June 25th, 2017

The Cabin in the Woods and the Cube

From my left:

Nick playing Merrick the human fighter

Catherine playing Ydee the half-elf thief

Matt playing Mirin the human spellsword

Chris playing Deckard the human ex-fighter thief

Sarai playing Desorna the elven axe-maiden

Hunter playing Strix the elven magic-user

and Zack playing LaVeya the human druid (HEALER FINALLY!!!)

As the party rested from the battle against the giant lizard, some of their missing members caught up with the group and one went back to Treefold. Then the adventurers in a more survivable group (with a healer) continued on.

Soon the cabin was spotted on top of the ridge over the river and on the far side of the river. Some reasonable efforts were made to get across the river though a unreasonable event happened too. Merrick, by virtue of his ring, walked across the top of the river with a rope that he used an iron spike to affix about six feet off of the ground in a tree while Deckard did the same on the road side of the river. The rest of the party crossed hand over hand, except for LaVeya who flew over in bird form, but the incredibly heavily armored fighter Desorna's hands slipped near the far side of the river and splashed into the water. She was mustache deep in the water and abdomen deep in the soft mud near the shore from her fall. Merrick walked back out and helped pull her free, though it took some time.

Meanwhile LaVeya did an overflight of the cabin and noted that it looked to be in good shape and well-maintained. The rest of the party had to take the roundabout way up, but soon they were outside the cabin. Strix marched up and knocked on the door. A panel in the door opened and a screechy not quite human voice was heard from beyond saying “Silver Eagle house welcome! What you want?” Some time was spent trying to figure how to best answer this, but in the end the doorman(?) just demanded they wait and slammed the panel shut again. A few minutes later it was reopened and the voice told them to come in and meet the master. Somewhat nervously and expecting the worst they did so.

The doorman(?) was actually a doorgoblin (!) in a tabard much too large for it. Strix, with her love for the horribly benighted creatures of the world adored it, which just creeped the thing out. It quickly led them down a short hall and into a second room which was a huge room with a centrally placed raised firepit with a fairly ornate chimney over it and quite a few comfortable looking chairs and benches and half a dozen or so small tables and a man sitting very comfortably and very relaxed in one of the chairs. He waved them in, smiled, and introduced himself as Gregory and welcomed them to the Aerie of the Silver Eagles, which it turned out was the name of their adventuring group. He invited them to sit down, offered them drinks which were fetched by the goblin, and they talked.

When Poknar (the goblin) brought the drinks Gregor invited them to choose which one he should drink so they could feel comfortable drinking as well. He took the one Desorna chose, drank from it, and continued to talk. Desorna was disappointed to discover that the drink wasn't alcoholic but involved unfermented fruit juices instead. Gregor told the group that most of the rest of his fellows were out exploring a nearby island that was rumored to be the lair of a drake. The discussed the what he knew of the drake's island, which included that there were many servitor races on it including bugbears and goblins in enough quantities that the Silver Eagles were considering avoiding it altogether.

Gregor did offer the party the chance to look at a curiosity they had found on a recent adventure: a 4 inch cube of some strange silvery metal that felt like heavy stone when held. Glenalen, the magic-user of the Silver Eagles, was going to identify it but hadn't done so, so Gregor asked if Strix would like to try while he went to get snacks. Strix said she would and started to cast the spell while Deckard and Mirin, fearing some sort of trap, left the room through the front door. Strix cast the spell on the cube and as soon as she did so all those in the room, including Poknar who had been standing in a corner minding his own business and trying to stay as far away from the creepy elven mage as possible, suddenly found themselves in a 30' by 30' room with an arched ceiling that was 20' high at the highest point. A door was in the center of each wall and there was nothing else to be seen.

After some “What just happened?” questions that no one could answer, the party decided to open a door and depart. They chose the subjective north door and had a hard time opening it, requiring two strong party members working hard to force it open. As they did so, heavily silted water came flowing in around it and now the rush was to shut the door again before they drowned. In this they were unsuccessful, but the silt only filled the room to about two and a half feet deep before it stopped. Since there were no halflings in the party since Keeva had gone back to Treefold, this was a nuisance more than a threat. Merrick could easily walk on the stuff Legolas-style so he didn't care too much. Poknar took off running to try to escape the weirdos and hopefully find someplace safe. The party went after him but his light weight and unencumbered state meant he moved much faster than the adventurers. He was gone, though perhaps to be encountered again later.

