This past weekend was a chance to take my first ever trip to Exeter, in the lands of Lyonesse within the Duchy of Therendry. As usual, I traveled to the gathering with my friends Glenn and Mirage, and we were amongst the first adventurers to arrive. We were all staying in the Healer’s Guild, because Mirage is the Guildmistress of the Exeter Healer’s Guild, and had appointed me to be the Assistant Guildmaster. I have to admit that it was comfortable to have an Earth circle nearby, as it was nice to have an added measure of security. Fortunately, though, we did not have to use the Earth circle very often, because there were very few resurrections.
At any rate, after we arrived in town, we did what is typical for adventurers to do, and we gathered at the tavern. I was happy to see that many of my friends had made the trip to Exeter, such as Squire Kyth of Richland. I spent a good amount of time on Friday night helping Squire Kyth fight against the various creatures that showed up, and I was as impressed with his fighting abilities as I always am.
The first of the creatures that attacked us, if my memory is correct, were creatures called shadow locusts. I don’t know much about what they were there for, but I am certain that they were very difficult to defeat. They seemed capable of throwing many chaos spells, were only affected by magic weapons, and most of the time their claws inflicted ten dagger blows worth of damage. They cast death spells as well, and I had to cast several life spells to keep people up. I depleted my spell reserves very quickly as the onslaught continued, and the problem was compounded by the fact that the only other backpack available was Guildmistress Parthynia, which meant that each of us had to backpack for half the assembled adventurers.
Finally, the onslaught abated, but we were not safe for very long. On the tail end of the shadow locust attack, undead alligators began arriving in town. These alligators were extremely powerful as well, but in a different way. While the shadow locusts attacked primarily with spells, the alligators attacked primarily physically. Specifically, they attempted to bite their victims, and bites were crushingly effective, dealing fifty dagger blows worth of damage to a victim.
It was then suggested by Lady Kes that it would be a good idea to try to find the source of the alligator attacks, and so Squire Kyth and I journeyed into the woods with her on a scouting mission. We found that the swamps around Exeter, which had apparently been drained recently, were beginning to refill. However, they were not refilling due to rain, but instead the water seemed to be coming from the ground itself. Upon investigating further, we found a series of caves, and one of them had a mother alligator and her babies in it. Strangely, these alligators were still alive and not yet undead. Even more strangely, there was a burlap sack attached to the mother alligator’s leg. We tried to move in closer to investigate, but of course the mother alligator attacked us, and so Lady Kes had to sleep it with gasses. We were then able to search the burlap sack, and found that it contained a great deal of what might best be described as candy. I am not yet certain as to the connection between the candy and the plague on the land, if there indeed was a connection.
Once we got past the mother alligator, our next task was to get past the baby alligators. They crawled at us, and when they got close, they bit our swords and attached themselves, and they had to be hit gently before they would fall off. After about five minutes of investigating the cave, we found that there was nothing else there to find, and so we left. When we got back to town, we discovered that His Excellency Count Lyonesse was holding Court. We entered as quietly as we could, and quickly took seats for ourselves. His Excellency then called us up to introduce ourselves, Squire Kyth for being a Squire of Richland, and myself for being the Arch-wizard of Order and Knowledge.
Count Lyonesse, during the ceremony, declared that we were to attack the lair of Mordakai, since we had recently discovered where his lair was. Cormyn the Invincible, a barbarian of Therendry, explained to us what he knew of Mordakai’s strengths and weaknesses, and then we marched out of town to begin the assault.
When we arrived at Mordakai’s lair, it was heavily guarded, to no one’s surprise. Most everything that was defending it, though, was an undead. Glenn and I both knew what that meant: our favorite trick. Glenn set up at one side of the room, and I set up at the other, and we both opened bane of the dead cantrips, allowing us to toss harm undead spells like candy. Fortunately, I had learned from my previous mistakes with using bane of the dead, and so this time I had my friends Beryl, Nikki, and Brin retrieving aura for me so that I could keep throwing. Unfortunately, though, Mordakai himself broke my bane by suddenly popping up behind me and forcing me to get out of the way of the paralysis spells that suddenly came flying at me. I was about to chase after Mordakai, but then Nikki told me that there was a shadow locust after her.
