King Eroan’s daughter, Ava is missing, and he wants us to find her.  ‘Us’ being the interesting characters I mentioned earlier.  We have Skye, a forest druid, Fingers, a thief and Dyrian, Eva’s brother and a trained fighter.

 

We started out by visiting the local inn.  There was a bard playing there named Brittle and Fingers thought it was odd that a bard wearing such rag-tag clothes should have such an expensive lute.  He wanted to steal it.  He said it could be a possible clue to finding the princess (this of course was highly unlikely and if I wasn’t already uneasy about Fingers this made me all the more so).  Skye talked him out theft but she suggested he should talk to Brittle to see if he knew anything about the whereabouts of the princess.

 

Brittle ended up relating a tale about a sea king who had befriended him and given him the lute.  During the story, he mentioned a place called Fisherman’s Cliff so we decided to continue our search there.  However, other patrons at the inn had told us of a path that the princess liked to walk in the morning so went there first and discovered a cave just off the path.

 

I led the way into the cave and found a room filled with wererats.  We killed them all and continued deeper into the cave.  On a table outside a locked door, we found a candle and piece of paper with writing on it that just seemed like gibberish.  Fingers picked the lock and discover a man asleep on a cot in the corner of the room, but of course what Fingers found more interesting was the chest at the foot of cot.  He crept into the room and tried to unlock the chest but he must have made some kind of noise and the man woke up.

 

“Who are you!!?” The man demanded.

 

It wasn’t long before the man found out that we had killed all the wererats in the cave and he exploded with anger.

 

“MY RATS!!! HOW DARE YOU KILL MY RATS!!! I WILL KILL YOU FOR THAT!!!”

 

The man transformed into a wererat hybrid and attacked Fingers.  The rest of us now had no choice but join in the fray and the creature was soon dead.

 

We located his journal and found that the man’s name was Murry.  He had been bullied as a kid because he was only a halfling and he retreated to this cave to live the life of a hermit.  At first he had tried to rid the cave of wererats  but he and the wererats came to understand each other and as the years went by, he became their guardian.  He had suffered so many bites that he himself became a wererat hybrid.

 

As the entries went on Murry’s thoughts became more and more scattered until they descended into the same gibberish we had seen on scrap of paper on the table outside the room.

 

We left the cave and continued our search for Fisherman’s Cliff.  Fingers said he had seen something shiny in the woods and went to investigate.  He was attacked by some kind of vine creature.  We left the path to help him and found ourselves ensnared by more vine creatures.  We finally fought them off and to our horror found a pile of dead bodies presumably victims of the vine creatures.  Among the dead, we found a cache of weapons including a throwing axe that I wanted to keep.  Skye warned me about using it until we can find a wizard who can tell us if the weapons are cursed.

 

We also found a map.

 

We decided to postpone our search for Fisherman’s Cliff and followed the map to a clearing where there stood a tree elemental.  Sky seemed to recognize him.  She approached and the elemental gave her something.  Fingers did the same but came back empty-handed.  And then I thought I saw something familiar entangled in the creatures branches.  It was Cora stone!  I could swear the elemental was smiling at me.  Olu had put his stamp of approval on our mission.  I am very however still very concerned about Fingers….

 

We have decided to spend the night in the clearing.

From the Journal of Wixerand Sapherage

 

And so my punishment begin’s.

 

My name is….Wixerand Sapherage (at least I remember who I am and why Olu is punishing me, but that’s not important right now).  I am a mountain dwarf and a Paladin of Olu.  This morning I woke up in the forrest outside of a cave, and that’s all I really remember about myself.

 

I sat up and looked around.  Saphire, my pig and constant companion, during my years of training to become a Paladin, was looking at me from the edge of the clearing.  I motioned for him to follow me and we began to walk through the forrest.

 

Several hours later we stumbled across a huge city that seemed to be populated mostly by elves.  All diferent kinds of elves, with a scattering of humans, dwarfs, gnomes, halflings… I tried to talk to some of the inhabitants, but as soon as they realized I didn’t speak elvish, they wouldn’t have anything to do with me.  Finally a guard approached us and said

 

"Dwarf! You need to stable your horse over there."  Oh, I neglected to mention my mount, whose name is Citrine.  I called him into service just before we entered the city.

 

“Oh thank Olu you speak common.  Can you tell me is there a temple of Olu in this city?”

