Well, we headed out of Wildsgate town after receiving from from the Baron's scouts that we had a location for Lady Aborn and that she was in the company of Azubahl. To my amazement, we were each given fine light warhorses and traveling gear--with the exception of Constantine, who already had his own horse and traveling gear--courtesy of the Baron. I chose one of the duns. Gideon chose the least attractive of the horses, a rather homely dapple. Nel also chose a dapple and Brom chose a dun, whom he has named "Horse" for some strange reason. Fortunately, having some experience riding horses in the past, I am not one of the clumsy riders in our group.
So, we headed and it only took us a day to reach a good stopping point at the base of the spires where an alcove in the mountain would be an ideal place to leave the horses. There we encountered two men, one by the name of Barek and the other by the name of Broth. Barek appeared to be a decently intelligent individual, but Broth seemed rather dimwitted. Amongst their party were three horses, and one of those horses happened to be Lady Aborn's mare. At the time, none of us had recognized the mare, but Broth seemed a bit shifty, however dimwitted. So, we were cautious and politely questioned the two men while Brom wandered off, presumably investigating the surroundings.
After some rather uninformative conversation with the two men, Brom came running back to us, as a wolf, and dove into the lake, completely immersing himself in the cold water and then resurfaced in his normal human form. This shocked both of the men and so Brom made up some lame story about the lake being a gateway between two worlds, one consisting entirely of wolves or something. Next thing, Broth dove into the lake and came back out claiming that he could not see the world in there. That was when Brom started going into detail about how when he was scouting, he was attacked by unseen assailants using arrows and said they were not far off from where we were. At that point, Broth then shouted something like "now" and we were set upon by Hobgoblins, I believe, who appeared on the ledge above us and fired upon us with crossbows and spears.
During this fight, Broth attacked us as well, and Barek, amazingly, fought on our side. Poor Barek seemed to not be a very good fighter. He kept slipping and falling and hardly landed a hit on anyone, but he did help out and possibly saved Constantine's life. But, I wonder if Barek is related to the captain of the Wildsgate guard. Anyway, the fight turned very ugly for Constantine when he suddenly started dancing uncontrollably. And while he was dancing, he had a rather horrified and strained look on his face. Obviously he was the victim of some kind of spell. But his dancing attracted the attention of some of the hobgoblins once they lept down to our level from the cliff, and so they surrounded him. He was completely defenseless and almost died as a result. But, in the end, we managed to kill them all and subdue Broth.
Then we found out that the crossbow bolts that hit some of us were poisoned and we had to quickly act in order to keep anyone from dieing. We managed to get everyone fixed up and Constantine shackled Broth so that he could not get away.
After all of that, we decided that it was time to clean up the camp site and get some rest. So, we piled all of the hobgoblin corpses around a tree about fifty feet away from the campfire and some of us bathed. Then, as we were getting prepared to bed down and Constantine was out scouting not too far away, a wyvern came swooping down from across the lake, landed and started consuming the hobgoblin corpses. I was really hoping that it would just go away, but instead it saw us and decided, then to roost atop our alcove and play a game of cat & mouse with us. Wyverns are really annoying, and quite scary. I wanted to create a diversion, so that we could attack the wyvern from behind and then, later, flank it. So, I tried to convince Brom to run out there as a wolf and get its attention, but he was rather insulted by that suggestion. So, we just had to fight it off, right there, as is. We did so and, though it was tough and Brom and Gideon almost go killed by the thing, we still prevailed. At one point, it really looked like Brom was going to keel over and die. I cast a protection spell on him, hoping to stave off further damage to him from the beast, but he managed to get away from the beast and not further suffer the wyvern's attentions. But the wyvern attacked me as well and I could not get away from it very easily. Those horrible creatures can fly, so my own flying and levitation don't help me out much. But, again, in the end, we managed to destroy it.
After that, we dragged the corpse away and I harvested some wyvern claws and scales and teeth. I also removed its heart. We then went to sleep and the night was uneventful.
When we awoke, I discovered that I had no way to securely store the wyvern heart. So, I cooked and ate it. I cannot say exactly why I ate it. Some arcane books that I have read spoke of human sorcerers eating the hearts of dragons and draconic creatures to gain insight into their mystical dragonic abilities and knowledge, which was part of the reason I ate the heart. But, it also just seemed like it should not go to waste. And there were other reasons that I could not exactly explain. I offered some of the cooked heart meat to the others and fed some to our captive, Broth, who was happy to have something to eat. After all, we could not just let him starve out of spite. We then packed up and made ready to climb the spire path. But, first, Constantine tied Broth to a horse, keeping him restrained but allowing him to use his knees to guide the horse. Constantine then placed a signed writ in Broth's belt, the writ describing Broth's crimes and he then instructed Broth to guide the horse back to Wildsgate if he wanted even a chance to live. Broth seemed quite cowed at that point and, hopefully, he will remain to be and do as he is told.
