Adventures of Krinsblag: Divine Intervention

We prepared our assault on the Pathfinder vault and broke into the Guild building after hours, sneaking through Amavor's broken window and distracting the guards through our ability to disguise one of us as Amavor. Utilizing the bells and dimension door we managed to get everyone into the vault and started investigating the rooms. I must say, this vault security is kind of annoying because the location of the rooms kept shifting around. Basically everyone but Meda wondered how in the hell the Pathfinders found anything in this damn vault. We checked a few rooms, mostly bypassing them because they contained cursed items or in one of them a couple of furies which we would have rather not tangled with. Eventually we did find one storage room containing a few interesting items, including the Manta Lord cloak I had sold, which I immediately looted. At one point we even got trapped in a maze spell, which I was able to break with my Iron Heart Surge, and resulted in us going toe-to-toe with a couple of minotaurs. Which, by the way, aren't terribly bright. It was actually kind of entertaining watching one of them charge me and basically throw themselves onto my braced spear. Finally we managed to find a room populated with gold statues, all of which appeared to be in pain. We immediately put two and two together and found a golden scimitar at the end of the room, which we immediately approached to loot.

And of course, the scimitar mysteriously was picked up and disappeared into thin air, implying an invisible person had just stolen it. We heard a slow clap and found Amavor standing behind us. He proceeded to go into some villain banter which Meda engaged him in. I was personally beyond the point of caring and didn't say anything. Eventually Amavor's invisible servant delivered the scimitar to him and Amavor decided he had enough of the witty banter and ordered some golems, which apparently none of us noticed when we came into the room, to murder us. Amavor walked off, leaving us to die horribly.

As we really didn't have a chance in hell of fighting off two golems and apparently an inevitable as well, Soma's immediate reaction was to leg it, followed by Meda. As Whitmore was a little slower on the uptake I decided to keep a path of retreat open for him, going straight up to one of the golems and smacking it with my warhammer. If nothing else it made me feel slightly better about myself and helped buy Whitmore time to get out of the room. Personally I'm kind of surprised I didn't go down fighting. I mean, yeah, I got pretty beat up there, but I was still okay. We finally got everyone out of the room and we slammed the door shut behind us, relieved at the sound of deadbolts sliding home.

We headed back to the entrance of the vault and the wayfinder teleported me back into the Guild building, where I was treated to Amavor running away like a bitch before he threw a fireball back into the building. I managed to avoid most of the damage, and I must say Soma must have prepared a ton of dimension doors today because he not only got everyone else out of the vault, but also teleported into the building, grabbed me, and teleported back out to the front, resulting in us walking away from the ensuing explosion like a couple of badasses.

In the following panic, we managed to slip away and headed back to Festivus's tavern, to discover not only Festivus there, but Palaveen, the cleric from No Fun, and Winifred from the Island of Fuck You as well. Needless to say we were a little confused and when they told us that things hadn't exactly gone to plan, I responded with a “No, really? Amavor running off with a legendary sword and the Pathfinder guild exploding into flame wasn't in your plan? Who the hell are you guys anyway?” To which the three sort of looked at each other and then transformed, Festivus turning into Cayden Cailean, Palaveen turning into Asmodeus, and Winifred turning into Nethis.

Gods. Fucking. Damnit.

- Krinsblag

This ends the current Adventures of Krinsblag. Next week Kalpar's D&D group will begin playing the pre-written adventure path Wrath of the Righteous. For those that are interested I may decide to chronicle the adventures of my new character, Sir Wilhelm von Koenigsturm. Until next time, friends. 

Adventures of Krinsblag: Robot House!

These past few days have been a bit of a blur, what with the binge drinking and ultimate frisbee on the campus quad. However, I did attend a few classes with Meda and learned a few things from Tandem. Well, and a few through independent research, but some progress is better than none at all. We had noticed a rather annoying amelodic chiming of bells that occurred at random points with no real rhyme or reason coming from the second floor of Pathfinder U. Meda asked Tandem and he gave some bullshit answer about celebrating a new artifact being discovered by the Pathfinders, but Whitmore claimed it was far too often for artifacts of true importance. I decided to go upstairs after class and investigate the bells, poking a couple of them to see what they did. Nothing terribly interesting happened until a man appeared, carrying a rapier. I tried to pump as much information out of him, but with no real success, resulting in me getting dragged off by campus police. Whitmore, however, noticed my plight and was able to sneak up and look at the bells later on, and was able to figure out the order they rang in, as well as noticing it seemed to activate a portal that lead to what we assumed was the Pathfinder vault.

As all of this was going on Soma managed to break into Tandem's office and stole a few items, including Tandem's Wayfinder, which Festivus had told us allowed Pathfinders to access the vaults. Soma decided to also experiment with the Wayfinder, putting different Ioun stones into the slot resulting in interesting effects. But when Whitmore put a stone in the slot the Wayfinder exploded, which, needless to say, was not according to plan. Soma was able to craft up a replacement Wayfinder, but held off on putting it in Tandem's office.

In class the next day Tandem was a little....irritated to say the least. He went into a very long lecture about responsibility with magical items and demanded to know who had stolen his Wayfinder, which was now missing. As Soma had decided class was beneath him, he wasn't there to return the Wayfinder, so we got treated to a boring-ass and mostly made-up lecture about a poem that totally wasn't the secret key to opening the vault. Except it was. Man, they have terrible security. After class Soma had managed to put the replacement Wayfinder in Tandem's office, and we decided we should try to steal Venture Captain Amavor's Wayfinder next. I gathered a couple of my bros for a frisbee game and “accidentally” threw the frisbee through Amavor's office window. As expected, Amavor stormed out of his office, swearing and leaving the door unlocked behind him. This allowed Soma to slip into Amavor's office and quickly search for Amavor's Wayfinder while Meda kept lookout and Whitmore kept an eye on Amavor. Soma didn't manage to find anything we could use, but Whitmore noticed Amavor kept his Wayfinder on him at all times, meaning we'd have to obtain one from someone else if we hoped to be successful.

After everyone had left campus for the day, we broke back into the building and rung the bells in the proper sequence, opening a portal. Soma went through and performed a quick reconnaissance of the vault, confirming that we needed a Wayfinder to even begin looting the hell out of this place. Unsure what our next move should be, we decided to wait until tomorrow and see what the day would bring.

Tandem had found Soma's replacement Wayfinder, but informed us that despite it being a very good Wayfinder it was not in fact his because it lacked the appropriate clearance codes. This did not, for whatever reason, stop him from giving us each our own Wayfinder to mess with. (Granted, these were without any security clearance so I suppose the threat was rather low.) By a random coincidence the combination of my Ioun stone and the Wayfinder I was assigned resulted in me being able to use disguise self at will, albeit limited to only three disguises. Seeing an excellent opportunity I chose Amavor as one of my disguises, as well as that Corrister fucker, and a generic nondescript disguise. I briefly considered getting into all sorts of shenanigans, but my party members suggested I use my Amavor disguise to get Hewron's Wayfinder. I will say it was a little dicey considering I'm not the best at convincing people, but I managed to get Hewron's Wayfinder by admitting there had been a security breach with the vault. Hewron said he would be keeping a closer eye on the vault and would let me (i.e. Amavor) know if he noticed anything strange. I think if we're going to pull this job off we're going to have to hit the vault tonight, before Hewron gets even more suspicious.

- Krinsblag 

Adventures of Krinsblag: Did We Just Join the Pathfinders?

Today has been an....interesting day, to say the least. Not necessarily "Oh gods, oh gods, we're all going to die!" interesting so much as "What in the Nine Hells just happened?" interesting. Although it may turn into the former kind of interesting soon enough depending on what will happen.

To start off, when we finally woke up from our epic bout of binge drinking the night before, Whitmore was still far too hungover and was unable to head into what passed for a town around here, so we went off to sell and exchange loot for other useful items. We spent a couple of hours haggling in the marketplace, getting a few items that Soma couldn't craft himself and obtaining the various ingredients Soma required to make a couple of Handy Haversacks and odds and ends. Although I was rather sad to let go of the manta ray cloak, I figured we wouldn't be near the ocean for a while and it wouldn't be terribly useful. Alas, Manta Lord, we hardly knew ye.

While we were in the marketplace we asked around for Hewron and Tandem, a couple of old Pathfinder buddies of Festivus. Festivus told us they may be able to help us with our investigations and they were still involved with the Pathfinders. Everyone pointed us to the giant manor house next to the adventurer encampment which had been converted into the local Pathfinder headquarters. As Soma was determined to get started on crafting right away, Meda and I headed directly to the Pathfinder building. Granted, without any sort of plan in mind, but that's kind of usual operating procedure for us at this point.

