Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sayburr" data-source="post: 1172" data-attributes="member: 92">Finding ArowainAfter returning to Weston, we find the rest of the party has left town without us. Rakis and I start out after them towards the town of Haanex in the northern part of the Reanaarian Bay area. We are going there to find a man called Arowain as the last part of our repayment to the bishop’s church for removing our curses. I will let the axman lead the way as he seems much more adept at trails and tracking than I. It seems to make him feel good to be in the lead, and I do want to make him feel good - especially since I will probably have him between me and harms way as much as I can. As we go past Hollobrea, we pick up Laura on the trail. It helps us that she is from the Reanaarian area. We twist and wind our way thru the Ka’Asa Mtns., which are filled with two sides waging war. We saw humans, dwarves, giants, and others fighting furiously. We continued northward thru Couni Heights and the Vrykar Mtns. When we came out of the mountains, we headed for Haanex to try to find a man named Veoden, an associate of Arowain’s. About a day out from Haanex, we spot Amber, Ars, and prissy britches.Around noon the next day , we arrive in Haanex. Laura says that she knows the man and perhaps where to find him easily, a pub called Ki-Ren’s Rest. As we head to the pub, we notice flyers up all over the place. I ask Laura if she can read them because I cannot. She says it was posted by Veoden and that he is looking for adventurers for a mission that pays 100gp. All interested parties should go to his tower at sundown. We decide to try the pub first since we don’t know where his tower is and Laura says the man is a drunkard. When we get to the pub, Laura is welcomed profusely by the owner (she later tells us). She and he exchange some tales and after the polite reminiscing, she asks him where the tower is. He points it out from the doorway and we all depart. It looks ready to fall over. It is about 6 stories tall but there is no way I would attempt to go above the 1st. We knock gently and then yell for Veoden but he doesn’t answer. Most of us decide to go back to our rooms but Ars says he will stay to watch the tower: why is anyone’s guess. We come back at dusk and ask Ars if he saw anything. He says no. We go over and knock and Veoden answers the door. I look at Ars and wonder if he lied or if he is just incompetent or tired from the trip, but say nothing. I tell him we are there for the mission and he asks us in. As ratty as the outside looks, the inside is as nice-plush even. He asks if we want a drink (I am sure he has already had a few) and I accept. I wonder how wise we are to get help from a drunkard. Perhaps Laura exaggerated the extent of his dependancy, but he does seem to like the stuff pretty well.He tells us about the mission. It seems that a star fell to the earth about a hundred years ago up in the mountains northwest of Haanex. He feels that this star contains a metal more suitable for magical purposes, called mithral. He tells us he will pay each of us 100gp each for each pound of mithral we bring him back. We ask him where to look for the fallen star but he tells us he does not know where it is. He does tell us that a man, Atuur Dairoo, found it some years ago but he died shortly after returning with some of the metal. He tells us that he is buried in the local cemetary. “Some believe he took his secret to the grave,” he tells us. I hope so, because I intend to look there, I think to myself. That taken care of, I ask him about Arowain. He says he was working with him on this project until 2 months ago when he disappeared between here and his home a few blocks down. We thank him and leave.Outside, we decide to try Arowain’s house first. It reveals nothing except the fact that someone has already been here looking for something. The place is a wreck. We decide to go to the graveyard under the cover of darkness. I am sure graverobbers are not looked upon kindly. We get there and look and listen for guards. Finding none, we go over the wall surrounding it. Veoden told us Atuur’s family had a mausoleum in here and we spot it easily. We approach it cautiously. It is locked but the lock is useless with its age. Rakis gives me the light orb and tells me to hold it high and open the door for him and Ars. I am only too glad to oblige. I swing it open and they rush in ready to lay low any foes, but there are none—only bones scattered on the floor amongst the wreckage of the interior. Ars bends over to see if the bones have gnawed on as if by ghouls he says. It is then that the skeletons animate and strike out at him. Others form and attack Rakis too. The bladesmen hold their own against these abominations but are unable to vanquish them. Amber steps to the doorway and blasts them to dust as she presents her holy symbol to them. We can find nothing of value in here except a scroll (I use my new found ability to read magic to learn that it is for protection from evil) or even anything that shows that Atuur is even among these dead. We decide to search the headstones for his name. We find it quickly. Rakis goes to look for shovels when we can’t find any here. He comes back with pair and we start digging. We hit the coffin lid, which seems to be made of iron, after some time. We drag it up to the surface. It is bound by chains and locks as well as being iron. What the hell? I have never heard of such a practice. I try to pick the locks but they are of expert craftsmanship and I fail to open them. As Rakis tries to break them open using Amber’s