Quayle's Story: Autobiography of the Smartest Bhaalspawn

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First a little note: This story will be a long and ongoing one based upon this idea. So if you have any questions or comments while the story is being written, you can address them to me there in that thread, so that I can keep the parts of this story together in this thread. Thank you.

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PROLOGUE & VERY EARLY CHAPTER 1

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Quayle, and I grew up within the walls of Candlekeep. Though some might have considered it a sheltered, privileged life, for me it was a hellhole. All those tall people around me, constantly looking down on me. I was relegated to the most menial of tasks and became the errand boy of the keep. Even my "sister" Imoen treated me as if I were a mere child, and none recognized the true potential of my amazing brain, save one. My step-father Gorion saw through my small stature to the tremendous intellect within, and secretly arranged for time off from my detestable 'duties' so that I might study from the many books of Candlekeep. Until that fateful day...

It seemed to be a day like any other, and I grabbed my trusty walking / tall-person-swatting stick and set about the keep to see if there were any odd jobs to be had. The barracks was my first stop, and I made a pretty penny on a job for Fuller. But when I went next door to the bunkhouse to see if Hull needed to be woken up to stand his post again, I encountered a stranger instead. Even I, with my massive intelligence, failed to predict his next actions; the long-leg stabbed me!

Though this was not the first time I'd ever gotten hurt, it was the first time I'd ever been hurt on purpose. My vision filled with a red haze, and I could hear a deep voice whispering thoughts of murder. The next thing I knew, the man's small brain lay splattered on the floor, and I was standing over him with my bloodied quarterstaff. Panicked at both my blood and his (I am not a violent gnome after all), I ran back to my room at the Candlekeep Inn to consider what had happened. I knew I had to leave, and leave soon, so I bought some equipment and left my bloody quarterstaff by the bed of a sleeping man to throw off suspicion.

Now armed and armored I set off again, this time to find out what was going on. Of course that smarmy Tall, Jondalar, smacked me on the head with his staff, causing my helmet to drop over my eyes. Even blinded, I swung and knee-capped the brute with my brand-new mace; I doubt he'll try that again any time soon. I did some more errands in the hopes that others might know something about the attack, but sadly, noone dropped any clues, and I was even attacked again by another assassin.

Determining that the best course was to consult my mentor Gorion on what to do next, I headed over to the keep. And who popped out of the bushes but my "dear sister" Imoen. Scared the breakfast right into my pants, it did, and I'm afraid I snapped at the poor girl. She went off in a huff, and I nearly ran after her before I remembered I wouldn't be able to catch her. But thoughts of Imoen fled from my mind as I saw Gorion heading towards me. Before I could even speak, he told me that he had heard of the attempts upon my life and was preparing to take me somewhere safe. Since this was what I'd had in mind in the first place, I was glad to go along with it.

We left at dusk and traveled off of the path, but we had not gotten very far before we were trapped in an ambush that I had seen coming a mile away. If only Gorion had listened to me, he wouldn't have been killed by that armored Tall. I of course escaped into the night and found a shrub to sleep in.

In the morning, I walked on the path, where I encountered no ambushes but instead found a small person arguing with a Tall. Figuring to help my fellow man, I ran screaming at the Tall, who turned with an alarmed look on his stupid monkey face. He started gesturing at me, but before he could complete his spell his body jerked and he fell forward, the little one's sword in his back.

"I been waitin' for the right moment to get rid of that mad wizard for nearly a week; I suppose I owe you for distractin' him. My name's Montaron, what's your'n?"

"You may call me Quayle. But who was that?"

"Arrr, that just be Xzar. Sent by the Zhent, he were, to investigate the goings-on down south. I intended to do the same for me own curiosity and to get a blasted sword that wouldn't break on me, and he be invitin' hisself along for the ride. Ye seem a mite stabler than he, though. I'd be glad for yer help, if ye'd give it."

I considered my options quickly, taking into account how easily he'd killed Xzar, and decided to take him up on his offer. So I and Monty headed south to investigate.

 

CHAPTER ONE, PART ONE

Come nightfall, we arrived at the town of Beregost. Monty got an odd leering grin on his face at the sight of so many darkened houses, and told me he had a couple errands to run. I admonished him that he should meet me at Feldepost's Inn (which an obsequious Tall had told us about) when he was done.

As I entered the Inn, I was accosted by a rude and obviously drunken Tall who demanded that I vacate the premises immediately. Having just arrived, I naturally took issue with that, but seeing the straining muscles on his arms, I decided to take a more diplomatic tack. Using my charming wit, I managed to soothe the beast, and learned that his anger was instead directed at his son, who had left for adventure and was *ahem* unable to return. I turned to buy the man a drink out of pity, but the mace in my belt whacked him on the shin rather hard. Screaming that I was even more careless than the group that had led his son to his doom, he lunged at me.

Monty's inimitable timing made its first appearance as he came through the door, stabbed the man in the back, and disappeared upstairs without even slowing down. He came back downstairs with an odd-looking cloak that I immediately recognized would give me an advantage when dealing with Talls, so I snatched it from his grasp and donned it immediately. Monty grumbled a little, but agreed that it looked much better on me than it would have on him. (He also mumbled something like "they got better locks since the last time I were here", but I payed that little mind.)

We went to what looked like a general store, but turned out to be a caravan business run by a dwarf named Kagain. He said he had a caravan that had failed to arrive at Baldur's Gate, and asked if we were interested in helping him look for it. We agreed (for a fee, of course) and the three of us set off to the north. Only a couple of hours into the search, he gave up on ever finding the caravan and decided to join me for a reversal of the fee. I, on the other hand, had just remembered something Gorion said to me about two of his friends named Khalid and Jaheira, so I insisted that we not give up the search just yet. Following the trail of broken caravans, we ran into an ogre! I quickly asked a nearby tree to entangle the monstrousity, and we were able to simply pummel it with rocks from a distance until it died.

We traveled further north, and came to a large keep that I assumed to be the Friendly Arm Inn that Gorion had told me about. Entering, we were attacked by a mage who didn't take kindly to remarks after he stepped on my toe. Searching through his possessions after the battle, I found a bounty notice that offered 200 gold for my head. Knowing what my companions would think, I pocketed it for later burning. I searched the entire Inn, but only one person looked trustworthy enough to be called a friend. I asked the bartender (a fellow gnome by the name of Bentley Mirrorshade) if kagain's caravan had made it this far, but he said that none had been by in several days. Disheartened, I inquired about anyone named Khalid or Jaheira, and he pointed out a pair of well-armed Talls standing menacingly in the corner. Trusting my better instincts, I left the establishment shortly.

When we returned to Beregost, a drably dressed Tall with a swaggering manner offered 300 gold for some simple bodyguard work. Seeing the avaricious look in Kagain's eye, I gave in to the inevitable, and this Garrick fellow led us to "Silke, thespian extraordinare". (Great, two Talls with attitudes.) A group of three more Talls approached, and Silke bade us strike them down. As they got nearer, though, I could tell that not all was as she had told us; the men were clearly merchants coming to make a business arrangement with Silke. I asked Silke what she was about, and she lost it so we had to put her down. Garrick protested his innocence, but Kagain and Montaron would have none of it, and soon his body lay beside that of his mistress. Spying Silke's quarterstaff, I recognized the touch of magic and decided that it might make for a fine new walking stick. I had just started to relax when two of the three Talls we had defended attacked us, accusing Montaron of petty theft. They were actually able to land a couple blows upon poor Monty before he killed them too. Fortunately, the last merchant was a little more level-headed, and offered us a reward for defending him, though Monty produced three more after he left, so I doubt it was worth a lot.

Seeking a place to rest after our tiring day, we entered a nearby establishment by the name of the Red Sheaf Inn. I was pleasantly surprised to see a fellow of my own stature in the place, but my glee turned to terror as he brandished an enormous ax. He sprung at Montaron first, and in an uncharacteristic bout of cowardice, Monty ran screaming to the other side of the room. Recognizing that Kagain was my best (and only) hope of survivng this situation in one piece, I quickly cast a protection spell on him and urged him into battle while I hung back slinging stones. We seemed to be outmatched, but Monty showed his sense of timing again as he snuck up and backstabbed our raging opponent. The slight distraction gave me a moment to heal Kagain's injuries, and the battle started anew. We bested the assassin (I found and pocketed another bounty notice), but Kagain was gravely injured, making it that much more crucial to find a place to rest.

Not wanting to risk entering another strange inn (the Burning Wizard doesn't sound like a good place for someone with my arcane skills to sleep), we headed over to Feldepost's hoping that the unpleasantness of yesterday had been forgotten. I sensed that Mr. Feldepost wasn't terribly glad to see us again, but my offer to take one of the most expensive rooms he had turned his frown quite abruptly upside-down. Monty's additional offer to buy an expensive axe that Kagain had been eyeing sealed the deal. Had I known he was buying it with my money, I would have been a little more reticent about the idea.

Come morning, we were awakened by the nasal call of the town crier, who proclaimed that any who brought proof of the madman Bassilus's death would get a reward of five thousand gold. Again the gleam in Kagain's eye, which was this time joined by a gleam in Monty's eye, told me that acquiescing would be the path of least resistance. So off we went to do this poor fellow in.

CHAPTER ONE, PART TWO

Shortly after we left town, we were accosted by a short Tall in bright, shiny armor who demanded that we "bandits" surrender ourselves to be arrested. Figuring that this must be some sort of mistake, I told him that we were not bandits, and would even lay down our weapons to prove it. This simply angered the oxymoronic man (heavy on the moronic), and he decided to attack us. He didn't last long, and when the deed was done, Kagain took a liking to the man's armor. Figuring that to waste not is to want not, I took his plumed helmet as well. We continued the search for Bassilus, and eventually stumbled upon a trio of hobgoblin bandits instead. Kagain took the lead and insulted them, and before I knew it we had another fight on our hands. Kagain got a bit scratched up, but he simply shrugged it off and handed the hob leader's sword to Monty, who gazed at it with great appreciation.

We were eventually directed to our goal by a strange child who spoke of Bassilus conversing to 'funny spooks' who only groaned in response. Recognizing talk of the undead when I heard it, I knew our task had just become even harder. As we edged closer, we could make out skeletons and zombies amidst the standing stones, but Monty became impatient and threw a rock at one of the skeletons. Needless to say, they did not take kindly to his actions. We skirted around the edge of the miniature Stonehenge, picking off the undead one by one, until Bassilus noticed his lack of conversational companions. with most of his pack already fallen, Bassilus did not last long beneath Kagain's swinging axe. Finally seeing the wounds from the encounter with the hobs, I offered Kagain a healing spell for his valiant efforts, but he declined, saying that he would be fine and he didn't need any of my "pansy magic". I was ready to argue that noone is invulnerable until I noticed that all he had left from our encounter with the dwarven assassin was a couple almost unnoticable scars, and I decided to let the matter drop.

With Bassilus himself being much too heavy for any of us to carry, we searched through his belongings and settled upon taking his holy symbol and necklace back to Beregost. I hefted his hammer experimentally, but before I could put it back (not really my style) a chicken ran screaming at us from out of the night, followed by a wolf that foolishly decided that he could take on the three of us instead. Caught unawares by their abrupt arrival, I did not think to change weapons in time, and was pleasantly surprised when, upon landing a blow with the hammer, an electric shock rippled through the wolf's body. Perhaps I shall keep it for a while after all, I thought to myself.

Once the wolf was dead, the chicken calmed down enough to speak with us, and we three exchanged alarmed looks before confirming that all of us could hear his words. Kagain made a wise-crack, and the chicken clucked angrily, but I was able to diffuse the situation before it got too far. He told us that he was actually a human that had been turned into a chicken, and we agreed (somewhat reluctantly) to ferry him up north to a place called High Hedge, where he might be able to get changed back.

we spoke with the "mighty mage" Thanlantyr, and learned that Melicamp the chicken had been his 'ungrateful' apprentice. He asked for a particularly gruesome spell component, and recalling all the skeletons we'd had to go through just to get to this place, I figured a small search would be little enough trouble to see this through. I found the requisite skull and returned to Thanlantyr, who proceeded to cast his "Antichickenator" spell. Aptly named, that spell, as it abruptly robbed the chicken of his chicken-ness by causing him to explode.

Gore splattered the room, and even as I was removing the beak from where it had lodged up my beakish nose, I could hear Kagain and Monty cheering at the sight. Kagain even took a bite out of a wing and pronounced that it tasted "like chicken", but I was paying little attention as I gazed upon the magical robes that Thanlantyr had for sale. Vowing that I would return when I had enough money to purchase one, we quit the place and as we were leaving I heard the mage commanding his golems to clean up the mess.

By this point Monty was getting itchy to continue south and find out what was happening, but I insisted on one last trip to the Friendly Arm to give "Khalid" and "Jaheira" another chance. I should have listened to him, as the two Talls started the conversation with insults upon my personage, saying that it was a slight upon Gorion to compare him with me! I also distinctly heard the female mumble something about me "not measuring up" to Gorion, which I'm sure was a racial slur. I decided then and there to have nothing more to do with them, and my dramatic exit would have been wrecked by the distance to the front door, had I not noticed the nearby stairs.

On the second floor, we happened upon a dwarf named Unshey who claimed we had her "magic" belt. I told her we had no such thing, but she pointed to Kagain's belt and said that it had been stolen by an ogre with a belt fetish. Recalling the ogre I had entangled in the wood not too far from here, I relented and told her that she could have it back. Kagain and Monty looked shocked, but after they locked eyes they seemed to agree with my position and kagain took off the belt. He handed it to Monty, who then handed a belt to Unshey. Little did I know that they had in fact found two belts on the ogre, otherwise I would have performed the hand-off myself.

Unshey put on the belt, and my two companions broke out into a fit of mean-spirited laughter as a most un-welcome change affected her. Enraged by the deception, she (now he) attacked us, and we were forced to defend ourselves. The commotion did not go unnoticed by the people downstairs, but Kagain was able to beg off by claiming that this strange man had made Unshey disappear before our very eyes. I was not happy with the half-truth, but considering the alternative of being drawn and quartered in the courtyard, I remained silent.

Shortly after they departed, a Tall came downstairs from the third floor asking for the laundry service. I was about to direct him to the owner of the establishment until he mentioned that he had soiled his golden pantaloons when he heard the fight. Kagain piped up again, saying that he would be glad to wash and press the man's pantaloons for a single gold piece, promised on delivery. I decided then and there that it was about time to have a talk with Kagain about who was the leader and who was not. Perhaps I'll take care of it on the way south to Nashkel.

[ October 12, 2005, 21:30: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

CHAPTER TWO

We arrived at Nashkel with few difficulties, and Monty led us through the town. Near the temple we were stopped by a Tall who claimed to recognize Monty. I prepared for yet another fight with a "wronged" acquaintance, but for once someone didn't attack us on sight. When I told him I didn't know him, he called it "unacceptable", so I agreed to help him with his problems just to shut him up. Fortunately, his problem was with the weakened metal coming out of the mines, so we could investigate his concerns by simply following our own agenda. We also witnessed a confrontation between an (almost) impressively over-sized Tall and a puny stick of a Tall in red robes. It ended with the big one casually knocking the other unconscious with a single blow, and all three of us silently agreed that it might be best to avoid the mammoth (though I did see Monty lifting the small one's coin purse).

Monty again claimed "errands ta do" and slipped off down the path toward the biggest house in town, while I and Kagain went to the nearby general store to sell the equipment of a band of hob bandits we'd met on the road. When we got to the Inn, though, we were greeted by yet another Tall assassin. She prayed to her evil god to hold us in our places, and suddenly neither of us could move. The witch then called up a magical mallet and proceeded to wail upon poor, helpless Kagain. It was at this moment that Monty lurched out of the shadows and drove his sword into her back.

When she was dead, Monty claimed her helmet as his prize for the kill, but I was simply glad that neither he nor Kagain noticed the scrap of parchment protruding from under her blood-stained jerkin. I was the first released from the devilish paralyzation, and quickly snatched the bounty notice while pretending to admire her chain mail. Saying a quick prayer of thanks for my companions' combination of blood-thirstyness, good timing, and lack of proper eyesight/brain, I decided we had best be off before any more bounty hunters came looking for us. One's luck can only hold for so long, after all.

After gaining entrance to the mines, we found the place simply swarming with kobolds; I even saw one miner cut down before my very eyes. Even as a Tall being slaughtered by one of my stature, such a bedraggled and dirty old man getting slain raised my sense of indignity, and I repaid his killers several-fold. Monty was a great help in disarming the traps that the little devils had set, and Kagain was a whirling dervish of death, but I knew that the kobolds could not be acting alone. So I guided my deadly companions ever downward to where I knew the true perpetrator of this plot must be located.

In the lowest level of the mines we found the Tall (who went by the name Mulahey), and I learned from the fool's own loose lips that he had been set upon his course by someone named Tazok. Even though he accepted my claim that I was acting on Tazok's behalf, he still set his minions on us, and soon we were fighting a desparate battle for our very lives. Even when I showed leniency, the brute's only response was to call for more help and continue the fight; I shall not make the same mistake again. Searching the cavern, we found a captive Tall who practically radiated hopelessness. Simply being near the elf caused me to feel a tiny bit depressed, and I bade him go upon his way with his recovered "Moonblade". The letters we found in Mulahey's chest spoke of a contact named Tranzig at Feldepost's Inn. I think more answers can be found there...

 

CHAPTER THREE

We left the mines the way we came, and returned to Nashkel with the good news. The mayor was pleased and rewarded us, but he also warned us that the Commander of his guard had gone insane and was on killing spree near the coast. Kagain started to say that we'd find and disembowel the crazy, but I touched him on the shoulder with my hammer, sending a small electrical jolt down his spine and reminding him of our "little talk" a couple days ago. While Kagain recalled the shouting match that had led to his attacking me and getting a painful shock in the nether regions (admittedly accidental but no less effective), I covered by assuring the mayor that we'd bring Brage home safely. But even as I said it, I was thinking only of what we might find up in Beregost.

Perhaps if my mind had been on the road and not our destination, I might have noticed the next assassin's approach. He spoke quite haughtily (referring to himself in the third person as both Death and Nimbul) and began weaving a spell. Desperate, I drew upon an inner power that I did not even know I had, and drained the life from him where he stood. My companions, astounded and perhaps a little cowed at the demonstration, said nothing and simply stood there looking at me with amazement. Not missing a beat, I claimed the assassin's gear for myself and set off again, while my friends trailed a respectful distance behind me.

On the way north to Beregost, we stumbled upon a Tall being followed by a dozen gnolls. I was sure we could take him and his gnoll buddies until he came closer and I could see his dark skin and pointy ears. Recalling the frightening things that I had read about the Drow back in Candlekeep, I kneecapped him (with the added bonus of the electrical shock that froze his calf muscles) and I, Kagain, and Monty ran the rest of the way to Beregost.

We found Tranzig on the second floor of Feldepost's Inn, and when we challenged him about his connection to the goings-on in Nashkel, he attacked us. (Surprise, surprise.) Much like Mulahey, he begged for his life once we had gotten a couple licks in, but this time we gave no quarter and finished him off quickly. We found a map among his belongings that pointed to Tazok's bandit camp being in the nearby Wood of Sharp Teeth.

As we were about to leave Beregost, I saw someone I vaguely recognized from back in Candlekeep; it was that old elf, Firehair Elvenbead. He spotted us too, and asked me to do a little favor for him. I told him the reward for such a menial task had better be worth it this time, and he assured me that it would be, so I got the book he wanted from Feldepost's and returned. I had expected ... well, I don't know exactly what I expected, but to get only another book (and a boring one at that) in return was not even close.

I started ranting at the Tall and Kagain and Monty backed me up, speaking of my spell-casting prowess (and their fighting prowess). We started demanding more restitution for our time, and I'm ashamed to say that I let the situation get out of control. Monty threatened Firebear, but I did not think he would actually go through with it and slip his blade between the old elf's ribs. (It seems I'm going to have to have a little talk with Monty as well.)

So we headed into the forest, and no sooner had we entered than we were fighting off a horde of gibberlings. We managed to dispatch the beasts quite handily, but while we had been fighting them, a group of bandits had surrounded us. The leader asked us to throw down our weapons, and I nudged Kagain as his cue to start speaking. I figured he'd be better at talking to bandits than I, but I had not realized quite how much better. Teven (the group's leader) and Kagain hit it off quite well, and before I knew it we were on the way to the bandit camp as new recruits.

When we got there, Tazok himself met us. He turned out to be a tall half-ogre, who immediately challenged us. Not trusting Kagain or Monty to remain level-headed with the insults Tazok was hurling, I took the lead and out-thought the brute. He agreed to let us join, but left shortly thereafter. Monty went on 'errands' again, while I and Kagain talked to the locals. We wandered into a nearby cave and were faced by several angry gnolls. I managed to get half of them entangled in the roots that had broken through the stone floor, but even with that advantage we were still outnumbered.

Enter Montaron's good timing once again; the blood-thirsty little halfling seems to be able to smell a fight from a mile away, and was soon hacking and slashing through the gnolls alongside me and Kagain. As we finished off the entangled gnolls with ranged weapons, two more surprised us from a side cavern, giving my spell time enough to wear off on the last remaining gnoll. Though Kagain was nearly vanquished by the gnoll behemoth, we all managed to survive it intact; for once, Kagain did not mind taking advantage of my healing prowess.

Which one was Tazok's tent became quickly obvious as we spied one twice as big as any of the others. The Tall guarding the entrance confirmed it, but at a ungodly cost. The man was apparently possessed of a disease of the bowels, and was quite flatulent when we talked to him. We entered to escape the gas cloud, and a Tall who identified himself as Raemon stopped us, along with a gnoll, a hob, and a mage. No explanation would have been good enough for him, it seems, and we soon had another fight on our hands. We were still weak from the fight with the gnolls, and I beseeched them to let us go in peace. I had not been expecting much, but suddenly my cloak shimmered and the mage began casting his spells against his own allies!

My companions rallied around me, and the mage even took the opportunity to cast a haste spell on us. The hob and the gnoll fell quickly, but Raemon fought on, and even landed a blow on me. The pain again caused my vision to go red, and when I came out of it, the first sight that greeted me was Raemon's withered remains. The second was Monty and Kagain standing over the bloody corpse of the mage who had helped us. I mourned briefly (I never even learned his name), but he was a Tall and a bandit, so I suppose he got what he deserved.

We finally noticed a Tall who had been huddled in the corner for the entire fight, and I had to restrain Kagain from slaughtering the man. He said his name was Ender Sai, and proceeded to let us in on how an organization called the Iron Throne was behind all of the bandit activity. Though it made me feel better about not trying to kill Tazok while I had the chance, it also made me slightly queasy to think that we were going to be battling an entire organization. But the letters in Tazok's chest gave me a more concrete (and smaller) target; Tazok had been receiving his orders from someone named Davaeorn.

[ October 19, 2005, 02:12: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

CHAPTER FOUR, PART ONE

But first, I wanted to get that Robe I'd had my eye on, so we headed west to High Hedge. As we approached the place, however, I discovered that Monty had picked my pocket (again) while I slept at Feldepost's. He had apparently used my money to buy himself a big bow. Not wanting to admit to the others that we had traveled all this way for nothing, I led the group further west toward the coast. The sea air was a welcome change from the smell of all those unwashed long-legs, and it even seemed to calm my companions' bloodlust a bit. (In other words, Monty was bored and Kagain was suffering from the common dwarven ailment of hydrophobia.)

Near the coast, we met a woman named Safana, who outlined a plan for ransacking a nearby treasure-laden cave. It was a two person job, she said, and Kagain and Monty quickly volunteered. I was glad to have them out of my beard, but with Kagain and Monty gone, Safana wasted no time in making advances. I might have even taken her up on it, but I just couldn't get past her long legs. (No seriously, she was really tall.) My companions returned with all sorts of loot, saying that the cave had been deserted. Safana looked ready to object until Kagain nodded his head in my direction; I concluded that I probably didn't want to know, and let the matter drop. We gave Safana her finder's fee (which Monty promptly picked her pocket for) and were on our way.

I was pleasantly surprised when neither Monty nor Kagain objected to our saving a little boy from a pack of worgs, but later we came upon an archeological dig site. Excited by the search for knowledge, I offered my services for free, but Kagain and Monty were not quite so generous. They haggled and finally settled on 50 gold apiece with the headman, a Tall by the name of Charleston Nib. While we were gurading the site, however, Nib's business partner approached us with a reprehensible plan to slaughter Nib and his men and steal whatever treasure we might find. Kagain needed no prompting at the thought of a bloodbath underground, and Monty was quickly drawn in by the promise of more money than Nib had offered.

