11/24/03 (Real world)

<Note: All text hereafter, except the heading, is written in a coded form of
Draconic>

IF THIS JOURNAL IS FOUND, THERE IS A SUBSTANTIAL REWARD FOR ITS RETURN TO HANREL TANNISON, IN THE CITY OF ERDAENOS

To: Hanrel Tannison
Order of the Erdaenos Collectors
Library of Erdaenos
City of Erdaenos

From: Dain Lonair
Lake of Lost Voices
2 Days Walk South of Gahanis

Re: Mission Report 7

Date: 19 Fifthmonth 1757

After a light lunch, we have entered the opening to the cave.

The opening looks like it was fairly recently engineered. Braces and supports hold it up, and those structural parts look to be about 6 months old. That would coincide fairly well with our information concerning the recent increase in bandit activity.

The interior of the first chamber was rather dark. Sniktari decided to quaff two of the four potions we recently acquired, which Iyri and Gür had previously identified as being of Beastskin, Darkvision, See Invisible, and Subtle Steps. Sniktari drank the darkvision and subtle steps potions, and silently scouted ahead in the darkness.

It wasn't long until Snik returned, a dangerous look in his single eye. He had spotted a Giant Spider, at least 10' x 10', heading our way. Quickly he returned to the first room, assuming a battle stance. The rest of us reacted to the danger as well, moving in to position, as Gür re-lite his lantern.

Snik was first to reach the monstrous arachnid, his claws lashing into its blackened and hairy carapace. Iyri launched a magically summoned mudball, smacking against its side. Not to be outdone, I charged, my new magical scimitar gleaming. The thing was so massive that it was difficult to miss it, and my steel struck home easily, ripping a nasty gash down one leg and part of the things abdomen. Gür finally charged in, and put the thing down with one mighty blow.

As the final twitches of the beast calmed to silence, we examined our surroundings. Before us stood a commanding, 30' tall statue, that seemed to be missing its head. Large outstretched hands reached outwards, each holding an orb. One orb appeared to represent the moon, and was smaller than the other orb, which seemed to represent the sun.

I noted that there were 8 pillars supporting the tall ceiling in the room, and exits in all four cardinal directions.

I began to examine the statue, as Snik scouted the exits. The south exist was blocked by rubble about 15' in. West was another room with more pillars. North was a 4-way split, with two of the four passages from there being blocked by rubble as well (North and west), while the eastern most split led 40' down to a T-intersection.

I could see nothing on the statue, besides the orbs. We decided to explore north first, and return later to the large headless statue.

The eastern split of the north wing led to a corridor and an adjoining room. The room was quite empty, and I detected several dire rat holes dug into the ground in the corridor itself.

The corridor led to a second room. This one contained a humanoid statue. It was floating silently above the ground, though the statue otherwise appeared to be very heavy. Curious at what sort of magic could cause such a thing, I moved in to investigate.

The moment I entered the room, I felt an irresistible pull. Without meaning to, I slide across the room, slamming into the statue with a metallic thud. I struggled to pull away, but the metal of my banded mail stuck to the statue with an intense adhesion.

Sniktari quickly moved into the room to assist me. Apparently, the pull against him was not as severe, and after a couple of tries he was able to help pull me off the statue. Searching this room would have to be done by someone else, as I rapidly made my way out the door.

Meanwhile, a ruckus erupted in the nearby corridor. Several dire rats had attacked. As I exited I noted three down one end of the passageway, and later noticed three more from the other direction. Sniktari rushed to one and tried to hit it, but his deadly claws for once missed their target. Iyri, however, was not so unlucky - blasting sharp stone from the roof of the passageway smashing into a rat from above.

Roksha then responded, slaying one quickly with one of his accurate arrows, while Gür backed himself down the corridor, apparently in the direction of the other group of dire rats.

Finally leaving the magnetic room, I ran down the corridor to attack Snik's target, but also missed the wily thing as it squirmed out the way. Fortunately, the rats had equally poor luck, missing us all as they tried to snap at us with their nasty, dirty teeth and claws.

Iryi threw yet another magical mudball at the creatures, but also missed. Roksha was the only one of us with any luck, hitting one with an arrow. Not to be outdone, Snik finally hit his target with his claws, a growl of delight coming from him as the rat convulsed and died.

The remaining rats all missed again, and Snik again attacked along with Roksha, both hitting their targets, with Roksha slaying his. With a massive blow of my new magical scimitar, I slew my target in one swoop, decapitating the foul thing where it stood.

Gür finally joined the battle down his side of the passageway, and had a bit of bad luck. One of the rats bit him, and he felt a burning sensation as the dirty wound was gouged into his flesh. Iryi leaped to his defense, trying to hit the rat with her staff, but missing. Snik then charged back down the passageway to help out, hit one with his claws as Gür missed one.

Noting that my allies now blocked the passage, I tried to rush around to flank the remaining creatures. However, before I arrived, Iyri killed the last remaining dire rat with her staff, ending the battle.

After the battle, Iyri went to inspect the magnetic statue, which appeared to affect her very little due to her lack of metallic armor. She found nothing, and we moved on past the magnetic room.

The next room we encountered contained a humanoid statue which was missing arms and a head. The statue had poles instead of such appendages, which stuck out like a scarecrow.

I stepped forward and began to carefully search this odd edifice. At first I noted that this statue, when combined with the prior two statues we had seen, confirmed that this was a temple of some sort, though so ancient that I did not recognize the gods once worshipped here. The rooms all had a celestial theme which was similar, but slightly different depending on the room.

