Of course there had to be even more Qlippoths.
At least I now know why Thassilonian martial arts are all but extinct these days, despite their obvious power potential. Its practitioners must all have died of delusions of grandeur. I suppose I should thank the Master of Masters for another lesson in humility — my hubris might well end me for good if I am not more careful.
To be fair, my power has, in fact, increased in leaps and bounds in the last weeks and even days. I only just realized the true capabilities of Snake Style. While it offered some early advantages, the deeper teachings of the style often struck me as unnecessary convolutions, going to great lengths to emulate the motion of a snake seemingly only for cosmetic purposes. How wrong I was. I understand now. A snake does not block a foe's attack, no, it strikes the offending limb. An opponent is never less defended than when they attack, and that is the best time to strike. That is why nobody messes with snakes.
It worked beautifully, too. I laid waste to half a dozen cultists and minor qlippoths in mere moments, each of their attacks contributing to their own downfall. The first of the greater qlippoths also fell rather easily between Azriel and me. Just when a second one of the greater qlippoths appeared, Ice recalled us to Zincher's sanctum, where the cultists were executing their main thrust for the prize. This is where I faltered.
While Azriel and the guards retreated from the fight and clustered for teleport to the sanctum, I decided to remain behind and take care of the qlippoth alone. I armed myself with ὀλοόξιφος, which I expected to make short work of the abomination. My plan was to step out of the building afterwards, ride my lightning boots up the side of the building and smash through a shuttered window.
As it happened, though, most of my strikes against the qlippoth failed to connect, while it struck true through my defenses. I had so far neglected the few light injuries I had sustained so far, but along with the qlippoths counterstrike, they brought me within an inch of death. I could not leave the building in time without either offering the qlippoth one more opportunity to strike against me or wading through acidic fog, neither of which I could afford at this point, so I called upon ἀνεμόδρομος to swiftly carry me up the stairs towards my friends instead. However, the qlippoth guessed where I was going and used teleportation to ambush me at the sanctum level. My friends were still too far away from me to aid me, so I had no choice but to turn around to try and reach a window on the lower storey through which I might blast myself directly into the sanctum, as had been my original plan. But my path was obstructed by stairs, doors, and window shutters, which did nothing to hinder the qlippoth's logic-defying locomotion. It caught up with me an overwhelmed me with some unholy miasma.
When I woke up again, I lay on the floor, staring right into the mind-rendingly absurd tangle of entrails that made up the qlippoth's mortal form. My friends tell me they came looking for me once their fight in the sanctum had concluded, and found the qlippoth carring me like a baby. I wonder what it had in mind, if «mind» is even a term applicable to qlippoths. Did it intend to bring me to its mistress as a prize? Was it looking for a quiet place to consume me? Or did it have a far less pleasant purpose for me in mind? We have met qlippoths in the past that used living beings as incubators for their eggs, after all. I keep wondering what long-term effects I will bear from this encounter. Perhaps I should ask Szarlej to cast Dispel Evil a few times upon me, just in case.
At any rate, still being mostly dead and prone at the mercy of a qlippoth, I used my boots to carry me to the relative safety of a nearby stairwell, where I applied a small amount of emergency healing to myself while Azriel held the qlippoth at bay in the form of an elusive air elemental. Ice, who had healed me back to consciousness, had succumbed to debilitating nausea in the meantime. However, I still had ὀλοόξιφος on my fists. I rejoined combat with a flying kick and flanked the abomination with Azriel, which allowed us to end its preposterous existence once and for all.
Looking back, my main sin was to «split the party», which common sense dictates is never a good idea. Had I joined the fight against the main enemy, a flying priestess of Yamasoth who created hungry pits in the floor and flung spell after spell at my friends, I might have been able to end the confrontation early with a well-placed stunning fist. Then again, I might just have fallen prey to these hungry pits, which I wouldn't have been able to escape as easily as my flying comrades. Furthermore, the qlippoth would no doubt have followed us to the sanctum, which might have disrupted my friends efforts against the priestess. However, in this scenario, I could have profited from Szarlej's channeled healing energies along with the others, which would have given me a fighting chance to take down the qlippoth on my own.
Ultimately, it is hard to say what would have happened, had I followed our plan and not set out on my own, but I do expect it would have worked out in our favor. For now, I am simply grateful to the Master of Masters for allowing me the opportunity to live to learn from my mistakes and do better next time.
In other news, Azriel's druidic powers can now teleport us through plants, which allowed us to choose a campsite in the wilderness, far from any corners that might attract the Hounds of Tindalos, and to reach the city of Korvosa on the next day without delay. We met another strange creature associated with Time, who did not assault us on sight, for a change, and who instead bequeathed upon us a fraction of the power of our potential future selves. At least that is how I understood her words. I do not pretend to comprehend the ramifications of time travel.
Furthermore, we met the Runelord Sorshen in person. She is every bit as regal and striking as one would expect — I am surprised she can walk the streets of Korvosa without drawing all sorts of unwanted attention. For the moment, her goals seem to align with ours, even if her plans for a New Thassilon ring an entire city's worth of alarm bells. We will have to keep our eyes, ears, and minds open for signs of treachery, even as we follow her lead.
Notes:
— I need a better way to heal rapidly when retreating from a fight. A few scrolls of CSW would do it, even if there is a small chance they would fail, given my inexperience with spellcasting. Potions would be better, but extremely expensive. Still preferable over not being able to rejoin a fight after a retreat, though.
— I need a way to fly. I cannot afford to be stumped by flying enemy, or kept at bay with something as mundane as a pit. The boots are certainly useful for quick getaways, but are usable only once a day. A scroll or two of Fly should do the trick. The same caveat as for the cure scrolls applies.
— The corrosive property that my amulet imparts upon my unarmed strikes appears ineffectual on qlippoths, and presumably other acidic creatures as well. In such cases, falling back to my trusty threshing flail would be preferable. I probably should pursue a magical enchantment on that weapon so as to render it a viable vessel for ὀλοόξιφος.
— I... hate... qlippoths.
— I vow to sample any and all exotic fruit I might encounter in Korvosa.
Dear Diary,
(AudrahniIsStillDead)
Well, the events of today went ... oddly. In one case very badly, as there was another death in our group (albeit temporary, as they seem to be for most of us these days.) But mostly just odd.
The fight against the Time Flayer went fairly typically, though. Honestly, it didn't do very well against us, although it managed to carve up Szarlej quite a bit with its ice sword (Szarlej had a bad day of it in general.) Although it had numerous tricks with time that it employed to fight us, we overcame it soon enough with our by-now well honed teamwork and tactics. The world unfroze around us, somewhat to the surprise of those who saw us suddenly injured or (in the case of Azriel) transformed into an earth elemental.
Time Flayers, as it turns out, come from the future to prevent people in the past from doing things that they would do in the future which would mess with the time stream. The whole concept makes my head hurt. After the fight, we got strong drinks and discussed the vagaries of time travel with Sorshen. That made my head hurt even more.
Somewhat later, we went to watch the key event at the end of the festival -- the ritual burning of a wooden statue of Queen Ileosa. That is where things went very wrong.
The crowd, as it turns out, was seeded with cultists of the Order of the Peacock, intent on assassinating Sorshen. Pegging us as her defenders, they assaulted us. And soon after, from the burning statue, a titanic firebird they had called from beyond began to rain destruction down upon the panicked crowd.
This fight did not go smoothly for us.
The cultists themselves were tough but easy enough for my comrades to best, Akkumsah, Dr. Variel, and Azriel all slaying them handily. I did not fare so well against them. After I had inspired and hastened my friends, one of the cultists smashed her fist into me, stunning me. As soon as I had recovered from her blow, she stunned me again, this time knocking me down. Akkumsah finally came over and slew my assailant for me, but then Azriel summoned a storm of sleet to assault the firebird. Which ignored it completely, so all it did was spoil the line of sight to any spells I might have cast.
For most of the fight, I managed to do exactly nothing.
Meanwhile, as everyone fought the cultists, the firebird threw down lightning upon us, causing grievous destruction. And as the final cultists were perishing, Szarlej, having enabled himself to fly, decided to take the beast on all by himself. It assaulted him with its beak and claws and in fewer than six seconds he
died but then time jumped and he
died but then time jumped and he
died but then time jumped and he
died. Not even time's favor could save him.
Sorshen managed to give the firebird a Reckless Infatuation with Akkumsah, presumably to keep it at a distance from herself, but nothing else was having much effect. We were all damaged from the fight thus far, while it had not taken a single blow. Azriel advised retreat. I attempted to Charm it and failed, but at that point we realized that if Akkumsah, already fast and hastened, fled from the creature, then Sorshen's spell would compel it to follow, and it would be able to do little else. In the breathing room this gave us, I tried to Charm it again, and this time was successful. It proved to speak perfect Thassilonian, and we began a conversation.
This is where things got odd.
We conversed with lightning crashing down on us, an effect the bird apparently had no control over, so we were periodically electrocuted as we tried to negotiate. We soon learned that the bird was bound to slay Sorshen, who by that time had vanished, and it could not leave until that was accomplished. Various alternatives we proposed to the bird were turned down, as it had been given an unbreakable command by the Peacock Spirit. So we hatched a plan.
While Akkumsah, inside a building to avoid the lightning, kept it happily tethered to the square thanks to Reckless Infatuation, and city guards, responding to the crisis, kept the citizens away after we consulted with them, the rest of us left with a promise that we would find Sorshen and kill her on its behalf. Instead, we gathered various spells that let us lie with impunity and sculpt corpses into different forms -- and we paid to raise Szarlej from the dead while we were at it. Soon we returned bearing "Sorshen's" corpse made from one of the dead cultists. The firebird, fooled by our magically enhanced lies, pronounced itself satisfied. And then did not leave.
It was still Infatuated with Akkumsah.
Szarlej attempted to dispel the spell. And failed.
I attempted to overcome Sorshen's enchantment with the effects of my own. And failed.
Finally, we left AGAIN, bought a scroll of Unadulterated Loathing, and used it to counter the spell. And the bird at last flew away. I rather expected that it would return to its own plane, but I suppose it had no way of doing so. So I guess it's just ... out there. now.
So that happened.
Once the bird was gone, Sorshen reappeared, and gave us some parting gifts before our journey to Kaer Maga. After a night of rest, Azriel used his magic to transport us there.
We paid to be guided through the tunnels in the cliff that led to the Shrine of the Seal. I must say I am uncomfortable with that much weight of stone above and around me. It is very unlike water. Azriel offered to turn into a water elemental so that I could swim in him if the claustrophobia overcame me, which I thought was sweet.
Finding the door to the Shrine locked, Dr. Variel began to pick it, but it was immediately opened by a monk who told us the shrine was closed. He said that the place had been beset with filth fever, and had no awareness that anything was wrong. Very strange. He was adamant that we could not enter, so I Charmed him. He let us in, and then Dimension Doored away to consult with his superiors regarding what to do about us. That is worrisome. Something is amiss here, and whoever returns with him may very well mean us ill.
We explored briefly and found a room that seems meant to rotate, but we could find no mechanism for making it do so. And that is where things stand, with us befuddled and confused in the midst of things we do not comprehend.
