Chapter 41 - Isle of Sorcery

After having killed two wraiths at the top of the prison stairs, we now had two magical shortsword at our disposition, one for Mushamee and one for Vinz. We were at a crossroad, with stairs leading down to the prison behind us, stairs leading up in front of us, and two corridors leading left and right. Mushamee remembered that our gear was taken down the left corridor, so we went that way. Leif was ahead, scouting, followed by Mushamee and Vinz, Kaeso, and Rufus and Recnam at the rear.

We walked a good pace, not too fast to make too much noise, but quick enough not to be followed easily. We saw some doors in the walls, but each of them were locked magically, so we left them alone. We reached a 90 degree turn. Leif took a quick peek around the corner and saw a big floating stone ball, 1 meter in diameter and with plenty of eyes, ears and mouths carved all around it, moving toward us. Luckily, it didn't spotted Leif, who immediately retreated behind the wall. We deduced the thing was some kind of sensor and was probably under someone' control. Kaeso suggested we could cut one of our robes and put it around the ball to blind it. Leif volunteered his. We got ready, and the moment the ball appeared, we dropped the robe on it. The ball immediately started back the way it had came, at a move of 3. We followed it (we didn't attacked because we guessed our weapons wouldn't go through stone).

A little while later, we stopped because Leif saw shadowy outlines ahead and smelled dead people. Rufus became aware of some supernatural force, and Vinz sensed danger. Recnam ran forward, yelling about the Will of Necros. Whatever was hidden recoiled, thus breaking the concealing spell (Vinz guessed it was probably the Hide spell). We saw ten skeletons armed with spears, in five rows of two. Mushamee and Vinz stepped forward and razed through their ranks in a couple of seconds. When the fight was over, Leif, Recnam, Kaeso, Rufus and Mushamee grabbed most of the spears the skeletons had dropped.

The floating ball was not visible anymore, but we decided to continue forward. After a while of going down in a big circle, we started noticing some bad odors. Knowing about poison, Vinz knew we would probably get sick within a couple of hours of breathing that stuff. Then he sensed sudden danger behind us. We turned around and saw a triangular pane coming out of each wall not far behind us; they joined themselves in the center to completely seal the corridor. Then, out of nowhere, six flaming spectres appeared in front of them and came toward us.

Because of Vinz's warning, we were able to change position before they could reach us. It was much more difficult dealing with them than with the skeletons because since they were immaterial, they could all be in the front row at the same time. Also, regular weapons were incapable of harming them, so only Vinz and Mushamee could hurt them. After a couple of rounds where we killed two of them, they hit Rufus once and Vinz twice, each time doing 2 points of damage. Vinz was already pretty badly hit at this point, so he fell to the ground, unconscious. Mushamee made minced ghostly meat of the rest before they could do further damage. Leif called for his grandfather to heal Vinz (again). We then inspected the four panes and saw a glowing skeletal head on each of them. The thing was obviously magical, so we left it alone for now.

We continued walking. We finally reached a big set of doors, guarded by a couple of big wraiths armed with a big sword wielded with both hands. We asked Recnam to try to repel one of them while we took down the other. What happened is Leif, Rufus and Kaeso rushed to one and tried to grab it. Their target had a chance to attack once, but Leif dodged. They grabbed it, while Recnam jumped on its back to impose his will on it (it ended up giving the thing a penalty on all its action equal to the amount by which Recnam won the Quick Contest of Will). This allowed Mushamee and Vinz to pile on the other one. They attacked it repeatedly, but while Mushamee was effective, Vinz could not hit hard enough to do serious damage. Finally, Vinz waited until the thing had used his parry against Mushamee to all-out attacked it to the eyes, hitting both times and killing it.

They both turned toward the second wraith and saw it trying to shake Recnam off (it couldn't simply grab the Priest because Recnam was repelling him at the same time as grabbing him :)). Leif took the greatsword of the fallen wraith.

Because of the risk of hitting Recnam accidentally, Vinz yelled to the priest to let go. Sensing his control slipping (he was winning the Will contest by smaller and smaller margins), and seeing Leif coming toward him armed with a weapon he didn't seem to know how to use, Recnam agreed and jumped to the ground. Mushamee and Vinz then piled on the wraith and destroyed it without much problems. This time, Mushamee was the one to finish it off. Rufus grabbed the second greatsword. Both swords were very cold to the touch, and, to Vinz and Recnam, obviously magical.

The big doors were magically locked. Vinz concentrated, hurt himself somewhat, and unlocked the door with Lockmaster. We found ourselves in what was probably a big volcano funnel, hundreds of feet high. A couple hundred feet below us, there was a big lava pool. We could see, at regular heights and stuck to the walls, large circular gateways made of wood following the circumference of the funnel. On each level we could see four doors identical to the one we had just opened. At regular interval were ladders attached to the wall, leading up and down. In the sky just over the volcano funnel was the whirling vortex Rufus had noticed before. Kaeso realized that in a normal situation, it would be impossible for us to stand where we were because of the heat that should have emanated from the lava, and did not.

Luckily for us, no one was on our level, but we could see plenty of activity above and (especially) below us. Down on the last level, two or three stories down, we could see dozens of the emaciated liches who had visited us in the cells. On the same level was a big manually rotating gear manned by skeletons. A quick evaluation showed us that all in all, there was as much as 200 undeads around us.

We moved away from the door onto the gateway. Recnam asked his father for any week point in this fortress. That is when he noticed, floating in the air over the lava pit, a big black diamond. When Rufus looked at it, his special vision made him saw another vortex hovering just over the lava pool that seemed to concentrate the heat and beam it to the lower end of the diamond. Another beam came out of the upper part of the diamond and went all the way up into the vortex in the sky. This is probably how they were able to maintain such a barrier during all those centuries. Rufus was also able to sense some kind of magical barrier envelopping the diamond.

When we got near a ladder, Leif decided to go scout the lower levels. He looked down, saw the level under us was empty, and climbed down to it. He looked down again to the next lower level, and saw a group of liches working on something and talking to each other in an unknown language. Then one of the doors on their levels opened and a group of twelve wraiths led by a much bigger wraith (which we called the wraith lord) walked to them. The wraith lord told them, in a language Leif could understand, that a group of intruders had been detected. One of the liches told them something, and the wraiths walked to the nearest ladder and started climbing up. Leif retreated to our level as quickly as possible and told the others of the threat. We looked around and noticed a bunch of unused sarcophagus lying not far. We ran and hid behind them.

Soon, the wraith lord and its soldiers stepped on our level and ran to the door we came from. They went through, then shortly after came back. We heard the wraith lord said he would settle things by using his Sense Life spell. As he started to cast, we felt a force envelop us; we looked at each other and saw we had been transformed into undead by the will of Necros. The wraith lord casted his spell and didn't detected us. He left with his gang through the same door. We reverted back to human.

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Chapter 42 - Isle of Sorcery

Still hidden behind the sarcophagus, we recuperated for one hour, using the time to discuss how we could bring this entire place down. We knew that the black diamond was the key. Kaeso was also intrigued by the big wheeled mechanism operated by the skeletons.

It quickly became evident that we needed to learn more about how this place work, and for this, we needed to go to the bottom level. Problem is, there were at least three dozens of the liches down there, with a host of skeletons. Vinz said he could try to make one of us invisible for three minutes. Knowing that Kaeso would probably be the one who could make the most of what he will see, Vinz casted the spell on him (with of course a big HT sacrifice, and Luck). Meanwhile, Recnam started praying to Necros.

As a side note, not seeing himself anymore seemed to make a big dent in Kaeso's believe that magic doesn't exist :).

Kaeso climbed down the ladder as quickly as he could, all the way down to the last level. He saw that contrary to the other levels who only had four magical doors, this one had eight all around it. Looking at the big rotating device, he saw it was going deep into the ground, and that it was basically of no interest to us. He also saw a lot of iron body parts lying around.

