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Whoops! Actual thread:

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Olwen's summing-up:

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so I died and it hurt a lot but I'm fine now and we saved the world I guess

The Musician and his goolfriends told us that the pillar we were looking for was in a broken metal tower and they asked if we might also please help them overthrow the bad people who had taken over their city and we said sure but we wanted to quick save our own world first and they said OK

so they took us to the tower avoiding other gools who had strange weapons and the creatures flying through the sky like the one that took us to the moon but these ones didn't seem nice and there were also crazy people who were tearing at their faces and talking about the man in the mask who wasn't wearing a mask and we got to the tower and flew up to the top and there was the pillar

and Bit started the ritual but when she was about halfway through something horrible attacked us just like we expected

it was a Bowl and Upianshe was very eager to fight the Bowl so I attacked the Bowl but it grabbed me with its mouth and I thought this is bad so I tried to grab it back but it was too big and it ate me and I died

it really hurt

I didn't see what happened after that obviously but I guess the others killed the Bowl and Bit finished the ritual and then they were all transported back to Thrushmoor

which I guess means we never helped the gools get their city back just like we never helped that girl not be a vampire I think we're really bad at helping people

but we weren't finished yet so the Doll Queen knitted me back together which also hurt a lot and I was alive again

and she told us that we had to go over to a place and do a thing so we cast all our defensive spells and we went to the place where Lowls' house used to be and there was THE YELLOW SIGN and we saw THE YELLOW SIGN and went crazy

and at the top of a tower was the man in the mask who wasn't wearing a mask and also Lowls but Lowls had become Examine Door! he was all covered with tentacles and mold and honestly I'm not sure this is what he was hoping for when he took our memories

we attacked Lowls first because we were mad at him and he hit us with his tentacles that made us weak and sickly and the man in the mask who wasn't wearing a mask cast spells on us and then he showed us THE YELLOW SIGN which made me go crazy and attack Tam but then Tam cast a spell that made me stop

and I was fighting Lowls with Upianshe and Nez was biting him and Tam was keeping us from dying and Bit was hurling spells at the man in the mask who wasn't wearing a mask but they weren't doing much and Lorena was also hurling spells at him and they did a lot more

and Lowls died so I went and grabbed the man in the mask who wasn't wearing a mask and Bit sprayed him with acid which finally worked and made his mask melt off and that's how I know he wasn't wearing a mask he hit me which almost killed me with one blow and made me turn into a ghost and it was really hard to hold onto him but I managed it and I squeezed him and he died

and then we were back in Thrushmoor and everything was normal

but then! the angels appeared and they wanted the book and I said oh great I'm so happy to see you please take the book but they blasted us with holy fire which seemed rude but I guess they were right because while we were all telling Bit to give them the book she teleported far away instead of giving it to them and they left to chase after her

so I guess Bit is evil now

honestly I'm not surprised if you had asked me "who is going to turn evil" I would have said "Bit" and then I would have said "and maybe Lorena" and then I would have said "and possibly Tam" but Bit would have been first

but now we have our lives to live so I asked Lorena if she wanted to get a coffee sometime and she said yes

!!!!!

and she's keeping the Dust of Darkness I gave her forever as a keepsake and that is so sweet of her

and I think I would like to go and free all the slaves in the world and Lorena said that was fine with her and Tam would like to come along to help which is really nice of him and we are going to try to find Tam a nice girl who doesn't want to suck his blood so maybe a succubus or a shadow? anyway someone nice and he says he will write a story about what we did although he will leave out the bits about Examine Door because we can't talk about Examine Door without Examine Door gaining power so maybe he will say the Briarstone Witch did it

but this is the one I wrote which isn't as good so that is our story of how we saved the world from Examine Door and the man in the mask who wasn't wearing a mask and the polyps under the city and the very bad man Lowls who took our memories and now has learned his lesson because he is dead

so The Musician let us know he would take us to the next city with a pillar or I guess really it was the same city because it's all Carcosa because Carcosa is all the cities that its absorbed so we walked for days beneath the strange creepy black suns beneath the black the sky looks dead but the night was even worse especially when it rained and I thought black hole suns won't you come and wash away the rain

we walked through strange alien cities filled with strange alien people until we came to a mountain and we climbed up the mountain and went through a tunnel in the mountain and it was cold so cold stuttering cold and damp steal the warm wind tired friend times are gone for honest men

at the other end of the tunnel there was a strange city where everything had five sides and there were statues of creatures with their heads knocked off and no one was there but we didn't know where the pillar was so we wandered through the city looking for a map

and Tam wanted to turn everyone into birds he was really insistent about it and got kind of weird but we said no

eventually we found a map that told us where to find an archive so we went to the archive but while we outside it the wind began to howl gibber and shriek but it wasn't the wind and something big came down the road big and hungry and covered with tentacles and eyes and Bit said it was a Shop Goth and we should run so we ran and we teleported into the archive

inside the archive there were a lot of books and some of them were written in Aklo which I can read because when I was a child the ooze in the vat next to me taught me some but I didn't read a lot because the books were very boring so I went upstairs and there were two of the creatures like the statues but these had their heads and they were asleep in boxes so we woke one up

and they told us the Shop Goths had been their slaves but revolted and killed everyone which seems fair and that they didn't know why their world was here but it might have to do with the pillar and they were just about the last ones left of their kind and at first they didn't want to tell us where the pillar was because they thought we would mess up and destroy everything but I remembered we still had the Necco Nomnicon and thought maybe it had a way to not destroy everything so Bit leafed through it and then talked SCIENCE at the creatures (who were called Old Things) and they were pretty convinced by the SCIENCE so they told us where the pillar was and asked us to please not let the Mutant out because it would organize the Shop Goths

the Shop Goth that wanted to eat us was still outside so we teleported away and went to where the pillar was and the building was surrounded by a force field so we turned off the force field and went inside and we were attacked by Evil Old Things who threw confusing bombs at us and I grabbed one and squeezed it and then the Mutant attacked!

the Mutant was a tentacle snake blob thing and it was pretty scary and it grabbed Nez but Tam got Nez free I tried to grab it but it was too fast so I couldn't so I just started punching it and Lorena and Bit were hurling spells at it and eventually it plopped into goo on the floor

and Bit did the ritual so now we've saves two-thirds of the world

we went back to the archive to tell the Old Things what had happened and then The Musician led us out of the cold cold city and through places where the people had no faces and we walked and we walked in my shoes a walking sleep and my youth I pray to keep

and finally he took us to a city which was weirder than any other city we'd been in yet and it was his home city and we ran into a bunch of gools but the gools were really happy to see The Musician so I guess they're his friends

so I don't remember a lot about the rest of the evening and there seem to be a lot of things I don't remember so I'm really glad I've been keeping this journal which I guess Tam told me to do but I don't remember that

did Lowls steal my memories again?

looking over my diary here are some other things I don't remember at all:

- the time we traded some toy knights for a lantern and brought the lantern back to a dead child who was happy and went away and Bit got her voice back

- the time a shopkeeper did a magic which made the Mistress appear in my head and she killed me and I woke up screaming

- the time a gnome told us to go to an old abandoned infirmary

and a bunch of other things too

but here's what I remember of the rest of the night I broke through a window and grabbed the girl and flew her away and told her I didn't want to hurt her but if I left her there she would become a vampire but when she heard she was a vampire she turned into a vampire because apparently if you tell the people here that they are vampires they turn into vampires and it would have been really nice to know that before we tried to rescue her THANKS ELDARIUS and anyway I kept trying to convince her not to eat people but she turned into a cloud and escaped from me and then invaded my mind and made me come close so she could drink my blood but when she tried to drink my blood it broke the spell and I ran away because I can't keep hold of someone who can turn into a cloud so I guess we failed to save her

and I don't remember much right after that but Tam came running out of the bathroom naked and screaming with a naked girl running after him so I guess he had a good time

and we sent Lorena in as a scout to see if she could find the dungeon and she found a suspicious room with wine in it so we teleported in and looked around and there was a ladder to the dungeon and we went down into the dungeon and there was a temple to some evil gods and stuff down there

we found a jail with a jailer who had lots of eyeballs and we asked about The Musician but the jailer said his jail cells were empty and then he said he was The Musician and he played the violin pretty good so I thought he might be telling him the truth but Tam said no so we left

and there was a mazed and we went through the mazed and on the other side of the mazed there was a teenage girl who came out of the wall and Lorena caught her in a hand made of invisible hand stuff which really surprised her but even caught in the hand she nearly killed Lorena and then she nearly killed me and made me feel really awful and then she knocked Tam unconscious and really really nearly killed him and all the while Lorena was blasting her with magic and Tam was blasting her with magic and I was punching her in the face and it wasn't working until I punched her in the face a final time and she disappeared

past the mazed there were some coffins and I guess that's where the vampires hang out and we found a violin which we guessed belonged to The Musician so we took it but we hadn't found The Musician so we looked around until we found a hidden door and Tam magicked our way past the hidden door and there was The Musician in a hole!

