The weather was hot and heavy as I slogged into the town of Aberwynn in Blackstone on the weekend of July 28th, 606. Aberwynn is located in Blackmoor, the southernmost barony of Blackstone. This was my first visit to this part of Blackstone. I had passed through the barony of Blackmoor many times on my way further north to Whitestaff and Haven and Firelight Cove, but this was my first chance to stay for any length of time.
I had been splitting my time over the last few months between the towns of Firelight
Cove in Blackstone and Dalken in Therendry. The mayor of Aberwynn put out a
call for adventurers to come help solve some problems he was having, so that
was to be the destination this month. Mayor Greenbrook explained that recently
spectral soldier were seen walking the streets of his town. This description
closely matched a situation we encountered a year ago in the Great Dark Swamp,
so we were being asked to see what we could do about it.
The oppressive heat and humidity that lay over the town like a warm wet blanket
further brought to mind the trip to the Great Dark Swamp the previous year.
The Great Dark Swamp lay just a little ways to the south and east, so perhaps
this should not surprise me. Sadly, there isn’t too much you can do about
the weather. I looked at my new suit of armor that I had hauled with me all
the way from Therendry, and I just knew there was no way I was going to be putting
it on. If it was this hot at midnight on Friday, it would be suicide to wear
it during the day. Adventuring is nothing else if not a long series of adjustments
and coping, so I stored away my armor and gear and headed into town to see what
was up.
I got to the tavern and took stock of the turn out. It looked like none of the
local nobility of Blackstone was in attendance. Baron Zug of Whiteman was there
with his squire Kaiya, so I figured he would be running the show for the most
part. The rest of the nobility present were all visiting from other duchies.
Therendry was well represented. Dame Parthynia was there, and Count Simeon Silvercord
had returned from six month sabbatical. Count Siranot Degauss was also taking
a rare trip abroad. Viscount Telaris Macleod made the trip south to attend.
From much further south, Sir Milo once again made the trip to Blackstone, and
traveling with him was Squire Nightshine and Lord Zerr Trellious of Blackwell.
This was the most nobility I had seen collected together in one place in quite
some time.
The action started shortly after midnight. We heard some screams coming from
outside, and when we stepped out of the tavern we found a rampaging band of
orcs chasing a number of townfolk. The managed to catch up to them right on
the very steps of the porch of the tavern, but then of course the doors opened
and adventurers poured out like ants from a nest, and pretty soon there were
orc parts flying everywhere.
After we defeated the first rush of orcs and took the rescued townfolks into
the tavern, a few more stragglers came down the road and attacked. I went ahead
and fought a little with these orc for no other reason than to get limbered
up and to test how much trouble I was going to have with the heat. I ended up
fighting beside Count Silvercord at one point, and I was amused to hear him
comment about how out of practice he was.
Somebody found a note on one of the orc bodies. It seemed to be written in some
sort of code. A couple of people took the note and the surviving townsfolk inside
to see what they could learn about the situation. I briefly stepped inside the
tavern, and then decided to rest outside on the porch. Even though it was sweltering
outside, it was uncomfortably cold inside the tavern when I was covered up in
sweat.
After a short time Sir Milo and Samara came out and joined me on the porch.
I had briefly corresponded with Sir Milo previously, but other than that I had
not spoken with either of them for any length before. Sir Milo discussed with
me the matter about which we had corresponded (super secret hush hush stuff),
and afterwards a few others matters of interest to him with I was surprised
to find related to some of the things I was involved it. It was kind of a weird
feeling to suddenly discover nobles taking an interest in things you are doing.
After this I went back inside the tavern to see how things were going in there.
I saw that a few adventurers were talking to a new arrival. He was a tall darkhaired
gentleman who was constantly scratching his head and scribbling away in a little
notebook. When I walked over, I saw that he was some sort of sage or researcher
or something similar. He was trying to ask people questions, but he couldn’t
seem to keep a single train of thought in his head. He never finished his sentences,
constantly interrupted himself, as was in general very difficult to understand
or talk to.
About this time there was a commotion on the front porch of the tavern. Someone
ran inside and explained there were some kind of weird beetles attacking, and
that magic weapons caused them no harm. I told the absentminded sage that maybe
he ought to go investigate that. He agreed and we went ahead and took a look.
It was mostly over by the time we got there. A bunch of beetles and beetle parts
lay strewn about, and people were wiping gloppy goo off their weapons. As we
stood there another group of weird looking beetles came out of the woods and
attacked the people standing on the porch. Sure enough, only silver and normal
weapons would harm them.
To me, this was an especially cruel joke. I was just coming off of a long campaign
against a group of lycanthropes that were menacing the town of Dalken inTherendry.
These lycanthropes were also practically immune to magic weapons. Thus, I had
not gotten a good chance to use my nice magic long sword in quite a while. I
could only hope that the beetles would prove the exception rather than the rule.
Once the beetles realized that not EVERY adventurer in Blackstone is armed with
a magic weapon they stopped attacking. I went back inside the tavern along with
the sage and everyone else, and I got myself something to drink. A few minutes
later Sir Milo called me over to where the sage and Samara and a few other were
standing.
He asked if I like exploring and looking for things, and I answered that I certainly
did, and so he assigned me to assist Samara. Samara had gotten a list from the
sage of a bunch of local legends and mysteries that he wanted investigated.
Samara was going to lead a team of about six people out to see what could be
found.
This suited me just fine. I spend a lot of time off in the woods just looking
for anything of interest. It would be nice to have something specific for which
to search for a change. Assembling our group of six searchers took a little
while, but soon enough Samara led myself, Kaiya, Pumpher, and two out of towners
named Orison and Beck out to scour the lands for clues.
The sage had a number of mysteries he wanted investigated. One involved a rumor
of there being a stone in the middle of the forest that talked. There was also
supposed to be a well that talked, a tree that walked, and glowing lights that
floated off into the forest. We decided to start with the talking stone. We
asked the sage if he knew the general direction we should be searching, and
he made some vague gesture towards the forest. With nothing better to go on,
we set off.
While I was pretty excited about the idea at first, it didn’t take long
for me to rethink my enthusiasm. It was pitch black dark. We had no idea where
this rock was, or what it looked like. We were blindly stumbling around in the
woods, and I was calling out “Hello? Roooock! Where are you rock?”
like I was looking for my lost dog. After a while I began to feel distinctly
silly.
We kept this up for about half an hour before we decided we were wasting our
time. Samara made the decision to call off the hunt until the morning when it
would be possible to see what we were looking for. I hate quitting on something
I started, but I also didn’t want to miss any of the real action because
I refused to stop looking for a rock in the woods in the dark, so we all headed
back to the tavern.