Meda and I entered the atrium of the Pathfinder building and were confronted with a long line for the opportunity to talk with a minor clerk of the Guild. There were some doors which appeared unguarded and I briefly considered just walking through like I owned the place, but the level of security made that seem like a bad idea so we opted for the bureaucratic route. After what seemed an interminable wait we finally were able to approach one of the clerks managing the line and explained that we were here to see Tandem and we had an appointment with him. Amazingly they believed us and lead us to a waiting room.

I was a little worried at one point because Meda noticed the venture captain that sent us down into No Fun passed by and checked a stack of paperwork that some of our documents had disappeared into, but fortunately he seemed to not notice us. We were interrogated by a couple of Pathfinder thugs, and I did a pretty poor performance. I'm still a little worried that they might confiscate some of the equipment we rightfully stole because of a technicality with the contract. Worst comes to worst we'll blame it on the druid and claim all the equipment we have came from Whitmore. (In a rare flash of foresight I gave them the fake name of Dr. J. Hollcroft for Whitmore. Hopefully Whitmore will be able to use this to his advantage.)

After Meda and I were interrogated, we finally met Tandem, who was very friendly and a very nice chap who was extremely helpful when I told him we were friends with Festivus, and directed us to follow him back into the Pathfinder building in the north wing. What happened next was very...strange to say the least. Festivus had us then introduce ourselves to a large group of people wearing Pathfinder robes and declared us to be new students in his class. What followed was a fairly fluffy lecture about the Pathfinders and ended with Tandem telling us to come back tomorrow for class at two o'clock. As Meda and I were confused as hell by all of this we talked with Tandem after class and discovered that we had inadvertently joined the Pathfinders. We also discovered that Tandem seems to have a short-term memory problem which means he probably won't be terribly much help to us in the long run if we have to keep introducing ourselves. In the short term, though, he was able to tell us that Hewron would be located in the library on the south side of the building and he would be able to help us find more information about the Sword of Chellan over there. After obtaining some student ID's for Meda, myself, and the rest of the party, we headed back into the tent city to find Soma and get his help with the library.

Soma was initially mad that things had seemed to go badly with our foray into the Pathfinder Guild, but was very interested in investigating the library. We eventually found Hewron who was more interested in shelving books rather than talking to us, but was able to direct us to the Guild's resources on legendary and mythical swords. We all began reading through the texts, Soma taking pretty much all of the older materials while Meda tackled the Dwarven tomes and I struggled with the poorly-written Goblin records. Soma eventually found a reference to the Sword of Chellan, as well as six other swords located in one of the oldest books among the collection. We were able to discern that all seven swords shared a similar overarching story and so it could be there are a total of seven legendary swords, or one sword which inspired seven legends. Personally I'm hoping for the seven swords because with my Efficient Quiver I can store quite a few weapons in there now, and it's always nice to have options.

Satisfied with what research we could find, we headed back to Festivus's Tavern to see if Whitmore had finally recovered from his hangover and we planned on attending Tandem's next class in the afternoon.

- Krinsblag

Adventures of Krinsblag: 3:10 to Laekastel

Our return to the mainland proved uneventful and the pirates finally dropped us off on the mainland, informing us the nearest Pathfinder base was in a town called Laekastel and if we followed the iron road we'd find it in a few days. I will admit that the road we were following was rather strange. It had a gravel bed like some of the better-maintained roads, but spaced evenly across the road were wooden beams, almost as if it was a corduroy road, but they were spaced too far apart for that. Placed on top of these wooden beams were iron rails, located on either side of the roadbed and apparently running its whole length. A nearby signpost informed us this was the road to Laekastel and we headed along the road with no incident for the rest of the day.

The next day we continued along the road and began noticing stone statues located along the right-of-way for the road. As we've gotten rather used to everything trying to kill us we looked on the statues with some apprehension but they proved initially harmless and we continued on our way. Key word being initially. As we continued down the road we noticed one of the statues moved slightly, and Soma was able to identify it as a stone golem. Not wishing to provoke something capable of murdering us with one hand behind its back, we tried going about a hundred feet off the road and circling the golem. Unfortunately for us there was a strange electrical phenomenon along the side of the road, which forced us to return between the rails. As we returned to the road we noticed a strange man covered in tattoos standing in the center of the road. As we approached he told us to surrender our weapons and valuables and we could walk away with our lives. Meda said nothing, clearly in shock at the sheer impertinence of such a remark. Whitmore exclaimed, “Where'd you learn to count, boy? Stupid school?” Soma announced his intention to eat the bastard, and I merely laughed heartily and said, “All right, let's kill him.”

I will say this about our attempted mugger, he at least came fairly prepared. It turned out the stone golem and a lightning elemental were also on his side. (Well, Soma says it was just a quasi-elemental which means it only got its GED, whatever that means.) If we hadn't pulled a few tricks the muggers may have actually killed us, but thankfully they were nowhere as bad as those damn cloakers we ran into on the island. Soma, of course, barely broke a sweat using fairly low-level spells to handle the situation. Things looked a little hairy there for a while, but we finally managed to give these criminal scum the sweet release from life they desired. I mean, anyone stupid enough to jump us at this point has to be suicidal.

After patching up our hurt, especially mine in particular, we continued to follow the rails until we spotted a building in the distance. As we approached we noticed it was a tavern that bore the symbol of Cayden Cailean, always a welcome sight, and entered the establishment. The interior proved empty except for the landlord, an extremely friendly fellow by the name of Festivus who immediately welcomed us profusely and shoved drinks into all of our hands. After a few rounds Festivus asked us what brought us to his tavern and what we were doing. Which resulted in us telling a somewhat edited but highly entertaining version of our adventures beginning in No Fun. (Although I suspect the alcohol may have made it more interesting.)

Festivus then asked us what we were planning on doing now, and we tried to diplomatically ask his opinion on the Pathfinder Guild. Festivus explained that he used to run with the Pathfinders a few years back and had lots of fun and adventures with them, but recently things had taken a new direction with the new leader of the Pathfinders, which had lead to him leaving the Guild. We found out that the bastard who sent us down into No Fun was the same one who had taken over the Guild and made it...well...no fun. We then told Festivus we intended to go straight up to him and demand that he pay us (Which is partially true) and Festivus was supportive, but warned us against breaking into the vaults because quite a few dangerous artifacts had been safely sealed away. We assured him we'd take precautions and Festivus gladly gave us a map of the complex, as well as a map of the first two levels of the vaults, although it seems there may be a third level below them. Festivus then welcomed us to sleep in his tavern and promptly passed out from the liberal amounts of alcohol. I'm looking forward to meeting across our Pathfinder friends again. Cash, loot, and a little bit of revenge are just what I have in mind.

- Krinsblag 

Adventures of Krisblag: Maelrawn the Disappointing

We emerged once again from our extra-dimensional campsite, ready to unleash seven kinds of hell on whatever else we could find down in these caverns. As we were walking along the hallway, Whitmore and I noticed that part of the wall looked...not quite right. Upon investigation it proved to be an illusion concealing a secret passage. The hidden passage had some sort of strange...slime...that appeared to be growing from the rocks itself, but undeterred we proceeded onward into the chamber. Within it we found a bier which had a giant mound of green slime on top, surrounded by dried out husks of skin. Having gotten quite used to how these things seemed to go Whitmore shouted, “Surrender your treasure now and we probably won't murder you.” There was a reply in a language none of us understood, but Soma was able to utilize his magic to translate and revealed that the room was, in fact, inhabited. Whitmore then asked whom we were addressing and the slime congealed itself into a freaky ocean monstrosity and revealed itself to be Maelrawn the Tentacular.

We were, at first, rather concerned by Maelrawn's sudden appearance. As the pirates seemed to be scared shitless at the very mention of his name, and mighty sea creatures obeyed his commands, we were worried we had come up against a force to be reckoned with. However, Soma was able to discern that Maelrawn did not seem as powerful as he claimed to be. Our suspicions were further strengthened when Maelrawn revealed he was trapped down within this island simply because he had no access to water. He wasn't bound by a magic spell or hemmed in by magic wards, or chained with adamantium or even shifted into a pocket dimension. He's trapped because there's no water. I mean, why were we even afraid of this guy in the first place? We could literally leave him right there at the bottom of the hole and he would continue to not be a threat to anyone. Desperate weakling that he was, he tried convincing us to help him get free, which earned nothing but our contempt and decision to outright murder him.

Sadly, I must say I remember nothing of the battle with Maelrawn, which is really a big disappointment in and of itself, but is only coupled with the fact that the fight was over in ten seconds. As I was standing right in front of Maelrawn and waving around that spear specifically designed to hill him, Maelrawn decided to focus on me and take control of me with a spell, resulting in me just standing there uselessly, not even my martial spirit could save me. But as that happened, Meda fired several arrows straight into Maelrawn, Soma dropped a spell, Whitmore threw a bomb right down Maelrawn's gullet, and Meda fired another cluster of arrows into his face. At which point Maelrawn dropped over, almost but not quite dead, and I took quite great pleasure in finishing him off. Done. That's it. We've literally fought a tree that took more time and effort to kill than this so-called god. Disappointing as hell.

