Time. It’s amazing how it changes things. For me, the passing of time has made me feel far more at home in Therendry now than I was when I first arrived in Therendry a year or so ago. Back then, there may have been a half dozen people in town who knew my name. Now, I feel like I know pretty much everyone and everyone pretty much knows me. With this newfound level of comfort, this past gathering in Therendry may have been more enjoyable for me than any previous gather. Let me tell you about it.
As I did last time, I arrived in town with my friend Sheriff Glenn Stormwolf. It was an easy ride into town, and so we arrived earlier than many other adventurers. This gave us some time to unwind before the gathering started and evil things started coming out.
When we were finally unwound and the gathering began, we discovered that the town was emptier than usual. Apparently there was a gathering going in Dar Khabad, and so many adventurers had chosen to go there. This created a significant problem in that there was a distinct lack of fighters in town. This caused me to have to spend a good portion of the gathering swinging my sword on the front line, instead of backpacking from the second line. It was a large adjustment for me, but I think it worked out okay.
Almost immediately after the gathering began, an old woman walked into the tavern, looking for Sir Noah. She said that a creature had been unleashed by use of a ring, and that we had to go take the ring and defeat the creature. Apparently the current possessor of this ring was some sort of sand wizard, but we didn’t learn much more about him.
Along with Caliphar, Kithe, and another, I went off looking for Sir Noah. Unfortunately, while we were on our way to find him, we heard a large procession of things that didn’t sound friendly coming up behind us. Following Caliphar’s lead, we ducked into the woods behind a building, and waited for the procession to pass us by. I never really got a look at the procession, but my guess is that it was rather large, as it took it a while to go by.
Once the procession passed, we managed to find Sir Noah in Baron Simeon Silvercord’s cabin, and as soon as he heard what was going on, he began gathering a force. Unfortunately, it took some time for his force to get ready, and in the meantime the old lady wandered from the tavern down to join us. She stressed the importance of the mission and insisted that we hurry up. Not long after, we gathered together the best force we were able to and went to attack the sand wizard’s minions.
Predictably, the sand wizard used sand constructs to defend himself. They were extremely difficult to fight, a difficulty compounded by the fact that our force lacked fighters. Fortunately, several of our adventuring group had their transforms activate, and so that gave us much needed extra punch.
Unfortunately, it still wasn’t enough. At one point, thinking we had them weakened, we charged through the door into their lair. On the other side, though, where it was harder for us to defend ourselves, the sand constructs had a decided advantage. They could swing for more mighty blows than we could, and our weapon blows didn’t affect them more than minimally. We put up a valiant fight, but we were losing. I was dropped several times, but was fortunate enough to be healed up each time. To make matters even worse, they were killing blowing adventurers, which sapped our life spells.
With the situation looking grim, I suggested to Caliphar that it might be a good time to go back to town and try to find reinforcements. Caliphar heeded my suggestion, and with speed that is nearly unmatched, he ran back to town to get help. We were still trying to push through to get to the adventurers that were down, but in doing so we were losing more people than we were saving.
When the reinforcements finally showed up, it was a great help. The fresh forces allowed us to push into the lair and save most of the fallen adventurers. Unfortunately, the sand wizard, sensing that defeat was upon him, took a townsperson hostage behind a circle. I did not see who it was, but I am sure that Guildmistress Parthynia of the Calais Healer’s Guild did the supremely noble act of trading her life for that of the prisoner. After the wizard had the Guildmistress as his captive, he ordered us to leave the lair or he would kill her. Accordingly, most of us filtered out of the lair.
Now, I was not present for what happened next, but only learned it as a secondhand account from Sir Noah. Apparently, Sir Noah realized that since the sand beasts were healed by binding magic, they might be harmed by release. While the rest of the town filtered out, Sir Noah and a few others stayed behind and attacked the sand beasts with release spells, dropping them rapidly. In searching their remains, Sir Noah found the ring that we had been searching for. When he put it on, the sand wizard became his slave. He ordered the wizard to release the Guildmistress, and the wizard did so. With everyone safe at last and the ring safely recovered, most everyone returned to town.
A few of us, though, had another mission to attend to. There was a sailor present who needed an escort to return to her ship. With help from the Baron Simeon Silvercord, a group of us undertook to provide this escort. We were attacked on the way by soldiers loyal to the former Count of Richland, who had betrayed the Duchy a year before and died for his crimes.
The soldiers were not difficult to kill, though, and we rolled over them easily, and returned the sailor to her ship. Once that was completed, we returned to town and found that His Grace Duke Ellis Pinetree had arrived in town. If I may be allowed, I would like to include an aside here about Duke Pinetree.
