Day 144: Starday the 9th, Calistril, 4708
We all woke up at approximately the same time. There was an hour period while all four of us were slowly getting ready with prayers or researching, or such. I hopped into my armor as soon as I was able and started my trip around the plane, checking up on the engine crew's notes for upgrades. Unfortunately, there was not much there, that was new, but at least this was consistent. I spent some time tinkering over the engines myself, getting them ready for a long flight, while others walked about. With the gauntlets on this armor acting as vice grips, I didn't need a wrench for most operations, which was nice.
After everything for the engines was set up, I walked back to the main passenger compartment. Faunra, Dame Rebekah, and Jonathan were all suited up and ready to go. I nodded to them as I passed and I made my way to the cockpit before I announced that we would be we starting up on our fateful journey. Faunra walked in and plopped into the copilot seat immediately and I warned the other two that they should probably be seated for this.
I ramped up the acceleration and we took off. I knew that we'd have to gain altitude quickly, so I kept the speed poured on. We climbed at a favorable forty-five-degree angle while we gained sufficient speed to get up to the altitude that we would need to be able to clear the Storval Steppes cliff face. We flew for a good distance without much of anything going on. Faunra, being serious for once, asked me all kinds of questions about the plane and what it took to fly it. She was kind of disappointed by the technical knowhow that was required for the engines, but I told her that I'd make sure that the engines were ready to go before we went anywhere dangerous, so that they could at least get back.
Around an hour into the flight, Jonathan came up to announce that breakfast was ready. Faunra leapt up at the chance to get food and Jonathan sat down in the co-pilot seat, telekinetically lifting my meal over to me. I gave him a brief rundown of how to hold the plane steady while I got my meal quickly wolfed down. We talked a bit after I took over control of the plane again and Jonathan asked if I thought that all of this was really necessary. I shrugged, telling him that we needed to put this to its end, one way or another. Jonathan nodded and said that he can understand that just fine, but added that he didn't understand why they were all learning how to fly the plane.
I spared a glance at him and the looked back at the door to the passenger compartment before saying that there was nothing guaranteeing that I was going to be the one who makes it back and we can't let this technology fall into the hands of someone who isn't responsible. Jonathan nodded and told me that if it came down to it, he'd get this plane somewhere that it could be destroyed if that was the last resort. I thanked him but noted that if he really was going to attack whoever had attacked him, he might need this ship to get to space. Jonathan thought for a good long moment and said that he'd consider that as well.
After an hour of talking back and forth with Jonathan, with much less of it about flying the plane than what he was hoping to get out of his revenge. I told him that it was right to get the scales balanced, and if that meant for him to deal with those who wronged him, then you do you. Jonathan got up after his hour was done, and Dame Rebekah came in after him. She sat down and started to ask a question, but stopped herself. Then she tried again, but stopped herself a second time.
I volunteered to start the conversation and asked her if she had any questions about where to start. Dame Rebekah nodded and said that she just didn't know where to start. I nodded and started telling her exactly how everything worked on a layman level. Roundy-Roundy-Roundski level stuff at first. It's not that she was stupid, but the vast majority of the concepts were not what she had ever dealt with. Dame Rebekah nodded along and started to get through the basics. After about twenty minutes, I asked her if she'd like to try to hold the controls. She did, but I could tell that she wasn't comfy with it.
We continued like this for about an hour when Faunra came back up to the cockpit with an update of the map. She had been updating it from her previous estimates and noted that we would have to land soon to be at the cabin that the sources in Janderhoff had referenced. I took control over the plane again and lowered the altitude slowly, to be closer to the ground. I had thought it odd that we had not encountered or seen anything in such a long flight, but I really had been focused on keeping us up in the air to give time to account for any issues that might come up while we were flying.
We skirted a mere three hundred feet above the river as it flowed down between mountain peaks. I requested that Jonathan be the one to take over as copilot, as his eyes were the sharpest among us. Faunra and Dame Rebekah nodded and noted that we needed a trap door in the passenger compartment so that they can just drop down on a rope. I noted that if we were going to do that, we'd need to get this to be a lot more like a helicopter. Faunra asked me a confused, "what?" and then went about getting ready with Dame Rebekah.
