Decisions, Decisions

Ever since the death of Farol, I've been struggling to come to terms with it. I can't help thinking that it is in some way my fault.

If I had stayed instead of turning back toward the town would we have held off the undead hoard? If the others had not followed me, would he have held? Is this what my father meant when he said my actions have consequences?

This is a new feeling for me. My entire life, I've never experienced an emotion like this. Is this guilt? I don't know what I should do. I don't like this feeling. I can't let something like this happen again because of the choices I make. I will step away and let the others in the group decide.

Spellscarred for life

We awoke in a room in Valthron's tower, the room he would not allow me to enter when I first consulted with him. He explained that he felt the magic taint that was growing had dissipated and that the undead in the town had become dead again. He also explained that the ruins had sunk into the ground and we needed to be dug out.

We had been unconscious for a time and were brought back to his tower so we might recover. He said that when we were being brought back he noticed that each of us seemed to have a scar. He said it was a Spellscar and that it may affect us later on on our journeys but did not know more then that. I on the other hand had been educated with the money of my family and while my tutors would not go into great detail about what exactly it was, I do know that it is some kind of taint within the blood from the Plagueland, but this not always the case. When they are used, they appear as a blue colour. That was about as much as they would tell me. When I got a moment to myself, I dug through the few tomes I brought with me from home, but they held no mention of Spellscarring, so I guess we will just have to wait and see what manifests.

Once we were well enough, we spoke with the lord and he granted us our recommendation letter so we can adventure legally through the realms, he also gifted us with the gold that was discovered in the ruins when we were found as well as some gold from his treasury. I spoke with the village priestess and we held a funeral for Farol. I also think I saw the Deva with a couple of severed hands. I wonder where she got them?

In any event, we will now move on elsewhere and see what comes our way.

The End Is In Sight

We began to make preparations to leave for the final showdown with Calaral and decided to make a final stop at Valthron's tower to see if the man had uncovered anything else we might use against him.

As it was, he didn't have any new information for us, but there was a Deva, but the name of Erayne, who wished to accompany us, I wonder if that's how it's spelled. I'll have to ask her later...Anyway, after gathering a few materials for a basic ritual from Valthron, me departed for the ruins.

We entered and found a room that had 3 statues in it. A glaring trap if ever I saw one. I tried to use my knowledge of the arcane to find out more information about them, but I could not. We skirted around the big statue in the middle of the room, but we got to close and it suddenly came to life and began swinging at us. It managed to hit us and we stepped back and it settled back into it's silent stance again. We noticed a patch of blood on the floor, possibly from a foolhardy adventurer who didn't realise what was happening. We decided to make our way to the other two statues in the corner of the room. Once again I felt a wave of arcane energy emanating from them, so I tried to find more information, but I could not.

As with the statue in the middle of the room, when we got too close to this one, it came to life and started attacking us. In a mighty show of acrobatics, Weedy leapt on top of the back of the statue and began to tinker with it's insides.

Mortis jumped onto the other one and began working on it's insides. I never would have thought that a dwarf could be so nimble, what with all the shortness and this one with the heavy muscles of longtime work in a forge, but he managed it. That was when a wave of concussive force exploded from the statue and threw me across the room. It hurt.

While Weedy and Mortis worked on the innards of the statues, Erayne and I hurled attacks at them. Eventually, Weedy began ramming her spear into the creature and Mortis tried to chip away at it with his axe. We managed to destroy them both, crumbling them to a pile of rubble. We focused our attention next on the bigger statue in the middle of the room, but this one proved to be less trouble then the first two, crumbling to rubble not long after we began our assault. I wonder how long they've been standing there, guarding the way?

As we made our way to the corridor that lead further into the ruins, we saw a trickle of water and 4 statues of cherubs. More arcane power was emanating from them, but I could produce no more information. After a couple of tries, in which he looked quite funny, trying to push on the statue without it actually moving, Mortis toppled one of them. I felt a diminishing of the arcane power and the group toppled another of the statues and the trickle of water stopped and the arcane power bled away. This might have been a trap set to stop curious villagers from nosing in on what they should know.