Across the lava pit, he saw one of the eight doors open and a lich coming through with a potion in its hand. It drank the potion, then started lifting big iron parts as if they weighted nothing.

Due to his extremely curious nature, Kaeso became enthralled by what was happening in front of him, and almost waited too long before leaving. He climbed up as fast as he could, and reached our level just as the spell was expiring (Vinz having passed out from fatigue). We waited another twenty minutes for Vinz to recuperate a bit. Kaeso used this time to tell us what he saw. Recnam mentioned he would like to go to where the potion-drinking lich had come from.

We suddenly found ourselves in a completely dark room; the sound level around had suddenly dropped to nothing. We didn't had anything to produce light, so we used some of our special abilities to make our fronthead rune glow. We saw we were in a stockage room full of potions. Seems like all this praying to Necros had worked :) Since there was no other way for our two alchemists, Recnam and Kaeso, to find the potions' effects but by tasting them, they were wary at first of any ill effect. But we figured most or all of the potions here, deep in the enemy stronghold, were probably beneficial, so Recnam decided to go ahead and taste some of them.

He found the following potions:

• Potion of Luck : raises the level of Luck one step
• Potion of the Warrior : Bonus to DX, gives you ridiculous confidence in yourself (have to make a will roll not to do incredibly risky stuff, like All-Out Attacks)
• Potion of Vision : Bonus to vision (i guess, since no one used them)
• Potion of Invincibitily : gives natural DR3
• Potion of Stealth: gives a bonus to Stealth

Since each potion was labelled, it became easy for the Litterate people in the group to find other potions with the same effect. Kaeso started looking for Healing potions, and, using his Luck, found a bunch of them. They had the same effects as the one Recnam knew how to make, i.e. they restored 1D6 HT, or, if no HT is missing, 2D6 Fatigues.

All but Leif drank a potion of Luck. All but Mushamee drank a potion of Invincibility. Recnam, Kaeso, Rufus and Leif drank a potion of the Warrior. We all drank potions of Healing and Stealth.

Vinz stepped in front of the door and tried to cast Lockmaster. He failed. He tried again. Failed again. It went on a couple of times, with Vinz sacrificing most of his HT in small batches. It still failed. Leif asked his grandfather to heal Vinz, and succeeded (although it was the last time he could do it this day). Vinz tried again, this time sacrificing all but one of his HT. He finally made it, and the door opened. He then quickly drank two of the last three healing potions we had.

We went through the door and found ourselves on the lowest level of the volcano funnel. We saw a group of ten liches not far from us, too occupied by what they were doing to notice us. There was an even bigger group on the other side of the lava pool. We ran to the smaller group, taking them by suprise and landing first blows. We took out seven of then in one round. The three left turned around and hit Vinz, Leif and Kaeso with their magical staves (they couldn't defend themselves because they had just all-out attacked). They took some damage, enough to send Vinz back on the floor at 0 HT. On the next round, we (and by we I mean Mushamee) finished the last three liches off. Vinz drank the last healing potion.

We turned toward the liches on the other side of the lava and saw them preparing many spells. Some started floating over the pit toward us. Others were envelopping themselves in strange auras. Still under the influence of the Warrior potion, and basically thinking that we were screwed, Recnam decided he preferred to sacrifice himself for the glory of his Father than to be killed by a bunch of undead monsters. He ran toward the rail, jumped over it, and plunged into the lava pool! His body was instantly vaporized the moment it touched the super-hot lava. The liches stopped moving to look at the pool.

After one or two seconds, we saw a dark form raising from the lava. The liches started screaming "No! You've ruined it all!" and ran away. The black form stood up and shattered the black diamond effortlessly. The entire volcano started trembling. Rails, gateways and ladders detached themselves and fell down; it was a real challenge for us not to get hurt. Looking up, we saw the vortex in the sky had disappeared. We also saw the 7-foot high woman who had helped us get to the island coming down from the sky in a flying golden charriot, pulled by six beautiful, golden winged horses. She entered the funnel, landed near us, and said to get onboard. Leif complained he didn't want to go without our equipment, but the Valkyrie (if that it what the woman was) told him either we go now, or we die. We all jumped on board, and the charriot took off.

While in the air, we could see the Temple falling on itself. The woman led us to our boat, still on the beach. We could see nobody was on board. On the beach we saw lots and lots of bone, and the rusted, immobile form of Ironman. The woman lowered her charriot beside the boat, and we jumped on it. She told us we had fulfilled our mission, that the barrier isolating this island from the Gods was no more. She also said magical energies cannot simply disappear, so the immense amount that was held in this place was, as we were speaking, dispersing around the world, changing it in ways unknown. She finally said the gods had granted each of us a wish, and we had until the night to think about it.

Meanwhile, Recnam's soul was approaching his father who said that at long last, the priest could be with his father forever.

We discussed a little bit about what we could wish for. We decided not to ask for our gear, as we can always get more (for example, the Sun Temple's storage room in Kapital was full of them). We also decided not to ask to be taken to the Island at the End of the World, as we could simply sail to it.

Guessing that his Hand of Necros would never let him alone if Recnam was not brought back to life, Rufus asked for the resurrection of the Priest. As he was about to embrace his father, Recnam saw other gods appear around him, and his father told him that unfortunately, he was still needed in the world. Recnam appeared in our boat, intact. As a reward, Rufus's skeletal hand disappeared, leaving a fully fleshed hand behind.

Against Vinz's opinion, Mushamee asked for the resurrection of Marco and the four High Imperial Guards. They immediately appeared, fully aware of what had happened and swearing fealty to Mushamee. The general gained four 100-point allies.

Vinz wanted to absorb some of the excess magical energy from the island. He gained a level of Magery and three extra fatigues.

Kaeso asked for all of us to be more intelligent, more capable of understanding the world around us. The gods deemed his request too broad, so they raised his personal IQ from 14 to 15.

Recnam asked to be closer to his father so that he could use its power more freely. All the limitations he had for using Necros's powers disappeared, and he gained the Spirit Empathy advantage.

Leif asked something in his own Barbarian language, so that we weren't able to understand. He only said it had something to do with being lucky. If it had any effect, it wasn't visible.

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Chapter 43 - Isle of Sorcery - Leif's Village - IATEOTW

As we started this week, we were still on the Isle of Sorcery, and had just received a wish from the messenger of the Gods. It was now time to leave. Since our boat was still on the beach, Mushamee asked the golden woman if she could help us put it back in the water. She agreed, walked to the boat, effortlessly raised it above her head, and threw it in the water. We ran and swam to it, while she took off in her golden charriot.

Once on the boat, we rowed away from the island, then set sail. A quick inventory of the equipment on the ship showed us that except for the weapons we had found on the island, we only had our concealable chainmails (covering only the torso), two crossbows, a bunch of spears, some winter clothings, a couple of backup swords, most of Leif's hunga mungas, and some of our money. We decided to stop at Leif's village in order to buy more stuff, especially armor.

The ten-days trip was uneventful. When we arrived at the small harbor, we were greeted by some of the locals who quickly recognized Leif. A couple minutes later, the priest of the village, who happened to be Leif's father, came to greet us. He said he was surprised to see Leif here, because of the promise Leif made of being gone for good. Leif said we were just passing through, that he was now Primus Pilus for the Empire, and that he was working for granddad. When asked where he was going, he said we were on our way to the Island at the End of the World. His father said he was happy that Leif had finally given in on his dream of being a warrior and decided to accept his destiny of being a shaman like him. He said it was important to prevent the Age of Blood and Iron of a thousand years ago from coming back, even if nobody else in this Age remembers it, and not one book ever mentions it. Having lived in this time in his previous incarnation, Vinz had absolutely no idea what the priest was talking about.

