Journal of Delben Moonglow

(A.K.A. Adian Thistlewait, A.K.A. Shimmer)

Copyright April 6, 1996.

Patrick T. Collins

3 Kythorn, 1367. Year of the Shield. A year of ominous portents, when Cyricists hold sway in Zhentil Keep and a Princess of Thay marries into the royal house in Mulmaster.

I met the rest of the team, as planned, in Eveningstar, at the Lonesome Tankard Inn. We gathered for breakfast in the common room, much as other adventurers in other cities were likely doing all across the Realms. Even so, I was edgy. I had to keep telling myself that, although I hadn't done the backgrounds myself, these people had been checked out and cleared. It is going to be a struggle to mix closely with such a large group. Albaeryl had insisted, though, that this was the right thing for me to do.

I had gotten into Eveningstar late last night. I had sacrificed caution for sleep. I should have gotten in early and worked the streets for a while before heading to the Lonesome Tankard. Instead I had arrived well after dark and stumbled, exhausted, to the Inn. Bad form. Very bad form. This morning there was little for me to do, except march into the dining hall and plunk myself down at the table like a thundering barbarian horde. Even so, I almost retreated into the shadows several times, mostly out of simple fear, before perching on the edge of an open chair next to a half elf. I recognized everyone on the team from Albaeryl's briefing.

Also in the room were two purple dragons, a huge young woman and four old farmers. The farmers were passing local gossip, and after a few moments, I tuned them out. The PD's were, it was painfully obvious, the giantess' body guards. Not that she needed any guarding. She stood a full six feet tall and was clearly at home here, full of confidence and wealth. She was watching us.

The other members introduced themselves. My nervousness only increased as I learned how open everyone was to each other. The information each gave out about themselves is summarized below. I am going to have a lot of adjusting to do if I remain with this group.

Aniken: A psycho half elf (moon). This one has a bad temper and is not afraid to let anyone know it. His origins as a gutter snipe are obvious even though he appears to have dragged himself out of the poverty trap that most of his kind are prey to. Age: 20, ht.: 5'11", 120#. Wears leather armor and boots, carries a long sword and a sash with several daggers. He has brown hair, green eyes and claims to be empathic. I doubt it.

Rhiannon McCloud, a human orphan from Ashabenford. Creepy. Hunts undead in the wilderness for fun. Carries a morning star, javelin, and a long sword. Long, wavy dark red hair, blue eyes. 5'9", 135#. Has a scar from temple to chin on left side of face. Does not like crowds.

Dorn of Shaundakul, a half orc warrior priest of the god called Rider of the Winds. 5'10", 160#, brown hair, red/brown eyes, coarse, olive skin and hair as is common in humans with orcish ancestry. 18 years old. Not at ease amongst the city dwellers. Hails from Voonlar. Carries quarterstaff, warhammer, long sword. Found his god's holy symbol some time ago. Interest in Myth Drannor.

Troy the Builder. Human fighter type. Carries axes and lots of other weapons. Grew up in the Evening Star area as an under sized homeless boy. Now 6'1", 180# with brown hair and hazel/blue eyes.

Sir Montgomery Silversword, a noble. Human, with what appears to be a wild, aggressive approach to magic typical of invokers. Does not yet appear to have dabbled in wild magic. Searching for a missing relative KA Narlan. From Suzail, Cormyr. Wants to be a War Wizard for Vangerdehast. Carries a saber. Accused of killing someone (I don't yet know who).

Medrik. A half elf shadow blade. Self-professed killer for hire. Does not like wizards. Has a Zhent named Semmon after him. 5'10", 155#. Carries cross bow, paired short swords, daggers. Claims some resistance to magic. Wears loose clothing that hides some of his weapons and a set of leather armor. Thrown out of the Zhentarim.

Molly Tinglefoot. A halfling thief from Daggerdale. Hasty! Loud! Flamboyant! 3' tall, curly blonde hair, attractive. Carries a short rapier.

Dinin, the dark elf mage was hidden out and awaiting us in the woods. We were told to expect a 6'1" drow with blue eyes and a dark cloak. He was to meet us after we got the charter. I am uncomfortable about this, but appear to be stuck with the drow.

After introductions, we discussed plans for obtaining a charter. The 1000 gl. cost was daunting. Before we had gotten discouraged, the huge young human woman cam over and sat down at our table. She introduced herself as Tesseril Winter, Lord of Eveningstar. She offered to show us around and help us get established. We quickly agreed and traveled the town with her after breakfast.

As we walked Lady Winter explained that she had nothing to authorize us to work on, but she told us that the priests at the Temple of Lathander have been known to front new adventuring companies the money needed to attain a charter. Lady Winter told us to ask for Gelde Asturien at the temple, and left us on our own.

We found the House of Morning and met Myr Kyr, a rotund, talkative priest. He brought in Gelde Asturien after we explained what we needed. Asturien arrived with a scribe and a witness. The pool of money we had come up with totaled a mere 150 gl. Asturien had a loan written up for 850 gl. with a 5% charge, and due in one year. We all signed the charter papers and agreed to name our new enterprise Eight and a Half.

The priests gave us several ideas for beginning our adventuring careers. The Troll Caverns, one day to the east, on the ridge bordering the Stonelands sounded a bit too challenging. The ruins of Castle Crag, in the Helmlands sounded interesting, but again, perhaps a bit beyond us now. The burned remains of Old Meg's hut, just out of town to the North, sounded reasonable. The Haunted Halls, five miles from town could perhaps wait until after we had explored the ruins of the witch's hut.

We left the charter with Asturien for Lady Winter's signature, and were told that it could take anywhere from several days to a few weeks for the charter to become official. Despite this, by dinner time, Myr Kyr had delivered the signed charter, officially forming the adventuring company known as Eight and a Half. Myr Kyr, plied with a bit of food and drink, was a source of a lot of local information. From him we learned that Gelde retired from the Knights of Myth Drannor. Another Knight ruled in Arabel.

He also told us that Old Meg was a witch who had come to town and had never fit in. She did not spend much time in Eveningstar and one day, just stopped coming to town altogether. About three years ago, her hut had burned on a night when strange lights and sounds had been heard in the area. No one had ever really investigated the place since.

Myr Kyr described the Haunted Halls as a former bandit hold, built by dwarves of cut rock and nasty traps. He said that it was filled with nasty creatures and many adventurers had gone in and never come out. Those that had come out seemed to return with more treasure from other adventurers than what is typical of monster hoards.

The Caverns of the Claws, filled with trolls are the source of raiding parties harassing farms in the region. The priest had little other information or guesses about these caverns. We continued to talk late into the evening until Myr Kyr had run out of local gossip. When he went off to his temple, we all retreated to our rooms for the night.

4 Kythorn. In the morning, after getting some boxed lunches from the innkeeper, we set off to explore Old Meg's hut. We wandered around for a bit before finding farmers in a field that gave us directions to the place. They warned us of giant crayfish in the well.

The ruins consisted of one charred wall -- still standing and little else. We spent a long time searching around the site of the hut before settling down to clear out the debris inside the walls. Only parts of a human skeleton were found. We carefully moved these bones into a proper grave and held a brief ceremony for the dead woman. A flagstone floor lay under the debris, and after clearing it off, we methodically began to lift the stones and pile them off to the side. Most of the floor had been removed before we found a 3 foot deep hole containing an iron coffer and a leather bag. Molly and I checked the containers for traps before moving them and found none. The bag held a few coins. The coffer's lock was so rusted that neither the halfling nor I could get it open. Several sharp blows with a heavy object succeeded where finesse had failed. Inside was a book and my stomach did a flip-flop. I checked again for traps, thinking that the book itself could be trapped. Before I was fully satisfied, hasty Molly Tinglefoot reached over and opened the book up wide. I nearly fainted. It was safe however, and we could see some sort of unintelligible writing.

My hopes had been fulfilled. It had every appearance of being Old Meg's book of magical spells! It was going to take many days of research, though, to master what this treasure contained between its musty covers.

Half the group decided to go into town to collect some food to bring back. The rest of us waited at the site of the ruined hut, poking around a bit more and looking at the old book. Everyone except Molly and Monty returned to spend the night in the woods. The human had gotten a message about his missing relative and left immediately to follow up in the information. The halfling was left alone in town. Not a wise thing I'm sure.

We stayed up around the campfire, discussing what we would do in the morning. If Molly showed up, we would go check out the Pillar Rock that was indicated on a map carried by the drow. Our sleep was briefly interrupted when a whip-poor-will arrived deep in the night. I think the commotion of the disturbed sleepers was more disruptive than the bird. Medrik was ready to shoot the thing. I guess the saying is true that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I climbed up the tree it was in and shook its perch, causing it to fly off. Grumbling, Medrik went back to bed.

5 Kythorn 1367. Molly arrived early, singing and looking ready to travel. She also told us that she talked with Myr Kyr in the tavern last night, telling him that we found coins and a book at the witch's hut. By now everyone in the town knows of it, I'm sure. I tried to explain a bit about keeping a low profile to the halfling, but neither she nor any of the others seemed to care. In fact, they all appeared to be annoyed by my efforts to be cautious. Last night they gave me a hard time for following the group headed into town to look for trailers. Today they just came out and called me paranoid. They seem to be looking for trouble.

Dinin and I took some time to examine the book. We both studied Read Magic spells today, and Dinin got to do the first reading of the book. He cast the spell and began to page through the book, reading rapidly. A smile tugged up the corners of his mouth almost immediately. He closed the book and began to recite spell names. Fireball, Melf's Meteors, Flaming Sphere, Stinking Cloud, and others. We looked at each other in amazement. What a find! The others did not seem excited by our discovery, but the two of us were thrilled. Despite my desire, though, I agreed to hold off on casting my own spell to read the tome. It might be needed later in the day. If not, I plan on looking the book over tonight.

After a lot of discussion, we set off for the pillar rock. A short walk through the woodland took us to a strange, out-of-place rock outcrop. The formation looked like it belonged in the Stonelands, but was plopped down here in the Dales. The rock marked the entrance of an old tomb. The entrance was easily found by the foul air seeping out of the cave mouth. We listened at the entrance, but all we heard was a faint sound of the wind, or something that sounded like coarse, whispery voices speaking in some unintelligible language.

The spook hunter sniffed the air and stared into the darkness. "I have a bad feeling about this" she said. "A very bad feeling."

After a bit more discussion, we prepared to enter the cave. The narrow opening allowed only one person at a time to pass through. Two of the big burly fighter types went in quickly. I slipped in toward the middle of the group and shifted over, out of the dim, flickering light of the torch. Hiding there in the darkness, I scanned the room. The cavern opened into a largish circular area just beyond the entrance. A wide door faced us from the opposite wall.

The room was empty and we began to mill about, looking for hidden doors and such. No doors were found, but a small opening was located, just below the 6 foot high ceiling on the left wall. Dorn probed the opening with his staff, finding that it continued away at an angle for at least the length of his stick. As he was drawing the staff out of the hole, something else came out, pulled by the weapon. It was a triangular badge adorned with the symbol of the Zhentarim. Even in the shadowy light of the torch, I could see that Medrik was shaken by the find.

We could tell little more about the passage from where we were, but as I was checking out the rest of the room, Molly agreed to enter the hole and crawl along its length. She was pushed up into the opening and a rope was fastened to one ankle. She crept down the narrow passage for several minutes until suddenly we heard a grinding of stones and a descending wail from the halfling, the sound of falling. Medrik pulled on the rope, but it had been cleanly cut, perhaps three feet short of its original length.

These was no way that any of us could negotiate the tiny passage, so we listened intently for any indication that the halfling still lived. Snipe tried another way. He confessed that he has psionic powers that might allow him to link his mind with that of the halfling. We gave him some room and he closed his eyes in concentration. Several moments later he opened his eyes and told us what he had discovered.

Molly had crawled through the passage for some time before the shifting stone trap had cut her rope. The floor of the trap dropped away, shooting her down a slide and into a spooky room. In the center of the room was a silver inlay on the floor. Apparently contained by the inlay were several shadowy figures moving about, either writhing in pain or dancing. I would have figured that this sight would have been enough to satisfy the halfling's curiosity for a while, but apparently the gate on the wall held more fascination for Molly. The gate was formed by an archway covered with runes and adorned with nine skulls. Five of the skulls had glowing eyes, the others were dark. The gate itself was filled with black and purple in shifting patterns.

The halfling approached the gate and reached out, touching the shifting colors. Immediately her perspective changed. She looked out upon her own body as it stood for a moment before slumping to the floor. She could see her body and the shadow shapes, but could not see the gate or close her eyes.

There was little for us to do other than try to find another way to reach her. We went on into the next room to find a series of empty crypts. The place was not unoccupied though. Several tiny holes in the walls provided access into the room for little humanoid creatures that carried tiny spears that they threw like darts. The creatures were sneaky little devils, snitching Medrik's lock picks and slitting open Troy's water skin. I caught one of the little buggers in my net and was able to make a deal with him and his compatriots to return the picks and answer a few questions. They were not very informative, but it ended up only costing us a couple of days rations to get the tools back.

We found another door leading in what we hoped was the direction Molly could be found. Interestingly, the door had a second jam that was marked by a series a shallow dimples in the wood from floor to ceiling. These dimples matched dimples in the door. It turned out to be a pattern that resulted from the placement from blocks that would keep the door closed from the other side. A corridor led away into the darkness.

I wedged the door open, using a wooden door stop wedge. As we explored the corridor and the next room, I drew my bow out and covered the doorway. I saw one of the little brown guys for an instant just as he spotted me and ducked out of the way. I found a better hiding place and waited while the others looked in the next room. I didn't see anymore movement before it was time to move on.

In the next room we found a use for the Zhent badge. It fit into a little slot and openened a door. We found a set of stairs leading down. As we neared the bottom of the steps the first rank of our file stepped onto the trigger for a trap. When they did, the steps turned into a slick slide. We slipped down the slide and slammed into a stone barrier that had risen to block our way. The floor at the bottom dropped out and we plunged into the darkness before slamming into a heap on a stone floor. A stone door closed above us, shutting out the light.

I was sorely hurt. Dinin was out cold. Between the crash against the stone at the bottom of the steps, and being on the bottom of the pile here, I was sure that death was near. As we untangled ourselves, Dorn looked us over and picked me out as the most in need of a spell of healing. I felt great afterward, but was not in the best of spirits, knowing that we were still trapped in this small room. I looked around, finding a quiver with three sheaf arrows and 18 gold lions. Troy didn't seem too concerned about being trapped here and made his way over to the stone that blocked us in as I looked around. Reaching up, he began to push against the stone. After a few long moments of straining muscles, the rock began to move. He continued to push until the stone was out of the way and locked open.

Immediately, sounds of battle drifted down to us. I climbed out after a couple of the others just in time to get knocked over by a flying skull, hacked off of an attacking skeleton by someone in the front rank. This was turning into a less than perfect day.

The skeletons were eventually hacked to pieces after they had severely injured Medrik and Dinin. We could not go on to search for Molly with so many of us badly injured. We decided to return to town to recover and regroup. Our way was blocked however, by the door I had wedged open. I found several splinters of the wedge near the stuck door. Troy bashed the door to pieces, solving the problem for good. We limped back to town, carrying Medrik and Dinin. We left the Drow in a secure hiding place after doing all we could for his wounds.

We met Myr Kyr at the inn and he offered to provide assistance if it was needed. We declined, knowing that the temple would expect a reasonable donation for this assistance. Because we were already so indebted to them, we felt that we had to take care of ourselves.

8 Kythorn, 1367 We were finally ready to return to Pillar Rock after a few days of rest and recovery. I had busied myself with Old Meg's spell book during the break. I learned a new spell called Black Thorns and had memorized it for today. I had also attempted to learn Scatter Spray, but was not able to master it. Aniken contacted Molly a couple of times to assure her that we were okay and were going to be returning to search for her soon.

Troy brought along several bags of flour to put in front of the holes that the little brown guys came out of. Most of the holes got covered up, and it would make quite a mess for them to cut through them.

The next couple of rooms held more skeletons, but we were a bit more prepared for them this time. We finally found a small secret room with the triangle that accepted the Zhent badge. Unfortunately, the badge teleported those of us in the room to another room with more skeletons. It put Dinin, Medrik, Aniken and I into a room with six skeletons. I did not have enough room to cast my spell without injuring my companions. I got hit by a skeleton and fell to the floor in intense pain. The others were doing alright without me, so I stayed down until a skeleton had its back to me. Even with a back attack, I barely scratched one of the bony things. Fortunately, the monsters were hacked apart by the others despite my inability to help.

As soon as we cleared out of the corner that we had arrived in, our companions winked into the room. Unfortunately, we had no idea where we were.

The room had a deep alcove that hid another door. Before passing through the door, though, we did a quick check for secret doors. My companions appear to be in a tremendous hurry, for they rarely give Dinin and I time to do a thorough search for secret doors and panels. A little time was all we needed in this instance. I discovered an intricately wrought stone door on one wall of the room. While Medrik checked for traps on the regular wooden door, I checked the secret door. Neither of us found anything, so we swapped doors and checked each others work. It gives me a great deal of comfort to have a second check for traps at times like these. I think we even impressed the others with the apparent professionalism of the way we handled the operation.

Both doors came up clean. The secret door was more intriguing, and I pushed it open. The stonework sank inward until it disappeared and quickly got out of the way. A booming, gravelly voice greeted us.

"Who's there!?!" The voice said.

