Post by Bandgoat on Feb 24, 2015 11:27:01 GMT -6
Abadius 30, 4708 – Early Morning
--,
We have met with considerable success concerning our expedition into the Halls of Wrath. Not only have we defeated the so-called Lady Athroxis and her minions, but also I believe we have discovered the possible departure mechanism for leaving Runeforge, though we are not yet certain how it functions. Our ultimate goal nears and I look forward to wresting control of Xin-Shalast’s armies from our unworthy foe.
Yesterday, after we had recovered from the Veiled Halls of Illusion, we prepared to enter the Halls of Wrath. Expecting to confront evocation magic from followers of Runelord Alaznist, we prepared our defenses appropriately.
As we entered the Halls of Wrath, predictably, Soril’s key necklace began to glow while Gorm’s and my keys grew cold, sapping us of our energy. When that happened, we agreed to take a moment to cast some protective spells. That turned out to be a very wise decision. As the hallway ended, a wide corridor of polished marble opened into a brightly lit and extremely tall chamber. The upper portion of the far wall was entirely covered in an immaculate mural of an armored woman with crimson hair holding a burning ranseur and riding on the back of a massive red dragon – a fanciful depiction of Alaznist, I presumed. A square outcropping of smooth marble jutted out from the far wall rising from the floor to a height of thirty feet or so. An opening in the wall directly behind the flat top of the stone column appeared to lead deeper into this section of the vault. A large iron statue stood on the platform, an enormous iron bow gripped in its metal fist, and a rune that almost looked like a pair of fangs decorating its chest. We recognized the rune as the Thassilonian symbol for “Wrath.” Gorm started to investigate and as he approached the midpoint, the statue moved. A thunderous alarm triggered that sounded like metal scraping and the vibrating of stones. The statue turned out to be an iron golem, a subject in which I have had some study. The golem fired with its bow, firing an energetic bolt of fire at me, which, thanks to our protective fire resistance, did no damage. By various means, we made our way to the top of the podium on which it stood, but it was able simply to step off through the air as if able to walk through nothing. Through other means, we flew to face him and brought it down to the ground. From there, we used ranged attacks to destroy it. The golem had two precious stones for eyes, one of them magically able to produce light.
We then quickly continued our exploration of the halls, moving up a ramp provided by Soril and down a short hallway. The room in which it opened was rectangular with two engraved circles in the ground surrounding large, strange runes in their center. The one closest to us was red while the other was blue. No translation could be made of the runes, but they were certainly magical. We reasoned they could be teleportation circles. After a very brief discussion among most of us, Nala took it upon himself to confirm that suspicion and jumped onto the red circle and disappeared. After a few tense moments, he reappeared on the blue circle. He said he found several rooms with a dozen or so monsters and humans in them. He said they appeared to be hostile. We prepared for battle. We waited a few moments for any enemies to appear, but nothing did. There was nothing for it but to go on the offensive. One by one, we jumped onto the red portal. The enemies we found on the other side were a strong contingent of magi and a swarm of monsters resembling those my companions found under the town of Sandpoint – what they called “wrathspawn.” Through a most impressive battle of arcane might and physical prowess, resembling those in which I fought during the war with Those-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and worthy to be recorded in the annals of our people, we prevailed with only a few injuries to ourselves. The fight would have been much more brutal had we not taken the precaution of warding ourselves against fire and other magical attacks. Our foes carried with them a good number of magical arms and armor, which we were happy to collect after the fight.
Not wishing our defenses to expire, we quickly healed our wounds and rummaged through the sparring chamber and attached barracks, finding sconces of continual flame torches and combat gear in various states of repair. We then opted to jump onto another red portal, in pursuit of a few magi that fled from the previous fight. In the chamber beyond, we found a long room filled with two rows of wide work tables. Four wide alcoves at the far end of the chamber were filled with all manner of alchemical supplies, large barrels, and a single huge vat full of what appeared to be twitching, foul-smelling flesh. There was also apparently a contingent of magi and some wrathspawn, but by the time I appeared in the room, Soril had expertly done away with most of them. We quickly mopped up the rest and made a cursory investigation of the room. It seems that the denizens in this hall have been creating more of the filthy wrathspawn beasts. We also found typical alchemical things, too useless to be of immediate use, and we recovered more of the magical weapons and armors of our assailants.
