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.

Tollday, Erastus 1

“… the lightning seemed to hit someone or something, but then a screech and the more vulgar version of “What the heck?” was screamed in ogre. Hee hee.

But this initiated the battle of the ogres.”

Or so I had hastily written when I had a moment. But it may as well have been called the battle of the giants. Or the battle of the sisters. Or the prelude to the commencement of the beginning of the adventures leading to the beginning of the battle with Mokmurian.

It was a whole darn lot of fighting, and for the first time that I can remember, I find myself having exhausted almost all my offensive spells. I’ve a couple of flaming spheres in me if needed, I suppose, and I did save one 4th level spell for an emergency, but when I consider how many spells I normally am able to cast, I must say we have been through a lot.

As the ogre screamed, the battle truly began. Although ogres were a challenge for us a mere few weeks ago, battle experience is worth its weight in gold and we find them to be more of a dangerous annoyance these days than a serious threat. That’s not to say they couldn’t hurt us dearly if one of us were, say, held, or fell asleep, or attacked by three simultaneously. But in general, they are well within our capability to triumph.

In this room and the room beyond, we encountered ten ogres altogether, and several of my fireballs were used to weaken or kill them outright. These were not heavily armored or armed, and that helped considerably.

However, we also found giants, which are a bit more problematic. Again, none seemed heavily armored or armed (the basement of the tower would be an odd place to find a provisioned army) but giants are, in general, a bit heftier than ogres.

I cast greater invisibility on myself early, and while this made it a bit difficult for my party members to guess where I was, it made the resulting fireballs all the more mysterious as well.

I fireballed at least four ogres with my first one, killing them all outright.

My next one smacked three giants, much to their surprise.

As one tried to leave and (I presume) bring reinforcements, I tried to trip him (being invisible). I discovered that tripping a giant is a good way to simply get a nasty bruise on the shin. Humans just don’t trip giants very easily.

So I threw up a wall of fire to discourage him from going farther. And darned if more giants didn’t show up to the party anyway.

This time I gave Nolin some extra strength, and hasted everyone. I used more magic missiles than fireballs because I had a hunch that this wasn’t the end of it. And in conjunction with our healers, our hasted fighters were more than up to the task of dispatching the remaining giants. My magic missiles number five now, and more than once seemed particularly effective for a first level spell.

Upon defeating the six giants, Rigel discovered they had enslaved some dwarves to help run the forges, and felt compelled – I don’t know why, perhaps there was magic involved – to be their liberator. I don’t mean just, “hey, let’s cut those guys loose.” I mean crowing like a rooster that it was WRONG for these people to have been enslaved and we must RIGHT this wrong for these are a PROUD PEOPLE. I don’t speak Dwarvish so I don’t know how fluent she was in speaking with them, but judging from the looks they threw at each other I don’t think she had quite the necessary vocabulary. They seemed more amused than offended so I guess it all worked out.

But she made up for it in gestures and enthusiasm.

Takkad had seen a flash of Lamashtu priestess through the wall of flame (no, she didn’t “flash” him THAT way) so we knew more battle lay before us. We took a moment to see to the dwarves needs and catch our breath, however. We also asked the dwarves to “guard our backs” which was a little like telling a rescued castaway to climb a crow’s nest and keep an eye out. They were so weak that they probably couldn’t have truly held anything back but goblins, but they nodded gamely and we supplied them with a few excess weapons we’d picked up. Kane created some food and water for them, which they were MOST thankful for.

But she made up for it in gestures and enthusiasm.

A hasty search of the corpses yielded

a vine rope
[731] a small bag with 3 gems – one looked to be worth at least 1000gp and the others several hundred
a bag of giant teeth (don’t ask, don’t tell)
4 polished stones (giants are worse than blue jays in what they pick up)
[732] a potion of bull strength

We concluded that while the giant room had been a forge, the ogre room had been a tannery. And it was time to move on.

Moving through the northern corridor we quickly smelled burning incense. We heard faint music. I did a mirror image, because it all seemed like impending battle to me.

And sure enough. We walked into a room with visible smoke. There was a metallic tang from the lute music. Soft voices seemed strangely soothing. The room was painted on all sides, and there was images of 3-eyed jackals on one wall. And there appeared to be three of Lemashtu’s faithful here, although since they did not have snake bodies they did not seem to be matriarchs (thank goodness.)

“Sister, maybe they’re not here to convert to Lamashtu after all,” said one of the creatures.

Rarallo started the festivities with a lightning ball — like a fireball but with lightning instead of fire. I’d never seen anything like it. I again hasted everyone, since we were all too close together for a safe fireball. One of the creatures said “Blind” to Sabin and he suddenly cried he couldn’t see.

A dire lion appeared. I magic missiled one of the creatures. The fighters, even Sabin, engaged the creatures (having been hasted). But these creatures had six arms or legs and could attack with them all. Sabin took some damage but Avia lost some wisdom. She responded by making it bleed a lot. One suggested to Nolin that he should fight the greater threat – the dire lion – but his only comment was “Right, then” and he commenced to attack that creature.

Sabin suddenly felt less wise. I threw out a flaming sphere but they easily dodged. Even blind and less wise, Sabin managed to connect soundly and dispatched one. Gravely injured, one of the creatures touched her barely living sister, causing the sister to succumb while she herself looked more vital.

She drained her sister to save herself.

Rarallo was throwing lightning pretty consistently. I tried to recreate an image of the dire lion, but the creature ignored it. Instead it uttered some spell and then looked incredibly quiet and serene. And startled, when Nolin smacked it anyway.

Examining their bodies, we found that each had a +2 flail [733, 736, 737], a +2 ring of protection [735,740,741], and a +2 headband of inspired wisdom. These were quickly divided up among needy party members.

Kane then thought he heard a gravelly voice. He thought it resembled the voice of Longtooth. Someone who understood Draconic said the speakers were complaining of their servitude to Mokmurian. It seems we may be near the captured dragons Longtooth spoke of. If so, these were extremely young dragons. It might be possible to bluff or intimidate them.

We decided the person best suited for that was the half orc, Sabin. It didn’t hurt that he knew Draconic as well. After a brief session of shouting and posturing, the dragons agreed that having their scales “harvested” and used for who knows what was demeaning. When Sabin told them Longtooth said they’d passed the test and they no longer needed to stay with the giants, they seemed both surprised and relieved. We pointed at the ogre and giant corpses and offered them fresh food, which they graciously accepted.

In a completely impetuous action, I exhaled a cone of fire in a harmless direction as the dragons were ready to leave the room. They looked a little surprised, and one of them breathed a bigger and longer cone of fire and said (according to Sabin) “not bad, but here’s how it’s done.”

I really need to study Draconic I think.

Back in the room with the dead sisters, we realized the braziers that had occupied space near the altar were actually quite valuable in their own right due to the workmanship. So we grabbed them [742, 743]. Rigel noticed the altar had been pushed across the ground at some point, so with some help from the stronger members of the team, we found that the altar was hiding a small niche of interesting documents. While there was a [745] scroll of remove curse (divine), there was also a collection of beautifully illustrated tomes … on how to torture nearly every living creature you could think of.

Having finished munching on the sisters, the dragons had moved on to some of the giant bodies. It appears they hadn’t been well fed during their term of service .. or maybe they were just pleased to have an all-you-can-eat buffet service. The beauty of this is that all the mayhem we’ve created will be blamed on the dragons.

As we prepared to follow fresh air to the south, a subtle noise gained our attention. A stone giant … apparently an older one from her looks … was quietly trying to get our attention. How odd.

Conna, as she is called, gestured to follow her into a nearby room. When we did, a little uneasily, we were treated with an interesting story that confirmed some of our thinking.

It turns out that, as we suspected, Mokmurian was creating his forces mostly of disenchanted younger giants. They were headstrong rebels, more than anything, but their numbers were strong. The older giants would just prefer to return to “the old ways” and not engage the other people in the valley, nor expand into “their birthright territory” as Mokmurian had called it. Mokmurian was power hungry and she wasn’t quite sure what was driving him. The sisters, for instance (she was glad to hear we’d killed them) may have been masters as much as they were partners.

She knew all of this because she was in his clan. Mokmurian had killed the clan leader, her husband, when he objected to what Mokmurian was doing. She wished to avenge the death of her husband, even if (especially if) that meant the death of Mokmurian. She did not express this openly to other giants, of course, but she knew there were some who were sympathetic, and she would aid us as much as she could without revealing herself.

Mokmurian was cast out. His growing army includes no elders; only hot-headed youngsters. Yes, it was true he could work magic and that’s one reason he has a following. Some considered it a sign. Her husband’s spirit haunts this room, this place, which makes it something of a place of safety. This room was a shrine to him, so it was not considered unusual for her to be seen going to or from this room. Others rarely visit.

Mokmurian worships Karzub, not Lemashtu. Conna has seen Lucretia and Xaneesha both during her time here. She can provide maps of the levels and although she cannot battle Mokmurian directly, she can provide us aid in finding him and getting past or bypassing his defenses. She hinted she may have access to spells or potions that could help us too.

Note: I failed to note earlier that we had discovered more things in the area of the spiders and the wyverns. We’d also found a chest [729] which contained 1935 gold pieces and 2987 silver pieces, and a spell rod [730] which could be used to cast spells by expending charges. It has 7 charges left and can be used to cast

airwalk [cost: 2 charges]
control winds [cost: 2 charges]
gust of wind [cost: 1 charge]
spike stones [cost: 2 charges]
shape stone [cost: 1 charge]

Sunday, Sarenith 29

Even as it sits there lifeless, it taunts. It beckons, it calls, and it teases. While some
can discuss it objectively, there are those for whom it represents equity and fairness. If
the universe has any balance to it at all, then this represents the counterpoint to poison
tails and sharp teeth.

