As my final watch report, I have to say that the Moon Light Monastery's facilities continue to surprise me with their periodic lapses in basic common sense. We eventually found the underground river into which the mountain-top lake apparently feeds and which apparently moves on to the water supplies all across the region. It was not that far underground, perhaps a day's exploration from the worked portions of the monastery's basement. If they had merely taken the effort some centuries back to establish some basic security, they might have been able to prevent the events of the past few weeks.
For that matter, there are some definite matters here that have been rather overlooked. Once the infestation of horrific blight-beasts had been dealt with, this cavern and the waterfall within it proved to be quite a scenic sight and even after most of the torches had been conscripted as makeshift ammunition for my catapult spell there was a dim glow of light which I suspect must come from the divine blessing upon these waters. This seems to be the sort of site one creates a temple around and the sort of temple where kings are crowned and important weddings are held. Granted, as it currently stands, the monastery is somewhat isolated from other people, but it is something to be considered for the future, I suppose.
Regardless, as to the matter of the blight creatures, we found a hideous being of outrageous bulk. It leaked a bizarre substance that seemed to be source of the sludge we found in the wells and what was afflicting the Silver Oak. The creature seemed incapable of moving from its spot and allowed us the opportunity for Miss Crest to cast a ritual granting us the ability to walk on water. Though it attacked soon after the ritual was complete and the magic was obvious.
Well, I say attacked, but in reality it sort of screeched and then spawned a small horde of tiny grub like monstrosities which the tiefling almost immediately reduced to a charred cinder. From there we started moving, Elanil and Dame TJ traveled up ahead of the corrupted waters to come at the beast from a clean direction and Panry traveled with them. Miss Freehand and Miss Crest also started to work around that way.
At one point Miss Crest simply took off into the air, flying about as she had when Panry used the lute on her. I'm not entirely sure what sparked that result, though I thought I had seen a brief flicker of magic bounce off the tiefling when he cast his fireball. For my effort, I launched one of the torches about the cavern into the monstrosity's face and cast another spell which resulted in my passing through the border ethereal to watch much of the fight occurring as a sort of grey haze around me, slight imprints upon the ethereal plane.
This spell left me mostly protected as the battle commenced as I would step out of the ethereal plane to make my appearance and cast my spells before stepping back into the ethereal again. The only downside was that I could precisely control whether or not I'd step into the ethereal. As such I was not able to intercept any attacks on my fellows. In this regard, it is a mildly selfish spell, but it does leave me much more open to use my powers to rain harm upon the enemy and, in this way, I can proactively protect my fellows or at least hasten the end of the battle.
As to the dwarf, Khodrin had his attention taken up with the appearance of several of those stealthy shriek creatures coming up behind us. He managed to catch sight of them early this time and hold most of their attention, even doing serious damage to the beasts with Nikola on hand to help keep him on his feet. The tiefling and I, meanwhile, mostly focused on the spawn-beast thinking that it would be best to end the disgusting larval creature's life as swiftly as possible.
Dame TJ and Dame Elanil reached the island only a little after Miss Freehand did, and soon after the three of them found themselves harried by a small wave of tentacles coming off of the gigantic beast. The tiefling tried to help by summoning a massive web to restrain the beast and its grubs while I continued to slam torches into it. Then that shrieking came to my ears and the horrific, irrational fear constrained me, making my spells fly wild as I tried to end the shrieks, turning my attention away from the brood-mother in my panic.
After the knight, the paladin, Miss Freehand's daggers, Miss Crest's moon beam, the various torches and blasts of fire rained upon the creature by myself and the tiefling, it was Panry who finally laid the telling blow with, as befits a bard, a word of derision back by some secret bardic trick to tear at the targeted mind. In response to the insult, the great beast had some sort of seizure and collapsed to death.
This left the matter of clearing up the surrounding shrieking horrors and their arm blades. One such beast nearly ended the tiefling, though soon thereafter, he began to float up into the air like some sort of balloon. Similarly, the monster could not manage to lay hands on myself and instead opted for trying to assault Panry as Crest had already flown out of range.
I must say, the tiefling was in significantly fine form for this fight. His spells were cast swiftly and surely and he seemed to have more spells on hand than you'd expect. Hellenae has just proposed that the tiefling may be some sort of wild mage and that a lot of the bizarre occurrences that happened around them could be put to a fluctuation of unstable magic. If that is the case, it is well that we were so lucky. I can only thing of what sort of occurrence might have happened had these unstable magical occurrences been less beneficial to our aims.
In the end, we managed to clear out the fight and heal our injuries. The divinely blessed waters were already pushing clean the corruption the beast had been spewing. I hope that the monastery, and especially this point in the river, would be better protected in the future. Indeed, it may be that if we have such enemies deep under the ground that one may have to begin exploration of the older caverns to make certain that the rest of the river would remain clear of such infestations in the future. That is a rather vast undertaking, I am aware, let us just hope we manage to accomplish something of that nature before a thing like this happens again.
This shall be my final report to the City Watch as it happens, as Hellenae and myself are taking the opportunity afforded by Lord Anders Rayvn's land grant. We have taken a deed for a plot of land to the north with a beautiful shoreline and plentiful trees. It seems a bit rustic compared to our previous dwellings, but I think we might find it easy to build a home in this place, with a lab for Hellenae and a place for myself to study my draconic nature.
Hellenae was a little bit miffed with my decision not to inform her of the specifics of my task, especially given the task itself turned out to be largely more complicated than originally it seemed. Whereas before we were told that we were simply baring a message, the basis of the reward required us to secure the Silver Oak Order's cooperation and that led to our pressing on to solve the problem itself. She was a bit curt upon receiving me back home, but did seem mostly relieved. I think securing the deed and the samples of the Selene-blessed water might have helped alleviate some of her anger.
In any case, we are now set to make our life for ourselves, My comrades have other plots nearby and I have not yet looked to see who our immediate neighbor is. They're maybe some two days to the west and we've been busy with prepping and building our new home. Though, given neither of us is an architect, we've considered looking for help in building that home. At least to start.
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