Wing Three

ADVENTURE 26 - KAZMIRA'S SAFEHOUSE

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At this point in time, Stuart had graduated college and thus was with us for this adventure, but Logan wasn't - he had to go back to school. So since there was a good chance that Stuart would be gaming with us for awhile, we just assumed that Mercutio had made it into the Adventurers Guild and had been assigned to the empty slot in Wing Three that had once been Gareth's.

- - -

The morning began with a Guild page entering the common area of Wing Three with a message: Piddilink Dundernoggin would like the group to come visit him at their earliest convenience.

As the group entered Dundernoggin’s magic shop, the little gnome greeted them and walked over to the front door, hanging up a “CLOSED” sign, and pulled down the shades. “We won’t wanna be disturbed,” he explained.

“Now then, the reason I called you all here. I understand that you’ve had a recent run-in with the wanted thief 'Kazmira the Magpie,' and that she escaped pretty much right from under your ridiculously undersized noses. It’s understandable that you want to find her and bring her in, and I hear tell the reward for her still stands at 50,000 gold. Well, I think I can help you find her.

“A couple of days back, this halfling walks into my shop with a silver raven. You guys know what a silver raven is, right? It’s this little statue thing, only you say the command word and it animates just like a real bird, can fly and everything, real good for passing messages on from here to there. Anyway, he’s got one, and he asks me if there’s a way to alter its outward appearance without screwing up the magic that makes it work.

“I tell him, sure, I can change it so it looks like a different creature if he wants, it’s a delicate procedure, but it can be done. So what does he want me to make it look like?

“And he tells me he wants it to look like a magpie.

“So, that’s the first thing that gets me suspicious, because who would want a silver magpie more than the Magpie herself, right? But then I notice something else. This halfling guy, he’s about my size, and he’s wearing one of those little floppy, flat caps that you see them wear sometimes. Only there’s sunlight coming in from the front door, and the shadow he’s casting is that of a human with one of those wide-brimmed caps like traveling wizards like to wear.

“Now, I’ve been in the magic-crafting business for some years now, and I’ve picked up a trick or two. Crafting magic items is expensive work, but there’s shortcuts you can take to keep the cost down. Now, I’m not saying there aren’t always side-effects by doing it that way – you guys remember them troll’s-blood healing potions I sold you awhile back, right? Well, anyway, what I figure is that ‘halfling’ was a full-size human wearing a hat of disguise that was made using some shortcuts. Maybe he didn’t know about the side effects, or maybe he did but didn’t think anybody would notice, but in any case I don’t think that was no halfling that came in here. I’m thinking it was one of Kazmira’s flunkies or something. Definitely a guy, though, from the shape of the shadow.

“So anyway, I tell him I can do it, but it’ll take me a couple of days. And while I’m working on it in the back office after business hours, I’m coming up with a plan. Now, I could just alert you guys or the authorities, but all we’d likely end up with is a captured flunky, not Kazmira herself. What we needed was a way to use the silver magpie to track down Kazmira. So here’s what I came up with.

“The silver raven he brought in had eyes made of these tiny rubies. It just so happened that I had a larger ruby of similar coloration, so what I did was I removed the raven’s original eyes and replaced them with ones I carved from my bigger ruby, and then I used what was left to create this.” With that, Piddilink reached into his robes and pulled out a large metal ring about a foot in diameter. Attached to one side was an odd-shaped ruby.

“I didn’t have time to whip up a magical tracking device into the silver magpie, plus I figured if Kazmira’s been operating this long without getting caught she’s probably got plenty of anti-scrying devices at work for her. So I whipped up this little beauty. It’s a teleport ring, keyed in to the little eyes I put into the silver magpie, since the ruby it’s holding is kinda like their ‘mother,’ if you will. Now, I will warn you, to get it made in time I took plenty of shortcuts, so it’ll only work the once, but it’ll teleport any and all who’s holding onto the ring directly to the silver magpie. My little ‘halfling’ friend came in this morning to pick it up, so I figure he’s probably handed it over to Kazmira by now. I figure she’s still probably here somewhere in Greyhawk City, because just the other evening she stole a couple of paintings from the big art museum down on Platinum Drive, and left one of her calling cards behind.

“So, here’s my deal: I give you this teleport ring, free of charge. You use it to teleport to Kazmira’s vicinity and take her down. Then we all split the reward money. I figure I should get a full fifth of the reward, since I’m the one putting you on her track, plus it took some coin creating the ring and all. You guys split the other 40,000 gold between yourselves however you like. Do we have a deal?”

After some quibbling on Piddilink's cut of the reward money (which he won), the gnome handed them the metal ring, explained its use, and the four adventurers each grabbed it with one hand. When they were ready, Cal spoke the activation word, and they were gone.

They found themselves in an open foyer to a moderately well-to-do house, with a series of high windows along the curved front wall - above what was apparently the front door - which let in sufficient sunlight to keep the foyer well lit without allowing neighbors to see inside.

Immediately upon their sudden appearance, however, a loud voice from above cried out “Intruders in the house!" Naturally, this was the silver magpie, sitting perched above the doorjamb of the front door. This led to a mad scramble into the rest of the house, the group hoping to catch Kazmira and Gareth unprepared before they had time to escape. But a search of the main level found nothing unusual - living room, dining room, kitchen, servants' quarters - until they got to the master bedroom, which had apparently seen recent use, as the bed was unmade, the closet doors were partially open, and the room held a slight smoky smell from the recently-extinguished candle sitting on a dresser. Peering inside the closets, the group saw that one contained women's clothing while the other held men's garments. Cal recognized one of the men's cloaks as belonging to Gareth.

Feron's sharp half-elven hearing picked up the sounds of footsteps in the kitchen, but a quick investigation showed nobody there. There were, however, a set of stairs leading to the basement, so the group cautiously went downstairs, finding a dead end in the form of a wine cellar.

"There's got to be a secret door or something around here," suggested Cal. Investigation of the wine rack, which covered an entire wall, showed that only the rightmost 10-foot section was covered in cobwebs. Mercutio uncovered a secret switch, and the entire wall - wine racks and all - slid smoothly over 10 feet to the right.

Behind the secret passageway was another large room, this one filled with all sorts of training aids: there was an area covered in padded mats with a balance beam centered in the middle; several storeshop dummies; a table covered in half-assembled padlocks and door mechanisms and another set up as a forger's station; and several targets lined up against a wall. The wall to the right had a passageway in its middle, while an impressively locked door stood directly ahead in the center of the wall in front of the group.

Mercutio headed straight for the impressively locked door, thinking it a more secure location in which to hide from enemies, and thus the more likely place for Kazmira and Gareth to have gone. Within less than a minute he had picked the lock and opened the door to find a pile of gold and silver coins sprawled in a loose heap upon the middle of the floor, with several jeweled swords and an ornate staff or two sticking up out of the coin pile. The air within felt damp and moist.

"Leave it," grumbled Cal, and moved toward the open passageway to the south. It contained doors on either wall and another at the end. The door on the left looked to be as impressively locked as the previous treasure room, and Mercutio applied himself to it as Cal barreled through the door straight ahead, followed by Slayer and Feron. This led to an open room containing a wide variety of oddities, looking rather like the contents of somebody’s attic. Two easels stood along the east wall, each covered in a black cloth. Next to it, a white cloth covered what might be a statue or life-sized mannequin. A table along the south wall held what looked to be several music boxes and toy castles. Three closed and locked chests were lined up against the west wall, and a shelf above them held several small boxes. An unlit brazier stood next to the chests, and several frames leaned against the far corner. In the center of the room stood a marble bust on an ornate pedestal, easily identifiable as a carving of Kazmira herself.

"Hello, Slayer," purred the bust of Kazmira, pivoting on its pedestal to face the astonished barbarian. "Did you miss me?"

"What trickery--?" began Cal, but then the bust barked out a command word and the white cloth was thrown aside, revealing a sculpture of a humanoid of some sort, both carved of wood and forged of steel. It had flung the covering aside and moved to attack.

Feron and Slayer followed Cal further into the room to battle the construct, as Mercutio overcame the lock to the room behind them. It opened up into another treasure room, this one containing several chests stacked neatly beside one another, each locked with a strong padlock. Next to it stood a suit of plate armor hanging on a rack, and immediately behind the chests stood three barrels marked “HEALING” in prominent letters. Everything stood upon an intricately-designed carpet, easily quite valuable itself. Mercutio rubbed his hands in greed, but heard the sounds of combat coming from the room the others had entered and decided to go help before rifling through the contents of the treasure rooms. That in itself was a bit of a shame, for as Mercutio moved away, the contents of this second treasure room shifted and merged together into an amoebic blob that oozed out of the room and followed the Peloric cleric into the room where all of the action was occurring.

Cal and Slayer were battling the metal-and-wood automaton with a fair bit of success. The bust of Kazmira swiveled again, and called out two more command words. This time, the black fabric covering one of the rectangles leaning on an easel ripped open, and out spilled two trolls, released from the magic mirror of life trapping that had held them suspended until now. Feron applied a series of fire-based spells against the trolls, who did not appreciate her ability at all.

In the meantime, the amoebic blob got to the room and snaked a sticky pseudopod at Mercutio, just as he dropped one of the trolls with some fire magic of his own. It hit him square in the back and pulled him into what was now revealed to be a hungry mimic. As these disparate battles raged on, the bust of Kazmira continued to call out taunts at her opponents.

In time, the battle started to turn in the adventurers' favor: the remaining troll was sealed off behind a wall of stone from which he couldn't immediately escape; the automaton was demolished, and only the mimic remained. Suddenly, a series of magic missiles came shooting from the direction of the toy castles, striking each of the adventurers, who were fairly depleted of their most powerful spells and were low on healing. Another round of magic missiles soared and hit each of the group, and this time they pinpointed the origin from a specific small-scale building, in front of which could be seen two tiny figures. Not for long, though, for the figures immediately grew to full size; Kazmira and Gareth, hiding while shrunken inside a Daern's dollhouse, had decided their opponents were weak enough now that they could step in and mop up.

That turned out to be a bit premature, though, for three of the adventurers had a personal stake in bringing these two to justice (and to gain the sizable reward on Kazmira's head), and seeing them here at last spurred them on to greater efforts. Gareth was quickly dropped into unconsciousness, and Kazmira took enough hits that it seemed she had overestimated her chances for success.

And then, inexplicably, everything changed in a single instant. One moment, Slayer and Mercutio were trying to pull their weapons out of a still-fighting mimic; Feron and Cal were slamming Kazmira to near-unconsciousness with her spells and his fists - and then, in the blink of an eye, Cal, Feron, and Slayer were gone, leaving a puzzled Mercutio and an equally puzzled Kazmira staring at each other in wonder.

Ever the pragmatist, Mercutio raced away from the mimic and slammed the hilt of his rapier into the Magpie's face, dropping her to a heap on the floor. Then he scooped her up and threw her over one shoulder and played a desperate game of tag with the hungry mimic, eventually managing to get by it and tug Slayer's magical greatsword out of its sticky body as he passed it by. Then he raced out of the room, down the hallway, through the secret door, and activated the mechanism that closed it behind him, sealing the mimic and Gareth in the basement level. Racing up to the kitchen (and snagging an impressive vintage of elven wine from the wine rack on his way), he raced out the door and made his way back to Headquarters on foot.

- - -

This one had me nervous, because I knew that certain individuals were going to mysteriously disappear at the climax of the adventure, and I wrote it up not knowing specifically which PCs would be going through this session. (I've found that's one of the most irritating aspects of running a campaign with each player having two PCs to run, and never knowing ahead of time who'll be in which adventure.) When I saw that Cal, Feron, and Slayer had been chosen, and knowing that they were on the "PCs who will disappear" list, I thought that Kazmira would probably end up getting away again. Thanks to Stuart's quick actions, that didn't happen.

I should also mention that we had Joey "playing D&D" with us during this session. He was probably about 4 years old at the time, and he had a handful of Star Wars miniatures that he played with at the table while we played D&D. However, he had in recent sessions insisted on putting his minis on the geomorphs with those of the rest of the group and pretending that he was playing. During his turn, he liked having his PC (a robot of some type from the Star Wars universe) shoot a "tactical nuke" at whatever monster was on the table, and didn't understand why his infinite supply of tactical nukes (and the occasional laser blast) wasn't killing off the monsters. In the past, I had tried including dinosaurs in whatever adventure we were running; each round, I'd describe to the D&D players what was happening, and when it came time for Joey's turn (I had made him up an initiative card that had his head superimposed on one of Klaus Pozas's halfling paladin drawings), a dinosaur suddenly attacked, and he could nuke it to death. But that got kind of tiring.

So for this adventure, we put Joey on "treasure patrol." Each round, as the PCs were exploring the upper level of the safehouse, I'd ask Joey where he was looking for treasure ("under the chair," "in the sofa cushions," "in the desk drawer," etc.), and I'd tell him what he found ("three gold coins!" or "a ruby!" or "a bag of ten silver coins!") and then he'd spend time drawing it on a sheet of paper that we had designated his treasure hoard. It kept him busy and involved with his family while we gamed.

The Daern's dollhouse is kind of a Daern's instant fortress in reverse; rather than growing a little tower to full-size, it shrinks people (and other creatures touching those people) to little size, and they can return to full size upon leaving the dollhouse. In time, once everybody was reunited again, they would encounter the Daern's dollhouse again and Feron would claim it, and she'd carry it around in her Heward's handy haversack as part of her standard gear. It became the default "camping overnight" location for the PCs when they were out in the field, and I made up a full-scale geomorph of the dollhouse out of a sheet of poster board. It's one of the increasingly larger number of things I bring to every gaming session nowadays.

In the meantime, the players wanted to know what had happened to their characters. I told them that they would definitely find out at our next gaming session.

ADVENTURE 27 - BALAMA'S TREASURE HUNT

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To say that it was mass confusion was an understatement. It was dark, it was wet, it was difficult to balance on the slippery deck, and there was a giant, snakelike head popping over the side of the vessel and devouring crewmen.

It took a few moments for Cal, Feron, and Slayer to get their bearings. One moment they had been battling Kazmira and Gareth in a long-awaited showdown, and the next they were here, on a boat, in the dark, with the screams of crewmen and the roars of an aquatic dinosaur only adding to the confusion. It was stormy, and the boat rocked back and forth with the crashing of the waves against its hull. Akari was no less disoriented; he had been on backup duty at the Guild Headquarters, fully armored in case he was needed to swap out with their new member, Mercutio, and then suddenly he was here on the boat among at least three of his compatriots.

"Lizards at the port side!" called out a familiar voice amid the chaos. Port was left - they were pretty sure of that, but which way was the front of the boat? - never mind, there were lizardmen climbing over one side of the boat; that must be the port side. The group met the lizardmen's assault while all sorts of questions raced through their minds: where were they? Why were they here? How did they get here? Never mind for now - such things were just distractions, and they could get you killed. Deal with the questions later, deal with the lizardmen now.

Cal and Feron had used up their most powerful spells during their battle with Kazmira and Gareth in her hidden safehouse, which to them had been just a moment ago, but the scaled menaces climbing over the ship's side fell just as easily to mace and scimitar. Akari at least had the advantage of having his Hoardmaster sword in hand upon his arrival; Slayer was cursing the lack of his beloved greatsword, which he had upgraded several times with magical properties since first acquiring it over a year ago, and as far as he knew was still stuck in the side of the mimic he'd been fighting before suddenly showing up here. He made do with a backup longsword from the many weapons strapped to his back.

A lizardman came charging across the deck at Slayer, and he prepared to cut it in half with his sword when it was suddenly leapt on from the side and thrown to the pitching deck. Whatever had brought Slayer and his companions to this ship, it had apparently brought Fang along as well, and the dire wolf ripped through the lizardman's thick scales and chewed its entrails until it stopped moving.

As the group of confused adventurers fought and slew the horde of lizardmen climbing onto the vessel's decks and kept an eye out for the elasmosaurus which kept sticking his head over the side of the boat and snatching up crewmen, they saw a glowing lizardman hovering over the front of the vessel. He held some sort of dual-pronged staff and had an oddly-shaped, red gemstone hanging on his chest. The creature seemed to be commanding his troops but doing so completely soundlessly.

Cal threw a dispel magic at the apparition, and it winked out of existence. The lizardmen continued fighting, but the next time the elasmosaurus popped its head over the deck, it selected one of the scaly invaders as its next morsel. Eventually, though, the waves of fresh lizardmen stopped coming, and those that had made it onto the vessel were dealt with. Not a one of them surrendered, though, nor did they opt to make a break for the easy escape of the pounding sea from which they came. The elasmosaurus had apparently had its fill for now, for it did not return.

Feron almost slipped on something that came sliding along the tilted deck; it was a crumpled and decaying body with feathers sticking out in all directions. Yet another mystery about this whole affair to try to resolve later.

But for now, it looked like combat was over. Other than the adventuring group that had suddenly arrived on deck and a slew of scattered corpses, there were only two heavily-wounded crewmen and the ship's captain still on board the vessel. And the captain was the one who had called out to warn of the lizardmen's surge onto deck from the port side in a voice that had seemed familiar. It was Balama Theron of the Starchaser, who had worked with the group in getting to the Rana Mor ruins a continent away from Greyhawk City.

“Many thanks, friends, for saving me and what’s left of my crew," Balama said. "I apologize for your sudden appearance, but I had no choice in the matter.” She reached into her blouse and pulled out an amulet, looking similar to the dreamcatchers often seen for sale in the marketplace. “When you were with me on the Starchaser in search of the Rana Mor gem, I took the liberty of removing a few strands of hair from each of you while you slept, plus some fur from your wolf and a feather or two from your eagle, and having them woven into this summoning amulet by a witchwoman I know among the Pinutu tribe. It’s a one-shot deal, so all I can say is that it won’t happen again.” With that, she broke the cord tying it around her neck and flicked the amulet overboard.

Feron looked down at the remains of Nocturna, her proud eagle companion who had died fighting to protect her, and who Feron had buried after his death so his body's nutrients could be returned to the earth from which it came. Now, his sad, unburied corpse was sliding around the deck as the ship pitched in the storm. The half-elf's face screwed into a snarl and she struck out suddenly with her fist, punching the sea captain in her face and knocking her to the slippery deck.

Balama struggled to her feet. “I know you’re all upset with me, and I’m sorry that I didn’t ask for permission ahead of time. I just figured that there was a possibility that I could use a group of powerful adventurers at a moment’s notice, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t use it unless I absolutely had to. But I’d already lost over half of my crew from those damned lizardmen when that dinosaur thing showed up and added to the mix. If I hadn’t summoned you here, I don’t think any of us – me and my crew, I mean – would be alive now. So again, I’m sorry." Feron looked away but said nothing, then turned to apply what healing she could to the two remaining crewmen. Cal applied healing spells to those who needed them, and the group did what they could to aid in the running of the vessel; fortunately, the worst of the storm seemed to have receded with the departure of the reptilian adversaries.

“Now then, I imagine you’re probably wondering where we are," said Balama when the ship was safely anchored in a sheltered bay. "Come with me to the map room, and I’ll show you.” She shouted some orders to her two remaining crewmen, then led the way inside. Balama showed the group an ancient map showing an island chain, and explained that there were rumors of an ancient civilization’s ruins on the larger of the islands. Her investigations uncovered rumors of a huge ruby, the size of a man’s fist or bigger, said to have magical healing powers. The islands didn’t show up on any current nautical maps, but she’d figured out their probable location and the ship was just about there – the lizardfolk attacked just as the island was coming into view off the port bow.

Balama admitted up front she didn’t have any way to return the group back to Greyhawk City, short of taking the Starchaser back to Thunder Bay and allowing them to use the teleport circle under the local Adventurers Guild headquarters there, but she also stated she was not about to turn back now that she was so close to her destination. She said she was willing to take the group on as augmentee crewmembers and split any treasure they found at the ruins with them equally. There was little real choice about the matter; like it or not, the group was pretty much stuck with her and her mission to go treasure hunting through the long-dead ruins.

Feron gathered up Nocturna's remains, said a little prayer over them, and dropped them over the side of the vessel. At least his body was being returned to the natural world, and not left to rot on deck.

The next morning, with a full complement of spells and fully healed up, the group's outlook was slightly better. Balama left Hurm Feros, her first mate, in charge of the Starchaser and went ashore with the group. They couldn't help recalling that the lizardman apparition that had apparently commanded the lizardmen in the attack had been wearing a large ruby, and speculated as to whether than might be the huge ruby of the legends. None of them noticed the water naga observing them from the waters of the bay, and then following at a discrete distance.

The first encounter they met up on the island was a pair of triple-horned dinosaurs, the male testy and snorting a challenge to the newcomers. But the group avoided them by skirting far around them, and pressed on.

After several hours, the group came to the outskirt of the ruins. Most of the stone buildings had been destroyed by the ravages of time, but a multilayered step pyramid still rose up from the ruins, in reasonably good condition given its apparent age. The group headed that way.

Unfortunately for them, the water naga that had been trailing them was in league with the lizardman tribe that laired in the stone pyramid, and had sent message spells ahead to warn the tribe of the group's approach and their apparent strengths and weaknesses. Thus, there were four lizardmen, plus a trained crocodile and monitor lizard, hidden behind the crumbling walls near the tribe's still-functioning well, ready to spring out in ambush when the word was given. Also hidden behind the well was a black-scaled lizardman half again as high as his companions. Less concerned about hiding his presence was the Lizard King, who stood proudly at the pyramid's upper level. This was the same figure that had hovered silently over the Starchaser, with the ruby at his chest and the twin-pronged staff in his hands. One level below him were four smaller lizardmen, each holding what looked to be a long wooden flute. Chained at the base of the pyramid, one on either side of the stairs that reached all the way to the top, were two pitiable human figures, their legs cut off above the knees and their arms severed at the elbow. They mewled in warning with mouths that no longer contained tongues.

However, two newer captives, who hung in a cage from a tall tree overlooking a deep pit, were still able to call out warnings in their native tongue. It was not the same tongue that the Banda people had spoken among the Rana Mor ruins, but it was close enough in structure that Balama thought the gist of their warning was to beware the "terrible lizards" inhabiting the pyramid.

The battle began with a summoned fiendish deinonychus in the midst of the adventurers. While Slayer and Akari dealt with this threat, Cal and Feron threw some long-range spells at the Lizard King. The hidden lizardmen and their reptilian allies leapt out from their cover and battle on the ground was suddenly fast and furious.

While battle raged on the ground, it became apparent that the "flutes" held by the smaller lizardmen were actually blowguns, firing poisoned darts. Cal decided to fight fire with fire and summoned a fire elemental at the top of the pyramid to deal with the enemies up there, to give them something to deal with besides the adventurers. The Lizard King countered with a summoned howler, and the two surrogate beasts had at it, effectively taking each other out of the battle.

Balama was holding her own with her cutlass alongside Slayer, Akari, and Fang, while Feron and Cal spread out to the sides and raced over toward the pyramid. The four lizardmen had apparently been given orders to try to take the interlopers alive if possible, but the adventurers were working under no such constraints, and they - and their crocodile and monitor lizard pets - were soon slain. The larger, black-scaled lizardman, Ssarpok, was a much bigger threat, and despite the creature's reptilian features Slayer recognized a fellow combatant channeling the inherent power of his internal rage. He wielded a powerful wooden greatclub with teeth and horns wedged into place, which dealt horrific damage upon a successful hit. Slayer channeled his own rage and called "dibs" on the powerful foe. Akari, meanwhile, was forced to deal with Shenesska, the water naga that had trailed them since their arrival on the island.

The others started climbing the pyramid, dodging poison darts with every step. A flurry of magic missiles from Balama's wand dropped one of the smaller lizardmen, while Feron cast a spell that nearly dropped another one. However, despite the fact that it was still alive (if just barely), the Lizard King finished it off himself - by stabbing it through the back with the twin prongs that now could be clearly seen to be metal blades. The little creature's scales sizzled and burned, taking on a black hue as the body crumbled to dust in mere seconds. However, a black shape was left in its place, and the undead shadow flew across the gap straight at Cal, eager to absorb his vitality. Cal raised his holy symbol of Kord and blasted it into oblivion.

The Lizard King, apparently not liking the current odds, called down to the pyramid below in his strange, sibilant language. Almost immediately, the lower section of steps started to sink into the ground with the rumbling of stone on stone.

"He's releasing something!" shouted Cal.

"Got it!" yelled back Feron, casting a stone shape spell that altered the dimensions of the lowering stone steps, jamming them into place. From the sounds of the carnivorous cries of rage that emanated from below the pyramid's base, it was a good call.

