Retconning Despair out is a good idea, let's go with that.
I've been at this long enough to recognize several warning signs in character submissions for games- the players likely to quit or simply not work out.

There are a few different types but one of them is the "It's Just Awful To Be Me" character.  This one has a Tragic Backstory and comes equipped with some obvious reasons why the character has a hard time fitting in.  It's unusual compared to other Warning Sign submittals in that the character is actually very well created.  Often, artwork, and everything.

But the player drops quickly.  What I think happens is this:  No matter how misunderstood and mistreated and outcast a character is, as soon as you are among other players, all of this doesn't matter.  Players will accept anything.  Rich noble, poor orphan, half angel, were-shrimp, whatever.  No one cares and it's instantly "welcome to the team, what can you do?"  (Kind of like the real world should be).  But it instantly deflates the "Awful To Be Me" concept.  The rare exception is the player anticipating this and planning to play it that way with "They LIKE me, I finally found a true home!".  But if the plan was just "Awful to Be Me" the player loses interest quickly.

Anyway, that's my rant for the day, now back to our story...

It's getting late, and the land is getting easier as they travel northwest.  The canyon floors here are narrow, the walls make rough V shapes instead of being straight rises, and it would be a fairly easy matter to climb up and out of the canyon... except then, traveling on would be a matter of climbing down into the next one, and then up, and down... it's very rough and rocky landscape and the canyons at least offer unobstructed paths.

The canyon trail also offers the advantage of a readily available water source.

The vegetation is adapted to the rocky terrain and erratic rainfall.. except there are frequent examples of species that are wildly out of place.  Most won't last long.  (A Druid, Ranger, or character with a nature skill can identify these).  A lucky few will prosper- maybe those large prickly pear cacti will make it.

Here and there, more dribbles of that odd pinkish crystal stuff.

Even though the canyon walls are shallower here, shadows come before sunset, while the ridge lines above are still well lit.

Yes, I have noticed those types of characters exiting for exactly that type of reason. I've also seen them get their way, be the outcast, then whine and quit because no one wants to play with them.

Leysa grinned at Daladain and snapped her teeth. The display was counter-acted by the happy swaying of her tail though and she waggled an eye at fenranir playfully, "I don't recommend testing it."

Laughing happily, she moved along the ravine/canyon/thing exploring. "Not sure of the exact nature and duties of an explorer, but it is quite nice. What do you make of this strange, strawberry colored crystal, girls?" Leysa approaches a large cluster of the substances and uses a knife to tap and even try to cut it after a bit. Taking out something to wrap it in, she tries to get a sample of the stuff.

She also inspects any new types of plants she ahs never seen before out of pure curiosity.

23:16, Today: Leysa the Emerald rolled 12 using 1d20+2.  Nature.

Fen rolled his eyes at Daladain's rhyming as well and then shook his head when Lysander joined in, though there was a hint of a smile on his face it looked like.

He took note of the names given, nodding to each in turn.

He looked at Leysa for just a moment and then gave her a small bow. "My lady, I would not dream of it." He shook his head at her question. "Not I, though it looks interesting."

He looked around. "Should we look for a place to make camp, maybe here? Or keep pushing on?"

We wait for for others every day,
Sometimes they wait for us,
We often try to push them on,
Sometimes we raise a fuss.
But if we would be patient now,
And let the other go
We find that they might find a way
To make the story flow.
So we will find something to do,
It seems to be our fate,
So while they write their story down,
The rest of us just wait.

Leysa discovers something very odd about the crystalline substance on the stone.

It's alive.

It reacts even before she is able to touch it.  As Leysa walks towards it, it twitches a bit, and begins to flow down along the rock, in her direction.

And not only that... a few of the others in the area have begun to move as well, on converging courses.

"That's probably a bad thing," Tarhoon says, looking at it, and quickly looking through his pack.

It really chills me to the bone,
to think of being held in stone.

Leysa eyes it curiously and continues to take a sample if she can find a container for it. She won't risk contacting it even to study it later. She watches the substance move for a time and then looks to the fairies, "Any ideas?" She suspected it was either undiscovered or another manifestation of the chaos waves. It was frustratingly hard to know which. She keeps her eyes on the substance and her distance as she walks along again.

Fen was watching Leysa but only with half his attention span as he had been talking to Daladain and been sort of rhymed at by both him and Lysander. So he saw something of the corner of his eyes and turned to look - and his eyes went wide.

"What the -!"

He brought his shield and rapier to ready position and moved to put his back some of his allies and faced some of the....stuff.

"Do we try to fight? Run? Talk?" The last was said with a bit of light humor behind it.

"Oozy things," Firefern says, fluttering up and staying well out of any potential reach of the thing, or over spatter.  "We hate them.  Unnatural things, and there's no reason to them. You can't talk to them or anything.  You can't even trick them because they're too stupid to trick!  Just a curse on the world, if you ask me!"

"Though these are pretty ones," Petunia says.  "Where have I seen them?"

