Orhan 1 Day 69 TE 6054

We return triumphant to Selkai in our new captured ship. Woo! We leave the magic sail with the ship where it will hopefully be put to good use. We visit our villa for a few days and do some shopping and hire some hirelings.

We prepare by purchasing four potions of HeatArmor, and wonder what to do about the disease. Rianne sends a dream to Haeraan suggesting he bring lead armor. That's crazy talk! Who would make armor out of lead? And why would it protect you from disease? Perhaps Gireg Jan knows. Well, Gireg Jan knows a few smiths who could make lead armor, but wonders about it. He does seem to remember that it was said that "Back in the first age, the lords of essense manipulated magic, and could travel between the stars, but used lead to contain the terrible power sources that propelled them through the void."

Haeraan goes and talks to Karzok, the Dwarven smith. With the inroduction from Gireg Jan, he takes Haeraan right in and asks what they need. The Dwarf is incredulous but thinks he can do it. Perhaps some thin lead plates on a leather coat? Sadly, it will doom any spell casters, but what can you do?

Eventually, we spend 100 gold and get some lead-lined raincoats. "Ick." says Oathar.

Oathar spends the last few days harassing the staff, while Imre tends to his slugs and their new eggs. Sigh.

Orhan 2 Day 14 TE 6054

We head off to peril. We grab another of our ships and whoosh to the mainland. We bring the horses. They have no raincoats.

Orhan 2 Day 18 TE 6054

We arrive on the mainland. We start treking overland.

Orhan 2 Day 26 TE 6054

We arrive at the edge of the forrest of ash. We ride in. The forest is dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. If you touch the trees, ash comes off in your hand. The ground is ash. It's pretty bad. Everything is dead. No animals.

Orhan 2 Day 30 TE 6054

We travel for a few days, and find a few streams of water. Nothing else happens. It's all dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Orhan 2 Day 31 TE 6054

We come to an area where the trees are bowed outwards, as if there were some sort of massive wind coming from the inside area. In the distance we see a large mound. As we approach, we see a giant furrow leading off to one side that heads up to the mound. The back of the mound is flat, and there's a big mound of dirt on it. The top of the mound is 20 feet off the ground. TradeWind notices that th etop fo the mound has a small depression. Haeraan detects about 15 ghosts inside spread throughout the mound.

Two ghostly forms rise up out of the ground. The form of two haggard looking humans. They say, "Go baaack! Go Baaaack!" Haeraan tells them that we *shall* pass. Haeraan wanders up to spring the trap. First he questions them. "The ghosts of ancient cursed ones lie inside!" Their leader was "Aaron, Paladin of Rianne. It was he who lead us to our dooms! We were stalwart and now we are dead. Aaron's dead body lies inside. Dead! Dead! Dead! We failed and now we are doomed!"

We pass them by. They tell us we are doomed. We start trudging up the hill. At the top is a large triangular opening with some dirt spilled inside. There's a set of doors at the point of the triangle and a set of doors set into the back. Haeraan jumps down into the hole. Nothing happens. We follow. The doors have writing in a language none of use have ever heard. Oathar casts a spell. "The language is something called 'Intergal' and it says, 'Level 5 - Shuttle Bay'. Anyone ever heard of it? "Nope."

There's a little glass button on the wall next to the metal doors. Pressing it does nothing however. Haeraan tries to pry the doors open with his manly strength and the door fly apart as if they were paper. There's a sqare empty shaft elading downwards. It leads down as far as we can see. We open the doors in the back and they also lead to a dark empty shaft.

Haeraan starts descending the shaft about 15 feet down is another door on the side of the shaft, then below that is two, and below that one, and below that one more. Haeraan gets to the bottom. Kyrik follows. Oathar follows down. At the bottom we pry open the doors and find a trapezoidal storage? room filled with moldering stuff. Through the doors are large level like machinery. On the other side is a mirror image of the same machines.

