Oathday, Erastus 31

As we entered the lair of Envy, there was a little hesitancy on the part of the party. While the warning of having our powers crushed was doubtless just hyperbole, it did put everybody on edge. Takkad, as seems customary of late, was in the lead.

There was a metal rod – or did it used to be a sword? – melded into the ground near the center of the room, and this seemed to conduct the occasional electrical discharge that still flitted from place to place. I was eerily reminded of the aftermath of a lightning strike that had been charged with a little too much electricity. And as we started to file into the room the danger we’d been warned of became far more real. The rod embedded in the ground flashed blindingly, and things felt … odd.

Takkad was the first to announce: “I’ve lost status.” And Kane: “Me too.” I realized I did not have my mage armor – ha, joke’s on me. I’d forgotten to cast it! But now I turned on my detect magic and was dismayed to find that I had not been immune to the effect. My ring of protection was no longer magic; nor were my bracers of defense. I suddenly felt very vulnerable, and quickly cast mage armor.

Around me arose cries of dismay. “Not my sword!” screamed Avia. “My bracers!” agonized Rigel. Fully half of our magic items seemed to have had the magic sucked out of them.

Now in my case, we had a spare +2 ring of protection and +3 bracers of defense that had been safe within a bag of holding, but not everyone was so lucky. Many of the items our party had considered important were now useless pieces of metal, paper, or wood.

So this is what the warning had meant. Fantastic.

And then as electricity continued to arc randomly in the room, it occurred to us that it could happen again at any time, and the whole place became much less fascinating.

Still, we were here because there might be something valuable here, so Takkad, Nolin, Kane, and Sabin started entering a passageway nearby. But there were putrid pools of filth, garbage, or sewage (we never did determine which) and it clearly made at least Nolin stagger noticeably. They disappeared from view as the moved down the corridor, and I did not feel motivated to follow them. Takkad told me later they encountered acid-laden air and finally returned abruptly when the air just became too foul. Kane’s wand of lesser restoration was necessary to restore them all to full health, and in some cases more than one charge was needed. Takkad channelled positive energy to help remedy the damage from acid air.

And they found nothing useful.

Perhaps there was something valuable here, but the pools of foul liquid and the random cancellation of magic from time to time was enough to make us leave. On to Kharzoug, and the hall of Greed.

Shortly after leaving the area of Envy, we discovered that for most of the magic items, their neutralization was temporary. Avia, in particular, was most pleased to see her sword regain its powers. My bracers, alas, were permanently damaged but as I mentioned, we had spares.

As we entered the corridor of Greed, Rigel found the passage to be quite easy. The rest of us struggled to varying degrees to reach the impatient Rigel. Rigel took the lead, looking for traps. The corridor led to a single door, which, after an inspection, Rigel pronounced to be a trap. It appeared to have jewels embedded in it, but Rigel also prounounced these to be fakes (with traces of disappointment in her voice).

After some additional searching, Rigel was able to find a secret door, and defeat the lock/trap that guarded it. We found a beautiful tunnel, with polished wood and inlaid silver and gold Thassilonian runes. A cursory look at these seemed to indicate they extolled the life and victories of Kharzoug (big surprise).

Further ahead there was a green, sparkly silver mist. Nobody thought that traipsing through that would be a pleasing experience. Meanwhile, Takkad and Sabin kept reading the runes and talking out loud: although Kharzoug bragged greatly about his prowess with magic, it seems he paid far less attention to (and possessed far less skill in) the schools of illusion and enchantment. He considered himself the enemy of Alaznist. He created the Hellfilre Plumes (of which the old lighthouse in Sandpoint was reputedly one) to help protect his empire.

I studied the mist and was able to detect some transmutation magic, so we created a gust of wind to dispel it. We quickly hurried to the chamber beyond.

Here we found an ivory floor, and a beautiful fountain in the middle of the room with water spouting from the (obviously NOT full size) figure of a whale. Curiously, the fountain never overflowed, so presumably somewhere there was a drain that perfectly matched the rate at which water flowed from the whale.

Perhaps most surprisingly, there were six small, vaguely humanoid figures swimming in the pool, along with what appeared to be the occasional goldfish. Takkad struck up a conversation with them and learned of a mean silver man who seemed to enjoy hurting them. The silver man was big like us. Sometimes he freezes water. He was by just yesterday but didn’t do anything harmful.

Takkad had an inspiration and used his ‘create water’ spell to create a brief waterfall from nowhere. The little creatures were ecstatic and labeled him Water Friend, guaranteeing him friends for life. But they could tell him little additional information.

In the next room we found another fountain, this time with a statue of a wizard and an outstretched hand. Water shot from the hand about 30′ before falling harmlessly into the pool. There seemed to be some magic in the pool of some sort, but nothing on the goldfish that were here.

Exiting to the north, there was a corridor full of doors with knobs. They were metal doors that looked silver, or silver inlaid. But opening one and looking inside didn’t yield anything of interest. The room was empty but for little odds and ends. The rooms had slightly different inventories but all were uninteresting. The strange thing? They all radiated strong magic.

So I stepped up and tried to dispel magic in the room. That seemed to do nothing.

Sedgewick snagged a goldfish and tried tossing it in the room. It flopped a bit, and eventually died; a fish out of water. Kane actually entered one; nothing. He entered and inspected all of the rooms; still nothing.

We went on to the next fountain room, which looked much like the previous right down to the wizard with the outstretched hand and goldfish. There was a door to the south which Rigel checked – it was locked, but not trapped. In a flash, Rigel insured it was no longer locked.

Sabin and Takkad entered first, and found what appeared to be a study. There was a worktable, and bookcases that appeared to hold hundreds of books and scrolls. More ominously there were some animals in metal cases – and a silver mannequin.

Literally, a silver man. Well those darn little sprites were right. He turned to us and .. disappeared. Sabin grunted and said that sure looked like a dimension door to him.

We started to do our “usual thing”. Sedgewick and I started to look over the library. Nolin began to search. Sabin inspected the animals – they were dead and the dog’s hind quarters were solid silver. Avia started trying to detect evil, hoping to determine where the silver man had gone.

Sedgewick found some spellbooks, and was gathering them up while Rigel checked another door for traps. There were none, and she unlocked the door for Avia, who opened it.

This room had statues in what we assumed at first were battle poses. We were alert to the possibility of them suddenly coming to life, until someone pointed out these were not battle positions so much as defensive positions. We had apparently found the rest of the staff in this section. It seemed they’d all involuntaily been turned to statues, and their stance was not attacking, but rather an attempt to stave off whatever magic had done this to them.

Rigel moved to, inspected, and unlocked another door in the room. Avia opened the door – and the silver man was revealed. He was ready, as well, and a greenish ray shot out at Takkad, taking him to the ground grieveously wounded, even as several mirror images sprung up around the silver man.

How did he get two spells off at once?

Sabin didn’t wait to ask questions. He, Nolin and Avia dimension doored to Mr Silver. I sensed I might want extra protection so I cast Spell Resistance on myself. Nolin had time to take out two images, while Sedgewick started singing a song of courage. Meanwhile Takkad started to heal his broken body.

In the middle of the room was a large (40′ across) pool, and Mr Silver was on the opposite side of the pool. Avia took out an image, Sabin took out an image, and I managed to carefully place a fireball out there that hit Mr Silver but nobody else. Unfortunately, he seemed unfazed by it. He DID seem a little more concerned when Nolin actually connected with his sword, though.

Images gone now, Avia started hitting him with sword, fire, and holy power. Mr Silver again managed to get two spells off – a disintegration ray on Nolin and, much to our surprise, he cast fireball on himself, knowing while he would hurt himself, he had an opportunity to perhaps outright kill the fighters surrounding him. Too bad for him I still had a magic missile in me, and that’s all it took to push him over the edge.

Damaged heavily, but not horribly diminished in magic, our group took inventory. Mr Silver left behind

[1180] silver staff of spell holding [40 charges ] also usable as a quarterstaff, +2 damage, +2 INT.
[1181] cloak of resistance +1
[1182] rod of metal and mineral detection
[1183] a belt of mighty constitution +2

As we moved closer to the pool, some of us found it disorienting. Sedgewick, in particular, warned others to stay back as he felt the pool was draining him in some fashion, and he stepped back. Takkad theorized this pool might be a means of charging or recharging magical items. He tried dipping a dead staff [730] into the pool, and identifying it we found it had 5 charges now. Dipped again, it went to 50.

Rigel, her eyes shining, estimated that 300 lbs of mithril silver might be worth 40,000 sp. The group considered whether to sell Mr Silver’s Corpse for metal, as a curiosity, or just leave it, lest someone try to revive it. The possibility of great money, though, has the group leaning towards some form of sale.

In any case, we decided to rest here overnight, and recover spells before proceeding.

Fireday, 1 Arodus

We arose eager to go traverse the corridor dedicated to gluttony. This time Kane was the one who found the path easy for him while the rest of the group tripped, stumbled and slowly made their way down the path. It didn’t take long for us to finally find a door, which Rigel said had no traps and no locks. Opening it, we saw why it needed no guard. Inside were eight mummies, which quickly (well, for a mummy) moved towards us. But the room was just so perfectly shaped for a fireball, that I had to blast them. So I did. Avia was able to take some chunks out, as well as Nolin and Sabin. A second fireball and Takkad’s negative channel knocked out every last one of ’em.

Eight mummies is nothing to sneeze at, but we also dispatched them seemingly easily. Maybe too easily. We’re taking a pause right now to consider what to do next and catch our breaths. At the very least, we’ll likely inspect the smoldering bodies for goodies.

Sunday, Erastus 27 (still)

When we killed Longtooth, we marvelled at what a dragon’s hoard looked like. We had no idea.

Longtooth had decades to accumulate his wealth. This dragon – whose name we never did learn – had centuries. A small number of centuries, maybe, but still.

Here’s what we found:

[1100] scroll of globe of invulnerability
[1108] scroll of remove blindness/deafness
[1111] scroll of heal
[1118] scroll of bear’s endurance

[1101] belt of giant strength +4
[1105] wand of cure light wounds [46]
[1106] pearl of power
[1115] chime of opening [5]
[1120] ivory set of bracers of archery +1
[1121,1124,1129,1130,1131,1134] Everburning torch

[1109] 6 vials of holy water
[1103,1104,1105] cure serious wounds
[1110] 17 potions of cure light wounds
[1116,1117,1126,1127,1128] potions of cure moderate wounds
[1122,1123] potion of resist energy (cold)

[1112] quiver + 20 masterwork arrows
[1113] 2 arrows greater dragon slaying
[1114] teak box with 6 thundereggs
[1125] flaming tongue longsword
[1137] 1 adamantine war hammer

[1107] cloak of resistance +3
[1119] half plate +3 w/wolf
[1133] darkwood buckler
[1134] masterwork suit of full plate w/ravens
[1135,1136] 1 mithril shirt +1 (small)

There was also about 500 copper pieces, 19410 silver pieces, 7000 gold pieces, and 950 platinum pieces. That alone represents the equivalent of over 18,000 gold pieces! Now of course, once we divide that among our party it is a much more modest amount (for certain values of “modest” :)) but .. woo hoo or what??

There are also tapestries that, while not magical, are valued at over 26,000 gold pieces. More woot.

Father, I’m not exactly positioned yet to buy my own house in the merchant district, but I very much see the attraction of this profession. The only thing better would be if we were also being paid to do this, but that would be too much to ask. Any employer would probably want a share, or maybe all, of the riches we uncover. To retain any of it would require … dishonesty, I’m all for bending the rules, but I’m not prepared to break any. So this arrangement works fine.

Wealday, Erastus 30

We catalogued the dragon’s treasures and moved those pieces we didn’t immediate ly put to use into the library. Then, with a deep breath, it was off to what we thought was probably the entrance to Runeforge, where we hoped to learn how to thwart Karzoug’s attempt to reenter our world.

Now that we knew where we were going, we could teleport there directly. We jokingly divided up the keys by the wraths we supposedly represented (I was lust – how silly!) and began to ascend the stairs to the cave.

But we’d never taken this way before, and we were surprised when what appeared to be three earth elementals rose from the ground and blocked our way: two in front of us and one in back. Sabin and I looked at each other and each cast mirror image. Takkad asked, in common, what they wanted, but they replied “none but the appointed may enter!”. Avia turned to the one behind her and said, in Thassilonian “Let me pass!” … and it did!

So Nolin did the same in front and got attacked for his trouble. What’s up with Avia? And then we realized she was wearing a sihedron. Kane, who was also wearing one, stepped up and demanded passage … and was also permitted to pass!