We descended and came to a ritual chamber. Calaral was at the end, chanting away in Abbysal. Thankfully I know the tongue or else I would have had no idea what it was. However, it was too complex even for me to grasp more then a word here and there. There we also 3 statues on grates with blood pouring down from them into a large pool, a handful of his minions, a statue to a dark god and a gateway. We held back so we could decide what to do. We decided that Mortis would rush the creature closest to us, which turned out to be a wight, while the rest of us would run over and try to remove the statue on the closest grate. We managed to topple it and the blood stopped pouring out from the grate. We also drew the attention of Calaral and his minions.

The battle was on. We took on the wight, each of us hurling our own specialised attacks at it. We finished it off and took on the other two minions. Mortis did quite well for himself as he was flanked and withstood attacks from both the minion and Calaral.

When it was just Calaral left, he did something we did not expect. He broke some kind of vial and was teleported on top of some ruins that had been painted on the floor just before the gateway. We rushed over there to confront him once more, but tentacles began sliding out of the gateway and started attacking. We decided to try and moved Calaral off of the ruins and finish him off.

The ritual must not have been fully completed for when we struck the final blow, there was a massive backlash of stored magic. Calaral's body was seized by the tentacles and drawn back into the gateway. The force of the backlash threw everyone against the far wall and we blacked out.

Requiem For An Adventurer

We were making our way toward the graveyard, and myself verging on doubling back to warn Lord Padrag of the traitor in the town when the goblin Grimshaw came running up yelling that traitors had captured the lord and were holding him, his family and their staff hostage in the town. That settled it for me and I turned around and headed back toward town. Farol continued toward the graveyard and the lurching undead. There was some discussion about whom to follow but in the end, it was decided to head back to town. Farol didn't seem to register that the rest of the party had headed back to town, as he waded into the hoard and started hacking away.

We got back to town and observed that Lord Padrag's manor had been taken under seige. The traitor, Ninran, the elf we met back in the tavern when we first entered the town who told us about the kobold cave. She was standing on the second level of the manor and I could sense some kind of Arcane working coming from the area. She demanded the blood of 10 innocents or 20,000 gold pieces. We reasoned her down to 10,000 gold pieces. I even asked if we could offer her the blood of 20 innocent children, being that they were smaller then adults but easier to catch. I'm pretty sure Weedy silently agreed with the pragmatism of that plan, but Ironarm seemed to have a problem with it, so we made our way to the cover of some market stalls to get a better view of manor. After some discussion, Ironarm was worried and rather peeved that the elf had taken hostages, we decided our best bet would be to try and get inside and to her. We managed to bluff our way in, saying we had the gold, and managed to bluff our way to her.

We had to hold Ironarm back while we traded barbs and spoke of what was taking place, but in the end it devolved into combat. Ironarm raged forth and attempted to bash her with his shield, while Weedy covered his flank and took out the minion that was in the hall. Myself, I teleported into the room, attempting to surprise her from behind and managed to miss her entirely with almost all my attacks. Another minion came down the stairs and I did manage to hit him, an overpowered magic missile fried his body to ashes, while, after being alerted by the elf, more minions came up the stairs from the lower level of the house. Weedy took point over the stairway to block their advance and managed to hold off the attackers quite well. Ironarm rushed the elf again, this time knocking her so hard that she flew out the window and fell 20 feet to the ground below with a somewhat wet thud. He then took leave of the room to assist Weedy with the minions coming up the stairs.

During this time as we took out more minions I could feel a surge in the Arcane energies that I felt surrounding the house, seeming to build to a point, but at the time I was too involved leaning out the window and trying to hit that traitorous elf with some spells, missing completely each time. Memories of pelicans and open wounds began to resurface. Ironarm and Weedy had managed to knock the oncoming minions down the stairs and Ironarm, still enraged at the elf, leapt out the window to confront her. Using a fetherfall spell, I helped him not hit the ground too hard, and went back out to help Weedy finish off the minions on the stairs.

