Orhan 2 Day 9 TE 6051 (Continued)

Having seen D. kidnapped right out from under our noses, we follow Imre's advice and start a pursuit.

Haeraan tracks our quarry while Imre heals Kyrik a bit. After an hour or so, we notice that there is one of those strange bird man things hovering above. It appears to be following us or perhaps our target or both. Haeraan recognizes it as one of those things he saw land at the college in the middle of the night. We assume that perhaps it is helping so we ignore it for now.

After a further time we see that the tracks we are following lead right up to these desert men in robes. We discuss how to approach them as the tracks seem to go right between them. As we get closer though, Imre notices that they are an illusion just as Jack discovers we ar ebeing slowly surrounded by six guys. We get a moment to prepare and then they pop out of the ground and attack.

Haeraan and Kyrik take theirs out in the first round. Jack yells to keep one alive. More combat ensues. Haeraan tries to take one his with a whip. Imre helps out and sleeps that one. Jack sleeps a second, all the rest die.

Jack spends a lot of time and power points questioning them. We were chasing the Black wizard. The mutated one is in charge here. The cave beyond is essentialy a cache. These guys and the 35 or so more inside (10 of them mutants) are here to guard supplies for the mutant army, and the army of the man from the South. There are guards around the cave too. He doesn't know who their actual supreme leader is. They had orders to come down here. He thinks there are only two spellcasters inside, the Black wizard, and a priest of Scalu, the dark god.

We mount up and go forward towards the cave. After a few minutes we are spotted so we charge the rest of the way to the cave. At the cave we are pummled by arrows in the first round. We counter their ambush with a terrible stun cloud, forcing the fight to the wings. We fight our way in. We mostly clear out the outer lobby of evil.

Taking a moment to breathe, and, heal, we wait for the cloud to clear and charge the rest of the way in. We find the fools who retreated from us earlier, and after trying a couple of doors we find D, having already escaped and taken down a guard, in combat with a mutant. The Black wizard apparently went out the secret door in the back while she was doing this. We smash the mutant. We save D.! But her stuff seems to be missing. Sigh.

Haeraan finds the secret door. He checks it for traps. We assume the Black wizard has fled. of the three other prisoners, Eric objected when they started sacrificing children to the dark gods. There's a quiet guy that won't talk and a mutant who we leave. D. figures out that he's riding away on his horse.

We get the remaining guys to surrender. We interrogate them a whole lot.We find all of D.'s stuff except for the headband. They are from Soralis. They tell us of the evil temple deep in the hillside that we should go destroy.

We argue for a while if we should do anything about the dark gods. "But Jack! They're bad!!!" We go down and check out the temple. We ask Vallondra, and discover that disturbing the ritual is even worse than letting it go off, so we leave...

Orhan 2 Day 19 TE 6051

We get back to Gryphon college. We bring Eric and the prisoners. Anton greets us. Anton looks at Eric and is shocked. He comes over and says, "Well Your Highness, I didn't expect to see you here." "I'm travelling incognito. Shall we talk elsewhere?" We get called into a teaching room. Eric says he's sorry for not mentioning it. He's Prince Kier Ianis of Hellisa. He was looking for the sea drake artifacts and wanted to search around Zor. So he enlisted in the army, but then couldn't stay silent when the sacrifices started. Anton thinks we now have a new quest.

Welcome to 6th level!