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It is the day after our big Founder's Day party. Landroval and I are out in the woods, collecting some spell components with the wolf pack nearby. Suddenly we hear a noise like weapons in a fight. Landroval goes to investigate while I circle around to the other side with my pack. Landroval can easily follow the clanging noise, and as he gets nearer he sees a man in a small clearing. The man appears to be human, but on his forearms he has some kind of strange, single-bladed weapons. He is making the noise by banging a hammer onto a pair of boots. Landroval takes a few steps in and sees not only is he making a pair of boots, but there are some other boots on the ground near him. So Landroval talks with this odd man for a while, who says he is just a cobbler named Ender. Well, he'd like to be a god, but he isn't quite yet. He's ambitious though. He's come to offer us a deal. "I'm not supposed to be helping you," he says. "I can't interfere because of Ao's silly rules, but I do have an interest in seeing your quest succeed." By this time I am back in my normal shape and out in the clearing with Landroval. "Which quest would that be?" Landroval asks Ender. "Your quest to defeat the ones who sleep, of course. Uh, you do know about the Old Ones?" Landroval and I glance at each other. "Vaguely," he replies. So Ender tells us a story... This planet was once invaded and enslaved by powerful beings, now known as the Elder Gods or Old Ones. They brought with them great power and magic. They created some races (trolls, ogres, gargoyles, minotaurs with cloven hooves) and enslaved the others that they found (elves, dwarves, minotaurs with regular feet--called "Faerunian minotaurs"--which means the Maldorean minotaurs that came to Cormynthdale are good). The Old Ones sucked energy to survive; that was their form of nourishment. As they "breathed in" the life-energy of others, they "breathed out" magic. Negative emotions like pain, suffering, and anger were especially tasty to the Old Ones, so they sought to encourage these feelings whenever they could. Some ambitious "younger" old ones (not the Old Ones, although Ao was there, these youngsters were some bad-ass mortals who came to power) plotted to betray the others. This group was mad up of mostly warriors whose names are lost, but some of them were Kimnokmar and Thoth (ancient name of Mystra), Corellan Lorethian and Llolth, and Clangadin Silverbeard. After a struggle, this group (with Ao) managed to imprison the Old Ones in a magic slumber. No one knows where they were laid down for their sleep. The "light bringers" as they were called set about to take the place of the Old Ones. They had to construct seals, wards so that no one could release or kill the Old Ones (if the Old Ones were destroyed, the world would cease to exist), and then had Ao remove the memories from each them of how to work the seals. But the Old Ones dream, and several times throughout time, they have come into a person's dreams and possessed him. As for the seals, we know now that one was entrusted to the elven high court by Corellan Lorethian himself, and one was in the ruins of Myth Drannor. Ender finishes, "These new gods then erased all memory of dark times from the races of Faerun and buried the seals far away from the sleeping Old Ones so that any mischief maker would have to locate both before doing anything. The seals must be protected!" "Okay, so why don't you and the other gods protect them?" asks Landroval. "Why get us involved?" "As much as I'd like to, I can't," Ender says. "Ao placed restrictions on all the gods after the Godfall Wars. I'm not supposed to be telling you this either, but I know where one of the seals is, and I think it's in trouble." "In trouble?" I say. "How?" "If its location is known to me, then it is known to others," Ender says. "And there are some who would move quickly to obtain it, so you must act quickly also. I have a pair of boots here that will transport you to the correct location." He brandishes the pair he has just finished. "All you do is pull this nail out to take you there, and when you have prevented the theft of the seal, you pull this one out to bring you back." "Great," says Landroval, grabbing the boots, "we'll go get the rest of the Seven!" We start to run off. As we are leaving the clearing, we hear Ender call out to us, "You might need to bring a coat!" We arrive at the Angry Dwarf Inn to find Dorn, Phae, and Corbin having breakfast. We tell them about Ender and the seal, and emphasize that there is no time to lose. Miranda and Beren will have to stay here. They get their things together, and the five of us gather in front of the manor house. I put the boots on and reach down to pull out the right nail. *BAMPF!