Though somewhat perturbed by the ridiculousness of the situation, I nevertheless proceeded to defend myself (quite adequately, of course; Aerik would scarcely recognize the little sister that he had such problems training when we were younger!). Then the doll turned to Prihelm and bit him, too. Unfortunately, this had quite a bizarre effect on him; he started giggling and finally broke into a belly laugh that was so violent that I thought he was going to hurt himself! And unsurprisingly, I was right: he did hurt himself (tore a few of those oh so impressive muscles of his, it seems). Well, eventually Haley and I killed the little doll thing, and then we went through the door.

At last we found the wizard's lab, complete with wizard (and a long dead wizard at that, just as I had suspected). We also found a second diary, describing his attempts to bring back his daughter. Without going too much into the details, suffice it to say that he was behind the plague and several of the earlier killings (we had suspected as much, or at least, some of us had). Apparently, he needed the body parts to create the body for his niece. Truly a revolting idea! (This, incidentally, was what all the thread was for, as far as we can tell).

The scary part was that he succeeded in bringing something to life out of all of this! But his creation, it seems, wasn't very obedient or at all understanding of what had happened, and she eventually turned on her maker. It seems that she was somehow responsible for the little doll thing which guarded the door, in addition to Rooden' broken legs (did I mention those?). He suggested that she would have to be killed, that she nests in the sewers (from which, we imagine, she emerges to terrorize the poor people of Port d'Elhour), and that as a golem (whatever that is), she is immune to normal weapons. This sounds very dangerous to me (and we won't even go into the rumors about the giant alligators), and I'm not at all looking forward to having to go into the sewers to track Alisanda down and kill her. Rooden did try to give some hint as to a weakness she might possess, but unfortunately, it was only partially legible. "She does have a peculiar weakness which can be used to immobilize her. She seems... presented... if it is not magically animated. She, herself... and can control such creatures... no child will ever be safe."

We then decided to see what was through the other door in the lab. Another big mistake! It was what you might call a meat locker, full of Rooden's various victims! Needless to say, those of us with weaker stomachs exited rapidly, followed shortly by the rest of the group (the men had decided to burn the building while Leighla and I comforted Haley as best we could). The building burned to the ground with a frightening rapidity, and we all felt as if we had accomplished something worthwhile for a change. Still, our quest won't be over until we've stopped Alisanda forever. I think our course is clear; we need to return to the town, prepare ourselves for the encounter, and track her down through the sewers until she's been destroyed. I can't get excited about the idea of killing what looks like a little girl, and I don't want to go into the sewers at all if I can help it, but I don't think we have much choice. I'm also torn about one other thing: I don't think we're at all ready for any dangerous battle at the moment (several of us are in very sad shape), but I'm also not sure that we can afford to wait a moment longer than absolutely necessary. Perhaps the shaman here can provide us with more of those nifty healing potions... But we need to start back to town, so I have to close, now. Hopefully, my next entry will have some good news about all of this. (And if we're really lucky, the town elders will see fit to raise our salary, given the trouble we've had to go through!)