On the night of November 18th, 605, the various adventurers and nobles of the land gathered in the town of Exeter in the County Lyonesse in the Duchy of Therendry. I was rather looking forward to getting back to Exeter once more. Having spent the better part of the past year touring various cities in Blackstone as well as the island of Trulam in Richland, it was good to be back on more familiar ground. Exeter is where my humble home can be found, and it was from here that I launched my adventuring career slightly over a year ago.
Exeter is currently a town in the process of great change. Under the strong
and capable leadership of Baron Degauss, great strides have been made towards
recovering from the hard times and famines of a few short winters ago. The peasant
revolts and the CFT uprising are a thing of the past. The newly planted rice
fields were producing grain in abundance. The recently completed docks on the
banks of the Korok river have served to increase the level of commerce and prosperity.
All these things have led to a population boom.
Sadly, all is not entirely well. Exeter is the shining exception in the County
of Lyonesse, which has fallen on some hard times of late. Much of the rest of
the County is doing quite poorly, and this has led large numbers of people to
flock to Exeter. They include a number of unsavory types and criminals. Despite
the best efforts of Sheriff Jack Fidian, crimes and murders have been on the
rise recently. There has been a disturbing rash of disappearances. After a long
absence, undead have begun to be seen prowling across the land. Spiders of all
sorts have become common as well.
I arrived in town late on Friday evening and gathered with everyone else in
the warm and cozy tavern. Once more we were graced with a functioning tavern,
and no one that I know of lacked for any food or drink throughout the weekend.
The temperature outside was decidedly cold, but the rains from earlier in the
week were thankfully gone. A gibbous moon rose shortly after nine, and you can
nearly read your scrolls by its light.
The crowd was fairly good sized, and for the most part consisted of the usual
suspects. There we a couple of out of town guests. Thorne Darkstrider and his
companion Beryl had traveled from Hawthorn’s Bluff to attend this event.
I’m told that Thorne is a minor celebrity of sorts in the Wolven community.
Viscount Delwyn Mithrilmyst and Baron Zug De’kernien of Blackstone were
also in attendance. Later in the evening Ashe Blackfist of the Ducal Court of
Ashbury arrived.
Baron Exeter was not initially in attendance. The highest ranking Therendrian
noble present was Viscount Kiera Zorbist. However, it was made to be known that
her Squire Ruendil Elencu De'Kiernan was to be in charge in the Baron’s
absence. I thought that to be a rather odd arrangement, but no one including
myself had any real objection to the arrangement and it worked out well enough.
It didn’t take long for the local wildlife to make it’s presence known.
Not everyone had yet arrived when people began running inside shouting that
there were spiders killing people. We rushed out on several occasions to confront
spiders of various sorts. Sadly, it was dark, and most bugs look pretty much
the same to me anyway, so I can’t say for certain what type they were.
Shortly after the spiders were defeated I spied a lone gentleman walking into
town. He had a rather odd air about him that suggested strongly that he was
a bit more that what he might appear to be. He spoke somewhat oddly and would
not give his name. He said that he was in town to preach the virtue of chaos,
for he felt the town was a bit too orderly and uptight to his liking.
It seemed pretty obvious where this was going to lead to, but I was not in any
hurry to get there. I let the good sheriff know of the situation, because he
likes to know about this sort of thing. The Chaos Elemental, as he shortly revealed
himself to be, spent some time engaging various people in the tavern in conversation
and debate, and urged them towards a less orderly, more spontaneous way of life.
In the end he step outside and starting casting necromancy about willy nilly,
and thus met a rather sad and abrupt end, and was seen no more.
It was shortly after this that we got attacked by a roving group of laughing
undead. Some of them had the power to infect their victims with deadly poison
with their blows, and some of them had the power to cause laughter. I couldn’t
quite tell whether there was a large loose group composed of both types, or
whether we were fighting two different groups of undead.