Someone dove away from the door and stammered something about a beholder! We all looked at each other, frozen in terror. Finally, figuring that if the thing really wanted to turn us into dust, we had little chance to prevent it anyway, I stepped in front of the open doorway and greeted the huge spherical creature.

"Excuse us for disturbing you. We just happened to stumble across your door here. We can certainly leave now if it pleases you" I stammered, glancing quickly around the round cavern. The room was a natural round shape, with the huge beholder dominating the space. Behind it was a detailed tapestry. In front of it was a small wooden box. Hovering to the side was a glowing red staff. My eyes didn't linger on anything before coming back to the levitating eye tyrant.

The creature introduced himself as Noraxis. He was under contract to guard the staff that floated in the room near him. It became clear quite quickly that questions about the staff and his contract were unwelcome. We decided not to push it. Medrik got him to admit that the wooden coffer meant nothing to him and that we could take it if we wished. When the shadow blade entered the room to retrieve the box, however, a thick iron grate slammed down between the half elf and us.

Naraxis seemed to find this amusing, but said that if we agreed to return here within five years for the purpose of conversing with a bored guardian, he would let Medrik go. We discussed the offer briefly. Since we had few options other than leaving Medrik here and likely enraging a beholder, we agreed to the bargain. After all, the monster seemed to be reasonable enough to deal with. We didn't count on the magical glow that covered us all with a light like Faerie Fire as we agreed. The beholder clearly bound the deal with some sort of magical spell. I was not at all happy.

The monster did raise the gate as soon as the Faerie Fire faded, though. I was ready to get out of there, but Dinin wanted to check out the tapestry, Noraxix told us that it was a scrying device. It could be operated only by a mage, and could show whatever location the viewer wished to see. Dinin looked first at Molly's motionless body, but learned nothing more than we already knew. He then turned his gaze to another location. The tapestry went black, and he seemed confused, but gave up with a slight shrug of his shoulders. I did not really want to reveal my spell casting ability, minor though it is, to the beholder, so I held my place at the door.

Although he had just sealed a deal with us to return to talk five years hence, the beholder was not now very interested in conversation. We did discover that it had disintegrated three humanoids in this room at some time in the past. It had entered this contact willingly, and that its last visitors were Zhentarim. We also discovered that its last visitors came three years ago, and they (or he) were its contractor(s) As it became more clear that the tyrant tired of our presence, we began to drift out of the room.

Medrik and I went to work on the coffer the half elf had carried from the room. Despite our efforts, the fancy lock would not yield to us. Troy went after the box with a very sharp woodcarver's chisel. The dried wood was no match for the tool. In the box we discovered five fluid filled vials, another Zhent badge, and a rune carved in the underside of the lid. The rune turned out, as we discovered later, to be the mage's sigil for Sememmon, the Zhentarim leader of Darkhold.

We assembled before the other door and prepared for facing whatever might be on the other side. After what we had recently gone through, I half expected a red dragon or a lich. Instead we found the room that Molly had tumbled into.

Her body still lay pressed against the ugly purple and black gate. Shadowy figures hissed and lunged at us, contained by the two silvery circles on the floor. Their hatred and evilness seeped out from them like an oppressive oily sheen. Rhy declared that they were indeed some variety of shadow, a form of undead that can drain the life energy from you with a touch of a spectral hand. They gave me gooseflesh just looking at them.

Dinin examined the silver inlay and supposed that these designs were indeed confining the monsters. Further, he said, the trigger would appear to be crossing the circle, rather than an event such as opening the door or stepping close to the gate or some such action. That made me feel a little better, but I still stayed well away from the silver inlay, not wanting any unexpected stumble to send me plummeting into the dark embrace of one of those horrid beings.

The drow wizard then turned his attention to the gate. After several long moments of concentration, he told us that he believed that the gate was a multiplanar doorway to the Shadow Land, the Land of Death or the Land of Undead, depending on how you wanted to interpret one of the many runes. I didn't really want to interpret them in any way, so I stayed away from the gate too.

Rhiannon simply stood before the gate, staring into it as if looking far beyond the swirling surface. "Undead. The sense of undeath here is overwhelming." Always one for understatement, the ranger then stood there in silence.

We dragged Molly away from the gate with a hook and rope before examining her further. She was in a suspension that had prevented decomposition, despite the fact that she had been in this damp dungeon for several days with no trace of life left in her body. There was nothing we could do for her now, so we left her body near the gate, planning to seek counsel from Austerian and Lady Winter.

In the next room we found three unanimated skeletons laying on the floor. They wore what was left of the armor of followers of Bane. The room was scorched, as if blasted by a Fireball. Burned into the forehead of each of the slain Banites was the mark of Cyric. We all vividly recall the story we heard of the fifty-three priests of Bane recently executed in Zhentil Keep by slowly lowering them, one-by-one, into a bonfire. It gave me the shivers.

We backtracked out of the priests' room into Molly's room and checked the other door. In it we found another corpse. This one was slumped over a table with a dagger in his back. A note was stuck through the dagger before it was plunged into the body. It read:

To my good friend Merik,

A certain amount of deviance is allowed in the Zhentarim. You went too far.

[Signed]Sememmon

[Sememmon's mage symbol]

Merik clutched a bag in one hand. He also still wore a money pouch and wore a plain silver ring. In the bag we found 200gl and 64sf. The pouch contained 3pp and 2sf We took the coins, the dagger and moved on to the next room. It contained a jumble of torn up furniture. A long search revealed nothing of interest.

We were at a dead end. There were no more doors to lead us out of here. So, we started a long search for secret doors. None were found until we finally returned to the room into which we had teleported. I discovered a secret panel that concealed a receptacle for the Zhentarim badge. We all crowded around the area while Medrik placed the badge into the hole.

We were teleported back to the entry cavern. The badge was left behind. The party decided to try to retrieve one of the badges, but when we prepared to reenter the next room, we set off an alarm set by the little brown guys. We discussed the need to go back in after alerting them that we were coming, but decided that it was worth it to recover the Zhentarim symbol. When we prepared to do so, however, we were confronted with an incredible sight! There were more of the little brown guys waiting to block our way than I would have dreamed possible. Not only that, but there were six heavily armored war rats with battle platforms loaded with more of the critters! I couldn't believe my eyes. As we stood there in amazement, we noticed streams of oil creeping toward us from either side of the corridor.

"Torch it!" I yelled, expecting the vile little bugs to attack us as soon as we turned our backs to them. Medrik quickly lit a torch from the lantern and threw it into the passage. The place burst into flame, forcing us to back up.

With our backs covered for the moment, I felt safe enough to take a bit of time before rushing out the cavern exit. It was a good thing I did. In looking for a possible ambush, I discovered a series of trip wires strung just above the floor at the cave mouth. The wires disappeared into the cavern wall. I could not tell just what kind of trap they would spring, but they were relatively easy to avoid once discovered.

We exited the place without mishap, and discovered an elaborate trap laid for us. Three levels of nasty surprises were arranged above the cave entrance for anyone hitting the trip wires. The trap included large logs, sharpened spikes, and buckets that likely contained some unpleasant liquid. We left the trap intact, reasoning that an unsprung trap that we knew about was one that we could avoid in the future.

Dorn found that the bag he hid outside the cave had been taken by the brown guys. A recently cut tree stump sat right next to where the bag had been hid. Our duplicate copy of the charter had been in the bag. Now the gremlins had it.

It was late afternoon before we made it back to town. We marched straight to the Temple of Lathander to speak with Jelde Austerian about Molly's condition before returning to our rooms. I expected to have to make an appointment for the next day, but as soon as the word Zhentarim was spoken, Myr Kyr's attitude changed and he rushed off to summon his superior.

When Austerian arrived, he appeared a bit distracted and disheveled. We got his immediate and full attention (as well as a private audience room) when we told him that we had discovered an apparent Zhentarim outpost of some sort. His distracted mien evaporated in an instant, making me wonder if it wasn't some sort of act or affectation to put off troublesome visitors.

He immediately got the gist of our discovery and told us to stop our tale before going into any more detail. He called in an acolyte, whispered to him for a moment, and sent him off. Moments later a hearty meal was brought in and the cleric spoke no more about our reason for being here. His actions became clear a very short time later when Lady Tessaril Winter and two grim-faced war wizards arrived and began to question us.

We were there for another four hours, retelling our adventure several times over and answering a thousand questions. Medrik and I played memory games, trying to outdo each other with the minute details of describing each and every thing we had seen and done. The wizards finally tired of questioning us and sent us off to our lodging after extracting a promise to return the next day. Since we were counting on these guys to recover Molly, we readily agreed.

13 Kythorn, 1367. In the morning I cast a magic detection spell on all of the things we had recovered from the caverns. The ring, arrows, dagger and vials of liquid all radiated magic. Nothing was very strong in and of itself, but the pile of treasure was pretty impressive, sitting there in one place, glowing away with the aura of magic.

When we returned to the temple, three new war wizards and a hard-looking warrior took up the debriefing. Each of the wizards was in his early to mid forties and appeared to be very battle hardened. The warrior was a little younger and sported a long, black moustache as is common in the service of the Purple Dragons. It was clear that these guys were used to doing this sort of debriefing, and were working hard on being more polite than usual. I quickly decided that I would not want any one of them to interrogate me under unfriendly circumstances. While we went over everything again and repeated it once more, I studied them, committing every aspect of their looks and behavior to memory. They didn't offer any names, but I could certainly describe each of them to Albaeryl. She might know who they were.

We took a long break after this session, and got a chance to stretch a bit before being called in to supper provided by the temple. A sixth war wizard was there at dinner, along with a third warrior. They took their turn at grilling us and looking for new information. The whole experience was actually kind of interesting. I think it helped Medrik and me really test and stretch our powers of memory. The others didn't seem to have the same ability to recall the fine details, but I felt like I kind of found a kindred spirit in Medrik when it came to memory.

10 Kythorn 1367. An expedition mounted by the War Wizards and Purple Dragons visited the caverns in the early hours of this day. They exterminated the little brown guys they called germelains and pretty much sealed the place off to outside visitors. They examined Molly and told us that her body would be retrieved in a couple of days when some specialist wizards would be arriving. They could not guarantee that they would be able to return her to us, but they gave every appearance of doing the best they could.

A spokesman for the War Wizards told us that they had determined that the site was some sort of safehold for Sememmon, the Zhentarim ruler at Darkhold. The beholder, or "Spectator" was left alone. He said that it would be very difficult to take the monster out, and it was not likely worth the cost in lives lost. As soon as Molly gets brought out, they were planning to seal the place completely.

We were a bit dismayed that they were planning to cut off entry to the place. With our promise to visit the spectator again within five years, we were obligated to get back in there. One of the War Wizards spent about two hours going over the wording of the promise and the visible effect of the spell that the creature cast. He determined that the binding would be very difficult to nullify, and that his interpretation was that we would need to return in exactly five years. That shot our hopes that we could return in the next few days, before they sealed it up, to fulfil our promise.

11 Kythorn, 1367. Jelde Austurian brought us in to see Molly's body in the early hours of the morning. The priest was apologetic as he explained that the halfling did not survive the shock of the transfer back into her body. He was certain, though that they clerics and wizards were successful in preventing her spirit from getting pulled through to the land of death on the other side of the gate. Austurian then volunteered to make arrangements for her remains, and we readily agreed.

Lady Winter called for us again. She briefed us on the results of the final activities they had planned for the caverns. After a thorough inspection, they sealed the entrance and were prepared to call the affair over. They were going to watch the site more closely from now on, but do not expect further trouble. She thanked us for reporting our find and told us that she planned a public announcement of our good work. She called us heros and wiped out the debt we still had with the Temple of Lathander in one sentence and brought us back down to earth with the next.

"Officially you are heroes," she said. "I'm personally quite grateful for your work here. But unofficially I have a few things to tell you. First off, you clearly disturbed Sememmon's safehold and he will be able to learn who is responsible. Secondly, it will not be long before the races of your company are known. This is a densely settled area, peopled by folks with strong feelings toward some races. It would be best if you use your public reward to your best advantage and make some space between yourselves and this place. "Thirdly," she said, ticking off the points on her fingers, "Daggerdale is in trouble." "You seem to be interested in doing the right thing. Daggerdale is a place that needs people like you right now. The temple of Lathander there burned under mysterious circumstances. The Zhentarim have been using the area as a staging ground for their shenanigans, and Randal Morn, the deposed ruler is leading the opposition Freedom Fighters. I think you should leave Eveningstar and make your way to Daggerdale. If you choose to do this, I would additionally like for you to take someone with you. Tell me what your decision is tomorrow and we will act accordingly," she concluded with a finality that left little room for questions.

We went out to Old Meg's place to talk about our options and split up some treasure. We all got 21gl and 8sf out of the collection of coins we recovered. It would have been more, but we had put 100gl toward our debt before Lord Winter paid it off.

We agreed to trade the three magical arrows to the Cormyrians in exchange for identifying the powers of our other magical items. Later we split up the magic, and I got the dagger with a slight enchantment. Dinin chose a ring of armoring, Rhiannon took a potion of speed, Medrik got a philter of persuasiveness, Aniken chose a potion of superheroism, Dorn received the oil of acid resistance, and Troy ended up with a potion of ventriloquism.

The party also decided that we would follow Lady Winter's advice and head for Daggerdale. This seemed an especially good idea when we learned that Medrik used to work for Sememmon before an altercation with an apprentice lead to the other's death. Since Sememmon was the top dog at Dark Hold, and since Daggerdale is in the opposite direction, that seemed a good direction to travel.

13 Kythorn, 1367. Tessaril Winter met us, before dawn, at Old Meg's as we prepared to depart from Eveningstar. She brought with her the one that she wanted us to take when we left. It was another drow! Not just any drow, but a drow priestess. This female, to add insult to injury, walked around like she was some sort of princess that we should all be thrilled to be traveling with. She refused to wear a hood to disguise her identity. Instead, she insisted that she was on the surface world to show every one that not all drow were evil. I was sure that she was going to end up getting all of us killed.

I insisted that either she conceal her identity or I would not allow her to join our group. I didn't know how this proclamation would sit with the rest of the party, but no one challenged me on it. Egwene Creale, the 5'8", 115# priestesses of Eilistreae from Undermountain, seemed to think she had a choice in this matter. She went off on her own for a while. When she came back, she said that her goddess had convinced her to take her mission of enlightenment a little more slowly. Therefore, she agreed to conceal her identity as best she could.

My feelings were ambivalent. On one hand I was relieved, knowing that we would not be instantly attacked as soon as we were seen. On the other, I would have preferred that she decided that she could not abide our requirement and left us for good. Despite my desire to please Lord Winter before we left, I felt as though she was asking too much from us. Perhaps she thought that two drow were no different than one drow. I found myself pushed to the edge of my tolerance for either of them. So far, Dinnin has done nothing to make me loose trust in him. In fact we even spent some time trading spells yesterday. However, the two of them together make me extremely nervous.

Our day of travel was surprisingly uneventful. We passed through Troy's village and lunched with his folks, making small talk and generally just passing time. The afternoon gave us good weather and little traffic on the road. By nightfall we had made good time and set up camp in a suitable place.

The night seemed busier than the day. Three separate Purple Dragon patrols interrupted our sleep at various times. All seemed short tempered, and full of their own sense of self righteousness and power. They didn't give us any trouble once they looked at our charter, and probably they kept even less pleasant nighttime surprises down. They didn't make us feel very comfortable even so.

14 Kythorn 1367. We reached Arabel today. As usual, Arabel was bustling with activity. Caravans were arriving and departing at all hours. We found an out-of-the-way spot to set up camp outside of town and settled in for a short stay. We needed provisions and information, so four of us went into town to obtain these while the rest of the group stayed with our camp.

We got the supplies easily enough from a place called the Nine Fires. Conversing with other adventurers and patrons there and wandering the streets a bit we picked up a few rumors:

1. Zhents and non-humans have been fighting in the forests near Zhentil Keep. Apparently the centaurs and satyrs have been loosing in their attempts to prevent the Zhents from continuing to log the forests there.
2. Drow have been appearing in Calaunt at night, some speculate about a secret alliance between the drow and the city rulers. Strange ships, probably from the Pirate Isles have been arriving at night and may be involved in the alliance. The adventuring group Ladies of the Green Shield were slaughtered recently, perhaps because they stumbled across activity of the alliance.
3. Drow took a portion of the city of Assam and it took a battle led by the Fellowship of the Spiked Fist to oust them. The rulers of Westgate are concerned that there may be a new invasion of the surface lands by drow. They have put out a call for mercenaries and adventurers to aid them in repelling such an action.

There was little other news floating around so we headed back to camp to share the rumors we had collected and divide up the supplies. I had considered contacting the Harper agent here in Arabel, but decided that since we were only about 9 days out of Tilverton, I would try to speak with Lady Tanthyin before getting in touch with any other Harpers.

We had a long discussion about our plans. Several members of the group were concerned about our inability to finance our journey past Tilverton with our present resources. It seemed to me that they were making an awfully big deal out of a problem that was at least a ride away. We eventually decided to continue on to Tilverton on foot. The problems associated with being in the company of drow came to the fore as we talked about how we might sign on with one of the many caravans heading north. It seemed unlikely that we could hire on with a caravan with two drow in our party. We could perhaps try to keep their identities secret, but the risk hardly seemed worth the benefits.

