Three Kingdoms and Empire

[the Jester]

Into the Ashen Palace of Bleak our heroes go. Immediately as they pass the threshold, they are assaulted by a group of the so-called ‘ash zombies’ that they have heard of. They are waxen corpses radiating cold menace, dusted with drifts of ash. Cooper immediately moves into a posture of attack, his falchion poised to hack downward. Barouk moves in behind him, his crossbow at the ready. Skaal, too, moves into the room, his sickles gleaming naked in his hands. Romdar follows close on his heels, his longsword at the ready.

The ash zombies move in, pawing clumsily at the party. One connects with Cooper, even as the herald of Thrush cuts savagely into it, nearly severing one of its arms. It doesn’t react at all, just continues attacking mindlessly. Cooper rocks back from its blow and cries out. “Ahh, watch out! They’re strong, and cold!” Romdar, too, suffers a blow. He feels the frost creep into him, bone deep, in an instant, and staggers back gasping.

But our heroes return the ash zombies’ attacks. Cooper lays his foe low and heads towards the next, shivering with cold; meanwhile, Barouk swears as he finds his crossbow ineffective against the ash zombies. He switches to shuriken, but his first throwing star just bounces off of his target harmlessly.

Severin is finally able to move up and into the room. He sees the zombies, notes Barouk’s crossbow on the floor and drops his bow. Quickly, he pulls his greatsword from the baldric slung across his back. He strikes a quick blow on one of the remaining zombies, and Skaal moves in from the other side and slices its head off with a sickle. The zombie’s neck vents ash, rather than blood; then it collapses.

The last zombie is surrounded by Romdar, Skaal’s kocho and Cooper. In only a few more moments it is hacked mercilessly to pieces, with Cooper striking the finishing blow.

Then, alertly, our heroes survey the scene. They are in a large reception room. There is a burnt and charred carpet underfoot. Tapestries on the walls look like they were once rich and valuable, but now they are burnt to cinders. Several wooden chairs and stools are in here, also burnt almost to ash. Two exits lead out of the chamber. The air is quite chilly. Severin checks one of the passages leading out; it opens into some kind of feast chamber. “Nuh-uh,” he says nervously. Barouk looks down the other passageway: it has two halls leading away at a ninety degree angle from each other. Down one of them he can see a couple of doors; the other way seems to open up into some sort of room off to the left at the end. He points these out to the party as they strike up light sources for the majority of the party, who cannot see in the dark. Then, they decide to head towards the open room.

When they reach it, they are disturbed to find it some kind of trophy room, with heads mounted on obsidian plates that hang incongruously from the walls of ash. The trophies are truly grisly- mostly the heads of humans or elves, though a dwarf and gnome head are also visible.

“That’s not right,” Kifla cries. “That goat man is mean!” She can’t stop staring at the mounted gnome head.

“He worships Bleak,” Barouk replies gently. “Of course he’s mean.”

One wall of the room is curved; clearly, this must be the edge of one of the towers that are in the four corners of the keep. There is a door in that wall. Opposite it, set in a flat wall, is another door.

“Let’s check out the tower,” Barouk suggests. “It seems to me that we should go up to find that goat-headed fellow, and hopefully to get out of here!”

Romdar asks, “Does anyone remember what he said about how to get out? In, and down, and up and around or something?”

“That wasn’t it,” objects Skaal. “Uh, it was... hmm.”

The party gives a collective shrug. “Well, we’ll see,” Severin quips. “Maybe we can ask him when we see him again.”

Barouk, meanwhile, opens up the tower. It is cold and empty, but for a stair that winds upwards along the wall of the tower. Barouk and Severin begin clambering up the stairs a short way, but the ashen steps shift and collapse under their weight! With a cry, Barouk finds himself landing 20’ below, with a rain of debris coming down all about him. He shields himself from the worst of it, but is pummeled by a few pieces. Severin was not as far up the stairs, but he is pitched right onto his face, breaking his cheek bone.

The stairs are a total loss; without climbing- and who knows how the ashen walls will respond to that- the upper level is, at least for now, unattainable.

Romdar shrugs. “There are three more towers.”

The party decides to go back to the two doors that Barouk first saw down the other half of the L-shaped hall. They easily penetrate the door of the first room. It bears a pair of bunk beds, badly burnt and ready to fall apart. Several footlockers, also marred by flame, are at the bases of the beds. But as soon as our heroes step within to investigate in more detail, two ash zombies spring up from within the ruin of the beds, disintegrating the ashen outline of the beds. However, the zombies are quickly dispatched by the group dog piling them.

The next room is roughly the same, including the pair of ash zombies lurking within it. Between the footlockers in both rooms, the party manages to pull out about 40 gold pieces.

“Well, why don’t we go back to the trophy room and check out that other door?” suggests Tempeh. The others nod agreement, and head back to the trophy room and to the door on the straight wall. This proves to lead to another hallway, with two doors to the right and one at the end of the hall. The first door on the right proves very interesting indeed. Obviously, it was the room of someone important. A large metal bed frame holds a thick ashen bed that was plainly once quite rich. A vanity, with a broken mirror, a charred counter, several blackened jars of various burnt substances and a wooden stool burned to ash before it, is against the wall next to the bed. A small writing table is near the other side of the chamber, and along the corner of the wall are the destroyed remains of a bookshelf. Only one feature stands true and undamaged in here: a portrait of a beautiful woman hangs on the wall of ashes. It is of exquisite craftsmanship.

.”Interesting all over again,” muses Tempeh.

Examining the room turns up something else interesting: the fire that burned this place down seems to have started in this room.

“You know,” muses Zelda, “it’s interesting that, of all the things we’ve seen here, only the painting wasn’t touched by the fire.”

“That’s... very interesting,” admits Kifla. She peers at it closely. “Say, do you hear a hissing sound? Or a crackling?” She cocks her head. “It sounds like fire-“

Abruptly, the fire in the fireplace in the painting seems to leap out of the painting and into the room with our heroes. They shout in surprise, falling back a pace or two at the sudden appearance of the living flame.

It lashes out, searing Severin across the face. “Aargh!” he cries out, throwing up his arms to cover his head. Barouk hurls a throwing star at the elemental, damaging it, and Kifla fires her crossbow at it. Her shaft strikes home too! The elemental flickers, and Romdar attempts to finish it off with a ray of frost, but unfortunately, he misses it completely!

Then Severin swings around, and his greatsword snaps into the elemental. The thing puffs out like a candle flame in a high wind!

“Another close one,” comments the ranger.

