An editor’s note, if you will: the post below is the summary of
our last game, sort of, because it ended in the midst of an extended
battle. I don’t really have a mechanism for Whitten having
written a journal entry between rounds, though, y’know? So there
you have it. It’s what Whitten thought after the last round of
the night. We play again this weekend, so next week I’ll post
something more normal. Read the rest of this entry »
We are fighting Alec, the halfling we came here to rescue.
It’s all rather hard to explain.
This morning, we discussed what to do with The Ruins. I don’t know what they’re called, so that’s what they’re called now.
We agreed we should seal them off. Adric though we should ask the
Lothandrians and the Kelemvorians to dispatch some troops to guard the
place, but Rock worried we’d just be attracting attention to it.
I advocated just sealing it shut and leaving it be for now, as did
Badl, Nigel and others. Badl very rightly emphasized that we first need
to seal off the entrance from the Underdark. He and Nigel were
able to magically seal the place and then Badl disguised the entrance
and even covered over the door to The Tomb. I spent the morning
studying the observation deck so that I can safely teleport
there. That gives us two points inside – the main cave and the
first observation deck – to which we can go in an instant.
Adric summoned a magical breakfast for us, and together we debated and
discussed our next steps. Badl thinks we need to consult with
someone more knowledgeable about the ways of the world, particularly
the ancient world, and I wholeheartedly agree. He suggested
Candlekeep, the headquarters of a god of runes and writings.
Adric suggested Elmwood, where there’s a temple to Oghma that owes the
Tinker Trading Company a favor or two. We tentatively discussed
going first to Elmwood (by way of Elventree), then to Candlekeep, then
possibly to Myth Drannor – Nigel’s favorite destination of them all due
to its potential for slaying any number of Drow.
Ultimately, though, the question of where to go next rested on what we
were going to do with Alec. Most people in the party didn’t trust
him, though I personally felt that all he was guilty of was adventuring, but
we had absolutely zero grounds to hold him captive or otherwise
imprison him. We decided that we really needed a better sense of
how well we could trust him before we made a decision, so we sat him
down and Adric and I explained that we knew that there were people
after Alec and that we felt strongly that he was, one way or another,
central to how all this was going to play out in the long run. If
he would let us question him, as a show of good faith, and we came away
from it feeling we could fully trust him, we promised we would tell him
everything we’d learned and take him with us so that we could offer him
better protection than he’d had before we got here.
Alec gracious agreed, on the condition that he be able to read my mind
while I read his. I saw no problem with this, and so he and I
took off all our magical equipment and sat down opposite one another
while Rock, Badl, Adric, Nigel and Katarina prepared to ask him
questions. Bonzo – a perfect gentleman, as always – stood by
holding my stuff while Nigel carried Alec’s. Alec and I opened
our minds to one another, and before we started I said I’d like to do a
quick head-count since we knew we’d already been magically spied on
once already. I went around the circle – quite surprised to learn
I could see nothing of the minds of Badl, Nigel and Katarina – as
everyone thought their names at me.
The second surprise was that Rodeo, Alec’s ape companion, thought his name at me.
The third surprise was that there was an extra mind belonging to someone as yet unseen.
I called out that someone was amongst us without our knowledge and
Nigel and Adric asked where. I could locate his general location,
but nothing more. I cast a spell to see through invisibility and
Nigel and Adric each dropped a dispel in the area. They did not
reveal our unknown guest, but their spells did have one effect we
hadn’t expected.
Rodeo turned from an ape into an enormous, coal-black dragon.
Really, that’s when the fighting started. Alec was quick to his
feet, two knives in his hands, and he used them to stab Katarina in the
back. Everyone stood there stunned for a moment, and then the
walls of the very cave shook as we fought back. The dragon spat a
stream of acid that struck me and struck Bonzo, and Alec was a blur of
darts and knives and all manner of hostility. Nigel and I were
dropping fireballs – mine sonic – and though we clearly split and
cracked the scales of the dragon, Alec was able to dance nimbly out of
the way of everything we could throw at them. Adric summoned
forth shards of sacred light that slit the dragon’s skin open – and
again, Alec stepped between them like puddles the day after a
rain. Badl tried to turn them both into various harmless
creatures to no effect. Katarina tried to shoot the dragon, but
her bolts just shattered on its hide. Her pet shadow, however,
hid in the floor underneath the dragon and popped up now and again to
grab its flesh and do whatever terrible thing it does to sap a
creature’s strength. As Badl and Adric tried to surround Alec
with monsters they’d summoned and Rock waded in to take care of the
dragon with his own sword, we realized more and more that while we were
clearly able to best Rodeo, Alec had barely taken a scratch.
Battle raged.
For all the songs I’ve sung in one bar or another about the glories of
war and the lights that fill the sky when swords clash and armies
barrel across a field at one another, wizards at their backs summoning
the energies of other worlds to split their ranks and slay their men,
words ultimately fail the real thing, don’t they?
Eventually, Badl had pinned the dragon to the ceiling with a tree he’d
summoned from a feather, and even as the dragon managed to free itself,
Badl pointed a finger at Alec and said, “Bullfrog,” and Alec was no
more than a croaking lump on the floor. The dragon landed around
- but, sadly, not on - him, and we drew a breath of
encouragement from the knowledge that now it was almost over.
Though with his last act Alec had imprisoned Adric, Badl and Rock in a
cage of force, and Nigel was almost out of spells and Katarina had
found the wand of lightning to be of no more use against Alec than any
of our other tricks, Greebo was flitting through the air around the
dragon, trying one more time to land a spell that would suck the life
force from it and deliver it to me as a small down payment on what
we’re owed for having been duped into guarding a dragon and its friend
and Alec, himself, was neutralized.
That’s when Alec – the real Alec – stood up.
I do not know what he is. Where a frog had been, now there was an
elf. Remember how I said that the elf we’d seen in the recorded
message – Behold, young princes, the greatest victory of your people,
the recording from at least 50,000 years ago – was the elfiest elf I’d
ever seen?
Alec is that kind of elf.
When he stood up, turning back into himself, leaving behind the frog
shape Badl had given him, he wore jeweled armor and had long hair and
ears that could cut a man’s flesh with their tips. He held a
sword in his hand, and though Adric had silenced the area around Alec
as an impediment to magic, we could see his mouth move as he shook his
sword at us. He is angry. His pet dragon is nearly dead,
and moments from finally dying. His secret is out. His
unwitting accomplices have turned on him. We do not yet know what
his intentions may be, but with a dragon like that as his friend and
pet, it can’t honestly be good, can it?
I do not know what is going to happen next.
Badl is trapped behind a wall of force. Though he is a fierce
warrior and a wise druid, I do not know what he can do. To be
honest, I do not know what most druids can do. Badl is a reserved
sort, and he has the whiff of a fiercely independent streak about
him. I respect this. His ape is a gentleman, now reduced to
whimpering in a side tunnel and thanking the stars it still has its
life. Badl is faithful to his cause, faithful to his trusted
friend, faithful to his god’s work. His actions teach us that
there is a place in the world for everyone and everything. I do
not want to lose that.
Nigel is angry. Nigel, in the few days I’ve been returned to his
company, is always angry. I should clarify that not once have I
seen him lose his temper or raise his voice, but then, he has the worst
rage of all: the kind that simmers over-long. Ten years of
enslavement to the Drow have robbed him of what I remember as a more
carefree sense of daring. He is still daring, make no mistake,
but he is bitter and hurt and in his short time of freedom has not
shaken the grudge that he carries from the decade he spent
underground. I do not fault him for that.
