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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ao the Overkitty" data-source="post: 1567865" data-attributes="member: 9758">Journal of Seth Lochmar - September 26thSeptember 26th, 1002    They’re watching us.  Eyes everywhere, watching.  When we eat, when we sleep, and even when we bathe.  Probably especially when we bathe.I know this because Fiona told me so.  Of course, she could be lying.  How do I know she doesn’t have some ulterior motive?  After all, I’m just her puppet.  She would have off’d me and be ruling in my stead if there wasn’t a social stigma against female lairds.But she seemed as shocked as I when she found out so many people were watching us.  Fiona told us she has manifested a new power to be able detect when people are watching us.  She said that, the first time she cast the spell, there were something like ten people watching us, though she couldn’t see them all.  Those that she could see were a man sitting at a desk wearing Bearsden colors, a woman in a room of mirrors wearing Loudwood colors, a man in Dars colors, a man in Risenson colors, and just darkness.  But perhaps she did see the others and she’s just withholding the information.  Or maybe she’s just been making it all up.  She did, after all, say she saw a ghost in the mirror of an upstairs room telling her to save Olag.  “In the vineyard, it took him.  Below the vineyards, in pain.”  I think she is just hearing voices.  After all, her friends from Kantu aren’t all right in the head.  They constantly bicker between each other and fight for her favor, denouncing the other’s use.  But that Maker is a suspicious sort.  How’d an old guy like him make the trip out here so easily?  And I know he’s holding stuff back.The guy in the basement is in league with the Ice mephit.  I think he sent the little guy to assassinate us in the night and was just covering himself when we followed it back to his lair.  He even armed it with wands of Melf’s Acid Arrow and Knock.  When we followed it down the well in the cold room, we found out the iced water was just an illusion and it was a back entrance into an underground laboratory.  We beat up his shield guardian, which made him very irate.  I think he was just covering for the fact that he was angry Frosty had done a bad job.  His name is Prestard Lochmar and he was, at one time, the House Mage.  Nowadays he just stays in his laboratory doing experiments and crafting items.  He says he got bored with the house politics after his first couple of lifetimes.  He sold the wands to Fiona as a cover and punished Frosty while we let ourselves out.  I don’t trust the guy, if for no other reason than he owns a cat.We found out what the meenlocks did with Lamard’s corpse.  They corrupted it into a Crypt Thing to guard a false throne room.  He tried to convince us to leave the meenlocks alone, but Lamard has gotten less persuasive since he lost his flesh.  Lamard teleported Fiona, Simon, Tellsford, and Lumin away, leaving Leetah and myself to deal with Lamard.  Leetah’s rapier wasn’t very effective against Lamard, but thankfully Lumin returned shortly after he had left and assisted in destroying the undead Lamard.Lumin said he ended up in a cabin he had never seen before.  Sirious was there, meditating.  When Fiona got back, she said she had ended up in Andreas’s bedroom.  Simon had ended up in Mentahl’s chapel and Tellsford up at the hunting lodge.We had one last tunnel, so we explored it the next day.  After going underwater for a while, it turned upwards back to an air pocket before dead-ending in sandy soil.  We fought some more meenlocks and Tellsford managed to kill one of them.  Well, if it didn’t turn out that Olag was the one he killed.  I think he intended it.Fiona’s ghost was raising hell in the upstairs of the Manor.  She was very, very upset that Olag was dead, or so I’m told.  Some of the others decided we had to go see Mentahl.  I had to go along to make sure they weren’t plotting behind my back, so followed behind Fiona, Padraic, Simon, Leetah, and Robert.It was decided that, since time was of the essence, we’d travel overland to the church.  This meant going over the Minter Creek Bridge that was guarded by Bugbear skeletons, but they didn’t pose much of a challenge to us this time.  Between Fiona’s Lightening bolts, Simon’s smashing, and my turning the creatures, they were gone in seconds.  We continued on, but once in the forest, we found we were going in circles.  It seems the land itself lent to hiding the church from others.  We had to take the roughest route possible to move in the direction of the church.  Any other path just led us around it.Just as we had the church in sight, we also saw some weird symbols written on the rock face leading up to it.  Unable to fight back the searing pain, Fiona and myself doubled over in pain.  While we were trying to recover, a group of Rasts came out from behind some boulders to find their easy prey.  They paralyzed Simon and Leetah, making it a very tough fight.    The others took Olag’s body into Mentahl’s temple while I stood guard outside.  While waiting, I noticed a holy symbol left on the ground, underneath some plant growth.  It looked like it had been there a while, so I picked it up. When the others came out, they had an old man with them.  Supposedly Olag changed back into a human when he was raised.  I’m wondering if they didn’t just switch out the meenlock for an assassin.    That night, I was awoken to the sounds of battle outside the Manor.  I grabbed my Greatsword and jumped out my window, casting Feather fall as I went.  As I fell, I could see Simon hitting the ground hard as he too had jumped out his window.  Casting Expeditious Retreat, I ran towards the commotion with Simon following behind. Lumin floated out of my window shortly after, following quickly behind.  My guards were fighting off some meenlocks, which had grabbed Ursula and Bethany and were dragging them towards the tunnels.  