# Cormyr: The Smile of Chauntea



## MulhorandSage (May 12, 2002)

Well I was doing an in character diary for the 3e D&D game that Steve Sloane is running, I thought I'd post it here.

Scott Bennie

*Cast of Characters*

*Ascarin Nevermoon*. Mage of Sembia, who found the conceits of the courts of Sembia to be stifling, so he fled Sembia in search of adventure. As presented here, he is a mage of 5th-6th level.

*Sir Ulrick Cormaeril*, Cormyrean paladin of a disgraced family, seeking redemption fortune and power. As presented here, he is a paladin of 5th-6th level.

*Sir Aron Wyvernspur* A minor Cormyrean knight of a great house, Aron is considered chaotic by most who know him. As presented here, he is a fighter of 5th-6th level.

*Kord the elf* An elven ranger (with a touch of the thief in his veins). Rather blood-thirsty and egocentric. A Ranger/Thief of 4th-5th/1st level.

*What has gone before*
In the wake of the devastation brought to Cormyr by the Ghazneths, four adventurers arrived in the Dales and set up a farm in Ashbeneford, hoping to export food to Cormyr and either feed their starving families or make a fortune. Attacks by raiders and the presence of drow led them far afield, eventually leading to the discovery of a series of portals at Galath's Roost. Fleeing the orc army that controls the portals, the fractious band followed one of the doors into Cormyr and has just arrived at the city of Wheloon.

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*THE SMILE of CHAUNTEA*
_Part One:_

I have woefully miscalculated the ambition of a paladin. As you know, for months I have been the travelling companion of one Ulrick Cormaeril, who, despite the ill repute of his family, I believed loyal to the crown of his land. And while in his heart he still believes that he is the Torm-true son of Cormyr, he may have begun to take his first steps toward an abyss. 

It began, of course, when our errand in the Dalelands went awry. We came to Ashabenford to grow food in the Dalelands to succor (and profit from) the famine that has stricken Cormyr following the death of the great Dragon Azoun. During our time in the Dales, our company became restless, and so we explored the citadel of the Orcs, and in doing so discovered a place of many portals. 

(Tell none of this last development. It is the lynchpin of all our designs, especially mine.) 

Ah, my merry fellowship, these battle-brethren. Let me speak of them so you might better understand my predicament. First there is Ulrick, a tall man of very fine features. He is a paladin who spends a lot of time on his knees in prayer to Torm, a posture that he has assumed more frequently of late, given how much our misfortunes have grown. He is full of certainty in moments which require introspection, and full of doubt in moments that require decisiveness. It is part of the national character, methinks.

Ulrick is matched in height by his Cormyte countryman,  Aron Wyvernspur, a broadly built minor knight who has shown remarkable skill with a great two-handed flail (when he takes combat seriously, he is a chaotic, unfocused sort), and a great ferocity when roused. He has no couth, but after awhile couth can wear quite thin. His family is plagued by a pertilence of trolls, and we have promised to assist him, but other matters always detain us.

My last companion (whom I trust less than the others), is Kord, a shifty elf who shows a great affinity for woodcraft. He is a most unreliable man; he loves to pursue a target and play tracking games with them, but as soon as it appears like an enemy might actually have the capacity to do him some small harm, he retreats, often abandoning us to a potentially unpleasant fate. He is accompanied by two noisy fighting dogs who, when we were travelling in the Dales, were turned pink by a vexed wizard's curse. 

Now let me proceed to the week's adventure. We fought our way through the orc den out of Galath's Roost, and followed one of the portals to the Cormyte city of Wheloon. "City", of course, is a term of dubious usage as it concerns Wheloon, for the place was neither fine nor hospitable even before the recent tragedies, but now one cannot look upon the place without experiencing great sorrow. 

Before the Ghazneths devastated their realm, whenever a Cormyte looked at me, I saw only contempt in their eyes (which, given their natural state of ignorance, I could ignore). Now their eyes were full of fear, hatred, and above all else, hunger. Wheloon was never a clean place, but what could once be regarded as a rustic charm had been replaced by dirt and rot, and the desperation in the air was a palpable thing. Needless to say, the starvation and the ruin that I witnessed there resonated deep within me, touching my abiding compassion for all things downtrodden (especially when the downtrodden have full purses and empty bellies). 

The evils that desperation spawns were quite rampant here: crime, mob rule, and the general breakdown of all things civilized. The place was sparsely defended when we arrived; the knights of the city had been slain during Cormyr’s recent foolhardy adventure, along with much of the nobility of the realm, and so when we arrived in Wheloon, we found a mob raiding the foodstores, with the surviving guards ready to slaughter them. 

I urged Lord Ulrick to remain uninvolved, but despite my warnings, the big-hearted paladin could not endure the sight of such a pitiable mob, so he strode heroically to the city foodstores and emptied them. Without the consent of any authority, he distributed the stores to the entire populace, rather than leaving them in the granary (where undoubtedly the lion’s share would have been stolen by the city’s most capable scavengers). And thus our troubles began. 

Invoking the knightly privilege of hospitality, we stayed at the city keep; a well-fortified but woefully spartan place (though once one is used to sleeping in a drafty farmstead in the Dales, this sort of dwelling almost becomes tolerable). In the evening that followed, we all experienced a most troubled sleep – though Lord Ulrick appearing to suffer more than most of us. We awoke to find the palace guards were gone; the lord had paid the guards in foodstuffs and without food the guards realized they would go unpaid, so they stole horses from the stables and fled into the wilderness (along with most of the town guard; I understand they have formed not one but three bandit gangs). Kord seems rather excited by the prospect of hunting them down. The chancellor, who had been sternly rebuked by Ulrick for his hoarding ways, had also fled. 

With Ulrick now de facto ruler of the city, we were forced to meet with a series of delegations. The first was an ostentatious lot, their bodies were covered in tattoos and they wore silk robes dyed in the deepest crimson; the copious quantities of gold they displayed were as everpresent as insults at a Sembian court. Honey dripped from their tongues, and they flattered Ulrick, telling him that he was the savior of the city. They wanted Ulrick to grant them permission to set up a Thayan enclave within Wheloon. 

"What!" I exclaimed. If my belly had not been nigh empty, I would have lost my meal. I laughed in their faces, but this act, which was once so effective in provoking these blackguards, did not engender the expected response. It is astonishing to see Thayans holding such legendary tempers in check. They offered bribes to all of us, including a holy sword for Ulrick and an exquisite wand of fireballs (crafted from red cedar, with a silver tip) for me. 

They also offered me a substantial discount on mageries, should I purchase a supply from them. It was an offer that might have proven useful, however the Lord Ulrick was in a prudent mood and he refused to grant approval without the express permission of the Regent. I was satisfied that this would conclude the matter, but the Thayans, perhaps finding more hope in Ulrick’s words than I, departed without incident. But they were far from our only visitor - they were quickly followed by a delegation of local guild lords, who proceeded to give Ulrick a most expert and veritable tongue-lashing. They informed our dear paladin that a beholder-mage was blocking the way to Suzail, and an adult red dragon was attacking all the lake traffic, and that by giving away all the grain and causing the guards to depart, he had left Wheloon open to its enemies. This was a grim accusation. They called Ulrick a usurper who had no authority to act as he had done – they were right, of course – and accused him of bringing ruin upon them all. Ulrick was mightily offended by the observation, poking them in their bellies and accusing them of fattening themselves while the people starved. 

This conversation knocked out all appetite for authority out of Ulrick’s belly – for now – and he prepared to depart Wheloon for Suzail. The Regent would undoubtedly have heard of his exploits, and given the unpopularity of the name “Cormaeril” with those who controlled the throne of Cormyr, he felt it prudent to clear up any misunderstanding. Furthermore, he felt time was of the essence; despite the barrier of the terror of many eyes that stood between Suzail and Wheloon, he was certain that even the diminished power of the throne could smite him at any moment. It is a typical paladin’s error, to assume that the one to whom you grant your allegiance is nigh omnipotent. But fate has a way of correcting such childish misconceptions. 

The next delegation was that of several cloaked figures. Ulrick assumed that they were members of the local thieves’ guild, and refused to treat with them. They beckoned me, and I excused myself, and we had a long conversation. They introduced themselves as fellow Sembians who wish to see Wheloon secede from Cormyr and join our realm. I must confess I found the prospect amusing. They asked for my assistance, asking me to whisper in Ulrick’s ear so he might be bent toward this design. I told them I felt it was impossible – Ulrick’s loyalty to the throne was absolute – but also told them that if Ulrick were to become convinced that the throne of Cormyr no longer served the people of the realm, then a wedge might be driven between them. 

And thus I made my most serious mistake. No, not in giving advice to a probable adversary – it is better to keep an eye on a vipertongue than to allow them to slither under your house – but in overestimating Ulrick’s bond of affection to the throne. The Sembians (if that is what they are), expressed delight at my cooperation. Thus I have become ensnared in what feels like a most despicable enterprise. But my love for Cormyr is almost as small as my love for my own people, so I sleep without guilt or shadow of recalcitrance. 

The nature of my error was soon made clear to me. Ulrick, whom I had never deserted even in the darkest of hours and the most foolhardy of enterprises, had abandoned me. No monster could frighten him, but the political beast had shaken him to his marrow, and so he quickly departed Wheloon while I was still speaking with the Sembians, and Aron had departed with him. I do not blame them, of course. They are simple folk; like peasants who found themselves forced to dance while wearing tatters in the middle of a grand ballroom, they were woefully unprepared for this challenge. 

Kord, eager to see the result of my meeting (almost certainly thinking they were thieves and fellow reprobates), decided to linger awhile to learn exactly who they were; and that is when the crack opened and we found ourselves falling to Gehenna. Not literally, of course, but it might well have been. Thirteen fit armed men, clad in chainmail and wielding bastard swords, forced their way into the castle’s central keep and arrested us, declaring that we were traitors to the throne. The elf argued that as non-citizens we could not be technically be traitors. I noticed one of the guards was a sorcerer, a dragon-blood, who cast a spell upon himself that greatly quickened his reflexes. Realizing that we had a wizard who was my equal, and twelve sturdy veteran soldiers to face one elf, I immediately surrendered. Kord, as he has always done, attempted to run from the fight. He ran into the kitchen, discovered he had reached a dead end, then also surrendered. 

Comparing me to the basest of animals, they shackled me and forced a strip of sackcloth into my mouth - the taste was rank and mildewed – stripped me of my possessions, then threw me into their donjon like a common criminal. To make matters worse, I was forced to share a cell with Kord, an elf who is so amoral that I’m convinced he’d think nothing of eating you if his stomach began to grumble. 

I suppose the situation could have been worse. William, my stoat familiar, had been sleeping in one of my spare cloaks, they might have skinned him alive, force fed him to me, then cut out my tongue for dessert. That’s been the sorry fate of more than one Sembian who’s found themselves imprisoned in a foreign gaol.

Thus Kord and I were left to languish in the cell for hours. Kord complained incessently that we were better off in Ashabenford. I quickly tired of my comrade’s grousing, and so I initiated an old (if gruesome) child’s game, “ratball”, a sport which involved us killing rats with good stiff kicks and then kicking their carcasses between us like a ball. Anything to pass the time, I suppose. We wondered what was happening with Ulrick, but the outside world was silent except for the taunting of the guards.

We learned no news of the outside world for hours, until the chancellor, who had returned to the keep with these so-called members of the “order of the Dragons of Wheloon”, inspected us. A man of terse manners and irritable patience, he informed us that we were  to be put on trial soon. The news was not welcome; a quick trial meant a quick hanging. The chancellor also told me that they hoped to capture Aron and Ulrick so they could stand trial with us (Tymora forbid that they should only have two hangings when four gibbet-swain, swinging in a swift breeze, is a far more entertaining display). 

So we waited two nights and a day. Nothing of consequence happened. The guards jeered at us in our cells, especially at Kord which was understandable (since it was an aggrieved elf who was the architect of Cormyr’s recent misery), but still quite disspiriting. I was not completely convinced I was going to die, but I knew that my best hope of survival was to impugn Ulrich’s name at the trial, and such a base act of dishonesty was loathesome to me. Never tell a lie unless you are certain it will not be discovered (and even then, only when it is necessary, for he who tells too many lies is often blind to those truths which can save one’s life). But desperate times call for desperate measures, if not blind panic.

So we continued to wait, and on the second day of our captivity, we received some very shocking news - the Chancellor, who seemed the most temperate of our enemies, was dead. The guard told us that Ulrick had lured him to the town square, and then had him shot with poisoned crossbow bolts. This story was, of course, absurd. The guards promised to kill us, but first they would deal with Ulrick and Aron, who had chosen the moment to single-handedly storm the castle. What wonderful fools those lads can be. The guards departed to battle the intruders; with our cell now unguarded, Kord took a pick from his boot and opened the look on the cell door like an expert thief. We could hear the commotion on the castle's upper floor, and so we bolted to the battle in an attempt to bolster our rescuers. 

Surprisingly, this turned out to be quite a smart move on our part. Our comrades were engaged in a desperate struggle against the surviving Dragons, and the enemy sorcerer, bolstered with spells and employing a necromancer’s touch (such a specimen of Cormyrean nobility), was slowly killing our good Lord Ulrick – Tymora had not been kind to them prior to our arrival. Kord had raided the armory and fired a crossbow bolt into the back of one of the soldiers who was bedevilling Aron, whose great flail was missing its mark more often than it struck. My task was to teach the dragon-blood of the virtues of a studied approach to magic, a task I undertook with relish. With a single spell, I stripped away the magicks that bolstered the sorcerer – six images that diverted killing blows shattered like shards of a broken mirror, his lightning-quick motions became sluggish, and his magical armor crumpled. 

This turned the tide. Without his illusory doubles to protect him, Ulrick drove his greatsword into the sorcerer’s arms and sides, attempting to hew him like an unwelcome tree. It looks impressive, though I must confess that Sir Aron’s fighting style interests me more – I would never have guessed a flail could be such a fell weapon (he once smote an enemy in the neck with such a mighty blow that its head fell from its shoulders). 

With an new enemy at their flank, the enemy found themselves in a dire predicament. One of the guards charged to engage me, but warded by my own spells, I ignored him while I directed a barrage of evocations at the sorcerer as he was battling against Lord Ulrick. After my lightning bolt nearly cut him down, th dragon-blood cast a spell to reestablish his quickness, cast a second spell to bolster his footspeed, then he fled through a door, scaled the castle walls, and escaped into the depths of the city. His fellow Dragons, on the other hand, did not survive the battle, and their loudly spoken oaths to defend Cormyr had fallen upon the deaf ears of the gods. 

We buried the Chancellor and his Dragon zealots with honor, though the people of Wheloon seemed to think that a dignified ceremony was unwarranted. These wretches had endured months of war, famine, loss and a host of other miseries, and now their despite for House Obarskyr and all who followed their banner was an equal of our hatred for the Zhentarim. Still, I must confess to a certain guilty amusement. Is it not the perfect irony that this nation, which had so proudly lorded the greatness of its knights for generations (and who had labelled all Sembians as “honorless curs”) were now themselves fighting like starving dogs in an abandoned kennel? 

The next day, bearing himself in lordly fashion, the victorious Sir Cormaeril assumed the duties (if not the title) of the Lord of Wheloon. He sent a messenger to the Harvestmaster of Monksblade, informing him of the changes that had occurred in the city. Then he did the one thing that most surprised (and alarmed) me; he met with the Thayans, and granted them permission to establish their enclave. He drove a hard bargain: in addition to the bribes they had offered us, the Thayans also promised to remove the dragon that had been preying on the local trade routes, restore the water traffic with Sembia, and import sufficient quantities of grain to feed the masses of Wheloon and its surrounding for a year. It was a good bargain for the people, but any bargain struck with devil-hearts must turn to evil in the end. Also inevitably, those Sembian blackcloaks (whom I am certain murdered the chancellor) will attempt to use me as an instrument to sway the heart of “my lord Ulrick”. They cloak themselves in shadows, but a veritable sun shines on their intent – they wish me to turn Ulrick completely against House Obarskyr and the Purple Dragons, so that in the end I will deliver Wheloon to them as a bauble that will gleam brightly in the crown of whatever nation they truly serve. 

So let us savor this triumph and pretend it is not a disaster. Let us celebrate the glory of my great and valiant lord paladin. Perhaps if we besot ourselves with these old, crooked delusions, it will make the situation seem tolerable for awhile. 

With Love, as ever, thy brother and thy servant,

_Ascarin Nevermoon_


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## MulhorandSage (May 16, 2002)

14th day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372. 
Saerloon.

Dear Ascarin, 

How in Toril do you get yourself into such fixes? ‘Tis a wonder that we have anything to do with you. I say this in jest, as always, but still… a Cormyte _paladin_?! A psychotic elven ranger who (I’d wager half the family fortune on it) has more than a hint of a thief in his bloodline? Have you forgotten the old (and very wise) saying that one should never meddle in the Cormyrean body politic, for it lacks all subtlety and crushes anyone who stumbles into its path like a drunken dragon?

My brother, you are the sweetest idiot I have ever known. In your last letter, you swore to me that this Lord Ulrick meant nothing to you, except as a swordarm to clear away the obstacles that lay between you and your fortune, and a beast of burden to carry your fortune from the deep places of the earth. You told me that he was so handsome that he attracted more than his share of women, which allowed you to take the pickings of those with whom he could not fit into his bed. He was supposed to be a tool for you and nothing more, which (to be frank) is all that the Cormytes have ever been good for. (One need only look at recent events to see what a right and fine mess the noble citizens of Suzail can make of their lives.)

But now you’re traveling with this would-be lord from a traitorous house and acting like his court magician. Don’t deceive yourself! You are not a great mage, my brother; when you and I last spoke, you could barely cast a creditable evocation. Please tell me you have not become so entranced by your schemes that you’ve become blind to the risks you are taking. You have already tantalized the hangman with your pretty neck once, and if you stay, you shall doubtless do so again. Please leave Wheloon as soon as the road to Monksblade becomes open again.

Still, perhaps some good shall come of this; I shall mention at court the fact that you were involved in the removal of the dragon and the restoration of the boat-traffic between Cormyr and Sembia; it may win you some favorable notice. And I shall also keep my ear to the ground concerning the Sembians in Wheloon, whether or not they are a genuine faction, or merely (as I suspect) exiles and pretentious brigands.

Wheloon is not the only place where these Thayan tatterskulls are stirring; they’re endeavoring to establish themselves in Sembia, and entrenching themselves quickly, despite the fact that everyone knows they’re devil-pacting slavers and gnoll-bloods who copulate with demons. I fear that when their liches cast the spells that bring down our cities, we’ll be the fools who’ll have sold them the components.

More is happening in local politics, of course, a veritable labyrinth of events and scandal, as usual. Incidentally, the fashionable color this season is yellow (a hideous bright yellow), and Velker Hamsbrun’s new spell, a miniature pyrotechnics.display that orbits his head like an Ioun Stone, has become the talk of the colleges. It is a trifle, of course; I thought Damt Huminbyr’s new spell that separates a familiar from his master and makes them unable to come within close proximity was the most clever thing I’ve seen lately, but as you’ve said on numerous occasions “Gevrael, you’re so damn practical you could pass for a Durpari.” 

As I write this, I am watching two suitors wait for me in the foyer. Father chose them for me, of course; they’re a pair of muttonweights with excessive manners and absolutely no wits. Your brother Argrad stole uncle Malveanon’s candles of emotion and lit them in the hall; I’ve kept them waiting for three chimes, and they’re starting to become quite jealous of each other. You’d like it Ascarin; you always enjoyed watching stupid people kill each other (no doubt that’s what attracted you to Cormyr). Perhaps one of them will goad the other into a duel, it would be very amusing, though more than likely, I’ll have to settle for fisticuffs. Oh well! A girl has to take what fun she can get!

Anyway, my brother, please take care of yourself, and do not forget where your home truly lies. You have not yet entirely burnt out your welcome, no matter what our father may say.

_Your loving sister,
Gevrael_


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## MulhorandSage (Jun 6, 2002)

*The Smile of Chauntea*
_Part Two:_ 
16th day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372. 

My sweet and evercaring sister Gevrael, 

The news you bring me from court seems trivial, as do these new fashions of spells. Even your inexplicably petty malice toward your suitors (is there Drow in our bloodline, my dearest?) does little to hold my interest, for the affairs of the moment are all-consuming. Ulrick continues to drive toward a chasm on the charger of his ambition, and I am tangled in the reins.

But first let me speak a little of my companion, Aron who (though Cormyte born) seems more alien here than I. He is a fine oaf in combat, oak-limbed, tall and fair of face, the sort of man that _you_ would happily bed, admire his form like a fine colt, and then discard as soon as you were done. His manner grates on me; not to the level where it is a mortal offense – however, his judgment is wanting in the extreme. 

Consider this. Aron, the fine-featured Wyvernspur stableboy-knight of Cormyr, decided that the great task of securing our fortune and helping his fellow Cormytes in the midst of famine and ruin was too boring for him. Boring! What could this troll-head be thinking? He decided that the affairs of this place were too small for one of his stature, so he set out onto the streets of Wheloon and publically announced that he, Aron Wyvernspur, was now founding a grand order of knighthood. This delusion lasted but a few short minutes, until Aron made his offer to the first able-bodied soldier we met and was promptly reminded that to organize such an order without the patronage of the royal house of Cormyr was a crime punishable by death. This revelation cowed the lad. 