When we were getting what I figured was close enough, I slowed us down from our speed of one hundred and thirty-five miles per hour, then down to ninety-two, then when Jonathan claimed that we were getting really close, I shut down the mechanical engines entirely, and got us set up on the enchanted drive that Faunra had set up. It would be much slower going, only about thirty miles an hour, until Jonathan spotted the cabin, on the edge of a fucking cliff face. I brought up this to the two in the back, and Faunra indicated that I should try to keep the plane steady while they work out a solution, but that I needed to back it up to the cliff face.
I shrugged and asked Jonathan to act as a runner between the back hatch and me, so I can get it as close as possible. So went a backing up procedure that I decided that I did NOT want to do again. I didn't care if we had to install a crystal ball in the cockpit. I would have my extra-vehicular camera system. And a damned GPS. This flying by map went out with Amelia and Lindberg. When Jonathan came back to tell me what was going on, after about half a minute, he told me that I can land drop the landing gear and land the vehicle.
I slowly lowered the plane and there was a release of weight as I did. When we were steady, I got up from the pilot seat and saw that there was a ledge that had been engineered out of the cliff-face. Right next to the cabin. I went to the center of the passenger compartment and activated the two immoveable rods, our "emergency brakes", and went to go look around. They had done a good deal of preparation for the ground and when I got back there, they offered up the widen meta-magic rod for me to use. I grabbed it and made a large hangar for the plane.
It took three castings, but when I was done, the hanger was twenty-five feet tall, fifty feet wide at the base, and fifty feet long. It was covered on three sides completely, with a bit of reinforcement throughout. It was also proof against intangible and ethereal foes. When I was done with that, I summoned up a crew to do the diagnostics for the engine to make sure that we are all good. There would be a fair amount of work that can be done to ensure that it would be ready for the next flight.
When I had decided that everything was good, I went to go get caught up with everything everyone else was doing. Apparently, while I was in with the engines, the other three heard a mournful howl that sounded like a dying elk. Faunra identified it as a Wendigo. I yelled, oh shit, you got those here too? Faunra looked at me like I was crazy. I told her that there was a legend about something called a Wendigo back where I was from, where it was the spirit of a man who had succumbed to cannibalism in the arctic, and who raced in the wind with burnt off feet.
Faunra, helpfully, corrected my incorrect knowledge. It wasn't a spirit of a man it was an extraplanar entity. Yes, it was associated with cold, it did have burnt off feet, and it did engender cannibalism. Jonathan noted that from the sound of it, the thing was at least a mile away at the time of the howl. I asked if they thought that it would be heading directly here. Faunra shook her head, saying that she would expect it to come at night. I nodded and suggested that we get into the cabin to see if we can figure out what information might have been left and get out. Everyone agreed.
We made our way to a rough porch crafted with crude handrails. There was a short set of stairs up to this, and the roof had dozens of different animal skulls hanging from the overhang. The columns supporting the roof had racks of antlers, a stone chimney that came out of the wall, and a pair of doors on that wall, one recessed from the other. There were a couple of tossed over split pieces of wood on the porch that looked to serve as stools. Dame Rebekah whipped her head around and stared off into the distance. I asked her what was up, as Jonathan had not noticed it, and she claimed that she had noticed someone possibly off in the distance.
I saw that the Haunt Detector that I had installed on my right forearm was acting up and I announced that to everyone before slapping the A.D.D.I.E. on my right hip, activating it. Dame Rebekah nodded and I felt a wave of positive energy flood the area around us. The feeling that I had only just now noticed about the paranormal haunt disappeared. I nodded to everyone else and went up to check the door for traps or locks. On the door was a faded sign that said, "Vekker Mining Co. Headquarters.", in the runic language of the Dwarves.
I can't remember when or where I learned Dwarvish, but I guess that it's just another thing that I picked up. From everything that I can tell, the door was not locked. It was just stuck. I activated the clockwork on my armor and slammed into the door. It nearly fell of the hinges. The room beyond looked like a combination living room and kitchen. The chimney to the side of the door had a stone hearth with an iron hook holding cauldron above the grate.
