Excerpted from the journal of Etaf
Gerin
August 6, 1377 (The Year of the Haunting)
Maybe I’ve been adventuring
for too long now, but all this dungeon crawling is becoming
almost routine. A roper…yawn. Spectral Lurker…the monk
defeats it with a single Flurry of Blows. Ugly metal construct that fires off a
meteor storm…didn’t break a sweat. Unfortunately not everyone in the group
thought things were quite as routine as I did. Calyx
ran off in the middle of the first fight today and we haven’t seen him since.
Warrior or no, we finally
found a clue to Artor Morlin’s whereabouts. We
captured an imp who claimed to serve Fahng, a vampire,
who usually stayed in the great hall not far away. The imp didn’t know his true
name, but the description sure sounded like our quarry. We’d have found out
more, but Friar Francis came down with a sudden case of pity for the imp,
promising to let it go after answering only 2 questions. Pff, clerics and their morals.
Despite the lack of solid
information, we progressed onward into the great hall. Sure enough, there was a
figure that fit Artor Morlin’s description perfectly.
He clearly knew we were coming – too bad that imp got away – and almost
immediately we were facing a summoned zombie minion. But not just any zombie –
somehow, he’d managed to reanimate our old friend Ahmed! Fortunately, no one
was in any danger of serious injury from poor Ahmed. Nonetheless, BadAxe
decided the zombie was a threat, and attacked. What an attack it was! One
single swing of her axe, and undead Ahmed was undead decapitated Ahmed, who
rapidly crumbled to dust.
BadAxe was so pleased with her
domination of the ex-Ahmed that she decided to do a little dance right there on
the spot. Too bad that left an angry vampire for the rest of us to deal with,
but honestly, we didn’t need her anyway. A few holy spells from the cleric and
some mighty blows from the monk put the vampire down for the count quickly
enough.
That seemed a bit too easy…and
of course it was. The vampire turned out to be a doppelganger, not Artor Morlin
at all. We did find a prisoner, though, who had been slowly dying by inches as
the vampire’s favorite snack food. After a bit of healing from Francis, he was
happy to tell us everything he knew. The good news is that he had some
information on Artor Morlin’s location. The bad news…it
was in the Underdark…
We decided to return to Waterdeep for some R&R before
venturing down into the Underdark. Around this time I finally dismissed my
zombie Ettin – I’d lost my taste for undead control
after seeing that zombie Ahmed. And we even ran into Calyx again, who had
apparently been struck by a fear spell and ended up in the city with no memory
of how he’d gotten there. Back together again, we rested and prepared to
venture into the depths of the Underdark.
August 8, 1377
After a couple of days of rest
and preparation, it was time to head out. We had not been idle during our break
– Omiata especially had gathered quite a bit of information. We were headed to
the territory of the Gost, one of the major ruling
families of Waterdeep. The Gost
had an ancient history in these parts, including some pretty serious “meddling
in things that ought not be meddled in” down in the
Underdark. One of those was a series of portals that had been used for
transport of (illicit) trade goods, but at some point an enemy had summoned a
purple worm to close down that network. Some other adventuring party had
managed to transmute that worm into silver and chop it up, but the portal
network remained the territory of evil things. This, of course, is where Artor
Morlin was hiding himself.
We made our way back through
the crypt and into the Underdark. We managed to almost immediately set off a
trap that summoned a couple of guardian drakes, who fortunately were too large
for the tunnel and got in each other’s way. Helieos managed to punch BadAxe a
couple of times in the close quarters, but overall no serious injuries were
incurred as the drakes were dispatched. Later we disturbed a blood fiend, but
this time Calyx was without fear – a single blow of his sword dropped the fiend
in its tracks.
Finally we came to a room with
several ghosts, caged and claiming to be enemies of Artor Morlin. We listened
to their pleas with a skeptical ear – they’d probably say anything to get out
of those cages. And in fact they did make us an offer that didn’t sound too
promising – they’d possess our bodies and use them to slay Artor, then leave.
Not having been born yesterday, we didn’t take that at face value. Instead of
letting them all out, I let one of them possess me, trusting that Friar Francis
would be able to exorcise the spirit if necessary. Instantly I found myself a
prisoner in my own mind, but I also knew the ghosts’ plans – they did indeed
know where Artor was, but what they really wanted was to slay everyone in the house
of Gost, as revenge for crimes committed centuries
ago.
It took some time, especially
since the ghost in my head kept trying to talk the group into also becoming
ghost-hosts, but eventually Francis decided it was time to use his holy power
to free me. With the ghosts all safely back in their cages, I told the others
what I’d learned – there was a portal in the next room, lying at the bottom of
a salty pool and guarded by undead merfolk. It led to an ethereal plane where
Artor Morlin was hiding from the High Hunt – and from us.
August 9, 1377
We spent the last night in one
of the rooms we’d cleared and warded, resting and preparing. Moving past the
caged ghosts, we entered a room filled with sea water, instantly drawing the
attention of a group of vampiric merfolk. I summoned
a group of celestial dolphins as a distraction, which worked well enough on the
merfolk, but also worked on Francis, who fell into the water as he tried to
talk to them. Fortunately he was able to hold his breath long enough for us to
dispatch the vampires and fish him out of the drink. After that little episode,
we decided we weren’t quite ready to venture through the portal yet, and that
it would make sense to rest another night first.
Some random out-of-character comments:
It’s great to have Mike R.
hosting the D&D at Game Knights in
Last updated 02-27-2007 by Skip Franklin