Wing Three

ADVENTURE 54 - VENGEANCE OVERDUE

PC Roster:

NPC roster:

For this adventure, I decided I should reveal a little bit more about Delphyne's past. Vicki and I had jointly determined that she had been raised by her maternal grandmother, Esmerelda Blinx, since she was eight years old, but we had never determined how her parents had died. Before running this adventure, I asked Vicki to come up with the names of her two parents. As I wrote the adventure, I decided I'd start it with Delphyne having come face-to-face with a figure from her past, and - after checking with Vicki to make sure she was okay with it - I'd write the course of action that Delphyne took upon seeing this individual. (Some people absolutely hate it when the DM decides what a player character does, and I generally agree with them. However, this would only be used to set up the adventure, and Vicki didn't have any qualms about it.)

So, I'll start this post by providing you with a copy of the two handouts I gave Vicki at the start of the session, detailing what had happened to Delphyne immediately before the group game session actually started.

DELPHYNE HANDOUT #1 said:

Delphyne has just had an overwhelming encounter, and her mind is currently whirling around in a frenzy. Here's a playback of her recent thoughts:

Delphyne in a marketplace, examining vegetables: Hmm, that’s a pretty good price on tomatoes. Are they fresh? (Sniffs sample tomato.) Nice. I can fry these up with supper tonight. How many should I get...? (Bumps shoulders with another customer at the market, turns to look at him and apologizes politely.) "Excuse me, sir."

Wait a minute, he looks familiar — do I know him from somewhere?​

(A memory from long ago: the fireplace embers are just about to go out. You're still supposed to be asleep in your bed, but you woke up, thirsty for a glass of water....)

Mom! He’s stabbing Mom!​

(A sudden cascade of flashing images: The spear sliding into her back, her sudden cry of pain. Dad falling to the floor in a dead faint. The glint of an axe at the Bad Man’s belt....)

The Bad Man!​

(Gripping the upstairs railing in your eight-year-old hand, afraid to make a sound....)

It’s him!​

(A memory of sadness: Where's Mom? It’s been days....)

He’s here!​

(Waking up thirsty in bed, getting out of the blankets, finding Babbitt, going to the top of the stairs and seeing Mom and Dad hugging – she’s back! When did she get back...?)

He looks the same after all these years! How is that possible?​

(About to cry out in joy, but then there’s the scary sound of the front door being kicked in, and the Bad Man appears in the doorway, spear in hand. You swallow the sound you were going to make....)

Why is he here?​

(The look of malevolent joy as he stabs Mom in the back with his spear. The drops of blood shining in the firelight from the dying embers in the fireplace as they arc across the room....)

He killed my parents!​

(Dad falling to the floor in a dead faint. Mom falling to the floor, just dead....)

He killed them!​

(The glint of an axe on the Bad Man’s belt as he grabs it up in his beefy hand....)

What does he want?​

(The glint of the metal axe-head in the firelight as he lifts it up, the timeless moment when it hangs suspended at the top of its arc, and then the solid thunk it makes as it separates Mom's head from her body....)

He’s here to kill me!​

(Dad’s severed head flopping around on the floor next to Mom’s....)

I’m next!​

(Hugging Babbitt to me, staring with unblinking eyes at my dead family in the room downstairs, staring without breathing while the Bad Man wipes his axe blade on Mom's dress. Unable to breathe, why can’t I breathe...?)

How did he find me?​

(Gramma tucking me into her bed and telling me that all of the bad scariness is over and nobody's going to hurt me....)

Why can’t I breathe?​

(The look of the Bad Man’s face as he bursts through the kicked-in door: eager for bloodshed, anticipating the violent deaths of my parents....)

Got to get away! Run! Run, Delphyne, run!​

(The Bad Man pouring oil on Mom and Dad's bodies and their severed heads, and scooping the remaining embers from the fireplace with his axe. The sizzling and crackling sounds they made as they burned....)

RUN!​

Click to expand...

DELPHYNE HANDOUT #2 said:

Now that you've had a moment to pull yourself together, you realize your chance encounter at the market has triggered buried memories that have been hidden deep in your mind for many years, since you were an eight-year-old girl and still living with your parents.

Here's what you remember: You were asleep in your bed, but woke up, thirsty. You half-remember hearing voices talking downstairs, which was unusual — maybe that's what woke you up? Mom had gone missing several days ago, and you and Dad hadn't been getting much sleep since. But when you went to the hallway and looked down at the living room by the light from the few burning embers left in the fireplace, you could distinctly see Mom and Dad standing there hugging each other in the shadows. You were about to call out to your mother, but then the front door was kicked in, and a bearded man (the Bad Man, it was the Bad Man!) entered, wielding a shortspear. He crossed the room before any of you could react, and plunged the spear into your mother's back. Your father fell to the floor, head lolling back as in a faint, and once the Bad Man pulled the spear from your mother's back, she collapsed to the floor as well. The Bad Man reached for a steel axe at his belt, and with several quick thrusts with it from over his head, severed each of your parents' heads, wiping their blood from his weapon afterwards on your mother's dress. Then, as if he hadn't killed them enough already, he opened vials of oil from his belt and poured their contents onto your parents' bodies and their severed heads. Using his axe, he scooped up some embers from the fireplace and dropped them onto their bodies. Once they were burning to his satisfaction, he returned the axe to his belt and without a word walked out the front door he had kicked open.

You knelt there at the upstairs railing, unmoving, looking down at the burning corpses of your slain parents with unblinking eyes, a death grip on Babbitt, your stuffed bunny. Eventually the living room caught fire but still you couldn't move; a small part of your mind realized that if you didn't get out you'd be burned alive with your parents, but the larger part of your mind just couldn't be bothered to actually get you moving — you felt numb all over, like this wasn't really happening to you at all but to somebody else in a story. The blaze apparently alerted the neighbors across the street from you, though, because they rushed in and fought the fire with blankets and buckets of water. Mrs. Densham (was that her name? — yes, I think so) grabbed you up and took you to her house while her husband and some others battled the flames.

Eventually, the town mayor sent a runner to fetch your maternal grandmother, Esmeralda Blinx, from the other side of the forest and you went to go live with her. She was very nice, but you kept waking up screaming in the middle of the night. She was a witch and a wise-woman; it's possible she did something to help bury the memories of your parents' deaths in the deep recesses of your mind, or perhaps your memories just buried themselves in an act of mental self-preservation.

In any case, it all came rushing back once you bumped into the Bad Man at the market this afternoon. At first, it seemed incredible that he hadn't aged a day since you saw him slaughter your family all those years ago, but now that you think back on it, the answer is obvious — he's a dwarf! With their expanded lifespans, it's not difficult to believe that he could look much the same as he did over a span of such years. And as an eight-year-old child you had never seen a dwarf before, so you had nothing to compare him to — he looked like any other adult to you. But he's definitely a dwarf, with a full, brown beard, hair the same color, and steely gray eyes. He was wearing a dark, hooded cloak of the same type that he wore while slaughtering your parents, and a pair of heavy leather boots. And you're not sure, but you somewhat remember something hanging on his belt, possibly the same axe that he used that night so long ago....

Click to expand...

- - -

Akari and Rale were having a spirited debate about the basic tenets of equitable treasure splitting in the Wing Three Guild Hall living quarters when they heard a clatter in the hallway and the sound of someone racing up the stairs. As they looked over in the direction of the commotion, they saw Delphyne in as distressed a condition as they'd ever seen her: she stared ahead as if she wasn't focused on her surroundings, her hair was disheveled, she was out of breath, and she was missing one shoe. As they watched in astonishment, she tripped into the living room, fell to the floor, and curled up into the fetal position, moaning softly to herself.

"Delphyne!" called out Rale in shock. Akari picked her up and placed her on the sofa, while Galrick and Aerik peeked in from the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about. Aerik grabbed the greataxe from his back, ready to face any threat that might present itself. Galrich raced over to the top of the stairs, peering down to see if anyone had been chasing the young witch.

Akari saw that Delphyne had no apparent wounds, and crouched at the side of the sofa, stroking the side of her head and making soothing noises, as he would if trying to calm down a frightened horse. Rale raced to the kitchen and returned with a glass of wine. "Here, drink this," he ordered, helping her to sit up. Delphyne sipped at the wine, and eventually came out of her nearly catatonic state, shaking her head as if just now aware of her surroundings.

"I'm--I'll be okay," she stammered. "Give me a moment to sort out my thoughts." It hurt to think back at the flood of memories that seeing the Bad Man at the market had opened up, but Delphyne managed to give a brief account of what had happened, and what she recalled of her parents' death.

"You're sure it's the same guy?" asked Akari.

"Yes, it was him, without a doubt."

"Then let's go find him!" snarled Rale, eager to dish out some punishment to anyone who would put Delphyne through such mental anguish. The five of them geared up, then raced back to the marketplace where Delphyne had had her encounter. They looked around, but the "Bad Man" had long since disappeared. However, they interviewed the stall owners in the area and some customers who had been around, and determined that a dwarf matching the description of the "Bad Man" had bought some herbs at a vegetable seller's stall and enquired about the location of the local Temple of Moradin. He was said to have walked with a limp.

The heroes figured he probably had about a half hour's lead, and they raced over to the Temple of Moradin, hoping to still catch him there.

"And just what are we plannin' on doin', stormin' into Moradin's Church like a maraudin' band?" asked Aerik.

"We'll ask them very nicely if they wouldn't mind sending out their murderer," Rale responded.

As it happened they needn't have worried, for as they approached the Temple of Moradin they could see the brown-cloaked dwarf limping down the street, apparently just having left the dwarven church.

"There he is!" yelled Rale. "Get him!"

The dwarf turned at Rale's outburst, seeing a group of five adventurers racing his way with weapons drawn. He pulled an axe from his belt and stood in a readied stance. The commotion also caught the attention of a few dwarven clerics from the Temple, who saw one of their race about to be overtaken by a small mob. They gathered up their weapons and raced over to the imminent fray.

As the group got closer and the "Bad Man" saw who he was up against, a puzzled look of disbelief crossed his face. "It cannot be!" he cried out, looking directly at Delphyne. "I killed you years ago!"

By this time, Galrich was nearly upon the dwarf, his barbarian muscles allowing him to cross the distance quicker than the others in his group. He raised his greatsword for a killing blow, but then his opponent, looking quickly between him, Akari, and Aerik, stepped back, threw his axe to the ground, and dropped to one knee. "I yield!" he cried, head turned down to look at the cobbled street.

It was all Galrich could do not to strike the dwarf dead where he stood, but he mastered his rage.

By this time, the others - the adventurers from Wing Three and the dwarven clerics from the Temple - had caught up to them, and they circled the two, each group looking warily at the other for signs of imminent violence. Then the clerics got a good look at Akari, Galrich, and Aerik as well, and were visibly astonished. "The Mark of Moradin!" they exclaimed. Sure enough, the very fact that they could see the Mark of Moradin spoke to both their adherence to the law and their goodness of spirit. The fact that the "Bad Man" could apparently see the marks as well didn't fit his alleged role as the murderer of Delphyne's parents.

"What's going on here?" Rale wanted to know.

"Who are ye, and why were ye threatenin' this good dwarf?" asked the leader of the trio of dwarven clerics.

"He killed my parents!" accused Delphyne.

"Yer...? Of course! Ye're a human! I've forgotten how quickly ye age!" exclaimed the "Bad Man." He quickly introduced himself as Thorvik Bleakwinter, admitted to having killed Delphyne's mother (he had mistaken Delphyne for her mother at first glance, so strong was the resemblance), and offered to give a full explanation at the Temple of Moradin, under the effects of a zone of truth spell, if necessary. Rale, still not trusting the dwarf any farther than he could throw him, took him up on the offer - after confirming with Akari that the paladin was aware of how the zone of truth spell worked, and got an assurance from him that he'd be able to tell if the spell was actually being cast correctly.

"Aye, it was me who killed yer mother these years ago, miss," Thorvik began, once the spell had been cast on him in the temple. "Not yer father, though; he was already dead. Let me explain.

"For many decades now, I have served the Church of Moradin as a hunter and destroyer of undead. My nemesis, if you will, has been a human vampire by the name of Ludovigo Montresori, a sorcerer of some power as well as an undead monstrosity. Ludovigo has eluded me for scores of years. He has a thing for beautiful women, and every time he finds a new hunting ground he selects the most desirable woman in the area and turns her into a vampire slave. Yer mother, lass, was one of these vampire slaves, I’m afraid.

"I'd tracked Ludovigo to his newest lair, but not before he'd abducted and killed yer mother; she rose as one of his foul breed three days after her death. And, as is the way of such things, her vampiric master immediately sent her to slay her previous family, wanting to sever all ties to her former life so that she could devote herself to him eternally. It was the fact that she went missing that led me to believe that Ludovigo might have taken up residence in the area, and I staked out yer house during her absence. Sure enough, the very first night I watched yer house she returned, coalescin' from the mist and knockin' on the door for her husband – yer father – to let her in, which he foolishly did, his relief at her apparent safe return overwhelmin' any caution he might otherwise have had. I rushed to the door, but not before she had slaked her thirst at his neck. I stabbed her through the heart from the back with a wooden stake, then cut off her head. Once I had determined that your father was already dead, I did the same to him as a precaution, not wanting him to return as a vampire, and burned their bodies for additional insurance. I swear to ye, miss, I did not know there was a child in the house! I was foolish, I know, and careless, but this was early in my career as a hunter of the undead, and I was not then as skilled or experienced as I am now. Forgive me."

"By the goddess!" exclaimed Delphyne. "You saved my life all those years ago! My...what was my mother would have killed me!"

"Without knowin' it, yes, I did," admitted Thorvik. "However, as you might have guessed, the only reason I am in your fair city now is that I have tracked Ludovigo Montresori to these parts, and I believe I know where he is holing up. Would you like to know how to find the monster responsible for your parents' deaths?"

Delphyne's eyes grew cold. "I would," she replied.

Thorvik outlined what he knew. He had come to the Temple of Moradin to have a divination spell confirm Ludovigo's current whereabouts, and had traced him to an underground cavern network several miles south of Greyhawk City, near enough for easy access but far enough away that he wouldn't normally be tracked back there. Of the vampire, Thorvik warned he was an accomplished sorcerer with a focus on spells involving clouds and mist; one of his self-appointed titles was "Lord of the Mists." He almost never drank the blood of males, seeking only beautiful women for his sustenance. The most beautiful of women he "rewarded" with the gift of immortality so that they would never age, nor would their beauty ever diminish. However, he invariably tired of them after awhile, and they were inevitably relegated to his small retinue of vampire spawn that he used as guards. While not a necromancer himself, Ludovigo had been willing in the past to work with other intelligent undead, and he relied heavily upon guard beasts and traps in his lairs, so it was often difficult to get to him in time to destroy him for good. In addition, he habitually had a wide variety of coffins spread out over a great distance, so it had been impossible thus far for Thorvik to deprive him of all of his lairs.

"But this time, I'll get him fer good!" remarked Thorvik, showing a necklace he wore about his neck. "I had this crafted a few weeks back, keyed to my own name. He tries turning into mist again, I'll just absorb him into this necklace and he'll won't be gettin' out 'til I release him!"

As it was late afternoon by this time, Thorvik suggested they rest up for the night and make an early start of it in the morning; he'd meet them at their Headquarters a half hour before dawn, so they'd have the whole of the day to make it through the vampire's underground lair. The group agreed, and they went their separate ways for the night.

The next morning, the five adventurers stood outside their Guild Headquarters, watching the sun rise above the buildings. "He's late," grumbled Rale. "We oughtta leave without him."

"We should probably wait for him," argued Delphyne. "He's got years of experience fighting vampires, and this one in particular."

"Well, we're burning daylight," replied Rale. "We want to be in his lair and have it all cleaned out before the sun sets again."

As a compromise, Rale set off with Galrich and Aerik to see if he was at the Temple of Moradin for whatever reason, while Akari and Delphyne waited where they were in case Thorvik showed up. The Temple clerics told Rale that Thorvik had rented a room at a nearby lodge, and gave him directions to it, but once there they found his bed hadn't been slept in, nor had anyone seen the dwarf since the previous afternoon.

"This sucks!" complained Rale. "Let's go!"

They returned to Guild Headquarters, and, lacking any better plan, the five decided to head off to the vampire's suspected lair without Thorvik. Fortunately, the dwarf had showed them on a map its suspected location. They took Old Clem and the horses with them to hopefully make up lost time.

Once at the suspected area, they looked around and found a hole in the ground, just big enough for a person to wriggle into. Then they found another one nearby, and another a bit further on. Scouting the area, they found a total of thirteen holes, each about the same size and shape. "Great," remarked Rale, already disgusted by how this event was playing out. Then something caught his eye, glinting in the dirt by one of the holes. He bent over and picked up a silver holy symbol of Moradin, on a broken silver chain. That didn't bode well - had Thorvik already been here, and run into trouble?

Akari volunteered to check out the holes. He took out Hoardmaster and a sun rod and scurried into the hole nearest where Rale found the holy symbol, headfirst. It was a tight fit, but he found he could maneuver without too much difficulty. The narrow tunnel he was in branched off several times, and he could see by the sunlight streaming in ahead that some of the branches led to some of the other holes. That at least made it easier for Akari to yell up to the others and report his progress, and they were able to more or less track where he was.

Soon, though, he became aware of a familiar carrion stench just ahead. Breathing shallowly, he inched forward and found a rotting deer lying in a slightly wider cavern, its festering body covered in dozens of sticky, whitish-grey lumps. Next to the deer carcass was the body of a stocky humanoid in a dark cloak. "Aw, crap!" muttered Akari, then yelled up to the others, "I found Thorvik! He's dead!"

Right about that same time, something found Akari as well. The paladin heard the scrabbling of many legs scrambling up the tight-packed dirt tunnel behind him, and then the touch of numerous slimy tentacles. He gave a startled cry, then tried kicking back at his foe. His sword, pointed in front of his supine body, was of no assistance, and the tunnel was too narrow for him to turn around and face his enemy.

"What's the matter?" called down Delphyne.

"Carrion crawler!" yelled back Akari, with just a little touch of panic in his voice, as he scrambled towards Thorvik's body and the slain deer, where he might just have room enough to turn around.

Galrich figured out which of the holes was likely nearest Akari's current location and dived in headfirst. His wider shoulders made it a tighter fit, and his progress wasn't as rapid as the elf's had been, but he finally caught up to the carrion crawler, which at this point had paralyzed Akari, and stabbed at it from behind with his sword. "Heh, how do you like it?" he asked the carrion crawler. It gave no response, and was quickly slain by the half-orc, given that its way ahead was blocked by the unmoving paladin.

However, there were two carrion crawlers down here in this tunnel network, and they both knew the best way to maneuver around their tunnels. Unfortunately, sometimes that meant popping up out of one hole and scurrying down into another; when the second one did so, it illicited a squeak of surprise from Delphyne and a massive axe-chop from Aerik, which nearly cut it in two. Eventually, the second carrion crawler was slain, and Galrich managed to tug Akari's paralyzed form back out of the tunnel. Then Rale - much thinner - went in and pulled Thorvik's corpse out. His throat had been slit, apparently from behind, and whoever had done it had taken a bit of his beard with it. Aerik composed his fellow dwarf's body as if at rest, and Delphyne took the necklace from around his neck. "We might need it," she explained.

While they waited for mobility to return to the elf, Rale volunteered to scout out the rest of the tunnels. He found that most of them reconnected back into the same snarl of a network, but one of them stood alone, descending deeper into the ground at a relatively safe angle. About halfway down its length it switched from hard-packed earth to stone, and then opened into the ceiling of a larger cavern. Rale took a look around as best he could with his sun rod, then scooted himself backwards back up the slope and reported back to the others. By this time, Akari had recovered from his paralysis.

"So what did you see?" asked Akari.

"Big cavern, several exits, floor covered in yellow mold," replied Rale. "Ceiling entrance, about 30 feet up."

They knew how to deal with that: piton in the rock near the ceiling entrance, rope tied to it, rogue goes down first, and he burns the mold with a torch. It took Rale another half an hour or so to do so, and even then he just cleared paths through the mold to each of the exits - time was wasting, and he wanted out of here by sundown!

Several of the exits led to "decoy" coffins: one was a mimic in the shape of a coffin on a raised plinth; another was an actual coffin but was empty, and on the other side of a pool of water guarded by shambling mounds. Both threats were dealt with handily, as was the allip in the third exit from the large cavern. There were signs that some poor soul had been shackled to the back of the cave and tortured at some length for the express purpose of creating an allip; the group put the gibbering thing out of its misery.

A larger cavern beyond showed signs of more such gruesome dealings: the decapitated bodies of two young women lay propped up against the walls, amongst crates and barrels that look to have been looted by some passing caravan. The women might even have been the thieves, judging by the leather armor they wore and the short swords belted at their sides. Curious as to what might be in the crates, Rale pried the lid off of one and found it full of gold and silver coins. Hoping to repeat his success, he took the top off a smaller chest and was disappointed to find only women's hair accessories: combs, mirrors, ribbons, and the like. "Hmmph!" he snorted, then noticed there was a draft coming from behind the crates. As he started to move the pile to see what they might be concealing, Akari opened the nearest of the barrels and found it to be half full of vinegar, by the smell of it. "Odd," he commented to himself, and opened the next of the three barrels.

He was not expecting to see the undead head of a young woman leaping up from the barrel, trailing a dripping mass of viscera behind her. "Intruders!" cried out the floating head. "Rise and fight, Djandali!"

The lid flew off of the last barrel and Djandali joined her penanggalan sister, Gzadia, in attacking the surprised group of adventurers. Akari hurriedly tried turning the nearest with his holy symbol of Hieroneous, and when that didn't work he opted not to bother again, but rather to put Hoardmaster to good use. Aerik and Galrich likewise swung their weapons at the wildly-flying things, who soared all over the room and dived at the heroes with fang-filled mouths. Delphyne blasted one at almost point-blank range with a barrage of magic missiles, while Rale opted to leave the undead fighting to those better equipped to deal with them, and continued moving the crates, uncovering a hidden entrance by doing so.