16 Kythorn 1367. The road here has been busy and uneventful. We have encountered several mounted patrols and have had no trouble from them. Today we found a patrol with a stopped caravan, and two other patrols standing ready near by. I was expecting trouble, but they gave us none. They were here to escort travellers through the dangerous wild magic area known as the Helm Lands. They did not escort us, but spent a considerable effort at warning us of the dangerous we might encounter. It takes us most of the day to get through the Helm Lands that intersect with the road.

Near the day's end we pitched camp almost in the shadow of Castle Crag. We were told that Bren Tallsword was in charge of the castle, and since we were still well within the areas patrolled by the Purple Dragons, we were reasonably sure that we would not be too disturbed during the night.

17 Kythorn 1367. At mid day we passed the ruins of Castle Kilgrave. The tar pits of the Helm Lands lead up to here, and I recalled the story of how Mystra, the Goddess of Magic was slain here by the God Helm to prevent her from returning to the realms of the gods. The shape of the ruin laid out a clear picture of the destructive blast that accompanied the death of Mystra. The still-bubbling horror of the Helm Lands is testimony to the power unleashed.

18 Kythorn 1367. By evening we made it trough Gnoll Pass and we faced with the choice of the Moonsea Ride or Stone Bolt Trail. It took another round of discussion to convince everyone again that the few days that we needed to detour to Tilverton might be a worthwhile investment. We slept near the junction and talked over our plans for the next leg of our journey. The next morning, we took the trail to Tilverton.

23 Kythorn 1367. We arrived in Tilverton and made our way directly to Lady Tanthyin's residence. She didn't seem at all surprised to see us standing at her door and rapidly hustled us inside. After quick introductions I gave a full de-briefing on the Eveningstar affair. We got into a discussion about the activities of the representatives of the Cormyrian Government in Tilverton and Albaeryl told us that Lady Regent Alasalynn Rowenmantle was now in the city as a member of the Citizens' Council.

We then moved on to talk about our plans. I told her that we were low on supplies and would appreciate it if she could point us in the direction of some work. Albaeryl told us that she would see what she could do. She also told us that we had been followed by two War Wizards as we had been travelling.

We talked for a bit about my recent adventures and the status of the Cormerian occupation of Tilverton. Before long Lady Tanthyin told us that it was time for us to go. She gave me a note to bring to Bloodshoulder at Grimwald's revenge. Bloodshoulder does not like me much and I had bad feelings about going to him for shelter. Despite this, we all (excepting Albaeryl) left Lady Tanthyin's house and made our way to Grimwald's Revenge.

Bloodshoulder was on duty as the bouncer of the place and looked none too happy to see me. He brightened considerably when I told him that we were only going to be in town for a few days. I started to wonder if perhaps the friction between him and I was the result of some jealousy by him. The Fat Man had never favored me over Bloodshoulder (or at least it didn't seem so to me), but the big bouncer may not have seen things the same way.

The place was as I remembered it, the only change was a few more frogs jumping around on the floor. Bloodshoulder soon had the tavern cleared of most patrons. As soon as he did, the remaining people, all Rogues, quickly transformed the tavern into the headquarters of the Rogues of Tilverton. My companions were more than a little nervous when they were surrounded by the members of a guild of thieves. The Rogues were pretty imposing as they led us through the tunnels below the tavern.

Bloodshoulder set us up in a cavern far below the streets of Tilverton and assured us that none of the War Wizards that had ever entered these tunnels had returned to the surface, except perhaps as a frog. He left for a while and we rested until he returned with some food. He also passed along regards from The Fat Man and then stayed for a long time and we discussed old times, new times, and the future. It became more and more clear that as long as I was not going to be staying, Bloodshoulder and I could get along quite well.

24 Kythorn 1367. Albearyl arrived at mid morning with three rides of travelling rations for each of us. Bloodshoulder was with her and gave us a sketch that showed a route out of the city using the sewers. It would be a bit messy, but should keep us from the eyes of the War Wizards.

Lady Tanthyin had little news of Daggerdale, but she shared a few things with us. She told us that there was a dream sickness in the Dagger Falls that was claiming the lives of many dalefolk.

The Zhents have made it difficult to keep agents beyond the Shadow Pass, but they did know that Dagger Falls remains organized and that it should be fairly easy to travel through the area. Zhents still preyed on outlying farms at night, but it sounds as if the Zhent leadership is trying to turn the tables on Randal Morn. They have labeled him an outlaw and a disturber of the peace.

The trip was indeed messy, through tunnels and chutes and finally bringing us to a huge barred grate. The grate was broken open and we squeezed out and trudged up the small stream that received the sewage until we found enough clear water to wash up a bit. Finally, we were on the road again.

25 Kythorn 1367. We made it to the Shadow Gap today. The traffic has been light but steady. Since entering the Gap, our line of sight has been reduced dramatically so it is difficult to estimate how much traffic the road has now.

26 Kythorn 1367. A terrible lightning storm blew up off the peaks as we were on the road. It hit us in an area where there was no shelter. We pressed on, hurrying to try to find some cover from the storm when a bolt of lightning reached down and struck the crypt ranger. It knocked her off her feet but did no serious injury to her. The strangest part of the whole event was that the lightning bolt lay on the ground next to her after it struck. She shook her head to clear it, looked at the bolt in puzzlement, and then picked it up. She looked at it for a bit and slung it over her back like a javelin. The storm blew out as quickly as it came up, and we resumed our journey.

29 Kythorn 1367. We shared a strange dream overnight. Several of us saw the same set of images. One was of one of the others looking at pots, looking and moving them. Another was of a sword. It was supposed to be in someone else's hand, but for some reason I was holding it. The third was of a rock. I had a black rock. It got round, it turned gray, then white and light then rotated and turned into a skull that screamed.

30 Kythorn 1367. We reached the Tethyamar Trail today around mid day. Just past the junction we found a small stone building on the trailside. It was built of granite, had a new thatched roof, and fresh sweet flowers growing all around it. There was an feeling of serenity and peace about the place and it made me nervous.

We approached closer and discovered several holy symbols of human gods adorning the place. We determined that this was some sort of shared holy place for the Gods Torm, Sylvanus, Chauntea, and possibly Melikki. We took our midday meal here under the eyes of the gods. It was obvious that the traffic on this trail was far less than that on the main road. We saw no one on this trail at all.

1 Flamerule 1367. We had some excitement today, thanks to a band of kobolds. They had set a spiked pit trap on the trail. Rhiannon was unfortunate enough to find the trap the hard way. Then a pile of the little disgusting things charged. I wanted to back up and cast my Black Thorns spell but one nasty little creatures attacked me. I killed it though. I used the magical dagger we found in Merik's back. After eight of them were killed, the others decided to cut and run. We did recover 16 thumbs and 8 good quality, Zhentish short swords from them. It looks like the Zhents are doing more than raiding farmers on their own. They are also arming the vermin.

I marked the area with a couple of Harper danger symbols, hoping to alert others to the potential danger from the kobolds. All I could find were some smallish native stones to scratch the symbol out on, but perhaps it might help.

2 Flamerule 1367. We came across another traveller's camp in the early morning. It appeared as though the half elf was asleep, but it soon became clear that the unfortunate was dead. His horse was too, although neither of them had any sign of wounds. As we were examining the area, the familiar feel of the spell I had memorized slipped away, leaving my mind feeling hollow and empty. We got out of the area quickly after Medrik grabbed the dead one's saddlebags. Snipe suffered a powerful headache from the encounter, but other than this we were really no worse for the wear.

In the bags were 35 lions and some food and ale. There was nothing to tell us who the dead person was or what he died from. I do wonder if this was similar to any of the symptoms of the dream sickness that has affected the people of Dagger Falls. I will have to look into it more closely when we get there.

By noon we heard the roar of water, and soon saw the Serpentsbridge spanning the River Ashaba. The bridge is aptly named as it appears to be built of entwined snakes frozen into stone. The bridge rises to a height of 50 feet above the churning waters of the Ashaba before descending to the other side. A rather impressive structure all in all, but we didn't stop to gawk at it.

Shortly after we crossed the bridge and were on our way, we heard the thunder of horses galloping our way. We all dove into the bushes along side the trail and looked out to see who was travelling in such haste. To my horror, I saw that The drow priestess remained in the center of the trail. Fortunately she remained hooded as the horsemen pulled up in front of her. They greeted her and the leader introduced himself as Randal Morn. Several of our party revealed themselves at that, and he told them that Zhents were hard on their trail, but if we wished to help the people of Daggerdale, we should find the cause of the Dream Fever. The usurper Trent is calling himself the constable in Dagger Falls, but is really a Zhent agent. We should look for help from Louden, the cooper at Red Rock.

And with that, he and his men were off again. Straight away we heard more horses. Back into the bushes we went, this time dragging the drow behind us. A whole crowd of soldiers charged past, obviously chasing Morn and his men. We waited for the dust to clear before we again ventured out onto the trail.

This encounter helped us decide our next course of action. We had been having a long discussion about what to do once we got near to Daggerdale. At one point along our journey, Dorn and I had engaged in a little role-playing game to try to think through what kind of responses we might get if we walked right into Dagger Falls without any attempt to conceal our identity as an adventuring group. I tried to play the role of Trent or one of his men and Dorn worked on responses. It got a little far fetched, but I think it was useful as a tool to prepare us for entering the town. Several members of the group observed, but others paid no attention. Dinnin even got in a huff, after wandering into the game partway through. He accused me of having an ego attack, of acting like a meddling Harper. I in turn criticized him for not paying attention to what was going on and told him that if he was not going to help with this, at least quit interfering.

3 Kythorn 1367. What at first looked like a flock of crows in a tree in the distance turned out to be a group of stirges. Several attacked us as we walked along the trial. I had heard of these blood-sucking creatures before, but never realized just how powerful they were. A couple attached themselves to Dinnin and he was incapacitated before we could get them off. I killed one that tried to attack me, again using the dagger I have started to call Merik's End. Fortunately, only a part of the large flock attacked us, and the others remained near their tree.

4 Kythorn 1367. As we approached Dagger Falls we saw more and more activity. Unfortunately, much of this activity was quite disturbing. Much of the forest was being cut and units of gnoll archers patrolled near the tree cutters.

We made our way to an inn called the Teshford Arms and arranged for lodging. There were many mercenaries around, including large numbers of orcs and half orcs. We hung around the common room until late into the night, watching bands of mercs. coming and going. We picked up several rumors that were circulating between the fighting men.

1. Dwarves forged a sword to slay a magelord. It is in the eagles Eyrie or with the constable.
2. Several children have vanished. Probably due to goblins of the hills.
3. The Brightblade dwarves cursed the region when they were driven out 100 years ago.
4. A sleeping horror beneath the temple is now awake.
5. Beams of the Red Rock Tavern sprouted flowers and leaves recently.
6. All the horses standing outside the Teshford Arms Inn died yesterday.
7. Three men and women died of lack of breath, calling for water. Thirty more are ill.
8. Evil dwarven spirits have come down from Eagles Eyrie. A blood sacrifice is needed.
9. A man with a strange accent has been in town spending gemstones marked with dwarven runes, buying odd pieces of this and that.

5 Kythorn 1367. We received a summons from Constable Trent during our morning meal. The congealed oatmeal was not difficult to leave behind, but Medrik had to do a tough-guy routine with the human leader of the small patrol sent to fetch us.

They escorted us to an audience with Trent. He was a tough looking bastard, with his hair cut in a short no-nonsense style common with hard core fighting men. He was reading through a stack of papers when we arrived. As he finished one he glanced at us and spoke in a straight forward manner. It was clear that he was used to giving orders that were followed without question.

"That rebellious dog Randall Morn has been killing the people of Dagger Falls with some sort of disease. I want you to go the ruins of the Temple of Lathander and rid me of this scourge. I'll pay you each 20 lions if you can stop him. I pay 50 lions for bringing in one of Morn's men" he barked before dismissing us.

We quickly left Trent and went to investigate the temple ruins.

We found the entrance near a cracked marble fountain. The fountain was empty except for the ageing black soot, probably from the conflagration that destroyed the temple. A few Zhents stood guard near the entrance to the ruins. They seemed to be expecting us and gave us no trouble as we descended the soot stained stairway.

A large wooden door at the bottom of the stair had survived the fire. We pushed it open to reveal a large room filled with wine casks and lit all over with a greenish glow. Small holes against one side of the room reminded me of the germalains' lair so I took a position in a corner and covered the area before the holes with a drawn arrow. I was drawn away from my place after getting exasperated by the jokers trying to get a portcullis up across the room. The whole room was chaos within minutes of our arrival. Troy and Medrik were struggling with the portcullis that barred the only exit from the room other than the way we came in. They were calling for help and not getting any. Everyone else was exploring the room on their own. I went over to help Troy and Snipe started screaming.

"Get it off me! Get it off!" he yelled in the eerie green glow. A big pale yellow furry creature had fastened huge jaws onto him and given a shake that sent him splattering blood all around. He and the creature were immediately surrounded by our group and the thing was killed by the drow priestess. In the meanwhile, Troy managed to lift the portcullis and we stuck a wine cask under it to keep it open. There was a nervous moment when it looked like the weight of the thing would crush the wooden cask, but it held and we snuck under.

The halls beyond the portcullis were catacombs filled with the moldering bones of long dead followers of Lathander. These remains were clearly laid peacefully to rest here, probably long before the fire that destroyed the temple above. The dead were well adorned but their valuables were as yet undisturbed. The next room to explore was protected by a massive stone door and an intricate lock. Medrik immediately tried to pick the lock and was unsuccessful.

I offered to give it a go and he said something like "don't bother its too hard" in his most annoying tone. I took a look anyway. The lock was beautiful. I had never seen one so well designed before. I took my time with it and explored it thoroughly. Medrik kept up a steady stream of derisive comments as I worked. The 'snick' of the opening lock shut him up only for a moment.

"Well, it wasn't easy for you" he added, as if he had to prove something to himself. What a chump. Of course it wasn't easy. This lock was not designed to be easy. I didn't see how that mattered. We were here to explore the place. The lock was now open. End of story. Obviously, though, it bothered Medrik a great deal until just as suddenly he was off on some other obsession.

The new room was a brightly lit chamber of stone set up as a chapel or retreat or something. There was a big mural of Lathander on one wall, and several valuables. At first I figured that we could use the golden candlesticks more than the dead guys outside the door. Then Dorn pointed out that the priests of Lathander, after the fire, had taken the time to go through the remains of the temple and these catacombs. Since they had left the place in this condition, perhaps they had a reason. This was no deserted and abandoned temple. This room was an active, if temporarily isolated, part of the faith of Lathander. Not everyone saw it this way and some harsh words were spoken before all the loot was returned to its proper place. We checked over the room for secret doors, and finding none we left and locked the door up tight again.

The catacombs wound around and we found a recently created opening from them into a natural limestone cave formation. Past that opening Medrik found a secret door to another brightly lit chapel. As with the other, this place had an alter made of agate.

The new opening into the catacombs was rough and lead down into a twisting corridor. In this winding passage we found two dead Zhents and a dead hook horror. The humans were probably from the one and only expedition the Zhents sent down here ahead of us. They had no weapons or treasure remaining on them, so I suspect that either his companions or someone else came by to loot the bodies. We heard some clicking or tapping from ahead of us and Medrik went on a head to investigate. He came back to tell us that it was another hook horror. It was eating a third Zhent, and it looked wounded. We made a plan to sneak up on it and have Medrik strike it from behind. We caught up to it a bit further down the passage from where Medrik had first seen it and Medrik quickly killed it. The body that it had been eating was a nasty mess and I very much hoped that we didn't run into any of these things that were healthy.

A short way further, we came upon a large open chamber that contained a substantial mushroom forest. Filling up part of another corridor was a wall of animate thorns that was clearly hostile. Some of the mushrooms looked almost humanoid. From out of the forest came little green mushroom men with vests and shirts of leaves that appeared to be grown on them. They attacked with spears coated in green drippy sap-like stuff. The crypt ranger went down in the attack. We killed the attackers and dragged our injured companion out of the room. I also took along one of the creatures spears along with the poison that smelled strongly of citrus.

We returned to the secret chapel to spend the rest of the day and night in rest. Egewene, the drow priestess cast a spell to detect magical energies in the room and was nearly overwhelmed by the result. Medrik and Snipe would not sit still in the chapel and went out to 'keep watch'. I suspected that they were more interested in trying to lift some baubles from the dead around us. I just hoped that if they did something stupid that they did not get all of killed along with them.

6 Flamerule 1367. We went back down the new tunnel and took a different route to the mushroom chamber. Along the way we discovered a large cavern with a deep dark pool of cool water. Always the showoff, Medrik had to prove that he could leap over the water. As he did, a female elf rose up from the depths. When Medrik landed on the other side he advanced on her and she retreated slightly. He pulled out his crossbow and started to aim it at her and she dove into the depths and was not seen again. What a blundering idiot! He thinks that everything he encounters can best be dealt with by drawing a weapon.

We found the other side of the tangle of thorns. It appeared to be 10-20 feet thick. Phasing in and out of the thorns were the little mushroom guys. They walked into the thorn-wall as if it were a fog bank, and used it for cover. They didn't give us any more trouble this time though.

On the other side of the mushroom cavern, a large tunnel lead to a flowstone falls. We set up a rope system that allowed us to get down the more than ten foot drop without injury. Following the tunnel further we found several more flowstone drops and a huge dead hook horror before being stopped by a deep and fast flowing river. Stone columns on either side of the river indicated that a bridge once crossed here, but try as we might, we could not see how to get to the other side. Across the 35' wide stream Dinin saw what he said was a drow caravan route marker.

