== Starday, Arodus 2, 4708; Runeforge; noon ==

Trask had launched a fireball into the adjoining hall, where we saw a swarm of creatures, which I later learned were called “sin-spawn,” racing toward us.

They did not appear to welcome Trask’s warm embrace, and so Trask blasted them with another, and one of the creatures dropped in a smouldering heap.

Our fighters moved in to attack, and I fell in behind to offer healing support. Nolin, Sabin and Avia managed to drop another sin-spawn, but things did not continue to go all our way.

A squad of human fighters arrived, but rather than attack, they held back behind the attacking swarm of spawn. All of a sudden we were engulfed in a pair of fireballs. These did not seem as potent as those Trask created, but they were plenty painful, and there were more of them.

Trask detonated another of his fireballs among the sin-spawn and more fell, and then Sabin used his Dimension Door tactic to pop us next to one of the spell casting fighters. Avia promptly killed it.

We were then hit by a volley of force missiles and another fireball as we realized there were a lot more fighters hanging out in the side wings of the great hall.

Sedgewick had been singing a song of courage all this time, and suddenly he shouted at the sin-spawn, which caused them to clasp their boney hands to their ugly ears. Trask then blasted them with yet another fireball, and the last of them fell.

This freed up the other half of our team, and Kane quickly made his way down to us and offered much appreciated healing for all of the fireball damage.

We approached another pair of fighters, but each was using various spells to visually shift their position and blur themselves into a series of wavering copies of them. This made them exceptionally hard to hit or touch.

In the meantime more fireballs burst around us.

I isolated half a dozen of the fighters with a Blade Barrier. One of them tried to launch a fireball through it, but it detonated at the barrier and blasted him and his fellows. Another tried to run through the barrier, but he did not survive the attempt.

Meanwhile Nolin, Avia and Sabin continued to grind their way through the fighters remaining on our side of the blade barrier. Task skillfully used his spells to assist, and finished off one with a set of magic missiles.

Soon there was just a pair of them left, and one of these was talking to his sword grinning evilly at Sabin, which did not bode well for Sabin.

I dropped a Flame Strike on the two fighters, which killed one of them, and then Sabin promptly killed the other.

I looked around the hall and saw a troll standing further down, with Nolin walking back from it, muttering angrily to himself. Apparently Sedgewick had created an image of one, and Nolin had dutifully run over to deal with it.

The four surviving fighters trapped by the blade barrier had one by one popped out from the room, using a teleportation circle on the floor.

This gave us time to look about the hall in which we found ourselves. And of course to search for valuables and loot the dead.

Sabin held a brief conversation with Trask about using the same spells as these fighter mages during combat. At least for Sabin’s part it was short. He made his comment, and as Trask waxed eloquently about the different and subtle nuances of various protective spell combinations, Sabin abruptly turned around and walked off. Trask kept on talking, no doubt for the befit of those around us who might have been listening. Or maybe he is just always talking like that.

We were in a large training hall for combat. Practice dummies stood along the walls, and the floor was littered with miscellaneous fighting gear. Two wings led off to either side halfway down, with doors before and after these wings. A wide hall led to another area further in.

We checked each of the doors in the main hall and found the first half a dozen were small rooms with a pair of bunks and chests in each. The next six were more like kennels, with straw, filth and stench liberally strewn about.

The wings to the left and right each ended in a large identical room with a pair of teleportation circles like the ones we had already seen.

The fighters (we would eventually find a slay 20):

[1206] 20 +1 greats-words
[1207] 20 +2 mithral chain shirts

Both Sedgewick and I replaced the armor we were wearing with a new shirt.

The sin-spawn:

[1208] 10 +1 great axes
[1209] 10 +2 red breastplates

The bedrooms:

[1210] 12 spell-books

The hall ended in a large meeting or dining area, with a sizeable pantry off to one side. Oddly enough there did not appear to be anything worth eating.

We decided to use the blue teleportation circle to to the left (from where we originally entered the hall). We knew that only four of us could use the circle at a time, and so we divided ourselves into groups. Nolin, Avia, Trask and I were in the first group; and Sabin, Rigel, Sedgewick and Kane in the other.

We cast a few protective spells and stepped into the circle.

The room in which we found ourselves was quite large and diamond shaped, with granite walls. A mural of Alasnist was on the ceiling, and the room was lit by three sets of flaming weapons embedded in the wall. At one end of the room was a wide hallway choked with a curtain of billowing black smoke.

We were immediately engulfed by four fireballs, and Nolin was near to death. For there, in each of the four corners of the room stood one of the fighter mages who had escaped the blade barrier trap in the hall. They had obviously been waiting for us, and set off prepared spells just as we arrived.

Trask cleverly isolated two of them by erecting a wall of force. This gave me an idea, and so I asked Avia if she could heal us while I worked on something else. She complied, surprising us with the efficacy of her channelling!

I then entombed one of the fighter mages in a wall of stone. Honestly, if you you are going to launch spells at us at least try to avoid standing in a corner of a room with stone walls.

This left one fighter mage, who tried to put a brave face on his now hopeless situation.

“Stop right there! If you think you can challenge the High Lady Athraxis, then you are mistaken. You have not proven yourselves nearly enough.”

After this little disclaimer he hit Nolin with a scorching ray. Nolin hit him back with something a lot more sharp and solid.

The others then popped into the room, and Kane immediately healed those of us nearest the circles. Trask placed a flaming sphere under the fighter, and I moved over to Nolin and healed him.

The fighter was sweating now, and casting furtive glances at the wall of smoke behind him, “You are not worthy to challenge the high lady! You will never become the high lord of…”

Nolin cut his speech short by cutting off his head. He is good that way.

Kane wandered over to the wall of force and made threatening gestures at one of the fighters, who cowered in response. This was an odd sight: a three foot tall halfling healer making a six foot tall fighter cringe.

The other fighter cast a fireball at the ceiling, obviously judging how high the wall of force reached, and he used this knowledge to scorch a few of us with a well aimed fireball.

This small degree of success was short lived, as Trask dropped the wall of force and we kicked the shit out of our two remaining foes.

Looking around the room we saw that smoke was an illusion. We also noticed that the walls of the room were covered in a thin script, but I was to distracted at the time to translate what they said.

The six flaming weapons lighting the room were a pair of +1 long swords, a pair of +1 ranseurs, and a pair of +1 great swords. We plan to take these with us when we leave Runeforge.

By now the fighter in his stone chrysalis was ready to emerge as a beautiful butterfly, but apparently he had had difficulty with the lack of air and emerged as a corpse instead. We took his stuff.

Rather than pass through the smoke (or illusion thereof) and encounter whom we felt sure was the most powerful being in the Halls of Wrath, we thought to try the other teleportation circles first. We returned to the hall and, keeping the same grouping as before, popped into another hall.

It was the smallest hall we had encountered in Wrath thus far, but it was still large. It was narrow and long and stretched down from the end where we arrived, past a number of very large tables, and ended in three large alcoves at the back.

Parchment, books and alchemical supplies littered the table tops, and standing around the tables were more fighter mages. They were in the middle of a heated argument, and did not notice us at first.

“…but each generation is going to worse and worse…”

“…unless we get the sin-spawn back into human form…”

Trask interrupted their debate with a deadly arc of chain lightening. This surprised us (where was the fire?), but it surprised the fighters even more. In fact three of them died from the shock.

The others began to pop in as we hastily tried to make room for them, and Sabin Dimension Doored Nolin and I into the thick of things.

Nolin killed one while Sabin killed another two. The remaining fighter called out “For the Lady!” as he hefted his sword and launched after us, but Sabin used his newly acquired Swipe spell to take the sword, and I killed the stunned man with a well placed icicle through the eye.

Notes on the tables indicated the fighter mages were trying to solve two serious problems that threatened their well being:

1. the constant in-breeding of warriors over the millennia had degraded their quality, and

2. the practice of converting the aged humans into sin-spawn had further depleted their numbers (that plus the hostile encounters with the denizens of the other halls), and they were trying to find a way to convert the sin-spawn back into humans.

Well, we had solved problem 2 for them. I guess we solved 1 as well, and in the same way.

It was kind of sad, really, but then I realized these people were stuck in the same sort of unchanging thought patterns as everyone we had encoutnered trapped in here. Ten thousand years of isolation is not good for creativity.

Other notes described forging magical weapons and armor (we kept those). In fact the entire place was a well stocked magical weapon and armor lab.

At the far end of the hall, in the center alcove was a large vat of stinking flesh colored goop. The notes identified it as something called proto-flesh, but smelled horrific and I kept well away from it.

The constant barrage of fireballs we had endured today had drained our healing ability, and even Trask had commented that he could not cast as many fireballs as he felt comfortable having on hand (I am guessing that number to be around a dozen). And so we decided to head back to our base in the Halls of Greed.

