Exeter has been described by Deputy Sheriff “Action” Jack Fidian as the worst place on Tyrra. While I think that may be an overstatement, it is safe to say that Exeter tends to be a very dangerous place. Nonetheless, I headed there this past weekend because Her Excellency Viscountess Kiera Zobrist and Good Dame Knight Pathynia Domamore were both supposed to be in town, and I needed to speak with both of them about some urgent matters. Also, as Assistant Guildmaster of the Exeter Healer’s Guild, it was my duty to be there anyway.
Things got started pretty quickly, too. I hadn’t been in town for five
minutes when undead burst into the tavern. Together with Anya Shadowrunner and
Jack Fidian, I managed to take down the undead, but then we were attacked by
constructs. They were very difficult to beat, especially since my weapon only
did minimal damage to them. They took down everyone in the tavern except me,
and I threw up an imprison spell to keep myself safe. As soon as they left the
tavern, I dropped the imprison and managed to get everyone up. The constructs
then came back, but Sheriff Stephanos helped us take down the constructs, and
we learned an interesting fact. Apparently the constructs were not constructs
in the traditional golem sense, but instead they were machines that had goblins
inside piloting them. Once the machine was destroyed, the goblin itself popped
out and was easily dispatched.
Now, some people claimed that these goblins were operating the machine against
their will, but I do not think that such was the case. For one thing, if they
were doing it against their will, then why were they driving the constructs
instead of just letting them sit there? The constructs were actively attacking
us, and for that I can only blame the goblin pilots. Second of all, when the
constructs were destroyed, oftentimes the goblins jumped out and yelled, “For
the glory of Irving!” Apparently, Irving was the mechanical genius and
necromancer who had created the constructs, and if the goblins were fighting
for his glory, one can only assume that they were hostile to the townsfolk.
Either way, we soon decided that the tavern was undefendable, especially since
one of the doors had been removed and replaced with a wall, which meant that
the tavern now only had two doors to go in and out of. The entire group of us
headed outside, and then met up with another group of townsfolk who had just
arrived. We fought off some more undead, and things seemed to be going pretty
well. Lord Exeter arrived in town, as did Viscountess Kiera with her new group
(later named TAK). The members of TAK besides the Viscountess were Sgt. Anthony
Darkforge and Sir Marcus Gunnar. Also, Squire Amra of Cumberland in Ravenholt
was in town, as was Canaan, a gypsy who is apparently a friend of Mario and
a generally nice guy.
Squire Glenn Stormwolf, Jack Fidian, and some other people chased some undead
around the corner of a building, while I stood watching with Leif Wraithfire
and Joseph Mooric. Joseph predicted that they were walking right into a trap,
and sure enough, he was right. By the time we got there, they were all down,
and we were looking at none other than Mordakai Pennance, the scourge of Tyrra.
I bolted back to town, gathered up Lord Exeter, TAK, House Silvercord, and anyone
else who was available, and led a force back to Mordakai’s lair.
We fought a pitched battle with Mordakai and his undead minions. It was difficult,
but not unmanageable. We finally managed to take Mordakai down, but I am not
sure who the one who actually knocked him down was. Having learned our lesson
from the last time, we kept him first-aided until such time as we could get
his bottle DFM’d. However, at one point His Excellency Silvercord decided
that we should cure light and sleep Mordakai so that he could not choose to
die. Mordakai took the cure light wounds spell and was healed (which if nothing
else proves that he isn’t undead, or so I think), and then when we tried
to hit him with the sleep spell he dodged it and ran off. Sgt. Anthony Darkforge
took off after him, and hit him many times in the back as he was running. By
the time I caught up with the two of them, Mordakai had been taken down. Roland
the Wolven first aided Mordakai, but then he chose to die. We decided that the
middle of a road was not a safe place to first-aid him, and so we resolved to
move him into the Lochwood cabin, behind the ward there.
We stopped to first aid him every thirty seconds or so, to make sure that he
couldn’t die on us and go back to his spirit bottle. When we finally got
him into the cabin, I took over the first-aiding, and ended up first-aiding
him consistently for the next fifteen minutes or so. In the meantime, Viscount
Silvercord brought Mordakai’s bottle across to the circles in town and
DFM’d it. It required an earth DFM, and I believe it was Lady Pyroxia who
cast it. After that was done, Viscount Silvercord came back and delivered the
killing blow to Mordakai, sending his spirit out of his body for the rest of
existence, or so we hope. Afterwards, we gave Mordakai’s body to Jack Fidian,
and I believe that he cut Mordakai’s face off as a gift for Kaede Eveningstar,
or such is what I have been told, at any rate.
