Updated 04/12/12 Amarinda’s Journal
I begin this story somewhere to the east, outside Calrie, the capital of Aerenwe. The date is Anarire 5, 597. I was in the forest heading into town when I suddenly found myself confronted with the remains of a battle. A tall slender man was standing over a body lying in the weeds. Beside him was a “pardon the expression” butt ugly female elf. Beside them looked to be the remains of a pair of orcs or orogs. I’m not quite certain. I stepped into the clearing and introduced myself. The man, Rah’hal, asked if I could help the little person that had just fallen out of the sky at his feet. He introduced the elf beside him as Letan Siobhan. I bent over the still form and blessed him with the healing power of Laerme, Goddess of Fire, Beauty and the Arts. He awoke and went “Wow”. Let me take a moment to describe myself. My name is Amarinda Del Laerme. I am blessed with the touch of Laerme, which gives me my divine powers. I proudly honor her name as part of my own. I have dark red-brown hair with hazel eyes. I stand 5’4” tall and weigh 118lbs. I have just entered my 19th summer. I am told that I look comely and I use it to my advantage when needed. He sort of looked at me and then the elf. Then his eyes just sort of bounced between her and me for a few seconds before he seemed to get his bearings. He stood up and introduced himself as Lyle Tosscobbles. He was quite shocked to find he had just traveled 1 000 miles in an instant when he opened the wrong chest.
I also have blood powers, passed down through the Basaia. My two powers are useful to say the least. My first power is Hawk vision. I can see with the eyes of a hawk. This also helps me in my chosen weapon, composite short bow. My other power is resistance to fire; this has helped me develop my attraction with fire in a most useful way. Even when I am caught unawares by a flame spell, I never seem to suffer the full effects of the flames. This is what first attracted me to the worship of Laerme the Goddess of Fire, Beauty, and the Arts. Once the introductions were done, we decided to strip down the bodies and take the loot into Calrie. I told them that it wasn’t too far away and that we could walk there before dark. I also have a family heirloom passed down to me by my grandfather Wentassa, these are bracers of archery. They let me use the chosen weapon of Laerme much better. Along with my power of sight, I am a very good shot at long range with a short bow.
Alas, I also
yearn for something more. Lately my dreams have become more vivid. I must learn
to cast and control fire spells. If that means gaining the ability to cast
arcane spells, so be it. I must give in to my desire to bend fire to my will
and bathe in its heat. The reason why I am just outside Calrie is that I am
just returning home from my pilgrimage to the largest
We arrived at
the gates to Calrie in mid afternoon. After haggling about the entry fee we
finally got inside the city so we could find an establishment to rest
ourselves. The guard at the gate recommended the Hammer and Anvil as a fair
place to stay in. We got directions to the inn and proceeded to head there. We
entered and got a pair of rooms for the night and proceeded to find someone to
buy the booty we had lugged into town. I let Lyle do most of the haggling and
we got a fair price from the spoils. We returned to the inn while Lyle then
went to haggle some more. This time he was looking to sell off a magical shield
he owned. He went and managed to trade the shield for bracers of armor, which
were much more useful to him. The
We spent a couple of days resting in the Hammer and Anvil when Lyle came in during the afternoon of Anarire 7, he was holding up a poster with a want ad from a wizard looking for help clearing out a tower he had just acquired. We went to see the wizard, Hafdan Sky. It was strange in that we never saw the gentleman but were hired by him for three hundred gold pieces each and any loot we found in the tower. He did stipulate that any furnishings in the tower were his but we could have everything else we found. So the next day, Anarire 8, found us walking out of Calrie to the north. It took a day and a half for us to finally come across the tower. Anarire 9, it was late afternoon and we were moving through some brush when we were jumped by 8 goblins. They were dead before they even realized it.
Lyle was the only one knocked out in this encounter and we were forced to find some place to camp to rest. When Lyle woke up, Anarire 10, we then moved out to scout out the tower. We had just got to the edge of the clearing around the tower when we encountered about a dozen goblins. Throwing caution to the winds and with a short prayer to Laerme we attacked. We got our butts handed to us in this short but brutal fight. Lyle was again knocked unconscious from the fight and unfortunately I was not too far behind in being in the same condition as him. Rah’hal and Letan managed to kill the remaining goblins and then were forced to flee with us to hide out and camp while waiting for the two of us to regain consciousness. This took a few days, as we were hurt rather badly. While we were waiting, Letan and Rah’hal had a short fight with a gnoll that found our camp. They managed to kill it and then loot the body. When Lyle awoke on the Anarire 15, he managed to use one of his blood powers to return us to Calrie while I was still unconscious. To my surprise, I awakened in the Hammer and Anvil Inn, in Calrie.
Anarire 16, we rested for the day and then proceeded to head back to the tower. Lyle tried using his blood power to get us back there quickly, but it failed to work at all. So we were forced to walk again. We arrived back at the tower on Anarire 20, just in time to encounter another patrol of goblins. We really must stop listening to Letan and her crazy ideas about attacking. She talked us into assaulting the patrol with disastrous results. The fight was brutal in one aspect. This patrol was led by one tough goblin. He was the only one remaining when the fight neared its conclusion. The only person still standing was Rah’hal and he didn’t look too good. The other three of us were knocked out again from the fighting, with Lyle being knocked out first again. I think he was taking it as a challenge to jump into the fray and get hit first for the benefit of the group. I was not too far behind in being eliminated from the fight as I had to defend myself against three of the little buggers. I managed to kill two of them, but the third managed to hit me hard enough to knock me out of the fight. What I didn’t realize is that we almost died from our wounds, while Rah’hal was finishing off the squad leader. A mysterious stranger attacked the goblin with his bow and killed him. He then tossed a vial at Rah’hal and left. Rah’hal then poured the vial down Letan’s throat just as she was going to die and brought her back to life. We were just going to have to wait for Lyle and me to wake up again before we could do anything else.
Anarire 26 was when I finally woke up. By now I
was starting to get a little grumpy about all this extra sleep I was getting
from these exhausting fights we were having. The lucky thing was that I was
awake in time to pray for my spells at
We scouted around for six hours before we found anything. It turned out to be a wild boar that burst out of the woods and savaged Rah’hal before he even had a chance to move or dodge out of the way. Letan and I each got an arrow into it before it turned and attacked Lyle. He was nailed by it and I was forced to move into melee range to attack. I had a flash of inspiration and drew the enchanted dagger. With a savage cry I stabbed at the flank of the beast and struck it. To my amazement the dagger then burst into flames, dealing additional damage to the beast. I went “Cool”. It then fell to our blows. I looked at Lyle and said, “This dagger is mine”. He went “Ok”. I proudly put the dagger back in my sheath as Letan started butchering the boar. Letan then brought to our attention the arrowhead stuck in the hindquarters of the beast. So it had been a wounded beast, that’s why it had attacked Rah’hal. I then went over to him and revived him with cure light wounds. I then heard a cry of surprise from Letan. When I turned and looked, she was holding a gold ring in her hand.
At this point I also realized that we had all gained in power. Lyle became active in the worship of his goddess, therefore gaining the power to cast divine spells. Letan and Rah’hal became stronger in their chosen skills while I fulfilled my dream of being able to cast arcane spells for real. I had become a sorceress. We all looked at each other and grinned, for now we were gaining in power. After Letan finished her chore, we sat down to have some roast pig. We finished dinner and decided to try and infiltrate the tower. It didn’t work. For one thing, we didn’t have any rope or a grappling hook. So the only thing we could do was to see if Lyle could climb the wall of the tower. Letan and Lyle tried to take out the two guards up top but did not kill them in one shot. Lyle missed, Letan didn’t. The goblin that survived started screaming for his buddies to help. Lyle then ran up to the wall and just as quickly ran back saying he couldn’t climb the wall. It was too smooth for him. So we retreated back into the woods to rethink our options.
Letan then tried to make a rope out of vines and a grappling hook out of a branch of wood. She succeeded somewhat and later that night we tried to approach and toss the homemade grapple up onto the top of the tower. She managed to sneak up under the tower and made ready to toss the grapple. Her throw however was terrible and clanked off the bottom of the tower, alerting the goblins that we were there. Letan then started running back to the woods so she wouldn’t get shot. She was unsuccessful as one of the goblins buried a javelin in her back. She was so quick to run away that she forgot the rope. We went further into the woods and decided on our next strategy. This involved returning to Calrie to pick up some rope and grappling hooks. Lyle then tried his shadow walk and was successful. We arrived in Calrie just before dawn Anarire 27. The sun was just starting to rise to the east. There was little movement in the city so we decided to wander around for a while until the city woke up. We got very hungry smelling all the bakeries doing their daily breads and goodies and found one that sold us some fresh baked bread for breakfast.
When the shops opened, we all went and did our shopping. The first thing that we did was exchanged our gems and items for gold. We all got our share and wandered off. I found a tailor to make me a dark red cotton robe with my holy symbol embroidered on the back of it. I also had to start looking for the needed ingredients for gaining a familiar. Now that I was a sorceress, I needed a familiar. Lyle was quick to get 200 feet of rope and two grapples to go with it. When we finally got to the inn, we were able to trade the remains of our boar to the inn for two days lodgings for each of us. We thought it was a pretty good trade. I then went to bed for a nap and awoke at dinnertime. I have no idea what the rest of the group did while I was napping and I couldn’t care less. We met up for dinner and then I had to wander off to spend the day summoning my familiar.
Anarire 28, it was the late afternoon when my familiar finally appeared before me. I had been having some vivid dreams and visions of flames and silver harps while I was waiting for my new friend. It appeared as if Laerme had been listening when I summoned my pet, as he was a little different from what I originally asked for. His name is Kei’lo; he is a green and red gecko. I realized something was different about him when he crawled up onto my arm and curled up into a ball. He was much warmer than I expected. He then crawled off my arm and walked into the tiny fire I had going to keep me warm. Nothing happened to him and I was delighted to realize that he appeared to be immune to fire. What a nice surprise from my goddess. I then picked up Kei’lo and gently put him in my pouch and headed back to the city. I arrived back to the inn and introduced my new friend to the rest of the group. They were quite astonished to see how warm he was. Our next plan of action was to decide how to assault the tower. Lyle came up with the bright idea to shadow walk right inside the main door to the tower and appear inside. This seemed like a very good idea. I didn’t feel like trying to climb to the top of the tower if we didn’t need to.
So our plan of action was to get up before the dawn and use his shadow walk to get inside and attack. Anarire 29, we awoke before dawn and had a quick meal before walking directly into the tower. Lyle was successful in shadow walking and we abruptly appeared in front of eight goblins. I was not ready when we appeared and was unable to do anything before the rest of the group attacked. The eight goblins were slain, but they managed to alert some more of them that were upstairs in the second floor. These proceeded to come charging down the stairs to attack. During the fight I came to identify the ring that Letan had recovered from the boar. It looked to be a ring of protection. As a blow that normally would have struck and damaged her, glanced to one side at the last instance. The fight then continued on when a goblin wearing banded armor charged down the stairs and attacked. This was one tough goblin. We killed it but not before he had knocked out Letan and it was up to Rah’hal and me to kill it. Lyle and I were soon out of healing spells and we then had to come up with a strategy to continue or flee out the door. With Letan out of the fight our options were limited.
We decided to continue the fight; I removed the ring from Letan’s finger and put it on. I then cast mage armor on Rah’hal and we then moved upstairs to investigate further. The next floor contained a solid wood and metal door that we couldn’t open the lock nor break the door down. Even Lyle couldn’t open the door. We decided to leave Lyle their while the two of us moved further up the stairs. At the base of the third floor we encountered the boss goblin and were attacked. Rah’hal was knocked out and fell back against me and tumbled us both down to the bottom of the floor. I landed on top of Rah’hal and tried to get up so I didn’t get attacked by the goblin. I accidentally kneed Rah’hal in the privates as I attempted to get up and it definitely knocked him out. I turned and headed back up the stairs to engage the goblin.
My first blow was a critical thrust that buried into the belly of the beast and then it burst into flames. The only problem was that twice the beast struck me and it knocked me out. Lyle managed to hit it from behind, finally killing it. Lyle then checked Rah’hal and me and stopped the bleeding. He then checked the goblin and found a ring of keys. He finally found the key to open the door to this level and discovered two people manacled to the wall. They both appeared to be women and one was definitely an elf. Lyle then managed to free them using the keys and managed to revive both of them. The human female introduced herself as Maurryna Crystalgryphon, a holy warrior of Avani. The elf introduced herself as Anastrianna Galandel, a pathfinder. As Lyle was the only party member still awake, he managed to find some weapons for them to use while they explored the tower further. The rest of the tower was empty and they found the ladies gear inside a locked room on the top floor of the tower. They also found the loot of the goblins.
This included
human sized half plate, a large steel shield, a masterwork short sword and some
coin, almost 350 gold. As no one could use the armor or shield, Maurryna gladly
put these items to good use. Anastrianna then grabbed the short sword, as no
one else seemed interested in it. The three of them then returned down to the
second floor where we were now resting again from combat. Lyle had to wait
until
It was Deismir 4, before Lyle returned with the mage and his wagon train. By then we had organized all the loot we were entitled to and left everything else for the mage. We then headed back to Calrie and arrived on Deismir 6. We then unloaded all of the weapons we had captured. It turned out to be worth 400 gold coins for the lot. Not too bad. We also received our payment for clearing out the tower, 300 gold coins. The group then wandered around to spend their loot. I looked for some more clothing and then tried to find any potions or scrolls, this was unsuccessful. Even Lyle had no luck finding any potions or scrolls. We then started listening to rumors to find some more employment. The only rumor that appeared to be of any substance was of a noble to the southwest near Roesone named Hythelson Ironfist looking for an adventuring group to solve a problem for him. Then next purchase for us was horses, as we didn’t feel like walking for over a week to get to where he was located. Maurryna had a line on a horse dealer that owed her a favor so we went and dealt with him. She managed to acquire a light war-horse while the rest of us were happy with riding horses. Along with all the gear, it cost us each 81 gold pieces to buy each one.
Deismir 8, we headed out of town moving
southwest. We stopped at
I actually liked this fight; I didn’t get hit even once. We decided to stop and rest here in the village; neither Lyle nor I had any healing spells left after the fight. The villagers were so happy we had slain the beast that they put us up for the night. We took the time to loot the body and found gold coin; four gems a potion, a whip and a scroll. When I checked for magical enchantments, the potion, scroll, and whip glowed. Of course Lyle was the first one to check out the scroll and he quickly handed it off to me saying he couldn’t read it. I managed to decipher it as arcane in its writings. After a few moments I understood it to contain the spells Color Spray, and Blindness. I then put the scroll in my pouch. The potion was pale blue and watery and faintly luminescent. The whip we didn’t know what to do with so I held on to it. As we were all battered up, we decided to rest for well over a day before continuing our journey. On Deismir 10, we continued our travels west.
Deismir 11, we arrived in the small
We were introduced to a middle-aged man with brown hair and a beard who identified himself as Baron Hythelson Ironfist. We introduced ourselves as the Stellar Four and company. We quickly found out that an active group of bandits had moved in and were harassing and destroying caravans moving from Uthra and Buiden. He was willing to pay 100 gold for each bandit captured or killed. While he was also willing to pay up to 5 000 gold for the elimination of the bandit group or groups. If we could supply him with enough information to capture the bandits, it was worth 3 000 gold for us. We thought that seemed to be reasonable and agreed to find these bandits. While we were there, Maurryna wanted to purchase some armor from him, she did so and we then managed to sell the half plate and magical shield to him for 1 500 gold. We split this between the four of us and then went back to the Rusty Plow Inn for the evening.
Deismir 12, Our strategy for the morning was simple. Letan and Rah’hal would check out the last known location of the bandits while we traveled to Buiden. The group split up and away we went. Letan and Rah’hal found some tracks all right. They also found an area that appeared to have been scorched, with no apparent starting point. When they followed the tracks, they led right back to Uthra, so it appeared they had tracked the militia. We on the other hand had no encounters all the way to Buiden. We arrived there and found a jeweler that agreed to exchange gold for gems. At a 10% exchange rate of course. We were happy to get rid of some weight. We stopped to get a bite to eat and then started back to Uthra. We stopped to investigate what appeared to be an attack on the road. We found a big splatter of blood along with tracks heading to the forest. We decided to follow the tracks and did so until they reached the forest boundary. We started into the trees, that’s when the enemy wizard nailed us with his fireball. I was lucky I guess. Because I was in the back I didn’t get hit when the spell went off. Letan and Maurryna were not so lucky. They both bore the brunt of the spell. It was bad enough to melt their armor right off both of them. Letan was left standing in her smalls waving her rapier in the breeze. While Maurryna still had all of her weapons, she was also very unconscious. Letan then charged the base of a tree in front of her and attacked the wizard that had struck at us. She hit with a nice thrust into the side of the wizard.
I then spotted him and readied my bow for a shot. The wizard then managed to cast a magic missile spell into the face of Letan. The two missiles knocked her out while the third one hit me. It hit me and then I replied with two arrows that struck him nicely. He then managed to cast a fly spell to get away. I couldn’t get a third shot off as he disappeared off into the distance. Lyle then moved up to check on our companions and found them both knocked out. We cast off all of our heal spells and then stopped to rest for a while. As we were not too far from town, we loaded the unconscious bodies on the horses and high tailed it back to Uthra. We got there and met up with Rah’hal and Anastrianna and decided to plot our course of action for tomorrow. Letan had to spend most of her gold to replace the equipment she had lost from the fireball. The next day, Deismir 13, we headed out to patrol the road after Lyle had cast all of his healing spells and after I had regained all of mine. We had been traveling about an hour when we were ambushed by a group of bandits that were hiding along the road. There were five warriors on each side of the road that stood up and fired their light crossbows at us. The bolts pummeled us before we could do anything about it. The fight was brutal and short. It didn’t even last a minute. We barely survived the fight but managed to kill off the bandits. The only ones still standing after the fight was done, were Rah’hal and Lyle. They had their hands full trying to prevent the rest of us from bleeding to death. While Rah’hal set up camp, Lyle checked out the bodies of the bandits.
They had been wearing chain shirts along with small wooden shields and carried longswords and crossbows. One of the bandits had a large steel shield and Lyle determined that it was enchanted. They also had some coin and small gems on them that Lyle piled up on a blanket. We rested the night, Deismir 14, and Lyle regained his spells. The fight had benefited us in another way; we all gained valuable experience from the fight. Enough that all of us got stronger and smarter. Lyle and I gained more power as cleric’s; it seemed the best idea to gain more healing spells. We rested for the morning until I could regain my spells, I then cast them on the party members that were still hurting and we proceeded back to Uthra. Before we left the camp, we remembered to cut off the heads of the bandits and took them with us to turn over to the Baron for our bounty. Maurryna agreed to keep the steel shield as her share of the loot.
We arrived
back at Uthra and met with the Baron. He was definitely worried about the
quality of the equipment that the bandits appeared to be using and was hoping
that we had finished them off. Maurryna was blunt in her reply that we still
had to find the brains of the organization and that included the mage that had
attacked us. The Baron paid us our bounty and also agreed to purchase the armor
and weapons for his armory. So we walked out of his home with a fair chunk of
coin. We then headed back to the inn to rest for the night. It took two days to
recover from our wounds and it was just after
As I still had the whip we had found, I decided to see if we could trade it for something more useful. This turned out to be a wand of bull’s strength. But he wanted an additional 1 800 gold to trade. Lyle started pulling out all of the loot we still had and plunked down almost 1 500 gold in gems on the table. We quickly came up with the remaining coin and purchased the wand. The reason why it was so expensive was that it was almost fully charged. The other nice thing was that it had been made by a cleric so Lyle, Maurryna and myself could all use it if need be. The command word was longhorn. After we had spent all of our coin, the next thing to do was find an inn for the night. This turned out to be the Windy Willow Inn. We had dinner and then went up to our rooms for the night.
I was rudely awakened in the middle of the night with the effects of a fireball going off nearly in my face. The first thing I was aware of, the wall was blown out between Rah’hal and me. I could also see into Lyle’s room beside Rah’hal. It took me a few moments to get my bearings and realize what had happened. The enemy mage had struck again. Rah’hal appeared to be down for the count and Lyle didn’t look much better. I had survived thanks to Laerme and her wisdom. I immediately started looking for the enemy mage and spotted him on top of a building across the street. My new bow was effective in slamming two arrows into him before he knew it. He then retaliated by blasting me with a bunch of magic missiles. I was just able to cast a cure spell on myself before I started to black out.
Lyle got over to Rah’hal before he died and healed him enough to live. Our next problem became apparent when some zombies started climbing up the stairs to attack us. Anastrianna and Maurryna were the ones to attack them before they got too close. Letan was nowhere to be seen. I was aiming at the mage for another shot when he abruptly soared up and behind the building. As I cursed him, I became aware of the sounds of combat behind me in the hallway. I turned and spotted the zombies. Oh dear, it looked like the leadership of the bandits was very annoyed with us. I readied myself and used the power of Laerme to turn them and forced them to flee from my sight back down the stairs. Anastrianna and Maurryna followed them down the stairs and came across their creator. This was a man standing in full plate armor and wielding a morning star. Letan found this out when she charged into the common room from outside. She had dove out the window with her swords and ran around the building to the front door. As the door was open, she had run right in and almost ran over the cleric.
As she was just wearing her smalls, this was going to be a problem. She started screaming for help as she fearlessly attacked. Maurryna and Anastrianna also charged and attacked the cleric. Lyle and I were the last ones down the stairs and I could see that this man was a worshipper of Belinik, one of my enemies. I charged forwards to help my companions as Lyle readied his crossbow for a shot. The cleric was brutal; he knocked down all of us with his weapon before we had him wounded. It didn’t help when he cast a cure spell on himself and recovered from most of his wounds. He finally had to use a spell of some kind to flee before he was dropped. Boy were we really annoyed with these two spell casters. Every time we knocked then down, they managed to flee to fight again. Just wait till next time.
Lyle and Letan were the only ones still standing when the enemy had left. They proceeded to check us all out to make sure no one was dead and then started to prepare us for transport out of the building. The innkeeper finally made an appearance when he stuck his head up from behind the bar to look about in bewilderment. “My inn. What happened to my inn?” Letan looked at Lyle and then looked upstairs to see flames flickering in the dark. At this moment, six city guards burst in and shouted “Fire, Get the fire brigade.” The innkeeper jumped and turned around to look upstairs. “My inn’s on fire” he shouted and then he rushed into the back room shouting “Fire, Fire” as he hurried to gather some possessions. Lyle looked at Letan and said, “Get Rah’hal, I’ll grab our stuff.
With that they rushed upstairs. Letan was just handing Rah’hal out to the guards, when she saw a burning timber fall on Lyle and knock him down. She then had to get to Lyle before he started burning. She did so and passed him back to the guards and then managed to gather together all of our gear before retreating from the flames. By then, the guards had cleared the building off all the people and were now busy fighting the fire. Letan managed to gather all of the party together along with gear and was trying to decide what to do. She was the only one still conscious and thought to herself, “What do I do now?” A short time later as she was getting things organized, the local commander showed up to take control of the situation. His name was Vithy. When Letan was able to talk to this man, she quickly lost her temper and then snapped. She had been busy trying to explain to the gentleman about the bandits and the spell casters, with the ensuing explosion and fire and then zombies. When she finally lost her temper, it took four guards to knock her down. She managed to punch one in the jaw and kneed another one in the privates before she was knocked out from behind.
Deismir 18, I must say that I gained the rest of
this information later from the guards as to what had transpired after we had
been knocked out. We found out that Letan had been involved in a donnybrook
with the guards after the fire. She had then been tossed in jail. But then
again so had we. Maurryna managed to get the guards attention as soon as we
woke up and was quickly granted an interview with Commander Vithy. I stayed in
the cell to tend to the others. Maurryna came back about half an hour later and
said that we were free to go while Letan was going to remain in jail. She was
being charged with interfering with, and assaulting members of the watch, along
with disturbing the peace. She was going to be appearing in court just before
Deismir 20, we retrieved our horses from the inn and headed back to Uthra to inform the Baron about our discoveries. He was surprised and a little worried that these bandits were going to great lengths to try to knock us off. We then made a return trip to Buiden to scout some more. We were half way there when we came across the remains of a fight. Three wagons were overturned on the road and signs of a battle were everywhere. The two scouts managed to find the tracks leading away from the scene and started to follow them we quickly got into the trees and came across a campsite before we even realized it. Letan and Anastrianna just managed to spot the stand in the tree where two men were waiting with bows. We managed to kill them before they hurt us and then off to one side we heard the voice of that dreaded mage, casting a spell again. Drat.
Off to my left, I spotted a bright red dot come streaking in from my left and explode right in front of me. Anastrianna took the brunt of the explosion and went down when it went off. Letan and Maurryna looked slightly singed and quite annoyed after the flames dissipated. We then spotted some humans moving out of the trees in front of us. This turned out to be the rival cleric and some men at arms. Letan and Lyle started shooting at the mage. I cast a few cure spells on Anastrianna to get her up. This time, our missile weapons seemed to have no effect. They were stopping just in front of the mage without harming him. Maurryna and Rah’hal moved to attack the cleric while Anastrianna got out her bow and started shooting at the cleric. Moments later four magic missiles streaked in and hit her knocking her down again. I managed to get Anastrianna up again while Rah’hal and Maurryna were killing the cleric’s flunkies off. The cleric was doing some serious damage to us with his morning star. Lyle and Letan were not doing any damage to the mage and he was casting spells with impunity. Lyle ended up hiding in the trees and trying to get closer to the mage while Letan then moved targets to the cleric. She then waited for the cleric to move forward to engage her.
Rah’hal was forced to attack the mage, leaving Maurryna to keep fighting the cleric. The cleric the started casting spells, one of which was a blindness spell that affected me. This was very annoying. The cleric then cast a doom spell on Maurryna and this affected her too. We were doing poorly again our rivals spells. The mage kept doing his thing by next sleeping Rah’hal when he managed to hit the mage. Lyle had by then managed to get close enough to finally attack with his sword and then moved to grapple the mage and attempted to use his inflicting spells he had memorized. This was the only damage done to the mage in the entire combat. The cleric managed to wade through Letan and then had to take out Anastrianna who had moved to attack after I managed to cast bull’s strength on her from my wand. The cleric knocked her down in one blow and then I was next. Not before I managed to throw a vial of alchemist’s fire directly onto the chest of the cleric. He then bopped me on the head, knocking me out of the fight. The only reason why we are all still alive is that we forced the two of them to flee from us before they could get the upper hand in the fight. Lyle and Maurryna were the only ones still standing when the mage flew away and the cleric used the same ball of energy he used last time to get away from us with some type of teleport spell.
We stopped to
rest for a few minutes and then proceeded back to Uthra after removing all the
gear from the six warriors we had slain. Lyle piled it all together and cast
his last detect magic spell. A set of half-plate armor and a steel shield radiated
magic. We also removed the heads of the warriors as proof that we had
encountered this group again and managed to get to Uthra later that day. We met
with the Baron again and received our payment for the warriors. I then inquired
about getting my blindness removed, but there was no one in Uthra that could do
it. So after spending next day recovering, Deismir 21. We headed to
Buiden the next day, Deismir 22, as we left shortly after sunrise; we
arrived well before
We then decided to head to an inn for lunch, while Rah’hal headed back outside to stay with the two rangers’. The next morning, Deismir 23, we were waiting at the temple as soon as it opened for business. This time Glynda was successful in casting her spell to remove my blindness. I was grateful enough to toss another handful of coins into the collection box before we left. We then proceeded outside and I wisely decided to use the wand of bull’s strength on everyone before we headed back to Uthra. It was most effective on the warriors. About half way back to Uthra, Anastrianna spotted a fresh trail leading off the road into the woods. We then proceeded to scout ahead and soon encountered our hated enemies, the cleric and mage. They again got the upper hand by the mage casting his fireball spell right into our midst. The first thing we knew, Maurryna was falling down from taking the brunt of the explosion. I was slightly wounded and had to step forward to help Maurryna. The cleric stepped out from behind a tree and attacked Anastrianna. Letan and her then moved up and engaged the cleric while Rah’hal and Lyle spotted the mage and attacked him; the mage had again cast some defensive spells first and made our attacks useless against him. After I had cured Maurryna so she wouldn’t die and had put out the flames that still flickered around her body, I was forced to move up and attack the mage.
I first tried using the scroll I had, but the blindness spell didn’t work because he had some sort of globe of protection around himself. Even Rah’hal was sort of useless as his blows had no effect on the man. I then moved up to engage him and used the color spray that was on the scroll. This affected him by stunning him for a few seconds. I then cast burning hands right in his face, setting his clothes on fire. We eventually forced the mage to flee again by using his fly spell to escape from our clutches again. Were we ever going to kill this guy or was he going to remain a thorn in our side for days to come yet. Meanwhile, Letan and Anastrianna were doing their best to engage the cleric. They were effective, but so was the cleric. He cast doom on Letan and blindness on Anastrianna. Fortunately, the two of them were hitting the cleric enough that he was finally knocked down by a blind attack from Anastrianna, just as he knocked down Letan. Anastrianna was forced to bandage up Letan before she bled to death, just as the mage flew away. I quickly ran over to Letan and cured some damage and proceeded to check the cleric.
He was still breathing but unconscious. I stripped him of all his gear and then tied him up. I then saw to the rest of the group. Lyle had been held by the mage and when he was freed, he used up some charges on his wand so as not to drain us of our healing spells completely. We then plotted our plan of action. It was agreed that Lyle would use the cleric’s magic ball to return to the base and scout it out in order to return so we could attack as a group. Maurryna then decided to wait until the next morning before taking the cleric back along with Rah’hal and Anastrianna to the Baron to turn him in.
Deismir 24, the three of them along with the prisoner rode off early in the morning. That left Letan and I to man the camp we had hidden in the trees. The day passed quietly and I took time to investigate the items that the cleric had been wearing. His large steel shield along with a light mace and bracers all were magical to some degree. Letan put on the bracers and we tried to figure out what they were. After I had thumped on her twice with a staff she quickly gave up on this idea. She then went off and practiced her archery for a while and that was no different. I proceeded to go to bed early while Letan remained on guard for the evening. About half way through the night Letan rudely awakened me when she kicked me and sounded the alarm about intruders. When I finally poked my head out of the tent, I spotted Letan fighting two bugbears. One of them went down from her blows and I managed to fire two arrows at it before I was forced to use me dagger. I managed to get in a good thrust and killed the second one. As these were bugbears, we then had to take a few minutes to drag the bodies far enough into the bush so they wouldn’t attract any attention to us. They had a large amount of silver in their pouch along with the two morning stars that they were using. I then went back to bed.
Deismir 25, it was late afternoon when Maurryna and the others returned bearing bad news. The mage had ambushed them while traveling back to Uthra and managed to kill the cleric with a fireball. He then took out the others and got into combat with Maurryna before he finally flew off again. It was a close thing with Rah’hal and Anastrianna nearly dying from their wounds. Maurryna managed to get them back to Uthra on the backs of the horses and managed to get them healed enough so they could travel to Buiden the next day to get Anastrianna cured of her blindness and returned to camp just after dinner. Of Lyle there was still no sign. During the evening, Lyle appeared at camp wearing some new clothing. He told Letan that he would tell us what happened in the morning. Deismir 26, Lyle then told us what happened to him when he appeared in the enemy’s stronghold. He had arrived and managed to investigate the site for a few minutes before he was captured by the mage using his wand of hold person. The mage then slashed his throat but it did not kill him. He awoke after being unconscious for three days while he healed. He used his shadow walk to go to Uthra before appearing here the night before. We decided to wait until the evening before allowing Lyle to do the same for us. He used his ability to make us arrive in the middle of the stronghold. It was deserted except for a room full of goods that the mage had left behind. We investigated the rooms and found one clue, a scrap of paper with the signature of Yaniz the only writing remaining on it. We then decided to find out where our camp was in relation to this site. The rangers quickly discovered that we were only camped about 10 miles away and we proceeded to head back there and arrived before dark.
Deismir 27, we decided to travel to Buiden to arrange the rental of some wagons to retrieve the goods still in the stronghold. When we got there, Letan remained outside with the horses and set up camp. I then went shopping for her to pick up more goods and foodstuffs for her. Lyle went off and arranged a meeting with the local rogue’s guild and found out that Yaniz was a tailor in Buiden and that he could meet with him. He was also warned that anything done to Yaniz would result in the death of Lyle. This being said he then went and talked with Yaniz, he found out that Yaniz was a fence and that the mage had dealt with him under guild rules and was a member in good standing with his organization. Lyle then agreed to purchase some clothing from him and arranged to come back before closing time to pick them up. I had by then spent all of Letan’s coin before returning to her with her goods. Maurryna had bought some feed for the horses and we returned to town with Letan getting comfortable in camp. Lyle met up with us in the afternoon and told us about Yaniz. We agreed to accompany him back to the shop. But not before I used the wand of bull’s strength on everyone. We headed to the shop and Lyle said he was going in alone first. We arranged ourselves so that a spell caster was not going to get more than one of us and waited.