So, you know, the usual.
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Dear Diary,
(AudrahniIsStillDead)
Well, today was a bit humbling.
The rotating room eventually began rotating while Akkumsah and Azriel were in it, with the rest of us unable to join them in time. It rotated them to a room that stabbed them with spikes, then stopped.
I must say that these Brothers of the Seal seem to have set up their dwelling to be unfriendly to visitors. But they seem to all be dead now -- more on that later. Karma, I suppose?
We finally decided to break through the walls to proceed forward, and after setting off another trap (a fireball which only targeted Akkumsah, who evaded it easily), we finally came around to a room with a pit that led to the lower reaches of the place. That is when we encountered the first undead, a pair of odd flying creatures with bows made of bone. The room had been desecrated, and if we were suspicious of the claim of "filth fever" before, we now knew it to be a lie. Something was terribly amiss here.
I'm pleased to say I did well against these undead, incapacitating one and severely damaging the other with a painful song, because in the subsequent, far more dangerous encounter, I was all but useless.
We made our way down the stairs to a large room where an ambush awaited us. We later put together that the "monk" I had charmed above had been a disguised drider sorceress, and her travel below had done nothing but warn the necromancer of our presence, allow him to remove the charm from his minion, and prompt him to prepare for our arrival. But at the time, all we knew is that we were beset by ghouls.
Ghouls who paralyzed me with their touch before I even fully realized they were there. A state I would remain in for almost the whole of the fight. I used one of the few tricks I could employ while unable to move or speak, using a gout of water to push away a ghoul who otherwise would have been in position to kill me with ease, but after that I had no tactics I could use.
The ghouls were soon joined by a set of what we eventually learned were totenmaskes -- doppleganger-like creatures who had taken the form of monks -- as well as the drider sorceress and the necromancer Erigantus. The battle that ensued was touch and go for quite some time.
While Akkumsah and Azriel (in the form of an earth elemental) battled the undead immediately surrounding us (and protected me from having my throat slit), Szarlej flew across the room to bring the battle to the necromancer. They exchanged spells -- a Finger of Death that failed to kill Szarlej, a Flame Strike that did little damage to the necromancer, and then a Grasping Hand that left Szarlej grappled for the remainder of combat. Meanwhile, the sorceress sizzled us with lightning bolts. I've no idea how I survived; no fewer than three hit me while I was unable to move.
While Akkumsah mopped up the undead, Azriel moved closer and began a summoning -- one which, alas, would be interrupted by a lightning bolt and never appear. Szarlej, meanwhile, unable to cast spells or strike with his longspear, began channeling positive energy against the undead and the dhampir necromancer, and when he could no longer do so, using his ring of forcefangs to pummel the evil wizard with missiles of force. These tactics would prove decisive for our eventual victory -- Szarlej, while grappled and held still, did more against the necromancer than anyone else!
But while the necromancer continued to hurl foul spells at us, one convincing Azriel that his skin was sloughing off, Akkumsah, having dispensed with the undead, moved in to attack the drider. At first she did little, confused by the many mirror images surrounding the sorceress, but soon they were gone and the blows of her mighty fists began landing. Azriel, meanwhile, used an earth elemental's affinity with stone to hide in the wall for his next summoning, eventually producing a rain of poisonous frogs that bedeviled the necromancer and interfered with his spellcasting.
When the paralysis at last wore off, I tried to blind the necromancer (and failed), and retreated to heal. We were all sorely injured, and I could not have stood another blow. But when I returned, Akkumsah had slain the drider, and the necromancer was on his last legs. He tried to kill me with an illusory monster, but I was not fooled, and Szarlej sent a final round of force missiles to finish him off.
I had achieved almost nothing. But we won, and I suppose that is the important thing.
We found the Book of Bones on the necromancer, and have begun our preparations to take on Zutha. We have decided to take what time we need to prepare, as he is likely to be a dangerous foe indeed. Alas, we were too late to save the Brotherhood of the Seal, and whatever lay at the heart of their monastery has been desecrated and broken.
I hope that won't cause any problems for anyone later on.
Dear Diary (A.I.S.D.),
I apologize that it's been so long since I've written in you, but we've been quite, quite busy! We decided to take something like a month to prepare for our first true battle with a Runelord, even only a partially constituted one. Azriel crafted many mighty objects of magic for us, and we purchased scrolls, potions, weapons, armor, everything we could think of to help us against an undead necromancer. Then we spent days hashing out a plan wherein I would use a magical instrument we had found in the Brotherhood of the Seal to construct a building on the Ritual site, so that we would trap Zutha in a zone of magical silence where his spells would be of no use.
Most of our preparations, and the entirety of our plan, proved to be completely useless (including a rather expensive scroll of Spell Turning I had purchased). A few, however, turned out to be crucial. You never can tell, I suppose.
I should note that Dr. Variel did not join us on the most recent of our adventures. We flatly forbade him to read the Book of Bones, and as a result harsh words were exchanged. I am sure we will reconcile soon, though -- the fate of the world may be at stake! But it did mean that I ended up performing the entire Ritual myself.
In any case, the rest of us traveled to the strange isle where the Ritual had to take place. Azriel tapped into the ley lines while I built our battleground, we all cast the spells upon ourselves which would last beyond the duration of the Ritual, and I began chanting. More than an hour later, further, shorter duration spells were cast, until we were bristling with potent magic. I myself had braced for the battle -- and these came from potions, scrolls, other magic items, my own spells and abilities, and spells cast by others upon me -- with Fins to Feet, False Life, Heroism, Spell Turning, Glibness, Mirror Image, Death Ward, Exquisite Accompaniment, Shield of Faith, Inspire Courage, Flight, and a dose of Ambrosia! And I was not even the most prepared among us! Just after the final words of the Ritual were spoken, Szarlej cast his carefully prepared spell of Silence ...
And the power of the Ritual blew the reconstituted Zutha straight up 30 feet in the air, right through the stone roof of the building and out of the silenced zone!
We were not taken aback for long, though, for we had been well aware that the plan might not work for any number of reasons. Our first crucial preparation -- the spells of Flight we had cast upon ourselves -- came into play immediate as we pursued Zutha into the air. Szarlej spit poison at him, which did no good. And before we could surround the Runelord fragment, he began to fence himself with defensive spells and tagged Szarlej with a Finger of Death, which fortunately the doughty cleric mostly shrugged off. But soon after, after taking a small amount of damage, the Runelord vanished from our sight!
And here, the most important preparation of all made itself evident. Akkumsah had cast a spell of True Seeing upon herself, and saw straight through all of the Runelords defenses -- the invisibility, the mirror images, the displacement in space. She turned into lightning to blast Zutha, but that did nothing. However, since she had pointed out the location of Zutha to the rest of us, I was able to cast a spell of Glitterdust -- another key preparation I had made for this fight -- and he became visible to all.
The melee fighters rapidly surrounded Zutha, who for most still proved difficult to hit for Azriel, Wind, and Szarlej. He tried to fell Azriel with a blow of his scythe, but missed. I cast a spell that left him staggered ...
And then Akkumsah tore him apart.
Her eyes unfooled by any of the Runelord's ruses, her fists glowing with magic that targeted the undead and the pure power of ki, in a single flurry of blows Akkumsah sent the undead Runelord of Gluttony to his final death. Eerie necromantic energies flowed through us as his form dissolved into shadows.
The preparations had taken a month. The Ritual more than an hour.
The battle took twelve seconds.
Dear Diary (A.I.S.D.),
We made our way back to Korvosa -- both to celebrate our victory, and to see if we could reconnect with Sorshen to discuss our next step. And indeed, while Szarlej was advising us on the best alcohol to imbibe, Sorshen arrived to join us, presenting us with a gift of honeycakes to add to the celebration.
She admitted that our efforts against Krune and Zutha had been something of a test -- a fact that we had surmised sometime before. Now, she told us, it was time for us to try our hand against a more dangerous foe. Xanderghul, Runelord of Pride and master of illusion.
Sorshen told us that he was biding his time in the Temple of the Peacock Spirit, which probably meant he had not been revived unscathed, since as prideful a man as he would not hide his face from the world unless he had to. Unfortunately, she could not tell us where the temple was, other than somewhere in the Kodar Mountains, or how to gain entrance to it. She recommended we look in the library at Jorgenfist, uncovered some years ago by ... people. (Who?)
The problems with the flow of time appear to be getting worse. Both we and Sorshen are troubled by this.
For her part, Sorshen said she would draw Xanderghul's attention away from us by announcing her presence to the world, attracting his assassins to herself. We agreed to her plan.
She remains cagey about her intentions for this "New Thassilon", and I sometimes wonder if she will be our ultimate foe after Alaznist is dealt with. But our purposes accord for now; I in particular have a bone to pick with the zealots of the Peacock order. They killed me once! (I got better.)
Azriel walked us through the trees to Jorgenfist, and there we were greeted by a strange sight. Everything but us was frozen and inanimate, as if time had stopped -- plants, animals, birds, objects, people, all fixed and immovable. While we wondered what was going on, a purple dragon(!) began appearing and disappearing before us, asking strange questions and making bizarre and disconnected statements -- which was apparently, exactly how we appeared to him. We were not the only ones cast adrift in time.
We finally managed to have a discussion with the dragon, who told us he had met us before in memories or dreams, in Sthethelos, the heart of the Plane of Time, whose Steward we had met. It is possible these events occurred in the dragon's past and our future.
More time stuff. My poor hurting head. Ow.
There was apparently a rift in time that had opened at Jorgenfist, trapping the dragon and us. We agreed that we would help each other, so we descended into the depths of the library to find the rift and set him free.
The library was in an odd state. Ghosts of many pasts drifted through its walls, giants and scholars and things stranger still. Corridors stopped at dead ends where the times when they existed intersected with the periods when they had not yet been built. We walked the large halls erected by the stone giants in the distant past, and wondered at the strangeness of it.
Before long, we were attacked by some kind of stone giant king who abruptly turned into a crystalline "Time Dimensional" -- a creature that spontaneously forms in places where time is broken. Its mastery of time made it very difficult to damage, and the fight was a long slog of attacks and counterattacks. I hung back and cast spells to hinder it and aid my allies. We did defeat it, but not without most of us sustaining considerable damage.
We moved on through the halls, with time lashing out at us along the way -- a room where Azriel's roc Wind was hurtled into old age, another where an incomplete magical cauldron hurled eldritch energies at us. We passed through a room pulsing in a nauseating rhythm and at last passed into the central library. We found it guarded by an automated assassin, but it only did a bit of damage before Szarlej plunged his longspear into a weak spot and destroyed it.
In the library, we found a book not frozen in time -- The Book of Serpents, Ash, and Acorns. Half of its pages were missing. As I leafed through it, I found myself convinced that it was crucial that we remove this book from the library complex. So I picked it up, Hasted the group, and began to take it out.
Soon after we set out, however, we encountered a Hound of Tindalos. Some fought the beast, but I had a more crucial mission, so I lowered my smoked goggles to protect against its gaze attacks and hurried on. I cast a Mirror Image just in case, and this proved prescient, for another Hound made itself visible as it attacked me. And then another Hound, and another.