After that entire situation was finished, TAK went with Squire Amra and Canaan
off on an adventure. I understand that they fought fire elementals, but I am
not sure if they were on Tyrra, on the plane of fire, or on the infernal plane.
If one wanted more information, they would have to talk to one of the people
who were there.
Once they got back from that, everyone settled in to the cabin for the night.
Beryl Qain decided to move into the Lochwood cabin at the invitation of Prince
Alejandro Sparras of Ni’Wrad. I escorted her across the town to get her
stuff, with help from Squire Anferny and Town Guard of Lochwood.
The highlight of the evening, though, was getting the chance to catch up with
Squire Amra. I hadn’t seen him since my old days in Ravenholt, and we sat
down to catch up on things over a cup of earl grey tea. I must say that I find
it amazing that he is still a squire, two years or more after I originally met
him. He is one of the most talented adventurers on Tyrra and will make a great
noble when he receives his title.
As usual, I was the last adventurer asleep, and the first adventurer awake the
next morning. I wandered outside, and got attacked by four armored spiders,
which are among the more nasty creatures I have ever seen. They can do a bunch
of physical webs, a bunch of physical confines, and a bunch of magic paralysis
spells. They can take a ton of damage, and they are completely unaffected by
spells. As you might imagine, I did the smart thing and ran way. I got into
the woods (I am very glad that I am faster than spiders) and the spiders stopped
chasing me.
Meanwhile, two scavengers came into town. One was a ferret, and the other was
a koala bear. Apparently, the koala bear had been sent by Beryl’s secret
admirer to serenade her. Personally, I think that Beryl’s secret admirer
must actually hate her, because the serenading was painful. It woke everyone
in the cabin up, and there was more than one suggestion to kill the koala. Thankfully,
though, it finally finished.
We sent it on its way, along with the ferret, and then the armored spiders came
back. One of them camped outside our residence, and so Prince Sparras, Beryl,
and I went to take it out. It turned out that they were weak against gasses,
and so Beryl was able to take it down while Prince Sparras and I failed. Of
course, since we hardly had any gasses, going after them directly was not a
good idea. Andris Belmont showed up and advocated that we go attack the remaining
three, but Prince Sparras and I both vetoed the idea. It would be like walking
right into an ambush.
Eventually, Viscountess Kiera, Lord Exeter, Sir Gunnar, Squire Amra, and Anthony
Darkforge joined us outside, and at that point the armored spiders came back
yet again and attacked us. The armored spiders were entirely too powerful and
we lost badly. I ran off into the woods yet again, and threw up a circle of
power to save myself from the armored spiders. They walked away, and I dropped
the circle and ran through the woods. I was trying to find a way to get back
to save everyone, but I knew I was seriously outgunned. I had to throw up another
circle of power to save myself when some spiders got on my trail again, but
eventually I managed to drop that circle and make it back to the road. I ran
down the road to find House Silvercord, which was staying on the other side
of the camp. I found a large group of people coming up the path. I asked them
for help, but before we could do anything, we were attacked by large alligators.
We tried to fight them off, but then the spiders began filtering in. We threw
up yet another circle of power, and managed to keep ourselves safe inside it.
However, we were no closer to saving everyone on the field.
However, the messenger of Chridor showed up and shooed the armored spiders off
into the woods. We were then able to drop the Circle and save most everyone,
and in fact I do not think anyone resurrected out of the situation, which was
fortunate.
After that incident was finished with, Her Excellency Viscountess Kiera had
a meeting of the Healer’s Guilds and associated persons in the tavern,
and we talked over ongoing situations in the Duchy. Much to her credit, the
Viscountess provided breakfast for everyone present, which was cereal and milk
and absolutely delicious strawberries. After breakfast was finished, the messenger
of Chridor informed me that Chridor himself wanted to speak with Lily (Adrian
of Quentari’s sister) and myself.
We went to speak with Chridor himself, and we discovered that Chridor is in
fact an order elemental, and he wanted to make certain that the Hearts of Chridor
stayed out of the hands of anyone who would try to put them together. Chridor
also revealed to us that there was a fifth and final Heart, and that it was
currently on the plane of lightning. He asked for our help in retrieving it.
He asked Lily to choose some people to bring with her, and me to choose some
people to bring with me. I brought TAK along with me, along with Lord Exeter,
Canaan, and Squire Amra.