Sadly, this did little to help matters, for the third penanggalan, Svetlana, was in the necromantic laboratory just beyond, working on crafting yet another guard beast. While it wasn't completely finished, it was ready enough for a first field test, and the young-looking woman - this penanggalan was perched on her headless body, and thus appeared to be a living woman - spoke the phrase that caused a large pile of rune-covered bones spread out about the floor to assemble into the shape of a massive canine. The charnel hound staggered over to Rale at its mistress's orders.

Akari heard Rale's cries for assistance and scrambled over to the hidden opening, secure in the knowledge that the others could handle the sole remaining penanggalan in the chamber behind him. He chose to attack the charnel hound first, due to its obvious undead appearance, with Deathstriker, given its undead bane properties and the fact that it was a bludgeoning weapon against a creature made of bones. Rale, in the meantime, went after Svetlana, and wasn't all that surprised to find she wasn't particularly inconvenienced when he slid his blade into her kidney in what would likely have been an impressive kill shot had he been fighting a living foe. Stupid undead! he cursed to himself.

Meanwhile, the other three dispatched Djandali and clambered over to help Akari and Rale. Their presence was well appreciated by that point, and tipped the scales in the heroes' favor. Before long, both Svetlana and her bone-hound had been destroyed. The group took a well-earned break, unpacking and drinking their various healing potions. "We should've brought Cal with us," Delphyne said, much to Rale's consternation, for he was Cal's "bink-partner," and longing for Cal meant that she was wishing Rale wasn't there. He was about to argue that he'd been extremely helpful in getting past the yellow mold that allowed them to even enter this lair in the first place, but for once held his tongue, realizing he'd sound petty and bitter.

"I imagine we should be getting close," Akari commented. "Everybody ready to go?" They entered a set of natural stairs rising up from the penanggalan lair, which split into two short passages. One apparently led all the way to the surface, but was blocked by a large boulder - but not to such an extent it was air-tight, Akari noticed, so a vampire could easily pass through in gaseous form. The other led to the largest cavern they'd seen thus far down here. And it was chock-full of coffins. Besides the coffins and the entry passage they had just used, the only other feature in the cavern was a pile of rocks that indicated another passageway must have collapsed some time in the past.

"I count...twenty-six," Rale said, making an effort to make himself useful. "What's the point of 26 false coffins, all in the same area? Or, say, one real coffin and 25 fakes?"

"Let's find out," grunted Galrich, pulling open the nearest coffin lid with one hand while holding his greatsword in the other, ready to strike down at any vampire he should find within. Instead, the fire trap blew up in his face, singeing his eyebrows.

"Better let me handle the coffin-opening," Rale smirked, approaching the next coffin. He made a point of investigating it thoroughly, checking it for hidden runes or glyphs that might indicate a magical trap. As he examined the coffin, a thin mist started seeping from it. Startled, Rale jumped back, worried about poison gas, but the mist coalesced into a beautiful young woman with long, flowing, blonde locks. "You are trespassing," she announced with a smile that showed off her long, ivory fangs. "Ludovigo does not appreciate trespassers." And with that, she lunged at Rale, who stepped back and grabbed up his swords from his belt. Galrich and Aerik leapt forward into combat with the female vampire, while Delphyne looked around and called out, "More mist coming this way!"

Indeed, several more clouds of mist were coalescing into feminine forms at various points throughout the cavern; by exiting their coffins without opening their lids, the vampiresses had prevented the heroes from seeing which ones were trapped and which were safe. The group soon found itself in combat with six lovely vampiresses. Rale smiled appreciatively at Ludovigo's selectivity; he might be an unholy, undead abomination, but he had good taste in women!

Unseen by any of the group was the lone bat, perched silently on the cavern's ceiling. This was Turinov, Ludovigo Montresori's bat familiar, studiously monitoring events and casting a silent, running commentary to his undead master in the hidden room on the other side of the cave-in. Ludovigo smiled as he cast his preparatory spells on himself, before assuming mist form and sliding silently through the cracks in the fallen rocks.

By this time, the group had discovered that these vampiresses were merely vampire spawn - still deadly, but not as powerful as a true vampire. They had already slain half of their number when mists started rising from the majority of the cavern's floor. This wasn't due to the appearance of more vampires, though; Delphyne quickly recognized it as an obscuring mist spell, called out such to her group, and hurriedly cast mirror image on herself as a protective measure, for it seemed as if Ludovigo himself - the self-styled "Lord of the Mists" - was about to put in an appearance.

She was partially correct - Ludovigo was now present in the cavern, but he didn't quite put in an appearance, preferring to hide his presence behind a greater invisibility spell. The three vampiresses had backed off, knowing what was likely to come, and he threw a fireball at the heroes, engulfing the five of them in flames. Worse yet, the obscuring mist made it impossible to see the origin of the spell. Akari took his best guess and let loose with Deathstriker, hurling it the length of the cavern. The magical warhammer struck Ludovigo's surprised form, then flew back to Akari's outstretched hand. The vampire snarled, and focused his immediate attention on the elven paladin.

Akari suspected such to be the case, and tactically retreated out of the cavern, slowly traversing the narrow passage back toward the penanggalan lair. Scorching rays blasted him from behind; apparently the vampire had gotten behind him somehow! Still, that meant he had to be standing right in the passageway to fire his spell; Akari, staggering from the fiery spell, hurled Deathstriker down the narrow passageway and smiled as he heard it crash into an invisible body and heard Ludovigo's grunt of pain and frustration. Ludovigo limped back around the corner and, still invisible, repeated the words to the dimension door spell he had used to get behind the paladin, this time returning to the larger cavern.

Unseen by the others, Ludovigo took time to examine his foes. His gaze lingered on Delphyne, or rather on the half dozen or so of her that shifted around constantly. She bore a remarkable resemblance to one of his former vampire slaves, but he had tired of her and had no desire to gain the services of a lookalike. Still, she could serve him in the way of all women, by offering up her life's blood to quench his unending thirst. He cast another spell, and more fog rose up from the ground and into the vicinity of the heroes; this fog, however, burned with an acidic fire, and the cries of pain from the living were music to Ludovigo's ears.

Akari, meanwhile, had realized the vampire had abandoned him and raced back toward the larger cavern to join the others. Delphyne, by this time, was seriously hurt, and pulled another flask containing a healing potion from her belt. She realized she was about to pass out, knew that doing so could mean the end of her life, and also that taking the time to guzzle down a healing potion in the midst of a heated combat with four undead creatures was risky, so she did what she thought was a smart move: she popped open the coffin that the first vampiress had misted out of (figuring, quite correctly, that it wouldn't be protected by a fire trap spell; Rale had, after all, examined it thoroughly), hopped inside, and closed the lid. There! she thought, unstoppering the flask and bringing it up to her lips, Safe and sound!

The young witch had forgotten one thing: her mirror images were still in effect. Ludovigo smiled as he saw half a dozen reclining Delphynes, laying on her side and drinking down a potion, each one flitting around and shifting places with the others. He couldn't resist the opportunity, and shifted into mist form, then slid through the slim opening between coffin and lid. Delphyne felt a cool, damp presence in the coffin with her, and looked up to see two glowing, red eyes staring down at her from within the mist, and felt his presence in her mind, trying to charm her into offering her neck without resistance. She screamed, and the others looked up from their combat with the vampiresses - who had resumed their attacks - to see half a dozen mirror images of Delphyne thrashing around on her back.

"She's in a coffin!" reasoned Rale. "Get her out of there!" Galrich complied by opening up what he thought was the correct coffin, but another fire trap blew up in his face.

Delphyne wanted nothing more to do with being trapped in a coffin with the vampire who had killed her parents. She pushed open the lid, scampered out, and slammed the lid back on the undead beast, still in his mist form and trying to use his charming gaze upon her. Now that they could see her again, Aerik broke off from combat with the vampiress he'd been fighting and leaped onto the coffin lid, holding it down with his armored weight. If he was trying to imprison the vampire within it was of no use, for Ludovigo's gaseous form started flowing out of the coffin, undeterred by the dwarf's attempts.

But by that time, Delphyne had regained her composure, and she held Thorvik's necklace in one outstretched hand. "Thorvik Bleakwinter!" she cried out, and the astonished vampire felt himself being pulled into the magical amulet with a tug of gravity he could not resist. And with that, Ludovigo Montresori, Lord of the Mists, had been successfully imprisoned. "Gotcha!" Delphyne cried in triumph.

Without their master to provide spellcasting, the remaining three vampire spawn were dispatched easily. While Rale set himself to opening up all of the other 25 coffins (using his "nine-and-a-half-foot pole," the other half-foot having been severed by a blade trap years ago in the White Queen's lair), the others, at Akari's insistence, started pulling the stones away from the rockfall that had sealed off the last passageway from the larger cavern. "He can travel as a mist," he reasoned. "This would be the safest place for him to have his coffin."

Both plans met with success. Rale eventually found that six coffins had been used as the vampiress's resting places, another 19 had been fire trapped to aggravate the attempts of any would-be vampire slayers, and the 26th was used as a communal treasure storage location, containing scads of coins of various denominations. Rale eagerly appointed himself the task of sorting them into piles, with a few of the platinum ones accidentally falling into his own pockets now and again.

Akari and the others, in the meantime, cleared a passage just wide enough to allow them to crawl through single file into another small room. It held two coffins; one had been Ludovigo's resting place, while the other was empty but fire trapped. (For once, it was the elven paladin and not Galrich who discovered this the hard way.) However, doubting that the vampire would have no treasure of his own, Akari examined the empty coffin closer, and discovered that it had a false bottom which, once removed, exposed a rich assortment of gemstones and a small pile of rings. Delphyne could tell at once that these were wedding bands, no doubt collected as trophies from the married women Ludovigo had transformed into his vampiric slaves over the years. She sorted through them, and tears sprang unbidden to her eyes as she read her mother's name engraved on the inside of one. Nobody argued when she slipped the ring onto her own finger - without even the formality of the "Dibs!" clause.

Gathering up the various treasures they had amassed in the lair, the group made its way back out the way they had come, climbing one by one up the rope in the cavern with the yellow mold. There was just one thing left to do.

Delphyne walked a good quarter mile from the thirteen holes leading to the carrion crawler den and Ludovigo's latest lair. She was in a wide clearing, with no trees or other sources of shade anywhere nearby. Pulling the necklace from her neck, she held it out at arm's length and called out, "Thorvik Bleakwinter!" As expected, the mist form of Ludovigo Montresori was expelled from the extradimensional space inside the necklace, and the vampire found himself free once more - in an open field, in broad daylight. His glowing, red eyes opened wide in horror as he looked around for safety and found none. Then the blazing sun burned off the mists composing his undead body, and Ludovigo Montresori, Lord of the Mists, was no more.

ADVENTURE 55 - HUNTING THE MAGPIE

PC Roster:
Lord Stanwyck cleared his throat with a scowl. "I sent for you," he said, "because you successfully completed the previous mission I hired you for, and because you have experience with the individual with whom we are now dealing. Perhaps you are aware that famed artist Giusonni Brevanche has been commissioned to create an oil painting of me for the Greyhawk Museum of Fine Art. The commission was completed and was to have been unveiled tomorrow evening at a gala for the nobility of the city. However, after it was hung in its gallery last evening, at some point during the night it was stolen. Just the painting was stolen; the frame was intact, containing only this." And with that, Lord Stanwyck flung a card upon the table.

Akari picked it up, and immediately recognized the bird illustration as that of a magpie. The simple, block-letter inscription beneath it read:

DID YOU MISS ME?

Click to expand...

"Impossible," scoffed Rale. "I saw her die."

"So?" glared Lord Stanwyck. "You were once killed by a kraken in the course of your adventures, and yet here you are."

"So somebody's resurrected Kazmira?" asked Feron. "Who would do such a thing?"

"Gareth, for one," pointed out Chalkan.

"He's dead, too," argued Rale.

"It doesn't matter who," replied Akari. "And it may not have even happened. All we know is that a thief stole a painting and left behind one of Kazmira the Magpie's cards. It doesn't mean it was her that did it; maybe somebody's just picking up where she left off."

Rale picked up the card. "This is the exact same type of card as the one Gareth left," he said, his voice full of certainty.

"Then maybe somebody found one of her safehouses, like we did," argued Akari. "Or maybe whoever made the cards for her is making more of the same for her replacement. The point is, it doesn't matter. We need to track down whoever stole the painting, and get it back."

"And punish the transgressor!" thundered Lord Stanwyck. "I won't stand being made to look the fool!" Feron muttered something under her breath at that point; fortunately, no one noticed. "I'll give you 5,000 pieces of gold if you recover my painting, with a 2,000-gold-piece bonus if you get it back in time for the gala!" Lord Stanwyck continued. "We can postpone the gala for a day or two if needs be, but not for long. I want that painting back!"

The group began by interrogating the guards at the Greyhawk Museum of Fine Art, and were surprised to learn that the Magpie had been caught in the act the previous night. The portrait had already been removed from its frame and the card left in its place, and the Magpie was in the process of leaving by an upper story window when one of the night guards entered the gallery, making his rounds. The Magpie leapt from the window and apparently made it to the street level unscathed, possibly by climbing the very walls of the museum. The third-floor guard blew his whistle to alert the rest of the security force of the theft, and a guard in the foyer heard the commotion and observed the Magpie fleeing down the street. He gave immediate chase, following the Magpie down Golden Street and into a nearby alley. In the alleyway, the Magpie suddenly turned and flung an item at the ground, which exploded into a cloud of billowing smoke. When the smoke dissipated, the Magpie was gone.

Neither guard had gotten a good look at the Magpie's face, as the thief was wearing a heavy black hooded cloak. However, the foyer guard who chased the Magpie offered to take the adventurers to the exact spot where the thief vanished in a puff of smoke. Examining the alleyway, Rale discovered one of the cobblestone bricks in the alleyway had a tiny magpie carved in it. Wondering if it was some type of magical effect trigger, he tried stepping on it, pushing it in, sliding it, standing on it and calling out "Magpie!" - all to no effect.

"Just what are you doing?" Feron asked him.

"That magpie carving can't be a coincidence," the rogue told her. "I'm trying to see how to activate it."

Feron cast a quick spell and looked down at the brick. "It's not magical," she replied, then scanned the entire alleyway with her magical sight. "Nothing in this whole alleyway is."

"Maybe it's just a marker stone," thought Akari aloud. "What can you see from here that you can't see elsewhere?" He stood on the brick and looked around. Nothing stood out as particularly important.

And then he looked straight up.

"What's that speck up there?" he asked. "Can you see it?"

Everyone strained their eyes at the sky above. There seemed to be a dark speck up there somewhere above them, but nobody could see it well enough to tell just what it was.

"We need a closer look," reasoned Akari, and sent a mental summons to his faithful steed. In the blink of an eye, there was a flash of light and Tsukitora, Akari's griffon companion, was standing before them.

"I know the drill," said Feron, unpacking the Daern's dollhouse from her Heward's handy haversack. Chalkan and Rale touched the dollhouse, said the command word, and shrunk down to doll size. They walked through the front door, and once they were inside Feron packed it up again. The dollhouse wasn't an extradimensional plane but it did have its own gravity plane, so she wasn't concerned about keeping the dollhouse level as she placed it back in her pack. Then she leaped up upon Tsukitora's back, right behind Akari, and the griffon took to the air.

Tsukitora wasn't able to fly directly straight up to the speck - not that his two riders would be particularly pleased with that plan, in any case - but he was able to circle around it as he rose higher and higher. The speck was quite a distance away, high enough that the air got considerably colder the closer they approached it. As it got nearer, it gradually showed itself to be a wooden structure, much like a crate some 10 feet wide and twice that long. There were no windows, but there was a door on one side, with a narrow ledge along the bottom of the whole width of that side; Akari would have referred to it mentally as a porch, save that it was a mere two feet long.

There was nowhere for Tsukitora to land but on the roof, so he came to a soft landing upon the structure and Akari and Feron climbed off. While Feron unpacked the Daern's dollhouse, Akari thanked his griffon for the ride, apologized for the lack of room, and dismissed him back to his home plane.

Stepping out of the dollhouse, Chalkan and Rale got quite the surprise at their new location. "Holy crap!" exclaimed Rale, looking down over the edge. "That's one hell of a drop!"

"So what are we doing up here?" asked Chalkan. "Is this where the Magpie went?"

"I'd assume so," replied Akari.

"So what are we waiting for?"

"Rale to open the door."

Rale got a sneaking suspicion he knew where the door was. "No way!" he said. "We're like a mile up!"

"It's the only way," Akari argued.

"I'll bet it isn't!" countered the rogue. "Somebody teleport inside! Tear up the roof! Burn our way in!"

"We don't have any way to teleport in at the moment, and in any case we'd be doing so blindly. And we can't take the risk of dismantling this structure, because if we drop anything from up here it would likely kill anyone it lands on below." Rale was unconvinced by any of the elf's arguments, and adamantly refused to go try to open the door while standing on a two-foot platform a mile above the city.

"We'll tie you to a rope harness," offered Akari.

"Sounds more like your job, Teabag!" countered Rale.

In the end, all it took was an "I know you can do this!" and a "Do it for me?" from Feron, and Rale's indomitable will crumbled like a house of cards. Grumbling quietly to himself, he triple-inspected the tightness of the rope being tied around him before allowing himself to be lowered down from the roof and onto the ledge. And sure enough, the stupid door was locked. Grumbling further, Rale unpacked his thieves tools - all masterwork, as befit an adventurer of his quality - and had at it. In less than a minute the door was unlocked.

"Here goes nothing," he grumbled to himself, then pushed it open and dodged to the side, where he'd hopefully be safe from any booby trap that might be waiting for him. Nothing happened, so he cautiously peered around the corner and into the room. There was nobody in it, just a cot, a desk, a chair, and a full-length mirror.

"It's safe!" called Rale to the others above him. "Once again, the underappreciated but multitalented rogue has taken all the risks for you, and it's safe for you to follow!"

"Is there someplace you can tie off your end of the rope?" called down Akari.

Rale looked around. "Not really!" he called back up.

"Then you're the anchor!" Akari called back. "Brace yourself, I'm sending the others down!" Chalkan's feet dropped down into the doorway, then he slid hand over hand down the rope and into the doorway. Feron avoided the rope altogether and wildshaped into a hummingbird, entering in that fashion and then resuming her half-elven form. When it was Akari's turn, he simply held onto his end of the rope and stepped off the roof, allowing his ring of feather falling to let him descend at a slow pace while Rale hauled him in like a fish on a line. "So, what have we got here?" the paladin asked.

"Not much," replied Rale. "Cot, desk, chair, mirror. No Magpie, no exit. A dead end."

"Not necessarily," replied Feron, looking through the desk. "This place is here for a reason. If nothing else, it's a hideout, a place to stay hidden for awhile after a heist, and wait for the excitement to die down."

"A very short while," pointed out Chalkan. "There's no bathroom facilities here."

"Not needed," responded Feron, showing off the ioun stone she found in a desk drawer. "This allows its user to go without food or water - or the need for a bathroom."

"So you think the Magpie hid here for awhile and then left?" asked Rale. "Then this is a dead end after all - she could be anywhere!"

"Look at this," said Akari, examining the mirror. Everyone crowded around him to see. It was a full-length mirror, with a series of words along the top and bottom: "CONSERVE," "OBVERSE," "ALTER," "ODOR," and "SEA GEMS." A round depression was located by each word, or in between in the case of "SEA GEMS." A gemstone covered the hole by "ALTER" - apparently it could be moved into different positions.

"Got it!" exclaimed Chalkan. "'ALTER' is an anagram of 'LATER.'"

"So?" asked Rale. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"No, he's right," pointed out Feron. "'CONSERVE' could be 'CONVERSE' - maybe you can talk through the mirror to someone. 'OBVERSE' is 'OBSERVE,' so you can use it like a scrying device. Let's see, 'ODOR' would be 'DOOR," so you can walk through it! That's where the Magpie went: right through this mirror!"

"And 'SEA GEMS?'" asked Rale.

Feron thought a moment. "...'MESSAGE,'" she said with a smile. "So you can leave a message for somebody, perhaps? And that's not 'LATER,'" she said suddenly. "It's 'ALERT!'"

"...As in, alert the Magpie on the other side of this mirror that there are trespassers in her crappy little home away from home?" asked Rale with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

On the other side of the mirror - or, more accurately, on the Plane of Shadows, looking into a mirror identical to the one the adventurers were staring into, although the gemstone on this mirror was aligned with the word 'OBVERSE' - Jandago smiled a quiet smile, appreciating his pursuers' uneasiness at the realization that they were probably being spied upon. He readied himself for what was likely to follow next.

"Crap crap crap crap crap!" said Rale, not liking this sudden turn of events. He had been convinced this was a dead end, which was bad enough, but to find out that this stupid mirror was probably spying on them the whole time, and that anybody - anything - could be jumping out of it at them at any moment made the rogue sweat with fear.

"Prepare for combat!" commanded Akari, moving over to the fold-up cot and grabbing up the blanket sitting folded on one end. He threw the blanket over the mirror, shielding it from view.

"You think that's going to stop them from coming into here?" demanded Rale.

"I think it may stop them from seeing our preparations," said Akari, casting a protection from evil spell upon himself and pulling Hoardmaster from its scabbard. Feron cast a stoneskin spell upon herself and gave a look to Akari denoting her readiness. Chalkan took the opportunity to cast longstrider and resist energy (fire) upon himself and received a bull's strength from Akari as well.

"Hey, what about me?" Rale asked. Feron cast a protection from energy (fire) on him, and he was happy.

"We ready?" asked Akari, one hand on the blanket.

"Ready!" confirmed Feron.

"Ready!" echoed Chalkan, bow in hand and an arrow nocked for use.

"Ready," sighed Rale, steeling himself for whatever he might find on the other side of the mirror. He had both of his short swords in hand.

"Ready!" smirked Jandago, standing before his own mirror and watching Akari pull the blanket from the mirror and switch the gemstone to the "ODOR" position. As the paladin stepped through the mirror into the Plane of Shadows, Jandago tossed his smoke grenade at the elf's feet, then twirled and ran down the stairs.