Adric is a shining light in the world. He has told us little of
his history despite being entirely open about his beliefs and
opinions. A part of me has started to suspect that his past
saddens him when he dwells on it – or would if he were to do so, which
I doubt he does. He looks always to the future, what to do next,
where we go from here. He does not care what has gone
before. In his eyes, every morning is a fresh chance at
greatness. I aspire to that.
Rock is my best friend. He is the one member of the TTC truly
left to me. I have known him for years, fought for him and beside
him more times than I could every try to remember in that time. I
owe him my life easily a hundred times over. I have watched him
grow from a naive boy with a taste for the outdoors into a skilled
leader with goals and ambitions and a vision he finds worth
protecting. I envy that.
Katarina remains a mystery to me. I do not know her, and sense
that she does not want us to know her too well. Katarina has
secrets and a friend made of shadows and something she wants very badly
- why else would she be here, I sometimes think, if there weren’t
something she felt she has to have that might be at the end of some road we now walk? I sympathize with that.
I stand here and look around as Alec shakes his sword and his face
contorts with rage and his jaws flap in silent fury. My cat is
about to kill his dragon. I am about to try to kill him, or free
my friends, or something, I know not what. What I know is that he
threatens us – threatens these people, and by extension, threatens
everyone I know and love. I think of Gerhard. We exchanged
notes this morning about the reasons why The Tomb would be an alloy of
iron and starmetal (he reports that any alloy of starmetal is weaker
than starmetal, so he doesn’t understand why anyone would
bother). If Alec kills us all, will he find that note, hunt down
Gerhard wherever he is for fear of his knowledge of this place?
Alec has heard us tell tales of our past exploits. Will he hunt
down Rock’s wife? Will he try to kill Berol, to whom I am tied in
a web of friendship and debts too complex for me to describe?
Will he, on a lark, decide to track down all members of the TTC to slay
them in their beds before they can ever come seeking revenge?
The core belief of my religion is that beauty justifies its own
existence. There are people in the world who think this shallow,
and I don’t spend much time talking religion with those people.
But our dirty little secret, the thought none of us bring up around the
temples very often, is that old saw about the eye of the
beholder. I think of these people standing here with me, frozen
for a moment in frustration and exhaustion and rage, and I think that
they are beautiful. Sune may not have much use for all of their
exteriors, but this is beautiful in its own, weird way, isn’t it?
We hike up and down the world, digging up secrets and seeing the past’s
past come back to haunt the now and the future, and I think it’s
beautiful in a way our scriptures do not yet address.
I think of all this and more, see Alec shaking his blade at us, his
mouth open in an angry grimace, and I think I know what I want to do
with the rest of my life.
I want to live forever.
I want to protect the world until the world, itself, ends.
We are fighting Alec. I have no idea what’s about to happen, but
whatever it is, it’s important. I want to stamp him out, turn
this place into a tomb not just of two dragons and an ancient elf, but
of the dangers of the past, the horrors our world must have faced and
then forgotten. I want to draw a line in the sand and tell that
past: you go no further. You do not get to go beyond this
point. Our world doesn’t need you. Our world does
need us, though. That’s why we’re here. Read the rest of this entry »
When I wrote my last entry, earlier this afternoon, Nigel and I had
just jumped back to Sessuadra to check out the ancient elven university
there. Snowdown, in her new role as the TTC’s spirit companion,
was happy to tell us where we could find the university though she,
herself, had never been there. Upon our return to the city, we
asked the priests if they were familiar with that area and one of
Berol’s men, a gentleman named William who’s quite handy with a sword,
told us that the Kelemvorians had never explored the old university
because no monsters seemed to come from there; thus, it was never a
high priority. I reminded him that the fact nothing came out of
the old university doesn’t mean there’s nothing in it, and he
agreed, offering to accompany us on our trek. We were glad for
the companionship and so off we went through Sessuadra.
I want to take a moment to describe Sessuadra as it is now. Were
I not there myself, I think I would not believe it. The main
temple complex is cleaned up, free of rubble and filled with
the tents and barracks of Berol’s people and the supplicants who have
come here seeking aid or, more often, a peaceful place to spend their
final days. The time was, though, when Sessuadra was where we
went every time there was upper-case T Trouble. If it wasn’t gargoyles, it was nagas. If it wasn’t nagas, it was giants. If it wasn’t giants, it was worse.
That place, and the haywire magic that surrounded it, had spent
hundreds if not thousands of years housing every type of foul critter
you can name. It wasn’t a ghost town, it was a monster town.
Every corner and every empty doorway and every crumbling alley was just
another form of death waiting to claim us.
Trust me on that one. I died there, once.
Today, however, Nigel and William and I walked for well over an hour,
right through the middle of downtown Sessuadra and out into one of the
outlying quarters and we saw… nothing. No one. It was
completely silent. It wasn’t just that it was calm, or that it
wasn’t dangerous. It’s that the city is dead. Stop
for a moment and consider your own town – the village where you were
born, or the city where you live now. Imagine yourself walking
its streets and there simply being no other living thing at all.
I almost wanted the monsters back.
William led us to where the University is, though, and we started out
by checking the remaining guardhouse at its gates. We found a
whole lot of nothing, save one small pool of unbelievably foul brown
liquid. We agreed to come back and fireball it, just in case,
because any adventurer worth their salt knows one does not leave standing pools of unusual liquid just lying around, waiting to eat someone. Honestly.
There really didn’t seem to be any signs of anything at all creeping
around, though, so we went right to the biggest building we could see,
inside the gates of the University. It was a big, marble
structure, its west wing collapsed, with a 2nd story sitting atop the
middle of the first floor. There was no writing on the building,
but we made our way up the front steps and into the lobby and there we
found a plaque: Sessuadra A&M, EST. 231. The
date was in some elven reckoning that doesn’t really mean anything to
us, but the alphabet was ancient and the plaque was half-covered in
some grody moss. We made our way into the building proper and
found that some stone counters and such were still standing but nothing
else was left. Any furniture or carpets that might once have been
here are long-since dust, naturally. The door to the west wing
was useless, we figured, given how that end of the building looked from
the outside, but the door to the east wing was long gone and through
the remaining arch we could see a hallway with a series of open
archways off of it where doors once might have stood.
Rather than march into the place without a care, I asked Greebo to fly
around the building and report on whether there was anything inside any
of the rooms. He’d gotten around the west wing, confirming for us
that it was nothing but rubble, and on his way past the east wing he
started giving off the oh shit, oh shit alert and came tearing
back to us. “There are people in two of the rooms on the east
wing,” he said. “They are dead, but they are still walking.”
Yech. I just cannot abide undead.
I turned Nigel, William and myself invisible, with Greebo perched on my
shoulder, and we snuck down the hallway to peek into one of the
rooms. The thing inside – a ghast, I think – absolutely reeked of
decay and seemed to be shuffling about aimlessly in what looked to be
the ancient remains of a classroom – stone risers to form a sort of
auditorium, with a stone podium at the front. Nigel and I agreed
to try some minor magic to bring it down, and on the count of three we
pinched our noses, swung back around the door frame from either side,
and fired off some magic missiles. The ghast went down with a
thud, and we agreed that the other rooms probably had more ghasts in
them, given Greebo’s report.