I deduced that they were trying to keep me from getting the book out of the library, so I did my best to stay ahead of them. I made myself invisible to avoid their assaults. Meanwhile, my comrades, after dispatching one Hound ... used a door between dimensions to leave. All of them.
With three Hounds remaining in pursuit of me. A number which had, not long ago, nearly slain all of us fighting together.
So, yes, they left me behind to die.
Huh.
A frantic pursuit ensued. The Hounds began conversing in a language I could not understand (I knew I should have cast Tongues, but now I didn't have the time to spare for it.) One was able to pinpoint my location, and I suppose barked it out to the others, who attacked me and tried to block my path. They were skilled at fighting the invisible, and I took some damage from their bites.
However, I still had a potion of Flight on hand, so I was able to fly over their heads in the large giant-built corridors. The chase continued, but with the speed of flight enhanced by Haste, I was able to outdistance them and make my way to the surface where my comrades-in-arms were busily waiting around doing nothing whatsoever to help me.
Seriously, as the land-dwellers say, WTF?
As soon as I emerged back to the surface world, the book vanished and time resumed its forward motion, the scholars around us surprised to see us appear suddenly in their midst. We had, apparently, healed the time rift.
I, um ... really hope the Hounds of Tindalos are not still below, wreaking havoc among the scholars ...
There is no greater power in the universe than Preparation.
This is the third time in our saga where we have had the luxury to indulge in it — the other ones being the wights in Thybidos' tomb, and the vampire gargoyle in the Gecko. In all cases, knowing what dangers to defend against, what manner of destruction to wreak, and how to deprive the enemy of their greatest strengths proved utterly devastating. It is hardly honorable, but against such manifestly evil opponents, victory is simply more important than honor.
In retrospect, we probably overprepared. We spent days poring over plans for the perfect building in which to trap and kill Zutha, only to find the ritual take offense with our meddling. Then again, the fact that we prepared for a pitched battle against an overwhelming spellcaster, rather than just for a slaughter, allowed us to take it in stride. I am glad I experienced the frustration of fighting a mage in Mirror Images in our previous encounter — it prompted me to invest in True Seeing, which paid for itself many times over.
Given the outcome, I do not rue the thousands of gold pieces I spent on potions and scrolls. Even if we did not reclaim any resources from Zutha's remains, or from the time-frozen library, for that matter. At least Sorshen rewarded us with a box of pastries. Really good ones, too.
At least we now know the Runelords are mortal. If Sorshen is to be trusted, only two of them remain a threat, and we will face Xanderghul next. Maybe we should rebrand ourselves as the RUNESLAYERS.
Speaking of which — does slaying Zutha make me the new Runelord of Gluttony? I don't suppose that is how it work. I do notice I am spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about those last two pastries, though.
Dear Diary (A.I.S.D.),
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I do not like the cultists of the Peacock Spirit. The cultists of the Peacock Spirit have assaulted my, robbed me, rained death and ruin down upon a crowd of celebrating innocents, and KILLED ME IN MY SLEEP.
Today I struck a blow back against them as only a singing enchantress from the ocean's depths can.
I feel so ALIVE.
I should backtrack. Where was I? Oh, yes, The Hounds of Tindalos disappeared when the time rift was healed. (I am still angry at my comrades for abandoning me to die. They seemed not to care very much about it when I emerged from the depths. No "my goodness, Ice, are you all right?" or "how did you manage such a daring solo escape?" More along the lines of, "Oh, are you back, then?")
We talked with the purple dragon, who left us his valuable hoard to use. That was nice of him! He then departed to places unknown. After that, we began our research into the Peacock Temple.
Long story short, a week of research made it clear that it is a hidden temple founded by Xanderghul, given fearsome protections by seven powerful shrines. It is locked against most forms of teleportation, but a ritual -- the same one which used a different way allows the Peacock cultists to make their annoying escapes -- can take you directly there. After making appropriate preparations (including creating a *very* expensive lens required by the ritual) and disguising ourselves as Peacock Cultists as best we could, we enacted the Viridian Rite.
I headed the ritual again, as it called for a good deal of singing, and was left exhausted by the process. We appeared in a chamber somewhere in the Kodar mountains, and were greeted by a medusa who asked us our business. I was able to lie glibly enough to convince her to let us be at first, which let us use magic to cure my exhaustion. And a good thing, too, because when we emerged from the chamber, our ruse disintegrated. We later learned that a curse had been set in place to affect all who were not Peacock Cultists, and Szarlej was not able to throw off its effects. A second medusa noticed and attacked us. Fortunately, we were able to defeat them without too much difficulty.
The Temple, as it turns out, is not a single building but a vast complex in a bucolic valley (with a river! I got to swim again! Oh, it was so pleasant.) We first went to a garrison crewed by more medusas and an otherplanar being who is, apparently, one of the gods' mistakes. We bluffed our way past them, so did not engage. We may wish to return there, though, in case the building contains a Peacock Shrine.
Moving further into the valley, we came upon a large fort split in two sides across the river. One side was inhabited by wereoboars and the other by hobgoblins. They were enmeshed in some kind of ridiculous feud and both sides attempted to gain our aid. We went with the wereboars, and pretended to go along with their plans, while magically assuring the hobgobilns that we would work with them instead. As we crossed the bridge over the river between the two halves of the fort, I noticed that all the wereboars had assembled into a nice group on one side. I encouraged Szarlej to cast a Flame Strike, but he declined.
So I cast confusion on them and walked to the other side of the bridge.
While the wereboars promptly started killing each other in their confusion, I greeted the hobgoblins, who were assembled to tell us their plan.
So I cast confusion on them as well.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
That didn't go quite as smoothly, I will admit -- a wizard among them spotted my intent and tried to disrupt my spell with a lightning bolt. I managed to cast it anyway, but there were also a few alchemist hobgoblins in a different room who were not affected. But Szarlej and Azriel created magic stone walls on both sides of the bridge, so for the most part we were able to let our enemies murder each other, hobgoblins and wereboars alike.
It turns out this was a good thing. As we fought those who escaped the confusion for one reason or another, we learned that the protections granted by the Peacock Shrines were very effective against both weapons and magical energies. If we'd had to fight them all at once, it would have gone poorly for us. As it was, there was a fierce battle. Akkumsah traded blows against the bomb throwers while Wind and Azriel used magic and might to slay a stray wereboar. Szarlej struck a mighty blow with his longspear which killed a bomb-throwing hobgoblin with a single strike. I continued to cast incapacitating spells. We took some damage, but in the end we handily won the day.
Kill ME, will you? Hmph.
That wizard did disappear, however, never to be seen again. I hope he is not warning others further within the temple of our presence. It would probably be best if we assume we have lost any element of surprise.
While we explored the fort, we found one of the Peacock Shrines we'd heard tell of. Attempting to deactivate it improperly set off chains of lightning, but fortunately Akkumsah is well empowered to evade such attacks. She soon had the thing dismantled enough to turn it off. It seems it's the one that rendered all our weapon attacks of significantly less use, so its loss is a great boon to our cause.
This seems like a good time to take stock of how I have progressed since unwittingly becoming an adventurer.
My worst vocal performance is now extraordinary. If I survive adventuring, I should have a good career as a singer.
I am capable of suborning the minds of both the living and the dead in ways which would be the envy of any mermaid of my tribe.
I have helped defeat a third of a risen Runelord.
I have been out of the sea so long that I have grown almost used to walking on land, and can now tell the difference between male and female land-dwellers nearly all the time.
If I hit exactly the right pitch, I can explode people's heads.
The flip side, of course, is that I am in constant danger and throwing myself into situations I would have considered sheer madness not long ago. I regular fight monsters both deadly and bizarre. And Audhrahni is, at least for now, once again dead.
Life is so strange now.
So very, very strange.
Dear Diary (A.I.S.D.),
I felt a little bad after my semi-unprovoked attacks on the garrison, so I resolved that for the rest of the day, I would start by talking rather than fighting. It didn't go so well, honestly. We started out by talking, true, but then we inevitably ended up fighting anyway.
We pushed deeper into the valley, and spied a gorgeous building which we took to be the Temple of the Peacock Spirit itself. Before we went there, however, we elected to travel down to a peninsula on a lake which we thought was a likely spot for one of the Peacock Shrines (we were not mistaken in this).
On the way there, we encountered some violent trees who said we did not belong there. We attempted to convince them otherwise, but it was to no avail, and when they promised to water the grass with our blood, a fight proved inevitable. I ... did not fare as well as my better armored, doughtier colleagues, and after being trampled and bashed around a bit I ended up knocked comatose. We prevailed, though, and with a bit of healing I was fine. A little embarrassing to be defeated by a tree, though.
We made our way out to the peninsula, where there was a lovely garden filled with, as Akkumsah accidentally discovered, poisonous fruit. My spells allowed me to see a pair of otherworldly creatures floating about invisibly. We engaged them in conversation, and they invited us to regard the garden and meditate within in, but forbade us to touch the Peacock Shrine which, as we expected, was located therein. We asked if they might like to be freed to return to their home plane, but they had no interest in that. So I attempted to fascinate them with a song so that my friends could investigate the shrine, but while I succeeded with one, the other resisted my charms, and, as you may have guessed, a fight broke out.
They threw magical fire and distracting illusions at us, injuring Akkumsah and Wind badly and stunning Azriel with their figments. Well, I was *not* about to let them overshadow *my* performance, so I broke him out of that right quick! (Everyone should be paying attention to me when I am singing. That is the proper way of things.) After a while, we defeated them, and Akkumsah disarmed the shrine, which granted powerful resistance to magic for those within the valley.
By this time, we were quite tired, so we camped for the night in the garden. I meditated a bit there, and possibly because of this, I became invisible! This lasted for quite some time, which would be both to our benefit and our cost.
We went to the Temple itself in the morning, with me remaining invisible and silent in the hopes of gaining advantage. To our surprise, when we tried the door, it was opened from within and we were greeted by a woman (buoyancy sacs) who we had last seen beneath the Hollow Mountain -- one of the opera singer's associates. She invited us within, and said the head Priestess of the Temple wished to speak with us! We decided we might as well hear what she had to say.
Inside the Temple, the Priestess greeted us in front of another Peacock Shrine, and I suggested that, since I had gone invisible and undetected, I would disarm it while they joined her for breakfast and engaged her in conversation. This, as it turned out, consisted of her trying to convert my friends to the worship of the Peacock Spirit, a religion she claimed was in favor of all that was beautiful in the world, dedicated to the preservation and renewal of all that was wondrous to behold. Somewhat an odd doctrine for a demonstrably evil cult that shortly thereafter attempted to slay us with Unholy Blights, but I get ahead of myself. At that time, she claimed that our previous clashes with their religion had been misunderstandings, although she did not go so far as to explain exactly what the misunderstanding had been.