Well, it took a little bit of shuttling and sihedron passing, but eventually all of us were able to get past the sentries. The dragon may have been dead but we were still far up on a mountain, and the cave itself was still cold and ice-covered.

Using our spiked shoes, we navigated the formerly secret, narrow path down to the bottom of the chamber, checked to make sure we still had our keys, and lined ourselves up at the appropriate pillar. Simultaneously we inserted our keys into the slots in the pillars.

Each pillar produced a different light, and they sprang to the central pillar where they formed a pure white light. A vortex then appeared, and looking into it it appeared to be a passage somewhere. We’d definitely found the entry into Runeforge.

We entered.

The passage led to a chamber with seven statues and a sihedron engraved on the floor. There was a bubbling pool in the middle, that radiated strong magic, and behind each statue was a corridor.

The chamber was large, probably 80′ across. Takkad captured some of the water from the pool in a vial, but after having done so, it was no longer magical. We concluded it was something about the pool.

So choosing a corridor somewhat at random, we started down the corridor behind Zandergul, who represented pride. Sabin went down .. and disappeared. Through their status spells, though, both Takkad and Kane said he was close by. Takkad stepped forward … and didn’t disappear. He took another step .. and did.

Each of us stepped into the corridor and arrived, according to Sabin, at different intervals. Some sort of filtering was going on, but eventually we were all there. The corridor looked to proceed before us, opening into a room. Sabin and Takkad stepped through first .. and immediately paused.

They called out briefly that there were mirrors, and gestured for everyone to halt. Apparently another Takkad and Sabin had emerged from each of two mirrors, one down a corridor to the left and another down a corridor to the right. The four new combatants immediately assumed an attack stance. Had the rest of us entered, we would have faced multiple instances of ourselves.

Any hope that we might negotiate with them disappeared when a flame strike hit Takkad, courtesy of one of the other Takkads. And Sabin was hit by a feeblemind from one of his doppelgangers.

It seemed that the doppelgangers were intent only on attacking the corresponding originals, but that didn’t stop us from being injured by their battle. I threw up a wall of fire to help separate them. When a blade barrier appeared, everybody needed to jump back. Fortunately for Takkad, he had memorized few offensive spells that day, so he knew that his battle would quickly devolve into pushing and shoving. Sabin, on the other hand, had a wealth of offensive spells as well as weapon prowess. Although Avia had pulled the original back from danger after the feeblemind, the other two dimension door’ed next to him, putting them squarely in our midst.

I hasted those of our party within range, and that granted Nolin and Avia the advantage they needed to take care of the extra Sabins with less danger to themselves. Kane read a scroll of heal and then Sabin was back in the game too. It didn’t take long after that, but I hope we never have to see Sabin argue with himself again. It wasn’t pretty.

Takkad, meanwhile, was being pummelled by a copy of his backpack. I carefully fired magic missiles at the copies without stepping into the mirrored corridor; the last thing we needed was an opponent loaded up with fireballs. However, when Sabin, now immune to the effect, stepped up to the magical mirrors and started smashing them, the doppelgangers fell in shards as well.

Proceeding onward, we entered a large chamber which seemed to have a giant peacock sitting on a dais. Upon addressing the peacock, however, we not only felt immensely silly, but were rewarded with six austentatious heralds who shot fireballs at the whole group. Fortunately, we were a little spread out so they couldn’t actually hit all of us with 6 fireballs. But several of us took notable damage, and the clerics got to work healing. Meanwhile, the ol’ dimension door trick brought the fighters to the firethrowers, and they quickly put an end to that. I found that they themselves were surprisingly susceptible to fire as I killed two and nearly killed a third.

The peacock, it turns out, was an illusion. But in the wall behind it, we found a secret door that led to a nicely appointed chamber. Nice, that is, except for the corpse rotting there.

Being of a practical nature, we took the following now-unused items from the corpse:

[1140] magical robe
+2 on class checks if evil alignment
-3 levels if good alignment
-2 levels if neutral alignment
spell resistance 18
+5 AC
+4 resistance (as cloak of resistance)
[1141] headband of vast intelligence +6, +3 skills,
skill ranks = to your hit dice
[1142] ring of protection +2
[1143] cape of Montebanc (dimension door 1/day)
[1144] journal (not magical)
[1145] spellbook (2 volumes) every illusion spell thru level 9

In one chamber adjoining this one, we found a couple hundred skeletons. We found the other rooms empty of any useful items, but the journal suggested this had been the workshop of Viraxis. He had been working on a way to live forever and had decided that was best done with clones. At some point, it seems, the current clone aged before he could create another, and, well, here he was.

However, one of his journal entries mentioned an alliance with Delvahine. It seems she was a follower of Sorshen, who represents lust, whom he was working with. The journal also mentioned an alliance which apparently thoroughly destroyed the area of Envy.

As a result, the group decided to go visit Delvahine’s area next.

As before, entering the corridor had mixed results for different people. I myself had no trouble traversing it, but others made it in in fits and starts.

We opened a pair of iron doors and entered a room. It was filled with gilded cages, although many were empty. One clearly was not, although the human looking creature in it seemed gaunt. Concerned, Takkad headed over to that cage while the rest of us were welcomed by the designated greeters.

Four succubi flew in front of us, trying to entice us to join them. The ceiling here was very high, probably 90′, giving them plenty of room to maneuver. Judging I would probably be attacked soon, I cast spell resistance on myself. As the succubi continued to try to lure us closer, I cast fly on Nolin so he could accommodate them and he obliged by beating on Vorvod.

One called Eryalla successfully convinced Rigel it would be fun, and Rigel started removing her armor. For her trouble, I fireballed Eryalla. Sabin cast fly on himself and also entered the fray. Only Rigel seems to have been affected, but Nolin now got a swing in on Zevashala. Sabin was bloodying up Lelyrin.

When only Zevashala was left, she threw us an evil look and disappeared.

I had never left the doorway, and it was about this time that I heard a noise behind me. Turning, I saw a figure walking towards us from the end of the corridor. I yelled to the group and cast mirror image on myself. As the figure advanced I cast a color spray at it – forgetting in the excitement that the spray only travels 15 ft, not dozens. So used to those fireballs!

“Trask, it’s me, Sedgwick!” the figure yelled.

Sedgwick? No – what would he be doing here?

Kane tried detect evil, and found none. Sedgwick held up his hands, and Kane tried detect good. I began to question him – was this really Sedgwick?

As others arrived, the conversation continued. It really was. Apparently he’d been at the Pathfinder Society when Takkad had been researching this mountain, and he concluded (correctly) that this was his old group. He followed us here and, unknown to us, apparently jumped in the vortex before it closed. He went looking for us in the area of Krune (sloth) and while he didn’t find us he did report it was highly unpleasant.

Meanwhile, we inspected the bodies of the succubi, and they seemed to be identically attired:

[1146,1147,1148] Bracers of armor +3
[1149,1150,1151] amulet (non magical) with woman’s face
[1152,1153,1154] ring of protection +2

The +3 bracers were better than my +2, so I switched.

Takkad had been working on his survivor, and although his health was better, his mind was still not … shall we say, all there.

And before us was still a big unknown. There appeared to be a room or pavilion or tent, really, marked by silk walls that were 20′ high and a very apparent entryway. None of these had been Delvahine … was there another corpse waiting for us inside? Where did the other succubi go? Sounded like we had more to check out, and now an extra person to do it with.

So we went to enter the pavilion, but immediately our path was blocked by what appeared to be numerous stone giants. They insisted we could not see The Lady, but Nolin persistently told them “We have an appointment”. They did not seem swayed by his statement. However, when he, Sabin, and Avia started hacking through them, and I managed to squeeze a fireball in between them, the giants started falling. They did not seem to respond to reason, but they all died fairly quickly.

Inside, there was lots of plush. Pillows, those same silk walls, cushions, comfy chairs 🙂 But no more giants (and their bodies held nothing of value to us.) We moved to the next chamber and saw a woman on a throne or dais through the entryway. Just as we reached it, she said in what Sedgwick said was Abyssal: “First I don’t hear from Viraxis and then the giants and now THIS!”

That seemed to Sabin to be the signal to dimension door in. The room held a smoking brazier in addition to the now familiar cushions and pillows. In he went, with Takkad and Nolin. Zevashala did one more attempt at googlyeyes at Nolin, and Nolin responded by beating up the figure in the thrown. I cast spell resistance again as Avia dimension doored herself in to the throne. Delvahine tried to attack Nolin, but Avia’s protection from evil prevented her.

There was an attempt at singing, but Sedgwick had a countersong. In fact, as Delvahine tried to unleash something really impressive, all that came out of her mouth was “Sedgwick is great!” much to her surprise and annoyance. I managed a magic missile on Delvahine before Sabin finished her off. Zelvahine managed to take some life force from Nolin before she finally succumbed to Avia’s sword.

And then the searching began. We got another triplet of (bracer[1155] / amulet[1156] / ring[1157]) from Zevashala and from Delvahine we got

[1158] +1 wounding whip
[1159] +2 mithril shirt, glamered to look like a flimsy top
[1160] +4 gloves of dexterity

Under the southern bed, we also found

[1161] handy haversack
[1162] book, written in Thasslonian, +1 WI
[1163] 6 potions of cure moderate wounds
[1164] potion of cure disease
[1165] potion of remove paralysis
[1166] box of sex toys [12]

We also picked up the brazier of mind fog [1167].

This seemed as safe a place as any (now) to rest, so we decided to sleep here and proceeed to Envy tomorrow. Takkad will leave his rescued human here because we really can’t drag him along with us and this place is now safe. He’ll come back tomorrow evening with a Heal spell and see if he can restore him to some semblance of a normal life.

Oathday, Erastus 31

After a good night’s sleep (those cushions really were comfortable) we headed off to the lair of Envy. Before entering, we have been warned by a voice:

STOP! Your powers shall be crushed and you shall die.

Pretty full of themselves. We shall trudge on, regardless.

This was, indeed, the site of some magical battle. Faint magical energy still flited from metal slag to metal slag. We decided that even though this area may be partially destroyed, we will inspect it as best we can.

Toilday, Erastus 8

Since we still were concerned about the magic in what we’d come to call the Quill Room, I tried a dispel magic. It was a little odd, casting it on the whole room, but as near as I can tell, it did nothing anyway. I didn’t feel like I’d done my best, so I tried again and we discovered the evil aura of the room had disappeared. Did I dispel something, or did some spell just end of its own accord? You never know for sure with dispel, but having the evil gone made everyone feel better, and we felt like we could safely pick up the magical quill. To be on the safe side, Takkad did that but with an unseen servant rather than an actual hand.

Takkad noted that the image on the floor in the cathedral was both offensive and magical. He tried a dispel on it, but it was ineffective. He muttered something about Lamashtu and Father Xanthus and “not on my watch”. I suspect there is more he intends to do here.

But for now, we are down on spells, and we have a body of a Sandpoint guardsman to repatriate. We picked up some things Scribbler would no longer have a use for:

a cloak of +2 charisma [1012]
a +1 breastplate [1013]
a +1 returning dagger of cold iron [1014]
a peacock quill, radiating very strong divination magic [1016]
17 vials of ink (8 black, 2 blue, 2 red, 1 violet, 1 yellow, 1 green,
1 brown, 1 pink) [1015]
falchion (broken by Nolin)
bag of diamond dust (750gp)

Returning to the surface, we consulted with Father Xanthus and he agreed to help with the cleansing of the cathedrala We decided to make camp next to the pit to make certain nothing crawled out overnight (and that nobody tried to sneak in.).

Wealday, Erastus 9

Returning to the rooms below, we discovered that today, all the foggy rooms were gone. Apparently that was the result of a spell with a duration of 24 hours or less, probably maintained by Scribbler. Sabin used an erase spell to erase one writing of Scribbler, leaving only about five thousand more.

Nolin and Avia started smashing statues. Meanwhile others of us went back into the pool room. The pool is incredibly clean (and Xanthus comments upon this.) How clean? I decided to find out, ignoring the horrified looks of my companions. How bad could it be? Well, it did make me feel sick, despite its cleanliness, but I threw up back into the pool as that seemed most appropriate.

NOW someone tried a detect evil and found the water was evil. It was probably unholy water.

Kane tried consecrating the water; nothing.
Kane tried dispel evil on the water; nothing.
Takkad tried a greater dispel magic; nothing.

Takkad decided to vent his frustration on the jackal on the floor by using 4 stone shapes to significantly deface the image.

Kane deformed the pool, thinking it might disrupt whatever magic was there. And it seems it did. We concluded that it was the pool that was magical, not what was in it, and now the pool was ‘broken’.

