Laurthen's Journal
From Rathe
Events as told by Laurthen, written in his journal before his untimely death.
Posted 12/4/2005 to the Metagamers boards
Soon after our last bloody encounter with the bugbears, a skilled half elf archer by the name of Gene found our camp and decided to join us in our expedition as he as well is aiming to find the ones who raided Xaister, which happens to be his hometown.
During our travel back to Lumcrox to obtain some supplies, we encountered a group of hostile orcs, whom after we put to rest, found a written bounty for my companions and I. Upon returning to Tarwood, we encountered a magical tower that had the ability to float.
The battle was bloody as we attempted to enter into the tower. Unexpectedly our old friend Rubich in his zombie form was present. But for some unknown reason his intentions towards us were hostile. It is most likely that he was manipulated in some way. The powers of the tower were beyond us, thus failling to gain entrace into the tower.
After the battle, Tien, Valtros, and Corian decided to go back into Lumcrox to trade in the treasures that we found, while the rest of us decided to camp outside of the city. Due to the populace of Lumcrox becoming extremely hostile towards us, we decided to head back to Heldregch with the gnome cleric for reconsolidation.
Posted 1/25/2006 to the Metagamers boards
My companions and I have finally arrived in Alabaster. However, just as the sparkling creature told me the other early morning, there is something terribly wrong with the city. The city seems completely deluged in darkness and depression as the majority of the populace have been transformed somehow into undead. They are devoid of life force but seem to be magically driven to continue living their daily lives, which allows Alabaster to function as if it were a normal city. No doubt, the Mountain Crag, the dwarf that my party and I spotted on the floating tower is in authority in Alabaster, somehow manipulating the entire city of undead to suit his ends, those of which my companions and I have yet to discover. He seems to have already mobilized a substantial size of undead soldiers to intercept some caravan or another. My party was outnumbered in the throne room and the chances of surviving a battle of that nature were minute. So we decided to accept to work for the Mountain Crag for the time being. I was shocked and disgusted at the same time when I recognized the misfortune that had descended upon my past companions, Rubich, Skye, and Qaurion. All 3 of them now are under the Mountain Crag's command. I must eventually lay them to rest if we fail to bring them back to full life, as the subsistence of the undead is entirely unnatural. It is very probable that this conflict extends much beyond the Mountain Crag himself, and that we have only just begun to tread the first path in this long expedition.
May Farewin watch over us.
Posted 2/4/2006 to the Metagamers boards
The past few days where my party and I were working for the Mountain Crag were a bit hectic. Our mission was to retrieve some sort of pearl in an abandoned grainery outside of Alabaster. Upon reaching the grainery we were attacked by 3 giant scorpions. The wizard in our party was nearly brought to the brink of death, but we managed to save him. Upon entering the grainery, we discovered that it was infected by swarms of locusts. They proved to be quite a problem to handle. Again, the wizard almost died, but Thor managed to drag him out of the grainery to safety in time.
Gene then decided to set the grainery on fire so as to get rid of the locusts, and planned to move into the secret passage way, which turned out to be a large drop into the ground, in the morning. During this time of rest I decided to perform my meditation ritual as to re-acquire my animal companion. That night we were attacked again by those floating shadowy figures that we have encountered before. I was unable to help since I was meditating, although my other companions did manage to defeat them.
In the next morning, the grainery was reduced to rubble, and the locusts were gone. Thor and Gene proceeded to try and excavate through the rubble to get to the pit in the middle of the destroyed grainery. Two magical bird-like beasts flew out from the hole and attacked us, but they were no match for the strength of our party, and excavation continued. Eventually we all made it down into the hole, albeit some injuries were sustained. We then proceeded to find a sort of house built into this underground space. Winged magical beasts that took the disguise of stone statues were the first ones that attacked us inside this mysterious house. We defeated them without much difficulty and continued to explore the house. The house for the most part seemed that it used to be a normal dwelling for a family at some time in the past. Caught off guard, we were attacked by an animated dining table. It was not a terrible threat however.
