Confronting the Order of the Black Banner

Laying Najáre upon a bower of leaves and bedrolls to recover back at camp. Our heroes consider their next move. Quick Jim is fascinated by the strangely but obviously female shaped trees in the Grove. His thoughts keep going back to the trees there. When Sif announces she’s going out to hunt for some fresh provisions for the party, Quick Jim advises Belton that he’s going to go back to the grove to give those trees another look-over. Belton at first considers accompanying him but then recognizes that his duty is to his wounded charge, Najáre and opts ot stay and guard her against wandering monsters in her weakened state. While Sif combs the wilderness for big game, putting her survival skills to the test in the deep woods, Quick Jim makes his way back to the Grove. He speaks respectufully of his service to Barael and the cause of protecting the woods to the open air of the clearing, directing his entreaty to the guardian trees. Saying his peace, he feels a surge of magical powers wash over him. He chooses a tree-maiden and wrapping his cloak about him and pulling his false beard up over his eyes for shade, he sit among the toadstools with his back agains the trunk and begins to doze off.

Alone.

In the wild woods of the Arthfell Forest.

In the middle of the day when predators skulk about seeking flesh.

As he begins to settle in and doze, he feels a strange compelling attraction to the other tree he passed by. It’s maidenly form returning to mind again and it’s natural beauty filling his attention. Before he even know it, he finds himself on his feet and shuffling over to the enticing tree. Settling down to rest at its roots. He falls immediately into a black and dreamless slumber as his conscious mind just catches the voices of women affirming that they intend to keep this one and another voice of admonishment gently asserting that it is not to be.

Meanwhile, back at camp, Najáre has laid down to recover from her grievous, deadly wounds. Belton summons forth holy healing energies through supplication and prayer to Desna and helps her torn and ragged flesh to knit back together and her splintered clavical bone to bind and heal. She creeps toward wellness slowly but the throbbing pain of the bear’s ripping and tearing claws is still with her and she is still a long way off from being fully combat-ready again. While Belton scans the forest with his keen eyes, seeking threats and danger to head off before it can menace hos weakened companion, Najáre spots a vague and vaporous figure slipping through the trees nearby, low and shadowy in the forest gloom. This figure approaches and partially materializes in the form a strange and other-worldy cat. 

Belton, wise in the knowledge of the Planes and the treatises of his religion, recognizes this being as an ascended soul, risen to the Nirvana of neutral-good celestial heavens, a place bewildering to Belton for its seeming boringness and pointless lack of direction, He being firmly in support of freedom and the chaos of free will in the realm of goodness. Recognizing it as a Silvanshee Agathion, He watches along with Najáre as the thing approaches her and sits in the bright sunlight of the camp’s clearing, staring with luminous intensity. The Cait-Sìth (sometimes called a Cath Sidhe) speaks to Najare in Truespeech, perfectly accented Katapeshi flowing like honey from it’s tongue. It greets Najáre and speaks to her of a destiny soon to unfold for her in vague hints and subtle mysterious clues, its oblique speech frustrating the forthright rectitude to which she is accustomed. She tolerates the Celestial’s purring dialog in laconic silence for the most part, stoically listening for useful clues among the ephemera. 

It becomes apparent that some momentous event impacting her fate will occur soon in a blighted and dire place. The rumored Giant of the Forest will loom in the presence of this turning point. The Cath Sidhe turns Najáre’s attention to the strange scent on the wind. A singular smell, easy to track and find for it is unlike any other odor in the forest. This scent-trail marks the path to this place. Najáre locks the memory of the scent I her mind. Then the creature pads forward on its partially ethereal feet and begins to knead Najáres chakra point in her stomach, healing positive energies flowing inter her ans further closing her sore and tender wounds. With a start the Agathion turns and peers into the forest, warns Belton that something is coming and then summons a tiny dimension door and leaps into nothingness, disappearing from the camp.

