I made my way into Firelight Cove just as night fell on the last weekend in March. It was a little difficult to exactly tell when night fell to be honest. Rather than relying on such normal things as the sun setting, I had to interpret the changing light in the hellish skies that looked like someone’s bad dream of the plane of smoke. All day long the sun had been blotted out by the clouds of smoke and ash from distant Mt. Sarabor. Even now rather than the soft orange glow of a sunset to the west, I was watching the light from the volcano to the north making a sickening red sore on the night sky.
The town itself seemed less cheerful than the weather, if that was possible. I recall Firelight Cove being a hive of humanity always bustling with activity. Rude, criminal and unwashed activity to be sure, but activity none the less. Now there seemed to be less than one in ten people remaining in town and no one would stop to talk to me. From behind locked shutters and under bolted doors I could see the blur and green glows of circle of power, which were patently illegal. But I guess these weren’t the sorts of times where people were concerned about he niceties of laws.
It had been five months since I had set foot in Blackstone. For most of the intervening winter I sat in my home in Exeter, and brooded over the events of that last night in Stonereach. For close to eight hours we fought to keep every hopped up necromancer, bone knight, liche and vampire from getting into the monolith. In the last few moments one undead popsickle slipped through the cracks and made a mockery of our efforts. Eight of my friends died and ressurected a short few moments later as I ran like a girl for the outskirts of town. I had a lot of think about over the winter. But now it was time to get back to business.
When I walked into the grubby ash covered tavern the first people I saw were Caliphar and Sathen. We spent a few minutes talking and getting re-acquainted. I asked Caliphar how he was coming along in his squire training, for reasons that should become apparent shortly. A few other people wandered in and out, but pretty soon it was just me and Caliphar and Sathen again.
Just then the doors burst open and a couple of broken down rotting tree like things came rambling into the building. There used to be a time when that sort of thing would surprise me or at least strike me as odd. I guess it says something about me that all I recall thinking at the time was “Well, time to get things started.”
The trees thrashed at us and we sparred for just a bit when one of them lashed out and smacked Caliphar with a terrific blow. Caliphar hit the ground like a rag doll and then it was three of them against Sathen and me. The one beside me reared back and aimed a huge shot at me that I barely managed to dodge as I bolted for the door. One look behind me showed one following, Caliphar down, and Sathen either imprisoned or in a circle. I decided to keep running.
I ran out the back of the building and circled around towards the other part of town, all the while counting in my head. As I ran up the path I came upon Rillien and some other adventures and told them that Sathen and Caliphar were in trouble, and that Caliphar had been down for about three minutes already. We rushed back to the tavern to find it empty of everyone but Sathen.
Sathen explained that the tree creatures had drug Caliphar off, be he didn’t have the least clue where or even in which direction. The tree creatures popped out of the woods, and we began a long and frustrating fight. Several of us split up into a bunch of different groups and began combing the area trying to find Caliphar. All the while we would be fighting tree creatures as they would show up.
Once it was long past the time that Caliphar could have survived being injured I was feeling pretty bad. This is hardly a good sign when things start off with someone resurrecting almost immediately. But after nearly a quarter hour of searching, Caliphar mysteriously showed back up by walking out of the woods. He seemed healthy, happy, and in good sorts. Well, other than the fact that his eyes were now glowing.
Everyone rushed over to see what was going on with him. Meanwhile the tree creatures as well as some black sashed pirates were still making periodic attacks. Caliphar assured as all that he was perfectly fine, though he couldn’t explain what had happened to him after he was dragged away or why his eyes were glowing. It was hard to concentrate on getting him figured out with the constant interruption of attacks.
Someone yelled out that somebody was in trouble, so I rushed over to help with a fight. When I looked back I saw that several people were now down over where I started. I went to help them out, only to hear that more people were down and being drug off. I couldn’t understand why we were doing so poorly until Andris finally beat the daylights out of Caliphar.
All the while we were fighting, Caliphar was taking advantage of the confusion to attack people when they turned their back. He would then let the tree people try to drag them off and move on to other people. He got quite a few people before he ran afoul of Andris and a magic armor spell. Luckily for us, whatever else the tree creatures did to put Caliphar under their control, they never did think to heal him, and no one else did either. So when Caliphar’s sneak attack bounced of the magic armor spell, it only took one swing from Andris to drop him.
Now that we knew something was wrong with him, several people tried to drag him off to the celestial circle to get him fixed. They never did make it. On the way they got attacked yet again by pirates or tree or something, and in the process they had to drop Caliphar for a few moments. Once they were in the clear and went back to pick up Caliphar his eyes were no longer glowing and he was back to his old self, for better or worse.
Once all the attacks died down I decided to take a look around town. I wandered off to the edge of a group of cabins near to where I was staying and I noticed a small group of bright lights a distance off in the woods. After looking around carefully to make sure nothing was in the area I decided to carefully sneak over to see what they were. I began to pick my way through the woods towards them, and soon began to realize they were a lot further off than I originally that.