By this time the note found on the orcs had been deciphered. For those of you
interested in such things, it was a slight variation on a single substitution
cipher. All the words had an even number of letters, and each grouping of two
letters represented a single letter in the cipher. I’m not sure who figured
it out, but I know Count Silvercord and Squire Nightshine both had a copy of
the cipher when they were done.
Nightshine told me that the message said something to the effect that we had
to travel to some place called Hook Pass, and that we would find the secret
there encased in iron. Well, we didn’t know what the secret was that we
were looking for, but at least we knew where to find it now. Or at least, we
knew the name of the place.
We asked around in the tavern, but no one seemed to have heard of Hook Pass,
nor could we find it on any maps. Nightshine decided to go off to the house
of Mayor Greenbrook, who was the guy who had originally invited us all the Aberwynn.
We figured that if anyone knew where Hook Pass was, it would be him.
We found the good Mayor at his house, and he gave us directions to a place off
towards the mountains called Hook Pass. Nightshine and I and a handful of other
traveled in that direction for a while until we came upon the pass. I’m
not sure how it got it’s name, because it didn’t look like a hook,
and wasn’t even a proper pass. It was more a twisting canyon that ran up
into a set of hills.
As we traveled along the canyons we began to encounter old crumbling ruins set
back into the walls. Most of these seem to be pretty badly decayed and empty.
The canyon then opened up into a wider sort of bowl, and at the back of this
was a slightly more intact set of ruined walls and buildings. Inside of this
we could see rank after rank of dark iron golems.
We spent a minute or two trying to see if there was anything else to learn here.
Our small group was not about to assault such a strong force of golems. Fearing
to get any closer, we went ahead and returned the way we had come and made our
way back to the tavern to report what we had found to the assembled nobles.
We had to wait around for a little while before we could collect up the town
to go take care of the iron golems. Viscount Telaris first wanted to take care
of a matter with Hooch. In the past couple of weeks there had been some reports
of mysterious rumbles and unexplained mystical attacks on the various permanent
circles of power in the towns throughout Blackstone. Hooch wanted a Dream Vision
formal cast on him to see what he could learn about this affair. We waited around
for about twenty minutes while the necessary items for the formal were assembled,
and the formal was cast. Then it was time to march.
It was fairly late at this point. I think it was already past three in the morning.
I don’t believe many people had gone off to bed yet, though. The force
that marched off to Hook Pass was pretty formidable both in terms of number
and experience. I suspected we would have very little trouble kicking the tin
cans around the valley, unless there was some sort of surprise waiting for us.
When we marched up to the ruin, the golems activated and moved forward to attack
us. As I suspected, our strength was more than adequate to the task of defeating
them. In the back there was a large armored golem that I presume was in fact
just that, an armor golem. It was a tough nut to crack, but it was unique and
shiny and so drew a whole lot of attention from the ranks of the powerful fighters
and mages in our group, and it got demolished in short order.
When people pawed through the wreckage of the armor golem, someone came across
a small round speckled cylinder. In the center of the ruins where the golems
were stationed was a similar looking speckled stone pylon. It was a cone about
ten inches wide at the base and a foot and a half tall, and the top was flat
with a large hole in it. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the
speckled cylinder fit in the stone pylon.
We all stood back and gave the pylon a wide berth. The key was taken to the
pylon and placed in the hole. The pylon then began to glow, but nothing further
happened. We figured there had to be more to it than this. Lord Zerr decided
to use the cantrip Lore of the Ancients on the stone pylon to see if he could
identify its properties. He explained that he merely learned that this pylon
was one of three.
I didn’t have anything to add to this particular activity, so I walked
over to a nearby bench and settled down beside it to rest while everyone discussed
the pylon. As I did so, I practically sat on a small wooden chest that was crammed
under the bench. I didn’t look like it had been disturbed yet. While everyone
else was screwing around with the goofy glowy pillar thing, I quickly went over
the chest to make sure there were no traps. Once satisfied that there were none,
I concealed the chest beneath my shield and sat on the bench and waited.
Now that the excitement was over, and there didn’t look to be anything
else to do, people began to drift back towards the tavern. Viscount Telaris
walked over and sat down beside me and asked how I was doing. He said I looked
as if something was troubling me. I assured him that this was not the case,
and that I was doing quite well. I figured he would be as good a person as any
to take charge of the treasure box, so I reached under the bench and pulled
out the box and handed it over to him. He looked at me kind of funny and shook
his head, but he went ahead and took charge of the box.
We all went back to the tavern and proceeded to pass out the treasure. There
was a fair amount of potions and elixirs and such, as well as some coins and
components. One weird thing was that there were around ten scrolls in the box,
and every one of them was a wizard lock scroll. We didn’t quite know what
to make of that. All these items were quickly handed out.
There was also a magic item of some sort, but for the life of me I can’t
recall exactly what it was. I remember that it wasn’t something immensely
powerful. By this time there were only around a dozen of us left in the tavern.
We didn’t even do a drawing for the item. We talked about who it would
help out best, and after a few of us decline to take it, it was given to one
of the newer adventurers.
That pretty much wrapped things up for the first night in the town of Aberwynn.
We all separated and went to our separate cabins and bedded down for what was
left of the night. We still hadn’t seen any of the spectral soldiers we
were here to investigate, but we found one of the three pylons. Of course we
had no idea what the pylon are about, or why we need to find then, but I’m
sure all that will be revealed in time. Now was the time to try to get a few
hour of rest before tomorrow, which was in all likelihood going to be very trying
physically.
Saturday morning dawned all too soon, and all to warm for my tastes. Still,
there was no point spending the whole morning in bed. Despite the very late
hour that we all retired, I was eager to be up and about as early as possible.
It was my hope to be able to get some exploring done in the cool of the morning
before things became too uncomfortably hot.
I did manage to get up before noon, which I suppose is early by some people’s
standard. A little after ten in the morning I emerged from my cabin after taking
a shower and getting my items all arranged. The coolness of the morning turned
out to be rather illusory. I had barely walked a hundred yards from my door
before I was soaked in sweat.
The first item of interest I noticed as I left my cabin was a large flat rock
with a red skull painted on it. It was somewhat flat and about the size of a
dinner plate. It lay on the porch of the cabin next to mine, where I believe
Katherine VonSering was staying. A short distance away I found a second similar
rock resting on the porch of another unoccupied cabin. I looked over the rocks
carefully and turned them this way and that, but I could find no hidden meaning
or purpose to them, so I left them there and made my way towards the tavern.
A few people were already up and about as well. I saw a few sleepy faced adventurers
moping about the tavern, and I passed two of the locals on the porch. One was
a thin balding man with dirt on his hands. The other was a boney woman with
some kind of red rag tied on her head and a garish black, red and blue poncho.
These two seemed to be having some kind of disagreement, so I let them be.