We then exited that room through the portal, returning us to the previous barracks. We stepped across the hall to another set of portals and entered an antechamber with a decorative illusionary wall of billowing, black smoke blocking entry to the room beyond. The polished granite walls of that large chamber were covered in spidery glyphs. The ceiling rose twenty-five feet high where a mural depicted a red-headed woman holding a flaming ranseur standing atop a burning tower of stone: another romantic depiction of Alaznist and her hellfire flumes. Swords and ranseurs rested inside shallow depressions in the walls, glowing faintly to illuminate the chamber. Yet another contingent of magi and some wrathspawn guards attacked us. After a short, but vicious skirmish in which Nala nearly died, we briefly healed and prepared to enter the next room.
Soril produced a hemispherical shroud of invisibility around us. We then continued, huddled closely to Soril. We found a wide avenue, flanked by crimson stone pillars, running down the center of the next chamber. The ceiling arched sixty feet above and seemed to be made of fire. At the center of the room, a huge seven-pointed star made of silver was engraved into the floor and surrounded by a circle of low-burning flames. Also in the room was a dark-skinned human lady with white hair wielding a flaming ranseur and wearing a metal breastplate. There was also a huge demon: a dastardly glabrezu. When we entered, at first they paid us no attention; but suddenly the woman turned to us and spoke in Thassilonian, “For fury and hellfire!” Our suspicion was that this was the so-called High Lady Athroxis, the enemy of the gluttonous Jordimandus. Predictably, a battle ensued. I began the fight by casting a spell to allow us to move more quickly in combat while Lai’Ki enchanted her longbow. Expecting a fierce fight against the demon, both Ryll and Tolgun called down righteous fury from their gods to boost their combat prowess. Soril tried to imprison the woman in a cage of force, but to no avail. He then exited the room fearing the inevitable magical retaliation. High Lady Athroxis sprayed the room with prismatic energy, but it seemed to have only limited effect on a few of my allies. Nala threw a bomb at the multitude of illusory images around Athroxis, but was then stunned by the glabrezu that seemed to instantaneously leap around the chamber. Gorm’s axe bit into the demon’s hide while I let loose a bolt of lightning at our wrathful foe. Soril cleverly erected a transparent wall, bisecting the chamber and temporarily cutting off Athroxis from the fight. We were then all able to concentrate on the demonic monster and finish it off, though at great peril to those within range of its powerfully evil claws, particularly the poorly protected Tolgun. When Athroxis was able to dissipate the wall, I sprayed her with arcane motes, but they were absorbed mere inches from her body, apparently blocked by a protective spell. Lai’Ki let fly with a flurry of arrows, causing Athroxis’s images to wink out of existence one by one. Soril placed another wall in the room, but the so-called “lady” just flew up and over the obstruction. She let loose vicious arcs of electrical energies, damaging several of my allies and knocking Tolgun down to the ground. With Soril running to Tolgun’s aid and protecting him against further attack, the rest of us surrounded Athroxis and eventually wore her down. Seeing the battle would soon be over, she yelled, “For Glory and Alaznist,” releasing a fiery blast of energy, killing herself and hurting a few of us in the process.
The battle won, we then healed our wounds and gathered some very nice magical items we could probably use. We focused our attention to the large circle in the middle of the room. We deduced that the rune was probably a teleportation circle needing activation and that it was the purported exit to Runeforge as mentioned in the journal we found in the halls of illusion. We decided to leave it alone for now until we are prepared to leave permanently. Our discussions afterward led us to plan a return to the area of conjuration to report our progress to Jordimandus. We hope to pry more information from him, though we will certainly prepare to fight when he eventually turns against us. From there, I believe it will be our mission to venture into the halls of transmutation to seek knowledge concerning the whereabouts of Karzoug’s capital of Xin-Shalast. At that point, the only area left to delve would be concerning necromancy and we may as well seek further equipment to aid us in the upcoming confrontation against the Runelord of Greed.
