Two Days' Walk And A Hammer

Sunday, we picked up the Wilderlands campaign where we left off, without Dave or Travis (surprise, surprise!)

With the political situation in Bugbear Falls like it is, and the encroachment of a new blight to the area, the party spent plenty of time in deliberation as to what they wanted to do, and how they would go about doing it.

This took up much of the session.

Once a decision was made, and after arguing back and forth about its merits, the group decided to follow Lucius' lead to the south to collect the services of an Ogre tribe in the siege of The Falls that will act as a distraction as the group infiltrates and decapitates the corruption, after rooting it out.

Shortly after departing from Eldam's camp, while traversing the crescent of farmlands near Bugbear Falls, the group had two Ceustodaemons (basically tough beater-style summon fodder for the Four Horsemen) summoned into their midst by an unknown source! They finished the fiends off, banishing them back to their home plane, but not before losing a couple of NPC comrades, one being Se'ah, to the massive trauma caused by the daemons' frosty breath weapons.

After taking refuge in a nearby farmhouse after the fight, we all had a pretty good laugh when Steve realized that Jadazh had left one of his retainers out in the field, unconscious. Fortunately, the lad had been left unmolested by creatures of the wild, and was able to sleep off some of his injuries under the stars.

The band had decided to ferry across the river Modron at Hyyap, and with but a day before getting there, they ran across a mutated mass of thick, bright green, vines...which apparently bit Jadazh when he approached them, but in actuality hid a talkative, deceptive, and greedy Aranea, who was quick to tell the party that the vines were theirs, then upon failing to bring Jadazh and Chas under its sway, began to try to convince the group that it was a cursed human child.

The initial attacks by the creature on the party led the group to continue its assault, and then seek whatever the spider-thing was searching for under the vines once it was dispatched. Surprisingly, the creature held what is perhaps the most valuable piece of treasure recovered by them...a magical hammer! The hammer's distinctive look - an angel, wings spread and forming the head of the hammer - sparked a memory in Jadazh of a story he had heard or read about the weapon, it having been crafted over a millennium ago by arcanists loyal to the Invincible Overlord to combat the demonic legions summoned by the World Emperor's own wizards, but lost in The Demon Siege while weilded by a City-State general named Arikin.

Such a great find was hard for Jadazh to conceal, for after the group made it to Hyyap, and they were taking their meals, he hefted the weapon up while speaking, drawing every eye in the tavern to its soft glow.

The party was about to settle themselves for the night before taking a ferry across the gap, and then continuing on to "The Twist," where the ogre tribe supposedly lives, according to Lucius.