NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haraash Saan" data-source="post: 4591890" data-attributes="member: 46615">My own recollections of what happened in the twenty minutes or so after I first lost consciousness are vague and blurred, so I will recount the tale that Mortec told me.    The whole banquet was in chaos. Many of the feasters were lying just like me, unconscious and drifting off to death. Others, more important sorts like the King, were being tended to by Urumei’s healers. They were present throughout the festivities of the Games to tend the injured. I doubt they had anticipated that their God and their gifts would be needed before the tourney had commenced.    Mortec left me with Zhontell and desperately tried to coax one of the priests of Urumei to tend me. Unfortunately for me they brushed aside the Gnome citing “people of consequence” to save.    Morgan sought the aid of the Son’s of Light, appealing to Gerech that I be saved. Whilst impressed with radiant adornment of the Fastendian they refused their aid. They would not help a heretic, and there was no doubt that I was exactly that in their eyes, and mine.    Morgan was undeterred. A thought struck him, on a previous evening when he had been prowling some of the taverns near the docks he recalled an overweight and dishevelled priest of Urumei that had moaned how he had not been selected to attend the banquet. So it was to the docks that he raced seeking the drunken priest.    Even Moxadder sought to assist me. His own thoughts obviously bent toward the healing properties of herbs. In a rare moment of useful clarity he sped to Miscrott’s shop hoping to find something to cure me.    At some point during my companions valiant efforts to save me I regained consciousness. All of my senses were dulled and my head throbbed as though as smith’s hammer rhythmically pounded it.    I saw a burly man on hands and knees with a massive sword on his back tugging at the blue frayed robe of a monk of Hutenkama, the very monk that had blessed me months ago as I prepared to celebrate All Summer’s Day. I stumbled toward him. The monks had strange and bizarre powers, perhaps he could vanquish the ever spreading toxins from my body.    “Aye man I ken save you.” said the monk to the groping gladiator.    The big man thanked him profusely and began to fumble with his coin purse. He managed to drop several gold gromits at the bare feet of the monk. The Hutenkaman smiled, pleased with the offering and nodded his acceptance before beginning a strange dance that saw him hop side to side from foot to foot all the while chanting.    The gladiator was paling more and more, as I arrived I saw his pleading eyes focused solely on the gyrating monk.     I lurched forward and roughly grabbed the monk of Hutenkama and rasped, “Heal me now!”    “Nay, ah already have a paid customer. Leave me be to finish the blessing.” He said roughly.    The gladiator was at first aghast by my action but then relieved at the blue robed man’s words.    My head lolled toward him as I dug into my coin pouch. With all my effort I kicked the kneeling man over into the dust, then thrust a platinum pound, worth many more gromits than the other had donated, into the monks’ palm.    “I am dying. Heal me now!” I hissed through clenched teeth.    I waved in the direction of the twitching man I had knocked over, “He is not your problem now. I am!”    “Right. Aye. Ah see that ah was mistaken. And by the look of ye, ye needs are much more pressing.” He said as he pocketed the platinum coin.     He added in a softer mumble, “And no time for the usual show either.”     The rich monk then dipped his fingers into a pot that hung on his belt and smeared a crude symbol on my head. “There. Ah have done all ah can for ye. Pray to whomever ye favour and go with ma blessing.”    I murmured my thanks, not feeling any different, and stepped over the still form of the gladiator. Callus as it was I do not regret my action. How could I? I am still here to tell the tale.    Morgan arrived supporting a heavy set brown robed Urumeian priest. Argonne thrust the holy sensor of Urumei that we had found in the desecrated Gerechian temple into the priests hands and Morgan urgently said, “Now heal him.”    The fat man rolled his blood shot eyes toward me, blinking once or twice and said, “I can do nothing for him. I can shee death ish coming for him.”    At this stage I could no longer speak, it was too much of an effort. My eyes implored him to try. Morgan articulated the same desperate thought.    The priest shrugged and began an incantation to his God. “Oh divine mashter, tenderer of the shick and inshured,” he paused a moment to take a breath, “redeemer of the losht. I besheech thee to grant me your grace to remove the shpectre of death from thish man.”     As the words slurred from his tongue he placed both of his hands atop my head, my hat had been lost in the earlier fighting. On his last pronouncement he thrust down with his hands. I crumpled to my knees, and then spluttered through another cough. Again I clutched my chest, it felt as though I was burning in the very pits of hell.    “Shee. He ish a dead man. I need a drink.” Said the priest as he turned and waddled away into the panicked crowd.    From my subservient position, to all bar Mortec (I was at his eye level), I eyed each of my comrades in turn. Morgan, his boyish face almost in tears as he looked at me. He turned away before my gaze shifted. Argonne, stoic and accepting of my fate. Stravarious, blank, unemotive and unreadable. Mortec, grim and resolved. Zhontell weary and worn. Moxadder had not yet returned from his quest to save me.    Even seeing the faces of my companions with whom I had shared so much I refused to accept my death. I could hear the laughter and music of Pandemonium that I had visited once before. I had no desire to return. No! Gerard d’Mowbray would not be struck down by mere poison!    I closed my eyes and isolated myself so that I could sense nothing of the world. All that was important was to focus on me. I reflected on my life; my happy childhood, my tortuous teen years and my more recent adventures. I was not finished! I had more to prove. I had more to do. I was not ready to die.    A beautiful young male face leapt into my mind. It smiled magnificently at me as a perfect hand brushed a golden curl from his forehead. “You are right my child.” He said in an angelic soothing tone, “You are not ready to die. I still need you in Anka Seth.”     A second hand brought a cup full of wine to his lips, and as the image faded, he drank deep from the chalice.    I know not how I knew, but I did. Laster had just come to me!     My eyes flicked wide open and I gasped, once again breathing deeply and filling my lungs with air. My body went into a spasm as I felt the burning pain rescind from veins. I had survived.</blockquote>

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