Tserdain, Thaumont (month 3) 10, 1028 (continued)

Roland flies us up to the top of the cliff, and we return to the scepter henge.

We go through the red henge.

We enter a really hot iron corridor. We go back to the hendge, and cast some protection spells before heading back.

We start exploring iron high ceilinged corridors. Eventually we go beyond a large iron door, and find a chamber with metal sculpted figures in a scene of endless war. It's hot and fiery. A gigantic wolf with hair of curling flames. It breathes fire at us.

We kill it in short order.

Shortly after, we here the next guardian as it speaks in a loud and booming voice to Lani's fire elemental which she sent ahead to have a look around.

Lani dismisses the elemental before combat starts, we heal up, and then head on.

We find a powerful warrior. He wields a fiery two handed axe. He blocks passage on a bridge, over a flaming moat. The whole place has an impressive fiery atmosphere. The warrior has burning light blaze from between the eye slits of his visor.

He kind of says we can't go past. He is known as Malkar the Warrior.

He isn't very talkative. We buff up, and then attack. The charge is lead by an air elemental summoned by Lani. The air elemental barely hurts the guardian. We all start trying to hurt him. Safranna actually manages to barely hurt him with her arrows.

Zim manages to Hold Monster him (the luck!). The air elemental brings him over, and Turia slits his throat. He stays dead. He has a magical great axe and magical full plate armour.

We take his stuff. He looks kind of human, but he has no genitals, etc. He's clearly a created creature type. He has +5 fullplate, but Lani couldn't tell what his axe was.

We head on. We get outside the castle. There's a massive fight going on, without beginning or end. There are endless ranks of pikemen, mounted knights, all engaging in senseless carnage. There are war machines about, firebals blasting here and there, and so on.

The creatures are spectral.

Zim casts dispel illusion, but to no effect.

Lani flies up, and sees a great war chariot moving about, always seeking the scene of greatest carnage. It doesn't seem to be spectral.

We move to intercept it. On the way, a 100 feet wide, 20 feet high creature composed of legs, arms, and weapons. We flee. Lani summons a greater earth elemental, which pretty much just gets trampled.

We cast various spells at it, to very little effect.

Zim casts prismatic wall in front of it, which it hits. It seems to be immune to fire. It gets zapped and damaged, and eventually is sent to another plane.

We start trying to find the chariot once more. The chariot approaches us. A very impressive warrior commands the chariot. We ask for the key. He pulls it out, an arrow, and throws it at Turia, telling her to catch it. She gets skewered, but is otherwise okay. He then charges to attack, laughing maniacally.

Zim casts rock to mud underneath him, causing him to sink into the ground. He slowly starts to make his way out.

Roland charges him, and hurts the guy a little. Lani touches one of his horses (incidentally they snort smoke), paralysing it.

Stuck in the mud with a paralysed horse, he jumps onto the other horse, cuts the tracers, and tries to trample Turia - except Turia cuts down is horse.

Roland cuts into him three times. His blood pools, and starts to morph in three large puddled, one for each wound.

Zim paralyses him with a hold person ["this is ridiculous!" the DM cries...]

We kill him.

The blobs of blood morph into warriors. We kill them.

We loot. Lots of nice loot.

We leave to rest and rememorise.

Moldain, Thaumont (month 3) 11, 1028

Grey prays to Nikhi, asking if what we're currently doing is a really bad thing. The response: In prison the Carnifex lie,
in prison your destruction could lie, in prison salvation lies
to the black demons rage.

Perhaps the black demon is related to a piece of information we uncovered regarding a Black Staff?

We go into the white realm. It's very watery. There is an island across the water.

We call for sea foam steeds, and they answer. [We had a tip from our earlier research.]

We hop on, and they take us across the ocean to the island. It is covered with oak, ash and thorn trees. A mountain dominates the middle of the island, possibly a volcano. There is a path wneding its way through the trees.

We follow the path, which leads to a small lake. We follow it around to a small river. Eventually we get to a lake at the top of the mountain. We head in, and come to a woodlands shrine. We find an altar made of quarts. Nearby are some ivory statues. The hourglass we probably want is sitting on the altar.

