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.