Orhan 5 Day 15 TE 6053

Having penetrated to the core of the Vuln'gor Spiral, we now see a couple hundred yards away is teh black dense core. Next to it, on a small hillside is a skeleton lying with a black jewel around it's neck. Oathar thinks it's a bit bigger than man sized. We spend a long time staring at it, building up the courage to attack.

We prepare for a great fight. Haeraan reaches forth and pulls the chain with the evil jewel free from the skeleton. The freed head and skeleton start sinking into the ground. We feel a strange sense of forboding. D. hears about 20 skeleton rising up from the depths. Haeraan thinks they are class III or IV. We regroup at the edge of the pack. Well, all of us except Vallandra that is. She seems to be walking slowly towards the darkness of the core. Haeraan and Kyrik go to pull her away but misommunicate and play tug of war with Vallandra.

Combat ensues. After a couple rounds Vallandra snaps out of it and rejoins the fight. The battle continues. Slowly, we begin to gain ground on them as everyone plunks away at the skeletons. After casting some haste spells, Oathar turns into a mad parrying machine. D. and Imre float out of range so they start chucking the bones of their fallen comrades.

Finally, they fall. Haeraan starts burning bones. Imre does some healing. After making some will rolls, we make it most of the way out. We come to a farm house, but we decide to pass it up. Pushing past, we wander in to the deserted wilderness just in time for nightfall. Oathar summons a couple of tents and people sleep peacefully through the night. Yay!

Orhan 5 Day 16 TE 6053

We spend the morning thinking about wells in the mountains and decide it must be an oracle up in the moutains we know of about 200 miles or so away. (In the spine of Emir).We head out!

Orhan 5 Day 31 TE 6053

We travel in the mountains. Whew! It's cold up here! Not so great a trail, but we persevere. Suddenly, we arrive at the cave of the oracle. We stride forward with out lights.

We find a couple of stone crowned figures sitting on stone thrones at either side of a stone archway. Haeraan thinks we need to make an offering. He decides to offer the evil black gem.

There are lot's of creepy runes inside saying useless things like, "The past is the present is the future," and "The oracle awaits."

We drop the creepy stone in and hear, "Your offering is accepted and well given. What do you ask the Oracle of Syne?"

"Oracle of Syne, I am on a quest and the next place before me is a place of evil learning, and I desire to know how to get there."

"Seek the walls of bone in the stinking swamp that lies to the sunward of the city of gold."

Our scholars think perhaps it refers to Ardania...For the last few years, a man calling himself Alderaan has founded Ardania, claiming to have reestablished the Emerian empire, and he seems to have unlimited coffers of gold which he is using to rebuild the city. He claims to be the actual emporer. We notice that Logor swamp is to the east of Ardania.

We try to think of things to ask but don't really come up with any so spend a little time to get a reasonable (10% failure) teleport lock.

Orhan 5 Day 32 TE 6053

We head out.