We made it back to the main entry hall of Wrath without incident, but as we were leaving we heard a loud thunderclap, and as we turned around we saw a cloaked figure swirl about and vanish.

We arrived in Greed without further incident, but Trask was distracted and muttered to himself the entire way back, “That lightening spell was actually more effective than my fireballs. That can’t be right. How can something be better than fire?”

Sabin spent an unusual amount of time looking at the goldfish in the fountains as we walked back to the stufy, and seems very thoughtful.

The permanent teleport circles in the halls of wrath are kind of cool. The amount of resources put into magic devices and traps in Runeforge are pretty mind blowing.

Ten thousand years ago this must have been an amazing place for magic, although half-ocs would likely not be allowed into RuneForge. The Runelord’s were each trying to gain control of the entire empire so they would have only worked together if there was no other choice. The only options that I see are that they either had to work together to create this powerful RuneForge or that first king Xin actually created the RuneForge and this is beyond even the Runelord’s abilities. We know that the RuneLords would not corporate on something like this unless there was no other option. I really like the idea that maybe the RuneLords created there little realms attached to the RuneForge because it was magic that they did not even fully understand. It is also interesting that the RuneLords themselves put wards and protections to prevent Runelord’s or agents of the RuneLord’s from entering RuneForge. The fact that they place wards and protections to prevent each other from entering into RuneForge means that they must have had a way to get out.

We still don’t really understand what the RuneForge is capable of doing. We know from the journal that we can enchant weapons to help with Karzoug but what about armor?  Thus far we have not found any written instructions on how to use the RuneForge. The mysteries of how it works are also beyond our current understanding. It’s hard to believe that this information was not written down. We have almost been to all of the RuneLords private areas and we soon need to see if we can get out and what RuneForge actually does. Tomorrow we are going back into the halls of Wrath to finish the exploration and meet the head mistress. Everyone else here just wants to kill us so I expect that will be the same.

I had been wondered about using blur or displacement with mirror image and today I found out first hand that this is a very effective protection from targeted attacks. It does not provide protection from magic missile or spells like fireball but it is still a good combination. For fireball fire shield is a great secondary protection plus maybe shield for magic missile. The way Avia and Nolan normally take out people the battle could be over before I was finish casting all of these spells. The battle with the Eldritch knights, or what ever they called in the empire, really uncovered that I am missing area affect spells that could bypass these type of protections. I technically learned fireball but I just don’t like fire magic. For the dragon it just seemed like what was needed/expected from a wizard but it just feels wrong. Luckily my two fire spells burning hands and fireball are not in the blessed spellbook, fire shield is technically a fire and cold spell but I plan to normally use the cold shield, so I am calling the spell cold shield. I have decided to not copy the spells fireball and burning hands into the blessed spellbook. Once I get the other spells copied out I am going to leave my backup spellbook someplace; maybe the library, under Sabin’s first spellbook. Thousands of years from now some adventuring party will find the library and wonder why somebody named Sabin would leave a spellbook in the library.

As I started to write before we have cleared a portion of the hall of wrath, If this one is similar to the size of the other halls we may have cleared most of the hall of Wrath. The Eldritch knights prepared for us effectively used displacement or blur with mirror image plus they kept throwing fireballs at us, Very annoying. The blade barrier and the holy flame brought down on the Eldritch knights by Takkad was impressive. One of the stupid Eldritch knights actually thought that he could run throw the blade barrier. Too bad for them that conjuration spells such as dimension door are not allow to them, likewise the abjuration elemental protections spells are on there prohibited school list. That should make Trask happy. With the prohibited school of conjuration it is very clear that someone else helped them create the teleport circles given that Alaznist’s followers don’t use spells form the abjuration and conjuration schools. It seems very odd that her section of RuneForge utilizes something her followers shouldn’t be able to use.

Off to the teleport circle to the left was the fireball ambush. Although it did not seem to work as well as they would have preferred. The funny part was that today Avia showed that she can be a big time healer and Takkad showed off his combat skill. As we entered the room we found that Trask had walled 2 of the fighters behind a wall of force and Takkad had trapped one behind a wall of stone. The enforcer Kane had the fighters behind the wall of force cowering against the wall so I went over to frighten the a little more since it was obvious that Avia and Nolan would likely kill the main guard in front of the shadow curtain before I would be able to get there. With all three guards killed we waited a little while to open up the stone cage Takkad create to trap one of the fighters.

