The Broken Chain

[babomb]

The party sans Wan heads north-east toward Citadel Fellbar. At sunset, they come across an abandoned (from the looks of it) temple, and get the idea to stay there for the night. However, Cecil Detects evil inside, so they proceed with caution.

Cecil casts Light (from his Assimar racial abilities) on a copper and tosses it in the direction of the evil aura. Apparently, it's an evil statue. No, they discover as it begins to move, it's an evil stone golem. Matthias strikes it with his sword, but it doesn't appear hurt. Astonished, Aeron searches the room for something more useful with which to hurt it. Cecil swings at it with his +1 defending longsword and creates a deep gash, nearly cutting it in two. (Not only did he smite evil, but he got a critical critical hit, meaning the multiplier is added again. [A critical critical is like the instant kill varient on p.65 of the DMG, except that it works across the full threat range and adds the multiplier again instead of instant death.] I just realized while typing this that constructs are not supposed to be subject to criticals. Oops.) Aeron, with Matthias's and Rurik's help, tried to manuever the creature toward a non-evil statue so they could push it on him, but Cecil took out the creature with one more blow.

Rurik found a secret compartment in the altar, which contained a Ring of Deflection +1 that he gave to Matthias. Rurik, Aeron, and Matthias sleep in the temple, but Cecil refuses to sleep in an evil temple (to Iuz, despite the fact that we're in the Realms) and sleeps outside. The next morning, he sets the temple on fire (the interior, anyway; the building itself is stone), and they all head to Citadel Fellbar.

Arriving at Citadel Fellbar, our heroes learn that half of the town is overrun by orcs. The other half is fiercely defended by humans, who have the orcs at a stalemate, at least for the time being. The heroes meet the king and agree to help. He asks them to break into the orc headquarters. They ride around to the orcs' half and knock out the nearby guards.

Aeron and Rurik climb the wall of the orc headquarters and look in through a hole. Three men are standing around a large, blue, glowing orb. One is making some sorts of gestures and messing with strange items on a table.

Rurik and Aeron shoot the wizard and one of the fighters (The DM tells me they were indeed fighters, and this is clearer than saying "one of the guys who wasn't gesturing") and then jump inside. Cecil and Matthias climb up and jump in also. Shards of ice rain down on Rurik and Aeron, but that doesn't stop them. Rurik and Cecil badly wound one of the fighters, while Matthias holds his own with another. Aeron connects a couple of daggers with the wizard. The Wizard gestures more and the orb changes hue, now glowing an eerie green. The three bad guys jump into the orb and disappear. However, as the last one, the badly wounded fighter, jumps in, he knocks over the table with the strange items on it. The orb flashes purple for a second then becomes a continually changing mix of colors. (Picture a Prismatic Sphere hovering a little above the ground, only without the nasty side effects - except possibly the violet/transport to other plane)

Rurik, Aeron, and Matthias jump in after them. Cecil is a bit more cautious. He grabs a spear from a weapon rack and passes it through the orb. It comes out whole. He thinks for a second, then whistles for his trusty steed Hasufel, waiting outside. Hasufel jumps in through the hole in the wall. (It was a BIG hole, about 15'x20', 6' or 7' off the ground. They don't make buildings like they used to...) Cecil gets on, cries "Torm help us!", and rides into the orb.

About a minute later, Wan and another guy run into the building and jump into the orb.

What will become of the Company of the Broken Chain? To where (or when) will they be transported? Will they meet up with Wan? Will they all even be in the same place? What the heck were those guys trying to do? Find out in the next exciting installment...in just over a week. It will have been five weeks since we last played, and the suspense is killing me.

 

[babomb]

The old switcheroo

"I awoke in a strange place, with bright white light in all directions. For a moment, I wondered if I were on some strange plane, or perhaps dead.

"Suddenly, I heard Wan's voice yelling, 'Is anyone there?'

"Rurik, Aeron, Matthias and another voice answered in reply. I called out as well, but still can see noone. The light finally fades, and when my eyes adjusted, I found that we were in the same room. However, I was shocked to find myself face to face with...myself! I also had on some strange black robes, like the guy who stole the magic aura.


"Just then, Rurik came up to me and started shouting 'WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE MAGIC?'

"'How should I know where it is, Rurik?' was my reply, and this clearly puzzles Rurik.

"'I'm not Rurik; I'm Wan. How do you know our names anyway?' answered Rurik.

"'What do you mean, "How do I know your name?" I've been traveling with you, remember - Cecil the paladin?'

