The weather was hot and heavy as I slogged into the town of Aberwynn in Blackstone on the weekend of July 28th, 606. Aberwynn is located in Blackmoor, the southernmost barony of Blackstone. This was my first visit to this part of Blackstone. I had passed through the barony of Blackmoor many times on my way further north to Whitestaff and Haven and Firelight Cove, but this was my first chance to stay for any length of time.
I had been splitting my time over the last few months between the towns of Firelight Cove in Blackstone and Dalken in Therendry. The mayor of Aberwynn put out a call for adventurers to come help solve some problems he was having, so that was to be the destination this month. Mayor Greenbrook explained that recently spectral soldier were seen walking the streets of his town. This description closely matched a situation we encountered a year ago in the Great Dark Swamp, so we were being asked to see what we could do about it.
The oppressive heat and humidity that lay over the town like a warm wet blanket further brought to mind the trip to the Great Dark Swamp the previous year. The Great Dark Swamp lay just a little ways to the south and east, so perhaps this should not surprise me. Sadly, there isn’t too much you can do about the weather. I looked at my new suit of armor that I had hauled with me all the way from Therendry, and I just knew there was no way I was going to be putting it on. If it was this hot at midnight on Friday, it would be suicide to wear it during the day. Adventuring is nothing else if not a long series of adjustments and coping, so I stored away my armor and gear and headed into town to see what was up.
I got to the tavern and took stock of the turn out. It looked like none of the local nobility of Blackstone was in attendance. Baron Zug of Whiteman was there with his squire Kaiya, so I figured he would be running the show for the most part. The rest of the nobility present were all visiting from other duchies. Therendry was well represented. Dame Parthynia was there, and Count Simeon Silvercord had returned from six month sabbatical. Count Siranot Degauss was also taking a rare trip abroad. Viscount Telaris Macleod made the trip south to attend. From much further south, Sir Milo once again made the trip to Blackstone, and traveling with him was Squire Nightshine and Lord Zerr Trellious of Blackwell. This was the most nobility I had seen collected together in one place in quite some time.
The action started shortly after midnight. We heard some screams coming from outside, and when we stepped out of the tavern we found a rampaging band of orcs chasing a number of townfolk. The managed to catch up to them right on the very steps of the porch of the tavern, but then of course the doors opened and adventurers poured out like ants from a nest, and pretty soon there were orc parts flying everywhere.
After we defeated the first rush of orcs and took the rescued townfolks into the tavern, a few more stragglers came down the road and attacked. I went ahead and fought a little with these orc for no other reason than to get limbered up and to test how much trouble I was going to have with the heat. I ended up fighting beside Count Silvercord at one point, and I was amused to hear him comment about how out of practice he was.
Somebody found a note on one of the orc bodies. It seemed to be written in some sort of code. A couple of people took the note and the surviving townsfolk inside to see what they could learn about the situation. I briefly stepped inside the tavern, and then decided to rest outside on the porch. Even though it was sweltering outside, it was uncomfortably cold inside the tavern when I was covered up in sweat.
After a short time Sir Milo and Samara came out and joined me on the porch. I had briefly corresponded with Sir Milo previously, but other than that I had not spoken with either of them for any length before. Sir Milo discussed with me the matter about which we had corresponded (super secret hush hush stuff), and afterwards a few others matters of interest to him with I was surprised to find related to some of the things I was involved it. It was kind of a weird feeling to suddenly discover nobles taking an interest in things you are doing.
After this I went back inside the tavern to see how things were going in there. I saw that a few adventurers were talking to a new arrival. He was a tall darkhaired gentleman who was constantly scratching his head and scribbling away in a little notebook. When I walked over, I saw that he was some sort of sage or researcher or something similar. He was trying to ask people questions, but he couldn’t seem to keep a single train of thought in his head. He never finished his sentences, constantly interrupted himself, as was in general very difficult to understand or talk to.
About this time there was a commotion on the front porch of the tavern. Someone ran inside and explained there were some kind of weird beetles attacking, and that magic weapons caused them no harm. I told the absentminded sage that maybe he ought to go investigate that. He agreed and we went ahead and took a look.
It was mostly over by the time we got there. A bunch of beetles and beetle parts lay strewn about, and people were wiping gloppy goo off their weapons. As we stood there another group of weird looking beetles came out of the woods and attacked the people standing on the porch. Sure enough, only silver and normal weapons would harm them.
To me, this was an especially cruel joke. I was just coming off of a long campaign against a group of lycanthropes that were menacing the town of Dalken inTherendry. These lycanthropes were also practically immune to magic weapons. Thus, I had not gotten a good chance to use my nice magic long sword in quite a while. I could only hope that the beetles would prove the exception rather than the rule.
Once the beetles realized that not EVERY adventurer in Blackstone is armed with a magic weapon they stopped attacking. I went back inside the tavern along with the sage and everyone else, and I got myself something to drink. A few minutes later Sir Milo called me over to where the sage and Samara and a few other were standing.
He asked if I like exploring and looking for things, and I answered that I certainly did, and so he assigned me to assist Samara. Samara had gotten a list from the sage of a bunch of local legends and mysteries that he wanted investigated. Samara was going to lead a team of about six people out to see what could be found.
This suited me just fine. I spend a lot of time off in the woods just looking for anything of interest. It would be nice to have something specific for which to search for a change. Assembling our group of six searchers took a little while, but soon enough Samara led myself, Kaiya, Pumpher, and two out of towners named Orison and Beck out to scour the lands for clues.
The sage had a number of mysteries he wanted investigated. One involved a rumor of there being a stone in the middle of the forest that talked. There was also supposed to be a well that talked, a tree that walked, and glowing lights that floated off into the forest. We decided to start with the talking stone. We asked the sage if he knew the general direction we should be searching, and he made some vague gesture towards the forest. With nothing better to go on, we set off.
While I was pretty excited about the idea at first, it didn’t take long for me to rethink my enthusiasm. It was pitch black dark. We had no idea where this rock was, or what it looked like. We were blindly stumbling around in the woods, and I was calling out “Hello? Roooock! Where are you rock?” like I was looking for my lost dog. After a while I began to feel distinctly silly.
We kept this up for about half an hour before we decided we were wasting our time. Samara made the decision to call off the hunt until the morning when it would be possible to see what we were looking for. I hate quitting on something I started, but I also didn’t want to miss any of the real action because I refused to stop looking for a rock in the woods in the dark, so we all headed back to the tavern.