We then headed upslope to a location directly above where we slept the night before, searching for the wyvern's lair, and we did find it, and found some interesting items in there. After gathering up a few choice items, we continue on up the spire's path.
I have settled on a name for the horse that I was given for transportation by the Baron of Wildsgate. I will call him "Arakyn-Mor". And I am going to call Gideon's horse "Caslth".
Now, we are before the mouth of a cave. So, I will close out this entry.
[End of journal entry, next will be the "Thoughts of Erhivor" to fill in the rest]
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Erhivor's Journal: Entry 5 (Back In Town: Oh, the carnage!)
Well, the last couple of weeks have certainly been ... interesting. The adventure is fun, but it's nothing like it is described in the books that I have read. For instance, the books make it look so simple for the heroes, how they so easily bring down their foes or how easy it is to identify the enemy. But it's not easy and enemies wear many, many different and deceptive faces. And I don't care what the books say, being burned by acid is really distracting and very painful.
Well, we're in a tower in the citadel inhabited by the Baron of Wildsgate, who just happens to adore us for our recent deeds (if at a distance).
So, about 12 days ago, after dispatching of a horde of goblins atop the westernmost peak of the Spires, we encountered Azubahl, a goblin vampire. Vampires, apparently, are "evil" undead creatures who wield embarrassing flails. They are very strong and can only be hurt with magicked silver--or at least this is the case with Azubahl. And, when injured enough, they turn to mist and the mist makes its way to a coffin, whereupon arrival it begins a regenerative process unless someone defiles the coffin, which prevents it from ever fully regenerating into its more physical form. Vampires feed off of living creatures, but instead of devouring the flesh of these creatures, they feed off of their blood. They also appear to prefer to blood of humanoid creatures over others. At least, this is my assessment of this particular vampire's feeding habits, as we did not find any non-humanoid animals with bite marks on their necks.
When we encountered this vampire, it spoke to us, claiming that it had been expecting us and claimed that we were working for "her", which I can only assume he meant Lady Aborn. He then stated that the "secret of the Third Key" would remain with him. He then attacked us. We eventually hurt him enough that he turned to mist. I then observed his mist-like form descend down to a lower platform on the spire and into a trapdoor that we came out of. The trapdoor had the letter "F" on it, which I made the connection of with the creepy well that we saw on the way up to the platforms on the Spire, which was also marked with an "F". In the "throne-room" that the vampire previously occupied, I happened to find a flagstone that was loose and beneath it was a coffin. In that coffin I found a sack of coins and the Emerald Key. But we had little time to waste at that point, so we grabbed what we could quickly and headed out.
We made our way down to well as quickly as possible and made preparations to go down there and finish off the vampire. We lowered Constantine down into the well, but just as Constantine touched the water of the well, a shadow attacked him and seemed to drain him of some of his strength. We had little success, attempting to damage the shadow, so we pulled Constantine back up the well. After some extensive debate, we decided to round up all of the prisoners that the goblins were keeping as sustenance for the vampire and escort them out of the spires and back to town. As we came to the final cave that let out onto the road, we encountered the vampire again, but Constantine, Gideon and Nel managed to dispatch of him quickly, yet not destroy him. So, eventually we must go back to finish him off.
We made it back to town with the prisoners safely and turned them over to the city guard so that they may be healed and cared for. We were rewarded by the Regent and the city residents seemed to have some praise for us. We spent a couple of nights there, gathering supplies and resting. During our visit to town, we spoke with the dwarf at the Hammer & Anvil and I did an excellent job of spooking him and offending him as a result of the war crown that I was wearing. He told me to take off the crown, but, as I had learned days before, I could not take the crown off. The dwarf informed me that I needed to shave off the beard that I had rapidly grown and renounce my clan (or, in my case, my name). I thanked him for the information and then informed him of the silver anvil and gold hammer that we found in the old dwarven citadel. He was astonished and quite taken aback by the fact that the legendary artifacts actually existed. I then informed him of how to get through the traps that were guarding the artifacts. After all of the discussion, we began to barter over contracting the dwarf to craft for us special weapons, armor and ammunition. Once all of the bartering was done, I went back to the inn and shaved and renounced my "name" (as a dwarf). Shaving just might have been originally devised as a means of torture, to draw out delicate information from potentially criminal subjects who would otherwise withhold said information from an interrogator. I would like not to shave hair off of my skin with a metal razor ever again. Anyway, the dwarf's method proved successful, if painful, and the war crown simply fell off of my head as a result. After that, I felt as though I was no longer mentally divided and I found it much easier to focus.