Akari stepped from the wooden structure - what Rale had dubbed "The Magpie's Nest" - and into a world of blacks and grays. Immediately, he was concerned that he was once again on the Negative Energy Plane, but he could breathe normally and there was no draining sensation. Then a cloud of smoke billowed up around him, and he just barely saw a cloaked figure running toward a set of stairs before he was blinded by the cloud. "This way!" he called to the others stepping out of the mirror behind him and staggered in what he thought was the right direction. He barked his shin on a chair, but felt his way to a curving set of stairs and heard the soft thump of footsteps heading down the stairs before him.

Jandago, for his part, grinned to himself for everything was going as he had planned. After stealing the portrait of the blowhard Stanwyck and leaving behind the Magpie calling card - why not steal the notoriety of the original Magpie along with her name? - he had returned here to Tarfeather Castle, stashed the stolen portrait, and hung around his bedroom, listening for his mirror to alert him of trespassers. He had purposefully waited to be chased, wanting them racing blindly down the steps in hurried pursuit, and it looked like they weren't going to disappoint. The shadowdancer threw open the door at the bottom of the steps, leaped up into the air, and used the acrobatic training he had gained at the monastery to flip himself around on his way up, touching lightly upon the ceiling and staying in place with his boots of levitation.

And here came the bumbling oafs in hot pursuit, the elven paladin leading the charge. He raced through the door and had no time to change course before plummeting into the open hole in the floor and landing on the level below. A half-elf bowman followed right behind, and followed the paladin's course directly to the lower level, crashing into him as he landed in a heap. Another half-elf followed, this one a striking young woman, and she had the grace and balance to halt her forward momentum at the last moment. That would never do! Jandago dropped from the ceiling, flipped around, and brought a foot smashing into the small of the woman's back, sending her plummeting down to the lower level below as well. This was just too easy!

"Bad idea, buddy!" said Rale as he swiped at the shadowdancer with both of his blades.

Surprisingly, neither blade hit, as the dark-clad foe dodged nimbly under the swords and then leaped back up to the ceiling, where he ran across its length to the other side of the room. Rale stashed his swords and pulled out his shortbow, tracking the enemy's movements as he ran across the ceiling like a fly. Rale could see that this was once an apparently sturdily-built castle, but the floor of this room had given out some time ago and collapsed to the dungeon level below, which was partially filled with water. "You guys okay down there?" he called as he tracked the upside-down foe and let loose an arrow in his direction - which, annoyingly, the shadowdancer snagged out of the air and cast aside like so much rubbish.

"Fine," replied Feron, wildshaping into an eagle and flying back up to the level above, far enough away from the broken floor that she should be safe before resuming her normal form.

"Okay," said Chalkan, getting up off of Akari and looking at his surroundings.

"Been better," croaked Akari, face and hair dripping with foul, black water.

While Feron and Rale traded blows with Jandago up above, Akari and Chalkan looked for a way back up. They were in a basement level, with chunks of stone scattered about, debris from the collapsed floor above, the whole area drenched in several inches of dark water. Many glistening bodies were in evidence; closer examination showed these to be leeches. And then a flash of movement revealed a more evident threat, a dark-skinned grick, no doubt altered by its existence on the Plane of Shadows to make it more in tune with its murky environment. As Akari and Chalkan regained their feet to face this threat, another of its kind wriggled from behind a chunk of fallen stone. The two shadow gricks kept the two adventurers busy down below while up one level, Feron and Rale were discovering another ability of Jandago, the self-appointed replacement Magpie.

Feron was well aware that many arcane spellcasters had familiars, and divine spellcasters - like herself - often had animal companions. But Jandago was the first shadowdancer she'd ever encountered, and thus his shadow companion came as a complete surprise. Having an undead creature as one's beck and call just seemed unnatural to the druid, and she did her best to keep the flitting thing away from her, while still attempting to keep an eye on the irritating shadowdancer, whose monk training gave him the flexibility to put his boots of levitation to good use; he jumped back and forth between floor and ceiling, and there were times Feron was positive that he had faded into one pool of shadows and exited from a different one across the room.

In the meantime, after Akari and Chalkan killed the pair of shadow gricks, they discovered they had bigger problems: the numerous leeches had all merged into a large, humanoid form and were headed in their direction. Both adventurers made grimaces and decided ranged weaponry was definitely the way to go against this foe. Of course, Chalkan's arrows tended to fly straight through the best, skewering half a dozen of the component leeches but doing little in the way to stop the composite creature. Akari's Deathstriker fared a little better, blasting a hole in the creature's body with each strike, but the remaining leeches always shifted around and reformed the humanoid beast, filling in any gaps. It was finally Feron, from above, whose constant movement during her fight with Jandago and his shadow companion brought her close enough to the hole's edge to see what they were up against, who dropped down a flame strike and fried the beast, allowing Akari and Chalkan to boost themselves one at a time back up to the upper level.

At that point, Jandago and his shadow companion found themselves outnumbered. The shadowdancer leapt across the opening to the dungeon level below and was about to run through the door to call for reinforcements. Akari, recognizing that this was not in the group's best interest, jumped at the shadowdancer, but missed and ended up plummeting back downstairs. Jandago saw this as a perfect opportunity, and he and his shadow companion jumped down there to flank Akari and hopefully take him out of the picture. That didn't go entirely the way he had envisioned: Akari triple-smote the shadowdancer, killing him in mere seconds. The shadow companion, for its part, decided at that point there was no real reason to continue the fight, and departed for parts unknown.

Jandago wore a key around his neck, which Rale took, certain that it opened his treasury, wherever that might be located.

An investigation into the rest of that level of the castle led to an encounter with a group of allied shadow kenku, but after an initial skirmish, the kenku realized they were outmatched and once they learned that their ally Jandago had been slain they suddenly lost all interest in combat whatsoever, going so far as to inform the group that the shadowdancer kept his stolen goods in a vault in the flooded level below.

Wading back down into the flooded lower level, the group found a locked vault door with a keyhole the same size as the key they had taken from Jandago. Rale checked the door for traps, found no evidence of anything untoward, and opened the vault door with the key. He got a surprise when, tugging the heavy door open, he saw the entire interior surface of the door was covered in wood that had been glued in place. The reason for this became obvious once the two starving rust monsters leaped forward, antenna waving at the swords on Rale's belt. He leaped back, and Feron blasted them with a spell, as Chalkan's arrows flew at them from a safe distance. They were dispatched without any trouble, but Rale was furious to see that the vault room was otherwise empty.

Still, Rale was familiar with the concept of the false vault, and decided the real one had to be elsewhere on the level. A close examination of the wall to the immediate left of the vault door revealed a secret panel, which, once they passed through it, revealed another vault door, identical in appearance to the one which housed the rust monsters. Still, having been tricked once, Rale was now on the alert and checked for secret doors in the vicinity before opening this second vault door. This proved to be a good idea, for he found a similar secret panel and a third vault just beyond; opening the third vault revealed not only the purloined portrait of Lord Stanwyck, but also numerous pouches of gems and canvas bags of coins. Rale whooped for joy at the discovery of the coins and gems - free loot for the group, since all they were hired to recover for Lord Stanwyck was his stupid portrait. (Actually, looking at the painting, Feron had to admit that it was very well done, giving Lord Stanwyck an undeserved appearance of nobility, with an almost regal bearing; much better than the creep deserved.)

The treasure was successfully transferred to the Daern's dollhouse for safekeeping, and the group backtracked their way to the magic mirror up in Jandago's bedroom. There was no way to take the mirror with them back through itself, so they left it in place and stepped through it back into the Magpie's Nest. They did take that mirror with them, and rather than bother Tsukitora again, Akari had everyone else pile into the Daern's dollhouse while he let his ring of feather falling transport him back down to the city below.

Lord Stanwyck was suitably pleased at the return of his portrait in time for the gala, and paid the group the sum he had quoted. The magic mirror was turned over to the Adventurers Guild, to decide what to do with it; some in the group wanted to destroy it to ensure it couldn't be used by the shadow kenku to infiltrate the material plane, while others argued that the pair would make a useful tool if the second one could be taken from Jandago's room on the Plane of Shadows. If this second option was the one decided upon, the task was given to a different Wing, for the Wing Three members never heard anything else about it.

ADVENTURE 56 - REVENGE OF THE DARKLORD

PC Roster:
Toofles Pigwilligan had been busy since he remanifested several days after having been destroyed. He had created another pair of negabombs, for one thing. The first one he used almost immediately upon its completion, dropping it unerringly in the middle of a gnomish village, which shunted a chunk of their real estate to the Negative Energy Plane; the chunk of village he ignored, seeking only the bodies of the gnomes that had been shunted along with their homes. This gave Toofles - or, as he preferred to think of himself since he had attained lichdom, "Darklord Drago von Mordak" - nearly two dozen animated gnome skeletons as a new work force, and an effective form of camouflage if and when it was ever needed.

He also crafted a series of small constructs, each the size and shape of a scarab beetle. Into each of these he built the ability to hold a single, pre-chosen spell, which he stored into each device and then set aside until they were needed.

Rather than waste another negabomb for his next step, he traveled to the material plane himself and gathered hundreds of living scarab beetles, then carefully killed each one in a manner in which they could still be successfully animated as undead. He performed this ritual back in the safety and comfort of his lair on the Negative Energy Plane.

He crafted an extradimensional storage device quite similar in size and appearance to his negabombs, then filled it with the contents he had built it for.

He spent some time repairing the damage that the adventurers had done to his extraplanar craft, built upon the skeletal structure of a triceratops and enhanced with the fused bones of a variety of different creatures. Fortunately, the engine, powered by the destruction of magic items, had not been badly damaged.

He took the time to hunt down and round up the dragon turtle zombie that the living adventurers had successfully turned when they had first met and fought. The mindless thing had apparently been traveling in a straight line since it had been turned, and thus was some distance away, but the Darklord had scried it with the device in his scrying room, opened a portal directly in front of its path of movement, and steered it back into its hangar.

He cast a contingency spell that he hoped would never be necessary, but he knew it was always best to be prepared, especially for the worst.

He spent some time scrying on the adventurers who had slain him, here in his secret lair, in what should have been his place of power and safety, and learned their names, their abilities, and their general habits.

Finally, he contacted a gnome assassin he'd had dealings with in the past, and hired him for another job. The assassin didn't need to know that this would be his final job; he was expendable, after all, and his potential future usefulness was insignificant when balanced against the need to destroy anyone who knew of the Darklord's existence, and, more importantly, of the location of his secret lair. Bad enough that there were living beings aware of the Darklord's existence as a lich; the fact that these were adventurers, who routinely set themselves on the path of the destruction of undead, made it all the worse. Toofles hadn't lived a century as a gnome and another as a lich, with untold millennia ahead of him in which he could expect to continue his undead existence, by leaving alive those who could put a stop to him. He was just lucky that his phylactery hadn't been found and destroyed, or he'd have been finished for good!

Now, all was finally in readiness. The five who knew of him were named Akari, Cal Trop, Chalkan, Feron Dru, and Gwendolyn Fine. The first four worked together in an Adventurers Guild in Greyhawk City; they'd be the first targets. After studying their routines, the Darklord decided it would be difficult to get those four, and those four alone, all at once, as they didn't always work as a team together, but interchanged their party with another four from their Wing; better to strike when he could get most of them in one fell swoop, and pick off the stragglers later. He gave descriptions of his targets to the gnome assassin, and told him to strike when he could get at least three of them at once. And then he waited.

And if there was one thing a lich was good at, it was waiting.

- - -

Cal strode proudly out of the Temple of Kord, his companions trailing behind him. It had been a glorious morning! At the Head Cleric's request, Cal had given the morning sermon, followed by leading a vigorous workout there in the arena that showed off his fabulous strength. The acolytes - and a few who had wandered into the church upon hearing that Cal would be there - were clearly in awe of this mere mortal who now had the blood of Kord Himself running through his veins.

Akari, Chalkan, and Delphyne followed their friend out of the church, and were amused to see that Cal's time in the spotlight hadn't ended, for there was a small crowd forming around him. Some just wanted to touch his robe; others asked him to grant him a blessing; one shapely young woman, Joslyn, informed him that she finished her shift at the Merry Mermaid Tavern at ten bells, after which time she was available if he wanted to show her some of his "feats of strength" in private. Cal did his best to give everyone what they wanted - and made a mental note to swing by the Merry Mermaid Tavern that evening, say, around ten bells. His companions just smiled at each other.

"He's loving this!" commented Delphyne.

"Ah, let him enjoy it," remarked Akari. "He was singled out by his own deity - that's quite a distinction."

As the small crowd finally dispersed, one lone straggler approached the group. This was a cheery-looking gnome. "Would you be Cal Trop, the cleric Blessed by Kord Himself?" gushed the little fellow.

"I am indeed!" grinned Cal, smiling down at the gnome. "And what can I do for you, fellow?"

"My name is Gabble Grindymelon, and I was asked to give you something, a token of appreciation, as it were."

"What's this?" Cal asked, looking back and winking at his companions. "A secret admirer? And does she have a name?"

"It's a 'he,' actually," responded Gabble, reaching into a pouch at his side and pulling out two small spheres, one white and one black. Then, as he threw them to the ground at Cal's feet, he called out, "And his name is Darklord Drago von Mordak!"

The white sphere hit the ground first and shattered. From it flew hundreds - if not thousands - of beetles, which flew in all directions and covered the four adventurers in mere seconds. Unseen in this swarm were four mechanical constructs, each the same general size and shape of the undead scarabs which formed a cloud all around them; these each climbed onto an adventurer and tucked itself away - under a belt, inside a boot - before awaiting the shunting. This came mere seconds later, when the black sphere - the negabomb - struck the street, exploding into a familiar sphere that sent the four adventurers, the gnome, and a small hemisphere of the ground beneath them over to the Negative Energy Plane.

All but Delphyne had experienced this before - the instant plunging from daylight to pitch black, the rapid dissipation of the air around them, and the immediate leeching of the very life-energy that kept them alive and breathing.

Cal was the first to react, and said the words to a plane shift spell that would immediately return them to Oerth. Unfortunately, by that time the scarab construct had activated, and Cal was under the effects of a spell similar to dimensional anchor, which prevented travel from one plane to another. (He didn't know it, but it would have allowed transport to elsewhere on the same plane.) Fortunately, Delphyne had an attune form spell ready, and cast it with her last breath upon herself and her three adventuring companions. The four felt their bodies attuning themselves to exist in this lifeless realm, and no longer felt the draining of their life essences that made adventuring on the Negative Energy Plane such a deadly prospect.

Not so Gabble, however. Before their very eyes - once Akari brought out a sun rod, which gave off a weak illumination on the dark plane - they could see the cheery-looking gnome wither away and die, transforming almost immediately into a wraith. He wasn't much of a threat, though: Cal held up his holy symbol of Kord and blasted the gnomish wraith into nothingness. The blast also destroyed a wide swath of the undead scarabs as well, and the rest were easily avoidable, as the adventurers could opt to "fall" to one side in the gravityless plane, whereas the undead beetles lacked the intellect to do so; they just hung in a cloud, slowly drifting away.

"So, the Darklord's back," said Akari with a grim look on his face.

"Yes, the Darklord's back," said the gnome lich to himself, watching from his scrying room and opening an intraplanar rift from his lair to right beside the adventurers, before sending four more wraiths bounding after them into the void. Then he gathered up the members of the next wave to follow.

A swirling, purplish hole suddenly opened up in the nothingness of the Negative Energy Plane, and out of the twisting vortex flew four more gnome-sized wraiths. They didn't fare much better; Cal destroyed three of them in a single turning attempt, and Akari's Hoardmaster took care of the last.

"Well, this is fun," commented Chalkan. "So, are we going to hang around here all day and blast whatever comes out of that vortex?"

"Maybe we should enter it ourselves, and see where it leads to," said Delphyne, unpacking the broom from its holder on her back and sitting upon it. She knew she didn't need her broom to fly around in this weightless environment, but it just seemed weird doing so without it.

"I don't know," argued Akari. "It could be a trap."

"How could we tell?" countered Cal. "And what's our other plan? We have an infinite plane of existence - or nonexistence, whatever - out here; how are we going to find the Darklord's lair if we don't try going through the vortex?"

Back at the Darklord's lair, he had been gathering up the members of the second wave, so he missed the adventurers discussing plans among themselves. Had he heard they were going to try going through the vortex, he'd have done nothing, for the vortex was calibrated to allow only non-living matter to pass; had they jumped through the vortex they'd have ended up in his lair, all right, but they'd have perished doing so. However, he had his second wave ready to go, so he sent them through the vortex and eagerly watched to see the results from his scrying room. "This should weaken them considerably," he smirked to himself, watching the second wave appear in the adventurers' vicinity. "Then I'll go through and finish them off myself!"

"Incoming!" shouted Chalkan, grabbing up a wand from his belt. The others, up until now engaged in a discussion on whether or not to go through the spinning vortex, watched as the Darklord's dragon turtle zombie passed through its purplish center. Mounted upon its back was the Darklord himself, nine feet of skeletal equiceph that the adventurers knew was a simple illusion cast upon the gnome lich's true form. Flanking him on all sides were five gnomish skeletons. Each of the skeletons raised a hand as if to throw something.

Chalkan beat them to it and sent off a blast from his wand of fireball. The bead-sized pellet of energy struck the dragon turtle zombie and exploded into a small fireball. And that's when the Darklord's meticulous plans all went awry.

Each of the skeletons - including "the Darklord," who was nothing but a sixth gnome skeleton wearing an illusion of Toofle's skeletal equiceph persona - had been holding a bead from a necklace of fireballs and was preparing to throw it at one of the adventurers. Toofles had anticipated that the multiple, near-simultaneous explosions of flame would have cut the adventurers down to size. Instead, each of the six beads was engulfed in the fireball from Chalkan's wand, and each was set off prematurely while still held in the hands of the gnome skeletons standing upon the dragon turtle zombie.

The resulting explosion not only ripped apart the six skeletons, but the dragon turtle zombie was instantly reduced to a fine mist, which expanded equally in all directions.

"Holy crap!" called out Chalkan, surprised at the efficacy of his simple wand. Back at his lair, Toofles Pigwilligan was equally surprised, and it was only the lich's inability to produce tears that kept him from bawling uncontrollably. Instead, he quietly opted not to confront the adventurers himself just quite yet after all, and raced upstairs to make preparations for what he knew would be coming next.

"Get ready for the next wave!" suggested Cal, maneuvering himself to face the spinning vortex. The other adventurers followed his lead, but no further wave came.

"Is that it?" asked Chalkan after awhile. "Did the Darklord grab us here just to throw an exploding turtle at us?"

"Let's go find out," suggested Cal, starting to float closer to the vortex, with every apparent indication of entering it himself.

"Hold on!" called Akari. "I still don't know if I want to trust traveling through that thing."

"Well, how else are we going to find his lair?" demanded Cal.

"I might have another way," replied Delphyne. "I have a teleport spell ready, but I've never been to his lair before. Can you describe it for me?"

"Well, it's carved out of a chunk of floating rock," began Cal.

"There's a kind of dock out front," added Akari.

"He's got a hangar where he kept his dragon turtle zombie, and another one above it for his triceratops-skeleton-extraplanar-vehicle-thingy," added Chalkan.

"There aren't any doors in the whole place," added Cal, "just doorways covered in illusory walls - very confusing."

"Tell you what," suggested Akari. "Just concentrate on a big hunk of rock, like a lumpy sphere, with a wooden dock sticking out of it. There can't be too many objects like that on this whole plane."

"There aren't too many objects of any kind on this whole plane," commented Cal.

"Here goes," said the young witch, casting her teleport spell. Instantly, the group found themselves facing a big hunk of rock, like a lumpy sphere, with a wooden dock sticking out of it. "Does this look right?" she asked the group.

"That's it, all right," replied Akari. "Let's go in through the hangar door." And by simply concentrating, he flew over to the side of the rock, the others following.

"Where's the door?" asked Delphyne.

"Right below us," replied the elf. "It's an illusory wall. Now would be a good time to buff up, then we'll go in together." Cal and Delphyne each cast a stoneskin spell upon themselves, Akari cast a protection from evil spell, and Chalkan cast a resist energy spell on himself in case there was any more of this exploding turtle nonsense. Then, upon Akari's command, they flew through the solid-seeming door and into a wide hangar.

It was the dragon turtle zombie's hangar, and it was thus empty.

"Nobody home," said Cal, heading to where he remembered there being a stairs. "Let's try upstairs."

Sure enough, up in the extraplanar vehicle hangar, they found Toofles Pigwilligan. Actually, they found 17 of him - each carrying his staff made of curved bone. And they weren't alone, either, for the lich had had a replacement clay golem completed, as well as repaired his extraplanar craft.

"Attack!" cried one of the gnome skeletons, and they each made as if casting a spell. A bead came flying in from somewhere in the back ranks, and a fireball engulfed the group. Chalkan smirked knowingly, pleased with his own preparations.

"Two can play at that game!" called Delphyne, and lobbed a fireball spell back at the group of gnome skeletons, destroying all within its explosive radius. In the meantime, the clay golem had lurched over to Cal, who battled it with his mace, and Akari busied himself avoiding getting gored by the triceratops-craft's horns. Chalkan decided fireballs had been lucky for him this day, and stuck to his wand rather than using his bow. Each fireball destroyed the gnome skeletons in its radius, quickly eliminating all but one - who had to be Toofles.

Toofles countered with an invisibility spell to hide his location, and raced over to enter his extraplanar craft. Delphyne and Chalkan blanketed the area with more fireballs, sure that one of them would get the crafty little gnome lich. And they did, without knowing for sure which one had brought him down.

But Toofles had one more surprise in store for the group. As his body became visible once more in death - he had almost made it to the extraplanar craft, which would have offered him an escape route - his disembodied voice rang out in the open area of the hangar, "Destroy those who have slain me, lest they prevent my return!" A dark blast of energy exploded around his fallen bones, and in his place stood the shadowy form of a 20-foot-tall humanoid. The nightwalker looked around at the living foes standing beneath him, and went to work.

Delphyne, out of fireballs by this time, cast a lightning bolt at the giant humanoid form. Cal, just about finished with the clay golem but recognizing the nightwalker to be a more serious threat, cast a holy word at it. Chalkan, wand still in hand and with plenty of charges, lobbed a fireball its way. The nightwalker seemed unfazed by the spells, and stalked over towards Cal.

