14th Day of Autumn

I actually made it in time. I was still on the road when this blue flickering thing the guild uses to have people gather happened. Had to run from the edge of town to the tavern, but fortunately enough I bumped into another fellow at the door who was also fashionably late to our meet up.

Now, folks always told me that people outside the valley will be and do things different, but not to judge, so I won't do that, but when I came into the tavern there was a huge, green person, goes by Ugglug, just digging into an entire cow leg like that, which is weird. Part of our or little party in fact, swings a sword that I think is bigger than himself. And then there is, I kid you not, some kind of fox person, Lennox, who can literally turn into a literal fox, which is even weirder. Seems to be the spiritual kind of guy. Oh, and the guy I bumped into at the door? Yeah, Dylle, next to being some kind of artist, by his own words "throws stuff around with his mind", which is the weirdest. Ok, I guess it is a tossup between the fox guy and the mind thrower.

Anyway, there was another one of those fox people, must be Lennox mom I guess, who seems to run the Adventuring guild here. Sent us into the forest to find Verdan Dayi, the head priest, who has been missing since yesterday, and people here seem to really be on edge because of what they call "phantoms" appearing out of nowhere, though I didn't really get what worries them so much. Didn't run into a single Zombie on the road, seemed peaceful enough around here at first glance.

So, we follow this priest’s route into the forest and quickly come upon a bunch of burned and charred vegetation. Unfortunately, everybody assured me there were no dragons around the Ancient Forest to have caused this, a depressing prospect. The mind thrower, Dylle, though showed off a fancy party trick, reading the emotions attached to stuff, claimed a charred stick was imbued with fear and the priest’s footprints following the destruction just curiosity and worry. Not entirely sure how much of this stuff is real or part of this guy's "artistic vision", but he did prove the whole throwing stuff with his mind part soon after, so I guess I got to give him some credit.

Cause as we followed the trail of burned vegetation, we came upon a couple of... just floating little fire balls? They attacked us and Dylle threw a waterskin at them. Yes, the waterskin, not the water inside. But he did it with his mind, so that's that. The fires just turned into glowing plants, which, according to Lennox, is not how the local flora is supposed to behave. Might be dragons after all.

The burning trail got more intense deeper into the forest, but the priests path diverged from it, so we decided to follow that instead and to continue our attempted rescue mission. Except we were too late for any actual rescuing. We came upon a little hunting shack in the woods, where we encountered more of those little fire balls and one ugly little fire dude. We defeated them, but they did a number on Uglugg. And while he sure knows how to swing his sword, I don't think the man is entirely in touch with his body. Didn't even seem to realize he was almost burned to a crisp. I feel like this has to be some kind of serious medical condition, Lennox, who's a trained healer, seemed to be worried too.

Unfortunately for Lennox though, we came too late to rescue Verdan, who apparently was his mentor, but had already died trying to protect the forest from the flames. After taking a moment to pay our respects and deal with the loss we went back to town.

But seriously these people have no proper perception of security. I was really trying to be as respectful as possible and yet everybody got upset after pointing out we might hurry a little, considering the poor man might have been dead for up to a day, it's a miracle he hadn't risen yet! And then when we come back, they just put him back in his room! Just like that in the church, with people around! This is going to cause trouble for sure. Man, seeing people be this inconsiderate really made me reconsider how I felt about dad always obsessively pushing us to follow procedure. If not being this strict about it leads to this careless behavior he might have been right actually, bless his memory.

Anyway, we are back in town and caught a break, while I am writing this. Guess we'll head out and try to figure out all the fire stuff going on next, while I desperately try to remember if the fox lady said we get paid for "rescuing" or "finding" the priest...