The room was in disrepair. Everything lied in the area in heaps and was covered in blood. Furniture, cooking utensils, and what I expected was just firewood. There was a painting hanging askew on the northern wall. They painting had a pair of dour looking dwarves standing in front of an elk. But there were no bodies. We walked into the room and looked around to get out of the weather, which had just starting to snow. While I was looking about the room, I started to get really hungry. REALLY Hungry. I know that I had not eat that long ago.
Suddenly, I felt like the only thing that could sate me was human flesh. I mean, Faunra was an elf, so she wouldn't work. Jonathan was a werewolf/elf kind of thing, so he wasn't right. Even Dame Rebekah was half elf, so it'd be like getting tofurkey when you were expecting Thanksgiving dinner. We had all started eyeing each other, hungrily, until something clicked and Dame Rebekah channeled her divine power again. The feeling wavered a bit but was still there.
Faunra thought quick and reached into her pack. She tossed Jonathan and I a pair of scrolls and told him to read his. I caught it and unrolled mine as he did the same. He read his scroll and there was a second pulse. The feeling of hunger dissolved. Dame Rebekah acknowledged that this was another haunt and that it seemed that it would be back in like a day or so unless we resolve the underlying issues. I nodded and asked if this was a situation like her hostel. Dame Rebekah looked at me a bit pissed off but agreed.
We walked into the door that was across the room from the door we entered. It was stuck, and Dame Rebekah yanked it open. It looked like a scene out of Hostel, and no, not Dame Rebekah's. There were iron hooks suspended from the rafters, iron bars in a grid over the only window, which looks out over the edge of the cliff, and a four-foot fucking tall pile of dwarf bones that were cracked for the marrow.
Jonathan walked over to the pile and seemed to be picking though the pile of bones. He straightened up and started jerking around. Deftly avoiding what were apparently invisible attackers. Still, not a single hit landed, and I noted that we should get out of this room as soon as we can. We all backed out of the room and slammed the door shut. With all of our combined force.
As a group, we looked to our left and saw that there was short hallway to the left. There was another door not too far down the line, and at the end of the hallway it hooked off to the right. At the terminus of the hallway, there was a blanket hanging, floor to ceiling to the left, a door ahead, and the hallway veered off to the right. The first door in our path was on the same wall as the cannibal store room. None of us saw another door into that room when we had gotten in there, so we carefully checked on the next door. I checked the door and everything but couldn't find any issues. I carefully opened it up and we found a storeroom with a few pairs of snowshoes. I laughed a bit and looked back at the rest of the group. Jonathan telekinetically yanked the contents of the room and lifted it into a ball. Waste not, want not, he said.
We went the rest of the way down the short hallway, and decided to check out the blanket room. It was a dilapidated coat room with another blanket to the north. The room was filled with dwarven sized clothing. Jonathan seemed to see something and yanked a giant hammer out from underneath the pile. I shrugged and went to look at the blanket door to the north.
I pushed aside the blanket to check out the room, but there was nothing in there except a rocking chair. The door had a set of hangers for a bar, and it could be locked, but from what I could see it wasn't locked and there wasn't a bar there. I told the others and they just suggested that we continue on, that it was just a mud room. I agreed and we turned around to check the next door.
It was a bunkroom with a large elk hide on the floor. In the corner was a small closet that was covered by another elk hide. There were a few weapons and a shield on some racks, but they were all warped and useless. There was an obvious shit bucket in the corner with paper on an iron hook. I noted that I was going to have to develop good toilet paper for this world.
We left the room and went to the other door in the hallway. There was at least a room that we didn't have access from the inside, but we could check that out later. Probably accessed from the porch. We walked up to the door and I checked it out for dangers or locks. No issues found and we went in. It was a manual chain lift for a bucket.
We looked around and Jonathan immediately spotted a secret door. Nothing gets past his werewolf-elven eyes. The door was locked and Jonathan passed it over to me. Seriously, with all of the experience that I have gotten with locks in this area, I felt kind of bad about how easy it was to get the lock open. Apparently, this was a damn good lock from what Faunra had said, but it was like I could get it open with my eyes closed.
