As we all stood at the bar within Trollskull Manner enjoying some warm Sake, courtesy of Toshi, the topic of what to do next came up. It seems Greemus had taken the opportunity to go speak with representatives of the local druid order at a place called Phaulkonmere Villa and they had asked for his help investigating a disturbance happening each night around midnight at a farmstead not far from the city. With no other leads on jobs that might earn us some extra coin, we decided to head there tonight. Greemus begins to fill us in on what’s going on there and suddenly Melandran mentions she stayed at this farm just after arriving at Waterdeep. I couldn’t help but think of what a coincidence that was.
We left the city proper and made our way to the MacGregor Farmstead to speak with the family and learn more about what they were dealing with. Upon arrival we were greeted by Aphra MacGregor, the mother of the household, who explained there’s been creatures staking the fields late at night and they’ve been causing all sorts of problems for the farm. We took a look around the fields and sure enough there were strange tracks all around which seemed to originate at the scarecrows hanging in the fields, however we couldn’t see anything strange about them. After poking around a bit more, Greemus noticed a bull in one of the out buildings and said he was going to go try to speak with him. I didn’t realize that was a thing you could do but he actually obtained a little more information. According to the bull the creatures were covered in straw and he tried to take a bite out of one but it ran away. After finishing the investigation of the farm we decided it was best to stay and watch for anything unusual and then determine the best course of action from there.
As midnight approached, we started to notice a strange dense fog start to roll in. Greemus mentioned he saw this exact same phenomena in the Ardeep Forest which was what made him seek out the druids in Waterdeep in the first place. As this unnatural looking fog settled into the fields of the farmstead, we watched as the scarecrows suddenly transformed into monstrous creatures made of straw. Knowing we had to put an end to this for the sake of the family, we quickly moved to intervene. As each one was whittled down by our barrage of attacks we noticed a strange crystal which fell from them as they perished.
The group looked to me to try to identify the object but, since I’m not an expert in magical objects, I was only able to determine that it seemed to be the source of the creature’s transformation. Greemus said he would take it with him to his next meeting at Phaulkonmere Villa to try to learn more.
After our encounter, the fields fell silent once again. We returned to Aphra, who was inside the farmhouse keeping watch over her children, and explained what happened. She was very kind and even offered to let us stay the night and fed us breakfast in the morning as a gesture of thanks. I hope that is the end of all this for the MacGregors and maybe in time we can use what we learned to help the Ardeep Forest.