13th day of Chillwind
This day started out marginally well. It then got worse several times, but got better just as often. I am thoroughly exhausted as I write now. Even my fingers tremble with weariness.
As it turns out, the scratching I mentioned in my writing this morning was a lone gourgaz pushing his way into our room to make a deposit in this vault. Imagine his surprise when one arc of Zerin’s sword lopped off its leg, only to be followed by its head in the return swing.
After we sealed our grisly deposit in the vault, we prepared to set forth into the darkness once more.
Sheeji scouted ahead for us again. She reported that there were three ways to go. One way held a small city of the slave-beasts and their kin. Several hundred of the creatures milled about in a shanty-town of sorts. At the end of another fork was command post like the last few we’ve seen. And the last had another fork. One way held a treasury, the other a long passage down.
We prudently decided to avoid the hoard of creatures, but not before investigating the treasury first. I glamoured us all invisible to avoid any confrontations with patrols that may happen out into the caves. Tylette linked our minds to further enhance our stealth.
When we arrived at the treasury, Fredrick decided that if a gourgaz could move the boulders, he could too. Zerin stood back and watched the boulder slowly creep open as the invisible priest struggled with all his might. Ah, but fate is a cruel master. You see, journal, instead of a treasury, this cave just so happened to contain a nest of cockatrice. These beasts, I have read, can turn a man and all he carries into a stone statue with but a touch of their beaks. They swarmed out of the cave in a tempest of squawks and feathers. Luckily, the invisible priest ducked out of the way and the beasts did not detect his or our presence. Some flew back toward the hoard of slave-beasts, other down the way we were going.
Descending deeper into the earth, we came to a split. We went to the right first and came upon an ancient and apparently unused shrine to Terraj. Zerin removed the lock in his own way (by removing the door itself). Inside, the stone had turned the temple into a slimy shadow of its former grandeur. Only the stone alter, magically enhanced, was not corrupted. Fredrick made a donation into the dusty offering coffer (which still held a few coins and gems, but we were not about to steal from the earth god in his own midst). Deciding the temple held nothing further for us, Fredrick used the Earth anchor to solidify all the rotten stone in the temple, for whatever it was worth. Perhaps Terraj may have taken notice. Nevertheless, we turned back down the passage. The second fork was a long causeway flanked by pillars and bat-winged stone statues. The center was trapped several times over, but Zerin, in the lead, held firm against all of them. The end was caved in, but a small excavation had been resumed off to one side.
Moving further down, we discovered a door bearing Tiztserak’s symbol. To complicate matters, five cockatrice were pecking about the room. In the center of the door was a small circular inset which happened to perfectly match the size of the lich’s phylactery we finally found last week. Still invisible, I carefully picked my way across the room and drew forth the amulet. Sure enough, the door opened before us. The cockatrice were quick to run in, one even moving between my legs. Ahead, we found another stone maze of square rooms. I had not believed to find anything here, as we are the first to discover the phylactery in what is assumed to be thousands of years, yet I sent Sheeji ahead to scout anyway.
Amazingly, she managed to find the stairs leading down in one pass. She also saw no enemies. We proceeded forth and stopped in one room which bore a cold, unnerving feeling. Fredrick dared to pull out the glowing axe he had found in one of the treasuries and was immediately set upon by moving shadows--the source of the ominous feeling. Fate was not kind to Frederick today. Calling upon Equitus, he managed to convince some of them that he wasn’t to be trifled with. Yet still the others came. Deciding not to chance anymore encounters, I glamoured Fredrick invisible again and we fled for the exit.
Other sounds came to our ears as we made directly for the stairs. We paid them no heed, and at last our goal lay before us. Between us and them lay a dark patch in the center of the room. Since only Zerin and Sheeji could see, they led us far around it. Unfortunately, the dark shape lashed out at Zerin and myself. It slammed the wind out of my lungs and its corrosive touch melted my coat and tunic, eating its way into my flesh. The dragon man was much luckier and rolled his massive armor out of the path of the fearsome acid. We dashed across the room, saving the battle for another time, and slid down the mucky steps on our backsides.
Crashing into the room below, Tylette and I had the feeling we were being watched. For the third time since descending into Terraj’s Breath, we knew we were being scryed. Yet currently we lack the means to do anything about it.
Sheeji came back from scouting to tell us that all paths on this floor led to the same three consecutive rooms. And these rooms were occupied. The first, by four stone giants, the second by six ogres, and the last by three humans in a large laboratory.
