LuYangShih
First Post
LOL. This story hour rocks. Keep up the good work.
Cormyr: The Smile of Chauntea
- Thread starter MulhorandSage
- Start date
LOL. This story hour rocks. Keep up the good work.
Broccli_Head
Explorer
thanks for another marvelous entry by my favorite Sembian.
MulhorandSage
First Post
Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor
(Continued from last correspondence)
I live a fool's life, and I know it. No sane wizard should willingly stick himself in the thick of battle, for the fundamental tactic of even an addle-brained enemy must be to target the wizard before all others, for we're capable of dealing with a greater number of enemies than even a skilled swordsman or (despite what Kord may say) a bowman. Unfortunately, while I've always tried to strike a sensible balance between caution and foolhardiness, often when you're fighting in close quarters, that balance topples. And, because I should expect this, I am a fool.
So here I was, watching the cult soldier extract his blade from my abdomen, and suddenly feel a burning sensation in my bowels. This pain I cannot describe, though detached from its horrific reality, dying is a rather interesting sensation. Slumped against the wall, I'm unable to move my limbs; my breathing, though labored, continues, but I'm fully cogniscent that it could end at any moment. Each heartbeat feels like a hammer stroke against my chest. However, my few remaining spells are still in my head, and I catch a clear view of Aron's armored buttocks as he turns to challenge the man who smote me. A few seconds later, and the attacker's severed head bounces over my legs. I wish I felt well enough to muster a smile.
Meanwhile, Ulrick is dancing with a pair of rogues, desperately trying to dispatch them before they can flank him, while in a far chamber, beyond the edge of my vision, Kord is fighting for his life against another necromancer. From what I gathered later, the corpse-fondler attempted to damage Kord's life force with some sort of deviltouch, but the elf successfully evaded his attacks and cut him down with a flurry of short sword strokes. When he was slain, the necromancer once again explodes into a swarm of death maggots, but this time Kord managed to ward them away before he can be engulfed. The swarm fades from existence after about twenty seconds, much to the elf's relief. We've won. The tower is ours.
After the battle comes healing, a respite that's never been so desired or needed. Ulrick touches us with his healing wand and restores our strength. The others begin to ransack the tower, while I take an hour to curl up with the high priest's journal. It's abominable reading, full of so many admonitions to "praise the dragon" and "proclaim the dragon" that I swear a devotee of Loviatar is less whipped by their religion. The high priest is named Ryngoth, which I believe means "idiotic fanatic" in the tongue of Vaasa, and if it doesn't, it should.
I do, however, find two things of interest nestled in these dry, yellow pages. First there's a reference to not one but two adventuring companies who have been attacking the tower, one of whom is clearly not us, and in fact dispatched that red dragon we spotted overhead a few days earlier. Second (and more ominously), we uncover a reference to "Pelendralaar awaits the completion" near the end of the journal. I gather that's the name of a dracolich, a realization that makes me wonder again, what cosmic force appointed this little ragtag band as the upheld hand to oppose such a force.
I'm quite tired and almost spent of spells, but there isn't time for rest and contemplation at the moment. Returning to the roof of the tower, Kord spots numerous patrols moving in, the distance. From what we know of these patrols, they'll return to the tower and report at dusk - and once they've discovered that we've wiped out the tower, I'm sure they'll send everything they have to destroy us. We need to be well beyond their tracking range.
So we say good-bye to this old dwarf-wrought tower, of which my principle regret was that I wasn't leaving it encased in a swath of flame. The burial grounds around the tower are littered with old elven mausoleums. Each tomb, if Ryngoth's journal is to be trusted, has two keys: a rune, and an ancient elvish incantation, a word of opening. We can probably get by with the just the runes.
Outside the keep, we encounter a patrol. A horde of zombies advances on Ulrick (there's no fool like an undead fool, except perhaps for an undead lover, like a necromancer), giving the shining Tormite a chance to display the white sheen of his teeth and dispatch the zombies with a gesture into that hole of Velsharoon where undead venture once they've broken. There's also a pair of scouts who perform one of Kord's favorite tricks, summoning a vast network of tanglevines and then shooting us full of arrows as we attempt to advance. But these measures are temporary - there's not even the slightest hint of the defeatism that marred our first three attempts to attack the tower, and they're dispatched with remarkable ease. I think even I could have stabbed one of them to death. One of them is left alive; Aron attempts to intimidate him and pry information out of him by propping one of his dead comrades against a tree, then forcing him to watch while the burly Wyvernspur uses that Tempus-cursed flail to pulp his former comrade's skull. Unfortunately, we haven't particularly chosen the most knowledgeable prisoner to interrogate, so we lock him in one of the tombs and seal him inside.
We make our way through several tombs, most ransacked and abandoned. The most imposing tomb on the west side is marked "Tomb of Rothilion, Judge of Myth Drannor", a tomb marked with a star rune (which we do not possess). I will confess with an utterly inappropriate humility that the sight of this place almost struck me down. I have ambitions and desires for greatness (of course), but here was the tomb of one of the ancients whose power probably far outstripped anything in my dreams and yet died a tragic, unholy death. Nothing is as unsettling as having the clarity of life's uncertain nature thrown in your face like a cheap harlot's cleavage, which manages at the same time to be both completely unexpected and yet utterly obvious.
"Keep searching," Ulrick instructs, and Kord is in rare agreement. They interpret my desire to renew my spells as a sign of hesitancy on my part, but I have no desire to back away from this course - I simply find it harder than they do to place my common sense in a strongbox and hide the key from the world.
We finally come to an open crypt, which is marked with the inscription: "Crypt of Orbakh", a wolf runeholder and a warning from the Sammasterites: "This place is too dangerous for now. Wait for Shamoor to return and perform the appropriate ceremony.
"It's probably just dangerous for evil people," Ulrick says.
"Or non-elves," Kord adds. I suppose if I said "non-wizards" and Aron said "non-idiots" we'd complete the joke.
We use what was left behind to enter the crypt. There's a room full of statuery, and ominous scorchmarks left on the floor; from the angle and intensity of the blast, I'd wager that they were emitted from the statues and triggered by floor plates. Armed with that knowledge, we managed to navigate the floor without setting off too many traps, which (given that we counted Aron among our number) was no small miracle.
We proceeded to discover a tomb in a sarophogus - unfortunately, it was a trap, and we nearly drown in a deluge of water. Given the poor condition and lack of splendor of the sarcophogus, Kord is convinced that he was not in fact Orbakh - an elven hunter with a reputation as a homicidal lunatic (I'm convinced he must be Kord's ancestor), so we search the tomb more carefully and find a much more elaborate crypt. We open it up and we discover Orbakh clutching an elven sword and a star rune to his breast. We pray to the fallen elf to allow us to take the items to keep the Sammasterites from throwing them into the Pool of Radiance, but as soon as we touch them, he attacks. While Kord attempts to negotiate (to no avail) with the elven wight, the rest of us attack (except for one lackspell mage of your blood, who watches and nervously clutches his wand). Ulrick is nearly killed, but in the end, the elf is defeated and the treasures of Myth Drannor are now delivered into our safekeeping.
Now comes a moment of misfortune. Fearing that Kord would be killed too easily and the treasures fell back into the Sammasterites' hands. I find Ulrick's desire to possess these treasures a little too uncomfortably covetous, and I argue that if these had been the treasures of dead Cormyr, I doubt any force would keep them from his possession.
"Your mouth is open and your tongue is wagging," Ulrick mocks. "Stop that."
How dare he! The little Cormyte twerp, a little man of a little fallen nation, who has stumbled through every piece of fortune that has come his way, dying an idiot's death not once but twice, addressing me in such a tone of low regard. Were I not shocked at his impudence, I would have slapped his face. How dare he fail to show a modicum of respect for those who had served along side him? Is this the true son of Torm, paragon of loyalty, or has he already fallen and become that name which I would later hear all too often in Cormyr, the Blackguard of Wheloon?
I am angry now, and I should not be, not when I am shorn of so much of my strength. But my courage he may mock, but not my council - I do swear that I will teach this man, be he paladin or blackguard, a lesson in humility at a proper time.'Tis a promise from a Sembian with a wagging tongue - and the wagging tongue of a wizard is a thing that one ignores at their peril.
The wolf-elf was defeated and some scant treasures of the elven tombs were ours. But the wolf-elf's wight was nothing compared to the horror that would soon await us, a creature so terrifying that even I cannot believe we survived. Ulrick and Kord felt that we had not struck the Cult a heavy enough blow, and I reluctantly concurred. So we pressed on - into Bane's darkness, and Lathander's light.
More shall follow,
In Love, Thy Benighted Brother,
Ascarin Nevermoon
(Continued from last correspondence)
I live a fool's life, and I know it. No sane wizard should willingly stick himself in the thick of battle, for the fundamental tactic of even an addle-brained enemy must be to target the wizard before all others, for we're capable of dealing with a greater number of enemies than even a skilled swordsman or (despite what Kord may say) a bowman. Unfortunately, while I've always tried to strike a sensible balance between caution and foolhardiness, often when you're fighting in close quarters, that balance topples. And, because I should expect this, I am a fool.
So here I was, watching the cult soldier extract his blade from my abdomen, and suddenly feel a burning sensation in my bowels. This pain I cannot describe, though detached from its horrific reality, dying is a rather interesting sensation. Slumped against the wall, I'm unable to move my limbs; my breathing, though labored, continues, but I'm fully cogniscent that it could end at any moment. Each heartbeat feels like a hammer stroke against my chest. However, my few remaining spells are still in my head, and I catch a clear view of Aron's armored buttocks as he turns to challenge the man who smote me. A few seconds later, and the attacker's severed head bounces over my legs. I wish I felt well enough to muster a smile.
