After traveling through the Mandala of Transport, we all faced a decision. Should we go with Kur to his dwarven mountain kingdom, or head back to Voneer to check on the state of affairs with my uncle. In the end it was more pressing to go to Voneer as we needed to know What my brother Lin was up to.
Following two weeks of foot travel, the coastal route lead us back to the outskirts of Voneer. Tiboh volunteered to fly into the city to avoid detection and gather information. We made camp under the cover grove of trees and waited for his return. What he told us was alarming. He was able to speak directly with my uncles Lieutenant and learned that my uncle has been arrested under suspicion of treason. Lin has taken greater control over the council and has issued an arrest warrant for our entire group. On top of that, it was noted that something was found at the bottom of the bay and a small group of armed men left the city two weeks ago headed east towards the People of the oak. Could this be another piece of the elvish artifact that when complete will grant the owner control over all orcs? We knew that we must leave right away to find out.
With a two week lead, we had a few weeks of forced march ahead of us. We bought what provisions we needed and started our hunt. Tiboh used his owl form for most of the journey to scout ahead. When we finally caught up to the men carrying a barnacle encrusted elongated box we were exhausted. Tiboh’s reconisance revealed that the guards were very nervice of their package and were cautious not to touch it. There were 4 armored men with swords, two with large daggers and one unarmed man.
We all agreed on an ambush location where we could have best tactical advantage. Tiboh flew in first and perched himself in a tree near their camp. He changed back to halfling form and readied an arrow. Da joined into kurin and they traveled under the earth to the location just under what we thought was the leader. I waited on the outskirts for the action to start.
Kurin reached his arm and upper body out of the earth and struck a deadly blow to the head of the sleeping, unarmed man and Tiboh made sure the job was complete with an arrow to the chest. Da removed her self from Kurin and slew the next sleeping man.
At this time the two men on guard started yelling and running in to engage the attackers. When I heard this I myself began to run in to join the fight. The battle raged for a couple minutes with Robilus joining in just in time to save Da from receiving a mortal wound.
I engaged one of the armed men on watch and found an opponent that was near my equal. We circled and slashed with our armor taking most of the blows, yet I was showing to be the superior swordsman. Kurin disengaged his own foe and flanked the man I was working on to help me defeat him and we then worked together to bring the next man to submission.
Da, Tiboh and Robilus finished off the remaining fighters to bring the conflict to an end.
After a brief search of the captive and dead, we moved our attention to the box from the bay. Heeding the warning we learned in reconnaissance, Kurin had one of the wounded men touch the box and some kind of magic caused him to be electrocuted. After further investigation we learned that there was only one charge to the box so kurin and I both cast Knock spells and opened it. What was revealed was a splenderoud elvish made sword. Definitely not the artifact piece that we were thinking might be there. Da claimed the sword as her own and I put the box in my bag of holding.