History of the World

The current year is 3479, in the common reckoning.

Before the Great Cataclysm, about 5000 years ago, there was a golden age. Trade prospered between all continents, and legendary heroes strode upon the stage of history. Then something happened to the Inner Ocean.

Learned scholars have differing opinions on what happened then, although before her presumed death the alien sorceress Quesmi put forth a tale which, if true, might explain it all. Whatever happened, the seas of the Inner Ocean went mad. Storms and earthquakes beyond anything ever experienced before or since, as far as is known, wreaked havoc on the interior coastlines of all the continents. Land disappeared beneath the sea, and new land arose in other places. Every coastal city was completely destroyed.

Over time new coastal cities arose, but only recently is the world approaching a state where intercontinental trade becomes commonplace. Contact with the Northeastern Continent has only been reestablished within the past century.

The Adventure So Far

First Adventure: Quasqueton

When we started out, the players were Michael, TammyJo and Keith. Ted joined part of the way through. I didn't think a party of three first-level characters would last long in combat, so I had everybody double up and run two characters. I probably wouldn't do that now.

This was based on the first-edition classic "Dungeon Module B1: In Search of the Unknown," by Mike Carr.

The party explored an ancient fortress built by a wizard and a warrior. It turned out to be a battleground between a zombie-raising cult of evil priests and an orc tribe, both wanting to use the fortress as a base. The party wound up exterminating both groups, which was more or less unavoidable considering Willow's hatred of orcs and Lorna's dislike for anything that goes against nature (such as raising undead).

Second Adventure: Cynidecia

There was a break, and afterwards we still had TammyJo, Keith, Ted, and Michael, but we decided that we didn't have to double up on characters because we had enough players now. So Michael decided to drop Stella and TammyJo decided to just run Lorna, but Keith opted to keep his two. David played Iskander the magic-user for a short time but unfortunately found he didn't enjoy roleplaying.

This was based on first-edition "Dungeon Module B4: The Lost City," by Tom Moldvay.

Traveling with a caravan across the desert from Tyrane to Qadim, the party found a lost city, with monsters living in it, but the descendants of the original inhabitants still lived in the caverns below, tripping on strange fungi and worshipping some weird one-eyed one-horned non-flying non-purple people-eating monster named Zargon as if it were some kind of god. The party wound up slaying the monster, revealing it not to be a god, and the real Cynidecian gods pronounced the ancient curse broken. The Cynidecians's new king promised to lead the people back to the surface. But the party found a golden arm in the monster's lair, apparently broken off a life-size golden statue.

The party finished their journey to Qadim, where Rathgar bought a magic sword from an artifact dealer. The sword revealed that it could speak and that it was named Enarius, though it couldn't remember much about its past other than that it was originally from Albar, across the mountains.

Third Adventure: Oquesmi-Tungiz

I believe there was a break in here somewhere, but I don't remember exactly where. When we started this one, we still had TammyJo, Michael, Keith and Ted. Keith had sent Willow off somewhere and was now playing Kuro Neko and Quick. Part of the way through, Ted left, and Sheryl joined and picked up Fraelin. We also switched to second-edition rules with some first-edition stuff thrown in.

This was the adventure that taught me not to make the plot too complicated.

The party heard that there was trouble to the south across the mountains and discovered a strange situation. Since about ten years ago, the centaurs of the Avernus Forest had been treating the satyrs living there as slaves, at the incitement of a new charismatic leader. However, Rathgar was primarily interested in the fact that the legendary ale of the centaurs, which he had just discovered, had not been made for the past ten years since this new leader came to power.

Lorna the druid was contacted while in the forest by a nature entity, who showed her a vision and gave her a glass globe, telling her to break it so that others may see. And before the ruling council of the centaurs, Lorna broke the globe, showing everyone a vision of horrible destruction, the deaths of their loved ones and their homeland, and superimposed on everything a mysterious golden statue.

It turns out that these visions were not limited to those present. At that moment, people all over the world had some kind of vision of destruction or impending doom, sometimes with images that guided them into the adventure.

