Nehl Brisby - The Island Temple

     My apologies, dear reader, for the delay between the last entry and this one. What should have been a short excursion into another realm for another journal to decipher quickly spiraled out of control into an ordeal that would require its own entry to give in the detail it deserves. For now, all I'll say is that I was successful in retrieving the journal and have quickly translated the rest of the adventure Nehl and his companions began last time. It will still take some time for me to decipher the dialect of my new tome, so I will leave you with this final translation in its entirety while I work!

"Our trek up to the temple was mostly uneventful, as was our brief stay in the initial pair of rooms. There were several inter-connected puzzle-like mechanisms that needed to be solved to open the way forward. I did a bit of heavy lifting, but for the most part the magically-inclined seemed content to do the actual solving. Completing the final mechanism did have the unfortunate side effect of stranding us between the two chambers, but each group had enough individuals to feel mostly safe (Aelon was, I imagine, quite glad to not be on the same side as myself at the time) and so we pressed on.

 The following room explained why the builders of this place had seen fit to split our party. Each passage was filled with elementals of varying types, but their movements seemed incredibly erratic to us as we fought them. We later discovered that these creatures actually existed in both of our chambers simultaneously, and what seemed like random flailing to one of our groups was actually a perfectly normal, directed attack on the other. An interesting mechanism, but one that seems quite inefficient for defense. None of the creatures struck in large enough areas to present a terrible threat if their opposite lacked an actual target, meaning much effort was wasted on open air as we were left free to strike them from behind. Regardless, we defeated the magical menaces and prepared to move on again. Nathaniel pulled Alin off to the side for a quick chat before we left. I believe they meant for their conversation to be private, and I made no active attempts to eavesdrop, but their chatter was loud enough that I overheard regardless. Apparently some ambient aura in this long-abandoned temple was causing an old, magically-charged wound of Nathaniel's to act up in strange ways. I made a note to keep an eye on what that could mean for our party and continued into the next room. The two of them following soon after allayed my fears that it might have been an immediate problem for us.

 The next chamber was one large, open space, allowing our two groups to finally see each other again. Aside from the room's walls, much of the space seemed to disappear into a black void, with the only navigable space being two bridges. Aelon and Mayim were dealing with one that seemed to be made of ice, while Nathaniel, Alin, and I had one made of sand. We decided not to question how that would hold up, since magic was obviously quite strong in this place, if not used in particularly worthwhile fashions. Touching either bridge, surprise surprise, alerted the guards. In this case, the ice bridge generated icy constructs and wind beasts that seemed intent on using the friction-light surface to blow intruders into the depths. Our bridge, on the other hand, spewed out gargoyles and fire beetles. Figuring I might draw the flyers off and let the other two take care of the beetles, I decided to harness the ability of my verminous forefathers and take to the walls. This worked fairly well, for the most part, with Alin blasting most of what accosted them and Nathaniel ignoring the attempted strikes of most everything else. The bridges did continue to spill forth enemies, however, and eventually it became clear that the two were in danger of being overwhelmed. I didn't fear for their lives, necessarily (the critters thus far had seemed quite ineffectual at actually getting through our defenses), but several dozen minor injuries can quickly add up into much larger problems. 

I was fortunate, in my desire to rejoin my allies, that a gargoyle had decided to split off from the rest to accost me. I leaped to it, grabbing onto the beasts legs and using its own wing-power to leverage my momentum into a swing towards the bridge, dragging the stony creature along behind me and using it as a club against a beetle that had just emerged from the sand. All in all, I was quite happy with my return from the bridge. It makes me wish we had a more competent artist in the party to render the scene... but in the moment, I was merely happy to have made it in time to help clear off the minor swarm of minions and get my two allies moving back towards the far side of the room. We gave up on fighting most of the rest of the monsters that were still spilling forth from the walkway and opted to run full-tilt towards solid ground. Nathaniel ran faster than I had ever seen him move (he actually left melted pools of glass in his wake!) and reached safety first, and I was right behind him, but the shifting sands of the bridge tripped up Alin behind me, sending him sprawling onto his face and tumbling off the edge into the blackness. In a moment of terror, I turned on my heel and hurled myself back, sliding along the sand to the edge of the bridge and just barely managing to catch Alin's hand before he disappeared into whatever dangers awaited him in the dark. By this point, Mayim and Aelon had managed to cross their own bridge (I hear it was quite the spectacle, as most of Mayim's power surges were), and provided covering fire on the beetles and gargoyles that harassed me as I struggled to keep my grip on Alin's arm while still staying on a platform made of shifting sand. Eventually, the dangling wizard managed to complete his teleportation spell, sending himself to safety. I hurled myself into the open air and assumed my bat form to fly back to the rest of the party. It had been an ordeal and a half, but we managed to cross the bridges. 

I retained my bat form for the time being -- it is actually quite tiring to use it multiple times in quick succession and flight is quite a useful skill at times -- and we moved onward after a short rest, traveling through several twisting passages covered in what appeared to be the stories of this land's prior inhabitants prior to their disappearance (sadly, it was in a language none of us understood and we felt using languages to understand something carved into a wall would be a waste if there happened to be actual texts later on). Additionally, we came across a strange, floating crystal, not unlike the glowing gems we had encountered earlier. We approached it to examine what enabled it to fly, only to be met with a strange voice! Only Alin and Aelon understand the tongue it speaks, but when they reply to its queries in the common tongue, it is able to return in kind. Whatever power is behind the gem claims to know the water genasi who pointed us in this direction, who it calls 'Walter', and begs us to help it, going so far as to offer us anything and everything the previous adventuring party had managed to scavenge from this place on their original trek through. We agreed quickly enough, but the crystal gave us two last pieces of advice. The first was to 'ignore the riddle', and the second was that the 'best way to move forward is sometimes not to move at all'. 

Soon enough, we came upon a large crossroads in the tunnel. Written on a nearby wall in some primordial tongue (which Aelon could read, because of course he could) was the following riddle: I have many tongues but cannot taste/By me, most things are turned to waste/I crack and snap, yet I stay whole/I may take the largest toll/I assisted all of the first men/And I will pay them back again/Around me, people snuggle and sleep/Yet run when I am released from my keep/I jump around and leap and bound/The cold man wishes I he had found. Now, I'm not much of a scholar, but the game of riddles is a fairly universal one, and even I was able to puzzle out that the answer was 'fire' in short order. Still, the voice earlier had told us to ignore the riddle... The room at the center of the crossroads was filled with yet more sand, and each alternate path was sealed with a marked door. While one of those doors did indeed have a fire-like symbol on it, we decided we would take a risk on the mysterious voice's advice and disregard it for the time being. 

Alin took the first step into the room, only for the sand to begin to give way beneath him, pulling him towards the center of the room. He retreated quickly and we reassessed our options. Chances were quite good that reaching the middle of the room would then progress into sinking down into some chamber beneath the place (it occurs to me that these assumptions of ours may come to being in far too many of these puzzle dungeons...). As I no longer require oxygen to survive, I offered to take a trip through the choking sand and survey the area beneath. Aelon was particularly enthusiastic about this plan, as it included a risk of me never being seen again, and the rest of the party eventually agreed that it was the best method of getting a look at whatever rested down there. I took a step onto the sands and let it begin to pull me in and down as Alin prepared a sending ritual to contact me when I reached the bottom. The trip was nothing especially arduous, even if I had needed to hold my breath, and I fell gently into the chamber below exactly as we had surmised. It was much the same shape and size as the room above, but sported four strange circles, one of which had an odd pillar of ice in its center. The wizard's sending spell completed and I relayed this information, at which point they agreed to come down for a look themselves. 

The room itself seemed to hold nothing of interest for us aside from the ice, so we moved in to inspect it closer, finding what appeared to be a human-like silhouette in its center. Between the wizards and Nathaniel's enchanted hammer, he was mostly free in a matter of moments, at which point he awoke and stared at us. When he spoke, his voice was identical to that of the crystal earlier, but his words were... different. His tone shifted rapidly between one of utter confusion and perfect confidence, first saying he was glad to be free of the ice, then saying he would prefer to be re-frozen, that we needed to stay clear of the circles on the ground and that we should immediately stand within them. While we tried to figure out exactly what this meant, Nathaniel was struck with a particularly harsh bout of nausea as his strange, tattoo-like scars began to glow. This prompted the mysterious frozen genasi (apparently the previous party had been a whole group of them) to begin laughing maniacally, which Mayim responded to by clocking the man in the temple, knocking him out cold... at which point he bounded right back to his feet and completed his laugh! Staring directly at Aelon, he pronounced us all fools for falling into his trap 'just like all the others' as two stone creatures dropped into the room, followed by a feminine, demonic entity. The genasi merely laughs again, shouting that now we will all die (very cliche, I know) before dropping unconscious once more. 

The battle that followed was a fair bit more intense than our usual fare, as all three enemies were far more competent than the thugs and soldiers of the past, or at least much tougher. As we fought, the temperature of the room raised dramatically, finally hitting an unbearable level as the last enemy finally fell. Quickly finding the air within the circles to be far cooler than that in the rest of the room, we set aside our better judgement and took shelter in them, dragging the unconscious genasi with us for good measure. He took this moment to come to and scream in fear upon realizing where we stood. We might have considered this an overreaction, had the rest of the room not suddenly burst into roaring flames that, upon contact with the air above the circles on the ground, turned into a frigid blast that threatened to trap us in the same pillars of ice that we'd found the genasi man in. The fire eventually died off, along with the cold, but there were signs that it intended to come again and again until we stopped moving. Alin and Aelon worked together to alter the ring we're taking shelter in, reducing its temperature-warping effects to convert the flaming heat into a bearable chill. When the next wave of fire died, they bolted over to the next closest circle and did some tinkering there, which reacted to the following fire blast by instantly forming a complete pillar of ice from floor to ceiling. Mayim dashed over to it, expecting to climb it into the sandy ceiling to safety, but encountered a barrier of strong winds that was keeping those sands in place and creating the current that had initially dragged us down. As she rebounded, my instinct to play the hero kicked in again, and I bolted across the room, nearly sprinted up the frozen column, and bull-rushed the halfling up into the ceiling just as the next wave of fire assaulted the circle, encasing the pillar in yet more ice. 

