We landed on the island with no further
incident and I secured the boat above the tideline to ensure we were
not once again stranded. Soma and Whitmore immediately noticed an
intense magical aura to the island, permeating the fabric of
existence, and a collection of energy around a large rock towards the
center of the beach. A quick examination of the rock unfortunately
identified it as the rock on which the pirates performed their
disgusting, perverted wedding rituals. Giving the rock a wide berth
we examined the rest of the cove, finding nothing of interest. Aside
from this somewhat sheltered cove the island's perimeter consisted
entirely of sheer cliffs which we would have to scale if we wanted to
head towards the island's interior. Largely utilizing what appeared
to be the remains of an ancient road, in extremely deteriorated form,
I was able to climb up and lower a rope for my comrades to follow. It
was at this point that some of us began suffering mysterious
symptoms, most likely a result of the strong magical field on the
island. Thanks to my training I was able to simply shrug off these
effects, but my comrades were not so fortunate.
The map that the pirate captain had
given us pointed out a series of ruins on a plateau surrounding a
larger, central plateau that seemed to be the center of this ancient
settlement. We decided to investigate the outlying ruins and try to
glean some more information before heading into the center and trying
to find Gerlach. Well, and loot the place, but that's just standard
procedure for Whitmore and me at this point. The first ruin turned
out to be inhabited by these giant enemy crabs. One of them sadly
managed to grab a hold of Whitmore and shake him up pretty good.
Fortunately we were able to attack their weak points and dish out
some massive damage, and get a pretty good lunch in the bargain. We
also managed to find some magic gloves of climbing and swimming which
will come in handy with all these cliffs. The next ruin was an old
barracks building that's barely worth noting, but the third one gave
us a bit of trouble, and unfortunately Soma only added to it.
It turned out there were three
will-'o-wisps hiding out by that third ruin and they were some
downright speedy guys, zapping all of us pretty good. We were
scrambling on the defense for a bit there, but we managed to get back
on the offense and drop them. We were down to two critically wounded
when one managed to pop back up, turned invisible, and asked us who
we were and what the hell we wanted. I started trying to explain that
we were looking for a fellow named Gerlach and trying to find out
where he was and what he was doing. The wisp said they were angry
because we had started looting the place, and it only got more angry
when Soma double-tapped his buddy. Overall we were just kind of
pissed with the situation: Soma had prevented us from getting more
information about what exactly we were getting ourselves into, but
more importantly the wisps attacked us with no warning and then got
indignant when we had the gall to defend ourselves. And it's not like
the wisps could have used the gloves. They don't even have hands!
Anyway, the wisp made some vague threat about how it'll be watching
us and buggered off. Ultimately his threats proved ineffective and we
continued to loot the shit out of the place, potentially more so out
of spite now than hope for profit. The third ruin didn't have any
mobile wealth but it did have a really old mosaic dating from
Azalanti times that Soma said was worth a good amount. Whitmore
suggested instead of trying to cart the thing off of the island we
sell a deed for it to someone and let them worry about getting it off
the island. I rather liked the idea and suggested that we could even
draw up multiple deeds and sell them to a bunch of nobles and walk
away with even more cash than what the mosaic was worth. Everyone
responded pretty well to that idea and Soma went ahead and drew up
two deeds to it, although we may make more at some later point.
Finally we headed straight into the
center of the old settlement, scaling the last cliff. Although I
continued to remain unaffected by the island, everyone else was
showing strong signs and in some cases the conditions were getting
worse. We headed into the closest ruin that turned out to be a
library of some sort, with numerous books made up of copper plates
floating through the air, suspended by some sort of magic. Before we
could investigate further Meda heard the sound of metal on metal and
a number of creatures came scurrying towards us, and for one of the
few times in my life I felt genuine fear. For scurrying out of the
recesses of that library came four rust monsters, the most dangerous
foes a warrior can face. I was left with no option but to quickly
hide my greatsword in my quiver and try to dodge their attention.
Unfortunately, I was not quick enough and one of the monsters managed
to severely damage my breastplate. I was left with no option but to
flee out of the building and let Soma and Meda handle them.
Fortunately unless you're wearing metal, rust monsters aren't
terribly dangerous, and they were pretty quickly taken care of.
Whitmore was even able to use some of his alchemy to reverse most of
the damage to my armor. We also managed to find some more or less
intact books and Soma was able to glean a little bit of information.
It seems that this whole island was a research colony with an
observatory at its center, and quite a lot of research experiments
being performed. Aside from some ominous signs we weren't able to
gather much else. On the bright side, we also found an artifact that
acts like a crown of blasting, so I can sear somebody with daylight
if I really, really want to. Hopefully we'll be able to find Gerlach
soon and get to the bottom of this mess before it gets much worse.
- Krinsblag
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