Lorna really did this because the centaurs suspected the party of collaborating with the satyr revolutionary leaders, and they needed to convince the centaurs to let the party go because there was obviously something more important they needed to do. They had learned that powerful forces, possibly going right up to the Chancellor if not the King, were engineering this strife, playing both sides against each other to create chaos so that the Albarian army would have an excuse to move in. So the party headed for Exeter, the capital of Albar, hoping to find someone who would listen to them. Additionally, the party learned some local legends about a golden arm that had been brought back from the legendary city of the Dragon Giants in days of old. If the story were true, the golden arm would almost certainly be kept in the Royal Museum, also in Exeter.

A visit to the Royal Museum in Exeter revealed that the golden arm had been there but had been recently stolen, possibly by the vanished Chancellor. Could it be that this entire ten-year plan was no more than a ruse to pull most of Albar's military away from the capital and the northern part of the country just so the Chancellor could escape with the mysterious national relic? What's more, the arm was a left arm -- as was the golden arm already possessed by the party. Visiting scholars at the museum (they were there to discuss a new object that had been found in the heavens), however, looked at a drawing of the arm, showing mysterious writing on it, and remarked that the writing was an ancient form of the common language, only written backwards, as if in a mirror. When these words were spoken aloud, the arm that the party already possessed produced a wall of force, causing speculation about what the other arm might do. The sword Enarius was also discovered to have reversed writing, this time in the elven tongue, although some of the writing had been worn away.

The party discovered that the Chancellor had hired assassins to kill them, whereupon Rathgar marched right to the castle to have a word with the Chancellor and was promptly thrown in the dungeon. Kuro Neko, Quick and Fraelin set forth to rescue their impulsive comrade, leaving Lorna to wonder what was to happen next and causing her to doubt her comrades' commitment.

In real life at this point we took a break, which turned out to be quite a watershed. Michael left for Austin, Texas, and Keith went to Japan. When we came back, Dan, Scott and Nathan had joined, and Sheryl had made her own character. TammyJo stayed. The third-edition rules had just come out, so we started using them.

Guided by a magic object-locating scroll, the party set forth after the Chancellor, who seemed to have gone north. The trail went up into the mountains, and the party met Ilyss, a lizardfolk loremaster who wanted to study Oquesmi-Tungiz because she had had some interesting dreams about it lately, but had found that it was occupied by what appeared to be a Dragon Giant and a number of lizardfolk who seemed to think it was a god and they were its chosen flunkies. Ilyss assisted the party, casting illusions to help get them into the city/artifact, and they eventually made it into the central tower.

Beneath the tower the party found a room that contained a number of tablets and scrolls in an unknown language, along with the head and torso of a golden statue. The left arm that the party had looked as if it would fit perfectly, but the party held onto it.

Then the party climbed the tower. In the large room at the top they discovered what did indeed seem to be a Dragon Giant -- big, black, bipedal, dragon head -- who was having some of his magic-using flunkies cast spells to try to figure out how to use the golden arm. A powerful spell and a poor saving throw caused the Dragon Giant to recoil in fear and leap out a window -- but when the party looked out the window they saw only the eagles of the mountains, flying around the tower as they always did.

The circular room contained a throne at one end and a large mirror at the other with writing around the frame in the same ancient script that had been found below the tower. Some study revealed how to pronounce the words around the frame, and that in turn revealed that the mirror was a magic mirror, allowing them to summon some of the scholars they had talked to before. The scholars promptly began studying the scrolls and tablets and discussing what it might all mean and what to do next. They also suggested that someone try walking through the mirror with the new-found arm, the one with the reversed writing, without first using the mirror to scry. Roma did this, walking through the mirror first with the arm, then with the sword Enarius. The arm was found to emit fireballs when the command words were uttered, and the sword remembered that it was in fact Desiderius, the legendary sword of Prince Worthington, and that its faculties had been severely impaired by having been reversed all these years.

The Fourth Adventure: The Land of Blood and Fire

The scholars reasoned that it would probably be necessary to bring together the four missing limbs of the statue and that they may have been distributed in a pattern that paid tribute to the four elements. The first arm had been found deep underground, and the second was originally atop a high mountain. It seemed to suggest that the legs were in places that had to do with fire and water. They got out a map of the known world and found that if a line were drawn between Oquesmi-Tungiz and Cynidecia, the line went straight through the Land of Blood and Fire.

Since the mirror could only scry upon people and places that the user had directly seen, the closest that anyone could come to the destination was the city of Qadim. The party walked through the mirror and set forth.

