Blackstone is a land I haven’t been to in a very long time. I think the last time I was there was way back in October of 603. However, Dame Parthynia was traveling there this weekend, and I thought that traveling with her would give me a good chance to get in some squire training, and so I decided to go.
I got there a little before Dame Parthynia, and so I grabbed a cabin for her, Sheriff Mario, and myself to stay in, and I adorned the door with the Ducal colors of Therendry. It was the first time I have ever stayed in a cabin with the Ducal colors, and I was proud of it in some small, probably insignificant way.
Well, when Dame Parthynia got there I met her and Mario in the tavern, and before long a drunk guy stumbled in. He was muttering something about a password. I caught him so that he wouldn’t fall on the floor, and in doing so I accidentally said the password, “floor.” He handed me a coded message, saying something about Lord Rawling, and then stumbled out of the tavern.
I immediately handed the message to Dame Parthynia and we set about translating it. Unfortunately, that is not our area of expertise, and so we handed it to my friend Nikki to translate instead. She is usually good at these sorts of things, but not even she could crack the code.
I was saying hi to my good friend Caliphar in a corner of the tavern when Dame Parthynia called me over. She said that a gentleman was selling wards and we were buying one, so we had to go watch him cast it. She, being a biata, did not want to be inside the building when the ward went up, so someone had to stay inside and watch the casting of the ward. That someone ended up being me. Meanwhile, Dame Parthynia, Mario, and the Archmage Rastlin stood guard outside.
Let me pause a moment here to say a few words about Rastlin. I hadn’t gotten to know Rastlin very well before this weekend, but he impressed me. I have always known that he was an exceptionally talented caster (in fact, he is the best caster I have ever met), but I did not know that he is also an exceptionally brave man. I saw him go off on a mission where death was a very really possibility without ever doubting it, just because it was for the good of the Duchy. Such bravery really impresses me, as it is becoming rarer and rarer these days.
At any rate, getting back to my story, when the ward-casting gentleman got done, he made himself a duplicate key, which he said he was giving to the nobles of the Duchy. Mario told him that there was no way he was walking away with a duplicate key in his hand. He relented, and we presented the duplicate key to Sir Cedric later.
After our ward casting got done, the ward-casting gentleman went over to cast a ward for my friend Sathen, who is now back after a long period of not adventuring. Meanwhile, I went over to guard Rastlin as he was casting his own ward. Well, the ward-caster made Sathen’s ward, and then made a duplicate key, and then ran off with the duplicate key, with Mario and Dame Parthynia and Sathen in hot pursuit.
I, of course, could not pursue, because I could not leave Rastlin defenseless while in the process of casting a ward. When Rastlin finished, though, we hurried up to the tavern, and we found Mario and Dame Parthynia behind the tavern, where the ward-caster had gone. Apparently he had thrown the key into the woods somewhere, and then killed himself, so he could later retrieve the key.
Dame Parthynia lifed the ward-caster, and then we knocked him out, trying to decide what to do with him while we searched for the key. Finally, we decided to heal him and interrogate him. Mario gave him a cure light, but he started screaming for Lord Rawling, the evil lord who is working with Saxony against the rightful rulers of Blackstone (if you don’t remember Lord Rawling, Baron Zug and I took him down in October, 603, and you should be able to find a journal entry for that gathering). I reacted quick and hit him to shut him up, just in case there were Saxons within hearing distance.
Ultimately, we decided to throw him in jail. We stuck him in a prison so that he couldn’t get out in the five days that the ward would be up. I do not believe that the ward key was ever found, but I don’t think there was ever an incident.
When we went back to the tavern, I got a chance to speak to my old friends from Fengate: Logenn, Pyre, and Uzuri. I was thrilled to see that they were in town, and we probably talked for an hour about current events in Fengate. Strangely, I can’t get to Fengate these days, because I get stopped at the border by some invisible force. It’s kind of like the magic barrier in Ravenholt, except it only stops me.
I got pulled away from my discussions, though, when a dwarf called 9 of 32 showed up in town. Apparently the rest of his mining company were being terrorized by golems, and so they needed people to go in and take them out. We had to organize a small, elite strike team to do the job. The people we grabbed were Dame Parthynia, Mario, Lady Pyroxia of Calais, Peregrine of Lochwood, Caliphar, Nikki, and myself.
