letting the Kat out of the bag

It had been a successful day of hunting and now I had a boar roasting on a spit with some mushrooms and root vegetables stewing in the pot. The sky was clear and the stars were bright, and the firewood was dry so there was little smoke from the fire.

In the back of my mind was the peaceful knowledge that this was my island—nobody had been here before me and with any luck I would be long dead of old age before anyone else ruined my paradise.

In the distance I heard some shouting and my immediate thought was whether I could kill the interlopers since I was unlikely to find myself another paradise such as this, or whether there was some other way to discourage them from staying that wouldn’t just result in others coming to look for them.

I doused the fire immediately, and prayed that they hadn’t seen it. The shouting was growing louder faster than should have been possible but I still couldn’t make out the words. Whoever it was seemed to be in trouble because there was a sense of frantic urgency to whatever they were saying.

And then I recognised one of the voices. It was Stimpy and he was calling my name. As I puzzled over how he had found me other thoughts began to stir in my mind—travelling to the first plane of Hell, losing Kat, searching the mansion for her, and being struck by several chains.

I opened my eyes as Stimpy was telling the others that I was okay. It was a relative term, evidently, because I hurt all over and was covered in blood which had to be mine. I was pulled to my feet and we hustled down the stairs and back outside, sheltering under the walkway so that if the chain devils wanted to come for us they would at least have to fight on their own without all the chains around.

Stimpy said he was going to fly around the building to look in the windows on the second floor so he wouldn’t have to blindly stumble from room to room and we waited, listening for any indication that he’d run afoul of the chain devils.

We heard movement on the walkway above us which had to be the chain devils and we kept as quiet as we could. The sounds died away which probably meant they’d moved further away to look for us. After a minute or so Stimpy suddenly swooped down past the walkway and landed in front of us. Immediately after a female devil with wings appeared in front of us. By the pallor of Valkor’s face I guessed that this wasn’t someone we wanted to try fighting.

It was surprisingly easy to strike a deal with this devil. All we had to do was explain to her that we intended to embarrass her boss which would create an opportunity for her to move up the ladder, and she agreed that she hadn’t seen us but warned that she’d better not “not see” us again.

With Stimpy’s scouting information we moved back indoors and up the main staircase. The landing at the top of the stairs led off on either side to corridors and in the two back corners were weird statues with open mouths full of teeth. I don’t know—maybe these things are considered pretty in Hell.

We checked the doors directly off the landing but didn't find anything interesting. The two doors led into a training room with a couple of weapon racks. Only about half the glaives were missing so we figured the rest of them belonged to devils that were currently away from the mansion. I happily broke the hafts in case their owners returned before we were ready to leave.

We then made to move down the corridor but as soon as left the confines of the landing both the ugly little statues started emitting a loud alarm sound. Moving back into the landing didn’t shut them up so instead of standing around in the open we ducked into another room.

From this room there was a door into the master bedroom where Stimpy had said he’d seen a small pouch on the night stand. We waited for the alarm to die down and nobody had come looking for us so we opened the door to the bedroom and looked in. There was some sort of netting surrounding the bed and draping over the night stands. It was difficult to see through to the bed and would be impossible to search anything without moving them. Glyn poked at them with his rpaier and nothing bad happened so we cautiously moved around the outside of the room to the night stand where the pouch was and I moved into the room behind him.

Suddenly the room was filled with flame and I ran out of the room slapping the flames out and Glyn followed soon after saying that the netting had burst into flame as soon as he touched it. As we watched the flames continued to burn but appeared to leave the netting unaffected.

A couple of the others slashed away at the netting from the door and cut a door-shaped patch out of it. Glyn stepped carefully over the pile of fabric on the floor and into the space where the bed was but as he moved over towards the night stand it became clear he would still be unable to get to the pouch so he backed out again.

We suspected that the trap might be triggered by alignment, so I tried reaching in from the doorway and sure enough nothing happened when I touched the fabric so I quickly moved in and collected the pouch. I searched the rest of the room and there was nothing else of interest so I returned with the pouch and we confirmed that this pouch was strongly magical.

We still had no idea where Kat was, and after checking a couple more rooms (setting off the alarm again as well) we were left with either the locked and trapped room at the end of the corridor of statues, or the tower. Not surprisingly we decided that we’d prefer to try to get into the trapped room.

Valkor managed to use some spell to move himself into the room and then appeared again a minute later with a small bundle containing three golden daggers. They weren’t magical but we figured there must be something special about them but we now had only one place left to look so it was back upstairs again, set off the alarm again (which we no longer cared about since nobody had responded to the other alarms), and then up the stairs to the tower.