Several are suspicious that it can either harm us outright, or be used to locate us later
for greater harm. Despite all that, Rigel continues to be obsessed with the fire opal left
glinting in the sand after the wyverns were killed.

“It’s worth about 200 gp,” she said, with a bit of anxiety in her voice. “I don’t see any
traps, either. It’s just sitting there and it’s foolish to leave it here for someone else.”
Kane confirms there doesn’t seem to be any traps. Would a magically trapped object be
detectable by a mundane? muses a mage.

“Yes!” says Rigel impatiently. As the others ponder, she reaches forward and picks up the
stone.

There’s a slight intake of breath.

She puts it back down and releases it, looking triumphantly at the others. She helps search
the rest of the cavern, but keeps one eye on the opal. Sabin pushed away the sand where the
opal was, slightly raised. Nothing happens. Rigel grins again.

It is rare to see Rigel so … engaged. Noteworthy, and so I take note.

It seems there’s nothing else in the cavern. But Rigel pauses, cups an ear, and points up.
There is a faint … singing, I guess it would be. Music of some sort. It’s simply
resonating off the ceiling, but its origin lies outside in the canyon somewhere.

Perhaps from the ledge above us.

Peering cautiously, we see we have harpies nearby. About 300 ft or so away they appear to
be luring something on the cliff with their song. I have heard they can do this; despite
their grotesque appearance, their song, when directed to you, can be very attractive.
Something actually does take a step off the cliff before hastily firing a lightning bolt as
it fell, striking a hovering harpy squarely.

Making a snap decision, Sabin casts featherfall on the being, breaks his fall, drags him
into our safe cave and secures him. It appears to be Elvish and carries no armor.

He is Rarallo, sent by the mayor of Roderick’s Cove to investigate the increase in giant
raids. He had arrived in the valley recently but had just woken to the harpy’s songs and
had been charmed into walking into their arms. We told him he’d nailed one with a lightning
bolt as he fell and that evoked a grim smile.

Moonday, Sarenith 30

A long, intense discussion has finally concluded, although I fear it may not go as planned.
Several have offered the opinion that the red dragon represents air support that we do not
have to want to worry about. I suggested we might contact it as equals and see if we can
make it friendly towards us by freeing it from whatever link bonds it to Mokmurian. Others
believe negotiation with an evil creature like a red dragon is doomed to fail, and would
rather remove the threat by killing it. It is, after all, a rather young dragon as dragons
go. Spell, wand, and scroll capabilities were carefully considered in view of the planned
assault. It was decided that fighting it in its own lair would be better than fighting it
after it has taken flight (and on that front I do agree.) But there was so much about the
approach we could now know, and we didn’t want to risk sending scouts since it was clear we
would need a contribution from everyone to defeat the red dragon. We couldn’t afford to
lose even a single party member if this were to work.

The spells we will use will be Fly, Airwalk, Mage Armor, Enlarge Person, Prot from fire,
resist energy (fire) and prot from evil. Several of these have durations measured in tens
of seconds so many of these will not be cast until we gain the ledge before the dragon’s
lair.

Later …

Would we be able to gain and keep the element of surprise? Once we found ourselves on the
ledge outside the dragon’s cave it was kind of moot. We were committed.

The entrance chamber was 50′ across, and about 50′ high. As we enter, we realize it empties
into an even larger chamber. Rigel hears the faint clinking of coins.

“This is a surprise,” says a voice from the back of the larger cavern. “I have not smelled
humans since Sandpoint.”

So much for the element of surprise. Perhaps we can still get him to underestimate us. He
may still think we have a white dragon at our disposal. Unless he can read my mind. Can
he? Would I know? What does that feel like?

I think I’m overthinking this.

Meanwhile, Takkad has taken up the conversational gauntlet. “We are some of his followers.”

The dragon expressed skepticism that Mokmurian would have human followers. “Really?”
remarked Takkad. “There are ogres and giants and dragons working together. Who do you think
helped give him the information on how to best attack Sandpoint?” Nolin added, grumbling,
“But we’re tired of taking his orders. Why do you continue to?”

“I do not take orders from him,” thundered the dragon. “We … share goals. We are peers.”

“Really?” I asked. “He seems to send you places where you can get hurt while he stays
safely behind.”

“Worse,” the dragon responded. “I was wounded by him and he refused to heal me. If I was
certain I could defeat him I might dissolve our alliance myself. Not that I could not if I
truly wanted to,” he hastily added.

As people brought up their lanterns, it was easy to see that 50′ back was a tremendous pile
of coins (many golden) and shiny expensive looking trinkets. The dragon’s hoard. Of course
the dragon lay squarely between us and the hoard.

Rigel stepped forward and says, “It is wrong that he leaves you wounded. I offer you my
healing potion.” The dragon looked at it thoughtfully, sniffed it, and finally drank it.
With a visible sigh, he seemed to relax a bit and even appeared slightly bored.

“So you are unhappy with Mokmurian. It seems we do at least share that,” mused the dragon.

With a conspiratorial tone, Takkad half whispered, “I think we’re going to try to kill him.
With him dead, the army he is raising will simply go home and this will all be over.”

“Don’t be too sure of that, little one,” condescended the dragon. “I get the sense that
many of them are hear having burned bridges to get here. They may have nowhere to return to,
and simply select a new leader.”

In a relatively friendly state now that we’d healed him some, the dragon offered some more
interesting tidbits.

• The harpies pretty much live in the Black Tower, and their command of the air would
  make an aerial assault very risky.

• Mokmurian’s magic is stronger than the dragon’s, “although in a fair fight I would
  win.”

• Looking at Lucretia’s head, the dragon remarked, “there’s only a few of those around”.

• “If it is true you have defeated the wyverns, then you may indeed be able to handle
  the insects as well. There is an abomination that looks like a spider there. If you
  can defeat it, the passages lead to under the tower.”

• These harpies are different from those at the Stairs. These have a deal with
  Mokmurian. They occupy the tower with MM’s permission.

The dragon appeared to have a ring on one talon, a silver armband, and an obsidian amulet.
My concern about defeating him seemed valid, but fortunately we seem to now have abandoned
that strategy.

“If Mokmurian were to .. fall from power … you would benefit from that would you not?”
asked Takkad. “Yes, I could see certain benefit from that,” admitted the dragon. “But I’m
not prepared to battle him again.”

“What if,” proposed Takkad, “your role in this was to do … nothing. Suppose he did not die
at your hand nor at your bidding but that you did not stop it from happening if it were to
happen?”

The dragon thought for a bit. “I tire of Mokmurian and his constant assertion that he is
superior. If I had but to do nothing to make that stop, I would find that quite
acceptable.”

One of the last things we learned before leaving the cavern was that the dragon’s name was
Longtooth. Or so he called himself; probably not his true name.

Tollday, Erastus 1

Based on the dragon’s assertions and information, we were ready to take on the insect cave.
This was a job that simply screamed for fireballs to cleanse the arena before our arrival.

Using my fly spell, hovered in front of the cave and cast a fireball. Awful smell. Flying
in, careful not to touch the ground, walls, or ceiling, I could see the back part of the
cave was still crawling with spiders but I could also what appeared to be a large exo-
skeleton of an ex-spider. Countless small spiders appeared to be running in and out of it.
This must be the abomination that was foretold.

The other team members had arrived via fly, or airwalk, or spider climb, and they now
entered cautiously.

Boom, another fireball, and advance a little farther. I could see now there were apparently
three of these abominations, although they’d been fried pretty good and Rarallo shot some
lightning off as well. One “spider” bit it went Sabin threw his axe at it. In close
quarters now, I had time for one more fireball before we’d all be too close together. Boom.

The second spider died at the hands of Rarallo’s scorching ray. The third one did manage to
attack Nolin by disgorging dozens of spiders upon him, but another scorching ray killed it
and with the “host” dead, the other spiders either died or ran off.

I’d lit a flaming sphere to help with Spider 3, but now I used it to burn webs so we could
advance safely. We found a collection of other people’s belongings; seems we were not the
first to come and play in the spider’s den. Our inventory was:

<

p style=”padding-left: 30px;”>[610] fire opal (from the wyverns)
[611] +1 long sword (giant sized)
[612] +2 halberd
[613] spell staff, already containing rusting grasp

While we were doing that, Kane found a secret door. It opened to a passage 3-5 feet wide.

As he told us later, Kane scouted the tunnels, which seemed to be natural tunnels. He was
doing okay up until he felt a sharp point in the back of his leg. As he turned around he
saw blood, and red caps with knives and mean expressions, but then they looked at him and
screamed DESNA! and ran.

When Kane returned and told us, he led us back to where this had happened and we went
searching. We finally found a larger cavern in which a single ratcatcher was sharpening a
single spear. He looked like a kobold, but we approached cautiously.

Good thing we did.

The ratcatcher was not dispatched easily; for a small creature he had incredible stamina.
Rigel eventually got the killing blow, and made a quick inspection of his belongings before
we turned to a doorway into a room in which there appeared to be a number of ogres. Rarallo
fired off his lightning even though he’d only seen a glimpse of him. The lightning seemed
to hit someone or something, but then a screech and the more vulgar version of “What the
heck?” was screamed in ogre. Hee hee.

But this initiated the battle of the ogres.

Fireday, Sarenith 20

It was today, as we caught the barge heading upriver to the Storval Stairs, that we had a long discussion about the horses. It would cost money to bring them along on the barge, and to what end? They could not navigate the stairs without assistance, and would need to be fed and cared for (more money). In the end, we decided to send them back to Galduria, to be cared for there and retrieved upon our return. We will see when we return if our instructions were followed.