When we went into the mines, we were shocked to find that the golems were swinging so hard that the blows went right through our shields. Fortunately, even though the blows were going through our shields, I found that with my new protection aura from Greyhorn, they were not able to damage me very much. And so, I stood on the front line and basically sucked punishment and tried to get in as many hits as I could. I would not have survived, though, if it wasn’t for a lot of timely healing from Lady Pyroxia.
After we saved the dwarven miners, Caliphar made an interesting comment. He called me the “hero of the encounter.” I want to think on that for a moment. Really, what is a hero? Am I am hero? I don’t think so. Heroes are people who do spectacular things. For example, a few months back when I was in Greyhorn, Lady Chancellor Nyneave threw her own life on the line to heal a room full of people when it seemed like all hope was lost. That kind of thing is heroism. What I do is my job. I save people because it’s what I am supposed to do, and because it’s right. I grew up idolizing great heroes like Basil Ravenhurst and Galen Cumberland. Someday, I would like to be a great hero like them, but I know I am not yet. Right now, all I am is a person trying to do his best.
At any rate, when we got done cleaning out the golems, we went back to town just in time to get attacked by hoards and hoards of undead. I once again wound up on the front line (it was a recurring theme of the weekend) and managed to take down some undead, but many more kept coming. By the end of the battle, I was absolutely exhausted, but at least I was alive.
At that point, Mario, Dame Parthynia, and I decided to call it a night, and went back to our cabin. When we got there, we had a good discussion of what it is to be a proper noble, and then went to bed. However, immediately afterwards, we heard screams coming from the neighboring cabin. We heard a death spell thrown, and then some gasses, and then nothing. We all jumped out of bed, and Mario was first out the door. When he got there, he succeeded in killing the last of three bandits that had attacked. Dame Parthynia and I arrived a moment later. Lady Pyroxia had dispatched the other two.
As we went back to bed, I remarked to Dame Parthynia, “I guess that’s what you mean by being a proper noble.”
By the time I stumbled out of bed the next morning, it was already fairly late, probably near 11 AM. I strapped on my gear and walked to the tavern, and found that they were serving breakfast. I ordered up some hearty pancakes, and sat down to eat. Amazingly, I wasn’t interrupted while I was eating. I did carry on a conversation with Pyre and Uzuri which was interesting, though.
After I was done eating, I stepped out onto the porch just in time to see four people in red tabards walking down the road. I told Sir Cedric that they looked like Lord Rawling’s troops, and he sent me to go investigate. I walked after them with Pyre, Uzuri, and Logenn. I hesitated to enter into direct combat with them, though, because they had two casters and I wasn’t sure I could take two casters. So I merely trailed after them, waiting for the right opportunity.
The right opportunity never came, though, because Beryl came running out of a valley and she had some of the wolven and gypsies behind her, as well as an unconscious Caliphar. I ran over to Caliphar, gave him a life spell, and then we ran down to find Mackarious, who had apparently been left behind.
Unfortunately, by the time we got there, it was too late. He had dissipated, and his stuff was still there, but he was gone. I believe Beryl resurrected him at the earth circle in town. I was sorry that I couldn’t get there in time.
However, I had little time to mourn, as the town was then attacked by golems. This was right about the time that Mario was waking up, and so I called for him to come help me fight them, as I was relatively certain that Caliphar, myself, and many lesser experienced adventurers were not going to be able to handle a combination of crystal golems and steel golems.
However, with Mario’s help, it wasn’t that difficult. They were tough, yes, but my protection aura minimized their blows, and so I was able to stand up to them for quite a while. Usually, I would fight them from the front, giving Mario a chance to move up from behind.
The problem was that they kept coming, and so we retreated towards the tavern. I told everyone to keep behind me, because I could survive the constant damage a lot better than anyone else could with the protection aura helping me.
When we finally got back to the tavern, we fought the golems there, up until there were none left. I am not entirely sure who was sending them or why, but my guess would be the Saxons were sending them as part of their plan to take over Blackstone.
It was about this time that Dame Parthynia and Mario asked me to come along on some type of randomness adventure. It sounded pretty chaotic to me, and so I wasn’t much interested, but of course I was willing to go if asked. First, though, I checked with Lady Pyroxia, and she asked that someone stay in town to provide another sword arm in case there was an attack. I decided to stay, and Dame Parthynia allowed me to, and it turned out to be a wise decision.
I was sitting on the front porch with Lady Pyroxia, talking to Lady Blackstone, when they began to appear. They formed out of a puddle, and came right at us. Water elementals, I thought to myself as I began to help Lady Pyroxia usher everyone inside.
