Friday, July 25^th, 2003

From The Journal of Sekhet, The Atlantean

Our encounter with the Spirit of the Dead left Harn a withered husk of his former self. This pains me to see. After the untimely death of Lady Halfrid, I depended on Harn. With him, I believed we could make a difference in this barbaric land of savages and beasts. Though I endeavour to learn their ways, I study their ‘Chivalry’ and Law, I will never be one of them. Harn was my last link to them.

He left this morning, a day after our return from the Fey tomb. He rides off to the capital to be high priest of the church of Woden. He will be an important political figure and a trusted ally, but he will journey no more with us.

The people of Hoddenhill were sorrowful. They cried and threw flowers as they watched their spiritual leader, the soul of the town, depart. Lady Halfrid is dead. Harn is gone. I will continue with our endeavour as best I can, but life is brutal and fleeting and hard won in this northern land. The day will come when I fall in battle. What will happen to these people then?

We arrive back in Hoddenhill and Erendill asks for 5 days to construct a pair of bracers of archery for Gilmarra. We’ve got some time, so we stay in Hoddenhill for five days. Harn leaves us, to go to the capital and head up the church of Odin. Ah well, bye Harn. He’ll be an NPC played by Dave, but it’s demoralizing to see the original party members drop off one by one.

Dave’s new character is…another cleric. We certainly need a cleric and Dave knows more about the class than any of us. He’s playing Kaylin Waterford, a cleric of Taiia, a god presented in Deities and Demigods as an example of a Monotheistic religion.

Kaylin is female, cute, and Sekhet wonders what she’s doing in Hoddenhill. She says she heard there are catacombs under the ruined keep. Which is now a not-ruined castle thanks to Ogsbod. She wants very desperately to see them. Her church believes that Undeath is an abomination and she quests to rid the area of undead of all types.

How she knows about the catacombs is interesting. I take her down and show her around. She thinks these catacombs were built by a branch of her faith, many hundreds of years ago. Matt thought they were made by Knights Templar following the Christian faith, but these two ideas aren’t necessarily exclusive.

Kaylin senses powerful spirits haunting the catacombs. Not all of them are benign. She can’t do anything about it now, but later…

Sekhet has a conversation with Gilmarra.

“What are you doing to Kephara?”

“Why do you think I do anything to him?”

“He grows at an unnatural rate.”

Gilmarra nods. “And more than grows. Matures. Yes, I am helping your dragon grow. The care of dragons is a sacred duty for the elves.”

“But you do not harm him.”

“No. Your dragon is safe.”

“He’s not my dragon. His name’s Kephara. He belongs to himself.”

Gilmarra nods. This is in accordance with the Elven viewpoint on the matter.

Meanwhile, Bourbon and Rye are giving away ale and food in their tents. This is interesting, because they’re supposed to be selling ale and food in their tavern. We talk to them and learn that A: it’s just for this one day, to get people hooked as it were. B: the food is really, really good.

Craig reminds me that though originally the Drunken Dragon was supposed to be a tavern, not an inn, we allowed that the halflings could build halflings-sized rooms for their kind and dwarves and any other lawn ornaments that want to rest in town.

Bourbon and Rye ask their cousin to come down to Hoddenhill to help them out. I meet him, a halfling thief named Paldo the Quick. One look at this short guy and you can see he’s smarter than the Whiskey Brothers put together. Erendill comes out of the Observatory and produces the bracers for Gilmarra, and I ask Paldo and Kaylin if they’d like to join us in our foray to the Elven tomb where the Spectre was. They’re all over it.

We journey back, along the Elven Wayroad, to the tomb. Someone’s been along here in the last five days. Someone came in and tried to get some of the Elven supplies out. They didn’t make it. We find their slaughtered bodies. Bourbon and Rye have been selling maps to the tomb. “Your cousins sent these men to their deaths,” Sekhet says to Paldo. Paldo is not happy with what he sees. Seems like a good man. Halfling. Lawn-ornament.

We find a secret room we’d missed before. Gilmarra, the Elf, notices it. Even Paldo, our new trapster, can’t find the wall. Erendill casts knock where we are told the door is, and we find a small room with a sarcophagus inside. Hmm…the tomb of the spectre? As we begin to disturb the area, bad things happen.