Next I touched the statue, which immediately gave me an electric-feeling zap! I stepped away quickly, feeling slightly fatigued.

Gür, who was standing directly behind me, exclaimed that he suddenly felt refreshed, and somewhat healed! Amazing! It seemed that the statue was able to heal wounds, in a similar fashion to the healing abilities of Iyri. It drained some energy from me, and used this energy to heal Gür.

We noted the location of the room carefully, since we might need such a healing font in the future, and moved on (the room being otherwise empty).

Returning to the front room with the headless statue, Iryi and I began to examine the headless wonder up close. I could see nothing special on the lower section, which was the only portion I could reach, and decided to boost Iyri up on my shoulders to try and inspect the orbs personally. Once up there, she touched each orb, but found nothing interesting about them, noting that they were carved from the same stone as the rest of the statue.

She did, however, detect a faint emanation of magic from the entire statue, though of what kind she could not tell.

Deciding to move on, we traveled to the west wing of the temple.

Sniktari, as always, led the way far in advance, using his magical darkvision and subtle steps to scout ahead. After a short while he reported back that he had found several dead ends, blocked by rubble, and a pit-trap, which contained a valuable pendant, but nothing else but rubble. He also found a recently destroyed statue that, on closer inspection by me, revealed some stars on it. It appeared to have been a humanoid figure, though it was difficult to tell. What destroyed the figure was also unclear, and a search of the nearby rubble revealed nothing further.

Moving into the Northwest wing, we immediately found a room with webbing in it. Expecting the attack, we were nevertheless surprised as another giant spider dropped from the ceiling near Sniktari, and attacked! Snik was bitten hard by the thing, as Gür rushed to his defense. Gür took a nasty chunk off of it with his mighty weapon, severing a leg and biting deep into its abdomen. Snik, angered by the bite, took an even larger hunk out of it, also severing a leg. Reacting to the twin assaults of Sniktari and Gür, the giant spider struck back, again biting Sniktari. Snik let out a growl, and stumbled away from it, seemingly winded by the attack. Gür finally moved in for the kill, slaying the many legged thing with several chops of his weapon.

I went in and inspected Sniktari's wound. He said he felt weaker, and suspected poison had entered his system. Unfortunately, there was little I could do for the sibbecai, being less than an expert in the healing arts, and having no healing herbs on me.

We decided to move on, and searched the room and nearby rooms. All seemed to be empty, beyond the lifeless husk of the spider.

However, in one room I found an abstract humanoid statue. Inspecting the sculpture caused a sudden gust of wind, as debris whirled around and rose towards the ceiling. The wind was not sufficient to knock us down, however, and we decided to retreat from the area, least it become more powerful.

Moving on to the North wing of the temple, we smelled a terrible scent, as if a large, unclean privy were very close. Disliking the scent, we decided to skip the area for now, and continued north.

We came around to the main northern room, which contained three 7' tall pedestals, and three 5' tall pedestals. The three shorter ones were each carved with a different animal: a hawk, an owl, and a eagle. On closer inspection, I saw a 5' wide band of ancient runes surrounding each, which I could not read.

In addition, at the end of the room, there stood a 10' tall statue of an avian creature.

Roksha, who has an affinity for hawks, approached the hawk statue for closer inspection. He described having a sort of buzzing feeling from the hawk sculpture, and felt like it was in some way connected with him.

I approached the large avian statue, intent on inspecting it closer. As I came near, it began to glow brightly. Suddenly, the tops of the three 7' tall statues burst into flames! Gür and I were dazed by the glow, as Iyri and Roksha cried out as if in some pain, and became weak on their feat.

I rapidly stepped away from the avian, but it was too late. Both Iyri and Roksha felt slightly more clumsy, as if the flames or statues themselves had unbalanced them.

We decided to leave the area, and moved on.

Soon we came to a large mirrored room. At the end was a statue of a humanoid holding a sphere, with mirrors along the north wall and ceiling near it. Beyond it was the opening to a darkened room.

I inspected the statue, but could find nothing. Sniktari, meanwhile, entered the dark room. Soon, he exited, explaining that even his magical darkvision could not pierce the night that was contained in that room.

The rest of us decided to enter and see what lay beyond. Making our way slowly, we felt our way further into the room.

As we moved on, eventually Sniktari said he could see stars in the room. The rest of us could not, and we suspected Snik's magical vision was aiding his ability to see such stars. Snik said it looked like the midnight sky outside.

We decided to wait in the room overnight, as this was as good a place as any to sleep. We left the dark room, and made camp in the mirror room, just outside the midnight place.

That night, as each of us took our guard shift, we examined the dark room further. We found that, as it got to the point where it would be dark outside, in the natural sky, our vision began to clear. Soon, all of us seemed to have magical darkvision, and we could see the stars outside, reflected in the ceiling of the midnight room, and Iyri said she thought she could see stars reflected in the mirrors of the main room as well.

After some time spent staring at the stars in the dark room, I came upon a sense of something aiding us. I could not explain what the thing was. However, it seemed to be offering to answer a question for us, foretelling the answer in the stars.

Not sure what to think, I spoke aloud, and asked it this question: "Is Nefenr a bandit?" I felt the answer, more than heard it - No.

Could I trust this mysterious aid? Or was the answer random? Or was the answer even real, rather than imaginary? I could not know. Alas, it seems the further I look into this riddle, the more questions I have, and the less certain I am concerning my mission.

In the name, the word, and the symbol of the Order of the Erdaenos Collectors,

Dain Lonair, apprentice.

<760 experience points each party member>
<100 experience to Iyri for RP Vote>