As I set waiting for my breakfast to be made, I saw that Hooch and Guido were
over in the corner haggling with a fast talking gypsy merchant. The gypsy had
a number of gems spread out on the table, and he was trying to interest Hooch
in purchasing some of them. He handed me a stone to examine, and it looked like
something he had picked up beside the road on the way into town. Not all of
his stones were quite so worthless, though. He had a number of emeralds and
sapphires that were worth a number of gold. Earlier the previous evening I had
purchased an emerald from the Mystic Wood Elf Beck, who had found it on one
of the orcs. I didn’t know what I would do with the one gemstone I already
had, so I declined to purchase any more.
My breakfast arrived and I sat down to eat it. Some more people began to filter
in, and several of them had noticed the same red skull rocks that I had found
spread about town. All told there were I believe four of them. When the gypsy
trader heard us talking about the rocks, he expressed an interest in them. I
half jokingly offered to trade him one in exchange for one of his stones. He
immediately agreed to the arrangement, and offered me a sapphire. The sapphire
was clearly flawed, and on closer examination I figured it was worth only a
few silver. Still, that was easy money. He instructed me to bring the stone
to the tavern and to leave it with the tavernkeeper, and then he took his leave.
I continued with my breakfast, and presently struck up a conversation with one
of the locals I had noticed earlier. The tall thing guy with the bald head and
grubby hands came in and took a seat near mine. I learned that his name was
Gregor, and that he was a beet farmer by trade. He had been arguing with his
neighbor Jessup when I had seen him earlier. Jessup lets her cows wander onto
Gregor’s land, which she claims is her own. I got the impression this was
a longstanding feud between them.
After I finished my breakfast I bid Gregor farewell and headed back to my cabin.
I wanted to pick up one of those red skull rocks and get it delivered to the
taverkeeper before I either forgot or they disappeared and I ended up with a
gypsy curse. My cabin was well to the other side of town, so I took a round
about path to it so that I could get a little more exploring in. Not too far
from my cabin I found what appeared to be a nest of spiders underneath a tree,
and I decided to investigate that further at a later time.
I got one of the red skull rocks and hauled it back to the tavern. I turned
it over to the tavernkeeper and then headed back outside. My first thought was
to take another crack at looking for the rock that speaks that we never found
the night before, but then I saw Pumpher and Katheryn De’kiernan heading
out into the woods. They looked like they had something interesting to do, so
I caught up with them and invited myself along.
Katheryn gave me a sidelong look, but Pumpher didn’t seem to mind. They
were following up some kind of clue that had gotten earlier that directed them
to search a nearby cave. After a little bit of searching around we came upon
a field that had the cave to the rear of it. Milling about the field was a pack
of rather mangy looking wolves.
The wolves looked rather small and underfed, so I reasoned we should be able
to handle them. I put my sword and shield to use and clobbered a couple of them.
Katheryn pulled out some gas globes and took out a few that way. Pumpher used
a few odds and ends of spells, and pretty soon we worked out way over to the
cave.
Katheryn ran into the cave and started rooting around in a pile of ill smelling
rubbish and old gnawed bones. One of the wolves that was left was wobbling around
the field in circles due to a vertigo courtesy of Katheryn, and Pumpher had
gotten a shun spell off on the other one. Pumpher stood in the door of the cave,
which effectively kept us safe from the one wolf. We stayed that way until Katheryn
found what she was looking for, which turned out to be a page that had been
torn from a book. She seemed a bit disappointed. I think she was hoping to find
the whole book.
Once we had fought our way back clear of the cave we looked over the page. It
was some kind of alchemical recipe for an insecticide gas poison. It listed
the various ingredients that were required as well as the method of manufacture.
Katheryn explained that she needed to take it to the town alchemist, which was
some guy named Malcolm. In the meantime, since we had gotten Katheryn’s
little errand taken care of and out of the way, I asked the two of them if they
wanted to come investigate the spider’s nest with me. The agreed, and we
set off in that direction.
The nest was right where I had found it earlier. It was crawling with numerous
small spiders. Luckily, none of them seemed up to the task of physically entangling
with webs, so I thought we might have a chance against them despite their numbers.
Right in the middle of the nest was a small box, and that was our goal.
I moved up to the front and started fighting, and Katheryn and Pumpher stood
behind me. I took a couple of stabs at the bugs, and a bunch of them jumped
up and bit me. Katheryn leaned over and stuck her paw on my shoulder and left
it there, and it took me a few seconds to figure out what the in heck she was
trying to do. For a moment I thought she was trying to push me into the nest.
I’m not accustomed to having a healer on my back.
Pumpher decided to get into the fight. He gathered up his mystical energies
and called out “With mystic force I web you!” I actually stopped what
I was doing and turned around and looked at him. I think some of the spiders
did as well.
“They are freaking spiders!” I said. “What were you thinking?”
“Well, a few spiders are affected by webs.” he said.
I wasn’t about to argue the point then and there. I went back to hacking
at the spiders. I seemed to be giving just about as good as I got, but right
about then Katheryn cast one last heal spell and then stepped back and said
“That’s it. All out.” Oh, that’s right. Katheryn isn’t
a scholar. You would think the fact that we just hunted up an alchemy recipe
for her would have clued me in to that, don’t you think?
I now figured there was no way we were going to clear the entire nest, and I
guess Katheryn came to the same conclusion as I did. I made a couple of flailing
swings at the closest spiders, and Katheryn ducked past me and made a grab for
the box. I took a couple of hits, but it looked like we were just about in the
clear. One of the spiders made a move toward Katheryn, and she grabbed the box
by the lid and whipped around to run back out of the nest...
...and the box popped open and stuff flew everywhere. Katheryn said a most unladylike
word and ran back behind me again with the now nearly empty box. Well, I figured
in for a penny, in for a platinum. I was getting pretty banged up by this point,
but I wasn’t ready to leave yet. I shifted a little bit to the side again
and made some slapping swings at the closest spiders to attract their attention.
When they moved over towards me I started fighting very defensively, and Katheryn
made another dash for the treasure.
Surprisingly, this actually seemed to work. I managed to fend off the two spiders
for a few seconds, and by the time they noticed Katheryn again she had already
grabbed up the bulk of the treasure except for a few coins. When they turned
her way she skidaddled back out of the nest and we took off back towards the
tavern.
The three of us went back inside the tavern and sat down to sort out our stuff.
We had a couple of coins, and a handful of potions, elixirs, scrolls and so
forth. We divided them up into piles and started the process of getting it all
identified and labeled. Right in the middle of doing this we were interrupted
by a commotion coming from the other side of the tavern. A bunch of giant, vicious
cockroaches had come crawling out from the cracks in the walls and floors, and
people were smashing the nasty things.