Meanwhile, Ulrick is dancing with a pair of rogues, desperately trying to dispatch them before they can flank him, while in a far chamber, beyond the edge of my vision, Kord is fighting for his life against another necromancer. From what I gathered later, the corpse-fondler attempted to damage Kord's life force with some sort of deviltouch, but the elf successfully evaded his attacks and cut him down with a flurry of short sword strokes. When he was slain, the necromancer once again explodes into a swarm of death maggots, but this time Kord managed to ward them away before he can be engulfed. The swarm fades from existence after about twenty seconds, much to the elf's relief. We've won. The tower is ours.
After the battle comes healing, a respite that's never been so desired or needed. Ulrick touches us with his healing wand and restores our strength. The others begin to ransack the tower, while I take an hour to curl up with the high priest's journal. It's abominable reading, full of so many admonitions to "praise the dragon" and "proclaim the dragon" that I swear a devotee of Loviatar is less whipped by their religion. The high priest is named Ryngoth, which I believe means "idiotic fanatic" in the tongue of Vaasa, and if it doesn't, it should.
I do, however, find two things of interest nestled in these dry, yellow pages. First there's a reference to not one but two adventuring companies who have been attacking the tower, one of whom is clearly not us, and in fact dispatched that red dragon we spotted overhead a few days earlier. Second (and more ominously), we uncover a reference to "Pelendralaar awaits the completion" near the end of the journal. I gather that's the name of a dracolich, a realization that makes me wonder again, what cosmic force appointed this little ragtag band as the upheld hand to oppose such a force.
I'm quite tired and almost spent of spells, but there isn't time for rest and contemplation at the moment. Returning to the roof of the tower, Kord spots numerous patrols moving in, the distance. From what we know of these patrols, they'll return to the tower and report at dusk - and once they've discovered that we've wiped out the tower, I'm sure they'll send everything they have to destroy us. We need to be well beyond their tracking range.
So we say good-bye to this old dwarf-wrought tower, of which my principle regret was that I wasn't leaving it encased in a swath of flame. The burial grounds around the tower are littered with old elven mausoleums. Each tomb, if Ryngoth's journal is to be trusted, has two keys: a rune, and an ancient elvish incantation, a word of opening. We can probably get by with the just the runes.
Outside the keep, we encounter a patrol. A horde of zombies advances on Ulrick (there's no fool like an undead fool, except perhaps for an undead lover, like a necromancer), giving the shining Tormite a chance to display the white sheen of his teeth and dispatch the zombies with a gesture into that hole of Velsharoon where undead venture once they've broken. There's also a pair of scouts who perform one of Kord's favorite tricks, summoning a vast network of tanglevines and then shooting us full of arrows as we attempt to advance. But these measures are temporary - there's not even the slightest hint of the defeatism that marred our first three attempts to attack the tower, and they're dispatched with remarkable ease. I think even I could have stabbed one of them to death. One of them is left alive; Aron attempts to intimidate him and pry information out of him by propping one of his dead comrades against a tree, then forcing him to watch while the burly Wyvernspur uses that Tempus-cursed flail to pulp his former comrade's skull. Unfortunately, we haven't particularly chosen the most knowledgeable prisoner to interrogate, so we lock him in one of the tombs and seal him inside.
We make our way through several tombs, most ransacked and abandoned. The most imposing tomb on the west side is marked "Tomb of Rothilion, Judge of Myth Drannor", a tomb marked with a star rune (which we do not possess). I will confess with an utterly inappropriate humility that the sight of this place almost struck me down. I have ambitions and desires for greatness (of course), but here was the tomb of one of the ancients whose power probably far outstripped anything in my dreams and yet died a tragic, unholy death. Nothing is as unsettling as having the clarity of life's uncertain nature thrown in your face like a cheap harlot's cleavage, which manages at the same time to be both completely unexpected and yet utterly obvious.
"Keep searching," Ulrick instructs, and Kord is in rare agreement. They interpret my desire to renew my spells as a sign of hesitancy on my part, but I have no desire to back away from this course - I simply find it harder than they do to place my common sense in a strongbox and hide the key from the world.
We finally come to an open crypt, which is marked with the inscription: "Crypt of Orbakh", a wolf runeholder and a warning from the Sammasterites: "This place is too dangerous for now. Wait for Shamoor to return and perform the appropriate ceremony.
"It's probably just dangerous for evil people," Ulrick says.
"Or non-elves," Kord adds. I suppose if I said "non-wizards" and Aron said "non-idiots" we'd complete the joke.
We use what was left behind to enter the crypt. There's a room full of statuery, and ominous scorchmarks left on the floor; from the angle and intensity of the blast, I'd wager that they were emitted from the statues and triggered by floor plates. Armed with that knowledge, we managed to navigate the floor without setting off too many traps, which (given that we counted Aron among our number) was no small miracle.
We proceeded to discover a tomb in a sarophogus - unfortunately, it was a trap, and we nearly drown in a deluge of water. Given the poor condition and lack of splendor of the sarcophogus, Kord is convinced that he was not in fact Orbakh - an elven hunter with a reputation as a homicidal lunatic (I'm convinced he must be Kord's ancestor), so we search the tomb more carefully and find a much more elaborate crypt. We open it up and we discover Orbakh clutching an elven sword and a star rune to his breast. We pray to the fallen elf to allow us to take the items to keep the Sammasterites from throwing them into the Pool of Radiance, but as soon as we touch them, he attacks. While Kord attempts to negotiate (to no avail) with the elven wight, the rest of us attack (except for one lackspell mage of your blood, who watches and nervously clutches his wand). Ulrick is nearly killed, but in the end, the elf is defeated and the treasures of Myth Drannor are now delivered into our safekeeping.
Now comes a moment of misfortune. Fearing that Kord would be killed too easily and the treasures fell back into the Sammasterites' hands. I find Ulrick's desire to possess these treasures a little too uncomfortably covetous, and I argue that if these had been the treasures of dead Cormyr, I doubt any force would keep them from his possession.
"Your mouth is open and your tongue is wagging," Ulrick mocks. "Stop that."
How dare he! The little Cormyte twerp, a little man of a little fallen nation, who has stumbled through every piece of fortune that has come his way, dying an idiot's death not once but twice, addressing me in such a tone of low regard. Were I not shocked at his impudence, I would have slapped his face. How dare he fail to show a modicum of respect for those who had served along side him? Is this the true son of Torm, paragon of loyalty, or has he already fallen and become that name which I would later hear all too often in Cormyr, the Blackguard of Wheloon?
I am angry now, and I should not be, not when I am shorn of so much of my strength. But my courage he may mock, but not my council - I do swear that I will teach this man, be he paladin or blackguard, a lesson in humility at a proper time.'Tis a promise from a Sembian with a wagging tongue - and the wagging tongue of a wizard is a thing that one ignores at their peril.
The wolf-elf was defeated and some scant treasures of the elven tombs were ours. But the wolf-elf's wight was nothing compared to the horror that would soon await us, a creature so terrifying that even I cannot believe we survived. Ulrick and Kord felt that we had not struck the Cult a heavy enough blow, and I reluctantly concurred. So we pressed on - into Bane's darkness, and Lathander's light.
More shall follow,
In Love, Thy Benighted Brother,
Ascarin Nevermoon
Last edited:
Broccli_Head
Explorer
MulhorandSage said:
First quote: My favorite line from the post! Ascarin cracks me up
second quote: that's a bit ominous...
MulhorandSage
First Post
Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds
(Continued from last correspondence)
I am reluctant to relate this part of the episode to you sister - for one thing, the previous portions of this tale has backed up the Stelosis to its limits, and I'm almost tempted to go to the end, rather than tell you what abomination I faced, and how close I came to brewing potions in the alchemy tables of Azuth's divine laboratory for the rest of time.
Still, even in the land of the living, my life was noSo here I stand, Ascarin Nevermoon, in the tomb of mad elf, drenched in swill water and my own sweat, my body scored in a score of scars which, while magically healed, had not yet lost their markings, and my robes tattered like a tapestry in a centuries old mansion full of moths and rats. All while Cormytes leered at me and my exposed skin, and mocked my "prissiness", as though I shared their barbarian credo to respect things worn and marred. It made me wish I knew a good plague spell.
With the tomb of Orbakh now defeated, we took the star rune from the wolf-elf's chest and proceeded back to the crypt of Rothilion the Judge. A large boulder lay in front of it, and Ulrick and Aron, both working like big Cormyte horses, sweating and snorting, attempted to budge it. After a few minutes of listening to them grunt like a pair of pit wrestlers, I tired of the sight, so I cast one of my last remaining spells - an invocation of levitation - and allow us to enter the tomb. It's a foolish expenditure of a spell, I know, but sometimes seeing certain expressions on otherwise smug faces justifies a little folly.
We enter the tomb, which is surprisingly well lit - Rothilion the Judge was not fond of darkness, even in death. The tomb is well constructed, stones fit with such cunning that belies dwarven work. And of course, what would any tomb be without the obligatory horde of skeletons rising out of alcoves to attack us?
From the moment we enter the tomb, Aron and Ulrick receive plenty of opportunity to exercise their swordarms. You know, why is it that we call the Cult of the Dragon "evil" for their fixation with the undead, but any time anyone goes into a so-called "good" tomb, you're up to your armpits in skeletons which are (of course) undead? A veritable feast for thought.
We slice our way through skeletons, a host of foot-tall terracotta elven soldiers come to life, then scour the ruins looking for finds. We find another page from the Book of Lathander on the body of a gnome (presumably a thief) who's impaled on a spear trap. Gingerly we remove the page (and the gnome) and continue onward, only to discover that Aron, bored with such bewildering concepts as party unity, staying close by to protect one's comrades, and the need to be careful in a place full of traps, has wandered off again. We notice he's missing when we hear his screams: he's gone into a room with a sword suspended from a glass pedestal and suspended in a beam of jet-blue flame; Aron stuck his hand into the flame to grasp the sword and was badly burned. What a surprise that was.