Sure enough, some type of shadow locust was chasing Nikki, and so I stepped in between her and it. It kept trying to get around me, but I kept my shield in between her and it. Finally, it warned me that it would kill me if I didn’t get out of the way. I refused, and so it hit me twice with death spells channeled through its claws. Fortunately for me, it takes three death spells to drop me because of the gift shield I always keep up, and so I was able to re-protect myself and then jump right back into the path of the shadow locust. This time, though, I was not happy, and so I began beating on the shadow locust. It was forced to rift out, and I told Nikki that she should imprison herself if the shadow locust showed up again. It popped back in a few moments later, and Nikki did as I asked and imprisoned herself. I beat on the shadow locust again, and it rifted back out.
Nikki, though, wisely kept the imprison up. And it turned out to be a good idea, because the shadow locust rifted back in a moment later. This time, though, it had a plan. It went over to her and tried to rift out with her. Along with everyone else in the area, I began beating on it, but it was Viscount Silvercord that saved her. He incanted, “I summon a force to disarm your elf,” and hit the shadow locust with the spell. The shadow locust was forced to phase the attack, and that bought us enough time to beat it down. I was grateful to Viscount Silvercord for the help.
Nikki then decided to drop the imprison, and I helped her find Sir Strider, who she wanted to talk to. I then heard that Mordakai had been found again, and I chased off after him. Caliphar turned out to be the person who finally caught Mordakai, and somehow managed to drop him. Unfortunately, Mordakai was able to go back to his bottle after bleeding out for sixty seconds, and no one ever stabilized him, and so we lost him. On the plus side, though, we did learn something about Mordakai. I observed that Mordakai was affected by spells thrown at him by Guildmistress Parthynia. Because the Guildmistress is a biata and only throws earth spells, I take this to mean that Mordakai’s claims that he is unaffected by earth magicks were a lie.
After the entire Mordakai business was finished with, I went back to the tavern, and then agreed to escort Nikki, Beryl, Brin, and Peppercorn back to their cabin. I stayed up talking to them for a while, and they are all very interesting people to talk to. I decided that it made no sense for me to go anywhere until the magicks had reset themselves, and as such stayed at the cabin talking until just after six in the morning, at which point I decided to head to bed.
I slept in late the next day, and apparently a lot happened while I was gone. Squire Kyth informed me that I missed an attack of some very powerful water elementals. Listening to his description, I am actually somewhat glad that I missed them, because they sounded as if they were rather heinous.
The big problem when I got back into town was something called the Headhunter. It had taken several people in town, and stolen their heads. This left them without the ability to talk or cast spells. Amongst the people who lost their head was Glenn, and so I had a personal interest in making sure everyone got their head back, since Glenn is a friend. I’m still not entirely clear on how people were still alive without their heads, but I am probably just ignorant.
At any rate, we went to an area outside of town where there were tons of headless people. And these ones were very hostile, and very powerful. Each was capable of swinging multiple mighty blows, and so we went through magic armor fast. It made me miss when physical reflect used to work as a spell in these lands. We were pushed hard, and we nearly broke, but we ultimately managed to rally and push inside the building where the heads of our friends were. I am not entirely clear on how the heads were reconnected, but somehow or another the heads and the bodies were re-joined together. I was glad to see that Glenn was okay, although he was naturally a little bit upset about the entire incident.
Things became quiet for a little while after that, but then spiders began showing up in town. Along with Squire Kyth and Spice, I managed to fight quite a few off, and in truth they weren’t that difficult. The problem was that they just kept coming. Finally, though, gigantic fire creatures rifting in interrupted our battle. They demanded to know who our leader was, and some humorous person in the crowd told them that the spider was our leader. That got the spider killed very quickly, not that we had any problem with the spider dying. However, there was still the matter of the fire creatures to deal with.
Her Excellency Viscountess Kiera sent Caliphar and I to go retrieve His Excellency Count Lyonesse. When we found the Count, we explained what was going on as quickly as we could in as much detail as we could remember, and Count Lyonesse hurried to the scene.
Count Lyonesse talked privately with the fire creatures for a while, but I assume that no agreement was reached, because a fight broke out. And it was not an easy fight. These fire creatures were extremely powerful. Their leader took only one dagger blow of damage from everything that hit him, and he could constantly heal himself with his own flame.
Our strategy basically involved hitting him a lot, but even with four or five people hitting him at once, it still took us something like fifteen minutes to take him down. I am not clear on exactly what the fire creatures were looking for in town, so their existence and the reason for their presence is still a mystery to me.
Now, it was sometime around then that people began informing me that there had been invitations to a party that evening handed out earlier while I was asleep. Now, of course, I didn’t get an invitation to this party, but that was okay with me. You know why? Because every time I have ever seen a party hosted at a gathering, it has been a bad thing! It is always hosted by some type of strange creature who has something bad planned for those in attendance. However, I will talk more about that in detail later.