There is another exit from the chamber, but our heroes elect to fall back and continue to the door at the end of the hall. This proves to lead to another hallway, but this one has a goat-headed humanoid and two of the ash zombies in it! The goat-man is armed with a longspear and crossbow. Our heroes move towards him, but he retreats up the stairs even as the ranger slices a red line across the goat-man’s arm. As he retreats, the goat-man fires an arrow and narrowly misses Severin. Meanwhile, the ash zombies move to engage the party as well. A brutal combat develops.

“It isn’t the same guy!” shouts Romdar. “It isn’t the Mouth of Bleak! Look, his fur is a different color!”

“Either way,” Barouk says with equanimity. He runs nimbly up the stairs after the goat-man, dodging the ash zombies. The goat man snarls as Barouk approaches, launches himself into the air and kicks with enormous force. The goat man’s neck snaps! He collapses, spasming horrifically as he dies, and Barouk whirls around to help deal with the ash zombies.

***

“I think we need to rest,” groans Zelda. She is tending to Severin, who has been rendered unconscious. The part choruses an agreement with her assessment, and they drag their wounded friend to the room with the portrait in it.

“This is probably as good a place as any to rest,” opines Barouk. “We haven’t seen any places that are specifically friendly yet, anyhow.”

“Sounds good,” sighs Romdar. “I’m pretty wounded.”

The party spends some time tending each others’ wounds, sewing up cuts, salving burns, binding gashes and so forth. Finally, they settle in to attempt to get some rest. But as they start to drift off, Romdar- who is on watch- stiffens. “Hey, guys,” he murmurs. “I think there’s something in the other room.”

“Huh?” Barouk snaps back to wakefulness. He cocks his head, listening carefully.

Yes. There is a sound... muttering? Puzzled, he concentrates fiercely, but cannot discern more. But it is definitely muttering.

The party rises and girds on their weapons. Then they proceed to the next room, from which the muttering seems to be coming. The small chamber that they walk into is set with two windows in the ashen wall. A stone tub, possibly for bathing, is in the chamber, below the windows, and steam rises from the water within it. This room is noticeably warmer than the rest. The charcoal remains of several buckets are near the tub, and a burnt up shelf is near the wall adjacent to it.

“Steam?” blinks Romdar.

Something sloshes in the tub.

Eyes wide, Barouk gestures at the tub. Nobody moves.

Then, suddenly, there is an explosion of water and steam from the tub! Something small, Kifla-sized or smaller, surges forth- a man-shaped form of steaming water, with weird, frothing, steaming wings.

“What the-“ cries Barouk.

The steam creature belches forth a blast of super-hot steam at him. “Aargh!” he cries, backflipping away from the cone and evading. Then, with a glare, he moves in, attempting to grapple the little monster. The creature, meanwhile, claws Cooper and tears a deep wound in his back as he tries to move away. Cooper groans and collapses into unconsciousness.

”It’s a mephit!” cries Kifla. “Watch out!”

Nobody really knows what that means, so they all ignore her words. Romdar dazzles the steaming creature with a flare, and Barouk throws a flurry of punches at it, but misses each time. Zelda begins to sing, inspiring courage in our heroes. Our heroes throw a multitude of blows and fire several arrows and bolts, but seem almost unable to hit it. The steam mephit, on the other hand, tears a great rent in Barouk’s chest with its boiling-hot claws.

The mephit cackles and dives back into the tub of steaming water. Kifla steps up and, despite the intervening water, manages to sink a crossbow bolt into the creature’s side. Then Romdar thrusts his blade into the water and hits it to pretty good effect. However, he is forced to admit that his blows are not doing as much damage as he would have hoped.

The mephit hisses, and it erupts from the superheated water again to belch forth a cloud of searing steam at Romdar. He covers his face and cries out in pain as the steam raises blisters on his arms.

Then a sudden flash of blinding, clashing colors explodes in the middle of the fight. The mephit is knocked unconscious, and Romdar- who is also in the area of the spell- resists the spell’s effect! Quickly, he administers a coup de grace on the mephit and slays it.

“Damn,” swears Barouk. “Now we’re in even worse shape!”

“At least we dealt with the threat before it attacked us in our sleep,” Romdar points out.

“Hey, look here,” Zelda gestures. She points into the tub. “There is some sort of vial in there.”

The water is very hot, so our heroes carefully use long objects, such as swords, to roll the vial out of the tub. It does not radiate magic when checked, but everyone is too paranoid to open it. Finally, Kifla shrugs and smashes it. The amber contents prove to be nice perfume, but now that the vial is smashed, it is wasted. Oh well.

Again, our heroes attempt to rest. This time, they are more successful.

Next Time: Further adventures within the Ashen Palace of Bleak!

 

[the Jester]

CURRENT PARTY ROSTER

Tempeh- elf psion 1; CN
Skaal- elf druid 2; CN
Barouk- dwarf monk 3; LN
Romdar- half-elf duskblade 2; LN
Zelda- human bard 1; NG
Severin- human ranger 1; CG
Cooper- human fighter 1; CG
Kifla- gnome illusionist 2; NG
Grom- half-orc rogue 1/fighter 1; NG

 

[Slickenfiber]

Damn Gnome.

Oh how the party lamented and lashed out at Kifla....

 

[the Jester]

The light is grey and thin. Our heroes can barely tell that it is morning. The smell of ash clings to their nostrils.

They do not take their time rising; they get up, albeit a little stiffly from the cold, uncomfortable flooring, and shake a few of the kinks from their limbs. They take a few minutes to eat some trail rations, dried fruit and jerky. Then they turn their attentions towards continuing their explorations of the ashen palace that they are trapped within. After only the briefest of discussions, they decide to investigate the dining room that they had previously spotted. A strange table, made from a single flat slab of what appears to be polished black glass, dominates the chamber. Cracked clay plates, pots, bowls and other dishes are set as if a large party was expected for dinner. Several covered plates are set in the center of the table, and the smell of cooked meat wafts from underneath.

“That isn’t beef,” Tempeh says, lifting one of the covers from its tray. “It smells good, and it looks like a nice cut of steak, but I don’t know what it is. No way am I eating anything in a place like this!”

“No kidding!” agrees Romdar. “This place isn’t exactly... wholesome.”

Barouk, meanwhile, is examining the exits. There is a door, as well as two different archways leading out. He moves around the corner of one to take a look and sees a hallway with at least one branch and one doorway in it. Too many choices. He decides to go back and open the door in the dining room. It reveals another hallway with doors on either end. More choices! he grumbles to himself. Skaal moves to join the dwarf as he peers out the other archway. Beyond it is a kitchen. However, despite the hot food under the trays in the dining hall, the kitchen doesn’t seem to have a fire going. On the other hand, there is something spitted over the empty, cold fire pit. Cabinets of ash are along the walls, and metal cooking instruments are strewn about, twisted by heat until they almost resemble torture implements.

