Darsille dangles--the Champion's Jig--we decide to journey to Greyhawk

Entry for Waterday, 5th Day of Reaping

We returned to Diamond Lake this morning. Barbazad continues to work hard on his spellbook—he’s trying to learn and transcribe all the spells in the several spellbooks we’ve harvested from our enemies while the rest of us find out what we can about Ilthane, Kyuss, the Ebon Triad, and the worms.

After lunch with Barbazad and Allustan, I went tavern-hopping with Allandrin, to learn how he plies men with ale and learns their secrets. Besides, it seemed a bit more interesting than sitting around Allustan’s house while he is closeted in his study and Barbazad is holed up in the laboratory. Wizards are useful, but rather dull company, I must say. Allandrin is more fun—he’s pleasing to both eye and ear, and he is full of interesting stories about his travels with his old master Brandazor in the two Urnsts and Nyrond. A clever lad, though sometimes he seems so young! Sixteen! Elf-lads and lasses are barely allowed out of their mother’s sight at that age, and have only just begun to learn their letters!

Anyhow, it was a bit too early for much to be going on in the taverns, so we stopped in at Lazare’s first. Business was slow, so the proprietor’s daughter, who was minding the shop, sat with us for a while and traded gossip over a desultory match or two of dragonchess. Later she introduced us to a monk from the Twighlight Monastery named Golgan Hant, who is in town to sell kalamanthis, an intoxicating herb that some folks in the Free City use. We quizzed him as to whether they have a library up at the monastery, and what kinds of books it might hold—we were thinking it might be worth a trip to further our research, but from Golgan’s description it did not sound promising enough to make the long walk out there. We also ran into the Hieronean shieldmaiden Mélinde, who delivered the startling news that Darsille Yagrax had hung herself in her cell at the garrison last night. No loss to the world to be rid of such demon-spawn, but I wish we had wrung more information out of her before she fled beyond our reach.

Well, after that depressing news, Allandrin figured it was time for a pint of the Feral Dog’s ale, though I must say an iced glass of Celene Moondew would have been much more to my taste. So we wandered across the Vein to the battered door of that saloon and marched in. We had hardly made it two steps inside when the motley crowd of patrons recognized us and stood almost as one to clap and shout a loud “Huzzah!” By the time we made it to the bar, Gorvic the tapster had poured out two large tankards of ale.

“It’s on the ‘ouse!” he exclaimed cheerily.

“To what do we owe this honor?” I inquired.

“Ye’ve freed us from a great tyrant and ‘is bloody gang,” he replied. “There’s not a soul in ‘ere’s not grateful for what ye done!”

Well, I thought we were about to have a mighty fine afternoon, in spite of the sawdust on the floor and the sour taste of the ale, but hardly fifteen minutes passed when the tavern door slammed open and in stepped a muscle-bound fellow with blond hair and the air of one who has been raised from low estate to a lordship. Behind him was a dark-haired elf women dressed in skin-tight leathers with a bodice cut so low that she might as well not bother wearing one.

“Well, if it ain’t the heroes who rid Diamond Lake of its big bully!” Auric shouted as he walked up to the bar. He dropped a fat purse full of silver coins on the bar. “A round of drinks for everyone in the house, including our heroes here! I hope in between your toasts to these fine folks you can spare a couple for us, since we struck it rich at the Stirgenest Cairn! Yeah, that’s right, the place you all said was tapped out!”

His neck was thick as a bull’s—thicker than his head—and he displayed the intelligence of a stupid beast as well, showing off his wealth like that.

“Come, sit with us and toast us on our success,” he said to me, grabbing me around the waist as though I were a common tavern wench. What an oafish lout! Meanwhile, that hussy Tirra was whispering in Allandrin’s ear, displaying her ample bosom in all its glory.

“Your tavern wench is over there,” I said, twisting out of his grasp and nodding my head toward Tirra.

“Best watch your tongue, or she’s liable to cut it out! She’s a feisty one!” He grabbed my arm this time and pulled me over to a table, as Tirra locked arms with Allandrin and brought him over to join us. Allandrin gave me a sheepish grin, followed by a look that said, “play along with them for now.”

Well, it wasn’t long before our table was cluttered with empty ale mugs, mostly drained off by Auric. Tirra tried to drape herself all over Allandrin like a blanket, and I could tell Allandrin wouldn’t have minded, except he felt uncomfortable with me there. Meanwhile, Auric’s hands kept wandering into my lap. There was little to learn from this pair, other than that they and their mage friend had finally found a secret door that led to an unexplored part of the Stirgenest Cairn, where they had finally struck it rich, or so they claimed. Hardly worth suffering through being groped and having to watch Tirra’s disgraceful attempts to seduce Allandrin, who was plainly not unfavorable toward her advances. They’re due to head back to Greyhawk soon—apparently the fancy gold belt around Auric’s waist means he’s the defending Champion of the Free City, and he’s got to get back for the Champion’s Games next month. Good riddance, and I hope someone unseats him in the most embarrassing manner possible!

Finally, I had had enough of Auric’s unbearable pawing and pinching, and I stood up to leave. Auric seized my arm and pulled me back down into my chair again. Then something strange happened.

“Since you’re so happy about striking it rich, why don’t you dance a jig for us on the table,” Allandrin said. His voice sounded strong and persuasive, and as Auric turned towards him a strange look passed across his visage.

“Happy to oblige!” he said, and hopped up on the table and began to dance to a lively song that Allandrin provided for him. The clientele of the Feral Dog began to clap in time. I scooted my chair back out of the way and stood up, afraid the drunken oaf would fall into my lap. Just as I did so, Auric’s dance took him to the edge of the table, and his weight flipped it over. Auric landed on his backside as the dozen or so stoneware mugs crashed to the floorboards around him, shattering and showering him with sour ale and potsherds. I started to laugh, but Auric, his face red as an efreeti, stood up, the spell broken. As he lunged for Allandrin, I screamed, but Allandrin dodged backward and shouted.

“It’s funny, Auric! Laugh!”

The ignorant fellow looked shocked for a split second, then gales of laughter erupted from him and he doubled over, incapacitated by the irresistable urge of Allandrin’s ensorcelment.

“Let’s get out of here, Gwyn!” Allandrin was halfway to the door before he finished his sentence, and I was right behind.

“Oh, Allandrin, do come back and play dagger-toss with me sometime when Auric isn’t around!” the dark-haired minx called after us.

I didn’t speak to Allandrin as we jogged back to Allustan’s house. He gave me a couple of sheepish grins, but I’m sure he could see that I was too angry with him to exchange words. Men can be such fools sometimes, and human men even more so. Does he think his magic tricks make up for letting that ape Auric slobber all over me for an hour?

That night over supper, Allaxsim related the conversation he had with Valkus Dunn after receiving the news of Darsille’s suicide. Valkus warned Allaxsim that we must use great caution even here in Diamond Lake, for we know not what other spies are watching us. He also suggested that the spy gave us the best lead we have at the moment, which is the name of Bozal Zahol in Greyhawk. Accordingly, we decided that our next move will be to go to the Free City, find our persecutor, and confront him. First, though, Barbazad needs time to master the new spells he is learning, so the rest of us shall keep a low profile here at Allustan’s as much as possible.

Well, later in the evening, Allandrin came to apologize. It's hard to stay angry with him for too long—I have to remember that he’s just a boy, in many ways. He’s good-hearted, but doesn’t understand the feelings of a woman who cares for him, and doesn’t realize that just because some other wench hangs all over him doesn’t mean she means him well. Perhaps he’ll grow up some time. I can only pray that the fates have that in store for him, rather than an early demise at the hands of our unseen adversaries.

Leisurely life at Allustan's--Farewell, Diamond Lake--Renegade Trolls

Entry for Starday, 22nd Day of Reaping

Well, it seems that I’ve been neglecting my journal of late, but, honestly, there’s been little of interest to record—we’ve not been adventuring, nor have adventures come seeking us out. It’s been a quiet two weeks or more. Barbazad works on his spellbook day in and day out, when he’s not making magical scrolls, or crafting a wand that stores those blue spheres he likes to shoot at our enemies. Allaxsim goes to the garrison every day to train with Mélinde and the other soldiers and receive teaching in the doctrines of Hieroneous from Valkus Dunn. Allandrin and I have been enjoying a leisurely time here at Allustan’s, and have not ventured out much for fear of attracting the attention of another spy. Mostly we’ve passed the time reading in Allustan’s extensive library, or playing dragon chess, or singing to the accompaniment of Allandrin’s lute. Every morning we train at foils for two or three hours, and I’m starting to get a better feel for swordsmanship with the rapier as a result. We had a tailor come out to take measurements and make some presentable clothes for each member of the party, in anticipation for visiting some well-heeled people Allaxsim knows when we get to Greyhawk. I guess I’ve always been one to dress in hunter’s Celadon Green—my father’s influence—but I have to admit I was pleased as a squirrel under a butternut tree to have Mistress Theren sew a gown in that color that shows my figure to good effect. Anyhow, Allandrin complimented me quite elegantly when I tried it on—I must say the young lad is quite the flatterer, but I don’t mind a bit.

The dress is all packed away in a portmanteau now, along with Barbazad’s imposing blue wizard’s robe and the handsome court doublets the brothers had made—we’re departing for the fabled Free City of Greyhawk on the morrow.

Entry for Sunday, 23rd Day of Reaping

We departed for Greyhawk bright and early this morning. The rest of us had already saddled Barbazad’s pony and loaded the packhorse when Barbazad came running out of the laboratory with his just-finished wand. Allaxsim bears letters for Jaikor Demien and reports for the Captain of the Free City Militia, while the rest of us just bear anticipation about where the quest will take us next.

Allustan walked us to the edge of town, where I was surprised to see my mother standing beside the road waiting for me. How she had found out about our planned departure, I don’t know, but there she was. We had little to say to each other, but for some reason I couldn’t keep my eyes dry when she bade me to travel safely and take care of myself and my reputation. She gave me a letter of reference to an old contact of hers in the city, someone to see if I “get myself in serious trouble and need help.” Mother! She always doubts my judgement and capabilities. Though I know she loves me dearly, sometimes she is just plain exasperating. I was half angry, but half sad to leave her behind, and I kissed her goodbye, then dried my eyes and set my face to the road.

Entry for Moonday, 24th Day of Reaping

It’s been a long and uneventful two days on the road now. Last night we camped near Blackstone Cross, and tonight we’re enjoying a night at the Dancing Satyr Inn in High Ery, which is an even smaller and dirtier town than Diamond Lake, if that is possible. The weather has been muggy, or was until we had a spot of rain this morning, but otherwise the trip has not been too unpleasant.

Entry for Waterday, 26th Day of Reaping

Last night we camped where the Urnst Trail drops down out of the Cairn Hills, only a few miles from the edge of the settled plain that surrounds the City. I thought I had picked a good campsite, in a little hollow where our fire would be hard to see from the road or the nearby woods, but our night’s rest was interrupted by a pair of terrible trolls.

It was Allaxsim’s watch when they came upon us, and Allaxsim’s warning cry gave us no time to do more than struggle free of our bedrolls and draw our swords before the foul things were looming over us, slashing at us with their horrendous claws. One rent Barbazad most horribly—by the firelight I thought he had been slain for sure, but somehow, my tough friend managed to cling to life long enough for Ehlenestra’s healing power to revive him. Allandrin used his laughing spell on this one, allowing us to kill it and burn it in the fire. Allaxsim cut the other to bits with his sword, but as he went to burn its head in the fire, it croaked at him, begging for mercy. We allowed it to live—the hideous things don’t just die when you cut off their heads, but can put them back on again—and we found out that these two trolls’ three brothers were slain by another party of adventurers whose descriptions matched the contemptible pair with whom we nearly came to blows at the Feral Dog, plus their wizard friend. Having given our pledge to spare it, there was nothing to do but let it go, threatening it with dire consequences if we heard of it molesting travelers in these parts ever again.

Tonight we’re once again staying in the comfort and safety of an inn—I’m not one to mind overmuch sleeping on leaves, pine duff, or whatever else the Lady Ehlonna provides, but after last night I’m just as happy for the company of jovial peasants and the assurance of a barred door between us and whatever fell things may be abroad at night in these parts. So I’m enjoying the warm fire and weak ale of the Wheatsheaf Inn in the hamlet of Caddenbrook as I dip my pen and make my entry.

Episode Eight: Stolen Faces, Stolen Minds

An old enemy welcomes us to Greyhawk--the rain barrel prophet--Eligos--the Crooked House

Entry for Earthday, 27th Day of Reaping

We arrived at the Druid¡¦s Gate today before noon, and after a long wait, and a long interview with the City Watch (it took us some time before we realized that they were trying to shake us down for a little bribe) we finally entered the Free City of Greyhawk. No sooner had we passed through the gate than we spotted a familiar (and unwelcome face)¡XFilge the Necromancer was standing across the gateway plaza from us, his maimed left arm hidden under his cloak, and his right pointing us out to some unknown companion. When he saw that we had noticed him, he fled¡XAllandrin gave chase but Filge disappeared quickly into an alleyway, and might as well have disappeared into thin air, for all we knew.

Before we left Diamond Lake, Allustan suggested we look up an old acquaintance of his, a sage named Eligos who was once Allustan¡¦s fellow apprentice, long ago. Eligos is, in Allustan¡¦s estimation, a man of considerable knowledge and sagacity, and if anyone can help us to unravel the mysteries surrounding the worms, and the Ebon Triad, and Kyuss, and Ilthane, it is he. Eligos lives in the Street of Sages in the Garden District, and once we had lubricated their tongues with a few gold orbs, the gate-guards were kind enough to give us directions. Fortunately Allaxsim lived in Greyhawk as a neophyte, and knows his way around the city reasonably well, so that armed with directions we were able to find our way. We passed the crowded Low Market and made our way up the broad avenue known as ¡§The Processional¡¨ toward the Garden Gate, which passes through an internal wall separating the Low City from the High City. Strange as it might seem to my human friends, I¡¦ve never once been in a walled city, and I find the veritable forest of houses here close and oppressive, even worse, in some ways, than being underground. There is little greenery to be found in this part of the city, and I feel isolated from my goddess here, vulnerable, with no tree nor underbrush, yea, not even a rock behind which to take refuge in danger. I was rather excited to see this new and interesting place, but am no longer so sure, after spending a few hours here.

At a street-corner along the Processional, we encountered a strange, unkempt man, standing atop a rain-barrel, who seemed to be endlessly prophesying doom upon the citizens. I was taken aback, but perhaps not so surprised, when his prophecy mentioned the Age of Worms. I took a few moments to jot down some of his proclamations so that I¡¦ll be able to remember them, as they may hold some clue that can help us in our quest:

Have you not heard the dead dragons roar? Have you not smelled the rot festering under your very nose? Have you not dreamt of the worm that walks, bringing decay to all he touches?

Who is to say whether these are the mad ramblings of a lunatic, or the prescient words of a seer? (Or perhaps, both.)

Eligos lives in a rather well appointed house in the Garden District, which is a bit more congenial to my tastes on account of the fact that the houses aren¡¦t so close together and there are many trees, flowers, and gardens to shade passersby from the summer heat and provide a hiding place when needed. The sage himself has wise gray eyes and short red hair, and he seems patient and level-headed. He was rather surprised when we mentioned that Allustan had sent us¡Xapparently the two had some sort of falling out, one serious enough that Allustan threatened never to speak to Eligos again. We gave him an account of our adventures in Diamond Lake and environs, and asked him our questions about the worms, Kyuss, Ilthane, and the Ebon Triad. We also asked him to examine some of the strange and marvelous treasures we found in the Whispering Cairn, to see if they have any unusual powers. He told us it would take a week or so to research the answers to our questions, and suggested we take lodgings at an inn called the Crooked House, down near the Low Market.

The Crooked House is a strange inn, to say the least¡Xthe floors and walls are all out of kilter in a way that is a bit jarring until you get used to it. But it¡¦s a cozy enough spot, and the keeper, a gnome named Tarquin Shortstone, is a hospitable enough fellow. So this will be a pleasant home for the week while we await Eligos¡¦ answers, though I daresay I¡¦m contemplating a trip or two outside the walls before then, just to get away from the houses, and the people, and the stench. Though I know my quest¡XEhlonna¡¦s will for me¡Xtakes me to this closed in place, and I must endure it, nonetheless I long for the clean air and open woods of the Celadon. May the Seldarine grant me a swift return there!

Business and pleasure in the Free City--a dangerous parade--crooked happenings at the Crooked House

Entry for Freeday, the 28th and Last Day of Reaping

Today, we took the opportunity to sell some of the magical treasures we did not want to keep, like the ¡§returning trident¡¨ that we took from the Lizard King. Most of the shops were closed, but we found a magic shop in the Artisans¡¦ Quarter, not far from the Druid¡¦s Gate, that was open despite the custom that shop-boys and apprentices get Freedays off. An ominous building without windows made of black stone houses the shop run by a partnership known as ¡§Maldin & Elenderi, Ltd.¡¨ They were quite willing to purchase our treasures for a handsome price, and sell us a few useful items as well.

The bulk of the earnings from our sale, though, were owed to that Nyrondese archbishop who revived Allaxsim. Allaxsim accordingly counted out that sum and proceeded to the Sanctum of Hieroneous. There, he consulted with Bishop Demien, gave him a first-hand report of our deeds and findings, arranged for his debt to be paid, and used some additional funds to purchase another curing wand for the party.

Allandrin spent the afternoon and most of the evening in various taverns, hoping to learn something about the mysterious Bozal Zahol. Barbazad and I played dragonchess for most of the afternoon and evening¡Xneither of us felt like walking through the crowded streets or smelling the filth in the gutters. Allandrin did not return until quite late, and although I daresay he learned some things about the city, he failed to catch even the faintest whiff of Bozal Zahol¡¦s trail.

Entry for Starday, the First Day of Goodmonth, Common Year 595

Today, we spent the morning strolling around Midnight¡¦s Muddle, as they call this neighborhood where the Crooked House sits. It is just north of the Low Market, and there are many and varied shops in it, though it seems to be but middling in its prosperity. There is little to remark on except that the neighborhood is crowded and close, and it is a wonder that the fire that claimed a shrine to Hieroneous and two neighboring shops down the street from our inn didn¡¦t turn the entire block to cinders. We did a little desultory tavern hopping in the afternoon, but once again found out nothing of interest. I suspect we are fishing for trout in shallow, sunny pools instead of casting our line toward the deep, undercut banks below which such creatures as they hide from the light.

