Mission: Wish Upon a Star

The grouped headed west to investigate what seemed to be something falling from the sky. On the way, they met and befriended an ogre named Umpsh, who was weeping due to having lost his friend "Fuzzy", having lost his chains, and not knowing where he is. Umpsh accompanied the group for the rest of the outing. Arriving at the impact site, the party found a large, empty crater and were quickly set upon by orcs. Defeating them, the group followed their tracks to their cavern domicile, they defeated another group of orcs before coming upon a chamber containing a mutated orc and wolf, as well as an unconscious man, bleeding into a bowl. Defeating the mutated pair, they bandaged the man's wounds and waited for him to come to consciousness. They did not share a language, but managed to trade names, and deduce that it probably was he who fell from the sky. The made their way back to Farhaven, two new friends in tow.

Wish Upon a Star (by Darut)
Experiences regarding the unknown object after planetfall

Day 45 in Farhaven

Something fell out of the sky! Maybe we are saved! If Karm managed to track me down, it could be a lifeboat, or at least a beacon! The others are interested too, some of them will come along to see it.

Day 46 in Farhaven

Okay, we have our team, a robot named Darwin, the dwarf with the saw in his head, Loggas, an elf, Korzana, and Rheinhardt. We know the way there approximately, I can’t wait to find it!

So, ogres. Big, strong, dumb brutes. And one is crying on next to the road. He is not a bad egg, seems to have arrived like the rest of us. Calms himself Umpsh, and he misses his bear friend, Fuzzy, probably that one stayed behind. He seemed lonely, so we invited him to come along, too. Seems to like the company, also, eats a lot.

'Warning! If you find a brown bear, it could be Fuzzy, please make an effort to not kill it!'

Rheinhardt has probably been living in some isolated corner of the world, he barely knows anything about the universe. But he is enthusiastic, and he managed to actually cast magic, in such a short time, smart kid. Got himself one of those flying cats, and some faire thingy. Tomorrow, we will probably reach the impact point, finally.

Day 47 in Farhaven

Oh, to Nessus, it’s gone! The crater is empty, somebody took whatever it was! There are some tracks leading away, humanoids, and canines. We have to find it! Mayb…

Orcs. Something we haven’t had so far around. Goddamn orcs. nearly feral, aggressive, axe-swinging fools, who would rather just charge at anything for whatever dumb reason.

No surprise they end up in prison among civilized people. Anyway, these are mostly dead, along with their wolves, but we captured one alive, maybe he can tell us where they took the thing.

He is not telling us anything useful, would rather die than help us at all. Damn it, we are letting this Gruck go, maybe he can lead us back to his friends. But I’m not going to make this easy for him, I’m taking one of his boots, try walking like that!

Following the tracks, we found a narrow cave, with the rest of the orcs inside. We managed to get the drop on them, and chopped them up. We also found something musch more messed up further inside.

An orc, but bigger, stronger, with horns and stuff, along with a two headed wolf beast. We outnumbered them, but still, they were dangerous. I got in there a bit late, but I cut the wolf nearly in two with two lucky strikes, and we surrounded the orc, fighting it together. He took quite a beating, but I managed to behead it, as it was attacking Rheinhardt.

It seems to have mutated by drinking the blood of some elf-like man, who was tied up there. This guy speaks some foreign language, but we managed to learn his name, Seraphael. With what little communication we had, he “told” us that he is the one who fell from the sky. By the Depths, I had too much hope. How in the hells would anyone find me here? I don’t even know if any of them are alive, or at least captured…

Anyway, aside from that, both this Seraphael, and Umpsh are coming over to Farhaven, they both need at least company, and probably help in this place. Maybe someone in the town can understand what he is saying, that would help.

Wish Upon a Star (by Rheinhart)
Lionhearted Loggas, Confident Korzana, Daring Darut, Dauntless Darwin, and I met up and introduced ourselves to one another. A falling star had been seen in the sky and it was witnessed to have crash landed in the woods nearby. Crash landed? I’d only heard about such things in fairy tales and tavern songs, but Darut was especially keen on investigating having been a sailor among the stars before arriving here in the Land of the Lost. Maybe some of his brethren came looking for him? Niko, my tressym familiar whom I only learned how to summon a few nights before met everyone and got used to their smells so she could tell friend from foe. She and Darut seemed to hit it off pretty well, too. She aided him a lot in combat, even so far as to learn “morning sunshine!” in Orcish to taunt his foes.