I was outright enraged at their crass, thuggish behaviour, and I walloped the both of them good with my hammer before warning the traitorous Tall that he had better get moving as quickly as he could or there would be severe repercussions. The shocked long-leg quickly took flight, and soon thereafter, Nib's diggers broke through to the last remaining chamber, and we followed them in. I was eager to see what they would unearth, but likely my companions simply followed out of boredom. None of us got quite what we were expecting as the diggers went insane and attacked us.

I tried to reason with them, but the one I convinced (with the help of my cloak) was quickly slaughtered by the others. In the end, all six lay dead at our feet. Nib mourned their loss and offered an explanation for their actions, but I simply wanted to be gone from this place. So Kagain and Monty collected their fee from Nib and we departed. It was then that we ran into Brage, the insane former Commander of the Nashkel Guard.

I reluctantly readied for combat, but Brage simply walked up and posed a riddle. I was easily able to solve it, and the insane look on Brage's face seemed to dissolve in an instant. He wailed about the people he had killed, and asked us to end his suffering. Though Kagain and Monty were more than happy to oblige, I was too weary of all the killing. I offered Brage safe passage back to the Nashkel temple, where we received considerably more than the bounty that had been put on Brage's head. The money mollified Monty, but I could see Kagain was still itching for a fight.

As we left the temple, the mammoth man was back again, this time shouting to all within hearing range that he needed help rescuing someone named Dynaheir from a Gnoll Fortress to the southwest. I saw Kagain perk up at the mention of gnolls, so I figured it would be worth a shot. I told the man (whose name turned out to be Minsc) that we would go and rescue the damsel in distress, and he responded by exclaiming his gratitude upon behalf of himself and Boo. I asked who Boo was, and he showed me his "miniature giant space hamster" and proceeded to have a short conversation with the normal-sized rodent. As he lowered his head to snuggle Boo, I saw the recent scar running across his bald pate and figured that to be the source of his malady, so I decided it would be best for him to remain in Nashkel while we rescued his 'witch'.

CHAPTER FOUR, PART TWO

Night fell (landing with a solid thump), and we decided to rest at the Nashkel Inn. For once, no blood-soaked dreams disturbed my rest, and we were fit and ready to go when dawn came. We headed west, through a convenient gorge that turned out to be an ambush location for a nearby village of Xvarts; we stomped the village flat in revenge and continued on our way. Encountering another ambush by ogres and hobs at a bridge, we were forced to fight our way through there, too.

we finally arrived at the Gnoll Fortress, and I was rather bored at this point to find yet another ambush by a mentally deficient pair of ogrillons, but Kagain really seemed to be getting into it. we carved our way through the bizarrely tall gnolls, and finally were able to rescue the 'witch' Dynaheir. She was even nuttier than her 'bodyguard'; I told her we were there to save her and she responded with something about "the fool, Edwin" being dead. with no Edwin in sight, I told her to return along the path we had carved, while we went over that way; we never saw her again.

We moved east along the Cloudpeak Mountain range, and many were the groups from Amn that attacked us simply because we weren't from Amn. Monty and Kagain were suspiciously silent while we helped first a dryad and then a little girl with a dead cat, but it did not last long. Next we happened upon a young boy who had lost his dog and agreed to help him too, but when we found the "wittle doggie", it turned out to be a dire wolf! It seemed tame enough, but Kagain and Monty simply slaughtered it. It seems their tolerance for my good deeds was running low, and they even insisted that we go back so that they could torment the child with news of his dog's death. I wanted answers for why the boy had deceived us, so I reluctantly went along. My answer came when the 'little boy' cursed us out (in some rather inventive ways) for killing his dog, after which he turned into a demon and vanished, vowing never to return to our plane again.

Thankfully, we weren't too far from Nashkel at this point, and we high-tailed it all the way back up to Beregost. After selling some excess equipment we picked up, I finally had more than enough for a good robe, so we headed west to High Hedge. When we got there, though, my money pouch was missing. I glared at Monty, who whistled innocently while wearing his new dark armor, and pulled two other money pouches that I had hidden upon my person. I stuck my tongue out at the astonished thief while Kagain guffawed heartily and slapped me on the back. Unfortunately, it appears that the money I had saved was still not quite enough (exorbitant prices), so I sold a couple wands that I didn't need to make up the difference.

We were now quite broke, and I heard the Cloakwood calling us. In retrospect, I might not have gone if I realized how truly gigantic that wood was. We traveled the better part of a day before we encountered a Tall hunter by the name of Aldeth Sashenstar, whose companions had been killed by a group of druids that he said were hot on his tail. I agreed to mediate, but my attempt was doomed to failure by the stubbornness of both parties. I even cast spell to hold them back, but sadly it only made the druids that much easier for my companions to slaughter. The hunter rewarded us for his defense with a bottle of warrior's brew, and said to look him up if we were ever in Baldur's Gate.

Journeying onward, we came upon a spiders' nest, inhabited by perhaps the most fearsome breed of all: the Sword Spider. Even the mighty Kagain would have been no match for such mighty creatures all by his lonesome, but together we fought hard and wiped out the nest. Kagain was gravely hurt during the battle, but insisted that he would be alright. I should not have listened to him.

Barely had we resumed traveling when we were abruptly attacked by a pair of wyverns and their spider pets; Kagain rushed them blindly, and it nearly cost him his life. They focused on him and him alone, and even with my healing spells and a few potions, Kagain was at death's door by the time the fight was done. And yet he refused to stop or go back, insisting that we press onward. (I often wonder how things would have turned out differently if not for that brave dwarf.)

He even managed to track the trail of the crazed wyverns backwards to where two of their young were being held captive and 'trained' in a small cave by a Tall whose excuses were more transparent than Calimshan silk. Kagain launched himself at the man whose actions had indirectly caused us such grief, and I, fearing for Kagain's safety, used my divine magic to hold the man in place. Unfortunately, the baby wyverns mistook our small forms for their next meal, and Kagain and Monty were forced to turn their attentions to the beasts first, before exacting their revenge upon the Tall.

Exiting the cave, we were confronted by a pair of Shadow Druids who I was unable to convince that we were not the ones who had kidnapped the baby wyverns. I was getting so very tired of this whole episode, and simply drained the life from them where they stood, hoping noone would notice until we were long gone. Sadly, that was not the case; we had barely gotten fifty feet before we were challenged by "Amarande, leader of the Shadow Druids". Growing ever more tired of all this, I silenced him with a spell, but it only enraged him and we were forced to kill him in self-defense.

Strangely enough, this seemed to be the best decision I had made so far, as another long-legged Shadow Druid approached and thanked us for ridding her of her superior. Faldorn had apparently been stifling under the leadership of the windbag we had just killed, and offered whatever was within her (limited) power to give us. Glancing back at my two exhausted companions, I quickly decided. "A place to sleep." Faldorn guided us to the druid leader's tree-home, and guarded the door as we three slept.

CHAPTER FOUR, PART THREE

My rest once again disturbed by forboding dreams of a dagger of bone, I awoke more rested than when I had fallen asleep, but not by much. We bid farewell to the long-legged Faldorn and continued deeper into the Cloakwood. We were again attacked by a pair of wyverns, this time with their three young in tow just outside of what turned out to be their lair. I feared we might be outmatched, so I called upon the wyverns' previous victims to rise up against their killers; five skeletons heeded the call and tipped the battle in our favor. We did not have quite as much difficulty with these wyverns as the others, and Kagain claimed the bloody head of one of the wyverns as his prize.

We finally began to near the mines that the scrolls in Tazok's tent must have been talking about, when we were challenged by four long-legs who fairly reeked of trouble. While Kagain traded insults with the leader, I surreptitiously cast a spell of Silence upon the two mages of the group. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the area of effect, and the leader became silenced as well (right in the middle of a sentence, no less). The one member of the group who could still talk yelled out, "Attack!" and we soon had a surprisingly easy battle on our hands. Kagain took on the yeller while Monty and I pelted the silenced mages with rocks and arrows; the leader of the other group simply stood there, seemingly shocked at his magically induced silence. By the time the spell wore off and the leader regained his voice (and his fight), both mages were dead and the others soon followed.

We entered the mines, dispatching the few guards we found and talking to the miners. One of them mentioned that the mines could be flooded if we had a key that was currently in the possession of the "master of the mines", and once again our group had direction: down. On the next level we dealt with more guards and even a couple of traps; since the traps were down a corridor branch, we decided to go the other way for now. The next guard we met was quite helpful when confronted with sword and axe, and told us of a secret passageway by which we could sneak around to the other side of the room that the trapped corridor would have lead to. The one thing he 'forgot' to mention was that it was an undead breeding ground.

The secret passageway led to a block of cells, where we met a Tall named Rill. He offered to help the other slaves escape for a small amount of gold, and I consented, thinking about how much trouble it would cause for the Iron Throne to have all those escapees telling their tales across the Sword Coast. We also found a dwarf by the name of Yeslick who immediately began to spin a long tale of woe that nearly put me to sleep until Kagain told him to wrap it up.

"Ta make a loong starry shart, I'd be glad ta help ye take doon tha Iron Throone. Oi've even got a special surprise fer that traitor Davaeorn," he said with a grin. I could tell he was a good sort, and agreed to let him help. Kagain objected, but I told him in no uncertain terms that I would help any poor soul who had been betrayed by long-legs, and he was free to leave if he felt otherwise. I had pointed my hammer at Kagain during this exchange, and Yeslick remarked on its beauty. I told him he could have it (I still had the trusty walking stick we had "liberated" from Silke), and he was shocked by my generosity; next he commented on the beauty of Kagain's armor and all three of us laughed in his face.

"Don't push it," I said with a friendly smirk, "Here, you can have my armor, Slick; I haven't used it since I got these robes." Unfortunately, it seems our laughter attracted the attention of a pair of nearby guards, who burst into the cells demanding to know what was so funny. Monty, ever prepared, quickly slit the throat of one guard while the rest of us felled the other guard before he could sound the alarm. With the door now open, we peeked out at the empty guard room beyond. I still wasn't quite sure where we had ended up, so I sent Monty out to scout.

He returned and told us of nearly a dozen guards armed to the teeth in the nearby room that the trapped corridor had led to; Yeslick also confirmed our location. Though I was loathe to cause so many unnecessary deaths, I was even more worried about leaving such an army behind us should we need to make a hasty retreat. I sent a Web spell into the room, and was rewarded by a number of loud exclamations. Unfortunately some had evaded the area of effect and came looking for the source. Panicking, I shot the first spell I could think of into the room: Fireball.

Again misfortune bit me on the ear, as the Fireball blazed through my Web, leaving precious little of it left. Kagain charged in with a great two-handed sword (I still don't know where in the Cloakwood he found that) and began gleefully slaughtering the room's occupants while the rest of us hung back and hurled things at the mage that had appeared in the middle of the room. When the dust settled, we surveyed the carnage and Yeslick gasped. It seems that the cook who had been so nice to all the slaves had come out of the kitchen to see what was the matter, and had been caught in the Fireball. I and Yeslick mourned briefly for the unfortunate's death, but there was revenge to be had. Yeslick mentioned a couple of debts to repay, and so we descended yet again.

It seems that our battle on the previous level had not gone unnoticed, and we were greeted by a "welcoming party" right at the bottom of the stairs. We dispatched them easily with help from Yeslick, and he led us toward his first target of revenge. Encountering some hobs in the corridor eliminated any advantage of surprise we may have had, and this time it was our turn to be surprised. As we readied to rush the room, I realized that Monty was nowhere to be found; a short, stifled cry sounded from inside the room.

I and the two dwarves entered the room cautiously, and saw only Montaron pulling his sword out of a woman's back. Yeslick was floored; he had seen both me and Kagain's talents during the second floor fight, but all he had seen of Montaron until now was his skill with a bow. I had to explain Monty's special talents before Yeslick would stop gaping at him and confirm that the woman had indeed been his first target, Davaeorn's mage-lieutenant.

We continued along the curving corridor, and finally came upon Yeslick's second target: the prison where the miners were tortured if they ever got "out of line". This time we all rushed in together ... and found nothing but dead bodies littering the floor. Yeslick warned us to be vigilant and exclaimed that the torturer would never have left the room, but the rest of us just rolled our eyes and turned to leave.

Next thing I know, Yeslick is waking me up not ten yards from an ogre-mage with a bashed-in skull, and I notice the back of my own cranium is suddenly somewhat sore. It seems that the ogre-mage had been hiding invisibly and had been able to level everyone except Yeslick (who had heard it coming because he had been paying attention) with a single sweep of his massive paw. It was at this point that I slurred an offer for the kindly dwarf to join our group in a more permanent fashion once our work here was done, and he accepted. I believe his exact words were, "Well, oi've got nothin' better ta do."

With the minor difficulties out of the way, it was time to descend one last time and take out Davaeorn himself. We dispatched his bodyguard at the bottom of the stairs quickly, but we knew that the mage himself must be alerted by now. Yeslick was straining to charge in, but Kagain and I held him back while Monty disarmed the traps he had spotted. Too bad he missed one; a glyph of warding went off near Kagain and zapped him pretty good.

With both Kagain and Yeslick now both angry, they rushed into Davaeorn's parlor. I followed, again with Monty nowhere to be seen, and turned a corner just in time to see Kagain skid to a stop. Wondering what would cause such a stalwart warrior pause, I hurried my pace into what looked to be a bedroom, and skidded to a stop myself when I saw not one Davaeorn but nine! For some reason, though, Yeslick seemed not the bit concerned, as his eyes were closed in concentration.

Davaeorn laughed and started to cast a spell, but at that moment Yeslick's eyes opened and a ball of light shot forth from his hands. The light streaked toward all nine Davaeorns, and eight disappeared while the last one seemed to shrink slightly. Kagain grinned and rushed toward the defenseless wizard, but Davaeorn finished his spell and suddenly Kagain turned on us! Yeslick prevented him from reaching me, and I picked out a scroll I had found upstairs and started to read it.

Yeslick was barely holding off Kagain, and Davaeorn recast his Mirror Image in the meantime, but finally my spell was ready and burst forth. Kagain's eyes returned to normal and he stopped the swing of his axe a mere fraction of a second before it would have split Yeslick's skull in twain. But upon hitting Kagain, my spell split into eight tiny globes which flew toward the fake Davaeorns and cancelled them out.

Monty chose this point to bury his sword in Davaeorn's back, and the frantic long-legged mage summoned up several wolves and worgs to buy himself some time. Monty, Kagain, and Yeslick had no choice but to fight the new arrivals, but I remained focused on the prize and cast the first spell I could think of: Quayle's Scorcher. The Tall wizard's robes caught on fire, and soon Davaeorn was nothing but a smoldering heap on the floor. I helped the others finish up the late Davaeorn's summons and we went through his things.

I found three letters in his personal chest sent to him by someone named Rieltar, and they only served to confirm that the Iron Throne was indeed the organization behind the region's recent troubles. One also mentioned that they had a new headquarters in Baldur's Gate, and I determined that it would be our next stop. We returned to the top level of the mines, and I gave the key I found on Davaeorn to the miner we had talked to earlier. Soon we were all racing the flood waters as the river gushed through the now-opened plug.

[ October 28, 2005, 19:44: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

CHAPTER FIVE, PART ONE

When we were back on solid ground, I asked Yeslick how he did what he did to Davaeorn; I'd had a scroll to read from, but Yeslick had not even mumbled a word of prayer. He explained to me that all of his clan had been able to use this anti-magic ability, but that he was the only one left. The long trek out of the Cloakwood was especially somber, and it seemed that no more random wyverns or spiders dared to intrude upon our solitude.

When we reached the Friendly Arm, we turned north toward Baldur's Gate; along the way we were approached by the only Tall that I have ever trusted on sight. He said his name was Scar, and that he had some important tasks he needed performed. We agreed to meet him at Flaming Fist Headquarters within the city, and continued on our way. At the gate we were greeted by the strangest sight: me! Or so it seemed; this gnome claimed to be the one and only Quayle, and demanded to know who I was! My companions stood by uncertainly as I argued with the facsimile, until the little copy pulled out a mace and I laughed in his face.

"You couldn't even get my choice of weapon right, you fake! Quayle the Brainsome would never be caught without his trusty walking stick." To emphasize my point, I rapped him across the nose with my staff, which prompted him to start casting a spell. I hurriedly started to cast a Holding spell, but the fake had a head-start on me and summoned up half a dozen Xvarts. Fortunately I had been expecting just such a move (from our recent encounter with Davaeorn) and my Hold spell froze them all.

I took my time dismantling his summoned Xvarts (with my companions still standing speechless on the sideline), and it nearly proved my undoing. No sooner had the last Xvart fallen than the Hold spell I cast wore off. He began casting the same spell again, but I was not in the mood for a repeat of our previous round, so I wrapped him across the knuckles with my staff and then began casting Hold at him again. The fraud was unable to recover in time, and I soon stood ready to deliver the killing blow to the paralyzed gnome.

But something stopped me; looking back over my shoulder, I saw it was Yeslick holding my staff. Kagain booed the other dwarf while Monty simply took the opportunity to grab everything of worth off of the paralyzed 'me'. "'Tis nay worth it," Yeslick solemnly said, "a' tha cost of your soul. Let him be." I lowered my staff and Yeslick let go, only to get smacked by it himself. Kagain guffawed and Monty hooted as Yeslick's hand came up to his stinging nose.

"He stole my identity and deserves death! But I suppose I won't kill him while he's standing here helpless." I turned to my still-frozen duplicate. "Know this, whatever your name might be; I am the true Quayle, and you could never measure up to my genius. Go find yourself someone else to imitate, or next time I won't be so kind." I walked around behind him and brought my staff down on the nerve bundle I had learned about from a book back in Candlekeep, and the fake collapsed unconscious to the ground when my Hold spell expired a few moments later.

Kagain and Monty gave me approving looks and Yeslick looked shocked, but once I explained what I had done, all three abruptly switched to slightly disapproving. Rolling my eyes, I entered Baldur's Gate. "Oh look, it's that daffy old Minsterel fellow again; you'd think he'd get the mesage. Monty, Kagain; carte blanche." Kagain stomped on his foot, and Monty poked him gently in the behind with his sword while he hopped around, making him jump forward. Unfortunately Kagain was now standing on his cloak, which pulled taut and jerked the man back. He started to pinwheel his arms to regain his balance, but only succeeded in smacking himself quite hard across the face with his own staff, and apparently knocked himself unconscious. Even Yeslick laughed this time.

We were tired from our long trek from the mines, and booked a room at the Elfsong Tavern. The place turned out to be aptly named, and after only two hours of sleep we were awakened by a horrible wailing. we rushed downstairs to loudly complain to the barkeep, only to find him sleeping soundly through the racket. I spied his assistant, a short human named Brevlik, and thought to give him an earful, but the man walked up to me instead with a whispered proposition.

"If ya can't sleep, mayhap ya be willin' to do some thievin' fer me? There be a spyglass in the Hall o' Wonders on the west side o' town that I be havin' my eye on of late, an' I'll give ya 5 hun'ert gold fer it."

With nothing left to do but try to recoup the loss of a night's sleep, we agreed and set wearily out for the Hall of Wonders. We entered only to find that we were not the first ones there! The place had been picked clean, and nary a culprit was in sight; until we heard a muffled sneeze from beneath a covered display table. Monty stuck his sword underneath and was rewarded with a loud "eep!", as a petite halfling woman scuttled out rubbing her bottom. "That wasn't very nice, you know. You could have just asked."

I could see Monty leering at her, so I 'accidentally' whacked him in the shin with my staff as I passed to address our little foundling. "I don't suppose you have a good explanation for the valuables missing from this museum, do you Miss...?"

"Alora. No, sir."

"Well, how about we share then? We came to rob the place ourselves." The shocked look on her little face was almost worth it, but the big grin that spread across it was even nicer. We welcomed Alora to the group (I had to thwack Monty again when he got too familiar) and headed back to the Elfsong Tavern with the goods. Brevlik was quite appreciative, and even gave us a refund for our room.

Thoroughly awake now, I decided to go meet this Scar. When we got to Flaming Fist Headquarters, we were greeted by a gnome named Niax, I mean Tiax. He said he was an agent of Scar, and that our first task was to help him investigate the siren song that could sometimes be heard coming from the top of Durlag's Tower, to the south. I complained about being given the run-around and explained that we were here to investigate the Iron Throne, but he said that it could wait and that there was no more time to waste. I made a final comment under my breath about the hypocrisy of that statement, but south we headed.

CHAPTER FIVE, PART TWO

Right away we could see the malevolence that radiated from the dark tower, and the two spectral monstrosities that guarded the path nearly killed Kagain despite our best efforts to keep him healed. For the first time ever, I saw him run in fear, but his valiant efforts up to that point proved to be just enough to let us overcome them. When Kagain had calmed down enough, we pressed on.

The interior of the tower proved considerably less dangerous, as we only had to contend with a dozen or so ghasts, and we eventually made it to the top. There we found the source of the haunting voice, a woman named Kirinhale. She moaned to us about how she had been trapped here for hundreds of years and needed someone to take her place, and I decided to humor her insanity. She told us to take a lock of her hair to some other unfortunate soul and she would reward us; Tiax had his eye on her staff the entire time, so we settled on that as a reward.

Our attempt to fool her into thinking that we had passed the hair on didn't work, and soon we were combing the tower for someone to give it to. In the basement we found a lonely soul sacking the place, and he accepted it somewhat ungraciously. Then we returned to Kirinhale, and the ungrateful ***** just teleported out without a word of thanks. Tiax was soon screeching about how we'd screwed up his chance for 'ascending' by keeping him from getting the staff; it turns out that it was the only reason he'd led us there, and he was not an agent of Scar after all.

But Alora had a surprise for all of us; somehow she had managed to sneak the staff away from Kirinhale when she wasn't looking, and now handed it to Tiax with a sly smile and a giggle. Everyone's estimation of her promptly went up several notches, and Tiax offered to "let us serve him". I took that as an offer to join and welcomed the delusional man to our group. Returning to Baldur's Gate, we found a great number of tasks that the local townspeople needed done, and I felt like an errand boy back in Candlekeep once more. But this time there was a difference; I had a group to delegate the tasks to!

Alora I gave the task of stealing special components from a noble's house for the local thieves' guild, and noone even noticed the theft. Kagain rounded up a basilisk running loose by the docks, and some spectators say that he even stared the beast down the entire time he was killing it. Monty was assigned the task of capturing a nymph from a rival wizard, but I'm told both wizards were killed when the hirer refused to pay. Yeslick took on the errand of retrieving a child's body from the local temple to Umberlee, but it seems that they took umbrage at another cleric entering their temple and a fight ensued there also. Tiax secured us an antidote for the poison we were subjected to by two agents of the Iron Throne when we re-entered the city (at that point I didn't care how), and I took the most important task of curing a baby of a mage's curse.

Soon our names were well-known within the city, and I decided that it was time to seek out Scar (again). This time we did not settle for an agent and were escorted directly to Scar himself, though it took a bit of 'persuasion' on Tiax's part to gain us entrance. The first task he put us to was to check on some weird goings-on in a nearby merchant's league. I told him we were more than ready to tackle the Iron Throne, but he said he had been talking about a place that was actually called the Merchant's League. The name sounded vaguely familiar...

CHAPTER FIVE, PART THREE

It wasn't until I saw Aldeth that I remembered our meeting in the Cloakwood. I introduced my new companions to him, and we set about working for the arrogant Tall once again. One of Aldeth's partners in the business mentioned an anniversary party on the third floor, and considering the lake of blood I'd had to wade through so far in my journeys, a party is just what I needed. It was not, however, what I got.

On the top floor we were ambushed by a dozen roughly humanoid creatures whose features seemed to twist and distort at random. We rushed back down the stairs with warnings of this menace, and both of Aldeth's business partners turned out to be more of them! We fought off the horde (with little help from Aldeth's security force, who ran screaming like ninnies), and then gathered everyone in the building together to be subjected to Yeslick's unexplainable power. Another half-dozen of the monsters were abruptly revealed and dealt with.

We returned to Scar with the news, and he told us that our next target would not be so easy to solve; it was time to investigate the Iron Throne. We heard many reports of odd happenings, but I wanted proof so that we could expose them and get them off of our backs. I should have been more careful what I wished for, as we met living proof of a conspiracy on the top floor, and they were none too pleased to be exposed.

I could sense the deaths that had taken place here, and summoned up the shades of the six's victims to combat the evil of their slayers. We attempted to save Emissary Tar, an insulting long-leg we had alked to on the third floor, but it seemed it was too late for her. The creature dropped her image and attacked us; it looked much like the ones we had found in the Merchant's League, and when all were dead we found the real Tar's body in the next room.

