Mistakes Were Made

Now, I don’t think this was the best idea. I’m just putting that on record in case anyone finds this journal. This was a patently Bad Idea.

Our plan sent me and Leon into the frog-man keep using Disguise Self and Comprehend Languages. As part of my disguise, I made sure to put a scar across my throat so that I could mime that I had no way to speak, if anyone tried to talk to me. The rest of our classmates were to create a distraction in the bullywug village to keep them from discovering us.  As the villagers scattered from all the Smoke and Mirrors, we ran with the civilians who high-tailed it for the nearby keep. Once inside, I made my way to the pens where the lizard-folk mounts were held along with Leon. 

I tried to distract the guards so Leon could do stuff, but he didn’t manage to get the gate open. When the guards dismissed us, I cast Unseen Servant to send it to open the gate but Leon beat me to it with Mage Hand. I redirected my Servant to prod the lizard mounts so they’d run out and create a stampede of sorts.

The lizard mounts got out and certainly took off running! I got bit by one as it passed, but I’ll live.  In the meantime, Leon set one of the huts on fire, so I made it a point to interfere with the water brigade that went to put it out. Using my Servant, I repeatedly tripped them so they couldn’t get as much water as they might like. It seemed to work fairly well.  In the chaos, however, I lost track of Leon.

As I stood there, the Biggest Bullywug I’ve Ever Seen came out of the burning hut and began to cuss and beat the other bullywugs into order. If this kept up, they’d rally and overrun us all. I had to think of a way to keep them distracted and disorganized! The first thing that came to mind was to alert my friends to the presence of this Biggest Bullywug, so I threw a batch of Dancing Lights over it to try and draw their attention to him – but as soon as I casted the lights they were there for a split second before they vanished, as if I’d never even cast the spell! I knew for sure I was in trouble then, so I had to make my way out of here. With Leon gone, I was on my own, so I hoped that he’d be able to make it out, too.

He did. I found him unconscious on the path out of the keep, on my way back to rejoin the others at the bullywug village. Everyone there looked pretty beat up, even the lizard-folk we were helping had been whittled down from seven lizard-folk to just two or three remaining. According to a headcount, there were still twenty to thirty bullywugs that we knew of in the keep itself, everyone was just about out of spells, but these lizard-folk still wanted to go charging into the keep to “finish them off!”

By now, I’d hoped that some of the faculty from Strixhaven had found my note and come after us. After all, they’d said this was too dangerous a mission for us to go on, we were just too dumb or preoccupied with our own grandeur to listen. Man, are my Mom and Dad going to be mad at me when they hear. I’ll probably be on pan-scrubbing duty for a month! That’s neither here nor there, though, my main point is that reinforcements weren’t coming and I felt at this point it would be suicide for all of us to go back in practically unarmed without our spells.

There was a lot of discussion about going back and not going back, taking a short rest THEN going back, but no real decision being made. There’s not really a clear-cut leader in this group, so everything is kind of decided by committee, but we seemed deadlocked on who wanted to go and who wanted to stay and fight. I feel a headache coming on, so I’m going to take a break for now. Maybe we’ll come to a decision that won’t get us all killed.

Just in case it does, I love you, Mom & Dad and I’m sorry about that time that I burned the brownies. Puck said the “herbs” he gave me wouldn’t change them any!  I learned not to listen to Puck after that.