We were hoping that Lord Exeter might be able to reason with the lightning elementals,
being very connected to lightning itself. Unfortunately, as soon as we got there,
he wound up rifting out, and we were forced to fight the elementals by ourselves.
Squire Amra and Canaan both opened up element’s fury cantrips, and they
were invaluable in the ensuing fight. We fought our way across the plane, and
eventually came to a building. I was busy fighting outside, so I don’t
know what happened in the building, but to the best of my understanding, the
Heart was eventually obtained by someone. We were then sort of stuck on the
plane for five or ten minutes with no way to get home before Chridor showed
up again and brought us back too Tyrra.
When we got back to Tyrra, Nicola Serife and I were sought out by Fachtna, who
wanted the Hearts. There was a large meeting between Chridor, Fachtna, Lily,
Nicola, and I, and nothing came out of it.
I then returned back to the Lochwood cabin, and was recruited to help His Excellency
Count Lyonesse with rescuing a member of the Court on another plane, or in another
reality, or something like that. We assembled a group consisting of His Excellency,
Squire Anferny, Town Guard, Canaan, Sir Gunnar, Lord Whitehall, Lily, Lord Exeter,
and myself, and went to the alternate plane. We lost, and badly. In fact, I
don’t know that I have ever gotten beaten quite as badly as we did there.
We had to fight against an alternate version of Lochwood, and they were more
powerful than us and more numerous than us. To make things even worse, we got
split up, and it wasn’t even close. We all died, but some force stopped
us from resurrecting, and in fact we were just thrown back to Tyrra.
We were also given a chance to re-organize and go back to fight again. However,
before we could do that, His Excellency Lyonesse stripped Lord Whitehall of
his lands, making him only Sir Kail Aspen, and also stripped Sir Gunnar of his
colours, although they were later restored by negotiations between Count Lyonesse
and Viscountess Kiera.
Before we went again, we grabbed extra people to come. Specifically, we grabbed
House Silvercord. Guildmaster Rastlin shined especially well in the battle,
and we romped over them this time. It wasn’t even close. We managed to
save the person who needed to be saved, and for the most part all was right
again in the world.
That afternoon Squire Kyth and Lady Kes arrived in town, and I was glad to see
them. It’s always good to fight with them, and this time was no exception.
Most of the afternoon was pretty slow, but right before we got to the point
where the magicks reset themselves, we were attacked by Mushdor, the giant mushroom.
I had heard of it before, but had never seen it. It was indeed quite possibly
the most powerful beast I have ever seen outside of Garn. It didn’t seem
to die no matter how much damage was done to it. For example, right when it
came out, Count Lyonesse dumped three slays and a blade fury into it, and it
didn’t even seem scratched.
It had tentacles coming out everywhere, and shields were useless against the
blows struck by the tentacles. I dropped my shield and began purely healing
people. I had to burn two full healing pools to keep everyone up during that
fight, and a good amount of that went to Count Lyonesse. We began realizing
that attacking Mushdor itself was useless. Instead, we attacked the tentacles
and cut them off one by one. However, Mushdor had put a Circle in town, and
used it to heal itself when it needed to. That made it take even longer to take
down the huge beast.
Finally, though, we managed to kill the mushroom. However, it must have been
putting spores out into the air, because after the battle many adventurers began
getting sick, and then tentacles began bursting out of them. Some people considered
the tentacles cute and tried to protect them, but I realized that they indicated
that Mushdor was still alive and was trying to put itself back together, and
so I began killing the tentacles as soon as they showed up, with permission
from Lord Exeter to do so. Some people got upset at me for doing this, but after
the tentacles began merging together, people realized that I was correct and
Mushdor was indeed trying to re-form.
After that, we killed the tentacles off pretty quickly, and the Mushdor situation
seemed to be dealt with.
After all of that occurred, Squire Kyth asked me to help him do some business
for Count Genovia of Richland. A group consisting of Squire Kyth, Lady Kes,
Caliphar, Nikki, Ramsus, Andris, Lily, and I went into a cave to retrieve some
papers. Now, of course you know that it couldn’t have been as easy as just
walking in, picking up the papers, and leaving. Instead, we were attacked by
skeletons and will o’ the wisps.
Will o’ the wisps have an ability to charm, which we knew would be a problem
for the non-elves in our group. Hence, we tried to take out the will o’
the wisps as quickly as possible. It was not easy, but we did okay. We managed
to fight our way to a center room, in which we ended up facing a small hobling.