"Uh oh," said Cal. "Guys? We might want to retreat from this thing!"

Retreat sounded pretty good by that time. Cal led the retreat right through the illusory wall of the extraplanar craft hangar, leaving the craft and the golem behind. The nightwalker followed, but the adventurers all linked hands to keep themselves from getting separated, stashed their light sources away, and sped straight ahead for the count of ten, then made a right-angle turn for another count of ten, then switched to "down" (or what seemed like "down" to them at the time) for another ten-count, and so on. Eventually, the nightwalker lost track of them, and they retraced their path back to the Darklord's lair.

Figuring that the extraplanar craft and the clay golem would stay where they were for the moment instead of go looking for them, the four heroes started making a sweep of the rest of the Darklord's lair. Since accidentally releasing the lich Nakariah from Joniah the Avenger's crypt, the group had learned all about liches and their phylacteries, and vowed not to leave the Darklord's lair before his own phylactery had been discovered and destroyed. It took them a good while to find it, as it was hidden behind a secret door that was only accessible from 10 feet up, behind a stairwell, and another good while to catch it, for Toofles had grafted on skeletal fingers to the box that allowed it to scurry around like a bone spider, but eventually the troublesome thing had been caught. Cal had the honor of smashing it to pieces with his mace.

"I guess that's about it," he said, once the phylactery was as dead as the Darklord. "I don't see any reason to hang out here any longer" - before belatedly recalling that he had already tried, and failed, to cast his one plane shift spell he'd prepared for the day. Fortunately, he had a backup with him on a scroll, but he wanted to figure out what had prevented the spell from working before giving it a shot with his scroll. It was Delphyne who figured out the problem, when she scratched her shoulder underneath her long hair and bumped into the scarab construct that had been hiding there, on the strap to her broom harness. A quick examination of each other turned up three more such beetles, each promptly ground under the heel of Cal's boot.

"Let's go," boomed Cal, gathering his companions up around him as he read the words of the plane shift scroll that would return them to Oerth, where their Guild rings would then allow them to "bink" back to headquarters.

As he did so, he mentally wondered what time it was, and if he had already missed the end of Joslyn's shift at the Merry Mermaid Tavern.

ADVENTURE 57 - RESCUE FROM AFAR

PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
This adventure was unlike anything I'd ever done before. I had come up with an idea for a cool type of magic item, and wrote the whole adventure around a handful of such things. In doing so, I created the seeds for a bunch of adventures to follow.

- - -

It was a typically boisterous time at the Pit-Fight, a local tavern on the outskirts of the Styes. It was late in the evening, but there was still a large crowd around the pit, where a fierce battle raged between a dire wolverine and an owlbear. Between the roars of the fighting beasts down in the pit below and the cheering spectators ringing the rails above, it was a particularly noisy night.

Suddenly, above the noise of the combat, there came a piercing scream. Rale had just enough time to turn and see a young woman in a long, white nightgown materialize out of nowhere at the edge of the rails, her hair and nightwear blazing in flames, before she lost her balance and plummeted into the pit below, where the bloodthirsty combatants ripped at each others’ flesh amid growls and roars. She landed on her back in the sand, scattering a handful of items at her side, and had the good sense to start rolling around to douse the flames. However, doing so brushed her up against the owlbear, who fortunately kept its gaze focused on the snarling dire wolverine attempting to rip it to pieces.

The reaction of the crowd above was varied. Some called for the beastmasters to put an end to the fight. Others called for the fight to be suspended, due to the interference of the noncombatant. Others started making wagers as to whether the foolish girl would be killed by the owlbear or the dire wolverine.

As if unaware of the danger represented by the two fighting beasts around her, the young woman made a mad scramble to gather up the items she had dropped in her fall, grabbing them to her as if her very life depended on it. They she started floating up out of the pit, a fact she barely noticed as she snagged the last of the items, which looked like narrow wands with small octagons at the far end. Only then did she look around her in puzzlement as she levitated up and over the upper edge of the pit, to come to a standing stop in the corner, right next to a dashing young wizard in fancy robes and a short mustache and goatee.

"It's a good thing I had a telekinesis spell readied today," said Telgrane, introducing himself to the frazzled young lady.

"You're a wizard!" she exclaimed. "I need your help! My master--the manor--assassins--!"

"Calm down," reassured Telgrane, waving his companions over to him. He took Rale's drink from his hands and offered it to the young lady, much to the dislike of the astonished rogue. "Here, drink this, then tell us what's the problem." By this time, Galrich, Aerik, and Feron had wandered over to see what was up.

"Is there someplace safe where we can talk?" asked the woman after guzzling down Rale's ale.

"We can take you back to our Headquarters," suggested Telgrane, while removing his cloak and wrapping it around the woman's shoulders - she was, after all, wearing only her nightgown.

"Then we must hurry," she decided, heading for the door. "I'll tell you what I know on the way there."

The woman's story was an unusual one. She introduced herself as Rebecca Starfall, an apprentice to Dr. Pythagoras Greymantle, an Archmage who lived in a manor on the outskirts of Greyhawk City. Living there with them was Delmond Ravensbrook, another apprentice, and the Doctor's good friend of many years, Pinwhistle.

"I'm not sure how they got past the building's defenses," continued Rebecca, "but somehow the manor was infiltrated tonight by assassins. They've got Dr. Greymantle and Delmond, and are torturing them for information. Apparently they've subdued Pinwhistle as well, leaving only me to stop them. And they would have gotten me, too, no doubt, if I hadn't already been awakened by Mr. Scruffles – that’s my cat familiar – when they showed up.

"I'm not very powerful, as wizards go, and I haven't prepared any spells yet today, but I do know the layout of the manor and where Thag – I mean, Dr. Greymantle" – and here she blushed furiously – "keeps a lot of his equipment. I know he'll reward you if you can rescue him and the others from the assassins currently attacking the manor's inhabitants.

"Along those lines, we normally have a magical field up around the manor, preventing anyone from teleporting in or slipping in from other planes. I know it was in place when we all turned in for the night, and it’s still up now, so I don’t know how the assassins managed to get in, but with the field up, there's no way I know of that we can get inside. However, I believe we can help Dr. Greymantle and the others...with these." And with that, she laid the oddly-shaped wands upon the table in Wing Three's common living area.

"These are telepresence control rods," explained Rebecca, sorting through them by the silhouettes inscribed in the octagonal surfaces. "Beetle, marmoset, elephant, fairy, viper, and centipede. Each one is linked to a small figurine back in the manner. You control it like this." And with that, she picked up one of the rods - the beetle - and held it up to her forehead, closing her eyes. "Just by concentrating, I can see through the beetle construct's eyes, see what it sees, and move it around. It looks like I'm on the fireplace, looking out into the living room area."

Everyone grabbed up a control rod and followed her example. Feron picked up the marmoset. "I'm high up," she declared, "looking out over a kitchen area."

"I think you're up on the pantry cupboard," remarked Rebecca. "Look over to your right, you should be able to see two of the assassins in the living room, trying to get to through the door to the hangar."

"I see them," Feron confirmed. "Two elves."

"I see them too!" exclaimed Rale, who was looking through the eyes of an elephant figurine that had been left underneath a sofa. "But it can't be--they're dead!"

"Who?" asked Aerik, who had taken the viper. "I can't see anything!"

"Um, you might be in a kitchen drawer," said Rebecca. "Here, try this one." She passed over the beetle control rod, and Aerik peered through the beetle's eyes at two young elves. One was clad in tight-fitting black leather armor, with a wide assortment of knives and daggers protruding from sheaths on her belt, in her boots, on her back, and on her forearms. The other was a white-clad sorceress, with a strange lump of something on her shoulder. She was looking down at the door and pointing, apparently offering suggestions to the thief. Her hair was as white as her cloak, and cut in an odd bowl shape that gave her head the appearance of a mushroom cap.

"I see 'em," replied the dwarf. "So who are they?"

"They're the assassins that Gareth sent after us!" exclaimed Rale. "Only we killed them!"

"So they were resurrected," commented Aerik. "It happens."

"Yeah, but no fair!" complained Rale.

Telgrane had chosen the fairy, and saw that he was perched on a shelf in the living room. He saw the two elves as well, and recognized them. "It's them all right," he said. "Were there perhaps four assassins in all?" he asked Rebecca.

"Yes, I think so," the apprentice confirmed.

"I imagine the other two are Bunny and Barbie, then, given that those two are Kitten and Candi."

"Which one's the one in white?"

"That's Kitten."

"She's the one who blasted me with a flame spell," Rebecca said. "I had made it safely to the kitchen, and was reading the words of a teleport scroll to get me to the Pit-Fight - it was the only place I could think of that might have adventurers who could help me - when she got me. I imagine I must have been quite the fright, popping in like that, all aflame!"

"Hey, I think I'm in a glass case," interrupted Galrich. "And how come we can't hear what they're saying?"

"Yes, you're in a display case, with some small statues and figurines," confirmed Rebecca. "And the magical constructs only allow us to see and feel through them, not hear, or taste, or smell. But they can't hear us, either."

"So is that all we can do?" asked Telgrane.

It turned out that each figurine had different properties, as Rebecca quickly explained. The fairy could fly and turn invisible. The marmoset was a good climber and had excellent manual dexterity. The beetle could store visual images that could be played back later, and it could walk on walls. So could the centipede, but it had something even more useful: if it bit somebody on the back of the neck, it could dominate them. The viper had two ampules of poison that could be loaded into its back, which could them be injected into anyone it bit. The elephant was the biggest of the figurines, and very strong.

"Okay, then, what's the plan?" asked Galrich. Rebecca had everybody remove their various control rods, and return their attention to their current whereabouts, mainly the Wing Three living area. She quickly sketched out a map of the Greymantle manor, showing Dr. Greymantle's room, Delmond's room, and her own room upstairs, and Pinwhistle's quarters downstairs. Each of the other three were likely being tortured in their own rooms, so they could try to rescue them. Optionally, Rebecca pointed out that Dr. Greymantle had an apparatus of Kwalish in the garage by the horse-carriage that he had been working on, so if they could make their way there they might be able to pilot it against the assassins.

"I've got a better idea," said Galrich. "I wanna bite one of those assassins on the neck and remote control them like I'm doing this centipede!"

"You'll have to get out of that glass display case first," Rebecca commented. "And I don't know if the centipede is strong enough to do so on its own." Galrich tried, and was dismayed that as strong as he was in real life, it made no difference to the strength of the centipede construct.

"Okay, here's what we'll do," suggested Telgrane. "Rebecca, you take the beetle and head down the hall to check on both Greymantle and Delmond, see who's with them, and what they're up to. Feron, you get to the kitchen drawer that Aerik's viper is in, open it up, load it up with poison, and we'll let Aerik go bite Candi on the leg, maybe put her out of action. I'll fly over to the glass display cabinet and free Galrich's centipede, and then he can climb up to the ceiling and drop down on Kitten, and then he can use her as his proxy to go kill the others."

"What about me?" asked Rale, piloting the elephant under the sofa.

"You act as lookout," replied Telgrane. "Keep Kitten and Candi in view, and let us know if they spot any of us."

"Got it," replied Rale.

"Then let's go," said Telgrane, mentally turning his fairy construct invisible and flying over to the glass display case across the living room, where he could see a metal centipede pushing in vain against the glass door. What he didn't see - but what Rale saw clearly through the eyes of his lookout elephant construct - was that the lump on Kitten's shoulder lifted its head and looked over at the invisible fairy as it flew past. By the time Telgrane had maneuvered the fairy over to the glass door of the display case and pulled it open with the centipede's help, the white drake had leapt off its mistress's shoulder and flew straight for the invisible fairy.

"Incoming!" called out Rale, but he was a bit too late, for the drake swatted the fairy with one set of claws, sending the invisible fairy flying into the leg of a chair. Its delicate wings must have shattered, for all of a sudden Telgrane could no longer get it to fly.

"It's still after me!" called out Telgrane. "It must be able to see me!"

"Over here, quick!" yelled Rale. "Under the sofa!" Telgrane maneuvered the fairy across the floor from the chair to the sofa, running past the elephant figurine. When the drake followed, Rale grabbed it around the neck with the elephant's trunk and held it tight. Kitten looked over at her drake with a frown, assumed it was after a mouse or something, and looked back at the door, which Candi was having no luck with picking.

By that time, Galrich had scurried the centipede up the wall, across the ceiling, and directly above Kitten. He dropped, letting gravity direct the multilimbed construct onto the sorcerer's shoulder, then scurried it over to the back of her neck and chomped its mouthparts into her flesh. "Got her!" he cried in triumph, as the sorceress stiffened in surprise. Then, controlling the sorceress as well as the centipede construct, Galrich maneuvered Kitten over to the sofa, where she bent down, grabbed up the white drake, and casually wrung its neck. Then he had her fling it behind the sofa, out of view.

"This is great!" he enthused.

While all of this was going on, Feron had had the marmoset figurine jump down off of the pantry cabinet, scurry across the counter top over to the drawer where the viper was kept, and helped Aerik open the drawer. She jumped the marmoset into the drawer, scrounged around until she found the two poison vials, inserted one of them into the back of the viper's head, and Aerik slithered the viper across the kitchen counter, down to the floor, and over to Candi's leg, where he gave her a quick bite. The metallic fangs in the viper construct bit deep into the elf rogue's leg, pumping venom into it. The elf jumped and shrieked in surprise, but then was further surprised to see Kitten bearing down on her with a dagger raised in one hand. She raised an arm to try to resist, but the paralytic poison did its work and she was too sluggish to stop Kitten from dragging the dagger across her throat, ending her life for a second time.

"Dr. Greymantle's tied to his bed, being tortured by a human assassin," reported Rebecca with a shiver in her voice. "Delmond's tied to his bed, being tortured by a drow."

"I'm on it!" said Galrich, marching Kitten down the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

"I'll go see about freeing Pinwhistle," said Feron, hopping her marmoset down the stairs.

"Aerik, you're with me," said Rale, marching his elephant from under the sofa and heading down to the beginning of the bedroom hallway. "We'll be tripping hazards, as needed."

"Aye," replied the dwarf, slithering the viper into position. Telgrane, his fairy construct invisible but unable to fly, positioned it where he could see down the hallway without being seen, and acted as lookout.

Barbie looked up as Kitten approached, and apparently asked something of the sorceress as she entered. Galrich, being unable to read lips, had no idea what was said, and didn't think he could bluff his way through any attempt at conversation, so he leapt Kitten at the human assassin and attempted stabbing her with Kitten's dagger. Barbie, however, had trained as a fighter before becoming an assassin and easily rolled out of the way. She wasn't sure what was going on, but she knew enough to know that Kitten had been compromised, and was thus expendable. She pulled the longsword from her scabbard and attacked her erstwhile partner in crime.

Galrich didn't particularly care who won that fight, and when Barbie was eventually victorious he simply climbed the centipede construct off of Kitten, scampered it under Greymantle's bed, and then up the fighter's leg once she returned her attention to her bound captive. Before long, the centipede had taken over Barbie's body, and Dr. Greymantle was visibly astonished when his tormentor suddenly stopped carving into his chest with a dagger, sat upright, and then began cutting him free from his bonds. A look of understanding crossed his face when Barbie turned and lifted her blond hair off of the back of her neck, exposing the metal centipede positioned there.

Feron, in the meantime, had entered Pinwhistle's room and was astonished to see that he was some sort of a construct as well. "Oh, right, I didn't explain about Pinwhistle," said Rebecca sheepishly. "He's Dr. Greymantle's oldest friend, but he died long before Delmond and I met him. Pinwhistle's a kind of living construct, containing the original Pinwhistle's memories and intelligence. Believe it or not, he was a gnome." Feron looked up at the fierce-looking device, easily some seven feet tall, and had a hard time believing there was a gnomish intelligence inside the vicious-looking thing. "Is there supposed to be some sort of disk on his chest?" she asked, observing the three-inch metal disk shooting arcs of electricity out in all directions every several seconds. Pinwhistle's otherwise unmoving form twitched and grimaced where he stood.

"No," replied Rebecca. "It's probably immobilizing him!"

Feron used the marmoset figurine to scamper up the construct's body. When she got it to his chest, she grabbed it with both hands and pulled. Then she got a shock - quite literally - as the energy flowed through the marmoset figurine, through the control rod, and into the elven druid. Back at Headquarters, Feron fell back off her chair and collapsed onto the ground. Telgrane detached himself from the fairy construct long enough to see that she was okay. She was, and both heroes plugged themselves back into their respective constructs. Feron was pleased to see that the marmoset had managed to pull the immobilization disk off of Pinwhistle, a fact that Telgrane was able to confirm when he saw the massive construct stomping up the stairs.

At that point, everyone converged into Delmond's bedroom. Bunny, the drow assassin, was shocked to see her attempts to pry information out of a noncompliant victim interrupted by not only Pinwhistle and Greymantle, but also, oddly enough, Barbie. She whirled her blade at the trio, but Pinwhistle got the drop on her with a spell, dropping a flame strike spell onto her head, which kept her busy enough for the living construct to cross over to the other side of the bed - which took him all of two strides - and grab the startled drow around the throat with a massive fist. Then he looked over at Dr. Greymantle, who gave a slight nod of permission, and he throttled the life out of his captive.

While Dr. Greymantle removed the bonds from Delmond's feet and hands, Galrich walked Barbie over to the kitchen table and sat her at a chair. When Dr. Greymantle returned with Delmond, he brought the bonds with him and tied Barbie securely to the chair. Then he had Pinwhistle confirm that their captive assassin was bound sufficiently tightly, while he gathered up a piece of paper and a quill pen and started writing. Several of the constructs gathered around to see what he was writing.

His first sentence was "Rebecca, I assume that's you?" As Rebecca was still maneuvering the beetle over to the kitchen, Feron had the marmoset give Greymantle a quick head nod and a thumbs-up. Greymantle resumed writing.

"You're all right?" was the second sentence. Again, Feron responded in the affirmative.

"Do you have a means of returning here if I drop the field?" Greymantle inquired next. Again, Feron responded for the group, and then everybody released themselves from their constructs. Rale went upstairs to wake Delphyne, who could teleport them directly to Greymantle's manor. She complained that she'd never been there before, but after peeking through the eyes of a construct and getting a good look at the kitchen, she announced she should be able to teleport everyone over there without any problem. By that time, the others had awakened, and wanted to see what all was going on.

As a result, nine adventurers and Rebecca all teleported from Wing Three of the Adventurers Guild to Dr. Greymantle's kitchen and living room area. Introductions were made all around, and the Archmage thanked them for their help.

"What did they want?" asked Galrich.

"They were interrogating me on several subjects," replied Greymantle. "They wanted to know how to turn off the field surrounding the manor, which prevented anyone from gaining access. And they wanted to know how to get through the door to the hangar."

"What's in the hangar?" asked Rale.

"An experimental craft I'm working on," replied the Archmage. "I call it the Planar Scout, and it's about ready for its maiden voyage. I imagine these four were hired to steal it."

"Who hired you?" asked Rebecca, looking down at a bound Barbie, her mind once again her own now that the centipede construct had been removed from the back of her neck.

"Don't know, don't care, wouldn't tell you if I knew," snarled the assassin. "We got hired by a proxy - standard procedure in our circles, for this very reason."

"Yeah?" asked Pinwhistle, leaning in towards the bound captive and doing his best to look intimidating, an admittedly easy task for the seven-foot-tall construct, crafted from equal parts stone, wood, and metal. "Well, let's just see what we can find out about yer boss, anyway." He began the words of a divination spell, casting his mind across the planes to answer the questions he had. "Hrrm," he muttered some time later, a sound of irritation in his voice.

"What have you learned, old friend?" asked Dr. Greymantle.

"Not much," admitted Pinwhistle. "These four were apparently hired by 'the unliving woman who has never died, hidden behind the door that doesn't belong.'"

"That's the problem with the gods," grumbled the Archmage. "They can't ever bother to be clear; everything's always cloaked in shadows and mystery."

"Let's not start this again," grumbled Pinwhistle, apparently not eager to resume an argument that had been going on between the two for years.

"Indeed," agreed Greymantle, turning his attention back to his bound captive. "Anything you'd like to tell us?" he asked Barbie. "Anything at all?" The assassin just glared her best glare at him, and said nothing. "I surmised as much," admitted Greymantle, and at a nod to Pinwhistle the massive construct snapped Barbie's neck, leaving her to collapse forward, quite dead. He looked up at Rebecca's squeal of surprise, and scowled at his apprentice. "We've all had a rather unpleasant evening," snapped the Archmage, visibly irritated. "She tortured us and would have killed us without any qualms at all, but for your own intervention; she has earned such a fate for herself by her own actions. But I must say, well done, Rebecca! That was some quick thinking indeed!" Greymantle's apprentice colored visibly at the praise.

"And many thanks to you as well!" the Archmage repeated, shaking each of the adventurers' hands in turn. He opened another drawer in his kitchen and pulled out a box of gems, presenting one to each of the heroes. These were ioun stones, and he passed them out in accordance with his own ideas about which would be the most useful based on his deductions about their respective roles as adventurers. "When the Planar Scout is ready for its first flight, you'll have to accompany us!"

As a final reward, Pinwhistle used his additional questions from his divination spells to inquire about the futures of the adventurers. Here's what he came up with:

• AERIK: "None need carry an anvil for his whole life; but placing it in the correct spot at the correct time makes for years of harmonious forge work."
• AKARI: "Remember always that a book by its cover should not be judged, nor the heart of a man by his physical appearance."
• CAL: "To those subsisting on sips of water, the mere chance for a taste of nectar may be too great a temptation to pass up."
• CHALKAN: "Beware he who pulls the strings of the Slayer, for he means your death."
• DELPHYNE: "Coventry has spent far too long in slumber; 'tis time it was awakened."
• FERON: "Even the fiercest of cats may eventually acknowledge a master – but never two."
• GALRICH: "No more than a warrior without a blade is a wizard powerless without spells, has he friends to see him through hardship."
• RALE: "The woman who will one day give you her hand will die before you can put your ring upon it."
• TELGRANE: "The burning desire in your heart will keep you alive when all seems lost."

