Stone Soules Summary: Cleanup
Our wonderous heroes last left off sorting treasure and arguing with fire giants, so needless to say, there was lots of clean up we had to do. We dispelled another huge batch of snakes because we couldn't transport them like snakes (they would die and radically turn back into humans causing a big problem). So Alegra cast another large-scale dispel magic. The effects of this one were a mixed bag according to some, but I count it as a drastic failure. About a segment or two after Alegra's spell went off, we saw a flash of blue light and smelled some sort of gaslike odor, screams of lots of people, and the fire giants on the lower floor yelling at us. At first we thought we set off some sort of magical trap, but when we went down it became obvious what had happened.
The floor below the altar room was filled with dead bodies (more dead bodies actually, there was already a couple there) but now it was really filled. Somewhere near the center was a charred heap of human (elf actually) remains with a broken staff nearby. All of the possible treasure in the room was destroyed, jewelry damaged, boxes obliterated, people burnt; the outcome was very bad. There was one person living amongst the dead, and we quickly healed his 7x burn wound to find out what had happened. His name was Zaris and he explained that he and his two comrades had been fighting an army of Treepeople (shot poisoned darts etc.) when their minor globe began to fail so the magic user Milf decided that it was time to do some serious damage and did a retributive strike, but was turned into a snake before he finished his action. Thus, when we turned him back into a human he decided to take out his wrath on everyone anyway and did the strike here, killing one of his party mates, himself (the charred remains, sort of like a human husk) but not Zaris. Needless to say we tried to get the situation back under control so we gathered all the treasure that was still intact and started to bring the people that think they are snakes and the coherent people back to base camp.
Everything went smoothly except for the last trip. It was about this time that I asked where the lantern was (something Ceydric explicitly said he put on the roof and something Eli specifically said he was going to take care of) Edwin said we left it on the roof...we checked and, guess what, it was gone. That really annoyed me since I specifically said I was going to take it but instead the sphinx got it. We know because Canstin mumbled to the Sphinx "enjoy your lantern" and was subsequently the target of his breath weapon. The log on the wall of the city (one of the safer paths in and out) where we were walking at the time began to vibrate really rapidly and Canstin and Eli fell off. Canstin took major damage but survived, Eli took a scratch (near the end of the log). We recovered and went to base camp and decided to go back to Middle to return these invalids and farmers to their families. We took a brief nine days off for the party to heal and learn new spells. Eli had found a spellbook and scrolls. Also, during the nine-day break the party bought several magic items from Zaris, including magical banded mail, magic arrows, a token of Salvage (unique item, creates a traveling spell book with Read Magic, and three spells that you currently have in memory), and we are willed Zaris' Bastard Sword +3.
We then decided to return to Tan-El as the Great Old City is more accurately named (comprehend languages is useful in many ways). Going through the teleporter, up two flights of stairs, and down the hallway we went to the little library room we had left for later. This room is filled with fine furniture, a bed, bookshelf with lots of books (enchanted with abjuration magic), a little level-4 magic bell (conjuration magic) that constantly rings, two evocation-trapped books, and magic rug, windows, and strings of beads hanging from the ceiling. Armed with lots of detection and removal spells we quickly ascertained that the room had traps on beads over the door, three of the books on the shelf, and on the bedframe. We removed the traps on the beads and two of the books before the inhabitant of the room decided to cause trouble. Although the beads we removed were the only ones trapped, all the others were magical and the druid of the party (Dari) decided she wanted to take down some of the other beads. As she cut one of the beads she was hit on the back of the head by some unseen force for 16 points. We then attempted to fight the unseen foe but it wasn't worth it. We needed to prepare for it (we have no way to detect the invisible, it destroyed our ink bags when we sprayed it). Thus we decided to stop here, return to base camp, and adventure again when we could dispel the last of the traps in the room.
Zack