The End: The Third Party vs. The Amazons

This marks the official end of both the "Third Party" (a.k.a. "Good Intentions") and "The Amazons" campaigns in my larger Ruins of Adventure setting. Some time ago The Amazons closed in on the other party whom they had been hunting and turned over the final versions of the character sheets with detailed instructions on how they should be run to fight the "Third Party". While the botted-PvP showdown did not result in a TPK on either side, nor resulted in the end of the larger campaign, both groups have chosen to retire the characters and move on to other games, leaving behind a double handful of rather badass NPCs, some new dungeons, a vision of the pending apocalypse, and some seriously messed up politics for the many other Ruins of Adventure parties to deal with in the future...

2nd of Marpenoth, 1362 D.R.

Grimnir and company stood in the central square of Hillsfar, discussing what to do and where to go. They were startled by a polite, "Ahem," from behind and turned to see Elissa Bivant-Mondaviak standing there with them. The Lady Bivant demanded, politely, for the return of the gloves that Grimnir had made from her husband's corpse, but was refused. Grimnir rebutted by repeatedly accusing her of being Tyr, or his present incarnation, a thing which she flatly denied.

Of course, the lady did not take this refusal lightly. There was a snap of fingers, a shimmer in the air, and a half dozen angry Amazons appeared, ready to throw down.

Battle Cry struck first, pronouncing a divine curse on Grimnir, stating:

"Grimnir, Squire of Cryptgarten, you are found guilty in the eyes of Assuran the Doombringer. You have killed your vassals, consorted with devils, betrayed your city, raised an army of the dead, and awakened that which should not be. You have forced innocents to bathe in the disgusting froth of their slain families, and demanded fealty from them thereafter. Know that no one, man or child, fiend or mortal, living or dead shall listen to your words nor obey your voice, nor that of your children's, children's, children, until you have yourself bathed in the blood of the evil which you have awakened."

Grimnir simply nodded along, matter of factly, at her entirely true pronouncement. Then proceeded to pummel Lady Bivant with a barrage of eldritch blasts, quickly followed up with a sword in the back from Morgianna, killing the councilwoman. Grimnir and company were stunned, and checked several times, but the lady was really quite dead.

Melastasya, who was hanging out by the citadel, shrugged and fired a trebuchet at the square, sending her friends and Amazons alike diving for cover, save Don't Fail, who stepped in front of Ash and transformed herself into living steel, shattering the projectile.

The Amazons did not take the death of their patron well, and retaliated, with many a cry for "Vengeance", as might be expected. Princess dove at Morgianna, stabbing her repeatedly. Dragon Bait hacked Traithe up severely with Worthy of Vengeance, Hot Flanks unleashed a half-dozen simultaneous fireballs (almost a meteor swarm) from her rod, Finds Them and Kills Them cripled Kevorkian with a harm spell, and Don't Fail severed Grimnir's right arm with a ring of disintegration.

Not really ready for such an assault, Grimnir grabbed Kevorkian, Dame, Morgianna, his pet beholder, and Elissa's corpse and teleported several blocks away, narrowly dodging a dimensional anchor fired at him by Battle Cry. Traithe responded likewise, disapparating in a cloud of disappearing smoke and fleeing into the city's sewers. Ash simply leaned back to watch the fun.

Experiment 321 rushed in and incapacitated Finds Them and Kills Them with a quick backstab from a poisoned knife, only to find himself being chased off and the Amazon healed by her unicorn companion. Noting Ash's refusal to help the others, Mel shadow-stepped to the square and started attacking Ash, only to be thwarted again and again by the elf mage's new mastery of Chronomancy and ability to annul her actions by creating temporal paradoxes.

With the majority of their targets apparently fled, Doesn't Shake and Princess flew into the air, eventually spotting Grimnir and the others, who they proceeded to aerially bombard with flame strikes and sunbolts. Grimnir woke up the beholder, who turned his anti-magic eye towards the flying Amazons, intercepting their spells. Unfortunately, the curse lingering over Grimnir took hold and the beholder turned his eye-rays on his would-be master, disintegrating Grimnir.

Distraught, Kevorkian reached into his pack and pulled out the enigmatic bauble that the party had found in Yarash's lair, which he proceeded to toss into the air and destroy with a barrage of eldritch blasts...


2nd of Marpenoth, 1362 D.R.

With Grimnir apparently slain and the rest of their, definitely secondary, quarry suddenly vanished, the Amazons returned to the body of their slain patron. Despite repeated attempts, they were unable to raise Elissa from the dead (as she failed her resurrection survival roll). Don't Fail messaged the Council of Phlan, to inform them of the deaths of Councilwoman Elissa and the traitor Grimnir.

Free of their obligations of both fealty and vengeance, the girls looked around at the city in which they found themselves. Hillsfar was a mess -- the citadel all but destroyed, the walls breached, and all but a tenth of the city's population dead from disease, war, and the economic collapse that followed. Blaming the woes of the city on Grimnir (which was, at least partly and indirectly, correct), the girls agreed that they should try to set the city aright and begin to undo some of the damage wrought by the monster whom they had been hunting for the last year.

The people of Hillsfar, unwilling to provoke the women who had so easily trounced the party that had saved them from dragons and beholders less than an hour before, quickly, and with feigned enthusiasm, welcomed their new "liberators" and rulers...


2nd of Marpenoth, 1372 D.R.

Grimnir, quite alive and not a pile of dust, and friends (sans beholders, followers, or hangers on) found themselves standing in the courtyard of Kryptgarten Keep. A deathly quiet hung over the place and there were no creatures to be seen. In the center of the courtyard stood a gallows, with a single noose and a smear of blue paint on the foot-board. Curious, Grimnir and company flew into the air to look around.

The area around the keep for as far as anyone could was completely devoid of life. The forest was a blacked field of ash, the riverbed was empty and dry, the city of Phlan was a flattened ruin, even the sea was gone--not but a dry, empty, mile-deep chasm. The region had been reduced to a parched, lifeless, wasteland. Most striking however, was the conspicuous absence of a mountain. Where once the tallest peak of the Dragonspines had stood there was now...nothing.

Duvan'Ku was gone.

Or, more precisely, the thing that slept beneath the mountain had clearly awakened to wreak havoc upon the world. Figuring there was nothing to lose, Kevorkian put the Gjallarhorn to his lips and blew. Ash and Traithe briefly lashed out at their companions, driven to violence by the sound of the horn, but no armies of demons or men came seeking them. Everything really was dead, it seemed.

Then, of course, they saw the horizon moving. Something was coming towards them, fast. Something so huge that it's head and shoulders dominated the entire eastern horizon from north to south. A giant as large as the highest mountains in the world. Of course they ran. Blinked. Teleported their way to Sorassar's cave, hoping to use the Pool of Radiance there to raise another mythal to protect them.

But there was no mythal and no pool.

So Grimnir laid an Asgard rune upon the empty pool and transported them to Hell, hoping to take refuge in the castle that they had left there and use the pool there.

But when they arrived, there was no castle and no pool. Only an empty island in the middle of the river Styx, with the flaming flowers of Hell on one side, and an endlass army of Slaad marching, nay seething, towards them from the other. Ash suggested that they use the celestial stairway and lead the Slaad back to do battle with Duvan'ku.

Experiment 321 took up the challenge and lept forward, doffing his mask of insivibility and challenging the slaad to send their greatest champion to face him. After some laughing, fleeing and advancing, and some running in random directions, eventually a mighty white slaad strode through the endless hordes of its brethren, stood before Experiment 321, did a pirouette, reached a clawed hand down its throat, and pulled out a bouquet of roses.

In response, Experiment 321 shoved the roses up his nose, taking considerable damage from the thorns, broke off the tip of his own tail, and fed it to the slaad while break dancing. Honorable duels between beings of pure chaos being what they are, the self-flagellating dance fight went on for some time before the Slaadi got bored and chased Experiment 321 up the celestial staircase, some portion of his infinite brethren following to spill out onto all the other planes of existence, with still more following all the way back to the Moon Steps in the Dragonspines. Of course, the mountain was not there, so the steps led out into empty air (not that the slaad minded).

Ash, wanting a place to stand, so to speak, dug through the bag of baubles taken from the tombs in Deckon Thar (which had somehow ended up on his person through yet another paradox) until he found one that contained both the mountain intact, and an elf.


2nd of Marpenoth, 362 D.R.

Ash, Grimnir, Melastasya, Kevorkian, Dame, Morgianna, Experiment 321, and Traithe stepped down off the celestial staircase into the abandoned city of Deckon Thar. Only Ash found it slightly strange that all of his companions were elves, complete with liripipe hoods, curly shoes, and inappropriately revealing armor and that the city exhibited a distinctive hint of Elvish architecture. Likewise the others did not seem to notice or mind that there was not a slavering horde of Slaad chasing them down the stairs.

The city was in surprisingly good shape, and the mountain was intact, though the hand of Duvan'Ku could be seen peaking out (Ash couldn't help but notice the unusually slender and graceful fingers on the giant hand). Of course, the party decided that they should immediately try to destroy the hand...

They shot it. Lightninged it. Burned it. Banished it. Poisoned it ... Nothing worked.

Then Ash had an idea...he pulled out Yarash's Spoon and pointed it at the hand. The hand quickly transformed, remaining just as large, but becoming a twisted thing, made entirely of thumbs, and oozing with clear, sticky, oil-like substance. They once again blasted the hand with fire, but this time it burned. And burned. And burned. Two days later, the hand was still on fire. The same remained true after two weeks, two months...

Determined that they must do something to keep Duvan'ku from fully waking up, and blessed with elvish patience and longevity, the party decided that they would settle in Deckon Thar to watch over the hand, protect it from anyone that might try to disturb its sleep, and research a way to destroy it.