I reminded the down-hearted Sir Aron of the proper ways of knighthood as I had always known them: find a squire, train him to knighthood, then repeat the process and slowly build a consort of vassals, so people would not suspect what you were doing until it had come to pass. But deliberation is a quality that is even in less abundance in Wheloon than food.

I suppose I should be thankful to young Wyvernspur for providing me with a comic diversion in such grim surroundings. Between the trials of our “Lord” Ulrick, the machinations of the Thayans and the Sembians and the insane laws of Cormyr that were never intended for times as grim as these… well, the body politic is an infected place that neither cleric nor god can heal.

So we gathered in the keep and were left to mull over the list of Wheloon’s problems, when two new ones were brought to our attention. 

First, a series of murders has been occuring in the city. The victims had their throats slashed, and a paper with a skull set in the center of a dark sun was inserted into their throats. It appears Cyric, having been spanked by the gods, is attempting to solidify his hold on the realm of cutthroats. The magnificent dark sun has now been reduced to a back alley bloodletter. I could almost be less than happy about it.

The second revelation was brought to us by the council of merchants, who had a grave concern – there was a scarcity of coin. Wheloon had goods, but not the currency, to trade with the influx of Thayans and Sembians who would be importing food into the city once the Thayans had dealt with the dragon. The amount of coin we would need to replenish the city’s coffers was staggering – I believe the figure was three million pieces of gold. The coins had to be Cormyte; Sembian coins had no value here, and the minting of currency was – you guessed it – a crime punishable by death. The only way to get such an amount was to face the dragon, but we did not know the whereabouts of its hoard, whereas the Thayans who had promised to drive the dragon away undoubtedly knew where to find its treasure.

The solution that it occurred to Ulrick was the one the Sembians encouraged me to whisper in his ear – separate Wheloon from Cormyr, at least for the duration of the crisis. I urged him against this – surely if we waited, other events would occur beyond our current reckoning, and perhaps easier solutions would come. He said nothing, but I know his heart was against my counsel – which is as I planned. For now I have advised Ulrick against separation, so if I am captured by the Cormytes (and not slain on sight), I will be able to honestly tell an inquisitor that I urged Ulrick stay loyal, but Ulrick is almost certain to disregard my counsel, which shall make the Sembians happy (provided they do not disbelieve me when I’m forced to tell them that I gave Ulrick this advice because the paladin has a contrary nature).

To add a second level to the labyrinth, yet more problems presented themselves. First, there was the matter of the former guards of the citadel of Wheloon, who had fled the city and turned to banditry; they had burnt the keep of one of Wheloon’s vassals. Second, the beholder who blocked the way between Suzail and Wheloon was scrying on us, and casting some devil-magic that tormented him in his dreams with the image of a terrible eye. Third, we were visited by a Thayan lady, who claimed the right of hospitality and took refuge in our keep. She said her name was Elebeyth, and claimed that she knew Szass Tamm.

Sweet Azuth, what next? One of the Manshoon upon our heads?

Kord, our sweet ranger, had had enough. He had not shed blood in two days, and thus was practically shaking from a fit of despite. He ventured out toward Monksblade, where our network of gates lay, and once again encountered a squad of knights who claimed to be paladins of Chauntea, in service of one called the Harvestmaster. Upon his return, I ventured to the local priestess of Chauntea, who claimed that she knew not of such an order at Monksblade.

Kord returned to the area, with Aron and I in tow, leaving Ulrick to mind our affairs in Wheloon. In one of the villages near Monksblade, we heard a tale of families disappearing from farmsteads, and we decided to investigate. Kord found signs that the bodies had been dragged from the farmhouse in the direction of Monksblade. We followed the trail.

As we approached Monksblade in the early morning, we were waylaid by the paladins of Chauntea, who came upon us in a column twenty strong, led by a mail-clad captain who bore a great staff and informed us that we had to turn back, in thr name of the Harvestmaster of Monksblade. But Kord and Aron, being men of contrary moods, were not receptive to his demand, and we quarreled. In the end, I spake soothing words to ease the situation, then inquired as to the history of this paladinly order. The captain stammered, as if caught by surprise, then attacked us.

It came as only a minor surprise. I let fly a barrage of missiles, while Kord invoked the power of some minor nature spirit, and the fields became a tanglenest of grappling vines. It was a spell that nearly killed the company once before (entangling one’s fellows is not wise when the half-orc raiders you are fighting are armed with bows and you have nought but sword and shield), but this time, the tactic worked splendidly. I levitated above the field and brought thunder and lightning down upon our foes. Aron fared less well; the lad became so tightly wrapped with vines that he could not advance against the Captain, and so he could not quench his bloodthirst. Fortunately, the enemy troops fared no better. The soldiers, who turned out to be skeletons clad in plate mail that obscured their body, quickly crumpled. And after taking bow shots and my best spells, the enemy Captain disintegrated into a pile of snow and perished.

Yes my dear, he was a simulacrum. I have heard tell of such children of frost, but it is remarkable – and quite frightening, given the power required to create such a thing – to meet one in the icy flesh.

I garnished the simulacrum’s staff, and we retreated back to Wheloon. A raven flying overhead, attempted to guide more skeletons to our position, but I shot it with a ball of flame from the wand that the Thayans had gifted me, and the creature toppled from the sky. Aron charged over to it and stabbed it repeatedly with his longspear. We then returned to Wheloon in a parody of triumph. The real enemy had been scratched just badly enough to strengthen his resolve to crush us. Sometimes it is better to leave an enemy alone than it is to bloody him.

To our surprise, no one had tried to kill Ulrick in our absence. The Lady Elbeyth examined the simulacrum’s staff and determined it was an object of necromancy. And thus we suddenly suddenly why the Harvestmaster of Monksblade had chosen that name.

Ulrick seems more determined than ever to declare his independence; he acts more like a lord by the day. I do not know what frightens me more; that he shall bring down the retribution of the Steel Regent on our heads, or that the crown of Comyr has become so weak that Ulrick might actually succeed in his designs, which does not bode well for the fate of the larger realm.

Contemplate this thought, sister. The beholder that controls the land between is a terrifying creature of great magical puissance. It is indeed a barrier to us. But one such horror should not be sufficient to stay the forces of a place as powerful as Suzail if the Cormytes are in a determined mood. Am I not correct?

Unless the beholder is harbinger of a greater menace with designs on this place, or the reason that Cormyr stays its hand is because Ulrick is in secret league with them?

One cannot sleep with both eyes open, but these times seem to call for it. 

So, with a beholder to the west, a dragon and a necromancer to the east, raiders and trolls on our doorstep, cutthroats and Thayans in our midst, and the inevitable wrath of Cormyr gathering on the horizon, we have discovered that our virtue and compassion have become a more unyielding trap than can be found in any dungeon. I know not how this endeavor will end, but I would offer you this counsel: should you ever come across a wager at court that concerns our survival, _bet against it_.

As ever, I wish you prosperity and happiness sister, even though your dour brother is (as ever) more fatalistic than the walls of Kelemvor.

Your brother,
_Ascarin Nevermoon_

PS Do not abuse all the suitors in Saerloon, or you shall need to resort to magic to win anyone’s affections, and that is something I would strongly advise against. For Azuth's sake, find someone you can be kind toward. A.N.


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## Dinkeldog (Jun 6, 2002)

Good story!

How often do you meet?


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## Broccli_Head (Jun 7, 2002)

I'm a sucker for a new story in Faerun. Good beginning. I like the correspondence-style. 

I would encourage the paladin to contact the Steel Regent.


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## MulhorandSage (Jun 7, 2002)

We game every week, alternating on a three week cycle between games.

As for contacting the Steel Regent, I don't know how the campaign will unfold, but I'm sure he'll be meeting her representatives at some point down the road.

Scott Bennie


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## MulhorandSage (Jun 17, 2002)

_Part Two:_ 
19th day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372. 

Dear Gevrael, 

The time has come to discuss the fate of my comrade Kord… or should I say ex-comrade? While I am not completely displeased by the turn of events, they were messy, and therefore quite regrettable. 

After having been subjected to the unpleasantness of politics in an era of Cormyte anarchy, our fellowship was all quite eager to experience the simple joy of swinging a blade and watching an enemy die. Kord the elf enjoyed the exercise more than the rest of us, provided that he could substitute “firing an arrow at eighty paces” for the proximity of a sword duel, (and provided that his quarry was facing away from him). For when it became obvious that we had to face a worthy adversary, Kord’s usual response was to run away as quickly as his feet could muster and leave his comrades to die. He was a very good scout, but a terrible companion-in-arms.

Once, when we were attacking an encampment of raiders near Ashenbenford, with Aron and Ulrick armed only with swords (and the raiders armed with bows), Kord came up with the inspired plan that if he was to cast a spell and entangle everyone on the battlefield, we could prevail. After the battle, when one of our comrades lay dead (after spending as much time fighting the writhing plants as the enemy), Kord insisted that the debacle was _our_ fault because we were not carrying bows and crossbows. In other words, rather than observing the situation and adjusting his tactics to fit, Kord displayed true elven arrogance by insisting that whenever the world didn’t adjust itself to fit his perspective, the world was wrong. No wonder the elves whimpered and Retreated from the world. 

Kord also had the annoying habit of lording the elves’ ancient achievements as examples of their superiority. I only shut him up once, when I reminded him that humans were one of the founder races of Faerûn and that elves were mere shoddy imports from some foreign realm. This did not sit well with him.

Anyway, getting back to the story at hand, our good paladin Ulrick wanted to kill something, preferably something that qualified under the category of “very evil”, and we were of like mind. Now Wheloon has eight lords who live outside the city who are foresworn as its vassals, and we reasoned that their loyalty could be quite useful to us in our current situation. We also learned that one of their estates had been overrun by a band of brigands (who were formerly the guards of Castle Wheloon, who made this career change after we arrived in the city). Kord was sent ahead to scout the area and discovered that the brigands had murdered the local lord and lady, and were now holed up in the lord’s keep. We needed to capture the keep, kill the bandits, and show the local lords that we would protect them (or at least avenge them).

Kord kept a vigil on the keep, and was rewarded when he spotted a crew of six young men, all of who had the demeanor of farmboys, building a catapult on the outskirts of the keep. Kord waylaid the head of the farmboys while he was attempting to relieve himself – it’s amazing how talkative people can be when a knife is held to their genitals – and learned that he was Sir Alfred, the son of the late local lord. Sir Alfred’s fiancée was still being held prisoner in the keep. The boys – who seemed to be wrought of the same reckless fabric as Ulrick – had the brilliant plan of using the catapult to launch themselves over the keep’s walls and then using potions of dove feathers to waft gently down to the roof before they splattered. When Ulrick arrived, he thought it was a brilliant plan (paladins!), but ordered Sir Alfred and his men to stay back and leave the assault to us.

Once we arrived at this quaint sitting, we immediately started debating our plan of attack. With Ulrick at hand (and with a deficit of stealth magicks at our disposal – I _never_ have the proper spells to fit these lackbrains’ crazed schemes), we chose a frontal assault. We crept to the keep during the day and found it lifeless and deserted. Kord was sent to lurk in ambush should any bandit escape through the front gate, while the local farmboys flexed their muscles and deluded themselves into thinking they were important by keeping watch on the tunnel entrance of the castle’s bolthole. Their task would turn out to be far more fateful than I suspected, especially for Kord.

I suggested that we penetrate the keep at dusk, when the shadows were at their longest and our movements would be most difficult to spot. But we tarried a few minutes too long. The keep came alive at nightfall, and the sudden fear that we were facing something unnatural set us to pointless bickering, giving the enemy time to set torches along the castle walls. When we arrived, our approach was seen and they were ready for us. We climbed the manor walls to find several squads of archers waiting for us, perched on balconies surrounding the castle keep.

Nonetheless, although they were prepared for us, they were not prepared for the Thayan wand of fire that I wielded. Our cousin Caecason would have been delighted with the result, given that he once burnt down a manor house too (albeit through malice and not magic). Two squads of archers were burned alive, screaming for only a fraction of a second before their charred husks fell to the ground, and once I lit their pyre, the enemy resistance crumbled. After a half minute of battle had elapsed, I contented myself to watch Aron and Ulrick flounder as they attempted to corner the enemy (which they did after some effort), and tried to dispel the enchantment that barred the door. The latter was a task beyond my power to affect; the door held firm even though my countermagic was more puissant than any I had ever cast. (Of course, Ulrick and Aron were scornful that I had but one such countermagic prepared. As gratitude would require humility, it is excluded from the list of Cormyrean virtues, which may go far in explaining this kingdom’s sorry state.)

So we broke through into the stables, which adjoined the main house but did not benefit from its protections; here Aron showed his stabling skill by releasing the horses and keeping them under his control so we were not trampled to death as they were herded through the main gate. Then, we turned our attention to the main house. Using an anvil or some other heavy implement (I cannot quite recall what instrument we chose - Ulrick’s head perhaps) we broke through weak points in the burning wall and strode into the manor house. It was already well on its way to becoming a flaming ruin. 

The defenders had fled; no doubt they had gone through the bolthole that Lord Alfred had mentioned. We did indeed find Alfred’s betrothed inside the keep – but alas, she was dead, she lay alone in the castle bath with her throat slit, wearing a bloody wedding gown. This was a most appalling sight, for she was fair and strong of frame, so if she had lived she would have been likely to bear very strong children, if she possessed no ambition for higher things. Such a doleful waste – why those animals killed her, when they could have bound her and dragged her through the bolthole to be kept as a useful bargaining chip, is beyond my comprehension. But I have always found evil difficult to fathom – especially when it’s wasteful, so dreadfully wasteful.

Our attention was now turned to the bolthole, to whose outer exit Kord had retreated once it was obvious that no raiders would be coming through the gate. This, too, was a very sad sight. Kord had left no brigand alive – but Lord Alfred and the farmboys were also dead. Our lanterns revealed a trail in the grass, which we followed to discover another dead farmboy, lying facedown on the ground about thirty yards from the bolthole with an arrow-hole in his back. I was fearful that more raiders were lurking in the woods, but Kord assured us that this fear was groundless – _he_ had killed the farmboys.

We stood agape in the Cormyrean night, listening with disbelieving ears to Kord’s explanation. The elf had parked himself at the bolthole when the brigands began to pour out. He had cheerfully began to slaughter them, but when he took a step back to find better footing, Lord Alfred decided to rush in and win glory for himself. Believing that Lord Alfred was a pup who was about to be cut to pieces, Kord grabbed him and was trying to throw him out of the fight when one of the brigands thrust a longsword through the young lord’s chest, killing him before he could draw another breath.

From their vantage point, fighting behind them in the dim light of a half moon, Lord Alfred’s braintrust of farmhands perceived Kord as having grabbed their liege-lord to assist in his death. So they attacked Kord, who calmly drew two blades and killed both brigand and farmhand – the only blood on his clothes belonged to his foes. One of the farmhands wisely decided that it would be prudent to flee from this elven threshing machine, but Kord does not believe in allowing an enemy to live, so he drew his bow and calmly shot the farmboy in the back, killing him instantly.

“So he did not stop when you called for his surrender?” I asked, trying to find some way to allow him to wrest himself from the situation. Kord was bewildered by the question and by our concern; the idea that anyone would object to killing this poor farmboy, merelh because he had stopped posing an immediate threat, was beyond the elf's comprehension. 

“Warning? Why would I give a warning?” he replied.

Ulrick was troubled, and debated what needed to be done. He was loth to punish the elf, but clearly Kord had done a grievous wrong, and Ulrick had no allowances to let it go unpunished, either as liegelord of the land, or as a paladin of Torm. According to the laws of chivalry, once the elf insulted Lord Alfred by laying hands on him, his vassals had no choice but to avenge the insult, and the fact that Lord Alfred had died had made it even worse.

Ulrick fumbled over the appropriate punishment, even though it was painfully obvious that whatever judgment he decided upon, Kord was too self-important and willfully amoral to accept it. Ulrick was muttering something about naming Aron as the deceased farmhand’s champion in a trial by combat, when I finally moaned to him: “You know what needs to be done. Just have at it and be done with it.”

So Ulrick arrested Kord for the farmhand’s murder, and (as expected) the elf immediately bolted. I could have tried to strike him down with a spell, but I doubt even my best lightning bolt would have killed him in one stroke, and I would rather not have given him reason to further begrudge my life, so I let him go. He ran into a copse of trees where the moonlight was beshadowed, and faded from human sight, and we did not see him again.

Alas! Kord was an elven swaggerer of a kind that had not been seen since the fall of Myth Drannor, but he was also a true arrowsinger with one of the steadiest hands and eyes I have ever witnessed, and because of that he was often useful to us. But the fool's bloodthirst and his lack of understanding of the virtue of forebearance frequently made him a curse, so it is good to be rid of him. Unfortunately he knows secrets about our discoveries (particularly the ones we made in Galath’s Roost), that I do not want to set loose in the open world. But there is not much I can do about it now, I forsook the chance to cast a spell, and so Kord is gone, and we are not likely to see him again. I trust you now understand why I view his absence with a mix of emotions.

So our tattered fellowship returned to Wheloon, not at all elated by what we had seen and done. Ulrick half-heartedly placed a bounty of five hundred gold coins on Kord’s head, with the provision that the elf was to be delivered to us alive. Ha! As if any local bounty hunter could catch him! And thus the farce ends in a bigger farce, and is true to itself; though I would wager heavily that if Kord the Wolfhead knew just what a niggardly price Lord Ulrick had been set for each of his fine pointed ears, he might feel so grievously wronged that he'd return to bedevil Ulrick just to see how high the paladin would be willing to set the price.

No matter. It is done, and the sole benefit of this affair is that Kord’s misdeeds overshadowed mine, so I will not have to endure an endless stream of petty jibes about the fire at the manor house. I hope Kord is gone forever. We have too many enemies as it stands.

So that is all for today. The dream of the dracolich, and our subsequent (if understandable) panic, will have to wait until my next correspondence.

Oh, and don’t spend too much on potions. You never know when you’ll need the money.

Warm regards,
Your Loving brother,

Ascarin Nevermoon


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## Broccli_Head (Jun 17, 2002)

*I hate elves!*

Kord was one bad seed. Surprised that Ulrick did not cut him down. What was the rationale behind that?


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## MulhorandSage (Jun 18, 2002)

Well, Ulrick is a paladin of Torm (god of loyalty) and felt that he owed Kord an honorable trial as payment for past loyalty, so cutting him down was out of the question.

Also, it was a moonlit night, and Kord's vision was far superior to the humans, and with his Stealthg ability, it was pretty easy for him to escape. As noted elsewhere, Ulrick's not fond of ranged weapons.


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## AvarielAvenger (Jun 18, 2002)

Impressive story hour.  The diary format is written very well, and the characters seem to have great depth so far.  It is unfortunate that Kord turned out to be an untrustworthy companion.  I look forward to reading more of this story hour, should you continue.


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## TheWiseWarlord (Jun 22, 2002)

So is this story hour going to be updated again, or has the author given up?


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## MulhorandSage (Jun 22, 2002)

We gamed again tonight, so there'll be a write-up in the next few days.


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## TheWiseWarlord (Jun 22, 2002)

Great.  I'm looking forward to it.


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## MulhorandSage (Jun 29, 2002)

22nd day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372. 

Dear Gevrael,

Thank you for your recent hospitality and understanding in our recent stop. I must confess I was surprised by father’s (relative) courtesy – do you think he knows of Ulrick’s importance in the machinations of certain Sembian parties? We've both known for a long time that a heart of cold, barbed iron beats underneath the courtier's lace and magician's silk.

I wanted to explain this to you in person, but our departure was in haste, so this letter must suffice. It began with Ulrick, of course: the big lug had dreams again. One would imagine that the dreams of a paladin would consist of visions of epic struggle and great quests, like the wildest tales of a cunning Cormyte tavern-bard who sifts through knightly purses by telling them the only tales they wish to hear (regardless of how obnoxious they become in the retelling). I imagine most paladins dream of the deathscreams of dragons and the touch of chaste women. What else do they have to dream about?

But not Ulrick. His dreams are different than those of other men, more portentous and vivid. I can only imagine what is like to be him at night, when the comforts of a woman’s touch fade with the coming of slumber, and there is not a scrap of dream-glory to be had, only torment.

And that night, his torment was the vision of a lone dracolich, death-boned, steel fanged, raising its great horned limbs through a star-blue portal, destined to bring a final death to Cormyr.

####

Weeks ago, before we arrived in Wheloon, we had a chance encounter whose importance was lost on me until this moment. We had found three dead Orcs in the wilderness, on the path between Monksblade and Wheloon, one of them clutching an amulet with an odd symbol engraved on it. Unfortunately, the events of Wheloon had distracted me from researching the amulet, but now I suddenly remembered that it bore a great similarity to the sign of the Sammasterites, a cult which holds that undead dragons are the true gods of Toril, to be nurtured and worshipped as a prelude to their coming age of supremacy.

A cult whose ultimate goal is the creation of those same abominations that Ulrick had beheld in his vision.

It had struck me as odd that something as base and weak as an Orc-band could control something as important as the portals. Now it occurred to me that their mastery of the portals was due to information that they had _stolen_ from their portal's true masters, the Sammasterites. 