Aron rather liked the sword, but Ulrick was transfixed by it. I swear I've met Sembians less covetous than the oaf.
We complete our circuit of the level (including another drowned level that leaves me smelling like a sewer rat). We discover a library which includes Rothilion's journal and books of martial lore, but our major find is a glowing book, left in a hidden panel in a library - it's the Book of Lathander. Ulrick seems quite eager to read it, even though I warn him that godly lore must be approached with caution. (No, as much as I appreciate lore, I haven't forgotten what happened after our uncle Hesharron read the Cyrinishad -what a horrible mess that was!)
So now we have the book - the perfect time to be confronted by a Sammasterite War Party. They're at least courteous enough to thank us for opening the tomb and clearing out the dangers. We respond appropriately to such a display of good manners, with violence. Tymora favors us once again, and the Cultists are forced to retreat. Naturally Kord believes that no one should escape alive, but for once I'm inclined to agree with him, so we track the necromancer who led them. Kord is faster than any normal mage, so we finally corner him in the brush. Eventually Kord puts him in his place - six feet under, for if the wight-raising bastard's so enamored of death, let him experience it first hand. We wrest another rune key from him, the final missing page from the book, and a letter:
####
Nevessam,
You must break the seal on the crypt of Rothilion as soon as possible. The Weavers of the Purple grow anxious and I have been told by Mordrayn that the phylactery has arrived for the contingent ceremony. We shall soon have our hands on the items within the Crypt of Orbakh so we may include them in the immersion ritual. Take care little brother that you acquire the Rune of the Sun or Mordrayn and Pelendralaar will be displeased.
Oh, and by the way, I'm planning to put a pox on that pet Ryngoth treasures so much.
-- Shamoor
####
Ha! So it didn't like the badger. These necromancers have no appreciation for the simple things in life, or life in general for that matter.
Victorious, we return to Ulrick and Aron, and Ulrick restores the book to full form. But that's not enough - we haven't discovered Rothilion's crypt yet, so we return to the tomb. A pair of statues guard a great door. Naturally, Ulrick draws their attack, failing to notice that the door had a pair of short sword-sized impressions that could have been effortlessly unlocked by a pair of shortswords we'd found an hour earlier in one of the alcoves. After judicious application of our failing wands of curing, we proceed through the opening, We discover a large workshop, with numerous scattered notes on woodcraft and gemcutting. I make some quick notes from the gemcutting manuals, and we push ahead through the opening. We finally find the sarcophogus in an elaborate antechamber. Beautiful elven paintings, a stone figure of an elf holding a staff, a book, and a grey disk, normally they would elicit our complete attention, but we were rather distracted by a tentacle faced creature in purple robes that stood over the tomb.
Illithid! Illithid! Kill it quick!
The mind flayer looks at us, and the world shudders. I look back at Aron, and he's standing straight, almost lifeless, drooling. I throw a fireball and duck behind a corner, Ulrick charges, Kord notches his bow. The tentacles wave again, and suddenly my knees buckle, I find myself swallowing sweat (I must've lost ten pounds in this dungeon alone) and Kord screams, drops his bow, and runs like a mad thing as far from the illithid as possible. I hurl a fireball into the chamber, but the mind flayer resists it, and it has no impact on him whatsoever. I really must learn how to gird my spells.
Ulrick charges, flails at him furiously, but his blows glance off the abomination's sleek, amphibious hide. It suddenly raises its hands, mumbles an obscene incantation, and suddenly I'm awash in fire. My prayers of thanks to Azuth at surviving the attack are mixed with a new, terrifying realization: that's no illithid, it's an Alhoon, a mind flayer lich. I may as well have lit a candle in the sanctuary of Shar and cursed the darkness!
If Ulrick realizes what this thing really is, he doesn't show it; instead, he continues his futile battle. The Alhoon looks hard at Ulrick, and suddenly he finds himself unable to move. Finally, he turns to me, as there's no one left to defend me. With a sleek, impossibly swift motion, he rushes toward me - then runs past me, Aron, and heads for the exit. In what may be the wisest decision of my life, I do not try to stop him. Fortunately, it just wanted to escape. Good. Play with the cult. Have fun, little alhoon. If you play with the Sammasterites, you have my blessings.
So we regroup again, and wonder how the Alhoon came to be trapped in the tomb of Rothilion in the first place. I'm certain there must be a good reason, but that's a question I'll have to put to a good lorist on some occasion in the far future when I can actually catch my breath. In the meantime, we take an account of the treasures we discover. I take Rothilion's staff, a ring, and a pair of bracers. Another tomb has been cleared - but there's at least one more major tomb to be explored before nightfall, even if I'm still damnedably short of spell.
(Continued from last correspondence)
I am reluctant to relate this part of the episode to you sister - for one thing, the previous portions of this tale has backed up the Stelosis to its limits, and I'm almost tempted to go to the end, rather than tell you what abomination I faced, and how close I came to brewing potions in the alchemy tables of Azuth's divine laboratory for the rest of time.
Still, even in the land of the living, my life was noSo here I stand, Ascarin Nevermoon, in the tomb of mad elf, drenched in swill water and my own sweat, my body scored in a score of scars which, while magically healed, had not yet lost their markings, and my robes tattered like a tapestry in a centuries old mansion full of moths and rats. All while Cormytes leered at me and my exposed skin, and mocked my "prissiness", as though I shared their barbarian credo to respect things worn and marred. It made me wish I knew a good plague spell.
With the tomb of Orbakh now defeated, we took the star rune from the wolf-elf's chest and proceeded back to the crypt of Rothilion the Judge. A large boulder lay in front of it, and Ulrick and Aron, both working like big Cormyte horses, sweating and snorting, attempted to budge it. After a few minutes of listening to them grunt like a pair of pit wrestlers, I tired of the sight, so I cast one of my last remaining spells - an invocation of levitation - and allow us to enter the tomb. It's a foolish expenditure of a spell, I know, but sometimes seeing certain expressions on otherwise smug faces justifies a little folly.
We enter the tomb, which is surprisingly well lit - Rothilion the Judge was not fond of darkness, even in death. The tomb is well constructed, stones fit with such cunning that belies dwarven work. And of course, what would any tomb be without the obligatory horde of skeletons rising out of alcoves to attack us?
From the moment we enter the tomb, Aron and Ulrick receive plenty of opportunity to exercise their swordarms. You know, why is it that we call the Cult of the Dragon "evil" for their fixation with the undead, but any time anyone goes into a so-called "good" tomb, you're up to your armpits in skeletons which are (of course) undead? A veritable feast for thought.
We slice our way through skeletons, a host of foot-tall terracotta elven soldiers come to life, then scour the ruins looking for finds. We find another page from the Book of Lathander on the body of a gnome (presumably a thief) who's impaled on a spear trap. Gingerly we remove the page (and the gnome) and continue onward, only to discover that Aron, bored with such bewildering concepts as party unity, staying close by to protect one's comrades, and the need to be careful in a place full of traps, has wandered off again. We notice he's missing when we hear his screams: he's gone into a room with a sword suspended from a glass pedestal and suspended in a beam of jet-blue flame; Aron stuck his hand into the flame to grasp the sword and was badly burned. What a surprise that was.
Aron rather liked the sword, but Ulrick was transfixed by it. I swear I've met Sembians less covetous than the oaf.
We complete our circuit of the level (including another drowned level that leaves me smelling like a sewer rat). We discover a library which includes Rothilion's journal and books of martial lore, but our major find is a glowing book, left in a hidden panel in a library - it's the Book of Lathander. Ulrick seems quite eager to read it, even though I warn him that godly lore must be approached with caution. (No, as much as I appreciate lore, I haven't forgotten what happened after our uncle Hesharron read the Cyrinishad -what a horrible mess that was!)
So now we have the book - the perfect time to be confronted by a Sammasterite War Party. They're at least courteous enough to thank us for opening the tomb and clearing out the dangers. We respond appropriately to such a display of good manners, with violence. Tymora favors us once again, and the Cultists are forced to retreat. Naturally Kord believes that no one should escape alive, but for once I'm inclined to agree with him, so we track the necromancer who led them. Kord is faster than any normal mage, so we finally corner him in the brush. Eventually Kord puts him in his place - six feet under, for if the wight-raising bastard's so enamored of death, let him experience it first hand. We wrest another rune key from him, the final missing page from the book, and a letter:
####
Nevessam,
You must break the seal on the crypt of Rothilion as soon as possible. The Weavers of the Purple grow anxious and I have been told by Mordrayn that the phylactery has arrived for the contingent ceremony. We shall soon have our hands on the items within the Crypt of Orbakh so we may include them in the immersion ritual. Take care little brother that you acquire the Rune of the Sun or Mordrayn and Pelendralaar will be displeased.
Oh, and by the way, I'm planning to put a pox on that pet Ryngoth treasures so much.
-- Shamoor
####
Ha! So it didn't like the badger. These necromancers have no appreciation for the simple things in life, or life in general for that matter.
Victorious, we return to Ulrick and Aron, and Ulrick restores the book to full form. But that's not enough - we haven't discovered Rothilion's crypt yet, so we return to the tomb. A pair of statues guard a great door. Naturally, Ulrick draws their attack, failing to notice that the door had a pair of short sword-sized impressions that could have been effortlessly unlocked by a pair of shortswords we'd found an hour earlier in one of the alcoves. After judicious application of our failing wands of curing, we proceed through the opening, We discover a large workshop, with numerous scattered notes on woodcraft and gemcutting. I make some quick notes from the gemcutting manuals, and we push ahead through the opening. We finally find the sarcophogus in an elaborate antechamber. Beautiful elven paintings, a stone figure of an elf holding a staff, a book, and a grey disk, normally they would elicit our complete attention, but we were rather distracted by a tentacle faced creature in purple robes that stood over the tomb.
