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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eccles" data-source="post: 1329302" data-attributes="member: 5675">To His Eminence Pietr Orik,Temple of Ilmater,King’s Palace Square,Heliogabalus.    Your Grace,I must apologise again for the long delay in the sending of these missives.  It is getting to be somewhat of a struggle to relay these messages, what with suspicious governments and bizarre Underdark effects (faerzress) conspiring to keep my teleporting scroll case in my backpack.  I think it safe to assume that Respen would take umbrage in my risking the transmission of sensitive information across the distance from here to Heliogabalus, and even I wouldn’t risk the chaotic fluctuations caused by teleportations in the realms of the Underdark.  Therefore, I beg you your grace, have patience.Anyway, let us not dwell on my excuses, but jump straightway to the end of my previous narrative.  To recap: The Crusaders were resting to fight drow vampires.  (We have yet to adopt any appellation other than the Clearwater Crusaders, despite it being some time since the escapades in Clearwater.  I would have us adopt the moniker ‘Lightbringers’ but I think some of the Crusaders (Miles) would consider the tag a little too ‘evangelical missionary!’)  Anyway, having rested and readjusted our stored mana to suit the task ahead, we returned to the temple to complete the clear-up operation.Again, we were forced to breach the forbiddance.  We were unsure as to what else we would have to face, so it was decided that we would bypass this barrier by force of will rather than reducing our spell choices by dispelling the effect.  As it was, only Halbrinn was blocked, but the barrier seemed total for him.  It was therefore decided that he would form our rearguard, raising the alarm should any of our foe attempt to flank us; the rest of us continued into the complex.It was well for him that he did not continue, for a horrid blade-vortex spell was then brought into effect, a trap it seems that both Aeron and I got caught in.  Fortunately the rest escaped the maelstrom and I thanked Ilmater for both my fortitude and my slippers of spider climbing, allowing me to leap for the nearby chasm wall despite the fact that my legs had been lacerated to the bone in several places.  Through the mist of blood I saw that Aeron had collapsed, but fortunately was lying below the plane of the whirling blades, so hence was safe for now, providing he was not dying or dead already…  Ilmater was with him, though, as I saw him move slightly.  With agonising slowness, he managed to crawl from beneath the blades and after a pause for healing the pair of us rejoined our companions.  I now have a half-inch high scar mid-calf on both legs to prove the effectiveness of that spell, although it is far too indiscriminate for me to ever want to use.  I have to admit to a small grudging respect for our foe.  This was a worthy enemy: A priestess that had risen high enough in the eyes of her dark goddess to be granted a spell of such power would be one well worthy of smiting.However, just as I was considering this, our quarry ambushed us: a Kiaransalee cleric with vampire support.  Adamo used a wall of stone spell to prevent these creatures from fleeing and trapped the cleric within its structure into the bargain.  The cleric was freed by its Quth Maren support, which then withdrew and so, using our superior weight of numbers, we vanquished the drow vampire and its drider compatriot.  We then proceeded to the door, which we knew led onto the sacred chamber/killing ground we got bogged down in the day previous.  Girding our loins, and summoning up suitable magics, we threw ourselves at the door.  Indeed, tactics were much as before, with our enemies determined to limit our access, that we might not be able to spread out into our usual attack formation.  I attempted to negate this scheme by climbing to the ceiling, my first plan being to weaken both vampire and drow with light spells.  These were quickly countered with darkness spells, and so I was reduced to casting support spells on my compatriots: blessings and similar effects.  With the entrapment spells of Adamo letting us concentrate on pockets of enemies at a time, we eventually worked our way through all of them, killing or destroying all save one drow cleric, who ran off.  All of the party survived this battle without falling (a miracle in itself!) but several of us were close to collapse, so we were forced to allow her to run.Noting the fact that diverse of our foes had been faced before (the Blackguard made an unwelcome return, for instance!) we decided to destroy the remaining bodies.  Having done this, and set fire to the webbed living spaces of the drider vampires as well, we rested and partook of the graces of Mystra and Ilmater, for some healing.  Grimm then pressed us to chase down the cleric, which we knew to be sensible.  However, it became clear as we searched the remainder of the temple that either the foul creature had departed entirely, or else she had headed towards the central parts of the temple.  Now, we were short of magic due to the previous battle and it was self-evident to me that the central chambers would most likely be covered with traps, if not with more powerful enemies.  I voiced my concerns, and did sway some of the Crusaders, but Grimm’s tail was up, and he had opened the door that we had paused before, thus deciding proceedings before full discourse had chosen the best path.Before us, without antechamber or other connecting room to hide our approach, was the inner sanctum of the temple, as expected.  Any representation of Lolth had been removed, of course: The central pedestal, fully fifteen feet high, was adorned with a throne of bones and little else…  Little else other than a lounging female drow that is.  