The party headed north down the hallway, bypassing a hall to the right. The passage turned a corner to the left, and the party continued that way. They came to another hallway to the right, but passed it by to investigate something they could see ahead. As they got closer several steps were seen rising out of the muck, and the party climbed them and looked to see if there were goblin-sized mucky footprints. None were found, but the party continued on. A short distance down the hall the party saw a T-intersection ahead. Reaching it they turned right and were in not another hallway but a twenty by twenty room with strange runic pictographs (think of Aztec/Maya engravings) on the walls, some of which were odd figures that looked very different. There were no exits out of this room, so they went the other direction and discovered another twenty by twenty room on the other side, with similar runic pictographs and designs on the walls. There were no other exits here, so the party searched the walls for secrets. Merrick actually found a secret panel at the end of the long hallway at the T intersection. Ydee was paid to search for traps and disarm the one she found. Behind the panel was an old and rusty looking valve wheel about 7 inches in diameter. Desorna attempted to turn it left but stopped when she felt like she might be breaking it. Merrick took over and turned it to the right and found it would turn about 90 degrees before stopping. When he did so they stopped to check and see what might have changed. Unfortunately what the discovered was a hissing sound in the distance. Taking a touch with himself, Merrick went to see if he could find the source of the hissing noise. He walked down the two steps and then walked on top of the silty mire back to the corner and turned south. As he did so he noticed that the flame of his torch was turning bluish. Realizing this as a sign of explosive gas, he decided after some discussions and back and forth to try to burn the gas away. Lighting a second torch off of the first, he prepared to throw the second torch down the hallway. As he did so it ignited the gas which ignited more gas around Merrick burning him badly. Very singed he walked back to report his results to the rest of the party. But the faint hissing of gas continued unabated.

At a dead end for the moment and unwilling to go down the heavily scorched hall towards the hissing of gas, the party returned to the first room they entered and tried to proceed south. This door was equally difficult to open, and when it was opened more silt poured in through the door. The door jammed making it impossible to close and the flow of silt could not be stopped, but luckily the silt only added to what was already in the room and filled the floor to a depth of slightly over three feet. This made slogging down the halls even harder for the elves in the party, but they did their best and continued on.

Continuing down the newly revealed southern hallway, the party quickly came to a four-way intersection but continued on straight after they saw steps a short way down the hall. At the top of the steps a short hall ended in a pair of bronze double doors. The party advanced and, after making sure the doors were safe to open, they opened them.

As the doors opened they revealed a thirty foot wide by forty foot long room with torches in brackets every ten feet along the side walls. These torches flickered to life showing a room with piles of what appeared to be rock and pebbles here and there on the floor and a raised dais in the southernmost ten feet of the room with a long altar like object sitting in the center of the dais. The party approached carefully and found a shroud that was so pale as to appear almost transparent on the altar with something thin underneath it. Desorna was the first to step on the dais and as she did she heard a voice in her head speaking in a heavily-accented unknown language that changed partway through into elven and finished by saying “...the tomb of Kaltec-Nairi must be worthy.” This caused her to hesitate in some fear before Merrick, having heard no new voices in his head stepped up on the dais and past the elven fighter to pull the shroud aside to reveal the most beautiful bastard sword he had ever seen. Overcome by the desire to possess this, he picked it up and failed a saving throw, hearing “not worthy” in his mind, before spinning to stare at/through Desorna and moving to attack her. Though he was not as effective under the control of the sword, he still attacked Desorna. The battle went badly for both of them for a dozen seconds as they hacked at each other until in his attack he caught his wrist against the elbow guard of her armor. The resulting shock caused the sword to slip from his grip and clatter to the floor, and he dropped to his knees as he regained control of his senses. Ydee, who had been maneuvering to get behind him to attempt to cosh him relaxed for a moment until Desorna picked up the bastard sword only to have it change to a battle axe in her hands. The words 'not worthy' echoed in her mind before the madness overtook her and she turned to continue the fight with Merrick. Ydee managed to maneuver behind her as the two fighters continued to hack each other, and then Ydee ended the battle by successfully coshing Desorna and knocking her out, leaving the axe to clatter across the floor.