Illithid! Illithid! Kill it quick!
The mind flayer looks at us, and the world shudders. I look back at Aron, and he's standing straight, almost lifeless, drooling. I throw a fireball and duck behind a corner, Ulrick charges, Kord notches his bow. The tentacles wave again, and suddenly my knees buckle, I find myself swallowing sweat (I must've lost ten pounds in this dungeon alone) and Kord screams, drops his bow, and runs like a mad thing as far from the illithid as possible. I hurl a fireball into the chamber, but the mind flayer resists it, and it has no impact on him whatsoever. I really must learn how to gird my spells.
Ulrick charges, flails at him furiously, but his blows glance off the abomination's sleek, amphibious hide. It suddenly raises its hands, mumbles an obscene incantation, and suddenly I'm awash in fire. My prayers of thanks to Azuth at surviving the attack are mixed with a new, terrifying realization: that's no illithid, it's an Alhoon, a mind flayer lich. I may as well have lit a candle in the sanctuary of Shar and cursed the darkness!
If Ulrick realizes what this thing really is, he doesn't show it; instead, he continues his futile battle. The Alhoon looks hard at Ulrick, and suddenly he finds himself unable to move. Finally, he turns to me, as there's no one left to defend me. With a sleek, impossibly swift motion, he rushes toward me - then runs past me, Aron, and heads for the exit. In what may be the wisest decision of my life, I do not try to stop him. Fortunately, it just wanted to escape. Good. Play with the cult. Have fun, little alhoon. If you play with the Sammasterites, you have my blessings.
So we regroup again, and wonder how the Alhoon came to be trapped in the tomb of Rothilion in the first place. I'm certain there must be a good reason, but that's a question I'll have to put to a good lorist on some occasion in the far future when I can actually catch my breath. In the meantime, we take an account of the treasures we discover. I take Rothilion's staff, a ring, and a pair of bracers. Another tomb has been cleared - but there's at least one more major tomb to be explored before nightfall, even if I'm still damnedably short of spell.
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MulhorandSage
First Post
Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds
Continued from last correspondence:
We recovered from our encounter with the Alhoon as best as we could - and were quite thankful it was so eager to escape that it didn't see fit to participate in its usual Underdark cruelty, Ulrick seemed unusually distracted by the Book of Lathander. It was a pretty thing on first sight, although its gilded, illuminated (in both senses of the word) pages were gaudy to the point of ugliness. Lathander is a showy and obnoxious deity - one more suited for elves than for men, and knowing the strength of his cult in my homeland only made me the more resentful of it. Ulrick, mind you, had no idea of my opinions, but the more I saw him taking a quick glance inside the book, skimming a passage and nodded in agreement, the more I regretted that the Sammasterites hadn't already cast this tome into the Pool of Radiance.
"We're going to get so much treasure for this book and the holy sword!" Kord declared gleefully. "Divine artifacts are worth at least 150,000 gold piece apiece each!"
"How are we going to carry all that?" Aron wondered.
"I am certain that promisary notes from the church of Lathander should be of some value." I stated. Ulrick raised an eyebrow, and Aron is openly skeptical. I crossed my arms and smiled. "I realize that the economy of your beloved Cormyr distrusted anything that wasn't cool and hard, but some nations have progressed well beyond the 11th Century.
My argument is not persuasive, but I can hardly expect a pair of muscle-for-brained Cormytes and a psychotic elf to understand even the basics on economic theory. But the argument is but a momentary distraction; while it would be good if this expedition were to result in the establishment of our fortunes, I'm not expecting it to do so. My hopes are placed on controlling the portals we found near Galath's Roost and using them as a conduit for trade - as the Zhentarim and my Sembian brothers know well, there is no wealth quite equal to that gained through the control of commerce. The book and the sword are nothing compared to that.
In any event, we proceeded to the next crypt and inserted the sunrune into the proper spot; the door crumpled to dust. So much for any protection we might have had wandering Sammasterite patrols. "Our only security lies ahead," Ulrick declares with a glance as intense as a sheepdog - a fitting metaphor, given how he sometimes treated us. "Sally forth!" he declared.
I took a step into the tomb and my nostrils bristled. "I think that's ammonia," I said, identifying the smell. The vacant expression on Aron's face typified their reaction. Ah, to be a lorist amid the barbarians!
At Ulrick's instance, Aron was put at the head of the company, a decision that produced mixed results. On the one hand, we constantly had to heal him, for the young Wyvernspur suddenly developed the gift for uncovering every pit trap that had been dug within a dozen leagues of Myth Drannor and falling with the reckless abandon of a naked Chessentan clown. I swear he was impaled so many times with spikes that even a Loviatarite or a Zhentarim torturer would wince at the injuries. After the fifth or sixth pratfall (if one can call falling headfirst in extraordinarily heavy plate armor down a thirty foot drop a"pratfall"), we tore off a wooden door and laid it over every intersection, and suddenly the falls stopped.
We encountered a bizarre assortment of monsters here: undead tigers, gorillas, naked men (I know shouldn't mention them, given your particular excesses, but he was hardly equal to Ulrick or even Aron in looks). Of course we slaughtered them.
We came into a room where a bugbear was staring at its own reflection in a pool of water. Hardly a sight I'd want to see. Perhaps guilty over some of our excess bloodletting, Aron offered him a piece of dried meat, which the creature, being a bugbear, devoured greedily. Kord attempted to recruit him as a follower, but he was far more interested in escaping the tomb than to become the indentured servant of an elf. He informed his entire clan that the front door was open and that many of the monsters that blocked the way were slain. Before we knew it, a small army of bugbears was abandoning the tomb for the wilds of Myth Drannor.
I hope you have a chance to have a nice little chat with the Sammasterites. Have fun, fellows!
We come to a chamber with many alcoves where four shining scimitars were encased in glass and hung from a high ceiling, beyond the reach of the denizens, more of the naked men (who, oddly enough, looked identical to each other). We scattered them and seized the scimitars for ourselves. For some insane reason, the idea occurred to us that, given that we had four scimitars and that there were four people in our company, we had stumbled upon a destined coincidence and that we should each take a scimitar, brandish it, and see what happened. What happened was that four cursed scimitars were hopelessly stuck to our hands and that we couldn't wield our main weapons. Aron, realizing he wouldn't be able to utilize that Tempus-cursed dire flail of his, almost broke into tears. We needed to test the curse, so with my permission Ulrick clove the scimitar that was stuck to my hand and rent it asunder. Cheap Orc-tempered steel. It did lighten my load, but hardly provided a viable solution to the problem, as my hand was still hopelessly clutching the ruined scimitar's hilt.
"Do you know how to remove curses?" Kord asked.
"Of course he doesn't," Ulrick said in a serious tone that still mocked me.
"Indeed I do not. That talent is more of a priestly evocation," I reply, getting rather tired of the mocking.
For a moment, I wished we had one at our side, which prompted an old memory. Some time after our arrival in Ashenbeneford, our attacks on a wandering band of raiders led to an inadvertant campaign against a brigand stronghold on the edge of the Anauroch. Ulrick died his first death there - he was inadvertantly caught in a tanglevine spell cast by Kord and cut down by a huge half-orc. After Ulrick's death, we recruited a large and obnoxious Mystraite prelate into our company. To say he was overbearing would be a mild understatement - Mystraites believe they have the Realms in their back pocket, one of several reasons I venerate Azuth and not the Weaver.
The priest, whose name I've forgotten, served with us for a brief time, and then he was blown away in a fell wind (in fact the very same wind that resurrected Ulrick after his recklessness led to the first of his deaths). At the time, I thought it a curious departyre but I have not pondered the cause for his absence nor regretted it for a long time. Now, suddenly, I wished he served at our side.
We had no choice but the press ahead, accursed though we may be. We discovered the final crypt, where an almost indescribably odd monster sat like a cat over the sarcophogus - if a cat were a bloated ovoid form like a beholder, but with many dangling tentacles. I recognized it as a deepspawn, a creature which devours creatures and then spits out copies of them. The creature asked: "do not hurt me!" Naturally - as none of us cared to see more than one version of any of the other members of our company walking the world - we attacked.
It was a long and hard battle, made much harder because we were forced to fight with cursed scimitars grafted to their hands. Finally, battered, and scarred, we managed to take up our true weapons into our "off" hand and took the battle to the Deepspawn and its servants. Though Aron was nearly slain by the aberration, we emerged triumphant.
The corpse was clad in a beautiful blue silk mantle and clutching a bone scepter. When I took hold of it, the tomb abruptly shook and I swallowed a curse that was harder than hardtack or iron rations. That was but a prelude to a much more fateful event. A spirit rose above the crypt; it was an elven protector ghost, a baelnorm. Aron recognized it as the creature that helped him get from Saerloon to Myth Drannor when he was stranded without a teleport spell.
"You have come at last," the baelnorm stated, speaking in reverential, beautiful tones that was as solemn as death but not as joyless. "Almost it is too late, yet there is still time to defeat the Sammasterites."
"You're relying on us to save the world?" Kord exclaimed. "What a mistake!"
Continued from last correspondence:
We recovered from our encounter with the Alhoon as best as we could - and were quite thankful it was so eager to escape that it didn't see fit to participate in its usual Underdark cruelty, Ulrick seemed unusually distracted by the Book of Lathander. It was a pretty thing on first sight, although its gilded, illuminated (in both senses of the word) pages were gaudy to the point of ugliness. Lathander is a showy and obnoxious deity - one more suited for elves than for men, and knowing the strength of his cult in my homeland only made me the more resentful of it. Ulrick, mind you, had no idea of my opinions, but the more I saw him taking a quick glance inside the book, skimming a passage and nodded in agreement, the more I regretted that the Sammasterites hadn't already cast this tome into the Pool of Radiance.
