Chapter 1: Into The Mists

Skallagrim quietly equips his bow and moves to the edge of the clearing. He steps into the shadows and searches the edge of the wood, to make sure there are no surprises while the others inspect the gates.

Morticia, your words echo through the woods but there’s no response.

Kar’i’nas, you don’t see any evidence of anyone hiding but you do feel a prickly sensation in the back of the neck like you’re being watched. You realise that you’ve had that sensation for a while now.

Balian, the statues look centuries old. You can’t tell who crafted them.

Skip, initially you think it could be general degradation through time, but the fact that it’s only the heads that have been chopped off could indicate that they’ve been deliberately removed.

Skallagrimm, you keep an eye out for any threats but don’t see any. You get a similar uneasy feeling like Kar’i’nas as if you’re being watched.

as the others move toward, and into the gate, Skallagrim nocks an arrow into his bow and aims just past them, lest anything pop-up.

"eyes sharp indeed" he mutters under his breath...

You slowly and cautiously walk through the towering gates, wary of any potential dangers that might lurk on the other side. As you all walk through, the hinges screech once more as the massive doors close behind you. You see no one and you can't help but wonder who exactly is controlling these gates.

You're faced once more by the dark forest. Towering trees, whose tops are lost in heavy gray mist, block out all but a death-gray light. The tree trunks are unnaturally close to one another, and the woods have the silence of a forgotten grave, yet exude the feeling of an unvoiced scream.

Suddenly ahead of you through the mist comes a skeletal warhorse and rider, both clad in ruined chainmail. The skeletal rider holds up a rusted lantern that sheds no light. It's still quite a bit of distance away and the rider looks like it's searching for something. Suddenly the horse rears up and something small and glittering falls from the rider to the ground. It then bursts through a thicket of trees deeper into the woods and disappears.

Kar'i'nas, the rider didn't seem threatening to you but more confused. Its head kept looking around from side to side as if it was trying to find something and although it did momentarily look at you guys, it didn't seem to take a prolonged interest in any of you. You look at the spot where it went into the forest and you can't grasp how it was even possible. The trees are extremely close together so it shouldn't physically be possible, but you can faintly see the outline of the rider disappearing through the forest in the distance.

You definitely get a sense that something has shifted. The mist is behaving extremely weird, the fact that it seemed to envelop you and gather mass behind you as you went further into the forest and ever since you moved through the gate it seems to have dissipated a bit. It's still there, but it's much more translucent and normal acting. If you were to take a guess, you think there's a good chance that you're in a different plane of existence.

You move up to the item that the rider dropped and see a small, blue gemstone dropped in the mud.

Skip, you think the beast reared up due to its rider. There's nothing here that immediately catches your eye as something that could've spooked it. But you also got the sense that the rider itself was confused and maybe a bit panicked in the way he was handling the horse.