Four other pillars, equally spaced around the chamber, held up the roof of this large open space that, as befitted a room dedicated to the spider queen, had the requisite eight sides.  Other than that, the room was bare.We immediately set to spreading out, a fact that saved all but Aeron and Grim from the unholy fire of a flame strike.  The quickest of us rushed the central column, that we might shake the drow from her nonchalant spellcasting, Miles using his assassin’s magic (or his sword) to leap the tower of stone entirely aiming to take her out with a fly-by attack.  His aim was well off, however (his sword is a known enthusiast, and likely bounced him too hard!), and the drow ignored him completely, despite the hefty mace she had in her possession, which could have knocked him from the air, had it connected.  The reason for the drow’s blithe disregard for her own safely soon became evident when Aeron pointed out that she was an illusion.  After some confusion caused by those who still regarded the seated drow as a threat, we set about finding our real attacker, listening intently for the source of chanting we could just hear.Finally, Aeron hit upon the cause: Buried within the central column was a secret chamber, whose occupant burst out as soon as she was discovered: yet another vampire cleric.  The foul creature was moving even quicker than vampires normally move; clearly it was in possession of a haste spell.  Using this burst of speed to its advantage, it set about Aeron, laying him out with a savage series of attacks with its mace that all struck home.  Miles was next to receive the beast’s attention, weakened by a bite that literally sucked all his remaining vitality from his body.  Adamo picked up the stricken Miles and promptly disappeared through a dimension door.  Aeron had dropped his mace of disruptive force, so while Halbrinn, in ogre form, scooped up the fallen cleric, I tumbled in to pick the weapon up from under the nose of the vampire.  It managed to get a swipe at me, but Aeron’s mage armour, cast on me that morning, managed to deflect virtually all of the force of the blow.Its next attack was against Grimm, who had darted in to divert its attention from me.  This time the vampires blow connected with a horrid crunching sound, and Grimm fell to the floor, pole axed.  By this time, only I was left to save the drow hunter, as Halbrinn had also departed, but Grimm was still breathing so there was no choice in the matter.  Offering a prayer to the Triad, I drew forth my holy symbol, hoping its power would still affect a vampire that was also a cleric.  Fortunately, it did, though by no means did this vampire cower away, and I was only barely able to get to the doorway, dragging the dying Grimm with me as I went.Unfortunately, I could not close the door and present my holy symbol at the same time, and the vampire was able to slam the door open as I withdrew my arm to close it.  Before I could hope to bring up my holy symbol again, I received a heavy blow from the creature’s mace that deadened my arm from shoulder to wrist.  However, I had to keep going: Grimm was still just breathing, although he had mere seconds to live.  However, I’m sure he would have preferred death to unlife at the hands of a drow, so I knew I could not yet give in and drop him.  I then called upon all my training to block each attack the vampire aimed at me while still dragging the now still form of Grimm.  The creature could barely touch me, and I had Aeron’s mace, so I attempted to ward it off with a blow.  However, my lack of training with conventional weapons told, and I was unable to land a solid disrupting hit on the vampire.  Howling anguish inside, I was left with no alternative but to abandon Grimm, and make good my escape as fast as I could.  The parting shot of the vampire, who could not match my speed now its own haste spell had dissipated, was to cast a dispelling at me, almost bringing me to my knees as my enhanced health returned to normal, and wounds reopened. I managed to find the rest of my companions back in our little private sanctuary by the first drop shaft.  I gave them the bad news that Grimm had died before I could revive him (if only I could have got that door closed!  Damn these foul undead!!) and worse, was now in the possession of the vampire.  Given this, we decided to adjourn to Dagger Falls, before more undead overran our current position.As soon as we arrived back, a party of militia approached us.  They required a word with Adamo regarding a strange creature that has appeared in the vicinity.  They were courteous, so we assumed it was just due to Adamo’s obvious expertise in this area.  Anyway, he is not available for now, so we had the opportunity to spend some time in Dagger Falls.Anyway, after making my usual reports to Sir Dundragon and spending a night’s vigil praying for the soul of Grimm, I decided to bury myself in the activity of the mission in the poor quarter.  After a few days there, healing the sick and tending to other unfortunates, I felt a good deal better, but the politics of the Dales soon caught up with me (or, rather, Miles) again.  Apparently, he had been tracking the Zhent agent sent to Dagger Falls for my express ‘benefit,’ and had managed to discover a hidey-hole.  Unfortunately, this was an intentional trap, involving not just conventional mechanisms but magic too.  In the ruckus that followed, a fire was started, and if not for us Crusaders, Sir Dundragon and the braver parts of the militia, a large portion of Dagger Falls could have been burnt to the ground.Unfortunately, in his haste to raise the alarm, Miles changed his form with magic, that he might have wings.  