Fiction | Game |Medium Adventurers League ⚔️
By the Wailing Lake
Part 1 of a quest — save the villagers!
This is part of a story that works as an interactive game. You’ll need to have some paper and dice at the ready! Click here for the beginning of the Medium Adventurers League, and find a reminder of the rules here. You can also go back to the Adventurers League Headquarters, or rest up at the inn.
As you set out from the Adventurers’ League, you ponder over this quest’s instructions:
A deadly lizard has taken up residence in the settlement of Rubyford, by the western fringes of The Wailing Lake. Our children are terrified — they can’t sleep! Please, if one of your fighter types can take care of it, we can get back to fishing and farming. There’s a few silvers in it for your trouble. Thank you!
— Bert Bones.
The accompanying sketch of the location was poorly drawn, but you visited Rubyford once before, and are pretty sure you can find it again.
A small river runs north from the area near the Guild Hall widens when it joins with one stream after another. You cross the main bridge leading west, and then slowly make your way across some rough, stony ground towards the banks of the lake.
At last, by late afternoon, you start to see a few settlements up ahead. The largest of these looks familiar. It has a little wooden pier amid a rocky bay, and many fishing boats are out.
Then, as you get closer, you see it. On one of the largest protruding rocks is an enormous toothy crocodile.
To get closer, you walk up to the end of the pier. There, a local fisherman greets you.
“Hello, stranger. Come to take a look at our newest resident?” He points a thumb in the direction of the croc.
“I’ve been tasked with killing the beast!” you say, hoping to demonstrate your bravery.
The fisherman raises one eyebrow, then takes a step back and pulls a pipe from his coat. “Seems a bit harsh. It’s only a dumb animal, after all.”
“I heard it was terrorizing the children, no…?”
The fisherman snorts as he lights his pipe. “Bert Bones doesn’t have any children, but he has a vivid imagination. Still, if he’ll pay you to get rid of the beast, the rest of us villagers won’t be sorry to see the back of it.”