I must admit, it is a pleasant interlude that finds the most difficult decision to be whether to take horses or leave them behind. We expect the barge trip to be largely uneventful, although it may yet be informative depending on how talkative the barge crew and any other passengers are. The trip shall take 5 days total and cost 2gp/person. Weather and current willing, we should reach Ravenmoor in 2 days and the Stairs 3 days after that.

I’ve a mind to practice my illusions (say, a large serpent in the water or another dragon flying in from the sky) but I suspect all but me would find my practice to be … disturbingly distracting.

Sunday, Sarenith 22

The trip did indeed take about two days, and was quite peaceful. Although I did sleep a little uncomfortably, it is still better than sleeping in the wild. I sleep a little better and a little deeper knowing that there is small chance our camp will be disturbed. We still set watches because surprises still could happen, but the nights are quiet and with the barge always available as an escape route, guard duty is much more relaxed.

We are now approaching Ravenmoor, and we intend to stop here to release some cargo, pick up some cargo, and restock supplies. The bargemaster tells us we will cast off before dark. He said we can’t stay here, but it wasn’t clear if he meant there was no place to stay or if we weren’t welcome here.

Sunday, Sarenith 22, late

So I have the answer to my question. It is both. There is apparently no inn, nothing resembling a formal eatery, no place to visit, and no place to stay. There is a pub, and it offers some basic food, but it’s the only deal in town. The barkeep did offer that the stone giants have been more active and that there have been raiding parties and there’s not much they can do about them. Still, Kane told us quietly he sensed a protective evasiveness in the conversations whenever the topic of religion came up.

I asked if there was a wizard or two in town I could speak with and that turned a couple of heads. In hindsight, perhaps it was better asked as a quiet question but who knew? Anyway, there was, out on the outskirts of town, so I travelled out to visit. Perhaps he would be more friendly. I sensed the town was, at best, “tolerant”. The people here seemed to realize they needed to interact for trade, but visitors were still infrequent and I guess they’d just rather keep to themselves.

When I got to the wizard’s place, there was an attractive young lady outside. She said her grandfather was the “wizard” I’d been sent to meet but that he really didn’t do much magic anymore. She said she was something of a magic user too and what magic was needed, she usually provided now. I asked her what magic might be needed and she shut down like I’d asked her the location of the nearest winged demon. Got nothing more than skeptical looks and terse replies after that. I was going to impress her with the spells I know and see if she opened up, colleague to colleague, but not knowing what she was capable of, perhaps they wouldn’t be that impressive. In the end, I finished the uncomfortable conversation and returned to the pub.

As recommended, we left on the barge before nightfall. The bargemaster anxiously herded us onto the barge and shoved off. “Nobody stays here at night” he said, which made it sound more of a safety issue than an accommodation issue. Still, Avia had reported a fair number of (mildly) evil people in town, so although I’m curious, there’s no good reason to find out why one doesn’t stay overnight there.

Toilday, Sarenith 24

Today, we saw a small band of ogres on shore, and they followed us like they would attack. But they didn’t have any weapons of particularly good range so after we all took a pole to move the barge a bit faster, they fell behind and returned to their camp. The bargemaster said this was not that unusual.

Wealday, Sarenith 25

We have arrived at the Storval Stairs. Well, to be precise, at the barge landing closest to the Stairs; they are still about 10 miles away. Here we are within sight and easy walk of a great and beautiful falls, though, probably a thousand feet high. Although the land has been appearing increasingly rugged as we’ve gone upriver, here the spray of the fall and the river itself creates an oasis of green.

However, since the Stairs are our goal, we don’t really get to enjoy it. Unload, and start trekking. And now that we’re closer to actual Giant land than ever before, precautions must be taken. It is bright and sunny today, with no cover. We kept relatively close to the cliff formed by the edge of the plateau, as it afforded what little cover (and sometimes shade) that there was.

It didn’t take too terribly long to reach the Stairs. The cliff had been slowly losing height as we walked east and now we could see the top of the stairs was only about 400 feet higher than the base. Still, the steps themselves were two feet high each, easily, which meant this stairway couldn’t simply be walked.

With the sun near our backs, we figured it was safe for me to fly up and scout the top. Kane, he of negligible weight, came along for the right and an extra pair of eyes.

The stairs were flanked by two great statues (nearly as high as the stairs themselves) and the face looked familiar on these figures. We’d seen this face before, at Thistletop in the looping speech. As expected, there were some giants (three) guarding the top of the stairs, although they appeared bored and disinterested .. all the better.

In one section of the ruins, a couple of our party detected (by nose) what appeared to be a remains garbage pit. Don’t know if these were previous residents of these ruins, or creatures that wanted to cross to the top of the stairs and failed. But either way, it did remind us of the strength of a stone giant.

There were enough ruins in the side of the cliff itself that it appeared there may have once been a functional city here at the stairs in the distant past. Now, we decided, they would serve as good cover for our camp. Through a combination of fly and air walk and spider climb, the entire party wedged themselves into a not-too-ruined ruin and settled in for the night.

We settled in for the night.

Oathday, Sarenith 26

With the sun now rising in the morning, the optimal attack direction was from the east (with the sun at our back, blinding any opponents trying to look in our direction.) We again used a combination of air walk and fly to get everybody quietly to the top while escaping notice.

Or so we thought. One giant actually on the stairs this morning (what, doing stair drills to wake up??) called us out and the battle was on.

Here at the top there was a small amount of ruined buildings to hide among or in so we took cover from the blind rain of boulders coming from the giant who spotted us. None of them were hitting us, but they were large enough to be distracting anyway. Derel pulled his trick of running out into melee again … once too often. He got smacked hard by two separate giants and fell in a heap. No healers were close enough to help in time and his injuries were too great.

One giant looked down at his body, then picked it up and took it inside. We redoubled our efforts to reach him – who knows what atrocities they were about to do to his body – when the “chief” giant came out and asked “What are you doing here?”

Takkad came up with some quick thinking and convinced them we were on a mission for Mokmurian. Apparently, the seven-pointed star necklace that Derel had been wearing identified him as one of the faithful, so Takkad’s soliloquy convinced them maybe they’d made a big mistake. When one of the “lesser” giants said that if were dead, nobody would know of the mistake, both Takkad and I feigned contacting Mokmurian to let him know his instructions were not being followed.

Terrified, the remaining giants ran down the stairs and abandoned their posts.

Without the ability to resurrect Derel, we were left to disposing of his body and dividing up his goods. (He would have wanted it that way.)

• Sabin took the +4 belt of strength
• Sabin gave his old +2 belt to Avia
• Nolin took the +2 ring of protection
• Noling gave his old +1 ring of protection to Kane
• I took the +2 bracers of defense. They won’t stack with my magic armor, but they’ll be of great use for those times when I don’t have a chance to get it up first.

Inside the “guard area” we found filthy mattresses and a small amount of change: 37 gp, 200 sp, and 300 cp.

I flew straight up again to scout ahead. I could see a fairly obvious pass through the mountain in the distance — that was our goal.

We made a good distance before stopping for the night.

We held a memorial for Derel. Some expressed sadness, some stoicness, and others indifference. Myself .. well I bemoan the loss of one of the party. But Derel consistently would refuse to hold to the plan and jump into danger, putting not just himself but all of us into danger. While I think some are thinking “but for this” or “but for that” he’d still be alive, I think the man had a death wish and was destined to die sooner than later. I hope others don’t feel too responsible; the man was his own worst enemy.

Fireday, Sarenith 27

During watch last night, I thought I saw not one, not two, but three dragon-like figures cross the light of the moon on their way east. Three dragons? I find that hard to believe. I wonder if they were some dragon-like creature instead.

We reached our goal near evening. We are at the pass and can see a tall tower on the valley floor. It is surrounded by six or seven distinct camps of giants or giant allies.

As we were taking all this in, we saw a red dragon — it looked to me like the same dragon we’d seen in Sandpoint, but it’s hard to be sure — fly in from over the river, fly up to the side of one of the mountains and enter an apparent cave. We must be at the right place if the Welcome Wagon looks like a red dragon.

We were trying to decide whether we should do something about the dragon when we heard large footsteps approaching. We quickly took cover and >From their conversation it was apparent this was another clan or team joining the cause. With a loud blast from the watch tower in front of us, a group of giants came up and escorted the newcomers down. We decided we needed more information before staging an attack.

Not too long after sunset, one obviously female giant left the watchtower, declaring that rank had it’s privileges and headed down to the encampments, obviously to, uh, mingle freely.

Starday, Sarenith 28

About 5am the female giant staggered back, obviously having partied hearty. Over breakfast, Nolin and I mentioned we’d seen three dragonish figures again. We are coming around to the idea that these may be wyverns, although wild or working for Mokmurian we didn’t know. They seem to come out of the ravine formed by the river. Removing them might be doable.

A little observation and recon reveals that there appear to be five stone giant camps, one ogre camp, and one hill giant camp. Our earlier observation that the recruits tend to be young continues to be true, in general. Could this just be a teenage rebellion? We wondered if the elders would intervene to restore the order, or were being prevented from doing so.

Around the middle of the afternoon, the stone giants from one of the camps dragged another screaming to the big tower on the valley floor. Apparently he was guilty of some transgression, and he was admitted and his sounds stopped once the door was closed.

He did not return.

We will attempt to attack the wyverns tonight.

Sunday, Sarenit 29

Well okay, not last night. We did a little exploring of the caves around the area to be better prepared for both the wyverns and the dragon should he appear. There are some caves in the side of the river canyon that may lead underneath the valley tower. They may also be home for the wyverns.

We will attempt to attack the wyverns tonight.

Sunday, Sarenith 29, later

Since we were fighting in the caves and most of the battle would not be seen, fire was again an option.

Yes we found the wyverns.

Yes, they are vulnerable to fireballs. Two, if needed.