so we teleported out with him but he wrote to us (because he couldn't speak) to tell us that the jailer with all the eyes had taken his memories and he needed them back

so we went back to the jailer and the jailer said he would give back The Musician's memories if he got someone else's memories in exchange

and I don't remember what happened after that but I guess it all worked out somehow because The Musician got his memories back

and The Musician took us to the pillar and Bit started the ritual and then we were all attacked by a big tree

the tree beat me up pretty bad because I was still feeling bad after what the teenaged girl did but I grabbed the tree and Nez bit the tree and Lorena blasted the tree and then the tree got away from my grab by sinking into the ground and Tam healed me and the tree appeared somewhere else and I punched it and Nez bit it and the tree died but Nez ate some of the fruit when she bit the tree so Nez is evil now

and Bit finished the ritual but we have two more to go so now I guess we've saved a third of the world

so we went to Carcosa and it looked a lot like the city we had just left and there was an evil tree but Lorena walled it off and we walked away

and then we met a woman who was made of porcelain and she was a Queen and she said we needed to find the pillars that were connected to our world because otherwise Carcosa would eat our world because Carcosa is like a mouth and the pillars are its teeth and she told us there were three places we needed to go and first we needed to find a guy who would tell us where to find a musician who would tell us where to go next

but first we met a man who tried to kill us and he showed us THE YELLOW SIGN and I went crazy because of THE YELLOW SIGN and I tried to attack Bit but I missed and then Lorena disintegrated the man

and we went to a city where most of the people were dead but they didn't know they were dead and we found the man the Queen told us to look for (he was dead) and he said the musician had tried to make his daughter not dead but he made her a different kind of dead instead and could we ask her to come home please and also the musician was in a dungeon now

so he gave us his invitation to the party where his daughter was and also where the dungeon was and we went and the man throwing the party danced with me and I chatted with him but when I mentioned the musician he got all mad and left

and Tam found the dead man's dead daughter and tried to convince her to go home but she said no and then another woman took Tam off for sexytimes so I'm going to try to kidnap the daughter now

so it turns out that the secret to using a sword is that you HIT THEM WITH THE POINTY END

we went to do the rituals at the pillars so we could do the other ritual that would take us to Carcosa and we went through the city and found an observatory where there was a grumpy giant and some snake ladies came out and we asked if we could do the ritual and they said no and we explained why we needed to and they said no and that they were doing another ritual Lowls had told them to do and we told them Lowls was probably tricking them but they wouldn't believe us and we kept trying to explain but they said no and that we were stupid so finally we gave up and attacked them

and Lorena hit one with a zapping ray and Bit hit one with an explody ball and then I took out Upianshe and she just killed them both dead because when you use the pointy end it turns out she works really well

the third snake lady surrendered and went away and the grumpy giant really didn't care so Bit did the ritual

then we went back and told the angels we needed the book so they came with us to the last pillar and Bit did the first ritual and then we were all doing the second ritual and we were almost done when suddenly WE WERE ATTACKED BY EXAMINE DOOR!

she came out of the lake and splooshed water all over us knocking us over and Nez and Nat were compelled to approach Examine Door and she killed Nat and almost killed Nez and Bit was really upset that Nat was dead and threatened to stop the whole ritual and go home but we convinced her not to and Examine Door sucked the water out of us and we were all hurt really bad but Tam kept us on our feet and Lorena and Bit were hurling spells at Examine Door and I rushed forward with Upianshe and stabbed her and she went back into the lake!

and then we finished the ritual and now we're on our way to Carcosa but the book is coming with us and I hope the angels aren't too mad about that

so we talked to the angels and at first they were very mean and dumb and wouldn't listen when we tried to explain about the horrible evil gods being unleashed upon the world and we explained that we wanted to give them the book and if they'd give us a ride to Carcosa we'd be happy to use that instead of the book but they kept saying we wanted to use the book for evil and I got very mad and said if they didn't care about the evil gods invading the world then maybe they weren't who they said they were and they got mad about that and we almost started fighting but Lorena said we should all take a deep breath and calm down because we're all on the same side here

so I calmed down and told them if they wanted to cast spells on us to make sure we weren't lying or something like that we would let them and they consulted with each other and tried to destroy the book when we weren't looking but they couldn't so they consulted with each other some more and then cast a spell on us so we couldn't lie and made us tell them all over again what was going on

and then they said that they couldn't give us a ride to Carcosa because they didn't know where that was but if we gave them the book right now they would agree to wait around for a couple of days while we made sure the polyps didn't destroy the world either and then we could use the book just to go to Carcosa and nothing else and we all thought that sounded reasonable so we said sure

so that worked out all right

then we went down into the well to try to find Kaklamath's body so she could put the seals back in place and keep the polyps from coming out and we went deep underground and there was a polyp so I said to Upianshe OK show me your stuff and I tried to stab it but I missed and missed and missed and luckily Bit and Lorena were able to disintegrate it and blow it up and stuff

and then we wandered around for a long time and we found the bodies of Kaklamath's people and they were all dead and that's why they hadn't stopped the polyps from escaping and Kaklamath was sad

but then we found Kaklamath's body and some gools were keeping it as a pet and it was all infested with the Examine Door fungus and that's why Kaklamath couldn't get into it and we asked the gools if we could buy it from them and they asked if we had any interesting books so we gave them the Pnakotic Manuscript because I'd already read it (it was boring) and Tam was a little worried about what they'd do with it but oh well too late now

and it turned out we had to kill Kaklamath's body and then bring it back to life so we had to wait until Tam could ask his god for help with that but he did and Kaklamath went back in her body and the woman who had been in Kaklamath's body went back into her own body and went all crazy so we had to knock her out until Tam can ask his god for help with that too

and we went through a door and there were more polyps and they attacked us and I tried to use Upianshe again and missed again and the polyps knocked me out and Bit teleported us back up the corridor but had to leave Kaklamath behind so once I was conscious again I raced back down and finally hit a polyp with Upianshe and killed it but then another one knocked me unconscious again

please don't tell Upianshe but I don't think she's actually very good at this

anyway the others killed the other polyp and we walked further in and there was a cavern that was just filled with millions and millions and millions of polyps and Bit said we should collapse the tunnel so they couldn't get out so we did that and I guess we saved the world

and now we have to save the world again from someone else

really this is very tiring

so if you meet someone you like a lot and then that person becomes a sword and you use that sword does that count as cheating on the person who you have a crush on but who isn't your girlfriend because you never told her you have a crush on her and even if you did she probably wouldn't be your girlfriend unless she would but you don't know because you haven't asked?

asking for a friend

a friend that is me

I am that friend and I would like to know the answer

but anyway we went up or maybe down through a tunnel where up turned into down and we found a camp where there was another person turning into a fungus but he didn't really remember much so we put him in the latrine for safekeeping and moved on

and there was a lot of fungus and we kept going up or maybe down until we found ourselves back on the ground floor which the others thought was weird but i don't know why and there was another camp out there and there was a well with a stone on it and the old woman told us that the polyps were under the stone and there were more fungus people and they tried to kill us and Lorena put up an invisible wall and one stabbed at me a lot with his little sword but he only hit me once and long story short we won and they had the Nekko Nomnicon!

they also had more of Lowls' notes and it turns out Lowls is going to Carcosa to ask the King in Yellow (not the Yellow King that's someone else) to end the world because Lowls is smelly and dumb

we can follow him there and maybe stop him but first we have to do something to three pillars here in the city and then we have to use the Nekko Nomnicon to travel to Carcosa which might be a problem because we said we'd give the Nekko Nomnicon to the angels but on the other hand they're angels so I'm sure they'll be reasonable when we explain the world is going to end and maybe they'll agree to give us a ride to Carcosa if we give them the book

anyway we went upstairs to attune the first pillar and we were attacked by a ghost named Upianshe and she nearly killed Tam but then she was very sorry about it and she turned out to be really nice and she told us her sword might help us keep the polyps from killing everyone

and we attuned the pillar and then we went downstairs to rest and a polyp attacked us and it was really big and it grabbed Lorena and nearly killed her and that made me mad so I grabbed it and pinned it and killed it because THAT'S WHAT YOU GET IF YOU HURT LORENA THAT'S WHAT YOU GET

it turns out attuning the pillar made the polyp come out and the old lady told us there are millions and millions of them down there and I don't think I can pin millions and millions of them so we decided we needed to put the wards back on the city which the old lady thought we could maybe do if we found her body but first we went to look for Upianshe's sword because we figured we needed all the help we can get

so we went to look for the sword and we found a very boring blind man who was all like "blah blah blah you are doomed I am doomed everything is doomed doom doom doom" and never did or said anything useful but he followed us around for a while

and then we met a devil who asked us a lot of questions and he was nice at first but then when he asked if he could see the Nekko Nomnicon and we said no he got all rude

but anyway we found Upianshe's sword and I picked it up and brought it back and then Upianshe became the sword and now she talks in my head

and I'm very confused about whether or not that constitutes a relationship?

but anyway the angels are back now and I'm sure we'll work out this whole book thing

so we went through the desert on some magic horses with no names and we went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on

we went for a long time

there was really nothing there because there were no plants and birds and rocks and things although there was sand and hills and rings

the Ythian lady told us that the whole bad world ending thing was because of Examine Door so I guess it doesn't matter if we know that or not now because we're already tainted by Examine Door

we found some obelisks with writing on them but I forget what they said

and then we found some giants and I was very happy to see the giants because we hadn't seen anyone in so long and I rode up to say hi and the giants threw rocks at us and at first I thought it was a game but then they through a rock at Lorena and hit her and I got very mad and put one in an armlock and made him apologize and he did and while I was doing that the others killed the other giant and also a very big scorpion

and later on there were some scorpion people and they said they were there to protect the desert and we said great so are we but they said we couldn't pass because it was sacred and we said someone had already passed and was doing bad evil nonsacred things and we were going to stop them and they thought about it and said OK and it was SO NICE to meet people who were willing to talk things through and not just attack us for no reason

and then we met some more giants who wanted to take us to their prophetess so we said OK and while we were going to see her I had a talk with the giants about freedom and tried to explain that true anarchy isn't the absence of order as most people assume but the absence of the enforcement of order by coercive means and they thought about that and told me they thought pooping in the desert was true freedom and I thought that was a cogent argument

when we saw the prophetess she mostly wanted to get a look at us before the world ended because her god Grotesque (another god!) was going to end the world sometime but she didn't know when so that's all right

then we finally (finally!) made it to the lost city which was weird

I mean really weird

like eye-hurty weird

none of the buildings had doors or windows and they were in strange shapes and the streets looked curved but were really straight or looked straight but were really curved and we kept seeing ghosts it was weird

eventually we found a building with a door and two angels were guarding the door and they said they were trying to get the EvIl Book back so they could destroy it so we said Great we'll help you and they said how and we said it's probably through that door and they said what door and then they realized that they couldn't see the door so they asked us to get the Evil Book for them and we said sure

so we went in and we were attacked by adventurers who had gone in before us except they were dead and filled with fungus which probably means they had something to do with Examine Door because Examine Door tried to fill me with fungus once in the library and it was a pretty hard fight and when you killed one of them they exploded into fungus but it didn't do anything probably because we're already tainted

so in Okeno we asked around about The Mistress but no one knew where we could find The Mistress and everyone was selling slaves and I wanted to burn everything down but I didn't because we can't fight an entire city

yet

and although no one knew where we could find The Mistress we were told that The Hyena Princess might know so we claimed we wanted to buy some slaves which I didn't like and asked The Hyena Princess and she told us because she didn't believe we wanted to buy slaves and she hoped we would cause a big mess I guess because The MIstress is her business rival

and my friends asked me about The Mistress so I explained about how she had all the powers of all the wizards plus could make herself fifty feet tall and could kill you with a single mighty blow and all that and how we were probably all going to die

but we went to The Mistress' tower and we flew and Lorena went first and confused some of the guards and more came out and I started throwing guards off the roof and then The Mistress came out and I was scared and she attacked Tam and almost killed him while Lorena and Bit were off blocking the guards with magical walls and there was a wizard and someone fired a ballista and they said I had to go help Tam and I was scared but I did and I went in with my eyes closed and threw punches and one landed and I won