Sabin kept erasing scribblings. Dogged, he was. But don’t say “dogged” around him; he might take it as an insult. Or worse, a compliment. In short order, all of the “important” (that is, ones that made a modicum of sense) were erased so that nobody else could read them in the future.

Takkad, meanwhile, was inspecting the hole that led to the surface and the cave-in beneath it. He concluded that with some skillful stone shaping, and judicious walls of stone, the structure underneath could again support the street above – possibly even better than the old street. He began the work here, but it would take another day’s worth of spells before he and Kane would finish. When they were done, the street above was solidly replaced and supported.

There aren’t a lot of clerical architects out there.

Starday, Erastus 12

When all of the scouring, erasing, shaping, and conjuring was done, the Square of the Four Watchers was christened. Four statues were placed above; one each for Desna, Sarenrae, Pharasma, and one guardsman from the garrison (fashioned after the one remaining corpse with recognizable features).

Meanwhile, below, our clerics and Father Xanthus’ army of sacred sandblasters turned what used to be a sacred area for Lamashtu into a harmless empty room that only held bad memories, and that only for us and the souls lost here. In time, it may be consecrated to some other deity, but for now, all are happy that it is NOT welcoming to Lamashtu.

A wall with a stoutly built and locked door was added to make the whole area nearly inaccessible except by force. (The locked door is only accessible from the garrison!)

And this too was the day when we helped bring to fruition an utterance of Rallo – a random statement we’d thought had been made in jest, or perhaps in frustration or even fear, but no. Rallo had seen Death close up and decided he was not willing to stare it down again. He will eventually, of course – we all do – but not in the wild, not in the battlefield.

Rallo has retired (if you can call running a magic shop a form of retirement.) As a group, we decided to help fund his setup, and in return he has said he will make items for us for only 10% over cost. We also will give him first option on any of the magic items we eventually decide to sell. It is not an avocation without risk, but the risk lies in a business failing rather than his life being lost. Rallo was often the most impetuous among us, which makes this comparatively conservative move all the more surprising, but it’s a decision each must make for themselves.

It made me think of you, Father – why did you decide to settle down and stop living from the road and reaping the rewards of such a life? When should I? I’ve lived a much shorter life than you did before you stopped, but I feel the last year has been .. comparatively rich in experiences. I’m but 18, but am I already living on borrowed time? Perhaps sometime when there is more time, I will teleport home and have that talk with you.

But not now. Tomorrow we will head to the ancient library to research more about the Runeforge: its legend, its power, and its use. Karzoug seems to be intent on bending it to his use in this modern day and we must find out how to stop him.

Moonday, Erastus 14

Information of the Runeforge was sparse, even from the mechanized servant available to us. Runeforge was not an object, but a place, and it was created to be a neutral place where acolytes of all the Rune Lords could study and research magic. Because of the danger of any one Rune Lord gaining access to this kind of research, the exact location was intentionally vague and secretive, and although students of all the Lords would attend there, while there they were, in theory, without allegiance.

To insure this, they were enrolled in this magical university for life. Once you checked in, only death was your way out. Mistrusting each other, the Rune Lords themselves created wards and barriers to prevent them from entering, or having agents or minions enter. Presumably all that flowed from the studies was somehow made available to all simultaneously, or never. It is not clear to me how the establishment of this hall of knowledge would benefit them without some clear way of getting output from it, but perhaps we will learn more as we study.

We found vague references to one of the last projects being undertaken at Runeforge before the empire apparently fell. The Rune Lords were seeking some method of transcending and eluding Death itself. Even limited successes in this area of study might explain the apparent vitality of some portion of Karzoug (or perhaps we’ll find, other Rune Lords).

After days of research – and we’re talking everyone who could read ancient Thasselonian, which is most of the group – we were able to discern only that Runeforge was up in the mountains, perhaps the Kodar to the north. But there were tens of peaks there and we needed more information.

Takkad was able to uncover information about a commander named Xaliasa, who, it appears, commanded the ‘Hellfire Plume’ that seems to have been located just outside Sandpoint. Xaliasa may have been double dipping and trying to serve two Rune Lords, but ultimately proved loyal to Alasnist.

Upon saying this out loud, Takkad got a strange look on his face and immediately sought out the pieces of the broken falchion, and Scribbler’s dagger that I had claimed. There was inscribed ‘Xaliasa’. Scribbler and Xaliasa were one and the same. It appears at least one principal from the past had been able to either cheat or prolong death.

It also suggested his cryptic scribblings were credible (if we could but understand them properly.)

Giving those notes a bit more weight and with some help from our mechanical librarian, we were able to identfy a likely peak in the Kodar range as the ancient Mt Xin: Rimeskull. Armed with a modern name, Takkad thought we might find more information from travellers societies and churches than from ancient manuscripts, so we are planning a little trip to Magnimar tomorrow.

I saw Takkad playing with the magical quill, trying to figure out why it was magical. I don’t believe I’ve seen Takkad look frustrated very often, but clearly that quill vexes him.

Toilday, Erastus 15

So Sabin and I took Nolin and Takkad to Magnimar via teleport. We quickly went in four different directions, as Takkad wanted to find out more about that mountain peak, Nolin was off to visit his parents, and Sabin went to buy more spell components. I decided I wanted a good cloak of resistance, fearing that we would run into more magic users who would attempt more charm or other magic upon me.

I found a shop that had a rather poor looking one, and the shopkeep tried to overcharge me for a lesser powered cloak. I went looking elsewhere, but even in a city the size of Magnimar, the number of shops selling something like that are limited.

During this search, however, a man approached me quietly and suggested he might have access to the cloak I was looking for. I was naturally suspicious, since at the time I was near the Underbridge and many transactions there have … strings attached. The man told me some story about his uncle dying or somesuch and I was worried that a) I might be buying stolen goods, or b) I might be set up to just have my money stolen.

I told him I would like to see it but if it was all he said it was I’d be interested. We haggled about a price and ultimately settled on something between 6000 and 7000gp, the exact amount to be determined after inspecting it. We agreed to meet again in an hour.

I’m no Rigel, but I followed him after our meeting and he seemed to head to a brothel and disappear within. How would I know if I was being cheated? I could tell magically if the cloak was not what I expected but would I be able to tell if he were lying about any part of his story? It occurred to me that Rigel might be able to help, and come to think of it so might Kane. I teleported back to the library and brought not just Rigel and Kane, but Avia back with me.

And that turned out to be of very little help at all. Avia and Kane found it humorous that we went and staked out a brothel, while Rigel didn’t understand at all my concern about whether the man had legitimate ownership of the cloak. In fact, she suggested we could improve the price considerably, given that we were now four versus one. I was against that, and I did see Avia knit her eyebrows a bit, but Kane was all for it.

Anyway, the man came out, we met at the agreed upon place, and Rigel, Kane, and Avia surreptitiously came along to make sure he did not bring friends. He did not, but when I started questioning more about the origins, the price started coming down. Sigh. My guess was the cloak was not his, but I had no actual proof of that, nor could I possibly discern who it had come from. We eventually settled on 5300gp, and I had a smart looking cloak with a little silver (thread) trim. And I had Rigel, Kane, and even Avia who found my negotiating tactics and priorities to be odd. And all they could talk about was how did I find a man in a brothel with a cloak, completely ignoring the earlier part of my story where I mentioned how I’d actually met him.

We met up with Takkad and the others, and it turns out everybody had a good trip to Magnimar. I got my cloak, Sabin got his components, and perhaps most importantly, Takkad got his information from the Pathfinder Society. Apparently Rimeskull had not been visited in dozens of years, but there were rumors of a white dragon, and although people (including soldiers) had gone to check it out, nobody had ever returned. Yup, that sounds like where we need to go. We won’t be able to teleport (initially) but once Sabin and I have visited it once, we won’t need to trek. The first time, however …

Seems like we will be starting a trip soon..

Fireday, Erastus 25

It seems there was more research to do before leaving, so my prediction of a trip was not inaccurate but definitely in the wrong timeframe. It looks like we’ll be leaving tomorrow, and Takkad has a spell called Wind Walk which means the journey need not be arduous and lengthy at all.

One of the things we were waiting for was for Kane to finish creating his set of wands: a wand of erase, a wand of lesser restoration, a wand of knock, and a wand of protection from evil.

Starday, Erastus 26

Wind Walk meant we could travel at the speed of the wind, which was much much faster than even horses. It only took about 4 hours. I may look into this spell but I fear it might be clerical only.

When we got there, we knew we were at the right place. There was a huge head carved into the side of the mountain, and even more telling, there was a plateau below that had seven other huge heads. Seven Rune Lords? There was no sign of a white dragon.

We did detect magic on the heads, and they were indeed magical .. but interestingly each emanated magic from a different school. As an experiment, I used Mage Hand to put a rock in the mouth of the figure representing Karzoug. There was a loud thrum and a key appeared in the mouth .. even before I could put the rock in it. I claimed the key.

Takkad suggested maybe a spell from each school cast at or near the appropriate statue might yield similar results. The mages and clerics stepped up and did that, and as we pulled the last key from the last mouth, Rigel yelled, “Dragon!”.

And indeed there was. White dragon. Likes cold. Should hate fire! I fireballed it … but it seemed to have little effect. Then it returned the favor with an icy cold blast which brought several of us far closer to death than we cared.

Kane set about healing us, while I tried another fireball. Surprise (or maybe not) – the dragon appeared to have magic resistance too, and the fireball had zero effect on it. Rigel fired an arrow at it which, by rights, sure should have hit it but it seemed to pass through it. Instead of flying by again, the dragon dropped down and grabbed Rigel in its mouth! Avia, Nolin and Sabin did the dimension door trick to get right next to it, but were having an uncanny problem just laying a weapon to it.

Suspicious, Takkad cast greater dispel at it and suddenly it seemed mildly startled and it seemed to snap into place. Displacement! And I’ll bet fire protection too. Takkad did another dispel and suddenly the fireballs started to hurt it, and the swords started to draw blood. The dragon had long ago spit out Rigel to deal with the fighters and it roared angrily now. Abruptly it pulled back, seemed to say something, and it disappeared. Perhaps it too knew dimension door.

We decided that although we could fully heal ourselves, we would probably want to have more of our spells available before confronting the dragon. So we teleported back to Sandpoint, but then we reconsidered. We needed more information about the cavern into which we expected we’d need to enter.

Quickly Sabin and I returned (I was protection, just in case something went amiss) and Sabin deployed an arcane eye. Using the eye and Sabin’s night vision, he was able to scout the way into the cavern. There were some statues about 40 or 50 feet in, and of course there was a protective barrier of what looked like freezing fog in the outer part of the cavern. About a hundred feet past the statues, a great hole gaped. Apparently at that point, we needed to go down — maybe feather fall or fly or something. The cavern was huge here; easily a hundred feet wide.

As the arcane eye went 300 ft down, Sabin found that there was a floor and the floor had (surprise) seven statues. More interesting was the dragon had its lair down there, and was resting upon it, searching for potions among its treasures and gulping them. No doubt healing itself.

We returned to Sandpoint and Sabin relayed what he had seen. Yes, we definitely wanted to rest and buff up, but we could also now lay in a bit of a strategy. But we realized there was a tremendous advantage if we could simply teleport to the point of battle. One problem: I hadn’t seen any of what Sabin had seen, so I had no point of reference.

So we returned once more, and Takkad cast True Seeing on me so I could see through the dark. We all became wisps of wind again (wind walk had not worn off) andin this semi-invisible state, Sabin and I went off to explore.

The nice thing was that with True Seeing I not only got darkness, I got to see through illusions too. And so I was able to discern that the statues were just that — nothing to be concerned about. I was also able to discern a hidden but tiny path leading around the edge of the great pit, so that dropping in wasn’t the only option.

The dragon wasn’t there now. so we spent some time trying to look over the hoard. It was tempting to take some things now but the dragon would undoubtedly note that things were missing, and we might even get caught, and we felt the element of surprise would still be very handy.

We returned to Takkad and all teleported back to Sandpoint. We came up with a plan knowing, this time, that the dragon would likely have enchantments we’d need to dispel before our fighters (or spells, for that matter) could be effective. We also split the group into two groups, each with a person capable of teleport, as our escape plan if things did not go well. We agreed to collect some cold weather gear, and rested. This would not be Longtooth. This dragon was bigger.

Sunday, Erastus 27

We awoke, had a good breakfast, and went off to kill the dragon. Funny how there was no talk of discussing anything with it this time. I think people grew tired of Longtooth’s conversations pretty fast last time. We cast our protections and enhancements that were not of short duration and teleported directly to the hoard.

The dragon was not there.