Dame, Kevorkian, and Melastasya decided to reform the Guild of Naturalists, and resume Dame's experiments at creating flying, soul-draining, god-hating, leech-cuttlefish-lamprey hybrids to feed on the thing under the mountain. After a few years of experimentation, their attempts succeeded, and they named their creations "Ab-bo'leth".

Grimnir and Ash, meanwhile went to Myth Drannor to treat with the Coronal, asking for use of his elf-blade to open the multi-planar sarcophagus which they found in the Tomb of Mog. He agreed, and many of the great lords of Myth Drannor came with them. Ash and the Coronal placed their blades in the slots on the sarcophagus, only to find it full of strangely clumpy and bad smelling particles of clay. Ash dug through and found, burried at the bottom of Mog's litter-box, an exact duplicate of the supposedly unique Coronal's Elfblade. He claimed this for himself, with the Coronal's blessing, and thus became the second king of all elfdom, ruling from the mountain city of Deckon Thar.

Traith explored down the river, finding a city by the sea populated by strange, short-lived, hairy ape-beasts. They were relatively intelligent and possessed the crafts of smithing and magic, but were otherwise mostly harmless and beneath the notice of the elf-lords of Deckon Thar.

The elves budded...

Deckon Thar flourished...

New "pets" wer made...

A thousand years passed...



2nd of Marpenoth, 1361 D.R.

High on the mountain of Duvan'ku, a giant hand burns for eternity. Below the hand is an ancient city, dark and brooding. It is a home to ancient beings of unspeakable power and the tentacled horrors which they created for their unknown ends. What riches await to be claimed in the fabled city of Deckon Thar are anyone's guess, and New Phlan is rife with the rumors of fortune and glory to be claimed beneath the Mountain of the Ever-Burning Hand.

The Third Party: Session 30 (GMs notes)

1 Marpenoth

The party stepped out of the last auction of BIshop Braccio's lands, Grimnir sporting his smashing new gloves, to find a frighteningly angry Elissa Bivant waiting for them. As usual, the party dithered for quite some time before Ash threw down a teleport to get them away from the enraged presumed-deity.

They appeared in the central square of Hillsfar, just outside the Citadel. Apparently Ash thought it would be a good idea to check on the progress of the city, now that it lacked an undead army defending it. The undead army was apparently much-missed. The arrived to the smell of smoke and the sound of bombardment. The entire, much reduced, population of the city were up on the walls or running around putting out fires, and it sounded like a pitched battle was happening just outside.

Grimnir levitated up into the air, enshrouded in a cloud of ravens, to see what was up. An army, some fifteen-thousand strong, was camped in siege of Hillsfar, flying the banner of the city's long-time rival, Zhentil Keep. When Grimnir reported the situation, Ash and Mel admitted that they might have let slip to Manshoon, one of Zhentil Keep's rulers, that Hillsfar was basically undefended in their conversation with him a few weeks prior. Grimnir, seeming elated to have a morally-unambiguous target, floated up and began raining eldritch death down on the gray-skinned, Zhentish orcs outside.

In response to Grimnir's magical bombardment, five beholders floated up over the walls and began closing with him (much faster than one might expect such creatures to fly) in a reversed flying-V formation. Grimnir and Ash dropped fly spells on Morgianna and Experiment #321 who swooped up to Grimnir's aid. Mel, meanwhile, dashed to the highest tower of the citadel with longshot and Traithe headed to the walls to take command the try to disrupt the siege engines.

Morgianna was the first to engage with the beholders, flying up behind the left rear-guard, dodging a trio of eye-beams, and striking it with a blinding smite blinding the creature and completely incapacitating three of the eyes. Mel struck the same target with a pair of arrows from her vantage more than a half-mile away, severely injuring it with the first shot and taking out another eyestalk with the second.

Experiment #321 flew in to strike the right rear-guard, but narrowly avoided getting knocked out of the sky when the central beholder turned to catch her in its anti-magic gaze. As the beholder panned, she swooped out of the way and tossed a dagger at it, striking it right in the pupil of the big central eye.

Zorch then summoned a fellow radiant mephit and the two creatures flew head-first towards the right flank of the beholder lines, head on to the antimagic eyes to avoid the eye rays. When they had closed, they used their superior speed and maneuverability to stay just in front of the creatures and just out of bite range. Finally the two enraged beholders pivoted down, to bring all ten eye-stalks to bear on the mephits. The readied imps unleashed blasts of color spray as the eyes came to bear, but the beholders just blinked them off and unleashed a full barrage at each mephit. Unfortunately for the beholders, the mephits took the worst of the blasts, but they also bounced back off their reflective skin. Both mephits and both beholders were petrified by the rebounding beams, plummeting out of the sky like rocks.

Ash tried, unsuccessfully, to save Zorch using a new spell he had developed to reverse time locally to a single creature, but Zorch's spirit was beyond recovery. Enraged he lashed out with a blast of chain lightning, scorching the three remaining beholders. The point beholder sped up to close with Grimnir, but was blasted back, again, and again. Finally it gave up and pivoted down, centering its anti-magic gaze on Ash, rendering him blind and impotent.

Grimnir, meanwhile, opened an arcane gate and used his repelling blasts (from unpredictable angles) to play ping-pong with the blinded beholder, bouncing it into its friends to disrupt their formation. Turning it into an uncontrolled, rapidly spinning mass of randomly firing eye-rays. Morgianna continued to dodge the beams and she and Mel concentrated fire to bring the blinded beholder down.

The central beholder, deprived of its main eye, charmed Experiment #321 and sent her after Grimnir. She flew into the cloud of ravens and narrowly missed slitting Grimnir's throat with her poisoned daggers, giving his beard a very close shave.

Grimnir fell back, allowing his levitation to stop and plummeting towards the ground, only to arrest himself about twenty-feet up and blast the beholder that was pinning down Ash. The beholder was shoved up just enough to get Ash out of the range of its gaze. Ash, who had been waiting patiently for just such a chance, immediately unleashed another chain lightning, one bolt popping the eye-less beholder like a corn kernal, and the remaining arcs frying the last one.

Meanwhile, on the wall, Traithe had managed to destroy three large siege engines of the Zhent army, slowing the assault. In response, the Zhents sent a large,  boar-like demon, a "Lord of Woe" up the walls after him. The demon cleared the walls with its scintillating aura of horror, then tore into Traithe with tooth and claw, wounding him severely. Mel, from her vantage on the citadel tower, pegged the demon with an arrow and called to the flyers to help Traithe.

Everyone ran (or flew) to join the fight on the walls. Traithe blasted the corpulent demon with the icy gaze of the sword of halfrek, then Morgianna lept into the fray, smiting the creature. Ash tagged the beast with Wesley's Temporal Disjunction causing it to lose all sense of time or purpose and leaving it open to a quick, poisoned backstab from Experiment #321. Finally Grimnir called up his crown of runes and banished the thing, which chose not to return after taking such a rapid, colossal, and humiliating beat-down.

Still in the tower and siting in her magical bow, Mel spotted the next, and last, major threat the Zhent's had on hand: a massive, gleaming, Chrome dragon, complete with black-robed, slick-haired, goateed wizard riding it. Mel planted to arrows right in the chest of the wizard, knocking him from the saddle to his death, but drawing the attention and ire of the dragon.

The dragon swept towards Mel at full speed, slowing only long enough to strafe the top of the wall with its breath weapon: a blast of pure, magnetic energy. Dozens of Hillsfar's defenders, including Grimnir, Ash, Traith, and Morgianna, were blasted off of the wall, hurled dozens of feet through the air to crash onto the roofs of nearby buildings.

Ash recovered first, lashing out at the dragon with Murlynd's Void, pinioning its shoulder-blades beneath the saddle it wore by the powerful vaccuum of spell's singularity, significantly limiting the range of motion of the dragon's wings. Unable to do much more than glide now, the dragon zeroed in on Mel and the citadel and dove.

Grimnir hastily scribed a death rune on an arrow and sent it to Melastasya via one of his ravens. Mel dashed into the Citadel, running and shadow-jaunting from room to room, and sniping out of windows as the ravens dropped death arrows into her hands, dealing numerous grievous wounds to the beast. Morgianna and Experiment #321 flew around the dragon's backside as it closed on the citadel, harrying it with their swords and daggers.

Finally the dragon spotted Mel and crashed head-first into the castle, sending the entire west wing crashing down on its head. Mel dove out a window, and clung to the wall of one of the crumbling towers. Ash drew Morvian, called up its burning aura, and with the others.

The dragon burst from the rubble, much battered, but still quite alive, and lashed at Mel with tooth, tail, and claw. Traithe rushed in and dropped another tower on the still moving dragon with a shatter spell. Not seeing Mel, the tower he dropped, was, of course, the one she was hanging from. Mel jumped in the window, sprinted through the tower, and leaped out the far side as it tilted and came down on the dragon's head. Pivoting in mid-air, Mel grabbed the last death arrow from Munin's waiting talons and planted the arrow in the dragon's neck, opening its throat with the explosive force of the rune-enchanted projectile.

No longer conscious-enough to resist the pull of the void, the dragon began to implode, its body sucking inexorably into the nothingness created under its saddle by Ash's spell. As the dragon's tail and head got sickeningly closer together, Grimnir blasted the saddle into the air with a repelling blast and sent it hurtling over the wall. The void-saddle sucked in the last of the dragon and several bystanders on the wall before crashing into lines of the Zhentish troops, consigning dozens of them to oblivion.

With their siege engines smashed, their demon, dragon, and beholders dead, and the sucking darkness of the saddle in their midst, the Zhent army broke and fled, running for their lives, leaving their camp and arms behind. Any that might have thought of staying behind were quickly routed by the sight of the gates being thrown open and the party casually marching out, Ash with his elven blade and 60-ft. aura of golden flames at their head.

Once the army was routed, Ash and Morgianna set about looking for the body of the black-robed wizard that Mel had downed, while Mel and the lizard set about looting the camp. None of them found anything particularly interesting or valuable, save some possible fodder for Zhent disguises, and Ash pointed out that this had probably been the Zhent's "B" or even "D" team, poorly equipped and with only a small contingent of significant monstrous threats.