"Pretty indeed!" Firefern says.  "Pretty nasty, and now that they're provoked..."

"If it's a kind of slime, then it is stupid, yes," Tarhoon says.  "And I have seen these before, when I came this way with... when we... other Petunia... gods, that's bothersome...   But I say we leave these be and and put some distance between then, because I tried burning one once and it didn't work.  Unless you have magic to spare and can blast them.  If we camp here they'll just slither over and get us in the night.  Good thing you woke it first."

Leysa looked over her shoulder at Tarhoon and hummed a bit, "Just call her Petunia2, your world's Petunia. This one can remain simply Petunia. It's a bit of a biased system, but it should avoid confusion." She then stood and pointed with her chin the direction they were heading before. She then moved that way at a steady pace.

Fen frowned as the two faeries started sort of...nattering on a bit. It was a little distracting and he hoped it wasn't the sort of distracted non-help he could expect in a combat situation. Though, so long as they didn't get in the way, he guessed it didn't matter.

Well. Some of it was helpful, he supposed. Still, he shook his head and began to move away from the...whatever they were. He didn't want to deal with them if he didn't have it. "Do they hunt by sound or vibration or something? I mean, how far away do we need to go to be able to camp safely?"

"They didn't follow me last time," Tarhoon says.  "I don't think they're the smartest things around.  No eyes, no ears.. how they track is a very good questions.  They didn't react to Leysa until she got quite close."

The Otter-Man studies them.  From a distance.  Whiskers flick.

"Still I wouldn't bed down without some distance between them and us.  This place is full of strange things, and... well despite being one of those strange things.. I seem to be very much out of place... I am very much looking forward to being in a place a little less strange."

He's all too happy when Leysa leads the way.  From this point, anything is up and out of the canyon.

As far as you can tell, the crystal things do not follow.

The sun is getting lower, and now you are in very rough, irregular terrain, full of rock formations and deep gullies, and every mile is tiring.  Up, down, climb, skid... climb again.

The land is all crags, nooks, notches and niches here.  The chaotic terrain lets water collect in little streams that flow in seemingly random directions, frequently appearing in springs, and disappearing in crevices and small sinkholes.

Where it can, vegetation grows around the rock outcroppings.  The trees tend to be smaller and more scraggly here, but from one rise you can see a thicker forest.. sort of ahead, depending on the exact course of travel, which is a little wobbly at best due to the nature of the land.

There are still a few of the odd plants the region is known for, signs that you have not yet exited the zone of Chaos Storms.  The bizarre Coldwood, the wood of which absorbs rather than emits heat when burnt, is here.  There is another tree the Faeries call Curstwood.

They aren't sure why.  They just know that it is.  Someone told them, once.

Daladain regarded the weird crystal stuff and wrinkled his nose. He didn’t like the look of it and kept well clear.

When they paused at the trees, he carefully inspected both the cold wood and the curstwood. They sounded... interesting.

Fen listened to the faeries, who were at least somewhat more focused on the specifics of what they were dealing with. One of his eyebrows twitched slightly. Then he gave a slow nod. "Sure. Right. Moving on." He followed Leysa, but looked back over his shoulder several times.

The journey quickly became...annoying and tiresome. And a lot of work. It showed on his face that he was getting more and more ready to just set up a camp somewhere. Not that he was a stranger to physical exertion, he just hadn't been outside of a city and having simply walking somewhere be so much work in a while.

"Ummm...not...sure we should enter the woods to sleep...just my opinion."

"The woods are safe and sound, you'll find
They ease the soul and calm the mind.
'tis so much better than the plain,
where all we seem to find is pain.
The mountains are too hard to climb,
The ocean stormy often time,
But in the forest there is joy,
For every fairy, girl and boy."

Leysa eyed the broken lands slowly then the darker line of the woods and shook her head, "I grew up in a deep forest on a mountain. I know rocky terrain as well as forests. Both have their dangers. The safest place to camp would be in the border. The line between two places is often the safest as few animals specialize in such terrain." She smiled at her companions and lead them toward the woods.

She walked along the border between the rocky area and the forest looking for a likely place to set down for the night.

16:49, Today: Leysa the Emerald rolled 22 using 1d20+2.  Nature.

Daladain shrugged, guessing that the Dragonborn was correct. He was a city boy, and completely out of his comfort zone. He then followed Leysa to see if he could help find a campsite.

Leysa finds them a good spot, a natural hollow shielded by rock, with nothing odd or abnormal around- party members excepted, of course.

Gathered around for the evening, they talk about where they are going and what's ahead.

The Fairies have only a rough idea of geography, as they claim that never travel very far...

"Faerie folk of all kinds are linked to their homes," Firefern explains.  "Some more than others.  Dryads are tied to a single tree!"

"Sylphs blow over the whole world, the sky is their home, it must be wonderful to be a Sylph," Petunia says.

"And we fall somewhere in the middle.  Fairies and their... Groves, Woods, Meadows, whatever we are supposed to inhabit.  No one is ever very clear on that.  Faerie folk have... things.  We aren't... well I don't remember ever knowing what ours is.  So we have a home with the Guest House.  As far as I know the entire Fairy population of The Breaks lives there.  All Twelve of us."

