Day 23 – New life

From the diary of Vida Pankhurst

Fungi and Cruelty must be thrown back into the void. Only then can All become Nothing and He rule supreme.

The next day I met Pearl by the stables as planned. Overnight she had scribed a scroll of Raise Dead for us. I took this back to our camp where it seemed William had kept its occupants awake all night with his illusions and tricks. That is one of the reasons I bloody hate gnomes! It's hard to believe gnomes and dwarves are cousins....however bloody distant. My kinds are too bloody stuck up and bigoted, whilst gnomes are flippant little gits. Maybe the gods should burn the bloody lot of them and start again...or is that her influence that is making me think like that.

Haunting by these thoughts I set out to do as much as possible that she would not approve of...starting with bringing Joe back to life. I chanted the divine prayer upon the scroll and pleaded with the goddesses and gods of Oerth to release Joe's soul from their care and place it back in the vessel of his body. They headed my call and after putting on a bloody impressive light show, for the benefit of the beautiful Mae, Joe was brought back to life. Did he bloody thank me though!? Of course not! I could dance on the edge of the void for these bloody men and not get a modicum of gratitude from them. And what really takes the nugget is that Mae still went off with that dumb blond giant Taki anyway.

Still intent on doing some more bloody thankless good I set off into Nulb, taking the newly raise Joe with me. The others stayed behind with Fillian who was using his powers to identify some of the magical devices we had discovered in the temple. Joe and I went to the house of the cursed half-orc blacksmith that attacked Ugg last time we were here.

Now that morning I prayed to might Joramy to give me the spell needed to allow the half-orc to cast off the cursed sword that held him in its power.  I took Joe with me because he was of a more...well lets say chaotic persuasion than my other companions, and I reckoned the sword attacks those who aren't, like Ugg. This was a bit bloody risky though because if the Remove Curse didn't work the sword might make the weapon smith attacks us anyway. But no one deserves to be the slave of a dark power. Be they dwarf, half-orc or bloody monkey. No one!

So he answered his door and I wasted no time in casting the spell. To my intense relief he cast the blade away and it embedded itself in the roof of his smithy. Now the bloody dolt started thanking me a little too much for freeing him of this curse! How typical of man of his kind to think that the only reward a woman could want is his company in the bedchamber! I obviously declined and let the insult slide... after all he has been through quite a traumatic experience. I allowed him to fix the crossbow string on the magical crossbow I discovered previously and asked him how he came to possess the sword in the first bloody place.

It came as no big surprise to learn that an agent of the temple had given it to the poor creature. A wizard called Falrinth! I made a mental note to smash this man's teeth in should I encounter him on my travels! Back at camp Fillian had identified most the items we had pulled from the statues...three quarters of which turned out to be bloody cursed! My crossbow, however, is an enchanted heavy crossbow of Speed that I intend to put to good use!

Leaving the company of Taki, William and Mae we decided to sleep for the night in the tavern before going back to the temple.

Day 22 – Day of the dead

From the diary of Vida Pankhurst

Existence is pure futility

We awoke and felt a lot bloody better and exited the caves. There were a few ways out of the circular grotto almost like the hands of a clock. We took a corridor that led us past an intersection. We followed the sound of running water and discovered another fountain. There was nothing to raid here so we proceeded to the east and came across a hall that was to be our doom.  I remember the initial bloody shock of seeing a small blue dragon perched in the chamber with a beholder, fire giant, medusa, mummy, ogre mage, wight and some sort of demon thing I’ve never bloody heard of with the head of a tiger. Thankfully they were all statues and so we entered and had a look around.

Each of the statues held an item of some sort. Including a box, scroll tube, spear, crossbow (missing a string), a deep black cloak, a staff, a ring and an urn. Fillian cast detect magic and revealed that they were all magical. So being the fools that we were we decided to nab one each; I went for the crossbow! Suddenly bright wisp –like creatures flew from the walls and one attacked each of us with bolts of electrical energy. The bloody things seemed impossible to hit with my war hammer and so I summoned my ring of blades again. Both Sameson and Joe were knocked out and so Fillian, Ugg and I were left battling the orb shaped creatures.

Two of them kept sapping at me and it was all I could do to stand within my ring of blades and call on the power of Joramy to heal myself. Finally they fell to the spinning blades and Fillian cast down the others with his wand of magic missiles. Quickly we healed the others and decided that since we had vanquished these guardians we deserved the treasure. First we gathered round the box which the blue dragon statue held. An odd bloody compulsion came over us to put our most powerful items within the box. I couldn’t stop myself putting Lareth’s phylactery inside. Then the box swallowed them all up and gave us a single gem like thing in return. At first I was miffed at losing the item but then it’s probably best to be rid of something sacred to Lltoth, no matter how useful it was.

The gem had the symbol of Obad-hai on it, so Sameson took it. The dragon statue had a place to put it into so Sameson did and out popped some sort of odd figurine of a badger. Seriously all that for a bloody toy badger!

Then I decided to take the crossbow and nothing bad happened to me. If only my companions had been so lucky. Poor Joe, may he rest in peace, took the medusa’s cloak and put it on. Only it was a poisoned cloak and he was struck dead where he stood. There was nothing we could for him but take his body back to Hommlet and hope they can resurrect him. Foolishly, the men decided to continue raiding the chamber first and Fillian set off a magical trap whilst liberating the staff from the mummy statue. He was struck completely blind!

Bloody marvellous! Now we have a blind mage and a dead thief. Not thinking we were in enough trouble Sameson took the urn from the wight and shook it. Toxic fumes burst out sickening us and causing us to enter coughing fits loud enough to wake the dead. Sure enough as the fumes cleared three figures stepped into the room….   

Luckily for us the gods seemed to favour us for it was none other than the beautiful Mae with two of her followers. One I recognized from the bar room brawl about a week ago...some tall blond haired other was a gnome magic user of some type. I bloody hate gnomes. They always seem to think they have an amazing sense of humour that can only be satisfied by playing asinine tricks on people. This gnome was no exception. Mae introduced him as Winolin and the other man as Taki.... Noticing our current plight they offered to take us back to either Nulb or Hommlet where we could seek out help. Remembering Pearl's offer of assistance some time ago we agreed upon Nulb.

I got lumbered with having to guide the bloody elf whilst Ugg picked up Joe's body. With Mae's help we made it out of the temple and back to Nulb. Ugg decided to wait in the woods with William, a blind Fillian and Joe's body: he didn't want to risk another fight with the cursed half-orc weapon smith you see. Sameson wanted to go speak to that bint mother Scareng, so I went looking for Pearl on my own. I found her in the tavern still disguised as a pole dancer to fool the bar keeper, who we now know recruits for the Temple of Elemental Evil.

I gave her what I hoped passed for a salacious wink to these pig men and she approached me and agreed to meet me in a room upstairs. In there I told her of Joe's passing and she agreed to help us this once if I met her by the stables the following morning.