We opened the door to find a small desk with a ledger upon it. There were also seven burlap sacks in the corner. The seven burlap sacks were filled with gold dust and gold nuggets. I kind of didn't feel one way or another about the gold, but the rest of the group seemed to be a bit more about it. It was kind of meh at this point, considering that we had had much more gold and such than this pass thru our hands by this point, in such a short period of time, but eh, more gold is more gold.
Underneath the gold bags was a small box with fourteen uncut stones. Jonathan threw them into the bag he had on his back. I asked everyone if they wanted to head down the stairs to check out the lower levels. Jonathan said that we had checked everything else out, so we might as well. Then he asked why take the stairs, before hopping over the railing and just dropping. Faunra laughed and did the same. Dame Rebekah looked at me and we both silently decided that they might just be crazy, but followed suit.
Around ten feet down, Jonathan got hit with the chain that had, until just then, been moving slightly in the breeze. The chain slammed into Jonathan and tried to wrap around him. Or I should say, his force field. It slammed at him twice, only to be brushed aside at the last minute by Jonathan's force. The chain did end up slamming him into the wall above a set of the stairs, which happened to be a trap that caused them to collapse.
To which Jonathan yawned, as his feather fall effect kicked in and he continued drifting down, only bothering to launch an errant blast of lightning at the chain, melting the whole damn thing. Faunra, Dame Rebekah, and I all shrugged and continued gently floating down to the bottom of the shaft. I silently noted that the stairs would have to be dealt with on our way back up. Faunra verbally noted that we'd deal with the stairs later. As we came to a rest on the bottom of the shaft, we looked around and found only a single set of double-doors out.
We all posted up at that door and got ready to force our way in after I checked it for traps and such. We saw none, and flung open the doors. It was an interesting experience. The air in the room was putrid, the back wall was solid rock, and there was a ramp down to another set of double doors. There were mounds of dust and debris on the floor, with rusted mechanical equipment, large copper tanks, and other mining tools. From what I could tell, this room was built for breaking up the stones to get at the gold.
In the far corner of the room, on this upper level, I saw the form of a balding dwarf with facial scars and a full beard Slav-squatting. The dwarf turned around and scooped up what appeared to be gold dust into his mouth. He belted out that the dust was delicious and that we had to try it. I heard it in English. Later I learned that Faunra had heard it in Elvish. None of us took him up on the offer. I had enough Goldschläger to last a lifetime thank you very much.
We kind of ignored this memory of an event and went to the other set of double doors. I got ready for what I expected would be a jump scare when I checked for any kind of locks or traps. There were no locks or traps, but it was REALLY corroded. I got them jimmied open and we went into the next room. The room was fairly well built, with no other issues. There was another door to the north, and a curtain just south of the double doors that we entered from. We decided to check the curtain to the south, just because it was closer and nothing had happened yet.
It was a small, utilitarian chamber with a wood-frame cot, a straw mattress, and a threadbare blanket. There were a pair of old work boots under the cot. We looked around and Dame Rebekah claimed that she had noticed a punching dagger in the left boot. I shrugged and noted that the blade looked stained. We left the room and headed over to the north door.
We opened up the rusted shut door (again, corrosion but also locked). The doors opened to the bottom of the cliff, and the weather had gotten much worse since we entered the building. I noted this to everyone and opted to utilize my ring to get a prediction of the weather. There was nothing of predicted snow in the next twenty-four hours. I explained this to everyone, and Faunra recalled that the entities known as wendigo can sometimes generate snowstorms.
I told them that we should get the investigation of this lower level done as quickly and thoroughly as possible, as I didn't want to be stuck in the weather later when it got worse. Jonathan walked off around the building to the south and warned us that there was more of the black dust around the corner. He noted that there was a sagging pine tree next to the pile. He then claimed that there was a victim buried in the pile. We all walked around the building, carefully.
When we got close to the pile, the tree animated and took a swing at me. A pair of swings at me. They both slammed home, rocking me off my feet and knocking me back ten feet. It roared with an unearthly roar of a dead pine tree splitting. Faunra fired off a series of burning, shocking arrows into it, damaging it greatly. I hefted my bolter into position and fired four times, sending burning hot rounds into its wooden structure. The thing splintered, showing a pile of things that it had stuffed inside itself. What a weird place this is, what with treasure eating pine tree Ents.