Merrick decided that perhaps the only safe way to pick up this implement of doom was with the shroud, so he grabbed it from where it had fallen and lay it over the axe. This caused both the axe and the shroud to vanish. Confused by this, Merrick went and looked at the altar again. The shrouded weapon was not back on the altar, but there was a noticeable seam running lengthwise down the middle of the altar itself. With some effort the fighter and an ally or two managed to open the top of the altar to reveal a human skeleton inside with a shroud covering its torso leaving only the skull exposed. The shroud looked very similar to the one that had previously lain on the altar, and there was a faint outline of some large object lying under it on the skeleton. Removing the shroud revealed that the skeleton's hands were crossed on the hilt of a two-handed sword whose blade was very odd. It was a long strip of metal with jaggedly sharp pieces of obsidian set along the blade like the teeth of a saw. Merrick, hesitantly, reached for the blade only to have the skeletal hands pull it away from him before the skeleton leapt to its feet and attacked.

For all the damage the fighters had inflicted on each other, what the skeleton could do with this sword was beyond that. Merrick faced the brunt of the damage and only stayed in the battle due to the multiple lesser and minor regeneration spells LaVeya cast on him. Other members of the party attempted to help but the skeleton's attacks quickly made them wish they hadn't. Ydee alternated between trying to wake up the coshed fighter and attacking the skeleton, but once she did enough damage to draw the skeleton's notice, and a single round of the skeleton's attacks reduce her from 23 hit points to one hit point, she focused on awakening Desorna. Finally, with a mighty blow, Merrick killed the skeleton and it collapsed and vanished in a flash of light that blinded the party for a moment. When their vision cleared the party saw that the skeleton was gone and the altar was closed again. The party was unwilling to open the altar again, but Merrick took some comfort in the voice that spoke the words “Perhaps you are worthy.” in his mind. But as far as he knew nothing else happened.

Meanwhile, back at the cabin, Mirin and Deckard had walked back into the main room after a few moments and found themselves alone. The party had vanished, along with the goblin (not that they much noticed or cared about a goblin), and only the cube remained lying on the floor. Suspecting treachery of some sort, they were somewhat confused when Gregor walked back into the room from the kitchen bearing a tray of bread, cheeses, some hard sausage, and fruit and seemed as surprised as they were. “Where have your friends gone?” Gregor asked. The wary adventurers replied, “We were going to ask you that.”

Some peaceable discussion followed where Gregor informed the group that he had no idea what had happened either, but he was beginning to be concerned for both the rest of the PCs and for the Silver Eagles' magic-user. Gregor told them that this item along with some others had come from a recent adventure to a place that was referred to in some noted that they had found as the Dungeon of the Trickster. After they had returned to the Aerie, the Silver Eagles were going to rest up for the night before most of the party were going to go and do some more scouting of the isle where the drake was. Glenalen, the magic-user, had taken the items that had detected as magical to his room and workshop to identify before resting, then he was going to get up early for the scouting mission.

When the Silver Eagles had awoken comfortably late the next morning a knock on Glenalen's door brought no answer, and opening the door showed that the mage was gone. Figuring that the usually impatient mage had grown tired of waiting and had flown off to scout, the majority of the rest of the party ate quickly, gathered their gear, and headed off after the mage, hoping to catch up to him at the end of the first day. Barron, the dwarven cleric, was going to Treefold to buy more supplies while Gregor was staying at the Aerie to watch over the place and continue training Poknar. It had been several days, but that meant nothing since the drake's island was at least three days away cross country. But based on the result of Strix's identify spell, perhaps Glenalen was not flying ahead of the scouting party but had instead been sent elsewhere through the cube.

Concerned, but without any ability to cast a similar spell at the cube, and with a relative unwillingness to do so, the three sat down to eat and chat and to hope that either the vanished PCs and/or Glenalen would return soon. Otherwise when Barron returned the combined foursome might mount a search and rescue mission themselves.

Back in the ancient tomb of the king (though the adventurers had and have no concept of that being where they are), the party continued to heal a bit and tried to figure where to go next. Leaving the guardian's tomb, the party turned right and then right again into the first byway. This led to a short hall that ended in a T intersection with rooms on each side, but without glyphs this time. What there was in the far corner of the right hand room was a skeletal head protruding out of the silt. The party cautiously advanced toward it and Merrick tried to bodily lift the skeleton out of the silt so it could be examined. The skeleton was heavily encrusted with muck and had little to show other than some rusted metal links of what used to be armor and some quickly disintegrating leather scraps. As Merrick lifted the skeleton's belt flaked away dropping its empty scabbard back into the muck. Merrick grabbed the crusted scabbard and removed his ring so he could actually search under the silt for a sword that might have gone into it. A quick search led him to find an equally encrusted short sword which he picked up. Hacking at the crust with his dagger removed enough of the crust to reveal the sword's still-bright metal underneath. Considering this a notable curiosity, the sword and scabbard were bundled up and taken along.