When I informed Ulrick of my theory, the bedevilled paladin immediately declared that we would travel to Suzail and warn the crown of the dracolich threat, despite the rather dramatic consequences of such an act. A reminder of the beholder-mage that blocked the path was sufficient to dissuade his (dubious) lordship from that course of action – barely – but the portals still held our attention. Two portals in particular seemed to demand further exploration: one which led to a wine cellar where Kord was attacked by someone who was dressed like a Sembian, and another which led to a ruined shrine to Mystra. So we spent a half-day riding to Monksblade (the pair should consider themselves fortunate to have a Sembian companion who actually knows a thing or two about horses) found the cliff opening, and returned to the portal room.

It is a marvel, this chamber. Sixteen or so portals, some dead, some blocked  by stone, others only slumbering, doorways etched into the stone by the craft and magicks of ancient Netheril. When the appropriate word is spoken, the portals become alive, sparking to red as they ignite, then cooling to a green miasma as they settle, finally fading first to a blue shimmer (as pretty as the crown of Mystra) and then to dark grey stonework when the doors are closed. We divined the opening word for many of these doors on our previous venture, a disastrous expedition where nearly all of us had died. Now that we had mustered our strength, we were eager to renew the assault. 

Finding the chamber unguarded by the Orcs, Ulrick once again entertained the idea of using the portals to get to Suzail, even though none of the doors would allow us to circumvent the obstacle of the beholder. Unfortunately, driving a point into a paladin’s head is enough to vex any man; a long argument followed that rattled me, and so I forsook my usual caution. Attempting to end the dissention before my headache became too great to endure. I stepped into the wine cellar portal, ready for (the expected) ambush.

Yes, I had remembered what Kord had told us about the archer who had been lurking in waiting. But what I failed to remember was the very powerful magical trap that was situated at the door. Idiot! As soon as I stepped through the portal, I was suddenly surrounded by a coriolis of lightning. Instinctively, I dodged to one side, otherwise the lightning would have done more to me than to smoke my robes and singe my legs and hands. The instant I stepped away from the trap, I immediately found myself wearing a thief on my back. Azuth, I have never beheld such speed! He plunged a dagger into my right kidney, and gave it a twist for good measure.

I would have been dead then, had it not been for Aron. The fool raced across the portal, bearing the brunt of another lightning bolt, and charged the thief. The distraction allowed me to stagger backwards through the portal, still clutching my side with one hand as shakily pryed a healing drought from my belt, and I quaffed it before it could fall through my fingers. I have never seen so much of my own blood in my life. 

Normally, I despise the taste of these brews, but for once I welcomed the burning sensation as it raced down my throat, (tasting much like rat's dung floating in a lamp oil soup) but the light-headedness and the pain in my side suddenly halted. I was not completely whole – my side still throbbed like a succubus in heat – but I always hate to let an injury go without a response, so I steadied myself, cast a spell of _myriad images_ and prepared to rejoin the fracas.

Alas, my comrades were not faring well. Seeing himself outnumbered, our quarry covered himself with magical dust – vanishing from sight, of course, and then he fired arrows at us while he danced nimbly around the cellar. 

I never dreamt I would miss having Kord at my side.

“Cast a fireball!” Ulrick barked to me as yet another mightily swordstroke connected with empty air. “Fill the entire room!” But the paladin had clearly lost his mind. How could anyone forget that any thief worth his salt would be able to hide from my fireball in one of the room’s many crooks and cracks, while we would all be burnt to a crisp? Not to mention what the fireball would have done to the wine – burning Cormyte manorhouses is one thing, but destroying good Sembian wine is quite another.

Still, Ulrick had reason to worry. Twice the thief stabbed him in the back, in parts of his body where his heavy armor afforded little protection. I began to cast a spell to sense enchantments; within twenty heartbeats, I would sense where the cutpurse was standing from the very magical dust that hid him from our sight, and if tried to disrupt the spell, it’d be likely he’d expose himself to my comrades and be cut down like a dog.

The thief countered my spell by dancing around us and whispering a word to shut down the portal. Fearing that we would be trapped, we panicked. I dove through the fading gatewayl back into the portal chamber, and the others followed. 

When we arrived on the other side, we realized that the thief had crossed the portal with us, so Ulrick decided to reopen the portal and return to the cellar. Unfortunately, as soon as he and Aron crossed the portal, the trap came to life again. Ulrick was electrocuted and fell dead to the floor; his armor was smoking and his father’s greatsword, sheathed in heavy cloth straps and fastened to his back, fell from his back and smoldered on the ground. Clearly it would never strike a blow again. 

Aron was grievously injured, so I rolled my other healing potion to him. Once he quaffed it, he was ready for the fight. The armor that the Thayans had given him fortified him against thief’s most deadly attacks, so our adversary decided to play a waiting game. The thief fled the cellar and hid in the upper levels of the building, but fortunately he was alone. The slow but diligent Aron carefully searched the building and finally discovered the thief hiding in an attic crawlspace, the dust’s dweomer having worn off over time. Aron smote the thief with several mighty blows, flaying him to death.

So! Our enemy was dead, brutally harvested by my strong-armed companion. But Ulrick was also slain, and I was in no mood for funerals. I bade Aron to return with Ulrick’s body across the threshold before the trap reset, but he suggested that we should inspect the area outside the building first. To my surprise, his counsel was the wiser. That’s how we discovered that the portal led to our home city of Saerloon, where healing would be much easier to find than in Cormyr, and Ulrick could be raised from death to renew his task.

Now you know why I demand such secrecy from you, sister.

We stripped the thief’s body of its possessions, taking it as weregild for the priests of Azuth, whom we would employ to return Ulrick to the tragic lands of the living. Remembering the wounds he had given me, I spat on the thief’s body, a satisfying if petty act. I almost wish I had a raven familiar to feast upon its eyes. Aron changed his bloody clothes, and we wrapped Ulrick in a large hooded cloak and stood on either side of him, carrying him like a drunken man who had passed out from the excesses of the night.

Our deception was made much easier by our fortuitous arrival at festival time. I had quite forgotten what a gaudy spectacle the Ravenswatch frivolity can be; the flight of the ravens from the jail to the citadel is impressive, of course, but the swaggering host of mages that follows it, casting their "spells", is laughably pretentious. None of these pups could challenge the city fathers’ as the Ravenswatch founders did a century ago. They are primping, posturing and perfumed pack of little beasts like poodles, who are utterly untroubled by the fact that they are lapdogs walking in a world of wolves. 

But they did provide a distraction, in case the thief’s comrades were watching the building. Singing a drunken, off-key ballad, we bards of the damned carted the huge paladin (with Aron bearing most of the burden) down the clogged streets of Saerloon, eventually dragging him to the House of Azuth.

After three clangs on the heavy iron gate, we managed to rouse a half-drunken acolyte, who shivered in a hastily thrown nightshirt as rain began to fall. All the high priests were away at festival (probably listening to the Ravenswatch bravos tell drunken stories of spellcasting mishaps and childish pranks) so after some haggling and exchange of coin, we hauled Lord Ulrick's paladinly corpse down a (much too lengthy) passage and several long flights of solemn stone stairs down into the temple’s necropolis. And to think that I enjoyed hiding in those catacombs as a boy! 

We laid Ulrick upon a slab in its catacombs, covered it with a sheet of canvass, and hoped that the rats didn’t pry into it. (Fortunately the body had not yet begun to smell). Our business could not be concluded until the morning, so we retired into the depths of the city and looked for lodging.

I really did _not_ wish to see father, so I took Aron to the Winding Serpent Inn. The big Cormyte was famished and demanded a meal fit for three hungry men, but the sight of a man in such heavy armor at festival time was an affront to the innkeeper, and so they refused to serve the Cormyte. Ah, what a satisfying turn that was, after being a target for everyone’s spittle in the Dales and in Cormyr for so many miserable months.

“Why should they care what I wear?” Aron growled as we sat down at a table.

“Why should you care?” I replied. “I’ve seen you dance around naked.”

“I only do that once a month,” Aron protested. “For religious purposes.” The knight is a devotee of Selune. Selune! Have you ever heard such foolishness? What good can come of worshipping the Moon, unless one wants to be a howling idiot?

I ordered a huge meal, and tormented Aron by forcing him to watch as I devoured the repast. Grievous injury does encourage a certain hardy appetite. Once I had finished the meal, I purchased the use of a grand suite, to celebrate my return to civilization in the appropriate style. Aron’s keen (and hungry) glance espied a man who was carefully watching us while I ate. I didn’t know if he was a thief or someone more sinister, so I retired to my room, had food brought up, and retired to bed. Though I was sleeping in the city of my birth, both Kord and Ulrick were gone, and their absence brought only a grave discomfort. Enemies seemed to be everywhere.


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## Broccli_Head (Jun 30, 2002)

*in the middle?*

doesn't seem that you are quite finished!

How could you let Ulrick die?
I know that adventure. I glad to see someone playing it. Anyway, looking forward to the conclusion of that letter.

BH


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## MulhorandSage (Jul 24, 2002)

I was afraid for our safety, even in the heart of Saerloon, so I conjured a _rope trick_ and scurried up the rope to rest while Aron guarded me. It was not a comfortable sleep, but one does the best that one can in such circumstances, and at least my gravest fears did not come to pass. I passed the night unmolested, then ate a quick breakfast and prepared to return to the temple of Azuth to see if they could work an undeserved miracle on our dear impetuous paladin.

Before we went to retrieve Ulrick’s body, I noticed Aron fumbling through his pack and uncovering a damp parchment (his wineskin was leaking) with barely legible writing. I asked him what it was.

”Oh,” Aron said. “I’d almost forgotten about that. It’s a letter I found on the person we killed in the wine shop.”

Immediately I snatched the letter out of his hand, regretting that I had not been more observant earlier. It was – to say the least – interesting correspondence.

_“Treibor,

Kell and Gregor have gone missing. I think these demon-cursed Orcs have got them. I have signs(?) of the others using the portals. The rubble in the portal room has been cleared away and I have found fresh pools of blood there. However, the glyph that was still in the temple has been triggered but no one was found wandering about. You should remain here to guard the wine shop while I return to the tower by way of the temple portal to warn the others. Be ready to shut down the portal system if need be.

Kayll

P.S. The Masters are close to completing their great task. Even in death the pool will restore you to serve our great lords even in death, so fear not. Our sacrifice will pave the way for our great lord’s rule.”_

I take the letter and set it among my papers and scrolls. Aron had made some even more illegible scratchings on the back; I think he was using it to record an inventory of treasures. The fact that the big oaf is literate is a great (and perhaps terrifying) surprise. 

The reference to the “temple portal” seemed to point to only one place; months ago, we followed one of the portals we found near Galath’s Roost and discovered an ancient shrine to Mystryl (the progenitor of our most beloved goddess Mystra). Unfortunately when we examined the place, Aron triggered a glyph, and since his skill at dodging spells rivals that of a drunken kobold, he was immediately blinded. We then retreated back to Ashbeneford, where we begged the priestess of Chauntea to restore his sight. The matter clearly demanded further study – the place was so ancient that it was almost certainly beyond the knowledge of either the local Mystraites or Azuthites, so the best way to explore it was first-hand. But first we needed to restore Ulrick to life. 

We arrived at the temple of Azuth and emerged to find Ulrick clutching a robe as he woozily emerged from the afterdeath. 

“I suppose it is a good thing that Torm is such a _forgiving_ god,” I say with a smile. This is not the first time the knightly lummox has fallen in the line of duty. Ulrick, as usual, does his best to ignore the jibe, although this time it’s probably due to trauma and exhaustion, not natural forbearance. But even if death did not diminish a man, it taxes them to the innermost fiber, and one need only look at the haggard look on Ulrick’s pallid face, and a stagger that’s one step removed from a zombie’s gait, to see that Ulrick has not completely rejoined the living. He’s certainly in no shape to confront our enemies, so I decide to retreat to the only place in Saerloon that offers a modicum of safety – father’s estate.

Father treats me with the usual cold formality. No one takes me to task for bringing a pair of big sweaty Cormyte human-horses into the house (perhaps your suitors have accustomed the staff to the habits of the breed), though I wish they had, as redress to the future injuries I’ll suffer when we return to Cormyr.

So that’s why we were at the house. I understand you had other business, on which even _I_ am not so foolhardy to speculate. We were given rooms in the west hall, and if anything is broken there, it’s Aron’s fault. Once we rested, and a color other than green had taken bloom in Ulrick’s cheeks, we sat down by the Wolfwicker fireplace and discussed the situation. The reason we had left Wheloon was to explore the portal network of Galath’s Roost and to prevent the Sammasterites from unleashing a dracolich upon Cormyr. There was little left to do in Saerloon, so the next logical step was to explore the abandoned shrine of Mystryl.

Not wishing to repeat the same mistake we made at the wine shoppe (falling into a trap twice. We _are_ such idiots!), I insisted that each of us recall whatever we could remember from our previous expedition. About the only thing Aron can remember is the glyph that blinded him. Ulrick sighs and mutters under his breath that Kord had the best memory of all of us.

“Well, to be honest, I was lost in thought over the uses of the portal system,” I confess. “Not to mention I was barely able to catch my breath after we escaped from that other portal. You remember the tentacle thing, that cross between a shambling mound and a otuyugh…”

Aron shudders.

“I remember,” Ulrick says. “It was a very starry night.”

“The moon had gone behind the mountains,” Aron added; as a devotee of Selune, he ought to know such things. “I climbed up the slope and we saw the pool and the statue of Mystra…”

“It was Mystryl,” Ulrick corrected. “An unaging statue of the goddess, standing in the pool. Then Aron touched it…”

“And I won my wager with Kord that _you_ would be the one we’d need to drag back to the healer,” I smile. “Well, I think I’ll need to make a small detour and see if the local Thayan mageries has an _erase_ spell at an affordable price.”

“They let the Thayans into Sembia?” Aron wondered.

“I heard _somebody_ actually let them enter Cormyr,” I smiled, looking at Ulrick. He’s too busy making plans to empty the Enclave’s stock of healing potions to react. One day, I’ll find a taunt that will truly test his patience.

There is a saying in Sembia: “nothing proves one’s manhood like shopping”; there is truth in the saying, as barter requires a forceful will, a silver tongue, and a sharp eye (and even sharper mind). I suppose those who ply their trade in ancient ruins struggling to best magical beasts may dispute the claim, but I will confess that I am less nervous facing a troll than I am these Thayans. I keep one hand on my purse as I walk; cutpurses are as common as rats in Saerloon, and half as clean. The Enclave is a cluster of beaded tents, shouting voices, burnt quail smothered in spices and roasting on open spits. I keep Ulrick at my side, and I pull on him and occasionally poke and jabber at him as if he were my bodyguard. The masquerade appears to amuse him.

“Would you care for a drink, honored sir?” a Thayan asks, suddenly stepping in front of me and holding a bottle of a green beverage which smells like rotten beer.

“I must decline,” I tell him, as politely as I can when I have a Thayan looming over me like a drunken familiar. “Another time…”

The merchant bows and returns to his stall, and I observe him with somewhat morbid curiosity as he blows on a large pipe, which issues a white smoke that is very harsh on the throat and nostrils. It is times such as these that I’m thankful to be such a nimble mage, as I’d have choked if I’d been caught in the center of the cloud. The narcoticist blows the opium mixture in heavy white rings that dissipate before they can rise above tent level; I suppose the wind is blowing harder than I thought. After a few seconds of inhaling it around the periphery, the bitrous smell is almost a temptation. 

But we don’t have time for distractions, so I continue walking. Arriving at the main stall, I’m forced to wait for close to a half hour as the vendor argues with a customer, a sagging old wizard with the motliest Raven familiar I’ve ever seen, and a voice almost as harsh as his bird’s. I never imagined that even a Sembian Ravenswatch could get so upset over the fabric of an old cloak. I keep my hand fixed on my purse, in case the quarrel is staged as a distraction for the benefit of the Thayan equivalent of the Knives. Finally, the exhausted merchant, dragging his prize on the ground, stomps away to the main streets of Saerloon, and it’s my turn to barter. With little argument, I sell the items we had taken from the man at the wine shoppe and use them to purchase scrolls containing eight or so low level spells, including a spell designed to erase magical glyphs.

“Well?” I ask Ulrick, who’s returned from a potion vendor with enough potions to heal a wounded dragon. He passes me a pair of minor curatives, and flashes a wand of healing, displaying it with a proud, shaggy-toothed grin.

“Additional healing,” I smile. “Of course when you die… again… the damned thing will be bloody useless to us.”

“Such an optimist,” Ulrick replied. “Of course, there _was_ a reason I purchased potions.”

“Considering you still owe me for those potions that I used on you on our first battle in the Dales…” Like any good Sembian, I never forget a debt, but I must confess I’ve forgotten which battle it was that I used those potions on him – it was before the fight with the manticore, I’m sure of it. Maybe against that zombie we found in the undercrypt, yes I think that was it…

We’ve all had our fill of Saerloon, at least for awhile, so I bid the others follow me to the wine shoppe. Because of the distraction caused by Ulrick’s death, we really didn’t get a chance to properly explore it, so I’m hoping that we’ll have an hour or so to search the premises unmolested. We’re about halfway from the Inn to the shoppe when I once again notice the shifty fellow who had been spying on Aron at the Winding Serpent. He’s obviously following us. Abruptly, I step in front of Ulrick, causing him to stumble into me, then I shout at him and slap his face.

“Cormyte!” I snap, adding: “we’re being followed by a black cloak” under my breath. Ulrick, playing along with the ruse, looks penitent. I snap us back onto course – when Aron collides with a second black cloaked figure, who drops a large bowl of clear liquid onto the ground.

“You Cormyrean oaf!” the man shouts, turning away from the shattered container just a little too quickly, like an actor who knows his role too well. “That cost me ten thousand gold! I demand immediate repayment!”

I take a step back and watch in some amusement. Aron stammers while Ulrick also watches, though much less amused than I. Aron refuses to pay the money – he doesn’t have one-tenth of the price- so the man demands satisfaction. Confused, Aron turns to me with Cormyte astonishment that the authorities would allow a duel to take place on the street.

"It's gauche," I admit. "But not uncommon."

"Draw your blade." the bravo says. Aron draws his dire flail. "Do I look like a chaff of wheat to you, sir?" the bravo snarls. "Draw a real weapon." Wrestling against a rising anger, Aron draws his other weapon, a greatsword. "Are you a knight or a barbarian?" the Sembian gasps in wonder. 

I must admit the bravo has a point - armed with a dire flail and a greatsword, Aron simply isn’t equipped for proper dueling. Given his love for huge weapons (no, it isn’t compensation for the inadequacies of his anatomy, a fact I can attest to because I’ve seen him dance naked under the full moon as part of the rituals of Selune), I do wonder how Aron ever achieved any rank of knighthood in a nation as hidebound as Cormyr.

The bravo threatens to involve the local authorities, so Ulrick finally offers to take Aron’s place. I can’t help but laugh. “What is your name, sirrah?” I sneer at the aggrieved blackcloak. “Is it not customary for a challenger to speak his name? Or are you afraid to speak it aloud, knowing that everyone on the streets of Saerloon will treat it as an object of ridicule, for anyone who would handle an expensive potion in the middle of a crowded street and then complain when he drops it is an unmitigated fool!”

The man snorts like a horse and accuses me of poor manners and threatens to gut me after he’s dispatched Aron. Such a cheap, self-aggrandizing bravo – is it not pathetic what’s happened to the young men of Sembia? Of course, Ulrick will not allow him to do make good on his threat, and insists on staging the duel. The bravo showers the paladin with a drunkard’s drought of insincere praise – how noble he is, how full of honor, to defend the unworthy - and then draws a long rapier that glitters like ice and a snub nosed dagger. Battle is joined.

The duel that follows between paladin and bravo is mercifully brief; despite a flurry of quick motions with scimitar and dagger, and a display of showy cave-waving, our third-rate countryman can barely graze the paladin. Ulrick, on the other hand, is fighting well (if not as stylishly); he bites his adversary’s shoulder with one sword stroke and follows it up with a slash along his rib cage. His side bloodied, the bravo falls to one knee. Ulrick immediately grants him mercy. The bravo forgives Aron’s debt, and, clutching his side, staggers away. I notice him duck into a back alley - the same alley where Aron had noticed the man who had been following us had also gone.

You do hate it when the conspiracies are _this_ obvious, don’t you, sister?

###

It’s an hour past dawn now, and Aron is rousing at last. I will resume the adventure another time, hopefully soon.

Your loving brother,
Ascarin Nevermoon


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## Broccli_Head (Jul 25, 2002)

Glad you're back to continue the tale of Ulrick and co.!

I like the conspiracies that are unfolding, also. Dragon Cultists....the temple of Mystra...crisis in Cormyr...Semiban and Thayan oppurtunists. 

Very grand!


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## MulhorandSage (Jan 27, 2003)

22nd day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372. 
In the shadow of the Death That Grows

Dear Sister,

Though mere days have passed since my last correspondence, it somehow seems much longer to me. A brief letter now, to prompt thy memory, and then we shall speak of the Pool of Radiance - and the three humiliations we suffered there - in greater detail some other time.

###

Meanwhile, in the marketplace of Saerloon, Ulrick is again displaying the two wands of curing wounds that he just purchased and is grinning like the idiot he is, boasting how much more cost effective they are. Actually, any good Sembian would agree with his assessment, of course, but I'm hardly in an agreeable mood.

"You do realize that if you die, they'll be useless to us," I point out.

"Then I guess you'll have to keep me alive," Ulrick answers.

"Judging from past experience, that's a task beyond mortal ken," I reply. The sarcasm washes off his skin like rain, as always. I hate that.