* And before we can blink, we are standing chest deep in snow, while more snow whirls around us at a brisk pace in the 10 degree below zero weather. I'm not cold at all, for some reason, but the others need to find some shelter! We look around and see what appears to be a water front, with some broken ice floes and leathery-looking mammals. We head the other direction, and cresting a small rise we can see a small cave in a hillside. We head for that. As we near the cave entrance, everyone in the group except for me sees some little red pinpricks underneath the snow. Almost like... eyes... Before Landroval and Dorn can get their weapons out, the demons come into motion. We're not sure what they are, as they are covered in snow, but they're big! There are five of them and five of us, so we square off. They move against us first, but we are hard to hit. Dorn takes care of his monster and Phae's immediately, Landroval drops his, Corbin took care of his in some way I couldn't see, and I get two good hits on mine. In the next second, Dorn is bashing the one in front of me, and as it falls it breaks apart like stone. Weird. It's about this point that I realize I am not cold when I should be, and figure out that the boots are the cause of that. We go into the opening in the hillside. It opens to a passage, maybe what was once a mineshaft. So, we go in. The passage heads pretty sharply down. At one point a section of the wall blasts a stream of fire at us, burning those of us without improved evasion. Landroval hunkers down to peer at the wall. "It looks like the flames came from this bit of writing," he says. I copy the symbol down in case it comes in handy. We proceed down the shaft. It eventually starts to level off, and then suddenly we are in a huge cavern. It looks like whoever built the mine broke through into this cavern and went somewhere else to dig. The cavern is a large open area, with another hole besides the one we came through. We head over to it, noticing in wonder that the hole opens onto a passage (heading left and right) that looks to be carved out of solid glistening obsidian. There are scorch marks on the walls--looks like there are similar glyphs to the one we found in the hallway. Same weird kind of magic that Landroval isn't familiar with. We step gingerly into the corridor, looking out for more symbols at every pace. The walls are made out of squares of obsidian, exactly 12" to a side and fitted together impeccably. To our left, there is a cave-in that collapsed the corridor. To the right, the passage disappears into the dark, and so that is the way we go. After about 100 yards, we come to a set of massive gilded double doors. Inscribed in mithril are more runes, but the doors have been hacked through. Dorn and Landroval can manage to push the doors open. On the other side, we see a huge chamber with all sorts of rich decorations: the floor is laid out in a checkerboard pattern in marble; there is a double row of massive marble columns that alternate between white and black; there are dozens of murals on the walls done in precious metals and gems. The murals are especially interesting: it looks like they tell some sort of story. It takes about ten minutes, but we walk all the way around, starting on the left, to see the whole thing. It starts out peaceful enough, with a wild uncivilized land. Peaceful that is, until the arrival of some foreign creatures who enslave the races, create evil races and pit them all against each other for sport. During the course of all this, some heroes rise up and start some sort of guerrilla war. Dorn and Landroval can recognize some of these heroes as the gods that have been previously mentioned, commanding vast armies against gibbering piles of evil. In the end, one of the Old Ones was transformed into an elf, and because of his help, they were able to manipulate the magic of this world and put the Old Ones to sleep, creating the 13 seals in the process. Then they buried the Old Ones in temples much like this one, and the young heroes took the place of the Old Ones as gods of Faerun. In the center of this gigantic chamber is a raised, circular metal platform, separated from the obsidian. We get on it, and as soon as we do it drops down very quickly. The shaft is made of obsidian, polished smooth, and the platform fits into the shaft exactly all the way around. It drops us into a smaller chamber, about 60' across. Immediately ten gargoyles (the big stone demons we fought outside) jump over and attack us! Dorn drops his axe (which is immediately snatched by the biggest gargoyle), Corbin and I both get a piece of ours. Phae gets hers really good. This group is much better at hitting us than that first group was. Then Corbin drops the single gargoyle that was on him (three ganged up on Dorn), Phae tries to hit mine but misses, I hit mine but not for much damage, then Landroval finishes the one on him and goes after the one swinging Dorn's axe. Then it's the monsters turn again! Dorn gets hit rather badly with his own axe, Corbin and I are both hit, and Landroval is missed by the one attacking him. Dorn whips out his sword on the next round, dropping one of