Thanks everyone, for a kind welcome-back. I missed you too!
RangerWickett, feel free to use whatever you want, in whatever form you want. Strict accuracy vis-a-vis my campaign should hardly be a prerequisite for your materials, which are an improvement as likely as not. And anyway, I stole the basic idea from Robert Jordan in the first place.
Here's a mini-installment:
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 144
But the table isn’t what’s radiating the overwhelming evil. That’s coming from one of the bookshelves lining the walls of the chamber. Squatting on one of the shelves is a large book, its unmarked spine a flat black. The malice radiating from that book is palpable, beating against the
protection from evil that keeps it from blasting the minds of the Company. Even so, no one can look straight at it for more than a couple of seconds; they glean what they can from sidelong glances.
After a search of the rest of the room turns up nothing save more (ordinary) books and papers, they back out into the hallway and send Cobb to the surface to fetch the sturdiest trunk he can find. A few minutes later he returns with another guard, dragging a large wooden chest with a solid steel lock. New
protection from evil spells are cast, and the party plunges back into the room with the horrific book. Using a long wooden plank, they tip the book off of the shelf and into the trunk. Then they hastily close and lock the trunk and drag it outside. The pure evil can still be felt through the wood, but muted and at least tolerable to those without magical protection. Morningstar casts
detect evil on everyone who had come near the wretched tome, but all seem personally untainted.
Grey Wolf and Ernie go back into the room where Califax had been kept prisoner, and fish around for more objects in the oily pit. First they find another book (non-magical) which contains a disturbingly accurate biography of Grey Wolf, chronicling his childhood, the death of his parents, and his apprenticeship with the wizard Melido. Then they find the bones. Kay examines them -- there are several, all half-elven. Grey Wolf doesn’t need confirmation – he knows that they’re the bones of his parents. He remembers back many years, burying those remains near the farmhouse. The Black Circle must have exhumed them, to prepare their evil ritual.
Grey Wolf smolders, his heart racing in outrage. Without a word he stalks out of the room, and the others shrink back as he marches back to the bloody pit where so many Black Circle savants met their end. Mokad’s body still lies on the floor, a chunk of Blood Gargoyle wedged in his mouth. His eyes are open, staring up lifelessly. Grey Wolf draws Bostock, and without uttering a word brings it down heavily, severing Mokad’s head from his body in one savage stroke.
Kibi casts a
fly spell on Ernie, who flies above the oil-pit and severs the chain holding the small cage with its chunk of black stone. While not as eeeeeeevil as the book, it’s still radiating malice on its own, so the party gets a second trunk and locks it away.
Lastly there is the shadowy room with the cauldron, that holds the chill of Null Shadows. Morningstar tries casting
dispel magic (from the hallway outside) on both the room and the cauldron, to no avail. Aravis drops into the Crosser’s Maze and “zooms in” his point of view onto the room itself. He has some success before the effort overwhelms him, and when he comes to a few seconds later, reports that the room seems to somehow be both on the Prime Material Plane
and the Shadow Plane at the same time. It’s fascinating, but it’s not clear what to do about it. The Company locks the door. Tired and saturated with evil Black Circle ambience, but convinced that nothing more dire will happen, the Company goes to the surface. Most of them return to the Moonspell to clean themselves up and get a good hot meal, but Morningstar has one more commitment to keep. She has been dreading it, knowing what may come. But the morning is getting on, and soon High Priestess Rhiavonne will be going to bed. Morningstar marches resolutely to the High Temple to face judgement. Her fiancee Dranko goes with her.
...to be continued...