There was a trapdoor at the top that had a latch on this side so we released that and then there was a ladder leading to another trap door. That one appeared to have a latch mechanism from the other side but it wasn’t latched and we pushed it open carefully only to be greeted by Kat’s strident voice asking what had taken us so long.

We moved in and found Kat chained to the wall and also Miranda who was chained to the floor. We tried to keep somewhat quiet as we didn’t want to annoy the devil upstairs. We worked out a plan to get out of there as quickly as possible and were soon well away.

We looked more closely at the daggers and saw that there was a tiny inscription along the blades. Valkor looked at it and was able to read some sort of celestial psalm. That was definitely odd—if these had been trophies taken from some defeated celestial foe then surely these daggers would have out on display instead of hidden away in a carefully trapped room.

After we got back through the portal we camped for a day to to make contact with our “friendly” devil. He sent an agent and we gave him one of the daggers to take back to his master, and then waited another day for them to honour their end of the bargain. Sure enough they returned with the inscribed cube and told us they were satisfied.

We made a small trip to Mota to sell our spoils, stock up on some additional equipment, and try to get some additional information on the pouch and cube, and the remaining two golden daggers.

We didn’t get much information on the pouch and cube, and as far as anyone could tell us the daggers had no particular value so we sold the daggers and prepared to return to Red, who I’m sure will be so happy to have his device back that he’ll once more tell us something we already know. Or perhaps the device truly is something of great power and he’ll just destroy us.

Valkor

Valkor:

"We quickly realized that something had happened. We set forth to rescue her. We tried to approach the Devil's abode without being seen, but weren't entirely successful. A Bearded Devil appeared just as we reached a window. He quickly escaped as he realized that he was outnumbered, but not before Glyn managed to shatter his glaive."

"We tried to work our way around the house and enter through the back, but just then, a fresh Bearded Devil teleported, again Glyn shattered the beast's glaive, but the thing's claws were almost as dangerous. Just then, two more of them appeared, one missing a glaive. It looked as if they brought friends with them, as we saw a swarm of imps also descend upon us. Fortunately, Mervil was able to keep that group at bay as we took care of the rest of the Bearded Devils. We saved the imps for last, though three of them managed to sting me several times with their poisonous stinger. I felt a bit weak, but somehow I managed to shrug it off."

"After this, we stepped into the house, first into what appeared to be a kitchen. Several humanoids were working inside, though they seemed to ignore us. We searched several rooms quickly, not finding much except food, though I did notice a storeroom stocked with bottles of exotic wine. I grabbed a bottle that looked like it was from Minourous. I don't know how you'd make wine from in a fetid, rotting swamp. A humanoid in the room seemed distressed that I had grabbed a bottle, and though I tried to communicate with it, he evaded me and ran out the door. I tried talking with several of the kitchen workers, but they seemed very absent-minded, talking only about some celebration that was happening that night. I knew we had to hurry."

"We explored the house, encountering a few more Bearded Devils, and coming upon a heavily trapped door. Without Kat, we had no way of disarming the trap. We also found a room filled with magic, though Glyn reported that after putting several items into a bag, he thought that he felt something try to grab and bite him. I cautioned the others as I suspected that the goods in this room might be cursed. After all, why would devils leave such a "treasure" room unguarded? We also found a room filled with potions, though again, the potions were suspiciously unguarded. Nonetheless, we grabbed several of the items for examination later."

"We continued upstairs, into what appeared to be a torture room, though we didn't see Kat anywhere. There was one door out of the room, though as soon as we opened it, I had a sense of dread. The room was filled with dozens of chains hanging from the ceiling. Before we could react, two Chain Devils took control of the chains in the room, lashing out at Edmund, striking him down..."

here Kitty

We waited a few hours for Kat to return but there was no sign of her. Glyn suggested I look for tracks but it was a lost cause with her special abilities.

Instead we moved within spying distance of the building. It all looked quiet—the only movement was the irregular passing of guards on the walkway that surrounded the upper floor. We kept our distance but moved around to view the building from each side but there was nothing else to see from this distance.

We moved in closer. Close enough to see better, but far enough to not be seen. Still nothing to see so we waited until both guards passed in close succession and then ran in under the overhanging walkway. Glyn looked in the nearest window and couldn’t see anything and asked me to look as well. I saw something—a devil looking straight at me. I’d seen this type before—I think Valkor said it was called a bearded devil.