Deciding that we needed more information, we returned up the flow stone passage, checking for secret doors or passages as we went. Back in the mushroom chamber we noticed that indeed the mushrooms were growing into the little green leafy guys. We discussed the possibility of burning the thorn-wall in case it was hiding another passage in its tangle, but decided against it for now. Instead we returned to the secret chapel, cleaned up as best we could and spent another night resting.

7 Flamerule, 1367. I wanted to return to the pool alone, hoping to see the elf maid who we saw there, but the group stomped along arguing about how to draw her forth. The drow priestess sang songs and the psycho guttersnipe played a flute and dropped stones into the pool. I was torn between drowning myself to end my frustration and running in terror from this ragtag bunch of misfits. In the end I sat in a patch of friendly shadows and sympathized with the elf maid. I only wished that I had been as smart as her and turned tail when I saw this group.

We left the catacombs after everyone finally realized that the elf maid was not going to return. The wine tun still held the portcullis open and we returned to the foot of the stair, dragging one of the worst mauled Zhent bodies and a severed hook from a hook horror. After a few minutes reviewing the basics of what we would report to Trent, we headed up the stairs.

Trent had apparently been expecting us to stir up trouble below, for a dozen alert crossbowmen had replaced the few laconic guards we saw on the way down. They were quick to challenge us. Once we identified ourselves, we were allowed to come fully out of the tunnel and stare into the wicked barbed bolts of their crossbows.

"Cyric's Lunch!" cried one guard in horror as he saw the devastated armored corpse we dragged up the stairs. Before we could do any explaining or get through the line to file our report, trouble started.

The loud-mouthed tough who delivered Trent's summons the other morning pushed through the line, dropped his sword belt and told Medrik that it was time to finish things. Despite comments by a guard, Marak, the tough, was prepared to fight Medrik then and there. Quietly, however, another man slipped through the line of guards to stand beside Marak. This new Zhent was finely dressed with hard black boots and a wide brimmed leather hat. Lieutenant Ridle introduced himself to us, apologized for Marak's brutish behavior and dismissed Marak and all but two of the guards, including the one that had tried to stop Marak's near attack.

Ridle walked toward Medrik and extended his hand for Medrik to shake. Instead of taking the proffered hand, Medrik flipped his wrist slightly, bypassed Ridle's hand and drew the lieutenant's dagger from his belt. He immediately plunged the dagger into Ridle's side and Medrik leapt back facing the two thunderstruck guards. The two looked at their former boss who was now lying in the dust with his eyes screwed shut, writhing in agony, turned, and ran.

"Guys, I've gotta go!" Medrik said in a voice that was just short of complete panic. "That guy was a Zhent assassin, leader of a death squad sent out to find me. I recognized the snake-hilt dagger. It was his guide to finding me. Don't touch it because the poison is incredible." His voice was getting shaky now, and he was close to losing it. "I've got to go" he said again, looking around for some escape from Sememmon's wrath. His eyes came to rest on the stairs leading down to the catacombs.

"I'll take you somewhere they cannot find you" Dinin said. "I've had enough of this business already. I didn't agree to this knowing that the meddling Harper scum were going to benefit. They are as bad as the worst of the drow manipulators. I know how to get across the river below and we can take the caravan route to places that the Zhents won't dare go."

The two of them dragged Ridle's now stiff body down the stairs and into the darkness. We stood above and watched them disappear. All of us were stunned. This had all happened in barely a breath or three. We looked at eachother in disbelief before deciding to simply make a brief report to Trent and then head directly to our rooms at the Teshford Arms.

I hardly needed to worry about our report to the Constable. He had not yet heard about the incident with Ridle and we did'nt bother to tell him. The mangled body and hook horror trophy did'nt surprise him. He heard the rest of our report as he continued to work on other things and dismissed us, without asking any questions, with a brusque "Keep at it."

Returning to the Teshford Arms, we cleaned up a bit and learned that a traveling puppet show was to perform at the inn. Rumor was that five people had recovered from the sleeping sickness too. I got names and locations of these recoveries so we could follow-up with them. We wondered if our dealings with the little green mushroom guys had something to do with the recoveries. It may have been coincidental that we had killed five mushroom men and five people recovered, but it didn't appear so.

Other rumors included:

1. The cowardly priestess (of Cyric) Evagyn fled town because her god would not protect her from the sleeping sickness.
2. The gods have abandoned Daggerdale and its people are being punished.
3. A score of sheep have disappeared, along with their shepherd, in broad daylight.
4. The Zhentarim are planning an invasion.
5. Trent has brought in a powerful wizard to scare the dale folk.
6. Randal Morn has poisoned a water trough.

Delores "Dlo" Gem's Puppet Show was a one-person affair, run by a fat woman dressed completely in black. She introduced the show with the help of two puppets before disappearing behind her stage.

The show opened with a little town and a wizard. The wizard beat all the dwarves until they began to bring him gems. The wizard disappeared and we didn't see him again. Next came a bunch of black shields to town. They pushed out the ruler and his family. Back in town the black shields and a flowerpot took center stage. The roses in the pot began to burn and were quickly consumed. Then puppets with white hoods and rose colored robes hovered over the barren pot. It was not possible to be sure, but it appeared that they planted something before leaving. Next the ruler puppet rides in to town and beats up the black shield. After that a black sun appears over the flower pot. It shines on the soil, as if trying to get something to grow. It eventually starts to dig in the pot until it uncovers a pointy hat. As soon as the hat is seen, the sun disappeared.

Next the black shields were seen milling around town while little green puppets throw nets over people that fall down. The green puppets also eat horse puppets. Another puppet, this one with a big black shield showed up and met eight cloaked riders. He beat them all up and they rode to the flower pot. The cloaked riders were then seen running through tunnels. They encounter a queen sitting on piles of books, with more books behind her. The hooded puppets point at the queen and pull off their hoods. We then saw that they had black skin and white hair. They shoot at the queen with crossbows, but she fled and the bolts struck the books, starting a huge fire that burns all the books.

Then, with a crash, the door of theTeshford Arms slammed open and two huge figures entered. When we turned our attention back to the puppet show a half-breath later, Dlo and her stage had vanished. I quickly looked around and no one else in the place seemed to notice anything unusual. It appeared that they had never noticed that a puppet show had been here and suddenly disappeared. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I developed a sudden case of gooseflesh.

The two huge figures looked the room over and headed our way. Both stood almost eight feet tall and must have weighed close to 300 pounds each. Ogre ancestry warred with human blood in them, giving them both a strangely menacing and somewhat comical appearance. They barged over to our table.

"Are you the circus?" one asked.

"Yeah, we were told to find another circus!" the other enthusiastically agreed.

Dorn, who was sitting next to me, nudged me with his elbow and said "You need to talk to Del here. He's our spokesman." Both half ogres looked at me intently and I almost peed in my breeches. I struggled with myself, wanting to run as much as I wanted to slip a garrotte around Dorn's neck. I composed myself as well as I could by finishing a long pull on my ale, and introduced them to Troy. The burly human came to my rescue and started a conversation with the huge brutes.

Jed and Ted are a pair of gladiators from Hilsfar. The broke out of the confined area for humanoid captives, fought their way through town, and escaped the city. Along the way they met a puppeteer named Dlo who gave them a show. Afterwards, they decided that they had left one "circus" in the arena and needed to join another here in Daggerdale. They were told to find us, help Randal Morn, and give us a letter. They handed ne a battered scrap of paper from Dlo. There we only a few words on the paper: "An adventurer or a farmer, you decide."

The message was pretty clear. The messenger was still a mystery. Who was Dlo? Why is she addressing us in such a mysterious fashion? Can we trust her? I suspect not, but I also realize that I may in fact be just as paranoid as Dorn believes. Oh well.

I suggested, after the second time Jed and Ted spoke Randal Morn's name, that we take a walk outside to get some fresh air. I was able to cover the verbal gaffes, but I was getting increasingly nervous. As soon as we got outside, I slipped away from the group and trailed along behind for a while, making sure that we were not being followed. The group continued to question Jed and Ted. I just observed from the shadows and then got ahead of the group, as I realized we were headed toward the nearby farm where a recovered victim of the sleeping sickness lived.

The two half ogres were pretty interesting characters. I am glad they wanted to join us rather than fight us. Jed Hurleyburley was a muscle-bound bald fellow with a slight paunch. He carried a mace, and a quiver of spears, an enormous body shield, an even larger bardiche that he swung around with one hand. He liked to grin a lot.

Ted Hurleyburley seemed more ogreish, heavier, and with the white pupils and residual tusks from his father's side of the family. He also seemed to have a worse temper. He carried a bastard sword, maul, and wore chain mail.

I slipped back into the group to suggest that Snipe use a little of his mental power on the two ogres. He didn't get much, but the feelings that he was able to read supported the story the pair told. Aniken put his talents to use again when we arrived outside the farmstead. We circled the place, looking for anything out of the ordinary. There were a number of men assembled here. It appeared that they were having a small meeting. After not finding anything unusual in the vicinity of the farm house, Aniken probed the farmers we could see through the window. He read feelings of relief over the one recovery, sadness for those still ill, and fear about the sickness.

The guttersnipe, the builder and I went up to the door and greeted the farmers. They asked if we were the adventurers from the temple. When we admitted that we were, we were warmly welcomed into the gathering. They believed that we had something to do with the recoveries. We learned that five people recovered suddenly from the sleeping sickness. The number matched the number of little green leafy guys we killed in the mushroom forest below the Temple of Lathander. Perhaps it was coincidental. Perhaps not.

The farmwife here was still ill, and we asked to see her. Aniken performed a mind-link with the woman. His voice got softer and began to talk in nonsense words, suggesting that he had tapped her subconscious, and that she was stuck in a dream state.

Our companion went in deeper, and again his voice changed. "If you slay us we shall live. The woods die but we forgive" the voice said.

The wife's voice again took over "When morning comes, to morning(?mourning) we go. Back to our master's caverns below."

Aniken shook his head and looked at us "That's it" he said.

We rejoined the farmers in the main room of the home. I dug for other details that may help us solve this puzzling sickness. Unfortunately, what we leaned did not seem to fit together at all.

• two cows had gone missing
• the farmer was out for five days with sleeping sickness
• fifty raspberry plants died and withered
• a cow was found with its neck stuck in the crotch of a tree 8 feet off the ground.

This last business happened at night near Eagle's Eyrie. The farmer that owned this cow agreed to let us escort him back to his place tonight and show us the site of the death in the morning. This fellow was a stutterer, but did not seem unnerved by our interest in his business. I had asked him if he had ever had other trouble with flying livestock, but he didn't take it well. He though I was joking with him. I didn't try to explain that I suspected wild magic. At any rate, we stayed in his barn over night, setting a standard watch, even though we were in settled lands.

During reverie, I experienced a strange vision. Later I learned that all of us saw the same thing. The vision started with a view of someone's back. He was throwing something out, and drawing it in. Getting closer, I saw that the person was a short dwarf-like being with branches in his hair. Then I realized that it was one of the green guys. He was throwing out a net, catching people. The person would run through the net, but a ghost person was caught in the net. There was then an interruption in the vision and the next scene started at a set of big metal doors. There was rock rubble and huge statues near the doors. A group of people wearing the leathers of woodsworkers and woolen cloaks. It is night and by torchlight I could tell that they were trying to open the doors. Just as I almost recognized the people, I saw their horses turn into skeletons. Then the people turned into skeletons and the shock jolted me out of the reverie and into wakefulness.

8 Flamerule 1367. After a hearty breakfast, the farmer lead us out to the site where the dead cow had been found. The tree was a huge old oak tree in the pasture. We found cow hair stuck in the bark of a crotch a good 8 feet above the ground. A careful investigation turned up a set of cow tracks leading to the tree. The trail ended in slash marks. The grass near here was long and twisted. There were green acorns all around the tree, even though no other oaks had yet dropped their seeds. Jed and Ted tried shaking the tree, but could barely budge the huge old oak. They certainly could not knock acorns out of the tree.

I climbed into the oak, looking for clues. The leaves all over the tree were shredded in an unusual way. They didn't look cut, just shredded. I also found a bit of dry twigs and grass in a branch. Looking below I saw the remnants of a bird nest that had fallen out of the tree. There was one broken egg shell with no yolk.

Despite spending a considerable time investigating the details of this odd affair and questioning the farmer, the whole thing remained very mysterious. I began to wonder if this mild farmer might be capable of staging an elaborate hoax. The question, of course has to be, does he have a reason to do such a thing? There was nothing more that we could do here so we asked the farmer to point us in the direction of Eagle's Eyrie.

It was a short hike up to the old dwarven stronghold. A broken tower guarded the top of the trail. Two huge ogres guarded the tower. I thought that Jed and Ted were big and ugly. These two full-blooded beast-men defined big and ugly. Snipe tried to find out what the two ogres were thinking and told me that they were worried about us stealing their sheep. Jed and Ted were spoiling for a fight, but they and the ogres were both restraining themselves. I wanted to confuse the ogres a bit and see if we gould get them on our side just a little. I asked them if they had had sheep stolen. They reacted with fear and anger and something else. I explained that we were trying to find sheep stealers. The eased back a little, but I think they were still off balance. I'm not sure if my comments did any good. At least they didn't attack.

They did not want us to go near their tower, but didn't care if we explored the cave in the cliffside. We edged away from the ogres after that, keeping our eyes on them. I was not really happy going in here with powerful, potential enemies at our backs, but we had few other real choices. Quickly, though, I had to turn my attention to the task at hand. Concentrating on the cave, I immediately discovered something unusual. I noticed a series of small holes in the cave wall. I pointed them out and the drow discovered another set. She asked for lights out, and we doused the lantern that had just been lit. We stood in the darkness of the cave for several breaths until Egwene showed me a thermal rune, caused by thinning of the stone and a secret passage behind. She opened the doors marked by the rune and we prepared to enter the ancient dwarven fortress.

Eagle's Eyrie was laid out around a large central room. In this room we found signs of a massive conflagration. The walls and ceiling were scorched, cracked and chipped. Four dwarven warrior statues in the central room were melted and charred as well. The plaques that identified these warriors were missing. On the ceiling four blue lights continued to shine. One was significantly dimmer than the others, as if it were quite old and wearing out.

As I was checking out the passage for secret doors, Ted wandered into one of the rooms off the central chamber. We heard him call for his brother and all the warriors rushed into the room behind him to battle four fire beetles. The dark elf explained that the glowing red glands on the back of each beetle were commonly used in the underdark as light sources. As the others were carefully removing the glands, we caught Dorn having a quick meal of bug flesh. He looked pretty spooky feasting on the bug until he noticed that we were all watching him. Then he looked a bit sheepish and tried to pass it off as nothing. Weird. Most of the time he appears real normal. Then we catch him doing something like this.

I went back to examining the walls and floor for secret doors. Ted lifted the statues off their pedestals for me to check beneath. I found nothing and we went next to the room to the south. As soon as Ted stepped into the room, a magical hammer rose from a huge anvil in the center of the room and attacked. He backed out of the room and re-entered with his brother. They destroyed the flying hammer and we explored this new room. In an alcove to one side we found another statue. This one was very grand and remained undamaged. It had a plaque with one word in Dethek on the pedestal. I copied the runes and examined the statue. It looked as though it could well be a dwarven God.

In addition to the statue, the anvil, and an old, disused forge, I found a secret chamber in this room. Behind a cleverly concealed door we found a stack of scrap iron and steel. There looked to be close to 500 pounds of the metal.

In the next room we found the remains of two dwarven warriors, a old water wheel, a broken stone desk and more runes. I copied these down while the others examined the dwarves. The dwarves still had on the remnants of chain mail. A mace and a short sword lay close at hand. Dorn cast a spell to detect magical emanations, and discovered that the short sword had a faint to moderately strong aura. When Ted and Jed touched the sword they each got a slight wound from a shock given off by the weapon. Snipe was also injured by touching it. Troy was not, nor was Rhianon. Later, when I touched it, I got a fairly serious injury. The crypt ranger examined the sword for quite a while and it looked as though she recognized something, but she refused to say anything. The blade was black with silver flecks and had markings that indicated that it was made by the Brightblade clan. After a bit of experimenting, it looked like only humans were able to touch the sword without being injured.

We found two other rooms in this small complex. Both were guard rooms overlooking the entrance, trail and nearby travel routes. I spent the rest of the day searching for secret doors. Despite a very careful search, none were found. Ted and Jed got restless before long, and left to talk to the beast men in the tower. The Ogres were gone, so we examined the tower as well. We found nothing of interest there, however.

9 Flamerule 1367. After spending the night at Eagle's Eyrie we prepared to return to the Teshford Arms. Before we departed, however, Rhianon told us a story. It was something that she recalled hearing and the memory was triggered by seeing the Brightblade name on the sword.

"At least 100 years ago, the Brightblade goldsmiths lived in delvings in Daggerdale, in peace with the ruler of House Morn, the Mage-lord. The Mage-lord's wife Belesaria, was a proud and arrogant woman, who believed that the people of the dale were her servants, not she their protector."

"One cold day in autumn she went to the Bladebright dwarves to buy fine jewels. The Bladebright dwarves had just finished crafting a masterpiece for their king under the mountain, and as soon as Belesaria saw it she demanded to buy it. The dwarves refused, Belesaria offered more for it, and still they refused. Vowing vengeance for this slight, she stormed off."

