"No longer like a toad in these foul cellars will I secret the venom of hatred -- for you shall bring me love!" - Erik
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Trolls attacked us at night, in the cold rain. It was very bad. We could only see them when the lightening flashed, and the water made it hard to light them on fire. Leento used his Faerie Fire spell, hoping to make the trolls visible in the dark, but it actually fooled the dumb beasts into thinking they were on fire. A few ran away, and more came back later. At one point, one showed up in the middle of the camp, even though we had watches posted. It managed to badly injure most of the party before we were even fully awake. I'm not sure how that happened. Trolls are very dangerous creatures and we will have to be extremely careful when we approach Yerraterra.
We stopped off in a tavern for one more decent meal before we headed to Malta Forest. The tavern was filled with townspeople, farmers, and off duty guards. A bard was singing, and the food smelled good, and I got ready to settle down for another chance to prove I could hold my mead. As soon as we got in, though, Arkospixi, who's always acted a little suspiciously, pardoned herself and headed off to meet with a shady looking man sitting in the corner. A few minutes later, an off-duty Knight Of Phantar, who had been very obviously trying to not look like he was looking at us, headed out of the tavern. I waited a few minutes, and then followed him.
When I caught up with him, he was already on his way back, escorting a distinguished-looking old man, probably a former Knight himself, and a young woman with brown hair (kinda cute) wearing the blue cloak and broach of an apprentice Guild Mage. We'd been having problems with the Mage's Guild ever since Snow joined our group, so I was wary. I stopped them and demanded to know who they were and what they wanted. The guard pointed me out as one of "them" and the older man introduced himself and the apprentice mage. He was Teranon and the woman was Andrya. Teranon was our friend Retameron's father, and Andrya was the apprentice of Halia, who was Retameron's wife and also a good friend of ours. The Knight was Sir Gandred.
After negotiating a meeting place (I wanted to do it in the tavern because I was still suspicious of the Mage's Guild connection), I agreed to allow the three to come into the tavern and make their appeal for our party to meet them tomorrow in Teranon's war bunk. We entered the tavern to find Chyekk singing drunkenly with a group of dwarves, Lashtal sitting over by the bard, and Malouf sitting in the corner, gnawing on a ham bone, but eventually I got everyone together and we listened to Teranon's appeal. He spoke quietly, apparently not wanting anyone else in the tavern to hear, but he told us that his son Retameron and his wife Halia had disappeared. He would not go into details in the tavern. We agreed to meet with him tomorrow to hear more.
After Teranon left, we got into a heated debate on what we should do. Our goal, to cleanse Malta Forest of Yerraterra and his trolls, had been continually delayed as we dealt with the enslavement of Malouf's tribe, Chyekk's geas and the orc mines (and an excursion into the frog-people's cavern), and the centaur war. On the other hand, Retameron and Halia were fairly good friends of ours and we did not want to abandon them. We agreed we would go to help them, but we weren't happy about how fate conspired to keep us from our task.
Teranon told us the following:
Snow seperated from the party, scaling the tower wall and entering through a window on the top floor. The rest of us went in the front door. We explored that tower, room-to-room, and found nothing, except busted furniture and the remains of the servants and soldiers, whose bodies had been sucked dry of life and converted into dried husks. There was a piece of broken mirror glass in each room, and at first we thought it was the magic mirror, but we soon encountered more glass than could have possibly made up one mirror. We figured that the creature, whatever it was, was able to travel from one mirror piece to another, so whenever we found a piece, we smashed it. We ran into a few creatures that escaped from Halia's lab, and at one point had a scare when a hairy looking humanoid that vaguely matched the description of the monster jumped at us, but it turned out it was only a rock baboon.
Chyekk was going into each room alone to smash a mirrors, and suddenly, as he went into one of the last few, the door slammed behind him. We heard the sounds of a fight, but were having a lot of trouble busting the door open. When we finally got in, Chyekk was fighting a creature that looked exactly like what Snow and Teranon had described. It was clawing ferociously at Chyekk. His armor was the only thing keeping him from getting rent apart. He was swinging at the thing with all his might and it was barely registering. The priests attempted to repel it with Tyr's power, but it had no effect. Then we all moved in and attacked it, but not before the creature got one good swipe in at Chyekk and scored a hit. Chyekk staggered, visibly weakened. I can tell you that while i was hitting that thing for all i was worth, i don't think i was hurting it that much at all. The priests seemed to be having better luck with their maces.