warhammer, I go to the gate to see if anyone is coming to investigate the noise or light at this hour. After quite a while, Ars is the one to batter them open. Glad to see he has some use. His build is much more slight than the axman’s but somehow he has overpowered the locks when the axman couldn’t. I come back to help open the casket. It takes all of us to get it open. The stench is terrible as is the visage of the emaciated corpse. He has a bit of paper right there in his hand in plain sight. I reach to pick it up but Rakis beats me to it. Lucky for me, since when he did Atuur struck him with a gnarled claw-like hand and leaped out of the casket onto Rakis’s face and shoulders. Amber stepped up and tried to turn him to dust too, but only succeeded in making him flee. Rakis who’s pride was wounded more so than his body wouldn’t allow that and split Atuur in half as he tried to get away. We dumped the body and the casket back in the grave and covered it up as best we could.We left the next afternoon. We headed to a place marked as “the Mounds”. When we got there the place was a mist filled valley with 3 huge mounds, not unlike rounded off anthills. We went down to investigate. The mist was about 4 feet deep and unnerved the horses a great deal, even to the point of throwing Amber and Rakis. I recovered her horses while the others helped Rakis out from under his mount. After this, we led the horses. We came to the first mound and I asked Amber to hold my horse’s reigns while I climbed to the top. Rakis said he would join me and prissy and Ars wanted to check the base for entrances. Amber and Laura held all the horses as the four of us set out to check our areas. Before we made it to the top, we heard one of the horse’s scream and so looked back to see the mist swirling about Laura and now only 5 horses with her. We charge down the slope to help them. Laura is stabbing into the mist and Amber is casting some sort of spell but the mist makes it impossible to see what is actually happening except that 3 more horses disappear as we make our way there. Amber leads the horses that she can out and Laura decides to do the same. I chant the protective rhyme the Watcher taught me in my dreams as I make my way to the place that the last horse, Pandora’s pack animal, went down. I swing Flamesinger with all my might and I am immediately drenched in blood, hot and coppery smelling. Watcher’s shield, protects me as whatever is here tries to claw and bite me giving me a chance to swing again and sever the creature’s insectoid head. I could have sworn I heard a wild cat’s screams mixed in with the creature’s clicking noises but see nothing else stirring in the mist. In a flash of brilliance, I realize this is Pandora’s animal. I decide to get even with that bitch right now by throwing her bags (with her precious books) out into the mist, but the Dm’s hand –I mean --, the horse’s weight won’t let me pull the bags free to do so, dammit!!! Ars wants to see what we were fighting, so he helps me pull the carcass over to the mound out of the mist. It is a monstrosity. It looks like a cross between a huge centipede and a huge grasshopper with a huge mantis-like head. The bard says she recognizes the creatures as ankhegs from descriptions she has heard in stories. She says they are burrowers like ants and usually ambush from just beneath the surface. Whatever! All I know is that we are 4 horses lighter than when we entered the valley. We leave the valley to make camp elsewhere right after we regroup since some of the riding animals were among those taken. We decide to go to the area that Atuur went to right before he died even tho I wanted to go to the area marked ogres here. The area is called “Dark Hills” and it earned its name. The whole area seemed to be under storm the whole time we approached it (and the whole time we there afterward) even tho the rest of the surrounding lands were under clear skies. We venture into the foreboding hills looking for this fallen star. After some searching we spot a large crater ahead. We tie the horses up and close on the site. From a short distance, we see that the crater has a small ramshackle cabin on the far edge and is home to a large boulder in the center and has 2 caves in one wall. There is smoke coming from the chimney of the cabin and nothing else moving so I ask the others if they want to stay here while I sneak over to snoop. They agree, covering me with their bows as I go.I see that the door is chained and padlocked when I get close to the shack but the window is only locked with a block of wood barring the shutters from the outside. I sneak a peek thru a crack in the shutters and see Arowain shackled to the fireplace but working furiously away at some chore. I also see a blanket at the back of the room, probably partitioning this room from another. It could be a guard’s room or the mage that we heard watches over the star. I sneak around the back to try to see in there but have no luck except to find that the cabin definitely has more room than can be viewed from the shuttered window. I sneak back to tell the rest what I have found out and to decide what we want to do next. We decide that the bladesmen and I should sneak back to free Arowain in case there are guards there. Also, since they have seen movement in the cave closest to the cabin that Amber, Laura, and prissy should cover it with their bows from here since they aren’t trained for stealth. The woodsman lives up to his name and keeps up with us and doesn’t queer the approach. Once there they watch and I lift the bar on the shutters and slowly swing them open and go