Yes, they have poison sting in their tails.

Yes, this poison affects people named Nolin. But …

People named Takkad have an awesome Heal spell better than any laying of hands, potion, or channeling. He was able to completely counteract the poison AND fully heal him.

There is a large fire opal sitting in the sand here, but whether reward or trap we do not yet know.

Moonday, Sarenith 16

I can barely hold the quill as I write. I am still weak from laughter. I did not realize I’d signed up with a troupe of comedic bards; nor did I recognize how contagious such skills were.

In short, by appearing (quite convincingly, apparently) to be drunken buffoons, we managed to kill eight giants and rescue five hostages. And the good news is that since none of them escaped to tell of the tale, it may well work again!

But as usual, I must back up.

After the giants’ bodies in Sandpoint were gathered up, we were disappointed that we didn’t find more good to be resold. In fact, after identifying things, all we found worth mentinoning was

[604] +2 hide (giant sized)
[605] +1 pick, dwarf bane (giant sized)
[606] +1 light pick (giant sized)
[607] +1 ring of protection (being worn by Sabin)

In talking with the mayor, we learned the missing paladin (Gavin Devlin) was her cousin, and his brother Brak, who had helped him co-found the brewery, had died in the “late unpleasantness” several years ago. Interesting, in that this seemed to be yet another tie, even across years, to the Rune Lord mysteries we keep bumping into. The mayor mentioned that she was going to institute mandatory longbow practice and draw up evacuation plans. No telling when the giants may return, and while there was rebuilding to be done, it was also important that as much of the town’s people be protected as possible. The tunnels under the city may serve a good and useful purpose yet.

The woman that Avia and I had saved from the house was, in fact, a Scarnetti matriarch. Perhaps the Scarnetti matriarch; somehow I felt that I should not speak unless spoken to so I never got to ask directly. For saving her and their family, she succinctly (and yet almost warningly) said, “We Scarnetti remember those who help us out.” And they brought out a box, within which was a red jewel which turned out to be a ruby worth about 1000gp [609].

Sabin, after some contemplation, was able to tell me more about red dragons. Yes, of course they breathe fire; we picked up on that. Yes, they are particularly vulnerable to cold; makes sense. They are probably not magic resistant, and one probably doesn’t need magic weapons to hurt it … but then killing a dragon is no small feat.

So, Takkad said he wanted to interview the giant prisoner we had. He thought he might be able to get some information from it by “befriending” it. I was skeptical but he’d done it once before with the ogres so, no harm in trying I suppose. Sabin would be “bad cop” and Takkad would be “good cop”; I was to be backup “bad cop”.

I was not needed.

Takkad quickly realized the best way to this giant’s heart was through Mokmurian. The behemoth went on and on about Mokmurian’s splendor and the splendor of Jörganfist, the great vacation place and spa for right-thinking giants. He went on and on about how he had seen Mokmurian himself, and he had been to Jörganfist, and how the giants would take back the lowlands that were rightfully theirs anyway, and blather blather blather.

And Takkad hanging on his every word – Really? Could I see it? It sounds wonderful! Oh if only I could see it, I would certainly see exactly what you mean!

The giant was amused that a puny human should want to see Jörganfist, but equally amused at the thought of what would happen to a human entering there. He struck (what he thought was) an extremely lopsided deal. Let me go, he said, and I will tell you how to get there.

Takkad and Sabin agreed to find a plausible way to lead the giant out of town to the Devil’s Platter, and unchain him. They would not harm him. In return, he would tell them how to find Jörganfist. Careful phrasing meant that while they would not harm him, the rest of us certainly would.

Why did you want a rock from the Old Light? asked Takkad. Legends have it that it is possible to get information from stone. But I don’t know how to do that, he added.

Why the dragon? Mokmurion forced him into servitude. Mokmurion strong! Mokmurian can cause stones in the earth to reject intruders by flinging them into the air! He can turn his own skin into granite! To hear him talk, he’s a god. But I remember hearing similar stories about Barl Breakbones, and, well …

Having been informed of the plan we took off sufficiently early to get to the Platter about an hour before they would. There happened to be a large fire bowl where trees (yes trees, not branches) had been burned, probably by the giants on the way in. Provided a fair amount of cover. By about 3pm we were good to go.

About 5pm they reached the same spot and found it a convenient place to stop. Apparently the giant had been released from his chains earlier and he and Takkad had continued to yak on about Mokmurian and his splendiferousness. At this point, though, Takkad reminded him it was time to keep up his part of the bargain.

He said (paraphrasing a bit): Go to the valley of the Black Tower; that is where Jörganfist is. It’s technically blasphemy for Mokmurion to call it that because it isn’t really, but he’s cool enough and it’s cool enough that he can get away with it. To get to this valley, climb the Storval Stairs, go due east and cross the Iron Peaks. Find the Muschal River and it will lead you to the valley. There you will find your doom, er I mean be enlightened.

With a hearty, “well then, off to Jörganfist!” Sabin announced that we were done with him, and sure enough, the rest of us made short work of the previously injured giant. Nolin’s been practicing with a big pointy stick on his horse and was able to kebab the giant.

We huddled for a quick conference. The track was still relatively fresh and so far as we knew, the giants had hostages including the paladin brewmeister. The giants could take longer strides than we could, but were probably unaware they were being followed and we were mounted; if we pressed our mounts we thought it possible to catch up with them.

When we stopped for the night, we thought from the signs that we might be gaining ground. The tracks seemed a bit fresher. Still nothing in visual range though, even now at night. We kept our fire low.

Toilday, Sarenith 17

We rose quickly and resumed the chase. We were rewarded just after lunch by the distant sight of lumbering giants. We could pretty much guess from our conversations with giants how much respect they accorded humans — that is to say, none — and Takkad suggested we use that to our advantage. If we appeared to be easy marks, we might be able to pick off one or two at a time instead of all five or six that appeared to be in the group ahead of us.

We closed the gap and immediately started shouting like drunken soldiers: Heya! We still got some left if you want to come over. We’ll share and all, cuz that’s the friendly thing to do! Kane fell off his horse. “At least, I THINK we have enough,” I shouted, eyeing the giants. “How mush do ya drink ennyway??”

Four of the (now we could see) eight giants pointed, and chuckled and started walking over. Their companions stopped and watched. They too seemed amused. But as the group approached, Nolin’s clumsy handling of the lance and meandering of his horse suddenly because much crisper. A couple of the fighters dismounted from their horses, slapped their horses to the back line and sloshingly announced that the new guests looked positively huge! Giant like, in fact!

But about this time, a fireball exploded, engulfing three of them. One also got skewered by the galloping lance of Nolin. All four stopped, momentarily confused. I yelled, “Hey, do you have fireworks too?” as five magic missiles leapt from my fingers and struck a giant. The fighters moved in with their swords and the healers moved in with their healings and suddenly the four were in dire straits. Two more were pointing and laughing it up before they good-naturedly started over to help their obviously clumsy companions.

But giants started dropping. And just as two of them decided maybe this wasn’t so funny anymore, a wall of flame erupted near them to cut them off from their escape path. I had cast greater invisibility on Derel and in a flash he was over there cutting the ropes of the prisoners. The two giants holding on to the prisoners gave a sharp yank in an effort to retreat, only to find that there were no prisoners anymore. Derel gladly beat up on them and they looked confused as his invisible blows rained upon them. To add to the confusion, we kept a constant chatter of conversation and song, and for the full effect, Kane, the halfling, charged at two giants babbling nonsense.

They clearly had no idea what was going on.

In surprisingly short time (and using a very modest amount of magic) the giants were dead. Eight this time.

The prisoners were understandably grateful. The old paladin was among them, and even largely devoid of weapons and armor he volunteered to lead the rescued prisoners home by way of Windsong Abbey. I cast a mage armor upon him so he’d have some protection, and it seemed likely that would last for the duration of his journey there. There were bags of loot from the giants, but we surmised they were simply items all taken from Sandpoint so even though I did detect magic items among the bags, we sent them along with the townspeople and counted on the paladin to make sure that the right things ended up in the right hands.

With light left, we have continued on to Galduria. We likely will not reach it by nightfall, but stand a good chance of reaching it the next day.

Wealday, Sarenith 18

We reached the outskirts just before evening. While there was not utter ruin about, such as almost happened to Sandpoint, it took only light conversation to hear about the giants that had been appearing and raiding almost at will here. Not only livestock were affected — as with Sandpoint, people had also been lifted and taken away.

One farmer mentioned his son had been taking while gambling at a neighbor’s house. We were reminded again of the link to the gambling boat near Turtleback.

Upon arriving in town we hastily arranged for a meeting with the mayor. Having the credential of a giant’s dismembered head (ala Takkad) is a wonderful way to establish credibility. The mayor was happy for the help, but although this town is comparable in size to Sandpoint or perhaps a bit larger, it is not nearly so defensible. There are no natural barriers, nor a city wall, that could protect even a part of the city. There is a city guard and they are vigilant but we’ve seen how useless that can be against the giants when they are intent on a task.

We set up usual watches again, although we were able to spend the night in nicer than usual accommodations.

Oathday, Sarenith 19

Leaving Galduria behind, we headed north to Wolf’s Ear.

Along the way, Takkad found a cairn that contained a giant killed by a manticore.

We expected a much smaller town, but it seemed even smaller. Apparently it has been more frequently visited by giants and others, because I believe there was not a building in town that did not show signs of having been damaged, burned, or completely rebuilt lately. An elder in the town confirmed the frequency of destructive visitors and was happy to see some skilled protectors stop in. He also confirmed that the woods around did contain manticores as well as other ill-tempered creatures. We stayed in an abandoned house, and although slept uneasily, found that nothing bothered us overnight.

