WARNING: SPOILERS for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor ahead
26th day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372.
A tomb of a mad elf, not far from Myth Drannor
Dearest Sister,
We were inside the high priest's quarters in the tower of the Sammasterites, trapped like rats on third floor of that imposing structure. A bodyguard of nearly a dozen skeletons and shambling undead abominations surrounded the room, not to mention the high priest and his (living) bodyguard. The stench of rotting bodies had filled the tower like a charnal-house and I was so sick of that cursed smell that I wanted to raze the tower, storey by storey, stone by stone, until its foundations were naked to the sky, a rotting leprous pox on the margins of Myth Drannor, a wound left for the forest to cleanse if it could.
But much work needed to be done before I could realize that goal. Fortunately, my compatriots had become something to be reckoned with. Now it was the Wyvernspur's hour: a figure of beefy heroism with a slightly goofy grin, Aron strode ahead, flail drawn, rushing to the attack. "Hold back!" Ulrick (who never seems to appreciate the same dumb heroism in others that is found in such abundant quantities within himself) shouted a loud warning cry at his countryman. Unfortunately, Aron's idea of "holding back" is to take one unfortunate step into the abyss instead of two. On better days, it's almost entertaining.
I sigh and survey the entry chamber, which is a clutter of thrashing bodies engaged in melee. With Ulrick and Aron pressing ahead of me and blocking the door with their broad, six foot four inch frames - and one of them wielding a dire flail with such reckless abandon that it's an act of divine providence that he hasn't taken out my eye yet - picking an appropriate target is an act of utter futility. But then I catch a glimpse of the high priest, and even from a distance there's a look of madness on his face that makes me just want to smite him, so I grip the wand of fireballs and begin to move it into position.
"Do it!" says Aron. Surprisingly, he took a quick second to look backward, and realizing he'll be caught in the flames, instructed me to perform a tactic for the betterment of the group. Such a sturdy, stupid lad. I raise my wand, and with a slight smile, shout the command word.
(As an aside, sister: let it be known that I will have none of this "I'll whisper the command word because I'm paranoid that I'm going to die and I want to make sure the enemy has to waste a divine the properties spell to wrest the command word" tripe. I am a Sembian, a real mage, and if they want this wand, these festering, corrupt, besotted, dead-flesh-kissing pieces of swill, they're welcome to pry it from my cold dead fingers!)
In answer to the incantation, a spark of fire leaps from the tip of the wand, and a fireball encompasses the room.
Aron's at the edge of the blaze and I'm hoping the lad can take a quick step back to avoid it - but alas, girded by his heavy mail, which somewhat resembles a skinned dragon plated with extra bits of steel to provide additional encumbrance, he reacts just a second too late. The fireball catches him squarely, and he burns too. But the fortune of both Tymora and Selune shine on him - he'll live. Aron does take a step back, and I station myself to loose a second orb of flaming death into the undead host - and then the priest gives me the evil eye, makes a quick gesture, and suddenly I'm held in place as surely as I were encased in stone.
I hate that spell.
I'm forced to watch the rest of the battle in silence. The priest, who was burnt badly, swallows a potion to heal his injuries. "Hey!" Kord objected. "He's drinking the treasure!" I'm too busy worried about our survival to care.
Ulrick cut down the bodyguard, a burly fellow who's wielding a bastard sword in two hands, and motioned at the priest to prepare for battle. The arch-Sammasterite responded by touching the burly corpse and bringing him back to life. The bodyguard had a sickly smile on his face (not dissimilar to Aron's when he's drunk), and rose from the ground, sword in hand, shouting "Praise to the Dragon!"
"Death to the dragon!" Ulrick growled back, and he dismembered the bodyguard a second time with three swift strokes.
The high priest looked on his crumpled guard with an aghast expression on his bloated face. With his undead legions scattered around them - it must seem like he's witnessing the fall of his personal empire. "Curse you!" he snarled at Ulrick. "May death follow you where you go!" As far as curses go against paladins, it's hard to think of one that's less self-fulfilling (and thus meaningless). The priest tried to run past Aron and Ulrick and touch me with a death spell while I'm still magically ensnared, but Aron's flail caught him in the back of the skull as he runs past. The priest collapsed into a bloodied, crumpled, dead heap on the ground.
Give my regards to Sammaster, you perversion of the glorious arcane.
