In recent times, with the Duke ill, Dame Parthynia and I have been spending a great deal of time administrating Theren City. For this weekend, though, Dame Parthynia granted me leave to aid Baron Delwyn Mythrilmist and Baron Cedric Warclaw in fixing up the town of Whitestaff in Blackstone.
You see, Whitestaff was just fine as of a few months ago, and we thought we had things under control. But then came the Saxon war. The adventurers were pulled out of Whitestaff, and in the meantime some less desirable elements took hold of the town. So, with the Saxony War finally ended, it was time to go back to Whitestaff and re-take the town. If it sounds like that it easier said than done, you’re right.
At the gathering, I decided to stay with my old friends Caliphar Belmont, Nicola Olorian, and Andris Belmont. I hadn’t seen Andris in a while, but he is developing into quite a capable fighter. He still needs some work, but then again, don’t we all?
Surprisingly, it has also been a long time since I fought alongside Caliphar and Nikki. I saw them during the King’s gathering in Blackstone, but only for brief periods of time. I don’t think we had consistently adventured together since Ae’ranor. When the three of us are together, though, we can be quite a force to be reckoned with. I was hoping that the old chemistry was still there between the three of us.
When I first got there on Friday night, I was loitering in the tavern with Caliphar and Nikki and a couple younger adventurers when some orcs burst in. We dispatched them easily, but more came, so we decided to give the younger adventurers a shot at them. They handled themselves decently, and so I went over to meet them.
I introduced myself to them, and they told me who they were. One of them, a larger fellow who was clearly a gypsy, was named Tegra. The smaller one, called Mark for short, was an Amani elf. I gave them some gold to help them get started in their adventuring careers, and Caliphar taught them a bit about how to stay alive adventuring. I wish that I had known that they needed a ward, but that is a matter for later in the story.
Well, after Baron Warclaw arrived in town, he had a conversation with Baron Delwyn and some other close associates, and I was grateful to be invited. He told us that a fellow named Robert Fishmonger had found a piece of paper, and this paper indicated that a long trapped wraith had escaped and was headed toward Blackstone, or at least that’s the short version. The long version one would have to ask Baron Warclaw for.
We got some more information regarding this mystery a little later, when another fishmonger came into town, and told us that Robert Fishmonger’s shop was overrun by wraiths. I suspect that they were searching for the piece of paper that Baron Warclaw had, but I cannot be sure.
Unfortunately, by the time we got there, it was too late. We found a bunch of chains, and we found Robert Fishmonger’s clothes, but not Robert Fishmonger.
Now, I did not know Robert well, but I did meet him briefly. He seemed to be a hard-working man, just trying to make a living to feed his family. For him to get caught up in the middle of an undead war is tragic. I tell you now, I will at least do what I can to end this wraith menace and bring some meaning to the death of Robert Fishmonger.
Well, in addition to the chains and clothes, we also found some wraiths at the fishmonger shop. We were able to deal with them, though it was not easy. They were able to inflict damage almost equal to a lightning bolt with every swing, and when they hit you, you would become unable to use your skills. We beat them anyway, though, although I don’t know that we found any useful information.
Back in town, we had order elementals arrive seeking to kill all elves. They almost got me, but fortunately I got a timely save from Nikki and Leviathan. Every time we beat them, more just showed up. To the best of my understanding, they were originally only after wild elves, specifically the Swift Arrow tribe, but then apparently they decided that all elves had to be judged.
One time, they made the mistake of trying to bring a young wild elf they had caught in the Whitemane forest through Whitestaff. Fortunately, we managed to save her. Her name was Azurine, and she proved to be an adept scout and fighter. Caliphar and I outfitted her with plenty of equipment, and it turned out that when she got behind something, she knew right where to hit it to cause lots of damage. In fact, she could hit almost as hard from behind as Baron Warclaw could from the front.
At any rate, I was soon taken along on another adventure, this one much less dangerous. Apparently people were going to mine copper for a blind man, and he promised to reward them well for their efforts. I came along not so much to participate, as this seemed like a good opportunity for younger adventurers to get something to do, but more to watch and make sure no trouble occurred. I think Leviathan and Hooch both came along pretty much for the same reason.
