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Daglan: Part 1 - The Key to the Lair
We knew it would be best to destroy the Crown of Souls before trying to defeat Daglan (and perhaps the only way to make it possible). We thought that retrieving the heart leaf from Sarusar's workshop would be the only possible way to find out more about how to find and destroy the Crown.
Sarusar told us what he could of where Daglan had moved the entrance to his workshop and what it looked like (an empty wooden mirror frame which was now located in a workshop somewhere in the middle of Daglan's tower.
Having already entered Daglan's tower once from the top, we decided to try that way again.
This time we were confronted by four spectres. Marcus, Chance, and Bolas attacked the two closest spectres, while Sanjian leaped over to attack one of the farther spectres while Theo shot off a lightning bolt from behind the group and off to one side (behind the stairwell that rises from the top of the tower). Taren moved to cast Protection from evil on Marcus (thus enabling him to better attack the creatures. One of the farther Spectres moved through the stairwell to attack Theo, draining him of two levels. Taren, seeing Theo's predicament, moved to cast Protection from evil on him as well, but wasn't fast enough to prevent the Spectre from draining another two levels. In the meanwhile, all of the Spectres were defeated, but not before Sanjian was drained two levels as well.
The group was much weakened, but we decided to press onward into the strange mists of the tower, burning through the magical webs that covered many of the passageways. Eventually, we came to a place where the stairway ended. Defying all physics, a straight passageway led off to the right and left, disappearing into the mists. To the left, a strange glowing purple object floated in the air just visible through the mists (the size and shape of a 20 sided die). In front of us stood a metal door with no visible handles, which seemed to open outward. Scratched upon the door in Ranger script were the words "Danger to the east" (the right hand side of the passageway). To either side of the stairs were grotesque two headed statues facing both directions.
Trying to listen through the door, Chance remarked that it was freezing cold. While we were debating which direction to go, Marcus wetted a piton in order to stick it to the freezing door and then opened the door using the piton as a handle. As the door opened, a gust of freezing air swept from the room beyond, freezing Bolas and Marcus into statues of pure ice, hurting the rest of the party, and temporarily blinding Sanjian and Taren (who had been watching). The room beyond contained ten bodies (of the warriors of Lathidus who had gone to fight Daglan) hanging from the ceiling by ropes. As the freezing air dissipated, the bodies began to come alive unnaturally, cut their bonds and move to attack us. We closed the doors to hold them off long enough to get our bearings (and recover our sight). Then the four of us that remained killed them off (Theo's fireball into the meat locker room was quite helpful). The bodies shattered into tiny bits as we destroyed them.
At this point, we decided it would be a good time to flee. We had no way to carry Bolas and Marcus (the heaviest and strongest among us), so our only alternatives were to dimensionally fold out now, pushing them through the portal or to leave them here in Daglans power. Besides, no one was in very good shape at this point.
So Theo cast Dimensional folding. It failed.
Our only choice was to press onward. We tried the doors on the other side of the "meat locker" room (which was no longer cold). They opened easily. Beyond them was another passageway running east and west with stairs descending downward in front of us (identical to the passageway we came from, except that these stairs went downward).
As we descended the stairs the walls slowly faded away into pitch blackness. After some time, we arrived at a very strange room. It was a circular room with a floor made of ice. There were three very ordinary looking doors even spaced on the sides of the room (the fourth entrance being the stairs where we were standing). There were four mermaid statues made of ice floating in a square formation in the center of the room. Below and above each of these statues were round pits of blackness. Three of the ice statues contained keys in their centers. We lassoed a statue and tried to get a key out, but the key disappeared. We also tried with the mermaid that appeared to have no key. Then Chance stepped out onto the ice and disappeared. Taren followed with a rope around her waist. The rope fell empty as she set both feet into the room and disappeared. Theo and Sanjian followed.
We found ourselves in a room identical to the one we had been looking into, except there were no visible exits or entrances and the mermaid statues (with their illusory keys) were gone. Chance (who had had some time before being joined by the rest of the party) had used his snow shoes to make a contraption which allowed him to climb down one of the pits to explore, but found nothing. Taren searched for secret doors where the doors had been in the other room and each place seemed odd, so she suggested that Chance feel for a key in the place where the mermaid keys had been. A key was found, but only Chance could see it. With key in hand, a door also became visible. The door was trapped horribly with a fire trap (strangely, only Chance could see the fire coursing over his body). Finding other keys and thus seeing other doors, the results were similar (all the doors were trapped). The invisible key (invisible even to the holder) made no door appear. We discovered that one person could not hold two keys at once or one of them would disappear. We also discovered an invisible door in the direction from which we had come. Eventually, we found the right keys for the doors (the person who could see the correct door had to guide the hand of the person with the correct key) and opened up two passageways to either side of the room (the doors disappeared into the floor).