Together, Nigel and William and I backed out of the hallway and back
into the main room of the first floor, then we proceeded to hoot and
holler and William banged his sword on his shield and we called out
that the ghasts should all shamble this-a-way for the brain feast we
had prepared for them. Sure enough, four ghasts come moaning
their way out of various classrooms and towards us, at which point
Nigel and I dropped some magic of the fiery variety and, poof, no more
ghasts. We were very pleased with ourselves for our tactical
prowess, and no sooner had we and William given each other a big round
of high-fives than an ancient and rather obviously undead elf stepped
out of the last classroom on the left and pointed our way.
“Keep that racket down!” he yelled, and with that he disappeared back into his classroom.
Needless to say, we were all a little stunned.
“Professor!” I yelled, and the three of us hoofed it down to that end
of the east wing and peeked around the doorframe into a
classroom. There stood the elf in question, dressed in robes that
looked very professional, standing at one of the lecterns and
addressing the classroom. Nigel and I agreed we should ask this
elf if he could help us – hoping that he was perhaps a more personable
example of the same sort of elven lich that helped us in Sessuadra once
a few years ago – and so we walked into the classroom to introduce
ourselves.
What a classroom it was: filling the stadium-style seating were
zombies, gargoyles and at least one dead naga, all staring intently – a
bit like the hypnotized, in fact – at the elven “professor” as he
addressed them. He looked sideways at us, pointed an eldritch
finger at the sundial in the courtyard behind the classroom, broken in
two at the base though it was, and said, “You are very late for
class, by the sundial. Take your seats immediately and prepare
for today’s lesson!” We stood there hemming an hawing, I’m
afraid, and he repeated himself, “Take your seats!”
I am somewhat mortified to report that both William and I did so, entirely against our own wills.
Nigel came and joined us, and the three of us sat there, surrounded by
vicious enemies, while the professor announced there would be a pop
quiz on the most recent class. Everyone else had their own little
stone tablet in their lap and a pigeon feather they used to scratch,
ineffectually, at their surfaces. The three of us sat there,
unsure what to do, and after a few moments the professor told us time
was up. When he came to collect our quizzes, he poked us each in
the chest and said, “Very disappointing. Shameful. You have learned nothing.” That was all well and good – William had expressed terror, and I confided in him that, frankly, I was never any good in school. What I didn’t tell him was that this was most definitely not the first time a wizard (or whatever) had berated me for being simply incapable of learning the lesson at hand, so that part of it, at least, was familiar if unpleasant territory. No, what really got me was that when the professor prodded us with his fingertip it hurt. It hurt like a little bit of my life had just drained away.
With that, though, the professor started his lecture. It was on
applied magic in agriculture, and then it hit us: Sessuadra
A&M. Agriculture & Magic. We listened politely, and when the professor asked (much later) whether anyone had any questions, I raised my hand.
“Yes?” he said.
“I was curious about the story of Fae’Rath and the dragon Despair,” I replied.
“What?” he demanded. “Why are you asking about ancient
history? You couldn’t get into the bardic college in
Myth’Drannor? Your test scores weren’t good enough?”
“Uh,” I said, and here I am quite pleased with how well I thought on my
feet, “No, it has an application to agriculture! I, uh, read that
they used a special sleep powder on the dragon to keep him docile until
he died, and I wondered if anyone has ever considered using a diluted
version as a… uh, a pesticide.”
It turns out the professor didn’t think I was as clever as I
thought I was, and he came over and grabbed me by the ear (more with
the hurting, I should note) and dragged me out of the room and kicked
me out of class. Nigel and William were quick to follow, but
Nigel pointed out that the back of the room was filled with
stone tablets just like each of the “students” had. We stuck our
head back in the classroom and asked the professor if we could go
through the notes at the back of the room and he acquiesced – we could
take any homework assignments with our names on them, ha! – and so we
rifled through them. Everything was about magic and agriculture,
though, so we gave up on that plan and asked the professor if he could
tell us where to find the library, at least. He wasn’t pleased to
tell us, it being “the middle of the semester” and all, but he did tell
us: the west wing.
You know, the part of the building that’s nothing but rubble now.
With that settled, we figured we should at least go upstairs, though we
stuck around long enough to realize that the “professor” had simply
launched back into the very same lecture as the one we’d heard.
How many thousands of years has he stood there, lecturing whatever
monster wandered in and lost control of itself when he turned his gaze
on it? At any rate, we topped the steps and walked up to the
first of the two doors on that floor. William said he’d heard
something behind it, but Nigel, Greebo and I hadn’t, so I said to hell
with it and threw the door open. Naturally, William was right,
and what was on the other side was… well, I can’t describe it.
Take a hundred different monsters and mash them all together and then
tell them to fight for whose shape the new critter gets to have, and
you’re getting close. It was just a writhing mass of arms and
feet and paws and tentacles and pseudopods and claws and mouths and
eyes, always shifting.
Also, it reached out and slapped me, and the next thing I knew I was a puddle of goo on the floor.
Greebo started to freak, but I was still in there, and while Nigel
dispatched the creature with a couple of well-placed spells, I managed
to reassert my normal shape. I could still feel it eating at me,
though, a sort of crawling madness under my skin trying to convince me
that I had no shape, no self, that I should just let go… so I grabbed Nigel and William and got Greebo on my shoulder and said, “We are going back to Berol’s temple now,” and we were there.
A priest ran up and Nigel and I tried to tell him what had
happened. He and Nigel and I all fired spells at me – dispels,
healing magic, whatever we could think of – but nothing seemed to
help. The priest called out to a helper to go get a more powerful
priest and I yelled, “No, go get Berol,” and then the next thing I knew
I was a writhing mass of goop on the floor again. I could see
when Berol ran into the room, though, said a few words, and BLAM! I was
back to normal. I threw myself at Berol, thanking him profusely,
while Nigel filled him in on what had happened.
“By the way, Berol,” I said, pulling back, “Did you know there’s an
ancient, undead elf in the university who’s giving the same lecture,
over and over, to a room full of zombies and gargoyles?”
Berol looked around at his flunkies and said, “Get the boys
together.” Five minutes later, Nigel and I were walking back to
the University behind a band of fifty armed fighters and priests, Berol
at the front, and when we got to the University they marched right into
the professor’s class. We heard a bit of “You’re very late!”
and then it was pretty much all over but the screaming. Berol and
his men filed back out and thanked us for informing them of their
unwanted tenants, then Berol asked if we wanted to explore the rest of
the upstairs with his help. We were quite happy to have him with
us – just like old times! – and so we checked out the rest of the
upstairs.
There wasn’t much to see, save one large and oddly abstract carving on
one wall. Nigel and I studied it for a few minutes, and then it
hit me: it was a map of the world. It didn’t look right,
though – specifically, the Anauroch Desert was missing, and some other
minor details were different. Then, it really hit us: it
was the halfway point between a current, accurate map of Fae’run and
the picture emblazoned on the chestplates of the dwarven skeletons that
had fought us that morning back in that observation deck that
overlooked the “dead” dragon.