“Hey,” both Barouk and Skaal say together. They both see it at the same time: the cupboards are moving. The dwarf pulls out and loads his crossbow while Skaal alerts their companions. Everyone stands ready as the cabinet door continues to clatter and shake.

Suddenly it bursts open to reveal- a burning rat! Smoke pours out of the cabinet, and flakes of hot ash burst up from the creature.

Barouk fires, his crossbow bolt transfixing the creature for a moment before it collapses. Its fire goes out.

From the various cupboards and cabinets, three more of the creatures pour forth! They are the size of small dogs. Chittering and squeaking, they rush forward, tearing into Zelda’s flesh. Another spits a lick of flame at Barouk, who dodges nimbly out of the way. But the party is far from helpless in the face of this assault; Tempeh mind thrusts one of the rats, but it remains conscious. Skaal has more luck, slashing down with twin sickles and cutting one of the weird ash rats in two.

Romdar observes carefully. They are burning, he thinks, so maybe cold will affect them especially well. Unfortunately, as he fires a ray of frost, he cannot get a clear shot in; there is too much movement, too much action going on! Curse it! he exclaims inwardly. He moves around the dining table, trying to get a better shot, but misses with his second spell too. “Dexter’s eyes!” he swears. Cooper pulls out his sword and jumps up onto the dining room table, moving across it, also trying for a better position.

Skaal’s kocho* screeches and steps up, kicking at one of the ash rats. It misses. Then it slashes its beak down, axe-like, and skewers it. The rat squeals and dies.

Barouk, meanwhile, is having an interesting contest, wherein he tries to back up, load and fire his crossbow while the ash rat tries to eat his legs. Barouk leaps up as the rat charges in, and it rams its head into the wall, knocking itself senseless! Quickly, Barouk takes advantage of the situation and administers a quick coup de grace. Relative silence falls across the kitchen, broken only by the panting breath of our heroes.

“Is everyone relatively okay?” asks Zelda.

Nobody denies it. “Then let’s move on,” Romdar suggests.

Barouk gestures to one of the kitchen’s walls, which shows a curve. “That has to be another tower,” he announces. “The door out of the dining room leads to a hall with doors at either end. I’d wager that the door to the left goes into that tower.”

“Good thinking!” exclaims Romdar. The others nod, and Barouk moves to the door that he believes leads to the tower. He presses his ear against it at first, straining to hear any sounds, but there are none that he can discern. He gives the others a warning look, and then hurls his shoulder against the door with a smash!

Unfortunately for him, the door holds. Barouk curses in Dwarven, then tries the knob. The door opens easily.

Barouk’s deduction proves correct: the party is staring into one of the palace’s towers. A stone staircase ascends from the level they are on, going out through the ceiling 30’ above. Cold air wafts down from above. Near the exit, about 20’ above them on the stairs, the party can see what appears to be an open chest of gold.

“Hey!” exclaims Barouk. “Gold!”

He begins to advance up the stairs immediately, but just before he reaches the chest, the stairs twist into the wall. With a wail, Barouk falls with bone-jarring force on the ground.

“Are you all right?” cries Tempeh. Skaal hurries over and casts a cure light wounds spell on his dwarven friend.

“I’ll live,” Barouk grunts. He climbs gingerly to his feet, testing his ankles; he sprained one in the fall. Fortunately, the druid’s spell seems to have repaired the damage easily. He glares at the chest above. After a moment, he says, “Well, I can climb up there... anyone have a rope?”

“I do,” nods Skaal. “I can throw it to you once you’re up there.”

“I’ll tie it off, and we can all climb up,” Barouk declares. Carefully, he feels the ashen wall for cracks and slowly begins to ascend. When he reaches the level of the chest- and the stairs above it- he tests it gingerly with one foot before stepping on with his full weight. Then he ties the rope around the chest itself, as well as around the stub of one of the steps that has twisted, and then tosses it down to his companions. Within a few more minutes, the others have all climbed up to the chest and the non-trapped stairs, either via the ramp or the rope. Several of them take a few falls on the way, but nobody is badly wounded.

Tempeh examines the coins. “I’d say that there are about 500 coins here...” She pauses, squints and picks one of them up. She scrapes a fingernail across the surface and frowns.

“What is it?” asks Cooper.

“We’ve been suckered,” she sighs. “These are copper pieces painted gold.”

Barouk barks a laugh. “Well, I got hurt for that copper. We’re going to take it anyway!” The party dumps out the chest and divides the coins amongst themselves.

The party continues their ascent. As they ascend to the second level of the tower, they pass arrow slits in the walls that allow them to see a little bit of the courtyard outside, though the view is somewhat obstructed by ash. The party continues up through the third tower level, which is also cut by arrow slits. At the top of the stairs is a doorway. Barouk throws it open- and our heroes find themselves looking out at the burnt rooftop of the weird palace. The footing looks treacherous and uncertain here; the ‘floor’- really the roof- is burnt to ash and holed in places. Two catapults rest on the ceiling before the party; beside each is a pile of good sized stones, clearly meant to be used as shot. A visible, open trap door is also in the center of the rooftop. Although our heroes can see all four towers surrounding the roof, only one- the one that they came out of- seems to have an entrance.

Laughter rings out. “At last you have come!” cries a voice. Our heroes whirl.

There are five goat-headed figures standing on the rooftop. One of them is wearing the open robe and has the same markings as the Mouth of Bleak.

“Now, my minions, we feast!!”

Next Time: Our heroes fight for their lives on the rooftop against the Mouth of Bleak!

*Kocho are flightless war birds. Skaal has one as his animal companion; though it technically might deserve to be a slightly above 1st level companion. But oh well.

 

[the Jester]

Rooftop Battle!

Slavering, laughing malignantly, the five goat-headed forms stalk towards the rooftop entrance that our heroes are behind. Cooper leaps forward, chopping downward viciously with his falchion. The first goat man falls back with a scream as the blade slashes his shoulder open, crashing into his collarbone with punishing force! Tempeh rushes out and to the side, trying to put some distance between herself and the entrance. “Don’t let them bottle us up!” she cries. Then she mind thrusts one of the goat folk near her. It gives a shrill, pained cry and reels about; but it remains standing, and turns threateningly towards her.

The Mouth of Bleak sneers. Spittle flies as it intones a dark prayer to Bleak and gestures at Cooper. The herald of Thrush falters for a second and shakes his head to clear it, then grins. “I don’t think so!” he calls at the goat headed figure.