A white maiden, Kerusar, and a white horse, both with green hair/main, and blood red eyes. She says that if we wish to have the hourglass, we must game for it. We must shoot arrows at a target 200 feet distant - it is the best of five shots. If we lose, our representative will be shot, which may prove fatal, or beneficial - which of the two is unknown in advance.

She has a bow.

We pick Safranna as our representative.

Safranna loses. She takes her penalty, and gets shot by Kerusar in the left leg. The arrow bounces off. She seems unchanged otherwise.

Grey then tries, and loses. Grey takes his punishment, and takes much pain. He doesn't die.

Turia tries, and loses. She takes pain in the chest.

Zim tries, and loses. Zim takes pain in the left leg.

Kerusar lets Turia have another go. Turia actually manages to win. She collects the hourglass.

During the contest, we notice some hounds watching from under the foliage.

Zim chats to Kerusar about her miniature collection. She's very animated about it - it tells the tale of a love story.

We recruit Kerusar to our cause. Amazingly, she's willing to follow us and help. Her horse will also come along.

We return to the henge. The lift is pulsates with colour. We step on it, and put the keys in place. The mesa shifts - the henge disappears, and a castle on clouds lies in the distant. It's very impressive and dark. All entrances have been blocked by masonry, except for the main gates, which we can access by a 1' wide bridge.

The castle is the size of a large city.

We walk across the bridge. At the bridge is a horn. The stone of the castle is a dark grey, and has a repellant odour. The walls are covered in a slimy, slick oily film.

Zim unlocks the gate, and we go in. We see a corridor beyond - a rather disgusting one, made of the same stone as the outside walls.

Summon monster spells will not work here, since this plane is blocked from other planes. In addition, since souls may not be able to leave, we may also expect to find undead here.

Turia moves ahead, and almost falls into a pit trap. It smells like it has barbeque sauce in it.

We keep exploring. At some point Lani accidentally triggers a trap, causing a length of wall to heat up, hurting us.

Turia and Zim both go ahead, Zim searching for traps.

Unfortunately, Turia sets off a trap, and disappears.

We don't know where she went. After Lani casts Rary's telepathic bond, and being made invisible, Grey is teleported to a meat grinder in a freezer room. Grey manages to get his way out. Turia had already gotten her way out.

There are humanoid carcasses hanging from spikes in this room. We can find no way out. We break the meat grinder. Grey and Turia teleport back to the party.

Zim disarms the trap, with some difficulty.

We continue to explore. Roland gets zapped by another teleport trap - but he's okay, since we broke the meat grinder.

Later, we set off another hot wall trap. We run forward, only to find a beholder. Actually, not a beholder, a gas spore. It blows up when it reaches the hot area.

Zim sets off another trap, and we all get covered in glue. It slows us down a lot.

Later, two humans attack us. Grey takes much pain from two dagger hits before we can react.

Roland charges them, but barely manages to hurt them. They then bluff him, and follow up with nasty attacks wih their hands.

The combat continues. They have spell resistance, and are rather tough.

We kill them. They look like humans, but they feel hairy. Zim dispels the illusion, and we find two humanoid feline creatures. Rakshasas. Perhaps Carnifex are Rakshasas?

Rakshasas are weakly aligned with Law; however, they are very evil.

They have no stuff.

We heal up and head on.

After a while we make our way to an area of the catle that is more sooty. Zim finds the trap and disarms it.

A short while later we find a double door.

We buff ourselves, then enter. We're in a large chamber. There are more doors further on. There are various horizontal walls that block our passage. We see a hideous centaur-like creature, complete with translucent skin, pulsating organs, and a horrid smell. It is a Nuckalavee. They are not true undead. They hate life, but are friendly with undead. They have various resistances.

We kill it with ease, but then a lich rocks up. The lich casts meteor swarm, engulfing us all.

It is painful.

A night giant then rocks up, and causes the spirit of the Nucklavee to rise as a dread wraith. Another dread wraith also appears.

Kerusar shoots many arrows at the night giant, moderately wounding it.

Turia kills a dread wraith.

The lich tries casting a spell, but Grey disintegrates it by way of counterspell.

Roland charges the Night Giant, wounding it.

The second dread wraith attacks Kerusar. She looks weaker.

The Night Giant brings forth a miasma in the area. Unholy Blight, quickened. It barely effects us. The Night Giant then attacks Roland, disarming him.

