This past weekend was a chance to take my first ever trip to Exeter, in the lands of Lyonesse within the Duchy of Therendry. As usual, I traveled to the gathering with my friends Glenn and Mirage, and we were amongst the first adventurers to arrive. We were all staying in the Healer’s Guild, because Mirage is the Guildmistress of the Exeter Healer’s Guild, and had appointed me to be the Assistant Guildmaster. I have to admit that it was comfortable to have an Earth circle nearby, as it was nice to have an added measure of security. Fortunately, though, we did not have to use the Earth circle very often, because there were very few resurrections.
At any rate, after we arrived in town, we did what is typical for adventurers
to do, and we gathered at the tavern. I was happy to see that many of my friends
had made the trip to Exeter, such as Squire Kyth of Richland. I spent a good
amount of time on Friday night helping Squire Kyth fight against the various
creatures that showed up, and I was as impressed with his fighting abilities
as I always am.
The first of the creatures that attacked us, if my memory is correct, were creatures
called shadow locusts. I don’t know much about what they were there for,
but I am certain that they were very difficult to defeat. They seemed capable
of throwing many chaos spells, were only affected by magic weapons, and most
of the time their claws inflicted ten dagger blows worth of damage. They cast
death spells as well, and I had to cast several life spells to keep people up.
I depleted my spell reserves very quickly as the onslaught continued, and the
problem was compounded by the fact that the only other backpack available was
Guildmistress Parthynia, which meant that each of us had to backpack for half
the assembled adventurers.
Finally, the onslaught abated, but we were not safe for very long. On the tail
end of the shadow locust attack, undead alligators began arriving in town. These
alligators were extremely powerful as well, but in a different way. While the
shadow locusts attacked primarily with spells, the alligators attacked primarily
physically. Specifically, they attempted to bite their victims, and bites were
crushingly effective, dealing fifty dagger blows worth of damage to a victim.
It was then suggested by Lady Kes that it would be a good idea to try to find
the source of the alligator attacks, and so Squire Kyth and I journeyed into
the woods with her on a scouting mission. We found that the swamps around Exeter,
which had apparently been drained recently, were beginning to refill. However,
they were not refilling due to rain, but instead the water seemed to be coming
from the ground itself. Upon investigating further, we found a series of caves,
and one of them had a mother alligator and her babies in it. Strangely, these
alligators were still alive and not yet undead. Even more strangely, there was
a burlap sack attached to the mother alligator’s leg. We tried to move
in closer to investigate, but of course the mother alligator attacked us, and
so Lady Kes had to sleep it with gasses. We were then able to search the burlap
sack, and found that it contained a great deal of what might best be described
as candy. I am not yet certain as to the connection between the candy and the
plague on the land, if there indeed was a connection.
Once we got past the mother alligator, our next task was to get past the baby
alligators. They crawled at us, and when they got close, they bit our swords
and attached themselves, and they had to be hit gently before they would fall
off. After about five minutes of investigating the cave, we found that there
was nothing else there to find, and so we left. When we got back to town, we
discovered that His Excellency Count Lyonesse was holding Court. We entered
as quietly as we could, and quickly took seats for ourselves. His Excellency
then called us up to introduce ourselves, Squire Kyth for being a Squire of
Richland, and myself for being the Arch-wizard of Order and Knowledge.
Count Lyonesse, during the ceremony, declared that we were to attack the lair
of Mordakai, since we had recently discovered where his lair was. Cormyn the
Invincible, a barbarian of Therendry, explained to us what he knew of Mordakai’s
strengths and weaknesses, and then we marched out of town to begin the assault.
When we arrived at Mordakai’s lair, it was heavily guarded, to no one’s
surprise. Most everything that was defending it, though, was an undead. Glenn
and I both knew what that meant: our favorite trick. Glenn set up at one side
of the room, and I set up at the other, and we both opened bane of the dead
cantrips, allowing us to toss harm undead spells like candy. Fortunately, I
had learned from my previous mistakes with using bane of the dead, and so this
time I had my friends Beryl, Nikki, and Brin retrieving aura for me so that
I could keep throwing. Unfortunately, though, Mordakai himself broke my bane
by suddenly popping up behind me and forcing me to get out of the way of the
paralysis spells that suddenly came flying at me. I was about to chase after
Mordakai, but then Nikki told me that there was a shadow locust after her.