They have been to Sanzi before, though, having traveled there in the past, with Arcto.  With their very rough idea of geography they speculate on where it is from here, and how far they have to go.

And the Otter-man, Tarhoon, has his brow furrowed, trying to make sense of something.

"If what you say is true, it is about the same place as something I knew... but that was a Gnome settlement on the coast.  They called it Sand And Sea.  Very, very peculiar.  It's more than you, Petunia, that overlaps between home and here."

**********************

The evening passes uneventfully, with the weather still in the pleasant post-storm calm.  The crystalline oozes, if track they can, do not track very far, and are nowhere to be seen come morning.

In the morning light, they have a better look at the wooded high ground ahead: it looks delightfully normal.  No peculiar magic trees like Coldwood or Curstwood, no strange and whimsical berries growing there.

Firefern deduces that beyond that wooded ridgeline must be the road to Sanzi.  It's too ordinary to be anything otherwise.  Mundane and ordinary things tend to cling to the roads here.  As if, by cutting their well built paths through the land, the Dwarves forced some order into this region of chaos.

The Party members, having seen Strange and Unusual things in their trip up the canyon, collects 1 Inspiration each.

Fen nodded at Leysa with a look of approval on his face. "Nice job. This is...good." He held up his hands briefly mock-defensively. "Not that I expected any less from you." He smiled for just a moment.

Then he turned his attention to setting up his bedroll and said he'd take the first watch. The discourse on faeries was interesting and Fen took note of it. Never knew when it might come in handy, after all.


In the morning he woke, feeling not quite as refreshed as if he'd slept in a bed, but not bad either. "Everyone sleep okay?" he asked idly as he got himself more awake, breakfast, and ready for the day.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:27, Tue 23 Feb 2021.

With the morning, they head for the ridge... the entirely normal looking ridge, exiting the area of odd trees on the way.

Petunia takes a last look at the Coldwood and Curstwood and other oddities as they pass.

"Do they have these where you are from?" she asks Tarhoon.

The Otter man shakes his head.  "It's a fascinating thing, really.  I should take a piece, just to have it around.  You never know.  There aren't any.. like, nature spirits or fey folk or..."

"I am Fey folk" Petunia says.

"I mean who would get mad if I cut a branch."

"No," Petunia says. "Just us.  It won't hurt to take a little.  It grows. People won't come here in droves and strip the magic woods, but we must be careful not to say where it came from.  Just in case."

They trade tales as they move along.  There are sounds echoing around the rocky countryside... and you hear it just before leaving the "chaos region."   Something with heavy, clicking, clacking feet clambering over rocks...  following.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:08, Tue 23 Feb 2021.

Leysa was far more used to sleeping rough and awoke refreshed and ready to continue. Their progress was slow, but she was learning vast amounts of information on this journey about the lands affected by the chaos waves. That said, a slightly more mundane day would be just fine by her senses. Perhaps they could make better time along their route. Part of her wanted to avoid the road though. The chance of a random encounter was always interesting.

As they walked though, the sound behind her made her scales uncomfortable. She whispered eldritch words under her breath and cast a spell waiting for whatever it was.

Cast Bladeward.

Fen eyed Petunia and Tarhoon for just a moment as they spoke about the magic woods and taking a piece. He wasn't so sure he would want a piece of either of those named forests. Might be bad luck.

Speaking of bad luck...he turned towards a sound. Something was coming after them. Something possibly big. He drifted towards the back of the group to get between them and whatever was coming.

He drew his longbow and nocked an arrow, walking sideways to keep an eye on the way ahead and behind. "Shall we keep moving and try to avoid whatever is coming?"

Lysander turns to face whatever is coming.

Daladain looked all around, trying to work out who, or what, was making the noise.

They await...

Well, it's a bug.  A beetle.  Not moving particularly quickly, but moving with the steady sense of self importance that bugs have, determined to "go that way" regardless of obstacles.

There are two things that set this beetle apart from beetles the party is familiar with.

The first is the carapace.  Some beetles do have shinier, glossier carapaces than others.  Some have an iridescent sheen.  This one is like a polished mirror.  It actually makes the beetle difficult to track with eyesight, because most of what you're seeing above the legs and head is a very distorted reflection of everything around it.

The second peculiar thing is the size.  The sounds were a hint.  In general, insects do not make loud sounds when they walk, because they are too small.  This one is about the height of  medium sized dog, but being considerably wider than one, it probably weighs four or five times as much.

Had you been down in the canyon, there is a good chance that evading this creature would be impossible due to the narrow, steep walled canyon bottom. But that assumes its of hostile intent.  It might have been happy to crunch and clack its way right past you.  Perhaps its a vegetarian.  Hard to tell.

At the moment, it is headed towards the party... hunger or mere coincidental travel, at this moment there is no way of knowing.  It is neither speeding up nor slowing down.