It took about a minute for my eyes jerk in their sockets, the first sign that the priest's spell has worn off. It left me with a stiff, arthritic feeling in every muscle. I felt like walking over to his body and spitting on it - but Kord's already gone over to a hatch and pried open a trap door that leads to the roof. Hoping there were no further glyphs or other surprises in store for us, we hoisted ourselves through the opening and found a large altar set in the high place. And here I thought necromancers would perform this grisly ritual underground, in a charnal pit closer to the Hell that empowers them! Prone on the altar, a small figure struggled in his bonds - it's a gnome, the same one we were warned was being held prisoner here - and Tarbash, the gnome we had met earlier in the woods, was perched upon the large stone slab, precariously balanced, straining like a mad thing with nimble gnomish fingers to pry apart the constraints that bind his comrade. It was a sight of such devotion that it breathed even upon the faint embers of my compassion, not a quality I'm known for. But Ulrick who must (of course) be the principle player of this great drama, set things aright the moment he first beheld the gnome's plight. Raising his hallowed blade so the sun, which bore down upon us with its full midsummer's wrath, briefly alit this bloodied rock of the Sammasterites, he let the steel fly, and the gnome's bonds were broken. The freed forestling nearly crumpled; he cradled his rope-burnt wrists and wrestled with a mingling of gratitude and pain. "Thank you!" he said - repeatedly - even to me. I must confess that the sound of gratitude, so rarely offered when I deserve it, is honey to my ears. Tarbash could not keep himself from performing a short gnomish dance. So this was victory? Who'd have thought it.
Kord craned his long elvish neck (the one I thought was perfectly suited for decapitation after the farmboy incident) and briefly surveyed the lands surrounding the tower, the despoiled elven crypts and burial grounds, and determined that none of the Sammasterite troops stationed outside the keep have spotted us yet. Good, we still have time. They probably won't return to the tower until nightfall, which (in high summer) is still ten hours hence. We can probably take a (guarded) breath.
I looked down on the priest's body and sneered, wondering what his precious Dragon had in store for him now. But it's another dragon - a purple one (or one who ought to be) - who determined the corpse's fate. Ulrick lifted up the priest's limp body, and clove his head from his shoulders with a vicious stroke. Then he did the same to his bodyguard, and finally stuck their heads on spears so they could be placed outside the keep.
"My, we are a vicious little paladin, aren't we?" I smiled at Ulrick.
"These people performed human sacrifices," Ulrick was visibly trembling when he spake the words. "I am giving them a taste of their own cursed medicine. And I hope they choke on it."
I cannot argue with the sentiment - though I would regret it greatly if Ulrick fell into blackguarddom, for he'd far more dangerous to control - but the more practical side of me would rather gather up these misbegotten swine into a pile and make a pyre out of them so that no necromancer could ever be able to turn them into undead.
Kord moaned that we should not tarry, but there was a time for spoils, and that time was now. So, ignoring the elf's pleas, I began to rummage through the high priest's drawers, while Aron struggled with that magical painting. He placed his fingers around the frame and we heard a "click!", but the painting still wouldn't budge. The dire badger, comfortably arraigned in princely fashion on his dire badger-sized cushion, laughed at Aron's attempts - yes, sister, we now have definitive proof that Aron's intelligence is less than that of a large forest creature. Kord, still upset that we haven't secured our position - acting more like an elven general instead of an elven wood-sneak - conversed with the badger, who informed us that by simply moving your fingers around the frame from top to bottom, you can open a small vault. We followed his instructions, and discovered the priest's hidden treasure store, in which a glowing page, written in Old Elvish, was secured. Within the drawers, I found the high priest's journal. I quickly leafed through it, but I did not have the time to give it an adequate amount of study. More pleasingly, I discovered the cult's spellbook, with numerous spells (unfortunately, most of them are the necromantic variety - not that, by Azuth, I scoff at knowledge, but the spells prized by the Sammasterites hold less fascination to me than those that evoke greater powers than simple mockeries of life).
Ransacking a level at a time, we returned to the lower levels. Kord insisted on taking the badger with us, and the badger won't budge without his cushion. Guess who, in addition to his heavy pack, must now carry a giant badger cushion on his back? I swear sister, that if you mention this to our family, I will plot a sweet revenge.