Sabin used a Locate Creature scroll to monitor for the approach of the dragon. The rest of us started to pull magic things out of the treasure, possibly for immediate use.

We got to do a good minute or two of ransacking before Sabin announced, “Dragon coming, that way.” And he pointed at a corridor.

I decided it would be amusing to see the dragon get frustrated very quickly. So I threw a wall of force over the entrance to that corridor. And only moments later, a small blizzard occurred in that corridor that was, yet, contained within that corridor. As our party gaped, I said, “wall of force. He’ll have to dimension do–“.

And he dimension doored.

Takkad had to take a dragon bite before casting his greater dispel, but just like before, the dragon snapped into position a few feet from where he’d appeared just moments ago. No more displacement! And he seemed really annoyed by the fire. And the fighters really beat him up. And he was really bleeding. And he was really dying. Amazing what you can kill if you have time to prepare.

So he left us again, but this time Sabin (through locate creature) was able to tell us immediately, “He’s down that corridor,” meaning the one he’d appeared from. I dropped the wall of force and we all ran after him.

And although he was able to give Avia a good bite, and to get one more good icy breath on us, by having gotten to him when he was badly wounded, it took only a few well-aimed swings from our fighters to take him out. Wiping the dragon spit off her body, Avia seemed quite pleased to slice off its head (which seems to be our calling card these days.)

And that was that. One dead, ancient white dragon. What do you think about THAT, Father? WOW.

There was, of course, a LOT of treasure he had collected over the years, but I will detail that some more tomorrow. We spent a lot of time poring over and collecting it. I’m feeling a little giddy; there’s not just money but some pretty interesting magic stuff too.

Moonday, Erastus 7. Still.

So we returned to the room we’d come to call “Scribbler’s room” since it was the last room we’d seen him n. This room had more of (we presume) Scribbler’s graffiti but there seemed to be few rooms down here that didn’t bear witness to his literary efforts. There was a door to the north, but Rigel proclaimed it was not trapped nor locked.

And thus it was opened, revealing, of course, yet another fog filled corridor.

It was pretty much fate that decreed Sabin, Takkad, Rigel, and Rallo would enter the corridor before me. Well, maybe not fate for Rallo, because he was going to blow the fog free again. But we sorted out later that much as I had been subject to some sort of fear spell earlier, they now fell victim to a spell of suspicion. Each felt the others had been turned against them.

Rallo reacted with a couple of scorching rays, which missed but were our first clue something was amiss.

Takkad responded by creating a wall of stone to separate him from everyone but Sabin. This was our second, although rather enigmatic, clue.

Sabin responded by doing a dimension door to a different room so that he could escape Takkad and the area in general. Since Rallo had NOT cleared the fog, nobody had any idea he’d done this .. he just disappeared into the fog and then dd’ed out.

And Rigel .. just turned and ran, pushing past me as she did so.

Those of us remaining (Avia, myself, Nolin and Kane) immediately assumed some sort of foul magic, although we weren’t quite sure what kind at first. However, our friends had also made a few utterances that led us to believe they thought we were enemies now. (We didn’t realize until later that they also considered each other enemies too!) I turned to run after Rigel, while Kane, Avia, and Nolin tried to figure out how to neutralize the magic without having our companions hurt us.

Rigel, it turns out, is faster than I am but also was running a little bit randomly, and I was able to corner her. Fearing the worst, I put a mirror image on myself before approaching her and that proved to be a very good idea. “Stop!” I told her. “I need your help to fight the others!” I said with all the charisma and diplomacy I could muster. She viewed me suspiciously for a moment before striking at me with her dagger. She hit one of the images, and started to move away. I attempted to wrestle her to the ground, but was unsuccessful.

Catching Rigel is a bit like catching a cat. You don’t ever catch a cat without injury unless it wants to be caught. I’d guess Rigel was going to swipe at me everytime I cornered her. Sigh. I ran after her.

Meanwhile, Avia had entered the corridor and was apparently unaffected. She successfully wrestled Rallo to the ground. This, of course, just reinforced to him that his former friends were indeed out to get him. Not wanting to spend her time sitting on him, she just tied him up really really well. He sat and struggled.

Takkad, having sealed himself into a corridor, was trying to decide what to do next when he discovered a door to the east. He quickly determined it was locked and could do nothing about it. There was no other way out. He’d created a spacious prison cell.

Kane tried to dispel the compelling magic, and failed.

Takkad decided to break down the wall so he could battle his former comrades. It was pure irony that he then cast protection from evil on himself to aid him in the coming battle. And upon doing so … discovered the compulsion and certainty he’d had moments ago faded. He’d cured himself, and suddenly realized that although his goal was still the same – break down the wall – his motivation was now completely different.

Sabin, it turned out, encountered the Scribbler again. But he curried no special favor with Sabin, so Sabin attacked him. By all accounts, Sabin beat him up pretty good before Scribbler teleported, dimension doored, or went invisible. He wasn’t dead, though, when he left.

I was still playing “catch the prickly kitty” with Rigel. She too had decided she needed to exit and was preparing to leave the area when Avia, Nolin, Kane, Takkad, and Rallo caught up with us. Once she entered the area of effect for protection from evil she too realized she’d, uh, misunderstood.

We managed to submit Sabin to the same sort of protection from evil and suddenly all our party but Rallo was sane again.

I used a gust of wind cast from the staff of spell storing to see if we could find Scribbler, but we could not. Depleted, now, of many of our spells, we decided to return to the surface. We were cognizant of the fact that the paranoid compulsion was held in check by protection from evil but not dispelled so we walked in careful formation.

Upon reaching the surface, we made haste to Father Xanthus who was able to dispel the charms. It took, however, several scrolls of dispel magic, and I wonder if we ought not replace them.

We decided to set up camp in the sinkhole to make it less likely anything might exit it overnight. We are here, after all, to protect the town.

Toilday, Erastus 8

As soon as everyone had sufficient rest to recover their spells, we mustered our group again to go deal with Scribbler. Sure, he’d had a chance to heal too but we were much better informed about what to expect and all of us against him was a battle he’d lose.

We checked first a few of the doors/rooms we had not inspected before, figuring he’d retreated to “his” room to rest and recover. Nolin seemed to enjoy using his “unlock door” spell – that is, his adamantine sword – to clear the way for us. We found some more fog-filled areas, some that the clerics vehemently objected to due to Lamashtu influences in the interior decorating, but no Scribbler.

Finally we reentered our corridor of altered alliances, but under protection of evil this time so it did not affect us. Instead, we ran into noxious fumes that, fortunately, did not harm us (though I believe they were intended to). Nolin “unlocked” the locked door Takkad had found and we found a small room full of graffiti again. As we were puzzling over this, Avia announced there was evil behind us in the fog.

Instantly, Sabin used dimension door to move himself, Nolin, and Takkad next to the evil, which was, of course, Scribbler. He was a bit surprised at finding himself engaged in battle so quickly and it left him no choice but to fight with weapons rather than spells. He did put some hurt on our fighters, and managed to fire off one spell to bring a couple more of the mastiffs to distract us. For my part, I used a wall of force to cut off Scribbler’s physical escape, but everyone was too close to use a fireball without subjecting the group to friendly fire (!).

Nolin got hit by Scribbler’s falchion and found himself weakened by it. Not surprisingly, it had some additional enchantments on it.

Suddenly, in a flurry of holy wrath, Avia pummelled Scribbler into small bits and it was over. Well except for the mastiffs, but Nolin had fun taming the puppies. Nolin had definitely developed an attitude about this area.

Scribbler left some diamond dust, a cloak, and some armor behind. We will evaluate these later. The danger to Sandpoint is, we think, largely dealt with (although the clerics still dislike the remaining influence of Lamashtu that lingers here.)

Moonday, Erastus 7 (cont’d)

Unfortunately, I find myself writing a lot of this portion of the day not from personal experience but from tales of my companions. As luck would have it, I (and several others in the party) suffered the effects of a fear spell or aura of some sort. But I’ll get there soon enough.

First the fireball. A fine fireball it was, too, quite capable of completely snuffing out the life of things smaller than the Scribbler. However, at the instant it exploded there was only him, and it turns out his response to the fireball was to invite in a few close friends, and none of his friends were smaller than he. In fact, several of them were bigger than any one of us. A couple were bigger than any two of us.

Seeming to shrug off the fireball, he chanted and summoned a half dozen dog-like (but dog-like only in shape) creatures. They were very hard to see when they were even close to shadows. But they were certainly susceptible to Avia’s, Sabin’s, and Nolin’s sword strokes.

But then there appeared some larger demons or devils .. I don’t believe anyone ever had a name for them. One of them, which also looked dog-like but bigger, I think Takkad declared to be “barghest”.

I was able to get off a second fireball which was felt by several of our foes. But then life got hard. First of all, gravity reversed. I had the choice of casting fly, or attacking prone from the ceiling (my new floor). Since weapons had been having a tough time damaging these newer things, I thought that lying prone on the floor and firing magic missiles might not be a bad idea. Wham! Hit the barghest but good. I barely had time to smile about that before one of the other big demons gestured, and … a fog descended upon me. I had trouble focusing and it was hard to tell friend from foe. Rigel seemed affected similarly and Nolin … Nolin just stood there with a surprised look on his face. >From his expression he seemed to be trying to clear his head, but it was taking all his effort. He didn’t move. He didn’t swing. He didn’t speak. It was as if he’d gone unconscious but hadn’t yet fallen. (I found out later he’d been hit with Power Word Stun.)

I only vaguely remember the rest of the battle, because there were lucid moments (I remember some magic missiles and even another fireball) but they were interspersed with times when I felt Kane and Nolin were too close and I swung at them (I was wielding no weapon, and really – fully armored Nolin??).

In the meantime, the battle raged on, and eventually Avia, Rallo, and Sabin (with invaluable and timely healing from Kane and Takkad) managed to dispatch the barghest and the two demons. At some point, gravity returned to normal but I don’t recall when. I believe Takkad got the final smite on the last demon. Nolin startled out of his astonishment only to find that he, like I, had only moments of lucidity. He, however, was much more dangerous when he decided you were too close so everybody gave him a wide berth for another minute or two.

When I regained my senses, we were in a room with black stone pillars 40 feet tall. A 3-eyed jackal was carved into the floor, and that was our clue that we were in the foul presence of Lamashtu. Or at least, a cathedral dedicated to Lamashtu. There were alcoves to the north and south, and a stone pulpit partially buried by a collapsed part of the room.

And hundreds of scribblings. The Scribbler had done his work here. My study of the Thasselonian language is beginning to pay off, and I could read several of them. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to say anything of importance; the ones I looked at were simply graffiti.

Takkad cast True Seeing upon himself, certain there must be more here than meets the eye. That did reveal a secret door which he was able to show to Rigel, but she determined it was magically locked. Our wand of knock was used to open it, but it revealed a short corridor (crack in the rock, really) with nothing in it.

There was fog coming from an exit to the southwest, and Rallo took the form of an air elemental to clear the fog out. This was a very messy (that is, bloody) area and we soon came across more of the shadowy dog creatures.

Unfortunately, they did something this time that I don’t remember them doing before — one of them howled. The howl was so unearthly, so utterly alien that I couldn’t stand it. I had to get away from it .. and so I ran from the room.

Meaning my understanding of what subsequently happened is again reliant upon my companion’s accounts. I apparently was the only one affected by the howls. Since they were difficult to see in shadows, Kane threw down a torch to reduce the number of dark areas. Rallo lightninged three of them, and Sabin and Avia and Nolin began to steadfastly but grimly hack them to pieces.

Fortunately my fear didn’t last nearly as long as my confusion, and I came back in time to find only two of six hounds remaining, and I contributed a flaming sphere to add both light and heat to the equation. It didn’t take long for the remaining pair to be dispatched.

Around us was what looked to be wreckage from the Sandpoint guards. There wasn’t anything in the way of bodies, but armor and weapons we could identify from the guard did lay strewn about. Earlier the Scribbler had called to his allies not to destroy our bodies so that they could be reused .. were any of these dogs previously humans? Previously guards? Never can tell with this foul magic. One thing was clear — there did not seem to be any apparent food for these dogs, so they were eager to attack us. Perhaps these same dogs did attack the guards and consumed them completely. We’ll never know.

The scribbles continue here, but there is one section that is both readable and a little different from the others. It reads:

On frozen mountain Xin awaits
His regal voice the yawning gates
Keys turn twice in sihedron
Occulted runeforge waits within.