It seemed like hours but in reality it was not even a minute before Maurryna spotted the enemy mage trying to sneak out the side door. She yelled to us and started charging forwards. Just as the mage cast his fireball at us once more. Maurryna shrugged off the spell and engaged him in the alley. Rah’hal was on the other side of the building and ran around the back to get at him from the other side. Anastrianna was undecided and was finally forced to come up behind Maurryna and attacked with her sword. I was closest to the shop door and proceeded to open it and step inside the store. I realized that Lyle was frozen inside the shop and his throat had been sliced open. Blood was pouring all the way down to the ground. As I moved closer, someone attacked me from behind. When I turned and saw the man, I realized from Lyle’s description that this was Yaniz. I snarled at him, drew my flaming dagger and thrust it into his stomach. His eyes opened in shock as he abruptly groaned and folded up over my arm as he fell to the ground. I made sure that he was not dead before looking around the shop. It appeared that he was the only one inside. I then ran outside to see how the fight was going. The mage was again proving tough to hit as he was now wearing Lyle’s bracers of armor. I did the only thing I could think of and moved close enough to start using my burning hands spells on him. These proved effective, as they were not affected by all of his protective spells he had on. The damage that the other three had done finally managed to nullify his stone skin spell. When he engaged his fly spell and started to lift off the ground, both Rah’hal and Maurryna tried to tackle him.
Rah’hal was successful in his grapple and was hanging on as he lifted off. He then started trying to punch the mage while he hung on. They were about thirty feet off the ground when the two of then abruptly fell to earth. We had finally managed to kill him. Rah’hal got to his feet with a grin and turned and kicked the body. I could hear the sounds of the watch approaching so I quickly cast detect magic on the mage and proceeded to strip him of all his magic. I then ran into the shop to see if anything in there was magical also. I spotted a thin blue line in the back wall that was glowing. I checked out the wall and found the release button. When it slid open I saw five weapons lying there. Two longswords, two short swords, and a rapier. They all glowed. I grabbed them and took them outside and proceeded to put them in with the other stuff we had scooped from the dead mage. Just then the watch arrived. One of them looked at the scene and turned and ordered one of the men to go get the commander right away. The man ran off down the street. I cornered the guard who appeared to be in command and demanded that he arrest Yaniz the shop keeper for trying to stab me in the back for no reason. I also explained that it appeared my companion Lyle had walked into the shop to pick up some clothes he had ordered and was murdered for his efforts. I then also told him that the dead man was the mage we had been battling since the first time we had been here.
He backed off from me as I got in his face and he kept repeating,” Wait for the Commander please”. I stopped shouting at him and proceeded back to the group. I then took stock of the pile of stuff we had taken from the mage and what I had removed from the shop. Luckily no one had noticed when I had come out of the shop with the items in question and I was very glad of that later. It included the following, the bracers of armor once belonging to Lyle, two rings, one of which had been Lyle’s, two wands of which I recognized the one as being cure light wounds that had belonged to Lyle, a potion, a dagger, and gauntlets. I took the gloves and the new ring and piled the rest into my sack to divide up later. It took a few minutes for Commander Vithy to arrive and he was not impressed to see the carnage and damage done to the surrounding street corner. He turned and looked at our little group and realized who we were and said “Why Me”. After he had taken a few minutes to talk with the guards on scene he approached our group. He wanted to find out what had happened and I was the one to do the talking. He asked for our version of events and I told him everything that happened from when we approached the tailors shop to the point where he arrived. I conveniently left out the little bit of thievery that I did in the shop. As none of the others had realized what I had done, they couldn’t tell a lie to the authorities. My little subterfuge would be between myself and Laerme. If she didn’t like it she could tell me so.
The commander asked that we did not leave town while he was investigating this
incident and asked us where we would be. I told him that we would now have to
rent some rooms and decided to see if the Winter’s Heart Inn had any rooms
available. We then proceeded to the
I waited a few minutes after the young lad had left and proceeded to walk to the gates to wait for Letan. The guard at the gates was quite surly to me and I didn’t like his attitude but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt as he had quite a welt on the side of his face from his previous encounter with Letan. A few minutes later the young lad came barreling out of the woods screaming at the top of his lungs about being attacked. I thought to myself, “Letan, What in the name of Laerme did you do now.” The lad attached himself to the guard and was shivering in fright saying something about arrows and his foot. I realized that Letan had probably shot first and asked questions as the lad was running for his life. I just hoped that she had received my message. It was a few minutes more before Letan finally appeared from the edge of the trees and slowly approached the gates. She was forcibly stopped by the guard when she was about 30 paces away from the gates and told to come no further. In fact the guard was quite rude and called her a bitch a few times as he was telling her to come no further. I guess his previous encounter with Letan had left him surly and short tempered. I was not impressed when he turned his rudeness on me and told him bluntly that if she could come no closer I was going to go out and speak with her where she was. The guard told me to get stuffed and that I was not allowed to leave the gates without the Commanders permission. I then told him to get the commander because I wasn’t leaving without talking with my companion privately.
We waited for a few minutes before the commander appeared at the gates. The guard approached him first while I waited by the gate. It seemed like the young lad had embellished what had happened at our campsite and seeing as the commander was in a bad mood he then told me that this incident may well be a breach of Letan’s parole in regards to her last incident inside the town and that he would be informing the magistrate in the morning about it. He then agreed to let me go out and speak with Letan privately. I then walked slowly out to speak with Letan and proceeded to tell her in impolite terms that she was bloody stupid for shooting an arrow at a defenceless young lad without asking what he was doing at the campsite first. I then told her that this could be considered a breach of her parole and she could go to jail for this. She then started mumbling something about protecting the campsite but I cut her off and then passed over the package containing some food, clothing and the five weapons I had recovered from the shop and told her to hide the weapons when she got back to camp and to not shoot at anyone else unless she was attacked first. I then asked her to give her word on this and she agreed reluctantly. I then proceeded back to the gates and thanked the commander and his guards for allowing me to speak to Letan and told him that I had severely chastised her for her actions at the camp. It had now been about an hour since I had left the inn before I returned and the other three were starting to get a little worried about what was going on. I proceeded to tell them what had happened at the camp and that Letan may have gotten the rest of us in serious trouble without our knowledge and that the magistrate in the morning might not be an easy person to live with.
The innkeeper then approached us and told us that he wanted up out of his establishment in the morning due to the incident involving his son. I then gave him two gold pieces, one for his troubles and one to give to his son for all of the trouble that had been caused and my sincerest apologies about out companion Letan at the camp. He accepted our apology but still insisted that we leave in the morning. We could only accept his decision as it was the only reasonable thing we could do. We then retired for the rest of the evening.
Deismir 28, we waited at the inn for our escort to arrive to take us for our interview with the magistrate. We arrived at the courthouse and entered the courtroom with a full squad as our escort. They proceeded to arrange themselves around the courtroom as we waited for the magistrate to arrive. A few minutes later he entered the courtroom with an escort of two guards and the two scribes. Other than the four of us there were no other spectators in attendance. The first thing that the magistrate dealt with was the incident with Letan outside the city. As it involved a citizen of the city the magistrate said that it pertained to his previous ruling regarding Letan. He also agreed that since she had been by herself outside the city and that no one had been harmed in any way other than the child returning to the city terrified, he agreed to only fine Letan 100 gold pieces for the incident and that he would frown on any further activities involving Letan and the city. I thought to myself that it was a reasonable request and that I was going to be privately glad to get out of this hick town and never return. We pulled out enough coin to pay the fine and I beckoned a guard to approach and take the money up to the magistrate. He then proceeded to give us a receipt for the coin and the he said he was now going to proceed with the investigation of the murder of Lyle Tosscobbles and the fight involving the enemy mage. He also told us that he would be using the services of the priestess Glynda in his proceedings to verify the truth of all of our statements involving this trial.
He then asked Commander Vithy to appear and give his statement as to the events in question that led up to this fight and what happened afterwards. The commander was forthright as he explained the version of events as he knew of them and that yes the merchant Yaniz was going to be prosecuted for the murder of our companion Lyle. He told the magistrate that witnesses all agreed that the first sign that something was going on was the blast of a fireball just outside the tailor’s shop in mid afternoon. Witnesses then reported the signs and sounds of battle with the clash of weapons and then further flashes of fire. He then told the magistrate that Yaniz had been under investigation for some time as there were rumors that he had been a purveyor of stolen goods for the local thieves’ guild. He then stated that they had found a hidden compartment inside the shop but that it had been empty and that unfortunately they had found no stolen goods in the shop. That’s when I thought to myself that it was a good thing that I had found the items in question first and was I going to get away with the theft of the swords. The magistrate then thanked the commander and told him he could now leave. The magistrate then started questioning our group about what had happened. We were truthful up to a point. We didn’t tell him that we had expected to meet the mage at the shop just that Lyle had spoken to Yaniz about the mages whereabouts and since the rest of them didn’t see me come out of the shop with the swords they couldn’t lie about it.
The magistrate then said that he was going to speak with each of us individually about our testimony and I went first. I truthfully told him everything that happened and conveniently forgot to mention that I had re-entered the shop after the fight was over to scoop the loot. He then proceeded to speak with all the rest of the group after me and then brought us all back into the courtroom where he then brought in Glynda and the body of our deceased companion Lyle. Glynda proceeded to cast speak with dead in order to talk with Lyle and his answers to her questions seemed to satisfy both her and the magistrate. As he had been dead when I found the weapons he didn’t know anything about them. The only problem we were now dealing with was our interpretation of events leading up to the battle. We had tried to say that we had not expected the mage to be there, but our actions and knowledge said otherwise. Lyle had to be truthful when he answered that we had a good expectation of the mage being there when we arrived. We had said otherwise. The magistrate then asked Glynda to cast a detect lie on our group as he asked us if everything we had told him today was the truth. This is when things got interesting. The rest of the group had told the truth though I guess some of the answers that Rah’hal had given were a bit strange and Anastrianna had taken the approach of I see nothing and I know nothing and it worked. Maurryna had been truthful because she is a paladin and knew nothing about the weapons we now had. Unfortunately I tried to bluff my way through the answer I gave and it didn’t work. Glynda told the magistrate that I had lied about something. She didn’t know what it was just that I had lied.
The magistrate then asked the rest of the group to leave the courtroom while he questioned me further. The group got up and left while the magistrate and his two guards along with Glynda remained. I managed to shield my thoughts this time because I decided to get into a contest of wills with Glynda and I guess it worked. I changed our story about the expectation of meeting the enemy mage at the tailor’s. We had said all along that we had not expected him to be there when we knew he would be. I still kept the knowledge about the weapons to myself as I gave the magistrate the new answer about the mage. I knew then that I had managed to hide my thoughts sufficiently about my extra knowledge and the magistrate seemed satisfied with my answers. He still wasn’t happy with what had happened but was forced to let us go by reason of self defense. He then told me that he would be extremely happy to see us leave his town for a long time and I privately agreed that if we had our way we would never be back. I then asked for permission to take the body of our dead companion Lyle as we wanted to try and get him back to life if it was possible in the near future. He granted us permission to retrieve Lyle and I then left the courtroom and thanked Laerme that we had gotten through this incident without going to jail. I then went over to the temple to talk with Glynda about getting Lyle returned to the living. She was cordial and told me that she had a raise dead scroll available for only 4 000 gold pieces. I thanked her and said that we would return tomorrow if we had a chance to purchase the scroll. I collected the body of Lyle and we proceeded out of town. We met up with Letan and the group gave her a stern talking too about attacking children. I then had Letan pull out the package I had given her earlier and broke out the swords. Letan got a rapier and short sword, Anastrianna got a long sword and short sword while Maurryna was given the remaining long sword.
We then proceeded back towards Uthra. We were half way there when we were jumped by a large green troll. This almost proved the undoing of our group as this beast went through us like a farmers scythe through wheat. Our valiant companion Maurryna was unfortunate to die from her wounds given to her from the beast. I was unable to help as I was unconscious at the time she died. In fact the only party member still up and fighting was Letan. She had taken a brutal thrashing from the troll and only managed to stay awake by downing a healing potion. When she finished off the beast, she was forced to spend some moments dousing the thing with oil and then lit it on fire. When she proceeded to bandage us up, she found Maurryna had died from her injuries. The rest of us were close to death ourselves. Letan also managed to remove the sack that the troll had attached to a rope belt. Inside she found all sorts of stuff. This included 219 gold pieces, banded mail, six thunderstones, three vials, two that were holy water and one terra cotta in color. Also two scrolls, two wands and horseshoes. She piled all the stuff up and proceeded to drag us off the trail and made camp after recovering the horses. We then rested for the night.
Deismir 29, I awoke
around
We then proceeded to get the items we had recovered from the troll identified. This cost us 350 gold to do. The items were as follows, a potion of alter self, one arcane scroll containing hurl (3rd), share life (3rd) and a divine scroll with augury (3rd). The wands were cure light wounds (5th) with 32 charges and a wand of invisibility (5th) with 18 charges. The horseshoes ended up being horseshoes of the zephyr. We then grabbed a meal and proceeded back outside to meet with Letan who had waited outside the city and set up camp while we were doing our business in Buiden. As it was now dark we slept in the camp for the night with Letan and Anastrianna alternating watches. It was a few hours before dawn when Anastrianna heard the sound of something large coming out of the town and walking towards the camp. She then woke everyone up and we had a few moments to wait until something large reddish and ugly appeared outside the camp. I then cast a light spell and lit up this beast. It had a pair of vicious tusks and was covered in small red scales with a pair of bat wings at the shoulders. It demanded in a rumbling voice that we hand over Lyle and it would leave. I bluntly told it that Lyle was not going anywhere and that we had just spent enough money on him to get him raised. The beast just gave a laugh and walked forwards. I then told the group to attack it. Our bows proved to be ineffective and had to fight the thing with our swords. The beast had some sort of dragon blood in it. Red dragon to be exact as it opened its mouth and spewed fire right at Rah’hal along with Letan and myself. Rah’hal dodged out of the way but Letan was not so lucky. She took the brunt of the blast.
We managed to kill the beast but not before Letan and Rah’hal had been knocked down. I did the wise thing and stood back and used my wand of cure light wounds when the rest attacked with weapons. Lyle tried using his wand of hold person but it was ineffective. When we knocked it down, I cast detect magic and found an enchanted ring which Lyle scooped along with some coin. We quickly packed up camp and moved about a mile away before stopping to rest and wait for the dawn. Deismir 30, Letan then let us know that she had gained in power and was now able to cast divine spells as a ranger. She took entangle as her first ranger spell. As soon as I had finished praying for my spells for the day we left for Uthra. We arrived there and proceeded to speak with the Baron. His men had found the bandits hideout and were proceeding to remove the stolen goods. He told us we could take our share from his estimates or wait until the products had been sold before getting our money. We decided to wait. He then also told us that the Queen of Aerenwe had informed him of problems in the forest 30 miles to the south of Uthra just inside the coastline of Aerenwe. She had put out the word that she was willing to sponsor adventuring parties to investigate this site as evil creatures were starting to appear and cause havoc and destruction. The Baron also told us that he had been given permission to bring in a mage and to try and increase the size of his church in order to help out adventurers in need. We thought that if we were going to be in this village for a while it might be a good idea to find a permanent home. We then started looking at acquiring some property on the edge of town and building a residence if the investigations of this site were going to take a while. We spoke with the Baron and managed to find some property between the village and the river. It was agreed that we would purchase the property totaling 1000 feet by 1000 feet for the sum of 600 gold pieces. Everyone in the group chipped in some coin so that we could buy it. We then had to start looking for a builder for our new home. We spent the rest of the day finalizing details and decided to investigate this site that had appeared to the south tomorrow.
Deismir 31, we decided
to leave the horses as the Baron informed us that it would be hard going for
them in the forest. We started walking and soon stopped for lunch so I could
pray for my divine spells. While I was praying we were jumped by a creature
that managed to surprise the group and landed on me. It attacked me and hurt me
before the rest of the group managed to drive it off. It then took a little bit
longer to regain my divine spells as I had to start praying again. After lunch
we kept going. We stopped to camp inside the forest and before
Deismir 32, we kept on walking south. It was in the afternoon when we were alerted to something by Anastrianna who had point. She could hear the sounds of something crashing through the trees. We all ducked down and soon a terrified gnoll burst out of the trees and almost ran straight through Rah’hal. He was forced to dodge out of the way and took a swing at it and missed. Figuring that something might be chasing this thing, I pulled out the wand of bull’s strength and used it on everyone. We then cautiously continued on. We waited there for a few moments and abruptly Anastrianna let out a yelp and seemed to jump up a foot. She turned and looked around, then said that something had just laughed directly into her ear. We then continued on. Anastrianna was still on point when she came into a lessening of the undergrowth to find body parts strewn about and extremely visible to any one walking into the clearing. We took a look and recognized the parts as being gnoll. The ends looked like they had been burnt or fried off. This really weirded us out; I wanted to go right now. We continued on walking and were unfortunate to encounter some weird floating, flying creatures that effected Lyle and I with some sort of paralysis when they let out a shriek right in our faces. Letan and Rah’hal managed to kill them; they were easily slain by a thrust or two. Letan was bitten by one of them quite severely and it was only after when they had dragged Lyle and I out of the area when I cast a cure spell on her, we found that the cure didn’t work. Letan had complained about a slight burning sensation when she had been bitten. I thought it might be a poison of some kind. We then continued on until darkness and stopped to camp. Tomorrow was a festival day, the Veneration of the Sleeping. Anastrianna took first watch and she climbed a tree. Letan thought that was a good idea and also got up higher to rest and watch. I along with Rah’hal found spots on the ground to bunk into. Lyle managed to crawl into a small hole to hide.
It was a few hours later when Anastrianna was still watching when she spotted a glowing apparition that appeared behind us and started approaching the camp. It got close enough to appear humanoid. Letan woke the rest of us up. I immediately cast mage armor on myself and then started looking around. Letan and Anastrianna took bow shots at the glowing thing and their arrows went right through it. They managed to alert the rest of us that it was an illusion just as the sound of crossbow strings sang out from off to the right. Letan let out a groan as she was struck. Anastrianna then let out a shriek and fell out of the tree and landed with a thud. I then realized that Rah’hal was busy laughing his guts out on the ground and was useless for the next little while. The effects looked similar to a spell I have heard about. My next action was to draw a normal dagger and cast a light spell on it. Now at least I could see something. When I turned to look at our opponents, it took a second or two to recognize three kobolds with crossbows were starting to charge towards us. They dropped the bows and drew short swords. Letan started cursing as she was hit by a spell. When I looked up into the tree, she was wrapped up tight within the confines of a web spell. This was not looking good. The three kobolds were trying to engage Lyle so I drew my flaming dagger and walked up to support him. We were helped by Anastrianna when she stepped forwards and engaged one of them.
We were then hit by the effects of some sort of cloud or vapor spell when the area suddenly filled with a noxious fog. The effects were ghastly. It was then when we realized that there was another figure off to the left. This was another kobold but he was wearing robes. Oh great, just what we needed to meet, a spell casting kobold. This guy proceeded to kick our butts. Anastrianna killed one of the other kobolds before I told her to engage the spell caster. Letan was cursing a blue streak in elfish while she struggled to free herself from the web. Lyle then killed one of them that looked a little green from the fog spell. Rah’hal was just managing to crawl out of the cloud and looked a little off color. When we next looked at the kobold, there was four of him. He had cast another spell. Letan finally managed to tear herself free from the webs and fell down onto the ground. Lyle and I killed the two remaining kobolds when I managed to cast a couple of burning hands spells on them. By then the kobold had hit Rah’hal with another spell and had tried to hit Letan again. We then found out just how tough this guy was when he reared back and nailed Anastrianna with a lightning bolt that went right through her and blasted her back about ten feet killing her instantly. Letan managed to get in a good blow before taking out one of the images of him. Lyle and I looked at one another when we finished the kobolds in front of us and seriously thought about leaving. I looked at him and said no let’s get this guy while we still could. He attempted to shadow walk behind him but only moved us a little bit closer. In fact we were right at the edge of that noxious cloud when we reappeared in front of him. When I spotted the three images, I stepped up and cast a burning hands spell over Lyle’s head. By the Power of Laerme, I was forced to also affect Rah’hal who had finally gotten to his feet and was moving up to attack this guy with us. At least my spell got rid of the images of this guy as we surrounded him and finally killed him. He complicated things by drawing out some sort of a rod and blasting Rah’hal with it during the fight. It crackled with thunder. It deafened him for a few minutes.
This guy managed to get off another lightning bolt, this time getting Letan and Lyle. It almost killed Lyle and knocked Letan for a loop. I watched Letan’s face after she had been struck and never in the time I have known her to see her more angry at someone as she was now at this kobold sorcerer. She lunged with her rapier and managed to strike it in the heart and finally killed it. She even kicked it a few times for good measure. By Laerme, that was a fight. After a moment’s reflection and rest, I ordered the group to do the following. Letan was to remain on guard while Rah’hal and Lyle stripped the kobolds. I went over and recovered what was left of Anastrianna. She had died valiantly defending us and by Laerme’s power I was going to see that she had a decent passing into the afterlife. Once we had everything recovered from the bodies I cast a detect magic and was pleasantly surprised to find that the annoying little kobold had been carrying lots of loot. We recovered the magical swords that Anastrianna had been using along with her studded leather and composite longbow. The three warrior kobolds had worn small chain mail and carried heavy crossbows and a score of bolts each along with a short sword each. The leader had lots of loot. We found the rod he had used along with an amulet, bracers, belt, scroll and a bag that all radiated enchantment. The rod positively glowed compared to the enchantments on the others. Lyle opened the scroll, glanced at it and tossed it to me. At this point I told the Stellar Four that it was time to rest and we could look at all this stuff in the morning. Soon after the dawn we were awake for the Veneration of the Sleeping.
Anastrianna’s body was wrapped in oil soaked cloth and placed on a wooden bier. I then used Laerme’s power to ignite her body and we waited while her body was consumed to the heavens. We also looked at the items we had found and Lyle informed me that the bag was a bag of holding. He had found more gold in there than it should have held. He proved it by putting all of the excess equipment that we had found into the bag. Nice, we agreed that he could carry the bag as he was our expediter of choice. The other items turned out to be the following. The amulet was of natural armor and Letan took it. The bracers were of armor and Rah’hal took them. The belt was looked at by Letan, she even put it on but it was more like a sash than a belt and I told Rah’hal to take it. I couldn’t get the thought that there was something on the belt I needed to decipher, but I couldn’t find it, at least not yet. The scroll contained three arcane spells. I was impressed as they were all third level spells. They were Fireball, Tongues, and Invisibility Sphere. I also took the rod that now that we had a closer look at it, almost appeared to be a light mace. As everyone else had taken something, I took the rod. I was also aware that I was now able to cast higher level divine spells. Rah’hal and Lyle also said that they had gained in power. My! I hadn’t noticed before but Rah’hal has definitely been working out. His muscles are getting bigger. I wonder if everything on him is the same large size. We continued on our journey. In this we were blessed by Laerme to have no encounters for the whole day. We stopped for lunch so I could pray for my divine spells for the day and I now had a greater variety of spells to choose from. I am starting to get curious about Lyle. I know that he has been casting divine spells, but I never see him praying for them, at least not in the daytime.
Maybe I will have to stay awake in the evening to see when he does do his
praying. NO, I know what I will do. I will send Kei’lo over and keep an eye on
him tonight. When he starts praying he will wake me up so I know what time he
prays. It was around
Erntenir 2, we headed into Uthra soon after sunrise and spoke with the Baron about temple. He also agreed to buy most of the gear we had recovering except for the three small sets of chain mail. Lyle then split up all the loot and we each received 383 gold coins and 5 silver coins for shares of treasure. Lyle then paid me 350 gold for his part in paying his debt to each of us. He’s lucky that his debt was reduced by a quarter with the passing of Anastrianna. Lyle has the short sword now and we still have the long sword that we will hang on to. Our next decision was to travel to Calrie and see about spending some coin there. We also managed to meet with a builder in Uthra that could help us build our house. We spent the rest of the afternoon discussing what we wanted and what it would take to finish. I left the gentleman with 250 gold coins as a deposit and we proceeded to wait until Lyle was ready to go. He told us that once there we would have to wait for a few days until he could return us to Uthra. That was fine; we would be prepared in moments. I really need to find out what this rod can do and I am going to suggest to Rah’hal that he get his sash checked out. There is something more to it. We next shadow walked to Calrie and safely arrived. We ended up taking rooms at the Leaping Leopard Inn for the week as we were going to have to stay there for at least a week while Lyle regained his shadow walking power.
Erntenir 3, we awoke in the morning and the four of us all had things we wanted to do. Rah’hal went searching for a mage to hopefully get his sash identified. I was going to wait until he told me that he had found one before I went searching. Letan visited a temple to see about getting her wound healed. I am not sure what Lyle went and did as he just said he would be back later. I decided as the representative of the Stellar Four to attend the castle and give the Queen all the information that we currently had including the location of the now discovered temple. So I took the time to be presentable to the Queen and proceeded to attend the castle. I was quickly taken to see Baron Dinthar who was in charge of overseeing the problem to the south. He was a man of mature years with dark hair and a beard, but was definitely fit and sure of himself. I introduced myself as Amarinda Del Laerme, leader of the Stellar Four. I told him that we were an adventuring group that recently had been south of Uthra and that we had discovered the temple deep in the forest. We had spoken with Baron Hythelson about the incursion. He quickly produced a map of the region to the south so I could show him were this building was located. I did so and we continued our discussion about the problem. He told me that all of the adventuring sponsorship would be coming from Baron Hythelson and not from the Queen so there was nothing else that I could get from them. I finished our conversation by telling the Baron that our group was staying at the Leaping Leopard and would be available later for anything further if required. I then proceeded back to the inn.
I got back to the inn and saw that the rest of the group was still out
wandering the city. I hung around the inn thinking about having some lunch when
one of the castle pages walked into the inn and came right up to me. He then
handed me a note that was addressed to me. I opened it and found an invitation
from the Baron for lunch. I thought to myself “Why not.” I then told the page
to lead on. I informed the inn keeper to tell my companions of my whereabouts
if they returned before I did. I then followed the page to the castle and
proceeded to have a delightful lunch and managed to keep the Baron from getting
a word in edgewise. I think I managed to talk about everything under the sun.
Including of course, introducing the Baron to Kei’lo. He was most impressed
with my little companion. Actually I think it was a pleasant way to spend the
afternoon. Sadly the Baron had to get back to work and I bid him farewell and
walked back to the inn. By now Rah’hal and Letan had returned. Letan had
visited the
I must have been lucky because it only took a few minutes for the gentleman to see me. Rah’hal had said he had waited over an hour to see him. Mister Thirkil was an older gentleman who I assumed must have been a wizard. He asked what my business was and I was blunt and to the point. I took the rod from my belt and plunked it onto his desk in front of him and said that I needed this item identified. He opened a drawer and pulled out what appeared to be a magnifying glass and started looking at the rod. His eyebrows rose as he looked and he said, “MY, MY.” He looked up at me and said that it was going to cost me a good sum of gold to find out all of this weapon’s secrets. In fact it cost 600 gold pieces for me to become the proud owner of a rod of Thunder and Lightning. It was a +2 light mace along with the following powers useable by their command words. Once per day the rod strikes with a thunder and is more powerful and makes a loud noise when it hits. Once per day it produces a short spark of electricity which deals additional damage even if I do not hit successfully, all I have to do is touch. Once per day it produces a thunderclap that can deafen along with sonic damage. Once per day it produces a lightning stroke to a range of 200 feet. Once per week it produces the lightning stroke along with the thunderclap to really hurt your enemies. This is a nice weapon. I am going to enjoy using this on our next opponents. I then proceeded back to the inn. We spent the rest of the day lounging around the inn discussing our house plans.
Erntenir 4, when we woke up in the morning I decided to go shopping and also wandered over and found the local temple to Laerme. As it was a very warm day I dressed for the occasion. In other words I wasn’t wearing very much for clothing. I managed to spend the afternoon speaking to people about the goddess Laerme and the glory of fire. I think I managed to make some converts and actually had a pleasant day. The local priestess was so happy she gave me a potion. Of all the things that it could have been, I was really surprised to find out it was a potion of charisma. Lyle had disappeared for the day.
Erntenir 5, today I decided to find myself a better bow and spent the better part of the morning tracking one down. I finally managed to find a craftsman that had a fine composite short bow for sale at 250 gold pieces. I barely had the strength to pull it and when I shot the arrow it almost disappeared into the target, very nice. I then took my purchase back to the inn. Lyle had again disappeared for most of the day. In fact just as I was decided to retire for the night he returned and quickly drew off Letan into the corner and started speaking to her. As I went up the stairs I watched them then proceed out the doors into the street. I then went upstairs and went to bed.
Erntenir 6, When I awoke and went down into the common room, I had breakfast with Rah’hal. It was strange that Lyle and Letan were nowhere to be found. Hmm, this is very strange. It was later that morning when Letan returned. She looked a little tired and her eyes were a little wild. I think the only reason why I knew this was because I had gotten to know her moods. She was just about bursting to tell me something. In fact she finally related a story about what she had done last night with Lyle. It seems that during the night she helped Lyle onto the estate of a local merchant. Lyle had been hired to try and burgle the house. They had tried to get over the wall of the estate fairly early in the evening and were thwarted when Lyle almost fell of the wall and alerted the guards on the estate. They were forced to leave for a while and came back hours later to try again. This time they managed to get over the wall onto the grounds, sneaked over to a large tree beside the house. They then climbed the tree without being seen and had to hide in the tree when an alert guard came over to investigate when Lyle had the misfortune of breaking a branch in the tree. They then managed to get a rope and grapple to attach to the roof and Letan got onto the roof and then had to try and take out the guard. Lyle followed Letan moments later to find her grappling with a guard. He went to help her by trying to punch the guard in the groin. Unfortunately he hit Letan instead. The guard was about to alert his companions when Letan head butted him in the face knocking him out. They then tied him up and gagged him. They next approached the hatch in the roof and managed to spot the guard at the bottom of the ladder. It seemed that the guard heard the hatch open and proceeded to go up onto the roof to change places with the guard there. The two of them barely managed to knockout this guard and snuck down the ladder to investigate the house further. They didn’t get far however as the next room contained too many people for them to deal with. Lyle then had the bright idea to try to get in through a window and the two of them went back to the roof and Letan then held onto the rope while Lyle dangled alongside the house. Letan got back a little revenge when she let Lyle bounce up and down on the rope when she was holding it. He was only down the side of the house for about a minute when he signaled Letan to pull him up.
Letan almost let go of the rope as she was pulling it up. She finally managed
to get him back up on the roof and Lyle then told her that he was unable to get
into the house. There were bars on the windows preventing him from getting in.
He then told Letan that they were leaving. They were unfortunate to encounter a
group of guardsmen just as they were climbing over the wall and they were
forced to flee into the night. Lyle had been smart enough to map out an escape
route and he was successful in making a clean getaway. They then had hid out
for the rest of the night and Letan had been paranoid the whole night that she
would have been captured by the watch. She also said that Lyle had been the one
to make all the noise and she had been as quiet as a ghost and was quite proud
that she could sneak around like a rogue. I always thought that she had some
sneakiness in her. In the afternoon I wandered over to the
Erntenir 7, Lyle was happy to see us in the morning and gave each of us 500 gold pieces for the share of the magical long sword he had sold. He then gave me another 450 gold pieces paying of my share of the debt incurred when we brought him back from the dead. I then sat down and counted up my money. I was rather surprised when it added up to nearly 2 000 gold pieces. Alas it didn’t take me very long to spend it as well. As a group we pooled some of our resources and I went and visited the temple to Nesirie again. This time I purchased quite a few potions of cure moderate wounds for the group. In fact Rah’hal spent some of his money on two potions of cure light wounds also. I also purchased eight vials of holy water so all of us had two vials each. Lyle managed to track down someone who had some thunder stones and alchemist’s fire.