Those of us that were lacking in armor suffered pretty badly from these undead,
since it typically took only one or two blows to put us out of action. The undead
that were using deadly poison caused quite a bit of confusion at first since
it was not immediately apparent to everyone what the proper remedy was. Once
everyone caught on that those that were felled by the poison blows could be
gotten up by a purify blood followed by a healing spell, things worked out a
little smoother.
While this was all going on a few people were following up some clues that were
provided by a couple of rather scruffy looking vagrants who were in the tavern
earlier. Beryle Qain and some others did a little digging and discovered that
they were euphoria addicts, and that some sort of euphoria crime lord was running
the local drug ring out of a building nearby.
The people in charge made the decision to rid the town of this criminal scourge.
Everyone was gathered up and we marched to the crime lord’s headquarters
and alchemy lab. We busted in and fought with a bunch of thugs and hooligans.
The leader of the drug ring was captured, though he loudly proclaimed his innocence.
After the battle was over I grabbed a lockbox full of money and passed it over
the Viscount Mithrilmist. It was later distributed amongst all the adventurers.
To be honest, I thought it was something of a paltry sum. I guess there isn’t
a lot of money to be made in euphoria, or else they hid the rest of their stash
somewhere else.
Things began to wind down shortly after this. In ones and twos people began
drifting off towards their beds. Sadly, things weren’t quite over with
for the night. I turned in around 3:00AM in the morning, and by 3:30AM most
everyone in the barracks I had chosen were in their bunks and sleeping. Then
the doors of the building opened up and a mixed group of undead and spiders
came traipsing through the doors.
Everyone in the barracks was behind a ward of some sort. Well, nearly everyone.
I was sleeping by myself in one of the front corners without a ward. I wasn’t
entirely unprepared for this event, though. Before I had gone to bed I had arranged
a loop of rope on the floor beside my bunk. Once I recognized my danger I rolled
out of bed and into the circle and quickly cast a circle of power just as one
of the undead pounced at me. I got the circle up in time, but I was now forced
to sit on the cold hard floor inside my very tiny circle while we tried to wait
out the bad guys.
Luckily for me the wait was not very long. Once everyone took proper stock of
the situation and got most of the gear on, a group of people dropped their wards
and attacked the undead. They defeated the monsters without much trouble, and
then defeated the second wave that tried to come in through the door after the
first. And then the third wave. And the fourth.
This went on for a very long time. We could easily hold the door to the barracks
against the undead that would attack, but after nearly a half hour of attacks
we were all getting pretty tired and just wanted to go to bed. We studied the
situation for a time and decided the only way to stop the attacks would be to
rush the necromancer who was standing outside in the field directing the attack.
To this effect, Verbal, Kyth, and some others made a charge outside the door.
Unfortunately the necromancer was a little more than he first appeared. He paralyzed
Verbal and then rifted him out. That ended the attacks by the undead, but now
we had no idea where Verbal was or how to reach him. Pyroxia Firestorm left
the cabin to try to go find him, and later on I believe Delwyn left to find
him as well. Or maybe he left to find her.
At this point I crawled back into my bunk and tried to get some sleep. But that
was still a long ways off for me. Even though the undead were gone, there was
still a single spider that kept repeatedly attacking the building. He couldn’t
or wouldn’t open up the door to come in. Instead he stood outside banging
on the door over and over and over. Various people would get up, open the door,
and blow the spider away with swords or death spells, but 2 minutes later another
spider would be back.
This continued until almost 5:00AM. Finally Draelin got up and went outside
to spend a little quality time with whatever was out there. I don’t know
what he said or did, but after about five minutes he came back inside and we
weren’t disturbed by spiders any further. Draelin was definitely my favorite
person on all of Tyrra at that moment.
Delwyn had returned and things were now finally settled down. The lights were
turned off, and I had just drifted off to sleep when the cabin was filled with
the unmistakable sounds of someone rifting in. I jumped out of bed into my little
circle once more with one hand clutching my circle of power item and the other
grabbing for my sword, when out of the darkness I heard the voices of Pyroxia
and Verbal. The rifting I had just heard was the two of them returning. Verbal
seemed to be rather out of sorts, so I decided that I would just give the two
of them their privacy and just go back to sleep. I’m not even certain who
if anyone else even woke up when they rifted in.