The priest turned to us and said that if the rest of us wanted to follow Leif to the IATEOTW, we had to underwent a cleansing ceremony that would last a day. We accepted. Having already went through the ceremony some years ago, Leif was exempted from taking it again, so we asked him to find what we needed while we went on with this little formality.

While the priest led us to the purifying room, we asked him about the age he said was coming. He said it was called the Age of Reckoning. We asked him how he would know that the new Age had come. He said the first sign would be a black raven, and the second would be a volcano that would be allowed to spew forth its lava once again. We could guess that the raven was Rufus' raven, symbolizing the return of the Gods and magic in this world, and the volcano was the onle on the Ilse of Sorcery, signifying its destruction.

We arrived in a one-room house with an empty pool in its center. Many young women came in with buckets of animal dungs, rotten fishes, and a lot of stinking liquids, and put it all in the pool. The priest told us to strip and get in. All of us, except for Recnam, had to make a Will roll to comply. The pool was deep enough for the glop to reach our necks. The priest put some kind of cap made of green materials on our heads, and said those who survived the night would be cleansed by the next morning. He then created a little mound with some herbs and wooden chips and lit it on fire. A dark smoke immediately started filling the room. The priest wished us good visions, and left.

Later in the day, Leif went to see the village's blacksmith and gave him a list of what we needed. The smith told him he probably had most of it avalaible. Leif selected boots, gauntlets, leggins and helmets made of boiled leather for everyone, including the four Imperial Guards. He also took a bunch of wooden shields, a good longbow for himself, and a good staff for Recnam. Unluckily for the guards and Kaeso, no swords were available.

When he deemed he had ordered all we needed, Leif told the smith he would come back the next day to pay and take delivery of the stuff. He went to talk to his father for a little while, then went to find a childhood friend named Skorri and spent the night drinking with him at the nearest tavern.

Sometime during the night, the five people undergoing the ceremony started having some pretty fucked up visions.

Mushamee saw a tall, good-looking, lightly dressed blonde woman, somewhat similar to the valkyrie that had visited us. She came close to him, then her head splitted in two, revealing a snake that swallowed his head. While thus stuck, he felt some crabs crawling up his legs...

Vinz was transported a thousand years in the past, but instead of the peacefull place he remembered from his previous incarnation, he found himself in a place where a big battle was being fought. The sky was dark and crackling with magical energy. All sorts of strange creatures were visible. Then a gigantic form as high as a mountain appeared, and said that this time had lasted long enough, and that from now on, this Age would be erased from mankind's memories, and all its madness would from now on be sealed. Vinz then found himself attached to a torture device, naked, and a small guy with no flesh started torturing him. He said, while laughing, that Vinz was his to torture for the next thousand years.

This particular vision ended and Vinz found himself in the present, where a voice told him this age will come back if the ritual is performed. It also told him some of the things we have left alive were now seeking us; Vinz saw one of the four Teclan stone jaguars overlooking Roma, and one of the surviving liches from the Ilse of Sorcery flying through the sky.

Rufus saw Roma looking like a conquered city, with citizens crucified and hanging from gibbets, and mysterious torturers running amok in the streets. Crows were pecking at the wounded.

Kaeso saw the city of Tenosia reduced to a basaltic plain glowing with the heat of a meteor impact or volcano or something. Some old guy with no flesh and a jet-black eye told him it was all his fault... and suggested that Kaeso, being uncursed, could have prevented the ritual that caused all this harm at any time, but did not lift a finger to do so. He also said that at least Kaeso was now working fine, that it took the blood of 100,000 warriors to make him. The engineer looked at his body and saw he had become an Ironman.

We don't know Recnam's vision as Bob was not there.

The next morning, Leif's dad came back in the purification chamber and started dowsing us with water to wake us up. He was happy to see all of us had survived the purification. He also said he saw an omen on his way here; a black raven had came and perched on the top of one of the village's houses.

We climbed out of the pool and removed our strange headcaps. Looking at each other, we saw we were now completely hairless; head, torso, arms, everywhere. The priest told us there was a small water pond outside; we were so happy to be able to clean ourselves that we plunged into the cold water without a second thought. Because of his stench, Recnam was forced to wait until the others were done before he could get in.

We put our clothes back on. The priest bade us farewell and we went to find Leif, which wasn't that difficult. We then went to the blacksmith's store, where we met the village chief, a jolly fellow who didn't understand the word negotiate. He asked for 2200 coppers for all we needed, and was impervious to all our attempts to lower the cost. Kaeso proposed to use the forge to make technologically advanced items and give some of them to the village. The chief was interested, but didn't budge on the cost. We then offered to give him some of our tenosian fire that Kaeso had created, but his offer was so small (something like 160 coppers) for a small casket that we decided to keep it. At the end, we did had (barely) enough to pay the full cost, so that's what we did. The chief put the money in a big coffer already well-filled. Mushamee immediately started elaborating plans to steal it, but Vinz said it should be on our way back from the island.

While we were carrying the equipment back to the boat, Leif paid a visit to his father and told him he wasn't really going to the IATEOTW to become a shaman. When his father pushed him for answers, Leif said we were forced to go there because of a binding. When asked about the binding, Leif used one of his powers to make his rune glow. His father immediately recognized the rune as the Mark of the Ages. He pressed his son some more, and Leif decided to tell him about the Inquisitors, the ritual that summoned us, and that we had to steal some holy object from the Island. The father said in that case, what he remembered from his own trip to the island was no longer applicable, and that the entire island would become a trap instead of a simple test. He then said he sure hoped we weren't going after three other such artifacts in the future. Leif said not really, since we had already collected one of them.

The priest told Leif everything he knew about the Ages and their Mark we had engraved on our forehead. He said time was separated into four ages:

• The Age of Gods: A golden age of magic and magical empires, during which the gods were active in temporal affairs. Also the time when the Serpent Queen (and Vinz) lived. Since the Gods were effectively walking on the earth, it would explain why the Serpent Queen acts as if she knows Necros personnally. Evidently, this is the age the Inquisitors wants to bring back by performing the ritual.
• The Age of Blood and Iron: An age of chaos, destruction, and torture, likely brought about by mortal wizards overreaching themselves to compete in power with the gods. These mortals made bargains with godlike beings from "outside time". It ended when the Gods banished those wizards from the world and the memory of all men.
• The Age of Waiting: The result of the gods withdrawing from the mortal world -- in the process, hiding magic and binding away the Mad Things.
• The Age of Reckoning: A time that some believe will look like a second Age of Gods... and others fear will be a second Age of Blood and Iron. Only one of the two views can be correct, whence "Reckoning."

He finally said the presence of the Mark of Ages on all our foreheads means we will have a determining role to play in the coming of the fourth age.

Leif left his father and came back to the boat. We took the rest of the morning preparing it. Before we left, Ilsa, one of Leif's sister that hadn't spoken to him in ten years, came aboard carrying a beaded belt. She told him it had belonged to their grandfather, and their father wanted him to have it. Vinz couldn't detect any magical energy emanating from it, but Rufus definitely sensed something "abnormal" about it.

We left the harbor and set sail for the IATEOTW. During the afternoon, Leif told us most of what his father has told him. We learned between the lines that Leif had decided to become a warrior just after going through the purification ceremony a couple years ago; he had actually broke out of the purification room, put on some clothes, got some equipment, said he would never come back, and left his village.

After we discussed our visions and what Leif had revealed, Vinz was pretty ambivalent about completing the mission, and asked Recnam to contact the Serpent Queen as soon as possible. The same night, Recnam tried and succeeded. She told him she didn't remember anything about an Age of Blood and Iron, but it was possible for the Gods to create a loop in the timeline so that two distant points could become adjascent and what was between them litterally went out-of-time, in a dimension full of "mad things." Vinz's visions could well be because the loop is now unraveling. When asked if we should go ahead with the collection of the artifacts, she said the powers of those artifacts were neither good nor bad, and could be used for both ends.