During our wanderings, we ran into a huge crowd lining the Processional. Curious about what had drawn them out, Allaxsim and Allandrin elbowed their way through the mass of grubby townsfolk. Barbazad and I reluctantly followed. A parade of performers was making its way down the broad avenue. A marching band with drums, pipes, and sackbutts led the way, followed by acrobats and jugglers. In their midst, great draft-horses pulled a huge wagon decorated with cut flowers and displaying several scantily clad strumpets dancing on a stage atop it. The next wagon was decorated with bunting and draped with a banner that read, ¡§Fifth Annual Champion¡¦s Games: Goodmonth 11-15.¡¨ A crier in a sequined coat perched on a crowsnest projecting above the wagon, shouting the news so the illiterate will know. From his loud announcements, I gather that there is supposed to be a great ceremonial banquet for the city fathers and other eminent personages on the evening of Moonday the Tenth, then a day of gladiatorial contests on Godsday the Eleventh, followed by two more rounds of the tournament on the thirteenth and fourteenth, with the Grand Finale held on Starday the Fifteenth to determine who will wear the Champion¡¦s Belt for the next year. I suppose these city folk are ignorant of the phases of the moon, but the first day of the contest is a most inauspicious one in the eyes of those who know aught of the natural world, for it is Darknight, the one night a year upon which both Luna and Celene achieve the New Moon simultaneously. Although the werewolves rarely travel abroad on such nights, other fell creatures of darkness certainly do, and it is rumored to be a night when the cults of evil gods perform their foulest sacrifices. Certainly the power of death will hang over this contest, and it seems strange to me that the city fathers would allow it to coincide with Darknight. Is something foul and dark afoot in Greyhawk?

My musings were interrupted by a rather impressive, though in a way pitiful sight. The performers were hauling a caged monster with three heads¡Xone like a goat¡¦s, one like a lion¡¦s, and one like a blue-scaled dragon¡¦s. The creature roared horribly, frantic to escape the iron bars containing it, and the latter head kept spitting lightning, which arced between the bars, but fortunately was contained by the glass panels outside the iron bars, keeping it from harming the crowd. It kept hurling its bulk against the bars after zapping them with its electric breath. Barbazad stared intently at the spectacle, but I happened to glance down just as a thief took advantage of his inattention to slide his hand into the wizard¡¦s pouch and swipe a valuable potion. I shouted a warning to Barbazad, and as the thief began to shove his way through the crowd I grabbed him by the arm. As we scuffled, another thief drew a poniard from under his cloak and tried to attack Barbazad. I turned loose the thief carrying the potion and called upon Ehlonna¡¦s power to freeze the attacker in his tracks. Allandrin and Allaxsim, hearing Barbazad¡¦s cry of alarm, pushed through the crowd to come to our aid, and Allandrin nearly intercepted the thief before he got away.

Just then I heard the loud crash of shattering glass over the noise of the crowd. An instant of silence followed, but by the time I turned to look, the scene was pandemonium¡Xthe monster had somehow broken out of its cage, and panicked onlookers stampeded every which way. All except a small girl who had fallen on the cobblestones, a mere three paces from where the monster landed when it leapt out of its wheeled prison. The monster¡¦s lion head contemplated this small morsel as its dragon head surveyed the fleeing citizens. A loud scream pierced the roar of the stampeding crowd, as the child¡¦s mother tried to fight her way against the human current.

¡§Hie-ro-ne-ous!¡¨

A battle cry followed close upon the heels of the mother¡¦s scream, and from the corner of my eye I saw Allaxsim bowl over several fleeing townsfolk and charge toward the monster. Time seems to slow when life and death hangs in the balance. Instinct jerked my sight back to the thieves nearby, but they had taken advantage of the moment of chaos to melt into the crowd. Ehlonna¡¦s power is weak in a place like this, and the one with the poniard broke out of the invisible snare in which I had caught him like a wolf breaking out of a snare made for a rabbit. With no threat at our backs, the three of us moved quickly to face the greater threat of the three-headed beast. I ran to pull the child to safety, while Allandrin charged in to aid his brother, and blue orbs of magical force shot from Barbazad¡¦s fingertips. The battle was soon over. The brothers were somewhat singed by the monster¡¦s lighting breath, but the child had been saved, and the fell beast had fallen to Allaxsim¡¦s sword.

It took some time after this battle to sort out the mess, as the watch arrived, and we had a long, heated discussion with the owners of the monster, which Barbazad said was a rare and elusive magical beast known as a chimera. Afterwards, we were too weary to visit more taverns, and retired to the Crooked House.

They say that no rest comes to those who have left something undone, and a very strange incident happened to mar our quiet evening of rest. Barbazad went upstairs to study his spellbooks after supper. He returned downstairs some time afterwards, and we saw him approach the bar, walking purposefully¡Xin retrospect he had a rather odd look on his face. The inn¡¦s proprietor Tarquin Shortstone was holding forth from his stool behind the bar, and Barbazad pulled a knife and stabbed the gnome in the chest! My jaw dropped in surprise, and before I could call out, he immediately fled back upstairs. Allaxsim pursued Barbazad up the stairs, and I was close upon his heels. On the way up, we ran into a well-dressed patron, but saw no sign of Barbazad, despite the fact that with his short legs we ought to have caught up with him. When Allaxsim inquired which way the Dwarf had run, the man indicated that he had headed for the third floor. The merchant headed downstairs and Allaxsim headed upwards, but then stopped in his tracks and said, ¡§Something¡¦s not right! Follow that fellow¡XI¡¦ll find Barbazad!¡¨

As I descended into the common room, I saw the well-dressed man talking to the patrons. The common room looked like an anthill that had been kicked over, and the man was shouting at the crowd, trying to turn them against ¡§that ingrate Dwarf and his friends.¡¨ Allandrin had rushed to Tarquin, and was tending to his grievous wound. Hearing this, both Allandrin and I shouted our protests of innocence and tried to calm the crowd. Then Allaxsim arrived with Barbazad in tow. ¡§There¡¦s been some sort of trick!¡¨ Allaxsim shouted. ¡§Block the door, Allandrin.¡¨ Seeing that the game was up, the well-dressed man sprinted for the door. He eluded Allandrin¡¦s grasp and ran out into the night, with the two brothers hot on his heels.

Meanwhile I asked Barbazad what had happened¡XI can¡¦t believe my friend would do what I saw him do, not unless some strange magic were at work. Barbazad professed to have been in his room the whole time until Allaxsim burst into it, and he asked me what was going on. The watch soon arrived to take the situation in hand. Shortly afterwards, the brothers returned empty-handed¡XAllaxsim had chased him through the Low Market into an alleyway, landing several blows on the man with the flat of his sword during the chase, but the man pulled a potion from his pocket, downed it, and disappeared into thin air. A long discussion with the watch sargent did nothing to solve the mystery or produce any definitive evidence that would exhonerate Barbazad after the near-fatal assault on Tarquin. The assault weapon bore the same ¡§FD¡¨ etching as the one we had taken from the tiefling spy in Diamond Lake. From our perspective it is obvious that someone was trying to frame Barbazad somehow, but how the assailant managed to disguise himself was a mystery. I¡¦ve heard of foul sorceries that allow one to compel someone else to do something, or possess someone else¡¦s body and control it for one¡¦s own purposes, but Barbazad showed no signs of such enchantment, and I told the watch sargent as much. In the end, the sargent was not convinced¡Xunderstandably, I suppose¡Xand insisted on arresting Barbazad and taking him into custody. He made noises about arresting the rest of us as well, but in the end he had no evidence against us, and dared not arrest a soldier in the service of Hieroneous without very good cause.

After the watch left, we decided we must expend every effort to free our friend, and the first thing we must do is find where the suspicious man fled. Accordingly, the brothers brought me to the alley where the man had vanished, in the hopes that I could find some sign of his passage. Unfortunately, cobblestones don¡¦t take tracks very well, and all we found were an empty potion vial and a crooked key, with its head worked into an odd design¡Xa ship being grappled by a huge, eight-armed sea monster.

With no tracks to follow, Allaxsim and I went back to the inn, and Allandrin went out to see what he could find out about the strange sigil on the key.

This is a most distressing development. We were told we could not accompany Barbazad to the watch garrison prison, and advised to ¡§come on the morrow when the garrison captain will sort it all out.¡¨ Meanwhile, if this was indeed a plot aimed at framing Barbazad (or maybe all of us), it seems our enemies know more about our whereabouts than we do of theirs. I wonder if our sighting of Filge has anything to do with all of this? In any event, we will not rest easy tonight, nor any night until we¡¦ve gotten to the bottom of this.

The watch 'disappears' Barbazad--the octopus key lets us in--strange guards and devious traps--a hidden prison--the transformed corpse reveals the truth--unseen assailants force our retreat

Entry for Sunday, 2nd Day of Goodmonth

This morning, we got up early and went to the Foreign Quarter¡¦s watch garrison to see if we could spring Barbazad free, or at least visit him. The watch lieutenant there brusquely told us that seeing him was out of the question¡Xhe had been transferred to another prison (¡§for dangerous criminals¡¨), and the lieutenant would not tell us the location.

This was grave news indeed, and we decided that our only recourse was to seek out those responsible for framing Barbazad and find evidence to exhonerate him. We suspect that the criminals must have some connection with the authorities, and it will be necessary to find evidence of this as well, or Barbazad may languish in an oubliette in some secret dungeon forever. Fortunately, Allandrin¡¦s late-night visit to the Low Seas, a dive in the River Quarter, last night had netted a key piece of the puzzle. The sigil on the key dropped by the mysterious well-dressed man was actually the emblem of a deceased merchant named Jarrett of Hardby, who once owned a warehouse on the waterfront between St. Cuthbert¡¦s Gate and the Cargo Gate. We proceeded to this location post-haste.

We found only one door into the warehouse, and it did not take us long after we opened it with the key to figure out that it is no ordinary merchant¡¦s warehouse. The warehouse floor was cluttered with crates, barrels, and stacks of boxes, and as we moved toward one of the several doors opening into it, two of the largest crates began moving! They weren¡¦t crates at all, but some strange, shapechanging creatures that attacked us with sticky pseudopods, grabbing the two brothers and trying to squeeze the life out of them. My elvish reflexes served me in good stead here, for I was able to move beyond their reach before either could catch me, and if it had not been for me pincushioning the two monsters with my arrows, the brothers might not have survived. A close call! Someone had placed these strange monsters here to guard the place against intruders¡Xand since merchants normally use mastiffs or the like in this capacity, our suspicions of this place were reinforced, and we decided to explore further.

Allaxsim tried the door on the left side of the room. It was locked from inside somehow, but his attempt to open it triggered a trap, and he was hit by a poisoned dart for his efforts. Fortunately, the poison was not too strong, and we were able to continue on. Two doors on the right side of the room revealed a disheveled office filled with stacks and boxes of papers, and another empty room with a ladder leading to a catwalk above the warehouse floor. The ladder proved unsafe, as it collapsed under Allaxsim¡¦s weight, but fortunately he was merely bruised a little when the wreckage of the catwalk came down on top of him. There was another door on the left side of the room, opening onto the catwalk, so we used a rope and grappling hook to climb up. This door took us to a stairway, which brought us back down to the ground floor of the building and into a room outfitted as a prison. Several prisoners were held in barred cells, including two shapeless forms huddling lifelessly under their cloaks on soiled straw pallets, and a young elven woman who cowered in the far corner of her cell, muttering at us to ¡§stay away from me.¡¨ Two other prisoners showed signs of life, though¡Xa pair of men in rumpled city watch uniforms called out to us, ¡§help us! Let us out of here!¡¨

As Allaxsim went over to see if he could somehow let them out, one of the men gave the cell door a shove and it swung open, slamming him into the bars on the opposite side of the corridor. His companion pulled two longswords from under the straw and the two set upon us. They were tough fighters, and we were taken by surprise. All three of us were badly wounded, and if it weren¡¦t for all three of us commanding magic to heal each other¡¦s wounds in the midst of battle, we would have been killed or captured. In the end, though, both fighters fell to Allaxsim¡¦s sword. One was so badly wounded that he expired before our eyes, and as he did so his corpse underwent a surprising transformation. What had appeared human shifted form, its skin taking on a gray, rubbery form, its head changing in shape to reveal bulging white eyes and a featureless face.

¡§Keep the other one alive¡Xwe must interrogate it!¡¨ shouted Allandrin. It had not changed shape, but we could only guess that it, too was a shapechanger mimicking human form. As I bandaged its wounds and saw to it that it was safely restrained with rope, Allandrin searched the corpse and found a key ring, which conveniently had the keys to the other cells. We let out the elven woman, who proved to be Ilya Starmane, daughter of the Starmane family of Greyhawk who handle trade between the exalted elven land of Celene and the Free City. It took some time to get her to talk to us, but she opened up to me once she realized we had killed two of her captors. The shapechangers have held her quite some time, tormenting her, using their ability to mimic her friends and family to toy with her. She could tell us little about the layout of this place, and I¡¦m afraid all the torture has affected her poor mind.

We also unlocked the two cells that appeared to contain dead prisoners, but it turned out both were still alive, and I was able to revive them with my healing powers. One was a very bedraggled man who seems to have been imprisoned here for a long time¡Xunfortunately, though I healed his body somewhat, I could do nothing for his shattered mind, and all he could do was to babble incoherently, alternating between weeping, childish laughter, and talking as if he were a noble speaking to imaginary servants.

The last prisoner was none other than our companion Barbazad, who quickly came round from his unconscious state under my healing touch, and appeared overjoyed to be rescued. As he picked the straw from his beard, he told us that he has no idea how he got to this place¡Xhe remembers going to sleep in the garrison jail, and has vague memories of dreaming about being strapped into some strange magical machine, but remembers nothing else clearly until I revived him.

Some of Ilya¡¦s possessions were in a chest under the stairwell, as were the wands, scrolls, potions, and spell components that Barbazad usually carries in his robes, and that were on his person when he was arrested. There was some other gear there as well, including a bag that held what looked to be a good 40 pounds of gold coin, but weighed much lighter when we picked it up. A magical bag, such as the tax collectors for the king use in Nyrond to haul around the coin they extract from the common people. We bid Ilya wait for us while we explored further into the warehouse, hoping to get to the bottom of Barbazad¡¦s strange capture and find some evidence to exhonerate him. We speculated that there might be more of these shapeshifting creatures, which Barbazad tells us are called doppelgangers¡Xperhaps that well-dressed man last night was one of them.

So, we opened the door on the far side of the prison room, and entered a dank, sodden chamber¡Xa part of the warehouse that once sat on pilings over the Selintan River, but now the floor has rotted away, leaving only a few pilings with beams strung between them to provide a precarious walkway. We could see in the dim light that a few sections of floor still looked safe. The water was filled with debris, including a few protruding spear points and sword blades that indicated it might be dangerous to dive (or fall) in.

Barbazad remarked loudly, ¡§Be wary! I fear some deception has been prepared for us here.¡¨

Allandrin decided to scout by jumping across the gaps to the other safe sections of floor. When he reached the far corner of the room, he was set upon by some invisible creature¡Xat his cries, Allaxsim moved out along the beams to come to his aid, but was in turn attacked by another of the invisible creatures. A fierce battle ensued, and both Allaxsim and Allandrin were knocked into the water, and rescued only by means of the magic rope that we had recovered from the cultists beneath Dourstone Mine. Spells seemed of little use against the invisible creatures¡XI had prayed this morning for Ehlonna to grant me the ability to reveal invisible creatures near me, but when I repeated the prayer, I saw nothing, even though the creatures attacked me after they knocked the brothers into the water. Barbazad tried a few spells himself¡Xthe only one that seemed to work was a web spell inscribed on a scroll, which entangled one of the assailants long enough to allow him to help the brothers out of the water while I held the other off using my rapier. We were overmatched by these invisible creatures, and beat a hasty retreat from the room. Fortunately they did not pursue us.

We found a lever in the prison room that allowed us to disable the poison dart trap on the door to the warehouse, and we retreated with our rescued prisoners to that room, dragging the two doppelgangers with us as well. After some discussion, we decided that we could not trust the city watch to aid us, and decided to seek Jaikor Demien¡¦s aid. I do not believe I have mentioned that Allaxsim learned a prayer some time back that allows him to summon a mount from the stables of Hieroneous in the celestial realm. To date, he has made little use of the prayer, but now he said the prayer and called a beautiful palomino stallion to him in the alleyway between this warehouse and its neighbor. We loaded the two doppelgangers onto its back, wrapping the corpse up in a straw mat from the prison floor to conceal it. Allandrin cast an invisibility spell upon the live one to avoid unpleasant questions from the watch. With the released prisoners in tow, we entered the St. Cuthbert gate, going separately to avoid attracting too much attention.

I escorted Ilya to the Starmane Mansion and dropped her off at the gate of the compound, then met the brothers at the Sanctum of Hieroneous. There we had an extended conference with Jaikor Demien and Tigran Gellner, the Captain-General of the Greyhawk Militia. Bishop Demien requested the latter to come to the Sanctum for a private meeting to inform him of the strange happenings without letting the word get out. If the Watch has been corrupted, it¡¦s hard to tell who can be trusted. Jaikor also used a healing scroll to return the insane prisoner to his right mind. We found out that he is a tax-collector, leading to suspicions that the Revenue Service has also been infiltrated. Captain-General Gellner agreed to have the wounded doppelganger imprisoned in secret in the Citadel until such time as the conspiracy can be unraveled. He praised Allaxsim for uncovering this plot, and ordered him to finish the job. He wrote a letter to Tarquin, to reassure him that we were the victims of a setup of some sort, so that Tarquin would not follow through on the noises he was making last night about evicting us from the Crooked House if this matter weren¡¦t quickly cleared up.

Barbazad, who joined the Wizard¡¦s Guild the other day, went off to purchase some scrolls of spells that will help us in our mission. Allaxsim and I did likewise at the Sanctum, and we met back at the inn to get a night¡¦s rest before renewing our exploration of the warehouse.

Second assault on Sodden Hold--a watery passage--perfidy

Entry for Moonday, 3rd Day of Goodmonth

We returned to the warehouse, which Allandrin jokingly dubbed ¡§Sodden Hold,¡¨ early this morning. We were prepared for the invisible stalkers (this is what Barbazad called them), even though one was waiting for us in the warehouse room at the front of the building. Allandrin used a spell that reveals the position of invisible creatures, covering them with glittering golden dust, and we dispatched them easily.

Beyond the room with the rotting pilings, we discovered a small room with a well shaft leading downward. A large barrel bobbing end-upwards in the water and a rope ladder leading down to it indicated a route used by the doppelgangers to get in and out of the upper level¡Xbut it was by no means clear how exactly they do it. We ended up swimming down the shaft¡XI had prayed this morning for the power to transform myself and my companions so that we could breath water like a fish, and had cast this spell upon all of us before we crossed the pilings. We used spells to light our way, and I unstrung my bow and stored the string in a watertight tube to keep it dry.