At the doorway, Kord decided to leave caltrops, small spikes, in the shadow of the gate. We also removed the wreckage of the door so that anyone who observed the keep will think that the door has been left open by its denizens, not hacked to bits by an invader. Once we did that, Ulrick urged us to descend down the stairs into the unexplored depths of the tower. This time Aron led the way.
The stairs were a tight, narrow winding spiral, irregularly spaced and awkwardly uneven, more likely by design than by weathering, for the dwarves wrought them. The summer air, still as a dead body that's chained to a rock and rotting in the sun, cultivated the dust that rises into our dry mouths like some sort of funerary crop. I'm still annoyed that I succumbed to the priest's holding spell, in addition to the other injuries I suffered in the three previous attacks on the tower. Severed heads on spear points, offered like love tokens to flocks of local carrion, may not be enough to assuage my hate.
Aron arrived at a landing, and we investigated a series of empty kitchens, storage rooms, and a single empty cell, which probably housed Tarbash's friend. Aron opened a chamber which reeks of death, a necromancer's paradise where a skull with a steel crown hovered in mid-air. But when Aron entered the chamber to get a closer, better look, a host of zombies rose from the ground and attacked him.
Ulrick quickly took stock of the situation and determined that Aron was quite capable of handling a small host of zombies, though the big Cormyte fluttered about, debating whether he should employ the greataxe or the flail. I moved closer to investigate when suddenly a unexplored locked door opened beside me, and I found myself face to face with a necromancer and his skeleton-guard, one of whom sliced my right arm with a swift scimitar stroke. Howling, I retreated, while Ulrick moved in, and I did my best to stammer through my pain and inform Kord about the situation. Ulrick took several volleys of arcane bolts from the necromancer (does every mage in this miserable tower have one of those wands?), was badly wounded, and retreated. Kord moved into his place, but Ulrick, whose retreat was only temporary, was a little late in returning to his assigned place, and Kord is hard-pressed. Gradually the skeleton-guard is reduced, and Kord waded over the once animated corpses in a quest for necromancer's blood. Pressed against the wall, the necromancer sent out a whispering wind, calling for assistance from remote quarters. Hopefully he called the high priest in Hell.
With Ulrick and Kord engaged against the necromancer, I turned to assist Aron. The mighty boy was hewing zombies left and right, but they were managing to get in enough blows to slowly wear him down. Realizing he needed support, I raised my wand, shouted the word of command, and the zombies burned. I felt exuberant, but that's when I turned around and found a dark-cloaked figure trying to impale my back with a skillful short sword thrust. The whispering wind had been answered. A patrol of blackcloaks and blackguards had hurried back to the keep and joined the fracas. Unfortunately, with Kord and Ulrick busy against the necromancer, I'm left almost alone against this assault - and given a choice of targets between a mage and a man with a big flail, the mage is invariably the target.
Quickly I surrounded myself with dweomermirrors and retreated. I have no offensive magicks capable of dealing with this horde - I'm not about to start casting fireballs into such a tight space - so I bolstered myself with a haste spell, drew my dagger and launched futile attacks against my enemies. The mirrors lasted only a few scant seconds before they're shattered, though the spell saved my life - one armored brute clove an image with such a perfect blow that I would have died, had it actually marked my skull with equal vigor. Aron, finally free of the undead horde, interposed himself between me and my attackers as best as he could, but unfortunately when one is willing to risk being hacked apart just to rid the world of the magnificence that is Ascarin Nevermoon, there is not much a protector can do except to grit one's teeth and hope that your best intentions translates into better results. The Wyvernspur's dire flail smashed one of my attackers' skulls and dropped him to his face with an accompaniment of crimson spray, but the second attacker caught me squarely in the ribs with a sword thrust. That when everything went red, the world seemed to slide around me, and I, propped desperately against the wall in a futile posture of defense, began a slow, painful - dying - descent to the dungeon floor, and I was left to wonder how many breaths I had left to take.
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Of course it does not end there, sister, but rarely have I passed up an opportunity to take my life and give it an evil twist, so I shall end this letter here, and leave you waiting on the particulars of my fate. The matter of Pellendaryll, and how I passed from the tower of the Sammasterites into the tomb of a mad elf (and the difficult matter of the disposition of lost loreworks obtained from the hunting elf) shall await my next correspondence. My will, like my blood, is spent this day.
Still alive (barely), with love,
Your brother Ascarin