By this time the note found on the orcs had been deciphered. For those of you interested in such things, it was a slight variation on a single substitution cipher. All the words had an even number of letters, and each grouping of two letters represented a single letter in the cipher. I’m not sure who figured it out, but I know Count Silvercord and Squire Nightshine both had a copy of the cipher when they were done.
Nightshine told me that the message said something to the effect that we had to travel to some place called Hook Pass, and that we would find the secret there encased in iron. Well, we didn’t know what the secret was that we were looking for, but at least we knew where to find it now. Or at least, we knew the name of the place.
We asked around in the tavern, but no one seemed to have heard of Hook Pass, nor could we find it on any maps. Nightshine decided to go off to the house of Mayor Greenbrook, who was the guy who had originally invited us all the Aberwynn. We figured that if anyone knew where Hook Pass was, it would be him.
We found the good Mayor at his house, and he gave us directions to a place off towards the mountains called Hook Pass. Nightshine and I and a handful of other traveled in that direction for a while until we came upon the pass. I’m not sure how it got it’s name, because it didn’t look like a hook, and wasn’t even a proper pass. It was more a twisting canyon that ran up into a set of hills.
As we traveled along the canyons we began to encounter old crumbling ruins set back into the walls. Most of these seem to be pretty badly decayed and empty. The canyon then opened up into a wider sort of bowl, and at the back of this was a slightly more intact set of ruined walls and buildings. Inside of this we could see rank after rank of dark iron golems.
We spent a minute or two trying to see if there was anything else to learn here. Our small group was not about to assault such a strong force of golems. Fearing to get any closer, we went ahead and returned the way we had come and made our way back to the tavern to report what we had found to the assembled nobles.
We had to wait around for a little while before we could collect up the town to go take care of the iron golems. Viscount Telaris first wanted to take care of a matter with Hooch. In the past couple of weeks there had been some reports of mysterious rumbles and unexplained mystical attacks on the various permanent circles of power in the towns throughout Blackstone. Hooch wanted a Dream Vision formal cast on him to see what he could learn about this affair. We waited around for about twenty minutes while the necessary items for the formal were assembled, and the formal was cast. Then it was time to march.
It was fairly late at this point. I think it was already past three in the morning. I don’t believe many people had gone off to bed yet, though. The force that marched off to Hook Pass was pretty formidable both in terms of number and experience. I suspected we would have very little trouble kicking the tin cans around the valley, unless there was some sort of surprise waiting for us.
When we marched up to the ruin, the golems activated and moved forward to attack us. As I suspected, our strength was more than adequate to the task of defeating them. In the back there was a large armored golem that I presume was in fact just that, an armor golem. It was a tough nut to crack, but it was unique and shiny and so drew a whole lot of attention from the ranks of the powerful fighters and mages in our group, and it got demolished in short order.
When people pawed through the wreckage of the armor golem, someone came across a small round speckled cylinder. In the center of the ruins where the golems were stationed was a similar looking speckled stone pylon. It was a cone about ten inches wide at the base and a foot and a half tall, and the top was flat with a large hole in it. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the speckled cylinder fit in the stone pylon.
We all stood back and gave the pylon a wide berth. The key was taken to the pylon and placed in the hole. The pylon then began to glow, but nothing further happened. We figured there had to be more to it than this. Lord Zerr decided to use the cantrip Lore of the Ancients on the stone pylon to see if he could identify its properties. He explained that he merely learned that this pylon was one of three.
I didn’t have anything to add to this particular activity, so I walked over to a nearby bench and settled down beside it to rest while everyone discussed the pylon. As I did so, I practically sat on a small wooden chest that was crammed under the bench. I didn’t look like it had been disturbed yet. While everyone else was screwing around with the goofy glowy pillar thing, I quickly went over the chest to make sure there were no traps. Once satisfied that there were none, I concealed the chest beneath my shield and sat on the bench and waited.
Now that the excitement was over, and there didn’t look to be anything else to do, people began to drift back towards the tavern. Viscount Telaris walked over and sat down beside me and asked how I was doing. He said I looked as if something was troubling me. I assured him that this was not the case, and that I was doing quite well. I figured he would be as good a person as any to take charge of the treasure box, so I reached under the bench and pulled out the box and handed it over to him. He looked at me kind of funny and shook his head, but he went ahead and took charge of the box.
We all went back to the tavern and proceeded to pass out the treasure. There was a fair amount of potions and elixirs and such, as well as some coins and components. One weird thing was that there were around ten scrolls in the box, and every one of them was a wizard lock scroll. We didn’t quite know what to make of that. All these items were quickly handed out.
There was also a magic item of some sort, but for the life of me I can’t recall exactly what it was. I remember that it wasn’t something immensely powerful. By this time there were only around a dozen of us left in the tavern. We didn’t even do a drawing for the item. We talked about who it would help out best, and after a few of us decline to take it, it was given to one of the newer adventurers.
That pretty much wrapped things up for the first night in the town of Aberwynn. We all separated and went to our separate cabins and bedded down for what was left of the night. We still hadn’t seen any of the spectral soldiers we were here to investigate, but we found one of the three pylons. Of course we had no idea what the pylon are about, or why we need to find then, but I’m sure all that will be revealed in time. Now was the time to try to get a few hour of rest before tomorrow, which was in all likelihood going to be very trying physically.
Saturday morning dawned all too soon, and all to warm for my tastes. Still, there was no point spending the whole morning in bed. Despite the very late hour that we all retired, I was eager to be up and about as early as possible. It was my hope to be able to get some exploring done in the cool of the morning before things became too uncomfortably hot.
I did manage to get up before noon, which I suppose is early by some people’s standard. A little after ten in the morning I emerged from my cabin after taking a shower and getting my items all arranged. The coolness of the morning turned out to be rather illusory. I had barely walked a hundred yards from my door before I was soaked in sweat.
The first item of interest I noticed as I left my cabin was a large flat rock with a red skull painted on it. It was somewhat flat and about the size of a dinner plate. It lay on the porch of the cabin next to mine, where I believe Katherine VonSering was staying. A short distance away I found a second similar rock resting on the porch of another unoccupied cabin. I looked over the rocks carefully and turned them this way and that, but I could find no hidden meaning or purpose to them, so I left them there and made my way towards the tavern.
A few people were already up and about as well. I saw a few sleepy faced adventurers moping about the tavern, and I passed two of the locals on the porch. One was a thin balding man with dirt on his hands. The other was a boney woman with some kind of red rag tied on her head and a garish black, red and blue poncho. These two seemed to be having some kind of disagreement, so I let them be.
