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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StalkingBlue" data-source="post: 1101522" data-attributes="member: 645">Dang.  No updates yet?  Where are the cool Xiang action scenes, the well-considered Leo sequences, the deeply self-centred Aos comments??  I was going to settle back for some nice reading here, guys!  ... (waiting ... tapping foot ... tapping other foot ...)OK.  Sniffle.  Here's a letter then.  (Seriously, I was pretty tired on Sunday because my brother cum girlfriend left literally before dawn to catch an early plane - so if I got things horribly wrong, shout and I'll correct them. In fact, if I find out my horrible mistakes by reading your updates, I'll go and correct them anyway.) ------------Letter from Tsui Yio ChoThe 24th Day of the 3rd Month of the Year 2739 3 Years 10 Months 5 Days since Hawk’s Palace’s Fall We are off tomorrow.  My heart sings at the prospect of getting back on the road.  We have gained two new companions:  Saphanie, the Margrave’s own sister, a lady with a temper and an impressive gift for magic;  and Sol, a taciturn wood elf security specialist.  We have also accomplished one mission and failed in another – there is much to tell.  ***A few mornings ago I was out on the plain west of the city, practising.  I find that I breathe easier away from those walls, the streets where people still stare when I pass.  I decided that it was a day of Water:  spring has come, wet and early, and the grass bruises deeply where your feet touch it.  Some shepherd children were sitting near.  They have given up on aping me and just watch.  I like to flatter myself that given enough time, even their undisciplined eastern minds may start picking up a thing or two.  Anyway, I was finishing the form of First Water and flowing into the second one, when a woman approached me.  I recognised her as an advisor to Margrave Kanor, Grimhelda, who deals in magic potions and in the telling of fortunes.  Grimhelda claimed she had been visited in her dream by what she called a great marsh-bird, which had given her a message to pass on to me.  These are the words of the bird’s message.  “Guard the Wielder of the Spear and protect Him until such time as It can be restored to Its rightful place.  Grow strong and seek the Queen held prisoner in the Mountain of Fire, for She has the Power to free the Guardians of Crane from Their long sleep.”   I knew then for certain that what I have been following were true signs.  I also knew that an ally might be gained for the Heavenly Mountains, here in Gaxmoor.  Surely I am not the person to go on such an errand but you see, there is no one else.  So I went, to see the Margrave.  Gods know that I hold him in terror, though I sincerely hope that he does not.  I was not born to speak in Courts.  I think the Margrave believed me.  He said that he would pass my report on, in confidence, within the League.  I expect that means all I told him has by now reached Mount Fire through the Traitor’s spies.  If I have made a mistake in telling him, may the consequences fall on me alone.  ***Two days ago, the Margrave summoned our company.  He requested that we act as guards to the Margravaine Eloise Brax-Arkand on a diplomatic mission south into Bretania.  The Margravaine appears to be in some danger due to certain intricacies of local politics, the details of which escape me.  I have still not worked out who is a retainer to whom in these strange lands.  We are to set out tomorrow on the first stage of our journey, towards Carrisqui.  At Leo’s request, however, the Margrave granted us leave to first return to the graveyard that we had visited once before in autumn.  Saphie and Sol (the Margravaine’s security chief) agreed to accompany us.  Leo and Tarquin had conducted some research during the winter in the city’s archives with the help of the Margrave’s advisors and priests.  They were confident that we would be able to defeat Xerxes Diccus, a former prince of the city turned blood-sucking ghoul, who had been locked up in his tomb for some centuries;  though likely we would be no match for the lich reported to be sealed up in the even older tomb of the Mageris family.  ***Leo demonstrated to us a new magic contraption he has, a translucent floating hand that can deliver spells by touch.  We then entered the graveyard and went to Xerxes Diccus’s tomb.  The red-eyed rats we had already seen in autumn swarmed around us again as we approached the doors.  There was much preparatory spellcasting.  Both Sol and Saphie immediately proved useful in that we were not forced this time to stand outside a locked tomb debating how best to break in:  the outer doors were swiftly opened by Saphie’s spells and Sol’s clever hands.  The inner doors still bore the protective runes that Leo’s magic sight had detected at our last visit.  When Saphie dispelled the magic, a tongue of fire licked out of the doorway.  Luckily we had all withdrawn to a safe distance.  We got ready to enter.  Xiang and Aos pushed the door into the inner chamber open.  Instantly a monstrous demon of towering height reared up inside, wreathed in flames and spitting words of glee and hate.  I later heard Tarquin and the mages call it a Pit Fiend.  