We proceed to the wine shop which holds the portal network we found - aware that we're being followed as we enter the doorway. Fearful of Orc guards, we scurry past the nexus and into the portal that leads to the shrine to Mystryl. Surprisingly, no one ambushes us on the way.

The shrine itself is trapped with dark magicks and ugly glyphs that hover in the air like twisted, charred hummingbirds. Carefully, I speak words of magic to counterspell them, and gradually, a rune at a time, the ancient spiritual bastion of the goddess is cleansed. All except for one rune, which is beyond my power to erase, though we can walk around it easily enough.

Ulrick slaps me on the back and the chain mail coif he wears is lit up by a too-handsome smile. "Good work. Ascarin,' he says, in the condescending manner of an elder mate at wizard's school upon seeing a spell-addled apprentice cast his first cantrip. He can keep his praise for worthier deeds.

We reach a stone stair that leads out of the enclosure. I send Willhih, my weasel companion, up the stairs to scout. I instruct him to do so quietly and not attract attention. Unfortunately, when he sees the two guards standing over the exit with drawn swords, he panicks. The weasel nimbly dodges a sword-thrust and runs down the stairs, diving into my cloak and burrowing into it frantically. The poor thing is such a coward - much, as it pains me to admit it, like his master. Fortunately, when I have two such doughty companions as Ulrick and Aron, courage is rarely a necessity. The two howling sword-wavers rush up the stairs, quickly dispatch the guard, then give chase to her companion - the guard who fled for reinforcements.

We're forced to leave Aron, languishing in his armor of sluggardness far behind us, and Ulrick finally gets a good crossbow shot into the guard's back. Kord would have been proud. The sentry grabs his back out of instinct, realizes he's running with an arrow stuck firmly between the shoulder blades, and panicks. Ulrick readies a second shot - which isn't necessary. for a tree suddenly grabs the guard around the throat, hoists him upward, and breaks his neck.

Friendly shrubbery. How wonderful.

"Well!" a gnome says, suddenly scuttling out of the underbrush. His bright eyes (do all gnomes have bright eyes?) shine in suprise. "You aren't the Dragon's Men!"

"Indeed we are not!" Ulrick says, introducing us. "It's a pleasure to meet such a distinguished looking forest gnome..."

"Forest?" I smile, mocking him with both glance and word. "He looks more like a lone gnome to me."

The gnome narrows his eyes at me, but continues. It's a good thing you came." he says. "I'm a lone gnome alright, but I wasn't always - unfortunately the Dragons have got him... he's a prisoner at their tower."

"Who?" Ulrick asked.

"There isn't time for that," the gnome says shakily. "The Dragons - Cult of the Dragon, you call them - they're draining magic items. They're using them at the Pool of Radiance. They're trying to spoil the Weave!"

"What!" I say. I admit that I am no hero - not an Ulrick - but even I can hear the clarion call of necessity ,and I know when I'm required to risk my life for the greater good. I know it and hate it, it's a curse.

"So where are we?" Ulrick asks. The gnome points to a huge forest in the distance - a wood that's so thick and so tall that it appears like a black shadow on the horizon, rising above the hills.

"Myth Drannor," the gnome says, and I suddenly feel the urge to vomit. Myth Drannor! Admittedly the wealth it contains - and the lore! - are an almost irresistible siren call, but I know enough about the demonic creatures who abide in that accursed wood, long abandoned by the elves, including a dracolich (which goes a long way toward explaining Ulrick's dream) to know that I never want to go there until I get very *very* much more powerful.

"You do realize we're dead men, don't you?" I tell Ulrick. He ignores me.

"And there's other problems beside," the gnome says. "There's also the matter of the corpse!"

"What corpse?" Aron asks. The gnome's already in motion, and we follow (nearly leaving Aron behind again). What the gnome takes us to is a badly bloodied thing, clad in forest green and brown raiment, a broken bow at his side in the underbrush, his fingers quivering. He's still alive. The gnome flips the body over, and I begin to laugh.

"You do us ill, forestling, to show us this sight!" I mock. "This is truly the ugliest and most disgusting corpse I've ever seen!"

It's Kord.

###

And so, having reunited with that insufferable insane elf, we begin our walk toward the certain death that is called Myth Drannor. And that's where we'll leave it for now.

Oh, and don't wear out your current boyfriend so quickly.

_With affection,
Your loving brother,
Ascarin Nevermoon_


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## darkbard (Jan 27, 2003)

excellent story!  i'm new to it with today's posting but it's already among my favorites.  it seems i've been steeping myself in your writing lately [i'm the fellow who was inquiring about more information about mulhorand on a thread in the general boards some weeks back and went on to download the ESD of the old empires and your 3e conversion].  thanks for the inspiration and here's hoping to some more frequent updates!


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## Broccli_Head (Jan 27, 2003)

Alright!

You're back!


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## MulhorandSage (Jan 28, 2003)

darkbard said:
			
		

> *excellent story!  i'm new to it with today's posting but it's already among my favorites.  it seems i've been steeping myself in your writing lately [i'm the fellow who was inquiring about more information about mulhorand on a thread in the general boards some weeks back and went on to download the ESD of the old empires and your 3e conversion].  thanks for the inspiration and here's hoping to some more frequent updates! *




You're welcome Darkbard (you too Broc). I'm glad the GM's running again, and that people are getting a chance to enjoy the write-ups.

Scott Bennie
------
Coming in April from Green Ronin, the game of Old Testament role-playing! (check www.greenronin.com for more details)


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## MulhorandSage (Jan 31, 2003)

*WARNING: SPOILERS for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor ahead*

24th day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372. 
In the shadow of the Death That Grows

Dear Sister,

My apologies for cutting my last correspondence short - these days I've done so much running that I'm easily caught out of breath and barely have strength to lift a pen.

I would tell you that I'm foreshadowing, my dear, except that I know you're smart enough to fil in between the lines.

Kord lay at our feet like a bound pig before the feast. I rather liked the pose, but Ulrick insisted on untying him so we could speak with him freely. I wondered how he'd react to me, especially since I had planted the seed in Ulrick's mind that led to his dismissal, but his anger was mostly directed at the paladin. Elvish eyes, with their eyebrows jutting the wrong way through an evil glare, almost look comical when they're angry. Ulrick bore the resentment with surprising good humor, and was more than happy to embrace Kord and bring him back into our little fellowship.

Paladins and their ways are as obscure as the gods' fingerprints upon the cosmos, and sometimes more than that.

Kord was reluctant to explain what had happened to put him in such dire straits. Gradually we pried some interesting tales from him; he had fled Cormyr after he was outlawed, and returned to the Dales. (I believe he hinted that he had encountered some revenants). In the Dales he learned that the Dragon Cultists were despoiling elvish tombs - presumably searching for magic items to feed the Pool of Radiance so they could warp the Weave to their purposes. Travelling here to prevent that atrocity, somehow he had been ambushed, knocked unconscious, and bound and gagged (though once the bonds were loosened, the elf's pride and delusions became so great that he refused to believe that he had ever been knocked out, as though the unfairness of the universe could be remedied by simply wishing it away). 

So Kord was with us once more. But that left the appalling question on how, in all Faerûn, did we manage to get back together at this Azuth-forsaken tower?

"Fate," Ulrick decided, and his words held the promise of an extremely uncomfortable truth. "It's fate that we're back together."

One cannot deny that great deeds sometimes mold men like clay, despite one's will and one's common sense.

Promising the gnome that we would rescue its comrade, we advanced on the tower. It lay huddled in the center of a forest glade on the outskirts of Myth Drannor, which cast a huge shadow directly to the east. The glade was tinder-dry from the summer heat, surrounded by long grass and dry shrubery, though on the northern side it was very close to the forest, The keep was constructed from granite, and looked like strong dwarf-work, with a square bailey that rounded to a circular parapet. Beyond the tower was a graveyard, and in the distance, we could see (and smell) the carrionated remains of fallen cultists, pressed into soulless labour without surcease, the perfect charnel workers for the Sammasterites.

"Let's avoid that for now," Kord suggested, though the sight of the undead made our Tormite leader's blood burn. Kord noticed a piece of paper tied to a tree. "Read me," it said in the common tongue. Drawn by curiosity like a small stupid child, Ulrick strode to the note before I could warn him, and read the inscription. I swear I could see his lips move.

The note exploded in a ball of flame. I hate it when someone gets cute with explosive runes.

Suddenly at least three Sammasterite patrols converged on where we were standing, swarming us from all sides. Seeing incredible peril encircle us, Ulrick did what every paladin would do - he charged straight ahead. There must be a handbook somewhere that tells them to do that. Suddenly a swarm of magical bolts issued from barely-shuttered windows in the tower, exploding all around us, a searing cauldron of bluefire bubbling over in our vacinity. Fortunately I had taken the (sensible) precaution of surrounding myself with dweomermirrors, magical illusions that walked as I walked, otherwise these volleys would have torn me to pieces as surely as if I were surrounded by the swords of a barbarian horde. Unfortunately, the bolts also shattered my illusions within seconds, leaving me practically naked, with only a wizard's armor spell to shield me from harm.

But far worse off than I was Ulrick, whose body was now covered in wounds - his charge had borne the brunt of the enemy attack - and he was forced to call upon the power of Torm to heal himself. Seeing a host of foes issue from a small ruin that had been dug in the hillside like a badger's hole, I cast several fireballs from my wand to incinerate them. They did, but they also set the grass on fire. Some of the advancing host were slain, but the bulk of their force continued to advance.

"Retreat!" Ulrick shouted, realizing we wouldn't make our way to the keep's front gate alive. So we retreated, even as the magic missiles continued to batter us, and Kord found himself in a sniper's duel with several of the Dragon Cult's rangers. Eventually - battered, beaten, and frightened out of our wits - we managed to retreat back to the gate of Mystryl (which in Aron's armor is a considerable feat) and from there we returned to Saerloon to catch our breath.

Once we finally regained our composure - and wasted our energies with the usual exchange of angry words - we determined that we could not abandon our quest, so we decided to return to the keep at the edge of Myth Drannor and fight again. Ulrick was determined that we wouldn't use the gates to return, for he was certain they were guarded. I was loth to take the time to travel there on foot, for I feared what was happening in Wheloon in our absence, and felt the press of time upon our errand. The others were willing to wait. I swear that my companions are like children who cannot stop themselves from playing in poison ivy - they care about nothing except their current itch, yet take no sensible precautions to protect themselves from it.

We hired a mage from the temple of Azuth (my patron deity, in case you thought I was still besotted by my brief dailliance with Mystraism) who teleported us back into the area. That is, everyone except Aron - the damn fool let go of the teleport chain just before the spell was cast.

"We go on without him," Ulrick declared, and so we devised a cunning plan that would compensate for our diminished combat strength (though if Aron kept missing the target with that damn flail of his, it wouldn't be diminishing us _too_ badly). 

So what was this cunning plan? At least it was a _paladin's_ idea of cunning (which very much resembles other people's ideas of _simple_): this time we would ambush a Sammasterite patrol, steal their uniforms (the least bloodied ones, I assume), find a safe place to observe the front gate, and wait until another patrol approached the door, Hopefully, we'd then learn the password and use it to infiltrate our way inside the keep. 

Unfortunately this brilliant plan failed when Kord instructed us to hide too close to the tower and we were spotted almost immediately by one of their patrols. Elven ranger prowess, ha! No wonder Cormanthor fell. 

Seeing the trap close around us, once again Ulrick drew his weapon, shouted out something grandiosely silly and pious about Torm, and charged. Even now we hoped we might catch them off guard and press the attack to victory, but another barrage of magic missiles quickly shattered our hopes. Kord ran away almost immediately. Finally discouraged, Ulrick retreated as quickly as he could manage, and I followed him. Again. 

Seeing a force coming away from the shrine to cut off our escape, we bypassed the shrine of Mystryl and retreated further into the West, not stopping for a day and a night.

And of course, it rained the entire evening. At least it put out the fires - the wand of fireballs that the Thayans sold seems to do a spectacular job of burning the landscape. Fortunately, I was firing them in the brush, not in the forests.

Ulrick and I were soon joined by Aron, who had either gotten himself very drunk, was a better liar than I had given him credit for - or had actually managed to persuade an archlich (one of those very rare good liches) that the situation warranted teleporting him to our location so he could rejoin our company. Again, Ulrick insisted that we could not abandon our quest (and I concurred), so we returned once again. This time we decided to attack the graveyard first. Unfortunately, we were spotted approaching the keep before we got within a hundred yards of our target, and once again the mages drew their wands, and (yet again!) a rain of magic missiles poured from the sky. 

Suddenly it occured to me that our best way of getting into the keep was by allowing them to take us inside, so I feigned that a priest's spell had ensnared me, hoping they'd bring me inside for questioning, where I could catch them by surprise. Unfortunately, Ulrick, the big drooling lummox of a paladin - who was never quite as happy as when he had a chance to demonstrate that his code of honor as tight was as a virgin's belt - was determined that he would leave _no one_ behind, so he grabbed me and pulled me out of the fray. So much for _that_ plan. Once again, the barrage of magic missiles nearly killed Aron, and once again we escaped by the skin of our teeth.

We retreated back to the Cormanthyr road, where Kord once again joined us - he claimed he had been looking for us, though he had conveniently kept his distance from the keep.

So here we are again. And we realize that with everything at stake, we have no choice but to make a _fourth_ attack on the tower. Ulrick's driven by his vision of the dracolich, Kord is driven by the need to preserve his precious elven artifacts (which, from their sheer elvishness, are so much more important than human), Aron's reasons are beyond the comprehension of even Ao and as for me, I cannot allow this undead filth to corrupt the Weave.

I'm girding myself with spells, and preparing for the inevitable. Again.

Doomed (but with love), Your Brother,
_Ascarin Nevermoon_


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## Broccli_Head (Jan 31, 2003)

I never realized how tough _PoR:Attack on Myth Drannor_ was. 

I guess your DM is playing the D.Cultists rather well. 
When's the next letter due?


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## Morte (Feb 1, 2003)

I was rather tickled to find this, since I've just started running a campaign based out of Suzail with the party getting involved in intrigue between two Cormyran noble families, one of them the Wyvernspurs who produced your Aron. To add to the parallels, in their last adventure the party tangled with the Cult of the Dragon in a newly unearthed Netherese ruin in the Dalelands.

It's also great fun to read. I very much like the author's style. Looking forward to more...


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## MulhorandSage (Feb 1, 2003)

Broccli_Head said:
			
		

> *I never realized how tough PoR:Attack on Myth Drannor was.
> 
> I guess your DM is playing the D.Cultists rather well.
> When's the next letter due? *




It's a case where we'd just come out of a section of the campaign with a completely different style (the tragedy laden Cormyte political stuff) and we had problems getting back into "heroic" mode for the Myth Drannor stuff. 

I'm about one write-up behind the current campaign date. It should be posted later this week.

Scott Bennie


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## MulhorandSage (Feb 6, 2003)

*WARNING: SPOILERS for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor ahead*

25th day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372. 
The tower of the Sammasterites, Within Spitting Distance of Myth Drannor


Dearest Sister,

I have heard that one only gets three opportunities to perform any task, and then it is gone forever. It seems a sensible policy to me, a way to cut failures out of life, like culling benighted grapes from a vat that could sour an entire vintage. But it feels rather different when that standard is applied to you, and it's _you_ who stares at one's shortfalls in the face, and feel the spittle of thrice-failures like serpent venom in the eyes.

After our third attempt to take the citadel of the Sammasterites failed, we fled on foot. After a day's retreat, we regrouped at the road, this time at full strength.

"I'm ready to give up on this," Kord said. But he truly wasn't, for the alternative would be to return to Cormyr, where a substantial bounty was on his head for his murder of the farmhand (Ulrick had initially set a price five hundred crowns on him, which I, knowing he'd be insulted by such a small sum, raised to two thousand crowns). For some reason, this mattered little to Kord now - or he hid his feelings behind such a wall of sociopathy that even I could not glimpse at his true face. For now we were comrades, and the Sammasterites were the threat.

We marched northeast through a sharply cut passage in a moderately dense forest. Once, a dragon passed overhead in the distance, and we fell to our bellies, stayed still, and continued on our way after it was gone. Or maybe that happened during one of the earlier retreats - acts of cowardice (and common sense) become highly indistinguishable after awhile. But, to evoke a more heroic demeanor, courage lay ahead of us, not to mention mortal peril. At times, when the road climbed to a ridge and gave us a clearer view of our surroundings, the far more forebiding woods of Myth Drannor loomed in the distance. There can be found demon dens, dragon haunts, and the forlorn ruins of the elves whose great magic, the Mythal, became as twisted and ruined as the pride of fallen Karsus.

I think we must have been quite weary after so much running, for we made far less progress in a day's march approaching the keep than we did in our retreat. Kord informed us he would keep watch for the bulk of the night, boasting to us about how little sleep the elves required to remain sharp-witted, more proof of their race's superiority. His smugness has gotten quite insufferable. If I wasn't convinced that they'd lead us all into certain suicide, I'd wish a plague of dwarves upon him.

Night in the forest was uneasy - I got a vague sense of malevolence out of the shadows, as if the forest itself were angry at me for bringing fire to its borders during our previous assaults. In fact, during the night, a vine of poison ivy crept toward me during my sleep, but Kord roused me and I warded it away. That's a good thing, for itching and spellcasting do not make for a particularly good mix.

We discussed our battle tactics, which closely resembled the battle strategies of a tribe of naked enraged Damarans. Strike hard, take no backward steps, and kill, kill, kill. Ulrick was determined to make a hard charge directly for the front gate and stop for nothing. I must admit that while it lacked subtlety, this plan had the virtue of getting us into close proximity with our foe and allowing us to kill many Sammasterites as quickly as possible, providing us all with what's sure to be a most welcome catharis. The front gate, however, would not fall from wishful thinking alone. Ulrick proposed that he fell some trees and build a battering ram. We asked Ulrick if he had any experience whatsoever in constructing a battering ram out of a tree. The answer: no. Kord advised us against cutting down any trees near Myth Drannor, even a deadfall. It's one of the few times I've ever heard the elf make sense. Our backup plan was equally crude but likely to be more effective; we would proceed to the north side of the tower, where the cover of woods was thickest. Ulrick, Aron, and I would charge the door, Aron with greataxe in hand. The brutish Wyvernspur, despite prefering his flail, is certainly the strongest of our company and offers our best chance at chopping through the door. I will erect a _mystic shield_ spell to ward away arcane bolts, while Ulrick prepares to charge as soon as an opening presents itself. Kord is to remain at the edge of the woods, under cover, and fire on anything that shoots at us from a tower window.

For once, we encountered no patrols, and the enemy received no warning until a forest shaking crack, courtesy of Aron's axe, struck the front gate. It's strong wood, and barred, but the huge Cormyte ripped through it like rotten timber with his very first stroke, not only cleaving through the wood but striking the metal and loosening the planks that holds a bar in place. Two more axe-strokes, which I could swear could be heard in Myth Drannor, rattled the gate and ripped at the planks. Selune must shining on the mad Wyvernspur, because it only took three strokes to open the passage.

It is usually an excellent thing to have strong and stupid friends.

Immediately, two guards attempted to fill the breach. Ulrick stepped forward, probably imagining that he shines more brightly than he does, and wielded his sword with consumate skill. Two guards quickly fell. He issued into the keep and Aron followed, discarding the axe for his beloved dire flail. I whispered an incantation and entered, beckoning Kord to come. I'm half-surprised when I see the elf sprinting across the breach to join us.

Ulrick turned into a guardroom and immediately confronted a wand-wielding mage. I leaned closer, hoping to overhear him recite the incantation of activation, but instead of proudly shouting it at the top of their lungs, as any mage in Sembia would, he whispered the words. I swear he did it just to annoy me.

Kord moved into a barrack room, while Aron searched several small storage chambers. A pair of stone staircases are stationed in the center of the room, one leading upward, the other downward. Aron made the mistake of standing in front of the upper stairs, and suddenly a hail of arcane bolts shot down the stairwell and connected with him squarely in the chest. I smiled, drew my wand, and imagined the smell of Sammasterite acolytes roasting in an open fireball.

Then that idiot of a knight charged up the stairs and ruined my brilliant design.

I called Ulrick, who's finished dispatching the pesky wizard, and warned him of Aron's predicament. He sighed noticeably. In the meantime, Kord was happily wandering through the backroom barracks, dispatching those who were unfortunate enough to be caught napping. I wonder if Ulrick realizes what the elf is doing in his spare time?

But it's Aron's plight that most concerns us. Ulrick made his best time up the stairs - magical boots, which allow him to charge without breaking his stride, he's almost as proud of them as he is of those damn wands - and arrived to find Aron surrounded by more foes than we've ever seen in one small space at one time: zombies, skeletons, guardsmen, necromancers and Sammasterite priests are all crowded into a hall and the only thing either of us can see is the host reacting to Aron's flail like ripples on a pond. Aron is quite the mighty lad, but Ulrick's power was more puissant. He removed his right gauntlet, an elaborate worked lattice of steel, and held it upright, in the same pose as the ironshod hand on the holy symbol of Torm. His body held itself with an inhuman firmness, a figure of divine resolve that bears little resemblance to the man I've seen shivering next to a campfire in the middle of a rainstorm, or bantering with mild baudiness with tavern wenches. It really is a thing to marvel at, that here, even in this desecrated dessicated hellhole of a tower, the god of duty is unwavering and can elevate his servants to such a remarkable degree. 