Sure enough, some type of shadow locust was chasing Nikki, and so I stepped
in between her and it. It kept trying to get around me, but I kept my shield
in between her and it. Finally, it warned me that it would kill me if I didn’t
get out of the way. I refused, and so it hit me twice with death spells channeled
through its claws. Fortunately for me, it takes three death spells to drop me
because of the gift shield I always keep up, and so I was able to re-protect
myself and then jump right back into the path of the shadow locust. This time,
though, I was not happy, and so I began beating on the shadow locust. It was
forced to rift out, and I told Nikki that she should imprison herself if the
shadow locust showed up again. It popped back in a few moments later, and Nikki
did as I asked and imprisoned herself. I beat on the shadow locust again, and
it rifted back out.
Nikki, though, wisely kept the imprison up. And it turned out to be a good idea,
because the shadow locust rifted back in a moment later. This time, though,
it had a plan. It went over to her and tried to rift out with her. Along with
everyone else in the area, I began beating on it, but it was Viscount Silvercord
that saved her. He incanted, “I summon a force to disarm your elf,”
and hit the shadow locust with the spell. The shadow locust was forced to phase
the attack, and that bought us enough time to beat it down. I was grateful to
Viscount Silvercord for the help.
Nikki then decided to drop the imprison, and I helped her find Sir Strider,
who she wanted to talk to. I then heard that Mordakai had been found again,
and I chased off after him. Caliphar turned out to be the person who finally
caught Mordakai, and somehow managed to drop him. Unfortunately, Mordakai was
able to go back to his bottle after bleeding out for sixty seconds, and no one
ever stabilized him, and so we lost him. On the plus side, though, we did learn
something about Mordakai. I observed that Mordakai was affected by spells thrown
at him by Guildmistress Parthynia. Because the Guildmistress is a biata and
only throws earth spells, I take this to mean that Mordakai’s claims that
he is unaffected by earth magicks were a lie.
After the entire Mordakai business was finished with, I went back to the tavern,
and then agreed to escort Nikki, Beryl, Brin, and Peppercorn back to their cabin.
I stayed up talking to them for a while, and they are all very interesting people
to talk to. I decided that it made no sense for me to go anywhere until the
magicks had reset themselves, and as such stayed at the cabin talking until
just after six in the morning, at which point I decided to head to bed.
I slept in late the next day, and apparently a lot happened while I was gone.
Squire Kyth informed me that I missed an attack of some very powerful water
elementals. Listening to his description, I am actually somewhat glad that I
missed them, because they sounded as if they were rather heinous.
The big problem when I got back into town was something called the Headhunter.
It had taken several people in town, and stolen their heads. This left them
without the ability to talk or cast spells. Amongst the people who lost their
head was Glenn, and so I had a personal interest in making sure everyone got
their head back, since Glenn is a friend. I’m still not entirely clear
on how people were still alive without their heads, but I am probably just ignorant.
At any rate, we went to an area outside of town where there were tons of headless
people. And these ones were very hostile, and very powerful. Each was capable
of swinging multiple mighty blows, and so we went through magic armor fast.
It made me miss when physical reflect used to work as a spell in these lands.
We were pushed hard, and we nearly broke, but we ultimately managed to rally
and push inside the building where the heads of our friends were. I am not entirely
clear on how the heads were reconnected, but somehow or another the heads and
the bodies were re-joined together. I was glad to see that Glenn was okay, although
he was naturally a little bit upset about the entire incident.
Things became quiet for a little while after that, but then spiders began showing
up in town. Along with Squire Kyth and Spice, I managed to fight quite a few
off, and in truth they weren’t that difficult. The problem was that they
just kept coming. Finally, though, gigantic fire creatures rifting in interrupted
our battle. They demanded to know who our leader was, and some humorous person
in the crowd told them that the spider was our leader. That got the spider killed
very quickly, not that we had any problem with the spider dying. However, there
was still the matter of the fire creatures to deal with.
Her Excellency Viscountess Kiera sent Caliphar and I to go retrieve His Excellency
Count Lyonesse. When we found the Count, we explained what was going on as quickly
as we could in as much detail as we could remember, and Count Lyonesse hurried
to the scene.
Count Lyonesse talked privately with the fire creatures for a while, but I assume
that no agreement was reached, because a fight broke out. And it was not an
easy fight. These fire creatures were extremely powerful. Their leader took
only one dagger blow of damage from everything that hit him, and he could constantly
heal himself with his own flame.
Our strategy basically involved hitting him a lot, but even with four or five
people hitting him at once, it still took us something like fifteen minutes
to take him down. I am not clear on exactly what the fire creatures were looking
for in town, so their existence and the reason for their presence is still a
mystery to me.
Now, it was sometime around then that people began informing me that there had
been invitations to a party that evening handed out earlier while I was asleep.
