November-something, 3042

City of Arthinon

My darling dearest sweet sister,

I'm alive!! I really didn't think I was going to get a chance to write this letter, but here I am, alive and well, victorious over evil once more! (You do have to allow me to crow every once in a while...) It's going to be a very long tale, I think, so sit back and make yourself comfortable. And I'd better end up hearing a song about this, too—I'd hate to think I've gone through all this for nothing...

Where to begin? Hmm. Where I left off, I suppose; at the inn in Arthinon, where a whole array of chaotic elements went sour all at once. As you recall, I was a little preoccupied with this little Ebrien thing, and was completely unaware that there were greater things afoot. Since we were relatively safe, and weren't expected to receive orders until the next day, and Sindaraen wasn't around to confide my problem to, I decided that I was going to go out on the town, and indulge myself in some of the finer...ah...sensual pleasures a large city has to offer.

As I left, I encountered Simon, who had a lady of the evening in tow himself. I would have thought nothing of it, but he stopped and asked me if I could change her appearance to that of Sindaraen's erstwhile lady-friend back in Glenzor—the one he's forgotten the name of. (There is a reason Sindaraen has never tasted carnal pleasures; it's called Lack of Tact.) Simon apparently intended her to wait in Sindaraen's room for a bit of a "surprise party." As my opinion of Sindaraen was less than rosy at that point anyway, I was happy to agree, and I used Alter Other to change her features before I went on my un-merry way, not intending to return until morning.

Sindaraen did return (very shortly after I had left) in a state of deep, despairing depression, and went straight to his room—only to find this disguised doxy waiting for him. From what I've been able to gather, his news was so devastating that he ignored her completely.

At this point, I think there is a little background I should share with you, to explain our little predicament. You know how I mentioned that Sindaraen had sold his soul to Skineater? Well, despite what Nicholas would prefer to believe, I wasn't kidding. He really did—sell part of it, anyway—in order to get his vengeance on the cleric-assassin who had kidnapped Femir and done various other vicious things. And, being Sindaraen, he later changed his mind and tried to find out how to make his soul whole again. Skineater apparently assigned him to find some obscure item called an "iorath seed," but wouldn't explain what it was; just told Sindaraen he'd have to do some research. And to top it all off, he geased Sindaraen not to reveal who he was doing the research for. What little Sindaraen found before he left Glenzor was inconclusive, and, well, we've been busy since then.

Remember in my last letter how I mentioned that Sindaraen visited the Temple of Thoth here in Arthinon? We had a little bit of breathing room, finally, and he figured that if anyone would have the answer to his little riddle, they would. And indeed they did.

An iorath seed, it seems, is the fertile egg of a metallic dragon.

Just like the one we'd been hired to recover.

So now, if we completed the mission, Sindaraen would be faced with the choice between returning the egg to its grandmother, infuriating Skineater, and possibly forfeiting what's left of his soul—or betraying the dragons and us, and taking the egg back to Skineater. Now, above and beyond the fact that the dragons would rend him to pieces (if we didn't do it first), don't forget that this mission of ours was intended to placate the dragons in order to keep them out of the war. If Sindaraen were to betray them, whose side do you think they would take?

As Sindaraen so succinctly put it:

So, there it stood. Sindaraen was in his room, silently bemoaning his fate while this young vixen attempted to seduce him. He was either more depressed, or more impotent, than any of us would previously have given him credit for, because he finally fled the room. So upset was he that he actually broke into Daniel's room, looking to steal the drugs that Danny had confiscated from Mikhael. Unfortunately, Daniel had left a paralyzation glyph or something on the drawer (I'm so glad he never caught Mikhael that way!). The rest of the party was only alerted when Femir called for help, after our pet disguise-expert-slash-assassin Franzel attempted to steal Sind's paralyzed body away from Daniel's room, for what purpose Erevan only knows. Daniel, Mikhael, and Nicholas went charging upstairs, with Simon trailing along behind, cheering Chaos all the way.

They sent Franzel away, then stripped Sindaraen of his magic items and handcuffed him to the wall before attempting to question him. (He had been acting very strangely, after all—and this party never trusts anyone completely.) Because of the geas Skineater had placed on him, he was unable to explain fully about his predicament, and the party, knowing only that his mind had been tampered with, and that it had something to do with the egg, called in Yomalia to see if she could decipher what was going on.

Now, there's just a wee bit more background you have to know. From what Sindaraen told me later, in between bouts of suicidal depression, he and your precious husband had made a little agreement of their own, long before we ever left Glenzor: If Simon could get his soul back from Skineater, Sindaraen agreed to run a"Soul Marathon" through the streets of Glenzor, trying to get from one end of the city to the other in one piece—with the entire GlenzorThieves Guild on his tail. This would simply qualify as Simon's usual inventive chaos at work, except for one thing. Simon also made a deal—sealed with a geas—with Skineater to retrieve an iorath seed in return for Sindaraen's soul. So even if we trusted Sindaraen to do the right thing (and we finally decided we did, since he's given us the command word to his suicide poison implant), we would have to deal with the chance that Simon himself might take the egg and run, regardless of the consequences to Sindaraen or to the war if he should deliver it to Skineater. And Simon declined to have a suicide pellet implanted at all, back when we were given the option when we joined the military. You know quite well how terribly difficult it can be to restrain your husband when he has his mind set on something; even Phantasmal Killer is not guaranteed of stopping him anymore, if we should need to—he's survived three of them already!