Grimnir, meanwhile called up the crown of runes again and communed with one of the slain beholders, asking where it kept its wealth. When the only answer was "at Zhentil Keep", Grimnir and the beholder came to an agreement, the simplest: life for service. Grimnir raised the beholder and dubbed it "Yggdrasil" (meaning "Odin's horse" or "Odin's gallows"). It is yet to be seen how loyal a mount the beholder may be.

The Third Party: Sessions 28 & 29 (GMs notes)

Due to large amounts of downtime covered by Session 27, the last two games consisted of backfilling some of the activities of various party members during that time, rather than kicking the pig to actually advance the plotline.

Thus consider this to really be Session 27.5.


25 Eliasias

As the rest of the party dealt with the Bishop and the Council, Ash and Melastasya caught a boat back to Hillsfar and made their way to the ruins of Myth Drannor, Ash having expressed a desire to see the results of his manipulations of the Mythal via the Pool. They arrived to find the city in pristine condition, the streets were clean, the buildings whole. In fact, the only thing that seemed different from the city's founding was the absence of elves, and the presence of swarms of infant orcs crawling around and the dragon, Garnetallisar, perched on the top of the Coronal's Tower.

Ash followed the confusing jumble of memories (his own, those passed down by his grandfather, and those stored in his kiira) and led the way towards the building that once housed the "Guild of Naturalists" (which was also home to one of the largest libraries in the city). They stepped into the main hall to find it empty, save for the two wood-paneled kiosks which would have greeted visitors so many centuries before, and the great winding double-stairs that lead into the lower halls of the guild.

Mel carefully examined the kiosks, sure that the elves must have had something of value. After poking and prodding and examining with her strange multi-planar vision, she became convinced that the emptiness of the place must be an illusion. Finally, on one kiosk, she found a secret panel which opened to reveal a half-dozen tiny, plump, grey-skinned, winged creatures with masses of sharp teeth. She shooed them out of the building, taking a couple of minor bites as she did. Ash, watching from the side, saw only that Melastasya tore several pieces of wooden planking from the kiosk and threw them out the door, taking a couple of scratches in the process.

Heading down, Ash, at Mel's prodding, tried to focus on memories of where the naturalists would have kept their most precious valuables. The two quickly descended to the third level down, and, down a hallway, found a door that opened into a vast cavern. Faint light filtered into the room through a long, narrow slit running the entire length of the ceiling, revealing numerous cages of all types and sizes, from small enough for a single mouse to as large as a good-sized house, each whole and pristine and empty.

Ash send Zorch up to investigate the light from the crack in the ceiling. By Zorch's light, the could make out lettering covering the ceiling. Zorch zoomed back down and, using the concave side of a mithril shield as a reflector, illumined the entire ceiling to allow Ash to read the markings, which ammounted to a knock spell on steroids, clearly meant to allow the entire ceiling to open as a single great door, large enough for a dragon (Garnet?) to pass through.

After this discovery, Ash wandered the aisles of cages looking around curiously before his grandfather's memories caused him to pause in front of one, rather small cage, which was immediately adjacent to the largest. The small cage radiated incredible amounts of abjurative and warding magic. The cage was, of course, the one in which The Mog had been imprisoned for so long. Mel picked up the magical cat carrier and stowed it among her belongings, with many reassurances spoken loudly to the empty air that they in no way intended to use it against against Mog.

They looked around some more, walking the length of the great chamber. Mel got close to each cage, peering into the gloom to see if any of them might still contain some valuable creature. As she pressed her face up to the front of one particularly large cage, a long ropy tendril, complete with a fang-filled maw, snaked out from the shadows in the back and bit into her shoulder, grabbing and pinning her against the bars. Within she could see a fleshy mass, with numerous tentacles, eyestalks, and a single, large, vertically slit mouth. Mel shadow-stepped away from the cage and Ash sent Zorch over to shed some light on things, but could see nothing.

Mel described what she had seen to Ash, who said that it sounded like on of the breeders used by the Guild of Naturalists to replicate the creatures they brought in to study. Ash explained that the breeders, which he suspected were created by the Guild from beholder-stock, could almost instantly give birth to near-identical copies of any creature fed to them. Curious, Mel dashed up the stairs and came running back with one of the grey winged things, which she found sitting dejectedly on the steps outside the guildhall from which she'd ejected it (though it still looked like nothing more than a broken bit of board to Ash).

Mel tossed the tiny creature into the back of the cage and watched as the breeder devoured it. Minutes later the great mouth split open and a new gremlin popped out. Ash and Zorch, strangely, saw the board vanish and the gremlin appear in its place, though they could see none of the creature that spawned it. Not long after there were two gremlins, then three, then four. Ash explained that breeders could supposedly produce any number of spawn, so long as fed a continuous supply of organic matter, so Mel immediately bribed the gremlins with food and sent the out to collect tree branches and other things to feed the ravenous breeder so that it could make even more of the tiny creatures.

Ash and Mel left the gremlins to their work and wandered off, now looking for the library. In the fifth sub-basement they found the massive room, with shelves and stacks from floor to ceiling, looking just as it had when first build, but completely devoid of books. Annoyed at the lack of the knowledge they sought, they wandered through the library for hours, looking in every last nook and cranny until they finally found a single book, resting on the bottom shelf of a back corner of the farthest wing of the library. Ash, of course, opened it immediately. And vanished.

Mel let her enlightened gaze unfocus enough to see Ash slipping into the maw of some massive, monstrous creature, with vast jaws and a single glaring eye, apparently on the ethereal plane. Remembering that Ash had mentioned concocting a potion of etherealness, Mel tore-open Ash's dropped pack, grabbed the potion, and leaped into the Ethereal after her companion.

She got the drop on the book-monster, hacking at it repeatedly with the silvered edges of the wicked sisters (one held in her single hand and the other gripped in her mouth). The thing snapped its head around, focusing its one, baleful eye on Mel, causing all of her magical items to cease their functioning. It then swatted her with one mighty claw, sending her hurtling through the gray mists of the strange plane to land hundreds of yards away.

Wincing at the blow, Mel hid as best she could and sniped at the beast from range with the bow longshot. Unfortunately the creature was both very fast and very alert, easily spotting Mel and closing the distance rapidly. The creature pinned her with one claw, then proceeded to sever her remaining arm with a snap of its jaws.

Zorch, meanwhile, looked at the strange book, which now showed a depiction of Ash on the page to which it was opened. Wondering if the book were somehow a magical device tied to the creature, he cast remove curse over its pages. Ash was immediately freed from the book, but in the form of a two-dimensional paper doll. Ash attempted to blast the ethereal beast with a barrage of magic missiles, but the magic-warping effects of Myth Drannor's Mythal resulted in him instead sporting a fine, thick beard of bird-feathers, which puffed out from his paper form much like fluff glued onto a child's school craft.

Mel shadow-stepped away from the ethereal beast and hid again. Using her feat and mouth, she managed to draw the bow and continue firing, teleporting away whenever it closed the distance again. This time, the thing did not see her when she hid, and one well-placed shot finally brought the colossal monster low.

She cut out the creature's magic-canceling eye, to add to the party's collection, and returned to the material plane where she found Zorch and 2D-Ash hacking at the book with flaming swords, to no avail. Witnessing its apparent immunity to fire and blades, Ash finally identified the monstrous writing as a palimpsest (both the creature and a work from which the original text had been scraped), learning that he might be returned to his natural form by liberal application of electricity.

Mel, unarmed and much in need of rest and healing, wandered out into the streets and laid down to sleep on a bed of Blue Moss, which Ash promised could regrow her missing tissues. Ash, meanwhile, quit Myth Drannor, both to escape the Mythal and to put distance between himself and Mel's lightning-rod-like nature. With the, not unpainful, self-application of a few lightning bolts, he was able to restore himself to his proper form.

26 Eliasias

Ash and Mel reunited the next morning, Mel having miraculously regrown both of her original arms, and headed towards Ash's family estate, in hopes that the Ellindir library might be intact. They found the estate, like the rest of the city, just as it had been at the elven capital's height. Ash spoke a word and the gates swung open, with an audible hum of magical wards being disabled. Another word caused the army of skeletal undead standing in the courtyard to snap to attention and step aside, giving them a direct path to the front doors of the house. So they continued, with Ash using the watchwords of his family to disable trap after trap and keep the numerous undead guardians at bay.

Within the house they found nothing, save for the guardians, animated by contingencies from the bodies of those slain by the numerous wards covering the place. Everything was clean and pristine, but all of the furniture, art, and valuables were gone, save for a single table in the dining room, to large to be easily moved out through the door.

They searched room after room, finding nothing and growing ever more frustrated. Finally Ash stopped and opened his mind to his grandfather's memories, searching for some secret as to where the Ellindir family treasures might have been stashed in the wake of the city's fall. In his trance-like state, he made his way up and laid his kiira directly in the center of the flat roof. Bright red light swept out from the lore-gem, forming a great disk on which he and Mel stood.

When their eyes adjusted to the crimson brightness, they found themselves standing in an empty void, with nothing in any direction save the red disk. Fire suddenly appeared all around, only to be swept away by a mighty wind. Then a great wave rose up from no where to crash over them. The waters did not touch them, but left them in a dark cave of loose, brown dirt. This crumbled away and they were back within the void, but now arrows rained from the black sky through which turtles appeared to swim. And thus, they knew they were in the Everchanging Chaos of Limbo.

Mel took immediate advantage of the strange space, imagining herself surrounded by riches. The arrows raining from the sky turned into bags of coins, which exploded on impact, literally showering the two companions with riches. Another stray thought from Mel and the coins lying on the ground became bunches of grapes, and buxom serving girls clawed their way through the disk on which they still stood, fighting each other to gather up the grapes and hand feed them to Melastasya, where they turned to writhing maggots in her mouth.