Now, of course, I didn’t get an invitation to this party, but that was
okay with me. You know why? Because every time I have ever seen a party hosted
at a gathering, it has been a bad thing! It is always hosted by some type of
strange creature who has something bad planned for those in attendance. However,
I will talk more about that in detail later.
As I often do, I spent a good portion of the evening talking to adventurers
around the tavern. There didn’t seem to be a lot going on, so it seemed
like a good time to catch up. Finally, though, duty called, as Guildmistress
Mirage called on me to help her cast a formal magic back at the earth circle,
and I also had to become invested in the celestial circle in town.
I’ll talk about the earth ritual first. Lynx was requesting to race change
to a darkstrider, and he was able to gather up the components necessary to do
so. This was the first ritual Mirage had ever gotten the chance to cast, and
so I performed as the secondary caster and coached her through it. She did an
excellent job, too. The formal went off perfectly, as I acted as a conduit to
channel the energies between Mirage and Lynx. Mirage also got a chance to cast
her first solo formal, as she had to also invest me in the earth circle, since
I am supposed to be the Assistant Guildmaster and I was not yet invested. It
is difficult to fulfill your job description as an Assistant Guildmaster without
being invested in a Circle.
Let me now pause and take a moment to speak about Guildmistress Mirage. I believe
that since I moved to Therendry in the first place, Mirage has been to every
gathering that I have been at. She is quiet and very rarely outspoken, but very
effective. She is also a very friendly person and so has friends such as Glenn
and myself that are extremely, fiercely loyal to her. In the time that I have
known her, which is only a few months now, she has grown much. Where once she
was timid, now she is more confident. Where once she may have hesitated to give
commands, now she can comfortably take control of a situation. I believe that
she was a perfect choice to become the Guildmistress of Exeter, and I believe
that Lord Exeter should be applauded for his decision. I can assure you that
in the months and years to come, Mirage will only get better at what she does,
and I think she will do a terrific job as Guildmistress for far into the future.
At this point, I guess I should talk about the celestial circle. Prince Alejandro
Sparras cast the circle, and he has a very interesting formal style. He tends
to spray bits of components over everyone in the circle as he is casting the
formal. I know Her Excellency Viscountess Kiera got sprayed with a bunch of
components, and I took one or two myself. Fortunately, though, everyone was
able to clean himself or herself off at the end of the formal, and the town
had itself a celestial circle.
Anyhow, at the end of the formal session, I went back into town only to be informed
that the people going to the party had left. I waited around for them to come
back, but it was a long, slow wait, and so I went outside the tavern and did
some sparring with Lochwood. They are excellent fighters, and they very much
have my respect for their martial prowess. In fact, they are some of the best
fighters I have faced outside of the Barony of Northguard.
Well, when people got back from the party, after having been there for a couple
of hours, they looked tired and weary. I found out that they had a fight with
vampires, and some townspeople had been bitten. We set up shop in the healer’s
guild with our destroy formal magic scroll, and we managed to remove most of
the transforms.
Unfortunately, in the middle of the process we got attacked by a new Headhunter
creature, which could rift at will and swung 20 dagger blows of magic damage.
It took people down quickly, but I could circle hop faster than it could rift,
and so it had no chance of actually taking us all down. It did down Lord Exeter,
Sathen, and I think Lynx in the doorway, but they were easily recovered.
Unfortunately, over the course of the next hour, it kept showing up and attacking.
It attacked me at least five times, and my lone defense against it was my shield.
Fortunately, I am good at using my shield, and so I managed to stop every one
of his attacks. He was nasty, but nothing a scholar with a long sword couldn’t
handle. My understanding is that he was eventually taken out by Lorel and Caliphar.
There were a few other events that occurred that night as well. For one thing,
Lochwood assembled the town and we assaulted some type of shadow creature base.
They were nasty, but we were able to deal with them. Count Lyonesse had a problem
with constantly getting tainted, but I was behind him to purify him, and he
bulldozed through shadow creatures when he was able to swing his weapon.
The final battle of the evening, though, was the living hassle himself, Mordakai.
He came into town, surprised Cormyn and Leif, and stole the bracelet that kept
him from rifting previously. Now, he has his rifting ability back, and so he
is almost impossible to stop again. Cormyn tried to get him on Saturday night,
but to no avail. Now, we will have to find a new trick to stop him in November.
I have no idea how it will be done, but Mordakai will die. There is simply no
alternative at this point.
Glenn left town on Saturday night, and Mirage, Peppercorn, and I left town on
Sunday morning to catch up with him. I believe we plan on traveling to Blackstone
next week. Who knows what trouble will await us there. It’s a difficult
life, adventuring. But it is what we do. And I believe, for now, that this tale
is at an end.
Scribed by Seronia on the 20th day of October in the year 603.