At the bottom of the shaft, a horizontal passage took us into the bottom of a large square pool with a huge column dominating its center. As we advanced, a water creature with eight arms and a bloated head appeared out of the murk and attacked us with its tentacles. The creature snared Allaxsim in its grasp and began to crush the life out of him. The paladin managed to draw is shortsword and stabbed at the tentacles that held him, trying to sever them. Recognizing this sea monster as an octopus, an eight-footed animal supposed to haunt the depths of the Nyr Dyv and the salt seas ruled by Procan, I called upon Ehlonna¡¦s power to penetrate the beast¡¦s dim mind and commanded it to leave us alone. The thing let go and swam away, crawling back into a hole in one corner of the pool. Meanwhile, Allandrin swam to the surface of the pool, and soon we heard the grinding of stone and the rush of water moving through a narrow passage. My power over such a great beast was not strong enough, however, and before long it re-emerged from its lair and began to attack us again. Finally, the water level in the pool dropped to the point where the creature was forced to retreat¡XAllandrin¡¦s quick thinking had saved the day, as there was a lever atop the column that drained the water from the room and lowered the pillar to where we could scramble up a short ladder and stand atop it. We did so, and Allandrin threw the lever the other way. The column ground upward, and water flooded back into the pool behind it. Before long we were even with a stone platform extending out above the pool, and we crossed this and walked through a door into the inner sanctum of our adversaries, whoever they might be.

Within, we found a passage onto which opened a privy and a series of bedchambers. The first one we opened contained a pair of doppelgangers, one of whom was modeling an expensive courtier¡¦s outfit. ¡§More deception!¡¨ Barbazad cried, as Allaxsim attacked these obvious enemies. We soon found ourselves in a great melee with six of the creatures, but we were better armed than they, and we prevailed. I found it curious that every time Barbazad cast a spell he used one of his purchased or stored up magical scrolls, but thought it was not for me to question my friend¡¦s tactics¡Xhe was probably saving his most powerful spells for the boss of this doppelganger gang, I figured.

We found a meeting room containing a heap of papers and maps at one end of the corridor. The other end had double doors which proved to be but the bate for an ingenious pit trap that swallowed Allaxsim and made him disappear beneath an illusory floor. Fortunately we figured out what had happened when we lowered Allandrin on a rope to check things out, and he went right through the floor. He helped Allaxsim out of his armor, and the two shimmied back up the rope after pulling the armor back up. There no further obvious exits, so we began searching the bedrooms for secret doors. What we found instead was that one of the bedrooms had an illusory wall, and beyond it was a door that led into an octagonal room.

The contents of the room caught us by surprise¡Xthere, tied up in four chairs, were four people who looked just like us! As I stared in disbelief, the one that looked like me struggled free of her bonds, ungagged herself, and pointed at me, crying ¡§she¡¦s a doppelganger!¡¨

At this signal all hell broke loose. ¡§I am not!¡¨ I screamed, and drew my rapier to skewer the imposter. At the same time I heard the loud clash of a dagger punching through metal plate from behind me¡XBarbazad had stabbed Allaxsim in the back! Two other ¡§imprisoned party members¡¨ broke free just at that moment and began to pummel their counterparts with their strong fists. Only a dwarf with a blue beard remained bound to his chair and gagged, despite his fierce struggles to escape. It was pretty clear who the imposters were, but the ensuing melee was confused, and I felt an uncontrollable sense of trepidation as I helped Allandrin to corner . . . an Allandrin in ragged clothes and without weapons. I hoped I was stabbing the right one.

The layer of chain and leather beneath Allaxsim¡¦s backplate had kept the false Barbazad¡¦s stab wound from piercing to his vitals, and Allaxsim roared with anger at the betrayal as he layed about with his long blade, wounding both the false Barbazad and the imposter Allaxsim. As the doppelgangers fell one by one, the false Barbazad moved to take his revenge on the real one, who sat helpless and unarmored in his chair, with no armor to turn a dagger thrust. The false Barbazad stabbed the real one twice before Allandrin fell atop the bleeding dwarf to shield him from further wounds. Finally, Allaxsim felled the false Barbazad, and I was able to heal the grievous stab wounds he had dealt to each of my companions. Barbazad was near death, but I used the power of my healing wand to revive him. He was very thankful when we untied him, and we were thankful to have the real Barbazad back, and to have survived this perfidious attack.

After this difficult combat, we rested for some time, curing our wounds with the power in our wands, and feeding the hungry Barbazad on some spare rations we had in our pockets. We found a strange, dark-colored sapphire in Barbazad's pouch, which Barbazad swore was not his. Must have been put there by the doppelganger for some reason. While Allaxsim stood watch, the rest of us took time to pray, meditate, and look over spellbooks. I was weary after our several hard fights and the casting of many spells, but as I sat and prayed for Ehlonna to sustain me I felt a resurgence of her power within me, like the fleeing deer that gets its second wind and manages to elude the wolf¡¦s jaws. Thus revitalized, we tightened our belts and pushed onward.

The hall of mirrors--suspicion is the bane of deceipt--the mastermind shows his face

Continued entry for 3rd of Goodmonth

A careful search of the room where Barbazad had been imprisoned revealed a secret door, and we pushed through into a hallway that in turn led to a strange maze of mirrors. Here we encountered more doppelgangers, and Allaxsim was briefly separated from the rest of us when a mirrored wall slid up out of the floor, but Allandrin was able to guess the right direction to travel through the maze to come to his aid. After a hard fight, we slew three of the shapechangers and pushed onward through the maze. After some searching, we found a door that opened into a cavernous hall, and as we stepped in we were greeted by a familiar voice.

¡§So kind of you to join me. It is time for me to show you the truth of things. Come and learn what lies beyond!¡¨ It was Allustan, standing on a dais at the end of the hall.

¡§It¡¦s an impostor!¡¨ Barbazad and Allaxsim cried out simultaneously. I barely had time to be confused, for as Allaxsim charged forward and drew his sword, the kindly old wizard¡¦s visage transformed into that of an ugly, hawkish man, who spoke a word and extended forth his hand to call into being a wall of flames. Another doppelganger, I realized, and I called down Ehlonna¡¦s blessing to aid us in the fight. Allaxsim barely dodged a trap door that opened beneath his feat, as Barbazad spoke an arcane word that snuffed out the fire, and Allandrin circled around to run up the other stair onto the dais. Both brothers were hit by spears that shot out of the ceiling as they reached the dais, as the wizard/doppelganger cast another spell at Allaxsim that seemed to have no effect.

¡§Clear out!¡¨ shouted Barbazad as he prepared to cast a spell at the enemy, but just at that moment, the enemy changed form into a hairy, brawny orc. Seizing an axe that was propped behind the throne, he charged at Allandrin. In the ensuing melee, both brothers were badly wounded, but the shapechanger fell under a hail of magical missiles and arrows launched by Barbazad and myself. As we had come to expect, what had been an orc changed form into a doppelganger after it was slain¡Xbut this one had a strange green tattoo on its brow, of an abstract form with spiraling tentacles that reminded me of the octopus we had recently fought.

The room in which we had fought this battle contained some sort of terrible magical machine, an assembly of vats and tubes connected to a table with straps for restraining a prisoner and a strange silver helmet. We weren¡¦t sure what to make of it, but Barbazad had vague memories of being hooked up to it and feeling as if someone were probing his innermost self, or so he claimed. Near the machine, in a locked container, were two large gemstones nearly identical to one we had found earlier on the body of Barbazad¡¦s imposter. Behind the dais was a private chamber that not only held considerable treasure, but also a chestful of papers detailing this doppelganger group¡¦s dealings throughout the city. This ought to exhonerate Barbazad! Amongst a few magical scrolls in a sack, we also found a note written in a strange, alien hand:

I have a task for you, Telakin. Meet me at the sewer junction beneath the cold forge and I will give you the details. There are some troublesome small minds that must be removed.

The note was signed with a symbol identical to the tattoo on the doppelganger boss¡¦s forehead.

We took as much of the treasure as we could fit in our newly found ¡§bag of holding,¡¨ along with papers detailing the gang¡¦s exploits in corrupting Greyhawk, stored both in Telakin¡¦s chambers and in the gang¡¦s planning room. Hopefully this will help Jaikor Demien and the Captain-General of the Militia to root out the doppelgangers and their agents. Meanwhile, we could see that there was further investigation to do: Telakin, the doppelganger chief, is obviously working for someone else who wants us ¡§troublesome small minds¡¨ eliminated. It is not likely that this someone will rest until the task is accomplished.

We found out who this someone was when we made to leave the underground complex. As we walked out onto the platform over the octopus pool, we realized that the pool was drained and the column was lowered. Suddenly, a section of the room was swathed in darkness, and a robed figure slowly ascended out of the shadows. It was vaguely human in shape, but as it moved into the light I could see that it was not at all human¡Xwith purplish, hairless skin, bulging white eyes, and a quartet of tentacles protruding where its nose and mouth ought to be. Suddenly a wave of . . . sensation . . . shot through my mind, and I struggled to bring order to my mind all five of my senses were swamped with swirling color, overpowering aromas and tastes, wild tingling, a cacophony of sound. As I was in the rear of the party, I was still in the doorway, and as I stumbled backward the sensation weakened and I regained control of my faculties. Barbazad also had managed to regain the doorway, but Allandrin had to pull his brother, who was holding his head and writhing in pain, back to safety. As Allaxsim recovered from this horrific mind blast, Barbazad stepped out and fired a salvo of magic missiles at our enemy. He found the platform to be slick as ice, and almost fell off it. He crawled back through the door, then stood up and used his wand to fire another pair of missiles. The tentacled horror seemed virtually immune to this spell, and answered this salvo with a lightning bolt that singed Barbazad¡¦s beard and made his hair stand on end. Meanwhile, darts coming from the shadows below told us that there were more enemies down there, so Barbazad launched a fireball at them. Seeing that it was dangerous to advance out on to the platform with our enemy thus able to focus his efforts there, I decided to provide him a little distraction, and summoned a celestial hippogriff from Ehlonna¡¦s realm in the Beastlands. The hippogriff flew in circles around the tall room, slashing at the tentacled abomination and forcing it to levitate up and down to try to dodge its claws.

At this point, we noticed that the water in the chamber was rising, and with it the column in the center of the room. A cloud of darkness shrouded the top of the column. Allaxsim by this time had recovered, and he charged forward across the platform, preparing to meet the enemy in darkness, whatever it was. The rest of us followed, hoping to distract the tentacled thing and perhaps find some way to penetrate its magic defenses. Allandrin and I fired arrows, some of which seemed to pass right through it as though it weren¡¦t there at all, but some seemed off the mark and yet found their target. Another magical deception! The tentacled creature fired spell after spell¡Xa lightning bolt sent the hippogriff back to its eternal home in the Beastlands, a ray of fire blasted Allandrin, and another lightning bolt blasted me, though I managed to dodge the worst of it. I gave back as good as I got, using the rapid shooting technique my father taught me as a lass to put a hail of arrows in the air in the hopes that some would hit it. A half a dozen clothyard shafts sprouted from its displaced form¡Xthough I couldn¡¦t tell whether my arrows would hit the target, the displaced image revealed how badly I had wounded it. And then, once again my senses were overwhelmed by that sensation, and I slumped to my knees, and could hardly filter what was happening around me from the rush of false images and sounds that sped through my skull. I saw Allandrin tumble from the platform, holding his head, into the water. A part of my mind screamed in fear. No! The octopus . . . From my other eye I saw Allaxsim leap downward into the darkness. And then I could see nothing but purple lights and hear nothing but the shouts of a thousand demons inside my skull . . .

When my mind cleared and became once again capable of orderly perception, I screamed the first thought that came to my mind.

¡§Allandrin!¡¨

¡§I¡¦m allright, Gwynaleth!¡¨ he shouted up from the floor of the pool-chamber. I looked over the edge, and saw him standing next to his brother, who was extracting his short sword from the eye of the monstrous octopus.

¡§You should have seen it, Gwynaleth,¡¨ said Barbazad, who came up next to me. ¡§Allaxsim jumped down to the top of the column, and fought with that fellow there¡¨¡Xhe pointed to an inert corpse lying on the floor¡X¡§to lower the column and drain the water so Allandrin wouldn¡¦t drown. Then the octopus came out of its hole to eat Allandrin and Allaxsim drew his short sword and dove in point first to slay the beast. ¡¥Tis lucky we have such a heroic warrior in our company, or we¡¦d be one fewer by now!¡¨

¡§And what of the tentacled sorcerer?¡¨ I asked.

¡§Disappeared into thin air¡Xyour arrows put him on the defensive, I guess. Not quite sure how he did it, but I don¡¦t think he just made himself invisible.¡¨

¡§Well, I suppose we¡¦ve won ourselves a little respite,¡¨ I said, ¡§but if he can disappear, he can reappear¡Xanywhere. We¡¦d better get out of here and go talk to Bishop Demien, maybe Eligos, and figure out what to do next. I guess we know who¡Xor rather, what¡Xwrote that note to Telakin. Maybe we can piece together where its lair is and kill it before it kills us.¡¨

To be continued . . .

Whew! I'm now caught up on this log, just in time for a Christmas visit with my son. We should finish off HOHR, and hopefully will have a chance to start Champion's Belt. Of course, we have another campaign to work on a bit as well, after an 18 month hiatus, and I've got a gaggle of nephews and nieces clamoring for a game as well, so we'll see.

DM notes: Kudos to Jason Buhlmann and whoever thought up the idea of using doppelgangers in this adventure (Erik Mona, I presume). This is my first time actually running them in my entire D&D career, and it was a blast. The look on my son's face when Ixiaxian stabbed his paladin in the back was sooooo worth it. It was really fun to see him start to get a bit suspicious, then rationalize his way out of distrusting the false Barbazad, only to be caught off guard. The battle with Zyrxog was epic, too. I love getting to use bad guys twice, and I'll be getting a double dose of this pleasure in the second half of the module. (Stay tuned if you want to know who the other returning villain is . . .)

Bravo, Peruhain! I've finally caught up in this journal after a grueling semester of teaching and research: it was well worth the wait. This is absolutely one of my favorite game journals on any gaming messageboard that I frequent.

Any chance for an update before the new semester's responsibilities become overwhelming? I guess too that it's now time for me to head over and check out your Savage Tide log. Hurray!

I've got entries to post for the second half of HoHR. I'll try to get them up sometime, but my working deadline is April--my son's next visit. Glad you like the journal! Guess you're in the academic business, too, so you know how it goes . . .

Episode 9--The Lair of the Tentacled Sorceror

Evening entry for Goodmonth 3rd¡XOur battle with the Tentacled Sorceror this noon put us in mind that we are being pursued by an implacable enemy, who, being able to disappear into thin air, might well possess the ability to appear from thin air as well. Accordingly, we wasted no time celebrating our partial victory, but proceeded to prepare for a confrontation with this malefactor. I went with Allaxsim to report our adventures in the Sodden Hold to Jaikor Demien. Since Barbazad shared with us his guess that the Tentacled Sorceror¡¦s mind-blast was some sort of spell, Bishop Demien kindly made available a magical scroll inscribed with a spell that abjures a given, named spell. It cost us a hefty donation to the church of Hieroneous, but one of us, at least, must be protected from the mind-blast when next we battle our enemy. Bishop Demien also sold us some additional wound-curing wands to replace our depleted ones. Meanwhile, Barbazad and Allandrin sought out Eligos, wishing to pass on the latest events to the sage and seek his wisdom on the Tentacled Sorceror. When we all met back at the Crooked House, they shared the knowledge that this strange and hideous-looking being is a creature known as an illithid or mind-flayer. According to Eligos, it is rare for such foul beings to inhabit places so close to the realm of air and sunlight, for they hide from Ehlonna¡¦s light in the bowels of the earth, building cities there where they lord it over those they keep in bondage. Besides the mind-blast that the creature used upon us, they are supposed to have more subtle magical powers that enable them to enslave others without shackles or chains, powers that compel the minds of their victims to obey them. Worst of all, they are supposed to feast on the brains of their victims, consuming their memories and perhaps their souls.

It was already late afternoon at this point, but we determined that further magical protections might be in order for our impending battle, and Barbazad made a trip to the Wizards¡¦ Guild to purchase magical scrolls that would confer such protections. Meanwhile, we decided that it would be a poor plan to wait for the Tentacled Sorcerer to come to us, but we need to locate his lair. This may be a difficult thing to do¡Xbut we at least found evidence of a favorite haunt, if the cryptic line ¡§meet me beneath the Cold Forge¡¨ is a clue that we can interpret. Allandrin remembered hearing the name before, and after thinking for a moment pronounced the Cold Forge to be a smithy in the Artisans¡¦ Quarter. Directions to the shop were easily procured, and we made ready to venture that way on the morrow.

We see a familiar face while looking for the Cold Forge--we meet an old enemy beneath the streets of the Artisan's Quarter

Entry for Godsday, the 4th day of Goodmonth¡XThis morning we arose early and prepared ourselves for battle, thankful we had had no nocturnal visits from the Tentacled Sorceror. We set off to the Artisans¡¦ Quarter and began searching for the Cold Forge, but before we found it, Allandrin spotted a familiar face¡Xthe well-dressed man who had somehow been involved in the attempt to frame Barbazad for the attempted murder of Tarquin three nights ago. He spotted us at the same time that we saw him, and we gave chase through several alleyways before he lifted a large iron grate and disappeared into the sewers.

Now the sewers of Greyhawk are one of its great marvels, carrying the city¡¦s effluvia out to the the Selintan and keeping it relatively free of the noisome piles of offal and puddles of nightsoil that make cities such disgusting and unhealthy places. But the sewers are also infamous for harboring rats the size of dogs, the hideouts of criminal gangs and evil cults, and much worse. So it was with some trepidation that we halted at the sewer grate, formed a marching order, and prepared to light our way with the everburning torch we¡¦ve been carrying since our first visits to the Whispering Cairn. Most likely this well-dressed fellow was a doppelganger, and most likely he was trying to lure us into some ambush. But he might also lead us to the Tentacled Sorceror.

The grating covered a stairway that led us down to the terminus of a sewer passageway, with a narrow walkway on the right and a five-foot-deep sewer channel on the left. We walked cautiously forward, then perceived a dim figure in the shadows ahead, standing on a plank crossing the sewer channel. It flitted left, up a side passage, before I could loose an arrow at it, but we ran forward in pursuit. As we arrived at the plank, we found ourselves at an underground crossroads, with a stair leading down to the right and sewer channels and walkways behind, in front, and to the left. Our quarry was nowhere to be seen, but a movement in the shadows before us revealed another enemy. A figure in a dark cloak stepped forward and pushed his hood back with his right hand, taking care to keep his left concealed beneath the cloak. The gaunt, twisted visage so revealed was a familiar one, and all of us recognized it instantly despite the dim light.

¡§Filge,¡¨ murmured Allaxsim.

¡§Indeed, it is I. How considerate of you to visit me,¡¨ the necromancer replied in a sardonic tone. ¡§I suppose you have come to apologize for the cruelties you inflicted upon me. I¡¦m afraid that I won¡¦t be accepting your apologies, but it was quite kind of you nonetheless to indulge my desire for revenge. Zyrxog is too busy to deal with you at the moment, and he has left you to me.¡¨ At that, he raised his right hand to point at Allaxsim and muttered a dark incantation. A shadowy hand seemed to shoot through the air, blacker somehow than the shadows of this poorly lit place. Before any of us could react, the hand splayed its shadowy fingers across Allaxsim¡¦s breastplate and seemed to sink inward, chilling his heart and making him feel weak, timorous, and a bit confused. (So Allaxsim described the workings of the spell afterwards¡Xat the time I saw only the shadowy hand streaking through the darkness.)

