We are still walking. We find more "guards" - they don't have the insignia that the guards yesterday had - and they are demanding that we pay tolls. Vondal argues with them, and we end up fighting. They are pretty good, but not good enough. We tidy up a bit - we don't want to leave the road impassable.
Overnight, we are attacked by about a dozen zombies.
We keep walking. After a while, we see some armoured riders. They greet us. Vondal speaks with them, as if they were guards. I suppose they may be Waterdeep's guards - that would mean we are getting close! They warn us to be careful. There is no trouble, and we continue on.
After resting, I feel a bit better. We acquaint ourselves with the things that we got in the nightmare-tower-that-isn't-even-there. I'm still a little on edge - it doesn't help that it clearly was NOT a nightmare - nightmares don't give you gifts. But if it wasn't a nightmare, what was it?
The remainder of the day is peaceful.
We are starting to see outskirt farms of Waterdeep. It looks like rain.
We run into a pack of zombies that are eating a cow. After we kill the zombies, we notice that there is no movement. Vandederp mentions that he thinks that the scarecrows are watching us. That's a bit creepy. Vondal wants to go to a homestead. He knocks and we get no answer. We go to the scarecrow in his field, and Vandederp talks to it. I poke it with my dagger. Nothing happens. I take another look at the cow, but there is nothing to see there either.
We continue on, and start seeing even more scarecrows. But no more people or animals. And it is getting scary dark.
We see a dark tower off the road a ways. We head towards it and see spooky green lights. The horses aren't happy and time feels weird. We see a flash of "normal." The horses stop and we get off. We go forward and look back and our horses are gone. This is like one of those dreams where nothing is going right, but you just can't stop, a right nightmare.
The scarecrows start to come for us. They get beat up, but it was weird - they even threw their heads at us! We enter the tower, where else could we go? It is bigger on the inside than the outside. And it is full of zombies. We kill them and look at the chest, when it attacks us, as well as some other furniture. When Vorest's moonbeam travels over them, they melt into a blob. When they are a blob, you stick to it, and it is very unpleasant.
After defeating them, we find some stairs. Up it is, I suppose. There's a fog that is following us, so even if we try to take over this dream, we still have no option - that fog does NOT look friendly!
Up the stairs we go, and we find a werewolves. I'm not dealing with a were curse again!
Up again, we find a golem or something that looks like a bunch of different people or monsters stitched all together. Who would do something like this? We kill him and go up the stairs again.
This floor looks like a slaughter house. There is blood everywhere. There is a devil wrapped in chains. Or not - the chains start moving and grow barbs. I tell the devil to go home, but he would rather flail us. Well, he had the choice before we killed him.
We feel oddly rested on this trip up, and this time we emerge onto the roof. From outside, this tower was not this big! There are torches, and around the tower we can only see the fog that has been following us. In the center of the roof is a patch of darkness. Out come 6 smaller black ghost guys fly out. When the black patch died, a horn fell out of him. We pick it up and time goes crazy on us.
The stones start fading, and the fog shrinks. We run down the stairs. As we run, the stones disappear. The lights blink in and out. We get to the bottom and everything is gone, it is daytime, we are in the middle of a wheat field. There is even a farmer here, and seems very confused to see us. There is no evidence of what happened. Even our horses are right there, on the road.
Vorest asks the horses what happened and they said we just wandered off, and disappeared. And happily, reappeared.
Still going. We run into Cedric and pick up some useful stuff.
We continue on. It's a lovely boredom - else we would be fighting!
We continue on. We see gnolls - some look like skeletons.
We leave, heading out towards Waterdeep. A little ways out, Vondal bursts out "Is Maln your mom?!?" That throws me a little bit, it doesn't follow any of what I have been told. Vondal and Vorest try to convince me. Weird. But it would explain some of the looks, and the question...
Later on, we see a hunting party of tribal warriors. They wave at us and ask if we have spare arrows to sell. Unfortunately, we don't.