I think after that, the rest of Friday night was pretty uneventful. I found out that Rastlin Dawnware has been named a Squire of Blackstone, and a Squire to the Duke no less, so I say huzzah to him for that! I know a fair bit about being a Ducal squire by now, and I can’t think of many people who deserve it more.
Saturday morning was when trouble really started. We had our first and only resurrection of the gathering. You see, Tegra and Mark never got a ward. Well, orcs came into their cabin early Saturday morning and killed Tegra. I think they were especially upset after Tegra pinned them, and of course I think we have to teach the boy to cast bind first, and then pin in the future.
Well, somehow Mark managed to survive, and then he came to our cabin a little while later and told us that Tegra was resurrecting. We asked him why he didn’t come and get us, as we could easily have dispatched the orcs or lifed Tegra, but I think Mark just got scared and panicked in the heat of the moment, which is understandable for a younger adventurer.
Well, we journeyed with Mark up to the tavern for breakfast, and thankfully I got to eat my breakfast in peace, which is always a nice feeling. I said hello to some of the people who were around, but in general I was not yet awake enough to do much.
The tavern was occasionally assaulted by some orcs, but in general it was nothing we couldn’t handle. Soon, a retired Blackstone military officer made his way to the tavern and asked us to come help him deal with wolves that had taken over his property. He promised to reward us with a magic item for our efforts, though in all honesty we probably would have done it even without the promise of a reward.
Fortunately, most of the wolves were fairly small and as such did not break my protection aura most of the time, and so I had a pretty easy time dealing with them. Everyone else didn’t have a much harder time, and so we advanced fairly quickly. If we got into trouble at any point, usually Hooch would just gas down a couple wolves, and we would deal with the rest of them.
There were a lot of wolves to cut our way through, but finally we got to the farmhouse, and there we found a giant wolf. This thing was amazingly powerful. It resisted thirteen of my spells, plus another few spells from everyone else. It also resisted fifteen gasses that our various alchemists threw at it. With either one of its front paws, it could swing damage equal to that of a flame bolt, and a shield could not block the damage. With its jaws, it could bite you for damage equal to a stone bolt, and a shield could not stop the damage. As I said, this thing was huge.
After our attempts at alchemy and spells didn’t work, we went after it the old fashioned way. We tried to hit it a lot. Specifically, we tried to get Azurine and Caliphar behind it so that they could find that weak spot on its back and repeatedly pummel it there.
To be completely honest, I don’t remember how we finally took it down. We might have just damaged it so much that it fell down, or we might have finally gotten a spell through. Either way, we did finally drop it, and then we managed to heal everyone up. Unfortunately, we were not yet done.
We found the man who was controlling all the wolves inside, and when we managed to take him down, finally the wolves all became docile. After that, the Blackstone military officer was able to reclaim his home and all was well again in Whitestaff. Well, at least for the next few minutes.
When we went back to town, we met up with the Mystic Wood Elves near the Guild building. At this particular gathering, there were five mystic wood elves in town, and they had a gypsy traveling with them. The Mystic Wood Elves were Leviathan, Sugar, Spice, Hooch, and Halcyon, a new Mystic Wood Elf from the south who I had not met before. The gypsy was a young gypsy named Tiva.
Well, we had just met up with the Mystics when I noticed some familiar creatures with skulls on their shields wandering down the path. Someone asked me, “Seronia, what are those?” I replied, “I fought them the last time I was in Blackstone. I recognize those shields. All I remember is that they swung death.”
That was all anyone needed to hear. Everyone ran inside the Guild building, while I tried to cover the way in. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. These ones were bigger than I remembered, and they were able to kill me with one swing of their weapon. Fortunately, Leviathan got me a life spell, and we got a wall of force up on the door.
Of course, we didn’t realize that the guild building has a side door! One of them fought his way in through the side door, and Andris jumped up on a table to wall of force the side door before the others could get in. It took a while, but we did manage to eventually beat down the death creature that had come in through the doorway. We all breathed a sigh of relief at our temporary reprieve, but then Sugar pointed out that there might be people at the tavern. So we rushed out the door, made our way up to the tavern, and found that the people inside the tavern had wall of forced themselves in.