?!!!???!!!?!?!?!!

and we went downstairs and there were slaves and I let the slaves free and gave them money and there was a big tiger and I THINK IT WAS MY MOTHER because she purred at me and was nice so I talked with her a long time and let her go free

!!!!!

and there was another prisoner there who was the old woman I saw in a vision who was really from another world and she told us Lowls was going to do a bad thing but she couldn't tell us what it was because the more people who knew what the bad thing was the more likely it was to happen and Bit kept asking what the bad thing was anyway

and The Mistress kept notes about Lowls' trip and we found out where he was going it's to a lost city which I guess he found so now we're going there next to stop him from doing the bad thing

it's been a big day I love you mom

so the rest of the library wasn't very exciting it was mostly monsters monsters monsters fight fight fight and that gets boring pretty fast

one level down there were some slimy blobby gibbering oozy things and we fought them and while we were fighting them a dead person stuck its hand out of the wall to drain the life out of Tam and Lorena and it was really annoying because it just stayed in the wall and wouldn't come out except to stick its hand out and I squeezed an oozy thing but the other grabbed me so I squeezed it instead and then Bit summoned a kitty to help me fight them and kitty! and I asked the kitty if it was a relative but it didn't say anything

after the fight I got to pet the kitty

and there was a trap which trapped you in a trap and Lorena and Tam avoided the trap but then I walked right into it and felt pretty stupid about that but the others yelled at Bit until she got me out of it and then the dead person attacked us again and we were really irritated and then there was another trap where someone named Examine Door tried to cover me with fungus and then the dead person attacked us again and this time we redeaded it and by then we were really tired so we went to the meditation room to take a nap and the others were worried that there would be something horrible in the meditation room but I thought that was silly because then how could you meditate there?

and then we went back down and below the level that was below the other level there were more of the oozy blobby things including a really big screaming one but I grabbed the screaming one and squeezed it for a long time while the others fought the little ones after eventually they were dead

and then we went down again and there was a room with a cube in it and Tam rang a bell and I tried to solve the cube puzzle but I got it wrong and was sent to a mazed and Tam was sent to a mazed but eventually we got out of the mazeds and Tam solved the puzzle and we went to the Sole which I think is caused that because it's on the very bottom

and in the Sole there was an angel who had gone crazy because Lowls stole his book and we tried to talk to the angel but he attacked us and I felt sorry for him so I tied him up but when the librarians came they said he was corrupted and couldn't be saved and I was sad

and the librarians were happy that they could open the library again so they paid us some money and teleported us to Okeno so we can track down The Mistress and probably die

but at least I got to pet a kitty first

so we left Cassomeer to get on a boat to go to Catheer and everyone else complained about how much it cost to get on a boat which I don't understand because to get on the boat we had to pay sixty pieces of gold and I know for a fact that Tam paid thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces of gold to buy a belt for his pet

but not much happened on the boat except for the dream where the ambassador woman who takes people souls tried to take my soul so she could sell it and space went all weird and it was hard to move from one place to another and she had monsters but the others showed up and we killed the monsters and then she vanished and we woke up but I guess it turns out my soul is pretty valuable so that's nice

and Winter finally answered Tam and said she's busy and would he please stop calling and Tam was sad but honestly I think he can do better and I told him so Winter was always kind of rude

then we arrived in Catheer and Catheer is really really big I mean really big and at the docks a lot of people came up and offered to be our guides and I wanted to hire them all but eventually we just hired one and someone robbed Tam and they took us to an inn and I said I would pay for all of the rooms at the inn because I was so tired of hearing the others complain for an hour every time we have to pay for anything

the next day we went to the library where Lowls and Mun went and Bit tried to teleport us into the library but couldn't and got a headache so we talked to the woman who runs the library and she said Lowls and Mun did something awful and now the library is bad and no one can go in so we said we would take care of the awful stuff and she said OK so we went into the library and they locked the doors behind us

and then we were attacked by dogs but we defeated the dogs and then more dogs came out of a mirror so we defeated those dogs and broke the mirror and then we went downstairs through the statue of the angels which I guess is how libraries work here

Miacknian Mun leaves all his clones in a house where a murder has been

all the clonely people, where do they all come from?

but I'm getting ahead of myself so after we defeated ourselves we talked to the Mad Poet a bit more about Lowls and the Mad Poet said Lowls had gone to Catheer to find a book called the Necco Gnomicon which sounds like it would be very bad if he found it and then we woke up

and we sailed the rest of the way to Cassomeer and on the way we saw some dancing lights and we followed the dancing lights and there were some followers of Dezna and that one nice lady we met told them about us and they wanted to know about our dreams and we told them about our dreams and they were very friendly and didn't try to murder us which was a really nice change

and before we got to the city I gave Lorena a gift I gave her Dust of Darkness and I think she liked it I hope she liked it

then we were at the city and we said goodbye to Skywin and thanked her for the trip and she said she'd ask the harbor master if there was a ship that could take us to Catheer she's so nice

we checked into a nice hotel and asked for a room and the other three argued and argued and argued and argued about the room with the clerk and tried to get a discount even though we're ridiculously rich it was weird

then we did a little shopping and went around looking for Miacknian Mun who was the person Lowls came to see in Cassomeer because we wanted to ask why Lowls came to see him and some people told us he was a member of a group that met at a bar and we went to the bar and he wasn't there but the bartender told us to ask a gnome and the gnome said we should try the old abandoned infirmary where Mun was living so we cast spells on ourselves because after the asylum "old abandoned infirmary" sounds like it's probably awful

and when we got there Miacknian Mun said we couldn't come in and when we tried to go in some angel statues spit acid at us and it wasn't Miacknian Mun after all but a clone of Miacknian Mun and the clone attacked us and all the while kept babbling about how we couldn't come in because he was too busy he said it over and over like he was babbling the words of a sermon that no one will hear

and we killed the clone and there was a golem and we killed the golem even though it hurt when you punched the golem and we went downstairs and then we went upstairs and there were murder bees in skin suits and I couldn't do anything about the murder bees so I didn't and then there was another clone who yelled at us and when we killed that one there was another clone who just cried and that's when we found the face that Miacknian Mun keeps in a jar by the door

and the face that he keeps in a jar by the door told us that the real Miacknian Mun had gone to Catheer with Lowls and they were also going to stop on an island to buy slaves to help with their journey and they were going to buy slaves from THE MISTRESS

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but when we went upstairs again there was a BIG SCARY TENTACLE MONSTER and the BIG SCARY TENTACLE MONSTER hurt us all pretty bad and then collapsed the house on us and we thought we were all going to die but it turns out that if you hit the BIG SCARY TENTACLE MONSTER really hard enough times it dies

so I guess at some point we're going to have to face THE MISTRESS and I'm scared but maybe we can stop her from doing all the evil and she'll die on her island and be buried along with her name

maybe we'll end up wiping the dirt from our hands as we walk from her grave

Woot!

OK, Mrriaál's observed symptoms: sometimes grew fangs; killed things during the full moon. She definitely had Lycanthropy, and eventually got saddled with Feral Senses, Lycanthropic Empathy, and Shift Form. She had hit stage three and went through the killing-a-sheep thing during one full moon and tried to kill Lorena during the one after that.

Lorena's observed symptoms: refused help from others; hair turned white; was able to suck life out of allies when an attack would otherwise have killed her. She was definitely Shadowbound. I'm pretty sure she ended up with Emptiness of the Void and Frightful, and I guess that explains why she tried to destroy that statue of Desna. Huh, that was way early on, before I thought we were using these rules.

Tam's observed symptoms: grew claws which made spellcasting more difficult; grew hideous scars; became angry and fond of torture; was able to turn a death blow into "stable at -1 hit points". Tam, I think, had Accursed, and I suspect had Undying Hatred, Weakening Claws, and possibly Horrific Shock.

Bit's symptoms: suddenly switched to a horrible, mean new personality when she otherwise would have been subject to a fear effect? Bit may have been Possessed, and maybe had Temporary Clarity? I'm not sure.

We started with the insanity rules from Strange Aeons, but they honestly weren't working very well, so the GM switched to those rules without saying anything overt -- we just started getting e-mails informing us of our new ... issues. They worked great within the story! I've been avoiding looking up the rules in question to keep the surprise factor in, but now that we've been cured I might take a look unless the GM says there's a chance they'll come up again.

I might make a note of our observed symptoms here in a bit for those curious.

so I remembered when The Mistress sold me to Lowls and how Lowls treated me better than The Mistress so I did all the Bad Awful things for Lowls and I got worse and worse and hurt so many people and did Worse Awful things and then Lowls took out my memories and left because he wasn't any better than The Mistress really and all those Bad Things I thought were OK because Lowls told me to do it and Lowls was good to me were really Bad Things and Lowls wasn't even good to me he was bad to me I was a Bad Evil person and so was he and I won't do those things anymore

and while I was remembering suddenly the Bad Evil Me that worked for Lowls appeared! and the Bad Evil Bit and Tam and Lorena! and they said we were weak and stupid!

so Lorena made a fireball that hurt me and Lorena and Bit and then I grabbed hold of me and pinned me under the water and I called me a bad name but I didn't let go because even though I said I was the bad one I knew that I was really the bad one and then Bit made black tentacles appear everywhere while Bit ducked behind a tree to summon a rhino and Lorena threw a fireball back at Bit and Tam and then hid and Tam made himself stronger and then Lorena started to fly way up high but Lorena confused her and I told me I was weak and stupid but I was wrong because when I tried to get out of my grip I failed and I broke my neck and dropped me in the lake so it turns out I was better than me which is good because I like me better

but then Bit made a stinking cloud that made Tam and me sick and not able to do much and there were more fireballs and Lorena threw a snowball at Lorena who attacked Lorena back and Bit sent the rhino against Bit but Bit had mirror images and then vanished so the Rhino attacked Tam and by then I wasn't sick anymore so I grabbed Lorena and told her that my Lorena was pretty and good and nice and sweet and I loved her and she wasn't my Lorena she was bad she was bad Lorena so I killed Lorena and then Tam channeled the bad evil energy that hurts but Tam called fire from the heavens down upon Tam and Bit threw another fireball they were just everywhere and eventually Bit appeared again and Bit killed her so we won

take that, evil us!