As I stood still for a moment trying to decide whether to keep going or head back I heard some yelling off in the distance. Someone was calling my name. I had a fairly good guess what this was about, so I immediately backtracked and started the long run back towards the tavern.
As I got back into town I found Rillien and Katherine both calling for me. They told me that the Duke was in the tavern and that he was looking for me. It figures this would happen when I was a quarter of a mile away and off in the middle of the woods. I ran the rest of the way back to the tavern, paused for a moment on the steps to attempt to order my appearance a bit, and stepped inside.
The Duke was sitting behind a table waiting for me. I knelt before him and waited for him to speak. Over the winter the Duke and I had exchanged letters. Shortly after the fiasco in Stonereach he wrote to me offering me a position as his squire. Knowing that I was about to stop adventuring for several months I wrote back explaining this and asked if I could consider his offer over the course of the winter. He replied this was acceptable. Two weeks ago I wrote him a letter accepting his offer, should it still be open.
The Duke gave a little speech explaining that he was accepting me as his squire. During the speech he mispronounced my last name, but given that I rarely use it and the fact he was rather ill at the time, I tried not to concern myself with that too much. There were some huzzahs and some congratulations, and then the Duke left. I followed him a short distance and was given a few instructions, and that was the last I saw of him that gather.
Around this time I spoke briefly with Adrafae. She seems to have somehow proven immune to the strange sickness that seems to afflict all guildmasters in Blackstone that makes them disappear shortly after being appointed. I asked her a few questions about the Celestial Magic guild and explained I was interested in joining. I had been studying Celestial Magic lately and though I would hardly consider myself a mage I have gotten to where I’m pretty good at casting the low level stuff.
Adrafae explained that she had a number of vague ideas about how she would like to organize the guild, and some thoughts about a possible charter. There was the inevitable talk about circles and scrolls and components, but nothing of any real consequence was decided. We decided to discuss the matter again at a latter point when it wasn’t so late and we had more leisure, but of course we never did. I’ll have to bring the subject up again when I see her next.
The next order of business was to attack an encampment of pirates. We learned there was a crazy blue pillar of light down by the docks defended by glowing eyed black sashed pirates, and we needed to go investigate the situation. Of course, in this instance, investigate is pretty much a euphemism for bloodshed.
The town marched to the docks and the pillar was quite easy to find. It was around fifteen to feet in circumference, and we were unable to enter the area of light. A detect magic spell revealed it to be some sort of celestial type circle of power. There were a number of pirates about and we soon fell to fighting them.
We fought the pirates for about twenty minutes or so, perhaps a little longer. Each had glowing eyes much as Caliphar did, but they did not seem to be undead in any way. We had a fairly easy time fighting them, but more and more kept arriving by stepping out of the pillar of light. They kept yelling stuff about Captain Teech.
We searched the area and found nothing, and fiddled around with the blue pillar but couldn’t come up with any way to get rid of it. Finally Lord Zerr had the brilliant idea to cast Dispel Magic on it and POOF it disappeared, and that was the end of the pirates. A further search of the area where the pillar stood revealed absolutely nothing, and so without anything else to do we just headed back to the tavern.
A short time later we were visited by two light elementals in the tavern. I recognized them for what they were because I had seen two nearly identical elementals the last time I had adventured in Therendry. There had been a posting on the Fae Trees a week or so previously announcing that Lord Glav-A’tel would be holding court, and I believe that is who that was. However, throughout the rest of the weekend I only heard him referred to as the light elemental.
The Elemental gathered us all close and explained that he was here to reveal to us certain mysteries, it being one of the natures of light to reveal that which is hidden. He explained that there was a man confined in a planar bubble who held important information what was vital to us. In order to reach him we would need to open a gate, and in order to do that we needed to gain a number of scrolls.
There were fifteen scrolls in all, each of which contained some truth about a fundamental power such as death, chaos, light, magic, hope, etc. On the next day he would take groups of either 2 or 3 people off to be tested in some fashion. If they passed the test they would be rewarded with one of the scrolls. The more scrolls we acquired, the easier it would be to operate the gate and reach the planar bubble. Once he explained all this he said he would be back to begin the tests tomorrow when the sun was at the zenith and the power of light was at its peak. Then he departed.
After this we spent a short time trying to get a little organized for the tests the next day. At first it looked that we would not have enough people present to field teams for all the scrolls, but we decided there may be more people tomorrow. We decided on a team of Pyroxia, Caliphar and Andris for the first test and made sure they knew to be ready at noon tomorrow and left it at that for the time being.
I guess we didn’t manage to finish off all the pirates, because a short time late we were back to being attacked by the annoying black sash pirates. These didn’t have glowing eyes, however. First they would attack one side of the tavern, then the other, then both sides, and so on. It got rather tiresome after a time.
