Okay, so to begin with, we're currently in that charming center of civilization called Necropolis. Don't ask me how we got here, because I don't really know; it's those dad gum Mists again. We are trying to make our way back to Holdenby in Mordentshire, where we have a sponsor, Sir Page, who is a member of some secret order or another. I've already written about this, but it never hurts to refresh the memory a little bit, I think. We bards call this "setting the stage." We'd recently stumbled across a town with a device called the Geist Stan which, as I understand it, was good for turning people into undead and not much else. With the help of the grandiosely named Company of the Dawn, we destroyed it (at great personal cost, might I add!), and then they left without a word, leaving us in a ghost town and in possession of a rather evil looking book called the Necrologis Libros. Since we weren't exactly sure what to do with it, but had rather the impression that leaving it sitting around would be a bad bad bad thing, we brought it with us to the town of Kayrle, where I'll pick up the story.

But before I begin, maybe I'd better take the time to introduce the rest of my faithful little group. Did I mention that it's changed a lot?

First of all, there's me. A little older, a little wiser, a little richer (finally!), and a little thinner (when you're an elf, it takes forever to work off those extra calories from random puppets taking possession of your body and gorging it on bread, you know), but still me.

Of the people I've written about before, only Prihelm is left. All the rest have died, but since many of them were very close friends, I hope you'll forgive me if I don't dwell on the specifics. Anyway, at least I still have Prihelm around. The big old lummox is still as earnest but inept as ever, I'm afraid to say, and it's beginning to look like if I am ever going to escape this cursed realm alive, it will be despite his help rather than because of it. Still, he's my oldest friend here, which would be embarrassing if it weren't so disturbing. Gods, I miss Leighla and Haley!

Fortunately, Pri and I have been joined by several people, of varying degrees of merit. I'll introduce them in rough order of seniority with the group.

The longest standing member at this point, aside from we two original people, is Jessahmyne. Jess is a human swashbuckler, and I think she fancies herself a lady or something (she certainly puts on enough airs!). She's a nice girl, but odd. For one thing, she has the appallingly bad taste to be in love with Prihelm! Now don't get me wrong; Pri is a nice guy, but he doesn't know the meaning of the words "personal hygiene," and he never stops talking about Torm. I'd sooner date a kobold, myself. But Jess has other ideas. Like I said, nice but odd. Also, owing to recent misfortunes in which she lost my magic dagger (damn her!), she's got ridiculously short hair, and looks kind of goofy since it's currently sticking straight out everywhere. Jess is alright, really, and probably my best bud in the party, but we have to work on her taste!

Not too long after Jess joined us, we met Morgana Johnavich. Morgana is, she claims, half elvish and half Vistani, so you'd think we would get along splendidly, as I'm all elvish and all gypsy, but you'd be sadly mistaken. In strict point of fact, Morgana doesn't like elves at all (claims we're too snotty, which is pretty funny coming from her!) and has all the charm of an unfriendly orc. She wanders around half naked all the time, which would get her killed soon except that she's not the type to ever be anywhere near the enemy, preferring greatly to shoot them with her pistols. I admit that she's actually pretty good at that last, but then as Auntie Leandra used to say, "even a drunken goblin finds the chamberpot every now and then." I'm not quite sure what that's supposed to mean, but it sounds good anyway. Due to horrible luck, one of her eyes is now stone; although perfectly functional, this looks pretty funny. Due to a horrible attitude, one of her eyebrows is now missing; this also looks pretty funny. You might say that I'm not her biggest fan, although she's not that bad when she forgets to be needlessly hostile.

I believe the next two to join the effort were Baxter and Blaze. Baxter is a mystery, still. He's a spellcaster of some sort, and he can heal people, but I don't really know much more about him than that. He's certainly dedicated to defeating the undead, which is good, and he's knowledgeable about doing so, which is better. He's friendly, but a bit aloof sometimes. So I'm afraid I can't tell you much about him. I like him well enough, but I wish he'd open up some!