In another room we found one of the Iron Throne's leaders, a Tall by the name of Thaldorn, cowering in the corner. He told us where to find proof of the Iron Throne's involvement in the iron shortage, but his whining and pleading got on Tiax's last nerve (after getting pounded in our last battle) and he stabbed Thaldorn through the heart with his staff-spear. I refused to heal him for that wanton act, but seeing as Tiax was the only one with any healing spells left, he got healed anyway. We returned to Scar again, this time with the information that proof of the Iron Throne's involvement could be found back in ancient Candlekeep; it was time for my homecoming.

[ November 04, 2005, 20:04: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

CHAPTER SIX

Candlekeep was as big as ever, but I wasted no time strolling the grounds. Instead, I headed straight for the keep, where I knew Rieltar must be. During the search, I heard that someone named Koveras was looking for me, but I never saw hide or hair of the man. We found Rieltar and his three friends, Brunos, Tooth, and Kestor in a private room on the second floor. Rieltar was not very forthcoming, so I used my charm on Brunos instead to get the whole story out of them. Tooth didn't take too kindly to that, and we were forced to kill them all in self-defense.

The commotion (which unfortunately included a Scorcher that destroyed the evidence we were after) drew the monks and Watchers, and we were summarily thrown in jail despite our protestations of innocence. Our first visitor was Ulraunt, who spun a fantastic tale about how we were spies for Amn! I admit I never liked the arrogant long-leg that much, but I would have thought he would at least remember me. Our second visitor was more welcome, as Tethoril arrived to break us out.

We re-materialized in the catacombs of Candlekeep, and proceeded to battle our way through the hordes of undead and the creatures I later learned were in fact called dopplegangers. There seemed to be a replacement for everyone I knew, and I soon grew fearful of ever reaching the end of this madness. One group of three dopplegangers even tried to imitate Gorion, whose rotting corpse we had passed on the way to Candlekeep, Tethoril, who had bluntly told me he couldn't afford to follow me, and Elminster, who I was not too fond of in the first place. I didn't fall for their transparent ruse, and they fell just as easily as their deceitful fellows.

Eventually we emerged into a cave, and I knew we were nearly out; what I didn't know is that there was a group of Iron Throne goons waiting for us. They moved impossibly fast, and we were surrounded in an instant, but we didn't lose our heads. The tables turned just as quickly when Yeslick used his ability to dispel their magical speed, and I used a Haste spell of my own. They fell...quickly.

We discovered a letter on the leader's person that indicated that a man named Sarevok had been plotting this whole affair; I suddenly was very glad we had not met with "Koveras". It seems his goal was to assume the position of Grand Duke, and I somehow knew I could not let that happen. Our path was set, and once we emerged out into the open air again, we made haste back to Baldur's Gate.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN, PART ONE

Our first stop was Sorcerous Sundries, where I intended to sell the myriad trinkets we had found in the catacombs. We were stopped at the entrance by another Tall, this one very familiar; she was one of the two who attacked me and Gorion! I shrieked for help and she disappeared into the night, but the Flaming Fist member who appeared turned out to be none the friendlier. He said that we were under arrest on the orders of someone named Angelo, and when I reminded him snidely that the leader of the Flaming Fist was actually Scar, he told me that Scar was dead, along with two of the Grand Dukes. I was so alarmed that I asked for protective custody.

The Flamer brought us to Angelo, who accused us of not only the cold-blooded murder of Rieltar and his group, but also "other assorted crimes" which included some far too heinous to write of here. We were thrown in a cell with a gnome by the name of Neb who turned out to have actually done all the horrendous crimes he was accused of, and I nearly killed him out of principle before he told us that he knew a way out. I was forced to figure out his riddle about how many children he had killed before he would show us, and our retribution was suggested by none other than Yeslick himself, who said that we ought to seal the passage so that Neb (and other criminals) could not get out any more.

After sealing the passage behind us with a couple of Fireballs and a final Glyph of Warding upon the fallen stone to seal Neb's fate at the hands of the executioner, a horde of Flamers could be heard running around both sides of the compound to investigate the explosions. Tiax spied a nearby sewer grate, and Kagain lifted it so we could descend. Knowing that the only thing that could clear our names was evidence of the Iron Throne's wrongdoing, we made a bee-line for the docks and slipped stealthily into their headquarters from below.

The building was near deserted, and Monty and Alora took off to loot the place. On the second floor we ran into Rieltar's son who decided to try to kill us "just to be safe", despite knowing full well that it was Sarevok who orchestrated their deaths. We explored the entire building systematically, floor by floor, until we reached the top floor and were confronted by Sarevok's consort. After insulting us (why does everyone do that?), she summoned up a pair of giant ogres, who Kagain and Tiax took on with surprisingly little difficulty while I and Yeslick made for the conjuror.

Monty popped in and scored a deep wound across her back, and the look in her eyes as she turned to speak was one of mortal fear, which proved justified when an arrow from a previously hidden Alora took her in the throat. The concrete proof we had been looking for nearly jumped into my hands when a book that turned out to be Sarevok's Diary fell out of her robes as she tumbled to the ground. It described in detail the plots to kill Rieltar & Brunos as well as all the Grand Dukes, and I nearly jumped for joy with our exoneration so close at hand.

But with Scar (and apparently also Entar Silvershield and Duke Eltan) already dead, I knew I had to act fast to prevent the remaining grand dukes from succumbing to Sarevok's schemes, or else I would have noone to appeal to. The Diary spoke of the last plot being committed at Sarevok's coronation ceremony in the early morn, but an invitation would be required to get into the Duchal Palace. Fortunately, the assassins that Sarevok had hired would need one too, and their hideout was easily found (with Tiax's knowledge of the sewers) in the Undercellar beneath the city.

One assassin came at us in a manner quite similar to those we had encountered beneath Candlekeep, and remembering Yeslick's solution, I quicky cast Dispel Magic from a scroll and not only did the assassin slow down, but another one appeared out of thin air! She began casting a spell and I started pelting her with rocks until she ran; Kagain attempted to take on the other one all by himself, but only Tiax's intervention prevented him from getting skewered on the Tall's sword.

Once we had dispatched the assassins, we searched for the invitation and were disappointed to find that it was only for two. I knew that some of my companions could sneak in on their own, but that still left three in my group and only two invited. The choice was made easily when I looked at Kagain's wounds, and when we arrived at the Palace (again by way of the sewers), I asked Kagain to stay outside. He protested, but I told him that we needed someone to make sure that Sarevok could not escape our justice and I could not think of anyone I would trust more with that responsibility. Only slightly mollified, he still grumbled quietly about missing out on all the "fun".

After I and Yeslick gained admittance (with Tiax, Alora, and Monty sneaking in as well) I made sure that everything was set up for my big entrance. Yeslick would have a clear view of the area when he came in through the other door (just in case his talents were needed), Tiax was set in the shadows to charge, and Monty and Alora lurked in the corners of the room, both with their bows trained on Sarevok himself. All was in readiness, and I made my grand entrance, announcing that I had proof of Sarevok's duplicity.

CHAPTER SEVEN, PART TWO

At least, that's what I meant to do; I actually took a single step into the room and froze in my tracks. Though I had not given much thought to who this Sarevok really was (aside from the man who framed me), I had not in my wildest dreams imagined that he would be the armored man who had killed Gorion! I stood there with my mouth hanging slack until Yeslick used his ability, thinking that I had been bewitched or some such. No change overcame me of course (having only been affected by a rather unwelcome memory), but most of the nobles underwent a startling transformation into dopplegangers!

Again I was shocked (I should have known that Sarevok would have a backup plan), but this time into action. I shouted for the guards to dispatch these monsters, and I and my group helped as much as we were able. Duchess Liia Jannath fell to the shapeshifting beasts, but we managed to save Duke Belt; I have no doubt that he too would have fallen if not for our intervention. Belt thanked us for our help and asked if there was anything he could do for us, and all I could do was mutely hand him the Diary. Belt read a few pages and the color drained from his face, then abruptly returned in full force as he turned to look furiously at the stunned Sarevok. "Guards!" he blared, "Seize him!!!"

Given that they had been about to crown Sarevok a Grand Duke, their momentary hesitation was understandable, but it still allowed Sarevok enough time to grab the robed Tall behind him and growl, "Get me out of here." I recognized a Dimension Door when I saw one, and sent Alora and Tiax to grab Kagain while I explained the situation to the last remaining Grand Duke. He agreed that we should pursue, especially given the personal grudge we bore, and when my friends returned I picked out a scroll and said a quick prayer to Nebulun that I could pull off following their trail.

We re-appeared in the Thieves' Hall, and were nearly made into pincushions by the ever-vigilant members until Montaron spoke up and they recognized him. I had been leery of doing any work for them initially, but clearly it had payed off as they lowered their bows. It seemed Sarevok had indeed been by here, and had even killed a couple of Guild Members before disappearing into the Thieves' Maze below the building. We followed, and I used another scroll (of Clairvoyance, this time) to ascertain the quickest path through the maze. We fought a number of difficult enemies, but in the end it paid off; when we reached the giant underground cavern, Sarevok's footprints were not a minute old.

I and Tiax summoned up a great army of undead from the graveyards in the cavern, but when we were ready to move out, a group of Iron Throne thugs came out of the Maze behind us and asked haughtily if we were in league with Sarevok. I sighed heavily and responded in the negative, asking what they planned to do about it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were also after Sarevok, but that pleasure turned to dismay when they decided to try to kill us anyway. The encounter cost us almost our entire skeleton army, and I decided that we ought not waste anymore time, lest we repeat the experience with the next group who came through.

We followed Sarevok's trail toward an ancient temple to fallen Bhaal, and the pieces all fell into place; he must be a Bhaalspawn too. You see, I had known of my divine ancestry and the prophecies surrounding it for many years. (Gorion never was one for locking his desk, and I was ever so inquisitive when I was younger.) I knew that if we were to have any chance, I would have to face him on even footing; so I drew on all my rage over his manipulation (oh, and the completely unnecessary deaths he caused too) and let loose as I entered the temple, my companions close behind.

Sad to say, with the regrettable bloodlust that filled my senses I can remember only snippets of the fight. Balls of fire and other magics streaking from my fingertips. Kagain wielding that sword again as he slashed through the webs to get to his targets. Yeslick calling down holy wrath upon Sarevok's cohorts. The halflings working in unison to rapidly shoot magical arrows into the fray. Angelo buried under a pile of summoned monsters. Tazok whipping around in circles to try to follow the surprisingly agile Kagain as he hacked at Tazok's knees and retreated only to throw an axe in his face and charge again. A mage's impromptu cairn made of sling stones and ceiling tiles. Sarevok bellowing in murderous rage and Tiax yelling something about "usurping his godhood".

When the dust finally settled (which seemed to take an hour; there was a lot of dust to kick up in that abandoned temple), the scene of carnage was appalling. The gnolls and wolves had literally ripped Angelo to pieces, and the only thing connecting Tazok's thighs to his knees was the pool of blood that had leaked out of the former. (Come to think of it, I believe I heard Kagain yell "Timber!" at some point during the fight.) Our side had come out of the battle nearly as battered, and the pieces of canine flesh scattered by Sarevok's thirsty sword would have been hard to reconstruct had we been inclined to attempt it.

Even the throne that Sarevok had been sitting on when we came in had been blasted to smithereens laying about the room. But of Sarevok himself there was little sign, aside from the blood-soaked sword and armor laying in what can only be described as the 'eye' of the whole mess. With the remains somehow missing, my companions clamored for pursuit, but I assured them that we had defeated him and that I myself had sent him to his eternal rest. Or so I thought...

 

INTERMISSION

With Sarevok and all his cronies now dead, the Iron Throne was bereft of leadership. The Grand Dukes offered me the job, but I had no interest in presiding over a bunch of fawning long-legs; Tiax, however, greedily accepted the job in my place. Long story short, he finished what Sarevok began and ran it almost totally into the ground, with a lot of help from his delusions of godhood. It took him only a month to get ousted.

I returned to Candlekeep with my (noW) four friends, but every time I passed someone in the hall, I would find myself wondering if they would suddenly turn on me as the fakes in the catacombs had. I could not take the pressure, and things were still getting worse both on the Sword Coast and in Amn. Monty and Alora were getting so bored with nothing to filch and only each other to chase around the keep, and the dwarves insisted we go do something, though for different reasons.

Kagain simply wanted something to kill, but Yeslick wanted to go help with the region's troubles. The group started fracturing, and in a last ditch effort to keep us all together, I announced that I was setting out on a quest to help some people, hurt others, and steal from the rest. When the laughter died down, they realized that it would in fact be the best thing we could do, so all five of us left together to face whatever we might find.

A couple of months after our depature from Candlekeep, we met up with a very bizarre wizard, who turned out to be Xzar, back from the dead and none too pleased about being killed by his partner. Montaron took the opportunity to leave, but not without a few of Alora's private things, including her rabbit's foot. Naturally, Alora gave chase once she realized it was gone; she was still missing when he came...

I was trying to prevent yet another pointless fight between the two dwarves when suddenly a Tall appeared out of thin air in the middle of the road. I asked him who he was and what he wanted, but the only words that came out of his mouth were spidery words of magic. Yeslick began to cast a spell of warding, but the Other was too quick; nothing remained of my good friend Slick but a pile of dust. Kagain charged and I chanted, and we managed to kill the demon the Other summoned up, but not before he had cast a Holding spell upon me. Kagain did not fare so well against the second demon, and he soon lay dead in the muddy ditch.

The wizard took me and experimented on me, but why I did not know...yet.

 

Book Two: Adventures in Amn
CHAPTER ONE, PART ONE

Another day of "experiments", and again I was subjected to pain unlike any I had ever known, or would ever see again. But this time, there was a subtle charge in the air, and the Other (as I had taken to calling him) seemed a little rushed. I cannot begin to describe the relief I felt when one of his golem servants interrupted him with news I did not even register. I collapsed to the floor of my cell in a heap, gratified that I had once again maintained my Deception and concealed both my ring and robes; a minor victory, but the only one I could manage in my current circumstances.

Later I was awoken by a tremendous shaking, and who appeared out of the shadows but my old childhood friend Imoen! Sadly, it seemed that she had been tortured too, and had only escaped when the rumbling roof shook her cell door open. Using the skills she had learned back at Candlekeep, she was able to unlock my cell too. Escape was my first priority, but it seemed that it wasn't Imoen's; as I grabbed equipment from a nearby supply room, she grabbed a dagger from behind a painting and stealthily snuck down a corridor. A surprisingly high-pitched screech was all I heard of the creature who had apparently delighted in tormenting her when the Other was away.

"The door's locked," was all she had to say when she returned, wiping the mephit's blood from the dagger. We chose another path, from which we could hear a hum of power, but Imoen motioned for me to stay put and for some reason I did. She snuck off again and the hum ceased, followed by another screech, but this one more human. I raced around the corner to find Imoen clutching at her arm as another mephit lay dead at her feet. I tried to heal her, but she batted me away and cast a spell! I'd had no idea that Imoen had any knowledge of magecraft, but as I saw her Stoneskin taking effect, I could not deny the evidence. She stalked on, and I had to run to keep up with her.

Not being the running type (usually), I simply jogged and contented myself with the knowledge that I would catch up to her whenever she ran afoul of another mephit. What I had not expected was the genie who appeared in the middle of the next cavern and spoke to Imoen as if I were not even there. All I caught was her response, "I will press the button." Next thing I know she's taking on an ogre-mage in hand-to-hand combat, armed only with a dagger and a tiny shield! I ran forward to help, but even between the two of us we could not dispatch it quickly enough to prevent its weakening and finally breaking of Imoen's Stoneskin. She began taking damage and I started healing, but miraculously Imoen scored a deep thrust into its heart. This time she did not bat away my healing hands.

Renewed, Imoen took off again, and I jogged along behind her. The next scene I found was her with a goblin's arrow stuck into a previous wound, writhing on the ground while the still smoking corpses of a half-dozen goblins lay scattered about. I quickly healed her arrow wound and glanced about at the walls at the char marks on either side; apparently she had bounced a Lightning Bolt back and forth down the corridor to catch the lot of them. I was getting a little tired of catching up to her only to heal her, so I shoved one of the goblins' bows at her and told her to keep behind me from now on.

I went back to the cavern and pointed out a different hallway that led toward where the locked door had, but even after killing the three goblins guarding the door, it seemed we were to have no luck; that door was also locked. Imoen shot me a dirty look, and we went the way she originally had, past the scorched goblins to a door set into the side of the hallway. It opened to a room with tanks of some strange liquid lining the walls; some tanks even had bodies floating in them.

We were almost immediately distracted from the tanks as yet another mephit attacked, but thankfully the steam that it spat at me rolled right over my robes. We killed that mephit and another we found in the same room, but the only equipment we managed to salvage was good quarterstaff for myself. we left the room and entered the one across the hall, and in this room was yet another mephit (who I clubbed with my new weapon) and a single tank. But this one was different than the others; it was somehow more "active".

The piteous creature within spoke, identifying itself as Rielev, a former servant of the Other. It had been imprisoned for far too long, and mere existance was agony. I asked if it wished for release, and it readily told me how to detach the cells that powered its chamber; it also told me how to activate the tanks in the other room with the same power cells so that we might learn of the way out. Rielev knows only peace now.

I and Imoen re-entered the large tank room, and I tried powering up a few tanks, but all I got were nonsense babblings from the occupants. I wasn't paying attention by the fifth one, and powered up one of the large tanks by mistake. The being within, which looked like an adolescent beholder, began to stir and apparently the power cell could not handle the demand of the larger tank. The creature realized its freedom of movement and instinctively crashed against and through the glass shell. It turned its gaze upon me, and with death imminent the words simply tumbled out of my mouth: "Oh dear."

CHAPTER ONE, PART TWO

My already great surprise doubled when the creature spoke in a raspy bass. "Grrgl... Greetings O'Deere, I am Goo. Where is your master? GrUARghl?"

I was flabbergasted at this coherent creature, but managed to squeak out, "Quayle... my name is Quayle. But I don't know what you're talking about; I just escaped from a cell too."

"I see. Grg..."

The silence stretched long until Imoen strode over to the creature and poked it in the side, "Well, do you know the way out or not? I don't think just hanging around is a good idea."

It turned to her and spoke, only inches away from her face. "Yes, I know the way out. Garrgggr..."

Imoen turned green and collapsed, and I rushed over to her side, but she was just unconscious. Goo was staring curiously at her, and I asked cautiously, "What did you do to her?" Then I caught a whiff of its breath. "Oh jeez, never mind! ... Come on Imoen, wake up," I said, slapping her face lightly.

I was rewarded with a punch in the face when her eyes snapped open, but at least it put me out of the line of fire when she vomitted. Holding my nose and keeping a safe distance from both Imoen and Goo, I asked Goo if he would tell us how to get out. It looked back and forth between my bloody nose and Imoen's vomitting, and then made a pronoucement, "Gruarghl... You will need my help. Goo shall show you the way out. Grrg..."

It led us through corridors filled with goblins, and eventually to a library. From there we went down another corridor that looked like the ones that had locked doors at the end, but this door didn't slow Goo down one bit. The door just swung open to reveal a sewer area and an otyugh! I summoned up a few of its previous meals to protect us, but only one skeleton perished before Goo had sliced up the otyugh with its jaws. I was a little nervous at this point about the creature's ravenous appetite, so I summoned up a few more skeletons 'just in case'.

The next room looked to be the Other's bedroom, but it was trapped from floor to ceiling. Imoen took care of the traps, but I found something that filled me with sorrow. Kagain's helm, apparently taken as a trophy because Kagain killed the first demon; I observed a moment of silence for my fallen comrade. The next area was rather odd, as it seemed that a piece of wall that should have separated it from the 'bedroom' was simply missing, and on top of that there were trees. I had read that some trees could grow underground, without the benefit of sunlight, but the sight of it was something else. I was so absorbed that I did not hear the dryads' approach until Goo growled at them.

All three of them started babbling at me at the same time, and I had to calm them down to get the pertinent details. It seems that they couldn't leave unless they had some special acorns, so we went in search of Ilyich. We found him in the foundry, but he attacked us on sight. I suppose I should have been glad that I didn't have to figure out how to sneak the acorns away from him, but at the time I was more concerned with being down another two skeletons with Goo's appetite seemingly unchecked by the two dwarves he ate in the melee.

We returned with the acorns to the dryads, and they had the temerity to say that they didn't want them! I spewed forth a number of profanities (which I had picked up from Kagain and Montaron) before they explained that what they needed was for me to give them to some Fairy Queen in Windspear Hills. Imoen said it all sounded like a gay old adventure and accepted on our behalf. My first thought was that I be-halfin' to have a little talk with Miss Eager when we got out of this hole, but agreeing was apparently a good idea, as the dryads told us where we could find the portal key to get up to the next level (the one thing Goo had been a little foggy on).

This room was even more heavily trapped than the last one, and Imoen missed one in all the disarming. Two golems came stomping in, and when we'd finally released them from their magical servitude, the rest of my skeletons were gone. When Imoen grabbed the portal key out of a chest, it stuck to her hand despite her best efforts to dislodge it. All the tension that had been building through the escape attempt abruptly eased as we couldn't help but laugh at this ridiculous predicament. As Goo led us to the nearest portal, she even related to me a story about how she'd gotten the belt that she was wearing stuck on her; not even the Other had been able to get it off.

When the portal's magics finally let us go, our heads spun dizzily on the next floor; another of Goo's growls quickly brought us back to our senses in time to meet THE Yoshimo. He claimed that he did not know how he had gotten here either, but I could tell that the long-leg was lying so I sent him on his way. Thankfully, before he left he imparted some useful information; it seems that the next room was teeming with mephits, and more kept arriving via the mephit portals.

I thanked him for the information (vowing to disregard it) and told him to be gone. But the next room was much as he had told us, and after witnessing a mephit come through a portal myself, I wasted no time in asking some of their previous victims to rise up and destroy the portals. One of them seemed familiar, but unfortunately that was the one that got ripped apart by the mephits when they realized what was happening. In the end, we succeeded in destroying the portals and continued on our way out. As we neared the exit, Imoen got a crazy look in her eyes and raced on ahead; I did my best to catch up, but my short legs couldn't carry me fast enough.

CHAPTER ONE, PART THREE

I burst into the open air with a sigh of relief, only to see my tormentor battling with those whose attack had allowed my escape. Even Imoen was getting into it, casting spell after spell at the Other. I was about to join in too when all of a sudden five robed wizards appeared out of thin air and proclaimed something about "illegal use of magic". The Other tried to fight them too, but no matter how many fell, there were always more to take their place. He finally relented, but insisted that they take Imoen too, and they were too quick about it for me or Goo to intervene.

Abruptly, Goo snarled to the heavens. "GGRRGUUUAARRGGLLHAAARRRRR! He has escaped again! We must... grar... find him, Quayle, and... grrggrg... punish him for what he has done... grg... to us... guarg..." I was not convinced just yet that I should stick my neck out for retribution, but what he said next got my attention. "Gruarghl... He needs you too for his purposes; just Imoen will not suffice. He will come for you eventually if you do not stop him first. Grrg..." After hearing that, I decided perhaps it was in my best interest to join with Goo on his hunt for the Other.

With my powers of Deception no longer needed to hide my personal items, I shifted them over to Goo in order to make him appear as a dwarf. (After all, it simply wouldn't do to be seen walking around with what looked like a miniature gauth.) I instructed him on the correct height to float at so that his voice would come from approximately the dwarf's mouth, and hoped that it would be enough to fool most. With my companion now set to blend in, I decided to take my chances in conversation with a nearby member of the local constabulary.

But the preening idiot had no interest in helping me figure out where I was, and instead started moaning to me about his own problems with the "haunted" circus tent he was guarding. I was about to roll my eyes at the plated Tall when a nearby urchin piped up; his mother was trapped inside the tent. Now, I admit I may be a little prejudiced when it comes to the long-legged variety, but I couldn't justify leaving this poor child to fend without his Ma.

Goo and I entered the tent, and I was suddenly overtaken by a serious episode of vertigo. When the world stopped spinning (no thanks to the nudges that Goo kept giving me) Goo's dwarven Deception was gone and he was floating in his usual form right before a bridge. Seeing a bridge (and just about nothing else) when I should have been seeing the inside of a tent brought me to the surprising conclusion that whoever was in control here was an illusionist of exceptional power, especially considering that he had been able to reverse my Bhaal-given powers of Deception.

When we attempted to cross the bridge, we were stopped by a genie whose riddle was even easier to answer than Neb's had been a long year ago, and we continued on to what appeared to be another tent. Inside we found an ogre who spoke with the voice of an elf, the high-pitched soft voice contradicting the brutish image. But the words themselves were what disturbed me most.