Zerin had a rather brilliant idea: I could summon creatures to draw the giants and ogres out into lab’s large antechamber. We would then run in behind them and take the mages by surprise. The mages, we knew, were the more serious threat. (I assumed they were mages, but they could have been mere alchemists. Still, I doubted that Tiztserak would employ brew masters to make tangle foot bags for him.)
But by the time we managed to quietly make our way through the stone maze and spot the giants up ahead, they had congregated outside the lab. Arranged as if they knew of our prescence and were ready for us. Without a backup plan, we were forced to press on. I summoned a Xorn and two girallons (four-armed apes with a ferocious temperament) from the plane of earth and instructed them to burrow beneath the ground, come up before the giants, engage them, and then retreat to the back of the room. As they did so, Zerin’s keen ears could pick up the mages whispering to their guards to hold steady. The loyal giants did so and the ruse was up. My summoned creatures then foolishly came up between the mages and the giants, temporarily blocking the doorway with their great bulk.
Zerin picked up Fredrick in the same instant and invisibly flew toward the door. Yet his shield had managed to escape my spell and hovered through the air. A voice called out to the giants and they swung their massive clubs at shield. Seeing no other way around, the game was truly lost. The remaining giants in the rear made quick work of the girallons and Xorn even as I called forth a great crocodile from the earth sphere. The battle was afoot and we were sorely outnumbered and hard pressed. I knew that drastic measures must be taken so I created a small sphere between my hands and called to the heavenly planes. My matron heard me. Eight columns of light filled the room for a moment and a pack of hound archons descended from the astral heralded by mighty howls. Their greatswords glinted with holy energy as the proud warriors touched down into the rotted earth.
It was then that the mages answered with a calling of their own. Descending from the ceiling like living shadows, a dozen babbling allips filled the room, entrancing nearly all within, including myself. I cannot say what transpired in the moments after that. But when I managed to finally shake my head of the inane murmurs, the mages had entered the antechamber. The center human held a scrying pool open before him, showing New Galdomond surrounded by legions of Tiztserak’s army. The two flanking him were ordering us to stand down, that the battle had been lost before it had begun. But none of these had such a commanding presence as the gaunt figure to their right. None other than Tiztserak himself was staring into Fredrick’s eyes only a few feet away. The evil man’s eyes shone like unholy torches.
Between the mages and I, Zerin was bringing his sword back up after decapitating one of the still babbling stone giants with his massive flamberge. The defiant dragon man was not about to stand down. The truth is, none of us were. If the clone had enough forces to level New Galdomond, it only made our stand here all the more critical.
Yet before me, Tylette was surrounded by a triad of the allips. The undead’s touch drained the spark from her eyes and seemed to dull her senses. Seeing no other course, she sidestepped their attacks and dove under the creature directly before her, suffering yet more of their cold touches. Now afforded a view of the entire scene, she spoke to the Fire Anchor and it came alive around her. Indeed, it nearly tripled in size, blazing white-hot and spinning so fast it could not be tracked with the eye. The earth above each of our enemies grew red, then orange, yellow, and finally white in only moments, finally erupting in a storm of fire that nearly covered the entire cavern. I began to see how the original Knights earned their name. Only the four of us, the new Daystorm, were spared the inferno if the fire storm. When the smoke began to clear, the mages were dead, Tiztserak was mysteriously gone, and only a fraction of our enemies remained. Conversely, all of the mighty hound archons stood singed but alive. The tide of battle had turned our way and we had Tylette to thank for our lives.
Still, the remaining foes would not die easily. I called once more upon my Matron. She heard again, and the pillars of light descended into the chamber before me. This time, however, the pillars were heralded by the gong of a tremendous bell. The earth shook at my feet as the many pillars formed into one and from that shaft of light spilled forth an array of floating spheres of holy energy. The lantern archons led with a volley of rays into our enemies, slowly bringing them down one by one. Fredrick had not faired well against his giant and were it not for one of the noble archons rushing to his aid, he would not be alive before me as I write this.
But in the end, bruised, weakened, and wholly drained of our resources, we stood victorious over the bodies of Tiztserak’s elite guard. We are now holed up in the laboratory, protected by a stone wall. The earth trembles around us as we prepare to bed down and gain a much needed respite. If the gods are good, we will get it. The lab’s notes have provided us with a great deal of useful information. Before we sent them on their way, one of the surviving stone giants told us just where we could find our quarry. I can only hope after all we have fought for, all we have lost, all we have sacrificed, that we have the strength to stand against the world’s oldest mage. If we do, well then we have truly earned the right to be called the Knights of the Daystorm.
Those last two were from 2 pm to 2-3am each. Makes these write ups somewhat daunting sometimes. Perhaps I should start taking notes? 