- E
--,
We have met with considerable success concerning our expedition into the Halls of Wrath. Not only have we defeated the so-called Lady Athroxis and her minions, but also I believe we have discovered the possible departure mechanism for leaving Runeforge, though we are not yet certain how it functions. Our ultimate goal nears and I look forward to wresting control of Xin-Shalast’s armies from our unworthy foe.
Yesterday, after we had recovered from the Veiled Halls of Illusion, we prepared to enter the Halls of Wrath. Expecting to confront evocation magic from followers of Runelord Alaznist, we prepared our defenses appropriately.
As we entered the Halls of Wrath, predictably, Soril’s key necklace began to glow while Gorm’s and my keys grew cold, sapping us of our energy. When that happened, we agreed to take a moment to cast some protective spells. That turned out to be a very wise decision. As the hallway ended, a wide corridor of polished marble opened into a brightly lit and extremely tall chamber. The upper portion of the far wall was entirely covered in an immaculate mural of an armored woman with crimson hair holding a burning ranseur and riding on the back of a massive red dragon – a fanciful depiction of Alaznist, I presumed. A square outcropping of smooth marble jutted out from the far wall rising from the floor to a height of thirty feet or so. An opening in the wall directly behind the flat top of the stone column appeared to lead deeper into this section of the vault. A large iron statue stood on the platform, an enormous iron bow gripped in its metal fist, and a rune that almost looked like a pair of fangs decorating its chest. We recognized the rune as the Thassilonian symbol for “Wrath.” Gorm started to investigate and as he approached the midpoint, the statue moved. A thunderous alarm triggered that sounded like metal scraping and the vibrating of stones. The statue turned out to be an iron golem, a subject in which I have had some study. The golem fired with its bow, firing an energetic bolt of fire at me, which, thanks to our protective fire resistance, did no damage. By various means, we made our way to the top of the podium on which it stood, but it was able simply to step off through the air as if able to walk through nothing. Through other means, we flew to face him and brought it down to the ground. From there, we used ranged attacks to destroy it. The golem had two precious stones for eyes, one of them magically able to produce light.
We then quickly continued our exploration of the halls, moving up a ramp provided by Soril and down a short hallway. The room in which it opened was rectangular with two engraved circles in the ground surrounding large, strange runes in their center. The one closest to us was red while the other was blue. No translation could be made of the runes, but they were certainly magical. We reasoned they could be teleportation circles. After a very brief discussion among most of us, Nala took it upon himself to confirm that suspicion and jumped onto the red circle and disappeared. After a few tense moments, he reappeared on the blue circle. He said he found several rooms with a dozen or so monsters and humans in them. He said they appeared to be hostile. We prepared for battle. We waited a few moments for any enemies to appear, but nothing did. There was nothing for it but to go on the offensive. One by one, we jumped onto the red portal. The enemies we found on the other side were a strong contingent of magi and a swarm of monsters resembling those my companions found under the town of Sandpoint – what they called “wrathspawn.” Through a most impressive battle of arcane might and physical prowess, resembling those in which I fought during the war with Those-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and worthy to be recorded in the annals of our people, we prevailed with only a few injuries to ourselves. The fight would have been much more brutal had we not taken the precaution of warding ourselves against fire and other magical attacks. Our foes carried with them a good number of magical arms and armor, which we were happy to collect after the fight.
Not wishing our defenses to expire, we quickly healed our wounds and rummaged through the sparring chamber and attached barracks, finding sconces of continual flame torches and combat gear in various states of repair. We then opted to jump onto another red portal, in pursuit of a few magi that fled from the previous fight. In the chamber beyond, we found a long room filled with two rows of wide work tables. Four wide alcoves at the far end of the chamber were filled with all manner of alchemical supplies, large barrels, and a single huge vat full of what appeared to be twitching, foul-smelling flesh. There was also apparently a contingent of magi and some wrathspawn, but by the time I appeared in the room, Soril had expertly done away with most of them. We quickly mopped up the rest and made a cursory investigation of the room. It seems that the denizens in this hall have been creating more of the filthy wrathspawn beasts. We also found typical alchemical things, too useless to be of immediate use, and we recovered more of the magical weapons and armors of our assailants.
