On their second journey into the Cloakwood, Aegon and the troupe find the bears more aggressive than before, forcing them to fight our way through to the Shadow Druid Grove. There, they met an unexpected ally. It turns out the Shadow Druids also want to rid the Cloakwood of the Iron Throne.

12 Eleasias 1368

To the north of the Shadow Druid’s henge we find a large tree with a doorway carved into it. Faldorn says it is a home to the Shadow Druids and leads us inside.

For all their devotion to untouched nature, the Shadow Druids seem perfectly content carving homes into the very trees they revere. There is a whole kitchen set up, and even a fireplace. The large chest here is locked, but Coran just takes that as a minor inconvenience.

Inside the chest, we find a Potion of Healing, an Antidote, and, most intriguingly, a Potion of Freedom. If there are more spiders lurking in this cursed forest, this may just save our lives.

In a cupboard we find a sling. Faldorn says she would rather use this than her dagger, so we give her some bullets and return her enchanted Throwing Dagger to the Bag of Holding.

We also find a cloak woven with the magic of the woods, its enchantment meant for someone skilled in stealth. But it seems that no one among us is the right wearer for this strange robe, even the Shadow Druid.

We climb up the stairs and interrupt a Shadow Druid practising his magic. He peers at us from under his hood and recognises Faldorn.

Amarande: I am Archdruid here, and I make the decisions. Andarthe merely extends my will with force. He is away, leading the rituals on the Island to cleanse this wood of the taint. Only he can release those I have ceded to him. Seniyad will learn his days are numbered, as are those of his feeble followers!

Druids taken to an island… and a taint that must be cleansed. Is this about the Iron Throne?

Faldorn steps up to talk to the Archdruid.

Faldorn: Hear me, Amarande! Talk to them, if only for a moment. I’ll lead them to destroy the mines. Once Jaheira has seen the wounds the Great Mother had suffered there, she will be more amenable to our cause.

Amarande: Foolish wolfling, clear your mind. Jaheira will not convert.

Faldorn: That is my call, and my decision.

Amarande: Little wolfling, go with them if it is your choice. It’s time for you to learn and important lesson: there are those who claim to serve nature, but only serve themselves. I trust that you’ll be able to see pretenders for yourself after this expedition.

So Faldorn wants to convert Jaheira. I wonder if she were here, whether she would hear Faldorn out or it would come to bloodshed?

We leave Amarande to his training and exit the tree. Outside, another bear charges us unprovoked, its roar splitting the stillness of the grove.

The bear charges, but before it can lift a claw, Eldoth and White’s arrows thud into its chest. It stumbles, collapsing in a lifeless heap at my feet.

Faldorn is not happy with the outcome.

Faldorn: I warned you!

Faldorn: Where are you going? The carcass is right here. Sit down and have your dinner!

Aegon: Alright. Hey, everyone, set up the camp! We are having a feast!

Faldorn: Grr! It was supposed to be a lesson, not an excuse for burning more trees…

But what can one expect from a townling? Grr!

With the creature slain, Faldorn’s frustration is evident. I half-expect her to demand a burial, but instead, she grumbles about wasted opportunities and the ignorance of ‘townlings.’ I press her for details, hoping to steer the conversation toward something useful. She reluctantly tells me that is a cave bear, that it only comes outside to hunt. There was a cave nearby where Jaheira…

I decide it’s worth checking out. Coran wants to hunt wyverns after all. I lead the rest back toward the cave were we last slayed a giant lizard. Along the way we are accosted by spear-wielding tasloi again.

They are surprisingly good at avoiding Bashrik’s Hammer, but our missiles go right through them. Half of them are killed when I am distracted and feel a sharp pain in my side. I look down to see the tip of a spear poking out.

Though wounded I manage to hold them off while the rest of the Troupe picks them off. When they are all dead I ask Corellon to Cure the hole in my body.

We step into the cave, where the air is thick with the scent of damp earth and something acrid, poison, perhaps?

Two massive wyverns stand before us, wings unfurling like battle standards. Their eyes gleam, pupils narrowing as they prepare to strike. We prepare ourselves for a fight, barely noticing the man stood before them. He leans on his pole-axe as his voice echoes through the cave.

Peter of the North: Move along, friends, nothing to see here. Just a humble woodsman doing a little spelunking.

