^{Source: NightCafe - Dreamshaper XL Lightning - u/OblivionCubed}

When last we left our heroes

At the end of our last session, the party had become retainers to the Bandyhand Institute, and taken on a job to find out what was going on in the nearby town of Sycamore Crossing. Reports indicated that folks were disappearing and that a powerful magic book had popped up around the same time as the disappearances started to gain notice. Because the Bandyhand Institute takes powerful relics like magic books very seriously, the team has been tasked with investigating the town and retrieving the book (if one exists and is indeed magical).

Leaving Lavan

It is during the assigning of the task that our party meets another group of newly-hired Bandyhand Retainers, and after a bit of a tense exchange of words, it's decided that the groups will make a contest of this first mission: Find and complete the task first for bragging rights and the rewards.

The rival party are known as "Reaver's Crew", despite Reaver not actually being the leader of the party. At these low levels, it is rare for adventuring parties to have special names. They lack the renown that provides for well-known group names, which is part of why our player party doesn't have a specific name.

With the friendly rivalry established and both parties sure that they're the best, Reaver's Crew boasted that they could beat the party even if they gave our player group a day's head start.

Having accepted the head start, the team decided to stack the deck in their favour and stole the other teams horses by having the druid shape-shift into a horse and then convince the other horses to follow them.

So with a day's head start and some "borrowed" horses, the team leaves Lavan with the intention of getting as far as they can in as short of a timeframe as they can.

The Shortcut

With the goal of winning the bet firmly in their minds, the team decided to take the shortest route to their destination, which required cutting through the Red Forest.

Locals avoid all but the edge of the Red Forest as it is well known to be haunted. The party decide that this is likely superstition and overblown coincidence. How bad could a forest really be, anyhow?

At first the Red Forest seems normal, asside from the oddly coloured leaves, trees, and grasses. Animals can be heard and seen, and things seem fine.

As they continue to move deeper into the woods, the entire place seems to get stranger and more hostile. At first they notice the birdsong and animal sounds have disappeared. A while later, they start to notice strange smells like dank stale air and rot.

In a clearing, they find the long dead carcass of a boar, out of which are growing a handful of strange pink mushrooms which some of the party members scoop up. It's at this time that the party Paladin, Syl, decides to cast Detect Evil and Good. This gives them the first real tangible warning that something is up, as the entire area of the spell lights up with a dark aura, showing that the entire forest has been desecrated.

Determined to make the best of their time they push on and as evening approaches and they get deeper into the woods they begin hearing a faint chanting on the wind. It grows and grows as they move forward until it's overwhelmingly loud and seems to be emanating from everywhere around them.

A pair of shadowy figures with strange rock-like masks emerge from the undergrowth and the party's Druid manages to hit one with Moonbeam before they're one and all magically commanded to sleep and they lose consciousness.

When they next wake up, they are outside of the Red Forest, but they can't tell how much time they've lost or be sure of where they are.

While trying to get their bearings, they notice that two of the teams members have had their hair change colour. One sports a strange new scar. Another is missing some minor items, and the last party member... Well, they seem fine.

Unsettled and further unsure of how much time they've lost, they are somewhat reassured when the party's Goblin scout spots the smoke of chimneys in the distance.

Sycamore Crossing

The chimney smoke does then out to be the town they are looking for, and after a bit of questioning they determine that they've only lost about three days of memory. A problem made all the worse by the fact that the rival group probably had time to arrive while the heroes were undergoing whatever the creatures in the woods did to them.

Further questioning the townsfolk proves two things: One, their rivals did make it to town about a day prior. Two, nobody really wants to talk about it and it seems like that's due to an unwillingness to cross the town Sherrif.

Which leads our players to the first big question: why?

One of the group decides to do a bit of sleuthing on her own, and after perusing a bookstore and getting little by way of any answers she heads over to the town Records office, where she's again stonewalled by the lady working in the office. But, when has that ever stopped a druid with wildshape?

Panthera, our druid, decides to distract the woman, veer into a mouse, and scuttle under the door to the back room to rifle through the records herself. Being a bit of a bookworm herself, it doesn't take long to find some basic information about the man.

His name is Ialos.

