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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cafu" data-source="post: 6625713" data-attributes="member: 6692807">Felix approached the warrior and cast a healing spell on him. John was also still scorched so healing was used on him as well; as this was being done, the rogue looked very pleased with himself: “Well, at least it wasn’t a complete waste of time. This Damatarian did have something in his sarcophagus.”John opened his palm and we all saw a finely crafted ring. It looked very old and very fine. I looked at it with professional curiosity: “Magical?”“I don’t know, I haven’t checked yet but I would be very surprised if it wasn’t.”Longhelim glanced at it and said: “We can research it later. We need to get ready to meet this……whatever that thing was. Let’s get healed and then we can go into its room.”We all began to approach the door into the room with the cells. I could see that Drudge was still watching it but he had stirred, which suggested that there had been no activity. A few last healing spells were cast and then we all surrounded the door. “Remember its breath weapon,” I whispered to everyone although it was obvious that everyone had as they had all dispersed. Then, once everyone was in position, Longhelim nodded to me and I dismissed my magical wall. As soon as I nodded in return, the paladin moved inside the room, ready to engage. The room looked just like before with one major exception. It still looked like a carved cave. There was a door to our immediate left, a few steps away. There were still a collection of four barred cages on the far left. These had been used as cells; and a chasm bisected the cave although there was a stone bridge leading across it. The main difference was that the strange monolith which attracted teleporting beings had been moved. We were not sure where it had been put but it was not in one of the barred cages where it had been previously. There was no reaction from the lava chasm as Longhelim moved in. Moments later, we had all entered the room, making sure to be apart from each other so as not to be caught in a breath weapon. Victor then moved to the door and opened the door to our left, to reveal another empty room.  Still, no reaction.Felix then cast a strange spell and as he went invisible, an illusion that looked just like him approached the bridge and crossed over it. Again, there was no reaction from anything in this room. Longhelim stood up from his crouch and seemed to relax a bit: “I think it’s gone.”Drudge frowned and still kept his bow aimed loosely at the chasm: “That’s very frustrating. My concern is that if we have to return here to perform this ritual to blind the eye on the flying ship, then we’ll all be concentrating in getting that right and then it appears again just at the most inopportune moment.”I gaped for a moment: had I just heard Drudge use the word “inopportune?”Longhelim shrugged: “Nothing we can do about that. We’ll just have to take our chances. Short of jumping down into the lava, I cannot see any other way of chasing down that thing.”John and looked at me speculatively: “Faden, do you think you could change yourself into a creature of the plane of fire, say a salamander or something and go after it?”I just looked at the rogue and then asked him: “So, you want me to change into a salamander, jump down a chasm of lava and go after an opponent on my own that sent the six of us scurrying to safety a few moments ago?”“Well, if you put it like that…….”Longhelim had obviously lost patience: “Enough! John, you know that’s not practical. That thing would rip Faden to pieces. We’ll go back out to the Lyceum. If it decides to come after us again, then we’ll just have to take our chances. In the meantime, we need to get in touch with this Gohnaach and decide how we are going to tackle this flying ship and the army on board.”As we walked back, I heard Victor speaking quietly to Longhelim: “You know there is only one way to deal with an army and that is with another army.”The paladin replied: “Yes, I know but from what I have seen, although we have an army down here, it is not of the greatest quality, shall we say.”Still on alert, we approached the main cave and Longhelim was able to take us up through the hole in the ceiling as he still had the spell which allowed him to walk on air. Since he had to take us up invidually, this took quite long but we finally emerged from the sunken building. Thankfully, the creature with the face of a toad did not make a further appearance. We were very unobtrusive as we travelled into Seaquen and then the Lyceum. We saw that there was a lot of activity in the town after the destruction committed by the ice elementals. At least there was rebuilding going on now as opposed to clearing rubble. Still, it was distressing to see the level of devastation which had been loosed upon the town. Fortunately, one of the reasons for the progress of the rebuild was the work being done by the soldiers from Dassen and Sindaire; their officers must have realised that it must have been far better for bored soldiers to have something to do and what better way to keep them occupied than rebuilding the town; and when you have eight thousand men available……someone seems to have been using their heads. We sneaked into the Lyceum before anyone realised and quickly made our presence known to Gohnaach. We were quickly ushered into the map room as I called it. There was an individual I could only describe as an administrator. He was a wizened little man with spectacles, a few wisps of hair and ink stained fingers. I assumed he was some kind of magician, but it was very difficult to tell. He was looking at us anxiously and spoke to us as soon as we entered into the room. He had a surprisingly rich voice: “You came! You know about the ship that’s coming. Are you going to drive it away?”Longhelim replied:“Yes we did come and we plan to do something about the ship but first we need to ascertain as much as we can about it. What can you tell us?”He looked at us in surprise: “Me? I don’t know anything. That’s why I called you!”We all looked at him wordlessly. Then Longhelim said: “Have you managed to get in touch with Simeon?”He shook his head. “I do not have the power.”The paladin just nodded and said: “We will do that tomorrow.”After that, we all sat down around the table and Longhelim asked: “So what are our options?”John was the first to speak: “Well, we could evacuate the city via the Torch. It would mean another sacrifice but we would potentially save thousands. It is difficult to conquer someone when there is no one to fight.”Gohnaach frowned: “Wouldn’t the ship just come after us again?”Victor spoke at this point: “Possibly but the ship is slow. More importantly, it is far more advantageous for us to choose our ground for this battle. For example, if we suddenly arrived in the Shining Lands of Shahalesti and Pilus started moving his ship into their sky, I suspect that Shalaadel would be very unhappy and more importantly, he has a selection of powerful good outsiders in his service. With its lack of defenses, Seaquen is particularly vulnerable to this kind of attack.”Longhelim was loading his pipe: “That’s a very good option, John. I like that a lot.”I had thought a little about it as well: “We could approach the ship from the ethereal plane? Scout it out from there.”Felix frowned at this: “We would be very vulnerable. It is not particularly difficult to see into the ethereal. More importantly, Pilus is a powerful mage and Faden, that is pretty obvious move; he will have something up there to defend his ship.” Victor asked: “There is an army on that ship, or so we were told. We must assume that it was observed as it boarded. Is there any indication of its size? And how is it being supplied?”Longhelim puffed on his pipe and looked at Gohnaach who again just looked at us and did not say anything. I was thinking along the same lines as the warrior and John: “That is a very good point. If there is an army of about ten thousand soldiers up there, that needs an enormous baggage train. We could probably get an accurate estimate from General Danaava but whatever its size is there is only so much space on that ship. If we evacuate the population, forcing them to chase after us, then we will have spoilt their schedule and they will have to stop off somewhere and re-supply. I am sure they will have thought of this and have depots on hand but if the ship has to land  then it will be far more vulnerable.”Longhelim said: “I like all of these options. There are several plans we could employ here but I think that we need to scout the ship as it approaches. If we observe it even from a distance, it will give us a much better concept of just what we are dealing with.”No one spoke but we all nodded. It was all very well theorizing about what we could do but there was no substitute for an actual observation, no matter how distant.Wordlessly, we all stood up and prepared for our journey. Longhelim turned to Felix and asked: “You do have that spell, don’t you?”</blockquote>

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