"Similar confusion abounds until it ws finally sorted out that Rurik and Wan had switched bodies, as had Matthias and Aeron, and myself and this other guy. (For clarity's sake, I shall refer to each character by his mind, not what body he is in.) My and the new guy's horses, however, do not appear to have switched bodies.

"So Wan then began shouting at this new guy, who introduced himself as Karn. I never liked that about Wan. He would alternate between quiet and shouting, and he was impulsive at times, like the time he split up with us instead despite our pointing out that it was too dangerous and that Citadel Fellbar was probably related. He seems to want to take things into his own hands rather than working with others (for instance, the fact that he walked all the way to Ascore to stop Decius, not ever trying to get anyone to help him or anything. He most likely would have died in Ascore had we not shown up. Not that any of my companions or myself are perfect (which is another story), but Wan was the one who never really fit in. Still, it is probably not a coincidence that we happened to run into him that day, and that when he left our party, he ended up rejoining. There must be a purpose behind it, I decided, but what?

"Anyway, Karn says that he was only working for this evil group because he was forced to do so. I tried to Detect Evil, but it didn't seem to work. He really didn't know very many details about what the group was trying to do, but said that they were stealing a number of magical auras to power some sort of machinery, and that they set up teleporters (like the thing we jumped was supposed to have been, before the runes were damged) in anumber of places.

"'Oh man, it's worse than I thought, if they're stealing more auras than just that one!' exclaimed Wan.

"'Kind of interesting,' I noted, 'considering that one supposedly had the power to destroy the world.' They're trying to kill the gods, unless Wan is a fool or given to exaggeration, I added silently, leaning more toward the latter.

"Mattias chimed in 'Maybe they want to destroy the universe.'

"I believe it was about this point that we found the scenery around us had changed into a forest.

"Surprisingly, Wan gave him the benefit of the doubt, but added ' I'll be keeping my eye on you!' Maybe he's more reasonable than I give him credit for.

"As we talked some more, the scenery changed again, to a mountain top in the middle of a blizzard. A strange orb I had on my person gave protection from the wind and cold in a small radius about it, so we crowded together and made for shelter, which we found in the form of a cave.

"Unfortunately, the cave had another inhabitant: a quite large, fearsome white wolf. His mouth bellowed cold air, but in a rather awkward battle, we defeated the beast.

"We started a fire, then Aeron and Matthias cooked some of the meat and we ate and slept.

"The next day, Aeron, Matthias, and Rurik fashioned cloaks from the wolf's hide, and two daggers from its long fangs. Meanwhile, I, with help from Matthias later, fashioned a crude sled. When everything was ready, we slid down the hill toward a small town known as Do-rin."

 

[babomb]

Divide and conquer

"In Do-rin, we found that the locals weren't especially helpful, almost xenophobic. We did, however find that there was a nearby city known as Citadel Rashemen, which Karn said had a good chance of having one of those teleporters.

"On the journey, we decided that our priorities should be
(a)Get back home
(b)Find out what this strange group is up to
(c)Get our bodies back, although if the opportunity presented itself before we accomplished a and b, we'd take it.

"And present itself it did. We headed to a tavern to find information. There weren't a large number of outsiders in the city, apparently, so they were curious as to where we came from. Rurik told the truth. I cautioned him about that, not that it did any good. Now, I'm all for being honest, but that sort of truth gets one thought to be cursed if people believe it, and crazy if they don't. I tried to claim it was the liquor talking.

"'Don't mind him; he's just drunk,' I said. 'How many have you had?'

"'Just this one,' he replied, pointing at a half-empty mug.

"Nevertheless, more careful discussion netted us a number of useful facts, namely that an old hermit named Franch had mumbled something about switching bodies some years ago and that we were now north-east of the Sea of Fallen Stars instead of north-west.

"Franch was a curious old fellow. He lived a very tall tower on the town's outskirts. His butler only let us in after much pleading and mention of body-switching. We climbed the long circular staircase up to the very top, and there we found a bent-over, wild-eyed old man playing a pipe organ. He insisted we listen to him play.

"At any rate, he said he could make a potion to switch us back, but first he needed a few ingredients: a pegasus feather, a petal from a sightless rose (a rose with transparent petals), and a Halco stone (a naturally mirror-like rock). He knew a man in Nathoud to the north who could supply the pegasus feather, but the other two were left to us.

"We split into three groups: Rurik and Wan went to Nathoud for a pegasus feather, Aeron and Matthias headed to Thay Mount where a book at the library said a Halco stone might be found, and Karn and myself headed for Ashenwood, where a sightless rose might be found, according to the library."