It teleported out to attack us and Valkor put a grease patch under it. To avoid it teleporting away I prepared to attack it should it try to teleport while the others attacked. We knew their glaives leave nasty bleeding wounds so Glyn cast a spell to shatter it.

I could see that it was going to teleport so I attacked it but failed to hit and it blinked out.

We smashed the window but didn’t enter, hoping to throw them off by making them think we were in the mansion. Instead we circled around to the back of the building and were most of the way along the wall to the door we were planning to use to get inside when it sprang open and the bearded devil came out with two friends.

Glyn cast his spell a couple more times and successfully deprived the devils of their weapons. Of course then they had their claws which were almost as nasty and they attacked with those. Valkor cast a sticky web that caught two of them and we were doing a good job of smacking them around when one of them blinked out again.

We continued to pound on the two that were still there and then the other returned with a swarm of imps. It could have been nasty but Valkor cast a spell which created a noxious cloud that incapacitated most of the imps before they could descend on us, and then Mervyl cast some spell that caused most of them to be enthralled. Three of them were coughing and spluttering from Valkor’s spell but apparently not affected by Mervyl’s spell and they made a run for it. We were too busy with the bearded devils to worry about them.

I can’t say it was easy as the bearded devils managed to claw their way free of the web but both Valkor and Stimpy summoned creatures to join the fight and we slowly gained the upper hand.

Mervyl kept the imps in thrall and we were trying to work out how to get rid of them when the three that had fled returned, having recovered from Valkor’s spell. They took us by surprise but we had cleared the other “distractions” and they didn’t last long.

A couple of spells cleared up the other imps and we were ready to begin exploring the mansion. The room we entered was a grand kitchen occupied by a bunch of strange humanoid creatures. Valkor settled down to master a new spell when we found we couldn’t communicate with them while we explored the side rooms, which turned out to be storerooms. Most of them were uninteresting but one of them contained racks of bottles and when Glyn entered he narrowly avoided a trap. As he looked around he saw there was some sort of humanoid or something hiding in the back corner that became quite agitated when he began fiddling with the bottles in the racks.

We waited for Valkor to finish preparing his spell and I don’t mind saying I wasn’t very happy just sitting around in enemy territory like that. It seemed like a very long time but eventually he said he was ready and cast a spell he said would allow him to communicate in any language.

First he questioned the creatures in the kitchen but they seemed focused on preparing food to the exclusion of anything else. He then tried to talk to the thing in the storeroom but it seemed uninterested in talking and ran out the back door and fled. It seems the bottles were infernal wine and I suspect this thing was from one of his rivals and was poisoning the wine. I told Valkor my theory and he said devils are immune to poison, but I was sure I was right—just because they aren’t affected by the same toxins as us doesn’t mean there isn’t something that could be insinuated into the wine to discomfort them.

We moved from room to room, and as we made our way down a statue-lined corridor a couple of traps triggered giving Glyn a couple of nasty surprises. There was a door at the end that he tried to open and he felt some sort of spell try to trigger on him but fail, so then he tried to force it open and the spell affected him this time, jolting him with a massive electrical charge. Perhapps there was something valuable behind here, but we weren’t going to get in without some help.

We backed up to a side door and found a couple more bearded devils in a gaming room. We were fighting them in the corridor and it wasn’t working to our advantage but Valkor cast another web, and both he and Stimpy summoned creatures to help. Glyn tried to shatter their glaives but failed this time. We were really struggling in the cramped space but we knew what we were doing and we took one of them out and the other blinked away.

We found a cashbox in the gaming room and pushed on. We moved across the main entry foyer and started down the rooms on the other side of the building. Dormitories and sleeping quarters, but they were empty now. In one of the rooms was a corpse and as I searched it I pricked myself on a small needle as I pulled a note from a hidden pocket. I cast a spell to block the effects of poison and handed the note across to Valkor. He read it and it seemed to be a warning about other agents in the mansion, and it sounded like there were many schemes at work here.

The next set of rooms were crafting areas. Some we could identify, some we couldn’t. One of these rooms was the one we’d broken the window in, one had a staircase going down, and one had a staircase going up. I was a bit surprised at the latter as I’d assumed the stairs up would be in one of the main rooms (which we’d avoided).

Valkor cast a spell to check for magic and found some magic in the alchemy lab and one of the other rooms was filled with apparently magical items of all descriptions—capes, boots, gloves, cut stones, ... Glyn grabbed a bag and shoved a cape in it because we figured we should loot as much of this as we could, but when he tried to put something else in there he jumped from surprise and said something had tried to grab his hand in the bag. Valkor told us to be very careful and suggested all these things might be cursed. Who would want to collect so many cursed items???

