Our intrepid band of adventurers continued to push on northward down the road in the rain. As they walked the could feel slight tremors in the ground throughout the day, but never seeing or knowing what could be causing them—were they natural, or something else?
* * *
As the sun dropped beneath the mountains to the west they headed off the road and set up their camp. Lorentz informed them that in the next couple of days they should come across a road-side temple, The Church of His Eternal Glory. There, they may be able to enlist the services of a Brother Shamus, a cleric Lorentz had worked with in the past, to join their band.
After eating dinner, the tremors persisted and seemed to be getting stronger. Suddenly a blood-curdling squeal of a boar could be heard off in the darkness. As they grabbed their weapons and rose to their feet, two giant boars rushed into their camp, wild-eyed and full of fear. They came to a sudden stop at the edge of the camp, seemingly surprised to run into the party—but willing to fight their way through them!
Ander backed off to cover to launch a continuous volley of arrows into the boars, while Lorentz and Grabby engaged one, and Audrey and Broak flanked the other, while Gerhardt stood with the pack animals to keep them calm, tied to a tree. At one point Broak dealth a stagger critical hit to a boar, causing him to relive his horrible past, stunning the boar and causing him to scream and cry, falling to his knees briefly.
As they fought on, the rumbling in the ground began to grow. As they were wearing the boars down, the ground shook violently, and the tree the pack animals were tied to cracked, rocked to the side and was uprooted in a cloud of dust and leaves. The horse and the mule were wrenched onto their sides, and Gerhardt was pinned beneath a tree branch and the thrashing mule.
The boars, equally surprised by the sudden uprooting of the tree, were caught off guard and the party slew them both, just as a massive shape emerged from a hole where the tree once stood: a land shark! The beast leapt through the air, coming down with horrible force on Audrey, dealing a massive amount of damage. Several of Anders' arrows bounced off its thick hide as the other party members rushed into the barbarian's aid.
Grabby climbed a nearby rock outcropping to gain height over the beast, but the wind shifted and wafted the delicious scent of halfling to the land sharks nostrils—it's favourite meal! Excited by the prospect of a halfling morsel, it once again jumped high into the air, landing on the rock outcropping, but Grabby managed to avoid the brunt of the attack, and rolled off the rock, and into the shadows below where he briefly hid from the hungry beast.
In his weakened state Grabby moved around the camp in an effort to stay away from the land shark while the others continued the attack. Lorentz switched to his crossbow which he quickly broke the bow string with a critical fail.
GM Note: Audrey's player was also rolling for Lorentz this session, and she rolled miss after miss, with several critical fails for both characters, leading to much frustration for her that night.
As they wore the beast down it manged to deal a devastating attack to both Audrey and Broak, leaving them bloody and unconscious on the ground. But within moments the others managed to bring the creature down, and they managed to finally help Gerhardt get out of his tight spot between the tree and the mule.
Audrey and Broak were eventually brought around, and had their wounds bandaged and they made it though the rest of the night without incident.
* * *
The next two days of travel saw nothing but rain and a grey sky. Late in the day they came to The Church of His Eternal Glory (a church devoted to St. Eliah), and entered past two rigid-looking paladins guarding the front gate...
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