In the aftermath of our battle where we cleansed the forest, Lefty and I scoured the bodies unaffected by necromantic rot. Besides the book, Lefty found a bag of coins, and I found a note written in the language of the dragons. As luck has it, our elven warrior Zex can speak Draconic! The note gave instructions to the cultists to find a book, which we assumed was the very book that we had acquired.
Our spellcasters began to feel a bit of peace settle around the forest as if the evil there had been fully cleansed. I tried to use my lockpicks on the book's arcane lock to no avail, but when I did so, a flare of purple magic licked from its pages. Sai, our druid, actually tried to burn the book with elemental magic, but it would not burn.
Suddenly, a strange entity charged in from the west -- a very dark, armored artificer broke through the clearing, calling himself "shadow." In Zex's words, he seemed . . . gullible . . . and not a threat. He was to my height, however, and appeared very formidable. It seemed as though we had quickly made another ally, who would be needed in the future.
Making our way back to town, we discovered Phandalin had been under siege by three parties of undead creatures. The town hall was full of injured, dead, and the local townsfolk, equipped with makeshift weapons. Our strange Priest of Shar was there as well. He was even more strange than usual, seemingly forgetting our interactions and drifting in and out of conversation. Seeking out the village headman, he confirmed our fears that the undead plague upon the town was still a problem. We hadn't cured the source. When asked about the dragon acolytes, he mentioned that "they must be back."
We each drifted our own ways that evening and spent the night in the local tavern. I tried to beg a piece of bacon off the tavern keep, but all he parted with was extra bread and cheese. Lefty and I split the spoils.
It appeared we had two directions we could travel. One to an arch mage's tower about 20 miles out. Two, travel over to the priest's enclave for a bit of reconnaissance. Speaking of Reconnaissance, our new friend Shadow noticed that in a moment of forgetfulness, the priest of Shar had seemed to have suddenly lost his sluggish mannerisms and decrepit disguise for a moment! When he told the group, Zex was outraged and helped us realize this was an obvious ruse. This convinced us even more that we should investigate the enclave.
Approaching the temple, we noticed no one was around. Inyarah spied nothing but emptiness as she flew over the walls. Sai crawled through the cracks, transformed into a spider, and noted the same. They also noted there was no magic to be found. With that, Shadow began pushing on the great ironwood doors of the entrance to try to open them. I joined him, and together we were able to push open the massive doors and really take a look around the place.
What I found, buried in the construction equipment, was a very inventive piece of magic -- it was a magic 3-foot rod decorated with horse heads on either end.
Curiosity got the better of me, and I pressed the button located on one end, what happened was the rod became magically immovable in space. Clicking the button again returned it to normal. This could be a very valuable find indeed . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment