This report seems to consist out of multiple pieces of bark wrapped together.

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[draconic] In memoriam of Galdain Glimmerdust*[/draconic]

I am sorry to inconvenience you with these medium used for transcribing this mission, it was all that was made available to me. As you might guess from my expended vocabulary I have found a magical artefact greatly increasing my intelligence, I, however, was not able to take this artefact with me back to Soro. But I digress, let me start at the beginning of our mission.

Soro has recently made first contact with a species of intelligent lizardpeople in the south. In order to better diplomatic relationship we have sent out a delegation to talk our standings and negotiate trade agreements.
The delegation was headed by Bran, who some of you might know better as Egberts second in command. He let a group of ten others with the addition of 3 guild members for protection to other kingdom. Me, Amiri of the six bears tribe, Brock and Galdain were chosen by the guild to lead in this expedition.

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Travelling took us 2 weeks by foot. The southern regions of this land are more of a tropical nature, with increased humidity and temperature, the change in climate also facilities a change in fauna. The increased biomass per area has especially made it possible for bigger top predators to range in the area. We have encountered quite large stegosaurus that after taking it down, was mightily eaten by Brock all by himself. While I was able to save lord Bran from a bird of paradise the size of a Roc, a truly magnificent creature, if only I had the presence of mind at that moment as I do now I would have certainly taken it’s rare liver and beak back to Soro, but alas.

When we finally arrived at the lizardpeoples domain we were heartily greeted by their scouts and let to their city. Their domain is split among 4 tribes living in their area. In their capital 2 lizards from each tribe are

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send to join the council, a warlord and a holy leader. From this group of 8, 1 is chosen to lead the coulcil as an Eldar. Their civilization seems to be quite developed, even outstripping what the GloebGloebs have built, but not yet reaching the height of the gnoll empire. At the time interacting with the lizardpeople could not fascinate me as much as it might have, so weeks were spend together with Brock and Galdain only playing cards and trying to stay out of trouble.

During a negotiation session, in which we were standing guard something strange happened. All the lizardpeoples priest started speaking as one something that can only be described as a prophetic way:
“The rise of the Forsaken one
A child abandoned by the gods, Savras and Leira.
It is bathing in the mudmaw”

After some deliberation a price of 3000gp was offered to whomever was able to find more information on this forsaken one. Bran decided that it would

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increase our political currency if we were able to find this information, so he send us three out to find it.

The lizardpeople told us of a place called Mezro, their abandoned capitol city, where they suspected we might be able to find information. This ancient city was hit by an catastrophe ages ago, they reason and exact nature had already been forgotten, but what they did know was that anything from inside it, when brought outside of the city limits would crumble to dust. Furthermore it was sacrilege for any of their own people to enter the area.

We were brought to the outside of the city limits. It was located in a delta of one of the many great rivers flowing across these lands. The city was surrounded by water and shaped like a wheel with only 4 spokes. Each of the spokes being a waterway dividing the city up into 4 regions. In the middle was giant tower leaming over the

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city.
We were given a canoe to travel into the city. We decided that the middle tower would be our best first line of approach, if it didn’t contain our answers it would at least be a good look out post over the rest of the place.

While traveling across a water way we were distracted by the distress calls of hippopotamus (riverhorse) in the south eastern quadrant of the city. We went to investing, but while trying to get the poor creature out of the mud trap it was stuck in we were ambushed by a group of velociraptors. They got to me before I was even able to draw the guild borrowed axe and immediately went down. Luckily .. was able to heal me again quickly. They displayed an uncanny amount of intelligence, if we had been in a match of wits we might have been in pretty big trouble, however as it was a battle of claw and sword we soon had

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them running. After they left we freed the hippopotamus and travelled further. It was not more than an hour before a green light came from underneath out both, we barely had time to react before we were attacked by an undead Tyrannosaurs rex, oozing poison into the water, debilitating anyone who ingested it.
It threw both my companions into the water but I was able to hold my balance, jump onto the creature and channelled my rage to lay waste to the creature. With the help from the others from the water the battle didn’t last more than 20 seconds, however it left out mode of transportation destroyed.

We had no choice but to use the leftover pieces of the canoe to doggy paddle to the giant tower. It was the longest and most exhausting bath I have ever had. Arriving at the tower we couldn’t find a direct entrance at first, we had to climb up an, in plants covered, side tower to

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find an entrance. At around 100ft into the air we were finally able to enter the tower. It was a hallway covered on both sides with statues of ancient lizardmen. At the end of the hallway a obsidian coloured portal was placed. Without a flinch Brock went through. Following him each of us ended up in different rooms. It turned out that each time we went through the portal we would end up in a different room. The library sadly only had long since rotten books, but the bed chambers still had functioning beds that gave us nice night rest. Most interesting was a throne room. It was a simple room, with a big stone throne at a corner, in the middle of the room was map of the town, sunk into the floor. This was no ordinary map, when we closer inspected it we could see people walking in the streets of this miniature town. Later we learned that this town was a

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copy made from the ruins that we stood in right now. The town was placed in a pocket dimension when the great war between the giants and dragons was raging, the inhabitants had looked for a safe haven and found it in another dimension. At the time we did not understand what we were looking at so we left the room building again after a rest and decided to head into the south eastern section of the city. This part of the city seemed to be most.. mud covered, almost a swamp, and seen as we were looking for the “mudmaw” it seemed like a logical place to look.

