The World of Telvar

First, Rangorn's reincarnated henchman, Luke (Lumpur Kuala) was sent to
talk to the roc and get some answers. He was Imbued with Cure Light
Wounds and Speak with Animals.

Luke flew through the day up to the top of the high mountain where the
roc nested. On his approach Luke noted a large cave with some sort of
avian creatures in it. He continued and found the nest, and waited for
the roc arrive.

As night fell, the roc arrived and dropped food for its "babies." The
little creatures tore into the creature viciously. Ignoring this for the
moment, Luke cast his Speak with Animals and spoke to the roc. He could
get virtually no information before absolutely everything went completely
and hopelessly wrong for Luke. The roc seemed confused and stupid, and
Luke soon found out why.

The "babies" looked up and had humanoid faces twisted in hate. Luke
turned to fly away when a horrible song rang out and held him
enthralled. He watched as the harpies circled and attacked, injuring
Luke. Blowing two more chances to break the charm, Luke took damage and
was temporarily saved, and cast a Cure Light Wounds, reviving himself.
Alegra knew that Luke was in trouble from the spell, but she could do
nothing. Luke attempted to fly but was instantly enthralled again. He
was attacked, twice more, and spiraled out of the sky. He could have
landed smoothly, but failed to do so and nearly killed himself landing.
His final chance was to evade the harpies in the rocks, but he picked a
bad spot and they descended upon him.

Theo instantly knew of his death from the Locket of Life Detection. He
couldn't have been killed by the roc, as it was much too slow (several
minutes had passed). Something else was there. We realized that the
appropriate information could be gathered by having Dari (the druid of
Middle) scry on the area. So Guile (Alegra's hawk) dropped Dari's item
in the nest, and Dari discovered that there were at least seven harpies
present.

This required a mountaineer, and fortunately, Alegra had two: Sean and
Aria. The plan was to climb the mountain in three days, hide from the
roc by virtue of Invisibility on the non-mountaineers, and attack the
harpies under cover of Silence spells and fog summoned by Alegra's
Weather Summoning spell. Our ears would initially be stuffed.

Well, the climbing was nearly fatal, as usual, for Rangorn. The first
day resulted in a close call, and on the second day Sean was attacked by
a snake that he fought off with Aria's help. On the third day we
discovered that Luke had in fact spotted a griffon nest containing at
least a dozen griffons, which we completely avoided without hesitation.

We camped in a cave four hundred feet under the nest of the roc. We
turned visible, and camped for the night. We used all of our 2nd level
spells to climb to the top under Silence. However, the danger was not
over as Rangorn was nearly plunged to his death by a mistake by Sean.
Still, we reached the top and managed to crest the ridge without shaking
the nest and waking up all the harpies. The four fighters (Theo,
Rangorn, Han, and Sean) snuck into position and began to silently kill
the harpies, which was awkward due to the nest.

The area was a complete mess with bits of carts and wagons and ships and
other materials strewn about and built into the walls of the nest.
Everything smelled extremely bad. There were a dozen sleeping harpies.

Initially things actually seemed to go well as everyone slew a harpy.
Then things got really bad again. Theo killed a second harpy, but
everyone else's harpies woke up!

Rangorn stabbed his twice and inflicted good damage and a wound. Sean
held his at bay, as did Han. Theo moved to help Sean, and Aria did not
notice what was happening due to the Silence. On his second swing, Han
missed and was attacked by the harpy, but was miraculously uninjured.

Then one of the other harpies began to stir.

Sean dropped his spear and moved to encompass that harpy in the Silence
spell (along with the remaining four). Rangorn fumbled and was struck
four times by the harpy he was fighting. Han's was defeated with help
from Theo.

Then Rangorn tried to kill Sean, stabbing him with his falchion
Gruntender. Fortunately, Rangorn's harpy was dropped moments later, and
whatever charm had taken over Rangorn disappeared after a moment.

The last four harpies were dispatched in the Silence, and the fight was over.

We searched the area for the body of Luke, but it was unrecognizable in
the general filth. We collected as much as appeared to be valuable. The
only incident of note happened in one of the ruined huts:

Sean picked up a glowing longsword. Suddenly, he unlooped his
Phaulkonian holy symbol, looked around, tossed it to Alegra, and said
something no one could understand in Cloud Giant. Alegra Commanded Sean,
who fell, and we moved the sword away from him.

The climb down was uneventful, and we returned triumphantly to Middle.

Salvage tax was paid. We collected three magic items, but all of them
are very cool:

-Full Plate+1
-Medium Shield+2/+5 vs. missiles, and 20% Magic Missile absorption
-Ascension, +2 Korian longsword (fanatically LG), +3 vs. avians, can
detect elevators, stairs, etc.

Good stuff. We gave Faranyn the full plate+1, returned Ascension to
Kelburn in exchange for recognition of Tan-El (this has not occurred yet)
and kept the Medium Shield, which is at the moment on Alegra's Guard
Captain, Wren.

A successful adventure. Rangorn will, of course, never live it down.

Joel/Rangorn/Luke

The results of the "Alegra Fest":

It appears that we have been successful. The Roc had to increase its predation to feed
the twelve harpies (its "babies") who shared its nest. It was completely unaware of their
cuckoo-like behavior. After the intrepid adventurers retreated from the Roc's nest in
great haste (to avoid the arrival of the Roc) and spent night in a sheltered cave, Alegra
consulted with Phaulkon. It was clear that the "Chaotic Evil abominations greatly
displeasing to Phaulkon" had been eliminated to his satisfaction. This would have allowed
the very reasonable predatory nature of the Roc to return to normal and achieve the
important goal.

Other notes:
Alegra had thrown a couple of Divinations on the area prior to leaving to investigate it,
in which she had learned though the "holy animals of Phaulkon" were highly dominant,
that "chaotic evil abominations to Phaulkon which were greatly displeasing to Him" were
significant in the area. This allowed Alegra, in consultation with the bestiary to suspect
three main creatures: harpies, manticores, and perytons. We had suspected manticores
(that had coincidentally "framed" the Roc by increasing predation in the area). Though
many possibilities were suspected, the "cuckoo hypothesis" was novel to us until our loss
of Luke and our scrying on the site. Alegra had in her possession several trinkets which
had been previous "memorized" by Dari, back in Middle, for scrying purposes. Alegra
had Guile drop one into the Roc's nest, and Dari observed at least 7 harpies in her field
of vision. (Alegra and Dari communicated with birds and the Messenger spell.) And
Alegra was actually picking off rousing harpies when the fighters couldn't reach them fast
enough. She picked off the one which charmed Rangorn so that he could be useful
again. We managed to kill the harpies very quickly, considering. The search of the nest
had to be cursory, but it was overall reasonably successful.

Kyle/Alegra