Once all the minions had been finished off, I felt the Arcane energies build to a crescendo and speed off toward the north and then dissipate from around the manor. Ironarm continued to attack the elf and I managed to get a good shot at her and finished her from above.

We took some time to search the manor and free the hostages and found the remnants of a ritual in the manor. We couldn't do more then that as we still had to rush to the aide of Farol who was still fighting the undead, or so I hoped. I knew from past experience, that the paladin can withstand much assault. We spent a short time to heal and then rushed back to the graveyard.

When we arrived, we found a terrible sight. Many of the undead had been returned to the dead status as well as a couple of liches, but in the end, it cost the holy warrior his life. Upon approaching his blackened corpse, we saw a column of white light.

So, one of our number is dead, because we abandoned him to fight the undead alone instead of trying to get him to come along back to town with us or to stay and fight with him. Was it my fault? If I hadn't turned away and headed back to town when I had, would the others have followed Farol instead? I don't know. I hope he is met in the halls of Lord Bahamut as a hero because he died as one. Farol, I'm not sure I was the most easy person to travel with but your presence during our travels before we met the others in Brandenburg gave me some confidence. When we deal with Calaral, I will see if the priestess of the town knows the funeral rights for a follower of Bahamut and if she will perform them over your remains. I will also say a prayer for you when I next pass a temple to Corellon. It is only a small service that I can do for one who saved my life and the others as you did

They Say "May You Live In Interesting Times"

And that is surely what we're in now, interesting times. After my last entry some rather interesting things happened indeed.

To begin with, when we returned to Brandenburg with Weedy, we split up to conduct our own investigations as to what was happening in and around the town. Myself and Farol met up with the old sage who said he would look into the history of the town to find any connection. He had some information for us. He uncovered information that a ritual took place in the area centuries ago and some of the events described in his tomes matches what is taking place here at the moment. Apparently the old lord of the tower slaughtered his family and serfs in some sort of ritual to gain power. He didn't have anymore then that so we went to visit the priestess who performed the rites for the dead woman who came back to life. According to her she performed all the necessary rituals as per usual, something she's done on several occasions. We then went to see the family of the dead woman. I was hesitant to interrupt the grieving of the family, but we needed answers. According to the family the woman had lived in the village her whole life. She had no enemies and they were at a loss as to why anyone would choose to resurrect her.

We met up with the rest of our team and decided to head north to the ruins of the old tower that was the focal point of the ritual that was performed so long ago. We also had a tag along. The daughter of the lord of the town decided to follow us with a travelling piano. She claims that our group provide ample opportunity to practice spurts of dramatic music and what not. Why not. It might give us something interesting to listen to.

We rescued the gnoll leader and he made mention of a human that was working with the goblins. He said his name was "Calaral". We also began interrogating one of the goblins; I say began, because Farol decided to slit the goblin's throat before we could get anymore information from him. The goblin did mention that they had been warned by a traitor from the town that we had entered the keep. After exploring around the keep for a bit more, we headed back to town to see if we could find out any more information about the potential traitor in the town.

When we arrived back, we found the town barricaded and sealed off, the lord made mention that the dead have been rising and been attacking the townspeople. We are off to explore the graveyard as that is where the trouble seems to be. However, I wish to inform the lord of the town that there is a traitor in his town, working for this Calaral, so I think I might double back and meet back up with our party. Also, when we rested in the keep, I went through some of my spellbooks and happened across several pages that had been stuck together, uncovering some interesting spells. One such spell I plan to retrain to use when we get a chance to rest again.

Ianis in Plastic

Ianis - Painted by Ironarm

What Happened Next

Some interesting events later and now we're back at the town. One thing I forgot to mention in my last entry was that we also met a wise man who did some research for us regarding the history of the town.

