21 Kythorn, 1361 D.R.
You’ll remember, I’m sure, that we had to go capture a couple of members of the Eternal Order so that Markollus would be willing to help us. Quite tedious, really; we’re getting rather far afield from dealing with Alisanda, after all! But we needed his help, so off we went to this ruined chapel of his, to take care of business.
Upon entering, we were faced with a pair of ghasts almost immediately. Awful things, ghasts. They reek, even more so than Prihelm, if that’s possible! Also the paralysis, which I’m none too fond of myself. So I let the less intelligent party members charge to the front while Morgana and I sat safely back and shot the things. It was none too hard, really, although Prihelm, Tass, Baxter, and Blaze were all readily paralyzed and Tass was in pretty awful shape before Morgana and I could save the party (these are both by way of themes for today’s entry, both Tass being in pretty awful shape and me saving the party). We explored for a while longer, but the chapel was really quite small. There were only five rooms, aside from the main entry way. Three were empty, and in the fourth and fifth... well, we’ll get to those.
First off, then, there was... a wight in the fourth room. I hate those things, even worse than I hate ghasts, if that’s to be believed! They have this awful thirst for life energy, and while I’m a live and let live kind of girl, I would like to keep my life energy to myself, thank you very much. So being intolerant of these various energy draining creatures, I boldly helped the party rid the world of the foul wight. So perished another undead.
The fifth room was more exciting yet. Tass went to open it and promptly did something to himself. I’m not quite sure what it was; either a trap or he got bitten by something. I don’t know. But he started shaking, and then he started vomiting, and his hand got all swollen up and his eyes started rolling around and it was pretty clear to all of us (except for Prihelm; the paladin hasn’t an ounce of intelligence, much to his own pride) that Tass had been poisoned. We were able to keep him alive, but couldn’t do much more than that for him. Since although he’s a pain in the butt, he’s our pain in the butt, we decided we’d better try and do better than that, so we sent him back to Markollus with Morgana and Blaze under the assumption that Markollus, being fascinated with poisons, might be able to do something for him.
This was a rather unfortunate choice, as we could have used Morgana and Blaze in the events to come.
In any rate, Tass having been poisoned by the door, Prihelm immediately volunteered to open it. Upon kicking it down (he has his moments, rare though they may be), the room revealed a big pile of rotting corpses. I was nauseated, understandably, and left Prihelm to explore the room. So in he went, and of course the great lumbering idiot had to disturb a carrion crawler in the back. The first we knew of this was when the paladin uttered the immortal words “hey, what’s this thing with all the tentac... urk.” Jess and I turned to fight it, but unfortunately, we, too, were paralyzed. Altogether, quite an irritating turn of events. We were just lucky that Baxter was far enough away that the carrion crawler couldn’t get to him, too, although he sure took his own sweet time about helping us. I don’t particularly enjoy being snacked on by large smelly creatures while the priest plays with himself in the back corner. He and I will have words about this at some point!
Well, eventually the paralysis wore off, and we were able to explore the room (gingerly), finding only a rather excessively magical sword in an ill-fitting scabbard. Prihelm seems to feel some sort of connection to it (my guess is that the sword stinks even worse than him, having sat in a room full of rotting corpses for who knows how long), and we’re going to have to look into this at some point in the future. Remind me to do that, okay?
About this time, Tass and the rest rejoined the group, feeling far happier about the entire adventure than they had any right to feel. Little vermin. But with the group at full strength again, we went straight down through a trap door in a room that Baxter claimed already to have explored. I swear, I like the guy, and he can be a real sweetie sometimes, but sometimes I think he’s almost as much of a moron as Prihelm. Besides, he sat around playing with himself while the carrion crawler nibbled on my knees. Jerk!
So, on down the ladder we went, to a typical cavern complex. With nothing better to do, we picked a random direction and started exploring, coming soon across a room with a ghast. I’m sure I must have mentioned that I really don’t like ghasts, yes? Well, I might actually prefer them to Prihelm right about now!
You see, while the rest of the party very sensibly stayed together to battle the poor outnumbered ghast, Prihelm went off exploring, dragging Baxter with him. This was very inconsiderate of him, as it left the main group with neither a healer nor someone to turn undead. It was also very stupid of him, as he and Baxter happened across another ghast. Also the random shadow here and there. Very helpful. Of course, Baxter was soon paralyzed and the two morons were in dire need.
The next several minutes is rather a blur. I remember running back and forth between Prihelm and the rest of the group, not really helping in combat but dispensing the assorted healing potions I had so painstakingly acquired. Our healers were, of course, down for the count, having idiotically wandered off. At some point, Jess and Morgana wandered off as well and came across another pair of ghasts, so after stabilizing Baxter with one healing potion, I ran back to help Jess and Morgana. Pausing long enough to let Prihelm (that idiot) take the brunt of the ghast’s attack, I used a dose of my extra-healing potion to stabilize Tass (who had, of course, but taken out by one of the ghasts while the party was running around in little groups). Having done that, I next did likewise for Morgana and then Jess, pushed Prihelm’s comatose body out of the way, killed the last of the ghasts, and sat around while Baxter ran around frantically trying to heal people to some vague semblance of health.
This was awful! Here we are, an experienced party of adventurers, and we’d nearly been defeated by a scant handful of undead! I had to use all but one of my healing potions, and we actually had to use almost all of our healing abilities in the entire party just to stay alive, and it’s all because Prihelm, that moron, was thinking with his chest hair rather than with his brain. No, I suppose I’m being too generous in even assuming he has a brain. What he should really learn to do is just to follow my orders, that’s what. By Corellon, that idiot had the utter gall to tell me that he had done the right thing, even after getting most all of us nearly killed! I hate him! I despise him! I utterly and completely loathe the very thought of ever seeing so much as a hint of him ever again in my entire life! Argh!!!
