Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="sniffles" data-source="post: 4003276" data-attributes="member: 30035">Letter #46We're returning to this campaign while another campaign goes on hiatus, and I realized I hadn't brought it up to date.  I've also inserted the "Quips & Quotes" inside the text where they originally occurred, but s-blocked for those who don't want to read them.---sniffles--------------------------------------------15 PatchwallThe Plane of AirDearest brother;As I told you in my last letter, we struggled over how to use the wish Pheretimma granted us. Finally we made up our minds, though:  we would wish for a way to extract the black shards from those who had absorbed them without harming such creatures. In return for this wish we received a new ‘dowsing rod’ to locate the shards. We also consulted with Ianus the air whale god to see if he knew of any way to get rid of the shards. His suggestion was to return them whence they came, which I suppose means taking them back to that strange fey realm where we found the Queen of Air and Darkness imprisoned.The next day, after saying farewell to the hawkmen and Pheretimma, we agreed to help Cail the dwarf look for the vault of his people. He’d been absent from the moon when Bloodfist’s army came and drove his people out, and didn’t know where they’d gone. But he wanted to retrieve the treasures they’d probably abandoned in their flight.Cail led us to a pair of great stone doors covered in runes, which opened at his touch. Then we proceeded into the caverns his people had inhabited. We were immediately attacked from above by nearly a dozen darkmantles, but we fought them off. Cail then took us through a second set of doors and down a spiral stair into the dwarven steelstone mines. Steelstone, if you’ve never heard of it, is a stone that can be shaped like metal. I’m not certain if it can be found anywhere but this “moon” on the Plane of Air.[sblock]Jubilee: “By ‘see’, Pat means ‘imagine’.”Devo: “I don’t have an imagination – I’m a roleplayer!”[/sblock]It was cold in the mines. Thor and I clothed ourselves in skin of bark to protect us from any threats. As we descended we saw signs of damage, which indicated that thoqqua had been tunneling in the area. Eventually we came upon a blocked passage and were attacked by thoqqua, I suppose because we were invading their territory.[sblock]Devo: “What does the water taste like?”Jubilee: “Stale water.”Devo: “Whale water? Ew!”[/sblock]Then another thoqqua arrived that was much larger than the rest. Erasyne attempted to speak with it to negotiate our passage through the mine, and it agreed to take us past a collapsed area that had apparently been set as a trap, though I’m not sure if that was by the dwarven miners or the thoqqua themselves.[sblock]Zora: “I wish for experience.”Hedrin: “You had an experience. You got married and had a kid.”--------------------------------------------------------------Patv: “Does anyone speak thoqqua?”Jubilee: “Maybe Cail can communicate with the thoqqua by interpretive dance.”[/sblock]After a time we came to another pair of great doors, flanked by heroic sculptures of the five dwarven clans who live in this place. Cail couldn’t open these doors, but Shishir produced a magic key he carries and opened them easily. When we stepped through the doors, Ninad noticed something up above us and climbed up to see what it was. Thor borrowed a light from Erasyne and flew up after Ninad. They found a huge cobweb above us. While they looked at the web, Erasyne determined that the next door we faced was trapped to deter thieves. She began to examine it to determine how to open it.  [sblock]Patv: “The ceiling is ridiculously high.”Jubilee: “Yeah, it’s like, seven feet!”[/sblock]Then a huge spider, obviously no longer living in the true sense, dropped down and caught hold of Shishir. It held him so tight he couldn’t get free or cast spells. Thor and Ninad both began to attack the spider with fire, while Erasyne began her dervish dance, slashing it with her scimitars. I summoned a lance of ice and skewered it. But our attacks couldn’t prevent the spider from biting Shishir, and he went limp.When Shishir stopped moving, the spider dropped him and went for his twin. We all kept attacking it with whatever weapons we had to hand. Then Erasyne realized that it was within reach of the trap on the door, and she managed to explain this to Thor. He flew down toward the door, resuming his normal form, and triggered the trap, causing a mass of spikes to shoot out of the floor and impale the horrid creature.The spider collapsed – and then burst into thousands of tiny, dead spiders! I’ve never seen such a bizarre thing. But I could hardly care that the spider was dead – so was Shishir.[sblock]Hedrin: “So I’m thinking that if Ninad switches clothes with Shishir, he’s got a pretty new wife!”[/sblock]There was nothing we could do to save him – the spider’s bite must have slain him. Thor determined that the spiders were vampiric in nature, so in an attempt to prevent Shishir rising as a vampire spawn he put the sun medallion he carries around Shishir’s neck. I was afraid the small spiders would rise again as well, so I set to work burning them all.After all that trouble, the chamber Cail thought was the vault turned out to be empty. I would have given up and returned to the surface then, but someone suggested perhaps the ornate trapped vault had been made to mislead thieves, so we took some time to search the area for hidden doors or compartments. We found a room that was full of webs left by the vampire spiders. Thor burned them. After a time our search led us to a doorway in a passage, which Cail openend. Beyond we found a second door guarded by an ornate statue of a minotaur and a dwarven lord. Cail spoke to the minotaur, and the door opened. Ninad told us that within the small chamber beyond lay four magical objects.Within the vault we found a chest containing an elaborate golden compass and a rune-covered tablet. Cail explained that the runes on the tablet told him where the other dwarves had gone. Ninad sadly gathered up the items from the chest. Naturally it was hard for him to rejoice for Cail’s good fortune. Cail gave us all steelstone daggers as reward for our aid, but it hardly seems a suitable recompense for losing Shishir. As with Illtud’s death, we're at a loss what to do. Would Shishir want us to return him to life? He has a wife and child to care for now, though of course his brother would look after them in his stead. In any case, we cannot raise him ourselves. We must go to find someone who can. I hope that when I write you again I'll have happier news to relate.Your sister, Lothiriel</blockquote>

Verification