There were numerous traps in the house, and we did our best to avoid them. There were also very strange rooms in the long hallway at the back of the house. They were filled with neatly piles of chains, and some were piles of ropes. We had no idea what this meant to us until a humanoid creature covered in chains attacked us from the cieling. It appeared that he also had the ability to command chains in the vincinity.
This battle was perhaps the hardest battle my party and I have encountered. The chain monster constantly hid from us in the second level of the cieling, and the chains were relentless in their assault. If the chains were broken, they would just be reanimated again. Many of us were critically wounded. However, in the end we did manage to send this creature to his death with the help of Valtros' fireball necklace.
We have returned to Alabaster, healed our wounds, and about to go undertake another mission from the Mountain Crag.
Posted 2/7/2006 to the Metagamers boards
What happened in the past day to me was perhaps the strangest thing that has ever happened to me before. As the day begun, my party and I decided to go undertake another mission from Rubich. This mission was to go and retrieve some sort of crystal from a certain's wizard's tower outside of Alabaster. We also wanted to retrieve some piece of meteorite material so we can reduce the price of buying a flying house from Jon Butterfly, the man in charge of such businesses. We thought the outcome of this mission was going to be similar of that of the first, mainly to retrieve some sort of special item by overcoming foes and challenges, and coming back safely. However the actual outcome of this mission was entirely unexpected.
It wasn't long before we reached the wizard's tower, which was constructed of five levels. In the first level, our encounter was with an invisible magical beast that only turned visible after we slayed it. On the second level, my party and I fought what seemed to resemble an assassin. He was slain and we continued onto the third level. This room was rather extraordinary; its size was double that of the other levels', and it was heavily engraved with runes. On this level we fought some sort of slimy and aqueous creature that did not have any definite shape and that would split into halves if we sliced or pierced at it. Many of us were critically wounded in this battle, including myself, as the enemy was also acidic. My hide armor was dissolved in one as I was grappling with it, but I managed to save myself in the end. Ascending to the next level of the tower, which was a library, we fought against some sort of winged creature that had the ability to transform itself into air and move freely throughly it. This battle was not so difficult so we continued on to the top level, which was the wizard's bedroom. To our surprise we found sitting on the bed a devil. Instead of fighting, we talked. He told us that he was summoned and kept here to guard the tower against his will, and that he would be much pleased if we freed him. We wanted to avoid more bloodshed so we did so by destroying the runes in this room. We found the meteorite material in the bedroom, and then we descended the tower to search for the crystal.
The search led us back to the third level, the one with the runes engraved in it. The crystal was hidden on the chain of the chandelier in the center of the room. Rog lifted Valtros up to grab it, but at the instant he touched it, a planeshift spell was activated, and the two vanished into thin air. Before I could discern anything, Sphere disappeared as well. Dumbfounded, Thor and Gene and I decided to bring this crystal back to Rubich and ask for answers. Gene managed to shoot the crystal off the chain of the chandelier without disappearing. We thus hurried back to Alabaster.
Back in Alabaster, we presented our case to Rubich, but he seemed to be as clueless as us. We realized that the planeshift could only be brought about if the crystal was in the laboratory of the wizard's tower. Thus we returned swiftly back to the tower with Rubich. Rubich took the crystal, shook it, and disappeared just like our companions did. The crystal fell to the ground. Not knowing what else to do, the rest of us decided to shake the crystal as well and give in to its powers.
We found ourselves atop a mountain in the midst of a snowy mountain range. We shouted out for Rubich but heard nothing. There was an obelisk close by, and tracks leading towards it and disappearing. There were runes on the obelisk that none of us could understand, but there were two sets of handprints on the obelisk. Acting spontaneously, we placed our hands in the handprints, and we were teleported to the highest mountain in the moutain range that we were in. There was some sort of ancient structure here with a stairway that led underground. We entered and found the rest of our party, Rubich however was nowhere to be found.
We descended the winding staircase and found there to be many other passages leading in other directions underground. We did not bother with them at this point and continued to descend on the staircase and reached a door made of platinum in front of us after quite a while. We opened the door, and to our amazement, found the remains of an underground city that was completely destroyed. In the center of the city there stood a damaged shrine. We decided to investigate there. There were pictorials on the walls, but some were destroyed. Philistine told us that it has something to do with the gods and deities creating the world, and conflicts arising afterwards. The details are unknown. We decided to rest here and continue exploring later.
