Orhan 5 Day 38 TE 6060

We fret about our wishes some more.

As Orhan rises, we begin the wishing:

• Oathar 1 - I wish for a second identity. Completely verifiable, and not mystically detectable as me. (And vice versa.)
• Haeraan 1 - I wish for good health and good fortune for my mother and my true siblings.
• Imre 1 - I wish for more self discipline and empathy for Simon.
• Alynna 1 - I wish for 15 ranks of the Lore Mastery spell list.
• Kyrik 1 - I wish for a laen lens. (It works! His sword gets really gross.)
• (Darren 1 - I wish that the next large military operation that I'm involved in will be highly successful.)
• Kyrik 2 - I wish for an increase in my innate mana capacity.
• Alynna 2 - I wish my MA strikes and sweeps do twice as much concussive damage as they do now. (She hurts herself while stiking now.)
• Haeraan 2 - I wish troops under my command will never break. (+40 Morale bonuses for any troops I lead.)
• Oathar 2 - I wish for a little book of maps to pirate treasure.
• Imre 2 - I wish for Xenium!!!! (A note to claim Xenium appears in his hand.)
• (Darren 2- I wish for a long, happy, and fulfilled life.)
• Imre 3 - I need to save mine until we get home.
• Alynna 3 - I need to save mine until we get home.
• Oathar 3 - Makes a self control roll and decides he requires no further wishes.
• Haeraan 3 - I wish for the good solid loyal commander for Santa Vallanda.
• Kyrik 3 - I wish for an increase in my ability to master and modify the parameters of spells. (+15 spell mastery.)
• (Darren 3 - He wishes for a nifty set of magical equipment. Camo-boots, armor, helm stuff etc.)
• Monko 1 - I wish for a super delux backscratcher.
• Tradewind 1 - I wish I were always dry.

Done with our wishing for the evening, we camp. Regular watches.

Orhan 5 Day 39 TE 6060

We head off back on our quest. We intend to ask some local tribes about mushroom shaped rocks.

Orhan 5 Day 49 TE 6060

We travel north for a week. On the horizon we see two figures (on horse and camel) at the horizon. Be alert tonight, but their a bit too far away to get to us tonight. During the second watch there seem to be a bunch of figure heading off into the foothills.

Orhan 5 Day 50 TE 6060

We follow them into the hills. Around midday, we come across an encampment with two bunches of tents and horses and camels, etc. Darren identifies it as a tribe meet. Darren leads us down to the encampment. Some horsemen ride out to meet us. We are told to halt.

Darren translates from their native tounge. Only Darren understands them. It's all very confusing. We head on down. There are mostly women standing around. It's kind of unclear.

There are several old men sitting around in the center of the camp. Darren goes and bows and starts talking to them. There's discussion of what's going on here. Very strange. There's apparently some sort of intertribal marriage here, and the bride and groom were supposed to get married today, but last night they disappeared. So both sides are pretty grumpy about the whole affair. They guess they went up into the hills.

Darren asks around on the bride's side and discovers that it was an arranged marriage and they barely knew each other. The groom's side thinks it was true love.

We head off to find them. Tradewind scouts but can't really tell people apart real well. So Imre flies up to search as well.

Imre uses his vast powers to determine where to go. Darren says, "Oh dear. Why are we going to the City of the Dead?" We all sigh.

Kyrik tells us that it's from one of the races of the interregnum. Their civilization died out. They were pretty advanced. The city of the dead. Darren explains to the old man about our suspicions, and the whole tribe breaks down into tears. Oh dear.

Darren volunteers our services. We are off!

We leaving true a bunch to get to the pass. Haeraan does some tracking to see if the kids have come through here. Sigh, it seems there are horse tracks coming through here in the last day or so. Looks like one horse. Let's go check it out. Haeraan checks. The horse is lying on it's side. Hmm... Haeraan thinks that the two kids took the remaining horse into the city of the dead.

We heal the lame horse and tether it to a tree and then head down into the city of the dead. Down they go. Yup, this sure is the city of the dead. Night falls.

Darren shouts for Aziz and Jahena, but nothing appears. Except a growl. Then the shuffling.

It begins. (Vampires incoming.) Imre and Oathar area affect blast various zombies and skeletons while Haeraan and Kyrik go for the vampires. Alynna valiantly resists their mind control attempts. At least the first time. We are victorious.

There is a big open yawning hole in the ground. Of course, the tracks lead into the pit. We encounter a pit full of spider skulls. Haeraan pushs forward with his aura and they part a little so we manage to get through. Meanwhile helicopters show up and shine lights on us. Yes helicopters. Haeraan tries to keep tracking. There's a passage and several doors.

We head back to the main pit to try and shout out for Aziz and Jahena again, but the flying helicopters shoot Darren with a net gun.

Imre tries to divine their location and he decides that the helicopters probably caught them. So we head back out to get caught be the helicopter. They catch us and then descend into the pit where we pass through a shimmering iris (similar to the anti-teleport field) which opens and then we are taken further down. Way way down there's a giant landing area and then there are iron golems who point guns at us and gesture for us to follow them. We follow. Down here, Haeraan finds no enemies. That's good. A fair ways above the iris apparently is where the undead are stuck.

Down here we are marched off and there a lot's of very odd looking machines. Big helicopters and metal flying carpets with seats. Other machines everywhere too. We are taken to a jail cell with two people inside it. We've found them. The kids explain that they ran into the city of the dead because they were goofs. They've each been bitten once by vampires. Imre tries to give them first aid for vampirism.

Then we escape from our cells with shortdoor, (confirming that we can't teleport through the main shield), and start exploring the complex. We're in a maze of twisty corridors all alike. Listening at doors, some of them have whirring sounds, others have voices (same inscrutible language of the dead race). This goes on for a while until we fire Kyrik as advance scout and promote Haeraan. Haeraan finds us a pair of really big door. One has the heicopter sound behind it, and another has some odd sounds behind it but we are not sure. Haeraan shortdoors through the other door and encounters several iron golems wandering around. Luckily he's invisible.

Haeraan explores. He finds one room where a robot is testing a bunch of iris controllers. How convenient. He steals one and jumps back to us. We search around an find a vault door. Inside we find an armory. Alynna grabs a blaster pistol and two batteries, setting off an alarm. We flee the armory area.

We make it outside and attempt to steal an aircar. Sadly, there's an engine and stuff like that but six spherical depressions. Sadly, some golems come over, Alynna freaks out, and melee with golems begins....