"We're going to get so much treasure for this book and the holy sword!" Kord declared gleefully. "Divine artifacts are worth at least 150,000 gold piece apiece each!"
"How are we going to carry all that?" Aron wondered.
"I am certain that promisary notes from the church of Lathander should be of some value." I stated. Ulrick raised an eyebrow, and Aron is openly skeptical. I crossed my arms and smiled. "I realize that the economy of your beloved Cormyr distrusted anything that wasn't cool and hard, but some nations have progressed well beyond the 11th Century.
My argument is not persuasive, but I can hardly expect a pair of muscle-for-brained Cormytes and a psychotic elf to understand even the basics on economic theory. But the argument is but a momentary distraction; while it would be good if this expedition were to result in the establishment of our fortunes, I'm not expecting it to do so. My hopes are placed on controlling the portals we found near Galath's Roost and using them as a conduit for trade - as the Zhentarim and my Sembian brothers know well, there is no wealth quite equal to that gained through the control of commerce. The book and the sword are nothing compared to that.
In any event, we proceeded to the next crypt and inserted the sunrune into the proper spot; the door crumpled to dust. So much for any protection we might have had wandering Sammasterite patrols. "Our only security lies ahead," Ulrick declares with a glance as intense as a sheepdog - a fitting metaphor, given how he sometimes treated us. "Sally forth!" he declared.
I took a step into the tomb and my nostrils bristled. "I think that's ammonia," I said, identifying the smell. The vacant expression on Aron's face typified their reaction. Ah, to be a lorist amid the barbarians!
At Ulrick's instance, Aron was put at the head of the company, a decision that produced mixed results. On the one hand, we constantly had to heal him, for the young Wyvernspur suddenly developed the gift for uncovering every pit trap that had been dug within a dozen leagues of Myth Drannor and falling with the reckless abandon of a naked Chessentan clown. I swear he was impaled so many times with spikes that even a Loviatarite or a Zhentarim torturer would wince at the injuries. After the fifth or sixth pratfall (if one can call falling headfirst in extraordinarily heavy plate armor down a thirty foot drop a"pratfall"), we tore off a wooden door and laid it over every intersection, and suddenly the falls stopped.
We encountered a bizarre assortment of monsters here: undead tigers, gorillas, naked men (I know shouldn't mention them, given your particular excesses, but he was hardly equal to Ulrick or even Aron in looks). Of course we slaughtered them.
We came into a room where a bugbear was staring at its own reflection in a pool of water. Hardly a sight I'd want to see. Perhaps guilty over some of our excess bloodletting, Aron offered him a piece of dried meat, which the creature, being a bugbear, devoured greedily. Kord attempted to recruit him as a follower, but he was far more interested in escaping the tomb than to become the indentured servant of an elf. He informed his entire clan that the front door was open and that many of the monsters that blocked the way were slain. Before we knew it, a small army of bugbears was abandoning the tomb for the wilds of Myth Drannor.
I hope you have a chance to have a nice little chat with the Sammasterites. Have fun, fellows!
We come to a chamber with many alcoves where four shining scimitars were encased in glass and hung from a high ceiling, beyond the reach of the denizens, more of the naked men (who, oddly enough, looked identical to each other). We scattered them and seized the scimitars for ourselves. For some insane reason, the idea occurred to us that, given that we had four scimitars and that there were four people in our company, we had stumbled upon a destined coincidence and that we should each take a scimitar, brandish it, and see what happened. What happened was that four cursed scimitars were hopelessly stuck to our hands and that we couldn't wield our main weapons. Aron, realizing he wouldn't be able to utilize that Tempus-cursed dire flail of his, almost broke into tears. We needed to test the curse, so with my permission Ulrick clove the scimitar that was stuck to my hand and rent it asunder. Cheap Orc-tempered steel. It did lighten my load, but hardly provided a viable solution to the problem, as my hand was still hopelessly clutching the ruined scimitar's hilt.
"Do you know how to remove curses?" Kord asked.
"Of course he doesn't," Ulrick said in a serious tone that still mocked me.
"Indeed I do not. That talent is more of a priestly evocation," I reply, getting rather tired of the mocking.
For a moment, I wished we had one at our side, which prompted an old memory. Some time after our arrival in Ashenbeneford, our attacks on a wandering band of raiders led to an inadvertant campaign against a brigand stronghold on the edge of the Anauroch. Ulrick died his first death there - he was inadvertantly caught in a tanglevine spell cast by Kord and cut down by a huge half-orc. After Ulrick's death, we recruited a large and obnoxious Mystraite prelate into our company. To say he was overbearing would be a mild understatement - Mystraites believe they have the Realms in their back pocket, one of several reasons I venerate Azuth and not the Weaver.
The priest, whose name I've forgotten, served with us for a brief time, and then he was blown away in a fell wind (in fact the very same wind that resurrected Ulrick after his recklessness led to the first of his deaths). At the time, I thought it a curious departyre but I have not pondered the cause for his absence nor regretted it for a long time. Now, suddenly, I wished he served at our side.
We had no choice but the press ahead, accursed though we may be. We discovered the final crypt, where an almost indescribably odd monster sat like a cat over the sarcophogus - if a cat were a bloated ovoid form like a beholder, but with many dangling tentacles. I recognized it as a deepspawn, a creature which devours creatures and then spits out copies of them. The creature asked: "do not hurt me!" Naturally - as none of us cared to see more than one version of any of the other members of our company walking the world - we attacked.
It was a long and hard battle, made much harder because we were forced to fight with cursed scimitars grafted to their hands. Finally, battered, and scarred, we managed to take up our true weapons into our "off" hand and took the battle to the Deepspawn and its servants. Though Aron was nearly slain by the aberration, we emerged triumphant.
The corpse was clad in a beautiful blue silk mantle and clutching a bone scepter. When I took hold of it, the tomb abruptly shook and I swallowed a curse that was harder than hardtack or iron rations. That was but a prelude to a much more fateful event. A spirit rose above the crypt; it was an elven protector ghost, a baelnorm. Aron recognized it as the creature that helped him get from Saerloon to Myth Drannor when he was stranded without a teleport spell.
"You have come at last," the baelnorm stated, speaking in reverential, beautiful tones that was as solemn as death but not as joyless. "Almost it is too late, yet there is still time to defeat the Sammasterites."
"You're relying on us to save the world?" Kord exclaimed. "What a mistake!"
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Broccli_Head
Explorer
MulhorandSage said:
Such confidence among an adventuring troupe is admirable !
Derulbaskul
Adventurer
Love it. I'm hooked. Well done.
Cheers
D
Cheers
D
MulhorandSage
First Post
Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds
Continued from last correspondence:
Somewhat to our relief, the baelnorm explained that the burden of the world's fate would not rest entirely on the competance of our little company. The larger and more powerful adventuring company that Ryngoth had mentioned in his journal had been recruited by the baelnorm - eternal protector of Myth Drannor, the poor bastard - and was about to launch an assault on the dracolich.
"You actually found fools who were willing to accept that job?" Kord wondered aloud.
The baelnorm treated the remark and its speaker as they deserved - by ignoring them with utter contempt. The air seemed to chill as it spoke, as we found ourselves more firmly wrapped into its designs - I've heard that the drow, to alleviate their perpetual boredom, breed fighting apiders and place them on a web and wager on which one will survive - and now I knew exactly how those spiders must feel. We were about to be placed on a very big web with very large spiders.
"When the dracolich is slain, its spirit will be transferred into a phylactery, and their deeds will be for nought," the baelnorm explained. "But if at the moment of transfer, the phylactery were destroyed before it could find a replacement body... then the dracolich would be forever dead."
"And then the threat to Cornyr from the Cult would be ended!" Ulrick said.
"And the Weave would be safeguarded!" I proclaimed.
"And although we're almost certain to die in the process, if by some miracle we survived, we'd be rich!" Kord declared. I could swear the baelnorm gave him a dirty look.
The Baelnorm gave me the code-words for the bone scepter - a powerful if distasteful item - and instructions on how to reach a refuge into Myth Drannor itself. We were directed to take the one long passage that we found under the crypt that led to Cormanthor. Once we arrived, we'd seek a predetermined refuge. There the badly injured Aron could rest on healing moss while I finally replenished my spells.
Thus we now left the tower outside the Mythal for more dangerous confines. We crept down the long tunnel we'd discovered earlier that day - the one that Kord was so frightened would take us into the heart of Myth Drannor. The only things who watched us were rats, who scurried without purpose or malice over the loam-soaked floor. All the while, we were silent, knowing our dreadful purpose. Ulrick's right hand, empty of its weapon, periodically reached around his body and fingered the place in his backpack where the Book of Lathander was kept. It appeared to be an involuntary response, which I found quite troubling.
Finally, after time unspoken and unmeasured had past - for in the midst of any deed that the heart deems great, the importance of time is greatly diminished - the long tunnel abruptly shot upward, and we came to an old half-rotten wooden ladder that was embedded in the earth. The way above us was sealed, but Aron, hoisted on Ulrick's shoulders, managed to break through the seal, and we carefully shifted the rotten, earth-soaked timbers that sealed the exit and pushed them aside. Aron crawled out and told us the route was clear. This was something of an overstatement. Several shafts of waning sunlight peered through the window, warning us that we might be observed from beyond the walls.
"It looks like some sort of barracks." Aron observed. We were in a stone building with a solid wooden fram, an oak floor and numerous beds. They were all abandoned, and many of the bedframes had become a feast for termites.
"Kord, see what's outside," Ulrick instructed. The elven scout nodded, did a quick check through the windows, and when he spotted no one observing us, he opened the door and took a more thorough look. Once he was certain we were safe, he motioned us to quickly follow him.