Therefore, when Yomalia came out after questioning Sindaraen privately, and seemed to be holding in barely controlled fury, Simon decided she was about to enact the dreaded "loose ends policy," popped the cork on his Bottle, and disappeared. Mikhael tried to follow, but quickly lost him. It took the rest of the party a while to calm Yomalia down and work out all the details of the situation themselves, and for Mikhael to find me (via Slither) and retrieve me from my night of ignorant bliss; I got the short version of this story on the way back to the inn. Yomalia finally stormed off, saying she had to "go talk to some people" about all this, and told us she would meet us at 9:00 the next night with our orders.

It was at this point that I sent you my very brief letter about finding Simon; he had taken off invisibly on his Broom of Flying, and we had no way of knowing what other travel resources he might have through his guild, so we had no idea where he might have gone. Our best plan, we finally decided, once we were assured of Sindaraen's commitment to giving the egg to the dragons instead of to Skineater, was to retrieve the egg ourselves and redeem our good name before Yomalia and the others could order us off the case and punish Daniel for not knowing things that he had no way of knowing. (The military mind—go figure.)

Anyway, we were all set to teleport off to the Saffron Hills (which, we had no doubt, contained a gate to the Lower Planes), but by the time we did contact Simon and regroup, slightly saner minds had prevailed. We decided to confront Yomalia directly instead, and demand that we be allowed to complete our mission. We accepted all responsibility for keeping the egg safe, from our own party members as well as from the Demon-kin, and she finally had to allow us to go—even if she did, rather condescendingly, treat us like irresponsible children. She also provided us with one bit of slightly reassuring information—the egg would still be on this plane, she guessed, because most likely they were performing the kind of dark ritual on it that would only work here. Lovely. She also gave us a scroll with an "Incubate" spell on it, and told us not to put the egg in an extra-dimensional space, if we could help it. Just to make things that much more difficult. Yeesh.

So there we were. Not quite as bad as it might have been with a nineteen-hour time limit, but bad enough. She mirrored us out to the boonies around the Saffron Hills, and we made our way toward Retriever Mountain, looking for information. Expecting the worst, we found only a newly-booming little townlet, building up new stores and taverns as they tried to put themselves on the map with their trade in saffron and weird local fungal products (mushroom wine—yeeuuggh!). What they said was that the local mountain fortress (once an ancient dwarven stronghold) was currently inhabited only by the kobolds they traded mushrooms with, although an adventuring party had gone into the mountain several times about five years before, then never come out again.

This seemed like a good place to start, so we got all the information we could on this party from the town mayor. She did ask that we try not to rile up the kobolds, because they were just starting to get peaceful trade going here after the skirmishes prompted by this last incursion of adventurers. We promised to try, anyway. Even managed to keep a straight face while doing it. You'd be very impressed.

Scrying on these former adventurers, we found (much to our surprise) that most of them were still alive, and were being held as slaves—with their tongues and left hands cut off. This immediately led to a huge fight within the party. Callous and Sindaraen the Neo-Paladin wanted to go get them right away, but some of us—including Mikhael and yours truly—said we weren't here to rescue prisoners and that we should just grab them on the way out once we found the egg. They had already been here for five years; another day or two wasn't going to make a difference. And why should we drag debilitated prisoners around the dungeon with us where they were just more likely to get killed? We finally argued the do-gooders out of their altruism, and just used our prison-scrying as a spot for teleporting.

The whole argument turned out to be absolutely pointless, anyway. We were supposed to be sneaky about getting into the place; you know, do some research, kidnap and interrogate a kobold or two, not raise the alarms.... But you know how it goes with a gung-ho fighter like Callous in the group—we alerted a small bunch of kobolds, who used bags of sticky fungus spores to cover us and effectively negate our invisibility, and he just went "what the hell..." Next thing we know we're fighting fifty kobolds and getting backed towards the prisoners' cells anyway. So we fought, and broke the prisoners out in spite of ourselves, and eventually destroyed or chased off all our attackers. The best part was Mikhael's illusion—he summoned up you and Brandon and Vascez to help with the jailbreak! The kobolds really didn't know what to make of the winged elf lobbing spells left and right, or the big half-orc with the Ventilator at her belt, or the death-dealing dwarf scowling at everything in his line of sight—least of all what to make of the red-haired gnome in a kilt Mik used to disguise himself with! I tell you, it was like seeing one of your old stories come to life! And Mikhael, who never wastes an illusion, kept them with us for a while after the fight; it is almost frightening how well he has your mannerisms down, F‘a. I almost found myself chatting with an illusion in spite of myself!

However, as we stood around afterwards, arguing about whether to try to find Simon (who had run off as he always did) or to just go after the Kobold King (we figured he knew where the Retriever was), we were attacked by these horrendous "Brain Spiders" phasing in from the Plane of Shadow. They're just as evil as they sound, and they have a poisonous bite that leaches "shadow substance" from your soul, or some such—at any rate, "shadow" continuously flows from your wounds, weakening you terribly, until the spider that bit you is killed. Very, very nasty—I was bitten in the chest, and went badly unconscious twice, in between gulping healing potions, before the spider was destroyed. Callous was badly bitten too.