As I often do, I spent a good portion of the evening talking to adventurers around the tavern. There didn’t seem to be a lot going on, so it seemed like a good time to catch up. Finally, though, duty called, as Guildmistress Mirage called on me to help her cast a formal magic back at the earth circle, and I also had to become invested in the celestial circle in town.
I’ll talk about the earth ritual first. Lynx was requesting to race change to a darkstrider, and he was able to gather up the components necessary to do so. This was the first ritual Mirage had ever gotten the chance to cast, and so I performed as the secondary caster and coached her through it. She did an excellent job, too. The formal went off perfectly, as I acted as a conduit to channel the energies between Mirage and Lynx. Mirage also got a chance to cast her first solo formal, as she had to also invest me in the earth circle, since I am supposed to be the Assistant Guildmaster and I was not yet invested. It is difficult to fulfill your job description as an Assistant Guildmaster without being invested in a Circle.
Let me now pause and take a moment to speak about Guildmistress Mirage. I believe that since I moved to Therendry in the first place, Mirage has been to every gathering that I have been at. She is quiet and very rarely outspoken, but very effective. She is also a very friendly person and so has friends such as Glenn and myself that are extremely, fiercely loyal to her. In the time that I have known her, which is only a few months now, she has grown much. Where once she was timid, now she is more confident. Where once she may have hesitated to give commands, now she can comfortably take control of a situation. I believe that she was a perfect choice to become the Guildmistress of Exeter, and I believe that Lord Exeter should be applauded for his decision. I can assure you that in the months and years to come, Mirage will only get better at what she does, and I think she will do a terrific job as Guildmistress for far into the future.
At this point, I guess I should talk about the celestial circle. Prince Alejandro Sparras cast the circle, and he has a very interesting formal style. He tends to spray bits of components over everyone in the circle as he is casting the formal. I know Her Excellency Viscountess Kiera got sprayed with a bunch of components, and I took one or two myself. Fortunately, though, everyone was able to clean himself or herself off at the end of the formal, and the town had itself a celestial circle.
Anyhow, at the end of the formal session, I went back into town only to be informed that the people going to the party had left. I waited around for them to come back, but it was a long, slow wait, and so I went outside the tavern and did some sparring with Lochwood. They are excellent fighters, and they very much have my respect for their martial prowess. In fact, they are some of the best fighters I have faced outside of the Barony of Northguard.
Well, when people got back from the party, after having been there for a couple of hours, they looked tired and weary. I found out that they had a fight with vampires, and some townspeople had been bitten. We set up shop in the healer’s guild with our destroy formal magic scroll, and we managed to remove most of the transforms.
Unfortunately, in the middle of the process we got attacked by a new Headhunter creature, which could rift at will and swung 20 dagger blows of magic damage. It took people down quickly, but I could circle hop faster than it could rift, and so it had no chance of actually taking us all down. It did down Lord Exeter, Sathen, and I think Lynx in the doorway, but they were easily recovered.
Unfortunately, over the course of the next hour, it kept showing up and attacking. It attacked me at least five times, and my lone defense against it was my shield. Fortunately, I am good at using my shield, and so I managed to stop every one of his attacks. He was nasty, but nothing a scholar with a long sword couldn’t handle. My understanding is that he was eventually taken out by Lorel and Caliphar.
There were a few other events that occurred that night as well. For one thing, Lochwood assembled the town and we assaulted some type of shadow creature base. They were nasty, but we were able to deal with them. Count Lyonesse had a problem with constantly getting tainted, but I was behind him to purify him, and he bulldozed through shadow creatures when he was able to swing his weapon.
The final battle of the evening, though, was the living hassle himself, Mordakai. He came into town, surprised Cormyn and Leif, and stole the bracelet that kept him from rifting previously. Now, he has his rifting ability back, and so he is almost impossible to stop again. Cormyn tried to get him on Saturday night, but to no avail. Now, we will have to find a new trick to stop him in November. I have no idea how it will be done, but Mordakai will die. There is simply no alternative at this point.
Glenn left town on Saturday night, and Mirage, Peppercorn, and I left town on Sunday morning to catch up with him. I believe we plan on traveling to Blackstone next week. Who knows what trouble will await us there. It’s a difficult life, adventuring. But it is what we do. And I believe, for now, that this tale is at an end.
Scribed by Seronia on the 20th day of October in the year 603.