After looting whatever scant valuables Maelrawn had hoarded for indeterminite purposes, we headed back down the passage, investigating the remaining chambers. In one we found five more of the freaky fish guard people, which Soma quickly scorched to death with a fireball, who seemed to be working on finishing that canal project which would have let Maelrawn out to disappoint the entire world. Thankfully we had spared the world such a horror. The final chamber turned out to be an alchemical workshop containing none other than Gerlach, also transformed into a freaky fish person. Gerlach naturally asked who the hell we were and what we wanted, and I decided to begin negotiating from a position of strength by saying, “We're the people who just killed your god.”

In hindsight, after I'd been hit by two lightning bolts, saying that you've just killed someone's god may not be the best position to begin negotiating from. However, in my defense I figured that anyone obeying something as pitiful as Maelrawn had to be much lower down on the food chain than Maelrawn and would surrender unconditionally and immediately following such a statement. This seemed, however, to only irritate Gerlach and provoke him into attacking us. Once again I charged forward and managed to get a good hit in, followed by the usual collection of bombs, spells, and arrows, but Gerlach did something that let him sap my energy somehow and I found myself too weak to properly beat him to death with my sword. It turned out Gerlach was actually stronger than the so-called god he worshiped. But not much stronger because we murdered him to death as well.

An examination of Gerlach's lab turned up a few odds and ends, but perhaps most importantly information on a potion that could reverse the curse of the island, as well as the curse affecting the pirate people. Gathering the remaining loot and valuables we easily escaped from Maelrawn's prison of...a hole in the ground, and emerged once again upon the island. We found the remaining villagers and explained Gerlach and Maelrawn were dead and we would soon be sending help to assist them. They seemed rather unimpressed. We went back down to the beach and utilizing my manta cloak I was able to tow the party and the boat back to Blackcove to meet with the pirates. The pirates seemed rather sad that Gerlach was dead, but relieved that Maelrawn was gone and that there was a way to remove the curse afflicting them. The captain rewarded us with some lovely cash and we were invited to a feast to be held that evening.

At the feast things were a little...odd. The captain seemed far more formal than he needed to be, especially considering we had just saved his village of eight people from being disappointed to death. It seemed that for once there was a reason because the captain later diplomatically asked about our opinions of the Pathfinder Guild. After we enthusiastically expressed our hatred for those bastards and their role in sending us down into No Fun, the captain seemed much more relieved and explained that he was no friend to the Pathfinders as well, having stolen quite a few of their artifacts and objects over the years. The captain went on to say that he was very interested in a sword which belonged to a woman named Chellan, a being that had been created by alchemists trying to convert lead into gold. Her sword was made of hardened gold and contained many wondrous properties, including the ability to turn people it struck into gold. As the captain was a collector of swords he was rather interested in obtaining this sword and wished to hire us to acquire it for him, as well as any other swords we might find interesting and cared to give him. He promised to reward us handsomely if we succeeded and would take us to the port where he had a very good lead on the sword's location. As we had no compunctions about liberating artifacts from the Pathfinders we agreed to take on this job for the captain.

- Krinsblag the Manta Lord

Adventures of Krinsblag: Where Did These Rails Come From?

Faced with the guards sacrificing four helpless slaves to summon Maelrawn the Tentacular, we decided it was probably in our best interest to try and save the world this one time. Although as usual we seemed to mess it up. We managed to kill a few of the guards, but there simply were too many of them and they were too spread out for us to take them out quickly,and they began to kill their sacrifices much to Meda's dismay. Plus it seemed that every time we killed one of the guards, their blood only added to the power of whatever accursed ritual they were trying to enact. On top of that, the worker fish people's refusal to do anything to save themselves, despite Meda's constant calls to action, meant that we could only save about half of the workers that had been herded into the temple. All during this of course the blood continued to flow in a magical fashion down the steps of the chamber towards the central pit. When the last of the guards had been knocked out the workers thanked us and said cryptically that “Azalanti blood would show us the way” before buggering off to do whatever.

As we had no realistic way to stop the blood, we decided to hide outside the chamber and see what happened. When blood ran from all four corners into the pit it glowed bright red and the previously terraced slope of the pit became a steep slope. And then it continued to....do nothing. For quite some time as a matter of fact. While everyone else was rather confused by this intense bout of non-activity I found some sheets of paper on the ground. Reading through them I concluded we were supposed to go down the pit and fight whatever was down there. So like an idiot I charged straight into the pit and dove into the center, plummeting to the confusion and irritation of my comrades. This proved to be a rather good idea, though, as I landed safely in a pool of water at the bottom of the pit. Well, mostly safely. There were a few eels at the bottom of the pit but with a few lucky strikes I was able to kill them and keep from becoming a moray's lunch. My comrades soon joined me and we discovered a passage to one side that lead out of the pool. Eventually we came to an intersection. To our left was a passage blocked entirely by a cave-in of rocks. I investigated the rocks, seeing if there was any way around, only to get attacked by an ooze that was hiding within them. Fortunately we were able to kill the ooze quickly and proceeded down the passage to the right. We soon came upon another intersection and heard cries of help coming from the passage to our right. We soon came into a chamber in which contained several wounded fish people. Those that were still conscious asked for our help, and Whitmore was able to provide some first aid to prevent their unconscious friends from bleeding out. We demanded to know what exactly was down here in the caves and the fish people gave vague answers about walls and ceilings and monsters in water. These statements turned out to be correct later on, but their ambiguity made it extremely possible for them to be accurate. We decided to press onward, ignoring their desperate cries for additional assistance. Freeloading bastards.

As we proceeded along the tunnel it seemed to follow a rather linear path. There was the occasional chamber off to one side, but they were all dead ends and we were left with no choice but to continue deeper into the cavern. We did encounter a cave-in that almost killed Soma and Meda, but fortunately Whitmore and I were able to pull them from the rubble in time. We also encountered two more of those gods-damned cloakers again, which was a little tricky, but fortunately not as bad as last time. And we managed to find a really sweet spear which will give a little righteous smack-down on any aberrations we encounter in the future. Soma also managed to use an earth elemental to retrieve a gem that will summon a fire demon, and an urn containing some potentially useful salves, bypassing whatever nastiness was waiting for us in the other chambers. Faced with an out and out showdown with Maelrawn and Soma running low on spells, we decided to rest for the “night” and climbed up Soma's rope into our extradimensional campsite. With our new items we may be able to tackle whatever the hell's underneath this island, but it's definitely going to be a challenge.  

- Krinsblag

Adventure of Krinsblag: All Hail the Manta Lord!

Much to nobody's surprise, the monster climbing out of the quicksilver pool congealed into a creature akin to a huge black pudding, ready to give us a giant hug and corrode us to death with its acids. Even more frustratingly Meda and my weapons only cut the large monster into several smaller monsters which also wanted to give us death hugs. Fortunately if we cut them down enough we could kill them without spawning yet more oozes. Plus Whitmore's grenades quickly roasted the bastards into oblivion. Meda got a little rouged up by an overly friendly ooze, but we emerged from this battle largely unscathed, a welcome change of pace considering our more recent struggles.

Left with two buildings to investigate we decided to check out the large pyramid located at the center of the island which turned out to not be the observatory, despite what the archives told us. The top of the pyramid contained a stagnant bath house as well as a large chamber that contained several descending levels connected by rubble-strewn stairways. We decided to investigate and see how far down this chamber went, discovering a black chasm at the bottom of the room. I tossed a handy nearby rock down and it took quite some time before we heard a distant splash, suggesting it probably would be better to not mess with this chasm until later. If at all.

Left with only the fish people working on the beach and the floating observatory tower we decided to check out the tower first and see if we could find some lenses for the orrery. Meda was able to nimbly jump onto the tower as it passed its closest point to the island, and with a little help from Soma Whitmore and I were able to just fly up. An investigation of the first floor showed absolutely nothing useful so we went up to the next floor and found three intact lenses, as well as numerous shards of glass and a valuable statue floating in the air. I attempted to snatch one of the lenses by throwing a bag over it and pulling, and while I was able to remove the lens from whatever magical field was supporting it I got a nasty shock. Lacking any better options we decided to remove the lenses and statue the brute force method and I got quite a few more shocks before removing all the objects we wanted from the tower. Whitmore and I flew out and landed safely fairly far to the south of the island, while Meda rode the tower back to its original place and jumped off. By the time we had met up again the sun had nearly set so Soma set up our extradimensional campsite and we climbed into its safety.