Now, I have known many nobles in my time adventuring, from barons to counts to viscounts to dukes, but Duke Pinetree has impressed me as few others have. He seems to be very much a man of the people, understanding what people desire and why they desire it. He has a very down-to-earth manner that puts those around him at ease. In addition, he is very skilled on the battlefield. I have seen very good backpacks in my day, but His Grace is one of the absolute best. He communicates very well with the fighter he is backpacking, he is always aware of his surroundings, and he always knows what the right spell is for the present moment. In summary, Duke Pinetree has made Therendry a Duchy I am very proud to live in.
Very late that evening, long past the hour when reasonable people go to bed, there was to be an auction held for the kidnapped daughter of one of the Therendry counts. Of course, we had to crash the party and try to steal her back for her father. We hid a large force outside the doors of the auction house, and sent a few people inside to act as spies. Unfortunately, the auctioneer was no fool. He stored her elsewhere and was only going to bring her in when the price got high enough.
Of course, his own arrogance came back to haunt him. The auctioneer had several undead, including the vampire Mandrake, trying to protect him, but it wasn’t enough. A new race of beings entered the building, walked through the auctioneer’s circle, and attacked him. In exchange for his life, he gave them the whereabouts of the Count’s daughter. The new beings then left the auction house, and Mandrake removed his forces, so that only the townspeople were left.
Lord Zug termed the new creatures “infernal beings,” and the name stuck. They are now referred to either as “infernal beings” or simply “infernals.” More on them later, though.
With the rescue attempt having failed, most townspeople decided it would be a good time to go to bed, and I was amongst them. I was going to head back to my cabin while simultaneously providing escort to my friends Nikki and Mirage, but I was advised by Gypsy the mystic wood elf that travel was not currently recommended in groups less than twenty. We couldn’t find twenty, but we did find thirteen or so, and so with that group we set about providing everyone escort back to their cabins.
It wasn’t a particularly restful night for me, because it was colder than I expected and I only had a light blanket. Nonetheless, the next morning I woke up early and Glenn informed me that we had orders from Lord Zug to produce three stakes of woe to get Mandrake with. This was an idea to my liking, and so Glenn and I immediately headed over to Therenstar’s cabin to get components for this ritual. We found Dame Pai Zhi there, and she was willing to provide us components for our effort to destroy Mandrake. Now having the components that we needed, we next had to find Squire Draelin, who was capable of getting us into the earth circle to retrieve the scroll we needed. When we finally did find Squire Draelin, he was nice enough to help us out, and so together we all headed over to the earth circle.
And that was where Glenn and I went wrong. After acquiring the scroll and components, we proceeded to cast the three formals in the earth circle. The problem was that we had not yet gotten permission from Guildmistress Parthynia or Assistant Guildmistress Fenna to cast the formal. Later on in the day, Guildmistress Parthynia made it very clear to us that it was not acceptable to use the earth circle without permission, and we apologized profusely to her for our error in judgment.
In retrospect, I would have been far smarter to just cast a temporary circle and use it to do all three formals. But oh well, one lives and one learns.
Having completed the three stakes of woe, we proceeded to distribute them. One went to Glenn, one went to me, and one ended up going to Lord Zug. With that out of the way, we decided to hang around the Therenstar cabin for a while and talk to Dame Pai. During that time, we were consistently under attack by bands of orcs. One particular band that we beat down had a letter on them. Dame Pai had to translate the letter, though, as it was written in the language known as “poor common.” Or, in other words, orcs are very lousy spellers. The letter essentially said that a band of orcs was planning on attacking the town because a human was paying them to do so. It even revealed the location of the orc base, which was Calais Ravine.
At Lord Zug’s behest, I gathered together a force of adventurers to go attack the orc encampment. Included in this group of adventurers were Lady Nyneave of Greyhorn and her squire Smoke Darkstar. It was good to see Lady Nyneave again, as I had not seen her for many months, and I was glad to see she was doing well.
When we got into the orc encampment, we were attacked from all sides. Our adventurers, who were largely young adventurers, began to falter, but held up admirably as we were hit with wave after wave of orcs. Eventually, though, it proved to be too much. We were being pressed too hard, and Lady Nyneave tried to get everyone to come back to her so we could rally and press forward again.
Unfortunately, no one listened. It is one of my continuing frustrations that adventurers do not respond well to orders in the middle of battle, which is when they should respond their best. If we had rallied together, we would have had a shot at recovery.
