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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oghma" data-source="post: 6817" data-attributes="member: 71">Dear Diary,I need to start putting dates on my entries, so here it goes:  Today is Moonday, Planting the 10th.  It is late afternoon and we are almost at the monastery of the Order of the Risen Star.  It’s been ten days since I left Treedimple.  I’ve been doing the ritual of binding with Ember most of the day in the wagon, while the priests and the others do the watching.Guess what? Ratlin learned that he has some magic in him, too!  He had found a falcon familiar, and he did his ritual of binding right along with me.  He named the falcon Millyeneum or something.  Must be a hobbit thing.  He can do this spell where he can hit anything whenever he attacks after casting the spell.  It only works for one attack, but it’s pretty neat.Ember is a smart dog! She picked up all the ritual steps really easily and when the binding was complete, I could feel her little doggy mind next to mine.  After all that ritual stuff, we got off and ran around a little bit.  I don’t think I’m going to argue with Ember like Felster did with Arabella.I can see the monastery ahead.  The priests have trotted forward to tell the Abbott. Ember is taking a nap next to me, and I’ll have to write more later.Dear Diary, It’s the evening of Planting 10th.  Abbot Martin Gerrard has told us about the monks that have gone down into the crypt.  His concern for them was so strong that we decided not to rest and to go straight down into the crypt.  He said he’d give us 100 gold apiece and a magic item for finding out what happened to them, or finding them alive.  He said the earthquake has opened up some new areas in the crypt, something that had not been explored.  Ord thinks that there may be an opening to the Underdark that the earthquake may have opened.  We are heading down to the crypt eight now.Dear Diary,I almost got Gimil killed.  We’ve been so successful up until now that I’ve started to forget that what we are doing is dangerous.  A moment’s inattention is enough to seriously jeopardize our entire group.We left the crypt entrance and headed down a flight of stairs.  The crypt was designed to have a flight of stairs, then a level of crypts, then a flight, then a level of crypts for four flights and four crypt levels.  We had gone down the first three flights and had stepped onto the third floor of the crypts.  As we started to make our way to the next set of stairs, a bunch of skeletons started coming our of some crypts that had been broken open.  Ord whipped out his holy symbol and destroyed all nine with his holy power.  Amazing!  I guess Clangeddin has more going for him than brass balls.When we got to the fourth level, we saw right away that the earthquake had split a crack right through the level and there was a large crevice that led down.  I cast light on a stone and tossed it down the crack.  We saw that about 30 feet down the crevice bottomed out into a pit, but that there was a further crevice that went off into darkness.  We dropped down into the pit (Milly-eneum flew down and we made a sling for Ember.)We dropped the light stone down the crevice and found that it went about a hundred feet or so down.  We dropped a long rope down the crevice to the bottom.  Here is where I made my near fatal mistake.Gimil so likes my armor spell that he has taken to just having it on him whenever we are heading into battle.  So far, we hadn’t seen anything, but Gimil decided that he’d go down first.  I forgot to armor him!  He went down that crevice without any protection besides his own agility and senses.When he hit bottom, he signaled for Ratlin to come down, then we watched in horror as four figures slowly started to surround him!  Ord shouted to look out but it was too late, Gimil was fighting for his life against we didn’t know what and we were all too far away to help!  Ratlin jumped down the rope, paying it out rapidly to make it an almost fall, as I targeted a figure with a magic missile. I can now shoot two of them and so two missiles went streaking into one of the figures.Gimil was fighting for his life, trying to avoid letting the figures flank him.  As Ratlin came down, he was struck by the claws of one and staggered.  He got back up as Ratlin tried to swing behind one.  He fell and landed badly, but it got the attention of one of them as I sent another two missiles shooting into the one I hit earlier.  Down he went!Ord jumped down the rope after Ratlin.  