One goofball threw open the door being guarded by me and Althkaelis and shouted out “Whos’s the man? I’m the man!” or something equally corny. He then cast an endow spell of some sort at Althkaelis, followed by an imprison spell. He then bolted right back out the door and took off.
I had a dispel magic spell stored in an item and now seemed like a good time to use it. I released Althkaelis from the imprison and we ran out along with some other people to chase the joker down. We ran around the tavern but eventually lost the guy. Menawhile some people had followed a group of pirates a short ways off into the woods, and it sounded like they might be in a little trouble.
We ran over to help them out only to discover they were fine and were just being a little boisterous. I saw a pirate creeping off into the woods and squat down about 30 yards away, and from his shiny shield I was pretty sure this was the guy who was casting imprisons. I moved over towards him and tried to get some people to come over and help me get him, but of course no one was interested. If someone else wants to chase a guy into the woods at night, that is bravery. If you ask someone else to come help you chase some guy into the woods at night, well, that is the height of stupidity and not even worth considering. Knowing better than to take him on alone, I just shrugged and went back to the tavern. The guy would be back soon enough.
Sure enough, a few minutes later he was back at one of the doors along with some other pirates, and this time we managed to chase him down. We ended up doing nearly a full circle around the building, but we finally caught up to him and brought him down. I searched him over and found an interesting looking pin. A Detect Magic spell courtesy of Kivuli (I think) revealed it to be magical.
There were only couple of us standing there at the time, and I was somewhat at a loss to figure out what to do with it. Keep it? Give it to someone else? Draw cards? Given that I had formally begun my journey down the path of nobility hardly an hour earlier, I didn’t want one of my first actions to be treasure snatchery.
In the end I made a big production about how I found a magic item, what it was, what it looked like, and that I planned to turn it over to one of the nobles. I’m pretty sure I sounded rather stupid and over serious, but in my defense it was rather late and I was under a little bit of pressure. I pocketed the pin and said goodnight to everyone and headed off towards my cabin where I had earlier seen Adrafae heading.
I head intended on giving it to her, but she was already in her cabin by the time I got there, so I decided to wait until the morning. I never did manage to get it to her. Later the next day I got it identified by Sathen and learned it was an endow and imprison item that required you to yell out that silly phrase to get it to work. I turned it over to Delwyn, and I’m not sure what he did with it.
I slept pretty well through the night. It was still early in the year and the air was cold, but not uncomfortably so. I got up around nine o’clock and washed and dressed and got ready to go out. I put on my daytime gear and assembled my daytime equipment and headed out for a little early morning exploring.
I started things off by exploring the tavern to see if I might find some treasure in the form of breakfast. Galant McCail was already there ahead of me and we spent a little time talking. A couple more people began straggling in and Galant and I decided to go take a look around town to see what we could find.
It didn’t take us too long to turn something up. We walked a short ways off to one of the nearby fields where we found a crumpled piece of paper wadded up underneath a tree. It turned out to be a map to Black Bart’s pirate treasure. When we looked it over we were somewhat surprised to see the area the map described was the yard right beside the tavern we had just left. There was an X marked on the map underneath a shrub growing right beside the tavern.
So we headed right back to where we started and began rooting around underneath that bush. The branches grew down right onto the ground which made it a little difficult to crawl under it, but after a couple of minutes of effort we turned up a small wooden box. Inside we found a few odds and ends of treasure and gems and coins. It wasn’t a fortune, but certainly worth the effort we had put into finding it.
We went back inside and I spent a couple of minutes sorting out the gems that we had found. None of them were all that particularly valuable, but they weren’t exactly gravel either. After I was finished I saw a white sashed pirate sitting at a table eating breakfast. On previous occasions these guys had been fairly helpful, so I decided to engage him in conversation.
The guy seemed to be a little under the weather. Maybe he had partaken of a little too much rum the night before. Who knows. He was able to tell me a little bit of useful information. He explained that the Captain Teech guy that the pirates had been hollering about last night was Captain Morgan Teech. He is supposed to be a powerful pirate captain who commands several pirate crews. I got the impression from him that Teech was a bit more than just a normal human, but he didn’t elaborate on this point and I let it go.
I took my leave at this point. I had something I wanted to get done before lunch. I went back to my cabin and collected a tarp and quilt and bundle that I had brought for this gathering and took them out into the woods. I searched around until I found a suitably scenic spot beside a small creek and then I stashed my supplies behind a large log. This was all preparation for something I was going to try later on in the day. I’ll get back to this stuff a little later in the story.
On my way back into town I spotted a rather odd procession. There were two golden hued skeletons draped in purple tabards with a golden cross on them marching purposefully through town. Behind them followed a group of several adventurers. To me it looked like the skeletons were leading them somewhere, which struck me as a bit bizarre.