The next morning, when we discussed these answers, it became quite clear that the Inquisitors were being manipulated as much as we were. But because of the Queen's last statement, we decided to go ahead with the mission.

After another 9-10 days trip, we reached the island. There were no beach in sight, but we found the mouth of a river leading inside the island. We took it and found ourselves at the bottom of a relatively high canyon. We continued up the river. After a little while, we started hearing a stange noise not far in front of us. Vinz started sensing danger. The river suddenly ended in a large, circular lake. The source of the noise became immediately apparent as we all saw a gigantic whirlpool of water in its center. Our boat got caught in the circling current, but we were able to get it near the rock walls and used spears to stop its momentum. We then secured it with ropes. The rock wall was not that steep, with a shape approximating that of a gigantic set of stairs. Leif and Vinz decided to climb the wall with ropes. Leif went first, as tradition asked.

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Chapter 44 - The Isle At The End Of The World

As we started this week, we had just landed on the Island At The End Of The World. While the others were busy securing the boat, Leif and Vinz climbed the rock wall to a plateau. They looked around, but nothing was in sight, not even mountains. They signaled Kaeso, Recnam, Mushamee and Rufus to joined them. Marco and the four Imperial Guards stayed on the boat, not having been purified appropriately. Recnam tried to cast Death Vision on himself, but failed. We decided to go toward the center of the island.

After walking for a while, we started hearing some beastly noise in the distance, and Vinz started sensing danger. Leif and Rufus looked carefully around us with their special visions. Leif saw some strange movements in the distance, but nothing too specific. Rufus was more lucky, spotting some kind of lizard form who was disappearing from view only to reappear somewhere else. He told the others, and we moved in an approximate hexagonal formation, looking outward, one against the others to prevent the beast from materializing behind us. We waited.

Suddenly the beast materialized in front of Leif and tried to bit him. Leif dodged and attacked. The beast disappeared and the sword slashed the air where it was ineffectually, meaning the beast was not simply invisible, but that its body had been physically transported somewhere else. Leif had time to notice the thing had a lot more eyes than it should.

A couple of seconds later, the beast appeared in front of Vinz and attacked. Vinz blocked with his shield, who took the brunt of the shock and almost shattered. Vinz riposted with a Feint-Attack combo and hit the thing to the torso, for 8 points of damage. The beast disappeared again.

It reappeared in front of Kaeso. The engineer was armed with a spear and a shield, but didn't know how to use either of them. As a result, the beast bit him severely in the torso, inflicting 10 points of damage. Kaeso sensed his body being "sucked in" by the beast (or something like that), but he resisted.

The beast attacked Recnam, then Rufus. Both parried, and their own counter-attacks missed. The thing appeared in front of Mushamee, who attacked it four times. Two or three of them hit, one a critical success. The beast fell on the floor, then started disintegrating. Recnam stepped toward it and tried to talk to its dead soul. He was only able to hear it called for his mother before it disappeared in the sky.

Leif rapidly threw a dead rat to Kaeso, healing eight of his ten points of damage. Since Kaeso didn't know how to use his equipment, we formed a pentagon around him and waited for "mother."

"She" didn't take long to appear and start attacking us by breathing some white stuff. First thing we noticed is that it was much bigger than sonny. She first breathed on Recnam, who threw himself on the floor to dodge it. He tried to hit her, but she dodged so well she made him crippled his left shoulder. She then appeared in front of Vinz, who blocked the liquid with his shield. He riposted, but the beast immediately teleported away. Obviously, it was much better at it than its son. She then appeared in front of Leif, who tried to dodge the breath attack but failed. The white stuff splashed him, causing some serious damage, dessicating part of his face and torso, and making him loose much of his strength. The thing appeared in front of Mushamee, who blocked its attacks and hit it once with a critical, causing 12 points of damage.

For the next 15-20 seconds, the beast moved from one target to the other, attacking maybe once every three of four seconds. It seemed to particarly like Recnam, as it attacked him three more times. Luckily, all attacks were either dodged or blocked. Still, none of our attacks hit it. Vinz eventually casted See Secrets on himself to see if it would help in detecting the invisible creature before she could strike, but before he had the opportunity to use it, the beast appeared in front of Mushamee who scored a critical hit on it for double normal damage. The beast took 23 points of damage and died instantly. Like its child, its body fell on the ground and immediately started disintegrating. Again, Recnam tried to communicate with its dead soul. He got the message that we had passed the first test.

Leif healed himself, and we waited for a while to recuperate some fatigue. When we were ready, Recnam casted Deathvision on himself. He saw himself walking beside us, then suddenly plunge to his death in a hole he never saw. When he told us about the traps, we decided to walk two by two, with Leif and Vinz at the front. We resume our trip with a cautionary walk.

During our trip, we couldn't help notice a couple of things about the priest. Firstly, he smelled worse than ever. Secondly, he seemed to have lost some weight lately. Thirdly, he actually seemed to stop breathing for a while before suddenly remembering he had to do it, and started breathing again.

Dusk eventually fell on us, and the wind rose. We also started hearing a strange noise vaguely ressembling a bagpipe. It continued uninterrupted, and rapidly started to get on our nerves. Suddenly, Vinz sensed immediate danger and made everyone stop. Leif smelled some bad odor from the ground. He took a spear and started poking in front of us. The spear disappeared in the rock, reveiling the presence of a hole hidden by an illusion. Leif attached a rope to the spear and threw it as far as he could, then pulled it up until it fell through the illusionary ground. We were able to determine the hole was at least 50 paces large. Leif got on his knees and put his head through the illusion. He saw a 50-paces large, three-men high trench disappearing in the distance to his right and left. The walls and ground of the trench were unnaturously straight and smooth. He saw the spear lying on the ground, confirming it was real and not another illusion. He also noticed the unnerving sound seemed to be coming from downm here, somewhere to his right.

Leif lowered himself using the wall, then dropped down on the trench ground. Kaeso followed him, although with much less grace. While the others were busy climbing down one way or the other, the engineer decided to investigate the sound by himself and moved away to the right.

When everybody was down, we realized Kaeso was missing. Vinz was all for letting the engineer die if he really wanted to, but Leif decided to go after him. Since we were pretty much protected from the wind, those left decided to make some kind of camp.

As he was getting closer to the source of the noise, Kaeso started hearing some other muffled sound, as if something really big was rolling on the ground. The sound got nearer and nearer, and the ground started trembling. The engineer turned around and started running. Leif eventually sensed something bad coming his way, so he also turned back and ran.

As they both reached the small camp, the others could already hear the rolling noise and sense the ground shaking. Because of the smoothness of the walls, we knew we didnt had enough time to climb out of the trench whatever was coming would reach us. Vinz casted Wallwalker on himself and got out.

Eventually, what was causing the rumbling came into view. It was a gigantic ball of rock rolling in our direction. It definitely wasn't a normal occurence, as it was coming steadily toward us, but the trench ground had no inclination whatsoever. Furthermore, as it got clearer, we we saw lots and lots of spears erupt from each side of the ball, then retract inside almost immediately. Because of its form, the ball could not fill the entire trench, but the spears made sure everyone who tried to sneak between the ball and wall would almost certainly get speared.

Estimating the time for the ball to arrive at less than 20 seconds, Vinz jumped back into the trench to get Recnam (missing his Acrobatics roll and taking 5 points of damage in the process). Rufus and Leif started walking toward the big ball, looking for a way to get past it while dodging the spears. Recnam was about to do the same, but Vinz grabbed him and say he had a much better way to get out of the way. He casted Wallwalker on the priest, and they both ran out of the trench. Mushamee stayed where he was. Having never stopped running, Kaeso continued in the opposite direction.

The ball reached Leif. The barbarian had a couple seconds to time his action, then ran between the wall and the ball. Three spears tried to pierce him, but he acrobatically dodged all of them and found himself behind the ball. Rufus tried the same thing, but one of the spears skewered him severely, going through his torso and coming out of his back. The spear retracted, and he was left on the ground, bleeding, with a spear-sized hole in his torso. Leif tried to first-aid him, but quickly realized no amount of First-Aid would stop this wound from bleeding.

Mushamee used another tactics, deciding to try and break all the spears that would come from him instead of dodging them (a viable tactics considering his four attacks and high damage). Still, he knew it was all or nothing since there was no way his shield could block any of the spears because of their great kinetic energy. Luckily, only one spear went for him. He got the drop on it and attacked it four times, sectionning it quite effectively. The ball passed in front of him and continued toward Kaeso. After some more running, the engineer finally realize he wouldn't be able to escape, as he was getting tired and the ball wasn't showing any sign of slowing down. He stopped, turned around and tried Leif's and Rufus' strategy. Like Rufus, he missed one of his dodge and was quite litterally impaled. The rotating mouvement of the ball combined with the retractation of the spear sent his body flying through the air toward us; luckily, his armor absorbed all the falling damage. He did took something like 28 points of damage from the spear, however, and was already unconscious when he hit the ground. The ball continued forward and soon disappeared from view.

Vinz and Recnam climbed down into the trench. The priest ran to Rufus and performed emergency surgery on him to close the gaping wound. Leif went to Kaeso and used all his Fatigue to heal the engineer partially. We all set down to recuperate a bit.

The bagpipe-like noise hadn't stopped, however. Vinz guessed whatever was making the noise was controlling the ball, so to be able to spend the night here, we had to destroy whatever was making it. He, Mushamee and Recnam decided to go investigate. Leif stayed with the wounded to continue his recuperation.

The small group walked toward the noise as stealthily as possible (which was pretty much without sound). We could see the tunnel slowly turning to the right, as if the entire trench was a gigantic circle. Which meant the ball would probably be back if it isn't stopped. A while later, we noticed a green glow somewhere in front. When Mushamee and Vinz looked at Recnam in this glow, they saw he had an almost skeletal form.

Vinz signaled the others to stop and started razing the wall toward the glow. When he got sufficiently near, he saw the trench was crossing a bigger, semi-spherical room. The green glow was coming from a big circular hole in the middle of he room. All around the hole was six stalls with five of them containing a big rock ball identical to the one who had just attacked us. The sixth one was empty. Finally, frenetically dancing around the whole in some kind of trance, was a 12 feet high ape. The nerve-wrecking sound was simply his singing voice.

Vinz went back to Mushamee and Recnam and quickly told them what he had just saw. They decided that Vinz and Mushamee would approach the creature as far as they could without being seen, then Vinz would try to become invisible. If he succeeded, he would move in position behind the monster. Thirty second after Vinz had left him, Mushamee would charge the ape, then Vinz, still invisible, would attack it from behind. Recnam would stay behind. If Vinz wasn't able to cast Invisibility, he and the legionnaire would simply charge at full speed (although it would not be quick since Vinz was at half speed and dodge due to fatigue loss).

Vinz and Mushamee started slowly toward the room. Again, they made their Stealth roll by a large margin. Combined with the fact the ape was completely absorbed by its dance, they got pretty near the room without being seen. Vinz concentrated a couple of seconds and used the last of his energy to cast Invisibility, and succeeded (he was rolling at a 6 or less, and got a 5). Now invisible, he sneaked in the room and moved behind the great ape. He then used the next six seconds and both his Breaking Blow and Body Language skills to guess where the vitals of the monster was.

After waiting approximately 30 seconds, Mushamee charged into the room, yelling. The ape couldn't help notice him and started toward another of the rock ball. Vinz immediately buried his sword two times in the monster's vitals. Goo started coming out of the wound, but the ape didn't pay it any attention. On the next round, the ape ran to the rock he was facing. Vinz followed and all-out attacked him three times to the vitals, hitting all three times. More goo came out of the wounds. Mushamee all-out attacked too, hitting three of the five times for serious damage (although the thing wasn't really defending, its erratic movements allowed it to dodge). On the third round, the ape grabbed the rock ball and made it spin on itself. We guessed that on the next turn, it would be able to move the ball. Again, Vinz all-out attacked to the vitals, hitting for maximum damage on two of them and for near maximum on the last (he rolled 6,6 and 5). Then Mushamee all-out attacked again; his last attack was just enough to kill the thing (Sean told us the thing had 200 HP, and the last hit from Mushamee brought our total damage to 201). It fell on the ground, soon followed by an exhausted Vinz (at 1 fatigue). Vinz looked at the ball and saw that it hadn't lost its momentum, and just continued spinning silently on itself. Maybe this means the first rock ball will continue its round trip to finally end in the hole in the middle of the room.

Mushamee went back to the others to help them move the camp to the small room.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, Leif started working on building a sledge for Rufus. He knew we would probably have to use it for a while given Rufus's stubborn refusal to apologize to Leif's grandfather for something bad he said (making Leif unable to heal him). After a while, he realized he wasn't making good progress, so he used the energy he had regained to heal Kaeso again. Although still in negative health, the engineer woke up and was able to finish the sledge (after of course taunting Leif for such a lousy design).

Soon, Mushamee came around and told them what happened. Since we were in no hurry, they waited for Leif to get back some of his fatigue, then they hauled Rufus' still unconscious body on the sledge and started toward the room.

That's where we stopped.

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Chapter 45 - The Isle At The End Of The World

As we started this week, Mushamee and Vinz had just killed a 12-feet high ape, while Leif and Kaeso were busy making a sledge for Rufus.

While Vinz and Recnam were relaxing in the small room, Mushamee went back to the others to help them move the camp. All in all, it took round an hour to do so. When we were all back together, Recnam decided to contact the spirit of the dead ape. He moved next to the corpse, then concentrated. He missed a quick contest of Will and his soul was immediately and totally taken over by the ape spirit. He immediately started singing and dancing wildly like the beast. When he started moving toward one of the big rocks, we decided it was enough. Mushamee ran to slam him, but the priest casually backhanded him, sending him flying into the wall. The legionnaire got up and ran to the priest again, and this time tried to knock him out by hitting him in the head with his shield. Both attacks hit, but since Mushamee was not going at it full force, he didn't do enough damage to bypass the helmet's DR and whatever DR the possessed priest now had.

Recnam reached for one of the rock balls. Vinz yelled that they had to take the priest down, even if we had to go for the brain. Mushamee went for shield attacks to the head again, this time with full force. One of them hit, while the other only hit the priest's torso. Incredibly, no damage was done. Leif stepped up and kicked Recnam right in the balls with great force. The damage was absorbed by the armor and natural DR, but the shock was so violent that the priest slumped on the ground, unconcious. We tied him really carefully. When he regained consciousness ten minutes later he was his normal crazy self again, so Vinz freed him.

Meanwhile, Kaeso spent some time inspecting the room in detail. He saw that the hole in the middle of the room was covered by a sheet of some kind of very hard crystal. He could also see some kind of passage behind the crystal.

Since it was the middle of the night, we decided to rest here before deciding what we would do. Kaeso removed the skin from the ape and put Rufus' body in it (it was kinda hard as he didn't had a lightsaber). We established a watch; Kaeso first, then Mushamee, Vinz, and Leif.

Nothing much happened during Kaeso's turn, except for Vinz having a nightmare about Recnam still being possessed by the ape spirit and waking up in sweat

During Vinz's turn, Leif's body stood up and floated 3 inches in the air toward the assassin. Another voice, much older than his own, came out of his mouth and offered a contract to Vinz to kill Rufus in seven days if he didn't apologize. As a reward, Vinz would receive a map leading to a treasure. Vinz accepted the contract.

Later, Vinz woke Leif up for his watch. Nothing else happened during the night. When morning came, Rufus had regained consciousness, and Vinz and Leif each had two fatigues left because of the troubled night.