And as if that wasn't enough, there were three Living Steels coming after us— metallic metamorphs that are almost impossible to stop. They made such short work of Mikhael's Evard's spell that we decided this would be a good time to teleport out, so we did—leaving Simon behind. We did two re-memorizations, a bunch of healing, and sent the rescued prisoners on to the nearest town on Phantom Steeds. We used the crystal ball to find Simon, except that he was still invisible (don't ask me how he managed that), so we found his Nightscar instead. It was in the dark and not moving. We sent a Letter to him, telling him to move to an open space and turn on a light so we could teleport in; nothing happened, and he didn't move. "Hmm," we said. "This is bad." So we teleported into the darkness (very scary—I don't suggest it at all), expecting the worst—and? We woke Simon up, of course. He had decided to take a nap in the middle of the dungeon.

"What?" he said. "I knew you'd come back for me."

Sssigh. Well, anyway, we succeeded in being sneaky for a while after that, following Slither to Korokan, the Kobold King. ("Ack," Mikhael said, "it's the KKK again!") We snuck all the way through a level full of priests, using every Dispel Magic in the party to defeat their glyphs. And we all had Polymorph Self up, so we kept polymorphing into smaller and smaller forms to get past their halberd- wielding patrols—we went from kobolds to pixies to bats to (finally) hummingbirds. Then we snuck through a market level, dodging scores of kobolds as we trailed after Slither, who had to stay on the ground, of course. Nothing as simple as flying over their heads for us!

We stopped being sneaky when we got to the little siege castle—this used to be a dwarven fortress, you see. According to Patwine Granite-Swimmer, the dwarven prisoner we'd rescued, it had been built by the Granite-Swimmer clan, which "they thought) had been decimated by disease—she was one of the two G-S's she knew who still lived—but she believed them to be the victims of an Intellect Devourer in the mountain, instead. Great, huh? As if four thousand kobolds and a Retriever weren't enough! Anyway, the important part is that the fortress was built by dwarves, including these little siege castles at strategic points to protect themselves from outside assault. And there were some fifty-odd kobold archers and lightning-casters waiting for us in this very strategically designed little room. And they started making mincemeat out of us. Then we rallied and made mincemeat of them, instead. A very effective battle, I must say—we were forced to discover how well we do when we actually bother to work together. Sindaraen and Mikhael, unable to see each other, cast a fireball in exactly the same spot—then each looked in surprise at their finger (or wand), going "hey, where'd that 14-die fireball come from?"

So then we went up to the next level (where Simon took off randomly again), which had all these towers with arching bridges criss-crossing the chamber—built for elven ambassadors, we're guessing. It was just another pain-in-the-ass room, though, when the Living Steel assassin started plunking arrows at us. Mikhael and I, who were already polymorphed into twin quicklings, went zipping off to find the guy; we executed twin screeching halts, then cast twin Phantasmal Killers at him. Mikhael's went off a second before mine did, but mine was the one that killed him. (Huzzah!) We regrouped with the party, then eight more Brain Spiders phased in, and I screamed. "What can I say? Between these fellows and the Jade Spiders who killed me in the Underdark, I've discovered an extreme distaste for spiders!) Sindaraen went high up in the air where he could fire his nasty damage spells at these things, and discovered—what else?—that the Retriever itself had teleported in on top of one of the towers!!!!!!!!!

Ack! Well, things happened pretty fast after that. Sindaraen scorched the Retriever with a lightning bolt. I polymorphed into a winged elf and also got up in the air, away from the spiders. Callous, Daniel, and Nicholas were fighting spiders on the ground. Mikhael started levitating, making lots of noise about teleporting into the Retriever being his best attack. Nicholas barked "No!"at him, then Daniel got bitten by one of the spiders and went down, bleeding shadow-stuff. Mikhael began shouting for Simon (and you know Mikhael doesn't shout!). Femir got a look at the Retreiver and seemed to go mad—he became convinced that he could take out the Retriever himself and went diving in for the breath attack. The Retriever shrugged it off as the pitiful thing it was, of course. Callous attempted toTurn the thing; it ignored the attempt and turned an eye-beam on him instead. He staggered, brought near death in one blow, and Mikhael screamed for Simon. Sindaraen cast a Sandstorm spell on the Retriever and did major damage, but not enough. One of the spiders phased in above the ground and clawed Mikhael (no bite, thank the gods!), and he went down, unconscious. I screamed for Simon as I swooped down and grabbed his levitating body, then dove for cover behind a tower, where Nicholas was barely keeping Danny alive. Femir swept down and attacked again as Callous struggled valiantly against the spiders. Nicholas began preparing for a teleport, shouting at Sindaraen that he'd better get there before he was finished, or he'd be left behind. I lifted Daniel into my magic closet, and shouted again for Simon, then gave my Bag of Holding to Nicholas in preparation for jumping in myself. Sindaraen, still flying above us, tried to grab Femir—but instead the Retriever turned another eye-beam on him, and Sindaraen was dead before he hit the ground. Callous grabbed his body and ran for us, diving into the closet; a second later Simon appeared, decided it was indeed time to "run away," and he and I jumped in together. Nicholas grabbed Mikhael and the Closet and teleported us all out of the mountain, leaving Femir behind to shriek at the Retriever in fury.