He pointed toward the east.  “And your going to have to do something about that pig!  We can’t have livestoke roaming our streets!”  Saticfied that he had done his duty the guard turned and left us

 

I dismounted and as soon a the guard had turned a corner, I told Citrine to kneel on the ground so Saphire could climb into my sadle, then I dismissed them both to the celestial relm.

 

When I got to the temple I called Citrine and Saphire back and put them in the temples stables.

 

“Good morning stranger.  I see that you are a servent of Olu.  My name is Selindus and I am the abbot here.”

 

Most Temples of Olu are small and Selindus’s was no exception.  As a rule we Olunese generally do not proselytize.  As a result the abbots are dependant on the patronage of officials from their home city to maintain the Temple’s upkeep.  That’s why I was not surprised when Selindus approached me for a favor about a month into my stay (during which time I had received a crash course in Elvish)

 

"Wix. We have noticed your dedication to Olu. And so has the King or rather I have pointed you out to him.  He has need of adventurers of your calibir for a mission.  He has not revealed the details to us. He will only make those known when you and the others he has chosen accept the mission.  Will you do this for us?”

 

I agreed and that’s how I found myself at the palace with many other paladins, I recognized symbols of Pelor, Ehlonna, Corellon Larethian, and numerous others

 

"You! Dwarf! I have not seen you or your symbol before!"  Said an elvin guard appearing at the door.

 

"I am a warrior of Olu. I wish to help the king in the name of my God."

 

"You may be just what the king is looking for. Follow me."

 

And so I did leaving behind a room full of disgruntled knights.

 

 He led me to a room with a long table full of food and surrounded by some interesting characters.

 

Gur's father was obsessed with the Singing Stones and refused to leave Blingdenstone until he could get them to sing. So about 20 years ago when Gur was about 10 and his baby sister Miriam was 5, their mother decided to take the kids on a vacation and booked passage on a ship to the Western Continent. They sailed into West Port and decided to visit a local marketplace. Outside one of the stalls they see a gnome tied to a post that they recognize as Jengal Tumthub, Jalles’s Husband (Jalles was the head nurse at the Blingdenstone infirmary) whose been missing for years.

The proprietor of the stall is a beholder merchant named The Worthful. Gur’s Mom demands that the Worthful free Jengal at once. The beholder ...looks her up and down, then he eyes the kids (yes I know there was a huge pun there). He tells her I am in a charitable mood today. If you give me one of your children, I do no care which, you may leave with Jengal. If you refuse to give me either of them, I shall kill them where they stand. After much agonizing, she turns over Miriam and leaves with Gur and Jengal.

Jengal tells her he can’t thank her enough for freeing him and gives her a gem that can make her forget that her daughter was ever born. She takes it but refuses to use it on herself. Instead she uses it on Gur and he forgets his sister ever lived and she does the same with Gur’s father when they return home. Jengal is reunited with Jalles and a few days later Gur’s mom comes back to check on couple and then leaves Blingdenstone and goes back to the Western Continent and thows herself off the highest mountain.

So Gur hopes to find his sister now that his memory has been unlocked.

We all survived!!! …Well almost…But I’m getting ahead of myself.

 

 

********************************************

 

 

I’m going to try to make this short, for this will probably be my last correspondence with you for quite sometime.

 

 

********************************************

 

 

At the end of my last letter I told you we had decided to visit Reginald, the Caravan Master before we set off for the Monastery of the Morrow.  That turned out to be a big mistake. 

 

At first I thought that Reginald was driven to action because Arty was goading him with the Medusa head; holding it up in his face.  But now I realize that we walked into a trap the moment we entered Reginald’s agency.  Reginald reached into his desk and we were all knocked unconscious (All except Kahalla, but the last thing I remember before blacking out was three goons rushing into the room and beating the sorceress to the ground).

 

We woke up sometime later chained to the walls (Frosty was in some kind of magical cage) of a room that felt as if it was moving.  Valla immediately tried to get Arty to help her get to her lock picking tools, but it quickly became clear that he was in an almost catatonic state.

 

Kahalla ignored all of this and cast a spell that freed us all (Frosty too).  I went over and put my ear to the door.  I could hear two people in what sounded like an argument on the other side.  I made out the word ‘dagger’ and then my eyes widened as I recognized one of the voices.

 

It was Reginald!

 

But he had dropped the country gentry affectation he had been putting on for us. When I told the others, we came to the conclusion that Reginald was Redsith.  Kahalla also told us that she had learned from Frosty that we were aboard an airship.

