September 13th, 3043

City of Glenzor

Greetings!

Well, against all expectations, I am once again alive and well, back in Glenzor. I apologize for not writing to you earlier, but it has been a somewhat hectic month or so—this is the first chance I've really had to breathe since Brandon's wedding in the beginning of August. And where were you during that festive occasion, my dear? I can't believe you would miss such a stunning event! I thought you said he was a dear companion of yours...? Well, believe it or not, your taciturn little dwarven friend gave me a hug to pass on to you; he was very sorry you couldn't be there.

We arrived in Brandon's little hold weeks early, of course. I don't know why the military thinks we would be taking our favorite real horses behind enemy lines when we have Phantom Steeds. At any rate, we were allowed to sample/endure a couple of weeks of dwarvish merry-making, which is, I think, more than enough for any sane humanoid. Especially when the entire vale was overflowing with visiting dwarves from both sides of the family. Brandon was fretting about where he was going to put them all when the wedding was done—it'd take twenty years to enlarge this delving enough to hold all his new relatives. But the party continued, fret or no fret; the tales were very tall for such a short people, and the ale flowed freely. The wedding itself was almost anti-climactic, it was over so quickly. However, the gift-giving ceremony was all we could have wished for. We presented Brandon with the intelligent axe we picked up in Retriever Mountain. Then we gave him the mountain itself. There was a delicious moment of stunned silence, and then—well, let me tell you, Fea, I don't think I've ever felt anything quite as gratifying as a ten-minute standing ovation from an entire Great Hall packed with dwarves. Now there's a people who know how to show their appreciation. (Of course, now Brandon has to figure out how to get all his people across the ocean to Parthenon...last I heard, Simon was conferring with him about the possibilities of an undersea tunnel....)

Needless to say, the parties became even more enthusiastic after that, and most of us were not quite prepared to saddle up when our dearest quartermaster attempted to wake us the next morning. I don't know what other spells Nick had to dodge, but I do have a hazy memory of trying to Web him, and some absolutely vile substance he forced down my throat... I'm told he got exactly what he deserved for suggesting an egg breakfast to Simon, though—and you know, even clean cantrips can never quite get the smell of vomit off your boots!

Anyway, we did manage to get ourselves back on the road, and headed for Pa Dorg, where we were to meet the new member of the Company. Oh, wait, I have to backtrack a little—there were a few important things that happened before we left Glenzor. First of all, we were called to the palace for a briefing with SkinEater, FluidStreamer, and PainDealer ( a few of our favorite) people). They told us more about the mission at hand (kenku village, minotaurs in a ruined castle, high-level illusions, possible links to the rakshasa, blah blah blah). But then they started talking about personnel. First of all, Sindaraen was reassigned to a ship off the western coast, working with two of our drow "allies" to rid the coastal caves of morkoth (remember those nasty things we fought under Slaughterhouse Canyon?) Sind was less than pleased by the arrangement, but after the debacle in Belgabass, the Company'd already discussed a leave of absence for him.

Then they told us Callous was being sent to the front lines, and we all got a little upset. First of all, Fea, he's just getting too old to be out in the thick of battle; he's in his forties now, and he's got a son and two more babies on the way—well, none of that matters to an orc, least of all Callous, but it matters to us. Then FluidStreamer started listing our choices for another cleric to take north with us. One of these was Larb PusPool, Callous' second-in-command at the Temple of Tyr, and suddenly Callous was leaping up to attack FluidStreamer! Skineater quickly dropped him with a spell, but then FluidStreamer kicked him in the face while he was down, and Mikhael and Simon were on their feet leaping to the attack as well. Sind and Nick and I were a little less sure of ourselves with all our so-called superiors in the room, and sat frozen, but only some skillful maneuvering by Daniel kept the violence from erupting further—I know Mikhael, at least, had a Phantasmal Killer at his fingertips.