Fortunately, though, Lady Nyneave had another trick up her sleeve. She had also sent a runner back to town to retrieve Lord Zug, and when Lord Zug arrived he brought the cavalry with him. He arrived with His Grace Duke Ellis Pinetree, Guildmistress Parthynia, and Squire Draelin. Together, they helped us turn the tide of battle and drive the orcs back.
The battle continued to go, though, and eventually we ran out of resources and had to fall back to town. Still, though, we had no resurrections, and we clearly would have had many if Lord Zug had not showed up when he did.
Back in town, His Grace held court. At issue was whether Baron Simeon Silvercord or Baron Valoric Treehawke would ascend to the position of Count. There was much support on both sides, and it essentially came down to a question of whether people wanted leadership by intelligence and experience (Baron Silvercord) or leadership by heart and passion (Baron Treehawke). Ultimately, His Grace made a brilliant decision by deciding to promote Baron Silvercord to the position of Viscount, where he would use his intelligence and experience as a Ducal advisor, and promoted Baron Treehawke to the position of Count. This decision made both sides happy and made it a pleasant ending for everyone.
In the aftermath of court, things got very quiet in town. At some point, though, a group of treasure seekers came into town, telling us that they wanted our help finding treasure chests. When we asked for details, they told us that they were looking for four adventurers to help them, because giants guarded the treasure chests. When we told them that we were not interested in treasure, one of them concocted a story of how his child was stuck in one of the treasure chests. We informed him that such was bad parenting on his part, but he blamed his wife. Not entirely trusting the treasure seekers, we nonetheless agreed to help them. I believe the group we brought consisted of Sir Noah, Kithe, Verbal, and myself.
On the way to the treasure chests, I became even more suspicious, because they asked us who our spell-casters were, and then constantly tried to stay behind me. I finally managed to slip to a spot alongside Kithe, though, and communicated to him clearly with my eyes that I did not trust these people. He whispered back his agreement.
When we got to the site, we saw no giants. We saw no treasure chests, either. The treasure seekers attacked us, including one with gasses. They targeted Kithe first, and so he dropped quickly, but the rest of us were easily able to defeat the five of them. As an added bonus, Caliphar showed up in the middle of the fight, apparently having been following us the whole time in case we needed him. Such a display shows why Caliphar is one of my favorite adventurers. When I picked up Kithe, we distributed the little bit of treasure we found on them, and then headed back to town.
This is when things started to get strange. With the exception of myself, my friend Fenrir, and a few other people, a good portion of the town got drunk. The particularly strange incident came when seven drunken people put up a circle of power, found a scroll and some components, and started to cast a ritual. Fortunately, when I checked again, I noticed that they were using a celestial battle magic scroll instead of a formal scroll, and their components had no actual magic in them. Of course, they didn’t realize any of this. They were convinced that their ritual had unleashed a spirit of great power who was going to kill them all, and so they dropped the circle and ran for it.
Their fun was interrupted, though, by the arrival of more orcs. Waves and waves of them attacked the town, and we had to call out every available adventurer to marshal a defense. They were not very powerful, mostly swinging for three dagger blows, but they kept coming for at least half an hour. With our lack of fighters, I wound up on the front line, but I was fortunate enough to have His Grace as a backpack at some times, and Assistant Guildmistress Fenna as backpack at other times, and so I made out okay. I don’t think I even dropped once thanks to the skillful healing I was receiving throughout the battle.
Eventually, the tide of orcs stemmed, and we decided it was time to act. Led by the Duke, we went on an expedition into the same orc lands we had failed to take before, but this time we overwhelmed them. We had so many fighters than I was allowed to be a backpack, and I backpacked Kithe.
At this point, I would like to take a moment to talk about Kithe. I had met Kithe before this gathering, but not gotten to know him well. He is one of the most skilled fighters I have ever met, and he is as difficult to defeat in a one-on-one fight as any adventurer I have encountered. More than that, though, he is also smart. He doesn’t take unnecessary risks. He measures the odds, and then decides on what the best approach to a problem would be. Sometimes this means attacking it head on, or sometimes sneaking up behind it, or sometimes the solution required is something completely different. Also, in addition to being a great fighter, Kithe is also a good man, and I saw him on several occasions risk himself to help someone in trouble, and selflessly share treasure from adventures. Overall, it is safe to say that Kithe is an adventurer that very much impressed me.