Meanwhile, I snuck up to the Temple's Peacock Shrine and, after examining it, deactivated that spell that gave powerful regenerative properties to those within the Temple. Unfortunately, they were immediately aware this had happened, called betrayal, and attacked. Since my friends were surrounded by almost the entirety of the cult at the time, this was a problem. Azriel, who is sometimes ... less than brave in situations where he believes we may be overmatched, immediately tried to flee. This has served him well sometimes in the past, as when we fought the Horned Fangs beneath Roderick's Cove, but was perhaps a bit peremptory here.
The battle was, I admit, a fierce one, with the Head Priestess hurling powerful deadly magics at Akkumsah, a horde of lesser clerics slowly damaging us with lesser spells, and even more monks who, while no match for our skills, threatened to overwhelm us with sheer weight of numbers. But we have mighty magics of our own now, and our front-line fighters are a force of nature. While we almost all took significant damage in the fray -- and the roc Wind was battered into unconsciousness early on -- once Akkumsah was able to battle her way to the High Priestess and take her out of the fight, the tide soon turned and we were, once again, victorious.
I suppose we have the Temple to explore now. I spotted a secret door behind an illusion, and suspect it may lead us deeper within ...
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P.S. Akkumsah has suggested that we must stop blithely wandering in to the middle of vast enemy fortresses until we are completely surrounded by our foes, as we have done at least three times now, but I fail to see what the problem is. We did fine, every single time.
We're fine.
It's fine.
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So the Peacock Cultists purportedly want for all things to grow into their true beauty and purpose, yet they cultivate... poison mangoes. That alone serves to expose their hypocrisy. Even from my brief acquaintance with them, I know mangoes want to be delicious and nourishing. What kind of monster turns them into a tool for suffering and death?
The temple of Pride is a fitting place for these deluded egomaniacs. The grave is an even better place. We are working on that.
Dear Diary (A.I.S.D.),
We proceeded through the secret door, which took us down a spiral stair which led deep into the very depths of the earth. At the bottom, we encountered a set of odd, two-bodied jailers, who demanded that we surrender our weapons and take ourselves to the cells. Noting that they seemed stupid and easily misled, I convinced them that we were inspectors there to prepare the Temple for the return of its lord. They showed us around a bit and introduced us to their prisoner, an Agathion named Hobbin, but refused to allow us to pass further in. I asked to speak with their manager.
Unfortunately, their manager, a three-faced woman, proved not to be so easily fooled. Seeing through my lies, she demanded that the jailers take us prisoner. We objected to this, and a fight broke out.
They proved to be fearsome foes, capable of skillful, rapid attacks aided by their natural magic. Poor Azriel got the worst of it, and a blow from a scimitar
cleaved his body entirely in two but then time jumped and it
felled him unconscious. Szarlej healed him, only for Azriel to be brought to the brink of unconsciousness again almost immediately, only to be healed again by Szarlej. Slowly we wore away at our foes, however, with me helping by screaming them to death, and we were eventually victorious.
Before we had a chance to recover, however, the room was filled with a cloud of noxious poison gas. We fled into the next room to find it blighted by a magical darkness, with a foe striking us from the shadows. When I dispelled the darkness, we beheld a gigantic snake man who attacked us with blades. Azriel once again took the worst of it, but a curious thing happened.
When a blow would have taken the druid's head off, the Steward of Sthethlos suddenly appeared and blocked it with her hourglass. She said it was not yet his time, for she was fated to meet him in the future.
Freaky.
After that, we soon defeated the snake man, and freed the prisoner Hobbin. Hobbin had been cursed by a magical robe and was a shadow of his former self, but gave us an important piece of information -- the "Peacock Spirit" is most likely none other than Xanderghul himself!
We are here to fight a god. That's unnerving.
Promising to free Hobbin from his curse when we could cast the appropriate spells the following day, we continued on. The entire floor of the Temple was a prison and torture chamber, full of ancient corpses of the followers of Pharasma. I felt that Audrahni would have wanted us to inter the bodies respectfully, and when we did so we felt their spirits pass on, and the goddess bestowed upon us a blessing.
I am grateful to Pharasma, who I cannot help but see as akin to my own Naderi and my beloved's Ashava. Death goddesses all.
We came across another Peacock Shrine, and decided that Akkumsah was the best equipped to deal with disarming it. It was magically trapped, and threw her into a pit of acid.
Over and over and over.
It was pretty hilarious, actually.
Eventually Akkumsah removed the appropriate feather, and we went on. Little of note happened on the rest of that floor, however. We camped out for the night and freed Hobbin from his curse in the morning; he thanked us and aided us as best he could with spells, and then departed. Then we descended down another set of stairs.
There, we immediately encountered a pair of horrors -- giants who appeared to have been turned inside out. Fortunately, they were not actually all that difficult to defeat, but I shudder to think what we might encounter next.
Dear Diary (A.I.S.D.),
The rest of that floor was sized for giants and, unsurprisingly, we soon ran into some. We first faced a pair of rock-throwing Fire Giants, and they were soon joined by a Shadow Giant bard. As you might guess, a fight broke out, and Akkumsah's usual nimble dodging proved of little use against them. Even after I had turned the monk invisible, she would have been crushed and sizzled beneath a thrown molten boulder had not the favor of Pharasma turned aside the rock in mid-air! Fortunately, we were able to turn the fight around after that, and even with Akkumsah drained of energy by the Shadow Giant's whip, we were able to defeat them.
The rest of the floor was empty of life, although we stumbled across a broken teleporter and a strange rune which tried to invade Akkumsah's mind. We found much evidence that until recently, the rooms had been locked in time, and the giants we found there had probably been held there insensate since before the fall of Thassilon.
One thing we did *not* find on first look, however, was a Peacock Shrine. Suspecting that there was one on the floor, we scoured the area for secret entrances, but we found nothing until we sent Azriel, in earth elemental form, through the very walls. He soon came across a hidden room with a Peacock Shrine in it, just as we had suspected, and Akkumsah disarmed it shortly thereafter.
Then we descended down a long flight of stairs to the next floor, and it would not be long before we encountered the Runelord of Illusion himself ...
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Dear Diary (A.I. S. D.),
After descending the stairs, we soon encountered a pair of roguish, shadowy servants of the Runelord. I attempted to enspell them to convince them to take us directly to Xanderghul, but I only successfully ensorcelled one of them. While we fought the other, the spellbound one began to make a beeline towards the Runelord, and I followed after. Unfortunately, this led directly past another pair of servants. We were able to defeat all the underlings with relative ease, but I was left somewhat injured and debilitated by their strikes.
Shortly thereafter, however, the final servant led us to a confused Xanderghul ... or rather, to an illusory image of him while he lurked close by. Knowing we were about to face the master of illusion, however, several of us had prepared with spells of True Seeing, and were able to quickly penetrate the ruse. A battle immediately began, with Xanderghul hurling Prismatic Sprays and other mighty magics at us -- in the process eliminating his own shadowy servant. We were able to resist his spells, for the most part, but were forced to use many of our own resources to do so -- a goodly portion of Szarlej's healing, my spells and bardic performances, and the force of Akkumsah's ki.
By using such tactics, however, we were able to gain the upper hand, and forced Xanderghul back into his library, where his librarian joined him in battle, tossing a Cone of Cold at us, and other spells as well. Knowing that the final Peacock Shrine would resurrect Xanderghul if he perished, we tried to beat him into unconsciousness -- but either we miscalculated, or he had prepared himself against such tactics, because as soon as he fell he vanished into violet mist. Hoping to question the librarian, we managed to knock her unconscious.
Here began a race against time. Our spells of True Seeing were our best defense against the Runelord, but they would fade, unable to be replaced, in a period that could be measured in minutes rather than hours. To better use our time, we split our party into two groups. Azriel used his earth elemental form's ability to pass through stone walls to race around the floor looking for hidden rooms, aided by Akkumsah's excellent perception. Meanwhile, I roused and interrogated the librarian while Szarlej healed my wounds (something I was sorely in need of by that point.)
The librarian suggested that we trade question for question, and I agreed. From her we soon learned that Xanderghul was most likely to reappear in his "Resurrection Chamber", that she did not know precisely where it was but that it could somehow be accessed from his bedroom, and that the floor had not one but several(!) Peacock Shrines.
Her questions, to my surprise, had entirely to do with names -- what our names were, how we had obtained them, why we did not change them, etc. Her final question was whether she had a name, and sensing by this time that it was something she deeply wanted, I gave her one -- Sarai. Sarai broke into a sunny smile and thanked me for giving her something that her creator had never bothered to, and promptly expressed a wish to join our group! I welcomed her.
This is an important reminder to me that kindness can win friendship as well as spells can, and in a more lasting, more real way.
Spells are still pretty good, though.
Meanwhile, Azriel and Akkumsah had come across the multiple Peacock Shrines sitting in a set of rooms off a hallway. We quickly decided that the greatest likelihood was that they were ALL fake, and that the true Shrine was most likely in this "Resurrection Chamber" Sarai had told us about. Because ... if you had a Shrine that made you immortal, would you just leave it in a room off a hallway? In plain sight? Even with a few decoys around it? The much less important one on the floor above was in a room so secret we couldn't find the door!
In the shell game, the ball isn't under any of the cups. The ball is in the huckster's pocket.
As the minutes ticked down, we stole to Xanderghul's bedroom and searched for a way to his hidden redoubt. It wasn't long before we discovered a secret elevator, which slowly (oh, so slowly!) lowered us another level down. There, we found a chamber with a door locked by a complicated seven-part lock, not dissimilar to the Sihedron puzzle which had hidden Sir Roderick's gauntlets. We determined that it could be unlocked with the feathers from the Peacock Shrines, but we did not have all of them, and the remaining locks were beyond our ability to pick. Not for the first time, we mourned the lack of Dr. Variel in our group -- as deranged and monomaniacal as he was, the elf knew his way around a lock.
At any rate, for lack of a better idea, we bashed our way through the door. It was shockingly tough, and took us nearly a full minute, even with our most powerful bruisers unleashing their full might upon it, their courage inspired and their blows enhanced with magic.
Beyond the door, we found a funnel-shaped corridor lit by prismatic lights. Nervous of this, we sent a summoned goat in before us, but no harm came to it. So we entered, and upon reaching the door at the other side, we pushed it open ...
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Dear Diary (A.I.S.D.),
So. We appear to have killed a god.
Wow.
On the other side of the door, the resurrected Xanderghul was seated on a throne, guarded by a wall of clanking, whirring gears. He held up a hand to stay our attacks, and said he wished to talk.
I said we would hear him out. And surreptitiously cast a spell of Haste upon our group.
He explained that he wished us to ally with him in the fight against the true enemy, Alaznist. He had concocted a plan to counteract her meddling with the flow of time, a ritual by which he could enter the time-locked city of Crystillan. There, he said, would be found documents that reflected the original, unchanged nature of reality, which could be used to reverse Alaznist's actions.
I cast a few more buff spells on myself, which would prove extremely useful later.
To be honest, his appeal was not, in many ways, dissimilar from the proposal Sorshen put to us. But there was to my mind, one crucial difference. Sorshen's minions, never assaulted, robbed, or killed me. Xanderghul's did.
When we were tired of listening, we attacked.
