Icewind Dale - Journey to Good Mead
Before I get into the events of today's session, I finished Kaiakee's ref, so you can see them here in full color!
Today, we finished up our business in Dougan's Hole and set off for the nearby town of Good Mead. When we woke up, our kobold friends were missing, so we had to search for them - it turned out they had broken into the town speaker's house and attempted to rob her! Fortunately, she had found them before they could do any damage, and was giving them a talking to when we arrived. She thanked us for rescuing the teenagers from the wolves, but also heavily implied we should leave town and provided information on Good Mead - apparently, all of the towns in Icewind Dale have had similar disappearances to the ones in Dougan's Hole, including Good Mead. She also informed us that the kobolds, Holgi, Snorp, and Zilbo, had told her that they were working on research for a contact in Easthaven. The kobolds later elaborated that they are supposed to capture an elemental alive as part of research on weather patterns. A new member joined the party, as well - Elias, a barbarian!
Before leaving, we had to find something to eat. Fortunately, Adair managed to catch a decent-sized fish, and Følra caught a huge one. Følra also made a truly horrendous stew out of said fish, but it was edible, and so we were able to leave having eaten an adequately nutritious, albeit nasty, meal. While fishing, we also learned that Dougan's Hole and Good Mead have a longstanding rivalry that in the past resulted in a violent conflict.
On our way to Good Mead, we encountered two perytons, a mated pair looking for humanoid hearts to eat. Luckily, since Kaiakee usually travels by air, they spotted the perytons long before they attacked and were able to warn the rest of the party. We then proceeded to swiftly kill the perytons without taking any significant damage. Adair took the antlers and heart from one of them as a trophy, which everyone else found creepy but didn't have enough of an issue with to try to stop him. The rest of our journey was uneventful.
Arriving in Good Mead, we stopped at the mead hall to secure lodging. It was overpriced, and although everyone else was planning to simply deal with it, Følra started an argument with the innkeeper about it. This was not a successful strategy for getting cheaper rent. The bees whose honey is used to make the mead - which turned out to be only mediocre - live in the mead hall, so their buzzing was audible. It turned out that Diatus had never seen a bee and did not know what they were, so Kaiakee took the opportunity to spend 15 or 20 minutes explaining in detail what bees are. After this, Adair, Kaiakee, and Følra went to check out the Shrine of the Flaming Sword, a local place of worship for the war god Tempus. Unfortunately, there was a dead body in there - the speaker of Good Mead, who had been stabbed 3 times.
Upon rushing back to the mead hall to report the dead body to the rest of the party, we received weird looks from many villagers, who were apparently already aware of the murder. Since it was getting late, we decided to investigate the situation tomorrow, and the session ended.
Check out these images of two of the other party members, Victorio and Diatus! Credit to chrysopid and psycada respectively.
