We left town to talk with the only known person to survive the attacks in Sandpoint. He has goul fever and the doctor was allowing him to die and turn into a goul just to witness the process. When Avia entered the room he went crazy talking about how he had a message for her from his lordship. He lunged at Avia but she handled him without any difficulty. He wasn’t fully turned yet so Trask rode him back to town on the horse to get cured. If it were me I would be paying the doctor a visit to express my appreciation for allowing the goul fever to take its course.

We followed a frantic farmer to a goul infested farm, didn’t catch his name. The people here were being transformed into gouls. To feed the legends they were tying these people to scarecrow poles, once they transformed they had the strength to break free. In the farm house we found what appeared to be the head goul for this farm. This goul had the key to the floxglove house. Also in the farm house was a body with another love note and the star carved in the chest. We spent most of the day killing these gouls, well truthfully I spent most of the day one step behind Avia and Nolan so most of the gouls were killed before I could get close enough to hit them.  Looking down at these foul creatures I am reminded of stories told in my youth about the blood of these foul creatures not being suitable for barbarian war paint. Goul fever, apparently if you get bitten by a goul you get goul fever and then turn into a goul.

Avia clearly has an admirer and this admirer seems to be leading us around like dogs. Her admirer keeps leaving love notes for Avia that seem to be leading us towards some sort of trap. It is not really clear if he has the hots for Avia or just trying to make her mad enough to charge into a trap. It really seems like this is foxglove or in some way related to foxglove but I guess we won’t know until we spring the trap.  I just can’t imagine how Foxglove can think that Avia would be swayed by these actions. Even as a goul I am pretty sure Avia would have an overwhelming urge to kill him. Maybe he thinks that she will accept him as her new deity and become his love slave.  I tend to think that foxglove’s and Avia’s deities do not like each other, or at least the followers hate each other. I can’t imagine a situation besides mind control where Avia will openly share her bed with Foxglove.

I really wonder why Foxglove seems to be leaving us clues to follow and specifically targeting Avia. In the back of my mind I keep wondering if we are being lead around because Foxglove needs us or Avia to unleash some great monster on the world. Maybe I am over thinking everything but as we used the key to open the doors at the Foxglove estate I can’t help but feel that foxglove or someone controlling foxglove is leading us around to suite their own desires. Are we seeing the rune lords of old coming back into the world or do we have those that want to take over from the rune lords. Are we dealing with those that learned about the Rune lords and are trying to bring back the empire or maybe followers of the Rune Lords have been passing the knowledge down through their families waiting for their Lords to return to power.

Walking into the house the feeling of magic comes from every nook and cranny of the house. This feels like old magic that at onetime covered this house or the magic used by one who caused the death of the Lord and Lady was so strong that remnants of this magic still linger. Avia looks to be disturbed by the house but we move forward. The stained glass window is eerie reminder that this family is in some way connected to the Rune Lords, although it almost looks as if the stained glass window was showing that this family may have been working to keep the power of the Rune Lords trapped. I am really not sure if we are being lead into a trap or just lead into something that someone wants use to get cleaned up. Either way we are here at the estate so we might as well investigate the secrets of the home of the Foxgloves.

Training has been completed and I have at least a week to myself as the others are still training. I have new spells transferred into my spellbook and have given that stuff to Kane to return. On the way back from the Cathedral to see Kane it occurred to me that I could try out my new spider climb spell by climbing to the top of buildings. I secured my axe and began to climb straight up the side of the closest house. Once on the roof I began running from roof to roof, combined with feather fall I easily traveled across the roof top in sandpoint. The chimney sweeps were a little nervous at first but you can’t under estimate the calming effect of a couple of rounds of free Ale. Three days after starting my roof top running routine a couple of town guards met me coming out of the Rusty Dragon and informed me that the duty commander wanted to have a discussion about my activities of late. At the garrison I was informed that running on the roofs was not proper. I tried to explain that I was training for the day when Sandpoint was invaded once again and I would need to chase those invaders across the roof tops to keep sandpoint safe. I even told him that the chimney sweeps were fine with my activity. Turns out that people are nervous about see a half-orc running across their roof tops. I have reluctantly agreed to not run across the roof tops any more, unless sandpoint is under attack. It’s not like I was hurting anyone and no one complained about any damage or noise as a result of my training. Something about law abiding citizens expecting some measure of law and order in their lives. Well at least I got in several days roof running before I was oppressed by the law. So my days of roof running have come to an end, at least until the next attack against Sandpoint anyway.