A spectre comes through the walls. Skeletons pour through the doors. Kaylin whips about, sees the horde of Undeath, and concentrates. The power of Taiia banishes the skeletons. Something like 30 of them. Maybe more. Glim looses three arrows at the Spectre. One seems to effect it. 11 damage.

Before the rest of us can act, the spectre flows into the room, and attacks. His hand reaches for Glim, and a second later Glim’s life is diminished. 2 levels lost.

Sekhet is totally powered up. He’s cast true strike on himself, and Kaylin cast Cure Serious Wounds on his Great Sword of Spell Storing. We are blessed The company parts, and the Paladins—Sekhet and his squire Gallick—stand before the undead spirit and attack.

Sekhet smites evil, power attacks, and though I roll a 3, I achieve a 33. I hit. 40 points of damage. Gallick power attacks and smites evil and another 20 damage. Erendill hurls a magic missile, another 11 damage.

The Spectre evaporates. “We got the TOOLS, we got the TALENT!!” Glim though, still two levels down.

Before we can investigate the sarcophagus, another spectre comes through the walls. Larger, more sinister, more palpably evil. Kaylin puts a cure moderate wounds on my greatsword. Gallick and Sekhet do their thing again, again aided by Erendill’s magic missile. This time, one less smite evil, but more damage. Another dead spectre.

Kaylin in the background, Glim to the left, Gilmarra, and Paldo to the right. Kephara the Dragon and Gilmarra's Wolf are also visible.

Big sigh. The thing that wiped us out a week before was this time dispatched in a moment. We loot the tomb, and find 75 mithral ingots disguised as large gold pieces. Enough to make two suits of armor!

We explore some more of the tomb. We find what is obviously a mortared up wall. Some room beyond was sealed up, we don’t know why.

The wall appears to be between 3 and 5 years old. Odd. Who was here then?

We break down the wall. There’s a 10 x 10 room, a cot, a table, a plate with rotting food on it. And a very small human girl.

???

Very newt-like, we try to talk to the girl. She’s reluctant to speak to us, but Kaylin coaxes some responses out of her. She’s frightened. The undead walled her up in here, she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t know how long she’s been in here. Her name…is Anya. Hmm…John’s not around so we can’t ask her, like, what the fuck? She even looks like John’s character as she might have been at 6.

Ok, so she’s been in here for, like, 4 years or so. She doesn’t need to eat, apparently. She’s not evil. Ok, she can’t be human, right? Because a human being would have starved to death. Sekhet asks her, flat out, ‘Why have you taken this form?’ She doesn’t seem to understand the question. Sekhet explains that he knows she’s not human, and wonders why she appears as a small human child. She still doesn’t understand. But she’s not evil.

We forward a lot of theories. Mark thinks she might be a Vampire. Vampires can shapeshift and are kinda immortal. I think she might be a doppleganger, but that doesn’t make sense, doppelgangers need to eat. Dave thinks she might be a lycanthrope. That seems somewhat more plausible than the doppleganger idea, less plausible than the vampire idea.

I mean, we really work the angles on this. Is it possible that this IS John’s character, Anya Ulfdötter, in the past? Can we have travelled through time? No, these don’t seem true.

We take the little girl with us. She’s happy to leave.

Sekhet, however, is not going to just let her run around Hoddenhill. We travel to Orthanc, there to meet with the Oracle and submit ourselves to her vision.

On the way, we meet some Elves. They’re not like the local elves, and they want to talk to Glimarra. Hm. Apparently they’re from Ulster. We talk for a little while. They explain they work for Finvarra. They’re surveying the land. I mention that the local elves are all kida…defeated. I’ve tried to get them to take over the elven ruins we’ve cleared out, but they never seem to want to.

These new elves, though, they seem like they might be interested in, um, moving in.

We make it to Orthanc and I put the screen up so we can talk to the Oracle.

“I have a question for the Oracle.”

“Ask your question.” This call and response appears to be part of the ritual that grants the Medusa her oracular power.

I present the girl and ask, simply; “What is this?”

She gives a cryptic answer that we puzzle out. She’s a vampire.

Well, this don’t make no kinda sense at all. Mystery compounded on mystery. I give the girl into Kaylin’s care. Kaylin isn’t totally behind the idea, being pretty devoted to the cause of eradicating Undead from the island, but she accepts that Anya isn’t a normal whateversheis, and accepts the charge.