We made our way down the stairs expecting that would be the most likely place to look for Kat. The only thing down there was a forge and it was manned by some other strange creature we couldn’t identify. It grabbed red hot brand from the forge to defend itself and backed into a corner. We left Valkor alone to see if he could calm it enough to touch it and activate his communication spell but it wouldn’t let him get close. We decided it was harmless and left it there, instead taking the stairs to the upper level.

The room we entered here was some sort of unpleasant ritualistic site, with chains, altars, blood, and a generally unpleasant feel about it. There was nothing of immediate interest so I headed for the next door. I threw it open and saw a familiar sight—two of those chain devils we’d faced near the portal. Only this time they were in a room full of hanging chains.

The last thing I recall is being whipped repeatedly by the chains in the room as they sprang to life while I tried to close the door.

Glyn

Imps. It is known throughout the multi-verse that they can not be trusted. Yet my companions tried to bribe a pair that was guarding the other side of the portal to hell. I was surprised that it was Valkor who tried to bribe them. I would have expected this from Edmund but for someone learned in the Art to try, troubles me. I guess this just yet again proves that they would be lost without me, their Captain.

Although I must admit I've felt I've been negligent in my leadership in our latest endeavor. On our first venture through the portal we were ill prepared for the devils that awaited us. This could not have been made more clear than when two chain devils tried to ambush us. If I had not taken the initiative and attacked the devils when I did, we surely would have perished. After seeing how poorly equipped we were I suggested that we ventured back through the portal to better equip ourselves. It was clear that Mota was the only city where we could find the weapons and supplies we needed. Edmund was reluctant to go there for some reason. Normally I would have pried further into the matter, for secrets should not be kept from one's Captain, but that mystery will have to wait for later since saving our plane is a more pressing matter. He finally agreed to go since Mervil would teleport us there.

We decided to camp the night by the portal to make sure no devils came through. I can't recall why I thought this was a good plan, but I should have known better. Of course, two devils came through the portal while we were sleeping. They managed to enthrall both Valkor and Miranda. We were able to break the enchantment on Valkor but could not help Miranda. Seeing that we could do little against the devils, Mervil teleported us to Mota, leaving Miranda to fend for herself. It is unlikely that she survived. After we save this plane I will find out if she has truly perished.

After resupplying we made our way back through the portal. This is when I had to make the call to dispatch the imps before they could inform what ever devil that had enslaved them that we had come through the portal. Unfortunately imps do not make for good trophies. What a waste of my spells...

Valkor

Valkor:

"They didn't seem to be in a mood to talk, and we immediately broke out into a fight. At this point, we realized that we were poorly equipped for facing off against these devils -- we had no silver weapons with which to hurt them. Fortunately for us, these chain devils weren't too powerful, and after felling one of them and driving the other off, I dug through my pack and found a potion of bless weapon, with which we used to kill the unconscious devil. I didn't know this at the time, but apparently, devils killed on their home plane of Baator were killed for good, so with that fell stroke, we rid the multi-verse of a speck of evil."

"We quickly retreated back to the portal and were going rest an evening before heading off to gather supplies. However, that evening, a pair devils came through the portal, and put me under there dire charm. Fortunately for me, my friends knocked some sense into me, and we teleported away to Mota, but we had left Miranda behind."

"At Mota, everyone was able to gather the supplies they needed, and I took the opportunity to join the local Conjurer's Guild. I had to say that I wasn't too impressed with my performance at the interview, but it was good enough such that I was allowed to join. They felt that my first-hand experiences with the planes warranted the membership."

"With everyone prepared and ready to go, we headed back to Baator. Right outside of the portal where we landed, we found two Imps. I wasn't sure why they were there, but they were no doubt the agents of some more powerful Devil. I knew that however, most likely, that some gold (and the promise of more gold when we returned), would likely be enough to have them 'forget' that we came through the portal, or at least, have them delay their report long enough that we'd finish our business here. However, Glyn, again putting the "war" in warmage, thought that he'd just attack them for good measure. He managed to kill one with an electrified touch. I was able to prevent the other one from escaping, and it did not take long before the rest of the party finished it off."

"We walked toward the the Bronze Citadel for several days and several nights without incident, following along the foul smelling banks of the Styx river. We finally came across the manor that the Ice Devil described to us. It was quite large, so we sent our scout out to scout. She said that she'd return within an hour, but after waiting for an hour and a half, I sensed that something was wrong..."

a devil of a time

We were face-to-face with two of these chain-covered things. I could only assume they were devils because Valkor said everything on this plane was a devil. I don’t understand the difference between devils and demons but Valkor seems to know and I don’t really care so I’ll trust him on this.

It was an awful slog of a fight. Our weapons seemed to have little effect and I can’t say I was overly impressed by the spell-casting either. In the end we were victorious but it wasn’t my idea of fun.

When it was over Valkor mentioned that we probably should have had some weapons of silver. And cold iron. And adamantine. Because apparently all these things are resistant to damage from normal weapons. I wish he’d said something before we’d got here, but it did encourage everyone to pull their crap together to get back through the portal. Oh, except for Glyn who had to cut one of the chains off one of these guys for his “collection”. I don’t know what he’s going to do with all these trophies he collects but one day soon he’s going to need something to carry it all around for him.

Back in the real world we tried to work out where we would be able to buy all these fancy weapons Valkor had suggested and the obvious choice was Mota. I wasn’t happy going there but at least with a teleport I wouldn’t be noticed arriving on the docks, if they’re still keeping an eye out for those that were on the Blessed Wind so long ago.

I suspect Valkor had other reasons for suggesting Mota as he slipped away in the afternoon and came back looking very pleased with himself. Meanwhile we all stocked up on weird and wonderful weapons until we looked like porcupines. For my own part I tried to get different styles of weapons to help me remember which one was made of what based on what Valkor said we’d need at the time.

It was a pretty odd collection as we joined hands to return to the island, but before long we were stepping through the portal again. This time there were a couple of imps on the other side. The didn’t seem that concerned in reporting us and Valkor suggested just bribing them to keep quiet but that was too easy for Glynn and he started a fight so we finished up killing the critters.

We trekked across the largely featureless plain trying to pick a path that would lead us reasonably directly to our destination without going through occupied areas. Of course we had no idea where the occupied areas are, but we figured the river near the bronze citadel was likely to be reasonably well traversed and thus worth avoiding.

We had to cast about to find our target but eventually we spied it. It was a pretty big place and looked like it was built to defend. We decided to send Kat in to scout the place out and we settled back out of sight of the place.

She’s been gone for a while now and the others are starting to worry that something might have happened to her. Maybe we should send Glyn to find out. Perhaps then I can get some peace and quiet.

going to hell

After a little preparation Mervil cast his spell and we were transported back to Belatune. It was probably fortunate for Miranda that he had used her as a target—when we arrived she was beset by infernal creatures.

Most of them were small flying imps that were difficult to come to grips with but a few well-placed arrows took care of most of them. There was a larger devil of some sort but once we started closing in on him and the imps started dying he vanished.

Miranda came with us to speak to Red and when we finally found him it looked like he’d been in some sort of fight as well. He continued to provide little useful information and we managed to get him to confess that this trip to retrieve his pouch from hell wasn’t a test—it turns out that it’s some sort of item he needs to be able to do anything.

We discussed the portals in the ruins and he provided a wealth of useful information. Like “there’s some sort of pattern to the portals” and “I can’t recall which portal it is, but I’m sure you’ll work it out” and “it’s one of these two command words to activate the correct portal, but I can’t recall which; or where the portal the other word activates will take you”.

He also failed to provide any information where in this plane of hell we might find his pouch. I somehow doubt he’s been everywhere on the plane, yet not even a hint like “stay away from the brass citadel”.

Thanks Red!

We made our way to the ruins and Valkor attempted to divine as much as possible about the portals. We spent the whole day at it and then withdrew to camp. In the middle of the night some hideous creature stumbled into the camp. We scrambled from our beds to attack it which turned out to be a challenge, as it was immune to many of the spells we cast at it, but eventually we brought it down. There was a brief discussion about moving camp but it seemed the creature had little or no volition so the chance of something else showing up seemed extremely small.

So of course we were disturbed again not long thereafter by a big honking devil. We were trying to work out whether to fight or run when it spoke to us in Common. Apparently it had sent the other thing in to see how tough we were and now wanted to make a deal. And that always works so well for the humans.

He said he had the contents of Red’s pouch and knew where the pouch itself was. Since it was a rival that held the pouch he was willing to give us some information in order to embarrass him, and would then give us what he had if we were successful in retrieving the pouch. Now Red had also refused to tell us anything much about the pouch (other than that it holds something) so it was hard to evaluate what the devil was saying but Valkor was confident that devils don’t lie so we should be good to go.

