My dearest sister Feanole,

Well, it's about time to fill you in again about what your husband and I are up to...we should be back in Glenzor shortly, so we'll have to see what Simon decides to tell you—and whether it matches my own (entirely true) account.

As of my last little missive, we were on Mabigon, the island next door to the githzerai's sunken headquarters. After that, we set sail through the deep, uncharted Glenzoran seas—dangerous for adventurers even at the best of times, as you know. Due to the incompetence of Simon's orcish navigator, we spent thirty-seven days on the open ocean, and I tell you, dear sister, if I never see Lord Sorceror Mikhael so bored again, it will be too soon. I must say, I was about ready to run screaming across the open waves myself! Simon seems to have been suffering from a certain amount of claustrophobia as well; he turned positively psychopathic on us for a while. Sindaraen did deserve to have a dozen daggers flung at him, but when Simon decided to throw Callous overboard to deal with the electrical phenomenon that was following us, I got a little worried. He later "tested" his Trident of Sharpness on each of us, and only his Stoneskin kept Sindaraen's head on his shoulders. Lord Mikhael was furious; he already lost a leg to that weapon once. I think if Simon points it in his direction again, Mikhael will just Phantasmal Killer him right then and there.

Our only relief from this boredom was the midday—midnight? well, we were sleeping—a daylight attack of a giant squid. And I do mean giant! It ate five of our crew members before I managed to polymorph it into a basset hound (a slight pause while I modestly polish my fingernails against my lapel....) and it joined Sindaraen's elasmosaurus-terrier as part of the Headless Elf's metamorphosed menagerie. At any rate, after we fixed the toppled mast (Lord Mikhael has some truly marvelous magical pigments!), we had turned our attention to Mending the sails and rigging when we were attacked by scrags. Have you ever dealt with scrags before? Dreadful beasties. And your sweet husband was so good at raising crew morale: "Oh, them. They regen." Sigh. Well, once again, illusions saved the day—between my extra torch-wielding crewmen and Mikhael's clever faux fireball, we managed to make them all think they were dead, and consequently make them more dead and dump them overboard.* [*One thing we need to purchase when we return to Glenzor is a glass-lined barrel in which to create acid; a "scrag-can".] Lord Mikhael and I agree, that for all Sindaraen's vaunted evocation and abjuration spells, the illusionists are the true "studs" in this group.

So what happened next? Oh, a few other minor encounters. Near the end of the voyage, those of us who had no sailing skills (i.e., Mikhael and I) were going absolutely batty. With the Metamorphose Liquids spell, we had no shortage of good ale, wine, and liquor, but the good food was all gone, and cigarettes were in dangerously short supply; Mikhael and I had learned each other's chess game inside and out, and had turned the ship into everything we could think of (not to mention torturing the crew members and the "puppies" with various illusions.) We tried getting to know the githzerai; her name is something with seventeen syllables and she has absolutely no sense of humor. We called her Ith. We discussed the creation of a "Phantasmal Voyeur" version of Phantasmal Killer—it doesn't actually harm the victim; it just allows the illusionist to learn what the subject's greatest fear is. At any rate, when we ran into the Ghost Ship one fine warm evening, Lord Mikhael was ready to go charging after it just for the entertainment value. Luckily Callous restrained him.

Anyway, we did finally reach the Island of the Illithid. And this time, we left the fighters on board** [**We did remember to Itemize the rowboat and take it with us so Simon couldn't follow us.] and performed a multiple-mage reconnaisance mission. Quite effectively, too, except that we decided that if we were in a Leomund's Hut we didn't need to set a watch while we slept. How were we to know that the savage little halflings that inhabited the island could "smell" magic? (The gods denied that they were Barbarians, but We are not fooled.) We managed to extricate ourselves from that one all right, and went back to the shore, spell-less for the most part, but successful. We let Sindaraen row us back to the ship. (It was about this time that Mikhael introduced me to some fascinating herbal compounds I'll have to tell you more about later.) We spent another day planning and memorizing, then we went in to Get the Mindflayer.

So we had all the usual precautions up (Stoneskin, Invis, etc.). The only problem was, we'd all taken spells to deal with the mindflayer, and neglected to consider the overland we would have to do to get within Dimension Door range of the illithid's throne room. Since none of us wanted to burn spells or break invisibilities, it was left to Simon to deal with the satyr scouts who spotted us. He seems to have done this with great efficiency, but we missed most of the action as he was too deep in the forest. Ith the Gith then proceeded to maul the bodies in the fashion of a natural predator while Mikhael and I went ahead (why is it that sights like this never bother the fighter-types? Or Sindaraen?)

