Still The 25th Of Toil
Eloias leads us along a hard-to-see path to the ruins of Kaelist, where we are eager to combat the encroaching bugbears and goblins. He seems worried. He says the corruption that befell the folk of Kaelist remains a threat to all elves who enter. We decide to camp outside the ruins within Barbatos’ rope trick’s extradimensional space (sleeping in that place gives us all odd dreams—especially Diethan. He dreamed that Lyosa made him the Bee King).
26th Of Toil
As we emerge from the rope trick space, we all feel a bit uneasy under the canopy of trees, but we’re not sure why. Nothing seems amiss. We head off toward the city, which is built on the edge of a lake. Our goal is to reconnoiter the bugbear and goblin invaders and question their leader, Swordthrasher, killing them if possible. But first, we must find a great red stone on the shore of the lake, where we are to use the Quill to write our true names on the stone to gain access to the inner sanctum.
As we approach, we can see the ruined city easily because the trees surrounding it are all dead. The woodland sounds are all silent around us. We come upon an elf corpse, a couple weeks old. His face is twisted in a grimace of horror. This unfortunate is carrying some magical items helpful for fighting undead—perhaps that’s what he was doing here. We don’t think he’d mind lending them to us. An owl appears in a nearby tree and warns us away, telling us to beware of evil. (Talking owls! What next?)
We ignore the owl’s wisdom and enter Kaelist. The rotting and faded elven buildings here are connected by second-story walkways. As we enter the town, Diethan is struck by a vision of Barbatos and me hanging from a gantry, dead. Diethan detects overwhelming undead creatures around us. Chilled but undaunted, we move forward.
Coming at us we see six skeletal horses and riders. We hope we can parley. “We’re here to try to lift the curse from this village,” Calista says to them.
A shadowy, menacing figure on horseback emerges from the gantry. “Curse!” it says, “There is no curse here.” This figure appears to be an empty suit of armor surrounded by an aura of night. Then they begin charging us. A lightning bolt from an invisible Barbatos weakens them considerably, but their unholy natures unnerve us. After a debilitating force attack from Calista, the wraith orders all the skeletal undead to kill her. Tharn valiantly serves as her bodyguard, until she and he are both sorely wounded. When the wraith launches himself at Barbatos, Diethan jumps in to take the blow, and his negative energy protection slays the bastard. We manage to slay the rest of the skeletal warriors and afterward stand in the street panting with exertion.
After we collect ourselves a bit, we advance and spy a glowing circle of green energy in the street. Glowing runes in Dark Elvish offer an invitation to knowledge and secrets. It gives Calista the feeling that she should find something called the Master Circle and enter it. Hmmm… perhaps it’s in the inner sanctum.
We press on, cleverly avoiding some carnivorous climbing rose vines. We pass into an area of many buildings under a large tree-dome, much like the one we saw in Faelasith, except the roof has a great hole. Jagged shards of glass have embedded themselves in the ground. We dispatch one bugbear sentry along the way and are disquieted by fleeting sights of the elven walking dead. Eventually we come to the edge of a pool beside a C-shaped dais. On the dais there’s a graceful statue of an elf woman; the statue is not painted, but the woman’s lips are bright red and don’t seem to be stone at all. Barbatos hears a voice from the statue asking him to kiss it, so he does. Then we realize the truth: She’s a statue of a dark elf! But before we can think any more about it, hoofbeats thunder their way toward us. Racing around the corner is a wooden chariot pulled by a gigantic, stony-plated bull and carrying an armored goblin and a bugbear.
What a time to have been playing with statues….
At the sight of the formidable war chariot barreling toward us, we dash up to a nearby balcony for cover. Before we can begin shooting at the goblin driver or the bugbear passenger, however, the bull—a gorgon—breathes at us and we begin to slow. I realize that we have to hurry and neutralize the magical congealing effect before our blood turns solid in our bodies and we die! While the unaffected Tharn, Archinemus, and Barbatos continue attacking our enemies, the rest of us are forced to let our own blood to rid ourselves of the gelling influence, then heal ourselves again with potions. (In our zeal to help our friends, I accidentally critically injure Diethan, and Tharn manages to bleed Calista unconscious, but it all turns out okay in the end.)
Still nursing our wounds, we move indoors only to find ourselves in the thick of a nasty fight with a mess of goblins and bugbears. For most of this battle, at least one of our party was unconscious at any given time, but at last we are victorious. Diethan and Calista relate their near-death encounters with an elf woman representing death who beckoned to them. We hear the gorgon outside waiting restlessly for us on the steps below the balcony. Barbatos loots the goblins’ porn: books of pure evil that originally belonged to the debased elves of this town. Those of us who look at them find these books the most nauseating and depraved things we’ve ever seen.
After we rest, we spy (using a periscope) some bugbears trying to corral the gorgon. We decide to charge out, Barbatos’ unseen servant going to pick up the weapons we dropped on the stairs leading to the balcony. There are a LOT of bugbears out here, more than we thought. A couple spells from Barbatos and Calista slow some of our opponents as we wade into the fray. Some goblins arrive on the scene in the company of a strange goblin-faced wolf creature. It seems able to command the gorgon, telling it to breathe on us again. We came prepared this time, though, wearing our breathing masks, and the breath affects more bugbears than us. Barbatos takes out that whole clump of goblins with the chaos skull he found in Pythoness House. Now the gorgon is mad! It charges up the stairs amid a bunch of bugbears slowly dying from their own congealing blood. I manage to halt it with my longsword of animal suggestion. Archinemus jumps up onto the gorgon’s back and finishes it with a mighty blow from his skivver, and Tharn subdues the last bugbear (which Diethan kills when Tharn’s not looking). We don’t see anyone else about.
In our search of the bodies we find some gold, gems, a ring, potions, scrolls, and so on. The mage-shaman bugbear was wearing a magical symbol of the Beastlord Ravvan. From a vantage atop the roof of the building we’re near, Diethan can see a couple towers and the lake we seek, with an elven structure rising out from the middle of it. However, we’re uncertain whether we should proceed—our spells are expended and we’re tired. We decide to withdraw and return in the morning. Hopefully we won’t have to fight our way through again tomorrow.