Coran: A fellow huntsman of wyverns, I presume?

Peter of the North: A huntsman, yes. But I have no interest in these… wyverns. I am here for… er… caves.

Coran: Really? And I could have sworn that this faint acidic smell on your cloak is the same that their poison leaves…

So you are not going to kill the pair? I am not surprised. *Nobody* around here is buying wyvern trophies… I know that for a fact!

Er… how long are you going to stay in this cave, anyway?

Peter of the North: For some time. My… er… spelunking takes time…

Faldorn: No, you aren’t! You are a beast-torturer! The wrath of the Shadow Druids have found you!

Peter of the North: I see that you have no use for beating around the bush. Well, so be it. I cast aside my master woodsman facade. You have interrupted my little wyvern-training session and likely set my schedule back by days. I have worked long and hard to gain their trust, but if they are to be ready for duty at the mine, I shall have to placate these beasts with meat! Fight, for you shall die if you lose!

The mine. He knows about it. He must be working for the Iron Throne!

I was about to feed them that stupid delivery boy. If it weren’t for him, you’d be facing one more wyvern. But he can wait. This will be a feast for them!

I finish my spell and webs start to stretch out of the ground around the wyverns. Pain lances through my shoulder as the trainer’s pole axe finds its mark, driving me back.

Faldorn asks Nature to raise a wolf from the dead, while White summons the help of a snake. Hopefully they can distract the wyverns long enough for us to take out their master.

Helga asks Heala to Bless us, then starts work on a prayer to Doom the wyvern-trainer. Eldoth helps me deal with my injury by using the Weave.

With a flick of its tail, a wyvern impales White’s snake, sending its lifeless body skidding across the cave floor. The second wyvern wheels around, locking onto Faldorn’s summoned wolf. The trainer, despite the doom Helga placed upon him, fights with renewed desperation, shielding the beasts with his pole axe.

While the others send their missiles into the trainer, I use my Wand of Fire to send a column of fire through the wyverns. They start to burn and the cave fills with the smell of charred lizard flesh. I ready some Magic Missiles to finish them off while Helga moves close enough to heal me.

The dread wolf crumbles to dust, and now, all three foes set their sights on us. Both of the wyverns lash out at me with barbs and fangs while my own webs hold me in place, making it difficult to concentrate on the Weave.

Eldoth manages to get an arrow through the skull of the wyvern-trainer and his blood pools on the cave floor.

Fangs sink into my arm, pain jolting through me. The Weave slips from my grasp. I barely manage to fumble for a Potion of Healing before the next strike comes.

Coran proves his prowess as a wyvern hunter when he looses an arrow straight through one of the wyverns.

As if looking to prove himself, White takes careful aim and the other wyvern dies the same way as its companions.

While I wait for the Weave to release me from these webs, the others search the corpse of the trainer. He is armed with long bow, a long sword, and some kind of enchanted leather armour.

He also has a quiver with several arrows, including some enchanted arrows and some Arrows of Ice. There is also a Potion of Extra Healing still intact on his belt.

There is a second bow strapped to his back, one that emits a faint hum when the string is moved. This is the Vibradeath, crafted by elves to grant the bearer great strength. Since White already has an enchanted longbow, Coran replaces his bow with this weapon.

The pole axe, still slick with my own blood, bears the name of General Kilther, an ancient weapon of great power. None of us, however, have the skill to wield it properly

We almost miss the bag hanging on his belt. At first glance it seemed like a moneypouch, but Eldoth recognises it as a magical item that can summon wild animals to help us do battle.

We try to search the rest of the cave, but the Weave has other ideas and traps more of us with the webs I conjured. The Weave can be fickle sometimes. While we wait for the webs to go back to the Weave, Coran takes the opportunity to ask me about my past.

Coran: So, Aegon, is what I hear true? You got locked out of Candlekeep?

Aegon: Unfortunately, I was. With my foster father dead, they won’t let me back in.

Coran: Ha-ha! But you must be clumsy, Aegon. Nobody ever locked me out.

Aegon: Oh, really? So, you can pick any lock?

Coran: Uhm, there was that one time when I had a rendezvous with a noble dame whose name I can’t mention for obvious reasons.

Aegon: Of course.

Coran: So, I decided to rekindle my acquaintance with a sophisticated society beauty after a few short years of absence. The lady was agreeable, and I didn’t have a chance to see her close in a well lit room until I made it up her balcony.