Erntenir 8, today I spent some time tracking down scrolls while I had some work done to my flaming dagger. I managed to find a very nice red garnet for only 140 gold pieces that a kind weapon smith attached to the pummel of my dagger. It looks very nice now that the work has been done. It would have been nice to use a ruby but they were much too expensive for me. I managed to purchase two scrolls. The first one contained the spells invisibility, blur, and ventriloquism. The other contained three copies of identify. Rah’hal bought some masterwork bolts for his crossbow and also purchased two potions of cure minor wounds along with a potion of cure moderate wounds. Even Letan spent some of her money, purchasing two potions of cure moderate wounds. After accounting for the remainder of our stay, I sadly found myself out of money, and I still had not gone shopping for any new clothing.
Erntenir 10, we awoke before dawn and Lyle had regained his shadow walk for the week. We then decided to go right to the temple and start exploring. By the flames of Laerme we were unlucky in that when we appeared in the forest we were directly inside the camp of a squad of bugbears. There were four of them and the fight got interesting in a hurry. It seemed that Lyle used up the remaining charge on the wand of hold person and it worked. Rah’hal then struck at another one stunning it for a round. Letan drew her swords and proceeded to engage one of them and killed it. The fight lasted only moments so it appeared and the bugbears were dead. I took a moment to make sure that the others were alright and that’s when Lyle showed me a new wand that he had acquired during our stay in Calrie. He told me that it was a wand of cure moderate wounds and it was almost fully charged. I had been slightly wounded in the fight and he used it on me. In fact all four of us had been slightly wounded so he used up some charges from both of his wands. We then looted the bugbears and proceeded to move off some distance and made camp while we had some breakfast and discussed strategy. I then used the wands of bull’s strength and invisibility on everyone and then we started walking towards the wall in the center of the massive clearing. We then moved through the clearing in the wall and spotted two trails leading off into the distance. The smaller trail went right up to the front door of the building in the center while the larger trail went off to the left and around the corner. There was a piece of wood up ahead that was being used for a sign but none of us could understand either language that was scrawled on the board.
We proceeded past and went up to the front doors. There was a chain wrapped
around the door handles and lots of symbols written all over the door. Some of
them appeared to shimmer with a silvery radiance. Looking past the door we
realized that there was a door on either side of this entrance. Looking further
we realized that both of these doors were also chained and covered in silvery
runes. We then decided to go completely around the structure looking for
another way in. We walked all around the structure and couldn’t find another
entrance other than some windows that were on the upper level of the structure.
We were back to the starting point trying to decide what to do next when out of
the corner of her eye Letan spotted some very large ravens that were diving
down to attack us. We managed to kill all but two of the birds when I cast a
burning hands spell on a bunch of them and forced them to fly away. After the
encounter with the birds we continued exploring the site. We found what looked
to be a couple of out buildings that looked to be promising in our
explorations. We also found the remains of a tower that still had a sturdy oak
door that was also bound with chains but didn’t have all the silvery runes
covering it. At this point it was getting close to
The chamber was very low with the ceiling only being about four feet high with rubble everywhere. This made it difficult for everyone but Lyle to move around. The next thing we knew we were being swarmed by what appeared to be dozens of rats. We were all busy attacking at least five or six each and just as we killed off these ones, more started appearing. I even had to cast a burning hands spell on myself. Thankfully the blessing of Laerme was on me as I was unaffected by the flames. Gleefully the rats weren’t. Just as we killed these ones off more of them started to swarm us. Letan managed to cast off her entangle spell and trapped half of them while Lyle and I each pulled out a vial of alchemist’s fire and tossed them at the other rats. We managed to kill these ones and I tossed another vial at the ones that were entangled and killed them. I needed some fresh air and told the group that I was going back outside for a few moments and Letan and Rah’hal decided to join me while Lyle stayed down there snooping. He came back up to join us a few minutes later and said that he had found a trap door in good condition partially buried under some rubble and the remains of a rug. After taking stock of the situation, Lyle and I were both running low on spells so we decided to head back to the forest so we could rest for the remainder of the day so we could recover our spells. We headed back to the campsite we had made the day before to rest. I also took the time to look at all the rat bites we had suffered and it appeared that the bites that all of us had with the exception of Rah’hal did not look good. Rats are notorious for carrying diseases so we might have to get them checked out by a higher level cleric than I am in order to be cured. As long as the disease doesn’t spring up all at once, we should be OK for a few days at least. The night passed by and we awoke in the morning.
Erntenir 11, I informed the group that I wasn’t moving until I had regained my divine spells for the day so Lyle and Letan went off scouting and returned just as I was starting my prayers. It seemed that I was the only one who was feeling the effects of the rat bites as I was feeling a little woozy and weaker than normal. As soon as my prayers were done we headed across towards the temple. Soon a raven took off from the tower and climbed up until it was circling us again. We managed to get to the collapsed area again and Lyle started to take a look. The smell of rotting rats soon drove him back to us. We then decided to spread out some oil and I caused the oil to flame up and we were then forced to wait for a while as the smoke started billowing up out of the hole. In fact the plume could probably be seen for quite a distance as it was black and thick. We waited for a couple of hours until the smoke died down and then we sent Lyle in to take a look. He managed to crawl over to where the trap door had been and found a hole in the floor. The door had burnt up in the fire and he could see the remains of a set of stairs at the bottom of the 10-foot hole. He then managed to get Letan to crawl over to him to help get down the hole. Letan pulled out a rope and attached it around some rubble and climbed down. Lyle soon followed and they realized that the room was a wine cellar. Letan found a keg hidden under a loose flagstone in the middle of the floor and the two of them counted over 60 jugs of liquid along with two dozen large barrels that Lyle confirmed was full. He pulled down one of the flasks and managed to open it. Inside was a very nice red wine. The two of them stuffed the keg into his bag and brought up the opened flask. They then crawled back to us and Lyle handed me the flask and told me to try a sample. When I did, I was nicely surprised in that this appeared to be a very nice wine. Comparable to what I had drank while lunching with the Baron in Calrie. Lyle informed us of how many flasks and barrels were down there and we decided to hide the hole and come back for the rest of it later. Lyle took a few moments to disguise the hole and we then continued checking around.
We then found ourselves back at the remains of the tower that had the door with the lock and chains holding it shut. Lyle had no luck at all in trying to pick the lock. In fact he managed to break off one of his picks while trying to open it. Letan was forced to use her sword and managed to break open the lock. Lyle was in front of the door with me behind him and Letan to his right and Rah’hal to his left. He then proceeded to open the door and it almost killed him. When he opened the door, I realized that there were some people standing in the light and they were all holding bows or crossbows. Lyle was nicely outlined in the sunlight as the twang of multiple strings being released all at once was disturbing. Seven missiles hit Lyle in the chest knocking him down. One of the bolts even struck me behind him. Letan and Rah’hal were getting ready to jump into the room when I told them to hold as I drew my Rod of Thunder and Lightning and forcefully spoke the main command word, “Blitzkrieg”. Lyle said that he looked up into the sky just in time to see the lightning bolt travel over his head and hit the wall of the tower with a blast. The thunderclap after the lightning only made things worse for the inhabitants in the tower. When the shock wave stopped, there was only one man still standing in the room and he turned and proceeded to open the door beside him and disappeared from view. I then told Letan and Rah’hal to catch him as I stepped forwards to help Lyle. He had again pulled out his wand and was in the process of healing himself as the other two ran after the man. Once Lyle was on his feet, we then moved into the tower. Lyle started looting the bodies while I checked for anything unusual. It was a minute later when the other two returned dragging the man that had fled. Rah’hal then mentioned something about a room right at the bottom of the stairs that we should check out. We collected the remnants of salvageable treasure and also found two keys in the pouch of the man we had captured.
We started looking in the other rooms and found a couple of chests that were locked. The keys unlocked the chest and Lyle opened them up. Unfortunately he also set off the one trap there when he did so. The trap he set off was a poison needle and he was hit by it and almost immediately was affected by the poison. He doubled over and then fell to the ground groaning in pain. He then said that he was too weak to stand and he didn’t look very good. We found some more loot and proceeded downstairs to take a look at the stuff that Rah’hal mentioned he had seen. Rah’hal then took another look around and realized that a cloak he had noticed the first time no longer appeared to be there. He went over to where it had been and when he brushed his hand across the wall he felt the fabric of the cloak and then it seemed to appear right out of the wall. He put it on and immediately blended against the wall. It looks like he had found a cloak of elvenkind. There was also another chest and a small silver box. Letan turned green with envy and immediately started bartering with Rah’hal to obtain the cloak. She wanted it so badly that she traded her bracers of armor and a vial of alchemist’s fire to him in exchange for the cloak. They were both happy for the trade. We started cataloguing all of the stuff we now had, including some magic items. These included four potions, a long sword, a small steel shield, and lots of coin. We also found three bolts of silk and the item I really liked, a very fine necklace inside the small silver box. At this point we had to decide what to do next. Lyle was curled up in the corner upstairs and was too weak to even stand up. I think we were lucky in that the poison didn’t kill him. If he had been a little bit weaker it probably would have.
After taking all of the loot that we found our next decision was on what to do next. Our prisoner was bound and gagged while we decided what to do. We decided to shadow walk back to Uthra. We headed back to the wine cellar and we all crawled down to the cellar. We retrieved all of the jugs of wine. Sixty-four jugs to be exact. We then held on to all of the stuff and walked to the north side of the Baron’s castle in the woods outside Uthra. Rah’hal was sent into Uthra to rent a wagon and horse to haul all of the wine to the castle. Rah’hal soon returned and we loaded the wagon and made sure that Lyle was comfortable as he was very tired. We managed to get to the castle and met with the Baron. We turned over the prisoner to his custody and he agreed to store the wine we had. We gave him four jugs of the wine as payment. This left fifteen jugs each for the four of us and I took the open jug that we had sampled earlier. The Baron also told us that the help from the Queen had arrived from Calrie. He told us of the female cleric of Nesirie called Faelan, and the wizard named Daene Sadira. She had also sent along a quartermaster, a Khinasi named Jahan Rashida. We spoke with Faelan and when informed of our difficulties, she agreed to prayer for the correct spells tomorrow to help Lyle and me. We then rested for the night. Letan brought the keg into the inn and had the innkeeper put a spigot on it. It turned out to be very good brandy and she agreed to pay us the difference to keep it. She then poured a jug and proceeded to get drunk. We also sold four jugs of the wine to the inn for 20 gold a jug.
Erntenir 12, We met with Faelan in the morning and she cast restoration on Lyle and a remove disease on me and I used lesser restoration to cure myself. Then Lyle met with the Jahan and proceeded to unload most of the coin and all of the goods we had agreed to sell. This included the magic items we didn’t want any more. I told the group to save the diamond necklace and the bolts of silk we had found and I would pay them the difference in gold for them. This was rather expensive as the necklace was worth 2400 gold pieces and the silk was 30 gold a bolt. This didn’t leave me with much money. Lyle was quick to pay off Rah’hal and Letan for their share of his debt. He was now paid up for the raise dead we had paid for. We managed to get the potions identified and they were potions of speed, water breathing, cure light wounds, and cure serious wounds. Lyle put the water breathing in his bag and gave me the potion of cure light wounds while keeping the potion of cure serious wounds. We then rested for the remainder for the day as our plan was to return just before dawn to the temple.
Erntenir 13, we shadow walked and appeared right behind the tower. The door was open and we went in. Lyle checked out the hidden door and could not find a trap. He also missed the spell that was on the door so when Letan opened the door the fire trap spell went off. Since I was behind them I didn’t get hit. We then looked inside for the trap door and found that it was closed. I then cast a detect magic on the door and realized that there were two spells currently cast on it. I walked over to the door and tried to open it but it appeared stuck. I then took out the wand of bull’s strength and used it on all of us and we found a large timber to use in forcing open the trap door. It took almost ten minutes before we got the door open and when it did I forced it open. Another fire trap spell was set off but I ignored the flames. The rest of the group wasn’t so lucky. Lyle and I then used a couple of cure spells to boost everyone back up before we hopped down to the next level. Letan was our scout and with her new cloak she was almost invisible. She went along for a while until the passageway branched to the right. By her reckoning she figured the branch continued towards the temple. We continued on the main tunnel and followed it until it came out inside a thicket of trees. It had taken about thirty minutes to get here. Letan then marked where we were and we turned around and started heading back to where the branch was. We then proceeded down this tunnel until it opened into a room. Letan looked in and spotted a brown skinned reptile of some sort and she realized with a shock that the reptile was a basilisk. Letan was just turning back around the corner to warn us of the creature when I suddenly felt a sharp burning pain in my lower back and almost fell down. I let out an involuntary scream and Lyle turned around and shouted that I was being attacked by someone. He turned and moved up to me and attacked the person behind me. Rah’hal was torn about what to do and finally decided to help me out. He ran towards us and attempted to tumble over us and succeeded barely. When he landed he was off balance and fell to the ground and rolled over back to his feet. Letan also ran back to help me out as I staggered against the wall.
Letan thrust with her rapier and managed to hit the person behind me. I was just grasping my rod when there was a slight pop and a flash of light in front of me and suddenly there was a man in robes standing about 50 feet away from me. The rest of the group was still fighting with my attacker when I managed to alert them to the apparent spell caster now in front of us. Letan then turned and looked at the man and muttered to herself as she spotted the brown head of the reptile peering around the corner by the wizard, she turned and ran back the way she had just come. Lyle then whipped out his wand and proceeded to cure me of most of the damage I had suffered. I was lucky in that the blade that had struck me appeared to have been poisoned and I managed to throw off the effects of the poison. Rah’hal managed to hit the elven rogue a few times and forced her to retreat while she still could. But not before she attacked me again and knocked me to my knees. I was still facing the other way and used the rod to blast the wizard with a lightning bolt. The wizard had some sort of spell protection as the bolt stopped just in front of him. The basilisk it appeared was just an illusion as it faded away in a blast of sparks when the bolt hit it. Rah’hal then jumped over us and charged up the hallway towards the wizard. Lyle then took the time to cure me again. At the same time I turned and attacked the rogue with my rod and blasted her with a solid hit. I also managed to make the rod spark when it hit her and she immediately jumped backwards and turned and abruptly disappeared. It’s a good thing Lyle cured me again because just at that time the wizard let loose a lightning bolt that sailed down the corridor. Lyle and Rah’hal managed to jump out of the way, but I was nailed with a direct hit blasting me unconscious. The blessing of Laerme was not with me today as the blast also destroyed my rod of Thunder and Lightning that was in my hand. A rod of lightning that was destroyed by a lightning bolt. Go figure! I guess Laerme didn’t want me to have it. I guess I was lucky in the fact that it didn’t blow up in my hand and just melted into slag. The next thing I knew I was waking up to the sound of combat behind me again. I could hear Lyle giggling away as he was standing beside me. I looked around and spotted Letan and Rah’hal still down the corridor and no sign of the wizard. I then turned and looked behind me to see four images of the wizard and I then pulled out my bow and started shooting at him.
We managed to remove the mirror images around him before he abruptly disappeared with a wave of his hand. I was standing there panting from the exertion of the battle. I was not very happy with the loss of my rod but there was nothing I could do about it but carry on. Letan and Rah’hal were still behind us and Lyle told me the wizard had put up some sort of wall between us. The wizard had then cast a mirror image and then a couple more spells that had appeared not to work on us at this time. We then waited for a few minutes and the wall of air faded away. We now had to discuss what we were going to do next. It looked like these might well have been the leaders that the captured bandit had been talking about to the Baron. These guys were tough. The spell he had used to put the wall up showed that he was a very accomplished wizard indeed. It might be a challenge to knock him off for good. The one thing the battle did do was to give us the needed experience so that all of us gained in power and skills. I now had the knowledge of another arcane spell while the rest of the group was stronger in their chosen class. Lyle said that he had gained more divine power and that might be a good thing. He also said that he had already used up half of the charges available in his wand of cure moderate wounds. I guess it’s a good thing he acquired it when he did. We now had to decide if we were going to continue on or if we were going to retreat back outside to rest. We decided to continue on. Lyle and I made sure that everyone was healed and we turned the corner. In front of us was a corridor that stopped in a blank wall and a branch to the left. We checked out the branch to the left and found a short corridor with a door on either wall and nothing on the end. Lyle investigated the door on the left and opened it to reveal a room full of weapons. I then cast a detect magic and nothing radiated. Lyle then spotted a light crossbow that fired two bolts at once and grabbed it.
He then turned and investigated the other door and opened it. Inside the room appeared to belong to a wizard as all sorts of iron rods and wooden staffs and other neat stuff. He also saw a door in the left hand wall. He then cast a detect magic and started scooping stuff. He handed me two scrolls and said they were magical. I made the mistake of looking at one without checking to see what type of magic they were. The scroll contained explosive runes and went off as soon as I started reading it. I was lucky in that the other scroll burnt up rather than going off like the first one. As it was I was left standing there going Ouch. Lyle whipped out his wand and cast a couple of spells on me to repair the damages. He then told me that there were 9 wands and 3 potions that appeared to be enchanted. He put them into his bag and we looked into the end room. It was just a tiny ten by ten room and it contained a chest in the corner. Lyle investigated and had the trap go off and fill the room with a white powder. It weakened Lyle and I had to cast a lesser restoration for him to get back some of the wisdom he had lost. We turned around and headed back out to the hallway. I then figured that there had to be a secret door or something around here as there was no other doors or anything for people to live in. I told the group to start looking at the walls to find a secret passage. We were back out into the hallway when Lyle spotted the secret door at the end of the hall. When he opened the door it revealed a tube about three feet wide that we had to crawl through to continue. Lyle led the way as I took off my pack and dragged it behind me. We traveled about 30 feet when we came to a tube going up with a ladder going up in a circular fashion. Lyle led the way and after 15 feet came to the top of the ladder. The hatch above was sealed and Lyle couldn’t move it. At this point I pulled out the wand of bull’s strength and used it on all of us. By the blessing of Laerme I was amazed to find that the wand was now fully charged. When I had used it last, I knew that it was only half charged.
Now that everyone had enhanced strength, Rah’hal managed to get the door open by forcing it. He then had to lift up the flagstone that covered the door and we proceeded up into a dusty cobweb filled room. It appeared that nothing had been in this room for some time. There was only one way to go and we looked that way. I was forced to use a light spell so we could at least see something. The one hallway disappeared into the darkness. We slowly went down the hall and commented on the amount of webs that were strung out all through the hallway. We quickly realized why when a phase spider materialized out of nowhere and started attacking us. It managed to bite Lyle and he was strong enough to fight off the poison. We then started putting our backs to the wall and waited for it to appear again so we could attack it. The next thing I knew it was right in front of me and bit me. I felt the poison coursing into my veins and managed to fight off the first effects of the poison. Laerme’s blessing was not with me however when the poison managed to finally weaken me from its effects. I was still standing there when the spider appeared again in front of me and bit me again. This time I was very unlucky as the poison immediately weakened me again as I started to slump to the floor. The rest of the group managed to kill the spider but not before I almost died. My constitution was so weak by now that I thought I was going to die. It was only the thinking of Lyle who tossed me an amulet and told me to break it to somehow lessen the effects of the poison that kept me alive. I then told the group that I now had to find somewhere to rest and we noticed a door ahead. Lyle investigated and then opened the door. We went through the door to find the hallway opening up into a room with a set of stairs going up and a large gong sitting ten feet from the stairs. There were also four doors, two on either side of the room. As we slowly moved into the room, one of the doors on the left side opened up and two bugbears walked into the room. The next thing I knew I was thrown up against the wall as my companions got into a fight with the bugbears. I managed to cast burning hands and then passed out from exhaustion. I do not know what happened next.
When I next woke up we were now camped outside in the trees. The group then told me what had happened. The doors in that large room had all contained some creatures. The group had managed to flee with me while Rah’hal had delayed the enemy long enough to retreat. It’s a good thing too as they informed me that the rooms had contained some bugbears along with a small group of ogres and two giants of some sort. They had also had some large wolves called worgs. Letan had carried me to the ladder headed down and Lyle had almost flown down the ladder. Letan had then grabbed me by the wrists and lowered me down and Lyle had caught me. By then Rah’hal had caught up to us and he had just dived down the hole. He hit the bottom at a run and left Lyle and Letan in his dust. Letan had been in the rear and it’s a good thing she was. She managed to kill the worg that entered the tube behind her but was forced to flee out the other side when the bugbears started using heavy crossbows on her. Six of the bugbears crawled through the tube after her and she managed to get out of the tunnel and ran and jumped over the pit trap while Lyle reset it. Then they started running for the exit. Two of the bugbears set off the trap and fell in. The remaining four continued chasing us. Letan then pulled her bow out and started shooting. Even Lyle got in on the act when he pulled his double shot crossbow and managed to hit the lead bugbear. They then stopped and put me down and helped Letan kill the bugbears. All Lyle did was grab his wand and healed the other two from the rear. They then stopped and looted the bodies once they were dead. Lyle found some coin along with the equipment they were wearing and also found a scroll in the pouch of one of them. It was a divine scroll but he couldn’t understand it because of his current lack of wisdom. They had then beetled out the tunnel to safety. I awakened a few hours later to find the group going over the stuff we had looted. I decided to use one of the identify spells I had on a scroll to check out the items we had found. I started with the nine wands we had taken from the one room. I was not impressed when none of them proved to be real wands. It appeared that someone had cast a spell on them to make them appear to be enchanted. I then tossed the nine wands into a pile and told Lyle to get rid of them, they were useless. I then decided that it was time to rest for the night.
Erntenir 14, I awakened in the morning and continued looking at the other stuff. The three potions were identified as diminution, cure light wounds and the last one appeared to be some sort of treasure finding potion. I wasn’t quite sure. I then gave the cure light wounds to Letan and mentioned that the third one was a bit strange. Letan was now quite bored and grabbed the potion and quaffed it. She then got an urge to investigate the feeling she now had. She quickly disappeared into the undergrowth and it was about two hours later when she returned and announced that she had found a couple of secret doors and the lair of a wizard. She was unsure of what to take and had returned to us to get help in investigating. To make things easier on us, I pulled out the wand of invisibility and used it on Lyle and then hopped up onto Rah’hal’s back so he could carry me. I was still far too weak to walk more than a few paces without tiring. I then cast another one on Rah’hal and we proceeded back into the tunnel. We managed to make into the room that contained all this neat stuff and started investigating. I immediately cast a detect magic and found a few items that appeared to be enchanted. There were two books that glowed along with a leather case that contained something that glowed. I opened the case and found a rod, Very Nice. I was a little unsettled with the radiance coming off this thing as it seemed to be constantly changing. I think I know what it is and if it is a rod of wonder, I don’t know if I really want to use it. We also found three potions along with three iron coffers that contained coins and a crystal ball and a mirror that was set in a wardrobe. There was also an iron box that gave me and Letan the willies just looking at it. I told the rest of the group to leave it alone for now. We also found some normal items like a brass wand sitting on a desk and items useable by a wizard.
While the rest of the group was looking at other stuff, I grabbed one of the books and flipped it open. I started reading it and the group was forced to break my concentration a few minutes later by forcing me to close it. I think I have found a Tome of Understanding. This helps raise a person’s wisdom. Wow! I could really use this. I told the group what the book was and I had an idea about the other one. I still had one identify left and the group decided that I should use it on the book along with the rod and one of the potions. The second book was a Tome of Leadership and Influence, which raised a person’s charisma. Why is Laerme teasing me so? I could use both of these books but I doubt the others will allow me to have both of them. I will try to use my influence to convince the others that I am the most worthy of both of them. The rod is a Rod of Wonder and the command word is Shazam. I really don’t know if I want to use it but I guess I have to as I am the only one who can. We then grabbed all the stuff we were taking and proceeded back out the tunnel so that I could at least regain my divine spells outside. It was really difficult for me to pray for them in this cursed forsaken place. I have now gained in more power thanks to the blessing of Laerme. I think I will now try to attract some followers to our cause. I think I can find someone who worships Laerme the same as me, though it might be difficult. We finally made it back to camp and debated about returning home. I convinced the group to stay for a few days and see if we could recover from our recent encounter. We passed the rest of the day.
Erntenir 15, after helping Lyle and myself to recover slightly from our ailments, we were sitting there bored when Letan who was on guard abruptly swore an oath and I heard her cast a spell. Just then we all heard the sounds of large footsteps and became aware of a giant and possibly some flunkies. As I stood up, the spell that Letan had cast seemed to have no effect. Lyle and Rah’hal both stepped into the brush to hide as I rapidly thought through what I could use to hurt this critter. The hill giant stepped through the brush that had hidden it and he looked at me standing all alone in front of him. I then said a prayer to Laerme as I drew the rod of wonder and said “Shazam”. The next thing I knew the giant seemed to be growing in height. It took a moment for me to realize that I was under the effects of a reduce spell as I shrank to six inches in height. The giant gave a grunt of surprise as I shrank down but looked down and spotted me anyways. This is not my day, my first use of this annoying rod and already I regret having to wield it. I then grabbed a scroll and cast a fireball and it seemed to fizzle as it hit. Letan then peppered the giant with arrows, forcing it to turn around as Rah’hal charged forwards to protect me. Behind the giant I could now hear the sounds of a couple of ogres. They moved forwards to engage us with the giant knocking down Rah’hal. I found myself using the rod again. This time it produced a massive gust of wind that struck everyone down except the giant. Even he ended up swaying back and forth. The next change I got to use it again and this time I managed to conjure up a large rhino that didn’t seem to be happy to be here. It charged the giant and gored him savagely. By now I had to run up and save Rah’hal after he got nailed by the giant. I just managed to get to him in time to cast a spell on him to heal him. He woke up after a few seconds and proceeded to drink a potion while I cast another spell on him. When I finally looked for Letan I couldn’t see her and the giant had started attacking the rhino. Thankfully the rhino finally prevailed and killed the giant for us and then turned and tried to attack Rah’hal. He was forced to lead the rhino away and returned a few moments later. The ogre had moved up and managed to spot me in the bushed and we soon got into a merry little scrap. I ended up using my dagger to give him the hot foot while Lyle got him in the back. We then killed off the last ogre and checked on Letan, she was still breathing and looked pale. Lyle then said that we should return home and this time I agreed with him. He then tried to shadow walk us home but couldn’t right now so we headed back to our camp and waited for the sun to set before he walked us back to Uthra. We appeared just outside of town and walked to the keep to speak with the Baron and checked to see what sort of gear was available to purchase. I ended up selling the rod of wonder for a fully charged wand of cure moderate wounds along with a decently charged wand of magic missiles. I also purchased a divine scroll with four spells on it and Lyle suggested that we purchase a rope of climbing that was available. We all chipped in to buy the rope and picked up a few more things for later. We then spoke with the cleric in residence and she cast the spells she had memorized and asked me to return tomorrow so she could finally heal my poison damage. We then decided to rest for the night.
Erntenir 16, when we awoke, I spoke to the seneschal to see about talking with the Baron, he agreed to speak with us when he took a break from sitting for his official portrait. I then went to see the cleric and she cast a spell to return my constitution back to full strength. We then went to see the Baron and much to my surprise and pleasure the woman doing the painting was a Khinasi worshipper of Laerme. She introduced herself as Chalina al’Mazin. After listening to our conversation with the Baron, she appeared interested in accompanying us in our return visit to the temple. She said that she was a warrior and could take care of herself. The rest of the group agreed to let her join us. Over the next week I managed to read both tomes and got the benefit of a higher wisdom and charisma. The rest of the group said that I owed them big time. I agreed to pay them something for the use of the tomes. We spent eight days before I was ready to return to the temple.
Erntenir 24, we prepared to return with Chalina coming with us. She asked where our horses were and was a little surprised when Lyle smugly told her that we didn’t need horses. We all grabbed each other in a circle and when we were done we were just outside the building. Lyle then used the rope to get us up to a window and we then managed to crawl in and started exploring. There wasn’t much left in the building or any of the rooms. All the furniture and furnishings had been long destroyed or damaged. We spent the next few minutes exploring and found the stairs that lead down. We made sure there was nothing in the upper level before descending and checking out the next level. Chalina looked around and mentioned what a nasty place this appeared to be. I told her that evil could come in many forms. We then headed down and continued exploring. We found a ramp going down and in one of the rooms Letan managed to spot a crossbow bow up on a ledge. It looked very nice and Rah’hal took it and put it in his case. We continued exploring until we opened a door and were confronted by some ghouls. We readied for combat. The fight was no fun as these foul beasts touch has the ability of paralyzing people if they are not hearty enough. This fight was unlucky in that I managed to cause some of them to flee from my divine power but as soon as they left a bunch more appeared and attacked us. We were forced to flee when it was only Chalina and Rah’hal that were able to fight, the rest of us were paralyzed and unable to fight. The nasty thing about these beasts was that every time we killed one it exploded and did frost damage from their body parts striking us. Chalina summoned her steed and put the three frozen bodies on it and proceeded to go back upstairs until we all thawed out. By now I was extremely pissed off at these foul undead beasts and bullied the group to return down below to continue the fight. This time I cast mage armor on all of us and then pulled out the wand of bull’s strength and used it on everyone. We then headed back down. When we got to the door where these things were, we stopped and then cast protection and resistance spells against the cold. We then proceeded to open the door and attacked. We managed to kill almost twenty of the beasts before the fight was done. We all suffered from the paralysis but this time we all managed to shrug off the effects after a few moments. Only Chalina seemed to be effected for very long. I suffered the most damage from the beasts exploding when they died. Since I was frozen when Rah’hal killed the last two, there wasn’t anything I could do about the damage and I collapsed unconscious just as I was able to move again.
It was Letan who roused me by using one of our cure wands. She was able to use them now as she had gained the ability to cast a couple of spells per day. Now at least we have a backup in case Lyle or I are knocked out. I sensed after the battle that I had gained in power again. I could now cast more divine spells and was able to effect more undead with my divine abilities. Lyle said that he had also gained in divine power. We were all getting stronger for it. We then continued exploring while I kept an eye on the corridor that we had come down. The rooms that the foul undead had been in were disgusting. Lyle and Rah’hal searched them quickly and we managed to find a small ivory statue of Laerme that I kept, it looked quite nice and I have to start collecting these items if I wish to found a church. Lyle then found two pieces of jewelry that I immediately started drooling over. One was a gold necklace with three very nice rubies set in it along with a gold ring with an absolutely massive ruby set in it. The necklace appraised at 7500 gold pieces while the ring appeared to be worth about 5000 gold pieces. Why does Laerme tease me so, these would be magnificent items to show my allegiance to the harp and flames of Laerme. Something else we found was a steel shield hanging on the wall. When Lyle cast a detect magic, it glowed from its enchantment. As Chalina was the only one of us to be using a shield we gave it to her. It was much better than the one she was using now. While they were doing this I managed to hear something out in the corridor. We had walked by a locked door earlier while fighting the undead and now something was making noises from behind the door. I alerted the rest of the group and Lyle came up to investigate along with Letan and Chalina. They stood guard on either side of the door while Lyle proceeded to pick the lock. The door was then pushed open and Chalina spotted the dozen or so people that appeared to be prisoners. There were nine men and two women inside this room. All the men were chained to the wall by manacles. Chalina then turned to me and said that I should come up and take a look. The prisoners were frightened of us at first but quickly moved into the room projecting a soothing presence. I managed to get them calmed down while Lyle went to work on freeing them from their restraints. It took a few minutes for him to do this and by then I had decided that we had to return these people to Uthra.
After speaking with them it appeared that a merchant named Oruzareld, along
with his servants and family had been captured by the ghouls just east of
Uthra. They had been brought to the
Sehnir 4, in the early
morning we shadow walked back to the temple. Appearing at our campsite we made
sure that nothing was amiss. We then left Lucy there to guard the camp until we
returned. She seemed to realize what Letan wanted her to do so we then
proceeded to enter the
Unfortunately for Rah’hal, this is where his buddies were standing as reinforcements the moment he came through the door. They were standing in the doorway on the other side as Rah’hal charged through and was then entangled by the net they had set up on the ceiling. He didn’t expect it at all and was completely entangled. Then Letan moved up to try and help him while Lyle brought up the rear. I wisely moved up to stand behind Chalina as she moved up to attack more of them coming at us from the corridor we were watching. The fight was furious and after a few moments the remaining ones retreated but were stopped by a foreign voice that was very forceful. This caused them to turn around and attack us again, along with more reinforcements. We managed to easily kill them. We also had to deal with an ogre and found out afterwards that Letan was attacked by a well armored ogre. She killed it along with a whole lot of gnolls and a few hobgoblins. Rah’hal showed me how versatile he was by managing to extract himself from the confinement of the net after a few moments. Letan had given him the much needed time by engaging the enemy. Lyle sat back and used the wand of cure moderate wounds on them, thus making sure they stayed alive. By the time we were done we had slain more than two dozen assorted beasts. Not back for two minutes of combat. Chalina and Rah’hal then made us aware that they had gained in power. I think Chalina is going to fit in very nicely with the Stellar Four Adventuring Company. By the blessing of Laerme I hope it is a long and fruitful relationship. After a few moments it took us to give some people healing, we continued exploring. Lyle casually looted the bodies and came up with quite a handful of coins. We left the coppers for the scavengers and continued investigating. Lyle and I had used up quite a few charges off the wands and we soon ready to go on. We spent a few minutes exploring until we headed down a corridor with doors on either side of the hallway at the end. Letan was twenty feet away when we heard the twang of a crossbow going off and she was struck in the stomach. The other bolt went past her and narrowly missed Rah’hal who sensed it at the last moment and dodged out of the way. Letan got pissed off then and charged forward and spotted the murder hole in the wall; she grabbed a flask of alchemist’s fire and managed to toss it through the hole. While Lyle had stepped up and checked the door on the right.