Further searching revealed a panel at the end of the hallway at the T-intersection as had been encountered before. Ydee detected no traps here, and so the panel was opened which led to minor electric shocks as arcs spread throughout the party. A single lever was behind the panel in an upright position. The lever was pulled sending more electrical shocks throughout the party and a loud thunk was heard in the distance in the direction of the hall they had come from. Leaving this place behind, the party went in search of the noise they had heard and what might have been revealed.

Turning back the way they had come, the party passed by the hallway to the altar room and continued forward. After a short distance they came to a four way intersection where, following the right hand rule, they turned right. Another short slog through silt led them to another four way intersection. A look to the right revealed a door a short distance in that direction. They went and opened that door and found a ten foot by ten foot room beyond with a door in the far wall that matched up to the west door in the room where they had first appeared. Not even bothering to enter this room, they returned to the intersection and went right from their new perspective.

This right was a short passage that led to a T-intersection with, once again, rooms with glyph pictographs on the walls on each side. The right hand room was odd though as it also had a circular hole in the center of the wall opposite the entrance that was roughly three inches in diameter. The party went to investigate this hole and Merrick stuck his ten foot pole (which the DM is seriously rethinking allowing most adventuring parties to carry. I mean, my Lord, how awkward is it to carry such a thing in a dungeon?) into the hole and determined that it was roughly five feet deep. Stooping and trying to use a torch to peer down the hole he was able to make out what could be best described as the Aztec equivalent of a frowning face at the end of the hole. There were also smaller diameter holes that entered into this channel which seemed to serve little purpose but made the fighter nervous.

After determining that there was nothing else to be done there the party went to check out the other room. They found no hole in here, but they did find a circular section of the wall that was roughly the same diameter and perfectly smooth and without glyphs. Pressure on it caused it to sink into the wall, and soon the ten foot pole was used to push it all the way in as far as it would go. It went in about five feet as well before stopping which pushed the frowning face out equal with the wall on the other side. Since this didn't seem to do too much, the party searched for and found the expected panel on the wall at the T-intersection. A switch was found after the trap was disarmed and a much closer clunk was heard. Looking into the rooms there were no visible holes in either wall and the frowning face was gone from the right hand room, but a stylized smiling face was now on the previously blank stone in the left room. The smiling face could be pushed in, and was for about six inches, but when it was there was a smaller clink from it when pressure was released. LaVeya looked into the hole and found that the bottom of the stone had fallen away and what looked like an odd ring was visible. Using one of Ydee's arrows to fish with, LaVeya managed to hook and remove the ring, which actually was the grip of a small key of archaic make. Pocketing this for future use, the party moved onward.

Following the only unexplored hall from the four way intersection, the party took a left turn when the hall gave them no other options (and went up another short flight of stairs out of the silt that the DM forgot to mention in game. Admittedly, the DM did that more than once in this adventure. Gah! Stupid map memorization fails.) and bypassed a side hallway to the left as they saw a door ahead on the left. The door was cautiously opened to reveal a twenty by thirty room with a large chest sitting in the center of the floor and a door across from the one the party entered through. However, the side walls were honeycombed with holes which made the party very nervous. Ydee determined that the floor was a pressure plate, and LaVeya used the ten foot pole to stamp down hard on the floor to see what would happen. The result was that hordes of what looked like cactus spines flew across the room. A repeat of the trick with the pole led to another storm of spines flying back and forth across the room. The party decided that they didn't want to risk it, but Strix advanced the idea that if she entered the room in gaseous form and returned to her usual form ON the chest, she would be safe since the chest wouldn't be on the pressure plate. There was some hesitation about the wisdom of such a plan, but in the end Strix tried it. Unfortunately, Strix's guess about the chest not being on the pressure plate was incorrect and the flurry of spines caused enough damage to render the poor magic-user unconscious and bleeding out even before the poison on the spines killed her dead. Unfortunately, Strix and all her possessions were out of reach unless someone else wanted to enter the room, and no one did. Too bad about the spellbook.