The journey took a few days but was uneventful. Soon the party was in the jungle. The jungle was parched, though. They met some wild elves who told them that the rainy season had almost entirely failed to come this year and that it must be a sign of something bad. The elves were welcoming enough but didn't have much food to be hospitable with. The shamans, however, insisted that the party make a sacrifice to Aerdiya, the goddess of rain. This consisted of shedding some blood upon some dried leaves, which were ceremonially burned.

The party gathered some information about the region from the elves, then went off to talk to the gnomes, to see if they had more details. The gnomes had a map, and the party hid from a flyover by a red dragon. It seemed likely that the leg of the statue was underneath or inside the volcano somehow, and according to the map, it was possible that there was an entrance still open east of the mountain. So the party headed in that direction, accompanied by a pair of elves and a gnome with two trained krenshars.

To the east of the mountain the party encountered some long, multicolored serpentine beings with wings: couatl. They were here, they said, because there was some kind of interdimensional instability in this area, and some evil force might take advantage of it to enter the world. They helped the party find the cave opening, and the party descended into the tunnels.

In the tunnels, the air was hot but dry; there were occasional mysterious flashes of blue-white in the distance. Then there was such a flash of light right in the party's midst, and they were somewhere else: a party of adventurers was facing a giant toad and had just cast a summoning spell, apparently summoning the party. Dispatching the toad, the party flashed back to where they had been, but seemingly Osric and the tailor did not find their way home.

Around this time, we took a break. Scott and Nathan discovered that they didn't have time to game, but we still had TammyJo, Dan, and Sheryl, and new players joined, their characters appearing through the magic mirror: Sean, Fox, Marisa, and Geoff. Sean left shortly after the start of the Natassa segment because other things arose on Sunday afternoons that he wanted to do more than he wanted to play D&D.

The sages contacted the party through the magic mirror, introducing some new adventurers who had come to them, guided by visions. The sages said they would try to find something about the strange flashes of light and what had happened to Osric and the tailor.

The party headed downward, finding and slaying a troll and an umber hulk on the way. In the troll's lair they found a curious earthenware jar which, when opened, produced an unending number of crawling black beetles. Delving deeper, the party met an azer: a dwarf with hair and beard apparently made of fire, wearing a kilt made of metal plates. When the party said they were looking for an artifact under the mountain, the azer explained that his people needed help; perhaps they could propose a bargain. The azer took the party through more tunnels deeper into the earth. The air grew hotter and hotter.

Through cracks in the walls the party saw into the volcano's core: a sea of lava, and in the middle an unmelted stone island with something golden upon it ...

The azer introduced the party to his Earl, who proposed a deal: there was a certain water-filled cavern, and in the center of the cavern was an island, and on the island was a pedestal, on which was once an obelisk-shaped stone carved with many arcane symbols. The stone, properly placed, maintained balance between the planes. But improperly placed, it produced random dimensional gates, and these were the blue-white lights the party had been seeing. But the azers had originally arrived here on the Prime Material Plane through a natural portal, from the Elemental Plane of Fire to the lava pool in the volcano, and when the stone had been removed the portal had disappeared. If the party found the stone and returned it to its original place, the azers would help them find the artifact under the volcano. The party pointed out that they now knew where the artifact was but could not get to it.

The azer the party had first met led them to the water-filled cavern but could not go inside. The party could, though; they found the island at the center as the azers had said, and they found another exit from the cavern at the other end.

At the other end, the party found more caverns, with large bones strewn here and there -- fire giant sized, one might say. The party then met and defeated what had killed the fire giants who stole the stone, or its descendants anyway. The party returned the stone to the pedestal; it grafted itself back into place.

The party returned to the azers, who kept their end of the bargain, swimming across the lake of lava to bring the golden right leg to the party. They then said farewell and left this plane through the natural portal, which had reappeared under the lava lake. Proxy quest complete.

The party then worked its way back to the surface, away from the oppressive heat and back to the regular jungle heat. When they left the cave they discovered that it was raining. The party was finally contacted by the sages with the magic mirror and brought back to the freezing, windy tower-top room ...

The Fifth Adventure: Thalassia

The party spent a few days at the Center of Time, resting and recovering and learning what to do next. However, while the party was there, an old enemy returned. The Dragon Giant, or creature who had been masquerading as a Dragon Giant, flew into the tower-top room again and attacked some of the sages who were using the mirror for research. The sages repulsed the creature with magic, but did not succeed in destroying it.

