Rebuilding the smashed lift apparatus took several hours, and we eventually had to cannibalise the temple doors for timber. We hoisted ourselves up, to discover that the terrible noises of the Overgod’s rampage had echoed throughout the complex. The miners had fled in terror, and we were able to escape the complex with a minimum of difficulty.
We returned the mauled bodies of our friends to those we thought best. Niccoli’s comrades at the garrison took us at our word when we explained that he had fallen defending his friends and the town. It took us some time to locate Torvig’s dwarven comrade, who was already down in his cups at the Feral Dog. Explaining that Torvig had been mauled to death by an evil cleric took us some time, and I wasn’t certain that he’d understood us when we’d finished. We had to pay for his funeral ourselves.
Morgan’s body – we left Endo to explain that one to his mother.
.oOo.
I spent much of the next few days selling as much as I could of the looted goods, although there were several suits of enchanted armour which were simply too costly for any of the town’s shopkeepers to be able to resell. Once we all had money weighing down our pockets, we began to dream of how to spend it.
We lost track of Endo at this point, as he went to his mother’s house and didn’t come out for several days. Eventually, he summoned us all to the house, and we learned that he had arranged for his mother’s sewing circle to make matching black vests for each of us, and he wanted us to try them on. Mine was badly finished and baggy, but I made encouraging noises as I shrugged it on and stood next to my friends.
Endo didn’t bother to explain what he was doing. He chanted briefly and opened his mouth, and suddenly thousands of tiny spiders poured out of his gullet. They poured like a crawling black river down his tunic, across the floor and up our legs, where they clustered across the new vests, spinning silken spiderwebs into the material, tightening the fit and improving the seams. When they had finished, the spiders all balled up and fell to the floor dead; thousands of tiny lives extinguished in the power of Endo’s enchantment.
The vests looked lovely though; and Endo confidently stated that they would make all of us more resistant to spells cast upon us.
Endo remained in seclusion for several more days, crafting a matching pair of gauntlets for Flynne (with a subtle bone motif etched into the material), as well as a number of wands and other spells scribed into his spellbook.
Apart from a few days spent proselytising the cult of Kord as a favour for Igmut, Flynne, Igmut and I spent most of the time in the pub.
.oOo.
We also spoke to Allustan about what we had discovered. He announced that he would be willing to sell us some items from his extensive collection of enchanted items, and so a vast amount of gold was given to the wizard in return for magical trinkets.
I also bought Endo’s enchanted Hat of Disguise off him; an item which I had been deeply envious of since I had first seen what it could do.
Allustan mentioned in passing that we would have to go to the city of Greyhawk to get the best price for the enchanted armour. He also said that he had been planning a trip halfway to the city in order to visit his old friend, the war-mage Marzena on the edge of the Mist Marsh (a region populated with lizardmen).
.oOo.
Whilst in the pub, we encountered Malachite, a friend of ours from Diamond Lake of some years ago. He left the town when we were growing up, hoping to find something he called ‘the green’. He may have found it, as he was followed into the Feral Dog by a large orange orang-utan. We greeted him with open arms, and he introduced us to Clive the ape, his companion over the last few years.
Also in the pub were the other adventuring group, who Flynne took a few minutes to talk to, remembering that they had been fighting the lizardmen. We learned from them that some of the lizardfolk were infected with worms which made them (at least according to Igmut’s description) “well ‘ard”.
.oOo.
We prepared our new equipment and mounted the prime horses which Endo had generously bought for us. Joined by Allustan, Malachite, Clive the Ape, and Flynne’s newly bought guard dog, we set out on the road as the sun shone down on us.
The travelling was cheerful. Allustan proved to be an amiable travelling companion, and we swapped tales and anecdotes as we rode.
A while after our noon meal, we encountered a group of 8 gnomes, who were travelling to Diamond Lake with a number of alchemical devices of their own crafting. Impressed, Endo opened his seemingly bottomless money pouch and purchased all of their thunderstones. Then their entire inventory of tanglefoot bags. As if that wasn’t enough, he also bought all the holy water that the gnomes had to offer, before we parted company.
Before they left, the gnomes warned us of a group of 9 bandits some 2 days’ distance up the road, which the gnomes had been able to hide and sneak around. Duly warned, we remounted the horses, and set off again.
.oOo.
A few more hours’ travel and we were ready to make camp. Malachite found a superb campsite in a clearing a little way off the road, and we pitched our tents and set watches.
A little after midnight, when it was my turn to keep guard on the campsite, I was startled by the sound of a female scream piercing the night. I woke Flynne, Igmut and Malachite, and the three of them slipped, crashed and strolled into the dark forest, whilst I stayed to keep guard on the other two spellcasters.
A few minutes later, I heard the sound of Igmut bellowing, followed by the same girl’s screaming. The scream was stifled rapidly somehow, but not soon enough to let Endo sleep on. A muffled swearing came from his tent, and he was just poking his head out of the tent when the three explorers (and Clive the ape) returned to the camp, setting off my alarm wards as they entered.
Clive the ape was carrying a young girl in an outmoded peasant’s dress, who was struggling unsuccessfully against the hairy ape’s huge arms. I took the girl and spoke gently to her, calming her down swiftly. As the child and I talked, Endo cast a spell of magical detection from behind her. I glanced up at him curiously, but he shook his head in the negative.
Malachite and Clive faded back into the forest and towards the swamp beyond. After a few minutes they returned to tell us of a statue in the marsh, indicative of a creature which was able to turn people to stone. The statue matched the description of the little girl’s mother.
We talked to the little girl for a while longer, and she explained that she and her mother had been going to visit family in a village. None of us (even Allustan) recognised the name of the village, and when Malachite somehow turned into the form of an eagle-owl and flew around for an hour he couldn’t find any trace of a village.
The girl named Archibald IX as the king, who had not reigned in over 600 years, and the idea formed in my head that she had also been turned to stone and somehow broken free of the spell.
.oOo.
I sang the girl some lullabies to get her (and Igmut) to sleep, and the next morning we set out to find the girl’s mother’s statue.
Having crept into the marsh, we could hear a number of voices hissing to one another in a draconic dialect. The voices closed in on us gradually, and Flynne slipped into the marsh towards them. A moment later, there was a ‘twang’ and a hiss of pain and alarm. Igmut bellowed a prayer to Kord, and dashed into the marshland. I was slow in following him, and by the time I got into sight, he had already beheaded two of the 5 lizardmen with his new greatsword. Flynne slew another, before Igmut hacked down a fourth before Malachite chanted and a colossal alligator lunged out of the marshland and swallowed the last lizardman whole.
The statue was recovered, and we returned to the campsite, ready to trek on to Marzena in the hope that she could end the petrification.