He worked his way from Deputy to Sherrif twenty years ago, and has been a good, fair sherrif for all of those twenty years, until recently. His family has lived in town for generations but they're all members of the local graveyard now and he's never taken a wife. He owns a house on the south side of town, which has been frequented less, lately. He's been a little odd over the last two years, but nothing out of line... just, more brusque and cold.

It's not much, but it's a wonderful start.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group went to find the local Inn, as the drink has the habit of loosening lips.

At first, it seems like they're going to get a lot of the same:

"Yeah, there were some folks matching that description but, I don't know where they are now."
"I stay out of the Sherrif's business, ask him."
"I don't know nothin' about anythin', can't help."

And then they meet Lenka, the tavernkeeper. She runs a great inn, but she's no poker player, and pretty quickly her tune changes from: "I don't know anything" to, "I'm loyal, I swear! I'm just not good at this! Tell the sheriff I'm steadfast, I promise!" to, "You're not with them?? Come with me, we have to talk - perhaps we can still save them!"

It's at this point that we get a better picture from the helpful tavernkeeper, Lenka.

Lenka has known Ialos for more than twenty years, and while he's grown distant over the last two or so... he's always been a good man. When the crops started failing just as harvest was coming, he started talking about saving the harvest by offering 'sacrifices to the land'. The local Druid, Broshod, and the cleric, Andel, had initially balked at any such talk.

For Broshod's piece, she thought anything exchanging lifeforce for healthy harvests was dark and best destroyed - or at least left alone.

---

Andel, meanwhile, balked at the thought of any form of sacrifice. He is a priest of Life, and as such sacrifice runs counter to his entire belief structure.

But between Ialos and his deputy, Edmon, they persuaded Broshod and Andel to just witness the results of one of their ceremonies. They agree, but won't leave town for it.

They don't need to. That same night, a rough-and-tumble-looking dragonborn adventurer goes missing and the next morning, plants and crops that had been looking wilted and dying were alive and healthy.

And that was enough for them. Andel reasoned that the greater good was in saving the town and in the food the crops would provide. A life to save ten, or even a hundred lives? Perhaps not a bad trade. Broshod meanwhile took more convincing but apparently went along with it after seeing something in the woods that she was cagey about. Both put pressure on Lenka to let them use her tavern as a meeting-place for the burgeoning cult but she had been putting them off. And then last night, the adventurers had come in asking about some cryptic book and a disappearance right when Sherrif Ialos and Deputy Edmon had been trying to pressure her into using the inn for the third time that week.

Well, deputy Edmon and Sherrif Ialos quickly told the newcomers that they could show them directly to the book and that they had a lead on the missing people... and out they all marched from the tavern before Lenka could so much as make a face.

They'd been gone all night and all morning, and the crops were again beginning to look unhealthy. One or two more weeks - one or two more sacrifices - and they'd be able to finish the harvest.

Armed with this knowledge and spurred by the pressing time-line, the party dashes into the forest north of town looking to stop the ritual and save their rivals/guildmates. It's a race against time, but the peasant cultists have nothing compared to the power raining down on them.

Muk-Muk finally lets Rage grip him, and becomes a frightfully powerful (and uniquely eloquent) being.

Panthera embraces the natural cleansing of fire.

Peril lives up to his name, striking from the shadows and striking fear into his enemies.

Syl lets loose a darkness when her friends are threatened and she is challenged.

Yuantine turns pure barbarian, smashing faces and tossing old men into people-eating-plants.

The druid is captured first, and then Ialos and Edmon are killed - burned to death before they could even make a move. Andel and the remaining cultists are dispatched; Andel becomes food for the Tripwire Patch which has been rejuvenating the plants around it, and after a discussion with the druid which confirmed she knew that they could have just benefitted passively by the Tripwire Patch snagging the odd deer... they decide she's got to go and she's tossed into the Patch as well.

With the unpleasantness behind them and none left who knew the details of the Tripwire Patch, there's a discussion about killing it or leaving it be and letting nature take it's course. They decide to try and hide the Patch as well as they can, and leave it alone. The Bandyhand Institute can always send someone out here to keep an eye on it and ensure nobody else uses it in an immoral way again.

Victorious in a way that leaves no doubt that this kind of activity will continue, the party returns to the tavern to share the news with an excited Lenka. Drinks are on the house, tonight!

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