He then tried to open the door while Letan waited to see what had happened with her flask. She could hear screams and smelled burning flesh. Lyle was not successful in opening the door so Chalina stepped up and put her boot into it and the door flew across the room nailing a man standing there. The fight was on at this point as we made short work of the human guards standing in this room. Letan then managed to get the door open beside her and looked into the room and spotted the corpse now lying beside a crossbow mounted to face down the corridor. Nothing else appeared to be in the room. The rest of us moved up to support Chalina and Rah’hal; they had charged into the room and lay waste to everyone around them. After a few seconds, the lone remaining guard tried to flee down the corridor, while the one guard still in the room dropped his sword and surrendered in front of Chalina. Rah’hal ran up behind the fleeing guard and punched him in the head. Then we heard the sound of multiple crossbows being fired as Rah’hal turned and started back towards us. Then a bolt of lightning went through Rah’hal and almost hit me while I was trying to see what was going on. I then spotted more guards and told Rah’hal to attack and looked at Chalina. She then used the pummel of her scimitar to knock the man in front of her out and charged up behind Rah’hal. Moments later more men entered the room from rear and supported their brothers. These guys looked and acted a lot tougher than these wimpy guards. These guys had been going down after one blow, not so the reinforcements. It took Chalina a few blows with her flaming scimitar to knock down these guys. Letan soon joined us and the guards were soon no more. We took stock of the situation and realized that we were doing some serious damage to whoever inhabited this temple. Now we continue on exploring. We spent the next few minutes walking around and exploring. By the looks of things the undead were laired up here. We headed down a corridor until we looked into a large room supported by columns. The next thing I knew this unearthly singing started up and I almost lost myself in the rhythm of the music. Suddenly Kei’lo crawled out of his pouch and bit me on the wrist, hard. That hurt and suddenly I realized we were under attack by two bird-like creatures that were definitely female. I realized that they were harpies and noticed that only Letan had been immune to their singing. The rest were mesmerized by the song.
The doors on either side of the room burst open and to my dismay about a dozen ghouls surged into the room. I yelled at Letan to take out the harpies while I dealt with the ghouls. With Laerme’s blessing they wouldn’t be a problem for long. As Letan fired arrows from her bow, I gathered up my energy to repel these foul beasts. Laerme’s fire was strong as I managed to force seven of them from existence. With Laerme’s blessings I was now destroying stronger and fouler undead. I then managed to remove the remaining ones from existence but not before I was attacked. I managed to withstand their chill touch when the beast scratched me; Letan also shrugged off the blows from the one attacking her. We then started attacking the harpies when more ghouls burst into the room. This was getting nasty. By now I had managed to kick the others back to their senses and turned to help Letan with the remaining harpy. This turned out to be quite a fight by the time it was done. I also learned something further about Lyle when one of the ghouls turned to run and I heard him command it to stop, just as Chalina stepped up and slashed it with her flaming scimitar, killing it. I know that the ghoul had stopped by Lyle’s command so he must worship a deity from the darker side. We took stock of the situation after this fight and Lyle pulled out his wand and started using it on every one. Moments later he was gurgling when a sword suddenly appeared in his chest, being held by that same woman who had been attacking us. Letan managed to pull out her rapier and managed a quick thrust just as she faded away again. There was a drop of blood on the tip of her sword when she looked at it. Lyle then turned the wand on himself and healed his wounds. He then started complaining that it had become depleted in a hurry. Lyle then wanted to go home and said he wanted to try shadow walking again. Well we decided to try and only Lyle faded away. We all stood there looking at each other until Lyle returned moments later looking absolutely pale white. He shuddered and said that we had to get out of the temple for it to work. He wouldn’t speak about what he had seen in the shadows. We continued on exploring for about an hour before we came to a spot that Letan investigated. She soon came back and said that she had found a peephole and should she take a look. I just looked at her and walked up and slid the wood open and looked inside a room to see two male clerics wearing dark robes. I couldn’t get a look at their holy symbols but the conversation didn’t sound very good. The stronger looking one was telling his subordinate that he had taken of the exits leaving this level and he wanted the marauding group that was roaming this area to be found without further delay. He then left the room with the other guy following behind. I went back to the group and told them that we had been trapped in here and to see if this guy was for real.
Lyle started leading us back to the stairs up and just before we got there, we found a wall of stone blocking the way. We then turned around and headed to the other stairs and found to our dismay that a wall of stone was there too. I then told the group that I had to find a place to pray very soon to regain my divine and arcane spells by the grace of Laerme. Lyle led us to a spot to rest and recover for the time it took to regain my spells. Lyle also said that he had gained in power as a rogue. We were also looking over the items we had gleamed from our explorations. Including a set of elven Chain mail made out of mithral. Letan was still deciding if she wanted to have it over wait for something else better to come along. It took me twice the time as usual to regain my spells. It was very hard to connect to Laerme’s presence like I usually can anywhere else. I had managed to regain them so we planned to press on. The explorations continued until we came to an area that was uncharted. We proceeded slowly until we came to a room with a large fireplace. When Lyle moved up to investigate, he disturbed a large snake that appeared to be lairing there. It struck at him as he jumped back. Letan then charged up and attacked the snake. Lyle was bitten but managed to throw off the effects of the poison. Letan was not so lucky when she was hit. At first I thought she had been lucky also until suddenly she cramped over in pain and turned very pale. It seems this snake’s poison was very virulent. At this point I pulled out the wand of bull’s strength and gave a boost to everyone. Then I cast mage armor on Chalina and me before we continued on. It’s a good thing we did when we were jumped by a wizard and that darned rogue that had been sniping away at us. The fight was fierce and the wizard was finally forced away when Chalina stepped up and struck him twice with her flaming scimitar. I watched the blows stagger the man and he almost went down. His shadow had by now moved up after peppering Letan with arrows from the corner of the hallway. She was forced to step up and prevent Letan and Chalina from getting to the wizard as he stepped back and drank a potion. He was then forced to cast a teleport spell to get away from us.
I figured that they had either just gone around the corner to regroup or were gone for a while. I told the group to continue on until we came to a door that Chalina kicked cleanly off the hinges in her anger. The warriors on the other side then shot off their crossbows at her as she moved into the room. Letan and Rah’hal followed and the slaughter commenced. These guards were absolute wimps and went down far too easy. In fact only one of them remained standing after just a few seconds of combat. Chalina put her sword under the chin of the last one standing and he dropped his sword and soiled himself in terror. He managed to stammer out that there were more guards behind him as we moved forwards as a group. Chalina went through the door and encountered more guards just as easy as the last ones to knock down. The fight continued and I then cast invisibility on Lyle who was guarding our back. I told him to try and sneak attack for the most effective tactic. He then waited as I moved up to the young man standing terrified against the wall. I told him to close his eyes and turn around and he wouldn’t get hurt. He gulped and closed his eyes with a whimper. As I thought the wizard returned. I couldn’t see his shadow but I ‘m sure that he’s somewhere around. The wizard and rogue didn’t stick around for long and disappeared, this time they didn’t come back. After taking stock of the situation, we decided to continue exploring and mapping. We were close to finding all of the rooms on this level, we also found lots of stairs that were going down to the next level. We even found what appeared to be a large temple dedicated to some sort of earth god as the room was filled with dirt and smelled very loamy. We were very careful moving past this area as it appeared dangerous. We continued coming across small groups of guards and we took them out quickly. We also found some items of interest while we were exploring. One of these items appeared to be a rod of cancellation. Usable once, it would nullify any item or permanent spell that it touched.
We finally came across a corridor that contained some small cells. One of these
was really sealed well. It included lead all around the door seal and symbols
spread all around the door. We continued on after a good look until we came
across a scroll that contained some symbols that I recognized as a seal to
prevent good beings from passing through. I noticed that some of these symbols
had been etched in this cell door. I mentioned it to the group and we went back
to this door and Chalina and I took the time to melt the lead that was sealing
the door shut. We then proceeded to open the door and inside I could see the
shimmering effect of a spell. In the middle of the cell a lion crouched as if
prepared to pounce? I studied the cell for some time and realized that the lion
was not moving at all; in fact it didn’t even appear to be breathing. The
shimmering inside the door seemed to prevent anything from entering. I then
thought of the rod we had just found and drew it and touched the tip to the
shimmering spell. There was a strange sound and then the rod seemed to suck the
spell into it and then turned brittle and crumbled. By the blessing of Laerme
the lion started breathing and then looked at us in confusion. I told the group
to put up their weapons while trying to show the creature that we meant no
harm. It started speaking to us in a strange language so I pulled a scroll of
tongues and used it to communicate to the beast. After a few moments he started
speaking Elvish so that some of us could understand him. He introduced himself
as
So now it appears that Lyle has gained a follower also. We continued exploring
and found another chamber that contained a human with a giant guard. We killed
then but not before the giant fell on the prisoner that they were torturing in
the chamber and killed her. We then looted the bodies and proceeded to check
the two cells that were in this room. One of them contained two women that I
started speaking with while Chalina checked out the other one. This contained
two orc warriors who had not wanted to join the rest of their tribe in serving
the humans. Chalina then managed to cow the orcs into her service by freeing
them and getting them to swear a blood oath to serve her. We even managed to
scrape together some decent weapons and armor for them as they gladly joined
our merry little band. The two women appeared to be simple peasants that were
very glad to be rescued by us. They had been abducted just outside Uthra. Their
names were Mirlonista and Doriesta. They agreed to accompany us until we found
a way to get out of here. In fact I already have plans for them when we get out
of her and back to home. I think I have found a couple of servants for our
house. Only time will tell. We continued exploring and found a room containing
two gnolls. The orc’s charged in when Chalina yelled at them to charge and
managed to give a good account of themselves with Chalina helping a little to
finish off the two gnolls. We continued exploring and finally decided that we
would either have to stop for a break or rest for the night. Letan wanted to
rest for the night so she could recover some of her lost constitution from the
battle with the snake earlier. I finally put my foot down and told them that we
were stopping for a few hours and then we would continue on. Lyle’s
recommendation was to head down to try and find the exit we knew about below.
We had now mapped out the level we were on and had found no other exit. I
agreed with his assessment and we started down the stairs to the next level.
As the rest of us moved up, Chalina told her two guards to hold the rear and
shout if anything appeared. They both gave a salute and turned around and moved
off a few feet into the darkness. Meanwhile the fight continued with the
owlbear and the sounds of the struggle soon attracted the attention of a large
armored troll. Rah’hal spotted him and moved up to attack. He was caught and
then shredded in the trolls claws before he tossed the now unconscious Rah’hal
over his shoulder. By now the owlbear was dead and Leon and Chalina stepped up
to attack it with Letan bringing up the rear. This guy proved hard to hit as he
started doing some serious damage to the fighters before he was finally knocked
down. We then proceeded to merrily burn all the troll bits we could find. We
also found some loot including a ring of fire resistance that Chalina found and
put on. Lyle managed to get to Rah’hal before he expired from his wounds. After
the fight was over, I was forced to use my strongest cure scroll I had to
revive him. Lyle then announced that his wand of curing was empty. It took a
few more cures before everyone was feeling better and we continued on.
Moments later when
The fight was started before we realized it and it took a few moments before we knew what was going on. The rest of the group moved up to attack and we quickly killed them. I was standing behind the orcs as the fight was winding down, in hindsight I guess I should have been expecting what happened as I was savagely attacked from the rear by the annoying female rogue who was becoming a thorn in our side. She did some damage to me when her sword nailed me from behind. She then tried to retreat as Chalina turned to see who had attacked me. Letan came out of the room just in time to see Chalina strike at someone on the other side of the door. Then she heard the sounds of footsteps as the person tried to get away. She didn’t figure on Chalina chasing her down the hallway. Letan then ran forwards as I told her it was that bloody rogue again. She then charged down the hallway after Chalina. They almost managed to catch that damn thief. In fact Chalina managed to tackle her to the ground but she got to her feet and was attacked by Letan. The rogue took some damage just as the rest of us came around the corner to help with the attack. Just then I spotted her partner the mage down the hallway and he started casting a spell as soon as he saw the fight. I knew what the spell was immediately and having no counter to a cloudkill, screamed at the group to retreat from the noxious fumes before it was too late. We retreated back into the room that Lyle had been attacked in and I liked it immediately except for the gruesome displays on the walls. It looks like this room is dedicated to fire as everything was orange or red. The frescoes on the walls showed flames and flame creatures everywhere. Some of them were doing gruesome things. I then told the group that this was a good time for us to hole up for the night and used our new wand of healing to help the badly wounded. We then investigated the room and it’s a good thing we did. In the one corner was a large curtain and when we checked behind it, a passageway led off into the distance. Off in the darkness we could see one torch lighting up a hallway and I ordered Letan to go down and investigate by herself. She slipped off into the darkness and I told Rah’hal to keep an eye on her so that if she got into trouble he would know. She came back about a minute later to say that it was a large hallway with a pair of massive bronze doors at one end and the other end opened up into an immense cavern.
I then told the group that we were going to stay here for a few hours so that
Lyle could regain some spells. Our order of watch was that the orcs would guard
the area that the wizard had cast the noxious cloud from. In fact they found
some rags and stuffed them around the door leading out to the hallway and then
they settled with orders to alert us if something tried to come through.
Rah’hal took first watch right beside the curtain so he could look down the
other hallway. It was about three hours later when Rah’hal heard the sounds of
lots of boots walking up the hallway. He managed to alert us to the fact that
we were about to be attacked and then he charged out through the curtain.
Moments later we all heard the sounds of combat. Letan was next to run forwards
and she was soon beside Rah’hal attacking anything that moved. This group of a
score of warriors was no match for the two of them. Things got even worse for
them when Chalina woke up
This seemed like a good idea to me and we settled back down to get some rest.
Soon it was Lyle and Leon’s turn to stand watch. Lyle immediately started
praying for his spells and
We managed to rest for the remainder of the evening and continued resting
through the morning of Sehnir 5; I then managed to recover my spells at
Oh great, just what we need, two new
party members possibly infected with lycanthropy. I guess we will have to wait
and see what happens in the future. I walked into the room and cast a detect
magic and spotted something glowing in a cabinet. I walked forwards and opened
it and spotted six silvered daggers along with a magical dagger, magical short
sword and a scroll. I grabbed two of the silver daggers and tossed them to
Rah’hal, at least he can now hurt any lycanthrope we run across now. Just then
Chalina gave a shout as she heard the sounds of heavy footsteps coming around
the corner. The next thing we knew, we were being attacked by six trolls.
At this point it was time to rest for the night. We found a spot to rest and
waited for morning. Sehnir 6, we continued exploring after breakfast,
after a few moments we found a set of stairs going down and that is where we
headed. We next started exploring this new level and that’s when we found a
large room with various items on the walls. I cast detect magic and a medium shield
on the wall radiated. I was foolish enough to walk into the room and that is
when the more than a dozen shadows poured out of the surrounding rooms and
attacked us. I managed to cast body of the sun on myself and this helped
immensely in the fight. As I was the only one in the room, the shadows attacked
me. I managed to kill off most of them in the fight by casting my burning
hands. I first tried to turn them and realized that I should have been
successful in my attempt. I then spotted two of the things holding rods in
their hands and I realized that these were preventing me from turning them. I
screamed at the group to take out the two holding the rods. Then I continued
casting burning hands and these finished off the last few. We ended up fighting
16 of them and I killed a dozen by myself. Letan tried shooting these things
with her bow and found even shots that should have hit went right through them
and then she made the mistake of hitting Lyle in the back with an arrow. He
then turned around and smacked her back during the fight. Even Letan looked at
me with some respect after the fight. I was lucky in that their strength
draining power didn’t kill me; it just made me as weak as a kitten. I then had
to cast lesser restoration to regain a few points and then used the wand for
bull’s strength to help even more. I pulled off my pack and gave it to one of
the women we had rescued to carry as I was too weak to carry it. We continued
exploring the rooms that the shadows had come from and found a potion and protection
from Undead scroll which I pocketed and we continued exploring. We soon found
another set of stairs going down and checked this out. When we opened the door
we surprised an ettin and attacked immediately. We then had the misfortune of
having out old enemy mage and rogue appear again and attacked us during the
battle with the ettin. The mage rapidly got the upper hand with the spells he
cast and the rogue was unlucky to be affected when the mage cast confusion in
the midst of the melee. Letan was the only one not affected but she fell
unconscious during the battle so it didn’t matter too much. The mage was almost
killed by
I then had to wait until the confusion spell that the other mage had cast had
worn off before I could get close enough to heal someone as Lyle and Leon were
still acting strangely. All the spells finally wore off and I cast a curing
spell on Chalina and Lyle as they were quite wounded. After everyone was
recovered at least slightly then we continued exploring. Every place we turned
and looked there were stairs going back up. Finally we came to a couple of
doors that we locked and Lyle started to take a look. He just had the
misfortune of setting off a needle trap that struck him in the finger. He
rapidly lost strength as the poison ran its course. I then used the wand of
bull’s strength to help him for now. The locks were finally opened and we
continued exploring. This section appeared to be a section for holding
prisoners.
As I moved up to see what was going on, I noticed that there was a swirling
circle of something on the closest wall to me. From here I could see smoke
coming out of this hole. As I watched the circle got smaller and popped out of
sight leaving the rough wall as it had been before. I turned to look at the
fight and it was over. I moved up to find the shrimp and he was curled up
against the far wall, still leaking smoke. I checked him over and he was in no
danger of dying, at least for now. This is the strangest little humanoid I have
ever seen. Grey skinned and dark hair made him unique in my eyes. I had never
seen his kind before. I then pulled out a wand of curing and gave him a cure.
His green eyes opened with a start and gobblety gook started pouring out of his
mouth. I looked up and everyone within hearing was looking at him strangely.
Great now we have rescued someone and he doesn’t speak the language, in fact
everyone was looking strangely at him too. By the power and grace of Laerme, it
appeared that the swirling circle must have been some sort of portal, but from
where this little fellow had come from I have no idea. He managed to stand up
and looked around rather wide eyed. I think I managed to convince him to follow
us out of this room and find someplace to rest. It is getting on to
We arrived back on Sehnir 9 and seeing as it was mid-afternoon we decided to go see Jahida the quarter master and unload all of gear we had accumulated in the bag of holding that Rah’hal was packing. The little guy with us soon had his eyes bugging out when he saw all the gear coming out of the bag. One of the items was an enchanted great sword that Kormac gleefully took as a weapon. After it was totaled up we asked Jahida what was available for purchase. The one thing that caught our eye was a very nice rapier that ended up costing more that the items we were trading in. Letan quickly pulled out enough coin and even traded her rapier to get this much nicer one. We also got a chain shirt for Kormac so he didn’t feel naked. We then headed to the inn to enjoy a fine meal. The only thing that marred it was the looks that our little fried kept getting as he sat and dined with us. Even the two tusker warriors didn’t get as many glances as Alth. Letan started to get upset about the looks we kept getting and I finally had to put my foot down and firmly chastise her before she stood up and caused a scene. She soon settled down and that is when I noticed that the little guy had vanished. I didn’t think he would be gone long and he soon came back in and abruptly appeared just as we were getting ready to go up to our rooms. We spent a comfortable night for the first time in weeks and I slept right through till morning.
Sehnir 10, after a leisurely breakfast we wandered back over to see Jahida again and I asked to see the Baron. His seneschal said that he was meeting with someone at the moment but would see if he was available. He quickly returned to say that the Baron would be happy to see me right now. I followed the seneschal further into the castle and into a room. I then realized that Alth had accompanied me when the Baron and his guest looked at something behind me when I entered the room. I turned and there was Alth up against the wall looking at us. The Baron introduced his guest as the high mage Alies. He was clearly a half-elven male and dressed in rather flamboyant robes. When I introduced Alth and said that he wasn’t from this world, Alies cast a spell and started talking to our little friend. I then spoke with the Baron and gave him as much information as I could about the temple. Soon after we had finished that part of the conversation, Alies turned to us and said that he had cast tongues in order to communicate with the little fellow. He was not from our world and had come through the portal I had described to the two of them. It appeared he had dove through the portal I had seen to avoid the fireball that had gone off right behind him, hence the reason why only his lower body had been scorched. He called himself a scout but until he learned to communicate with us we were going to have difficulty making our commands known to him. Next Alies wanted to know if he could do anything for us and I then inquired about a stone to flesh spell to return our feline companion back to the living. Alies raised an eyebrow with my explanation of what had transpired down below with the earth creatures and then said he may have something and spoke a word. In front of him appeared a chest and he opened it and started rummaging through it until he finally had a scroll in his hand. He opened and looked at it and said that it would do the trick. He then said that it contained four more spells and offered to sell it to me for 500 gold. I opened the bag of holding and started pulling out coins until the amount was there. He then handed me a bead and he said that I could have it with his compliments and that he would like me to stop by and visit with him at his tower. He then said that it was the last bead from a necklace of fireballs and the then spoke another word and vanished. I then took my leave of the Baron and found the others waiting for us as we came out. Letan then showed me what she had purchased from Jahida including a wand of cure serious wounds that was fully charged. She handed it to me and told me to keep it. I then gave her my wand of cure moderate that still had four charges left. She also said that they had purchased some curing potions and another wand of curing that was less than half charged so it had been fairly cheap. Seeing as Kormac was a cleric and had decided to join us in our further explorations he would get this wand as another backup in curing party members. I then sat down in my room and started emptying the bag of holding to find out what was in it.
Sehnir 11, we decided
to ride to Buiden while waiting for Lyle to return. I expected him back in
three or four days after he could shadow walk again. The only interesting thing
to happen was that we were attacked by two stone giants about halfway through
our ride. We attacked after they had stepped out of the woods and tossed a rock
each at us. We were forced to kill them, but not before Letan and Rah’hal were
knocked down by them. We then looted the bodies and found some coin along with
two potions, two scrolls and a wand along with some other stuff. I bundled it
all in the bag of holding after checking the scrolls and finding a divine spell
on one and two arcane spells on the other. I tucked them in with the rest of my
scrolls and we continued on. We got to Buiden at lunch time and Letan proceeded
to find a place to relax with Lucy while we headed into town. This place is
bigger than Uthra but not by much. I merrily spent the day buying clothes for
Chalina and
Sehnir 12, we returned
to the temple via Lyles’ shadow-walking ability. We set up camp in the usual
spot and left Lucy there to guard it while we were gone. The two orc warriors
came with us but I left my maids with the Baron. I stopped Letan from taking
the lead and let Alth go to the front. He seemed to vanish within a few steps.
We slowly moved up to the building and climbed the wall into the open window.
We managed to travel for a bit before we turned a corner and confronted a night
hag riding her nightmare. This was not a fun fight as only Letan could hit with
her new rapier. Thus we were forced to kill the nightmare first while Letan
furiously stabbed away at the hag. Then we had some sort of invisible creature
show up and it wiped out the two orcs with a blow each as I tried to futilely
spot it. We managed to make the hag flee and then turned our attentions to the
invisible thing. We managed to kill it, but not before Alth suffered from the
attentions of the beast. He got nailed by a blow and the force of it drove him
into me. I managed to catch him but fell down from the weight. I was then
forced to cure him as he didn’t look good. He jumped up when he was cured and
got back into the fray. He then made the mistake of shooting at the invisible beast
and nailed Lyle in the back. Lyle reacted by turning and giving Alth a good
whack with his mace, nearly undoing all the curing I had just given him. All I
could do was shake my head as I turned my attentions to the orc warriors. I had
to cure both of them before they died. We spent a few moments casting some cure
spells before we moved on. It took only a few more moments before we came back
to the room where we had dragged
A few moments later Alth found a pit trap the hard way by stepping on the
trigger and had the floor disappear below him. Leon and Lyle were too close to
him and they also fell into the pit. I know it was fairly deep when it took a
few seconds for them to hit the floor. Then the lid of the trap snapped shut
with a thud. The rest of us slowly moved up to the edge of the pit and Letan
and Kormac finally spotted the edge of the trap. We then tied a rope to Rah’hal
and he carefully moved onto the trap and finally forced the trap open. He
dropped down against one of the doors and held it open while we proceeded to
help the others back up out of the pit. We had to look down sixty feet to see
them. Good thing the trap didn’t have any spikes or they may have been dead. We
helped Alth and Lyle up first and then needed to find something big or heavy in
order to pull
The large doors slammed shut throwing the orcs outside. Next the basin of
flames flared up and creatures of flames grew from the small ones that were
there. After a few moments we were fighting a small army of them. As the combat
started it turned out that most of them were illusions as they popped when we
hit them. By the time the fight was done only Chalina and Letan were still
standing. All the rest of us had been knocked down and unconscious from the
blows from the large elemental. Letan and Kormac were the only ones that could
hit the large one with their enchanted weapons. We managed to cure everyone so
no one died and after resting for a few moments we started exploring this room.
It turned out that the amulet was not as valuable as it first looked. Alth
started checking around the alter and basin and quickly found a small door
underneath the burning charcoal. Rah’hal slipped off his ring of fire
resistance and handed it to Alth so he could check further. He finally uncovered
enough for all of us to see the door and the ring set in it. He carefully
pulled up the ring and that’s when the trap went off. The fumes nailed him in
the face and he was forced to retreat, gasping and choking all the time. He was
not as nimble as he should be when he finally started breathing right again. We
looked into the recess and found two potions, a scroll and a very nice long
sword. The sword must have had an alignment because none of us could wield it
without dropping a level. We continued exploring the room and found nothing
else. Lyle then checked the door to the west and found a wide passageway with
double doors in the wall opposite each other. When the door to the south was
approached by Alth, a gust of wind flung him up against the wall. It took Lyle
using
I guess I got the beasts attention from all the flame and fire that I hit it with. I had also taken the time to use a magic missile and it hurt it. The beast attacked me twice and I was forced to try and cure myself and that helped me take another blow before I was finally knocked unconscious. I watched Chalina go down at the same time as Letan as things slowly went black for me. I woke up a minute later with Kormac standing over me after casting a cure spell. I got to my feet and surveyed the situation. The other brazier had now quit spewing out smoke and the pit and lower floor were now covered by smoky air. We dragged everyone up the stairs to the door while I checked to make sure everyone was alright. Kormac told me that Letan had passed out from the exertions of the combat and even though she had been given a cure spell, she was still unconscious. I then ordered Alth and Lyle to investigate the room where the large beast had come from and the two of them started checking the room. Seconds later I caught Kormac’s attention and told him to keep an eye on our nefarious duo. Lyle found a small door in the floor just inside the ell shaped room. After telling Kormac to stop just as he walked into the room, they then took a look and finally got the door up. Inside they found a brazier. Kormac picked it up and brought it back to me. I cast detect magic and it glowed. I assumed it to be a censer for controlling air elementals. I then put it in the bag of holding and asked the others if the room was clean. They said it was and I told the group that we were going to rest there until Letan was awake. So we dragged everyone into the room where the big beast had come from and waited for Letan to wake up. We had been resting for a few hours when we were surprised by a pair of Illithids or mind flayers. They managed to get the upper hand on us until only Kormac was the only one still able to attack them as they used their mental abilities to great effect against us. When I finally came to my senses, I found Kormac almost dead from his wounds but the Illithids were slain. We managed to start resting again but were found by a pair of reddish skinned creatures with four arms that attacked us. One of them managed to grapple with Kormac and then faded away with him while we killed the other one. We had never seen these quasi-reptilian four armed creatures before. They were nasty fighters and with the extra limbs hard to fight.
Once we had recovered from the fight we had to start looking for Kormac. We
started heading back the way we had come until we encountered a very large
skeleton that proceeded to attack us. As I moved up to engage it I heard a
voice behind a door in the hallway that sounded familiar. I opened the door to
see Kormac lying down with his sword tried to wake him up. That was the voice I
had heard. As he didn’t look healthy I pulled out a scroll and walked up and
cast a heal spell on him. He jumped to his feet instantly as I told him we were
fighting a massive skeleton outside. He grabbed his sword and charged out the
door. After that the fight was short and sweet as Kormac gleefully hacked it
apart. When the bones finally shattered we were under a deluge of bone
fragments and coins that had been embedded in the bones. We all took a big sigh
of relief and after checking that everyone was ok we started looking for
Kormac’s missing equipment. We managed to find his gear only steps away in
another room. Kormac then had to ask for help in getting into his plate armor.
Chalina then stepped up to help him as she is the only one proficient in the
use of heavy armor. Lyle and I cast a few healing spells on the people that
needed it while Kormac was busy. Once he was equipped he grasped his new found
sword and seemed to concentrate. He then turned and headed towards a door we
had bypassed before as he muttered something about sensing evil behind the
door. We managed to catch up to him just before he opened it and we got him to
stop and wait while we investigated further. Once Lyle and Alth said it was
clear, we opened the door. It looked like the room had been untouched for a
while. Just inside the door was a body. It had been dead for quite a while. The
group slowly moved in to look further and that is when the creature attacked
us. It appeared to be some sort of undead that I didn’t recognize and thank
Laerme for Kormac and his honking sword as he proceeded to hack the thing to
pieces while the rest of us were affected by its powers. It forced Chalina and
Rah’hal to flee from its presence and rest didn’t want to get close. We then
checked the body and found a pouch underneath it. Inside we found a scroll and
jewelry along with some jewelry on the body. The scroll and a black gem on a
silver chain radiated enchanted. The scroll contained six arcane spells and I
put it in my pouch to look at later. We then had to engage a troll that had
followed Rah’hal back towards the party.
We ended up in a small laboratory that was covered in dust. We found some
parchment, paper, and vellum that were still usable and Kormac picked up a vial
of ink or something that he said radiated enchantment but it was very dim. We
were still checking out the room when some tentacles or something shot out from
underneath a stone bench and attacked us. Most of us were hit and were quickly
drained of strength. The fight ended up being quite furious as the now
identified roper proceeded to hide under the bench.
The following journal entry was written by Chalina, Cohort of Amarinda.
I realized that something was wrong when my mistress abruptly stopped and then
stared off into space with a vacant look on her face. The warriors seemed to be
hurting the demon so I moved up to check on my mistress. She was humming to
herself. I managed to draw her away from the battle as Lyle started to move up
to engage the demon. I watched in amazement as the demon looked at Lyle and he
too stopped and then started drooling a little. Whatever this demon was doing,
we have to kill it soon before it kills us. Luckily the two warriors and that
nasty sword that Kormac was now wielding managed to knock down and killed the
demon. Kormac then used a wand of healing on a few people before we decided to
get out of here. Once people were back on their feet, we put Lyle and Alth on
Sehnir 13, we awakened and continued walking towards Uthra. The day was uneventful and we didn’t see anything. We stopped for the night again to rest.
Sehnir 14, we continued walking and resting throughout the day. It was difficult having to deal with Lyle and my mistress acting like little children. It made for some interesting times. We arrived at Uthra about mid afternoon and immediately headed towards the castle so we could speak with the quartermaster and the spell casters. Between them they determined that the demon we had fought had feeble minded the two of them and it would require a heal spell to return them to normal. Thankfully there were three heal spells available on a scroll and we purchased all three. It was good to see my mistress and Lyle returned to normal. Chalina’s entry ends.
We then started pulling out all of the loot we had accumulated and we ended up
trading most to the quartermaster for two items. The jewelry from the banshee’s
room was divided up and I took the pair of ruby and gold earrings that went
well with my ruby and gold necklace. Letan and Rah’hal benefited the most from
our trading as Letan gained some studded leather armor that was further
enchanted with spell resistance and Rah’hal was offered an enchanted
Sehnir 15, we then got
all of our items checked and the black gem on the silver chain was a periapt of
proof against poison. Lyle ended up taking it because he always seemed to be
affected by poisons. Kormac’s cloak was of resistance so he kept it. We
then decided to rest for a while and I wanted to use up the vial of ink we had
found in the lab for a scroll. The small ceramic pot contained one ounce of
sovereign glue. This stuff will glue anything together permanently. We headed
back to the inn and I was taken aback with a group of Khinasi warriors waiting
there. Chalina recognized them as people from home. They approached Chalina and
told her that her brother had been murdered and she was required to go home.