"When Belesaria returned, she told her husband that the dwarves would not sell her their fine work, only their trinkets, and that they said she was not fit to wear anything more than that. The Mage-lord was angered at his wife's words and swore to teach the dwarves a lesson."

"Returning to the Bladebright delvings, the Mage-lord threatened the dwarves with a sorcerous curse if they would not pay him a great tribute of gold and worked steel as an apology for their insults. The dwarves refused, but, knowing the power of the mage's wrath, the clan and all their kin gathered what they had and left to dwell with cousins under the mountains to the north. Their champions remained behind to fight the Mage-lord and were destroyed, never to be avenged. To this day, the Bladebright dwarves will render no aid to the descendants of House Morn, including their only male heir, Randal Morn."

This helped explain a bit about what we found at Eagle's Eyrie, but it didn't really get us too much closer to solving the problem of the sleeping sickness. So, we returned to the Teshford Arms for lunch and more information in town. I hoped to go off and meet with Louden the cooper at the Red Rock Tavern by myself. Unfortunately, everyone wanted to tag along. I thought that they would at least behave themselves so that I could do my job, but I was quite disappointed.

The crowd at the Red Rock was mostly locals and farmers, rather than the mercenaries at the Teshford Arms. Even so, I didn't recognize anyone. None of the farmers that we had met earlier were there. The patrons were kind of suspicious looking, until I realized that there were a lot of Morn sympathizers in the group.

I asked someone to point out the cooper for me and observed the man identified for some time before quietly sitting down next to him at the bar. I introduced myself as a friend of a friend, and then gave him a sign that Randall Morn had told us would be recognized by Louden, telling him that 'five gallon barrels work best.' I give the cooper a lot of credit. He neither abandoned caution and greeted me like a long-lost friend, nor did he dismiss me out of hand.

We talked for a while about things we both mostly knew before getting into more interesting topics. From him I learned that:

• the sleeping sickness trouble started after the priestess of Cyric went into the crypts below the temple,
• there was a stranger in town spending old dwarven coins,
• Eagles Eyrie was seen as a small holding, with most of the dwarves living outside the caverns,
• The dwarves forged weapons, cut gemstones and mined, but no one knows where the mine was.
• Fulgar's Caravan Supplies would be the best place to check on the value of scrap iron and steel.
• There were about 100 Zhents, 200 mercs., and 150 Daggerdale auxiliary troops in the region,
• The temple of Lathander burned after a Zhentarim-backed Morn took over the town.
• The runes under the dwarf statue read "Moradin"
• the other runes were words of a curse from Caldaron, the Mage-lord to the 'children of the earth'
• Aragen, the priestess of Cyric is a mean, heartless witch, and that we should watch our backs,
• Caldaron developed lots of plant spells and he may have created the little green mushroom guys,
• we should avoid the Trifold Daggers, or Tridags. The Purple Dragons sent this group in, but they have gone bandit, after being infiltrated by Zhents in Tilverton.
• Daggerdale used to be called Merrydale, before a terrible infestation of vampires in 796 D.R. The original vampires produced more vampires until adventurers killed many of them, but not all. A vampire named Jander Sunstar, a gold elf survived. Some of the vampires preyed on Mistledale. The residents of Merrydale became very suspicious and distrustful. Then the Zhents invaded the area that was Teshendale. Now it is an area for mining and lumbering. The Zhents hired bands of orcs and other goblinoids out of the hills to fight the Merrydale folk. A Morn, backed by the Zhents, with training as a mage took over the dale. He was the half cousin of Randal Morn. Randal deposed this Zhent but still, a third of the dale is satisfied with the Zhentarim as rulers. The other two thirds of the dale is behind Randal Morn.

Throughout our conversation, Louden seemed to warm up little by little as I slowly gave him reasons to believe that we were legitimate. By the end of the conversation, I believe I had him convinced. Jed Hurleyburley made things very difficult, though. He kept coming over to me, trying to get me to leave. He was restless and bored and wanted to kill mushroom men. At one point the big idiot tried to grab me and drag me out. I'm not sure what Louden thought of all this, but I was not very happy. I don't want to have to ditch my comrades each time I start to gather information, but this got out of hand.

Finally, when I was through with Louden, we went off to meet with Tren. Marak was there, but he quickly got out of the way and left the area as soon as he could. Tren was working on papers again when we were shown in. He said that he had heard about the business at the temple ruins. All he told us was to keep fights personal, and to not let them get out of hand.

He raised an eyebrow when we asked for two kegs of special fire oil. We explained a little of what we had run into below and told him that the oil was to be used for burning the thorns. Ted Hurleyburley also asked for a big sword. I thought that he was pushing his luck, but the Constable said nothing. He just wrote up an order and handed it to us, directing us to the equipment shop.

When we got there we received two small kegs of flash oil. The quartermaster was very careful with the green, slimy stuff as he placed the two wax-sealed kegs on a small wheel barrow. He explained that this is the stuff used by the Thayvians to fuel their legendary great bombards. He then had several guards dip two ropes in red paint. These were used to clear a lane through the busy streets to the temple. Anyone who didn't move fast enough got touched by the wet red paint. They were singled out by several gnolls with whips for punishment. They helped us get the barrels and the wheel barrow down the steps, into the former temple's wine cellar.

We took one barrel about half way to the thorn wall and retreated to the catacombs. Troy, and the two beast men took the other to within 15 feet of the wall and lit it. The blast was incredible. I was able to duck behind a bit of rock as the flames shot past us, filling the passage, and even shooting out the rat holes in the wine cellar room. Several of the others were not so lucky, and got burned a bit from the powerful explosion. We were just about to check on the results of our work when the second barrel, obviously lit by the first blast, exploded. I hit the ground and rolled behind some cover, but not before the searing heat and concussion knocked me silly and toasted my skin.

When the rumbling stopped, I rolled over to see that not everyone had fared as well as I had. Ted, Dorn, Rhianon, Snipe and Troy had all been knocked unconscious by the blast. Their clothing and armor was still on fire in places, and they were bleeding profusely from their ears and noses. Those of us still on our feet ripped the burning things off them and did our best to see to their wounds. The shrine to Lathander was nearby, so we dragged the wounded there before we all collapsed in an unnaturally deep and restful slumber.

10 Flamerule, 1367. We have no idea how long we slept, but when we awoke, all of us appeared to have been touched by the healing of Lathander. Egwene cast another healing spell where it would do the most good, and we decided that we were well enough to check on the results of the explosions.

The destruction was pretty impressive. The mushroom forest was gone, nothing but ash remained. The thornwall was in the same shape. Behind the thornwall, the tunnel narrowed a bit and we found a 5' wide side passage leading off to the left of the main passage. Further ahead was the ruins of a door frame, with the door completely blasted away. Behind that was a very small room where we stood facing the wrong side of several arrow slits. Fortunately, the blast had blown completely through this room, knocking out the door on the other side of the room and incinerating the many bow-wielding skeletons on the other side of the arrow slits. This would have been a pretty nasty trap.

Across the skeleton room was an archway and more hallways and doors. Jed and Ted went off and started breaking open doors. The rest of the group stuck together and looked in the next room we came to. We discovered a large iron cauldron filled with an evil, steamy brew in a room crowded with boxes and crates of herbs and miscellany. Suddenly we heard a scuttling sound and a box fell to the floor, spilling black seeds out all over the floor. A bat-winged creature with nasty looking teeth and a snaky tail burst out from behind a box, fleeing for the door. As Troy split the thing nearly in two with one blow from his hand axe, we heard an earsplitting scream from further into the complex.

We rushed out to the hall, around a corner, and down toward the source of the scream. As we approached the open archway, I ducked behind the corner of a doorway and drew my bow, hoping for a shot at the bad guy.

Two of the little green dwarves guarded an infuriated, fat human in mage's robes. Before I could get a clear shot, Troy was down from a poisoned spear, and Rhianon and Jed had dropped the fat man. I immediately dropped my bow and rushed in beside the fallen mage with my dagger to his throat. The two green dwarves were killed quickly, but not before a silver, iridescent net came floating at us. I yelled a warning, alerting the others to the net, and drew Merrik's End across the Mage-lord's throat. Instantly the net dropped to the floor, lifeless.

For some reason, Aniken blew up at me for finishing off the mage. He screamed something about trying to pick his brain, but I did not understand half of what he was trying to say. He vented his anger for a bit, glared at me in disgust, and turned to examine the net. He cooled down quickly as he looked over the net. It was fine and delicate, obviously with magical significance. The snipe stuffed it into his pack and said nothing more about the incident.

The only other significant thing in the room was a large stone crypt. It had a sculptured relief carving that resembled the fat guy. The inscription read "Caldaron, the Mage-lord."

Apparently we killed the patriarch of the Morn family.

We collected a staff, dagger, ring, robes, and several pouches of spell components from the dead mage and assembled them neatly in a corner of the room. I searched the crypt, finding several more pouches of spell components, and a small spell book marked "Caldaron". I didn't think that now was the time or place to mess with the book, so I just set it in the corner along with every thing else.

While we were doing this, Ted wandered off and soon we heard pounding coming from another room. I asked Jed to see if he could get his brother to rejoin the group, but he did not return. Instead we just heard more bashing sounds. It clearly was not the sound of combat, so I asked if the others would come with me to help get the group back together. No one seemed to want to come along, so I went alone. I found the two half ogres in a small secret chamber breaking open small chests with huge swings of their giant weapons. I tried to get them to stop, tried to explain that there might be something fragile inside, but nothing seemed to get through to them. After four of the six chests had been broken open, Jed stopped because there might be a trap on one of the two remaining chests.

I was angry because Ted especially kept continually acting like a spoiled toddler. If he was not at the center of the action at all times, he had to act out and be disruptive so that he would become the center of attention. I told him that it had been his choice to join this group, and that if he just wanted to go off and do his own thing he should find another way to do it. He got all pissed off and started yelling at me, so I just left. I have just about had it with his attitude. Both he and his brother think that all we should do is run from battle to battle with no thought of figuring out what in the abyss is going on. They give me no time for gathering information, and I practically have to beg for the chance to look for secret passages. I am not sure what to do next. I did know that a shouting match with a half-brained ogre was not a good situation, though, so I went back to the rest of the group.

In another room we found a sleeping pallet and a large stockpile of food, weapons and other supplies. Egwene came in with 2' tall wooden statue of a dwarf tied to a torture wheel. The bat creature's room held box after box of herbs, seeds, and other strange materials, a barred door and a secret door. Behind the barred door were eight prisoners. The stood blinking in the dim light of the dungeon when we let them out. The prisoners included:

• Hiram, a shepherd
• Boront, a dwarven tinsmith
• Franter, a Zhent guard
• Marabelle, a housewife
• Torginn, a small child
• Omella, a spinster
• Larun of Sylvanus, a priestess
• Norban, an unlucky merchant who had been robbed, and knocked out by bandits before being taken.

All of these people had been out for up to two rides, but seemed to be quite healthy considering everything. Egwene, had covered her head when the prisoners were discovered, and quickly took charge of seeing to their health and comfort. While she was busy with them, we examined the secret door. Cleverly concealed behind a hinged herb cabinet we found a small study chamber furnished with a table, chair, and Continual Light. There were a stack of books on the table, but before anyone touched them, I checked around for traps. The books were unceremoniously dumped into a big sack and carted off, along with the loose papers on the table. It was several days before I was able to record a bit of information about them:

1. Mastering the Unseen ( a general primer on magic, something similar to what nearly every apprentice studies at one time or another)
2. The Iron Glove ( a political work on the nature of power, maximum taxation and general principles of oppression. Nasty stuff. The Zhents are bad, but this text may have a few tricks even too mean for them.)
3. Perfection in the Craft of Lasting Magic. (techniques of magical construction)
4. Herbarium Maleficium (Magical and poisonous plants, herbalism, instructions for creating a ring of thorns that can cause spell effects such as entangle, pass plant, and wall of thorns. Is this Caldaron's ring? The last 100 pages give detailed notes on the creation of a nightshade. Instructions call for a huge cauldron, many herbs, and the blood of innocents among other preparations. This is probably what Caldaron was brewing in the next room.)
5. On the Aspects of Dreams, or The Dreamers Travels in Planes Lesser and Greater (sleep magic, astral travel, positive and negative life forces, also describes the construction of a net of dreams that can steal the life energy of one sleeping target once per night. The entrapped life force can be removed to a cage to allow the net to be used again. Side notes on the cage refer to magic jar research.)

The loose papers covered various subjects, including the text to a work in preparation entitled the Great Book of Magelore by Caldaron himself. Most of the other papers were letters and miscellaneous correspondence to colleagues and servants. One note was particularly interesting. It referred to how Caldaron was recently revived by Aragen. It noted that he took a few days to realize that it was not Belesaria that had awakened him, and that he speculated that she still lay dead in her own crypt. I wonder if his confusion upon resurrection was encouraged by the priestess of Cyric, and if the realization was the cause of her flight from the crypts?

12 Flamerule, 1367. When we emerged from the catacombs we were greeted by over a score of pikemen and crossbowmen. The freed prisoners were quickly led off and we were told that Tren wanted to see us immediately. We did learn, along the way that we had lost a few days sleeping off our wounds in Lathander's chapel. We also saw that the alchemist's shop had blown up while we were below. Perhaps because of our actions. The buildings on either side of the alchemist were destroyed also, and windows all over were boarded up. Three people, one of which was the alchemist, were hanging from a recently constructed gallows nearby.

Tren was not a happy man when we arrived. He was standing in his office while another sat in his chair and severely reprimanded him for incompetence in dealing with the situation in Daggerdale. His list of offenses was long, but most damming were a lack of control over the priests, not getting shipments of powerful magical materials to the keep, not yet capturing Morn, and insufficient patrols to guard the caravans. The newcomer stood, pulled Tren's hand forward, and poured in a fistful of sand, saying "I hope you like this, because that is where you are going."

Tren seemed barely able to control his temper. The five wizards by the new fellow's side, and several tough looking veteran guards seemed to do wonders for his control, however, and he said nothing.

Marak introduced us as the adventuring party dispatched to clean up the catacombs, but did not seem too sure about who he was reporting our arrival to. He didn't have to worry for long, as he was immediately dismissed. Tren left under escort and the new constable, Constable Golthammer began to berate us for the surface destruction. The half-brain ogre started to argue with him, but didn't get to far. I was certain that he was going to land us all in the lock-up, but Golthammer merely asked us if we were finished with the job. As soon as we said no, he dismissed us with a command to finish it up quickly.

At the Teshford Arms we found a note under the door that simply said "See me, same place as before" it was signed with a small dwarven rune. As we were all planning to go get something to eat, I found it a convenient time to slip away for a meeting with the cooper. I would have liked to stayed together as a group, but my experience the last time I tried to do this with them along suggested that I was safer alone.

I was pleased to see that I could slip up next to the cooper and sit beside him for several breaths without him noticing me. When I spoke, he jumped a bit, but quickly recognized me. That little trick will probably get me in trouble some day, but it was just too satisfying to pass up sometimes. Louden took me to a back room and we waited in silence for a bit. A pattern knock on the door gave Louden a look of concern and he reached for his dagger. I was drawing my own dagger, one covered with the plant poison, when another knock, this one with a slightly different pattern followed. Louden sheathed his weapon and opened the door to reveal a very sheepish young man and a robed woman. The woman stayed. The man left after a few whispered words with Louden.

She was Elem Catha, Cormerian spy, and she was asking for our help. She said that Louden told her that she could trust us. They (the Cormerite agents) pushed the powerful magical oil on us the other day, thinking that we were Zhentish mercenaries. She apologized for the mistake, and actually seemed to mean it. She described the original rationale behind the Tri-fold alliance or Tri-fold daggers and how they had been infiltrated and turned rogue. I probed for details about how the infiltration had happened, because I was concerned about the danger to my people in Tilverton, site of the supposed infiltration. She could give me no details though, and I let the subject drop.

She also explained that they had just seen three agents executed. The gallows were built for spies, not just an incompetent (or unlucky) alchemist. The alchemist and the other two victims had been discovered recently, but it was not clear to me whether the discovery was as a result of Golthammer's arrival, or whether they prompted it.

The bottom line was that the Cormerians had been decisively shut down and wanted out. Elem had sent an agent to the Purple Dragon, requesting assistance in getting out. She had just received word, however, that the agent had been captured by bandits in the mountains to the southeast of the city. There was a small old tower on the small stream called the dagger river that she believed was taken over by the bandits. She was asking for our help to get the agent out. If we could not do that, she wanted the message back as it named other agents in Daggerfalls. Failing to get the message back, she at least wanted us to destroy the missive. She wanted the message returned to her or Louden. Then she reconsidered and said that she wanted it delivered to her alone.

I wanted to know why we should not destroy the message immediately, but after a long moment of thought, Elem Catha told me that while she had her reasons, she could not tell me what they were. Instead, she simply reassured me that the risks associated with returning the message were necessary. Isn't that the way it always goes? We could be trusted to risk our necks to pull her fat out of the fire, but we couldn't be trusted enough to be told the truth about why we were doing it.