Well. Callous was hauled off to his temple, and FluidStreamer and SkinEater finished the briefing with somewhat less grace than before. SkinEater gave us a large gem which was apparently enchanted to work like an Iron Flask against the rakshasa, and instructed us on its use while I quietly worked on undoing FluidStreamer's belt with the Ring of TK. Finally we were sent on our way, but unfortunately Daniel was asked to remain behind, so he was present (and held responsible) when the door was closed behind us and FluidStreamer's trousers suddenly fell to the floor....

I do feel guilty. I don't know how much my little stunt may have contributed, but Daniel was sentenced to fifty lashes for our insubordination, and Callous received a hundred and twenty-five for attacking a superior officer. I really hate this part of the orckish military—this need to beat the living daylights out of anyone who stepped out of line. But we all showed up in full dress uniform to watch them take their lashes, and stood at attention the whole time. (Though Nicholai had the audacity to dose himself with laudanum—to keep himself from attacking the Whipmaster, he said later through gritted teeth, but I still think it was in terribly poor taste to do so while Mikhael was standing there suffering, forbidden by Daniel himself to dose himself with anything stronger than brandy.) At any rate, we did at least arrange for Larb to be present to heal them both as soon as the ordeal was finished. Unsportsmanlike, perhaps, but then, the Scintillating Company has always had its own brand of honor.

We did finally find out why Callous reacted so badly—he's quite fond of Larb, and feared that our current assignment was going to be a death mission for someone less experienced than he... (and yes, we all thanked him for the vote of confidence. Then again, we do have a rather bad record for keeping clerics other than Callous alive....) In addition, with both Callous and Larb out in the field, the guidance of Tyr's temple would be left in less-than-trustworthy hands, and Callous has certainly become politically savvy enough in his old age to recognize that ploy.

So, we were left with only one choice—to take their other offered pawn, a cleric of No Cha named Torg, who is of roughly the same rank as Callous. Now, I have no problem with gods of thievery in general, but since No Cha became the state religion the temple has become rich, powerful, and thoroughly corrupt. (Simon says they're way overdue to be absorbed by the church of Zed!) It doesn't take a genius to guess that they've got their fingers in every plot going on behind the palace gates, and we were less than thrilled to take on a spy in our midst. Torg career had been stifled by some of PainDealer's machinations, so we had some sliver hope, at least, that he was not a tool of our enemies, but we kept a Very Close Eye on him nonetheless.

We left the next day, after collecting our magic bracelets we'd commissioned from Eyesore the Enchanter. They're quite lovely, actually. They're all slightly different in design, but each has a different colored gem for each of us, which glows or flashes if we are in trouble, badly injured, or dead. And it provides each of us with a permanent Nightscar effect, visible only to the others wearing the bracelets, so we shouldn't have to worry anymore about losing each other when dealing with invisibility or doppelgangers or any other nonsense like that. They're very richly made—we'll definitely have room to add on other enchantments in the future, if we ever manage to pile up a couple hundred thousand in the Bank of Glenzor again. We left the Crystal Ball with Sindaraen, and the Flying Carpet with Callous. That way if any of our gems should suddenly light up, Sind could scry on us to find out how bad it was, then teleport to Callous, and they could get to us in fairly short order. (Ah, contingency plans....)

So we rode overland with very little incident (except the night that Simon parked us in a Stone Giant's playground, and we discovered that Torg had Eyes of the Basilisk he hadn't thought to mention to us...); attended Brandon's wedding, (the military was hardly going to forbid us that!), then continued on to the little coastal town of Pa Dorg somewhere around the 20th. There Sindaraen was sent off with many fond farewells (that's irony, dear sister) to his ship full of orcs and drow. And a day or two later, we were introduced to our other forced addition, the aerial scout Cassia Vesellos. Now, strictly objectively, I must tell you she's a striking figure of a woman—very tall, very sleek, with white hair down to her shoulders and satiny amber-colored eyes. She's a Zeus worshipper from the mountains of Parthenon, and she has an intelligent giant eagle named Akilina as a steed and companion; they've apparently been "bonded" since Cassia was very young. To make her doubly effective as a scout, she's also got a saddle that can turn the both of them invisible in the air, and goggles that serve as Eyes of the Eagle—meaning she can do an effective scouting mission from five thousand feet up. Oh, and she has a +4 longsword. (Sigh...no one ever makes +4 rapiers....)