After spending a couple of days buying rounds of ale for the watch commander to ease over the tension over the roof incident I decided it was time for something new. I was walking over by the glassworks near the cliff when it suddenly occurred to me that this is a great cliff for improving my timing with feather fall. This is a great place to jump off, free fall most of the way and then use feather fall near the bottom to prevent injury. I always wondered what it was like to fall off a cliff; unfortunately it is only a few seconds of failing. Given enough height this free falling thing could be a lot of fun. Everything was going great, and after a couple of days I was able to get the timing down. I could easily run jump off the cliff, cast feather fall just before the ground and keep running. As I said everything was going well until I was handed a note by a guard from the watch commander with a very simple message.

Sabin,
Please stop jumping off the cliff, people keep reporting someone falling to their death.

And so ends my Sandpoint Cliff jumping days. I guess being 1 of the 2 half-orcs in Sandpoint make it pretty easy for the watch commander to figure out it was me. If we were back in Magnimar there would be a lot more half-orcs so they wouldn’t know that it was me. Being linked with the other half-orc who smells like his garbage is not making it easy to get along with the folks in Sandpoint.

Fireday, Lamashan 11

Wow it is Fireday, Lamashan 11 already. I had to ask Olithar what day it was and if he wasn’t a stickler for putting the date in his journal entries I would have no clue what day it is. Since getting away from the strict guild regimen I seem to care less about keeping a strict account of days. His attention to the details and always working to record everything is well kind of disturbing, although the healing that Olithar and Kane have been doing are the only reason that we are still alive. Those flying creatures would have easily slaughtered us had it not been for the great healing.

We found a war horse that Nolan has become fast friends with. The horse has been mis-treat by the goblin, but what do you expect they are goblin. Besides to them this was just food. Olithar believes that this goblin king/warlord’s name was Ripnugget and that he is linked to the invasion planning. Kane spoke to him and made an offer to allow him to die with honor. In the end Kane finished him off and Ripnugget has taken his proper place in society, Ripnugget won’t be bothering anyone anymore.

We found a researcher/mage named Akenja that Olithar offered freedom if she answered questions honestly. She was employed by Nualia to do research on stuff that they have been finding down below. We allowed her to take her cat, dagger, and gown as we sent her over the bridge. I thought that we should just throw her over the side into the water but luckily for her Olithar, Avia, and Nolan were insistent that she be able to just walk away. We still need to identify those magic items and see what spells she had in her spell book. Looks like I will be able to add some spells to my spellbook when I can afford it. I’ll have to have Sedjewick or Trask look through the spellbook to get an inventory of the spells Akenja had in our new spellbook that I can copy into my spellbook.

I have begun to feel some kinship with this thrown together group of people. I really thought that my pursuit of magic doomed my chance at any such kinship. I was even glade to see Avia pull annoying Sedjewick’s limp body out of danger and back where the healers were able to get him back on his feet. It was kind of funny that Sedjewick moved forward into the room while Rigel and Trask ran away in fear. I tried to stop them to make sure that they were safe without success and luckily they both ran into the room and hid under the table. In spite of my instincts I stay back to make sure they were safe. I jumped into the fray in time to cast magic weapon for Noplan and to hand Avia a healing potion. At that point Avia and Nolan had the fight well in hand and it was just a matter of time before we defeated those evil creatures. Once these creatures were defeated Olithar and I began working to destroy that alter. It turns out that we were a little too loud.

Nolan heard the door to the south open and after waiting and waiting Avia confronted the bugbear threatening us. Soon after she engaged the bugbear an arrow shot from the north. Luckily Nolan was ready to spring into action and take care of the threat, this human took a hit and surrendered. Down south I join the fight with Avia on the bugbear. This bugbear took a lot of damage and just kept hanging in there, I am not sure that even Avia could have survived that much damage. Avia and I chased the bugbear as he ran up the stairs and around to the other side back to the room we found Akenja in. Avia broken down the down and we found him looking for something on the wall. All along there was a secret door that we missed that leads down. Now we have to decide if we have time to rest and allow the healer to recharge or do we move ahead possibly without healing.

I have decided that my true path lies in both magic and arms. I need to find a way to walk in both the mage and warrior paths at the same time. For me life consists of a balance between these two sides of me, the barbarian and the mage. For too long I have tried to ignore the warrior inside and to become a true mage. I will never be a true mage, Sedjewick is more of a true mage then I am, at least he would fit in with the other mages in the guild. Today I am perusing greater understand of wizardry which is providing me we access to new spells but my new mission is to find a way to walk both paths.

