7/18/26 From the Muck We Rise

Through it all we survived. Muck stained, barely alive.  Through it all we stand revived. Growing stronger to level five. 

The angel sent from above, Gudger, bestowed upon us the knowledge on how to get back to Silas. Trusty Silas has been keeping our sweet Addy safe. About 2 hours on the way back to retrieve her and then maybe even a long rest. Oh how I need a fecking long rest. Fecking, that’s a funny swear. Barty taught me. Feck. Feck. Feck. What are Emonie and Eggie doing? Both are saying we need to head west, but they’re pointing in opposing directions. After a few words are exchanged, they settle on the right direction. It’s around noon and I’m happy to leave this stinky, gassy, and gooey place. 

We set forth on a normal pace on our way back to Silas. Agnes, Elandra and I start to hear a panicked man’s voice. From a distance, we can see he’s chest deep in a gnarly, wet ground. His cart seems to be submerged within the muck as well. He’s easily 300 feet ahead of us, we can see him struggling, but he can’t see us. Barty attempts to venture towards the fallen man, but within 3 steps, his feet are covered. 

Agnes adds water walking onto all of our feet and we are able to embark on any watery surface! How cool! I’m tap dancing on muck! Agnes and Barty start towards the stuck man. They quiet his shrieks, and Agnes begins to start a ritual to grant him the ability to walk out of this too. Elandra levitates him out of the muck while Barty wraps the rope of climbing on him to prevent him from falling back down in the muck. Once he lowers down, Emonie interrogates him. He said that he and his buddies (4 in total) were all coming down from the north and their horse got spooked and ran. It dragged them into the muck and left him. His 3 friends left him, the corpse that Barty and Agnes saw in the muck with him was “there when I got there.” His name is “Tav.”

As Emonie continues her interrogation, she sees him scratching his back. As she turns him around, she can see the bite. Agnes performs a medicine check and sees that he is in the advanced stage of the Blight. He is a liability. He’s further infected than our dear friend Barty. “Back in the hole!” I scream!

Agnes calmly talks to him to try and coax him into letting her ease his passage into the afterlife. He freaks out and runs, forgetting that Barty still has him tied to his rope. She can sense the crystal warming, almost like it’s reacting to his infection, but he’s too far gone for this world. She eases his way and TRUE STRIKES him to the beyond. It’s RADIANT! A HOLY impact so deep his arms and legs immediately ascend above. I will forever refer to this as the “Agnes Special”. I think all Blighted should feel honored to go this way. 

We recover 2 fresh rations, a short bow, and a full quiver from his sucken cart. His body also had about 72 copper on it. And by my calculations that’s about 12 copper each. Now back on the path to return to Silas and retrieve Addy. 

We continue back on our normal pace, a few hours pass and we can start to hear the trickling water in the distance. It begins to look familiar from when we were rafting away from Silas’ home on the riverbanks. One can never forget that stale, decayed stagnant smell of the water. As we approach, stealthily, we can see Addy is tied to a post, safely eating. Silas’s house on stilts is dark and we can see a placard of some sort posted to the door. 

Eggie and Barty use the rope of climbing to go up to the door. The sign says: FISHING. FUCK OFF!

We decide to hunker down in Silas’s house to take a Long Rest. We fall asleep quickly. Emonie meditates for a few hours while we all slumber. Agnes has an intense dream while we all deeply sleep unaware. 

We awake around 8AM and feel rested and recovered. I observe Agnes praying. That’s good, she’s so holy we need all the prayer we can get. We start back on our journey to Greymire. We have to forfeit going through the military checkpoint because I made that stupid promise to Commander Callum to give him “ten fold” my earnings. What I fool I am! Me and my beak mouth! Thankfully, it’ll only be a few hours added to the trip, and now that we’re out of the Pale, sunshine is back and we all seem to have a lighter pep in our steps. 

As the day continues, we start to see the iconic, grey walls of Greymire. What a privilege to have walls in this world. Agnes can start to see a line of corpses hanged as we enter Greymire. As we get closer, we can start to see a portly being in colorful clothing hanging. It’s the body of JORICK VANCE! His hands have been amputated and nailed to his chest with papers stuffed to his chest. The parchment stuffed in his mouth appears to have religious symbols on it. We are all unfamiliar with this kind of judgement. This form of punishment is unique to us all. 

The gates are busy and we wait our turn to enter, thankfully we have papers so it will be easy. But as we get closer, we can see there are other guards of different colors and regalia are also standing by at the entrance.  Agnes can tell that these men and women are part of guardians of the Lathander’s Light. We hand in our papers, the Greymire looks them over, a LL guard comes over and reads it and then lets us through. 

Walking in, all I can see is that Greymire has gone through some insane restoration project since we’ve been gone. Have these white/gold templars taken over this city? What is happening? What’s up with a LL temple being closed door? They’re literally turning people away. We know that Lathander’s is an open doored religion. 

It seems like everything else is at its usual state with the exception of this giant temple construction. It’s only been about a week. We head back towards Agnes’s home and my makeshift place. We take the long way so we can pass by Jorick’s place. There are at least 2 of the LL guards walking around his place. On his door is a wax seal : “CLOSED UNDER INVESTIGATION.”

Agnes leads us back to her place because there’s no way I could fit everyone in my makeshift place. Jerry and I could barely move around in it with just the two of us. Agnes’ home is cute and quaint. The sign reads Gentle Journeys. 

She welcomes us into her home and shortly after we start to settle in, her friend Jeffery Pepper arrives to check on her.  She invites him and asks him about what’s been going in.
“They arrived around 4 days ago and just started going to work on the temple. First the guards, then priests and I’m not sure about it but I think I saw the Penatent is here too.”