Once we were all acquainted, the Glenzoran command used Lord Arawn's mirror to pick us up from Pa Dorg and transport us to the wilderness near the kenku village, way behind elvish lines. We settled in and began scouting. The set-up was fairly simple: a gorge running through the forest, a ruined keep at the bottom of the gorge, and a kenku village on a promontory directly above the keep. Simon scouted the village, and Mikhael and Cassia and Torg checked the gorge. We actually spent several days in reconnaissance, trying to decide on some sort of plan. This was really somewhat difficult; usually, we just scout until something happens, then leap into the fray. This time, we were good enough that nothing happened—no alarms went off, no patrols were alerted—so we actually had to come up with something brilliant. The keep was obscured by a "Mirage Arcana" that was renewed every eleven hours, which meant that we were dealing with at least a thirteenth-level mage in there somewhere. We hoped that was the rakshasa himself—if he had henchmen of that level, we were more Doomed than we had thought! Anyway, mirage or no mirage, Torg's "Commune With Nature" spell gave us some limited information on the inhabitants of the area: minotaurs of course, and some kind of elemental, and lurkers and trappers (I'm sure I saw Daniel shiver), and a handful of unknowns. Mikhael and Nicholai did penetrate part-way into the keep, but retreated when some sort of shadowy cloak-shaped thing spotted them as Mikhael dropped out of Wraith.

We finally decided to go down and deal with the canyon, since we knew we didn't want to fight the kenku. We knew from our briefings that they are generally pacifists, but that they can be damned nasty when they do decide to involve themselves in something. Which is, of course, what they decided to do when we headed for the gorge. We were intercepted at the rim by a courier (who seemed to have no trouble at all detecting us through our invisibilities and protections -- someday we'll actually fight an enemy that's actually fooled by our magic.) and politely invited to come speak with one of their elders, and old hen named Nikita, or something like that. Daniel and Cassia and I went in, while Mikhael tagged along in cat form as Daniel's familiar. Nikita was apparently not fooled by this, and kept addressing remarks to him anyway, which he steadfastly ignored. She asked us only a few questions, but they were odd ones, such as "where's the jester?" and other such nonsense. Supposedly she'd had some sort of vision about the Scintillating Company coming to deal with the rakshasa, only her vision had included Sindaraen (the jester), and possibly Callous, and she was very perplexed that we might have gone forward without them.

She did answer a few of our questions as well, but she was as frustratingly enigmatic as any druid I've ever met, and seemed quite good at running us around in circles. Mikhael became more and more infuriated, and gave her a good lecture when she finally convinced him to drop the cat form and talk to her, and was still ranting when we were finally released and went back to camp. Unfortunately, this means he bit Nicholai's head off when he started asking questions. Nick took it badly, and the two of them spent the next several days in a sulk, snapping at or avoiding each other, and generally behaving like brats. Gods, Fea, save me from the company of touchy mages!

Anyway, we went on to deal with the minotaurs at last, and made short work of the above-ground guards around the keep—even the flying toad-beasts with twenty-foot wingspans. We took the usual damage, but the only one who had any real trouble was Torg, whose Eyes of the Basilisk didn't seem to help him much. Then, however, we began receiving spell-fire. Simon and I found a corner filled with magical darkness, and dispelled it, only to catch a brief glimpse of a shadow-creature sliding back into one of the crumbling towers, leaving a trail of darkness behind it like a snail's slime. We finished off the last of the minotaurs, conferred, rememorized, then went in after the creature. Fea, save me from long straight hallways! We were blocked in by a trap, then attacked by minotaurs, half of which were illusionary. It was a chaotic fight, which I don't remember all that well; I just remember that Simon heard Mikhael shout "Illusion!", decided all the minotaurs were illusionary, and waltzed through a phalanx of real ones without taking a hit before disappearing deeper into the dungeon. Typical, you say? Well, he still never fails to amaze me.