The Lizard King was caught in a fire storm spell, and its magical protection from fire only partly shielded it from the spell's damage. The two remaining smaller lizardmen scrambled down the pyramid and grabbed one of the limbless captives, releasing him from his neck-chain. As they scrambled to drag the hapless victim up towards the top, the Lizard King suddenly raced down to meet them. By the time the leader had reached his two underlings, one of them had slit the human's throat, and his life's blood spilled onto the Lizard King's chest, to be absorbed by the ruby. He then turned, with a snarl of triumph on his reptilian features. It was at that point that Cal and Feron saw not only that his wounds were all closing up, but the glowing ruby, which they had assumed hung from a chain on his neck, was actually embedded in his chest, in the place where one would expect his heart would normally lie.

Akari and Balama took out the naga and the remaining of the smaller lizardmen on their way up the pyramid, and Slayer eventually trailed behind, finally having bested his black-scaled opponent. This left the Lizard King, although healed of all previous wounds, on his own against five humanoid opponents and a dire wolf; the results were as predictable as they were quick to occur, and the reptilian overlord took his last breath at the apex of his pyramid, his last sight the great vista of the lands he had once ruled as their uncontested master.

After the standard post-battle healing, the group decided to check out the pyramid's interior. The basement level held all of the items of interest, the upper levels being living areas and lookout stations. A chained megaraptor was scrambling to get out of the sliding door opening that Feron had jammed with her stone shape spell; it was slain at a distance with ranged spells and arrows. A hatchery held dozens of leathery eggs in the immediate vicinity of a hot spring; they were summarily smashed and ripped open. A treasure room behind a hidden wall held many bricks of solid gold, each stamped with images of feathered serpents, crocodile-headed humans, and multiheaded dinosaurs. A half dozen ceramic jars stood in a row against the far wall of the treasury; the jars were opened one by one, and dealt with appropriately. (One held green slime, apparently as an anti-theft device; it was set aside and abandoned in place. Another held a screaming skull which flew about the room and shot blasts of energy at the intruders; it was eventually brought down with spells and Slayer's longsword.) The rest of the treasure came in the form of chunks of amber, dinosaur teeth and claws carved in the manner of scrimshaw, brightly-colored feathers (several of them one-shot magic items), and historical records written on crumbling scrolls in an odd pictogram language, the latter of which sent Balama squealing in delight, as she apparently knew some scholars that would pay handsomely for such items. Everything was packed away carefully into Feron's handy haversack or otherwise distributed among the adventurers for the journey back to the ship. Before leaving, they released the two natives from the cage dangling from the tree, and slew the second megaraptor confined to the pit below the cage. The grateful natives grabbed up the remaining limbless captive and carted him away into the jungle.

After some arguments to and fro, they eventually carved the giant ruby from the Lizard King's chest and took his death-prong. Both detected as strong evil, but rather than leave them here where they could be recovered and put to eventual use, Akari wanted to see them destroyed. (Cal was much more interested in selling them to a collector who wouldn't use them for evil, but Akari's stubborness on the point eventually overcame Cal's.)

The trip back to the Starchaser was uneventful, and they raised anchor the following day, after restocking the vessel with provisions for the trip back home. That was going to be a task unto itself, as none of the adventurers knew anything about the proper running of a ship, and would have to receive "on-the-job training" while at sea if any of them wanted to make it back home. Fortunately, Balama estimated that they were less than a month away from Thunder Bay if the weather held.

It was going to be a long, hard month.

- - -

This was a pretty fun adventure. I got some great roleplaying from Vicki, who was pissed at the treatment of her former eagle companion, and it was fun hearing the players guess about what the heck was going on. (Dan at one point was half-convinced that they were all dead and in some Hell dimension.) I had to step in and roleplay Akari there at the end, when he and Cal had differing opinions about the proper disposition of evil items, but otherwise Dan played him very well.

For the big battle at the end, I actually made a four-tiered step pyramid out of cardboard, 3" by 3" at the top level and two inches wider at each consecutively lower level. The area surrounding the pyramid was one big map on the back of a sheet of desk calendar, so we had an 18" by 22" area to have the combatants run around on.

It had also been a highly-anticipated adventure, because my players were desperate to find out why they had suddenly disappeared like that at the end of "Kazmira's Safehouse." And at the end of this session, I told them that it would take about a month for these four PCs (and Fang) to return home (they couldn't just "bink" back without leaving Fang behind, and it was unlikely that Balama and her two surviving crewmen would be able to handle a vessel the size of the Starchaser by themselves). I did promise that their month of hands-on experience would translate to a free 2 ranks in Profession (sailor), but that the next several adventures would be using their other PCs.

There was no real way to integrate Mercutio into this adventure, and rather than play a one-shot PC or NPC, Stuart opted to do something else on the day that we played this session.

ADVENTURE 28 - A MESSAGE FROM GARETH

PC Roster:
I'm a bit confused about this next adventure, because my records indicate that this was the introduction of Logan's replacement PC, Telgrane. But it was a short adventure, and I had thought that on this session we played not only this mini-adventure but the longer adventure that followed, only Telgrane was not part of that second adventure (and neither was Akari). So maybe Logan was back for this session, and we knew ahead that it would be shorter than normal. (That happened sometimes, due to Boy Scout commitments for Dan and Jacob.)

Anyway, for his second PC, Logan wanted to try out a conjurer, and since he was creating him as an 8th-level character, he was able to have already invested in the Improved Familiar feat. Telgrane's familiar was Infernia, a Small fire elemental who took the shape of a woman with dark, curved horns. (This was based on the image he had found on-line of a flaming demon with a pair of large, dark horns jutting from her head.) We decided that he was a member of Wing Four whose adventuring partner was a glory-hound barbarian who insisted on going on all of their excursions, leaving Telgrane in permanent "backup" status. It was a good enough reason to have him in the Adventurers Guild Headquarters, which is where the bulk of the next adventure was going to take place.

Campaign plot-wise, the following had happened since "Kazmira's Safehouse":

• Mercutio had turned Kazmira in to the Greyhawk City militia, and had been awarded the 50,000 gp bounty for her head. (This was split up between the PCs that had captured her and Piddilink Dundernoggin, but Mercutio insisted on a cut as well, since without his participation she'd still be free.)
• Kazmira had been sentenced to death for her crimes. (The fact that they were usually high-profile crimes and she often stole from the noblemen of the city no doubt helped her gain the death penalty.)
• Said sentence was to be carried out the afternoon of the game session.
• Nobody had seen Akari, Cal, Feron, or Slayer in the last three days, and even Fang had gone missing.

- - -

The day began with the delivery of an unmarked envelope. The envelope was unaddressed, nor did it bear any markings of any kind. Opening it, Delphyne pulled out one of the calling cards that Kazmira habitually left at the scene of her robberies, featuring an elaborate drawing of a magpie. On the back, in a recognizable handwriting, was a simple message:

IF SHE DIES, SO DO YOU. - GARETH

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"Lovely," replied the young witch. "Who paid you to deliver this card?" she asked the lad who had brought it to them. He merely shrugged, as the man had provided no name and had paid him up front to deliver the card. He described the man in detail, but it was nobody the group could place - but then, they knew that Gareth had that hat of disguise, so he could have appeared as anyone. They thanked the delivery boy and sent him on his way.

- - -

The next day was a bit more exciting. Delphyne was the first one up, and she walked down the stairs from the upper level and was crossing over to the kitchen when an audible "pop" sounded behind her. Spinning around, she found herself standing face to face with an equally surprised troll. Her screams brought the rest of the group hobbling down the stairs in their bedclothes and whatever weapons were handiest, and thus began a pre-breakfast battle with a hideous, wart-covered troll who was apparently just as hungry as they were but disagreed vigorously with the rest of the group as to what exactly constituted an exceptable breakfast. After a desperate battle and several of Chalkan's numerous flasks of alchemical fire, the group found themselves with a charred corpse in the middle of their living room.

A close examination of the troll's body showed that it was wearing a Guild ring. Pulling it off, they found the name "GARETH" etched on the inside.

It turned out that nobody was very hungry for breakfast after all.

- - -

Four days later, the group headed over to Executioner's Square to observe Kazmira's hanging. They were specifically asked to attend, so they'd be there on hand in case Gareth attempted a last-minute rescue operation. Several minutes before the appointed execution time, however, several City Guards frantically waved the group over. They were hurried over into an unused interrogation room.

"We've got a problem," remarked one of the wizards assigned to the Greyhawk City Militia. "It's standard procedure to scan the accused for magic before their hanging, to ensure they don't have any magic items on them that might assist them in escaping justice. It's not common, but occasionally someone finds a way to slip something to the accused during their incarceration.

"In any case, we cast detect magic on Kazmira, and got an unusual reading - her entire body is infused with magic. Not her clothes, though, just her body. She's radiating a strong necromantic energy, but we're not sure what that means or what we can do about it." He further explained that all prisoners are similarly examined upon their arrival, and that at that time Kazmira was not radiating any magic at all.

"Have you tried dispelling the magic on her?" asked Delphyne.

"I tried, with no success," replied the wizard, looking a bit abashed at his failure. "Perhaps you might want to give it a try...?" Delphyne agreed at once, and the group was escorted to see the prisoner. Kazmira snarled and raged at their approach. "Release me!" she yelled. "My fiendish ancestor is watching every event that transpires here, and anyone trying to harm me will be met with a terrible demonic revenge!"

Delphyne fired off her dispel magic spell, with no discernable effect. Indeed, a quick peek with detect magic gave the same indications: strong necromantic energy was emanating from the tiefling's body in waves.

"Perhaps a divine spell will succeed where an arcane spell will not," suggested Mercutio, elbowing Delphyne out of the way and firing off his own dispel magic spell at the caged tiefling, who only raged at him for his efforts. His spell was no more successful than had been Delphyne's.

"Weird," he admitted.

"Is this maybe a tiefling thing?" asked Rale. No one was sure, but they all hoped she was just bluffing about the "demonic revenge" bit.

With no further suggestions about what to do about the situation, and with bloodthirsty cries for justice coming from the crowd outside, the Greyhawk City Militia decided to go on with the execution. The adventurers dispersed into the crowd, keeping a close eye out for Gareth, or - remembering his faulty hat of disguise - for individuals whose shadows did not match their own forms. All eyes went up to the gallows as Kazmira was led by a group of four Militiamen, snarling and cursing as she struggled against her bonds. She was placed on the gallows platform as her crimes were read aloud to the crowd. When asked if she had any final words, Kazmira only cried out, “I’m not the one! I’m not her!” The chief official ignored her outburst and stated "By the power invested in me on behalf of the Council of the City of Greyhawk, I hereby sentence you to death for your crimes. Executioner, do your duty!”

A black hood was placed over Kazmira’s head, followed by a rope noose. Then, at the official’s nod, the executioner pulled a lever and the floor dropped out from under Kazmira’s feet. She fell several feet to the end of the rope, there was an audible snap! as her neck broke, and then...she was gone. No body dangled on the now-empty noose, which fluttered in the breeze. Her prison clothing fell to the ground below the gallows.

A sudden panic erupted through the crowd, after some idiot screamed that her ghost would wreak vengeance on her killers. The adventurers were pushed and shoved in all directions as panicked townspeople desperately tried to flee the scene. In the end, though, Kazmira's body was gone and neither the adventurers nor the Militia had any explanation as to what had just happened.

- - -

The day after Kazmira's questionable execution - for there was certainly some doubt as to whether she had been killed or not - began with another delivery, this one a single long-stemmed black rose from Ingermann's Flower Shoppe. Like the other messenger from nearly a week ago, this one had no idea who ordered the rose to be delivered here, nor was there a card stating who the flower was from. So the group took it upon themselves to do some investigating. They went to Ingermann's Flower Shoppe and asked who had ordered the flower to be delivered to Wing Three. The young lady wasn't sure, and seemed primarily concerned that the flower made it to them intact and was in good condition. When they group assured her that the flower was indeed lovely, and that they merely wished to thank whoever it was that had sent it, the Flower Shoppe employee agreed to check her records. Flipping through a ledger, she found the entry she was looking for: the flower had been ordered by one Magdelena Pietrovski, whom she remembered as a rather cultured, older lady. Rale immediately latched on to the fact that the first three letters of the woman's first and last names spelled out "MAGPIE," and that this was a rather apparent warning from Gareth. A black rose could easily be a warning of impending death.

Wing Three put themselves on full alert status, and desperately wondered where the other half of their Wing was, but nothing eventful happened the rest of the day. Nonetheless, even though they slept in their own Headquarters that night, they took turns taking guard shifts during the night.

- - -

The next day, in midmorning, the sound of footsteps on the stairs leading up to their wing was heard, and a stranger entered the room. Immediately, the group grabbed for their weapons, while some of them peered down at the floor of his feet to see if his shadow matched his figure.

"Um, hello?" asked the young mage rather nervously, seeing a much less friendly reception than he had been hoping for. "I'm Telgrane, from Wing Four next door. I just thought I'd come on over and see if you had any openings, as I don't ever get to do much in my Wing." Telgrane explained his situation, that he was paired with a real glory-hound of a dwarven barbarian who elbowed him out of the way of all adventure outings, leaving a rather bored conjurer looking for alternatives to permanent stay-at-base-in-reserve status. The five adventurers chatted a while, when there were the sounds of more footsteps coming up the steps and into their general living area. The group turned and found three beautiful women smiling up at them.

"Hi," beamed the first woman, a fighter by the looks of the polished armor on her torso and the sword at her hip. "I'm Barbie, and these are Candi, Kitten, and Bunny. We're the new recruits from Wing Seven."

"I only see three of you," commented Delphyne.

Barbie spun around, and called out "Kitten? Where are you?"

"I'm right here," replied a young-looking elf with a strange hairdo, her white hair sticking out around the top of her head like a mushroom cap. She wore an elaborate white cape and had an odd-looking, lumpy humanoid perched on her shoulder. She stepped quietly up the stairs and into the room with the rest of the group.

Introductions were made all around. Bunny was a drow, wearing tight-fitting leather armor, but her sunny disposition and friendly demeanor showed her to be an exception from the majority of her dour race. Candi was also an elf, and also wore leather armor, but hers was chock-full of daggers, knives, and stilettoes that jutted out at all angles. Mercutio was quick to offer the young ladies a drink, and toddled off to the kitchen. In crossing the entryway, however, he stopped in puzzlement and looked at the wall of stone that had been placed directly across the bottom of the stairs, blocking it off completely. "How odd," he commented, just before the assassins struck.

Kitten fired a blast of magic missiles at Delphyne, while the homonculous on her shoulder leapt off and flew into Rale's face. Barbie leapt at Mercutio, and he only just got his rapier up in time to deflect the vicious blows from her longsword. Barbie cursed their luck, for they had each chosen a target and were studying them for secret assassin death attacks, but hadn't had the time to complete their studies before Kitten's wall had been discovered.

The drow, Bunny, had selected Chalkan as her target, and she came after him with a jagged dagger that seemed to scream "assassin" just by its looks. In the tight quarters, Chalkan chose to fight with his own longsword rather than the bow and arrows he preferred. Meanwhile, Rale was under attack by the elven rogue/assassin, Candi, who seemed just as adept throwing her knives and daggers as she was stabbing with them. Worse, quite a few of the weapons employed by the assassins seemed to be dripping poison.

Fortunately, Telgrane was something of a wild card in all of this confusion. The assassins had been hired to slay the members of Wing Three, and the lanky wizard did not fit the description of any of that group. It didn't mean that he wouldn't be killed along with the others, merely that they didn't know anything about him ahead of time. And that meant that they were completely surprised when one of Telgrane's first actions was to reach into his robes and pull out not a weapon, nor a wand or spell component, but a simple tinder box. He stepped back out of range, blew on the contents of the open box, and from the glowing embers inside erupted a small gout of flame, which instantly took the shape of a halfling-sized woman carved out of flame, with a pair of twin, graceful horns jutting from her head. "What would you have me do, Master?" she asked in Ignan.

"Slay the women assassins!" commanded Telgrane. "That one" - and here he pointed to Delphyne - "is not among their number."

It turned out that the assassins had made a terrible mistake in their tactics. The wall of stone was there to ensure their privacy while completing their mission (or at least half of it, since the other half of Wing Three seemed to be elsewhere at present), but Kitten held sufficient dimension door spells to ensure their quick getaway once their mission had been performed. This tactic had worked well in the past, but had a fatal flaw built into it: namely, if Kitten was slain - as in fact happened in this instance - the assassins had no easy way out of their own trap. Kitten was the first to fall, under a series of magic missile attacks from Delphyne, and suddenly the assassins were outnumbered three to five (or four to six if you counted homonculi and fire elementals) with their element of surprise long since gone. It was only a matter of time before their numbers were whittled away, and since the group already knew who had hired them and for what purpose, they didn't even feel the need to keep the last one alive for interrogation purposes. And for their part, the assassins were a stoic lot; even Barbie, the last to die and apparently the group's leader, kept fighting to the end long after it was evident that she couldn't win.

So the end result was that the four assassins had been slain, but Gareth's message had been definitley received, if not sucessfully carried out: the group had been threatened with death if Kazmira were slain, and this assassination attempt made it seem as if Gareth believed that she was dead. Unless he had only sent out the assassins to make it look like he believed Kazmira was dead?

There were too many possibilities, and too many unanswered questions. The group swore to keep a look out for Gareth, and if Kazmira was in fact alive, the odds were that when they found Gareth they'd find her as well.

ADVENTURE 29 - THE MENAGERIE

PC Roster:
"The Menagerie" was a short adventure from the pages of Dungeon, this one from issue #126. It was written by B. Matthew Conklin III, and was the winner of an adventure-writing contest. It dealt with the weird occurrences inside a magic shop, and I wanted to use it because I really liked the architectural design of the magic shop. (Plus, I reasoned that I'd be able to reuse the map on several occasions if I made this a shop that the adventurers would frequent. I considered remaking it into Dundernoggin's shop, but at the last minute decided against it, as I had other thoughts as to how his shop would be laid out and at the time thought I might actually set an adventure there. To date, this still hasn't happened, but in the meantime I left Gwendolyn Fine as the shop's proprietor, as written.)

"The Menagerie," as published, was written for a group of 6th-level adventurers but included scaling suggestions for bringing it all the way up to 12th level. At the time they went through this, Chalkan was a Rgr4/Clr2; Delphyne was a Wiz9, Mercutio was a Clr9/Rog1; and Rale was a Rog9, so I scaled it up to 9th level and figured that Chalkan would probably be okay.

Behind the scenes, Jacob had just discovered that prestige classes existed. This had come about at the very end of the previous adventure session, with Logan's declaration that his plan for Telgrane was to have him continue as a conjurer until he had fulfilled the requirements to become an archmage, and then to take archmage levels from that point on. In explaining the concept of prestige classes, Jacob wanted to immediately find one that he could take. I showed him the section in the Dungeon Master's Guide (the one core rulebook he hadn't purchased on his own), and he fell in love with the concept of the arcane archer, so that was his newest goal. I pointed out that his XP total pretty much guaranteed his leveling up Chalkan at the end of this adventure, and that if he wanted to be an arcane archer he'd need to take a level of an arcane spellcasting class. We convinced him that at this point he'd do better taking sorcerer levels rather than wizard (or bard) levels, so that became Chalkan's desired career path from that point on.

Anyway, I don't want to give too much away about the adventure (I hate spoiling it for those who might be sending their own players through it some day), but I got to use some fairly appropriate miniatures for this session (two chickens from a farm set stood in for cockatrices; various small dinosaurs were put to use as shocker lizards; I actually had an official D&D Miniature of a darkmantle), and part of my "beefing the adventure up to 9th-level" included the addition of a vrock that was imprisoned (and who would be released as part of the effect that was wreaking havoc in the magic shop) in an iron flask because I had just purchased a cool-looking vrock mini (not the original one, with one taloned foot sticking out, but the much cooler-looking vrock in a crouched position that was released in a later set). I printed out dretch tokens for the demons the vrock might summon when he had the chance.

That iron flask turned out to be a bit of a mistake, because Dan zeroed in on it with his prior-edition metagaming knowledge and knew that this was valuable beyond any treasure the group had discovered thus far. After the PCs had saved Gwendolyn's shop from the effect that was setting free a bunch of creatures (and warping some of their abilities), he had Rale demand the iron flask as payment for their services. A quick peek into the Dungeon Master's Guide and its 170,000 gp value had me - through Gwendolyn - give an emphatic "No!" to his demands. In retrospect, I should have agreed and found some way to "weaken" the item's effectiveness (because I didn't want them to have something that powerful, or that valuable, at this stage of their adventuring careers), but in the end I had Gwendolyn stick to her guns as refuse to turn over the iron flask, reasoning that she would be well aware of its intrinsic value and would not be willing to part with something so valuable. They were rewarded with less valuable items, and while I think they got a fair deal, in Dan's case at least it was soured by the prospects of being able to have an iron flask. (Dan even considered having Rale attempt to break into the shop at a later date and steal the iron flask, and was only deterred once he realized the other PCs wouldn't support such anti-heroic thievery, and he didn't want me to waste a viable game session in the future running a solo-adventure for Rale. Plus, he didn't like the possibility of running out of healing potions during a solo game and not having a way to be healed. I suppose Rale's recent death via fiendish kraken had made him touchy on such subjects.)

I did later write an adventure that started out in Gwen's Relics, but events conspired in that one to ensure it was the last time they ever visited Gwen's Relics, so in retrospect it was a good thing I didn't make that Dundernoggin's shop. But at least I got to reuse the map.

ADVENTURE 30 - CHALKAN'S QUEST

PC Roster:
My notes show that at this point in the campaign, Mercutio Midas was no longer with the group. That means we've advanced to the point where Stuart, recently graduated from college, moved out on his own to the Portland, Oregon area. Furthermore, at this point Logan was now back with the group on a permanent basis. As an in-game explanation for these events, we decided that Wing Four, Telgrane's original posting, had several very good-looking young ladies on the team. Once he found this out, Mercutio was more than willing to "trade slots" with Telgrane, making the young conjurer a permanent resident of Wing Three while Mercutio became part of Wing Four. He didn't mind at all the fact that his new dwarven barbarian ring-partner was a glory-hound that insisted on going on all of his Wing's adventures, as that just meant more time in comfort with good vintages of wine and the ability to get better acquainted with the young, female members of his new Wing. (This also kept Mercutio close by, in the event that Stuart came back for a visit that coincided with an adventure session.)

"Chalkan's Quest" is something I wrote especially for Jacob, who wanted Chalkan to be an arcane archer even though he'd just found out that such a thing existed and thus had not "prepared" Chalkan for such a role (in the proper selection of feats and skill points). I began by writing up a dream for each of the PCs who would be running through this adventure. (And I should add that I was enjoying immensely the fact that for several adventures in a row I knew exactly which PCs would be in a given adventure, since half of the PCs were on board the Starchaser with Balama Theron, slowly sailing back to civilization.)

These are the dreams I emailed to each of the players before our next gaming session:

CHALKAN’S DREAM said:

You dream of yourself, lying in bed asleep. Oddly enough, you can see an elf suddenly appear in your room, by your bedside. He wears the armor of a fabled member of the arcane archers, a legendary order of defenders you remember hearing about as a child back in the elven village in which you were raised. He moves his mouth as if speaking to you – the sleeping you, that is, for he doesn’t seem aware of the “other” you’s presence – but you cannot make out any of his words.

Suddenly, in the manner of dreams, you find yourself elsewhere: the dark interior of a cave, by the looks of it. The arcane archer’s body is there, crumpled in a corner, his armor ripped open by what must have been a set of very large claws, but his magical bow – you can see it glowing slightly in the darkness – seems undamaged, ready to be claimed by one willing to wield it as he did.

You wake up from this strange dream with the words “Greenbriar Forest” on your lips, and you feel certain not only that the cave in your dream lies in the midst of that forest, but also that you will be able to find it without fail.

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DELPHYNE’S DREAM said:

You aren’t sure where you are, but wherever it is, it’s dark. And it smells – a musky, earthy smell like the animal cages at the zoo.

A sudden ear-splitting roar breaks the silence, and your breath catches in your throat. You can actually feel your heart speeding up, throbbing like a frightened sparrow. The roar diminishes into a low growl, and you can feel a snort of hot, fetid breath on your skin, as some sort of enormous beast shuffles up close to you, the jagged scrape of its claws on the stone floor quite audible above its snuffling. Then there is another roar, and you feel a line of dagger-sharp claws rake across your side, as your unseen assailant swipes you with a massive paw.

