It looked as thought it might rain when I arrived in Blackstone. The rain had held off to that point, but I couldn’t help but wondering how much longer my luck would hold out. Nonetheless, a little rain wasn’t going to keep me away. It has been a long time since I had adventured in Blackstone, and I was going to make the most of it. Besides, I was going to get a chance to see some old friends, and it’s always worth braving a little bit of rain to be able to do that.
When I arrived in Firelight Cove, where the gathering was going to be held,
I was informed by some of the local officials that the gathering was going to
be on the opposite side of Firelight Cove from where we normally gather, thus
restricting our access to earth and celestial circles. This was a minor setback,
but one I took with a grain of salt. I rode over to the gathering location area,
picked out a cabin, and set up camp.
Soon, my old friends Keno, Adrafae, and Angus arrived, and so we were able to
fill up the cabin I had picked out. It was late by the time the three of them
arrived, though, and so I was resting on the porch of the cabin when I heard
a familiar voice call out to me. It was Rillien, my good friend from Therendry,
and I was of course happy to see her.
If I had to describe Rillien in one word, it would be dependable. Rillien is
the type of adventurer who is always there when you need her. Even better, she
has no fear, and so whenever I have an important task that needs to be accomplished,
I know that I can count on her to help me accomplish it, even if it has the
potential to be extremely dangerous. She’s also one of the few adventurers
I know that has no sense of greed. She takes only what she needs, and never
more. I can’t even count the number of times she has handed off components
to me, telling me that they would do more good in my hands. On top of all that,
she has probably saved my life more times than any adventurer this side of Viscountess
Zobrist, and so you can be sure that she is one face I am always happy to see
at a gathering.
Not long after I ran into Rillien, I also ran into another face that I am always
happy to see at a gathering, that of Sugar, the Mystic Wood Elf. Sugar is the
Guildmistress of the Exeter Healer’s Guild, and has done a good job shaping
up the Guild in the time she has been there.
By that point in time, I had decided that Keno, Adrafae, and Angus would be
able to catch up, and so I went into town with Rillien and Sugar. What we found
waiting for us was a group of a few townspeople and another group of many undead
that seemed to keep coming. We took care of the first few waves of undead, but
then we decided we would all be better off by falling back to town. Caliphar
Belmont, Sathen Gor, and I established a fighting retreat, and everyone else
kept moving back behind us. We thought we had gotten away from the undead, but
then we realized that the entire group was on the move.
We attempted to make a stand, thinking the town was behind us, but in fact everyone
had already retreated behind their wards. Squire Pyroxia of Myrr was taken down,
but Katherine von Sering managed to hit Roxi with a healing spell, after which
she cast an imprison on herself, but neither Sathen nor I saw this happen. Sathen
and I continued to backpedal, looking for an opportunity to get to Roxi, who
we believed was still down and bleeding out. By this time, even Katherine and
Caliphar were behind their wards, and Sathen and I were facing down the undead
horde between us. Thankfully, the undead horde was made of mostly lesser undead,
and thus we were able to beat most of them with simple trap and turn undead
spells. Having removed most of the smaller part of the horde, we circled back
around to where Roxi was, she dropped the imprison, and the three of us hightailed
it to the safety of Caliphar’s ward.
There is one lasting point that I want to emphasize out of that fight, and it
concerns Sathen. In working with Sathen during the attempt to get to Roxi, it
absolutely amazed me how much he has improved as a fighter. When I say that,
I am not merely talking about the ability to swing a sword and block with a
shield, although clearly those skills are important. I am also talking about
the subtleties of combat, such as knowing which spell to use in what situation
and having a sense of where everything is on the battlefield. In those types
of skills, Sathen’s improvement has been tremendous, and so I want to take
the time here to congratulate him for it.
Once things has calmed down a little bit, we made sure that everyone else was
safe, and thankfully it turned out that everyone was. Some people went back
to town, but I went back to see how Keno, Adrafae, and Angus were doing as far
as getting ready. I got quite a shock when I walked in. Angus, previously a
dwarf, no longer had a beard. I asked him if he shaved, because I had been under
the understanding that doing so was a no-no in dwarven society. He informed
me that he had not shaved, but instead had race changed human. He was very proud
of his newfound ability to use a polearm. I suppose that hanging out with Keno
long enough would give anyone the desire to learn to use a polearm.