anyway we went upstairs and we saw the top of the weird instrument that the dragon was playing and there was someone with a bunch of instruments and I thought oh good a musician maybe we can have a chat for once but he just said You Will Die In Agony and stuff like that in our minds and lashed his tentacles at us and it's not so much I mind that everyone always wants to kill us but it's really boring anyway we killed him and went back downstairs

and in a bunch of cells that didn't make any noise we found the King In Yellow and broke him out and he was surprised and happy that we were there to free him and we went back downstairs and told the woman we had left in the cells Are you sure you don't want to go? Last chance! and she noticed Tam and said Yes Grand Master which was weird but anyway she came with us and it turns out the Monster that flew us to the moon would have waited a much longer time so we really didn't need to hurry as much as we thought

and all the way back from the moon the woman was like Yes Grand Master Oo Grand Master Why Do You Let Your Slaves Talk Back To You Grand Master and Tam was getting very upset and Bit made fun of him so Tam got mad and tried to throw Bit off the Monster so Bit opened a pit on top of the Monster and Tam and the woman and me fell in and everyone took a deep breath and stopped fighting except Tam and the woman because he told her to stop calling him Grand Master and he yelled at her about it and she got miffed but I think Tam was right don't call people something they don't want to be called that's rude

so when we got back down to the desert she left and the King In Yellow took us into the desert and said Are you suuuuuure you want to see the Mad Poet? and we said yes and he said Are you suuuuuure? and we said yes and he said Are you suuuuuure? and we said Yes! so he said OK the Mad Poet is right behind that dune

so we went over the dune and the Mad Poet came out of his house and said What do you want? and we said Here are gifts will you give us our memories back please? and he said Are you suuuuuure you want your memories back? and we said YES!!! so he said OK and that's when things got weird ...

oh hey it turns out Lorena didn't die in the dream after all she used that thing where she could suck the life out of a friend to stay alive and she was just hiding real good so we thought she disappeared she does that a lot honestly

but anyway just after the fight with the dragon when we were all looking around two women came into the room and everyone else said they were twins but I don't know I didn't think they looked much like each other and they were very confusing and we were all still wounded from the dragon so it got bad

they confused me and then Tam unconfused me and then they confused me again and I started chasing my tail and grabbed it and bit it and it really hurts when you do that and they sucked the life out of Nez and she fell to the ground and someone threw a fireball but it didn't do much Bit made a buffalo but the buffalo got confused and started fighting with the rhino Bit had summoned to fight the dragon and Tam got knocked unconscious and Bit ran away and no one knew where Lorena was and then I grabbed one of the women and she tried to bite me and that made me mad even though I was confused so I killed her but the other one touched me and sucked my life out and I fell unconscious so I'm not sure what happened next but I guess Bit came back and woke up Tam who and Lorena stopped babbling in a corner long enough to throw some acid at the woman and eventually they brought her down and then we spent an hour in the room confused while Bit made sure we didn't kill ourselves or each other because Bit was the only one who wasn't trying to do that by then

there's a lot more after that but I have to go away for a moment

so we snuck into the building and there was a scary bad man and we thought he might be scary and bad so I tried to grab him and he frightened me and I ran away up the stairs past two people who attacked me with swords and also they had a monster that they didn't treat very nicely

so I jumped off the roof and by then I wasn't scared and I wanted to get back as quickly as I could so I broke through the wall with an axe instead of going around and the scary bad man had turned into mist but then he turned back into the scary bad man and he tried to do that thing to me that makes you panic and then die but it didn't work so I grabbed him better this time and killed him

and then I went up to the roof again and the two swordspeople were dead but Lorena had burned the monster with a fireball and it took us a long time to calm it down but we healed it and it liked us more after that and we asked where the Yellow King was and it said he was probably up in the moon prison

and Bit and Tam got all nervous because they said there's no air on the moon but that's ridiculous there's air everywhere except under water I guess but the moon isn't under water

so we rode the monster up to the moon and there totally was air there so I don't know what that was all about and the monster said it wouldn't wait for us very long so we trudged into a lake of black goo and down a pipe and then we were in the prison and there was a prisoner who said Hey let me free so I said OK but Tam wanted to know who she was and why she was in prison and she got mad and eventually Bit let her out

there was another woman but she didn't want to leave her cell so we left her in it

anyway we went upstairs and there was a woman next to a machine but the woman was SECRETLY A DRAGON and she breathed acid all over us with her SECRET DRAGON POWERS which was eerie because Tam had made everything silent and I grabbed her but she breathed acid all over us again and Tam saved me but not Lorena who disappeared and I guess is back in the real world now

so the Horrible Monster that Skywin turned into was scary and confusing but Tam did a magic that made me stop being scared and confused for a while and the Horrible Monster tried to kill me the same way the Shopkeeper did but this time I guess I was ready for it so it didn't work and we killed the Horrible Monster and I noticed that none of the crew were on board the ship anymore so obviously we were in the Dream World and the ritual had worked

and then a bunch of mercenaries boarded our ship and they were pretty easy to deal with but there was another Horrible Monster and the Captain and they were more difficult but we managed it without a lot of trouble and I took the Captain's hat and then the magic Tam did which made me stop being confused wore off and I was confused so I tried to attack Nat but I missed

anyway I said OK we have the hat let's wake up and Bit was all confused and said what do you mean wake up and I said from this dream and Bit said what dream and really for a very smart person Bit sometimes misses obvious stuff

we tried to sink the ship but it just laughed at us so I peed on it and woke up

Skywin was fine so the ruby wasn't cursed and Bit asked if we could have it back and Skywin said no and the rest of us agreed with her

we sailed to a town so Skywin could pick up supplies and while she was out an Inspector came on board to Inspect the ship and everyone seemed very upset about this but I don't know why and anyway nothing bad happened

Tam tried to contact Winter with a magic but Winter didn't answer and now Tam is worried and I hope Winter is OK although to be honest I don't completely understand what Tam sees in her she's kind of mean?

and then we read more of Lowl's books and another gift for the Mad Poet was the foot of a Womp but Lowls left a note saying that the foot of a Womp was a b##&#@@@ gift and he wasn't going to bother so we didn't either

so we went back to the desert in the Dream World to see the Yellow King and we saw a weird flying thing on the roof so we went in invisibly except for Lorena who might as well be invisible and there was a bad person there with bad dogs so Bit made ice go between us and them and then we were attacked by things that were the same as the thing in the courtyard of the asylum that tried to carry off Lorena but this time they carried off Tam and dropped him but he was fine

so we stopped in Riverton to repair the ship even though Skywin didn't like it because Riverton is run by a crazy helf-elf Hotspur worshipper and she said we had to get out of town by sunset or we'd have to listen to a sermon

but when we got there the crazy helf-elf was already on the dock to give us a sermon and he mentioned the ship with red sails so we told him to come onboard and tell us about it and it turns out the ship with red sails had come by and asked about us and they give him a big ruby and he didn't want it and he gave it to us and Tam was convinced it was CURSED and I don't know why because Bit checked and it wasn't CURSED but Tam kept saying it was CURSED he was really obsessed about it

anyway the crazy half-elf was wasting all our time talking to us about Hotspur so I told him he could talk to me about Hotspur because I hadn't picked a god yet so he did for a long long time and he told me that Hotspur was in everything and everywhere and at every time because time had no meaning and by the end of the sermon it sure felt like that was true but Hotspur is a dumb god who puts holes in ships so I'll pass on that one

there are so many gods I don't know how anyone picks there's Hotspur and Bogart and Gnarly Hotep and Farazma and Besmircha and Dezna - six! six gods! it's so many how can you choose?

later the ship was attacked by a big bat and we killed it and Skywin got mad because she said the ship never got attacked by big bats before we came on board and we thought she was probably right so we gave her the ruby

by then Nat had figured out that we needed to get the heartstone of a nighthag ambassador so we did the ritual and ended up at another party and Tam did a magic to protect us from Bad Evil Magic and everyone at the party moved away from him and made faces at him like oh that's so rude

and Nat and I went up to the nighthag ambassador and asked if we could borrow her heartstone and she asked if I'd trade my soul for it and I looked at the others and they told me to say no so I said no and she was really insistent but I kept saying no so finally she said fine find the person who's trying to assassinate me and I'll give it to you and I said OK do you have any enemies and she said lots so I said that's going to be really hard then and she said well I think it's either that girl or that guy or that other girl go torture them and tell me all about it

so we talked to the other girl first and I said hey can we talk to you in private and she said OK but before we went into the ambassador's room to talk to her she turned off a thing (she was trying to be subtle but didn't do so great at it) so I said since you put a trap on the ambassador's door does that mean you're the assassin and she said um and I said because if you are we'd totally love to help you out because she's awful

and the assassin (she was the assassin it turns out) said yes she's awful she takes people's souls and we were like we know and the assassin said she's terrible and awful and we said yes yes we know so can we lure her into your trap and the assassin said OK

so Lorena and I went out to lure the ambassador into the trap and the others stayed behind and Tam made everything quiet so she couldn't do any magics and Lorena said hey we found the assassin do you want to watch us torture her and the ambassador said sure but I guess Lorena didn't do so great a job of lying because when we got near the door she said ha I knew you were lying and attacked Lorena and did a spell that put me to sleep

if you fall asleep in a dream where do you go?

it turns out that while I was asleep Lorena tried to blow up the ambassador with a fireball and mostly blew up everyone at the party so that wasn't good and then Nat woke me up and Bit tried to catch the ambassador in tentacles and Nez started eating her and I grabbed her and then it was over so now we have the heartstone

and we told the assassin hey if you're ever in the Prime Material Plane stop by and say hi we like you and she said OK so we woke up

when we got back Lorena's hair had turned white and she was all twitchy because she'd done an evil with the fireball so I asked her not to do an evil again because I was worried about her and Bit joked that maybe I should eat her and I told her that no one was eating Lorena

but then that night I guess because it was a full moon I went all crazy and tried to eat Lorena!