"Uncle Quayle, you escaped! How did you get away from Kalah?"

"Excuse me?" I queried.

"Don't you ... look out behind you! Another of Kalah's illusions!"

"Where? Oh, him? That's just Goo; he helped me escape from ... Kalah, I guess. But what's all this business about 'Uncle' Quayle, and how do you know my name?" At this point I was becoming concerned that the Other had faked my entire escape and that this was all some trick he was playing on me, still in my cell. My anxiety was short-lived as the more important issue of survival came up.

"You ... You're not Uncle Quayle. You must be another of Kalah's illusions! I won't let you taint his form!!!" The elf-ogre attacked, but Goo intercepted it and it didn't stand a chance. When it had been slain, it did indeed revert to a female elf, but I felt no regret for defending myself and putting this crazed woman out of her misery.

Of course the only two 'normal' people attacked us without a word, but the gigantic spider was more than willing to talk to us. We got yet another story about transformation, and I was about to just back away when she mentioned that her little boy had somehow gotten out. Figuring I might as well make the best of things, I told the spider-woman that I was already working on reversing ... whatever this was, and went on my way. At this point I wasn't even surprised by the stairs.

On the next level (still apparently inside the tent, though it didn't look it) we were attacked by shadows and werewolves. I was glad to find that my two remaining skeletons had followed me, and sent one into the fray to take a little pressure off of Goo while the other stayed to protect me. One werewolf came howling at me, and I ordered my skeleton to protect me but all it did was stand in place; the werewolf even started slashing at the skeleton, but it still just stood there!

I realized why when I saw one of the creature's sweeping paws go through the skeleton without effect; the werewolves must be another illusion. I yelled to Goo through the ruckus to ignore anything that the skeletons weren't attacking, and they stopped attacking anything I just had them wander around to attract the attention of the remaining illusions.

Up the stairs we went again, and Kalah the ogre-mage was waiting for us with two more shadows and a slime. I knew that Goo's teeth would be worse than useless against the slime, so I took it on myself, and had the distinct honor of hearing my own voice issue softly from it. I assumed it was another of Kalah's tricks (like the werewolf who kept sweeping its non-existant claws through my spleen) and just kept whacking and whacking away.

Eventually another wave of vertigo, though slightly different this time, and I found myself in what appeared to be a circus tent. After the odd things I'd seen in the past hour, something so normal was quite startling. But the weirdness returned with a vengeance when I noticed a normal-sized body at my feet, where the slime had been. I rolled it over and looked into my own face; apparently the voice I'd heard had not been a trick after all.

I thought about the irony that I had unknowingly carried out my threat from back at Baldur's Gate seemingly a lifetime ago, and I simply couldn't help it; I burst out laughing. I laughed long and hard and hysterically; I'm sure every eye in the tent was on me, but at the moment I didn't care. All the pain and anguish from the last few months as a prisoner, all the sorrow at the dwarves' deaths, all the fighting I'd been through, just rushed to the surface and I was helpless to fight the tide, had I even wanted to.

A touch on my shoulder brought me back to reality. A strange, almost featureless dwarf had his hand on my shoulder; eventually I remembered Goo, and the Deception that had apparently been restored when Kalah fell. I gathered myself together, and turned to face the circus performers who had been staring at me in both awe and confusion.

"The Quayle you knew is dead. He took my identity and tried to make it his own. I cannot say that I am sad to see him go, but I know that those of you who knew him might be. So I offer my condolences to you for both his death and that of the elf who he raised." I spied a woman looking about frantically and drew the proper conclusion. "Now if you will excuse me, I must reunite this woman with her child."

Outside the tent, the child was still waiting for the loving embrace of a parent, and she did not disappoint. I'd pulled that short speech out of thin air, and was not in the mood for a repeat, so I and the disguised Goo ducked into the nearest shop. The GMT (gnomish mass transport) ride continued when I spotted a familiar figure being held clear of the ground by the shopkeeper. "Alora!" I blurted.

"You know this little thief?" asked the shopkeeper, shaking Alora in midair.

"Ha! She's no thief," I lied, "She couldn't even sneak up on a blind and deaf Calimshiite."

The shopkeeper chuckled and tossed her over the counter at me. "Well, I'll give you that. Just make sure she doesn't darken my doorstep any more; she's not welcome here."

Goo caught her surprisingly gently, and we made a hasty exit from the store. In the Promenade outside, I caught her arm but she pulled away. "How could you say that about me?"

"To get him to let you go," I replied, rolling my eyes. "Now 'fess up, Alora, what did you get from him?"

She giggled and pulled a ring out of her pocket. "I was commissioned by an old friend of ours." Her smile abruptly drooped. "Ohh, you have to come see him Quayle, he's in bad shape."

I was a little puzzled, as the only two I coud think of were Tiax and Monty; Monty could've done it himself (without getting caught, even) and last I heard, Tiax hadn't a copper to his name after the debacle with the Iron Throne. Curious, I let Alora lead us toward the slums.

[ November 21, 2005, 19:57: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

CHAPTER TWO, PART ONE

Alora led us straight to the Copper Coronet, a run-down looking inn smack in the center of the slums. We entered, but I quickly lost sight of Alora in the hustle and bustle of all those long-limbs. One Tall even bumped into me, and the next thing I know I've been roped into some sort of pit fight! I fired off one of the wands I'd found in the Other's bedroom in desperation, summoning three giant ogres. I figured that would be enough to deal with him, but the maniac sliced through them and kept coming for me.

I fired off a Hold spell and climbed out of the pit to the boos of the crowd, which then quieted. I knew that hush and whipped around; I'm afraid my staff clobbered the charging Tall quite hard when I spun. His fellows were more than a little concerned about the blood pooling on the floor, but I assured them that killing their friend had not been my intent. Raucous laughter came from nearby at my statement.

"Har har har! Ye needn't be denying a rightfully made kill. If they has any problem with it, they can answer to me ax!" A hard clap on the shoulder nearly sent me tumbling to the floor. "Me name be Korgan; what be yours, aye?"

I turned and stared into a face that I knew all too well. Though the voice had changed some, and the accent was much closer to how Yeslick's had been, I could still tell Kagain was hiding in there somewhere. Even more telling was the cloak that Kagain had always worn, draped around his shoulders. I nearly fainted before Alora scampered up and took me aside with a quick excuse to 'Korgan'. "I'm sorry, Quayle; I should have told you before we got here. Just hold on a little longer and I'll explain when we're alone."

We went back to 'Korgan', who was having a rousing (but somewhat confused) discussion with Goo. Alora interrupted, "Hey Korgy, I'm back from Ribald's."

"Ye got what I was askin' for?"

"Yeah Korgy, right here." She held out the ring she had showed me earlier.

"Har har! I nay be askin' how ye came by it, lassie, but I'm grateful none the same." He put on the ring and his gaze shifted to me and Goo. "So ye know these scallywags, do ye?"

"Mmm-hmm, they're old friends of mine. I don't know what I would have done without ol' Quayle sometimes. And this is his new friend, ..."

"Gozaloth," I filled in, hoping it sounded a bit more dwarven than Goo.

Goo frowned (he seemed to be adapting to the Deception quite well). "Actually, my name is..."

I cut in, "...pronounced Goz'loth; I'm sorry. I just can't seem to get a handle on that old dwarven name of yours."

Goo's scowl deepened. "But I'm not..."

Again I cut in, getting a little annoyed at Goo's seeming penchant for the truth. "...that old. Yes, we know you're still a strapping youngster, but this is starting to get a little personal. Perhaps we could get to know each other a little better in private?" Goo finally got it from the look I was giving him, and promptly closed his mouth.

I located the proprietor of the establishment and inquired about a private room where I and my friends could talk, and he gave us the strangest of looks. "(Hurmm). Well, what you small folk want to do behind closed doors is none of my business, I guess. (hurrrm)" We went upstairs (covering our ears as we passed some woman shouting "RUMAR!!!" at the top of her lungs) and got settled in the only empty room we found.

Korgan and Alora started talking about something inane, and I pulled Goo aside by an eyestalk before he could go in. "Look, as far as anyone else knows, you're a dwarf named Goz'loth. If they find out you're a...whatever-you-are before they're ready, they'll hunt you down and put you in a zoo. IF they don't kill you." The dark complexion I had given him somehow turned a little ruddier, but I cut him off before he could go into a tirade. "We'll tell them when they're ready, but doing it in public would only get us both killed. For now you'll have to keep your trap shut about it, okay?"

My nervousness made it seem like an hour before he responded, his lowered eyebrows seeming to cast a shadow over his face. "Alright. But if you don't tell them when the time comes, I'll do it myself."

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you. It won't be necessary, though; I'll tell them. Now let's get in there before they notice."

We entered the room and caught the tail end of Korgan and Alora's conversation, but before I could ask 'Korgan' about who he was, Alora ushered me right back out. "To catch up on old friends," she said with her trademark smile.

Out in the hallway, her demeanor changed abruptly. "You recognize him, don't you."

"Yes. Despite the new hair and sounding like Yeslick, it's pretty obvious. What happened?"

"Well, once I found Monty, I snagged my rabbit's foot back and stole one of his daggers for the trouble. Then I tracked you guys, hoping I'd catch up with you somewhere, but your trail ended pretty abruptly. I was searching for clues when I found Kagain's body." Her lip quivered with the memory. "He was all cold, and I brought him to a temple to get him raised. The clerics said that he had been dead for a while, but I didn't listen and made them raise him anyway."

She nearly broke down here. "He wasn't the same, Quayle; he wasn't the same. He didn't even remember what had happened, and when I asked about you and Yeslick, he flew into a rage and hurt a lot of people before I could calm him down. He calls himself Korgan now, and even mentioning the name Kagain brings back his madness. Please, it's the only way."

What he called himself didn't bother me, and I told Alora as much. She asked me what had happened, and I gave her the full version, only leaving out Goo's true form. She was sad to hear about Yeslick's death, but she was glad to hear that "Gozzy" (as she was now calling him) had helped me escape. A bittersweet reunion, but I couldn't help thinking that this was only the beginning.

CHAPTER TWO, PART TWO

We re-entered the room to find Korgan and Goo arguing about who could down the most ale. Korgan said he could (of course) and Goo said he couldn't because his stomach was smaller than Korgan's. Korgan seemed confused and kept trying to challenge Goo to a drinking match, but Goo kept refusing, saying that there would be no point because he was bound to lose. Korgan took it as sarcasm, but I knew that Goo was just telling the truth as always, so I stepped in before things could get out of control. "Come on Korgan, you know you'd win and so does he. He's just conceding." I stepped closer and whispered in his ear, "(Besides, he can't really hold his liquor anyway.)"

Korgan looked askance at Goo. "What kind o' dwarf be ye, to be turnin' down a drinkin' match?"

Goo looked questioningly at me, but I had no answers for him. "A sober one?" he guessed.

"Har har! That's a good one, laddie. (A sober dwarf...hahahaha.)"

Once we got the initial introductions out of the way, I enlisted Korgan's help in tracking down the Other, but at a price; I would have to help him find a rare book for a collector. Such tomes were right up my alley, so I readily agreed. We got sidetracked rather quickly though, when we went down the wrong stairs and ended up watching a pit fight between a dwarf and a troll. The dwarf fell quickly, and all I could think of was Yeslick and Kagain's deaths on that fateful day.

We stormed even farther into the very back rooms; I thinking of the past, Alora thinking of the fallen gladiator, and Goo thinking of the poor imprisoned troll. Korgan came along for the trouble he might be able to cause, and his wish was granted rather quickly when a guard told us to leave the area. I could clearly see the human and humanoid slaves held in the cells and was thinking to ask about their treatment, but Korgan beat me to it by barking in the guard's face that we went where we pleased. Naturally this started a fight, which I'm sure was Korgan's intention in the first place.

When we'd dispatched the guards, one of the slaves (a Tall named Hendak) called out to us to free him and the others. Goo was unconcerned until Hendak mentioned that the key to his cell would be found on the beastmaster. Deciding to kill two slavers with one sling stone, I agreed to help him and his fellows. We sought out the beastmaster in the animal pens, but he sicced all of the animals on us. Goo headed straight for the beastmaster, ignoring all the rest, while Korgan fended off the animals with my and Alora's help.

We returned to the human slave pens with the key, and freed Hendak as well as the rest of the prisoners. We helped them fight their way out, but Hendak wasn't satisfied with just escaping. He approached the proprietor brazenly, and challenged him to a fight. I and Goo sat back to watch the folly, but Alora promptly pulled out a bow and started firing; the late proprietor was full of arrows before I could blink.

Hendak thanked us for our help, but moaned that the slavers would not be so easily stopped; it seemed that their headquarters were in a different location. Alora quickly agreed to help, and Korgan just got that familiar 'I want to kill things' look in his eye. I thought that we might be splitting up just as quickly as we had met, but apparently Hendak knew his audience and mentioned that the reptile slaves were being held there. Goo was raring to go now, so I just sighed and agreed to come along.

We fought our way through the slimy sewers and its slimier inhabitants, and eventually found ourselves right in the heart of the slaver compound. Goo roared, freezing everyone (including us) in their tracks, and launched himself at the slaver captain. The man had no time to react and stumbled backward, flailing wildly while calling for help. That help never arrived due to the efforts of myself, Korgan, and Alora; though more slavers poured into the room, we cut them down just as quickly.

We cleared out the rest of the building, releasing both children and animals (though the animals invariably attacked us when we did), and then headed back toward the Coronet. About halfway there, we were stopped by someone Alora seemed to know, and she greeted him. "Hiya Gaelan, how things goin' with the Shadow Thieves?"

"My good lady Alora," he replied with a laugh, "I do wish ye wouldn't be spoutin' such things so close to the watch. Yer bound to get me into unwarranted trouble one o' these days." He winked and Alora giggled, but then he turned and knelt down in front of me, putting himself at my eye level. "Coo! And this must be Quayle, aye? I've heard a bit about ye from the little missy here, and ye also seem to be someone my superiors would like me to have a word with. But the word I 'ave for ye not be for the listening ears of the commonfolk; I don't suppose ye'd mind accompanying me back to my place? Yer friends can come too if ye like."

I did not ponder his offer long; Alora seemed to know him well, and he had taken more effort to reach out than I would have in his place. I agreed to come, and what he told us when we arrived was too good to be true; the group he was working for knew where Imoen and the Other had been taken. Not only that, but they were willing to help sneak us in to look for them! The catch came at the expected time; it seems that they would only do it for a fee of 20,000 gold. I shook my head at the ridiculous number and tried to haggle, but to no avail; neither my old cloak nor my old helm remained to help my negotiating skills.

In the end it was Alora who posed a possible solution, "Why don't we go and talk to the Shadow Thieves directly? Maybe we could get them to lower the price." Gaelan raised a hand and opened his mouth to protest, but Alora was too quick for him. "I know, you don't work for the Shadow Thieves, blah blah blah. Come on, Quayle, let's go!" She grabbed my arm and off we went, leaving Gaelan with his mouth hanging open and one finger suspended in mid-air.

CHAPTER TWO, PART THREE

We stopped by the Coronet first to let Hendak know we'd released the rest of the slaves, and then headed over to the docks where Alora assured me that the Shadow Thieves could be found. Apparently she'd been around Athkatla a bit before, and she led us unerringly through the streets to an orange brick building overlooking the water. Several of the Talls inside greeted Alora warmly, though she had to stop and remonstrate one of them to give my money pouch back. Clearly we were in the right place.

We made our way up to the second floor and Alora introduced me to a Tall by the name of Renal Bloodscalp. He started off by making light of my stature, and I would have walked out right then and there if it weren't for Alora. Fortunately, aside from his initial misspeaking, Renal turned out to be quite the conversationalist but certainly no match for me; I learned a number of things about the Shadow Thieves' current situation before he caught on. When we finally got down to business, Renal outlined his need for an outside party to infiltrate another guildhouse and find proof implicating it's leader, Mae'Var, in whatever treachery he was planning against the rest of the Shadow Thieves.

I took an instant dislike to the oily and annoyingly long-limbed Mae'var, and I knew I would have no problem exposing this man for the conniving sneak he was. He was quite dismissive when he sent me out on my first task: stealing a necklace from a priestess of Talos. We headed over to the temple district, but I hadn't paid all that much attention to the long-legs' deities aside from Oghma (who was big back in Candlekeep), so I stopped in at the first temple I saw to ask directions. The first priest I saw was wearing my old helmet, and he had the nerve to call himself a Priest of my Helm!

It turns out that Helm was actually the name of one of the Talls' gods, so I asked him where I could find the Talosian temple and left before I did something I'd regret. Fortunately, Alora was more than willing to do it for me, and soon I was happily reunited with old Glory and the priest was none the wiser. Alora called it practice, and when she strolled back out of the Talosian temple she had the necklace freshly plucked from around the priestess's neck.

Mae'Var was suitably unimpressed, and told us to go talk with his subordinate, Edwin, for further orders. Edwin was even worse than Mae'Var, talking to himself out loud with us standing right there, and his first task was the murder of a Cowled Wizard. I tried to talk with Rayic instead, but it seems that living near the Docks in Athkatla has a pre-requisite of insufferable arrogance. Korgan didn't wait for my go-ahead after the insults, and I ended up having to zap Rayic with another of the wands I'd found in the Other's dungeon.

Edwin's next task for us was getting back some documents he lost, and I was somewhat impatient at having been left out so far. Goo was getting rather bored too, so I discussed my plan with him and he seemed to like it. The man with the documents was busily reading them in the Sea's Bounty, and with everyone else absorbed in their own business, I abruptly dropped Goo's deception and Goo obliged by snarling at the man. A frightful yell and papers flew everywhere as the man dashed out the door with surprising quickness for someone of his ample frame, but when the rest in the tavern looked up, only Goo's dwarven form and the other three of us could be seen.

We gathered up the scattered documents and laughed ourselves silly over the "Spook spell" I had cast as we made our way triumphantly back to Edwin. Though he let us know he wasn't too pleased with the 'conspicuousness' of our methods, I could tell he appreciated us giving that portly merchant the scare of his life. He said he'd put a good word in with Mae'Var and see if he could get us a more important job to do for the man himself. I wasn't sure I liked the contemplative way he was looking at me, but so long as he was getting me closer to the end of my task, I was willing to let it go.

The final task, given by Mae'Var himself, was to kill a traitor. Knowing that Mae'Var was actually the traitor, it seemed likely that the person he wanted me to kill had overheard his plot; I managed to contain my glee when I accepted. Unfortunately, it seemed that the 'traitor' (who was staying at the Sea's Bounty as well) was too cowardly to try to betray Mae'Var. I tried every avenue to attempt to get something from him, but he wouldn't budge. Finally Korgan had heard enough and simply lopped off the man's head, despite my admonition before-hand that he could be useful. We took his dagger back to Mae'Var to prove his death, but he simply sent us back to Edwin.

Disappointed, we trudged back up the three flights of stairs to Edwin's room, wondering how we would ever find proof if we continued to be at the bottom of the food chain. Our fears proved groundless, however, when Edwin practically handed us the evidence on a silver platter. He told us where to find it, gave us a key to Mae'Var's strongbox, and even offered to help us; considering how well he had been 'helping' Mae'Var just a moment ago, I naturally declined.

The only problem we had now was how to get in and out of Mae'Var's room without being noticed. Alora wasn't quite that sure of her sneaking skills, but she did have an idea. Coming up the stairs, she had noticed a practice wall, full of doors for thieves to practice their lock-picking skills on. So, while Alora distracted the other thieves with her prowess and Korgan and Goo created a ruckus to draw a crowd to watch, I snuck into the room and grabbed the letter Edwin had told us about from Mae'Var's strongbox.

I took the letter to Renal immediately, and he told me that my task was nearly done; all that was left was to dispose of Mae'Var. Remembering how he had threatened to torture me the first time we met, with my experience with the Other not too long ago to feel a shudder of terror, I had no compunction about killing the Tall. In fact, we slaughtered everyone in Mae'Var's guildhouse just to get to him, and he proved no more difficult to kill than some of his flunkies.

We returned to Renal and demanded that he tell us where Imoen and the Other were, and he cracked a smile, saying that hadn't been the deal. I offered to 're-negotiate', but he replied that he couldn't tell me because he simply didn't know; that knowledge resided only with the higher-ups. Alora gasped at this, whispering that there was only one man in the city higher than Renal; Aran Linvail commanded all of the Shadow Thieves within the city.

I asked Renal what our reward would be, but his only response was to hold out two items to me. One resembled Alora's sword almost exactly, and when I passed it to her she hefted it experimentally alongside hers. Dressed in darks with a sword in each hand, I couldn't imagine her looking any fiercer and still being Alora. The other item resembled the necklace that Alora had lifted from of the Talosian priestess, but much lighter and more compact than the gaudy thing we'd 'borrowed'. He called it a Sensate Amulet, and when I touched it I could feel the power of Balavar Cloakshadow running through it.

I asked him how we were supposed to get to the person who knew now, and he responded with a condescending smile, "Through the one who contacted you in the first place, of course. I'm sure he'll be waiting wherever you left him last; I doubt they'd risk being punished for disobedience. But what happens to you now is none of my concern, and I'll bid you farewell before I'm seen in your company."

CHAPTER TWO, PART FOUR

I'd had it with being jerked around by the Shadow Thieves, so I decided to take my chances with the Cowled Wizards (despite my experience with Rayic) before I went any further. So we started off toward the Government district, but we didn't get very far before we heard someone crying out for help from a side alley. In the alley we found four thugs standing over a prone figure, and we didn't hesitate for a second. When the thugs were dispatched, the curled-up figure spoke in a weak voice of being poisoned.

I used my Bhaal-given powers despite his insistence that my magic wouldn't help him, and was surprised when they failed for the first (and last) time in my life. Korgan was ready to end his suffering, but Goo held him back long enough for me to ask what he wanted. His answer surprised me. "Take me to Jaheira at the Galvarey Estate near the docks; she'll take care of me." Having used the last of his energy to impart these directions, he fell almost immediately unconscious.

The name Jaheira sounded vaguely familiar, so I decided to indulge my curiosity and take the now limp figure back to the docks we had just left. People can be surprisingly helpful when your companion has a body slung over his back, and we soon found the Galvarey Estate with no trouble at all. We were greeted at the door by a man named Rylock, who immediately called for Jaheira when he saw who Korgan was carrying.

My memory was finally jogged by the sight of the Tall who came to the door; I handed over the poison victim and left without a word. On our way back out of the docks, we were stopped again, this time by none other than Xzar. His customary shadow was nowhere to be seen, but I didn't even have time to ask before Xzar demanded that I find Montaron for him. Apparently Monty had snuck into the Galvarey Estate and had not returned.

To my great surprise, Alora spoke up and said we'd rescue him; I turned to stare, but all I saw was her desire to help. Xzar accepted less than gratefully, and added that he had knowledge of the whereabouts of someone named Irenicus. I asked him why I would care about that, and he told me that Irenicus was the name of the man who had taken me prisoner and tortured me below the streets of Athkatla. For the name alone I would have agreed; finally my tormentor had a name!

Drawn back to the Galvarey Estate again, I rapped on the door with my staff. Again Rylock answered the door, but I didn't wait for him to yell for Jaheira and simply walked in as if I were expected. Rylock didn't fall for that, and ushered me out before closing the door behind him. "What do you need now, Quayle?" he asked.

I was surprised he knew my name, but given that he didn't seem to be expecting a response, I let it pass without comment. I told him that I needed inside to look for a friend who had entered yesterday on a dare. He finally relented on the condition that we do something for the Harpers, and I figured it was only fair to balance out an intrusion with a kind of penance. A mage named Prebek had been making some strange and unnatural creatures, and Rylock wanted him stopped; by his tone, I could tell that reasoning with Prebek would most likely not be successful.

I was right of course, and Prebek needed some convincing by Goo to stop "his heinous deeds". We returned and Rylock let us in, but warned us not to go up to the second floor due to the danger. Naturally, that made me quite sure that was exactly where Montaron had gone; he always was one to stick his fingers where they didn't belong. Of course, I knew that they wouldn't just let us run up the stairs, and so did Alora after she tried it. But she didn't stop there.

After a futile struggle to get past the Harpers and up the stairs (for which I wound up apologizing profusely) she ran outside and started climbing the wall. I and Rylock stared in amazement as she scaled the building and disappeared over the lip of the roof. The first crash from the second floor sent both me and the long-limbed Harper rushing back into the building, and my fear for Alora sent me moving faster than I ever thought I could, leaving Rylock in the dust. But even as fast as I had been, the crashes had stopped by the time I got to the stairs, only to be replaced by the sound and sight of a bluish Alora tumbling down them.