Ulrick had become a thing of power. The steel gauntlet glowed, and the look in his eyes must be terrible to behold. "Back!" he said, firmly but without shouting. "The pit awaits for thee!" Then there was a sound like the cracking of a thousand timbers being shorn apart by some titanic thing, a giant who strides across the Battle of Bones and pays no heed to the cracking sound beneath his feet, and suddenly the skeletons collapse intod clouds of powder thick enough to choke upon. Their comrades, the shambling stupid undead, shrunk back and hid their decaying faces from the light of the most insufferably righteous of gods. Whom I'm glad stood with us today.

Of course, the priests were dismayed, if not outraged. To necromancers, skeletons are one part child, one part doting sweetheart, perfect in their obedience, the ideal toy. No wonder every necromancer I've ever met has been utterly lacking in the social graces. From their cloaks, the priests drew black maces with skeleton heads atop four black phalanges, and cried for paladin's blood. They're too angry to realize they're badly overmatched: _too many rituals rot your brain._ Aron (who exemplifies the same principle but with a different god), almost spent and bleeding from many wounds, took advantage of the opening that Ulrick has created and staggered backwards and propped his back against a wall, where he drew a healing potion from his belt and savored it like a drunkard who's been divorced too long from drink. That's fine. The lad has had his hour. Now time has become vengeance, for both the hour, and vengeance, was mine.

Barely visible behind shining Ulrick, I nonetheless had a clear view of several priests, who are concentrating on the glowing beacon of Torm's light that just spoiled the jubilation of their summoning. _Good_, I told myself, _ignore the true threat to your little necromancer's paradise_. I drew my hands together, spoke words of power, and felt that indescribable rapture that comes when one masters the thunder in one's hands. Three of their priests, craning their necks in a line to survey the extraordinary chaos of this fight, are scorched by my lightning, and two of them fall. I followed lightning with winter - Snilloc's Death, the doom of ice, that swarms and fells another two acolytes. By this time Kord, blood trickling down his sword and mixing with his forest green cloak in disturbing lines, has joined us, and charged for the surviving priests.

I'm not certain when the battle ends. I'm breathing too hard to notice, even though the one attempt to deal me a wound was deflected harmlessly off my arcane shield. The true threat was elsewhere.

Kord playedtracking games with the chief priest, who was slowly and cautiously being backed into a corner. Realizing that his best spells were useless against the elf's quick thrusts, he drews a wand and aimed several arcane bolts at the elf. Kord countered skillfully, and finally felled the necromancer with a quick thrust to the chest. Then the dying prelate screamed, and treated me to one of the most grotesque sights I've ever witnessed. The moment that the priest died, he exploded in a swarm of maggots that attempted to engulf his killer. The elf briefly managed to ward them away, then they encircled him and fell upon his flesh like locust on a grain field. Maggots must like the taste of fresh elf, as Kord quickly falls.

Realizing that the elf's death was imminent - and recognizing the maggot swarm as a simple summoning that was cloaked in a magician's trick - I cast a counterspell. I immediately realized that I'm facing a very powerful enchantment - the high priest's work, I'd guess - but I managed to overcome it. Then Aron dragged Kord over to our glorious leader, where he expended close to the entire contents of a single healing wand nursing the hurts of the twain.

"I'm surprised you haven't evoked your... what is it called... mirror images?" Aron remarked.

"The true connoisseur of magic calls them _dweomermirrors_," I replied, wondering why I'm wasting my breath correcting him.

I took a moment to inspect the room's stonework, which is well-fitted but otherwise unremarkable. We proceeded to search several chambers, leaving the collection of treasure for a later time. We discovered a chamber full of Sammasterite propaganda, roughly drawn tracts, stack upon stack of dirges and odes to the glory of moving bone without the prison of flesh. It took a major effort for me to resist burning them. We climbed to the third level of the tower, where we found the door to the fourth level is magically barred. Unfortunately I didn't have the spells to effectively counter its dweomer (which is a source of irritating banter and ridicule from my comrades). One door was barred by a lesser glyph, which Ulrick did not hesitate the walk through. He survived the flash of lightning to open up a lavish bedchamber, including a huge, fat badger plopped on a pillow.

It occured to us immediately that the animal is a familiar and thus a target of opportunity, but Kord kept us away and spoke to it in gnomish. It knew depressingly little about the tower, but as far as Kord's concerned, it's a pleasant conversationalist. Inspecting the room for magic, I discovered an enchanted tapestry on the east wall and a magical painting behind it. Alas, even Aron, though his arms are larger than most men's thighs and the envy of even a diligent blacksmith, is not strong enough to pry the painting from the wall.

"Must be magic," Aron said, stating the obvious.

Ulrick turned his attention to a far door. Opening it, we came into the main chamber of the third level - which was occupied by a swarm of zombies and several men wearing the livery of the Sammasterites, and one man with a pointed hat adorned with a dragon's skull.

The high priest has arrived.

Must dash,

Ascarin


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## Broccli_Head (Feb 6, 2003)

Wonderful letter, MS!

How do they get to your sister all the way in Sembia anyway?


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## MulhorandSage (Feb 6, 2003)

Broccli_Head said:
			
		

> *Wonderful letter, MS!
> 
> How do they get to your sister all the way in Sembia anyway? *




Weasel Express. It's how I keep Willhih out of harm's way. 

It's a framing device; the parts involving the sister are entirely my invention. Though I wouldn't put it past my DM to one day use them against me. 

Scott Bennie


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## MulhorandSage (Feb 9, 2003)

Just a slight clarification, Broc.

Thanks to your question, the DM has ruled that Ascarin and his sister both possess "Magic Tablets" to transmit letters between each other. I don't have a ruling from the DM on the exact specifics, but I'd suggest creating an object with the following properties:

*Sembian Stêlôsis*
Despite the name, this item actually originated in ancient Chondath, where it was used by bureaucrats to pass imperial documents between each other and maintain official sanction - and for spies to pass messages between each other without being  scryed. 

The Stêlôsis is a frame of metal, into which one places sheets of parchment or (originally) a clay tablet. Once per day, a writer can give a verbal command end magically send whatever's written on the page from one Stêlôsis to another; the writing vanishes from the parchment and appears instantly on a piece of parchment that's been placed into the other Stêlôsis. The writing remains on the other parchment until it is read aloud, then it vanishes. Only one message may be sent per day.

The message cannot be longer than 2,500 words and must be written letters: pictures and maps are not transmitted between the two Stêlôsis. Every Stêlôsis has a mate, and only the two Stêlôsis can communicate with each other; a person cannot write to another Stêlôsis except to the one that's mated to it. As a consequence, both Stêlôsis must be created at the same time and "mated" as part of the creation process. Only two Stêlôsis may be mated. If one is destroyed, the other becomes useless.

Significant transcription errors may crop up when the two Stêlôsis are more than seven hundred miles apart, and the devices cease to function beyond a range of twelve hundred miles.

_Caster Level_: 14th; _Prerequisites_: Craft Wondrous Item, _sending, vanish_; _Market Price_: 36,400 gp; _Weight_: 1 lb.

Scott Bennie
----
Coming in April, _Testament_, the game of Biblical role-playing by Green Ronin.


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## MulhorandSage (Feb 14, 2003)

*WARNING: SPOILERS for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor ahead*


26th day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372. 
A tomb of a mad elf, not far from Myth Drannor


Dearest Sister,

We were inside the high priest's quarters in the tower of the Sammasterites, trapped like rats on third floor of that imposing structure. A bodyguard of nearly a dozen skeletons and shambling undead abominations surrounded the room, not to mention the high priest and his (living) bodyguard. The stench of rotting bodies had filled the tower like a charnal-house and I was so sick of that cursed smell that I wanted to raze the tower, storey by storey, stone by stone, until its foundations were naked to the sky, a rotting leprous pox on the margins of Myth Drannor, a wound left for the forest to cleanse if it could.

But much work needed to be done before I could realize that goal. Fortunately, my compatriots had become something to be reckoned with. Now it was the Wyvernspur's hour: a figure of beefy heroism with a slightly goofy grin, Aron strode ahead, flail drawn, rushing to the attack. "Hold back!" Ulrick (who never seems to appreciate the same dumb heroism in others that is found in such abundant quantities within himself) shouted a loud warning cry at his countryman. Unfortunately, Aron's idea of "holding back" is to take one unfortunate step into the abyss instead of two. On better days, it's almost entertaining.

I sigh and survey the entry chamber, which is a clutter of thrashing bodies engaged in melee. With Ulrick and Aron pressing ahead of me and blocking the door with their broad, six foot four inch frames - and one of them wielding a dire flail with such reckless abandon that it's an act of divine providence that he hasn't taken out my eye yet - picking an appropriate target is an act of utter futility. But then I catch a glimpse of the high priest, and even from a distance there's a look of madness on his face that makes me just want to smite him, so I grip the wand of fireballs and begin to move it into position.

"Do it!" says Aron. Surprisingly, he took a quick second to look backward, and realizing he'll be caught in the flames, instructed me to perform a tactic for the betterment of the group. Such a sturdy, stupid lad. I raise my wand, and with a slight smile, _shout_ the command word.

(As an aside, sister: let it be known that I will have none of this "I'll whisper the command word because I'm paranoid that I'm going to die and I want to make sure the enemy has to waste a _divine the properties_ spell to wrest the command word" tripe. I am a Sembian, a _real_ mage, and if they want this wand, these festering, corrupt, besotted, dead-flesh-kissing pieces of swill, they're welcome to pry it from my cold dead fingers!) 

In answer to the incantation, a spark of fire leaps from the tip of the wand, and a fireball encompasses the room.

Aron's at the edge of the blaze and I'm hoping the lad can take a quick step back to avoid it - but alas, girded by his heavy mail, which somewhat resembles a skinned dragon plated with extra bits of steel to provide additional encumbrance, he reacts just a second too late. The fireball catches him squarely, and he burns too. But the fortune of both Tymora and Selune shine on him - he'll live. Aron does take a step back, and I station myself to loose a second orb of flaming death into the undead host - and then the priest gives me the _evil eye_, makes a quick gesture, and suddenly I'm held in place as surely as I were encased in stone.

_I hate that spell._

I'm forced to watch the rest of the battle in silence. The priest, who was burnt badly, swallows a potion to heal his injuries. "Hey!" Kord objected. "He's drinking the treasure!" I'm too busy worried about our survival to care.

Ulrick cut down the bodyguard, a burly fellow who's wielding a bastard sword in two hands, and motioned at the priest to prepare for battle. The arch-Sammasterite responded by touching the burly corpse and bringing him back to life. The bodyguard had a sickly smile on his face (not dissimilar to Aron's when he's drunk), and rose from the ground, sword in hand, shouting "Praise to the Dragon!"

"Death to the dragon!" Ulrick growled back, and he dismembered the bodyguard a second time with three swift strokes.

The high priest looked on his crumpled guard with an aghast expression on his bloated face. With his undead legions scattered around them - it must seem like he's witnessing the fall of his personal empire. "Curse you!" he snarled at Ulrick. "May death follow you where you go!" As far as curses go against _paladins_, it's hard to think of one that's less self-fulfilling (and thus meaningless). The priest tried to run past Aron and Ulrick and touch me with a death spell while I'm still magically ensnared, but Aron's flail caught him in the back of the skull as he runs past. The priest collapsed into a bloodied, crumpled, dead heap on the ground. 

_Give my regards to Sammaster, you perversion of the glorious arcane._

It took about a minute for my eyes jerk in their sockets, the first sign that the priest's spell has worn off. It left me with a stiff, arthritic feeling in every muscle. I felt like walking over to his body and spitting on it - but Kord's already gone over to a hatch and pried open a trap door that leads to the roof. Hoping there were no further glyphs or other surprises in store for us, we hoisted ourselves through the opening and found a large altar set in the high place. And here I thought necromancers would perform this grisly ritual underground, in a charnal pit closer to the Hell that empowers them! Prone on the altar, a small figure struggled in his bonds - it's a gnome, the same one we were warned was being held prisoner here - and Tarbash, the gnome we had met earlier in the woods, was perched upon the large stone slab, precariously balanced, straining like a mad thing with nimble gnomish fingers to pry apart the constraints that bind his comrade. It was a sight of such devotion that it breathed even upon the faint embers of _my_ compassion, not a quality I'm known for. But Ulrick who must (of course) be the principle player of this great drama, set things aright the moment he first beheld the gnome's plight. Raising his hallowed blade so the sun, which bore down upon us with its full midsummer's wrath, briefly alit this bloodied rock of the Sammasterites, he let the steel fly, and the gnome's bonds were broken. The freed forestling nearly crumpled; he cradled his rope-burnt wrists and wrestled with a mingling of gratitude and pain. "Thank you!" he said - repeatedly - even to me. I must confess that the sound of gratitude, so rarely offered when I deserve it, is honey to my ears. Tarbash could not keep himself from performing a short gnomish dance. So this was victory? Who'd have thought it.

Kord craned his long elvish neck (the one I thought was perfectly suited for decapitation after the farmboy incident) and briefly surveyed the lands surrounding the tower, the despoiled elven crypts and burial grounds, and determined that none of the Sammasterite troops stationed outside the keep have spotted us yet. Good, we still have time. They probably won't return to the tower until nightfall, which (in high summer) is still ten hours hence. We can probably take a (guarded) breath.

I looked down on the priest's body and sneered, wondering what his precious Dragon had in store for him now. But it's another dragon - a purple one (or one who ought to be) - who determined the corpse's fate. Ulrick lifted up the priest's limp body, and clove his head from his shoulders with a vicious stroke. Then he did the same to his bodyguard, and finally stuck their heads on spears so they could be placed outside the keep.

"My, we are a vicious little paladin, aren't we?" I smiled at Ulrick.

"These people performed human sacrifices," Ulrick was visibly trembling when he spake the words. "I am giving them a taste of their own cursed medicine. And I hope they choke on it."

I cannot argue with the sentiment - though I would regret it greatly if Ulrick fell into blackguarddom, for he'd far more dangerous to control  - but the more practical side of me would rather gather up these misbegotten swine into a pile and make a pyre out of them so that no necromancer could ever be able to turn them into undead.

Kord moaned that we should not tarry, but there was a time for spoils, and that time was now. So, ignoring the elf's pleas, I began to rummage through the high priest's drawers, while Aron struggled with that magical painting. He placed his fingers around the frame and we heard a "click!", but the painting still wouldn't budge. The dire badger, comfortably arraigned in princely fashion on his dire badger-sized cushion, laughed at Aron's attempts - yes, sister, we now have definitive proof that Aron's intelligence is less than that of a large forest creature. Kord, still upset that we haven't secured our position - acting more like an elven general instead of an elven wood-sneak - conversed with the badger, who informed us that by simply moving your fingers around the frame from top to bottom, you can open a small vault. We followed his instructions, and discovered the priest's hidden treasure store, in which a glowing page, written in Old Elvish, was secured. Within the drawers, I found the high priest's journal. I quickly leafed through it, but I did not have the time to give it an adequate amount of study. More pleasingly, I discovered the cult's spellbook, with numerous spells (unfortunately, most of them are the necromantic variety - not that, by Azuth, I scoff at knowledge, but the spells prized by the Sammasterites hold less fascination to me than those that evoke greater powers than simple mockeries of life).

Ransacking a level at a time, we returned to the lower levels. Kord insisted on taking the badger with us, and the badger won't budge without his cushion. Guess who, in addition to his heavy pack, must now carry a giant badger cushion on his back? I swear sister, that if you mention this to our family, I will plot a sweet revenge.

At the doorway, Kord decided to leave caltrops, small spikes, in the shadow of the gate. We also removed the wreckage of the door so that anyone who observed the keep will think that the door has been left open by its denizens, not hacked to bits by an invader. Once we did that, Ulrick urged us to descend down the stairs into the unexplored depths of the tower. This time Aron led the way.

The stairs were a tight, narrow winding spiral, irregularly spaced and awkwardly uneven, more likely by design than by weathering, for the dwarves wrought them. The summer air, still as a dead body that's chained to a rock and rotting in the sun, cultivated the dust that rises into our dry mouths like some sort of funerary crop. I'm still annoyed that I succumbed to the priest's _holding_ spell, in addition to the other injuries I suffered in the three previous attacks on the tower. Severed heads on spear points, offered like love tokens to flocks of local carrion, may not be enough to assuage my hate.

Aron arrived at a landing, and we investigated a series of empty kitchens, storage rooms, and a single empty cell, which probably housed Tarbash's friend. Aron opened a chamber which reeks of death, a necromancer's paradise where a skull with a steel crown hovered in mid-air. But when Aron entered the chamber to get a closer, better look, a host of zombies rose from the ground and attacked him.

Ulrick quickly took stock of the situation and determined that Aron was quite capable of handling a small host of zombies, though the big Cormyte fluttered about, debating whether he should employ the greataxe or the flail. I moved closer to investigate when suddenly a unexplored locked door opened beside me, and I found myself face to face with a necromancer and his skeleton-guard, one of whom sliced my right arm with a swift scimitar stroke. Howling, I retreated, while Ulrick moved in, and I did my best to stammer through my pain and inform Kord about the situation. Ulrick took several volleys of arcane bolts from the necromancer (does _every_ mage in this miserable tower have one of those wands?), was badly wounded, and retreated. Kord moved into his place, but Ulrick, whose retreat was only temporary, was a little late in returning to his assigned place, and Kord is hard-pressed. Gradually the skeleton-guard is reduced, and Kord waded over the once animated corpses in a quest for necromancer's blood. Pressed against the wall, the necromancer sent out a whispering wind, calling for assistance from remote quarters. Hopefully he called the high priest in Hell.

With Ulrick and Kord engaged against the necromancer, I turned to assist Aron. The mighty boy was hewing zombies left and right, but they were managing to get in enough blows to slowly wear him down. Realizing he needed support, I raised _my_ wand, shouted the word of command, and the zombies burned. I felt exuberant, but that's when I turned around and found a dark-cloaked figure trying to impale my back with a skillful short sword thrust. The whispering wind had been answered. A patrol of blackcloaks and blackguards had hurried back to the keep and joined the fracas. Unfortunately, with Kord and Ulrick busy against the necromancer, I'm left almost alone against this assault - and given a choice of targets between a mage and a man with a big flail, the mage is invariably the target.

Quickly I surrounded myself with _dweomermirrors_ and retreated. I have no offensive magicks capable of dealing with this horde - I'm not about to start casting fireballs into such a tight space - so I bolstered myself with a _haste_ spell, drew my dagger and launched futile attacks against my enemies. The mirrors lasted only a few scant seconds before they're shattered, though the spell saved my life - one armored brute clove an image with such a perfect blow that I would have died, had it actually marked my skull with equal vigor. Aron, finally free of the undead horde, interposed himself between me and my attackers as best as he could, but unfortunately when one is willing to risk being hacked apart just to rid the world of the magnificence that is Ascarin Nevermoon, there is not much a protector can do except to grit one's teeth and hope that your best intentions translates into better results. The Wyvernspur's dire flail smashed one of my attackers' skulls and dropped him to his face with an accompaniment of crimson spray, but the second attacker caught me squarely in the ribs with a sword thrust. That when everything went red, the world seemed to slide around me, and I, propped desperately against the wall in a futile posture of defense, began a slow, painful - dying - descent to the dungeon floor, and I was left to wonder how many breaths I had left to take.

####

Of course it does not end there, sister, but rarely have I passed up an opportunity to take my life and give it an evil twist, so I shall end this letter here, and leave you waiting on the particulars of my fate. The matter of Pellendaryll, and how I passed from the tower of the Sammasterites into the tomb of a mad elf (and the difficult matter of the disposition of lost loreworks obtained from the hunting elf) shall await my next correspondence. My will, like my blood, is spent this day.


Still alive (barely), with love,

_Your brother Ascarin_


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## LuYangShih (Feb 14, 2003)

> *We discuss our battle tactics, which closely resembles the battle strategies of a tribe of naked enraged Damarans. Strike hard, take no backward steps, and kill, kill, kill.*





LOL.  This story hour rocks.  Keep up the good work.


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## Broccli_Head (Feb 14, 2003)

thanks for another marvelous entry by my favorite Sembian.


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## MulhorandSage (Mar 7, 2003)

*Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor*
(Continued from last correspondence)

I live a fool's life, and I know it. No sane wizard should willingly stick himself in the thick of battle, for the fundamental tactic of even an addle-brained enemy must be to target the wizard before all others, for we're capable of dealing with a greater number of enemies than even a skilled swordsman or (despite what Kord may say) a bowman. Unfortunately, while I've always tried to strike a sensible balance between caution and foolhardiness, often when you're fighting in close quarters, that balance topples. And, because I should expect this, I am a fool.

So here I was, watching the cult soldier extract his blade from my abdomen, and suddenly feel a burning sensation in my bowels. This pain I cannot describe, though detached from its horrific reality, dying is a rather interesting sensation. Slumped against the wall, I'm unable to move my limbs; my breathing, though labored, continues, but I'm fully cogniscent that it could end at any moment. Each heartbeat feels like a hammer stroke against my chest. However, my few remaining spells are still in my head, and I catch a clear view of Aron's armored buttocks as he turns to challenge the man who smote me. A few seconds later, and the attacker's severed head bounces over my legs. I wish I felt well enough to muster a smile.