In the morning Soma examined the orrery and managed to decipher the instructions. As the rest of us stood safely outside the building, Soma placed the replacement lenses in their appropriate slots and successfully repaired the orrery. Other than a strange glyph glowing, the orrery proceeded to do absolutely nothing interesting and shed absolutely no light on the situation at hand. So time well spent.

We soon heard a riot coming from the direction of the beach and when we arrived on the cliff we saw the fish people had divided into two groups. On the one side stood guard fish people with weapons, while on the other stood the worker fish people with a few guard hostages. The workers seemed confused about the situation, realizing that the guard fish people had been relatives of theirs while the guard fish people wanted the workers to help them release the Master, who we assumed was Maelrawn the Tentacular. It seemed the two groups had reached a stand-off, which meant it was the natural point for us to begin interfering. Well, Meda didn't think it was the natural point for us to start interfering, especially when I suggested we claim I was the Manta Lord and make a super impressive entrance to get them on our side. Everyone else seemed to like the idea and Whitmore agreed to try and help negotiate with the fish people while Soma provided some of the special effects. What happened next was kind of epic, although it didn't get quite the results we wanted.

As I stepped off the cliff Soma cast levitate on me and slowly lowered my down towards the beach. When I was about twenty feet above the beach I utilized my crown to send a blast of sunlight over the heads of the crowds, causing everyone to hit the deck immediately. In a mighty voice I declared that I was the Manta Lord, returned to them at last to resolve their strife and usher in a new age of peace and prosperity. Something vague and impressive enough to work on the locals. That certainly got the fish people's attention and Whitmore shouted down some more helpful mumbo-jumbo to try and get the crowd on my side. The workers seemed rather impressed with my performance but the guards remained understandably skeptical of my veracity. (After all, the cloak comes right off) I explained I was searching for Gerlach the Alchemist, to which they responded by asking me if I was a friend of the Master. Dodging the question I asked if Gerlach was a friend of the Master and when they confirmed this I said any friend of Gerlach was a friend of me. They then challenged me to prove I was a friend of the Master so I dove into the canal beneath me and emerged in the full glory of the Manta Lord, using the cloak to good effect. This seemed to get the guards to at least accept us for now and agreed to take us to where Gerlach was, herding us and the worker fish people towards the pyramid.

When we arrived at the pyramid the guards herded us into the large descending chamber and placed four worker fish flanked by guards at the corners of the room in front of the stairways. All of us started getting a really bad feeling about the situation because it looked like they were going to summon Maelrawn and that seemed a thing we didn't really want to do. When the guards asked us again if we were friends of the Master we decided to say no. It seems our Manta Lord plan was all for naught, but hopefully we can keep these bastards from unleashing an eldritch horror on the world.

- Krinsblag the Manta Lord

Adventures of Krinsblag: Who Wants a Hug?

If I learned anything from our latest sets of misadventures it's that I should probably mention something if I've got less than half of my hit points left. See, for whatever reason I foolishly assumed that we'd be pretty okay. Maybe have to deal with some more wisps or fish people but we'd just beat the ever-loving crap out of them and then go on our way. Business as usual. However I had unfortunately forgotten that sometimes the gods themselves look down upon us and say, "Those guys haven't been kicked around enough lately. We should mess with them again." Because gods above today was one of those days. 

We climbed out of Soma's campsite, feeling rather refreshed. Soma first took a trip down to the beach, apparently whatever the island's affecting him with means he needs to submerge himself at least once a day. He managed to sneak a look at the fish people and noticed they didn't seem terribly interested in us, which may be of use later. Everyone else is getting pretty badly affected by the island too. Meda's eyes are bulging out of her head like crazy, Whitmore's limbs are freakishly proportioned, and I've started seeing in the dark. Which...is beneficial at least, but it may get worse later on. Soma and Whitmore decided to poke around the orrery again, to see if they could find anything else of interest. They did manage to find some instructions in Azalanti but Soma couldn't quite make heads or tales of it, but for now the orrery will remain broken until we can spare the time to look at it. 

As we were investigating the ruins we heard a blood-curdling screech and saw one of those freaky fish people running away from three cloakers. For those of you who've never run into one of these damn things, count yourself lucky. A cloaker is basically a flying cloak, but with teeth. And really wants to eat you. We saw one of the cloakers envelope the poor luckless fish person while the next two decided to come for us. We started the usual slice-and-dice when one of the cloakers managed to give me a nice, big death hug that proved really difficult to escape. In addition to being gnawed on by the cloaker's teeth, it turns out that if anyone hits a cloaker, whoever's inside of it also gets hit. Now, to be fair, I appreciate Meda's fine archery skills when it's shooting nasty beasties out of the air. When I get hit by arrows that somehow shatter my already poorly abused breastplate? A little harder to appreciate. Fortunately the combination of arrows, armor shrapnel, and some other sundry things my friends chucked at it eventually killed the cloaker. Granted, I was in a pretty bad way as well, but I managed to hold my organs in long enough for Whitmore to bring me back from death's door. Unfortunately Meda also had to deal with an angry cloaker trying to eat her, but we eventually got it cut to pieces as well. After getting righteously yelled at for not mentioning my lack of hit points sooner, we patched our party back up and continued our investigation of the ruins. 

The next building we found appeared to be some sort of aquarium that turned out to hold a giant octopus which soon lashed its tentacles out in the surrounding room. Having just struggled with several things trying to hug us to death, we decided getting into a fist-fight with another such thing was a terrible idea. Taking a look at the building gave me an idea and I decided to gather whatever scrap wood I could find at the only entrance to the aquarium. Once we had a decent pile put together we lit the wood and started a cheerful fire, which eventually boiled that bastard octopus alive. Man, did he taste good. We poked around and found a few corpses of less lucky people who decided to tangle with the now deceased octopus and discovered a few useful scrolls and elixirs, but perhaps more importantly an awesome cloak of the manta ray. According to Whitmore it's a cloak that allows its wearer to become basically living death underwater. I was rather excited at the idea and I'm looking forward to utilizing it when we finally have to go down to the beach. 

After we left the aquarium we ran into another one of the fish people who appeared rather wounded. Soma suspected a trap, but I decided to see if my new cloak would be helpful and declared myself the Manta Lord, liege of all the fish people, to try and get information from him. It turned out though, once again, that Soma was correct for the fish person soon transformed into a giant lobster monster. Who, of course, wanted to give me a hug. I will say, though, this lobster thing? Doesn't even rate in the top five worst things that have decided to hug me. Those cloakers were pretty awful, along with the blood puddings, and one or two other things. The lobster was pretty tame by comparison. Not that I enjoyed being grabbed by claws, stung by tentacles, and bitten by mandibles, mind you. But at least when Meda shot it the arrows didn't also hurt me, so I count it as a plus. 

With the lobster gone we proceeded to the next building which turned out to be a graveyard of the intellectual elite on this island back in the day. With some twenty-odd neatly arranged corpses around silvery pools of light. Soma was able to decipher some instructions and find out that the silvery pools contained the knowledge of the intellectual leaders of this island, however to listen to the lecture life force had to be sacrificed. Which is...kind of creepy to be perfectly honest. It seemed Gerlach has been sacrificing people to learn something, although what we're not entirely sure. There appeared to be some leftover life force, though, so we sat down for a lecture on how the orrery's supposed to work. I didn't understand heads or tails of it, but apparently Whitmore and Soma have a better understanding of how it's supposed to work now. Of course, it wouldn't be a day in our adventures if something we encountered didn't try to murder us. As the lecture finished a hand started crawling its way out of the silver pool. I'm starting to get really sick of this godsforsaken island. 

- Krinsblag

Adventures of Krinsblag: My God, It's Full of Stars

We continued investigating the island, heading towards the next cluster of ruins indicated on the map. On our way there we encountered a cluster of darkmantles, a rather random encounter to say the least. Darkmantles are usually subterranean and rely on surprise to attack random adventurers that are occupied dungeon-delving. Six of them floating around in bright sunlight? Easy targets to say the least. Soma dropped a fireball right on the center that killed all but one of them, the last one was left pretty seriously singed but Meda quickly shot it out of the air. The tower itself was much more interesting. Apparently it was made of a sort of white shale (don't ask me how we figured that out), and the tower appeared to be constantly growing and shedding giant shards of shale, which we were mostly able to avoid but a few of us got knocked around.