As I set waiting for my breakfast to be made, I saw that Hooch and Guido were over in the corner haggling with a fast talking gypsy merchant. The gypsy had a number of gems spread out on the table, and he was trying to interest Hooch in purchasing some of them. He handed me a stone to examine, and it looked like something he had picked up beside the road on the way into town. Not all of his stones were quite so worthless, though. He had a number of emeralds and sapphires that were worth a number of gold. Earlier the previous evening I had purchased an emerald from the Mystic Wood Elf Beck, who had found it on one of the orcs. I didn’t know what I would do with the one gemstone I already had, so I declined to purchase any more.
My breakfast arrived and I sat down to eat it. Some more people began to filter in, and several of them had noticed the same red skull rocks that I had found spread about town. All told there were I believe four of them. When the gypsy trader heard us talking about the rocks, he expressed an interest in them. I half jokingly offered to trade him one in exchange for one of his stones. He immediately agreed to the arrangement, and offered me a sapphire. The sapphire was clearly flawed, and on closer examination I figured it was worth only a few silver. Still, that was easy money. He instructed me to bring the stone to the tavern and to leave it with the tavernkeeper, and then he took his leave.
I continued with my breakfast, and presently struck up a conversation with one of the locals I had noticed earlier. The tall thing guy with the bald head and grubby hands came in and took a seat near mine. I learned that his name was Gregor, and that he was a beet farmer by trade. He had been arguing with his neighbor Jessup when I had seen him earlier. Jessup lets her cows wander onto Gregor’s land, which she claims is her own. I got the impression this was a longstanding feud between them.
After I finished my breakfast I bid Gregor farewell and headed back to my cabin. I wanted to pick up one of those red skull rocks and get it delivered to the taverkeeper before I either forgot or they disappeared and I ended up with a gypsy curse. My cabin was well to the other side of town, so I took a round about path to it so that I could get a little more exploring in. Not too far from my cabin I found what appeared to be a nest of spiders underneath a tree, and I decided to investigate that further at a later time.
I got one of the red skull rocks and hauled it back to the tavern. I turned it over to the tavernkeeper and then headed back outside. My first thought was to take another crack at looking for the rock that speaks that we never found the night before, but then I saw Pumpher and Katheryn De’kiernan heading out into the woods. They looked like they had something interesting to do, so I caught up with them and invited myself along.
Katheryn gave me a sidelong look, but Pumpher didn’t seem to mind. They were following up some kind of clue that had gotten earlier that directed them to search a nearby cave. After a little bit of searching around we came upon a field that had the cave to the rear of it. Milling about the field was a pack of rather mangy looking wolves.
The wolves looked rather small and underfed, so I reasoned we should be able to handle them. I put my sword and shield to use and clobbered a couple of them. Katheryn pulled out some gas globes and took out a few that way. Pumpher used a few odds and ends of spells, and pretty soon we worked out way over to the cave.
Katheryn ran into the cave and started rooting around in a pile of ill smelling rubbish and old gnawed bones. One of the wolves that was left was wobbling around the field in circles due to a vertigo courtesy of Katheryn, and Pumpher had gotten a shun spell off on the other one. Pumpher stood in the door of the cave, which effectively kept us safe from the one wolf. We stayed that way until Katheryn found what she was looking for, which turned out to be a page that had been torn from a book. She seemed a bit disappointed. I think she was hoping to find the whole book.
Once we had fought our way back clear of the cave we looked over the page. It was some kind of alchemical recipe for an insecticide gas poison. It listed the various ingredients that were required as well as the method of manufacture. Katheryn explained that she needed to take it to the town alchemist, which was some guy named Malcolm. In the meantime, since we had gotten Katheryn’s little errand taken care of and out of the way, I asked the two of them if they wanted to come investigate the spider’s nest with me. The agreed, and we set off in that direction.
The nest was right where I had found it earlier. It was crawling with numerous small spiders. Luckily, none of them seemed up to the task of physically entangling with webs, so I thought we might have a chance against them despite their numbers. Right in the middle of the nest was a small box, and that was our goal.
I moved up to the front and started fighting, and Katheryn and Pumpher stood behind me. I took a couple of stabs at the bugs, and a bunch of them jumped up and bit me. Katheryn leaned over and stuck her paw on my shoulder and left it there, and it took me a few seconds to figure out what the in heck she was trying to do. For a moment I thought she was trying to push me into the nest. I’m not accustomed to having a healer on my back.
Pumpher decided to get into the fight. He gathered up his mystical energies and called out “With mystic force I web you!” I actually stopped what I was doing and turned around and looked at him. I think some of the spiders did as well.
“They are freaking spiders!” I said. “What were you thinking?”
“Well, a few spiders are affected by webs.” he said.
I wasn’t about to argue the point then and there. I went back to hacking at the spiders. I seemed to be giving just about as good as I got, but right about then Katheryn cast one last heal spell and then stepped back and said “That’s it. All out.” Oh, that’s right. Katheryn isn’t a scholar. You would think the fact that we just hunted up an alchemy recipe for her would have clued me in to that, don’t you think?
I now figured there was no way we were going to clear the entire nest, and I guess Katheryn came to the same conclusion as I did. I made a couple of flailing swings at the closest spiders, and Katheryn ducked past me and made a grab for the box. I took a couple of hits, but it looked like we were just about in the clear. One of the spiders made a move toward Katheryn, and she grabbed the box by the lid and whipped around to run back out of the nest...
...and the box popped open and stuff flew everywhere. Katheryn said a most unladylike word and ran back behind me again with the now nearly empty box. Well, I figured in for a penny, in for a platinum. I was getting pretty banged up by this point, but I wasn’t ready to leave yet. I shifted a little bit to the side again and made some slapping swings at the closest spiders to attract their attention. When they moved over towards me I started fighting very defensively, and Katheryn made another dash for the treasure.
Surprisingly, this actually seemed to work. I managed to fend off the two spiders for a few seconds, and by the time they noticed Katheryn again she had already grabbed up the bulk of the treasure except for a few coins. When they turned her way she skidaddled back out of the nest and we took off back towards the tavern.
The three of us went back inside the tavern and sat down to sort out our stuff. We had a couple of coins, and a handful of potions, elixirs, scrolls and so forth. We divided them up into piles and started the process of getting it all identified and labeled. Right in the middle of doing this we were interrupted by a commotion coming from the other side of the tavern. A bunch of giant, vicious cockroaches had come crawling out from the cracks in the walls and floors, and people were smashing the nasty things.
