DavesGaming

Jaheira knew a little about the Forest. The Cloakwood Forest is large and difficult to navigate in places. Naturally Minsc knows about life in the forest, but he’s not local enough to know much about the Cloakwood. So we would be following Jaheira’s lead. She could take us from the almost civilized woods as they come right up to the Friendly Arm Inn, to the deepest most remote extremes… or as far as we needed to go at any rate. We knew a greedy and dangerous mage named Davaeorn had established an iron mine somewhere deep within. Presumably some attempt to profit from the local iron crisis? Or maybe, hopefully, this would have something to do with who was behind the iron crisis.

We agreed to see how we could help, but I noticed Jaheira was being silent.

These were druids, they claimed our new friend was hunting beyond his needs and he had killed one of their friends. They intended to put him and his friends to death. Aldeth insisted he’d been attacked first.
Neither party detected as “evil”, I suspect there was some truth in both sets of claims. We negotiated a compromise. Seniyad and his druids would withold their death sentence, and Aldeth and his crew would decamp and head home to Baldur’s Gate.
That all went about as well as could be expected! Seniyad told us a group of “Shadow Druids” were operating more deeply into the Forest. And an old friend of Jaheira’s had disappeared while investigating them. We will be sure to see what we can find!

We found the path deeper into the Forest was not easy.

And we used a lot of anti-poison magic.
We did make it (mostly) clear of the spiders. And ran in to some of the Shadow Druids.

He apparently had a girlfriend being held for the same purpose.

Some of them were dangerous casters. In the end, we had freed both of their prisoners.

But we still had not found a working iron mine.

After more than a week of travel and fighting, we saw a small wooden fort that was set up as a mining operation.

A big guy with a mace, an archer and two mages. This was a challenging fight, especially the two warriors. Dyna and Imoen took out the two mages with Fireballs and arrows. While the rest of us fought a fierce melee, the big guy was a challenge. Amyntor and I fought him while Jaheira and Minsc went after the archer. I was able to hold the big guy’s interest by getting in his face. He seemed to regard me as a small pest, but I was far quicker. In the end, Amyntor and I wore him down.

We took some time to catch our breath, and sort through their gear.

And I claimed a pair of boots that help me run faster. Since so much of our tactics involve me closing in first to draw attacks, it makes sense for me to move the fastest. We also found several scrolls that Dyna scribed.

After a time we entered the mine. The first level was just a mine, worked mostly by slaves with a few guards.

The next layer down seemed to be more of a barracks for the many guards working this site. We encountered a few standing watch.

Worse than the guards, some of their leadership was present.

But in the end they finished up before we did against the bulk of the guards. We were all sore and tired by the end, but the good news was there weren’t so many guards left after.

Just the guy we needed to find! We directed him to start gathering the slaves to escape.

Down the next flight of steps the whole character of the facility changed. It felt like we’d stepped into a noble’s quarters. After dispatching a guard we open a door and saw a long, poorly lit corridor.
Imoen immediately saw traps.

After disarming several traps, we heard the sound of a mage casting, chanting out a spell. Imoen hit the deck.

Davaeorn was doing some sort of teleporting around (Shadow Door? Blink? I can’t keep track, Dyna knows) which had us chasing him around his lab and living quarters. We may have tripped a few other traps, and he had an apprentice cowering under a desk in the library that we ran by a couple times…

We let him be terrified for a few minutes. We learned they worked for a trade syndicate known as “The Iron Throne”. They were behind the iron crisis to drive up the price on the uncorrupted ore they were providing from here. Their orders came from the Iron Throne in Baldur’s Gate. Once we had exhausted what he seemed to know, we told him to git. We were flooding the mine.

Actually, first we searched the quarters for information, and any valuable loot.

This proved to be a long and exhausting expedition. But we now know the source of all this is in the city of Baldur’s Gate. So we head north next.
First, we will take several days to get back to the Friendly Arm Inn. Where we will spend a couple nights recuperating. It feels like a well deserved rest.