Patrol Report

Filed by: Temoren Cairnwright
Apologies for any misspellings

We were met by Wum Burdun, one of the local frontier scout leaders, along with Scövja Thurfurst, whose son had been taken. The problem was not just the kidnapping, but where it happened. Their people cannot cross into the Coldwood without breaking treaty, and since the Blood Riders had apparently decided giant children count as fair game, we were hired as the neutral solution.

King Heartwich wants peace kept if at all possible, because rampaging giants tend to complicate diplomacy. We were offered 1,000 gold and given five days before the giants stopped waiting and started responding.

Scövja told us her son, Burleigh, vanished after a fight near the edge of the mountains and the Coldwood. When she returned home, she found dead humans and horses and believed her son had taken several of them down before being captured. Their own scouts had been searching for days with no results.

At the camp in the Ice Spires, we found two dead humans and one dead horse, drag marks into the woods, and clear signs the Blood Riders had been there. The corpses were branded with a giant rune meaning death. Solia found a frozen finger with a ring, and nearby was a massive axe buried under fresh snow marked Ligia over a family crest. It was clear only two giants had been at the camp, but they had fought off more than ten humans and horses before Burleigh was taken.

At the Shining River, we found another dead body wedged between rocks. Solia spotted an ambush waiting across the river, and Yashir noticed a shimmer coming off the corpse. We determined he had been killed by a humanoid weapon through the chest, and we recovered an amulet with the initials E.T., worth around 200 gold.

After making camp, we found the Blood Riders’ holding site. Burleigh was chained in a cage, and Solia handled the rescue beautifully. She talked a horse into causing a distraction with promises of apples, picked three locks, and got the boy out without raising a full alarm. Very clean work.

On the way back, we were intercepted by a Blood Rider Captain and her group. I cast Faerie Fire and lit her and her horse up like a set of trail markers. The rest of the party made quick work of them after that. Solia landed the finishing shot on the captain, and while it was admittedly brutal, it was also extremely effective. Burleigh joined in by throwing rocks, and giant children throw rocks with frankly alarming force.

We returned Burleigh safely to Scövja Thurfurst and Wum Burdun, both of whom were very grateful that we were able to resolve the matter without technically breaking treaty, despite the Blood Riders having started the problem in the first place.

As for the team: Fetch went down on the first day, but I repaired him the next morning. Shev hit hard and took excellent advantage of targets once I had them lit up. Solia was exceptional throughout with stealth, lockpicking, animal handling, and ranged attacks. Her bow remains deeply concerning in the best possible way. Yashir fought bravely and did a good job pulling enemy attention, though he did go down once and required repeated healing after throwing himself into the middle of multiple enemies. Effective, yes. Advisable, less so. I would gently recommend remembering the rest of us are here to help keep him alive.

Overall, the patrol was a success. Burleigh was recovered, the treaty remains intact enough for politics, and no giant retaliation was triggered. That is about as clean an ending as we were likely to get.

30th of Ches, 1502 Dale Reckoning
Where: Ice spire? i believe weve been here before.
Who: A furbolg and a bleedin ice giant of all things?

This one felt like some proper hero work. weird was to start i know. but thats what you read about in all those stories right? people fighting for those most wouldn't think twice about leaving on their own? but ill be damned odd times were living in.

We were back up north again. seems we should consider another outlet up there. we were enlisted for another search and rescue. now we've done a few at this point. so what made this one different. to prevent a war i believe between giants and giant slayers. a frost giant mother had inquired for us to find and rescue her son from what she assumed were a group of giant slayers. they didn't want us to make it known we were affiliated. so we acted as a radical third party. came across and thwarted an ambush attempt from a bunch of orcs. after which we found the giant slayers camp and. . well. its a tich hard to hide a giant in a cage. and so to we had found our employers son. Solia putting her impeccable stealth talents to work managed to infiltrate the camp and free the giant. with the help of a diversion of some horses. dunno how she managed that one. but, regardless. we got the poor lad out and made good head way up until the river. no surprise the giant prisoner that had gone missing caught some attention. the aimed to cut us off. but it was ultimately a failure on there end. we defeated the enemy and brought the chap home to his mum!