A runeforge? That’s supposed to be a pretty powerful artifact, but I don’t think it’s a good thing 🙂

We’re not done here yet. There are doors unopened and a missing Scribbler. May my wits be about me more than they have been, as we advance. One good thing – having run away so much I have many of my spells left 🙁

Sunday, Erastus 6

So we were not fooled by the only opening in the tower appearing to be going down. We knew there was more structure upstairs, and that there must be a way to get there, if we were to but look more carefully. And so, after searching intently and thoroughly, we found …

… that, uh, apparently there was nothing upstairs. Or at least, no way to get there from here. We found not a trace of secret doors, passages, ropes, teleport traps, signs, arrows, or even disclaimers or warning notes.

However after some discussion, we decided it was entirely appropriate to make this Derrel’s final resting place. I mean, a tomb built for monks? We’ll probably want to embellish it a bit, later, when we have a bit more time on our hands.

Next up: we needed to convert some of our property into cash. We sat down and sized up what we had, what we wanted to keep, and things that perhaps folks in the group wanted to personally take. Takkad seems to have a knack for the numbers, so with everyone chiming in on what they knew (fighters knew weapons, magic users knew not only magical components but not uncommonly, magical items too, and Rigel, well, she just seemed to have a knack at quickly appraising darn near everything else) he provided an estimate of what we should be able to garner for our stuff.

It was impressive. But the market for a lot of this stuff did not lie in an ancient Thassalonian library. We needed to be in a big city again, which really bothered me not one whit.

So after taking days to get here before, it was more than a little satisifying when Rallo and I were able to teleport the group directly to Magnimar. Poof. Well, ok, actually there wasn’t a poofing sound. Not even a faint pop. But just, after all the travelling we’ve had to do, it was nice to want to be there, and just be there. It’s like the difference between being dirt poor and working as a bouncer just to get a barebones meal, and walking into a nice place and saying, bring me a whole chicken. The whole bird. I’m hungry and I’m going to fix that.

Or maybe it’s just good to be back in the city. It’s hard to explain. But we’re here, and I think it’s great that it took as much effort as it takes to walk over to the next room, and half the time.

Being Sunday, a lot of the places we wanted to visit were lightly staffed or, more often, closed entirely. We’d not be able to finish selling off all of our stuff until Monday. Still, we cashed out a fair amount of it. I traded my ring of protection for a ring of better protection we’d procured, and handed the old one over to be sold with the rest of the stuff. We were able to set up a meeting with the mayor to further clarify our previous, brief messages, and then, well, freedom.

Considering the money I had now, and not even taking into account the share of the money I would get for the things we’d sell tomorrow, my options in Magnimar were much wider than they were the last time I was here. Oh, I’m not ready to retire and buy a villa yet by any means … but sheesh it sure seems like it by comparison.

I needed to swing by the clock tower where Olithar had died. I still feel that if we’d been a little more prepared, or a little more skilled, or a little more cautious that he’d still be with us. I don’t know why but I felt a visit was in order. It was getting late, so I thought I’d wait until Moonday.

But it seems that we were destined to return sooner. Takkad returned and told us he’d gotten information which suggested Xaneesha was still in town. He gathered up those of us who hadn’t already struck out on their own — myself, Rigel, Sabin, Rallo, and Avia — and we went to his temple to try a scrying. When that couldn’t find her, he suggested we go back to the Shadow Clock. I was kind of surprised we were doing this now.

So we did go back, although by now it was dark. I briefly noted on the way in that you could no longer discern where the pieces of Olithar had landed; the blood had faded in the intervening rains and sunshine and blended with the dark gray of the twilight. I didn’t have a chance to stay and talk with him, but perhaps I’d return later. Now able to Fly and Airwalk without scrolls, we easily ascended and searched the clock tower, but not surprisingly, there was no sign of Xaneesha. From high in the tower, Takkad looked out at the city, and we could hear the sounds of varied entertainment, below. Voices rising and falling. A female voice, now and then, standing out among the lower tones of the men at the pubs, carousing and gambling.

Gambling, he said out loud. They were targeting people with money. With scarcely a look at the rest of the group, he pointed beneath the Ironspire and headed back down the tower.

Sigh. Seemed Takkad was on a quest. He wasn’t even there for Olithar’s death, but he really seemed to have it in for Xaneesha. I vaguely remember he’d talked about having had some sort of run-in too, with the lizard priests. Or was it priestesses? Did that explain his fascination with a creature I thought we alone had a personal stake in? Try as I might I couldn’t remember the details of his story, but now I was thinking maybe he really did have as much skin in this game as we did.

The first pub we found wasn’t very interesting. We were looking for tattoos, and we knew from experience they were not always out there in the open. Still, after ten or fifteen minutes, we communicated by hand signal that we wanted to move on.

The second pub – ah, now that was more productive. It was certainly well-populated, and there were some active games going on in one corner which a good crowd observing. It was Rigel who noticed one tattoo discreetly sliding in and out of view on one person as they moved. That was enough to make us hang out a bit longer.

Most of the time it bothers me that I wear my age on my face, because it means people treat me as a child. I may not be a wizened shaman, but I think at this point I’ve had a rich share of life’s experiences in my recent years. But in this case, it was exactly what we wanted. I put on my best “wow this city is big” look as I gazed upon the game, and it wasn’t long before one of the players noticed me.

When I saw him look at me, I asked him how you played. He asked if I had any gold, and I looked a little shy. “Well, a little, but not much. Does it take a lot to play?”

“How much do you have?” he pressed.

“About 15 gold.”

His face broke into a smile. “That’s plenty to get started!” he said.

And he introduced me to a game which, even if they weren’t cheating, would challenge anyone who’d had even a sniff of ale. One gold piece to play, and double sixes meant everybody paid you a gold piece. But double threes had different results, and double twos were … well, and heaven help you if you didn’t get doubles at all.

It was Rigel who silently acknowledged there was some dishonest play going on. Once my stake was gone, and I’d placed the appropriately wowed look on my face, Rigel stepped in and offered to play some. The group took on a look of a school of sharks circling blood, but Rigel had a few tricks of her own that allowed her to not only keep pace, but do better than they would have liked.

The leader (who I learned later from Takkad was called “Snake”) looked at Rigel shrewdly, and suggested maybe she would be interested in some games with higher stakes. She agreed that might be fun, but it turns out they were only being held in a different place. On the condition that her friends, meaning me and Avia, could come too, she agreed. “Maybe I could play too,” I suggested. The group looked at me in a sharp toothy way and agreed the friends were welcome too.

Sabin and Takkad observed this agreement, and sent the word out to Kane and Nolin — it looked like the whole group was going to be needed. They and Rallo followed us discreetly and then waited for the others to arrive.

Meanwhile, we reached a nondescript house and Snake provided a password to the person who answered the door. We were all admitted and, as promised, there was a serious game going on off to one side. But there was also obviously a party atmosphere here, and there were several non-players who were circulating around the room.

Rigel sat down and did well. I honestly don’t know if she was cheating or lucky, but the distress of the other players seemed genuine enough. She was by no means winning every game, but she was apparently winning much more often than they were used to. After a half hour or so, she withdrew from the game.

While that was happening, an attractive young lady named Isabella came up to me and asked if I was playing. I replied no, just watching at this point. She suggested I should go upstairs to the party, then, and said she was actually going up right now, if I wanted to go right now.

She was really very attractive, but at that point Rigel was still playing, so I held firm and said perhaps I or we would come up later. She looked disappointed, and suggested with a wink and a smile that sooner would be better, before coyly heading up the stairs.

So when Rigel finished, Avia and her and I decided perhaps we should check out this party. We had a hunch Xaneesha was somewhere near this house, given the presence of tattoos and the gambling atmosphere. When we went upstairs, the door was not locked and we simply walked in, although we were quickly challenged. But when I mentioned Isabella’s name, he quickly turned and located her. She slinked over and welcomed us to the party. She directed us to a smallish room off in the corner where we could get masks to better blend in.

Once we were in there, though, Isabella turned quickly towards Avia and Isabella’s mask’s eyes glowed green as a ray of light shot out and struck Avia. But she shook it off and announced, “Your time has come, Xaneesha!”

“I recognized you the minute you came in,” she responded. “Bring it on!”

And Avia did, laying open Xaneesha with a furious attack with her sword. Rigel nicked her with her rapier and I quickly hasted all.

(Meanwhile, unknown to me at the time, Takkad had sensed the battle beginning through a status spell he’d cast on us before we left, and hurriedly brought the other half of the party to us.)

Avia had damaged Xaneesha/Isabella so badly that she angrily disappeared. It appeared to be a teleport or dimension door and not invisibility, but it took a few moments to discern that. When we exited the dressing room a few people in the party room looked a bit panicked — they’d heard both the battle and the yells. I looked them over and said as convincingly as I could, “There’s been a problem. Isabella told us to go downstairs and help with it.” And we rushed out the door. And downstairs. And, after a quick glance showed us no Isabella, headed to the front door.

.. Only to have it blown in upon us. Our friends had arrived, and apparently Rallo’s form of a knock spell ALSO manifests as lightning, like so many of his other variants. The door was blown to splinters, and as we rushed outside I turned and looked at the ragged exit, and sighed.

As Avia shouted, “it was Xaneesha, and she teleported away” I created a major image of a red dragon that looked oddly like Longtooth. A couple of my friends looked startled but I quickly said, “if you want confusion, you want the dragon” and sure enough, as the players and revelers arrived, they skidded to a stop at the opening and gawked at the red dragon that was there. Never mind that a red dragon would burn a door down. Never mind that it really would have had trouble taking off and landing on this particular street. No, it just made them stop and consider what their eyes were telling them.

And it was as this was happening that Xaneesha reappeared and sent a couple of scorching rays at Sabin and Avia. Kane cast prayer, but Sabin got the most horrible, wonderful grin on his face as he turned towards her grabbed Nolin, and dimension doored right next to her. Her eyes got real big – really really big – before Nolin practiced his butchering skills on her. Avia, still hasted, rushed in and laid into her again. And in a subtle move, Takkad sent a little sliver of cold into her heart, and killed her. Rigel sliced off her head almost with glee.

And it was about then we remembered we still had an audience. Probably more any time now. Takkad herded the gawkers back inside the house while I made the dragon disappear. He explained to them the tattoo/soul/death linkage, and several looked very concerned.

We took two important items from Xaneesha’s corpse:

[1010] Mask of the Medusa: Grants +4 bonus to saving throws for visual effects, and once per day the user can send a pale green ray from the eyes to a victim, who must make a DC15 fortitude save or be turned to stone for one minute.

[1011] Impaler of Thorns: A +1 spear, which once per day can be used to create a burst of despair in a 30′ radius with a DC16 Willpower save. Those who fail must make and additional DC15 save or be nauseated.

Finally, after a much busier night than I’d anticipated, we all retired to our rooms.

Moonday, Erastus 7

We met with the mayor, and although we explained the tattoo/soul/death concept, he seemed fairly unconcerned. Then Takkad suggested some complicated way where wealthier people would end up subsidizing the removal of both their own and some others’ removal, with the city managing the program and, as near as I could follow, also making a profit on it. His Lordship suddenly gained interest in Takkad’s words.

We finished selling off our unneeded stuff, and teleported onto the road just south of Sandpoint. We had a rendevous with a hole in the ground, but figured teleporting in in sight of anybody would likely cause a distraction to our task at hand.

We spoke with the Mayor and the Sheriff, but they had nothing much to add to the short messages we’d already exchanged with them. Looking down into the pit didn’t yield anything interesting, but we pulled out Olithar’s old journal entries, as he’d helped map the underground passages last year and we had a hunch they’d now changed.

Descending into the opening we quickly found where we were on Olithar’s maps and determined that some passages that had been rubble-filled before seem to have been cleared. We saw boot marks that we presume were from the missing soldiers and followed them deeper into the Thassalonian ruins.

We encountered some spider webs, but no spiders, so I just burned them away. At the bottom of a staircase (that had been previously blocked) we had to search to find a secret door.

The door led to a room with artistically decorated walls. Both pictures and words (Thassalonian words) appeared here, in various sizes (which might have meant multiple authors or even multiple updates). After passing through several locked doors (courtesy of Rigel) we reached a round room with a round pool in the middle. The runes here seemed to speak favorably of Lamashtu, much to the chagrin of several in our group.

We returned to the main chamber and went to a wide western hallway, but from there eminated a strange hollow voice in ancient Thassilonian. It wanted to know of the world up top, and clearly was trying to discern if there was a power vacuum it could occupy. Who wields the greatest power? it asked.

I do, I replied. But it ignored me while Takkad said something about everybody has great powers now.

So there are no true wielders of great power left, yada yada yada?

Hey. I wield great power!

