== Sunday, Lamashan 5, 4708; Monastic Library; evening ==

We teleported back to the library, which has become our defacto home base. And who could blame us for settling here? The collection of ancient volumes in library itself is useful, and it is maintained by a marvelous mechanical man who acts as part librarian and part catalogue.

All mundane ways into the complex are protected by traps (magical and otherwise), and the stacks are shielded from magical and mundane entry. We simply teleport into the hall outside, use the key to enter, and we are as safe as can be expected.

There has been some discussion about moving our headquarters to Runeforge, but while it might prove more secure then the library, access is more difficult, which makes it less desirable a residence.

In the here and present we have decided we should return to Magnimar tomorrow and pick up additional supplies and equipment for our expedition up the Ava River and on to Xin Shalast.

== Moonday, Lamashan 6, 4708; Monastic Library; late evening ==

We just spent an entire day and most of the night to buy a handful of objects that should have only taken a couple of hours.

In fact the shopping went well.

Sedjewick and I bought several hundred cold iron bolts for our crossbows — I seldom wield weapons these days, but thanks to our trip through Runeforge my weapon is Domineering aligned, which should make it useful to have on hand in Karzoug’s realm.

I also found a pair of Goggles of the Night that I scooped up at a fair price.

Avia and Sedjewick picked up some ioun stones that provided various types of protection.

Once we were done shopping I mentioned that I wanted to update the mayor with our status and current efforts (in case we should fail). Typically Sabin and I just show up at city hall and make an appointment which, given our recent contributions to the city’s prosperity, is usually soon granted.

But Nolin had an alternative: what if we were to mingle with the guardsmen and send word up through them and their captains that we had something to tell the mayor? This seemed like an inefficient way arrange a meeting, but he and Task seemed very enthusiastic about this approach, and so I reluctantly agreed.

And so we waited for the changing of the guard, and then accompanied the off shift group to a nearby pub, where the hours dragged on as Trask and Nolin regaled the inn with tales of our past glories. Sedjewick was there, and provided visual interest via illusion spells, while Avia and I sat nearby impatiently waiting for the supposed meeting with the mayor to be arranged.

Finally, near midnight, a meeting was arranged, but it was for the next day! Had we just gone straight to his office we could have already seen the mayor and been home.

Sabin used a Sending asking what was taking us so long, and after I provided a disgruntled reply, he teleported into the inn, and he took Avia and I back to the library while the others remained to indulge in more bragging.

While we had been wasting time at a pub in Magnimar, Kane had asked Desna for information about Karzoug and Xin Shalast. He discovered that Karzoug was not lawful and that Xin Shalast was on our current plane. He also found that fasting, as the Vekker brothers had done, was not necessary to find the path beyond the River Ava, but the full moon was.

None the less, I decided it would be good if at least one of us fasted as the Vekkers had, and volunteered for the position of “control subject.”

== Toilday, Lamashan 7, 4708; Headwaters of the Ava; evening ==

Some time past midnight the others returned, and by day break were rested well enough to get started.

We teleported to the Vekkers’ cabin and from there used Windwalk to continue up the Kazaron River. Some thirty miles up we came to a fork, and followed a narrow waterway left, assuming that this was the Ava. The tributary had cut a sharp chasm into the surrounding rock and mountain sides, and dropped swiftly from its lofty source high above. The water was white with frothy foam as the river flowed over boulders and faults, and plunged over sudden precipices.

Up and up we went until, around noon, we came to where the Ava flowed from a frozen lake, some sixty miles above its union with the Kazaron. We landed on a rocky shelf close to where the river left the lake, which we soon realized was really a frozen marsh. But it was a bizarre sort of marsh, and instead of reeds and sedges poking up from below, strange fungi and lichen grew.

The sky was a piercing deep blue, and it was bitter cold, but it was the thin air that caused the problems. It was hard to get enough air, no matter how deep or fast our breaths, and at times we would need to sit and rest although we had done nothing more strenuous than just stand and gasp.

There was nothing here for us except the frozen marsh, the tops of surrounding volcanic cones, an eery silence, and a growing feeling that something was not right with this place, and that we were not welcome.