the monsters with a critical hit. I also get a critical hit on mine, taking it down, and Landroval hits his as well! (He's got a +25 to hit at this point). The monsters attack us again before Phae or Corbin can do anything, and then we finally finish them off. We are in a rather small, circular room, about 40' across. There are four sets of doors, one in each direction of the compass. The doors are absolutely smooth, with no knobs. Landroval calls our attention to the "death" symbol on each of the doors and we discuss for some time the best way to open any of them without dying. Finally, I try an area dispel which works pretty well--two of the four symbols fade away before our eyes! But which of the two directions to go? Corbin does an augury to see which one would be better. He gets back rather mixed messages. The door to the south has slightly more harm than good, and the door to the east has slightly more good than harm, although either door could bring any result. So we pick the east door to go through. Dorn and Phae check it for traps, finding none. We all gather around, and Dorn throws the doors open. They open to reveal a smaller room, about 25' at its widest, shaped like a diamond. Suspended in mid-air is a beautiful greatsword, hanging above several glowing glyphs traced into the floor. We are all taken aback by the sword, when out of the darkness... A long thin humanoid moves towards us, nine feet tall, with grayish-black skin and an elongated face. It looks Dorn directly in the face and says in a rumbling voice, "Die!" (But Dorn has a +15 to his Fortitude save and saves.) We all roll initiative. Dorn hits it big, and it is at this point we learn that this monster is impervious to cold, lightning, and fire damage. Phae, Landroval, and I step up also to hit it. Landroval does 47 points of damage, with one crit and one hit! The thing is finished off in short order. Corbin tells us it was a Boudak, a thing of great evil. Dorn checks out the greatsword. It is indeed beautiful, with lots of gold and titanium work, although the hilt itself looks like some sort of stone. Landroval is looking at the glyphs: he says they bear some resemblance to the ones on Aranashator. Dorn steels his courage and steps into the light to get the sword. As he moves into the golden light, he feels like the light looks into his soul, weighing and judging him. He passes through to where the sword hangs, and takes hold of its hilt. The glyphs that were glowing now fade into darkness. As Dorn raises the sword in his hand, his arm is encircled in its own golden light, and he hears a woman's voice speak in his head. "Wield me against my foes," she says. Her name is Valoris, and where Aranashator is an elf, Val is a dwarf. She asks Dorn, "Have we been called? Is it time?" Dorn replies, a bit unsure, "Uh, it seems that way." Val says that the seal we are seeking is to the south of here, so we all go to the south door. Dorn kicks these doors open to reveal a startled group of minotaurs bent over a game of dice. These minotaurs are wearing scale mail, and they have cloven feet and wield big scimitars. We jump forward and attack them! The three or four that were playing dice die quickly (much thanks to Dorn), and as soon as we notice the two in robes, without scale mail, who are starting to chant, they will also die. Corbin gets off a flame strike, and Dorn drops one of them with two hits from the speedy Valoris (explosion of golden light, very holy-looking). Phae shoots some arrows at the other one still chanting and disturbs his Concentration. But the next round he gets his spell off, and Corbin, Dorn and I all take 35 points from an exploding fireball that the minotaur centered on himself! It is at this point that we learn Val can heal with a touch. Nice!
At the end of the room is a broad set of stairs that descend. Looks like some of the stairs were once warded but have been deactivated. We go down the stairs; the air begins to warm as we go. Aranashator turns jet-black. We take a moment to down several potions, using some scrolls, trying to increase everyone's strength and base attack (thank you Landroval's Fighting Prowess!). We reach the end of the staircase... And find ourselves at the edge of a large natural cavern. There is a band of lava weaving its way throughout the room, encircling an island in the middle of the cavern. On this island are two odd figures: a large 12' tall armored figure in black plate mail with a large scimitar, and a male elf kneeling in a glowing circle, directing a thin beam of light out of a chunk of platinum, shaped (strangely) like a serving platter. There's some kind of shield around the tray (which, btw, has runes on it). Whatever it is that this guy's doing, we need to stop him, and no two ways about it. I get the initiative on everyone and immediately cast spike stones over the whole island. The rocky points shoot up into the sun elf's legs, but he pays them no attention! He continues with the beam of