- - -

This whole adventure was an experiment. The bulk of it was spent running the constructs throughout Dan and Vicki's house, which by a fortunate coincidence was the exact same layout of the Greymantle Manor. I had originally written the adventure with five constructs (one each for my four players plus one for Rebecca), when I realized that Joey would expect to have one too. So I hurriedly created another telepresence control rod, the elephant. (I actually built these props, using chopsticks from my local Chinese restaurant, which I poked through 3D octagons I built from cardboard, and upon which I drew the relevant creature's silhouette.) However, when I placed all six rods on the table, everybody just grabbed one and Joey ended up with the viper. We ran the whole adventure with Joey running a character, and it wasn't until the end of the session that I realized Joey had done an excellent job paying attention to what was happening in the game, running his character (even if his character in this session was a plastic snake I bought for a dollar at Wal-Mart).

However, it was still kind of early at the end of this adventure, so we started up the next adventure and then I stopped it at an appropriate stopping point. That night, when I sent out my standard XP email, I pointed out how well Joey had played with us, noted that he was now eight years old (the same age Jacob had been when we first started this campaign), and offered to have him create a PC of his own (a real one, not his pretend one, "D. Andy," which was traditionally represented by a Star Wars mini), and have him join the group for good. Dan and Vicki both thought it was a good idea, but asked me to hold off until the completion of the adventure we had just started, since it took place in the Abyss and dealt with a bunch of demons, which they didn't feel was the best setting for Joey to jump into our campaign. But more on Joey's status as a player in a couple more writeups.

ADVENTURE 58 - BAD BLOOD

PC Roster:

NPC Roster:

When I wrote "Rescue from Afar," I intended it to be the first of a three-part story, with the second story involving finding out who hired the four female assassins to steal the Planar Scout from Dr. Greymantle, and the third one being an exploration of that person's lair. However, I couldn't resist the opportunity to sneak this adventure in here, when my players wouldn't be expecting it. As is usually the case when I have an adventure crafted for a specific individual, I recommended to Logan that he'd probably want to run Akari for this adventure, only I coached it in such a way that I made it seem just that Akari would be more useful on this adventure than Telgrane, as there would be some fiend-fighting going on. I let the other players decide who they'd be running.

- - -

A Guild page entered the Wing Three living quarters with a small box in his hand. "This came for you," he said. "I was told it was fragile, and that you should open it right away."

"Who brought it?" asked Cal.

"One of the local courier services," replied the Guild page, handing the box to Akari. "I didn't catch the kid's name, but I've seen him around before." Cal nodded, apparently satisfied, and the page departed.

Akari looked the box over. It had no markings; it appeared to be just a simple wooden box with a hinged lid and a metal clasp holding it closed. Opening it carefully, he saw an egg marked with various magical runes and glyphs lying nestled in a pile of soft grasses, and a hastily-scribbled note. It read:

Are you up for a quick excursion to the Lower Planes to go fiend hunting? If so, grab your gear, stand in a rough circle, and throw the egg down on the floor between you – it will save us all some time. I’m making preparations for your imminent arrival.
- G

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"Greymantle must have the Planar Scout ready to go!" piped in Delphyne. "Fiend hunting, huh? I'm in!"

"As am I!" agreed Akari, eager to test out the fiend bane properties he'd recently had added to Hoardmaster's magical attributes.

"I'm in, too!" added Cal. "I could go for some devil-bashing!"

"Same here!" agreed Galrich, gathering up a small arsenal of weapons and strapping them to his back, his belt, his boots, his forearms, and anywhere else he could find a spot.

"I'll go get m'gear," muttered Aerik to himself, seeing that the half-orc he was duty-bound to keep alive was about to voluntarily go to the Lower Planes to go pick a fight with some demons or devils. "Don't be leavin' without me!"

Once everyone was ready, they stood in a small circle and Akari raised the egg above his head, then threw it down to the floor between them. There was a sudden disconcerting twist to reality as space warped all around them, and then the five heroes were no longer in their living quarters in the Greyhawk City Adventurers Guild Headquarters. They eagerly looked around, expecting to see Dr. Greymantle loading up the Planar Scout, but they were nowhere to be seen, either.

No, this was decidedly different.

The group found themselves standing in a large, open room with the hulking presence of a shaggy creature combining the worst features of an ape and a boar, with ridiculously small feathered wings sprouting from his broad shoulders, standing before them. He stood three times the height of a man, but raised a hand in a welcoming gesture and fixed its grotesque mockery of a mouth into the approximation of a smile. His other hand held a white flag with the word "TRUCE" written upon it in the language of the Common tongue. "Welcome, mortals, to Castle Shatterhope, on the 119th layer of the Abyss, the Muckmire Fens. I am your host, Grottlepox the Puppeteer." Extending his hand in a sweeping gesture that encompassed the entire room, the group looked around and saw dozens if not hundreds of people lining the walls of the chamber, hanging from bones and sinews piercing their limbs. They moaned as if in constant pain.

"I mean you no harm," smiled the demon. "In fact, I have a proposition for you. Shall we talk?" Then, looking straight at Akari, the huge demon said, "You must be Akari. I must tell you, it amuses me to no end to discover that I have a great-great-grandson who has devoted himself to the life of a Hieronean paladin!" And with this, the demon wiped his eyes with a fat, clawed finger as his enormous belly shook with mirth and a gobbet of snot dribbled out of one of his piggish nostrils.

"WHAT?" demanded Akari, thunderstruck at the news that the nalfeshnee demon standing before him was his great-great-grandfather. The hulking brute stood in the center of a magical circle inscribed on the floor, by all looks a magic circle against good. Cal raised his mace and looked ready to put the circle's protective measures to the test.

But the nalfeshnee was ready for such antics. "Akari!" he cried out. "Unsheathe your sword and hold it to your throat!" To everyone's astonishment - not least of all Akari's - the paladin did exactly that. Sweat beaded down the elf's temple as he struggled to pull Hoardmaster away from his own jugular, to no avail.

"Now, everybody settle down, or be prepared to watch your friend carve his way through his own neck!" admonished Grottlepox. "I would also like to point out my little friends above," he smirked, directing the group's attention to the ceiling above him, where four large batlike creatures hung motionless, but with red eyes glaring. "These are my soul vultures," he crooned. "They can grab the soul of any mortal slain on the Abyss and drag it screaming to me for eternal torment, regardless of where it might otherwise have gone. So don’t be thinking you can just grab his body and run, to resurrect him later. Any of you who dies here gets to be my guest on a permanent basis. Now then, if I have your attention, shall we get back to our friendly chat?"

Cal gritted his teeth and swore an oath under his breath. Aerik stepped in front of Galrich, to prevent him from rushing the nalfeshnee demon who, for now at least, held all of the cards. Delphyne looked nervously around the room at the human "puppets" dangling from hooks along the ceiling and shivered, suddenly glad she had left Iggy back home.

"Much better," smiled Grottlepox. He then began his narrative by explaining Akari's lineage. Akari's great-great-grandmother, a wizard named Jaziria, summoned Grottlepox in an attempt to increase her personal power by forcing him to instruct her in advanced magic from the lower planes. While explaining this, Grottlepox motioned to one of his dangling puppets, and a 90-year-old woman came floating down from where she had been hung along the ceiling. Like the other "puppets," she was completely naked, and had bone spikes piercing through her feet, hands, scalp, lower jaw, and neck. She dangled by sinews from a handle of crossed bones; the effect was that of a marionette being made to move by a pair of invisible hands.

"He agreed," croaked Jaziria, "but the price was my body: he mated with me, siring a half-fiend human male named Excrezial, your great-grandfather." Excrezial sired a tiefling on an unwilling commoner woman. The resulting offspring, named Malechus, was Akari's grandfather. In turn, Malechus begot Rezuma, Akari's mother, a tiefling as well. She was not proud of her fiendish ancestry, and took on the surname Naruchi, which meant "Curse-Blood." When Akari was born, the only physical manifestations of his fiendish blood were his red-colored eyes. "However," reassured Grottlepox, mentally causing Jaziria to float back up to storage on her hook at the top of the wall, "there is enough of my blood running through your veins for me to control your every action while here on my Abyssal plane, the Muckmire Fens. Here, allow me to demonstrate." And without saying another word, the nalfeshnee caused the elf paladin to dance around in a little jig, do a little soft-shoe, and then pound his mailed fist into his own groin.

"Stop it!" cried out Delphyne. "You've made your point!"

"Indeed I have," grinned Grottlepox, and allowed Akari to resume his stance with his sword poised at his throat. "Perhaps we should get on with why you're all here. The Muckmire Fens is a desolate place, mostly filled with shallow swamps and sucking bogs. There's very little in the way of protruding solid ground through this infinite plane, and Castle Shatterhope occupies one of the few such areas to be found for scores of miles in all directions. As might be expected, that makes this some prime real estate for other demons of the realm, eager to take this fortified dwelling over for themselves. I have a rival of sorts, a nalfeshnee like myself, who covets my fine castle. But what can he do about it? The fetid swamps surrounding my grand abode are swarming with all manner of fearsome creatures, making a slog through the swamplands to attack from the ground a dangerous proposition. Likewise, those who would attack from above must contend with the roiling clouds above, which distort directions and distances, throwing airborne travelers miles off course. No, to attack this place, the only real option is to slog through the swamps and hope for the best.

"I have spies, though, who inform me that one of my competitors on this plane has built himself some sort of superweapon, a transport guaranteed to get his troops close enough to my castle to make a decent attempt at overcoming my defenses.

"This I will not allow! I want you to go find this superweapon and either destroy it, or better yet, bring it back to me for my own use. In return, you will all be allowed to leave this plane alive – and without harm – and go about your brief and pointless mortal lives. Your other option, of course, is to remain here as my playthings for all eternity – my soul vultures haven't had much of a chance of late to do what they do best, and I'm always looking for more soul puppets to amuse me. So, what do you say? Do we have ourselves a deal?"

Cal was hesitant to do the bidding of a demon, but he didn't really see as if there was much of a choice. Grottlepox pointed out that doing his bidding allowed them to slay demons on their home plane – how could they object to that? It resulted in an overall decrease in the number of demons on the Abyss, which was surely something in the best interests of good-aligned mortals like themselves. But the real argument lay in the fact that while the rest of them might well escape, he could force Akari to kill himself on the Abyss and grab up his soul for all of eternity, and there was no way for them to get his soul back away from the Abyss. So reluctantly, they agreed.

"Excellent!" beamed Grottlepox. "Then I have just one more thing to do before I send you on your way!" He summoned a succubus underling, Maladomnia, to fetch him his eye patch, and while she was off doing that he dug a cracked claw under his left eye and popped it out of its socket, ripping it out entirely in a spray of blood and gore. Then he reached over his massive shoulders and plucked several feathers from his undersized wings. Holding his severed eye in one hand, he concentrated and forced it to expand in size, then attached wing-feathers to it, creating a flying eyeball in the process. It fluttered about just above his gore-drenched hand, as the succubus returned and handed the nalfeshnee a black eye patch, which he placed over his empty socket.

"I don’t want you thinking you can sneak out of here and go plane shifting home on me without finishing your task," the demon snarled. "I'll be watching you at all times, and I can control my little mortal descendant from any distance on this plane." To prove his point, he had Akari slap himself upside his own head. Then he smiled a crooked smile and said, "My little soul vultures will of course be accompanying you as well. Good luck!" Maladomnia guided them out of his chamber to the sounds of his booming laughter.

The alluring succubus led the group down a hallway flanked with mirrors on each wall, her beautiful appearance a stark contrast to that of her beastlike master. She smiled coquettishly over her shoulder at the men of the party, flirting shamelessly as she explained her orders. "I'm to take you outside to the boathouse if you don't have transport of your own," she breathed huskily, hips swaying rhythmically as she sashayed down the hall. Unnoticed by the group, as they passed by the mirrors, one by one their reflections disappeared from view, until by the end of the hallway only Maladomnia was appearing in any of the reflective panes.

Stepping outside of Castle Shatterhope, the succubus opened the doors to a rickety-looking boathouse made of bones tied together with sinew. She waved the group into a foul-smelling boat made of the dried skins of several Abyssal beasts. The oars were fashioned from leg bones tied to a shoulder blade from some large creature of vaguely humanoid build. "The superweapon should be in that direction, several miles away," Maladomnia offered, pointing directly away from Castle Shatterhope.

The group piled into the boat. Aerik and Galrich offered to man the oars. Trailing behind them was Grottlepox's flying eyeball, and keeping within striking distance were the four batlike soul vultures. Not liking their present circumstances, the group paddled on in silence. Akari felt the worst of all, knowing that his friends' lives were in danger because of him, and although he had had no idea of his specific demonic bloodline, he had been aware that there was a demonic ancestor somewhere back in his family tree. His red eyes had even carried through in his transformation from human to elf, when he had been reincarnated into his present form. Now he wished for his friends to escape and be free of the Abyss, while at the same time harboring hopes that with their help he might escape a fate worse than any he could think of at present.

The Muckmire Fens were an unpleasant place, as would be expected of an Abyssal layer. The smells were of various styles of rot and decay, interspersed with the occasional whiff of a more fecal or sulfurous nature. Gnats and mosquitoes buzzed incessantly, flying into faces and buzzing around ears. The depth of the fens seemed to vary from between two and ten feet, with occasional sand bars, scrub-brushes, or small trees rising up out of the fetid swamp from time to time. Overhead, an orange-black sky hung oppressively low; Delphyne dared not use her broom of flying for fear of falling victim to the teleporting effects of the low-hanging clouds.

Paddling through what seemed like endless swamplands, the boat suddenly bumped as if hitting a shallow sandbar – something they'd already experienced several times during this ill-fated expedition. However, probing around with their bone-oars, Aerik and Galrich determined there was about five or six feet of water underneath the boat on all sides. Delphyne pointed out that the boat was hanging much lower in the water than it had been a moment before - and then the whole thing started tipping over to one side. Fearing a plunge into the swamplands, the young witch activated her broom and jumped on, keeping it just above the level of the water. The others leaned over toward the opposite side of the boat, leveling it out as best they could. And in doing so, Delphyne was able to see what the trouble was - a squat, rubbery fiendish leech nearly as long as the boat had adhered to the vessel's bottom, and was now crawling its way over to one side. Akari gave it a good slicing with Hoardmaster, and the thing died a silent death, sinking to the muck at the bottom of the endless swamp. The boat righted itself, Delphyne reluctantly resumed her place in the vessel, and the group moved on, trailed by their flying entourage.

After an unknown time spent in the mindless rhythm of paddling, the group was suddenly alerted to the presence of a threat ahead by the sounds of trees being brushed aside. Without further warning, several gnarled trees toppled forward towards the boat, splashing everyone with brackish swamp water, and then standing ahead was a beast several stories tall. It was in the general shape of a snapping turtle, but a stone structure had been built on its rugged shell, upon which were seen several mounted catapults and an oversized ballista. Rows of archers protruded along the sides of the beast's upper fortifications, and they let fly with their arrows as they become aware of the little boat's presence.

Aerik and Galrich steered their boat to face the massive beast, the better to present the smallest profile as possible towards the archers. Then an apish face peered over the side of the fiendish zaratan's walls, only to disappear in a flash - and the entire bar-lgura demon suddenly appeared in the boat with the heroes. It made a grab at Delphyne, who leapt overboard and only avoided falling into the water by grabbing and activating her broom of flying; she wasn't riding it so much as hanging onto it under one armpit, but it got the job done. And it kept the bar-lgura's attention focused on her long enough for Galrich to slice deep into the demon's side with his greatsword. The bar-lgura spun towards Galrich, snatched at him with one clawed hand, and then thought better of it and teleported away as quickly as he had appeared. And once he was gone, the hail of arrows, which had been put on hold while the demon was in the boat, rapidly resumed.

"We're dead if we stay here!" called out Akari. "Delphyne -- can you get us up to the turtle?"

Delphyne ran over her spell inventory, and found a greater teleport prepared and ready to go. Ironically, she regretted not having the less powerful teleport spell available, for while the greater version didn't allow for failure to plant the travelers exactly where she intended, she could only go somewhere she had seen, and she didn't want to chance flying up higher on her broom to get a better look at the top of the massive beast. She could see a platform rising up from the top of the turtle's shell; it would have to do.

Intoning the words to the spell, Delphyne teleported all five adventurers to the top of the platform. They found two other demons already there: Callista, a succubus sitting on a thronelike chair at the rear of the elevated platform, and her vrock bodyguard, Ironbeak. Combat broke out immediately.

From up on the raised platform, the adventurers had a better view of the top of the fiendish zaratan. Teams of manes demons manned the twin catapults and the massive ballista, which was aimed towards the front of the zaratan and shot enormous bolts some 50 feet in length. There were eight outcroppings of the zaratan's fortifications, with a four-armed arrow demon manning each station, each creature able to fire arrows with both of its longbows. There was a hezrou sergeant, Blorrk, in charge of the manes, and four bar-lguras scampering around fetching small boulders for the catapults.

Once the demons below noticed the adventurers were up on the platform - warned by some telepathic means, no doubt - Blorrk and one of the bar-lguras teleported up to the raised platform to give assistance to Callista and Ironbeak. The hezrou's stench overpowered all of the ambient stenches of the Muckmire Fens, and Delphyne began violently dry-heaving, falling to her knees. Callista decided to allow the combatants to have at it, and leapt backwards off the platform, flying down to a landing on the zaratan's shell.

Akari, Aerik, and Galrich were in their element, attacking the demons with their blades. Cal was about to try a banishment spell, then cursed himself for his own foolishness - you can't banish a demon from his home plane! Instead, he had at it with his trusty mace. The bar-lgura made a grab for the nearly-helpless Delphyne, and Cal bashed the side of its simian head in. It flopped over the side of the platform, nearly crushing a manes demon.

There wasn't a whole lot of room on the platform, so fighting was a dangerous proposition, especially those who stood near the edges, for there was no wall or railing preventing one from toppling over the edge, and the arrow demons below could shoot at those along the edges. Callista decided to use that to her advantage, and telepathically commanded the fiendish zaratan to rock its shell from side to side, in an effort to dislodge one or more of the invaders. It worked; with a cry of fear, Aerik toppled over the edge of the platform and only just made it back on his feet on the zaratan's shell below before he was surrounded and swarmed by manes demons.

Galrich and Akari had been dual-teaming Ironbeak, and the vrock finally decided he'd had enough; with a flap of his wings, he flew over to Callista down below. Cal looked down at the two of them, and decided to try to even the odds a bit; casting a summon monster spell, he called forth a pair of celestial hippogriffs and set them against the succubus and vrock. They complied with their orders with equine glee.

Blorrk now found himself the sole opponent against three hardened warriors. He did his best against them, but was fast being cut apart, despite the occasional bar-lgura teleporting up to do battle with the trio. However, when arriving and seeing a choice between battling three heroes with weapons or trying to grab Delphyne, they invariably went for the easy target. Delphyne could do little but try to roll out of their way, her stomach still trying to heave up contents that were no longer there. Cal split his attention between fighting Blorrk and jumping to Delphyne's assistance when necessary.

Finally slaying Blorrk was the turning point of the battle. Akari kicked the squat toad-thing off the side of the platform, getting it far enough away from Delphyne that the young witch could gain her composure and actually contribute to the fight. Galrich leapt off the platform and into the crowd of manes that were swarming Aerik, and together they finished the little demons off. By this point, the celestial hippogriffs had made quick work of Callista and Ironbeak, and only one of the four bar-lguras was still standing. He took a quick look around at the remaining forces - which at this point consisted of the arrow demons and a small handful of manes - and gave serious thoughts about fleeing.

Grottlepox helped him with his decision. Watching the battle through his own flying eyeball, he decided it was now safe to enter the fray himself, and teleported from the safety of Castle Shatterhope. That was all the remaining bar-lgura needed to see; he teleported away to parts unknown in the wink of an eye. The arrow demons, seeing the situation, quickly followed suit.

"Excellent, excellent!" beamed Grottlepox, looking around at his new superweapon as Maladomnia teleported in and sat up on the vacated throne. After verifying that she had taken control of the fiendish zaratan, he teleported his mortal allies, the soul vultures, and his own flying eyeball with him back to the room in which the heroes had first met him. The celestial hippogriffs returned to their own heavenly realms, their surprisingly enjoyable task having been completed.

"I'm very pleased with your performance, mortals," oozed Grottlepox, a broken grin on his face. "I believe I had said if you did this little task for me, I would allow you to return to your own dreary mortal lives. I'm sure you've no doubt heard of the general worthlessness of a demonic promise..." and here the great demon chuckled loudly to himself, "...but in this case, I’m eager to play with my new toy, so I won't bother to renege on our deal. You are free to go, if you have the means to do so.

"Oh, but Akari," he said as an afterthought, "one last thing before you leave me: how about a hug for your great-great-grandfather?" And the nalfeshnee spread his arms open wide, eager for an embrace.

Akari did his best to resist, but as usual it was for naught; Grottlepox the Puppeteer walked the paladin over to him and there was nothing Akari could do to resist him.

"That's it, my little mortal offspring, give your beloved ancestor a big hug." As the paladin stepped towards the demon on shaking legs, the demon addressed the group as a whole. "I know you adventurers" – he spit the word out like a curse – "generally like to earn treasure for your heroic deeds, but I'm afraid your pathetic lives will just have to do this time around. Except for my little paladin here; I've got something special for him!" And as he squatted down to receive Akari's unwilling hug, he ripped a gash across his left nipple with a ragged claw and whispered to Akari, out of earshot of the others, "Suckle deep, little mortal. Fill your mouth with Grampa's tasty demon blood, and drink it down!" He shielded his actions behind Akari's body, so the others couldn't see exactly what was occurring. Then, after Akari had been forced to comply, the demon stood upright again and flicked a hand at them. "Begone!" he commanded imperiously, then chortled with glee.

Cal didn't wait any longer than necessary - indeed, he had begun the words to his plane shift spell as Akari was still stumbling backwards to the rest of the group, a strangled cry stuck in his throat. The spell took effect, and in the blink of an eye the group stood in a field of wheat somewhere on Oerth.

Akari fell to the ground and writhed in sudden pain, grabbing his face in both hands. Delphyne was the first to spot the blood that had spilled down the front of the paladin's armor and called out, "He's hurt!" Cal knelt down to cast a healing spell on Akari, and then gasped in shock as Akari's convulsions pulled his hands from his face.