Screw that! I cast True Seeing and Nolin and I resumed gaseous form and drifted around the perimeter of the marsh. Nothing. And so we resumed solid form and I cast Waterwalk (just in case) and we made our way on foot to the center of the marsh.

Despite the fungi, the marsh was like others, with hummocks of dry ground, shallow fens and deeper mires, but all covered with a thin layer of ice.

Meanwhile Trask had cast Rope Trick, and the others, except for Sabin who waited for Nolin and I to return, had climbed inside for relief from the cold and thin air.

Standing by the rope I pulled the Peacock Quill from my pack along with chartreuse ink and a fine piece of lamb skin vellum. I then penned the question,

We stand at the head of the Ava River. How much longer before the way to Xin Shalast appears?”

And in its usual discomforting way, the pen wrote the Peacock Spirit’s reply:

At the right place you are, open your way may be, yet easier your journey will be under the light of the white face.

I thought it might be worth an effort to replicate the light of a full moon, and so taking a rock with Daylight cast upon it, Sabin and I flew up and positioned the glowing stone where the full moon wood be, as Sedjewick directed us from below.

Nothing.

We decided to return to the library and wait for the full moon. But Teleport did not work the two times Trask tried to cast it, and so we used Water Walk and began the trek back down the river.

We made it down past the first large cataract when we noticed the feeling of unease had passed. But our feeling of elation was short lived when we discovered that Nolin and Rigel were missing.

We turned around and wearily climbed back up the river, while Trask flew on up ahead. We found the three of them waiting back where we started, sitting around a fungi fueled fire.

They said they were following the river with the rest of us, but at some point in time the realized they could no longer see or hear us. They continued down but wound up here instead.

I used an Ethereal Jaunt spell to see what the place looked like from that plane, but it looked like everything does while there: grey and foggy.

Trask persistently kept at using Teleport until he finally popped out and safely arrived back at the library, and he kept at it from there until he returned to us, but he had consumed a frightful number of spells for this simple experiment.

We decided to rest in a Rope Trick sanctuary until morning, and then try Wind Walk to get back out.

== Wealday, Lamashan 8, 4708; Monastic Library; afternoon ==

In the morning I cast Windwalk and led the party down the Ava. Only we landed on the side of a volcano instead. I tried again, and we found ourselves somewhere north of the marsh, in the opposite direction we needed to go.

Trask then led the way and we made it down the river some five miles, where we resumed solid form and then teleported back.

Kane had earlier suggested that perhaps the disorientation and feelings of unease were caused by the intersection of two planes. We now researched this idea and found a book on planes that confirmed Kane’s theory.

The next full moon is on Lamashan 21st, and we will return on the 20th to see what luna will show us.

In the meantime we will once again head to the city to find items to aid us with the thin air, and anything else we might find useful.

== Oathday, Lamashan 16, 4708; Monastic Library; evening ==

I began my fast today.

Over the past week we searched for items to help us out in the mountain environment.

With all of the recent encounters with different planes, I picked up tuning forks for various planes:

material
ethereal
astral
air
water
earth
fire

For Kane and myself I purchased Iridescent Ioun stones, which sustain one without air. While expensive, this purchase proved to be popular, and so we traveled to Korsovo to find another two for other party members.

Party members who did not already have something dangling from their necks purchased less expensive but equally effective Necklaces of Adaptation.

Rigel and Nolin eschewed any such precautions, but perhaps they have other means for dealing with the lack of air.

== Moonday, Lamashan 20, 4708; Road to Xin Shalast; evening ==

I awoke ravenous, as I have for the past few days, and a little light headed. Sedjewick joined in the fast the day after I started, and he too looked hungry.

We teleported to the five mile point below the headwaters of the Ava, and then used Windwalk to make our way to the marsh . Trask created another shelter using Rope Trick, but we take turns climbing down in pairs periodically to check the status of the coming night.

The moon finally cleared the surrounding volcanoes and bathed the marsh in its silvery light. And I saw a ghostly image of the river Ava from where it emerges from beneath the ice, flowing through the marsh and up a valley between two peaks.