To my shame, I found myself lost in the churning sands after entering them, but Mayim kept her head long enough to make good use of her connections to elements of Storm to nullify the section of the wind barrier keeping the ceiling aloft around me, dumping me back into the room below and creating a much easier path up than the slippery ice. Once everyone had climbed this sandy path to safety, the vindictive little sorceress saw fit to nullify the wind barrier for the entire room, dropping all of the sand down into the chamber below, blocking or breaking whatever mechanisms had been rhythmically pumping fire into it and causing the room to eventually settle into an uneasy peace. Finally regaining consciousness for the third time today, the genasi began to thank us for the rescue, only for his demeanor to shift mid-sentence and his words of thanks to turn into taunts and jeers. Mayim, either out of surprise or impatience, immediately punch the man again, though unfortunately for him she aimed for his other head this time... It shut him down just as effectively as before, though I didn't envy the lasting ache the hit would likely bring when he inevitably came to again. While he was conveniently unconscious again, our two scholars took the time to finally look over the man to see who or what might be possessing him. They fail to come up with anything specific, but apparently it's a force tied to the elemental chaos, and some of the energies involved resonate quite strongly with Mayim. It's around this point that Nathaniel speaks up and points out that each time the possession took place, the controlling force addressed us as 'you four'. We were surprised that none of us had noticed this odd circumstance, but more interesting was the fact that one of us apparently didn't 'count' in this thing's estimations. We reasoned it could easily be Mayim, whose energies resonated with its own, Nathaniel, who seemed to have magical ties to this place as well, or myself, given my undead nature. Unable to come to any definite conclusions, we eventually moved on again. 

Along the passage to the next chamber, through the fire-marked door we had ignored earlier, Nathaniel was struck with another debilitating wave of sickness. Mayim was struck with an idea, however, and handed him her ring of elemental affinity. Wearing it does seem to alleviate his discomfort quite a bit, surprisingly enough. This interaction fascinated Aelon, who proceeded to drone a bit about how the elemental ring and Nathaniel's Spellscar must have ties to the elemental energies of this island, though he claimed neither was quite 'in sync' with them, so I was left unenlightened to what any of that could mean. 

The passage eventually gave way to a large staircase, though before we could even mount the first step, the genasi woke up once again. It seemed that Mayim's thorough punishment of his head and groin area had temporarily cured him of his possession (not the conventional cure, I'm sure, but surprisingly effective in this instance) and he finally managed to introduce himself as Ferrick and thank us properly for helping to get him out of his entrapment. He also agreed to let us bind him before we moved any farther, just in case he became possessed again and was overtaken by violent urges, so that was pleasant. At the top of the stairs, we were met with a giant, crystalline ring floating in the center of a large, circular room. In the four cardinal directions were yet more sets of stairs, each leading up to some new room. Mayim approached the ring with interest, only to be met with a villainous, echoing voice that sounded quite a lot like the possessed tone Ferrick had used. He seemed a bit angry that Mayim had interrupted his earlier monologue and, further proving his dire unoriginality, told us that it was yet again time to die. He attempted to go on, but Mayim found the nearest human-esque object (an engraving in the wall) and punched that in its family jewels as well... and this worked, apparently, as the voice howled in rage and the room shook slightly. When the voice fails to return, we decided we should check out the branching rooms. 

Each chamber was elementally themed and has a fairly simple puzzle or collection of minor monsters guarding a strange, glowing crystal. The first chamber we entered all together, encountering a pitch-black maze and a creature within the walls who would buffet us with gusts from the side. The darkness was of no concern to me, of course, but the little critter was quite annoying. For the next two chambers, we split up, with Mayim and Aelon going up one staircase and the rest of us moving to the other. Our way led to a fairly standard (in our line of work) chamber full of aggressive braziers that launched fire at us. Nothing we couldn't handle. The other pair claimed to have found a large, stone-filled room with the crystal guarded by another possessed genasi, who Mayim proceeded to punch in the groin 'for consistency'. Alin made it a point to dramatically sweep his hands across the crystals he acquired, slipping them off into their magical storage compartment with some admittedly impressive sleight of hand. With three crystals down, we then entered the water-themed chamber, and this one gave us a bit of pause. 

The crystal here was not immediately visible, resting behind a large central pillar, and the entire room was filled with small rivers of water. Nathaniel was the first to accidentally touch one of these streams as we moved deeper into the room, prompting it to rise up, engulf him, and drag him down into the floor. Moment later, we heard a loud pounding on what appeared to be a bricked-up doorway that leaked a fair amount of water. We quickly determined that these must be reservoirs of some sort, and the rivers were designed to dump intruders into them. We worried for a moment that our fighter friend might be in some trouble, being one of the few of us that this sort of a trap could actually pose a serious threat to (considering I don't breathe, the eladrin and human can teleport, and the halfling can transform into lightning), but he proved resourceful enough, pulling out an enchanted dagger he picked up some time ago and carving a doorway into the ceiling, opening up a passage into a small pocket dimension where he was able to breathe while we puzzled out the rest of the chamber. 

We eventually reached the center of the room, where there was a moderately deep pool with a silver key at the bottom of it. Both Alin and I attempted to use indirect means to reach down into the water to retrieve the key, but some magical force stopped us, striking out as it did with Nathaniel, though with far less success as we were expecting it this time. When we considered that the force in the water might be some form of advanced slime, I attempted to coax it out of the pool with my gaze, but to no avail. Aelon took a closer look and determined that, while lifelike, the entire water system was little more than an elaborate, enchanted trap. Meanwhile, Alin finally manages to wrangle one of his mage hand summons around the key and pull it free of the pool, only to be engulfed himself and deposited in another of the water chambers. Before I could grab the key from the floor, Mayim bolted by and grabbed it up herself, immediately attempting to jam it into the solid rock of the nearest sealed chamber. Aelon, noticing that there is an actual keyhole in the rock, decided to assist the over-enthusiastic sorceress by physically lifting her off of the ground, moving her to insert the key into the hole, and twisting her whole body to turn it. Silly as it looked, it worked, and the wall fades away to reveal a wall of water, and within it the crystal for this chamber. As the artificer extracted the thing from its crevice, the water attempted to lash out and drag him under as well, only to lose power as the crystal left the water, dropping harmlessly to the ground and returning to the pool. The trap taken care of, we quickly opened the other two chambers and released our party members before returning to the central chamber to see what our efforts had wrought. 

Understandably, the echoing voice was none too pleased with us, and his screams shook the room so terribly that the ceiling began to gave in, and as the sunlight from outside struck the space within the ring, a gargantuan head began to fade into view. It looked something like a horse, if you were to described what a horse looked like in very general terms to a blind sculptor. When it had finished appearing, suddenly seeming to be wearing the ring like some sort of collar, it began to move, extracting itself from the floor. Thinking quickly, we jumped after the thing, landing on its back as we found ourselves suddenly back on the surface of the island, moving steadily towards the shore. We were now riding atop the dreaded Thunderhooves that Walter had warned us about. 

Having no time to waste, we decided that the ring was almost certainly Thunderhooves' source of power and I dashed forward to attempt to shatter it. Meanwhile, the beast's lumbering nearly sent Mayim off its back and down into the jungle, but she managed to catch hold of some vines across its back and stay aboard, coincidentally discovering a strange, glowing glyph. Attacking it, she discovered that her dagger sank into the creature's stony hide as easily as it would pierce flesh, and the beast howled in pain, its direction wavering as it continued to try and shake us loose. From that point on, Nathaniel and I wailed on the ring until it broke while our mages scurried about finding more of those glyphs to attack. It was a tremendous effort, made more difficult by the creature quickly closing the distance between itself and our ship, threatening the remove our way home from existence. Several luckily-timed stabs to its vital glyphs eventually caused it to divert entirely from that track, though not before Walter had run out like a maniac and gotten himself trod upon, vanishing as Thunderhooves' massive feet touched down near his screaming, flailing form just as he'd told us would happen. It was certainly a shame at the time, but we were far too busy making sure the thing died to mourn.

When the last sigil was shattered, the beasts animation more or less ceased, sending it collapsing into the jungle with a resounding crash. We more or less landed on our feet some distance away, but quickly returned to the colossal corpse to survey the scene. The ring on the beasts neck had never shattered completely, but had cracked so severely that all power had apparently leaked from it. Aelon claimed he would be able to fix it, given time. Walter also appeared again as the beasts final death throes completed, still shouting some nonsense about it needing to 'heed his authority'. Despite the target of his ranting being dead, he didn't cease shouting right away. Mayim muttered something about needing to 'complete the set' before giving her now-trademark punch to the madman, silencing him for the moment. It seemed that Thunderhooves' death marked the end for whatever malevolent force had been plaguing this land, and over the next few days there was no sign of its presence. The genasi we had left unconscious in the temple were retrieved, reunited with their mad ally, and we went to work constructing a floating sledge on which to transport the magical ring back to our ship, as well as removing Thunderhooves' head so as to actually begin moving it. Within a week, we were able to load everyone aboard the Bronze Fang and set sail for home. Since the ring was too large to actually load onto the ship, we were forced to tow it behind us, meaning we had to remain sea-bound for the voyage home. Thankfully, the genasi who weren't Walter were competent sailors and have aided us in the trip significantly. As I finish writing this, Nathaniel tells me we've sighted land in the distance, so it seems we may finally be free of this dull boat for at least a few days.