¡§Attack them, my darlings!¡¨ the necromancer screeched after loosing his spell, and suddenly out of the shadows came three monstrous creatures. They were the size of ogres, almost, but paired the hooves and heads of bulls with a hairy humanoid form. Each gripped a massive axe. Their herky-jerky motions told me right away that they were zombies, but they were too large¡Xthe power of Ehlonna availed me not when I tried to counter the dark energies Filge had harnessed to animate these monstrous corpses. One of the zombies advanced down the sewer channel past Filge, one came from the left, where our original quarry had fled, and the other advanced up the stairs to the right. It would not be an easy fight, but my companions were determined.

A pair of bright, blinding flashes lit the passage where Filge stood¡Xthe first resulting from a ball of flame evoked by Barbazad and the second from Allandrin¡¦s glitterdust spell, which he found another use for by blinding our enemies. Allaxsim had closed half the distance to the necromancer by this time, and he charged past the blinded zombie to attack its master. His first blow should have cloven the wizard¡¦s skull, but by some stroke of luck or magical ward it was a glancing blow. Before Allaxsim could regain his balance, Filge revealed his left hand with a flick of his cloak. The left hand Allaxsim had cut off in our first meeting with the deranged wizard, now replaced with a long, skeletal appendage. Filge touched Allaxsim and he screamed with agony and nearly sank to his knees, but kept fighting, flanked now by two blinded, but nonetheless formidable opponents. He touched him again, and Allaxsim reeled and groaned, but continued to fight, and calling upon Hieroneous to smite Filge, he managed a series of weak sword cuts that brought the wizard down before he could cast any more of his dangerous spells.

In the ensuing melee we were beset from all sides, for as Allandrin advanced to meet the zombie on the left and I attempted to keep the one on the right hemmed in the narrow stairway where it could not easily use its axe, the doppelganger, which had eluded us, climbed up from the sewer channel behind Barbazad and struck at him. The huge, dumb zombies were horribly hard to destroy. Neither Allandrin nor I could do much to them with our rapiers, and if two of them hadn¡¦t broken their axe-hafts with mighty but errant blows we might have been cut to mincemeat. Another glitterdust spell and a great badger from Ehlonna¡¦s Elysian Courts kept the two closing in from the flanks from putting their full attentions on us, until Allaxsim could cut down the minotaur zombie that had been protecting Filge. Barbazad loosed a storm of hailstones on another of the zombies and followed that with an extended barrage of magical missiles to dispatch it. Then Allaxsim ran back to our aid, slaying the doppelganger to our rear with a fierce onslought that saved the day. By the time we destroyed the third zombie, we were bloodied and exhausted and nearly out of spells.

We found that Filge was unconscious but alive, and we trussed him to make sure he could not escape. His zombies had tracked through a patch of beggar¡¦s gold on the way to their ambush, and we followed their tracks backward, down the stairs to our right, and along an old, poorly maintained sewer channel. A corpse lying in the water with a hole in its head told us we were nearing the Tentacled Sorcerer¡¦s lair¡Xperhaps the Tentacled Sorcerer and Filge¡¦s new master, Zyrxog, are one and the same. If so, the hideous unliving appendage grafted to the stump of Filge¡¦s amputated left arm is a testament to the perversions of nature that this hideous aberration delights in. In any event, the tracks led to a spot where the sewer tunnel wall has collapsed to reveal the entrance to a cavern. Yellow patches of beggar¡¦s gold fungus grew all across the cavern mouth, so it was clear that the zombies had come from this cavern.

Well, none of us were enthusiastic about capitalizing immediately on the discovery of the Tentacled Sorcerer¡¦s lair, so we retreated back to the surface. Allaxsim summoned his celestial mount in a deserted alleyway, and Allandrin cast a spell of invisibility upon Filge¡¦s badly injured form¡Xwe hoisted Filge atop the horse and made the long walk to the Sanctum of Hieroneous. Once again, Bishop Demien summoned trustworthy contacts in the watch to take custody of Filge. We were so disgusted with meeting this enemy for a second time, that we didn¡¦t bother to revive and interrogate him. We will deal with his new master first.

Ehlonna's Voice--Entering the lair of the Tentacled Sorcerer

Entry for Waterday, the 5th Day of Goodmonth—This morning we arose early once again and prepared carefully for our assault on the Tentacled Sorcerer’s Lair.

My first act was to ask Allandrin to serve as witness, for I wished to try something I’ve seen my mother do several times—which is to call upon Ehlonna’s Voice to give us guidance. I stood in the middle of the floor and had Allandrin pluck a tune upon the lute—the ancient, simple elven hymn “Wisdom of the Wood, Guiding Light”—to invoke the Lady Ehlenestra’s presence in what would otherwise be a sterile and confining inn-room. I closed my eyes, spinning in a slow dance, praying silently with the words of this hymn to my goddess, and letting the images the words conjure take over my mind until I could smell the fresh scent of leaf mould and flowers in place of the close, foul air of the city.

Soon I envisioned myself in a round glade surrounded by towering oak trees. I saw a vision of my goddess, standing in the center of the glade, a single shaft of light shining upon her and making her long tresses glitter like spun gold, the radiance of her beauty unencumbered by mortal cloth. I strode slowly up to her and knelt before her, bowing my head. I felt the caress of her hands upon my head, the touch of a mother, a sister, a lover as she stroked my hair. Then suddenly, she was . . . inside me somehow, and I saw nothing but a haze of green dappled with golden light, felt nothing but a tingling warmth extending from my innermost center and radiating outward to my fingertips. I was barely aware of my lips moving, but all I could hear was the hymn, played loudly and frantically by an orchestra of viols and woodwinds. I lost all sense of time, and when I came to my senses again, my head was spinning, and I was leaning against the wall for support, flushed and drenched in sweat.

“What did the Voice say?” I asked Allandrin. I had called him here because when a priestess calls upon Ehlonna’s Voice, a witness is always needed to hear and record the words. Allandrin shot me an inquiring glance, but though he was a party this time to one of Ehlonna’s Mysteries, it is not for me to explain them to a layman, even if I could begin to do so. Seeing no explanation forthcoming, he repeated the words Ehlonna had spoken with my lips:

Beware the tentacled beast with the molasses eye!
Beware the stone brain that bends the victim to its master’s will!

A curious divination, if there ever was one. “What do you suppose it means?” I asked Barbazad and Allaxsim, after Allandrin shared the Voice’s words with them. Some discussion followed, but it was difficult to come to any firm conclusions, as is often the case with such divinations. All we could guess was that we might encounter some creature that had the power to slow victims with its gaze, and that some device within Zyrxog’s lair that might aid him in enthralling his victims. With these guesses in mind, along with memories of our first encounter with the Tentacled Sorcerer, Barbazad set to work choosing spells from his spellbook, and I returned to my room to utter prayers for spells that would protect us from mind-blasts, lightning bolts, spells of compulsion and spells of slowing. The more one knows about one’s enemy, the better, but being well-prepared takes time, and energy.

Two hours later, we found ourselves in the sewer tunnel where we had defeated Filge and his “darlings” the day before, magical lights glowing on the tips of our weapons. Outside the entrance to Zyrxog’s lair, Barbazad and I spoke enchantments to protect each party member from the lightning bolts Zyrxog hurled at us in our last battle, but we held off on casting other protective spells of shorter duration. We leapt across the sewer channel into the entrance of the cavern. Yellow beggar’s gold covered much of the floor, ahead of us, interspersed by the caps of several much larger fungi, faintly purplish with bloated stems. I recognized them from some caves my father once took me to as a child.

“Shriekers,” I whispered. “They’ll warn the guards of our arrival. I’ve got a spell to silence them.” I pulled out an old scroll I’d been carrying for just such an occasion, and muttered the incantation that would silence the puffy mushrooms. When I gave the signal, Allaxsim led the way across the mold patch, his creaking suit of armor eerily quieted by the enchantment I had laid upon the hall. I watched my comrades cross the patch of golden fungi, but suddenly they were enveloped by a cloud of yellow spores kicked up from where Allaxsim trod. I could see Allaxsim bent over almost double with coughing, the sound of which became apparent only when he stumbled back out of the radius of the silence I had laid down on the entrance. Forest Queen’s mercy, I thought, there’s Yellow Mold mixed in with that Beggar’s Gold. I pulled out another “for just such an occasion” scroll and spoke the prayer upon it, calling upon Ehlonna’s power to counteract the poison, and uttering another prayer to calm his wheezing lungs and bring blood back to his pallid cheeks. Yellow mold spores are often fatal poison. Fortunately, Allaxsim and Barbazad had managed to hold their breaths and were waiting for us on the far side of the mold patch. Allaxsim and I picked our way carefully through the mold to join them without triggering the release of more of the deadly spores.

We had made enough noise outside the silence that the sentries were alerted to our presence, and as we moved into the caverns we saw glistening puddles of oil upon the floor before us. As Allaxsim stepped into the slickened area, a glass vial fell from a shadowy ledge above us, bursting into flame and quickly igniting the oil-soaked ground. At the same time, another of the glass vials hurtled toward us, striking Barbazad and setting him alight as a dark-skinned figure poked head and right arm out of the shadows and fired a tiny crossbow dart at Allaxsim.

“Drow!” I shouted.

This was the beginning of a running battle through the caverns. The three drow sentries on the ledge above us kept us at bay briefly with their alchemist’s fire missiles and the darts of their one-handed crossbows, but as soon as the oil on the floor burned out, one jumped down and attempted to flee into the caves to warn his fellows. Allandrin charged after him while Allaxsim finished off one that dropped down to cover the retreat and Barbazad webbed the other one into his alcove. The fleeing drow led us into a battle with a huge, hideous snake-like monster. Its head was vaguely human in shape, and it had many magical powers by which it attempted to deceive us and do us harm, but once we forced it to turn at bay, Allaxsim made short work of it. Then we advanced into another cave, where a drow priestess opposed us with four of her warriors. They fought well and hard, bolstered by the foul prayers the priestess uttered to her spidery goddess and the black whip of profane energy the Queen of the Demonweb Pits sent to scourge us with. But our advance was inexorable, our blades fierce, and our spells called upon the powers of fire and ice, and when her last warrior fell, the priestess retreated further into the caves. Chasing her, Allaxsim triggered a magical warding that sprayed him with a foul substance that burned like vinegar poured into an open wound. He pressed onward, and we followed, until she turned at bay in a cave barred by a pair of marble gates.

We had had no time to stop and treat our injuries during this entire battle, and we were hard pressed when three hideous purple beasts climbed down from the ceiling of the room on suckered tentacles. As Allaxsim turned aside to pursue the priestess, one of these monstrosities caught my gaze with its single eye, and suddenly I felt as though I were up to my neck in a pool of water, unable to move at my accustomed speed. The beasts had wicked claws, and one got hold of Allandrin and tried to rip him limb from limb, nearly succeeding. Fortunately, Barbazad was prepared by the clue in Ehlonna’s Voice, and as he puffed into the room on his short little legs, he spoke a hastening spell that restored me to normal motion. I called upon Ehlonna’s light to heal Allandrin, and Allaxsim slew the spider-priestess and came to our aid against the three “tentacled beasts with the molasses eye.” At last we had a moment to catch our breath, succor each other’s injuries, and decide upon our next move.

Before proceeding into Zyrxog’s inner sanctum, we thoroughly checked the caverns we had passed through, making sure our retreat would not be blocked. We found a few caged prisoners, guarded by several zombies, whose dark animating energies were quickly banished by Ehlenestra’s light. The corpses had holes in their skulls, food for Zyrxog’s unholy appetite, no doubt, and doubtless turned into zombie prison-guards by his erstwhile servant, Filge. The prisoners were nondescript citizens of Greyhawk, who had been abducted from the streets above and were waiting like cattle to be fed to the master of this place. We also found caves serving as sleeping quarters to the drow and one serving as Filge’s laboratory, but we took no time to pillage, for the thought of our enemy beckoned from beyond the marble doors.

Updates! Huzzah!

Enchanting, once again. Keep the tales aflowing!

the stone brain--experiments and collections--battling the Tentacled Sorcerer

Goodmonth 5th, continued

We told the prisoners to hide in the drow sleeping quarters for the moment, and warned them about the yellow mold at the entrance should they try to escape. We then returned to the marble doors. Besides using our wound-curing wands to treat the injuries sustained in the battle, we weaved such magic as we could to ward ourselves and increase our powers for the coming battle with Zyrxog, not knowing where he might be lurking within, and not wishing to be caught unprepared. Using magical scrolls and prayers, I layed Ehlonna¡¦s wards against evil on each of us, and a spell-ward against electricity on all but Allandrin. I cast a spell to stiffen Allaxsim¡¦s will to resist the magic of the mind-blast (and another to stiffen my own and make my spells more potent), while Barbazad cast spells to strengthen his arms and make him as tall and broad-shouldered as a troll, not to mention putting a charm of flying upon him so that he might be able to pursue the Tentacled Sorcerer wheresoever he might levitate. Allaxsim drank a potion to make his skin as tough as bark, in case we encountered more of six-tentacled, one-eyed beasts, and Barbazad created a magical shield for himself and spoke a charm of celerity, that he might move expeditiously. Finally, I read from the scroll we had procured the day before, casting a powerful spell to protect myself from the ravages of the Sorcerer¡¦s mind-blast. It was important for one of us to remain capable of fighting the illithid and coming to the aid of wounded comrades, and I chose myself for that role.

Thus prepared, we tried the doors. They were locked, but Barbazad soon remedied that with an opening charm. Beyond the doors lay the ¡§stone brain¡¨ about which Ehlonna¡¦s Voice had warned us, a massive stone, eight-feet across and carved with a maze of ridges and clefts to give it the appearance of the organ that is the seat of the human soul. Muttering brief prayers that our precautions would be effective, we walked slowly forward. The brain was carved of white marble, shot through with purplish veins that seemed to pulsate with each breath I took. Four stone benches stood around the walls, each bench equipped with a set of manacles. To what foul purpose Zyrxog used this device, I can only guess¡Xperhaps it is how he bent the doppelganger chief to his will. Certainly I felt the assault as I walked through the doorway¡Xsomething was trying to thrust itself inside my mind. Instinctively, I summoned my willpower to resist, concentrating as hard as I could on the vision I had had this morning of the Lady Ehlenestra standing in the grove, and striving to shut out the harsh probings of the stone brain.

¡§For valor!¡¨ Allaxsim¡¦s cry echoed through the caverns, and he swung his sword at the magical stone. A few chips flaked off and flew through the air, but the probing did not cease.

¡§I feel a strange presence in my mind,¡¨ said Barbazad in an urgent, hushed voice. ¡§It whispers to me, telling me to attack those that offer it resistance.¡¨

¡§Allaxsim, leave off,¡¨ I cried. ¡§Let¡¦s get out of this room! The stone is tied to its master, and we must slay him before our wards wear off.¡¨ I believed, or hoped at least, that the wards against evil Allaxsim and I had placed on everyone would give them the means to resist the stone brain¡¦s whisperings, even if they had failed to repulse its assault. ¡§Every moment we waste here brings us closer to calamity!¡¨

We hurried through an archway on the left side of the domed chamber and into a stairway leading further downward into the Tentacled Sorcerer¡¦s sanctum. Quickly quizzing the others, I found that Allandrin, too, was bothered by the strange whisperings. As long as he didn¡¦t act on them . . . .

The stairs led down into a semicircular room that appeared to be a laboratory for Zyrxog¡¦s experiments. I could see in my mind¡¦s eye Filge submitting in this very space to the Tentacled Sorcerer¡¦s ministrations, receiving his hideous undead arm in an awful orgy of blood and sorcery. A large tank dominated one side of the laboratory, filled with an opaque green liquid.

¡§Let¡¦s hurry through this¡X¡¨ I began to urge Allaxsim, but it was too late, for as he walked forward to peer into the tank, pink tentacles grasped the rim and another of Zyrxog¡¦s cyclopean pets heaved itself out of the green brew. This one was substantially larger than its brethren that we had encountered outside the door to the sanctum. A fierce battle ensued, and we prevailed, but Allaxsim was grievously wounded. It cost me a spell I had been planning to use to ward one of us against Zyrxog¡¦s mind blasts, for if I hadn¡¦t turned the spell¡¦s raw essence into Ehlonna¡¦s healing light, Allaxsim would have fallen to the hideous creature, and the rest of us might have been rent in turn by its hideous claws.

Drawing on the curative power of my wand, I healed Allaxsim¡¦s wounds, and we proceeded downward, ignoring the small door on the right side of the chamber. The next stair led us to a pair of double doors. Opening them, we found a creepy trophy-room. In the center stood a ten foot-tall ebony statue of a vulture-headed demon. The walls of the circular chamber were taken up by four glass display cases filled with all manner of strange objects. There were books bound in chains, a wicked looking dagger on a cushion, jars with the preserved parts of strange monsters, figurines of griffons and dragons, and many other indescribable and ineffable things.

¡§An interesting trove,¡¨ whispered Allandrin.

¡§Don¡¦t touch anything!¡¨ his brother admonished. ¡§Battle first, rewards later.¡¨

So we moved cautiously to the doors on the other side of the room, being extra careful to avoid touching the statue or the display cases, half-expecting the statue to come to life. I breathed a sigh of relief when I got through the far doorway and into a long curving passageway leading further downward. As we walked cautiously forward, an archway bathed in otherworldly green light appeared before us, and we stepped through into a great chamber with a tall, domed ceiling. A tall faceted column of jet-black stone was set in the far wall, its central face inscribed with green, glowing runes. A pool of phosphorescent green liquid fronted the column. Our adversary hovered forty feet above the pool, a glowing red rod in his right hand.

¡§I¡¦ve been waiting for you,¡¨ he said. ¡§I¡¦ve been looking forward to feasting on your brains, my pretties!¡¨

¡§Ehlonna¡¦s light burn you to oblivion!¡¨ I cried, and quickly fired an arrow at him. It found its mark, but the Sorcerer just laughed. Allandrin cast a spell on Allaxsim while Zyrxog muttered an incantation of his own, then Allaxsim shot into the air with the aid of Barbazad¡¦s flying magic and stabbed the mind-flayer with his sword. The rest of us scrambled and spread out across the room, hoping to avoid all getting caught in the same mind-blast. Just then a pair of the six-tentacled, one-eyed beasts came climbing down from where they had been hiding, near the ceiling. Barbazad spoke a hastening charm to counteract their magical gaze.

The fight that followed was long and difficult. Both Barbazad and I were badly mauled by Zyrxog¡¦s tentacled, clawed pets, while the Sorcerer¡¦s mind-blast soon had Allaxsim clutching his head and drifting downward from his flight-path. By the time we dispatched the one-eyed creatures, Allandrin and Barbazad had been stunned by the mind-blast momentarily. Zyrxog blasted me with a ray of blistering fire, and I lost consciousness . . . .