After some travel in this quadrant we ran into some spear points directed directly at us. It seemed like a group of natives had surrounded us. The group of, surprisingly enough, recognizable humanoid races such as humans, dwarfs, elves Halfling and lizardfolk, spoke draconic and agreed to take us to their town (if we were guests

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or prisoners I still don’t know).

After incessant demanding on our parts we were eventually taken to their leader, an elder dwarf named Ebberon. He spoke an archaic form of common, he referred to us as refugee’s, by which he must have meant our ancestors who fled during the fights between the dragons and giants. He told us that this grouped worshipped the mudmaw as their god and the we had either two choices. That we would be sacrificed to their god, or that we would take down the flaming fist after which he would tell us more about the “forsaken one”.

It was an easy choice.

The flaming fist was a group of lizardpeople who lived nearby who hunted the mudmaw worshippers. We had been tasked with bringing back the head of their leader, miss lieutenant Broken Barrel.

We were given direction and headed out.
We discovered one of the paths they flaming fist used to scout the area and decided to lay in wait there. When they finally

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arrived we got the drop on them. I remember a red blur, bodies crumpling before me, while Brock was being attacked on all sides, not caring one bit, behind us the enemies were pelted with a magical barrage. When my rage ended there was nothing but bodies left of our enemies, so we continued onwards.

After getting around 2/3 of the way to our destination we heard distant screams, when we went to investigate we saw a group of flaming fist fighting… 2 undead tyrannosauruses. While debating if we should interfere, and if so on which side, a dead body drifted by. Brock couldn’t resist and immediately went to loot the body. This body did not want to be looted however. As soon as the body was touched it moved, and around us 7 more skeletons stood up from the swamp. The skeletons were clearly from the lizardman, standing a foot higher than my own impressive length these beasts started laying in on us.

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Well when I say us, I mean Galdain the creatures themselves seemed pretty mindless but whoever was controlling them clearly recognised .. as a cleric, a great threat to the undead. As soon as Galdain channelled the divine powers of his god half of the skeletons ran away. We were almost ready to celebrate when 8 wights rose up around us, again all going in for Galdain . He was brave and took more hits than I would ever have been able to withstand while myself and brock killed 2 of the creatures and Galdain set 3 of them running away again with his holy power. He was severyly hurt aleady when the necromancer finally showed itself. The beholder was just as dead as the creatures it was controlling, which did not stop the monster from shooting eye rays all around it. Brock was hit by a ray immediately turned tail and ran into the forest. Another ray went for Galdain who stood

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for a second, before turning to dust.

I was left alone, but the flames of my rage reached heights unknown even to me. I charged up some nearby structure straight for the beholder, it was able to hit me with one of its eye rays but the evaporation of path of muscle was barely enough for me to notice. The axe lent to me by Redemption slashed at the creature, who didn’t do anything but laugh maniacally. It tried to fly away, shooting me with another disintegration beam. This ray was not able to get a grip on me through me rage, and as soon as the beholder turned its back on me I saw my opening and split its skull.

And just in time as well, as soon as I turned I saw that the battle between the flaming fist and t-rex’s had ended, for the one “surviving” T-rex came charging straight at me. I drank a potion and was able to get

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in some quick blows before the creature bit me, took me into its mouth and made to make of with me while chewing the life out of me. It made the fatal error, that while chewing on me it was unable to defend itself from my axe. I freed myself by cutting of its head with one fell swoop.

As soon as I stood up I heard sounds of battle again, it seemed like Brock had found his courage again and was attacking the remaining Wight’s. I hurried back and together we dispatched the last of the undead.

Nothing was left of Galdain for us to  honour him by, but I will put up a stone for him when we are back in Soro.

Me and Brock quickly tried to find a place of shelter, which we found in the form of a half sunk house. Halfway during the night we noticed a cage standing in our shelter, upon further investigation a fairy dragon showed

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itself to us. It played some tricks on me, trying to make me belief it was my family heirloom, but after feeding it some sweets it was more than willing to help us get to the flaming fist headquarters to which it knew a secret entrance.

The fortress of the flaming fist was a wooden structure standing on pole above the water. They fairy dragon let us right beneath the chambers of the lt. Broken Barrel, to which we could climb up. We tried to climb into her rooms using the chains underneath, but she noticed us nonetheless immediately attacking Brock as soon as we reached her chambers. She called for help but our faerie friend had distracted the guards. Lt Broken Barrel soon saw that she stood no chance against us both so ran outside, where I had to cut down 2 more knights and a mage before we were finally able to get her head. In Lt broken barrels room we found

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a chest of gold, a tablet describing what was going on here.. and a headband of intellect.

It took a moment for me to catch my thoughts, being flooded in memories of my history, my tribe, my family..  took a moment.

We left soon afterwards and headed back towards the mudmaw worshippers. From the tablet we learned about the fate of this ancient city that they left for the pocket dimension. We also learned that the path to this dimension laid somewhere in this swamp, which could be accessed by taking a specific route. This path which makes dimensions bleed through each other might also what let this beholder come to life.

After we headed over the head of LT broken barrel to Ebberon told us that the forsaken one was in the pocket dimension that held the city.

This fulfilled our quest for finding the location of the forsokan one, so we headed back to the lizerdpeople. That is, after I took some

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time to write this account.

*rest continues in a far less neat handwriting*

When we were back to the lizard people they were very happy. We got gold from them, and Bran said that we helped lots. Then we went back to soro. It was boring. And it was said that Galdian was not with us anymore 🙁