Belton, mindful of the advantage of surprise and higher ground flies quickly into the trees and prepares his heavy crossbow for battle. From the dark of the deep woods emerges Sif Amarth hefting a weighty wild boarling on her brawny shoulders, slain by her axe. She begins to butcher and dress the pig, preparing a good and hearty meal for her wounded fellow-ranger. As they set the meat to spit over a clean fire of dry wood and leaves, they note that even after more than an hour, Quick Jim Barleycorn is gone in the woods. Belton advises that Quick Jim said that he meant to return to the sacred grove and the three rise and make way to the Druid’s Circle.

Finding Quick Jim asleep at the base of a Tree-Maiden and partially overgrown with root tendrils and flowering vines and half sunk into the trunk of the tree as though he had been in place there for days or months, Sif quickly pulls him free of the loose foliage and dusts away the natural debris. Shaking and slapping him awake with a start. Jim roars into consciousness quickly spewing excuses and noise before collecting his wits and thanking his comrades. They tell him of the good provender that Sif has cooking back at camp and the band starts to make it’s way to the camp when a creak snap groan and crack sound behind them from the Tree-Maiden. Spinning and freeing her battleaxe, Sif crouches into a ready position to do battle with some new threat from the forest, Najáre too drawing saber and tomahawk to stand and deliver. The heroes see a beautiful and shapely figure of wood and leaves pull itself forth from the Tree-Maiden, full and supple of figure with sultry grace and an otherworldly allure. 

“Return to me, Mortal” it supplicates, it’s smooth and comely arms raised toward Quick Jim in a come-hither beckon that tears at his heart, filling him with a longing for her leafy embrace. With a surge and effort of will he resists her charm and bids her a gentlemanly and gracious farewell. As they part she speaks and with a voice redolent with eldritch power she commands, “Come back to me sometime, Mortal” her powerful Fey suggestion working into his mind and bending his will. He knows that he will return to this Tree-Wife and be her beloved and he yearns to do so soon. Reluctantly the four leave the grove as the Dryad passes back in to the Tree and disappears.

After a full and delicious meal the team rests slightly longer and gains strength for a push through the forest into the evening. Returning the bear den cave entrance they pick up the trail of the Order of the Black Banner, obviously the thieves who stole the Wand of the Earth’s Ire and they head off into the woods in pursuit. Tracking for 8 hours they finally reach nightfall and Belton flies into the night sky under the cover of darkness to see if he can espy the enemy’s camp. It turns out to be child’s play. The camp is illuminated with magical light and visible from a mile and a half away through the tree canopy.

Creeping through the benighted woods through the shadowy leaves, the group surronds the Black Banner’s encampment, seeing that the Wizard Whartley is already asleep and Knu the wicked goblin is set to sentry duty. Grelm, a former soldier is seeing to the care and maintenance of his equipment and is unarmored as he works oils into his black leather armor, his sword set aside near a whetstone. Nirashi the heretical cleric of Urgathoa the Pallid Princess, a goddess of murder and evil, sits in dark and blasphemous prayer, her black and keenly honed scythe close at hand and ready to slice and maim.

Signaling across the camp with silent gestures, Quick Jim motions that he will creep up behind Grelm Hammerlocke and slit his throat in silence. And that Sif should cast one of her powerful Thunderstones into the camp when he has to deafen the spellcasters and hamper their casting ability. Belton slip in quietly and readies himself to pounce on Knu and capture the small creatue. Meanwhile Sif creeps through the underbrush to a tree overhanging the camp and climbs deftly up its trunk, her mountain upbringing and sure feet serving her well as she scales the tree with ease. Taking care to move as silently as possible to as not to alert the Camp to the ambush. But luck is fickle and faithless. A limb supporting Sif’s foot snaps suddenly and her stealthy approach is ruined as the branch heavily crashes to the forrest floor smashing into several other branches loudly on the way down.