After eating, Mushamee went to Rufus and told him he had to apologize to Leif's grandfather. Before he had time to really insist, Vinz took him apart to talk and told him about the contract and the treasure map. They agreed to split the loot 55-45% for Vinz. Mushamee returned to Rufus and said he didn't really had to apologize after all if he didn't felt like it. Recnam insisted he had to. Mushamee said he would never order Rufus to apologize, and Leif said that anyway, a forced apology wouldn't be enough for his grandfather; it had to be heartfelt.

Before making our decision of going in the covered hole or leave the trench, we had to see exactly what was behind the crystal sheet. Mushamee tried to break it with his sword, but the crystal was way too solid. He was lucky his sword just slipped on the side, and did not simply break. It became clear only Vinz had a chance to break the sheet, and it would take something better than a sword. Mushamee thought of the spear he had broken from the the rock ball the day before, and remembered it was made of some strange metal. He decided to go retrieve it and went back to the place where the rock ball attacked us. There, he found the half spear he was looking for.

Meanwhile, Leif decided to explore the trench in the other direction. It didn't take long before he came face to face with an immobile rock ball spinning on itself. A couple of blood spot marked it as the same rock ball that had attacked us the last night. Leif climbed the trench wall and moved past the ball. When he looked back into the trench, he could only see it disappear in the distance. He came back to the camp, where he threw a dead rat at Kaeso to heal him.

As soon as he came back, Mushamee gave the spear to Vinz. The assassin then stepped on the crystal cover, looking for a weak point. He then concentrated for six seconds then slammed the spear deep in the crystal, for maximum damage. Cracks appeared all around him and he just had time to acrobatically jumped away before part of the sheet collapsed and disappeared into the hole. He looked into the hole and saw that there was a chute leading down for eight to ten paces before more or less levelling up in the general direction of the center of the island. Razor-sharp crystals were protuding from all the walls, making the trek through the tunnel hazardous at best. Vinz tried to break some of them with the spear, but they were much too hard.

Using the visible curvature as reference and supposing it formed a perfect circle, Kaeso mesured the circumference of the trench at 100 miles, with its middle point 15 miles away.

We discussed a bit on which way we should go. Finally, Recnam's intuition told him that since we were possibly looking for a crystal, we should go down where the crystal were. Vinz asked Leif for some healing, since he was still pretty banged up. The barbarian complied, and we waited another hour for him to recuperate. We used the time to discuss what to do with Rufus; it was pretty clear he couldn't come with us. We decided to leave him here for now, with some food.

One after the other, we went down the small hole and followed the tunnel. It was really hard to move without hurting ourselves on the shards, and we all had to make ten Climbing rolls. Leif Lent first, then Kaeso, Vinz, Recnam and Mushamee. Only Recnam hurt himself seriously, and when we reached a small greenish room, we took a break to allow Leif to heal him and recuperate his fatigue.

The tunnel continued past the room, but at least there was no more crystal shards on the wall. It was larger, allowing us to move two by twos, with Leif and Vinz in the front, Recnam and Kaeso in the middle line, and Mushamee at the end. As we walked, we started hearing some watery noises coming from the walls.

Farther down, we started hearing noise ahead, as if water was being dropped on the floor at regular intervals. We continued forward and saw the tunnel end as a balcony to what seems to be a big cave. Leif sneaked to the balcony and found himself overlooking a 100-paces wide, 100-paces tall crystal cave. In the middle of the cave was a 50-paces high spike with a blue glowing ball the size of a human head at its top. The ball was surrounded by what looked like water flames. The splashing noise was much stronger here. When Leif looked at the floor, he saw a gigantic snake entirely made of water, 150 paces long, its body as large as two humans. It was lying all around the room, moving from time to time, each move producing the splashing sound. Luckily for Leif, the snake didn't noticed him. A quick look around the cave didn't reveal any other entry in the cave, and there was no visible way to climb down to the floor easily.

Leif retreated in the tunnel with the others and told what he had saw. We retreated further down to discuss what to do. The glowing sphere was obviously the artifact we had been asked to bring back. The problem was of course the big snake; its incredible lenght made him able to reach anywhere in the cave with incredible quickness. Coupled with the obvious lack of means to climb down, it made our position very vulnerable.

Having a really bad feeling about any hand-to-hand confrontration with the thing, Vinz looked at a way to get the sphere without the knowledge of the snake. The others joined him and they soon put together a good strategy. Since it necessitated the simultaenous use of two of Vinz's spells, he and Leif went back to the small room to take a two-hour nap to get all their fatigue back. They then undressed to their smallclothes, and Vinz put a pouch around his neck.

Back to the balcony, Vinz wrapped the middle of the rope around his torso, then give one end to Leif and the other to Mushamee, Kaeso and Recnam. He then casted Wallwalker on Leif (after many tries; he wasn't willing to cut himself), and the barbarian walked up the cave wall and ceiling until he was directly over the spike. Vinz used this time to cast Mage-Stealth on himself. When Leif was in position, Vinz jumped over the balcony rail and found himself suspended in mid air, supported by his four companions on each extremity of the rope. Mushamee, Recnam and Kaeso proceeded to lower him slowly. With the angle formed by Leif, Vinz ended up going down in a 45 degree angle, directly toward the blue sphere (thank to Kaeso's calculations). We all succeeded in Stealth rolls, so the snake didn't noticed us.

When Vinz got in front of the orb, he stabilized himself and looked around for some locking mechanims or traps. He saw nothing. He made a countdown with his digits so the others would see it; when he reached zero, he grabbed the orb and put it in the pouch in a single felt swoop (using his Sleight-of-Hands). Mushamee, Recnam and Kaeso started running at full speed away from the cave, pulling the rope with them. At the same time, Leif started running toward the balcony, still carrying his end of the rope. As a result, Vinz was pulled back up toward the balcony in a straight line, at the speed of a running person.

As we had guessed, the snake immediately detected the taking of the orb and looked up. It saw Vinz hanging in the air, and immediately uncoiled to try to bit him. Vinz was unarmored, but his great speed gave him the +3 bonus for retreating, so he dodged the attack (using his Luck). The snake's second attack missed. Then Vinz dodged a third one just before reaching the balcony and disappearing into the tunnel with an acrobatic roll. Just behind, Leif had to dodge another attack before being able to join him. They started running after the others.

We didn't stopped running until we reached the greenish room. Kaeso helped Vinz get into his armor, while Recnam helped Leif (they absolutely needed it to go across the razor-sharped tunnel). Mushamee stood at the exit of the tunnel, sword drawn. Soon, he saw a man-sized water snake coming toward him. He waited, and when the snake was in reach, slashed it four times. The snake lost all cohesion and splashed on the ground. Another one soon followed, and got the same treatment. Then two showed up, and he killed them both in one turns. Same thing for the next two, except he took two turns to do it. One tried to engulf him in water, but he dodged it.

When the next three showed up, Leif and Vinz were now able to give him a hand (thought Kaeso took the orb from Vinz first). He took out the first two. Leif hit the last one with his big sword, but did no actual damage (rolling 2 on 2D6). Vinz hit it twice, not hard enough to kill it, but still stunning it with a critical success. Then Mushamee finished it off.

It was now time to retreat, as we knew that if these small snakes came from the big one, there could be thousands of them. One by one, we retreated into the dangerous tunnel, moving as quickly as possible toward the exit. Luckily, we were quicker than the snakes. We came out of the hole into the rock balls room relatively unscathed. We immediately decided to try to put one of the rock balls over the hole to stop the water snakes from reaching us. We got all behind one ball and pushed it with all our strength. After a couple of seconds, it started to move. Then, as we continued pushing, it started picking up speed, mostly by itself. We stopped pushing, but its own momemtum would probably made it roll over the hole without stopping. But the moment it passed over the hole, it suddenly stopped and wedge itself in it. When we moved around it, we could see Necros' giant handprint on one side of the ball.