Fireday, Sarenith 10

Most people have completed their training and today we will be speaking with the mayor and sheriff about how best to prepare the town against an invasion of giants. I expect

• incredulousness
• disbelief
• denial
• and lastly, acquiescence

How fast we move through the list will be an indicator of our credibility in the town. If they take us seriously, incredulous to acquiescence should take about 20 seconds. However, I will add that I also expect us to make very little difference. Having seen and battled ogres and giants, I fear, as I look around “my” little town, that the same town that barely survived a plague of goblins would not do well against ogres or giants. While there is a wall at the north gate, there are only bridges to the east. Even if they were to arrange for the destruction of them in defense of the town, I believe giants and maybe even ogres would be able to ford the river in their absence .. and it would leave the townspeople unable to escape.

The priests will set up some glyphs of warding near the bridges which should both warn us and injure, to some extent, any approaching enemies. We’ve outlined some training the town guard might undergo to better prepare them for the possible battle. But as I look around at the wood frame buildings, and wooden bridges, I have to admit that the town would be but a playground if giants actually appeared. We probably should also speak of how best to evacuate the town, and send word of any problems to other towns to warn them. If poor Sandpoint is put under siege by giants it doesn’t seem very defensible even with an intelligently placed town guard.

Wealday, Sarenith 11

“My” town lies in splinters. Parts of it, anyway. And charred timbers (most of which aren’t my fault this time.) I see Tekkad sitting down and scribbling furiously as well – this is the first break we’ve had all day and putting quill to pen gives us a legitimate reason to sit down and try to catch our breath.

Well, me, anyway. I won’t put words in Tekkad’s mouth.

They came. Even before we could execute any of the defensive strategies (save a few glyphs of warding), they came. And “they” wasn’t one. Or two. We thought we were pretty good taking out two giants up in the mountains. Three or four would fairly test us, even with the town guard backing us up.

Try seven? Eight?

Our first clue that we’d start to remember goblins fondly was during our meeting with the sheriff and mayor. The mayor had not yet arrived when we heard loud booms from the northern gate. Fortunately, as part of the recommended precautions it was closed already, but we looked in horror at each other even as we thanked our favorite god that at least they’d chosen the fortified gate to attack. Giants were generally stupid and that might count in our favor.

We rushed to the gate, Derel getting there first. There were three giants there tossing rocks at the wall and gate, and issuing weak taunts like “human insects come out to play”. I got there in time to catch that last taunt so I tossed back that their mama threw ugly babies and smacked ’em with a fireball. As the others arrived, we heard a different kind of boom, more like an explosion, off to the east. Tekkad called out “the glyphs!” and sure enough, from my vantage point at the top of the wall I could see the bridges. And more giants — several more — were crossing the bridges and approaching the town. They brought with them what looked to be dire bears. Not only would we be facing more than two giants at a time, but we’d have to split up the group to do it.

On the plus side, looking at those, it appeared those at the north gate might either be juveniles or growth-stunted giants. Still, this was Not. According. To. Plan.

Quickly, those of us who were not directly engaging the northern giants (Derel, myself, Kane) rushed over towards the bridges. I flew (I’m going to like knowing a Fly spell) and the rest ran. Derel, of course, ran much faster and ran into trouble (fighting giants and dire bears with no support and no healer). Although with flight I could go in a straight line, my flight speed is slower than running speed, so ultimately the rest of the group reached the dire bears and giants before I did.

The giants were calling out for people to bring out their merchants and they would leave, but as I watched them reach in through second story windows and grab people, it became apparent this was not being done simply to frighten them. People we really being grabbed. Some were really being eaten.

All I could think of was how attractive goblins appeared right now. And how woefully underprotected this town was for this sort of assault.

And then Derel running off ahead. Both a giant and a bear attacked him viciously and it looked grim without a healer nearby. I managed to drop a fireball very precisely to scorch the giant and the bear but not Derel (but also, unfortunately, a nearby building).

Just then I happened to glance to the east and up and on the horizon I saw something that did not bode well at all.

A red dragon was approaching the town. Flying. I mean, really. A dragon too? And a red one meant he’d be immune to all my fireballs and fire spells. As I quickly ran through my arsenal I realized there was not a lot I could do to a red dragon, while I’m sure there was plenty he could do to me. Me, the only aerial combatant, I suddenly realized. And if I could see him …

“Red dragon from the east!” I yelled. While not everybody in my party heard me, some of the townspeople did and you could tell they were wishing they’d just stayed in bed that day. (But not a second story bed. Good day to have a bed in the basement.)

I saw Kane get attacked as he tried to reach Derel. But I also saw the fighters from the north wall approaching at a run. The giants there must have been killed or driven off. Fighting the dragon would be no mean trick but with the rest of our band here, perhaps the two giants and the three dire bears would be too occupied to be gathering townfolk.

Avia started walking in the air, as if on steps. I did not know this magic. Meanwhile, the dragon came in and began circling the town, and as you might expect, townspeople panicked. Thinking for a moment that maybe I was right and that this dragon was too much and might be an illusion, I smacked it with magic missile as it came by. It did not, unfortunately, disappear.

Boom. Another explosion. The south bridge. More giants. No additional dire bears. But how much magic did we really have in us? What worked in the past? Remembering, I flew down and got as many as I could in a haste spell to give them additional attacks.

By this time the ground forces had wounded much but actually taken out little. There was the dragon, there were two giants (plus three more now) and all three dire bears. I fired magic missiles at one that looked a bit ragged and it fell. But all this and only one invader down. And we were using magical healing a LOT. I myself had fared okay but almost everybody on the ground had gotten carved up at some point. Not a happy party.

Then the tide turned a little. A giant and another bear fell. We’d been pounding on these creatures for dozens of minutes (it seemed; really it had happened so fast that it had only been one or two) and finally we were getting the upper hand.

Then the dragon, feeling he as not getting enough attention, flew over the cathedral and bathed it in flame. All the wooden parts immediately caught as it swooped down to sit on the stone portion of the cathedral and screamed, almost like a challenge.

I wasn’t sure what I could do, but certainly the rest of our group was in no condition to take on the dragon. So I approached it and (not knowing if it understood Common or not) started yelling insults at it. “What are you, some sort of freakish flying weasel? Why don’t you go somewhere else to hunt for mice? You’re not needed here!” And his response was to cast a spell — a ray reached from a talon to me and I suddenly felt a WHOLE lot weaker. Thank goodness for always being lightly loaded. This was not good. But I needed the dragon to be worried, not me. So I made a point of shrugging, yelled “Hah!” and quickly cast greater invisibility upon myself, hoping the dragon had no means with which to see invisible. Just to be safe, I also flew 20 feet up after doing that so if he breathed fire at my old position I’d be safe. (It wasn’t until later I realized how this looked to my companions: dragon shoots something at me and I wink out.)

The dragon took to flight almost straight up, and then came down in a strafing run.

Meanwhile, Kane had called up his small fire elementals again and they were helping singe a dire bear.

The dragon swooped out of his dive bomb having breathed fire on the venerable old theatre. What could I do to stop him? I felt helpless. Nobody was powerful enough to drive him off other than … other than … another dragon! I smiled.

From the north came a screech. A white dragon, almost twice the size of the red dragon, was arriving. Since this was a Major Image, it had both the appearance and sound of a white dragon, but it would be unable to actually injure anything with its cold breath. I was hoping the red dragon knew enough about its brethren to be frightened. For my part, I only knew what I’d read after my discussion with Berik, so I hoped my dragon was visually accurate enough to fool the red dragon.

By this time, all the bears were down, the three giants at the north gate had been either killed or discouraged, and the two who had originally arrived from the east were also down. This was beginning to look possible. Except for the other three giants that had arrived via the southernmost bridge. And the dragon.

The white dragon definitely had drawn the red dragon’s attention. It seemed apprehensive of it, and it landed near the beach where it could keep an easy eye on it. The rest of the party was trying to convince the last three giants to leave but the apparent leader seemed quite strong and sword resistant. He told the other two to get the rocks, which meant nothing to us but apparently did to them as they headed off to the old lighthouse. Some of our group tailed them, while some stayed occupied with the apparent leader.

As I played with the red dragon, giants continued to fall. And yet, three more appeared. Eyeing my new friend nervously, the red dragon quietly withdrew from the battlefield and flew off, affording me the capability to help out elsewhere.

Meanwhile the rest of the group had finally managed to finish off the leader, and they found the other giants easier to kill. So, looking around at the carnage and discussion, I realized the town had been through a lot that day. 13 giants. 3 dire bears. 1 dragon. No scratch that, I realized, 2 dragons. They probably can’t tell that one of them was helping them. But I could fix that. Nothing like a little thespian skill to complete the illusion.

I flew down in front of the town guards, making myself visible as I did so. I caused the white dragon to fly down before me and I said, “I release you from your service, and your service will be both appreciated and remembered.” Then with a flourish I dismissed the dragon, and he flew away, finally disappearing at a range of about a hundred yards just as I ran out of spell. There were ooos and ahhhs from the crowd, which leads me to feel nobody will be held liaable for the damage here and that the prestige of our group just improved again.

I had noticed, during the middle of the battle, that the Scarnetti mansion across the bay seemed to be on fire. Avia and I hurried to check that out while our aerial spells were still holding out. The rest of the townspeople and the rest of our group began the arduous task of putting out fires, assisting the injured, and assessing the damage?

We found that the place had been ransacked and set aflame. No sign of the Scarnettis, although we did eventually find a maid hiding. Apparently giants here, too. We caught them taking a wagonload of stuff and so I used my last fireball spell to discourage them from doing that. We brought the wagon and the lady back to Sandpoint.

All told, there was far more prestige at stake here than goods. We managed to get only a magic hide shirt [604], a magic pick [605], a light pick [606] ; a magic ring [607], and a warhorn [608] from all the bodies.