We have decided that at low tide we will go back down to the beach and check for another way to get into the complex. Trask and I sat watch while the other slept four hours. Nothing interesting happened while the other slept and Trask and I moved around to make sure nothing got in. After four hours we woke up the party and got ready for travel back down to the beach.

Down to the beach we go. A lot of standing around as Avia and Nolan swim out to check for alternative ways to get to the goblins other then walking across the bridge. I was a little concerned about swimming out there as I could see that Avia and Nolan were struggling, I think it would be safer to dodge arrow then make that swim.Nolan found hand holds under the bridge but we decided that the effort to swim out and climb was not worth it. Next they checked out a very little island, yah more standing around. In the end we decided to just go back, sleep and go across the bridge during the day.

I have discovered that Sedgwick does not know undercommon. He seemed disturbed that I was speaking in a language that he did not understand. Sedgwick’s obsession with language is kind of funny and at the same time frightening. Did I make the wrong choice; I don’t seem to be the same as the other wizards. I was so obsessed with learning magic that even banishment did not matter to me. All that training to learn magic and in the heat of the moment I revert back to the old ways and just hit things with my axe.

The next day when I woke there was Halfling . It seems that he was supposed to be fed to the beast when Avia, Rigal, and Olithar saved him, even more dead globins. After regaining our spells we began the raid on the goblin fortress.

We devised a plan to get through the doors. It worked well enough that one goblin came out and he was killed before he could close the gate. We quickly killed the goblins from the barracks and the goblins in both towers, seems the goblins in the towers didn’t even know they were being attacked. Looks like we over planned and over estimated goblins at least to this point. Chanting from behind double doors provided guidance on where to go next. Leading the way Avia headed into the room, these were a lot tougher then the wimpy goblins as evident when Avia was dropped by a pair of commanders, and luckily our healers were able to heal her up again after the battle. I was able to get in a couple of killing blows and the mighty Sedgwick was also able to show some skill with the bow as the last remaining commander fell. All is as it should be, we are alive and the goblins are dead. We kept the king alive so that we can question him before we finish killing him. Well I guess he is the king, given how many goblins we have killed I am not sure how much of a kingdom he has left. After we get some information from him it will be time for us to reunite him with his followers.

Ambush!!! Goblin attack. Goblins were short lived as we slaughtered this band of boot biters. Even pretty boy almost got dirty. I have never really cared for the taste of goblin and these things are too weak to be considered anything but pests. I killed a goblin or two but the party would have slaughtered these vermin even if I was not there. So we moved on.

Down the beach we heading and up to an underwater cave. As I can see without the requirement of a light source I went into the water to check out the cave, trask at my side. He obviously could not see as he almost ran his head into the rocks a couple of times. Inside the cave we found what Sedgwick described as bunyip, half shark and something else. After a discussion we decided to leave this sea creature alone for now and move on. Feasting on the meat of the bunyip just was not meant to be, at least not yet!

Backtracking we worked our way up to towards the bridge we found caves cut into the brush. Rigal, Olithar and I scouted into the tunnels. We witness Globins dropping other globins into a hole. We later discovered that they were feeding the bunyip. We found what looked to be two groups of goblins, a main force and an area with growling sounds. A great cat like thing jumped out and as we took its life we heard a goblin cry out, looks like someone lost a familiar. There was some confusion as Avia started to run over and help Nolan but instead had to run back and save Trask as he was overrun with goblins. Rigal, traks, Olithar, and Avia had this situation well in hand so I moved back over to assist Nolan. As I returned to Nolan the goblin mage returned with a flaming blade. That cool flaming blade hit me and everything went blank. Nolan must have slain this creature while I was out, I am not sure how long I was out but someone had stripped the gear off the goblin mage while I was out. Through the ringing in my ears I can almost hear fathers words “Magic, why you want to become frail and weak, only those cursed with magic in their blood not true warriors. You not even bless by the gods, you bring dishonor to the family. You no longer my son”. Could I have actually not traveled down the correct path? My master did tell me that the path of the wizard is not suited for everyone and that I still must find my true path. Did I dishonor my family for nothing?

For the rest of the day we found interesting ways to kill goblins, Olithar played goblin on a stick to present a goblin and then shoot bolts at the towers. We didn’t really get to kill any goblins that way but we were entertained. Sedgwick used silent image to create a dog and then other goblins as we used these images to lure countless goblins to their deaths. At least this time as was able to properly assist Nolan and Avia in slaughtering these pesky goblins. Bloody goblins and goblins parts started to stack up, although the goblins are fresh meat I have never liked the taste of goblin so I will just eat the travel rations. The humans are squeamish anyway so eating goblins is not really an option; besides these are just weak goblins, there is nothing to be gain by consuming there heart.