It was so close a call that we barely had time to think. We blew a Secure Shelter and a Private Sanctum off my books so we'd have a safe, unscryable place to rest. I couldn't believe that Sindaraen was really dead! As we all began to breathe again, Callous explained that he could use a scroll of Raise Dead to bring him back immediately, or wait eight hours to pray for the spell. The others were prepared to wait, but I insisted that we raise him right away—the longer we waited, the more Skineater might be able to do with Sindaraen's soul! Callous agreed with me, thank Hanali, and cast the spell. For a little while it didn't look like it was going to work —Sindaraen was just laying there, and Mikhael had poured me a glass full of brandy as it sank in that he might never come back at all. But finally he began to cough, and we gave him some water, then sat him up and asked what happened.

Apparently, his spirit had been delivered by a "charonodemon," or something like that, and was incarcerated in the body of a decaying corpse for his audience with Skineater. He had to negotiate his way back to the land of the living, which is why it took so long to come back to his body. He did have to give up another portion of his soul for the privilege—although he did at least get a copy of the contract this time— but he no longer has to turn over the dragon egg in order to get it back: Skineater's price is now the Retriever's soul gem.

See, it's apparently like this: usually a Retriever is kind of a big pet for some greater demon-lord, who keeps its soul/essence/whatever safe in a receptacle of some kind "a gem, in this case) while the creature is sent out to the Prime Material to fetch things. That way, even if the Retriever's body is slain on the Prime, it can eventually form a new one on the lower planes and keep serving its master. In order for the critter to stay on this plane for any length of time, however, it has to bring its gem with it, and this Retriever does have to stay here to perform whatever unspeakable ritual it is they're doing with the dragon egg. (Demon Omelette, anyone?) So that is now what Skineater wants—I begin to suspect it may be what he wanted all along, and that he just maneuvered Sindaraen (and the rest of us) to the place where he could get at it. If so, I have much greater respect for his cunning...and much greater dislike for other things about him....

Anyway, this would all be well and good if this were just another homogeneous party that was only really concerned about completing their mission. We'd keep the egg, and turn over the gem, and everything would be fine and dandy, right? Wrong. Once again, moral differences threw the party into disarray. Callous would prefer that the gem be destroyed, thus killing the Retriever forever and removing one more demon from the plane-scape. Nicholas is grimly, vehemently adamant that it be destroyed as well—he has developed a strange moral conscience about this one point. He says it would be WRONG. I think he just doesn't want Skineater to have such a powerful creature at his beck and call. Daniel's opinion seems to tend this way as well, although he's much more willing to discuss a compromise.

Mikhael, on the other hand, will do nothing to offend Skineater, or to attack him directly. He has worked long and hard to cultivate his political influence in Glenzor, and Skineater, who's pretty much next in line for the High Council (and probably has ambitions of becoming some sort of shadow King), is a big part of his network. As Mikhael says, Skineater has very big coattails....

Sindaraen, of course, will do anything in his power to prevent the gem from being destroyed, and I intend to back him up on this—this is eternal slavery we're talking about for him, if he doesn't get the rights to his soul back. And Simon, who is suddenly spouting sentiments about never turning your back on your fellow party members (and I don't think he means it in the thiefly sense, this time), is also prepared to keep the gem from falling into the wrong hands—meaning Nick's, in this case, I suppose.

What was it I said about this group raising party strife to an art form?

The party was torn by a FEROCIOUS argument between the two (or is that three?) points of view. People finally gave up, and sullenly turned to their books to rememorize, but some of us took advantage of the Closet to pull others aside for private discussions. First of all, I talked to Nicholas—I couldn't believe that someone as violently against slavery as he is would be so determined to doom Sindaraen by destroying the gem, even if he and Sind never have learned to like each other. It's just as well that we were sealed off from the others, because we ended up full-on shouting at each other. I finally fought him down to a draw—he did not trust Skineater or Sindaraen, but he conceded at last that as long as Sindaraen himself was not allowed to touch (or steal, or teleport away with) the gem, he would consent to let Daniel or Callous hold onto it until we discovered what other options might be available to us. An exhausting fight, and difficult for me—Nicholas in a rage is frightening even when it's directed at someone else—but very necessary. After that, Nicholas gradually composed himself and went off to talk to Daniel and Mikhael while I dragged Sindaraen aside and wrung similar compromises from him; as it turned out, he was angered more by his opponent's attitudes than by their caution, so that worked out all right. Everyone in this party is so proud and independent, F‘a; it's our strong point sometimes, but at moments like this it's hard for anyone to concede that party welfare should occasionally come before personal welfare, or worse, to have to admit they might be wrong!

Anyway, at long last we all agreed that neither Nicholas nor Sindaraen "the two who most suspect each other of betrayal) will be allowed to touch the gem, and that it will be turned over to Daniel (the one person here whom everyone trusts) until we can decide as a party what to do with it. Sindaraen and Simon and Callous and I believe that we may be able to drain the gem, or the Retriever's soul within it, or otherwise tamper with it so that we can obey the letter of the contract (to turn over an intact soul gem with a Retriever inside) while still "dicking Skineater over"—which Sindaraen has plainly stated is his new goal in life. We shall have to wait and see— at the point where the argument muttered itself to a standstill, we still had the problem of killing the Retriever and finding the gem ahead.

Oh, by the way, Sindaraen also discovered that his link with Femir was broken; this almost certainly means his familiar is dead, which is just prompting Sind to new heights of fury. He will get Skineater, no matter how many times it kills him.

Whew! Page eleven already, and I'm only half-done with the story! Well, pause a moment, get yourself a drink, and I'll continue.