Bit teleported me off the ship into the place where the Bad Evil Elves are but fortunately we didn't run into any Bad Evil Elves and Bit dropped me in a pit and Tam did a magic so I'd stop running away and they brought me back to the ship and I felt really bad about it in the morning

I could have hurt Lorena! Or Bit too I guess

and they told me it was because the moon was full so I said next time the moon is full chain me up and Tam said he could do a magic to my mind when that happened and I said sure because I trust Tam I don't think he'll turn evil and kill me again

back on the ship we did some more research and found out that the next thing we needed was the hat of the captain of the ship that had been following us that gave the crazy half-elf the ruby so we did the ritual and it didn't work and we thought it was because the ship was chasing us and was already in the real world so we just stayed in the real world and we went up to ask Skywin if she could see the ship with red sails and she was acting weird so I grappled her and then she turned into a Horrible Monster!

Tam thought it was because we gave her the ruby and it was CURSED but I still think it's just a ruby

so some fishermen in a boat came up to our boat and said hey we are sinking can we get on your boat so Skywin said OK and then they attacked us because they were trying to sacrifice us to their awful god Hotspur and that was rude so Bit and Lorena blew them up

but before they got blown up they put a hole in our ship so I went down to help fix the hole and the others stayed on deck to try to cast spells to fix the hole which didn't work mostly

anyway we made it to shore and were able to fix the boat a little bit with a different magic so it was fixed enough that Skywin thought she could make the next town where a real repair might be possible

also river travel seems ridiculously dangerous how does anyone get from one place to another I guess most people just stay home although the last place we were in where people just stayed home they got attacked by fish people and skeleton people

seriously how is anyone anywhere still alive when that's a thing that happens

once we were on our way we decided to go back into the dream world where we were supposed to pick up the idol of the dread god Bogart

and when we got there we arrived at a party which was much better than that stupid prince's party because there weren't any spiders above us killing people and I was thrilled because I've never been to a party except the stupid prince's party with the spiders and some very nice women took me to a corner and got naked with me and I was a little nervous and had to explain to them that I had never done anything like this before voluntarily but they were very nice about it and that's when the ghosts attacked

and I was VERY MAD because the ghosts were attacking MY NEW NAKED FRIENDS so I drank the potion that makes me big and charged right into them and fighting naked is a lot more difficult so they actually messed me up a lot but at least that kept them from attacking anyone else I guess

but soon my friends came to help and Nez started chomping on the ghosts and Tam and Bit and Lorena threw magic at them and I turned myself invisible with another potion so they wouldn't kill me again because I hate it when ghosts kill me in a dream and the water was pouring down the stairs like the lake was trying to get into the room and once we'd taken care of the ghosts we figured we'd better check that out so Tam and Bit and Lorena cast spells on all of us and we went up

and there were more ghosts and one had the idol of Bogart and cast a spell that nearly killed Nat and then it summoned the HORRIBLE GOD BOGART WHO EMERGED FROM THE LAKE ALL AWFUL AND POWERFUL AND HURT OUR MINDS WITH ITS AWFUL POWERFULNESS

but I was still invisible so I snuck up next to the ghost with the idol and I grabbed it right out of his hands and yelled Come and get me! and I jumped off the roof and Tam cast a spell that let me float down gently

and Bogart was still coming so I woke myself up and this time I stuck the fork WAY in DEEP because I really didn't want to not wake up with Bogart coming and it hurt a lot but I woke up and soon everyone woke up although Nez died in the dream before he could and Tam is acting weird about it

by the way if you have sex in a dream does it count? Tam says yes

so after we killed the big horse we talked to the zoogs and they were very interested in eating me and I asked if they had a pard's tail and they said yes so I said OK how about I carve off bits of myself so you can eat them while my friend Tam heals me up and then you give us the pard's tail

and they weren't sure because they didn't know how I would taste and they said we could hunt tigers for them but I was NOT DOING THAT because what if one of them was a relative so I told them I was a unique cat in all the worlds and this was their only opportunity to have a bite so they said OK

and I said Tam you're the only one who knows how to stab people without killing them because you're kind of a doctor and you can heal me so could you cut bits off me and Tam yelled at me and told me it would hurt a lot like back when I was in the cage going through all the surgery but Lorena offered me some opium so I took the opium

so Tam started carving bits off of me and it was going fine even though it hurt a lot despite the opium but then Tam started REALLY LIKING IT and the only one who noticed was Bit but Bit didn't stop him so Tam killed me

although the zoogs apparently did say I tasted really good and handed over the tail so there's that

anyway when I woke up and found out what happened I got really mad at Tam for killing me when I trusted him and Bit for noticing something was wrong but not stopping it but I forgave Tam because we've all been acting crazy like I've been biting things because our brains are melting because of whatever Lowls did to us so I told him we're all going to lose it at some point and I hope he forgives me too when it's my turn

but Bit didn't understand what she'd done wrong and didn't believe that her brain wasn't working right even though she sometimes changes personality completely so we explained to her that your brain could be working wrong even if you still knew things and that we should all be looking out for each other

and Bit pointed out that offering to feed myself to zoogs was a really bad idea and that was fair so we all agreed that we were all at fault here

except Lorena who is perfect

so next we had to find the skull of gool royalty and I was very excited because I know a little about that from living in the cage next to all the other monsters in cages so I helped look through the books

and when we went back into the dreams we were in a place where gools were preparing for war and they were performing a ritual to Tam's god and when we showed up a gool came up to us and said I didn't really think that would work so we said yes the god sent us to help you with whatever and do you happen to have a royal gool skull lying around because we need that too

and the gool said no but there's probably one in the mausoleum where we'd like to you to go fight the gugs and we said well, that's convenient so we went

Tam's god is named Gnarly Hotep, it turns out

so we went to the mausoleum and bone snakes and a big bone golem attacked us and Lorena threw magic at the bone golem but it didn't do anything so Bit dropped the golem in a pit and covered the pit with a web and summoned a moo cow to guard it

meanwhile we went past it and there was a gug and it turns out gugs are big and have lots of arms and like to hurt you but Lorena's fireballs worked better on the gug and I grabbed it for a while and Nez bit it and we brought it down while the golem kept climbing out of the pit and falling back in

and we found a mausoleum and I said hey we should check it for curses so Bit and Lorena checked and there was a curse so Tam dispelled the curse so I opened the mausoleum and there was a skull so we took it and I stabbed myself with a fork to wake up again and soon we were all awake

and then a few days later there were pirates! but we paid the pirates and they went away

so when I woke up I was not in a good mood and Tam wasn't in a good mood either and he tried to cast a spell on me so I grabbed him and asked what spell he cast and he said it was to calm me down

well that didn't work

I told him to ask first next time and he said OK

we talked about what happened in the dream and I asked why we had gone into the dream in the first place and it turns out we went to find out what Lowls was up to and I guess there's also a book or something but anyway we agreed that we should try again because it was important and I do want to know what Lowls is up to

and Tam asked what do we do about the shopkeeper and I said let's not go in that room and he said but what if he can come out of the room and I said I guess we'll die then and no one really had an answer to that

so we went back down the stair into the dream and Lorena decided she would sneak in first sneakily to scout things out and I went with her to protect her and everyone told me that was defeating the purpose because I'm not good at sneaking but I don't see why because Lorena can still sneak right?

and we avoided the room with the shopkeeper and we didn't run into the shopkeeper only some noisy ghosts so that was all right

and there were some books with writing in them that no one could understand and maybe wasn't writing at all and Tam wondered if they were written by The Mad Poet but I thought if The Mad Poet had written these he would just be known as The Mad because they didn't even rhyme and also weren't words or letters

then upstairs there was a man in yellow and we said who are you and he said I am the Yellow King and I said oh I thought you would be taller but it turns out the Yellow King and the King in Yellow are two different people who knew?

the Yellow King looks like Lowls and I think he and Lowls are cousins although the others told me no and there was some complicated explanation I don't understand so I'll go with cousins

we asked a lot of questions and he said a lot but the important thing he said was that if we wanted to see the Mad Poet we needed to bring gifts or he might eat us or something and that Lowls had written down the gifts we needed to bring in a book so we woke ourselves up and checked and there they were

Nat read the books for a few days and Nat is a little person now if I haven't mentioned that before and said that to get the first gift we had to go to a party so we dressed up all fancy and went back into the dream and went to the party

and there were lots of people at the party including a cat and I tried to speak to the cat but the cat didn't speak cat which is kind of weird and then a web came down from the ceiling and yanked up a guest so we all went up and evil spider creatures attacked us and they were very hard to kill but I thought they looked like some of the evil spider creatures The Mistress kept so I said try killing them with silver weapons or not-evil weapons and Tam had a silver knife so eventually we killed them and then we went back down

and we went to see the prince who was throwing the party because we needed his ring and we said hey did you know there are spiders eating your guests and he shrugged so we said OK then and then we said can we have your ring and he said well I promised to dance with three guests and I only want to dance with my girlfriend so if you tell the three guests I won't dance with them I'll give you my ring so we said OK

the first person was a vampire and she was upset that the prince didn't want to dance with her but she liked Tam so we said what if Tam dances with you instead and she said yes and she only drank his blood a little so that was all right

then we went to see a merchant who was upset because he was going to do a business deal with the prince while they were dancing and I said how much were you going to make and he said seven shovelfuls of money and I said how much is that and Bit said 10,000 gold pieces so I said OK how about we pay you that to make up for it

and my friends all got mad at me for offering to give away all our money so I had to explain to them that IT WAS A DREAM and that if you give away money IN A DREAM you do not actually lose the money and I thought I was supposed to be the dumb one?

anyway the merchant was grumpy about it but he said fine and took the money

the last person was a peasant girl and her friends said she had gone missing so I asked if she had gone missing "upstairs" and they said yes so we raced back to the upper floors and found her in a cocoon and cut her out of it and told her to go home because she was in pretty bad shape and she was a little upset about missing the dance with the prince but honestly it wasn't all that hard to convince her

so we went back to the prince and told him we'd done it and he said great and gave us the ring and also a belt and then he went out to dance with his girlfriend

and his girlfriend was a giant purple seven-legged spider and I guess that explains why there were all those spiders up there but we didn't really want to see how that dance was going to end so we all made ourselves wake up although I had to stab myself in the leg with a fork in the real world to do it

and I said I was sad we had to leave because there was someone I wanted to ask to dance and for some reason everyone thought I meant the cat and they offered to get me a cat and what am I going to have to do to get Lorena to notice me

sigh

then Nat read books for a few more days and found out that the next thing we needed was a cat's tail which made me uncomfortable and the cat was a kind of cat called a Pard and Lowls had found a Pard by asking the Zoogs like the little creature I found back in the asylum and apparently Zoogs hunt and eat cats which made me even more uncomfortable

so we went back down the stairs and we ended up on a great big tree and we saw some Zoogs and the Zoogs were being attacked by a giant horse so I made myself big with a potion and the Giant Horse attacked me and nearly killed me but Tam healed me with the not-evil magic and Bit and Lorena threw spells at the horse and I grabbed it and eventually we defeated the horse and that's where we are now

sail!

so we left Thrushmoor to chase after Lowls and Tam wanted Winter to come with us and she said no but she told him to write so that's something and I hope it works out for those two crazy kids

but anyway we got on a boat and we started sailing and Bit started making magics and Lorena started reading all of Lowl's books although I can't remember why that's important I blame it on my ADD

sail!

