I'm sorry that I've taken so long to reply, but your letter had difficulty finding me. Since I recently suffered a moral setback, my ring of protection and immunity to disease stopped functioning, and I ended up trading it and another item for a scarf of nondetection. As a result, spells that need to locate me in order to work are held in abeyance until I remove the scarf. Your letter just barely escaped a fatal drenching in the bath.

I suppose I should be wary of corresponding with you, since we're officially on opposite sides of the Glenzoran War, but as it happens I know virtually nothing that would interest the elven high command. Nevertheless, do me a favor and keep this missive to yourself. While I'm not currently expecting to live long enough to be court-martialed for high treason, why take chances? It's possible I could mention something here that would cost me my head, or at least my commission ... but more on that later.

I expect you have heard that we managed to rescue Lord Austrellis' wife from the mind flayer Orothoth without any party casualties; quite a change from our previous adventure! Lairunya acquitted himself quite well. I like your brother; he's obviously the rational member of the Telperin clan. I admit that I had reservations when he first joined us on the ship and I learned he was your relative and Sindarion's best friend ... but as it happens, he's pleasant company and one of the few civilized adventurers I've met. He and Sindarion have taken a house together (I'm not sure how to explain this lapse in your brother's normally impeccable taste), but while it's being remodeled he's been staying in one of the spare rooms in my house - Sindarion opted to stay in an inn. He just couldn't bring himself to say the "magic word." I'm tryuing to teach Sindarion his manners - finally he's learned how to say "please" and "thank you," and use calling cards. Your brother's trying to teach him the fine art of romance, but Sindarion's not doing so well on that front, having a tendency to forget about his girlfriends for extended periods of time.

Did Simon tell you that we finally mapped out our extradimensional cube? Turns out the thing is 'Dumir's Fiery Monastery,' consecrated to the firegiant god Surtur. There's a library, some sort of temple, living quarters, and a forge that taps into hell ... three fire giants were there forging armor and weapons and being overseen by barbed devils and a pit fiend. The other two sides were storage spaces. Naturally, we left the devils alone - thank Zed we didn't have Callous along! I've refrained from mentioning the devils to him. He'd want to do some damnfool thing like banish them, and probably turn Morshasha into a widow and Scorn into an orphan in the process. Really, it's for his own good.

Since I'm not comfortable leaving the thing in my basement lab any more, I'm thinking about selling it - either to the conjurer Skineater, or the gold dragon Yamalia (I figure she'll buy it just to keep me from selling it to Skineater). Simon seems amenable, except when he wants to reconsecrate it to Zed or give it back to the giants in return for fighting the elves, but Callous is balking; he wants to explore it himself, and of course I've put him off. Do you have an opinion, as part owner?

Oh, guess who else has shown up? Nicholas is back in town again. Actually, I received a letter from him some time ago, but he just arrived (why he chose now to return to Glenzor, I have no idea). I put him in the room next to Lairunya (with, I admit, a bit of malicious amusement). Letting the two of them stay was putting me at a bit of risk, since harboring elves is patriotically questionable right now, but I managed to come up with an ingenious solution to the problem. We enlisted in the orcish army! We're the "Scintillating Company" now - the name was your brother's inspiration, I should add. (Hmm ... this information might be confidential, although I don't see why - it's not as if we're a discreet unit - but maybe you'd better destroy this letter when you're done, just to be safe). Lairunya, Sindarion and Nicholas designed the uniforms, which I colored black rainbow, chromatic and scintillant. Your brother insisted on epaulet braid. Nicholas refuses to wear the company outfit, so he's just the cook (necromancers are always so dull).