Okay, I’m better. Anyway, the obvious thing to do, what with the party low on health on low on healing abilities, was to return to the surface and come back later. Thus it was that we chose to stay below and continue exploring. I take it you need only one guess to determine whose foolish idea it was to do this...
Well, of course we took four steps through the one door we hadn’t been through yet and promptly ran across an evil spellcaster. Marvelous, eh? He gave us the standard “join me or die” speech (do all these evil megalomaniacs have the same dialogue instructor?), and when we gave him the equally standard “bite me, jackass” speech in response, we found ourselves beset not only by the high priest but also by his fighter friend (who had the quaintest paint job on his armor; he wanted to look like a skeleton, the silly twit!), several ghouls, a pair of shadows, and a wight (but no partridge in a pear tree). Obviously, our situation grew passing desperate!
Taking care of first things first, Morgana and I quickly shot the wight, eliminating that little worry. Baxter, for reasons known only to him, elected to cast a spell rather than to do something useful such as, for example, turning undead. And the evil high priest, not being quite as stupid as he looked, quickly dropped a spell of silence in our general area, making it impossible for Baxter to turn undead or to cast further spells. Why can’t we fight evil high priests who are as stupid as they look? Compared to most of us, they’d still be geniuses!
In any event, I don’t suppose the blow-by-blow description of the combat is particularly useful. What is important, I think, is the general flow, just because we have yet more examples of me saving the day and of Tass getting beat to a fine pulp. Which actually, now that I write about it, doesn’t really sound too bad...
As mentioned, I killed the wight (Morgana helped a bit, I guess) while Blaze zapped the spellcaster with the spell of burning hands. Tass backstabbed Marke (the skeleton guy) while Prihelm and Baxter were utterly useless. Jess, the poor dear, had her hands full with both Marke and a ghoul, while Baxter and I also had ghouls to deal with and Blaze and Tass were being harrassed by shadows. And it was about at this juncture that the spellcaster silenced darn near all of us. I don’t really mind, for the most part, except that he silenced me, too, which is intolerable! I have no desire to listen to Prihelm’s blithering idiocy, but it would be nice to be able to tell him how stupid he’s being!
At this point, things were obviously rather chaotic. Jess, Baxter, and I meleed with our respective ghouls, Tass and Blaze with their respective shadows. Prihelm tried to help Jess with Marke and failed dismally. And Morgana... was held by the blasted spellcaster. I really hate those people!
Fortunately for all involved, I slew my ghoul soon thereafter, and Prihelm actually was able to kill Jess’ ghoul, too (I think it was a lucky accident, myself)! Also, Tass teleported behind the spellcaster, backstabbed him, and was promptly zapped by some foul spell or another, falling to the ground he knew not where. At least someone hit the killer spellcaster!
Of course, no good thing happens without a bad thing also happening. In this case, the bad thing (well, aside from Tass getting splattered all over the floor, which isn’t really a bad thing) was that Baxter’s ghoul finally paralyzed him, and Marke finally ran Jess through, the bastard! I was incensed, but things looked pretty grim. I mean, Baxter was paralyzed and his ghoul was getting ready to munch on his brains. Morgana was paralyzed and a shadow was draining her rapidly. Tass and Jess were dying. Blaze was battling ineffectually with a shadow himself. Prihelm was Prihelm. That left things up to me, and me alone, and both Marke and the spellcaster were still up!
Fortunately, the spellcaster picked that moment to try some enchantment type spell on me, and of course we elves are far too sensible to let simple magics like that affect us. Irked, worried, and actually a little desperate, I struck out with my blades, and managed to pierce Marke’s throat, slaying him instantly! Note again the saving the party aspect...
While I fed my last healing potion to Jess (Tass was out of reach at the moment), Prihelm went and actually did something incredibly useful (a lucky accident, again), killing Baxter’s ghoul. I have no idea how he managed to actually hit two opponents in the same battle, I truly don’t. And from there, it was pretty simple, really. With Jess back in the fight thanks to my potion, she made quick work of both shadows. Prihelm meleed with the spellcaster (unsuccessfully, of course) and was promptly struck blind for his pains (one can only hope that this will help keep him out of trouble). I resorted to more sophisticated methods, preferring to shoot at the priest, and I had soon feathered him as well as Leighla could have done. Down he went, another victim of elven archery!
Prihelm stumbled over to Tass and kept him alive, while we kept the priest alive for Markollus, and headed back to town with a corpse (Marke), a hogtied prisoner (mostly naked, much to Jess’ fascination), and a big pile of stuff. Markollus, the twit, wouldn’t see us that late at night, so we snuck around with the captives hidden under some blankets and left them in our room while we spent much time healing. And here we are! In the morning, we’ll be taking these two over to Markollus, then taking a look at our new goodies. We have a lot, this time: a mace, a long sword, a ring, two vials, two suits of chainmail, two shields, plus the sword I’d found earlier. Maybe even some of this is magical! If it is, I’d better get first pick; not only did I give a whole bunch of neat toys to the common cause just the other day, but I spent my own hard-earned wealth on potions to keep the party alive despite its own idiocy, and I was the big hero of the last battle! These people would be dead without me. Which is hardly anything new; while a good-hearted bunch, my companions are quite inept. One might even say that they’re sheer blithering idiots.
I have had the worst day! My companions in arms have a remarkable tendency towards sheer blithering idiocy, and it’s starting to get on my nerves very much. I can’t ever remember being so stressed out! But I’d better begin at the beginning. I’ve always thought that was good advice, if frustrating to follow.