"So...cold," she whispered through chattering teeth, and I didn't think twice before taking off my cloak to wrap around her. I even grabbed Korgan's right off of his back, and when he protested I snapped off a quick command in gnomish (GoobreatheinKorgan'sface) which resulted in a woozy Korgan hitting the floor face-first. We carried Alora to Rylock's room and bundled her in the covers on his bed in addition to the two cloaks she already had on. She was still cold to the touch, so I poured all the healing magic left in me into Alora, and relief swept over me when the blue finally started to fade from her lips.

Rylock escorted us out shortly thereafter, saying that we had gotten a much more thorough looking around than we had any right too. Alora remained strangely silent on the subject until we were out of sight of the estate, whereupon she immediately removed a small bird from underneath her leathers. Her face lit up as she stroked its head and cooed at it, calling it 'widdle Monty'. Korgan was furious ("We went through all that trouble fer a blasted bird!?!") until I explained that it must be some sort of shapechanging magic which held my old halfling friend in his feathered form.

I was not sure how to handle this as I was unaware of the spell which had caused this affliction (at least I was at the time; I have since learned it), so I decided the best course of action would be to take him back to Xzar and see what he could do. Naturally Xzar knew the spell to undo Monty's magical malady, and he cast it right then and there. The next words out of Xzar's mouth mirrored my own thoughts, "What in the..?? You're not Montaron!"

Those words were his last as the Tall woman who had before been a bird stabbed him through the heart with her blade. Xzar slumped to the ground, and I couldn't help feeling a bit of deja vu at seeing Xzar killed yet again. Concern for Montaron overrode anything I might have felt for the twice-fallen wizard, and I queried the woman on the subject. Her advice was to talk to Jaheira. More feelings of familiarity as I pounded on the Galvarey Estate's door again and braced myself for talking to the overly insulting Tall.

Alora wasn't in the mood to wait, however, and simply picked the lock and walked in; remembering the last time she had ventured alone into the estate, I and my other companions hurried after. Alora was shouting about how Jaheira had better come out to explain what had happened to Montaron, but she stopped abruptly as the Tall in question came down the stairs carrying a large rolled-up carpet. With no more fanfare than one would shake out a dusty rug, Jaheira snapped one end so that the rest unrolled, dumping Montaron's body on the floor in a most undignified manner. "If you truly wish it, you may dispose of the filth yourself."

I glared at her and made to leave, but Alora simply went berserk. "You...you killed him. YOU KILLED HIM!!!" She leapt at Jaheira, moving so fast that I swear I could see 3 different arms and blades all rising and descending upon the shocked Tall. She threw me clear across the room when I tried to intervene, and it took Goo and Korgan both to pull Alora off of Jaheira, who was by this point covered in red from head to toe. The other Harpers turned for revenge, and I was forced to fight them off single-handedly as the two "dwarves" dragged Alora (still kicking and screaming) out the door.

A Hold spell later, we were tearing through the streets and back alleys with a paralyzed Alora slung over Korgan's shoulder. When I was reasonably sure we had lost the pursuing long-legs, I let the spell drop and Alora collapsed weeping into my arms. I gave Goo a significant glance to convey the need for privacy, and he soon left with Korgan in tow. Through her tears, Alora confessed to me the feelings she'd had since she met Montaron, as well as the numerous flings they'd had in the past year. I could scarcely contain my disbelief; a sweet thing like Alora falling for a heartless brute like Montaron? But contain it I did, and offered what condolences and hopeful thoughts I could.

CHAPTER TWO, PART FIVE

By the time that Korgan and Goo returned, Alora had calmed down a bit. Korgan didn't even notice the redness around her eyes, and immediately started complaining about how Goo had dragged him off for no good reason. "I've been followin' yer lead fer hours, but ye still have not even tried to meet yer end o' the bargain. I need that blasted book!"

Wondering if I'd ever get to talk to the Cowled Wizards, I agreed and we set off for the graveyard district where Korgan told us the book was buried. We searched through the upper tombs, finding little of value except some old bones, and finally descended into the lower crypts. They were covered in spider webs big and small, and it didn't take too long for us to run into the spiders that had made them. Big spiders, little spiders, even the dreaded Sword Spiders; all were crunched beneath our boots. Korgan seemed to love sloshing through the dripping ichor, and I'm pretty sure I saw Goo eat some of the spider bodies when he thought noone was looking.

We made our way deeper into the crypts, but Korgan's hate for the spiders was boundless, and he would not let us leave the nest unmolested (likely repressed memories of our time in the Cloakwood). We entered to find a horde of spiders and, strangely, a drow woman. I used up another of the wands I'd found in Irenicus's Dungeon to wipe out the spiders, but it seemed to tick off the Tall for some reason. I tried to appease her, but it seems that she didn't want them killed and was now going to kill us in retribution. Needless to say, we didn't allow it.

Deeper still into the crypts, we found traps and undead aplenty. Korgan seemed to know where he was going now, so I let him lead the way. Finally, we came to a large tomb and Korgan announced that we had arrived. The occupants of the tomb begged to differ, and once again the group was caught up in a scuffle with the undead. When the room was clear we began rummaging through its sparse contents, but the book was nowhere to be found. I asked Korgan if perhaps we were in the wrong crypt, but he showed me a few glyphs that he said he recognized.

Korgan berated us for not coming here sooner, until I suggested that perhaps our time would be better spent finding who had beaten us here. Korgan knew that whoever would want to take it would be selling it to a long-limb by the name of Mr. Pimlico, who was offering a large amount for it. We headed to the temple district to stake out the house, but we could tell we were too late here as well; the front door swung freely on its hinge. The scene inside was not pretty, and I told Alora to wait outside while we picked through the tossed contents of a once-pristine estate.

After picking at the corpses of Pimlico and his guards, Korgan settled back on his haunches and grumbled something about "Shagbag". He left without a word, and the rest of us scrambled to keep up as he headed back toward the slums. It seemed that he was going back into the Copper Coronet, but instead he went up the stairs along the side of the building; Alora crept up after him, and I and Goo followed cautiously.

The stairs led out onto the roof of the Copper Coronet, where I was surprised to see a battle already well underway, with Korgan and Alora carving through a group of thugs. Goo must have figured it was just another bunch of generic muggers because he helped out too, but I was a little wary of how they had been exactly where we were going, so I stayed out of it. My suspicions proved justified when Korgan triumphantly lifted the "Book of Kaza" from one of the corpses.

I asked him what he would do with the book now that his principal buyer was dead, and the grin dropped from his face. I smirked and told him that he would find much more profit (and likely also killing) if he came along with us and shared in our fortune. He looked us over (I unconsciously bristled when his gaze lingered on Alora) and grudgingly accepted. Hoping that nothing else would interrupt our travels yet again, I set our direction for the government district and the Cowled Wizards.

We had reached the government district but not quite the Council building when I heard someone cry out in distress. Sighing, I resigned myself to the constant disruptions and sought out the source. A drow woman was tied to a stake and asked for us to let her free, though the mob surrounding her didn't seem too willing to do it themselves; in fact, I was pretty sure that they had put her there in the first place. She tried to claim my attention by shouting my name and claiming I'd saved her once before back up near Baldur's Gate. Of the two possible explanations that came to mind, neither was particularly palatable: either she knew my imposter (good enough reason to let her be) or she really was a wicked sorceress who was plucking memories from my mind and using them for her own purpose. I simply left and let the mob have her.

Again we were accosted as we approached the Council building, but this time it turned out to be someone in the hire of the Cowled Wizards, who said that they would be most interested in talking to me. Glad that I would finally reach my objective with no further interruptions, I strolled boldly into the building with my companions trailing behind me; I nearly screamed with frustration when another Tall moved to intercept me. Fortunately my business with him took not too long (though 5000 gold for a magic license is highway robbery), and soon I was talking to the Cowled Wizard Tolgerias.

Sadly, his concerns were not my own, and he had little information on Imoen and Irenicus's whereabouts other than that they had likely been taken to an asylum by the name of Spellhold. What he asked of me in return for confirmation was the return of a criminal, and I accepted, hoping he wasn't just dragging me around by the nose like the other organizations I'd met with. A quick interrogation of the fugitive's butler at his house near the docks revealed a hideout in the Umar Hills.

On our way out of the city, we encountered a strange gnome who offered to sell us some illegal merchandise, but before he could go into detail, a snobbish Tall by the name of Trax interrupted our conversation. I made to leave, but Trax's bodyguard stopped us and Trax began making some rather insulting insinuations. Angered at his assumptions, I told him that I was merely discussing the weather with a fellow gnome, and that he should mind his small-brained business. Not waiting for a reply, I took the gnome by the arm and walked off, more to snub Trax than to protect the gnome.

He seemed very appreciative though, and introduced himself as "Jan Jansen, part-time mobile vegetable peddler, inventor, and adventurer". I let him know about my current and long-term plans, thinking it might scare him off, but instead he seemed quite excited about it and began stringing a long and surely pointless tale; I decided it would be quicker just to let him come along. Besides, he seemed a likable enough fellow, and I was glad to be able to converse at a normal speed with a fellow gnome again (instead of that horribly slowed-down "language" that the Talls call Common). Without further ado, the five of us set off for the Umar Hills to track down the fugitive, Valygar.

CHAPTER TWO, PART SIX

We found Valygar's cabin with very little difficulty, right where the butler had said it would be. Valygar himself refused to come quietly, but he was no match for Korgan, who took him down easily. We bound and gagged the fellow, and carted him back to Tolgerias. The Cowled Wizard looked quite surprised that we had taken him alive, and I smuggly told him never to underestimate the little guy. When I asked him about Imoen, he hedged and said that he hadn't had time yet to work on securing Imoen's release; I knew he was lying and told him so.

As if a curtain had been dropped, Tolgerias's attitude changed and he admitted that he had never intended to do anything for us. I was rightly incensed, but there was nothing I could do as TOlgerias Teleported out of the Council building; Alora, on the other hand, made a quite gymnastic flip and snatched Valygar from Tolgerias's hands in the instant before the spell took effect. I still swear I saw a curse forming on the fading wizard's lips as he disappeared without his prize.

Valygar seemed quite confused when we untied him, but quickly saw an opportunity to ask our help. The Cowled Wizards had wanted his help to access the giant sphere that had appeared in the slums not too long ago, but when he refused, they attacked him. He fled, killing two of their number in self-defense, but their determination to get into the sphere had apparently brought them to "hire" me. Valygar was rather vague about why only he could gain access to the sphere, but I didn't push it since he said he would let us in if we helped him kill someone inside, a 500-year old necromancer named Lavok who extended his life at the expense of others. I was not too keen on killing, but as I didn't want Lavok's future victims on my conscience, I agreed.

We entered the sphere with little difficulty, and proceeded through the first few rooms and halls with barely a little more. Only the door that had been straight ahead when we entered remained locked to us (despite Alora's skill), and I cautiously came to the conclusion that we needed the key we had found to open the door. My sense of foreboding grew deeper as I carefully inserted the strange key into the even stranger lock and turned it.

The sphere shook violently around us, and everyone but Goo was thrown to the floor. Alora and Jan helped up the frightened Valygar, and I surveyed our surroundings while Korgan and Goo kept watch on the doors. It seemed that the only thing that had changed was that the key had opened the door, but I knew better; as a god-child I could sense the strangeness of our new location even if the others could not. I'd read of Planar Spheres back in Candlekeep, but I'd never thought I'd encounter one until that moment.

Since I had no intention of living my life out on another plane (Irenicus was surely powerful enough to find me even there), I reasoned that we would need to find the control room and decipher the controls so that we might shift back to our own plane and continue my quest to find him first. I told my companions none of this, however, and simply waved them on as if nothing had changed and we were still on our original mission to find the necromancer. We stepped through into the next corridor, and I was about halfway to the far door when the one behind us clanged shut abruptly. Then a Forcewall shimmered into existence directly in front of the far door and began moving slowly towards us.

We all ran to the near door to try to pry it open (to no avail), except for Valygar, who stood firmly in the middle of the corridor. I stopped my efforts on the door and stood to watch what would happen when the Forcewall made contact with the Tall. To my surprise, nothing happened as it went right through Valygar, though he did cough soundlessly a couple times when it had passed. Seeing this as our best chance, I called back to my companions as I strode more confidently than I felt toward the advancing barrier, stopping just before I came to it.

I closed my eyes in anticipation, but after a few moments of nothing happening, I sneaked a peek to find Valygar standing surprisingly close, and the barrier behind me, sweeping over Goo as he stood/floated. Relieved, I took a breath of what I can only describe as the most stale-smelling air I have ever encountered, and I realized why Valygar had coughed as I succumbed to a brief spasm myself. When the Forcewall had passed by the rest of my companions, leaving them unharmed but still complaining, the far door popped open. I sent Alora to scout, but when she screamed we all ran into the next room.

In it, we found a cowering (but unharmed) Alora and three very confused-looking knights. What followed was the most confusing conversation I have ever had about halflings, the Sphere, and even the name of the world. I finally sorted out that the three were "Knights of Solamnia" from the continent Ansalon on another world named Krynn, where they had no halflings (though their description of "kender" sounded somewhat close), and that the only halflings they had met before Alora had been vicious, blood-thirsty monsters in the next room.

Now this I had to see for myself, and I opened the door, only to see some of them being cut down by Goo, in his normal form and already in the desert terrain beyond. I snapped my gaze back to the room we were in, but Goo was still here too. Puzzled, I beckoned Goo over with a nod of my head to see if he saw what I saw. He peeked out and roared so loud at what he saw, the sound waves disrupted my Deception; in his normal form, he zoomed out directly at the other Goo and soon they were locked in tooth-to-tooth battle.

Alora, Korgan, Valygar, and the knights were all shocked, but Jan seemed no more surprised than myself, and in fact seemed to have finally settled an internal debate. When I asked him about it, he replied in gnomish, "IhadbeenwonderingwhyIsawtwoimageswhenIlookedathim, theglasses don'tyouknow. Icanseethroughanyillusionwiththesewonderfulthings andthisisthefirsttimethatIhaven'tbeenabletoseeclearly, IwasthinkingmaybeIneededanewprescription likethetimewhenIsawthethree-headedelephant. Itturnedouttobejustaregulartwo-headedelephant but..."

"Jan!" I interrupted. "Ithinkmaybenowisnotthetimeforthis; I need to explain to the others." The rest were now looking at the both of us with suspicion (me more than Jan), but I managed to keep the quiver out of my voice as I explained everything to my increasingly rapt audience. By the time I finished, Goo had returned, his teeth red with blood from the fight, and added his own voice to my pleas for understanding. Jan seemed quite satisfied with the tale, but Korgan kept eyeing Goo as if looking for which eyestalk to cut off first.

It was Alora who took the first step and ran up to hug Goo, saying that he'd saved us on more than one occasion and deserved our friendship. When she let go, she giggled about how cuddly he looked and even Korgan burst out laughing. "Aye, if he be good enough fer you, lass, he be good enough fer me. Goz...Goo, ye can stay and fight with us so long as ye remember who ye're fightin' fer."

Valygar and the knights didn't seem quite so convinced, but I didn't really care what those long-legs thought. The knights refused to help us (they seemed rather resigned to spend the rest of their lives in the Sphere), and we left again with a skeptical Valygar in tow. The maze of a sphere was rather difficult to manuever through, but eventually we found our way to the control room and found both of our objectives there.

Lavok the necromancer was franticly fiddling with the controls when we entered, and screamed something about not having enough power just before Valygar boomed out his challenge. The wizard turned, and Valygar drew a katana, seemingly out of thin air, and pointed it at Lavok as he spoke, "You will not continue! I will avenge my family by ending you life here and now!"

Surprisingly, Valygar didn't even need our help to defeat Lavok; firing into the melee would have been foolish as we were more likely to hit valygar than the wizard, and Lavok's spells blocked the few attempts we made. But strangely, the wizard's spells didn't seem to provide any protection against Valygar's blade, and every time he tried to cast an offensive spell, the katana would shine and something peculiar would happen. One spell even caused it to begin raining chickens, and with nothing else to do, I reminisced about our unfortunate encounter with Melincamp oh so long ago.

The battle finally ended with a bang as Valygar drove his sword through Lavok's heart just as he finished casting a spell; the explosion threw them to different corners of the room and we charged Lavok to finish him off. I tried to heal Valygar afterward, but he was too far gone. His katana, however, burned with the energy that it had somehow absorbed from Lavok; I remembered what Lavok had said about "not enough power", and rushed it over to the control board. With a quick prayer to Nebulun, I plunged the sword into the board and the sphere again shook around us.

CHAPTER TWO, PART SEVEN

When all was again calm, I could tell that we had miraculously returned to the Prime Material Plane, and breathed a sigh of relief. My risky gamble that Lavok had been trying to get back had paid off, or so I thought until I glimpsed the control panel. I had inadvertently hit a number of dials and switches when I plunged the late Valygar's sword into the machinery, and the controls were utterly ruined. I could only assume that there must have been some sort of return-default if the Sphere was too badly damaged.

As we trudged back through the inactive Sphere, it was barely recognizable. All the odd terrains and creatures were gone; even the dead bodies and blood were conspicuously missing, and in their place were only sterile corridors and rooms. The airlock had to be pried open manually, and I realized in the process that the Solamnic Knights were gone too; I wondered whether they had reappeared safely on Krynn or perhaps over an ocean somewhere.

We exited the Sphere, and I pondered what we had gotten out of this mess; all I had were a strangely chaotic-feeling wand and an almost indecipherable scroll, while Jan had taken the two rings off of the necromancer. No closer to our goal of reaching Imoen and Irenicus, I reluctantly crossed the Cowled Wizards off of the list in my mind of places where I might find help. Only the Shadow Thieves remained, and their price was steep indeed; I would have to go outside the city for the kind of funds that they were requesting.

I knew of nowhere else to go, so as soon as I finished painting "CONDEMNED" on the outside of the Sphere, we returned to the Umar Hills. As luck would have it, there was a town meeting called by the mayor of Imnesvale (a little village in the hills) going on when we arrived, and the problem he spoke of seemed like a thrilling chance for a little detective work. His openeing bid of 5000 golders for help seemed more than fair (seeing as how we'd only been able to raise that much in the past few days in the city) and I quickly piped up to accept.

Even the customary puzzled glances over our heads by the assembled crowd didn't curb my enthusiasm (much), and soon we were in the employ of Minister Lloyd. Our mission, if we chose to accept it, was to discover what was behind the mysterious disappearances happening in Imnesvale of late. We had two leads: a group of monsters squatting outside the town, and the previous investigational notes of a now-missing ranger. I was concerned when Lloyd told me that we were not the first group he'd hired, but after inquiring as to its makeup, I came to the conclusion that the lack of brainpower had likely been its downfall.

First we investigated the lead less likely to involve bloodshed, and headed over to the ranger Merella's cabin. Inside, we found her journal, which described shadowy wolf figures that she thought were causing the disappearances; we also found a letter to someone named Mazzy, which pointed out where Merella would go next. With that leading out of town, I decided we should investigate the second lead before we continued with the first one.

The monsters were surprisingly well-mannered for being so tall, and the things they spoke of lent credence to what we'd read in Merella's journal. They even asked us to relay a message to Minister Lloyd, and seeing as how I had planned to report my findings before taking off on Merella's trail, I agreed. Lloyd seemed quite perplexed by the new developments and went to take a walk; it was time for our walk too.

We walked until nightfall and set out before dawn, but despite the rising sun, the trees grew darker as they day passed. A pall fell over our group, and Korgan's weak jokes about pansy elves claimed only silence in return; Jan's usefulness came to the fore as he filled the silence with a near-constant verbal stream and somehow managed to keep our hopes up. He even managed to chat up the the rather stoic Goo. Thanks to Jan, before we knew it we were almost to the spot marked on the copy I had made of Merella's map.

We slowed our pace, and just in time as some sort of wolf-woman went crashing through the bushes not 50 yards in front of us. On its heels was a horde of wolves that I would have described as normal if not for their translucence. We watched in silence as they passed, and then cautiously moved forward again, following the trail backward to its point of origin. We managed to ambush a couple of lone sentry wolves on the way, and it became clear that Merella's ruminations had been right on the money; there had to be some sort of higher intelligence at work here.

When we finally reached the temple ruins, we were nearly swarmed by shadows. Goo looked frantically for something to bite, but finally gave up and just spat on one of them. The hail of missiles that I, Alora, and Jan had been pelting the shadows with ground to a halt as we watched with disbelief as the shadow Goo had spit on seemed to writhe in pain before fading away. Even Goo simply floated in shock as the stone ruins beneath his saliva bubbled and dissolved.

The only one who wasn't watching was of course Korgan, who was fighting off a half-dozen shadows by himself. The rest of us snapped back to reality, and soon the tide turned in our favor as Goo began applying his new ability immediately and liberally. When the battle was won, Korgan turned to us, furious at our hesitation. "What were ye all bloody standin' around fer!?" In answer, Goo spat at a nearby fountain, and Korgan watched part of it disintegrate for a few seconds before finally muttering, "Ach."

We descended the stairs into the catacombs of the ruins, and fought our way through a maze of undead. Shadows, unead wolves, and even giant skeletons blocked our path as we sought a way through the darkness, and finally we came to what looked to be a block of cells. Naturally, Korgan sought the fore, and carved his "not bloody enough" way through the living night. A key he found in the decaying armor that one of the shadows had still been wearing he used to open a cell door.

"Ach, what have we here? A damsel in distress, no doubt. Well I may have saved ye from these two-dimensional hooligans, but who'll save ye from me, lassie? Har har huuuhg?"

We rushed over to see what was the matter, but Goo got there first, and we were all stopped in our tracks by a commanding female voice. "Halt, dwarf! If you come any closer, I swear I'll part your friend's empty head from his shoulders."

CHAPTER TWO, PART EIGHT

Even in his prone position, Korgan managed to summon a bit of outrage as he sputtered, "Ye'll be doin' no such hech!"

"Quiet, you lout," the woman's voice came again, as she applied a boot to Korgan's throat and then replaced it with the tip of a sword. I and Jan had been moving as quietly as we could toward the cell door with some hope of surprising its occupant, but I hadn't realized that Alora had stood stock-still after hearing the voice until Alora's voice similarly froze us in our tracks.

"Mazzy? Is that you?"

"Who speaks my name with such familiarity? Show yourself!" came the command from the cell.

Everyone who was able turned to see Alora grin in delight and rush into the cell. "It's me, Alora! I haven't seen you since our last family reunion in Iriaebor; I think it was six years ago. Are your parents still living in Trademeet? How are you doing? What happened with what's-his-name?"

"What in blue bla--erk!" Korgan protested, to no avail.

"Mazzy, stop that! He's a friend," Alora pleaded.

"Very well, cousin, but you have quite peculiar taste in friends." Mazzy helped Korgan up as I and then Jan overcame our shock and ventured into sight range. "More of your...friends?"

"Yeah, Quayle's a good guy; I met him back in Baldur's Gate. And the guy giving you the stink eye is Korgan. We just met Jan over there a couple days ago, and...I think I need to talk to you in private about the other one. (He's a little strange.)" Alora took Mazzy over into a corner to chat, and the rest of us just looked at each other and shrugged. I could tell when Alora popped the truth, because 'Mazzy' sent an alarmed glance in Goo's direction at one point before Alora could pull her back into their huddle.

Once Mazzy was properly confused and wary (I made a mental note to straighten her out when this was over), we continued on our way. Mazzy guided us through the tombs, while I single-handedly figured out the puzzles that had so stymied her group's collective intellect, which was not quite as bad as I had thought with Mazzy being surprisingly insightful for her type. One of the crucial things she had missed, however, was the wardstone that would have protected her group from what she called "the Shade Lord's pet dragon", a surprisingly massive creature made of shadows. We crept by it with little difficulty thanks to the wardstone.

When we emerged out into the open air again, it was hard to tell any difference in lighting; indeed, it almost seemed darker than the lightless room that held the Shadow Dragon. Naturally, Mazzy called out a challenge to the Shade Lord rather than trying to surprise him, so we were soon fighting off shadows left and right. Mazzy was a whirlwind, fighting with speed I'd never seen, shadows dissipating all around her as she hacked and slashed with her sword. Jan and Goo stood back to watch as Korgan, Mazzy, and Alora all cut their way through the throng of shadows while I struck down those I could with the power of Baravar.

Mazzy seemed determined to fight the Shade Lord alone, though, and was soon lost in the milling crowd. Jan and Goo came to their senses and started firing and spitting at the edges to help out, while I cleared Mazzy's path as best I could and kept Korgan and Alora from getting overwhelmed. When we were able to finally thin the herd, we saw Mazzy and the Shade Lord locked in a frenzy of a battle. They were moving too fast for us to be sure that we would hit the right one, so we simply stood and waited.