Anyway, when we left the town, we headed south for the waterfall mentioned by the elf at the inn where she had seen some kobolds. As we approached we came across an ancient magic circle, but nothing much remained to identify its use. We continued beyond the waterfall into what we found out to be the kobold's lair. After fighting off a few, I'm glad to say my aim had improved somewhat, we entered their main chamber and was greeted with a rather strange sight. The kobolds were being led by a goblin, who appeared to be controlling them with a withered hand he wore around his neck. Those vile little creatures will gather and hoard anything. Struck by a sudden inspiration, I cast my "Mage Hand" spell and removed it from around his neck. Well, after it was removed from him, the kobolds stopped attacking us. Well, I wasn't going to touch the hand, so I gave it to the paladin for safe keeping.

After dispatching the goblin, a kobold elder approached us and not only thanked us for releasing them from the goblin's control, but explained that their race had been taken as slaves to work for the goblins. He said that their leader had been taken to a keep in the north and they promised that if we went and released him, the kobolds would leave the area for good. Not the solution that the lord was looking for, but it suits his needs fine, and he doesn't have to know about our deal. We were then told of a restless spirit further down in the kobold's lair and were asked if we might try and calm it for them. This was all relayed to us by Grimshaw, as she was the only one who could speak draconic.

We descended into the lower sections and came across a strange idol hidden in an alcove. When it was touched, a voice mentioned an ancient ritual that had taken place here centuries ago and that it was part of a second idol that was being used to perform the ritual again. We reached the bottom of the stairway and found ourselves in a chamber that indeed had an ancient restless spirit. Talking with it, we found out some more information about this ritual that was revealed by the idol. We settled the spirit and left the lair and headed westwards to the old dragon burial site.

When we got to the site, there were several people there already, as well as a large tarp covering something in the pit. We were bid to come closer, but declined and were set upon by a couple of young dragon dog things as well as several attackers. After dispatching them, we discovered that the missing dwarf that was mentioned in the town was under the tarp. He said that he had been ambushed by the group and tied up. We accompanied him back to the town, which we found had had some rather interesting events take place.

First that an old woman who had died recently had suddenly become an undead and was walking around, much to her family's dismay, and when we met with the lord to advise him on what we had discovered we heard a rather loud crash, we were then rudely interrupted by his daughter who chose that time to begin practising her dramatic music on her piano. An owl flew into the window and bade us to follow it, so we did. Fortunately the daughter of the lord decided to follow us with her travel piano, playing for us some light traveling music. We arrived at the scene of our first battle, the road to the Brandenburg Gate, to find two people in the throes of battle, a druid and an older man. We helped them get rid of their attackers and they thanked us and introduced themselves. The older man was one of the purple blades, at least I think he said it was the purple blades. The other was a druid who had a rather unusual name, Weedyseadragon. She apparently can't remember anything from before the time she woke up recently. So now we have an extra person in our group, and we are headed back to town to conduct some investigations into the happenings to see where we go from here.

Finally!

After a week of travelling with the paladin, we finally reach the town of Brandenburg. Well, I use the term "town" very loosely. The grounds of my family's estate is bigger then this "town", but I get ahead of myself.

As we approached the Brandenburg Gate, we were greeted by two of the townsfolk, a city-goblin named Grimshaw and a dwarf by the name of Mortis, residents of the town or some such, I really wasn't paying much attention past their names, they are common after all. Anyway, after the introductions were made, we were set upon by a group of kobolds. I knew that my aim and training had been lacking, since the incident with the pelicans, and I had not practiced as I said I should have, this showed in our battle with the kobolds as most of my spells either sailed way overhead to strike something behind my target, or smashed into the ground in front of it. I must admit that Farol was great, being surrounded by the vile little creatures and taking them on.

The goblin on the other hand ran. She said she was going to fetch the town guards. It took a while for them to arrive, but in the end they did. In the interim both Farol and the dwarf inflicted most of the damage, while I did eventually score a couple of hits, but not much more then that.

