Making a Horse's Ass of Oneself is Easier than it Should Be

4 June 2008-

We continued downriver this week after making nice with the local ogre shaman, and getting both his advice and his blessing. Things were, as they say, "going swimmingly" until we came to a lake, when things got a little hairy. Once we got into the lake, the water itself seemed to grab us and start moving us toward the center of the lake. Having been warned of the upcoming fens and the evil, nasty, and overtly hostile "fen witches," I (as the centaur) jumped to the conclusion that we were being taken out to the center of the lake by one of the denizens of the fens so that it could attack us far from the safety of the shore, and responded accordingly. Our experienced gamer crew, most of whom are ancient veterans of things like the Ravenloft campaign (the cuter and more innocent the encounter, the more likely it is that it heralds your impending doom) and the Arduin Grimoire ("you walk through a field... it attacks you!") immediately saw the logic of this approach, even while joking about how we would feel stupid if it were a "friendly water elemental". Of course, it was- courtesy of the benign river goddess, and it sunk one of our boats as retaliation for our attacks.

Once off the lake, we headed into the fens on the river, this time condensed onto one large boat. The loss of some of our supplies necessitated more foraging stops, and on one of these, two of our men disappeared. We tracked them through the fens to a large plant dome, which appears to be some sort of giant livestock pen, but with an attractive bridge made out of bones leading to it. Poking our heads in hasn't revealed anything yet, but we fear the worst for the NPCs, who were probably wearing red shirts when they stepped off-screen.