(DM's Preface: Funny thing, the spell check has given up in the Word doc where I compile the session logs. Currently, the total is at 104 pages! When I first started, I wanted to write it in a more prose, storytelling style than the objective, journalistic style I finally decided to go with. I can only imagine, had I chosen the other route, I’d probably be at 400 + pages and 15 sessions behind!! Anyway, here is the latest session. Some great combat, and even more questions posed about the mysteries of Eyru.)

The party travels north along the coast, stopping to raid an absent fisherman’s house and leaving behind an enormous pile of copper. (I’m sure he was pleased….) They take his tools, some spare nets, some fishing hooks. (The plan was for Liam to use these tools on the boat they are chasing, slicing it up underwater….that never quite came about.)

They continue north with Cian keeping an eye on the ship for them from the air. The vessel never stops, traveling all night with oars going. The party does their best to keep pace. After several days, they reach a small village within High Clan Faough’s lands. It is a tiny trading village that appears to have recently sprung up. Analogous to the mining boom towns of gold rush days in the U.S., it is a rough place with plenty of wealth. Trappers and salmon fisherman from High Clan Faough come here regularly to trade with intrepid merchants from various high clans.

Bebe and Dierdre go to town while the rest wait outside in the woods. Bebe gets into some gambling and after scaring the pub’s patrons by betting gold in a mostly copper pool, she looses the dice game to a merchant from High Clan Erinin. Dierdre meanwhile sees a large longship flying High Clan Erinin’s colors. She gets a fisherman to row her out to the boat and she convinces the crew to let her wait for the captain (yeah that was hard…bunch of sailors, 17 charisma sorceress, "Can I come aboard?")

The captain returns and Dierdre spends a long time convincing him of the urgency to follow the ship. She is very insistent and bluffs him into believing she is also a merchant. She was recently in Dun Brees and saw some rich, unknown people trading there and she wants to establish communication with them. The captain is very skeptical, but agrees to take her north. He keeps stating that no one goes further North than the edge of the woods, even by sea, but she convinces him there could be some hot trading prospects there; a market no one else has tapped. The captain, an adventurous man at heart, buys into it.

Dierdre returns to the group and disguises Liam to look like a small boy. Bebe returns, a little tipsy and a few gold poorer. The plan is to have Dierdre, Bebe, Liam, and Archu (who hides his half-elf heritage) travel on the boat. Lance, Cinn Oir, Cian, and the animals will follow along the coast (Talking birds, and bears tend to not be standard cargo.) They return to the city and set sail that night.

They travel north several days and finally catch up with the slow but steady ship. The strange illusion is still up and it looks as though they are following a very normal, but large keelboat and not the war galley the group saw when they were on deck of the ship in Dun Bree's harbor. The captain of the Erinin ship is nervous as the other ship flies no colors. He original told Dierdre they were probably pirates with some sort of hideout to the north. He orders his men to be wary.

Later that day, Cian contacts Dierdre. He flies overhead to get her attention and she then asks the captain to let her and her group go ashore for a few hours. Once there, Cian speaks to them breathlessly. The party on shore (Cinn Oir, Lance, Kentaka, the bear, the three horses) spotted a group of *giants* further south and had to hole up to avoid being spotted. Dierdre tells him to tell the others to either hold tight and they will be back to pick them up ASAP. Cian agrees to relay the message and then return to follow the party on the ship.

Several more days pass and the captain and crew get very antsy. The crew is keen to turn around. The condition of the land in sight has been slowly deteriorating into a hostile, hell of a landscape.  The captain is also nervous and curious. He wants to overtake this ship they have been following for three days. Dierdre convinces him it is best to see where they are going first. (With continual success at her Bluff rolls) She drags the captain along and he agrees to one more day. Toward the end of the fifth day, the captain decides to end the slow pursuit and pull up along side. The other ship is steady, but not fast and with a good wind in the sails, the longship overtakes it. The captain orders his men ready and some keep short swords or belaying pins nearby.

Having seen the nature of the illusion before, Liam, Bebe, Archu and Dierdre can see through the thin veil of the oversized keelboat and the true war galley beyond it. Dierdre calls out to the deck of the other ship which, presumably as part of the illusion, has oars manned by crimson robed figures. There is little in the way of an immediate response. However, up on the upper deck at the back of the ship, the party can see two familiar faces. The veiled medusa and her monk companion.

Dierdre calls out again and receives a response, but not one she cared to hear. A Fireball blazes forth from the medusae’s hands and slams into the merchant longship. Dierdre is thrown to the deck and badly burned. Archu dives behind a stack of furs to avoid some of the damage as does Liam. Bebe is just outside the area. The crew is less fortunate. Most at the oars on the side closest to the impact die instantly. The sails begin to burn as well and the rest of the crew is badly injured. The captain calls out in alarm and immediately starts shouting orders to turn the boat around.

The death of half of the oarsmen sends the longship careening into the side of the war galley. As its bow smashes into the other ship, it begins to scrape along the side, breaking off oars as it goes. The party rushes to the prow of the ship to try to leap over and scramble up on to the war galley’s lower deck. Everyone except Dierdre who feebly reaches over to her magic tattoo she recently commissioned from Cian. It releases its Cure Moderate and she stabilizes her near mortal wounds.