Nehl Brisby 

Nehl Brisby - Long Overdue

"It has been far too long since I've been able to log the events of our travels.. After the ordeal with Telicanthus, the rest of the Copper Fang and I had gotten into contact with a Githzerai by the name of Tokk'it, apparently the party's airship pilot on the trip into Sayre in the first place.We intended to set off for the strange isle beyond Nefelus that we had learned about from the shopkeep several weeks ago, but we required a pilot and navigator, not to mention someone to watch the ship while we went ashore. The man came highly recommended by my fellow Fang members, and he certainly seemed competent enough on first meeting. Before actually setting off, we made sure to purchase supplies for a far longer adventure than what we had planned, as our luck has long since proven to be some of the worst in this plane of existence. As I required none of the usual food supplies the party typically carried with them, I suggested that they buy the shares I would have consumed anyway as insurance. Fish and birds I managed to capture en route would more than suffice for my sustenance. I felt that Aelon perhaps suspected I would use them as my provisions, but he needn't worry about that. It would be a last resort at the very least, and I would likely dive into the ocean looking for the nearest shark before I would drain my companions dry. 

Nevertheless, we were off. Having since rechristened our vessel the Sky Fang (not the most original name, but it was the most popular of those suggested), spirits were high and the journey proceeded with little of note, thus the lack of these journal entries in the intervening time. Even better, the party had managed to get into contact with Mo'kaw, their old associate who had hired me on as his replacement, and I had communicated with Sayre's rat population, and between the two forces, we arranged for our headquarters in the old temple of Ioun to be refurbished and cleansed of the influence of the Filth King by the time we returned.We reached Nefelus well ahead of schedule, but stopped only for a short while to rest and refresh our supplies. On leaving, I noted an odd phenomenon in the winds. The warm, almost tropical gusts that had accompanied us thus far from Sayre gave way to an odd burst of chill winds moving in a different direction. These wayward winds lasted only for a few days -- a week at most -- but I did find them strange, especially when they disappeared as quickly as they came. 

(A rendering of the isle of Nefelus)

Eventually, Mayim (who seemed to be going stir-crazy from having little more than my sluggish, drained birds to fire lightning at for so long) spotted our target: the mysterious, unnamed island. Stranger even than the lack of information about this place was the fact that there already seemed to be complex constructions on it. Formations of tall, stony pillars that could not have possibly formed on their own. Had we sailed out here on a regular ship, we might not have been able to see these formations due to the thick forests surrounding them (likely the intent of their constructors), but from our aerial viewpoint, they stuck out like a sore thumb. 

We did not have long to admire the island, however, as Aelon noticed something. The ship had been experiencing minor jolts every now and again for some time now, and most of us had written it off as errant gusts of wind or unfortunate birds, but now these bumps and bucks were having a secondary effect. The psionic echoes that gave our ship lift and propulsion were beginning to flicker out with each wave of motion, and if they faded out completely, we would surely plummet to our deaths! Thinking quickly, we warned Tokk'it to start taking us down into the sea and our casters began working with the psionic echoes, hoping to keep them working for as long as possible, while Nathaniel and I rushed topside to see if we could do anything from there. As it happened, we could! Already starting to drop from the waning power, the ship was rocking far more violently than before, and its sails had begun coming loose from the masts. We scrambled to secure them, and were mostly successful. We kept the ship upright and on course as it fell faster and faster, eventually losing all resistance against gravity and dropping into the sea. Wood creaked and anything not bolted down bounced and scattered about the ship, but we had kept the ship operating long enough for it to safely touch down into the water. Now were were nothing but an undermanned sailing ship drifting just a few miles off of an island so mysterious that it lacked both a name and a position on any normal map. This was... Unfortunate.

Within minutes of touching the water, rhythmic waves began beating against the ship, and soon we were boarded. First, watery tentacles burst up from the sea and began slapping us around. These were followed by what appeared to be water elementals of some sort, less attached to the ocean than their tendril counterparts but still completely composed of liquid. There may have been other combatants after them, but it was around this point that I was dragged from the decks into the sea itself. Thankfully, there were actually fewer dangers here than on the ship, but it also gave me a chilling vision of what we were actually attacking. Beneath the ship's hull floated a massive collection of sigils and runes, suspended in an amorphous mass of discolored water. Whatever we had been fighting above was simply a part of a much larger whole. Ever the fool in combat, I likely would have attempted to tangle with this part of the beast directly had Alin not seen me go overboard. The next free moment he had, he teleported me back up to the 'safety' of the upper decks. I'm thankful now, of course, but at the time it seemed like little improvement. 

Eventually, we defeated the humanoid water-beasts and inflicted enough punishment on the tendrils to send the whole beast into retreat, and we were left floating alone once more. Quietly, we tended our wounds, mopped up some of the water, and collected a few magical shards that the beast had dropped as its fragments were slain. While Alin prepared and cast a ritual that would allow us to brave the ocean should the monster return, the rest of us focused on sailing the flightless Air Fang up to the island. 

We arrived near a fairly clean beach, a place that might have actually seemed quite pleasant had we not been attacked on approaching it, but found to convenient place to actually anchor the ship. Circling the island, we eventually found a bay filled with a large number of stony ruins. From the looks of things, this had once been some sort of port or docks district, but nearly everything organic in the place had long since rotted away. We sailed into the center of the bay and dropped the anchor. After a short discussion, we decided to head to shore before night actually fell for a cursory inspection. Giving Tokk'it one of our Sending stones, we left him to watch the ship and swam (with the assistance of Alin's ritual from earlier) to shore. There we found yet more ruins, but several chunks in particular that drew our attention. Despite the low light of the setting sun, we could tell that a few pillars and sections of stone wall were not casting shadows as they should have been. Immediately, this led Mayim to fire a bolt of lightning at a bare section of wall, doing little more than scorching the inanimate surface. Alin, being a bit more attentive and pragmatic, used a Mage Hand to poke around beneath one of the ruins, pulling it back to reveal an odd sort of crystal that shone with a bright light very reminiscent of sunlight, which explained why it was not an obvious 'glow'. Beneath every 'shadowless' bit of stone, we found similar gems, like naturally occurring sunsrods. 

Our survey of the bank more or less complete with this discovery, we gathered our new light sources and returned to the ship. Tokk'it had seen nothing while we were gone, so the party was content to sleep. For my part, I found the prospect of sitting awake and motionless for yet another night on this ship appalling, and decided to do a bit of scavenging while still under the effects of Alin's ritual. I dove into the sea beneath our ship and began my investigation there. Similar ruins to those on the shore could be found here, suggesting that whatever settlement was once here extended onto the water as well as up to it. I found several more of the light gems as well, but most importantly, I found a strange hunk of rusted metal sticking up from the sand of the sea floor. Further digging found that this metal was a piece of the bow of a ship, though I had no intention of attempting to excavate the rest of the thing. The designs that covered the metal were, strangely, the signs of many different deities, including Pelor, Ioun, and others that I could not define. Even more noteworthy was the fact that these symbols, and the way in which they were arranged, matched nothing else that I could see of these submerged ruins. This insinuated that the ship was, perhaps, another visitor like ourselves, perhaps scuttled by the same monster that threatened us only a few hours earlier. Intrigued by this, I returned to the ship to dry off and get the short amount of rest my body did require from time to time. Once above the surface of the ocean again, I notice that there is an occasional rumbling coming from the shore, as of a distant quake or explosion. My fellow party members confirm that they heard these sounds as well the following morning... 

We decide, in light of the strange sounds from the shore, to take Tokk'it with us to the shore this time. While he may not be of much use in a stand-up fight, none of us are comfortable leaving him alone and defenseless on the ship for an extended period of time. However, we do leave an active Sending stone on the upper decks as a sort of surveillance system should any real threat attempt to damage or steal our vessel. This turns out to have been a better plan than any of us realized, as we're barely on shore for ten minutes before we begin to hear things from the stone. First some scrambling, then an odd voice. 

'A ship? A ship that made it past Guppy?' The voice said, sounding surprised. Still, the voice didn't sound like something making it past 'Guppy' meant that dinner had arrived. I was tempted to reply immediately, but Mayim responded first. Putting on a foolish voice, she began to warn the voice away, on account of the 'Boat Ghosts'. Knowing how superstitious tribal societies tended to be, this actually seemed like a worthwhile ruse to pursue, so I joined her in it, hoping to perhaps scare this man off. To our dismay, he seemed more fascinated than terrified, and tried to strike up a conversation with the Ghosts. Sighing, Alin stepped in and kept him occupied while we moved to return to the ship. However, as he talked, he started mentioning specific details about the party. When questioned as to how he knew about us, he simply stated 'Because I'm watching you right now!' Sure enough, Aelon soon spotted a form in the crow's nest, holding our Sending stone in one hand and manipulating a disk of water to serve as a lens in the other. 

We stopped approaching immediately, unsure of this being's intentions, but he claimed to have information for us, in his inane, babbling way, and so he took off, diving into the sea and climbing up onto the far bank before running off into the forest. We followed, but as we did so, the rhythmic booming returned, and each time the sound reached us, the world seemed to lurch forward, as if we had blacked out for a moment and then woken up while still on our feet. Despite this strange feeling, we managed to reach the point where the figure disappeared and follow the previously-unseen trail he'd taken. At the end of it, a ragged, seaweed-bearded Genasi stood at the entrance to a large cave, with a cobbled-together door held open invitingly for us. Against our better judgement, we entered the man's home. 

Luckily, the Genasi (whose name I don't think we ever asked, now that I think about it) was actually friendly enough, offering us seaweed tea and telling us to make ourselves at home while he discussed what was going on. Apparently, something from this mysterious island was the reason for the massive cleft in the center of Nefelus; some unspeakable horror from the Elemental Chaos that threatened the entire island and was somehow stopped on this small chunk of land. Even the original inhabitants of the area had been embroiled in this danger, and thus had been doomed to die in the 'solution' to the problem. What did survive, however, was a beast that the Genasi called 'Thunderhooves'. Something bound so deeply with the Elemental earth that it could altar reality to wipe living beings out of existence. It seems those minor hiccups in time we'd been experiencing were simply a side effect of his presence, temporarily removing us from reality before placing us back where we were. A terrifying thought, to be sure, and something I hoped we didn't have to experience again any time soon... 

As for the Genasi, he had come with a larger crew, but they had all gone into some temple for an artifact of some sort and hadn't yet returned. Despite our assumptions, he claimed that they were most certainly not dead and would be back any day now. We decided to leave him with his hope. That said, it was our turn to head into that same temple for the 'power source' we had been led to believe rested on this island. A power source we now desperately needed to get off of this island. We thanked the Genasi for his hospitality, gathered our things, and headed off into the jungle to find our prize and, possibly, the true fate of this odd man's crew..."

