Session Report #1 11/5/2023
In the session today the PCs in their hunt for the Druid Maebh continued south out of Caernyff and came across the village of Wryddymbre a village they could not speak to anyone in on a day they traveled about and almost stumbled into the lair of Ylmo the Last Bear. In a bit of desperation (and an excellent reaction roll after the players pantomimed paying for a room) the villages headman signed to them a desire for them to find several children missing from the village.
The party agreed with one character boasting "I will save these children from the jaws of destruction, especially keeping them from being eaten." and the group set out. First they went Northwest and found a cliff with many fat gulls. Catching and cutting one open they found a person's ear which left them concerned it may have been the fate of the children but they climbed down a nearby cliff the gulls where congregating around and found a body at the bottom. Swimming out they fished 2 bodies out of the water and saw there was several that where bobbing up and down in the waves, constantly being pulled up and down with the passing of the tides.
Seeing this was not the fate of the children they returned to the village for the night before going SW out of the village the next morning. In heavy fog they stumbled across a ruined building a small doll resting on the ground nearby the smell of bird dung hanging heavily in the area. Following the smell of bird feces they found a hole in the ground and followed it down a thegn holding a torch, weapons drawn and ready for a danger within. As they came in a room where a statue of a child perfectly preserved stood they encountered the monster that petrified the child. A bird naked of feathers, armor of iron scales hanging from its body and ineffectual wings like that of a bat hanging from its side.
A fight breaks out with the bird charging up the stairs clawing the PC Jimbo with its claws as it goes. He barely makes a save with a +2 bonus from a small statue of St. Anthony that the mother of the missing child gave him. The Thegn flees up the stairs carrying the light with him, the monster pursuing up silouetted by the sky above Jimbo then takes his net and wraps it around the birds legs toppling it. With the bird trapped for a round the group falls on it with the Great Axe of Druisten removing the head off the bird following a boast he would slay the creature. The blood drains from the birds neck as its legs ineffectually kick. The blood dripping from the stairs freezes into stalactites of stone as it falls.
The players return to the village with grim news but in thanks for their service they are shown the way to Conar a fellow druid who also is searching for Maebh who agrees to join the party. He knows the only way to turn stone to flesh is with the tears of a petrified god or demon. Jimbo fortunately remembers encountering one such being long in the past somewhere down the coast and they journey night and day and gather the tears from a hellish petrified toad and rest in the city of Caernfon nearby.