Now without a magic-user, the party closed the door on Strix's tomb and continued down the hall. It made a left then an immediate right before ending in a door. Opening the door took some effort without Strix the door-opening crowbar, but the doors opened and the party entered the room beyond.
This room was a 30 by 30 room with stylized engravings along the walls resembling a view of a mountainscape from a peak within the mountains. There was an engraving of a setting/rising sun on the west wall (since all directions were subjective after being teleported), and an engraving of a rising/setting crescent moon on the east wall. Another set of bronze double doors was in the center of the far wall. The moon and sun appeared like they could be pushed like large buttons. Ydee detected traps on each but failed to disarm them, so they were left alone. The double doors were not trapped but were locked, though the lock was way too large to fit the key they had found. Ydee made short work of the lock and the party opened the doors.

The space beyond was filled with a thick mist, though there were walls barely visible to the left and right that showed that the space beyond was around thirty feet wide. Desorna and LaVeya entered the area to explore while Merrick and Ydee waited to see what they would find. After a bit there was no response to the fighter and thief shouting the names of the two explorers, and when Ydee lay flat to see if she could see under the mist, which was possible, no sign of the two was seen. Merrick groaned at this news and said, “Well, it is just us then. Let's go back to where we came in and see if they find us.”

Desorna and LaVeya had actually found themselves lying down in a confined space. Though this was unnerving for both of them, the elf was extra freaked out by this as elven claustrophobia made it almost unbearable. LaVeya managed to push up on the heavy coffin lid that had her trapped and slide it aside while Desorna continued to try to beat her way out of the solid coffin. LaVeya carefully squeezed out of the coffin and off of the catacomb shelf to find that they were in a twenty foot long hall with many catacomb shelves cut into it, but only one other had a coffin on it. There was phosphorescent light coming from the ceiling which gave enough light to see by, so the human was able to see dimly. LaVeya managed to shift the coffin lid and help the panicky elf escape. They were both without the majority of their equipment: LaVeya had her leather armor and her ironwood staff while Desorna was only wearing the padded armor from under her plate armor. They each had a sling, but no ammunition for it and there was no easy path to escape. A stone slab with some melted metal visible in the cracks around its edges was the 'door' that sealed off the room. A search found nothing else of interest other than an old dagger lying at the back of one of the lowest shelves, but Desorna was happy to grab it up as a weapon. After a brief amount of time the two noticed that it was getting harder and harder to breathe, meaning that the place where they were was air tight. The resulting fear increased for the elf though she tried to calm her breathing so to make the air last longer. LaVeya changed into the form of a rat for the same purpose, and then Desorna attacked the metal seals with the found dagger, trying to desperately remove enough that they could make an escape. Their vision had become narrow tunnel vision by the time Desorna had more or less cleared one side of the slab of its seal, and afterretaking her human shape LaVeya threw her weight against the slab with Desorna and tried to make their escape before suffocating. With their last gasp they were successful and the slab fell away allowing them to take deep breaths of relatively fresh air.

That obstacle surmounted and their escape from entombment made, the two peered down the dark hallway before them trying to make out any features. The human couldn't see much of anything of course, but the elf could barely make out an intersection of some sort at the limit of her vision. They also realized that LaVeya's hands were faintly glowing now from when she had been lifted up by the fighter to search the ceiling for secret ways out. This phosphorescence was enough to allow Desorna to use her low-light vision, so LaVeya lifted Desorna up so she too could coat her hands with the phosphorescence. As Desorna turned to lead the way down the hall LaVeya couldn't help but giggle out loud. When Desorna asked what was so funny, LaVeya grinned and said “I left two glowing handprints on your butt when I picked you up!” With the elf's tail lights making it easier for the human to follow her, the pair carefully started down the hall.

Following the right hand rule, the pair took the right turn at the four way intersection. This led down a short hall to a T-intersection with glyph-filled rooms on each side. The rooms didn't look familiar, so the pair turned right again at the four way intersection and headed toward another hallway that opened into another thirty by thirty room. The hissing, which had been noticeable, grew ever louder as they approached.

This room had a 10 diameter round area inset into the floor in the center of the room. A smaller round area, about six inches in diameter, was raised in the center of this equal to the level of the rest of the floor. A roughly inch and a half diameter hole was in the center of this and there was a hissing emanating from it and the smell of gas. Desorna tried to stop the gas with the hilt of the found dagger, but while it quieted the hiss it did not stop it, and it made them notice that there was an equally loud hiss from the ceiling overhead. Not wanting to be rendered unconscious from the gas, they decided to keep going.