I tried to just ignore them, but pretty soon they were crawling out of the cracks
of the walls on our side of the tavern. Tomas and some of the other wolven that
were sitting nearby jumped up to squash them, and I thought at first to just
let them have the bugs. Then I noticed that they were looting something from
the cockroaches. At that point, I figured I should probably do my fair share
of cleaning up the tavern like everyone else.
The vermin kept coming out of the walls for about the next five minutes or so,
and eventually we either killed them all or we killed all the dumb ones stupid
enough to come out during the day. I kept racing Tomas for the cockroaches and
trying to search them before he did. Every one of them that I searched had a
scroll, and most of them were dragon’s breath scrolls. I alternated between
giving them to Tomas and Pumpher.
Once the bugs were all gone, we got a visit from Rainbow. We had not seen Rainbow
at all the previous gathering in Firelight Cove, and her absence was much remarked
upon. There had been several rumors circulating to the effect that she was either
dead or undead or somehow in trouble. However, she gave every appearance of
being her same old self. She was even playing her same old game.
Well, actually, she was somewhat mad because her game was over. She typically
plays a game where she asks people to draw a token from her bag, and the person
who gets the special token get a prize. This time the second person who drew
got the silver piece from among to bag of copper, and thus ended the game.
She wanted to have a new game for a new prize, but she needed a new silver piece,
which I happily supplied. In fact, I pulled two silver pieces from my pouch,
and gave her one. When it became my turn to draw, I pulled a nice shiny silver
piece from the bag. Of course it was the second silver piece that I had palmed
prior to reaching in, but I made the fact pretty obvious for those who were
looking. Rainbow asked if I would like to visit a volcano, and I politely declined
and let the game continue.
Eventually someone won, and Rainbow sat down to socialize a little with those
present. I was actually hoping to get a chance to speak to Rainbow about some
things that had happened in previous gatherings that I didn’t understand
and that I thought she could explain. But about this time someone came in and
announced that the orcs had kidnapped Gregor the beet farmer, and that we all
needed to go rescue him.
I thought perhaps I could speak to Rainbow on the way to the orc encampment.
The problem was that Hooch also wanted to speak to Rainbow, and he was much
more insistent. I was able to ask Rainbow what she knew about the weird Fae
Undead we had seen a few months ago. She only replied that they had some kind
of name that sounded like lemony. After that Hooch buttonholed her and became
discussing some kind of bizarre sounding plan to protect one of the nobles for
which he needed her help, and so I left the two of the alone and hurried to
catch up with everyone else.
We came to a field, and sure enough there were orcs and there was Gregor. The
battle itself was just your standard stab the orc, loot the orc, stab the orc,
loot the orc affair. In the end, the orcs were all stabbed and looted and Gregor
was rescued. There was a large chest sitting off to the side, and I was asked
to make sure it wasn’t trapped. It wasn’t, of course, but I had to
put on a decent show of poking it and prodding it and peering inside. The box
contained some treasure and another coded note much like the one that was found
the previous evening. Parthynia asked me to hold the note and guard it.
As we were about to leave the area and escort Gregor back to his beloved beet
fields, some of us noticed a neighboring field where there was a bit of a commotion
going. A group of about ten of us let by Count Deguass decided to investigate.
We found a wheat farmer who was beside himself because of a plague of locusts
that were destroying his field. Sure enough, there were about two dozen locusts
about the size of billy goats hopping and munching around in the field. Now
I can see why they need an insecticide gas poison. Every time I turn around
there are more giant bugs.
We agreed to help him out, and so we all set out to eradicate the locusts. It
was a pretty low intensity fight. The locusts weren’t exactly ganging up
on us or anything, so we could pick and choose our targets and fight them just
a few at a time. I saw that Orison had a handful of bricks that he was using
to chuck at the locusts, and so I pulled out my throwing dagger as well. I was
kind of fun tossing the dagger and bricks back and forth and bouncing them off
the bugs.
Once we finished off the locusts and received the heartfelt thanks from the
wheat farmer, we went on back to the tavern and hooked up with everyone else.
I remembered that I still had that coded message shoved up my sleeve. Squire
Nightshine said she had a copy of the cipher from the note the previous evening,
so I went over to a table and helped her decode this message. And by help her,
I mean that I held the rolled up piece of paper open on the table while she
wrote out the answer. I learned that among my list of useful and essential adventuring
skills I can now add paperweight.
The note was written with the same code as the previous note, so it only took
a short time for Nightshine to decode it. I don’t recall the exact words,
but the note indicated that the next secret would be found in the ruins of Treldor,
and that only one who was keen of mind would be able to find the path.
We asked around among the locals and finally got directed to where the ruins
of Treldor lay. It turned out that they lay in a cave a little ways off from
town. When we all got there we found that the cave was serving as the hideout
for a band of thieves and brigands. We went through the perfunctory process
of trying to talk them into leaving peacefully and such, but all too soon the
gas globes were flying and the swords were swinging.
The bandits really were that much of a match for all of us. We had them bottled
up at the mouth of the cave, and they were clearly unwilling to retreat back
further into the cave from where they were at. They kept going on about how
the gargoyles were going to get us all. Well, the bandits certainly weren’t
going to get us, and in a short time they were all dead or routed.
We moved a bit further into the cave and found what had to be the gargoyles.
They were all shaped like gargoyles, but they were standing in two lines on
either side of the cave passage, motionless as statues. Everyone there knew
what was going to happen next. Sure enough, the Mystic Wood Elf Beck dashed
down the tunnel in between the two lines, and the gargoyles all animated and
attacked.
They were a bit tougher than the bandits, but still nothing that the entire
groups of us couldn’t handle. We began to slowly push them back, and pretty
soon we could see what had to be the ruin of Treldor. There were a number of
alcoves off to the side of a large cave as well as a few rooms with doors. As
most of the people battled the gargoyles, some of us fanned out and began exploring
the cave.
What we found tucked into the various rooms and alcoves were a number of small
puzzles. Each consisted of a stone slab with a number of holes in it. Some of
the holes were filled with round colored pegs, and some were empty. Each had
a small phrase written above it. In the back of the cave beside the last puzzle
was a pile of colored pegs and a locked door. As best as I can remember it,
here is a description of each puzzle.
…a watery jail…
Empty slot – Red Peg – Indigo Peg – Empty slot
…blue bassinet owner…
Empty slot – Orange Peg – Empty Slot
…a crystal ball…
Empty slot – Red Peg – empty slot
…a wall climber..
Empty slot – Violet Peg – Empty slot
…partner of vim…
Empty Slot – Indigo Peg – Green Peg – Empty Slot – Empty
Slot
…combination of them all…
5 empty slots
Nightshine and Lord Zerr stood in the back by the last puzzle and the pegs and
the locked door. Some of us kept the gargoyles busy, and some of us ran around
finding all the puzzles. When we found one, we came back to the group at the
last puzzle and described it while they wrote it down.