Those dwarves’ emblem is a map of Fae’run, too, and of the five stars
that adorned it in random places, one of them matched the location of
that very prison. “It’s a map to their ancient places of power,”
I said to Nigel, and we agreed that this trip had been well worth it,
indeed. If we really want to learn about Stormcloud/Despair and
Fae’Rath, apparently we’ll have to go to Myth’Drannor, but in the
meantime we know that there are probably other places like this, or at
least as ancient, tucked around the world: one far to the west,
on some islands across the ocean (a place I so far quietly suspect to
be Evermeet), the middle of the Anauroch Desert, far to the north in
Rasheman and far to the south in the Rift Valley.
Fascinating.
We told Berol everything that had happened so far, and then off we
went, back to the cave where everything started. It had been a
very, very busy couple of days.
Upon our return, Adric, Badl, Katarina and Rock told us all about their
own adventure. As they rested, they had heard a booming voice
demand of the “drow” in the cave that they hand over Alec “or
else.” Rock knew it was the orcs he’d seen “interrogating” the
lone remaining drow in their other outpost, earlier, and so the group
set themselves for an attack. Apparently Badl and Bonzo literally
tore one of the orcs in two – just dug their fingers in and yanked -
and then Rock and Badl literally carved another one to death.
Adric let loose a bunch of holy magic to disrupt and damage the orcs as
a whole, and Katarina took up a position from which she could disrupt
both their wizard and their priest and their druid. Eventually
all but the druid and the priest were dead, the druid having turned
into a bat and flapped away and the priest having taken off on
foot. Badl caught them both in a magical hailstorm, killing the
priest, but the druid limped away through the air despite the party’s
best efforts. Now we have bodies to loot and bury, a halfling to
get back to Sessuadra and some notes to compare to figure out what we
should do next.
This is certainly no vacation, but I’m never going to claim it’s boring, either. Read the rest of this entry »
I have something to confide in you, diary: I think we are in over our heads, and I love it.
OK, I don’t really think we’re in over our heads. I think we’ve
stumbled into something huge and ancient and fantastic. I think
we stand on the very edge of the Now, looking over that high bluff into
the dark unknown of Soon. In it are dragon skulls and clouds of
despair and a talking portrait of an ancient elf who has no idea that
the first to hear his words in fifty and a half millenia have no idea
what he’s talking about. Today I’ve felt the undertow of history,
the past opening up and threatening to swallow us, and it’s days like
today that make adventuring worth all the dirt under the fingernails.
Oh, my head is practically swimming.
So anyway, when last I wrote, we were just about to spring open the
locks on that old dwarven DO NOT ENTER door. We did so, sure
enough, and what did we find? The halfling for whom we were
searching the whole time. Good thing we opened that door,
eh? Anyway, he was chained to an elaborate throne made of a
brownish-yellow metal alloy (iron and… something, we couldn’t quite
figure out what) by his ankles. In front of him, face-down, was a
drow priestess dead of a multitude of stab wounds starting around her
ankles and working their way up to her back. The halfling – Alec,
as you’ll recall – pleaded with us to release him and thanked us for
finding him. After releasing him and making sure he was okay, we
were treated to a general explanation of how his circumstance came to
pass. He hired two younger halflings to serve as “muscle” for an
adventuring trip. Investigating ancient ruins is what he does for
a living, apparently, and upon arriving here they were captured by the
Drow. Alec was brought into this room (after the boulette so
kindly discovered it on behalf of his masters) and chained up so
that the Drow priestess of Beshaba could question him. He said
she wanted to know everything he knew about the history of this place,
but the problem was, he doesn’t know anything about the history of this
place. It’s just old, he said, and so he came to poke around in
it.
I should note the following about the room where Alec was chained
up: the manacles used to bind his feet were of exceptional
craftsmanship and were built into the throne to which he was
bound. We checked them for magic, of course, but found
none. Now, not to incriminate myself or anything, but I know a
thing or two about the, um, less savory sides of adventuring. If
Alec could kill a Drow with a dagger to the shins, he probably knows
how to open a lock or two. And yet, he couldn’t open these.
What manacles they must be, I thought to myself at the time. But,
again, I get ahead of myself.
In the meantime, Adric had spent the morning tending to the waking
humans and elves, once prisoners of the Drow, who have started to come
out of the drugged stupor they’d endured. Some of them, it turns
out, were brigands who had ambushed others of them along the roads
through the Cormanthor (only to be, themselves, ambushed by the
Drow). Their leader made a sincere display of regret and recanted
his dastardly ways to Lothander, begging for a second chance in
life. Adric has gotten into shape said leader and those of his
men who likewise sought to make amends for their crimes and thus has
arranged them as a sort of defensive force.
While all that was happening, and while Badl and Bonzo kept a lookout
and buried the umber-hulk and all its various victims en masse, Rock
went off through the woods in the direction of the other side of the
other priestess’ mirror-reflections conversation. There he found
another Drow encampment, this one inhabited by soldiers. Well, a
soldier. The rest of them had been killed, and the one who
survived was in the process of being, uh, questioned to death by four
Orcs of terrible demeanor. They, too, demanded to know where Alec
was being held and swore to find him. Alec, it appears, is one
popular little fellow.
Not sure what to do with Alec, we explained that we had been sent by
the Seers of Kelemvor to find out what his mission was and that we
would like to take him to them. We promised to bring him back and
accompany him on his explorations if the Kelemvorians were alright with
that, so off we went, back to Sessuadra. Nigel and Adric and I
interrogated the two Drow we had captured and taken there and
discovered that the main camp, where we were, had recently been
established as a Drow slave camp maintained by one of the “noble”
families that rules one of their cities. The Beshaban priestess
had shown up claiming that her goddess saw some extreme example of bad
luck in the future that did not, in fact, involve Beshaba herself, and
had sent her to discover its nature. The Beshaban had become
obsessed with finding out what Alec knew. After confirming what
we could with her compatriot, we turned them into bunnies and loosed
them on the grasses of Sessuadra. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I
say.
While we questioned the Drow, the Seers questioned Alec. They
concluded that they were comfortable with Alec continuing his
exploration as long as we went with him, so off we went back to the
cave where we reported our findings. Rock returned to report his,
as well, and we decided we might not have much time to get the job
done. Adric and Badl and Rock instructed the newly reformed
brigands in the defense of the cave and off we went, back through the
door marked DO NOT ENTER to see what lay beyond it.
What lay beyond it was vast, indeed.
The room where Alec was tortured and questioned, it turns out, is an
observation chamber. It overlooks a vast and empty darkness where
we could see nothing at all. Some flying reconnaissance and a few
little spells to create some light showed us it overlooked a huge,
spherical room made of the same brownish-yellow alloy. It seemed
to be all of a piece, so finely crafted was it, and there were huge
pipes jutting into the room from all around. From these pipes
seemed to emanate nothing but the same mechanical banging noises that
originally drew us to open the door in the first place. To be
totally accurate, the banging noises came from ten of the sixteen
pipes. The remainder were silent.
Checking the place for magic, though, showed us something
interesting: a fine trickle, almost a mist, of magic seemed to
float out of the pipes which produced the banging.
Now we knew we just had to investigate the whole place, so down we went
to garden level. Shining our lights around and generally checking
it out, we noticed that the center of the place was a pool. Well,
sort of a poole. It was black and reflected no light but looked
as smooth as glass. At a couple of points along the walls of the
giant, spherical chamber we noticed huge chains – each link at least a
couple of tons – with ancient Elven writing on them. The chains
seemed to float or rest just upon the surface of the inky black pool
that had formed in the center of the room, and on each link was
written: And with this do I bind despair.