Avia challenged it to show itself and a humanoid figure appeared wearing a breastplate, with sword in one hand and a dagger in another. One eye was completely milky white, reminding me both of an old man I’d met once, and a rather smart dog. Except this thing was ignoring me and probably was not going to hug us and in a few seconds would be too close to –

I SAID, I WIELD GREAT POWER! I practically yelled as I sent a fireball to it. I mean, really, not only was it evil (profoundly evil according to Avia) but it was being really rude, and any closer and a fireball would singe my friends too. And it was pretty clear a fireball was necessary to get his attention and cleanse its surface of small cooties.

Oathday, Erastus 3

Sometimes, ethics and morals are inconvenient.

Red dragons are not known for their generosity, or even their friendliness. In fact, they are generally recognized as evil and untrustworthy. I know this now, and I know this is why Father has always been reluctant to reveal our family’s lineage. It is said that the apple does not fall from the tree. What would people think? I’m fortunate to have fallen into a group that judges more by actions than simply by reputation. Or presumed reputation.

But I digress. We’d made a deal with Longtooth which, in hindsight, had people wishing they had not. In return for doing nothing (and we were very explicit on that — had he shown up we’d have been very upset) we would give him a share (1/9 or 1/10) of anything we found, earned, recovered — what have you. It grated on us that we took all the risk, and simply based on the fear that he might harm us, we were willing to pay ‘protection money’. Do nothing, and there’s something in it for you.

Some have openly advocated not paying him, now that we’ve defeated Mokmurian. That doesn’t seem right either. It grates on me to give away what seems so much like it is ours, and yet to not keep the bargain seems to make me – us – as bad as any of the evil beings we’ve been defeating. Our reputation and our actions are what define us. If we are not true to our principles, we risk losing the reputation we’ve created. Even if only among ourselves.

To that end, I offered to teleport to him and let him know we did indeed defeat MM, and that we were tallying the treasure we’d found, and would contact him again within 24 hours. Without that notification, I thought, he might think we were doublecrossing him.

But others argued that if he feared that he was more than welcome to come and check it out. Or use magic to contact us. Even though I felt I could teleport away if he threatened me, others thought he might try to doublecross us and grab more treasure through capturing or injuring me. I feel, unfortunately, like I understand him and that that is not likely, but the group urges strongly against that and instead advocates we regain all our spells and visit him at full strength, just in case battle does happen.

I’m a little worried that planning for a possible battle increases the likelihood of a battle, but I do not fear we’d lose the battle. I fear we’d lose the moral high ground, and I for one would be disappointed if I found any one of our party could create circumstances where it was reasonable (or even convenient) to ignore the deal we’d made.

Some have asked if I’d feel the same if Longtooth himself broke the deal first. It is a good question. If one party breaks a deal, there is no deal, I think. Certainly if he attacks us for any reason, we would need to defend ourselves, and it would be unwise in the extreme to wound but not kill an angry dragon.

Meanwhile, Takkad and some others are spending a great deal of time in the library, trying to discern what information is actually held there. He found much information about the Rune Lords, and in particular Karzoug and Alaznist, whose minions we seem to be running into with increasing frequency. And he also discovered the answer to a question that we’d asked ourselves when MM’s corpse spoke to us: what role did the runic tattoos play in all this, and if it really did pass, grant, or amplify a dead Rune Lord’s power or essence, how could we undo that? The answer, it turns out, is that if the tattoo is actually removed, then the Rune Lord gets nothing from a death, but if it does not then the manner in which it was originally enscribed means that the Rune Lord does indeed get some small measure of power, or essence, or something from the soul that has been extinguished.

It borders on religious doctrine to me – all this talk of souls and such – but everyone else takes it very seriously. Any power that a Rune Lord can exert in today’s world is bad news, so I guess I don’t need to know the details of how it works if I simply know it does. I’m not sure how we will erase these tattoos berfore killing our opponents, but we will undoubtedly look for opportunities in the future.

The Black Tower, it turns out, was not so much a Rune Lord construct as a religious one. It was once the bell tower of an order of Therassic monks (whom we suspect were not exactly law abiding and virtuous souls.) The Peacock Spirit, I think he said.

Fireday, Erastus 4

Clever.

I didn’t really ruminate out loud, but perhaps my expression or my demeanor has conveyed to the group my mixed feelings about our deal with Longtooth. It seems we may be intending to adhere to the letter of the deal while being somewhat more free with the spirit of it. As we are separating Longtooth’s share, his pile is becoming full of things that have no use to us, but do have value. We calculated his share would be in the neighborhood of 8500 gp, and the pile did include gold (red dragon after all!). It contained a couple of giant-sized magic weapons which were of no use to us, and great piles of giant armor that, again, had value but no use to us or even Longtooth except, perhaps, as trophy pieces.

I think they are hoping he expresses dissatisfaction in a manner which requires we kill him.

Fireday, Erastus 4 (later)

We emptied our sacks, and haversacks, and bags of holding so that we carried nothing but Longtooth’s share. He couldn’t gain additional treasure by force. Even if he attacked and we all died, he’d not know where the rest of it was.

And when Rallo and I teleported the group there, he appeared in short order and inspected the loot. He seemed satisfied, but then said he also wanted the scrolls and the location of the library. Takkad threw a verbal barb at him – “you should be happy you got what you did when we did all the work while you crouched cravenly in your cave” – and that was all it took. He bared his teeth, waved his wings and took a snap at us.

And quick as you could blink, he had three fighters dimension door right next to him, and Takkad Smote him, and I hasted everyone and that was all it took. While I knew a fireball would be pointless against a red dragon, I was ready to create an illusion of the entrance sealing off as if with a giant shape stone spell. But it wasn’t necessary. Before I could do anything else, our three fighters had created dragon hash. And we had our share back, our honor intact .. and additional treasure to inventory.

There were a great number of coins .. a stunning amount of copper coins (copper? what a slacker for a red dragon!): over 360,000. There were over 23,000 silver pieces, and over 34,000 gold pieces. But it wasn’t just the coinage. We had some in our party who are skilled at appraisals, and they informed us there was a water opal worth a thousand gp, a diamond worth 1600 gp, 2 black opals worth 8000 gp each, 53 gems of assorted size and quality worth a total of 3500gp, a tapestry of monks sparring worth 600gp, a set of 4 silver idols worth 2400gp, and a pure platinum statue of (ugh) Karzoug worth about 5000gp. All told, it had over 70,000 gp in value.

This, Father. This is why you went adventuring, right? 🙂 And yet, as stunning as these figures sound, when one looks at the price of even “inexpensive” magic items, there’s only a fraction of them that we would be able to buy with this hoard.

With the empty bags of holding that Takkad and Sabin had brought (gosh, almost as if they’d planned for Longtooth to die 🙂 ) we were able to get the loot (but not Longtooth’s corpse) back to the library with just one teleport by Rallo and I. And rest.

But what about the Black Tower itself?

Starday, Erastus 5

We started the day by sending messages to Conna (any ‘friendly’ giants should be gone in 3 days), Sandpoint (ther’es been a giant earthquake and a sinkhole has appeared), Magnimar (what Rune Lord cult?), and our ferryman (thanks, won’t need you but tell the stables we’ll pick up our horses in a couple of weeks).

The news from Sandpoint was disturbing and yet, sigh, it seems almost normal. I get the sense that Sandpoint will never be normal again, or perhaps disaster is the new normal. It started with goblins, and then giants and dragons, and now even the earth is trying to destroy the town. We have no more message capability today but we will have a longer conversation tomorrow. And the mayor of Magnimar remains relatively clueless, and I’m not sure short messages of 25 words or less will convey to him what we’ve learned.

Sunday, Erastus 6

Well, in talking with Sandpoint, it seems things are more dire than we thought. Yes, there’s a sinkhole, but part of Sandpoint had apparently fallen into it, and the guards that went to investigate it never returned. Apparently there is also a loud howling that does not sound like a normal dog, or pack of dogs. We told the mayor we’d be there as soon as possible. With teleport, now, we can be there almost instantly but we need to wrap some stuff up here yet. We’ve decided to take on the Black Tower.

So we teleported out to the area in front of it and were immediately beset upon by harpies. It turns out these were not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill harpies (if such exist). These seemed much stronger or more powerful somehow. Still, Takkad encased one in stone (silly harpy sat oh a stone wall, and, well, “wall of stone”), and we eventually defeated the other three. I managed to fireball one, but then I’m afraid I became rather useless because the harpy’s song got to me.

But when we finished, there were no more harpies. We cautiously inspected and then entered the door and found ourselves in a round room that was noticeably cold. Not just a chilly draft. Cold. As in, walls glistening with frost. Sabin opened a trap door that Kane was able to find on the floor. It revealed a five foot shaft which seemed to be about 70′ deep, judging from the lit stone we dropped. Might be a chamber down there.

And then the eyes. The eyes looked up at us. And Sabin and Takkad felt a chill from that gaze, but shook it off. And because of that, if for no other reason, Takkad sent a flame strike down the shaft. Kane cast bless. Rallo sent a lightning ball down. And we waited. For a very short time.

Because in response to all this, a figure shot out of the shaft carrying some sort of metal rod or cylinder and clung to the ceiling. This was a major clue that we needed to take action. Cold room. Evil figure. Fireball, right? But both Nolin and Kane had the ability to get to the figure (by airwalk and spider climb, respectively) and by the time I could try a fireball, there would have been too many friendlies nearby. I really need to research a haped fireball. So instead I made Avia able to fly, and effectively threw another fighter at the problem. I was later able to try an old favorite (burning hands) which does less damage but can be better aimed. Eventually, the mummy was dead, but not before Nolin reported feeling .. off. Or ill. Mummies are renown for passing on disease so we hit Nolin with both a heal and a remove curse, unsure of which would be needed.

The cylinder, it turns out, was locked, but using several knock spells from the wand, I was able to make the six spinning ring align to the correct places and open it. Inside we found

9 scrolls describing various curses that could be issued. I suppose we should study these sometime, if only to know and recognize them.

8 magic scrolls:

Greater Restoration
Hero’s Feast
Order’s Wrath
Scrying
Slay living
Unholy blight
Regenerate
Symbol of Stunning

1 scroll describing the entrance to the library (which we’ve already found), and how to get past the shining one (which may be useful).

We’d hoped to go up and clear the Tower. But the only opening appears to be down? What next?

Oathday, Erastus 3

We decided that the ‘doggies’ would be at our back if we didn’t take care of them now, so we set out to either free them or kill them (which, if one is at all religious, really is another way to free them, but I digress.)

We arranged ourselves, and opened the door we presumed led to the doggies. But no puppy appeared. We shut both sets of doors, and went to the door at the far east. Kane had thought he’d heard voices in this room. Rigel checked for traps, found none, and Sabin led, using his dark vision.

Somebody called for everyone to come in and shut the door. When you think about it, that instruction isn’t very clear. Really, you should say, “Everybody come in and the last person shut the door behind them.” I was thinking, much like in an aviary, we wanted to close the door behind us so nothing could scoot out. The next person coming in would But no puppy appeared. We shut both sets of doors, and went to the door at the far east. Kane had thought he’d heard voices in this room. Rigel checked for traps, found none, and Sabin led, using his dark vision.

Somebody called for everyone to come in and shut the door. When you think about it, that instruction isn’t very clear. Really, you should say, “Everybody come in and the last person shut the door behind them” if that’s what in fact you meant. I was thinking, much like in an aviary, we wanted to close the door behind us so nothing could scoot out. The next person coming in would then be cautious about making sure nothing got past them. Anyway, it wasn’t very clear and several people got upset when I closed the door behind like I was told. Apparently they wanted it held open until everyone was in, and then shut. But they weren’t very clear on that.

Knowing they hated fire, I wanted to fireball them but with so many of the party already in the room and starting to engage them, I couldn’t very well do that without seriously annoying some of my party. So I confined my ‘fireballs’ to flaming spheres, which indeed did cause the critters to dance about. One of them somehow caused Avia to bleed profusely although I swear it didn’t even contact her there. The dogs tended to blink about — I don’t think it was teleport but I could be wrong — but we managed to kill two of them. The third blinked out of site, and never came back.

We looked at the western door, and nodded. Odds were good that Mokmurian was in that room. We aligned ourselves and approached the door.

“Magic!” said Rallo, and after a short bit of study we realized we’d lost the element of surprise. There seemed to be an alarm spell here on the floor, and now it was triggered. Shrug. Might as well head on in then.

Upon entering, we caught a glimpse of a celing that had to be 100′ high if it was an inch. Then fog enveloped us. Fortunately we had experience at this too. I whipped out the special wand of spell holding, and called up a gust of wind.