Inside the tower we found that the dirt appeared constantly shifting and being incorporated into the growth process of the tower, a peculiar situation to say the least. Whitmore was able to discern a distinct pattern to the dirt, providing a sort of staircase to an upper level, but requiring a great number of precarious leaps. Fortunately for us, Meda was able to nimbly scramble up to the second level, discovering a group of three wisps, including the one we had argued with earlier. I will say this about the wisps, they're either insane or just plain stupid. Possibly both. The one we had run into before "tried" to negotiate with us, but I got the feeling he wasn't terribly interested. I tried explaining once again that we were looking for Gerlach and if the wisp would help us find the alchemist, we'd be able to leave his island much more quickly. When the wisps proved to once again to be utterly obstinate, we engaged in some mean-spirited taunting which goaded the wisps into attacking us. The fight was a pretty close thing there for a while. Soma managed to summon a lighting elemental that harried the wisps, and a few solid hits from me, Meda, and Whitmore managed to drop the bastards. Whitmore considered trying to capture one of the wisps and teach them how to properly negotiate, the logistics of such a proposal proved too prohibitive to be implemented. However we did find a decent collection of ioun stones, meaning pretty much everyone in the party now has at least one stone whirling around them. Soma also found an armillary amulet which apparently shows the positions of the celestial spheres, which seems to fit with everything else we've heard about this island.

As we left the tower we discovered a hidden cover around the rear of the island which had a canal to the ocean and a cave. We were able to determine the canal was being excavated by some sort of freaky fish people who were being overseen by a slightly different type of freaky fish people. We presumed this is what happened to the villagers on the pirate island, but didn't relish the prospect of heading down there without more information. So we decided to investigate the remaining ruins before tangling with whatever was down there.

The first set of ruins we investigated had a small outbuilding that was missing its top half, not in itself unusual. What was very odd though was the top half of the building was orbiting the island in some sort of magical field, making a lap of the island every ten minutes or so. We decided it might be worth investigating later, but we wanted to check out the larger building first, which proved to be a very large orrery. (Or for those of us that don't have technical training, a giant mechanical model of the cosmos) We were initially hesitant to enter, fearing another surprise attack of rust monsters, but our scouting revealed the building to be inhabited by three phase spiders instead. Lucky for us we got the jump on them and managed to drop one of them in six seconds flat, causing the other two spiders to run off to the Ethereal Plane. We waited for a good two or three minutes, expecting the spiders to come back, and were rather confused when they didn't. We eventually decided to investigate the orrery, which Soma and Whitmore were able to determine was in serious disrepair. I'm not sure if it was the disrepair of the orrery or just the fucked up nature of this island, but we started getting hit by random bursts of magic. This proved much to our advantage, though, because Meda and I started phasing between the Material and Ethereal Planes, allowing us to lay an everloving smackdown on those damn spiders. Meda did really well, putting a few arrows straight through the creatures' eyes, and I got a really solid hit in with my sword, finishing the creatures off.

Threatened with continual bursts of random magic and approaching darkness, we decided to rest for the day before giving the orrery a more detailed examination. I will say that I rather like Soma's new ability to give us a hidden campsite in a pocket dimension. It means I finally get a nice, uninterrupted stretch of sleep.

- Krinsblag

Adventures of Krinsblag: Have I Got a Mosaic to Sell You

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  

Adventures of Krinsblag: I Feel Like We've Done This Before

We arrived at the town of Blackcove in short order, only to discover that the town had recently been hit by a tidal wave and was mostly destroyed, reminding me of at least one other town we'd visited. Once the ship was moored, Captain Nortrom jumped onto the wharf and ran towards the village, intent on finding out what exactly happened to his village. Nortrom urged us to follow him, however a tingling sensation on the back of my neck made me instantly suspicious of the wharf, so I pushed Soma off the boat onto the dock. My suspicion was confirmed when Soma immediately crashed straight through the dock and landed in the water below, only to levitate out. Whitmore managed to get to land without incident, but I was still uneasy, my fears justified when Meda crashed through the dock as well. After fishing her out, I was left with no option but to try and make it to land, discovering that this dock had apparently been made of balsa wood because I too crashed through it. This situation was made worse by the addition of a sea cat which decided to bite me. Undeterred I bit him back and a few punches from me and Meda convinced the sea cat that an easier lunch would be found elsewhere.

Nortrom was rather upset by the delay and rushed into the town, telling us to look around and see what we could find. Our initial assessment was that Nortrom and his crew weren't very good pirates because there didn't seem to be any loot whatsoever. I mean, stealing from these people probably wouldn't be the wisest course of action, but I am determined to make a profit off of this. Aside from more evidence that the sea itself seemed to have declared war on these people, there was very little of interest. At least, until we got to an alchemy lab. As Whitmore poked around, finding various odds and ends in the surviving equipment, some of us noticed a gasping sound of labored breathing coming from a nearby vat, which suddenly stopped. Soma was adamant about finding what had been inside and it was left to me to shift the lid and poke it with a stick. The....object...turned out to be a weird fish-man hybrid sort of thing and a careful and thorough prodding with a stick proved it was, in fact dead. At least, it didn't jump up and try to eat me, which is dead enough for me.

Captain Nortrom soon returned and announced that people had been mysteriously disappearing from the island and things (surprise!) did not look good. Furthermore, he was unable to find his friend Gerlach, the town alchemist, who seems to have declared he was close to a breakthrough in saving the village and had retreated to the nearby island of Nalkashol, apparently a sacred spot to the people of this village and the location of their marriage rituals. (As well as the location of several ruins from the village's Azalanti ancestors) Nortrom's fears were exacerbated when we revealed what was in the vat, needlessly running it through several times with his cutlass. Nortrom then rushed off towards the lighthouse on the other side of the cove, where the survivors of the village had holed up for the time being.

By the time the rest of us had arrived at the lighthouse, it had descended into sheer anarchy with Nortrom and the rest of the village arguing, accusing, shouting in downright fear, it was pure bedlam. I utilized my great skills in convincing people it's in their best interest to shut up, enabling the captain to pump the survivors for any more information. They were able to fill in a few more details but seemed largely terrified at this recent turn of events. Our ensuing argument was soon interrupted by a very unusual tide coming into the bay. I quickly bolted the door to the lighthouse and, determining it wasn't waterproof, directed everyone to head upstairs and quickly began ascending the stairs myself. The villagers, for whatever reason, decided to continue to argue until water had begun leaking into the lighthouse, by which point I had already made good progress up the stairs to higher ground. However, the panicked mob soon caught up with me, which was further exacerbated by the appearance of four powerful tentacles through the windows of the lighthouse, which grabbed several villagers and drug them out the window. The party, the captain, and I quickly acted to stave off the tentacles, although it did little to calm the ensuing panic.

I will say this, seeing the captain disappear through a window in a tentacles suckery embrace and reappear through another window is quite hilarious, even if painful. Quite glad that someone else was taking a beating for once we set to work eliminating the tentacles. When I was able to actually hit the writhing forms severing the tentacles was a rather simple task, but hitting the damn things was the tricky part. We eventually managed to sever eight of the things before the tentacles, and the mysterious tide, soon departed. We ferried a very badly bruised captain and the remaining villagers back to the main island, having apparently no more need for the semi-fortified nature of the lighthouse.

The captain, after paying as a well-deserved if scanty fee, informed us that whatever the hell was going on was clearly on the island of Nalkashol, and Gerlach was almost definitely involved. However, it seems that none of his people could approach the island without running the risk of turning into freaky fish guys like the one we saw in the vat. As such he requested our services and promised to reward us handsomely. Meda was happy to be of assistance while Soma, Whitmore, and I were already arguing over what we should demand from them as a fee. I was ready to demand as much as 30% of their gross yearly earnings in perpetuity while Soma and Whitmore wanted to take just a flat fee. Determining that we should hash out the details of our financial transactions later, we agreed to assist the captain and were ferried to the island in the morning.

To really our utter unsurprise, our ferryman turned into one of the freaky fish guys when we approached the island and soon jumped out of the boat and into the water. Unfortunately, this sudden transformation resulted in both Meda and Soma falling out of the boat and being stung by a nest of jellyfish. Fortunately the stings were painful, but not terribly serious. On arriving on the island Soma determined it was steeped in quite a bit of magic and Whitmore and I looked forward to picking up whatever loot we could unearth from the ruins. I can only hope that we can resolve whatever the hell is going on here for once and get paid.

- Krinsblag

Adventures of Krinsblag: A Rollicking Band of Pirates We

After a night of carousing with the pirates we set sail in the morning, hopefully leaving this undead-infested island behind us for forever. As the days passed we settled into a peaceful sort of tedium. With very little to do, Meda and I engaged in a series of drinking contests with the crew, occasionally even winning and earning the crew's respect. Soma did various odd jobs around the ship, including assisting with some navigational measurements which informed us we were heading largely to the north and west, while Whitmore sold potions and tonics to the crew. Personally I welcomed the continue respite from constantly keeping our guards up and making sure little cannibal children didn't creep up in the night to eat our face off. Eventually we got along so well with the crew that they were willing to let us go through their spare equipment and loot and exchange much of the useless junk we had picked up on the island for useful odds and ends. 