 

The door was flung open a man dressed in a captain’s uniform was roughly deposited on the floor.  The door slammed shut just as quickly.

 

Valla was able to pick the lock on the door and was almost trampled by Arty, the second she got it open.  He rushed through the door and disappeared down the hallway.

 

We soon learned that the captain’s name was LeRoy.  A man who carried himself as a country gentleman had rented LeRoy’s airship for the day, but then he had had three thugs escort him off his own ship while the man loaded some mysterious cargo (which was probably us) on board.  LeRoy was able to pilot the ship without any interference until they got close to mountain.  One of the thugs then took over the controls and LeRoy was brought down here to visit us.

 

Kahalla was happy that at least we had finally found the Monastery of the Morrow.  It didn’t take much convincing for LeRoy to join us in our fight against Redsith.

 

Out on deck we caught a glimpse of Arty as he jumped from the ship right onto the side of the mountain he climbed down the face and disappeared into a cave.

 

It appeared that Redsith and his thugs had abandoned the airship to drift as it pleased.  LeRoy was able to pilot the ship to the side of the cave, moor it tightly with some ropes and then extend the gangplank to the cavemouth.

 

In the first chamber of the cave we came upon a friendly ghost named Curly.  He told us the story of Theodore, the original Abbot of the Morrow.  He had wanted to bring peace to the land by sacrificing himself in huge Morrow bowl at the center of the mountain.  Peace of a sort had come to the land but in the form of the blue glow and Theodore’s soul had been trapped here along with the souls of every other monk who was residing in the mountain at the time.

 

For years the monks of the Morrow had sought a way to free Theodore and the other’s and bring true peace to the land.  In the last few months a rumor had circulated that a child had been born whose sacrifice would bring this to pass.

 

It didn’t take long (with Curly’s help) for us to figure out that that child was Arty.

 

Over the next few hours we fought a multitude of beasts that populated the cave and corresponded to a series of force fields that held the dagger that must be used to sacrifice Arty.

 

Once the force fields were down, we went back to the chamber where we had seen the dagger and found that it had already been taken.  We stood on the platform where the dagger had been and were raised into the Morrow Bowl Chamber.

 

Arty stood in center of the bowl (that took up the entire chamber) pressing the dagger to his throat.  We all stood transfixed for a few seconds and then an arrow seemed to come out of nowhere and pierce Arty’s heart.  Arty’s body disintergrated and we saw his soul floating in the air until it was drawn into the body of the man who had shot the arrow:  Redsith!

 

Redsith told us that we would now help him complete his rise to greatness by sacrificing our loved ones.

 

That’s when we saw them.

 

Behind where Arty had stood lay three figures.  Somehow I knew without being told that the young woman was Miriam, my sister (the others were a man named Salty, Valla’s mentor and the Lady Serina).

 

Kahalla told me the best tact I could take was to keep singing my special empowerment song while the others fought Redsith.  That was fine by me; the only thing I cared about at the moment was my sister.  I edged closer and closer to her as the battle raged on.  It seemed the more they fought the bigger and more powerful Redsith became.  I reached Miriam and tried to shake her awake hoping she knew some secret we could use to defeat Redsith.  But it was to no avail and I was losing hope.

 

Kahalla’s cold power seemed to be turning the tide; it was the only thing that was doing much real damage to the now giant creature.  Redsith reared back and cut the sorceress down.  Her body disintegrated just as Arty’s had done and her soul was drawn into the creature.  I looked up and saw that her essence was still intact and she was still fighting against the creature.  That was all I needed to rekindle my hope.  I bounded across the bowl and sank my sword deep into Redsith’s foot.  At the same time, LeRoy’s blade had found the creatures neck and loped the head off.  Redsith’s lifeless body collapsed into the bowl and it cracked in two.

 

Somehow we all got our loved ones out before the whole mountain came down around our heads (Kahalla’s body had been regenerated and I quickly offered her my cloak to cover herself).

 

So I have learned from Miriam the full story of our mother, which I have attached in a separate document for you to peruse.

 

Miriam also told us that her daughter had been kidnapped as a ruse to get her to come to the mountain.  As soon as Serina heard this she insisted that Kahalla assist Miriam and me in finding the girl…my niece! Valla is taking Salty home while Serina will return to Rocky Harbor to join you on your journey.

 

As I said, I have no idea when I shall be able to write you again but I wish you all the luck on your journey

 

Yours Gurmadden Stonesinger