And there it was. Castle Cormanthor, once the heart of the great realm of Myth Drannor and the center of elvendom on earth, now loomed ahead of us, a mile in the distance and yet all-too-close. Its ancient spires filled with an unspoken dread that belied their elven beauty. Its battlements zhot skyward like eagle's wings beneath a great shadow, its walls, aged and scarred, reflected only a pale reminder of what it must have been, the citadel of elven moonlight, a glorious mystery reduced to an accursed ruin.
I suppose only Kord and I could appreciate what we saw, and Kord more than I, if his heart weren't so tightly governed by the mercenary impulse. We're in a large courtyard, and we quickly scuttle across and look for the opening to the baelnorm's sanctuary. Kord expected to find it easily, but somehow, I spot the opening and lead us through a curtain of ivy into a mossy den.
We're in a green cage, alit by moonlight and the subtle candle of stars. At the far end of the chamber is a raised bed of purple moss, whose healing properties were well proported by the baelnorm. Uneasily, Ulrick helps Aron slides out of his massive body sheathe of an armor, and sets the Wyvernspur's badly injiured body on the moss-bed. The lad needs it, as do we all - for without question, today has been the hardest day of my entire life. I've been closer to death more times in one day than even the average elf gets during their entire lifetime. Some day, provided that the remainder of our errand goes well, I will look back on this day and laugh, because -for a brief time - I lived a life when the drama surpassed the level of even hysterical melodreama and entered the realm of the absurd.
But reflection was best left until our errand was over. I fell asleep almost as soon as I close my eyes.
I awaken with shafts of morning breaking through the ivy, and the chamber lit by its own dawn's light: Ulrick has the book of Lathander on his lap and is stooped over like a monk, transfixed by the gods' own pages. Again, I'm disturbed by the sight. I love lore, and will pry into the far corners of the world to seek it, but man should be lore's master, lore should not be the master of men.
And then, jubilantly but perhaps hypocritically, I prepare my spell arsenal for the coming battle. I start a discussion of our battle tactics, but the others (quite correctly) advise me to wait until after our final instructions from the baelnorm. Kord decides to give us an incredibly inspired speech on how noble we're being, and how we should feel honored to be walking into certain death and dying for such a glorious cause. I openly ridicule him. "What kind of fool are you?" I sneer. I don't deny that a certain fatalism is among my qualities, but "inspiration through recognition of one's purpose" is a farce of extraordinary measure, "I have absolutely no intention of dying today, or any day in the foreseeable future." The other agree, even Aron (which, of course, worries me). Kord sighs and looks at us like a pack of dumb children refusing to listen to the august wisdom of a sage among sages. Which he most certainly is not. We continue to argue the point until the baelnorm arrives.
The baelnorm congratulates us on our already impressive accomplishments and then briefs us on the castle's layout. After being given advice on how to infiltrate the gate, There is a ground level, and three subterrtanean levels. We were to enter the ground level.and proceed as quickly as possible to the subterranean level. The first level was an artificial elven skyline, which we should be able to infiltrate quickly until we found a secret door. That would take us down a set of stairs into the middle of a large cavern on the second level, which were patrolled on the north side by skeletons and on the south side by some sort of Dragon-Men; the description made them sound like half-dragons. We were instructed to avoid these patrols at all costs, travel northeast and look for another secret passage. There we would travel down to the lower level, where the dracolich's phylactery was kept under guard in a magical prison. There we would break through the prison and destroy the phylactery.
"So we destroy the phylactery in the Pool of Radiance?" Kord asked,
"No." the baelnorm told us. "Simply break it out of its prison and smash it. You will need magical protections. These I can provide, but they will be detecting magic on anyone who enters. So I will provide you with this..." he said, and a magical cream appeared. "Smear it over yourselves and your items and they will be hidden from their scrys."
"How do we escape?" It didn't take Kord to ask the ultimate in Kord questions.
"There is a tunnel branch on the far west side of the cavern, beyond the Pool. Take that, and it will lead to a sanctuary," the baelnorm explained. "Do not take the northernmost passage - that leafds to the dracolich."
We take a careful note of that statement, "Why don't we just take the escape passage and head there directly?" Kord asked.
Good question. "The passage leads through a Null-Magic Zone," the baelnorm explains. "You could not enter Cormanthor with any magical protections if you took that route."
That's a very convincing argument.
"And once we arrive down in the Pool of Radiance, we throw the phylactery into it?" Kord repeated, oblivious to the fact that the baelnorm had told us not to do that only ma minute earlier. Even Aron gives him a mystified look. Once again, Kord stubbornly refuses to accept any factual statement, however grand or trivial, that doesn't meet with his worldview.
The baelnorm departs, wishing us good fortune, leaving us with a great task and an immense weight. To infiltrate Castle Cormanthor, pass unseen amid the Sammasterite Cult, make our way to the bottom, destroy the dracolich's phylactery, and escape - hoping the other adventurers, whose names we don't even know, can slay the abomination. Otherwise, we'll have an adversary beyond imaging on our heads.
"That's it," Ulrick says, looking at each of us in turn. "Let's go."
Continued from last correspondence:
Somewhat to our relief, the baelnorm explained that the burden of the world's fate would not rest entirely on the competance of our little company. The larger and more powerful adventuring company that Ryngoth had mentioned in his journal had been recruited by the baelnorm - eternal protector of Myth Drannor, the poor bastard - and was about to launch an assault on the dracolich.
"You actually found fools who were willing to accept that job?" Kord wondered aloud.
The baelnorm treated the remark and its speaker as they deserved - by ignoring them with utter contempt. The air seemed to chill as it spoke, as we found ourselves more firmly wrapped into its designs - I've heard that the drow, to alleviate their perpetual boredom, breed fighting apiders and place them on a web and wager on which one will survive - and now I knew exactly how those spiders must feel. We were about to be placed on a very big web with very large spiders.
"When the dracolich is slain, its spirit will be transferred into a phylactery, and their deeds will be for nought," the baelnorm explained. "But if at the moment of transfer, the phylactery were destroyed before it could find a replacement body... then the dracolich would be forever dead."
"And then the threat to Cornyr from the Cult would be ended!" Ulrick said.
"And the Weave would be safeguarded!" I proclaimed.
"And although we're almost certain to die in the process, if by some miracle we survived, we'd be rich!" Kord declared. I could swear the baelnorm gave him a dirty look.
The Baelnorm gave me the code-words for the bone scepter - a powerful if distasteful item - and instructions on how to reach a refuge into Myth Drannor itself. We were directed to take the one long passage that we found under the crypt that led to Cormanthor. Once we arrived, we'd seek a predetermined refuge. There the badly injured Aron could rest on healing moss while I finally replenished my spells.
Thus we now left the tower outside the Mythal for more dangerous confines. We crept down the long tunnel we'd discovered earlier that day - the one that Kord was so frightened would take us into the heart of Myth Drannor. The only things who watched us were rats, who scurried without purpose or malice over the loam-soaked floor. All the while, we were silent, knowing our dreadful purpose. Ulrick's right hand, empty of its weapon, periodically reached around his body and fingered the place in his backpack where the Book of Lathander was kept. It appeared to be an involuntary response, which I found quite troubling.
Finally, after time unspoken and unmeasured had past - for in the midst of any deed that the heart deems great, the importance of time is greatly diminished - the long tunnel abruptly shot upward, and we came to an old half-rotten wooden ladder that was embedded in the earth. The way above us was sealed, but Aron, hoisted on Ulrick's shoulders, managed to break through the seal, and we carefully shifted the rotten, earth-soaked timbers that sealed the exit and pushed them aside. Aron crawled out and told us the route was clear. This was something of an overstatement. Several shafts of waning sunlight peered through the window, warning us that we might be observed from beyond the walls.
"It looks like some sort of barracks." Aron observed. We were in a stone building with a solid wooden fram, an oak floor and numerous beds. They were all abandoned, and many of the bedframes had become a feast for termites.
"Kord, see what's outside," Ulrick instructed. The elven scout nodded, did a quick check through the windows, and when he spotted no one observing us, he opened the door and took a more thorough look. Once he was certain we were safe, he motioned us to quickly follow him.
And there it was. Castle Cormanthor, once the heart of the great realm of Myth Drannor and the center of elvendom on earth, now loomed ahead of us, a mile in the distance and yet all-too-close. Its ancient spires filled with an unspoken dread that belied their elven beauty. Its battlements zhot skyward like eagle's wings beneath a great shadow, its walls, aged and scarred, reflected only a pale reminder of what it must have been, the citadel of elven moonlight, a glorious mystery reduced to an accursed ruin.
I suppose only Kord and I could appreciate what we saw, and Kord more than I, if his heart weren't so tightly governed by the mercenary impulse. We're in a large courtyard, and we quickly scuttle across and look for the opening to the baelnorm's sanctuary. Kord expected to find it easily, but somehow, I spot the opening and lead us through a curtain of ivy into a mossy den.
We're in a green cage, alit by moonlight and the subtle candle of stars. At the far end of the chamber is a raised bed of purple moss, whose healing properties were well proported by the baelnorm. Uneasily, Ulrick helps Aron slides out of his massive body sheathe of an armor, and sets the Wyvernspur's badly injiured body on the moss-bed. The lad needs it, as do we all - for without question, today has been the hardest day of my entire life. I've been closer to death more times in one day than even the average elf gets during their entire lifetime. Some day, provided that the remainder of our errand goes well, I will look back on this day and laugh, because -for a brief time - I lived a life when the drama surpassed the level of even hysterical melodreama and entered the realm of the absurd.
But reflection was best left until our errand was over. I fell asleep almost as soon as I close my eyes.
I awaken with shafts of morning breaking through the ivy, and the chamber lit by its own dawn's light: Ulrick has the book of Lathander on his lap and is stooped over like a monk, transfixed by the gods' own pages. Again, I'm disturbed by the sight. I love lore, and will pry into the far corners of the world to seek it, but man should be lore's master, lore should not be the master of men.