The main guard said that we were not worthy to meet or challenge the mistress, we never really figured out what that meant although I can’t help but think that we missed something in the fog of battle.

Off to the right circles of teleport we found a group of them planned how to save there bloodlines. Without there protection spells they were no match for us and they were quickly dispatched. Rigal stepped into the portal without waiting for the agreed upon amount of time, Taking Rigal’s lead I also stepped into the circle and almost landed on Nolan. In the craziness of going through the portal the dimension door missed Avia, I really hoped that she would be within reach of Nolan but alas she was not. I was able to test out the swipe spell the final fighter. I gave him the option to surrender but he chose death. I guess he would rather die following what he believes in rather than betray his belief, we respected his choice. In here we found a bunch of paper work that mainly related to the fact that they were trying to revive there elders that they converted to sinspawn. Turns out they needed there elders to increase there breeding pool. I would have though that focusing on capturing us would have been a good way to solve that problem.

We decided to leave Wrath for the day to regain spells. It is early in the day so I have an opportunity to learn some spells today. Karzoug’s special spell Blood Money is a very power spell for any of my spells that require materials components greater than 1GB. If I didn’t have Eschew materials it would be useful for other spells, but I really like Eschew materials. If  I could get Kane or Takkad to provide a lesser restoration this would is a good way to cheaply cast true seeing, that is in the future when I am actually capable of casting the spell. This also opens up the option to learning and using stoneskin. Maybe when we get out of here I can see if Rarallo can create a special command word magic item that would allow me to use lesser restoration a couple times a day. While doing research on the different ways to create magic items I discovered that putting restrictions on such items reduces the material costs required to create such an item. Looking back through my notes I see that I can reduce the cost of a command work magic item by reducing the number of times that it can be used per day and aligning the item to a specific trait. I would just have to figure out which trait feels right, maybe fighter. I have always seen this used as a touch spell so the ideal items to place this on would be bracers or gloves.

For all of the wonder and power of the runelords and Rune magic you would think that they would have created a spell to help make life more comfortable. Something like create beer would be a wonderful spell for a wizard trapped in RuneForge for the rest of his or her life. I suspect during the height of the empire there must have been a way to get supplies into RuneForge without trapping more people inside. There also has to be a way for the RuneForge wizards to get objects out to the main world.

I have been watching and admiring the maps that Takkad puts in his journal. Every time he brings them out so that we can review where we have been it is impressive.   I have decided that today I would start recording maps into my journal as well. Takkad seems to really enjoy his time spent creating these maps and I have learned that a lot of parents try to teach there children to respect there elders. That is a little strange to me as I was taught to fear my elders. Someday I may need to rid the world of the clan that I was born into. I am sure the Shoanti people would benefit greatly from the extinction of the clan. The Shoanti have long been victimized by the clan and it is very likely that my father was of Shoanti blood.  Shoanti are wanders so maybe map making is a natural thing for them and maybe I can find it as fulfilling as Takkad. Ok here we go.

…

After many attempts to draw this map I have come to the conclusion to give up drawing maps. My maps suck, I suppose that with effort I would get better at drawing the maps but this is clearly not something I enjoy doing. I actually have decided that I really hate drawing maps. It is right up there with listening to Trask and Sedjwick talk on and on about some uninteresting detail. I was able to use erase to get rid of one of the attempted drawing and luckily I was smart enough use the back of the journal for most of the very bad attempts to draw a straight line. I will regain those other 15 pages at the back of the journal over time as I have available spell slots. What a waste of ink.

In frustration I made a few laps around the greed hall to work off the frustration of the failed map making attempts, luckily here in the hall of greed one can walk in a circle. On the third time around I stopped to talk with our watery friends. They told me an ancient story about one of there great hero’s. There were a lot of culture references to people, places and events that were unfamiliar to me. I could understand all of the word spoken in there language but with out the cultural references I couldn’t really understand the whole story. I am pretty sure the story relates to the discovery of the tasty food gold fish. GOLD FISH! All this time I was aware that the trap here at the entrance was a baleful phymorph that was transmuting the people into gold fish. We have been passing by these fountains for days and it never even occurred to me that we could break the phymorph enchantment to bring back people and question them. They might be grateful to us for freeing them and provide critical RuneForge details. Worse case is that we have to kill them and take all of there magic equipment. Although we either need to move the gold fish out of the fountains or break the enchantment soon before they are eaten.