Along the way into the forest, we met and befriended a really large man-child (an ogre, I’m told) named Umpsh that was sobbing over losing his friend “Fuzzy” the bear. He got transported here just like the rest of us and he didn’t know what to do. He used to be a slave of some kind as he was fearful of people not liking him or chaining him up. I wonder if Burl the werebear would mind if Umpsh adopted one of the bear cubs we orphaned a while ago? Umpsh joined our group and we proceeded to head to the crash site, Darut leading the way with an eagerness I’d never seen in the man before now.

Darut led us to the impact site where we found a 40 ft wide crater in the earth! Darut mumbled something about it being strange the surrounding area was not set ablaze nor destroyed by an explosion. I was amazed at how large the crater was from something as tiny as a heavenly star. Darut and Loggas started climbing down into the crater to investigate the “point of impact” at the center while I wandered around the edge, not really knowing what to look for. I mean, really, it’s a tiny flickering light up in the night sky. What would even cause an impact on the ground like this? Ancient legends claim rocks fell from the sky and some contained magical metal ore worthy of a knight’s weapon or armor. Fallen angels, too. As they regularly fought with demons trying to conquer heaven. Darut says ships that fly up in the sky and in the heavens could also come crashing down. I believe this was either his biggest fear or his wildest hope.

We really didn’t get much time to ponder the weight of what we found as shortly after the blood trail was discovered leading southwest away from the crater along with wolf and humanoid tracks, we were attacked by a small band of orcs and their pet wolves! Darut and I engaged the orcs as best we could while the others battled from afar and dealt with wolves that got past us. Darwin kept opening and closing his hand in the air to little effect. Loggas wielded a wicked looking bone sword inlay with sharp stones. He might have to repair it fairly often, but it’s quite intimidating to watch him attack with it. Umpsh managed to uproot a small tree and flatten a wolf with it. Korzana has quite the deadly aim with her bow and thrown daggers, as impressive as any feat of professional skill displayed back in my homeland.

We captured one of the orcs alive and attempted to interrogate him about where the rest of his clan were likely hiding. The savage was intelligent and cunning, deflecting all our attempts to gather information from him. Niko, however, learned a new phrase from Darut during this time and kept using the “morning sunshine!” orcish phrase as part of her distractions used to help Darut in combat. She helped him land a few blows before one of the monstrosities bit her in half. I hope she doesn’t feel too much pain reverting back to the Feywild where she’s from. If she does, she didn’t complain about it to me when she heeded my next summons.

After attempting to let the captured orc free and have him lead us back to his clan, that turned out to be a wild goose chase. We instead hoped to follow the blood trail hoping it would shed some light on what was likely taken by the orcs before we arrived. The trail led to a crack-entranced cave. Too big for Umpsh to fit, so we convinced him to sit outside and guard my horse (“no eat horse!”) as well as prevent any orc from coming up behind us. We made our way in and fought several more orcs with much more effectiveness this time around. I guess our little party started to get the hang of working with one another.

Around another bend in the small cave was a curtain, behind the curtain was a caged unconscious person still bleeding into a bowl along with a mutated wolf with two heads (a cousin to Cerberus it seemed)  and a monstrously grotesque mutated orc. We fought hard and thanks to everyone’s teamwork, we managed to fell those foul beasts and rescue the unconscious man. The man is quite handsome, though a bit androgenous and we could not understand his beautiful, sing-song-like language. We checked for wings, but could not find any trace of wing, if he ever had them. Korzana successfully managed to mime our intentions with him and we all shared our names at least. We could only surmise the blood the orcs were gathering is what mutated both the wolf and the orc into those monsters. After a bit of rest and a demonstration of friendship by Searphael when he magically healed my wounds, we all headed back to Farhaven with both Umpsh, the childish giant hoping to meet more people that like him, and Seraphael, the man who fell from heaven and lived to speak about it. If only we could find someone who understands Seraphael, or perhaps given enough time, he’ll learn to speak in one of the tongues we already know.