‘Twill be a day not soon to forget, for many days to come.

Moonday, Desnus 19

It feels right to be leaving. Although technically we remain the owners of this fort, by virtue of Magnimar having relieved itself of the responsibility, in practice we’ve done all we can to make it self-sufficient. The new recruits are being trained, and I smile a bit as I see Jakardos chastise them. He had spoken of retiring from this business (and still does) but I can see from the manner of his step and the way he holds himself that his words do not match his actions.

Logically, I do believe he has convinced himself it’s time to move on. Emotionally — ethically, perhaps — he seems to still feel a conflict, as if leaving now would be abandonment. I do hope for his sake that a protege rises from these recruits that will allow him to actually do what he has reasoned it is time to do. But that will still be, at least, several months off.

Our destination is Magnimar. Many of us have additional training we’d like to undergo, and while we were able to piece together some training from various elders and skilled artisans in the region this last time, it is nowhere near the same as having a skilled master, who is also skilled at teaching, guiding you as you extend your capabilities.

Fireday, Desnus 23

Of course, coming from the direction we were we would have to pass through Sandpoint before reaching Magnimar. And yet it startled me to come upon familiar bridges and landmarks, because I feel so changed in the intervening times. When first I arrived at Sandpoint, I knew none of my companions and few of my spells. I mean, really, a handful of goblins gnawing at my leg could have killed me. Now, with a greater mastery of magic, crossbow, and even quarterstaff, I doubt the infestation we encountered would do more than annoy me and my companions.

Sigh. Korvosa will always be my home, but Sandpoint still holds a special place for me. I look forward to an overnight here, and not simply for the promise of better accomodations than a bedroll and an open sky. I do like nature, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing. And too little of a better thing like warmth and well-built shelter.

There will be little time to socialize, but it will be hard not to run into at least a few people we know. I could see us returning here with purpose if the promise of the giants’ reclaiming of their homelands is true, because Sandpoint would certainly be in that area of dispute.

Oathday, Desnus 29

 
We arrived in Magnimar a few days ago, and although we all immediately went in different directions to accomplish different things, we find it … comforting is not the right word … comfortable to reconvene in the evening. Weeks of relying upon each other have established some old habits, and I feel like I’ve forgotten something if, before I retire, I’ve not accounted for everyone in the party. That is silly, of course; we’re in a place of safety and it’s not at all unusual for somebody in the party to be out late or away a bit longer than the majority of the party on any given night. And yet, it is how I feel.

Father never spoke to me of the camaraderie that is formed by a band of adventurers, but then I don’t believe he ever found himself in the company of such a large group. From his stories, he had the occasional companion or two, brought together by circumstance or common foe or problem, but I don’t recall him speaking of a regular coming together of the same group. I will admit (to none here, of course!) that I find the sameness a little comforting.

Comfortable, I mean. Comfortable. I wish it were possible to erase ink without ruining a whole page of parchment. Hmm. Perhaps there’s a spell for that.

And that brings me to my training. I found my usual tutor, Berik, shortly after arriving in town. After a day or two of instruction, he found me, in his words, “particularly adept” at this point in time. He warned that soon, possibly as soon as at the conclusion of this session, he might consider me more of a peer than a student. I considered that a bad thing, in the sense that it meant it would be harder to learn new spells and techniques, but he disabused me of that.

“Trask, a sorceror reaches a point,” he confided to me, “where your magical improvement hinges more on your creativity and ability to explore new areas with peers than your ability to read textbooks and burn down labs.” He smiled. “Not to say you have not been extraordinary in that capability. Never have I found my create water spell so useful as with you. But the day is soon coming when you and I will consider things as equals, and learn together. There are still sorcerors and wizards who know more in breadth than you or I, and yet are not suited to be tutors to us.” And with those words, we returned to what may be our last session as professor and student.

Fireday, Desnus 30

We have settled on several new spells that Berik knows sufficiently to teach me. And he has commented again that I am picking them up very quickly. Featherfall is a very easy spell that I’ve never had the time to learn before. The rope spell is a fascinating spell that I never knew existed until somebody in the party asked if I knew how to cast it. It is a surprisingly easy way to hide from enemies in a dimensional pocket and I was fortunate to find that Berrik could instruct me in it. Neither of those requires a particularly complex lab area.

The other spells I am learning are tougher, but I see them having great use in our missions. I am learning major image, which will allow me to cast very believable illusions. I am learning greater invisibility, which conveys upon the recipient the ability to remain invisible despite taking action against another. I might find that Rigel is my new best friend if she finds I can do this to her. The last is wall of fire.

Berik raised an interesting topic with me after instruction today. He asked if I knew the basis for my magical control, and I told him I got it from father. He looked annoyed and replied that yes, of COURSE I did, but where did he get it from? And his look told me that if I answered “my grandfather” he’d create a large amount of water right over my head. I must admit that I was confused by the question. He looked astonished. “You mean your father never told you?” I continued to look perplexed, and replied simply, “He said magic ran in the family, and that as I got older, aspects of that would make themselves apparent. But it was that heritage which gave me the control and left others unable to have the same control.”

Berik looked me up and down, and commented, “If I didn’t already know your age, I’d accuse you of being intentionally idiotic.” I smiled briefly, and then paused, and said, “Hey, wait a minute.” Berik gave a wry smile and said, “You ARE an idiot, you know? At least when it comes to why you are a sorceror and others are not. Most sorcerors are well aware of why they have the gift, and whether to hide that or flaunt it. Especially given that your father apparently was reluctant to brief you on the topic, I suspect I know what it is that gives you the magic.”

I sat down for a moment and looked at him. “What can you tell me? Does this help?” And I made the claws appear. And even as I did so, I stared at them. I’d not brought them out in several weeks, since as my magic grew, my need for hand to, er, claw combat had lessened. But they seemed, I don’t know, larger than I remembered. More powerful looking.

For his part, Berik proved he had an innate ability to jump, travelling at least three steps back before regaining control. “Great Light of Desna, you need to say something before you point those at somebody in polite company!” He quickly regained his composure and stared me down. “Given this, and your predilection and adeptness at playing with fire, I suspect there is a dragon in your ancestry somewhere. Given your father’s reluctance to discuss it, that introduction may not have been entirely voluntary.”

I stared at him. I stared at the claws. I stared at him again. “A … dragon? Does this make me evil? Does it make me a freak?”

“No, and yes,” he responded. “All sorcerors, myself included, are a freak if you consider introducing magic into a human bloodline to be a freakish thing. I myself have a bit of the fey in my bloodline. But whether you choose to use this talent for good or evil is still an individual decision, borne of both upbringing, genealogy, and will. Has your father told you what to expect as you progress?”

“Well, he has said there are certain family traits that will become apparent — the claws, for instance, I’ve had since I exhibited a flair for magic,” I responded.

Berik nodded. “That’s typical. And I’ve observed your augmentation of fire spells, which tells me you’ve a red, brass, or gold dragon in your lineage. We should be able to tell from your breath weapon. What form does it take?”

“WHAT?” I sputtered. “A breath weapon? You mean like breath noxious gas on people?”

Berik chuckled. “You’ve that, son, yes, but that’s simply due to poor oral hygiene. No, at a point in your development — and I’d judge that to be soon — you will indeed be able to breath – fire, I suspect – upon those who displease you. Have you tried?”

“How does one do that?”

Berik shrugged. “Do I look like a dragon? I already told you my magic is fey based, not dragon based.” He looked bemused. “I don’t know if it’s a cough, or an exhalation, or what. I presume it doesn’t hurt you, but I may be wrong. Did your father ever barbecue dinner without the use of wood, or sneeze and set the curtains on fire?”

I just stared a little goggle-eyed at him, until he smiled a little. “I wish I was an artist,” he said, “because the look upon your face is worthy of canvas.” He sighed. “I know something of what you may expect from speaking with other sorcerors I have known. Exactly how it works and when it happens varies from person to person and my own inexact understanding of other bloodlines. But I believe you should expect yourself to become increasingly resistant to fire itself. You should expect to find yourself with fire breath that you can use infrequently, like once or twice a day. Those claws you already know about. They will continue to get more vicious. I would guess you already have a hide that is tougher than the average human, although it still won’t break a blade or be as good as the armor a fighter wears. At some point you may develop wings, or at least the capability for them.”

I took a deep breath and stared into the distance. At that moment, my pride in my father was at an all time low. And yet, I was excited. Enervated. Angry. Sad. Frustrated. Quivering.

“Trask?” Berik broke a very long silence. “Do we need to take a break?” There was real concern in his voice.

Still in a bit of a daze, I looked through him, and then focused. “Yes, please. I’d like to call it a day if you don’t mind.”

He looked at me intently. “It is still a gift, you know,” he said softly. “Even if it isn’t wrapped as nicely as you might have wanted.”

I looked at him and a thought occurred to me. “Do sorcerors and priests control magic in the same way?” I asked.

Berik snorted. “Completely different. Priests are granted power from their deities. Sorcerors utilize naturally occurring magical forces to concentrate them in ways that produce the effects of the spells they cast. It’s all rather metaphysical and a complete understanding of it is an area of study all its own. Why?”

“So priests don’t manipulate the same energies by focusing them through their holy objects and intense concentration?”

Berik remarked, “You really are an idiot, you know. But you’re 18 or so, aren’t you? So there’s still hope.”

I gloomily looked at the ground. “I think I have some apologies to make to some priests.”

And I knew I had a long letter to write. And probably rewrite, before sending.

Toilday, Sarenith 3

Instruction is going well. Berik says I am learning more spells than he would normally ascribe to a sorceror of my skill, and he thinks that too may be due to my lineage. We did not intend to study either fly or fear, but a few times I almost “accidentally” cast those in reaction to lab events. The imprecise reactions I had make the almost-cast spells dangerous, but it is taking but a small amount of instruction to formally pick up on those as well.