Yeeks.
Alec said he wanted a spoonfull of the black stuff but we told him
maybe it would be best to wait just a little bit and assess our
surroundings more completely before going around poking spoons into the
darkness. Sounds crazy, I know, but I guess a few years of
adventuring makes one wary.
We kept going around the sphere to the far side and there we spied what
looked to be another observation chamber. Upon climbing up to it,
thanks to Katarina’s slippers and various of our abilities to fly, we
found much the opposite of what we’d seen where Alec was held: an
observation with two thrones, not one, and no shackles. Also, we
saw four suits of Dwarven armor with skeletons inside.
Of course, the skeletons just had to stand up and start talking.
“Betrayers!” they cried, and then they were after us. We fired
some spells and Bonzo and Badl went on the offensive. Rock
charged into the room to fight them hand-to-hand as well, and Katarina
turned first her crossbow and then her sword against them. Adric
tried to turn them, their being skeletal and all, but to no effect.
Nigel’s spells were able to harm them, but mine just washed around them
with no apparent damage done. Eventually we were able to wear
them down, though, and finally we were alone in the observation
chamber. We found a door exiting the chamber, at the rear, and
Shadow was able to tell us that beyond it was nothing but dirt.
This building had either been buried to conceal it or, over time, had
been buried by nature itself.
Looking around, we found a lever between the two thrones in the center
of the room, but decided not to pull it just yet. Instead we
looked back out into the giant, spherical room to see if anything had
changed since we’d arrived. Nothing had changed, but we did
notice something new: the giant, larger than any we’d seen or
even heard of, dragon skeleton mired in the inky black pool in the
center of the room. Through it, with rib bones healed around
them, were giant anchors to which those ancient Elven chains were
attached.
This place was, it seemed, a torture chamber and a tomb for a dragon larger than any we’d even imagined could exist.
That was enough to pique everyone’s interests, sure enough, and soon we
were off to investigate the tunnels protruding into the great sphere
from each side. Shadow reported that there were fans at the end
of them, and in the ones still whole, ladders leading up to a control
room just above the fans and, above that, another room with an enormous
metal man turning a gear. We figured this must be some sort of
distribution mechanism for the magic we saw emanating from most of the
tunnels, so we set about exploring. Soon enough, we’d assessed
our situation: the giant metal men, golems made of still more of
this brownish-yellow alloy, stood atop each tunnel’s mechanism and
wound a wheel which turned a gear that powered the enormous fans.
Behind each fan was a distribution tank and in each tank lay a fine
layer of bright, pink powder that smelled faintly of cinnamon. When I
checked the powder for magic I was nearly blinded by its
intensity. Alec was kind enough to get us a sample while Badl and
I took our magic helms and saw what would happen when the golems got a
visitor. Each of us got the same response from the golems when we
approached: the head would turn to face us and a deep voice would
say, in ancient Dwarven, “I am 50,430 years overdue for maintenance.”
Yes. 50,430 years.
I asked one of the metal men what maintenance entailed, and was told
that the golem would be disengaged and inspected, and the level of
“sleep dust” in the tanks would be checked.
Sleep dust.
Down below, in the control rooms, Adric and Nigel and Rock and Katarina
had found that each control room had three identical levers:
“Light,” “Disengage” and “Ventilate.” We tried them, one after
another, and found that “Light” made the lights come on in the control
rooms. “Disengage” made the metal men stop working and sit
down. “Ventilate” made their arms crank so fast they fell off (at
least, in the broken tube where we tried it). Stopping to discuss
our circumstance, I couldn’t help but wonder how much longer the sleep
dust in these tanks would hold. If they hadn’t been filled in
50,430 years, obviously the dust in question wasn’t being put out at
any great rate. Still, if some ancient elves and/or ancient
dwarves had captured a dragon, physically anchored it to the floor and
then begun flooding the room with sleep dust, were they just waiting
for it to starve to death? If so, did they really think it would
take fifty thousand years for that to happen? Were they just
being extra careful? Or were they worried that the thing might in
fact not die?
Worse yet, did they know something we didn’t: that it was already
“dead” when they captured it, and as an undead dragon, it “lived”
still, chained to the floor and kept unconscious by ancient,
super-duper sleep dust? Adric was able to detect that a terrible
evil emanated from around the remains of the dragon, but that didn’t
really answer the question, did it? For all we know, ancient
draconic bones emanate evil for eternity regardless of how much dragon
is left on them.
I asked the rest of the team if it would be a good idea for me to fly
out over the skeletal remains of the dragon and use magic to probe it
for an active consciousness. They agreed, but with my full
agreement they shackled my feet together and tied a rope off to the shackles so that I could be tugged
back in should something go wrong. With that, I flew out over the
center of the spherical pen where the dragon had been/still was held in
place and cast my spell.
At first, I could tell that there were minds other than my own.
As my awareness focused, I could count them: one. And when
I pushed into it, to see what its thoughts were, well…
It pushed back.
That was all I really needed to know: that down there, around the
corpse of an ancient and enormous dragon, was a consciousness that new
I had tried to look into it and had shut me out. I turned around
and flew back to the rest of the group at top speed, absolutely
terrified. Whatever is down there is not good, I said, and it is
awake, and it probably knows we’re here and hears every word we
say. We needed more information and fast. Snowdown was able
to tell us that an ancient elven university lay in the ruins of
Sessuadra, and Nigel and I agreed that we should go there and do some
research as soon as possible. First, though, I wanted one more
look at the 2nd observation room, the one with the two thrones and the
lever. Upon getting back up there, I cast another spell to find
any secret doors or passages and sure enough I found one on the floor,
directly in front of the two thrones. The lever was the way to
open it, so we tugged on it to see what would happen. A few
moments later, the floor had separated and slid open to reveal a metal
plate. On that plate sprang to life an illusionary recreation of
an elf of high and fine features – features more elfy, for lack of a
better word, than modern elves of the highest nobility. It was
like the Ur-elf, something strange and almost alien in its… primacy. It turned to
the thrones, where someone would sit when pulling the lever, and
addressed them thus:
“Behold, young princes,” he said, “The ultimate triumph of your people.
The chained wyrm. The storm cloud. The mount of the traitor
king. Here they were imprisoned together by the greatest of the
eldar heroes. Here Fae’Rath trapped the three-faced man and the
dragon called Despair, and bound them. Before the sundering of
the alliance, before the end of the great war. And here they
remained for 4 generations of elves before the trial ofthe traitor king
was held. The wyrm persisted for more than one thousand years
alone in the dark, before death claimed it, and left only the remains
you look upon now. The greatest of the dragons are dead or driven
to other worlds. But threats still surround us, and you must lead
your people to greatness. You must become the next Fae’Rath, an
unstoppable hero of light. Look well young princes, and know what
blood runs in your veins, what shoes you must fill.”
That gave Nigel and me a start on our research, and so we went back out
of this building to where the warriors still stood guard over those
former captives who still slept from the drugs the Drow had given
them. Nigel and I were off to Sessuadra in a flash (literally) to
find that ancient university and search its libraries for anything on
the history of Despair, the “storm cloud,” Fae’Rath, the great war and
anything else we can find.