Dame Rebekah, came over, helped me to my feet, and handed me a potion. I popped open my facemask, chugged the potion, reclosed my mask, and felt better instantly. Jonathan walked over, used his breeze power to dust me off further, and slapped a hand on my shoulder, sending me healing energy. I could see the strain on him as my vitality was restored. I got hungry again, but I figured that it wasn't due to any kind of haunt, more of my body processing its reserves so rapidly.
Jonathan apologized, saying that his sense of smell was off, otherwise he felt he would have noticed that undead tree. I mouthed the words undead tree for a few seconds and asked where we needed to go next. Jonathan noted that there was one more room down here that the bottom of the cabin, and said that we should go check that out. The door was stuck but a bit of force from Dame Rebekah knocked it down. There was a lot of junk in there for mining, not any of it worth consideration anymore.
We all decided that it would be best to head back into the cabin and head back upstairs. Already, this was looking like a Donner party resort thing occurred here. I'm guessing that they got stuck in here in the winter and didn't have enough in the way of food to get through. Then they followed through with their baser issues. It kind of worried me that we had flown here in a plane, but then again, we had somethings those poor souls did not, magic, telekinesis, and the ability to summon extraplanar entities. We walked back in to the lower entrance and shut the door behind us.
As soon as we pulled the door shut on the lower entrance and started to walk away from it, we heard a knocking at the door. Jonathan went and opened the door. There was no one there. He looked around outside, and seeing no one, shut the door. The knocking returned. I nodded, and told everyone that I had seen this movie before, and told them that we needed to get to a defensible location right quick, and that we needed to get all of our ways to deal damage to these haunt things.
Dame Rebekah asked me where I thought the most defensive room was. I told her that the mud room was the second best place, and where we should probably go. Faunra asked me why we should head to the second best place. I told her that the best place was the cannibal storeroom. Faunra nodded gravely. We ran through the entrance, up the ramp, barely giving the spectral gold eating dwarf a glance, before getting into the staircase. Faunra and Jonathan flew up the stairwell, and Dame Rebekah looked to start running up the stairs. I told her to stop and get over here. She was confused, but did so. I picked her up and activated my boots, jumping to the top of the stairwell in one bound. I made a mental note to get Faunra to upgrade the enchantment on these boots to allow them to do this jump all the time.
When we hit the top of the stairs, the knocking ceased. I realized that this was "NOT a good thing" and that we needed to get to our defensive structure as soon as we could. We rushed through the door of the shaft, with Jonathan shutting it behind us, and ran straight across through the blanket into the coat room and then into the mud room. Dame Rebekah was behind me and she ripped the door to the bunk room off of its hinges and we used it as a blockade for the bottom part of the curtain door. The rest of us fortified the door to the outside. I was glad that there were no windows.
When we were all four in the mud room, and Jonathan was flinging items out into the hallway, we heard a loud crack followed by hammering as the walls of the cabin began to shake. We all stayed upright for now, but I could tell that Dame Rebekah was having problems. I'm glad that we made it in here before it started this. The hammering continued and now I could see faint images of emaciated dwarven ghosts out of the corner of my eye. I could feel the hunger radiating off of these spectral images. Dame Rebekah reached out in a direction and channeled her positive energy into the form of a spectral dwarf.
It recoiled and she yelled at us to use holy water and cure wands. Faunra tossed Jonathan a wand, and I gave her five of my holy water "grenades". I hoped at the time that this wouldn't take more than that amount of time. While the hammering continued, there was a ghastly whisper that seemed to carry throughout the room. I heard pained dwarven voices say, "eating us", "don't let him", and "so hungry".
I felt something clawing at the corner of my mind, but I shut it out. The voices continued as we repeated the routine. Dame Rebekah channeled her divine force again, I threw another grenade, as did Faunra, and Jonathan hit it with his wand. The force of the haunt relented as the last bit of holy water caused it to recede. As the haunt's oppressive force stopped, another spirit came into existence in the coat room.
As the dwarf, who we recognized as one of the two brothers, sans eyes, appeared a little surprised and spoke to us. As he spoke, bite sized bits and pieces of him tore loose and faded away. The dwarf told us that he can provide us with the way to Xin-Shalast, but only if we bring his brother's corpse back. It is a mile's walk north of the cabin. He asked us to bring his brother's bones back to him to reconcile them. He dissolved after saying that.
