Among the Mages

- Calleigh's Horrible, Awful, No Good, Very Bad Week - Dan's good but also bad week. He forgot Jurassic Dark for the Game Pitch. - April's blah week - O'Brian's Master and Commander books - "Some facts may have been changed to protect the plot." - The vines disappear into the ground as Acta wriggles free of the ones encompassing her. - The rest of the night passes uneventfully. - By the time everyone is up and moving around, it's late morning. - Once the morning fog burns off, the group can see a large merchant vessel has pulled into the port of Bayside. It is flying the flag of Rhoanor. - Acta suggests they see if the vessel is headed the direction they are going and maybe chartering passage to save their feet. - As they approach the market / dock, Sariel casts Detect Evil & Good. Many of the longshoremen read as Undead. The sailors and crew members of the actual ship read as human. - Neil talks the party onto the boat by asking after t

- CANDY! - Katie is now a direction. Did you travel Katie-wise? - After several hours of travel, Penny gets Neil's attention and points out something, and he sees someone duck down into the tall grass - After some very quietly whispered discussion about the stalker, Cornelius sends Penny to go tackle the guy - There's a high-pitched yelp after Penny's easy success on sneaking and pinning. The stalker is a young girl, maybe ten or twelve. She says her name is Kelly. - She reads as undead to the paladin. - They converse. She says the tower is far away, but there's another town called Bayside at the coast. - She ends up walking with them for a little while. - After they take a rest to have some food, which they share, the girl heads back home. The place she was sitting has grown some dark colored vines. - Acta cuts a piece of vine, and Sariel asks if she can use Druidcraft on it to see what will happen. - Sariel gives a tiny poke of magic to the bit of vine, and

- Presents from Dan! - The misadventures of Frodo's butt - The group looks up in the direction of the drumbeats as Acta melts away into the shadows and sees torchlight coming towards them through the trees - The retreat as a group to the treeline - A group of people wearing dark, blood-red cloak / robes and wearing tribal masks, some carrying torches some carrying spears enter the clearing. There's several dozen of them, and they approach the stone alter. - The robes part and one person comes forward and sweeps the bones away. A human man is dragged forward struggling and is lashed to the table. The group starts chanting. - A man comes forward and is clearing casting a Ritual incantation (as far as Acta is concerned - it feels nature-y, but also deathly). - The ground starts to rumble. - Vines begin to grow out of the ground around the alter, then arc over the table and start to encircle the victim. - The party is extremely unhappy about all this, but they are not sui