The water elementals didn’t seem interested in coming through the door, or they were unable to figure out how to open it. Either way, we thought about just leaving them outside, but decided that they should be destroyed, and so we let them in, to fight on our turf.
It was a pitched battle, and the healing pools that Lady Pyroxia and I had up were the only things that saved everyone from oblivion. However, they were running down fast, and people weren’t ponying up the components for us to create more. It’s amazing to me how people’s greed consumes them even when their life is in imminent danger. I know for a fact that there were people in that room that had components that didn’t supply them even to save their own lives, and that makes me sick.
At any rate, Lady Pyroxia and I stood as the front line, fighting water elementals as best we could. There was a member of the Ducal army there as well who used celestial magic to great effectiveness against the water elementals, but even despite his efforts the fight was hard. We had no big fighters, just two scholars standing against the tide of water elementals, if you’ll excuse the pun.
Eventually, though, we persevered. We managed to destroy that group of water elementals, and we took on another group. This fight didn’t go so well.
Two of them managed to pin me in a corner, and they were both extremely skilled fighters. I did the best I could to stay up, because when I looked over to the other side of the tavern, everyone else was down. Realizing how desperate things were, I started lashing out with spells. I took down the two I was fighting, and then Lady Pyroxia managed to get everyone healed up on the other side of the tavern.
We fought another couple groups, but eventually we realized that we were tapping ourselves out and we weren’t sure how many we could take, so we stopped letting them in. Then, when the randomness adventure group got back, we were able to pretty much clean out the rest of the water elementals.
When that was all over, I once again went to sit on the porch with Lady Pyroxia and Lady Blackstone, and we had some good discussions. Eventually, though, Sir Cedric gathered everyone together to go take out a pyramid which apparently was capable of stopping magical communications. It was guarded by a bunch of supposed peasants, who all turned out to be spellcasters, of course.
The battle was fierce, but the hero was Mario, without question. When the circle around the pyramid was dropped, he managed to get his weapon in and choose in before a new circle could be created. He dodged several death spells, and took down both the casters, which dropped the circle and allowed us to destroy the pyramid. Mario put his life on the line for Blackstone, and came through with another show of true bravery. I was very impressed.
That mission was heavily resource consuming, and it didn’t help that it was followed up not long after with another heavily resource consuming mission. This time, Lord Mikhail of the Blackstone Navy needed help to recapture his ship which the Saxons had stolen. We had two fey, named Will and Way, transport us to the docks where the ship was moored. We tried to move in stealthily, but there were just too many Saxons, and they spotted us.
The Saxons had a few front line fighting types, but most of their people were casters, archers, and gassers. This presented a significant problem, since we were running low on resources as it was, and it wasted lots of resources to constantly remove the gas effects on people. Personally, I spent a lot of time trying to get behind the line of Saxons, because the archers and casters were easy to take out if you could just get on top of them. Also, if anyone needs proof that the Saxons are the bad guys in this war, they merely need to look at the fact that they tried to take me out by throwing necromancy at me in broad daylight.
We fought along the docks, and managed to free two caravels from Saxon control, but we were still moving toward Lord Mikhail’s ship, the Minion. I actually had a discussion with Lord Mikhail about the name of his ship. You see, the name The Minion implies servitude, which seems to me to make the name weaker. I would think it could be stronger if it were named something like The Overlord, which implies dominance and strength. That’s just my opinion, though.
Anyhow, we continued to move towards The Minion, and I pulled aside Lord Mikhail and Lady Pyroxia and tried to tell Lord Mikhail that going on might be suicide, because we were basically out of resources at this point. We had no purify blood spells left, no awaken spells left, nothing like that. In fact, things got so desperate at one point that I spent several minutes paralyzed before Dame Parthynia convinced Lady Blackstone to drop a Circle and unparalyze me.
Lord Mikhail and Lady Pyroxia, though, created a new strategy. They said that we should rush the next ship, so that we could take it quickly. We did so, and we overwhelmed the Saxons. I was impressed with their eye for strategy.
After taking the third caravel, we moved on to the Minion itself, which was guarded by traps and yet more gassers. However, we got lucky, because when the crew saw Lord Mikhail, some of them turned against Saxony and helped us win the day. Dame Parthynia managed to get herself up onto the deck, and heal the loyal Blackstone soldiers when they got cut down. By the time we were finished, we had routed the Saxons, and re-taken The Minion.