I sat down on a log to watch this, and a moment later Sir Telaris spotted me. He called me to come over, so I got up and started to join the parade. No sooner had I stood up then everyone jumped on the skeletons. There were only two of them and they were heavily outnumbered, but they put up a terrific fight. The one I was fighting was using a polearm with which it could strike massive blows. All I had on me at the moment was my short sword, so that meant a whole lot of darting in to strike a blow followed by a rapid retreat.
We eventually after much effort managed to defeat them. Delwyn hauled one of them off to the Celestial Circle to try to get it identified. It turns out that these were very weird undead. There were formed by taking a standard undead, and using a celestial process they are fused with pure elemental chaos and the void component of the original undead is nearly completely expunged. The result is a powerful chaos being with a celestial core that is very resistant to the normal undead harming spells, but still vulnerable to healing spells. And if you understand all that, you know more than I do.
A short while later three more of the same sort of undead came tromping past the tavern. A bunch of us jumped up to follow them. I thought we were going to pounce on them again, but a couple of the nobles wanted to follow them for a ways instead to see where they were going. So we just marched along behind them as they led us all the way through town and off into the woods.
Once we were about fifty yards out in the woods, the undead stopped and turned to face us. We stood there staring at each other for a little while. Sir Telaris tried to ask them what they wanted or where they were going, but they replied that they had no reason to answer his questions or help us out. So we just stood there looking at each other.
The last two of these things we had found put a pretty good beating on us. Now there were three, and one of them seemed to be a caster. There were about six of us standing there at that point, including Milo and Telaris. Nobody liked the odds, especially this far off the beaten path. So I was given the task of running back into town to get reinforcements.
So I go hoofing it back to town to see if I could find anyone. The first group of people had just been collected by the light elemental to be tested. Rillien had been ordered to stay in the tavern. Knocking on Baron Zug’s cabin door proved fruitless, of course. I got an answer at least from Adrafae and Keno’s cabin, but the answer was “Ummm, we’ll be along in, uhhhhh, a little while.” They sounded remarkably unenthusiastic. I did manage to find Katherine and Delwyn I believe, and so I headed back to where I started.
I hurried back to the spot where I had left everyone fully expecting the fight to be already over by that point. No one was there. I listened for a moment and heard fighting a little ways off down a hill, and sure enough there they all were battling back and forth across a small creek. I dumped my excess gear and ran down to help.
All three of the undead were still fighting. With the massive blows they could swing and the caster chucking spells, they were doing a pretty good job keep all of us off of them. The chancy footing and trees and logs on the bank made difficult to maneuver anyway. After a little while of desultory skirmishing the battle began to move up the hill on the opposite bank of the creek.
And then we finally saw destination the undead were trying to reach. At the top of the hill was a low flat topped pyramid-like golden structure similar in appearance to the monolith we defended last October. The undead marched up to this and the battle continued at that point.
Things swung back and forth for a time. I took a quick moment to circle around the monolith to see if there were any doors. The last thing we needed was for more of these creeps to pop out and attack us. As far as I could tell the monolith didn’t have any openings at all. I tried peeking around the corner to see if I could get a quick backstab in, but they kept spotting me.
Then we had a bad moment. Delwyn, Katherine, and Nightshine all got dropped real fast over by the monolith. Everyone else but me was down the hill a ways. The lead skeleton killed all three before I could dart in a do anything about it. I kept trying to wait until he moved off, and then I would try to get in to help them. But I quickly realized all I was doing was keeping him occupied right on top of all the dead people, so I moved around to join up with everyone else.
Now that we had some lives on the line, everyone muscled up and took it to them with a bit more effort. One of the lesser ones dropped, and with only two to concentrate on it made it a ton easier, and in a short time they were all destroyed and everyone was back on their feet.
In the mean time a few more people had shown up and we started to examine the monolith. Well, to be more precise, some of us started to examine the monolith. I and most of the other people were ordered back into town and so off I went. I was told later that Caliphar cast a lore spell on the monolith to try to learn what it was about. The magics of the monolith somehow managed to feedback on the spell and Caliphar keeled over dead. When he was lifed he explained that the monoliths were formed of the same celestial and chaos mix that the undead were made of.
Just to make sure the point isn’t lost, please note that I said Caliphar died. Casting lore spells on the monolith, and possibly other spells for all we know, causes the caster to die. Should anyone come across any of these gold monoliths out in the wilderness somewhere, please keep this little fact in mind. It could be important.
Caliphar was certainly not have a good day so far. He had just gotten back from the first test with the light elemental. Caliphar, Pyroxia and Andris had all three died and in the process also lost a few magic weapons. When they were taken to the chamber of testing they were given a puzzle to solve, and they were periodically attacked by a guardian light elemental. As they struggled longer and longer with the puzzle the attacks from the light elemental grow stronger until after 15 minutes had expired he simply disarmed them and killed them with the power of his voice alone and ejected them from the chamber leaving their weapons behind.