Nehl Brisby - The Sting

[Continued from the last entry]

"I arrived just as the rest of the party was clambering up onto a roof adjacent to the warehouse where Amyria and Odos had been staying, with several Githzerai in tow for some reason. I assume they had offered to help and Mayim simply hadn't told them no yet... 

As we entered the courtyard, the signs of our combat with the beggar cult from earlier all but gone, Telicanthus and Pennel pulled off from the group of city guards (I noticed at this point that his personal contingent of Githyanki had slinked away. This worried me) and told them that a dangerous group of insurgents slept inside of the warehouse, making this the perfect time to strike. The fools, having no real reason not to trust the Githyanki Lord, charged in. To their credit, they did so with all due trepidation and readiness -- not like idiots who expect to meet no resistance -- but it mattered little, as they were met with an empty room full of straw-padded crates and little else. One of the Githzerai huddled with the party was nudged by Mayim, and he leaped down to lock the warehouse door. I remain convinced that this was more for the guards' safety than our own, but Mayim claimed otherwise. Either she's going soft, or for some reason she's attempting (poorly) to display the slightest bit of humility. My money is on the latter. 

Telicanthus' momentary confusion as the the sudden Githzerai underling was quickly overtaken by the surprise of the Copper Fang descending upon him and his servant from the rooftops, yelling at them to surrender and pay for his crimes. Unfortunately, the pompous ass quickly recovered from the shock of our attack and laughed at us as Githyanki poured from the surrounding alleyways and one of the Githzerai -- A female by the name of Galia, who had been rescued with the others of her kind before I joined up with the party -- suddenly turned and struck down one of her own squad. Mayim later reported that, in fighting the woman, she seemed vacant and sluggish, much like previous enemies they had fought who had been the possessed forms of former allies. She neglected to slay the poor creature, hoping to find a cure for the possession and perhaps save her life rather than end it mercifully. I find this notion naiive, but noble. Something to expect from Mayim, perhaps. She's quite immature in both humor and violence, and this lends itself to a somewhat child-like take on the realities of the world... I'm surprised she's survived this long with that world-view intact, but I find it refreshing... 

The combat with Telicanthus was quite difficult, as both he and Pennel proved to be formidable opponents. However, in time, we managed to overpower them and render both unconscious. We were thoroughly exhausted by this point, but the night was far from over. Mayim and I rushed to the warehouse and opened the door, which was already near breaking from the beating the guards inside were applying to it. The captain of this particular company stormed to the forefront of the group and demanded to know what was going on, surveying the violent scene in front of him that he had only been able to overhear prior. The gods were truly with us for once, as this man proved to be quite sensible for a town guard, taking our story quietly and immediately agreeing to follow our lead for the time being, until such a time as we were able to further prove our case. He did insist on taking custody of the prisoners (we had since tied up any combatant who hadn't been killed Galia in our brawl), so that we would have no chance to assassinate any of them now that we'd gained his temporary trust. We considered this reasonable, and once he was content with the state of things in and around the warehouse, he joined the rest of the party in a mad rush to find Amyria's company (and eventually the rest of the coalition members) to see if they were alright. For my part, I slipped into an adjacent alley and assumed the form of a bat, taking to the skies to scout from above and keep an eye out for other, perhaps unrelated signs of violence.

My eye being elsewhere, the rest of the party found Amyria first, standing in another open avenue with a sword in the gut of one of her followers. It seemed that he, like Galia, had been possessed at some point over the last few weeks and had attempted to strike while everyone was rushed and distracted. Thankfully, Amyria was not so easy to catch off guard. The rest of the party stopped to discuss what's happening with her, so I decided that now was an excellent time to warn Mayim's General Taramin of the danger the Githyanki posed to his life. Getting some directions towards the central Guard Tower in the city from Mayim via the sending stone, I quickly located the General's room from the outside and made a moderately dramatic entrance, crashing through the window and regaining my human form. I was quite fortunate that the man didn't seem to have his sword sheathed by his side at that moment, as I'm not sure I would have survived the landing otherwise. Taramin was on me in an instant, obviously ready to fight off whatever threat I might pose. When I made it known that I was a member of the Copper Fang, and thus knew Mayim, he softened up slightly and listened to my warning of possible attempts on his life by the Githyanki that now roamed the city streets. Taking into account the fact that I had yet to act violently towards him thus far, Taramin nodded and accepted my words. He told me to go and gather the party, if I was who I claimed to be (my absence during the gathering at Telicanthus' mansion meant I had left little impression on the people there...), and prepare to root out these murderous individuals wherever they were. 

The rest of the night was spent in minor combat, bursting into the homes of Coalition members and people of some political clout in the city, halting assassinations and protecting the general populace from those few Githyanki who were villainous to deviate from their stated goal enough to attempt some theft and looting. By the time the sun began to rise on the city of Sayre, reports of violence (and Githyanki in general) lessened and eventually ceased altogether. The only lives lost were the Githzerai attacked by Galia and a few city guards that Assassins had gotten the drop on before being apprehended by larger forces. Perhaps not a happy notion, but in the grand scheme of things, these were acceptable losses."

There is a span of several weeks between this entry and the next.

"Telicanthus, after much coaxing and some 'persuasion' from the city guard (apparently they had offered to bring Mayim in as assistance if he remained obstinate), finally confessed his crimes against the City of Sayre, and we were released from our probationary state of the last few weeks. Many of the actions we had undertaken in protecting the city and its inhabitants had been quite violent, and Taramin had made a point about being sure these actions were fully justified before letting us off entirely. Now that our names were fully cleared, we were lauded as heroes -- for the second time, for everyone but myself -- and Taramin saw fit to grant us several magical items found in a raid on Telicanthus' manor as rewards for our service. In addition, we were offered the use of said manor for a short time as a sort of base of operations before we move on to our next adventure and the land is put up for sale. We declined, much to my own disappointment, but instead the land was given to Odos and the other Githzerai refugees, which is a noble enough purpose for the place. For our own part, we once again raided the ruined Temple of Ioun, this time ousting the beggars for good, and have set up a temporary holding here.

All said, I quite enjoyed this strange turn of events. Had I not been convinced to join up with this band of violent psychopaths, I might never had found out what it felt like to be truly appreciated by a community. Vampire or not, noble or not, the people of Sayre all know me by name, now, and are quick to shout words of thanks or promises of free drinks in my direction while I walk down the street. It is a... pleasant situation. I hope that we can remain here a bit longer, that I might better appreciate what it means to be admired and appreciated, instead of ignored, reviled, or resented...

Nehl Brisby"

Nehl Brisby - Githyanki Secrets

The pen strokes in this entry are particularly heavy. This leads me to believe that it was written soon after the addendum from the last entry. It seems Mr. Brisby was just a bit annoyed with the childish mage at this point.

"After digging in the rubble for several minutes to make a passage I could fit through in my rat form, I returned to the party cleaning up after what seemed to have been a quite brutal, rapid fight. Every enemy was soundly unconscious, bound in rope, and slid back into their bedrolls. Following this spectacle, I came across Alin, the blighter, calmly cleaning his gear while a mage hand wrote in this very journal. How he had gotten it away from me in the first place I have no idea, but I will certainly remember this moment should any other items of mine happen to go missing... 

The room we now rested in contained a very large, very deep pit. According to Nathaniel, the body we could see at the bottom was, in fact, thrown in there by one of his allies. Assuming this is the truth, I would imagine his goal was to alert whoever might have been down there already. Nobody else seemed to consider this an issue, however, and we quickly lowered ourselves into the pit to investigate. Below were a landing and a large chamber, separated by a small chasm bridged by a wooden board. Alongside this chasm was a furnace that appeared to be used for glassblowing and glass smelting. I admit that glassworking is not a specialty of mine, but even had the forge not been surrounded by chunks of colored glass, the large sphere of the stuff in the center of the room ahead might have given it away. The surface of the sphere was nearly opaque, but the vague shadows of a few humanoid forms could be made out in the center of the hollow orb. Mayim, ever the diplomat, decided to enter the thing and attempt to speak with them. By this, I assume she intended to fill the insulated chamber with as much lightning as she could muster. 

The moment one of the sphere's hatches was opened, the sphere reacted, sending out radiating waves of psychic energy. Several of the others seemed pained by it, but I remained unharmed physically. Mentally, however, I was driven into a state of agitated bloodlust, and I charged forward wildly, swiping at the Githyanki as they were thrown from their spherical hidey-hole by Mayim's attacks. Alin, suddenly serious as anyone else in the room, had the presence of mind to separate me from my unfortunate victims with his own magic. He deposited me near Aelon (I wonder if, in his maddened mind, he sees Aelon's similar name and superior knowledge as some kind of threat to his position as the party wizard?), but the shock of the throw itself was enough to jog me out of my crazed state. I had slain one of the githyanki, but the others managed to fight back for a time before we subdued them, leaving them alive. 

There was one strange moment of note during the fight, which was otherwise quite standard as cave brawls go. While Alin and Aelon subdued the psychic emanations of the sphere, Nathaniel -- who had taken a few swipes when combat began -- slipped over to me and requested my aid. As he knew my penchant for healing with the life force of our enemies, he was hoping to borrow a bit of my energies to heal a small blade wound the Githyanki had landed on him, which was bleeding quite badly. In the heat of the moment, I acquiesced, and he seemed to enact some kind of ritual. Blood seeped from my very skin and wove through the air until it reached Nathaniel's wound and sealed it. He seemed slightly put off by the fact that the wound was still quite obviously present, but I believe he had not taken into account the fact that such necrotic, life-draining effects would be hampered quite a bit by my undead nature. Still, it was an odd reversal of fates to be drained of life like that... Funnily enough, Aelon witnessed this exchange and took it in stride. Either he only has a problem with me due to my vampirism, or he is gradually coming to terms with these magical means of exchanging life... Perhaps in the future he might even allow me to borrow some of his life force, should the need arise... 