And then, jubilantly but perhaps hypocritically, I prepare my spell arsenal for the coming battle. I start a discussion of our battle tactics, but the others (quite correctly) advise me to wait until after our final instructions from the baelnorm. Kord decides to give us an incredibly inspired speech on how noble we're being, and how we should feel honored to be walking into certain death and dying for such a glorious cause. I openly ridicule him. "What kind of fool are you?" I sneer. I don't deny that a certain fatalism is among my qualities, but "inspiration through recognition of one's purpose" is a farce of extraordinary measure, "I have absolutely no intention of dying today, or any day in the foreseeable future." The other agree, even Aron (which, of course, worries me). Kord sighs and looks at us like a pack of dumb children refusing to listen to the august wisdom of a sage among sages. Which he most certainly is not. We continue to argue the point until the baelnorm arrives.
The baelnorm congratulates us on our already impressive accomplishments and then briefs us on the castle's layout. After being given advice on how to infiltrate the gate, There is a ground level, and three subterrtanean levels. We were to enter the ground level.and proceed as quickly as possible to the subterranean level. The first level was an artificial elven skyline, which we should be able to infiltrate quickly until we found a secret door. That would take us down a set of stairs into the middle of a large cavern on the second level, which were patrolled on the north side by skeletons and on the south side by some sort of Dragon-Men; the description made them sound like half-dragons. We were instructed to avoid these patrols at all costs, travel northeast and look for another secret passage. There we would travel down to the lower level, where the dracolich's phylactery was kept under guard in a magical prison. There we would break through the prison and destroy the phylactery.
"So we destroy the phylactery in the Pool of Radiance?" Kord asked,
"No." the baelnorm told us. "Simply break it out of its prison and smash it. You will need magical protections. These I can provide, but they will be detecting magic on anyone who enters. So I will provide you with this..." he said, and a magical cream appeared. "Smear it over yourselves and your items and they will be hidden from their scrys."
"How do we escape?" It didn't take Kord to ask the ultimate in Kord questions.
"There is a tunnel branch on the far west side of the cavern, beyond the Pool. Take that, and it will lead to a sanctuary," the baelnorm explained. "Do not take the northernmost passage - that leafds to the dracolich."
We take a careful note of that statement, "Why don't we just take the escape passage and head there directly?" Kord asked.
Good question. "The passage leads through a Null-Magic Zone," the baelnorm explains. "You could not enter Cormanthor with any magical protections if you took that route."
That's a very convincing argument.
"And once we arrive down in the Pool of Radiance, we throw the phylactery into it?" Kord repeated, oblivious to the fact that the baelnorm had told us not to do that only ma minute earlier. Even Aron gives him a mystified look. Once again, Kord stubbornly refuses to accept any factual statement, however grand or trivial, that doesn't meet with his worldview.
The baelnorm departs, wishing us good fortune, leaving us with a great task and an immense weight. To infiltrate Castle Cormanthor, pass unseen amid the Sammasterite Cult, make our way to the bottom, destroy the dracolich's phylactery, and escape - hoping the other adventurers, whose names we don't even know, can slay the abomination. Otherwise, we'll have an adversary beyond imaging on our heads.
"That's it," Ulrick says, looking at each of us in turn. "Let's go."
MulhorandSage
First Post
Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds
Continued from last correspondence:
Somewhat to our relief, the baelnorm explained that the burden of the world's fate would not rest entirely on the competance of our little company. The larger and more powerful adventuring company that Ryngoth had mentioned in his journal had been recruited by the baelnorm - eternal protector of Myth Drannor, the poor bastard - and was about to launch an assault on the dracolich.
"You actually found fools who were willing to accept that job?" Kord wondered aloud.
The baelnorm treated the remark and its speaker as they deserved - by ignoring them with utter contempt. The air seemed to chill as it spoke, as we found ourselves more firmly wrapped into its designs - I've heard that the drow, to alleviate their perpetual boredom, breed fighting apiders and place them on a web and wager on which one will survive - and now I knew exactly how those spiders must feel. We were about to be placed on a very big web with very large spiders.
"When the dracolich is slain, its spirit will be transferred into a phylactery, and their deeds will be for nought," the baelnorm explained. "But if at the moment of transfer, the phylactery were destroyed before it could find a replacement body... then the dracolich would be forever dead."
"And then the threat to Cornyr from the Cult would be ended!" Ulrick said.
"And the Weave would be safeguarded!" I proclaimed.
"And although we're almost certain to die in the process, if by some miracle we survived, we'd be rich!" Kord declared. I could swear the baelnorm gave him a dirty look.
The Baelnorm gave me the code-words for the bone scepter - a powerful if distasteful item - and instructions on how to reach a refuge into Myth Drannor itself. We were directed to take the one long passage that we found under the crypt that led to Cormanthor. Once we arrived, we'd seek a predetermined refuge. There the badly injured Aron could rest on healing moss while I finally replenished my spells.
Thus we now left the tower outside the Mythal for more dangerous confines. We crept down the long tunnel we'd discovered earlier that day - the one that Kord was so frightened would take us into the heart of Myth Drannor. The only things who watched us were rats, who scurried without purpose or malice over the loam-soaked floor. All the while, we were silent, knowing our dreadful purpose. Ulrick's right hand, empty of its weapon, periodically reached around his body and fingered the place in his backpack where the Book of Lathander was kept. It appeared to be an involuntary response, which I found quite troubling.
Finally, after time unspoken and unmeasured had past - for in the midst of any deed that the heart deems great, the importance of time is greatly diminished - the long tunnel abruptly shot upward, and we came to an old half-rotten wooden ladder that was embedded in the earth. The way above us was sealed, but Aron, hoisted on Ulrick's shoulders, managed to break through the seal, and we carefully shifted the rotten, earth-soaked timbers that sealed the exit and pushed them aside. Aron crawled out and told us the route was clear. This was something of an overstatement. Several shafts of waning sunlight peered through the window, warning us that we might be observed from beyond the walls.
"It looks like some sort of barracks." Aron observed. We were in a stone building with a solid wooden fram, an oak floor and numerous beds. They were all abandoned, and many of the bedframes had become a feast for termites.
"Kord, see what's outside," Ulrick instructed. The elven scout nodded, did a quick check through the windows, and when he spotted no one observing us, he opened the door and took a more thorough look. Once he was certain we were safe, he motioned us to quickly follow him.
And there it was. Castle Cormanthor, once the heart of the great realm of Myth Drannor and the center of elvendom on earth, now loomed ahead of us, a mile in the distance and yet all-too-close. Its ancient spires filled with an unspoken dread that belied their elven beauty. Its battlements zhot skyward like eagle's wings beneath a great shadow, its walls, aged and scarred, reflected only a pale reminder of what it must have been, the citadel of elven moonlight, a glorious mystery reduced to an accursed ruin.
I suppose only Kord and I could appreciate what we saw, and Kord more than I, if his heart weren't so tightly governed by the mercenary impulse. We're in a large courtyard, and we quickly scuttle across and look for the opening to the baelnorm's sanctuary. Kord expected to find it easily, but somehow, I spot the opening and lead us through a curtain of ivy into a mossy den.
We're in a green cage, alit by moonlight and the subtle candle of stars. At the far end of the chamber is a raised bed of purple moss, whose healing properties were well proported by the baelnorm. Uneasily, Ulrick helps Aron slides out of his massive body sheathe of an armor, and sets the Wyvernspur's badly injiured body on the moss-bed. The lad needs it, as do we all - for without question, today has been the hardest day of my entire life. I've been closer to death more times in one day than even the average elf gets during their entire lifetime. Some day, provided that the remainder of our errand goes well, I will look back on this day and laugh, because -for a brief time - I lived a life when the drama surpassed the level of even hysterical melodreama and entered the realm of the absurd.
But reflection was best left until our errand was over. I fell asleep almost as soon as I close my eyes.
I awaken with shafts of morning breaking through the ivy, and the chamber lit by its own dawn's light: Ulrick has the book of Lathander on his lap and is stooped over like a monk, transfixed by the gods' own pages. Again, I'm disturbed by the sight. I love lore, and will pry into the far corners of the world to seek it, but man should be lore's master, lore should not be the master of men.
And then, jubilantly but perhaps hypocritically, I prepare my spell arsenal for the coming battle. I start a discussion of our battle tactics, but the others (quite correctly) advise me to wait until after our final instructions from the baelnorm. Kord decides to give us an incredibly inspired speech on how noble we're being, and how we should feel honored to be walking into certain death and dying for such a glorious cause. I openly ridicule him. "What kind of fool are you?" I sneer. I don't deny that a certain fatalism is among my qualities, but "inspiration through recognition of one's purpose" is a farce of extraordinary measure, "I have absolutely no intention of dying today, or any day in the foreseeable future." The other agree, even Aron (which, of course, worries me). Kord sighs and looks at us like a pack of dumb children refusing to listen to the august wisdom of a sage among sages. Which he most certainly is not. We continue to argue the point until the baelnorm arrives.
The baelnorm congratulates us on our already impressive accomplishments and then briefs us on the castle's layout. After being given advice on how to infiltrate the gate, There is a ground level, and three subterrtanean levels. We were to enter the ground level.and proceed as quickly as possible to the subterranean level. The first level was an artificial elven skyline, which we should be able to infiltrate quickly until we found a secret door. That would take us down a set of stairs into the middle of a large cavern on the second level, which were patrolled on the north side by skeletons and on the south side by some sort of Dragon-Men; the description made them sound like half-dragons. We were instructed to avoid these patrols at all costs, travel northeast and look for another secret passage. There we would travel down to the lower level, where the dracolich's phylactery was kept under guard in a magical prison. There we would break through the prison and destroy the phylactery.
