Primal Adventures II

So after a skip week where we played the Battlestar Galactica boardgame instead, we went back to my SO's Primal game (story so far here).

We decided we'd best just catch our breath before racing after the escaped "floaty-tentacly-eyes-on-stalks-monster". Thankfully, we'd injured it enough so that it was leaving blobs of, well, goo, behind otherwise tracking a flying thing would have been difficult. As it was, we were able to follow a trail of goo blobs to the nearby swamp - home of the dragon that told us bad stuff was happening and not to interfere with them stopping it. With no idea of where it might be heading, and the swamp slowing us down much more than it (as it could fly) we reluctantly admitted we were never going to catch it up. We trudged back to the cave to make camp, intending to head back to the rest of the tribe after a good night's sleep.

My inquisitive Druid examined the patches of earth where the goo had fallen. It looked.....wrong, somehow. Not necessarily darker or twisted, but more defined than the surrounding area and slightly surreal. Being reluctant to actually touch the goo, I tried setting it on fire. It didn't really burn though, which is probably a good thing.

We had a disturbed night, with maddeningly surreal, weird and physics-defying dreams. Probably sleeping in the entrance to a cave where an otherworldly being had been summoned wasn't the brightest plan. The Warden was on last watch and in the brightening day heard the sounds of an approaching group of creatures and woke us all up. Suspecting it was another band of goblins (as we'd run into a few before) I scattered caltrops over the path just before it widened into the clearing in front of the cave and we all attempted to hide. (Not being particularly stealthy, this ranged from crouching behind rocks, to blending in with the trees and standing in the cave entrance hoping it was shadowy enough.) But rather than it being goblins, it was in fact a chattering group of kobolds.

As they didn't immediately look like the corrupted, warped kobolds that had been doing the summoning, I called out "Are you nice kobolds?" and after some intense discussion one was pushed forward to do all the talking. In a conversation limited somewhat by their halting common, we managed to establish that they were there to stop the summoning ritual which we'd failed to stop. We admitted we'd killed all the bad things in the area but one had got away, and they investigated and poked around the site a bit (shadowed by my druid who desperately wants to learn everything she can about what had been going on). They went off to report back to "Boss", and I told them to say we were willing to help. Rest of party were less convinced about being willing to help, but my character at least is worried by this incursion into her reality, as well as fascinated by these things she doesn't understand. Plus the dragon had compared this incursion to an "infection" and infections spread....

we finally retraced our steps of long ago to head back to the tribe's camp and let them know what lay this way. On the way we ran into a small group of longtooth shifters who looked slightly familiar but who didn't seem to recognise us. Oh, and they too were slightly...wrong. Edges too well defined. Surreal. Just like the patches of ground the Far Realm creature's goo had fallen on. When they first saw us, they just growled.

While most of us held off attacking until they did anything hostile, the Barbarian ran up and (failed to) hit one of them. To be fair, this was probably how the barbarian greeted most people. But attack us they did, and we had a pretty hard fight, not least because the dice hated us and we kept missing repeatedly while the GM rolled good damage. With some struggle, a lot of chasing after two sneaky ones who kept running to hide behind trees, and the barbarian not only getting hit lots but taking a wack of damage too, we finally managed to knock them all out (for once we reined in our killer instincts). And that's where we left it.

Hopefully it'll only be another fortnight until the next session. I'm really getting into this, and the plot is a lot tighter and more focused than my own rambling game. Or at least, that's how it comes across - maybe my SO is making it up as she goes along too! Will need to keep poking her to make sure she does enough prep to keep on schedule.