Blaze Everburn is, frankly, insane. He's a human fire-mage, which should tell you enough as it is, but he has little self-control, to go with a big mouth and a truly ridiculous love of all things involving burning, destruction, explosions, and the like. I suppose I'd rather have him with us than against us, since it's always better to have the crazy mage who likes to blow things up fighting for you rather than against you, but if he makes one more comment about my rack (his charming and elegant term, not mine!), I shall be forced to take extreme action. Why he chooses to bother me when Morgana is flaunting herself for all the world to see would be one of those great mysteries, except that as an elf I'm much nicer and much prettier and much better than Morgana, and in any event I expect he finds the stone eye and the missing eyebrow rather off-putting. Still, I wish he'd start harassing her instead!

Lastly, we have Tass. Tass is not very forthcoming; he claims to be a kender, when all the world can plainly see he's a halfling. Since he wants to be called a kender, I'd call him a kender were I not too busy calling him a thieving little rat. He's forever "finding" things that belong to one of us, and if I ever catch him in the act of "finding" something of mine, I shall castrate the little bastard. He seems to have some sort of ability to teleport himself, which is probably the only thing that's kept him from being squashed already. I think maybe he thinks I'm his big sister or something, since he's always following me around and always giving me a bad time. He's actually not too bad when he's not busy swiping stuff from other people or being immensely annoying, although I can't exactly call this resounding praise or anything. Did I mention that one of these days I am going to lose all patience and castrate him?

As I may have mentioned, I miss Leighla and Haley and Samar and Dogboy and even Al. All of them are dead, though, except for Leighla. For completeness, I should mention that we were also temporarily joined by a wild elf named Sirannon, but he didn't stick around long enough to make much of an impression, really.

Right then, I think that's it. Sweet Corellon, but this is a lot of work!

So as I was starting to say, we were in the town of Kayrle, on our way back to Holdenby. Kayrle is a small and rather ugly little town with a small and rather ugly little tavern in which a large and rather ugly tavern keeper and a small and rather ugly serving wench poison the locals with what they generously call ale. We were relaxing around the room having a drink before returning to our inn for the evening when one of those increasingly irritating supernatural events occurred.

One of the shutters sprang open with a bang, most of the candles went out, and while we were sitting there in the near dark, we heard a ghostly voice! It wasn't loud at all, and wasn't threatening; all it did was mutter "release me," twice. And then the rest of the candles went out, and when we got light back, we saw that the mirror was stained ion blood, which spelled out the word "Sidnar"! The voice spoke again, right in our ears, telling us to "go there. The rod... the rod... the reward!" And that was that. Needless to say, it was quite enough for me!

Well, we left the tavern at once, stopped at the inn long enough to grab a quick but restless night's sleep, and got ready to head out in the morning. Stopping only briefly to re-equip ourselves, we set out for Holdenby. Along the way, we decided we ought to see to getting rid of the Necrologis Libros, although we didn't have any great ideas about how to do that. I thought (and still think) that we should let Paige take care of it, but the others wanted to try to get rid of it on their own. I don't suppose this was a bad idea, as such, but it didn't seem very likely to me that we'd succeed! Although to be fair, Paige had never even heard of the book, as it turns out, so maybe he couldn't do much with it.

In any event, I was outvoted, and it was decided that Blaze would try to destroy it with one of his spells. While the rest of us (except for that idiot Tass) kept a safe distance, Blaze pelted it with a bunch of fire, which was entirely ineffective (this was not, of course, a great surprise to me). I tried to tell them, didn't I? "It'll never work," I said. "It's a waste of time," I said. But did they listen to me? No, of course not! And me, a bard, who should know! Humans. Puh!

Anyway, Blaze was immediately enamored of this book which resisted his feeble powers, picked it up (having let it open in doing so), screamed while holding his head, and passed out. I shall have to make it a special point to watch him for a while, since I don't know him very well in any event, and I don't trust anyone where evil tomes are involved. I'll bet he's possessed or something, and just doesn't know it yet.

In any event, Tass ran up, closed the book, dumped it in his pack, and Blaze eventually recovered. He said he felt rigid, and he certainly wasn't speaking very clearly (except to tell me, when I was trying to ascertain his state of mind, that he recognized me as "the elf with the nice rack." He shall die slowly.). But he wasn't obviously in any kind of distress, so we reluctantly picked him up, set him on his feet, and started for Mordentshire. Our best route seemed to take us by this town Sidnar, unfortunately, but that couldn't really be avoided, so..

