The Revenant Cometh

With the dulcet forest hymns of Dala'gse's new pixie friends lulling them to sleep, the group bedded down for the night. Slothrop kept the first watch and Safad decided to keep him company, passing the time throwing pebbles at a tree. 

Falka was the first to notice something was wrong. The pixies' songs had stopped, and rather abruptly. Suddenly, Dala'gse was awoken by a strange weight on his chest. It was Duma the Pixie, flickering in and out of visibility, with a crumpled wing and one arm lopped off at the elbow. His face was battered and blood poured from his mouth as he sputtered out, "Run!"

The sleeping party awoke to a horrifying scene. The bodies of Slothrop and Safad lay unconscious on the ground, bleeding from large gashes across their backs. Standing over them was a massive cloaked figure, its greatsword dripping blood. It groaned something awful they could not quite understand, and began to turn toward them. As it did, they saw half of its body was burned badly, and as the light from the fire caught its face, they recognized Langson the Barbarian, of the Dawson's Creek Highwaymen. He was somehow raised from the dead, and his eyes burned with an infernal rage when he saw the party. Langson's burnt face contorted into a grotesque grin as it groaned out the words, "Beeaaaaaveerrrrrrr.....BEAVER!" 

Falka knew it for what it was: a Revenant, seeking vengeance on the party for its untimely death, sworn to never rest until they were slain. 

Langson the Revenant's eyes flared and the campfire went out. The last thing they saw before darkness was the awful creature raising its greatsword to attack Dala'gse. And then everyone's dark vision kicked in, save for the halflings who were left sightless in the night. 

Dala'gse felt two powerful blows from the sword slice into his toughened skin. His yelp of pain turned into a roar as he whispered the words of Silvanus, transformed into a bear, and pounced at the thing. Falka was up quick as well, and the group watched in grim fascination as she transformed into a wolf-human hybrid-- Zireael's daughter was a Lycanthrope! She set her fangs and growled, electrifying the blood pouring out of her ever-wounded arm before launching a flurry of claw attacks. Ironica, unable to see, fumbled around the undead creature, trying to find an opening with her dagger, to no avail. Nancy fled for the river. Rya lightning bolted the Revenant. 

The party noticed quickly that many of their attacks were blunted somehow, as though some dampening effect had been placed of Langson. And they watched after each of their attacks as the wounds they had inflicted partially closed on themselves. This was going to be a long fight. 

And it was. 

Dala'gse and Falka traded claws for swings of the thing's massive greatsword. Ironica kept fumbling for an opening. Rya thunder-stepped Langson before running after Nancy to check in on her friend. Safad and Slothrop's blood seeped into the springy dirt of the pine-needled forest floor. 

Twice, the Revenant forced Dala'gse from his druidic bear form back into a wounded island dwarf, and twice, Dala'gse rallied and held his ground for his companies. Falka's fury was unlike anything they had ever seen, but the Revenant had plans for her: it reached deep into his undead soul, trained his eyes on Falka, and summoned all the terror from the netherworld it could muster. Falka, no stranger to the darkness of the worlds beyond, remembered the fear it commanded, and was paralyzed by its terror.

Rya was running out of strength to summon the magic in her blood. Dala'gse could no longer connect to the feral bear within in him. Ironica was still blinded. Falka was terrified. 

And then Rya heard a sound, a crashing in the trees beyond, something Dala'gse had heard as a bear before. She sprinted over to the source of the noise and saw a wheezing, bloodied man. The Mad Priest Wensley was slumped against a tree, his torso littered with renting slashes from wolf and bear claw alike. Somehow, the Mad Priest had been shielding the Revenant from the party's attacks, but evidently he was absorbing their effects. Rya decided to put an end to that protection with a well placed dagger to the neck. His last words were, "You were there, you could have stopped us!" 

Dala'gse cast a Druidic cantrip on the fire to spring it back to life. With the fire back, Ironica could finally see, and with the Mad Priest's protection forever ended, she struck. Her sneak attack buried itself into the creature's battered flesh, leaving it sickeningly wobbly. The thing turned quickly on the little halfling and delivered two massive blows, knocked her out and on the precipice of death. 

Dala'gse yelled out and turned a thorn he had in his pocket into a whip. The creature was damaged, but it laughed out another "BEAAVEERR!" And raised its greatsword at the vulnerable Falka. 

Rya heard the terror in her companions' voices and dashed through the trees until she had line-of-sight with the creature. She raised her bow before setting it aside and reaching deep to push aside her spell fatigue. She connected to the Weave coursing within her blood, and empowered at lash of pure electrical energy, forcing it to reach the creature. A second before Falka would have been missing an arm, or worse, the lightning struck, blasting Langson the Revenant to the ground, dead. 

For now. 

The Revenant's soul rose into a spectral force out of its body. He promised he would find another body to haunt, and hunt them down until his oath of vengeance was fulfilled. He would get them back from how they brutally killed him. And with that, he faded into the night. 

"What'd I miss?" Safad asked companionably when they revived him. 

Nancy fled into the night. 

The group rested. 

The next day, they recovered and did their best to heal their wounds. But the lack of tents or any type of camping gear was getting unbearable. Safad and Rya were exhausted from sleeping wet in the drizzle. Dala'agse checked his traps and found three pouch rats before they set off for the Mootscarp.  

The travel was straightforward, and they passed Red Tusk burial site or a number of graves anyway, at the start of the High Moor. That night they camped and stayed at Hostel One - Nine. Dala'gse and Falka stalked deer and foxes. The next day, they set off deeper onto the Moor, and finally, as they crested one last hill, they saw it. 

The Mootscarp.