Tumbleweeds Are Best Left To Themselves

Vidar had some other business to attend to, so he let us handle Halsmill on our own. Before we got there, we had a bit of a scuffle with some roly polies, but giant ones. Probably ‘bout yay big? Size of my torso, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, stoneback isopods, whatever. I’m callin’ ‘em roly polies.

They sniffed out our rations and was tryin’ to poke around for a bite to eat. They snook in while we was sleepin’, so only Sledge saw ‘em. He tried to herd ‘em away from our wagon, but it wasn’t no use ‘cos they’d already climbed up on him. They weighed him down so he couldn’t move, but luckily he’d made enough noise by that point we were all up and payin’ attention. Big Clyde had a nice roly poly breakfast, and so did some eagle that swooped on by. Vebradu made some big wind gusts that knocked some off Sledge, and I took care of the rest with my fists.

Vebradu’d read about them a bit before and said it was weird they was out in the plains and not in some wet cave or forest someplace. They mostly feed on little bugs n’ stuff like that, so they musta been desperate to go rootin’ through our jerky n’ tack.

Sketch of the party fighting the large isopods.

Once we got to Halsmill, we saw a bunch of adventurers and such, even a few knights. Some fellas working for someone called Raziel with burning tower sigils and such on their armor. Larry, Vebradu, and I went to see the witch, Agatha. Vebradu had a buncha questions about magic mostly. That and they talked about all the weird adventurers and outta place animals and stuff. She said she thought a big sand worm had come south from the Fissure Fields and had driven a bunch of the local critters outta their homes. The adventurers were there to deal with either the worm, or all the critters that got too close to Halsmill. She wanted us to give some nearby goblins a heads up about it and said she’d make it worth our while.

Once Vebradu was happy, he and Larry headed out to give Agatha and me some privacy. I talked to her about our stuff. She didn’t have a whole lotta answers for me really. Well, she mentioned basilisk stomachs might be an ingredient a master alchemist could use. That and she told me to go find some loxodon monks to meditate. I pretty much just left after that. Joined back up with the boys at the bar while we waited for Vidar to meet back up with us before we headed out to the desert.