Meanwhile, Ulrick is dancing with a pair of rogues, desperately trying to dispatch them before they can flank him, while in a far chamber, beyond the edge of my vision, Kord is fighting for his life against another necromancer. From what I gathered later, the corpse-fondler attempted to damage Kord's life force with some sort of _deviltouch_, but the elf successfully evaded his attacks and cut him down with a flurry of short sword strokes. When he was slain, the necromancer once again explodes into a swarm of death maggots, but this time Kord managed to ward them away before he can be engulfed. The swarm fades from existence after about twenty seconds, much to the elf's relief. We've won. The tower is ours.

After the battle comes healing, a respite that's never been so desired or needed. Ulrick touches us with his healing wand and restores our strength. The others begin to ransack the tower, while I take an hour to curl up with the high priest's journal. It's abominable reading, full of so many admonitions to "praise the dragon" and "proclaim the dragon" that I swear a devotee of Loviatar is less whipped by their religion. The high priest is named Ryngoth, which I believe means "idiotic fanatic" in the tongue of Vaasa, and if it doesn't, it should.

I do, however, find two things of interest nestled in these dry, yellow pages. First there's a reference to not one but _two_ adventuring companies who have been attacking the tower, one of whom is clearly not us, and in fact dispatched that red dragon we spotted overhead a few days earlier. Second (and more ominously), we uncover a reference to "Pelendralaar awaits the completion" near the end of the journal. I gather that's the name of a dracolich, a realization that makes me wonder again, what cosmic force appointed _this_ little ragtag band as the upheld hand to oppose such a force.

I'm quite tired and almost spent of spells, but there isn't time for rest and contemplation at the moment. Returning to the roof of the tower, Kord spots numerous patrols moving in, the distance. From what we know of these patrols, they'll return to the tower and report at dusk - and once they've discovered that we've wiped out the tower, I'm sure they'll send everything they have to destroy us. We need to be well beyond their tracking range.

So we say good-bye to this old dwarf-wrought tower, of which my principle regret was that I wasn't leaving it encased in a swath of flame. The burial grounds around the tower are littered with old elven mausoleums. Each tomb, if Ryngoth's journal is to be trusted, has two keys: a rune, and an ancient elvish incantation, a word of opening. We can probably get by with the just the runes.

Outside the keep, we encounter a patrol. A horde of zombies advances on Ulrick (there's no fool like an undead fool, except perhaps for an undead lover, like a necromancer), giving the shining Tormite a chance to display the white sheen of his teeth and dispatch the zombies with a gesture into that hole of Velsharoon where undead venture once they've broken. There's also a pair of scouts who perform one of Kord's favorite tricks, summoning a vast network of tanglevines and then shooting us full of arrows as we attempt to advance. But these measures are temporary - there's not even the slightest hint of the defeatism that marred our first three attempts to attack the tower, and they're dispatched with remarkable ease. I think even I could have stabbed one of them to death. One of them is left alive; Aron attempts to intimidate him and pry information out of him by propping one of his dead comrades against a tree, then forcing him to watch while the burly Wyvernspur uses that Tempus-cursed flail to pulp his former comrade's skull. Unfortunately, we haven't particularly chosen the most knowledgeable prisoner to interrogate, so we lock him in one of the tombs and seal him inside.

We make our way through several tombs, most ransacked and abandoned. The most imposing tomb on the west side is marked "Tomb of Rothilion, Judge of Myth Drannor", a tomb marked with a star rune (which we do not possess). I will confess with an utterly inappropriate humility that the sight of this place almost struck me down. I have ambitions and desires for greatness (of course), but here was the tomb of one of the ancients whose power probably far outstripped anything in my dreams and yet died a tragic, unholy death. Nothing is as unsettling as having the clarity of life's uncertain nature thrown in your face like a cheap harlot's cleavage, which manages at the same time to be both completely unexpected and yet utterly obvious.

"Keep searching," Ulrick instructs, and Kord is in rare agreement. They interpret my desire to renew my spells as a sign of hesitancy on my part, but I have no desire to back away from this course - I simply find it harder than they do to place my common sense in a strongbox and hide the key from the world.

We finally come to an open crypt, which is marked with the inscription: "Crypt of Orbakh", a wolf runeholder and a warning from the Sammasterites: "This place is too dangerous for now. Wait for Shamoor to return and perform the appropriate ceremony.

"It's probably just dangerous for evil people," Ulrick says.

"Or non-elves," Kord adds. I suppose if I said "non-wizards" and Aron said "non-idiots" we'd complete the joke.

We use what was left behind to enter the crypt. There's a room full of statuery, and ominous scorchmarks left on the floor; from the angle and intensity of the blast, I'd wager that they were emitted from the statues and triggered by floor plates. Armed with that knowledge, we managed to navigate the floor without setting off _too_ many traps, which (given that we counted Aron among our number) was no small miracle.

We proceeded to discover a tomb in a sarophogus - unfortunately, it was a trap, and we nearly drown in a deluge of water. Given the poor condition and lack of splendor of the sarcophogus, Kord is convinced that he was not in fact Orbakh - an elven hunter with a reputation as a homicidal lunatic (I'm convinced he _must_ be Kord's ancestor), so we search the tomb more carefully and find a much more elaborate crypt. We open it up and we discover Orbakh clutching an elven sword and a star rune to his breast. We pray to the fallen elf to allow us to take the items to keep the Sammasterites from throwing them into the Pool of Radiance, but as soon as we touch them, he attacks. While Kord attempts to negotiate (to no avail) with the elven wight, the rest of us attack (except for one lackspell mage of your blood, who watches and nervously clutches his wand). Ulrick is nearly killed, but in the end, the elf is defeated and the treasures of Myth Drannor are now delivered into our safekeeping.

Now comes a moment of misfortune. Fearing that Kord would be killed too easily and the treasures fell back into the Sammasterites' hands. I find Ulrick's desire to possess these treasures a little too uncomfortably covetous, and I argue that if these had been the treasures of dead Cormyr, I doubt any force would keep them from his possession.

"Your mouth is open and your tongue is wagging," Ulrick mocks. "Stop that."

How dare he! The little Cormyte twerp, a little man of a little fallen nation, who has stumbled through every piece of fortune that has come his way, dying an idiot's death not once but twice, addressing me in such a tone of low regard. Were I not shocked at his impudence, I would have slapped his face. How dare he fail to show a modicum of respect for those who had served along side him? Is this the true son of Torm, paragon of loyalty, or has he already fallen and become that name which I would later hear all too often in Cormyr, _the Blackguard of Wheloon_?

I am angry now, and I should not be, not when I am shorn of so much of my strength. But my courage he may mock, but not my council - I do swear that I will teach this man, be he paladin or blackguard, a lesson in humility at a proper time.'Tis a promise from a Sembian with a wagging tongue - and the wagging tongue of a wizard is a thing that one ignores at their peril.

The wolf-elf was defeated and some scant treasures of the elven tombs were ours. But the wolf-elf's wight was nothing compared to the horror that would soon await us, a creature so terrifying that even I cannot believe we survived. Ulrick and Kord felt that we had not struck the Cult a heavy enough blow, and I reluctantly concurred. So we pressed on - into Bane's darkness, and Lathander's light.

More shall follow,

In Love, Thy Benighted Brother,

Ascarin Nevermoon


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## Broccli_Head (Mar 7, 2003)

MulhorandSage said:
			
		

> *The high priest is named Ryngoth, which I believe means "idiotic fanatic" in the tongue of Vaasa, and if it doesn't, it should.
> 
> or has he already fallen and become that name which I would later hear all too often in Cormyr, the Blackguard of Wheloon?
> 
> *




First quote: My favorite line from the post! Ascarin cracks me up

second quote: that's a bit ominous...


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## MulhorandSage (Mar 28, 2003)

*Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds*
(Continued from last correspondence)

I am reluctant to relate this part of the episode to you sister - for one thing, the previous portions of this tale has backed up the Stelosis to its limits, and I'm almost tempted to go to the end, rather than tell you what abomination I faced, and how close I came to brewing potions in the alchemy tables of Azuth's divine laboratory for the rest of time.

Still, even in the land of the living, my life was noSo here I stand, Ascarin Nevermoon, in the tomb of mad elf, drenched in swill water and my own sweat, my body scored in a score of scars which, while magically healed, had not yet lost their markings, and my robes tattered like a tapestry in a centuries old mansion full of moths and rats. All while Cormytes leered at me and my exposed skin, and mocked my "prissiness", as though I shared their barbarian credo to respect things worn and marred. It made me wish I knew a good plague spell.

With the tomb of Orbakh now defeated, we took the star rune from the wolf-elf's chest and proceeded back to the crypt of Rothilion the Judge. A large boulder lay in front of it, and Ulrick and Aron, both working like big Cormyte horses, sweating and snorting, attempted to budge it. After a few minutes of listening to them grunt like a pair of pit wrestlers, I tired of the sight, so I cast one of my last remaining spells - an invocation of levitation - and allow us to enter the tomb. It's a foolish expenditure of a spell, I know, but sometimes seeing certain expressions on otherwise smug faces justifies a little folly.

We enter the tomb, which is surprisingly well lit - Rothilion the Judge was not fond of darkness, even in death. The tomb is well constructed, stones fit with such cunning that belies dwarven work. And of course, what would any tomb be without the obligatory horde of skeletons rising out of alcoves to attack us?

From the moment we enter the tomb, Aron and Ulrick receive plenty of opportunity to exercise their swordarms. You know, why is it that we call the Cult of the Dragon "evil" for their fixation with the undead, but any time anyone goes into a so-called "good" tomb, you're up to your armpits in skeletons which are (of course) undead? A veritable feast for thought.

We slice our way through skeletons, a host of foot-tall terracotta elven soldiers come to life, then scour the ruins looking for finds. We find another page from the Book of Lathander on the body of a gnome (presumably a thief) who's impaled on a spear trap. Gingerly we remove the page (and the gnome) and continue onward, only to discover that Aron, bored with such bewildering concepts as party unity, staying close by to protect one's comrades, and the need to be careful in a place full of traps, has wandered off again. We notice he's missing when we hear his screams: he's gone into a room with a sword suspended from a glass pedestal and suspended in a beam of jet-blue flame; Aron stuck his hand into the flame to grasp the sword and was badly burned. What a surprise that was.

Aron rather liked the sword, but Ulrick was transfixed by it. I swear I've met Sembians less covetous than the oaf.

We complete our circuit of the level (including another drowned level that leaves me smelling like a sewer rat). We discover a library which includes Rothilion's journal and books of martial lore, but our major find is a glowing book, left in a hidden panel in a library - it's the Book of Lathander. Ulrick seems quite eager to read it, even though I warn him that godly lore must be approached with caution. (No, as much as I appreciate lore, I haven't forgotten what happened after our uncle Hesharron read the Cyrinishad -what a horrible mess _that_ was!)

So now we have the book - the perfect time to be confronted by a Sammasterite War Party. They're at least courteous enough to thank us for opening the tomb and clearing out the dangers. We respond appropriately to such a display of good manners, with violence. Tymora favors us once again, and the Cultists are forced to retreat. Naturally Kord believes that no one should escape alive, but for once I'm inclined to agree with him, so we track the necromancer who led them. Kord is faster than any normal mage, so we finally corner him in the brush. Eventually Kord puts him in his place - six feet under, for if the wight-raising bastard's so enamored of death, let him experience it first hand. We wrest another rune key from him, the final missing page from the book, and a letter:

####

Nevessam,

You must break the seal on the crypt of Rothilion as soon as possible. The Weavers of the Purple grow anxious and I have been told by Mordrayn that the phylactery has arrived for the contingent ceremony. We shall soon have our hands on the items within the Crypt of Orbakh so we may include them in the immersion ritual. Take care little brother that you acquire the Rune of the Sun or Mordrayn and Pelendralaar will be displeased.

Oh, and by the way, I'm planning to put a pox on that pet Ryngoth treasures so much.

-- Shamoor

####

Ha! So it didn't like the badger. These necromancers have no appreciation for the simple things in life, or life in general for that matter.

Victorious, we return to Ulrick and Aron, and Ulrick restores the book to full form. But that's not enough - we haven't discovered Rothilion's crypt yet, so we return to the tomb. A pair of statues guard a great door. Naturally, Ulrick draws their attack, failing to notice that the door had a pair of short sword-sized impressions that could have been effortlessly unlocked by a pair of shortswords we'd found an hour earlier in one of the alcoves. After judicious application of our failing wands of curing, we proceed through the opening, We discover a large workshop, with numerous scattered notes on woodcraft and gemcutting. I make some quick notes from the gemcutting manuals, and we push ahead through the opening. We finally find the sarcophogus in an elaborate antechamber. Beautiful elven paintings, a stone figure of an elf holding a staff, a book, and a grey disk, normally they would elicit our complete attention, but we were rather distracted by a tentacle faced creature in purple robes that stood over the tomb.

Illithid! Illithid! Kill it quick!

The mind flayer looks at us, and the world shudders. I look back at Aron, and he's standing straight, almost lifeless, drooling. I throw a fireball and duck behind a corner, Ulrick charges, Kord notches his bow. The tentacles wave again, and suddenly my knees buckle, I find myself swallowing sweat (I must've lost ten pounds in this dungeon alone) and Kord screams, drops his bow, and runs like a mad thing as far from the illithid as possible. I hurl a fireball into the chamber, but the mind flayer resists it, and it has no impact on him whatsoever. I really must learn how to gird my spells.

Ulrick charges, flails at him furiously, but his blows glance off the abomination's sleek, amphibious hide. It suddenly raises its hands, mumbles an obscene incantation, and suddenly I'm awash in fire. My prayers of thanks to Azuth at surviving the attack are mixed with a new, terrifying realization: that's no illithid, it's an Alhoon, a mind flayer lich. I may as well have lit a candle in the sanctuary of Shar and cursed the darkness!

If Ulrick realizes what this thing really is, he doesn't show it; instead, he continues his futile battle. The Alhoon looks hard at Ulrick, and suddenly he finds himself unable to move. Finally, he turns to me, as there's no one left to defend me. With a sleek, impossibly swift motion, he rushes toward me - then runs past me, Aron, and heads for the exit. In what may be the wisest decision of my life, I do _not_ try to stop him. Fortunately, it just wanted to escape. Good. Play with the cult. Have fun, little alhoon. If you play with the Sammasterites, you have my blessings.

So we regroup again, and wonder how the Alhoon came to be trapped in the tomb of Rothilion in the first place. I'm certain there must be a good reason, but that's a question I'll have to put to a good lorist on some occasion in the far future when I can actually catch my breath. In the meantime, we take an account of the treasures we discover. I take Rothilion's staff, a ring, and a pair of bracers. Another tomb has been cleared - but there's at least one more major tomb to be explored before nightfall, even if I'm still damnedably short of spell.


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## MulhorandSage (Apr 9, 2003)

*Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds*

Continued from last correspondence:

We recovered from our encounter with the Alhoon as best as we could - and were quite thankful it was so eager to escape that it didn't see fit to participate in its usual Underdark cruelty, Ulrick seemed unusually distracted by the Book of Lathander. It was a pretty thing on first sight, although its gilded, illuminated (in both senses of the word) pages were gaudy to the point of ugliness. Lathander is a showy and obnoxious deity - one more suited for elves than for men, and knowing the strength of his cult in my homeland only made me the more resentful of it. Ulrick, mind you, had no idea of my opinions, but the more I saw him taking a quick glance inside the book, skimming a passage and nodded in agreement, the more I regretted that the Sammasterites hadn't already cast this tome into the Pool of Radiance.

"We're going to get so much treasure for this book and the holy sword!" Kord declared gleefully. "Divine artifacts are worth at least 150,000 gold piece apiece each!"

"How are we going to carry all that?" Aron wondered.

"I am certain that promisary notes from the church of Lathander should be of some value." I stated. Ulrick raised an eyebrow, and Aron is openly skeptical. I crossed my arms and smiled. "I realize that the economy of your beloved Cormyr distrusted anything that wasn't cool and hard, but _some_ nations have progressed well beyond the 11th Century.

My argument is not persuasive, but I can hardly expect a pair of muscle-for-brained Cormytes and a psychotic elf to understand even the basics on economic theory. But the argument is but a momentary distraction; while it would be good if this expedition were to result in  the establishment of our fortunes, I'm not expecting it to do so. My hopes are placed on controlling the portals we found near Galath's Roost and using them as a conduit for trade - as the Zhentarim and my Sembian brothers know well, there is no wealth quite equal to that gained through the control of commerce. The book and the sword are nothing compared to that.

In any event, we proceeded to the next crypt and inserted the sunrune into the proper spot; the door crumpled to dust. So much for any protection we might have had wandering Sammasterite patrols. "Our only security lies ahead," Ulrick declares with a glance as intense as a sheepdog - a fitting metaphor, given how he sometimes treated us. "Sally forth!" he declared.

I took a step into the tomb and my nostrils bristled. "I think that's ammonia," I said, identifying the smell. The vacant expression on Aron's face typified their reaction. Ah, to be a lorist amid the barbarians!

At Ulrick's instance, Aron was put at the head of the company, a decision that produced mixed results. On the one hand, we constantly had to heal him, for the young Wyvernspur suddenly developed the gift for uncovering every pit trap that had been dug within a dozen leagues of Myth Drannor and falling with the reckless abandon of a naked Chessentan clown. I swear he was impaled so many times with spikes that even a Loviatarite or a Zhentarim torturer would wince at the injuries. After the fifth or sixth pratfall (if one can call falling headfirst in extraordinarily heavy plate armor down a thirty foot drop a"pratfall"), we tore off a wooden door and laid it over every intersection, and suddenly the falls stopped.

We encountered a bizarre assortment of monsters here: undead tigers, gorillas, naked men (I know shouldn't mention them, given your particular excesses, but he was hardly equal to Ulrick or even Aron in looks). Of course we slaughtered them.

We came into a room where a bugbear was staring at its own reflection in a pool of water. Hardly a sight I'd want to see. Perhaps guilty over some of our excess bloodletting, Aron offered him a piece of dried meat, which the creature, being a bugbear, devoured greedily. Kord attempted to recruit him as a follower, but he was far more interested in escaping the tomb than to become the indentured servant of an elf. He informed his entire clan that the front door was open and that many of the monsters that blocked the way were slain. Before we knew it, a small army of bugbears was abandoning the tomb for the wilds of Myth Drannor.

I hope you have a chance to have a nice little chat with the Sammasterites. Have fun, fellows!

We come to a chamber with many alcoves where four shining scimitars were encased in glass and hung from a high ceiling, beyond the reach of the denizens, more of the naked men (who, oddly enough, looked identical to each other). We scattered them and seized the scimitars for ourselves. For some insane reason, the idea occurred to us that, given that we had four scimitars and that there were four people in our company, we had stumbled upon a destined coincidence and that we should each take a scimitar, brandish it, and see what happened. What happened was that four cursed scimitars were hopelessly stuck to our hands and that we couldn't wield our main weapons. Aron, realizing he wouldn't be able to utilize that Tempus-cursed dire flail of his, almost broke into tears. We needed to test the curse, so with my permission Ulrick clove the scimitar that was stuck to my hand and rent it asunder. Cheap Orc-tempered steel. It did lighten my load, but hardly provided a viable solution to the problem, as my hand was still hopelessly clutching the ruined scimitar's hilt.

"Do you know how to remove curses?" Kord asked.

"Of course he doesn't," Ulrick said in a serious tone that still mocked me.

"Indeed I do not. That talent is more of a priestly evocation," I reply, getting rather tired of the mocking. 

For a moment, I wished we had one at our side, which prompted an old memory. Some time after our arrival in Ashenbeneford, our attacks on a wandering band of raiders led to an inadvertant campaign against a brigand stronghold on the edge of the Anauroch. Ulrick died his first death there - he was inadvertantly caught in a tanglevine spell cast by Kord and cut down by a huge half-orc. After Ulrick's death, we recruited a large and obnoxious Mystraite prelate into our company. To say he was overbearing would be a mild understatement - Mystraites believe they have the Realms in their back pocket, one of several reasons I venerate Azuth and not the Weaver.

The priest, whose name I've forgotten, served with us for a brief time, and then he was blown away in a fell wind (in  fact the very same wind that resurrected Ulrick after his recklessness led to the first of his deaths). At the time, I thought it a curious departyre but I have not pondered the cause for his absence nor regretted it for a long time. Now, suddenly, I wished he served at our side.

We had no choice but the press ahead, accursed though we may be. We discovered the final crypt, where an almost indescribably odd monster sat like a cat over the sarcophogus - if a cat were a bloated ovoid form like a beholder, but with many dangling tentacles. I recognized it as a _deepspawn_, a creature which devours creatures and then spits out copies of them. The creature asked: "do not hurt me!" Naturally - as none of us cared to see more than one version of any of the other members of our company walking the world - we attacked. 

It was a long and hard battle, made much harder because we were forced to fight with cursed scimitars grafted to their hands. Finally, battered, and scarred, we managed to take up our true weapons into our "off" hand and took the battle to the Deepspawn and its servants. Though Aron was nearly slain by the aberration, we emerged triumphant.

The corpse was clad in a beautiful blue silk mantle and clutching a bone scepter. When I took hold of it, the tomb abruptly shook and I swallowed a curse that was harder than hardtack or iron rations. That was but a prelude to a much more fateful event. A spirit rose above the crypt; it was an elven protector ghost, a _baelnorm_. Aron recognized it as the creature that helped him get from Saerloon to Myth Drannor when he was stranded without a teleport spell.

"You have come at last," the baelnorm stated, speaking in reverential, beautiful tones that was as solemn as death but not as joyless. "Almost it is too late, yet there is still time to defeat the Sammasterites."