When he vampire charmed Squire Kyth, we had a pretty good idea that he wasn’t
an ordinary hobling. I threw a bunch of destroy undead spells at him, but he
phased them all. He then phased his way back through the wall to the chamber,
and we decided that we didn’t have nearly the firepower to take him out.
We did manage to get the papers, though, with a well placed disarm spell, and
then we ran back out of the chamber and out of the cave.
When we got out of the cave, we found Canaan there waiting for us, which I appreciated.
He told us that he had heard us in the cave and had decided to hang around just
in case we needed him. We wandered back to town with him, and when we got back
we split up our meager earnings from the adventure. However, I was concerned
with the fact that the town was eerily quiet. We could not find House Silvercord,
and House Lochwood and TAK had both left town. If my estimates were even close,
that meant that we were just about the only people in town. Given this fact,
I felt that we needed a defensible position, and the Guilds were the only defensible
position I could think of, and so I moved everyone towards the Guilds.
As we were waiting at the Guilds, we heard screaming from outside, and we ran
out to find House Silvercord and two newcomers to town, Lissia Ashwood and Dragnar,
engaged in battle with Irving’s minions. I told everyone to just get everyone
up and then get out, because even with House Silvercord, we didn’t have
enough power to fight the never-ending stream of death knights and liches that
Irving was sending at us.
However, as usually happens, no one listened. Once we got everyone up, everyone
continued to fight, and we lost. If you notice, losing was a constant trend
at this particular gathering. Well, once again we got bailed out, as some goblins
from the town of Goblonia showed up in town and healed us up. By that point,
Irving had already managed to blow himself up, and then he had escaped with
some of his minions.
We re-organized the town, and I went back to the Guilds to cast some formals
and do some identifications. I also got a chance to know Lissia and Dragnar,
who seem to be good people, and I hope to see them around more often. Lissia,
as it turns out, is the sister of Daenerys, an old friend of mine from Neridia.
I had a good time reminiscing with them about old times in Ravenholt, Neridia,
and Avendale.
Finally, TAK got back into town, but I was informed that Lochwood had left town
for good, as had Alejandro’s Court of Ni’wrad. This became a problem
a little later, when we had to go in to fight a den of spiders, which had something
to do with Boo. I don’t know the exact story, but I do know that we lost,
yet again.
The spiders were capable of swinging blows that hurt as much as a lightning
bolt and could paralyze you as well, and before long the entire town was paralyzed.
I was actually fairly lucky. I got paralyzed, but at least I was still conscious
(though barely).
Finally, I am not sure what happened, but people began becoming unparalyzed
and healed, and we fought back against the spiders with greater fury. Eventually,
with that second wind, we were able to beat them, and we managed to do whatever
it was we were there for. Or, at the very least, I assume we accomplished whatever
we were there for. No one actually tells me these things.
After the battle was over, I went patrolling the town with Lord Exeter and Canaan.
A man dressed all in white jumped out of the bushes and screamed, “I am
Buford the necromancer! I have come to destroy the town of Exeter with my hordes
of undead!” He then looked around, and exclaimed, “Where are my zombies???”
Realizing that he was obviously too incompetent to really be a necromancer,
Lord Exeter spoke unto Buford, “I will give you a chance to save yourself.
One of the three of us is a noble, one of us is a squire, and one of us is a
commoner. If you can name which is which, we will let you go.”
Buford pointed behind us, and shouted, “The noble is… OVER THERE!”
None of us looked behind us, but Buford ran off into the woods anyway.
A few moments later, a zombie came out and attacked us. After we cut it down,
we found a silver when we searched it. We heard Buford yell from the woods,
“Darn it! I need to stop sending in my zombies with silver in their pants.”
About thirty second later, we were attacked by a zombie with no pants. We cut
it down, and it had no treasure. A few moments after that, we were attacked
by another zombie. When we cut the third one down, it had a gold in its shirt.
We heard Buford yell from the woods, “Darn it! I have to stop sending in
my zombies with gold in their shirts!”
After that, there were no more zombies, but Buford yelled at us, “My ninja
plan of sending in one zombie at a time isn’t working. I’ll get you
next time, Exeter! Next time!”
We discussed it amongst ourselves, and realized that Buford could not have been
sending in the zombies, because he was too incompetent. Obviously, he had a
caster in the woods with him who had like a ten column earth, but was ritually
flawed so that he could only cast create undead spells.
At any rate, the incident with Buford was the end of the gathering, and the
next day we all packed up and headed home, having once again saved Exeter from
certain doom. Or something like that.
Scribed by Seronia on the 31st day of March in the year 604.