Snider's posessed slave told to obey me while going back to Inn; attacks centaur, I make it stop. Centaur attacks and kills possessed thing from behind.
Some despicable people pinch all the mattresses while we are out fighting. The PC's have never been more irate... "I may lose my lunch, I may lose my dignity, I may even lose my character's life, but I'm DAMNED if I'm gonna stand to lose my bed!" The swindlers are attempting to sell the mattresses back at exorbitant prices. We attack them, and their barricade of beds does not outlast our anger. One by one we recover the mattresses and the fools die under the onslaught...
Faeries immediately latch onto him.
Davrik asks Vanian if he knows where the forge is. Vanian tries to sap him. Davrik is very annoyed.
to see offerings on altar. Sun-rays excellent.
as people looking for Crux want to see the offerings.
Davrik and Silvermoon attack and kill them, as they are talking with the Sherriff. I arrive when pretty much all is over, and Snider is gaining on the last one running away down the hill.
for drainage of Eneldorean town near-swallowed by the Swamp.
Agreed, slightly reluctantly (If there's a half-orc involved in this, is it a quest I really want to go on?
I am asked to ally with King Silvermoon on behalf of Eneldore.
With writ from King proclaiming them citizens, looking for their hunting party. Oops. Another altercation ensues but the Orcs escape away.
She must recover a vial of sand, a tentacle, a Sentient Eyeball, and an egg - in duplicate.
Thor wants his goats and his hammer back. Helga and Gethsemene are his heralds. He is also pissed off that the Faery Realm is drawing power out of the Demon Realm and making it freeze over.
Davrik has to make a quick magical trip to Jurawicca to get Thor?s Hammer. I ask for a messenger to deliver an answering letter back to Eneldore.
Faeries trying to save rest of magical flowers that trasport people to Faery Realm from people picking them. (Slu'ak took one, and was chased round the Inn.) Travel to glade down by Dreaming Tower. Gypsy Gheorge Voyeur - known to Faeries - also trying to get flowers. Centaur comes with his bow and starts shooting. Davrik, King Silvermoon, Malffian and I hold him off and he hangs around till we all go away, having placed a magical ward around the flowers.
Half a dozen Dark One followers on beach, waving tentacles. Andreassa tells them we are spies for the Dark One and must be among the PC's thats why we don't have tentacles. They make us kneel, how degrading. They are sceptical, but arrange for Andreassa to speak with a High Priest of the Dark One later for the information she needs, and let Lathaea get the sand from the beach. Then we scarper back up the hill and leave them for the group of PC's that was following us.
The leader of the second party of orcs arrives at Inn with King's Voice and dead orc. King Silvermoon delivers a great (but becoming increasingly longwinded) oratory about why he is not guilty. The King's Voice, having no imagination whatsoever, convicts them anyway. King Silvermoon is exiled from Mordavia; Davrik is to be hanged the next morning.
Lathaea gains information about the Sentient Eyeballs. We see some tentacled creatures and organise a party to go back and look for them.
There are some Dark One followers and a High Priest. We sap them, remove two tentacles and eyeballs. Then Andreassa wakes up the High Priest again to ask for information. He won't give any unless we make a sacrifice to show our loyalty - for Andreassa, a limb. For anyone else, a head. And no revivification. Not surprisingly, we spend some amount of time arguing about it. Eventually, we just kill the bastard.
The Satyr takes the stuff and Lathaea disappears. The Satyr looks smug, cackles and jabs at us with his weapon. We attack, but as people land blows on him he puts a spell on them, a Mute spell: "Etum!" Taranth, Katherine and I get muted. I realise this will not stop me from fighting, and go after him, but the Satyr gets away. Lathaea appears again. The three of us muted discover a completely new set of facial expressions, with the main one being "I would be cursing very loudly right now if I could speak". Lathaea has a couple of vials of interesting potion and force-feeds them to two sapped people. I don't know what happens as I am trying to find ways to regain my speech.
Though he speaks backwards, the Satyr told us that the Dark Ones with the Crux would be coming down that path at a time that appeared to be 5pm (or in 5 hours?) Andreassa asked if he would help us recover it but he was not interested. I did a whole mime thing trying to explain that the Dark Ones and evil things wanted to kill the forest where he lived, and eventually had to write it down because people couldn't understand what I was trying to convey without words. Then followed a period of trying to convince the Satyr to unmute us, because I wouldn't be able to say my spells. He did, mercifully, unmute us.
There are Orcs in the Inn Hall. We fight them off. Malffian and I trip over each others leg and I skin my knee. It is annoying.
We get a party together, practically everybody, and saunter across to the top of the hill and wait. They do not come. We go downhill. They are seen at the beach - tentacles waving, and the Crux. We charge down the hill in the failing light. Snider, Lady Catherine and I attempt to do a sneaking-round-the-side trick but it doesn't work. There is a big battle - people get poisoned - I get poisoned despite my shield - I wake up, heal myself, then go round healing other sick people, and help dispatch the last of the Dark One followers. (Two tourists watch all this without any apparent amazement.) The Crux is ours!
I've been told I may be assassinated so wish company, and Malffian and the Faeries' noble King Silvermoon is exiled, so they are serving as my retainers. Faeries take a long time to get ready. :P as a result we are late.
I make the mistake of forgetting to tell Malffian not to announce me so everybody looks at me as I come in (late).