I tried to just ignore them, but pretty soon they were crawling out of the cracks of the walls on our side of the tavern. Tomas and some of the other wolven that were sitting nearby jumped up to squash them, and I thought at first to just let them have the bugs. Then I noticed that they were looting something from the cockroaches. At that point, I figured I should probably do my fair share of cleaning up the tavern like everyone else.
The vermin kept coming out of the walls for about the next five minutes or so, and eventually we either killed them all or we killed all the dumb ones stupid enough to come out during the day. I kept racing Tomas for the cockroaches and trying to search them before he did. Every one of them that I searched had a scroll, and most of them were dragon’s breath scrolls. I alternated between giving them to Tomas and Pumpher.
Once the bugs were all gone, we got a visit from Rainbow. We had not seen Rainbow at all the previous gathering in Firelight Cove, and her absence was much remarked upon. There had been several rumors circulating to the effect that she was either dead or undead or somehow in trouble. However, she gave every appearance of being her same old self. She was even playing her same old game.
Well, actually, she was somewhat mad because her game was over. She typically plays a game where she asks people to draw a token from her bag, and the person who gets the special token get a prize. This time the second person who drew got the silver piece from among to bag of copper, and thus ended the game.
She wanted to have a new game for a new prize, but she needed a new silver piece, which I happily supplied. In fact, I pulled two silver pieces from my pouch, and gave her one. When it became my turn to draw, I pulled a nice shiny silver piece from the bag. Of course it was the second silver piece that I had palmed prior to reaching in, but I made the fact pretty obvious for those who were looking. Rainbow asked if I would like to visit a volcano, and I politely declined and let the game continue.
Eventually someone won, and Rainbow sat down to socialize a little with those present. I was actually hoping to get a chance to speak to Rainbow about some things that had happened in previous gatherings that I didn’t understand and that I thought she could explain. But about this time someone came in and announced that the orcs had kidnapped Gregor the beet farmer, and that we all needed to go rescue him.
I thought perhaps I could speak to Rainbow on the way to the orc encampment. The problem was that Hooch also wanted to speak to Rainbow, and he was much more insistent. I was able to ask Rainbow what she knew about the weird Fae Undead we had seen a few months ago. She only replied that they had some kind of name that sounded like lemony. After that Hooch buttonholed her and became discussing some kind of bizarre sounding plan to protect one of the nobles for which he needed her help, and so I left the two of the alone and hurried to catch up with everyone else.
We came to a field, and sure enough there were orcs and there was Gregor. The battle itself was just your standard stab the orc, loot the orc, stab the orc, loot the orc affair. In the end, the orcs were all stabbed and looted and Gregor was rescued. There was a large chest sitting off to the side, and I was asked to make sure it wasn’t trapped. It wasn’t, of course, but I had to put on a decent show of poking it and prodding it and peering inside. The box contained some treasure and another coded note much like the one that was found the previous evening. Parthynia asked me to hold the note and guard it.
As we were about to leave the area and escort Gregor back to his beloved beet fields, some of us noticed a neighboring field where there was a bit of a commotion going. A group of about ten of us let by Count Deguass decided to investigate. We found a wheat farmer who was beside himself because of a plague of locusts that were destroying his field. Sure enough, there were about two dozen locusts about the size of billy goats hopping and munching around in the field. Now I can see why they need an insecticide gas poison. Every time I turn around there are more giant bugs.
We agreed to help him out, and so we all set out to eradicate the locusts. It was a pretty low intensity fight. The locusts weren’t exactly ganging up on us or anything, so we could pick and choose our targets and fight them just a few at a time. I saw that Orison had a handful of bricks that he was using to chuck at the locusts, and so I pulled out my throwing dagger as well. I was kind of fun tossing the dagger and bricks back and forth and bouncing them off the bugs.
Once we finished off the locusts and received the heartfelt thanks from the wheat farmer, we went on back to the tavern and hooked up with everyone else. I remembered that I still had that coded message shoved up my sleeve. Squire Nightshine said she had a copy of the cipher from the note the previous evening, so I went over to a table and helped her decode this message. And by help her, I mean that I held the rolled up piece of paper open on the table while she wrote out the answer. I learned that among my list of useful and essential adventuring skills I can now add paperweight.
The note was written with the same code as the previous note, so it only took a short time for Nightshine to decode it. I don’t recall the exact words, but the note indicated that the next secret would be found in the ruins of Treldor, and that only one who was keen of mind would be able to find the path.
We asked around among the locals and finally got directed to where the ruins of Treldor lay. It turned out that they lay in a cave a little ways off from town. When we all got there we found that the cave was serving as the hideout for a band of thieves and brigands. We went through the perfunctory process of trying to talk them into leaving peacefully and such, but all too soon the gas globes were flying and the swords were swinging.
The bandits really were that much of a match for all of us. We had them bottled up at the mouth of the cave, and they were clearly unwilling to retreat back further into the cave from where they were at. They kept going on about how the gargoyles were going to get us all. Well, the bandits certainly weren’t going to get us, and in a short time they were all dead or routed.
We moved a bit further into the cave and found what had to be the gargoyles. They were all shaped like gargoyles, but they were standing in two lines on either side of the cave passage, motionless as statues. Everyone there knew what was going to happen next. Sure enough, the Mystic Wood Elf Beck dashed down the tunnel in between the two lines, and the gargoyles all animated and attacked.
They were a bit tougher than the bandits, but still nothing that the entire groups of us couldn’t handle. We began to slowly push them back, and pretty soon we could see what had to be the ruin of Treldor. There were a number of alcoves off to the side of a large cave as well as a few rooms with doors. As most of the people battled the gargoyles, some of us fanned out and began exploring the cave.
What we found tucked into the various rooms and alcoves were a number of small puzzles. Each consisted of a stone slab with a number of holes in it. Some of the holes were filled with round colored pegs, and some were empty. Each had a small phrase written above it. In the back of the cave beside the last puzzle was a pile of colored pegs and a locked door. As best as I can remember it, here is a description of each puzzle.
…a watery jail…
Empty slot – Red Peg – Indigo Peg – Empty slot
…blue bassinet owner…
Empty slot – Orange Peg – Empty Slot
…a crystal ball…
Empty slot – Red Peg – empty slot
…a wall climber..
Empty slot – Violet Peg – Empty slot
…partner of vim…
Empty Slot – Indigo Peg – Green Peg – Empty Slot – Empty Slot
…combination of them all…
5 empty slots
Nightshine and Lord Zerr stood in the back by the last puzzle and the pegs and the locked door. Some of us kept the gargoyles busy, and some of us ran around finding all the puzzles. When we found one, we came back to the group at the last puzzle and described it while they wrote it down.