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, although us landing in a safe port and able to wander off wherever we damn well please was not to be. About four or five days into our cruise with the pirates the ship was attacked during the night. I initially slept through the attack, sleeping the peaceful sleep of the highly inebriated, when Meda and Whitmore woke me up, informing me that there had been several sounds like the boat had run over something. Assuming that it wasn't good we rushed up on deck, discovering that a good portion of the crew had been swept overboard and the remaining crew were all armed. The captain quickly directed the first mate to take us below and give us back our weapons, and by the time we returned to the deck we found the captain battling a great sea serpent near the prow. We all rushed forward to assist the captain and quickly dispatched the creature. We decided to collect some of the creature's blood, skin, and other materials for potential future uses. Hopefully I may be able to get a new grip for my weapon out of this, and Whitmore's very excited at the alchemical potential with some of the odder substances. 

We later met with the captain in his cabin who explained that he is the leader of an entire pirate village and they all are descended from the Azlanti, the legendary humans that once ruled the world thousands of years ago before the Earthfall, albeit their bloodline has been greatly diluted. According to the captain, they've had a long relationship with the sea and have always relied upon it for their livelihood. However now an...entity, known as Maelwran the Tentacular has declared war on them and is determined to wipe out their bloodline. So, of course, now the captain wants to change their bloodline to avoid this curse but has no idea how to do it. Which, you know, is apparently more logical than my solution of move inland and never go near the sea again. Because I'm pretty ready to do that. And, of course, the captain's heading straight back to their village of Blackcove instead of dropping us off somewhere on the mainland. I get the feeling we've traded one inescapable island for another. 

- Krinsblag 

Misadventures of Krinsblag: Exercises in Futility

After having thoroughly looted the surgeon's theater we decided to cut a hole in the floor/wall of the room so that we could scout the next room down and determine our next course of action. We lowered a lantern down to discover that the next room was a very large gun deck with a few cannons and other weapons scattered along the floor. In addition we noticed two carved figureheads which instantly aroused our suspicion. Tidingston and Soma were able to identify them as Ship Sentinels, a sort of magic statue that protects a ship from harm at the direction of the captain. Tidingston decided to attempt posing as the captain and getting the sentinels to assist us in clearing out the ship. The sentinels, however, remained unresponsive to our commands. Acting on a hunch I went back over to the galley and cut a hole into the next chamber, discovering that it too was a gun deck, much like the other one, but lacking any sentinels.

Unsure where to go from here, we somehow inferred that another chamber was located on the ship and managed to punch our way through the decks to it and it turned out to be the captain's cabin. After a brief search of the room we managed to turn up a few odds and ends of varying utility. We also discovered the captain's log which shed no real new light on our predicament. Apparently Corrister was the ship's medic, but instead of healing people with the principles of modern magic, he resorted to the barbaric practice of cutting people open and performing surgery. However, the sheer lack of skill necessary for such a brutal practice left us seriously in doubt that Corrister could even be behind whatever nefarious plot was going on.

Faced with yet another dead end that apparently had done nothing but waste our time we decided to leave the ship and burn it down out of spite and frustration. Surprisingly this task was easily done and we watched the ship burn down to the waterline before heading off into the west away from this forsaken blight. We traveled for much of the day before setting up camp for the night. Unsurprisingly we heard the sounds of someone moving around our campsite in the middle of the night and when I went out to investigate I was rather surprised to discover a band of pirates, or as they prefer to be known, wealth redistribution specialists.

After some very tense, and through my own fault, rather idiotic negotiations we seemed to reach an agreement with the pirates to negotiate passage off of this island on their ship. We then went back to the pirate's base and joined in their frolics and festivities before turning in for the night. Hopefully come morning we'll be able to get off this godsforsaken island and back to some civilization.

- Krinsblag

Adventures of Krinsblag: Some Days, the Bear Gets You

Although we had successfully defeated the ghosts, and got two nifty eyepatches in the bargain, Soma and Tidingston's supply of spells and bombs had been severely depleted and we had another deck of ship to still clear out. Deciding it was better to go in with a full supply we headed back out of the boat and spent an uneventful night camped out on the plain near the swamp. When morning came we headed back into the boat and had Meda climb through the passageway to see if the coast was clear. Meda directed us to an abandoned kitchen and we punched a hole through the wall/floor to access the kitchen.

To absolutely no one's surprise the food was all moldy and completely inedible, although we found a collection of interesting cutlery and some four hundred year old wine. It seems if we ever make it back to civilization we'll make a handsome profit off of this misadventure, but that hinges on us getting back to civilization in the first place. Satisfied that we could find nothing else useful in the kitchen we decided to cross the hall and enter what appeared to be a surgeon's operating theater. We did notice two mutilated cadavers on the floor, which fooled exactly no one. I told everyone to get behind me and cut the head off of one of the cadavers with my sword. When nothing happened I decided to cut the other cadaver's head off, which resulted in a brain ooze and two blood pudding coming out of the corpses to absolutely no one's surprise.

Sometimes, I think, there is a god up there that hates when we start doing well as a party. Because for whatever reason, when things start actually going our way for once, some monster comes along that's just downright impossible for us to deal with. Well, at least for me to deal with. Take these oozes, for example. So we manage to get the jump on these guys and I figure, "Tidingston will drop some bombs, Soma will do his usual thing, Meda will shishkebab them, and I'll cut up whatever's left." Solid plan, right? Interesting fact about blood puddings? Fire proof. So poor Tidingston's standing there, wondering why in holy hell these damn things aren't getting scorched, and then they decide to come up and give me a hug. Because, of course the have to give me a hug. I can't use my sword, the thing I'm best at, if they decide to give me a hug. Another interesting fact about blood puddings? Apparently they can go inside your body. Just...force their way inside and kill you. Plus the brain ooze kept zapping me and doing weird...brain oozey things. Fortunately Meda split it more or less in half with an arrow. Which just left me with a blood pudding trying to take up residence inside of me.

Honestly, if it hadn't been for that crocodile that Soma summoned, we'd have been well and truly boned. To see the jaw on that beasty, I'm glad he's on our side. On the plus side we did find some potions and equipment in the operating theater, but I'm personally not looking forward to clearing the remaining rooms in the ship. Soma's said he wants to eat Corrister when we finally kill him, and I'm inclined to let Soma do just that.

- Krinsblag

Adventures of Krinsblag: Who Ya Gonna' Call?

When we got back to the sunlight streaming into the hold of the ship, Tidingston and Soma seemed to have recovered from the pants-wetting fear that had engulfed them with the appearance of ghosts within the ship. We were determined, however, to ensure that the mere incorporeal nature of our opponents would not stop us on our quest for loot and vengeance, mostly vengeance, and given the opportunity we would come back and teach those ghosts the meaning of fear. We also miraculously discovered an entirely new line of compartments within the ship we could explore and avoid the ghosts for the time being. How we had not noticed this series of compartments before is a downright mystery and it seems that whoever designed this ship had little to no understanding of nautical engineering, but I'm just a former slave so what do I know?

The first room we investigated turned up nothing but some bits of rope, hammocks, and some old moth-eaten Pathfinder robes. We did decide to keep the Pathfinder robes with the intention of being able to break into the first Pathfinder guild we find, taking money from their vault, and leaving the invoice Soma's drawn up for our previous endeavors. The second room turned out to be an armory of sorts and we discovered a few magical weapons, including a shiny new greatsword. I'm still pretty attached to my old sword, I mean I have some fond memories attached to it, especially when I murdered the people that owned me and freed my family, but Soma explained this new one would be able to actually hurt the ghosts, which is definitely an advantage considering how many we've been running into.

It seems we've settled into a sort of rhythm when it comes to fighting the various monsters we find. I usually go in first, solid like a brick wall, and draw the attention of any beasties. Soma uses his magic, summoning creatures and dropping buffs, while Tidingston flings his bombs. Behind all of us Meda continues to fire her arrows with deadly precision. Aside from the me getting punched and hurt a lot, it's a pretty good plan. And even I have to admit if anyone's going to get punched around here, it's probably best for it to be me. Meda might be able to take a hit or two, but Soma and Tidingston would probably crumple like wet paper. It's certainly putting a strain on our supply of potions, but better me than anyone else. In another compartment we found yet another corpse lord and some creatures that appeared to be sewn together out of a bunch of different bodies. It looks like Corrister didn't leave any of his crew alive, but they went down like all the others we've taken out so far.