And that’s where we are now: just returned to Sessuadra, taking a
breather while we get some healing to catch us up from our battle with
the undead dwarves. As I turn my mind upon the thoughts of today,
I have to wonder whether Badl is precisely right: he predicted
that the throne with the manacles would turn out to be where someone
who betrayed the elves in favor of the dragons had been held at the
time. “The three-faced man” certainly sounds like an epithet for
one who chose too many sides in the same war. I worry, now, that
we’ve stumbled into something far larger than anything we’ve faced
before. Oh, yes, I’ve walked the streets of the City of the Dead
and crossed swords with a god – a real and terrible god, and struck so
hard both our swords were shattered – but that was years ago and here I
am, right now, knee-deep in something far older and far more fully
forgotten than even Cyric could claim to be.
Tonight, at any
rate, I know that underneath the Cormanthor is an ancient dome built to
hold and starve a dragon. One of the metal men told us that the
whole place was made of an alloy of iron and the Starmetal that fell to
the ground “when the stormcloud came,” which makes it something strange
and alien to this world. To think of the dwarven masters who
could take that star-kissed ore and turn it into something as durable
as this, and the elves who could fashion such anchors as would hold a
dragon of such size to the ground for a millenium while it died – well, the mind simply boggles.
Somewhere, back in that murky past was an elven prince or tutor
or king who recorded an image of himself addressing some unknown
future, the dragon laid out behind him as an object lesson and
inspiration to greatness. Fifty and one half thousand years ago,
they were forgotten and abandoned. I don’t know whether the
dwarves felt betrayed (and thus the cry of their skeletal minions) and
hid that place within the hill or whether time itself crept over the
top of it until all our ancestors forgot it was even there.
Regardless, that past has managed to reach into the now, its fingers
cold from the grave, to brush our ankles and whisper in our ears and
try to make us remember that a great war was fought and won and that
others would come after it. I wonder, did they record their
message because they feared more dragons or other, stranger things
would come in time, or did they know already that the great wyrm they’d
trapped in their metal cage would never die, might in time overcome its
bonds, might one day threaten the world as it had before?
I shudder to think. Today the past spoke directly to us, and
though its words did not all make perfect sense, we understood enough
to know that something big is at hand. No wonder so many gods
have taken an interest.
I know I keep saying this, but it keeps being true: I love my job. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, I must say, we have had an adventurous morning. After our little encounter with the crazed, feral monkeys from underground, we were quick to move. After all, if these were minions of the drow we sought, they would certainly be, uh, missed? Missed seems like the wrong choice of words, a bit more sentimental than I find it believable to think anyone could be about them, but you take my point.
Rock and Katarina and Katarina’s “pet” moved ahead of the party about a mile and a half to the top of a small hill. On the other side they beheld a small, shallow valley and, on its other side, another small hill of similar height as their own. Rock spotted a cave on the far side of the valley with what was clearly the path of the evil monkeys coming out of it. Badl was in bird form, overhead, and between the four of them they were able to spot that the small campsite – complete with roasting pig – off to one side of the valley floor was an elaborate illusion designed, without doubt, to snare any unwary adventurers who happened past. Fortunately, they also saw the drow lookout perched in a tree, wrapped in a cloak and keeping an eye on the illusory campsite.
Katarina, Badl and Rock were quick to take him down, and soon they were slipping away from the valley with a bound and grumpy drow in their possession. Upon returning to us, we all questioned him and learned that there were 64 other drow in the cave, a dozen slaves (all elves, he claimed) and that they were here purely to collect slaves. I asked pointedly if they had any halflings and he got wary of us – and confessed that they had three. He also told us that there was, among the forces of the drow, a priestess of Beshaba. I have a number of reasons to dislike Beshabans, not least of which is the time some very bad people tried to slander Tel by claiming he was a “brood” of Beshaba.
I wrote a song about it. I have to say, it was one of my best.
After finishing our discussion with him, Badl asked him one more question: bunny, squirrel or chipmunk? The guy knitted his brow and said, “Bunny?” Badl accomodated him by turning him into a bunny and he shortly was off running through the woods eating various wild lettuces. Delightful!
The rest of us agreed that now we had taken a scout we would have to move quickly. I made myself appear to be a drow and everyone else hid. En masse, we took position in the woods outside the cave and I perched in the scout’s former post. Katarina’s shadow explored the cave for us and came back wounded – I am very bothered by the sort of talk going around about what it takes to “heal” a shadow, but we’ll
just save that one for some other time – with a report that inside there were countless dead bodies, one very large crab and a woman in armor perched in a tree atop the hill. We agreed to take out the
priestess at the top of the hill first – the giant crab was, we hoped, unintelligent and, in a situation where one of them got away, the crab would at least be easier to track.
I have to say, you know you’re a seasoned adventurer when you’re sitting up a tree in the middle of the Cormanthor pretending to be a drow, a shadow appears out of the ground and tells you a “giant crab”
is in the cave ahead of you, and it’s just business as usual. Adventuring is a very strange profession.
We gathered our various means of sneaking up on her and then flew up to take care of what seemed to be the most immediate threat. Katarina, Shadow and Bonzo went into the cave to cover the priestess’
exit and the rest of us gathered together the frontal assault. Between the five of us up top, it was a quick matter to take the Beshaban priestess down a peg or two, knock her unconscious and bind her in her treetop turret. However, I should note, spells seem… slippery around these drow. It’s like our ability to reach into the guts of the universe and make things simply happen just sort of slides around
them. It’s very disturbing.
Memo to self: Nigel has expressed the opinion that there must be a balance between all things, good and evil, law and chaos. If this were true, would it also be true of a balance between random events and controlled? After all, magic seems to slide off these drow like water off a duck, but it also seems to feel like the same sort of “random” event I can nudge in one direction or another like so many other apparently random events. Are there, in fact, laws that govern chaos? If so, are they true laws or merely an impotent effort to recognize the slow creep of chaos into all events and, in their recognition, subsume them into a larger but ultimately hollow framework that seeks but fails to fully describe the structure of the world? Is it all a matter of perspective? Is the world utterly chaotic and, in the wide spread of truly random outcomes, is it possible to pick and choose interpretations such that any belief in laws or other preordained structures and rules can be amply but ultimately falsely supported? Or is it quite the opposite: that there are vast and near-immutable rules of operation but that the Powers That Be have the capacity to twist and shape the rules to their own advantage, and do so with such frequency that the appearance of chaos is merely a smokescreen for their backstage machinations in the lives of such mere
mortals as we?
I am, above all, a believer in fate. The TTC clearly was, and continues to be, fated for greatness. And yet, many of our best efforts have been, throughout our history, stymied by seemingly random events. On the other hand, I have made it my specialty to have the ability to do some of that twisting myself. If there are levers and pulleys in the machine of the universe that allow me to
do such things, then there must be structure to the chaos. And yet, the structure itself allows chaos to be, well, chaotic.
I suppose these are the sorts of things I should think about when I’m not on the job. After all, we have a door to open and this damp old cave is murder on my look..
After we’d taken her out, I asked Greebo to keep an eye out in the direction of what we suspect to be at least another drow scout if not another outpost – the priestess, as we approached, was using a giant mirror to signal some remote part of the forest. Rock wanted to break the mirror, but I reminded him doing so is, quite frankly, terrible bad luck. We’d just bested a priestess of the goddess of bad luck, and, you know, my whole deal is sort of actively working against the idea of luck altogether. The two don’t really mix to
begin with, and I wasn’t terribly interested in poking Beshaba with yet another sharp stick and seeing what happened.