Skaal, meanwhile, has spent a few moments focusing on calling forth an ally. Suddenly, with a loud howl, a wolf appears, literally from nowhere, and launches itself at the goat-man that Cooper has already wounded. The canine locks its jaws around his right ankle and pulls. With a cry and a crash, the goat man falls down on the ashen roof of the palace! The wolf tears at its throat viciously, and in seconds the first of the goat folk has stopped moving in a puddle of blood!

“Yes!” Tempeh cries enthusiastically. She puts her head down and tries to sprint away from the two goat folk threatening her, but one of them cuts her across the back with a heavy blow, and she is knocked sprawling. For a moment, she struggles to rise, but as blood floods out of the huge cut across her, she falters and collapses.

“Tempeh!” shouts Skaal. He rushes past the goat folk, who are turning to try to fend off his wolf and kocho, and comes to a halt next to the bleeding psion. Again, he calls on the power of nature. There is a green glow from his hands, and slowly, her wounds start to knit together, closing... closing. The flow of blood slows, slows; it does not quite stop, but it is now much less dangerous. With a groan, she opens her eyes.

“Hurry up, get out of the way!” Romdar yells. He is still stuck partway down the stairs behind the party members who have not yet been able to force themselves through the doorway. He curses at Barouk, who is standing ready, waiting for a moment to spring out when the entrance is finally clear.

Meanwhile, one of the goat men grins at Skaal as it grabs Tempeh by the hair. “I have our dinner!” it cackles. She screams and tries to shake herself loose, but she is still woozy from the cut across her back. The other two goat folk engage the kocho, and it clucks and makes stranger noises at them as it dances and kicks and bites at them. Cooper steps back and rushes around the bird-battle, coming up behind the goat man trying to drag his companion away. With a mighty blow, he decapitates the goat man! Then he turns to face the Mouth of Bleak- just in time! With a shout of malevolent glee, the goat man swings its blade- a longsword with strange patterns running down the blade, and a hilt fashioned to resemble the foot of a frog or toad- and cuts into Cooper. The fighter grunts and staggers, but brings his falchion back up into a guard position.

Tempeh groans, “I’m too weak to fight.”*

“Here,” the druid says grimly. “This is all the remaining healing that I have.” He casts a healing cantrip; it isn’t much, but it permits the psion to stand up, at least... which she does.

Meanwhile, Barouk finally sees his opportunity and manages to leap out through the entrance to the roof. The goat man nearest him swings its axe, slicing into his thigh. He yelps in pain, staggering, and aims a blow at the villain. Smack! It’s a light hit, but a hit nonetheless. The dwarven monk presses forward, hoping to finish the goat man, but his next blow is absorbed by the goat man’s thick hide.

That draws one of the goat folk from the kocho, but the other manages to hit the bird with a telling blow from its axe, causing it to scream in pain. Skaal jerks in response, turning wide-eyed to see what is happening to his animal companion, but there is nothing that he can do as the goat man head butts it in the head! The kocho wavers and collapses, knocked cold by the blow! With a cry of rage, Skaal draws his sickles and leaps to the attack. They begin to trade blows- two sickle slices across the belly for a head butt to the face.

At last, Romdar is able to squeeze forward and into the fray, his sword whistling as he comes to Barouk’s aid. Unfortunately, his blow is wide. But now, with both of them working together against the goat man, they start to press it back. Barouk aims a kick at its head, but it ducks under it- right into the tip of Romdar’s blade! The sword rips up into the creature’s head, entering the skull under the chin, shattering the lower jaw and erupting out of the top of the skull covered in bloody brains! With a twist, Romdar frees his sword.

Tempeh, meanwhile, staggers over to the bleeding kocho. She pulls out some strips of cloth and begins binding its wounds, being in no shape to actually fight. One more blow and I’m out- or dead, she thinks. Her head swims. She is still losing blood. She bites her lip to stifle a moan of pain. Adventuring is more dangerous than she had really realized!

After a furious exchange, the Mouth of Bleak and Cooper each back off from each other, panting. “I have the best of you,” the Mouth taunts. “Come, follow me to your death!” With that, it leaps away to the center of the roof and drops through the trap door leading downward.

“Soon enough,” Cooper promises. “But first...” He turns and joins the furious assault on the remaining goat man atop the roof. Skaal is pressing his assault viciously, with Barouk and Romdar moving in to flank it. Cooper joins the fun with a grin. The goat man laughs, slicing Romdar with its great axe and knocking Barouk away with a head butt. The heroes stagger back for a moment, and it presses the attack. With a mighty blow, it sends Cooper sprawling, bloody and unmoving!

Romdar, badly wounded, thinks, This is too close! Tempeh is barely on her feet, Skaal is pretty well staggering, Barouk is wounded, and I can barely stand! I can’t afford to get too close; one more blow will take me down, and I don’t know that anyone else can take much more! He falls back and casts an acid splash, wounding the remaining goat man further. Its makes a sinister-sounding noise, a combination of pain and glee and hunger. He shudders, throws down his shield and pulls out his bow.

Skaal, meanwhile, falls back as well, switching to throwing daggers. His first one goes wide, but at least he doesn’t stick it into one of his allies! Frowning, he realizes that he doesn’t have another dagger, so he pulls out his club and throws that. Again, his missile goes wide.

The goat man dances over to Cooper’s unmoving form and grabs him by the arm. This time, there is no resistance from the body when he starts dragging it, laughing, to the secret door.

“NO!” shouts Barouk. He springs forward and grabs Cooper’s legs. “You won’t take any of my companions!” The goat man sneers, and for a moment the two struggle over Cooper, disputing possession in a most physical fashion.

Then there is a twang! and an arrow sinks into the goat man’s eye.

It topples over instantly, spilling foul, brown blood onto the ashen roof underfoot. Barouk gives a surprised cry and tumbles backwards as all resistance to his grasp on Cooper vanishes. He springs back to his feet only seconds later, but there is no enemy in evidence.

“Good shot,” Skaal nods to Romdar.

Everyone in the party is badly wounded. They are teetering on the edge of defeat, and they know it. So they shut up the trap door, bar it and the tower entrance as best they can, and set out to rest.

Cooper, unfortunately, is dead. It seems that the last goat man’s slash was lethal to him.

Our heroes curse the Mouth of Bleak. “We need to kill that thing,” Skaal says grimly.

“After we rest,” Tempeh replies.

Next Time: On the trail of the Mouth of Bleak!

*She was at 0 hp after Skaal’s cure light wounds. Note that after Skaal’s cure minor wounds, she is still only at 1 hp...