Suddenly Mazzy faltered, slowing and nearly swooning. The Shade Lord advanced, but I saw my opening and slung a stone with a brief whisper to Gaerdal Ironhand; he must have heeded my prayer, for the stone flew true and struck the Shade Lord smack in the center of its head, distracting it just long enough for Mazzy to recover. But Alora was the one who put down the undead creature, slipping both blades into the monster's middle from opposite sides.

Oddly though, nothing happened as the Shade Lord sank to the earth, but I solved that question rather easily as another shadow came pouring from out of nowhere. "The altar!" I screamed, "We must destroy it."

I was a little surprised at the feminine undertone to my voice until I realized that Mazzy had echoed my words as I spoke them. She rushed to the altar to destroy it while Korgan and Alora easily dispatched the newly-formed shadow, and soon all six of us were dismantling the foul centerpiece. When at last we finished our grisly work, it seemed as though a curse had been lifted off of the entire forest, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Everyone except Mazzy, that is. She was kneeling over a corpse that I had not seen before, one that looked as though Korgan had been to work on it, and I quickly made the connection to the over-large shadow that Korgan had been battling for most of the earlier fight. Alora went over to comfort her cousin, but my attention was on the dying woman who lay where the Shade Lord had fallen. She spoke in a whisper and I leaned over to hear, but it was only the grateful thanks of the ranger Merella, now released from the Shade Lord's clutches.

The trip back to Imnesvale was somber. Mazzy and Alora commiserated quietly about memories of someone named Patrick, but none of the rest of us had much to say; we dared not intrude on their grief. (Well, Korgan would have if I hadn't curtly threatened to let Goo eat him; one too-wide, toothy grin was enough to keep him quiet for a few hours.) When we camped for the night, I took Mazzy aside and explained more in-depth what had my group's purpose was (as well as clearing up a couple exaggerations that Alora had made) and she asked to join the quest. She had noone else to turn to, and was eager to fight for good in her fallen comrades' names; still thinking of Yeslick, I found I could not say no.

Minister Lloyd was quite glad to see us again when we returned, and recognized Mazzy immediately. I let her inform him of what had happened at the ruins (only adding our part before we had found her), and I could see by the end that the mayor was grieving as well. But on the bright side, he and Madulf had worked out an arrangement for the protection of Imnesvale, so the late Merella now had a successor to protect the little village. Minister Lloyd tacked on another 2000 gold for this service (in addition to our original price of 5000); then Mazzy elbowed him in the ribs and he raised the total to 8000 with a chuckle.

I was overwhelmed, and thanked him for his generosity, thinking that we were now two-thirds of the way to Imoen's "ransom", and that we might actually get another couple thousand from the miscellaneous items we had picked up in the ruins. We rushed back to Athkatla as quickly as we could.

[ December 14, 2005, 20:21: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

CHAPTER THREE, PART ONE

On our return to Athkatla, we headed straight for Ribald's to sell our trinkets (Alora was forced to wait outside, naturally). We emerged from the shop with more than three-quarters of the sum that the Shadow Thieves had requested, and I wondered where we might find the remaining money. That concern evaporated when a figure coalesced out of the night mists; even Jan seemed surprised by her appearance. Thinking it might be another vampire, I turned my holy symbol on it and it shrank back into the darkness.

A nearby child released an appreciative gasp of, "Wow...adventurers," and came over to tug on my robes. Not in the mood for the adulation of youngsters at the moment, I asked, as nicely as I was able, why the child was not home asleep in his bed. The answer gave me my second surprise of the night; Gaelan Bayle wanted to see us again. Mention of a better deal had us making haste to Gaelan's home in the slums.

When we got to Gaelan's, he seemed quite edgy and quickly outlined that the time for hoarding gold was past. His new offer was 15000 gold, which I was not surprised to find was roughly what we had so far. I handed it over with fairly little reluctance, and Gaelan in turn handed me a key. Korgan started fingering his ax, but before a bloodbath could break out, Gaelan explained that the key would get us into the lower level of the Thieves' Guild. There we would find the Shadowmaster Aran Linvail, who would know that Gaelan had gotten the money, and would help us.

Finding Aran was not quite as easy as Gaelan had made it sound, and we ended up exploring almost the entire floor before we found someone who told us to go back to the beginning and try the secret door that we had initially discounted. Aran seemed a likable enough fellow until he asked us to help him, instead of offering the help that we had paid so dearly for. My face got so red, Jan started going on about turnips again until I shut him up with a glance. I opened my mouth to rant, but Goo's booming voice rang out first. "YOU WILL HELP US NOW!"

In the aftermath of that pronoucement, Aran calmly walked over to the wall and helped his two bodyguards back to their feet. Bending down, he picked up and dusted off his hat before replacing it on his head, then coolly turned back to us. "Your friend has quite a set of lungs on him, doesn't he? I beg your pardon if you were under the mistaken impression that the gold was all I needed. In truth, my attention is divided at the moment thanks to another guild growing within the city; I would need for a little pressure to be let off before I could truly devote my resources to helping you."

Anticipating my next question, he continued, "The gold that you paid will be put to good use ecuring your passage to where Imoen and Irenicus are being held, and I will of course compensate you for your time. These items I give to you in advance, as a good faith deposit on your work; you will find them useful, I'm sure. You may consider the other 5000 gold of my fee to be covered by your help, as well." He handed me an amulet and a ring. I looked them over and put on the amulet, letting it rest beside the holy symbol of Baravar; the ring I gave to Goo, and after careful inspection, he promptly ate it. I could barely suppress a chuckle as Jan goggled, but Goo's dwarven form only seemed to put it on his finger, and the rest were none the wiser.

Aran's first task was to safeguard a shipment that he was fairly sure would be hijacked by the other guild, but it didn't arrive for two days so we had some free time. Mazzy objected at the delay because 'we are on a mission of mercy', but we could hardly speed the cargo on its way. So, we went back to the Copper Coronet (where all this nonsense had started) to rest and relax.

Jan and I fell into an easy rapport, while Alora chattered at Goo. I hadn't the heart to tell her that Goo was sleeping, so I made the Deception nod its head every once in a while. Korgan seemed to be happy to drink away the money he had made from selling that book, and telling tales so gory that Mazzy got up and left. When she came back with a Tall in tow, I knew the party was at an end and chugged the mug of turnip beer that Jan had provided for me to taste. Mazzy told us how she had agreed to help this "Nalia", but I was sputtering too hard to say anything to the contrary. Jan's turnip beer may have been middling on taste, but it had a kick at least twice as strong as even dwarf spirits.

Jan woke Goo as inconspicuously as he could, and soon we were on our way to de'Arnise Hold. The trolls within were numerous, but none could stand up to Korgan's fire-breathing axe, and we soon had the compound cleared. Nalia was quite impressed, but when I was forced to tell her that her father had been slain, she started whining about how she was betrothed to someone she didn't want to marry and who would usurp the lands. I could tell where she was going with this by the look in her eye, and frantically looked around for an alternative.

"How about him?" I asked in a voice made a little higher than normal by my panic. "He looks like a strapping specimen of Ta--humanity."

Both parties looked at each other and then me, and their responses were simultaneous and almost identical.

"Him!?"
"Her!?"

"But she's..."
"But he's..."

"I'm what?"

"You know what you are."

Here they turned to me...

"Anomen's a whiny, arrogant snob."
"Nalia's a whiny, arrogant snob."

...and just as quickly snapped back to glaring at each other.

"No, YOU'RE the whiny, arrogant snob."

"Hah, I guess we can add childish to the list."

"Who are YOU calling childish?!"

"I should have you drawn and quartered for your insolence, peasant."
"I would challenge you to a duel if you were not a lady."

After a few moments of tense silence, they leaped into each others' arms, and we took the opportunity to slink away from the baffling new couple. Later we would laugh over the improbable scene on our way back to Athkatla once again.

CHAPTER THREE, PART TWO

We arrived back at the city barely in time for our appointment, and rushed down to the docks to meet Mook, our contact. She chastised us for being late, and said that there was a peculiar character who kept passing by. The next time he came by, I confronted him, but he seemed to be interested only in Mook. At first I thought it was merely attraction (Mook was quite fetching for a Tall), but it quickly became clear that his interest was that of an employer; he was trying to poach Mook for the other thieves' guild!

She declined roughly, and the man responded in kind, ripping out her throat. We ran to her defense and the man turned into a vampire! We managed to beat him off, but I was sure he would return; Aran needed to be told. I rushed back to the Shadow Thieves' headquarters, with Goo along for my own safety and the rest of the group staying behind to protect the shipment. Aran seemed quite dismayed at Mook's death, but not terribly surprised at the revelation that the other guild contained vampires.

He sent a group of thieves to bring the shipment and my companions to the guildhouse, and then began outlining what he wanted us to do next. It was clear, he said, that the other guild had far too much inside information thanks to some defecting, and he wanted to return the favor. Aran knew of two thieves that were about to defect and even where to find them; our job was to take their place and find out where the other guild's headquarters was.

Our meeting with the two defectors in the Five Flagons was cut rather short by Korgan's temper, as was one of the defectors (one head shorter, to be exact). The other fell with little difficulty, but I worried at the commotion that our fight may have caused. When noone came to investigate, I peeked my head out the door and spotted a lone cloaked figure coming up the stairs. Hoping this was the contact that the two had come to meet, I told Jan and Alora to help Mazzy and Korgan hide, while I changed Goo's Deception to a Tall, like one of the two we had killed.

The contact, seeing two pairs that fit the description, with one alive and one dead, readily accepted a foiled plot that the other guild had apparently been expecting; their inside info must be better than Aran had ever thought. I had nearly gotten the long-leg to escort us to the other guild's headquarters when a shriek of indignation came from the closet, and the contact cried "Trick!" and slashed at me with his sword. I tried to parry clumsily with the sword I had picked off of one of the defectors, but he still cut my arm.

The first blood may have been his, but the last blood belonged to us as Goo nimbly bit off the man's head and swallowed it whole; he hadn't even the time to scream at Goo's seeming transformation. The others burst out of the closet just as I began healing the painful wound on my arm, just in time to see the contact's now-headless body slump to the floor. Mazzy nearly cried out at the sight of Goo, but Jan anticipated and covered her mouth with his hand, for which he got a nasty bite. Korgan showed more sensitivity than I would have given him credit for, burying Alora's head in his chest until we were safely out of sight of the room and its grisly contents.

Once I'd settled everything (a pinch from Korgan had apparently caused Mazzy's shriek as well as the immense red welt on Korgan's face), I reasserted Goo's dwarven Deception and tried to think of a way to explain the noises we had made. Nothing came to mind though, so I settled on simple misdirection; we came down the stairs complaining about "the noise those people were making". The fact that it worked did not speak well of the average intelligence of the Five Flagon's inhabitants.

We continued down the stairs to the basement to continue the ruse, and as a result we were treated to an ungodly travesty of a play. After it was cut short, one of the players made a plea for adventurers, and for some reason I felt a kinship with her. When I inquired backstage, I found out what it was that had seemed so familiar; it appeared that she too had a friend who'd been kidnapped by a wizard, and my ire rose at the injustice of it. The woman, who called herself Raelis Shai, said that her friend and the wizard could both be found in the sewers underneath the Temple district.

CHAPTER THREE, PART THREE

We weren't greeted very warmly on our return to the Temple district, and I belatedly remembered as we ran through the streets that two items had been caused to go missing the last time we were here. Despite the hostile welcome we received, we managed to elude the Tall priests and sneak into the sewers. Though Mazzy and Jan complained at the smell, Korgan and Alora shared a bemused smirk after a reflexive glance at Goo. Goo, naturally, could not smell it as he had no nose; I'd been in the sewers beneath Baldur's Gate, and this wasn't any worse.

Much worse, however, was the vermin in the sewers. One on one we fought against a group of 6 surprisingly well-armed and armored bandits, and only barely emerged the victors. A little more leery now, we managed to spot a group of kobolds lead by what Jan informed me was a rakshasa before they spotted us; a well-placed fireball took care of the kobolds, and the rakshasa fell to Mazzy's blade.

We found the entrance to the wizard's lair with little trouble thanks to Jan's miraculous goggles, and soon we were killing so many mephits that I dared to dream that we had found Irenicus again. Sadly, it seems that mephits are common guardians for evil wizards, as the one I found had little resemblance to the enemy I sought. But I did not let my disappointment sway me from my pledge, and soon Haer'Dalis was free. I nearly regretted it when he started spouting poetry immediately upon release, but an unfriendly-sounding admonition from Korgan stayed the flood of words pouring from the long-leg's mouth.

We returned to the Five Flagons in blissful silence, but it seemed Raelis had another task for us. All of the actors were from a different plane, but if they tried to return all sort of nasty interplanar creatures would try to hijack their portal and shift to our plane. I couldn't very well have them running amok with my only way to Irenicus so precarious already, so I agreed to guard this side of the portal until they got through.

Our duty discharged when the portal finally closed, we made to leave the bridge district, but apparently we were not fated to depart just yet. A child's body lay in the street, stripped of its skin, while a woman I assumed to be the mother stood crying over it, an occasional grief-wracked sob of "Faraji" escaping her lips as a member of the guard tried in vain to comfort her. Nearby an old beggar lay, his body still warm to my vision and a blade stuck in his gullet.

As Mazzy inquired of the "Lieutenant" what had happened, I walked over and plucked the blade from the beggar's neck and examined it. I recognized it almost immediately as a skinning knife, of a type similar to that which I had seen used by Dreppin back in Candlekeep; the accompanying smell of tannin reminded me of the leather that Imoen had been overly fond of. Mazzy turned to fill me in as I approached, but I paid no heed and asked pointedly of the guard if there was a tanner nearby.

"Err...yes," he replied. "Why do you ask?"

I barely managed to contain my contempt for his ineptitude as I said, "Because he's the one behind the murder. Who else could have skinned someone so expertly?"

When a dumbfounded "Oh" was all he could muster, I asked again, "Now where is the tanner's shop?"

We followed his halting directions, and soon stood at the entrance to the shop. The lieutenant moved to knock on the door, but I had no intention of giving the tanner a chance to hide things away, so I nodded to Korgan, who smashed open the door with no hesitation. Inside, the tanner had been hurriedly stuffing things into a large sack, but turned at the sound of the splintering door. At the sight of the tanner's disgustingly familiar face, I paused and whispered a name I regretted knowing...

CHAPTER THREE, PART FOUR

"Neb." I couldn't believe it. I thought I'd trapped the despicable creature back in Baldur's Gate when we collapsed his tunnel, but he must have found another way out before his execution date. I could barely contain my outrage that a monster such as this would be walking free, able to perform his heinous deeds at will, and my arm started moving of its own volition. Before I knew it, Neb's skinning knife was flying through the air; it struck him on the shin and it even carved off a bit of skin due to its well-sharpened edge. All I could think of to say was, "Your knife."

Neb looked frantically between us and the lieutenant, noting the now-grim expression of the latter, and dashed down the stairs, scooping up his knife as he went. I cursed myself for inadvertantly giving him back his weapon of mutilation and rushed to follow, but Jan stopped me with a hand on my shoulder while Goo blocked the lieutenant's path as well. I saw why as Alora tip-toed over to the stairs and disarmed a trap. Proceeeding cautiously but quickly, we made our way down in a similar fashion.

When we got to the bottom though, Neb was already climbing into a boat, and our pursuit was cut off by a group of undead, the likes of which I'd never seen before. Animated skins sought to wrap around us and prevent us from reaching the murderous gnome. Neb managed to set sail before we could fight free, but I wasn't about to let him go so easily. I called upon every god I could think of for justice, and when I felt a divine touch, I channeled it as best I could.

A column of fire shot down from the sky, bathing the small ship in flame. Neb and his boat were soon engulfed, and they sank out of sight far out on the water. I savored the sight briefly, then turned to see my companions carving skins off of the lieutenant (an initially alarming sight, I must say). As soon as his head was free he began complaining about not being able to catch the 'skinner', so I had Korgan prop him up and he was able to see the the burning stern disappearing into the dark waters in the distance.

He offered a reward for our assistance, but I declined, saying that I was glad we could finally rid the world of such evil that had plagued the Sword Coast. Naturally, the dim-witted Tall seemed to know nothing about it, so I told him about how Neb had been imprisoned in Baldur's Gate. The lieutenant's eyes grew wide as spoke in an awed voice, "That Neb, the child-killer? The one who skinned all those child...(I could almost hear the gears clicking as he hesitated)...ren. I should have realized it sooner; by Helm, I'm such an idiot." We couldn't help but agree.

In the end he insisted on a good deal more than the reward, which had been petty at best, and a promise that we wouldn't tell anyone how large a part we had played. It doesn't matter anymore since he was fired a few months later for drinking on the job and inadvertently helping a major ring of black lotus dealers to escape custody. I think the Iron Throne later hired him to help with their rebuilding efforts.

I felt a little silly being so wary of further distractions as we left the bridge district, and thankfully no more were forthcoming. We reported back to Aran with the information on the location of the other guild's headquarters, and he began planning an attack; of course he wanted us to be a part of it, but by this time we all needed rest and I told him as much. He agreed, and I and my companions headed back to the Copper Coronet for the rest of the night.

Bright and early the next morning we headed to the graveyard district, and met up with a mage that the Shadow Thieves had sent to meet us. When I inquired where the rest of the force was, he looked at us and said simply, "You're it." We descended into the catacombs, and followed the mage's divining directions to a set of giant stone double doors. He began casting what looked like a ridiculously complicated incantation, but Korgan just walked over and kicked one open; the cracks he made in the stone were impressive.

Thought the mage had helped a great deal in getting us this far, his usefulness abruptly stopped as he ran screaming in terror from the assembled vampires. I cast a spell of protection on Korgan that he might fight freely with the undead, and gradually we worked our way through the press of undead to their coffin chamber, where we staked a couple of the vampires we had disposed of. Korgan wandered into an adjoining room, seemingly mesmerized by something within, and we followed; the ensuing ambush was handily defeated thanks to Goo's apparently natural hyper-alertness.

When the vampires were defeated, our attention again turned to the object that caught Korgan's eye and the term 'bloodbath' took on a whole new meaning. Taking up nearly a quarter of the room was a raised bath filled not with water but with blood, and Korgan's gaze fixed on it once again. He approached it almost reverently and dipped his arms in up to the elbow. "So much glorious blood...Ach!" He yelped and pulled his arms out in surprise, his face darkening as he exclaimed, "Somethin' bit me!"

Back into the pool Korgan plunged his red-soaked limbs, wincing as he was bitten again but pulled the offender out and threw it to the floor. He raised his boot to stomp down on it, but lowered it again in confusion as he regarded the mace lying there. He reached down to pick it up, but pulled back when it 'bit' him again and kicked it across the room. It slid toward Mazzy's feet, and Korgan warned as he rubbed his own foot, "Careful lass; it'll bite ye right through yer boot."

Mazzy seemed unafraid though, and reached down to pick it up. It seemed to glow as she held it, and the glow only grew stronger as she raised it aloft. Her gaze stayed on the mace as she spoke. "You may have need to beware such a powerful weapon of good, dwarf, but I do not fear it. I can feel its true nature, and it is akin to my own. I thank you for bringing it to my attention."

With the odd episode over, we continued deeper into the vampires' lair until we finally found the ringleader of the whole operation, a vampiress who called herself Bodhi. She blustered a bit before attacking, but she screamed when Mazzy struck her with the mace. Holding a hand to her side, Bodhi hissed and turned into a bat, which then flew away through a previously unseen crack in the wall. What few undead were left in the area fell swiftly even to Mazzy's awkward use of the mace, and soon we left to find the cowering mage we had entered with and report back to Aran that we had dealt a serious blow to the other guild.

[ February 01, 2006, 22:00: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

CHAPTER FOUR, PART ONE

Aran finally proved true to his word, and as soon as we got back he hurried us onto the waiting ship. I didn't much like the look of the captain as we boarded, and his manners on the trip only proved my suspicion; he was far too nice to us when he clearly regarded us as only a means to an end. Fortunately, Goo's silent and foreboding prescence seemed to quiet the captain's mood, and after only a few halting tries, he left us to our own affairs.

To wile away the days, Mazzy practiced with using the new mace with Korgan, who in turn practiced with a many-headed flail he must have picked up somewhere along the way. Both ended up getting their fair share of shocks from the other's weapons, though neither seemed to mind, and I ended up rather busy each night healing the internal injuries that resulted from their foolishness. During the day, while the fighters trained, I reminisced with Alora and traded tall tales with Jan.

Once we even joined in the fun and several sailors quit their posts to stand around and watch as Mazzy and Korgan battered on each others' shields, Alora and Goo traded lighting-fast ripostes with their blades, and I and Jan duelled with our staves. We had a good amount of fun until a particularly brilliant move of mine sent Jan stumbling, and he pitched over the rail. Though I'd been concerned about our audience before, I was quite glad of them as they reacted instantly and tossed a rope to the sputtering and flailing gnome. As we all helped to haul him back onto the ship, I heard a comment about "Quayle in a Hood besting Little Jan", but I didn't make the connection at the time and paid it no heed, my mind on saving our floundering companion.

A couple of days after that little mishap, we were nearly to our destination when a lookout spotted another ship in the distance. Oddly, the captain seemed unconcerned at the report that it was a pirate ship, and had his men bring a strangely fitted lantern up on deck. When the ship sailed closer they flashed a pattern of lights at us, and the captain flashed right back with a different pattern. Again I pondered what kind of man he might be, and I was soon to find out.

We docked at the island port of Brynnlaw, and the crew sprung into motion to offload their cargo. The captain himself offered to show us around the town, finally telling us that it was a den of pirates, and that we needed to be careful with our words and actions as well as our money purses. But no time had we to put that advice to good use as no sooner had we set foot back on solid ground than the captain turned to greet a trio in dark robes. At first I thought that perhaps these three were to help us gain entry to Spellhold, but the idea was quickly discarded when I saw the pale faces of vampires beneath their hoods.

I turned to the captain for an explanation that I was sure I wouldn't like, only to see him stepping through a Dimension Door. Unfortunately for the fleeing mariner, Korgan did not share my indecision, and was already rushing toward him as he stepped through. But my attention was swiftly diverted elsewhere as Mazzy and Goo stepped in front of me to confront the vampires. I'm not sure exactly when Korgan joined the battle, but soon it was over and the vampires were gone, having floated away as mist on the wind.

I glanced only briefly at the location where the captain had made his getaway, and then did a double-take as I noticed a small pool of blood on the ground. I looked questioningly at Korgan, and with a grin he held up his bloody axe and a boot. I declined to look inside the boot, knowing full well what I would likely see; apparently the traitor's leg had been the only thing still showing by the time Korgan reached the point of his escape.

With no clue of where to go, we wandered aimlessly through the town until we saw a sign made in the universal language of the tavern: pictures. Though I wasn't quite sure what the monkey on the sign was supposed to be doing, Korgan guffawed and declared that he was thirsty, and I figured that a tavern would probably be the best place to be starting our search anyway. Korgan got a few beers from the bar, but as he was heading over to our table, he was bumped into by a thin stick of a Tall, nearly spilling the drinks. Knowing that a conflict would be sure to follow, I hurried over to the scene to try to keep a fight from erupting. As expected, Korgan exploded before I even got there.

"Watch where ye're goin', ye overtall, clumsy, beardless freak!"

"I beg your pardon!?"

"Ye heard me, ye ninny! Watch where ye step or next time me axe'll find yer throat."

The Tall looked ready to erupt himself when I finally arrived. "Korgan, please. This man is obviously someone of importance who likely has a lot on his mind, and that's probably why he didn't see you." Some of the red from his face, and I knew I must be on the right track. But now I had to mollify Korgan as well. "He might even be able to help us."

Korgan wasn't going to make it easy for me, though. "Him? Help us? Har har, he can't even walk!"

"Of all the...I'll have you know..." The red creeped back into the man's face, contrasting wildly with his green robes.

"Korgan!" I quickly admonished. "That was uncalled for! Now I want you to apologize to this man right now." I knew I was treading on dangerous ground, but the man's reactions so far told me that he might actually be able to help us and I didn't want to alienate him. "If you're lucky, he may even apologize for bumping into you."

"Ach, I don't apologize to any - aah!" I thanked whatever halfling gods I could remember for Alora's timely intervention as she poked Korgan in the behind with the point of her sword. Dancing away, she taunted 'Korgy' into chasing her, and soon I wsa blessedly alone with the still fuming long-leg. It took quite a bit of apologizing for my companion (and an assurance that Alora could take of herself) before he finally calmed down enough for a rational discussion.