No sooner hd I gotten to sleep then it seem like it was morning and time to
get up. I got up around 9:30AM or so and trudged my way across the lawn to the
showers. As I walked out I cast a baleful and jealous glance at the other cabin
across the lawn that was already showing some signs of life. From what I was
able to gather, they all slept a blissful and uninterrupted sleep the previous
night.
I got myself cleaned up and dressed, and I met with some of the other early
risers in the tavern where we swapped stories over breakfast. We received three
sets of visitors in the early morning. As I recall, the first to arrive was
Tynsil Treehawke, the Ducal Warden of Therendry. I never have fully understood
what that position entails, though I do know she tends to nag people about chopping
down trees and the like.
The second visitor was a bit more strange. A broad and hearty pale man came
to the tavern next. He was crowned with a wreath of sticks and he had a large
white cloak with a large golden feather or fernlike leaf pinned to the shoulder.
He announced himself as Lord Winter.
He seemed a rather jolly and cheerful person, though I most admit that I did
not get to speak to him very closely. He had the rather unnerving habit of gathering
everyone he met into a great big bear like hug. Unfortunately, physical affection
isn’t something I’m very comfortable with, and that goes double when
it involves some sort of metaphysical planar being. I gave the Lord of Winter
a wide berth.
The third set of visitors was a group of deep trolls. They were you standard
sort of hack and slash thug monsters, but they were being led by an arcane goblin,
which made them a bit more dangerous than normal. Luckily by this time we had
a fair number of people up and about, and our forces were easily equal to the
task of slaying these creatures.
After the bitter cold of the previous evening, the sun was pleasantly warm.
Other than a few isolated puddles and mud from the rains earlier in the week,
you really couldn’t ask for anything better for this time of the year.
As it rolled around to noon time, a good many of the people who had been staying
in my cabin were still sleeping off the battle from the previous night. Those
of the more experienced adventurers that were awake were occupied mostly with
either socializing in the tavern or attending to their own private affairs.
Baron Siranot Degauss had arrived by now and was busy catching up with various
people.
An ad hoc scouting party was formed to explore the surrounding area and to look
for any trouble or clues. The group consisted of Sheriff Fidian, Rillien Nol-Feredir,
Squire Seronia Merritt, and a handful of newcomers I had not met previously.
Two were named Vivalin and Malaki, and they were dressed in the same outfits
and looked like a set of fighter/healer bookends. The other two were scavangers
of some sort I believe. I never did get their names..
When they set off into the woods, Sheriff Fidian was lagging a bit behind and
moving quickly to catch up. Before he could join everyone else he was ambushed
by an exceedingly large spider than had been creeping up behind him. A bit a
luck, a magic armor spell, and some strenuous work with his spear served to
keep the spider at bay under everyone else spotted his trouble and raced back
to defeat the spider.
The group continued on a little more cautiously, and began to make a large loop
through the nearby forests. On three more occasions they were attacked by spiders
that lay in ambush by the path or tried to creep up behind them. Each time they
stayed in a group and managed to fight off the spider and slay it.
The expedition wound its way around through the woods and ended up back where
it started at the tavern. There they were greeted by a peasant who complained
of spiders having made off with some of her livestock. Having spent much of
the morning fighting off spiders, they felt confident they could manage a few
more. So they followed the peasant lady off to a nearby cave.
The cave was full of wicked little spiders. They were much smaller and weaker
than the huge spiders they had been fighting in the woods, but there were much
more of them and they were crammed into a cramped little cave. Still, with a
little bit of teamwork, all the spiders in the cave were eradicated without
too much fuss. A small stock of items and treasure was found in the spiders
nest, and this was divided up amongst all those present.