However, I am getting off track. The combat was quickly over, and we all turned our attentions to the glass sphere. It still vibrated with internal energies. Aelon and Alin noted that the four Githyanki we had just defeated were actually required to hone these energies and direct them towards the communicatory purpose of the sphere. With them gone, feedback from residual psychic messages and those that might be coming in from other such spheres would eventually leak out and wreak havoc on the minds of the city folk above. Thinking quickly, Mayim entered the sphere and let out a terrible explosion of thunder from its center. The pressure and force created a massive spider web of cracks on one side of the thing, into which I slotted my scythe. Using the leverage this provided, I managed to pull the sphere apart, and it shattered as its perimeter was well and truly broken apart. In fact, the destruction of the thing was so complete that the small, stone bridge that ran through the center of the sphere shattered apart as well! We all dove for cover from the falling glass, but it turned out to be mostly harmless, as the individual pieces were quite small and light. There was, however, an... odd sensation. As the sphere broke, it let off a sort of shockwave, similar to those from before but both different and more powerful. For a few moments, it was as if our thoughts were being forcibly removed from our minds. Not that our thoughts were being inhibited or our memories altered, but... it was similar to having an invasive force reading your thoughts, but if that reading was accomplished by tearing the thoughts out entirely before returning them to their rightful place moments later. A strange and worrying sensation, to be sure, but there was little we could do about it now, with this pile of glass shards and stone.

Our job here done, we exited the pit and Mayim and Nathaniel grabbed two of the guards they had fought while I was trapped by the rock slide. Apparently these two had seemed quite important, and they could perhaps be interrogated for information. This seemed like an intelligent plan. We quickly cleared the tunnel we had entered through (Nathaniel using a ritual of repair that he had kept prepared for some time, now to make the walls even more stable than they had been the first pass through) and prepared to leave, when suddenly we heard a commotion coming from a different tunnel. From the sound of the voices, we realized that Telicanthus and Pennel were approaching from the manor house's secret passage. In that moment, we hatched a plan. 

I was given one of the party's Sending Stones and immediately assumed my ethereal form (it occurred to me yet again how wonderful these vampiric powers really are... Had it been on my own terms, I would likely have taken them gladly... Should I ever atone for the lives of my family, I still might...) and moved back into the tunnels to spy on them as they looked over our work. The two men seemed quite agitated, having heard the shattering glass orb and now seen the many unconscious bodies stuffed into their bedrolls like stuffing in so many turkeys. When they reached the sphere's resting place, Telicanthus finally swore aloud. "This is the work of those damnable adventurers, no doubt. I had thought them off my trail after their cordial meeting earlier today, but they are cleverer than I thought." He turned. "Pennel, you have the list I gave you. It is time... We must gather what guards we can and kill them all." My thoughts immediately leapt to the members of the SCPD, and I relayed this information to the rest of the party. They agreed, and set out immediately for the old warehouse where Amyria was staying with the other Githzerai to warn her and begin collecting them to escape the city. Mayim added that she also intended to warn a 'General Taramin' that she had met in Telicanthus' manor. The man had apparently not seemed to keen on the Githyanki Lord, and it was quite likely that Telicanthus would take this opportunity to remove as many political enemies as possible in one fell swoop. 

Both groups set out immediately, Telicanthus and Pennel to an old guard house to collect men for their murderous deeds, and the rest of the Copper Fang to the warehouse district to try to prevent said deeds. I followed the former group, watching as the number of men following in the wake of Telicanthus' carriage grew and they made their way towards the city slums. We were running out of time, and I had my doubts that even we could defeat the force that was heading straight for the party... Things were getting desperate."

[To Be Continued...]

Alin Guest Entry - Off the Record B&E

I am not sure how to describe what it is I have transcribed here. When Nehl discussed the insanity of this team, I had assumed some form of sociopathy, perhaps a true psychopath in Mayim, but this... This is something different entirely. It seems, by some means, Alin the Wizard got his hands on this Journal, and decided it would be fun to write his own entry. I can only pray this never happened again, for both my sanity and my safety... His handwriting is quite pleasant, however.

“Hey Nehl! You totally dropped this when you got caught by that cave in and I stole it from Nathaniel because I wanted to see what you’d been distracted with. Just so you know, I have this nifty ritual I know called Comprehend Languages, so you might as well not bother with the code. [This sentence is followed by a crude drawing of a mocking face, done in excessively bright colors.] 

I also know one called Explosive Runes! Don’t worry I didn’t cast that one here. This time. Probably. It may be enchanted to make you sparkle in the sunlight if you don’t figure out the code though. 

Anyway I figured I’d tell you all about what happened while you were gone because I’m awesome like that.  

So, you were there for the first part, but for the benefit of the people who will doubtless read this after we become legends, I’ll go over it again. We went back to the old underground temple so we could try and come at things from below, only we found the Filth King wasn’t there anymore – that’s really annoying, actually, I bet whoever took him got him all filthy AGAIN; why do I even bother. We spent an hour or so making our way towards the area under Telecanthus’ mansion thanks to my great sense of direction (…okay fine I’m lying, it was mostly Aelon. Guy is insufferable about that, I swear he knows something about EVERYTHING. I mean, sure, I kind of do too but he usually beats me to the punch. It’s been worse than ever since he got his new tattoo. “Oh it lets me draw passively upon the knowledge of my god,” he says. Bah. At least he’s got some awesome gadgets  and I guess in fairness it’s good we have someone who knows this stuff but humbug anyway. I’d mess with his colors or something but I honestly don’t think he’d even notice. Maybe if I can turn him into a canary… but I’m off track. Woops.) 

Anyway we finally found the right area and heard some digging not too far away on the other side of a wall so Nathaniel brought out his Dagger of Exile and we hid in the pocket dimension on the ceiling for a bit. Unfortunately, the digging stopped before they broke through so we had to drop out and go for a more conventional and less traditional ambush (I really wanted to yell out Death from Above, but gang aft agley). We managed to make a small hole without anyone hearing us and snuck through, only for disaster to strike – the part of the tunnel we were in began to collapse. Aelon got caught and you did too, Nehl, though you seem to have got caught pretty far back. Still, we made good anyway! We totally caught the bunch of Githyanki off guard when Nathaniel lit up his hammer and I lit up their table so we could actually see stuff. But then we blasted them around, and I was able to slide people around with ice and occasionally just straight up teleport them, and Mayim did stuff with lightning like she always does (it’s pretty awesome, not gonna lie). The really neat thing was what Nathaniel did though! He charged in and his spellscar did some crazy stuff and he kind of glowed red and spun around and smacked all of the dudes pretty hard, and then he put off some kind of creepy aura that kept them off balance – they were having a lot harder time aiming at anyone with him all up in their faces, it was pretty cool.  Anyway we knocked out a bunch of them and then Mayim straight up glared the rest of them into submission – she’s the scariest one of us for a reason, after all, and I bet she’d be flattered by you saying so in here. Hmm, maybe I should try to set her up with you? She’s no longer got Diane to have weird tension with… Nah, that’s kinda dumb. Oh well. Anyway, we knocked the last couple out and dusted ourselves off. We actually got away from that fight completely unscathed – Nathaniel almost got hit once but I messed with reality a little bit and made it miss instead. I can do that a bit, though usually you guys can’t tell since it’s almost like a retcon but it’s pretty cool to watch on my end, trust me, space goes all octarine and makes these great patterns before it settles.  

Anyway, with that done we managed to dig out Aelon but he was kind of tired from the cave in and needed to sit down for a bit. While he was resting I spent some idle time trying out new hairstyles on the various Githyanki – they have really nice long hair so I could get some pretty funny stuff going on. I think my favorite was the mindslicer, who I left with this crazy red, black and gold spiked pattern with crazy angular bangs that came to me out of nowhere. It looked pretty ridiculous. I gave it some eyeshadow for good measure because, screw Githyanki Mindslicers, they’re the worst things ever. Another one got this pretty funny forward pointing afro that extended about a foot in front of its head. 

While that happened, Mayim heard some voices coming from the direction of this huge underground tower so Mayim and I snuck up on them and found another group of Githyanki. I conjured up some illusory sheep which made ‘em all sleepy and Mayim called up this pretty awesome pattern thingy that glowed and shifted and pulled the Githyanki toward it when they tried to do stuff. We blew through them pretty well again, no one ended up hurt at all (the Githyanki don’t count). One of them managed to get the door into the tower open though, which sucked, and another one managed to throw another one in through the door with its mind. It kind of got KO’d by Mayim as it flew through the door though so at least it didn’t get a chance to shout for help. Mayim’s pretty awesome like that. 

Oh! You missed one other thing. Nathaniel totally did a whole vampiric thing and stole life force to heal himself with his spellscar. Aelon didn’t even freak out at all! Though in fairness I don’t know if he even noticed, he was kind of out of it from the cave-in still.  

So now it’s time for you to try and guess the password! Your hint is that this is what the librarian who you should never call a monkey (he’s an orangutan) says. He’s a pretty awesome librarian actually, appreciates a good prank. Never could figure out where he actually worked, though, but he kept showing up in the library when Nathaniel and I were students, though I don’t know if Nathaniel ever actually saw him. I always did see things kind of oddly I guess but it’s more fun that way. S’how I knew you’d do fine in the group, actually, there’s a nebulous force behind you that’s kind of the same as the one behind Mo’Kaw and Garchomp (who you never met). And no that’s about as well as I can describe it. It’s pretty weird but it’s never been wrong yet, and the weird force behind me seems to give me lots of great ideas! Like apparently I have a naturally high metaphysics skill. Whatever that means. 

Oh, right. So you’d better say the password pretty soon or be doomed to sparkling in the sunlight for a couple of days, pretty boy! [Another crude drawing of a face is found here, this one looking like it’s laughing maniacally.] 