In superhuman courage, both Xiang and Aos charged the monster, managed to strike it but were grievously wounded by its claws.  A thought tugged at a corner of my mind, complaining that such a towering monster could hardly fit into the low chamber of the tomb – but I pushed the thought back to narrow my focus as I somersaulted over Xiang’s and Aos’s shoulders into the chamber.  Desperate to strike the demon, I only realised when my shin passed through its flank freely that here was a transparent illusion!  I pushed myself off the wall in mid-spin and leapt through the magically faked form, calling out to my companions.  The demonic image screamed in outrage and disappeared.  Tarquin healed Xiang and Aos, whose wounds were real enough, for having been slashed by an illusion.  We pressed on.  Beyond the imaginary Pit Fiend’s chamber, we found another chamber that contained a desk, a wine rack, and a sarcophagus, next to which Sol detected a hole in the floor.  There was concern that the vampire, if that was what Xerxes Diccus had in fact become, might escape through the hole in the form of a gas cloud.  Leo cast a wall of force, a thin invisible thing that for the length of a few breaths will keep anything from coming or going through.  (Sol later bounced off another such wall, which in the heat of battle he had forgotten was there.)  Leo had hardly finished casting when Sol called everybody’s attention to an almost invisible cloud that moved and appeared to be coalescing in a far corner.  It was cut off from us for the moment by Leo’s wall, so we decided to deal with it later.  We stood around the sarcophagus and lifted off the lid.  The sarcophagus was empty.  It was then that the cloud beyond the wall took shape – or shapes, I should say:  a number of overlapping images of one of the same man.  I saw this once before, in a place I shudder to write of, from that woman who has become the worst thing a person can possibly turn into:  a traitor.  No more of that here.  We got ready for Leo’s wall to go down and then charged the vampire.  Aos’s rapier and Xiang’s Spear hit it in quick succession.  It stumbled back against the wall, spread its fingers in front of him chanting arcane phrases, and a fan of fire leapt from him, flat and easy to dodge.  The flames did little damage other than to a sleeve of one of Aos’s favourite shirts.  Aos had hardly done cursing when I struck the vampire.  It crumpled almost instantly.  We all had heard its neck crack and its head was lying at an angle – yet as we stood over it, its wounds were closing.  Tarquin brought out some wooden stakes he had had blessed for the purpose, and drove them through the vampire’s heart.  The undead body crumbled to dust.  ***This had been easy.  So, elated and still charged with the heat of battle, we collected what valuables we could find in Xerxes Diccus’s tomb and withdrew, to return the next day for the Mageris family tomb.  This turned to be an ill-advised decision.  The first warning sign that we were not on a lucky path came when Titania attempted to read the ancient writing on an inner door inside the tomb, thereby setting off a burst of magic that injured her and everyone else inadvertently standing close.  We proceeded.  We found a corridor with five secret doors with stairs leading down into the darkness beyond them.  Saphie through her magic sight discovered that four of the sets of stairs involved magical illusions.  When I tapped my foot on one, it went right through.  Beneath the illusory stairs lay only spiked pits.  Leo warned us that he had sensed magic melt away from the fifth door when it was opened – likely an alarm of some kind.  Yet, nothing came at us.  This should have warned us.  We followed the one set of real stairs down into a pentagonal room.  This room’s walls were fascinating in that they represented the five elements:  four of the walls had doors and beside them murals showing elemental creatures of Earth, Water, Air and Fire, respectively, and the fifth wall was the one we arrived through by means of an archway, the lack of a door and absence of any mural fittingly, if crudely, representing the Void.  We suspected that the elemental creatures represented in the murals would break free and attack us when we opened any of the doors.  Leo sealed off half of the chamber with a wall of force by way of precaution.  Sol tried to open the door nearest to the elemental of Earth.  The door was locked, but the guardian creature broke forth from the mural – a mass of rock that shook the ground with the stomping of its legs and slamming of its granite fists.  Sol flew out of its way hastily.  We killed the creature, then proceeded to the Door of Water.  Moments later we had dispatched all the elemental guardians.  By this time many spells had been expended by Saphie and Leo, and astonishing skill been displayed by Sol in disarming magic traps and overcoming locks.  Again, things were going smoothly.  In our elation we determined to press on.  Tarquin put his hands to the stone around the door locks and by the grace of his god shaped the stone so that one by one, each door came loose and fell in with a crash.  Beyond three of the doors lay chambers with ancient embalmed corpses lying on biers in their finery.  