Posted 2/16/2006 to the Metagamers boards
After resting for sometime in the musuem in the middle of the abandoned city, Gene, Valtors, and I decided we should explore the cavern system above the city. Thus we headed back up through the stairway and started exploring the passages one after another. After traversing the cave system a few hours without encountering anything save rock or stone, we realized that we were lost. We thus re-tracked our own foot prints back to the entrance of the passage that we just took, however, the number of the passage ways and the passage ways themselves do not appear to be the same as it once was. The cave system could therefore somehow be magical, and hence extremely difficult to find one's way around it. Therefore, we decided to track our own footsteps back down to the stairway. Luckily we were able to find oursevles back into the city. While Rog and Thor were busy trying to figure out how to remove the platinum door from its present location, they discovered that the door itself had faces imprinted on them that could speak our common tongue as well as other languages. They told us that this city has been abandoned for a very long time, however, there were 2 humanoids recently present in the area. They called themselves The Axe and The Bow.
At this moment, we were under attack by a hail of arrows. As these arrows hit Gene, grease started appearing at his feet. Before taking cover, I saw a distant humanoid figure on higher ground at the side of the city. My companions and I moved with caution to that point while using the rubble and remains of the city as cover. No one was there when we reached that point, however I tracked a set of foot prints and they led across an extended bridge back to the musuem in the center of the city. Coming to the conclusion that the attackers were hiding in the museum, we decided to engage the enemy.
I cast spider climb on Gene so he could walk under the bridge so as to provide a hidden and secretive support for Thor and Rog who were moving at fast pace towards the museum across the bridge. I spotted an eagle flying above the city, and hence summoned a hippogriff to attack it, knowing that no natural animals could dwell in this environment. I soon found out that the eagle belonged to the archer hiding inside the museum, the one who attacked us. My hippogriff perished as I was moving across the bridge to help my friends out. As I was moving across, I saw The Axe move towards Thor and Rog, and transformed himself into a hideous, monstrous looking humanoid, and surprisingly dropped both of them to the ground in one single attack. As the Axe started using his bow to attack the remainder of our party, we retaliated back with a flurry of spells from the wizard and myself, and arrows from Gene. The battle was rather frustrating because it seemed that no matter how much amount of damage we were dealing to the Axe, he kept on holding his ground. Some point in the middle of the battle he shoved the bodies of Thor and Rog off the bridge half a mile down to the floor of the abandoned city below. Enraged by the loss of our companions, we attacked with greater vigor.
Finally after a barrage of arrows and spells, the Axe dropped his weapon and fell to the ground. The Bow thus started commencing his attacks on us. He shot Gene a couple of times and dropped him. He then pulled one of the levers controlling the bridge and the bridge started contracting. Before Gene fell to the ground, I summoned a hippogriff to carry the corpse of the Axe so as to make use of his equipment undamaged, however as soon as Gene fell, I commanded the hippogriff to let go of the body whilst in mid-air, which plummeted to the ground beneath, and go bring Gene's body to safety. Likewise, I summoned a giant eagle to save Valtros as well. At last, I myself jumped off the bridge and shapeshifted myself in mid air to an eagle so I could fly to safety.
We reconsolidated in the ruined streets and alleys of the city, and to our surprise, Rog and Thor were still alive. It is a mystery to us why the Axe did not choose to kill them. After a full day's rest, we started to execute our attack on the Bow, who we found out to be hiding in the museum with all the bridges retracted. When we reached the side of the city half a mile up, I summoned hippogriffs one after another to be used as mounts. In this fashion we flew across to the museum and took down the Bow, even though the skilled archer did manage to hurt Gene, Valtros, and Thor enough to render them unconscious before he was beaten down by Rog.
Our party recuperated, and decided that we should leave this forsaken plane and return back to our own plane. We asked the door as to how to get back, and it told us that we should take the obvious path back up to the mountain peak, and use the obelisks there. We planned to do so, however, we still do not know why the Axe and the Bow were here. Perhaps they are tools of a larger plot.