But then he wanted to write a contract. Hahahahaha. You tell us that devils are truthful, but then you want to challenge him to a battle of wits by trying to bind him to his word in writing. I’m glad we talked him out of that one...

He sketched out a map and we copied it, gave us instructions for finding his agent once we had the pouch, and then he was gone.

The next day we returned to the ruins and with the knowledge Valkor had gained the day before we went through to the first plane of hell. We started to follow the path the devil had sketched out but before long we saw some devils in the distance heading straight for us. We moved off in the opposite direction fast enough to open some space but hopefully not fast enough to attract their interest and then we cut across at an angle to get back on our path.

Wasn’t exactly the most effective plan—a bunch of devils appeared out of nowhere in front of us and things didn’t look good for us.

Valkor

Valkor:

"...we teleported to Bellatun, right in to the middle of a fight. There was Miranda, surrounded by several Imps, and a Bearded Devil. With all our efforts combined, we killed or drove off all of the devils. From the looks of things, the planar breaches were growing larger and more frequent."

"Miranda seemed to be happy to have our help, and accompanied us as we talked to Red. Red explained that he needed was his pouch before he would be able to aid us in closing the portals. We headed off to the old portal grounds again, and I cast cast several spells to aid us determining which portal to leap through. I found the most curious thing: the portal that the Howlers came out of also contained another portal layered within it to the Baator. We knew the command word to go through the portal and I suggested that we head on through. However, the others, wanting us to go though at full strength, wanted to wait a day, so we did."

"That night, however, a strange creature attacked us. It had a grotesque, frightening look to it. One of my summoned monsters flew next to it and promptly died. We knew enough to keep our distance from it, though it appeared to be highly resistant to all of our attacks. Glyn kept blasting it with attacks, and eventually it went down, though at that point it looked as if we were out of resources for the following day, and would need to rest again."

"This time, we camped out further away. I was sitting around when suddenly an Ice Devil teleported to our midst. I cast a spell to hopefully allow us to retreat, as the others ineffectually tried to attack it. Fortunately for us, the devil didn't seem interested in combat, and invited us to a chat. He was quite helpful actually. He gave us precise directions of where Red's missing pouch was. Apparently, he wanted some "mere humans" to steal that and some other trinkets from the home of one of his rivals. It seemed like a fair deal to me, though I had to trust the devil's lawful nature to keep his word."

"The rest of that day passed uneventfully, and we stepped through the portal the next day. On the other side was a bleak and barren landscape. The sky was streaked dark red. There were some mountains in the distance, and with it, we were able to figure out our position with relation to the map the devil provided us. We set off toward our goal immediately, after leaving some markers to ensure that we'd be able to find our way back to the portal. I didn't take long before we encountered some denizens of the plane. We tried to avoid them by backtracking, but to no avail. With a puff of smoke, two of them appeared before us, their chain covered bodies making distinct clinking sounds..."

home again

Home sweet home.... This time with some water!

So, after spending a little vacation in the woods, I came back to find that the lizardmen and the rest of the party had a scuffle and we had again turned some of the stone support around the spring into mud, allowing water to start flowing again. It was still very low, but when we got back to Seawell, at least they had some water.

The lizardmen have been very active recently. They did a big attack on Abel and have started raids on the human towns. It seems that they have become more hostile recently... almost as if there has been a big change in leadership.... I wonder what could have happened. Really though, that was the least of our worries. We need to have an island to come home to before we worry about the lizardmen. So, we went to go see Mervyl Jr. I stopped by an old friend's house before we skipped town. He's a little bit paranoid.... he wouldn't let us open the door, and then Edmund didn't help the situation by being his normal, shiney, happy self. We finally slipped the note from Miranda underneath the door, to come back the next day. After that, we decided to go check out a cave that I had spotted. Edmund absolutely completely refused to come with us, which was fine with me, sometimes he can get a bit grating.

The caves were bone dry and there was no sign of the centipedes which they encountered the last time they entered the caves. It was a pretty long tunnel, and it finally sloped down to the river gorge. At the end of the tunnel, we encountered some creatures called creepers, things with long nasty tentacle hands which almost killed me. Next time, I'm not going first. Since we wouldn't have much of a chance in the future, we decided to go explore another cave which was right across the other side of the river. Very interesting, I wonder if the cave existed before the river, since there is no other way it could be so conveniently split in two. We encountered some sort of elemental, which then splashed the party with acid. I stayed behind and managed to stay alive and unscathed. After pulling back the corpses we decided it would be more prudent to come back more prepared next time and at full strength. We returned to camp, Edmund rolled his eyes at our adventures, and went to bed. The next morning we prepared and entered the cave. We weren't aware, but Mervyl Jr was scrying us and saw us prepare for the big battle. Battles work a lot better if there is something there to battle. Having grown up here, I really wonder how his family could afford to send him to a fancy wizarding school on the main islands, Roara isn't exactly rich. When we returned to the lighthouse, he let us in.