Eventually Snow met up with us and reported that the top floors were the same as what we were seeing, and also said that it looked like the mirror, which had been hanging on the bedroom door, was gone. We decided that there was nothing more for us to do.
We left Teranon, and were walking through the streets, feeling demoralized (especially Chyekk) but ready to leave town and head to Malta Wood, when Malouf suddenly turned to us and started stammering "My... my b-brother!", and then ran off. The rest of the party ran off after him, but i didn't. I was sick of it. One thing after another. It was getting pointless. In fact, this whole series of side-quests would never have happened if we hadn't gotten mixed up with that oaf Malouf and gone trekking the entire breadth of the country to free his tribe of female worshippers. Well, I was tired of it. Let the rest of the group go catch the crazy barbarian and settle him down. I was going off for a drink. I found a nicer pub that had some tables on the street, and I sat down.
After a while, though, I started to get worried. How hard was it to catch the crazy man and calm him down? They should have been back by now. I got up and began following their tracks down a series of narrow allies. Soon I heard the sound of battle up ahead and I started moving faster. I got to an alley, and saw trouble: we were being attacked by an efficient looking group:
Immediately after our captors left, Arkospixi slipped out of her chains. A second later, Snow was out of hers and the two of them were opening the doors and unlocking our chains. It is at times like these I am glad to have people of their unique abilities on our side. If we were a team of only warriors, we would still be in prison. As we were freeing ourselves, another prisoner, a man named Ashgarth, introduced himself as the leader of a slave rebellion in this world. What world? Well, apparently we had been sucked into a different dimension, ruled by Skarda. Ashgarth said that Skarda commanded 500 soldiers and had about 3,000 slaves. Ashgarth had organized a small resistance force of 100 slaves, but they weren't very effective, and Ashgarth wanted our help.
Originally I had thought that Chyekk and Malouf were in a different cell; I now realized that they were not with us.
We snuck through the dungeon, and Arkospixi was able to dispatch a few patrolling guards. I've always been impressed with Chyekk's ability to knock an ogre clear across the room, but the stealthy way that Arkospixi can drop an opponent in a single, silent stab is... disturbing.
As we were leaving the dungeon, we found both Retameron and Halia in cells. We freed them, and Retameron and myself both wore the prison guard armor. Then we burst into the guardroom, and fought the idiot prison keeper and several guards. Our equipment was in the room, so we grabbed our stuff, and i removed the guard's armor and put my own back on. We also took as much of Chyekk and Malouf's stuff as we could carry. Ashgarth said that our friends were likely at the arena, and that we had better hurry there.
When we left the dungeon, I was stunned. The world we were in was apparently a giant cube, with the walls, floors, and ceiling made out of mirror. It was very disorienting. But we didn't have time to stop and consider it. Several guards were coming towards us. Ashgarth led us across the mirrored floor, into a makeshift "town" of slaves. Once we were in the crowd, the guards could not find us, and Ashgarth took us to the arena.
Looking down into the arena floor, we saw Chyekk and Malouf, and a badly abused Manticore. Malouf was fighting the beast with the scattered weapons spread across the floor. Chyekk, apparently still rattled from his diminished strength and his recent defeat, was just standing there in a daze. While the rest of us were trying to decide what to do, Snow took off, jumping into the arena to help Malouf. Her system of honor is admirable but also completely impractical. Thinking quickly, I tried to salvage the situation while a number of guards entered the arena after Snow. Suddenly I realized my mistake: I had taken off the guard armor, and now I couldn't pass myself off as one. Retameron still could, though, and I urged him to enter the arena and help Snow. Nonetheless it looked hopeless.
Then, a group of perhaps 15 slaves entered the arena, screaming and shouting. They began attacking the guards. The guards turned to face them, and Malouf and Snow ran off, Malouf picking up and carrying Chyekk. Then the Manticore turned and attacked the guards as well. Ashgarth shouted for us to follow, and so we were not able to see the end of the fight. I don't know what happened to the slaves, or to Retameron.
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