Ruhi, the Angler Summoner's Journal: Total Eclipse
Leading up until game day, I was planning my penguin wizard as an elementalist. That was until a friend helped me make a new idea. An angler summoner who conjures the twisted, foul beings of the murky depths.
Last night we finished our first scenario in the Thaw of the Lich Lord campaign. Here's an excerpt from my wizard, Ruhi the Pengulion Summoner.
The signs began before dawn.
The air carried a peculiar stillness. Birds refused the sky. Even the wind seemed hesitant to disturb the ice. The heavens themselves whispered of change. I could not decipher their message, but I knew with absolute certainty that something within Felstad had begun to stir.
Barely an hour beyond the settlement, our path crossed three rival expeditions.
The first marched beneath a crude banner stitched from scavenged cloth. A swarm of ratfolk surrounded a sharp-eyed Enchanter whose smile never quite reached his eyes. Every order he gave carried the confidence of someone already counting treasures not yet found.
The second surprised me. Little folk. Their own Enchanter carried himself more like a master dwarven craftsman than a wizard, constantly directing companions to reinforce sleds and inspect equipment while advancing.
The final company appeared almost peaceful by comparison. Humans. Weathered and practical. At their head stood a Thaumaturge whose expression never shifted, even as every other warband silently measured one another's strength. There was something profoundly calm about her. A dangerous sort of calm.
Conflict had become inevitable the moment our paths converged.
Reason abandoned me. Or perhaps curiosity simply outweighed caution once again. I ordered the warband to spread through the ruins and recover everything of value.
An error. A necessary error, but an error nonetheless.
Felstad is vast. Our numbers are not. I discovered far too quickly that ambition can stretch a company thinner than any battlefield.
Kahi paid the price first. A halfling thief emerged from nowhere, striking with startling speed. By the time our soldiers reached him, Kahi lay bleeding heavily across broken timber.
For one terrible moment I believed I had lost him.
My apprentice Maaka tells me he will live. The scar will likely remain. A reminder that even the smallest opponent deserves respect.
Elsewhere, Arona nearly met a similar fate. A stone from a ratman's sling struck her squarely upon the head with frightening force. Had fortune shifted only slightly, I would now be writing of her funeral rather than her recovery.
The ratfolk may be vermin, but they're not to be underestimated.
Amid the confusion, one discovery eclipsed every other prize. Our thief uncovered an amulet buried beneath collapsed stone within a narrow alley choked by centuries of debris. The moment I laid eyes upon it, I felt the pull. Not from the artifact itself. From whatever had guided me here.
The amulet mattered. I cannot yet explain why. Unfortunately, I was not alone in reaching that conclusion.
The Thaumaturge advanced from the opposite end of the alley. The dwarven Enchanter's followers closed from the side. For several desperate moments the relic sat at the center of three converging warbands. Then the sky disappeared.
Darkness rolled across the sun with impossible speed until daylight itself became twilight. A total eclipse.
Every instinct I possess screamed that this was no coincidence. The very air became saturated with power.
Magic answered thought before any incantation had fully left my beak. Every spell flowed with astonishing ease, as though the world itself wished to lend strength to those reckless enough to wield it.
I glanced toward the other wizards. They felt it too.
Whatever force had awakened beneath Felstad had reached upward, touching every practitioner of the arcane. But only for a moment.
The power began fading almost as quickly as it had arrived. Like a wave receding from shore. The others recognized it as I did. None of us wished to discover what followed the tide.
The treasure was secured. The wounded still breathed. No answer is worth dying over on the very first expedition.
Reluctantly, each warband withdrew into the growing shadows, carrying their spoils back toward the safety of the settlement.
Tonight the amulet rests beside this journal. I have examined it for hours. It bears no maker's mark. No obvious enchantment. Yet whenever I hold it, I hear the sea.
Impossible. We are miles from the ocean. And yet, if I close my eyes, I can almost hear something breathing beneath the ice.