Jorn

Dinner passed much the way he'd expected it to. Liam and Pak ate a mixture of fruits from the forest and the vegetarian travel rations they packed for travels while everyone else enjoyed a meat stew that was both fatty and gamey at the same time. Kala informed Jorn that it was local hedgehog and rat both hunted in the first part of the forest, Jorn had had much worse in his lifetime and gladly asked for seconds.

After supping with Melody, Jameson, and a very shaken boy named Jeremy, Jorn got down to business. Following a half hour of questioning he had a much better picture painted in his head of how things had happened. From what he could tell the elf he was told to expect had not waited around as he was supposed to, but rather had approached a group of Jeremy's 'friends' and asked them to go dungeon diving. It was no surprise that in a town full of greedy low-life type humans that the group of men had decided to keep information of the budding dungeon on the low.

Jeremy had been grabbed because of his experience wielding a spear by three of the local gang's enforcers and been pressed into joining them on the expedition. Apparently, the forest had been much smaller, each of the trees at least 60 cm shorter than what they currently were. The contrast between what Melody had seen in the forest and what Jeremy had experienced was very stark and left no doubt that the forest itself was magical in some way.

Jeremy continued to describe the wildlife, different plants, and eventually the clearing where they'd found the dungeon entrance. The dungeon layout was very simple, only one floor fashioned after an abandoned mineshaft of some sort. There were crude pit traps, falling rocks, spiders and bats for enemies, and even some water holes that were not investigated. Throughout this whole description Jorn and Jameson listened intently, trying to pull every detail that might make the dive easier for them. Then Jeremy got to the real story.

Apparently two of the thugs thought they'd dislodge the dungeon's core and sell it, the idiots. They'd pummeled the wall and triggered the dungeon's failsafe endangering their entire party. The two thugs had been killed by beetles, likely the dungeon's worker bees, and the other human had died on the surface. Jorn was no expert on magical trees but it wasn't a far stretch to say that every spirit or god that inhabited the woods benefited from the aura put off by the dungeon and was displeased with the party’s actions.

Shaking and breathing much more heavily Jeremy finished his story. He spoke of his flight through the woods, the frenzied woodland creatures, and then the betrayal of his elven guide. Jeremy had been spared by the forest, and the elf had been captured by a sapient or near-sapient tree, strangled to death. Finally, he wrapped up his story with his 30-hour long trip back to the village, a mixture of sprinting, limping, and stumbling. He fell into the door at the inn Melody was staying at and sensing a story to be heard she flagged him down.

Finally, Jorn understood the lack of news about the dungeon, and understood a bit of the dangers that faced them ahead. He thanked the two for their time, and with a quick wink and an invite upstairs to Melody, he set off to his room alone. They'd have work to do in the morning.

* * *

Although the group rose before the sun rise, they did not set off until the sun had risen above the horizon. With what Jeremy explained it did not seem very safe to be in the forest after dark, and everybody wanted to check out the town area a bit more first anyways.

As they approached the rope bridge they ran into a group of dwarves they'd not yet met, getting ready to enter the forest.

"Ho' there brothers, what are you all up to this morning?" It wasn't often you saw a dwarf away from the ancestral mountains, and when you did they were usually either working as a blacksmith, miner, merchant, or an adventurer. It was a shock to find even one this far east, let alone three of them.

"Ye' ear that Korin, ‘ees a civilized dwarf. Oe'er talking like a human and all. What’s it to ye what we are doing hmm?"

Jorn was taken back a bit by the rude reaction. The offending dwarf looked like the average dwarf, shaggy brown hair with a shaggy brown beard and a thick nose. As he prepared to retort he was shocked yet again, the dwarf just started laughing.

"I'm just messin with ye. We are off for the morning logging. We got lots of buildings to build, so we need to get all the lumber we can. Actually, if ye don’t mind a little labor, we'd love to have ye help us out. So far, we only harvest from the first clearing, I'd love to see if there be more trees to chop deeper in. There could be some good coin in it for ye."

"Maybe another time, for now we need to evaluate the dungeon and see if it's worth writing home about. Thank you for the offer though-"

"Geim, the name is Geim."

They shook hands and watched as the dwarves walked off whistling to themselves and brandishing their oversized axes. Strange fellows, but no stranger than a dwarven aeromancer he supposed.

Finally, they crossed the bridge, which was very sturdy for being made of woven grass. Almost as instantly they were already stopping.

"I want to look at the willows. If they are sentient we might be able to communicate with the forest, and it sounds like they might be." And just like that Liam was off. Jorn watched his halfling druid as he approached the tree. Since only the lowest hanging branches could touch the man, he was able to approach the tree with relative ease. The barefooted druid approached the trunk and put his hands against it, closing his eyes to commune with nature. Almost instantly the druid fell backwards onto his rump and back-peddled to the group.

"Stay away from those willows. They are not sapient yet, and from what I could tell they can only feel hunger, thirst, lust, and gluttony. Let’s get moving again."

Once again, they were trekking through the woods eyes open. It did not feel like anything in the forest was particularly malicious, apart from the trees. Within 20 minutes they had passed the dwarves, who were laboriously tolling away at several large oaks that surrounded the fruit trees. They kept on moving.

Throughout the entire trip Robyn, Randar's emberhawk animal companion, swooped in and out of the canopy killing squirrels and other birds. It was very uneventful if Jorn was being completely honest, but there wasn't much to do about it. After four more clearings in the forest over the next two hours, they finally emerged in a glade that matched Jeremy's description, more or less.

It was larger than the previous clearings and populated with dark blue walnut trees with a hill in the center. Carefully they made their way to the center, prodding the ground to check for holes like the one Jeremy said his human friend stepped in. There was no tree on top of the hill, like they'd been told to expect, but there was a hole that led down into the earth. They waited there for a moment as Liam ran around and collected as many of the copper encrusted walnuts as he could fit into his pouch, dumping the rocks that he usually collected for his sling along the way.

With a healthy amount of trepidation, the party began their decent to the backdrop of Pak's pan flute playing a light tune to try and ease the tension.