Right after the wisp zapped me, I awoke, strapped down, blindfolded, with something down my throat, and stark naked. After remedying these various conditions, I found myself in some sort of bizarre laboratory. Hundreds of people, with tubes down their throats and all sorts of unpleasant things! My equipment was at the foot of my bed, so off I went to explore, ignoring the zombie-like lab workers.

I quickly ran into some lunatic calling himself Dr. Arcanus; apparently, the bodies are those of all the people whose minds are trapped inside some machine he created. He uses their emotions, especially pain and suffering, to provide sustenance for himself. None but him know how to operate the device, so there's nothing I could do for those poor people! I tried planning, but nothing would work. Besides, I was soon distracted by the knowledge that Haley was alive!

Apparently, people who have the Virus are people whose minds have escaped the Illusionator; the device must then attempt to portray them, and it can't do so perfectly, thus explaining the "madness" that the thing causes. So Haley caught it first, and thus woke up first. Sirius caught it when Haley tried to wake him up and accidentally killed him doing so.. And then I awoke, and though we plotted and plotted, we couldn't think of any way of waking the others; we had to trust they could awaken themselves. And by killing the illusionary me, they did so. But now I know how what I mean to them...

At any rate, when they all awoke, they confronted Arcanus, but ultimately, it was a stalemate, and he let us go, since he didn't want to risk damage to his precious machine. I hope to defeat that bastard one of these days! So through the exit we went, and back into the mists, to see what the future held for us in this strange and miserable land. Somehow, I'm almost getting used to it. But I still want to go home! I hate it here!

We emerged into a strange land, of course. Off in the distance was a ruined castle atop a hill; at it's base was a walled town, and in the center of the castle was a tower that glowed with a beautiful mystical fire. With nothing better to do, and drawn by the curiousity that all adventurers possess, we went to the town, hoping to get a place to rest for the remains of the night.

This, of course, was not to be; the town gates shut fast after dark, and it was already near midnight. We were told to come back in the morning, and warned to not light any fires while we waited; apparently these would attract some sort of local denizens that we didn't want to have to face. Since it was late and we had no source of light, I volunteered to stay up for the watch. The rest went to sleep, and the hours started to pass uneventfully.

Some few hours later, I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eyes, but I was wrong. But I could have sworn I saw something. And a few moments later, it happened again! Somewhat unnerved, I woke up Sam to keep watch with me, and it was just then when these walking shadows charged into us! Sam reeled, stunned, but my agility foiled my foe, and I buried both of my blades in it's side. I yelled for the others to awaken as I finished my hapless opponent off with another flurry of swordly wizardry. Sam seemed to be struggling mightily; he swept both of his blades through the area where his foe was without doing any real damage; Tolec had a little more luck, but naturally, it was up to me to save the day, and also naturally, I was more than capable of doing so; with a deft maneuver, I plunged both of my blades through the creature, whatever it was, and with a wail of agony, it vanished, slain by my mighty prowess!

None of us got much rest after that, so early in the morning, we made our way into the town. Naturally, we all had different priorities; Haley, of course, was mostly interested in food, Sam (perhaps somewhat shaken by his recent encounters with the undead) wanted to go to a magic shop, and Tolec wanted to go the blacksmith's. Since the taverns were still closed and the smith's was on the way, we stopped by there first, and Tolec made his purchases (remind me to get my money back from him soon!). Then we headed over to the magic shop, and while we certainly couldn't afford any of his wares, the merchant did tell us about something that might prove very interesting; the castle up on the hill is known as the Cracked Keep, and it is said to be home to much in the way of riches and whatnot. I tried to convince him to back an expedition to the place, but he refused, alas. More importantly, however, he told us about an old historian, Artoise, who knew much more about the place, and being all curious, we went to visit the man.

Artoise happened to live near a temple, which was, curiously, dedicated to Prihelm's god, Torm! Our holy warrior, naturally, immediately went in to worship while the rest of us waited outside, but a few minutes later, a great commotion from the temple brought us rushing! It seems that Prihelm is involved in some prophecy here! Apparently, the keep is inhabited by a fallen paladin, Prihelm's "birth enemy," and Prihelm is to be the one to put an end to this being's reign of terror! I find this rather amusing, myself; without meaning offense to the big guy, he's not exactly the most intimidating opponent I can imagine facing... But there the prophecy is, after all.

We were able to get the whole story from Artoise, which I'll write down here for posterity; also because it may contain something useful that we'll see later on.

"Well, about a few thousand years ago, that castle was called Shinare-Tyche, which means the Castle of fortune and wealth. In fact, the coat of arms was a gold coin over a sword with a crown encircling them both. And the motto was, "The wealth of the King is his backing". The kings of this kingdom were descended from a line of merchants that....but I digress. You wanted the legend of the castle. Here it is: About two thousand years ago, after many years of civil war, the kingdom fell. I am certain you are curious how so great a realm fell, no? Well, a neighboring kingdom that was jealous of the king of Shinare sent an assassin to kill the king and his chamberlain. And the assassin succeeded. I see the look of puzzlement on your face, why the chamberlain you wonder? Well, somewhere within the castle, there was a hidden vault that held all the king?s fortune; and only two people knew where it was, the king and his chamberlain. When they both died, and the king?s brother ascended to the throne, he was forced to raise taxes. This started the civil war and doomed the nation to fall. And fall it did.

When it fell, it was carved up by its neighbors and forgotten. Then, about 500 years ago, a holy warrior came and took up residence in the abandoned castle. Things went well for a few years, but something happened to the knight, no one is exactly sure what, and he fell from grace. As time passed, he did not repent but became more evil, even to the point of killing all his former friends. Eventually, he became so evil, that his former god sent a ball of fire from the heavens and a great earthquake to destroy him. The holy fire consumed and blackened the castle and killed the knight and the quake split the ground and destroyed all the towers. In fact, one tower fell over and was swallowed by the earth. But all this did not kill the fallen warrior; it imbued him with evil energy and gave him unlife. Now he inhabits the castle, the Cracked Keep it is now called. He is unable to leave it except during the new moon, when darkness covers the land. Only during the new moon may he leave the crypts of the Keep to come and reign upon the land. But legends say that a seer once told him that he would be destroyed when another knight came to take his place, to take up his holy blade and slay him with it, for only if the evil knight is destroyed, may the blade be taken from the castle."

Our mission, it would seem, is thus; we must first find the treasures of Darkhelm's friends (Darkhelm being the Fallen One, of course); with these, Prihelm will be able to gain entry to the single remaining tower, in which is the Holy Sword with which we shall defeat the fallen warrior. Naturally, Darkhelm doesn't want this to happen, so he'll send his minions after us, though. There's also that fallen tower somewhere, which is said to be haunted; I suspect we may want to investigate that more throughly, though first, I'd like to find the works of some historian named Moonji Rahja, who apparently made a study of the architecture of castles; while he didn't visit the Cracked Keep itself, he apparently wrote all about castles of similar time periods, and with luck, we could use this book as a guide to help us in that unholy place.

I'm not sure what to think about this mission: on the one hand, it is heroic, and it can only add to my legends, and the fact that it is potentially lucrative doesn't hurt either, but on the other hand, I have no real interest in dying in this strange land, and this seems likely to be a much more unsafe mission than what I'm used to. But my friends are all going, and if they are to succeed, they will surely need my help, so I guess I'm going with them. Still, this kind of thing's not in my contract!