The next morning we did more trading in town and with the dwarf. I offered up the war crown and some spiked scale mail armor to the dwarf to settle Nel's transaction and then we went back to the inn.
We spent a few more days in the town until we could get all of our goods from the dwarf and then we headed North, to the Eastern side of the river and over to the place where the barbarian flesh-eaters lived. Once we entered the thickening forest, Gideon, Nel and Constantine began to suffer the effects of some kind of curse and we began to find creepy-looking dolls with bits of hair and flesh woven about them strewn throughout the trees in the forest. We found a doll that looked somewhat like Nel and whenever we did anything physical to the doll, Nel could somehow "feel" what we were doing. We took the doll with us and continued on to try to track down whoever created the curse and doll, and along the way we found dolls also matching Gideon and Constantine. We collected those dolls and proceeded onward.
As we entered a sprawling, little barbarian living area, consisting of roughly-built wooden walls encircling a large bonfire and several little rough huts, we were assailed by a few barbarians whom we disposed of rather quickly. We then approached the raging bonfire, which was surrounded by dancing barbarian warriors we spotted that the bonfire was centered beneath human corpses, which some of the barbarians were pulling pieces of meat off of and devouring. We decided it was time to break up their little party, so we immediately attacked them and, again, quickly dispatched of them.
We then proceeded onward to cross some barrow mounds and we set upon by corpses granted life through the magicks of Necromancy. We managed to destroy them, but it was not an easy task.
At the head of the barrow mounds was a large building that appeared to be a meeting hall or a celebration hall of sorts. The large double-doors at the front of the building were barred from the inside with a large wooden shaft. So, to make things simple, Nel blasted the doors and shaft to pieces in one fell swoop and we charged in and laid waste to four powerful barbarian warriors. Now, these barbarians are really tough to fit because they do not feel pain and they are very fast. They managed to do some damage to us, but we took them down in good time. And, man! Gideon landed the first hit of the fight on one of the barbarians before they even knew what was happening and hoo! That barbarian didn't even get a chance to start foaming at the mouth like the others did afterward.
These barbarian warriors were using what probably used to be sane and civilized human women as their servants, in many foul and sexual ways, I am sure. These women were obviously kept shackled at all times and were extremely malnourished. They were also like feral animals. They seemed to have no sense or reasoning within their minds. These barbarians had obviously broken the minds and wills of these women. It was a rather horrible reality to witness the state of these women. We tried our best to calm them down, but in the end they ran off into the woods somewhere and probably died of starvation.
After some investigation of the main room of the large building, we continued on, through a back door that led us through a recently-mined cavern and down a hall that dead-ended in a roughly mined-out room where the ceiling was decorated with life-like dolls hanging from strings and swaying around as if moving to a non-existent breeze. At the end of this cavern room was a disturbingly gaunt man standing atop a makeshift throne, holding a skull enveloped in blue flames. As with all evil overlords, it seems, he was expecting us and had been patiently waiting for our arrival. He appeared to be pleased to see us, but then he threw a flaming skull at us. So, we killed him too. He was a bit complicated to kill. The dolls hanging from the sealing kept attacking us while we fought him and he was quite effective with necromantic magic. He managed to scare off Nel and Gideon at one point, but eventually we all overwhelmed him. And that was funny.
Okay, so we found on him what was supposed to be the "Second Key", the "Saphire Key", and the effects that Gideon, Nel and Constantine were suffering had simply vanished after this Necromancer perished, so we headed on out of the cave and building. Gideon got the idea to plunder the barrows, which I must admit, was a rather unsettling and creepy thing to do, but we did find a couple of items to sell in town. We also got attacked by a couple more undead creatures, but they were easy to destroy.
We then headed back up to the dwarven citadel, where we ran into the dwarven smith on his way down the mountain, carrying the silver anvil over his head. He stopped and talked to us for a while, explaining how he would be able to craft finer weapons and armor with this anvil. He was very excited. We then continued on, but the dwarf saw Fred and, thinking Fred was a wild and dangerous shock lizard, he smashed him with the anvil. Poor Fred.