Four narrow horns had burst forth from the paladin's forehead, just above his eyebrows. Another pair had sprouted downwards from either side of his jaw, and two of his lower teeth had transformed into a small pair of wicked tusks. Blood trickled down where these new protrusions had burst forth through his skin.

"What's wrong?" asked Akari, seeing the sudden fear in his friends' eyes, and looking uncomprehendingly at Cal as the cleric quickly voiced the words to a detect evil spell. "He's okay," he said quietly.

Akari touched his forehead and found the horns; his quaking hands traced the downthrust spikes jutting from his jaw. "A mirror," he croaked, his voice breaking. "Get me a mirror."

Delphyne reached into her pack and wordlessly passed over a small hand mirror. Akari looked into it with a look of puzzlement. "It's...it's not that bad..." began Cal.

Akari just shook his head. "There's nothing there," he said. "I don't reflect an image."

Cal stepped behind the paladin and verified for himself. It was true; Akari no longer reflected an image in the mirror. And neither did Cal. Or Galrich, or Aerik, or Delphyne.

"This can't be good," Cal said, with more than a trace of worry in his voice.

- - -

This adventure didn't work out at all like I had envisioned. I had made a double-sized battlemat, outlining the fiendish zaratan and his battlements, with a raised octagonal structure I made out of cardboard to represent where Callista and Ironbeak sat. I anticipated a rollicking battle on top of the fiendish zaratan, as the PCs raced around fighting the various demons at their stations. And then Delphyne teleported everybody to the top of the raised platform, and once Blorrk joined them, that was pretty much it. I had prepared a battlespace that took over the majority of a kitchen table with seating for six people, and the majority of the battle took place on a 4-inch-by-4-inch structure. I felt bad for Vicki, too, because Delphyne succumbed to Blorrk's stench effect and didn't do much but puke the whole adventure. She had apparently thought (prompted an incorrect metagaming comment from Logan) that the stench effect only lasted "X number of rounds," and thus she thought she could just wait it out, when in reality it was "while in the vicinity of the hezrou and for X rounds thereafter." As long as she and Blorrk stayed up there on the platform, she wasn't going to escape the stench effects, ever. Of course, she could have simply rolled over the side of the platform and escaped that way, but it didn't occur to her (and the fact that rolling over to the edge made her susceptible to arrow demon attacks at range probably didn't make that too appealing an option, either).

As a result of being force-fed Grottlepox's demonic blood, Akari's fiendish dormant (and mostly recessive) nature was "jump-started" and he became a tiefling. I thought it was a particularly evil thing for Grottlepox to do, and perfectly in character for a demon with the opportunity to do so. In talking with Logan after the adventure, I told him that there was no need for the change in Akari's appearance to be permanent, but he thought it was a cool event and embraced Akari's new tiefling status (after ensuring that it wouldn't preclude him from being a paladin). So Akari now holds this campaign's record for the number of "permanent" transformations of race: he was born a human, died, was reincarnated as an elf, and later transformed into a tiefling.

Backstage between adventures, we decided the Church of Hieroneous would ensure that Akari was still as good at heart as he had been as an elf (and as a human), and decide that if it was okay with Hieroneous (which it obviously was, as Akari's paladin abilities were still functioning), who were they to say otherwise? So Akari probably made the record books again as being the only lawful good tiefling paladin among the Church of Hieroneous.

The transformation to a tiefling caused me to make up a new initiative card for Akari. I opened the "Akari" image in the Paint program, copied a portion of his elven ears, trimmed them down to horn size, and grafted them onto his forehead and jaw. I was going to do the same for his tusks, but I didn't like the way they looked, so I decided his tusks are small enough to not be seen when his mouth is closed. The back of his new initiative card reads "AKARI - TRANSFORMED."

As for the lack of reflections, that had the group worried enough that Cal did some divinations to find out what was going on, and he learned that their reflections are trapped in various mirrors back in Castle Shatterhope. It's not causing them any harm (other than making it harder for them to shave and comb their hair!), but it is making them nervous, especially since the divinations foretold that the effect was likely tied in to a summoning effect. They didn't much appreciate it when Balama Theron created that one-shot magic item that teleported them to the Starchaser; now it looks like Grottlepox the Puppeteer has a similar hold on them!

great game and really a fantastic job writing it all up~ inspiring!

Thanks, baron_samedi - and I take it as a great personal honor that your very first post on these boards is to compliment my Story Hour!

Sadly, I'll be slowing down on the frequency of my posting here coming up, as this Story Hour is now only seven adventures behind the current point in the campaign. Since we only seem to ever manage to play every 4-6 weeks or so, once I catch up to the "current" adventure I won't have anything new to post until we play again (and even then, only if we finish up the adventure that session). So I've already dropped from my former "twice a week" posting frequency to once a week, and once we hit the current adventure my new postings will be few and far between. But on the bright side, they'll be much fresher in my memory, so my writeups will likely be a bit closer to how they actually played out (instead of me guessing which spells were used and who killed which monsters and such).

Johnathan

ADVENTURE 59 - THE TAKING OF THE PLANAR SCOUT

PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
The four adventurers walked up to Greymantle Manor, and were met by Rebecca Starfall, who smiled and welcomed them. She shut off the building's defenses long enough to allow them to enter, then reactivated them once they were inside.

"You're right on time," she said, escorting them through the small manor and into the hangar in the back of the wizard’s dwelling. "I think I hear him landing the Planar Scout right now."

"Landing it?" asked Feron. "I thought we were going on its maiden voyage."

"Well, the first one where it actually goes somewhere," said Rebecca. "Dr. Greymantle just wanted to make sure it was flying okay before taking it to another plane."

Sure enough, entering the hangar the group saw a brief flash of energy as the dorsal shield kicked off and the Planar Scout slowly settled into place in the center of the open hangar. Then the shield snapped back into place, the similar shield around the vessel kicked off, and Dr. Greymantle exited the craft's control cabin. He looked down at the vistors and waved in greeting, calling down "Everything's fine. Are you ready to go?"

Suddenly, there was a solid smack and he crumpled into a heap, hanging in midair like a marionette whose cords had been cut. Before the group's astonished eyes, he rose several feet into the air, and then went flying in their direction, eyes closed and head lolling, apparently unconscious. Rebecca shrieked in alarm. Cal leaped forward, catching the incoming Archmage and tumbling backwards in a heap having done so. As the others watched, the door to the Planar Scout opened and shut, the shield around the vessel snapped back on, the dorsal shield over the hangar deactivated, and the whine of the craft's twin engines escalated as the ship started to rise into the air.

Pinwhistle stepped over and slapped his friend awake, casting a healing spell upon him as he did so. The Archmage opened his eyes groggily as the Planar Scout just in time to see the labors of his last two years escaping off into the sky. "What happened?" he demanded.

"You got hit, by someone - or something - invisible, and plenty strong," said Cal.

Dr. Greymantle scrambled to his feet and stared up at the elevating ship, fists quivering in anger. "This is unacceptable!" he cried in dismay.

"Not much we can do about it now, Thag" said Pinwhistle, his seven-foot-frame decrying the gentleness in his voice as he placed a massive hand on his friend's shoulder.

"But there is!" cried Dr. Greymantle, a look of inspiration on his face. "Pinwhistle: with me!" He activated a switch, and a door opened up on the far side of the hangar. A bright light emanated from the other side, bright enough to cause the others to shield their eyes. "We'll be right back!" the Archmage called over his shoulder, then the two disappeared into the light, and the door closed shut behind them.

Telgrane was fascinated by the craft, still visible in the sky above him. "Is that thing...carved from stone?" he asked in astonishment.

"Yeah," commented Delmond. "Those two have been carving it into shape for a couple of years now."

"And yet it flies!" marveled the conjurer. "Amazing!" As he watched, it became little more than a speck in the sky.

The door opened again, spilling its blinding light into the hangar. Dr. Greymantle emerged, his robes wrinkled, hair in disarray, and stubble covering his chin that Telgrane didn't recall having noticed before. The Archmage wore a strange pair of goggles on the top of his head and he clutched an odd-looking metal rod which had several protrusions jutting out at one end. "Stand back!" he commanded, as Pinwhistle staggered out, balancing an octagonal slab of stone some 20 feet wide and trying carefully to place it on the floor of the hangar without squashing anyone. Looking closely at the slab, it was apparently identical to one of the wing protrusions from the Planar Scout.

"Everybody on!" called out the wizard, as he plugged the metal rod into a hole at the top of the slab and a familiar whining sound started emanating from the stone octagon. As one, the group jumped aboard. A magical shield snapped into place as the raft started rising into the air. Casually slapping the goggles into place over his eyes, he called out, "I can follow the Planar Scout’s wake!" over the roar of the engine. "We may be able to catch up to her!"

"Just what the Hell is going on?" demanded Cal.

"I'll tell you what's going on," replied Pinwhistle. "We're gonna get whoever took the Planar Scout and make 'em wish they'd never been born!" He pounded one massive fist into his other hand for emphasis.

"No, I mean what is this we're on, and where did it come from?"

"Oh, that," remarked the living construct. "Thag's got a workshop on another plane on the other side of that door in his hangar. Time passes at a diff'rent rate over there. We spent the past three days slapping this raft together out of a spare wing protrusion. We're smaller than the Planar Scout, but we're lighter and a little more maneuverable, too - with any luck, we'll be able to catch up before it goes extraplanar."

The makeshift raft rose up into the air at an alarming rate. The heroes watched the city fall away below them until it was obscured by cloud cover. Soon, Dr. Greymantle called out that he could see the craft ahead. Squinting into the sun, Chalkan could just make out a shape that could only be the Planar Scout. "She's getting ready to jump!" cried out the wizard in alarm. "Hang on – we've got to get through the gate before it closes!"

A bright light emanated from the Planar Scout, and Dr. Greymantle gripped the control rod desperately as he urged the raft forward. It zipped through a hole hanging there in the sky, and then suddenly the ambient light around the group changed to a deep blue-green, and fish darted around in all directions. "The Elemental Plane of Water!" yelled the wizard, struggling to keep the raft on the larger vessel's tail. The magical shields in place around the Planar Scout and the makeshift raft kept the local environment at bay, so no water reached the group or their open vessel. "Amazing!" repeated Telgrane.

The Planar Scout leaped through several other planes of existence in an effort to shake its tail, but Dr. Greymantle was determined not to let the thief get away. He followed his craft through the Elemental Plane of Fire, into the Plane of Shadow, and even through the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, a nerve-wracking plane of endless, miles-long gears turning inexorably on. The Planar Scout darted in between the gears, the raft in hot pursuit. Rebecca couldn't help shrieking as her wizardly mentor took several short cuts that drove them dangerously close to hitting a massive gear at high speeds, but the Archmage kept them from crashing - if just barely.

"We need to get inside the Planar Scout's shields!" the wizard called out. "I'm going to try something – brace for impact!" And with that, he did something to the control rod, and the open vehicle burst forward in a blast of sudden speed, heading straight for the vessel before them.

Everybody grabbed onto something, although there wasn't much to hang onto. Rebecca and Delmond grabbed instinctively onto Pinwhistle's massive form, trusting in him to keep them safe. Cal and Telgrane dropped prone and held onto the side of the raft; the cleric wrapped a protective arm around Feron, who had dropped down at his side. Chalkan held onto the base of the control rod, and got a nasty shock as he felt his own life energy being drained. He pulled his hand back as if touching a hot stove. "What are you doing?" he called to the Archmage. "You'll drain yourself dry!"

"I need the power to augment the raft's speed!" called back Dr. Greymantle, just before everything went to Hell.

With a shriek, the shields around the two vessels touched, then merged into a deformed shape as the raft careened into the side of the Planar Scout at high speed. Everyone went flying onto the top of the larger vessel upon impact, just as another gate opened before the wounded vessel, and both vessels popped into another plane of existence.

As the landscape changed again, the heroes could see the Planar Scout spinning clockwise as the ground rose up to meet it. A hellish reddish-orange sky cast flashes of black lightning across it at odd intervals as the damaged vessel came to a stop on a barren wasteland of parched, cracked earth.

"Is everybody okay?" asked Cal, looking around. As he picked himself up and took stock of his surroundings, it was apparent that not everyone had come through the crash unscathed. Dr. Greymantle lay unconscious, the hair at his temples suddenly white from the ordeal, and age lines apparent on his face that weren't there before. Pinwhistle cursed, looking at his shattered left leg, and finally ripped it off at the knee in disgust, handing it over to Rebecca. "You think you can carry that for me, kiddo?" he asked her. She took it in both hands and nodded.

"Just where are we?" asked Delmond. Telgrane looked around, then said, "I think it's Avernus - the First Layer of the Nine Hells."

"Are you sure?" asked Feron, looking worried.

"Pretty sure," replied Telgrane. "But maybe we could ask that fellow there for confirmation." The others looked to where he was pointing, and saw a scowling pit fiend striding across the cracked desert. He wasn't hurrying, but his demeanor showed he didn't feel the need to hurry - he would have his prey, one way or another, in time.

"Let's not," said Feron. "Are the shields going to hold up against that--thing?"

"They should," replied Pinwhistle, struggling to an upright position. "But we'd best get inside before whoever's piloting this thing gets it into their heads to turn the shields off. C'mon, you lot - this way!" And the damaged warforged hopped along the side of the Planar Scout, heading for the control cabin. Delmond and Cal held Dr. Greymantle between them. Rebecca followed, holding Pinwhistle's left calf and foot, and the others brought up the rear.

"Ah, Hell!" scowled Pinwhistle from ahead. "It's locked! Open up, ya lousy--"

"I got it," interrupted Delmond, shifting the unconscious Archmage over to Cal and sliding forward, opening up a set of lockpicks from a leather wallet as he did so. In less than a minute the cabin door was open.

"You are to be destroyed," casually announced an automaton in the small, cramped room beyond. It was of humanoid build, but made primarily of metal. A gem sat perched in the middle of his forehead.

"Aw, fer--" began Pinwhistle, drawing back a massive fist and clobbering the automaton in the face, causing it to fall backwards against the far wall and tumble to the floor. "We don't have time fer this nonsense!"

"What's gotten into Pilot?" demanded Rebecca from outside the door.

"Who knows?" replied Pinwhistle, as he dropped his much more massive form onto the prone automaton. Pinning it under his bulk, he held Pilot still while Delmond reached over and plucked the gem from off of Pilot's forehead. "Whatever this is, it doesn't belong," commented the young apprentice.

Removing the gem had an immediate effect upon Pilot, who seemed to go through a reboot sequence and was restored to his normal self upon the removal of the magical gem. He looked up at the unconscious form of his creator, and asked, "What happened to Dr. Greymantle?" Despite the artificiality of his voice, there was a real human concern in his tone. Rebecca quickly explained, and then Cal demanded some questions of his own.

"Who put that gem on you, and what were its effects?"

"I am unsure of her name," replied Pilot. "It was an ambulatory statue of a nude female elf, carved from black marble. She wore a similar gem upon her forehead, and once she had placed one on my own forehead I was completely submissive to her demands. I can only conclude that it is a domination device, perhaps crafted for constructs such as myself."

"What did she have you do?" Cal asked.

"She had me pilot this vessel, as I was built to do," replied Pilot. "I was to take evasive maneuvers to lose you, if possible, to include jumping to various other planes of existence."

"Where is this elf statue now?"

"She went into the back of the vessel," Pilot replied, pointing to a door behind him. "I am unsure of her current whereabouts."

"Guys?" asked Feron nervously from outside the control room. "That pit fiend's getting awfully close!"

The group made some hasty plans. They ordered Pilot to keep the shield up at all costs, and see what he could do about repairing the Planar Scout, using the "raft" Dr. Greymantle and Pinwhistle had cobbled together from a spare wing protrusion as necessary. In the meantime, the group would get Dr. Greymantle to his quarters, where Pinwhistle, Rebecca, and Delmond would hole up while the Wing Three adventurers hunted up this elven statue-woman and dealt with her. Rebecca sat on the side of the bed with her unconscious mentor, wiping away a trickle of blood from his forehead with her handkerchief. Delmond wanted to go with the heroes, but Pinwhistle called him back, saying he needed him to help watch over Thag. "I can heal him up, but he's the only one can fix my leg for me," the giant warforged said. "So you gotta stay here and help me fight off that elf statue if she shows up." Delmond didn't like it, but he begrudgingly agreed. Pinwhistle verbalized the main structural layout of the Planar Scout's interior - it was an octagon ring with an artificial garden in the middle, and a series of doors next to each other along the outer edge of the octagon. Just like the Adventurers Guild Headquarters, the doors each led into an extradimensional space much larger than would be allowed by standard geometry - only some of these extradimensional spaces hooked back up to other rooms. It was all very confusing.

The first fight the group got into was with Gardener, another mostly-metal automaton who tended the artificial garden in the middle of the octagonal ring. It, too, wore a magical gem on its forehead, through which it received its orders from the marble statue who had placed it there. They managed to subdue the automaton without doing it any permanent harm, and once again it "rebooted" upon removal of the gem and became helpful thereafter. It wasn't sure of the elf statue's current whereabouts, but it did warn them that there were two more of Dr. Greymantle's automatons on board the vessel, each of which had been subsumed into the construct hivemind created by the gems. These were Crewman One and Crewman Two, normally stationed in the ship's engine room.

Eventually, the group just started opening doors and seeing what was inside. The contents of the various rooms of the Planar Scout were quite astounding. Despite the vessel being only 50 feet long, there were two octagonal rooms with a 40-foot diameter, and the briefing room was nearly as large. There was a medical bay, a construct repair laboratory, a massive storage bay, and a full kitchen and dining room. There was a large pool of water in one room, where the Archmage's fully repaired Apparatus of Kwalish hung suspended from a crane; there was an extradimensional door on the bottom of the pool which connected to the bottom of the Planar Scout, such that the Apparatus could be used as an exploratory vessel on the Elemental Plane of Water. Another room, dubbed the "Prep Room," held lockers full of useful items allowing explorers to survive in a wide variety of terrains; it, too, had an extradimensional door leading to the outside of the vessel.

The Fuel Storage room was where the group met up with Crewmembers One and Two, and a brief battle ensued, for the two automatons were under the sway of the forehead-mounted gemstones that made them no more than dominated slaves to the will of the elven statue who had taken over the vessel. The group overpowered the two automatons and destroyed the gems, just as they had done with the others, with the same effects.

"Well, that takes care of her 'army,'" commented Telgrane. "So where's she hiding?"

There was nothing left to explore on the vessel save some of the less exotic rooms. There were two bathrooms, but neither was occupied. The twin bathing facilities were likewise empty. Pinwhistle, Delmond, and Rebecca each had their own quarters, which were likewise devoid of trespassers.

"There are only six doors we haven't been through," Feron said. "According to Pinwhistle, they should all be spare guest cabins. She's got to be in one of them." But they peeked into each one, and each appeared empty of intruders.

"That's it - we've searched the whole ship," groused Chalkan. "Where is this elf statue?"

"Do you think she turned back, and made it outside the vessel?" asked Feron.

"Maybe she's invisible again," reasoned Telgrane. "Remember, she was invisible when she knocked out Dr. Greymantle and stole the Planar Scout."

"You have an idea?" asked Cal.

"I do," replied Telgrane, and cast a summoning spell that brought forth four dust mephits. He assigned them each a guest cabin, and sent them forth to search the rooms, using their innate abilities to generate small dust storms to hopefully pinpoint where an invisible elf statue might be hiding. The first four guest cabins were empty (and now very dusty, but Telgrane was reasonably sure that Dr. Greymantle would be understanding).

"Okay," commanded Telgrane. "Two of you into each of the other two guest rooms. Use your dusty breath weapons to do likewise: try to cover the rooms with dust, and see if there's anything invisible in there taking up space." The dust mephits flew off to do as they were instructed, but called back negative findings.

"Hmmm," scowled Telgrane, hoping he wasn't going to have to try something similar through every room in the ship - that would take forever!

"Hmmm," mirrored one of the dust mephits, still inside the guest room. "That's odd."

"What's that?" asked Telgrane.

"Well, unlike the other guest rooms, there's a big black door on the wall in this one, behind the door that opens to the cabin. If you open the main door all the way, it would block this black door, and you wouldn't see it. Kind of weird - this black door doesn't seem to belong here at all."

Telgrane was the first to recall the result of Pinwhistle's divination spell, back when the group had saved him and the others in Dr. Greymantle's manor from the four assassins. When he asked who had hired the assassins to steal the Planar Scout, the answer had been--

"--The unliving woman who has never died, hidden behind the Door That Doesn't Belong!" exclaimed Telgrane.

The others rushed inside the guest cabin and closed the door, leaving visible footprints in the dust and grit that now covered the floor. The dust mephits, their summoning duration expired, popped back to their home planes, their job done.

"She's in there," Telgrane said, pointing to the black door. It was covered in silver runes, obviously magical in nature.

"Well," smiled Cal, preparing the words to a stoneskin spell, "Let's go get her!"

- - -

This officially finished off this adventure. The next one, "Behind the Door That Doesn't Belong," was written as a standalone adventure embedded within this one. The players had a fun time with this one, but the tension kept growing as they explored more and more of the ship but couldn't find the elven statue-woman. When Logan recalled Pinwhistle's divination, the group all jumped up in excitement, eager for the battle they knew just had to be coming.

I not only built a geomorph for each of the rooms inside the Planar Vessel, but I made up a scale model of the ship itself (and another of the "raft"). From the top view, imagine a rectangle, with diagonal extrusions from each corner that then bend and stick out towards the front and back. Now stick out two straight extrusions from the sides of the rectangle, and on those stick two octagonal sections (like the engines of SHIELD's helicarrier from Marvel Comics). This "lower level" is one inch tall, and made of cardboard. Jutting up from the top of the rectangle, leaving a one-inch walkway all around it, is a smaller rectangle with its two front corners lopped off diagonally; this section is an inch and a half tall. I colored in the front window with a black marker, and drew on doors where appropriate. Each of the two octagonal "engine" protrusions has a circle on the top of it, and the "raft" does as well. I envision the Planar Scout as powered by two captive lightning quasi-elementals, one in each "engine."