Mokmurian proved surprisingly easy to beat up. Now we didn’t defeat him (this time) because (in hindsight) we were too passive. But after pounding on Nolin pretty good, MM got seriously cut up by Nolin and Avia, and he winked out. Probably a teleport; maybe a dimension door.

On the other hand, this gave us an excellent opportunity to look around the room we’d found him in. Indeed, it was messy, and journals were strewn about. Spell components and what appeared to be spell books lay open. Various pieces of equipment lay askew.

I went to the alarm trap and (presumably) tripped it several times to simulate our leaving. Maybe he’d teleport back in if he though we were gone. Takkad inspected to the west but found nothing; some rubble again.

But there was a chest! Traditionally such things hold great wealth and I do believe Rigel was actually quivering 🙂 It was not trapped, but was locked. That is, momentarily. The chest appeared to have thousands of gold pieces, hundreds of platinum pieces, and a few items:

[913] an amber/sapphire necklace
[914] ivory runestones
[915] a magic scroll

We decided to leave a detailed accounting for later, and returned to the corridor. There was one room we had not yet inspected and we though MM might have gone there. Rigel really wanted to inspect the chest better, and so stayed behind (Sabin and Kane stayed with her.) That left me as one of the more observant ones, so I checked the door for traps and, finding none, proceeded to cast a knock spell upon the door to unlock it.

This elicited the strangest reaction. The door changed color to orange, then yellow, then bright yellow. It was blinding. Literally. By this time, Rigel, Sabin, and Kane had returned. Some sort of being appeared that was just too bright to look at — and it screamed, too. Loudly. Persistently. And then the bastard hit me. I was blinded and apparently on fire which, if I was going to be attacked, was one of the better things to attack me with, at least. The damage was minimal, but I was blind. I’m told Avia and Rallo both got a good hit in before Kane managed to banish it.

A few minutes later, everone’s sight came back. Phew.

We entered what appeared to be an auditorium or at least large echo-ey room. There was a shaft in the middle of the room that looked like it would require feather fall or fly to avoid being seriously hurt. And a mechanical creature of some sort approached and announced “Welcome to the Therassic Monastic Library. There are over 24,000 volumes, scrolls, and manuscripts.”

This could prove useful. Not now, perhaps — MM didn’t appear to be here — but later. When we need information.

So we returned to the room we’d last seen him in, and discussed the situation. We agreed that he’d probably come back with help, and discussed how best to deal with that. If he arrived with mundane help (that is, on foot) we’d make them come through the doorway one at a time and we could surround and pick them off, one at a time. If they all just appeared, however, we might have to just make do in a much more adhoc fashion.

Suddenly we heard voices. It sounded like he may be returning. We arranged ourselves as we’d discussed and waited for the first to cross the threshold. Some protective spells were cast, like protection from fire.when

Imagine our surprise when the first was Conna, who subtly gestured to us to back up. She clearly had some sort of plan, but .. what was it? Nolin jumped forward and appeared to do battle with her, but losing ground in the process. We all backed up with him. Conna seemed exasperated. She whispered for us to get up on the stage and look scared. Well, this wasn’t what we’d had planned at all, but we did trust her. We gave up our advantage and did as she said. In the meantime, though, the giants entering were being attacked by party members that she could not talk to without being noticed. As we all moved to the stage (“TO ESCAPE THE FEARFUL GIANTS I HOPE THEY DON’T HURT US”) Conna nodded and waited. Among the last to enter was Mokmurian himself, still looking somewhat injured but looking very pleased with himself. “Now!” he cried. “Attack the little ones and we’ll –”

“No!” cried Conna. We have lived under his tyranny long enough, have we not? We must throw off this oppressor and take control of our own destiny again!” And with those words, a little better than half of the giants hesitated, and started attacking the giants alongside them.

We? We went for MM. I personally threw a fireball at him, and despite the fact that one of his few surviving supporters was three steps behind me, threw a fireball at me in return. I was protected against fire, so I took minimal damage. “I’d always wondered what that looked like from the inside,” I mused. Turning my attention back to MM, I saw Rigel shoot one last arrow into him before his eyes went vacant. Man, she always gets the killing blow. Not fair!

But although life left him, his body nevertheless housed a force or spirit of an old Runelord. I don’t remember it all, but something to do with we were worms, Karzul would soon have an army, every death brings me closer to my gola, yada yada yada :)_

And then his eyes closd for good. Takkad was going to collect another head, but realized Conna might need it to convince the others that Mokmurian was indeed dead. Sounds of fighting were still coming from the next room over, but by the time we got there to help, Conna and her troops had things in hand. We stayed somewhat out of sight so that she would not seem to be associating with mere humans. After the others had left, though, she came over to talk and mentioned that we shuld probably stay low for a few days while, she hoped, the various camps broke camp and left.

An inventory of what we found:

[916] wand of Bear’s Endurance [15]
[917] +1 great club, defending + spell storing
[918] bracers of armor +4
[919] Robe of Runes. Crimson silk, +4 to INT and wearer recalls up to 4 spell levels of spells cast that day, once per day.
[920] bag of holding, holding spellbooks for virtually every spell less than 7th level.
[921] curious key (to library:)
[922] 500 gp of diomond dust
[923] goggles – careful polished goggles wearer can see through fog and mist.
[924] ~25,000 gp
~2420 up

additionally, while idly perusing the maps the robot had brought us, we found a map that had 4 x’s on it.

One of them was the old lighthouse at Sandpoint, while three were out in the ocean. What did they mean?

Must ponder.

Toilday, Erastus 1 … still

We searched the body of the dead giant. He had a great club and hide armor, and we noticed that the most prominent tattoo on his body was the rune for “wrath”. The floor is a polished gray and black marble. After some discussion, we decided that while Takkad and Rigel found no particular discomfort or disadvantage in being smaller, this was not true for Sabin, who has become a front-line hitter. So I cast Enlarge Person on him, and it seemed to cancel the effects of the Reduce Person spell he was suffering under. The lack of residual magic (as viewed by a detect magic) suggested strongly that he was not permanently back to regular size.

Rigel inspected the double door and determined they were neither locked nor trapped. We entered the room and began our misadventures.

There were runes on the walls.
The room was glowing.
There was a slowly burning circle of flame beneath a huge (12′ tall) black cauldron.
And there was what appeared to be a massive stone golem at one side of the room.

It’s always something, ain’t it?

But adamantine weapons are made for this sort of thing, and Avia and Nolin were able to land some good blows. That’s not to say we won easily; it had spell-like powers to slow us down. Nevertheless, it fell, we retrieved what arros we could, and trudged on. Or at least, were going to.

That’s when a 10′ tall lumbering humanoid came Out Of The Wall to attack, wounding Rallo with an upchuck of lava, or so it appeared. Before we could do anything else, we lost it as it reentered the wall.

Takkad was convinced that the cauldron was creating, allowing, or somehow influencing this tall creature, so he wanted to call in water to put out the fire beneath the cauldron. We convinced him we should wait to do that on the return trip, to avoid clogging up the traffic through here.

As we entered the next chamber, we were struck by the flow of cold air. The room seems to have contained 2 dozen suits or armor that are mounted on frozn ogre bodies.. One set of armor is radiating magic. We suspected it to be the “leader”.

This was just begging for a fireball, so I launched one to hit maximal soldiers. That took some out, but also worked others up. Fortunately, there were so many soldiers in the room, that between them and us, they weren’t too hard to pick off because there wasn’t a lot of room to move. Lightning and fire became the order of the day, and our fighters cleaned up the stragglers. Since they were undead, Takkad washed them in happy sauce .. oh, okay, positive energy .. and that too caused them to be unhappy.

Our reward for this was a lot of heavy metal. There was some decent armor to be had here, as well as some magic battle axes which had runes enscribed on them. We left all this for retrieval upon return.

As Takkad was putting the fire out on the cauldron, the molten slag monster returned. It seemed to have an attitude, complaining about how Sabin tasted, and then turning Kane to stone at a glance. And then disappeared into the wall again.

We discussed our options. We didn’t want to see Kane all busted up ala Olithar. We decided this might be time for me to use my teleport spell to take Kane to a big city and get him fixed before anything worse happened. Bad news was the slag monster was listening to us from the wall! He cast Dimensional Anchor on me to hold me in place, and then toyed with a bit more of the group. Avia, being annoyed by the constant chatter (and damage) smacked it but good and it died. Satisfyingly.

We returned to the original plan. I was to take Kane (and Rigel) to, we decided, Korvosa, where the thought was my father might be able to revert Kane to fleshy Kane from stony Kane. I honestly didn’t know if he could, but if he couldn’t I was pretty sure he could help.

So I focused on the area I knew best — that is to say, my old room — and one blink later, it worked, like it was supposed to. I was home.

I must admit, when I teleported to my room, I did not consider two things. One, Father, is that you’d repurposed the room and filled it with your old stuff. Thank goodness the magic doesn’t let me materialize inside of other stuff or you might still be hearing muffled shouts and beating from inside your old foot locker.

And the other was that you might have put a lock on that door — that locks from the outside. It makes me want to ask — what all is in that room now that it needs a lock? I realize I can hardly call it “my” room anymore but in one brief glance I took in what looked like an amazing potpourri of mere household stuff.

Fortunately, the one named Rigel — the one you mistakenly called “your girl” later during conversation — is very adept with small mechanical devices, and she was able to assist in exiting the room. (I do hope the lock is reparable; sorry.)

There was something about being home again — the smell of distant baked goods that I never before realized exists throughout the whole house, the sight of a familiar portrait here, that threadbare rug in front of the wash basin that has been there for as long as I can remember and which I know Mother has more than once threatened to replace, the fact that our dog Alaric obviously still remembers me — it was like I’d never left. Except for the small humanoid well-chiseled boat anchor to my left, and the dimunitive young lady to my right.

There is a part of me that is mildly pleased to know that even as the changes at home surprised me, I too managed to present myself in a way you had not considered. I had no way of knowing if you’d installed new wards against burglars, and while I was cautiously optimistic that they might still not trigger on me, and that my statuary friend would be even less likely to trigger them, I had far less certainty about my living, breathing companion that you’d had no knowledge of when the wards might have been placed. No matter how small she was now.

So when I cautiously entered the living area, broadcasting an aura of detect magic before me, and found you sitting at the desk in the alcove by the window that looks out over the port, it was entertaining to see how big your eyes could get. When you uttered the words, “I can’t believe I caught you sneaking into the house with your girl, and what is this other thing, some kind of oversized achievement award?” I had to break into uncontrollable laughter and I know it seemed puzzling to you and you didn’t get the joke, but I’m sorry Father, it was just the release of tension and frankly, from my point of view, it really was funny. Despite Rigel’s edginess at the misplaced label.

Dad. Wow. I’ve gotten a year older and I think you’ve gotten shorter.

I wish I’d had more time with you. I have this marvelous journal – well, THIS marvelous journal – that I’d like to have shared with you. I’ve not written you personally as often as I’d wanted, because too often we’re not near an area with enough … civilization … to provide reliable message service.

But of course, you knew that. I mean, you know that. I’m living a life you’ve already led. Maybe not exactly the way you lived it, but you know the constraints, and you know the limitations. You’ve been there.

I wish I could have had more time with you to tell you of my adventures, to have you read my journal, or even to read my journal to you in the hopes of creating the stir in your heart that I felt in mine whenever you would tell me of your tales. But time was not on our side, and I really needed one specific thing: to change my “oversized achievement award” back into the halfling he really is.

I had hoped you might know the spell by heart that would do this. I never really thought to ask you to tell me the true range of your powers before I left, and I don’t know if you’d have told me had I thought to ask. I know now that details like that are not revealed lightly, since the spells a sorceror knows not only defines him but can restrict him. If your opponent knows all your capabilities, then he knows how to put his own spells to best use, and since you can’t always easily discern friend from opponent …

I should not have been surprised that even though I felt great urgency, you felt great curiosity. My rather abridged recitation of how I came into the possession of a stoned halfling no doubt left some confusion in your mind, but it did at least convey the urgency. My companions were still in danger, lacking, now, over a third of their number while on this mission.

When you sent messengers to those whom you knew so that we might quickly find a mage that had either direct knowledge of or a scroll for stone to flesh, I had no idea the machinery it would put in motion. A city the size of Korvosa has many nooks and crannies, and while such a thing is almost certain to be found eventually, it is substantial effort to find it quickly.

And I must admit, I did not realize your contacts extended so deeply into the Council. Every son believes his father to be important and powerful, but when your messenger returned saying Councillor Rasok believed he could help, it was a surprise even to me. I did not know Councillor Rasok to be .. to be as you and I are. In hindsight, though, I suppose if someone has the magical prowess that Rasok does, we should be surprised if he does NOT bear a seat on the Council.

