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.