Naturally, this perturbed the general populace, to the extent that Miles appeared to become the culprit of the general hysteria concerning the sighting of demons.  Miles quickly owned up (to the Crusaders, and later to his superiors) to having made the mistake of being seen with the wings of a bat firmly attached to his back (and having to use ‘extreme prejudice’ on one of the bouncers of a local inn).  This all culminated in Miles being ‘transferred’ out of the Dagger Falls ‘civil service’ and into the military!  By Ilmater, I thought he would be angry, but it seems he has taken the change of role without rancour.  The thought of a desk job within a few years probably shaped his opinion!  On the other hand, he is a master of concealment, so perhaps I should be on my guard for a little while…However, one plus point that did emerge from this fiasco was the re-discovery of Stedd of the Old Order!  Apparently, his search for his brothers and his monastery has proved fruitless; indeed, he has gained gravitas, several magical items and an interesting scar, but nought else for his travails.  Because of this, he has re-applied to join the Crusaders and Miles, being the nominal leader, has agreed.  Naturally, none of the rest of us took umbrage, so Stedd has once again become a Crusader, which is only right considering he was a founding member!With the fire under control, I set about providing succour for the injured, along with the priests of Lathander (who were providing the bare minimum of salves, but demanding a visit by the injured to their temple by way of recompense.  Ilmater, I’m surprised they didn’t hand round the canister whilst they were at it:  Lathander saves—with the Bank of Waterdeep!  Ha!!).However, that said, the Lathanderians did approach us a while later on an unrelated matter.  They sought out Aeron (who is apparently well known to them as something of a seer) to give him a scroll of communing, that he may aid in the hunt for the ‘demon.’  Naturally, he was in something of a quandary, as he knew full well where the ‘demon’ was  (sitting just across the table from him, supping mead!) so simply took the scroll with as much graciousness as he could simulate, and said of course he would help.  Hmmm…  Not the Crusader’s finest hour:  It seems Mask is enjoying all the false intrigue being caused, at Miles’ expense!  Ironic, methinks!Given that we now had a scroll of communing, Aeron decided to put it to good use tracing the path of the agents that had so recently caused the fire.  After formulating a series of questions, Halbrinn and Aeron (both having some knowledge of logics), managed to use the commune to narrow down the location of my erstwhile assassin(s) to the river Tesh, possibly heading for Zhentil Keep.  This seemed to me not quite the use I would make of a commune spell, but it was done for my benefit, so it would have been churlish to stop them.With the knowledge that the agents did not appear to be in the vicinity of Dagger Falls, we felt it was safe to return to the crypts, to see if we could complete our quest to neutralise the drow coming from there.  So, after a day spent re-equipping (we had managed to rupture our bag of holding while transporting water to the fire) and re-acquiring Adamo, we left for the crypts to the south once again.We made quicker progress than normal through the upper reaches of the crypts, with Halbrinn using his resilient sphere spell to clear a path.  This leg of the journey was notable only for the fact that metal had disappeared from the remains that still lay about, but there was no time for ruminations on the cause of this so we continued.    We arrived back at the temple a short while later, but found that large areas of stone had been used to all but block the entrance, leaving just gap of about two foot where before there was open space.  Aeron and I were not slow to notice that this was where the blade barrier trap had been set previously; if that spell were used again, there would be nowhere for the victim to run too…    We therefore stopped to ponder safe circumvention of this area, when suddenly Halbrinn cried out: Adamo, bloody and convulsing, had been attacked by a bebelith, which in the blink of an eye had become ethereal and had disappeared into the nearest wall.  Deciding that we were not well placed to face such a creature, we vacated the location post haste.    After we were securely away, Adamo summoned a Unicorn (variant?), to heal the wound the bebelith had inflicted on him, as it was well beyond my skill to treat.  The Unicorn successfully cured the poison, but we decided it might not be best to go back to the temple right then; we chose to explore a little first.    In this exploration the Crusaders achieved little other than scaring off some drow mushroom farmers and fighting with a pair of giant squid (and I ‘achieved’ the despoliation of another judogi suit, via squid ink!) so we retreated back to our sanctuary and rested, ready for the morrow.  This time we gave ourselves a plan:  Aeron would choose spells of dispelling to give us a chance to bypass the forbiddance altogether, and all of the spellcasters would memorise more light-based spells.After the usual night watches passed without incident, we awoke, broke our fast and performed our customary rituals for the gathering of mana.  Arriving back at the chasm entrance into the temple, Stedd, Aeron and I got past the forbiddance, and Aeron then used his dispel evil to clear the unhallow.  With that evil umbra dispersed by his spell, Aeron then set to work on the forbiddance, this time with a simple dispel magic.  By the grace of Mystra, Aeron’s spell proved more powerful, and hence the rest of the Crusaders were able to make it through the entrance and onto the narrow strip of rock that abutted the new rock that had been added by the drow.Now we advanced very carefully, moving through the almost sealed entrance to the temple with utmost care.  