Once we had cleared out the other compartments of the ship, we decided to cut a hole in the compartment directly above the one with ghosts in it to allow sunlight into the interior of the ship. We also cut a hole through the floor, providing a nice, large patch of sunlight. The corpse lord that had been with the ghosts merely looked at us quizzically while the ghosts remained safely away from the wrath of the sun's rays. We decided to gather around the hole and start taking potshots at the corpse lord, who eventually went away where we couldn't hurt him. Lacking any better options, I jumped down after him and soon became the target of the corpse lord and both the ghosts. Fortunately Soma summoned a couple of giant ants, which were much more useful than you'd think, and Meda put an arrow straight through the corpse lord's head. The ghosts kept hitting me with magic rays that sapped my strength, but unluckily for them, my martial prowess enabled me to shrug off their attempts and delivered a sound thrashing, all without taking so much as a scratch. Hopefully all that remains is to find and kill Corrister and then maybe we'll be able to get off this blasted island, although I'm not exactly sanguine about our prospects.

- Krinsblag

Adventures of Krinsblag: Well....Okay Then.

This has been a rather....interesting day to say the least. We've made some progress in getting closer to Corrister and finally killing that bastard, but we've encountered some initial setbacks that have hindered my righteous vengeance. It's only a matter of time before Corrister learns that trying to kill me is generally not a wise course of action if you're determined to keep living.

After getting a late start in the day, having been tuckered out by the zombie horde, we continued towards the structure which Soma had noticed the day before. As we got closer we first noticed the smell of brine on the air, which was soon followed by the ground becoming incredibly marshy and difficult to traverse. It initially appeared that we'd encountered a saltwater marsh some fifty or so miles inland, which was curious to say the least. As we struggled closer to the structure we determined it was the aft end of a great ship that seemed to have been picked up and dumped, prow first, into the ground. It seemed that part of the ocean had come along with the boat, explaining the appearance of the saltwater marsh.

We eventually ran into a moat which impeded our progress towards the ship and appeared to surround it entirely. I made a makeshift leadline with some rope and gold pieces, tossing it into the moat to discover it was about twenty feet deep, making wading across an impossibility. As I drew my line back in, I noticed something tugging on the end and two gold pieces had disappeared from the makeshift weight I'd created. Not relishing the potential of something dragging us under as we tried to swim across, we decided to go around the boat and see if there were any other potential ways across the moat. At one point Tidingston and I noticed a strange light in the depths of the water and felt a strange compulsion to walk towards it, heedless of our own safety. Fortunately we were able to avert this disaster and discover that it was a corpse candle, the spirit of someone who had been sacrificed in water against their will, driven by a desire to get vengeance against the person that killed them. (That copy of Know Your Undead: A Guide For Adventurers has really come in handy for me recently.) We concluded that Corrister had killed this poor soul as well, and much to no one's surprise Tidingston was able to confirm this fact through negotiation. Tidingston further informed the spirit that we intended to kill Corrister and if it could help us at all, it'd be that much closer to revenge. The spirit agreed and brought up the corpses of two large water beetles which served as very good rowboats across the moat.

We entered the ship from its deck, now turned into a wall, and entered the belowdecks through a hatch. We had the option of heading either up or down through the boat and decided to head upwards. Our consensus was that the lower portions of the boat towards the prow were probably flooded and inaccessible, so we decided to try and make it towards the aft of the boat and find Corrister. We encountered a few undead, the first batch of which we quickly dispatched, finding more evidence that this was the Pathfinder mission that Corrister and Winifred had been sent on all those years ago. As we ascended we ran into another group of undead, including a couple of fear lords. I was certainly unnerved but managed to keep my calm, and Meda seemed to approach it with the same tranquility as she approached everything. Tidingston and Soma, however, fled in an absolute panic, leaving Meda and I with no choice but to withdraw.

Despite setbacks, we're at least getting closer to Corrister and perhaps finally getting off this godforsaken island. Hopefully.

- Krinsblag

Adventures of Krinsblag: All Aboard the Pain Train!

Things have actually continued to get better for our party, despite the loss of Grovetender and his druid companion. After a night's rest in the village Soma announced that he had developed a new plan for taking down that thrice-damned tree in the graveyard and demanded that we go back. We were initially pessimistic, believing we simply did not have the resources to tackle such a challenge, but Soma's plan proved to be a stroke of absolute brilliance and was executed flawlessly. Soma had improved his levitation spell which allowed him to fly, and had deduced that his acid attacks would in the long run be more devastating to the tree than anything Meda, Tidingston, or myself could throw against it. Taking to the air once again, Soma soared well above the reach of the tree and unleashed a torrent of acid down upon it, much to our amusement.

It seems to have worked because very quickly the leaves began to wither off of the tree and after a few minutes the tree had decided it had had enough and ran away into the forest. Meda was strongly in favor of pursuing the tree and killing it, but Soma decided to let it go in favor of looting the treasure underneath the tree and getting the hell out of there. Tidingston and myself, being utterly incapable of doing anything beyond slightly tickling the tree, agreed it was better to just grab the loot now. A little bit of digging unearthed a chest containing a decent amount of gold and six enchanted headbands, which we distributed amongst ourselves before heading back out of the graveyard. As we had obtained the loot promised to us by Deris in exchange for us returning his body to its proper grave, I proposed that we keep Deris a ghost trapped in the ruins of his town as punishment for him failing to inform us about the incredibly dangerous tree on two separate occasions. Tidingston suggested that we demand more recompense for the return of his body to its resting place and if Deris refused, then we leave him stuck as ghost. While I certainly relish the prospect of wringing yet more money from this bastard, I'm not exactly hopeful.

While Soma had been flying around above the treetops he had also managed to get a very good view of the countryside, noticing how the Blight seemed to increase or decrease in magnitude in certain areas. Soma said that he had noticed a strange structure several miles away and the Blight appeared to grow stronger in that direction. It seems my initial conclusion that Corrister would be at the center of the Blight where it was strongest was correct, although to be fair it didn't take a great amount of mental arithmetic to put two and two together. (I still wish we had gone directly into the Blight to take Corrister out about a week ago. It would have saved us considerably more time. But if wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak.) We decided to begin our trek towards the structure in the remaining daylight, setting up camp just outside the edge of the forest, about two miles from the structure.

As we were rather deep in enemy territory, we decided to keep watch for the night while our casters got their required eight hours of sleep. I volunteered to take first watch and everyone else settled down to get what sleep they could. Soon the moon had risen and gave me a fairly good view of the surrounding landscape. Eventually I noticed the sound of a child crying coming from across the plain and I immediately drew my sword because there was no way in hell that was a regular child. Eventually I noticed a small figure in the distance that strongly resembled the gnome child I had befriended in No Fun, who I had last seen getting crushed by a demigod. He soon spotted me and waved, gesturing for me to follow him. As I'm not a moron I refused to follow him into the blatantly obvious trap and quickly woke Meda, believing that the two of us might be able to handle the problem without the casters. My suspicions were quickly confirmed when the child came closer and I was able to identify it as the same as some of the other creatures that had taken a big bite out of Meda's face when we first met Corrister. I attempted to fend him off with my sword but he ducked under my guard and managed to take a decent sized bite out of my leg. The struggle soon woke Soma and Tidingston and we quickly dispatched the monster, although not before Tidingston accidentally dropped one of his grenades on me. At least it cauterized the wound...

After we had dispatched the cannibal child, the sound of zombies soon assaulted us and a group of twenty or so undead shuffled into view, lead by four corpse lords. Although the odds did not seem in our favor, we made ready and prepared to kill all sons of bitches. And by Gorum, it was glorious. Tidingston threw bomb after bomb into the horde, engulfing them in a wall of flame, while Meda picked off survivors with her bow. Soma ran around the battlefield, using his magic for crowd control and to aid our efforts. My favorite was when he magically made me grow twice as tall, creating a veritable wall of flesh and steel against the undead horde. Although I took a great many wounds, I drew most of the horde's attention and kept them from attacking my less beefy companions, while also getting in quite a few good hits of my own. When the last zombies had been engulfed in one of Tidingston's bombs we managed to come up with quite a bit of loot and burned the bodies in a merry little bonfire as a precaution. With that we rested for the night, secure in the knowledge that with this horde defeated, we would not be attacked again until day.

- Krinsblag

Adventures of Krinsblag: Alas, Poor Feron

Fortunately for us, the path to the graveyard was not choked with more assassin vines and we soon arrived to a clearing outside the graveyard. What little we could see showed a very large tree in the center of the graveyard, as well as a stone wall surrounding the cemetery covered with yet more vines. Having just fought a number of vines that sought to eat us, we were naturally suspicious of practically any and all plant life that wasn't Grovetender. Feron approached the vines in an attempt to negotiate with them, but the results were less than hopeful and we convened a safe distance away to determine the best course of action. Soma decided to summon an earth elemental to attack the roots of the vines directly, ensuring a clear avenue of escape, however he had greatly overestimated the efficacy of his elemental and the vines soon became rather hostile, releasing four zombies to attack us.