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Chapter 46 - IATEOTW - Crazy Barbarian Island

We decided to spend the night in the small rock ball room, since it was probably the most comfortable place on all the island and we were pretty tired. The first thing Rufus did is profoundly apologize to Leif's grandfather (much to Mushamee's dismay). We then set up guard duty and went to sleep.

Nothing disturbed us during the night. During Vinz's turn, Leif's grandfather got hold of Leif's body to tell him the contract was canceled. Before going, he wished us good luck in leaving the island.

When morning came, Leif was finally able to heal Rufus, enough for the informatore to be able to stand up. We then climbed out of the trench and started back toward the boat. Kaeso decided to bring the big ape's skin.

We walked the entire day. At night, we finally reached the cliff we had climbed two days ago. Looking down, Leif saw our five companions at the base of the cliffs, but our boat was nowhere to be found. We climbed down. Near the water, we saw some wood remains where our boat had been. Oleg, the leader of the four guards, told us that two nights ago, they were sleeping on the boat when they had been woken up by the sound of wood being broken. They only had time to leave the boat before it broke in two and sunk.

Before going to sleep, Recnam raised two zombies from the water (which, if you recall, is full of corpses, animated or otherwise). He also asked to take two guard duties (since his coming back from the dead, he seem to need less and less sleep). We agreed.

The next morning, Kaeso decided to try and build a new boat from the wooden remain of the first boat and the ape skin. It took him the rest of the day to do it. When he was finished, we had a somewhat fragile boat; Kaeso told us it could probably lead us to the next island, but not farther. Since we didn't knew the water around the island, we decided to leave the next morning.

The following day, Recnam sent his two zombies into the water to try to find 'anything unusual'. He then started one of his strange ceremonies to send off the dead, rolling a critical success on his ritual skill. Many zombies and skeletons emerged from the water and walked to him. The priest asked them if they wanted to join Necros. They said they didn't knew who Necros was. Recnam told them he wanted to send them away to their eternal peace. The undeads thought about it, then one by one, walked to Recnam, embraced him in their arms, and collapsed to the ground. Other undeads came out of the water and did the same thing.

When all was said and done, more than 70 ex-undead corpses laid at Recnam's feet. The only ones still active were his two zombies, standing in the water, immobile, with some sort of medium-sized box in their hands. At the behest of the priest, they gave us the box. It was covered with alguae and corals, and had obviously been in the water for a long time. The lid was wedged shut, and neither the priest nor Kaeso were able to unstuck it. They gave it to Vinz who broke it using Breaking Blow. Then, as he was about to remove the broken lid, he sensed danger coming out of the box. Not an immediate danger, but something more diffuse, and at the same time more ominous. We decided to wait until we were on another island before dealing with it. We noticed some runes on the box. Rufus identified them as Old Imperial, and said he would probably be able to decript them in Roma with the necessary books and a week's time.

We all got onboard Kaeso's improvised ship and started rowing. Being a good navigator, Marco was able to orient us toward the west. The trip took two days. The only thing of note happened during the evening when Kaeso decided he wanted to open the small box. He tried to grab it, but Vinz snatched it from under him. Kaeso rolled a critical failure on his DX roll and cut his hand somewhat deeply on one of the coral. Recnam casted Death Vision on himself. He saw Vinz throwing the box overboard, but then something came out of it and slammed him in the face, killing him. He told us what he had seen. Kaeso mocked him, so Recnam casted Death Vision on the engineer. He saw Recnam with a strange rictus on his face, killing people in their sleep. The next morning, Kaeso's hand had become infected, so Leif had to heal it.

After dusk on the next day, we finally landed on another island. We quickly created a small camp on the beach and went to sleep. During the night, we heard some people laughing in the distance.

On the next morning, three men came to see us. The leading man, obviously the chief, was armed with an axe. The two others, probably bodyguards, were armed with spears. They were talking in barbarian language, so only Leif was able to talk with them.

The chief was cordial at first. Leif told him we were just passing through and we would leave as soon as we had another boat. The chief said they only had one fishing boat, and that no one have ever leaved the island. Looking around, he noticed the small box. He asked Leif why we were carrying the box of the dead (or some similar name). Leif told him we found it on the Isle at the End of the World. The chief said we should destroy it. Leif said we can't, but we won't play with it until after we have leaved the island. The chief was not happy with the answer, and took a step toward the box. Kaeso and Vinz raised their crossbows. Leif repeated we just wanted to leave as soon as possible. The chief didn't listen and threw his axe at it; the weapon split the box in two. Kaeso and Vinz shot the chief in the chest, wounding him gravely. The bodyguards readied their spears, but before the situation escalated, Leif asked us to stop the fight. He then healed the chief and reiterated that as soon as we had another boat, we would be out of here. The three barbarians decided to leave.

We went to the box and found some kind blood-red wand in the debris. Vinz tried to relate it to one of the path of magics he knew about, but got the impression that it was made of a different kind of magic, the type that had produced the Ironman on the Isle of Sorcery. That led to the speculation that the item could be coming from the Age of Blood and Iron.

Kaeso started looking around for materials to build another boat, but was disappointed when he saw the trees on the island were all much too small to be useful. During the afternoon, Recnam casted Death Vision on himself (again) and saw us under attack from a group of barbarians. One of them threw a spear at his head, killing him instantly.

Knowing that the barbarians would attack soon, we quickly prepared ourselves. Vinz decided to go take a look at the barbarian village. He only had to follow their visitors' tracks for fifteen minutes before he reaching it.

He saw that all the villagers were piling aournd their chief in the village's central place. He was busy harranguing them. Near him was a big camp fire, and another man was walking around it, making some sort of chant. When the chief's speach was finished, a couple of villagers opened a door trap, took crude weapons from it, and started distributing them among the populace. Brandishing a bronze sword, the chief started yelling to his people, who responded in kind. Vinz decided there and then to kill the chief, and brought his crossbow to bear. He rolled a critical failure and dropped his weapon. The villagers heard him and turned around. Vinz darted out of there, the villagers in tow. Being much quicker than they were, he reached the camp first and yelled to the others that the villagers were coming.

I won't describe the combat, as you can probably guess how good a group of 30-40 unarmored, untrained, 25-point villagers would fare against a group of 10 well-armed, well-armored and well-armored group with two Weapon Masters. Let's just say it was a massacre. The only casualty on our side was one of the guards who got severely impaled by a spear.

After the first vague had been exterminated, we charged the second one, who rapidly fled in the wood. Mushamee took care of the chief and his two bodyguards. In a humorous moment, Kaeso tried to run around an old woman with a spear, but she nailed him on the side. Luckily, she was so feeble his armor absorbed all damage. Less than ten seconds after it debuted, the fight was over. Mushamee first-aided the hurt Imperial Guard.

Dusk fell rapidly on us, so we went to sleep. Nothing disturbed us, at least nothing external. Vinz did find himself creeped out when during his watch turn, he noticed Recnam 'pleasuring' himself with the decapitated head of one of the barbarians. He desperately tried to get this image out of his head for the rest of the night, but he couldn't.

When morning came, we ate breakfast. Kaeso, Mushamee and Vinz decided to go to the barbarian village to see if we could scavenge something for the new boat.

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Chapter 47 - Crazy Barbarian Island

In the morning, Kaeso, Mushamee and Vinz went to the village to find some material for the new boat. When they reached its outskirt, they saw it was mostly deserted. Vinz went to the underground storage room, but only found cheap, improvised weapons inside. Kaeso looked at the small huts, but deemed them all unusable.

While they were still looking, a man moved from behind a hut and approached us slowly. Vinz recognized him as the "priest" who was dancing around the fire earlier. The man addressed the group in Imperial. He said his name was Seamus and he came in this region with the Legion many years ago; he had been captured and put to slavery by the barbarians. Now that he was not able to be a slave anymore, he had been sent here, on this island.