Quick Jim flies into action materializing out of the shadows behind Grelm and driving gis quarterstaff ito the base of his skull, knocking him senseless, shattering his vertebrae and breaking his neck. Grelm slumps to the forest floor, dead to the world, eyes rolling in his head as he expires silently. Knu, cursing his ill luck, see the way that the tide is turning as Sif’s deftly thrown thunderstone hurtles to the ground at the center of the camp and deafens the Wizard and the Cleric instantly. He slips off into the forest using his rogue skills of Stealth and nearly escaping Belton. Najáre, courses like a lioness through the forest toward the evil Cleric drawing saber and hatchet picking up murderous speed as Sif drops from the trees and narrowly misses the deftly dodging priestess of Urgathoa. Quick Jim acts fast as Nirashi begins casting Magic Weapon on her scythe and hurls a fist-sized stone from the edge of the clearing sending it crashing into the face of the beautiful elf, disrupting her casting and sending her eldritch energies dissipating impotently into the night. Belton pounds away into the trees after the quickly receding Goblin and is infuriated to see the little blighter cast Obscuring Mist and disappear into the billowing cloud. Undaunted, the Angel-born Inquisitor speeds into the fogbank in pursuit muttering the arcane syllables that evoke his TrueStrike spell, which will ensure he can cut down the nasty little imp even despite his total concealment. From out of the mist a vast wave of fire roars, narrowly missing Belton as he dodges to the side, homing in on the lowly-creeping Goblin and raising his heavy crossbow to impale the sneak on a heavy iron bolt.

Meanwhile Najáre leaps like a jungle cat from the trees and sends her Saber and axe crashing down into Pudge the Wizard’s unarmored head and chest nearly killing him on the spot and driving him to the ground unconscious. Sif takes please in finishing off the half-breed hating elf, sweeping her head clear from her graceful shoulders, sending it rolling through the dirty leaves. In triumph, she hacks off a straight branch from a nearby tree and in the way of her harsh northern people sharpens one end like a pungi-stick and mounts the bloody head of the Elven priestess upon it as a warning to her enemies. Stripping the body of it's clothes so that Valhalla will know that her spirit died in shame and defeat and deny her succor in it's hero's mead-halls. 

Jim loots the corpse of the Captain of the Black Banners and calls into the night for the foolish Goblin to surrender, the rest of his evil gang having been already dispatched to hell’s dark embrace. The trifling fiend is no fool and recognizing a lost battle yields and begs for quarter and mercy. Belton, a champion of justice, takes him prisoner on the spot and marches him roughly back to camp.

The rest of our heroes strip the dead of their gear and Jim and Belton interrogate Knu. Demanding first the location of the Wand of the Earth’s Ire, which the Goblin produces immediately, having had it all along and having used it to blast flame at Belton moments earlier. Then they question him cruelly about how they knew of the artifact’s whereabouts and Knu reveals that an ancient treasure map had been bought from the Olfden Thieves Guild “The Whispering Death”. Quick Jim, moving the dead, corpse-head's mouth of Nirashi like a horrifying ventriloquist's dummy along with the questions asked, further interrogates the Goblin sorcerer. With terrible finality, Quick Jim Barleycorn asks the nasty imp why they should leave him alive and find his answer wanting. The creature claims that he know the location of the staff, his entreaty pregnant with hidden revelations, Jim, unmoved by his plea as he is in possession of the Birch-bark map of Barael, judges Knu unworthy and orders his execution which Belton delivers in a trice, skewering the knave on his masterwork swordbreaker dagger. Killing him instantly. A shiver runs through Belton at this borderline act of cruelty that dances on the edge of evil but his deep convictions of personal free will shake off his trepidation at his guilt I this act and he clears his head of doubt, trusting in the surety of his souls dedication to the greater good. A niggling doubt moves back into the shadows of his mind to sulk amid the forgotten.

Belton relieves Knu of his silver and a magical ring of protection. Then the party makes camp as Sif builds a Nordic bonfire and consigns the dead villains to Pharasma’s judgement.