Afterward, we went to the tavern to meet with the lord of the town as well as some of the other townspeople. I was surprised to see an elf in the tavern. Meeting with the lord, who really could only barely just be called that, he told us that the town had been under attack by the kobolds or some-such, and some other things. I drifted in and out of the conversation. When he left, the four of us decided that it would be an idea of we investigated the problems of the lord, so before leaving the town, we decided to gather what information we could about the kobold attacks. I decided to speak with the elf, due to our common ancestry I felt I might have made more of a connection with her then the others. She did give us some interesting information, as well as a map of the surrounding area where some of the attacks had taken place and that some kobolds have been spotted toward the south of the town.

We also got some information about a recent visitor looking into dragons. But he hasn't been heard from since he left for a site near the town, southwest I believe.

So our course from here is to investigate what we believe is the kobold stronghold toward the south and from there head southwest to investigate the ancient site. I will write of our findings when we return to the town

An Interesting Development

It's interesting how one's fortune can change so quickly. The other night I was huddled over a campfire, patching up some wounds, and now I've not only got a companion, but I also have a direction and a destination. While I was walking along the road headed for the next city, I came upon another adventurer. A paladin by the name of Farol. It was an interesting meeting. He had no idea as to whom I was and he clearly had no noble blood that I could tell, little more then a servant really. But I didn't hold that against him. He mentioned he was headed towards a small town called Brandenburg. He didn't seem willing to divulge much more then that. I asked if he would like a companion as well as a mage for the journey and he agreed. So now we're headed for this, what I'm assuming, quaint little town. I can't wait to get there and see all the little people. In the mean time my new companion and I have set up camp for the night, but seems that I will have to still look after my own things, for when I handed them over to him to take care of, he just looked at me and then let them fall to the ground.

He says that we should reach Brandenburg by next week.

Blasted birds!

All had started out well. I left town and headed down the coast road. My plan was to follow the coast road south to the next city and see where things went for there. I decided to take my midday just off the road near to the sea. That will be the last time I make that mistake. While eating, the pelicans began to approach. I tried shooing them away but that didn't work, they just kept coming back. So I decided to try something with a bit more oomph. If you're going to cast magic missile at something, you'd better be damn sure it will hit them. I need to work on my aim.

The blast struck the ground next to one of the foul creatures and it seemed to take exception to my methods and began to attack me. At one point the blasted bird got ahold of my pack. I had to wrench it from it's beak. When I had it back, it nipped my fingers and arms before I managed to get off a good shot and blasted the cursed thing. So now I'm sitting beside my campfire patching up the cuts along my arms so they won't get infected. At least I've got some tasty fried meat to eat over the next couple of days, so it's not all bad.

If all goes well, I should be able to make the city in the next couple of days and I'll hopefully be able to find something interesting and fun to take my fancy. At the very least I need to find a way to make some more gold. Buying those supplies drained much of the money I got from father.

This Can't End Well

I knew when father summoned me that morning that it wasn't going to end well for me. I couldn't have been more right. Apparently he is fed up with the way I've been living my life and spending his money. He went on a tirade about how the family fortune wasn't mine to squander on frivolities and how our ancestors would be spinning in their graves if they saw what I'd been doing to the legacies of their fortune and name. I don't think I improved my situation with my comment about throwing open the doors to the family crypts and charging people to watch these spinning corpses in order to replenish the family coffers.

He told me that in a matter of a handful of years I'd burned through what was to be my inheritance, a considerable lot he "assured" me. In the end he gave me a bag full of gold, saying it was the last of any gold I would see from the family, that he would no longer coddle me and cast me out of the family estate.

So now, apparently, I have to make my own way in the world, without the benefits that a nobleman's name would provide. So I'll go about as just Ianis. At least I have my magecraft to fall back on. I wandered down to the town in order to purchase a few supplies before heading out into the world for some adventure as well as this journal in which I will chronicle my journeys. I may as well make the best of this situation, seeing as I've now no responsibilities to tie me down. So I guess I'd better begin and head off. I'll write more when I make camp tonight.