Ash, meanwhile, focused on the Kiira at his feet and his own muddled memories, thinking of where his grandfather might have hidden the family treasures in this strange place. Immediately a great boulder began drifting out of the void, floating erratically like a piece of driftwood, but maintaining a trajectory more or less directly towards Ash's head.

Ash ducked at the last minute to avoid being struck by the great stone, which landed at his feet and cracked open to reveal a beautiful geode with a single, cylindrical rod of amethyst sticking up from its center. Ash took the rod and immediately a door appeared in front of him, complete with a great lock with a hole exactly the right size for the rod. He inserted the rod and the door opened into a small, stone chamber, much like a mausoleum, but stacked high with books.

Mel quickly stepped into the library with Ash, spitting bugs from her mouth and dodging the frogs that were raining down around them. Ash looked around at the collected lore of his forebears and wished that he might find an index to all of it. Immediately the rod in his hand changed shape, becoming a beautiful amethyst-bladed sword which somehow put all of the collective knowledge of the place at his fingertips, with no need to crack open any of the tomes.

Ash realized that this was his family's house-blade, a lesser cousin of the elfblades wielded by the rulers of Myth Drannor, and a much greater form of the kiira that elves used to store the memories of their long lives. The sword showed him the end of Myth Drannor and the events that lead to it: His family's dislike of non-elves and refusal to accept the opening of the capitals borders to humans and their ilk, and the long rivalry with the Coronals that resulted from it. His grandfather's participation in the creation of the Mythal, and his installation of a back door that would prevent extraplanar creatures from being controlled by their summoners. His grandfather opening Mog's cage, and the cat calling the Trio Nefarious into the city. So, he realized, his grandfather's betrayal of Myth Drannor was not only true, but had begun long before the Army of Darkness arrived in his opposition to the opening and the very ideals that the City of Love stood for.

Mel, meanwhile, looked around the place for anything of value that she might easily take with her. She found a small, blue gem lying in a corner of the structure and managed to palm it. As Ash and Mel turned to leave, they saw that the frogs that had rained from the sky as they entered had grown into large bipedal frog-things, Slaadi. The three closest ones, one red, one green, and one blue, growled ominously and approached them.

Mel jumped in front of Ash, landing several punches on the slaad. The red raked at her mid-section with its claws, but stopped just short, gently caressing her stomach instead. The green lunged for her face with its fangs, but ended with a gentle kiss. The blue spread its arms wide to grapple her, but instead wrapped her in a loving embrace and whispered something akin to "mama". Disturbed, Ash ran for the kiira and picked it up, causing the entire tableau to vanish, leaving Ash, Mel, and the blue slaad standing on the roof of the Ellindir House.

The slaad took a step back from Mel and began groveling at her feet, swaying in time with the faint pulsing of the blue gem in her hand. Mel showed the gem to Ash and he identified it as a "control gem" -- literally the brain of a slaad that gave whoever held it control over the slaad from which it was taken. This gave Mel an idea, and she dashed back to the Guild of Naturalists, slaad in tow, and promptly fed the blue creature to the breeder. She left some snacks for the gremlins and instructions to keep the breeder well-fed, then she and Ash left before the place could be overrun with Slaadi.

_____________________________________________________________________

24 Eleint

Melastasya, Ash, Damascena, and Kevorkian sat at a small table, enjoying the sun, the breeze, and, judging by the many empty bottles in front of them, the wine. The air was filled with the buzz of the auctioneer's voice, as Bishop Braccio unloaded the deeds to several churches into the willing hands of the wealthy patrons of the Moonsea. The winery where today's auction was being held was just one of many in the area around Mulmaster owned by the Mondaviak family.

Mel called for another bottle of Mondaviak's finest and continued her account of her and Ash's brief excursion to Myth Drannor. Kevorkian, once again invisible to all save Mel and the handful of new lawn ornaments surrounding them, then recounted his misadventures with attempting to purchase a unicorn from a merchant in Melvaunt.

Eventually the discussion turned back to Myth Drannor and the discoveries that Ash had made about his grandfather's and Mog's involvement in the city's downfall. As if on queue, the cat himself, in bipedal form and dressed to the nines, slipped out of the crowd of auction attendees and made his way up the hill towards them. He chatted with them a bit, explaining that he was there as a buyer and had already purchased a few nice temples, but not really adding anything to the conversation at hand. Mel, for her part, dove right into her usual mercantile manner, offering to commission several statues of Mog to be erected in his new temples.

Unwilling to content themselves with the beautiful day, the fine wine, or the pleasant company (ok maybe that one is pushing things a bit too far), Dame suggested that she could really use a new cloak or maybe a tail, either of which clearly needed to be made from something large and dangerous. Kevorkian obliged by casting locate creature for the nearest chromatic dragon. Despite the limited (1000 foot) range of the spell and the inability of the spell to pierce disguises or shapechanging, he did, in fact, locate one. Just down the hill. In the crowd of buyers.

Following the invisible cleric's direction, Mel and Ash wandered down into the crowd and found a small white dragon perched on the shoulder of a well-dressed, dark-haired, goateed high-roller. The man brushed off Mel's initial attempts to engage him, then finally introduced himself as Manshoon of Zhentil Keep. Mel and Manshoon made their way out of the crowd, withdrawing up the hill to talk.

The two had a fairly equitable exchange of information. The party learned that the Zhentarim had been actively backing the council in New Phlan and also the temple of Xvim in Old Phlan and still had a substantial investment of resources and capital in the city. Conversely, the information Mel gave him about the current state of Hillsfar, Myth Drannor, and Phlan seemed likely to kickstart new expansion in the region on the part of Zhentil Keep's forces.

Finally Ash, apparently having lost patience with the talk of business and politics, cast a spell to dispel any shapechanging that might be in place on the man and his tiny dragon. Sure enough, the dragon instantly expanded to full wyrm size, nearly two hundred feet long from nose to tail. Seeing the great dragon, the auction-attendees quickly broke into a panic and fled, emptying the surrounding area.

The man, suddenly pinned beneath the massive dragon's claw, told him to have fun and suggested that he would get into touch with Mel to talk further, then promptly vanished. Dame and Kevorkian did likewise, the former ducking behind some grape vines and the latter covering himself with a sanctuary.

Mel, of course, jumped right in, stabbing the dragon several times with her sword. In retaliation, the dragon flew eighty-feet strait up with a single beat of its wings, knocking Mel down, then opened its maw to douse her with a stream of boiling-hot water. Mel took the full force of the blast, then promptly hid herself as Kevorkian rushed to her aid.

Zorch began ringing his bells as Ash attempted to transmogrify the dragon with Yarash's Spoon, once and again, to no avail. Dame called forth an ice storm, which, while it did not significantly harm the dragon, served to push it downwards to within range for Mel's ability to step through shadows.

The dragon again breathed at Mel, this time unleashing a high-powered blast of sand and grit, which tore through the grape arbors, beating them down and flaying the skin from Melastasya. As it breathed, Dame and Ash noticed a ring of differently-coloured scales circling the base of the dragon's neck, one of which blurred back to white as the breath discharged.

Kevorkian quickly healed Mel again and she leaped into the air, propelling herself through the dragon's own shadow until she was clinging to its underside, stabbing it again and again. The dragon lashed at her with its claws and tail, but failed to dislodge her. At a word from Ash, Mel turned on her electricity-absorbing armorand then pressed herself tight against the dragon.

With a massive clap of thunder, Ash unleashed a storm of lightning, seven bolts in rapid succession arced through the dragon, bending and twisting to make their way to Melastasya. The beast roared and twitched as the energy tore through it. Finally the power pouring into Mel's armor overloaded it, causing a sudden, secondary discharge as the pent-up power exploded back out from the armor, only to arc back by Mel's strange attraction.

The dragon clawed at Mel and beat its wings to try to escape the electrical fury, but the arcing lightning touched off a gem from Zorch's bell of blasting that was still on the dragon's back. With one final burst of flame, the beast roared its last and began falling towards the ground, only to be arrested by a feather fall spell from Ash. A light gust from Dame blew it away from the party, to crash-land on one of the vinyard's barns, crushing it to rubble.

The party regrouped (and healed Mel yet again), then wandered over to look at the dragon they had defeated. Kevorkian examined the scales around its neck and declared that the dragon's fundamentum, the organ that grants the beast it's breath weapon, had somehow been infected with primordial chaos, much like the party had seen when Mel infected things with slaad eggs.

After a few minutes of quiet, the vintner who ran the place came out of one of the , and seeing the dead dragon lying on top of his former-barn and the sand-blasted vines, began weeping. Dame used plant growth to bless his crops and restore them to greater than their former yield, which prompted an anticipated and appropriate level of worship of the beings who could wield such power (mostly Dame and Ash).

After some musing of all the things they could make out of the corpse of so large a dragon (not to mention potentially harvestable body-parts), the party decided to take the whole dragon with them (though whether to Sorrassar or Yarash, they could not decide). Dame cast wind walk, turning the entire party and the entire dragon to clouds and blew them north. The party and their prize settled down in a clearing in the Quivering Woods, not far from Yarash's island, right next to an old forge.

To be continued...

The Third Party: Session 27 (GMs notes)

17 Eliasias, 1362 DR

After completing construction of the Mythal in Deckon Thar, the party (mostly Grimnir really) decided it was finally time to deal with the Council in Phlan. They hiked down the mountain from Sorrassar's cave and Mel flagged down a passing gypsy barge to give them a lift downriver.

21 Eliasias

As they neared the city, they found it in shambles. North of the river, the castle was gone. The ruins had devolved into true ruins, with narry a stone left standing and the formerly ordered markets of goblins and giants nowhere to be seen. South of the river, the new city was burning. The walls had been torn down, the docks abandoned, and mobs of slums-dwellers rioted in the streets.