We looked at each other, and I asked if they just wanted to fly there. They all agreed, and we all ran out of the cabin to get to the plane. I didn't even bother to spin up the engines, as we would overshoot my miles even if we went at the normal cruising speed. I lifted off using Faunra's enchantment and we went forward at the now respectable thirty miles an hour pace. We got to the location where we expected the remains to be within five minutes. The way was a little winding and the winds were really kicking. Dame Rebekah was up in the cockpit with me, keeping an eye on the trail.
When we got to the area where we expected the last remains to be I swerved around, floated to a stop about twenty feet off the ground, and had Jonathan engage the stopping devices (i.e. the mounted immovable rods). We all got ready and I ensured that Jonathan or Faunra would be able to open up the back hatch. With the stage set, we all got to the drop hatch and jumped down. Or floated down I should say. It certainly wasn't a dynamic looking superhero landing.
We slowly fell into a foggy mist and I landed very close to the edge which would have been a two thousand foot drop down into the mountain side. We got together and walked towards what we saw as a small, pitiful series of a dozen gravestones. While we walked closer towards what we saw was an ancient fire pit with a body beside it, we were confronted with a great beast coming up from the snow and ice. It had been prepared for us because as soon as it did, it unleashed a blast of cold at us. Jonathan was just peachy. The rest of us, not so much. We weren't down, but the cold hurt.
Dame Rebekah got up in its face, dodging from an attack brought about by it in retaliation for invading its space, and opened up a vicious slash across the thing's belly. It would also be her eventual undoing. Jonathan deftly ran in, and avoiding the same attempt at retaliation, slammed a few (unenhanced) strikes into it. Faunra lit it up with a few arrows, with the last one that hit causing it to explode. Ouch.
Jonathan, was of course, fine. Faunra and I both took some shrapnel, her taking about twice as much as I think I did. Dame Rebekah had shielded me unknowingly, and even though she weaved to avoid a lot more of the spray than was actually heading towards her. I heard a cackle as a malevolent specter rose up from the dead body. It had the same appearance, but was clearly see thru. I cursed myself for not having my ghost salted rounds in the magazine but opened up with my bolter.
The group wasn't quite ready for the amount of noise. Honestly, neither was I for that matter. The four rounds ripped into the ghostly form, doing less damage than I would have expected, but doing a fair amount considering the insubstantial nature of the ghost. It responded by letting lose a terrible scream. I could feel the supernatural force behind the scream, but held it together. I could see the same from Faunra and Jonathan, but it latched onto Dame Rebekah for some reason and she started to react. I shouted at her that we hold the line and she snapped out of it.
Dame Rebekah's eyes blazed with fury as she charged off after the spectral entity. He burning sword matched the intensity of her eyes as she slashed thru its corpus. Jonathan didn't even move as he smiled. He just looked at the thing and simply said, "No". The snow around him lifted up and the frost worm's shards flew through the air, passing between the physical and the immaterial, and imbedded themselves, full force, into the ghost. The apparition dissolved into nothingness. For all of the problems that the frost worm caused us, and it did, the ghost of Karivek Vekker seemed to be a lot easier to deal with.
After Jonathan spent a few short seconds healing us all up as best he could while we gather up the remains of the only dwarf left. Jonathan then utilized an ice shelf to get us all up into the plane easily. I asked Jonathan if he wanted to scour the remains of the frost worm for anything that he could sell or create as food. He looked back down at the cliff and said nah. We shut the hatch for the back of the plane. The trip back was worse, as the snowstorm was getting worse. We got back to the hanger just in time.
We all pooled our remaining abilities to reinforce the hanger and took the corpse back to the cabin. As we stepped out of the hangar, there was another howl of the Wendigo. This time it was Jonathan and Faunra's time to balk. It was Dame Rebekah's turn to be inspiring, of sorts. She utilized some of the divine gift from Iomedae to remove the fear from both Faunra and Jonathan. As they shook off the sudden fear as we all knew what was coming next. The Wendigo. The great cannibal spirit.
