21. April 26, 2015

We lie down; it is near midnight. After about 15 minutes, Jessa gives Bel a very significant look then leaps up and begins ranting and raging about how sick she is of the dagger and how she dislikes the situation, ranting ever more loudly with each sentence to a silent but wide-eyed Bel, and ends by stalking off angrily.

About 100 meters away, Jess slams the dagger into a giant tree, says good riddance, and angrily strides back to camp, breaking into a run and diving for cover when she reaches camp. As she had hoped, 'BCM' cannot help but touch the 'abandoned' dagger. An enormous explosion results and causes about 20 seconds of trees falling and swamp water to 'tsunami' from the blast site.

We approach to find a smoking crater around the dagger, swamp water sizzling and smoking as it seeps back to the crater. Next to the dagger in the center of the crater is a small, milky white stone. And above is a smoky eye, just like the first time the dagger caused an explosion [7/20/14 session], which we believe to be a Seeing spell cast by The Master. We pack up camp quickly and travel away (in a different direction than our true goal) to put distance between us and the smoky eye in the sky.

In subsequent detection spells over the next 2 days, Bel learns that the dagger registers as Chaotic, but no other aura. The milky white stone, which Bel speculates is either a seed or is the remains of 'BCM' (its corpse). It doesn't Detect as anything—not evil, not chaotic, not good, not lawful. Bel pockets it and decides to try to nourish it (or keep it dead) by thinking good thoughts.

We travel 2 days to a pip on the map we found [from 3/22/15 session] and after a long search find an “invisible” hunter's blind in the trees. (Really, it is not invisible so much as it is transparent.) Inside, it's bigger than it ought to be—obviously there is some magic at work. There are bunks and stores of dried foods in waxed containers and chests of blankets. The pips/treehouses are all about 3 days apart. We travel to a second, which is also devoid of people. We are traveling to a third site when we see what appears to be an ambush ahead of us, with a dozen archers in the trees and a single humanoid who steps out, hands up to draw our attention, about 100 feet ahead of us.