"You're relying on _us_ to save the world?" Kord exclaimed. "What a mistake!"


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## Broccli_Head (Apr 9, 2003)

MulhorandSage said:
			
		

> *
> "You're relying on us to save the world?" Kord exclaimed. "What a mistake!" *




Such confidence among an adventuring troupe is admirable !


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## Derulbaskul (Apr 11, 2003)

Love it. I'm hooked. Well done.

Cheers
D


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## MulhorandSage (Apr 13, 2003)

*Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds*

Continued from last correspondence:

Somewhat to our relief, the baelnorm explained that the burden of the world's fate would not rest entirely on the competance of our little company. The larger and more powerful adventuring company that Ryngoth had mentioned in his journal had been recruited by the baelnorm - eternal protector of Myth Drannor, the poor bastard - and was about to launch an assault on the dracolich.

"You actually found fools who were willing to accept that job?" Kord wondered aloud.

The baelnorm treated the remark and its speaker as they deserved - by ignoring them with utter contempt. The air seemed to chill as it spoke, as we found ourselves more firmly wrapped into its designs - I've heard that the drow, to alleviate their perpetual boredom, breed fighting apiders and place them on a web and wager on which one will survive - and now I knew exactly how those spiders must feel. We were about to be placed on a very big web with very large spiders.

"When the dracolich is slain, its spirit will be transferred into a phylactery, and their deeds will be for nought," the baelnorm explained. "But if at the moment of transfer, the phylactery were destroyed before it could find a replacement body... then the dracolich would be forever dead."

"And then the threat to Cornyr from the Cult would be ended!" Ulrick said.

"And the Weave would be safeguarded!" I proclaimed.

"And although we're almost certain to die in the process, if by some miracle we survived, we'd be rich!" Kord declared. I could swear the baelnorm gave him a dirty look.

The Baelnorm gave me the code-words for the bone scepter - a powerful if distasteful item - and instructions on how to reach a refuge into Myth Drannor itself. We were directed to take the one long passage that we found under the crypt that led to Cormanthor. Once we arrived, we'd seek a predetermined refuge. There the badly injured Aron could rest on healing moss while I *finally* replenished my spells.

Thus we now left the tower outside the Mythal for more dangerous confines. We crept down the long tunnel we'd discovered earlier that day - the one that Kord was so frightened would take us into the heart of Myth Drannor. The only things who watched us were rats, who scurried without purpose or malice over the loam-soaked floor. All the while, we were silent, knowing our dreadful purpose. Ulrick's right hand, empty of its weapon, periodically reached around his body and fingered the place in his backpack where the Book of Lathander was kept. It appeared to be an involuntary response, which I found quite troubling.

Finally, after time unspoken and unmeasured had past - for in the midst of any deed that the heart deems great, the importance of time is greatly diminished - the long tunnel abruptly shot upward, and we came to an old half-rotten wooden ladder that was embedded in the earth. The way above us was sealed, but Aron, hoisted on Ulrick's shoulders, managed to break through the seal, and we carefully shifted the rotten, earth-soaked timbers that sealed the exit and pushed them aside. Aron crawled out and told us the route was clear. This was something of an overstatement. Several shafts of waning sunlight peered through the window, warning us that we might be observed from beyond the walls.

"It looks like some sort of barracks." Aron observed. We were in a stone building with a solid wooden fram, an oak floor and numerous beds. They were all abandoned, and many of the bedframes had become a feast for termites.

"Kord, see what's outside," Ulrick instructed. The elven scout nodded, did a quick check through the windows, and when he spotted no one observing us, he opened the door and took a more thorough look. Once he was certain we were safe, he motioned us to quickly follow him.

And there it was. Castle Cormanthor, once the heart of the great realm of Myth Drannor and the center of elvendom on earth, now loomed ahead of us, a mile in the distance and yet all-too-close. Its ancient spires filled with an unspoken dread that belied their elven beauty. Its battlements zhot skyward like eagle's wings beneath a great shadow, its walls, aged and scarred, reflected only a pale reminder of what it must have been, the citadel of elven moonlight, a glorious mystery reduced to an accursed ruin.

I suppose only Kord and I could appreciate what we saw, and Kord more than I, if his heart weren't so tightly governed by the mercenary impulse. We're in a large courtyard, and we quickly scuttle across and look for the opening to the baelnorm's sanctuary. Kord expected to find it easily, but somehow, I spot the opening and lead us through a curtain of ivy into a mossy den. 

We're in a green cage, alit by moonlight and the subtle candle of stars. At the far end of the chamber is a raised bed of purple moss, whose healing properties were well proported by the baelnorm. Uneasily, Ulrick helps Aron slides out of his massive body sheathe of an armor, and sets the Wyvernspur's badly injiured body on the moss-bed. The lad needs it, as do we all - for without question,  today has been the hardest day of my entire life. I've been closer to death more times in one day than even the average elf gets during their entire lifetime. Some day, provided that the remainder of our errand goes well, I will look back on this day and laugh, because -for a brief time - I lived a life when the drama surpassed the level of even hysterical melodreama and entered the realm of the absurd.

But reflection was best left until our errand was over. I fell asleep almost as soon as I close my eyes.

I awaken with shafts of morning breaking through the ivy, and the chamber lit by its own dawn's light: Ulrick has the book of Lathander on his lap and is stooped over like a monk, transfixed by  the gods' own pages. Again, I'm disturbed by the sight. I love lore, and will pry into the far corners of the world to seek it, but man should be lore's master, lore should not be the master of men.

And then, jubilantly but perhaps hypocritically, I prepare my spell arsenal for the coming battle. I start a discussion of our battle tactics, but the others (quite correctly) advise me to wait until after our final instructions from the baelnorm. Kord decides to give us an incredibly inspired speech on how noble we're being, and how we should feel honored to be walking into certain death and dying for such a glorious cause. I openly ridicule him. "What kind of fool are you?" I sneer. I don't deny that a certain fatalism is among my qualities, but "inspiration through recognition of one's purpose" is a farce of extraordinary measure, "I have absolutely no intention of dying today, or any day in the foreseeable future." The other agree, even Aron (which, of course, worries me). Kord sighs and looks at us like a pack of dumb children refusing to listen to the august wisdom of a sage among sages. Which he most certainly is not. We continue to argue the point until the baelnorm arrives.

The baelnorm congratulates us on our already impressive accomplishments and then briefs us on the castle's layout. After being given advice on how to infiltrate the gate, There is a ground level, and three subterrtanean levels. We were to enter the ground level.and proceed as quickly as possible to the subterranean level. The first level was an artificial elven skyline, which we should be able to infiltrate quickly until we found a secret door. That would take us down a set of stairs into the middle of a large cavern on the second level, which were patrolled on the north side by skeletons and on the south side by some sort of Dragon-Men; the description made them sound like half-dragons. We were instructed to avoid these patrols at all costs, travel northeast and look for another secret passage. There we would travel down to the lower level, where the dracolich's phylactery was kept under guard in a magical prison. There we would break through the prison and destroy the phylactery.

"So we destroy the phylactery in the Pool of Radiance?" Kord asked,

"No." the baelnorm told us. "Simply break it out of its prison and smash it. You will need magical protections. These I can provide, but they will be detecting magic on anyone who enters. So I will provide you with this..." he said, and a magical cream appeared. "Smear it over yourselves and your items and they will be hidden from their scrys."

"How do we escape?" It didn't take Kord to ask the ultimate in Kord questions.

"There is a tunnel branch on the far west side of the cavern, beyond the Pool. Take that, and it will lead to a sanctuary," the baelnorm explained. "Do not take the northernmost passage - that leafds to the dracolich."

We take a careful note of that statement, "Why don't we just take the escape passage and head there directly?" Kord asked.

Good question. "The passage leads through a Null-Magic Zone," the baelnorm explains. "You could not enter Cormanthor with any magical protections if you took that route."

That's a very convincing argument.

"And once we arrive down in the Pool of Radiance, we throw the phylactery into it?" Kord repeated, oblivious to the fact that the baelnorm had told us not to do that only ma minute earlier. Even Aron gives him a mystified look. Once again, Kord stubbornly refuses to accept any factual statement, however grand or trivial, that doesn't meet with his worldview.

The baelnorm departs, wishing us good fortune, leaving us with a great task and an immense weight. To infiltrate Castle Cormanthor, pass unseen amid the Sammasterite Cult, make our way to the bottom, destroy the dracolich's phylactery, and escape - hoping the other adventurers, whose names we don't even know, can slay the abomination. Otherwise, we'll have an adversary beyond imaging on our heads.

"That's it," Ulrick says, looking at each of us in turn. "Let's go."


----------



## MulhorandSage (Apr 13, 2003)

*Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds*

Continued from last correspondence:

Somewhat to our relief, the baelnorm explained that the burden of the world's fate would not rest entirely on the competance of our little company. The larger and more powerful adventuring company that Ryngoth had mentioned in his journal had been recruited by the baelnorm - eternal protector of Myth Drannor, the poor bastard - and was about to launch an assault on the dracolich.

"You actually found fools who were willing to accept that job?" Kord wondered aloud.

The baelnorm treated the remark and its speaker as they deserved - by ignoring them with utter contempt. The air seemed to chill as it spoke, as we found ourselves more firmly wrapped into its designs - I've heard that the drow, to alleviate their perpetual boredom, breed fighting apiders and place them on a web and wager on which one will survive - and now I knew exactly how those spiders must feel. We were about to be placed on a very big web with very large spiders.

"When the dracolich is slain, its spirit will be transferred into a phylactery, and their deeds will be for nought," the baelnorm explained. "But if at the moment of transfer, the phylactery were destroyed before it could find a replacement body... then the dracolich would be forever dead."

"And then the threat to Cornyr from the Cult would be ended!" Ulrick said.

"And the Weave would be safeguarded!" I proclaimed.

"And although we're almost certain to die in the process, if by some miracle we survived, we'd be rich!" Kord declared. I could swear the baelnorm gave him a dirty look.

The Baelnorm gave me the code-words for the bone scepter - a powerful if distasteful item - and instructions on how to reach a refuge into Myth Drannor itself. We were directed to take the one long passage that we found under the crypt that led to Cormanthor. Once we arrived, we'd seek a predetermined refuge. There the badly injured Aron could rest on healing moss while I *finally* replenished my spells.

Thus we now left the tower outside the Mythal for more dangerous confines. We crept down the long tunnel we'd discovered earlier that day - the one that Kord was so frightened would take us into the heart of Myth Drannor. The only things who watched us were rats, who scurried without purpose or malice over the loam-soaked floor. All the while, we were silent, knowing our dreadful purpose. Ulrick's right hand, empty of its weapon, periodically reached around his body and fingered the place in his backpack where the Book of Lathander was kept. It appeared to be an involuntary response, which I found quite troubling.

Finally, after time unspoken and unmeasured had past - for in the midst of any deed that the heart deems great, the importance of time is greatly diminished - the long tunnel abruptly shot upward, and we came to an old half-rotten wooden ladder that was embedded in the earth. The way above us was sealed, but Aron, hoisted on Ulrick's shoulders, managed to break through the seal, and we carefully shifted the rotten, earth-soaked timbers that sealed the exit and pushed them aside. Aron crawled out and told us the route was clear. This was something of an overstatement. Several shafts of waning sunlight peered through the window, warning us that we might be observed from beyond the walls.

"It looks like some sort of barracks." Aron observed. We were in a stone building with a solid wooden fram, an oak floor and numerous beds. They were all abandoned, and many of the bedframes had become a feast for termites.

"Kord, see what's outside," Ulrick instructed. The elven scout nodded, did a quick check through the windows, and when he spotted no one observing us, he opened the door and took a more thorough look. Once he was certain we were safe, he motioned us to quickly follow him.

And there it was. Castle Cormanthor, once the heart of the great realm of Myth Drannor and the center of elvendom on earth, now loomed ahead of us, a mile in the distance and yet all-too-close. Its ancient spires filled with an unspoken dread that belied their elven beauty. Its battlements zhot skyward like eagle's wings beneath a great shadow, its walls, aged and scarred, reflected only a pale reminder of what it must have been, the citadel of elven moonlight, a glorious mystery reduced to an accursed ruin.

I suppose only Kord and I could appreciate what we saw, and Kord more than I, if his heart weren't so tightly governed by the mercenary impulse. We're in a large courtyard, and we quickly scuttle across and look for the opening to the baelnorm's sanctuary. Kord expected to find it easily, but somehow, I spot the opening and lead us through a curtain of ivy into a mossy den. 

We're in a green cage, alit by moonlight and the subtle candle of stars. At the far end of the chamber is a raised bed of purple moss, whose healing properties were well proported by the baelnorm. Uneasily, Ulrick helps Aron slides out of his massive body sheathe of an armor, and sets the Wyvernspur's badly injiured body on the moss-bed. The lad needs it, as do we all - for without question,  today has been the hardest day of my entire life. I've been closer to death more times in one day than even the average elf gets during their entire lifetime. Some day, provided that the remainder of our errand goes well, I will look back on this day and laugh, because -for a brief time - I lived a life when the drama surpassed the level of even hysterical melodreama and entered the realm of the absurd.

But reflection was best left until our errand was over. I fell asleep almost as soon as I close my eyes.

I awaken with shafts of morning breaking through the ivy, and the chamber lit by its own dawn's light: Ulrick has the book of Lathander on his lap and is stooped over like a monk, transfixed by  the gods' own pages. Again, I'm disturbed by the sight. I love lore, and will pry into the far corners of the world to seek it, but man should be lore's master, lore should not be the master of men.

And then, jubilantly but perhaps hypocritically, I prepare my spell arsenal for the coming battle. I start a discussion of our battle tactics, but the others (quite correctly) advise me to wait until after our final instructions from the baelnorm. Kord decides to give us an incredibly inspired speech on how noble we're being, and how we should feel honored to be walking into certain death and dying for such a glorious cause. I openly ridicule him. "What kind of fool are you?" I sneer. I don't deny that a certain fatalism is among my qualities, but "inspiration through recognition of one's purpose" is a farce of extraordinary measure, "I have absolutely no intention of dying today, or any day in the foreseeable future." The other agree, even Aron (which, of course, worries me). Kord sighs and looks at us like a pack of dumb children refusing to listen to the august wisdom of a sage among sages. Which he most certainly is not. We continue to argue the point until the baelnorm arrives.

The baelnorm congratulates us on our already impressive accomplishments and then briefs us on the castle's layout. After being given advice on how to infiltrate the gate, There is a ground level, and three subterrtanean levels. We were to enter the ground level.and proceed as quickly as possible to the subterranean level. The first level was an artificial elven skyline, which we should be able to infiltrate quickly until we found a secret door. That would take us down a set of stairs into the middle of a large cavern on the second level, which were patrolled on the north side by skeletons and on the south side by some sort of Dragon-Men; the description made them sound like half-dragons. We were instructed to avoid these patrols at all costs, travel northeast and look for another secret passage. There we would travel down to the lower level, where the dracolich's phylactery was kept under guard in a magical prison. There we would break through the prison and destroy the phylactery.

"So we destroy the phylactery in the Pool of Radiance?" Kord asked,

"No." the baelnorm told us. "Simply break it out of its prison and smash it. You will need magical protections. These I can provide, but they will be detecting magic on anyone who enters. So I will provide you with this..." he said, and a magical cream appeared. "Smear it over yourselves and your items and they will be hidden from their scrys."

"How do we escape?" It didn't take Kord to ask the ultimate in Kord questions.

"There is a tunnel branch on the far west side of the cavern, beyond the Pool. Take that, and it will lead to a sanctuary," the baelnorm explained. "Do not take the northernmost passage - that leafds to the dracolich."

We take a careful note of that statement, "Why don't we just take the escape passage and head there directly?" Kord asked.

Good question. "The passage leads through a Null-Magic Zone," the baelnorm explains. "You could not enter Cormanthor with any magical protections if you took that route."

That's a very convincing argument.

"And once we arrive down in the Pool of Radiance, we throw the phylactery into it?" Kord repeated, oblivious to the fact that the baelnorm had told us not to do that only ma minute earlier. Even Aron gives him a mystified look. Once again, Kord stubbornly refuses to accept any factual statement, however grand or trivial, that doesn't meet with his worldview.

The baelnorm departs, wishing us good fortune, leaving us with a great task and an immense weight. To infiltrate Castle Cormanthor, pass unseen amid the Sammasterite Cult, make our way to the bottom, destroy the dracolich's phylactery, and escape - hoping the other adventurers, whose names we don't even know, can slay the abomination. Otherwise, we'll have an adversary beyond imaging on our heads.

"That's it," Ulrick says, looking at each of us in turn. "Let's go."


----------



## MulhorandSage (Apr 16, 2003)

*Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds*

Continued from last correspondence:

The few minutes that we waited by the gate of Castle Cormanthor were among the most nervoius of my life; it felt like a basilisk was crawling up my spine. Just the sight of the gatehouse at close range, its granite walls, hard stone battlements, a portcullis of dire steel spears, and an opening so large and so tall that a storm giant would barely need to stoop, would have been enough to want to send me fleeing back to Sembia had I not been consumed by the insanity of our errand. 

As we waited, I observed my companion with new eyes, looking for familiar behavior. Aron played with the pommel of his sword - he was unhappy that he was forced to conceal his dire flail beneath his cloak for a less distinctive weapon. Aron, like a dumb beast, sometimes has to be yanked with hard, deliberate tugs toward the trough of survival.

Kord was obvious trying harder to be inconspicuous - it's a good thing I've never learned any invsibility magic, for I am certain he would want them as often as possible. Still, I get the sense that this place is having a profound effect on even _his_ emotions. His eyes glance hither and yon when he thinks no one is looking at him, and the traces of the old elfwork besot him, and he longs for the drought.

Ulrick was standing erect as a well-trained horse, not a surprise. Truth to tell, I think he has even less appreciation for the beauty and heritage of this place than Aron. He was driven by duty and by the mission, and blind to all else, like a stern father lecturing his child for getting one note of a performance wrong when a lad has sung like an angel - it is not a way I'd choose to live. Of course, if he got us out of here alive and successful, it would be boorish of me to complain _too_ loudly. Ulrick was focusing on the chief guard, a tall man who was as broad as an ogre and wore a great black steel helm with bone inlays, shaped like a dragon's skull and whose few patches of visible skin are markedly scaly.

"Half-dragon..." I whispered to Aron, hoping that he won't openly inquire about the man and put us in mortal danger. Of course, the lummox of a Wyvernspur probably can't hear a whisper in that huge helmet anyway.

"We've completed our patrol," I heard Ulrick repeat. "No losses, praise the Dragon!" And with that, the huge half-dragon nodded, shouted something virtually incoherant and, with a metallic squeal and a carillon of chain rattles, the great gate was pulled up in a staggering motion until its grid of pointed spears loomed thirty feet above our heads.

"Enter," the half-dragon proclaimed. "Praise the dragon." Such a quaint little cult. I'm not sure whether I should answer him, but I follow Ulrick's lead and remained silent. We entered the castle grounds without incident. We were but mice in a shattered cathedral - the glory of Castle Cormanthos is not simply its physical beauty but its many magcks, its dance of dweomers, here an alteration, there an alteration, interwoven with such skill that when one sees it and has learned enough of dweomercraft to appreciate true artistry, all of the chest-swollen pretension of our brethren in Sembia seems amateurish and vulgar by comparison. This description does no justice to what I saw - in truth, I longed to cast the most basic spells and examine its dweomercraft more carefully, but the necessity of the quest prevented any spellcasting until we reach our goal.

We spoke to no one. We appeared to be no one worth speaking with, and that suited our purposes splendidly.

We strode purposely down a long, delicate spiral staircase of some unearthly blue stone, inlaid with mother of pearl trimmings, and descended into the first underground level, where we walked under an elven sky as they must have seen in it in the hoary-lore days when man was still a young race. There were many patrols here, but by feigning a martial posture - which even _I_ can do convincingly - we managed to avoid drawing attention to ourselves.

_Praise the dragon, your minions are idiots._

We said farewell to the cavern of elven memories for darker realms, for dungeons and caverns wrought from crudely hewed stone. These were not dwarf-work. As the baelnorn said, there were patrols of undead and dragon-men here. We avoided them, almost without effort. It was more taxing finding the damned secret entrance to the Pool of Radiance level.

The tunnel was pitch dark; even Ulrick's Cormyte commander's ring wouldn't illuminate this blackness. We became aware of each other's movement, the familiar clatter of metal on stone. To say that the descent seemed to go on forever would be melodramatic, but not far from how it felt. Anticipation gaveway to tedium and slight fatigue. Finally, we came to a dead stop, a great stone slab barred our way. Aron and Ulrick, straining mightily, managed to pry the seal open, and there we were. The Pool.

To call this cavern large would be an understatement, like everything else in Myth Drannor, this place was determined to impress us with its size. The walls were black granite, basalt perhaps, rising several hundred feet above us, where the shadows seemed to swirl over our heads. The shadows were cast by the light from large green-white pool that loomed in front of us. The Pool of Radiance was about fifty feet in diameter, perhaps larger, and crossed by several natural land bridges that rose over the central depression where the Pool sat. Beyond it was an altar, adorned with the trappings of the Sammasterites. Behind the altar, was a glass case - glassteel, I'd wager, in which the phylactery of Pelendralaar is contained.