At any rate, once they were together, the three adventurers accompanied me towards
the tavern. On our way there, we heard a scream, which I was certain was coming
from Sugar. Keno and I hightailed it towards the sound, and it turned out that
an undead had dropped Captain Elenril Elintari, and was now heading towards
Sugar. Keno, Angus, and I dealt with the undead, and then Captain Elintari was
found and healed. Greetings were passed all around, and then I finally got a
chance to get some food from the tavern. Og was having some trouble with the
burners, and so our options were only muffins, but the muffins were quite good.
Before long, Sir Cedric recruited the bunch of us to help deal with a time portal
that had appeared in town. When we got there, we discovered that the rest of
the town was already there. It didn’t take us long to figure out that the
creatures we were fighting must be Protomorgis’s minions. They were just
like Pyromorgis’s minions had been, except that we knew Pyromorgis was
dead because he had been killed by the being pretending to be Morbidus Bane.
Wow, come to think of it, monsters in Blackstone can be pretty confusing. None,
though, is probably more confusing than Protomorgis, thanks to all the time
games that he has played, and all the different versions of him running around.
The fight itself was intense, and the shadow/fire minions gave us lots of trouble.
Still, we managed to press forward until we got through the portal. On the other
side of the portal was some type of a building, and there were two approaches
to the building. The first was a stairway going directly up to the door, and
the second was a ramp hitting the door from the left. I anchored an assorted
group of templars and rogues in assaulting the front door directly, while Caliphar
took a group up the ramp to the left.
The major problem with the assault was the presence of some type of death fountain
that was constantly pouring out arcane and magic death spells. I ate arcane
death spells several times, but I have to give thanks to Squire Pyroxia here,
as she saved me several times. Eventually, we managed to push forward until
we got up to the building itself. The shadow/fire creatures were still coming
up from behind us, but there didn’t appear to be any more resistance in
front of us. Still, though, I wanted to end the battle quickly if at all possible,
in order to prevent us from suffering any losses at the hands of the minions
still out there.
Caliphar and I looked at each other, and we knew exactly what we were going
to do. We surged through the doorway to the building with him breaking left
and me breaking right once we got through. The room was full of gravestones,
candles, and a large table in the middle. One part of the room looked like it
might be some type of altar. I didn’t have much time to investigate, though,
because Caliphar told me he had found a person.
I went over to see what Caliphar was talking about, and I saw a man sitting
inside a circle, concentrating on three candles burning in front of him. I checked
the circle, and it appeared to be non-protective, like a formal magic platform.
I didn’t know what effect ending his ritual would have, but we were taking
some damage outside, and so I decided to act quickly. I swung my sword at the
guy, and he appeared hurt but unfazed. I swung a couple more times, and he fell
down. At that exact moment, the portal began to close. I handed off my shield
to Kajah, tucked away my sword, slung the time guy over my shoulder, and dragged
him out before the portal closed.
With Kajah generously carrying my shield for me and providing protection, I
dragged the gentleman back to town, and once he was there we put him in a chair
and began interrogating him. Hooch was brought in as our interrogation specialist,
but the conventional methods were not working. In fact, he seemed to enjoy torture.
Weirder yet, when he did talk, he spoke so slowly that we could not understand
him. Eventually, Beryl had the good idea to let him write down what he was saying,
and so we found out that he worked for Temporal Morgis, who I assume is another
incarnation of Protomorgis, and that he wanted us all to die. We eventually
realized that he was trapped in some sort of slow time bubble, and it could
even affect those people or objects around him if exposed for long enough. We
sent him off for further study.
Not long after that situation was resolved, I decided to take in some fresh
air outside. While I was out there, Caliphar and Rillien both told me that they
were hearing voices in their heads, calling for them. When I realized that they
were the only two hearing voices, I got them together and tried to figure out
what they had in common. Other than being elves, there wasn’t much of anything.
They decided that they were going to follow the voice off into the woods, and
Sugar went along to make sure nothing weird happened. However, Sugar came back
soon after, telling me that Caliphar and Rillien were off in the woods, but
hadn’t seen anything.
By this time, most people had gone to bed, and so I asked Sugar to show me where
Caliphar and Rillien had gone. We went back to the spot, but they were now gone.
We waited around for a few minutes, but nothing showed up. We went back to town,
and I declared that I was going to remain awake until such time as Caliphar
and Rillien came back, because they are both my good friends. Sugar let me borrow
a circle representation, and Sigurd, Hooch, and Guido all stayed up with me.