We knew that we needed to take pegs from the pile of loose pegs and plug them into the various puzzles. We fiddled around with various strategies for deciding which peg goes where. The first break was when we realized that the short phrases were riddles, and that led us to realize that we need to substitute letters for the pegs based on the first letter of its color. Thus we had Red = R, Orange = O, Yellow = Y, Green = G, Blue = B, Indigo = I, and Violet = V.
I’ll not reveal the answers to the various riddles in case anyone wishes to try to figure then out on their own. We did have a little trouble amongst ourselves trying to decide which of the purple pieces represented Indigo, and which was Violet. The toughest puzzle was the last one that had 5 empty slots. We figured it out at the end when we had only 5 pegs left, so we knew all the letters (YOVRI). Once we got that figured out we started sticking pegs in the empty holes.
Each time we got the proper pegs into the puzzles, the puzzle would begin to glow. When we completed the last puzzle near the locked door, it began to glow and another one of the goofy speckled key pegs fell out. Then the locked door clicked open. We opened it up and found a small room with another one of the stone pedestals and a treasure box. Lord Zerr grabbed the box, and Nightshine inserted the peg into the pedestal. When she did so, the pedestal began to glow and the room began to shake for a moment. Luckily it stopped before we all wedged ourselves in the doorway trying to get out.
So the second pedestal had been found and activated. We still didn’t know their purpose, or where the third pedestal was to be found. It was now around four o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun was beginning to beat down a bit less harshly. The townsfolk had previous said that they would open there shops at four, and so we hurried back to town to split the treasure and to get ready for that.
This makes a good spot to leave off with this tale for now. I hope to post its conclusion later tonight before I must depart for the deep south.
Following the battle in the cave with the puzzle, we all filtered back to town. It was getting close to five o’clock, and as the sun got lower things began to cool off just a little bit. We split of the treasure, and people began to split up and head out on their own private business. Many of the people headed over to the main part of town where we had been promised that shops would be opening up.
I headed in that direction myself. I arrived a bit later than most people, and so business was proceeding briskly by the time I got there. The first place I stopped in was the general merchandise store. In addition to some normal items such as quills, pouches and the like, there was also a large assortment of alchemical items for sale. The shop was also equipped with an alchemy workshop, and some people were taking advantage of this. I believe Katheryn and some others managed to create some of the insecticide gas poison at this point.
The prices were quite reasonable, but I was perilously low on funds at that time. I decided to look around a bit more before committing to any purchase. The next stop on the line was the scroll workshop. I didn’t spend too much time there before heading over to the blacksmith. The blacksmith was looking rather glum. Of all the shops, his was by far the least busy. He had a number of people hanging about to talk with him, but no one was interested in normal swords and axes and such.
I remembered that I had both the nice emerald that I had purchased from Beck the previous evening as well as the somewhat crappy sapphire I had gotten in trade for one of the red skull rocks earlier in the morning. The blacksmith said he was not interested in gems, but suggested I try the scroll merchant. The scroll merchant agreed to buy both gems for a sum of five gold pieces, which I judged to be a bargain by a few silver pieces. With these coins supplementing the ones I already had, I went back to the general merchandise store and bought a couple of elixirs and vorpal coatings.
I was now pretty well stocked with items, and out of money, so I headed back to the tavern. I went inside and ordered dinner and spent a leisurely time eating and socializing. Right after I had finished my meal I spotted two elves through the tavern window. They were approaching the tavern, and each was dressed in bright blue. They looked rather grim, and given their colors and demeanor I judged them to most likely belong to General Sor-banes group of rebel elves.
I wasn’t expecting to see any of these elves so far south. I had gotten the impression somehow that Sor-bane operated mostly to the north where we had been previously adventuring. Perhaps his area of operation is larger than I was led to believe, of perhaps these two elves were sent here to spy on us.
They gave every impression of being spies, or at least nosey. They came up to the tavern and peeked in, but wouldn’t speak to anyone. They then moved off down the path towards the other side of town where a number of people had their cabins. I was somewhat surprised by what I judged to be a lack of concern from most people. No one really seemed interested or motivated to see to the matter.
So, I took it upon myself to do a little spying on the spies. I ducked out the opposite of the tavern and jumped over into the woods. Through the trees I could fairly easily spot the bright blue cloaks of the two elves as they moved down the trail. I stayed even with them for a while until they moved up into the upper side of town where several people had their cabins. I was concerned that they would run into someone unawares, and that there would be trouble.
They milled about this area of town for a few minutes, and then continued to move towards the very far side of town. I left the woods and crossed through the cabin area and moved to the opposite side of the road and continued to follow them. Once again, they moved into the area where the next set of cabins were and began to mill around. This was where my cabin was, and I was most curious to see if they would be foolish enough to look inside. The front door to my cabin was not warded, but it was stoutly trapped.
As it turns out, they seemed to have little interest in the cabins. The moved through the area and began to enter the woods on the far side. I was quite curious to find out where they might be going at this point. The paused just inside the woods and just stood there for a bit. I moved up a little closer to get a better look, and then I realized what was going on. A group of around ten adventurers entered the cabin area from the direction of the tavern. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who decided to follow the two elves.
The adventurers were approaching the elves, and they looked like they were going to stand there and wait for them. I figured there was going to be a short period and calling back and forth, and then everyone would jump all over the elves. Odds were that I wasn’t needed, but just in case, I thought I might circle around and get behind the elves. Who knows, maybe I might even be able to do something in the fight.
I got up from where I was hiding, and began to circle around in the woods. I had been out in this area of the woods earlier in the day, so I thought I knew where I was going. I moved around the far side of a bit of a slope and then angled back towards where I thought the elves were standing. I believe I swung a bit wider in my loop than I had meant to, because I didn’t come out exactly where I though I would.
I stopped for a moment to looked around, and finally saw a corner of one of the cabin on the edge of the clearing. Using that to orient myself, I realized I was standing practically in the same spot the elves were in, yet I didn’t see either them or the rest of the adventurers. So if they weren’t standing here, and they weren’t in front of me in the clearing with the cabins…
I turned around, and sure enough there they were. They were about fifteen yards behind me approaching up a small path. I immediately began to move towards the cabins and explained I was out looking for my friends, and asked if they had seen them. Their response was “With mystic force I pin you, with mystic force I bind you.” Okay, I didn’t figure I was going to be able to talk my way out of it.
Luckily their first spells were hastily thrown from a good distance away. I leapt out of the way and took off running back towards the main part of town. The pursued me and kept up a steady stream of spells, but the distance and the running combined to keep the aim from being very good. Once I broke out of the woods and into the clearing I could see that the main group of adventurers were only a short ways off and walking back to the tavern.