Skywin is the captain of the boat and she asked where we were sailing and why so we told her and that seemed to make her upset and she said if I wanted to be a sailor I needed to learn how to drink so I said I would try it again so she gave me some kind of brown wine and it was still terrible so I guess I'll never be a sailor but I refuse to do it again blame it on my own sick pride

we were sailing past Illmarsh and Skywin said we shouldn't stop there because it's a bad place and we saw a ship with red sails in the fog and then we were attacked by Screaming Things so we killed the screaming things

and I started reading the Pnakotic Manuscript it's very boring

anyway Lorena said she found a ritual which would let us go to the land of dreams so we decided to do it although I'm not sure why maybe I'm not listening maybe I'm a different breed but we did it and we went down a stairway into a desert and there was a deserted place in the desert which makes sense and we wandered around until we found a man who said hi I am a shopkeeper may I sell you some things and we asked if he had seen Lowls and he said no so I said OK what do you have to sell us and he did a magic which made the Mistress appear in my head and she killed me and I woke up screaming

sail!

Mr. Jones.

(Mrriaál's posts frequently contain song or poetry references.)

so I guess we won but we still have no idea what's going on because something is happening here but you don't know what it is do you Mr. Jones?

down in the room behind a secret door there was the pillar just like I thought but there was also a horrible monster from another world and a woman and we asked the woman what is going on and she said we would be too stupid to understand and I said that's fair so can you tell us something we would understand and she said no because you wouldn't understand and I said but I asked for something that I would understand that makes no sense and she said that is because you are stupid and don't understand and I said can you at least tell us your name and she said you wouldn't understand so I said screw this and drank a potion that made me invisible

because sometimes you hand in your ticket and you go watch the geek who immediately walks up to you when he hears you speak and says how does it feel to be such a freak and you say impossible as he hands you a bone and something is happening here but you don't know what it is do you Mr. Jones?

so I snuck up on the woman while the others fought the thing from another world and then another thing from another world came and attacked them as well and Bit dropped the woman in a pit but she flew out and I grabbed her and she tried to do a magic to make me attack my friends but I resisted and soon we defeated all of them

and we looked at the pillar and it was covered with blood and there were dead bodies and I guess that's where the kidnapped people went and we touched the pillar and I saw some stuff but the others saw much more horrible stuff which was weird and then we went upstairs and the city was on fire

and we were on top of the hill so we could see that there was fighting over by the docks and fighting over by the chapel of the death goddess and Tam said "Oh no, Winter!" so I said I'll go take care of the docks and you go help Winter and I ran down to the docks and the rest of them told me to come back so we could discuss things and not split up but I didn't think that was a good idea when the city was on fire so I kept running and the rest of them went to the chapel but I found that out later

down by the docks there were fish people taking all the people slaves so I took a potion that made me big and fought the fish people and killed some and then one threw a spell at me that made it hard for me to move so if they'd run I couldn't have chased them but instead they got all close and tried to kill me so I grabbed the one who cast the spell which hurt because he was covered in electricity but then I started squeezing him and he died and the rest of them ran away

and later I found out that down at the chapel there were dead people attacking the chapel and my friends had a hard time because it was hard to hurt them with fire or cold or hitting them really hard which kind of left not a lot for my friends to do but eventually they managed to kill the dead people

but we still don't know why the dead people or the fish attacked or why they were there but it looks like they came from the fort so that woman who told us nothing was going on at the fort was lying which seems mean

and it's all very confusing like if we saw a one-eyed midget shouting the word now and we said for what reason and he said how and we said what does this mean and he screamed back you're a cow give me some milk or else go home and we know something's happening but we don't know what it is do you Mr. Jones?

so I don't have a lot of time because I'm writing this down in front of a door because I think as soon as we go through this door everything's going to get very bad and explode very fast so I'll make this quick but basically almost everyone in Lowl's house is stupid

I guess the guards weren't stupid they were just surprised because Lorena snuck in first and said hey there are guards so we surprised the guards and killed them

then Lorena went sneaking upstairs even though it was obvious that we should go downstairs because that's where Bad Evil Wizards keep their secret stuff so that's where the third pillar would be I know that because that's where the Mistress kept her secret stuff like me

but Lorena got attacked by a big invisible bloodsucking thing with tentacles and that's how we knew things were really weird because who keeps a giant bloodsucking thing with tentacles in their house?

it was really hard to kill because we were all crammed into the stairway and it was a big invisible bloodsucking thing and more guards came and then an assassin lady tried to assassinate Tam but she missed and Tam's lizard killed her

then we found some books and the others spent a long time reading books and it was very boring but they found out Lowls had gone to a place called Katheer and then the others said they were tired (I have noticed that Wizards get tired very easily) so we went to bed

the next day we went up to the attic I guess just in case Lowls was an incompetent Bad Evil Wizard who put his secret stuff in the attic where anyone could climb up and find it instead of the basement but the only person in the attic was an old woman who told us to leave her alone and when we didn't she threw a magic at me which honestly seems fair because she did ask first so we left her alone and went away

and then we finally finally went down to the basement and that's where all the stupid people were first there was a stupid woman doing something to a corpse and we said hi there what are you doing to that corpse but she just said you will die you will all die I will kill you so we killed her

and then we met a stupid man who said have you seen the Yellow Sign and we said yes it is right over there on that wall but he kept asking and got all scary and Bit made a pit and the stupid man drained my life when he touched me so we killed him

and then we met a whole bunch of stupid people who didn't even say anything they just attacked us so we killed them

but that was the whole basement and I was surprised because we hadn't found the pillar so we looked in a couple of other buildings but there weren't any other basements so I said there must be a Secret Door in the basement because sometimes Bad Evil Wizards hide their secret stuff behind Secret Doors so we looked and we looked and we looked and finally we found one behind an image of the goddess who kills people when they are old and sick and I guess also makes babies get born

we went through the secret door and down the stairs and there's another door and behind that door I think it's going to be all the secret stuff and it's going to get bad so I'll stop for now

so we went to the castle and said hey what's going on and they said nothing's going on so we went to Lowl's house

and at Lowl's house the guards wouldn't let us in so Tam did a magic that let me fly over the gate and then a guard attacked me but I could fly so I went way up high with him and dropped him but meanwhile the hedge attacked Bit and Lorena threw a web at a couple of Bad Evil Wizards so they attacked us and even when we said hey sorry about the web can we talk they said no you will die so Lorena made them blind and Tam's big lizard ate one of them and Bit threw a big cow at the other one and we said do you want to surrender and she said no you will die so Bit threw her in a pit and then we threw the big cow in the pit on top of her and she got smooshed and died

and we thought wow they were really stupid and it turns out that's a whole theme here every single person at Lowl's house is stupid I'll get to that soon

anyway the Bad Evil Wizards had wine in their house and I drank some and it was horrible

it turns out I am even worse than I thought

much much worse

so we found the cave of the Briarstone Witch and we went in and we found a Witch but I don't think it was the Briarstone Witch because there weren't any kidnapped people there and she attacked us with her weird wolves and cast a Bad Evil Wizard spell that tangled us up in vines

and I have mixed feelings now about the Good Not-Evil Magic that my friends are using because later it saved my life even though they should have let me die but this time my friends the Good Not-Evil Wizards threw webs and pits and things at the Witch and they didn't save anyone's life they mostly got in the way and kept anyone from getting to the Witch while she cast her Bad Evil Wizard spells at us so she did that for a long long time and Lorena almost died of a fungal infection

but finally I burned my way through the web and went down the pit and came up into the other room where the Witch was waiting with her monkey and they tried to kill me but I killed them instead and we found a note from some lady asking for more dreams I don't know what that means so we left

and we went back to town and a dead woman attacked me saying I had killed her

and I remembered killing her I remembered punching her and kicking her until she died somehow I became the Thing that The Mistress raised me to be

and this time the spells cast by my friends the Good Not-Evil Wizards really helped and I would have died if not for them but instead I killed her

again

and then I curled up in a ball and cried and cried

I am the hollow cat I am the stuffed cat headpiece filled with straw my dried voice is quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass or rats' feet over broken glass shape without form shade without colour paralyzed force gesture without motion

later I talked to Winter about it and asked what can you do when you did something bad and you can never, ever, ever make up for it ever and she said you have to learn to forgive yourself and I said how and she said I had to atone which I think means I need to do so much good that it cancels out the bad

that's an awful lot of good

an awful lot

and then we went to investigate the weird pillars and I touched one and

unreal city under the yellow fog of a winter dawn a crowd flowed over the bridge so many I had not thought death had undone so many

sighs short and infrequent were exhaled and each man fixed his eyes before his feet

and I saw the Yellow Sign

the Yellow Sign

the Yellow Sign

I did a bad bad thing

so we took a boat over to Thrushmoor over water and it was raining and I hated it and we saw a big pillar on a hill and there's another one in town and obviously another where Lowls lives although you can't see it but it's obvious from looking at a map so that probably means something

and then Winter took us to the temple of Farazma who is the goddess who kills old people and outside the temple there was a mob with torches and they were shouting at someone and I thought someone had been doing hideous experiments like the Mistress did with me after my mother the leopard gave birth to me because that's when the mobs with the torches come but it turns out it was just some artist and they were mad at him for making art only he didn't make it and it was art like the art Zandalus drew only not as good

Tam and the bird that rides on Bit's shoulder calmed the mob down and we went into the temple although the priestess wasn't there and we went to sleep and that's when I did the bad bad thing and it hurts so bad when you finally know just how low low low low low you'll go