Not much exciting happened, though. Finally, when Caliphar and Rillien came
back into town, Rillien told us that they hadn’t found anything interesting.
Rillien, Sigurd, and I decided we were all heading off to bed, but Caliphar
was planning on staying up the entire night.
Before we could even say good night, though, a giant chicken emerged from the
woods. We sent Guido to go deal with it, and he heroically defeated the chicken,
which turned out to be quite a coward after it was hit. In fact, you might even
say it was chicken. Personally, though, I just wish Squire Verbal had been there.
He would have loved the giant chicken.
At any rate, the giant chicken was followed by another giant chicken, which
Guido also killed, and then a giant marshmallow chicken, which Guido defeated.
Then an ogre came into town looking for his chickens, and he was going to slay
Guido, and so I killed the ogre.
With that, I was finally able to get to bed. The next morning, it seemed like
there was a long line for breakfast, and so I went wandering off in the woods
with Rillien and Angus to see if we could find anything interesting. We knew
there was stuff out in the woods, because Angus had already found two interesting
things.
First off, Angus found a tree in the middle of a field. Oddly, he somehow found
this under the tavern, but I find it best not to ask questions about such circumstances.
At any rate, there was a farmer who was going to chop down the tree, but Angus
healed the tree, and the tree rewarded him with a small diamond and told its
story to him. Apparently the plane of harmony was being invaded by the plane
of discord. I assume that the plane of harmony is a subplane of order and discord
is a subplane of chaos, but I am not sure. At any rate, the tree was one of
the harmony elementals who had escaped. Angus suggested to the tree that hiding
amongst other trees might be safer, and so the tree decided to take him up on
his suggestion. We later encountered discord elementals, which apparently have
the ability to guise themselves, and so can be quite nasty.
Moving on, the second thing Angus found was an ogre who had problems with moles
in his basement. They would pop up and go away so fast that the ogre could not
hit them with his hammer. Thus, he lent his hammer to Angus, and Angus invented
a game he calls “Whack-a-mole.”
Getting back to the original story, Rillien, Angus, and I went off into the
woods looking for adventure. We found all types of cool things. We discovered
a series of fallen trees that essentially created a bridge which led from one
area of the marshy ground to another. We discovered a white turtle shell, which
turned out to be the ballast stone of a sunken ship when examined more closely.
We discovered a lake, from which we took water which turned out to be of component
quality. We also discovered a fish and a seashell, but neither of those turned
out to have the value we had hoped.
The best, though, I saved for last. We saw somewhere around ten or fifteen butterflies
all gathered around the same patch of grass. When Angus approached, the butterflies
all flew up into the air in a spiral which was a wonder to behold. I might live
the rest of my several hundred years and never again see a sight so beautiful.
On the way back from the woods, we encountered a large group of sea trolls.
They outnumbered us at least three to one, and they were demanding that we leave
their home. We saw no reason to pick a fight while we were trespassing, and
so we decided to leave their home.
The next exciting thing to happen involved the elves that had been taking over
towns in Blackstone as of late. The only person that I knew to have had contact
with these elves on any extensive scale was Sathen, and so I let him handle
the situation as much as possible. Essentially, the elves marched into town
with a prisoner in tow, and did not commit any hostile action.
After speaking to Sathen for a while, they asked to speak to whoever was in
charge. Viscount Mithrilmist and Sir Warclaw were not around, and so I got nominated,
being the only Evendarrian noble present. The conversation was one of mutual
respect, and as far as I understood it they were going to leave town peacefully.
That was the way it worked out, too, until they marched back into town after
leaving and informed us that they were annexing Firelight Cove into their empire.
I informed them that I could not let them do that, and so we agreed that it
would have to be a fight. They told me that their general was to arrive later
in the day with an army, and we could attempt to stop him if we wanted to. After
they left, I started organizing the town’s defenses. Specifically, Keno
and I went to get resources that might prove helpful for the fight ahead.
By the time I got back, Sir Warclaw was back in town, and Captain Elintari had
told him what happened. He had thus decided to go directly after the scouting
party, and worry about the army later. We tried negotiating with the scouting
party, but the negotiations went nowhere, and so it was a fight.
For this fight, I used a different tactic than usual. The fight took place on
a road, which had a ridge running over it on one side. I stood up on the ridge
with Hadrick, Fenrir, and Caliphar, and sniped at the scouting party below.