In the early to mid afternoon, the town found itself plagued by a number of
thieves, cutthroats and raiders. Mostly these were two man teams of thieves
coming in to try to take advantage of the prosperity of Exeter. Several of these
met a rather unpleasant end, though I know of at least one that was merely fined
and sentenced to several lashes.
The first large organized activity of the day came in the mid afternoon when
everyone was gathered up for an expedition to find some Fae webbing. Rumors
and Fae Tree messages had been hinting towards a battle to come with the monstrous
spider Krateen. Krateen had a rather unpleasant history with Exeter going back
to the early spring of 604. She was back, and everyone had pretty much figured
out that eventually we were going to have to battle her. Someone discovered
that the way to defeat her was to cover her in sticky Fae Webbing, and so we
were off to get some.
The Fae Webbing we were after was guarded by a group of curious Fae known as
Hagglers. I had found them in a gathering in Trulam a month earlier. These Fae
were weird little goblin businessman who are always trying to strike a bargain
or a deal. In battle, they strike their blows in a fashion such as to bid with
their opponent. If their opponent strikes with force, they strike with nearly
as much force, and try to bargain their opponent to strike with less and less
force each time. Once you catch on to what they are doing, most people strike
with very little force, thus bargaining with the Hagglers to in turn strike
with even less force.
Once everyone caught on to how the fight worked, the battle was not particularly
difficult. A few of the Hagglers were defeated and the Fae Webbing was retrieved,
and everyone began a slow fighting retreat. The Hagglers did not seem to be
overly concerned about the loss of the webbing, but they were incensed when
several people broke their bargain by lowering the force of their blows, and
then lashing out with a great amount of zeal. Great cries of “Cheater!
Cheater! Cheater!” went up, and Kyth in particular came under a great deal
of criticism from their ranks for his bad bargaining.
After this was over I decided to spend the remaining daylight scouting around
in the woods on my own. I didn’t really find anything of any great importance.
I found a few odd bits of treasure here and there. I came across Rillien at
one point, as she was out doing very much the same thing as I was. Together
we came upon and observed a pair of dark elves passing bags back and forth and
acting all suspicious in a cave. But then again, that is something like saying
we came across some water that was acting very wet and runny.
Once the sun went down and the temperature dropped, small groups of shadowy
elemental creatures began popping up and attacking people. I decided that it
would be a good time to head back to the tavern and stick around other people
for a while. I was hoping to recruit a few people to come with me to explore
a little further.
When I got back I found that several people were organizing for a trip to hunt
down some vampires. It became pretty apparent that this was going to be one
of those “by invitation only” affairs. Whatever wisdom there was in
limiting participation to a few select individuals, trips like this always end
up breeding resentment among those who aren’t picked to come along. This
was no exception. There was no shortage of people sitting around pouting.
Luckily for me, I have an exaggerated opinion of my own unimportance, at least
when it comes to the subject of slaying powerful monsters. I had little interest
in tagging along as a spectator or victim on a vampire hunting trip, and instead
planned on tackling something a little closer to my own personal scale. To that
end, I looked around for some help among the less experienced people present.
When I proposed a trip into the deep dark woods, Vivalin and Malaki readily
accepted my invitation. In fact, considering they really didn’t know me
at all, they probably accepted just a little too easily. Then again I can remember
not too long ago when I was the same. I am often accused of being both too trusting
and too reckless, so I’m not the best person to criticize that sort of
behavior in others.
There was a trail leading off into a gully that I had noticed earlier and wanted
to check out. On our way over to this we came across of bunch of other people
fighting a battle with a nasty nest of spiders. I considered continuing on,
but thought better of it and joined the battle. In the darkness I could not
even tell who I was helping out. It was all I could do to separate the good
guys from the spiders. We fought for about ten minutes, and then moved on once
all the spiders were defeated.
We crept up the trail that I had found and we had not gotten very far when we
came upon a small camp of orcs. There did not seem to be very many orcs around,
and they appeared to be rather lethargic and sleepy, so I judged our little
group to be capable of dealing with them.
