We woke up to some less than wonderful news: Liss' pendant was missing, and apparently, Liss can only be away from it for a short time before he starts to be in great pain, and eventually, his unlife dissipates! This was a far more urgent crisis than the missing sailors, so we resolved to do our best to help the poor ghost.

Leighla and I were in favor of checking with the natives, but apparently Prihelm disagreed, as he started to lead the others off to one of the mountains. I think maybe he's homesick, since he grew up in a mountainous area, after all. But aside from an abandoned temple, which would probably make a great camp site, we found nothing there that would help us in our current situation.

We did, however, discover a journal, belonging to a priest named Vernspus Criss; it speaks of a Table, which he wanted to destroy, and a tapestry which had already been destroyed and whose loss was a major factor in the disbandment of his order. Knowing my companions as I do, I suspect we shall seek out more about this later, and even if they won't, I want to. Can't be a bard, after all, without having a healthy dose of curiosity about ancient mysteries (especially since exploring these things often proves to be rather lucrative...)!

All of this was quite fascinating, but not especially germane to our immediate purpose of helping Liss. With no other options open to us, we decided to go talk to Fran. Wonder of wonders, he'd been brought the pendant by one of his "children," which I gather means one of the friendly natives or something. He'd put it in a box that neutralizes magic, since he was able to determine that it had some sort of summoning magic associated with it and thought it might be dangerous. We got the pendant out, but it would take more time than Liss had left for the magic to return. With no other options, Fran agreed to help us, and after a dangerous and very painful ritual, we were successful! Liss has a body again! I'm so happy for him, even though he seems to like being mean to me for no good reason (and now that he has a body again, he's gonna pay for that...). I, at least, am also enormously grateful to Fran, even though my comrades seem to be less than gracious in their thanks to this nice man. I hope we won't need his further help, because at the rate we're going, he's not likely to want to give it!

Well, having gotten Liss a body, the next order of business was to get him some clothes and other equipment. Dogboy and Prihelm were able to take care of the former between them, and as for the latter... Fran suggested we go check out his storage room and see if we could find anything there that might be of use, so off we went. Mostly, to be honest, Fran has a bunch of junk in there; furniture, lumber, tools, and that kind of thing, rather than useful stuff like rope, weapons, and so on. But we were able to get enough stuff for Liss to at least feel somewhat content, and were just about ready to take up Fran's offer of lunch when it was pointed out that the big collar in the middle of the room bore investigating.

Sadly, there proved to be little too it. It was a large iron collar, big enough that it could hold something as large as Minxy, but it looked like it could be tightened to fit on a smaller animal. It was on one end of a sturdy iron chain; the other end was staked into the ground, and far enough that I couldn't feel any give in it at all as I tried to pull it up. Some of the others immediately felt suspicious about this ("He probably keeps the people who were shipwrecked here," said one half-elven companion who shall remain nameless), but although I couldn't really explain why he had this thing here, I don't think it makes him a bad person. Maybe it's just that I was raised to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and Fran has shown good intentions thus far, while the others are more suspicious of strangers; I shall have to remember to do my best to keep my companions cheerful and happy and more openminded!

Our curiousity piqued, we were getting ready to join Fran for lunch when Ratboy (oh, sorry: Felix) came in to get us. The earlier mystery about the monastic order on the island fresh in our minds, Leighla asked him about his robes; Felix claims that he found them washed up on shore after a shipwreck and liked them, so he wears them now. I suppose it's possible, though I don't really believe him; after all, no one could have that poor of a fashion sense, right? But we weren't getting anything out of him, except that the reason he seems not to like us is that he doesn't like talking and hasn't practiced his social graces in ages. This seems plausible enough; who else on this island is there to talk to? Though I'm sure we'll have more to say to Felix later, hunger won out (one of the side effects of appointing Haley as leader), and off we all went to lunch.

Fran and poor lonely Delphi were already there; the latter had saved Prihelm a seat, but he quickly moved as far from her as possible. I wound up with the seat instead, and was just explaining to the poor girl that Prihelm's a naturally shy and quiet type and that he didn't actually dislike her when Orson brought in a huge repast; bread, fruits, and as a main course, a rather underdone side of roast beef. Delphi couldn't tolerate the meat that rare, and Prihelm apparently doesn't eat anything with blood in it (which I saw as further evidence that they were meant for each other, since they even eat the same foods!), but other than those two, we all enjoyed a tremendous meal. It was punctuated by some rather interesting conversation...

Without going into details, suffice it to say that we learned the following tidbits. Delphi isn't really Fran's daughter (well, duh!); she washed up here several years ago and doesn't really remember a thing from before then. Fran himself is from Darkon; he's heard nothing about this mystical table whatsoever, and Orson built the one in his lab. Because Fran isn't religious, and is interested in curing diseases and so on, which means he must do all these experiments, people tend to distrust him (witness most of our own little band!), which was one of the reasons he moved out here. The other is that he wants to understand and ultimately cure the disease on this island. It seems that there's a contagious, if slow-acting, disease which causes people to mutate into beast-men who call themselves the "Broken Ones." Minxy is one of the few examples of an animal that's been infected with the disease, and apparently the effect on people is much the same. It is to protect himself from these Broken Ones that Fran has the stockade, since not all of them are friendly. Leighla and I both think that it was one of these that we saw our first day here, but we disagree as to where they come from; she thinks that Fran is creating them somehow, while I think it's an effect of the magical table. We'd place a friendly little wager on the outcome, but since we're both broke, that's not really an option right about now. I really really really need to make some money!

After our meal, we decided we would make our way back to the camp to get Alamon and Singe, then move into the doctor's guesthouse. As we were leaving, Delphi (who had apparently somehow gotten the impression that Prihelm likes her; don't ask me where the poor girl got that idea!) ran up and gave Prihelm a peck on the cheek, reminding him to be careful and to come back safely and soon, before she vanished up the stairs in her own room. Prihelm stood there looking a little thunderstruck; perhaps romance lies in his future? I hope so; those two are so darn cute together!

Anyway, we left the manor and hadn't gotten very far when I heard a sound off in the bushes. Alerting the others, I went to investigate, only to find myself face to faces with a gorilla-man, a couple of wolf-men, a couple of boar-men, and a couple of goat-men. Using those excellent powers of intuition that have drawn so many comments already, I deduced that these were the Broken Ones we'd been told about. Further, since the missing sailors were there (well, except for half of Dirk...), I assumed that these were the ones who'd attacked our camp. Leighla told us not to make any sudden moves, but it didn't matter, since they attacked anyways!