After that was over, I finally got a chance to rest for a while, and after Will and Way rifted us back, I went into the tavern to get some dinner. Not too much happened after that for a while. There were some giants that showed up in town, but they were dispatched pretty easily. As it turns out, one gas took these giants down, and so Hooch and Pendulum had a field day.
My particular favorite part of the battle was when one of the giants, who was bigger than the rest and firing a bow, kept shooting at me and I kept ducking and diving and avoiding his arrows. If one had connected, that might have been it for me, but I managed to prevent that from happening.
After the giants were disposed of, some orcs and a human necromancer came into town. They weren’t especially dangerous, and I used the opportunity to help some new adventurers learn how to fight. I trained especially hard with Logenn. I also gave Caliphar a chance to train with an orc, by promising to heal up whichever contestant fell. The orc fell, and, as was my word, I healed it up.
The strangest incident, though, was still to come. I was dueling with some new adventurers, and I got tangled up with one and we both tripped. I held my footing, though, while he fell to the ground. Dame Parthynia saw this, and she told me to come over to her. However, I was in the middle of battle and didn’t hear her. Mario turned to her, and asked, “Do you want me to show him the Greymist waylay?” She jokingly nodded, and he was off.
From my spot on the field, where I was still training with the new adventurers, all I heard was a rocket with bells coming at me. I turned in time to see Mario arrive, and I figured he wanted to join in the training. Then, he began swinging his sword at me for real. I was shocked, but I recovered quickly, and my protection aura ate his first couple blows.
I responded to him in kind, and pretty soon he realized that as long as I kept in front of him, he couldn’t possibly beat me, because of the protection aura. About halfway through the fight, he turned to Dame Parthynia, and yelled, “I’m getting my a** kicked!”
Finally, I managed to take him down, and then I healed him up, finally having figured out what was going on. Dame Parthynia came over and tried to heal him some more, but he was okay after the healing I had given him.
Afterwards, Dame Parthynia explained the entire situation to me, and explained that it was just a joke. I nodded, but I was too exhausted from all the fighting to give much of a real response. I think I walked inside the tavern and collapsed into a chair.
There was only one more thing to do that night. A Blackstone military captain showed up to lead us to an area where Morbidus Bane, a fearsome undead, was hiding out. Apparently Morbidus Bane was a relative of Malek Bane, and Malek Bane was the one who took over from Necros as the most powerful undead in Blackstone.
We lined up on a path in front of a gate, and advanced forward. I had Sir Delwyn to my right, and Kaja to my left. At this point, Kaja was using a shield, and it made her much more effective. Lady Pyroxia opened up a bane of the dead behind us, and that was really the difference. She kept smiting the lesser undead and damaging the greater undead with it.
Eventually, we moved the line up and through the gate, where Morbidus Bane was aiting for us on the other side. It was an intense battle. He threw arcane deaths at us like water. Mario sucked one, and I ate another. Fortunately, Lady Pyroxia was right behind me to life me.
The battle raged on, and pretty soon I noticed that there were ten adventurers lying on the ground at the feet of Morbidus Bane. I rushed over to help, and quickly realized that I had gotten myself in over my head. I couldn’t take a super-undead by myself. Nevertheless, I didn’t have much choice but to try. I incanted, “I call upon the earth to destroy undead 70” and let the magic fly at him. He stumbled backwards, and I pressed my advantage. I unleashed five more destroy undead spells at him, and that was the end of Morbidus Bane. He collapsed to the ground at my feet. I am sure he is bottled somewhere, but at least we made temporary progress.
We beat back the rest of the undead, and found a very ordinary looking graveyard, and then we retreated back through the gate. After the last two people, Peregrine and Sir Delwyn, made it out, we hurried back to town.
At that point, I was very tired, and I went to bed, as did Mario and Dame Parthynia. However, others stayed up, and later told me that Adder re-appeared, and stole back his axe from Caliphar. Also, Malek Bane showed up in town, but I don’t know what he wanted. He was probably irritated that we destroyed his uncle, but I have no way to know for sure.
At any rate, in the end the gathering seemed to be a productive one. We made gains against Saxony, which was the most important thing. Hopefully, next month we will be able to deliver the killing blow once and for all to the Saxons’ aspirations of a coup.
Scribed by Seronia on the 15th day of June in the year 604.