The first day of the rest of my life

The boat ride from Magnimar was uneventful and we safely arrived in Sandpoint today. Coming off the boat it was obvious that the people in Sandpoint are not accustom to half-orcs as a lot of them kept staring at me with the look of concern. I found a city guard to ask for directions to the home of Wizard Serin Martin only to get the answer that they have never heard of Serin Martin. Taking out the letter I watch as the name changes from Serin Martin to my own. In the letter my teacher and mentor said that she believes that I am more suited adventuring and Sandpoint is a good place to start.

I spent the day walking the city to get the lay of the land. The city guard seemed a little concerned with my presence and on a couple of occasions it seemed as if they were following me through the streets. I made a point to stop in and sample the brew of the various taverns in Sandpoint as I walked through the streets. The local patrons seemed a little put out in Risa’s Place when I decided to drop in on their seemly private watering hole. Late morning I crossed paths with Rigel and we decided to meet up later at the Rusty Dragon for dinner and drink. The city is buzzing as the common folk seemed to be discussing the concerns about all of the strangers in town and excited about the free feast planned for the dedication of the new Cathedral. Obviously I will have to attend this extravaganza tomorrow if I have any hope to get a meal, luckily they will also be serving brew at this extravaganza event as well.

Back at the Rusty Dragon I meet up with Rigel and we enjoyed a good meal and a few brew. Tonight’s entertainer was pleasant but had the look of someone who most likely has never been anywhere outside of Sandpoint. I am not even sure if he was carrying a weapon, must be a local. Sandpoint is a long ways from the Barbarian training grounds of my youth.

First Day of Autumn
Kyras a local hunter in Sandpoint approached Rigel and me about a profitable adventure to restock the town’s meat supply. So today we enjoy the free meals and tomorrow we meet at the white deer and head out with a couple of wagons to profit off these free meals. Someone has to get paid to restock the meat. The hunting party looks to be getting pretty big, hopefully this will not dilute the profit too much.

I am thankful that a decent brew was being served throughout the day. As usual those few select members of Sandpoint just had to give their speeches to show their importance. Evidently the great Sandpoint fire burned down the Cathedral and a big chunk of the northern part of town. Speech after speech seemed focused on telling the common folk how the town leaders worked together to rebuild this great Cathedral BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Early evening the Festival of the Swallow Tails was abruptly interrupted by an evasion of GOBLINS. Screams sounded out as the crowd began to scatter. As we began to engage the first group of gobin’s a distant magic missile drop one of the gobins directly in front of me. A small group of us engaged these goblins and dispatched them only to encounter even more goblins. Greateaxe in hand I charged forward along with my fellow goblin slayers. The sorcerer charged into combat seemly without a weapon! that did not work out for him as he was quickly eating dust and dirt,Sorcerer!!! Luckily for the sorcerer the fighter Nolin charged in to save him from getting eaten. Nice move by Nolin as he bull rushed one of the goblins driving the goblin backwards. Raw sorcerer doesn’t sound very tasty at least to me. Once the next batch of goblins were killed off the cleric (whose name I did not catch) and father Z were able to get almost everyone heal up in our small band of goblin slayers. Somewhere along the way we seemed to have picked up that local story teller from the inn, at least this time he brought a weapon. We were about to head south when we heard cries from the north.

To the north we go and we found a group of goblins with a goblin chief leading them. They had just killed a dog that was protesting its well dressed owner. As they were feasting on the dog we began our attack on the goblin chiefs riding dog. It felt good to see my axe fly through the air and take the last breadth of life out of the riding dog. We finished off the rest of the vermin and were able to at least save one citizen from certain death and most like being dinner. Nolin had been severely injured so we travel back to the Cathedral to see if we can get healing for him.

As quickly as it started it seemed to end. We checked the bridges and could not find any trace that these goblins used the bridges to get into the city and they didn’t really look wet so it is a mystery how they got into the city. As we were investigating we found that the north gate was wide open and we followed a dozen or so goblin tracks to the grave yard. They had dug up and take the last cleric in charge of the Cathedral 5 years ago before it burnt down. Why would goblins want to take the body of a cleric that has been dead for 5 years. Tracking down the sheriff we found out that the gate was supposed to be locked and that the duty sheet oddly did not have anyone assign to watch the gate. This is beginning to look like someone inside the town is involved, someone who has access to the guard duty sheet.