Frei's Memories: Day 15

We poked around Nashik, looking for any information that might give us get the upper hand in our fight against Helmut. We got extremely luck and caught wind of some rumors that a large hunting part had recently headed into a large forest. We assumed they had to be Helmut's men out looking for the Nightmare Beast so we set out after them at the first opportunity.

We tracked the hunters to a large coral forest northwest of Nashik. It seemed like a good place to hide; volcanic vents covered about half of the old forest in a smoky veil. It didn't take us long to find their camp, though. There were only a few guards, some of them we recognized from our fight with Helmut's apprentice. They should have found other work while they had the chance---we fed them to a huge, predatory starfish after we dispensed with them. They didn't go quietly, though and attracted some of their friends. The shadar-kai reinforcements were half-bemused to see the starfish munching on their comrades, but their humor didn't last long. Their force was much stronger, but not enough to stand against us. After they were dead, we looted the camp and discovered a few bricks of very nice tobacco.

We engaged another group of hunters about a mile from the campsite. The shadar-kai were trying to separate the Nightmare Beast from its child. We fought the hunters in a bloody and sometimes confusing melee amongst dense corals and clouds of sulfurous smoke. The Nightmare Beast and child seized the opportunity and ran far, far away. In the end, we took only three prisoners from the shadar-kai and killed the other dozen or so.

Not long after the battle, our psychic knight made mental contact with the Nightmare Beast. The creature knew where Helmut laid his head at night and gratefully shared the location with us. Helmut wasn't a very social shadar-kai---he made his lonely home in an isolated tower in the rugged mountains far north of Nashik. In exchange for his life, one of our prisoners even divulged the location of a secret entrance to the tower. That damn wizard didn't have much longer to live.

Luck was with us and we found a coral archway to the obsidian prison in the northern part of the forest. We decided to pay Katja a visit and prepare for our assault on Helmut's tower. To help us fight the wizard, the obsidian dragon gave us a box of feathers. She said that they could reach into Astral space and trap anyone using teleportation for a few minutes. Katja was pleased with our gift of tobacco and broke out the fanciest (and largest) hookah I've ever seen.