I must admit, the battle went surprisingly well, largely because of a spell Szarlej cast early on. Even without being able to see the invisible wizard, the cleric managed to grapple him in a Grasping Hand of force. This proved a potent strategy against the spellcaster, who found himself unable to cast most of his more powerful magics.
It did not go completely smoothly. The walls of gears turned into mighty golems that exploded when they were disabled, and a blade of force that Xanderghul summoned before he was grappled slashed through or ranks. Well, slashed through Akkumsah, mostly. Our foes' assaults were concentrated on her, and they
actually brought her past the gates of death but then time jumped and they
killed her stone dead but then time jumped and they
slew her mercilessly. Time's favor did her no good, she had already been in need of Pharasma's favor, and I guess the Steward of Sthethelos just doesn't like her as much as she likes Azriel.
Fortunately, Szarlej was able to quickly revive Akkumsah with a Breath of Life. Troubling, but the golems were soon destroyed, I plucked the violet feather from the immortality-granting Peacock Shrine behind the throne, and the blows of Azriel and Akkumsah soon killed the grappled Runelord, whose soul screamed its way to death.
I was greatly relieved, since I was by that point nearly out of resources. My throat was sore from singing, my spells nearly exhausted, and my magical implements almost all used.
So that is, of course when a god appeared and tried to murder us.
The Peacock Spirit itself manifested in the room across the hall. Fortunately for us, Szarlej took immediate stock of its flaming appearance and grace us all with resistance to fire. Immediately after, an explosion rocked the room and a wall of fire sprang up in the hall, but thanks to his quick action, we took little harm.
Szarlej definitely gets MVP for these battles, I think.
We raced to get into position to fight it, and found it a potent foe, capable of truly mythic feats of strength, skill, and magic. I used up my last traces of power hurling spells at it, one of which left it briefly staggered, but the rest of which did no good. I threw my last precious seconds of bardic music inspiring my friends and calling down doom on the Peacock Spirit. Meanwhile, my friends stepped in to do battle. It was difficult to land a blow on the god, and for a moment it held Szarlej grappled and I thought the cleric's end was nigh. Szarlej escaped from that, but not long after lay bleeding his life out on the ground (I was able to get to him with a healing potion in time.) It slashed us with its talons and cast potent and deadly spells of Harm. But with heroic efforts and nearly every trick up our sleeve, we were able to best the god, Azriel bringing it low with a decisive blow. It exploded in fire as it vanished, and once again Szarlej's preparation saved us all.
After the death (banishment? disappearance?) of the Peacock Spirit, the temple shuddered ominously. I was able to slow the damage with the Lyre of Building, but only for a limited period of time. We looted Xanderghul's quarters and repaired to the teleporter room, where Szarlej brought us to the surface.
Sarai elected to stay in the valley. I hugged her goodbye, which she found surprising.
When Azriel tried to use his powers to leave the valley, he found himself unable to reach any lands outside of Varisia itself. Absalom was closed to us, and other lands we tried. Eventually we returned to Magnimar.
We have decided to take no more than a month to prepare for our next step -- enacting Xanderghul's plan to travel to Crystallan. We cannot tarry too long, as Alaznist's plans are clearly approaching some dire end.
It will take a strange ritual involving travel to the Plane of Shadow. It does not sound at all safe.
But then, what is, these days?
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Hey, I just wanted to say how much I've enjoyed reading this journal. I especially love the fish-out-of-water tales of Ice here, and she is an absolute delight to see. Thank you for sharing these journals with us, and have a good break. :)
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Dear Diary (A.I.S.D.),
We decided to take another month off to prepare for our next mad venture. Azriel crafted many items of puissant power for himself, and the rest of us did a lot of shopping using the money we had looted from the Temple of the Peacock Spirit. For some reason, something bars us from traveling beyond the confines of Varisia (more temporal tinkering?), so our purchase options were somewhat limited by what was available in Magnimar, Korvosa, and Riddleport. Happily, though, just before we left, an extremely potent magical headband came on the market which allowed me to significantly increase my allure and the magical abilities related to it. Between that and a Tome we found in the Temple which had similar effects, my charms have become much harder to resist.
Sorshen is still prettier, but I'd be willing to bet that I'm a better singer than she is. ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR!
All that having been accomplished, we set out for the Shadow Plane using another magical implement from the Temple -- since we were, after all, enacting a plan of Xanderghul's, he happily had done some of the preparatory work for us. We arrived in a dim land, leeched of light and color, shifting at the edges like the half-seen horrors that lurk in the corner of your eye. And we were immediately set upon by three icicle-clad kytons.
They were in the middle of enacting some horrific ritual that involved torturing a pair of fetchlings, and were displeased at being interrupted. They beset us with potent freezing magics, and I was nearly killed in the first few instants, before I had time to even react! I spent the next few moments healing myself and seeking cover while my comrades took down one of the kytons, then rejoined the fray and blasted a second with sonic agony while Akkumsah and Azriel beat the other to death. It was a difficult fight, but we managed to get them down and, once Akkumsah stopped their regenerative powers with her holy silver fists, keep them down.
We attempted to heal their prisoners, and found that one of them was already dead. The other, after we had rescued and restored her, proved to be a professional Shadow Plane guide! A bit of luck on our part. Since we had saved her life, she agreed to take us to the excessively dangerous area we needed to go, for only double her normal fee. She also gave us some helpful tips -- e.g. don't fly, because awful horrible things lurk in the permanent hurricane overhead which kill dead anyone who ventures there.
Is it possible that the air is even worse than the land? Why do our travels never take us underwater?
She naturally attempted to dissuade us from going, and we were naturally far too insane to take her sound advice, so off we went for half a day's travel through the horrible, bitterly cold land. I can survive the frigid ocean's depth, and even I found it a bit much. Our guide left us at the series of tunnels surrounding the place where we wanted to go -- the palace of the Kyton Lord Incariax.
We entered the tunnels and were immediately trapped within a magical Maze that slashed us with razor-sharp shards of ice. All of us wandered through it, separate and alone, until Azriel was finally able to dispel it.
From then on, we proceeded apace through the tunnels. We met another pair of eye-bleeding kytons and handily dispatched them before they could use us for their "experiments". We avoided a puddle of supercooled water and then chanced upon a nine-headed troll who had something we very much needed -- one of the amulets that allowed access to the palace!
She at first thought we were there to deliver some canopic jars we had ordered, so I attempted to negotiate a deal whereby we would obtain the jars for her in exchange for the amulet. Unfortunately, she was too dim to see the benefits of this, and just as I was about to give up and throw a Charm at her, she attacked. She proved far less of a foe than her size and strength would seem to indicate, and we were once more victorious.
At that point, after our exhausting overland journey, we decided to rest. Azriel was able to create a portal to a warm magic meadow, with a pool!!!! Oh my goodness. I hope we never have to sleep in a tent made of webs again.
In the morning, we proceeded into the antechamber of the palace, looked over by a giant diamond-eyed statue of Incariax. We got started finding and attuning to a ley-line and beginning the ritual, hoping no one would notice us during the many hours that would take. Fortunately, no one did. We performed the extremely difficult ritual imperfectly but well enough to work, and opened a portal to Crystallan. We walked through and
things
got
weird.
Wrenched back and forth between the dimensions, barely able to take in what was happening, we finally landed upon some kind of floating platform bearing a map of the city. And before us, some monstrous, four-armed, faceless creature stood looming over a pair of children who were trapped along with us. Naturally, I did what any bard would do in such a situation, and shouted out:
Hey! Creature!
Leave those kids alone!
And there I shall leave things for now.
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Sounds awesome! I'm glad to see your adventures are once more being posted on the forums! Alas, it will be years before I end up running this at the rate my groups tend to inch through games... ^^;; oh well! Good fortune to you and your adventures! :)
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Dear Diary (A.I.S.D.),
Well. This has been quite an interesting few days.
We determined that the creature was not attacking the children, so we called over to them asking what was going on. The creature flew over to me and bombarded my mind with a series of confusing images -- apparently it was convinced that was had somehow created this insane location and trapped it there. I tried to convince it otherwise, but it grew increasingly agitated; eventually I charmed it to calm it down. Unfortunately, this convinced the children that we were in league with it, and they spent some time terrified of our intentions.
We got ourselves together (Szarlej had ended up upside-down on the other side of the platform!), and eventually the cleric created a stone bridge across platforms so we could walk over and talk the to children. We managed to calm them down, and learned that they were from Crystallan -- or Xin-Edderasil, as it is actually named -- and had been sent here by an evil ritual cast by cultists of Doloras. How could anyone do that to poor little fingerlings! They were barely older than fry!
The children also gave us the crucial information that the platforms could be moved by an effort of will. With this insight, we were able to put the fractured puzzle pieces back together, and found ourselves transported into the city proper.
The once-glorious city was in a sad state, with many buildings boarded up or burned. The children urged us to follow them, and led us to a barricaded house where a number of citizens were huddled for their protection. Upon talking to them, we learned that until very recently, the city had been cycling through the same week over and over -- for 10,000 years! A few months ago, however, the cycle was broken and time began to proceed. But at the same time, the city began disintegrating under the temporal pressure. It had broken apart into warring factions: Rune Giants in one area, Belimarius and her guard in another, the cult of Doloras in a third. We asked if there were any way to halt the destruction of the city, and were told that there were rumors of a "Heart of Altruism" that might fix the problem. The best source for information on that -- and for the historical information we sought -- was likely, we were informed, to be the library under the control of the cult.
We made our way there, and as we went the changing nature of flickering time in the city drove Szarlej and me insane for a while. We attacked Azriel in our madness, but no permanent harm was done before we threw off the effects.
At the library, we were greeted by cultists who told us that the High Master of the cult was very eager to talk with us indeed. He was seeking for a means to escape the city (hence his experiment with the children), and was quite interested in talking to people who had managed to pierce the barrier. He offered us a deal -- he would allow us use of the library if we gave him the secret of the ritual we had used to arrive ... and the pendant of the first tears we had picked up in the Shadow Plane. We thought he was honest with his dealings with us, but I did not like the idea of giving such a powerful artifact to the head of an evil cult. Frankly, I did not like the evil cult which sent innocent children to an unknown fate against their will. So we pretended to agree to the deal, and then attacked.
The fight was brief and brutal. I managed to incapacitate the leader with a spell of Terrible Remorse, and as he cried his anguish to his goddess, Szarlej encased him in a Grasping Hand. His cultists did me some damage, but with the leader unable to do much, we soon overwhelmed them.
We first researched the Heart of Altruism. At first we failed to find useful information, but then the Steward of Sthethelos, aged almost beyond recognition, appeared and told us that since we had not failed here, we could not do so, and pointed us towards the book we needed. She vanished, warning us to avoid the whisperers in the trees, whatever that means.
We discovered that the city had gotten stuck in time when Karzoug booby-trapped Belimarius' Runewell as she sought to avoid Earthfall. The Runewell, however, could be undone by an act of pure altruism -- namely, willingly throwing an artifact into its depths. Turns out it was a good thing we kept the pendant! (We could have used our Philosopher's Stone instead, perhaps, but thought the evil artifact should be the one to go.) The Runewell was located in a demi-plane that could be accessed from Belimarius' throne room.