The sages had learned that some sort of evil was headed for the world and would arrive at the summer solstice, unless something were done to prevent it. What they had managed to translate seemed to suggest that it would be something from the sky and that the whole city/artifact of Oquesmi-Tungiz had been built as some kind of weapon against it. But nothing they had been able to translate so far stated exactly how the weapon was to be used.

However, the sages had had better luck with finding where the fourth and final limb of the statue should be. The three marks on the map representing where the other three limbs had been found lay along a straight line and were the same distance apart. The location of the other leg was clear. Unfortunately, it was also about 30 miles out to sea, off the coast of the city of Natassa. The sages had found the party a few potions of water breathing, and the Dragon Giant creature's treasure, which the sages had found, contained a pearl of the sirines that it had apparently found somewhere.

Ulfgar the sage had been to Natassa years before and knew something of it. He thought that the leg was in the old city of Thalassia, which sunk beneath the ocean during the Great Cataclysm and would have been about where the mark on the map indicated. That area was now called the Shoals of Despair, and few ships dared to venture near it for fear of running aground on the reefs. He was able to summon up an image of the city's outskirts in the mirror. The party walked through and made their way into the city. The guards at the gate seemed to need everyone's names, though.

After gathering information, the party learned a few things. People said that the ruler of the city, Prince Hartelion IV, had been becoming more and more withdrawn into his magical studies and more and more paranoid about anybody finding out what he was doing. They said that he no longer slept and rarely saw visitors. Roma the bard learned that there was another Vagari in town and went to meet him -- his name was Lyano, and he told Roma that the Commander of the Guard, Lord Pentos, always seemed to want to question every Vagari who came into town. The party checked into the Bell and Compasses inn for a rest.

Meanwhile the other party members had their own adventures. Lorna and Silev were accosted by a street gang who had been told by person or persons unknown that the party was going to take away their territory. But a look at Silev's steel and Lorna's flaming scimitar quickly sent them running.

Some party members went to the docks and made the acquaintance of a fisherman named Angus, who agreed to sail in the direction of the Shoals of Despair, but refused to get within a few miles. Going out with Angus to get a look at the area, Lorna, Leif and Fa Shen made the acquaintance of some of the neighborhood dolphins -- apparently the descendants of the Thalassian messenger dolphins of old. They told the party (apparently one of the dolphins was a sorcerer and could cast tongues) that the sahuagin currently held claim to the underwater ruined city, and they probably wouldn't let the party just waltz in and have a look around.

That night the party by chance walked into one of their rooms and noticed some of their packs were moving toward the open window by themselves. The phenomenon stopped, leaving them confused. Kitsu climbed out the window of another room to sleep on the roof, since the night was quite warm, and found a shadowy figure sitting on the roof above the party's other room. The figure attacked, and Kitsu defended himself, perhaps using a bit too much force. The dead human thief was unable to tell the party anything, but he did possess a ring, which the Chan Ch'iang learned was a ring of telekinesis and must have been how the thief was moving the packs. The thief's name had been Rathus, and according to the city guard, he had been known as mostly a thief for hire. But who had hired him?

The next day was a rainy day, and the party prepared for an underwater adventure. Roma received a strange parcel, left with the innkeeper by Lyano -- it contained a strange carved stone bottle, which Roma through experimentation learned was a bottle of air. Additionally, Silev learned that the right leg of the statue had the ability to adapt the environment around the holder to suit his or her needs -- most especially, it could make a region of water around the holder comfortably breathable. Also, Lorna learned that she could become a shark using her druidic powers and therefore would need no additional magic to survive underwater, and the dolphin sorcerer Seequee's tongues spell would hopefully overcome the communication barrier.

The day was marred by tragedy, though, as Kitsu and Chan Ch'iang were attacked by the same street gang that Lorna and Silev had faced down, only in larger numbers, and these two were not the party's strongest fighters. Ch'iang valiantly told Kitsu to take the ring and run, and Kitsu did as he was told ... hearing some explosions and seeing some flashes of light behind him as he outran the street toughs.