The poled the boat up to the main docks uncontested and headed into town. They asked several passers by what was going on, but, other than the simple idea that their had been a revolution, most people they encountered seemed clueless. They did learn that a merchant from the slums, one Hasan  Abd-al-Bane, had taken command of the council chambers.

Between Traithe's very large sword, Kevorkian's petrifying gaze, and Ash's and Grimnir's general creepiness, they reached the Council Hall uncontested (give or take the wake of dead, petrified, frightened people behind them). A mass of spiked club and pointy-stick wielding malcontents had formed a human, three people deep, wall surrounding the entire Council Hall. Grimnir turned on his charm, er, crown, and the rabble layed down to make a path for him.

Forcing their way past yet more peasants and protesters filling the hallway, they eventually came to the council chambers, where a swarthy, slick-haired, goatee-sporting man in a fez had set up shop, using the pulled-from-their-hinges doors of the council chamber and some old boxes as a desk.

Hasan greeted the party cordially, explaining that the downtrodden residents of the Slums had finally risen up to assert their rights--with some help from the displaced priests of Xvim. Hasan explained that he and Mace, high-priest of Xvim, had previously had a friend on the council, Markos, who had helped push for democratic reforms--allowing women to hold positions of power and own property, allowing homosexuals to marry, etc.

The Council, Markos included, he said, had fled on a ship two days ago, taking most of the city's wealth (and wealthy) with them. He said he would have expected them to flee to Hillsfar, but, given the recent plagues and revolution their, that they probably diverted to Mulmaster or Sembia instead.

Grimnir quizzed Hasan about his intent, which boiled down to letting the people run out their frustration and energy with rioting and looting for a few more days, then slowly try to re-establish order and arrange for democratic election of leaders to start forming a new government for Phlan. Grimnir gave his approval, then the party headed across the square to the Temple of Tyr to look for the Bishop.

They found the temple covered in graffiti, obscene phrases in twenty languages scrawled on the walls in paint, chalk, tar, and blood. The gates had been thrown open, but were flanked by a pair of burly orcs in matte-black plate armor. Screams echoed from within.

Marching into the main sanctuary, they found four priests of Tyr and Sister Theymr, the old abbess, tied spread-eagle wagon wheels, with their arms threaded through the spokes. A mixed group of orc soldiers, human dregs, and Xvimlar acolytes stood around taking turns breaking the priests' limbs with clubs and hammers.

Grimnir enslaved the Xvimlar that appeared to be in charge and asked him to clear the room. Once the rioters were gone, he interrogated Sister Theymr, learning that the Bishop had fled with the council on their ship, most likely heading for the cathedral in Tantras for refuge. Further questioning revealed that the Tyrrans were, perhaps, amenable to his ideas of government, having a strict opposition to the idea of autocratic rule. The core of their philosophy being that laws could only be derived from the people, or their just representatives, and that Tyr was an embodiment of the laws of men, rather than a being with the right or power to pronounce laws himself.

While Grimnir and Ash questioned the prisoners, Traithe and Kevorkian headed downstairs, to look for others. First they headed down to the austere men's quarters, finding everything looted and mostly empty of people, aside from the cook who had been shoved in his own, still hot oven (long dead) and a trio of orcs in similar black armor to the ones above, who were relaxing in the quarters and explained that they were waiting for their shift to guard the doors. The orcs suggested that if they were looking for some fun, they should go over to the women's quarters, where the bulk of the force were 'questioning' some of the nuns.

They did just that, calling in Ash, Grimnir, and Dame for backup. Broken finery and the sounds of screaming greeted them as they headed down the women's hall. Kicking in the far door, they saw a great mass of orcs, nearly half a hundred, taking turns gang-raping five nude, bruised, and bloodied Tyrran priestesses.

Ash lit up the room with a lightning bolt and Traithe charged the orcs, only to find that the orcs were surprisingly tough (though not for orcs). Enraged by the interruption of their sport, the orcs rose up and charged en-masse, killing Traithe and incapacitating Kevorkian in their initial onslaught.

Zorch healed Kevorkian, who immediately hid himself with a sanctuary spell and dragged Traithe to safety. Ash then raised a wall of force between the orc horde and the door through which the party had entered the women's quarters. Dame enlarged, animated, and awakened a few potted plants in the room, setting them to entangling the orcs, while Grimnir opened an arcane gate and began extracting the priestesses through it.

Once everyone was relatively safe, Ash sent Zorch back into the room, where he flew around next to the ceiling, carpet-bombing the orcs with his Bell of Blasting and Bell of Treachery.

Once the army of orc rapists had been dealt with, Kevorkian raised Traithe and Grimnir ported the party and the ten Tyrran prisoners to the last battered ship in the docks, which they quickly commandeered to pursue the Council.

22 Eliasias

Ash used control water to guide the stolen ship.

Dame and Kevorkian healed the rescued priests, then Grimnir continued to question them on their theology and their view of the law, looking for which ones might be turned away from Tyr. They seemed surprisingly unfazed by their Bishop having left them behind to be tortured, raped, and killed, all except one who called himself Brother Rant.

While the questioning was going on, Kevorkian decided that the ship was not traveling fast enough. He called to Mog for a planar ally, conjuring a Rakshasa. In exchange for propelling the ship faster, the Rakshasa first demanded one of the priestesses. Kevorkian refused. Then the cat low-balled, asking for the youngest priestess to simply be tortured (tied to the mast and flayed slowly), even offering to let Kevorkian do it himself. Kevorkian refused and counter-offered, offering to allow himself to be tortured in any way the Rakshasa chose (save severing limbs or removing jewelry) for thirty minutes. They finally settled on 45 minutes of torture for Kevorkian and a bottle of fine cognac.

The sails swelled with the wind of Kevorkian's screams as the Rakshasa played with his entrails and the ship sped along at a breakneck pace. As they sailed, Grimnir projected horrific dreams into the mind of Markos Mondaviak, using the Rakshasa's games as inspiration. Despite the two day headstart, they overtook the Council's vessel just as it was docking in Mulmaster.

The party watched, from a safe distance, as the entire Council, sans-Bishop, including most of the Training Hall professors, the Clerk, and other dignitaries, disembarked. The ship remained outfitted for travel, and, after unloading its passengers, soon put back out to sea and turned south with the Bishop still aboard. Deciding they could come back for Markos (and unwilling to throw down with Markos's wife just yet), they turned their boat, ran up the jolly roger, and gave chase to the Bishop.

The Bishop had, wisely, laid a forbiddance over the ship to guard against extraplanar attacks, so they simply rammed the ship with their boat and boarded it. Kevorkian petrified three-quarters of the crew on the first glance, and the rest quickly went below to bring the Bishop out as ransom for their safety. Grimnir hexed and then enslaved the Bishop, forced the Bishop and Kevorkian to un-petrify the crew, then they took control of the much nicer ship and turned it back towards Mulmaster.

Under Grimnir's control, the Bishop went ashore, unloaded all of his worldly goods, and immeadiately began to liquidate all of it. Auctions were arranged to sell off all of his parochial holdings: every temple, every shrine, every monastery, every parish church in the woods, every house, farm, mine, or serfdom that had been acquired by the Moonsea Diocese under Braccio's reign as bishop.


Highharvestide

The party worked for months, bankrupting the church of Tyr to raise a mercenary army to restore order to Phlan and buying up ships and stores to equip them and rebuild the city. Grimnir never strayed more than a few hundred yards from the enslaved Bishop, manipulating the fat old man like a puppet. At night, he continued to assault Markos Mondaviak with dreams, terrifying the young nobleman to the point of insomnia and exhaustion.

The party used some small portions of the massive funds being generated by the liquidation of the church to fund their own interests. Kevorkian bought a unicorn, named Banana Fluff, from a shady merchant, though the animal quickly teleported away once Kevorkian removed its collar and leash. Grimnir funded scholars to research how to imbue his staff with powers of darkness. Ash researched the nature and location of various elf-blades. Dame went shopping for knives. And Grimnir raised the bounty on the Amazons (delivered alive, blue, naked, and trussed to the steps of Kryptgarten) to fifty thousand gold crowns.

Finally, on the 29th of Eleint, it was announced throughout Mulmaster that Markos Mondaviak had died of fear and weariness. His young widow through a great state funeral for the fallen councilman, presided over by the same Bishop who was so determinedly spending every last cent of his fortune to reclaim the city that Markos held so dear.

On the night of Highharvestide, graverobbers (paid by Grimnir) exhumed the body of Markos Mondaviak and skinned it. Grimnir had the skin made into a lovely pair of gloves...

Markos' wife, immediately set out to settle the score against the man who would so desecrate her husband's grave.

The Third Party: Session 23 (GMs notes)

In which the party finds the second Pool of Radiance, kills its guardians, get the divine infodump on what the end-game might look like...and decide that they should all just go to Hell.

6 Flamerule

The party stood on a floor made of snakes, thousands of snakes, gray, cold, and solid. Damascena went over to one that reached the highest off the floor, a great asp that had raised it's head to Kevorkian's eye level before being petrified, and broke it off at the base. A fine staff. The others looked around but, as is so often the case with evil castles, found no logical explanation for the room being so full of snakes.

Melastasya headed to the far door and found it neither locked nor trapped. She opened it wide to find a wide, tall corridor, with a heavily armored, thirty-foot-tall giant looking strait at her. She stammered out a greeting and Grimnir stepped up beside her, rubbing the skull of his staff of enslavement. The giant's face went slack and he bowed stiffly at the waist, greeting his new master and introducing himself as Duolc.

Mel tried to strike up a conversation with Duolc. Although he was clearly not the brightest giant in town (and giants are not generally known for their intellects) she was able to learn some potentially useful information, like the fact that the "Boss" could take a number of forms ranging from fiery demons to dragons to a fellow giant, but very definitely never a young, human noblewoman. Which, Grimnir pointed out, pretty much guaranteed that Elissa was the "Boss" (via his particular brand of distrustful circular logic). Mel, for her part, seemed rather fixated on the fact that the giant seemed unable to discern between the various races of smaller creatures, not knowing the difference between humans or elves. Duolc told them that he knew where the Pool chamber was, and that the pool was not guarded by other giants, but rather by "little folk". So, of course, they asked him to lead them there.