She turned to me and asked to be excused for a moment; she had not spoken to
her friend Abriana in quite a while. The rest of them looked at me a little
strange when she called me mistress. By the way they treated her, she could
have been royalty. I waited while they went to talk. When they returned I found
out that Chalina and her friends were from the
Sehnir 17, it was late
afternoon before we were ready to go back to the temple. Lyle used his ability
to move through the shadows to get us there. The rest of the group had agreed
to accompany Chalina and me when we left for Calrie. So we were only going to
explore the temple for a few days before we had to return. Once we had appeared
before the temple, I asked Letan to find the orc warriors waiting for us. She
quickly found them and Chalina ordered them to break camp and follow us. We
then headed towards the manor house and proceeded to climb up through the
window. I had wisely left my maids back in Uthra; I don’t think a dungeon is a
good place for them to be. We agreed to check out the throne room that was here
and we spent a few minutes looking it over and trying to figure out the key to
opening it. It was Leon who recognized the throne from a tapestry that we had
seen and we figured out that there was one hanging in the banshee room. We then
headed down there and found the tapestry he had talked about. On the throne was
a demonic female with multiple arms holding a large black orb in one hand? We
figured out that this might be the key, now the fun part would be finding it.
There was a spell I could use but I would have to pray for it at
Soon we found a room with a coffin inside. The lid was slightly ajar and we cautiously approached it. Looking inside we saw a black haired man wearing evening clothes and the strange thing was that there was a stake through his heart making us think he was a vampire. We looked around further and even cast a few spells. We found that there was a spell cast on the room and on the body. It appeared he wasn’t dead but in some sort of stasis. The lid of the casket was stone and a silver sword appeared to be engraved in the centre. We found a scroll with two spells, bull’s strength and true seeing. With the spells about, I decided to cast dispel magic on the body. This didn’t do anything and the group told me to use the scroll. I then cast the true seeing spell and the group watched my eyes widen in amazement. The man in the casket shifted before my eyes and became a gorgeous blonde haired man wearing ornate plate armor. I didn’t recognize the heraldry of his shield but it was well made. I started explaining to the group what I was seeing and after some discussion, we agreed to remove the body from the room and maybe head back to Uthra with him. However once we got him out of the room he proceeded to stir. I guess once we crossed the threshold of the room the spell on him was broken. He was very weak and babbling a bit. We couldn’t recognize the language until Leon spoke up in his growling voice that he was speaking in old Anuirean.
We then got another shock when he introduced himself as Adaere, son of Roele. He was a holy warrior in the service of Haelyn. We thought he just meant that he was actually in the service of his church or something. But No he said that Haelyn was the brother of Roele, thus making one of the Supreme Beings of our world his uncle? Indeed he said that Haelyn was his uncle. We then tried to figure out how long he had been out of the loop. Our jaws dropped again when we realized that he had been captured during the great battle of the gods. He had been frozen out of time for two millennia; Just like Leon. We decided to rest for the night here. Letan started looking around and soon found a room full of stuff including holy symbols and heraldic information. Adaere soon found his ring and seal among the stuff and put them in his pouch. We found 5 very nice gold holy symbols and we took them.
Sehnir 18 after resting the night and regaining some spells again we agreed to continue exploring the temple for a while longer. Adaere agreed to accompany us while we explored further. He then wanted to go meet with the Baron when we left. Next we used Kormac’s sword and Adaere’s power to detect evil; we quickly found something around the corner. I regretted this as we ended up fighting two demonic creatures that I think were demodands? One of them was emaciated and oozed something all over. The other one was corpulent towards obesity with stubby little wings and also covered in slime. The fight was brutal and even Adaere was affected by I guess the poison from the slime of the biggest one. It paralyzed us for a few seconds when it worked. Letan, Rah’hal and Adaere were the only ones that could hit the big one; it was highly resistant to the other weapons of the group. We finally managed to kill them and started healing and looting the bodies. We found a few things including a long sword and rod with some gems, a gold music box, and statue. Chalina took the long sword as no one else wanted it and I kept the rod for now. The rest went into the bag of holding and we kept exploring while we waited for noon so I could pray for a locate object spell. As we explored we seemed to encounter trolls with great frequency. Leon happily pounced on each one we ran across and we burnt up all the scraps and looted the bodies. We soon found a set of stairs and we followed them and ran into trolls again, but this time there was something else waiting. We encountered a group of powerful people that proceeded to thump on us. I moved up and around the corner to see a wizard casting spells at us. She had some back up and they started appearing when a rogue managed to back stab me while I was trying to deal with the wizard. A warrior was dealing with Rah’hal and Chalina while Letan tried to engage the multiple copies of the wizard. The rogue hit me again before the wizard cast a spell at me and then everything faded to black.
The next thing I knew, I was standing in front of the group with Glynda holding a scroll in her hands. We were back at Uthra. Chalina then told me that the rogue and wizard had escaped but they had killed the cleric and the warrior that had attacked them and then proceeded to come back to Uthra to get me returned to flesh. Leon was driven insane by a spell and even attacked the group afterwards. Thankfully Adaere was a strong enough holy warrior as he had cast dispel magic on Leon to cure his insanity. Also the sad news that Alth appeared gone forever, the wizard had cast a spell and he had disappeared in front of the groups eyes. By the description, seeing as he was not from this world, he had been sent back to his home world. We then checked over the items looted from the fight and Chalina took a very nice steel shield and gave her wooden shield to Kormac. Rah’hal took the lens found on the cleric and they gave him night vision. Letan took the great sword that the warrior had been using and traded in hers. This one was much nicer. The two rings were split between Lyle and Kormac and Kormac also kept the wand recovered from the cleric. We all had something nice from this encounter except me.
Sehnir 19 after having all the items checked and trading in the other stuff, we agreed to return to the temple by horseback Adaere was now mounted on Eldried, his new mount, and a noble one indeed.
Sehnir 20 we left soon after dawn and rode all day.
Sehnir 21 we arrived at mid afternoon and hid the saddles and gear. Adaere’s horse would keep an eye on things. We walked to the point where we had fought the other party and I then cast locate object and got a sense of the orb off to my right about 100 feet away. I then sensed it to be about 100 feet away to my left. This was very strange indeed. I told Lyle to check to the right as that had been the first one I sensed. He moved down and looked around, he then concentrated for a moment and he dropped to the ground unconscious. That did not look good. We moved up and looked around. Adaere came up and looked around. He sensed evil up ahead and even shook his head when he first sensed it. After waking Lyle up we proceeded to move ahead slowly. I managed to get another reading and now it was only yards away. But we had to find a way around to the area. We found a room that appeared to be living quarters for someone and found some nice jewelry and Letan was the one that found the hidden drawers in the wardrobe. The first contained six perfectly cut black sapphires and the next one blew up in her face. I looked at three books and made the mistake of touching one during my investigations. Suddenly I was holding a block of wood in my hands and I couldn’t let go. Luckily I had a remove curse on scroll and Adaere then read the scroll and I let go and the block hit the floor with a thud. We continued on after pocketing the jewelry and finally got around to a cavern where we found a massive ruby that glowed. I stopped and cast mage armor on myself and prepared to continue. Lyle walked up and touched the ruby and disappeared. We all followed and we appeared in a cavern. It was dark and I reached for my potion of dark vision. We were being attacked by some small creatures that we easily dispatched. They looked a little strange and we figured out that they were para-elementals. The next cavern was of fire and we had to step into a fiery brazier to advance to the next cavern. We appeared in a large dark cavern that widened before us; the sound of the wind was quite strong and seemed to gust occasionally. Taking a look behind, Lyle said the cavern narrowed into a small tunnel that he might get through. I told Kormac to take the lead with Adaere second rank. The rest of us stayed behind Adaere as they moved forward. Lyle had a lantern lit so everyone could see. The next thing we knew, Kormac yelled out “Giants!” as he started running forward.
Bang, bang, bang. The cavern rang out with the sounds of rocks hitting the floor around us. One hit Adaere’s shield with a loud ring. I flinched when I saw the size of them going past me. They would hurt if they hit. Ouch! Leon bounded forward with a growl and hit the upslope and jumped out of sight. Letan was moving up and stopped behind Adaere to hide while the rocks were flying. We started moving up in order to see what was going on. Finally I could look up and see and my jaw almost hit the floor. Standing above us about ten yards up were four massive giants that stood 18 feet tall. This did not look good. The rest of the group started heading up the hill as we watched Leon make it to the top and attack the giant on the left. Rah’hal had also managed to jump up far enough to get over the first slope onto a landing. He had two more to go to get to them. Lyle moved up to the edge and pulled out his rope of climbing and engaged it upwards. I stood there for a second and decided to trust in Laerme as I cast a fireball upwards. I managed to get three of them in the blast as the rest moved on. The giant on the left rumbled something and the next thing I saw was lots of rocks heading my way as four of them struck me down. All I could think of was, That Hurt as I blacked out from the pain. Moments later I woke up to see Lyle staring at me with concern. I looked up in time to see one of the giants jumping off the ledge with Leon grasped in his arms. Leon let out a yowl as they hit with a massive thud. The fight did not look good. I motioned to Lyle that I was alright and told him to help out the others. I cast a cure on myself as I looked up in horror as another of the giants jumped down right at my feet. I then cast mirror image on myself in order to delay the inevitable and watched as six images appeared beside me. Rah’hal lay off to my right. He had been knocked off the ledge by a giant. Adaere and Letan were finally doing some serious damage with Kormac right behind them. I was still lying on the ground when I cast another fireball straight up in the air to nail the giant standing above me. He then noticed me again and started smacking at my images. We finally turned the tide when the warriors managed to gang up and knock down a giant every round. I had lost all my images by the time the last giant went down with a massive thud. This had been a nasty fight. Chalina had been knocked out and I managed to revive her with a spell as we took stock of the situation. We soon realized that what we thought was a hill was actually a spiral as we started walking up to the top. We finally came to where the giants had lived and found a massive chest that was locked. Lyle managed to pick the lock with his hands as the lock was rather large. H e had crawled into it to unlock it. We opened it to find gold, platinum, gems and a ring, three scrolls and some potions. Chalina informed me that she had gained in power.
After looking around a bit , we headed back to the small tunnel to explore further, Lyle, Rah’hal and Letan managed to squirm through the hole and found the next sign so Kormac used a mace and Adaere took off his belt and told Kormac to use it while he was widening the tunnel. This took a few minutes and we all managed to get to the triangle and went through the portal. The next cavern was massive and we soon encountered a very large earth elemental that we proceeded to beat up. We then looked around and spotted a few large gems in the rubble and looked at some exits so I then cast my remaining locate object spell seeking the orb. It showed that it was off to the right and less than 100 feet away. I pointed and Lyle took the lead as I kept pointing in the direction as we moved through the tunnels. Finally I sensed that it was just around the corner. We came around the corner as we spotted the black orb sitting on a rock pedestal. Moments later it faded behind a rock creature that rose in front of us. We started attacking it and were shocked when our weapons did next to nothing for damage. It seemed to be immune to most of the damage. This did not look good for us as it attacked us with rocky limbs. It then hit Kormac solidly and then coated him in a black tar like goo that rapidly hardened. It didn’t slow him down from attacking however as he hacked away. I was then forced to heal Letan after she got smacked back at my feet from a blow. Leon was on top of it going nuts trying to scratch and claw away but it appeared that he was barely scratching the surface. Adaere was managing to cut off chunks with his sword and it finally turned its attention to him and a limb came out and dropped straight down onto his head knocking him flat and silly at the same time. Lyle and I got busy healing the fighters. It seemed forever before Chalina finally got in the last blow and kill the large rock. It shattered into shards and sliced into us as a final blow. We stopped for a moment to rest before we started casting cure spells before Kormac spotted the chunks of metal that were showing throughout the rock. He started looking and soon got Rah’hal and Letan busy retrieving all the metal they could find. It included silver, gold, platinum, and even some mithral. While we waited for Adaere to recover from the blow the three of them went through most of the rubble. I then took Lyle around the corner and we spotted the orb. I cast detect magic and told Lyle to check it out. The only thing that radiated was the orb itself. I then reached out and grabbed the orb; I also saw a throne carved on the pedestal. We then returned to the group and rested for a while. We agreed to leave the temple and head into the woods to rest for the night. We then gathered around the pedestal and we all touched it and were standing around the throne on the upper level. We headed out of the temple and soon found Eldried and the other horses resting and we proceeded to make dinner and rest for the night. Lyle and I cast off our entire cure spells before nightfall and we rested for the night.
Sehnir 22, everyone seemed to be recovered other than Adaere and we gave him more cures to get him back to better health. I then pulled out my wand of bull’s strength and used it on the warriors. I then cast mage armor on Lyle and myself before we headed back in. We soon gathered around the throne as I sat down into it and put the orb into the hollow on the arm. The dais with the throne in the middle started dropping down into the rock. We slowly dropped for a minute or two before the dais settled on the floor. We started looking around and spotted the two enchanted doors that we had seen from inside the temple. Adaere, Kormac, and Lyle then started concentrated on detecting evil and we soon determined that we would have to head down the stairs to find the bad guy. We slowly moved down the stairs and looked forwards. The room widened out in front of us and there were three pedestals in front of us, they were electrum, gold, and platinum. The walls were covered in frescoes and paintings that were very disturbing. In front of us was a large silver circle with a hexagram inside. Beyond it was a dais with a large throne on top of it. Behind the throne was a tapestry. Sitting on the throne was an old crone who started cackling at us as we slowly moved forward. She started talking to us and offered to let us take the electrum pedestal if we turned around and left now. Kormac said no. she then offered the gold and then the platinum pedestal if we left now. Again Kormac said no and finally she seemed to snap and started casting a spell at us. It appeared to malfunction and some sort of a sphere materialized around her and then the other spell she cast reflected back on her. She screamed and then disappeared with a flash. Something wasn’t right here. We looked around and then I heard a voice behind the tapestry, it appeared to be casting a spell. Moments later the walls appeared to sprout and we were surrounded by some sort of mobile fungus. We started attacking them and this made the entrance of a massive demon even more shocking.
I looked at it and my jaw dropped. It appeared to be a balor, or balrog. These were rumored to be very nasty in a fight. It was wreathed in flames and its wings fanned out and blew towards us. The scent of sulpher was strong as it cracked the whip it held in one hand. This did not look good and I heard a voice behind it and moments later a large otygh appeared from behind the curtain. By now we had killed the mushrooms and were moving to attack the demon when the beast appeared. Rah’hal attacked the beast and watched in amazement when his slash closed up before his eyes. I then cast fireball and the only one I hurt was Letan who happened to get in the way. Adaere was hacking away at the demon as the others moved up to help. The balrog’s whip snaked out and wrapped around Letan, then she was pulled up under his wing and the flames started burning her. It then grabbed Lyle and pulled him in before Kormac managed to get there and hack away at it. We finally knocked it down as Rah’hal got pummeled by the beast .It also didn’t help when the beast slammed a foot down and kicked up the dust and fungi that was laying around. Some of the group started hacking and coughing because of it. I then cast body of the sun to surround myself with flames. Chalina stepped up beside me and that prevented the fungus from getting close to us. We tried fighting it but the wounds healed up right before our eyes. I was in despair until Laerme send me a sign. I felt one of my higher divine spells leaving my mind and I got the sense to heal the beast instead of hurting it. I then pulled out a scroll of heal and proceeded to cast it and then touched the beast. I felt something as the beast screamed in anguish and the shape rippled in front of me. The next attacks on it appeared to be damaging it so we all started attacking. By now most of us were injured and it didn’t help when the beast kept stomping on the ground kicking up the dust and fungus. Most of the group was affected and started coughing and hacking. I managed to cast a cure on Chalina and it helped when the body of the balrog exploded and sprayed bits and pieces all throughout the room. I managed to duck the worst of it but noticed that the rest of the group had been hurt again. Then more of those purple mushrooms appeared again and forced us to deal with them before we could attack the beast again. We finally managed to kill most of them and soon surrounded the beast as we started hacking away. We noticed it starting to droop and finally Adaere stepped up and thrust his longsword deep into her chest. We all heard the scream of anguish as we watched the longsword drain something out of the body. She screamed out for her beloved to avenge her. I had heard of this but had never seen it before. She appeared to have blood powers and Adaere was absorbing it. He positively glowed when the body collapsed and the room started shaking.
I then heard the sound of a male voice echoing through my mind. He did not sound happy and he swore eternal vengeance against all of us but was really angry at Lyle. Lyle turned white as the voice said something to him. We got ready to leave as the ceiling started collapsing. We got back to the dais and I pulled out the black orb and thought about the throne coming down to get us and it started moving down. We waited while the room continued collapsing and managed to finally get back to the ground floor. We started running out of the building and were forced to jump out of the windows in order to survive and finally we were standing outside and watched as the building collapsed into the ground. It looks like the temple of Evil was finally finished for good as we stared at the deep hole in the ground. I then asked Lyle about shadow walking home and he turned white and shook his head. The voice we had heard had told him not to return to the shadow world on pain of death or worse. The being had called himself the Cold Rider and Lyle said he ruled over the Plane of Shadow and some time ago he had chased out the Halflings that used to live there. So it looks like we won’t be using the shadows anymore. We then walked back to our campsite and we all flopped down to rest and discuss what we had just done. I pulled out the orb and told the group we were keeping it. The beast must have been some sort of deity and we had killed it on this world. Now to travel to Aftane with Chalina and the others.
After our short rest we broke camp and mounted the horses and headed back to Uthra. It took a day and a half to ride there and we arrived just after sunset. We headed straight to the castle to speak with the Baron and his staff. We informed them that the Temple was no more, we had caused the collapse of it and it had sunk into the ground leaving a very large hole. We were saddened to find that two other adventuring groups had also been in the complex and we thought they would not have survived the collapse. The Baron agreed that the Queen should be informed and he agreed to travel with us tomorrow to Calrie to speak with the Queen personally. She was going to be shocked to find out about Adaere and his history. Lyle and I then requested access to the vault and we packed up everything we had except for one large chest containing 10 000 gold that we left for the Baron to access if he needed and to pay the contractor building our house. Lyle then split up the loot so we each had half in our bags of holding.
Sehnir 25 we headed to Calrie with the Baron and his entourage. With his royal pennant flying we had no worries about being stopped or bothered by anyone. We managed to get to Calrie and Lyle quickly disappeared on us. He had been worried about his upcoming lycanthropy and had been muttering to himself about a noble that he was very angry about.
Sehnir 26 we arrived in late morning and headed to the palace of the Queen. The Baron managed to get an interview with Her Royal Majesty Liliane Swordwraith, Queen of Aerenwe and happily informed her that the uprising to the south had been put down by the group that had accompanied him here. They had managed to collapse the temple into the ground. He then introduced Lord Adaere by his rightful name and rank as he stepped forward and bowed to the Queen. Her eyes widened when she realized who this man might be but she would not do anything until his status could be confirmed by the Chief Herald to the west. Adaere agreed to travel west and meet with the man before he prepared to retake his ancient realm of lands. With that he turned and thanked us for all of our help and said he would see us again soon. He then turned and walked out of the hall and left. The Queen then turned her attention to us and announced that a party would be held in our honor five hours from now but until then we would be escorted to our rooms to prepare.
I took Chalina shopping and we found a decent dress makers and I purchased two gowns to wear for tonight. The seamstress would have them ready in a couple of hours. I told her to deliver them to the palace and paid the fee of 800 gold for them and left. We spent the next hour or two wandering around purchasing supplies for our trip to Aftane to the east. We finally returned to the palace and prepared for dinner. Lyle and Letan were nowhere to be found. I was certain why Lyle was absent but not Letan. We arrived for dinner and met some of the nobles of the kingdom. After the dinner we were shocked when the Queen formally knighted us into the Royal Order of Aerenwe. So now I was Dame Amarinda. Chalina, as another sovereign ruler to be, gracefully declined any recognition of her efforts during our adventure.
We then spent a glorious night dancing and feasting. Most of the Queens ministers were there along with a few of her nobles. During the night, Kormac suddenly stopped in front of one of the noble warriors of the realm; Sir Fernando San Miguel Delarosa. He abruptly pulled his long sword and handed it to the startled man. He took the sword and seemed to concentrate for a moment and then nodded and pulled his own sword and handed it to Kormac along with a formal bow. Kormac grasped the sword and the grin of relief on his face was large when he realized the sword wasn’t talking to him now. He put it in his sheath and turned away. At the least he had a sword almost as powerful as before. We also met a half-orc named Snurri who ended up talking more with Chalina after I spent some time mingling with the other guests. Notably I was impressed with the Queen’s Seneschal Lord Darius Amal, a tall thin man with graying hair and a regal bearing. The other was her Minister of the Exchequer, Lady Marika Samm, she was fairly young for a minister but from what I heard she was a wizard with numbers. Two of the nobles of note were Countess Shazira Bethune, a tall dark haired woman with flashing eyes. I liked her as soon as I started speaking with her as she was so like my mother it was uncanny. The other was Earl Wyatt Vanteer; he was an older gentleman and was quite funny to talk too. He knew who everyone was at the party, even us. It was fairly late when Chalina and I turned in.
Sehnir 27 it was late morning when Letan and Lyle wandered in. Lyle stopped to speak with me privately and informed me that he was indeed infected with lycanthropy and he had turned into a were-tiger during the night. Seeing as Leon could live with that, I personally had no problem with it. Letan had been out looking for magic items and had been knocked out and robbed of her coin and gems. I told the both of them to go and get cleaned up as they were going to meet privately with the Queen. During the meeting the two of them were also formally knighted and we had a short meeting with her. We then prepared to sail towards Aftane on the morrow on the Gazelle. Chalina had purchased the vessel and we would be sailing on her with all of Chalina’s followers. Snurri also arrived and he was accompanied by his panther companion. Let’s hope his companion and Lucy don’t get into a fight otherwise it might get messy. It looks like I am going to get a new consort soon. Chalina said she had someone in mind, but I would have to wait until we got to Aftane to find out.
Sehnir 28 we boarded the Gazelle early in the morning and headed east.
Emmanir 1 we were four days into the journey when we were alerted to the fact that some ships were approaching us from all directions. Chalina and her party thought it might be her family’s enemy, the Red Kings. Whoever they were, they approached with three ships and the fight was soon on. The spells started flying when we were nailed by a fireball. We started returning attacks and then the enemy mage cast reverse gravity on us and we were all shot up into the air and watched the ship slowly drift away underneath us. I managed to cast a few fireballs and watched as one of the enemy ships burst into flames and went down. The fight got furious with spells being traded back and forth. It didn’t help when one of the enemy started nailing us with a bow and what really didn’t help is that he was invisible most of the time and we had a tough time dealing with him. I was busily attacking the enemy mage when he cast a feeblemind on me and I went to my happy place and don’t remember anything else for a while.
I came back to myself looking at Lyle with a scroll in his hands. He handed the blank piece of parchment to me and said he had used the only dispel magic scroll I had to counteract the feeblemind. I was grateful that it had worked. We then took stock of the situation and soon realized that we could see so flying creatures off in the distance. We soon realized that they were harpies and they were rapidly closing on us. Letan started to prepare her bow but then Chalina told her to put up her weapons as she walked down the beach a bit until the harpies approached and landed. She spoke to them for a few moments and then turned back to us and told us we were now on the Isle of the Harpy and that we were going to have to speak with the harpy leader in order to get off the island. One of the harpies took off while the others landed a hundred yards away and kept an eye on us. I told the rest of the group to head up the beach a bit and make camp for the day. We waited for a few hours until a very large harpy abruptly arrived and Chalina and I spoke with her. We explained that we had been attacked and our vessel destroyed by the Red Kings and we asked for passage back to the mainland. She finally agreed to help us for a fee of 500 gold. We paid it and she then said that a ship would arrive tomorrow. We spent the rest of the day drying our clothes and waiting for the ship.
Emmanir 2 the next day a ship arrived and we boarded and sailed for a few hours until we made port in Turin, a coastal city in the Kingdom of Zikala. We asked about passage to Ariya and a ship was going to be berthing in four days and we decided to wait.
Emmanir 6 a merchant ship named the Elfin Shrew and flying the flag of Binsada docked and we purchased passage for 10 gold apiece and headed south east towards Ariya. It took six days to travel there and we arrived on Emmanir 12 we then spent the next four days looking around and purchasing some decent magic items.
Emmanir 16 we have managed to purchase some nice items including a ring of protection for Rah’hal and an amulet of undead turning and a ring of avoidance for me. Things are looking up at last. We finally had a chance to sit down with Chalina and her council. With the council was a woman named Jameela bint Tayyib, she was a sword sage and a worshipper of Laerme. She was dark haired and dark eyed and was willing to become my cohort now that Chalina no longer could be. Chalina then asked us to thwart the efforts of the Sphinx, a nasty Awnshegh ruler to the north-west. He was looking for a legendary crown rumored lost millennia ago. It was said to be buried somewhere in the Tarvanian Hills in the province of Irboura northwest of Aftane. We were then outfitted with four horses and gear and some foodstuffs that I stuffed in the bag of holding. We then headed west back towards Zikala and then headed north towards the territory of the Sphinx.
Emmanir 21 it was at the border of the provinces of Azada and Houran in eastern Zikala while we were camped at night when we were attacked while Lyle was on watch. It was a flying creature and managed to get close enough to attack Lyle before the rest of us even knew it was attacking. We were alerted to the noise and woke up to see some sort of black flying creature attacking. This was a nasty critter as it turned Lyle into a rabbit while the rest of us tried to attack it. It was a really nasty critter when we found that most of our weapons couldn’t even touch it. Lyle managed to change into a tiger using his lycanthropy and managed to break the spell over him. Things got worse when it managed to confuse Leon and then Letan while we tried to attack the beast. It kept nailing us as it flew around and we couldn’t do a thing as we didn’t have any nasty ranged weapons to hit it. I even cast magic missile at it and it fizzled before it hit the beast. Kormac was standing there watching it when it flung out a hand and cast something at him. Kormac gasped in shock as his skin turned ashen and he fell to the ground dead. Lyle ran over and grabbed his longsword and prepared to help attack it. It finally swooped down and attacked us again and we managed to hit it enough to finally knock it down and finish it off. It then started smoking and sizzling and started dissolving before our eyes.
We spotted lots of coin and started digging around and found some platinum, six gems, a set of bracers and what looked to be a scroll. We grabbed all of the loot and backed off as the body was now stinking. We backed off and looked over the stuff. I opened the scroll and was very pleased to find a raise dead and restoration so at least I could bring Kormac back from the dead. I read off the scroll and Kormac awakened from his early demise. Moments later Leon and Letan wandered back from the woods where they had wandered off too. We broke camp in the middle of the night and moved a few hundred yards to get away from the smell and bedded down for the rest of the night.
Emmanir 22 we broke camp in the morning and continued heading north towards the border. We took our time and stayed in the trees where ever possible. The day was uneventful after the fight the night before and we made camp just before dark.
Emmanir 23 we continued walking and finally came across the main road heading west and decided to camp and wait to see what sort of traffic was on the road. The rest of the day passed quietly with no traffic and we rested quietly. I spent the time speaking with Jameela and found that her training was the same as mine as she had started out as a sorceress and had become a sword sage and then had just recently joined the order of the Jade Phoenix which is a prestige class of sorceress. She was also trained in some martial disciplines and was quite proficient with her short swords.
Emmanir 24 we continued watching during the morning and soon spotted a large dust cloud to the east and we waited and watched. A few hours later a very large caravan slowly passed us heading west. We waited for the guards and wagons to pass and then we started following them. By mid afternoon, Letan had asked to scout ahead of the caravan and found where the massive dig was happening. She soon returned with some disturbing news.
It appeared that everyone working there was dead. We skirted the pit and kept an eye on the caravan as it arrived. The people milled around the wagons until some small groups spread out and looked further. We watched two men go down a ramp toward the excavation and they dropped out of sight. Moments later we heard a scream and watched as an arm flew up over the bank and landed on the ground. The workers and guards then grabbed all of the horses and rapidly departed the scene leaving the wagons. We waited a few minutes to make sure they were gone and we headed down to investigate further. The wagons contained food and supplies and nothing else. We continued looking around and soon came to the ramp and looked down. The ramp turned to the right and we couldn’t see anything. Before we headed down, I grabbed my wand of bull’s strength and used up the remaining charges on all of the warriors. I then cast mage armor on myself and my consort while the others cast off some spells also.
I ordered Leon to take the lead with Kormac and Letan behind him. The ramp turned the corner and we could see a set of stairs going into an area of darkness. The bodies of the men were laying there with one of them missing an arm and blood everywhere. Leon stepped through the darkness as the rest of us followed. We finally all stepped through and immediately were assaulted by some shadow-like creatures that seemed to have immense strength. When they hit us, they attempted to tear a limb off. Thankfully I had cast the bull’s strength as it helped everyone. The shadows attacked for two rounds and then faded away. We continued exploring and found that the main room had lots of stairways heading down off the room and they all appeared to be identical. We checked the stairway on the left and soon looked to the right and headed down the stairs and looked around further. The next thing we know, we were being attacked by the shadows again. They hit us for two rounds and then disappeared again. We continued exploring with Kormac in the lead when he set off a pit trap and fell through the floor. The lid snapped back into place and we couldn’t find the trigger so Rah’hal set off the trap to find Kormac. Rah’hal also fell through but we managed to keep the lid open in order to help Kormac and Rah’hal out of the pit.
We then continued exploring this rather weird building. I hope the shadows don’t come back again but I don’t think we will be so lucky. In fact the shadow beings reappeared every five minutes, attacked and then vanished. We noticed that the shadows looked like us. After the second appearance I had finally had enough and cast a circle of protection against evil and this did the trick. I ordered everyone to stay within 10 feet of me and the shadows could do nothing the next time they appeared. We continued exploring and rapidly realized that we were going around in circles. We decided to leave and headed back to the entrance and soon realized that we couldn’t leave. After a few moments we became aware that a maze spell had been cast over the area so we started looking for something that looked different and finally found a chamber where a translucent book appeared to be floating in place. We slowly approached it and found that it was written in Elvish and seemed to be a journal of some kind. We could not find the name of the author and decided to try and read it.
I cast mage hand and managed to turn the pages of the journal as the others gathered around and started reading the story. It appears that some Illithids had appeared when they dug down too deeply and broke into a vast area. The other thing of interest was that some of them had been undead. Great! Now we will have to fight even nastier critters. It also sounded like we were going to have to attack the Illithids in order to get out of the caverns. Past this room was a chute that headed down and we were going to have to slide down to the next level in order to explore further. We then slid down the chute and soon found ourselves in a room with a long corridor. Moments later we were being attacked from the shadows and had to react. When we could finally see them, we spotted two undead Illithids down at the end of the corridor and they attacked with their psychic powers and knocked down Leon and Lyle.
We started attacking them and soon were attacked by another two of them that were floating above us. The fight was now on and we started attacking with a vengeance. I had to cast off all of my fireballs and managed to penetrate their defenses. The fight was very nasty as every time they hit, we lost a level. Rah’hal suffered the worst as he was struck five times and suffered greatly. Letan and Jameela were the others to be struck before we finally managed to kill the three Illithids. The others had been images. I had to cast a few cure spells on Rah’hal as he was near death. Moments later we could hear the shuffling of bodies coming down the corridor and spotted more Illithids. These ones were falling apart and looked like zombies and I managed to destroy half of them before the warriors took out the rest. We checked the bodies and found some coin and a couple of gems and proceeded to head down the corridor. We came around the corner and looked into a large room that had Illithids standing everywhere. Most of them were in bad condition, all but the tall dark Illithid standing watching us. His aura of undead radiated towards us even from a distance away. This did not look good as I realized that this one was a vampire and we now had our work cut out for us. We will be very lucky to survive this attack unscathed.
We moved up to attack and soon realized that this vampire cast spells. He first tried a confusion spell and it worked on Lyle and Jameela. I spotted a large brain in the pit behind the vampire and yelled out to Leon to attack it. As the vampire flew up to the ceiling, I ordered everyone to attack the brain. Soon the vampire closed and tried to hit me with a spell that I shrugged off. He then managed to dominate Letan but Kormac managed to knock her out before she could do any real damage. Next he tried a fireball but this also hit the brain and he flinched when the brain reacted. He closed and then managed to dominate Leon just as the others started whacking away at the brain. I pulled out a scroll of mass heal and cast it just as Leon attacked Kormac while the vampire waved his tentacles at me. The spell worked on my companions as the vampire shrugged it off. He quickly looked in alarm when the brain gave a violent shiver. Kormac looked up at me as I screamed at him to kill it.