Gimil was hit again and then seemed to freeze in position.  The three remaining oriented on Ratlin, who went into a spinning, tumbling frenzy to try to get away from all their attacks.  I stayed up and fired two more missiles into one the Gimil had injured, and it went down.When Ord landed he showed his holy symbol to the ghouls, for that is what they were.  Two of them went cowering into the corner of the room while the last one fought Ratlin.  Ord had to keep his eyes on the ghouls he had pinned, but he sidled over to Gimil and gave him a whack to see if he could rouse him.  I sent my final missiles down to the one trying to fight Ratlin, and Ratlin got a shot in on it, and took him down.  I waited up at the pit until Gimil became conscious and he and Ratlin finished off the other ghouls with bolts and arrows.  I sent Ember down in the sling and then followed down myself.I apologized to Gimil right away.  He looked at me and said that the fault was not mine, that he had forgotten to ask for it.  Still, I vow never to forget to armor him when he needs it.  Maybe even if he doesn’t.We decided to rest down in that room.  There are a lot of rocks and spiky things sticking up in the room.  There is a bunch of smashed coffins that I’m going to look through with Ratlin.  There is a crevice leading out of the room which we set a guard on while we look and restDear Diary, (Early Morning, Godsday, Planting 11th.  Tanabat, Seven Sisters Festival)Well, we’ve rested a bit, and Ratlin told us about the Seven Sisters Festival, which is today.  It seems seven lovely sisters entertained Olidammara on this day when he was in disguise as a minstrel. (Ratlin told this story, of course, with a lot of winks and bawdy comments.  I think it’s just wishful thinking.)  He was so pleased by these women that he offered to send them to his halls where they could play forever.  (What I remember about this festival is that there is a lot of wine drinking going on, and the girls get chased into the vineyards.  I, myself, was never caught, but Bonnie Thimbleprick was, and I’ll bet she let herself get caught.  More than a thimble was pricked that night, I’ll bet.  Goodness! I’ve been listening to Ratlin too much! Look at my language!)We celebrated by having a couple of mugs of ale and resting.  I declined Ord’s offer to chase me into the vineyards.We found a bunch of minor items in the smashed coffins (they must have fallen from the crypt), but we found a holy symbol of Heironeous, and it was engraved with the following: “To Brother Durham, for Faithful Service."  A clue!  We are at least on the right track.  We are about to head off into the crevice, but I’ve put an armor on Gimil, so he will lead the way.  The crevice seems really tall, with a very high ceiling, so we’ll have to watch out for falling rocks and things. Hopefully by the next time I write we'll have found Brother Durham.Dear Diary, (Late Afternoon, Godsday, Planting 11th.  Tanabat, Seven Sisters Festival)Well, it was a good thing we were looking up in that crevice because after we had only gone down about 20 feet or so, whoosh!  Out of the sky came a bunch of stinky bird-things with long sucky noses.  Eeeuw!  Ord said they were called stirges.  I slept a couple of them, Rat got one with a lucky shot, but Gimil and Ord got one attached to them.  I shot one off Ord with a magic missile, and then Gimil tore his off and whacked it against the crevice wall.  We continued down the crevice for another hundred feet or so before opening into a really humid cavern.The floor was soft and covered with thick, damp moss. Immense, root-like, brown-and-gray tendrils of vegetation dangled down from the ceiling overhead, lightly brushing the tops of the varied fungi in the circular chamber.  It was really steamy and hot, and right away Gimil spotted some black robes in the middle of the patch of fungi.We started to go toward it when suddenly there was this piercing shrieking noise, and we saw that there were these big mushrooms with holes in the top making noise.  It was awful!  Then these tentacles started coming out from the pile and attacked Gimil!The shrieking mushrooms and tentacles weren’t’ moving fast, so I took some shots with my wand and the others peppered the mushrooms with crossbow bolts.  One by one, we brought each one down.Inside the pile of fungus and moss we found bad news:  two of the acolytes lay there dead.  They had their equipment, and that was all.  What had happened to Brother Durham?There were two other exits to the room, one on the south and one on the east, but the east one looked caved in.  