We knew that we needed to take pegs from the pile of loose pegs and plug them
into the various puzzles. We fiddled around with various strategies for deciding
which peg goes where. The first break was when we realized that the short phrases
were riddles, and that led us to realize that we need to substitute letters
for the pegs based on the first letter of its color. Thus we had Red = R, Orange
= O, Yellow = Y, Green = G, Blue = B, Indigo = I, and Violet = V.
I’ll not reveal the answers to the various riddles in case anyone wishes
to try to figure then out on their own. We did have a little trouble amongst
ourselves trying to decide which of the purple pieces represented Indigo, and
which was Violet. The toughest puzzle was the last one that had 5 empty slots.
We figured it out at the end when we had only 5 pegs left, so we knew all the
letters (YOVRI). Once we got that figured out we started sticking pegs in the
empty holes.
Each time we got the proper pegs into the puzzles, the puzzle would begin to
glow. When we completed the last puzzle near the locked door, it began to glow
and another one of the goofy speckled key pegs fell out. Then the locked door
clicked open. We opened it up and found a small room with another one of the
stone pedestals and a treasure box. Lord Zerr grabbed the box, and Nightshine
inserted the peg into the pedestal. When she did so, the pedestal began to glow
and the room began to shake for a moment. Luckily it stopped before we all wedged
ourselves in the doorway trying to get out.
So the second pedestal had been found and activated. We still didn’t know
their purpose, or where the third pedestal was to be found. It was now around
four o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun was beginning to beat down a
bit less harshly. The townsfolk had previous said that they would open there
shops at four, and so we hurried back to town to split the treasure and to get
ready for that.
This makes a good spot to leave off with this tale for now. I hope to post its
conclusion later tonight before I must depart for the deep south.
Following the battle in the cave with the puzzle, we all filtered back to town.
It was getting close to five o’clock, and as the sun got lower things began
to cool off just a little bit. We split of the treasure, and people began to
split up and head out on their own private business. Many of the people headed
over to the main part of town where we had been promised that shops would be
opening up.
I headed in that direction myself. I arrived a bit later than most people, and
so business was proceeding briskly by the time I got there. The first place
I stopped in was the general merchandise store. In addition to some normal items
such as quills, pouches and the like, there was also a large assortment of alchemical
items for sale. The shop was also equipped with an alchemy workshop, and some
people were taking advantage of this. I believe Katheryn and some others managed
to create some of the insecticide gas poison at this point.
The prices were quite reasonable, but I was perilously low on funds at that
time. I decided to look around a bit more before committing to any purchase.
The next stop on the line was the scroll workshop. I didn’t spend too much
time there before heading over to the blacksmith. The blacksmith was looking
rather glum. Of all the shops, his was by far the least busy. He had a number
of people hanging about to talk with him, but no one was interested in normal
swords and axes and such.
I remembered that I had both the nice emerald that I had purchased from Beck
the previous evening as well as the somewhat crappy sapphire I had gotten in
trade for one of the red skull rocks earlier in the morning. The blacksmith
said he was not interested in gems, but suggested I try the scroll merchant.
The scroll merchant agreed to buy both gems for a sum of five gold pieces, which
I judged to be a bargain by a few silver pieces. With these coins supplementing
the ones I already had, I went back to the general merchandise store and bought
a couple of elixirs and vorpal coatings.
I was now pretty well stocked with items, and out of money, so I headed back
to the tavern. I went inside and ordered dinner and spent a leisurely time eating
and socializing. Right after I had finished my meal I spotted two elves through
the tavern window. They were approaching the tavern, and each was dressed in
bright blue. They looked rather grim, and given their colors and demeanor I
judged them to most likely belong to General Sor-banes group of rebel elves.
I wasn’t expecting to see any of these elves so far south. I had gotten
the impression somehow that Sor-bane operated mostly to the north where we had
been previously adventuring. Perhaps his area of operation is larger than I
was led to believe, of perhaps these two elves were sent here to spy on us.
They gave every impression of being spies, or at least nosey. They came up to
the tavern and peeked in, but wouldn’t speak to anyone. They then moved
off down the path towards the other side of town where a number of people had
their cabins. I was somewhat surprised by what I judged to be a lack of concern
from most people. No one really seemed interested or motivated to see to the
matter.
So, I took it upon myself to do a little spying on the spies. I ducked out the
opposite of the tavern and jumped over into the woods. Through the trees I could
fairly easily spot the bright blue cloaks of the two elves as they moved down
the trail. I stayed even with them for a while until they moved up into the
upper side of town where several people had their cabins. I was concerned that
they would run into someone unawares, and that there would be trouble.
They milled about this area of town for a few minutes, and then continued to
move towards the very far side of town. I left the woods and crossed through
the cabin area and moved to the opposite side of the road and continued to follow
them. Once again, they moved into the area where the next set of cabins were
and began to mill around. This was where my cabin was, and I was most curious
to see if they would be foolish enough to look inside. The front door to my
cabin was not warded, but it was stoutly trapped.
As it turns out, they seemed to have little interest in the cabins. The moved
through the area and began to enter the woods on the far side. I was quite curious
to find out where they might be going at this point. The paused just inside
the woods and just stood there for a bit. I moved up a little closer to get
a better look, and then I realized what was going on. A group of around ten
adventurers entered the cabin area from the direction of the tavern. Apparently
I wasn’t the only person who decided to follow the two elves.
The adventurers were approaching the elves, and they looked like they were going
to stand there and wait for them. I figured there was going to be a short period
and calling back and forth, and then everyone would jump all over the elves.
Odds were that I wasn’t needed, but just in case, I thought I might circle
around and get behind the elves. Who knows, maybe I might even be able to do
something in the fight.
I got up from where I was hiding, and began to circle around in the woods. I
had been out in this area of the woods earlier in the day, so I thought I knew
where I was going. I moved around the far side of a bit of a slope and then
angled back towards where I thought the elves were standing. I believe I swung
a bit wider in my loop than I had meant to, because I didn’t come out exactly
where I though I would.
I stopped for a moment to looked around, and finally saw a corner of one of
the cabin on the edge of the clearing. Using that to orient myself, I realized
I was standing practically in the same spot the elves were in, yet I didn’t
see either them or the rest of the adventurers. So if they weren’t standing
here, and they weren’t in front of me in the clearing with the cabins…
I turned around, and sure enough there they were. They were about fifteen yards
behind me approaching up a small path. I immediately began to move towards the
cabins and explained I was out looking for my friends, and asked if they had
seen them. Their response was “With mystic force I pin you, with mystic
force I bind you.” Okay, I didn’t figure I was going to be able to
talk my way out of it.
Luckily their first spells were hastily thrown from a good distance away. I
leapt out of the way and took off running back towards the main part of town.
