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In the ashes of the demon, sat some kind of evil pearl. The paladin attempted to handle it, but it scorched his hand. We collected it in a bag and didn't touch it further, and toted it back to Seridan for inspection.

The pearl wouldn't go into the cave. So we had to go in and get Seridan, who came to inspect it. He suggested it wasn't all taint, and that it could perhaps be cleansed. We decided to use a dose of the water and … it caused quite and explosion. The well water, however, successfully cleansed the taint, leaving behind a pearl containing some kind of power. Seridan couldn't say anything further about it, so we decided to rest and let Caed inspect it. Caed didn't get much from his inspection, so we concluded that if Ohlo couldn't tell us what it is, then we'd never know.

We stayed the night in the cave and road the ferry back to Phlan the next morning. Off to the council we headed.

Our tale was relayed, we were congradulated, paid, and sent on our way. We talked to Jeanine about the Sea Elf/Mishral task, and got prepared to head there. We were given some magical head gear to let us breath underwater, and sent on our way. We stopped to refill our potion and scroll stash. Ohlo observed the pearl and said it was pure magical energy contained within it. It appeared as though it had a few charges that could refill expended spell slots, and that once used, its magic would be gone forever.

I implied the druid should take it but everyone insisted I carry it. Ok then.

We headed out and boarded the Sea Nymph, captained by Captain Asgarad, and headed out to sea. A day later we arrived. The Captain dropped anchor, and said he'd wait for us to return for 20 days before declaring this a failed mission.

In we went.

It took us a while, but we ran into a patrol of Sea Elves. Their captain, Ureatair, took us back to Mishral, and we discussed with the Sea Elf King, Laderious, Phlan's concerns over their lack of communication. The Sea King apologized, and said that the nearby merfolk village of Ardfinham recently expelled their ambassadors and started gearing up for war, and the Sea Elves didn't know why. But things had gone from generally amicable, to hostile, in the blink of an eye.

We offered our services to the Sea King to help get everyone back on the right foot, and get our trade route going again. We spoke with the expelled ambassador, Veerin. Between him and the king, we were pretty sure the Sea Elves were genuinely clueless as to why all this hostility had boiled up. Only thing left, really, was to visit the village of the Merfolk.

We headed out to the village of Ardfinham. As with the Sea Elves, the merfolk intercepted us with an even more hostile guard patrol. We agreed to the guard captain, Dageron, to come with them peacefully, and they took our weapons and we came back to the village. We saw a large structured dedicated to Eadro, a (TN) god, as we were escorted into town. We were led to a well-appointed prison-hut to wait for an audience.

An hour or so later, we were brought before the Chieftan of the Merfolk, Kierl. Kierl said the Sea Elves kidnapped his son. He also said there was no ransom note delivered, and said the Sea Elves were lying if they pretended they didn't know.

He adamantly refused to listen, and couldn't think of anyone else who might do such a thing. Something was incredibly fishy. Who would benefit from the Merfolk and Sea Elves fighting each other? Possibly destroying each other? Someone must benefit from this… whoever it was, it was probably them.

Kierl didn't want to listen to what we were implying, and sent us away. His advisor, some green chick, watched us go with sad eyes. We were escorted back to the prison hut, and discussed our next moves. Later, the door to our prison hut opened and we were escorted to the Chieftan's Advisor's hut. Her name was Annelsie.

She was concerned that Kierl wasn't in his right mind at all, and was gearing up for war against someone he had very flimsy evidence against. Seemed like none of the Merfolk really supported this, but no one wanted to step up and put their foot down. Annelsie was releasing us in the hopes we could find and return the son safely. She lead us up a secret tunnel that ended outside of the village, and gave us all our gear.

We discussed how to proceed. The druid decided to do a Divination, and it told us to go north. So north we went. To be clear, this was in the opposite direction of the Sea Elf village, and boded ill for the theory that the Sea Elves had perpetrated the kidnapping.

An hour or so later, we came across some Sea Elves fighting a couple of Sea Troll things called Scrags. I banished one, while the boys fought and destroyed the other. One elf was very wounded, but we healed him up. Once the first troll was down, we sent the sea elves away a distance and I let the banished one return. The boys then chopped that one up too, along with Kethys's summoned sharks. Somehow, Caed's spell prevented the Trolls from regening, so he was really clutch to their defeat.

Once the trolls had perished, we discovered a note on one of them. It was crudely written, and claimed credit for the kidnapping of the son. They implied they would return him in exchange for a few weeks worth of fish and some pretty Merfolk women. Wat. Is this really where the son was?

We spoke with the Sea Elf patrol we'd rescued, and they pointed us in the direction of the main Scrag nest. Well, guess we should go clean that out and see if the son was really there. The boys seemed convinced the kid was dead, but I wasn't so sure. The son was kidnapped a month ago; seems a bit late to be finally delivering a ransom note. Very suspicious. Would he even be there? Only one way to find out!