We stopped that night near a dark, brooding forest that rises into the Mountains of Misery. I rather like forests, ordinarily, but this... well, this one made me nervous and uncomfortable, so we made a bonfire, gathered around, and started a watch. Prihelm and Morgana, of course, being completely inept, fell asleep during theirs. This was irritating, as something happened during their watch: a voice, just like the one we'd heard in Kayrle, started us awake, whispering. No one else in the party, as far as I know, could really tell what it was saying, but that's because they lack my acute hearing. Even I could barely understand it, but it seemed to be muttering about freeing the Land through something or other which I didn't catch.

Not particularly helpful, really, but it stirred Blaze up a lot! He leapt to his feet, saying that we had to defend the land against the usurper, that the land was calling him, that it wanted him to be its champion in a "fight against he who wields a scythe of death over the land." Obviously, someone is delusional. My bet is that it's Blaze, but maybe he's not, in which case the land is likely to be immensely disappointed, since I can't imagine someone less suited to being a champion in any fight than our psychopathic pyromaniac.

Obviously, Blaze needed to be watched, so Pri and I kept watch with him (one of the horrible problems in having a group of seven people is that we can't have four watches with two people on watch at a time without me staying up for a pair of watches. I can handle this, but I'd much rather get my Reverie!). But nothing else happened that night, except that I realized that my wand was missing. Immediately suspecting a rat, I confronted Tass, and while he tried to blame Prihelm, I eventually got it back from him. Not, however, without having to lower myself enough to actually be nice to the little irritant. I need to convince Baxter to trap my belongings for me, so that if Tass reaches his hand into my pockets again, he'll be blown to smithereens. I find this thought immensely satisfying, somehow.

Did I mention that writing this journal is a lot of work? I've been at this for at least an hour, darn it, and I'm not even close to being finished!

We woke up the next morning, hoping to make Sidnar by nightfall. Sidnar is located on the banks of the Khoury River, which flows from Mount Nyid to Lake Khorst, and is supposed to be rather scenic, according to Baxter. Our first view certainly seemed to confirm this. But we didn't have long to take in the view, as we heard a scream from the woods nearby, followed by a growl and some thuds. We ran over to help, in time to find three people lying about in pools of blood, along with the indications that a fourth person had died there, although we lacked the corpse to go with it. But we didn't have time to look around too carefully, as one of the people was still alive, although he was pretty clearly dying!

Nothing we could do would keep the poor boy alive, and we never even learned his name. But he made some last requests of us, and of course there's something rather difficult about denying the last requests of a dying man. Although in this case, I think we probably should have. But I don't want to ruin my story, so I'd better keep things in order.

He gave a scroll to Prihelm, asking us to bring the letter to Aliss, a halfling chirurgeon in Sidnar, and to tell her that the Rod was stolen. I, for one, was immediately reminded of the Rod that the voice had mentioned earlier, although I can't for the life of me see the connection. I'm sure that some of my fellows have thought the same thing, but I'm willing to bet that some of them haven't, too. Not all of them, after all, are as bright as me! I suppose, since none of the others are elven, that I can hold this against them...

Anyway, having told us this much, he went on to identify his attackers a little bit. They were, he said, werewolves. This is the last thing I wanted to hear! He also tells us that a wizard said that many people would be after the Rod, since it is very powerful. He was in the process of telling us something else ("our attackers, they were kaa") when an arrow came flashing out from the woods and hit him dead in the throat! It was actually quite an impressive shot, although I wasn't really in the mood to be appreciating feats of archery at the time, and besides, I'm sure Leighla and I could have done better. Being shot at never puts me in a happy state of mind, really.

From my vantage point in a nearby tree, I saw a figure running away, and since it dropped to all fours and took off running, I assume it was a werewolf. Tass chased it for a while, but eventually lost the trail. I guess this is a good thing, since while he's a pain in the ass, Tass is our pain in the ass and only we get to beat the snot out of him.

With nothing better to do, we collected up what we needed there, and got to town, after dark. No one would open for us, not even at the inns! I couldn't believe it! What kind of uncivilized idiots live here, that they won't let strangers in after dark? It's a cold world out there, and by keeping us travelers on the streets at night, they're being needlessly cruel! Jerks!

Anyway, I noted that they weren't keeping their stables locked, so we just bunked for the night there, uncomfortably. I think Jess was really a farmgirl before she joined our group, to be honest, since she seemed so at home rolling around in the hay...