Let's see...after that, we tried scrying on the Kobold King again, and this time we got him. No more futzing around, we decided—let's go straight to the top. So we teleported in invisibly, and once again showed what we are capable of when we're not busy screaming at each other. We destroyed the king's paladin and his six elite guardsmen within a couple of moments, while Mikhael made the rounds and kicked wedges under all the doors just as reinforcements came to help. We tried to take the King alive, but first he used some sort of Anti-Magic field that has permanently drained Simon's ex-Trident of Sharpness (much to Mikhael's relief, I must say), and then metamorphosed into some sort of Fire Elemental and turned the whole room into a blast furnace "the powers of a very nifty ring which is now in Sindaraen's possession). So we had to paralyze him and then kill him. Somewhere in there the front doors were broken open and a lightning-and-thunder-bolt came through, stunning Simon; Sindaraen and I sent twin lightning bolts ricocheting back down the corridor and killed some sixty-odd troops waiting in the hall. We unfortunately missed the shaman with the Staff of Thunder and Lightning, however—he continued to plague us and plague us and plague us...

Anyway, we finally closed the front doors again and stripped the bodies "wanting to take at least the paladin and the king back with us, but not about to throw unidentified magic into extra-dimensional spaces), then turned to check out the room. Then more Brain Spiders phased in, and the troops blew the doors open again, so I just created a simple illusion that the room was on fire (having so recently seen it myself) and covered our retreat into the Closet (Mikhael and I, the two resident extra-dimensional space carriers, remained outside as usual) and Nicholas teleported us back to the campsite where we'd parked our long-since expired Leomund's Shelter.

Safe at last, I thought! But no, there were another eight Brain Spiders and at least two priests of Demo—ah, DG—crawling over our campsite! I opened the Closet in a hurry, and Simon saved the day by leaping out with his Bottle already uncorked. We cheered, and spent the round casting the Smokesights we always have memorized, and suddenly we had the advantage. The spiders phased out immediately, and the priests, who had only seen three of us teleport in, had seven of us coming after them in the smoke. Mikhael, who still had Detect Magic and Detect Invis up from inside the dungeon, went stalking joyfully through the underbrush like some evil predator, until he realized that he'd left Danny behind unprotected, said "Ahh! What am I doing!" and hurried back to the party. (See, we'd agreed to try the buddy system and cover each other's backs—Mikhael and Daniel were natural partners, as were Sindaraen and I; though I just don't know about Nick and Callous.... It didn't actually work all that well, because we're all too used to doing our own thing during combat, but it was worth giving a try, anyway.) Sind and I did perform a nice bit of teamwork to end the thing—he cast his wicked Sandstorm spell "a variant on Ice Storm that we learned from the man-scorpion), and I, counting on the fact that they'd likely never seen the spell before, used an illusion to make the spell effect continue until they all thought they'd taken enough damage to fall down. Very neat and tidy—I don't think any of us were hurt in that battle, even though we were way down on spells and strength to begin with. It's most gratifying to take care of your enemies so handily, although we certainly seem to be going back and forth between doing the beating and taking it in this little jaunt of ours!

Well, we sat down and healed up again, and called Yomalia on the mirror and told her we had some captive priests for she and her friends to mind-f... ah, interrogate. She invited us to come back to the inn in Arthinon, which we did, gratefully. We rested and rememorized in relative comfort in an unscryable room far from the Saffron Hills, while Yomalia took our captives "both living and dead) off to be questioned. (She asked us for the prisoners and we pulled them out of the Portable Hole for her one by one: "King, Paladin, Bishop, Bishop—we'll go back for the rest of the chess set later.")

She came back shortly with information on where the temple area was likely to be (which we couldn't scry on and which was all but certainly where the egg was kept), so we scried on the nearest area we could scry on, which happened to be the hall where we'd fried all the kobolds with lightning bolts earlier. It was filled floor-to-ceiling with Brain Spider Webs—br-rr-rr-rr. Mikhael quite practically suggested that we open the portal through the mirror and throw a torch in, then go through when the webs had burned away, but Yomalia very snootily said that she wouldn't leave the portal open that long. Not that she couldn't, or even that she shouldn't, but that she wouldn't. Mikhael was furious—she wasn't even interested in discussing it. Now, Mikhael has told me that he and Daniel are pretty damned certain that Yomalia is a gold dragon, but she insists on playing the game that she's just an ordinary sixteen- year-old human girl who happens to have a lot of influence with the Flintlock Guild and the Glenzor military. But she has treated us so poorly over this whole assignment that I think Mikhael was about ready to treat her like any other snotty young lady— he was going to take her over his lap and spank her! Although he didn't, quite, he was silent as we formulated an alternate plan to go into the webbed room Wraithed, and we had probably been in the dungeon for twenty minutes before he really cooled down. Remind me, F‘a, never to make Mikhael truly angry at me—I don't think I ever want to be on the receiving end of that icy glare.

Anyway, we again attempted to be sneaky as we worked our way towards the temple; it lasted for, oh, about twenty minutes. We fought more kobolds, took more lightning bolts, had our invisibilities blown by more sticky-fungus-spore-traps—and worked our way through the outer doors to see two huge mushrooms standing in cages on the other side of a chain mesh. Mikhael almost had heart failure, but they were only shriekers. Still, I begin to see where you fellows get this funga-phobia! Well, we made relatively short work of that little area, then discovered the next bit was a straight, featureless corridor better than two hundred yards long. Being the brave, experienced adventurers that we are, we opted to Dimension Door to the far end rather than traverse it. There we fought more kobolds, took more lightning damage, and Sindaraen finally killed the shaman and took that damned Staff of Thunder and Lightning from him. It's really rather sad that it took legions of kobolds to force us to work together, but we were again rather messily effective in this room.