We engaged the death creatures, and then the wall of force on the tavern went down and the people inside came out to join us. It was a fierce battle that used a lot of life spells, but we did eventually manage to defeat the death creatures.
Around the end of the death battle, Baron Warclaw apparently went with Beryl and Squire Rastlin to investigate a story we had heard about a person who was being imprisoned for use in a “freak show.” I don’t know what came of it, but I would imagine that Baron Warclaw and company pulled off a successful rescue.
After that, there was a brief lull, and lull seemed like a good time to attend a fruit party that the Mystics were having. I appreciated the invite, and I always have a good time with the Mystics, so I was clearly looking forward to the party. What I saw, though, was… interesting. Leviathan, Hooch, Sugar, Spice, Halcyon, and Tiva were all in attendance, and other people came in and out as the party went on.
Leviathan insisted that part of the key to enjoying the fruit was sharing it. I said that I had no problem with sharing, but I didn’t exactly know what he meant by sharing. Apparently, for Mystics, sharing involves taking a piece of fruit in your mouth and then having someone else bite a piece off of it.
At one point, I decided that I would try to out-mystic the Mystics, which of course is never a good idea. I took a strawberry, and began eating it slowly, piece by piece. All the Mystics were absolutely transfixed, but of course I got self-conscious about so many people watching me eat. Unfortunately, though, I had started it, so I had to finish it or I would lose face, and as such I did finish the strawberry.
The fruit party was fun, but of course in my world fun never lasts. Ogres attacked the tavern, and people called me outside to go help, so I ran outside. Then, as Caliphar and I were returning from chasing after and slaying an ogre, we ran into a strange box in the ground, and we stopped to look at it. It had a riddle inscribed on it, and after Caliphar successfully answered the riddle, it gave him some treasure. The correct answer to the riddle was time, and I had the answer the entire time, but I never said it. My logic was that time is the answer to every single riddle, so maybe this one is different. I was, of course, wrong.
Have you ever noticed that, though? There are certain answers that seem to show up disproportionately in riddles. Time is one of those types of answers; another one is a mirror. Maybe I should just guess those things no matter the riddle, and most of the time it will be right. At any rate, it would certainly improve my percentage on riddles.
Speaking of percentages and streaks, for those still keeping count, my streak of magic item picks without winning one is now up to 77. I am by now convinced of two things. One, there is such a thing as luck, and it is a real factor in things like magic item picks. Two, there has to be a better system for distributing magic items than magic item picks. I was thinking a system where the person who has not gotten a magic item in a while gets one would be a good system, but it would only work if you picked with people you know, because I am convinced that people would lie.
Anyway, getting back to the story of the gathering, when Caliphar and I got back from dealing with the riddle, I walked back in to the tavern and was just about to re-join the fruit party. I announced, “I am back,” and Sugar immediately replied, “Great, then you can go deal with those things,” and pointed me towards more ogres at the door.
After I dealt with the ogres, I managed to re-join the fruit party for another minute or two before it ended. However, that minute or two proved heavenly, as Levetta snuck up behind me and gave me a back rub. Now, normally I am not much for back rubs, but I have never seen anyone do back rubs as well as Levetta. Her back rubs could inspire a whole army to go out and eagerly face their impending doom. And hey, they would die happy.
Well, after we got past the point of the evening where spells reset, we had to go deal with finding some buried pirate treasure. I warned everyone that I was not going to go along if it was a huge resource drain, because we needed to conserve our resources to fight wraiths and order elementals that evening. Everyone assured me that we would pull out if it was a huge resource drain, and so I agreed to come.
Well, as it turned out, the pirate’s treasure was guarded by undead that swung wither limb every time their weapons touched your body. Because of eldritch blesses, I could deal with this better than most, but a lot of people ended up getting their limbs withered, which was draining my spells and draining Nikki’s spells. The adventure was becoming a resource drain, and so I did three things to change our fortunes.
First, I wrote a spellsong for restore limb, so that I could restore all withered limbs at once, instead of one at a time. People seemed to think the song itself was amusing, too, so it was gratifying that people enjoyed the experience. I still need to write a bunch more spellsongs, but at least I am now up to five.