We eventually arrived at the room of dwarven heroes. We inserted the three keys and proceeded through a number of complicated traps that Gideon managed to disarm without too much difficulty. Gideon discovered one secret passage after tinkering with a false traps and lock mechanism. After we went through the secret passage and Gideon discovered another misleading path that lead through traps, I discovered another secret passage in the hallway just past the last secret passage and that led us to a room with two coffers that appeared to be filled with ancient gold coins. I discovered again, in that same room, another secret passage beneath a loose flagstone. But before we entered the secret passage, we decided to check out the two coffers. While doing this, Gideon noticed some movement in one of the coffers and told everyone to hold on for a second. He then withdrew one of his daggers and started to slowly bring it down into one of the coffers. All of a sudden Gideon shouted "run" and he ran off back down the hallway from which we came. None of us really understood what was going on or what Gideon was talking about, so we did not get out of the way before Constantine was attacked by some creature consisting entirely of clear, acidic slime. Then it turned out that there were two of these creatures and both of them must have been inside the coffers before. The two creatures attacked Constantine and Brom relentlessly and were very, very difficult to attack and damage. Gideon noticed that we had not run and that Brom and Constantine might be overwhelmed, so he came back and helped all of us fight these creatures off. In the end, Brom's clothing, armor and beard were all eaten away by the acidic slime of these creatures and Constantine did not fair much better. We then gathered up the gold coins, which it turned out were fewer than we had thought before because the coffers were shallower than they appeared from the outside. The coins were all ancient gold coins and weighed more than the typical gold coin of more recent civilizations. The coffers were dedicated to two dwarven sons from two different families who might have been warring against each other.
After getting the two cleaned up and covered up a bit more, Gideon and I crawled down beneath the loose flagstone, into the secret chamber and Gideon proceeded cautiously forward in a low-ceilinged chamber to discover a few old, oilcloth sacks. The sacks turned out to be containing the stolen heirlooms of the Wildsgate barony and a few bars of gold. So, Gideon and I hauled them back up to the others and we then headed back down to the foot of the mountain.
At the foot of the mountain, we camped for the night and rested up. We then proceeded onward to the town of Wildsgate. Once within the walls of Wildsgate, yet still outside of the town, we were blocked off to the town by Lady Aborn and about a half-score of mounted riders from the Outriders, including the captain of the Outriders. The Lady Aborn accused us of being in possession of the stolen heirlooms and threatened that if we did not hand them over that we would be placed under arrest. Constantine began an attempt to explain to her our intentions, but I already knew that there was no chance that we were getting out of there without a fight. I was positive that the White Lady had absolutely no intention of letting us walk away, no matter what we did. So, I attacked her. Actually, I was going to cast an offensive spell on her, but I then realized that she was too far away from me for that to work. So, I readied a protective spell for myself, but she and her mounted Outriders were too quick to react, so I failed to stay focused enough and failed the spell.
This battle was horrible. Most of us were horribly wounded in the end. The captain of the guard of Wildsgate came out of the town's inner gates with a score of lancers and charged our assailants. But Lady Aborn vanished and managed to get away from the battle safely. The captain of the guard commanded a cease of all fighting and charged one of the outriders, but seemed to overcompensate what appeared to be a fancy dismount, coupled with a powerful attack, and propelled himself in a quite uncontrolled manner off of his mount, careened off of Nel (who hardly noticed the hit) and plowed face-first into the hard-packed dirt of the well-trodden road. That action obviously failed to impress the Outriders, so the Outrider captain and his men continued to fight us. I managed to deliver a significant amount of damage to the Outrider captain with some spells, but he just would not stop. Finally, I tried to make it appear to the Captain of the guard as though I was only holding guard to defend myself by raising my bow in a defensive stance and watching the Outrider captain, but the outrider captain attacked me. I managed to loose one arrow into him at point blank, yet the captain still stood. He missed me with his first blow, but he managed to hit me with the second. Before that I was already in critical condition from him and his men and that last blow took me down.
Apparently, after that, Gideon, who had disappeared at some point when I was not looking, suddenly appeared behind the Outrider captain and cut him and his horse in half with the heirloom sword while the Outrider captain was trying to flee the scene. To top it off, Gideon followed up with the gruesome attack by bellowing "SURPRISE!" and scaring everyone who was not unconscious, dying or already dead half to death. I really wish I could have seen that.
After that, the three remaining Outriders surrendered. After seeing what Gideon did, I think they made a very smart decision. Brom revived me and a medic came around and gave us healing potions. At that time, we explained to the captain our story regarding the heirlooms and our initial encounter with Lady Aborn. The captain informed us that the Lady was, indeed, a criminal and then left to bring word of our actions and what had just occurred to the Regent. While he was off, I looted that bastard Outrider captain's corpse. During that time Gideon managed to get a trace of the Lady's tracks.
Coming as close to death as I did is really disturbing. I haven't even been around for a century. I have so much more I must experience and witness. I want to be around for a good few centuries. But there are wretched things that keep trying to kill me. And this most recent encounter was the closest of all. I don't like that.