What the heck is a Penatent? Apparently he’s the most fierce person who represents Lathandar’s light. He basically would raze and trample over places with brutality and violence leaving little to nothing in his wake. He’s the most feared and respected among the church circles. Dripped in a long, white robe wielding a giant silver great sword, Sun Sorrow. He is very dangerous and without a doubt probably the most infamous figures in this new era of, The Blight. 

He goes where the church “needs him” and for some reason, they need him here. He is dangerous, he is destructive, he is relentless. All in the name of his religion. 

Pepper lets us know that Rook (pretty much the ruler of Greymire) went through and cleared out Jorick’s place. Rook lives in Charrow (the charred row) and his place is called “The Rookery”.

Pepper believes that Rook has kind of taken over Jorick’s lackeys. It seems like Jorick’s place has a tunnel to Charrow and that’s how him and Rook would meet and do business. We start to think about how we are going to infiltrate Jorick’s brothel. We need to do some recon undetected. 

Additional Shopping Montage throughout town. 

We start to plan around getting into Jorick’s place. We need to go at night in order to get everyone in to look for the tunnel to Charrow. Next to Jorick’s brothel is a hostel style place. It has food and boarding that’s affordable. Penny for a Pillow. I have plenty of pennies, so maybe we can get a few rooms. 

As we head to Penny for a Pillow, we pass by Jorick’s brother again. Barty clocks that the 3rd guard, the walking one, takes about 90 seconds to walk the whole perimeter. The other two are still stationed at the front door. Unfortunately, these guys are professional and aren’t talking. 

We go inside Penny for a Pillow, and are greeted by a scummy individual behind the counter. He’s astonished that we want the room for the whole night. Ken gets a discount on the poop buckets. 3 for 1, don’t mind if I do! 

Our room is facing east and we can see Jorick’s place from the window. Penny for a Pillow is 2 stories high, and Jorick’s place is 3 stories. There’s no way sunshine could come through this window, Jorick’s place is LITERALLY right in front of it. We can see a row of windows, I wonder if any are unlocked. 

We decide to wait until night to be able to complete our recon. About 4 hours pass by, Barty maintains his attention out the window to observe if the guards change hands. Around dusk, he notices a shift change. 

Once it’s dark, I send out my mage hand to check two windows. It checks the 1st window and it’s locked, the 2nd one is unlocked!

I cast invisibility on Elandra so she can levitate over out of sight. Agnes ensures Silence is surrounding the windows so we can remain undetected. I can’t see or hear her, but I imagine she whisks herself forward with beauty and grace. 

She makes it inside, safely and quietly. She goes out of the room, it’s pitch black dark and the slowly and quietly opens the other door. She can see that we are on the other side of the window. She messages Barty and alerts him we are good to go. But do it quietly. 

I send my mage hand with the immovable rod over to Elandra to create a point for the rope to be bound onto. Barty sends his rope of climbing over to the rod. We estimate it’ll take 1 person about 30 seconds to go across, so we decide 2 people go, and then we wait for the guard to pass by while retracting the rope and then let 2 more people go. We make it over undetected and safely. Barty takes his rope and Eggie repacks his rod. 

Elandra, still invisible, starts to head downstairs to look and make sure no one is present. She goes to the 1st floor and can’t see anyone inside. As she heads down further towards the basement, she can see a doorway that’s slightly ajar. This is the doorway that leads down to the basement. She heads further down the stairs; she can see a hallway that leads towards Jorick’s office and another hallway that leads to what looks like a storage closet, but unfamiliar. 

She creeps into Jorick’s office and can see it’s been ransacked and completely gutted. She can see a wall safe that looks untouched. Elandra sends a message to let us know it’s safe to come down. While she waits, she takes a swig out of a clouded and unfamiliar liquor bottle. Fully sauced from the nasty liquid. Invisible and drunk she whispers, “Don’t drink the black stuff…actually you guys should drink the black stuff.” Barty chuckles as he tries to pat her invisible shoulder. 

We all begin looking around his overturned office. Not really anything left around, just some book keeping stuff. No evidence of who was in here doing all this either. Could it be Rook’s men? Could it be the churches men? 

Emonie cracks the safe. Inside is a thick book and a small token. An image engraved on it… a small tower. It looks like a rook from a chess board. Ken takes the book and thumbs through it. 

We recover the last 2 weeks or so of his ledger. Looks like Rook was extorting him. He definitely has our silver based on this ledger. Who leaves a coin calling card?!

Continuing on in our investigating, we start going into other rooms. Looks like part of this room has been expanded and he’s been digging to expand the space. Maybe that’s why Rook was extorting him? Eggie founds a necklace with two reddish, orange beads on them. Doesn’t look valuable, but he’s never seen this type of “necklace” before.  Emonie finds a lever and discovers a hidden, trap door. 

Marching order: Emonie, Agnes, Elandra, Barty, Eggie and Ken. Walking down the stone stairs that lead into what smells and is starting to look like a sewer tunnel. Thankfully, Agnes grants us water walk and we avoid having to trudge through the sludge.

As we traverse this area, I can start to see now how Jorick was able to run his empire, completely underground. Lots of symbols on the walls, looks familiar but not really. Could it be thieves cant? I can’t remember. I never learned during my time with Jerry. 

Emonie guides us down the right path to where she soon encounters an iron ladder that leads up to a hatch. She heads up and opens it, quietly, to reveal ash and smoke billowing out of the hatch. She pops her head up and lighthouses around to see no one. Just embers on the ground and smoke in the air, and now her lungs. 

We climb up the ladder and ascend into a destroyed, burned down building. Welcome to Charrow. 

Ash covers everything, it seems like a wild fire blazed through and took everything with it.