Once they were back at the tavern, they described the test and the chamber to Rillien as best as they could, and she kept a log of this and all subsequent test attempts. Rillien had been put in charge of keeping track of the scrolls, the tests, who was taking what tests, and so forth. The task was originally given more generally to all the various squires, myself included, but there really wasn’t enough work there for more than one person. Rillien was quickly on top of the situation and the rest of us were content to let her handle things.
I feel a little bit guilty about that, though. After a while the job did get a little tedious, and Rillien was essentially captive in the tavern. Every time she stepped foot outside either Zug or Telaris would bite her head off and order her back to her post. It was pretty apparent that she was more than a little annoyed at the situation. Several people offered to relieve her for a spell, but each time she refused. I guess she figured it was easier to just gut it out than to deal with the hassle of explaining why she delegated the task.
There was also a little bit of griping about the teams assigned to go on the tests for the scrolls. Several people who had some sort of connection with an elemental power wanted to go on the test for that particular scroll. Other people wanted specific people for their partner. Zug and Telaris assumed charge for the most part of making the assignments of who went on what test and with who, and for the most part it worked out without too much griping. As it turned out, almost none of the tests I heard about had any part of them that was related to the theme of the scroll being tested for.
As far as I can tell, each of the tests consisted of the same elements. The participants arrived in the room, and there was the scroll behind a magic ward. A light elemental lay on a bed, and spread about the room was various pieces of furniture and things like paper, pen, and clay. There was also some sort of puzzle that needed to be found. On one wall was a piece of paper that said “Create Create Create Create”.
The participants were tested in mind, spirit and body. The test of the mind was to solve the puzzle, which was different each time. The test of the spirit was to create four different things, which could be art, pictures, song, dance or anything similar. As all this was being done, the light elemental would periodically attack. Defeating him was the test of body. Complete all the tests, and you could grab the scroll and leave.
Once we got the gist of things people had a much easier time. I think we only failed the test for two of the scrolls. When the test for the scroll for Time came up (three guesses who went on that, and the first two don’t count) we were told that the test would be particularly difficult, but that we would have a chance to get two scrolls. This test was passed. Another test later on got us two scrolls as well. In the end we got all the scrolls but two. One of them we never even took the test to get, because the time had just grown too late.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. While the tests took place over the course of the afternoon, people managed to amuse themselves with other pursuits. Rainbow showed up, as she often does. She hid a number of eggs all around the town that contained prizes. Several of us spent some time looking for those. She also had a pile of hollow eggs that contained confetti and she was trying to devise a game in which to use those. I don’t know how that turned out.
I decided to stretch my legs a bit and look for some eggs, and when I stepped outside I saw Nightshine, Kajah, Kaiya, Pyroxia and Juniper all heading off into the woods together. I thought that was something of an odd group, but it looked like some kind of ladies trip so I declined to join them. I went off in another direction searching, but we ended up circling around and meeting each other again, and then they took off for the other side of town.
I wasn’t having much luck finding eggs. I think several people got to them before I did. I was trying to think about what to do next when I remembered my bundle that I had previously hidden in the woods. That in turn made me realize I needed to find the group of ladies again. But I had no clue where they went.
I would like to think that I used my great skill at tracking or something similar to hunt them down, but to be honest it was as much luck as anything else. I knew they had to be on the other side of town, and so I just guessed a likely direction and struck off into the woods. Sure enough, thirty yards later there they all were walking down a trail.
They said they wanted to go back to the creek and the monolith where the battle had happened earlier, but they had gotten a little turned around. They had found the right trail that led to it, but they were walking in the wrong direction. I told them I would show them where it was at. Pyroxia and Kaiya had grown weary of the trip by this time so they returned to town, and that just left the four of us to continue on to the creek.
The creek wasn’t particular large or deep, and it was cold as blue blazes this time of year. But it did have a nice soft sandy bottom and several large smooth rocks right where the trail crossed it. There weren’t any golden skeletons around and so we all took off our boots and shoes and goofed around in the creek for close to half an hour.
Kajah didn’t want to get too much of her fur wet, and I can understand that. Nightshine popped off her boots and was splashing around in no time. She lives in a swamp down in Oakhurst where she is from, so I suppose this wasn’t too out of the ordinary for her. Juniper took a little more time to get out of her boots, which were a little more elaborate, and she had to get her pants legs all tied up and out of the way. For my part, I just hiked up my pant a little and just stayed out of the deep water.
Once my feet started to get a little wrinkly we decided it was time to head back. Juniper spotted a little frog on the bank and pounced on top of it. In honor of this humble little amphibian it was decided to christen the gently flowing brook to be “Frog Creek” henceforth. I guess we need to put up a sign or something next time we are out that way.