Allandrin¡¦s touch brought me back¡XI felt the healing warmth and opened my eyes to see Allaxsim struggling to fend off the mind flayer, which already had one of its tentacles around his gorget and another inside his vizor. At that moment, Barbazad snapped out of his stunned state and had the presence of mind to cast another flying charm on Allandrin, who rushed to his brother¡¦s aid. While I further healed myself from my burns and wounds, Barbazad cast a spell he has been experimenting with. Before my eyes, he suddenly underwent a hideous transformation, doubling his height and making his skin thick, sallow, and warty. He had taken the form of an ogre, and jumping upward from the edge of the green pool, he swung his staff, now the size of a tree limb, smacking the mind-flayer in the shins and forcing him to abandon his grapple with Allaxsim. The mind-flayer shot upward, propelled by his strange capacity to levitate, then caught Allandrin and Barbazad with another of its mind-blasts. I shot arrows at it one after the other, though half of them missed their mark due to some sort of magic that made it appear to be in a slightly different position from where it really was. The battle went on like this for some time, with the creature blasting each of my comrades in turn, then descending to try to grapple them with its terrible tentacles. Finally, it succeeded in stunning Allaxsim and grabbing him mid-air. Allaxsim struggled weakly against it, writhing in mental agony from the effects of the mind-blast, while Allaxsim and Barbazad were recovering from earlier mind-blasts. It wrenched off his helm and attached first one, then two, then three tentacles. I screamed as my arrows missed it¡XI was trying to be careful not to hit my friend, but I was not doing him any service this way. Then the fourth tentacle curled around the back of his head and began to pull the poor man¡¦s head close to its hideous, squid-like mouth. At that moment, both Allaxsim and Barbazad recovered from the mind-blast, Allaxsim leaping into flight but stabbing at thin air because he was fooled by the illusionary displacement, and Barbazad leaping up to whack the thing¡¦s legs with his staff. The foul aberrant creature was badly battered already, its robes shredded and its body bleeding from a dozen wounds, but it was still intent on sating its twisted lust for human brains. There was only one chance left for Allaxsim, and it¡¦s not so easy to bring someone back from the dead when their brains have been eaten.

¡§Lady Ehlenestra, guide this clothyard shaft,¡¨ I whispered as I took careful aim at the Tentacled Sorcerer¡¦s bulbous head. Three inches to the right and my arrow would pierce Allaxsim¡¦s skull instead. I loosed my arrow. The world seemed to move in slow motion. Blood streamed down Allaxsim¡¦s face as the mind-flayer¡¦s rasp-like teeth began to cut through his scalp and began to bore into his skull. Onward the arrow flew, and I would have uttered another prayer, but my tongue clove to my palate in fright.

Then it was over. My arrow had found its mark. The hideous sorceror hung in the air for a moment, still defying the pull of the earth despite the arrow lodged in its brain. Allandrin ripped his brother free from the grasp of the thing¡¦s tentacles, then pulled out a dagger and stabbed the Tentacled Sorceror¡¦s heart, to make sure he was dead.

This has been perhaps the narrowest of our many narrow escapes.

evidence and treasure--old answers, new suspicions--we decide to accept hospitality from our enemy

Goodmonth 5th, further continuation

After our battle, we searched the rest of the compound, finding a scrying pool in a side room attached to the laboratory and a private chamber behind the central hall. Within the latter, sitting on a writing desk, we found a ledger, lying open, written in a strange language none of us knows. We took this and broke open his treasure chest¡Xhis ready coin and gemstones will serve as compensation for the harm he has done us. Allandrin and I went back out to the outer caves, where we burned off the yellow mold patch at the entrance and escorted Zyrxog¡¦s prisoners to safety. Meanwhile, Barbazad and Allaxsim investigated the green pool and found many thumb-sized tadpoles with four tentacles swimming around in it. They drained the pool and killed the tadpoles, ending this fiendish experiment, whatever its purpose was. We then looted the corpses of the drow guards, plus their sleeping quarters and Filge¡¦s new lab.

Having finished all this, Allandrin was curious about the museum-room. We looked around the room, at all of its strange displays, and wondered what might be useful or valuable, and what might prove to be a curse instead.

¡§I bet there¡¦s some sort of spell on these cases to alert the owner to a break-in,¡¨ said Allaxsim.

¡§We can find out,¡¨ said Allandrin. ¡§Everyone get out of the room, I¡¦m going to test it.¡¨ He drew a copper coin from his purse and prepared to toss it at one of the glass cases. I hurried out of the room with the others, but looking back at the huge statue in the middle, it seemed awfully lifelike, and awfully like a picture I had once seen in some sort of demonology book. I opened my mouth to speak, but Allaxsim spoke first.

¡§Stop! I¡¦ll bet that statue is the guardian!¡¨ he yelled. Allandrin pulled back his hand in mid-toss, and the penny fell harmlessly in the middle of the floor.

¡§He¡¦s right,¡¨ I said. ¡§We are tired, and wounded, and have used most of our magic. If that statue comes to life, it might be the death of us.¡¨

Reluctantly, Allandrin let himself be persuaded, and we left this temple of gluttony and evil and its contents to whatever foolish rogue deems it worth the risk to pilfer what we left behind.

We climbed out of the sewers and went back to the Crooked House to bathe and rest for the early part of the afternoon. After we had recovered somewhat, we went to the High City to make our reports, first to Jaikor Demien, then to Eligos.

The sage made us welcome in his home this evening, inviting us to share his evening repast and listening to our tale of the day¡¦s battles. After dinner, we adjourned to his study to discuss what he has discovered on our behalf so far.

First, he took out the two strange items we had him examine from Zosiel¡¦s tomb. The adamantine loop appears to be something called a ¡§talisman of the sphere,¡¨ a device for controlling the black ¡§sphere of annihilation¡¨ that was the cause of Zosiel¡¦s death so many eons ago. It is inert now, but Eligos believes that there must be some way to reactivate it. He also believes that Zosiel¡¦s diadem likewise has powers that we have not awakened yet, but has no idea how to do so. ¡§Perhaps the Whispering Cairn will reveal this secret, if you have time to examine it more carefully in the future.¡¨ As nearly as Eligos can tell, these two items have nothing to do with the prophecy of the Age of Worms, which was our main reason for seeking his aid, but they are both valuable treasures nonetheless, treasures which might prove potent aids at some point in our quest.

Next, the topic turned to the mystery of the worms. He reviewed the evidence we had presented him: the jottings of Theldrick and Grallak Kur of the Ebon Triad, the worm knicked by Smenk and the one preserved by Marzena, the worm-tainted potions we had discovered in the lair of the Twisted Branch tribe, and our description of the worm-infested dragon¡¦s egg left by Ilthane.

¡§All the evidence you have presented to me,¡¨ said Eligos, ¡§points to the machinations of a minor deity named Kyuss, whose portfolio involves the creation and mastery of undead creatures. Kyuss and his cultists are responsible for the creation of unliving beings in many forms, of which the least formidable are the worm-infested creatures you encountered at Blackwall Keep. All of Kyuss¡¦s undead creations possess the ability to turn their victims into various spawn of Kyuss, and some scholars suspect that it is this foul god¡¦s purpose for undeath to spread across the land like a plague, reshaping our world in his image.

¡§The evidence you have uncovered tells us that Kyuss¡¦s cult is active in the lands ruled by the Free City of Greyhawk. Such historical records as have survived indicate that the cult of Kyuss has always been small and scattered¡Xwhen one of its branches is uncovered, rarely do we find more than a single priest, masquerading as an upright citizen, and a handful of followers. What you uncovered beneath Dourstone Mine, when put together with a recent report I received from the city of Cauldron far to the south, suggests that a newer cult, the Ebon Triad, is somehow related to the cult of Kyuss¡Xexactly how, I¡¦m not sure, but it seems that both are somehow involved in trying to bring about the prophecy known as the Age of Worms.

¡§The Age of Worms prophecy has circulated for several millenia, at least¡Xcertainly it predates the ancient empire of the Suel that was consumed in the Rain of Colorless Fire over a thousand years ago. It is sometimes called by other names, but the gist of it is that there will come a time when the world shall be transformed from a haven of life to something else, a world that knows neither the joy of living nor the peace of true death. Certain forbidden texts like the Book of Vile Darkness, the Libris Mortis, the Necronomicon of Acererak the Black, and the Apostolic Scrolls transmit parts of the prophecy, and several adventurers have recorded similar texts inscribed on stelae in certain ancient ruins of the Bright Desert and the Amedio Jungle. Many theories have been propounded about the true meaning of this prophecy, but most of the interpretations I¡¦ve read seem rather unreliable¡Xthe fabrications of hedge seers and charlatan cult leaders. But never have I seen so many references to the Age of Worms or the omens attached to it in one place and time as what you have brought me this week. I fear that something connected with the prophecy is indeed afoot.¡¨

This long disquisition accorded with the fears and suspicions that have been building in my heart for almost two months now, and with the promptings of my goddess to pursue the problem of the worms. I still questions, though, and I asked them.

¡§What you say merits concern, but gives us little guide to future action. Where are we to take our investigations from here? And what does all this have to do with this illithid Zyrxog trying to arrange our deaths, or with the mysterious Bozal Zahol sending his minions to spy upon us in Diamond Lake?¡¨

¡§Good questions,¡¨ said Eligos. ¡§I was hoping you might have found further clues pertaining to them in his lair.¡¨

¡§Perhaps we did,¡¨ I said, taking out the ledger. ¡§But we can¡¦t read them.¡¨

Eligos perused the first page of the ledger for a moment. ¡§It¡¦s written in Undercommon, the language shared by all of the many beings that live and trade beneath the surface of Oerth. A record of Zyrxog¡¦s business transactions . . . let me see . . . . Yes, here we go! You¡¦ll be interested to hear news of Zyrxog¡¦s most recent transaction: a certain Loris Raknian, Director of the Free City Arena paid him 8,000 gold orbs to ¡¥dispose of¡¦ four busybodies from Diamond Lake whose names match yours. It seems you¡¦ve made enemies in high places.¡¨ He read on for a moment, his brow clouding and growing much more serious.

¡§And a few weeks before that, he bartered a huge collection of magic items and 50,000 gold orbs in cash for a copy of the Apostolic Scrolls. By Boccob¡¦s beard, here is your answer¡Xsomething very wrong is afoot, under our very noses, and Loris Raknian is involved in it.¡¨

¡§Well, I¡¦ll be glad to see him hang from gibbet, both for trying to have us murdered and for whatever crime he¡¦s plotting!¡¨ exclaimed Allaxsim.

¡§Not so fast,¡¨ said Eligos. ¡§This ledger is a clue that Raknian¡¦s plotting something heinous, but it¡¦s a rather flimsy piece of evidence to take before the Directing Oligarchy with accusations of high crimes. Raknian is a member of that body, and he is a popular figure in the city¡Xit will take much more than a ledger of dubious provenance, which could easily be explained away as a forgery designed by his enemies to frame him. If anything were to happen to the Director of the Free Arena right before the Champion¡¦s Games, they might have to be cancelled, and that would likely cause riots¡Xit¡¦d be worse than cancelling Brewfest!

¡§Besides, we don¡¦t know exactly what he¡¦s up to. Given what I know of the contents of the Apostolic Scrolls, we can guess it has something to do with the creation of terrifyingly powerful undead creatures. That, in turn might lead us to surmise that it has something to do with fulfilling the prophecies of the Age of Worms¡Xbut we¡¦ve no idea how or why. We need to learn more, both to bring Raknian to justice and to stop whatever he¡¦s doing with the Apostolic Scrolls.¡¨

This exchange left us all in stunned silence, and each person meditated on his own thoughts for some time.

¡§Well, we must find some way into his residence,¡¨ I suggested.

¡§Perhaps,¡¨ said Eligos, ¡§but when a man leads a double life, he often finds someplace besides his home for the activities that he wishes to hide. His mansion might contain some clues, but he owns other properties, and he controls one of the oldest structures in the city¡Xthe Arena. It is said that the coenoby beneath the Arena dates to the early days of our fair city, and it undoubtedly holds many hidden chambers in which the Director could hide his secrets safely.¡¨

¡§I have an idea,¡¨ said Allandrin, ¡§if we entered the Games ourselves, we would have an excuse to go into the coenoby ourselves, and maybe sneak out and look around.¡¨

¡§Are you mad?¡¨ I cried. ¡§Why should we willingly enter a deadly contest with the strongest and most violent men from across the Flanaess. Isn¡¦t that boorish tub of muscle, Auric, last year¡¦s champion? Do you want someone like him to separate your head from your shoulders? Besides, Raknian is already trying to do us in¡Xhow convenient for him if we willingly enter the Games he controls¡Xall he has to do is stack the cards against us and he can say that it was the luck of Kelanen of the Seven Swords that did us in, and no plan of his.¡¨

¡§Ah, but at least we will know from what quarter to expect our enemies,¡¨ interjected Barbazad. ¡§I¡¦d say it¡¦s better than waiting in our inn rooms waiting for another batch of doppelgangers to sneak in and slit our throats.¡¨

¡§Entering the games would provide excellent cover,¡¨ remarked Eligos. ¡§It might be rather hard to find a licensed manager to sponsor you at this late date, but as it happens, I have a few connections who may be helpful in that regard.¡¨

¡§Anyhow, Gwyn, unless you have a better idea, I think we should try this,¡¨ Allandrin insisted. ¡§Sneaking in under cover of darkness and shooting the guards didn¡¦t work so well last time we did this kind of thing, if you remember.¡¨

Allaxsim and I exchanged looks¡XI could read on his face that he had as many doubts about this plan as I did. Neither of us said anything, though, and the party soon retired to the Crooked House for the night. Eligos promised to send us a message when he finds us a manager. I can¡¦t say I have a better plan, and Ehlonna send the wolves to eat me if I¡¦m going to argue with Allandrin and his quick tongue. It¡¦ll just make me more angry at him than I already am.

Well, we're now most of the way through the Champion's Belt, and I'll be posting the logs as I get them done. In keeping with the idea of changing POV to explore each of the PCs, I'll be switching to the narrative voice of Alaxsim in the following episodes.

Episode Ten--Gladiators by Day, Crusaders by Night

Alaxsim begins his spiritual diary

Age of Worms Campaign Log, Part 3
Being an Excerpt from The Mirror of Light
the Spiritual Diary of Alaxsim Delaluç, a Chosen Knight of Hieroneous

Prologue

I begin this diary because I find myself bound by honor to complete a quest of great moment. Until now, I have always felt that a knight should do righteous and heroic deeds, and leave the telling of them to the minstrels and the bards. Yet I find that as I pursue my great quest, the path of righteousness, honor, and bravery is not so easy to discern as I was taught to believe. I have taken up the pen, therefore, to record my own deeds and those of my companions, for I fear that our motives may be misunderstood and our deeds may be misrepresented. I wish to leave a true account of my thoughts and deeds behind, should my quest bring me to such peril that my lips are forever stilled and I can no longer testify in my own defense. Besides, my companion in arms, the priestess Gwynaleth Galánodél, claims that keeping a diary has granted her spiritual insights that she otherwise might not have gained. Therefore, I pray that this diary might serve me in like fashion, as a mirror in which I can examine myself and discover my faults, that I may mend them.

Before I begin my daily entries, I must give a brief account of myself and my quest. I, Alaxsim Delaluç, am the fifth and youngest son of Theragost Delaluç, Twenty-first Baron of Gorthvale, a minor vassal of the Duke of Urnst. Once we could boast of pure Suel blood, but my grandfather was friendly with the Talniths of Hammensend, an old Oeridian family from Nyrond, and he married my father to a daughter of that family. As a child, I always dreamed of growing up to be the Lord of Gorthvale, while my twin brother Allandrin dreamed of winning the Duke’s Jousts at Summerfest and catching the eye of every pretty maiden in all of Urnst. Once, when our tutor Magister Hornbeck caught us at this game, he gave us a severe caning. It was not meet, he said, that I dream of usurping my eldest brother Alerion’s rightful place as heir to the Baron, and while my brother might do worse deeds than winning the jousts, Magister Hornbeck was of the opinion that dreaming of pretty maidens demonstrated a lust that must be corrected with the rod or else risk drawing my brother into a life of rakish depravity. I have long since stopped dreaming of being a lord, but I believe my brother still dreams of winning tournaments and the hearts of pretty maidens.

I suppose it was these dreams that led Alandrin to run away from home when we were thirteen and take up the life of a minstrel’s apprentice. He has always been slender of stature, and despite his dreams of winning the jousts, he was never strong enough to win the melee, nor a good enough horseman to win at the lists. Yet he was always mother’s favorite child, because of his comeliness and his sweet voice. It seems I was born with a greater share of the qualities that make a warrior, and I have tried since Alandrin ran away to make up for the dishonor my brother brought upon the family by earning honor enough for both of us. After Alandrin’s departure, my father agreed that it would be best for me to enter into an honorable military service, that I might make a name for myself since there was little he could do to provide for his fifth son—our lands are rocky and our villeins poor, so a sword and an old suit of armor were all he could spare as he sent me out into the world. Fortunately, his steadfast support of the Petrides family in the Honorable Chamber meant that Count Reichart Petrides, the Duchy’s ambassador in Greyhawk, owed him a favor, and Count Reichart was on friendly terms with Bishop Jaikor Demien, Hieronean Primate of the Domain of Greyhawk and High Priest of the Sanctum of Hieroneous. Although my family has never had many doings with priests, I found myself a neophyte in the Sanctum, learning to recite the first chapter of The Book of the Code from memory. After nearly three years of discipline and testing, Bishop Demien felt I had progressed sufficiently in the faith to be of service to the Invincible, and so I stood the Vigil of Three Nights, and was consecrated as a Sacred Warrior of the Archpaladin. The good bishop felt that I would benefit from the seasoning afforded by time in the field, and so I was sent to the garrison at the tiny mining town of Diamond Lake, to be under the military tutelage of Captain Tolliver Trask and the spiritual guidance of Father Valkus Dunn.

While I made many foolish mistakes and also learned much in my six-month stint with the garrison, it was not the orders of my superiors but a chance meeting with my twin brother that set me on this quest. That is right—my foolish, romantic, runaway brother conned me into exploring an old tomb with him and two other friends during my off-duty hours. He got me in trouble with my superiors, but what we found within the Whispering Cairn led us by chance to discover that something sinister was afoot in Diamond Lake, and that, in turn, led us to the worms. The worms got me out of trouble with my superiors, for they were a mysterious and troubling omen, an omen not to be spoken of publicly, but one that begged for discreet investigation. The worms seem to appear where an evil cult known as the Ebon Triad does its foul work, and appear to be associated with some being known as Kyuss, who is, perhaps, a herald or servant of that merged essence of three unholy deities, the mouthpiece for a prophecy known as the Age of Worms.