We then exited that room through the portal, returning us to the previous barracks. We stepped across the hall to another set of portals and entered an antechamber with a decorative illusionary wall of billowing, black smoke blocking entry to the room beyond. The polished granite walls of that large chamber were covered in spidery glyphs. The ceiling rose twenty-five feet high where a mural depicted a red-headed woman holding a flaming ranseur standing atop a burning tower of stone: another romantic depiction of Alaznist and her hellfire flumes. Swords and ranseurs rested inside shallow depressions in the walls, glowing faintly to illuminate the chamber. Yet another contingent of magi and some wrathspawn guards attacked us. After a short, but vicious skirmish in which Nala nearly died, we briefly healed and prepared to enter the next room.
Soril produced a hemispherical shroud of invisibility around us. We then continued, huddled closely to Soril. We found a wide avenue, flanked by crimson stone pillars, running down the center of the next chamber. The ceiling arched sixty feet above and seemed to be made of fire. At the center of the room, a huge seven-pointed star made of silver was engraved into the floor and surrounded by a circle of low-burning flames. Also in the room was a dark-skinned human lady with white hair wielding a flaming ranseur and wearing a metal breastplate. There was also a huge demon: a dastardly glabrezu. When we entered, at first they paid us no attention; but suddenly the woman turned to us and spoke in Thassilonian, “For fury and hellfire!” Our suspicion was that this was the so-called High Lady Athroxis, the enemy of the gluttonous Jordimandus. Predictably, a battle ensued. I began the fight by casting a spell to allow us to move more quickly in combat while Lai’Ki enchanted her longbow. Expecting a fierce fight against the demon, both Ryll and Tolgun called down righteous fury from their gods to boost their combat prowess. Soril tried to imprison the woman in a cage of force, but to no avail. He then exited the room fearing the inevitable magical retaliation. High Lady Athroxis sprayed the room with prismatic energy, but it seemed to have only limited effect on a few of my allies. Nala threw a bomb at the multitude of illusory images around Athroxis, but was then stunned by the glabrezu that seemed to instantaneously leap around the chamber. Gorm’s axe bit into the demon’s hide while I let loose a bolt of lightning at our wrathful foe. Soril cleverly erected a transparent wall, bisecting the chamber and temporarily cutting off Athroxis from the fight. We were then all able to concentrate on the demonic monster and finish it off, though at great peril to those within range of its powerfully evil claws, particularly the poorly protected Tolgun. When Athroxis was able to dissipate the wall, I sprayed her with arcane motes, but they were absorbed mere inches from her body, apparently blocked by a protective spell. Lai’Ki let fly with a flurry of arrows, causing Athroxis’s images to wink out of existence one by one. Soril placed another wall in the room, but the so-called “lady” just flew up and over the obstruction. She let loose vicious arcs of electrical energies, damaging several of my allies and knocking Tolgun down to the ground. With Soril running to Tolgun’s aid and protecting him against further attack, the rest of us surrounded Athroxis and eventually wore her down. Seeing the battle would soon be over, she yelled, “For Glory and Alaznist,” releasing a fiery blast of energy, killing herself and hurting a few of us in the process.
The battle won, we then healed our wounds and gathered some very nice magical items we could probably use. We focused our attention to the large circle in the middle of the room. We deduced that the rune was probably a teleportation circle needing activation and that it was the purported exit to Runeforge as mentioned in the journal we found in the halls of illusion. We decided to leave it alone for now until we are prepared to leave permanently. Our discussions afterward led us to plan a return to the area of conjuration to report our progress to Jordimandus. We hope to pry more information from him, though we will certainly prepare to fight when he eventually turns against us. From there, I believe it will be our mission to venture into the halls of transmutation to seek knowledge concerning the whereabouts of Karzoug’s capital of Xin-Shalast. At that point, the only area left to delve would be concerning necromancy and we may as well seek further equipment to aid us in the upcoming confrontation against the Runelord of Greed.
- E