Near the altar, kneeling in prayer, were two men in black robes. Necromancers I gathered, I might even guess that one of them is the great Shamoor, writer of letters. Truth to tell, I didn't give a damn in the Nine Hells who these people are, what their boyhood suffering might have been, how badly they were treated by children and pets. They were human offal, who needed to be thrown into the streets with the rest of the offal, and ground under horses' hooves. Some say that they need to know and understand their enemies to fully battle them, but deluded cultists such as these are such apocalyptic simpletons that they engage no sense of curiosity, only contempt. No death was too swift for such swine.

Unfortunately, they were not the only people here. There were also two huge dragon-men, alertly guarding against the unlikely possibility that the guardians of Faerun might invade their sanctum. More ominously, however, was the figure of a huge red dragon that was poised several hundred feet away on our right hand side.

"Five guards!" Kord whined. "What are five guards doing here? There should only be two guards! This was supposed to be a cakewalk!"

I think even Aron looked at him like he was completely mad. Ulrick shrugged, and he and Aron drew their weapons and immediately charged. Kord took cover near the door and drew his bow. We would not try to bluff our way through this battle.

"Kill the intruders!" the necromancer who's probably Shamoor shoued at the dragon.

My main tactic was to get as close to the phylactery as possible, and use the bone scepter to cast a _shatter_ spell, but the dragon posed the most immediate problem. We noticed that the dragon's movement had a staggered quality to it, and its hide looked ragged, not at all well groomed. We also remembered encountering a red dragon that flew above us in Myth Drannor - which the baelnorn later told us had been slain by the same adventuring party that was now confronting Pelendralaar. Could this be that selfsame dragon, now animated as a zombie? Perhaps its body was placed here as a recepticle for Pelendralaar should his hopes fail? 

And I smiled, for now I knew how to deal with it. First I hastened myself, then I raised a magical shield, and finally I used the scepter to cast a _holding_ spell on the red dragon, a spell that only affected undead. The dragon froze in its tracks.

"Thought so," I smiled, advancing toward the phylactery, skirting the edge of the Pool itself. The one weakness in my plan was that the _shatter_ spell required me to cast it at close range, whereas I wanted to be as far away from the fray s possible. By this time, Aron and Ulrick had reached the mages and were slashing away at them, though Ulrick was determined to destroy the phylactery as quickly as possible. The two mages raised dweomermirrors to protect themselves, but Aron, either through Tymora's grace (or just pure stupidity that allows him to see through a complex illusion), managed to connect with the true mage, cracking his skull with hideous and wondrous power. The other mage fired _arcane bolts_ at Aron (who's been struck by so many during the course of our campaign that I'm surprised he hasn't grown armor against them) and dispeled the holding spell I'd placed on the zombie. I smiled, restored the spell, and aimed a lightning bolt at the two dragon-men - who were sweeping towards me as fast as their wings will carry them.

Great. You were _supposed_ to engage Ulrick, you idiots!

They shrug off the effects of the lightning bolts and one of them grappled me. His strength was monstrous, but fortunately for me he was so anxious to hurl me into the pool that he didn't secure his grip, and I managed to wriggle free. The other dragon-man took a swing at me, only to receive an arrow between the eyes for his trouble, courtesy of Kord. The other dragon-man got hold of me, and also triedto throw me into the Pool. Somehow, perhaps knowing that the waters would prove fatal, gave me the strength to resist. Either that, or the baelnorn's spells were at work. Either way, as long as I was still breathing at the end of the day, I did not care in the least.

To make matters worse, spirits issue from the bodies of the dead necromancer and the dead dragon: Mythal ghosts I guessed. They've absorbed so much magic from the mythal of Myth Drannor and the Pool that the dweomer has permeated their entire bodies. Kord, employing an arsenal of magic arrows, slew the dragon-man-ghost thing too. The other ran down a long tunnel, silently screaming for assistance.

Now our attention was focused on Shamoor. Realizing that the words "praise the dragon" meant absolutely nothing when you're surrounded in a ring of foes, decided to leap headlong into the Pool and see what happens. Unfortunately, the Pool dissolves magic - and Shamoor, like the others, had become permeated with the energies of the Weave. Like a living, hungry thing, the Pool devoured him like a sweet treat that dissolves on one's tongue. Good riddance.

Ulrick finally shatterec the glassteel case and Aron struck a heavy blow with his flail. I attempted to cast a _shatter_ spell, but the phylactery resisted. How annoying. What it doesn't resist is the second blow from Aron's flail. The phylactery fall to pieces. Our work was done.

We proceeded to the exit, and noted that from the exit where the mythal-ghost went, another dragon emerged. This one was breathing smoke from its nostrils. I had a brief thought of casting a lightning bolt at it, but common sense prevailed. Our one problem was that the dragon lies between Kord and ourselves - Kord loves to fix himself to a good sniper's position and not budge. Fortunately, seeing our retreat, the dragon returned to Pelendralaar's lair. Kord rejoined us, and we escaped down the tunnel.

Eventually, we followed the tunnel out of Myth Drannor; as we were warned, we crossed a Null Magic zone along the way. We finally met the baelnorn, who thanked us for our service, and asked us where we'd like to go. I expected to be sent to the Wyvernspur lands, to help save Aron's family from the troll infestation - he's certainly done us enough of a service that we should turn our attention to helping him. Kord, however, was adamant about seeing his family at Silverymoon and refused to entertain any other course of action; Ulrick, lusting after a holy avenger weapon, thought he could trade the Book and Sword of Lathander at his Silverymoon temple, and Aron hoped to join a holy order of the temple of Selune at Silverymoon.

"I'll get you as close to Silverymoon as I can," the baelnorn promised, and he raised his arms to cast a spell.

"But what about --" I said, meaning to ask about Wheloon, the benighted city that Ulrick essentially abandoned for his quest to stop the dracolich. But it's too late. We reappeared somewhere in the high mountains, in a freezing wind. The snow blew hard in our faces, stabbing like ice.


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## Broccli_Head (Apr 16, 2003)

MulhorandSage said:
			
		

> *Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds
> 
> 
> 
> "But what about --" I said, meaning to ask about Wheloon, the benighted city that Ulrick essentially abandoned for his quest to stop the dracolich. But it's too late. We reappeared somewhere in the high mountains, in a freezing wind. The snow blew hard in our faces, stabbing like ice. *





Funny! Ulrick shirking his responsibility. 

Now I wonder where they are.


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## MulhorandSage (Apr 29, 2003)

####

28th day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372. 
Silverymoon

Dear sister,

How *dare* he!

Curse me for a fool to ally with paladins and Cormytes! I'd wish a plague upon my head as punishment, except that a plague would be an improvement over my current situation. The abyss take all paladins! Take them all and shroud them in shadow and maggots! All of my designs are undone because this fop of a Cormaeril chose glory over duty!

We supposed that the baelnorn sent us as close as it could to the place where we requested - Silverymoon - unfortunately it must have used a moongate that connected to a mountaintop located some distance from the town. How like that fool Ulrick, who, pursuing a greedy goal while claiming to be above such base emotions, led us into a place where I nearly froze both my vitals and my spellfingers.

At that moment my sister, I wondered which plane of chill would be best suited to send him and repay the favor.

We were atop the battlements of an ancient fortress, surrounded on all sides by impassable cliffs. There's a shrine to Halani, one of Kord's conceited elven gods (the goddess of staring at one's self in the mirror for unending hours, methinks) and naturally the oblivious elf wanted to pray to her, probably for the removal of that mole on his back. I suppose I should have been curious whether that arrogant elven-bitch would answer Kord's prayer, instead, I was busy experiencing a more bitter chill than any my necromancer adversaries in Myth Drannor had shown me. I was certainly glad I did not cast my spells with my toes.

I digress, again. It is, I think, that natural human trait that inspires one to talk about the weather as frequently as possible, especially when it's conspiring to kill you.

Kord's prayer was interrupted, but not by anything divine - more infernal I think. A glowing ball of energy, dancing like a fey in mid-air, suddenly rose from a nook in the shrine and fired a tiny bolt of lightning hat struck the prayer-addled elf in its vespers, ending its supplication in a manner that would have been amusing had I been less hypothermiac.

Ulrick, failing to sense the ambush, but sensing (correctly, I suspect) that it would get much worse the longer I stayed there, pointed us toward a downward facing staircase. We fled downward, our numb feet nearly tripping on the stairs.

"Why are you so cold?" Aron asked. "I can barely feel it."

"That's because you're wearing a traveller's cloak, you dolt!" I shouted back at the irritating lummox. Unfortunately, the other members of the company had, during an expedition when I was indisposed, discovered a cache of traveller's cloaks. Of course would these allegedly hardy human slabs of meat actually deign to lend such a wondrous thing to a less physically adept soul in his hour of need? Of course not! I suppose the next thing I'll hear as that they're expecting me, as a wizard. to have prepared the appropriate spell to keep myself warm (even though it had been midsummer's heat at Myth Drannor). If so, I'll fireball the lot of them and warm myself on their carcasses!

In the meantime, the one source of warmth was one we were all desperate to avoid - the painful lightning jolts of the fey-lights, which flickered in and out of existance and proved so agile that they were nearly impossible to hit - Aron, who's usually a capable swordsman, floundered like an overconfident apprentice trying to hit the blasted things. 

The fey things play a cat and mouse game with us, popping in and out before we can deal with them. Ulrick urges us on, agreeing that we're probably being herded, but seeing little alternative. Of course, neither could I. The jolts from the fey-orb were painful (after receiving a solid flash on the buttocks, I was careful to raise a magical _shield_ and keep it interposed between me and the light) but not lethal.

We ended up in an open courtyard of a large temple complex, a huge altar of black stone - basalt, I'd guess, or I'm a Cormyte - grinning at us with dark power. Its acolytes were about a dozen muscle-bound men, as broad-shouldered and thick-chested as Aron, clad in the meagerest leather straps, they flaunted themselves in a manner that even a Chessentan self-pageanteer would find embarrassing.

(Fine sister. On the last point, I exagerate. But it was an odd sight indeed to come face to face with these wolf-bloods. And despite the potential danger I faced, I couldn't help but be preoccupied with one thought - how could anyone survive wearing such scant clothing when the ice-wind was freeze-burning my flesh and flaying it from my bones?)

The leather pageanteer looked up at the sudden instrusion, clearly annoyed that we disrupted some ritual, and one of them, drawing a whip from his belt, pointed at me menacingly. Great, I told myself. I recognized who they were, or at least what they served - Loviatar. The baelnorn just _had_ tp send us into a stronghold of the bitch of pain. Ignoring the growling sounds of my comrades. I put up my hands in a gesture of non-violence and began to walk around them. They were clearly evil, or harbored such intent, but I rarely debate a man's religious dogma unless they're presenting a warped view of the arcane, and I don't believe in killing people because their ethos differs from mine (else I would have gutted that paladin like a spawning salmon a long time ago). But the Loviatarites had other ideas. The lash leapt out of the Loviatarite's hand, lazily flying above the rim of my protection spells, and stung the side of my cheek, drawing the blood of Sembia. I believe the others thought me a fool for not attacking on sight. They charged into the fray, even Kord (though he did so to avoid the fey-light that was driving him from behind. There's nothing Kord hates more than being flanked, except perhaps for common sense and the practicality of reigning in one's bloodthirst).

The battle that followed was welcome, if only because the blood rushing through my veins was sufficiently warming that I no longer felt like I was freezing to death. Truth to tell, when it comes to warming one's body, and one is forced to choose between a whore in one's bed, warm brandy in one's hand, and the fear of a sudden death in one's heart, the latter is by the poorest of the available options. One of the pageanteers cornered me, whip in hand; almost giddy at the prospect that he would flay me like cattle. I didn't wish to cast one of my more powerful magicks, not yet, so I took the bone scepter, and drawing it with one swift motion, slammed it into the ample acreage of his chest. The impact did much more than I expected. Immediately, the enemy's health faltered, and his broad frame became emaciated as a sickly wizard; he fell to one knee, then lay prone at my feet, and then (to my astonishment) I heard his death rattle. Looking at my hands and wrists, I found that they had thickened noticeably, and briefly sliding my left hand over my upper right arm, there was a hardness and a bulge that is not the norm for one of my slender (fine, call it frail if you must!) physique.

Necromancy. I could get used to this.

The Loviatarites had bitten off more than they could chew, but they were not fighting alone, as several of these fey-orbs had now materialized and continued to pelt us with lightning. Briefly Aron swayed, clutched his belt for a healing potion bottle that wasn't there, and we suddenly realized we were dying the death of a thousand cuts. Kord pushed ahead into a guardtower door, and we found ourselves facing animated suits of flying armor - helmed horrors. We managed to disable them, and continued fighting our way into the keep, hoping that we'd eventually make our way to a safe egress. But resistance only grew stronger as we penetrated deeper within the keep, and with Aron and Ulrick both badly wounded and little healing left to us, I decided on a desperation gambit. We unloaded much of what we had taken from the Sammasterite's tower, all of the masterwork quality armor and weapons that burdened us, and lightened our load so I could support our descent with a _levitation_ spell. We worked our way to a window, and stared down the sheer, ice-sharded face of the cliff. It looked like a straight drop of several thousand feet. Taking a deep breath, knowing that all it would take is one well-cast _dispel magic_ to send us all plummeting to certain death, I cast the spell, and we began a controlled descent to the valley floor.

Several minutes later, as the fell winds battered us like the buffet of white dragon wings, we finally descended below the altitude where  ice held the mountain as its thrall, and finally arrived in climes where a heavy cloak could shield you from the wind with shivers.

"I know where we are," Kord said - he was born in these lands. "I'm not sure I want to take you there. You might embarass me."

Our collective jaws dropped.

"Let's see," I laughed. "Silverymoon is dedicated to the peaceful unity of Men, Elves, and Dwarves - among other races - and we've just helped safeguard some of elvendom's most valuable artifacts, as well as risked our lives fighting against an evil that had desecrated your most hollowed sanctuary west of Evermeet, and we're _still_ not worthy of entering Silverymoon?"

"Yeah," Kord replied. 

"But I'll never be able to join a specialty order of Selune!" Aron protested.

"And we need to get the book and sword of Lathander back to the temple." Ulrick said.

"Oh." I could hear the moneychanging going off in Kord's head. "Two major artifacts, that's worth at least 125,000 Gold each." Kord gleefully chortled. "For 250,000 Gold, I can easily take you to my city!"

I would have told him that it's highly unlikely that even a cathedral as rich as Lathander's would keep that much currency around - for one thing, it'd attract far too many thieves - but I said nothing. It's best to let this treasure-besotted fool live with his delusions, then smile when reality inevitably shatters them. Life's more fun that way.

The sun was waxing when we arrived at the Cathedral of Lathander, as grand and as gaudy a temple as I've ever seen, even more than the Grand Register of Waukeen in Saerloon, which I marvelled at as a boy. The walls had a slight yellow tint, magically pigments I'd wager, which made the building appear pearl-colored at dawn and dusk, and a deep gold at noon. Such were the aspects of Lathander Morninglord (or those aspects he'd claim as his own, which for the gods is much the same thing.)

We entered the cathedral to find it busier than the market district of Saerloon at Highharvestide. There were dozens of adventurers seated at table, piled next to assorted relics and weapons, awaiting nervously as the priests made a circuit of the room, divining the properties of those goods they'd been brought. Since, two years again, the Queen Alustriel had founded the Kingdom of Luruar (now called the Silver Marches, a more religiously neutral name), many adventurers have scavenged the ancient dwarf ruins of the North, unearthing treasures enchanted by the ancient elven masters of the northern forests, which vied with Netheril when the world was young, and the dwarrow-delvers of the great dwarf kingdom of Delzoun. At least some of them must have lain in a dragon's hoard, for they had a draconic stench, half-offal, half overwhelming spice.

We watched patiently as the priests fawned and marveled over the discoveries - I got the distinct impression that their pretty speech was intended to bespell them without actually throwing an enchantment - and smiled as we anticipated their words to us. Kord's face was lit up as if it were a living gateway to the treasures that would be awarded to him. I had the brief and quite horrifying mental picture of a naked Kord swimming through a hoard of gold like a great wyrm, throwing coins in his wake.

Then the priest came to our table, laid their eyes upon our find, and the fawning mask dropped and was instantly replaced with wonder. The high priest of Lathander, a gaudy creature clad in gold like a eunuch, was immediately summoned to inspect the book and the sword. He cast a spell. Suddenly the temple went pitch dark, and then the book shone, and a crack of light came out of the ceiling and illuminated Ulrick. This was followed by a light that surrounded the sword, and the blade levitated in place, then drifted into the hands of a Lathanderite paladin.

"Hey! Our treasure!" Kord exclaimed, though his voice was lost in the moment. And I seemed to recall that Aron was the one who suffered taking the sword from Lathander's light.

"Truly the prophecy has been fulfilled," the chief priest said, pointing at Ulrick. "One has come, bearing relics from the dark, and the darkness came but could not restrain him."

There was a very unsettling feeling in my stomach when I heard that damned word "prophecy".

"You must become our new high priest," the priest added.

I knew, of course, that Ulrick would have to decline now and put an end to this nonsense. Clearly Cormyr needed his help far more than Silverymoon, and no paladin of Torm could abandon his subjects for very long, even one as neglectful as Ulrick. Furthermore, the portals we had so carefully studied lay near Cormyr, but not (to our knowledge) Silverymoon. I had pinned all my hopes on mastering the portal network, wresting them from the control of the great Orc King, taming them and using them to facilitate commerce between the Dales, Sembia, and Cormyr - control of those portals would make us all richer than kings.

Ulrick looked at us - and I knew even _he_ wouldn't make any hasty decision without consulting us. After all, taking the position of high priest of Lathander (for which he was utterly unqualified) would have serious consequences for our partnership, and no paladin who prized loyalty would take that decision without talking it over with us. And I am a Wizard, not a Dullard: it is my chief purpose in life to provide advice to Men at such critical moments.

"I accept," Ulrick said, and suddenly I realized I'd been betrayed. No, not betrayal in the grand conspiracy, dagger-in-the-back sense, the labyrinthine court plotting that one finds in potboilers and history. No, this was betrayal in a very personal sense, betrayal through neglect and disregard. For it is easy to be a comrade in a time of great need, but when that need is gone, and one can be casually disregarded in the everyday scheme of events, then one is not a comrade, one is a lapdog.

I had once seen greatness in this man's mien, a potential to achieve triumphs beyond the scope of lesser men, and such a man is worth keeping close, for he will lead you to interesting places. But now he has become besotted by his new religion, which forced him to make a choice between two places: the easy and the hard; on one hand the prosperous avenues of Silverymoon, on the other, the starvation-ridden streets of Wheloon. A great man never choses the easier of two such paths, but that is precisely what Ulrick has done, and he who makes such a coward's choice may be useless to me now.

I will go nowhere, sister, if I remain this Lathanderite's lapdog for much longer.

His decision was made without malice - I suspect he will be surprised when I tell him he's betrayed me, and treat the accusation lightly. He will be mistaken. In a friend or comrade, neglect is ofttimes far worse than hate. I do not know what my next move will be. But I shall have to make it shortly.

In love, and regard, still thy brother,

Ascarin Nevermoon


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## Morte (Apr 29, 2003)

Great stuff, Mr Sage. I cannot wait to read Ascarin's caustic description of the trouble that ensues...


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## MulhorandSage (May 2, 2003)

29th day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372. 
Saerloon.

Dear Ascarin, 

You are an idiot.

Yes, I'm talking to you, you snivelling egotist! A few weeks ago, you were wizard and friend to a minor Cormyte despot who had so many enemies that he couldn't swing a sword without hitting one. Now you're the wizard and friend of the high priest of Lathander in *Silverymoon*. What is *wrong* with you? Your position has improved more than I can describe, and all you can do is whine like a battered cur!

So he ignored you and disregarded you. Well, what else did you expect? It is the fate of wizards to be ignored! They told us that in the first week at the Academy - to be a wizard is to become frustrated with the rest of mankind, for they will never heed you! And given how much of the blame for the current problems in Cormyr can be attributed to the incompetant advice of the War Wizards, is it any wonder Ulrick doesn't seek your advice or approval? Would you, in his place?

Yes, you've lost your opportunity to exploit those portals, and gotten rich over the misfortune of the wealthy but starving Cormytes. That's a shame. But there's more than one portal in Toril, and more ways to become rich than trade routes. Oh dear. Your plan failed, and now you need to come up with another one. Such a dire tragedy I have not heard in at least three days! For the sake of heavens and treasures, brother, use your brain for more than just moping! While I have no faith in Cormytes or paladins, I do trust those in power. Stay close to this Ulrick, at least for now. Stop being such a romantic idiot.

By the way, I am very glad to hear of your continued survival. Though your reports are so fretful about the least little threat to your person that they've dulled the impact of your narrative, I am quite proud that you survived the Sammasterites.

I was going to describe my new spell to transform people's clothing into a steel vise that crushes them, but your idiocy has worked me up into such an exasperated state that I simply care not to describe it now.

Stop being such a child. It's a good thing father didn't see your last correspondence, or you'd never have heard the end of it.

Your loving (though sometimes I don't know why) sister,

Gevrael


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## Scott Bennie (Jul 26, 2018)

Okay. Talk about thread necromancy.


I'm archiving a lot of my old writings, and I thought I'd revisit this after oh-so-many-years. So I've compiled the old story into a PDF, attached herein. Hope this works. Apologies if this degree of the dark arts are considered unclean.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/12a1lCx8plCgUg60ghMibkl_JbzxogA9P/view?usp=sharing


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