Armed with all this underwater survival magic, the party went to Angus the fisherman and started the journey. Aided by the dolphins the party defeated the undead guarding a sunken ship; the characters had their pick of its treasure. But then a sahuagin patrol attacked, and Leif had to employ the ring of telekinesis to make sure they did not get away to report.

A random encounter proved beneficial: a wandering triton was enraged when he heard the sahuagin were occupying the ancient city and promised to bring a horde of his people to drive the fish-men out. Lorna, in shark form, swam into the city to scout around, then came back with information. The words of a curse were engraved around a dome in the center of the city, indicating that this was almost certainly where the leg lay, but this dome was also where it seemed that the sahuagin baron held his court. Perhaps the party would be able to wait until the tritons attacked and drew off most of the sahuagin forces before moving in.

As the party moved closer to the center of the city the encounters with the sahuagin increased in frequency, but the party forged ahead, with no small amount of help from its dolphin allies. Again Lorna went ahead to observe, and as soon as it appeared that most of the sahuagin had been sent northeast, presumably to fight the tritons, she came back and signaled the party to move. A battle ensued between the party, the sahuagin baron, and his elite soldiers and high priests, but the party was victorious.

Searching the area revealed that there was a low cylindrical stone in the center of the dais beneath the dome, which the baron had been using as a throne, and on that stone was a golden footprint. The golden leg unlocked the stone, which moved to one side revealing a dark tunnel going downward -- and as soon as the tunnel opened, a shark quickly swam down into it! The party quickly followed, but shortly after they were inside the stone moved back, locking the adventurers in an underwater cave!

Seeing no alternative but to explore the cave, the party found the floor of the cave covered with gemstones and piles of gold and silver coins. The party took no interest in this treasure, however. This may have been partly due to the curse inscribed in the dome above, or it may have been due to the large chunk of ice in the center of the cave with a golden leg frozen within. Some magic must clearly have been at work for the ice to remain constantly frozen, especially considering that chipping away at the ice produced only scratches and dents that soon froze back into solidity. However, three good blasts with the fireball arm melted a tunnel in the ice deep enough for Leif to use his ring to pull the leg out.

And that was when a tiny fish swam up from between the coins on the floor and transformed itself into a black dragon. Naming itself Catharandamus, it declared that now it would have all four statue limbs for itself, along with their powers. Yes, this was the shapeshifting enemy that had been troubling the party since Albar. The party and its dolphin allies proved more than a match for the dragon, however, and it barely escaped by returning to the form of a tiny fish and hiding itself among the coins.

Silev learned that the leg they had found was able to cast teleport, and the party used this power to transport themselves and the dolphins back to an undersea area near Angus' boat. They had the fourth and last statue limb! They returned to their inn.

As a coda to this adventure, party members started noticing a lot of black beetles crawling about, when they had noticed no such things earlier. The innkeeper mentioned that there suddenly seemed to be a plague of the insects. And that was when the party remembered that Chan Ch'iang had been the last one to have been carrying the bizarre jar of endless bugs. Someone must have found it, opened it, and left it open somewhere. But the jar wasn't in the spot where Kitsu and Ch'iang had been attacked. Kitsu did, however, spot one of the street toughs wearing Ch'iang's robe. Overcome with anger, Kitsu knocked the man out and took the robe back.

Using the newly-found leg, the party teleported themselves back to the tower, then used the magic mirror to find the jar of bugs. It was in an alley, and black beetles were pouring forth surreally from its open lid. I frankly don't recall who did this, but some brave soul went through, grabbed the jar, shut it, and brought it back.

The Sixth Adventure: Awakening

At last, the end of an adventure matched up with a break. Marisa and Geoff left for Cape Cod. Keith returned from Japan and played for a few sessions, but as he was now living an hour away and his employment situation kept changing, he had to leave the game. James joined, and his character formed an integral part of the early portion of this adventure. Sheryl, having just purchased a house and in the middle of a semester of classes, couldn't commit to being present every week, but said she would be able to play Roma at times; unfortunately, she left the game after only a few sessions. Dan had lost interest in D&D.

I had a slight problem with the planning of the campaign: all four missing limbs to the statue had been recovered, months too early in game time. But during the break I had an interesting, twisted idea for a self-contained story that would fit into the campaign. I decided to see how it went.

