Nerd Dice: Chapter 2: Encounter with the Harpers

After escaping the Zhents in Hill's Edge, Milos, Thorne, and Sergor return to New Keep early in the morning with the two women they rescued from prostitution. Mirabelle had arrived just before them with the people the group had freed from the Thayan slavers. Leythan the Paladin assisted with healing the wounded arrivals and places to rest and eat were acquired for everyone from New Keep's meager resources. Out of the woods, Laucian returns with a hawk and an owl sitting on the back of his backpack.

After talking with the freed slaves, the group learns that three of the people are from Waterdeep, to the north, and the rest are from Greenest and Berdusk, to the south. Since they had promised the freed slaves safe passage to their homes, they planned to head quickly to Trell, which was on a caravan route. At Trell, they could send the folks from Waterdeep off with a reputable caravan to see them safely back to the City of Wonders. After resting a half a day, the group packs into three carts and heads back on the road, wary that the Zhents or Thayans could be following.

After half a day's travel, they arrived for the evening at the small mining village the adventurers had rescued from a magical plague. There, the paladin, cleric, and monk are pleased to discover a shrine to the Triad is being built in honor of their gods. The night passes safely in the mining village and they leave early the next day, back on the road for Trell.

That night as they make camp, Leythan stays up for the first watch. After a few hours he wakes up Laucian and Sergor for second watch. The ranger sends his owl up into the air to search for anything moving in the dark woods. For a while it's quiet, and then Lomion sees something and returns to the ranger, circling above him to signal that something was coming through the trees.

Laucian calls her down and uses a spell to talk to her. "Big head, big head!" is all she'll say. Sergor and Laucian wake up the other adventurers, worried that something large and dangerous is approaching.

Milos casts a spell to detect the thoughts of what's approaching, and can only get a sense of something angry and confused. The adventurers brace themselves and a beholder emerges into their clearing!

The passengers huddle in the cart as the adventurers prepare for battle. Laucian, familiar with beholders, tells the group to keep together, but Mirabelle attempts to hide from it in the bushes. The rest of the group cluster together between the beholder and the carts. Milos manages to attack the beholder first, and in return the creature levitates him 30 feet from the ground, while firing different magical spells at others, which miss. Thorne sends a magic missile into the beholder, and Mirabelle gets a hit at the abomination with her crossbow. Leythan swings his sword and cuts the beholder, while it continually fires at the rest of the party. Undaunted by being so high in the air, the cleric of Tyr casts a blindness spell on the beholder. Losing its sight, the beholder can no longer levitate him and he drops to the ground with a crash of his armor. The paladin steps in and manages to finish off the creature.

The group nurse their wounds through the rest of the uneventful night, but are left wondering from where the beholder came.

The next day they arrive in Trell and make arrangements to send the three Waterdavians back home with a respectable caravan. They decide to spend some time in the town, and separate to complete their own errands.

Milos goes to the temple of Tyr to relate the events of the past few days, and asks if there are any criminals of note in the area. The only particular troublemaker is a half-elf charlatan who was selling fake potions, and had escaped arrest in Trell.

Mirabelle goes to a tavern to listen up on gossip, and hears tales of more missing persons. In another tavern, Leythan encounters another paladin and trades tales with him, but doesn't learn much about either the Zhents or the beholder.

Thorne visits a wizard in town to look for spell scrolls, and Laucian follows him to ask the wizard what he knows about summonning and controlling beholders. The adventurers all meet up at the end of the day and sleep in Trell.

Early the next morning, they continue on with the rest of the freed slaves toward the town of Elturel. Intending to spend the night there, the group heads for a nearby tavern. At the bar, Laucian asks the bartender if he had any knowledge about hunters stealing eggs and chicks from birds of prey. The bartender recalled a man with long dark hair, a goatee, and distinctive jewellery instructing hunters on stealing hatchlings and live eggs.

Meanwhile, Milos investigates the potion-selling charlatan activities and finds him nearby. He exposes the half-elf's trickery and arrests him, turning him over to the town's authorities.

Feeling relatively well-rested, the travellers head out on the long road to Berdusk the next day. Travel remains relatively uneventful until the third day, where they find signs of an orc raid on the road. However, the dead are buried and the orcs are long gone, so they continue on to Berdusk, where they arrive the next day.

In town, the former slaves disperse: residents of Berdusk hurriedly returning home, and the remainder from Greenest sent safely off with a caravan headed that way. After seeing the last person off, several of the group notice they are quite obviously being followed. Mirabelle circles around to follow the follower, while Sergor points out their tail to the rest of the group. While they keep an eye on her, they notice her talking to a man; they are both human, well dressed, and rather attractive. The paladin walks by them, unable to detect any evil intentions, and the cleric can't read the thoughts of either person. At this point, everyone realizes Mirabelle has been gone for far too long.

Sergor spots the human woman walking down an alley and slips behind to follow her, hoping to gain a clue to what has become of Mirabelle. He hides and sees three people: the human woman, the man, and a sun elf. All wearing similar clothing and distinctive pins on their cloaks. He also sees a shape which he eventually distinguishes as the unconscious Mirabelle.