He swung his sword and nailed the brain and it started falling apart. The vampire let out a shriek as it fell to the floor. We all jumped up and hacked away at it and I realized that I couldn’t hurt it with my dagger. The rest managed to hurt it as it then stood up while Leon was on top of him and tossed Leon aside like a rag doll. I tried to cast a few spells but couldn’t get past his resistance until I finally got fed up and cast burning hands and nailed him right in the face. We finally forced him to turn gaseous and started floating towards his coffin. Rah’hal followed it as Kormac and I climbed out of the pit and watched in amazement as Lyle and Jameela appeared to be taking turns fighting away at each other. We managed to get them healed enough so they couldn’t kill themselves as we turned our attention towards the vampire. Lyle and Jameela then came back to themselves with a shake and turned to follow us.
Rah’hal pointed out the crack in the wall that the vampire had gone through and we soon found the secret door and finally Lyle opened it after a struggle. Behind the door was a stairway down. Lyle hopped up onto Leon and they proceeded down the stairs with Rah’hal behind them. The rest of us started following with Jameela and me taking up the rear. Moments later the stairs moved underneath our feet and we were sliding down the ramp. Jameela stopped almost immediately as I scrambled for a scroll. I managed to use a scroll of levitate just as I hit the lip of the slide and slowly dropped into the fifty foot pit covered in spikes. Letan looked the worse for wear while Kormac was already standing up and dusting himself off. Leon and Rah’hal had managed to jump the pit and were now looking down the pit at us. I pulled Letan off the spikes and cast a spell on her to wake her up. Kormac also cast a spell and she then got to her feet. Jameela soon walked down the wall and joined us as Lyle pulled out his rope of climbing to help us get up. Letan stood up and was mumbling to herself as she looked up and gave a second look to the wall. She then said that she thought she had seen something in the wall. We all decided to look and search and it was me who found the secret door. Lyle tried to open it and then cast detect magic and we realized that an arcane lock had been cast on the door.
Finally we had to bash the door down to find the corridor behind it leading to an iron door. We walked up to the door and Lyle said the same spell was on this door also. I pulled out a scroll of reduce and cast it at the door and it shrank enough that I told Leon to break it down. He lowered his head and charged through the door. Beyond the door we could all see the coffin as we stepped forwards.
The vampire rose out of the coffin and reformed before our eyes. The warriors surged forwards so that they could attack him. I stepped back and cast spells as the group hacked and whacked away. Suddenly he turned gaseous again and we then tore apart his coffin, inside we found a few choice items including a potion, scroll, wand and a very nice looking light mace that Lyle picked up and then grinned to himself. This is mine he said to the group as he put it onto his belt. The scroll was chain lightning, the wand was lightning bolt and the potion was labeled delay poison. We continued checking the room after the coffin was turned to shreds and managed to find a small door in the block that the coffin had rested on. Lyle tried to pick open the door and set off the trap. Noxious green fumes erupted into the room and by the fate of Laerme; it seemed that I was the only one affected by the gas. I downed the potion of delay poison while Letan pulled out a potion of neutralize poison and offered it to me. I downed it and walked into the room and looked behind the door. Inside was a small platinum box that was covered in gems. It glowed at me and I could clearly sense it was highly enchanted. I carefully pulled it out and spotted a sheathed dagger behind the box. My eyes widened as I spotted the ruby in the pommel. I carefully pulled the dagger out with the box and turned back to the group as their eyes widened when they saw the box. I carefully put the box in my bag of holding and looked at the dagger further. I drew it and it immediately burst into flames. I could sense the chaotic nature of the blade and felt it would hurt lawful beings.
This blade is much better and I put it on my belt and relegated my other dagger to the secondary blade. We headed back out and stopped when we got to the remains of the brain and spotted the mounds of gold in the pit. We decided to stop and grab the coin, we washed it off via my create water spells and collected 11 000 gold. We put it in the bag of holding and headed to the exit. With the brain dead we soon walked out of the caverns and decided to camp for the night. I had now gained in power and decided to gain more divine spells.
Emmanir 25 we rested for the night and started walking soon after dawn. Letan was scouting ahead when she heard something moving in the trees. Before we could do anything we were surrounded by dozens and dozens of very large cats along with a large Sphinx which slowly walked up to us. Off in the distance we could see the silhouettes of four large giants. This did not look good. The Sphinx turned and looked at Letan hiding in the bushes and told her to come out and back to the group. He then asked who our leader was and I took a deep breath and then stepped forwards to identify myself as the leader of the Stellar Four Adventuring Co and he immediately asked me what we had been doing at his excavation. I tried to bluff him a bit but he soon got tired of my evasive answers and Letan’s snide comments and finally he forced Letan to step back from us and surrounded her with ten large lions.
He then turned his attention to Leon and looked at him. Leon immediately started spilling the beans about who we were and what we were doing there. He then turned to me and asked if we had found the item. At this point I decided to cooperate with him, I doubted that we could survive a fight with these guys so I opened up my bag of holding and rummaged around for a few moments and pulled out the small platinum box and held it in my hands. I told him that this was the item we had recovered. He ordered me to give it to him. I stepped up and placed it in his hands. He looked at it curiously and made it disappear. He seemed impressed when we told him of all the undead we had killed and then shocked me by asking us if we would help recover something from another site to the north. He had reliable information that the legendary crown may be found in the Mountains of the Silent Watch. He agreed that if we explored the ruins that we could keep anything we found in there except for the crown. This he said was his and that if we found it he might even return the box to us. I was rather surprised to hear the offer and the group quickly agreed to his terms. He even agreed to give us an escort to the ruins and ordered twenty of the large savannah lions to accompany us along with two of the stone giants. He told us that all of the lions were his progeny and he would be very upset if anything happened to them. He informed us that this group would only accompany us to the ruins and from there we would be on our own. With that he ordered the rest of the cats to follow him and then soon disappeared. We then turned north and started riding. We stopped at noon so I could pray for my divine spells and we continued on until dinnertime. The others started recovering from the energy drains from yesterday but Letan and Rah’hal were drained of power permanently so I had to cast restoration spells on them. The others recovered their powers and only Rah’hal still required a spell the next day.
Emmanir 26 we continued riding north, things went quickly when we didn’t have to put out a guard. Letan was up to her usual antagonistic self when it came to the lions and the lions were smart enough to get back at her when she least expected it. Like when one of them hid a mangled rabbit in her blankets as she went to bed down for the night.
Emmanir 27 it was late in the afternoon when we reached a small village and stocked up on basic foodstuffs. We would have liked to have found some magic but there were no temples or mages anywhere around. Letan went wandering around and found a large sack of catnip and bought it and later that night used it on the cats. Even Leon and Lyle were affected by it. The cats got back at her when they all abruptly decided to lie down on her tent and turned her into a mummy wrapped up in cats.
Emmanir 28 it was funny in the morning to see Letan covered in lions with only her head sticking out. The cats got off of her and it took her some time to get her limbs working again. She kept giving the cats dirty looks and finally I told her to knock it off and behave. We had a good meal and continued north. The Sphinx had given us a map of the location so at least we knew where we were going. We continued riding until the late afternoon when we were abruptly surrounded by flames that knocked down most of the lions and severely injured the giants. We started looking around for the spell caster and were soon attacked by a large dire bear and dire wolf. Then some trees seemed to animate and proceeded to attack us. We fought back as we looked around and Rah’hal rushed forward when we spotted the man floating up near a tree. I cast body of the sun on myself and waited while the trees attacked. The remaining lions all attacked the wolf as Leon took on the bear. The fight quickly got nasty as I pulled out my new dagger. Now at least I can see what it does in combat. The fight proceeded furiously as more spells went off and a large earth elemental appeared out of the ground and attacked. Jameela was attacked by some trees and managed to kill them while I looked around to find someone to attack. I couldn’t cast any flame spells as I would hurt my companions if I did. The next thing I knew, Kormac was pointing out someone standing off in the distance that appeared to be casting spells.
I immediately nailed him with a fireball and he looked hurt. So hurt in fact that his next attempt at casting a spell failed. I then managed to nail him again and he went down. I then turned my attention to Leon and Lyle and realized that they were in trouble against the druid that had attacked us. The next thing I knew, Lyle was screaming that Leon and Rah’hal were dead and he started running away from the guy. I then cast a fireball at him and managed to hurt him a little bit. I turned to see what else was going on and spotted on of our giants going down and noticed a few of the lions were now definitely dead. Jameela was busily helping out Letan who looked like death warmed over as we continued attacking. Then more trees started moving forward as one of them stepped up and gave me a whack. We were going to have to do something about this druid or we were all going to end up dead. The next thing I knew, Letan was down again and Lyle was almost back to us when the druid threw something at Lyle and nailed him in the back and blew him forward so he almost landed at my feet. I then pulled out the scroll of chain lightning and nailed the druid. He then moved forwards to engage us as Jameela approached Kormac and I. we continued attacking and I cast another fireball at the druid that did absolutely nothing to him so I then pulled out the wand of lightning I had and nailed him for good as I watched him go down. I then turned and nailed one of the trees and blew it into splinters as Kormac continued attacking as Jameela went down from a blow from the tree. The lions finally managed to stagger the last tree as I blew it apart with another charge from the wand.
Suddenly all the enemy was down as I looked around in amazement. Kormac and I were the only ones still standing as we started to check our companions. Lyle and Leon were dead while the others were unconscious. We managed to cure the remaining giant and then took stock of the lions. Of the twenty that had accompanied us, only three remained alive. Boy was the Sphinx going to be angry at us for losing most of his progeny. I then checked the two druids and found quite a few magic items including some scrolls. On one of them I found two reincarnation spells. I looked at the group and they agreed that I should cast them to bring back Lyle and Leon. I proceeded to do so and we were amazed when Lyle returned and turned into a Khinasi human male. Leon appeared to shift into human form but he quickly melded back into lion form as he woke up. He was amazed to find that Lyle was gone and in his place was a human. This was going to get interesting. The other thing of interest was the holy symbols that the druids had been wearing. It appeared that they worshipped the Cold Rider and had attacked Lyle because of his halfling status. I don’t think we have to worry about that now as he is no longer a halfling and he informed us that he could no longer shadow walk. I am just glad that we got them back again and we can continue on with our journey tomorrow after we have rested for the night. The lions conferred and it was decided to send off the remaining two to report back to the Sphinx, leaving the giant and the last lion with us.
Emmanir 30 we were still resting when we spotted someone approaching the camp. He quickly turned into an elf male dressed in robes. Letan was the first to see him and she announced his presence by saying “Look a man.” He slowly approached the camp with his wolf companion. He introduced himself as Von and said he was a sorcerer specializing in cold and ice spells. I checked on his alignment and he did not radiate any evil but showed that he was chaotic in nature. We started talking to him and when we spoke about our quest, he told us that he was familiar with the area and knew of the fortress we spoke of and agreed to lead us there. We quickly broke camp and started walking north. The day passed quickly as Von was able to lead us through the forest rather easily. He said that we had to travel into the Mountains of the Silent Watch in order to find Bannalach Fortress.
Emmanir 32 we knew we were getting close to the fortress when all of the foliage around us turned grey and dead. As we walked over the grass it turned to dust under our feet and when Letan snapped a branch off a tree in turned to dust and fell to the ground. The remaining lion and giant then stopped and said that they had fulfilled the Sphinx’ agreement to lead us to this spot and they were now going to return and report that we were now investigating the Fortress. We started walking closer to the site when we spotted something flying out of the fortress. There was almost two dozen flying things that I realized were spectres. This did not look good as they could fly faster than we could run. We then got in a defensive circle as Lyle cast protective circle against evil. We then started casting spells as they rapidly approached. I hope that the power of Laerme is strong in me today otherwise we may all end up dead.
The spectres approached and attacked while Von and I cast cold and fire spells. They came within range and we proceeded to continue casting spells. I had to drop a fireball right behind Letan and then she was hit with a cone of cold that didn’t help. Finally she was hit a few times by the spectres and was affected by their energy drain. Finally they were all dead as we watched another one come out of the fortress and soar to attack. We killed it just as we got back to the edge of the barrier. We crossed it back into the land of the living and decided to go rest. Of all of us, only Jameela and Rah’hal were unaffected by the draining touch. We rested over night and awoke to the Eve of the Dead and the group refreshed after a night’s sleep. We had all recovered our drained levels and decided to rest for another day and awoke to the month of Keltier. We also discussed tactics and strategy.
We returned to the barrier and waited while we cast some spells. Von and I cast mage armor on everyone and then cast a few more spells and we cautiously stepped across the barrier. We were over halfway to the fortress when Rah’hal brushed up against a branch and we all heard a faint ringing sound and moments later we spotted more spectres appearing and we went into our plan of action. I cast death ward on Rah’hal and Letan while Letan cast greater magic fang on Leon. We then waited for the spectres to approach and moments later they were surrounding us. I then cast a fireball right at my feet to nail all of them and the group managed to survive the first blast and then Von cast another one and something went wrong when he screamed in agony and then his staff of frost literally blew up in his hands and he was vaporized by the shock wave. Jameela went down in a heap and I was able to step up and help her survive with a cure spell. The only good thing was that there was only 4 spectres left of the score that had attacked us. The blast had nailed most of them. We made quick work of the remaining ones and then picked up Jameela and headed back towards the barrier. Everyone managed to get to the barrier before the spectres got close enough to attack us. When Kormac turned around he foolishly attacked the spectre that was on the other side of the barrier. It surged across and attacked Kormac and managed to hit him once, draining him of vitality. We finally killed it and headed back to camp to rest for the night and waited for Jameela to awaken.
Keltier 2, after awakening, I cast a spell on Kormac to help him recover his vitality and it returned and we prepared to do battle again, we started towards the barrier when we came across an old male elf that appeared out of the trees in front of us. He carried a staff and looked frail. He introduced himself as Merlin as the group checked him out. Lyle then murmured that he was not evil and Kormac nodded the same. Merlin then asked where we were going and I said that we were dealing with the fortress in the dead area and he asked if he could accompany us there. I guess Laerme works in mysterious ways as we needed to replace the inept Von with someone better. We headed to the barrier and stopped and cast multiple spells before we entered. We attracted the attention of a score of the foul creatures again and we started casting spells. Laerme made me suffer when three of them approached me and savagely hurt me, draining me of vitality. I was forced to step back and cast body of the sun to protect myself as I was struck again, almost dropping to my knees in weakness. Jameela tried to help me but it was difficult due to the creature’s ability to flow through anything. This hurts. We continued attacking until I was struck again and everything went black. I woke up to Lyle looking down at me and saying that more were coming. I sat up and looked into the dead zone. Another twenty spectres were approaching so Lyle and Leon were outside the barrier along with Jameela as we watched the others waiting inside the barrier to approach. Merlin was standing with a wand in hand and was firing fireballs as fast as he could. The three with the death ward were waiting for them to approach to defeat them again. This made over 80 creatures that had appeared. I watched as our warriors attacked the spectres. I walked down the line until I was far enough away and stepped into the dead zone drawing a wand as I did. I used the wand of lightning twice in order to help the fighters and the spectres were finally destroyed and we high tailed it back to camp to rest again.
Keltier 3, we awakened and recovered our lost vitality and prepared to engage the spectres again, at least this time we will have less than twenty to destroy before we can finally get into the fortress. We headed back to the barrier and prepared to do combat again, we stepped through and attracted the attention of them again and this time eighteen of the appeared with another one suddenly appearing behind them. This one stopped and waited while the others moved in to attack. They had learned from the previous days and were spread out enough that we would only be able to hit one of them with fireball so we waited until they closed in to attack us. As Kormac and Letan stepped up to attack, confident that the spells we had cast on them would help in the fight. I noticed the lone spectre swirling in color and it looked like it might be making gestures. The next thing we knew, Kormac shouted that the spells on him had disappeared. The creature had cast dispel magic on him so he was now susceptible to their draining attacks. Merlin then cast a fireball at the wizard and nailed it. I cast a spell on myself and waited. Merlin cast another fireball at the wizard and this time something flared up right in front of it and I recognized it as a globe of invulnerability. This was going to make things difficult for us. I started pulling out scrolls and found one that might work and cast fire storm at the wizard. The spell passed right through it and I tossed down the now useless scroll in disgust. It returned the favor by cast Evard’s black tentacles and managed to grab most of the group in its grasp. I then cast a fireball into the group around me as the others attacked. Lyle and Merlin were forced to retreat out of the barrier as we fought. Then the creature cast confusion and nailed Kormac and Letan with its effects. I then dropped a fireball at their feet and finally managed to wipe out a half dozen of the spectres leaving only a couple left to fight. Rah’hal was forced to run up and engage the wizard with physical attacks. Lyle was also attacking it with his spiritual weapon as Merlin started summoning tough enough creatures to get through the globe. Letan then ran out of the area as fast as she could.
The wizard then cast a spell and the summoned creatures could no longer hit him and soon changed their targets to the remaining spectres fighting us. I finally caught a breath when a cast another fireball and wiped out most of the spectres still remained and then I ran up to Rah’hal to help him in fighting the wizard. I stepped through the globe and then proceeded to cast a spell. The only thing I still had to use was a blast of searing light and I managed to nail the wizard solidly and the spell penetrated. The spectre dissolved into a burst of vapor and finally it was dead. I turned to look at the others and they had finally knocked off the others. I watched in horror as Letan stepped up and stabbed Merlin in the back and knocked him through the barrier. He managed to scramble away from Letan as we finished off the remaining spectres and retreated back to camp once the confusion wore off. We rested for the night and recovered our strength.
Keltier 4, we headed back to the barrier and walked through and headed to the entrance. Once we got there, we stopped and cast a few spells to buff ourselves up and proceeded to open the gates and walk in. The first area we entered was a large room with some sort of a twenty foot black statue wearing a cowl over its head. I asked Rah’hal to move into the room to investigate the exits and when he stepped in the statue moved. Rah’hal, Kormac, and Letan didn’t wait and attacked it. To my surprise as soon as Rah’hal attacked he froze in place. The same with Kormac and even Letan froze in the middle of firing arrows at the thing. In fact two of her arrows froze in flight only feet away from the thing. Merlin then stepped into the room and cautiously started talking to the thing. It spoke with a cold scary voice and it sent a shiver up my spine as I listened to it. It was very angry that we had killed off its guardians and I decided to step up and try talking to it. I carefully explained that we had been forced to come here and investigate this fortress and to find an item wanted by the Sphinx. I told him that we were more worried about the Sphinx and what he could do to us. The creature then told us that the item was down below him and guarded by something evil. He warned us that if freed the evil we would have to make sure that we destroyed it or we would suffer the consequences. I carefully asked if it could free our companions so we could complete our quest.
A few moments later the three of them were knocked backwards and recovered quickly. We checked out the exits and decided rather quickly that we would go straight ahead as the other doors we could not open. The light showed a tunnel leading straight off into the distance and after we had walked for a few moments started to slant down. Then we were waylaid by the sudden attack of six bolts at Letan who was in the lead. She was nailed by a few of them and Kormac moved up to help. They quickly got into combat and we were forced to move up in order to see anything. I quickly realized that we were engaged with some dark dwarves. There was a group of them fighting with Kormac so I launched a fireball into the area. We looked for Letan and finally spotted part of her showing through the floor. We moved up and Jameela used her sword to probe the floor and stopped ten feet away from the pit. Jameela walked around the side of the tunnel and then helped Letan up and turned to help Kormac and Leon. They were busy attacking and had to watch their step as the tunnel was going down at a 10 degree grade so the footing was getting slick. We walked for a while until we came to a large chamber with a very large rock in the centre of it. When we advanced into the room, the rock suddenly shifted and became a very large earth elemental. In fact I had never seen one that big before. It rumbled something in a gravelly voice and Kormac suddenly told us to leave. We decided that was a good idea and retreated about 100 feet and stopped to talk. He told us that the elemental was a guardian and the only way past it was to destroy it. Seeing as we needed all the help we could get, I decided to use the censor for summoning air elementals and summoned one. Once we were ready we attacked. The fight was brutal as it ignored some of the damage we did to it and it was my magic missile that finally destroyed it but not before it almost killed Leon and Letan. The massive stone fists hurt every time they hit and it was so powerful that it hit every time.
When it died it burst into rubble hurting us even more. We got patched up and continued on until we came to an archway in the tunnel, just before the archway was a small passage leading off to the left. There was a strange blue light covering the hole and after a few minutes we determined that the archway and side passage had some writing on them. We determined that the language was Andu and basically they said either hard for straight ahead or easy through the side passage. We decided to continue straight ahead and when we passed through the archway the walls seemed to change ever so slightly. Kormac stopped and investigated and finally said that it appeared to be elemental rock and we might be somewhere on the Elemental Plane of Earth. Great this is all we needed to be doing, traipsing around the Elemental Planes. We continued walking until we came to another chamber with another large pile of rock. As Leon walked into the chamber the pile of rocks suddenly moved and it threw a rock that hit with a meaty thump into Leon. The rest of the group rushed forwards to attack it and this one was even harder to hit than the last one. The lucky thing was that Kormac’s sword sliced into it without resistance while the others were having a tough time hitting. I got the bright idea to give my dagger to Rah’hal so he could attack it and I didn’t have too. In fact I ended up pulling out my wand of curing and started using it mostly on Letan as she started turning into a punching bag for the thing. We finally killed it off and it too fell into a pile of rubble when it died. We looked past the chamber and could see a side passage to the left that was covered in blue light and twenty feet past that a black curtain.
We decided it might be a good time to rest for a moment and that is when Kormac started digging. When we asked him what he was doing all he would say was wait a moment. Soon he had uncovered a vein of pure gold that was large enough that all of us were impressed. It took a couple of hours to dig it out enough to uncover it and put it in the bag of holding. As we looked around some more, Kormac reached into the rubble and brought out something blue and shiny. He looked at it and he whistled. Lyle and Letan both looked at it and said it was junk. Kormac just grinned as he tossed it to me and I put it into the bag of holding. Even I could see that it was a large blue sapphire that was worth thousands. We then went to check out the black wall and Lyle lit a torch and thrust it through. When he pulled it out, it was soaking wet. I decided to have some fun with Letan and asked her to come up and look at the wall. When she did so I tried to assist her through the wall and almost succeeded but she managed to push me through instead. I plunged into cold water and the shock forced my mouth open and I took in a lung full of water and started choking. As I was flailing around in the water, Letan suddenly appeared beside me and she could see that I was having some problems and she thrust me back through the curtain to the other side. I landed onto the floor and started gasping for air. The others assisted me as Kei’lo popped out of my robes and shook himself before he burst into flames and started drying me off. Moments later Letan emerged from the wall and shook herself as the water poured off of her. It appears that we have come across the Elemental Plane of Water and now we have to find out how deep it was. I convinced Letan and Rah’hal to go for a swim to see how deep it was and they soon returned saying they couldn’t swim to the other side. Well now is a good time as any to take and break and rest so we can learn some new spells for tomorrow, specifically water breathing. We retreated back to the chamber and after making a quick meal bedded down for the night. With where we are I don’t think we have any worries about intruders during the night.
Keltier 5 We rested up and I prepared the group by casting water-breathing and touched every one, by my calculations it should last about two hours. Long enough for our needs I hope. Then I cast freedom of movement on myself and we proceeded in. We started swimming/walking along the bottom of the water and it felt weird to be in this environment. About ten minutes later we finally came to a disturbance and out of it we were attacked by some Water Mephits. They attacked Rah’hal before we managed to come up and support him and wiped them out. We continued on until we came to a large chamber that contained one massive water elemental and beyond it the exit through the room. We moved up and engaged the elemental but not before I decided to try and turn it to my will. Ha? That’s what I thought as it just stood there waiting for us to attack. It soon turned into a vortex and started spinning catching all of the warrior types first as they had been bashing away at him. I had just enough time to cast body of the sun on myself as it swept me up. Soon we were all being tumbled and tossed all over the place. I managed to keep doing it damage until suddenly the flames winked out. It must have done something to knock them out. I prepared myself to cast it again as I figured it must be getting weaker by now. I looked for Jameela and soon spotted her and she didn’t look well. She was tumbling around limply and looked very faint. I may have to heal her first. At least as long as this thing was spinning it could smash us with its limbs. Still spinning around like a darned washing machine is no fun at all. Poor Leon looked like the proverbial drowned cat but was biting and clawing away madly. I looked for Jameela and spotted her next to Kormac and hoped that he could heal her as I cast body of the sun again and burst into flames. This finally killed the elemental as we took a breath to recover. We quickly headed back to dry land to recover and agreed to wait a day and head back in again.
Keltier 6 I took the time to cast water breathing again as we headed back into the water again. We walked again until we got to a section with a smaller tunnel heading off to the left and we continued straight until we came to a large cavern with a large water elemental standing at the other side. This one was different as it was non reflective. Letan the cast bulls strength on the fighters and headed into the cavern. We had just taken a few steps when Merlin cast a spell and then the thing waved its hand and we all suffered from some type of necromantic spell. This also caused Lyle to finally morph into his tiger form for the first time since becoming a were-tiger. The group moved up to attack this thing and it proceeded to cast spells at us before we could get close enough to hurt it. I cast three fireballs at it while Merlin cast all his nasty spells. Finally we got all of the warriors around it hacking and slashing away. Then the bloody thing abruptly flowed up to Merlin and whacked him just as Jameela launched her flame bolts at it finally killing it. We rejoiced in its destruction and then looked around. Just inside the tunnel was a small alcove containing a chest? Letan searched it and could find nothing wrong and then tried to open it. The lid would not open so I cast detect magic and the chest indeed radiated, I then cast dispel magic and managed to overcome the spell. I opened the lid to find some nice gold vestments along with a pair of gem encrusted gauntlets. Underneath them was a pair of leather boots that Letan asked to try on. No one objected so I handed them over. She tried them on and walked around and then tried to take them off but she couldn’t. I guess they were cursed and I laughed out loud when I saw it. Underneath them were two wands, a scroll tube and a potion. I tucked them away as we decided to continue on. We had to get out of the water in order to continue. We still have air and fire to go.
We continued on and came to the next black screen. We passed through it and stepped out onto a ledge about thirty feet wide. We looked over the ledge and it was a long way down to the ground. Looking out we couldn’t see across the cavern. I then started looking at the items and found that the scroll tube contained two scrolls of which one of them contained three mass fly spells cast at 20th level. At least now we could get across the cavern if it wasn’t too long. We decided to rest for the day here as we waited for Lyle to transform back to human and I needed to refresh my spells anyway seeing as the water was behind us. We rested for the night and in the morning Merlin cast identify on Letan’s boots and they were indeed cursed. She still couldn’t figure out what they did but they were hers now. The two wands turned out to be monster summoning 1 and web. I gave the monster summoning to Merlin and kept the wand of web. The other scroll contained two first level spells, charm person and ventriloquism. I put the scroll away and asked if everyone was ready to proceed. They all said they were and I proceeded to cast a mass fly and we took off from the ledge heading across. We had traveled for seven minutes when we noticed a small group of air Mephits waiting for us and as we approached they did something and next thing we knew there was 16 of them. Merlin was preparing to cast a spell when I told him not to bother and launched a fireball into the group. When the smoke cleared all we could see were bits and pieces floating down to the ground about a mile below us. I cautioned everyone to stay close to each other or someone was going for a nasty fall. We continued on until we came across the air elemental waiting for us and we proceeded to attack. It was a hard fought battle but in the end we managed to prevail. Leon took the brunt of the damage from the thing and he got so mad that he raged and proceeded to shred the thing apart as only a large cat could do. He was forced to curl up and slept while we all grabbed a hold of him and towed him along. We continued until we could see another elemental being waiting for us and this one was nastier as it caused a large thunder storm to materialize right about us and the thunder deafened Merlin. Luckily it didn’t affect the rest of us and we moved up to engage it. I calculated that we might just have enough time remaining in the fly spell to kill it and get to the exit. We could see it behind the massive creature that was attacking us. It seemed to shrug off most of the damage from our blows like all the other elementals that we had fought here. Thankfully I managed to cast some spells on it at the same time that Jameela and Merlin cast spells and these seemed to work.
But it still had something up its sleeve so to speak when a prismatic spray erupted from it and nailing us with it. Merlin was hit with a violet beam and shimmered out of existence. I think he had been sent to another plane. Seeing where we are I can safely say that he has gone to the Elemental plane of Air. Letan was hit with the blue beam and suddenly she was a heavy rock statue. Rah’hal managed to hold on as the rest of us attacked the elemental and finally killed it. We managed to get to the tunnel exit and the black curtain dividing the elements. We soon found an unlocked chest and opened it. We found one potion and four scrolls. I looked at the scrolls and they were all arcane. With Merlin now gone I am the only arcane caster. Luckily the first scroll contained two stone to flesh spells and I used one of them to restore Letan. The others were blindness, blur, and summon monster II, melf’s acid arrow, and mirror image, chain lightning and stone of vengeance. We decided to rest up for the day and waited until tomorrow as we have the fire element to come and then the last one. I told the others to memorize the appropriate spells for tomorrow.
Keltier 7 when we awakened we noticed that Letan’s boots had grown up her legs during the night and seemed to becoming part of her skin. This did not look good and I tried to break the enchantment but was unsuccessful. We held our breath and stepped through. The heat was pretty intense but bearable. We soon came across the fire Mephits and I stepped up and dismissed then with a wave of my hand. Next we soon came across the middle guardian, an elder fire elemental and I tried to dismiss it but knew I didn’t have a chance. We then attacked and soon managed to kill it. It was a good thing that we all had some sort of resistance to fire and we continued on. We next encountered the fire elemental lord and proceeded to attack it. It hit us with a horrid wilting and almost sucked us dry. We still managed to kill it but it was a close thing. We looked down the tunnel and spotted another black curtain dividing the planes. We looked into the corner and found a gorgeous white ash staff chased in silver. I quickly realized that it was a staff of healing and it was half charged. I took it with glee and we continued to the veil. I asked Letan to step through and take a look. She gave me a dirty look but then swirled her cloak around her and stepped through. She came back moments later and said that this one was desolate with an occasional dead tree. She said that something spoke in her mind and was pleased to see that something living had arrived. We decided to go back to the air zone and rest as the fire zone was a little too hot to endure. We walked back and rested for the night.
Keltier 8 when we awakened I tried to break the enchantment again on the boots but it didn’t work again. The curse must be pretty strong. The boots had now moved up to her thighs and we still didn’t know what the curse was. We traveled through the fire zone and stopped at the next veil and we started casting a few spells to prepare us for what was to come. We then stepped through the veil and stepped into a dreary place. Everything was gray and the ground was hard baked. Every so often we could see a dead tree. Other than that, the cloud layer was fairly low and I noticed that the clouds roiled about and churned above us. The veil behind us hung about three feet off the ground and it was a perfect circle ten feet across. Letan took point and looked warily around. Lyle then stepped up beside me and quietly said that Letan was now evil, probably from the curse and that we should be very careful around her until we got out of this dreary place. We walked for a few hours and were debating about what to do now when something slowly appeared on the horizon. It looked to be some sort of a horse and it plodded slowly forward towards us. It looked like it was about to fall over with every step. We soon found out that it was nasty enough when it approached close enough and drained our vitality before we could even get close to it. Letan fired an arrow and it went right through the thing without stopping. We finally had to engage it with weapons and found that blunt objects were the right thing to hit it with. I pulled out the censor for summoning an air elemental and summoned one and ordered it to attack
We finally managed to kill it but not before it nailed Leon with something and sucked his body dry killing him instantly. All we could do was put his dried husk of a body into the bag of holding and hope that we could survive until tomorrow when I could pray him back to life. I also noticed that Letan was looking at us strangely and her features were starting to change. This did not look good. I think the curse of the boots has now taken her. We looked around and I realized that we would have a tough time finding our way back to the portal. We turned around I thought and started walking back the way we came I think. The ground showed no evidence of our tracks and a few hours later we agreed that we were lost on this desolate plane. I even summoned another air elemental and told it to try and find the portal and return. It did not come back so I decided to use one of the mass fly spells to try and see it from the air. This spell eventually expired and we had not found the portal. The clouds remained only a few hundred feet above us so we couldn’t see anything. Finally we landed and decided to build a roaring fire to see what we could attract. It didn’t take long before some sort of dragon came out of the clouds and landed about 100 feet away from us. It looked undead but didn’t look like a dracolich so at least in that regard we would be safe. The appearance of it looked rotten and foul and I remembered reading about the reports of one of these beasts and thought it might be a rot dragon. We prepared to attack it and I looked for Letan and she seemed to be retreating when she should be stepping up to attack. This doesn’t look good. I pulled out the scroll we had found and cast chain lightning at it and was happily amazed that the spell got through and nailed it as Kormac and Jameela stepped up to attack it. Rah’hal had charged right up and was trying to hit it when it opened its mouth and something foul and disgusting poured out of it and over us. It seemed to be a blast of rot and it nailed us hard. Letan slowly moved up as I turned and screamed at her to attack it. She stepped up and then cast a spell and I was not shocked that she cast it around Jameela and Kormac. It turned out to be an entangle spell. I turned and looked at her and she just looked at me and then started to fly up into the clouds.