I called to the rest of my party, but none of them could see it, and so I began walking through the marsh and then up into the mountains, with the others following behind.

The shimmering image of the old river bed led around a shoulder of one of the volcanoes and beside it was a fallen tree. On the tree was a nude elf maiden sitting on the trunk.

All of my companions could see her, and I heard Avia murmur that the maiden’s ears were too long for her to be an elf.

I could detect a strong aura of magic around her, but Avia detected no evil, which was reassuring, but we still gripped our weapons tightly.

Speaking Thassilonian, Sedjewick clumsily greeted her, but she continued to stare at us.

Trask stepped up to offer assistance, but being equally clumsy with words as our bard he barely managed to squeak out anything more coherent than, “Boobies!”

Fortunately she spoke, surprisingly using common:

“Greetings strange ones. I have heard of you before, but was not expecting to find you here, nor hear youj speaking in strange tongues. I am from the mountain fens, my realm, where I look after the plants and creatures. My name is Svenka.”

“How do you know us?” asked Sabin.

“Some time back you assisted my poor cousin in the forest dells near Turtleback Ferry, and I have heard of your kindness from her.”

She was a nymph!

Svenka looked at us with compassion and declared we would find little more than danger and suffering from the horrors that lay in wait ahead, and she suggested we go back.

We then told her of the threat Karzoug presented to all if he were to escape his realm of Xin Shalast. Svenka was familiar with Karzoug and his city, and described the hordes of giants, lamia, snowmen and other fell creatures who had flocked to his city. The River Ava itself once flowed from Xin Shalast itself, as we must have known, having followed its ancient course to this point.

She then led us up to the beginning of the remains of an ancient road, paved with flat stones with flints of gold, fully one hundred feet wide! She pointed on ahead to where the road passed between two cliffs and said that Karzoug’s centuries were posted ahead, and she would go no further.

We had done well to come this far unimpeded, and fortunate indeed to have met such a gracious guide. But Nolin and Rigel were having a hard time keeping up, and were gasping for breath. Nolin asked if the entire city of Xin Shalast was exposed to the thin air, and Svenka confirmed that these conditions were what we would find there. Nolin frowned and looked at Rigel, but said nothing.

From where were stood, hiding behind a large boulder, we could see a fire lit upon the top of the cliff to our left, but the right cliff was dark. Sabin sent an Arcane Eye up the the cliffs and found four cloud giants on either side, looking down watchfully on the road below.

He then sent the eye up the road and onto the city itself.

Whereas the full moon cast a pleasant silvery shimmering light upon the lands about us, on cursed Xin Shalast it cast an unwholesome glow of sickly yellow. Sabin described a large city spread between the feet of two volcanoes. A gigantic fortress at the near end guarded a gold ramp that led down into the city, passing through and rising again at the far end as a massive stairway climbing up the side of a mountain. An avalanche from the west had encroached upon the city, burying a quarter of it in snow and ice.

The city had clearly been built on a massive scale with towers soaring high overhead. The architectural motif was one of decadence, which still managed a sort of haughty pride despite the millenia of ruin and decay that time had wrought upon it.

Although a ruin, there were still fires from the buildings — hundreds or perhaps even thousands of them.

Getting past the cloud giants was clearly our first step, and stealth rather than force seemed our best bet for infiltrating the city beyond. But while the relative dark of night was the best time to set out, Nolin and Rigel were in no shape to go anywhere.

We have set up another Rope Trick shelter and are waiting for morning.

== Toilday, Lamashan 21, 4708; Road to Xin Shalast; morning ==

After many attempts Trask was able to teleport to Korsovo, and by the use of a Sending spell we knew that Nolin and Rigel had found a pair of Necklaces of Adaptation. Unfortunately Trask was unable to return before running out of spells in failed teleport attempts.

The rest of us are waiting around, carefully keeping watch on the land around us, and especially on the road and guards ahead. While the rest of our company should return tomorrow, it is likely that Trask will have used enough of his spells that we will need to wait another day before setting out.

And yet having our entire party at full strength is preferable to impatiently setting out prematurely.