You awake, screaming, before realizing it was only a dream.

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RALE’S DREAM said:

Apparently the assassins that were recently sent after you either were not dead, or were slain but then returned to life. You are separated from your companions, and spend the night in combat – of a sort – with the assassins, after which time you can state without question the following facts:

1. Barbie has an extraordinarily nasty vocabulary when aroused.
2. Candi is as adept with ropes as she is with throwing daggers.
3. Bunny has a tattoo of a spider in a web on her clavicle.
4. Kitten is incredibly ticklish.

You awaken, disappointed to realize that it was all just a dream, and there are currently no assassins in your bedchamber with you.

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TELGRANE’S DREAM said:

You dream of floating high in the sky, looking down upon the earth below. You can see a human city below you, teeming with life. A spider web of roads emanates from this city; following one at random, you see it leads into a vast forest, inside of which you spot an elven village. The elves look up at you and smile.

You awake from your dream with the sounds of elven laughter lingering in your mind.

Click to expand...

- - -

Chalkan excitedly described his dream to the rest of the group over breakfast. He was convinced he was supposed to go to the cave in his dreams and fetch the magical bow that was left behind when the elven arcane archer had been slain. Delphyne then recounted her own dream, thinking perhaps it was a warning of a fierce creature guarding the cave. Telgrane merely mentioned that he, too, had dreamed of an elven village; perhaps it was the village of the arcane archer? Rale admitted to having no dreams the night before, but was in an especially good mood and had a crooked smile on his face as he ate his breakfast.

Soon afterwards, the group prepared for an excursion into the woods to the south of town, saddled up their horses, and were on their way. Old Clem rode one of the draft horses that carried the group's tents and provisions, and Toronaus, Chalkan's timber wolf companion, trotted happily alongside the others. Iggy the raven often flew on ahead, waiting for the others to catch up as he rested in a tree branch, then took wing again. At other times, he rested on his mistress's shoulder.

As they traveled along the forest path, a sudden bend around a corner found the group confronted by at least a half dozen orcs blocking their way, some brandishing crossbows, others ready to hurl javelins.

“Hold up right there,” said a burly half-orc, presumably their leader, in passable Common. “This here forest is orc territory, and we don’t take too kindly to folks trespassin’ through it without paying their fair share. Tell you what, though, me and my boys are feeling a might generous today, so you leave us the dainty, and the rest of you lot can be along your way. Best be on your guard, though, ‘cause us orcs ain’t the worst you’re likely to find ‘round these parts.”

At mention of "the dainty," Rale brought his horse protectively between Delphyne and the orc horde. "Just exactly who do you mean by 'the dainty'?" he asked.

At that, the half-orc licked his lips and looked directly at Chalkan. "That one there," he pointed, and belatedly, Rale recalled that a "dainty" was an orcish pejorative for an elf. "I figure me an' my boys can have hours of fun torturing the dainty. Rest of you folks clear out and leave the dainty with us, and we won't have any problems 'tween us."

Not surprisingly, that idea didn't really sit well with the group, and combat ensued. The two orcs armed with javelins started swinging orcish greataxes once their ranged weapons were used up, while the other five continued shooting crossbow bolts at range until the party moved in on them, at which point they dropped their crossbows and swung short swords instead. But they lacked spellpower, and with three spellcasters among the adventurers' members, the orcs were soon slain, stripped of any valuables, and lugged off to the side of the path. The group continued on.

Soon, however, the half-orc's warning that they weren't the most dangerous foes in the forest proved to be prophetic, for a large boulder came ripping through the undergrowth and into the path of the group. Only a quick reaction by Chalkan, riding in the front of the group (no doubt as he was the most eager to get to their location, which was stamped into his brain from his dream), who reared up his horse as the rock came flying past, prevented serious injury on the part of the adventurers. The sounds of growling soon followed the boulder's path, as a dire wolf came crashing through the undergrowth alongside the forest path, followed in turn by his two hill giant masters. These three were indeed much tougher foes than the orcs, but the eventual outcome was the same, as a barrage of spells slew both the giants and their megalupine pet.

Eventually, the group came to a cave that Chalkan knew with prophetic certainy was the cave from his dream. The group dismounted, and left Old Clem with the horses, accompanied by both Toronaus and Iggy. Torches were lit; Telgrane didn't bother, as his familiar gave off more light than a torch in any case and she generally didn't stray too far from her human master. The cave's opening was about 10 feet in diameter and capped with an overhang of jutting rock; the cave's interior consisted of a curving passage that sunk down deeper into the ground. The first area of any note was a pool of water that filled a side passage to the right; this area was filled with a variety of fungi, some of which waved small tentacles in the presence of the adventurers. They deemed these to be violet fungi, dangerous if touched but slow enough to easily avoid. They passed deeper into the tunnel, leaving the violet fungi alone. Rale, in his usual position at the back of the group, hung back long enough to ensure that they weren't following the group, and once he was sure they weren't he continued on and caught up.

The sloping passageway expanded to over twice its original width, and a series of natural steps brought the group even deeper under the earth. The steps were damp with moisture, forcing the group to watch their step to avoid slipping. At the bottom of the steps there were many bones scattered about, no doubt the remains of past kills by whatever manner of creature laired here. Sorting through the bones, Chalkan identified portions of the skeletons of humans, elves, orcs, deer, and one particularly unlucky horse. In the back of this section of cave, the group could make out the remains of two figures. One was a dead elf wearing torn leather armor; in his hands he still cradled a slightly glowing longbow of polished wood the color of bone, with a quiver visible on his back. The other looked to be the picked-clean bones of an enormous bear, which glistened moistly in the light. They faced each other, apparently enemies even in death.

Suddenly, a roar reverberated across the cave, and an enraged dire bear materialized in the middle of the den, making its way towards the closest party member - a horrified Delphyne, who was having sudden flashbacks to her dream of the night before - with bloodlust in its maddened eyes. It swung a massive paw which ripped through the young witch's side, and then just as quickly both Delphyne and the ghost-bear were gone.

Chalkan ran over to the elf's corpse and grabbed up the bow and quiver. A name entered his mind at the mere touch of the bow: Rilisivae Athelgala, the White-Wood Whisperbow. He was stripping the elf's bracers from his arms when Rale called out a warning: the pile of dire bear bones was moving, gathering itself erect and hobbling over to attack.

As Telgrane, Chalkan, and Rale fought off the creature, they wished once again for Cal's presence (or even Mercutio's); more powerful clerics than Chalkan would apparently be needed to turn this undead beast. After fighting it for a bit, though, its status as an undead being came into question, as its glistening was discovered to be the result of a nearly translucent blob of matter that coated the bones and was apparently using it as both a weapon and a means of rapid locomotion; the group was up against an ooze, not an undead. (Both of them immune to critical hits, lamented Rale.)

Meanwhile, Delphyne was in a gray, misty world, alone with an undead dire bear that had her exactly where it wanted her. She was completely on her own, too, as the rest of her group couldn't even see her, although she was apparently in a near-replica of the cave that she'd been in. Belatedly, she realized that the ghost-bear's attack had shunted her to the Ethereal Plane, and she had no way of returning on her own. The great bear attacked her several time with its slashing claws, and Delphyne soon found herself spending her time trying to run from the bear while unstoppering her few healing potions.

Fortunately, help was soon to arrive. Chalkan felt a powerful urge emanating from his new bow, and realized that the spirit of the arcane archer (a name popped into his thoughts: Vlaegoroth) was tied to the spirit of the dire bear that had apparently slain him, and that by concentrating he could will himself to follow the ghost-bear. Doing precisely just that, Chalkan found himself in the Ethereal Plane alongside a severely wounded Delphyne. Together they fought off the bear, and if slaying a ghost is even possible, then that's exactly what they did. But regardless of the permanency of its death, the wounds Rilisivae Athelgala inflicted on it caused the bear considerable pain, and it eventually collapsed on its side. As it dissipated into nothingness, Chalkan and Delphyne slid back into the Material Plane. By that time, Rale, Telgrane, and Infernia had taken care of the ooze creature that had been "animating" the dire bear's skeleton. However, there was no time for rejoicing over the party's reunion, for Old Clem's voice came echoing down the passageway from above. "Uh, guys?" he called. "We've got problems up here!"

The group raced up to the cave opening and peered out. Arranged in a wide semicircle around the cave opening was a large group of orcs. They had apparently tracked the group here after discovering the slain (and looted) bodies of their tribesmen piled on the side of the forest path.

"I count eleven," remarked Rale. Four were apparently of the same barbarian class as the javelin-and-greataxe pair they had encountered earlier; six more looked to be rogues in leather armor and wielding crossbows; the eleventh was a shaman of unknown power. This last wore intricate patterns of painted symbols on his face and had feathers woven into his glossy black hair. All of the other orcs had their ranged weapons at the ready, aimed directly at the cave entrance.

"They obviously know we're in here," replied Telgrane, watching as a rat waddled up to the shaman from the direction of the cave and was picked up by its master and placed upon the orc's shoulder. "No doubt that was his familiar, spying us out."

"Plus, you know, darkvision," pointed out Rale. "The shadows of this cave aren't doing anything to hide us any."

"Why aren't they attacking?" asked Delphyne.

"Too smart," replied Chalkan. "If they come rushing in here, we can fight them one or two at a time. If they stay out there, we have to fight all of them at once." They decided that there was little chance that the orcs would allow the group to stay hidden in the cave for the duration of the night, and thus renew their spells. They were short on healing, having each gone through their limited supplies of potions after (and during) their battles with the ghost-bear and its animated skeleton. So they started preparing for battle, with the usual buffing spells. The orcs, not wanting to give them that advantage, replied with a barrage of crossbow bolts that forced the group to move deeper into the cavern to do their buffing.

Telgrane decided to try a strategy he'd never tried before: he cast enlarge person on himself to make him more menacing, little realizing that to the orcs, that merely made him a more appealing target. When the PCs rushed out en masse, most of the ranged attacks were aimed in his direction, and he fell almost immediately, bleeding into the dirt from half a dozen wounds. "Master!" cried out Infernia, but it was too late - Telgrane had been slain.

That did not put the fire elemental into a good mood, and she rushed the nearest orc, setting him ablaze with her burning touch. In the meantime, Delphyne and Chalkan concentrated their firepower (spells in her case, arrows in his) on the orc shaman, who quickly fell in battle. Rale leapt after Infernia, hoping to take advantage of her nearly berserker fury to get in some sneak attacks in her immediate vicinity. It was a tiresome battle, with the group already tired out from their previous encounters that day, but the lack of spellpower after the shaman's death made the end almost inevitable. None of the orcs ran off, even after it was apparent that they had no chance of winning.

After the orcs had been slain, Infernia ran from corpse to corpse trying to burn them all up in retaliation for their having slain Telgrane, while Rale raced to strip them of any valuables before they became small bonfires. Old Clem crept back out of the cave now that it was safe and helped gather up the horses that had scattered upon the orcs' arrival, and the group bundled Telgrane's body in some blankets for the trip back home.

- - -

Since Chalkan had not been aiming for the arcane archer prestige class from the beginning (almost a requirement in 3.5), I made it so that Vlaegoroth's spirit manifested in the bracers of archery that Chalkan recovered from his body; they provided him with "loaner" Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot feats that he needed as prerequisites, on the condition that those would be the next two feats that Chalkan chose as he progressed up the levels. In game, his spirit would be "guiding" Chalkan until such time as he felt his assistance was no longer needed. The quiver was a quiver of Ehlonna, and the White-Wood Whisperbow was a +2 composite longbow (+3 Strength). When the bowstring is pulled back without an arrow, an illusion of an arrow appears in its place; this illusory arrow can be “shot” at anyone within range, but it deals no damage – instead, the recipient receives the equivalent of a message spell. Unlike the message spell, however, the message recipient cannot respond back to the bow-wielder. In addition, once per day, the wielder can activate a true strike upon the bow as a free action, with the next arrow shot gaining a +20 bonus to hit.

Since it wasn't likely that I'd be having any of the other PCs wish to take levels in arcane archer, I beefed the prestige class up a bit by granting each level of arcane archer a full level of arcane spellcasting. That might make it too powerful as a generic rule, but since this was Chalkan, who was a Rgr4/Clr2/Sor1 and thus fairly sucky at ranger, cleric, and sorcerer abilities for a 7th-level character, I wasn't overly concerned.

Logan learned his lesson, and in future adventures with Telgrane he would opt to buff up his familiar rather than himself. Infernia now often leaps into combat as a Medium elemental, and he's also sure to buff her up with mage armor and shield spells before she wades into battle. In the meantime, Telgrane was raised after this adventure, with the subsequent lowering of his class level, which bummed Logan out a bit.

ADVENTURE 31 - DEATH-BEAST OF THE DEEP

PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
I wrote this adventure as something interesting to have happen to the group of PCs that had been "kidnap-summoned" to help Balama Theron in "Balama's Treasure Hunt" on their way back to the outpost of Thunder Bay. Having written the previous session's adventure specifically for Jacob to aid him in his quest to make Chalkan an arcane archer, I thought I'd take advantage of the opportunity to make this one focus on Feron Dru, for the simple reason that Feron's player, Vicki, collected mermaid statuary, and it would be fairly easy to incorporate mermaids into an adventure taking place at sea.

I should mention that we generally don't get to play as often as we'd like. Between Jacob's scouting activities and sporting events through his school, and both Jacob and his little brother Joey's church activities, most of their weekends were pretty full, and the weekends were really the only time that gaming between our two respective families was available. So while I'd be perfectly happy with a weekly or every-other-week gaming schedule, it seldom works that way. Every 4-5 weeks had probably been more like our average, with 7 weeks probably about the biggest stretch we've had between sessions. On the plus side, though, that gives me plenty of time to create adventures specifically built for my own campaign and the PCs involved in it. On the down side, it sometimes happens that an adventure I've planned takes much longer to actually arrive on our gaming docket than I would have hoped.

I only mention this because I wrote "Death-Beast of the Deep" when Stuart was still living at home with us after graduating college. As Akari, Cal, Feron, and Slayer (and Fang) had been "spirited away" halfway across the globe, there was no real way I could shoehorn Mercutio Midas (Stuart's only PC to date) into the adventure that would take place during those four PCs' trip back home. So I came up with a compromise: I'd have Stuart make up a new PC as a one-shot and incorporate him into the adventure.

Figuring that the PCs' ship would be captured by merfolk, I figured the easiest way to incorporate a new one-shot PC was to have him be on a ship that was similarly captured earlier. So my only constraints were to have Stuart create a PC that could conceivably have been on board a sailing vessel in that part of the world. He came up with Theodore McGraff, a human rogue/wizard - actually, when it came down to it, a pirate. (He even asked to reskin a raven familiar into a parrot familiar, which I had no problem with. He wanted the parrot to be a wise-cracker, and so he decided on Rickles as a name, after famed smart-aleck comedian Don Rickles.) He decided that Theodore would be a rather good-hearted pirate, certainly not against the looting of ships but not so enthused at the prospects of slaying everybody on board the vessels he plundered. That, I imagined, could get him into a bit of trouble with his own crew (assuming his crew was composed of the more traditional "bloodthirsty" pirates), so I envisioned the PCs picking him up in a drifting rowboat before they even got attacked by the merfolk - thus establishing a link between him and the PCs without the complications of the "we hate those evil pirates except for this one, he can adventure with us" mentality.

So, character made, everything was all set...and then we hit one of those long stretches between gaming sessions that crop up occasionally in our campaign, and by the time we were ready to run though "Death-Beast of the Deep" Stuart had moved across country. I ended up running Theodore McGraff as an NPC.

- - -

It had been nearly a hard month of sailing. None of the group had had any prior experience in the handling of a ship at sea, and of the original crew there were only the ship's captain, Balama Theron, and her first mate, a gruff half-orc named Hurm Feros, to teach them. But they did as best they could, and the Starchaser made its slow way back to Thunder Bay. Balama estimated that they were only a day or two away from their destination when a colorful parrot flew from out of nowhere and landed on the railing around the ship's wheel, startling Balama from her thoughts.

"Master's in trouble!" it squawked. "Needs rescue!"

The parrot, it turned out, was the familiar of a wizard who had been set adrift in a rowboat with no supplies but a single bottle of rum. Remarkably intelligent, the parrot was able to guide Balama to the location of his master, who seemed remarkably surly towards his would-be rescuers. Of course, the fact that the rum bottle was now completely empty and had been discarded on the bottom of the rowboat, and the parrot's master was consequently completely drunk likely had something to do with the matter.

"What are you doing in my stateroom?" demanded the drunken pirate, struggling to an upright, indignant posture on wobbly legs that caused the small craft to wobble precariously as well.

"Theo?" asked Balama incredulously. "Is that you?"

Theodore McGraff squinted blearily at the figure peering down at him from the sides of the vessel that had maneuvered alongside his rowboat. "B'lama?" he asked. "Ah, I see you have brought me my new vessel. Which I won. And is mine."

"You did not win my ship from me, you card cheat! You're lucky I let you walk out of that game alive!"

"I am in no mood to quibble wiffew," slurred McGraff. "Kindly remove your things from my new ship. And if anyone wants me, I'll be in my cabin." And with that, he turned around, stepped off the side of the little rowboat, and sunk like a stone below the surface of the ocean.

"Idiot!" hissed Balama as Akari quickly pulled off his boots and dove over the side of the Starchaser. He wasn't a particularly strong swimmer, but Theodore gave no more resistance than a limp rag, and the young elf was able to drag him back up to the surface, where the others grabbed him up and pulled him aboard. The drunken pirate was passed out, and remained unconscious throughout his rescue, the stripping off of his soaked clothes, and his being tucked into a spare bunk with a warm blanket pulled over him. The rowboat was similarly recovered, but it was empty other than the discarded rum bottle, lacking even a single oar. Hurm pulled it aboard anyway and stowed it against a bulkhead; waste not, want not. In doing so, he discovered that someone had scratched the words "Avatar of Heck" onto the small boat's prow, likely with a dagger.

That night, the seas were particularly rough. All hands were on deck - save Fang, who was down below to ensure he wasn't swept off the deck by a rough wave - trying desperately to keep the ship from capsizing. Even standing upright was a chore, with the constant rocking of the vessel as the waves slammed into its sides. This was particularly true of McGraff, who was battling a fierce hangover on top of everything else. It turned out he was the victim of a recent mutiny, his pirate crew having decided they didn't need Captain McGraff's softheartedness when it came to the victims of the ships they plundered. He muttered curses about what he'd do to his crew when he next caught up with them.

And then it happened: a whirlpool suddenly opened up in front of the Starchaser. The vessel was canted "uphill" as it crested a wave, and then it shifted "downhill" as the wave passed and the ship continued sliding down, riding a spinning vortex below the surface of the storm-tossed sea. "This isn't natural!" called out Balama from the helm. "Somebody's causing this!"

The adventuring group was collectively hanging on for dear life to whatever ropes or netting was within reach as the ship bounced its way to the ocean's bottom, which was approaching at an alarming rate. "Brace for impact!" called out Balama, seconds before the Starchaser flew into a cloud of churning sand particles from the ocean floor and ran aground. The roar of the whirlpool's waves were not enough to drown out the horrible creaking sounds of the ship's wooden beams splintering into so much driftwood. Fang came racing up the companionway to investigate the event, and the massive dire wolf whimpered like a puppy at the strange sight awaiting him.

The Starchaser sat, broken and listing to the starboard side, on the bottom of the ocean floor. Miraculously, the ship sat in the middle of a tunnel of air leading up to the sea's surface, but as the horrified crew looked up, the tunnel started closing above them. In mere seconds they'd be submerged underwater and unable to breathe.

"Gather up!" screamed Cal, urging everyone to get close together as he began the words to a water breathing spell. Feron did the same, but neither was able to get everyone together before the sea came crashing in, preventing either spell from affecting anyone but the two casters.

As they held their collective breaths as best they could, the group noticed forms advancing through the settling sand-clouds that had been generated by the magical whirlpool. Some were mermaids, beautiful and sinuous as they swam gracefully to the Starchaser's crew and gathered their heads up between their hands, delivering a kiss of breath to each that allowed the surface-dwellers to breathe the ocean waters. At the same time, coming up behind them were more reptilian-looking humanoid forms, with long tails and the toothy grins of piranhas. These sahuagins stabbed at the surface dwellers with long spines taken from some type of sea urchin; the spines pierced deeply into the flesh and caused a sudden paralysis in their victims. Despite the inability to look around, the paralyzed group noticed that even Fang and the parrot were being "processed" in such a manner, being simultaneously granted the ability to breathe underwater by a mermaid while robbed of mobility by a sahuagin.

While all of this was unfolding, an older mermaid had singled out Feron and asked quickly, in the secret universal language of the druids, "Do you trust me, Child of the Land?"

Feron looked deep into the mermaid's eyes and realized that she did. Voicing this trust, the mermaid quickly replied "Then do not resist my spell," and began intoning a magical spell that warped Feron's body, shrinking it into the form of a starfish, which the mermaid placed upon her chest among the other sea life that formed a living necklace there. “I will explain everything later,” she promised starfish-Feron, “and I will see to it that no harm becomes your friends.”

"Is that everyone?" demanded a four-armed sahaugin, apparently in charge of this expedition. He addressed his question to the mermaid druid who had just successfully hidden Feron away, having apparently not noticed the subterfuge.

"It is," replied the mermaid.

"Bring 'em to the cage!" commanded the sahuagin, and led the way to a cave opening in the ocean floor nearby. They passed the wreckage of another ship, the Avatar of Hell, similar in size to Balama's vessel but partially dismantled, plank by plank, as well as having obviously having taken damage from its sudden plunge to the ocean floor. The stronger sahuagin dragged the paralyzed victims into a bed of sea kelp, in front of which were stationed armed sahuagin and above which swam fierce-looking sharks of various sizes. Then they were taken through a darkened maze of passageways, and eventually dumped unceremoniously into a deep pit that had been carved into the rock of the ocean floor. And there lay Akari, Slayer, Cal, Fang, Balama, Hurm, and Theodore and his parrot, all piled up like a bunch of discarded statues in the darkness of the pit, awaiting whatever grim fate might be in store for them.

“Don’t try leaving this cell," called down a sahuagin guard from above in passable Common. "There’s a lattice of sharp coral over the top, and if you cut yourselves on it, my sharks will know about it before you can escape.” Then there were dragging sounds as he apparently put the coral into place above the entrance hole, and then what little light was available dimmed out as a clam shell was dragged over the top of the coral. Two other clam shells nearby hinted at the possibility of other captive pits.

In the meantime, while the sahuagin and other mermaids went about their duties, the mermaid druid swam away to a hidden grove. Here, inside a hollow sphere of sheltering coral, she removed the starfish from her breast and restored Feron to her original form.

"I dreamt about you,” she told Feron. “I wasn’t sure if it was a prophetic dream or not, but when I saw you among that ship’s crew, I knew that Eadro had sent you to help us. I am the Lady Dorca, druid to a merfolk village that was recently overtaken by a sahuagin force. I am the one who created the whirlpool that captured your sailing vessel, but I only did so under duress. If we do not provide bodies for the sahuagin's dark rituals, they will use our people in their stead. But I had a dream of your arrival, and believe you may be the key to our situation." The Lady Dorca fondled the dolphin pendant hanging around Feron's neck. "I see you have been in contact with my people before."

"Yes, once," admitted Feron.

The Lady Dorca outlined her plan. Feron would assume the form of a mermaid and she and the Lady Dorca would return to where the others had been taken captive and held. Nearby, the tribe's leader, Princess Cerulea Seafoam, was bound captive as an incentive for the merfolk to obey their sahuagin overlords, having already slain Cerulea's parents, King Trigon Deepcurrents and Queen Almathea Wavecrest. The Lady Dorca would take the Princess's place in captivity, altering her form to look like that of Cerulea, while Feron and the Princess rescued the others and searched out the conch scepter that had been taken from her. This latter was a powerful artifact, usable only by the true ruler of the merfolk tribe, which could summon a powerful ally, Dragon Turtle Goruka. With Princess Cerulea freed and Goruka at their side, they'd be able to lead a revolt against the conquering sahuagin and put a stop to whatever project the sahuagin mystics were working on that required the constant sacrificing of captives. The mystics had been going through sacrifices at an alarming rate; already the majority of the crew of the Avatar of Hell had been sacrificed in the dark rituals, and whatever was to become as a result of the ritual, it didn't look good for the merfolk tribe.