I continue to compose the letter to my father. It has already been rewritten twice and remains unfinished.

Others are also training and restocking, but for now I’m simply keeping my share from the artifacts we’ve sold. I’m in an awkward state where I have too much coin for mundane stuff and not enough for truly useful magical stuff.

Sunday, Sarenith 8

The letter is still not complete, and while I’m normally pretty outgoing and talkative with the party, I’ve been rather contemplative of late. Others are telling of the new skills, languages, and spells they’ve picked up, but although I’ve done well and completed my training with Berik, it just seems to not be an interesting topic to me.

I thought I was doing fine, but I’m not. And I don’t know when I will be. Berik has given me much to think about.

We are part way to Sandpoint. We have decided we must make a circuit across the cities and villages that may be targets of the giants and their allies. It may happen next month or next year, but we need to consider it urgent that they be prepared … if only for the advanced warning the fall of one city may give the others.

Moonday, Sarenith 9

We are back in Sandpoint, and apparently are remembered, judging from smiles and waves.

In fact there is a celebration scheduled in a few weeks to commemorate the great Goblin invasion (and defeat). Seems like a bit of Chamber of Commerce marketing effort, but hey, tourism supports the town better than random travellers so who am I to complain?

We will meet with the sheriff and mayor later today or tomorrow to discuss what we know. In the meantime, it’s rooms at the Rusty Dragon and Amiko’s friendly smile.

While many greeted us openly, on our way to the mayor’s office, Avia thought she saw somebody watching us secretly. Our resident sneaky people were unable to turn the tables on this person so we know little of whether they really were following us or if they were, why.

We discussed the need for a plan, and Takkad looked frustrated at the mayor’s Sandpoint-centric view point. Glyphs of warding were suggested and a reasonable defense was discussed. There is no standing army here and never will be, but perhaps a reasonable defense can still be put in place for any small foraging parties (whatever a small foraging party may look like in the context of giants.)

Oathday, Desnus 15

Before leaving the forge room, we inspected the forges themselves. Acrid black smoke continued to pour from the now unattended forges and made its way to the entrance. Lying about were many completed and incomplete weapons, mostly swords and ogre hooks. The forges were still hot enough that dumping these weapons back into the forge was sufficient to warp and even melt most of them. So much for the war machine.

There were still the unguarded passages to the north. We all wanted to rest and recover spells, but we needed to know it was safe to do so.

From the forge chamber, we listened in all directions.

From the west we heard distant hammering sounds, of metal hitting stone.

From the southeast, we heard nothing.

From the southwest, we heard more hammering sound, somewhat louder.

The hammering sounds were likely miners, but how many? Best to deal with those closest first. To the southwest, then.

The passage here descended, heading down into what was obviously a mining area. Scouting carefully, we were able to see 4 ogres working. We left them alone for now.

Returning to the forge room, we next went west. This passage was long and twisty but had no branches. Eventually we quietly came upon three ogres harvesting ripe rocks. We also left these alone.

The passage southeast branched only twice, and seemed to contain no ogres. This showed promise as a resting place due to the lack of workers and the relatively low branching passageway.

But there was still, too, the passage to the west northwest in the room that lay between the entrance and the forge, and there was another passage that went due north. Trouble, reinforcements, or both might still lie in that direction. Even though we knew we were running low on magic, some felt we needed to check this out before resting. I was not among those, but I also had, I think, more magic left than most. Admittedly, I only had one or two fireballs left in me but hopefully that would be enough if needed at all.

Sabin, with his dark vision, led the way. There were stairs going up that seemed to lead to another cavern. Nolin and Rigel were close behind, Rigel ever vigilant for traps, snares, and gold. There was a distinct, putrid fragrance wafting from this room that those of us behind could detect quite easily without dark vision. And we also had no trouble making out the conversation: “I think they are coming this way.” “Might they have children?” “Shhh, get your pet!”

Then Sabin came upon a giant, pustule-pocked personage peering perniciously upon the group. As he saw it, it saw him, and suddenly an invisible cage was in place around Sabin, Nolin, and Rigel. Tekkad immediately tried to dispel it, but failed. With surprise no longer an option, we brought out the torches.

Three uglier creatures one could not imagine. I identified them as pustule-face, lumpback, and skeletor, although we occasionally heard them call to each other using proper names of some sort. The ‘pet’ seemed to be a ghast or a wight; it was hard to tell from the claws alone. However, it seemed entirely possible that this ghastwight was what remained of the former commander of the fort, Lamatar.

The creatures started chanting, and since they did not appear to be particularly musically inclined, this probably did not bode well.

Many things were tried to break our friends out of that cage. I gave Sabin Bull’s Strength, and two adamantine swords were also applied. Tekkad tried stoneshape to remove the bars from the stone, but apparently they extended farther into the stone than he thought. A magic missile was fired at the ghastwight. Several magic missiles and a flaming sphere were applied to lumpback.

One of them yelled at Nolin “Hah! How brave are you as a rabbit??” and then looked a little surprised when nothing happened. Impatient, skeletor yelled, “I’m done with this!!” and the cage disappeared as she clawed at Rigel viciously. I desperately wanted to toss a fireball into that room but wasn’t sure I could do it without enflaming my friends. So I contented myself with magic missiles and flaming spheres, which didn’t actually do too bad. Fighters, freed from the cage, attacked with their swords and rearranged themselves to be at the front.

Then an obscuring mist made it hard to see everything and we backed up to the chamber in back of us so we could better spread out. Once I realized everyone was out, I knew I was fireball-ready! There was a brief distraction as a voice from the fog croaked “help me”. Some in the group were concerned that Lamatar may have changed back to his normal self and needed rescuing, but I believed it to be a ruse so I threw a fireball into the mist. (I couldn’t see what I was hitting, but didn’t need to with an area effect spell!)

Turns out I was right but a few party members were dismayed that I hadn’t been more sure. I actually was pretty sure but I think they just didn’t believe me. The fireball did have the side effect of dramatically evaporating some of the mist.

We did see a ranger standing and urging us to stop and parley, but I was pretty sure ghasts and wights can’t turn back into the form from whence they came, so I continued with flaming spheres and magic missiles. Others started to move in as well as the creatures retreated into the cavern we’d found them.

Sweet! Another fireball. Poof.

They were not faring well any longer. They claimed Barl Breakbones had brought them here and held them here against their will and that if we but would let them go they would be grateful and gone. Our fighters and one of my flaming spheres sealed their fate.

About this time Derrell showed up. He caught up to us just as we were finishing off these hags. The cavern was littered with body parts, but little else. We tossed the hags into the smoldering body pit (how thoughtful to have one of those going) but found no magic available for us to lift.

NOW we were TRULY bereft of magic, and all agreed it was time to rest. Tekkad did a stoneshape to make it even harder to reach us in the mine passages, and we set guards and rested.

During my watch we heard a large giant bellowing. Nolin said he was complaining about missing guards and having to clean up after himself.

Fireday, Desnus 16

This would be the day we faced Barl Breakbones. We’d gotten used to killing ogres fairly easily, but a giant … ah, a giant will be a new test of our skills.

We made our way back to the northern corridor (despite the ruckus the night before, there appeared to be no guards) and peeked around the corner. “Sooner than we thought” ran through my mind, because at the far end, sitting on a throne, was a giant. Another giant (a guard, I suppose) was at his side. We strategized, decided on a plan, and rounded the corner.

Only to find we’d been seen. Barl was floating 15 ft above the ground and the guard was already halfway to us. Now the plan had been to use distance weapons (in particular, fireballs) until they were no longer viable, then utilize our big swords. But Derrell apparently had trouble following the script, and rushed out. He was pummeled severely by the guard, but having the guard focus his attack on the poor man DID insure he was not pummelling on anybody else.

I dropped a fireball under the floating Barl, followed quickly by a second, but it was almost impossible for me to get his guard, since Derrell and quickly some of our fighters surrounded him. Although they were doing well, and the clerics were channeling healing to them, the guard was still a formidable enemy. He was, after all, still a giant. About this time, Barl whipped out a wand and shot a black ray at Avia which caused her to get much weaker. Tekkad successfully cancelled Barl’s flying spell and I enlarged Nolin, both of which served to level the playing field considerably. Nolin’s next swing pretty much dealt the guard a death blow.

Barl, however, made a effortless gesture and suddenly we had an undead giant on our hands Still, Barl was on the ropes, and when he tried to run away, it seemed completely natural to give him a fireball to measure himself against. Turns out he was closer to death than anybody might have thought. Ooops. Gosh.

Searching the bodies, we found

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p style=”padding-left: 30px;”From the guard we got a [540] Great club (masterwork).

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p style=”padding-left: 30px;”From Barl we retrieved [541] earth breaker hammer (masterwork), [542] wand of enervation (11 charges), [543] ring of minor cold resistance, [544] sihedron medallion, [545] black onyx gems (worth 545 gp), and a [546] spell book.

A lizard popped off his body as we searched it, so we popped the lizard too. Wouldn’t do to have an angry (or depressed) familiar around.

At the top of some tall stairs (boy the steps were big in this place) in the last room we hadn’t checked, The clerics discovered a Lamashtu altar, and just couldn’t leave without paying their disrespects. They desecrated it in ways that would make Lamashtu proud, were they priests of Lamashtu, or really angry, were they not, which they were not.

The ogres were liberated! Wow, seemed weird to be thinking that. Normally we kill ogres, but there was one last thing we needed to follow through on, because after all we promised. We summoned Glark (via a sending spell by Tekkad). He was most happy to take over the stronghold again and seemed held in high regard by the remaining ogres, although not so high a regard as to remain anything other than skeptically neutral of us. Then, while making a point during our ongoing discussion, he unfortunately removed the giant sihedron amulet from the reposing giant in the entrance … and the one symbol of the Kreeg clan that had remained constant for dozens if not hundreds of years turned to dust and blew away.