I was supposed to be on watch but I never went on watch because when I woke up I was in a field and I had blood all over me and I had eaten a sheep and the sheep wasn't mine which means I stole it and I was naked because I had forgotten that walking on two legs means wearing clothes

so I went back and told the others and they thought I might be a Where Wolf because the moon was full and I don't know what that means but it sounds like a bad bad thing

that morning Winter took us to see a lady who knew us even though we didn't know her and she didn't like us and she took us up to see another lady who knew us even though we didn't know her and she didn't like us and she told us that bad things had been going and people were going missing including the priestess of Farazma which is why the mob was angry at the artist and a crazy man was saying the Briarstone Witch had done it because she's a witch that makes people disappear and someone had gone to the castle and disappeared

so first we went to see the crazy person who told us he had seen the Witch in a cave outside town so Bit knocked him unconscious with a spell so he wouldn't scare people and we took him to a stable and Bit and Tam told me to strangle him until he was passed out which seems mean but Bit and Tam said to do it so OK and I was careful not to kill him

then we wanted to go shopping so we went into an Inn where there was a woman who knew us even though we didn't know her and she didn't like us I don't think we were very nice people

but after we paid Bit's bar tab she told us where we could go shopping and then another man came in who knew Tam even though Tam didn't know him and he liked Tam so he's probably evil and he didn't believe Tam when Tam said we had lost our memories which made Tam mad because he's tired of explaining and then the man said he'd seen Tam hiding something off a pier

so after we went shopping we went to the pier and we were attacked by a horrible gibbering thing covered with mouths but Lorena trapped it in a web and then we killed it so I guess this place isn't much better than the asylum really

and I climbed down and got the stuff that Tam had hidden and it included a wand full of Bad Evil Magic so we talked about the fact that it seemed really likely that we were Bad Evil People especially Tam but I had also done the bad bad thing and Lorena said she could drain life from people and Bit is Bit so we talked about it for a long time

Bit said she thought good and evil were just words and I said what does that mean everything is just words like the thing you said right now that was words and Tam said maybe a not-evil person could still worship an evil god and Lorena said maybe evil actions could be good if they were done for a very good purpose and Bit said there was something that wasn't good or evil called neutral so I said I was going to try to be a completely new thing that I called neutral good because I want to be good but still friends with Lorena if she does bad stuff for a good reason or Tam if he's good but worships an evil god and Bit if she's Bit and me if sometimes I do a bad bad thing while I'm asleep

but we all agreed that we were at least going to try to be not-evil from that point on so that was good

and then we went down to the cave and an evil vine grabbed Lorena and strangled her so I got mad because Lorena is tiny and cute and she can cast a spell now that MAKES HER EVEN TINIER AND CUTER IT IS SO ADORABLE I CAN BARELY STAND IT so I grabbed the vine and tied it in a knot and then we all hit it until it stopped moving and Lorena stole some life energy from Tam so she didn't die and I said she could steal my life energy anytime if she wanted

you ever toss and turn your lying awake and thinking about the one you love? you ever close your eyes your making believe you're holding the one you're dreaming of?

and then we went into the cave and we were attacked by a fungus that appeared and disappeared and appeared and disappeared and it was really annoying but we killed it and there was an animal tied up in vines there and I made friends with it but it really wanted to make friends with Tam I think because Tam is a boy but that's all right I have Mr. Bear

oh also I can see in dim light better now for some reason the Mistress would be so happy she always hoped I could do that but I never could before now

You know, dressing up as an inside-out iron maiden and then grinding people to death against yourself is also pretty horrible. ;o)

i am a bad kitty

oh right i forgot about the part where Tam held aloft his symbol and hideous tendrils of noxious pulsating energy spewed forth from him and froze our foes with awe and terror at the sheer horror of it

good job Tam

so we went back to tell Winter what was going on and we told the people in yellow that we were foraging so we brought back some food and water and then rested for the night but we all had bad dreams because a candy-colored clown they call the sandman tiptoes to my room every night

and then we went back over he barricade and across the courtyard and into another part of the building where some gools had laid a trap and pushed a wall over on Tam and Lorena and we killed the gools

and then we went up looking for the dreamer who was making the fog and there were more gools and Bit dropped them into a pit but one jumped over and paralyzed Lorena but we killed the gools

and then we went upstairs and the fog was thick and we could barely see and we ran into a man breathing out yellow fog and it was the dreamer and he touched Tam and sprinkled stardust and whispered go to sleep everything is all right so Bit kicked Tam until he woke back up and then I grabbed the man and squeezed him until he was dead

and we were all very tired so we went back to the chapel to sleep because we knew the next day we would probably face Zandalus

so the next day we went up the stairs to face Zandalus but first there were guards and the woman who killed all the people on the crosses and they wouldn't let us past and they attacked us and the woman grabbed Tam and knocked him out but Bit knocked them all out with a burst of pretty colors and I strangled the woman because it served her right and Tam woke up and was very angry and demanded that Bit tell him about his holy symbol and Bit was being all coy about it so Tam grabbed her and finally Bit said it was the symbol of a god from somewhere called Osirion and then we finally went on our way

and there was a hallway filled with fog and when we went through there were THREE of those foggy people who make you sleep and I closed my eyes then I drifted away into the magic night and I softly said a silent prayer like dreamers do then I fell asleep to dreams my dreams of you

but Bit kicked me awake and there was a pit and Lorena had covered the floor with grease and no one could see anything and Tam fell into a pit and then a dreamer fell into the pit with Tam but we were fighting the dreamers up above so no one could help Tam and Lorena threw a snowball and broke a window and it was all a mess but we finally killed them and the fog cleared a little

and Bit said she was out of spells except for the spells that she had left I don't know why she said that

so we kept going down a hallway and we found Zandalus who said he had already killed us so Lorena threw a snowball at him and Bit dropped him in a pit and then I climbed up on Tam's shoulders and threw things at him and he tried to burn out my mind and then turned invisible so I threw oil over him and then fell into the pit and Lorena and Bit threw acid at him and finally he died

but we didn't think it was over because we found all these silver weapons like someone had been afraid of something that could only be hurt by silver and we hadn't met anything like that so we kept alert and then the tattered man from our dreams who walked with us in dreams and talked to us in dreams came out of Zandalus and Bit and Lorena threw acid at him but he healed the wounds up so I grabbed him and he made Lorena afraid so I got REALLY MAD because I did not like it that he made Lorena afraid

Lorena we're together in dreams in dreams

so I squeezed the tattered man until he passed out and then Tam stabbed him with a silver dagger and he died

and the fog went away and the sun came out

we did it

so we went back to the room where the dead birds were singing and most of us got through all right but they picked Tam up and tossed him down because what goes up must come down and what must rise must fall and what goes on in your life is writing on the wall

and we had to go outside for a while and I don't like being outside here because there are horrible things in the fog and sure enough horrible things came and attacked us a swarm of little faceless things and they were scary and we killed them with fire

I had lots of things to light on fire I don't know why I had them I think maybe they belong to Mr. Bear

then we went back in and we found a lantern with a frozen flame and a dead man who had killed two of the cultists in yellow with a boot and suddenly there was a horrible creature next to me and I punched it in the face and it died and Bit said it was a gool and if they touch you they can make you not able to move and remember that because it's going to come up again later

anyway we went on and there was a screaming man tied to a hospital bed and Tam touch him and he died so I said Tam why did you do that and then the dead man turned into another gool and I said Tam why did you do THAT and Tam said he didn't do it but no one else touched him so I think it was Tam

we're all pretty sure Tam is evil but that's all right I like him anyway

so we went on after we killed the gool and we found a room where a dead woman was bleeding sideways and there was a dark room beyond with a child in it and Bit went in because Bit can see in the dark and the child was dead and stole Bit's voice and now Bit won't go into rooms anymore

this place is horrible

I went and got the lantern with the frozen flame because the dead child wanted a lantern but it was the wrong lantern and we figured out that her brother was alive and back at the chapel and probably had the lantern so we went back to the chapel and let Bit's parrot do the talking because frankly the rest of us shouldn't be allowed to talk to children and we traded some toy knights for the lantern and brought the lantern back to the dead child who was happy and went away and Bit got her voice back

and then Lorena went to scout ahead and said there are a LOT of those people in yellow robes in a big room with dead people in it on poles so we decided to disguise ourselves in yellow robes and we went in shouting "Zandalus Sees!" and "Praise" and they thought that was weird and I don't know why because it's not like everyone else here is normal

but a man came up and pretended like he knew us and he was a nice man who was there because he didn't have much of a choice and we talked to him and he told us a bunch of stuff that I mostly forget but he said that dreams are escaping into the real world and there's a person in a tower to the west we should find who might help us figure out what's going on and a serial killer lady and also the Tatterman in the dream who stroked my face were working with Zandalus so that's not good

so we went off beyond the barricade that the people in yellow robes had set up and it was dark and foggy and we were attacked by more gools and we could barely see and they made Tam stop moving and then Bit dropped the gools in a pit but Tam fell in the pit too and I thought if all things must fall why build a miracle at all if all things must pass even a miracle won't last

so I jumped in the pit to save Tam but then the last one made me stop moving like when what goes on in your mind is turning into stone

so Lorena jumped in the pit to save us because Lorena is brave and good and pretty and nice but she is also small and had a hard time killing the last one and it looked like we were all going to die

but then Bit dropped us all into another pit and the gool died but we lived

so we went back across the barricade because by then we were in pretty bad shape and everything is terrible and how do we know what the earth will endure how can we be so sure

so we went and fought the rat man and I got scared and ran away and then I got knocked unconscious

so we went back and fought the rat man again and I got scared and ran away and then I ran back and he ran away and now we don't know where he is

and the bird on Bit's shoulder turned into a raven of the saintly days of yore and much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly and not the least obeisance made he and the raven never flitting still is sitting still is sitting

then we found a woman and the yellow fog was coming out of her and I went to try to wake her up and I fell into a dream I was back in the city and there was an old woman knitting and she told me the past was in the doctor's books and our past had been sacrificed and presently my soul grew stronger hesitating then no longer I woke up and told everyone we had to find the books

but first we wandered around looking for a place to put the woman making the yellow fog and Winter told us not in the chapel and we asked her some things and she said she was there because she was looking into someone named Lowls and we found a room where everyone was dead with bags on their heads and a room where dead birds were singing although not a feather then they fluttered and methought the air grew denser perfumed from an unseen censer swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor

so finally we found a closet and we put the woman in the closet and then we went into a courtyard where a THING attacked Lorena and nearly killed her and tried to carry her away so I grabbed Lorena because she is MINE and we tugged her back and forth until I dragged her out of the courtyard and then the THING attacked Bit but we had hurt it pretty badly so it gave up and flew away

and at the end of the courtyard was a little shed and in the shed there were stairs and at the bottom of the stairs was a hole and in the hole there was