At any rate, I was backpacking Kithe into the battle against the orcs. They were relatively nasty by comparison to normal orcs, but certainly not impossible to handle. The town held a line pretty well, and so was able to drive them back. They responded by creating magical storms and attacking us, but we managed to break up most of the magic storms. They held elevated terrain, but we eventually managed to displace them. Kithe in particular did a great job of breaking up their magic storms by hitting the casters and forcing them to move.
When we took down all the orcs, we headed back to town and Kithe and I took a magic item we had found in the battle to be identified. Viscount Silvercord was nice enough to identify it for us, but it turned out to be necromantic and had to be destroyed. That was disappointing, but my spirits were rejuvenated a few minutes later when Guildmistress Laraza told me that she wanted me to be invested in the celestial circle at the Mage’s Guild.
Being an earth caster, I had never been invested in a celestial circle before, and it was a strange experience. Still, I was glad for the Guildmistress’ support, and I look forward to trying to help the Mage’s Guild. I see an opportunity for the Therendry Mage’s Guild to be something like the Ravenholt Mage’s Guild, which is to say that its purpose is not just to identify items, but instead to serve as the bedrock support for all magical research in Therendry, especially research related to strange magic effects found in Therendry. The example of the transformed animals from the last gathering could have been a good subject for the Guild to study, for example.
After the completion of the Mage’s Guild circle, not much happened for some time. We all retired to the tavern, as we were told that we were going to get a chance to go after the infernal beings that stole the Count’s daughter. Unfortunately, our messenger took a long time to show up, and many people fell asleep or left town. By the time we were ready for the battle, we were down to maybe half our original number. Sensing that people’s spirits were low, I suggested that it might be a good time for an inspirational speech. Goodman Verbal turned out to be the perfect person for such an occasion, and so he delivered an inspirational speech that got the town completely ready to fight. It was so inspirational that I could not do it justice were I to repeat it here. But the speech was enough to rally the exhausted town for the one last fight.
When we got to the area where the Count’s daughter was being held, we saw a mass of undead. Glenn and I broke our formal sticks and started bane of the dead pools going. That mowed down the front line of undead, but then the infernal beings joined the undead, and they weren’t affected by undead harming spells. Therefore, Glenn and I had to abandon the banes and join the fight with our swords instead.
By far, this was the most difficult fight of the gathering. The chief infernal being could swing for drain, which requires a life spell or a 10-minute wait to remove. Not having 10 minutes to spare, we went through life spells quickly. We didn’t guard our flanks well, and we collapsed inward quite often. Usually we managed to break out again, but we weren’t getting any closer to figuring out how to rescue the Count’s daughter, who was in a circle. It looked like they were getting ready to do some form of ritual on her.
At one point, we got pushed back to the point where the only people still standing were Duke Pinetree, Lord Zug, Sir Noah, Fenrir, Guildmistress Parthynia, myself, and a couple others I do not recall. I thought we were done for, and I almost was. I had five creatures swarm me at once, and I wouldn’t have been able to hold the flank I was holding if Guildmistress Parthynia had not been pumping constant healing into me. I much appreciated her efforts. Still, though, the situation looked bad, but then for some reason the circle fell. Not wanting to miss the chance, we swarmed in to save the girl, and then Lord Zug and Guildmistress Parthynia rushed off with her.
Meanwhile, in the chaos, two things had happened. First, we had managed to get much of the town up. Second, Squire Draelin had been captured. I didn’t know whether to stay and help the Duke rescue Squire Draelin, or go with Lord Zug and Guildmistress Parthynia. The Duke ordered me to follow Lord Zug, so that made my decision easy. I helped get the girl to safety, and then I came back and tried to help rescue Squire Draelin. Fortunately, by the time I got back the good squire had already been saved, so I helped offer cover fire for his escape.
When we got back to town, I went with Fenrir to check and make sure that the girl was okay. We joined up with Lord Zug, Kithe, and Guildmistress Parthynia, and with them went to visit the Count.
The Count received us warmly, and was truly thrilled to get his daughter back. In reward, he offered to let us become squires to him. Kithe took him up on his offer, but the rest of us declined. Lord Zug, Ducal Squire Parthynia, and Fenrir of Therenstar all had other obligations, and I am simply not choosing to follow that path at the moment. However, I am glad for Kithe’s choice, and I know he will make a fine squire, and someday a fine knight.
Well, after the Count thanked us for our help, we all went back to town. Since we were very tired, we rapidly made our way to bed, and that was pretty much the end of the gathering. Glenn and I headed back to his clan lands, and now I have a month or so to get ready for the next gathering. Until that time, may the star of Therendry continue to shine brightly.
Scribed by Seronia on the 7th day of September in the year 603.