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...]
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