When the four limbs of the statue were put in place, the statue animated itself and became a golden-skinned woman who said she was a sorceress named Quesmi. She claimed to have come from another world beyond the stars in ancient times. Actually, she claimed that she was a refugee; she and her companions had left their war-torn world in a huge vessel and sailed among the stars until they crash-landed here. She said that an evil entity that lived among the stars had influenced her world, gradually turning it into a planet of neverending warfare and destruction. When the refugees neared this world, this same entity caused a smaller exploration vessel to crash -- this was about 5000 years ago, and the crash caused the great disaster that devastated all the coastal cities. But Quesmi, the only survivor, magically foresaw that the Disaster (the only name she had for the evil entity) would attack again thousands of years later, as civilization had survived on this planet and her people's main vessel was still nearby, and this time there would be no nation unscathed. So she gathered the greatest artisans of the age, magical and mundane, and had them build a city, a city that was also an artifact, atop a high mountain peak, and had herself magically preserved, scattered in such a way that, her visions of the future told her, would cause her to be reassembled when the time for action approached.

All that the Sages need do, Quesmi assured them, was wait until the proper moment, a few months hence, and let her do her thing. Exactly what she planned to do, she would not explain, except that it involved her using the city for its intended purpose, whatever that may be.

However, the Sages were unsure, and approached the adventurers with a backup plan. It is said that, in ancient times, users of magic were able to pool their powers and create spells of a magnitude greater than they would be able to create individually. The mages of Thalassia were said to have had such a power. It could have been used to save their city, if some of the mages had not despaired and retreated. It is possible, they said, that whatever secret had been used to accomplish this may still exist, probably in the library of the Thalassian Order, in the city of Natassa. The Sages asked the adventurers to go to Natassa and ask the Thalassian Order for access to its library and to try to discover the secret. Ilyss, the lizardfolk loremaster, volunteered to go with the party to do the research, if they could only gain access to the Order's library.

Using the magic mirror, the party picked a spot to step through to, a pretty copse of trees in a field near the city, all scattered about with pretty orange wildflowers. There was a strange rippling in the image, but the mirror soon cleared, and the party was able to step through.

As they journeyed toward the city, the first remarkable thing they saw was a farmer's wife brandishing a broom at a naked, tattoo-covered man. His named turned out to be Pirojil, and he couldn't remember how he had come to be sleeping naked on a hill next to a weasel, why he had tattoos of dragons all over his body, or indeed much of anything. The party gave him a spare robe and took him into town, where they discovered that he was a sorcerer and the weasel, named Archimedes, was his familiar. And that night an inept thief tried to sneak into the inn to kidnap him.

The city guards were summoned, but before they took the thief away he was induced to reveal that he had been hired by the Temple of Tiamat, a cult thought to have been eradicated from Natassa over a decade ago. Pirojil could not remember what the cult would want with him. But the guards told the party where the Temple of Tiamat had been located -- in the catacombs beneath an abandoned church in the east part of town. If the cult was reforming, it might be using its old sanctuary again. As it turned out, they were. Also, strange sights and occurrences were happening in the city with increasing frequency -- three-eyed rats, the figure of a wandering woman who disappeared when approached, screams heard from uninhabited rooms, hallways and alleys, and other odd things.

The party had been reunited with old friends Kuro Neko and Quick, who were in Natassa to visit a shrine -- Natassa is one of the only places on the Southern Continent where the religions of Su Dzien-Sho are followed, because of the population of sailors and immigrants from the Northeast Continent in Natassa's port. While Ilyss went to the Thalassian Order (where an oily, arrogant fellow named Gryck offered the party help if they wanted to get out of town, but didn't make a very good impression) to consult the library, Kitsu and Kuro Neko were able to stealthily explore the above-ground portion of the abandoned church, which seemed to still be abandoned. But they found a concealed entrance to the lower levels -- a rather wide hidden ramp ...

Below they found that there were indeed cultists, led by a half-dragon and aided by a ghost dragon that was in fact Pirojil's half-brother -- Pirojil had been bred as a sacrifice by the cultists, but his father had reconsidered and fled with the infant Pirojil to another city, but recently the cult had finally found him, so he used the last of his spells to get his son to safety. After defeating the cultists, the party found a spear of lightning that Pirojil's father had stashed for him to find later.