Following the threads of this mystery brought us first to a stronghold of the Ebon Triad beneath Diamond Lake, and then to the Mistmarsh, where we found that the black dragon Ilthane had duped a tribe of lizardfolk into becoming vessels for the worms. I had my first brush with the touch of the worms in Blackwall Keep, at the edge of the marsh, where several lizardfolk had transformed into foul, worm-dripping spawn of Kyuss, and it was only the deftness of Gwynaleth Galánodél’s silver knife that saved me from the same fate. The feel of the green worm made my flesh crawl—I could feel the evil burrowing into my body and seeking to consume my soul. From the Mistmarsh, our quest led us back to Diamond Lake, and then on to the great city of Greyhawk, where we now find ourselves recovering from an assassination attempt and trying to find out why Loris Raknian, director of the Free City Arena, wanted us killed.

While I have tried to follow the path of honor set forth in the Code throughout this quest, I am finding that loyalty to the Archpaladin sometimes seems to conflict with the Code’s urgings. I have been absent from duty, broken and entered the premises of a mine owner, been the accessory to the murder of an innocent guard, acceeded to the bribery of the Diamond Lake authorities, and set a guilty man free to preserve the secrecy of my quest. Yet through all this, Father Dunn and Bishop Demien have urged me to continue in the service of Hieroneous rather than retreating to a cell to contemplate my faults and mend my ways. They feel that the Archpaladin is best served by me getting to the bottom of the mystery of the Age of Worms with the utmost expedition. There will be time enough to contemplate my errors, they say, when the quest is done, and if the Archpaladin sees fit not to withdraw his holy power from me, then I must take that as a sign that I have found favor, and not opprobrium, in his eye. I know my father would be mortified if he knew of the dishonor my deeds have brought upon House Delaluç in the course of doing the Invincible’s will. How can the Valorous Knight see my deeds as honorable and true?

I take up my pen, therefore, to record my deeds each day, that if the time comes for me to reflect, I shall remember them, and that if others question my deeds or slander me after my death, my testament may be heard.

Well, lookee here: I take a quick break from reading and am rewarded with an update! And a change of character perspective at that! Yet another promising turn in the twisted labyrinth that is the Age of Worms. Bravo!

Breakfast with Gwynaleth--Ekaym Smallcask and his business proposal

Entry for Earthday, the 6th Day of Goodmonth

This morning, I awoke early, feeling restless and disturbed by the direction our quest seems to be taking us. At cockcrow, I turned quietly out of bed and pulled on a tunic, and after my morning prayers, I went down to the common room of the Crooked House for a cup of tea and a plate of fresh-baked bread with butter and honey. Not long afterward, the elf-maid who is our companion joined me at the table. She looked as though she rested as little as I last night, though she always claims that she needs no sleep, only a few hours to rest and meditate. Her long, golden hair hung loose instead of in its customary braids, her feet were bare, and she wore only a loose robe. Appearing this way in the common room! ‘Tis no wonder she had a reputation as an unchaste girl back at Diamond Lake (though I believe that reputation was earned by her casual and sometimes flirtatious manner, rather than by any truly sinful behavior on her part).

Anyhow, we broke our fast together. Things have been a little awkward between us, ever since she slew the dwarf Firgi son of Halgi during our investigation of the Dourstone Mine, and especially since the big row we had over paying Firgi’s family weregeld. Gwynaleth is a friend, but we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. And it doesn’t help that she’s always looking at my brother with those alternately petulant and seductive glances that betray what can only be feelings of attraction. Although I value Gwynaleth’s aid in our quest, and she has saved our lives more than once, I cannot condone she and my brother developing a romantic attachment—neither Gwyn’s mother nor our father would approve, and the honor of House Delaluç would certainly suffer with such a liaison, not to mention that the alliance my father has so painstakingly contracted with House Talnith would suffer greatly, as the Celadon elves are sworn enemies of the Talniths. It is difficult to talk of such things openly with my brother, let alone with Gwynaleth, so I find myself keeping silence in her company as often as not, lately.

This morning, though, we had a little common ground for a discussion—our shared opposition to Alandrin’s idea of entering the Champion’s Games as a cover for investigating the games’ organizer, Loris Raknian. So, after sharing bread and honey in silence for some time, I finally mustered the courage to ask her opinion.

“So, what do you think of being a gladiator?”

“Can’t say I much like the idea,” she replied, looking down at the plate of bread rather than meeting my eye. “Loris Raknian will cry out for joy if we place ourselves so easily in his clutches.”

“I do not fear Raknian’s evil designs, for I trust Hieroneous to protect me from them. But how am I, a Sacred Warrior of the Archpaladin and a scion of the House of Delaluç, to enter a common gladiatorial match without bringing dishonor upon both my order and my family? Better for us to break into Raknian’s mansion and enter it like thieves in the dead of night than to publicly advertise our names as common gladiators!”

A scornful look washed across Gwynaleth’s face, and she sat up and looked me in the eye. She has a rather penetrating gaze, when her eyes are not cast down in thought or evasiveness. “Thinking of your own particular honor as usual, Alaxsim? You and your brother asked me to sacrifice my honor for the quest back at Blackwall Keep—and you scruple at risking your honor?”

“You don’t understand, Gwyn! There are dozens of people in this city who know me for a servant of Hieroneous and a Delaluç. Do you know what a scandal it would be if a member of the Hieronean order fought in the Arena? Do you know how mortified my father would be if he heard that two of his sons did so?”

“Well, if that’s the only reason you’re worried about Alandrin’s plan, all you have to do is enter anonymously. No one can tell who you are inside your metal suit anyhow! Just for a moment, I thought maybe you were going to concede to common sense and think about the danger we’ll be in if we set foot in an arena controlled by a man who’s trying to kill us.”

“Well, perhaps you’re right, Gwyn, but maybe you could show a little sense for once and think about how difficult it’ll be for us to continue our quest if I’m forced to spend the next year in an ascetic’s cell at the Sanctum, contemplating my error in departing from the path of honor. Whatever Raknian sends against us, at least we’ll have some chance to defend ourselves, but if my honor is besmirched, there’s nothing I can do except resign from the order to preserve the Archpaladin’s honor.”

“And are you so devoted to the path of honor that you’d retire to a cell, and not lend your sword to the quest we’re on?” she said in a low but insistent voice. “If the Age of Worms comes, your honor will be worthless. And how can you call yourself a servant of the cause of Good if you stand idly by and watch it happen? Preserve your honor if you can, paladin, but it seems to me that saving the world is a bit more important than one man’s honor, or a family’s, or an order’s. At least, that’s what I thought you argued back at Blackwall. Your tune’s changed now, it seems!”

At that, she stood up and flounced back upstairs, to attend to her womanly duty to the mirror and her priestly duties to Ehlonna, I suppose. I thought I might find an ally in our party’s debate about how to proceed, but it seems we are on the same side for rather different reasons.

The better part of the day was devoted to selling some of the things that Zyrxog and his minions had yielded to us. I have little desire for the wealth such things yield, but when on a quest like ours, one must take advantage of the gold and magic that one’s enemies leave one, for it takes gold to fight a war!

We returned to the Crooked House in the mid-afternoon, to find that Eligos had sent a message to summon us to dine with him.

When we arrived at Eligos’s house, we discovered we were not the only guests. Also in attendance were a rather roguish looking woman named Celeste, apparently a close friend of Eligos, and a short but well-made and well-dressed fellow named Ekaym Smallcask, a friend of Celeste. The dinner was elegant, as was the wine, which was the finest Celene vintage, but the conversation at the table was mostly small talk, along with some general discussion about Celeste’s recent adventures (and misadventures) in a faraway town at the edge of the Amedio Jungle named Cauldron. Despite her lowbrow appearance, Celeste speaks in a way that reveals a cultured and good-natured person—I suspect there is more to her than meets the eye. Her friend Ekaym is from Cauldron, a merchant who recently arrived here on business. Something was strange about him, too—admittedly I’ve spent little of my life in the company of merchants, but he hardly seemed interested in the things I imagine merchants to be interested in—the price and availability of commodities, shipping rates from Greyhawk down the Selintan to Hardby, and that sort of thing. Instead, he seems to be a devotee of the arts. He and Alandrin had a lengthy conversation about the merits of the lute in comparison to those of the rebek, and it turned out that they both knew some of the same popular songs that have traveled the trade routes across the Flanaess and beyond, and were able to serenade us with a harmonious impromptu duet version of one of them as we ate our dessert.

Well, as we had surmised, this was not merely a social dinner, and after desert we retired to the drawing room with a bottle of the finest Velunese apple-brandy to discuss a business proposition. It seems Ekaym is concerned to expand his social network in the Free City as an aid to his business, and he thinks that the Free City Games are a golden opportunity to do that. If he could be the manager of a successful gladiatorial team, he would earn a measure of fame in the city, and that, he professed, would grease the wheels of his trade. Celeste had told him that her friend Eligos might know of some trusty adventurers who had a good chance of success in the Arena, and he was impressed with us at this first meeting. He had already gone to the expense and trouble of securing a manager’s license—not an easy thing to do at this late date. Would we be willing to consider entering the Games under his management, in exchange for half of the total winnings?

“Yes!” said Alandrin and Barbazad loudly, half drowning out my “No.” Gwynaleth opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

Ekaym looked us over carefully and said, “Well, it appears you are not in complete agreement. I’ll be happy to give you a larger share of the winnings, if that will persuade you. But I’ll be disappointed if I miss this opportunity. And Celeste tells me you really are the very best people available. Perhaps I should give you some time to think things over a bit. Could you meet me on Starday afternoon in the common room at the Crooked House? If I have your answer then, it won’t be too late to enter you in the competition.”

When we returned to the inn this evening, we agreed to put off discussion of Ekaym’s proposal until the morrow. May the shining light of the Archpaladin illumine my thoughts, for this is a difficult decision!

Day of decision

Entry for Starday, the 8th Day of Goodmonth

Well, we discussed our decision yesterday over breakfast and couldn’t come to an agreement. We each went our own way, shopping or just enjoying the leisure of a Freeday morning to stroll around town, then met again at the Crooked House for lunch. Still no decision. We argued our way through the afternoon and several flagons of wine, and through supper as well. Finally we got sick of arguing and all went to bed. I’m not sure how well everyone else slept, but I know I only slept fitfully.

Starday dawned—a day for making decisions. When I came down to the common room of the Crooked House for breakfast, Gwynaleth was just making her way indoors—apparently she had gone out for a pre-dawn walk to someplace where she could see the night sky over the rooftops. So she claimed, anyhow—“I saw Ehlonna’s will for me in the Morning Star” were her exact words, punctuated with a grim, but significant look. And so it was that in our morning debate, Gwynaleth threw her support to the plan for entering the Games, and I was left with the choice of letting my brother and my two friends step into the Arena by themselves, or joining them. So much for honor! How can I stand idly by while my brother throws himself in harm’s way? May Hieroneous forgive me for putting my brother ahead of the order’s honor!

So, the question became not whether I would fight in the pit, but how I might do so with a minimum of harm to the Order’s honor, and my father’s.

“Well you’ll just have to fight incognito,” remarked Gwynaleth acerbically.

“Yes! Since you still have that suit of armor we won from Theldrick, you can be ‘the Black Knight,’” rejoined Alandrin. He was soon babbling about how the color black would completely throw off those who might otherwise connect me to the Hieronean Order, and what an awe-inspiring sight I’d be on the Arena floor in my black-lacquered plate. Like as not, I’ll bake to death in the summer sun, I thought. My brother’s ideas would have been amusing, if he weren’t dead serious about putting them into effect.

“Well, there’s the Free Dinner to think of as well,” I rejoined. “How shall I maintain my anonymity at such a social gathering. Certainly I can’t wear my armor and spend the entire evening with my visor down. It’s difficult even to sit in a chair when I’m suited up like that, let alone see well enough to pick up the correct fork for the course we’re eating. Impossible!”

“Oh, that’s an easy one!” said my brother. “You can wear a black cloak with a hood. Just keep your hood up—it’ll be evening, and no one will see your face. It’ll be great for public relations—nothing captures people’s imagination like an air of mystery!”

Well, I suppose I could eat and drink with my hood covering my face in shadow, but it would be awkward. Better than any other idea anyone could come up with, though, so it was decided.

Midday was spent visiting a tailor’s shop to order a black cloak of the appropriate size and cut. When our midafternoon appointment with Ekaym arrived, we congregated once more in the common room of the Crooked House. From blaming us for trying to kill him, the proprietor Tarquin has come to regard us as his best customers—not only renting well-appointed rooms but taking most of our meals there and bringing in other customers to while away the afternoon over flagons of his most expensive Irongate port to boot.

Our discussion with Ekaym went quickly, since I had reluctantly dropped my objection to the plan of entering the tournament. We soon agreed on how to divide any prize money we might earn—we didn’t press for a larger share than the half he offered us, since we are in this for other reasons than money. Strangely, he didn’t seem to put forward his offer very confidently, and I suppose we could have gotten him to agree to giving us a larger share of the take, if we had wanted to.

What took the most time was deciding on the name under which we would enter our team. While the others argued back and forth over various suggestions connected to my assumed personality as “The Black Knight,” to our origins in Diamond Lake, and various other possibilities, I sat and listened glumly. I have a bad feeling about this whole enterprise in the pit of my stomach that doesn’t seem to go away, even when I sleep. Finally we returned to the name Gwynaleth chose for our party long ago, “The Company of Light.” I could no longer hold my tongue.

“It gives too much away about our identity, about my identity,” I said. “You know very well that the family name Delaluç means “of the light” in Old Suloise. Even if Alandrin and I use aliases, it’ll be obvious.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Alaxsim,” Gwynaleth replied. “The three or four people in this town who both know you and the meaning of your name are on our side and can keep a secret. And the name has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? If someone ever chronicles our quest, they can call the book The Adventures of the Company of Light, and you’ll be proud to be in the book. And the air of mystery we’re trying to cultivate will only be that much greater—people will spend weeks trying to figure out why ‘The Company of Light’ is being led by ‘The Black Knight.’”

“That’s just what I’m afraid of,” I rejoined glumly. “Some wag-tongue minstrel will devote his efforts to solving the riddle, and in no time the rumors will be all over the city.”

“Who cares!” she replied. “By the time your wag-tongue minstrel figures it all out we’ll have dug up the mystery of why Raknian’s out to get us, and it won’t matter any more. Maybe some of your snooty noble friends will look down on you for entering a gladiatorial contest, but anyone with a lick of sense will admire your cleverness—at least if we succeed at digging up whatever skeleton in Raknian’s closet is driving him to have us offed.”

I noticed Ekaym biting his lip for some reason as Gwynaleth spoke these words.

Anyhow, needless to say, all of my objections were overruled. Ekaym left to take care of the formalities of entering our team, and the rest of us retired to our rooms to contemplate our preparations for becoming gladiators.

Yay! Update!

That's a good way to fight off those moving blues.

More please!

Just dropping by to let you know I'm still reading and enjoying as much as ever, Peruhain. Thanks for your efforts!

I'll try to get a little more done this weekend, in between crapping syllabi for my classes that start next week, and pulling together end materials for my diss.

Can't wait for 4e to come out so I can use each of my special abilities (compose fiction, teach, write history) in the same round. Then I'll be able to keep up on everything. /sarcasm

Glad to see my loyal fans are still with me--all two of you! ;)

The Free Dinner

Entry for Moonday, the 10th day of Goodmonth

I spent the day readying my harness and sharpening my sword in preparation for the Free City Games. Would that this were a knightly tournament, with opponents worthy and honorable, rather than a common gladiatorial match between groups of down-on-their-luck mercenaries and ragtag adventuring bands. We might as well be entering a contest of pugilism or a bout of quarterstaves at the fair in Nyrstran with a bunch of peasants! The challenge will not be to outdo them in feats of arms, but to watch our backs and make sure that Raknian’s hand-picked agents don’t stick a shiv between our ribs.

When the evening bells began to ring, an hour before sunset, Ekaym arrived at the Crooked House to escort us to the Arena. We were all dressed up in our fine clothes that we had had made in Diamond Lake not so long ago—seeing the cosmopolitan fashions displayed by the more wealthy citizens here we all felt a bit frumpy and provincial, but there was nothing to be done about it at this point. My clothes were mostly covered in a dark cloak, so I doubt anyone noticed my lack of taste, in any event. Ekaym’s two manservants loaded our equipage and accoutrements atop a mule for delivery to the Arena’s coenoby—so at least we were spared the indignity of lugging heavy sackfuls of gear behind us as we ran the gauntlet of the receiving line and made our way into the Arena. It was hard to maintain a degree of courtesy appropriate to these formalities and at the same time keep silent so that my voice would not be recognized. My brother made excuses for me—some balderdash about a vow of silence or some such—I paid little attention, and tried mostly to follow the correct etiquette in so much as that could be accomplished by gestures alone.

Once inside the arena, we saw hundreds of guests at the open-air banquet. Many, by their appearance, were contestants. I looked around, trying to size up our opponents, and my opinion that they’d mostly be riff-raff was largely confirmed. Well, there was a group of aristocratic elf-women, who dressed as if they were attending one of the Queen of Celene’s famous midsummer balls, and several strange-looking fellows from Baklunish lands (by their looks), dressed in garb that was rich if outlandish. But just as many appeared to be street rogues or common mercenaries.

The banquet tressels were arranged around a circular wooden stage, and the entire arena was festooned with colorful bunting, pennants, ribbons and flowers. Two huge bonfires burned brightly at the north of the Arena, where several cooks and two dozen scullery maids were seeing to turning the spits and basting a dozen roasting boars. Raknian’s major-domo saw us to our table, which was already laden with pitchers of wine and ale, huge platters of pepper roasted quails, spitted for our convenience so that we could nibble on them while walking around and socializing, and plates of cheese, mounds of ripe peaches, and loaves of fresh bread. Ordinarily I would take delight in both the food and company at such a banquet, but the necessity of staying incognito spoiled the fun, and I sat glumly at the table while Gwyn and Alaxsim circulated among the guests. Barbazad sat with me and kept me company, but he was taciturn and withdrawn, contemplating, perhaps, the problems of some new spell he’s trying to learn.

Finally, as the lower edge of the sun touched the rim of the Arena, Loris Raknian entered the arena from a private gate, accompanied by a shifty-looking assistant with close-cropped brown hair, a gray-haired man in wizard’s robes, and half a dozen tough-looking bodyguards in polished breastplates. Both guests and servants applauded loud and long, and as he meandered toward the stage, he stopped many times to exchange pleasantries with guests he knew, or to make fine ladies blush with a compliment and a kiss on the hand. He and the other guests at the high table were introduced by the wizard, whose stentorian voice must have been augmented by some enchantment. Last year’s champion, that muscle-brained brawler Auric, and his companion Khellek (a man whom I mistrust greatly based on his appearance) shared the Director’s table, along with Mayor Glasgol and many members of the Directing Oligarchy, including Org Nenshen, a man reputed to be the head of the city’s Thieves’ Guild. Also at the high table were several foreign dignitaries, including Count Petrides, whom it is my honor to include among the close friends of my family. Raknian made a short speech, punctuated by frequent applause, and the din became an almost demonic cacophony when he introduced Auric to the crowd. While Auric basked in the adulation, I noticed the faintest hint of a scowl cross Raknian’s face, quickly replaced by a plastered-on expression of joviality. Next came a long-winded and somewhat confusing lecture by Raknian’s wizard, whose name is Talabir, on the rules of the gladiatorial contest. It appears Talabir is to be the referee for each of the matches. Finally, Raknian stood up again and pronounced all of the contestants “Champions of the Free City” for the duration of the games. Once the applause died down, he signalled for the dinner to begin, and servants bearing huge tureens of soup began to circulate amongst the tables to fill our trenchers, while a musical ensemble took the stage to play a variety of madrigals, gigues, sarabandes, motets, and other such tunes. My brother could perhaps name all of them, but I paid little attention, as I was focused on trying to eat my soup without pushing my hood back far enough to reveal my face.