"So we destroy the phylactery in the Pool of Radiance?" Kord asked,
"No." the baelnorm told us. "Simply break it out of its prison and smash it. You will need magical protections. These I can provide, but they will be detecting magic on anyone who enters. So I will provide you with this..." he said, and a magical cream appeared. "Smear it over yourselves and your items and they will be hidden from their scrys."
"How do we escape?" It didn't take Kord to ask the ultimate in Kord questions.
"There is a tunnel branch on the far west side of the cavern, beyond the Pool. Take that, and it will lead to a sanctuary," the baelnorm explained. "Do not take the northernmost passage - that leafds to the dracolich."
We take a careful note of that statement, "Why don't we just take the escape passage and head there directly?" Kord asked.
Good question. "The passage leads through a Null-Magic Zone," the baelnorm explains. "You could not enter Cormanthor with any magical protections if you took that route."
That's a very convincing argument.
"And once we arrive down in the Pool of Radiance, we throw the phylactery into it?" Kord repeated, oblivious to the fact that the baelnorm had told us not to do that only ma minute earlier. Even Aron gives him a mystified look. Once again, Kord stubbornly refuses to accept any factual statement, however grand or trivial, that doesn't meet with his worldview.
The baelnorm departs, wishing us good fortune, leaving us with a great task and an immense weight. To infiltrate Castle Cormanthor, pass unseen amid the Sammasterite Cult, make our way to the bottom, destroy the dracolich's phylactery, and escape - hoping the other adventurers, whose names we don't even know, can slay the abomination. Otherwise, we'll have an adversary beyond imaging on our heads.
"That's it," Ulrick says, looking at each of us in turn. "Let's go."
Continued from last correspondence:
Somewhat to our relief, the baelnorm explained that the burden of the world's fate would not rest entirely on the competance of our little company. The larger and more powerful adventuring company that Ryngoth had mentioned in his journal had been recruited by the baelnorm - eternal protector of Myth Drannor, the poor bastard - and was about to launch an assault on the dracolich.
"You actually found fools who were willing to accept that job?" Kord wondered aloud.
The baelnorm treated the remark and its speaker as they deserved - by ignoring them with utter contempt. The air seemed to chill as it spoke, as we found ourselves more firmly wrapped into its designs - I've heard that the drow, to alleviate their perpetual boredom, breed fighting apiders and place them on a web and wager on which one will survive - and now I knew exactly how those spiders must feel. We were about to be placed on a very big web with very large spiders.
"When the dracolich is slain, its spirit will be transferred into a phylactery, and their deeds will be for nought," the baelnorm explained. "But if at the moment of transfer, the phylactery were destroyed before it could find a replacement body... then the dracolich would be forever dead."
"And then the threat to Cornyr from the Cult would be ended!" Ulrick said.
"And the Weave would be safeguarded!" I proclaimed.
"And although we're almost certain to die in the process, if by some miracle we survived, we'd be rich!" Kord declared. I could swear the baelnorm gave him a dirty look.
The Baelnorm gave me the code-words for the bone scepter - a powerful if distasteful item - and instructions on how to reach a refuge into Myth Drannor itself. We were directed to take the one long passage that we found under the crypt that led to Cormanthor. Once we arrived, we'd seek a predetermined refuge. There the badly injured Aron could rest on healing moss while I finally replenished my spells.
Thus we now left the tower outside the Mythal for more dangerous confines. We crept down the long tunnel we'd discovered earlier that day - the one that Kord was so frightened would take us into the heart of Myth Drannor. The only things who watched us were rats, who scurried without purpose or malice over the loam-soaked floor. All the while, we were silent, knowing our dreadful purpose. Ulrick's right hand, empty of its weapon, periodically reached around his body and fingered the place in his backpack where the Book of Lathander was kept. It appeared to be an involuntary response, which I found quite troubling.
Finally, after time unspoken and unmeasured had past - for in the midst of any deed that the heart deems great, the importance of time is greatly diminished - the long tunnel abruptly shot upward, and we came to an old half-rotten wooden ladder that was embedded in the earth. The way above us was sealed, but Aron, hoisted on Ulrick's shoulders, managed to break through the seal, and we carefully shifted the rotten, earth-soaked timbers that sealed the exit and pushed them aside. Aron crawled out and told us the route was clear. This was something of an overstatement. Several shafts of waning sunlight peered through the window, warning us that we might be observed from beyond the walls.
"It looks like some sort of barracks." Aron observed. We were in a stone building with a solid wooden fram, an oak floor and numerous beds. They were all abandoned, and many of the bedframes had become a feast for termites.
"Kord, see what's outside," Ulrick instructed. The elven scout nodded, did a quick check through the windows, and when he spotted no one observing us, he opened the door and took a more thorough look. Once he was certain we were safe, he motioned us to quickly follow him.
And there it was. Castle Cormanthor, once the heart of the great realm of Myth Drannor and the center of elvendom on earth, now loomed ahead of us, a mile in the distance and yet all-too-close. Its ancient spires filled with an unspoken dread that belied their elven beauty. Its battlements zhot skyward like eagle's wings beneath a great shadow, its walls, aged and scarred, reflected only a pale reminder of what it must have been, the citadel of elven moonlight, a glorious mystery reduced to an accursed ruin.
I suppose only Kord and I could appreciate what we saw, and Kord more than I, if his heart weren't so tightly governed by the mercenary impulse. We're in a large courtyard, and we quickly scuttle across and look for the opening to the baelnorm's sanctuary. Kord expected to find it easily, but somehow, I spot the opening and lead us through a curtain of ivy into a mossy den.
We're in a green cage, alit by moonlight and the subtle candle of stars. At the far end of the chamber is a raised bed of purple moss, whose healing properties were well proported by the baelnorm. Uneasily, Ulrick helps Aron slides out of his massive body sheathe of an armor, and sets the Wyvernspur's badly injiured body on the moss-bed. The lad needs it, as do we all - for without question, today has been the hardest day of my entire life. I've been closer to death more times in one day than even the average elf gets during their entire lifetime. Some day, provided that the remainder of our errand goes well, I will look back on this day and laugh, because -for a brief time - I lived a life when the drama surpassed the level of even hysterical melodreama and entered the realm of the absurd.
But reflection was best left until our errand was over. I fell asleep almost as soon as I close my eyes.
I awaken with shafts of morning breaking through the ivy, and the chamber lit by its own dawn's light: Ulrick has the book of Lathander on his lap and is stooped over like a monk, transfixed by the gods' own pages. Again, I'm disturbed by the sight. I love lore, and will pry into the far corners of the world to seek it, but man should be lore's master, lore should not be the master of men.
And then, jubilantly but perhaps hypocritically, I prepare my spell arsenal for the coming battle. I start a discussion of our battle tactics, but the others (quite correctly) advise me to wait until after our final instructions from the baelnorm. Kord decides to give us an incredibly inspired speech on how noble we're being, and how we should feel honored to be walking into certain death and dying for such a glorious cause. I openly ridicule him. "What kind of fool are you?" I sneer. I don't deny that a certain fatalism is among my qualities, but "inspiration through recognition of one's purpose" is a farce of extraordinary measure, "I have absolutely no intention of dying today, or any day in the foreseeable future." The other agree, even Aron (which, of course, worries me). Kord sighs and looks at us like a pack of dumb children refusing to listen to the august wisdom of a sage among sages. Which he most certainly is not. We continue to argue the point until the baelnorm arrives.
The baelnorm congratulates us on our already impressive accomplishments and then briefs us on the castle's layout. After being given advice on how to infiltrate the gate, There is a ground level, and three subterrtanean levels. We were to enter the ground level.and proceed as quickly as possible to the subterranean level. The first level was an artificial elven skyline, which we should be able to infiltrate quickly until we found a secret door. That would take us down a set of stairs into the middle of a large cavern on the second level, which were patrolled on the north side by skeletons and on the south side by some sort of Dragon-Men; the description made them sound like half-dragons. We were instructed to avoid these patrols at all costs, travel northeast and look for another secret passage. There we would travel down to the lower level, where the dracolich's phylactery was kept under guard in a magical prison. There we would break through the prison and destroy the phylactery.
"So we destroy the phylactery in the Pool of Radiance?" Kord asked,
"No." the baelnorm told us. "Simply break it out of its prison and smash it. You will need magical protections. These I can provide, but they will be detecting magic on anyone who enters. So I will provide you with this..." he said, and a magical cream appeared. "Smear it over yourselves and your items and they will be hidden from their scrys."
"How do we escape?" It didn't take Kord to ask the ultimate in Kord questions.
"There is a tunnel branch on the far west side of the cavern, beyond the Pool. Take that, and it will lead to a sanctuary," the baelnorm explained. "Do not take the northernmost passage - that leafds to the dracolich."
We take a careful note of that statement, "Why don't we just take the escape passage and head there directly?" Kord asked.
Good question. "The passage leads through a Null-Magic Zone," the baelnorm explains. "You could not enter Cormanthor with any magical protections if you took that route."
That's a very convincing argument.
"And once we arrive down in the Pool of Radiance, we throw the phylactery into it?" Kord repeated, oblivious to the fact that the baelnorm had told us not to do that only ma minute earlier. Even Aron gives him a mystified look. Once again, Kord stubbornly refuses to accept any factual statement, however grand or trivial, that doesn't meet with his worldview.
The baelnorm departs, wishing us good fortune, leaving us with a great task and an immense weight. To infiltrate Castle Cormanthor, pass unseen amid the Sammasterite Cult, make our way to the bottom, destroy the dracolich's phylactery, and escape - hoping the other adventurers, whose names we don't even know, can slay the abomination. Otherwise, we'll have an adversary beyond imaging on our heads.
"That's it," Ulrick says, looking at each of us in turn. "Let's go."
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