 

[Slickenfiber]

I remember this day well. Limping and tired from discomfort sleeping on an ashen floor... Ridiculous! Though I am used to meager settings, a hard hewn floor would have been more comfortable... ah but I am a dwarf and tougher than Bleak!! A challenging climb to the top of the stair only to be rushed when we open the door to the rooftop... A most difficult combat strategy and effective -- I must remember this. Alas, fighting while at the brink of losing consciousness is not a feeling I shall soon forget... Dare I hope it never happens again... Yes! I fear I have acted with too great abandon! HAHA!! As if I, Baruk, Fist of the Sun of Galidor and lawful through and through, should act so carelessly!! Yay, but this is the Walk and The Way of the Monk.

 

[the Jester]

They rest, and wake, and rest all day as best they can on the ashen roof. There are a pair of catapults on top of the burn palace, both of which are still functional. It takes three of our heroes to crank the catapult’s arm back, and then they put a few rocks in the cup (there is a pile of ammunition for the catapults atop the roof).

Severin pulls the lever, and the arm hurls its payload away, over the wall and beyond.

“Hmm,” muses Barouk.

The party continues to rest, letting their wounds heal for another night. Then, in the morning, they begin their pursuit of the Mouth of Bleak. The trap door leads to a shaft heading down, set with rusted rungs set loosely into the wall. Romdar’s eyes widen. “Did you hear that?” he whispers. “Laughter! He’s down there!”

Everyone scowls at the rungs and the shaft. Finally, Barouk mutters, “Wussies,” and begins to descend. The rungs groan, but hold him. The others, breathing easier now that the rungs have held the heavy dwarf, begin to descend. All of them find it an easy climb- except for Kifla. She agonizes at the top for a while, gnawing her lip at the thought of a 70’ fall, but in the end she clambers cautiously down and manages to reach the bottom safely.

At the bottom is a small chamber, with a ceiling only about 7’ overhead. Small bits of rusty metal are scattered about on the floor, including the remains of several of the rungs of the ladder running up the wall and out of the ceiling via the shaft that our heroes descended. Both a passage and a single door lead out of the room. Suddenly the adventures realize that the room is earthen- a tunnel hewn from earth, not an ashen structure!

“Be careful,” warns Barouk.

Kifla casts mage armor. She knows that it will last a while, and she has a feeling that she might need protection at any moment.

Barouk and Severin move to the hallway leading out of the room. It is small and cramped; the hallway has a multitude of small, iron-bound doors with tiny windows in them running along its length. The doors occur on both sides of the hallway about every five feet, all the way to the hall’s end (where a final door, straight ahead, lies).

The two of them move up and peer through the small windows. “It’s a cell,” Severin says. “I think there’s an old body in there. It’s just a skeleton now.”

“Mine, too,” Barouk rumbles.

“It’s locked,” Severin announces, after trying his door. Barouk nods, rattling the handle to the door he is next to. They move along to the next door on each side, and find essentially the same thing.

There are a total of 17 doors, with eight on each side and one at the end. They begin checking them all. Severin pauses a few doors down. “I think there’s a dire rat in here,” he says.

“We have no need to mess with it,” Romdar points out, “and probably nothing to gain.”

“I bet that there is a torture chamber beyond that door back there,” Barouk says dourly, nodding back to the room the party just came from. Kifla shudders.

“Well, let’s go check it out,” Romdar suggests. “It doesn’t seem like there’s anything here in these cells except for the skeletons of prisoners, and I doubt whether they’ll have anything on them- they were prisoners.”

“Good point,” nods Severin.

The party goes back to the door and throws it open. Indeed, it is a torture chamber; Barouk was right. A rack is along one wall. In a corner, an iron maiden seems to radiate menace. Opposite the entrance, an oven large enough to force several people inside rests above a cold pit of ashes. A cage of steel bars squats in another corner. It looks as though the bars of the ceiling are adjustable, allowing a torturer to restrict the space available to his victim. Straps and knives and pincers and other implements of horror are everywhere.

Kifla blanches. She hasn’t the stomach for such terrible things.

“No exits,” Barouk grumbles. “And no Mouth of Bleak.”

“He has to be here somewhere,” protests Romdar.

“Maybe there’s something in one of these cells,” Severin muses.

“Hold on a second,” Romdar says. He casts detect magic and scans around- but there is nothing. “Let’s go back to the hallway, and I’ll look in there too, while I have this spell up,” he offers.

The party returns to the hallway, and Romdar scans the entry room on the way. Nothing, he thinks, exasperated. Where is that goat-headed bastard??

The party moves down the hall of cells to the end and Barouk begins trying to force the door. It is a heavy, solid thing, however, designed to hold dangerous prisoners; the dwarf fails, though he throws his full strength against it.

As he pauses, drawing back, Barouk suddenly stiffens. “Laughter!” he growls. “I heard him!” He whirls around. “He was this way!” He starts to stalk away back towards the entry room.

“Hey!” Severin interjects suddenly. “What’s that buzzing sound?” His eyes narrow. He knows what it is already; he knows that sound. Vermin. He moves over to the little window that opens on the cell that the noise is emanating from and looks inside.

Most of the cell is filled up by an enormous wasp’s nest.

Romdar comes over and takes a look through the window once Severin moves aside. He whistles. “That’s a lot of wasps.”

Severin lights a torch. The window into the room is just about the right size for the torch to jam into perfectly. Not quite perfectly, but close enough. He shoves the torch into place. And the cell is small. Severin smiles grimly. The smoke should eat the air in their, and eventually suffocate them. At the least, it will leave them sluggish and weak. He feels a grim satisfaction: vermin. He has studied them and their ways. Now he has slain (or at least incapacitated) a full nest of them! He feels a burgeoning pride. After a few moments he pulls out the torch to verify that things are going well, and indeed they are. Dozens of wasps lie dead or in a stupor on the ground. Quickly, he shoves the torch back in.

“It was over here somewhere,” Barouk calls. He is in the entry chamber, opposite the ladder of rungs. “But there’s nothing here.” Could be he’s invisible, the monk muses.

”Maybe he’s behind a secret door,” Kifla suggests. Reluctantly, she goes back into the torture chamber and begins a thorough search, looking for secret doors. There are bloodstains everywhere, and the little gnome finds a number of things that she wishes she hadn’t (including an ear and several little bits of bone and flesh). “Nothing,” she says mournfully. Everyone else comes in, and they search it again, hoping to find something- to no avail.

The party moves to the entry room and carefully searches again. This time, they uncover a very cleverly hidden door, built to look like plain stone opposite the rungs. A few more moments of searching, and Romdar turns up a hidden switch that opens the door. It swivels open, exposing a 10’ wide hallway about 15’ long that ends in some sort of chamber.