The Lady Dorca instructed Feron to channel her wildshaping energy into the dolphin necklace she had been given. Doing so, Feron's form shifted into that of a mermaid with her own facial features. She would have to leave her weapons behind, as the merfolk were forbidden by the sahuagin conquerors to carry weaponry, but she could likely rely solely upon her spellpower to keep her safe. Thus transformed, the two mermaids returned to where the others were held captive.

By this time, the other adventurers had regained their mobility, and were trying to come up with a plan of escape. That soon became unnecessary, as sounds of a brief struggle above them were immediately followed by the careful removal of the clam shell and the lattice of coral, and the group was able to swim up out of the pit to see Feron in mermaid form while another mermaid swam quickly up to the top of the underwater cavern. There, chained by the wrists to two points on the ceiling that spread her arms out wide, hung Princess Cerulea. The Lady Dorca released the Princess while Feron swam up to see if she could help. Quick introductions were made, the plan hastily explained to the Princess, and then the Lady Dorca snapped the manacles onto her own outstretched wrists, using her "thousand faces" ability to take on the appearance of Princess Cerulea. "This will prevent your escape from being noticed for awhile, at least," she said to her liege. "You must find the conch scepter; it's likely kept somewhere in this compound. Hurry, Your Highness!"

Despite the need to find the conch scepter, of more immediate concern to the heroes was to find where the sahuagin had stashed their weapons and magic items. Dumping the slain sahuagin guard into the pit they had just abandoned, they pulled the coral lattice and clam shell back in place and started searching around. Fortunately, they found the room rather quickly, for it was one of the closest rooms in the maze of tunnels that had been apparently dug into the stone of the ocean floor by some unknown means. It was guarded by a pair of animated merfolk skeletons and an undead chuul, but they were soon overpowered, and the group fell to grabbing up their gear. Besides their own gear and that of the pirates from the Avatar of Hell, there were two large chests filled with coins, apparently loot from the pirate vessel. The group begrudgingly left them behind, but definitely had plans to return for them when the excitement had died down a bit. Conspicuously absent was the bloodstone heart, the powerful ruby that had been taken from the Lizard King's chest back on the island that Balama's map had led her to.

An exploration of the maze of passageways led them to an encounter with a pair of guardian sharks, but they slew the fish without incident and then made a point to leave them far behind before their blood attracted any other such guardians.

Another room housed several large glass cylinders, inside which were kept wildly-colored sea slug delvers. These aquatic - and much smaller - versions of the terrestrial delvers were used by the sahuagin mystics to dig out the tunnels of their subterranean enclave below the sea floor. Fortunately, the mystics were all busy elsewhere, so the group moved on.

The next room they found was large, and contained a flat slab of stone in the middle of the room, barnacles encrusting its sides. Sitting on top of this slab was a large conch shell embedded on a short ivory rod, with narrow, twirling grooves circling its length. This was identified by Princess Cerulea as the conch scepter, a large conch shell that had been magically grafted onto the horn of a narwhal. Unfortunately, surrounding the doorway to this room was a giant pair of shark jaws, and the group universally decided that they could only be bad news. Akari and Cal volunteered to enter the room first, and as they had expected, the jaws animated to bite down on the non-sahuagin. Still, Cal, using his Kord-provided strength, held the jaws pried open long enough for Princess Cerulea to swim in and grab the conch scepter.

After that, the group decided to split up. Feron and Cerulea would escape the compound and go to awaken Dragon Turtle Goruka, while the rest of the group would see what they could do to stop whatever nasty project the sahuagin mystics were working on. The two mermaids wished the others luck and swam off in the direction the group had originally been taken from; Cerulea predicted that the sahuagin guards outside the entrance to the enclave couldn't likely tell mermaids apart and would probably not recognize Princess Cerulea for who she was, and if the two of them swam close to each other with the conch scepter it would likely not be spotted. After all, the merfolk had been thoroughly cowed by their sahuagin conquerors, and had given them no trouble after the slaying of their King and Queen. The sahuagin had no reason to suspect treachery from the mermaids, and sure enough, they passed the guards without any comment. Then they were through the kelp beds and off in the direction of Dragon Turtle Goruka's deep trench lair.

The rest of the group kept exploring the compound. Another room held an aquatic elf, who floated in a room dominated by a large brain coral in its center, along with several sea fronds and darting fish. The elf had her hands cupped at her stomach, and had had her eyes closed. Sensing the group's approach, she snapped them open and asked, tentatively, "Are you here to rescue me?" She gave her name as Zozika, and said she had been captured by the sahuagin. She was an emmissary of a nearby aquatic elf kingdom, but now she had been magically bound to this room, unable to leave. There was another impressive-looking set of shark jaws mounted around the doorway to her room.

However, in the midst of her explanation, Zozika suddenly called out a command word and the brain coral in the middle of the room started spitting out swarms of jellyfish. She made a dash for the far side of the room, where there was a smaller doorway hidden behind the brain coral. As the group watched her swim away, they caught a glimpse of what she had been cupping at her stomach - it was the bloodstone heart, which she had just been communing about and was ecstatic over, for the powerful evil of the artifact could jump-start the project that she and the other sahuagin had been working on for weeks. (Unbeknownst to the group at this time, Zozika was actually a malenti, a sahuagin born with the outer appearance of an aquatic elf but a heart as cold as the more reptilian-looking members of her race. Worse yet, she was the leader of the sahuagin mystics.)

To chase after Zozika, the group had to enter the trapped shark jaws (again, Akari and Cal took the brunt of this attack to let the others get through), then had to fight their way through the jellyfish swarms. Fortunately, Balama discovered that her wand of magic missiles worked just as well underwater as on land, and she got a shot off before Zozika vanished through the back doorway.

Then it was a chase through the maze of passageways, as the group desperately tried to stop Zozika from getting to the rest of the sahuagin mystics. Zozika used her telepathic ability to call forth the guardian sharks from outside the complex, so the group soon found themselves not only swimming after the malenti but trying to keep pace ahead of the bloodthirsty sharks chasing them. It became necessary for those without ranged attacks - namely, Slayer, Fang, Akari, Hurm, and Theodore - to hold the sharks at bay, allowing Cal and Balama to try to overtake Zozika.

It was a good plan, but luck - and numerical superiority - were not with them. Killing the sharks only drew forth more - and sometimes larger - sharks, and although the group was finally able to back away from the fight and leave the remaining sharks fighting over the bodies of their own slain, this happened after Theodore had been killed as well. In the meantime, several sahuagin, including the four-armed mutant leader, helped block the way so that Cal and Balama couldn't engage the fleeing Zozika, and she made it out of the maze and to a mysterious dome of magical darkness that encompassed the majority of a cavern just past where the clam shells covered the pits of future sacrifices. From there, she sounded the alarm and sent reinforcements to chase down those who had taken the conch scepter. Balama and Cal were holding their own against the sahuagin but fighting a retreating battle, and it wasn't until the remainder of the group was able to join them that they were able to overcome their sahuagin foes. Rushing past the bodies of the slain, the group entered the chamber, hoping against hope that they weren't too late.

But alas, they were.

- - -

While all of this was happening in the underground complex, Feron and Princess Cerulea were racing to the deep trench where Dragon Turtle Goruka slumbered. Knowing that whoever had stolen the conch scepter would likely be heading there to use it, Zozika had sent an interception team to stop them. Looking back over her shoulder as they swam, Feron noticed two large sharks giving chase - and rapidly gaining on the two mermaids. Worse yet, hanging onto their fins were two animated merfolk skeletons, each wearing a coral crown and wielding a wicked-looking crossbow in one hand. Princess Cerulea looked back at their pursuers and gave a startled gasp - the skeletons were those of none other than her own slain parents, King Trigon Deepcurrents and Queen Almathea Wavecrest.

"You go ahead; I'll hold them off!" called out Feron as she turned to face the rapidly-approaching menace. Princess Cerulea raced ahead, as Feron called forth one of her most powerful spells, altering it as she spoke the mystic syllables to summon forth an orca. The great beast showed up just in time, slamming into the sides of the sharks and flinging the two animated skeletons from their perches to cascade off in random directions. Leaving the sharks to her summoned orca, Feron concentrated her attacks on the animated skeletons. Much of her normal spellpower was useless underwater - she couldn't call lightning, nor could she call down a flame strike - so she repeated her recent success and summoned forth another orca. Then it was a matter to stay out of reach of the animated merfolk skeletons while her summoned whales took care of the fight for her. After all four foes had been slain, Feron swam after the skeletons as they sunk to the lower depths and relieved them of their crossbows and crowns, no doubt powerful and treasured symbols for the merfolk tribe. Then she followed in the direction Princess Cerulea had been swimming, and caught up to her at the top of the trench.

Cerulea took a deep breath and blew a long note from the conch scepter. The result rivaled the deepest tone of whale songs.

In answer, an equally deep voice rumbled throughout the area, startling several schools of fish into panicked retreat. “WHO WAKENS GORUKA FROM HIS SLUMBER?” the voice demanded.

"It is I, Princess Cerulea Seafoam, ruler of the Merfolk Tribe of Trigon," answered the young mermaid in a voice that couldn't help but tremble slightly. Then a shiver of fear coursed through her body as rising up from the trench was a huge dragon turtle, its mouth large enough to gobble the mermaids whole in a single bite.

The enormous creature looked down at the conch scepter, then back up at the quavering mermaid.

"I WILL SERVE YOU, PRINCESS CERULEA SEAFOAM, AS I SERVED YOUR FATHER BEFORE YOU AND HIS FATHER BEFORE HIM. WHAT IS YOUR DESIRE?" Cerulea explained the recent takeover of the tribe by the marauding sahuagin, and her plan to drive the invaders away with the aid of the dragon turtle. After all, the Princess's capture was a major factor in the tribe's unwillingness to fight their attackers; with the Princess free, and with the aid of the tribe's powerful ally, Cerulea had no doubt that she could lead her people in a rebellion. Together, the three swam back towards the merfolk village.

- - -

Across from the hemisphere of unbroken darkness was a wide ramp leading up to the surface of the ocean bottom. Crawling out from the black hemisphere shambled an enormous crab, its unliving limbs crackling with necromantic energy and it headed for the ramp. Attached atop its broad shell was a wooden structure, a square pillar upon which was mounted an octagonal projection. Thin slits in the sides of this octagonal structure allowed slim black wands to project out, while the center of each octagonal side and the four sides of the supporting structure below it held a round porthole, through the latter of which could be seen the beautiful features of the evil malenti Zozika. This explained the damage the adventurers had seen to the pirate ship Avatar of Hell; the sahuagin had taken apart many of its planks and beams to build this structure atop the back of the gigantic undead crab animated using the souls of the slain sacrifices and the necromantic power of the bloodstone heart.

The Death-Beast of the Deep crawled up the ramp; with a slam of its massive claws it pushed aside the slab of rock that covered the ramp opening, and the undead monstrosity, at the urging of Zozika, scuttled its way towards the mermaid village. Her project completed and shambling along in unholy unlife, Zozika had no further use for the merfolk save as flesh upon which to feed her army of sahuagin.

The group raced up the ramp in pursuit. They were followed by the Lady Dorca, who, having heard the commotion in the room beyond her self-imposed prison, decided that the time for subterfuge had passed. Wildshaping into an eel, she escaped her bonds and resumed her true form, leaving the face of Princess Cerulea to morph back into her own features.

Akari, leading the strike against the Death-Beast, was the first to discover what the wands did. A sonic blast of energy penetrated his body and shook him to his bones; the slim black wands were wands of sound burst, each wielded by a sahuagin mystic: Qintaaq, Joluri, and Borbuka. Zozika, in the lower pillar, had a similar wand of her own.

"We need to get into the wooden structure!" called out Cal. In response, the Lady Dorca grabbed him below his arms and swam him up to the top of the structure, dropping him to fall onto its surface. There was a hatch on the top that appearently opened up, but it was bolted from within and withstood the cleric's best efforts. "Allow me," suggested the Lady Dorca, and cast a warp wood on the hatch that allowed Cal to rip it from its moorings, revealing the three sahuagin mystics within. For his efforts, Cal was hit by three blasts from the wands, and staggered back from the damage.

Slayer, Akari and Hurm, meanwhile, had attempted to attack the Death-Beast itself, but this proved to be more difficult than anticipated. Its undead shell had been magically reinforced somehow, making it even tougher and stronger than it had been in life. Furthermore, the Death-Beast moved with preternatural quickness with its claws if not its legs, and Hurm was captured between the serrated edges of one massive claw and crushed to death in the span of a heartbeat. The crab seemed to be absorbing life energy from Hurm's slain form; once it had drained him dry, it discarded him with a flick of its claw.

The life energy seemed to grant the Death-Beast additional powers, for suddenly beams shot out from its eyestalks, hitting Akari and Slayer each square in the chest. Akari managed to shrug it off, but Slayer was overcome by an inability to get his muscles to do what he wanted them to; he was helplessly paralyzed as the Death-Beast skittered up to his unmoving form with a set of open pincers. He doubtlessly would have been slain in the Death-Beast's grip, had Fang not grabbed his master by the pant-leg and dragged him backward to safety. After a few seconds, Slayer was able to shake off the effects of the ray and wade back into battle. Balama, in the meantime, stayed back and put her wand of magic missiles to good use, slamming magical energy into the Death-Beast's shell.

The Lady Dorca grabbed Akari and deposited him atop the wooden structure to assist Cal in slaying the three sahuagin mystics. Together, they tore through their reptilian foes, tossing them aside as they were slain. While Cal pitched the last of the three over the side, Akari leapt down into the center of the pillar's interior, driving his Hoardmaster sword directly into Zozika's skull, channeling a burst of positive energy through its blade in a smite against evil. Zozika was unable to counter the attack, and slumped over, dead.

However, the Death-Beast, now "driverless," merely continued carrying out its last instructions, to defeat these foes as it scuttled across the sea floor towards the merfolk village. Still, the remaining adventurers, aided by the Lady Dorca and her animal companion, a fierce-looking orca whale, were able to finish off the undead monstrosity without further casualties. As it fell unmoving to the ocean floor, a cloud of specks appeared over the distant horizon. As they got closer, the group could see that it was a large group of merfolk, led by Dragon Turtle Goruka. The merfolk were armed with weapons they had taken from the sahuagin they had slain and were en route to aid the group at the sahuagin mystics' underground enclave. None were overly disappointed to see that they were not needed after all.

- - -

Several hours later, the Lady Dorca called her animal companion over to her side. The enormous killer whale streaked over to her and smiled like a playful dolphin. “Go, Swift-Fluke, and fetch the stick,” she said to it, patting its massive head. The creature darted off in a flash, grinning.

The mermaid druid turned to the group, but addressed Feron, still in her mermaid form. “You and your friends have our eternal gratitude, Child of the Land,” she said. “No thanks could ever be enough for the service you have provided us this day, but I think it would please Eadro for you to have this.” As she finished speaking, the killer whale swam up, an ivory staff held daintily in its massive mouth, which his mistress plucked from his lips. “This was crafted from the tooth of an elder narwhal,” explained the Lady Dorca. “Wield it wisely, for it channels Eadro’s life-giving power to those recently slain who find favor in His eyes.

“And now, I’m afraid your vessel is no longer seaworthy. However, the tribe has gathered together the many treasures you carried aboard, and Goruka has agreed to take you where you were going. They should have him just about loaded up by now, if you wish to be on your way.”

After farewells were said, Goruka the dragon turtle swam all the way to Thunder Bay (close to 100 miles) on the surface of the water with the group – and all of their equipment – on his back, which worked out for the best as the mermaids’ “breath of the sea” wore off partway through the journey. As might be expected, their arrival at Thunder Bay caused quite a spectacle, and their entrance into the harbor city was the talk of the town for many months to follow.

Balama thanked the group one final time before they went their separate ways. She was planning on using her portion of the treasure they had obtained to have poor Hurm resurrected - sadly, his body had been too badly savaged by the Death-Beast of the Deep to be raised by the power of Feron's staff of life - and to have a new ship commissioned, which she would name Starchaser II. The rest of the group headed off to the local Adventurers Guild Headquarters, where they would crash for the night before using the teleportation circle to get back to their own Guild Headquarters in Greyhawk City. There, they'd finally be able to catch up with the rest of their companions and find out what had transpired in their absence.

- - -

Whew! That was a long one! Although it took me a long time to write up the story for posting here, my records indicate that we managed to get through the adventure in one session. If my memory isn't playing tricks on me, though, I believe this was one of our longer sessions; we generally play on Saturdays, from noon until 6 PM or so, and this one might have extended to 6:30 or 7:00 to avoid having just a tiny bit left over for a future game session.

I was frantic, in the days before we played through this adventure, to find a big plastic crab for use as the Death-Beast of the Deep. I had already made the wooden structure atop it out of cardboard, and as a backup I had found a top-view image of a crab that I had enlarged to the proper scale to use as a token if I had to, but I had really hoped I could find a plastic toy to use. I tried the various hobby places and department stores to no avail, and finally had an epiphany one day and decided to try at the gift shop of the local zoo. I was in luck, although not as lucky as I had hoped; rather than being able to buy a plastic crab the size I wanted, I had to spend a lot more for a bag of various sea creatures, some of which I was able to use (the orca whale was put to use in this very adventure, for one), and others that would come in useful in adventures to come (I later wrote one adventure that had a summon monster trap in it, and made the summoned creature a fiendish monstrous lobster just so I could make some use of the lobster that came with this set), but I did get my plastic crab, and cut the bottom of the structure so that it lined up with the contours of its shell. So that worked out pretty well.

I was a little concerned about splitting the party, and once Dragon Turtle Goruka had been summoned I really didn't want to waste time on the rebellion against the sahuagin, so I asked Vicki if she wouldn't mind allowing that to happen in the background, and I had her run the Lady Dorca (as well as Balama, who was little more than a magic missile machine at that point and not particularly interesting to run) during the fight against the Death-Beast. She was amenable, and I gave Feron the same XP as if she had been there in the fight in Lady Dorca's place.

By the way, I'm aware that "Dorca" is the name of the Sub-Mariner's love interest in the Marvel Comics universe (and thus kind of cheesy for me to use for the name of a mermaid), but I stole it nonetheless because I liked the thought that "Dorca" might actually be "d'Orca," or "Lady of the Orca." After all, as a mermaid druid, she did have an orca whale as an animal companion.

Anyway, that was that - the end of my splitting the members of Wing Three into two separate groups for an extended period of time. I enjoyed it; it was a refreshing change being able to anticipate exactly which party members would be going through my adventures for a while, but now it was time to get the whole group together again and give the players control of who they'd be running each session.

And I think Vicki enjoyed the mermaid aspect of the adventure, so that was cool.

ADVENTURE 32 - MY GREATEST TREASURE

PC Roster:

I wrote "My Greatest Treasure" for one reason only: Rale had recently been slain by a fiendish kraken and had lost all of his gear, including Liverwurst, his magical short sword. I wanted a reason to plant a "replacement sword" in the campaign, and decided that a trap-filled tomb specifically built to house such a sword was the way to go. (A trap-filled adventure practically guaranteed Rale's involvement, as he was the only rogue in the group.)

Here's the starting status I gave the group:

The PCs are called before one of the Guild administrators, who describes an upcoming delve. These are the facts as they know them:

• Dascombe Quickblade was a seasoned veteran of many battles who lived and died several hundred years ago. He carved himself out a kingdom among a group of warring fiefdoms and lived to be well into his sixties.
• He was known for his enchanted blade, which he named Belladonna after his only daughter. The short sword was of exquisite manufacture; some say it was created by a trio of the finest elven artisans of the day. The specifics of the sword’s powers differ according to the legends, but they all agree that its enchantment was very powerful, and that Dascombe was never seen without it.
• Dascombe died quietly in bed, within a year of seeing his daughter precede him in death. Some say that his heart was broken when she died; others claim that he was poisoned by a greedy advisor who wanted the kingdom for himself.
• After his death, Dascombe’s known possessions were all accounted for, save for his enchanted sword, which has never been recovered.
• Recently, much of his former estate, including his extensive library, was sold at a public auction by his descendents, who have since fallen on hard times. The Adventurers Guild purchased a significant chunk of his papers and journals.
• A Guild scribe recently discovered that a gem Dascombe often wore on a pendant around his neck was magical in nature, allowing anyone who viewed through it to see invisible markings hidden in the margins in some of his journals. These invisible markings detailed a secret treasure hold hidden in the mountains where Dascombe’s greatest treasure is kept. It is believed that this “greatest treasure” is none other than his enchanted short sword, Belladonna.
• Last night, the Guild scribe was examining the journals through the magical gem when he was struck from behind and rendered unconscious. When he awoke, both the journal and the gem were gone. Fortunately, the thief was apparently unaware that the scribe had already transcribed the invisible markings into a ledger of his own, so the Guild still has a copy of Dascombe’s description of his hidden treasure hold.
• The Guild had been planning on gathering a party of adventurers together to find the hidden hold and recover Belladonna, but now time is of the essence, since apparently there’s someone else after the sword as well.
• The PCs will be accompanied on their journey into the mountains by the Guild scribe, Ezekiel Featherquill. They have the rest of the day to gather together their provisions and equipment.

- - -

"Well, that's just typical," groused Rale. "Why doesn't this Guild have a better sense of security? We've got folks traipsing in here getting our own stolen Guild rings recharged, we've got assassins waltzing in here as bold as you please, and now we've got thieves stealing Guild property from right under the noses of Guild scribes. Please tell me this Featherquill fellow wasn't here in Guild Headquarters when the stuff got nabbed?"

"No, I believe he was in his own private residence," remarked Telgrane, who had apparently paid a bit more attention to the briefing they'd all been given.

"So Featherquill just takes whatever Guild property he wants home with him?" Rale complained, determined to have something to gripe about. "Lovely, just lovely."

"We're just lucky he had a backup copy," replied Telgrane. "Or this delve would be finished before it even started."

"I wonder who stole the original journals and gemstone?" wondered Feron aloud.

"Betcha anything it was Kazmira," Rale responded. "This sounds like her style - rip off something valuable and play us for fools at the same time."

"We'll see," Feron replied. "Maybe we'll meet up with her at the treasure hold, or with whoever it was that attacked Ezekiel. In any case, is everybody ready to go?"

"Old Clem's getting the horses packed," said Telgrane. "Let's head down to the stables."

"I'll swing by and get Fang," remarked Slayer. "Meet you there."

- - -

The first several days of travel were relatively uneventful, and the group eventually made their way safely to the foot of the mountain range described in Dascombe’s notes. A narrow trail wound through the mountains that looked promising. Slayer led his horse up the mountain path with Fang trotting along at his side, and the others followed suit, Old Clem and Ezekiel bringing up the rear with the pack horses.

Several hours up into the pass, the group was confronted by a stout figure, looking rather like a 12-foot-tall dwarf with reddish orange hair. He wore half-plate armor and wielded a greatsword longer than two men standing head to toe. “What have we here?” he thundered. “Willing slaves for my forge, or morsels for the stewpot?”

"Neither," replied Telgrane amicably, trying to keep things calm. "Just a group of travelers, looking to pass by without any trouble." While he spoke, he surreptitiously popped open the top of the metal tinder box hung at his hip, just in case. The glow from Infernia in cinder form was barely discernable, but she was able to hear that battle might soon be commencing.

"Tell you what, then," replied the fire giant. "I'm in a good mood, so I'll make you a deal. You turn over two of your number to me, and I'll let the rest of you pass unharmed."

"I'm afraid we'll have to pass on that offer," replied Telgrane. Slayer, meanwhile, was reaching for his greatsword with a frown, wondering why Telgrane was wasting all of this time talking when there was obviously a fierce battle to be had. And then Fang growled and turned his head up to the rock above them, where a furry, canine head could be seen peeking through the mountain scrub. A glint of metal hinted at barding covering the creature's hide.

"Ambush!" growled Slayer, whipping out his greatsword and spinning his horse to face the threat from the side. The Nessian warhound leapt down from its ledge above the others, and battle commenced. Slayer took a swipe at the massive beast on the way down and sliced through its side, eliciting a howl of pain from the thing and a retaliatory blast of fire from its wide jaws. Telgrane concentrated his initial attack on the fire giant, casting a magic missile barrage that was certain to strike true. As he did so, Infernia leapt out of the tinderbox in a gout of flame, assuming her horned humanoid form as she did so. She let out a hiss of disappointment once she saw she was dealing with a firebreather; such beasts were usually immune to her fiery attacks. Feron backed her horse up and cast a call lightning spell, causing bolts of electricity to lash down at the giant.