The effect this created was to make the scouting party have to defend another
flank, which allowed those fighting below, such as Sir Warclaw and Keno, to
get a better shot at the scouting party line.
We pushed the scouting party all the way back to a waterfall, and we eliminated
the last resistance on the rocks just in front of the waterfall. We rescued
their prisoner, who turned out to be one of their commanders who had refused
to obey an order to destroy fields and kill livestock around Firelight Cove.
Essentially, he thought that such action was against the rules of war. We spoke
with him for a while, and he provided us with a lot of interesting information
on a variety of subjects, even including the activities of Protomorgis.
By the time we were finished speaking, it was nearing renewal time, and so I
went to buy a ten gold book so I could re-make my cantrip tome. It was going
to be expiring soon, and so it only seemed sensible to re-make it before it
was gone completely. I lost a couple of cantrips in the process, but nothing
serious. I also understand that some people went to visit the Arcane Emporium
around this time, but I do not know what came of that trip.
Not long after spells had reset themselves, we went tromping off to fight the
invading elf army. It was getting dark, but there was still some light left
when we met their army. It was an extremely tough fight, as every single one
of their soldiers was an adept templar. They also had the ability to spell-strike
without channeling, which I found to be a very strange ability for elves.
During the course of the fight, a few individuals truly stood out. Over on my
side of the line, which was the left side, Guido did a terrific job of helping
to hold the line, and too full advantage of the opportunities he got to counter-attack.
Angus used his polearm to great effectiveness, and even though he dropped a
fair bit, he dealt out his fair share of damage. Rillien did a terrific job
keeping people up, stretching her resources thin but always being able to find
that extra needed bit of healing. Caliphar, though, was truly the hero of the
battle.
First off, he bailed me out when a sneak attack went awry, which I appreciated
a lot. Secondly, he negotiated the end of the battle, appealing to the elf general
and getting him to agree to stop fighting. That ended the conflict, and the
elf army withdrew. An agreement was also reached out of that conference that
all should abide by. The elves will not killing blow us if we do not killing
blow them. If the agreement is broken, of course, then all bets will be off.
However, it should not be broken by any adventurer.
By the time that battle was finished, Spice had arrived in town and given me
a scroll that I had been searching after for quite a while. She and Captain
Elintari also informed me that there was something strange about the food coming
out of Og’s kitchen. Apparently the bread had gone flat and the food tasted
like ash. These two things together indicate that there are vampires about.
Together with Rillien and Sigurd, I went to go gather up components and put
together a stake of woe. Once it was completed, I handed it to a trusted associate
to use in case any vampires showed up. It didn’t take long to find a vampire.
There was a darkly dressed gentleman with long hair hanging around the tavern.
He walked up to me and asked how I was doing. I told him he was doing fine,
and he told me that he was scared about all the stories of vampires being around.
I knew right then that he was a vampire, but I couldn’t prove it yet.
The proof I needed came shambling into the tavern a couple minutes later in
the form of Fenrir as a zombie. I administered a life spell, and Fenrir told
me that he had been attacked by the long haired gentleman. I cornered the long
haired gentleman and checked him for a pulse, but he had one, which led Sathen
and I to conclude that he was a vampire disciple, or a human with vampiric abilities
in training to be a vampire.
I got Sir Warclaw’s permission to go after him, and he bolted. I took off
after him, and Sathen and Tomas both joined in. Eventually, Sir Warclaw joined
in as well, and after throwing many spells at him which were stopped by various
vampiric abilities, we finally broke through and killed him through an imprison.
This proved, as Sathen and I suspected, that he was not a full vampire, as full
vampires turn gaseous upon being killing blowed.
After that exciting episode was finished, I sat around in the tavern with Keno,
Angus, and Rillien just sort of waiting for something to happen. Finally, we
were approached by a man who said that there was a merchant tent which had been
taken over by satyrs and asking us to clear out the satyrs. Rillien could not
go, but we took along Spice, Adrafae, and Tomas instead. It was basically a
long door fight, and Spice was furious because the satyrs were throwing charms
like crazy. We eventually managed to break in and defeat them, although it took
a lot of resources to do so. With that fight over, we looked around and decided
it was time to go to bed.
In concluding the story of the gathering, I really feel like there is only one
thing I can say to appropriately wrap it up, and that is this: weasels.