El’s journal #008
When you spend a few days where you wake up and think, “Hey, noone tried to kill me in my reverie. Yay.” and you feel a bit surprised about that, it tends to wear on the spirit. We are all a bit more reserved and pious these days, now that the major threat has passed and we begin to wonder exactly how we got in that shape, and how to avoid it in the future. Reclaiming the assets of the town fence… possibly not such a good idea, since apparently he was a piss-poor gambler.
But in the end, we come away with some sum of platinum apiece, and everyone whole (including the water Genasi, who apparently strolled out of town on the bottom of the river. How odd.). This is perhaps the life of an adventurer, not just a wanderer. It is different from the days before, and not just the days in the woods — the travels too. The men, the religious, seem to want to get involved in the workings around them, influence people duly. They do not just take their job at the wages, they risk limb to do the lucrative thing, the heroic thing. They risk the gold as well. But though they will slaughter beasts easily, there is a moral shroud about icons, and honest money. Among some. Perhaps not the thief. It is very confusing.
Here we are tonight, snug again in an inn many hours from Mulhurand. Though we have not often been out-of-doors, the rough and panicked ride certainly jarred the senses, and it is nice to return to some place calm and quiet so that I may become calm and quiet again myself. We have been quite fortunate to arrive here, as there is both an out-of-the-way inn and a stable with spare horses. We will purchase a few steeds tomorrow, since we cannot afford to stall our longer journey.
In the tavern this evening, we were told about an opportunity far away (with the far away part being fairly important to us at the moment): the Full Moon Road. Apparently there is a magical road that appears outside a local abandoned church iwhen the harvest moon is full. It is a road that noone has returned from, though both adventurers and young, hearty men have gone that way to investigate. The adventurers were never seen or heard from again– at least not for sure. The full moon after they left, people said they heard screaming from down the path. Tortured, terrified screaming. But noone knows for sure that it was the adventurers. The local men that went, several years later, only dared venture inside the church. They, too, never returned. Screams, again, were all that issued from the place. And after that, the townspeople boarded up the church, and locked their doors and windows
any time the moon was full. They put out a call for adventurers, big prize. We looked the type — though I’m not sure if that is tough or foolish… or both.
So we will saddle up, and get supplies, and meet with our benefactor Jed Hotep in the morning and head out over the desert to find a small town with a haunted church. While we’re being pursued by, oh, sixty men. Good grief. How did I end up here?