As for the Fuel Room, it's a pillar of light in the middle of another octagonal room filled with specialized storage compartments. Inside these compartments are items taken from the various planes; when it's desired for the Planar Scout to travel to the Elemental Plane of Water, for example, Pilot would give instructions to the Fuel Room, and they'd open the appropriate cabinet and pour water from the Elemental Plane of Water into the pillar to be vaporized, which allows the vessel to open a planar gate in front of its flight path. In this way, the Planar Scout can really only go to planes where there's already been fuel gathered for it, so it isn't really all that much of a "scout" after all - but I hadn't decided on how it would work until after I had already named the vessel, and the name was already stuck in my head so I didn't want to change it.

Also, while the PCs have never discovered this, Pilot, Gardener, and Crewmen One and Two are all copies of Dr. Greymantle's own mind and memories, whittled down to encompass only the aspects of his mind that are required to perform their duties. Gardener, for instance, only needs to know about gardening, so it contains everything Dr. Greymantle knew about gardening when he copied his mind into the automaton, plus anything else it has picked up in the meantime. But it has none of Dr. Greymantle's personal memories or spellcasting abilities. He does, however, keep several "full copies" of himself over on the other side of the hangar door, where time moves at a much greater rate. Having made these copies of himself - with all of his spellcasting knowledge and abilities - he is able to create a design of a magic item, pass it on to his copies, and have them do the work to create it. End result: he gets his magic item crafted much quicker (from his standpoint) by automatons he trusts implicitly, because they're basically himself.

Pinwhistle, on the other hand, is a complete "copy" of the original Pinwhistle's mind, Pinwhistle being a gnomish cleric of Gond who was friends with "Thag" for years; when he died, Dr. Greymantle created a warforged body to house the copy of Pinwhistle's mind he had made. The original Pinwhistle is off in his deserved rest in the gnomish afterlife, while the warforged Pinwhistle is still a boon companion to Dr. Greymantle and his apprentices.

By the way, if anyone has noticed a striking similarity between Dr. Greymantle/Pinwhistle/Rebecca/Delmond and the Fantastic Four, you're not wrong. Greymantle is patterned after Reed Richards, the brilliant scientist/inventor; Pinwhistle is effectively Ben Grimm, "The Thing"; and Rebecca and Delmond fill the Sue and Johnny Storm slots, respectively (although before they got their powers). And Dr. Greymantle is the one whose extradimensional expertise was used to create the "bigger than there's room for them to fit" bedrooms in the Greyhawk City Adventurers Guild Headquarters.

Okay, enough backstory. Next up: Behind the Door That Doesn't Belong!

ADVENTURE 60 - BEHIND THE DOOR THAT DOESN'T BELONG

PC Roster:
"We'd better buff up," commented Cal as he cast a stoneskin spell upon himself. "There's no telling what's behind this door."

"How'd it get here?" asked Chalkan. "Obviously, Greymantle doesn't know it's here."

"I imagine it's like our Daern's dollhouse," observed Feron. "Only it's just a door. But I'd guess you can probably take it with you somehow."

"Pilot didn't say anything about 'a statue of an elven woman carved out of black marble, carrying a freaking door under her arm!'" argued Chalkan.

"Maybe it's collapsible," suggested Feron. "Or it shrinks down."

"Maybe who cares?" said Telgrane. "Who wants to open it?"

"Nega-dibs!" called Chalkan, stepping back away from the door.

Feron was observing the silver runes which ran along the black door's frame. "Recognize anything?" asked Cal.

"These are elven runes," Feron replied. "I recognize this one, and this one over here - they're involved in extradimensional magic effects, I believe."

"Well, let's see if it opens," said the cleric of Kord, stepping up to the door and turning the knob. It was locked.

"We should have brought Rale," lamented Chalkan, earning him a dirty look from Cal.

"We don't need Rale to get us through a simple locked door," replied Cal, and then gave the door all of the strength a cleric of the God of Strength - and even more, one with the blood of that same god running through his veins - could muster. He forced his way past the locking mechanism and even past the arcane lock that had been in place. The door swung into the room behind - which had to be extradimensional, since the area behind the wall on which the Door was located was the octagonal corridor around the artificial garden at the center of the Planar Scout - which was cloaked in darkness.

But not for long. Entering the room and activating a sun rod, Cal saw it was a square room, 25 feet on a side, with a 5-foot-square projection on the center of each of the four walls. The Door which he had just entered was centered on one such projection; the other two were to the left and right and held closed doors, while the way straight ahead was blocked by a series of hanging beads at the far side of the projection. More importantly, the room contained not one but four statues of nude elven women, each carved from black marble in such a way as to appear to be holding a large sword in front of them. These statues stood in each corner of the room, upon black marble platforms, and balanced similar sized platforms upon their heads. Cal recognized the style: these were caryatid columns, each statue nearly 15 feet tall, a mere 5 feet shorter than the ceiling height of the room. But surely none of them were the intruder who had stolen the Planar Scout; these were much too big to have entered the cramped control room at the front of the vessel.

The sound of the Door slamming shut behind the heroes occurred in the same instant that the four statues animated and attacked.

Cal, not entirely surprised by such an occurrence, leapt at the closest statue and swung at it with his magic mace. It chipped off a few flakes of stone upon impact, but overall the caryatid column seemed mostly unaffected. She, in turn, swung her stone sword at Cal and struck him heavily in the side, but the cleric's stoneskin spell absorbed most of the damage, and he merely grunted and pressed on.

Telgrane responded as he did in most similar circumstances, by calling forth someone to do his fighting for him. A large earth elemental suddenly appeared in the middle of the room, and it stepped between Telgrane and the statue barreling down on him. Feron cast a quick spell of her own, and lightning bolts struck down at the caryatid columns from the room's ceiling. Chalkan, believing his arrows would have limited effect against opponents made from stone, opted to use a wand of magic missiles against the animated statues. It was a hard fight in somewhat cramped quarters, but eventually the heroes prevailed.

"Which way now?" huffed Feron, catching her breath. Cal impulsively chose the door to the left, and passing through it, found himself standing on a beach at sunset, with the sounds of the waves crashing onto the shore a soothing contrast to the sounds of recent battle in the room just behind him. There was a white marble bench on the beach, and a doorway flanked by marble pillars. Looking behind him, he could see that the door he had just passed through was flanked by white marble pillars as well.

"Nice," remarked Telgrane upon entering. "But it's all an illusion."

"Are you sure?" asked Cal.

"Strong aura of illusion magic permeating this entire room," replied the conjurer, using his arcane sight.

"For what purpose?" asked Chalkan.

"Meditation?" suggested Feron. "I'd imagine even animated stone statues need to recuperate their spells somehow. This might be some sort of relaxation chamber - kind of like Pinwhistle's regeneration booth back at Dr. Greymantle's manor." It made enough sense to adopt as a likely explanation. But rather than travel through the door on the beach, the group opted to backtrack into the entry room and try the other door. It led to a construct lab, where several other statues of nude elven women - or, upon closer examination, the same nude elven woman - were in various stages of carving.

"That's the same elven woman as the four caryatid columns," observed Feron. "Whoever this statue-woman is, she's got a pretty high opinion of herself." However, immediately upon Feron making this observation, one of the statues lurched forward and attacked. It was larger than even the caryatid columns had been, and after several minutes of trading attacks it became apparent that this construct had all of the characteristics of a stone golem, if a slightly different appearance. Still, the group had fought stone golems before, and the end result was the same as the others they had destroyed before: shattered construct pieces littering the floor.

There was another door to what the group arbitrarily decided was "north" from the construct lab, which led to a room with a sunken center. A series of beads hung from a doorway to the "west," which led the group to believe that the room that way likely had all of its entrances covered in hanging bead doorways. There was a short set of stairs leading down to the "sunken" portion of the room, which featured a large mirror on the wall facing the stairs. A helmet lay discarded on the floor. Telgrane noted it had an aura of divination, and placed it over his head. In doing so, the image of a small grove of trees appeared in the mirror. "Hey, I can move some kind of a sensor around by thinking about it!" Telgrane said, and demonstrated by changing the image in the mirror. To the others, it was if they were flying around a bunch of trees.

"Hey!" called out Feron. "That's Dr. Greymantle's manor!" And sure enough, it was. The view in the mirror was of the back of the archmage's dwelling - specifically, the back of the manor where the Planar Scout's hangar stood. "This is how she knew when to attack Greymantle, when he turned off the shield above the hangar and landed the Planar Scout in the hangar," reasoned the conjurer.

"So which way now?" asked Chalkan. "How about we see what's behind these beads?" Impulsively, he walked up and put his hand through the metal beads to push them aside and see what was in the next room - and was attacked for his troubles. The bead strings animated, wrapping around the half-elf's hand and arm, as other strands started wrapping around his legs and torso. "Hey!" he cried in alarm. The others rushed to his rescue, Cal grabbing up his legs and tugging him away from the beads while Feron slashed at the strands above Chalkan with her scimitar. Telgrane summoned a celestial beetle to go in and wrestle with the beads, and it managed to keep them busy enough for Cal to free Chalkan, then slide him into the room beyond. He rolled under the flailing beads and into the larger room, and Feron and Telgrane followed suit.

The group was now in an even larger square chamber, this one 35 feet to a side. As expected, all four walls sported a doorway in its center, covered in hanging beads. Five white marble columns reached to the ceiling, arranged like the pips on the "5" side of a standard die. Telgrane approached the center pillar. "Odd," he said. "This one is radiating transmutation magic."

"Is it a trap?" asked Cal. "Touch it and get turned into a bunny or something?"

"I don't think so," replied the conjurer. "It seems to be self-contained: the magic affects the column, nothing else."

"Well, let's find out," said Feron, and cast a stone tell spell on the central pillar. "What's your deal?" she asked it.

"Please elaborate," replied the stone column.

"What is your function?"

"I am an elevator platform, leading to the upper level."

"How does one activate you?"

"By command word," replied the column.

"What is the command word?" Feron demanded.

"'Saadenial' to lower the column, and 'Lerretar' to raise it." Feron couldn't help but notice that these were the Elven words for "home below" and "magic above," respectively.

"Shall we?" she asked. The others readied their weapons - and Telgrane released Infernia from her tinder box - and nodded their assent. "Saadenial!" called out Feron. The stone pillar started lowering into the stone floor of the room, until a three-foot circle on the floor was all that remained of it. The group looked up at the ceiling, but could see no corresponding hole directly above. However: "There's an illusion in the center of the ceiling," Telgrane said. "Illusory wall spell, no doubt."

A feminine voice muttered some arcane syllables from the ceiling above, and a fireball streaked down to engulf the heroes. Infernia and Telgrane shrugged off the effects, but the rest of the group scattered to avoid a repetition of these tactics. However, their unseen adversary quickly changed tactics, and the next spell streaking down from the ceiling was a chain lightning spell, striking Telgrane and arcing out to hit all of his companions. Chalkan backed even further away from his companions, trying to get out of spell range, and found himself within reach of another set of bead-strands. "Not again!" he called out as the beads tried entangling him within their lengths.

Telgrane assumed that the floor of the level above them was of a standard thickness, and cast a summon monster spell up there, reasoning that the best thing to throw against an animated statue was an earth elemental. His spell was greeted by a yell of surprise from above - which Feron identified as a powerful oath in the Elven language. "Got her attention!" she called to Telgrane, who grinned back at her. But their victory was short-lived, for in a flash an animated statue appeared in the room. It was a nude elven woman, carved in black marble, and she said a string of Elven words before casting a cloudkill spell in the middle of the room. Then she turned on her heel and walked imperiously through the beads in the western doorway, which parted effortless for her.

"Follow her!" commanded Telgrane to Infernia, as he cast a gust of wind spell to blow away the poisonous vapors. He aimed them to the south, to the entry chamber, then called for his summoned earth elemental to come down and aid them. The creature obeyed instantly, leaping effortlessly through the illusory wall spell in the ceiling to plummet through the marble floor, then rise back up as if on an elevator. "You go guard the front door, in that direction," he commanded. "Don't let any black marble statues exit through that door. The elemental obeyed, simply tearing the animated bead-strings from the doorway when they attempted to stop it from passing.

The rest of the group, recovering from the poisonous vapors they had accidentally inhaled, rescued Chalkan from the beads and they all followed the marble statue through another set of animated beads, Cal following the earth elemental's example and allowing them to wrap around his arm and then use his Kord-granted strength to yank them from the ceiling. "What did she say before she cast the cloudkill?" asked Telgrane.

"'None dare enter the sanctum of Ambrosia Black!'" quoted Feron. "It was Elven."

"It sounded like it," replied Telgrane, as they entered the next room. This was a scriptorium, with long desks holding various scrolls and cabinets of writing implements. It was empty, but the door to the north was open, and spilling out of the room beyond was a mobile cloud of sickly green vapors. "Another cloudkill!" warned Telgrane.

He was partially correct. This was a cloudkill spell, but one that had been granted a level of sentience by the elven spellcaster. The living cloudkill obeyed Ambrosia's commands - in Elven, for she deigned speak no lesser language - to kill the intruders. She stood in the midst of its billowing vapors, unharmed by its poisonous nature by virtue of her unliving marble form.

But Infernia was immune to poison effects as well, and she went wading into combat with the living statue. Of course, there was little chance that a marble statue would be set ablaze by a fire elemental's pounding fists, but she was willing to do whatever would help her master defeat his enemies. Telgrane, meanwhile, was lamenting the fact that he didn't have a second gust of wind spell ready, and was reduced to fleeing the living spell. Cal and Feron likewise backed away from it, and sent ranged spells into its mass in an attempt to kill it from afar. Ambrosia advanced as her living spell advanced, casting spells at the enemies who dared invade her sanctuary. The heroes were forced back into the central chamber. Not wanting to get tangled up in the northernmost set of animated beads, Telgrane again assumed the thickness of the wall was about five feet wide, and used a stone shape spell to burrow a tunnel to the side of the doorway, through the marble wall and into another square room beyond. This one was a mirror image of the entry chamber, only instead of caryatid columns in the corners it had a summoning circle permanently etched into the floor. He ducked into the tunnel and into the room, staying ahead of the billowing cloudkill spell.

Cal and Feron, the two highest-level spellcasters in this particular group of heroes, traded spell attacks with Ambrosia as best as they could, with the occasional spell thrown at the cloudkill for good measure. They did finally destroy the animated spell effect, causing a look of hatred to pass over the otherwise beautiful elven features of Ambrosia Black's marble face. She redoubled her efforts, using dimension door to disappear from view so she could attack from another direction.

"Half-elf abomination!" she spewed at Feron, striking her with a blow from her marble fist that sent the druid reeling across the room. "How dare your ancestors sully their elven heritage with the likes of a human!" Of the intruders, Ambrosia seemed to harbor the most ill-will towards the druid, perhaps because her half-elven beauty rivaled that of the living construct. Chalkan was as fully a half-elf as was Feron, but he was a male, and thus perhaps on a lower level of consideration to the bigoted elven wizard.

Eventually, as was often the case with drawn-out spell battles, all of the casters had used up their most powerful spells and were trying to do their best with their lower-level spells. At this stage, Ambrosia Black was clearly at an advantage, for her marble body had more strength than even Cal's mighty frame, and she gleefully traded blows with him while cursing him in her own native language - which flowed past Cal's ears like water from a duck's back, as he didn't speak the language. Still, he could guess the gist of her ranting, and responded with a snarled "Right back at you, lady!"

Eventually, a look of concern crossed Ambrosia's face, for while they were all casting their lower-level spells at each other, Chalkan's wand of fireball was just as powerful as ever. The other heroes backed away and allowed Chalkan to blast the living statue again and again with his wand, and while she appeared to be partially protected from the flames, each strike seemed to be doing some damage. All out of teleport and dimension door spells, Ambrosia raced to the elevator pillar in the central room, but Feron anticipated this avenue of escape and stepped into the circle, saying "Lerretar" to get it to raise up to the upper level and jumping off as it raised to the ceiling, landing nimbly back to the floor of the lower level. Apparently it was programmed to finish one action before accepting a new command, because Ambrosia simply glared in hatred at Feron rather than say the command word to lower the column.

A few more fireballs and Ambrosia Black was no more. "No!" she cried out in Elven as her exquisite marble body was engulfed in another explosion of flames. "I will not be defeated by members of the lesser--" She never got to finish her sentence.

Feron called the central pillar down, and then one at a time they each went upstairs (Telgrane having Infernia jump back into her tinder box to save a trip, then releasing her once they got upstairs). The upper level was not arranged as symmetrically as was the lower level, being made up almost entirely of an enormous library. "No touching," admonished Telgrane to his fiery familiar.

"Yes, Master," replied Infernia, putting her hands behind her back.

A pile of books on a table nearby configured itself into the semblance of a face, and asked "May I help you? And where is the Mistress?" in the Elven tongue.

"Dead," replied Feron in the same language, and then switched to Common. "Do you speak anything besides Elven?"

"Indeed," replied the animated pile of books in the Common tongue. "I am conversant in most of the common languages in the region, as well as several extraplanar languages. If you have defeated Ambrosia Black, then I suppose I am now yours. My name is Rhunic. I act as the permanent librarian here."

"So you know all about this pocket dimension?" asked Feron.

"Indeed I do," replied Rhunic. He caused a book to float out from its place on one of the many shelves in the library, and fly over to the heroes. "This book details the construction of the Door and the rooms beyond."

"Cool!" said Chalkan, then jumped to the chase. "Is there a treasure room?"

"Indeed there is," replied Rhunic. "There's a secret panel on the wall just behind you." He began to describe its workings, but Chalkan had beaten him to it. A section of the wall slid to the side with the rumble of stone on stone, revealing a short corridor ending in a blank wall. Not surprisingly, there was a similar secret door on that wall, leading into a room filled with treasure. Chalkan whooped with joy and raced into the room. Cal tried to pull him back, but it was too late. Fortunately, there were no obvious traps in the room, just a series of chests and ornate boxes. Chalkan opened each one eagerly, and it was fortunate that they were all untrapped. The first seven chests were all filled with either coins or gems and jewelry. A long wooden case contained an ornate longbow of exquisite elven manufacture, and Feron could tell the quiver stored next to it was a quiver of Ehlonna by the holy symbol engraved upon it. "This is quite a haul!" exclaimed Chalkan with glee.

"It sure is," admitted Telgrane. "But I'm more interested in what the library holds." He turned and re-entered the narrow passageway, noticing the arcane glyphs above the doorway only at the last second, when it was too late - and thus activated Ambrosia's final act of vengeance. In a second, a pile of Telgrane's clothes dropped to the floor in the doorway, followed by the quiet thunk of his ioun stone falling to the floor.

"Master!" cried Infernia, jumping through the doorway into oblivion - or at least, that's what it seemed like to the others, who watched the small fire elemental disappear from view.

"Nobody move!" commanded Cal to the others. "Feron, what are those runes?" The half-elf examined them, and replied that they looked to be involved in teleportation magic, possibly of an extraplanar nature. "I think they were plane shifted somewhere else."

"Any idea where?" asked Cal.

"No idea, sorry," answered Feron.

"Okay, we can't get out of this treasure room this way," reasoned the cleric. "Rhunic! Is there another way out of this room?" he called.

"Alas, there is not," replied the librarian from the other room.

"What's the point of having a treasure room you can't exit from?" asked Chalkan.

"Oh, I'm sure Ambrosia had no problem coming in or out of this room," replied Feron. "I imagine the runes are attuned to only affect living creatures, not animated statues. Or maybe there's a password or something."

"Rhunic, is there a password to allow us to get out of this room?" Cal demanded.

"Alas, if there is, it is unknown to me," called back Rhunic. "Ambrosia has not documented any details about protective measures in the treasure room in any of the books in this library. And I would know."

"Okay, we're making our own safe passageway," replied Cal. "We're going to do like Telgrane did downstairs, and carve a passageway with a stone shape spell."

"You have one readied?" asked Chalkan.

"On a scroll," replied Cal, digging through his scroll tubes for the right one. But it did the trick, and thereafter Ambrosia's treasure room had a second entrance and exit.

"How are we going to find Telgrane and Infernia?" asked Feron with a worried tone in her voice.

"We're not going to, today," admitted Cal. "We don't have the spellpower. We'll have to rest up, and try to find him tomorrow. In the meantime, let's go back to the Planar Scout and see how Greymantle is doing, and if Pilot's fixed the ship yet so we can get home. Remember, we're still on the first layer of the Nine Hells."

"Oh yeah," replied Feron. "I kind of forgot during all of the excitement."

Fortunately, Pilot had just about finished the repairs to the ship, and Dr. Graymantle was resting comfortable. Pinwhistle was glad to hear that the heroes had taken care of Ambrosia Black, and had high hopes that they'd be able to get back home, Thag would be able to repair the severed leg of the warforged, and the heroes would be able to find Telgrane and Infernia.

- - -

Pinwhistle was mostly correct. Dr. Greymantle's shield around the vessel managed to keep even a dedicated pit fiend at bay, and Pilot effected repairs and steered the Planar Scout up out of Avernus and back to the skies of Oerth. They landed in the hangar behind Greymantle's manor house, and the three heroes said their goodbyes. Rhunic had informed them how to remove and transport the Door That Doesn't Belong - the whole thing rolled up like a poster when not in use - and they took it with them.

The next day, though, once fully rested and with a full complement of spells, Cal began with some divination spells. From these, he learned that Telgrane was dead, although Infernia was still alive. "I can cast a true resurrection to get Telgrane back," he said. "I don't know how to get to Infernia, though."

Casting the spell caused Telgrane's body to materialize in its present form, before its wounds were healed and Telgrane's life restored. Telgrane's corpse arrived naked, with nasty-looking bites on his thigh that were swollen and purple. His torso was badly burned, with holes burned in two places on his chest. Once revived, Telgrane could explain the bites as having come from a phase spider - he had been plane shifted to the Ethereal Plane, where he had been set upon by one of the fierce arachnids who dwelled there. Naked and without his spell components, he was no match for the phase spider, and even Infernia was unable to fight off the creature before the poison worked its way through Telgrane's system, stopping his heart.

"I can summon her directly, once I regain my spells tomorrow," Telgrane said. "I hope she'll be okay until then."