light between him and the tray. Landroval takes off flying for the elf, while the rest of us ready to attack the big guy in black armor, who has started to fly towards us. He comes in range of our weapons! Dorn hits him twice, one a critical hit at 57 points (or is it? he seems strangely unaffected). The figure just raises his sword, and begins breathing a poisonous gas at all of us! Phae gets a bad whiff and hits the ground. Dorn hits the figure again, three times, another critical for 69 points and basically takes the guy's head off. Corbin neutralizes the poison in Phae. Landroval reaches the elf and runs into some sort of shield surrounding the kneeling man! We boink the shield (I'm not a bad hand with a sling, and Phae hardly ever misses) and Dorn gets the first blood against the dude, from across the river of lava. Then Landroval rips, I mean rips, him into pieces, enough to break his concentration. The beam of light breaks, and the sun elf gives Landroval a dirty look. He stands up, removing various body parts from the spikes, points a finger at Landroval and says, "Die!" But Landroval saves, and the sun elf looks a little worried. Phae plinks him. I get him with a sling bullet for 3 points. Dorn shoots an arrow for 5. (Hey, they were the weapons we had out at the time, okay?) The sun elf throws open his rune-covered robes and draws his black scimitar, which is itself traced with gold runework. He points it at Landroval, and a bolt of (electricity?) comes out, getting him for 26 points. I get a critical hit with a sling bullet! Landroval gets one crit and one hit on him, for a total of 53 points. Corbin smites him "in the name of Tymora," and that blows him against the shield surrounding the tray, but he seems okay. He has started bleeding black instead of red, which startles all of us. Corbin says, "It's like something is keeping him alive!" "Yeah," growls Landroval, "like his sword." I whack him right in the eye with another critical hit sling bullet. Dorn uses his ring of the ram just as the sun elf is coming to attack (surrounded by a wicked black glow). He looks startled as he is blown backwards, and just before he hits against the shield, he yells, "But I'm not ready!!" and disappears. Landroval says it was a contingency spell. I let the spike stones go and we check out the tray and its shield. Looks like the shield has been weakened. There is a circle of runes on the ground that the elf was kneeling in when we came in. Landroval decided to try to drain the rest of the shield so that we can take the Seal away, since obviously this dude knows where it is. He kneels, but now what? He needs some sort of key. A magic key. He tries to use Aranashator to do it. At first all he feels is a warm glow, then hotter, hotter, as hot as Aranashator can get, but Landroval can tell it isn't enough of a buffer. Landroval has to make a concentration check to continue, but he needs to stop. Phae notices at this point that the band of lava around the island just got a little wider. What to do?! Valoris might help. So, with Val and Dorn's permission, Landroval takes both swords into the circle of runes. He has to promise Val to try to give up chaotic ways and be more lawful. It still might zap Landroval if he isn't careful! Landroval kneels, and as they begin to heat up, he starts to realize that his chaotic tendencies really have caused him problems in the past, etc. He and the swords start to heat up, but Landroval can tell it's dampened. The lava is coming closer every second! Dorn downs a quick fly potion and hangs out nearby. We're all getting warm, though. Landroval is doing wonderfully but he's really getting hot! He starts taking damage. The lava is inches away! Landroval collapses forward as the shield finally gives out. Corbin flies over and lays on some quick healing (28 points). Landroval takes the seal and flies straight up, just as the rest of the land is covered with lava. We check out the big black armored dude--there was nothing inside the armor. He was some sort of construct, magically powered. Landroval hefts the Seal in his hands, noticing that it's way too light to be platinum. Valoris recognized the scimitar that sun elf carried as "Soul-Walker," a champion of Eok, who was an Old One of war, death, bloodshed, etc. Every minotaur has a +1 great scimitar or "talivar" (we collect 6 of them). So far we've only been gone from town for an hour and a half, or two hours at the most. Now what to do with the Seal? Landroval pulls the other nail out of my boot and we are in Cormynthdale. Maybe Ender will deal with the Seal? We all go out to the clearing in the forest; no Ender but there are five pairs of high-quality boots, with nametags on them. There's a set for each of us! We all pray to our respective gods, hoping to figure out where on earth to put this Seal. Phae is the only one to get a response: she sees a vision of an old guy in a comfy-looking robe and bunny slippers, with a pipe burning in one hand