Summary XLIII: Against the Ancient One in the Dark Pit and More Tan-El Stuff
Our next expedition was to eliminiate the "ancient one" so we went to the
Ziggurat and performed a ceremony that destroyed the evil altar there, as
well as dispelling the hell hole. Eventually some of us might call the
Ziggurat home, now that it is rid of all dangerous evil. I am sure if we
scraped off the soot and featured what remains of the hell hole (by
building some sort of dais around it) it might look like a neat place.
Forces of Evil: 0, Stone Soules: 8
Since we were in the mood to finish up some loose ends, we headed back to
Tan-El to check out some of the rooms that we hadn't been to before.
Eli's henchman sage Elendwhen recovered 4 good potions from the tower
wizard's alchemy lab. We also recovered some personal belongings of the
tower wizard. After that, we went to the "Golem Building Workshop" and
decided that the 4 Iron golems just kind of hanging around in the corners
of the room were REALLY bad news and decided to permanently leave that
place alone. So then we went to the "electrical zoo", a kind of creepy
room with a watertank in the back corner of one of the walls and several
other "exhibits" with various creatures that discharged lightning. We
had everything from Will-o-the-wisps to electric eels, trapped spirits to
a plant that zaps things. And then there was the cage filled with sand
(flecked with blue) that was broken out of. I have to credit the
original idea to Kyle but it is totally obvious now...this cage is where
the Behir originated. Flecks of blue, it will be really easy to do a
test if those are behir scales, broken out of because the little baby
behir grew up after the city was destroyed. Oh, and that high magic
Mithril lock...aren't we trying to find a mithril key for the behir? I
think all the pieces to the puzzle are there.
When the zoo was created, the mages made it so the Behir couldn't wander
a certain distance from the lock, but as the Behir got bigger, that
hold on him weakened so he was able to travel further and further
distances, but he is still tied here. These are all guesses, but I
am pretty sure they are on the right track.
Wandering around the courtyard so Eli could show the new party members
the wonders of the "whispering courtyard" caused quite a show. The stone
golems said "The Gate is closed." when we approached, and when Eli tried
to roll a continual light ball past them, one of them stepped on it and
then used a breath weapon which double-slowed the whole party. The other
golem went to the other side of us, and said that we would wait for
the proper authorities to arrive. No one did, and the golems eventually
went back to their posts. Scared us there for a second though, these are
obviously very powerful golems. We have good reason to believe that they
are the guardians of where we want to eventually go, so I guess we will
have to figure something out...they do move 6" after all :)
After that, we killed a bunch of ogres that decided to try and live in
the castle and then headed back to Middle. We have learned alot from
Tyner and have recovered a bunch of REALLY cool things. Although only a
couple of characters know about some of the stuff for safety reasons.
Although I may have been disappointed that we were seemingly getting
nowhere, these last couple of game sessions have made huge progress in
some of the party's goals. It is expected that the beginning of the next
semester the party will be travelling to the School of Wizardry and then
to the Academy, where we will identify a few things and get information on
the key, respectively. After that...who knows what, but it will
definitely be interesting and fun.
Merry Christmas everyone and have a good break!
PS- Can you tell that I get in a better mood after finals as opposed to
right before them :)
-Zack Hubert-