Anyway, we tucked our prisoner away with a gorilla and a shadow standing over her ready to beat her back unconscious if she came to (and a Tressym watching our backs), and went downstairs to examine the
wreckage of the drow caves. We found a variety of interesting things – a badly burned boullette having seizures in a metal cage, a larger cage hanging open and a variety of corpses scattered about. Perhaps most interestingly, we also found a door that read, in ancient dwarven runes, DO NOT ENTER. Rock was kind enough to lend me his listening cup, but even with that I could only make out the clanging and banging of metalworks behind the door. Our current theories run towards constructs being back there, but we
haven’t opened it yet. More on that in a bit.
The time had come to find out what was up with this “giant crab,” and Katarina volunteered to scout out the room where it had been seen. Inside she saw a bunch of metal boxes, a huge pile of dead bodies and, next to it, an umberhulk I find it hard to describe adequately with mere words. To start with, it must have been twenty feet tall, and its claws were enormous. Unfortunately, it had the ability to cause people to go temporarily mad, and in this regard it found Katarina an easy target. She ran screaming toward
it, sword out, and the rest of us knew we needed to act quickly or our new friend would be remarkably dead. Rock and Badl ran in, Nigel and Adric and I fired some spells at it, and although it did manage to very nearly kill Rock with a single hit, we managed to drop it (with quite a thud) in short order. No sooner had we started to relax, though, than we spotted three drow hiding in a corner of the room. They
tried to put up an effective defense but, really, they were no match for us. I confess that there was some, um, collateral damage in terms of slaves, but they were all drugged so, well… at least they didn’t suffer. Or, at least they weren’t alert for the suffering. I guess. I am yet again very, very glad for
Adric’s presence, for he has been specially blessed with the ability to ease the suffering and heal the wounds of others, gifts beyond the ken of any other cleric I have ever known. (It doesn’t hurt that he seems to have an especially civilized air about him.)
At any rate, now we have another drow prisoner, the rest of the cave to explore and an ancient dwarven EMPLOYEES ONLY sign to go bust open. As I sit here writing this and chewing on a trail ration, I
have to hope that what’s behind that door is, frankly, mind-bendingly dangerous. Does that make me some kind of weirdo?
Well! Two days ago I was tending the counter at the TTC store in
Elventree and here I am, deep in the Cormanthor Forest with Rock and
Nigel (!) and some new friends, hunting down drow slavers who’ve taken
hostage someone Berol feels is important to Fate.
OK, maybe I should back up and explain.
So there I was behind the counter, playing a little Sembia Hold ‘Em
with Greebo and generally humming a tune, and in walks this pale woman
dressed in a lot of black frippery. She said she’d heard of me,
and heard of the Tinker Traders, and was going to be dancing at the pub
that night and wanted me to provide her musical accompaniment. I
am, of course, never one to shy away from the stage, or from
new people, so I agreed. After the show, she told me she sought
passage into the Cormanthor in search of a mantle that would increase
her skills in some regard. To be honest, I thought she was being
a little shady about it, but whatever. She seemed absolutely
disinterested in harming us, and we were headed to Sessuadra to meet up
with Berol anyway, so I invited her to teleport down there with us in
the morning. We did, of course, run her through The
Question. She assured us that she was not to her knowledge a
doppleganger and we assured her that they are generally aware of their
condition, so everyone was entirely satisfied.
Next morning, we were off to Sessuadra. It’s always exciting to
teleport somewhere, especially somewhere dangerous! When we got
there we were greeted with the usual grim and crumbling facades and a
wagon of relations all carrying their patriarch to Berol’s temple to
spend his final days with dignity before passing on. (One of them
recognized me! I was very pleased, despite the somber
circumstance.) We escorted them into the city and about halfway
to the temple we met Berol and some others coming our way. Before
we could greet each other, though, a hollow-eyed elven woman appeared
before Berol and demanded her “fair share” of the dead and dying.
Rock and I could hear huge footsteps and with a few words I could see
what was making them – an enormous giant! We called out
that an ambush was under way and moments later we were in the thick of
it! All of Sessuadra’s worst were on hand to try to take out
Berol and anyone on his side. We were being jumped by hill
giants, this other kind of huge monster thing, some nagas, even gargoyles.
Katarina, the woman we’d brought with us from Elventree, started
stabbing the gargoyles and a shadow detached from one of the walls and
started attacking the big grey thing and then a tiger and an ape – I
know, odd! – were fighting everything and I was casting sonic fireballs
and arcs of flame were shooting back and forth and Rock was knee-deep
in enemies hacking them to pieces and this priest was waving his hands
around and casting spells and it was just crazy. We took
everything out, though, and soon enough we were all standing in the
street (the mendicants we’d met at the gate were all fine – well,
except for the fact that their grandfather, or whoever, was on his
deathbed) meeting and greeting. It turned out that the main naga
was their champion, and with her destruction we had managed to break
what remained of the monstrous resistance to the reoccupation of
Sessuadra. Rock even saw the last hill giant pack up his few
belongings and leave the city the next morning. With that, we
knew we had once and for all cleaned out Sessuadra. How cool is that?
Back to getting to talk to Berol, though! We made sure he was
okay (he was the main target of the attack, and kept getting knocked
around pretty bad) and then met his companions. Nigel, from back
in the old days of the Flatliners, of all people, was with Berol -
apparently Berol freed him from enslavement by the Drow, which all
sounded very unpleasant – and then we got to meet the Tiger, named Badl
Ojingyrbir, who is actually a gnome druid, and we met his ape, and we
were also introduced to a priest of Lathander named Adric. They
were all very nice, and if they’re friends of Berol’s then they’re
friends of ours, so we all went back to the temple and ate a big dinner
together and got to know one another. Badl taught Rock the
traditional drinking dances of the gnomes while I played, and I got to
admire Adric’s very fashionable robes and civilized demeanor.
Berol may not be much for the small-talk, but he certainly knows how to
put together a crew!
Before bed, Berol called us all back together to discuss why we were
there. He had a mission of the utmost importance, he told us, and
he needed to ask us to complete it for him. Those of us who
weren’t immediately willing to accept by simple virtue of it being
Berol were at least interested, so we settled in while he explained
that his temple’s seers had determined that there was a time coming of
terrible death and destruction in the future and that a certain
halfling named Alec was important to these events somehow.
However, this Alec had been taken captive by the Drow trying to invade
the Cormanthor. We were all eager for an opportunity to mess with
the Drow, so we took the job of going and rescuing Alec and bringing
him to Berol, and Berol told us the Drow access from the underworld was
in a general area three days’ ride to the west. The next morning
we had one of his priests scry us a likely spot and Nigel and I whisked
everyone away to the middle of the forest to begin our search for the
Drow and wherever they might be holding this Alec person.
Badl, being a druid, suggested we find a bear with whom he could talk
about where any drow might have been. This sounded like a great
idea, and very shortly we came across a bear that was, in fact, running
full-speed in the opposite direction of where we were going. Badl
caught up to it and found out that They were coming, the They being
something terrible that made “the sound of fear.” We were all a
bit curious about that, and various of us went about our plentiful
means of concealing ourselves when one tiny – uh, well, it looked
monkeyish, to be honest, kind of halflingish with some monkey around
the edges – came gibbering out of the woods and tried to flail at Rock
before it was summarily cut down.