The zombies were...well interesting and strange as words do not fully describe their actions, but they seem the most accurate. The zombies, of course, shambled towards us and began trying to attack me but one of them decided to turn instead and attack its fellows, which came as a surprise to the other zombies as well. Between fighting amongst themselves and the sheer killing power the entire party the zombies did not last particularly long. The vines, however, proved a greater challenge and even Meda's archery and Whitmore's bombs could only take down one before the other decided to burrow underneath the ground and disappear. We quickly reformed the party, worried that the remaining vine would come back and try to seek its revenge, but it must have decided it enjoyed living more and we've seen no sign of it since.

As we entered the cemetery Soma and Feron noticed that the tree which dominated its center was a gallows tree, a nasty plant which turns any corpses around it into little meat puppets that hang from its branches. Although we didn't like the look of it, we decided Feron should at least attempt to negotiate with the tree so that we could investigate the cemetery in relative peace. I will never know exactly what Feron said to that damn tree but it must have pissed the tree off because it killed him just moments after he walked up to it, smashing him into a very fine pulp. Grovetender quickly gathered up what little was left of Feron and ran back into the woods, much to our dismay because as frustrating or annoying Feron was, we all had taken a liking to Grovetender. Probably because he didn't talk as much. Confronted with certain death if we continued into the cemetery, we decided to head back to the town and see if Deris could give us more information.

Deris seemed somewhat surprised about the tree and despite our protests still wanted us to investigate the graveyard. We asked him if there was anything he could do to help us take care of the tree, and he said he could write some spells down on a scroll, but Soma concluded none of the spells would be of much help. The great age and strength of the tree meant that Whitmore's bombs and chemicals would be of limited help, and while I could certainly attempt to cut down the tree with my sword, it seemed unlikely that the tree would let me live long enough to accomplish anything significant. Meda, however, had a skyhook that could leave her suspended in air, well above the tree's clutches, and she could sit all day flinging arrows at the tree until it finally expired. As this seemed the best plan with our limited resources, we decided to begin Operation Skyhook the next day.

Despite a promising beginning, Operation Skyhook proved to be extremely unsuccessful, much to everyone's regret. I did find it rather entertaining to watch a dwarf be lifted a hundred feet in the air and then stay there while she launched arrow after arrow towards a giant tree, but after a few minutes it became apparent that Meda was doing little more than scratching the bark of that damned tree. If it had been almost any other creature our plan might have worked, but the tree's thick bark meant most of Meda's arrows clattered uselessly around its roots. While she was suspended a hundred feet in the air, though, Meda did notice that thirteen of the graves in the cemetery had been defiled. Determined to prevent this trip from becoming a total loss I carefully entered the graveyard and skirted the edges, staying well out of the maiming radius of the tree. Although unable to investigate all of the graves, I was able to discover (much to no one's surprise) that twelve of them were child-sized graves and one of them was adult-sized. Presumably Corrister had stolen the corpses of Deris and his students for some nefarious purpose. With no other options available to us we decided to return to the town and inform Deris about the developments.

It was at this point that we started debating if Deris was either useless or trying to dick us over because the argument could be made very strongly either way. Apparently all Deris needed us to do was confirm that his grave had been desecrated, something which he had already concluded from available evidence but could not prove. Furthermore in life Deris had been a verdant sorcerer which meant he had planted the tree in the center of the graveyard with the intent that it would help protect the cemetery and prevent any desecration of the corpses. I was very quick to inform Deris that the tree had very clearly failed to do its job, and he could have very easily told us about this tree before we left for the cemetery the first time. Or even the second time after we told him a giant-ass tree had killed Feron but still wanted us to go into the cemetery and investigate. Furthermore, rather than wasting our time with confirming something he already knew, Deris could have just told us to go find whoever had stolen his body so that it could be put back to rest, which is what we're now going to have to do. Either Deris completely forgot to mention all of this relevant information until we reminded him of it, making him utterly useless, or he selectively omitted information because he's planning to dick us over at some point, possibly with the tree. Not even the promise of treasure (of course buried underneath the tree) is able to make the more mercenary of us eager to perform this task. I'm left with the suspicion we should have just hunted down Corrister in the first place, which would have saved us a lot of trouble.

- Krinsblag

Adventures of Krinsblag: School's Out

When last I wrote we had discovered a noticeable draft in a school library which probably had some undead as its cause. Deciding to hold off on poking that particular monster with a stick we went through the other rooms of the schoolhouse, discovering that someone had recently done an inventory of all the valuables in the town (most of which we had already grabbed) and a list of names, most of which had been crossed off. A continued search turned up little else and we decided to investigate the rest of the school before tackling whatever was hiding in the library. In one classroom we discovered a desk with particularly unusual graffiti, specifically the phrase "Want to get out" carved over and over into the desk. We did not have long to ponder this mystery though, as a gibbering horror the name of which I've forgotten came out of a supply closet and began attacking us. What I do know was it looked like a floating disembodied skull and hands and all attempts to cut it with my sword left me cutting nothing more than empty air. I was left to stand impotently in the corner with Grovetender while everyone else quickly dispatched the monster with magic. It was, by far, one of my saddest moments.

As soon as that gibbering horror was sent back to whatever hell it came from we again noticed the draft and a ghost entered the room demanding to know what was going on in his classroom, and became quite friendly when he discovered we had killed the monster. The ghost explained he was Deris Marlinken and had been headmaster of this school four hundred years ago before the event which had destroyed Absalom. Deris explained that although he had died, it seemed quite a few of the townsfolk had survived before they suffered some ill fate in the aftermath of the fall of Absalom. However, he has only recently become a ghost and does not quite understand why he's here rather than in whatever afterlife the gods have deemed appropriate for him. What he has figured out is that someone has been raising his former students as undead and he's been working to put them all back to rest. (We suspect Corrister may be behind the necromancy, but Deris was unable to confirm the identity of the man responsible.) Between Deris and ourselves all but two of his students have been put back to rest. Deris also mentioned that the two demigods who had burst into No Fun and facilitated our escape to the Isle of Fuck You had never left Absalom before, which implied that something very importantly mysterious had happened. Personally, it doesn't seem terribly important because not even Deris could tell us what would make them leave the island, so it puts us in precisely no position to do anything about it. Whatever the hell it is. 

We asked Deris if he could check the house covered in vines as, being a ghost, the whipweed and assassin vine would be unable to harm him. A short while and quite a few explosions later Deris had cleared the house of plant life and confirmed that none of his former students had been inside, which meant they probably weren't inside the town. (Interestingly the house proved to be Deris's house when he was alive and we vehemently denied that we had anything to do with his silver possessions going missing.) Deris suspected that the two remaining students may be at the town graveyard, a short distance away in a forest to the west of town. Deris also believed that his grave may have been disturbed recently, explaining his return to this plane in ghost form, and he would investigate himself but for some reason he was unable to leave the confines of the town. We assented to his request that we would investigate and planned on heading out into the forest the next day, as it had already grown quite late and none of us relished the prospect of prancing around a haunted graveyard in the middle of the night. 

Personally I'm still suspicious of Deris, but much of that seems to be because everyone else we've run into so far has either been entirely unhelpful or actively trying to dick us over. Deris doesn't seem to fall in either category, although part of me suspects that heading into the graveyard might be part of a nefarious plan of Deris's design. Not that we were going to stumble blithely into the graveyard in the first place, of course, but I'm still concerned. Feron tells me that I'm just paranoid and I need to relax, but he's been eating parts of his mushroom hat pretty frequently and seems detached from reality most of the time so I suspect he may be wrong. 

In the morning Deris saw us off from the edge of town  and we headed out into the Blight, along a dirt path leading towards a forest. As we proceeded deeper into the forest the path continued to disappear and the vegetation grew considerably denser. Unfortunately for us it proved to be yet more assassin vine which was so eager to give us a nice, big, bone-crushing hug. I think I certainly got the worst of their attention, Feron said the vines are carnivorous and I guess they just wanted a big, meaty meal. Their decision to hug me proved a fatal mistake, though, as I managed to kill two of the bastards with my bone-blades.* I'd have rather cut them up with my sword, but they didn't really give me the option to maneuver and most of my time was spent trying to keep them from eating me alive. We've manged to clear out this particular patch of forest, but if we stay anywhere too long the vines will be able to come after us. I just hope we won't have to do a lot of heavy bushwhacking to get to this graveyard. 

- Krinsblag

*Editor's note: Krinsblag's outsider bonding means that he has spikes growing out of his body which can be used against creatures (or plants) that decide to grapple him. This has not been mentioned before because it hasn't come up. Krinsblag also can make his armor turn into shrapnel twice a day, but again this hasn't really come up.