He told me that his name was Sanik, and that he was actually leaving Brynnlaw soon. He'd had enough of the Cowled Wizards' restrictions on magic, and had come here to avoid them only to find that they ruled here as well. As a powerful wizard, he felt he deserved a position of power but wasn't willing to bend to others' rules. I could tell he was nothing but a blustering idiot, but I couldn't let this chance slip away and I needed information.

So I let slip the fact that I was well-known and respected back in Baldur's Gate, where I had saved the Grand Duke Belt's life but had not asked for a favor in return. I also mentioned that the other Grand Dukes and Duchessesses were dead and in need of replacement. (I knew that no doubt they would have already been in the past year if they were going to, but Sanik didn't need to know the timetable.) Naturally, Sanik was intrigued, and I led him on expertly toward my current dilemma: entrance in to the Asylum.

We came to an agreement on information for a recommendation, and I scribed (out of sight of Sanik, of course) a little note apologizing to Duke Belt for wasting his time and asking if Sanik might be given some small functionary post out of the way somewhere. I sealed the note in a scroll tube and gave it to Sanik, and in return he told me that the only two kinds of people who got into the Asylum were the crazies and their caretakers. After gleaning a little more information, I bid farewell to the puffed-up Tall and hoped that Belt would forgive me this one time.

CHAPTER FOUR, PART TWO

I pondered my limited options as I watched the chase of Alora and Korgan come to an end in a little friendly scuffling, and realized that I had no choice at all. Attacking a Cowled Wizard to gain entry was not only needlessly bloody, but needlessly noisy. Even if we did manage to prevent the one we attacked from sounding the alarm, surely the others would notice his or her absence in due time. No, we must enter as any other inmate would to keep our arrival quiet. Once among the inmates, we could search out our fellow prisoners Irenicus and Imoen at our leisure.

Fortunately, some of the planning for our time within Spellhold had been taken care of on the ship. One of the first things that I had assumed about the 'Residence for the Magically Deviant' was that there had to be an Anti-magic Zone placed upon it so that the incarcerated magicians could not simply break loose. With that in mind, I had tried to transfer a portion of my power into my trusty staff during the voyage. I found, as I worked, that there were certain things that I simply could not entrust to my weapon, for it seemed to have a mind of its own and rejected that which it did not 'want'.

But fortunately, it drank most greedily of the illusionary powers I supplied it, and soon Goo's Deception was no longer a constant drain on my own resources but a function of the staff. Nonetheless still worried that the Deception might not function in the null-magic atmosphere of the asylum even from the staff, or that they might realize its true power and take it away, I formed a backup plan. But I digress; suffice it to say that my extensive planning would stand me in good stead during the events to come.

Determined now upon a course of action for entry into Spellhold, I told my companions of what I had learned, including who we had to convince. The Pirate Lord was, as his title suggests, the ruler of the pirate colony of Brynnlaw, and he could admit anyone he so chose. But even if we could convince him we were crazy, only the magically deviant were admitted to Spellhold, and in this we had a slight problem. Jan and I would surely be admitted for we were wizards, and Goo might be if his aura were detected, but the others had nothing of magic about them.

Fortunately yet again, I had planned for this eventuality too, and divested myself of all the clerical items I had been carrying, distributing them to Korgan and Mazzy. making them out to be clerics was not so hard, as Mazzy already spoke like one and Korgan had learned to imitate the manner of a mad priest of Cyric we had chanced upon in the Docks district. Mazzy gave her sword to Goo for safe-keeping, now wielding only her new mace, and Korgan was much tougher to convince to part with his axes but he eventually complied too, instead using a warhammer with his shield. Alora is where the backup plan I mentioned earlier kicked in.

Away from prying eyes in our room at the tavern, I dropped Goo's Deception and he in turn lowered to the floor. Alora approached and sat astride him, but soon she was sprawled on the floor and Goo was on the other side of the room growling about the indignity and swearing that he wouldn't do it. It took a bit of soothing to get him to relent, and the second mounting went a bit smoother, though Korgan did have to restrain him a bit when he tried to bolt again. Mazzy and I draped a long robe over Alora's shoulders, and Goo gradually rose until I deemed the height correct. Standing back to look at the disguise, I found it quite satisfactory; Alora looked like nothing more than a long-legged human mage.

After a little practice to make the duo's movements more natural, we were ready. We moved through the streets of Brynnlaw, making no commotion but attempting to look nervous and high-strung to passers-by. Most likely didn't notice us, but those who did would mistake us for lackeys of the Pirate Lord on the way to deliver news that he probably wouldn't take well, thus explaining our subsequent absence. So far, my meticulous plan was going well, but the first bump in the road was soon to present itself.

The guard at the door would not let us pass, and I tried to plead with him but Korgan was already in character (or not; it was a little hard to tell) and simply cracked him in the knee with his warhammer. Jan moved quickly to stifle the guard, as did Alora, momentarily forgetting the disguise she was supposed to be maintaining. I reminded her just in time to keep her from jumping off of Goo, but the guard saw the two of them when the robe opened and simply fainted. I was a little stunned at the turn of events and looked to Mazzy to see what she thought, but she just shrugged and opened the door.

Once inside, the Pirate Lord was not difficult to find; when he asked how we had gotten in, I told him that his guard was asleep at his post. His ire rose at that, but I quickly distracted him with my act; I pretended to be Tiax. Tiax was the most insane gnome I had ever met, and if acting like him couldn't get me admitted to an asylum, I had no idea what could. Throughout my monologue my companions chimed in with their various comments, and by the end the Pirate Lord had summoned his entire household guard "just in case you crack". Very soon we were being escorted to Spellhold.

CHAPTER FOUR, PART THREE

The 'five' of us were led to the asylum and dropped off with one of its caretakers, a gnome by the name of Lonk. We were taken into a foyer, where several Cowled Wizards, moving almost as zombies, took our equipment as I had feared. No words could sway them, and they even took Alora's robe! Without my staff, Alora and Goo floated, revealed, for the wizards to see, but none took any notice. Inspiration kicked in, and I grabbed Goo, tumbling Alora unceremoniously to the floor for the second time in as many hours. I rushed over to the Cowled Wizard holding my staff, grabbed one end, and pressed it against one of Goo's eyestalks. Goo vanished.

I heard my companions gasp (Alora groaned), and I felt Goo's invisible eyestalk curl around the staff so that he might be able to look at himself. I cannot adequately describe the odor that accompanied Goo's subsequent noise of surprise. Not only would mere words be severely deficient, but I would not want you, the reader, to vomit upon this book, as you surely would if I could adequately convey the smell. Suffice it to say that in that moment I very deeply regretted subjecting Korgan and Alora to its effects for mere tactical benefit, and prayed that all of Goo's opponents had died quick and merciful deaths.

Thankfully, Goo seemed to get the idea and I felt him wrap his other eyestalks around the staff for a firmer grip. But as I stood paralyzed, one hand still convulsively gripping the staff, I couldn't turn my head to see if the automaton wizards were fooled by Goo's disappearance. That also meant that I never saw the blow coming. A fist struck me in the chest with inhuman strength, hurling me across the room where I slammed into a column. I felt my spine curve around it just before I lost consciousness.

I awoke lying on my stomach on a cold stone floor. My entire body ached, and the taste of copper in my mouth reminded me of the time as a child when I got into Withrop's change drawer and swallowed half the contents. (The platinum tasted particularly good, but after the consequences of ingesting the metal I couldn't stand to eat with silverware for a full month.) As cliche as it may seem, the pain seized me with an overwhelming urge to groan, and I did so. A fresh headache was my reward for the noise.

"Ach, quit yer belly-achin'. Ye had ta know what would happen if ye tried that." When my head stopped exploding from the booming voice, I was able to recognize it as Korgan's. Coincidentally, at that moment I suddenly realized that one hand was not on the floor, but slightly elevated and resting on something long, round, and wooden. Without a moment of hesitation, I grasped it tightly and hurled it in the direction that the voice had emanated from. The resultant bellow of pain made the accompanying headache more than worth it.

I gingerly rolled over and sat up, putting my back to the cool stone wall, and opened my eyes gradually. The first sight that greeted me was Korgan writhing on the floor and clutching himself, and I chuckled before remembering that it would hurt to do so. The pain seemed to be receding though, and I looked around at what was apparently a prison cell of sorts. Besides Korgan and myself, the only other occupant was a blearily blinking Jan. It took his eyes a moment to focus on me, but eventually he said, "So you're finally awake. That was quite a blow you took back there; I haven't seen anything like that since Uncle Flippy tested out his automatic poke-pole. I don't believe that goat ever came back down..."

I briefly considered letting Jan numb my brain with another one of his stories, but I needed to know what was going on. "Jan," I interrupted, "where are we? Where are the others? What...happened?"

"Oh, yes, of course. Let's see. We're in Spellhold, in our room. The girls are in the cell next to us." Jan suddenly froze in mid-speech then switched to Gnomish, presumably to throw off any eaves-droppers. Even so, his words were guarded, "IthinkGoowentwithourstuff. He'sagoodstaff heis. Afteryougothit Mazzyfixedyouupalittle butsinceshe'snotmuchofacleric allshecoulddowashealyourbrokenribs. Afterthattheyjustbroughtushere."

As I processed the information (and the way it had been imparted), my hands subconsciously went to my chest to feel for the damage. Aside from some soreness in the muscles, my bones felt whole, and I decided to ask Mazzy later on how she had accomplished it. But for right now, Jan's mention of Goo brought up a new dilemma. Taking the cue from my fellow gnome, I answered back cautiously, "AndwhatofAlora?"

Jan laughed. "Oh she'smightyupsetthattheytookherBootsofLevitation andIimagineshe'llwanttohaveawordwithyouforgettingusputinhere butotherwiseshe'sfine. IhadasterntalkwithLonkoverdeprivingherofherdelusionsofheight buthesaidthatruleswererules. Ohwell."

Finally I relaxed. It seemed that my companions had done a good job of improvising in my absence, and our cover was still secure. Now all we had to do was find Irenicus and Imoen and get out before anything else went wrong.

CHAPTER FOUR, PART FOUR

By this time, Korgan had stopped rolling and groaning, and was trying to sit up. Jan and I helped him back onto his bench, when suddenly he swung at me! He hit me right in the chest, and though I thought I felt a rib break anew, it was not as hard as the Cowled Zombie had hit me. Even so, I stumbled backwards with the force of it toward the cell door...and passed right through it! But even as I did so, the agony that assailed me left me weak as a new-born kitten, and I collapsed to the floor just outside of the cell.

I looked up at a *clang*, to see a very confused Korgan rubbing his nose and sitting on the floor just inside the still-closed door, and I could see behind him Jan was eyeing the door warily. "Shocked you too?" I asked, too worn out to speak in Gnomish.

A nod and another glare at the door was all the answer I required, but Jan chose to elaborate. "AbitofazapwhenItouchedit butnotquitewhathappenedtoyou. Itmustreacttodivinemagicdifferently."

Though probably true (it would explain why it hurt so damn much: a double-hit for my access to both arcane and divine castings), I knew that still couldn't explain why I was on the outside of the cell instead of on the inside. As my strength returned faster than I expected it, the answer dawned on me. My Bhaalpowers were unaffected by the magic of the asylum! I briefly berated myself for transferring some of my powers to my staff, since those were now cut off from me, but then I remembered that Goo was safely with our equipment (and vice-versa) thanks to it. A trade-off, to be sure.

But regardless of that, I was now free, and armed with my powers. This, I decided, would be the perfect time to hunt for Irenicus and sap the life from him while he was helpless, to put an end to this chase. I could also scout around for Imoen and the way out. But first I needed to make sure my other companions were okay. I tiptoed over to the next cell, and within I saw Mazzy and Alora dozing fitfully on their benches (they could not rightly be called beds). I let out a breath I had not known I had been holding, then hissed as I felt a fresh stab of pain from my rib.

Moving on, I looked into cell after cell, but I hadn't found Irenicus or Imoen as I approached the last cell. Wondering if perhaps they had been imprisoned in the same cell because they had been captured at the same time; it would have been rather illogical since they were fighting each other at the time, but you never know. I peered cautiously in and then jumped back, startled by Imoen standing and staring right through me as if she had been expecting me.

But as my heart gradually slowed back down to a normal pace, she didn't move, still standing and staring at the wall even in the dead of night. I tried to get her attention, even whispering her name, but there was no response. Getting more worried now, I backed up against the wall opposite the cell door and steeled myself before running full-tilt at and through it. The shock was easier to bear this time, thanks mostly to the shorter experience.

I picked myself up and dusted off, disappointed that Imoen still had not budged, even after my charge straight through the bars. Again I tried my best to get her attention, but she stood unmoving despite all the words and hand-waving I could offer. But things changed dramatically when I absently touched her hand; all of a sudden she was shrieking like a banshee, and she even clawed me across the cheek.

I stood stunned for a moment, then bolted out of the cell, colliding with the opposite wall in my haste and pain-clouded senses. An agitated voice that sounded like Lonk's from beyond a nearby door compelled me to run all the way back to my original cell and dive back inside before he came to investigate. Tomorrow night, I thought before drifting off to sleep; but I would not get the chance.

I woke early the next morning at the sounds of a scuffle, and opened my eyes to see both Korgan and Jan pinned against opposite walls by Cowled Wizards, their feet dangling off the floor. Lonk stood in the open doorway to the cell, and two Cowled Wizards flanked him. "I see you've got a cut on your cheek. Been to visit any childhood friends last night, Quayle?"

I knew the jig was up, so I let loose with everything I had, drawing the life force out of the two holding my friends. The look of surprise on Lonk's face was priceless, but the two Wizards left didn't miss a beat and established holds of their own on Korgan and Jan. I squared off to face down Lonk with the cudgel that I had been given to help me walk in place of my staff (another one of Jan's tales), but our fight was interrupted before it could even begin as I was roughly grabbed from behind and lifted into the air.

I looked to the side to see who had grabbed me, and recognized the face of one of the wizards I had just killed. Though their behaviour prior to this could rightly be called zombie-like, my actions had apparently only made these two into real zombies in every sense of the word. As I finally realized that perhaps the Cowled Wizards were no longer in control of the asylum (they wouldn't do this to their own members), Lonk spoke words that sent shivers through my soul.

"Come. Master Irenicus has been waiting most eagerly to see you."

CHAPTER FOUR, PART FIVE

I really began to regret fighting back as the two freshly-minted zombies carried me behind Lonk. Apparently, depriving them of their life also deprived them of any consideration over things like comfort, and I was even stretched as if on the rack if they happened to drift apart. Alternating pain with mere discomfort didn't do much for my sense of direction in tracing the path we were taking, and I gave up once I realized I was lost. The only thing I was able to keep track of was when they took me down a flight of stairs; the jarring ride was rather hard to miss.

Finally we arrived at our destination, and I was thrown bodily into a glass tank. I recognized the design immediately; it was incredibly similar to the tanks I had seen back in Irenicus's Dungeon. Again I felt a chill down my spine, followed closely by a bigger one as I heard an all-too-familiar voice. "Well, it would seem that my visitor has arrived. It is as I predicted. It all has been. I fear I have had an advantage over you. I have planned your coming from the start. It could be no other way."

As I listened to Irenicus blather on about how he had planned every step of my journey, I continued to hope, and when he was done I thrilled at the omission of one of my travelling companions. He spoke of Alora, Korgan, Jan, and Mazzy, but not much of the second nameless dwarf that accompanied us for a time. Irenicus seemed utterly unconcerned that we had parted ways with the dwarf in Brynnlaw, and I knew that he had not planned everything quite as he said he had.

But regardless, I was right where he wanted me for the moment, and when he finally finished gloating about it, he set about his task with barely a word to me about what he was doing, despite my many questions. I watched as six Shadow Thieves died before my eyes, and I felt my own hold on my life slipping. I clung as hard as I could to the ephemeral idea of my soul, but as I did I failed to notice my consciousness fading.

It would be a misnomer to say that I woke with a start, as I instead found myself in a dream. Before me lay Candlekeep, as forboding as the last time I dreamed of it. But this seemed more real than any of my previous dreams, and I realized belatedly that my awareness of the dream was in itself unusual. I was at first proud of my control, then disappointed as I realized that with that control did not come any idea of what in the Nine Hells I ought to be doing in this dream. I pivoted to see what was around me, but nothing gave me any clue so I simply stood there and waited.

Gradually I became aware of a faint voice floating out from the keep before me. Figuring I might as well follow it, I started walking, but came to an abrupt stop as I saw a demon lurking at the gates. Its black eyes fixed on me and I felt fear, but it made no moves, simply watching me with a surprisingly benign expression for such a fearsome beast. Unsure and alone, I figured it might be better to try to find another way in.

I was wrong. I skirted around the west wall of the keep, and instead of a side door I found Bhaal himself, a representation of the essence inside of me. I'd used my abilities many times before, and figured that I would be on pretty good terms with my Bhaal essence by now, but I was proved wrong yet again as it charged at me waving a sword that looked like Sarevok's. I ran back toward the front entrance, hoping to pit the fiends against each other, but neither gave the other a second glance, instead focusing exclusively on me.

The voice came again, more urgent this time, and finally I knew what I had to do. I rushed past the demon to the door of the keep, trying to dodge its sweeping grasp. I succeeded completely, but the one thing I had not taken into account was the door itself. Even the split-second pause while opening the door was enough for the hulking nightmare to gain a bead on me, and my eyes widened as I knew (too late) that I could do nothing to get out of the way.

The claw hit me dead in the chest...and passed right through. For a moment I felt utterly ill and I fell through the open door into the keep foyer. I felt hands upon me, and weakly tried to fight them off, thinking the demon or Bhaal was come to finish the job. But the familiar voice comforted me, and I looked up into the smiling face of Imoen. Never had I seen her looking so friendly, and I was briefly reminded of the good times I had had with my "little sister" back within these comforting walls, annoying the monks and getting Gorion into trouble with Ulraunt for keeping us.

My strength returned, looking up into that peaceful visage, and I suddenly remembered the dangers behind me. But the demon was gone, and Bhaal was at a small distance yet, though closing fast. "We must work together," was all Imoen said, and I stood up beside her. Instinctively we began chanting the words of magic in unison, and Bhaal stopped a moment, covering his ears before charging again even faster. Whatever spell we were casting was nearly done when suddenly Imoen let out a screech and fell backward.

I completed my part in that instant, and a ball of light streaked from my hands to burst upon Bhaal's chest. He faltered and fell backward in that instant, but I wrenched my gaze away out of concern for Imoen, not caring what would happen to the essence. I turned to look where Imoen had fallen, and saw not floor but a black hole where the floor ought to be. Without warning it expanded quickly to cover my senses, and I fell into unconsciousness once again.

CHAPTER FOUR, PART SIX

This time when I awoke, it was to harsh reality. My chest ached and my vision was blurred; even breathing hurt as I struggled to sit up. Irenicus stood before me, laughing quietly to himself, and it was a moment before he realized that I was aware. He did not even deign to speak to me, but instead told Bodhi to get rid of me. My head reeled anew as her spell took me away; I felt as if I was falling endlessly.

The jarring halt at the end of the spell did not help my dizziness much, and the cool kiss of brick upon my face was a mixed blessing at best. A hissing sound made me jump to my feet before I realized that it was Bodhi's voice and not a pit of snakes. I struggled to listen to her words, but I could only make out the occassional word like 'soul' and 'maze' and 'hunt'. Before I could ask any questions to clarify, she once again turned into a bat and flitted off. I tried to sit up again, but my stomach lurched warningly and I lay back down with a groan.

"Oh shut up, you crybaby." My eyes shot open at the voice, and I turned my head to see Imoen standing there. I briefly considered whether or not this might be yet another dream, but Imoen didn't even seem close to how she had been in the other dream, and thinking about it too much made my head throb. "They did the same thing to me and you don't hear me moaning about it," Imoen continued. "Here I was hoping that you would come and save me, but you couldn't even save yourself. You're pathetic."

Her grimace twisted into a cruel smile. "But you did do one thing right: you brought people with you who don't know a thing about our kind of magic. They're my ticket out of here; I hope you all enjoy your stay in this nightmare." The contrast of attitudes from how she'd been in the dream delayed understanding, and I didn't absorb the meaning of her words until it was too late. Imoen finished her spell before I could react, and she vanished. In the same instant, I heard four voices from four cardinal directions call out in surprise.

I was torn over who to help first, and I knew that this was no time to be holding back my ace-in-the-hole. "Eklis!" I hissed, calling to my staff, hoping beyond hope that what I had begun to sense during my experiments on the ship was true. Suddenly I was standing, and I closed my eyes and reached out to the side, feeling and then grabbing my staff. But I was surprised to also feel a leatheryness upon the other side of my hand, and I looked without thinking; whatever had been brewing broke with my concentration, and vertigo seized me as it collapsed.

Laying on the floor seemed to be getting far too familiar at this point, and I stood back up quickly with the support of my staff. Just grasping the staff made me feel stronger, as the power that I had given it flowed through me. I allowed myself a brief moment of wonder that I could be so lucky to have found it at all in the first place, and I could swear I felt the staff beam with pride.

A tap on the shoulder caused me to spin, and I regarded Goo as he floated there, a weapon grasped with each eyestalk save one, and armor heaped around him. He opened his mouth to speak, causing me to beat a hasty retreat to a safe distance, but neither of us got the chance for conversation. The four voices of our companions came alive again and we heard the yells of combat from the north and south, with frenzied chanting coming from the west; but the one that rang most loudly in my ears was Alora's shriek from the east.

I waved Goo to the west as I ran to the east, faster than I would have thought myself capable of. I burst through a door to find Alora in the grasp of a clay golem, beating her fists on its malleable chest. Without hesitation, I swung my staff at its arm with all my might, and it passed right through at the elbow. Effectively severed, the clay that was the golem's forearm fell to the floor with a loud *splorch*, as did Alora with her own yelp of pain.

The golem charged me, and I set my staff as I had seen some of the soldiers back at Candlekeep do with their pikes. Being a mindless magical construct, it ran directly into the staff, impaling itself on the end. As I watched, astounded, it stood transfixed while magical fire and lightning played over its body for a few moments, and then suddenly it just exploded. Clay flew everywhere, knocking me back a couple steps and smacking Alora (who had just been trying to get up) on the shoulder, causing her to spin around and land awkwardly on her back once again.

I ran over as she swore loudly, and asked what was the matter. She punched me in the shoulder (slightly harder than what I would have called playful), and said, "Couldn't you have gotten it to put me down first?! My bottom didn't need any more bruises after everything you put me through." She started to rub it for emphasis, but hissed and pulled her hand away very quickly. "Oooh, it still hurts. Can't you do something? It is all your fault, after all."

I prepared a healing spell, feeling bad for all this, but the moment my hand touched her backside, I forgot about everything else. All I could feel was the adrenaline from the fight with the golem still pumping through my veins, and suddenly I was very aware of how curvy Alora's body was. In an instant my mouth was on hers, and she returned the kiss with eagerness. When our lips parted, she looked into my eyes and I into hers, but then she stepped back and lowered her eyes, saying, "Thank you. It feels much better now."

I didn't know what to say, but I stammered something even I couldn't understand and led her back to where I had first appeared, too stunned to think. As I neared the middle of what I could now make out was a fairly large room, I saw Mazzy bounding down the stairs from the north a pair of bloodied short swords in her hands and a grin on her face. I asked if Goo had found her, pointing at her weapons, but she said no, and that she had liberated them from some goblins who wouldn't be needing them anymore.

Mazzy caught up with Alora on this new bag she had found (which turned out to be what sent the golem after her), and detailed my rescue, thankfully leaving out the kiss. I went to the west in the meantime, looking for Goo, and ran into Jan and Goo coming the other way. It seems Goo had gotten to Jan just in the nick of time; I got a close-up view of what they had been fighting later when Goo had a little indigestion and burped up a Yuan-ti head.

I took them back to where the halfling girls were still chatting, once again thankful that my beard hid the embarrassment I felt. But all thoughts of the encounter fled from my mind as we heard an inhumanly loud roar from the south, and I remembered who was not with us. "Korgan..."

CHAPTER FOUR, PART SEVEN

Goo quickly distributed the weapons he'd saved, keeping only Korgan's axe, while I crept cautiously to the south. My overeager companions rushed past me once they were armed, and I struggled to keep up, not finding the urgency with which I had rushed to save Alora. Blushing anew at the thought, I irritably wondered if some capillaries would just burst already and turn my beard red for all to see.

As I drew close to where the roar had originated, I began to hear a dull clash of arms. Turning a corner, I saw Korgan still fighting, but not against any enemy; instead, he was beating on Mazzy's shield with his bare fists. Goo, Alora, and Jan simply stood there watching, as Mazzy tried to reason with the crazed dwarf. Having had this problem back in Baldur's Gate when we'd met up with a bunch of ogre-mage assassins, I knew exactly what to do.