To be honest, diary, I wondered what it was about this one little
monkey that had the bear so worked up when more of these little monkey
things appeared – then more, then even more than that, then hundreds of
them. Nigel and I started taking out as many as we could in a
single go while Badl worked to protect the wildlife from the horde of
little monkey things and Rock and Adric drew their attention to
themselves to try to get them gathered in as small a space as
possible. With enough fireballs and sonic fireballs, and Rock’s
unbelievably fast blades and a huge column of fire called down by
Aldric and a hail of crossbow bolts from Katarina, we cut them all
down. Admittedly, we sprayed ourselves in gore when Rock would
slice several of them in two and then Nigel would fry them and then I
would liquify what was left, but in the end we managed to best them and
calm back down (their mindless chitter had a deeply unsettling effect,
making it hard to concentrate on anything beyond a sort of rising
panic) and assess our situation. All told, we had managed pretty
well, and now Badl’s gone to go make sure the bear we saw is still okay
and ask it what it knows.
Whewf! Day two of my return to an active adventuring career and
it is already every bit as exciting as I remember it being.
I love my job.
PS: While we were in Sessuadra, Berol told us that his temple has
managed to free Snowdown from the restraints which kept her trapped
there and she can now travel freely. He asked her to favor us
with her presence on our journey, and now she is able to assist us in a
number of ways. It was very good to hear of the progress made in
setting her free, and Rock was very happy to see her. She, in
turn, was not so happy to hear that he’s married now, but you know how
it is. She’s an ancient elven ghost, he’s a half-elven ranger
with a wife and home… it wasn’t meant to be.
PPS: I feel I should note that Badl’s ape wears a shirt like a
person. It is, I have to admit, adorable in this regard. It
somehow makes it easier to forget that his ape could snap our necks
with a gesture if it wanted. Read the rest of this entry »
ELVENTREE – The weather is unbelievable – summer in Elventree is ridiculously hot. I know that sounds dumb given I just
spent a year camped on the shores of the Lake of Frickin’ Steam, but seriously, I think summer in Elventree is even worse than
summer at that spa. I’d try to record the name of the town where
the spa is located, but the name changed eight times in one week during the winter and that’s the slow season in the coup d’etat leagues down there. The Lake of Steam is certainly an exciting place!
In happier news, we’ve gotten word from Berol that he needs the
assistance of the TTC. Admittedly, it’s just me and Rock these
days, but we’re nothing to sneeze at and it’s a chance to go try
(again) to spruce up his temple. Every time we talk I try to get
him to adopt a more colorful scheme – maybe with a little red in it,
you know, just a nod to old friends and their goddesses – but I guess
he really does have more important things to think about.
Gah – I’m all scatter-brained and making zero sense at the
moment. Adventure! Adventure is upon us! We’ve gotten
a summons! Sure, it’s to Sessuadra, but at least it’s to somewhere!
I have to go get Rock to pack. We have to leave right
away. I’m pretty sure there’s a nice, big rock about a half mile
from the eastern gate to the city where we used to camp on our way in
and our way out and I can probably just jump us straight there.
If we pack a basket, we could be eating lunch in Sessuadra with Berol
and talking about old times today. Read the rest of this entry »
ELVENTREE – I’ve finally returned for good to Elventree. I do confess that I
zapped back to Phlan first, just in case I’m still the mayor, and they
were all rather surprised to see me there. One of my juniors -
oh, what’s-his-name, the one with the weak chin and the yappy dog – is
now the mayor, and more power to him.
I am quite sad, however, to find that none of our songs are still being
sung up here. It’s only been five years, but I guess memories are
short when it comes to heroism. Oh, Zhentil Keep is rebuilding,
they say, maybe it’s not nice to sing that clever song by that bard
fellow. Bah. Zhentil Keep should be routinely flattened on
general principle.
Oh my. I do believe I channeled Donth for just a moment.
At any rate, I’ve been hanging out in Elventree. The heat around
the Lake of Steam seems to have triggered something in terms of
Greebo’s development, as he is newly winged. At first I was
certain something was wrong, and he didn’t want to talk about it, and
everything was a little awkward, but then one day there they were.
Wings. Just like that.
I suspect this is something akin to human teenagers and zits, but honestly, I doubt he’d ever admit that. Read the rest of this entry »
LAKE OF STEAM – My time among the Durbari is done for now. I finally was there
long enough to feel fairly certain I could return at a moment’s notice,
so I summoned up my will and went back to Elventree to check in.
My prediction of G’dam’s fate has not been far off, as she is with a
traveling circus that tours the outer planes. She says she
entertains djinn and stranger things for a living. I assumed at
first, as Rock told me of her letter, that she was simply trashed when
she wrote it but the handwriting is steady and, well… it is what we all expected, isn’t it? Sounds like she’s having the time of her life, to be honest.
Getting away from the Durbari has reminded me that this was supposed to
be a vacation, so on my return to their town – it has a remarkably
complicated name I simply haven’t the faintest idea how to spell – I
was off on the road again. I did pay up on my apartment, though,
two full years of rent in advance with a promise that it be left
exactly where and as it was. The landlady did arch an eyebrow at
the where part of that request, but honestly, teleporting around is hard enough without having to explain it to people.
I have since come here, to the Lake of Steam. It is a corrupt and
barbarous place, chopped up into a dozen dozen tiny nation-states,
city-states, village-states – there are probably three competing kings
fighting to the death over each and every barn. It makes the Moonsea look downright neighborly in comparison. However, a kindly old priest has retired here to operate a spa and I have found it very relaxing.
The water is very pleasant, despite the steam, but what lives in it is not: giant leaches
the size of elephants that can squidge up the beaches and onto land on
rainy nights. Let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve run
from giant leaches in pitch dark. The sound they make just walking is enough to give me the willies even now.
The steam is very good for my complexion, though, and the waters are so mineral-rich that this is the place in the whole world for a mud-wrap.
I intend to stay at least until Hogswatch and then it’s back to
Elventree for roast duck with Rock. I’ll invite Berol, of course,
but he seems so stern these days that I don’t want to make him
uncomfortable by putting him in a situation that demands
small-talk. It’s not like we can discuss work over dinner,
anyway. Can’t you just imagine it?
Me: So, the Lake of Steam was nice, what did you do this past year, Rock?
Rock: Oh, you know, guarded the trees, tended the forests, defended the town.
Me: How nice! And you, Berol?
Berol: I shepherded the souls of the dead into the land of
the dead where my grim master oversaw their disposal with the gods of
their choice or, lacking a faith, deposited them in the timeless land
of the wailing dead. Also, I’m going to say The Dead a few more times.
Me: …Be a dear and pass the dressing, would you?
I love him like a brother, but he’s really not the sort to sit around a roaring fire and sing old dwarf songs for New Year’s. Read the rest of this entry »
GOLDEN BAY, DOLPHIN COAST – Shocking! The Halruaans have a highly civilized society – they
have formal, public education for all! – and yet they have silly rules
against the use of magic by other than certified, book-carrying wizards.
I tried to explain that perhaps they should have invested in a sign to let the rest of us know – nothing major, nothing expensive, perhaps something as simple as a pamphlet - and they did not like that at all.
Bribes – especially the ones made in escape – always seem so dirty in
hindsight no matter how necessary at the time of their execution. Read the rest of this entry »