"We've got the dog, you handle the giant!" Rale called to Slayer, as he dropped from the saddle - there was no way he wanted to fall off of a mountain path on horseback when he could ensure he had better footing from the safety of the ground. Slayer followed suit, jumping from the saddle the better to engage the fire giant on his own. And the group's tactics worked; the Nessian warhound was dealt with relatively quickly, allowing the others to concentrate on helping Slayer and Feron deal with the giant. Before long he too had been slain.

Looting the giant and his canine pet gave Rale the opportunity for more griping; the fire giant's armor and greatsword were obviously valuable, but much too large to be put to use by the group, and too unwieldy to be brought along to be sold later. At least he had a pouch with four large rubies in it; Rale pocketed those for safekeeping, slightly consoled. And the chain mail barding from the massive hell hound was not only magical in nature but was of the same general size as Fang; despite wanting nothing to do with it initially, Slayer was eventually able to coax the dire wolf into allowing it to be placed on him and tightened to fit.

The group saddled up and moved on.

- - -

After several more hours of travel, the group reached a cave opening that Ezekiel claimed fit the description of the location of the entrance to Dascombe’s hidden treasure hold. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary about the cave, although as the group got closer they detected the heavy odor of a large, shaggy mammal.

Rale dismounted from his horse and the others backed up down the mountain trail as he peeked inside. Apparently, assuming this was indeed the cave leading to Dascombe's horde, in the years since he had his cache built here a mated pair of dire bears had taken up residence in the cave. They were currently inside the cave and fast asleep, but Rale suspected any loud noise would be sure to awaken them. He returned to the others, explained the situation, and then Feron approached the cave on her own. Peering inside, she saw the slumbering bruins amid the remains of previous meals lying scattered across the cave floor: the bones and matted fur of deer, mountain goats, and the like. She had a pair of charm animal spells prepared, and the sound of her casting awoke the groggy pair, who fortunately both succumbed to her spellcasting. A speak with animals spell allowed her to express her wish that the two dire bears not attack anyone from the group. The bears countered that they were hungry and a nice meal of horse would really hit the spot right about now. After translating the bears' request, the group talked it over and decided that a pack horse was a small price to pay for the support of a pair of loyal dire bears guarding the way into the treasure hold, especially if the thief who stole Dascombe's gemstone and journals from Ezekiel would likewise be mounting an expedition this way. Feron asked the bears if any people had been this way recently, and they responded that the last human they had seen was several months ago - and that he had been delicious. The male dire bear smacked his lips with his lengthy tongue at the memory.

One of the pack horses was unloaded, led nervously into the cave, and quickly dispatched by Slayer, who handled his greatsword diligently to ensure the creature didn't suffer. Old Clem and Ezekiel watched nervously as the two dire bears ripped into their meal, and jointly decided that despite the protection from the elements that the cave afforded, they'd make camp down the trail a bit, where the path widened enough to make a decent campsite. Fang would be left with them as additional protection, as he had developed a rapport with the elderly hireling over the months. Old Clem felt much safer with Fang at his side, especially since he had no idea how long Feron's spells would last and just how long these two monster-bears would remain friendly. The rest of the group gathered up their adventuring gear and went to the back recesses of the cave. There, they found a nearly perfectly circular pit some 10 feet in diameter. It went straight down into the rock of the mountain, seemingly much too uniform to be a natural formation. The pit's depth was soon swallowed in darkness, making it impossible to guess how deep it might be; even Slayer's darkvision was unable to penetrate to the bottom of the pit.

"I'll go down first," volunteered Feron. "I've got the boots of spider climbing, so I can just walk down the side of the pit and see what's down there." Rale agreed that that was a fine idea, as he gathered together everyone's lengths of rope and tied them together. Slayer took a piton from his pack and busied himself hammering it into place, not too close to the pit's edge. Feron, an everburning candle in hand, activated her boots and walked down the side of the vertical pit.

The first 20 feet of the pit were unremarkable, save for their uniform smoothness that hinted at other than natural origins. However, right at the 20-foot mark, the pit's interior suddenly plunged into pitch blackness. "It's a darkness spell!" Feron called up to the others.

"Can you dispel it?" called down Rale.

"Not at the moment," replied the half-elf, mentally going through her prepared spell inventory.

"I'll give it a try," offered Telgrane, casting a dispel magic at the area of darkness below. It had no effect.

"Do you want to come back up?" asked the young conjurer.

"No, I'll just continue on, slowly," called back Feron.

Walking down the vertical shaft slowly proved to be an excellent idea. At the 80-foot point, Feron's foot slid off the side of the stone as she was about to put her weight on it. She dangled precariously from her one foot for the space of time it took her to pull her other foot back and plant it safely on the side of the wall where it had been before she took her last step forward. She tentatively slid her foot forward along the wall, and found the same thing happening again - one moment, it was sticking to the wall just fine; the next, it was as if her boot wasn't even magical at all.

"Antimagic field," reasoned Telgrane after she had called up her findings. "Maybe you'd better come back up."

Feron found no reason to argue, and made her way back up to the top of the pit. By this time, Rale had the ropes all bound together into one length and had secured one end to the piton. "Volunteers?" he asked.

"Too bad Teabag isn't here," commented Slayer. "He likes dangling into things."

The group decision was that Rale should be the one to climb down, and the young rogue could find no counterargument that made sense, so he dropped the other end of the rope into the pit and tried to listen to how long it took the other end to hit bottom, but the rope didn't make enough noise for it to be conclusive. He repeated the experiment with a small stone with better luck and estimated that the pit was likely more than 100 feet deep. They had just shy of 150 feet of rope, so hopefully that would be enough. He asked Feron for one of her everburning candles, which she handed over with a puzzled look on her face. "You don't think that will be able to counter the magical darkness, do you?" she asked. "I didn't have any luck with it."

"No," Rale replied, "but it should tell me when I'm past the antimagic field." He tucked the candle into the side of a pocket flap, just enough for the light-producing end to poke out, and started repelling his way down.

Sure enough, at about 20 feet down the light from the candle went out, and Rale found himself in absolute darkness. He gave himself a moment to adjust, then continued down.

At what he guessed was probably the 80-foot point, the antimagic field should have kicked in, but he had no way to verify. He continued down.

Some forty feet lower, Rale discovered the bottom. He did so by stabbing himself in the calf with an upthrust spike along the floor of the pit. Cursing loudly as he pulled himself from the spike, he slid his foot along the spike's side until it hit a solid floor. The candle was still dark; the antimagic field was still in effect.

"I'm down!" Rale called up to the others. "Throw me down a torch so I can see!" Telgrane grabbed up an unlit torch and held it out to his familiar, who set it ablaze with a touch of her hand. He pitched it into the pit, and watched its light snuff out when it hit the deeper darkness effect. After enough time for it to have hit bottom, he called down, "What do you see?"

"It's just a circular pit, filled with spikes!" Rale called back up. "Are we sure this is the right place?"

"According to Ezekiel!"

"Fine then, come on down, one at a time!" Rale called back up. "Lightest ones first! You're last, Slayer!"

Feron grabbed the rope and climbed on down, calling up to Telgrane when she reached the bottom. "Hey, baby," cooed Rale to the druid. "Looks like it's just you and me down here."

"For now," Feron replied coldly, then looked up to see when Telgrane would appear. The dangling rope wobbled, then the light from his open tinder box appeared; Infernia had reassumed cinder form and was being carried down at her master's side. After helping the young conjurer find his footing between the spikes, Feron called up to Slayer that it was safe for him to climb down.

Rale, meanwhile, had been examining the circular wall of the pit, certain that if this was indeed Dascombe's treasure vault, there must be a hidden door somewhere. He failed to find one, but he did find a small hole about waist high. Its interior was threaded. As Slayer's great bulk lowered itself down to the pit floor, Rale realized that the hole was about the same diameter as the pit spikes. He examined the various spikes until he found what he was looking for. "Here, hold this," he commanded Slayer, thrusting the torch at him and grabbing a spike with both hands. Twisting it, the spike unscrewed from its base, and, as Rale had expected, it fit perfectly into the hole in the wall and screwed in securely.

"I fail to see the point," commented Feron, oblivious to the obvious pun. "What does this do?"

"Observe," commented Rale with a smug grin, and pushed the spike in. Or tried to, in any case - it didn't budge. "Hmm," he muttered thoughtfully, then gave the spike a tug instead. This had a better result; the spike extended a good foot further from the wall. Part of the new section thus exposed included a hinge, and Rale knowingly bent the spike upwards, impressed at his own ingenuity. The others weren't quite as impressed, as doing so caused each of the floor spikes to shoot up a good 18 inches, jabbing into the legs of everyone who had been straddling them. Amid screams of pain - his own included - Rale hurriedly pulled the spike down from its "up" position and lowered it to the opposite direction. The spikes retracted to their normal height, then kept retracting until they were all the way through the bottom of the floor, leaving behind only small holes where they had protruded. Then, with a shudder, the whole floor started lowering as well, spinning slowly in a counterclockwise direction as the entire pit floor unscrewed lower into the ground. As the stone mechanism lowered, an open doorway seemed to rise from the floor.

"This must be the place after all," remarked Rale. Then, before anybody else could beat him to it, he called out "Dibs on the sword!"

The doorway led to a short corridor, at the end of which was a closed metal door. After examining it and finding no traps, Rale cautiously opened it up. On the other side was an enormous natural cavern, stretching farther than the group's light sources could reveal. Stalactites hung down from overhead, and a narrow, open stone bridge cut straight across into darkness. There was no telling how far down it would be if anyone fell off the side of the bridge, but the lack of walls or handholds made it look like a dangerous proposition to cross. Rale signaled for silence, and heard the occasional drip of water from somewhere down below, plus the occasional chirp, possibly from a bat or similar creature. After listening to the sounds of the cave and hearing nothing else, Rale cautiously led the group across the slightly arching stone formation.

As they crossed, the chirping noises got louder and more numerous. Perhaps attracted to the group's light sources or possibly by the noises they made, a few stirges fluttered down to investigate the adventurers. This was followed by more and more with each passing second, until there was a virtual swarm of the beasts, each darting in and trying to penetrate delicate flesh with its wicked proboscis. The bloodsuckers were difficult for the adventurers to fight off while balancing on a natural stone bridge with a fall of unknown depth below if they slipped; Slayer found his greatsword invariably cut several of the beasts in half with each swing, but there were more than enough to replace each one he cut down. Soon the entire group had multiple stirges attached to them, eagerly sucking blood. Telgrane and Feron managed to let fly with some area-effect fire spells, which burned a great number of stirges all at once, but the insatiable creatures' numbers seemed endless in the vast cavern.

Rale had crossed the bridge as quickly as he could and was disheartened to see that the bridge ended in a small ledge with another metal door, this one locked. Worse, it wasn't a standard lock that might be picked, but rather one of those damned puzzle-based locks. There were four square indentations in the door’s center, and along the left side hung a series of eight metal plates, each the same size as the indentations, and each bearing the holy symbol of a different god. Rale recognized several of them immediately: Correlon Larethian, Ehlonna, Heironeous, and Kord's holy symbols stood out if only because they were worshiped by various Wing Three members. Likewise, he recognized Boccob's symbol through their association with their friend Altamaic. Pelor's was fairly obvious, too, and the skull symbol belonged to one of the evil, nastier deities - Vecna, maybe, or Nerull. Then there was a green face belonging to one of the nature gods.

It was apparent that the trick to opening the door was to place the correct four holy symbols in the right slots. Looking closely at the slots, Rale saw that they were each pierced by 16 holes in a four-by-four grid; pulling a holy symbol from the side at random, he saw that it had over half a dozen thin pegs that formed no discernable pattern, but which would line up in any of the four slots quite nicely. Pulling another holy symbol down and comparing the backs, he saw that the pegs were different on each, but each would line up in any of the four slots. So that meant that the four symbols would have to not only be selected as the correct ones, but they'd also likely have to be placed in the correct order. It also meant that the lock was practically unpickable, as it would require pushing in the correct holes all at once, something far beyond the abilities of even his masterwork thieves tools.

"Crap!" cursed the rogue. "Feron, c'mere and tell me what these holy symbols mean!"

Between blasts of her fire spells, which sent hordes of stirges plummeting to their deaths below in streaks of flame, Feron called out the gods represented by the holy symbols. In order, they were Boccob, Correlon Larethian, Ehlonna, Heironeous, Kord, Nerull, Obad-Hai, and Pelor.

"Try the good ones!" she suggested, pulling a blood-bloated stirge from her neck. "Ehlonna, Hieroneous, Pelor, Corellon...oh, and Kord. That's five."

"Let's hurry it up!" called Slayer, who was getting light-headed from the loss of blood. "Open the blasted door!"

"Soon would be good!" agreed Telgrane, who was rapidly running out of area-effect spells against the growing numbers of stirges and was having difficulty hiding behind the flaming form of his small fire elemental familiar. Infernia, for her part, was waving her hands around in a "shooing" motion that kept those stirges nearest her at bay.

"Oh, for pity's sake!" scoffed Feron, grabbing up four symbols and placing them in the correct order, calling them out as she fitted them into their respective slots. "Obad-Hai, Pelor, Erythnul, Nerull: O-P-E-N, open!" And sure enough, as she plugged Nerull's unholy symbol into place, there was an audible click and the metal door swung inwards into the next room. Everybody piled through, and then Slayer insisted on immediate healing. It was a good call, too, as his normally dark half-orcish face was lighter in skin tone than any of the others and he was too weak from loss of blood to stand up and carry his greatsword. Feron's newly-presented narwhal-horn staff of life was put to repeated use, as numerous charges were expended replenishing the life-blood that had been drained by the thirsty stirge swarms.

Only after everyone was healed back to fighting trim did they look around at their newest surroundings. The other side of the metal door was a stone platform with a set of carved stairs leading down into an empty chamber below. The ceiling was natural, with hanging stalactites pointing down into the chamber. Once again, Rale took the lead, Slayer behind him, then Feron, followed by Telgrane and Infernia at the rear. As the group got about halfway down, Rale suddenly leapt back and crashed into Slayer, causing the half-orc to snarl in irritation. Just as Rale started to explain that he thought he'd just triggered a plate in the stair, it started raining metal spheres from the stalactites in the cavern's roof. These marble-sized metal balls struck the group upon the head and shoulders, then caused tripping hazards as they got underfoot. Slayer and Telgrane both lost their balance on the narrow stairs; Slayer had the misfortune of pitching over the side and cascading to the cavern floor below.

Worse, after the rain of orbs was finished, the tiny spheres started rolling around of their own accord, rolling together as if magnetized and forming the shape of an enormous serpent.

"I don't like the looks of this!" called out Telgrane.

"Run!" agreed Rale, who had spotted another door across the chamber. Unfortunately, it looked like it led back into the stirge cavern they had just left, only this time on the ground floor. Still, at least they knew what they'd be dealing with among the stirges, whereas this orb construct serpent was an unknown quantity. The group had a few tumbles as they stepped on stray metal orbs, but they made it across the room before the serpent could do much in the way of attacking - it shot a barrage of metal orbs from its "mouth" that mostly impacted on the metal door as Telgrane slammed it shut behind him.

The floor of the cavern was littered with the still-flaming bodies of numerous stirges, enough to give a general view of the size of the enormous cavern. The stone arch was somewhere overhead, beyond the radius of the group's light sources, but they could see several areas where water had accumulated over the years into still, dark pools. The group was wary of attacking stirges, but the vast majority of the beasts had either already been slain in area-attack spells or already had their fill of blood for the moment and had returned to their hidden nests among the stalactites far above. The group moved deeper into the cavern, looking for an exit.

About halfway through the enormous cavern, there was the grinding sound of stone on stone. This was accompanied by the sounds of pebbles falling to the stone floor, as the group approached near enough to a side wall to see the petrified skeleton of some great beast pull itself from the wall in which it had been embedded. Similar noises came from both in front and behind them; eventually, three great skeletal beasts pulled themselves free from the surrounding rock and lumbered towards the group. Two scurried on all fours; of these, one had three great horns jutting out from its shieldlike head, while the other was lower to the ground and built much like an oversized lizard with a great fin jutting up from its back. The third skeleton stood upright, with a gigantic head filled with daggerlike teeth. Surprisingly, it gave a tremendous roar that reverberated along the cavern walls and shook the adventurers to their core. Lacking a cleric capable of turning such undead beasts, the group made a run for it to the far section of the cave, where the passageway both narrowed and made a wide turn to the left, lowering further into the earth as it did so. The way ahead led to a small underground lake, and not wanting to explore its unknown depths, the group was forced to deal with the primeval skeletons before they dared move on. The beasts' petrified bones made them as tough as animated stone, but the narrowing passageway forced no more than two of the beasts to attack at a time; this gave the adventurers the opportunity to pick them off bit by bit, until eventually all three had been destroyed and lay in a heap of bone. Only then did the group stop to catch their breath, apply healing spells (and consume healing potions), and look around at what next faced them.

The lake was still, as would be expected underground, yet the surface of the water was constantly being dripped upon by the stalactites overhead. A "shore" of stone stretched for a short distance in both directions from the cavern opening, yet there was no way to get to the far "shore" - just identifiable at the edge of their field of vision - without entering the lake.

Fortunately, there seemed to be a way to do so in safety: a small wooden box lay abandoned on the group's side of the lake. Examining it, it had no visible means of opening, but it had a legend carved ito its top, which read, "THE COMMAS END BUT WORDS LAST FOREVER IN THOUGHT." The caption was carved in the center of a circle of seemingly random letters.

"This is obviously a folding boat," commented Telgrane, who had read of such things in his studies. "And I'll bet the phrase has something to do with the word that activates it." He tried reading the phrase aloud, to no avail. He then tried reading the letters that encircled the phrase, but they weren't even pronouncable as written. Finally, after even Feron admitted to being stumped, Telgrane attempted matching up the letters in the phrase to the letters in the circle around them - if he ignored the letters in the carved phrase which did not appear in the circle around it, he wound up with "--- COMMA- -ND --- WORD- LA-- FOR---R IN --O-G--."

"Command word 'laforrinog!'" he exclaimed in triumph. At the verbalization of the last word, the wooden box shifted and warped, unfolding itself in a geometric impossibility that defied the senses into a wooden rowboat with a pair of oars sitting inside. Also sitting on one of the seats was a small metal key. "Everybody in!" commanded Slayer, glad that the reading part was finally over. "I'll row!"

"I don't like this, Master," commented Infernia, looking fearfully at the expanse of water ahead, while Rale pocketed the key.

"In you go," replied Telgrane, flipping open the top of his tinder box. The fire elemental gratefully jumped inside, shrinking down into her glowing ember form as she did so.

There was a metal door on the farther shore, and Slayer rowed diligently towards it. As they neared the middle of the lake, the water seemed to bubble and boil, but close observation showed that the water wasn't actually boiling; rather, small blobs of protoplasm were rising up to the surface. "Some sort of ooze!" cried out Feron in alarm, as the aquatic ooze swarm started creeping up over the sides of the rowboat. To make matters worse, there was another primeval roar of fury, and another petrified dinosaur skeleton reared up from the water, its head holding a long, curved crest jutting from the back of its head. It started making its way towards the bobbing vessel.

"Keep rowing!" commanded Rale, as Slayer made to grab up his greatsword. Feron and Telgrane used what ranged spells they had remaining in their respective spell inventories to take out the dinosaur skeleton, while Rale did what he could to push the oozes off the boat and back into the water. He learned the hard way that allowing them to touch bare flesh allowed them to latch on and start absorbing blood through the skin; his stomach turned as he saw several of the translucent spheres turn a familiar reddish color as they drew blood out of his hand.

The dinosaur skeleton dropped back into the water after a final barrage of magic missiles from Telgrane, and Slayer increased speed to the shore. Everyone jumped out of the boat and onto the stone floor, pulling the boat up behind them, then watched to see if the oozes would follow them. Fortunately, they seemed to be better suited to an aquatic existance, for they slid back into the clear waters and submerged.

Rale approached the door and pulled the key out of his pocket. Not surprisingly, it fit perfectly. However, to his dismay, it wouldn't turn, neither left nor right. He removed the key and tried peeking into the keyhole, but this wasn't a door whose keyhole went all the way through the door; he saw nothing. "Weird," he commented.

"You want to know something even weirder?" asked Telgrane, activating a detect magic spell. "That 'door' you're playing with is radiating an aura of illusion. I'll bet it isn't even a door." Sure enough, it wasn't - rather, it was the illusion of a door cast over a slab of smooth stone the size and shape of the illusory door, complete with a "keyhole" carved into the rock at the appropriate height and depth.

"So where's the blasted door?" demanded Rale, getting a bit fed up with all of the hoops he was having to jump through to claim the fabled sword Belladonna.

"Try over here," suggested Feron, who had cast a detect magic spell of her own, and had zeroed in on an apparently blank section of cavern wall some 20 feet away from the illusory door. "I'm getting a strong illusory aura from right over here."

Some scrabbling around with his fingers (and his eyes closed, to block out the illusory sensory input which was telling him there was nothing there but a cavern wall), Rale found the real keyhole and slipped the key in. This time, it turned easily in the lock, and the door opened into another room, this one apparently carved by magic from the solid stone, for it was a large square with walls 40 feet on a side.

This, at long last, gave every appearance of being the room the adventurers had been seeking, for there on the floor in front of a large metal chest covered with glowing runes was an elaborately hilted short sword, no doubt Dascombe Quickblade's legendary sword - its blade, sadly, snapped into three pieces. However, there were other features of the room which immediately stood out, like the fact that standing beside the opened chest was a desiccated female corpse, her body little more than parchment-like skin stretched tight over bones, yet somehow animate enough to embrace a young woman clad in familiar black combat leathers. Standing dumbfoundedly staring at their embrace, his back turned to the group of newcomers, was a young, fair-haired man in dusty traveling gear. An unusual toad fluttered its feathered wings in consternation upon his shoulder.

Several other details in the chamber came to immediate focus: the painting of a beautiful young woman on prominent display on the wall behind the chest, the holy symbols hanging from each of the trove’s walls, the neatly-folded camping gear – bedrolls, tents with coiled rope and lined-up tent stakes, blankets – stacked along the wall to the right. As the group stared in amazed silence, the corpse became healthier and more vital before their eyes, as the woman in black leathers slipped away into apparent unconsciousness. As she slumped to the floor, Rale immediately realized two things: first, the corpse that stood before him, wiping blood from her full lips, looked to be the spitting image of the woman in the painting; and second, the unconscious and deathly pale woman lying motionlessly on the floor at her feet, with two crimson holes at her jugular, was none other than Kazmira the Magpie.

The suddenly-revitalized woman looked up at the group of adventurers. "Come to join in the fun?" she purred. "Excellent - my thirst won't likely be quenched solely by the likes of these two." And with a wave of her hand and a flash of her eyes, she called out to the dumbstruck figure standing before her, "Take them!"

Gareth turned and faced the group, the only expression on his face a sudden eagerness to obey his new mistress to the fullest of his ability. He spouted off the words to a quick spell and a barrage of magic missiles went flying into Telgrane, the only member Gareth didn't recognize, and thus an unknown quantity who should be taken out as quickly as possible. Telgrane staggered under the blast, but unhinged his tinder box as he began the words to his own spell.

"Get the vampire!" commanded Rale to Feron and Slayer, realizing his own skills would be put to better use against a human foe like Gareth. Plus - he wasn't ashamed to admit it - he wanted revenge on Gareth for his betrayal of the group, whereas this vampire chick, whoever she was, meant nothing to him.

The "vampire chick," however, had apparently spent some time during her life learning the martial arts, for she waded into battle with Slayer without hesitation, dodging under his greatsword and sweeping his feet out from under him. The burly half-orc landed on his back with a painful thud and felt the anger welling up within him. Releasing himself to its flow, he jumped back to his feet and let out a roar of rage as he rushed the nimble vampire, who had turned her attention to Feron.

Feron, in the meantime, had opted to stay out of immediate reach and attack the undead creature with spells. She still had some blasts left from the call lightning spell she had used on the aquatic dinosaur skeleton, and used it to drop several bolts of electricity down upon the vampire. Between her lightning strikes and Slayer's rage-fueled greatsword, they managed to keep a steady string of hurt going on the vampire monk. Gareth was faring little better, for Telgrane not only was holding his own, spellwise, against the traitorous sorcerer, but kept Gareth focused on him long enough for Rale to get in a few sneak attacks. Despite having been dominated into fighting for the vampiress, Gareth's all was just not enough, and he fell to a final thrust from Rale's blade. Joanna, who sometime during the months since Gareth's betrayal had gained a set of pigeon-sized wings, was taken out by a single magic missile spell.