Second, I insisted that I be allowed to fight the inside monsters, since they could not break my protection aura, and as such I could have a lot more success against them. I managed to dispatch them easily both times I went in after them, and as such I didn’t have to waste more spells restoring limbs.
Third and finally, on the last room I set up a bane of the dead to use to clear the room. Unfortunately, I had to set up two banes, because I broke my first one in a stupid manner. I told people to cover a hole in our defenses, and of course, talking breaks a bane of the dead. Fortunately, I got a component to use to set up a new one, and the second one lasted long enough to clear the room. One of the monsters in the room, an undead jester, was particularly hard to kill, since he had the ability to get out of the way many times per day. However, it finally ran out of the ability to do that, and then died shortly afterwards.
At the end of the adventure, though, I was mad at myself. I had to yell at Caliphar, which I never like doing. I screwed up with the bane of the dead, which really made me mad at myself. As anyone who knows me will tell you, there is no harsher critic of me than myself.
When we got back to the tavern, Caliphar pointed out that we needed to start trying to disrupt the order elemental ritual. Actually, before I tell that story, let me fill you in a little on the order elemental ritual. You see, the order elementals had enslaved many of the wild elves in the Whitemane Forest, and were using them to conduct a ritual to summon an order titan, which is essentially a huge order elemental. We were obviously trying to stop the summoning and free the elves from enslavement in the process.
Well, when we assaulted the first citadel that was being used for the formal casting, we were overmatched. They were throwing constant arcane imprisons, and we simply didn’t have the dispels to deal with it. So, a lot of people got imprisoned, and I had to write a dispel magic song to deal with it. Unfortunately, there was no building to cast from, so I had to create a makeshift circle of harmony. All this took time, and while I felt sorry for the people who were imprisoned, we simply didn’t have the resources to deal with it another way. If we were going to be fighting order elementals the rest of the night, we would be dealing with more imprisons, and as such we had to conserve our dispels as best we could.
Well, in the time it took me to unimprison people, Nikki stayed back with me, and others pushed forward to the citadel itself. Unfortunately, they were too late. We were told to get there at 8:00, and we didn’t get there until 9:00, and as such we couldn’t stop the citadel from being activated to power the ritual. We needed a new plan, but we had no idea how to do it.
By the time Baron Mythrilmist got back into town around 11:00 after taking care of business for most of the day, we still had no plan. Nikki and Caliphar were both outside town scouting for clues, but no one had heard from them in a while, and so we figured that we had to take matters into our own hands. Azurine, Andris, and I asked Baron Mythrilmist for permission to find out if chaos would help us in the matter, since it was in chaos’s interests to do so. Baron Mythrilmist assented, and so we were off.
We managed to contact chaos, and a chaos elemental came to us. We explained the situation, and explained that the order titan would no more be in chaos’ interests than be in our interests. After a long discussion on the matter, chaos granted us three boons. It gave Azurine and Andris a 24-hour connection to chaos, so that they might swing chaos and doubly damage the creature. It allowed me to channel elemental chaos through curse spells, so that I could use spells to damage the creature. Finally, chaos agreed to interrupt the order titan ritual, so that the order titan would still come, but in a weaker state. Chaos also told us that Squire Rastlin already had the key to destroying the order titan, and so we should seek him out before going to fight it.
Was the deal distasteful? Yes, no doubt. But was it necessary? I believe it was. And people can be all righteous if they want to, but the simple truth is that sometimes you need to do things you don’t want to do in order to save innocent people. In this case, making the deal with chaos was necessary to save the wild elves and probably the town of Whitestaff, too. I don’t think it can be fairly criticized.
Well, after getting done talking to chaos, Azurine, Andris, and I headed back to the tavern to gather everyone. Unfortunately, what we found when we got there was that three greater undead (a liche and two death knights) and one lesser undead had dropped everyone in the tavern. The liche sent the two death knights after us, and we ran away fast.
Azurine and Andris cut left, while I cut right. The two death knights chased Azurine and Andris, so I circled back to the tavern to stare down the liche. I blew up his lesser undead, and so then it was just him and me, with no minions. If it wasn’t for the fact that liches can cast while being hit on their body, I knew I would be able to take him. With that fact added in, though, and the fact that he could phase and resist, he probably had a distinct advantage.