The elves broke off pursuit when they saw they would not catch me before I would reach the other group. The turned around and melted back into the woods. I stopped to catch my breath and to assure everyone that I was fine. I decided to press my luck just a little bit, and I crept back into the woods to see if maybe I could do a little more spying on these elves. After about ten minutes of creeping and searching, I was unable to find them. After this I gave up and headed back to the tavern myself.
The two elves may very well have been spies or scouts. Not long after I got back someone looked out the back of the tavern and shouted that the elves were attacking. This time it looked like there was close to ten or so of them. I recalled how the elves in a previous attack on the tavern in Firelight Cove had blown through our defenses pretty easily, so I turned around and ducked out the opposite door.
Once outside I peeked into the window to see how things were going. The battle line seemed to be about in the center of the tavern, and our line looked pretty strong. I thought this might be a good time to see if I could circle the tavern and sneak in behind them through the door they originally came in. I crouched down below the windows and duckwalked my way to the other side of the tavern. However, when I turned the corner I was surprised to see they had left someone to guard the door to their back. Sadly, he wasn’t surprised to see me.
He started chucking spells at me, and I scrambled to get back out of the way behind the corner of the building. Then I heard some other people fighting at the door and figured that some other people had snuck around the opposite side of the tavern. I popped back around the corner and saw that I was right. However, the battle inside the tavern was going so well that the elves were all getting pushed back out this door, and now there were three of them on the porch, including one with a big polearm.
I jumped forward to try to stab the polearm guy, and I got a chest full of metal for my effort. I hit the ground hard and lay there for a while until everyone else had cleaned up the elves and someone came over to get me healed. I sat there for a short moment pondering the errors of my strategy, but my contemplation was interrupted by another group of elves emerging from the woods to attack.
I believe that in total there were three or four small waves of around ten or twelve elves. We defeated each group in turn without a great deal of effort. After it was all over and I had a chance to think about it, these elves turned out to be much weaker spellcasters than the ones we had fought in Firelight cove. In previous battles, nearly every elf was casting dragons breaths and imprisons. These elves cast mostly binding spells and some lower level damage spells.
I began to think that maybe they sent the light troops to backwaters like Aberwynn, and had the shock troops on the front lines in places like Firelight Cove. But then again, Firelight Cove is the very definition of a backwater. No matter. I didn’t waste too much time trying to figure it out.
It was now finally beginning to get dark. I still found the tavern to be uncomfortably cool, so I decided to take a little time to rest outside on the porch. There wasn’t anyone else around, though, and I have always felt a little uncomfortable being alone on the tavern porch. That is always the first place the monsters hit.
So I did the next best think. A short distance from the porch was a jumble of fallen trees that had been knocked down in a storm. One of the trees was fairly broad and level, and it was just a short distance from both the path leading to town and the porch. I like to sit there sometimes to keep a watch on things around the tavern. It was dark enough in that spot so that I’m not easily seen.
So I sat down on my little roost and even began to doze off after a while. At one point I could see someone approach the tavern, but then they moved off down the path towards town. Not long after I heard some fighting in that direction, and then Nasreen cried out for help.
I jumped off my log and worked my way out of the brush I was standing in. Others in the tavern heard the shout as well, and pretty soon about six of us were running down the path. We found some creepy undead thing beating the tar out of Nasreen. We all jumped on the thing and chopped it to bits. Nasreen pointed up the trail where Darius lay in a heap, and someone ran up to him and got him back on his feet. Nasreen said something to the effect that they had just gotten back from walking Katherine to her cabin.
The creepy undead was a pretty tough customer, and he took a pretty good beating from us. I could tell that if I ran into one of those alone there would be no way I could defeat it. This observation was pertinent, because I had just decided that I needed to go to my cabin at the opposite end of town in order to change my clothes and some equipment. I really didn’t feel like asking a bunch of people to go with me all the way to the other side of town, so I decided to risk it on my own.
I told a few people who were now sitting on the porch where I was going and what route I was taking. That way if I started yelling for help they would have some idea where to run. In then headed to my cabin by a wide circuitous route. I skipped the obvious and short path that lead directly to where I was going. I walked around the edge of town until I got to my cabin.
When I went inside, I thought that if I turned on the light, it would be like a beacon for monsters everywhere. So instead I went about the cabin trying to swap out equipment and get dressed in the dark. It was an interesting little exercise. All the time I kept hearing noises outside that made me think someone or something was creeping around. I figured I was probably fairly safe, though. In an emergency, I would have cast a circle of power using a magic item I had. I had a circle already prepared in a corner of the cabin. Also, I knew that Katherine had just gone to her warded cabin, which was next to mine. If I ran into trouble I could call out to her, and she should be able to fetch help.
One I had finished my affairs I made my way back to the tavern. When I got there, the first person I saw sitting on the porch was Katherine. It seems I misunderstood Nasreen earlier. Katherine wasn’t safe in her ward within earshot of my cabin. I believe she must have been talking about Katheryn. Oh well.
As I went up to the door of the tavern, I though I could see a little bit of blue light shining onto the trees at the far side. I walked through the tavern and opened the opposite door and looked out. There in front of me on the path right at the treeline was a blue and orange glowing ball swinging back and forth.
One of the strange rumors that the sage we met the first night wanted investigating was glowing blue ball in the woods. Here surely was the ball he was referring to. I stepped back inside and looked around for someone to go with me to check it out. I was a little surprised to no one was interested, but eventually Simeon and Lilly the tavern keeper stepped outside to take a look.
Lilly stayed on the porch, but Simeon and I slowly approached the swinging ball. When we got closer, I saw that the ball was on a string, and that it was being swung be a small boy. When I got closer still, I realized what was going on.
“What is it?” Lilly asked from the porch. I told her that it was her kitchen helper and food server. “Gus? Is that you? You get up here in this porch right now!” Lilly then proceeded to scold her young charge and to hustle him back into the kitchen.
The mystery having been solved, I went back inside the tavern and socialized for a bit. It was around this time that I learned another one of the sage’s rumors had been solved. Squire Nightshine had discovered the talking rock that we had looked for the previous evening. Sometime in the afternoon she was part of a group that found an ancient stone golem in the woods. It said it was guarding the spot as ordered by his master, who had then stepped away. The master had been gone for around a hundred years by this point, but lacking any further instructions the golem remained guarding the spot, and I presume that is where it is today.
