Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Episode 2

Things have changed.

The Liberators paired us up with an elven Sorceror named Zalan, and around dusk we went to a gully outside of town, as instructed by the Liberators, and found it guarded by a pair of men with a longsword and a spear. Regrettably, there was no time to parley and we were forced to dispatch them both. Soon after the fight, a bard named Alon joined our group, perhaps because he was an elf, and our group had the highest concentration of elves he'd likely seen in years.

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I was running late, and wasn't actually here for this part of the game. That's why it's all exceptionally vague.

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Inside the tunnel that led beneath the city and to the keep where the sorcerer was hiding, we found an altar to Nehrun, the god of evil. And soon after, one of his monstrous minions found us. A choker began to fight with the party, and when I arrived around the corner (having been lagging behind the rest), it almost immediately grabbed me around the neck and began attempting to drag me up the wall. Zalan blasted it with an arcane missile, but the creature barely even noticed. Then Fenrir swung his sword at the beast, cleaving through its arm and slitting its neck in a single blow, leaving the monster dead. It seems I've been demoted from leading the group into battle to providing distractions. For Fenrir.

The alter had a struggling deer atop it along with two small canals. A riddle directed us to slaughter the deer and pour its blood into one canal and take the bleeding corpse of the choker and pour its blood into the other. When we did so, the room lit up and one of the smooth, obsidian walls slid open.

Moving through the tunnel, we discovered two things. First, we were now in the heart of the city, just one wall away from the castle. Second, it was now broad daylight. It was dusk when we entered. Having no immediate answers for this, we decided to scale the wall. I climbed up first to check to see if it was all clear and found the castle deserted. I turned around and found Falric had somehow scaled the wall without my noticing, while meanwhile the bard scrambled upwards with ease, Fenrir and Zalan following with a bit of difficulty.

After searching the ramparts, we discovered yet another hidden passage, which led us into another tunnel. Fenrir went in first, and lit a torch for myself and Falric. We followed him in, along with Zalan and Alon. Once inside, a ghost appeared before us, skeletal, cloaked in black, and holding a scythe. It beckoned us towards him and, drawing our weapons and advancing cautiously, we followed. It led us into a temple to Nehrul, in the far corner of which was a dragon caged, and in the center of which was a massive throne, presumably for the god himself, with Nehrul's symbol emblazoned upon it. The ghost vanished.

At the top of the dais upon which the throne sat was a sorcerer, working his magic. I pulled my sword out and slung it over my shoulder, so that it wasn't immediately threatening but still ready for use, and advanced towards the sorcerer. As I approached, he noticed me and turned around to greet me. "I am not who you think I am," he said, "And if you wish to kill me, I won't stop you. I've plenty of treasures to steal, and I'm sure the Liberators will be grateful. But if you've any good in you, hear me out instead."

"I never trusted the Liberators," I said, "What can you tell me about this?" I turned my gauntlet upward and exposed the talisman to him, and can't really remember much for the next few minutes. According to Fenrir, I fell to the ground writhing in pain, which I remember vividly, along with the voices of the dead kings crashing through my mind. When it cleared, the sorcerer was kneeling over me, having evidently done something to keep the powers of the amulet at bay, though for how long I'm not sure.

We spent some time questioning the sorcerer. Evidently, something is wrong with the timestream in Tolmra. Time is far too malleable in that location, and as such multiple different time streams have sprung up. The sorcerer is seeking to sort this out and put an end to the two consistent threads throughout all the time streams: the Liberators, and a plague of undeath. The only lead he has on this, is that several hundred years ago there lived a man, whose name changes from one story to the next. He lived in the desert at the north end of Tolmra, but the exact location also changes from story to story. We need to find him, and bring him to the sorcerer.

I am not one to be daunted by long odds. While I questioned him for more information on this man we were supposed to find (the sorcerer had nothing useful to tell), Fenrir asked details such as what the sorcerer had been doing and why he'd taken up residence in a temple to the god of death (the answer to the first was experimenting with the time stream to find out why it was so malleable, and the answer to the second was convenience). Zalan was more concerned about getting out of the place alive, and wasn't too keen about running off to another time, possibly never to return, in order to find some man he'd never heard of before, but I told him if he killed the sorcerer and tried to flee back to the Liberators, I'd kill him. Alon wanted to kill the sorcerer just to be done with it. He was off playing a tune in a corner, thoroughly bored with everything. Falric, meanwhile, was poking at the skull emblazoned on the massive throne.

Ultimately, we accepted the sorcerer's quest and took what wealth he had to offer us, which was no small amount. Unfortunately, however, I will have to save our journeys into a different time for another day, as I am very tired now, and need rest.

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