She told me to expect about a score of bandits. When I questioned her about the likelihood of magic use by the bandits, she said that was unlikely. This information was vague but reassuring. I began to wonder if that was intentionally so. After answering all of the questions I could think to ask, Elem Catha was escorted out by the young man that brought her in. Louden looked intently at me and mouthed something. I couldn't figure out what he was trying to communicate, as he was making no sound. He had to repeat the performance two more times before I was able to figure out that he was telling me to bring the Cormerian message to him rather than to Elem Catha. With that little twist, we parted and I returned to my companions.

They were all curious about what I found out, so we retreated to our rooms for a debriefing. I got nervous, though, when I and the others realized just how easy it would be for our enemies to listen in on our discussions. Therefore, instead of talking about my meeting with the cooper, we talked about the treasure we recovered and when we were going to finish up under the temple. We had recovered 4000 old silver coins, a bag of agates marked with dwarven runes, and 10 odd silver coins with the name Gondegal marked on them. The name was clearly that of the "Lost King" of Cormyr, but why his coins would be here in this crypt, who can say?

Our course of action was to replace supplies using the old silver coin, and return to the catacombs to complete our mission there. The shopping went pretty quickly as there wasn't anything too wild that anyone needed. I was unhappy about having to spend the old coin when we had no real idea about what the value was. I was also unsatisfied with the idea that all the treasure was to be used to resupply those that lost gear below before it was split up. It seemed fairer to split it up and then let people buy the gear they wanted with their personal shares. I figure that 500 of those old coins should be each person's share. We also have to split up the other items found in our recent adventurers. Dorn is carrying the ring and dagger from the Mage-lord, Rhianon carries the dwarven short sword. Snipe has the silver net, and the ogres have the books and a bag of agates.

We went down to the chapel and I briefed the party on my meeting with the cooper. There was little discussion about the information, and we all went to sleep for the night.

13 Flamerule, 1367. Dorn cast a spell to assess the enchantment of the items we found. He wisely chose to do this outside of the chapel. Out of all of the treasure, only two new items held an enchantment. The ring has a moderate strength power, and the net is strongly magical. According to Caldaron's book, the ring's powers are activated with command words set by the creator at the time of the enchanting. Unfortunately, he did not write down the words for his ring (if in fact his ring is a ring of thorns.)

The first thing we checked out today was the narrow side passage just beyond the site of the thornwall. We followed the passage, single file, until it opened into a larger chamber. The floor dropped away into the darkness in the center of the room, and a putrid odor rose from the black depths of the pit. The smell was of rotting decay, too long without good air. The combination of rot and the holy symbol of Moander that was found in one of the small chests gave me a sudden case of severe terror. Snipe wandered over to the edge of the pit and spit into the hole. Everyone was silent for a long time, listening intently. Suddenly, the cave began to shake and rumble. Ted, who had been leaning over the edge of the pit fell to the floor, but was able to catch himself before he fell into the hole. When the rumbling stopped, we heard an ominous slurping, slorching, plopping sound getting louder and louder. We ran. We did not look back.

We got back to the main passage and headed off for the Mage-lord's crypt. The long, dark passage that we had left unexplored lead through some curves and then down many sets of stairs. We descended a long way before reaching a leveling out through an area with a rumbling overhead, damp walls, and a slightly muddy floor. Almost immediately, the passage began to rise again, and continued to rise until it ended at a trap door. I crept up to the door and listened carefully.

Above me I could hear Golthammer's voice yelling at Tren yet again. "It is not just for your inability to control this dale, but for your mishandling of this whole Morn situation" he went on. The Constable continued to berate Tren for several minutes, concluding with "Did you even bother to tell them not to kill the Mage-lord? He was a Morn for Cyric's sake. We could have backed him against Randal Morn!" The comment was punctuated by a sound that may have been a fist striking a face, and followed by the thump of a body on the floor above my head.

Tren was getting more than just a tongue lashing. Finally Golthammer sent Tren away and called in Marak. He said some things to Marak that I cold not make out then called Tren back in for a continuation of the abuse. As interesting as this was, I wasn't getting much out of it. Instead, I did a careful examination of the trap door and steps. It was evident that the door had not been used in decades. It seemed that the Zhents knew nothing about this little secret. Hopefully we could keep it that way.

We made our way back through the passage, stopping along the way to discuss our discovery. The passage must go under the underground river that we had heard rumors of. The only fortification in Daggerfalls, before the Zhents' new wall, had been the Mage-lord's tower. That tower was now the Constable's Tower. Given the length of this passage, and the fact that other tunnels could lead away from the tower in any direction, Belesaria's Crypt could be almost anywhere in the region. I am still not convinced that we found all the secret passages out of Caldaron's crypt. How was he getting out of here to buy all those supplies? How was he getting them all down here? And why was he doing it? What were all those supplies for? Why was he creating the Nightshade? Why did Aragen wake him up? Is she going to try to get to Belesaria?

Even with all these questions unanswered, we decided that we were pretty much done down here. Troy said that he could scavenge some stone from another wall and do a bit of stonework to wall up the hallway leading to the tower passage. It took him a day to do it and make the borrow site look right. He then took a torch and added soot and ash to the wall to make it look like it too had been burned in the blast.

15 Flamerule 1367. When we exited the catacombs there were only six guards left on duty. Aniken, Egwene, Troy and the Hurleyburley brothers went back to the inn while I and the others went to collect payment from the Constable. Golthammer had a guard confirm the number of adventurers that came up before paying us the 20 gold lions we each had earned. We spent the remainder of the day examining the books that the Mage-lord had hidden away in his secret study.

16 Flamerule 1367. After picking up the supplies we needed, we left town, following the Tesh downstream. We easily found the small stream Louden had called the Dagger River. By evening we still had not reached the foothills, but were able to find a good place for camp. This is a loud and unruly group, and I am uncomfortable in their presence in the wilds. It didn't seem so bad in town, or when we were on the trail, but here in the forest, on a mission to sneak up on a bandit stronghold, it is getting to me. I am trying to stay calm, though. There is a real danger that if I try too hard to get this group to follow some safety precautions, they may simply dismiss my concerns as paranoia. They seem quick to make these sorts of judgements, quick to rely on their ability to fight their way out of trouble. It makes me edgy though. At least in part because I have noticed myself succumbing to the temptation of relying on their brawn rather than my own cunning and care. I must be careful about this. The problem is, how do I participate as a member of the group but not fall into group mentality? How do I change their behaviors without pushing them too far? How do I keep myself safe when they all choose to bull ahead without thinking?

17 Flamerule 1367. We reached the foothills of the small mountain range that hides the bandit stronghold. The Dagger River has gotten lively here in the hills, tumbling over rocks and into small pools. The surroundings here are quite pleasant.

I suggested, that as we were getting closer to the bandit stronghold, and because we didn't know where it was, perhaps we should have a cold camp tonight, forgoing the fire. The suggestion was followed, and I began to hope that I could get along with this group. As it turned out, the precaution probably was meaningless.

Dorn and I had the second watch this evening. Well into the watch we were disturbed by a group of ancient skeletons that attacked us. I was able to shout a warning in enough time before the attack so that the warriors were able to throw on their armor. I hid in a dark patch of shadows as the undead warriors marched into camp and attacked. One skeleton presented an inviting target when it turned its back on me. I leapt out of the shadows and wounded it with the Zhent short sword I carry. The wound I caused did little to damage my bony opponent, and it turned and struck me with the old, rusty blade in its hand.

I immediately fell to the ground, blood pouring out of me. As soon as I fell, the skeleton turned away to attack another, and I was able to stanch my wound so that I didn't immediately die. As I lay there bleeding, though, the grass suddenly sprang up and wrapped around me. I could not see much, but it appeared that the spell had been cast by the drow, and that it had entangled all the skeletons and most of our party. It gave me little choice but to lay there in the grip of the suddenly aggressive grass and hope that my warning had given the others enough time to fully prepare for the battle.

The sounds of weapons faded, and suddenly Egwene appeared next to me. The grasses gripped her legs, but she had her upper body free. I knew it was bound to happen eventually, but still I was not prepared for this. She began to call forth the power of her god to cast a healing spell on me and there was little I could do about it. I tried to get her to stop, but she paid me no attention as the healing magic flowed into me. The wound closed and the pain subsided. She finally spoke as she became aware that during her casting, the grasses had entangled her arms and torso and she could not move.

She started preaching to me about the goodness of her goddess. I listened politely for a bit, but finally had enough. I told her that this was very hard for me to deal with. I have been trying hard to put aside my feelings about dark elves, and I believe that I have done quite well. Having the power of her goddess heal me was beyond what I was ready to handle though. Now with her crouched over me, preaching her religion, it was way too much. I asked her to stop, but she seemed to think that since I was a captive audience, she could go on all she liked. Finally I told her that crowing over her virtue and good acts quickly pushes them out of the realm of good deeds and into the category of self-serving behavior. She didn't seem to get it, but fortunately, about this time, the grasses relaxed their hold and we were able to escape.

Rhianon examined the broken skeleton warriors and their moldering equipment. She proclaimed that they were from what was once Teshendale, long before it had been called Merrydale. She went on to show us the route the undead had taken to our camp. It did not correspond with our planned approach to the tower. She said that these hills were filled with undead from hundreds of old borrows. As she said it, it was clear that she would love to search them all out and destroy their inhabitants. We had other plans, though, and she did not argue with them.

18 Flamerule 1367. A few miles from our camp we spotted the tower from our place in a dry, heavily eroded gulch. The erosion had turned up a huge stone slab covered with runes. From under the stone, a thirst of stirges rose as we neared. The bat-winged creatures rose from their hole under the stone and dove towards us. As they did, I got off a spell just above our heads. Six of the nine monsters were within the area of the spell's effect and dropped to the ground, asleep. The others were quickly killed and the beast men set about smashing the sleeping stirges before they could awake.

Egwene came over and enthusiastically extended her hand to congratulate me on the successful spell. I shook her hand, but her attitude suddenly changed. She had not wanted to congratulate me, she had wanted to tease me. She gloated over the fact that she had tricked me into shaking the hand of a drow! I tried to explain to her my feelings and discomfort so that we could work through it, but she was so caught up in her little game that she was totally disinterested. I was disgusted and turned to transcribe the runes on the stone for translation at a later date. Meanwhile, Aniken found an old skeletal hand wrapped around a dagger in the stirge lair. The hand, clad in a fingerless, spiked glove fell apart when the dagger was removed. The dagger's hilt was wrapped in red leather, had strange flowing points on the pommel and hand guard, and glowed with a magical aura. It was like nothing Rhianon, or any of the rest of us had ever seen before. Snipe packed away the dagger and the spikes from the decayed glove and we all turned our attention toward the tower, just now becoming visible at the top of this dry gulch.

The rest of the party agreed to hide out in the gulch while I did a careful circle of the tower and its environs. The inhabitants of the tower had cleared a small area around the tower, keeping it free from trees and shrubs. There was a considerable volume of litter and debris, however. Most of which appeared to be from broken wagons and the like. If there was any doubt that these people were caravan raiders, seeing this carnage caused a lot of the doubt to dissipate.

Most of the trash was located near the trail leading to the front gate of the tower. I crept through the bushes near the trail, and approached the arched doorway. I could not get very close while remaining within the concealing cover of the vegetation, so I was unable to read the rune in the keystone of the arch. The setting sun also made it difficult to make out details. I continued around the tower until I reached a place where I could get a better look at the building. The stone was heavy and dark, placed carefully and tightly. The tower was five-sided and about 50 feet high. Arrow slits broke the plain, unadorned walls only on the top third of the tower. Battlements ringed the top, and I could see no guards or structures. Defenses from aerial attacks were also conspicuously absent. The only flair to the structure, with the exception of the mystery rune, was a set of shadowy buttresses. I got the feeling that this tower was not built by humans.

Around the back side of the tower I found a crumbling, eroding cliffside. The Dagger River was slowly eating away the tall bank here, a process probably accelerated by the clearing of vegetation up to the cliff bank. It appeared that this tower probably had a great view of the Teshendale Trail from the top of this hill.

I also discovered a faint trail that led into the woods. Following it a short distance lead me to a garbage dump that was relatively fresh. Circling back to the group, I snuck up and gave my report after startling a few of them.

We waited until dark before beginning our attack. After the sun set, I snuck back to the piles of broken wagon parts and searched through them until I found a heavy axle that would serve as a good battering ram. The arrow slits appeared covered, so I crept up to the door and checked to see if I could get the door open quietly. Unfortunately, the door was constructed of heavy, damp wood and was studded with huge iron plates and rivets.

Dorn cast a spell, calling on the aid of his god and the two half-ogres rammed the door with the axle. The wood splintered and dented, but the bar did not break. The second hit, however, carried Jed, Ted, and several others into the tower through the shattered door.

The bandits were, of course, ready for us. Unfortunately, they were also tough and well organized. They were waiting with loaded crossbows in a room where the only cover consisted of some cots, chairs, and a few tables. The first wave of crossbow bolts staggered the beastmen and the rest of our front rank even before they could drop the ram and draw weapons.

What followed was a gruesome and awful battle. Several more bandits, wielding more crossbows, came down the stairs from the floor above. I got off a spell causing one bandit to fall into a magical sleep. The downside to this was that this action drew the attention of a couple of the crossbowmen on the stairs. At that moment, Jed and his huge bardiche drew away their attention and they fired at him. He fell, feathered with many of the wicked bolts. I got off several arrows, doing some damage to the bowmen on the stairs. Ted and Troy charged up the steps and finished off the bandits who did not retreat.

On the second floor we found more bandits, including one, sitting behind a desk and giving orders. He proved to be a tough opponent. He yelled orders to the floor above before engaging our fighters. I hastily transferred a bit of green sleep poison from a dagger to an arrow tip and held a guarding position, covering the stairs. It seemed to take forever, but finally, the last bandit fell, bleeding and cursing, to the floor. There had been a total of sixteen bandits in the tower. The third floor and roof were empty. This was fortunate, because almost all of our fighters had gone down in the battle. We were able to stabilize everyone, and while it was very close for Jed, no one in our party died. The bandits were much less fortunate. All were killed.

We assembled our wounded on the first floor and cared for them there. Those of us that were able, dragged the dead out of the tower. Egwene conducted a ceremony to offer the bodies of the fallen to her goddess. I was startled to see the offering accepted and the bodies fade away. Even more surprising, was the bright moonshine that hit the shattered door and slowly mended the damage.

The bandits had a total of 20ct and 17sf on them. The leader also had two keys and a strong box. I took the keys and strong box and put them away for later. After the tower was as clean as we were going to get it tonight, I examined the place for secret passages. The third floor had no windows and comprised only about a quarter of the structure. The second floor was about the same size, but contained the arrow slits we had seen from the outside. The first floor made up about half of the building and I found, under a rug, a trap door that hid a ladder leading down into blackness.

19 Flamerule, 1367. I waited for most of the others to recover and receive magical healing before attempting to open the strongbox. It was good that I did. I first checked for traps, but was unable to find any indication that one existed. I was unconvinced, so I donned a heavy leather gauntlet before placing one of the keys into the lock. Nothing unfortunate happened, so I covered the entire works with a chainmail shirt before turning the key. It was a bit difficult to turn the key with the shirt coving the box, but as I did, I heard the "snick" of a trap mechanism. Thinking that it was a needle trap, and that my precautions were adequate, I went around to the back of the box and lifted the top. A horrible poison gas came pouring out from between the links of the mail shirt. I dropped the lid and tried to dodge out of the rapidly expanding cloud, but instead caught a lungfull of the gas.

My lungs felt on fire and I could not cough the poison out. I felt as though my chest was engulfed in flame. I felt strong hands grab me and force water into my mouth. I was choking and close to drowning now, but the water seemed to ease the fire just a bit. Then, just as I was blacking out, I felt the cooling rush of a healing spell. The relief was instantly washed away in more pain and fire and water as the choking and coughing continued. Moments later, the fire faded. The coughing lingered on for some time, but the horrible pain subsided to a more manageable level. I coughed a sincere thank-you to Dorn and Jed who had saved my life and collapsed in exhaustion.

I later learned that the strongbox held, in addition to the dragon-headed bladder-trap, 100gl, 200sf, two necklaces, and a scroll with the following dates marked on it: Flamerule 3, 9, 12, 17, 18, 23, 24, 27. We suspected that these were dates when caravans were supposed to be attacked.

20 Flamerule 1367. I felt considerably better after a long night's sleep. I was still a bit weak, but was ready to move on and check the trap door. We descended into the darkness, using Snipe's light stone to illuminate the room. We first found a small room with a well and a heavy door, barred on our side. Behind this was a dark, narrow hallway. It was short with big, heavy oak doors on both sides. Several were empty. A couple held the old bones of long-forgotten prisoners. One, appearing more recently occupied held not the Cormerite prisoner, but a newly excavated tunnel. The stone from the wall sat nearby and the small, dark hole beckoned us onward. I thought about squirming into the tunnel after the Cormerite agent, but because I was still less than fully recovered from my encounter with the poison, I agreed with the beastmen that they should enlarge the hole and we should all go after our missing quarry.

As they worked away at the tunnel, I and a couple others went to examine the keystone of the doorway arch. It was not something any of us recognized, but was quite similar to the runestone where we were attacked by stirges.