Vivaline, Malaki and I had a quick whispered conversation where we formulated
a basic plan. I was going to try to sneak up on one of the orcs that appeared
to be napping, and after I took care of him we were all going to jump on the
next one. Unfortunately, the orc wasn’t sleeping as soundly as I first
thought, and they both jumped up and challenged us.
I told them that they were in the lands of Exeter, and that if they stuck around
they would end up getting hacked to bits by adventurers. I explained that if
they paid us 5 gold pieces, I would let them go their way and not tell everyone
at the tavern that there was a camp of big fat lazy orcs sitting around in the
woods with bags of gold. I really didn’t expect that to work, but I figured
I might as well give it a shot. The orcs considered the matter for a moment,
and decided that they would be better off taking their chances in attacking
us, which came as no real surprise.
The battle was joined, and Vivalin and I rushed the orcs. I’m not much
of a stand up fighter, and Vivalin was still pretty new to the profession, but
despite this we had little trouble defeating the orcs. I started thinking this
was going to be a cake walk when I few more orcs came out us from out of the
edge of the woods.
These orcs were also fairly weak, and I was feeling pretty good until I got
careless. I was running around trying to get behind an orc Vivalin was facing
and not paying close attention to the second orc, and when he swung at me he
caught me by surprise and knocked my sword out of me hand. The orc picked up
my sword, and now I was armed with nothing but a single throwing dagger. About
this time the big fat ugly boss orc decided to show up. The simple and easy
little battle was suddenly not so simple and easy any more.
What proceeded probably looked pretty stupid, and would have been funny to me
had I not been so anxious. The boss orc was swinging pretty darn hard, and without
my help I didn’t know if the two new guys could take her. I needed to get
my sword back, which meant I need to kill the orc that had it using nothing
but my throwing dagger. Throwing it right at his front wasn’t going to
accomplish much, so I need to get behind him. But whenever I would circle around
to the left, Vivalin would do the same and the orc would turn to face both of
us. I kept yelling “No, counter-clockwise! Counter-clockwise!” Eventually
we got our act together, and I pegged the orc a few times in the back with my
dagger and retrieved my sword.
By this time Vivalin already had to boss orc on the ropes, and it only took
a moment for all three of us to clobber her good. No more orcs showed up after
that, so we grabbed the loot we found on their bodies and walked back out of
the woods to split it up in the light. It turned out to be a pretty good haul.
We got a little bit of gold, four components, and a goofy looking candle holder
that Malaki detected as magic. We drew for the candle holder, and Malaki ended
up with it.
After taking on an entire camp of orcs on our own and coming away with a good
haul of treasure, I was feeling pretty cocky. Circumstances quickly stepped
in to return a healthy amount of humility to me, though. We headed back to the
tavern to find someone to help us identify the candle holder. Not ten feet from
the tavern we got ambushed by a bunch of shadows. We all panicked and ran in
three different directions. I managed to make it to the porch of the tavern
before I got pin, webbed, and blasted.
Luckily some people inside spotted the commotion and ran out on the porch and
scraped my messy carcass up and shoved it inside. I looked around and saw Vivalin
running in the other door, but Malaki didn’t make it inside. Vivalin said
she had no clue which way he ran, but almost certainly the shadows had gotten
him by now.
Several of us shouted that we needed help finding Malaki, but to our misfortune
there was something else going on over in one of the corners of the tavern involving
some of the more senior adventurers, and that held almost everyone’s attention.
I never did figure out what it was, but only a handful of people ran out to
help us find Malaki.
The shadows were still there, and I saw a group of two of them approaching from
off in the distance by some huts. I reasoned that they must be coming back from
having chased Malaki off in that direction, so I eased my way around some buildings
to search over there. It took a little while to get there without being spotted
by the shadows. I searched around but couldn’t find anyone. After I was
sure that five minutes was well past I made my way back to the tavern. I was
relieved to find Malaki already there. He had been killed only about 20 yards
from the tavern, but he fell behind a building in the opposite direction I had
chosen to search. He was found and lifed by Glenn Stormwolf with only a few
moments to spare.