We caught up with him shortly, as he had caught up with our shadowy foe, and it screamed some sort of magical, nerve-rending shriek that left Simon prone on the floor, gagging and half paralyzed—but still crawling forward inch by inch, just as he had when dosed with the Dust of Sneezing and Choking. Simon's nothing if not Determined! We helped him recover, then pursued as Daniel filled us in on the creature. He believed it to be a Cloaker, a distant cousin of both lurkers and trappers, but infinitely smarter. Intelligent enough, in fact, to become a high-level mage, which is rather frightening when you consider all their innate abilities— the paralyzing scream, creating darkness at will, shifting to the Plane of Shadow....

We continued forward, but on high alert. Finally those of us in front were confronted by the Cloaker-Mage, while Nicholai lightning-bolted the three lesser cloakers who came up on us from behind. Finally we chased the Mage off again, then retreated to rest and rememorize. We must have captured a minotaur or two, because we got more information on the complex...oh, that's right. We fought a few more minotaurs and another flying toad-beast on our way out, though the ugly beast did manage to get its grotesque tongue-siphon thingie into Daniel's chest before Torg finally turned it to stone. Removing the petrified tongue was very painful, but all Daniel said (through gritted teeth) was, "Next time, Torg, turn it to stone before it attacks your commanding officer...."

Our minotaur captives spilled their guts about the underground levels (no, no, we didn't spill their guts, we don't do that sort of thing). The first two levels seemed to be mostly obstructions, so we opted to Dimension Door right down into the main chamber on the third level, where the minotaurs said their 'god' appeared. If it was the rakshasa, we'd be fully memorized and prepared, and if not, at least it was bound to be the biggest threat in the place. So we bypassed the minotaurs' maze completely—much to their dismay, I'm sure—and went straight for the gold. I stood there befuddled for a moment while the rest surveyed our foes: eight or twelve minotaurs, two ice elementals, and a Night Minotaur guarding a shimmering blue portal on the floor. (If you haven't met one of these—be glad.) The Company swept into action. Hasted, Cassia impressed everyone by hewing minotaurs left and right. Nicholai worked mostly at healing and defending Daniel, who took more than his fair share of hits, while Mikhael sealed the doors just in time to stop reinforcements from joining in. Simon destroyed one of the elementals. Torg did some preliminary sparring with the big black Night Minotaur, but it's hard to attack them directly because they have a permanent aura of electricity around them, and any damage you do to them will arc back to you in a devastating lightning bolt. Meanwhile, I kept my eyes open for the Cloaker Mage—and cast Phase Trap to keep it on the Prime Material as soon as it showed its thirty-six eyes in the room. It resisted the magic, but fled, suddenly realizing that we could affect it as badly as it could affect us. It appeared twice more, and I cast the spell twice more—once off a scroll and once out of my books—and although it continued to resist, at last it was frightened enough of me to stay away for good. Finally, just as it looked like the minotaurs and the ice elementals were history, Simon lunged out of nowhere at the Night Minotaur, knocking them both back through the portal. Instantly, Simon's (orange?) gem blazed on our bracelets, indicating that he was dead. After a moment of panic (at least on my part), we realized that they probably wouldn't guard the portal if it led only to sudden death, and that the odds were much better that he'd just gone to another plane, where the magic of the bracelets couldn't find him.

Nicholai tried lowering a rope, but it came back severed—an effect of the portal, we thought at first, but on closer inspection we realized that the rope had been frozen solid, then snapped off. Brrrrrr!