There did turn out to be one good side-effect to our long ocean voyage. If Callous had been his usual stout self, we could not have D-Doored into the illithid's lair. The spell has a limit of 250 pounds of living creature; usually, that is precisely Callous' weight (sans armor and all). But the long diet of iron rations had reduced him to 243, leaving 7 pounds for the rest of the party. They polymorphed into jermlaine while Callous remained himself in order to protect me during the round that I would be (in Mikhael's succinct phrase) "dicked" after the transport.

This worked rather effectively—we all got in and got a round's surprise on the four salamanders and the four satyrs. One of the salamanders was a spellcaster of some sort; one of the satyrs was a shaman and a second was a trained assassin with magical arrows. Quite an intimidating situation, really. And we knew the illithid was in there somewhere—probably beyond the secret door that just had to be behind the giant throne made of silver-plated skulls. Oh, one more minor detail of the throne room that later turned out to be vitally important—in four niches around the room there were three completed illithid statues and one that was half-finished.

So...one untalented satyr fell almost immediately; the shaman wasn't far behind. I took out one of the salamanders with a Sepia Snake Sigil scroll I had prepared. Callous took two more out with damage over the next several minutes, and Sindaraen rather ignominiously Magic Missiled the last one to death (after it had been significantly weakened by its own critical hit to Sindaraen's Chill Shield.) Lord Mikhael, meanwhile, had quite efficiently Phantasmal Killered the satyr assassin, and let his own Chill Shield destroy the final satyr with the arrows of lightning bolts, and then laid down some Evard's Tentacles in the corridor which he suddenly discovered he was standing in front of.

I, meanwhile, bravely hid behind Callous' Protection from Evil and Ith's Minor Globe, and cast Spectral Forces of ice-things to keep the salamanders from further hurting Sindaraen before they were killed. (He took two Flame Strikes and a Fireball—he seemed to be the only one they could see. My bet is the Curse of the Sea Hag was kicking in.) But honestly, most of my spells were useless against the salamanders; I was mainly useful in keeping the salamander shaman (and his spells) bottled up in an illusionary ice dome for several rounds while Callous killed the others.

Anyway, by this time Simon had charged—hasted, improved invisible, and twelve-feet-tall—through the secret door to deal with the illithid who we'd roused out of ... well, let's just say he left the two women we were trying to rescue naked and chained to the bed. (Please ignore my quiet retching....) After the round he spent discovering the misjudgment factor of the illithid's Cloak of Displacement* [Ith had warned us about this cloak, but that didn't help us defeat its effect.] (an item doomed to be Simon's), the thing promptly blasted him into unconsciousness and tried to get a taste of his brain. Once more we had cause to be grateful for the "tink" of a Stoneskin, as it gave time for Mikhael and the gith to catch up with Simon. You see, we had all put up Smokesight as soon as Simon had gone in, of course, and when the room did not immediately fill with smoke, we knew there was something wrong. Naturally, the two of them were then struck with some kind of nasty Confusion spell and started acting random and confused.

But Sindaraen and Callous and I were coming closer and the illithid did not have a chance to go back to Simon for his hors d'oeuvre. The gith then got so confused that she polymorphed me into some kind of extraplanar worm—one that doesn't breathe air. Decidedly unpleasant—you should have seen how hideous the thing was!! Well, I still had a polymorph effect up from before the D-Door, so I changed back into a winged pixie (to make myself a smaller target), but at this point my true form is that of an icky worm. Un-happy! Well, I saw no possibility of affecting the fight from out in the throne room, so I flew into the illithid's bedchamber (another absolutely disgusting sight), and worked on finding the villain's displacement with my dagger before setting up with my rapier from behind.

So then the illithid gets frustrated and just mind-blasts everybody. Even with my magic and Tyr's blessing protecting me from some of the pain, it was enough to knock me out cold—and turn me back into a worm!! Strangely enough, being changed back into my "natural" form also relieved some of the damage, so I regained a little bit of consciousness as the fight continued to rage around me. Luckily (?) the gith was in front of the illithid while Simon lay behind him with me lying (unappetizingly) on top of him. So the mindflayer starts munching on her brain ... sigh—so sad to see a good friend go ... ahem: sorry, no irony here. So as I lay there gasping and barely conscious, Mikhael searches his spellbooks for something to blow off the pages, and Sindaraen gropes for something—anything—intelligent to do, Simon recovers from his stun and spears the thing with his Trident of Sharpness from below. Between him and Callous, they managed to kill it in another round or two. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief except for me, but finally Sindaraen came and Dispelled the Polymorph Other efect so I can be myself again. Thank Hanali—I'd have killed myself if I'd had to stay a worm!

So we killed the illithid, and there was great rejoicing. We stripped him and his place and began identifying his stuff. And that's were things started getting intresting ... in ways that nearly destroyed the party.

More next letter—

Lairunya