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Cormyr: The Smile of Chauntea
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<blockquote data-quote="MulhorandSage" data-source="post: 826869" data-attributes="member: 751"><p><strong><em>Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds</em></strong></p><p></p><p>Continued from last correspondence:</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>"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!"</p><p></p><p>"How are we going to carry all that?" Aron wondered.</p><p></p><p>"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 <em>some</em> nations have progressed well beyond the 11th Century.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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!</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>I hope you have a chance to have a nice little chat with the Sammasterites. Have fun, fellows!</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>"Do you know how to remove curses?" Kord asked.</p><p></p><p>"Of course he doesn't," Ulrick said in a serious tone that still mocked me.</p><p></p><p>"Indeed I do not. That talent is more of a priestly evocation," I reply, getting rather tired of the mocking. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>deepspawn</em>, 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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>baelnorm</em>. Aron recognized it as the creature that helped him get from Saerloon to Myth Drannor when he was stranded without a teleport spell.</p><p></p><p>"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."</p><p></p><p>"You're relying on <em>us</em> to save the world?" Kord exclaimed. "What a mistake!"</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MulhorandSage, post: 826869, member: 751"] [b][i]Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds[/i][/b] 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 [i]some[/i] 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 [i]deepspawn[/i], 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 [i]baelnorm[/i]. 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 [i]us[/i] to save the world?" Kord exclaimed. "What a mistake!" [/QUOTE]
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