I took Malaki and Vivalin over to the celestial circle to get their item identified,
and then I went back to the tavern. I spent a little time eating some food and
talking some things over with some people, and then I was told that we were
heading out to take on some kind chaos creatures. Everyone gathered up and marched
out of town.
No one seemed to be exactly certain what it was that we were supposed to battling,
and that ended up costing us a little bit of time. When we arrived at our destination
and found ourselves fighting spiders, we realized that this was going to be
the big battle against Krateen. Unfortunately Pyroxia had the special Fae Webbing,
and Ruendil had the formal magic scrolls that were going to be used to destroy
her, and both of them had left those items back in town because they didn’t
realize that this was going to be the battle against Krateen. They hot footed
it back to town to get the missing items while the rest of us waded into the
spiders.
There was an endless supply of spiders pouring out of every little hidey hole
and crevasse, but we didn’t have too much trouble with those. Krateen was
another matter. She was pretty huge and swung massive amounts of damage that
would get through even a parry or a shield block. Luckily she didn’t move
too fast. She was surrounded by a couple of larger spiders that were pretty
darn tough.
Once Krateen would take a certain amount of damage should would rift away. A
moment or two later she would rift back in a short distance away and attack
again. This happened three or four times before Pyroxia finally showed up with
the Fae Webbing and covered her up with the sticky strands. I don’t know
if that weakened her or just made it so that she couldn’t rift away, but
a couple of moment later she lay dead on the floor.
The battle wasn’t over just yet. There were still a bunch of lesser spiders
attacking, and some of the adventurers began inscribing a circle and casting
some sort of formal magic ceremony on Krateen’s body. I suppose that was
necessary to kill her off once and for all. When the spell finally completed,
Krateen’s body gave a nice little explosion, and that was the end of her
and all the rest of the little spiders.
We headed back to town and did the standard treasure split. I was a bit wore
out at this time, so I took a seat in the tavern and ate some food. When I got
up to throw away some trash, I was somewhat annoyed to see that some sort of
order elemental had come into the tavern and sat down at my seat. I went and
got a cup of coffee and sat down beside it so that I could keep an eye on my
things, which were piled in front of the order elemental.
The elemental held a conversation with Kyth Wild. All weekend long we had been
finding strange colored sticks being carried around by various monsters. We
had been instructed to turn these over to Kyth. He was collecting them, because
they were going to be needed in some fashion to confront a large fire elemental
later on. The order elemental was taking stock of Kyth’s stick collection
to see if it was complete.
As I understood the conversation, the Fire Lord’s defenses were darn near
impregnable. He was guarded by a group of extremely powerful fire knights whose
defenses and fire powers were immense. By assembling the various collected sticks,
the order elemental was able to fashion various charms which incrementally decreased
these fire knight’s powers until they were killable by mere mortals. It
turned out that Kyth was a single stick short, but after a quick search he discovered
that Algorian was carrying the missing stick.
It was still pretty early, and it didn’t look like anything was about to
happen for a bit, so I decided to make one more trip into the woods to see what
I could find. This time I stumbled onto a clearing that had a bunch of suspicious
looking humanoid tracks crossing it. Since I lacked the tracking skill I headed
back to the tavern to find someone who did have it. As it turned out, I ran
into Kes almost immediately.
I think she was still more than a little peeved at not being invited to the
vampire hunting expedition earlier, and I had hardly begun to ask her about
the tracks before she was dragging me back into the woods. I brought her back
to the clearing and she began to follow the tracks.
It was pretty slow going. She was trying to use enough light to follow the tracks
but not too much light that she got noticed. We crept along slowing as she alternately
used and put away her liquid light until we came to a set of crumbling buildings.
Here she started to spot blood on the trail. We followed it for a short distance
further until we spotted a body slumped at the base of a tree.