These rooms were identical. They were circular with an ice mermaid statue on a circular pedestal in the middle of the room. On the ceiling directly above the ice mermaid was an eye symbol (like on a dollar bill). Chance climbed atop the mermaid to discover that the eye could be turned and a grey beam came down to hit him (it hurt). We decided it would be better to use a staff to turn it. As the grey beam came down, it melted the mermaid leaving only a puddle atop the pedestal. Taren used her hammer to feel atop the pedestal, noticing a hole that could not be seen and some sort of lever inside it. After a certain amount of time, the mermaid statue would return. After having the grey beam come down upon both mermaids and turning both levers, the ice room became charged with electricity and began to turn until it was facing the other direction and we used the other key to open the invisible door in the other direction (straight across from where we entered).
A short stairway led downward to a square room with a door on each wall. As we opened a door a swirling mass of grayness would appear from which bricks would fly and form themselves into a hallway. At the end of each hallway was a room. The room to the left contained a closed book on a pedestal. The room in the center contained an open book on a pedestal. The room to the right was a laboratory of some sort. Sanjian walked down the hallway to the laboratory and we noticed that he became older as he did so and he didn't go all the way to the end. Returning to the group, he would slowly become younger again. Taren also experimented, but returned to the group when her fingernails fell out. We experimented with the closed book (both of the books exuded an aura of evil, but we thought the closed one was safer) in hopes that it would provide a key to making the hallway safer to enter.
Sanjian poked around it. Holy water bled from his silver sword, but sizzled off from the book about a foot away when he tried sprinkling it on. The cover of the book seemed to be made of human skin. He tried to pry it open with a dagger. It resisted, but opened a little ways and blood pour forth along with sounds of screaming and great anguish. He grabbed hold of the book, thinking that was the only way to open it. Suddenly, it didn't seem to be evil at all.
The rest of the group could now hear the room above begin to course with lightning, making it obvious that Daglan was coming. We decided to run down the passageway to the laboratory, but we had trouble convincing Sanjian to come along. As he finally pulled away from the book, he noticed black tendrils had crawled through the book into his hands and arms, piercing his skin and he had only just felt the pain as he pulled away.
We ran down the passageway toward the laboratory, growing older and older as we went. Then we proceeded to uncover those objects covered in sheets, looking for the empty mirror frame that would lead to Sarusar's other planar storage room/workshop. Taren uncovered a full length mirror and, looking into it, found her normal young self looking out. She was then able to disbelieve the aging and invite everyone else to do the same. At nearly the same time, we found the empty mirror frame and stepped into it.
Entering Sarusar's workshop, we looked back through the mirror frame to find that the gateway was still wide open. We could see straight back into Daglan's tower and we could hear his footsteps approaching. The only way we could think to escape him was to destroy the entrance from the inside. So we set to smashing it and it was quickly done.
The workshop was much as Taren had seen in the scrying glass of the ancient druids. There were four important items (Taren snatched them up upon entering, thinking we were still in a big hurry): The red glowing pyramid which is the control for the soul-imprisoning one on Loche Island; the small wooden box containing the black antimagic rings; the heart leaf of the Arnorian Arbor tree contained in a jar; and the round grey bowling ball like object which was used to curse the stone giants in Taren's charge. There was also the body of the druid (Danteth Silentdream sr.) lying upon the floor.
Knowing that we were probably safe since we had destroyed the only entrance, we set about to figuring out an exit (since, after all, we had destroyed that as well). Theo, of course, being the main thinker since he's the expert on magical travel (and magical anything else for that matter). It took quite some time, but we eventually found ourselves in the Down Under - a place where our group has briefly visited in the past. Since there were trees about, Taren was able to easily return to her charge and from there go on to return the heart leaf. Theo then contacted Sarusar, knowing that he would be able to return them to the surface. Sarusar told us that he would be able to restore Marcus and Bolas to their proper forms if we could retrieve them from Daglan's tower.