The way to the Pool was winding and confusing, even to the Giant it seemed, and he had to double back and choose different paths several times. Eventually though, they came to a pair of large double doors, almost identical to those in Myth Drannor, with a familiar brilliant light leaking out around the edges.

They pushed their way in to find a large, high-ceilinged, circular room, just as before, with the blindingly bright Pool in the center. Eight plate-armoured human guards stood circling the pool, looking outwards. They stood stoic and unmoving, their hands resting on massive zweihander swords. Duolc waved and the guards did not react when the party approached them. Nor did they react when the party began examining the pool, or poking, prodding, and making faces at them.

One did finally react when Ash tried to scoop up some of the water of the Pool using his soul-sucking urn. As soon as the urn crossed the line of the guards, a sword came up, impossibly fast, shattering the urn. Ash scooped the pieces, weeping for the possible loss of Zorch, back and Kevorkian repaired it with a mending spell.

Ash, not wanting to take any more chances with the receptacle that held Zorch's soul/body/form/whatever, considered blasting the Urn with lightning to see if he could resurrect Zorch again. Then he remembered that any electricity would go strait to Mel. He tried casting  remove curse on Mel, in hopes of ending her plight, though further experimentation (involving tossing witch bolts and lightning bolts across the pool and trying not to hit Mel) proved the curse removal to have been ineffective.

Experiment 321 walked up to one of the guards and began poking, tickling, and prodding some more, eventually eliciting a tiny smirk. Grimnir, walked up and, stopping just at the edge of the ring of guards, placed an Asgard Rune (in this case keyed to his own home plane) on the mouth of the Pool, unmolested. As Grimnir stepped back, Ash tried one last thing to test whether the repair of the urn had worked and whether the guards incredible stoicism could be broken. He touched one of the guards with the urn.

Of course the guard died, instantly, and that finally got the others attention. Swords came up. Experiment 321 stabbed the guard she had been prodding with a sword of biting. Dame laid down a field of spikes between the guards and the party. Then the guards vanished.

Ash locked down one, countering the teleporation he was using. The guard charged across the field of spikes and smacked Ash with his sword, cutting an impossibly deep gouge. The other six suddenly appeared behind the rest of the party, striking with similar results.

Grimnir activated the rune on the Pool and blasted his assailant through the one-way portal to Hell, then used a thorn whip to yank a second through. Mel and Experiment 321 dodged their attackers and rushed to Ash's aid, tagteam sneak attacking the poor sap. Ash smacked another one with his urn. Morgianna frightened one off with a wrathful smite. And Dame called down a wall of fire over her assailant.

Despite the party's best efforts, the guards continued to take their beating and beat them soundly in return. One even flew when Grimnir attempted to evade them by perching in the air. That one was also blasted down through the portal to Hell. Dame called down an ice storm on the one being jumped by Mel and the lizard-girl, finishing him off. With two urned and three stuck in Hell, the last two were cornered and outnumbered.

The one that fled from Morgianna rushed towards Dame, through the ice, and the spikes, and the fire. He got one hit in before Grimnir dropped down beside Dame and blasted him back the way he had come. Morgianna rushed in and pinned him between herself and the wall of fire, then Traithe laid him on his back with a grease spell, which subsequently also burst into flames. The poor guard died screaming horribly, scared stiff, coated in grease, impaled on spikes, and burning alive.

The last one, sensibly ran for the door. Melastasya chased him down and, once free of the Pool's light, clubbed him like a baby seal then shadow-stepped to the far end of the hall to block his path. Concentrated fire from the rest of the party dispatched him quickly. Once the guards were dispatched, the party rounded up their arms and armor and Grimnir set about identifying the weapons that had dealt so much damage to them.

As Grimnir's portal to Hell winked out, the party spotted a red metal triangle resting at the top of the steps leading down to the pool, with a small piece of paper under it. They collected the piece, which bore the sigil of death and read the note.

Found one.

If you find the others.

Meet me at the Abadon.

-- Mog

Ash, meanwhile, sensing the tremendous power possessed by the Pool of Radiance, took his urn with him and dove in. There was a flash of light the blinded everyone as energy surged into Ash as the soul-devouring power of the urn mingled with the absolute law of the Pool. With supreme focus of will, Ash harnessed and shaped the inflow of power before it could destroy him, focusing it back out through the sister Pool in Myth Drannor and into the Mythal. Ash watched through the Pool as time flowed backward within the Mythal, restoring the city of Myth Drannor, every building, road, stone, and tree to the state they were in immediately before the coming of the Army of Darkness.

As the spontaneous and massive undertaking of restoring Myth Drannor completed, the urn began to disintegrate. Ash cried out, focusing the last of the dissipating energies back into the urn and unleashing a bolt of lightning. Then the urn was gone. A moment later, as Ash climbed out of the Pool, he felt a jolt and a tap on the shoulder. He turned to find Zorch floating there.

As Ash and Zorch had their tearful reunion, Grimnir studied the Pool, realizing that Ash's little time-rewining trick had done nothing to deplete it's reserves of power. Wondering if the pool could be depleted, he started the Nogese ritual for transmuting water into liquefied time, then dove in himself.

Grimnir became immediately aware that the Nogese ritual was in fact how the Pools of Radiance were originally created, and that by repeating the process he had opened his mind to the inner workings of the Pools. The fact that the Pools were made of liquid time, combined with the resonance from the Mythal, meant that Ash's time-reversing trick, while it had exhausted the souls stored in the urn, had tapped only the smallest fraction of the Pool's powers.

Grimnir had previously suspected that the Pool, as a focus of pure Law, might be some extension of Tyr's power ("Tyr is the Law and the Law is Tyr") and was unsurprised to find that he was right. More surprising was to learn that Tyr was a girl, and that Tyr was somehow coterminous on some metaphysical level with Elissa Bivant. Looking deeper he saw that the metaphysical struggle between Law and Chaos was coming to a head, right here, right now. He also saw that the party's own actions had somehow awakened the key players of the last two major conflicts back.

	Distant Past (Nog)	Past (Myth Drannor)	Present (Phlan)
Law	The Blessed Afflictor	Garnetallisar	Elissa Bivant
Chaos	Duvan’Ku	Mog	Yarash

There was some debate about whether Yarash should really be on that list. Ash in particular insisted that all the others had god-like powers, while they had actually killed Yarash. Until, of course, he was reminded of how many times they had killed Yarash, and that normal clone spells do not allow multiple copies to function simultaneously...

Grimnir also saw that there were two factions that stood apart from this metaphysical conflict, but at opposite ends of a different spectrum. First the Yugoloths, led by Lord Maram, who were egging both sides on towards a final throwdown, presumably as an extension of their eternal desire to see Law and Chaos both purged from the multiverse. The second was represented by Sorrassar, and desired to maintain the status quo, which Grimnir dubbed the "Anti-Ragnarok Party".

Melastasya didn't need any more convincing, she wrote to Sorrassar and told him where they were and what was up, and asked if it was possible to destroy the Pools. Sorrassar wrote back that he did not know if the pools could be destroyed, but that they could be hijacked. He sent instructions...

Grimnir took one look at the circles of runes Sorrassar had instructed them to draw around the Pool and saw how the magic circle might be modified with his own permutation of the Asgard rune. He told the others that he could take the Pool to somewhere where it would be put to good use. Ash understood where he meant and immediately responded by suggesting that this would give Grimnir a chance to show proof of his repeated argument that devils were performing a necessary service for the multiverse by keeping the demons in check.

And so, if the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, then the intentions of this party must be the best, for that is where they went...

To be continued...

The Third Party: Session 22 (GMs notes)

THE WORLD'S MOST GOTHIC FISH-MONGER

1 Flamerule

The party stood in the depths of Myth Drannor, on the lowest levels of the Coronal's Tower, staring at the Pool of Radiance and having a chat with Elissa Bivant and her Arcanaloth companion, Lord Maram. As Grimnir continued to examine the pool, Melastasya began discussing the rights and privileges of vassaldom with her former mistress.

In agreeing to ally with Elissa in her empire-building scheme, Mel suggested that they be given a section equivalent to roughly one-third of the final holdings to reign over as a vassal state. Elissa agreed that they should have a fiefdom of their own, but that the size would be dependent on their total contribution to the effort, and that whatever autonomy they were given would be contingent upon their acceptance of the common law handed down from the empire. There was some hemming and hawing, about only accepting those laws that the party deemed reasonable, to which Elissa asked what, specifically, they thought would be reasonable.

Kevorkian was the first to make his demands plain, asking for control over Sorcerer's Island and the laboratory and facilities currently owned by Yarash, and the freedom to conduct his own experiments in peace. Trathe suggested that he had no interest in running a state of any kind, and would rather be compensated in cash and given the freedom to come and go as he pleased. Elissa seemed quite willing to concede these points--especially since it implied the elimination of Yarash.

Dame asked that she, and the larger druidic circle, be given dominion over the forests and that all such lands be given protected status. Elissa tentatively agreed so long as they would allow "reasonable" and "sustainable" harvesting of resources (without defining either of those terms) and not impede "progress". She suggested that specifics could be dealt with once there was actually something to be governed.

Melastasya asked that no laws or taxes be passed that could be construed as harmful to the mercantile classes. Moreover, she asked that she be put in a position within whatever government was established from which she could have direct input regarding all matters of economics, taxation, and trade. Without waiting for an actual answer from Elissa, Mel asked the others to withdraw with her to "privately consider their next actions." Elissa let them leave without comment, and they withdrew back up to the ground floor of the tower and hid within a Leomund's Tiny Hut.