The ghostly dwarf that had sent us on this quest reappeared and told us that he needed the remains of his brother in the cabin, in "that" room for ten minutes to reconcile. Jonathan telekinetically floated it into the cannibal storeroom and we went outside of the cabin. Dame Rebekah noted that the dwarf would need several minutes to reconcile properly. I asked her what we needed to do. She smiled at me and told me that I already knew, that I had just told the rest of the group. I decided to reload my bolter and get Faunra's assistance on quieting the weapon.
We prepared as best we could. Faunra had told me that the Wendigo is not intangible, but that it was proof against all but cold iron and magic, so I didn't load the ghost salt. I did get out the two magazines of the cold iron rounds. When we had gotten ready we waited for the inevitable assault that would attack us. We formed up together and waited as the monster tried to repeatedly harass us into making a mistake. We didn't fail, and they didn't need any further "encouragement" from me.
Eventually, the Wendigo must have gotten annoyed by us not falling for its psychotic ruses. It rushed down to try to pick up Jonathan. That was its last mistake. It had to attempt to grab him at the last minute of its dive, and fell into our stupid trap. We were ready.
Faunra shot him with an arrow converted entirely to fire energy. I shot it with a bolter round, and Jonathan decked it with a full force punch. It didn't drop but it was certainly feeling it. To make matters worse, its bite didn't even make it through Jonathan's force shield. The claws were deftly evaded by Jonathan's Ninja like stance.
Dame Rebekah finished it off with two vicious sword strikes, one taking off an arm and the other completely decapitating it. It dropped in front of us and I acknowledged that when we were not surprised, we were definitely a force to be reckoned with. We watched the area for another ten minutes before the spirit of Silas appeared before us. He told us that we had saved his brother and him. He told us that he should reward us by taking the path to Xin-Shalast to the grave with him, but that he would provide us with it as the deal was already set.
A few pages from the ledger that had been torn out suddenly appeared in the air before us as the ghost dissolved. Jonathan telekinetically gathered them all up and we studied them. I mean, I studied them. Because why would anyone else know Dwarven in this motley crew. I got the general description of which way we were going to have to go, and the notes that we were going to be heading up into the nosebleed area, so to speak. It was about one hundred miles following a river up a mountain range until we get to a marsh.
I relayed that to all of them, and as a group, we had a discussion. I asked if there was any chance that the wendigo might come back, or that another one would arrive to see what happened. Faunra noted that it was unlikely that there would be another Wendigo that would show up, and that they didn't come back after being destroyed. I asked if there were any other dangers that could show up that we would have to worry about. They were mostly shot down, as there had been a lingering aura of evil around this place and the other monsters wouldn't come close.
We decided that we would take up the night in our hangar, since it was the sturdiest structure we could think of. Before we did, we decided to do what we could for burying the remains of the bodies. It was a bit difficult to piece out which grave got which bones, but we did out abject best and hoped that this would at least count for something. When we were done, we all piled into the plane, in the hangar, and set ourselves up for a night of being on high alert. We took our times off to contact our loved ones and go about our preparations. I took the opportunity to utilize a few groups of unseen craftsmen to create a very thin layer of ice as a screen for the front part of the hangar.
We managed to get a good rotation going for the watch and we tried to relax. We spent time doing more plans, especially on what more we know about everything. I asked if anyone had noticed any scrying sensors. Everyone said that they had not. I nodded and said that I had hoped that we wouldn't be on the short end of the stick when it came for knowing the other side's tactics.
It was a tense period of time, but we managed to get some things out of the way. Faunra indicated that she might be able to get some work done if we hold up on leaving first thing. I asked her what she thought would be best to work on, and she shrugged a little, saying that there were some things that could be done. I nodded and noted that I probably needed to increase my ammunition. We all figured that there were some things needed to be done, so we decided that we'd get running a little bit after first light.
I spent the rest of my day going back and forth between talking (via the radio) to Savah to update her on what we had dealt with, and making ammunition. Savah told me that this was all crazy, but that she hoped that we would be safer. I agreed and noted that we would definitely be protecting ourselves against cold damage and such. I didn't have any ideas on what specific types of ammunition to make, so I just settled on refilling what I had utilized. At the end of the night, I took my two hours of watch and relayed to Jonathan that nothing happened.