That made it four against one in the adventurers' favor, and before too long the vampire was cut down. She immediately turned to mist, which floated over to the opened metal chest and reformed into her slumbering form. "The chest's her coffin," remarked Rale, seeing the layer of grave dirt coating the bottom. Slayer did the honors, cutting off her head as she was helpless in her coffin, destroying her forever, her lifelike body crumbling to centuries-old dust. Feron noted that there were holy symbols from several different good deities attached to the inside of the chest - or rather, to her coffin lid. She surmised they had been put there to keep her trapped in her coffin, for however long she had been placed here.

"His greatest treasure," said Feron, looking at the painting of the young woman they had just slain. "Dascombe Quickblade had this whole place built to house his greatest treasure...."

"Yeah, well, it's broken," remarked Rale, obliviously, picking up the pieces of the shattered short sword. "I wonder if the Guild weaponsmiths would be able to reforge it?" He put each piece of the broken blade into the scabbard laying at its side, then buckled it onto his belt. "But before we go, I want to make sure of something." He walked over to the limp form of Kazmira, her pale skin a ghastly pallor in the torchlight, and placed a finger at her throat. "She's not breathing," he said, and propped her up into a sitting position. Then, with his hands on either side of her head, he gave a quick twist and snapped her neck, then dropped her lifeless body to the ground. Then, just to be extra sure, he had Slayer decapitate her with his greatsword; no point in taking the chance that she'd come back as a vampire herself.

"So how'd these two get down here before we did?" Feron wanted to know.

"Probably with these," commented Telgrane, pulling an empty potion flask from Gareth's belt. "Potions of gaseous form, I'd wager."

"That wouldn't allow them to get through the antimagic field," argued Rale.

"There's got to be another way to the surface," reasoned Telgrane. "Those stirges must have some way to get to a food source; everything else we've seen here was either undead or some sort of construct."

"Makes sense," agreed Feron. "So, shall we go?"

They went, but not before looting the bodies of their slain foes. Kazmira's pack held Dascombe's original journal and gemstone, and she also had a magical rapier and dagger and an amulet which prevented the wearer from being successfully scried upon. Gareth's greatsword and dagger were both of masterwork quality if not magical themselves, and he also wore a ring and amulet that provided various forms of protection. He had several magical scrolls in a case at his back, and between the two of them the group recovered several potions, of various strengths of healing and gaseous form.

The way back through the treasure trove was uneventful, and the group eventually caught back up with Old Clem and Ezekiel Featherquill, who they found gagged and bound back-to-back at their encampment, with Fang in a state of magical slumber beside them. Among the group's horses were two others they didn't recognize; after freeing their compatriots (and waking up Fang) the adventurers were told the two had been attacked and overpowered by Kazmira and Gareth, who were pleased to see that the Guild had sent Wing Three to search out the short sword Belladonna. At first it seemed odd that the two thieves hadn't brought along any camping gear, but this was easily explained by a quick perusal of the saddlebags of one of their horses - inside was the Daern's dollhouse that Kazmira and Gareth had used in their safehouse, immediately before Balama's magical summons teleported away most of those who had been fighting them.

All in all, not a bad haul, thought Rale, as the group mounted up and headed back the way they had come.

- - -

This was a fun adventure to run. Jacob was in full panic mode up on the stone bridge fighting the stirge swarms; I think Slayer dropped down to a 2 Constitution before Vicki and Dan figured out the puzzle door, and he was sweating bullets, sure that his barbarian was going to die. I had found some plastic dinosaur skeletons at a local party favor shop that were pretty spot-on scalewise for use with D&D, and had picked up a bunch for less than a buck each; this seemed like a good opportunity to use them, so I added them in when I wrote the adventure. The orb construct serpent used a template from a "Template Troves" gaming accessory I had written that was to have been published by Silverthorne Games, only the company decided to get out of the business once 4E came about and it never materialized.

The group had kind of expected to meet up with Kazmira and Gareth again, but hadn't really expected that this would be the adventure where they got to take care of them for good.

Dascombe Quickblade's Belladonna had originally been a +4 short sword of speed, and had been broken during the fight in which Dascombe and his allies had first captured his vampiric daughter. The Guild weaponsmiths told Rale they could attempt to reforge it into either a +3 short sword or a +1 short sword of speed; Rale had them attempt the latter, and they were successful.

And as for the Daern's dollhouse, I made up a scale map out of posterboard, and that's been one of the most-used magic items the group has ever had. Feron keeps it in her backpack, and whoever's adventuring with her generally uses it to sleep in when out in the field. It has four bedrooms, a kitchen, and even a stables; the trickiest bit is finding a good place to put it when they camp out for the night where it won't be easily discovered.

ADVENTURE 33 - 26 PAPER STREET

PC Roster:
"26 Paper Street" was one of the entries in Paizo's "RPG Superstar" contest some years back, in the round where the contestants had to provide a map and a description of the encounters in a room or rooms depicted in the map. I thought the map was very well-done, and it actually fit in with a plotline I had come up with about a group of spellcasters who were tapping into the Far Realm as a source of power. I was just about finished writing that adventure (which would become "Cult of the Far Realm," the adventure after this one) when I discovered the "26 Paper Street" map on the Paizo website and decided to use it as a prelude to my bigger adventure.

Here's the setup I used: The PCs are approached by Callibrand, an elder administrator of the Adventurers Guild, and asked to investigate the disappearance of a sorcerer who had arranged to meet with him on a matter of some urgency. When he went to meet at the appointed time and place, the sorcerer never showed, and the administrator has no idea what the meeting was to have been about, but he deems it worth looking into. The PCs are asked to track the sorcerer, if possible, and find out both what happened to him and what he needed to pass on to the Adventurers Guild.

Callibrand can only tell the PCs the following:

• The sorcerer has gray eyes, black hair, a short black beard, and a scar above his left eye.
• He was last seen wearing a nondescript brown cloak with a hood.
• He said the matter of urgency had something to do with a tattoo on his right palm, a pattern of tentacles around an eye that in many circles is used to represent raw chaos. (Callibrand can provide a rough sketch of the symbol.)
• Callibrand was asked to meet the sorcerer at 8 bells at a tavern called the Pit-Fight. He arrived on time and stayed until 10 bells, but the sorcerer never showed. Not knowing what else to do, he decided to approach one the Adventurers Guild Wings and see if they could track down the mysterious sorcerer.
• Callibrand’s only suggestion as to how to find this unknown sorcerer is to check out the Pit-Fight and see if anybody there knows of or has seen a sorcerer matching that description.

- - -

"'The Pit-Fight', huh?" asked Cal. "Never heard of it."

"It's apparently fairly new," replied Telgrane. "It's in the crappy part of town, the Styes. You'll probably like it."

"Hmm," grunted Cal noncommittally.

The Pit-Fight had indeed recently opened on the outskirts of the Styes, and in the few short weeks since its founding had become very popular among the adventuring crowd (as well as those who like to hang out with adventurers but dared not live that lifestyle themselves). The tavern was named after its most prominent feature: a large, deep pit in the middle of the tavern floor, ringed by railings, inside which a variety of fights took place. Some involved two people fighting one another (either with or without weapons, but usually nonlethal); some involved animals or more exotic beasts against others of their kind (cock fights, dog fights, and the like); and occasionally a man-vs.-beast fight would pit one or more adventurers against some exotic monster. While the food and drink were above average and the service fairly good, the majority of the revenue taken in at the Pit-Fight came from the betting on the combatants in the pit.

Only creatures posed to not be a danger to the participants along the upper rails were allowed to combat in the Pit-Fight - an owlbear would be acceptable, but a beholder would not. All fights were strictly voluntary (at least those besides the fights between beasts), and the participants were responsible for the healing of their own wounds (or resurrections, should it come to that).

The night's big fight was a trained war ape against any and all comers; 50 pieces of gold to anyone who could stay conscious in the pit with him for a full three minutes without being knocked out. (According to the rules, the ape’s handler would observe from the top of the pit and blow a special whistle to get the trained ape to stop attacking if the opponent was knocked out or signaled that he had had enough.) There was a fee of five gold pieces to enter the bout.

"Let's ask around, see if anybody's seen our missing sorcerer," said Feron upon entering the tavern.

"Hang on a minute," suggested Cal, reading over the posted rules for the war ape fight and reaching into his coin pouch to fish out five gold pieces. "I want to check this out."

"Fine, whatever," sighed Feron, rolling her eyes at Cal's obvious attraction to yet another feat of strength. Sometimes it seemed as if these Kord-followers thought with their biceps. She moved among the crowd, asking questions about the missing sorcerer. Telgrane followed suit, while Chalkan stuck around to see how Cal would fare.

Five minutes later, neither Feron nor Telgrane could get anyone interested in talking to them about missing sorcerers, as everyone had crowded around the top of the Pit. A rope ladder had been pitched down the side, and Cal, stripped down to his breeches and boots, was descending to the Pit's sandy bottom to the cheers and whistles of a crowd of adoring fans. Feron rolled her eyes again and went over to the bar, since she obviously wasn't going to be able to finish her investigation until this nonsense was over with. She ordered an elven wine from the bartender and got an incredulous look in return; the Pit-Fight served mostly ale and beer, none of the "pretentious stuff" that the average patron here would be unlikely to be able to afford in any case. She ordered an ale and sipped it slowly, with a look of mild distaste.

The cheering raised in volume as at the bottom of the Pit-Fight a door opened and a large, dark ape wandered out, walking on feet and knuckles. He gave a loud roar, exposing an impressive set of dental weaponry, then beat his chest in an aggressive display. Cal faced the beast, who stood a full head taller than him even while hunched forward, and beat his own chest to show the animal that he was not afraid. The crowd ate it up and yelled for more.

At the starting whistle from above, the war ape rushed Cal, arms open wide to grab him and crush him into submission. Cal ducked below the swinging arms, grabbed the creature by its thigh and chest and, with his legs in a shoulder-wide stance for stability, threw the ape over his head. The beast roared as it landed on its shoulder and whirled immediately around for vengeance; Cal had to back out of its way to catch his breath, as he had summoned up a Kord-granted increase of his strength to perform that throw, and he realized he wouldn't be able to duplicate it. Now if he could just stay out of its reach for the full three minutes....

No such luck. The war ape leaped in the air at him with arms open wide, and there was no dodging those simian arms this time. Cal was crushed into a ball, his arms pinned to his sides, as the massive beast squeezed the very wind out of him. He flexed his muscles as best he could in an attempt to wriggle free, but there were black spots appearing at the edge of his vision, and he could feel himself losing consciousness.

At the trainer's whistle from above, the ape dropped Cal's unmoving form onto the sand, then moved off to the side, chuffing and pounding the sand at his feet with a massive fist. The crowd moved over to collect their various winnings at the pay window, and the door opened up at the side of the Pit and the ape was returned to its pen while the trainer hawked above for more challengers. But the crowd was a bit disenfranchised with their chances, none of them thinking with any honesty that they could do what the mighty cleric of Kord could not. For now, at least; the trainer well knew that all he needed to do was wait until a few of them had consumed a bit more alcohol and they'd suddenly think they were invincible.

Several of the Pit-Fight staff slapped Cal awake and led him over to the ladder, where he groggily climbed up and over the edge of the railing. Chalkan was there to give him a hand, but Cal shook it off. "That was great!" he said with a genuine smile. "I'll get him next time for sure!"

Feron just shook her head, but she couldn't argue with the results. Despite his defeat, the crowd was appreciative of the fact that Cal had had the guts to even face the war ape in the Pit, and they pushed drinks his way and slapped him on the back and shoulders. Eager to assist their new local hero, they did what they could to help him find the missing sorcerer. After talking to the crowd, the group consensus was that that the guy they were looking for was named Delgrove; that he had a bandage on his hand a week ago and said he'd just gotten a tattoo; and that there was a big, greasy-looking guy named Maggert who ran a tattoo parlor on Bleaker Street in the Styes that had likely done the ink work. Unfortunately, nobody in the Pit-Fight knew where Delgrove lived, or was aware of either his current whereabouts or what he would want to talk to an Adventurers Guild representative about.

However, the group's interest in the matter came to the attention of Sk’kaar, a member of the Collectors, a kenku band brokering in information. He offered to get the information they were looking for for 100 gold pieces, half up front. It would likely take him a couple of hours to see what he could find out, then he'd meet them back here at the Pit-Fight, if they wanted to wait. The group agreed, money changed hands, and they had another couple of hours to kill. Cal wanted another shot at the war ape, but was talked out of it by Feron, who argued that Sk'kaar could return at any moment. Still, less than an hour later, a patron had consumed a sufficient quantity of ale that he was ready to give the war ape a go, and Cal cheered him on from above (to no avail, as it turned out - but Cal had foreseen the most likely outcome, and at least won enough on the bet to earn his entry fee back).

Eventually, Sk’kaar did return as promised with some information for them: a sorcerer meeting Delgrove’s description was last seen being escorted into an old, boarded-up house over on Paper Street in the Styes, being assisted by a nobleman of some type, as it appeared that Delgrove was either drunk or drugged. Sk’kaar offered to lead the group to the location of the boarded-up house at no extra charge, as he considered that to be part of the duties he had been paid for. Under no circumstances would he enter the building with them, however – he was a simple information broker, nothing more. He was paid the other half of his fee and the group departed the Pit-Fight, following their kenku hireling.

Sk'kaar led them to 26 Paper Street, an old, dilapidated, three-story building that looked ready to fall over at any minute. A crude sign reading “CONDEMNED: DO NOT ENTER” hung over the door. The windows were boarded up and deep weeds had long since overtaken the small garden out front. Having done his duty, the kenku pulled the hood over his head and drifted away into the shadows of the nearest alley.

"So what do you think?" asked Feron. "Do we just walk in?"

"Sure," replied Cal, walking up to the door and finding it locked. "Guess I'll have to break it in," he shrugged, secretly pleased at another opportunity to show off his strength.

"Hold off there," Feron replied, nudging him aside with her hand. "I've got a warp wood spell prepared - it'll be much quieter that way." She cast the spell and the door shifted and warped at her touch, swinging open easily. She missed Cal's look of disappointment as she walked inside. She also missed the alarm spell that had been cast upon the door, which silently notified the spellcaster dwelling within that there were intruders about.

Stepping inside, the group saw haphazard piles of books tottering throughout a damp and musty-smelling room, which was strewn with many heavily-annotated parchments and diagrams. A few ghostly candles flickered in the gloom. Telgrane immediately started examining the prevalent diagrams, noticing arcane annotations in the margins of many of them. "Weird," he commented. "A bunch of studies about giant tentacles."

A scurry of movement caught the corner of Feron's eye, and she turned, not overly surprised to see the shadowy figure of a rat approaching from a room around the corner. She stifled a squeak of terror at the sight of the creature's head, though - it was that of a middle-aged man, shrunken to scale and grafted seamlessly onto the rodent's body. It twitched its tail in consternation as it looked up at the group. "The Master's not going to be happy about this," he whined petulantly.

"M-Master?" squeaked Feron. "Who's your master?"

"A pompous wizard, named Percival Alabaster Strangeway," replied the rat-thing. "I was once his wizardly rival, but the miserable wretch attacked me and remade me in this form. Now the little bastard's got me serving as his familiar; he sent me to see who's snuck into his secret lair. Oh yes, he's linked to me all right, and is probably looking through my own eyes at you this very minute. Because he's a COWARD!" the rat-thing yelled into the air above him. "He's cowering away upstairs, no doubt with his homemade floozy, waiting to see how powerful you are and if he thinks he can defeat you himself, or if he should weaken you with some of his minions first, no doubt. I'm sorry, where are my manners? My name is Abercrombie. Do you have any cheese?"

The group was taken aback by the strange little monstrosity, who seemed eager to chat away about his hated master to potential enemies who had broken into his lair. "Uh, no, I'm afraid we don't have any cheese with us," Telgrane apologized. "So, uh, how powerful is Strangeway?"

"Magically? Eh, I could easily have taken him in a fair fight - not that he'd ever FACE AN ENEMY IN A FAIR FIGHT, THE WEASEL! But now? Now he's all augmented, with the power of the tentacle and all. Chaotic energy coursing through his blood, who knows what all else - the guy can take punishment like nobody's business. And I'd love to see you dish it out - say, did you say you had any cheese on you?"

"Sorry, all out of cheese," repeated Telgrane. "What's all this about a tentacle?"

"C'mere, I'll show you," offered Abercrombie, turning and scampering back the way he had come. The group followed, past a staircase leading up to the second floor, and into a large room. A horrific pillar of twisted flesh rose up from a jagged hole in the floorboards and extended upwards through a similar hole in the ceiling. The putrescent appendage had ripped through the walls of a smaller room centered in this larger area. To the right, on a large table, lay a partially-dissected ogre. The shelves lining the surrounding walls were cluttered with jars of pickled eyeballs, preserved animals, and strange bits of organic matter. Clearly, Strangeway was something of a vivisectionist. Another set of stairs against the far wall led up to the second floor.

"Ew," commented Feron, holding her nose.

"So, Abercrombie," remarked Telgrane, "You haven't seen a bearded sorcerer by the name of Delgrove around here anywhere, have you?"

"Hard to say," replied the rat-thing. "Strangeway's brought a bunch of people - and things that aren't people - in here in the past couple of weeks. If you're looking for this Delgrove, and Strangeway brought him here, I'm afraid he's probably dead by now. Say, did you happen to have any cheese on you by any chance?"

"No cheese," responded Telgrane. "So, if Delgrove were here, where do you think he'd likely be?"

"Probably in the basement," replied Abercrombie, visibly disappointed about the lack of cheese.

"I don't see any stairs going down," remarked Cal, looking all around the area. "Is there a cellar or something outside?"

"No, you've gotta go up to go down. Watch the tentacle, though, it's got tentacles." And with that, Abercrombie distanced himself from the young wizard, ambling up to Feron instead and attempting to rub up against her leg. "Excuse me, miss," he said eagerly. "Do you think you might have any cheese on you?"

"No cheese," mumbled Feron, stepping away from the creepy rat-monster and going over to stand by Cal. There was no way around it: that rat-thing was an abomination, a sin against nature, and she wanted nothing to do with it.

"Let's go," suggested Chalkan, mounting the stairs.

The upper level was similar to the lower level, with the massive tentacle having burst through the floor and up through the ceiling into the smaller third floor, which was almost completely demolished, leaving an opening twice as tall as the rest of the second level. The top of the abnormal appendage was lost in the shadows of the ceiling. There was a second room on this level; a door was visible just down the way. Chalkan led the way, the others not far behind.

Chalkan had almost made it to the door when the tentacle attacked. Long, slender tendrils uncurled from somewhere at the top of the appendage, dropping down and striking out to grasp the adventurers. Fortunately, Cal had taken Abercrombie's warnings seriously and had been prepared for such an eventuality, calling down a column of holy fire to burn the tentacle. The tendrils caught fire and burned up, and the group slid along the wall and over to the door, not wanting to turn their backs on the unearthly limb.

Rushing through the door, the group found themselves in an orderly bedroom, rectangular in shape but for one corner of the room, which looked to possibly hold a closet but had no visible door. Standing in front of this area was a distinctive figure, a young-looking female wearing a stylish red dress with a slit up the side that revealed a shapely thigh. She wore a white fur stole that hung off her shoulders, and high-heeled shoes that accentuated the shape of her calves. All in all, she would have been quite the beauty - if not for the fact that her thigh, calves, shoulders, and even different parts of her face had apparently come from half a dozen different women, all sewn together into a patchwork of flesh that was a mockery of feminine beauty. The golem scowled at the group with mismatched eyebrows and staggered to the attack.

"Ew!" Feron reiterated as the mockery took a swing at her. She quickly cast a produce flame spell and lobbed a ball of fire at the monstrosity, which didn't seem to faze it in the least but started her stylish stole smoldering. The creature's uneven lips opened wide, and a cloud of billowing gas expelled from her mouth, enveloping Cal and Chalkan. Cal shrugged off the effects without any problems, whereas only Chalkan's half-elf blood prevented him from succumbing to the numbing desire to close his eyes and fall asleep right there and then. Cal swung his mace at the female golem, each bruise caused by his blows doing nothing to make the patchwork body look any worse than it already did. Still, the thing slowed down as its stole blazed up around its shoulders, and it seemed to lack the simple intelligence needed to shrug the fur from its body. Feron lobbed additional balls of fire from her hand at the thing, and its attacks became more and more feeble, until finally its entire body was blazing under a curtain of flame. It collapsed to the floor, one of its red shoes slipping off a two-tone foot (with wide stitches showing where the two halves had been sewn together) and sliding across the room. Everyone gave the thing a wide berth as they headed over to the "closet" area, the only logical place a passageway to the basement could be hidden.

It didn't take Chalkan very long to find the stud that slid open the panel in the wall that led to a spiral staircase. Leaving the burning she-thing behind them, they entered the staircase and descended into darkness.

The basement level was flooded, and the far corner was half-obscured by the root of the alien tentacle, reaching up through the ceiling to the first floor above. Standing next to it was a closed chest, balancing precariously on a half-rotten stand. "Just how long is that thing?" asked Telgrane in wonder, looking up at the tentacle.

"I don't think we want to see whatever it's connected to," replied Cal, stepping into the brackish water, which proved to be only up to his waist.

"Dibs on the chest," called out Chalkan, wading his way over. Feron and Telgrane looked up at the tentacle, ensuring that it didn't have any tendrils that would uncoil and surprise them from above.

Fortunately, it didn't - this time the tendrils were below the water level, and in fact were attached to an aboleth that had been grafted in whole to the shaft of the massive alien tentacle. Several thin appendages whipped up from the water and started wrapping around Chalkan's arms; the young half-elf was not too proud to scream in terror at the sight of the glistening tendrils once he recognized them as belonging to an aboleth. He had no desire to fall sway to its disgusting flesh-warping that caused a victim to become its water-breathing slave!

As luck would have it, this aboleth didn't seem as tough - or fight as intelligently - as those the group had faced before; despite the advantage it had in being in its natural aquatic environment, it fell quickly to Chalkan's sword, Cal's mace, and Telgrane's magic missiles. Furthermore, upon its death a section of the wall vanished; the beast had apparently been projecting the illusion of a wall over a passageway into the next room, which rose up through a small stairway out of the murky water. The group collectively splashed their way up the stairs and into the final room of the house at 26 Paper Street.

It was in this room that they finally met up with Delgrove. He was lying on a table at the far end of the room, his robes cut away from his chest and his chest cut away to expose his still-beating heart. Standing over him was a young-looking man in the finest of noble fashions, the overall effect spoiled somewhat by the blood staining his hands up to his elbows and the spatters of blood staining his shirt and vest. At his side stood a hulking flesh golem, this one apparently made from the bodies of several strong men.

"Oh dear," complained the bloodstained wizard, "Visitors. And at a most inopportune time."

With a quick gesture from the young wizard, the flesh golem lurched forward to attack, With another gesture, three beating hearts that lay amongst a half a dozen others on a shelf behind him also animated and attacked. These organs each had long tendrils extending from them, and skittered along the floor like jittery spiders. Then Strangeway ignored the group and returned to the task at hand, namely, cutting Delgrove's heart out of his chest with a scalpel.

Cal took the brunt of the golem's attack, while Feron threw a ball of flame at the nearest of the skittering hearts. Telgrane blasted another one with a magic missile, then released Infernia from the tinder box at his side and allowed her to enter the melee. The third heart construct foolishly attacked the fire elemental, burning itself badly in the process.

Chalkan, meanwhile, stepped back and sheathed his longsword, pulling his bow from his back and notching an arrow. Then, taking careful aim at Strangeway as he bent over the sedated Delgrove, he let fly an arrow that hit the wizard just above his own heart. To Chalkan's surprise, Strangeway looked up, scowled in his direction, then casually plucked the arrow from his chest and tossed it to the floor at his side before returning his attention to the removal of Delgrove's heart. He plucked it from the bearded wizard's chest cavity and turned to place it almost lovingly on the shelf behind him. Delgrove gave an involuntary hiss of pain, and then, to Chalkan's horror, a new heart started growing in Delgrove's chest before his own eyes. Looking over at the wizard's hand, he saw a ring pulsing with red light, and surmised it must be keeping him alive and regenerating during this vivisection procedure.