Taren returned to her charge and from there travelled to Tel-Akbar to the backyard of Lady Silentdream. She replaced the borrowed heartleaf with the original heart leaf which was recovered from Sarusar's workshop. Climbing down and looking into the face of the tree, she could see it smile and slowly open its eyes. They spoke briefly and told Taren that it would give her a gift in thanks. She felt a tingley feeling. The tree would not be specific as to what the gift was, and then the conversation was over. Taren went and spoke with Lady Silentdream and then spent the night there. She talked with her about her husband, who has been gone for many years. Lady Silentdream seems to live in a world of her own. After the conversation, Taren decided it was better not to bring the proof of her husband's death (small identifying items recovered from his body in Sarusar's workshop) since, at best, it could only upset her. He was magic missiled several times, though we do not know what he did to upset Sarusar.
The next day, Taren travelled to meet with Kabal, a druid of the old ways who transported her to the forest of Arnorian Arbor trees. This time, he did not accompany her on the trip. She found herself once more in the vale, near the cliff side that leads down to the Temple. Within the magical darkness of the temple, she easily located one of the light staffs that she and Marcus had discovered on their last visit. She made her way to the ladder and down into the maze of ladders, archways, and bridges that all seem to grow from the one central tree. Climbing the stairway that winds around the impressive trunk of the tree, she reached the room from which the heart leaf was taken and returned it to its box.
From there she travelled back to the library and thence up the winding stairway to the circular floor of branches suspended above the library. There was the huge round glass which Taren had been able to use for scrying and there, in a large circle around the scrying glass were the chairs, but this time instead of being on the floor, they were all raised up in the air and seated in each chair was a ghostly robed figure. These she had seen briefly when last she and Marcus were in this room. They spoke to her and she replied, stating her reasons for being there and insisting that they had promised her that she could use the scrying glass when she had returned the borrowed leaf. One of the ghosts (which had but three strange fingers) was hostile towards her, but eventually agreed. These ghostly druids seemed to wish for Taren to give up her "new" god (Baeast has existed in Sulerin for but twenty years) and worship the old druidic ways. It seemed as if good and evil meant little to them, but the fact that Daglan did not belong in this world must have had some significance. With their agreement, the ghosts disappeared and the chairs floated down to the floor.
Taren sat in the chair of the ghost that was most friendly towards her and rose up to a vantage from which she could use the scrying glass. She scried for the location of the Crown of Souls and found it in a dark place and discovered a Sceptre that could be used to reach it. She scried for how to destroy the Crown and was shown an old, dusty, long forgotten forge and metal working tools and when looking for how to get to this place she was shown the closed book in Daglan's tower. Somewhere in the middle of the book was the necessary page... there were also a few other things she scried for, including the location of Marcus and Bolas, who were still ice sculptures but were now located in that same meat locker which had turned them to ice in the first place. Before leaving the place, she thanked the druids for their help.
In the meanwhile, the party had to wait for Theo to rest and rejuvenate before Sarusar would transport them back to the prime. Then, they all held hands, Sarusar cast some sort of spell, and they found themselves falling from a great height in a place with nothing but blue sky all about and strange floating islands of earth. They fell faster and faster, and just when it seemed they would soon hit one of the floating islands, Sarusar finished another casting and the three remaining party members (Chance, Sanjian, and Theo) fell into the ocean. Sarusar floated above them. Theo then cast his portal spell and they found themselves outside of Tel-Akbar all wet in the middle of the pile of slush created from the water pouring out over the snow. They quickly lit a fire to prevent hypothermia. While awaiting Taren's return in Tel-Akbar, Chance tried to straighten out his relations with the thieves guild and reacquaint himself with a friend among the guards. Theo and Sanjian travelled to Challsea to speak to Bishop Acarius about restoring their levels. Theo agreed to make a Runestone of healing for the Temple of Arden in Tel-Akbar in exchange for the performance of the spell on himself and Sanjian (which costs 2 years of life for both the caster and the recipient).
That evening in the inn, after Taren had returned with the information of what she saw through the scrying glass and the party was busy planning the next course of action, Taren said quietly to herself "I wish we had Bolas, Marcus, and the bejeweled sceptre which I saw in Daglan's workshop here with us." To everyone else's surprise, these things suddenly appeared in the room. Bolas and Marcus (still ice) immediately began to melt and Theo opened a window and quickly called to Sarusar who arrived and snatched up the Scepter. It took some convincing and debating with Taren and Chance (Chance being much more convince because Sarusar and Taren don't like each other especially) to get him to return us the sceptre. He then restored Marcus and Bolas to their humanoid shapes. It took Theo's healing to completely restore them, since they looked somewhat melted at that point. Chance then ran off to get a lead lined box in which to hide the scepter. Before Sarusar left, Taren reminded him about his promise to restore the stone giants to their original forms. She returned the strange object that he had used to curse them to him and he said he would restore them the next morning.
And so the party rested.
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