21 Flamerule 1367. This morning, I found Dorn engaged in a ceremony to his god, Shaundakul on the top of the tower. I waited, watching respectfully until he finished before asking him questions about his religion. We talked for a while about his god and his aims before going down to join the others. During the conversation I learned a lot about Shandukul, including that He is a protector of travelers and adventurers, and that occasionally, His faithful, when lost in the wilderness, will see a godlike hand pointing the way. Shaundukul also protects tradeways. If this is true, Dorn likely earned the favor of his god for destroying this nest of caravan raiders. Now it would be nice to figure out how to get this tower occupied by the forces of good rather than leaving it open as a refuge to the wicked. Perhaps when I meet again with the cooper, he will have some ideas.

It was clear that the tunnel workers were going to be quite a while at their task, so I got Rhiannon and a couple of the others to help me follow-up on an idea I had. I thought that perhaps we could locate the tracks of the messenger if he came out of his hole somewhere nearby. I figured that the best place to start would be by the runestone. We spent most of the day examining the area around the tower in minute detail. We found no tracks, but after looking at everything so closely for so long, we noticed that the rune in the keystone on the tower matched the pattern at one corner of the design on the runestone. Careful examination of the curvy dagger revealed a pattern on the handguard that may match the runestone. There were even tiny markings that may have been runes, but they were so small that we could not make them out.

The drow cast a spell of a variety unknown to me and determined that the runestone was 2434 years old. We dug out the bottom of the stone, thinking that there may be more of the pattern that we could decipher. Unfortunately, the stone was broken off just below ground level. All we were able to find was a copy of a rune that looked like the keystone rune and three lines leading away from the rune.

22 Flamerule 1367. I tried to talk the beastmen into taking reduce spells to enable them to slip through the slightly enlarged tunnel, but they would have none of it. Troy kept at the tunnel work, telling us that it would be another day or so until he had the tunnel wide enough and stable enough for the ogres to fit through. In the meanwhile, I occupied myself with examining Caldaron's spellbook.

I had waited on this task until we were somewhere safe. I took several precautions now, and eventually opened the book to see just what the magelord's magic would reveal. He had quite a few spells, many of which were beyond my limited skills. The collection looked interesting, but not terribly exotic. Most of the spells were ones I had either seen or heard tell of. The book included: Affect Normal Fires, Armor, Change Self, Grease, Magic Missile, Unseen Servant, Charm Person, Chill Touch, Hold Portal, Taunt, Ray of Enfeeblement, Scare, Summon Swarm, Bind, Fools Gold, Glitterdust, Blink, Monster Summoning I, Wraithform, and Phantom Steed.

Interestingly, there were not a lot of the plant-control spells I had expected, given his research interests. I wonder if he had some other books hidden away somewhere.

23 Flamerule 1367. Troy was finally satisfied with his tunnel work and our group slipped through the messenger's escape hole. We found that the tunnel led to a small stone room with very little decoration. A large, wooden door, held shut by a bar was the only obvious way out. It was clear that the door had not been opened in a very long time though. Snipe found a secret door, and we surmised that our quarry had gone through there. A long, narrow passage led from the room to another door. In this new room we learned the awful fate of the Cormite.

The messenger was a recently created wight. The monster that brought him into undeath was a huge, powerful looking monster. Even more terrible was that this wight had, in life, been an orc. When the door was opened, the old wight sprang to the attack, shouting in orc "Death to all those that would disturb the Torillian OrcGate!"

The battle was joined quickly. Rhiannon yelled out that the wight could only be hit by magical or silver weapons, so I indicated to Ted that he should take my magical dagger. As soon as he did that, I hit Troy with a spell to protect him from some of the effects of the evil from this creature. After that, all I could do was await the outcome of the battle. The way in front of me was completely blocked, and even if I could get in, there would have been nothing I could have done. The battle was short and brutal. At one point Rhiannon hit the old wight with a splash of holy water and the thing let out a howl as the liquid sizzled and burned. Finally, Ted was able to land a killing blow with my dagger. The messenger had already fallen and we found the scroll on his body.

We also found that the splint armor, worn by the orc wight was magical and would fit Dorn. This armor also bore the now familiar rune that we have come to associate with this tower. The bladed knee plates from this armor were appropriated by Snipe. The huge axe that the orc wight had wielded was also magical, as was the sword that had been used by the bandit leader. This blade showed the word "Bloodthirst" along its length when a detect magic spell was cast on it.

The message carried by the former Cormite agent was tucked into a scroll tube and sealed with a Cormite seal. I was disappointed that we would not be able to read the missive without breaking the seal, and busied myself with trying to figure out how to get at the information I held in my hands. Eventually, we agreed to leave the seal intact for now.

A search for secret passages turned up another secret door. I checked for traps, and finding none, retreated to the narrow passage while the ogres opened the door. They, and everyone else standing near got hit by a horribly powerful blast of cold that sucked the heat from their bodies. They retreated quickly, but Ted tried to charge back in, seeing that there was treasure atop a huge stone alter. He collapsed from the cold after just a few steps. His brother pulled him back, and we quickly got him under several blankets and treated him as though he had been a freezing victim in the winter. He slowly came around, but it was necessary to haul him back up into the tower for a day or two of recovery.

Rhiannon trailed along behind the group, eyeing the doors we had left untouched. She had told us that she had a very powerful sense of undead from behind the doors. She didn't want to leave it undisturbed. She wanted to go after the undead behind the doors. We were able to convince her that now was not the time, though.

When we returned to the tower, our regular watch spotted a caravan on the road to the north. There were 4 wagons with guards armored in black heading toward Dagger Falls. About a score of outriders were evident around the wagons. We checked the calendar we recovered from the bandits, and found a check mark beside the 23rd.

24 Flamerule 1367. While we were waiting for Ted to recover, I sorted through the boxes and crates of foodstuffs and provisions stacked in the tower. There were enough supplies here to outfit our group for a couple of months. I also found a crate we had overlooked in our previous search. When I opened it I found a wondrous treasure. It was a magekiller! A shiny black metal sphere covered with cone-shaped depressions. A slip of parchment attached to the killer had the word "Ythrim" written on it. I had heard of these things, but had never seen one. I knew that there were several varieties, some stronger than others, but had no way to tell how powerful this one was. As with all the crates of rations, this box was marked by the distinctive "Z" symbol of the Zhentarim.

25 Flamerule 1367. On the 25th, we observed another caravan on the north trail. This one had five wagons and over a score of outriders in the black livery of the Zhentarim. Some of these outriders wore robes and were likely wizards. However, I would not put it past the Zhents to dress slaves up as wizards as either distractions or deterrents. Again, when we checked the calendar, we found a check mark by this date. This confirmed, without a doubt, that the calendar marked days when the bandits were to stay away from caravans that the Zhents wanted to allow through.

Ted had finally recovered and Jed was ready for a go at the treasure in cold storage. We did the best we could to protect him from the cold. I cast a spell to protect him from evil. He wrapped himself in warm blankets and strapped his body shield, heated in the fire, to his back. He carried a sack, held open by stuffing a small shield in along one side. We also tied a pair of ropes to him just in case he collapsed from the heat loss and we needed to drag him out. He bolted into the treasure room and started flinging things into the sack and out the door. He was in the room for a breath or two before all the stuff from atop the huge stone had either been heaved out to us or tossed into the sack. He stumbled back out to the warmer room where we awaited him with more warmed blankets. He had obviously suffered a great deal of pain from the cold, but his lips, purple from the cold, were pulled back into a huge grin of triumph. We got him back up the tunnels into the warm summer sun and he warmed rapidly. A few spells from the priests, and he was as good as new.

Jed had recovered a magic shield, a magic pole arm type weapon, 2 metal vials, one crystal vial that had broken in the sack, one unbroken crystal vial, a broken crystal goblet, a ring, and two pieces of silver, that when placed together could form the tower's rune. I wondered briefly if this rune could be from the ancient kingdom of Netheril. The age of the rune stone would be about right. Because I knew so little of this ancient culture, I could do no more than speculate idly.

We went back to the first room we entered in this little complex to see what was behind the old, barred door. The crypt ranger told us that she felt a powerful sense of undead lurking behind the door. Cautiously, we unbarred the door and peeked inside. The door closed with a sudden slam and the bar was back on in an instant! We had seen scores of glowing red eyes like those of the orc wight from the other chamber. There were at least 40 or 50 of the horrible things waiting with the patience of the undead in this room. An uncontrollable shiver ran up my back as I thought of spending eternity as an undead monster, guarding an "orcgate" I knew nothing about. I was prepared to do what we could to bury this horrid crypt forever.

Unfortunately, several of the others were discussing a more immediate way to deal with the wights. Jed was shaking the magical stick he found in the cold room, trying to get it to turn into a bardiche. He tried several commands, but all were unsuccessful until I told him the orc word for bardiche. He said this and the stick magically transformed in to this type of weapon. He was ecstatic, and danced around the little room waving his new-found treasure.

It was then that we realized that the floor of this room had changed somewhat. I examined the change. In the center of the room was a metal plate that had appeared when another flagstone shifted out of the way. The new, metal flag had the tower's rune embossed on the surface. The shift had apparently occurred as we opened the barred door. The new flag was covered by bits of a shredded leather bag. There was nothing in the bag, and the leather was unmarked. I tucked the pieces of the bag into my backpack and returned my attention to the problem of the wights.

Despite my misgivings, the group decided to try to use the magekiller against the wights. I believed that this would be a waste of a potentially powerful magic weapon and would gain us nothing. The others wanted to destroy the wights no matter the cost. I argued that we could do that by collapsing the tunnel to the crypt forever, but the decision was made by the majority of the group.

I cast a protective spell on myself and positioned the beastmen where they could push the door closed if the wights tried to get out and we opened the door. I tossed the magekiller into the room, high above the heads of the wights clustered near the door. Jed and Ted slammed the door shut as soon as I yelled the command word "Ythrim!" The bar went back on and I got as far from the door as I could.

In a horrible commentary on the events occurring within the wight's lair, red spots began to show through the door, and then even the stone walls of the crypt. It appeared as though the bolts from this magekiller were powerfully magical and that they nearly burned through the walls of its confinement. The spots continued to appear for nearly a glass. The sounds of battle had long since ceased, but we waited at least as long again before we unbarred the door and looked in. The devastation was both gratifying and frightening. A huge cluster of shredded wight bodies lay around the dormant magekiller. Other wight bodies were scattered all over the room. Amazingly, one wight still moved! It was slowly dragging its broken body toward the corner of the room. Rhiannon rushed over to it and crushed its undead skull in one blow.

I looked at the thing she had just killed and received yet another emotional jolt. This orc wight was wearing the robes of a mage. Not a witchdoctor or a shaman, but a true mage. In a satchel carried by the mage, I discovered what had to be a set of spell books. They were riddled with holes and virtually useless, but even so, I could see spell after spell after spell had been recorded in these tomes. Also in the satchel were other scrolls and parchments with more writing, similar to that of the rune. In the corner, we found what had been, to all appearances, a magical staff. This was all too much. Orcs don't have a written language! Orcs don't have mages! What in all the layers of the Abyss was going on here? I had thousands of questions, and no answers.

The group decided, given all the questions, that we should head for Shadowdale where we might be able to get some answers. I was glad, for now perhaps I could meet the contact I had there and get some help with trying to figure all this out.

Midsummer, 1367. We had a modest Midsummer celebration amongst ourselves a day's travel south of the Serpent's Bridge. We have been on alert for the past few days, concerned that we might run across one of the Zhent caravans. So far we have been fortunate, and our way has been clear. I have been doing advance-scout work, trying to reduce the chance that we will be surprised by travellers along the road. The drow has been trying to get me to submit to a spell that she calls Sacred Guardian. I am unconvinced. Not because I doubt her description of the spell (though I did talk to Dorn about it), but because the thought of having a drow cast spells on me still gives me a great deal of concern. Her preachy attitude and the entire experience while entangled in her other spell did nothing to ease my concerns. So far I have refused.

1 Elesaias, 1367. We met up with freedom riders today and they escorted us to Castle Crag to meet with Randal Morn. We were all amazed to find that while Castle Crag looks like a ruin from a distance, after passing through a magical barrier, we saw the place for what it was.

The ruins were illusionary. Crag had been completely rebuilt since the Time of Troubles, and looked very tough. As we entered the castle, several heavy weapons were being installed to further boost defenses. The freedom Riders got us settled into our quarters and told us when we were scheduled to meet Morn.

He was just as busy here as he had been when we first encountered him fleeing the Zhentarim. He was in the process of working on a complex looking schedule when we were shown in. He was in his early 40's, tough looking, but with kind eyes for a human.

As we entered, he looked up from the scheduling, clearly glad to see us. He welcomed us to his castle and quickly filled us in on the state of affairs in Dagger Falls. It was not good. Golthammer has issued many new edicts since his arrival, including searches of anyone on the trails, has increased patrols at least by ten times, increased the raiding of outlying areas by non-humans, and has brought in several hundred troops, several wizards, and a psychotic Terror Team from the war in Yulash. This new team is itching for fights. They live and work alone because they get along with no one. We also learned that Elem Catha had been executed yesterday. Louden was executed today.

Based on this information, I decided that we should turn the message about the Cormite agents over to Morn immediately. We gave him a full and detailed report of everything we had done and learned since the moment we met him on the road for the first time. He was impressed by the forthrightness of the report. I had had some suspicion and doubt at first, about turning all of our information over to him. The deaths of Louden and Elem Catha made it all too simple to give him the message and never return to Dagger Falls ourselves. If I wouldn't trust Randal Morn, though, what was the point? It was either trust him completely here and now or find another line of work. I believe we made the right choice.

He was pleased with what he learned. I tried to observe his reactions to our report to learn how much of it was new to him and how much his network had learned on its own. My guess is that it was pretty mixed. The biggest smile we got out of him was when we told him of the tunnel from the crypts of Lathander to under Golthammer's office. He rewarded us each with 70gl for our work and dismissed us after what seemed to be a very successful meeting.

The strangest part of the meeting had been a rather long interruption caused when one of his aides came in and reported that a band of volunteers had arrived and Morn was needed immediately to deal with the situation. He was not going to do so at first, but the aide leaned over and whispered in Morn's ear. All I could pick up was the group's name, "Long Wing of the Dragon."

Morn invited us along as he went to meet the group. It was a force of 120 heavy cavalry, all human, and appearing to be cut from the same mold. They had a severe military bearing and were well equipped. The were all wearing plain white tabbards, but it was obvious that the purple dragon emblem that had once been affixed to these tabbards had only recently been removed. A lengthy conversation followed between the leaders of the Long Wing and Randal Morn. Everyone was very careful in choosing words to precisely explain themselves. I whispered to Dorn that I bet they were going to be turned away, but Morn concluded by directing an aide to get them set up in one of the barracks and a set of stables. It seems that these troops were to be an apology for the mistakes of the previous Cormite "help."

Morn told us that the cavalry would be a valuable addition to the 60 heavy horse archers he had been sent from Mistledale and the 80 longbow men that Shadowdale had promised him. He also told us that two of the names of agents on our list were currently being held in his dungeon. The missive would spare their lives, and there was still a chance that another agent could be extracted.

As we toured the castle after our audience with Lord Morn, I observed the priests of several human faiths working here alongside one another. I saw priests of Lathander, Torm, Helm, Tyr and Tymora. There was a diverse group of fighters and others as well, and all seemed well pleased to be working for Morn.

While Lord Morn had been unable to decipher the orc rune, he did support our decision to go to Shadowdale. He even went so far as to give us a letter to deliver to Lord Morngrym of Shadowdale, thanking him for the troops, and introducing us to the Lord of Shadowdale. He also agreed to provide us with mounts for the trip (including two huge heavy warhorses for the Hurleyburley brothers) and a 10 man Freedom Rider escort to the borders of Shadowdale.

8 Eleasias, 1367. The trip to Shadowdale was fast and easy. We said our farewells to the Freedom riders a day out of the dale and rode in on our own to find a quiet, peaceful community. The Old Skull Inn had been recommended, so we made our way there after delivering Lord Morn's letter to the Tower of Ashaba. We did not meet with Morngrym, but the innkeeper Jhaele at the Old Skull made us feel welcome in the community. She even made a point to welcome the drow as soon as Egwene revealed herself.

Not long after we finished eating, a scribe named Lhaeo arrived at the inn and launched into a strange conversation with us. He and Jhaele had filled out a huge pile of papers and forms for us that are required to speak with Elminster the Sage. How he knew enough about us to fill out these detailed forms, he did not explain. From the rumors I had heard about Elminster, though, the sage may well know more about me than I do. At any rate, we soon began talking to the scribe about the events in Daggerdale and before we knew it, Jed had his magical bardiche out and was dancing around with it once more.

Lhaeo said that he had not seen anything like the bardiche in a long time, implying that he had seen something like it before. He didn't explain that, but promised that if we wanted all of our magical items investigated, he could provide us with a great deal of information. As we were talking, a woman with silvery-white hair and black leathers arrived in the room. The attitude in the room changed dramatically, the respect afforded this lady by the patrons of the inn was impossible to miss. Nearly everyone greeted her, and as they did, I learned that this was the Harper Storm. She was quite friendly, but dallied with no one on her way toward us. She asked if she could join us and the Beastmen made fools of themselves as they invited her to sit with us. Storm made a point to welcome us to Shadowdale and we talked for a while. At one point she told Lhaeo that she wanted to talk to Elminster. The scribe told her that the sage was not in.

Before leaving us, Lhaeo collected all of our magical treasures and told us that it would be a very long time before he was done investigating them. Storm left a short time later, asking me to meet her later at her farm. She gave me directions and gracefully slipped out of the inn.