Romdar moves forward, halting at the threshold to the room. It’s big, 40’ wide by 20’ deep. At the center is a small covered wooden square with four statues beneath it: a lion, a goat, a wolf and an angel. In each corner of the room is a column with a hollow area facing into the room. The hollow areas have a thick screw like device coming up from the bottom of the area. Each pillar seems to have some writing engraved upon it. In the northwest corner, the writing reads, “I burned it down.” In the northeast, it reads “I betrayed them all.” In the southwest, it reads, “I am lost forever.” Finally, the southeast pillar’s message is, “I came to see.”

“It’s some kind of puzzle,” Romdar says.

The others cluster up behind him, but nobody wants to go in. “Now who’s the wuss?” Romdar says wryly, and crosses the threshold into the room. Nothing appears to happen to him, but the others don’t exactly hurry to follow his example. Romdar moves up to the northwest pillar. The hollow area in the pillar looks to be about the same size as the statues at the central covered area. “It looks like you would screw something onto this,” he calls out to the others.

“That’s weird,” says Severin. He steps into the room. Nothing happens, so he moves to the central structure and begins looking over the lion statue. Barouk and Kifla continue to watch from outside the room. Severin reaches out to see if the statue is attached, and as soon as he touches it, a portcullis slams down, cutting Barouk and Kifla off from Severin and Romdar! Simultaneously, Barouk hears a pair of sounds from back towards the cell block. The first sounds like well over a dozen cell doors swinging open. The second sounds like the rattle of bones moving. Finally, at the same instant, a rain of freezing cold ash begins to fall inside the room with the statues and Romdar and Severin. The two of them scream in pain from the chilling ashen rain.

Barouk grits his teeth and rushes over to the secret door leading to the entry chamber. His eyes bulge. “Gnome, get over here!” he screams, and throws himself against the door. “All those remains are coming, as animate skeletons!”

Next Time: The conclusion of the Ashen Palace of Bleak!

 

[the Jester]

The bits of ash floating down from the ceiling above are so cold that they burn where they touch. Severin shrieks in pain, swatting at the stinging flakes, as several of them sap the heat from him. In only seconds he is faltering, falling to his knees. He screams again, but it is a fading sound.

Barouk and Kifla, on the opposite side of the portcullis, are a little bit too busy to help him. The two of them desperately brace themselves against the secret door, struggling to stop the mass of skeletons on the other side. How many cells were there? wonders Kifla. I didn’t keep count. There were a lot, though- a dozen or two. If there was only one skeleton per cell, then we’ve got at least a dozen skeletons to contend with here. Oh dear! They won’t grow tired, and we will- and I’m so weak anyway... I hope Barouk can hold the door! She looks around for ideas, but nothing presents itself immediately.

“Whatever you two are doing in there, hurry up!!” Barouk shouts, straining to hold the secret door closed against the mass of skeletons. “We’ve got almost twenty skeletons trying to get in!”

“Help!” shouts Romdar, from the ash-filled room where the freezing ash is falling.

“Sorry, we can’t!” Barouk yells back sarcastically. “Unless you want those twenty skeletons coming in here!”

As it is, both Kifla and Barouk are horrified by the insistent scrabbling of the skeletons’ finger bones against the secret door. The dwarf and the gnome press against it with all their might, but the implacable horde of skeletons manages to force the secret door open a crack! First an inch, then two... slowly the gap grows wider... and suddenly, several skeletal arms thrust through the gap, seeking living flesh to tear at. Both Barouk and Kifla suffer attacks. Barouk feels a rip of pain as the bony claws gouge furrows in his arm and shoulder. He gnashes his teeth and heaves against the door, as hard as he can. Kifla groans with effort, giving her all and pushing; and slowly, the door swings back shut. For the moment, the gap is closed.

Yet the skeletons keep pushing, trying to thrust their claws back through the doorway. Kifla bites her lip; they can’t hold out forever. What’s happening with Severin and Romdar? she wonders, but she cannot spare the attention to try to discern what is happening in the thick fall of ash within the chamber.

If she could, however, she would see Romdar marshal all his concentration and cast a spell on himself. If she had still more attention, such that she could observe closely enough to discern what spell he had cast, she would realize that he cast resist cold on himself. And if she had a few more seconds to watch, she would see him cast another one on Severin, just as he staggers and nearly keels over.*

Suddenly immunized from the cold damage, Severin is nonetheless shivering, profoundly chilled to the core of his body, but now that Romdar has ensorcelled him, he looks around warily. “Thank you,” he groans to his companion. Romdar nods.

The two of them examine their situation. The ash continues to fall. They move to check out the statues. Bearing in mind the screws in the pillars in the corners of the room, they check to see if the statues will unscrew from the structure in the center of the room. To their great pleasure, they do.

“Hurry up!” shouts Barouk from the far side of the portcullis. “I don’t know how long we can hold them! Aargh!! Dammit, Kifla, close that door!!”

Severin and Romdar exchange a grim look. “We have to figure out what goes where,” Romdar predicts.

“Then, if we’re lucky, the portcullis will lift, and we’ll have to fight the skeletons,” Severin chuckles faintly. He is swaying on his feet. His head is swimming. Nonetheless, he helps Romdar unscrew the various statues and try moving them from one corner pillar to the other while Barouk and Kifla struggle to hold the door. Their shouts encourage Romdar and Severin, but it proves somewhat difficult to unscrew the statues. They rush to random corners and begin trying to screw them on. When all four statues are screwed in to the pillars, the central platform trembles and shakes, but nothing seems to change.

“Hurry!” Kifla’s shrill voice cries out. “Ow!! Really, hurry!!”

Romdar thinks about it. He recalls the bedroom with the unburnt painting. We found indications that the fire that burned this place down started there, he remembers. But which one represents her?

They figure that they don’t have enough information to solve the puzzle in a timely fashion, so instead they just try reconfiguring the statues so that the goat moves from the southwest to the northwest, and the lion to the southeast, and the wolf in the southwest... they try moving the goat back to the southwest, with the angel in the northwest...

Again, there is a significant shift and tremble in the central platform. “That must mean that we’re close!” exclaims Severin. “I bet we just have to switch two, but which two?”

Romdar peers intently at the trembling central structure. “I’ve got it!” he cries. His keen eyes have managed to discern that the angel and lion are trying to shift, but the other two aren’t. “Hold on just another few seconds!” he yells to Barouk and Kifla. Quickly, they switch the goat and the wolf, so that the lion is in the southeast (“I came to see”), the goat is in the northeast (“I betrayed them all”), the angel is in the northwest (“I burned it down”) and the wolf is in the southwest (“I am lost forever”). Exactly what each one represents, our heroes neither know nor care. All they care about is the sudden cessation of the ash fall, the clatter of the portcullis chains as the gate begins to rise again, and the sound of nearly twenty sets of bones falling to the ground.