There are servants coming through with nibbles, and I discover I can eat in my mask (with care and a little effort I can drink in it as well) The band is playing and people are beginning to dance. No-body is asking me and I am fairly wary of danger, thus am keeping in the corner, and drinking out of my flask. Mmmm miruvor... Eventually the fairies draw me out onto the floor and I begin to relax a bit. Although I'm probably dancing like the ungainly stork I must resemble in this mask. Later I do get to do some dancing, I remember the Marseille (or however you spell it) - we dancers beat the musicians! Even the drummer! Woohoo! and I remember Stripping the Willow - dancing with Baron Eric von Braun's retainer James.
The room slowly fills up with vampires. While I am dancing somebody takes me aside to whisper about the vampires being a problem to the health of the citizens.
The 'smoke alarm' goes off from all the candle smoke. We all stand outside talking and occasionally dancing, and eventually someone comes and sorts it out.
Back in the Ball, after a while a pale noble-looking woman comes in. She seems to be Lady Katrina, the Vampire Lady that turned our half-Elven prince. When she comes in all the vampire sycophants slither up and kiss her feet, hissing. It is very creepy and everyone stays very quiet for a while afterwards. One of the two Vampire Hunters stupidly goes up to talk to her, and gets possessed. But we don't know that till afterwards. Lots of people go away and do other things. I'm not sure what happened now, but I think we got word that the Crux had been stolen, and went out into the woods to look for it. When we went back to the Hall emptyhanded - who did we see, but the stealer, the possessed Vampire Hunter! Seeing a dozen of us pour in, he was completely outnumbered. But he lit some tapers, and asked us to wait while he made his peace with the world or something. He blew out one taper and talked about Christ, walked round the table and blew out a second, talking about the Holy Ghost, then blew out the third and ran out the door unchallenged, hightailing it while we came to and raced in pursuit, in vain as it was dark. It was a fairly miraculous escape.
After going back up to the Tavern in shame, a lot of us were collared and told to get back down and have fun at the Ball. Didn't realise it was still on. More dancing and singing. I stopped drinking miruvor and started drinking water, after deciding that with all the vampires round being drunk wouldn't be a good idea.
I think Gabriel started the contest off with a recitation and act of Jabberwocky, which I mouthed along to happily. Lathaea sang something, I recited an original poem: Knight Errant (click here to see it), the Faeries co-opted Gheorge for a very voyeuristic poem (which he seemed to enjoy), and Helga sang a yodelling duet with her goat-masked staff (which won the contest)
I don't remember anything else from the evening but most of us went to bed, but at about 5am three minstrels staggered in and stood in the middle of the tavern hall singing loudly, waking people up. There were grumbles, and I got up with my sword in my hand and said something rude in Elven to them. Eventually they stopped and went away.
Malffian and Andreassa bought a contract for horses from a herdsman - too bad for Prince Arman's contract, he might now be demoted. We can only hope. We Elves reckon he could do with letting hot air out.
To decorate hall of town recovered from the Swamp. While I was getting the contract the rest of my group wandered off into the forest. I tried to follow them but couldn't find them, so I stormed back to the tavern in a huff and bad mood, grumbling that I could have been killed by Orcs or cultists.
A guy with a huge axe and a ton of armour turned up asking to fight anyone who would, with a bag of spoils for the one that could beat him. Turned out he had Really Extra Tough and so much armour he had 12 hp. The axe did Knock Down damage, so people were going down like sacks of grain. The Faeries and I had a chat, and they said that since Silvermoon had been exiled, they had his shield - the Shield Impervius - invulnerable to knock-down blows. Theey said that since I was the only Elven noble around, they were going to give it to me. So I took the magical shield, and took all the axe blows squarely on the magical shield, and took down the axe wielding guy, and won the prize. I gave the necromancy scroll within to Helga - her schizophrenic other-half Gronk is a necromancer.
The nobles were bored so decided to organise a tournament. It was 2k to participate and 1k to watch. Basically a series of rounds and whoever was left standing at the end won the take. I actually fought, such was my boredom, and lost to Carlyn Blackhammer. Good fighter, that human.
Davrik said his piece and went nobly. (very realistic!) Prince Arman made nasty remarks and I very nearly stabbed him. I sang an Elven lament for the dead, and the Fairies cast Fairy Dust on everyone and made them grieve, so he had a proper sendoff after all. I stomped off back up to the Tavern, pausing only to tell Davrik's corpse I hoped he found his way to the Timeless Halls.
I came outside to see Lathaea and Gabriel meditating on the side of the path. I joined in, and Eric and another did as well. Gethesemene was pointing us out to people and wondering aloud what we were doing, and saying 'It'z contagiouz! If you feel zleepy, exerzize, and don't zit down!'
A tortured man was running round the forest, being tormented by whispering wraiths with bloody fingernails, and being surrounded by tentacled cultists. He was the Duke of Borsa, who had ordered the slaughter of all the babies, and the souls of the dead wouldn't let himk rest. We had to kill him, but we could only touch him when he became corporeal, when all the cultists were dead and the wraiths scattered. And the wraiths were nasty - if one cut you with its fingernails, you were knocked out and rose up evil, and joined the wraiths, until someone poured holy water on you,or you got knocked unconscious. Holy water also repelled the wraiths. The water was flying. Lady Catherine did a lot of good work sapping people that had been turned evil so they could be dealt with. I did a lot of healing on people that had been poisoned by tentacles, or half-killed by our own side trying to unpossess them. My shield barely held the wraiths off several times, and I was touched once. The next thing I remembered was standing up shaking holy water off myself and my pouch, courtesy of Malffian. We chased the Duke from the graveyard to the chapel, into the forest up the hill, to the top of the hill, and finally to a last stand behind the inn where the Duke finally died at peace clutching the Staff of Erana.
What? Over already? You've got to be kidding! Oh well, packing and photo time.