Until, that is, the Brain Spiders showed up again. I was mightily tired of seeing them, I must tell you. It was a hard fight to begin with, and it only got worse. Callous got bitten again. Nicholas was in the form of an invisible Draconian (I thought you said he didn't like these?), and at one point he ended up spread-eagling himself over Mikhael, who had been knocked to his back. I don't think I'll ever forget the look on Mikhael's face as three spiders tried to take their attacks on his vulnerable belly, and instead got a face full of tough draconian hide. And then Mik ended up pulling Nick's scaly head down on his shoulder so he could cast a Color Spray past him, immobilizing the spiders so the rest of us could kill them.

Sindaraen, meanwhile, was dealing with three spiders phasing in and out around him as he flew around in the upper reaches of the cavern; just as he thought he'd figured out their tactics and had the upper hand, who should appear but—the Retriever!!!! He was incredible lucky to get away alive, but he managed to get off a spectacular forked lightning bolt that killed two of the spiders and also zotted the demon, just as the third spider behind him finally succumbed to the hypnotic pull of his Scintillating Robe. Luckily, Simon popped the Cork again just after that, and the Retriever decided not to try hunting us in the smoke. Instead, we just had to deal with two more priests of DG casting Silence out on the battlefield. Of course, two of our second-level spell slots are always devoted to Smokesight and Vocalize, so none of this really crippled us, but we did use up more of our spells and numerous charges off our various wands to deal with them. Even then, we couldn't kill them; just forced them to retreat. (Although all our lightning bolts and fireballs did, apparently, seal off one of their escape routes by collapsing the ceiling of a staircase we hadn't even been aiming at...)

Once the priests had finally been chased off, we argued (again) about what to do next. I was all for leaving the dungeon—I was virtually out of spells—but others said we had to press on before the Retriever decided we were getting too close and scrapped the ritual, probably destroying the egg out of pure spite. I had to surrender, but we spent a few moments loading up on defensive spells (blowing some of them off the pages of our newly renamed "scroll-books"). We had another long, long hallway that had to be searched for traps, because, brave or not, we were not about to D-Door to the far end into a space we could not scry on. Naturally, our usual trap-bane was the only one of us who did not have Smokesight up, so I ended up taking point; I think Mikhael finally figured out that I'm not really a fighter-mage—exactly. He hasn't said anything to me about it yet, though; I hope he's not too upset. Simon told me not to tell him, so it's all his fault.

The tunnel was not as dangerous as we were afraid it might be—no spells or breath weapons took advantage of the long straight corridor, but I did end up disarming a couple of traps. After many long, nerve-wracking minutes, we finally came upon a band of runes inlaid in the walls, floor, and ceiling, and correctly concluded that we had come to the edge of that part of the complex we couldn't scry on, because it was consecrated to ol' DG. Once again, we stopped to argue about whether to retreat and port back in to this spot again after rememorizing, or to go on with depleted spell lists; even as we spoke, a lot of the spells we had cast at the start of the tunnel were starting to wear off. I honestly can't remember what decided us, but we went on in.

The corridor opened up into a maze of natural caverns, and so, of course, we followed the proper adventurer credo, and split up so we could take more damage that way. Mikhael went first with Nicholas on his shoulder, in Dark Femir form (that's a black draconette—and he nearly strangled Mik with his tail when Danny pointed out that we couldn't use our big bang wands in here or the roof might come down!). Daniel and Callous were right behind the two of them. Simon took off to who-knows-where on his broom, then Sind and I split off. Sindaraen was following his Locate Object spell, hoping to find Femir's Brooch of Shielding, thinking that's where the Retriever's lair would be. A reasonable plan, but once again things got taken out of our hands. The Retriever, having outwaited most of our defensive spells, appeared out of the darkness directly ahead of us.

The rest is a little fuzzy, but I will try to reconstruct it as best I can. Mikhael, Nicholas, Daniel and Callous were clustered together, just barely screened from the Beast by a rough, natural column of stone. First, Sindaraen and I converged on the battle site, and, exactly according to plan (!), cast a couple Malison spells, which reduced the Demon's resistance to our other spells. Someone began shouting for Simon. Sindaraen cast another Sandstorm at the thing, taking down its Stoneskin and wounding it significantly. Then I cast my Phantasmal Killer. It failed, but I learned that the Retriever's greatest fear is an Ultradaemon; file that away for future reference!

That was when Callous pulled himself up tall and cast Slay Living—Tyr was apparently serious about this battle! But that failed too, unfortunately. The Retriever then sent a lightning bolt from one of its eyestalks at the group of us; I cringed behind our scanty cover, but took enough of a shock to fall unconscious anyway. Nicholas, our ever-alert party medic, brought me up almost immediately, though he looked more than a little worse for wear himself. Sindaraen zipped around behind the lines as a quickling, keeping the priests off our backs. Scraping the bottom of my spell barrel, I tried casting a Chromatic Orb at the thing; it's just as well that I didn't expect anything to come of it. Callous, meanwhile, was fuming, and began the casting some fairly intricate spell we had never seen before.