Against the door, Barouk and Kifla both slump in exhaustion. “Thank the gods!” Barouk barks. “Took you long enough, though,” he starts to complain.

Next to him, a new secret door opens up, and the Mouth of Bleak is there, rage in his eyes, froth upon his Billy goat lips. He stabs violently at Barouk, but the monk dives away from the blow just in time. Then the Mouth of Bleak retreats a few steps and gestures, invoking a hold person on him. However, the monk’s willpower is too great, and he throws off the spell-like ability.

Kifla hangs back and begins summoning a celestial dog. It appears a moment later, and darts in growling for the goat man’s legs. Then the little gnome casts magic weapon upon Severin’s greatsword. Grinning, the bard swings for all he is worth, hitting the Mouth of Bleak across the arm! The villain yells and snarls and laughs, spittle flying from his mouth.

The party dances across the doorway as the Mouth of Bleak falls back into the secret room it was hiding in. They trade a few blows, and the goat man runs the celestial dog through, killing it.

So Kifla summons another one.

Severin lands another greatsword blow to the Mouth of Bleak’s body. It rolls back, avoiding being cut in two, but the blow is almost perfect. Surely, this fiend can’t handle much more... can he?

Barouk punches him in the face, trying to be sure. Unfortunately, the Mouth of Bleak is still standing.

”What does it take to kill this guy?” shouts Romdar, exasperated.

“Another celestial dog?” suggests Kifla. She begins summoning a third time.

The party presses the Mouth of Bleak back against the wall, but he is still defiant. Gnashing his teeth, laughing, spitting at our heroes, he keeps slicing and chopping until the end. But the end comes soon enough, as Romdar swings his sword and chops the Mouth of Bleak’s hand off at the wrist and simply continues the blow until it smashes into the goat man’s face. He slices the Mouth’s mouth in two, skewers his brain... and when he pulls the blade free, the Mouth laughs again, insanely- and then falls to the ground. “Urrrbll,” he croaks, and his body starts to bubble and smoke. Soon he is liquefying and burning away simultaneously. In moments all that is left is his gear.

Sweet victory! And what could be more convenient? The secret room that he attacked from was the treasury! Our heroes loot thousands of gold, silver and copper pieces, as well as gems and jewels and a fancy-looking pair of boots. When everything is examined by means of detect magic, the boots prove to be magical. Moreover, the longsword and the breastplate of the Mouth of Bleak radiate magic as well. The hilt of the longsword resembles the paw of a frog.

“Hey, look,” Kifla says suddenly.

The walls are beginning to disintegrate, turning first ashen, and then into blue-white flame. At first our heroes cringe away from this, but quickly they realize that there is no heat. In wonderment, then, they watch as the flames blaze higher, momentarily surrounding the party with the silhouette of a magnificent palace, before suddenly bursting into a spray of ash.

The party stands outside, beneath the setting sun in the Deadgrass Lands. All around them, carried by the wind, ash floats away.

Barouk’s breath catches in his throat. For an instant, he sees the golden white form of a haloed, bewinged woman. She catches his eye, and a shocking sense of betrayal runs through him. Her betrothed, and his brother. The masters of this palace, in their time. Murder... betrayal... locked up like a bird in a cage. Never! She’ll die first! Burn it all down! His eyes are wide. Cursed. Lost. And now... free. Justice is done.

The figure is gone.

Barouk shakes his head in wonder.

The party continues their journey north.

Next Time: Romdar can’t remember anything about his past... but he’s about to encounter it. Who calls him “Captain Romdar”- and what is their connection to Barouk’s father’s murderer??

*Severin was reduced to 1 hp by the ash fall by this point.

 

[Slickenfiber]

What luck Saint Spadron placed on me that fierce and deadly day in the basement of the ashen palace! Hold shut the secret door from the onslaught of skeletons. Why, I am a dwarf of reputible defense. Though with a strength of only 13, and cut down to only 1 hit point myself -- and joined by a young gnome girl too! -- I did have the will of Galidor at my side. And then to triumph against a servant of Bleak!! This was a most glorious day -- and most deserved of such treasure!! I wonder what magic those boots hide??...

Baruk, Fist of the Sun

 

[the Jester]

"Captain" Romdar

“How much longer do we have to go through these thrice-cursed grasslands?” grumbled Barouk the dwarf.

“It shouldn’t be much longer. Look!” Severin gestures to indicate the mountains in the distance. “Another day or two and we’ll be on the skirts of the mountains.”

“This valley is somewhere along the range of mountains, then?” Kifla asks.

Grom nods.

“Well, let’s not tarry, then,” the dwarf mutters grumpily. He scuffs the ground with one wide boot. “Come on.”

They keep moving. More weary hours of marching slowly pass. The sharp, long grasses leave little cuts on their exposed skin. Only hardy creatures live here: armies of ants and small snakes and lizards underfoot, occasional tough old buzzards in the sky. And there are bound to be more kobolds, but at least our heroes don’t see any for the moment. Flies cloud around rudely before scattering on the wind; fleas and grasshoppers leap merrily onto the passing arms and cloaks of the adventurers.

Perhaps there is less to be said for adventuring than I initially thought, Zelda considers sourly, limping on a twisted ankle.

Barouk shades his eyes and squints. Did I just see movement up ahead? he wonders.

“Halt!” shouts a voice.

A group of riders appears, thundering forward. The leader is mounted on a green-blue kocho- a type of flightless war bird, used as mounts by the daring and notoriously difficult to control. The others, about half a dozen of them, ride garen (zebra-like animals, each striped in two colors of green, brown and yellow). The leader is dressed as some kind of knight; his followers are clearly some sort of men-at-arms.

“Identify yourselves!” the leader demands, as he approaches them.

“Why should we?” Romdar retorts. “Who are you to ask who we are?”

“I am Sir Cranston, leader of this patrol,” the man answers sternly. “You are in our operational zone. Now, tell us who you are immediately, by the authority of the Emperor!”

Immediately, Severin and Romdar think of Cooper. The so-called “herald of Thrush” claimed that the Emperor was dead. Still, thinks Romdar, he is an agent of rightful authority...

He explains to the knight that they are headed towards the goblin invasion at Drellin’s Ferry, and that they are here as adventurers. But as he speaks, the knight’s face darkens. Clearly, Romdar has somehow said something uncouth or gauche. “Drop your weapons immediately,” the knight demands.

Thunk. Onto the ground the party’s weapons go. One of the men-at-arms hurries forward and gathers them up, and then our heroes are surrounded and marched off.