Despite Chalkan's desire to concentrate on Strangeway, he was forced to turn his attention to Feron, who had been targeted by one of the heart constructs and was being strangled by its ever-tightening tendrils. She was gasping for breath and unable to concentrate on spellcasting, instead trying to slide her fingers under the bands of muscle that were squeezing the very breath from her throat. Chalkan grabbed the dagger from his belt and slid it into the beating heart, ripping through its pumping muscle and spilling thick, black blood down Feron's armor. The tendrils unwound and Feron pitched the now-lifeless heart construct across the room in a fit of revulsion.

Cal was holding his own against the flesh golem, trading blows and getting in the occasional spell, while Telgrane blasted it with spells of his own while remaining out of reach of its massive fists. Then a surprise gout of flame issued forth from the golem's mouth, catching Cal off guard and staggering him under its scorching heat. The brute hammered its fists down upon the beleaguered cleric of Kord, but Chalkan rushed in and came to his aid, brandishing his sword in hand. This gave Cal enough of a respite to heal himself of the wounds he had attained thus far, and, thus refreshed, he waded into battle with the golem once again. Together, the group managed to whittle down the golem's defenses until it lay unmoving and dismembered in a puddle of gore on the floor.

"Oh, am I up?" asked Strangeway, looking up from Delgrove's immobilized body, ready to cut out the new heart beating in the mangled wizard's chest. "Very well, if I must." He set the scalpel down on the table and started casting a spell. Before he had finished he had another arrow sprouting from his neck, but he ignored it and sent a lightning bolt crashing into his four adversaries. Only then did he bother to casually pluck the arrow from his neck and toss it aside.

"I'm not like any of the other wizards you've likely fought thus far," Strangeway commented as he attempted to dominate Chalkan with another spell - which, fortunately for the group, the half-elf was able to shrug off. "I've linked myself to a power beyond anything you've ever dreamed of! You've seen the tentacle in the rooms beyond -- just imagine the power of the beast to whom that tentacle belongs! A portion of that power is mine, making me stronger, tougher, than anyone you've ever faced before! And once we've brought that power to this world, we will rule this plane as its undisputed masters!" It was a pretty speech, and Strangeway sprouted two new arrows by the time it was done with, but he barely noticed.

"We're not going to take him out with weapons!" called out Telgrane. "Let's see how well he does against a full-scale magical barrage!" He threw a fireball at the far end of the room, catching Strangeway in its radius of effect while sparing the rest of the group. Feron, meanwhile called lightning down from the ceiling to strike the wizard, while Cal threw a sound burst his way. Chalkan even tossed a magic missile spell at the wizard, and while his arcane spellcasting was nowhere near being in Telgrane's league, every bit helped. Still, as much damage as they heaped onto Strangeway, he kept on fighting, seemingly only mildly inconvenienced by the magical barrage of energies.

Telgrane started conjuring up assistance from the outer planes. He sent a celestial black bear in to grapple the wizard and try to pin his arms to his side to prevent further spellcasting, but Strangeway cast a gaseous form on himself and floated to the other side of the room before remanifesting. Seeing that grappling might be the way to go, Cal cast enlarge person on himself and waded in to battle, now standing some 12 feet tall. As tough as Strangeway was with his life force enhanced by the tentacle from another world, he was not nimble enough to escape Cal's embrace, and the cleric caught him up in a bear hug from which he was powerless to escape. Then Cal called on his friends to target them both with their heaviest area-effect spells, claiming he was freshly healed and would be able to take it. Telgrane responded with his last fireball, catching both Strangeway and Cal in its full effect. Chalkan stuck with his magic missile spell, which at least could be targeted to only affect Strangeway, while Feron continued calling down lightning strikes onto Strangeway, even though doing so was hurting Cal as well. But the strategy worked; Strangeway, cursing at his inability to escape Cal's viselike grip, fell dead in the cleric's arms, and Cal dropped him and cast his most powerful healing spell upon himself, restoring the vigor he had rapidly lost underneath his friends' assault.

Feron ran to Delgrove's side. The skin and muscle of his opened chest had been nailed to the table; she rapidly pulled the nails free and closed his chest back up, while the ring he wore on his right hand glowed red and worked overtime to heal him up. Within minutes, his chest had healed back up to the point where there was no visible proof that he had ever been cut open. It took longer to rise him out of his drug-induced stupor, but eventually he was awake enough to stagger to an upright position and explain what had happened.

Delgrove had recently joined a group of spellcasters interested in increasing their own personal power at any cost. Strangeway was a member of this cabal, who called themselves the Cult of the Far Realm. Delgrove was all for increasing his own personal power, but balked at the cult's ultimate plan: through the placement of a group of cyst stones taken from the Far Realm, a place of unending chaos, they hoped to open a rift to that lawless plane and allow it to seep into the material plane, absorbing it into itself. A shortcut to power was just fine with Delgrove, but opening his world to the horrors of the Far Realm was too great a price to pay. Unfortunately, Strangeway had sensed Delgrove's hesitation and desire to warn others about this threat to the world, and thus was overtaken by the more powerful wizard, who had already found a way to link himself to one of the Far Realms' more powerful denizens. And that was that; Delgrove wanted nothing further to do with the group. He thanked the adventurers for his rescue, drew them up a map to the cult's secret headquarters in the Styes, and gave them a detailed description of the Cult members, but was not willing to confront his former cultists and in fact planned on hightailing it far, far away where they'd never find him.

Climbing up the stairs to the main level, the whole house began to shake as the tentacle thrashed about. Exiting the hidden room in Strangeway's bedroom, the group rushed into the main room of the second floor to see the whole alien appendage starting to blacken and melt, whole clumps of it falling off into a pool of goo and merging together into a liquid form, which seeped through the hole in the floor and reformed into a massive, ebon blob. Apparently the portion of the great beast's tentacle that had been imprisoned in the material world had been tied in to Strangeway's life force, and it had not only greatly increased his constitution but was also transformed upon his death. The group raced down the stairs to the main floor just as a massive black pudding oozed up out of the hole in the main level. This was a black pudding like none other, its outer surface glistening in a miasma of colors, some never seen before on this plane. Fortunately, it was weaker here than it would have been on its home plane, and despite its formidable size and appearance the group was able to destroy it with the last of their ranged spells, for nobody wanted to venture too close to the thing. As it died, it released a foul vapor that drove the group outside into the relatively fresh air of Paper Street.

The five spellcasters all stopped to catch their collective breaths, jumping as the house at 26 Paper Street literally collapsed under the structural damage it had taken. Then Delgrove said his goodbye to the group, wished them well, and was off like a shot, racing off into an alleyway and soon swallowed up by shadows. He was never seen again; presumably he made his escape to a city far away from the Cult of the Far Realm and lived his days out in a quiet fashion as he had intended.

"So now I guess we'd better go hunt down this Cult of the Far Realm," said Cal, still winded from his exertions.

"I hope it can wait until morning," remarked Telgrane, popping open his tinder box and allowing Infernia to jump inside. "I'm going to need to rest up and get my spells prepared."

"That sounds like the best idea," replied Feron. "If we're going to take on a whole cult of these wizards, we're going to need to be at full strength. Let's go home, brief the others, get some sleep, and then make our plans on how to best take these guys down."

"I say," said a voice at Feron's feet. "Do any of you have any cheese?" Feron shrieked and ran to the other side of Cal, while Telgrane bent down and lifted Abercrombie by the scruff of his neck.

"C'mon, you," said the tired wizard to the twisted rat-thing. "Maybe the Guild wizards will have a way to return you to your normal form."

"Do you think they might have any cheese?"

"They might," admitted Telgrane. "Let's go find out."

- - -

I knew I wanted Strangeway to be able to hold his own against the PCs for this fight, so I came up with the "life-force-tied-in-to-the-Far-Realm-tentacle" ploy; I think in game terms this resulted in something rather ridiculous like a 30 Constitution, which boosted his hit point total far beyond what you'd expect from a 10th-level transmuter. Once I factored in the bear's endurance and false life spells he had prepped himself with, he was wading into battle with 116 points, far more than any other spellcaster the group had fought to date. (And the stoneskin didn't hurt him any, either.)

The heart constructs were something I made up for this adventure, and I even managed to find a fairly accurate picture on-line of what I had in mind, so the initiative card was fairly easy to make for them. I was able to make a flesh golem card easily enough, but I wanted a female flesh golem for Evelyn, the patchwork girl Strangeway had waiting up in his bedroom (I envisioned her as being made out of parts of every girl who had ever dumped Strangeway; he seemed the type for such a petty revenge), and when I couldn't find anything appropriate I just grabbed photos of good-looking models from the internet, threw them into my Paint program, and had a grand time chopping off various parts and slapping them together until I had the look I was trying to achieve. (I even used the drawing tool to add stitches where appropriate.)

We haven't heard anything about Abercrombie since this adventure; presumably the Guild wizards were able to restore him. If not, I'm sure he's become good friends with Quiffington the duckbunny, whose improbable body holds pieces of no less than four different wild mages.

ADVENTURE 34 - CULT OF THE FAR REALM

PC Roster:
It was the early hours of the next morning that all eight members of Wing Three gathered around to discuss the Cult of the Far Realm and their plans for incorporating the material plane into the eternal plane of chaos. Telgrane relayed Delgrove's information to those members who had not been involved with their excursion to 26 Paper Street the night before.

"Delgrove said there were six main leaders of the Cult of the Far Realm. We've already taken care of Strangeway, so that just leaves five.

"First up is an elf named Bollivond. He’s a fairly powerful wizard, and pretty much the main guy who decided that the world could become part of the Far Realm, and in doing so, those who instigated the transformation could become 'super powerful, like the gods or demigods that dwell in that plane.' It’s his run-down place in the Styes that’s been made the cult’s headquarters.

"Next up is Quillianna; she’s a tiefling from one of the Outer Planes somewhere. Bollivand apparently picked her up on one of his extraplanar excursions. She’s got some kinda demon blood in her or something, and she just likes the idea of spreading as much chaos into the world as possible.

"For muscle, they’ve got Chondak and Kelvic. Chondak Bloodfist is a bald half-orc with a large sword who is also some sort of spellcaster. Kelvic Stonehammer is a dwarf in charge of rounding up the sacrifices. Apparently he has no spellcasting ability."

"Wait, sacrifices?" asked Rale. "What are the sacrifices for?"

"Delgrove claimed he didn't know; he didn’t get too deep into the cult before deciding he was into something he didn’t really want to be a part of. But he said Kelvic's been grabbing people off the streets and holing them up somewhere, and, this being the Styes we're talking about, nobody paid a whole lot of attention to the disappearances.

"Finally, there’s Stisska, some sort of naga. And that’s it, at least as far as the leadership goes. Delgrove said there’s at least half a dozen just regular old cult members, too, like he was, most of them just folks off the street, although a couple are low-level sorcerers.”

"So you know where their headquarters is?" asked Slayer. "Let's go get 'em!"

"We do," replied Telgrane. "It's a dilapidated manor built into the side of a cliff at the north end of the Styes. Delgrove also warned that they have some kind of weird guardian, something he’s never gotten a good look at even when he was looking right at it."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Slayer asked.

"I'm not sure," Telgrane replied. "Delgrove wasn't quite able to explain very well what he meant about that. He's also never been inside the manor, so we don't know what the interior is like, but he knows (having heard it from one of the other low-ranking cult members) that there’s a secret level underneath the structure, where the cult has a gate to the Far Realm, and where they harvest the cyst-stones that, once positioned in strategic places around the Styes, will open a permanent leak from the Far Realm into this world, giving it the start it needs to eventually overcome all of this reality."

"So let's go!" said Slayer, grabbing up his greatsword.

"Not so fast," replied Telgrane, putting a hand on the half-orc's shoulder. "We need to decide who will storm the place, and who will remain behind as a backup force."

"Dibs!" cried out Slayer and Chalkan simultaneously, then scowled at each other.

Cal put a hand on Slayer's shoulder. "I think we'll want you to lead our reserve force," he said diplomatically. "If we run into trouble, we'll need your muscle to come in and rescue us." He didn't voice his concern that, knowing they'd be facing a group of spellcasters, the odds would be that one or more of them would attempt to dominate Slayer and use him against the rest of the group. The half-orc had demonstrated once too often in the past his inability to shrug off the mental commands of a strong-willed spellcaster.

"Fine," grumbled Slayer, who plopped down on the sofa and started polishing his weapons.

"Feron and I will accompany Chalkan, since we've dealt with the Cult before," Cal continued. Telgrane didn't fail to notice his name having been dropped from the list. "Hey, what about me?" he asked.

"I think it best if Akari accompanies us," Cal reasoned. "We've got Slayer as backup muscle, and I think if we had both you and Delphyne as backup spellcasters we'd be best off. You know how battles with wizards go: it's fire off the big spells up front and then you're left with just the little stuff later on. I'd like to have two fresh spellcasters coming in later to the fight, full of high-level spells when the enemy wizards are low on the good stuff."

"Fine," grumbled Telgrane, plopping down on the sofa next to Slayer, his scowl nearly identical to that of the half-orc. Then he brightened up. "Hey, this will give me a chance to cast that permanency spell I've been wanting to try!" he enthused.

The others geared up and headed out to the Styes.

- - -

"That should be it, ahead," whispered Chalkan. The ramshackle front of an aging manor projected directly out of the face of the narrow cliff towering above it, leaving the whole edifice in cloaking shadows. There looked to be at least two levels to the manor, the upper level nearly twice as wide as the lower, but supported by a shelf of solid rock to the structure's side. The entire building projected some 10 feet or so from the cliff rock, with no way of telling how deep into the cliff side the building might reach. There were two main entrances visible: a front door to the right and a set of large double doors, almost like those on a barn, to the left. "Which way do we enter?" asked the half-elf.

"That's obviously the front door to the place," remarked Cal. "Let's try the barn doors; maybe there's a lesser-used entry from there."

The group pried open the creaky doors on the left and entered what had apparently, in better days, been a stables: the room held a set of horse stalls (currently empty) and an old wooden wagon. Hanging on the walls were various accouterments used in horse grooming. The numerous cobwebs among the equipment and the wagon indicated they hadn’t seen much in the way of use recently. However, the stench of raw meat and the lingering odor of a large animal indicated that something had been making this its lair of late.

They didn't have long to wait to find out just what had been lairing there, and at the same time they never did really find out. A low growl was the first indication of a presence with them in the room; the growl was followed by the appearance of some sort of creature as it manifested from within one of the unused horse stalls. The creature stalked silently on padded feet, but it was impossible to say how many feet it had; sometimes there seemed to be four, at others, six or seven. The creature was - usually - the size of a large dog or small pony, although sometimes it would shift in just the right way to tower above the group. About all that the group could tell about the beast was that it was furred and somehow lupine, although its body seemed to be in a constant state of flux; it was almost as if they were seeing it through a swarm of mirror shards that floated at varying angles and reflected only distorted visions of the beast that confronted them.

A gout of flame burst from the creature's throat, or perhaps a section of space up to a foot from the general area of the creature's muzzle - it was hard to tell. It enveloped Akari, who had leapt to the front of the group's formation at the sight of the strange beast. "It's evil!" he cried out as he swung Hoardmaster into the creature's side. The elf was pleased to see that whatever strange geometries the creature's body followed, it was as vulnerable to sharpened steel as any other creature he'd fought thus far. The creature let out a roar of pain, its two eyes - no, three - no, wait, four - no, there were definitely only two eyes - glowing with an evil reddish light. It clamped its jaws onto Akari's arm and tried dragging him to the ground, but Cal's mace swung down into the side of its impossible head and crushed its skull. The creature collapsed, folding in on itself, and disappeared in a flash of alien light as the group's minds all ached at trying to make sense of what they had just seen.

"No wonder Delgrove couldn't describe it any better than he did," commented Akari. "That hurt my head just looking at it."

"So, front door then?" asked Feron.

The front door was locked, but considering the noise they had made in the stables fighting the impossible guard-beast the group considered it was likely the Cult had already realized there were intruders about, so rather than wasting time trying to remain stealthy Cal just kicked his way through the door. There was a short flight of stairs leading up to the main floor and opening into a large foyer, the floor containing a large painting of the six-tentacles-and-eye symbol denoting the Far Realm – the very same emblem tattooed on the right palms of both Delgrove and Strangeway. There were several closed wooden doors and open doorways leading to other rooms in the manor.

Stepping into the foyer, Chalkan and Akari were taken by surprise when the tentacles painted on the floor came to sudden life. Each was wrapped up in a tight embrace, and while Akari's tentacle sent a burst of electricity coursing through his body, Chalkan found his skin burning at the acidic touch of the appendage encompassing him. Cal and Feron dashed to either side of the wall and dodged the writhing tentacles that had thus far not found a victim to embrace; neither noticed the nearly invisible chameleon perched on the ceiling farther down the hall. This was Bollivond’s lizard familiar, Aerivole, whose mental link with his master alerted the elven wizard to the intrusion of the adventuring group. He gathered up Chondak and Kelric, then used dimension door to transport the three of them to the hallway.

By this time, Akari had freed himself from his tentacle's grip, slicing it with Hoardmaster while it alternately blasted him with sonics and drained the heat from his body. Ducking another probing tentacle, he attacked the appendage gripping Chalkan at its base while Cal and Feron skirted the foyer and faced the new threats approaching from the hallway. Kelric Stonehammer seemed like a typical dwarven fighter, but closer examination revealed the writhing tendrils in among the hairs of his beard. He wielded a warhammer, wore half-plate armor, and carried a light steel shield. Chondak Bloodfist was an odd-looking half-orc, for while he wielded a greatsword he seemed to eschew armor, relying instead upon the thickness of his pebbly skin, which seemed almost as tough and durable as that of a rhino. Both closed with looks of glee upon their faces, while Bollivand whistled and caught his lizard familiar as he dropped from the ceiling, scampered up his master's arm, and took his place on his shoulder. There were small tentacles growing from the elven wizard's right arm. He wheeled and walked down the hallway, calling for the others to rejoin them downstairs when they were finished.

"Pretty sure of himself," snarled Cal, calling forth a divine power spell to further enhance his physical attributes as he waded into battle with the dwarf.

"Must know something you don't," grunted Kelric, swinging his warhammer into Cal's shield.

Chondak, meanwhile, made a beeline for Feron, a snarl on his face as he faced a foe he deemed doubly unworthy: an elf-blood, and a female one at that. Feron quickly disavowed him of that notion, calling down a lightning strike from the ceiling that lit the half-orc up and sent tendrils of smoke wisping away from his armored skin.

The two one-on-one skirmishes were fairly equal in power until Akari successfully freed Chalkan from the tentacle trap; at that point the cultists were outnumbered two-to-one, and the eventual outcome was in little doubt. After slaying the two cultists, they grabbed up their weapons and armor, tossing them into Feron's magical haversack in what had become a well-practiced maneuver. "Downstairs, the elf said?" asked Cal.

They popped into a few rooms along the way as they looked for a stairwell leading downstairs. In the kitchen, a collection of pots, pans, knives, and eating utensils configured themselves into a cutlery golem and attacked, but the biggest outcome of that fight was the horrific noise it made; if the rest of the Cultists weren't already aware of their intrusion, they likely were by the time the golem collapsed into a clanging pile on the kitchen floor. But eventually the group found a hidden passage along a back hallway, with a spiral staircase leading down into darkness. The group healed up, then followed the stairway down to the lower level.

The group spread out at the bottom of the stairs, wary of an attack. They were in a large room, some 25 feet wide and nearly twice that long, with a row of four statues on either side. Directly across from them was an open doorway leading into an even larger room beyond. In that larger room, at the farthest end, stood an archway bracketing a sheet of solid blackness along the wall. An unconscious man in peasant garb hung spread-eagled by four chains binding him to the marble arch. A robed elf stood at his side, wielding what looked to be a sacrificial dagger. Next to him stood a tiefling woman, while a half-dozen or so hooded followers gathered around them. Whatever they were up to, it didn't look good for the chained peasant.

Akari raced into the room of statues, with the others close at his heels. As she ran, Feron cast a quick detect magic on the statues, and three of them registered a magical nature. She started to call out a warning to the others, but then a fireball streaked at the group from somewhere behind them and encompassed them all in flames. The other three whirled around to face this unseen attacker, but Akari pressed on, running through the doorway and into the larger room.

Bollivond took the opportunity to cast a quick wall of ice across the doorway, effectively sealing the impulsive elf into the larger, octagonal room with the cultists - and more importantly, sealing the other three adventurers out. Akari noticed that seven walls of the octagon contained an archway like the one that had an unconscious peasant bound to it; each archway had a gemstone at its peak, and each was a different color. The one above the bound peasant was an unearthly stone with a myriad of swirling colors bound into it. The cultists grabbed up daggers from their belts and moved to try to engage the elven paladin, but Quillianna held them off and raised a wall of fire in the center of the room, imprisoning Akari within. She followed that up by summoning a fiendish giant praying mantis into the circle of fire, with orders to slay the elf.

In the meantime, the statues radiating magic didn't seem to be causing any problems; rather, it was a nonmagical statue of a helmeted warrior from which the fireball had apparently come; this was made clear when another one came racing across the room from between the slits in the helmet's visor. Then, her hiding place no longer a surprise, Stisska the spirit naga lifted the helmet's visor and came slithering out of the hollow statue. She was followed by her familiar, a twin-headed viper called a bancali. Feron and the naga traded spell-blasts, while Chalkan, recognizing that his greatest damage potential lay in his bow, not his spells, peppered the naga with arrows. Cal, in the meantime, attacked the wall of ice with his mace and every bit of strength he could muster, determined to carve a way into the octagonal room to save Akari before the foolish elf was slain yet again.

As for Akari, he had managed to slay the hellish mantis and watch as it discorporated to reform in whatever fiendish plane had spawned it, and was running through the wall of fire when he was struck by a hold person spell. The spell caught him off guard, and he stopped his movement while standing right in the middle of a sheet of flame, but his elvish heritage (new as it was) gave him the mental strength needed to fend off the spell. He stood there, engulfed in flames, realizing he could survive the heat for a short while - and that it would look incredibly intimidating to his foes to see him standing there, apparently unfazed by the fire blazing all around him, calmly gripping his sword as if to say, "What else you got?"

“You are too late to stop us!” bellowed Bollivond. “The Far Realm calls to us, and you cannot prevent us from basking in its unearthly radiance!” With that, he plunged his dagger into the peasant’s heart, killing him instantly. Immediately, a swirling commenced in the middle of the black plane, cascading in erratic waves. They encompassed the peasant’s body, and in an instant, not only were all traces of the slain peasant gone, but the gateway now lay open to another world. "The Blood Gate has been opened!" bellowed Bollivond. "Into the beckoning chaos of the Far Realm!"

Bollivond, Quillianna, and the cultists raced through the now-open gate, into a blinding radiance that made Akari shield his eyes. A crashing noise behind him told him that Cal had broken through the wall of ice, and he waited for once for the rest of his group before plunging ahead into unknown danger. Feron and Chalkan joined Cal through the shattered wall of ice, around the wall of fire, and met up with Akari. The elf filled them in on what had happened, and they realized that they'd have to follow through the Blood Gate and into the Far Realm if they were going to put a stop to the cultists. With a quick prayer to their various gods on their lips, the four stepped into a world of unimaginable chaos.

The scene before them as they passed through the Blood Gate was difficult for their minds to process. They saw not one view, but several, overlapping and bleeding through each other. Glistening, tentacled slugs seemed to ooze and glide slowly through the air, while in the distance they could see what might be mountains or perhaps the shells of mollusks too big to even contemplate. Elsewhere, patches of flame arose out of nowhere, burning a bright purple before vanishing as quickly as they appeared. Patches of what could either be oddly-shaped grasses or upright tongues swayed in a nonexistent breeze, while scuttling near Feron's leg was a goblin-faced creature whose body was made up of two joined hands. Spread out among this patchwork reality were the transformed enemies they had come here to stop.

The otherworldly energies of the Far Realm had not been kind to the cultists, who had basked in such energies before and had already suffered some transmutational effects as a result. Bollivond, whose right arm had already sprouted tentacles, felt an unimaginable pressure in his head as his brain expanded, shattering his skull as his body levitated out of both the robe he wore and the armor he wore underneath. As his body shifted and changed, it flowed out of the neck of his armor, which crashed to the ground beneath him and he floated in the unnatural breezes of the Far Realm, fully transformed into a levitating grell, tentacles twitching beneath his massive brainlike body.

Quillianna screamed as blood poured from her every orifice, hardening into a thick, chitinous substance that covered her body like petrified black candle wax. It didn't seem to affect her ability to move, though, and the chaos-worshiping tiefling smirked in delight at her new form.