As we dried off our feet and got our shoes back on I asked them if I could show them something on the way back. No one was in any sort of hurry so they all agreed. I led them down the trail back the way we came and a bit further along than we had gone previously. Once I got to the spot I angled back off the trail over to where a large log lay beside the creek under some trees and sat down.
They stood there looking at me wondering what I was up to. This was going to be my big dramatic moment that I had prepared for earlier in the day. I reached over behind the log and pulled out a large canvas tarp that I had hidden there that morning. Blank stares. I then smiled and pulled out a large quilt and spread it out over the tarp. I think at this point Juniper actually began backing up from me. I realized that they might be misinterpreting my intentions at this point, so I hastened to pull out the last item I had hidden there, which was a big fat picnic basket.
By pure chance I had packed away four place settings, and that was exactly how many people we had. We all sat down and spread out the food and spent close to an hour eating and gossiping like a bunch of old housewives. I don’t think we accomplished a whole lot in the way of finding out how to defeat Mclearus or solving the mysteries of the Golden Monoliths, but I really didn’t care.
I told myself going in to this gather that I need to slow down just a little bit and spend a little more time with other adventurers. After all, time and time again I am reminded that constant effort rarely amounts to anything significant other than fatigue. I usually wear myself out every gathering trying to spend every waking moment in constant motion, searching the woods for clues, trying to solve the mysteries, and trying to make something happen. It never accomplishes anything.
When it comes to important stuff, every single time it seems like you just have to wait until some magical moment arrives, and then the solution or the next step typically just waltzes in to the tavern and drops in someone’s lap. And if that magic moment hasn’t yet arrived, then no amount of work or effort or exertion on your part will get you one iota closer to your goal.
Of course, having said all that, don’t expect to see me sitting around all weekend in the tavern waiting for things to fall in my lap. I’ll still probably spend way too much time out in the woods grubbing around looking for non-existent clues. But this afternoon at least I was more than satisfied with my efforts and the results they achieved.
When we finished the picnic we packed everything up and I hid it all back behind the log again. We headed back into town and waited our turn to go get tested like everyone else. My time came a short while later. I went along with Kajah and Fenrir. We took the test for the scroll of Hope. We passed the test without too much trouble. Battling the light elemental was the most difficult part, but Fenrir’s healing managed to prop us up pretty well during that part.
Late in the afternoon we started getting attacked by small bands of elves. I had been waiting for these guys to show up. It was the same blue clad ancient elves from Sora-bane’s army that seem to show up every time we adventure in Blackstone. At first it was just one or two of them but they were most likely scouts.
Just as it was getting dark the last of the people came back from getting tested by the light elemental. He ended the tests and said he would return later, at which point we would use the scrolls we had gained. Soon after he left the elves attacked in earnest.
Fighting the elves is always a real challenge. They are practically all skilled celestial casters, which means if you stand off from them for too long they can really pile a hurting on you. They typically do their worst when they all come out quickly and barrage us with spells before we are ready for them. Once the battle gets mixed up we do a lot better. On the good side, it is good to fight someone who takes both alchemy and waylay.
Over the course of the early evening we fought I believe three separate waves of elven forces. We faired pretty well against them. They pushed us out of the tavern on one occasion, but we retreated in good order and reformed quickly right outside. We have done much worse against them in the past, that is for sure.
After the elf attacks tapered off I took the opportunity to run take a shower and change into my evening attire. When I made my way back to the tavern carrying my armor with me I arrived to find the place empty. Since I had just come from one side of town it stood to reason everyone had to be on the other, so after a brief debate I decided to dumpt the armor for the time being and then hoofed it down towards the docks.
I got there and found everyone standing in a line facing off against a sizable force of elves. I got a weird sense of déjà vu. This was nearly the exact same setup we had last year in June when we fought the elves. It was nearly on the exact same spot. I spotted Sora-bane in the crowd this time, along with a few golems or constructs of some sort that they have taken to using.
It looked like most of their front line this time was sword and shield fighters, and so we weren’t taking a lot of celestial fire from them. So we just stood there looking at each other across about ten feet of open ground for the longest time. A couple of people where tossing a few spells and gas globes, but the effect was rather desultory.
Finally we started inching in, and the battle started in earnest. Unfortunately for me I almost immediately took a mace in the face from one of the constructs. It was only a glancing blow, thankfully, and I managed to jump back behind the lines safely. The problem was that the blow bent my glasses out of shape and opened a small cut on the bridge of my nose. I ended up having to hide the glasses behind a bench and returned to the battle without them.
In the deepening darkness, not having my glasses became a real liability. The elves didn’t look much different from us to begin with. As the battle got more and more mixed up I was having a terrible time trying to figure out who to hit and who to heal. I spent a lot of time just running around looking frantic I’m afraid.