Down a short flight of stairs and into the silt again, they came to another four way intersection and again took a right turn. This hallway went thirty feet before it came to a T-intersection, this time with a set of bronze double doors ahead. The doors were tempting for the underequipped duo, so they considered them before turning right as protocol dictated. This passage led thirty feet to yet another T-intersection, this time with the expected twenty by twenty foot rooms on each side, though these were plain-walled. Not wanting to fool with a potentially trap-filled panel, they returned to the double doors and slowly opened them.

Beyond was a thirty foot by thirty foot room with stone sarcophagi standing against all the walls, one in the center of every ten feet of wall space. Considering their current levels of equipment, they decided to not open these either. From pain comes wisdom. Back to the hall, a right hand turn, and down another silt-filled hallway.

The next T-intersection was actual hallways instead of standard twenty by twenty rooms on each side,so they took a right, went around a corner to the left, and then took a side passage to the right. This led ten feet down to another T-intersection with unadorned rooms on each side, and so back to the hallway they returned. The hallway led up a flight of stairs and continued forward thirty feet to another T-intersection with the standard two rooms, but after a moment these two rooms looked familiar. Sarai looked at the original pre-teleport map she had drawn versus the after-teleport map (that Desorna actually didn't have since all her equipment was missing) and discovered the overlap and correctly identified that they were in the first pair of rooms they had explored. Once they were oriented they returned to the room where they first arrived and were greeted by Merrick's “What took you so long?”

Once the party had reformed they went back to investigate the sarcophagi. Once back in the room they opened the first sarcophagi beside the door. A mummified body stepped out and began attacking the party. Some panic ensued until the 'mummy' collapsed after not too much damage and they realized that it was just a wrapped up zombie. They zombie didn't have much else of interest, so the group moved onto the next one.

This one, when opened, resulted in a much more significant battle as the plate armor clad wrapped zombie hacked into Desorna twice with a very familiar looking silver bladed pole axe, hurting her badly. But the zombie was quickly killed and stripped of her gear. Meanwhile LaVeya, feeling that she knew the pattern, ran to the opposite sarcophagi, much as she had been on the opposite shelf from Desorna in the tomb, and with help got it open and attacked and killed the zombie wearing her equipment. When the party was reequipped and ready to go, they continued exploring.

The party returned to one of the discovered but unexplored twin rooms next to the sarcophagi room and found a secret panel which caused another loud thunk to come from behind them, perhaps from the original entry room. Returning to this room they discovered that a opening roughly twoand a half feet square and three feet deep had opened in the center of the ceiling. Merrick's helm of vision allowed him to see that there was a small keyhole, about the size of the key LaVeya had, in the center of the ceiling in this opening. Now the question was how to reach it?

Minds met, bickered, and finally a well done working conclusion was reached after a couple of less successful ones were attempted: Merrick used his hand axe to notch the end of the ten foot pole, the key was wedged into the end and lashed there with a strand of twine that had been unwound from the rope. Then, with Merrick standing on the silt, Ydee sat on Merrick's shoulders and had the combination of high dexterity to fit the key into the lock on the first try and high strength to turn the key with the pole. There was a bright flash, a moment's disorientation, and the four surviving adventurers were back in the main hall of the Aerie where the chatting three were finishing their dinner and sipping beverages of their choice.

Discussion of what had happened took some time, and it was noticed that one side of the cube was now a deep red color, which may have meant something but without a magic-user it was only guesswork. Facilities were made available for cleaning up as the silty much had inundated much of the clothing and armor of three of the four since Merrick had managed to stay MOSTLY out of it because of his ring. The foundling short sword and its scabbard were cleaned and were shown to be a beautiful blade and a very well made and decorated scabbard, though both had odd design elements. Strix was mourned a bit by some of the characters and not at all by others, and Poknar's loss was greeted with an “Oh well.” Then the plan was made to take word of this item to Glykras and to wait for the remainder of the Silver Eagles to return and to try to plan out what to do next, if anything.

And here we paused for the night.

Experience points for the party (and wow this gets odd):

Merrick: 1522

Ydee: 1522

Mirin: 500

Deckard: 500

Desorna: 1522

Strix: Deceased. :-(

LaVeya: 1522

Mirin and Deckard get a portion of xp for helpful advice and such. Hunter gets 500 sympathy XP for character death, but he needs to quit making a habit of it. :-p

Merrick has had something happen that he knows nothing about yet.

If you all ever find a magic-user again, you might want to get the short sword identified.