“Where are we going?” Severin asks.

“To our encampment,” the knight snaps shortly.

Indeed: our heroes are led further into the foothills, to an area where a small military encampment sits atop a hillock. There is a palisade of stakes beyond the wall, with a moat before the palisade. There are dozens of tents set up, and many soldiers in Forinthian uniform hustling and bustling about. The place shows typical Forinthian military efficiency, with guards posted at watch towers and everything ready to be broken down and carried away or burnt at a moment’s notice. The Imperial flag, as well as the banner of the maniple itself, fly from the watch towers.

The party is led into a tent, guards are stationed to watch them and the knight stomps out. Kifla and Barouk can hear some talk about local bandits, and Kifla groans inwardly. They’re going to try to blame us for, for something, she thinks.

Soon enough, the knight returns with several other guards. They begin badgering the party with questions, and it immediately becomes apparent that they suspect that our heroes are local bandits or thieves. Despite their protests, the soldiers strip them of their gear. The knight snarls, “We’ll get to the bottom of this, all right!” He sends a page to fetch “the list,” whatever that is, then fixes Romdar with a baleful eye. “We’ll soon see whether you are as innocent as you claim,” he declares.

“All right,” Romdar nods. “Then maybe we can get back to what we were doing.” He gives the knight a mild, but clearly annoyed, look.

The page returns a few moments later with a ledger, which he hands to Sir Cranston. Obviously expecting our heroes to be frightened by the news, the knight announces that the ledger contains a list of goods stolen in the surrounding areas in the last couple of years.

Romdar shrugs again, eloquently.

The guards begin sorting through the party’s equipment, none too gently. Meanwhile, Sir Cranston’s superior arrives and listens carefully as the knight relates the tale of his patrol’s meeting with the party, their arousal of his suspicions and “capture”, and now their interrogation and the status of the search.

Unfortunately for Sir Cranston, however, only two minor items (pieces of loot from the party’s adventures) appear on the list of stolen goods, and it is plain enough from everyone’s faces that even those are dubious matches to the list. Sir Cranston’s superior is none too pleased. He says, “It appears that you have misjudged these folk. Fine and release them.” With that, he leaves the tent.

Thus it is that the party pays 100 gold pieces to regain their gear, less the two confiscated items, and leaves the military camp, more than a little disgruntled.

***

Into the foothills, out of the Deadgrass Lands at last! Ah, free of the cutting, high blades that constantly irritate the legs (and often higher places). Away from the ash-tainted terrain, away from mazes of hedgerow and tangles of unwholesome growth!

“It may be slightly slower travel in the foothills,” Skaal notes, “but it is far more pleasant.”

Around dusk, Romdar and Severin both find excellent camp sites. The party chooses the one with water running through it, and soon they have a merry fire crackling as they cook dinner before bedding down. By morning, the sky has turned grey and overcast; the humidity is high, and the temperature has dropped from the normal tropical heat to a sticky mellow warmness. The group breaks camp and starts to march on, and as if to encourage them, it starts to rain a dirty rain. Severin notes that there are bits of ash in the rain yet. Clearly, the air is not yet clean, but the ranger is confident that a few hours of rain- or a few dozen more miles northward- should take care of that.

As the party heads down a slope, Kifla points at the opposite face of the defile. “Hey, look over there!” the gnome cries.

Another mounted group is coming towards our heroes, moving across a small creek. These ones are clearly not soldiers. They are shabbily-dressed, mounted on skinny garen, and five of the six of them wear studded leather, shortbows and longswords. The party halts and takes a somewhat defensive formation. The group reins in a few dozen yards away. Their leader, who is a middle-aged human with thinning grey hair in fancy-looking leather armor, squints at the party. “Huh!” he exclaims, and canters towards the group. “Captain Romdar? Is that you?” He looks everyone over.

Romdar looks puzzled. “I, uh, well, my name is Romdar,” he admits. “But I don’t... I mean... I lost my memory. I don’t know anything. I don’t recognize you...”

“You- what?” The man looks nonplussed, then looks the rest of the party over again. His eyes linger momentarily on Barouk. “Ah, I see. Maybe the earl can help. Well, it looks like you’ve at least kept yourself in good company!” He winks. “Come along, then; we’ll go back to camp and see what we can see.”

“What’s your name?” Romdar asks helplessly.

“Striker,” the man replies. “You really don’t remember anything?”

Romdar shakes his head.

“Well, you’ve been missing for weeks. You’re our captain, Romdar. You work for the Earl of Thyrozim, same as us. Let’s hope that he can help you with your, uh, little problem.”

The party falls in with the Thyrozim men. As they move towards their camp, the party relates the tale of how they met Romdar, captured by kobolds. Romdar listens closely to everything Striker says, hoping that something will provoke a memory, but... nothing.

The camp, which is very near to a small keep that looks run-down but not ruined, consists of one great pavilion tent surrounded by a dozen or so smaller tents, with several small fires and one great one beneath the pavilion. A banner with a heron emblem flaps soggily in the wind. As they approach, Striker pulls Romdar ahead and indicates that the others should wait for a few moments.

Together with Striker, Romdar walks into the pavilion. Several more of the- men-at-arms?- are beneath the great tent. Seated at a worn, crude table is another man, this one dressed fairly aristocratically. He wears fancy clothing, with a silver circlet set with a heron above the brow. “Look who I found!” Striker cries out.

“Romdar!” the aristocrat exclaims, and stands with a slight smile. “Well, well! What happened to you?”

“I don’t really know,” Romdar replies uncertainly. “Forgive me- I have no memory- who are you?”

“More importantly,” Striker interrupts, “Romdar here comes with very interesting company.”

“Oh?” The earl cranes his neck, to peer at the rest of the party, and his face undergoes a remarkable transformation: from a slight expression of pleasure to an exultant, predatory-looking expression of victory. He turns back to Romdar. “Is that him? The dwarf?”

“I, uh, don’t know what you mean,” Romdar admits. “But those people are my friends. Look, Striker said that you might be able to help me recover my memory...”

“Yes, in due time. But for now, have a seat.” The Earl of Thyrozim smiles and gestures to Striker. “First, I must speak with your friends. Bring them forward,” he commands Striker. The man nods and walks back to the party.

“The earl will see you now,” he announces. The party moves forward eagerly, barely noticing that the men-at-arms are closing in behind them. As they move forward and the earl comes into sight, Barouk comes to a dead halt.

“YOU!” he shouts. He begins to quake with rage.

“MURDERER!!!”

Next Time: What does Barouk mean? When did he meet the earl before, and what is Romdar’s connection to all of this?