Mel proceeded to explain that she believed Sorrassar had been sitting in his cave for six years not with the intent of finding the third Pool of Radiance, but rather to keep it from reappearing--in a kind of "a watched pot never boils" logic. She suggested that they should actively seek the third pool, but do so with the same intent of hindering Elissa's plans. Grimnir agreed, admitting that he was largely on board with her overall goals, so long as he could "jack it and turn her into one" (a jacket that is -- much in the same manner that he had repeatedly suggested that Bishop Braccio be made into a pair of boots and Markos Mondaviak a hat).

Traithe pointed out that Elissa had mentioned she was "only 14 years old in this body" and that she was clearly just a host or shell for some greater entity.

Mel also let the party in on how she had implanted one of the Nycaloths with a slaad egg, and that they needed to be as far away from there as possible before 24 hours had past. Which, of course, led to some concerned questions about how the Mythal's anti-aging effects might be causing more significant local fluctuations in time and that "24 hours" might not be as predictable here as elsewhere.

In order to confirm some of her assumptions, Mel wrote to Sorrassar, inquiring whether he was still watching the pool and what the situation was on the mountain. Sorrassar responded noting that not only was he not watching the pool, but that he had no idea where he was at the moment, other than that it was very hot and bright, complaining that "a sextet of bitches had stolen his wand and banished him." After writing to confirm that they were in Myth Drannor, Sorrassar sent Mel detailed instructions for calling him to her location--including a detailed diagram for a greater summoning circle and the necessary ritual incantation to bring him over.

The party made their way out into the city and found the remains of an old amphitheater, which they carefully cleared of babies, and proceeded to summon the giant. Sorrassar appeared, thanked them, and then easily stepped over the summoning circle as if it didn't exist. They had a rather long chat with the giant, during which he confirmed that he had, in fact, been trying to keep the third pool hidden. He also confirmed that Elissa Bivant's name, for the purposes of exercising power over her, was, in truth, 'Elissa Bivant', or rather, that it was up until she got married. He asked Melastasya, to carefully pronounce her new, married name for him, since he had not spoken directly with the lady since her wedding.

When Sorrassar learned that Elissa was still in Myth Drannor, presumably, he turned on his heel and headed for the edge of town post haste. He turned back when he heard the party's discussion turn again to the slaad egg that Mel had implanted in the daemon. He suggested that they join him in running like hell. Traithe and Kevorkian asked why, and, more generally, why Slaad where bad and what they really were, and what made a Daemon different from a Devil or Demon.

Sorrassar was forced, by nature of being a helpful guy, to delay his fleeing to give them the short-short-short rundown on cosmology, the origins of morality, and the origins of fiendish species. He explained how in the beginning there was only Evil, as embodied by the Baernoloth's, proto-Yugoloths,  but that over time they fell to petty squabbling over methodology. The Yugoloth's in their desire for purity of purpose, magically purged themselves of all emotions and any need for either structure or freedom, thereby spawning the concepts of Law and Chaos. At first these conceptual offspring were themselves pure, with the latter being embodied by the ever-mutable Slaad, but over time a blending of ideologies occurred on either end of the spectrum, resulting in the birth of Devils and Demons. From that came the eternal war between the opposing poles, with the Yugoloth's beloved homelands as the battlefield, such that the squabbling of Law and Chaos became the perfect buffer to keep the Yugoloth's "pure" form of evil from spreading to the rest of the multiverse.

Thus, Sorrassar said, Mel had taken an embodiment of pure chaos and implanted it in the embodiment of pure evil, and thus likely reproduced that original conceptual merging. Or, put even more shortly, 'Daemon + Slaad = Demon'. And, he added, given that the Nycaloth Aulmpiter was among the most powerful of the Daemons, the resulting Demon was likely to be particularly big, nasty, and destructive. Hence, the running like hell part.

The party and the giant exited Myth Drannor stage left. They performed a sending to inform La Bouche and the Blessed Afflictor to fortify Hillsfar. Then Sorrassar poofed them all back to his cave outside of Deckon Thar to confirm that the pool had not snapped back to its home during his several months of absence.

Once it was clear that the pool had not returned, Sorrassar resumed his vigil and the party settled down for a bit of rest in relative safety (discounting the shaking of the ground that is).

2 Flamerule

After a rest, the party took their leave of Sorrassar and looked around. The ground was still shaking gently. A large section of the mountainside had crumbled away, turning the sheer cliff into a gently slopped heap of rubble, and burying most of the lake below. A rough path had been worn up and around the mountain's top, packed down by numerous skeletal feet.

They went up and over. From the top, they could see the city of Deckon Thar below them. The moon was waning, just past full, and bright in the clear sky. Mount Duvan'ku was completely gone, and with it the north-west end of the city. Where the mountain had stood there was a massive crater, rubble from the peak lay strewn everywhere, filling in the valleys and defiles. From the center of the crater rose an stony-gray arm a thousand feet high and now bare to the bicep (which was more than 150 feet wide). The arm moved very slowly, as if stretching to free its shoulder, and the hand clawed feebly at the sky, like a man dreaming.

The party made their way down the treacherous slope to the city and were ambushed by a massive squad of undead...who immediately pulled up to a stop and addressed the party when they recognized them. The Slaughterer, whom they had left in charge of the city six months prior, informed them that the Amazons had never descended into the city, nor anyone else, given the earthquakes and the avalanches that had plagued the mountains.

Grimnir contacted to the Blessed Afflictor to ask if he thought that the thing beneath the mountain might truly be waking up. The undead general suggested that perhaps it was only a spasm, and that it seemed unlikely that it had awoken given that the sun had not blackened, the sees had not turned to blood, the sky was not raining fire, nor were there any other signs of an apocalypse. "Unless, of course, all of our myths and prophets were wrong, which is always possible..." he said.

The party brainstormed how they might test the "only spasming but still asleep" theory given that only the arm was accessible. People suggested taking its pulse, electrical shocks (in the form of lightning bolts), using meld into stone to join with its rocky flesh, using stone to flesh or the reverse, and many other equally implausible ideas. Finally, Kevorkian and Melastasya surveyed the arm with the enchanted bow, Longshot, and even tried a few shots at it. After which they gave up and decided to ignore the arm for now and head back to Phlan.

5 Flamerule

The party walked to Sorcerer's Island to pay a visit to Yarash. On the hike down, they found that the river was open to trade again. Several dwarf-manned barges bearing ore and other commodities floated downriver, while a handful of Dales gypsies ("Melastasya's people") poled their way up. From chats with the gypsies, they learned that Kryptgarten was as racist as ever (if not more-so with the influx of yet more settlers from Hillsfar), but was thriving, mostly on the manufacture of bear, mead, and wine.

At the island, they greeted Yarash briefly, then made their way to the portal to the Phlan Council chambers. Traithe disguised everyone and Mel went through first to scout. She appeared in the center of the brightly-lit and hallowed chambers to find the Council in session and her darkness-dependent powers of stealth and teleporation nullified. Mel quickly stammered out that she had news for Councilwoman Bivant, and Elissa made some vague reference to the strange girl being one of "My Amazons" and asked her to wait in the hall until the Council was finished. Several guards escorted Mel out to wait.

Kevorkian went through next, wearing his glove and mask. Markos and Elissa both looked at him as he appeared, but he was ignored by the guards and the rest of the Council. Elissa quickly looked away, but Markos's eyes went wide, with much surprised pointing and blubbering (and not turning to stone) at the strange dragon-legged, basilisk-eyed, half-man with the creepy mask standing in the middle of the room. Elissa put a hand on her husband's arm, asking him to calm down, and made some quip to the Council about Markos needing his medicine.

The Council session proceeded, despite the strange interruptions. Kevorkian stood there throughout the proceedings, listening to them talk about trade deals with the Griff Dwarves, approving funding for restoration of the recently retaken Temple of Tyr on the north side of the river, approval of expansion of the wall to encompass more of the Slums and old city, and a suggestion by Elissa to burn the worst of the Slums to the ground to allow for new construction (shot down by Councilman Urslingen citing that most of the Slums' inhabitants were human citizens).

Finally the Council adjourned and Markos walked down to the floor to confront Kevorkian as the guards and other councilmen shuffled out. Elissa walked with him, still keeping a hand on his arm, and carefully not looking directly at Kevorkian. Markos tried to interrogate the strange creature on why he was there, but Kevorkian's only response was the scrolling marquee of his thoughts across the bare flesh of his arm...most of it vague threats and assertions of Markos's guilt. Finally Elissa was able to lead her frightened, twelve-year-old husband away from his bogey-man and out into the hall where they parted with the suggestion that he go have a couple of drinks.

Kevorkian slipped out after the Councilman and took off, following the Bishop. Bishop Braccio for his part, made his way directly to his chambers in the nearby Temple of Tyr's Waiting, poured himself a glass of brandy and collapsed onto his bed. Kevorkian noted that the Bishop looked old and worn out, clearly tired just from hauling his bulk to the Council Hall and back. A boy acolyte helped the Bishop out of his shoes and started giving him a foot message, at which point Kevorkian backed out of the door and ran.

Elissa invited Mel back into the Council chambers and closed the door so that the party, who were steadily teleporting into the center of the room now that it was clear, could brief her on what they found at Deckon Thar. The party gave an almost-entirely-accurate report about the pool still being missing from the Noga city. Mel asked why she did not have her husband magically dominated and she insisted that "men are idiots and such measures are seldom necessary." Elissa also thanked Mel for the "amusing gift" she had left in the pool chamber in Myth Drannor when they had parted.

Once Elissa left and they were free of the Council and relatively confident that they were not going to be killed or arrested in the city, Grimnir suggested that they should head for Valjevo Castle, in the old city, and see if they could do anything to remove the pool there from Elissa's list of readily available assets. Mel said they should hang tight and went to round up a large wagon, and then purchased a wagon-load of fish from her Xvart contacts.