We then spent a day looking through the history books and comparing them with what we remembered, trying to determine where Alaznist had changed the past. We found seven key points -- including the assassination of Xin, the Azlanti invasion of Thassilon, and a number of others.
From there, we went to see Belimarius.
As with the cultists, we were expected, and escorted immediately to the presence of the Runelord of Envy. There, we saw a surprising sight -- the Sihedron heroes, Viv, Laslo, Draco, and Nasim, frozen in time along with the Sihedron itself, used as decorations! (And also the entombed previous Runelord of Greed, on display. Runelords are an odd bunch.) Their attempt to penetrate the city some months ago had caused the destabilization of the time bubble and gotten them stuck.
We explained the situation the Belimarus, and she was happy to let us go through to the demiplane to try to resolve it.
So, that was easier than expected.
When we got to the Runewell plane, we were assaulted by illusions, which all of us penetrated easily. But there was one creature there which was no illusion; a colossal electrical undead. (Belimarius failed to warn us of this, which seems kind of stupid when our mission could very well end up saving her life.) Fighting it was rough going at first. It lead with a necromantic wail that would have killed Szarlej and Wind outright had they not absorbed the eldritch energies of Zutha's death. That seems so long ago now. It began pummeling Azriel, and did him terrible harm. We began fighting back, though, and after several spells bounced off of it, I managed to leave it dizzied and unable to act thanks to the secrets of the dirge bards. After that, it was mostly a matter of wearing away at it until Akkumsah was able to fell it with a deadly touch.
After healing and preparing for the worst (who knew what destroying the Runewell would do), we threw the pendant into the well and...
Found ourselves, and the Sihedron heroes, back in Magnimar -- but a Magnimar under siege, nearly fallen to Sinspawn and other horrors. The chronological fiddling of Alaznist had come to its head, and all of Varisia was falling beneath her heel.
We must fix the timestream, or all will be lost.
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That *is* an evil choice. But I will chose not to suggest who to go with, seeing I only know of Ice, and don't know Viv. Thus I don't have enough knowledge of the characters to give an unbiased suggestion. (Though I've noticed Ice is no longer starting her journal entries with the loss of Audrahni... is she recovering?)
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Khello vorld! Is good beink beck. Did enything kheppen vhile ve vere...? Oh.
I'm sure it's nothing we can't handle, darling. Let me take a look and...
Oh.
Yeah, things got pretty beached up while you were away, Viv.
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Dear Diary,
AUDRAHNI IS NOT DEAD
oh my goodness
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Dear Diary,
So.
We found ourselves in a Magnimar besieged by monsters and soon to fall. At least we were reunited with some old friends -- the SIhedron heroes, Sheila Heidmarch and some of her allies -- along with some new faces -- someone names "Ameiko" leading a gaggle of refugees. Dr. Variel was also there! He would have remained in Korvosa, but apparently a giant elephant is sitting on it. Kaer Maga, according to another report, is under the rule of a Demon Lord.
Ameiko brought with her the sad news that the "Heroes of Fort Rannick" had died securing the retreat. Many in our group took that hard, although I frankly had no idea who those people were.
And also among the was Audrahni.
Alive.
And she threw herself into my arms
and
Well. I rather lost track of what was going on for some time after that.
By the time I came up for a breath of water -- er, air rather, in this case, I suppose -- the group had decided to decamp to Xin-Edessaril, which being a city newly arrived to the timeline was probably still undestroyed, and had come up with the most ludicrously convoluted scheme for fixing the timeline that I have ever heard in my life.
Apparently, the idea was that we would find and kill someone named Zinlun (who according to Dr. Variel was some kind of arch-nemesis of Karzoug) after which we would locate Karzoug's soul and use this to win his favor so that he would teach us the secrets of the Cyphergate (which, according to Xanderghul's notes, Karzoug was the only person who knew) in order to travel through time (a function of the Cyphergate again according to Xanderghul's notes) NOT to fix the timeline but to wrest the Sceptre of Ages away from Alaznist (which the Sihedron heroes apparently saw us doing in a vision, hence the plan) and use THAT to fix the timeline.
Honestly. I spend a bit of time away from the planning session and this is what they come up with?
Using teleports and Azriel's plant-walking powers to get to Xin-Edessaril, we quickly made a deal with Belimarius to protect the refugees (so few! perhaps thirty!) while these matters were dealt with. Since Zinlun's last known location was at the bottom of the Storval Deep, I obviously volunteered, must as it pained me to be wrenched away from Audrahni so soon after reuniting with her. I would have liked to at least spend the night, but time was of the essence.
The Storval Deep is of such great depth that even I needed magic to survive the pressure (I am, after all, a shallow-water mermaid; hence I have buoyancy sacs). Teleports were used, powerful spells were cast, a boat was found to take us close to the site, and off we dove into the water. Once near the bottom, I asked around and was able to convince a friendly angler fish to take us directly to the location -- the first time I have used my ability to talk to fish in a useful way since this whole mess began.
There we found a large inverted symbol of Greed (basically, a giant middle finger aimed at Karzoug), and were attacked by some kind of undead tentacle monster thing. I was able to paralyze it in short order, though, and Azriel smashed it into fragments with little difficulty.
By placing a rock in a hole, we activated a secret entrance, and soon were swimming through a dungeon that was once again in the shape of an inverted Greed symbol. It was full of dead clones of Karzoug, some of whom animated and attacked us. This Zinlun fellow REALLY has a hate-on for Karzoug.
We avoided a "rocks fall, everyone dies" trap thanks to Szarlej's clever use of a wall of stone, but got caught in one that dispelled much of our magic! We would have been in a good deal of trouble had we not anticipated this possibility and had extra "survive under water" spells on hand. We were a bit stumped going forward until we noticed a small hole in the wall that I enlarged with my Lyre of Building. Unfortunately, this released a golem made of mithril. A bit of a problem, but between Akkumsah's adamantine weapon and my deadly sonic screams, it was soon defeated.
We proceeded further into a room filled with freezing tar, so Szarlej protected us from the cold. In the center of the room was a sarcophagus, and upon removing the lid we saw the Thassilonian inscription, "Someting something dread repose something something enlightenment" (I forget the exact wording.) We puzzled over this for quite some time while we killed the horrible worm creatures that emerged from the tar. After trying many useless things, FINALLY I lay in the sarcophagus while the others put the lid back on. At first I thought nothing had happened, but when too much time had passed and I heaved the lid off, I found myself in a location entirely new...
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Dear Diary,
Well. That was ... terribly exciting.
Shortly after I emerged from the sarcophagus in a new room, I was assaulted by the Demilich Zinlun and his Fossil Golem minions. I worried from the first that my comrades would be unable to join me unless the lid were back on the sarcophagus on my end, and this indeed proved to be the case. Unfortunately, one of the very first things Zinlun threw at me was a spell of Reverse Gravity that rocketed both me and the 300 pound sarcophagus lid to the ceiling, far from where it needed to be and difficult for me to either lift, move, or secure while I was fighting for my life.
I was, naturally, a little nervous to be facing creatures that would be resistant or immune to nearly all my spells. Happily, I am not without either wiles or resources, and with the cunning use of Mirror Image Vanish Fins to Feet Heroism Freedom of Movement Saving Finale Gallant Inspiration See Invisibility Shadowbard Inspire Courage Inspire Heroics Weird Words Secrets of the Grave A Black Soul Shard A Mirror of Guardian Reflection 2 Scrolls of Heal a Scroll of Fly and a Greater Aegis of Recovery, I was able to win the day without too much trouble.
Meanwhile, my fellows were attempting to join me, and spent most of their time lying down in the sarcophagus on their end in various configurations trying to get it to work, which of course it didn't. After many such attempts, they tried to use a Dimension Door to teleport to where they thought I might be, but they got it wrong, sent themselves into a wall, and were ejected back into the Storval Deep.
I will refrain from comment.
At long last, after defeating the undead, I was able to get the lid back on the coffin and my friends were able to rejoin me. We rested in Azriel's magical fairyland, and then Szarlej used divine spells to ensure that the demilich would return no more. After returning to Xin-Ederrasil to check in with the rest of the group, Szarlej opened a gate to the realms that lie after death so we could seek the soul of Karzoug and commence part two of our insanely convoluted plan.
At the front door, a sphinx leapt off a pedestal and killed me.
No, really.
I can't even.
Anyway, Szarlej brought me back with a Breath of Life, and we proceeded inside the strange building where we had tracked down Karzoug's soul. Inside, we tussled with some invisible Daemons, and then, after passing through a portal that blasted us with acid, we found ourselves in a strange courtroom filled with Daemons, their lord judging the souls of Karzoug and Xanderghul.
While I tried to determine what was going on, Xanderghul was judged, found wanting, and sent to burn in a brazier. The Judge asked us to submit to judgement, and when I asked exactly what that meant, he commanded his minions to capture us.
While Akkumsah and Szarlej assaulted the judge, and Azriel summoned a Storm Giant, I used Mass Suggestion and then Overwhelming Presence to incapacitate the minions. Before I was finished, though, the Judge tried to slay me with a Finger of Death (rude!) and one of the minions tagged me with an enervation. By then, however, my friends had surrounded the Judge, and though he put up a ferocious fight, at one point even slaying Azriel and feasting upon his soul (once again, though, Szarlej was able to bring him back with a Breath of Life), with fists, spear, claws, talons, giant sword, spells, and weird words, we were able to bring him down. And now we must speak with Karzoug.
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The Demi-lich fight sounds like a truly epic fight, the sort of thing that leaves someone with Mythic power at the end. ^^ I must applaud, that was truly spectacular.
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Being The Testament Of Viveltre Vanderale, Cleric Of Asmodeus, The Lord Of Law And Fire All Praise Be Unto Him,
The situation is dire.
My beloved Magnimar has fallen. Korvosa is a ruin, Kaer Maga a demon-haunted nightmare. Riddleport, the last great city of Varisia to survive, is according to the latest report now no more; in the wake of some great explosion, enormous and horrible beasts stalk its streets. Our redoubt in the newly-reconstituted city of Xin-Edessaril is the last and only hope. We are the last hope.
... Is that right? I feel like there was someone else. Other people. Someone I associate with ... fish? I can't recall. Audrahni, one of remaining elves, seems quite torn up about someone, though. Someone none of us can recall.
No matter. Does anything matter, really, anymore?
The day began when Khoriah, Ameiko's lover, arrived with yet more bad news. Something terrible was happening in Windsong Abbey, my home for so many years. Shalelu had been captured or killed. Those of us who knew it best, Nasim, my darling Laslo, and myself, agreed to go and try to take care of matters.
There has been something of an air of finality about things, so before we went, I decided to try and make peace with Sheila Heidmarch; if we do not survive, we are undoubtedly going to very different realms in the afterlife, so I thought this might be the last chance. She was as depressed as I have ever seen anyone, sinking into complete despair. She agreed to reconcile with me, but it may have been as much out of lack of caring as about any true emotion. I told her that I knew she thought she had failed with me, but that I was throwing myself into danger once more to save Varisia because of what she had taught me. That I thought of her as my mother and that I loved her.
