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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lars Frehse" data-source="post: 745858" data-attributes="member: 1674">An audience with the archfiend- part 3 of 4It took them most of the rest of the day to find a map with Vauldell in it, and after they had bought that one from a greasy trader, they left Durm without spending any moment longer there than necessary. Since it had taken them quite a while to even find a proper map and they didn’t want to stay in this Corean-forsaken town any minute longer than necessary, they didn’t even bother to haggle anymore, paying twice what it was worth.Their journey to Vauldell took them northeastwards, well into the spread-out foothills of the Kelders. Throughout the trip it was raining in a slow but steady downpour, so that they were damp and wet all of the time. They were now closer to Oreirover than they had been ever since they had fled the assault of the Dragoons, and if it weren't for the almost impassable barrier posed by the Kelders, they could even reach it in just a few days.On the evening of the third day, they found the town that the archfiend had mentioned. However, the term "town" was clearly an overstatement. There were only a few houses huddled around a small square, but the remaining foundations which were jutting out of the ground occasionally hinted at a much more populated past of the place. The way it looked, there had once been well over a hundred houses here, whereas now merely a dozen remained.It appeared that after the village had lost a good part of it's population and the years went by, the remaining villagers had used the empty houses for the building material- walls between the fields, fortifying irrigation ditches or for repairs of their own homes. All in all it was a depressing place, and the lowhanging and opressive looking grey sky didn't do much to make it look any better.On one muddy plot of land in front of the village, there seemed to be a single and lonely cemetary. There, in front of a fresh grave that was covered with flowers which were being washed out by the steady rain, they saw a single man in a wet, mudstained robe. He was praying, and only after Niklas cleared his throat, did he seem to notice the group of men behind him. He turned around, and they saw that he was an old grey-haired man who, to their surprise, wore the symbol of Hedrada."Welcome travellers! What brings you to our humble village?""We are just passing through", Niklas said."Well, you must certainly be on an unusual route to come through this forsaken place.", the priest answered, showing nothing but friendly curiosity."But forgive my lack of manners. I am just not used to making new acquaintances anymore! My name is Elam, and I am the priest of Vauldell, as we call our little place here.".Torn introduced himself and his friends, and then, as if on second thought, he added:" And what has happened to this place? It looks like something bad has befallen it at some point"."Ah, you saw the old foundations. Yes, you are right- something bad indeed had befallen this place. Many decades ago, when I was still a young lad who was just about to turn into a man, we had been enslaved by a priest of Chardun who had returned from his grave."He forced his will on every single soul in the villages, be it man, woman, child or the old and weak. For a long time we worked on his tomb. I hardly remember anything from that time, it is all covered by a haze, but in the end, many of the workers had died from exhaustion. And among those who survived and returned to their villages and towns, most didn't stay for long- they left for other parts of the country, fearing that the fiend may come for them again. And so this once thriving town was deserted and we are now merely a poor little village of less than a hundred souls.""Have you ever heard from that evil fiend again?", Jan asked."No, but about twenty years ago or so, a little group of adventurers asked for the way to the tomb. Apparently they were graverobbers, or something foolheartedly like that. I told them the way, and they never returned. But, see, it is getting dark and we are all wet. If you like, I will speak to some of the villagers for you so that you can get a place to sleep at.".The next morning, after having gotten breakfast from overjoyed villagers, for whom the silver and gold the friends had given them were real treasures, they met on the townsquare. At last, the rain had stopped and the sun was now shining with all it's glory and reflecting a hundredfold in every small dirty puddle. After a quick exchange, they decided to tell the priest what they had come for. This looked like the best way to have him tell them where the tomb was.They walked to his house, which was just a little bit bigger than the other buildings in the villages, and had the scales of Hedrada over it's doorway. After knocking and seeing that he wasn't in it, they went around it, and there in a small herbal garden, he was kneeling in the dirt and taking care of his plants.Ben took a quick glance and saw that Elam was mostly growing medicinal herbs. They greeted the priest and thanked him for getting a place to sleep for them, and then they told him the truth about what had brought them here. He listened intently, and after warning them about the dangers that would certainly wait for them in the tomb, he told them how to get there.Niklas, who felt with this man who was clearly trying to live a good life caring for his fellow villagers in this evil land handed him a bag with twohundred pieces of gold. It took some prodding, but ultimately, Elam accepted the gift: this was enough to buy enough grain and other needed things for the village to make it through an entire season, should they have bad luck with farming or if some other misfortune should happen to them.He blessed them and they left, following the instruction the priest had given them. Around noon, they reached the valley he had described to them: a wooded, circular area free of hills, with only one hill that was topped with a crown of rock in the middle of it. The valley was rather peaceul, and the biggest living creature they encountered was an excited squirrel that ran up it's tree as the friends turned around a corner.They climbed up the hill and the ledge of which the friendly priest had told them, but as they reached the plateau with the entrance, they stopped dead in their tracks. There, strewn all over the rock, they saw the remnants of several skeletons. Trepat knelt down, and looking at the remnants of the skeletons:"The battle happened days, maybe just hours ago. They have already been skeletons when they were battling..."He went over to one skeleton that had it's bones connected by vines:" It looks like a bunch of the skeletons here were of the variety we had encountered on the day before we met the Taurosphinx. As weird as it may sound, they seem to have wiped out each other!"."Strange", Niklas said:"Can you find any other tracks?""Yes, here. One humanoid, rather small. An elf, maybe or a human woman. And it looks like these tracks lead nowwhere, but rather disappeared here in the middle of the ledge."."Let me take a sniff at this", Ben said, putting on his wolf-skull. He went to the spot where the tracks disappeared and smelled the ground:" This smells like sandlewood. It is the same smell the woman who had pointed at the crows had left behind...".</blockquote>

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