The World of Telvar

I mean, hey, it had been almost two years since the last attempt to level drain him. Balinor was starting to wonder why they were taking so long to come after him.

The now 4th level Balinor whipped around and smacked the creature, hitting with Maiden Basher (the +1 hammer) and injuring the creature, who promptly disappeared into thin air.

Fortunately, Felix as Peacemaker threw a Detect Evil in the area and spotted the creature in front of Balinor. Nakumanu moved in and stabbed it, unfortunately missing. Kain cast a Flame Blade, but swung and missed.

Chiaro snored contentedly, but everyone else eventually woke up. The creature had moved, and it came in behind Balinor for a second stab—which would have killed him instantly—but miraculously missed! Balinor activated his Strength from the new hammer and became 20 strength! He turned and whacked the creature with Wrath. Felix moved in and stabbed the thing, as did Nakumanu, attempting to corner the thing. Donald sent four Magic Missiles at the thing, but it resisted them.

We seemed to have it in a corner, when it vanished again. Felix swung, but the creature really was gone. Thinking quickly, Felix threw a Detect Chaos and spotted the creature high up, 15 feet in the middle of the chamber!

Where no one could reach it. Arrgh. If it could fly, then there was no way we could keep it from escaping. Morgan went back to back with Balinor, who pulled his +3 dagger and flung it at the creature, but fumbled and the dagger struck the wall with shocking power, almost breaking it.

Chiaro stirred at this point, and Donald threw a Web spell in the opening. The illusionist threw hordes of chalk dust in the air, but the creature had already escaped the area. We spat and cursed until we realized that dozens of snakes were coming through the opening, all poisonous. Balinor and Morgan killed the nine that were through the Web, although Morgan was poisoned and had to be Slowed, and the rest were trapped. Kain spoke with them and discovered that they were in a Limgut-style trance, ready to kill us at all costs. They said simply that they served the Master of Rot.

Morgan couldn’t help but notice then that dozens of poisonous spiders were pouring out of the cracks in the wall.

That did it. We lit the Web and charged out of the cave, though Chiaro managed to get bitten by a spider and poisoned (despite having cast Mirror Image), but was Slowed by Kain. We moved rapidly out of the area and down the great stairs to the original landing spot on the beach.

Or that was the plan. Felix was in front, and suddenly we spotted seven zombie things shuffling slowly up the stairs. We shrugged and Cassian lobbed a Fireball at them from the Belt of Fire, but when none of them fell down, we realized they weren’t zombies.

Nonetheless, we hadn’t guessed what they really were. Felix engaged the first and barely slew it with a swing of his sword. He moved to kill the second, but the thing reached him first and struck him, level-draining him as well!

Arrgh!!!!

They were wights. Realizing the danger immediately, Cassian launched another Fireball which did tremendous damage and wiped them all out, leaving only a gold bracelet, a choker, and a short sword of some alloyed metal. None were magical or aligned.

We reached the beach, three levels down, and decided to camp there, hoping that the wights that emerged out of the sea were all the creature could summon.

It was not to be.

We were partway through the spell-shift, with the fighters ringing the spellcasters, when our old buddy the undead guy popped up in front of Balinor and tried to kill him. The alert fighter managed not to be surprised, barely, and the creature miraculously missed him once again (it would have killed him). Balinor struck back, and though his increased strength had left him, he still injured the creature, which had seemed to take a particular interest in Balinor, apparently wanting to finish him off!

The big blow was then struck by Morgan. The elf had come around the side and wailed on the creature with Thunderstruck, doing massive damage. But more importantly, he managed to STUN the creature!

Taking full advantage, all the fighters beat on the creature, which went down suddenly, vaporizing into thin air!

Felix threw a Detect Evil and we could see the mist escaping, just as in the ogre mage. Balinor roared, unwilling to let this go. He kicked Cassian awake and yelled for her to lob another Fireball at the cloud, as it might actually be hurt by it. Cassian responded and blasted the mist, which then vanished. Felix confirmed that it was no longer there.

Hmm.

There was jubilation, but a note of caution. What the heck WAS that?

We looked through the Bestiary, and the closest thing we can come up with is an oriental vampire. There just aren’t a lot of corporeal double-level draining undead—basically you have liches and vampires.

Oh great.

That meant the thing had a tomb somewhere and we needed to find its coffin to kill it permanently. We had other things to do, so we healed up and sent Donald as a Polymorphed gull to scout out the orc villages and such so that we could develop a good plan, while we dug around the shady spot where we’d last seen the vampire.

We discovered from a weird “squirrel on steroids” creature that the thing often hanged out there during the day and had been seen floating away at times, to some unknown location. The creature had not been out at night, as it was too scary.