Others considered this a curse, and clearly this would come up at his annual chieftain review. I think the Kreeg clan will be in disarray for a while longer.

However, it did leave us with some very valuable (historically and actually) giant sized armor, helm, and glaive. One of our party judged it might be worth several thousand gold pieces to the right party.

[547] armor + helmet (400 lbs, 5000+gp?)
[548] glaive (30-40 lbs)

We gathered our new artifacts, and we gathered our ghastwightbody, and off we headed to the forest to fulfill our quest. The two day trip was punctuated by Tekkad’s idea to speak with the dead head of Barl (Tekkad is accumulating quite a collection of macabre charms for his charm bracelet). His conversation revealed there was an even bigger player in the attempt to take over the fort, and gave us yet another loose thread to pull after visiting the Willowwood. Jorgenfist, or Mokmurian, if I recall correctly.

Sunday, Desnus 18

When we got there, Myriana was glad to see us, or at least as glad as an angry ethereal presence could be. Lamatar was resurrected as a halfling, and vowed to stay in the woods working to improve it, while Myriana’s mood improved dramatically and she returned to the plane where spirits dwell. We believe that the forest will recover from her despaired influence over the coming weeks and months. Lamatar will stay to assist for the remainder of his new life.

Okay, now THIS, Father, is more like the adventuring stories you told!

Wealday, Desnus 14

So, since she was seeming a bit moody, we were leery of asking the remains of Miriana any more questions. This left us the problem of “how do we recognize Lamartar’s remains when/if we find them?” We figured the remnants of the Black Arrow were probably our best chance of a reasonable description. Perhaps there was even a portrait of their fearless leader.

And so it was that we started the journey back to the fort. Having horses sure does make for a shorter trip. Jakardos was able to tell us about a ring Lamartar had, and he and Vale also gave a brief description of the man. If he’s been tortured or disfigured, however, that description may be of little use. I have a feeling it will be a forensic identification rather than a personal one.

From the fort it is 20-30 miles to Hook Mountain. The closer we get, of course, the more steep the terrain becomes. There’s a good chance that we will need to go far up the mountain, which rises up well over 10,000 feet.

We decided against taking horses, figuring they would just become ogre or animal fodder in short order. Walking out will make us move a little slower, but it also affords us greater options for stealth and battlefield strategy should we find ourselves under attack. We estimate we got about halfway before darkness neared and we set up camp. Watches were Tekkad, by himself, then Nolin and myself, Avia and Rigel, and lastly Kane and Sabin.

It was during my and Nolin’s watch that we heard noise in the distance. It was not subtle, it was not hidden, and it indicated that thw producer of that noise was not concerned about being overhead. The gutteral utterances sounded like the trollspeak we’d been hearing much of lately. Quickly, we woke the group and we prepared ourselves for the arrivals. There appeared to be 2 smaller trolls — children or teenagers, judging from their size — and 4 adult size trolls.

It’s times like this that I wish I had the night vision of Sabin, becase I could have launched a preemptive fireball if I were sure it was safe to do so. But I’ve been controlling my pyromaniacal urges really well of late, so I was able to realize that firing blind into the wood at a sound was probably not as good as I could do.

So I waited a minute or two until they came into view, and THEN I fireballed ’em. Near as I can tell, I toasted four of the six. This did not slow them down. To the contrary, it apparently made the hunt all the more exciting, because they rushed to us. By the time they figured out that we had fire and fighters, it was too late to turn around.

It seemed like a vicious battle but truth be told, it was over in less than half a minute. We’ve become very efficient at fighting as a group and skillfully combining weaponry and fire. I was able to add a new twist this time — I enlarged Nolin and suddenly he was on even footing with the large trolls (something Nolin very much seemed to enjoy!) Kane added a new twist too: three small fire elementals to attack the trolls too.

The trolls dispatched, we resumed watch, and others went back to sleep. Nothing else of import happened that evening.

Oathday, Desnus 15

In the morning, we inspected the bodies for goodies but found pretty much nothing. We were able to discern from the tracks that the trolls came from the direction we were heading, so we were marching into the teeth of the beast. Following this trail, there came a time when the troll tracks became intermingled with ogre tracks, finally splitting off in a trail that appeared to keep about the same elevation, while the ogre tracks definitely went up the mountain. Since we were pretty sure we had to have access to the upper reaches, we elected to follow the ogre tracks.

The weather worsened as we rose and while I was in no danger of frostbite or anything, it was nevertheless decidedly uncomfortable. Finally we spotted some thick greasy smoke rising ahead. We slowed and carefully crept up on the position.

The smoke was coming from a cave, and as we neared the opening, it definitely smelled of ogres.

A quick conference and we easily decided it would be easiest if we lured the ogres out into the open. A listen to their conversations told us they knew of the fort, and the loss of the fort, and that lent itself to several ideas. Ultimately, we used the wand of silent image to create an image of two struggling and wounded Black Arrow rangers helping drag a barely-alive third ranger past the cave opening. I assisted in distracting by using the hat of disguise to again appear like Lucretia. (And it served to distract them again!)

Like butterflies to a flower, out they came to take care of the “helpless humans”. However one was closer and got taken down first, giving the second an opportunity to turn and raise an alarm. We got him under silence and finished him off, but we had to assume now they knew of us and were preparing something.

We retrieved from their bodies

[530] masterwork longbow
[531] 2 potions of cure moderate wounds
[532] +1 hide armor

but were quickly drawn to the huge displays of scrimshaw in this cave. What appeared to be the ribs of a blue dragon were embedded in the walls and elaborately decorated. They looked like they’d been here some time.

This was further supported by the presence of a 40-foot tall statue that was also in this chamber. Er, wait, no, that is not a statue. It is a (very big) individual in gentle repose and we definitely don’t want it to wake up. How long has it been here? It has around its neck a 7-dided sihedron which we recognize and know to be capable of producing and maintaining a gentle repose. Avia did not detect evil, but nevertheless …

We took the steps to the upper levels, and quickly discovered that, yes, an alarm had been raised. After climbing the stairs behind us, we discovered that to the east was a huge smoking pit, responsible for the greasy smoke we’d seen. It appeared to be an incineration pit, where one threw bodies that nobody wanted any longer. To the west there was darkness, but we could hear noises.

Good enough for me! I threw a fireball into the darkness and in its brief illumination it showed us several ogres approaching from the west … before scorching several of them badly. This set the tone for what would follow … fighters fighting, clerics healing, me tagging the targets with burning spheres and possibly additional fireballs.

Although the ogres were weakened by the fireball, the battle was again on and it took a while for us to dispatch them. I helped with a judicious Haste for all our fighters. But as we finished off what we thought was the last one, here came another dozen ogres to fight us. But a close look at these new recruits made it apparent that they were, in fact, not trained warriors but simply workers with weapons. They fought clumsily and, even more egregious to some in our party, the two remaining true warriors stood back while pushing these untrained ogres in front of them as cannon fodder.

Well, they were still ogres of great strength, and even untrained they could damage our party. But even I was surprised when the subsequent fireball I threw killed almost all of the untrained warriors, and seriously singed the two overlords. Tekkad yelled out in common that if they did not attack us we would reward them. One glanced at our well-armored party and back at his now weakened but apparently still threatening overlords and, without great relish, moved to close with us. The other did run off.

The unskilled worker was easily dispatched. While some fighters engaged the two warriors, others of us rushed after the one who ran off. Glark, as history would record his name, was suspicious of our motives and of his chances of survival. After we killed a dozen and a half of his racial brothers, why, imagine that. Still, we pointed out to him, he was still alive and we had not killed him yet, had we?

Glark, it turns out, was not the brightest torch in the camp, but then, he was already handicapped by the fact that he was an ogre. Still, we worked on him and he came to trust Tekkad, especially.

We learned this is an ogre stronghold (in which we had apparently dispatched a good part of the guard already) and that a giant named Carl Breakbones had assumed leadership of the ogre clan through formal challenge of the previous chieftain. Giant vs ogre didn’t last very long, no matter how skilled the ogre. So this was less of an alliance and more of a political takeover.

We promised Glark we would kill Breakbones and return control of his clan to ogres, and he burst out laughing. Laughter on an ogre is a bit grotesque to experience, although I’m certainly happy we could raise his spirits so. He stopped laughing, though, when we showed him the (actual) severed head of Lucretia, which Tekkad has been carrying around for weeks hoping for just this sort of opportunity. I tell you, he was very smug for quite a while afterwards. Glark’s face paled when he recognized her and he decided perhaps he WAS dealing with some powerful people.

Having been shown how powerful we truly were, Glark was happy to take some gold now, more later, a special “blessing” (enhanced with a temporary light spell by me) and the enchanted armor we stole off the other ogres as payment for helping us find both Breakbones and Lamartar. He thought the latter may have been given to “the sisters”, which I’m thinking might be related to Lucretia.

Glark was particularly impressed with my “glowy hand” and so Tekkad cut off the hand of his former boss and made it glow for him and it was just like a birthday to him, what with all the cool presents he got. He agreed to lay low for a few days before we would hook up with him again.

The only thing of note we found in the dead ogres was another potion of cure moderate wounds, bringing our total to 3 claimed today. There were some magic ogre hooks, and masterwork bows, but those are not of much use to us.

There were several passages in the main chamber that could even now be bringing reinforcements. We’ll need to secure those and move further in. I’d like to rest and recover some spells, but I don’t think we have a safe place to do that, and some modicum of surprise is still on our side. Best to move on.