Mikhael and Nicholas simultaneously attempted to blind the Retriever, but Mikhael's Blindness spell failed to overcome its resistance, and Nick's blinding Chromatic Orb went through the Beast's displaced image. (ARRGH!) It laughed and shot a fiery eye-beam back at Nicholas, slaying him instantly. I cried out for Simon again, absolutely certain that we just weren't going to make it through this fight, and I opened the Closet as an escape route for the party, just as I had done the last time the Retriever killed one of us. I carefully pushed Nicholas inside and prepared to hold the portal for the others, guarding it as best I could without any spells of my own.

Just then, another priest of DG showed up, and before any of us could even react, felled Callous with a single spell. Unbelievable! Now I was sure we were doomed. Finally Simon appeared and took his first swing at the displaced Retriever, while Daniel ducked forward and pulled Callous out of the line of fire. The grim look on his face confirmed for us that Callous too had been slain. Daniel firmly ordered a retreat as he pulled Callous into the Closet with him, and Mikhael scowled. You see, with Nicholas dead, Mikhael had the only remaining Teleport, but even though we had all vehemently vetoed the idea earlier, he was still cherishing notions of using it as his last-ditch heroic suicide spell, to teleport into the Retriever's head.

Then the totally unexpected happened, as Callous' last spell bore miraculous fruit. A blindingly gorgeous armored Valkyrie appeared, sword in hand, and waded into melee with the Retriever. We all blinked for a second, then snapped back into action. Mikhael cast the Feeblemind that had been part of our plan (!) from the beginning, but the Retriever was just too strong. One of the priests eyed me, and I was all but ready to dive into the Closet but, thank all the Gods, Sindaraen finally managed to Hold him. I do hope somebody remembered to kill him in all the aftermath; I'd completely forgotten about it 'til just now!

Anyway, the Valkyrie and Simon continued to hack at the Retriever with their swords, dodging flailing limb-tentacle-axe thingies, and somehow in the middle of all this, Simon still managed to find the breath to flirt with her! Talk about unbelievable... Mikhael, meanwhile, was bravely holding his ground, and cast a Confusion spell. It didn't work, but it reminded me that I wasn't completely spell-less; I still had the scroll of Confusion I've been toting around for years now. I dug it up and cast it hurriedly—and I'm still honestly not sure whether it worked or not. At least there were no more eye-beams after that. Daniel finally leaned back out of the closet, asking why we hadn't teleported yet, but rejoined the battle when we told him the tide had turned. Simon and the Valkyrie pounded on the Retriever some more, and finally drove it to its knees. One of the remaining priests—the High Priest, Jared North, I'm told—panicked and dove bodily into melee, landing against the creature's side and desperately casting cures of some sort. It didn't matter too much, in the end; the Valkyrie killed the high priest, and then Simon killed the Retriever.

Whew!

What can I say? We were, for the most part, still alive, when I thought we would all be dead, and we succeeded in killing a demon. What can I say?

In the aftermath, the Valkyrie turned to us and asked where Tyr's priest was. We wobbled for a moment, afraid she might just take his soul off to Valhalla or wherever, but Mik was right—we didn't really have any choice. We brought his body out of the Closet, and she said a few words about his bravery, brought him back to life, and disappeared. It's really too bad Callous missed seeing her fight; she was a truly magnificent warrior. I can't really blame Simon for being entranced by her!

We took a few moments to strip the bodies of the priests and the Retriever (ick! Simon did that), partly because we were afraid of leaving items behind to be re-used by the one or two priests who were still hiding out there, but mostly because we're greedy. But as Mikhael's fond of pointing out, the military sure as hell isn't paying us enough for what we've been through. Do you know we used over a million gold worth of scrolls on this mission? That's not even counting the potions and the charges off our wands. We'll be lucky to get a twentieth of that back from our finds here.

Well. Having regrouped and healed up as much as we could, we set out to find the temple and the egg. Sind continued to try to find Femir by locating his Brooch; and we followed that since, again, it seemed as good a plan as any. It did not lead us to Femir, but did end up dropping us right at the front door of the cavern that was, apparently, the heart of the temple. It seemed to be abandoned—a huge, round, echoing space, with about a dozen concentric circles carefully laid out on the ground in several different kinds of metallic powder. In the center of the chamber was a circular dais topped with a hemisphere of angry, pulsing red light. We looked at each other.

"Egg?" we asked.

"Egg," we answered.

"Get it?" we asked.

"Later," we answered.

So, believe it or not, we parked ourselves there at the front door of the temple to rememorize, and to allow Callous to recover from his on-death's-lap experience. We still could do nothing about Nicholas, other than worry. After a great deal of tired, calm discussion (no arguments this time!) we decided to D-Door onto the central dais, thus avoiding the problem of breaking the concentric wards altogether. Dispel Magic on the glowing dome, and worry about the rest from there. Agreed, we slept and rememorized while Simon and Callous kept watch.