I armed myself with my most powerful magics before casting the Word of Recall that took me to the room Laslo and I share at Windsong.
The room was gone. Most of the abbey was gone. What remained were Qlippoths, more than I have ever seen in one place, ranging in human-sized to the size of small houses. Four of them were torturing Shalelu in some ritual above a giant pit which had been carved into the abbey's depths.
Qlippoths, always our arch-nemesis. In our fight here with them last time, they did more damage against us even than when we fought ...
Who? Who did we fight? Why can't I remember?
No matter.
We attacked.
At first, the fight did not go well for us. The little ones swarmed us, and shrugged off Nasim's Cloudkill. Laslo turned himself invisible and attacked one of the giant ones, but it saw him without trouble and evaded his cunning blows. I tossed off Fireballs and Disintegrates as I rushed towards Shalelu, but at first they had little effect. Meanwhile, they attacked us with Disintegrations of their own, and with Confusion, Slow, Chaos Hammers, Baleful Polymorphs, claw and stinger and maw. Soon after I had used Dimension Door to reach Shalelu's side, I was half dead.
But I was able to wrench Shalelu into my Otherwordly Kimono, disrupting their ritual, and soon the tide began to turn. My fireballs began to wreak havoc among them, and Laslo's claws began to take their toll. Nasim assaulted them with a blade crackling with electricity, and even after one of them snapped his weapon in half he battled on. I sent one from full health into dust with a single disintegrate (hail Asmodeus), and we all whittled away at the others until one by one, they fell.
Shalelu reappeared over the pit while we were still fighting, but I was able to catch her and heal her before she fell to her death. Shortly after that, we carried the day. For now.
Because Shalelu revealed to us the reason behind their horrific ritual -- accelerating the opening of the Doomsday Door beneath the abbey, so that the Crawling Chaos could come through and usher in the end of the world. Disrupting the ritual had slowed the process but not stopped it. Our only chance, she told us, was to go into the abbey's depths and collapse the building around the door.
We seem unlikely to survive that.
After we took Shalelu to safety, we prepared to go in. I told Laslo that I love him as much as I love fire, and that if we died, then in the afterlife, I WOULD FIND HIM.
Asmodeus, protect your servant. This world is yours, and I will let no creature of chaos wrest it from you.
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Dear Diary,
(I hope Audrahni still lives. What does that mean, in a place where time runs so strangely?)
The conversation with Karzoug went about as well as could be expected. He demanded we free him and showed no interest in helping us. Not until I screamed Zinlun's skull into dust in front of him did he change his tune. But at last he agreed, and after we freed him to join the river of souls, he shared with us the ritual that would activate the Cyphergate.
Next, obviously, we went to Riddleport, last of Varisia's great cities to survive, and enacted the ritual we had learned. The Cypergate began spinning -- it is, in fact, a circle, partway buried in the ground, not a mere arch. As it spun faster and faster, and the runes upon it glowed, a strange tongue came out through the portal that opened within it and attacked us. We continued with the ritual and then
we
were
removed
from
time
We came to upon a strange shore, where we once again met the Steward of Sthethlos. For the final time? We had arrived in the dimension of time, and our charge was to repair the damage wrought by Alaznist. Not only was this necessary to save Varisia; it was necessary to re-establish ourselves as beings who exist within the arch of time. At present, we appear to be nonpersons.
We traveled to a bizarre island populated with all many of strange beings. A gorge had been burned into it, Alaznist's actions writ in the shape of time itself. We went to a dome where seven holes in time writhed in place, and an enormous being, the master of the Steward, told us the price we must pay to continue.
One of our deaths. One among us would be imprisoned for eternity in a moment of time.
After we all looked at each other uncomfortably for a while, I recalled that some of us still had a get-out-of-death-free card from Pharasma for our services to her. We flipped a gold piece, and I made the offering of my life.
The ground crawled up and clawed its way into my throat and I stood there dead and paralyzed forever, for an eternity, for a time I could not comprehend, and then Pharasma's gift took hold and I stepped free while still staying there, dead and not dead, but able to move on.
It was not a pleasant experience. I cannot recommend it.
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Okay. That? That was truly epic. About as epic as soloing a demi-lich.
|
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Excerpt from Devil May Care: The Memoirs of Dr. Laslo Grigorovich Budynek, unabridged edition.
One vould think vitnessing apocalyptic downfall of Magnimar and entire vest coast of Varisia consumed by fire vould be enough to drive home the extreme severity of situation. Yet I must admit the truth of it only really penetrated to the innermost core of my understanding vhen ve attempted to travel home and materialized in gaping hole vhere it used to be.
In cosmic scale of things, is no doubt infinitely less important than, say, entirety of Magnimar. I barely allowed myself thought for my colloquium, esteemed colleagues at University, my little bay-view studio, vhen ve abandoned city as total loss. Our private tower over the cliffs of Windsong Abbey, though: This is vhere gets personal.
Gone the innumerable mementos of life-changing moments and fond memories. Gone my hard-von honorary doctorate certificates. Gone Viv's custom-built recreational brazier, just large enough for two. Gone the jar of candied gelatinous cube cubes.
Oh.
Gone Viv's old body.
Definitely is personal now. I vould kill those qlippoths several times over if I could (and if it weren't so extraordinarily dangerous to fight them). Even just looking at them unravels my mind and body, and the big ones don't even have decency to be fooled by invisibility. I must admit their anatomy is fascinating in the extreme — like two spiky oliphaunts fused together where heads should be, and mouth like giant wound along bottom of belly. Vhat I vould give for a chance to study one of the carcasses in peace! But there is no time, and it vould no doubt cost me my sanity. Still, I'm tempted. That's how dangerous they are, even in death.
I hate qlippoths.
Vait, I just had strange déjà-vu. Somebody said that to me yesterday, but I cannot for life of me remember vho. Is like black hole in mind. Vell, one more for the collection, I suppose.
Now, ve are off to collapse last remainders of my only true home in this world. Part of me is still convinced we had some kind of plan to restore timeline, but if so, I cannot see it anymore. I cannot tell anymore vhether we are fighting the end of the vorld, or completing it. But Viv is vith me: Is only thing that still matters.
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Dear Diary,
I never.
Ever.
In my life.
Want to see the inside of Emperor Xin's chambers ever again.
That bad?
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Being The Testament Of Viveltre Vanderale, Cleric Of Asmodeus, The Lord Of Law And Fire All Praise Be Unto Him,
I ... am alive. That was far from being a sure thing. It was very touch and go, especially at the end.
We descended into the depths beneath Windsong Abbey and there found exactly what we feared -- the Doomsday Door flung open wide, and our old enemy, Yamasoth, the Polymorph Plague itself, emerging from the Abyss to destroy the world.
The Abbey should have collapsed around the Door already, but four pillar of fire held up the weight of the earth, allowing the monster to come forth. I have to say, the use of fire in the aid of the forces of Chaos seems like a deliberately insulting choice. I could not help but feel that a gauntlet was being thrown down.
My darling Laslo, ever the fastest among us, was the first to react, racing across the room and slashing at a pillar with his claws and teeth. It was obvious from the first that fighting Yamasoth was a fool's game, and our only chance was to destroy the pillars. He did great damage as his weapons were charged with holy might ... which is something I really need to talk with him about, I had no idea Laslo was into THAT sort of thing.
Once Laslo was inside, however, Yamasoth sealed the entrance with a wall of stone in an attempt to prevent the rest of us from coming to his aid. He had not counted upon Nasim's mastery of dimensional travel, however, and soon we were inside attacking the pillars on the other side.
Laslo threw off the Qlippoth Lord's attempt at changing his form, and had almost completely destroyed two of the fiery supports, when Yamasoth
Opened
His
Maw
To
Reveal
His
Great
Eye
We shut our own eyes to prevent the dread gaze from wreaking its havoc upon us, and for the most part we spent the rest of the battle fighting blind.
Yamasoth unleashed a full attack on Laslo with maw and claw and tentacle. My darling went down, and would never recover from it. When the ceiling began to fall, he died.
I began the fight being of little effect; a pillar resisted my attempt at a disintegration, and my stormbolts were poorly placed to have maximum effect. Draco and Nasim, however, hacked away at them and began bringing them down, the ceiling trembling and crumbling as the first one fell.
Then, however, Yamasoth subjected Nasim to the same treatment as Laslo. Little time had passed, and only Draco and I were left standing.
Draco hurled his great rock at a pillar on the left, then charged it and brought it down. The ceiling was kept up by almost nothing now, but with Yamasoth murdering each one of us it turned its attention to, time was running out. I finally had a decent idea; I threw a wall of ash across the room to block its dread gaze so I could open my own eyes, then used a quickened, cold fireball to attack a pillar. I always keep some on hand in case my foes are resistant to fire, and it seemed like a good choice to use against flame itself. I threw my spell, and the pillar went down ...
And the ceiling came down ...
I was crushed beneath the rock, unable to breathe, Yamasoth had been forced back beyond the Door, but I had only one chance, scant seconds, to save us all. So I used a power I had been saving for ages, dating back from our first adventure at Windsong Abbey, from the first time we fought Yamasoth, and made a Wish upon my Luck Blade.
It whisked us all away, back to the relative safety of Belimarius' city.
So Laslo may be dead, but I can bring him back (Nasim, too, I suppose.) I should ask Laslo how he found the experience. If it was enjoyable, perhaps we could introduce my killing him and bringing him back into our private time. Only if he consents, of course -- the Law is clear on that!
In any case, we have prevented on Doom from falling upon the world. I fear, however, that it is but one of many. We barely managed this time. What will come next?
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Dear Diary,
All right, so.
We decided to fix the damage to the timestream in chronological order, oldest first. This meant our first trip back in time took us back to Emperor Xin's chambers, where he first forged the SIhedron. We appeared to find him locked in battle with Alaznist, and his ooze-servant Mezlans stealing the Sihedron components. We took it upon ourselves to defeat them and free the SIhedron shards.
Fortunately, the time dragon Ninuron had volunteered to accompany us, and his first attack, a cone of crackling electricity, brought the Mezlans a good deal of the way towards death, and his follow up disintegration destroyed one entirely. We began picking them off with our usual attacks, but their counteroffensive proved deadly -- Szarlej was first weakened by physical attacks, then was blasted unconscious by a lightning bolt. I gave him a small amount of healing, but a second lightning bolt fried him to annihilation. He disappeared. We were worried he was gone forever, blasted from the timeline altogether, but he had been whisked back to Sthethelos.
We began to be nervous about what we knew was a limited window of time to fix things, as they regenerated against our attacks, but I managed to recall that acid could bring them to a final death. I had some vials on hand, and thanks to a spell of Azriel's and a talent of Akkumsahs's, we were able to defeat them in due course, and found ourselves back in Sthethelos with one of the time wounds healed.
Ninuron, unfortunately, became lost in the timestream along the way back, no doubt sent to where we first met him, which I guess is shortly after he first met us oh my sweet Naderi this time business gives me a headache. In any event, we will have his assistance no more, but I am very glad we had it the once.