The battle lines eventually dissolved and things degenerated into a great big fat scrum. There was a glowing circle right in the middle of it, but I couldn’t make out whether it was a circle of power or not. At one point someone started yelling and Rillien ran right past me straight into a big crowd of elves. She chucked a spell but got immediately beat down.
Once I focused on her, I figured that here at least is something I can do that was clear enough. I kept trying to sneak over to her to pour a potion down her throat, but the elves kept spotting me and chasing me off. Finally the battle heated up around them and they got distracted, and I managed to creep up behind them to get to Rillien.
I carefully poured a potion down her throat with one of the elves practically standing on me with his back turned. Sadly, I belatedly realized that one of them most have gotten a killing blow off on her, because she was now completely lifeless. I dropped my sword and shield and as quietly as I could I carried her off and around the battle line back to what was more or less our side of things. Meanwhile a number of people were leaving the battle and peeling off to run down the road.
I finally found someone who could cast a life spell on Rillien. I later found out that what prompted her suicide run was that Sora-bane was spotted trying to escape and the order was given to stop him at all cost. That is why people where now running down the road. They were trying to catch him. Suddenly the fight was down to about half of its original participants. I decided to go grab my sword and shield and get back to business. But when I turned around and looked over to where I had left them, they were now gone.
Those dirty rotten elves had hid my sword and shield from me. I hate that complete feeling of nakedness I get when I am slam in the middle of a battle and I have nothing in my hands. I started creeping around the edges of the battle trying to spot my stuff. I finally saw them right in the middle of everything. They were piled up inside the glowing circle.
I waited for my opportunity and dashed in to grab my stuff. Luckily all the remaining elves were occupied at the time. I tested the boundary of the circle and sighed in relief to see that it was not a circle of power. I grabbed my sword and shield and found a small box and a sheaf of scrolls hidden underneath of them. I grabbed those too and slinked off behind a building.
I stashed the treasure and got my gear back in order and returned to the fight. By this time things were pretty much over. There were a few straggler elves to take care of, and then it was mostly a matter of getting us all collected back up again. Somehow Sora-bane had gotten away yet again. People started filtering back to the tavern, so I went and retrieved the treasure box and followed them back.
The treasure was passed out and people broke up into smaller groups and started socializing. It looked like things were going to be a bit slow for a while, so I took the chance to go meet with some people privately back in their cabin to discuss some personal business. Unfortunately while I was gone I missed Xavier coming into town.
Xavier opened up his magic shop rather late. He had some scrolls and components and other knick knacks for sale. The marquee item in his collection was an Armor Golem formal scroll that had been enchanted with Refit Armor spells as well. I believe that was sold, but I do not know who purchased it.
When I got back to the tavern, Caliphar ran over and grabbed me. He was recruiting people for a bombing mission. Someone had come up with the idea of rowing out to the Sea Nymph that was anchored in the harbor and mining it with explosive traps. The hope was that we could blow the traps and sink the ship and hopefully get rid of some of the pesky pirates.
Lord Zerr completed out little three man commando crew. We hauled a pile of explosive traps down to the docks and loaded them into a leaky little dingy. As quietly as we could we paddled out to the ship. Luckily, it didn’t look like anyone was on board or paying attention over the sides. This struck me as rather odd, but it did make our job easier.
We managed to get all the traps attached to the side of the boat and set. That was a rather nerve wracking experience. Setting traps can be chancy in the best of circumstances. Setting them on a bobbing boat while you were also sitting in another bobbing boat was another matter entirely. Since the only people who could save me if I blew myself up were practically sitting in my lap already, the margin for error was rather thin.
With a huge sigh of relief I finally started to paddle away from the boat. So far so good. Once we were what we judged a safe distance away Caliphar pulled the tripcord. BOOOOM! Smoke, bits of wood and water blew out in all directions. When it cleared enough for us to see what we had done we could see huge holes that had been ripped into the side of the ship.
Our celebration didn’t last long. Almost immediately the holes began to close up again. After a few moments the ship was whole and sound. Suddenly we were shook by a loud resounding thump that seemed to resonate from the ship in all directions through the water. We could hear the sounds of shouting and running coming from the ship. As Caliphar and I leaned over the oars, Lord Zerr took the time to lob a Detect Magic spell at the retreating shape of the ship. He turned to us and said the boat was both a magic item and alive.
A string of unrepeatable and most unsquirely obscenities erupted forth from Caliphar. As I rowed frantically I asked him what that was all about. He said he had just received a whispering wind from Delwyn telling him to call off the mission, and that it might be dangerous and lead to our death. Well, a little late for that I suppose.
The three of us beached our boat and hustled our way back to the tavern to report on our mission to the nobility. We explained that not only was the ship not sunk, that a crowd of highly irritated pirates was most likely going to be there in a few minutes. Preparations were made and sure enough a few minutes later the doors swung open and a crowd of black sashed pirates came pouring in.