The longnoses were concerned that these corpses might rise to defend themselves, so Saphie set the ones in the first room ablaze with a fireball.  The corpses did nothing, other than burn merrily.  By the time we went in, their jewels and some scrolls and other objects had been eaten by the fire from their belated pyres.  No more fireballs were thrown into the next two rooms, and the treasures were eagerly collected from the corpses.  Saphie objected at first to what she called grave robbery (is there some law here that grants ownership in grave treasures to the nearest city?);  but she allowed herself to be convinced that we were acting with her brother’s permission.  The fourth and last room contained no corpses but a single stone sarcophagus, sealed with lead and bearing a plaque that proclaimed this to be the final resting place of Lucius Maximus Mageris.  After repeated efforts and with the help of Sol’s crowbar, Xiang and Aos together levered off the sealed lid.  Inside the sarcophagus stairs led even further down.  Sol scouting ahead, we went down into a wizard’s laboratory.  Beyond the door at the far end, Sol heard flames crackle and a parakeet croak.  He produced a set of interlinked mirrors to peer underneath the door, and reported an armchair with a figure sitting in it.  More plans were made, more protective spells cast.  We readied ourselves.  Saphie and Leo went invisible.  With a spell, Saphie opened the door from a distance.  The man in the armchair rose to his feet.  He was elegantly dressed and wore a circlet with a single precious stone on his forehead.  We hardly had time to take in the skeletal form of his hands and face under ages-old leathery skin, when he spread his arms and spoke warm welcoming phrases.  No one had taken time to think why our foe had not risen to meet us, when he must have clearly heard our approach.  Now no time was to be left us.  The lich’s words washed over us – already the only course that seemed to make sense was to calm down, follow his invitation, come into his study.  The only ones who kept their heads even for a breath were Leo and Aos.  Aos charged in to strike our undead host with his rapier, while Leo threw a magic ray at him narrowly past Aos’s ear.  An instant later Aos, too, was caught in the lich’s inescapable net of silken phrases.  Leo, judging that on his own he had no chance of overcoming our opponent, pretended to be enchanted along with us.  I dully remember the hours that followed:  the flickering of the fire, the press of the rim of the carpet where I sat down to stretch my leg;  the murmur of the lich conversing with Leo about the history and politics of the last few centuries – all of which appeared as new to him as to me, yet vastly more understandable to him.  With what ease a man dead for half a millennium finds his way back into this world!  The lich left at last, leaving us a gift of sorts:  a bag of runed tiles to choose from.  Only Saphie and Titania tried their luck at this game of chance.  Saphie went first.  When she drew her first tile, her hands shook and her hair turned grey.  (I saw Xiang, who had been half-eager, shudder and draw back.)  The second tile made Saphie cringe and turn pale, sapping some of her life force, which fortunately Tarquin was able later to restore to her, though to her dismay, the grey hair remains.  The last tile at least appears to have been of some benefit – a future favour owed her by the divinities or some such.  Titania’s luck was similarly mixed, combining damage that Tarquin later mended with future divine favours.  Unbelievably enough, Titania reports having been able to talk directly to her goddess.  She asked some questions about her own future, about Aos and about the fate of Gaxmoor, receiving answers of varying usefulness.  There was little of value to be found in the lich’s old apartment, but Leo kept the lich’s parakeet.  I understand that in its true form this red-eyed bird is a dangerous demon, of the variety that we encountered briefly at our last visit to the graveyard, when fighting the bat-winged demoness.  The cage appears to be its magic prison.  ***We returned to the city and made our report to the Margrave.  I found that he accepts failure with the same equanimity as he did desertion.  Will these people ever cease to surprise me?  ***Before I end, here are two more things.  First, to my puzzlement, Titania has had a look in her eyes for me ever since we returned from the graveyard:  a look that I have not seen in what seems aeons or more.  She is misguided, of course.  It may well be that her exchange with her deity (if that was indeed her counterpart was) has touched her head.  Or else it is her karma to travel down a path without hope.  I shall make an effort not to add to her pain.  Second, I have understood only in writing this that I must tell Xiang of my bird’s message.  He may well turn the knowledge against me when the time comes.  But who am I to hope that I may eventually be found worthy of overcoming the Traitor, if I myself start out on my path in a spirit of deceit?  Who am I to hope in any case?  But that, I suppose, is beside the matter.  Live, my love.  Live and walk the path destined for you in this life, and in all others.(edit: sp)</blockquote>

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