Creeping up behind Korgan, I tapped him on the back of his skull with my staff. He stopped for a moment, then turned around and started advancing on me. Treating him as if he were a puppy who had made a mess on the rug, I rapped him again with my staff, this time on his nose. Again he paused then resumed his advance, so I hit him again, harder across the face. This time he stopped completely, then gradually raised a hand to his now bloody nose. Satisfied that I'd gotten him out of his rage, I nodded to my companions and looked around the room we were in.

It would have been considerably easier to estimate the number of foes that Korgan had defeated if he had left them in one piece or at least left the pieces where they fell. As it was, I was forced to judge by the volume of the chunks thrown against the walls, and I figured that at the very least he had torn apart as many Umber Hulks as we had encountered in the basement of De'Arnise Keep. Suddenly I felt a wetness on my feet, and looked down to see that I was standing in a large pool of blood, which had apparently now creeped up over the top of my boots. I grimaced and stepped carefully out of the pool, accidentally finding a couple deep spots before I made it clear.

Together again, we travelled through the maze; at this point making no attempt to hide Goo from anyone. The riddles designed to test sanity were ridiculously easy to solve, and I even gave them to my companions like quizzes, to see if they could get them too and to allieviate the boredom. Along the way we found many tokens, and also a place to use them; Korgan and I got new boots to replace the ones that had gotten soaked in blood.

But even as we continued through the maze with barely a problem, I could feel a watchful gaze upon me, and I could tell the others could too. No doubt they attributed it to travelling with Goo in his natural form, but I knew better. Even with what few words I had been able to make out from Bodhi's earlier speech, it was obvious that it must be she who was tracking us. My suspicions were confirmed when she apparently tired of the 'hunt' and confronted us.

"Hard to believe such a tiny mouse could have survived so far, but I suppose you did have help. Even so, you shall neither escape this place nor your fate; you are doomed to die as your body withers without the soul that Irenicus stole from you..." I didn't hear what she said after that, my mind racing as I began to understand the reason for the ache in my chest, the significance of Imoen falling away in the dream, and most of all, the hopeless situation I was in.

Locked away in this maze of the mind, I would rot to nothing as the darkness of Bhaal's essence, no longer staved off by the better part of my soul, ate at me from within. Even now, I could feel it taking advantage of my weakness, and the rage swelled up from inside me. I began to feel a strange tingling, and looked down at my hands. But they weren't my hands; instead I saw claws of deepest black, and the floor began to shrink away from me. At first I was confused, but then I realized that I was becoming that which I hated most . . . I was growing Tall.

As that final piece of horrible knowledge assaulted me, I snapped. Suddenly it seemed as if I were seeing this creature that I had become from a far-away distance. I watched as it tore into Bodhi and her vampire friends, and listened to her hissing (yet still somehow echoing) voice call for retreat. And finally, I watched the thing turn on my friends. Mazzy stood firm, calling in a strange, echo-ridden voice for Korgan to get the others out of harm's way. Korgan prodded the others none-too-gently through the double doors we had just come through, and I barely heard the echo of his order to Goo to keep Alora and Jan safe, before he slammed the doors behind him and turned to face...me.

CHAPTER FOUR, PART EIGHT

I tried my hardest to re-assert control, but the best I could manage was to slow the blows. Mazzy, realizing that I was not attacking at full force, had begun sparring warily with me, and I could see it gradually dawn in her eyes that I was not in complete control. I cheered her silently as she began instead evading the claws that sought her of their own accord, and began to focus my energies on somehow reversing the transformation. Korgan saw an opening and joined in, trying to confuse and distract the creature that stood in my place, and Mazzy took a brief break in front of the doors that still shielded my other companions.

So it went for what seemed like a full day and night. Mazzy would dodge while Korgan protected the doors, and then Korgan would charge in when Mazzy faltered, taking her place while she recuperated on guard. Then Korgan would falter and Mazzy would take up the burden again of evading the deadly claws that whistled toward her. I racked my brain for something that I could do, and at length I felt a familiar pulse. I had been holding my staff when the transformation hit, and it had apparently fused into this form.

I grabbed onto the idea of help with gratefulness, and as I did so I recognized a piece of myself. Along with all the powers that I had entrusted to the staff, I had not even realized that it had stolen a tiny piece of my soul in the process; almost infinitesimal, it gave me just the weapon I needed to fight the essence. Drawing all the energy I could from the staff, together we drove back the essence from my mind, and I could feel myself pulled toward the body of the creature, which I saw with relief was slowly changing back to a much more familiar (and normal-sized) form.

This time, instead of being irritated I welcomed the floor as an old friend, thankfully falling in a heap as what little borrowed energy I had left fled back into my staff. My friends (for surely friends they were not to have struck down the creature I had become) kept watch over me as I lay there, barely breathing. They talked among themselves at a safe distance after the others returned, and I couldn't blame them for the fears they were expressing over my startling performance.

When at last I found the will to speak, I thanked them for holding back and told them that it would not happen again, though I felt ill of the assurance as I spoke it. I leaned heavily on my staff as we continued, still having to fight the occasional attack from the essence inside me but growing stronger each time I beat it back. The riddles continued to be no match for my agile mind, but I took them all on myself now, as I was very eager to find a way out. Eventually the answers and fighting satisfied whatever it was that put us through these tests, and we were released back into Spellhold.

And there, waiting for us, was Lonk. I drew myself up in preparation for a battle, but he waved me off. "I'mtiredofthisingrate Irenicus. Allhedoesisordermearoundlikethemindlesszombiesheturnedtheothersinto. Neverawordofthanksora"goodjob" justmoreorders. Here takethisandopenupallthecells; I'msuretheinmateswillhelpyoutakehimdown. Goodriddance saysI." And with that short speech in Gnomish, he simply handed me a key and walked away.

I did as he asked and opened the cells, finding, to my dismay, that one of the inmates actually was my old companion Tiax. I felt briefly guilty at the thought that I had imitated him to get into Spellhold, then I remembered what he had been like and the guilt vanished, replaced instead by an odd sense of gratification that I had obviously picked the perfect person to emulate if he'd gotten in here on his own.

But regardless of any past ties, I needed my soul back from Irenicus and these were just the people to help me. I manipulated, cajoled, and obfuscated, and finally my "army of madness" was ready to do my bidding. Wanev, the former director, teleported us to Irenicus, and the battle began. Under the assault of so much magic, even Irenicus started to fall back, and my less magic-inclined companions pressed home the advantage. But in a last, desparate move, he teleported away, leaving assassins behind.

Most of the inmates were slaughtered before they could put up a defense, but in the end we were the ones left standing. Tiax was one of the first to fall, and by the time I reached him, he was dead. I left Spellhold back in the care of Wanev, not caring what would happen, only feeling the pull of my soul. I followed the trail that it seemed only I could see, but it lead through a wall and I thought perhaps my senses were wrong. But Alora produced a key that she said she had slipped from Irenicus's pocket during the fight, and inserted it into the wall, which proceeded to swing open.

The portal stood before me, looking as the portal back in Irenicus's dungeon had, and I knew that this had to be his escape route. Taking a deep breath to calm my racing heart and taking a quick look back at my fellows, I stepped forward into nothingness...

[ February 15, 2006, 21:27: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

CHAPTER FIVE, PART ONE

As the disorientation faded, so too did the darkness, giving way to the familiar tones of my infravision. At first I did not know if my companions had followed me, but the low, familiar rumble behind me quickly reassured me that at least I was not alone. I turned to watch first Alora, then Mazzy, Jan, and Korgan come through the portal, joining me and Goo in this lightless place. Only Jan, Korgan, and I could see properly, so we guided those who couldn't; I took Alora's hand, Jan quickly grabbed Mazzy, and Korgan grumblingly led Goo. Goo gradually became used to the light level, and soon he and Korgan were leading ahead of us.

Alora whispered to me that she heard voices up ahead, and I strained my own ears to try to pick it out but could hear nothing. Trusting her and seeing a turn in the cavern up ahead, I gripped my staff tighter and activated Goo's dwarven Deception just in case. (Considering that there turned out to be a number of hostile beholder-kin in the area, this proved to be a very good idea.) We rounded the corner and saw a trio of dwarves, who greeted us in a strange language I hadn't heard before. I looked to Korgan to see if he knew the tongue of his dwarven cousins, but he shook his head.

I was about to attempt it myself when Goo suddenly spoke up, rumbling strange words at the dwarves. He indicated my startled self with one eyestalk/arm, and stepped back with a bow I would not have thought him possible of. The lead dwarf began speaking in Common, and though it took me a fraction of a second for my shocked brain to catch up, I got the gist of what he had said and soon began a dialogue with the group of traders.

When all was said and done, I had a new helmet for Mazzy that allowed her to see in the dark, and information that both Bodhi and Irenicus had passed this way, heading toward the city of Ust Natha. I thanked the dwarves and continued in the direction that they had pointed, whispering a question at Goo. His shiver was almost imperceptible as he whispered back, "This place brings back many long-forgotten memories. GrrglARGHLurghl. I would ask that we proceed without delay so as to be... Grg... gone from here as soon as possible. Graghl."

We fought our way quickly through a couple groups of drow, following the path that the duergar had related, and finally coming to the great doors to their city. They opened at our approach, but only to spill forth an army of hooting drow, which we barely escaped. Clearly, they weren't about to just let us in to look for our quarry. Knowing that the enemy of our enemy is our friend, we took the fork in the tunnel that the duergar had said lead to the village of Svirfneblim, the deep-dwelling cousins of my kind.

I greeted the lookouts as best I could with what I remembered of my studies of their language, and only a quick and thankfully correct "I don't know your language well." saved us from yet another fight. (Apparently I had asked to do something...unkind to their grandfathers with a single missed word.) Once the misunderstanding had been worked out satisfactorily, they took us to their leader. I explained our predicament, and Goldander said he might know someone who could help, but first he had something that he needed help with. More than happy to help out a fellow gnome, I asked what it was they were having trouble with.

Apparently they had dug in the wrong place and unearthed some sort of buried demon, which they'd had no luck dispatching. After they locked the entrance to the mine, the demon had gone back to its hole to rest, but they were sure it would break through their barriers when it re-awakened. I offered to shore up their defenses with some magical wards, but Goldander was adamant that he wanted this resolved permanently. Having not only little choice in the matter, but also sympathy for their plight, I accepted.

Goldander gave me a scroll that would collapse the passage on the beast once we'd finished our work. The complexity of the spell intrigued me, and I was tempted to copy it into my spellbook for later study, but we only had the one scroll so I restrained myself. The breachgnome opened the wide doors of the mine when we got there, and the party descended. Expecting trouble at any moment, we kept on our guard all the way to the end of the passage, where a pit lay open.

Gazing into the pit, I quietly huffed in annoyance that the creature still dozed despite our presence. Calling Jan over, I pointed at the creature and whispered a suggestion. Simultaneously we threw balls of fire into the pit, and I even dropped one of Jan's Flashers in there for good measure. Flame and light erupted from the pit, and with an ungodly screech, so did the demon. unfazed by the fire curling around its sides, its unholy gaze swept over us, and I felt fear most unnatural.

I scrambled away from the pit, but looking back I saw Jan frozen at the edge. I grabbed Goo as he raced by and pointed at Jan; a nod of understanding was all the response I got before he ran to pull Jan out of the way as Mazzy and Alora charged the creature. I glanced around as I prepared another spell to throw at the creature, and saw Korgan simply standing there, looking in awe at the demon. I returned my attention to our foe and finished the spell, but he merely shrugged it off as if it were nothing and glared at me again.

The fear returned, but I fought it and won; Mazzy was not so lucky and froze as well in mid-swing. Realizing now that the immobility of my companions was not voluntary in the slightest, I set to work freeing my companions, and then Jan and I spent our time summoning up monsters to serve as fodder wile the other four battled the monster. The tide gradually turned in our favor, and soon our foe was defeated. Our summons pushed the demon's corpse back into the pit before the spells expired, and all that remained was the reading of the scroll; had I known it would collapse the entire passage and not just the ceiling over the pit, I might have waited until we were outside to read it.

CHAPTER FIVE, PART TWO

We barely managed to escape as the tunnel collapsed, and our skin and clothes were covered in soot. I tromped angrily back to Goldander, but the look of relief on his face when he saw us took the steam out of my britches. Instead we simply short-handed a conversation...

"The whole tunnel?"
"Sorry, forgot."
"The light gem?"
"Here you go."
"Thanks."
"Gratitude."

...and we left. It was a short walk to where Goldander had said we would find the one who would help us, and the light gem that Goldander had given us showed us the way through the curtain of darkness shrouding the mouth of the cave, which even my infravision could not penetrate. The darkness gradually receded, and eventually I could make out the walls of the wide passage, and finally the tall ceiling far above us. For a moment I idly wondered what kind of person would carve out such a grandiose cavern, but I figured I'd find the answer to that soon enough.

The passage began to widen even more, and finally came a gigantic chamber. Unmistakable in the middle of the giant chamber was a shining silver dragon. The party froze at it glanced at us with a distracted air, then Korgan made to charge, but Mazzy stuck out her foot, tripping the dwarf and sending him sprawling face-first onto the marbled floor. Jan and Goo looked at each other in confusion, while Alora simply gazed up at the creature in awe.

Mazzy, on the other hand, knelt in front of the dragon and announced, "My Lady, I am Mazzy Fentan and these are my friends; except perhaps that one. We come to ask a favor of you, and would trade our services in return if you would grant it."

The dragon's voice blasted out, beautiful and strong, answering the kneeling halfling. "Welcome to my lair, good Mazzy Fentan; I have watched your adventures with great interest, as I have a stake in the betterment of those races who are so cruelly discriminated against. I despaired when I learned of your capture by the Shade Lord, and I mourn for your loss."

I spied a tear work its way down Mazzy's cheek as the dragon continued. "But I am most glad that you were able to escape with the help of these companions and work your way to me. I am Adalon, the guardian, and I have done my duty as well as I have been able for many a century. I was not the first, though I know the history. But there has been a crime here recently, and I can no longer honor my commitment. I will ask your assistance, and in return I will aid you."

Mazzy looked up, saying, "Of course, my Lady, whatever you-"

"Silence!" Adalon exclaimed. "I... I will tell you when you may speak. This is a VERY important matter, and I will not be interrupted."

"Now, that was uncalled for," I said, but Korgan interrupted me before I could say any more. "Quayle, don't get the beast angered! I don't put much stock in our chances..." I was inclined to argue, but Adalon had continued her story over my words, and I decided I would rather listen.

"The two you seek, this Bodhi and Jon Irenicus, I believe they have made a deal with the Drow for their own safe passage and offered a way to tip the scales against their Elven enemy. You may ask why I do not extend my influence. I cannot. Irenicus bargained with my most prized possession. He violated my lair and stole from me. They have taken my eggs."

Korgan actually seemed to approve of it. "Hah! Caught you napping, did they? A brilliant way to - oof!" That's when Mazzy and I hit him simultaneously.

Adalon smirked (if a dragon can indeed smirk), and finally made clear her demand. "You must retrieve them for me. Do this, and I will reveal a safe escape route to leave the Underdark, one that emerges close to where Irenicus plots his next move."

"It shall be as you say, M'Lady. The villains shall not escape righteous justice." Mazzy seemed almost as surprised as the others to hear such words come out of my mouth and not hers, but I could hear Alora stifling a giggle behind me. Of all the companions, she knew me best, and could tell when I was being sarcastically over-dramatic.

Adalon seemed not to notice, however, or perhaps she simply sensed the truth behind my statement that I would indeed help her as best I could for my ends. Regardless, she continued, outlining her plan for getting us safely inside the Drow city. "You will take the identity of a group of Drow I dispatched recently, a party from another city destined for Ust Natha. I will transform you, and you will be able to..."

I confess that I did not hear the rest of the details, for my mind had stuck on the word 'transform'. After my bout within the avatar form of the Slayer, I was none too eager for another transformation, and I said so in the plainest language I could. "No glemmening way. You are NOT turning me into some rydrunian Tall."

I was expecting surprise, but in that I was sorely disappointed. Instead of 'I beg your pardon?', the dragon simply said, "I fear that the choice is no longer yours." I felt the magic swirl, and could see my friends' transformations beginning. I fought it with all my might, but it was not like fighting the taint of Bhaal; this transformation came from without, not within. I heard a hiss from Adalon as Goo's Deception dropped in the onslaught of the dragon's spell, but at the moment I was beyond caring about something so insignificant to my own dilemma.

I do not know what possessed me to do it - perhaps it was Eklis itself - but suddenly I raised my staff and brought it down again, striking the end of it upon the marbled floor of the cavern. A light burst from it, and the pressure on me vanished. I leaned on my staff, and was startled by a low, loud growl emanating from a serpentine throat. Pulling myself up as straight as I could, I uttered only three words, "I said no." Staring defiantly up at the creature that could likely swallow me whole, I awaited Adalon's response.

CHAPTER FIVE, PART THREE

It was not what I had hoped, but at least it was not what I expected. The accusations came hard and fast from the shimmering creature. "How dare you resist my will!? Travelling with a beholder-kin would be enough to raise my suspicions, but now you compound that with your brazen selfishness?!? Give me one good reason why I should not kill you right now!"

I thought fast for something that would satisfy the dragon, but someone acted faster. Interposing herself between me and Adalon, the Drow spoke in a surprisingly timid voice. "Because I will not let you harm him."

I whirled, thinking we were under attack, and belatedly realized that these were actually my transformed companions. I shivered involuntarily at the juxtaposition as the other Drow female stepped up and spoke with Mazzy's voice. "Nor will I. Respectfully, My Lady, you do not know Quayle or Goo as I do. They are good people - well, a good gnome and a good something - and they have their reasons for acting as they do. I ask that you not judge them until you have heard their stories."

Though I was not in the mood for an exposition while Irenicus was still free to escape, I could see that it likely was the only way. Briefly, I summarized my history (I won't bore you by repeating it here when you've already read a more detailed account), going into depth towards the end, mostly with respect to my horrifying transformation in the bowels of Spellhold. Adalon uttered a single word in a language that I assumed to be that of dragons, but seemed to be slightly mollified.

Then her gaze turned to one of the Drow, which at first glance appeared to be an androgenous female, but had some distinctly male features to the face. Adalon frowned, clearly disliking how the Deception must have interfered with her spell's effect on Goo. He took his cue from her attention, and began to tell the story that even we, his friends, had not yet heard.

Goo's rumbling bass voice painted the picture of traditional youthful rebellion growing into genuine differences with the philosophy of the elder orbs of his hive. Beholder-kin being none too tolerant of individuality, they drove him out with a vengeance. He sought sanctuary with an uncle who had also been driven out, as well as driven mad, who called himself "the Unseeing Eye" despite being able to see quite well out of all eleven eyes. When Goo had finally had enough of his uncle, he tried to set out on his own, but was captured by Irenicus and experimented on. His story complete, Goo the Drow seemed to deflate, and he shambled over into the corner, obviously desirous of some solitude after laying his soul bare.

Adalon's scowl deepened as she surely realized that she could not hold us to a standard of evil that would allow her to kill us, no doubt wondering how her plan would work now. Anticipating her concern, I said, "T'will not be a difficulty to hide my gnomishness, M'Lady. If you would but observe..." Activating the powers of my staff, I assumed a Deception to mimick the look of a Drow, continuing, "You see, I control the power that hid Goo's true form with my staff, and it is rather versatile in what look it can produce."

Adalon did not seem appeased, looking skeptically at me and booming, "But there are yet problems with your plan. For one, you cannot speak Drow; for another, your voice is coming from the Drow's belly."

I smiled, knowing I had outthought a dragon. "Ah, but in Drow society, a male would not likely be the leader of our group anyway. I shall leave the talking to Mazzy (as you would no doubt prefer), and I shall play the part of the mute, solving both problems at once. We will rescue your eggs, but you must allow me to do it my way."

Finally I got the reaction I had hoped for earlier, as Adalon laughed ruefully. "Indeed, you are clever, little one. I see now why Mazzy Fentan would follow you willingly, even in the company of one such as him." I looked to see which Drow she pointed at, marking the appearance and the Korgan-esque grimace at that comment; I was relieved that finally I would be able to tell who was who among my companions with their new forms.

Adalon continued, "But be warned that I will hold you to your promise, as I imagine some of your companions will as well. And you, good Mazzy, must suppress your natural instincts and act as a Drow would. As much as it may pain you, you may need to take the advice of the dwarf."

"I shall...try, My Lady; for the greater good." So saying, Mazzy made to leave and the rest of us followed her. We approached the great doors to the city of Ust Natha once again, but this time they opened for a lone sentry, who asked our business. Mazzy provided him with the information that Adalon had supplied us, and soon we were being escorted into the city. A shiver ran down my spine as the doors closed behind us with a sound of finality.

CHAPTER FIVE, PART FOUR

Immediately on entry to the city we were greeted by the harshness of the drow, as we saw a slave being beaten savagely by his master. I was not surprised to see the crusading look in Mazzy's eyes, and I sighed quietly as I 'accidentally' stuck my staff between her legs as she started towards them, tripping her. She got up with fury on her face that dawned into understanding, and I shot a look at Korgan. He whispered in her ear briefly, and I stifled a groan at the look that passed over her features momentarily; if she was going to do this bad a job of acting the part, we would be found out before too long.

But then Mazzy turned on me, and I readied myself for the pratfall as she shouted, "Clumsy oaf!" She swung above my head, and I timed my fall to coincide with when her hand would have struck my Drow cheek. With no harm done, and thankfully not a glance by the populace (for the whole drama took entirely too long, as in a play where an actor wust be reminded of their lines), we continued on. We came across an escaping slave, and Mazzy satisfied her need for good deeds by pointing the hunters in the wrong direction. I could only hope that the lie would not be discovered.

We arrived at the Fighters' Society without further incident, and sought out the drow called Solaufein as we had been told. Mazzy took umbrage at Solaufein's dismissive tone and finally acted as a drow female should, in this case by simply standing up to him and demanding the respect she was due as Veldrin from Ched Nasad. He told us that a Handmaiden already had a job for us to do, and that she would meet us on a platform near the entrance to the city.

"I tromped halfway through the city to talk to a male when a Handmaiden demanded my attention?!" Mazzy exclaimed, and Korgan nodded approvingly. "This had better be worth wasting my time." Sure enough, it did turn out to be worth our time, as the first task we were assigned was to rescue the daughter of a Matron Mother! We set off with Solaufein, but he soon called a halt. I thought at first he was going to have words with Mazzy over her tone earlier, but instead he declared that we were at the designated spot where we could interrupt the captors' psionic passage.

Solaufein began a complex incantation, though he nearly stuttered when I seemingly turned into a stalagmite. Alora and Jan hid themselves as well, while Goo did his best to give away my position by hovering around me. Solaufein's gestures ceased, and I watched as a rip appeared in the middle of the cavern and creatures began pouring out of it. Korgan and Mazzy rushed at them, with Solaufein right behind.

An umber hulk broke through and raced toward Goo, who seemed to have trouble battling in his new form, not used to being limited to two limbs. He even tried to bite the creature, which only got him a savage slash across the neck. I smacked him in the back of the head with my staff, hoping that would work as it had before, but all it got me was an annoyed look from Goo as he continued to try to fight off the umber hulk. In the end, I had to destroy it with my spells.

Korgan was carving his way through the enemies as usual, but at one point Mazzy simply froze as an illithid advanced upon her. I was busy with Goo and the umber hulk at the time, but Jan and Alora saw. Jan sent a flaming arrow into the illithid's back, and Alora sent an arrow through its eye and into its brain when it turned. Solaufein did surprisingly little in the battle, succumbing to the umber hulks' confusing gaze early on and spending the rest of the time attacking a nearby rock.

With our enemies finally defeated, I snuck up on Solaufein and tapped him with my staff, dispelling the confusion and returning him to his senses. Meanwhile, Mazzy was freeing the illithids' former captive from her bonds. Phaere, the matron Mother's daughter, showed a significant lack of gratitude for her rescue, and Mazzy seemed about to take umbrage when Korgan stepped forward speaking about the pleasure to serve. Thankfully, Mazzy fell in line.

We returned to the Drow city with Solaufein and Phaere, who lead us to the tavern. Once there she showered us with praise over her rescue, though it seemed forced after her reluctance before. Phaere told us that our assistance in her rescue had caught the Matron Mother's attention, and that she had another task for us. But first, we could have some time to ourselves, she said, and my first thought was of some time alone with Alora. I nodded to her, and took her upstairs to a room to talk.

[ April 24, 2006, 19:55: Message edited by: Felinoid ]