Oh! Anyway, the captain came back and informed us that we must see the Baron immediately. So, in the horrible condition that we were, we had an audience with the Baron (or he had an audience with us). The Baron thanked us for our deeds and claimed that he owed us his life. He explained that the Lady Aborn had been exacting conspiracy against the Wildsgate throne for some time. He assured us that his scouts would report directly back to us on the whereabouts of Lady Aborn once they fully trail her and he then granted us many luxuries and a place to stay in what was formerly the Lady's tower.
So, we went up into the tower and got some rest. Early in the evening, though, Gideon disturbed our rest by setting fire to Lady Aborn's undergarments. He also managed to set free her familiar. That was an understandable mistake, though. I tried to explain to everyone why the familiar was a threat, but Constantine was very firm with the idea that I was putting them into danger by speaking to them of it. Humans are just too secretive, sometimes.
Later in the night, Gideon disturbed my rest, again, by calling my name. I walked upstairs and found him lying atop a raised surface covered with a blanket, in a rather strange and leisurely pose. Gideon is strange, but this was a very strange thing to stumble upon when I was so exhausted. I asked Gideon why he was posing like that and he asked told me he had something to show me that he did not trust the others to see. So, I closed the door and he lifted the blanket to show what he was lying on. There were six iron-banded chests that were marked as the property of the Baron of Wildsgate.
Gideon opened each chest, one-by-one, to reveal loads of gold, platinum and other items of value and currency. And one chest contained various items of great worth. One of which was a book in a sack. While Gideon was rummaging through these things, asking me if I had any unmarked chests that we could transplant the coins and gems to, I grabbed the book out of the sack and started to read it. Then I suddenly realized, six days later apparently, that I was in a different room, wearing a lovely belt, with a sign around my neck that had the words "No pickles!" and a spreading knife in my hand. According to Nel, after I opened the book, a snake came out of the book, bit me on the hand and then I was frozen in some form of stasis with an amber-colored forcefield encasing my body. I was in this state for six days. And obviously someone had been having fun at my expense.
After I was hit by this protective spell on the book, the Regent assessed my condition and explained to the rest of the group that the spell would wear off in a few days, then claimed the chests that Gideon had discovered beneath the floorboards of one of the rooms, but left the items of value from one chest behind. Since I was now free of the stasis spell, I was able to open the book that had cursed me in the first place and read it again, as Constantine claimed the book was now safe for reading. The book turns out to be a spellbook and it has spells in it. Most of the spells look necromantic to me, but it will take some more time for me to fully understand the writing.
At this time it was still afternoon on the sixth day in town and everyone (except for me, obviously) was eager to get moving out of town and after Lady Aborn and the vampire. But Nel convinced everyone that I needed the rest and so I headed out to make some quick transactions and get some supplies. Now, finally, I get to update my journal with the most recent events of the last couple weeks. Well, it's time for me to get some meditative rest. This really is a nice belt. It's nice to know that my companions will still share their findings with me, even when I am unconscious or otherwise incapable of interacting with the world.
Well, we're in a tower in the citadel inhabited by the Baron of Wildsgate, who just happens to adore us for our recent deeds (if at a distance).
So, about 12 days ago, after dispatching of a horde of goblins atop the westernmost peak of the Spires, we encountered Azubahl, a goblin vampire. Vampires, apparently, are "evil" undead creatures who wield embarrassing flails. They are very strong and can only be hurt with magicked silver--or at least this is the case with Azubahl. And, when injured enough, they turn to mist and the mist makes its way to a coffin, whereupon arrival it begins a regenerative process unless someone defiles the coffin, which prevents it from ever fully regenerating into its more physical form. Vampires feed off of living creatures, but instead of devouring the flesh of these creatures, they feed off of their blood. They also appear to prefer to blood of humanoid creatures over others. At least, this is my assessment of this particular vampire's feeding habits, as we did not find any non-humanoid animals with bite marks on their necks.
When we encountered this vampire, it spoke to us, claiming that it had been expecting us and claimed that we were working for "her", which I can only assume he meant Lady Aborn. He then stated that the "secret of the Third Key" would remain with him. He then attacked us. We eventually hurt him enough that he turned to mist. I then observed his mist-like form descend down to a lower platform on the spire and into a trapdoor that we came out of. The trapdoor had the letter "F" on it, which I made the connection of with the creepy well that we saw on the way up to the platforms on the Spire, which was also marked with an "F". In the "throne-room" that the vampire previously occupied, I happened to find a flagstone that was loose and beneath it was a coffin. In that coffin I found a sack of coins and the Emerald Key. But we had little time to waste at that point, so we grabbed what we could quickly and headed out.