ITS EYES HAD ALL THE SEEMING OF A DEMON'S THAT IS DREAMING AND THE WITCH-LIGHT O'ER IT STREAMING THREW ITS SHADOW ON THE FLOOR AND MY SOUL FROM OUT THAT SHADOW THAT LIES FLOATING ON THE FLOOR SHALL BE LIFTED NEVERMORE

anyway then we went and found the books and they mentioned Lowls and that we had worked for Lowls and they mentioned Zandalus and that Zandalus dreamed of things that were and weren't and the doctor was going to try an experiment with Zandalus and we think that is when things went very very wrong and there were more cultists like the one who said Zandalus Sees! and they attacked me so we attacked them back and now we are very tired

and now we must ponder weak and weary over all these quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore

And R.I.P. one doppleganger who demonstrated real commitment to her role, sticking to the script of being a helpless innocent while being grappled, pinned, bound, "healed", "knocked unconscious", and eventually killed, in a show of dedication to method acting that deserved all of the awards.

so we decided not to open the door yet because we were very hurt and very very tired so we went back to a broom closet to sleep but before we slept we talked to the guards and we asked why they hadn't run away from all the terrible things and they said look outside so we looked through a door into a courtyard

and the yellow fog from our dreams was hovering overhead and it was raining blood from a lacerated sky bleeding its horror the sky was turning red falling into me the sky's crimson tears abolishing the rules made of stone

then we went back inside and went to bed

and I had a terrible dream again I was back in the alley with the fog and I closed my eyes and ran and ran but didn't get anywhere and the big creature was there in the fog so I attacked it kill it kill it and it reached down and gently stroked my face

and I woke up screaming

after that we went back to the door we didn't open with the man outside still screaming Zandalus Sees and we opened the door and there were bodies an a pile and one on a table and a thing in a basin saying I'm hungry and a face-changing thing behind a curtain but when we pulled the curtain aside it was gone

but the woman on the table turned out to be alive and I was worried about face-changers so I held her down and later tied her up and we searched her and found a healing vial and a key and we gave her the healing vial and then we talked to her and she said she didn't remember much but she worked there and there had been an earthquake and a riot and strange monsters took her to the room

and she seemed all right but I knocked her out for safety which the others didn't like and we talked about what to do about the thing in the basin which wanted to eat us and eventually we decided it was better to kill it although Bit's bird disagreed that bird is really very annoying

and while we were leaving I asked if the key we found on the woman fit the manacles outside and the others tried them and they did

and I thought why would a helpless woman on a table have the keys to the manacles that were holding a dead body and a hungry monster and a crazy person and I thought I don't think she's a woman I think she's a face-changer

but I knew I only thought that because I am very stupid and the others are all very smart and I knew that if I told them I thought the woman was a face-changer they would come up with all sorts of clever arguments I couldn't think of about why she might have the key even if she wasn't a face-changer and they would probably change my mind so I killed her while she was helpless and tied up before they could say anything

and Tam raced in to stop me but he was too late and the woman was dead and turned out to be a face-changer she turned into one when she died

but that was the third face-changer we killed so we went back to the guards and said Hey let us in and they said no at first and we were very mad because they promised but eventually they said they would let us in if we left our weapons outside so we did

and inside there was a place where a whole lot of people were staying and a woman named Winter was taking care of them and she was mad at us for coming so I got upset and she said help out if you want to stay so I chopped some firewood and Tam made some food and Bit knocked a poor old man unconscious and I think Bit has a Problem

and then while we were explaining that Bit had a Problem Lorena tried to destroy a statue of a pretty woman with wings but we stopped her

I don't think we made a very good first impression

but anyway we talked to Winter about what happened and she said they didn't know there was a riot and things got strange and the fog came and it had something to do with the Zandalus person who the crazy person was talking about and they couldn't look for a way to solve it because the way out had been blocked by an eye wall fungus thing

so we spent hours and hours and hours trying to figure out how to get past the eye wall fungus thing which was VERY ANNOYING and finally Tam and Winter used their Good Not-Evil Magic to get rid of it

we went past and through a room into another room which had nothing interesting only a lot of books and there were RATS and I hissed at the RATS and the RATS summoned more RATS who attacked us and there were lots of them so we had to retreat

but we went back the next day with a plan on how to fight the RATS and this time we were better at it so we defeated the RATS and Lorena went through a little tunnel and said there are more RATS back there so we went through a door and are going to fight them and that's where things are now

so we introduced ourselves to each other although we all kind of felt like we knew each other but none of us could remember how we got there or much of anything at all

it was like the moon had lost our memory and was smiling alone all the torches seemed to beat a fatalistic warning someone muttered and the gas lamps guttered

and a parrot came out of Bit's shoulder and I tried to grab the parrot but it flew away and everyone told me not to do that which seems unfair

so we searched and found an enormous pile of dead bodies in another room

and then we found a furnace which we thought maybe we could climb up so I took my armor back off and tried it I should have said that I found my armor too along with Mr Bear

and I climbed up into a room where I saw something glow and heard something skittering so I went to the door and opened it and someone shot me with a crossbow!

and then the rats and a cat-rat creature came out and attacked me and we were fighting and Tam came up to help me but then I could understand the cat-rat creature I think because my father was a leopard and the cat-rat creature just wanted us to leave so I said sure because I like animals I think because my father is a leopard

anyway the others came up and we went out into the hall where people were warning us not to come into the hall and we found out they thought we were shapechangers like the woman downstairs who when she died became a horrible monster

so we talked to them and asked them to remember the time they knew what happiness was and let the memory live again

but they WOULD NOT LISTEN even though we said we were not shapechangers and we argued for a very long time and finally they said if we killed a bunch of shapechangers they might believe us

so we went away and some big centipedes attacked us right in front of them and Lorena made the centipedes all greasy and then we killed the centipedes

and then we went farther and a woman came out of some rubble and said "Oh I am hurt" and Tam went to help her walk but I was suspicious because of what the guards had said so I tried to grab her and I missed and it was a good grab so I knew she wasn't a wounded old woman so I said "Kill it kill it!" so we did and it was a shapechanger so I took the body back to the guards and said "There's one"

and it made more sense to me why the guards were so stupid because being stupid was smart in this place

and we saw a body moving in the rubble so we went to help but it attacked us even though it was dead but its hands and head crawled towards us and when we killed them its intestines attacked us too

I am starting to think something is wrong with this place

and we went on and found another dead person eating another dead person so we killed them both even though only one was moving and there was a not-dead person too who said "Zandalus Sees" and "Praise" and nothing else and we thought he might be a crazy person because the guards who didn't let us pass told us this was a crazy person place

anyway we knocked him out

and now we're standing before another door but we're not sure whether to open it because we're hurt and Lorena can't make things greasy anymore and Tam can't do the special good not-evil healing magic and I guess Bit probably can't do whatever Bit does

so maybe we will go in or maybe we will rest and wait because soon it will be morning

daylight we must wait for the sunrise we must think of a new life and we mustn't give in

when the dawn comes tonight will be a memory too and a new day will begin

this is my journal because Tam told me if you write things down then you can remember them when you need to and Tam is very wise just like Bit is very smart and Lorena is very small and I need to remember because something is wrong with my memory because I am very very stupid and useless

so I will start with the earliest things I remember

that is being in the cage I was bred by the Mistress she bred me from a half-ogre and a leopard using BAD EVIL MAGIC but I didn't come out the way she wanted so she put me in the cage next to the other failures

and she did the tests which hurt very much to see why I was so bad and I tried to escape sometimes but she always caught me

... that's pretty much everything I remember until what happened today

I guess I should start with the dream

it was a very bad dream

I was in an alley and it was the time when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table and I went through certain half-deserted streets the muttering retreats streets that followed like a tedious argument of insidious intent and there was something pursuing me in the yellow fog

something big

there was something big in the yellow fog that rubbed its back upon the window-panes the yellow smoke that rubbed its muzzle on the window-panes and licked its tongue into the corners of the evening and lingered upon the pools that stand in drains

so I ran away I ran before it could slip by the terrace and make a sudden leap

and the bricks were made of flesh and the streets were rotting beneath me and a voice said "Me" and I thought "Me?" and a voice said "Up" and I thought "Up Me? Me Up?" and the thing in the yellow smoke that slid along the street rubbing its back upon the window-panes was getting closer and closer

and there was no time there was no time for all the works and days of hands

and a voice said "Save" and I thought "Me Up Save? Save Up Me? Up Save Me?" and I thought is that like "Wake Up Save Me"? is this a dream?

and then I woke up

I woke up in a cage so that was normal but MR BEAR WAS GONE

so I screamed and screamed and screamed

and Bit was in the cage with me and Tam was in another cage and Lorena was in a third cage but I couldn't see her and I didn't know their names until later and I can't remember how I got in there it wasn't the same cage as the cage the Mistress kept me in

and outside the cage there was a woman with a knife cutting up a man on the table so that was normal and he was the one screaming "Wake Up" and I was screaming back because MR BEAR WAS GONE

and the woman came over to tell me to stop screaming and she was wearing my face because I guess she could prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet

so I grabbed her through the bars

and Bit walked right through the bars which is pretty neat and she got the key off the woman's belt and let us out and Lorena did something to the woman's knife which made her drop it and I thought oh no I am in here with BAD EVIL WIZARDS

but i thought the woman with the knife was probably worse than the BAD EVIL WIZARDS what with the knifing and taking away Mr. Bear so I kept hold of her and started punching her and I did that for a while

but after a while she got away though and I had to come out and punch her and Tam did stuff to make my punching better and also tried to save the guy being knifed but he died

and Lorena squeezed out through the bars and she and Bit threw acid at the woman and the woman clawed me until I was almost dead but I was able to take One Last Punch and then I fell over but they told me later that I punched her so hard that she was able to take One Last Punch which knocked out Bit but then she fell over too so that was the end because Tam and Lorena were still awake but she wasn't

and then Tam did something although he didn't know how he did it which made me feel better and I said "How can that be magic if it made me feel better" and they told me that there is Good Magic and that they are GOOD NOT-EVIL WIZARDS

!

anyway we looked around and I found Mr Bear and I gave him a good long cuddle