I was a bit wide-eyed, I admit, as we entered the Hall and proceeded to Councillor Rasok’s chambers. As we entered, I remember Rasok’s unusual greeting. “Elros,” he chuckled, “so it seems what is old is new again.”

“Indeed, Wilkas,” you responded. “The tables are turned this time.”

Councillor Rasok took the appearance of someone remembering across many years. “Had you not appeared when you did, leading with that signature fireball of yours, I would not be here today, helping lead this city. I’m still amazed at how many ogres fell at your hand while the others in our party hesitated. And even more amazed at how the rest of the ogres turned and ran after seeing 14 of their companions turned into blackened corpses. Some credit must be given to the healers, of course, for saving me, but a moment longer and only priests would have been able to help me.” His gaze fell upon me. “And so this is your son. Already finding trouble, and already gifting it to his friends. His father’s son, indeed.” But he was smiling. “So you seek a stone to flesh for this, what, a halfling? You are out saving the world with halflings?” He was still amused, but somehow, less smiling. “Is that all you could find willing to join you in this cause?” He glanced at Rigel. “I’m sensing a pattern here. You seem to have an issue with size.”

“No sir,” I had replied. “I’m with a party of eight. Rigel here, and Takkad too, were shrunk by magic means. We have fighters and wizards, humans and half-orcs, lawful and ” – I had caught a warning glance from my father – “and those who claim allegiance only to the principle that justice is blind and owed to all. And we fight the resurgence of the Rune Lords.”

The silence which fell over the room was almost palpable. Father looked stunned and seemed, for the first time in my life, speechless. Rasok paused, then gestured slightly and an aide shut the door and left the room. “He knows better than to repeat what he hears. Tell me more, Trask, son of Elros. Your plight may be of importance to more than your rigid friend here.”

So it was that I found myself in the inner sanctum of Korsova, talking to a man whom, it was said, could change fortunes, about what we had done and what we were doing. When I was finished, Rasok gave a great sigh. “It never ends. Magnimar to Sandpoint, and beyond.” Now my father and I both were looking at him agape, and he gave a half-smile, saying, “There have been signs, and sadly, your tale does not surprise me. Things are moving more quickly than I expected, though. The Council needs to hear this, but I also fully understand that time stops for no man, and while we unfold this fascinating tale, some hundreds of miles away your companions may be falling. I would quiz you more, Trask, but time grows short. On behalf of the Council, I thank you. If even half of what you told me is true and accurate, the Council has much to consider.” He gestured in some manner at the cabinet next to him and a drawer appeared. Reaching into it, he withdrew two scrolls.

“Do you have money?”

“I do,” I replied. “But I don’t know if I have enough.”

“You do,” Rasok assured me. “Because your information is valuable, and because I owe something of a debt here to your father, I will offer you a discount below cost. These two may be had for 1750 gold each.”

“But … on the open market these would be worth over 2000!” I stammered. “Each!”

Rasok smiled. “Does that mean you don’t want them?”

“No, no,” I stammered. “I do. And here is 3500 gold pieces. But I ask you a favor.”

“Yes?”

“Cast the spell yourself. If you’re powerful enough to create these scrolls, then you are more skilled than I and your invocation of the spell would produce better results.”

Rasok laughed again. “Good show, Trask. You are showing signs of an education, be careful! I am impressed. 3400, then, and not a penny more. I cannot cast the spell myself right now as I no longer have that one in mind, so we must use a scroll to help your friend. But you are still right that I can help with this scroll.” And with that, he picked one up, read it out loud, and .. Kane was standing there.

I glanced at Father and he looked like someone who desperately wanted to ask more questions, but it already been on the order of two hours since I left. In the end, Rasok and my father nodded, and as Kane and Rigel and I touched, I uttered the words that would return me (I hoped) from whence I had come.

I have since pondered on the irony: I had left home seeking knowledge, and today, just a little over a year later, I was the one imparting knowledge to the Korsova Council itself.

With a start, I found myself back with the party. There was much happiness and backslapping, but only for a moment. They brought me up to date — they had heard some growling or barking from behind a particular wall .. a wall that appeared damaged or collapsing. Takkad tried to shore it up with a wall of stone, and that made the noise stop. At first. Then a “puppy” leapt out from the wall. Yes it growled and snarled but it looked like no puppy I’d seen before. We thoroughly beat upon it, and it elected to return from whence it came before causing any of us any damage.

We pondered over how it had managed to appear when we’d just patched the wall. It was Takkad himself who realized something — his repair had not smoothly followed the contour of the rounded corners. It had simply put a “slab” into place. Kane cast comprehend languages and listened at the door. He heard snippets like

“Intruders in hallway”
“…but brought fire!”
“gave us a way out!”
“free to roam the universe”
“came back by the angle”
“leave this cursed plane”

It was unclear from this exchange if they were prisoners or hired guards. But clearly they knew about us, and viewed us as undesirable. Good news (for me) is that they seem to dislike fire. Hopefully it’s because they are vulnerable, and not because they’re trying to trick me into hitting them with a life-force-adding random amount of energy.

We continued looking at doors. We found a set of double doors that had behind it, another set. Upon opening that set, a puppy appeared. We quickly shut the doors, but found that the ‘puppy’ (or a ‘puppy’) had squeezed through.

Hates fire, hates fire, must conjure up fire …

Toilday, Erastus 1 … still

This has been a very full day. As I write this, I may finally say it is over, but the path here was dangerous and exhausting.

Conna, it turns out, had a map of this area that she was able to share with us, and this helped us immensely. She herself, she revealed, commands a small number of spells, including stone shape, stone tell, rock to mud, fly, blink, invisibility, scorching ray, charm person, identify, mage armor, obscuring mist, and shocking grasp. As we looked over the map, frequent questions were “what is here? what is this for?” And it was in that vein that we learned where Mokmurian’s feared assistant, Lokansir, held office, so to speak. He was responsible for “breaking in” new recruits.

She also mentioned that Mokmurian spent a lot of time downstairs in the library, and Lokansir was pretty much the only other one that was allowed down there. If we could take out Lokansir here, we wouldn’t have to worry about reinforcements coming (from this level anyway) when we finally attacked Mokmurian. Unfortunately, the group felt this was something we really needed to deal with now, while we had the element of surprise — and also before we could recharge any spells. I considered this risky and ill-advised, but was clearly in the minority. I just felt my options were so limited at that point in time, and for the first time in quite a while, I might need someone other than myself to protect me.

Or revive me.

When we arrived at the room that was Lokansir’s office, we were greeted by some massive stone doors. These looked hard to move, even for a giant, and we weren’t giants. Our plan was to enter thr room under cover of an obscuring mist. Additionally, Nolin and Avia were granted greater invisibility. I hasted everyone. Sabin cast heroism. And we heaved at the doors, and entered.

Invisible Avia entered first, and was greeted by an immense, carved hall. The walls were well worked, and sported what almost looked like giant ribs and placed as if they supported the ceiling overhead. Contrasting the stonework was a floor that appeared to be dirt, in which were 7 15′ tall tree trunks. Each had a set of manacles attached to them and smoldering coals and a branding iron with easy reach. There were runes all over. And Lokansir …

.. was staring at the door, waiting for us to come in. I didn’t believe he could see invisible, but he clearly had heared us opening the door and probably entering. And when the visible members entered, he did make some clever comment about puny humans. Y’know, every giant born thinks he’s the first one to think of that phrase but I’m getting kind of tired of it.

The plan worked pretty well. Within the first fifteen seconds of entering the room, Avia had gotten four solid blows on him. Nolin had gotten three, and Sabin had gotten one plus a good magic missile. I myself had attacked him twice with a ray of enfeeblement (from my wand) and there were arrows flying and muted cries of victory. And then something very unexpected happened. He started to sink into the earth. Not quite like quicksand, but also not quite like he had a secret hole in the ground. More like .. more like .. oh crap.

He was a hill giant, not a stone giant. The earthen floor was no coincidence. And I was willing to bet he was either escaping or regenerating by this action. Avia said the earth was evil, and we tried burning it and kicking it and lots of different types of attacks, but we just couldn’t damage him while he was in earth form. We did verify that the floor was stone beneath the earth, and the earth was something like 3 feet deep. Rarallo tried frying it with a fireball; no visible effect. Then again, how would we know if we managed to kill the earth??

We weren’t even sure what he could see or sense in his current form. Since we were paranoid about his suddenly rising up around us somehow, we nervously searched the room. Found no personal effects. Then things got worse.

The doors opened and two stone giants came in. There may have agaih been a tired remark about puny humans but in any case the battle was on. After all that had happened today already, having “only” two stone giants to mess with was almost a relief. I must say the eight of us have gotten it down to a science, and it took less than half a minute before they had gone to meet whatever deity they believed in. Nolin and Sabin took the brunt of their attack, but the healers made it so they barely felt it. In a stroke of genius, we decided to hang up the giants on the posts and anybody coming in would think they were not sentries that had discovered intruders, but rather miscreants who had needed punishment.

We weren’t sure how long our luck would hold, but so far almost nothing that had happened screamed that the hall had been breached. We were hoping to keep that streak going as long as possible! In the end, we decided to use a rope trick to rest and wait for Lokansir to reconstitute himself. We created a stone platform (15′ x 15′) in one corner of the room and put our rope trick there. (The thought was that the stone would stop him from rising underneath our rope and give us a decent chance of not simply jumping into his lap as we exited the rope.)

About 1pm, we entered the rope trick and tried to start some studying. But a mere half hour later, the ground rippled and the giant reappeared, rising from the earth. He looked at the giants manacled to the trunks, and he looked at the stone platform, and seemed to consider it all. He started heading for the doors and we suddenly realized that if he raised an alarm, our lives got a whole lot more coplicated. We dropped out of the trick, and attacked.

Although our magic was still diminished, we again mounted a successful and vicious attack. Not that he didn’t try the ‘sink-into-earth’ thing again, but this time we had enough people around him that that gave several of us a chance to get in one last blow, and we killed him before he could get back into the ground.

Now that he wasn’t trying to become one with the ground and we had more than fifteen seconds to interact with him, we noticed that the tattoos all over his body looked to be reminiscent of ancient runes … but they were not. Those of us who knew such things could see that they were wrong. It’s as if they were done from description rather than from knowledge.

As has become traditional in our group, I guess, the head was removed and Takkad added it to his collection. He was then dismembered and buried randomly throghout the room. We were a little worried that that might allow him to regenerate and revive, but we checked after about an hour and there seemed to be no healing happening.

He’d had a +3 great club, but no other magic on him.

At long last we returned to the rope trick and were able to rest and study. It took two rope tricks for everyone to get that benefit, but finally everyone had recovered their spells. By now it was late in the evening, so we retired to the ‘haven room’, again in a rope trick, to wait for Conna to show.

Wealday, Erastus 2

It was 2am before Conna came by, and she showed immediate relief when we told her the hill giant was dead. She mentioned it was safe for the moment. While security had been increased because of the recent events, nobody suspected it was the result of a human invasion. The rogue dragons had been found and killed, and the missing guards were replaced with new ones culled from the tribes above us.

Our luck still held. Now with the hill giant out of the way, we need not worry about a (serious) attack from the rear when we travelled to reach Mokmurian.

The last thing Conna revealed (almost in passing) was that she had a familiar, and it was a bat.

With that, we took off towards the library. As we headed south east, we discovered that the corridor was lined not by walls, but more by cloths and other cover behind which were three trolls, that poked hurtful things at us. They were fairly tough, but we put them down and moved on. Past them, the corridor went into a downward sprial, eventually losing about 800 feet in altitude before opening up into a junction for a east and south corridor.

We took the eastern corridor first and found the passage blocked just before a largish (10’x15′) room that didn’t yield anything valuable. Heading south, though, we ran into s strange room.

First, just looking around the room was very disorienting. The walls seemed to move … not the ones you looked at but those on the periphery of your vision. It made people feel ill.

Second, actually entering the room made some people shrink. Yes that’s right: Rigerl, Sabin and Takkad all shrank to Kane-size. I was able to enter the room without effect, but judging from my companions I guess I was lucky. I wonder if they will change back at some time.

Third, there was strange but dangeous looking giant here. His body was carved with scores of Thassilonian symbols and energy sprang between them. For some odd reason, he also appeared to have mo muscles than the average giant. Avia detected evil … and then the lights went out. A couple of our fighters have blind fighting, so they were standing by in case they could be of service.

It took several really good blows to take him out, and he gave as good as he took. But it cost us some spells, cost us some time, and I believe that was his real purpose.