Kerusar badly wounds the Dread Wraith.

Roland pulls out his holy sword to attack the Night Giant.

The Night Giant breaks Rolands sword.

We finish off the dread wraith and the night giant.

Lani says the night giant was bound here.

The rest of the chamber is clear. There is an enclosed area with a door here. We explore the inner room as well. It's a treasure chamber. It's a dragons hoard - no, bigger. We will have trouble auling this away, as it ways too much. Nevertheless, we manage.

We head on, going past some double doors.

We enter another large chamber. Inside are four lizardmen (two armed and armoured, two in robes). They say that we can take the Black Stuff. When we act suspicious, one of the robed ones whispers that the Black One said we'd be argumentative.

They comment that the Black Staff is what they will use to destroy our world. They wish to have their revenge. Even so, they don't seem to care if we take the staff.

It's all very suspicious. They let us go to investigate the staff.

When Grey approaches the staff, a duuplicate of Grey appears. The two Greys start attacking each other. Lani manages to hold one, and it happens to be the copy. The original Grey knocked the copy Grey unconscious, and when he pulled him out of the shadows, in normal light it was clear that the copy was a copy.

The lizardmen proceed to attack. Zim horrid wilts them, and they horrid wilt back.

Melee ensues.

Zim Finger of Deaths one. Grey chops one down.

We chop down the rest.

Lani looks at the staff. She picks it up. One of the black diamonds on it has disappeared. There are five black diamonds left.

Grey and Roland cast detect evil. The staff is overwhelmingly evil.

Lani starts prising the diamonds off. When she prises the last diamond off, the staff disintegrates. A vortex then appears, and we, and the area we were in, including us, are sucked through. We end up on the Guardian Mesa, on the lift. An alarm is sounding, and Carnifex start to appear. They rush to the vortex, but Lani pulls symbols off the elevator, and the vortex closes. As the vortex closes, parts of Carnifex castle are ripped apart, and Carnifex fall into the atmosphere. No Carnifex manage to come through the vortex. We are left on the Mesa with a chunk of Carnifex Castle - a chunk studded with jewels.

The henges open. Out of some of the henges step some of the guardians. Suddenly Kerusar, who is still with us, acts regal, instead of insane.

The guardians we did not kill step out.

They speak as one voice. "You have bested us, and thus it is your right to claim and rule our realms." If we wiish to be the rulers of any of the realms, we must merely touch the appropriate henge.

Kerusar indicates there was a plot by Alphaks who wishes us dead. Alphaks might have hatched this plot for two purposes: to release the Carnifex, now that their staff was created, and also to get us killed.

If we become rulers, we gain powers whilst within our realm, we will not age in the realm, and we will be its rightful ruler. We can leave the realm and purse our lives as we please, but if the realm is entered by an intruder, we will be summonsed back immediately. Whilst not in the realm, we do not gain any powers.

Grey chooses the red realm, the realm of battle.

Zim chooses the rainbow realm.

Lani chooses the gold realm.

Turia chooses the black realm.

Roland wishes to choose the blue realm. Roland will offer his services to the King there as Guardian.

Safranna chooses the green realm.

Powers: we can enter and leave our realm at will. We effectively have absolute rule when within our realm - the realms native inhabitants cannot harm us in any way, and we can command the realms inhabitants as we please - they can try to resist, but it is difficult. We do not age when in the realm. We can, using our own power, reshape a realm as we please.

This is an asset if we become immortal, because we effectively start off with our own plane.

We loot the walls that came through with us. THe walls were solid gold, and encrusted with gems. A pity only a bit came through.

It seems clear that in Nyx's earlier hint to Grey, the reference to Black Demon must have been an indirect reference to Alphaks.

It's all so fun: Alphaks thought we wouldn't stand a chance: he had a foolproof plan. He lured us in with the man who warned Grey of the Carnifex, the man who died, leaving behind valuable gems. He made it possible for us to get to the Mesa, which normally would be very difficult to enter. He felt we'd probably die at the hands of the guardians (oh, sorry Alphaks, but we aint 10th level any more!), and if we did succeed, we'd perish with the Black Staff trap in Castle Carnifex, and chaos would ensue.

Instead, we've got heaps of loot, and have ourselves become guardians.

Ah, Alphaks must hate us even more than before... if that's possible.