Gimil and Ord poked around a bit, but it looked really closed up.We left the bodies there for the time being, and took the south exit.  Just as we were crossing the threshold of the tunnel, Gimil stooped down to look at the ground.“Orc prints!” he exclaimed.  He looked carefully at the tracks, but was only able to determine that there had been a small band of Orcs that came from that eastern exit and had gone south.  We decided to be very careful, since those stupid mushrooms had probably warned the Orcs that we were coming.  Gimil and Ratlin went in front, moving quietly.  Gimil’s darkvision would make the difference with surprise, we hoped.After a minute or so, Gimil came back and said that he’d seen a room, about eighty feet wide, where there were at least four Orcs that he could see.  He scratched out the room in the dirt and indicated where there were Orcs hiding behind some stalagmites.  (I think that’s what they were.  I can never remember which are the sticky-uppy ones and the hangy-downy ones.)  Gimil said he thought there were more than four in the cave, because there were more than four sets of prints.  We decided that since Gimil and Ord could see in the dark, they would move in first, as quietly as they could, and get set up to attack.  Ratlin and I would toss in light stones, and that would be the signal to attack.  Ord would first bless us, and I’d do a mage armor on Gimil and myself.  Ratlin and I trotted back to the previous room to make the light stones so they wouldn’t light up the tunnel.It worked pretty well!  Gimil and Ord slipped in just fine, and when the light stones came shooting out of the tunnel the Orcs were a bit surprised.  We counted seven Orcs.  Four were tucked back behind a few stalagmites, and Ord and Gimil were fighting some to the right as I came in.  I popped a sleep off to the stalagmites-hidden ones and got two!  Ratlin took a shot at on that Ord and Gimil were fighting and got him good, and he dropped.The two remaining in the stalagmites threw javelins at Ratlin and I and charged.  I shot two missiles into one and dropped it as Ratlin drew his rapier and engaged the other.  Ord and Gimil were fighting the other two and Gimil’s was a highly trained warrior, feinting and ducking and making Gimil’s life difficult.Gimil finally got a shot in which dropped his right as Ord and Ratlin dropped theirs.  A quick fight, and we were relatively unwounded.  Gimil and Ord had each taken a hit, and Ratlin had a little cut from when he dodged a huge axe swing.In the room, besides a bunch of sticky-uppy things and dead Orcs, was a boulder that looked like it had been rolled across a tunnel opening.  Ord healed Gimil and Ratlin, and we went to investigate.The boulder was pretty big, but Ord and gimil thought they could move it.  They tugged and pushed, and finally got it to roll out of the way.  Behind it was a small tunnel leadin to the right.With lightstones ready, we stepped into the tunnel.  It wound around to a cave where we were faced with a horrible sight!Brother Durham was spread-eagled on a post, where it looked like he had bled to death from torture.  There were cuts and bruises and strips of skin hanging off him.  I had to run back to the other room to throw up.  It smelled like a slaughterhouse.Gimil and Ord cut him down and covered him up.  We found the rest of his equipment in there, except for his armor which looked like the Orc warrior had worn.  We packed it all up, made a travois, and begin the trek back.We left the destroyed crypt feeling like we’d missed something.  We went to the Abbott and recounted everything we’d seen.  He also felt that the Orcs’ presence was unusual, but thought that the cave-in may have re-sealed their entrance into the area.  We promised to explore the whole area tomorrow.I felt bad for the Abbott after presenting him with the body of Brother Durham.  He seemed to age after we told him how we found the body, and Brother Durham and the Abbot must have been good friends.  The Abbott look tired, but said he would call for a feast in our honor, and I almost felt like telling him we didn’t want a feast.  The look on Ord and Ratlin’s face, though told me they sure needed one, and a chance to relax before we went down again.  I’m going to attend the party, but I’m pretty tired, and I hope to call it a night early.  Besides, writing this entry has made my hands cramp up something awful, since so much happened today!</blockquote>

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