Lhaeo returned only a few glasses later with all of our stuff. He seemed a bit agitated as he told us that most of these things had been made over a thousand years ago by orc wizards! The pole arm, in addition to being a bardiche, could turn into a great axe. The spell book was that of an archmage. The dagger was somewhat more strongly enchanted than Merik's End, the splint mail and the body shield were enchanted to provide better protection and to be less encumbering. The longsword was one of wounding, enchanted to create wounds that were difficult to heal. The short sword was created to kill mages and enspelled to hit them easily. The dream net, he told us, was a dangerous item and he volunteered to destroy it for us. It had been feeding off Aniken's dreams, and we were happy to see it go. The ruby ring was a ring of battle that glowed when in the vicinity of creatures hit only by magic weapons. It also enabled the wearer to hit these creatures with normal weapons. Caldaron's ring was, as we expected, a ring of thorns. Lhaeo even had the command words and told us that the ring still had 20 charges. The two metal vials held potions of extra healing, the glass vial was a healing potion.

The agates were dwarven tradestones from the Tethyamyr mines. They were not accepted many places, but Lhaeo would give us 500gl for the lot. The old silver coins were from the Kingdom of Teshan and were worth 3sf for every 2 coins. The silver from the reign of Gondegal were curiosities, and Lhaeo would provide us with 1000gl credit in supplies for the lot of them.

Of all the books, only one was cursed. The herbal would be destroyed by Lhaeo and the others were worth 200sf each, so we sold them to the scribe. The holy symbol of Moander was a fake, and the scribe did not seem at all concerned about what we found in the pit under Dagger Falls.

He had no references on the rune, but told us a story of a gate that opened near Thay in the year -174 DR. Several million orcs poured through, starting the Orcgate War. This war resulted in the first dieicide in Faerun when the Orc god Gruumsh killed the God-King of Unthor. Until now, there had been no sign that any of the higher culture of these orcs had survived the brutal end of the war when the orcs were defeated, scattered, or driven underground. Even so, there are still stone sculptures from the warin Unthor that occasionally come to life and tear apart buildings before once again going dormant.

We talked on for a bit, but there was no other substantive information. I had to wonder, though if perhaps the tower was just one part of a large gate construct. If there were other towers at other vertices of the polygon on the dagger, and each had its own rune, and that if the silver shapes we found were needed to somehow activate the tower to function as part of the gate and if.... It all got to be too much after a while and I slipped away to find Storm.

I found her weeding her garden in the dark of the night. I joined her after she showed me how to differentiate between the weed and the vegetables. She told me that she was my new sponsor, and that she expects regular visits. I said something stupid to cover my awkwardness and talked a little more. She assured me that she could help locate some special equipment I needed and asked me how my sword work was coming. I was happy that I had been working on it a bit, but as she drew her weapon and prepared to spar, my mouth went dry. The first few blows came in slowly, but the lady quickly pushed my skills to their limits. I found myself leaving her many openings that she could have used to kill me. Instead she used them to teach me to improve my defenses. Ted, Jed and Egwene arrived and joined in the practice session. I was amazed, but the Harper was able to press us all to our limits and continue teaching at the same time. After a long time, long past the point at which I was certain my lungs would explode, Storm began to work up a light sweat. Still she pressed us. I knew I couldn't continue, but I would not give up. Then, mercifully, just as the muscles in my legs gave up completely, she called it quits and sent us to the well to wash up before going back to the inn.

9 Elesias, 1367. Lhaeo came in while we were eating breakfast, looking harried and in need of sleep. He gave me a package from Storm and sat down, plunking another large sack of stuff on the floor next to him. He pushed his strange little eyepieces up over his forehead and scavenged some food from our breakfasts. Between bites the scribe told us that he had urgent news.

Last night several Freedom Riders came into the dale. One of them, named Ariton, told a terrible tale. Three days ago Randal Morn and three warriors left for the crypt of the mage Shraevyn, hoping to recover the Sword of the Dales. This longsword is reputed to be able to part chains and other bonds when the command word "Merrydale" is spoken. It is also supposed to have other powers, including the ability to allow its wielder to breathe underwater.

Ariton was the only survivor of the expedition able to go for help. According to him, Randal Morn's party faced a horde of undead in the crypt, including skeletons, gouls, and zombies. They fought through to win the sword, only to be ambushed by Zhentarim as they were leaving the crypt. Randal Morn, wielding the Sword of the Dales, crushed the Zhents, but before he could leave the vicinity of the tomb, a strange green ray of light shone out of the crypt and struck Morn. The light seemed to paralyze the man. Ariton escaped to get assistance, coming here to Shadowdale after alerting the forces at Castle Crag.

He brought with him another magical sword that Ariton had recovered from the crypt. It was a dull gray color with a dark brown/red handle. Lhaeo said it would allow the wielder to cast a shield spell once per tenday and a faire fire spell once per day. The man wanted it used to help rescue Randal Morn. Lhaeo asked us if we would take the sword and try to help the leader of the Freedom Riders. He said he would also give us a map and directions to the crypt, some healing potions, and if we accepted, each of us would get a land grant in Shadowdale.

We readily accepted and the scribe passed over the sword (carried by Ted, three potions of extra healing, and the map to the valley called the Giants Craw. He already had new mounts being prepared for us. We quickly purchased some needed supplies and were on the trail by mid-afternoon.

I had hoped to have a longer conversation with Storm before departing the dale, but due to the circumstances, it was not possible. However, in the package she sent was a note. It told me to develop some contacts in Daggerdale on my own. She told me to look for the Rangers Three, Ithan, Belckram and Shantyr who keep to the northern part of the dale in the southern edges of the Border Forest and into Dagger Falls. The package also contained a number of special items I had been wanting to pick up, including some silver tipped and bulb-tipped arrows, holy water, sleep gas, better lock picks, a silk body suit, and a high quality set of climbing tools. All likely to be useful in our exploration of Shraevyn's tomb.

My final preparation was to leave Caldaron's spell book with Jhaele here at the inn. Since I could use none of the spells yet, I would rather it stayed here as sort of a back-up if anything happened to my others. I also left most of the coins I had with her in a locker she set aside for us.

We also lost a party member in our short stay in Shadowdale. Aniken found out about a place in the city of Waterdeep called the School of the Piercing Mind. It is run by a fellow that teaches about the strange mental abilities Aniken has been struggling with. I get the feeling that much of the surly nature of our companion is caused by frustration over his inability to understand and control his mental powers. He did not say this in the words he chose at his departure, but it seemed evident from the hope and determination in finding a teacher that could help him. Because of our haste, the parting was not long. He would leave for the west in a few days time. We were on the trail before sunup the next day.

10 Elaisias 1367. Our numbers remained the same, even with Snipe's departure. On hearing that we were leaving Aniken behind, Jhaele recommended that we take along someone she knew. She said that his skills in the arts of stealth may be useful to us. She had been so kind and helpful to us that we trusted her judgement in recommending the newcomer. We were all taken aback when we met him in the darkness before dawn, though. The addition to our group was a mongrelman. He goes about fully cowled, covering the dark monstrosity of his form, but, bearing in mind the welcome we received from Jhaele, we all kept our revulsion to ourselves. We had little time for long introductions, and within a glass of meeting the mongrelman, we were leaving Shadowdale. Even on the trail, though, we learned little of our new companion, as he kept to himself, making strange sounds and mimicking voices and noises from the forest.

The horses from Shadowdale were swift and we made good time. We passed the shrine on the Tehtyamar Trail in the early afternoon and were some miles north of it when we encountered a strange man on the road. He was an older-looking human with brown hair and a brown beard that was braided in places. He wore blue robes in the manner of a wizard, and on the robes were runes. It took an effort not to react violently. There was nothing simple or basic about the magic woven into his garment. The runes spoke of very powerful magics, and they were abundant across the robe. Tattooed upon his forehead were three concentric circles. I did not recognize the mark, but suspect, after seeing the robe, that they too were symbols of power.

He was friendly enough, when we hailed him and asked if he needed assistance. After just a moment it was clear that he did not. He told us that he was Mazarahe of Sembia, though Sembia was a long time ago and now he was more Mazarahe of Faerun. He claims to have walked from Waterdeep to Kara Tur and from the far south to Daggerdale looking for a place to call home. Our group tried to convince him that this dale was not the most friendly place to visit or most welcoming place to settle at the moment. He didn't recognize the name Daggerdale, but when I called it Merrydale, he knew it instantly. I suspect him to be older than he looks.

We all ran into trouble almost immediately. As we were talking, a patrol of Zhents rode up and hailed us. There were just over a score of black helmed riders. The leader was an attractive human female that introduced herself as Roakshane. She recognized us as the group that worked for the former constable when we introduced ourselves, and quickly seemed more at ease. She pointed to the wizard and demanded his name. Something transpired between the two, but I did not see a spellcasting or code get passed. She seemed less interested in who he was though, and we ended up travelling with the Zhents for the rest of the day.

I spent the day and evening after we camped staying out of sight and trying to listen in on private conversations. I did not hear much of value, only that the Yulash terror team was causing a bit of terror amongst the ranks of the ordinary Zhent troops and the residents of Dagger Falls. Interestingly, I could not seem to find the wizard and Roakshane in camp that evening. I got to thinking that all we had told Mazarahe would have been enough to get us sent to the executioner in Dagger Falls. I stayed alert all night, not acting suspicious, just milling around and listening to conversations between the guards and off-duty troops.

11 Elaisias 1367. When we mounted up today, even Mazarahe had a horse, even though the huge black stallion had not been with us yesterday. We all rode north for most of the morning, with the wizard and leader of the Zhents staying close together. Once, Mazarahe held up his hand and had us listening to tiny voices singing. It was the grass singing a beautiful, soft song. The wizard seemed well pleased and motioned to the clouds. They were taking shape as runes in Thorass. I could pick out an R and an S. Dorn pointed out the obvious to me that the mage was spelling out Roakshane's name in the clouds.

Fortunately, we did not travel too much further with the Zhents. They were on their way to the Spiderhaunt Woods to the west. We split up with them and I was much relieved. The mage continued to travel with us for a short distance. When we arrived at a pleasant little glade he looked around and told us that he had found the place to call home. I was startled and suspicious. Just then we heard a small voice telling us to get off his land.

The voice belonged to a halfling who had his house in a hill nearby. Mazarahe and the halfling negotiated for a while and the mage ended up paying the little halfling a small sum to buy a piece of land neighboring the hill. The black stallion was gone the next time I looked around and the mage began to talk of building his home. We left him in the company of the halfling as we continued our journey.

I was suspicious of the whole affair. Dorn asked if a person can't wander great distances looking for a place to call home, and then suddenly find it? I told him no, at least not while I was there. He claimed it was just coincidence that we happened to be there. I told him that too much belief in coincidence leads to too little analysis of the data!

North of the Serpent's Bridge we found the track of a dragon in the dirt alongside the trail. The halfling had claimed to have a big friend, I had to wonder just what kind of friend he had. We pressed on quickly, finally camping off the trail in a meadow near a charred tree.

11 Elaisias 1367. We left the trail yesterday and headed north west to the Giant's Craw shown on Lhaeo's map. By midmorning today we found ourselves in a pastoral valley of amazing beauty, just on the edge of the foothills of the Deserts Mouth Mountains. Perhaps I was a bit too suspicious of Mazarahe. If not for our mission to save Randal Morn, I would be very tempted to stay in this valley for a time myself.

We found an odd block of stone in the valley. It was a huge rectangle of dark basalt, covered with a misty violet radiance. Around the block were pieces of basalt that appeared to have been chipped from the block. These pieces did not glow, but instead appeared dull and lifeless. The stone was very out of place here in the valley. There were no basalt formations for leagues. It was unmarked by runes, but by peering carefully into the stone, I could just make out a shape that looked like a prone humanoid deep within the rock. Was this the tomb of a giant from long ago? The stone was easily 12x20 feet, perhaps larger, and could have held a giant quite easily.

A short time later we arrived at the location of Shraevyn's crypt. It was not surprising that no one had found the tomb before. A recent landslide had caused the collapse of a shale hillside, revealing a narrow gap that lead to the crypt. Before we could explore the gap, though, we were discovered by a patrol of four Zhent warriors and two spellcasters. The two robed figures gave a command to attack and promptly disappeared. The others charged.

I dove off my horse into some cover and fired a couple of arrows toward the mages' last known location, just above their saddles. Neither arrow even came close. I kept a careful watch for any sign that the mages had gone invisible and were preparing to attack or support their comrades. There was no sign of them. They must have teleported away at the beginning of the fight. I had heard that many Zhent wizards on patrol had teleportation rings. These guys must have used some such magic to get themselves to safety. I suspect that they were talking to Golthammer at that very moment, telling him of our actions.

I had hoped to keep the Zhents fooled a little longer, using our true alliances to our best advantage, but the fact that Golthammer likely knew the truth now caused me little grief. If I had ever been in doubt of my feelings for the Zhentarim, the night in camp with that patrol earlier this tenday cured me. They were a thoroughly disgusting bunch of abusive rot grubs. I felt about them much as I did about orcs. The more dead ones, the better.

The four warriors were killed quickly. The mongrelman indicated that he saw magic on the dead, but detected none that might indicate the wizards were still nearby. The horrid mongrel could see magic. I began to understand what talents Jhaele thought might be useful. He pointed out a suit of magical chain mail that just barely fit Ted, a magical longsword, a magic ring, and an enchanted dagger. These guys had been loaded with magic. We would have to be careful exiting the tomb, now that the Zhents knew we were here. We would have to expect an ambush, much like Randal Morn got when he came out.

The entrance to the crypt was an imposing set of chipped and broken granite stairs, leading up to a long landing guarded by two twenty foot tall statues. I lead the way up the left side of the steps, checking for traps along the way. I found none, but did find a secret panel on the back of the left statue. I could tell that there was some sort of magical trap on the door that would be set off when a tiny lever was raised. I could not, however, figure out how to disarm the thing. So we settled for the brute force way of dealing with it. We backed up to the other statue and the ogres shot quarrels at it. One hit it just right, and as the panel sprung open, a blast of flames erupted from the trap. It would have crisped anyone standing in front of it. Behind the panel was a simple plaque inscribed with a message. "I really hate thieves" it said. What a welcome! I am going to have to watch myself in this place if he designed in these special little surprises just for me.

Shraevyn's Crypt looked like it had been built by the giants that once inhabited this valley. Lhaeo told us that Morn cleared out a bunch of Hill Giants a decade or so ago, but that the Giants Craw had long been the home of other races of giant. This did not look to be the work of Hill Giants. The door had been treated with Everbright, and shone brilliantly in the sun. It was neither hot nor cold and had no color of its own.

There were runes etched into the door and a crackling blue haze covered it. A muttering voice read the runes to us and posed a riddle about friends that needed to work together. As the voice finished, I noticed a small metal box-like thing on the door. It looked like it needed two keys to open it, but I was able to disarm a trap on it and open it up. Unfortunately, there was a secondary trap set so that if I removed my hands from the first, the next one would shoot a needle between my eyes. The mongrelman helped me out by disarming the second trap, but as he did, we were both covered by red faire fire and stuck in place. Following this was a strange sequence of events where everyone had to help another until we were all stuck and covered with the red aura. Finally, when it looked as if everyone was stuck in the red glow, the door opened and we were released.

The door opened to reveal a long, wide hallway with a red glowing balls illuminating the space. Mosaic tiles formed epic murals on both sides. On the North a human army faced shadowy foes. The humans looked dead and ashen. On the south was a scene of the same battle, only here the skies were lighter, the swords were brighter, and the king more vigorous. Rhiannon recognized the king's sword as Giventhar, crafted on the astral plane for a githyanki lord. It was brought to this plane by adventurers. It is said that Shraevyn hid the bastard sword away in a temple.

The first room we encountered was a large one with a sun-shaped symbol in the floor. At each point of the solar figure was a small round depression. Along the walls were ten alcoves, each holding an enchanted jar or pot. Beyond the pattern was a set of silver doors with the words "some decisions are more lasting than others" melted into them.

The pots were all different.

• Twin bands of blue-white energy crackled across this pot.
• A fire-emblazoned shield, turned red, then vanished.
• Plain looking.
• A carving of a skeletal humanoid, chilling and scary. The crypt ranger sensed the presence of undead.
• A crumbling book with a brown glow.
• Golden vessel gets brighter as Jed got closer.
• Rather plain, with the lid slightly propped to one side.
• The surface shimmered and revealed the area outside the tomb, with the silvery doors open.
• An intricate, glowing longsword
• Missing its lid, moist dark dirt within.

Each of us chose a pot to place in a depression of our choice. Rhiannon got struck by a sepia snake sigil when she tried to read the book-pot, but when Jed picked up the book-pot and put it in a depression for the ranger, she was freed. I chose the plain pot. When I lifted it up it shimmered and changed shape, becoming silvery for a moment before returning to its plain appearance. Jed chose the golden pot, Ted picked the one with the longsword. The drow picked the first one. The mongrelman went for the dirt. I did not see which pot Troy chose, but when the last pot was placed in a depression an hourglass fell out of the air and a snake of fire appeared in a whirlwind.

NOTE: Here the delicate elven script used by Delben ends. A brief note, in a much coarser hand follows.

We destroyed the fire snake and found both the Sword of the Dales and clues that Morn was being held in the Spider Woods. The chase lead to a battle with Zhent fighters and mages. In the battle Del was killed by enemy lightning magic.