and a frozen concoction in the other. Is it... yes, she thinks it was butter pecan. "That's Elminster!" exclaims Landroval. That's it. He'll know what to do. So, in order for Corbin to be able to transport us all, we strip off some of the unnecessary baggage and we zip over to Shadowdale. Nope, still too much weight. Darn Landroval's growth spurt! So we find Davrim back in town, and ask him if he can send us over. He can, and does. We arrive in the middle of Lysander's temple. We walk out to Elminster's tower, saying hi to some people we recognize along the way (from the battle at Ashenbinford). There are no doors on Elminster's tower, but Landroval calls out to him, mentions the "Old Ones," and a door opens in the side. Elminster himself comes down the stairs to us, looking mad. We tell him that the Seal is holding Old One(s) in the Weave as a prison. "But how did you get it?" he asks, a little surprised. Landroval tells the story of how we came by at just the right moment, etc. We don't want to deal with the Seal, so we ask him to take it. He doesn't want it either. Dorn thinks it would be funny to actually use it as a serving dish and "hide it in plain sight." Landroval has an idea about taking it through a portal to Terra. Elminster asks us all to sit down and gets each of us a Guiness ("just the stuff for my inn," muses Dorn). So what do we get as a result of speaking with Elminster? Short version: we all must promise not to mention any of this to anyone unless it is of utmost importance. Long version: We already know most of the general info. Rumors came a month ago that a massive organized effort had started to re-awaken the Old Ones. Group of renegade mages, several races. Landroval and Elminster go off to talk. When they come back, Landroval is very excited--he got Elminster's Evasion, and he is super psyched! Elminster gets Landroval's Fighting Prowess in return. And Elminster has a plan: he will take notes on the thing, then he will send it with some very capable and competent magical carriers, and take it to the ruins of Myth Drannor. Perfect place, because there was a Seal there once, but it was stolen. So who would think of going back? We all agree it sounds like a sensible plan. Elminster tells us to make ourselves comfy. He has a big box that keeps things cold--we find the frozen concoction Phae saw in her vision. Dorn tries a butter pecan & Guiness stout float. There is also a square, flat black box with red letters on it with a strange food inside. After a few hours, Elminster comes back. He makes us "frozen pizzas," and we are amazed. Then there is some rippling in the air, a bright light appears, and there, before us, is a Lantern Archon in all its glory (big time angel--think Gabriel). We feel compelled to bow. Elminster puts the Seal in a big box and hands it to the angel (hey, says Dorn, there's a better place to hide it than as a tray in our manor--how about putting cheese and pepporoni on it and leaving it in Elminster's cold box?), and the Lantern Archon disappears. We catch Elminster up on what we've been doing in Cormynthdale. We are the Bastion of Good in the Cormynthyr Woods. Elminster teleports with us back to town. He says the layout of the town is pretty nice, but it looks too much like a big spider. Dorn asks Elminster about how to construct an eternal fountain of ale, coming out a spout through a dragon's snout. "Oh, easy," he replies. "You would need an endless decanter, the create water spell, and you could use ale instead of water. You would have to have a really good artisan to install the spout with a valve to cut back the pressure (as an endless decanter will shoot out like a fire hydrant)." We glance at each other. No one wants to ask what a "fire hydrant" might be. Dorn reveals Olga's idea for something called a "menu," on which foods would be written and the bar patron would choose something from the list to eat, and her idea for giving away salty foods for free so that people would be thirsty and buy the drinks. A woman ahead of her time, that one. Elminster successfully squeaks by on the remove curse on the red dragon armor by four points, and Corbin removes the curse from Dorn so that he doesn't feel hot anymore. So that's all cool. We show Elminster the door in our basement. He studies it a bit, scries, etc. He takes an hour and then says, "You have to promise not to open this door unless I tell you to." We all look at each other, a bit startled. "But where does it go?" Landroval wants to know. Elminster won't tell us. We swear (although Landroval really wanted to know where it goes!). Elminster says his goodbyes, says, "I do believe we shall meet again," and teleports out. ... That's it for the adventure, sports fan, but for those of us keeping track, I have written down at the top of one of my pages of notes, "Grave--guy's name with Soul-Walker." Anyone know what that means? It was Himrillian, we find out later, but why do I have "Grave" written down like that? |