Buoyed by our success, we went to the second time wound, and found ourselves back in Xin's chambers, this time on the night of his assassination. Alaznist was there sucking the power out of the Sihedron through magic conduits. After a bit of experimentation and thought, we figured out how to destroy them, and were beginning to do so when the Rune Giant assassin arrived and attacked Xin, who immediately destroyed everything in a retributive strike, and we found ourselves back in Sthethelos, the time wound unhealed.
We decided we would have a better chance if we prevented the giant from attacking Xin until we had destroyed the conduits, something Akkumsah would be able to do rapidly once Szarlej enchanted her blade, and the others could assist with.. So we went back, and found ourselves in Xin's chambers YET AGAIN. I suborned the giant's mind with a Suggestion that he not attack until I told him to, while my fellows destroyed the conduits in short order ... and then we were immediately whisked away, before I had a chance to give new orders to the Rune Giant, changing history in a different way, so the TIME WOUND REMAINED UNHEALED.
So we went back for a THIRD try and found ourselves in Xin's chambers a FOURTH time and this time I commanded the Rune Giant to attack as soon as we disappeared, and that FINALLY WORKED AND IF I NEVER SEE XIN'S CHAMBERS AGAIN IT WILL BE TOO SOON.
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Dear Diary,
To continue.
The third wound in time brought us to the Azlanti invasion of Thassilon, on the site that would eventually become Korvosa. We found ourselves seeing a sight few have witnessed and survived, the Oliphaunt of Jandelay laying waste to the city and the armies of both sides.
The Oliphaunt of Jandelay is ... big. And terrifying. I am not really getting across what an ink-squirtingly frightening sight it was, a quarter of the size of Korvosa itself, trampling towards us with footfalls like earthquakes as lightning fell from the sky.
We found ourselves by a portal that we quickly deduced led to the modern era; Alaznist had snatched the Oliphaunt out of the past itself to lay waste to the present which now lay in our future and did I mention headaches? Anyway, to save Korvosa-that-is-and-will-be, the portal had to be destroyed.
HOW to destroy it was a puzzling question, but we combined our knowledge of magic and the vagaries of planar travel to come up with a few possibilities. We assaulted it in various ways -- with weapons, with dispellings, and in my case by tinkering with the components that powered it.
Meanwhile the Oliphaunt drew nearer and nearer. Lightning smashed into us, the ground shook and threw us to the earth, leaving us stunned, as we tried to destroy the portal before the behemoth reached it ... and us.
But through that shimmering hole in time, we saw a figure in red throw energies that undid our efforts; Alaznist, in the present-future, fighting against our work in the past-present! Er, past. or whatever.
Anyway, we redoubled our efforts, and managed to crack the portal and disperse its energies just before tusks the size of buildings ran us through. BIG buildings.
And back we went to Sthethelos.
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Dear Diary,
audrahni is dead
again
the timeline has been restored to its natural state, and in that state, she perished as I remembered
but I will bring her back
as soon as I am done devouring alaznist's heart for putting audrahni through this
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Dear Diary,
If I focus on her death, I will never finish this record of events. So.
Deep breath. Feel the water flowing past the gills.
Our fourth jaunt back in time was to a library where some Runelord was making plans to betray the other Runelords. I could not remember his name if you paid me. Anyway, true history said he succeeded, so our task was to keep him alive when the Runelord of Sloth (tipped off by Alaznist?) threw a couple of dragons and a silence spell at him.
It was relatively easy. I forced the dragons to bow to my Overwhelming Presence (ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR), and my colleagues slew them while they lay there helpless. Then we buffed up the extremely rude Runelord for his planned betrayal, and the wound in time was healed.
Next, we arrived in a cave where future-Alaznist opened a portal to a Qlippoth Lord of Secrets so that he would tell past-Alaznist the secrets of fleshwarping. This proved to be one of the most dangerous jaunts for me personally, because the portal itself was a hideous beast that trampled over us and swallowed me whole, and proved to be immune to sonic attacks. That limited my options to almost nothing, and when Szarlej was devoured, too, it seemed certain that we would be dissolved in the acid of its stomach. I focused all my efforts on healing us, and barely managed to keep the two of us alive until our friends tore apart the portalbeast. Unfortunately, just as it was torn apart, the Qlippoth Lord stepped out and began driving us to madness with its hideous presence. The roc Wind was permanently warped and deformed by the sight of it. After I used a Bard's Escape to place us all in strategic locations, including a storm giant summoned by Azriel, we were able to slay (drive away? I'm not sure they can be slain in this way) the Qlippoth Lord.
Unfortunately, Wind's problems were unhealed when we returned to Sthethlos, leaving Azriel with a grave dilemma. An expensive Miracle could cure Wind, or he could go the cheaper route of slitting her throat and bringing her back from the dead. He opted for, um, thriftiness.
Well.
Or next adventure in time took us to the laying of the foundation stone for the Cyphergate. Alaznist had sabotaged it, which would eventually lead to the destruction of Riddleport at, to be honest, our hands. But I managed to convince the giants, denizens of Leng, and half-elf working on the project that we had come from the future to prevent disaster (they seemed to think I had been sent by Karzoug, and I was happy to let them think so -- in an extremely roundabout way, it's even vaguely true.) Then, while I faffed about trying to dispel Alaznist's enchantment, my fellows much more efficiently heaved the rock off the scaffolding -- once I had convinced the giants to help them, for my friends are not very good at talking to people or socializing or not being horribly rude or anything of that nature -- and shattered it. Presumably a new one was built later.
Finally, we went to the site where Sorshen attempted to protect herself from Earthfall. While the sky caught fire outside the windows, Alaznist held Sorshen prisoner in some kind of trap of animate blood. And two extratemporal beings appeared for good measure, one aiding us and one attacking us! While Szarlej and I freed Sorshen from the trap, Akkumsah battled the strange time being, and Azriel and Wind wrested the Sceptre of Ages from the grasp of Alaznist! We all succeeded at our tasks, but as past-Sorshen threw herself into safety, Alaznist vowed revenge upon us and drew us in with her as she was hurled from the room ...
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Dear Diary,
As we travelled through time, the Sceptre of Ages was wrenched from the grasp of Azriel (or rather from his jaw, since he was in the form of a dinosaur), and we were given visions of the timelines that are and were and will be ... which is how I know that in this one, my love lies dead.
I will devour Alaznist's heart. I will break the world and time in my own way if I have to, to bring Audrahni back. I will burn down the world if I fail.
But, as I was saying. We arrived in what could only be the stronghold of Alaznist herself. Immediately we were assaulted by giants perched upon one of her hellflumes. They assaulted us with fire and savage flaming darts, and we responded with fists and teeth and spells. A clever spell of Szarlej's (Polar Midnight) by happenstance worked well with one of mine (Hold Person), for anyone remaining motionless within Szarlej's spell was soon frozen helpless. Between this, making the giants throw up, and Azriel and Akkumsah's usual effective attacks, we prevailed.
Going deeper into the place, we found an abandoned room where we picked up some items of magic, and then came across a titanic behemoth trapped behind a wall of force. When it saw us, it flew into a rage and began to batter down the barrier. While that was occurring, a mass of demons in another room took note of our presence and began an assault.
The behemoth soon broke through the barrier, and things rapidly began to go pear-shaped. The party was split, with Szarlej and I on one side of the giant monster and Azriel and Akkumsah on the other, with the demons. They were getting the worst of it, and soon Azriel was staggered by some kind of magic bullet while the behemoth chomped him near to death. He went ethereal to escape disaster.
I manage to incapacitate a few of the demons with enchantments, and then turned my attention to the behemoth. While it was immune to much, unlike the portalbeast it was NOT immune to sonic attacks, and I soon began to damage it. Szarlej absorbed a full attack from the monster and barely flinched, then plowed his spear into its guts, while Akkumsah, after dealing with the demons that were left, wrought great damage to it on the other side.
That was when we discovered that it is unkillable. Without a wish or a miracle, the best we could hope to do was tear it in so many pieces that it would take it a significant amount of time to regenerate itself.
So that is what we did.
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Dear Diary,
My goodness, time runs strangely in this place! I feel as if I have been in some sort of strange stasis for months, even though I know that hardly any time at all has passed since my previous diary entry.
After dealing with the behemoth, we explored a bit further and found a firepit which we soon gleaned might be a teleportation device. Being, as usual, bolder than my comrades, I went through first and, as usual, found myself face to face with deadly monsters intent on my destruction. It was also a flamey teleporter that tried to burn me. So hot and dry! Ugh.
This time, the monstrosities in question were a pair of fiendish Thessalhydras, who soon summoned a demon to come to their aid. Fortunately, my friends came through soon after me (for once), and though the beasts assaulted us with spells of Horrid Wilting, Destruction, and their innumerable melee attacks, we prevailed in reasonable fashion. I was able to test out one of my new spells, Sonic Form, which proved to be of great effect in combat.
We poked around and found little of note until we chanced upon a secret door. Unable to figure out how to open it, we bashed our way through. Beyond it, we found another secret door. This trapped us in a room that tried to freeze us to death while pretending to burn us to death, but fortunately we were protected against both types of damage and were able to ignore the trap.
From there, we soon discovered yet *another* secret door (paranoid much, Alaznist?), behind which was a Balor demon guarding some kind of portal. However, it chanced that the Balor was the Runelord we had rescued in the library during our time jaunts, much changed! Good deeds sometimes do have good ends. He dimly remembered us, and was well-disposed enough to tell us that Alaznist lurked through the portal he guarded, and that while he would not attack us before we tried to get through, he could not help but do so if we tried.
At this point, we decided to take the time to rest and plan our assault upon Alaznist. Knowing she would be the most difficult foe we had ever faced, we took the time to recover our spells, and cast all the defenses we had at hand upon ourselves. They may prove crucial against the master evoker, although I fear they will not last long. Azriel tried to take us to an extradimensional space to rest, but his spell behaved oddly and when he sent a summoned eagle through to test it, it got, er, mangled. We determined that we are outside of time, in a place time formed in the way an oyster forms a pearl around an irritant -- and we are the irritant.
Anyway, nothing bothered us in the night, and suitably armed for combat, we attempted to Dimension Door past the Balor -- uselessly. I attempted to immobilize him with my Overwhelming Presence -- uselessly. Finally, we just ran past him, and I think he deliberately moved a bit slowly, because we were all in the portal by the time he was able to act.
The flames of the portal once more sucked all the moisture from my skin, although thanks to our spells it did no damage.
Beyond lies our ultimate test...
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Heh. I'm reminded of my running "In Hell's Bright Shadow" how the group got past the Scrivenite guardian. It did not want to be there, hated how it had been used, and allowed the PCs to distract it by claiming there was a bookworm it had to deal with. In the round that just about everyone escaped, it took a round casting a buff spell. From the other side of the room. And since it didn't have Telepathy for an ability (Sense Thought, but no telepathy) it was reduced to shouting an alarm... but through thick walls and doors its shouts were ineffective. =^-^=
So. It looks like this story is almost through (outside of wrapping up after the adventure ends). What are you all going to do for your next AP? I hope you'll be doing another character journal, I've much enjoyed hearing Ice's musings. :)
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