Erhivor's Journal: Entry 6

Well, we headed out of Wildsgate town after receiving from from the Baron's scouts that we had a location for Lady Aborn and that she was in the company of Azubahl. To my amazement, we were each given fine light warhorses and traveling gear--with the exception of Constantine, who already had his own horse and traveling gear--courtesy of the Baron. I chose one of the duns. Gideon chose the least attractive of the horses, a rather homely dapple. Nel also chose a dapple and Brom chose a dun, whom he has named "Horse" for some strange reason. Fortunately, having some experience riding horses in the past, I am not one of the clumsy riders in our group.

So, we headed and it only took us a day to reach a good stopping point at the base of the spires where an alcove in the mountain would be an ideal place to leave the horses. There we encountered two men, one by the name of Barek and the other by the name of Broth. Barek appeared to be a decently intelligent individual, but Broth seemed rather dimwitted. Amongst their party were three horses, and one of those horses happened to be Lady Aborn's mare. At the time, none of us had recognized the mare, but Broth seemed a bit shifty, however dimwitted. So, we were cautious and politely questioned the two men while Brom wandered off, presumably investigating the surroundings.

After some rather uninformative conversation with the two men, Brom came running back to us, as a wolf, and dove into the lake, completely immersing himself in the cold water and then resurfaced in his normal human form. This shocked both of the men and so Brom made up some lame story about the lake being a gateway between two worlds, one consisting entirely of wolves or something. Next thing, Broth dove into the lake and came back out claiming that he could not see the world in there. That was when Brom started going into detail about how when he was scouting, he was attacked by unseen assailants using arrows and said they were not far off from where we were. At that point, Broth then shouted something like "now" and we were set upon by Hobgoblins, I believe, who appeared on the ledge above us and fired upon us with crossbows and spears.

During this fight, Broth attacked us as well, and Barek, amazingly, fought on our side. Poor Barek seemed to not be a very good fighter. He kept slipping and falling and hardly landed a hit on anyone, but he did help out and possibly saved Constantine's life. But, I wonder if Barek is related to the captain of the Wildsgate guard. Anyway, the fight turned very ugly for Constantine when he suddenly started dancing uncontrollably. And while he was dancing, he had a rather horrified and strained look on his face. Obviously he was the victim of some kind of spell. But his dancing attracted the attention of some of the hobgoblins once they lept down to our level from the cliff, and so they surrounded him. He was completely defenseless and almost died as a result. But, in the end, we managed to kill them all and subdue Broth.

Then we found out that the crossbow bolts that hit some of us were poisoned and we had to quickly act in order to keep anyone from dieing. We managed to get everyone fixed up and Constantine shackled Broth so that he could not get away.

After all of that, we decided that it was time to clean up the camp site and get some rest. So, we piled all of the hobgoblin corpses around a tree about fifty feet away from the campfire and some of us bathed. Then, as we were getting prepared to bed down and Constantine was out scouting not too far away, a wyvern came swooping down from across the lake, landed and started consuming the hobgoblin corpses. I was really hoping that it would just go away, but instead it saw us and decided, then to roost atop our alcove and play a game of cat & mouse with us. Wyverns are really annoying, and quite scary. I wanted to create a diversion, so that we could attack the wyvern from behind and then, later, flank it. So, I tried to convince Brom to run out there as a wolf and get its attention, but he was rather insulted by that suggestion. So, we just had to fight it off, right there, as is. We did so and, though it was tough and Brom and Gideon almost go killed by the thing, we still prevailed. At one point, it really looked like Brom was going to keel over and die. I cast a protection spell on him, hoping to stave off further damage to him from the beast, but he managed to get away from the beast and not further suffer the wyvern's attentions. But the wyvern attacked me as well and I could not get away from it very easily. Those horrible creatures can fly, so my own flying and levitation don't help me out much. But, again, in the end, we managed to destroy it.

After that, we dragged the corpse away and I harvested some wyvern claws and scales and teeth. I also removed its heart. We then went to sleep and the night was uneventful.

When we awoke, I discovered that I had no way to securely store the wyvern heart. So, I cooked and ate it. I cannot say exactly why I ate it. Some arcane books that I have read spoke of human sorcerers eating the hearts of dragons and draconic creatures to gain insight into their mystical dragonic abilities and knowledge, which was part of the reason I ate the heart. But, it also just seemed like it should not go to waste. And there were other reasons that I could not exactly explain. I offered some of the cooked heart meat to the others and fed some to our captive, Broth, who was happy to have something to eat. After all, we could not just let him starve out of spite. We then packed up and made ready to climb the spire path. But, first, Constantine tied Broth to a horse, keeping him restrained but allowing him to use his knees to guide the horse. Constantine then placed a signed writ in Broth's belt, the writ describing Broth's crimes and he then instructed Broth to guide the horse back to Wildsgate if he wanted even a chance to live. Broth seemed quite cowed at that point and, hopefully, he will remain to be and do as he is told.

We then headed upslope to a location directly above where we slept the night before, searching for the wyvern's lair, and we did find it, and found some interesting items in there. After gathering up a few choice items, we continue on up the spire's path.

I have settled on a name for the horse that I was given for transportation by the Baron of Wildsgate. I will call him "Arakyn-Mor". And I am going to call Gideon's horse "Caslth".

Now, we are before the mouth of a cave. So, I will close out this entry.

[End of journal entry, next will be the "Thoughts of Erhivor" to fill in the rest]