As things would have it, a few minutes later I stepped out on the porch of the tavern, and what should appear before me but a glowing blue light bobbing in the distance. It weaved its way through the woods and made its way over to the tavern, and passed around to the other side. I figured this must be the real think, so I hurried around to investigate. I ended up catching up to Viscount Silvercord and on other, and we followed the light as it made its way into town.
When we caught up to the light we saw that it shown from the spectral form of a peasant. He was completely immaterial and would not respond to anything we said or did. We followed the ghostly peasant into town and a short ways into the woods until it came before a cave. From out of the cave rushed an equally spectral dire dear. The ghostly bear ripped the peasant apart and devoured him, and then returned to its cave and disappeared. After this ghostly tableau finished, the glow of the light shrunk down to a tiny ball and slowly sunk into the ground in front of the cave and was gone.
Since there was only a few of us, we decided not to immediately investigate the cave. We went back to the tavern to find some others. Since I knew that Viscount Telaris had a particular strong interest in eradicating bears of all sorts, we made sure to include him in on the trip. We gathered a band of about eight people and went to investigate the cave. Sadly, it was a bit anticlimactic. The cave proved to be extremely small, and extremely empty.
So once more we headed back to the tavern. The next order of business was the planning process for Tomas/Althkaelis’ race change formal. Although it seems for the time being he is going to be sticking with his new name, he made it known that the wolven race turned out to not be well suited to him. He was seeking to regain his former race of Quentari Elf. Viscount Telaris, who made secret of the fact he thought the race change to wolven was a foolish idea in the first place, was giving Tomas quite a hard time about the process.
Telaris and Zug proposed this idea. They would hold a raffle. For ten pieces of gold, anyone could place a slip of paper in a hat listing a race to change Tomas into. At the end of the raffle, a slip of paper would be drawn, and that would be the race he was changed into. Proceeds of the raffle would go to benefit the “Slaughter All Bears Wildlife Fund”, a charitable organization run by Viscount Telaris. I’m not sure whether the idea was discarded or whether he got real lucky on the draw, but sometime later Tomas returned to the tavern as a Quentari Elf once more.
While all this was going on, I saw Nasreen come into the tavern along with another lady I did not recognize. They approached Baron Zug, and the lady knelt down before him, clearly signifying that she was not an adventurer. Nasreen pulled out another of the round speckly peg key things. I walked over to see what this was about, but then Nasreen gave me the fisheye look. I figured if it involved the stone pylons, I would find out soon enough, so I went ahead and found something else to do.
Luckily, the absentminded sage we had met the previous night chose that moment to visit again. He was checking in to see what people had learned about the various rumors and mysteries he was investigating. A few of us spent some time updating him on the things we found out and learned. He seemed particularly interested in the information about the rocks that were found with the red skulls on them. I was hoping that he might have some other clue about them that would shed light on their meaning or purpose, but unfortunately he seemed as baffled as we were.
When I got to the part about the glowing blue light, he was able to offer some useful suggestions. He suggested that the spectral peasant fit the description of ghost that had died in a horrible traumatic fashion, and that was unable to pass on to the afterlife. It was forced to continue to act out the circumstances of its death until something could give him eternal rest. He also asked if we had thought to dig at the spot the light disappeared into the ground. We hadn’t, but it sounded like a good idea.
So the sage and myself decided to give this a try. Count Degauss was standing nearby as we discussed this, and he decided to join us. We traveled to the cave for a third time, and once there I began to scrape at the ground with a stick I found nearby. Luckily the ground was very sandy and loose, and pretty soon I came upon a bone. Further digging yielded an entire skeleton.
This had to be the skeleton of the poor peasant that was eaten by the bear. The best idea we could come up with was to place the skeleton in the cave, and to collapse the cave as a way of giving it a more dignified burial. After some fiddling around we found a rock that looked as though it was holding up the rest of the ceiling of the cave. Count Degauss gave himself an Endow spell, yanked the rock out, and took off running. This caused a complete collapse of the roof. As we stood back watching the dust settle, the ghostly form of the peasant appeared before us, smiled, and then slowly faded away.
Everyone agreed this was most likely a satisfactory conclusion of this affair. The sage offered us his thanks, and provided us with a few coins in payment for our troubles. Count Degauss declined the payment, but I went ahead and collected the coins from him. Later on after we had gone back to the tavern I shared them out with some of the others who had helped out in solving the sage’s various mysteries.
Back in the tavern there seemed to be a little bit of agitation among some people. I asked around, and someone explained to me that we had somehow learned that Gregor the beet farmer was not trustworthy, and that he was wrapped up in some way with these strange stone pylons. A group of people went to confront him in his cabin, but he wasn’t there. A second group went back and found a note written in blood on the front door. The note said that the secret could be found a short distance away from a nearby bridge over a creek.
As we all got ready to go investigate this, there was a brief moment of confusion. Baron Zug was telling everyone to get ready to go investigate this note. Then Caliphar burst in and exclaimed that everyone needed to get ready to follow him to some destination. Baron Zug kept trying to ask Caliphar what his emergency was all about, but for some strange reason Caliphar just seemed inable to speak in complete sentences all of a sudden. Eventually they worked out that Caliphar’s mysterious destination was in fact the same place that the note refer to, and thus both trips were one in the same.
Everyone marched out to the bridge and followed the instructions on the note which led to a wide shallow cave with another one of the stone pylons inside. We all moved inside, and Baron Zug produced the speckly key that Nasreen had provided him earlier. The key was inserted into the pylon, and like the two previous ones this pylon began to glow. This time the glow grew very bright, and a incandescent pulse of energy jumped from the pylon and flew out of the cave and disappeared off in the distance. Those among us who were near the mouth of the cave said that the pulse appeared to have gone to a nearby field.
So we formed up again and marched to this field. When we got to the edge of the field, we saw our old friend Gregor standing at the far side of the field inside some kind of circle. I had a pretty good idea what was about to happen next. I had been to this field earlier in the day, and I knew that Gregor was standing in front of a thick patch of trees at the edge of the field. I decided that I would move quickly to work my way to this patch of trees now before bad things began to happen.
I plunged into the woods at the side of the field as everyone else moved forward and approached Gregor. I could hear Gregor ranting and raving about something, but I didn’t get the details. Suddenly he let out a scream, and I could hear lots of fighting. I continued to slowly work my way as quietly through the woods as I could, and I finally got to the spot I was aiming for.
I looked out from behind a tree at the edge of the clearing, and about fifteen feet in front of me was the crumpled body of Gregor. Well beyond him out in the middle of the field I could see these large monstrousities battling with the adventurers. Now that I had gotten to the spot I wanted to be in, I realized I hadn’t really thought past this point. I just kind of assumed once I got here I would spot something to do.