Oh and that goes for you too, whoever’s working on this in the future. I primed it so that this will only go off once per person but as far as I can tell it’s kind of got an indefinite duration. It might have mutated by whenever you get it, too, actually. I kind of did the modifications on the fly, so don’t be surprised if you spontaneously start vomiting miniature purple unicorns or something. Well, I guess that’d be a surprising mutation actually, so do be surprised, and if I happen to stop by to take notes on the effect don’t worry about it too much. Future me will probably be able to fix you if I’m still around by then. Though you might have to convince him to do it. Whoops, looks like there’s a bit of a commotion starting up. I’ll write more later unless you show up again, Nehl!”

Following this, it seems Nehl regained ownership of his book.

"I swear, Alin, if you lay your hands on my things again, you may yet learn why Aelon fears the undead. That said, you have my condolences for whatever it is that wracks your brain so. Thankfully, I have no desire to actually kill you at this time, as I am fortunate enough to have encountered tales of this Librarian you speak of. Your 'password' is 'Ook'. Perhaps I've passed through your hometown along my travels, or perhaps this particular vision is not yours alone..."

I had heard similar tales of this odd Orangutan who kept a Library, though I did not know about his particular language impediment. I learn much from reading about the adventurers of old and from other realms, but it is rare that I am so grateful of their exact knowledge!

Nehl Brisby - A Meeting and a Party

"The following morning, we were met at the inn by Amyria, who had an urgent request: She wanted us to make an appearance at a coalition of powerful leaders she had assembled. Apparently she hopes our notoriety, neutrality, and (in Mayim's case, at least) ferocity would help her in wrangling some unruly bureaucrats. This sounded like something I was specifically well-prepared for, but I feigned disinterest, following the rest of the party there anyway in their efforts to help out in any way they could. I imagine this strange, helpful attitude I see signs of every now an again is, in some way, a sort of penance for just how brutal they are in combat. Perhaps all of the mercy they don't deign to show their enemies is offloaded onto nearby townsfolk and people in need... 

Regardless, we were on our way, and en route to the University where this coalition was meeting, Amyria discussed the people we would be meeting. Sadly, most were not technically nobility so much as they were people of power. That subtle distinction makes much larger differences in the circles I am accustomed to... Nevertheless, I made note of their names (and particularly the fact that the ruler of Nefelus had not shown up) an we arrived in due course. 

The other Copper Fang members (I belatedly realize that I called our little gang the 'Bronze' Fang in my last entry. Mayim claims that Copper is the correct name. We shall have to settle this at some point) seemed to recognize a few of the people in attendance here. Specifically a Dwarf by the name of Kalad and a Githzerai named Odos, who sat apart from the other assembled leaders for some reason... I recognized the latter myself, as he had been at the meeting in the warehouse not long ago, but I had not previously caught his name. Amyria introduced everyone in a round, we explained our presence and status as freelance heroes, and the meeting began. 

As is so often the case when people of 'real' power come together, petty squabbles sprung up almost instantly. The purpose of this meeting, it seemed, was to create a sort of multinational truce and joint military force with which to hold off all that might threaten the realm, and at the moment the odd Githyanki uprising that had been taking place of late outside of the city's walls. Apparently the prospect of relinquishing direct control of their military might unto a collaborative force did not sit well with several people, despite the fact that they themselves would be a part of this force. Mayim, again taking point as the mouth of our party, did an admirable job talking the shouting members down without losing her nerve. With some prodding from myself, Alin, and Nathaniel, we even helped her to convince them that such a treaty might be beneficial to them as individuals, as well as to the region as a whole. While many of those assembled seemed to care very little that some small towns might be taken over by Githyanki, the point that the loss of a non-ally could very quickly lead to the rise of an immediate enemy convinced at least a few of them very quickly. The largest sticking point taken care of, Amyria brought up a second point. One which could sink such a venture before it even began: Who would lead this assembly? 

To my surprise, the usual explosion of noise and self-nomination managed to limit itself to a more polite mentioning that such arguments so often end in stalemates as every party votes for themselves. Even more surprising, Mayim had an answer. We, as freelancers, made a perfect swing vote for such an event and (to cut off an uppity elf woman who attempted to cut in with a snarky retort about us nominating ourselves) Amyria would make for an excellent leader. She was not in a position of real power, unlike the others seated here, her only real allegiance was to the safety of the realm, and she had no particular stake in the status of any one nation. Several of the leaders eyed Amyria more carefully at this. Before she had simply been the officiator of this meeting. As the head of a multinational coalition, though... How would she stack up? "Additionally," I spoke up, "should you find her lacking information or insight that you find truly important to such a role... She would have each and every one of you as personal advisers to the cause." Plenty of say on matters of state, none of the responsibility. That got them. I admit to being slightly smug as the assembled leaders nodded their heads and agreed that such a situation pleased them greatly. Nobility, as I well knew, were incredibly easy to sway with the promise of power without repercussions... Before we left the meeting, we took a moment to help the group brainstorm a name for their organization. The Lord of Sayre, who still seemed slightly worried about the prospect of losing some control over his town's forces, was quite pleased with the name that was eventually settled on. To commemorate where this deal had been made and where its seat of power currently rested, it was dubbed the Sayre Coalition for Planar Defense. Everyone seemed pleased with this moniker, and we quickly left, as it was nearly time for our previously-arranged meeting with Telicanthus, the Githzerai noble who seemed quite interested in our presence here. 

Arriving at the manor, we were met by an elderly man who announced himself to be Baranor the Black, once an adventurer like ourselves, but sorely brought low in his prime when an arrow had lodged itself in his knee. (Alin chuckled at this, for some reason) Nathaniel offered to help the man's knee with some of his knowledge of healing (how the man was not a Paladin I do not know), hoping to get some information about Telicanthus from him. We got plenty of information, that is for certain, but most of it was squarely focused on Baranor's adventures of old. Not caring whether or not these tales were true, we positioned Alin at the forefront of the man's barrage of anecdotes and continued into the manor itself. Telicanthus greeted us briefly, and we split up to mingle with the guests and see what we could overhear. At one point, a servant by the name of Pennel, who the rest of the party had apparently met soon before my joining them, was seen eyeing us intently. Interested, Mayim and I both made our way over to him, to see if perhaps he was trying to get our attention. He quickly denied anything and slipped away. We were both quite suspicious, but Mayim seemed content to leave him be and continue hovering near Telicanthus himself in hopes of learning something important. I was less easy about the man. The things servants in a house such as this often know could bring entire kingdoms to their knees... I excused myself and slipped into a side room. There, I assumed my rat form and emerged into the hallway where Pennel had been. 

He was still at the end of the hall, entering a room with a wary glance in both directions. I made my way towards him, but was forced to quickly hide under a different door as he emerged again, stowed away a small key, and hurriedly moved in my direction. I went unnoticed, and I approached the door he had entered. The thing was quite secure, being so low as to prevent my entry even in this small form. Peering around carefully lest I be spotted, I assumed hybrid form (I had arrived as a human, and as such I might not be immediately recognized if spotted), picked the lock, slipped through the door, shut it behind me, and resumed rat form. It appeared to be some kind of study. Sure that I hadn't been spotted entering, I began snooping. Everything seemed to be in order. No furniture seemingly disturbed, no incriminating documents lying around... Even the journal left open on the desk was one of guest lists and planned construction elsewhere in the manor. Defeated, I prepared to leave the room, when suddenly I noticed something. This room, when compared to the room adjacent to it, where I had hidden when Pennel passed by, was several feet too thin. Even assuming that this building had very thick walls, there was the space of a small hallway between this room and that, without any such feature existing from the outside! I investigated further... 

As I suspected, the wall that should bordered the neighboring room held a particularly ugly mirror. The decorative trimming of the thing was so overblown that it almost made it difficult to pay attention to the very image the mirror displayed. Clambering up the side of the hideous thing, I carefully checked it for any signs of a mechanism or switch. Eventually, I pressed the right inlaid jewel, and the glass of the mirror flickered out. Pleased with myself, I immediately entered, giving no thought to the fact that my companions might find this sort of thing interesting as well. The small tunnel on the other side of the mirror was rough, with the same look of recent excavation as the beggar tunnels, albeit with signs of a more skillful hand throughout. At the end of this tunnel was a ladder down, and at the bottom of that, yet another tunnel. Dark as it was, I was still perfectly capable of seeing a larger room at the end of this one, though it was not empty. Two Githyanki stood at the entrance to the next room, unaware of the rat watching them from the tunnel. I was sorely tempted to give them the surprise of their lives (shortly before ending those miserable things), but there was a great chance of more of their ilk being elsewhere in whatever complex this was, and I thought better of it. I retraced my steps, carefully left Telicanthus' study, entered the library at the other end of the hall, and retook human form. I joined the party again in the parlor with the excuse that I had simply gone to peruse Telicanthus' book collection, as you can tell a lot about a man from the books he keeps. It's quite true, and I was certainly curious, but it was an investigation that would have to wait. That said, the party was quite clearly not convinced with my story (which I had expected) and we adjourned to a small balcony so that I could tell them what I'd found.

While they had kept tabs of Telicanthus himself, witnessing him discussing the state of the city's food stores with a worried noblewoman (worth noting, perhaps, but not the intel we sought), very little had been gleaned from the Gith's conversation. Everyone seemed quite curious about what truly hid in the tunnels beneath the manor, and we agreed that we would canvas the area that night and look for an alternate entrance to the same system. If an old town truly lay beneath this one, there was a good chance that many of these tunnels eventually connected. Even better, Telicanthus had recently requested that the usual town guard avoid the streets around his home, instead having them be patrolled by his personal guard. This mean that we would be freer to explore without chance of awkward talks with the night watchmen. Things were looking quite good for us, for once. 

On a bit of a side note, I was quite saddened by this little party scene. Not only had I gotten very little time to socialize once again with people of my own status, I found that, after so much time away from it all, I'd lost much of my taste for the business... Mercenaries, townsfolk, soldiers, barbarians; they all spoke plainly and directly, if not always politely. The double-talk and sarcasm and hidden plots of the nobility... If only a short time among them, the cloistering stench of plotting and scheming and inevitable betrayal flooded back, and I found that I no longer enjoyed the intrigue as I once had. It had become... petty. Petty, empty, and full of negative energy. Such energies may keep me animated these days, but it seems I simply can't stomach them in a social setting... My dreams of one day rejoining the lavish noble lifestyle, and of once again holding a position of privilege and power... I have much thinking to do.