Mervyl was finally willing to talk to us about the planes, and we found out that where the bessie had crashed, there was a sort of planar exchange point, with water flowing around them. He also thinks that Roara's spring is supplied with a conveniently placed portal, a long time ago -- might be the same type of people who built the ruins on bellatoon. We decided to go visit Red, and Mervyl has teleportation abilities, hopefully which will place us on the island, not in the middle of the ocean. Hopefully Red knows about these things.

A huge mystery is still why the boundaries of the planes are disintegrating. Is it time, is it on purpose? Was our plane created by someone or something? How big is it?

fire down below

We completed the trip back to Seawell where things still looked tense. People could see there was some water in the river but it would still be quite a while before there was enough for them to drink and water their crops.

There wasn’t much reason to stick around here so we slept the night to recuperate and then headed off to the lighthouse to talk with Mervil. It took us a day or two to get there and when we did Mervil wouldn’t open the door. We slipped Miranda’s letter under the door and he told us to return the next day. I decided to set camp and wait but the othershad some obsession with the centipede cave and set off to clean it out.

It was late that night by the time the returned, which was somewhat surprising—I didn’t really expect them to have much trouble burning out the nest, and with the lack of water I wasn’t sure that the nest would still be there anyway.

However it didn’t look like centipede bites all over them. Kat looked okay, but most of the others seemed to have nasty burns. It turned out that they had made their way through the centipede caves to the chasm with only a minor skirmish with some chokers. However they could see another cave on the other side that contained a large shallow water pool and they’d been hit by some sort of elemental which had almost killed Glyn and Valkor.

They were out for vengeance and I figured it might provide some more clues about the problem we were really trying to solve so I went with them. Whatever it was they’d fought was gone though and we spent hours finding nothing but more flooded underground caverns. The spells we’d cast were long gone and they actually showed some sense and gave up the pursuit and we returned to the lighthouse.

Mervil actually let us in this time and we spoke to him about the problems that were occurring. He had some interesting information, such that the island’s water source emits from a portal which seems somewhat too convenient to be accidental. The suggestion is that many hundreds of years ago someone modified the islands to make them more habitable.

Are the problems we face now just the expected deterioration of the magical tampering done so long ago?

He was interested to hear about the ruins on Bellatune but even more interested to hear about Red the humbug. He wants to go and consult with everyone’s favourite guru, and will be able to transport us to the island magically.

What magic does this Red person exude that everybody thinks he knows something??? I’m not sure I can stand another pointless trip to Red’s mountain and between that and the obsession with wanton destruction I think perhaps it’s time I went my own way to find out what’s going on.

what lurks beneath

After we finished off the elemental we were largely wasted, as we rested someone spied some lizardmen approaching on the other side of the river bed. Kat talked with them and apparently they were asserting their territorial rights and demanded we drop our weapons.

I don’t know what Kat said to them but they became pretty agitated, at which point Kat disappeared into cover, presumably to circle around behind them.

I opened fire but these guys were ready to fight and were magically boosted, while we had pretty much selected and expended our magical arsenal to combat the elemental.

It was clear we wouldn’t win by trading bow fire across the river—they were doing much more damage than we were. So I dropped my bow and ran across to the other side. It was a stupid thing for me to do personally, but was effective for evening the odds. I didn’t see the end of the fight after being surrounded by them but clearly we won because when I regained consciousness the scales were all taken care of.

Sharky had also fared poorly and while we patched ourselves up I noticed that two of the lizards were still alive. I would have been happy to finish them off but the others wanted to take them back to Seawell for interrogation. I thought it was a dangerous thing to do since I figure all this is a result of us helping that shaman out but it wasn’t the time to challenge the others, so off to Seawell we went.

We got back there okay only to find that the situation on the island had really deteriorated. The scales had become very aggressive in the last little while (pretty much since we’d helped that shaman, as I’d suspected) and were monopolising the water supply. Someone was going to have to go back to the river source and try to restore the river on this side of the island and I knew that when they said “someone” they meant us.

We headed back towards the river source and Stimpy changed himself to a bird to fly around and scout the area. He saw scouting parties all over the place, but nothing too close to us. We figured we had a good chance of avoiding them and reaching the source.