Solia Faolanri
30th of Ches, 1502 Dale Reckoning
Where: Ice Spire
Who: Shev, Yashir, Tem and Solia

The mission was to find and recover - dead or alive - the son of Scövja Thurfurst. She was a giant that had lost her son Burleigh. He'd been taken by Blood Riders, who are hunters of Giants. The trek was difficult. I'm not used to moving through deep snow and mountains, but we managed well enough. We encountered some polar Owlbears near their territory and had to put them down. Eventually, we came to a wrecked camp and I found a woman's finger frozen to a massive axe with a signet ring attached to it. I kept them, not knowing what to expect to find, really. We determined that something large had been dragged off, so we followed the trail.

That led to a huge camp of Blood Riders, and a certain young Frost Giant that had been shackled and caged. We came up with a plan. I spoke to one of the warhorses and convinced them to go for a run and rally their friends to do the same. The chaos was enough to get the whole camp stirred up, which made it easier to break Burleigh out of his imprisonment. He didn't want to help us fight them... there was a treaty that he was worried about violating if he incited the violence despite his capture. We fled, trying to escape a fight.

That worked, until we ran into a Blood Rider commander who wanted to take Burleigh back. I realized who she was... she told us to give back what belonged to her, so I tossed her the finger in my pocket. She didn't like that much.

After the fight, we took him back to his mother and made a bit of a name for ourselves in the area. That felt pretty good. Jaru would have been impressed, I just know it.

There are still a lot of questions unanswered. I think it'd be useful to research some of the species in the area in the meantime... it can only make the hunt more successful in the end.

30 Ches, 1502 D.R.

Summoned by the same party we had helped some time ago in the distant north, we were called upon by people whose names I cannot pronounce to rescue, much to my surprise, the son of a frost giantess.

The boy had been taken by the Blood Riders, who had apparently raided a scouting party's encampment some days prior. There was some sort of uneasy truce between the two factions that prevented the giants and the scouting force from mounting their own rescue mission -- but nothing prevented them from hiring us to do it, since we were outsiders. We were, however, admonished to avoid bloodshed as best we could all the same, to preserve relations.

We traveled for days, facing owlbears and cold and rockslides of snow. I am still picking snow out of places I'd rather not mention, but with the aid of horses I'd negotiated for, we made it to the battlefield in good time.

The camp was devestated, of course. We expected nothing less. We poked around a little bit, but found little other than a woman's finger hewn away by a giant axe. Little worth salvaging, but we found the path of our quarry well enough. They had dragged away a giant; it was not difficult to follow.

We followed that trail to a river, where we faced an Orcish ambush which Solia was clever enough to spot. We were more prepared for them than they expected, and though one escaped us, all the rest perished. We continued on our way.

The camp of the Bloodriders was abuzz with activity, and the frost giant child was caged in the center. This proved no particular difficulty for Solia, not aided by the combined magical power of the rest of us. She slipped up to the cage, started an insurrection of horses, and freed the giant child, and we all slipped away in the chaos -- even the giant, all unspotted.

Nevertheless, when we reached the river of the orcish ambush again, the Bloodriders were waiting for us. They made threats. Solia gave them the finger -- and I mean that both figuratively and literally, as she produced the severed finger we'd found at the scout encampment, which belonged to the Bloodriders' leader, and threw it at their feet.

Combat ensued, needless to say. Through trial and pain and the power of our newly-freed companion, we prevailed, leaving them all dead.

So much for not shedding blood. We returned the child to his grateful mother, and were paid for our good work -- though I must admit to feeling a touch useless, myself. Still, any one you walk away from.

-- Yashir adh Rumahr