Kes approached the body, and when she leaned over it jumped up and began casting
spells. I rushed forward and ate a web spell almost immediately. As soon as
I got splatted by the web something rifted in behind me and imprisoned me for
good measure. The thing that imprisoned me started to berate Kes for not trying
hard enough to take care of some sort of problem. It seemed that the two of
them knew each other.
The creature then rifted me out and dropped me on a hill somewhere on what I
judged to be the Fae plane. He came back a short time later and began to berate
me. I could see now that the creature was a fuzzy sparkly humanoid bear. I was
told later that it was a Pooka. The Pooka spun me around and pointed to a distant
line of trees and told me that this was the dreaded Dark Forest, and that due
to us Tyrrans it was steadily expanding.
The Pooka eventually dropped the imprison and held a long involved conversation
with me that was part lecture, part rant, and part lesson. The story that he
told was that the Dark Forest here on the Fae Plan was steadily growing, and
that it needed to be stopped. Something within the forest was drawing power
from planar rifts. At some point earlier there had been a rift between the planes
of Dream and Nightmare. A third side of that rift connected to somewhere in
the Dark Forest, and something there was drawing power from that rift to expand
the forest. That rift was closed, but a similar rift immediately opened between
Light and Dark, once again also connected to the Dark Forest. The Pooka said
that this rift had been closed earlier in the evening, presumably when Krateen
was destroyed. But immediately afterwards a rift opened between Life and Death.
I could never exactly get straight who was responsible for the rifts. The Pooka
seemed to hint that the Dark Forest expansion was being caused by some ancient
renegade Dark Fae Princes and Princesses. But he also kept blaming the rifts
themselves on us Tyrrans, and scolded me to make people make it stop. I promised
that I would do what I could to influence people to stop creating planar rifts,
and that seemed to satisfy the Pooka. He then rifted me back to the tavern.
All things considered, I think I got off pretty lightly.
I went into the tavern and found Kes to assure her that I was fine. I was told
that Seronia, Algorian, Pyroxia and a few others were sitting in the corner
of the tavern discussing the whole elemental plane rift problem, and that they
might wish to hear of my conversation with the Pooka. I walked over and explained
what I had been told, but I believe I didn’t really add anything new to
what they already knew.
Shortly afterwards the town was assembled to march off and confront the Fire
Lord that Kyth had been collecting sticks for all weekend. After a short time
of traveling we reached a cave full of lava and a series of short rickety stone
bridges. The first part of the battle was a little tricky. Due to the flimsy
nature of the stone bridges we had to be broken up into teams of no more than
five and sent across one team at a time. As each team made their way across
the bridges they were attacked by some lesser fire elementals.
This portion of the battle turned out to be more time consuming than difficult.
A few of the groups had a moment of trouble or two, but for the most part everyone
made it across without too much difficulty. Once everyone was assembled on the
far sides of the bridges we were confronted by an enormous door. Kyth did something
which opened the door, and scorching heat and light blast forth from the opening.
Through squinting eyes we could see the large molten shapes of around a dozen
fire knights that seemed to burn with the heat of a thousand suns. Then Kyth
pulled out the charms he had be given, and it was like a bucket of water had
been thrown on them.
We all charged in at the now greatly reduced fire knights, and moments later
they had been snuffed like a bunch of cheap candles. The Fire Lord himself was
at the back of the cavern, and everyone dogpiled onto him next. I’m sure
of the exact circumstances of his defeat. Kyth spent some time interrogating
him, and he came away with both a magic sword and some sort of useful information.
The Fire Lord was yelling at us to leave his realm as we walked out, so I know
he didn’t die.
Things pretty much wound down from there. A couple more spiders showed up here
and there, and I believe the Lord of Winter put in another appearance, but I
avoided each of these situations pretty easily. I had participated in my fair
share of events, and gotten more than my fair share of treasure, and I pretty
much pushed my luck to the breaking point. The last thing I needed was to get
splatted by a spider right at the end of the gathering. I retired for the evening
a little while later, and that ends my tale of the first gathering in Exeter
on the Winter season.