We were mostly correct but we did have an encounter with a couple of them. We took one down but the other ran for help and we had to give chase. Stimpy changed himself to a black bear and was able to close the fastest, and he took the scout down. Their patrols were sparse enough that having hit one we were unlikely to see another and indeed we reached the river source without further incident.

Valkor inspected the portal closely but was unable to determine much more than we already knew. That left us with the backup plan of trying to destroy the mound on the side facing Seawell to restore the water flow. Stimpy worked away at the mud and stone with his magic and was able to let a decent flow out, though the water source basically shoots straight up and the portal is a horizontal tear directly above it so there is still a lot that just vanishes into the water plane. There’s no guarantee another elemental won’t find his way through but I guess that at least it will have trouble messing up the water flow if it just hovers around the portal.

We headed off immediately and headed back towards Seawell by the most direct route. We left the immediate vicinity of the river and were heading through some forest when something erupted from the ground beneath me. I don’t even know how to describe this thing—it wasn’t anything I’d seen before. It had a hard chitinous shell and sharp mandibles. What was this—some sort of giant underground land shrimp?

The others were coming to help me fight it when another one broke through and attacked Stimpy. The one attacking me tried to pull me down its hole but I managed to brace myself and it was left exposed where we could easily finish it off.

Stimpy was less lucky. His pulled him into the hole and he was left hanging onto the lip for grim death as it was pulling him from below where we couldn’t attack it. Fortunately for him Valkor had summoned a creature and used another spell to exchange Stimpy and the summoned creature, then slicked the sides of the hole so the attacking thing lost its grip. We heard a satisfying crunch as both critters hit the bottom of an apparently very deep hole with Valkor’s summoned creature on top. We shone a light down the hole and there was nothing moving but we decided to move on quickly in case there were more in the area.

Valkor

Valkor:
"...Now where was I? Ah, yes. So right after yelling that and angering the Lizardfolk, Kat slinked back into the shadows and disappeared. Edmund didn't seem fazed, and followed the insule by shooting an arrow at one of the Lizardman. Suffice to say, that's when hostilities broke out. Those Lizardfolk were quite a bit tougher than your average ones, and it was a hard fought battle. Edmund and Glynn were knocked unconscious, and I think an arrow caught my arm in that battle. I was still in better shape than the others though, especially the Lizardfolk."

"Two of the lizardfolk were still alive, and we figured that there could be some sort of reward for bringing them back to town. It was slow going dragging the two along. Those lizard folk were heavy, though I let the rest of them do all the heavy lifting. We got back to Seawell with no further encounters with the Lizardfolk. However, we did learn some dire news: it appeared that since the time we left for Bellatune, the Lizardfolk have been far more active and aggressive (probably because of the new leader we installed). They had cut off a large portion of the water supply to Seawell, and even with the water elemental gone, they still couldn't get enough water to survive on. We decided that we had to go back to the spring, and either close the portal or do the same thing that Ren had originally done to get water to Able."

"Ren volunteered to first take the form of a bird and scout out the area. When he returned, he informed us that there were a good number of Lizardfolk there, though most of them appeared to be scattered along the mountainside. We went back to the spring at the top of the mountain, careful not to alert the entire lizardmen tribe. We were largely successful in our task. A few lizardmen tried to run off to warn the others, but Ren changed into a black bear, and ran them down down with frightening speed."

"I tried to analyze the portal that was diverting the flow of the river, however, I just couldn't figure how how to close it. We had to settle on the backup plan. Ren cast a few spells that reshaped the opening, and a few monents later, a steady stream of water was flowing toward Seawell. At this point, we decided that at least for the time being, our task was done. We headed back down the mountain side without any more Lizardfolk encounters."

"However, later that evening, as we were walking in the forest, a large...Creature of some sort appeared to burrow up from under the ground. It looked like it had a tough carapace and large mandibles. It struck quickly, cutting a gash in Edmund. Ren and Glynn moved forward to attack, when second one suddenly appeared and struck Ren, grasping him in its mandibles. Fortunately, these beasts were not as tough as they appeared, and Edmund managed to quickly finish one off. The other one attempted to drag Ren back into the tunnel it just came out of, but luckily, Ren was able to grab ahold of a large branch, and keep himself from being pulled down. I cast a spell that swapped Ren and a creature I summoned, and followed it up by slicking the sides of the tunnel with a thick coat of grease. To my satisfaction, the creature tumbled back into the tunnel, and I heard a loud crunch as it hit the bottom of its tunnel. We peered over the edge, and noted that whatever it was, the fall crushed it."