We made our way down to well as quickly as possible and made preparations to go down there and finish off the vampire. We lowered Constantine down into the well, but just as Constantine touched the water of the well, a shadow attacked him and seemed to drain him of some of his strength. We had little success, attempting to damage the shadow, so we pulled Constantine back up the well. After some extensive debate, we decided to round up all of the prisoners that the goblins were keeping as sustenance for the vampire and escort them out of the spires and back to town. As we came to the final cave that let out onto the road, we encountered the vampire again, but Constantine, Gideon and Nel managed to dispatch of him quickly, yet not destroy him. So, eventually we must go back to finish him off.
We made it back to town with the prisoners safely and turned them over to the city guard so that they may be healed and cared for. We were rewarded by the Regent and the city residents seemed to have some praise for us. We spent a couple of nights there, gathering supplies and resting. During our visit to town, we spoke with the dwarf at the Hammer & Anvil and I did an excellent job of spooking him and offending him as a result of the war crown that I was wearing. He told me to take off the crown, but, as I had learned days before, I could not take the crown off. The dwarf informed me that I needed to shave off the beard that I had rapidly grown and renounce my clan (or, in my case, my name). I thanked him for the information and then informed him of the silver anvil and gold hammer that we found in the old dwarven citadel. He was astonished and quite taken aback by the fact that the legendary artifacts actually existed. I then informed him of how to get through the traps that were guarding the artifacts. After all of the discussion, we began to barter over contracting the dwarf to craft for us special weapons, armor and ammunition. Once all of the bartering was done, I went back to the inn and shaved and renounced my "name" (as a dwarf). Shaving just might have been originally devised as a means of torture, to draw out delicate information from potentially criminal subjects who would otherwise withhold said information from an interrogator. I would like not to shave hair off of my skin with a metal razor ever again. Anyway, the dwarf's method proved successful, if painful, and the war crown simply fell off of my head as a result. After that, I felt as though I was no longer mentally divided and I found it much easier to focus.
The next morning we did more trading in town and with the dwarf. I offered up the war crown and some spiked scale mail armor to the dwarf to settle Nel's transaction and then we went back to the inn.
We spent a few more days in the town until we could get all of our goods from the dwarf and then we headed North, to the Eastern side of the river and over to the place where the barbarian flesh-eaters lived. Once we entered the thickening forest, Gideon, Nel and Constantine began to suffer the effects of some kind of curse and we began to find creepy-looking dolls with bits of hair and flesh woven about them strewn throughout the trees in the forest. We found a doll that looked somewhat like Nel and whenever we did anything physical to the doll, Nel could somehow "feel" what we were doing. We took the doll with us and continued on to try to track down whoever created the curse and doll, and along the way we found dolls also matching Gideon and Constantine. We collected those dolls and proceeded onward.
As we entered a sprawling, little barbarian living area, consisting of roughly-built wooden walls encircling a large bonfire and several little rough huts, we were assailed by a few barbarians whom we disposed of rather quickly. We then approached the raging bonfire, which was surrounded by dancing barbarian warriors we spotted that the bonfire was centered beneath human corpses, which some of the barbarians were pulling pieces of meat off of and devouring. We decided it was time to break up their little party, so we immediately attacked them and, again, quickly dispatched of them.
We then proceeded onward to cross some barrow mounds and we set upon by corpses granted life through the magicks of Necromancy. We managed to destroy them, but it was not an easy task.
At the head of the barrow mounds was a large building that appeared to be a meeting hall or a celebration hall of sorts. The large double-doors at the front of the building were barred from the inside with a large wooden shaft. So, to make things simple, Nel blasted the doors and shaft to pieces in one fell swoop and we charged in and laid waste to four powerful barbarian warriors. Now, these barbarians are really tough to fit because they do not feel pain and they are very fast. They managed to do some damage to us, but we took them down in good time. And, man! Gideon landed the first hit of the fight on one of the barbarians before they even knew what was happening and hoo! That barbarian didn't even get a chance to start foaming at the mouth like the others did afterward.
These barbarian warriors were using what probably used to be sane and civilized human women as their servants, in many foul and sexual ways, I am sure. These women were obviously kept shackled at all times and were extremely malnourished. They were also like feral animals. They seemed to have no sense or reasoning within their minds. These barbarians had obviously broken the minds and wills of these women. It was a rather horrible reality to witness the state of these women. We tried our best to calm them down, but in the end they ran off into the woods somewhere and probably died of starvation.