The run-of-the-mill cultists fared much worse. One started screaming as violent changes erupted throughout his body, spurting out claws, tentacles, gnarled wings, teeth, and a host of limbs hitherto before unseen. He collapsed into the form of a chaos beast and started attacking those within range. Two more cultists started spasming violently, and hugged each other in fear. Their forms merged together, and oversized, inhuman eyes sprouted from their mouths. The two emerged as a single entity, a man-crab that scuttled erratically towards the group in an attempt to take their new-found misery out on them. The rest of the cultists’ bodies seemed to melt and flow like liquid, finally merging into a gibbering mouther.

The group watched these transformations with a mixture of astonishment, fear, and panic, each examining their own bodies to ensure that the Far Realm wouldn't be transforming them into something unspeakable. But fortunately, the effects seemed to only occur after long exposure to the chaotic world, for they looked and felt no different.

The time for such introspection was shortened by Bollivond's sudden attack. Despite his new form, he still had his full spellcasting ability, and he tried petrifying Feron with a flesh to stone spell that fortunately had no effect. The group rushed into battle, but even that was problematic, for spacial orientation didn't seem to work correctly on this weird plane, or even the same way twice. Feron called down a bolt of lightning from the sky, and instead of just striking Bollivond its spell effect widened into a ragged line, catching the goblin-faced hand-monster some ten feet away as well. It exploded in a mass of black goo, which bubbled on the ground for a short time and then evaporated. Cal tried racing forward to slam his mace into the side of the man-crab, but found himself 20 feet beyond his mark, uncertain if he had moved at super-speed or teleported the short distance away. Chalkan shot an arrow at the chaos beast, only to have it spontaneously transform into a hornet and buzz away into the distance. Akari thrust Hoardmaster at one of Bollivond's tentacles and severed it, only for it to burst into purple flames when it hit the ground.

The cultist-beasts were definitely at a home advantage here in the Far Realm, for the oddities of the plane seemed normal to them, their bodies having fully adapted to the swirling chaos of the land. Not so the Wing Three adventurers, who were learning by trial and error a new set of rules every few seconds, and fighting on an ever-shifting terrain. One moment the ground was normal; the next, blue monoliths were sprouting from the ground, forming a maze of obstacles. The group found itself fighting in a field of black snowflakes, which had no real effect other than to further disorient the adventurers; they had no idea which effects were harmless and which could potentially kill them. Fortunately, the man-crab and the chaos beast had become virtually mindless; the group left them to their own devices and they ended up battling each other. Likewise with the gibbering mouther, which wandered off into the endless plane of chaos and was last seen squirting into the sky in a zone of weightlessness. That really only left Bollivond and Quillianna for the group to fight, and despite their advantages in understanding this strange world, they were slowly being cut to pieces. A bolt of electricity from Feron's call lightning spell did in Quillianna, whereas Bollivond's exposed brain was cracked open by a blow from Cal's mace, spreading gore in all directions. Once the two of them were slain, Cal called for a retreat back to the Blood Gate, for they had no idea how long the extraplanar passageway would remain open, and nobody wanted to risk being trapped in the Far Realm forever. Akari took the time to grab up Bollivond's discarded armor, for it seemed to be of good quality and Feron thought it might be magical; into the Heward's handy haversack it went for further examination later.

Returning through the Blood Gate, the group saw that both of the magical walls - fire and ice - had disappeared during their absence. Concerned that they were unsure about what the magical statues in the other room were all about, they had Feron examine them more closely with a detect magic spell, and they radiated a form of teleportation magic. Extensive experimentation finally showed that if they were touched by a tattoo of an eye surrounded by tentacles (the tattoo that each of the cultists had on their right palms; fortunately, Kelric's and Chondak's were available once the group dragged their bodies downstairs), they each led to a different place. One was an extensive library, no doubt worth quite a bit to the Adventurers Guild wizards and sages (and if not, Altamaic of the Temple of Boccob would probably pay handsomely for the set). Another led to a workshop of sorts, where a magma beast crafted cyst stones from gems taken from the Far Realm; these would have been placed in a magical pattern around the Styes (according to some papers the group found in the library) to allow the Far Realm to spill into Oerth. The adventurers killed the magma beast and destroyed the existing cyst stones so they couldn't be used. The last statue led to a prison, where the group rescued six other peasants, each having been taken from the Styes and kept here as future "Blood Gate keys." They were grateful for their rescue, and returned home when the group left Bollivond's manor to go report back to the Adventurers Guild. The Guild leaders would decide what to do about the Blood Gates, whether they should be destroyed or studied; despite their observed use, it might be possible that they could be activated without the sacrifice of a living victim.

But all of that was out of the group's hands for now. They were just glad to be back on their own world, in a place where normal geometries stayed the same and the laws of physics weren't constantly in flux. And, as Cal pointed out, it was quite possible that the group of four adventurers had just saved the world - for if the Cult of the Far Realm had succeeded in opening the way for the plane of chaos to leak into the material plane, there was no telling that there would have been any way to undo that.

What the heck - they were counting it as saving the world.

- - -

I had a great time having the PCs fight in the Far Realm. I normally make up geomorphs or entire maps of the areas that the group is in; for the Far Realm, I used a full-sized sheet of 22" by 28" paper (the back of a sheet from a desk calendar from work), but instead of drawing the 1" grid using a yardstick, I hand drew the spaces, and had them vary greatly in size and shape. Most were four-sided polygons, but occasionally they would bunch up into a triangle or expand into a pentagon. I also did up rules ahead of time for what chaotic effects would occur each round while they were on the Far Realm. I had spontaneous bursts of purple flames (that expanded, contracted, and moved each round until they vanished as sudden as they had appeared), I had rules for when monoliths would rise up from the ground, I had teleport zones (for this round, if you step on a triangle space you teleport to the nearest triangle space in the direction you were traveling), and so forth.

Bollivond's armor was eventually given to Telgrane, who wears it to this day. It's ethereal armor, and once it's donned correctly and activated, all but a small patch of it shunts to the Ethereal Plane, so the wearer hardly even feels its presence. (As a result, no chance of arcane spell failure.) The "zone" that's present moves around of its own accord, jumping into the way of oncoming attacks. As a result, the wearer gets the effect of wearing the armor, but only for the first hit each round; the second (and further) hit each round affects the wearer as if he wasn't wearing any armor at all.

ADVENTURE 35 - THE NEGABOMB

PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
I had come up with the concept of "The Negabomb" and was unsure of where I wanted to have it begin, since wherever the negabomb went off would cause that particular piece of real estate to be shunted off to another plane. I was originally thinking of centering it around Dundernoggin's Magic Shoppe, since the lich behind it was specifically looting magic items, but I didn't really want to destroy that building since I was planning on using it throughout the rest of the campaign. Then I recalled "The Menagerie," and the "Gwen's Relics" shop that the PCs had already visited - and which, of course, I had already done up a full-fledged map for when they went through that adventure. Having it start off there cut my preparation time significantly, and had the added benefit of adding a bit of verisimilitude to my campaign.

- - -

"If Dundernoggin ever finds out about this, we'll never hear the end of it," commented Feron.

"Well, if he doesn't want us visiting the competition," remarked Cal, "then he should make sure his prices are lower than theirs. Hey, did you hear about the bulk savings on healing potions they have here?"

"Do you think we should pick some up for Rale?" asked Feron.

"Nah - he's a big boy; if he wanted some he should have come with us," replied Cal. "I think he's still miffed that Gwendolyn wouldn't just give him that iron flask after he helped save her store from that snake-thingie."

"Ooh, look!" exclaimed Feron, her eye catching another sale item. "A wand bracer! That'd come in handy!"

The group slowly split up, each wandering off to investigate whatever trinkets caught their eye. Chalkan was examining a list of divine spell scrolls that were available, mentally deciding which ones he'd have the best chances of using with what little training he'd had as a cleric. Feron was trying on the wand bracer, seeing how it attached to her forearm and how easy it would be to grab up a given wand. Akari was examining a nonmagical tome describing the basic tenets of the major religions of the area. Cal was purchasing potions from one of the salesgirls, and taking the opportunity to try to hit on her in the process. Gwendolyn Fine, the shop's proprietor, was explaining the pros and cons of healing via wands versus potions to one of another half-dozen customers in the shop, when her attention was drawn the the ceiling. "What the Hells--?" she sputtered.

A purple, glowing hole had opened up in the ceiling and from it dropped a small black sphere. The sphere bounced a few times on the floor of the shop, came to a rest against a display rack of various material spell components, and then exploded in a wave of energy. The blast knocked those in its immediate vicinity off their feet, and the energy wave expanded out in all directions, passing through solid objects as if they weren't there. In an instant, the ambient sunlight filtering in from the doors and windows of the shop was extinguished and an eerie wailing was heard from the vicinity of the front door – it took a moment to register, but this was the sound of the air in the shop rushing outside. At the same time, everyone in the shop felt a sapping of energy throughout their bodies, as if something were siphoning off their very life energy.

Several of the shop's visitors succumbed at once, their bodies crumbling to dust and being replaced with eerie, ghostlike forms that looked around them with hate-filled eyes.

“Crap!” yelled Gwen amidst the chaos of the shop’s environs. “We’ve gotta go extradimensional – now!” She rushed behind the counter and opened a drawer, pulling out a small model of a house and placing it on the countertop. “In here, quick!” she called, activating a command word while touching the tiny house’s rooftop. “Hurry!” And with that she was gone.

Akari was the closest to the small house model, but he took a deep breath and helped those nearby get to safety. Feron touched the house and disappeared, followed by Chalkan. Cal was supporting the salesclerk he had been hitting on, trying to drag her unconscious form with him over to the counter, but she died and converted to wraith form in his arms. He stepped back and blasted her with a blast of positive energy from his holy symbol of Kord, and she died for a second time in just over twice as many seconds.

"It looks like we're it!" called Akari, looking around and seeing the rest of the customers assuming wraith form. He and Cal reached for the house model nearly simultaneously, and both disappeared from the shop as well.

They found themselves in a sumptuous dwelling, with thick carpeting beneath their feet and magical golden lighting in sconces along the walls. Gwendolyn stood there in the entry hall, Chalkan and Feron behind her. "Are you it?" she asked. "Anybody else still alive out there?"

"We're it," Cal confirmed, and Gwendolyn said another word, apparently deactivating the model house to prevent any of the wraiths from entering behind them.

"What's going on? Where are we?" Feron wanted to know.

"We're in a Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion," replied Gwendolyn. "The little house model is a permanent spell effect - activate the command word and anyone touching it comes in here. This is an extradimensional space, so we've got plenty of air and food for the next 24 hours. After that, we’re in trouble, because the effect wears off, and we get booted back outside, where we all start getting drained again. We'll have to have a plan by then as to what we're going to do. Any of you ever go planehopping? I'm pretty sure my whole shop just got shunted over to the Negative Energy Plane. I could tell by the life-sapping I felt, and the fact that the air was escaping the building. There's no air on the Negative Energy Plane."

"How did this happen?" Cal asked.

"There was a black ball thrown through a hole in the ceiling right before we got shunted. Somebody caused this to happen, although why they'd want my shop floating around in the Negative Energy Plane is anybody's guess. You don't think this is the work of one of my competitors?" she asked, thinking aloud.

"It's kind of a drastic measure to take," observed Akari. "So what's our plan?"

"Let me think," said Gwendolyn, mentally cataloguing the magic items she had in the shop and which ones could be of help. "Okay, we've got several possibilities. Long-term, I have an arcane scroll of attune form that can attune our bodies to the Negative Energy Plane, so we can walk around without suffocating or getting life-sucked into a wraith. Problem is, the scrolls are in the back room; I doubt we could make it back there on our own in time. Closer at hand, I've got an ioun stone that allows its wielder to exist without air, a necklace of adaptation that does the same, and a bottle of air that can be passed back and forth between the others. Each is in various locked drawers behind the counter; I've got the keys right here," she said, displaying a set of keys on a chain around her neck. "Oh, hey, I've got a scarab of protection in another drawer back there; that'll protect the wearer from the energy draining effect of the plane for a little while at least before crumbling into dust. And I've got some healing potions of various potencies; we should probably grab those up while we can. You never know when those will come in handy. Let's see, as far as getting back home, I have an obsidian steed, but it's temperamental and only supports one rider at a time. Still, I suppose the rest of us can stay in the mansion while the rider gets us back home."

"So some of us pop back out, grab a means of surviving long enough to go get the scroll from your back room, meet up back here, and then you can cast the spell on all of us," Cal said. After some discussion, it was decided that the scouting party would consist of Cal for his undead turning ability, Akari for the same reason but also because he'd recently upgraded Hoardmaster to be an undead bane sword, and Gwendolyn, because she knew the exact location of the scrolls in her back storage room. Unfortunately, all of the scrolls were stored in scroll cases and kept lumped together in a crate; it would be easiest to fetch the whole crate and sort them out back in the safety of the Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion. Feron and Chalkan wished the others luck, each secretly just a little bit pleased that they didn't have to go out into that environment.

Before they left, Cal healed himself, Akari, and Gwendolyn, restoring all of the life energy that had been drained from them. He also applied some buffing spells that he thought might be useful, like a stoneskin upon himself. Then Gwendolyn said the command word that allowed them to exit the mansion, they each took a deep breath, and they found themselves back out in her magic shop.

The place had changed in her absence, and not for the better. Several wraiths noticed the three almost immediately, and while Cal focused his attention (and the positive energy from his holy symbol) on them, Akari and Gwen noticed that the shop was being ransacked by humanoid skeletons. Each held a large sack in its bony digits and was stuffing as many magic items as it could into the sack. Gwendolyn quietly led Akari to the locked drawers, opened them up, and tossed an ioun stone at Akari's head, where it orbited silently. She snatched up the bottle of air for herself and gave Cal the necklace of adaptation, figuring she'd give the items that didn't involve active holding to the two that would most likely be doing any melee fighting. While she was at it, she grabbed the house model and stuffed it on a lower shelf behind the counter, where it would likely be unnoticed by the looting skeletons. Then she tried leading Akari into the back room, but they were noticed and attacked by a skeleton. Akari fended it off with Hoardmaster, successfully cutting it in two, when an even larger skeleton stepped into view. This one was half again the height of a man, with a horse skull in place of a man's head and an extra joint in his skeletal legs. "What have we here?" it called out upon spotting the trio. "Adventurers? Here in my domain? Die, fools!" And with that, the remaining wraiths attacked the trio en masse. Cal used another turning attempt to blast the closest into dust, Akari stepped up and fended the next off with his sword, and Gwendolyn took the opportunity to scoot out of battle and go running to the back room, using one of Akari's sunrods to light her way, taking swigs of air from her magical bottle as she did so.

Surprisingly, the skeletal equiceph did not seem eager to leap into battle with the two remaining adventurers. It called its skeletons back with the loot they had gathered thus far, and sent a second wave of wraiths at Cal and Akari as he led his skeletal minions out the front door and onto the broad back of a dragon turtle zombie that waited just outside. "None may long defy the will of Darklord Drago von Mordak!" he called back to the adventurers, who were busy fighting off this new batch of wraiths. "I'll be back after you've fallen to my slaves, and you've joined my army of undead!" And with that the dragon turtle zombie whirled and flew off away from the shop. By the time Cal and Akari had destroyed the last of the wraiths, the Darklord was long gone. Fortunately, by that time Gwendolyn had returned with the small crate of scroll cases, and she led the two back into the Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion, where Akari was once again restored to his full level of life energy by the last of Cal's restoration spells. The trio explained what had happened to Feron and Chalkan, and Gwendolyn further explained their next course of action.

"The skeletons cleaned me out pretty good. They had already taken the stone horse by the time we popped out, so that's no longer a way back home. However, they also took a rather expensive magical sword, and I've got a rune hidden on most of my more expensive stuff. I can track it with this," she said, pulling a thin wand out from her sleeve. "So let's go - I want my stuff back from that bonehead!" She said the command word that opened the door to the outside world, everybody stepped out, and Gwendolyn quickly cast an attune form spell from the proper scroll that prevented the inherent qualities of the Negative Energy Plane from draining their life energy or suffocating them in its airless vacuum. She picked up the house statue and dropped it into her pack, so it would be with them if they needed it again. Then, stepping outside of the shop (a circular area around the shop sat atop a solid hemisphere of ground that had been ripped from Greyhawk City when the negabomb activated), they leaped off into nothingness and with the right kind of concentration started "falling" in the direction indicated by the shop owner's tracking wand. It was actually kind of a fun way to travel once you got the hang of it.

While "falling" in the direction of the sword, the group attracted the attention of one of the plane's few denizens, a sentient ball of negative energy known as a xeg-yi which was driven to attack them due to their light sources. They made quick work of the odd creature, and after an unknown amount of time practically ran into a solid chunk of matter that floated in the Negative Energy Plane in the same manner as Gwen's Relics. This was a semispherical clump of stone, with a dock jutting out from one side. As they approached, they could see a flickering light coming from an open doorway at the top of the stone stairs leading up from the dock. This was the first light they'd seen on this plane that they weren't responsible for, so they were drawn to it like a moth.

Akari peeked through the open doorway. The entire room was filled with flames. He felt an intense heat emanating from the room, which looked to be 30 feet square and carved out of the stone of the floating “island.” At two-inch intervals covering the ceiling and all of the wall surfaces jutted metal spikes, glowing red-hot from the heat of the magical flames, which seem to continue to burn without any visible fuel. Akari couldn’t actually see the floor, but he assumed the metal spikes continued there as well.

"This doesn't make any sense," complained Feron. "What are open flames doing in the middle of the Negative Energy plane?" She focused her concentration with her eyes closed, then looked at the flames again and smirked. "I knew it!" she crowed. "It's an illusion!" She stepped boldly into the room, only to find that the central area of the room did in fact contain real spikes, and although they weren't red-hot, they still hurt significantly when you stepped on them. Feron stepped back and cast a healing spell upon her foot.

"So where's the door?" asked Chalkan, sliding both feet along the floor to ensure he didn't step onto any spikes. The others followed suit, slowly "skating" into the room. Feron looked around, studying the walls, then said "This way!" and walked through an apparent wall. The others followed her, stepping into a stairwell leading up to a higher level of the complex. The top of the stairs was an apparent dead end, until Cal found a section of wall that was illusory. "I guess the Darklord's not much for doors," he commented, walking through and into a large, open room. This room had one familiar feature: the dragon turtle zombie, who turned and attacked. It was slow, but it was also massive and unafraid of pain, and it managed to do a bit of damage with its serrated beak before Cal was able to turn it with the power of his holy symbol. The great undead beast turned around and moved through the one wall of the room that was jagged and natural looking; this too proved to be an illusory wall made to hug the contours of the massive slab of rock from which the Darklord's Keep had been carved. The group opted not to pursue it, but to search for other doors out of this "hangar."

Two were found: one led to a workshop of sorts, and from there a storage area, while the other led to another upper level via a spiral staircase, like everything else seen thus far carved out of the very rock. The group opted to go up the stairs, Akari in the lead.

Not surprisingly, this led to an apparent dead end; even less surprisingly, there was an open doorway at the top covered in an illusory wall spell. Walking through it, with Hoardmaster in one hand and a sunrod in the other, Akari found quite a scene before him. The upper level was all one massive room, rectangular in shape but with the entire wall to the right all jagged and rough, just like the wall in the dragon turtle zombie hangar below. This room was also a hangar of sorts, only the vessel it contained was unlike any Akari had ever seen. It was crafted of fused bones, and the skeleton of a triceratops had obviously been the starting point for the vessel, for its size, shape, and build were obvious to any who had seen such a beast (as indeed Akari had, on the lizardman-infested island Balama had taken them to against their will). Other bones, from a wide variety of creatures, had been used to create the outer walls of the craft, and so tight was the fit that you couldn't see between any two bones into the craft's interior. The vessel stood unmoving on its four dinosaur legs. Before it stood the Darklord Drago von Mordak, the skeletal equiceph the group had encountered leading a raiding party of skeletons inside Gwen's Relics. He held a staff made of bone, and a quick use of his inherent ability to detect evil confirmed to Akari that the creature before him was utterly evil - oddly enough, his evil being particularly concentrated from his knees on down. At the Darklord's side stood a clay golem, awaiting orders.

The first order came immediately: "Slay them!" cried the Darklord, stepping back behind the safety of his dinosaur vessel as the clay golem moved forward menacingly. Akari pounced into battle with the golem, as Cal, Feron, and Chalkan entered the room and spread out. This proved to be a wise idea, as the Darklord shot a fireball at the group, but only caught Feron and Cal in the blast, the others already having moved out of range.

Another command from the skeletal equiceph showed that the dinosaur craft was somewhat sentient, as a command to attack the intruders caused it to shudder to awkward life and attempt to gore the closest - Chalkan - with its impressive set of horns. While the undead vessel and the clay golem kept the intruders at bay, Drago von Mordak took an opportunity to cast a protective spell upon himself. Not liking that idea, Feron cast a dispel magic spell upon him, and got quite a surprise, for the "skeletal equiceph" itself was an illusion covering the less-impressive-looking bones of a gnome lich.

Akari and Cal took it upon themselves to take care of the clay golem, which they had learned from prior experience could be a tough foe, leaving Feron and Chalkan to attack the diminutive lich while everyone tried to stay out of range of the slow-moving undead vessel. The gnome lich seemed to feel much less powerful now that his impressive alter ego had been taken from him, and he fought defensively, trying to hide using invisibility and keeping his distance with expeditious retreat. Still, Chalkan's spell-enhanced arrows and Feron's ranged spells were able to keep up with him no matter how far away he got, and before too long he opted to make a run for it inside his undead vessel. Just as Cal and Akari were dropping the clay golem, the gnome lich was opening a side hatch in the triceratops vessel and climbing aboard. Feron tried grappling him, but he was remarkably agile for such a little guy. The vessel was apparently run by consuming magic items, as the gnome had popped a pair of magical gauntlets into an arcane furnace inside the construct, powering it up to open an extraplanar gate to make good his escape. Feron, unable to grab hold of the slippery lich, snatched the gauntlets out of the furnace and threw them behind her, preventing the vessel from being able to sustain the gate long enough to slip through.

Akari, meanwhile, had learned that Hoardmaster's undead bane ability worked just fine against the animated dinosaur skeleton vessel, and was slowly chopping one of the vessel's front legs off. It finally snapped in twain, spilling the vessel over onto its side, and allowing Feron to grab up the gnome lich, pop the hatch back open (it had slammed shut during the tussle), and toss the gnome back out onto the hangar floor.

"You cannot stop me!" squeaked the gnome from his prone position. "I'm the Darklord Drago von Mor--" The rest of his final statement was cut off by the sound of Cal's heavy mace smashing in the lich's skull.

After that, it was a simple matter of going through the Darklord's Keep and grabbing up the stolen magic items he had taken from Gwendolyn Fine's shop. Most of them were in the storage room just beyond his workshop, where he had crafted the negabomb that had shunted her shop to where he could easily plunder it. Gwendolyn was particularly pleased to find her obsidian steed, as this was the group's only current way back home. (Cal was powerful enough to know the plane shift spell, but he didn't have it currently prepared and their attune form spell would wear off before he was able to rest up and prepare it.) In his library, they found a journal with notes about the construction of the extraplanar craft, and something much more interesting: the "Darklord's" real name, Toofles Pigwilligan.

"I think I'd use a pseudonym too, given the circumstances," snickered Chalkan.

When everyone was ready to depart, it was a simple matter for Gwendolyn to activate the obsidian steed and ride it back to the prime material plane with the four members of Wing Three basking in luxury inside the Mordenkainen's magnifient mansion, the house statue sitting inside her pack. They ended up on a random road somewhere, and walked together to the next town. Gwendolyn's magic shop was no more, but she had the majority of what "the Darklord" had plundered from her - it was enough to rebuild again elsewhere, and Gwendolyn had no desire to return to Greyhawk City to have to explain the semispherical hole in the ground where her shop used to be, or to have to explain to their families what had happened to the workers and customers who had been shunted with the shop to the Negative Energy Plane. Granted, none of it had been Gwendolyn's fault, but she wasn't eager to have to explain any of it to anyone; much easier to start again somewhere else and seek her fortunes elsewhere. As a thanks for helping her once again and for saving her life, she let the group keep some of what they had been using of hers: Cal kept the necklace of adaptation, for instance. Then, having figured out exactly where they were from the townspeople they met up with, the four adventurers headed back to Greyhawk City on foot, while Gwendolyn rode her obsidian steed in the opposite direction.