- Nehl Brisby"

At this point, the handwriting and language of the entries change dramatically. It seems someone else got their hands on this journal for at least a short while... Did Nehl abandon the book, or was it stolen from him? I shall have to translate... It's been so long that I've worked on this goblin-esque script, I need to remember how to begin!

Nehl Brisby - Ancient Archives

On the page following the second stain on his private journal, Nehl continues his commentary on the hidden lair of the beggars.

"The combat following the initial rising of the draconic golem was tense, to say the least. Aelon, having heard the commotion of our fight with the Filth King and his minions, had quickly completed what study he could and rushed to our aid, arriving just in time to see the beast take shape. Mayim went to work filling the room with more lightning than I think the heavens themselves could muster, while the Dragon and I took to a battle of the minds. Over the course of our conflict, it managed to manipulate the minds of Alin and Nathaniel (the latter more than once) to move and act as it bade. In what I thought was a just rebuttal, I locked eyes with the thing long enough to assert dominance over the construct and force it to attack its master. These sorts of exchanges went on for some time, while the Filth King tried many tactics to pierce Nathaniel's armor and remove our front line of defense, failing each time. Eventually, the golden golem seemed to sense that we would not stop attacking it for fear of both its size and ferocious form, and instead decided to detonate. Gold and small artifacts flew across much of the room, thankfully doing little harm to us, but rendering the beast -- then just a floating collection of larger items and loose coinage -- a far more difficult target. So prevented from easily striking the more dangerous foe, we turned on the Filth King, eager to get this combat over with. He proved tenacious and hardy, but eventually he succumbed to our combined strength and expired. With all other enemies soundly defeated, we turned our attentions once more to the summoned monstrosity. 

While I had been hopeful that simply killing the apparent leader of this cult would be enough to call off his pet, I was disappointed. Thankfully, Aelon, having been less taken aback by the arrival of the creature due to it having already been there when he arrived, had been carefully studying the beast and its habits. He had seen, he called to us, a strange motion from the Filth King while he had been worryingly close to the thing. For no obvious reason, in the midst of combat, he had flung a small, golden object at the dragon, then ceased to pay it any real mind. Perhaps, he thought, this was a way of pacifying it or declaring yourself its ally! Bemused by this possibility, several of us backed away from the golem and tossed some of the same gold that it had violently expelled at us earlier back into what remained of its mass. The tossed gold returned to the thing's center of mass as if magnetized, and it seemed to lose interest in us. Alin, however, was not content with this result, claiming it was inconclusive. He tossed a small coin at the golem like the rest of it, and watched it calm down considerably towards him, but he followed this act up with a violent, arcane bolt. Understandably, the dragon riled up again almost instantly. "Aha!" Alin cried, apparently excited by this result. "I have verified your hypothesis with science!" His actions here were systematic and logical, I must admit, but much the same conclusion could have been drawn by simply throwing the coin and waiting. Had the creature not attacked him after that, the theory would have been proven enough for my liking! Such a risky ploy, simply in the interest of precise knowledge of something that would likely not arise a second time... The man is intelligent, no doubt, but he lacks much in the way of common sense, I fear. 

However, once everyone played along, the gambit worked! The dragon, suddenly sensing no more threats nearby, returned to its place of origin and dissolved back into an inanimate pile of gold, gems, and the occasional weapon. Nothing especially spectacular, sadly, but it was certainly a bounty in terms of raw currency. The potential, in that respect, far outweighed any individual item we might have found! We reveled in our victory, it being the first major accomplishment we'd made since I had joined with the group, and we took turns keeping watch of the entrance, searching the bodies of our foes, and shoveling the remains of the dragon into a bag of holding that the party had apparently bought some time earlier. Saffron and Aelon claim with some certainty that whatever enchantment brought this treasure to life was absent now, or would at least become so upon leaving this chamber, but I remain wary. I will let the others carry the bag for a while, just to be safe... 

My undead nature is a curse in many respects, but in one it has been quite a boon: Rest comes quickly and easily to me. Though I am not a sleepless, hungerless beast like the average zombie or wight, I find that I recover from fatigue a fair bit sooner than the mortals around me. An obvious advantage in many respects, it helped me once again here, as I felt fit to travel again a few minutes before everyone else was quite prepared to continue onward, giving me a bit of time to inspect the room one last time. Specifically, I chose to investigate a crudely-hewn statue of Tiamat that rested in the very back of the room, behind where the treasure pile had once been. It was large, but not particularly detailed, and it showed little sign of worship around it, and the pile of gold before it had largely hidden it from view to the rest of the chamber. This intrigued me, and it turned out that these instincts were correct, as the statue rested on an odd seam in the wall. Manipulating the statue in any way I could think of, I eventually heard the click of a mechanism and a passage opened before me! By this time, the party was quite ready to move on once more, and so we ventured into this secret tunnel. 

It proved to be quite short, but the dark passageway ended in an incredibly sturdy-looking stone door. I made a quick attempt to open the thing silently, having heard nothing inside, but it was immediately apparent that moving the thing even the slightest bit would be incredibly loud and agonizingly slow. Determined not to be caught unawares once again, I alerted the party that I intended to scout ahead and utilized yet another of my helpful vampiric traits: the ability to become little more than a cloud of mist. (A note in the margins: It continues to irk me just how often my condition actually makes itself useful. Were I not an abomination before the gods, I would almost wish to remain this way, but it is what drove me to slaughter my family, and it is a curse I must someday rid myself of, if such a thing can even be done...) Slipping through the cracks between the door and its frame, I inspected what lay ahead of us in the darkness. 

The scene was a sad one. This room had obviously once been some kind of study or library. Shelves lined every wall, and signs of parchment, books, and writing tools were nearly everywhere. Unfortunately, anything even marginally perishable had long since converted to dust, mold, and rot. Several bodies sat on the floor, nearly mummified in the dry air of the chamber. The remains of their clothes suggested that they were scholarly types, and worshipers of Ioun, but the bones of their fingers were sharpened to deadly-looking points. Hypocritical as it seems, I am not fond of undead creatures, and ghouls are certainly an unpleasant lot. I made special note of them before continuing to survey the scene from near the doorway. Etchings and writings covered every vertical surface in the room. Most were formulas and equations that were alien to me, as well as ramblings as to their meaning that might have helped, were I any sort of scholar, but amongst them were several journal-like entries. Their contents were too long to recall easily, and my incorporeal form lacked any means of writing them down, so I concluded that it was time to rejoin the party and enter the room physically, ghouls or no ghouls. 

Excited by the mere mention of a library, Aelon was first through the door by a large margin as we laboriously shoved it aside. As soon as his light fell upon the bodies, however, the forms stirred and he screamed like a woman, running back through us and up the stairs. This made a bit more clear his obvious disdain for me, but it was still unsuited for an adventurer of his supposed caliber... Still, I will admit that I was quite surprised myself as one of the ghoul-like bodies began to glow and speak, reacting to that short moment of Aelon's presence. "Fellow seeker of knowledge and follower of wise Ioun, we leave these findings to you..." It intoned, going dark once it had completed its message and collapsing into dust. I had been unaware of Aelon's religious affiliations up to this point (and Nathaniel's as well, as apparently he had quite the pantheon of worshipped gods I was unaware of before now), but it was good to know that they were at least making themselves useful. We eventually convinced him to return to the room and investigate it with us. The writings were fascinating, though I imagine moreso to Alin and Aelon, who seemed to actually understand a few of the less direct etchings that covered the walls. I have made a note of the things I could actually read and comprehend, the latter of which appears to be some sort of prophetic message directly specifically for us: 

 This, as is to be expected, was quite a surprise. While I don't believe we are part of anything especially great or worthy of song in our current endeavor, to have our current adventuring be a part of something foreseen so long ago is... Well, I'm not sure if it's flattering or worrying, to be honest. Perhaps I have underestimated exactly what kinds of things this Bronze Fang gets itself into... 

-- 

We returned to the surface some time later, having gleaned the area for yet more writings and anything else of worth -- at least of the monetary sort -- the beggars might have scavenged. Our first stop was the marketplace, where we bought several things for the rest of the party, and I purchased for myself some presentable clothes. (While I value the clothing I wear in combat greatly, I must be presentable if I am to finally mingle once more with others of my true station) Before we left the market, however, we were called to the side by a seedy-looking chap who was hocking an odd, glowing crystal. Such things are not exactly uncommon to an adventuring party as magically-inclined as ours, but it was odd to see one being sold in the town square, and Mayim seemed to take a liking for it, immediately making an incredibly poor attempt at haggling for the item. I stepped in and attempted to assist her in this. Things were progressing slowly, with Aelon also providing a few offers for the merchant, but he seemed adamant in a price that I considered unreasonable. However, Nathaniel suddenly spoke up from the back with an interesting offer. He had noted that, among various other marketing ploys and false stories about how exotic and rare this crystal was, the merchant had mentioned finding it beyond the Isle of Nefelus, a location mentioned in the scrawls from the library walls. We would pay the merchant's egregious asking price, Nathaniel stated, if the man would also tell us where he had found this crystal, as well as where to find the place and the isle he'd passed to get there. An interesting and shrewd bargain, especially from one who usually said so little. The merchant seemed perfectly willing to give up information like that, seeming to think that the lands he'd visited were dangerous enough to get us all killed, were we even willing to travel far enough to impact his own expeditions, not realizing that what interested us more was his simple landmark rather than the stated destination. We neglected to correct this false impression, instead accepting both item and information and going on our way.