After the roast boar was paraded, tested by Mayor Glasgol (in his capacity of guest of honor) and found to be tasty and fit for general consumption, a round of gluttony ensued. I confess to having eaten a nice cut off the loin, but I avoided the ribs—my favorite part—because they would be too messy with my face concealed as it. As I ate, my attention was drawn to the high table, where Auric engaged a rack of ribs like a starved leopard attacking its prey. Next to him sat Loris Raknian . . . whom I remarked several times staring at our table, as though he were particularly interested in us. Well, I suppose he is interested in us, enough to have paid to have us disposed of. No doubt he is trying to scry out our weaknesses, so that his next attempt may be more successful. I’d give a lifetime of wealth for a jar of meersalm to protect my poor skin, but I shall have to trust that my faith in the Archpaladin will be rewarded without recourse to such powerful relics.

Several more courses followed: a dish of summer greens to cleanse the palate, then a round of regional delicacies like Elmshire liver pasties, Hardby boiled shrimp with horseradish sauce, and deep fried jerked venison with mint leaves (an old Narwell specialty now cooked only by refugees from that ruined town who serve as cooks in a handful of Greyhawk inns). Then salad, and finally desert, a tasty flan made in the Keoish style and topped with flaming brandy. After desert, Raknian had a cask of his finest Onnwall sherry broached, and amidst the general toasting and speechifying, each of the teams were introduced. I shan’t bother with an exhaustive list or description of the various ragtag adventuring bands and mercenary companies that have enlisted in this un-knightly contest, except to note that one caught my brother’s eye as a worthy risk of coin: a pair of fierce-looking dwarves with red beards who went by the name of Pitch Blade. By the time they were introduced, Alandrin was busy shmoozing with one Harlan Shuzor, head of the Bookmakers’ Guild, who had come around to our table to assess the quality of our team. My brother managed to convince him that the stories of our exploits that had trickled to the city from Diamond Lake were largely unjustified, if not wholly false. When Harlan lowered the Company of Light’s rating as a result, my brother placed bets of fifty orbs each on us and on Pitch Blade to advance to the next round. I observed my brother’s gambling proclivities closely, ignoring the inane chatter of Bandorello Halfpint, a diminutive halfling member of a team called the “Woodchuckers,” who was regaling Gwyn and Barbazad with stories of how his band solved the mystery of the Mad God’s Key and braved the Tomb of Blood Overflowing.

While all this was going on, I noticed that Ekaym was spending more time watching Loris Raknian than attending to his duties as manager—he should have dealt with Harlan Shuzor and his ilk, rather than my brother—but instead he seemed obsessed with the impresario of gladiation. Yes, Ekaym should have dealt with Harlan Shuzor, and with another visitor who came to call after my brother had had three or four glasses of port with the bookmaker. Tirra seemed to appear out of nowhere—one moment Alandrin was chatting up the bookmaker, and the next moment there the elf-wench was, giving Alandrin a kiss of greeting that went beyond mere courtesy. Gwynaleth turned bright red and stalked off, while Tirra exchanged a whispered conversation with my brother, looking outwardly as though she were arranging a lover’s tryst or some such irreputable matter, though from my brother’s face I guessed they were speaking of something else. Finally, the awkward moment was over, and the dark-haired woman slipped away into the crowd. It took Alandrin some time to calm Gwynaleth down once she returned to the table—his revelation that he had staked a goodly share of our remaining party treasure on a huge wager involving the Thieves’ Guild and necessitating that we win the Champion’s Belt to reclaim the money did not mollify Gwyn, and it did not reassure me either. If we win, all well and good, but if we lose, we may die both dishonored and deeply in debt. Father would never forgive us in a million lifetimes.

The fireworks of Gwyn’s and Alandrin’s argument were finally overshadowed by the beautiful pyrotechnic display put on by Raknian’s wizard, which concluded the banquet and left us all breathless. After half an hour of watching flameflowers and dragon queens and other such fancy fireworks, the banquet was concluded, and Raknian dismissed the guests as the contestants lined up to be escorted to the Coenoby below. The stone tunnels beneath the arena echoed as loudly as the deserted tunnels of the Whispering Cairn, and reminded me that our work here is to explore and find out the secret that Raknian wishes to hide from us, not to win the Champion’s Games—though it appears we must do that, too. Finally, we made our way down to the huge cavern filled with small houses and made to look like an underground village. Here we would be staying, along with twenty-three other companies of gladiators. We quickly took refuge inside the house assigned to us. With the Coenoby this packed it would be difficult to sneak out and explore, so we resolved to get a good night’s sleep in preparation for the morrow’s contest, and the exploration we would need to undertake afterwards.

Just a bump to make sure this doesn't drop into the archives while I'm busy elsewhere. I'm trying to finish the big diss. right now, and just haven't had time to think of the journal (not even much playing time lately). I do want to keep this up, but probably won't do much with it until sometime in the spring. IRL, we've finished AGoW and will hopefully make a little progress on a side-quest I have planned before SoLS over Christmas break.

Sorry to get your hopes up about an actual update, Eltanin and Darkbard, if you're still reading.

Definitely still reading, Peruhain, though my own travails in the academy have left me an infrequent poster--and almost as infrequent a checker for updates--these past several months. This last semester was particularly brutal!

Nevertheless, still along for the ride and enjoying it immensely. Many thanks again for the inspiration!

Sorry no update yet--I project that I'll be back to getting this project up to date sometime in April, conditions permitting. IRL we finished A Gathering of Winds last August, played the very beginning part of Spire of Long Shadows over Christmas, and have made the decision to take the campaign online. We're in the midst of a sidequest right now. Once I get this log up to the point where the online game takes off, I'll provide a link.

No worries, Per. I'll still be here when you get around to it.

Another short post to bump this. Hope to continue work on it this summer, now that certain large millstones have been removed from my neck. Unfortunately, I still haven't made it back to the surface of the pond yet.

Allright, I had a bit of inspiration and got another journal entry done. Still two modules behind with the journal, but the campaign's been really slow lately even though (or because) it's gone online. My son and I are both quite busy.

I'm not going to promise an iron-clad schedule for these updates, but I think I'll try to follow Guy Humual's practice (excellent STAP journal if you're reading, Guy!) and put one up every two weeks on Saturday. At least until the journal catches up with the game, at which point we'll have to put them up as game progress permits.

Preparations--an easy fight--Ekaym's confession--the prisoner and the worms

Entry for Godsday, the 11th Day of Goodmonth

I woke early in the morning, having taken a long time to fall asleep, and sleeping unsoundly when I did. It is uncomfortable to share a room with a woman—I suppose marriage eases this feeling a bit—but to be truthful, I must admit that Gwyn has a certain beauty and charm that are hard for a man my age to ignore, even when his better judgment tells him that it would be an unsuitable match, and a violation of his principles besides. So I tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep until some time in the third watch of the night. When I awoke, Gwyn was already seated on her bed, looking as fresh as springtime, with her eyes closed and her ruby lips murmuring prayers to her goddess in the Elven tongue.

Quietly, I saw to my own devotions, and by the time I was done, Alandrin and Barbazad were taking advantage of the relative silence, the one humming tunes to himself and reciting poetry, the other flipping through the pages of his spellbooks and chanting strange, arcane phrases in his sonorous voice. Gwynaleth by this time was donning her battle harness and making sure the arrows in her quiver were straight and sound. I spent a little time inspecting mine, but decided not to suit up for the battle yet. Instead, I threw my black cloak over the mail shirt I had worn all night (a precaution—the thought that Raknian might send an assassin in the night was another reason for my restlessness). About this time, a commotion in the common space outside our little room told me the schedule had been posted, so I flipped my hood up to cover my face and strode outside.

Shoving my way through the crowd, I got close enough to see that the Company of Light were scheduled for the second match, and that we would be sharing the arena with teams named Arcane Auriga, Badlands Revenge, and the Sapphire Squad at the sound of the forenoon bells. Since those fighting in the first match had head of line privileges for breakfast, I retreated to our temporary abode to announce the news to my companions.

A while later, we went back out to take our breakfast. I had only a bowl of porridge and a cup of tea. The chirurgeons say ‘tis wise not to eat a heavy meal before battle, for that makes a wound to the gut twice as bad. Of course, I kept to myself, but my brother spent some time circulating among the other contestants, trying to figure out who our opponents would be, size them up, and perhaps make some “arrangements” with them. Even in the melee of a knightly tournament, men make such pacts—“first try to eliminate our common rivals and then turn on each other only at the last, if both of us are standing”—or some such. I was in a foul mood and had no mind to make such arrangements, but my brother, with his silver tongue, did.

The band known as “Arcane Auriga” turned out to be the tetrad of elf-women we saw last night, the ones dressed in the fancy fashion of Her Most Fey Majesty’s court. Today, their leader, Rennida Auriga wore a finely wrought breastplate of mithral, flattering to her figure and decorated with scandalous cut-outs that would please the crowd but leave her rather vulnerable to an arrow or a sword thrust. Her daughter and two younger cousins wore finely made jerkins of boiled leather with mithral studs, a bit tight-fitting but much more practical than Rennida’s armor. Alandrin tried to make conversation with them, but they gave him short shrift, and soon he gave up the attempt. Fortunately, Gwyn’s attention was elsewhere at this moment, for I’m sure she wouldn’t have spoken to Alandrin the rest of the morning if she had seen him trying to chat up the scantily clad shrews.

Another opponent, a surly-looking and ill-groomed fellow, was feeding lamb chops from his plate to a huge badger lying under the table at his feet. He was accompanied by a pair of hyena-men, gnolls I think they call them—their type is normally not welcome in Greyhawk at all, but the usual exclusion policy against the Barbaric Races is held in abeyance for events such as the Games. This was “Badlands Revenge,” and the leader gave Alandrin such a foul look that he steered clear of the man’s table entirely.

Finally, Alandrin wandered over to talk to a trio of Baklunish fellows, whose presence I had marked at last night’s banquet. I didn’t hear their conversation, but these three were quite jovial, unlike our other competitors. Alandrin spent quite some time trading jests with them, and shared jovial laughter—some of it seemingly at the expense of the elves across the way. The end result was that Korush, leader of the Sapphire Squad, agreed to lead his horsemen against Arcane Auriga first while we took on Badlands Revenge, and we would turn against each other only in the event that our common enemies were defeated.

Later, I was back in our “pavilion,” buckling on vambraces, greaves, and breastplate, and at the appointed time we strode forth, fully equipped, and me with my helm and visor in place to preserve my incognito. We walked back through the stone tunnels beneath the arena, and were raised on an elevator, one team at a time, as Raknian’s wizard introduced us to the crowd. The heat was unpleasant, and the noise nearly unbearable, but mostly I was nervous, on my guard for some treachery arranged by our host. As the wizard made his long-winded announcements, we murmured prayers and downed a potion or two to prepare us and protect us in the coming contest. Then the wizard shot up into the air like a rocket and pronounced the contest begun.

The entire battle took less than two minutes, and was hardly a challenge with the magic we were allowed to use. At the opening bell, Barbazad raised a wall of flame down the middle of the arena to make sure that Korush kept his word and force Arcane Auriga to focus their attentions on the Sapphire Squad. Meanwhile, my brother used what he calls glitterdust to render the badger and the two halberd-wielding gnolls blind. Still, they wouldn’t surrender, so Gwyn summoned a badger as big as Badlands Revenge’s leader’s pet, and though it felt positively knavish to attack enemies so handicapped, I did it anyway, for the sake of winning the battle and the chance to stay in the Coenoby another night and accomplish our purpose. We made short work of our adversaries, and when they were hors de combat, Gwyn and I used small doses of the divine healing power our gods gift us with, to keep their wounds from being mortal.

While we battled, Korush and his men made nearly as short work of the elves. It appeared that he had some sort of magic trick up his sleeve besides fancy swordsmanship, for he shrunk one of the elf-women to the size of a pixie, and the others were quickly overwhelmed.

Then Barbazad made the flaming wall disappear, and we traded blows with Korush and his men. Soon, and with little magic, we showed the Sapphire Squad that we were the better party, and when one of his men took an arrow through the lung, and he and his other blue-cloaked Kettite mercenary were badly wounded, he threw down his sword and yielded. Gwyn stanched the bleeding of the poor fellow she had shot, as the stretcher bearers came out to cart him down to Raknian’s chirurgeon Palemon Nodor to have the arrow extracted.

Thank Hieroneous that there were no deaths in this, our first battle of the Games, and that we prevailed, not for the glory but for the opportunity to advance our quest. We returned to the Coenoby after a brief ceremony at which Raknian stood up and proclaimed us the victors and we bowed to the cheering crowd. Soon, we were back in the Coenoby, cleaning our gear and in my case making up for the sleepless night and the likelihood of another one with an afternoon nap.

Ekaym and his servants came down at supper time with our share of the prize—a trophy depicting a bronze bull and 1,500 gold orbs—and Alandrin’s gambling winnings—250 orbs for our victory and 10 orbs for Pitch Blade’s (they were apparently a strong favorite, thus the low payout). Ekaym brought a picnic supper for us, for which I was grateful—with most of the other contestants eliminated, it would be far too easy for Raknian to have us poisoned. Far too easy.

After supper, Ekaym sent his two servants to wait outside, then closed the door and spoke with us in a low, confidential voice:

“I have a confession to make,” he said. “While it’s nice that you turned out to be pretty good gladiators, I must admit that I had a hidden motive for entering you in the games. You see,” he paused, and a distraught look came briefly over his face, “my sister Lahaka disappeared here last year, not long after the previous Champion’s Games. I’ve been looking for her for months now, but I’ve hit a dead end. She was a traveling entertainer, a dancer who took her artistic performances to whatever place would appreciate her beauty and her art. From her letters home, I know she found her way to Greyhawk, and from what I’ve been able to ascertain, she caught Loris Raknian’s eye. I believe that they became lovers, based on what people have told me.

“In any event, it seems that she vanished the day after the Champion’s Games ended last year. I’ve paid good money for divination spells to find what informants won’t tell, but alas I’ve learned little more. And so, I decided to come to the games, and I hoped that by entering some gladiators in the competition, I’d have a chance to look around, to talk with Raknian in person, and maybe find out what happened to her. But so far, I’ve found out nothing—Raknian’s nearly impossible to get to, and I’ve uncovered no clues by snooping around the outlying buildings. There are two places I’ve not been able to reach—his palace and the arena understructure. This is where you come in, my friends. If you can slip away from the Coenoby between battles and search for clues as to what happened to my sister, I’ll turn over my share of the winnings from the games to you. What do you say?”

No wonder Ekaym was paying so much attention to Raknian last night, and so little to his duties as manager. What could we say but to assure him that we’d help him if we could. We ourselves had intended to have a look around as well, so we might as well look for clues as to his sister’s fate as well as those that might let us know why Raknian wants us dead. It would seem that this Loris Raknian must have a few skeletons in his closet—if only he didn’t keep it so carefully guarded. I fear his sister must have uncovered some dark secret, and that she met the fate that Raknian intends for us. Ekaym didn’t quite voice it, but I think he fears the same. Anyway, he was happy when we agreed, and promised to bring us magical healing supplies in case we run into difficulties in the bowels of the arena and must rely on magic to get ourselves into fighting shape for the next day.

After Ekaym left, we put our heads together, and decided that unobtrusive scouting was the first priority. Since I’m a knight, not a sneak, and since Barbazad is a bit clumsy, that meant sending Gwyn and Alandrin. They used spells to put the guards to sleep or turn invisible and sneak past them, and managed to explore two areas of these catacombs. Earlier, Alandrin had discreetly inquired about two passageways leading out of our underground “village,” and found out that one goes to a place called the Titan’s House, while another leads to the arena understructure. Alandrin and Gwynaleth explored the former, but found little of interest except a subterranean lake—and short of a diving expedition there appeared to be no further passages to explore in that branch of the catacombs. The area under the arena was more difficult to sneak around, as the arena staff uses these quarters to live and work in. However, Alandrin found something quite interesting there.

It seems that there are some prison cells under the arena—I’d heard of public executions here, so it’s not surprising that they would have holding cells for the condemned conveniently close by. One of the cells was occupied, and Alandrin managed to communicate with its occupant, in a manner of speaking. The fellow was deaf and mute, and perhaps a bit crazed as well. But when Alandrin approached him, he drew squiggly lines in the dust—worms, probably, or so Alandrin thinks—and pointed to the cell across the way, then to another passageway nearby. This passage led to a locked door, and as neither Alandrin nor Gwyn is a professional thief, they could explore that route no farther. The two looked around a bit more, but found no other clues. Anyway, this is the most promising clue we’ve had, and if my brother’s hunch is correct, it seems Raknian must be in some way connected to the Kyuss worms, or sheltering someone who is. So, tomorrow night, when we are less weary from battle and able to face danger with a full complement of spells, we shall all go see what is behind the locked door.

May the Archpaladin protect us from harm tonight as we sleep in the house of our enemy. Gwyn has been nattering all day that tonight is Darknight, the night when both Luna and Celene hide their faces, and the night when the energies that bind unliving souls to Oerth are at their strongest. I pray that we shall be safe in the Coenoby from whatever worm-spawned creatures Raknian is sheltering. Somehow, I know that they are near, for I feel the chill of death coursing through the scars left by the Kyuss-worm’s passage, though I know Gwyn burned it out of me with her silver knife that night we faced the Kyuss-spawn in the dungeon of Blackwall Keep. I fear this strange prescience I have this night—I fear it is the harbinger of some horrible transformation. Did the worm leave some egg, some seed that grows inside me? O Hieroneous, save me from such a hideous fate! The most painful death would be better than to become a walking, worm-ridden corpse. O Hieroneous protect me!

A quick note to my fans (all two of you!) that I'm already behind on my plan to post one every other Saturday. My son was visiting last week, so we took the game off the web for a couple of sessions. I'm now busy updating the PBP thread on Myth Weavers with a summary of what we did, so we can pick the game up again there. I'm almost done with that, so I should have a post up here by the end of the week. (Please note that there is a gap between the most recent journal entry here and the opening post of the PBP game. Eventually, I'll get caught up here, and the gap will close.)

Another fine update, Per. I had begun to fear that the journal was coming to a close but am delighted that you're back to posting--even if it's not quite as regular as you would like.

