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Dunmari Frontier - Session 27

The Wellspring Standoff: in which the party faces gnolls and a cruel creature

Featuring: Kenzo, Wellby, Delwath, Seeker, Drikod
In Taelgar: May 24, 1748 DR to May 27, 1748 DR
On Earth: Wednesday Jul 07, 2021
Shakun’s Wellspring

The Dunmar Fellowship embarks on a journey to Shakun’s Wellspring, where they avoid gnolls, meet Cintra, and hide from Samerki.

Session Info

The party is gifted a Scoll of Sending by Candrosa
Character advancement: the party reaches level 6 while traveling across the Red Mesa, as Shakun prepares them for the challenges ahead

Summary

  • The Dunmar Fellowship attends a funeral for those killed by shadows, witnessing a network of magical connections.
  • They plan to find Shakun’s Wellspring and possibly Cintra to heal her daughter.
  • Traveling across Red Mesa, the party senses a force aiding their journey and discovers gnolls guarding the Wellspring’s entrance.
  • The party decides to bypass the gnoll guards by flying and climbing down the cliffs to the Wellspring.
  • They encounter Cintra, who warns them to hide from Samerki, a menacing creature demanding information from her; a confrontation is narrowly avoided through illusions and distractions.

Timeline

  • May 24, 1748 DR, evening: Funeral for mysai killed by shadows. Learn about the web of connections between initiates that powers the magic of Shakun that keeps Dunmar safe, using Shakun’s Heart and the Temple of Shakun as a focus. Decide to leave for Shakun’s Wellspring in the morning.
  • May 25, 1748 DR, morning: Depart Karawa, heading across the Red Mesa
  • May 26, 1748 DR: Travel across the Red Mesa all day.
  • May 27, 1748 DR, late afternoon. Arrive at a circle of stone trees, the entrance to Shakun’s Wellspring. Find it guarded by gnolls, most of whom look skeletal and wasted away. Sneak south and begin to descend steep cliff walls with magic. Meet Cintra. Nearly discovered by Samerki.

Narrative

We begin in the evening, as the sun has set and the Candrosa is leading the funeral service for those who died in the shadow attack at the end of the ritual of Shakun. As Seeker, Wellby, Delwath, Drikod, and Kenzo watch the funeral pyres burn and listen to the prayers of Candrosa, the lingering visions of the ritual leave the impression of webs of power connecting the initiates of Shakun together in a network of power. But the center is missing, and power seems to be slowly ebbing away. Hinting at the consequences of revealing the secret widely, the party can also faintly see six gray, brittle lines of the web, where they and Tharandros connect to the web of power, but don’t contribute as they are not truly initiated. The party spends the evening discussing their plans, and also briefly discussing Wellby’s memories or vision of a woods in deep twilight, following a stream to a glade that is dark and old, as he held the bow Delwath summoned for him during the shadow fight. 
The next morning, before heading south across the Red Mesa to find Shakun’s Wellspring and perhaps Cintra, or some clue of her, the party speaks with Candrosa once more. He describes Shakun’s Wellspring – a great open bowl canyon, below sheer cliffs stretching five hundred feet, accessible only by a narrow slot canyon that can be entered from a stair marked by a circle of stone trees grown from the rock of the mesa itself. Candrosa says it is a place of healing, and it does make sense that Cintra might go there to try to heal her sick young daughter. The mesa, Candrosa believes, is somehow Shakun herself, or contains her essence somehow. But the Supreme Oracle – Cintra – was always the guardian of Heart of Shakun. Before the party leaves, Candrosa gives them a scroll of sending, and asks to be alerted to news when they have anything to tell him.
Then, after gathering what supplies they can in Karawa, the party leaves south across the Red Mesa. The first day of travel is fairly uneventful, although the mesa is very quiet, and as the party travels south, they have the feeling that something is easing their passage, clearing the rough terrain ahead and keeping crevasses from opening under their feet. On the second day, Drikod sends his silver raven ahead to scout, who returns twelve hours later with a report that, up ahead, a band of gnolls, skeletons, and other undead guard the entrance to Shakun’s Wellspring.
The party decides to creep forward to within a mile of the entrance and get a better look with Seeker’s magic. They are able, then, to count about 20 creatures, a mix of skeletal gnolls, fleshy undead creatures of some kind, and gnoll hunters with longbows. They seem to be guarding the entrance but primarily to keep people from leaving. 
After a lot of debate, the party finally decides to circle around the guards and attempt to descend into the wellspring by flying down the sheer cliff walls, after Drikod reads the omens of the future and reports that this is a good course of action. When the party reaches the cliffs above Shakun’s Wellspring, they see that at the bottom, five hundred feet below the cliff edge, there is a small camp set up near the circle of trees marking the Wellspring itself. A woman, Cintra, kneels in prayer near the camp, and some distance away are a number of grave markers and the remains of a funeral pyre. The party begins to descend, which starts uneventfully, with Drikod (carrying Wellby) scaling down the wall using his spider climb spell, and Kenzo and then Seeker flying down with Delwath’s magic. When Kenzo speaks to Cintra, almost the first thing she says is that he needs to hide, immediately, or risk everything. 
As confusion breaks out across the party, Kenzo rushes to hide among the trees while Seeker descends, Delwath hides at the top of the cliff, and Drikod begins to climb back up the cliffs. Eventually, Seeker and Kenzo end up crouched in Cintra’s tent, as from the far side of the canyon a creature emerges: maybe seven feet tall, or a bit under, generally human in features but somehow unnaturally stretched or elongated, giving him an eerie, not-quite-human feel. This creature carried a huge, spiked club, and wore a dark cloak putting his face in shadow. He looked down at Cintra, laughing, and saying in a booming and cruel voice, “Good, you are still here, your daughter will live another day.” As he looks around, he seems to notice something on the far side of the cliffs, and heads towards Wellby and Drikod. While Drikod casts meld with stone and fades into the cliff wall, Wellby is caught in the open, defiant and knocking an arrow without a good place to hide. As the creature flies across the canyon towards Wellby, Delwath turns his shadow into a vaguely humanoid form, and sends it running across the top of the canyon, distracting the creature searching for Wellby for a moment. As it goes to swing its club towards the Wellby shadow, Cintra yells in a supernaturally loud voice from below, as she causes an illusion to appear before her of a shadowy halfling form, “Wait, that is me. That was just my trick. I will give you want you want, just come back in the morning. Please. I can’t stay here any longer.” 
The creature, distracted by this moment, lands and looks down at Cintra, laughing again, saying “I must report.” It takes a small stone out of its pocket, concentrating for a moment, and says, “She’s still here. Don’t kill her daughter. She’s agreed she’ll tell us what we need in the morning. I’m not sure it’s worth your travel.” And then it flies off. 
The session ends with Kenzo and Seeker hiding in Cintra’s tent, Drikod melded with the stone of the cliff, Delwath hiding while his shadow (looking vaguely like Wellby) moves along the edge of the cliff, and Wellby crouching in the open on the clifftop, hiding the best he can, bow at the ready.