Fortunately, he made one crucial mistake. He decided he needed new minions, and so he animated a bunch of the corpses from the tavern and sent them after me. I cut them all down and lifed the people, and then I had a force behind me. Most fortunately, I had Baron Mythrilmist behind me, and he is a great source of both fighting skill and earth spells.
Well, the liche retreated into the tavern, and we chased him in. Legion attacked him, but he downed Legion, and then he put me down with a bunch of death spells. Baron Mythrilmist got me a life spell just in time to watch Legion’s vengeance make the liche explode.
I then went running down the path to find Azurine and Andris. As it turned out, Andris got away safely, but Azurine got dropped and almost had to go to the earth circle. However, Azurine was saved by the mysterious mystic wood elf called the Traveler.
Having beaten the undead, we marshaled the town together, found Baron Warclaw, Squire Rastlin, Nikki, and Caliphar, and heaeed off to the main citadel to try to stop the order titan. We got there just in time for the summoning, and then we knew we were in for the fight of our lives. Fortunately, chaos had weakened the creature, but it was still very strong, and had minions.
Strangely, Caliphar and Baron Warclaw had their transforms pop. Now, I didn’t even know that either one had a transform, but apparently they do. Caliphar is a lightning elemental, and Baron Warclaw is a darkness elemental. Now, as a believer in Malaclypse’s theory of staying free of elemental influence, I would never follow an element, but I guess that somewhere along the line Caliphar and Baron Warclaw chose to. Of course, that is their decision, and their life is their’s to live as they choose to. The thing that I can’t figure out is why the transforms went active. I could see chaos transforms going active. Maybe order transforms. But why would lightning or darkness care about an order titan? It doesn’t affect their part of the balance.
Oh well, one way or another, the transforms had clearly become active, and the order titan was clearly there, so it was time for the big fight. And, without a doubt, the superstars of the fight were Azurine and Andris. Azurine kept getting behind it and smashing it while Andris kept hitting it from the front. Meanwhile, I did what I could to hit it for chaos damage. I put elemental chaos damage into it worth over two hundred magic missile spells, but it just continued to stand. Finally, we took it down in a perfect manner. Azurine hit it from behind as Andris hit it from the front and I pumped a 30 elemental chaos spell into it.
Once we had it down, we cut out its heart, and Rastlin rushed the heart down to the celestial circle to DFM it. A few minutes later, Tegra and Mark came running back up telling us that Rastlin had sent them, but not telling us why. Just then, the order titan came back to life.
This time, only about half the original force was there, and the fight was much tougher. We pounded it a lot, and it almost seemed to ignore us as one might ignore flies or gnats. It let Azurine stand behind it and just continue to pound it in the back and barely flinched. Andris kept heroically rushing at it to get in a couple shots, and then falling down. I would heal him, and we would repeat the process. Baron Warclaw and Caliphar were also pounding it in their transformed states, while Levetta and Nikki helped me deal with healing the people who were hitting it. Baron Mythrilmist directed the action, and let us know where to move and when to switch strategies.
We finally managed to drop it again, and then Tegra and Mark informed us that Rastlin told them to tell us that the order titan was going to re-spawn. We thanked them for their information, and Baron Warclaw went with Andris to check on Rastlin. Of course, five minutes later, the stupid order titan came back to life again.
This time, under Baron Mythrilmist’s orders, we played with it, delaying it so that Rastlin could finish his formal. It eventually got tired of us, and headed down to smash Rastlin in town. We could not let this happen, and so we chased after it.
We finally got it to talk to us on the field outside the tavern. It told us that it’s lifelong aspiration was to be a singer and performer, but that it would not sing for us because more singing meant less swinging, and it still wanted to smash us.
However, while it was talking to us, Squire Rastlin completed his formal, and the order titan popped into thin air.
Did we solve the problem with the order elementals? What’s up with the wraiths? Were the wild elves freed? Who killed Robert Fishmonger? All these questions were left unanswered at the end of the gathering, but maybe next month we will find some answers. Or we’ll have another Mystic fruit party. Either one works for me.