Stone Soules Summary: After the Crushing Defeat of the Trolls
After my attempt to bury the poor bones lost to the troll shaman's evil lusts turned out to be unsuccessful (their souls were lost, used by some foul god as building material and I could not save even one), we packed up and headed to Middle. We soon discovered that Eli's clean spell had somehow managed to transport all of the sewage we cleaned off from the trolls' lair, to the Sphinx's library. Ceydric informed us of this (he wasn't in a good mood, mind you) and said that he had had to pay the Sphinx in cows for his stonegoyles. I hear that the townspeople were (rightfully so) not too excited about this either. The Church needed some work, and I concentrated on that for awhile. The keeper of the Church, Star, Aria, and I all worked at some sort of a midsummers welcoming celebration, to try to draw people of all sorts into visiting. Star also began some work on composing a poem about Gerald getting his sword. In a few months, he will unveil it.
While all this was going on, Canstin and Cassana trained. Dari collected mistletoe on Midsummer's day, and Theo and several others were there at that occasion. We had our small get-together at the same time and several people did visit.
Eli got some information on the paraelemental ooze monsters. Firstly, the change spell he used on them somehow caused them to explode, so he took some information for researching to the Alchemist in town. It is called "Vitrioliquid" and is clerically created from acid, swamp water, and graveyard dirt, with the aid of at least a quest and animate object spell. It explodes when in contact with elemental earth, but not with mineral or glass.
The party was getting restless, and Cassana and Canstin returned. We decided to head out. First, we reviewed the Jack of Clubs translated diary of the city. This is what they had to say.
The diary comes halfway in in a plan to steal the treasure of the Behir. The party is made up of mostly stealthy people, and mostly humans. They describe the "Caverns" with killer mushrooms, leeches, lizards, etc. They give directions involving a "broken" aquaduct and a narrow path across a chasm. On their way, the lead meber is killed instantly by some sort of "death field." They plan to come back with dispel magicks. One memebr was "carrying the boat." At the end, they lift the boat out of the channel and are very quiet to avoid the Sphinx from noticing that they came that way. They were also paranoid about crossing the bridge. Other strange things were that they were carrying two poison gas containers for killing the kobolds "when they reached them," though they hoped to avoid them. They also had some sort of deal with the Fire Giants that involved paying them money. When they left, there were voices of dissent to return to the Temples with magic, but then they just said that they were going to complete their next adventure. All of the passages seem to be retrospective.
At Tan-El, we decided to explore a few buildings near the log, because the Behir was in the city. He somehow projected his sound like he was outside the city, when we tried to leave, though. When Jeremy was sent out to scout, though, we knew the truth. We then left, and Jeremy scouted some more, but returned late. All of his feathers were gone, and he had walked back.
The next day, Canstin, Dari, Cassana to check for Behir leaving the city. The Sphinx demands reparations or we won't be allowed to scout the city any longer, because of our unwillingness to own up to our "clean" mistake. That was why he did that to Jeremy. We went to Middle to discuss options and to get any money for the Sphinx. We healed Jeremy (he had a wound).
We paid the Sphinx and he told us that clean sends dirt to the nearest rug (underneath it) and that he had the nearest one. Argh! What a strange spell. We explored and the scouters report, no Behir in the city.
We checked out the hexagonal area, though we stopped at the temple of the god of justice (Kor) and war (Kord) on the way. The temples were largely intact, nothing of too much excitement. At Kord's temple, there was a large red-cloaked man with a two-handed sword (a translucent illusion). "Death is open 24 hours," but then again I knew that from Teft!
A university like building with the first and last runic characters on it, along with lots of other runes. Nearby to the temples. Inside, there were mirror duplicates of ourselves. If our stuff touched their reciprocal item, they exploded with a fizz that didn't seem to destroy anything. There was also confusing tricks with Eli casting spells, etc. but I was outside, not wanting to face a double, and did not have exact experience myself. Star assured me that they seemed real enough to him (but of course, Star is sometimes very whimsical). We finally left, frstrated. Perhaps Eli would be better at explaining exactly what happened.
At the hexagonal area, we found the library locked and trapped when Dari tried to pick it. A face pressed against the opaque glass. Who was it? We do not know. Star tried with his keen eye-sight to spot the face again, but to him it seemed that the windows bent such that probably not even magic could penetrate them very far (but he said to ask Eli about that)! Indeed, they were endowed with magical electrical properties when we threw a small pebble at the window. There was a service entrance to the back, as well. We left, hopeful that tomorrow we could be better prepared.
We explored a munical building, but all it had were spiders. We left, there was naught we felt like exploring; it was getting shadowy by now, anyway. As we were leaving, Theo reported ghouls trailing us in the shadows. Eli turned a lightning bolted them. The surviving ones ran before I could even try ot turn them. They would have met a horrible fate if I had had enough time to destroy each one.
We walked to base camp, and set about our nightly duties.
--Alegra Falconer, June 28th, 2173
Kyle