Nathaniel had, among a few other things, purchased materials with which to make himself a new shield, and left us at the inn to get to work while the rest of us rested for the next day. Unlike my short meditative rest within the beggars' chambers, unfortunately, my night's sleep was anything but restful. I tossed and turned wildly in my sleep, beset by images both dark and disturbing. I saw myself fleeing through darkened streets and among shadowy, living trees, dogged on all sides by fierce sewer rats and other foul vermin that I in waking hours considered kin. I ran for what seemed like an eternity, never truly resting or finding peace, gaining little solace if I dodged a pursuer and exacerbating the problem if I attempted to kill one. Eventually, however, I crested a strangely barren hill and encountered a blinding light. The sun, rendered my mortal foe by my condition, hovered on the horizon, far larger than I had ever seen it before. As its rays fell upon myself and my assailants, I was left somehow unharmed while the shadows that had plagued me squealed and screamed, dissipating in the light. As I stood there, awestruck, the sun itself spoke: "Fear not, Nehl Brisby, son of Veracht. Your new path is a righteous one. Though all might seem lost, and your companions more dangerous than your foes, stay true to both your goals and theirs, and all shall become clear to you, in time..." 

I woke then, shaking and terrified, but also suddenly hopeful. I have never been the most pious or loyal follower of Pelor, but he had seen fit to assuage my concerns with the Bronze Fang and bring me some semblance of peace. I am not sure I will ever bring myself to trust these people, Mayim and Alin in particular, but I will take solace in the fact that their cause and mine, whether they know it or not, align. Perhaps there is yet more to this motley assortment of divinely lucky psychopaths than I thought...

Nehl Brisby III"

Nehl Brisby - A Cult of Tiamat

Continuing the narrative begun on the previous page, this section of the writing is a bit darker and more jagged than that now ruined by the stain covering the previous iteration of this same tale. I would hazard a guess that perhaps Mr. Brisby was a bit upset at having to write this chunk of the adventure over again. Given the likely difficulty of translating common to goblin and goblin to this phonetic frankensteining of the written language, I would not necessarily blame him...

"Mayim and I, still hanging from the hatch we'd opened with her coin, peered into the upcoming room while we waited for the rest of the party to catch up. The place was dark, but it seemed even Mayim had little trouble noting the layout of the place, which was an irregular layout of raised platforms in a rectangular room. I was unsure of the usual purpose of this room, but at the moment it was most likely a point of ambush. My fears were partially confirmed when I noticed a slight movement on the floor below. At first appearing to be a cloud of mist or large puddle of water, I quickly realized that this room was home to a large slime of some sort, and quite possibly one of those annoying gelatinous cubes. Nasty critters, though their essence was as good as any other living thing's for my usual purposes. Pointing this danger out to my companion, the two of us entered the room via the trap door's rope ladder. I moved onto an outcropping behind our entry point, still in rat-form, while Mayim leaped outwardly onto a far ledge. I heard a cry of surprise, and realized that the halfling had unwittingly landed on a waiting assailant, who had hidden himself beneath a pile of rags. I glanced around expecting the worst, and the worst it was; we were surrounded by such piles, all of them filled with the stench of the ruffians who had attacked us earlier. 

I quickly assumed my hybrid form, hoping to catch the beggar within the pile nearest me by surprise, possibly even terrifying him into falling from our shared perch into the clutches of the slime below. Oddly, he barely seemed phased by my appearance. Slightly surprised at my sudden appearance and proximity, perhaps, but completely calm about the sight of what surely must have looked like a rabid were-beast appearing before him. To their credit, these beggars (if that's truly what they were) were of much sterner stuff than most men. Setting his lack of shock aside to be pondered at a later point, my diminutive cohort and I set about slaying those nearby while the rest of our number arrived. They did, in due course, and Nathaniel was the first to make his way down in the traditional manner (being ahead of both Alin and Aelon in the tunnel, with Saffron teleporting her way down to assist Mayim directly). There was a moment of dread as the ladder snapped under the weight of the man's armor, then one of disbelief as something I have never seen took place. Before he had fallen more than a meter, there was a flare of fiery magic from within the plates of Nathaniel's armor, and he flew through the air, landing safely on a platform to my left. When I asked him about this phenomenon later, he claimed that he had something called a 'spellscar', inflicted upon him years earlier, that had awakened these semi-random traits in him. I may have to research these 'scars' at a later date, but for now I'll simply take his word for it... 

The fighting continued from there in a fairly standard way, odd terrain layout notwithstanding. Many attempts were made from both sides to force foes from the edge and into the waiting protoplasm of the gelatinous cube, but few directly succeeded until Alin decided to dive into the room and fill it with a whirlwind capable of wresting nearly all of the brigands from their positions, dumping most of them unceremoniously into an acidic demise. Although one lucky (?) bastard survived his ordeal long enough to emerge from the cube's membrane, his face soon met with Nathaniel's hammer and simply ceased to be. Such is the way of this group... All that stands in your way is to be blasted, smashed, and teleported as quickly and violently out of the way as soon as possible, consequences be damned. Thus far I have not seen them hurt anyone I would deem 'innocent' in this unholy fervor, but I shall have to be on my guard in case they begin to go to far... 

Our combat concluded in that chamber, we rested for a moment before moving on. The rest of the party seemed disinclined to touch the remains of our slimy foe, even at the prospect of gold and new equipment with which to continue our crusade, and I made a point of the oddity of a blood-thirsty party such as them seemingly having an aversion to grime. "I would be perfectly willing to do it myself," Alin replied calmly from a ledge above me. "But why get my hands dirty when I have these Mage's Hands to do it for me?" He seemed to find himself quite clever at that, and the rest of the party was more than willing to allow him to sift through the ooze in this way, so I let the point drop. It made sense, in its way, but I felt that such a distant method of searching, even if it were only done on the rare occasion of a particularly moist enemy corpse fouling up an area, left much to be desired in terms of a thorough inspection. It seems my line of thought got through to Aelon, however, as he eventually joined me in the pit. He trusted my search of the bodies (aside from their fairly standard weapons and armor, they had nothing of real value), but he thought he might get something of worth from the acidic slime left behind by the cube. As everyone else was rested by the point, he suggested that we move on without him, citing that we were more than capable of handling ourselves, and there weren't likely to be all that many more beggars anyway, considering how many we had slain in the courtyard earlier. We agreed that his logic was sound and moved on. 

The tunnels beyond the chamber we had been in were strange. Apparently this had once been a part of the town above, but in time it had fallen into disrepair, and the new district had been erected on top of it. While much of the area was filled with rubble from the buildings that had once lined these now-subterranean streets, this small alleyway appeared to have been excavated some time ago, leading to a simple door. Mayim and I surveyed it for traps (there was a simple one, though we were unable to determine what setting it off might have accomplished before disassembling it), before revealing a short hallway beyond it. The walls were decorated with the image of a black-haired sorceress, and the door at the end of the hall with a five-headed dragon of many colors. Mayim, showing a bit more knowledge of the world than I had come to expect from her, announced that these were aspects of the goddess Tiamat, a deity of greed and envy. Fitting, for a cabal of lowly thugs, criminals, and beggars, I thought. 

Happy, perhaps, that she had managed to dispense some knowledge before either of the two competing bookworms had piped up, Mayim strode confidently up to the door and (after a cursory check for obvious traps) carefully opened it. Inside, yet more beggars stood behind rows of pews, obviously awaiting us. "Whoops! Wrong door..." Mayim lied quickly, hiding her surprise well. "Praise Tiamat!" With that, she shut the door. 

We looked at her for a moment, dumbfounded. From the sounds of it, the beggars were just as confused. "They shut the door. What do we do now?" I heard one ask. "Kill them, you fools!" was the immediate response. They tried to explain that we would kill them if they tried (a correct assertion), but the second voice, obviously a leader of some kind, commanded them to do it before he slew them himself. Moments later, the door opened slightly, revealing the silhouette of one of the beggars, a dagger whistling past his ear and lodging itself uselessly in the door behind me, just over my shoulder. Terrified, but unable to resist his master's orders, the beggar attacked, but was met by Nathaniel's hammer, slamming into him from the fighter's position immediately to the left (our right) of the door. From there, we blasted into the room with a fair amount of noise and mayhem.

The room was some kind of temple, it seemed. At one point, Alin later told me, the place was used to worship Ioun, but these miscreants had defaced all of the previous religious symbols with those of their draconic goddess, and at the far end of the chamber, across a small channel that separated it from our starting positions, was a large pile of treasure, obviously the reason these apparent vagabonds were able to have some adequate weaponry, but also where all the money that weaponry could earn for them was going. Directly before this pit was the leader of this little band, an absolutely filthy man who had taken the title of the Filth King. Whether he was a legitimate priest of Tiamat's or he had simply taken to her tenants and begun gathering a cult around him I was unsure at the time, but nevertheless he seemed to be the one keeping this group going in the first place. 

Without a second thought, Alin ran directly at the Filth King, using his prestidigitation to instantly clean the man up (rather well, I might add, it even combed his hair!) to shame him in some way, before teleporting once again and unleashing another swirl of space-bending magic upon the room. This instantly killed two of the beggars, and everyone else was sent cascading into the pit. This was a brilliant move tactically, as it gave us the high ground against a foe that might have otherwise been quite a problem (despite his ragged appearance, the Filth King did wield some fairly powerful poison and divine magic), but it also ended up causing us quite a bit of trouble down the line. As Mayim charged forward to kick her foes while they were down, attempting to clamber out of the hole they'd been dumped in, she did comment that the thing was full of corpses in varying stages of decomposition, stating that it was a disgusting sight. Several people beat me to telling her that she dealt with corpses on a semi-daily basis, having probably created more corpses than this over her lifetime. "That's different!" She cried in response. "Those are my corpses! I know where they've been!" The remaining beggars and the Filth King seemed nonplussed by this comment. 

Unfortunately, just as things were wrapping up, everyone of import being relegated to the pit and on their last legs, there was movement from the treasure pile. It seemed that Alin treading on the golden stash had triggered some sort of magical defense, as the whole thing reared up and assumed the form of a five-headed dragon, bellowing with the sound of cascading coinage, with teeth made of daggers and gems and hide of literal gold. Not having much choice in the matter, we attacked..."

 At this point, the narrative cuts off once more, this time with a different stain. There is a small note jotted to the side in the common tongue, but in Nehl's handwriting.

"Damn that Alin! First a beer and then this vial of blood! If he weren't such an asset to this team I would likely have torn out his throat by now! His shenanigans are getting out of hand..."