But as she slipped to the window to open it for me, the moonlight shone straight onto her face…

Oh humans, humans…

Aegon: You are not the type to go after inner beauty, are you?

Coran: I love inner beauty. It complements the outer one so perfectly. But this was different, believe me.

A hag in the moonlight… All the old stories about hags of the magical kind leapt to my mind, how they breed with the likely lads of my disposition and then devour them.

So you must see why my romantic mood quickly diminished, and why I spent a good hour outside that window pretending that I could not get in.

Aegon: Actually, it was very decent of you to spare the old woman’s feelings.

Coran: Well, yes… that, and I needed time to recover before hitting the roofs. One won’t go far on shaky feet.

I smirk. For all his lockpicking prowess, it seems Coran was once trapped by something far worse: his own taste in women

I realise I can shake my feet once again. We make our way deeper into the cave and we find what must be the delivery boy who had been marked for wyvern food.

Teodor: P… please, spare my life! You came to rescue me… yes?

Aegon: I entered this cave by coincidence. I mean you no harm, though.

Teodor: Then I will thank the gods for your arrival!

My name is Teodor, and I run a delivery service. This… this man obviously ordered a wyvern egg, by his own words of a new, bigger breed of some sort. I was still in my room in the Friendly Arm Inn after the delivery, preparing to leave, when he came and kidnapped me into this rotten hole, accusing me of having given him the wrong egg!

I don’t know how I mixed up deliveries. I cannot say where his wyvern egg went, and he wouldn’t tell me what he got instead. I’ve lost all my papers… and he destroyed all of my remaining deliveries, too.

Aegon: You delivered it to a young boy instead of a grass snake. We had to kill it to save him.

Teodor: Dear gods! If this is true, then I am in your debt… even more than I already am.

It doesn’t matter any more, I will quit. I was a delivery man for long enough now, travelling from the North to the South and even further, having all these eggs and special items to be taken care of. Some need it hot, some have to be cooled, and almost all have to be moved carefully – try to do that on a dusty, bumpy road, through wind and rain!

I have only this one thing left. It seems to be a preserved egg of some sort… I was to bring it to some mage, but I lost the name altogether with my papers… I… I don’t want to have this any more! These deliveries only brought me bad luck! Take it, maybe it is helpful to you.

Aegon: Oh, why not. Give it to me.

Teodor: It is preserved in some way. It is a usable thing, not a living egg. At least I think so! You can still give it back, if you want. Just not to me!

I… I cannot believe you came in the moment you came. He was threatening to feed me to his wyverns the last days, but I really think he would have done it today. I thank you! There is nothing I can give you, only this magical egg-like stone. Just try not to make it too hot, I think that was the only advice coming with that.

Coran: A new kind of wyvern? What a pity we didn’t get a chance to fight it when it was bigger!

I cannot complain about the amount of wyverns we already killed, Aegon.

Faldorn: Again I can only shake my head in disbelief about the gullibility of men. To think he could control those wyverns! If we hadn’t killed them, they would have turned against him someday.

Eldoth: Let us make this thing to gold, and all is good. That mage can still buy it back, if he wants it that badly.

Teodor: I cannot wait to get out of her. In fact, I am gone now. Thank you for your help!

He waves as he runs out of the cave. I call out to him to walk slowly, watch his step, but he is gone. He seems to have gotten out safely.

The “egg” glistens like a gem, yet when I hold it, something stirs inside—shifting, alive yet lifeless. A preserved relic, or something more? When Eldoth places it above his head it seems to float there, slowly spinning around as if in orbit.

There is a large wooden chest here, covered in dust. It looks like no one has opened in a long time. We force the lid off of it and it crashes to the ground.

Inside we find some arrows and a mithral ring here, valuable though unenchanted.

There is also halberd inside, enchanted so it can stun opponents with its powerful strikes.

There is also an enchanted flail that will set fire to anything it hits.

And another suit of enchanted leather armour that none of us can identify.

By the time we leave the cave, Teodor is long gone. It is time to leave Shadow Druid territory. I ask Faldorn to point us toward the mine. She takes the lead and we move deeper into the forest than we have been before.

We press onward – toward Tazok, toward the Iron Throne, and toward the one who took my father from me.