About this time I saw Count Degauss walk around the edge of the clearing and approach Gregor and begin examining him. Well, okay, fine, I guess that is another way to do it if you prefer. I wasn’t sure whether we were supposed to be helping or hurting Gregor. I think the count was similarly confused. I called out to him to ask if he needed someone to life Gregor. He replied that he had already done so, and in fact had imprisoned Gregor as well. He said I could help out, though. He needed me to haul Gregor out of the circle and stash him off in the woods somewhere so we could pick him up later.
Well, that wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but I went ahead and took care of that. When I came back out of the woods I saw that the count was looking at a treasure box in the circle. While we stood there trying to decide if we should leave it or take it, some of the big bulky monsters starting coming on over to us.
I’m not much of a fighter when it comes up to a straight up fight, but I figured with the count here at my back I should be in good shape. But as the monster kept coming, it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Crap, I thought, these things are freaking huge! Just about the time I started rethinking my plan to make a stand with the count, one of the apes swung out and just pounded the snot at of me.
Next thing I recall I was being helped to me feet by someone holding a potion bottle. He told me to run, and that is exactly what I did. I took off towards the main pack of adventurers and tried to find a gap in between the monsters so that I could get back to the safety of the main group. I ran nearly full circle around the group before I finally made it inside.
The first beating I took removed all thoughts of sneakiness or heroics from my mind. I concentrated on just staying close to other people and supporting their attacks. Even playing conservatively as I was, I got pasted several times and needed the benefit of a healing spell to get me back up. I tried to spent as much of the fight as close the Count Degauss as I could. At one point one of the monsters shambled up and began pounding out ice damage from a mace it had clutched in its claw. We took out the monster, and the Count grabbed the mace.
It was a tough fight, and lots of people got smacked around pretty good during it. But we were a pretty stout force, and there just wasn’t enough monsters to overwhelm us. We slowly ground them all down until eventually there were none left. We began searching all over the to make sure we had not lost any bodies in the fight. During this time Count Degauss went back to collect the treasure box, and was quite vexed to see that it was no longer there.
He asked around several times if anyone else had either gotten the box or seen who did. No one replied in the affirmative. There wasn’t anything else to really do at this point other than to head back to the tavern. The hauled Gregor out of the woods and drug him back to town.
I decided to stick around in the field for a little bit. I figured it was a bit unlikely that anyone had grabbed the treasure box and run off. Their absence would immediately make them suspicious. A more likely plan would be that someone took the box and stashed in somewhere in the bushes close by, and was going to come back later to get it. Based on that idea, I hid at the edge of the clearing and began to wait.
I said in the weeds getting chewed on my bugs for about twenty minutes. The longer I sat there, the more I became convinced that I was wasting my time. I began to believe that almost certainly someone had grabbed the box, and that the treasure was probably being sorted out right now in the tavern. Finally I head on back, and sure enough that is exactly what was going on. It turns out that Parthynia had grabbed the box earlier and not heard Siranot asking about it.
The treasure was just about sorted out, when word came to us that we faced another battle. The forces of the self styled King Logaris had been spotted, and we needed to immediately leave to confront them. The nobles made the decision to place all the treasure into a box and to mystic lock it, and to pass it out later when everyone returned.
Once that was gotten out of the way we all travelled to where the forces of King Logaris were reported to be. Sure enough, we found King Logaris himself there surrounded by his army of void elementals. We wasted almost no time and immediately engaged Logaris in battle.
Logaris turned out to be a very strange sort of wizard. He was able to cast spells using elemental power. He cast his spell in the same manner as magic deliverance, but used elemental power instead of magic. This meant that he could cast spells in a very quick fashion.
The battle started off in a somewhat linear fashion. King Logaris stood a little uphill from us and fought a fairly stationary battle surrounded by his void minions. After a while the void minions began to lap around the edges of our group, and the battle broke up to a certain extent.
One extremely bizarre part of the battle was the appearance of a black clad ninja from seemingly nowhere. No one could seem to remember seeing him show up, but all through the battle he would rush out of the shadows and strike at King Logaris and his void minions, and then would retreat and disappear almost immediately.
At some point in the battle King Logaris worked his way from one side of our group to the other. We had a hard time getting to him, but we slowly wore down his void minions, and time was on our side. Finally we got a break and in a quick rush a bunch of people piled on top of King Logaris, and that was that.
With King Logaris gone, the void elementals melted away. I didn’t get a chance to see if Logaris ressurected or not, and I didn’t think to ask anyone until it was too late. Some treasure was produced from somewhere, and after a short search for bodies we all headed back to the tavern.
I made it back to the tavern without any incident. I overheard some people talking who said something to the effect that they met and spoke with the strange ninja on the side of the path on the way back. I didn’t get a chance to ask what was said, so I still have no clue what that was all about. Perhaps someone else who was there may be willing to explain that.
The treasure from the two battles were brought out and placed into a single large pile and sorted. Three magical items were found, and I was lucky enough to win third choice of them, which turned out to be an enchanted stack of bones. It was somewhat creepy, but otherwise a nice item and much more than I expected.
I thought that perhaps the night was over at this point, but as it turned out there was one other small matter left to attend to. Sage Nicodemus arrived, and several people produced a number of oddly shaped puzzle pieces. I was told that we needed to assemble the puzzle, which would form a key, and this would be used to open a gate to some kind of library that held a book we needed.
Assembling the puzzle pieces turned out to be a bit harder than it looked. Lord Zerr, Nightshine, Samara and Tomas fussed over it for quite some time without success. Nicodemus wandered over to help, and once he figured out the first step, the rest of the pieces went together quite quickly. A short time later there was a gate in the tavern, and people were jumping through it. Not having been told otherwise, I went ahead and invited myself along.
The gate led to a small library. Telaris was there searching around for some kind of book that was needed. I never did figure out what it was needed for. Baron Zug grabbed a parchment which he said related to some troubles Blackstone was currently having, and after this we all headed back out the way we came.
That is where things came to an end. I headed off to my cabin and slept quite soundly through the night. I had been a good and profitable two days of adventuring, and it did much to restore a bit of the confidence I had lost during some of the more unfortunate previous gatherings of the season. I felt so good in fact that I resolved to extend my adventuring just a bit and once again take a trip to some foreign lands. On a week’s time a group of people were headed south the Greyhelm to attend a gypsy gathering and I resolved to go along with them. Hopefully the southern climate will agree with me.