That's about it for down here, so it seems time to go up a level.Haeraan climbs back up to level 2 (counting from bottom) and pries the doors open. Inside is a corridor with many doors. We all climb back up to level 2. Checking the doors on the left we find a sort of cafeteria like area and behind that a nicely furnished dining room. There's a door to a kitchen too. We find more corridors and shafts. From one of the rooms comes a small 12 year old boy ghost with a large metal staff of some sort. The 12 year old blasts us with his staff. We attack. Imre does significant damage, and the ghost attack him next with terrible fire. We kill the ghost, and Haeraan rushes into the room it came from to lay it's little shrine to rest.

In a terrible first aid accident, Kyrik increases Haeraan's bleeding by two a round.

Deciding that this level filled with doors is probably some sort of living area and thus filled with ghosts, we climb up to level 3. Inside one room are a bunch of small vaults that are either empty or contain a dead body. We put the bodies to rest and try to not deal with any more ghosts. There end up being six bodies, five men and one woman. Across the hall we find a small hospital like area. When we walk in a small ghost woman stands up and attacks with fear. Kyrik runs away, but Oathar and Haeraan finish it off.

We search the room and find some decaying medicines. We take some alchemical chemicals.

In the third room is a bunch of clear glass coffins with windows. Some are broken and some are filled with some sort of green goo. Across the room and more doors. There's a ghost in one of the rooms with some pottery. It blasts Haeraan with a small wand of firebolts and Kyrik and Oathar take it down.

Another ghost comes around the corner and uses a wand of stat draining on Haeraan. Kyrik destroys her with a blow. We proceed and find another ghost who appears to be in the midst of some alchemical experiments. She puts Kyrik to sleep with her box. Oathar attacks the box, while Haeraan attacks her.

In the room beyond is some large cat-like creature that has some sort of blur spell on him. The cat-like thing vanishes from in front of the fighters charge, and reappears next to the mages where it attacks Imre. Imre takes a lot of damage and we finish the cat thing off.

We rush back to where our rope is and climb up to the next level. On this next level we are attacked by several ghosts, a huge man with a flaming sword, a tiger, a couple of women, and a smaller man. We engage. Teh flaming sword guy is grusome! Ack, we are being crushed. There are too many. Oh dear.

We retreat into the shaft while Oathar fills the room with stun cloud.Sadly, most of the ghosts follow us into the shaft and avoid the stun cloud. On the lower level we are surrounded by bad guys and even more show up. Imre uses his repel undead wand and explodes one. Another ghost we had somehow missed walks up and drops a magic gas cloud making box at our feet. Oathar blows the gasses away towards the enemies. Mass combat ensues as we all unload in both directions. Fate points are spent. Much damage is done. We survive the combat. Whew.

We continue searching. We go back up to that mysterious room labled "Bridge" and encounter the last four ghosts. Battle ensues again. Oathar almost blows up his head, while Kyrik appears to be working off some massive karmic debt to the universe. It's a fairly short combat nonetheless. Oh well.

We put our raincoats back on and search the ship. Lo! It is the Morningstar of Night! Black with white speckles made of High Steele. N is your level: +N magic weapon, +2N versus undead, x2 PP palidin multiplier, Holy once a day for N rounds. +N bonus to undead lore with low level intelligence, casts Repel Undead IX or Banish Demon III once a week, the handle is hollow and inside you could put something in there for boosted power.

Haeraan picks it up and we leave. Orhan is in the sky. A beam of light comes down from Orhan. It settles on the ground and after about 30 seconds, a bright light comes down the beam. It's a man in golden platemail with a hood but wings. Haeraan recognizes a High Sentinel of Rianne. He speaks. "Well done my child, you have passedthe first of your tests. There will always be tests in the future, but for now you may enjoy the fruits of your labor. You and your stalwart companions have done well."

"Weild your weapon well, for the darkness approaches and we must be vigilant. Heed the words of old. He who speaks with the voice of the ancients and has six fingers on each hand shall be your guide to the future." "Well done, you have indeed proved yourselves to be stalwart companions." We go up to 3 fate points! "Well met and well fought."

WELCOME TO 11TH LEVEL!