After some investigation of the main room of the large building, we continued on, through a back door that led us through a recently-mined cavern and down a hall that dead-ended in a roughly mined-out room where the ceiling was decorated with life-like dolls hanging from strings and swaying around as if moving to a non-existent breeze. At the end of this cavern room was a disturbingly gaunt man standing atop a makeshift throne, holding a skull enveloped in blue flames. As with all evil overlords, it seems, he was expecting us and had been patiently waiting for our arrival. He appeared to be pleased to see us, but then he threw a flaming skull at us. So, we killed him too. He was a bit complicated to kill. The dolls hanging from the sealing kept attacking us while we fought him and he was quite effective with necromantic magic. He managed to scare off Nel and Gideon at one point, but eventually we all overwhelmed him. And that was funny.
Okay, so we found on him what was supposed to be the "Second Key", the "Saphire Key", and the effects that Gideon, Nel and Constantine were suffering had simply vanished after this Necromancer perished, so we headed on out of the cave and building. Gideon got the idea to plunder the barrows, which I must admit, was a rather unsettling and creepy thing to do, but we did find a couple of items to sell in town. We also got attacked by a couple more undead creatures, but they were easy to destroy.
We then headed back up to the dwarven citadel, where we ran into the dwarven smith on his way down the mountain, carrying the silver anvil over his head. He stopped and talked to us for a while, explaining how he would be able to craft finer weapons and armor with this anvil. He was very excited. We then continued on, but the dwarf saw Fred and, thinking Fred was a wild and dangerous shock lizard, he smashed him with the anvil. Poor Fred.
We eventually arrived at the room of dwarven heroes. We inserted the three keys and proceeded through a number of complicated traps that Gideon managed to disarm without too much difficulty. Gideon discovered one secret passage after tinkering with a false traps and lock mechanism. After we went through the secret passage and Gideon discovered another misleading path that lead through traps, I discovered another secret passage in the hallway just past the last secret passage and that led us to a room with two coffers that appeared to be filled with ancient gold coins. I discovered again, in that same room, another secret passage beneath a loose flagstone. But before we entered the secret passage, we decided to check out the two coffers. While doing this, Gideon noticed some movement in one of the coffers and told everyone to hold on for a second. He then withdrew one of his daggers and started to slowly bring it down into one of the coffers. All of a sudden Gideon shouted "run" and he ran off back down the hallway from which we came. None of us really understood what was going on or what Gideon was talking about, so we did not get out of the way before Constantine was attacked by some creature consisting entirely of clear, acidic slime. Then it turned out that there were two of these creatures and both of them must have been inside the coffers before. The two creatures attacked Constantine and Brom relentlessly and were very, very difficult to attack and damage. Gideon noticed that we had not run and that Brom and Constantine might be overwhelmed, so he came back and helped all of us fight these creatures off. In the end, Brom's clothing, armor and beard were all eaten away by the acidic slime of these creatures and Constantine did not fair much better. We then gathered up the gold coins, which it turned out were fewer than we had thought before because the coffers were shallower than they appeared from the outside. The coins were all ancient gold coins and weighed more than the typical gold coin of more recent civilizations. The coffers were dedicated to two dwarven sons from two different families who might have been warring against each other.
After getting the two cleaned up and covered up a bit more, Gideon and I crawled down beneath the loose flagstone, into the secret chamber and Gideon proceeded cautiously forward in a low-ceilinged chamber to discover a few old, oilcloth sacks. The sacks turned out to be containing the stolen heirlooms of the Wildsgate barony and a few bars of gold. So, Gideon and I hauled them back up to the others and we then headed back down to the foot of the mountain.
At the foot of the mountain, we camped for the night and rested up. We then proceeded onward to the town of Wildsgate. Once within the walls of Wildsgate, yet still outside of the town, we were blocked off to the town by Lady Aborn and about a half-score of mounted riders from the Outriders, including the captain of the Outriders. The Lady Aborn accused us of being in possession of the stolen heirlooms and threatened that if we did not hand them over that we would be placed under arrest. Constantine began an attempt to explain to her our intentions, but I already knew that there was no chance that we were getting out of there without a fight. I was positive that the White Lady had absolutely no intention of letting us walk away, no matter what we did. So, I attacked her. Actually, I was going to cast an offensive spell on her, but I then realized that she was too far away from me for that to work. So, I readied a protective spell for myself, but she and her mounted Outriders were too quick to react, so I failed to stay focused enough and failed the spell.