During the fight with the cultists, some of the party members had a dreamlike encounter with a mysterious woman, who healed some of their wounds with magic. When the vision ended, they were right back where they had been, in the thick of battle, but the healing had been real. And when the party left the church they heard a woman screaming somewhere down the street and around the corner, but when they ran to look there was nobody there. The strangeness didn't end there. The next morning at the inn, sailors were reporting that ships due in hadn't arrived, and neither had any of the day's caravans the merchants were expecting.

The party learned that a wall of mist surrounded the entire city, even extending out to sea, and anyone who entered the mist simply got turned around somehow, ending up headed back in toward the city again. A detect thoughts revealed the presence of many minds beyond the mist, with random, changing, chaotic thoughts, like those of someone asleep and dreaming, and different minds seemed to be constantly moving in and out of range of the spell. What few wizards there were at the Thalassian Order -- many of them seemed to have chosen this time to take vacations for some reason -- didn't know much. The one member of the Circle of Nine present, Bayla the Evoker, suggested the party see Medruek, who was an oneiromancer, a wizard specializing in dreams.

Lorna received a strange message: a Prince Harold of Mirrhenia was in town and wanted Lorna to come see him at the inn where he was staying. Some of the party went with Lorna, and some went to see Medruek.

Lorna learned that, although Prince Harold had a reputation for being somewhat of a self-absorbed fop, this was just a front, because he had the heart of an adventurer and would travel around Mirrhenia secretly righting wrongs. Meanwhile, Medruek seemed like a rather distant old man but said that his dreams lately had started to feel as if they were dreams within dreams instead.

At the same time both halves of the party saw a strange scene enacted: in a forest, two shadowy figures approached a female member of the party, holding out some sort of bottle and chanting some strange words. In both cases, the party attacked the figures, which died, then disappeared, but some of the party saw their faces. Medruek told them that this reminded him a lot of how the city's ruler, Prince Hartelion, had lost his mother Faiella to kidnappers when he was a child: two men had approached and used some kind of magic bottle to trap her. Rewards had been posted, but for over thirty years there had been no sign of Faiella or her kidnappers. The party decided to try to see Prince Hartelion. Prince Harold offered to go with Lorna to see the prince of Natassa; his rank might well prove useful in bypassing red tape. And indeed it did help -- the party was met by the prince's vizier, Lord Pentos, who had been perplexed by the reports he had been hearing about the apparitions and the ring of mist surrounding the city.

Pentos told the party that Prince Hartelion had become very distant in recent years, seeming never more than half-awake, but in the past few days he had been saying incoherent things like "She's here," and "I know she's here, but I can't find her," and "They're here," and "I will kill them." The party describes to him the two men they saw in their vision, which match the Prince's description of his mother's kidnappers from when he was a child, but others in town are also describing seeing these men. The party is admitted to Prince Hartelion's chamber, but he is quite incoherent and unhelpful. But Lord Pentos had had a breakthrough: the inept thief who tried to kidnap Pirojil earlier was, on closer inspection, Gireb, one of the two men who kidnapped Faiella, and he was still in the custody of the city guard. Gireb was older and had acquired some facial scars, but it was him. Keeping in mind that Prince Hartelion had been muttering "They're here," Pentos set the guard to finding the other man, who the party had actually already run into, begging on the street. His name was Daharg.

Gireb and Daharg revealed, after persuasion, that they had been hired by a man named Gryck to kidnap Faiella, many years ago. Gryck gave them a pink glass bottle of some kind and taught them some magic words. There was a phrase that had to be said three times, with Faiella's name inserted among the syllables in a certain place, and the bottle would capture her. They did all this, and he paid them in gold, and they left town with the bottle, which apparently Gryck didn't want, and they didn't ask too many questions. They had gambled the bottled princess away and split up, and this was the first time they had seen each other in 20 years. They each had had no idea that the other was in town. But the Prince had somehow known. And, although no location spell had been able to find Faiella in the past, the Prince apparently also thought his mother was in town too, by some twist of fate.

(to be continued)

The Seventh Adventure: Quesmi

The Eighth Adventure: The One and the Coin

Interlude: The Origin of Catharandamus

The Ninth Adventure: Nine

The Tenth Adventure: The Betrayal

All pages copyright © 1997-2004 Thomas J. Lee, except material cited from other sources, which is covered by its own copyright.