Cellar Door to a New Fear

Once we were over the shock of young Giva turning into a half person half wolf beast and trying to kill us we re-began our search of the area with extra haste.  Who knew what was living around here This is not a place for children what with werewolves living here. Soon enough Oakey spotted what looked like a cellar door that remained in relative good shape, something worth checking out while we were here as the tracks in this vicinity had gone cold.  Oakey managed to nimbly unlock the door that only troubled us as to why it would be locked in the first place since the rest of the orphanage had been abandoned so long ago.  Upon opening the cellar door we were struck with the stench of rotting flesh.  After hearing no movement we pressed on to investigate, hoping that the children were not down there.

Jäger volunteered to go down first and investigate and was met by a scene that did not belong in or near an orphanage.  Chains complete with manacles were fixed to the walls with what looked like blood, now dried, had been sprayed indiscriminately  across the floor and walls.  On the floor was a dead body, killed a while ago and left to rot.  It was in this corpse that Jäger's fear that was soon to manifest was residing.  As he stepped into the room a giant spider and it's swarm of children burst from the corpse and attacked Jäger.  He only barely managed to escape and survive and since then whenever Jäger is in the presence of anything that could be considered a swarm, his skin visibly shudders

Once Jäger regained his composure we continued our search, this was still the only lead we had concerning the children that were missing and we were all starting to dread the worst.  But thanks to Jäger's keen eye and tenacious spirit he was able to find new tracks a little further out but it came with bad news too.  Not only did he find what looked like the children's tracks but what looked like kobold tracks with them.  It seemed as though the children had been kidnapped.  More bad news,  the tracks headed back to Droskar's Crucible.

Ilara's Half Way House.

I met Oakey downstairs, I believe he had finished a few drinks while I was gone and could not see Jäger as he was still outside, hiding in the shadows, ready to jump into our defence if any danger was to approach.  I quickly ushered Oakey away from his table and out of the building as I could no longer bare to be in that establishment any longer.  It was getting late so setting off tonight would only cause us to hugely increase the chances of us getting lost so we reluctantly agreed to set off first thing in the morning.

Before I set off to sleep I went to find Loral to let her know the situation.  She smiled at me when I showed my concern for the children and informed me with a heavy heart that she wished she could join us but the caravan needed to be prepared. She felt she was needed to oversee the preparations as the caravan was what she has been hired to protect and deliver.  Hopefully this errand will not take too much time and we will be back to the caravan in no time.

So Oakey, Jäger and I head off with haste to where we were told we would find Ilara's old orphanage and we were not disappointed with how easily we found it.  Mostly due to Jäger and his tracking skills.  If I did not know better and had only just met him on the road that day, I would have sworn he was half canine with the way he was able to follow the tracks of children that my own eyes could hardly spot even after he showed them to me.

The journey was mostly through light woods and once we had broken the tree line, the orphanage was easily spotted.  Abandoned a long time ago and barely a husk of a building is left from the fire that finally ended the place many years ago.  As we approached we were met by a young girl.  She did not match the description of any of the missing children but that did not calm my nerves and raised the question of who she was and why she was here.  I approached the young girl and she seemed to be completely calm and unafraid, excited even to see us.  The name she gave was Giva and she claimed she knew where the children were.  We started to follow her but something felt wrong about his young girl so I used the gift that Sir Ganther has given me and searched her for traces of evil.  She was indeed evil, it emanated from her strongly, as if she was not even human.  I stepped back from her and drew out my great sword and signalled my friends to stop.

I confronted her about her alignment once she had noticed we had stopped and all three of us had our weapons in our hand.  In response she gave us a toothy grin and transformed into a large beast.  Half human and half wolf.  I have heard of werewolves before but never before had I ever been in the presence of one and hopefully never again.  With no further warning and as quick as a flash, she attacked us with heinous fury.  The werewolf was strong and quick, hard to battle but as a team of three we managed to fell the beast with only moderate wounds on our part.