This battle was horrible. Most of us were horribly wounded in the end. The captain of the guard of Wildsgate came out of the town's inner gates with a score of lancers and charged our assailants. But Lady Aborn vanished and managed to get away from the battle safely. The captain of the guard commanded a cease of all fighting and charged one of the outriders, but seemed to overcompensate what appeared to be a fancy dismount, coupled with a powerful attack, and propelled himself in a quite uncontrolled manner off of his mount, careened off of Nel (who hardly noticed the hit) and plowed face-first into the hard-packed dirt of the well-trodden road. That action obviously failed to impress the Outriders, so the Outrider captain and his men continued to fight us. I managed to deliver a significant amount of damage to the Outrider captain with some spells, but he just would not stop. Finally, I tried to make it appear to the Captain of the guard as though I was only holding guard to defend myself by raising my bow in a defensive stance and watching the Outrider captain, but the outrider captain attacked me. I managed to loose one arrow into him at point blank, yet the captain still stood. He missed me with his first blow, but he managed to hit me with the second. Before that I was already in critical condition from him and his men and that last blow took me down.
Apparently, after that, Gideon, who had disappeared at some point when I was not looking, suddenly appeared behind the Outrider captain and cut him and his horse in half with the heirloom sword while the Outrider captain was trying to flee the scene. To top it off, Gideon followed up with the gruesome attack by bellowing "SURPRISE!" and scaring everyone who was not unconscious, dying or already dead half to death. I really wish I could have seen that.
After that, the three remaining Outriders surrendered. After seeing what Gideon did, I think they made a very smart decision. Brom revived me and a medic came around and gave us healing potions. At that time, we explained to the captain our story regarding the heirlooms and our initial encounter with Lady Aborn. The captain informed us that the Lady was, indeed, a criminal and then left to bring word of our actions and what had just occurred to the Regent. While he was off, I looted that bastard Outrider captain's corpse. During that time Gideon managed to get a trace of the Lady's tracks.
Coming as close to death as I did is really disturbing. I haven't even been around for a century. I have so much more I must experience and witness. I want to be around for a good few centuries. But there are wretched things that keep trying to kill me. And this most recent encounter was the closest of all. I don't like that.
Oh! Anyway, the captain came back and informed us that we must see the Baron immediately. So, in the horrible condition that we were, we had an audience with the Baron (or he had an audience with us). The Baron thanked us for our deeds and claimed that he owed us his life. He explained that the Lady Aborn had been exacting conspiracy against the Wildsgate throne for some time. He assured us that his scouts would report directly back to us on the whereabouts of Lady Aborn once they fully trail her and he then granted us many luxuries and a place to stay in what was formerly the Lady's tower.
So, we went up into the tower and got some rest. Early in the evening, though, Gideon disturbed our rest by setting fire to Lady Aborn's undergarments. He also managed to set free her familiar. That was an understandable mistake, though. I tried to explain to everyone why the familiar was a threat, but Constantine was very firm with the idea that I was putting them into danger by speaking to them of it. Humans are just too secretive, sometimes.
Later in the night, Gideon disturbed my rest, again, by calling my name. I walked upstairs and found him lying atop a raised surface covered with a blanket, in a rather strange and leisurely pose. Gideon is strange, but this was a very strange thing to stumble upon when I was so exhausted. I asked Gideon why he was posing like that and he asked told me he had something to show me that he did not trust the others to see. So, I closed the door and he lifted the blanket to show what he was lying on. There were six iron-banded chests that were marked as the property of the Baron of Wildsgate.
Gideon opened each chest, one-by-one, to reveal loads of gold, platinum and other items of value and currency. And one chest contained various items of great worth. One of which was a book in a sack. While Gideon was rummaging through these things, asking me if I had any unmarked chests that we could transplant the coins and gems to, I grabbed the book out of the sack and started to read it. Then I suddenly realized, six days later apparently, that I was in a different room, wearing a lovely belt, with a sign around my neck that had the words "No pickles!" and a spreading knife in my hand. According to Nel, after I opened the book, a snake came out of the book, bit me on the hand and then I was frozen in some form of stasis with an amber-colored forcefield encasing my body. I was in this state for six days. And obviously someone had been having fun at my expense.
After I was hit by this protective spell on the book, the Regent assessed my condition and explained to the rest of the group that the spell would wear off in a few days, then claimed the chests that Gideon had discovered beneath the floorboards of one of the rooms, but left the items of value from one chest behind. Since I was now free of the stasis spell, I was able to open the book that had cursed me in the first place and read it again, as Constantine claimed the book was now safe for reading. The book turns out to be a spellbook and it has spells in it. Most of the spells look necromantic to me, but it will take some more time for me to fully understand the writing.
At this time it was still afternoon on the sixth day in town and everyone (except for me, obviously) was eager to get moving out of town and after Lady Aborn and the vampire. But Nel convinced everyone that I needed the rest and so I headed out to make some quick transactions and get some supplies. Now, finally, I get to update my journal with the most recent events of the last couple weeks. Well, it's time for me to get some meditative rest. This really is a nice belt. It's nice to know that my companions will still share their findings with me, even when I am unconscious or otherwise incapable of interacting with the world.
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