The pursued me and kept up a steady stream of spells, but the distance and the
running combined to keep the aim from being very good. Once I broke out of the
woods and into the clearing I could see that the main group of adventurers were
only a short ways off and walking back to the tavern.
The elves broke off pursuit when they saw they would not catch me before I would
reach the other group. The turned around and melted back into the woods. I stopped
to catch my breath and to assure everyone that I was fine. I decided to press
my luck just a little bit, and I crept back into the woods to see if maybe I
could do a little more spying on these elves. After about ten minutes of creeping
and searching, I was unable to find them. After this I gave up and headed back
to the tavern myself.
The two elves may very well have been spies or scouts. Not long after I got
back someone looked out the back of the tavern and shouted that the elves were
attacking. This time it looked like there was close to ten or so of them. I
recalled how the elves in a previous attack on the tavern in Firelight Cove
had blown through our defenses pretty easily, so I turned around and ducked
out the opposite door.
Once outside I peeked into the window to see how things were going. The battle
line seemed to be about in the center of the tavern, and our line looked pretty
strong. I thought this might be a good time to see if I could circle the tavern
and sneak in behind them through the door they originally came in. I crouched
down below the windows and duckwalked my way to the other side of the tavern.
However, when I turned the corner I was surprised to see they had left someone
to guard the door to their back. Sadly, he wasn’t surprised to see me.
He started chucking spells at me, and I scrambled to get back out of the way
behind the corner of the building. Then I heard some other people fighting at
the door and figured that some other people had snuck around the opposite side
of the tavern. I popped back around the corner and saw that I was right. However,
the battle inside the tavern was going so well that the elves were all getting
pushed back out this door, and now there were three of them on the porch, including
one with a big polearm.
I jumped forward to try to stab the polearm guy, and I got a chest full of metal
for my effort. I hit the ground hard and lay there for a while until everyone
else had cleaned up the elves and someone came over to get me healed. I sat
there for a short moment pondering the errors of my strategy, but my contemplation
was interrupted by another group of elves emerging from the woods to attack.
I believe that in total there were three or four small waves of around ten or
twelve elves. We defeated each group in turn without a great deal of effort.
After it was all over and I had a chance to think about it, these elves turned
out to be much weaker spellcasters than the ones we had fought in Firelight
cove. In previous battles, nearly every elf was casting dragons breaths and
imprisons. These elves cast mostly binding spells and some lower level damage
spells.
I began to think that maybe they sent the light troops to backwaters like Aberwynn,
and had the shock troops on the front lines in places like Firelight Cove. But
then again, Firelight Cove is the very definition of a backwater. No matter.
I didn’t waste too much time trying to figure it out.
It was now finally beginning to get dark. I still found the tavern to be uncomfortably
cool, so I decided to take a little time to rest outside on the porch. There
wasn’t anyone else around, though, and I have always felt a little uncomfortable
being alone on the tavern porch. That is always the first place the monsters
hit.
So I did the next best think. A short distance from the porch was a jumble of
fallen trees that had been knocked down in a storm. One of the trees was fairly
broad and level, and it was just a short distance from both the path leading
to town and the porch. I like to sit there sometimes to keep a watch on things
around the tavern. It was dark enough in that spot so that I’m not easily
seen.
So I sat down on my little roost and even began to doze off after a while. At
one point I could see someone approach the tavern, but then they moved off down
the path towards town. Not long after I heard some fighting in that direction,
and then Nasreen cried out for help.
I jumped off my log and worked my way out of the brush I was standing in. Others
in the tavern heard the shout as well, and pretty soon about six of us were
running down the path. We found some creepy undead thing beating the tar out
of Nasreen. We all jumped on the thing and chopped it to bits. Nasreen pointed
up the trail where Darius lay in a heap, and someone ran up to him and got him
back on his feet. Nasreen said something to the effect that they had just gotten
back from walking Katherine to her cabin.
The creepy undead was a pretty tough customer, and he took a pretty good beating
from us. I could tell that if I ran into one of those alone there would be no
way I could defeat it. This observation was pertinent, because I had just decided
that I needed to go to my cabin at the opposite end of town in order to change
my clothes and some equipment. I really didn’t feel like asking a bunch
of people to go with me all the way to the other side of town, so I decided
to risk it on my own.
I told a few people who were now sitting on the porch where I was going and
what route I was taking. That way if I started yelling for help they would have
some idea where to run. In then headed to my cabin by a wide circuitous route.
I skipped the obvious and short path that lead directly to where I was going.
I walked around the edge of town until I got to my cabin.
When I went inside, I thought that if I turned on the light, it would be like
a beacon for monsters everywhere. So instead I went about the cabin trying to
swap out equipment and get dressed in the dark. It was an interesting little
exercise. All the time I kept hearing noises outside that made me think someone
or something was creeping around. I figured I was probably fairly safe, though.
In an emergency, I would have cast a circle of power using a magic item I had.
I had a circle already prepared in a corner of the cabin. Also, I knew that
Katherine had just gone to her warded cabin, which was next to mine. If I ran
into trouble I could call out to her, and she should be able to fetch help.
One I had finished my affairs I made my way back to the tavern. When I got there,
the first person I saw sitting on the porch was Katherine. It seems I misunderstood
Nasreen earlier. Katherine wasn’t safe in her ward within earshot of my
cabin. I believe she must have been talking about Katheryn. Oh well.
As I went up to the door of the tavern, I though I could see a little bit of
blue light shining onto the trees at the far side. I walked through the tavern
and opened the opposite door and looked out. There in front of me on the path
right at the treeline was a blue and orange glowing ball swinging back and forth.
One of the strange rumors that the sage we met the first night wanted investigating
was glowing blue ball in the woods. Here surely was the ball he was referring
to. I stepped back inside and looked around for someone to go with me to check
it out. I was a little surprised to no one was interested, but eventually Simeon
and Lilly the tavern keeper stepped outside to take a look.
Lilly stayed on the porch, but Simeon and I slowly approached the swinging ball.
When we got closer, I saw that the ball was on a string, and that it was being
swung be a small boy. When I got closer still, I realized what was going on.
“What is it?” Lilly asked from the porch. I told her that it was her
kitchen helper and food server. “Gus? Is that you? You get up here in this
porch right now!” Lilly then proceeded to scold her young charge and to
hustle him back into the kitchen.
The mystery having been solved, I went back inside the tavern and socialized
for a bit. It was around this time that I learned another one of the sage’s
rumors had been solved. Squire Nightshine had discovered the talking rock that
we had looked for the previous evening. Sometime in the afternoon she was part
of a group that found an ancient stone golem in the woods. It said it was guarding
the spot as ordered by his master, who had then stepped away. The master had
been gone for around a hundred years by this point, but lacking any further
instructions the golem remained guarding the spot, and I presume that is where
it is today.