As I joined the fray the meenlocks still had the advantage.  It took a couple of them to carry each struggling person and a few more to occupy the guards.  I could see the rest of the family approaching in the distance.  My men were dropping like flies.  By the end of the battle, only one of them was still standing.  In fact, William Monroe had killed several meenlocks in as the others retreated into the tunnels.  Even I felt my joints lock up from a strike from one of the meenlocks.  Simon and Padraic had forced the meenlocks to abandon Bethany after taking most of those carrying her down.  Lumin and Fiona managed to take out one of those with Ursula, slowing them down as they entered the tunnels.  Lumin and Padraic followed the meenlocks into the tunnels.  Though it was a cramped fight for Padraic, the two of them managed to down another meenlock and force them to abandon Ursula as well.    When they emerged, Lumin was acting a little weird, skirting around the air more than usual.  When I talked to him, he sounded a little paranoid.  I think the meenlocks did something to him.  Or maybe Padraic did while they were out of my sight.  He could have been trying to take control of Lumin, to draw him away from me.    Those of us that were paralyzed were dragged back to the camp, where we waiting for our joints to unlock.  We made sure everyone was all right before going back to bed.In the morning, we resolved to make a final assault upon the Meenlocks.  It occurred to us that, while they could Dimension Door to other tunnels, they could not carry stuff with them.  So, they had to have some connected tunnels to drag victims and plunder in through.  The sandy soil we found at the end of that tunnel would make for an easily movable entrance.  I made sure everyone was armed with a sap so that they could not claim accident if someone tried to kill more meenlocks.On the crawl there, we ran into several meenlocks.  Their presence seemed to drain the sanity of my family and friends.  Only I seemed immune, though the others could have been faking to draw me into a false sense of security.  Lumin was the first to fall.  I had never seen a catatonic ball of light before.  I scooped him up and stuck him in my pocket as we crawled on.  Tellsford was the next to fall, followed shortly after by Simon.  We had to drag them back to the surface so those up top could care for them.  By the time we had made it through the sand into a large chamber, it was only Padraic, Fiona, Leetah and myself left.  The cave was oddly shaped and more than tall enough for us to stand in.  From above it surely would have looked like a left hand with the palm up.  A large pile of items lay just below the palm, by where we entered.  The palm itself was a pit, which we could not see the bottom, except for pillar in the middle that’s height was equal to ours.  The fingers were each small caverns also at the same height as our own.  Several Meenlocks inhabited each of the finger caverns, but a weird creature rested beside a meenlock on the pillar in the middle of the palm.  A Blood Imp, I remember them being called.  Blood red colored imp with a large, translucent belly, half full of sloshing red fluid.The blood imp cackled, offering to spare us if we left the meenlocks alone.  When we declined, meenlocks appeared beside us.  As one appeared behind Leetah she dropped to the ground in a fit of paranoia.  I sent dancing lights to light the caverns as Padraic leapt across the black pit to one of the other caverns.  No sooner had he made it across then a meenlock ran into him, pushing him over the edge.  Fiona blasted the blood imp and a couple of meenlocks behind it with a bolt of lightening, but the imp just laughed and remained unsinged.  The meenlock next to me shouted, “I will be laird!” and slashed at me with its claws.  I smacked Dancin with my merciful sword and made him take a nap before moving up to the edge.  Fiona sent some magic missiles at the Imp, but they just splashed harmlessly off of it.  Then a meenlock slashed at her from behind and her joints froze up on her.  I could see Padraic climbing up into another of the caverns and taking out some meenlocks as the Blood Imp once again cackled at me.  As I fought another meenlock, the Imp floated over to me, stopping over the pit.  As it moved to try and bit me, I called upon the might of our lord to smite this creature down.  I slammed my greatsword down on the beast with a very mighty blow, knocking it out.  It hit the ground some distance below with a satisfying thud.  As I continued to deal with knocking out meenlocks, I could see Padraic stiffen up in another of the caverns.  Their claws had done much damage to me, but only two remained.  I felt rather weary, but my job was not done.  Though the others may have taken the time to be rid of me while in a paralyzed state, I would not do that to them.As I dropped the last of the meenlocks, I knew the battle was not over.  I jumped off the cliff and cast feather fall as I drifted into the darkness below.  I directed one of my lights to accompany me so that I could see the blood imp’s wounds healing themselves.  The creature had not yet regained consciousness and I would not let it.  With a final swing, I separated the creature’s head from the rest of its body and its wounds stopped mending.Now I was stuck at the bottom of the pit, alone.  Just as I thought they were going to leave me down there to rot, a rope was lowered and I climbed out.  I helped drag the unconscious back to the opening of the tunnel before sneaking off on my own.  I am sure now is the time that they would chose to rid themselves of me, so now I have hidden myself in the tower, amongst Andreas’s army.  I have changed the loom of my armor to match the style of dress of the sleeping soldiers and lie here as still as I can.  When I have to eat, I sneak out down to Taggert’s, again switching my dress to look like that of my men.When they make their move, I’ll be ready for them.</blockquote>

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