Actually, I have an ulterior motive for enlisting. Everyone 'knows' that I joined the army to earn military recognition - a prerequisite for wielding political power in the orcish nobles' circle. Actually, they all vastly underestimate my fear of death. The only reason I joined was that Danny was sent to the front, and I simply don't have very much confidence in his sense of self-preservation. He gets carried away and runs into danger when the wisest thing to do would be to retreat (fighter mages! I think they get hit on the head too often during sword practice and forget to think things through). Since seeing his decapitated body has joined watching the draconians torture Nik and Callous on my top ten list of nightmares, I figured he'd better have someone there protecting him while he's busy being a hero. We managed to get the Scintillating Company assigned to his battalion, and just to make sure everyone was together, we "requisitioned" Callous! Poor Danny ... I don't think he ever expected to be held responsible for the actions of a pack of loose cannons like ourselves! Of course he simply assumes we showed up to make his life miserable. I won't tell him the truth - he can get very touchy about being watched over, the gods only know why (I would be complimented). But this time I'm not going to let him die.

I suppose it's not a very big breach of security to mention that I outrank most of the others, but report directly to Daniel (it's not as if you elves haven't been spying on us for weeks now!). So far I've managed to keep the group fairly disciplined, although Sin is up to 120 lashes for insubordination, to be applied whenever we can manage to catch him undefended. Callous and I hold the same rank, so - as usual - we get to fight about protocol. At least we aren't arguing as vehemently as we did after killing Orothoth ... Callous and I weren't talking for nearly two months afterwards! It was just a case of mi - well, forget it, you know how he can get. But I did make an honest effort to work things out! I even went so far as to apologize to him - twice - but of course the pig-headed cleric wouldn't accept my apology until it suited him. You know, after all these years and all the times I've hauled his holy ass out of the fire, you'd think he'd finally trust me. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother!

I really would be telling too much if I described our first mission. Let's just say that, with my usual dire predilection for accurately predicting the absolutely worst outcome that could occur, I correctly foretold both who the traitor was, and what realm he had betrayed us to. Your brother managed to notice the act that sealed the traitor's fate, so rest assured that he's staying on top of things. Callous geased the traitor to tell us his plans, and unfortunately for him, he mentioned that one of his directives had been to turn Danny over to the Underdark. (I wonder if that was supposed to be kept secret? Oh, well, I know you're no ally of the Underdark.) Anyway, I was gratified to find out that most everyone else in the group is as protective of our erstwhile commander as I - Callous wouldn't let us kill the traitor out of hand, but I'm afraid the turncoat suffered quite a few small but painful mishaps on the way back to camp. Naturally, he was finally executed - far too mercifully, as far as I'm concerned.

Since you know about the Underdark, I might as well go ahead and tell you that our next mission is to 'deal' with it (I'll skip the details of our orders - suffice to say that I asked our superiors if they wouldn't like us to take over the Ninth Plane of Hell while we were at it). Callous and Danny have both been reassigned to aid us. I was going to try to convince the Glenzor government not to send Danny, since one of our enemies' goals was to kill him, but then I realized that all that would do would be to cause trouble. The administration would think I was criticizing his ability, and Danny would be annoyed at me for preventing him from championing the cause of good, etc. etc., so instead I just bit my tongue and stayed quiet. Both Sindarion and I have quietly agreed to keep a close eye on Danny and Lairunya while we're below, so you needn't worry too much about your little brother; one of us should always be around to protect him.

Still ... you know those hunches I have sometimes, the ones that usually turn out to be true? Well, I've got a really bad feeling about this mission. I've been lucky all these years, but now I'm finding myself disconcerted by having people in the party that I care about ... I can't concentrate on my own survival when I'm worrying about someone else's! I just have this premonition that I'm not going to walk back out of the Underdark, and with my poor health, if I die, I'm not coming back. That's why I've taken some time out this evening to write you; I've already dealt with updating my will and writing a few other letters that tie up loose ends. We're a few days away from the caverns to the Underdark, and while you'll be able to find me if you need to - I gave Danny my scarf for the duration - I'd prefer you didn't, because we're being escried regularly by both the Underdark and your own army, and it's very distracting. If I live I'll write again and tell you how it went (at least, as much as I'm permitted to tell) - and otherwise, I'm sure that Lairunya will send you a note. Try not to get captured when the orcs win the war!

Mikhael