As things would have it, a few minutes later I stepped out on the porch of the
tavern, and what should appear before me but a glowing blue light bobbing in
the distance. It weaved its way through the woods and made its way over to the
tavern, and passed around to the other side. I figured this must be the real
think, so I hurried around to investigate. I ended up catching up to Viscount
Silvercord and on other, and we followed the light as it made its way into town.
When we caught up to the light we saw that it shown from the spectral form of
a peasant. He was completely immaterial and would not respond to anything we
said or did. We followed the ghostly peasant into town and a short ways into
the woods until it came before a cave. From out of the cave rushed an equally
spectral dire dear. The ghostly bear ripped the peasant apart and devoured him,
and then returned to its cave and disappeared. After this ghostly tableau finished,
the glow of the light shrunk down to a tiny ball and slowly sunk into the ground
in front of the cave and was gone.
Since there was only a few of us, we decided not to immediately investigate
the cave. We went back to the tavern to find some others. Since I knew that
Viscount Telaris had a particular strong interest in eradicating bears of all
sorts, we made sure to include him in on the trip. We gathered a band of about
eight people and went to investigate the cave. Sadly, it was a bit anticlimactic.
The cave proved to be extremely small, and extremely empty.
So once more we headed back to the tavern. The next order of business was the
planning process for Tomas/Althkaelis’ race change formal. Although it
seems for the time being he is going to be sticking with his new name, he made
it known that the wolven race turned out to not be well suited to him. He was
seeking to regain his former race of Quentari Elf. Viscount Telaris, who made
secret of the fact he thought the race change to wolven was a foolish idea in
the first place, was giving Tomas quite a hard time about the process.
Telaris and Zug proposed this idea. They would hold a raffle. For ten pieces
of gold, anyone could place a slip of paper in a hat listing a race to change
Tomas into. At the end of the raffle, a slip of paper would be drawn, and that
would be the race he was changed into. Proceeds of the raffle would go to benefit
the “Slaughter All Bears Wildlife Fund”, a charitable organization
run by Viscount Telaris. I’m not sure whether the idea was discarded or
whether he got real lucky on the draw, but sometime later Tomas returned to
the tavern as a Quentari Elf once more.
While all this was going on, I saw Nasreen come into the tavern along with another
lady I did not recognize. They approached Baron Zug, and the lady knelt down
before him, clearly signifying that she was not an adventurer. Nasreen pulled
out another of the round speckly peg key things. I walked over to see what this
was about, but then Nasreen gave me the fisheye look. I figured if it involved
the stone pylons, I would find out soon enough, so I went ahead and found something
else to do.
Luckily, the absentminded sage we had met the previous night chose that moment
to visit again. He was checking in to see what people had learned about the
various rumors and mysteries he was investigating. A few of us spent some time
updating him on the things we found out and learned. He seemed particularly
interested in the information about the rocks that were found with the red skulls
on them. I was hoping that he might have some other clue about them that would
shed light on their meaning or purpose, but unfortunately he seemed as baffled
as we were.
When I got to the part about the glowing blue light, he was able to offer some
useful suggestions. He suggested that the spectral peasant fit the description
of ghost that had died in a horrible traumatic fashion, and that was unable
to pass on to the afterlife. It was forced to continue to act out the circumstances
of its death until something could give him eternal rest. He also asked if we
had thought to dig at the spot the light disappeared into the ground. We hadn’t,
but it sounded like a good idea.
So the sage and myself decided to give this a try. Count Degauss was standing
nearby as we discussed this, and he decided to join us. We traveled to the cave
for a third time, and once there I began to scrape at the ground with a stick
I found nearby. Luckily the ground was very sandy and loose, and pretty soon
I came upon a bone. Further digging yielded an entire skeleton.
This had to be the skeleton of the poor peasant that was eaten by the bear.
The best idea we could come up with was to place the skeleton in the cave, and
to collapse the cave as a way of giving it a more dignified burial. After some
fiddling around we found a rock that looked as though it was holding up the
rest of the ceiling of the cave. Count Degauss gave himself an Endow spell,
yanked the rock out, and took off running. This caused a complete collapse of
the roof. As we stood back watching the dust settle, the ghostly form of the
peasant appeared before us, smiled, and then slowly faded away.
Everyone agreed this was most likely a satisfactory conclusion of this affair.
The sage offered us his thanks, and provided us with a few coins in payment
for our troubles. Count Degauss declined the payment, but I went ahead and collected
the coins from him. Later on after we had gone back to the tavern I shared them
out with some of the others who had helped out in solving the sage’s various
mysteries.
Back in the tavern there seemed to be a little bit of agitation among some people.
I asked around, and someone explained to me that we had somehow learned that
Gregor the beet farmer was not trustworthy, and that he was wrapped up in some
way with these strange stone pylons. A group of people went to confront him
in his cabin, but he wasn’t there. A second group went back and found a
note written in blood on the front door. The note said that the secret could
be found a short distance away from a nearby bridge over a creek.
As we all got ready to go investigate this, there was a brief moment of confusion.
Baron Zug was telling everyone to get ready to go investigate this note. Then
Caliphar burst in and exclaimed that everyone needed to get ready to follow
him to some destination. Baron Zug kept trying to ask Caliphar what his emergency
was all about, but for some strange reason Caliphar just seemed inable to speak
in complete sentences all of a sudden. Eventually they worked out that Caliphar’s
mysterious destination was in fact the same place that the note refer to, and
thus both trips were one in the same.
Everyone marched out to the bridge and followed the instructions on the note
which led to a wide shallow cave with another one of the stone pylons inside.
We all moved inside, and Baron Zug produced the speckly key that Nasreen had
provided him earlier. The key was inserted into the pylon, and like the two
previous ones this pylon began to glow. This time the glow grew very bright,
and a incandescent pulse of energy jumped from the pylon and flew out of the
cave and disappeared off in the distance. Those among us who were near the mouth
of the cave said that the pulse appeared to have gone to a nearby field.
So we formed up again and marched to this field. When we got to the edge of
the field, we saw our old friend Gregor standing at the far side of the field
inside some kind of circle. I had a pretty good idea what was about to happen
next. I had been to this field earlier in the day, and I knew that Gregor was
standing in front of a thick patch of trees at the edge of the field. I decided
that I would move quickly to work my way to this patch of trees now before bad
things began to happen.
I plunged into the woods at the side of the field as everyone else moved forward
and approached Gregor. I could hear Gregor ranting and raving about something,
but I didn’t get the details. Suddenly he let out a scream, and I could
hear lots of fighting. I continued to slowly work my way as quietly through
the woods as I could, and I finally got to the spot I was aiming for.
I looked out from behind a tree at the edge of the clearing, and about fifteen
feet in front of me was the crumpled body of Gregor. Well beyond him out in
the middle of the field I could see these large monstrousities battling with
the adventurers. Now that I had gotten to the spot I wanted to be in, I realized
I hadn’t really thought past this point. I just kind of assumed once I
got here I would spot something to do.