6 Flamerule

The huge wagon full of fish, driven by a mostly undisguised Grimnir--skull-staff, raves, black robes, and all--rolled through the Slums and the ramshackle human settlements beyond the wall. The Slaughterer hid, rather grumpily, beneath the pile of fish and the rest of the party walked along as escorts for the world's most gothic fish monger. Traithe had heard rumors that the castle was occupied by giants, and they knew that Lord Maram was amassing an army, and so they hoped to get close to the place by bringing useful supplied for sale.

They passed through the Slums, and the no-man's-land of the ruined sections of town. As they got nearer the castle though, the roads became less and less ruble choked, finally opening up into a wide boulevard leading directly to the castle. The buildings around the Podol Plaza and the Stojanow Gate road were well clean and in good repair. A bazaar filled the plaza, filled with goblin, orc, kobold, and xvart merchants hawking their wares. Giants meandered among the crowds, easily plucking up anyone who disturbed the peace and hauling them off. Monstrous children ran around playing.

The sight of the more-or-less-human merchants sent a frightened hush over the bazaar. One orc child pointed at the wagon and got a solid look at the otherwise invisible Kevorkian, petrifying instantly. As soon as the crowd saw the new statue on the side of the road, they all went back to their own business, apparently much less worried about possible medusae than they had been by what looked like humans.

At this, Grimnir dropped all pretense and allowed his crown to show. All of the orcs and lesser creatures immediately became very polite, making way for the esteemed fish-monger. Grimnir used his staff to enslave a two-headed giant he saw passing by, putting it/them to work hauling the fish wagon.

Melastasya, ever the mercantilely-minded one, sought out a buyer for the massive supply of fish she had brought. Wandering through the bizarre, she found that the xvarts, who had supplied her with the fish in the first place, were already selling here, and were none to pleased by her attempts to undercut their primary business. Eventually she found a large pavilion, surrounded by a stockade filled with wolves and donkeys being milked by goblins, filled with dairy products for sale, and baring a large sign identifying it as "Cheeseaters'."

Mel recognized the cheeses as a kind and brand that she had seen sold in Phlan for hundreds of gold pieces per wheel. She had the nag that had been hauling their wagon slaughtered by the Ettin and tried to offer it to the goblins, saying they could feed it to their wolves. The headman, who called himself Dilltwit, seemed utterly offended and ordered that the dead horse be taken away, saying he would never feed such filth to his stock.

Mel said that she would like to sell him her fish, and he seemed intrigued, particularly if she could undercut the prices of the xvarts, but refused to state a price, instead saying that she wanted to trade for cheese. This he flatly refused. She then offered to buy the cheese, saying she could get it into other markets. When asked which markets specifically, she said she had contacts and ready buyers in Hillsfar. Dilltwit seemed both frightened and interested, asking if it was true that Hillsfarran humans ate their own dead. Mel said that her people, the gypsies did.

Finally Mel offered 15% of the going rate in Phlan for the cheese in bulk (apparently assuming that it was being re-sold in Phlan by a 3rd party). Dilltwit was completely appalled at her gall at offering such a stupidly low price. He insisted that resale by someone who eats their own dead would ruin his brand, and, even if he could offer her a wholesale price, her offer was just insulting, and asked her to leave.

Desiring to learn more about this odd settlement, Mel and Kevorkian (still invisible to everyone but children and puppies) made their way to a nearby bar, called 'The Pit', which they had seen the ettin leaving earlier. Mel was given fairly wide berth to begin with, but as soon as the dice came out of her pouch, all of the orc, goblin, and other-things patrons moved as far away as possible. When she asked if anyone was up for some gambling and laid money on the table, a terrified-looking orc went sprinting out the door.

Moments later a massive, red-haired giant forced his way through the door, bending in half to get his head under and buckling the frame out with his shoulders. He said that Mel was under arrest. Curious about the monstrous legal system, she put her hands up and allowed herself to be taken. The giant lifted her in one hand, passed her out the door of the pub, and carried her two blocks up the street to a large, stone building.

The inside was laid out like a typical police precinct, all clean white walls and hard iron bars. There was no paperwork and there were heavily armed and armored giants everywhere. Mel was simply tossed into a cell with close to twenty other prisoners and told that the magistrate would hear her case in the morning. The prisoners informed her that "The Boss" tended to pass very strict laws, but that the magistrates were both fair and efficient in adjudicating them.

Mel shadow-stepped out of the jail and joined her friends, where they had gathered on the roof of an old building at the north end of the bazaar. At the end of the long, main street hosting the bazaar was Valjevo Castle. The castle was a massive hexagonal structure, two hundred feet on a side, sixty-foot walls and towers at each corner and the centers of each side. One gate led into the castle from the south, through one of the corner towers, and the Stojanow River circled the walls to the north, east, and west.

A large army, mostly of hobgoblins, was encamped just outside the gates, their tents and picket lines running right up to the wall itself. Giants of several varieties patrolled the walls and manned the towers, their hulking forms standing out clearly despite the gathering dusk.

Determined to get into the castle and find the pool, Dame turned herself into a rat. Her tiny form slipped easily past the encamped soldiers and began ascending the walls. She learned quickly to take extra care, as shards of glass had been set into the mortar between the stones, a significant deterrent to anything larger than a rodent.

Once she reached the top of the wall, she headed to the tower just east of the gate, closest to the building on which her friends waited and just within message range. She began looking around for a possible diversion--some way that she could get the guards attention away from the wall long enough for her friends to dimension door inside. On the second floor of the tower, she found a munitions store: large rocks, spears, sandbags, and barrels of oil.

She went to one of the barrels and began gnawing through it, making a hole big enough for the oil to spill out on the floor. Olive oil unfortunately, not that she would have expected anything else in this region. She gnawed through the barrel some more, creating a few wood shavings as kindling, then began gnawing on the metal bands to try to get a spark. After close to an hour of working, she was no closer to making a significant fire.

Grimnir sent Huginn flying over to the tower, carrying a smoldering rag. The raven swooped through the window and dropped the rag to Dame. Finally the oil and wood chips caught enough to start smoking. Thirty minutes later there was a laughably small fire, and a shift change for the guards.

A red-skinned giant came down from the top of the tower and, seeing the oil and the smoke and the flames, it smiled, layed down, and began rolling around, enjoying the heat and putting out the fire. Dame scurried out of the tower before she got crushed, then messaged the others to come across. In all it was not a great distraction, but giants do not see so well in twilight. The party appeared on the wall, then quickly dimension doored across the castle's courtyard, where another army was encamped, into an upper room of the keep.

They appeared in a room that Muginn had previously informed them was empty. The room seemed small after the towers, scaled to beings of normal human height. Dust covered the floors and old white sheets covered ancient furniture. Mel and Traithe did a quick scout of the level, finding it similarly abandoned with a thick layer of dust on the floors, though the stairwells were brightly lit with torches, well maintained, and showed plenty of use. They retreated to the room where they'd come in.

After a short rest, they looked around the nearby rooms and found an old dumwaiter that looked like it had not been used in centuries. Figuring that the pool would be on the lowest level, as it was in Myth Drannor, they decided to use the dumbwaiter to get down without being seen. Mel went first, chimneying up to oil the pulleys, then returning to haul the dumbwaiter up to the top and spike it into place. She then went back in head first, climbing down to the very bottom of the shaft.

Hanging upside down, Melastasya pried open the lowest door and peered through to see a massive, busy kitchen. A hundred goblins scurried about, working at two huge brick ovens and numerous tables and work-benches to prepare dinner for the army outside. A never-ending line of servers came in through one door, then out another carrying large trays of food. One older-looking door in the far corner near the stoves appeared unused. Mel signaled for the others to come down, told them she was headed for the unused door, then shadow-stepped into the darkness under one of the tables near the line of servers.

At a signal from Traithe that the others were ready, Mel burst from hiding, overturning a table, knocking aside several servers with their trays, kicked over a tub of dirty dishes and sudsy water, the shadow-stepped to the door and kicked it open. In the sudden confusion, Traithe, magically disguised as a goblin cook, Dame, in rat form, and Kevorkian piled into the room and rushed for the door, with Traithe throwing down a grease spell in the middle of the room for good measure.

As the goblins slipped, tripped, and crashed their way around the room, Grimnir slipped out of the dumbwaiter. At the sight of his glowing crown of runes, the chaos stopped dead. Goblins froze where they were, bowed to the ground, and let the godling calmly walk across the room and shut the far door behind him before returning to the ruckus of trying to get their operation back under control. As soon as the door was shut, they seemed to completely forget about the strange beings who had caused the disturbance.

Behind the old door was a storage pantry filled with dry-goods, with a smaller door leading out the back. Dame stashed several large, fifty-pound bags of flour in her bag of holding, while Mel popped the lock on the other door. They came out into the castle's ancient servants corridors--narrow, low-ceilinged passages no more than two feet wide extending for quite a ways to their left and right. A spiral staircase made of ancient, rickety boards stood nearby, leading both down and up.

The party chose down. They descended one flight to the bottom of the servant's stairs, coming out into a similarly narrow passage in the basement. Mel led the way to the left, passing several doors, before stopping at one at random. She heard faint hissing noises behind the door and apparently thought that meant it was a good way to go.

She nudged open the small door, coming out into the back side of a small walk-in closet. Opening the closet door, they found an old barracks chamber, empty of troops, but not empty of life. The floor was covered with thousands of snakes. Kevorkian, holding his glowing staff, pushed his way up beside Mel. The snakes were aroused by the light and raised their heads, turning to look.

Unfortunately for the snakes, as natural animals, they could not only see Kevorkian but were drawn to him aggressively. A thousand snakes turned their heads and looked strait at the man with the basilisk's eyes. A wave of grayness spread out over the floor starting at the closet, as thousands of snakes rapidly petrified into a solid stone floor with strange snake heads rising up out of it.

To be continued...