We dug on the spot and eventually bumped into a burrowing mole. He was very helpful and told us that there was a set of large room down below. Though it would be a major digging job, there is something below the spot there.

On the other hand, it was probably accessible from somewhere else, like the spire, so we put the digging on hold.

We also discovered that the door to the spire can be opened by someone wearing the Passwall Cloak from Orc Isle! This makes the spire a wonderful retreat spot from orc swarms.

The inside of the room in the spire (the only one we could see, as there did not appear to be any exits) contained four silvery statues and a flashing strobe “disco” light like the one from Orc Isle.

As a tangent from this, we decided on an itinerary and a plan for our stay:

Day One—Lizards, get trashed
Day Two—Heal from vampire encounter
Day Three—Scouting, Check out spire, granary plan
Day Four—Explore spire
Day Five—Open
Day Six—In the evening begin master plan for destruction of many orcs
Day Seven—Hide and possible second attack, then pickup by Dunstill and Illic at dusk

Some Details:

The granary plan, which has already been executed in part, goes like this. An Invisible Kain Flies (thanks to Donald) to the roof of one of the stone warehouse granaries at night. He Stoneshapes a hole, drops a Precipitation and a Putrefy Food and Drink inside, and then reseals it with clay. The idea is that this will induce all the rice and food inside to rot away without the orcs knowing it. This was done on the two granaries in one of the three villages.

The main plan goes like this:

There are two other villages on the island, a secondary and the main “metropolis.” We intend to harm both as badly as we can.

There is a very large stone and earthworks dam that if broken would dump huge amounts of fresh water over the smaller village and destroy it along with all the drydocks (it’s the shipmakers’ village). There is also a second dam by itself, which contains huge amounts of fresh water. Between them they contain virtually ALL the fresh water on the island.

The plan is this: (the use of resources is critical due to our limitations on numbers of spells and potions)

The party arrives (perhaps by use of Waterwalk spells) at the dam near the drydock village on the eve of the sixth day. Balinor, Felix, Morgan, Bogomel, Kain, and Albee use their full abilities to take out all the guards there, using multiple Silence spells and Hold spells and Commands and sheer brutal fighter power. Albee can cut down any that try to escape. Then, after the guards are dead, Chiaro will use his illusions to make it appear as if nothing has happened on the dam and will have stationary guards and such.

Just as this combat starts, Nakumanu will take off for the big city. He will set up 2 sets of oil for each of the twelve city districts (which have been separated by large distances to protect against a single fire wiping out the town). Nakumanu will be Invisible and Flying for this plan. Nakumanu was chosen because the many animals will not be able to distinguish him from the smell of any other orc, whereas, say, Morgan would be in serious trouble.

The main plan continues at the first dam. Donald casts Fly on himself and then Polymorphs into a burrow worm! This allows him to mess over the dam quite effectively and set it up for collapse as Cassian will Lower Water to allow him to reach the more difficult spots without being killed by water. Donald and Cassian then Fly to the other dam by using half of the flying potion left behind by Nakumanu on Cassian. Nakumanu has returned and receives the rest of the Flying potion to actually go and light all the fires in the city, or at least as many as he can until the general alarms prevents him from finishing. This should cause mass destruction.

Yes, that would be a flying burrow worm and cleric heading for the other dam. This would of course be at night and out of infravision range.

Then Cassian uses her clerical spells to take out the much smaller number of sentries (who have no backup or witnesses) at the other dam and cast another Lower Water (using the Pearl) and allow Donald as a burrow worm to wreak havoc on the second dam. Here we simply care that the water drains out rather than actually destroying the dam.

Nakumanu returns, and the dam at the drydocks suddenly collapses when the Lowered Water rises up. It will be helped by a Plant Growth from Kain that will mess up the structure, and then have it Dispelled by Kain, further weakening it by removing the roots. The result would be that the water would break open the dam, which for an instant would still look intact thanks to Chiaro, and then the water would break through and destroy the village.

So in summation, we would burn down most of the capital, drown the drydock village, and remove all the food from the other.

This even leaves us the option that if we spell-shift we can attempt a final operation, like freeing the slaves, in the closing hours of day seven, with Donald as a bird waiting to tell Dunstill and Illic to pick us up at the slave camp. We could divert the orcs attention by having Donald set off one of the fireworks on the southern end of the island (the undead infested end) thereby pointing them in the opposite direction from where we are.

It sounds like a plan.

First, we have to explore the spire and kill that vampire once and for all!

An additional note: Miraculously, both Balinor and Felix made their saves (Felix thanks
to the Chant spells) and regained their levels, which is fantastic!

Joel/Balinor