The battle lasted about fifteen minutes or so. We were never in much danger. It was a straight up line fight fought right in the middle of the tavern. The pirates were tough and well supported by casters and healers, but we just had too much muscle for them to break through. We wore them down by attrition and pretty soon we were back to socializing and sitting around.
I think it was around this time that Rainbow put in another appearance. She doesn’t often show up at night, so I thought it was a bit strange to see her. Guido had been carrying around a rather garish ball most of the day. I came to understand that this was some kind of magic item that could summon Rainbow if it was bounced, which is exactly what seemed to have occurred.
Rainbow told Guido not to use the ball frivolously. When she was done with him Du’kratha came up and began speaking to her. He was fairly agitated and a bit more animated than I am used to seeing him. He spoke to her briefly about some kind of curse and after a little back and forth she worked some fae magic on him which seemed to delight him to no end.
After the hour grew quite late the light elemental returned once more and announced it was time to travel to the planar bubble and to receive the message and warning that he had promised. He produced a large ornate golden slab with a strange hole in the middle of it. It was identical to the object that we used last year to travel to the Wasteland. He said that by using this object and by reading the scrolls that we had gathered, we would be able to travel to our destination.
The fifteen odd scrolls that we had collected were passed out to various people. Each person in turn opened their scroll and read it. Each scroll detailed how some principle of the world (time, life, chaos, etc) was important and could be helpful. The inscriptions were quite poetic and even inspiring in some cases.
As we stood around solemnly reading the scrolls we kept getting interrupted by the attacks of a bunch of unruly trolls. There were others in the tavern who were not taking part in the scroll reading who were capable of dealing with the trolls, so in that regard none of us were pulled away from our task. The problem was that the trolls were all screaming bloody murder and making all kind of racket. They kept hollering around some item that they wanted back or something. It was all very distracting.
At length all the scrolls were read. We then all touched the golden pillar and by the magic of the scrolls and the light elemental we all entered a weird spirit like state. We could see those around us and be seen by them, but we could no longer interact in any way with the surrounding world. In this state we followed the light elemental out of the tavern.
He led us off down a path, and the further and further we went the more the world around us faded away. At length we arrived at a door. The light elemental said that the things we were seeking were inside. We opened the door to find a small room strangely similar to the Chamber of Testing that the light elemental had led us to all afternoon. Some things were different however. On a bed was the remains of a man long dead. On a table were some writings.
The writings appeared to be the last will and testament of the man on the bed. We gathered the paper and the remains and brought them with us as we left the chamber. In the same spirit form that we took previously, we all took the journey back to the tavern. When we arrived we were told to touch the gold monument again, and when we did we each returned to our normal form.
Well, most of us did. Du’kratha hesitated. He noted that his current spirit like state could in fact be quite useful in a number of ways. When we all went over to one of the table to sit down and read the writing, he stayed over by the monument hovering in spirit form apparently debating on whether we really wanted to return to the world just yet.
Delwyn sorted through the writing and read aloud to us the story it contained. It was several stories long and quite involved. I’ll not get into the subject here because it isn’t really relevant to anything else that happened that night. It anyone is interested in the contents of the scrolls, and believe me you should be interested, please contain Viscount Mithrilmyst and he should be able to provide you with a copy.
About halfway through the reading Du’kratha came to a decision. He finally strode briskly over to the monument and slapped his hand down on it and walked purposefully out of the tavern.
We spoke about both the scrolls we had gathered earlier in the day and the scrolls we had found in the planar bubbles. We worked out a brief plan for collecting the information in them and distributing them to one and all later. As I have previously said, Viscount Mithrilmyst has one set of scrolls. Kivuli has taken it upon himself to collect a copy of all the scrolls we gathered during the day and distributing them later.
Just as we were finishing a rather angry Kajah walked into the tavern. She was upset because she had just returned from resurrecting. She was killed by a wraith that was out and about in the town. She had the misfortune of deciding to take off her armor right before going outside and getting killed.
Most of the people at this point started drifting off to their cabins. I started to do the same. Unfortunately I ran into the same wraith that had killed Kajah. It did not swing for much damage, but if it got past your armor its blow could cause death. There were a number of us around now, so we could handle it pretty easily.
The Argent Guard group was all in the guild building so I stopped in to see what they were up to. They were going through their stock of components to see which ones were about to lose their potency. They were using these to cast a few miscellaneous formals that they needed to have done. I had previously loaned some of them components and they took this chance to pay me back. I watched them for a short while and then went off to bed.
That is where things ended for me that weekend. Soon I will be right back in Firelight Cove and will hopefully pick up where I left off. I have left out a few small but important matters that were discovered over the course of the weekend. Mostly they involve things that shouldn’t be printed publicly. If anyone is interested in learning what they are they are certainly free to contact me privately and I will explain them.