Great now she can fly. This doesn’t bode well. I moved up to help the others but I couldn’t shake the unease that had come over me as soon as the rot poured over us. I slogged through the entangle spell to help the others and just as I got there it collapsed and fell down in front of us. At last the dragon was dead. I waited for something else to happen and it didn’t take long for Letan to appear behind me and she attacked me with her great sword. As she hit me I cried out for Laerme to hear my prayer. She must have been listening as I felt the earth move underneath me and the sky flickered. I heard Letan gasp and she started to shiver. I looked down and saw that her sword was now rippling with flames inside the blade. Then everything went black and when I came back to my senses we were no longer on the undead plane. We were all standing around the courtyard where we had first entered days before and the black shade was standing there looking at us. I turned to look at Letan and she was lying unconscious on the ground. She had now changed into her new form which appeared to be a demon; in fact she now looked like a succubus. The interesting thing I spotted was on the palms of her hands was branded the harp and flames of Laerme in bright silver. With that I safely figured that at least she wasn’t evil anymore as Laerme would not have done this without changing her. The shadow looked at me and said “Well done! You have slain the evil, here is your reward.” Then he was gone and behind him was a small chest surrounded by bags. I walked over and could see the glyph of the Sphinx on the chest and figured it was the item he wanted. I pulled out the bag of holding and put it inside. We then looked at the bags and Lyle noticed that they were all labeled. Lyle pulled his open and found a very nice set of leather armor. Feeling Leon’s I realized that it was a ring. I put it away until I could revive him. Kormac had a nice steel shield and Rah’hal pulled out a Kama. Letan’s appeared to be a rock but I soon realized that it was a figurine of wondrous power. Jameela now had a nicer short sword and it appeared that I had been given a tome. I looked at the tome and it would improve my leadership abilities once I had read it. Letan was still asleep and we decided to make camp right here for the day. The pall of undead was gone and it appeared that the plants were starting to grow again. Tomorrow we can head back to the Sphinx and hopefully trade for the crown.
Keltier 9, we awakened in the morning after resting for the night and started walking south-west. We stopped at noon so I could pray for my divine spells and I managed to gain raise dead and pulled out Leon’s body from the bag of holding and prepared to cast the spell. It worked as Leon returned to life and we then had to cast some healing spells to get him up to strength. We continued walking until night fall. This continued on for a few days until the monotony was broken on Keltier 12 when we came across the remains of a battle. Kormac looked over the remains and was surprised to see that someone appeared to be alive amongst the dead bodies. While the others looked for clues I managed to find the living person and she was hidden underneath some dead bodies. I pulled her out to where I could see her clearly and she appeared to be human with red hair and green eyes. In fact she looked quite a bit like I did. I noticed her ears had tips to them so I thought she must be part Sidhelien. I cast a couple of healing spells and she abruptly woke up and was very surprised to see me. In fact her eyes glued onto the holy symbol of Laerme that was swinging freely around my neck and she sat up with a start asking what was going on. I informed her that we had just come across the camp to find everyone but her dead. Her companions all appeared to be Sidhelien and I asked her what she had been doing with them. She said her name was Amber and she had joined up with the others a few days ago as she had been leery about traveling alone in the wilderness. She then started asking about her cat and we heard a meow up the tree at the edge of the clearing and I spotted the cat up in the branches. Once it saw that she was awake it climbed back down to the group and hopped into the woman’s lap. It appeared it was a familiar so she must be an arcane spell-caster, that and she had a mandolin strapped to her back that was still in one piece. She then started asking about her horse and I told the others to scout around to see if they could find it. Rah’hal returned a few minutes later leading a light warhorse with gear on it. Amber jumped up and ran over to her horse and checked it over. It seemed alright as the others returned and said that the bandits had left and it appeared that something had spooked them during the fight. Amber appeared worried at first when the others came into the camp, especially when she spotted Letan who had been trying to test out her new found abilities. Amber relaxed once I told her that half of the group worshipped Laerme and she told me that she also followed her but not like I did. We then asked her if she wished to accompany us south and she agreed seeing as she didn’t want to travel alone. We continued south once more.
Keltier 13, we had traveled for the day and made camp. During the night we were awakened by the hiss of something approaching the camp. We were shocked to realize that it was a demon and it gave a warning to Letan that she was now an abomination to demon-kind and must be destroyed. Oh my! This did not look good for us. It was large and snakelike with multiple arms, each with a sword in hand. It charged Letan and attacked before she could say anything before it hit her. The fight was nasty and Letan was forced to flee before it killed her. We tried attacking it but it soon left after nailing us with a blade barrier. It almost shredded me before we got out of the way. Letan finally came back but not before it vanished from sight. The nasty thing was, anyone that hit it took major strength drain so Lyle and I were forced to use our restoration spells in order for them to recover. I then went back to bed.
Keltier 14, after having breakfast we started heading south and stopped for lunch so I could pray and we headed south again. It was just after dinnertime when we glimpsed a fire in the distance. We walked forwards as I watched Letan appear behind the people and felt up two of them and disappeared. They were simple wood cutters and we spent the night with them and continued on the next morning.
Keltier 15, Things did not go well in the afternoon when we abruptly came across the remains of some people spread out among the trees and we recognized them as the remains of the wood cutters we had spent the night with. They were spread out among the trees and there wasn’t much left of them. I said a quick prayer as there wasn’t anything else we could do. We continued on until we were suddenly stopped by the appearance of a blade barrier. That nasty demon must be around here somewhere. We couldn’t do much as the blades slowly appeared all around us, trapping us inside the blades. This did not look good. The demon then appeared at one end and Letan decided to attack it. This did not go well as it was an illusion and her attacks went right through it. Finally it appeared and we started attacking it. It didn’t help when it summoned another nasty blob of a demon and it also attacked us. I cast a fireball at it and couldn’t overcome the spell resistance of it. Then it looked at me and things went funny and I went to my happy place. It was a few hours when I came back to myself. Lyle was holding a scroll and looked like he had just cast it. Whatever the effect that the demon had nailed me with sounded like a feeblemind. Letan said that she had teleported to Calrie and ended up getting a scroll of heal from the Temple of Haelyn. She couldn’t get in but spoke to one of the priests and managed to convince them to give her a scroll of heal. The nice thing was that they gave her the scroll as their help against the demon forces arrayed against us.
The group had managed to slay the six-armed demon (a marilith) but the one it summoned (a nalfeshnee) managed to get away. The marilith demon had been formidable but the group had killed it and now I was looking over the swords it had wielded. Four of them were enchanted and one of them was just nasty to touch so it went into the bag of holding. One was a Flametongue and Letan took it for now. One was made of cold iron and I figured that Jameela should use it for now. The bastard sword and remaining longsword were magical but I couldn’t figure them out. It had also had a nice staff that took some time to figure out and I soon had a big grin as I realized that it was a staff of evocation and I could cast multiple spells from it. Now I have to recharge it when I have the chance. We continued walking and stopped to camp for the night. I cast a couple of curing spells on Letan but told her I would have to wait to help her recover her strength that was drained in the fight. In fact a few others had also been drained so I was going to be busy when I regained my divine spells.
Keltier 16, we continued walking and stopped at noon so I could recover my divine spells. I was a little upset that Lyle had sacrificed my amulet of wisdom to his goddess while I was addled; he said he was just trying to help but I wasn’t too sure and I was not happy about it.
Keltier 17, we continued walking after I cast some restoration spell on the group that was drained of strength from the fight with the demons.
Keltier 18, we have now passed the border of the lands of the Sphinx and have relaxed our guard from the demons as I don’t think they would dare attack us here. It was mid-afternoon when we rounded the corner to see the Sphinx standing in the middle of the road surrounded by hundreds of cats. We slowly approached and told him of our troubles and that we were sorry that most of the cats that had accompanied us had been slain by the druids. He didn’t seem too concerned about them and just asked about the coffer. I opened the bag of holding and produced it and slowly walked up to him. He stopped me with a glance and looked over at Letan and told her to leave his realm. When she balked at leaving, I convinced her that it would be in her best interest to not antagonize him as he could do us a world of hurt. I then stepped up to him and offered the coffer. He looked at me with contempt as he took the coffer and turned and started walking away. I was going to say something about the item he was supposed to give us when I noticed that he had been sitting on it. I picked up the smooth chest. The only thing I could see on it was the two handles to pick it up. There was no sign of a lid or anyway to open it so I put it in the bag of holding and we started walking south towards the border. Letan teleported to the edge of the border and waited for us to arrive. We continued walking south and soon stopped to camp again for the night. When we did, I pulled out the chest again to give it a good going over but still could not find any way to open it. Letan asked to look at it and I handed it to her and told her that I was going to sleep for the night.
Keltier 19, I awakened in the morning to see Letan still studying the chest. She hadn’t been able to open it either. I put it in the bag of holding and we continued walking for the day. Just after midday we came across a small hut with a beggar outside the door. He stood up and came to the edge of the road as we passed by and putting out his hands, asked for alms for the poor. Letan grabbed a gold piece and licked it and stuck it to the man’s forehead. This turned out to be a bad idea when he grabbed Letan’s wrist and wouldn’t let go. Then he turned into something strange and proceeded to meld somehow into Letan. This was getting weirder by the moment. As we were close to a village I decided to stop there for the night. It was so small that they didn’t have an inn. We stayed in one of the houses and were fed a plain but decent meal. They pulled out some pallets for us to sleep on and we spent a restful night.
Keltier 20, we continued walking until midday and I stopped to pray to Laerme. I decided to pray for augury and divination to see if anything we had would work. The spells were quite emphatic in saying no. We continued on until dark and stopped to camp for the night. It was after midnight as Lyle was up and praying when we all heard something outside the camp. Whatever it was, it enthralled most of us before we even realized it. Only Amber and Lyle managed to shrug off the effect that settled over us. I woke up and decided it was a great time to get up and go for a walk. It seemed that the others were so inclined to follow except for Lyle and Amber as they tried to talk us out of it. We packed up the camp and proceeded into the night. After an hour or two we hit the edge of a swamp and continued walking into it. We had to slow down as the trail meandered through the moisture until we came around a small hillock and spread out in front of us was a massive tree. We approached in awe until we stood about twenty feet away from us with Lyle and Amber behind us trying to warn us about it. We were mesmerized by the tree and could see nothing wrong until it rippled and something nasty happened. I heard the tree speak a word and its power rippled through the air and suddenly I saw a massive water elemental in front of me about to envelop me in its grasp. I couldn’t believe that this was really happening and my strength of will managed to overcome the illusion as I recognized the effects of phantasmal killer. I shuddered from the effect but to my horror as I turned and looked at the others, I spotted Leon and Lyle lying dead on the ground with not a mark on them. Man that spell was nasty. I turned and looked at the tree and realized that it was nasty and we had to kill it or we were all going to end up dead.
My only thought was that fire would hurt it so I immediately cast a flame strike and noticed that it didn’t hurt it as much as I hoped. I was prepared and managed to cast a fireball immediately afterwards and it nailed it. Letan stepped up to hit it with her sword and her first blow just bounced off the bark. The tree rippled again and the effects of entangle sprang up around us. Rah’hal stepped up to hit it and Kormac started to pull through the spell to hit it. Jameela didn’t bother to use her sword and she too started casting fireballs at it. Then the thing rippled again and we watched as Kormac went insane and started gibbering to himself as he stood there stunned. Letan was managing to hit it every so often during the combat so this thing must be really hard to hit. Then the thing decided to start thumping on us instead of using spells and it nailed me and Letan at the same time. I was lucky in that I had taken no damage but I was forced to back up a step or two while I recovered from the damage and then I cast a wall of fire to surround it and that worked quite well as the others backed up enough so they were out of the flames. Then the thing just leaned through the fire and seemed to shrug off the flames but I knew better. It then turned its attention to Jameela and nailed her hard enough to knock her unconscious from the blows. Kormac just stood around babbling away as we continued attacking it. It then cast another phantasmal killer directly at me and I almost believed the image as it appeared and overwhelmed me with its might. I just managed to shrug it off as it touched me and I felt its chilling effect. I continued casting fireballs and then watched in delight as the thing shuddered and fell to the ground. I gave a cry of relief and went over and cast a cure spell on Jameela before turning my attention to the others. Unfortunately I don’t have a spell capable of healing Kormac but at least I should be able to bring Lyle and Leon back to life, Laerme willing.
I was still trying to deal with the wounded when Kormac decided to attack me. I managed to get Letan and Rah’hal to hogtie Kormac and finally got him tied up so he couldn’t hurt us. I then cast a few more cure spells as we took stock of the situation. We could see the glint of coins throughout the base of the tree and I got the others to start gathering the coins. I cast detect magic and scouted the area and found a bastard sword, light mace, wand and potion. I stuffed them in the bag of holding as I waited for the others to pick up all the gold. It was over 11 500 gp and I put it in the bag of holding. By now I had cast an augury to Laerme to see if she would grant my request to raise our companions. I got an image in my mind of Lyle going up in flames and disappearing but Leon remained looking at me. I guess Lyle had finally had enough of this world and wanted to go to another place. Once we had stashed the loot, I ordered the group to build a pyre to send him off. It was an hour later when I said a farewell blessing and prayer to Laerme as I cast off the flame strike to consume Lyle forever to the arms of Eloele. He went wearing his new armor and with his double crossbow in his arms. Everything else we removed and I added everything to the bag of holding.
Keltier 21, We started walking back towards dry land so to speak as I wanted to get out of the swamp. It took a couple of hours before we finally got to dry land and the sun was coming up so I told the group to stop so we could rest. Just before noon I cast off all of my spells to cure the party as I waited to pray to Laerme for her blessings for the day. After recovering my spells for the day I then took the time to bring Leon back to the living and when he revived he said that he would leave us now that Lyle was gone. We let him keep his jeweled belt as part of his treasure and he went on his way. It was a few minutes later when we felt the ground rumble and something came out of the ground right behind Jameela and me. Its tongue flicked out and touched the bracers given to me by my grandfather and they crumbled to dust before my horrified eyes. This was not good. The thing looked like some sort of dragon but it was not a true dragon. This was weird. I stepped back and cast flame strike and it seemed to do damage to it. Then I cast a fireball and it seemed to hurt. Letan grabbed the flame tongue sword and attacked it when she noticed the tongue do in my bracers. I screamed at her to use her great sword as Jameela cast a fireball at it. Rah’hal stepped up and started punching away but it was extremely hard to hit. I even pulled out the new mace we had just found and it was ineffective in doing any damage. This did not look good. We continued fighting as I was forced to step back from the beast. I turned to look as Letan pounded away at the thing as Jameela slid up and managed to hit it.
It then took a moment to smack Jameela back to my feet and turned its attention to Letan. While I took a moment to cure Jameela of some of the damage, the beasts tongue flicked out a few times before it managed to hit Letan’s greatsword and turned it to dust. I then tried casting a few spells at it but they only seemed to invigorate the darned thing. It managed to knock Letan down as Rah’hal punched away at the thing. I then noticed that Amber had even stepped up and was whacking away at it with her staff. Then I watched in horror as Kormac suddenly got to his feet, free of the ropes tying him and casually stepped up behind Amber and chopped into her three times before I could even move. He then finished her off before I could even do anything about it as the dragon kept attacking. Finally Rah’hal managed to finish it off as the body crumbled onto him in death. I was rather worried about Kormac and started screaming at the others to get him knocked down and tied up as I franticly dug through the remains to find Rah’hal. Jameela was on the other side doing the same. We finally managed to uncover him as Letan staggered to her feet and Kormac came to his senses long enough to lie down and let us tie him up. I then looked at the rope that we had used on him earlier and it lay on the ground in a pile. It didn’t even look like it had been used at all. This was very strange. Jameela then reached into her pouch and pulled out a very nice emerald that she said had been in the dragon’s body. That reminded me to search it again to see if we could find anything else seeing as it had taken two of our nicer magic items as Letan was grumbling about losing her fancy greatsword. Then I went and looked over the remains of Amber. Honestly I think that Kormac did way too much damage to her body when he hacked her down and I didn’t think that I could bring her back to life. I will have to pray to Laerme and see if she agrees. I took a moment to cast a decent cure spell on everyone before seeing if we could find any loot when both Letan and Jameela shouted out about something under their feet. The next thing I knew some sort of earth creatures appeared right beside all of us and demanded all of our magic. I thought to myself, not bloody likely with the mood Letan was in and I was right when she attacked the creature beside her.
The fight didn’t last very long which was a good thing as I was forced to pull out the staff of evocation and cast chain lightning at them as Jameela attacked. The fight was rather nasty and when it was over only Letan was still standing. I was not impressed when Kormac suddenly stood up from the ropes that had been holding him as Letan shouted out that she had just spotted someone off in the distance making a gesture just before Kormac was freed. The bad thing about it was that he went after Rah’hal as soon as he stood up and then managed to draw the attention of the creatures. As we kept fighting the others were slowly knocked out and soon the rest of us were unconscious from the attacks. Letan finally knocked down the remaining two just before she fell over. Letan cast cure spells on us to get us back on our feet and I pulled out a wand of cure serious wounds and basically used it up. We then took the time to see if they were carrying anything and we found some decent items including a staff of fire. I almost drooled when I first spotted it. There was also an amulet, potion and a bronze horn. They had also been carrying a lot of gold. It was at least 12 000 gold so I dumped it into the bag of holding. Looking at the horn I thought it might be a horn of Valhalla and if so, only Letan and Kormac could safely use it. Seeing as Kormac was still babbling to himself I tossed it to Letan to use for now. I warned her about using it frivolously. From what I can remember of the horn, it summons berserkers to fight for you if you are a warrior. If you are not, they will attack the horn blower instantly. This could get interesting.
We cleaned up a bit and then I got the others to collect some firewood so we could consign Amber to the eternal flames of Laerme. Once that was done I decided to pull out the scroll of mass fly and use up one of the two spells still on it. We drove off the horse that Amber had been riding as we had no use for it. It wasn’t strong enough to carry Kormac so we didn’t need it.
Unfortunately the spell didn’t work on Kormac so he was a dead weight and it took the combined efforts of all of us to fly south. The spell lasted almost two hours so we managed to clear the swamp and I started looking for a road to land on and we spotted a trail that was headed towards a small settlement. We had flown over a few farms but we didn’t stop. Just as the spell was wearing off we landed on the ground and prepared to drag Kormac with us when he decided he didn’t want to be tied up anymore and he started struggling with us again. In one of his lucid moments I managed to attract his attention and told him that we were traveling towards the village. When he asked for beer I told him that beer was that way as I pointed towards the village. Unfortunately we couldn’t keep him focused due to the insanity spell and it was a constant struggle to get him to the village. I took the lead because the others were forced to carry him on the remains of the travois until we got close enough to the village to attract some attention. There were three farmer types waiting outside the village as we approached and I had to use my skills of diplomacy to get us past them as I inquired about purchasing a wagon and horses to continue our journey. The village was so poor that it didn’t even have a wagon.
They did however have a work cart that had seen better days and a pair of heavy draught horses that they agreed to sell us for a total of 500 gold pieces. I just grinned and pulled out the bag of holding as I asked them to hold out their hands as I started pouring gold into their hands. Once I hit 500 I stopped and had to smother a grin as all three of them took the time to bite into each coin to make sure they were real. Seeing as we had just found over 20 000 gold I wasn’t worried about the small change. The villagers then asked if we were planning on stopping for the day and when I asked why they said that because I had paid so much coin they were willing to put us up in the local inn for the night and they were also willing to feed us as it would take the rest of the day for them to clean up the cart enough so we could use it. I was glad to take a break and I told the others to head over to the inn. We were there enjoying a drink when I started arguing with Letan over something trivial and we didn’t notice Kormac freeing himself from the ropes again. I was glad that we hadn’t healed him as Letan managed to knock him out again. This attracted the attention of the village blacksmith and he asked why we were having so much trouble with our friend. I told him that he had been affected by an insanity spell and he was subject to attacking us without warning. He then told us to bring him over to the smithy and he would put some manacles on him. I thought that was a great idea and was asking the others to pick him up when the smith told us not to worry as he picked up Kormac with one arm and proceeded to his smithy. It took about an hour for him to fashion manacles for his hands and feet. He locked them in place with a pin pounded into each set so he wasn’t going to get out of them anytime soon. This would make our job a little easier.
Keltier 22, after a good night’s rest we got Kormac loaded into the cart and stuffed some things around him so he couldn’t thrash around too much. Jameela agreed to drive as I settled down beside her as Letan and Rah’hal walked in front of the cart. Now that I finally had the chance, I pulled out the enchanted book I had and started reading it. It was very difficult the first couple of days as the road was rough.
Keltier 26, we have arrived at the city of Ariya where Chalina now had her court in exile and I have read through over half the book. Once we managed to meet with her I immediately requested help in bringing Kormac back to sanity. She then sent a messenger to the church of Haelyn and one of their clerics soon arrived and cast greater restoration on Kormac, thank Laerme that the spell overcame his innate resistance as he blinked a few times and gave a sigh of relief. Then he headed over to the smithy to get his manacles struck off. I then spent the next two days feverishly reading the book and managed to get it read within the time limit and felt much better after I was done. I know had new insights in the world and the book was now just a normal book. It still had some good thoughts and I found myself pulling it out occasionally and leafing through it for more insight. I also spent some time going over all our loot and after the group had picked over what was there, we sold off the rest. I managed to sweet talk the merchants into giving us a great deal on the stuff we sold and by the time I was done we had almost 100 grand in coins and items. I split up the loot and everyone got 18 000 in gold and another 200 in platinum. The rest of the group went on a spending spree. Kormac managed to find a set of dwarven plate armor made of adamantine. It was very nice. Rah’hal donated a large amount to the church of Avani and got back some potions and wands in return. Letan soon came around to borrow some money from me as I was still busy reading as they spent their coin. She borrowed 9500 gold and agreed to pay back 10 000 in return. She had found a very nice composite longbow that she couldn’t pass up. Jameela looked around but didn’t find anything she really wanted but came across a handy haversack that she bought and found a large bag of holding that the rest of us decided to buy and everyone kicked in 2000 gold each to buy it and Kormac became the pack mule. At least he could now put most of his gear inside the bag. I managed to find a scroll of greater restoration and Rah’hal also bought one when he found out about it. I also tracked down some incense of meditation. It was expensive but worth it. Kormac also bought a brick of incense when I told the group that it would summon a very large air elemental. I also spent some time casting spells into the staves I had to recharge them. I also spent some time speaking with Chalina and relaxing.
Keltier 32, we attended a formal dinner with Chalina and her court in exile. She had requested our presence to inform us what she would like us to do. During the dinner we were introduced to a man named Nimitz. He was an urban scout, a nicer name than thief. Seeing as we had lost Lyle, we had need of a rogue. After the dinner was over, Chalina then asked us to head into Aftane to scout out the areas adjacent to Ariya. She was rather worried because all of the scouts she had sent over the border had failed to return. She wanted troop movements and numbers and the type of defenses that the usurpers had set up. The one thing that worried her was that they had not seen any type of movement over the border so they didn’t know what was happening. We made arrangements to start exploring the next day as we headed to the border.
Faniele 1, we requisitioned some horses and a cart for Kormac as Rah’hal could walk faster than the horses so he didn’t need one but I got one for myself and one for Jameela, even Letan decided to ride. It was in the afternoon as we headed towards the border when I noticed that the sounds of the forest had died down and we could only hear ourselves. I told everyone to be cautious and soon we spotted something waiting for us about a half mile ahead. This did not look good as we recognized the demon we had fought earlier to a draw, but this time it had taken the time to summon reinforcements. I was very worried when I spotted all the Vrocks behind them as we moved up. We took the time to cast some defensive spells as I cast align weapon for Jameela and Rah’hal, Letan and Kormac had weapons that would still work as I also cast mage armor on myself and my cohort. We continued moving up and then the fight was upon us when the Vrocks all teleported and suddenly surrounded us and started dancing.
This did not look good as we charged ahead. We managed to disrupt two of the trios as the others continued dancing. I cast a few fireballs and they seemed to be effective as the others started fighting away. I lost count after four dozen for the number of demons that were moving up to attack. At least the minor dretches were easy enough to take out but the others were going to be a serious challenge as I realized there were five different types of demons facing us. This did not look good. At least we managed to disrupt two circles before they could finish as the power they could unleash was very nasty if we were inside the area of effect. The next thing we knew, we could hear hoof beats and suddenly a horse and rider burst onto the scene and started attacking the demons with a vengeance. Rah’hal was knocked down but not before he managed to knock down one of the demons and he managed to fall right beside the body as the Vrocks finished their dance and the discharge went off. Good thing we were out of the way when it went off. The Vrocks started dancing again as we continued fighting away. The Vrocks managed to work their dance again while we whittled them down.
When the next dance went off we were out of range again and the Vrocks decided to gang tackle Letan when she started to fly out of range. As she fell I managed to cast a flame strike and nailed her and all of the Vrocks that were clustered around her. She then managed to stand up and attacked with her sword and knocked down most of the Vrocks still standing. Then she was able to teleport to right behind me as the other demons attacked Jameela and me as we stood there. Kormac ran over to back us up as the demons turned to us and attacked. The noble warrior used his horse to great effect as he butchered the demons that attacked.
The tide finally turned and we managed to destroy all of the demons and I was knocked out and brought back to consciousness by Nimitz using one of my healing wands to wake me up. I sat up to see the knight stepped onto Letan as she lay prone on the ground. He then put the tip of his sword to her throat and asked her what she was. She took a few minutes to explain herself and showed the brands of Laerme on her hands. He finally relented and allowed her to stand up as I quietly told him our tale. Letan had tried to figure out the demon that had affected her and was confident that it was the prince of the Succubi as her new enemy. When she told him that she was planning on heading down to the Abyss, he expressed an interest in accompanying her in her quest. I was planning on casting a divination later when I could gain my spells for the day. The other thing I did was cast a detect magic and found a rod and a staff among the bodies. They were featureless so I put them inside the bag of holding for further study. We continued on towards the border and stopped for lunch and waited until I gained my spells for the day. I managed to gain a divination and took the turn in order to cast it and asked Laerme a simple question. Who was Letan’s new enemy? I received a very strong image of a demon lord and we quickly determined that it was Pazuzu, the lord of the Succubi. Now we now that Letan has her work cut out for her quest.
We headed towards the border and stopped when we got to the check point and I started arguing with Letan about what our plan of action was and she abruptly teleported into the tower and started attacking while we were organizing ourselves. We then headed over the border and when we were stopped by the guards, we decided to attack the guards while Letan was dealing with the towers inhabitants. We quickly wiped out the garrison and after snooping through the tower we continued on with nothing remaining in the tower. Jameela finally got tired of Letan’s constant bitching and managed to cast a silence spell on her to shut her up. We went down the road until we found an inn and stopped for dinner. It was rather interesting as we had to say that Letan was under a vow of silence. We were just getting ready to leave when a drunk at the bar managed to flick a peanut into Letan’s top and put it down her cleavage. Letan immediately grabbed a bun sitting at the table and threw it and pegged him in the head knocking him down. I decided it was time to leave before things got weird. I gave the barkeep a gold to help the poor slob get drunk after he woke up as we headed out the door and continued on our way. We traveled until dusk and stopped at another small village and stayed at the only inn here. We ended up renting two rooms and split up the boys and girls. Rah’hal decided he needed to spend some time outside as he was feeling restless. Jameela and I went to sleep with Letan sitting on the floor meditating. I was soon woken up by Letan shaking me; I woke up to see a dead man lying in front of her. I was quite amazed to see this and got out of bed to check over the body. I could see no cause of death and no signs of trauma. I didn’t know what else to do and gave a quick prayer and Jameela had the bright idea to cast an invisibility on Letan so she could get rid of the body by flying away with it and dump it off somewhere in the woods. So we opened the window and Letan flew out.
Faniele 2, I went back to sleep while Jameela waited for Letan to return. I woke up in the morning to find Letan back and resting. After a quick breakfast we continued on our way after Rah’hal joined us. We continued walking until we stopped so I could pray for my spells again and stopped for lunch. We continued on and soon we came to a bridge and standing on the bridge was a ten foot long greenish looking dragon. It demanded that we turn around and leave or we would regret it. We looked at this smallish dragon and looked at each other and Letan said this wouldn’t take long and stepped up to attack it. In hindsight this was not a very good idea as it proceeded to pound the stuffing out of us. The nasty thing was the poison in its fangs that drained vitality and paralyzed most of us in the process. I had stepped up to help Kormac when it snaked over his body and nailed me with its bite and I was paralyzed. This does not look good at all. When I could finally move again, the dragon was long gone after walking up to me while I stood frozen and told us to leave. I think maybe it’s time to do a strategic retreat at least for now. We headed back towards the border as I thought that Queen Chalina would need to know about this thing. We headed due south and managed to get back over the border without coming across anything of interest. The only patrols we spotted we managed to avoid until dusk. Once it became dark we decided to stop and camp for the night. Jameela and I took first watch and it was uneventful. We then went to sleep and Rah’hal and Kormac took over.
The next thing I knew, I was being rudely awakened by a shout from Rah’hal. It took me a few moments to realize that they were being attacked by something. It was some sort of snake as the body was serpentine and over twenty feet long. The front of it was disgusting as it seemed to have multiple heads and arms and the arms were wielding swords. The bites were nasty as Kormac cried out as he was weakened in strength. Letan charged up and attacked it as I launched the first thing I could think of and cast fireball. Unfortunately the thing was resistant to spells as I watched it fizzle out. I then stood up and was deciding what to do next as the others attacked. When I managed to use another fireball, it fizzled again and I decided to help the others instead of attacking. I had to help Kormac survive as he fell to the ground from a vicious attack from the thing. It didn’t help that its bites were poisonous as I fell to the ground unconscious after it bit me. The problem was that the poison zapped our vitality and we couldn’t stand up against it. By the time the fight was over, only Letan was still in range of it attacking away. Nimitz had been forced to back off or die as I fell down along with Jameela and Rah’hal. Letan was closing to falling over when she finally knocked the thing down. I woke up to Letan healing me as the others recovered from the fight. I then took the time to cast detect magic and the only thing the creature had was a colossal falchion. I could feel the blasphemous power of the thing from where I stood so we managed to get it back in its scabbard and into the bag of holding. I then took the time to burn the body as we moved camp a few hundred yards away and went back to sleep after telling Letan she had guard duty for the rest of the night. I remember waking up some time before dawn to hear Letan having a conversation with something. I was too tired to think straight and decided not to get involved and went back to sleep.
Faniele 3, once we had awakened, we continued on our journey until just before noon when we spotted a flock of wyverns descending towards us. I was in a foul mood and instantly let off a fireball as Jameela matched me. Letan peppered one of them full of arrows as the beasts didn’t get close enough to us to attack. We continued on and stopped for lunch so I could regain my divine spells. Letan decided to teleport to the city and wait for us as she was attracting too much attention. We rode until dusk and stopped at another small village and took rooms in the inn. It was after dark when I awakened to the ground shimmering and a strange light outside the window. I got up and opened the shutters to see a fiery ball of light pass overhead and soon it slammed into the ground some distance away to the north-west. I closed the shutters and went back to bed and was just getting comfortable when the shutters flew open from something. Whatever it was, it stirred things up around the village and I thought it was from the blast. I went back to bed.
Faniele 4, we continued riding and arrived back at the city just after noon. We met Letan and then headed to the temple of Haelyn. Once there, I showed them the massive sword we had and they told us to take it to the church of Avani and they would hopefully be able to destroy it. So we walked over to the church of Avani and gifted the falchion over to them to destroy as they agreed that the blasphemous weapon should be destroyed. We then left to speak with Queen Chalina about our investigations. After speaking with Chalina she asked us to investigate the meteor that I had seen coming down the night before. I told her that we would be happy too and we planned on leaving the next morning. I then went to find a mage who could identify the rod and staff and as I thought, the rod would enable me to extend the duration of three spells per day, and it didn’t matter what level the spell was. The staff was of defense and I was impressed as it had about 80 percent of the charges available. If we keep this up I will need to hire a wand and staff caddy. It seems that everything we find that is meant for spell casters only I can use. We also looked into finding some potions of neutralize poison and managed to acquire three of them. Letan then rooted through her pack and pulled out another one. Seeing as she was now immune to poison, she no longer needed it and gave it to Jameela. Rah’hal was also immune so the four of us that needed the potion now had one.