Bebe and Archu make the leap while Liam has quite a bit of trouble, nearly falling between the two boats on his attempts. As Bebe and Archu board, they are cut off by several crimson robed figures and a melee ensues. Longsword and axe flash, streaming green ichor. The medusae fires Magic Missiles into the melee as her monk companion stands guard, waiting for the need to defend her.

Liam gives up jumping onto the ship and casts a Silence spell centering on the upper deck where the fireball came from. This stops the stream of magic missiles headed toward Archu and Bebe as they dispatch crimson robed combatants one after another. Liam then hops atop several crates at the front of the longship and leaps, grabbing the lower deck of the war galley by his fingertips and barely managing to pull himself up.

Dierdre picks herself up slowly off the deck of the longship and she too leaps to board the war galley. Her own vault successful, she heads for the upper deck as Bebe clears the stairs of combatants for her. Dierdre spots the medusae (veiled as of now….) and her bodyguard who have moved down to the lower deck on the far side of the boat. Dierdre fires off a volley of Magic Missiles (being just on the edge of Liam’s Silence….) They fly true but deflect harmlessly as they reach their foul target. Miffed, Dierdre heads toward the strange globe on the upper deck which she assumes is some sort of "steering wheel".

Liam, now aboard the ship casts the party staple Obscuring Mist which quickly envelopes the majority of the deck. Archu and Bebe don’t lose a beat in their melee and continue to bring down their opponents. As Archu wrenches his longsword free of one of the lizardman monks, he dons the hood of his cloak and slips noiselessly into the fog. Liam continues around to the farside of the deck, cautiously.

Dierdre growls as she loses line of sight with the Medusae and scowls as she notes she can’t here her growl of discontent. Stepping further into the haze she nearly runs headlong into a crimson robed monk. With several deft sword thrusts, she leaves the creature bleeding on the deck as she pushes forward to the ships controls. Bebe drops the final monk facing her and peers into the fog. She too presses forward to find the Medusa, last seen opposite her on the far side of the ship with her monk bodyguard.

Archu pads softly around to the farside of deck, and is surprised as the fog in front of him seems to suddenly vanish. A powerful breeze throws back his cloak and he looks forward to the source. What he sees is not what he had wanted to…. (DM's Note: The Medusa cast a "Wind Wall" to deflect create a nice sudden end to the fog where she could give people a welcoming smile...)

Liam, can see ahead of him that the fog is swirling violently. A dark figure stands between him and the edge of this fog. Cast in hopes of depriving the enemy spellcaster of a clear line of sight, he notes how effective it is….. He approaches the figure cautiously with his sword at the ready, but the figure does not move. Slowly it takes on a familiar shape…it is Archu. At least, it looks like Archu. However, the uniform surface speaks of an inanimate object. Liam understands Archu’s fate. The bewitching gaze of the serpent headed medusae has turned him into stone. Liam mutters a curse and presses forward, his eyes averted toward the deck.

Bebe stays near the stairs and forges into the fog. Reaching up, she taps her tattoo of Bull's Strength which Cian had refreshed for her. She closes her eyes, trusting her near supernatural instincts of her surroundings (a.k.a. Blind Fighting….) to warn her of approaching opponents. As such she knows he is there before she even breaks the fog; the crimson robed leader of the monks.

Bebe raises her axe and flies into a blood boiling rage. The monk advances almost passively and his relaxed figure explodes into a blinding swirl of hands, feet and a sharp edged Kama. Bebe spins her axe wildly, fending away or ignoring her opponents blows as her reckless will demands. Her opponent fights with a solid calm, raining down blows as the steady beat of a drum. Bebe’s head pounds beneath the motion, her body jolts beneath the hands and feet of this creature that never seems to stay on the ground.

The monk launches forward again with a flurry of attacks. Iron fists collide with Bebe’s jaw and she shrugs off their blows, a hand grabs her firmly by the shoulder as a leg slips behind her own. She feels a push. Her rage grants her no time to think, no time to be confused. "Push back it" screams. Locking her leg, she strikes forward with her palm striking the monk square in the chest. His reptilian features show a hint of surprise; a master beaten at his own game. There is an audible crunch and the monk falls backward to the deck.

Axe raised, Bebe Brings it down hard. She must stop the dizzying figure from moving is all her rage can tell her. Pinned to the deck beneath her battle axe, it moves no more.

Her bodyguard down, the medusae looks franticly around. The unstoppable rage of the axe wielder has pushed her and her bodyguard into a corner of the ship…a corner just inside the enchanted silence. There is no escape. Before her, the barbarian, blind in her rage, seems to ignore the ghastly face. The horrific visage her last defense. The medusae snarls and draws a dagger from her belt, flinging herself to the whirling wall of the living axe, and certain death.

Liam emerges from the fog as the battle rages. The corpses on the deck and a winded Bebe tell the story.

(DM’s Note, ok, so it didn’t go quite just like that but its been a few weeks so give me some artistic license. That's the spirit of the thing at any rate!)

The session ends with victory aboard the serpent prowed war galley, and Archu bestowed a dubious honor….immortalized in stone……