The sun elf berates the man, demanding to know why he knocked the rogue out and mentioning something about the unusual armor that Milos was wearing. Mirabelle eventually awakens and demands to know what's happening. The sun elf tells her that she wants to see the half-orc, Milos, and she wants to know how he got his armor. Since she had been taking the slaves back to New Keep, she didn't realize that the cleric had found the armor in a room of the Zhent sorceror's house in Hill's Edge. Eventually, the three let her go, realizing she was telling the truth.

As she walks back up the alley, Sergor pulls her into his hiding place and tries to find out more. They decide to go meet up with the others before they take any action. Once back out in the street, the group talk and decide to go confront these mysterious people. As they approach the appointed meeting place, Milos recognises the design of the odd pins they wear.

The adventurers are lead through Berdusk, down a sidestreet, to a cul-de-sac guarded by half-hidden sentries with bows trained on them. There they see the sun-elf and the woman who had been following them. They question Milos suspiciously and demand that he drink a potion of truth. Milos tells them briefly of what happened in Hill's Edge and how he came across the armor in the assassin's bedroom.

The sun-elf seems to drop her guard somewhat and allows the party to go inside her house. She reveals that her mate was the former owner of the armor, and had been brutally slain by the Zhents. She and her companions were in search of the armor and an equally distinctive flaming battle axe, which she hoped one day to give to her son. She reveals that they are of the Harper's Guild, and have also been fighting against the slaving activities and other evil wrought by the Zhents in the area.

They describe the leader of recent doings between Greenest and Hill's Edge, and from his description he sounds suspiciously like the leader of the hunters that the barkeep in Elturel spoke of. The man calls himself Darkblade and he is often seen in collusion with the Zhents. Also, confirming the evidence the group has seen on the road, there has been trouble with an orcish war band... and conveniently, neither the Zhents nor the Thayans have suffered any attacks at all.

The Harpers tell the group that the wizard Darkblade had been seen to leave a short while ago with a caravan for Hill's Edge. The group decide they'd best catch up with him, so they leave immediately, riding hard all that day and well into the night until midnight. They sleep a short while, and early the next day, they ride all day, but rest their horses over a full night's sleep. After a short ride early the next morning, they spot smoke billowing up ahead on the road-- much more than should be from a camp fire.

Mirabelle scouts ahead and finds a caravan that had very recently been destroyed. It looks like the attackers are gone, however, and when she returns with the rest of the group, they begin to search the ruins of the caravan. They find the body of a man who matches Darkblade's description, and he looks as though he was partially attacked with flame. Further searching reveals one survivor, a caravan guard, in the brush nearby. With his dying breath, he describes a battle with orcs a few hours ago. Darkblade had met with the orcs on good terms, but an argument developed, and the orcs destroyed the caravan, carrying off goods and people.

It is an hour after dawn, so the group know the orcs won't be awake much longer. They ride for an hour and then Mirabelle sneaks ahead on foot to scout out their camp. She finds sentries posted around a huge clearing with a bonfire in the middle. Near the bonfire stand a huge orc who is obviously the leader, carrying an impressive battle axe, and another orc who looks like a shaman. Three people are tied up at stakes and a fourth is partially devoured, while a horse roasts over the fire.

Mirabelle comes back and the group plan their attack. She sneaks up on two sentries and kills them, while Thorne shoots a fireball at the orcs furthest away from the humans, badly burning the shaman. The orcish leader shouts, and his battle axe bursts into flame! He charges the rest of the party, who have little real cover outside the clearing.

It's a tough battle, even though most of the other 30 orcs are dispatched easily, except for one who had an especially vicious whacking stick. The orcish shaman focuses on casting beneficial spells on his leader, who has gone into a barbarian rage. Milos tries to freeze him with a spell, which is quickly dispelled, and then attempts to blind him. However, the leader manages to wound several of the party, doing the most damage to Laucian. Mirabelle drags off the critically wounded ranger into the bushes and gives him a potion, only to be attacked soon after by the shaman from behind. Meanwhile, Leythan finally finishes off the barbarian leader with his sword. Soon, all the other orcs are gone but the shaman. Weakened by an attack of acid arrows from Thorne, he attempts to escape but is caught by Sergor who snaps his spine with a final blow.

The party wearily collect the battle axe and free the two human captives who are left alive. They find a number of useful objects that had been stolen by the orcs. The corpses of the orcs are thrown on the bonfire, and the group go back to the ruined caravan to bury the human remains there. They spend the night on the road back to Berdusk.

In the morning, they find that one of the survivors has hung himself, traumatized by the sight of orcs feasting on the other human captives. They bury his body and travel on the Berdusk, where they leave the remaining survivor (a bit loopy) at a temple to be looked after.

They return the flaming battle axe to the Harpers and relate all that had occurred with the caravan and the orcs. The sun elf rewarded them kindly for retrieving her former mate's weapon, and offered to allow any of the party to train with the Harpers whenever they returned to Berdusk. She also told them of further Zhent activity to the southwest in Greenest. The group plan to head to Greenest next and get to the bottom of the Zhents' scheming.