Faniele 5, we headed out west early in the morning and rode for four days until we came across the landing zone for the meteor. It must have been fairly large as it clipped off the top of a mountain and landed on the far side.
Faniele 9, we rounded the corner of the road to see a small village ahead of us that was bursting to the seams with people. As we slowly approached I advised the others to spread out and see what information we could gleam. Everyone was a buzz about the meteor and we quickly heard some reports about it being metallic and we even saw a chunk of strange looking metal that a hunter had found some distance from the crash site. There were even some people standing up on boxes preaching and prophesizing to the crowds that were listening. Most of them were saying that the end of the world was near. The one thing we learned that groups that had already checked out the site didn’t want to get too close. A couple of the more adventurous ones had gotten too close and hadn’t been seen since. Nothing else was apparent to us so we prepared to head toward the crash zone.
Just as we were leaving a large man stepped up in front of me and asked us where we were going. I smiled up at him and thought he must be some sort of berserker from the style of clothing he was wearing and the weapons on his belt. When I told him we were going to investigate the site, he smugly told us that we would have to wait our turn as his group was planning to go first. I went to go around him and he shocked me by grabbing me by the throat and lifting me off my feet. My! This boy had muscles to lift me and my equipment. I struggled for air as Nimitz stepped up behind him and placed his sword at his throat. The man then dropped me and elbowed Nimitz hard in the face as the others stepped up to help me. Letan jabbed him with an arrow, as if that was going to do anything. Rah’hal then grabbed his attention by smacking him hard with an open hand three times and the man slowly toppled over unconscious. As I got my breathe back, I stepped up and knelt beside the unconscious guy and made sure he was still breathing. I then cast a cure light wounds to make sure he wouldn’t die and looked up at his erstwhile companions who were standing off to the side. I curtly informed them that we could have easily killed him but didn’t. I then noticed Nimitz rooting through his belt pouch and bluntly told him to leave off. He smugly said that because I had cured him I was owed a fee for service. I told him to put the money back and he ended up dumping it on his chest as we walked away. The surprising thing is we seemed to pick up a follower when one of the men preaching about the end of the world was coming followed us out of the village and he wouldn’t stop talking about the end of the world and that we would regret going to investigate. I finally lost patience with him and told him to shut up or leave. I think he realized that I meant business as he lowered the volume of his preaching to a low mumble as he followed us. From looking at him he appeared quite old but yet very nimble for his age. Rah’hal quietly told me that he was not a follower of the martial arts so I wasn’t too sure what to make of him.
We headed toward the mountain and we could see the trail of destruction in the forest from the shock wave. We headed around the side of the mountain before we decided to stop and cast some spells on ourselves before we went any further. I decided we needed to reconnoiter and Letan agreed to fly over the mountain and take a look. Jameela pulled out her wand of invisibility and proceeded to cast it on Letan. The little old man’s eyes bugged out in amazement when he watched Letan produce her wings just before she faded from sight. We waited for five minutes for Letan to return and she brought some disturbing news. There was a large impact crater on the other side of the mountain and inside the crater was something large and metallic. She also said that several small head sized metal spheres were buzzing around the area. It appeared that they were some sort of guard. She didn’t see anything else so we slowly headed through the forest until we got to the edge of the crater and we started exploring to see what we could see. We came to the edge of the pit when one of the small spheres must have noticed some of us because I was suddenly lit up by a bright light and it started saying something. I then went to cast comprehend languages when suddenly a very large sphere rose up from the hole in the ground. It was much larger than the others and it appeared to have two arms that ended in tubes. This did not look good.
We were debating whether to fight it when it attacked us with something that shot out of the tubes right at us. As I looked around I watched Letan jump forward and Rah’hal grabbed Jameela and jumped forwards and ended up behind the thing as they proceeded to attack it. I was trying to figure out what to use on it and ended up casting a magic missile and that seemed to hit it. I was very careful to keep an eye out and spotted some more of the smaller things coming out of the crater and then something small and fast flew out and landed beside Nimitz and went off with a bang. I was over forty feet away and the concussion almost knocked me down. Looking around I could see more things appearing out of the crater and shouted at the others to retreat before we regretted it. Letan didn’t want to leave at first but when she could see the turmoil our encounter had caused she ended up teleporting away as the rest of us turned and ran for the trees. Kormac had been charging forwards when the rest of us went the other way and he got nailed by something that stopped him in his tracks and he turned and started chasing after us.
Thankfully we made it to the trees and finally stopped when we could no longer see any movement. Taking stock of the situation, we were all wounded so I pulled out one of my wands of curing and used a few charges to heal some of the wounds. We were deciding to make a camp where we could still observe while being hidden in the trees when something suddenly shimmered off to the side of our camp and a strange female suddenly appeared. She had shocking white hair and was wearing some sort of strange armor that at first I thought was some type of fired clay from the look of it. She started talking and at first only Letan seemed to understand her when suddenly she started speaking our language after a few seconds. I had to look twice as I realized that the sound was coming from something on her wrist and as I looked closer I could see that she was definitely not a native of Cerilia. She said her name was Jazra and she wanted to help us. She explained that the craft that had landed was under the control of someone called the Overseer and his plan was to take over the world by wiping out all opposition to him.
She said that she had been watching us and that we would need to find weapons that would affect them. When we asked where we could find these things, she said that we would have to explore the debris field from the craft landing. So we split up and started looking around the debris field. Rah’hal and Kormac went one way while I took Jameela another way and Nimitz went off by himself as I told Letan to fly around and see if she could spot anything from the air. We all spent a few hours wandering around collecting anything metallic or strange and we lucked out when Jameela spotted some sort of case half buried in the dirt and we uncovered it and found a box about four feet by two feet by two feet. It had strange markings on it and on one side a pair of latches holding it closed. I pulled out my bag of holding and opened it and we managed to get the case in and continued looking. We found some other things and finally headed back to camp to find that the others had also found some stuff and Jazra looked everything over. She showed us what she called blaster weapons and there were two types. One a small one slightly bigger than my hand and a pair of bigger ones with a tube on one end, she said the large ones were rifles and the small ones were pistols. We had also found a strange body suit of the same material as Jazra was wearing. She said it was suit of armor and it was most effective against the strange weapons that the shiny things were using against us. Jameela ended up putting the suit on as it was too bulky for Nimitz to use to sneak around. We also had a strange mask that Jazra said would help against strange fumes and poisons and I took it. We had also found a bunch of small wafers that she said were charges for the weapons.
Then I pulled out the case we had found and her eyes lit up when she saw it and she carefully opened it and inside we could see another weapon. She called it a blaster cannon and Kormac picked it up and grunted with the effort. Jazra told him to make sure he was properly set before he fired it or it would knock him on his ass. While we were looking everything over, we told Letan to go out and look around some more to see if she could find anything else while we decided what to do with the new gear.
She came back an hour later to say that she had encountered more people like Jazra and had seen some of the enemy at the edge of the crater carrying what looked like a body wrapped up in something. She said that the other people needed to communicate with Jazra and pulled out a small thing from the pile of stuff and said it was a communicator and she gave it to Letan to take back to the others. She took off as we split up the items. Soon she came back and as we were talking about this strange event we suddenly spotted someone coming towards us from the trees. I spotted an owl flying above him and it was staying fairly close to him I surmised that it might be a familiar. As the person got closer we realized that it was an elven male not wearing any armor so I thought he might be a wizard. He came close enough to hail us and we allowed him to approach. He said his name was Devlyn and he had just escaped from the aliens from the ship but he had not been able to recover his pack that contained most of his items including his spell book. He asked our help in recovering his stuff and decided that he could join us for the time being. We ended up giving out the new weapons with Kormac taking the cannon, Letan taking one of the rifles and the rest of us took the pistols. I took the other rifle as I was a better shot than Devlyn so we gave him a pistol. We also had three charge packs each for the weapons and got ready to investigate further as a funny sound was heard from Jazra as we turned and watched her lift her arm up and speak into the thing on her wrist. We could hear another faint voice coming from it and a few moments later she said that the others that Letan had met wanted us to meet with them so we broke camp and headed back along the debris field until we came to the strangers encampment and found that they had some sort of strange tents set up among the trees and they seemed to blend right in. The others came out of the trees and from hiding as we approached and waited until we came up to them. They called themselves Rael and they had arrived with the craft.
Once every one was there I decided to cast a spell to feed every one and we started discussing what we would have to do next and the others told us that we would have to do some probing attacks to whittle down the sentries and we would have to do it quickly before the Overlord could start building up his forces. Devlyn then decided that he wanted to go retrieve his pack and spell book and we decided to scout out the pit again while I told Letan to do another circuit through the debris field to see if she could find any more weapons. We gave our two spare pistols to the other group so they had some weapons. While we headed out to scout the pit they agreed to do the same at dawn so they all settled down to get some rest while we headed back to the pit. Once we got to the tree line we stopped for a moment and decided to see if we could get the machines attention by having Rah’hal run up to the edge of the pit and then run back to us so we had something to attack.
So Rah’hal jogged up to the rim and took a moment to look around and spotted a couple of the small spheres and one of the larger machines with legs and very large weapons instead of arms and he charged back to us when the big one took a shot at him and thankfully missed him. The flash of the light going by him lit up the sky for a second as the rest of us ducked in reflex. As the spheres started approaching we pulled out our new weapons and started shooting away. These new weapons were taking some getting used to as we had never fired them before. Kormac set up his massive cannon on top of his shield so he had a solid base from which to attack. As targets came close enough we started shooting away. Lights were flashing all over the place and Letan spotted the flashes from some distance away and flew closer and was very unfortunate when she was spotted by three of the guardians that shot at her as she flew overhead. She was nailed by two of them and dropped to the ground like a rock and managed to stop just in time. The rest of us had stepped up to support Kormac as Devlyn started casting spells and using his rod of Metamagic to make his spells more powerful. We were taking more shots and had to wait as Kormac used up one of his power packs and tried to replace it and had nothing but troubles trying to insert the new one. Finally I had to get underneath the weapon and turned the pack around and inserted it properly as Kormac prepared to attack again when some small spheres landed among us and exploded in our faces knocking us out from the concussion.
I woke up a minute or two later with a group of the Rael surrounding us. Looking around I could see the others also waking up. The Rael had seen the fight and came to our rescue and we now backed off for the rest of the night. We then decided to take a different tact and had Letan start looking around for natural resources so we could take out some of the scouts and or mineral collectors. She finally spotted a mine entrance and we headed that way and found a shored up entrance that looked like it had just been recently repaired. We got close enough to see that something metallic was inside. We decided to let Kormac take a shot with his cannon and he launched it into the tunnel. Something was in there and it reacted by firing back but missed badly and ended up collapsing the mine entrance. We decided to set up an ambush and wait to see if anything showed up. We also kept an eye on the mine but nothing seemed to be moving. Devlyn sent his owl out scouting and took some time to look through another owl’s eyes and soon he warned us that something was coming through the trees following the road that had been created by the constructs. We set up along the edge of the hill and waited for the enemy to appear. Soon we could see some spheres flying through the air and the appearance of one of the big guardians as it approached through the trees. We set up and started firing as soon as we had clear shots just as we could hear some noise from inside the mine. Something was trying to dig itself out.
The shots were flying everywhere as we managed to destroy a couple of the spheres when suddenly Nimitz gave a yell as he went to fire his pistol. Somehow the thing blew up in his hands and he barely managed to drop the pistol and dive out of the way down to the ground as the pistol blew up with a massive explosion. I managed to check Nimitz and he was still alive as I turned to see the hillside collapsing behind us. I turned and ran off to the side as fast as I could. Rah’hal grabbed Nimitz as he went by as the rest of us managed to get out of the way as the hillside collapsed. Then we waited for the dust to settle and I healed Devlyn from the wounds he had suffered as I looked out for the enemy. There was so much dust and debris in the air that we couldn’t see a thing and we crouched down so we weren’t obvious targets. Finally we spotted something flying through the trees and Kormac took a shot and nailed one of the spheres as it passed through a gap in the trees. It headed away trailing smoke as we continued looking around. The guardian had headed back into the trees as the hill collapsed and we had no idea where it now was. We kept an eye out and waited for the constructs to return and soon we were rewarded when the large one appeared and attacked. We finally managed to destroy it and salvaged what we could and headed back to camp to meet up with the Rael. After talking with them we learned that the constructs could dig themselves out so we headed back to the mine to investigate further. Soon we found a perfect circle coming out of the landslide. We entered cautiously and headed down into the mine. We soon found where they had been mining and found a vein of high-grade ore and at the end Kormac spotted a very nice vein of mithral that was almost 100 % pure. I used stone shape to pull out a fifteen foot chunk of mithral that was four inches in diameter that I stuffed into my bag of holding.
We were walking back up to the exit when we heard something in front of us and encountered another of the guardians with a smaller creature behind him and we quickly attacked and managed to kill them. We continued exploring and soon found where the constructs had been and cleaned out a room. The other area looked like it had been worked but awhile ago. We decided to leave and before we headed out of the mine we checked outside and realized that something was waiting for us. Once we knew that more of the constructs were waiting outside, I pulled out a scroll of invisibility sphere to shroud us as I told the group to get ready. I told them that I was going to cast an offensive spell and when I did the invisibility would drop. So I pulled out the scroll and cast the spell and we slowly walked out of the entrance and looked around. A pair of the large constructs was waiting about 100 feet away and I turned and looked behind us to see about a score of twisted humanoid constructs and what made me shiver was all of them had the blaster weapons in hand, and standing with the humans was a large giant who was also part construct. So with the new power I had gained from Laerme I cast one of my new strongest spells.
A line of fiery blades sprang into existence around the group standing on the hill behind us as the others started shooting at the constructs standing in the tree line. My spell worked very well as the humanoids above us got shredded to mincemeat as most of them couldn’t get out of the way in time and fell apart. The giant seemed to shrug off the blades and jumped down right beside us. The fight was rather short and furious as we attacked anything that moved. The only thing that really hurt is when the large constructs launched what we now know as grenades at us and they hurt when they landed. The giant was taken out in moments as we ganged up on it and then we turned our attention to the constructs and we pulled out our blasters and started firing away at them. Then a couple more of them popped up behind the others and things got rather dicey for a few moments. We managed to prevail and after a minute of furious fighting the enemy was down.
We then looked around to see if anything else was waiting for us and as the sounds of battle died down all we could hear was silence. Once we realized that we had killed everything we started salvaging what we could from the constructs. Devlyn had been giving a small item to attach to the large things in order to try and get the magic that powered them. We had been showed by the Rael back at camp what powered the constructs and it was vital that we retrieve at least one of them to help the Rael. So while the others were checking out the other dead bodies, Letan and I started helping Devlyn with his chore. I was looking over his shoulder as we finally found the spot to plug in the little box and things started flashing on the front of it. He started tapping it with his fingers and other things started appearing.
Then suddenly a red flash appeared and the words self destruct popped up and it was counting down from five. Letan and I started running away as fast as we could as Devlyn franticly pressed down on the box and thankfully he managed to stop the thing from blowing up. I went back to him and watched as things started flashing on the screen. Finally he told me that we had to start cutting into the body in order to free up the power source. Letan came over and helped with the cutting and finally we got the core open and inside we could see something glowing inside the body. Devlyn continued tapping away at the thing he held and suddenly the power core shifted and moved up and clear of the body and the metal fingers holding the thing in place moved and released the core. I went to grab it and huffed in surprise as the sphere wouldn’t move. I called over Jameela and the two of us grunted in effort as we finally picked the sphere up and moved it to the side. I then pulled out the bag of holding and opened it and we carefully put the sphere inside the bag.
Devlyn managed to retrieve another of the power cores and we also managed to find two of the smaller cores that were only ball sized and we put all of them into the bag. The others managed to remove some of the built in weapons and we also recovered about four dozen of the little spheres called grenades. We had been given a few of the weapons called grenade launchers and we were now very anxious to try them out. It took a few hours to go through everything and when we were done we piled up everything we could find and a detonated a couple of fireballs over the pile to reduce it to slag to hinder the Overseer as much as possible. We had been told that even if we turned it to a slag pile they could still reuse the stuff so I was satisfied to drop some fireballs on the stuff before we left. We headed back to camp and got there just after dark. The Rael wanted to know what we had encountered and I told them that we had destroyed four of the larger guardian constructs and told them that we had recovered a pair of the spheres they wanted and I pulled out the bag of holding and with Jameela’s help we pulled out the two large spheres and the two smaller ones out and handed them over with a grunt of effort for the large ones. The Rael’s technician was ecstatic about the find and with our help we got them into his lab and he started hooking up things to one of them and told us that he could start recharging the power wafers that were used to power the blaster weapons. We also handed over all the ones we had drained during the fight and he said he could recharge them for us.
So we rested for the night after I created a feast for us and then the next day Faniele 13, we were debating what to do next when we decided to take the bull by the horns and attack the ship. So we waited until noon when I prayed for my divine spells for the day and then we headed towards the crater. Once we got there, Letan and Rah’hal charged up using their speed and got to the lip of the crater and disappeared down towards the craft. Seconds later we heard explosions going off and I spotted grenades being launched at us from behind the ship and from the ship. I managed to duck in time but the explosions still shifted me as I dove to the ground. Kormac got his cannon ready as we started looking for targets to attack as the guardians started coming out of the hole in the hull. I decided to head to the lip of the crater and as I watched I spotted Devlyn and Nimitz drop from sight as explosions started going off around them. I started casting flame spells and when I finally got to the lip I pulled out my rifle and started shooting away. We were firing away at anything that moved and the freaky thing that scared me was the weapons that came from the other side of the ship. These new weapons were some sort of grenades except they left a vapor trail and screamed into the ground and exploded with some force. At this point we decided it might be a good idea to get as close as we could to the ship to prevent these nasty grenades from hitting us.
I finally got to a point where I could look down into the crater to see Letan unconscious and the bandoleer of grenades she had been wearing were now gone and she looked rather the worse for wear as Rah’hal stood over top of her to defend her. The fight was nasty and I ended up casting a flame strike and three fireballs at the enemy until finally we couldn’t see anything moving around. Now we have to get into the craft and explore further. Just before we all walked inside, I managed to cast a couple of cure spells including one that helped the whole party. The others also pulled out things to help heal some damage and we slowly moved into the craft. Just as we headed inside, one of the small spheres landed just outside the door and exploded while the other one landed on top of the roof. Kormac took some damage when it went off as the others moved out of the way in time. Jameela and Nimitz took the lead and I warned everyone to keep on their toes. Devlyn found a spot where lights were blinking and he decided to plug in his little box and we watched in amazement when sparks flew and a puff of smoke rose up from it and he was forced to drop it before it scorched his hand. Whatever it was that he plugged into was the wrong thing for sure. The others started looking around and there were narrow corridors all over the place and we had to make sure nothing was hiding on us and that’s how we found one of the guardians when Nimitz went around the corner and a door suddenly opened and one of them was attacking him.
The corridors were so narrow that we couldn’t attack except one at a time so our blaster weapons were good to use in such tight quarters. The guardian was killed and we continued exploring and Rah’hal and Jameela had gone around another corner when suddenly they were attacked by another one that seemed to suddenly appear in a doorway. I also was attacked by another one when I went the other way and was attacked by a third one. I had used up the last charges on my rifle and didn’t have a chance to reload it so I whipped out my wand on lightning and blasted the one in front of me and the bolt went right through the thing and sparks started flying out of it as it slowly fell over. The others had encountered a small band of things and had attacked them. I heard the combat behind me and turned. I had a moment so I pulled out a charged clip and took the time to swap out the clips and put the expired one in my pouch as I readied the weapon again.
I was looking around when Kormac stumbled around the corner looking very pale and hurt. I slapped a cure spell on him and he perked up. As I looked around suddenly the dim lights that had been on flickered and then all the lights started coming on as a voice suddenly echoed throughout the craft. I couldn’t understand what the voice was saying but suddenly I could hear Jameela shouting about the teleporter being active in thirty seconds. I realized that if the thing started working again we would be in serious trouble. Kormac started running towards Jameela as I looked around the corner and could see some constructs heading toward me from around the corner. I pulled out my wand of lightning and let it fly and all the things stopped moving and fell to the floor with a clatter. I looked around and couldn’t see anything else and turned to follow Kormac when I heard a strange sound behind me around the corner. I decided to see what that was and headed down the corridor stepping over the bits and pieces of metal now laying on the floor. I rounded the corner to see Letan on the floor and she was badly hurt. I stepped up to her and checked her over and she was covered in dirt and soil and the floor below her was bent in her shape. I wasn’t too sure what she had done but I cast one of my remaining higher level cure spells on her to prevent her from dying and turned to follow Kormac once I was sure that she wouldn’t die. I had a wild thought just as I turned to run and grabbed the little box that we used to talk with the Rael and managed to raise them and when the image appeared the guy went white when he heard the voice echoing throughout the craft. He screamed at me to get to the cargo bay to prevent the teleporter from going off so I turned to run.
I headed down the corridor to the sounds of combat and as I turned the corner to the right I glanced over to the left to see Rah’hal in a fight with one of the larger constructs and I headed his way. The quarters were rather tight for me to get a shot in so I just cast a cure on him instead as he was furiously punching away at the thing. He finally managed to kill it and I turned to follow the others and came into a large room and at the rear of the room was a machine with a flickering blue light surrounding it, beside it was a machine that Jameela said was the Overseer so we started pounding away at it. The back wall by the machine was heavily damaged and the Overseer had one of its arms plugged into the wall. About the machine was a screen with images flickering on it and Jameela screamed something about the teleporter being active within moments. I fired my rifle at it but the flickering blue light solidified as the blaster hit it stopping it. I was feverishly thinking about what to do and cast a blade barrier in front of the machine so if anything came out it was going to be shredded.
Then we finally destroyed the Overseer and his guards and I watched Jameela
shimmer and turn to shadow and she suddenly appeared inside the chamber as a
red light flashed on the machine a moment later. I stood there with my wand of
lightning in hand just in case something appeared when Jameela spoke up and
said she had managed to abort the teleport by getting into the chamber just
before it activated. I dropped the blade barrier and looked around to see
everyone else collapsing onto the floor in exhaustion.
As we recovered the Rael entered and soon joined us and
started checking the equipment as we decided to find somewhere to rest for
awhile. Before we did the Rael asked if we would be interested in exploring the
other side of the transporter pad once they repaired it. They needed to know
what was on the other side. We agreed to help them and they said it would take
a few hours. Once they were ready we decided to step through and take a look. We
were keen to start exploring once we realized that the entry chamber appeared
to be empty at the moment. What stopped us was that most of the group was
injured and needed to be healed. So we headed back to rest for the day and told
the Rael that the chamber had been empty and that we were going to rest and
recover before we headed back to explore what they told us was an Arcology, or
a self contained city that could hold up to 10 000 people.
Faniele 14, after casting off all of our cure spells
we waited until I regained my spells before heading back and going through the
transporter again and appeared in the massive room. Three of the Rael had
agreed to come with us to assist in our efforts. We asked about the important
areas and they spoke about the armory where they stored the weapons, we headed
that way. We got jumped by three of the spheres and took them down using our
blaster weapons. But not before they managed to launch some sort of grenades at
us that contained something weird. I managed to whip on my mask before they
went off and didn’t seem to be as effected as some of the others. We made it to
a small reserve armory and when we finally got the door open and looked in. we
spotted multiple weapons and 7 suits of the fancy ceramic armor. Letan decided
to grab a suit and I thought it might be a good idea. I put on the whole suit
and attached the helmet and gloves to give myself a sealed unit. It was
interesting as I could see some lights and symbols once I put the helmet on but
they all turned green and the Rael said that it was working properly. We also
took some of the weapons and power clips along with some grenades. We found 50
smoke grenades and 20 of the explosive type. We counted 200 power clips and we
gave 50 of them to the Rael and kept the rest. I passed out 5 to each of the
group and put the rest into the bag of holding along with the items the group
no longer needed. The entire group now had a rifle and a pistol with Jameela
and Nimitz using the combination rifle/grenade launcher. There were some more
of the large cannons here but we decided to leave them there. We decided to
head out and as soon as we opened the door we could see lots of the spheres
waiting for us. Jameela launched a grenade while the others started using the
rifles. I waited until I could cast a spell and launched a fireball into the
mass and most of them dropped to the floor.
We continued exploring with the help of the Rael and
started looking for the main armory and it took awhile to locate it. We finally
got to the main door of the armory and we could see that it was a very strong
door. It took a few minutes to figure out how to open the door and when we did
my eyes just about popped out of my skull. There were racks and racks of
weapons. We slowly went in and Nimitz was drawn to the cases of grenades and
just as he started to grab one of the cases another of the nasty death strike
metal things appeared from around the corner and attacked us. We had limited manoeuvrability
so the ones that could fired away. The unlucky thing was that someone got a
direct hit on the thing and it started to blow up. We started running for the
exit and Kormac was forced to drop his cannon in order to get far enough away
to be somewhat protected when the thing blew up and took the armory with it.
The explosion shook the building hard enough that we figured that everyone must
have felt it. The Rael were looking at us a little wide eyed as they realized
what had happened. Not only did we lose all the munitions stored there but
Kormac was forced to take a rifle as his weapon now that the cannon was toast.
We continued on exploring and got into a larger area when
we encountered more of the robots and as we spread out during the attack a
couple of the weird humans appeared and managed to grab Devlyn and disappeared
with him. It took some time before we realized what had happened and we then
started looking around for him and then asked the Rael where he might have been
taken. I was worried about his spell book and when I mentioned this to one of
the Rael he also asked me about what I had been during earlier when I seemed to
say a few words and gesture and I cured the group of their wounds. I told him
that I channeled the power of my goddess and cast a light spell in front of him
to show him what the power of Laerme was capable of. He was impressed and tried
to copy what I did and I was surprised to see him cast the spell. He then told
me that if the main computer here was able to scan Devlyn’s book it might be
able to replicate what he did. We also had a discussion about weapons and I
ended up swapping my rifle with Nimitz so I could use the grenade launcher as
Nimitz was having a hard time hitting what he aimed at.
After a quick check of the area came up empty on Devlyn we
asked the Rael where they would more than likely take him. They directed us to
the chamber where the bodies were rebuilt by the machines and we headed there.
We also discussed what we would have to do to shut down the systems here and
they told us that we would have to find the sub-director of this Arcology and
find a way to shut it down. We continued exploring and taking out any of the
spheres we ran across or encountered until we finally made it to the section
where the bodies were worked on. It took us a bit to get past the guards and we
soon made a gruesome discovery. The room was filled with bits and pieces of
bodies and metal and it looked like they were putting the bodies back together
with metal and plastic parts. Devlyn was found lying on a table with half of
his skull missing and his brain clearly visible. Looking around I finally found
the parts that were missing and started to put him back together again. He was
still breathing so I took a few moments to check over the other bodies and they
were Rael and it appeared they were too far gone for me to help them and the
other Rael agreed that they should be put out of their misery before I healed
Devlyn. We found all of his gear in a pile other than his spell book. It looks
like it was missing again.
We started checking everything in the room and Nimitz
finally opened a cabinet to find the spell book open and some sort of light
going across the last page. The Rael became very worried as they said that the
book had just been scanned into the system that was controlled by the sub-director
and the only way to make sure that Devlyn’s spells didn’t get used was to take
out the sub-director so we headed to the only access point to get to it. The
Rael explained what the area would look like so we made plans accordingly. We
soon found the access door and tried opening it but we had to overcome the
resistance before Nimitz finally got it open and we were shocked to see a new
addition inside the room. There was a small room with a solid looking door in
the opposite wall and we could see where some of the little eyes were peeking
out of the ceiling and a couple of small squares in the wall that held
defensive weapons. After looking in the room for a bit we decided to launch a
couple of grenades into the room and they seemed to bounce off something before
they hit the back wall and exploded. Nothing seemed to be damaged so Letan
tried to shift into the ethereal plane and tried to get past whatever was there
but we soon found out that it appeared to be a wall of force put up by the
sub-director so he had learned how to cast spells and looking through
everything I had, I didn’t have anything to overcome the wall so we had to
decide what to do next.
The only thing we could come up with was to have Nimitz
toss another grenade in and when the weapons emerged and fired at us, Letan
would try to shift into the other plane and sneak through one of the gaps when
the weapons appeared. We had one of the Rael rig up an explosive using 5 power
clips for the weapons as the energy. He managed to put one together and when
Letan was ready we put the plan into action. She shifted into the ethereal
plane as Nimitz stepped into view and launched a grenade into the corridor.
When the blaster weapons popped out and attacked him Letan slid through the
narrow gap in the wall and she looked around the room. She saw that it
contained ten of the death-strike robots along with one that seemed more
advanced. This must be the Sub-director of the system. She moved forwards until
she was behind the leader and then shifted back into the room and dropped the
explosive. Laerme must not have been watching her as just as she went to shift
back out, the death-strikes turned on their stun fields and one of them must
have overcome Letan’s resistance as she felt herself freeze and then slump to
the floor as the bomb went off as the last thing she saw was the flash of white
and everything went black. The rest of us realized that the bomb had gone off
when the walls in front of us suddenly bulged out a few inches and the lights
flickered all around us. It took a few moments for Nimitz to get the door open
and we looked into chaos. There were bits and pieces of machinery everywhere
and we determined that there had to be close to a dozen machines that had been
blown up along with what we found that remained of the Sub-director. We looked
around for Letan and Nimitz finally found her armor almost melded into the wall
of the chamber and it took me a few minutes to find enough to see about
resurrecting her.
With the Rael now in control of the Arcology they now asked
us to continue helping them by acquiring a star ship. We discussed it as a
group and in came down to my vote as the group was split down to middle. The
choices were to return to Queen Chalina and continue helping her or do this one
last deed for the Rael in helping them to capture a ship and use it. At first I
thought to return to my former cohort but the idea of capturing one of these
ships intrigued me. But before we could do that I would have to see about
returning Letan back to the living and to do that I think we need to return to
Aerenwe in order to find someone powerful enough to bring her back. So I
cajoled Devlyn to teleport myself and Jameela back to speak with Queen Chalina
and then to take us to Aerenwe to help Letan. The rest of the group said they
would wait here at the Arcology as the Rael told us there were three portals
that we could access in order to jump to a ship but when we checked one of them
seemed to be sealed to bar us entry. So Devlyn cast his spell and the three of
us appeared in front of the Queen and after we had a discussion with her about
what had transpired in the last few days since we left, I told her we would try
to return within the week as I said we still had a couple of things to
accomplish. Then off we went back home at least for a few hours. It was a bit
of a whirlwind tour as I managed to see the Temple of Haelyn in order to gain a
resurrect scroll along with the one they used on Letan. Bringing her back from
the dead caused her to lose her ability to teleport as she was weakened in
power from the death. She was not happy about it but at least she was back. I
also took the time to unload some magic items and pick up some new ones before
Devlyn was ready to return us. I also had a scare when a nimble fingered thief
tried to make off with my bag of holding but Jameela put the fear of Laerme
into him before he gave the bag back. I guess I should not have been so casual
when I told the moneylender to just dump the 8 000 gp that I was owed from one
of the merchants into the bag. Oh well, no harm done.
We returned to the rest of the group with Letan in tow and
she then told the group what she had done when she had teleported into the
room. As we already knew, it didn’t go very well for her as one of the machines
had managed to stun her before she could teleport out and she had paid the
consequence for it. We returned to meet with the Rael and we headed through the
portal and then took some time to explore one of the other portals at the
Arcology to a world that they had not explored yet. We stepped through the
portal into a world that seemed nice. I am not going to get into what we did
here as we had to take some time to find some Rael survivors and we managed to
eliminate the sub-director that was here just starting to gear up to produce
the nasty robots. We left the planet free of the controlling machines and then
came back. The Rael had found the portal for us to use and it would jump us
right onto a moving ship. We had to be prepared for a stiff response so we got
ready and stepped through. I am not going to worry too much about what we did,
suffice to say we eliminated the sub-director that was on board and all of his
support robots and turned the ship back over to the Rael. Finally we were done
with the Rael and we made sure that we had lots of power chips for the energy
weapons and I was going to make sure that we kept the expired ones to recharge
them later. We returned to the court of Queen Chalina and the rest of the group
was itching to get back at the dragon that had humiliated us weeks before. We
then waited to make sure we were stocked up on spells and we then headed to the
border and soon crossed over. We took out time scouting but didn’t see anything
and finally we camped for the night. Of course this is when the dragon decided
to attack. The problem was is that it didn’t come alone. It had a rider that
turned out to be nastier than the dragon.