She was. She had eventually managed to kill the phase spider whose bite had killed Telgrane, and any others in the area were smart enough to realize a fire elemental made for poor eating. And the burns on Telgrane's chest were the result of her throwing herself upon her master's unliving form in her grief, her magma tears burning through a body no longer protected by fire, since the ring of fire protection Telgrane wore had been left behind in Ambrosia Black's treasure room along with all of his other worn items.

When Infernia suddenly appeared in the Wing Three living room the day after Telgrane's resurrection as a result of her master's summons, she appeared in her ember form, as a small pile of ashes with a tiny spark of life left glowing in its center. "He's dead, he's dead," she cried out in anguish, over and over. Telgrane knelt down and blew softly on the ashes, causing the ember to glow brighter. Surprised, Infernia reassumed her fiery humanoid form, and was astonished to see Telgrane kneeling before her. "MASTER!" she cried in delight. "You're ALIVE!" She rushed to him and hugged him tightly, and it was a good thing Telgrane once again wore his ring of fire protection, or he'd have suffered similar burn marks once again.

To this day, nobody has ever complained about the scorch marks on the carpet in the living room of the Wing Three general quarters.

ADVENTURE 61 - ATTEMPTED REPOSSESSIONS

PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
This adventure was an attempt to tie up multiple loose ends. One one hand, I had Feron Dru walking around with a stone carving of a winged tiger in her Heward's handy haversack that she had apparently forgotten all about - she had found it all the way back in adventure 18, "Rana Mor." At the same time, I had three pieces of the wand of infinity still unassembled (and carried by three different PCs) from adventure 42, "Ex Keraptis Cum Amore," and a lichlike baelnorn who had remanifested since being destroyed who would be determined to get the pieces back (or at least one of them, so that they couldn't all be assembled together). And finally, I had an idea for how to make Chalkan's status as an arcane archer a part of a plotline.

"Attempted Repossessions" also marks the beginning of Dan and Vicki's youngest son, Joey, as a full-fledged player in our campaign. By this point he was 8 years old, the same age Jacob had been when we first started this campaign (and, incidentally, the same age Logan had been many years ago when I introduced AD&D 2nd Edition to both him and his then 10-year-old brother, Stuart). Rather than go the same route we had taken with Vicki - namely, put the current roster of PCs on hold and start everybody off at 1st level - we decided to have him roll up a single 8th-level PC and have him run that character exclusively. There were several reasons for this: although he had been playing "pretend D&D" with us for years, we had gradually morphed his "Joey rules" into rules very similar to the actual D&D rules, so he was much more familiar with the game than Vicki was when we introduced her to the campaign. I figured an 8th-level PC run through every adventure would catch up rather quickly in the XP department, and doing so would give him a single PC on which to focus his attention instead of having it split between two alternating PCs like the rest of the players were doing. I went with an 8th-level PC because Joey was 8, and up to this point, whenever he asked what level his "pretend PC" was I always made it the same level as Joey's age.

Dan and I decided that a fighter was the way to go for Joey's first PC - it was the easiest class to learn, and the group could always use another front-line fighter. Joey rolled up a PC with his dad's supervision between game sessions, and he decided his PC was a human fighter named Thunderwolf. I had come up with an idea as to how to integrate Thunderwolf into Wing Three in such a way as to make it plausible that he'd be adventuring with them every time without being a full-fledged member of the Adventurers Guild. And with that, we were off on Thunderwolf's first adventure.

- - -

Guildmaster Farthingale bustled up the stairs to the general living area of Wing Three, a young man in step behind him. "Your attention, please!" he harrumphed at the group talking there. "This is my nephew, Thunderwolf - my sister's kid - and I'd like you to show him the ropes as far as adventuring goes. I expect great things from him in time, and I expect he'll do best under the guidance of one of our most powerful Wings." He turned to Thunderwolf, slapped him heartily on the side of the arm, and said, "You'll do fine. Let me know if you have any problems." And with a nod at the Wing Three members, the Guildmaster turned on his heel and made his way back down the stairs.

Feron was the first to greet the newcomer. "Hello," she said, smiling sweetly, and made the introductions. Thunderwolf shook hands with everyone, and even Cal was surprised at the firmness of his grip. He was a fairly fresh-faced youngster, but for all that he seemed to be a seasoned fighter.

"Come join us for breakfast," offered Telgrane, ushering the young man into the kitchen. The brief meal was spent talking over past adventures; Thunderwolf had a voracious appetite for stories of derring-do and was clearly excited to be joining a group of such experienced heroes.

After the five had finished up their meal, Chalkan scraped together some scrambled eggs and bacon onto an extra plate, gathered up a fork and a hard roll, and called over his shoulder, "I'll be right back - I'm going to bring this down to Old Clem!"

Old Clem, if the past was any indication, would be down in the stables attending to the group's horses and various guard animals, just as he did the first thing every morning in the city. Only after he'd seen to the animals' needs did he ever worry about his own breakfast, and it wasn't unusual for Chalkan to beat him to the punch by bringing him down something to eat. As Chalkan entered the stables, however, Old Clem was nowhere to be seen. "Odd," he said aloud to himself - and then he saw the parchment stuck to the door to his own horse's stall by an arrow. Setting down the plate of food and plucking the arrow from the stall door, Chalkan read the words scribed upon the piece of parchment. They were written in Elven in a flowing script, and read:

Chalkan,

I'm taking the chance that you have enough elf blood in your mongrel body to have learned to read in the True Script, for I refuse to lower my standards and write this in a lesser language. Hopefully, if nothing else you might at least recognize this as the Elven script and get an actual elf to read it to you.

We have your filthy old human servant. While no true elf would value the life of such a doddering old fool, I'm sure that tainted as you are with the blood of humans in your worthless veins you will do as instructed to purchase his release unharmed.

There is an abandoned fort 10 miles to the south of this miserable, human-built excuse for a city, right at the edge of the forest. Be there today at high noon if you want to see your human vassal alive again. Bring with you Vlaegoroth's bracers, his quiver, and his glorious bow. Rilisivae Athelgala is sullied at the hands of a half-breed abomination such as yourself. You may turn over Vlaegoroth's items and thus procure the life of your wrinkled old servant, secure in the knowledge that Vlaegoroth's legacy will live on by one truly worthy of his elven heritage.

Come alone – if you bring anyone else with you, we will slit the geezer's throat and leave him as food for the carrion crows (which, if nothing else, proves that humans are actually good for something).

Elandimor Kerythinue

Click to expand...

Chalkan raced back up to the others, the plate of food long forgotten.

- - -

"Hmm. 'The death arrow's war-song,'" translated Feron upon reading the author's signature. "Somebody's got a rather high opinion of himself." She knew that many elves chose their own names upon reaching adulthood, casting aside the names they had been given at birth.

"We've got to rescue Old Clem!" said Chalkan, gathering up his adventuring gear.

"We will, without a doubt," agreed Cal calmly. "But we need a plan - we can't just go racing down there all pell-mell. Feron, can you scry on Old Clem?"

"Yes, but it'll take about an hour to set up and do so," she replied.

"An hour?" yelled Chalkan. "We don't have--"

"We have plenty of time," interrupted Cal. "The note said for you to meet this guy at noon, and it's only ten miles south of the city. We'll have Feron get her scrying attempt ready, while the rest of us go down to the stables and look around - maybe we can learn something about who took Old Clem that way. Then we can gear up, Feron can see what we'll be facing, and we'll head on out there to the rescue. Okay?"

"Okay," Chalkan replied begrudgingly. He was eager to rush to the rescue, but he could see the wisdom in Cal's words.

Close examination of the dust in the stables indicated signs of a brief struggle, with up to four assailants - all elves, more than likely, judging by the size of their footprints. There was no blood, so with any luck Old Clem hadn't been actually harmed.

When Feron was ready for the scrying attempt, she cast her spell in the small grove behind the Headquarters building, and the other four heroes gathered around her eagerly. The pool of water rippled, and then the group could see Old Clem.

He was not looking well. An expression of fear covered his face, and he was lying on what looked to be a large log, his arms extended perpendicular to his body. Ropes secured each wrist to a side-beam of wood jutting out from the larger log. His hands fluttered around, trying to find a way free of the bonds.

A voice emanated from the image in the pond; Chalkan and Feron recognized it as "Hold his hand still!" in Elven. A hand pressed down upon Old Clem's fingers, pinning them fast to the wood. And then what was unmistakably Old Clem's voice cried out in pain as an arrow suddenly thunked into place, piercing the center of his palm. Blood pooled in his palm as he screamed to the sounds of elven laughter. Feron turned away at the sound of a second thunk! at his other hand, and the image dissipated.

Even Cal's cool demeanor had vanished. "Let's go!" he cried out to the others, racing to the stables.

Lacking the ability to teleport directly to Old Clem at the moment, the group saddled up their mounts and headed south out of Greyhawk City. They knew the old abandoned fort that the note referenced, and stopped short a good half mile before the bend in the road that would make the fort - and the beginning of the forest - visible. There, Telgrane cast a Rary's telepathic bond on the whole group and Feron unpacked the Daern's dollhouse. Cal, Telgrane, Infernia, and Thunderwolf each entered the dollhouse, leading all of the horses in with them, and then Feron replaced it into her Heward's handy haversack and wildshaped into a timber wolf. As Chalkan had left his own timber wolf animal companion, Toronous, behind at the Guild, she would easily be mistaken for Chalkan's pet - or so they hoped. Feron's own animal companion, Felix, flew on ahead and reported back that there were half a dozen hawks circling high above in the sky, directly above the abandoned fort.

Chalkan and Feron loped quickly to the bend in the road, and saw the fort ahead of them. It had seen better days, but despite some crumbling stones at its upper level it still seemed safe enough. An elven figure stood atop its battlements, and the crouching shadows of several others up there with him confirmed he was not alone. Oddly, a stout wooden pole was balanced along the top of the fort and projected out into the open air, its bottom sharpened to a blunt point.

"Hold it right there!" called down a voice from the top of the fort, in the Elven language. "Place Vlaegoroth's bow, quiver, and bracers on the ground at your feet, and step away!" the voice demanded.

"I want to see that Old Clem's still alive!" Chalkan called back, as he slowly placed Rilisivae Athelgala on the ground and made a big - and slow - production out of removing the quiver from his back.

The shadowy figure above motioned to the others up there with him, and they hoisted the end of the wooden pole up from the roof. It tipped over the front edge of the fort's roof, its sharpened end finding the pre-dug hole awaiting it on the ground below, and the whole thing tipped upright. Old Clem, crucified by arrows through his palms at the top of the pole, groaned in pain and his head slumped to the side. Almost immediately, two small hawks rose up from beyond the fort’s battlements and perched on either side of Old Clem's wrists, looking down at Chalkan as if in disdain. "He's alive enough!" called down Elandimor.

As Chalkan slowly stripped off his bracers of archery, he stealthily looked around at his foes. Besides Elandimor, there looked to be two others on the roof with him, and another two at the arrow slits on either side of the wooden door of the fort, each with bows drawn and an arrow nocked in his direction. He silently passed this information on to Feron through the telepathic bond; the others were currently subsumed into Feron's wolf form inside the Daern's dollhouse, and couldn't communicate with Chalkan and Feron - they'd have to be updated when Feron resumed her normal form.

Suddenly, the door to the fort opened and an elven woman approached Chalkan. She wore leather armor and carried an elven longbow, with a longsword sheathed at her hip. As she approached, Chalkan could see that she was quite beautiful - and oddly familiar, as if he'd seen her before. She scowled as she approached Chalkan. "No sudden moves," she warned. "Elandimor and the others have got you in their sights, so if you try anyth--oh crap, your name is Chalkan, isn't it?"

The sudden question startled Chalkan, who started to ask the elf if she knew him when she interrupted him with another outburst.

"Mom is going to freak!"

About this time, Feron became aware of a drumming sound coming from the distance. She looked around with her lupine eyesight, but didn't see anything. The sound was just at the edge of her awareness - thump-thump-THUMP-thump, thump-thump-THUMP-thump....

The elven woman quickly gathered up her composure. "Okay, quickly here, Chalkan - my name is Caeline Laniela, and I'm your older sister. Elandimor is not a big fan of humans or those with human blood, and he's incensed that you've got Vlaegoroth's stuff, which he sees as rightfully his. I don't suppose you'd just let him have that stuff, would you?"

"You're my sister?" asked Chalkan, dumbfoundedly.

"Focus, kid, focus! And keep it down; I don't want Elandimor finding out! Yes, I'm your sister - well, half-sister, anyway - and I was meaning to come by and visit you and Mom one of these years, but I forgot how fast you half-humans grow. So let's save the catching up for sometime later, when we don't have a bunch of elven rangers ready to poke us full of holes, okay? Now, here's what we're going to do--"

Caeline didn't get to finish her thought. The drumming had been growing increasingly louder, and Feron was surprised to see a group of eight dark-skinned drummers suddenly manifest in a ring around her, Chalkan, and Caeline. They were grim-faced, wearing feathers in their hair, war-paint on their faces, and simple loincloths, and pounded on animal-skin drums with their hands: Thump-thump-THUMP-thump, thump-thump-THUMP-thump, thump-thump-THUMP-thump....

Neither Chalkan nor Caeline seemed to notice. When a female suddenly appeared in the midst of these drummers, her face painted into the visage of a skull and a tiger at her side, Feron suddenly realized who she was facing: Saeng Ki, the witch-woman they had encountered in Rana Mor.

"Look out!" called Feron, as she shifted back to her own normal form, not wanting to face this new threat while wearing the shape of a timber wolf.

The elven rangers who had Chalkan in their sights didn't see the ghostly intruders, but they did see Chalkan's pet wolf suddenly transform into a half-elven woman in dragonhide plate. "Treachery!" cried Elandimor from the fort's roof, and let fly with his arrow. The others followed suit.

"Chalkan!" cried Caeline, diving to tackle her little half-brother out of harm's way. She did so, but throwing herself into harm's way like that came at a cost, and the arrows meant for Chalkan suddenly sprouted from her own back - including the pitch-black arrow of elf slaying from Elandimor's bow. A bit of blood trickled from her mouth, and she died with an unimpressive "Crap!" as her final epitaph.

Feron, distracted by the ghosts apparently only she could see, took two arrows herself. These came not from the fort in front of her but rather from the trees off to her right; apparently there were two other elven rangers stationed there that they had missed. But she couldn't worry about them now; there were ghosts to fight, and for that she needed Cal! She shrugged the Heward's handy haversack off of her shoulders and dropped it to the ground, where the dollhouse peeked out from the flap. Now that her carried items were no longer subsumed into her lupine form, the Rary's telepathic bond kicked back in and Feron did her best to catch the others up on the situation.

Cal was the first to leap from the dollhouse and regain his normal size. He looked around for the ghosts but saw nothing; puzzled, he turned to Feron with a question on his lips. Feron instinctively grabbed for his shoulder, and upon touching him he too saw the ring of drummers, the witch-woman, and the snarling ghost-tiger. Saeng Ki was raising her arm back, ready to snap a whip at Feron, when Cal blasted her with his holy symbol. She dissipated with an unvoiced scream.

Apparently Saeng Ki had been somehow shielding the other ghosts from everyone else's view but Feron's, for all at once the elves and the heroes - some of them just now emerging from the Daern's dollhouse - saw the ring of drummers and the tiger. Elandimor and his archers weren't sure what these newcomers were all about, but he was more concerned with killing Chalkan and his companions and the other archers followed his lead. Feron cast a quick entangle spell at the two archers in the forest, and was pleased to see that that kept them busy enough for her not to have to worry about them for awhile. Then she reached into her haversack and felt the cold stone of the winged tiger statue.

Merely touching the statue took Feron to an all-white plane of seeming nothingness. A small speck appeared in the distance, just at it had when she had first found the statue among the ruins of Rana Mor. As the speck got closer, it took on the form of a winged tiger, who padded up to the druid and spoke directly into her mind.

"I have waited patiently here for your call, but it has never come," the tiger said without making a sound.

"I...had forgotten that I had found you," admitted Feron. "I take it that Saeng Ki was trying to get you back?"

"Yes," replied the winged tiger. "As I served her once before, she would have had me serve her once again, to protect the ruins of a city already fallen to rubble."

"Will she be back?" asked Feron.

"As long as you have not claimed me as your own, she is free to win me back," replied the tiger.

"I claim you as my own!" said Feron. "Will that do it?"

"Not by itself," said the tiger. "You must do two things: you must give me a name by which you will call me, and you must summon me to the material world, by casting a summoning spell through the statue."

"I'll do it!" said Feron. "Now come on -- we've got to get back to the others!"

"There is no rush," admonished the tiger, stretching lazily. "This is a realm of the mind; time does not pass here as it does there. But very well, let us go." Feron found herself back in the material world, and sure enough, no time had apparently passed during her conversation with the great beast. She spoke the words to a summon nature's ally V spell, and cast it at the stone statue of the winged tiger. "I call you forth, Linus!" she said - and in an instant, the statue was gone, and in its place stood the winged tiger. "I am here to serve, Mistress," Linus spoke telepathically to Feron. "What would you have me do?"

"The man up there," she said, pointing up at Old Clem. "Can you free him?"

"I can," replied Linus, and spread his striped wings to fly up to the top of the pole.

Chalkan, in the meantime, grabbed his bracers back up and slid them on his arms, then wielded Vlaegoroth's whitewood whisper-bow once again, sending a few arrows streaking up at Elandimor. The full-blooded elven arcane archer, in retaliation, set one of his own arrows ablaze and shot it at the base of the pole upon which Old Clem was impaled. The pole must have been coated in oil, for it quickly burst into flames which started eating their way up higher, towards the unconscious hireling.

Telgrane cast a stinking cloud spell at the top of the fort, catching all three elves on the roof at once, and then those on the lower floor later when gravity pulled the cloud down to them. It was quite an effective spell, apparently killing Elandimor's two allies on the roof and one of the ground-floor archers; the other one burst out of the door, choking and coughing.

Thunderwolf was in combat with the ghost-tiger and doing rather well for himself when another turning attempt by Cal wiped away half of the drummers. At that point, it became apparent to the remaining drummers that their cause was for naught, for Thunderwolf and Infernia soon made quick work of the tiger. The four remaining ghost-drummers stopped their rhythmic drumming all at once, looked at each other in confirmation, and then disappeared in unison, letting themselves slide into the Ethereal Plane and begin their long trek back to the ruins of Rana Mor, their mission - to free the winged tiger statue taken from their ruins - a failure.

At about this time, the last combatant entered the fray. Daestas, a baelnorn from the volcanic mountain range weeks to the north, had tracked the members of Wing Three to this area and his recent divinations told him that today - and during this battle - was the most advantageous time to try to steal back one of the pieces of the wand of infinity. It didn't really matter which one he grabbed, as getting away with even one of the three would prevent the dangerous item from being reassembled. Feron had the stone of life, but it was stowed somewhere in her haversack, out of easy reach; Telgrane had the rod of the gods, but he disdained its feeble powers so much that it was buried at the bottom of his own, nonmagical backpack; however, Cal wore his gem of seeing on a chain around his neck, so it looked like that would be the easiest one to grab.

Daestas, invisible, walked up behind Cal and cast a hold person on him, expecting to simply grab the gem from around his neck and make his escape. Cal was much more powerful than when the baelnorn had last met him, though, and the cleric easily shrugged off the spell's intended effect. Then he spun around, saw the undead creature reaching out at him, and blasted him with another turning attempt. Power flowed through his holy symbol of Kord, and while Daestas was able to resist the effect, he was out in the open against a group of adventurers much more powerful than he remembered. He didn't last long against the combined might of Cal's mace and Feron's spells, his undead body crumbling to a heap on the ground as his undead spirit raced back to the volcanic mountains, where another body would form soon enough.

Linus had ripped out the arrows piercing Old Clem's palms and chewed his way through the ropes binding the elderly hireling's wrists, and grabbed him up by the collar in his teeth and flew him gently to the ground, just as the flames reached the spot where Old Clem's legs had dangled. Elandimor cursed loudly, and whistled for his aerial steed. Above him, one of the circling birds of prey descended; however, while the others were normal hawks, Elandimor's was a giant eagle. It swooped down by the top of the abandoned fort, and the arcane archer leaped onto his broad back. He was willing to admit his failure to gain Vlaegoroth's items for himself, but he was an elf, and there would be other times to gain that which he deserved. The important thing now was to survive to try again later.

As Elandimor flew off into the distance upon his giant eagle, Chalkan fired off a few shots in his direction. When they missed, he called out to Telgrane over the telepathic link, and the conjurer obliged his friend by firing a spell at the vanishing arcane archer. The fireball struck Elandimor on the back, and the resulting fiery explosion burned both him and his aerial mount to a crisp. They plummeted to the forest below.

The three remaining elves were soon dispatched, especially as two of them were still bound up in Feron's entangle spell and the third was on his hands and knees just outside the fort's ground-level door, choking and wheezing from Telgrane's cloudkill spell. Cal revived Old Clem with a bevy of healing spells, and the cantankerous fisherman sat up and flexed his fingers, amazed at the lack of scars where the arrows had pierced his flesh. "I think we should bring up the matter of hazard pay," suggested Old Clem with a gleam in his eye.

Chalkan and Feron tracked Elandimor's remains to ensure he was really dead, then returned and retrieved Caeline's body, placing it reverently into the Daern's dollhouse. Chalkan fully intended to pay to have her restored to life.

After all, if he didn't, his mom would freak!

- - -

And thus, with this adventure, we took care of two of Pinwhistle's divinations. The first was Chalkan's: "Beware he who pulls the strings of the Slayer, for he means your death," in which "the Slayer" was the arrow of elf slaying. The second was Feron's: "Even the fiercest of cats may eventually acknowledge a master – but never two."

I made the keep out of cardboard, and used a pencil as the tree trunk that Old Clem was bound to (using a rubber band to hold him in place). The battle map I had prepared had a marking where a hole had been dug in front of the fort, and I had made a "pencil stabilizer" to hold it upright in place when Elandimor and his men tipped Old Clem's tree trunk up off the fort's roof.

Joey seemed to enjoy his first adventure, and did a good job keeping track of what was going on. At one point he verbally regretted not having brought his "pretend PC" on this adventure, as that PC had some item drawn on his equipment sheets that Thunderwolf could have used, but he pressed on and did a good job nonetheless.