4) Of Childhood Stupidity

A largish lumber town lay to the west, a good waystation on their journey to Cragspire. It was so conveniently located it was almost as though a divine presence was directing them there. Upon reaching the town they headed to the font of rumor in all towns, the tavern. Word was tense - several of the children in the town had been missing since the previous day. Entranced by the local rumor of a haunted orphanage outside town, they had taken up a dare to spend the night there.

Mephilda's Home for Unwanted Ruffians
Mephilda opened her orphanage some years ago to take in children left without parents by bandits that had once plagued the area. One night the whole place burned to the ground with Mephilda and the children inside it and ever since then tales of ghostly youngsters had stirred the imagination of the children of Falcon's Hollow. Every once in a while a group of the braver ones would make camp outside for the night, their young ears primed for the sounds of otherworldly moaning. Until now, they always came back.

Without hesitation Kestrahl decided the children must be found, and the rest of the party agreed. But the hour was late, and they were still weary from their encounter with the doppleganger so it was decided to stay the night at the tavern, called the Wobbly Kraken, and set out the next day. In the middle of the night Garel, seized perhaps by the Imp of the Perverse, snuck into the party's rooms and took all their clothes, piling them in Marvin's room. All except for Kestrahl, whose paranoia led her door to be blocked tightly with pitons and the windows also were wedged shut.

Kestrahl was not, however, immune to the influence of dreams. A vision came to her in her sleep, one that disturbed and frightened as most things did, but also left her as rested as if she was sleeping in a grove under the open air. It spoke of the passage of Dzurac, a dwarven-carved highway leading from Cragspire through the great mountains to the wasteland on the other side. As distressing as it was, she remained steadfast in her resolve to find the missing children and so the party set off.

A short distance out of town they came across one Carin Eavewalker, father to one of the children, who had been hunting in the Darkmoon Vale and hadn't heard that his daughter Kimi was missing. He insisted upon accompanying the party in their search, and led them to the burned orphanage. It didn't take them long to find the childrens' makeshift camp, and along with it the small humanoid tracks and drag marks that led away from it.

The urgency of their findings dwarfed the importance of the orphanage and its heat-preserved basement. They would have to find out what lay in that fetid space at a later time. Upon leaving the orphanage behind however they came across a scrawny, underfed girl who told them she saw a group of kobolds dragging the children away. The party was moved by her pitiful look, and so gave her a few coins and told her to make for Falcon's Hollow to find food.

Through the Darkmoon Vale
The rare trees of the vale quickly blocked out the sunlight and made the air heavy. The party travelled carefully through the wood, trying to make a minimum of noise. Their progress was impeded  a couple times.

Hearing voices in the distance, they went to investigate. Two bugbears were arguing over the most delectable parts of a dead lumberjack they either found or killed. Worried for the safety of the town, the party engaged the beasts. It turned out there were three of them, as one emerged from the trees after answering the call of nature. The battle was soundly won and the group continued on. Next they encountered a very inebriated giant. Normally this monster would be quite happy to grind the adventurers into paste and spread them on his morning toast, but he was in no state to do so having lost his wedding ring. The giant's wife was apparently even more fearsome and cruel than he, and he was afraid of having his drunken head smashed in.

To avoid a fight and possible mastication the group looked around for the ring and it was finally discovered by Lucan - a gold band large enough to serve a human as a tiara. How a giant managed to acquire such an article was a mystery but they sent him on his way a happy, if very unsteady creature.

Those distractions taken care of, they made their way further and further into the vale, following the kobolds' trail easily between Marvin and Eavewalker's skills until they came to the crumbling and sinister edifice of Droskar's Crucible.