It was several hours later when I was awoken by some evil sounding chanting. No one else could even hear it, of course; my companions have really truly awful hearing! It was about then that I noticed that Baxter was missing! Hoping that he hadn't come to an evil end, we followed the whispering, to find... Baxter, sitting in an alley, reading the book, surrounded by a black glow, and carrying a dead and bleeding rat. Just then, the book vanished! Needless to say, I was immediately suspicious. Now I have two people to keep an eye on!

Baxter says he was just trying to keep the book from the undead. I don't know about that... And he has to remember to consult with me before doing stuff like that! What's the point of being in charge if people ignore you all the time? These people are really awful about that!

Anyway, Tass threw a hissy fit about losing the book. Little rodent seems to think that because we let him carry it for a while, the book belonged to him. His notions of ownership are remarkably primitive! Not, of course, that I could expect much else from a halfling. He wouldn't shut up until Baxter bought him off with a silver sword that he bought from me just for this purpose. When he got something shiny, of course, the little bastard stopped complaining right away. Doesn't Baxter know that the way to deal with kids having temper tantrums is to ignore them, and not to let them have their way? Puh! And to make matters worse, Baxter let Tass hug him! I can't believe it! Either Baxter is exceptionally stupid, or... no, I guess Baxter is just exceptionally stupid. One thing's for sure; I'm not letting that little kleptomaniac anywhere near me!

Since it was already close to dawn, we wandered for the rest of the night, found the local silversmith, and placed a large order which he said would keep him busy all day. I wish he'd keep stuff like arrows and the like on stock; as it is, we're largely without effective weapons against werewolves until we can stop by his shop tomorrow, and of course being unable to defend yourself from werewolves is a real problem in a town near at least one of them... But hopefully we're well enough armed that we won't have any problems!

After stopping by the alchemist's also, to pick up smoke powder for Morgana and healing potions for the group, we went over to Crypt Street, where Aliss was supposed to live. Her shop looked to actually be a herbalist's shop (where I should have bought more wolfsbane, although we may have enough of it with us). Aliss, of course, wasn't there, and a not particularly helpful and not particularly bright human was manning the counter for her. This lack of helpfulness and intelligence was only a minute surprise, of course, since he was only human.

We waited for Aliss for about an hour, and when she arrived, I had the shock of my life! "Aliss" was Alisanda! I thought I'd killed the little bitch back in Port d'Elhour! She, of course, remembered us as well, more's the pity, and violence was about to break out when I decided that it might be better to defuse the situation. After all, while Prihelm and I know that the little bitch is a murderous golem, she looks like a sweet innocent little girl, and I don't think I would like to explain to the locals why we were killing children! And anyway, my curiosity was piqued; I wanted to know what was going on, and how she fits into all of this. I love a good mystery.

Since, as I said, I didn't want a fight to break out (and also since she was right next to Prihelm, and close enough to touch him, which as I recall is how she controls adults), I mentioned that the Rod had been stolen. Her face went instantly blank, and eventually, it was decided that the group would help her recover the Rod (she calls it her scepter) and she would in turn give up her grudge against us for stopping her in Port d'Elhour.

Of course, I fully intend to kill Alisanda as soon as we have the chance. She deserves death for all the murders she's committed over the years! And if this Rod is as powerful as the dying man said it was, Alisanda is one of the last beings I want getting her hands on it, especially since we may want to use it ourselves, if the voice we've heard a couple of times is any indication. So I have no intention at all of giving the Rod to Alisanda. Not that she needs to know that, although I suppose she doesn't really expect we'll live up to our half of the bargain. Which is fine, since I don't expect that she'll live up to her half of the bargain, either, and I'm positive that giving her the Rod would be a huge mistake.

Anyway, Alisanda tells us that the Rod was taken by a werewolf named Angus McFee, who lives in the woods nearby and with whom she doesn't get along at all well. It sounds to me like this McFee is a being of excellent taste and discrimination, personally. At least for a werewolf. Perhaps we could join forces with him instead?

And now, I've been writing for a couple of hours, but at least I'm finished at last! With luck, the next time I have the opportunity to write, we'll know a little more about what's going on. If we're especially lucky, none of us will be werewolves, none of us will be dead, and Alisanda will be pushing up daisies. Couldn't happen to a nicer golem.