About this time I saw Count Degauss walk around the edge of the clearing and
approach Gregor and begin examining him. Well, okay, fine, I guess that is another
way to do it if you prefer. I wasn’t sure whether we were supposed to be
helping or hurting Gregor. I think the count was similarly confused. I called
out to him to ask if he needed someone to life Gregor. He replied that he had
already done so, and in fact had imprisoned Gregor as well. He said I could
help out, though. He needed me to haul Gregor out of the circle and stash him
off in the woods somewhere so we could pick him up later.
Well, that wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but I went ahead and took
care of that. When I came back out of the woods I saw that the count was looking
at a treasure box in the circle. While we stood there trying to decide if we
should leave it or take it, some of the big bulky monsters starting coming on
over to us.
I’m not much of a fighter when it comes up to a straight up fight, but
I figured with the count here at my back I should be in good shape. But as the
monster kept coming, it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Crap, I thought,
these things are freaking huge! Just about the time I started rethinking my
plan to make a stand with the count, one of the apes swung out and just pounded
the snot at of me.
Next thing I recall I was being helped to me feet by someone holding a potion
bottle. He told me to run, and that is exactly what I did. I took off towards
the main pack of adventurers and tried to find a gap in between the monsters
so that I could get back to the safety of the main group. I ran nearly full
circle around the group before I finally made it inside.
The first beating I took removed all thoughts of sneakiness or heroics from
my mind. I concentrated on just staying close to other people and supporting
their attacks. Even playing conservatively as I was, I got pasted several times
and needed the benefit of a healing spell to get me back up. I tried to spent
as much of the fight as close the Count Degauss as I could. At one point one
of the monsters shambled up and began pounding out ice damage from a mace it
had clutched in its claw. We took out the monster, and the Count grabbed the
mace.
It was a tough fight, and lots of people got smacked around pretty good during
it. But we were a pretty stout force, and there just wasn’t enough monsters
to overwhelm us. We slowly ground them all down until eventually there were
none left. We began searching all over the to make sure we had not lost any
bodies in the fight. During this time Count Degauss went back to collect the
treasure box, and was quite vexed to see that it was no longer there.
He asked around several times if anyone else had either gotten the box or seen
who did. No one replied in the affirmative. There wasn’t anything else
to really do at this point other than to head back to the tavern. The hauled
Gregor out of the woods and drug him back to town.
I decided to stick around in the field for a little bit. I figured it was a
bit unlikely that anyone had grabbed the treasure box and run off. Their absence
would immediately make them suspicious. A more likely plan would be that someone
took the box and stashed in somewhere in the bushes close by, and was going
to come back later to get it. Based on that idea, I hid at the edge of the clearing
and began to wait.
I said in the weeds getting chewed on my bugs for about twenty minutes. The
longer I sat there, the more I became convinced that I was wasting my time.
I began to believe that almost certainly someone had grabbed the box, and that
the treasure was probably being sorted out right now in the tavern. Finally
I head on back, and sure enough that is exactly what was going on. It turns
out that Parthynia had grabbed the box earlier and not heard Siranot asking
about it.
The treasure was just about sorted out, when word came to us that we faced another
battle. The forces of the self styled King Logaris had been spotted, and we
needed to immediately leave to confront them. The nobles made the decision to
place all the treasure into a box and to mystic lock it, and to pass it out
later when everyone returned.
Once that was gotten out of the way we all travelled to where the forces of
King Logaris were reported to be. Sure enough, we found King Logaris himself
there surrounded by his army of void elementals. We wasted almost no time and
immediately engaged Logaris in battle.
Logaris turned out to be a very strange sort of wizard. He was able to cast
spells using elemental power. He cast his spell in the same manner as magic
deliverance, but used elemental power instead of magic. This meant that he could
cast spells in a very quick fashion.
The battle started off in a somewhat linear fashion. King Logaris stood a little
uphill from us and fought a fairly stationary battle surrounded by his void
minions. After a while the void minions began to lap around the edges of our
group, and the battle broke up to a certain extent.
One extremely bizarre part of the battle was the appearance of a black clad
ninja from seemingly nowhere. No one could seem to remember seeing him show
up, but all through the battle he would rush out of the shadows and strike at
King Logaris and his void minions, and then would retreat and disappear almost
immediately.
At some point in the battle King Logaris worked his way from one side of our
group to the other. We had a hard time getting to him, but we slowly wore down
his void minions, and time was on our side. Finally we got a break and in a
quick rush a bunch of people piled on top of King Logaris, and that was that.
With King Logaris gone, the void elementals melted away. I didn’t get a
chance to see if Logaris ressurected or not, and I didn’t think to ask
anyone until it was too late. Some treasure was produced from somewhere, and
after a short search for bodies we all headed back to the tavern.
I made it back to the tavern without any incident. I overheard some people talking
who said something to the effect that they met and spoke with the strange ninja
on the side of the path on the way back. I didn’t get a chance to ask what
was said, so I still have no clue what that was all about. Perhaps someone else
who was there may be willing to explain that.
The treasure from the two battles were brought out and placed into a single
large pile and sorted. Three magical items were found, and I was lucky enough
to win third choice of them, which turned out to be an enchanted stack of bones.
It was somewhat creepy, but otherwise a nice item and much more than I expected.
I thought that perhaps the night was over at this point, but as it turned out
there was one other small matter left to attend to. Sage Nicodemus arrived,
and several people produced a number of oddly shaped puzzle pieces. I was told
that we needed to assemble the puzzle, which would form a key, and this would
be used to open a gate to some kind of library that held a book we needed.
Assembling the puzzle pieces turned out to be a bit harder than it looked. Lord
Zerr, Nightshine, Samara and Tomas fussed over it for quite some time without
success. Nicodemus wandered over to help, and once he figured out the first
step, the rest of the pieces went together quite quickly. A short time later
there was a gate in the tavern, and people were jumping through it. Not having
been told otherwise, I went ahead and invited myself along.
The gate led to a small library. Telaris was there searching around for some
kind of book that was needed. I never did figure out what it was needed for.
Baron Zug grabbed a parchment which he said related to some troubles Blackstone
was currently having, and after this we all headed back out the way we came.
That is where things came to an end. I headed off to my cabin and slept quite
soundly through the night. I had been a good and profitable two days of adventuring,
and it did much to restore a bit of the confidence I had lost during some of
the more unfortunate previous gatherings of the season. I felt so good in fact
that I resolved to extend my adventuring just a bit and once again take a trip
to some foreign lands. On a week’s time a group of people were headed south
the Greyhelm to attend a gypsy gathering and I resolved to go along with them.
Hopefully the southern climate will agree with me.