By the bye, I wonder if you've had a look at the new 4E rules and plan to make a shift eventually. Despite the (many) naysayers, I've found them to be tremendous fun, and I can now finally begin to run the high action, everyone involved game that I always wanted to run.

The locked wine cellar--spawning our suspicions--battle with Bozal Zahol--Lahaka--"are you the Chosen One?"--Ekaym's grief

Entry for Waterday, the 12th Day of Goodmonth

The gladiatorial schedule for today consisted of finishing the first round of the tournament. We have already advanced to the second round, so we were able to rest and prepare to investigate further in the catacombs beneath the arena. By late afternoon, the Coenoby’s population was half what it had been the day before, and the guards and other staff were much more relaxed than they had been. We took advantage of their laxity this evening after supper, sneaking past them with the aid of my brother’s invisibility spells and Gwyn’s magic silencing of my clanking armor. Making our way to the cells, we discovered the mute prisoner Alandrin had talked to yesterday was absent from his cell. Nothing for it but to unlock the door he pointed out with a knock spell and look inside.

Inside we found a wine cellar, the air permeated with an almost overpowering odor of vinegar from an open barrel in one corner. Gwyn searched carefully and found a secret door. Secret doors are usually built to hide something, so we figured we were onto something—we were pretty sure we would find what we were looking for beyond the door. So, we prepared ourselves with spells and prayers we though might be useful. Gwyn placed a warding on me to protect me from necromantic magic, and spoke a prayer to hide us from perception by the undead. Then we swung the door open, and I led the way in.

As I stepped through the secret door, I triggered some sort of foul magical trap, but Gwyn’s ward protected me from it. I found myself on the upper landing of a staircase, and the strong stench of death overpowered that of vinegar. Like hunting hounds, we could tell we were following our quarry by the scent. By the light of my everburning torch, we descended into whatever charnel house was awaiting us below. At the lower landing, we found another secret door, and Gwyn cast a spell to alert her to the presence of any further traps.

We opened the secret door, and stepped through into a room with several coffins and three zombies crawling with green worms. Spawn! More confirmation that we were on the right track. They hesitated, and before I remembered they couldn’t see me, I attacked, negating the spell hiding us from their sight. We made short work of them, but a Kyuss worm burrowed into my skin, and the chill feeling of death coursed through the scar from the first worm’s passage through my flesh, nearly a month ago. I called upon Hieroneous to protect me from the impurities that cause disease, and felt the worm melt away inside my flesh.

Two passages led out of this entry room, and with the welcoming committee out of the way, we looked around briefly. One passage led only to a room containing a hole or pit leading down into darkness. The smell wafting upward hinted that we would find the city’s sewers if we plumbed its depths, so we explored in the other direction. We passed a corridor leading to the left, opting instead to enter a door straight ahead of us. Beyond, we found the true guards of this place.

Opening the door, we saw, in a room that must once have been a training room for gladiators, six more spawn of Kyuss, plus another hideous skeletal creature with purple viscera inside its ribcage, attached to a long, barbed tongue protruding through its open jaws (a morgh, Gwyn later called it). This was a tougher battle than the last, even though Gwynaleth quickly destroyed two of the Kyuss spawn with the power of Ehlonna’s light and sent two more fleeing through the far door. I contracted another worm early in the fight, and then was touched by the mohrg’s hideous tongue, numbed my entire body with its supernatural cold, paralyzing me. While Gwyn called on Ehlonna to restore my movement and cure me of the worm, my comrades fought the remaining undead with rapier and spells.

The spawn Gwyn turned left several doors open in their flight, and we pursued them as soon as the morgh and the other two spawn were destroyed. Entering what looked like a shrine, we smelled incense burning on a brazier, and saw an altar with a set of scrolls upon it. The scrolls glowed with an eerie green light, and a thin beam of this light cut horizontally through the shadows, illuminating a pair of double doors opposite the altar. In a short corridor beyond stood a squat, ugly creature, resembling a paunchy middle-aged man, but with small horns and cloven hooves. As I spotted him, he was gesturing and speaking some magical phrase. I charged across the room at him, ignoring the beam of foul light, but seemed to bounce up against an invisible wall. Then a huge boar appeared in the middle of the altar-room, between me and my comrades. It smelled more of brimstone than of swine—a fiendish creature conjured from the nether planes! Alandrin blinded the beast with his glitterdust, but it fought furiously, and was soon joined by a wolf-sized scorpion of similar origins.

“Dare to trespass in Bozal Zahol’s home, and the worms will turn you to Kyuss’s service!” the ugly man shouted ominously, and he retreated to let his servants fight us.

We destroyed his summoned minions and slew the spawn of Kyuss when they returned to the battle. Then we pursued Bozal Zahol into his quarters. A zombie leapt up from its seat and tried to attack me, so I cut it in half with my sword, but try as I might, I couldn’t get past Bozal’s invisible wall, which surrounded him and still held me at bay. Instead, Barbazad struck him with a blast of cold followed by a bolt of lightning, slaying him.

It was a hard-fought battle, but we had prevailed. I raised my visor and wiped the sweat from my brow as Gwyn operated on Alandrin with her silver dagger to remove a worm that had burrowed under his skin as we fought the last of the spawn.

A quick look around told us that this was Bozal Zahol’s sleeping quarters. We looked at the corpse Bozal had turned into a zombie. Once, she had been a beautiful woman. The corpse showed signs of bruising about the throat—she had been murdered. Her face bore a resemblance to Ekaym’s. One mystery solved—we had found Lahaka’s body. Whether Bozal Zahol had killed her, or Loris Raknian, we could not tell for certain, but almost certainly the master of the Arena was somehow responsible for her death. Resting by the bed was a carven darkwood trunk. On the lid was a bronze plaque decorated with a screaming skull infested with worms. Clearly, this Bozal Zahol was a servant of Kyuss. A second mystery solved—it was he who sent the spy to Diamond Lake, and he who got Loris Raknian to arrange for Zyrxog’s assassination attempt. We have, it seems, been noticed by Kyuss’s servants. In any event, the trunk was painted with hideous, apocalyptic images—a man made of worms imprisoned in a huge stone monolith, huge green worms infesting subterranean caverns and breaking through to the surface of an earth inhabited by undead and terrified, naked people. An artistic rendering of the Age of Worms, perhaps.

Since Bozal Zahol had a set of keys, I used them to open the trunk. As I did so, the same cold feeling I have when Kyuss worms eat my flesh shot through my hand, and I felt some force trying to pull me into some horrible abyss—for a split second a macabre vision much like the one painted on the side of the chest passed before my eyes. I fought with all my will to escape the clutches of the horrible nightmare. Suddenly, something seemed to snap, the pull on my soul vanished and the cold feeling in my hand was relieved as a green worm burst forth from the back of my hand. It left a hole in the flesh of my hand, then dropped to the floor and writhed for a few moments before decaying into slimy brown goo. My flesh has been sullied thrice by the worms this night, yet still I live and breath. I am tainted by the touch of Kyuss, but I have not succumbed yet. Let these words on the page mark my inwardly spoken vow never to submit to this evil being’s cold call, but to resist to the last, and do my utmost to thwart the Age of Worms prophecy from coming to pass!

Inside the trunk we found a hoard of treasure, most of it in gems and a collection of magical items—scrolls, wands, oils and potions. (The potions are not to be trusted, of course, until Barbazad makes sure there are no worms in them.) We also stripped the tiefling—for Bozal Zahol clearly had the blood of fiends in his veins—taking for our own use his weapons, armor, and other valuables. It is a satisfying thing to be able to put our enemy’s treasures to use in our quest. We shall have need of them, I have no doubt. We put all of this treasure in Alandrin’s magical haversack, and Lahaka’s sundered remains in Barbazad’s bag of holding. It felt disrespectful to the dead to do so, yet we must needs smuggle the poor woman’s corpse past the guards and back into the Coenoby.

Bozal Zahol’s quarters have a back door, but we decided not to investigate in that direction just yet, for we were exhausted from our running battle with the priest and his undead minions. Instead, we went back to have a closer look at the altar room. The glowing scroll and the writhing green beam of light emanating from it were a further mystery meriting investigation. The effect was made eerier by the fact that our footsteps and our voices were silenced in the confines of the room, though I could hear Gwyn and Barbazad talking in the passageway outside.

I walked over to the altar to examine the scroll, holding my everburning torch above it, and trying to roll it open to read it. The scroll would not budge. Suddenly, I heard a fell voice whispering in my head, and all of the places where my body had been touched by the worms of Kyuss ached with a chill throbbing feeling.

“You are not my master,” the voice whispered, ominously. “Are you the chosen one?”

“The chosen one . . .” I thought these words rather than speaking them. “What do you mean by ‘the chosen one?’”

“The chosen sacrifice! The sacrifice that will awaken the Apostle of Kyuss!” The voice in my head whispered intensely, eagerly. It made my flesh crawl as though I were immersed in a pool of writhing Kyuss-worms. I jerked my hand away from the scroll, and staggered from the room, sickened, overpowered by this contact with the horrid voice carrying the palpable taint of Kyuss into my mind.

Back in Bozal Zahol’s quarters, I told my friends about the voice.

“Bozal Zahol and Loris Raknian are plotting something terrible here,” I said. “I think Raknian wanted us dead because he feared we would find out, and put a stop to it. There is something incredibly . . . evil . . . in this place, and its mind is somehow connected to that scroll. It told me of a sacrifice—I think it means a human sacrifice—and this sacrifice is to awaken something called the Apostle of Kyuss.”

“I am not sure what might be signified by this term, ‘Apostle of Kyuss,’” Gwynaleth responded, “but whatever it is, it can’t be good. Some harbinger of the Age of Worms, I can only guess.”

“We must investigate further,” said Barbazad. “We must prevent this sacrifice from being made, and to do that we must learn what we can about it.”

The first thing to do, we agreed, was to see where the writhing beam of energy from the scroll led. We had crossed through the beam with no ill effect during our battle with Bozal’s minions, so we fearlessly opened the double doors facing the altar, between which the beam led. On the other side was a wide passageway, and five paces distant was a translucent, glowing green plane of energy. Just beyond this shell was a stone door, carved in bas-relief depicting an obscene orgy of worm-ridden corpses surrounding a large skull dripping with worms, its mouth open as if screaming. The symbol of Kyuss. We tried to open the door, but our hands would not pass the green plane of energy protecting it, and the various things we tried to dispel this strange magic failed to do so. Something terrible slept beyond the door, we had no doubt, and it was perhaps best not to disturb it yet, despite our determination to stop the sacrifice.

We agreed that we should wait until tomorrow night to investigate beyond Bozal’s back door. We did, however, follow the walls of this catacomb around, investigating the corridor we had left behind us when the battle with Bozal’s minions began. This passage led to a small chamber housing an ancient, dilapidated machine of some sort. The machine connected to one wall of the chamber by a large pipe, and Barbazad thought this wall might abut the chamber hidden by the profane portal we had just found blocking our way. Alandrin had a look at the pipe—there was a way to crawl into it, but a ninety degree bend near the mouth made it impossible for him to get very far into it. Gwyn could not manage either, and of course neither I nor Barbazad would be able to.

“Wait a moment,” said the wizard. “There is a spell for reducing people in size. I don’t know it, but I’m sure Ekaym could procure a copy of it for me. Let’s come back tomorrow night and try it out.”

Our investigations exhausted for the night, we retreated to the wine cellar. We used magic to make Barbazad and me silent and invisible, and we snuck back to the Coenoby. Gwyn and Alandrin followed, sneaking through the catacombs and using a sleep spell to keep the guards from observing their return. We asked the guards to send a runner and summon our manager, and while we waited for Ekaym’s arrival, Barbazad penned a letter to Eligos and I to Jaikor Demien to report our findings and ask whether they had any thoughts on the ominous discoveries we made this evening. Then Barbazad busied himself with identifying the magical treasures we had captured. The potions had no Kyuss worms in them, and Barbazad identified several vials of an oil that preserves corpses. We uncorked one and anointed Lahaka with it, and discovered that it was infested with a Kyuss worm, which Gwyn promptly burned with her silver dagger. We strained the other two vials to remove Kyuss worms from them as well.

An hour later, Ekaym arrived. Though he had expected his sister to be dead, he was nonetheless distraught when he found her remains laid out upon the floor, and we could do little to console him, or indeed to communicate with him at all, for the better part of an hour. Finally, when he had cried himself dry, we were able to reason with the poor fellow a bit. We let him borrow the bag of holding to take his sister’s remains away to the temple of Wee Jas for burial, and got him to agree to deliver our letters and procure the scroll Barbazad needed for tomorrow night’s investigation. We told him only a little of what we had found out, merely stating that Raknian was harboring an evil priest who had been in possession of the body. We begged him to be patient, and let us finish our investigations, which will surely discredit Raknian and bring him punishment in the end. When Ekaym left, we settled down to write in our journals and compose ourselves for sleep.

I doubt I will rest well tonight. I still feel pulses of cold every now and then in all of my worm-wounds despite Gwyn’s ministrations, and I can still hear the Voice whispering in my head, though I know it is but my fevered imagination. O Hieroneous! Grant that the sacrifice to awaken the Apostle of Kyuss may not be me, or that I may somehow thwart the ceremony and escape that fate if that is what my enemy plans!

Killer dwarves--winnings--more investigation--a deadly demon--aid from outside

Entry for Earthday, the 13th day of Goodmonth

The morning tournament postings in the Coenoby told us that we were to fight Pitch Blade. This pair of barbarian dwarves from the Griff Mountains of the far north began the Games ranked second only to Auric’s Warband by the bookmakers. From what Coenoby gossip Alandrin had overheard, their stock had not diminished with a first-round victory in which they slew all three members of the Iron Hill Monkeys and gravely wounded two of the Woodchuckers, then went on to force Chuko’s Ravens to throw down their weapons. My brother won money on them, in fact. Since this victory, though, they had been shut up in their quarters, so we hadn’t had much chance to assess our opponents.

Nonetheless, we outnumbered them and came out well-prepared. Barbazad cast a spell that created a confusing array of illusionary doubles swirling back and forth about him, and Gwyn and Barbazad placed abjurations on Alandrin and me to protect us from the flaming swords these dwarves were said to use. Barbazad also cast a hasting enchantment upon us at the beginning of the fight, and Gwynaleth surrounded herself in a wreath of cold flames. All of these precautions proved useful, for the dwarf named Drusfan nearly slew Barbazad before I killed him with a blow to the helm. The other, Pharbol, my brother took out of the fight with his infamous laughing hex, but the dwarf still wouldn’t surrender, and we had to pummel him into submission. Perhaps I should account it shameful to slay an enemy in a gladiatorial contest, but what could I do? Drusfan seemed in earnest in his attempts to slay my companion, and I could only stop him with deadly force. The dwarves seemed suspiciously eager to slay us—and I wonder if this contest may not have represented in some way Loris Raknian’s attempt to kill us without suffering the sanction of the law.

Ekaym came down to share supper with us, bringing our prize for surviving this round of the tournament—a silver trophy-statuette of a dwarven gladiator—a chance irony, or was it meant to please those who were supposed to win this bout? The prize also included a fat purse of 5,000 gold orbs plus 600 more from the bets Alandrin had placed. Ekaym brought the news that our team had risen in rank, and was now a safe bet for the next round of the tournament in the eyes of the bookmakers, rather than a long shot to survive. The bookmakers clearly do not realize that Loris Raknian would stop at nothing to see us dead before the end of the tournament, or they would give worse odds for us to win the next round. The matches for tomorrow won’t be formally announced until morning, but it is customary, according to Ekaym, for the defending champions to face a monster in the ring as a sort of exhibition, while the two best challengers fight for the right to face them in the grand finale. A team called the Skull of Murq should be our opponents—fronted by an eight foot tall fellow who must have ogre’s blood in his veins, they defeated two fellows from the Wild Coast known as the Guttuggers on account of fighting with a pair of pet wolves and a vulture who entertains the crowd by plucking out the eyes of their slain enemies.

Ekaym was composed this evening, but I could see the flame of revenge burning in his eyes. As yet he has been unable to procure the scrolls we need, but he encouraged us to continue our investigations in the hope of finding clearer evidence linking Raknian to Lahaka’s death. The man is so influential that the Directing Oligarchy is unlikely to convict him without some truly damning piece of evidence that establishes without a doubt that he murdered the poor woman and knowingly sheltered Bozal Zahol.

We used the same methods as before to sneak past the Coenoby guards. With only three teams left, the guards are getting lax, making our task even easier. On this foray, we returned straight to Bozal Zahol’s quarters and ransacked them more thoroughly. The stench of death in the place was almost unbearable, but one learns how to bear the unbearable when one has a quest. At least the place seemed undisturbed—if Raknian ever visits this place, he must have been too busy with his duties to do so in the last day. Behind a loose brick hidden by the tiefling priest’s bed, we found a packet of letters, and we took these without looking over them carefully, for later perusal.

Last night, we did not venture beyond Bozal’s chamber—instinct, perhaps, had told us to be wary in this fell catacomb. Tonight, to our sorrow, we pushed beyond this chamber, into a chamber divided by a curtain. We are not yet sure of the purpose of this chamber, other than to serve as lair for a fell guardian—a hideous, amorphous demon that hid in a huge clay urn behind the curtain until we disturbed it. The demon—we aren’t even sure what kind it is—possesses terrible powers, and most especially commands some sort of ice magic—it trapped Gwyn and Alandrin briefly in the latrine beyond this room with a wall of ice, then slew Barbazad (who was invisible, trying to avoid harm) with a powerful blast of ice-cold air. When it seemed I was near to destroying it with my sword, it disappeared, then returned in the form of a horrible, choking brimstone cloud. We had no choice but to retreat with our friend’s body and sneak back into the Coenoby in much the same fashion as last night.

It is now very late. Alandrin bribed the guards to let him out of the Coenoby, and then paid a visit to Jaikor Demien at the Sanctum of Hieroneous. Alandrin informed him of what we’ve found so far, and the good Bishop happened to have a scroll on hand with the powerful magic for raising the dead. Gwynaleth has brought our good dwarf back to us. Now two of us have experienced the world beyond. Perhaps death is preferable to the fate that lies in store for us at the end of our quest . . .

A post to keep this from falling off the edge of the world . . .

Hey, Per! It's been a very long time since I checked in here; in fact, since my switchover to 4th edition, I haven't spent much time on the Paizo 'boards at all.

In any event, I've just read this last post and wonder if you continued this game at all or have plans to post further updates.

Hope all is well!

Wow. I haven't checked in over here for a very long time. Hello if you're still around, Darkbard.

My Age of Worms is still going, but at a snail's pace, since my player is off at college and only comes back for short periods of time. We just finished the Spire of Long Shadows over winter break, and maybe will get to start the Prince of Redhand this summer.

Haven't really worked on the journal because most of my gaming time is occupied with a play-by-post campaign of my own devising over on Myth-Weavers. I haven't converted to either 4e or Pathfinder, so I haven't been hanging out over here much either. Maybe sometime when I'm feeling idle I'll try to get some more journal written.