in. The old man looks up as I am trying to get to the partition and nearly gives me a heart attack when he starts asking me questions, loudly, even tho I am signaling for him to be quiet. I tell him we are here to help him and quickly close the distance to the blanket. Thank Watcher and Risk the room is only his sleeping area and no guards are present. I go to him to try to free him but the manacle has no lock to pick.It is riveted closed into one piece. I go out the window to tell the men about it and tell them I will cover the cave from the lip of the crater with my crossbow while they free him. I do for a few seconds. Even with all of Magnus’ teachings telling me to hold the high ground and to draw the enemy out to slaughter them as they have to struggle against bow fire and the grade of the slope, I find myself sneaking quietly down the slope. I did love the big northman but I follow Risk, afterall. I am close to the near cave entrance when two hobgoblins (curse their ability to see in the dark!) guarding it notice me and attack. I am still clumsy with the new, heavier blade but when I do hit with it, the damage it wreaks on the foe is impressive. The first HG dies immediately, skewered on the flaming blade. The second, however holds me off as the guards from the other cave are closing. I can hear someone coming down the slope behind me and my prayers are answered as Rakis arrives just as the other HGs do. We kill 4 of the 5 but one retreats back into the cave complex. Rakis, Ars , Laura and I decide to follow that one to press our advantage but I holler back to Amber to watch the other cave to make sure they don’t come out that way and follow us in to cut of our exit. At the chance not to get into the action, prissy suddenly listens to me without argument.We advance to what will become a bloodbath---ours and the HGs. Ars steps up to the front with Rakis while Laura and I bring up the rear. But at the first wave of them he seems slow to react so I use some of my exercises from my show with the gypsies to move past him to engage the HG attacking him. The lack of practice with this blade shows up in full force here. I would have come out of that roll with the blade buried deep in his guts if it had been my short sword. The weight of this one pulls me off balance so that I miss the mark and end up on the defensive and out of balance instead of standing over his body tho. Laura is chanting her battle song for us and shooting her crossbow and Ars steps forward into the fray but the axman outshines us all here today. He is really in his element. He gets that crazed look in his eyes again (I would hate to be the one staring into that face) and starts hacking things to bits. His ability to withstand damage as well as dish it out amazes me. The woodsman earns his pay today, too. I am barely able to stand after wave after wave of HGs assualt us, as is Rakis--- but the woodsman is stabbed and cut and slashed literally to ribbons. I advanced on thru the room and into the corridor beyond as they finished the last HGs to find 2 doors and the corridor continuing on. I take this time to drink my potion of healing. I return to them to tell them what I discovered and ask what they want to do now. They want me to go get prissy and Amber while they rest a minute. I do as they ask.I return with them and Amber helps them as much as she can and prissy is useless of course. We explore the little bit left of the caves only to find it empty except for a trapped door that burns me and Amber.The threat of discovery quelled we return to the cabin to see if we can free the old man. While he is trying to convince us to let him finish his work, Daresh bursts the door open and wants to know what we are doing. We try to tell her but she acts crazed. Yelling that the coin is hers and going on like a mad woman even tho we tell her that she can have it. We tell her we only want the old man even if it is after he is done. She does that stunt she used to get my key to bring the coin to her but it is straight out of the forge, the stupid bitch! It burns her hand horribly and while I think she is distracted I pull Flamesinger and leap to behead her and put a stop to her nonsense. She shoots some black ray out of her hand toward me and as I try to dodge it the old man is suddenly between us and it strikes him. The beam blows his arm off at the shoulder and some sort of blackness swirls about his body. I continue my attack after dodging the ray but the bitch has pulled another one of her quick fades. Arowain warns us back from trying to help him saying it is too late to save him and that we would die too if we touch him. I back away quickly. He tells us that Daresh will become unbelievably powerful and evil now that she has the coin. He tells us that only another armed with a similar coin can stand against her. He asks us to find a man named Halaan to do this and to tell his daughter and his friend Veoden what happened to him here and then he dies. We rest long enuf to heal most of our wounds and the head back to town with what mithral we found, about ½ pound.We tell Veoden as Arowain wished. He pays us the full price since we helped his old friend and brought him the news even tho we only had half the mithral. He says he doesn’t know anyone named Halaan but he thinks someone named Geolain in the large city of Zoa might be able to help us. We will travel to Zoa and hear what Geolain has to say. I need to go there anyway. It is a large city Veoden said and I am still shy 1 finger and Amber has told me that there are spells to regrow lost limbs so surely they can help me.</blockquote>

Verification