Halbrinn scoured the area for traps, and it was not long before our circumspection proved judicious.  We were attacked, for want of a better word, by odious illusionary skulls, trailing black fire and keening most awfully before breathing fire and vanishing.  Clearly, these were spells (skull of secrets, I suspect) that were triggered by traps, and they proved more of a nuisance than a genuine threat.  These were not the only traps however; it soon became clear that these priests of Kiaransalee were aware of my heritage: A seemingly basic water-trap turned out to be far more potent.  Only my determination not to be blasé saved me from full immersion in a bath of unholy water; as it was, I screamed in agony after stepping into the pool, with the scars on my legs reopening on contact with that base fluid.  My friends did not wholly understand my pain, but I garnered some sympathy nonetheless.  After pausing to soak my legs in a spell of water creation, to dilute any remaining unholy water and clean my reopened wounds, the rest of the Crusaders and I continued.    From there we gradually made our way back to the central chamber of the temple, checking for traps all the way.  This time, of course, we were better prepared, with our many castings of light-based spells at the ready.  These we deployed as soon as we stormed the room, giving us somewhat of an advantage versus the two vampires, the cleric and the minions.  We were taken aback by the fact that two of the undead were ex-members of the Crusaders; those abominated priestesses had reanimated Grimm and Vorin!  However, just looking at the faces of our old comrades, it was clear that internal struggles were going on, with Vorin, especially, vocalising his desire for a merciful release from his predicament.  Fortunately our determination to end this battle quickly was galvanised by seeing our friends so heinously used, and we laid low Grimm, Vorin and the Quth Maren minions in quick order.  Our sunlight spells were also too much for our other foes: the drider being destroyed, the other drow disappearing into mist-form and the priestess hurling abuse at us before she, too, made herself scarce.Hunting for the two escapees led us into more defensive magic, but eventually we were able to locate the sanctuary of the drow vampire, which we expunged from the face of Toril with a conjoining of daylight spells.  Unfortunately, the drow priestess had vanished utterly, but with the Kiaransalee cult now irretrievably smashed in this location, we should hopefully not have to suffer her abominations any more.  To further prevent problems with undead, we destroyed all available corpses within the temple, except the body of Vorin.  This I put into the bag of holding, that his remains may be blessed and given a proper burial.  Unpleasant to carry around a corpse, I know (and my friends were also quick to point out), but a representative of Torm deserves at least a return to consecrated ground.In our search we also managed to locate diverse items, one of which proved insidious to say the least.  This was a letter addressed to one of the priestesses here, it seems.  Miles has kept the actual letter itself, but with a spell of comprehend languages I have managed to extract the gist of what was written.  The letter was written from a ‘mother’ to her ‘daughter.’  This may have been literal or figurative, although my limited knowledge of drow forms of address suggests that ‘mother’ refers to a Matron Mother of a drow House.  It describes the fact that, within two months of the writing of the letter, some plan that the supporters of Kiaransalee have been concocting will come to fruition.  The plan appears to be in the form of a massive attack on lands above ground, and the attacks that have been perpetrated from this particular enclave of the Church of Kiaransalee is either nothing but a feint, or simply designed to inspire fear that will make the final assault all the sweeter for these evil scum.  It signs off with a promise from this ‘mother’ that, when her ‘Great Revenance’ (a return after a long absence or spiritual transcendence?  A revenant is a ghost, I believe, but that is too literal a translation, surely) is achieved, we can expect to be assailed with ‘such a dark and terrible might that all Faerun will shake (tremble?) before us.’  I hope that Kiaransalee has not made a pact with some other Force…Names and details are: -•    Zedarr is specifically mentioned by ‘mother’ as being a person/creature to be kept safe from any forces assailing the enclave in Szith Morcane.  ‘Daughter’ should withdraw with this Zedarr if the attacks become too fierce.  It is a safe assumption that we have not stopped the escape of Zedarr.•    ‘Mother’ comes from a place called Maerimydra.•    There is no date on the letter, but given the sensitivity of the information it contains, it seems reasonable to assume that ‘daughter’ was still digesting the information when we attacked.  I would guess that it had been less than a few days in the possession of ‘daughter’ after our first assault on the temple.  It just depends on how long ‘daughter’ braved it out, before departing with Zedarr for Maerimydra.This brings us up to date now, your eminence.  We have returned to Dagger Falls so that Miles can fully debrief the relevant authorities.  As luck would have it, it is also the meeting of the Dales’ Council in a matter of days, so the leaders of virtually all the Dales will be here in Dagger Falls.  They can all benefit from this information, and many may have guidance to offer on how the Crusaders best deal with this threat out of ‘Maerimydra.’More will follow, your eminence.Yvgeny.Ilmater save the King.</blockquote>

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