We fully anticipated further resistance from the priests, but they may well have left the mountain (or the continent, or the plane) once the Retriever had been killed. The rest was almost anti-climactic. Mikhael, Callous and I D-Doored in uneventfully, with the rest of the party riding in the Closet for safekeeping. We dispelled the dome, revealing a ragged, noisome shaft in the center of the dais that went down into the floor. A horrendous stench rose out of the hole, and on closer inspection, we saw that the sides were lined with dismembered body parts—mostly kobold—covered with this evil- smelling slime. It was just as well that none of us had remembered to eat recently! Luckily, they elected me to hold all the extra-dimensional spaces (since the hole might be one, for all we knew) so I didn't have to go in. It was unlucky for Mikhael, though, and Callous, who went along to protect him. They climbed down into a slightly larger pocket, also lined with this disgusting wallpaper, and found the egg and several chests. It took a bit of maneuvering, Sindaraen's Ring of Telekinesis (remind me to tell you the story of that ring sometime) and several Itemize spells, but we finally got everything, including Mikhael and Callous, out of the Retriever's nest.

Hmm. We were all really tired by that point. What else? We tried calling Yomalia, couldn't get through, concluded we had to get back out of the consecrated area first. It seemed like a much longer walk going this way... Oh, and we did finally track down Femir. He was indeed deceased, but apparently some of the kobold shamans had been performing some sort of experiment on him designed to turn him into a quasit. Very unhappy—Sind is more determined than ever to come back to this place and scour it top to bottom, and I think I'll be more than happy to help.

Finally we reached Yomalia, and she brought us back to that same little inn in Arthinon, almost drooling over the egg. (Simon, by the way, was seemingly too tired to try kidnapping it for Skineater; he said later that it had crossed his mind, but just didn't seem worth the effort.) We were all a little incensed by the way she imperiously seized the egg to take back to its grandmother before even asking about our casualties. She left behind free meals, rooms, baths, opera tickets, etcetera, as if she expected this to placate us, but she just doesn't get it. Yes, we can be a sinfully decadent party, and we are sometimes swayed by various luxuries—but not when a fellow party member is still awaiting resurrection, and the rest of us are nursing all-but-mortal wounds. We all agree with Mikhael—Yomalia has made herself persona non grata around our camp.

Well. Well, well, well. Nicholas was finally resurrected at the temple of Diancecht; the rest of us received whatever cures and restorations we required, and we have been allowed to indulge ourselves in luxury. I've been writing this letter from a very soft bed, a very hot bath, a very fine restaurant, and another very soft bed, but I think I'm finally finished now. If there's anything important I forgot, it will just have to wait for my next letter.

As for our future plans, well, the military hasn't provided us with their options yet, but I think our first item of business is going to be to go back and rescue the Saffron Hills villagers from the—oh, I did forget that part. During some of our reconnaissance, we saw some kobold war parties leaving the mountain and heading for the nearby human towns. We sent Letters to warn the townfolk, but I imagine we'll have to go back and take care of it ourselves.

After that, we (some of us, anyway) intend to clean the mountain out. We think the Intellect Devourer was either destroyed when the demon moved in or captured in the Retriever's Iron Flask—which now belongs to Callous, of course. But there are still somewhat less than four thousand kobolds there, and the Living Steels, and whatever else. We're considering turning the mountain over to your pal Brandon as a coronation present—what do you think? We're already planning to give him the intelligent-dwarven-axe-with-an-attitude we found as a wedding present. (Hey, you may be out of the loop on this, huh? Brandon finished his Glory Quest, is marrying a dwarven princess, and is en route to his coronation as King of the Dwarves—I sure hope you got invited!)

Speaking of items, be frightened—be very very frightened. Your husband came up with the Staff of Thunder and Lightning. It's low on charges, but even if he can't find a way to recharge it, the amount of damage he can do... just be frightened. Oh, and do you want to hear the irony of ironies? After spending the entire dungeon fending off those terrible spiders, my share of the magic turned out to be a Cloak of Arachnidia! I almost refused to take it, just on principle, but maybe Sind can use it as the lining for the peacock-feather cloak he's promised me. I simply can't imagine wearing a plain black cloak like that everyday anyway. I mean, really!

There were a handful of other items we distributed, of varying levels of nift; a few unknown (extra-planar?) gems in the Retriever's "jewelry" that may be worth a bit to the right collector; and quite a haul of other gems, coin and jewelry. The mithril-and- jacinth crown leads me to believe that this was probably the hoard of the old Granite-Swimmers, but I really don't care—it's ours now. Maybe we'll negotiate turning the crown over to one of the two clan survivors; I imagine its sentimental value to them is higher than its monetary value to us—Gods know none of us would be caught dead wearing the thing!

Anyway, once the mountain is taken care of, then, if the others are still willing and the military gives us the time, we'll deal with that—pardon me—that bitch Ebrien and her frost-men down in Doracha. The story got spilled to Mikhael and Nicholas, you see, after they brought me back to the inn at the beginning; they demanded to know why I had taken off, but how was I to know all heck was going to break loose that night? Anyway, once they heard the story, they all said they would help with this, even Daniel. Maybe you're right, and they do value me a little more than I had thought...

But all that can wait for another letter, another day. I'm going to—oh, wait! We did get the soul gem, too. But we haven't figured out what to do with it yet.

Okay, now I'm going to close up this letter—I may have to send it by Special Post just for the weight allowance! But at least now you'll be all caught up on my life; I feel like I haven't had time lately to draw a full breath, much less write you properly! I certainly hope life is a little less hectic on your end; please take a few moments to write back and reassure me. I look forward to all your letters, and they'll be especially welcome as we recuperate from this last little adventure.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Laurie