When asked about a boat, he said this island was completely isolated from the rest of the barbarian lands, and was mostly a place to get rid of all the crazy people. At irregular interval, a new ship would come in to drop some new occupants and would then leave as quickly as possible. The only boat they had was a small fishing boat, wholly inappropriate for our needs. He said the only place we could probably find one was in the middle of the island, where all the undeads were waiting. He gave us the approximate direction. We left him and went back to the beach camp.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, Leif used the fact that Vinz was not there to play with the red wand. His special sense having detected nothing unusual about it, he started twirling it around, putting one of its end to his head, etc. As he was doing that, Rufus' special sense showed him the wand becoming a brighter red and blood starting to pour from its opposite end. He tried to warn Rufus, but the barbarian didn't pay any attention. He did put it away before the return of the others.

Recnam used the time off to create a third zombie.

When Kaeso, Mushamee and Vinz came back from the village, they told what they had learned. Since it was now the middle of the afternoon, we decided to wait for the next day to go to the middle of the island.

A little while later, Seamus paid us a little visit. He said he just wanted to see how we were doing. We told him we were going to the middle of the island to find a boat the next morning. He was surprised at first, reminding us of all the undeads living in caves he had heard about. We told him we didn't really fear them, and that it would be nice if he would guide us. He thought about it for a while, then the prospect of finally leaving this island was too hard to resist and he accepted.

As dusk was falling, Recnam casted Death Vision on himself. He saw our group under attack from a bunch of undeads. He told everyone what he saw. We realized that here on the beach, we were completely opened to an attack, so we decided to leave right there and then. We grabbed everything of value, and Recnam told his three zombies to carry our small boat in case we needed its material. We started walking. After a little while, Recnam decided he was tired and climbed into the boat.

Sometimes during the evening, we started hearing some chants coming from somewhere in front of us. Seamus said it was made by the undeads when they were readying themselves for the hunt. Our first idea was to try to evade them, but we realized that with one of the four elemental artifacts and a wand from the Age of Blood and Iron, we were probably walking with the equivalent of two huge magical beacons, and that hiding would probably be useless. We decided to make our stand right where we were. We used the boat's wood to create a big camp fire, and prepared ourselves for the inevitable assault.

It wasn't long before a group of thirteen undead barbarians appeared at the end of our circle of light. We rapidly move to form two ranks. Recnam asked for Necros' help and found himself in the front line, full of energy, strenght, toughness and resistance (having been possessed partly by Necros' spirit; from what we know, he got ST 18, DX 15, Shield +5, Armor +5, and High Pain Treshold). The priest was also able to recognize the type of undeads we were facing; they were extremely strong and tough humanoids found around barbarian tombs. They were different from normal undeads in that they were not destroyed when they reached 0 HT, and were missing some of their immunities - they had vital points. Seamus said that we should aim for their heads for best effect.

The first rank consisted of Leif, Mushamee, Recnam, Vinz, Oleg, Vladimir, Josef and Ilya. Seamus, Kaeso and Rufus formed the second rank. Marco safely moved even farther down. As the undeads got near, Kaeso shot one of them with his massive crossbow. Seamus then handed him Vinz's repeating crossbow.

The enemies soon crashed into our first rank. The first round showed us instantly that 1) their skills with their broadswords were pretty good (around 15), and that 2) they had really good defenses, with damn large shields and good armor. They quickly overwhelmed Vladimir and Ilya, allowing access to our second rank. Oleg was also grievously wounded, falling into the fire. He only had the energy to roll away before falling unconscious. Mushamee mostly patched the hole by himself, hitting undeads with massive amount of damage (but still, they were so tough that even four attacks from the legionaire were not enough to drop them in one round). Leif took on two undeads, using the long range of his 2-handed sword, and constant retreating, to force his enemies into only attacking him one at a time. Vinz and Recnam coordinated their actions, the priest making their target use its retreat and best defense against him, thus allowing Vinz a much better chance of scoring a hit.

A couple of undeads used the opening made by Leif's retreat to get to Kaeso and Seamus. The engineer fire the repeating crossbow, then he and Seamus grabbed spears. Josef left the front rank to help them.

Mushamee continued his feint/3 attacks combo, sending the undeads in front of him back two or three yards. One fell on the ground and lost its sword. Another suffered enough damage and was destroyed. A third one was hurt seriously and decided Rufus was a safer target. He ran toward the informatore, but Rufus was waiting for it and luckily hit it with his spear. The undead missed his HT roll and was destroyed.

In the second rank, Josef took a couple of hits but stayed his ground. Kaeso, not being trained at all with a spear, wasn't able to hit anything. Seamus lost his spear on a critically missed attack, and kicked one undead in the groins from behind. The undead turned around and slashed him across the torso.

Another undead went after Rufus, who was forced to retreat away from the others. He blocked a couple of attacks, but his ripostes with his spear were either blocked or did a wholly inadequate amount of damage. He finally got hit severely in the chest, but stayed conscious.

Leif continued his little ballet with his two undeads, and it eventually paid off as he hit one of them solidly a couple of times. Down in negative HT, it eventually missed a consciousness roll and fell down. Another undead immediately took its place.

Back in the front rank, Mushamee was finally able to kill another one with massive trauma to the neck. Recnam and Vinz continued their cooperation, the priest even hitting one time for really good damage (ST 18 and a good staff would do that). Vinz was hit once for four points of damage after armor (which was really low for these things). Recnam was hit much harder, but his Armor +5 saved him from going into negative HT. He was downa at half move and dodge, however. Vinz became so frustrated by the damage it took to kill these things that he decided from now on to go for their brains.

At this point, we stopped for the night. Mushamee, Leif, Marco and Kaeso were still unhurt, Vinz and Recnam were only slightly wounded, Rufus, Seamus and Josef were gravely wounded but still conscious, and Oleg, Vladimir and Ilya were unconscious. Four of the undeads were down for the count, and many of the others were grievously wounded. Only two were still intact.

To be concluded in the next chapter.

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Chapter 48 - Crazy Barbarian Island

Just for a little reminder, last week's section of the battle ended with Mushamee, Kaeso, Leif and Marco unwounded, Vinz and Recnam slightly wounded, Josef, Rufus and Seamus seriously wounded but still conscious, and Oleg, Vladimir and Ilya unconscious. Four of the undeads were down, many other badly wounded, and two still unhurt. The battlefield had been crudely divided in three, with Mushamee, Vinz and Recnam facing four undeads in the front, Josef, Kaeso, Seamus and Leif facing five in the back, and Rufus facing one undead all by himself. Marco, still the coward, was keeping a safe distance from all that.

Now fighting side by side, Mushamee and Vinz quickly overwhelmed one of the unwounded monsters with repeated feints/attacks to the brain (they did receive the extra damage, but were not automatically knocked out). Mushamee then got rid of one already greatly wounded, then ran to the back to help the others, leaving Vinz and Recnam to deal with the last two. Vinz sent a third undead one to the ground, before killing it with all-out attacks to the brain. Recnam pounced solidly on the last one, who also fell on the ground. Vinz pounced on it some more, finishing it off.

Meanwhile, in the back, Seamus passed out from his injuries. Leif continued occupying two undeads, using the increased reach of his two-handed sword to good tactical advantage. He pounced a couple of times on one of them, finally killing it. Rufus was hit again by his attacker, but luckily the damage was minimal. Unluckily, he had rolled a critical failure on his block, so found himself on the groud lying on his shield. He rolled on himself, spear in hand, and parried the undead's next attack.

Josef also passed out from his wounds. Kaeso grabbed one of the fell undeads' broadsword and ran to Rufus' help. He arrived just before Mushamee and actually hit the undead for some damage! Still running, Mushamee put himself in front of the engineer. He parried the undead's riposte and mowed it down in a couple of rounds.

Meanwhile, just as Leif finished the undead still in front of him, he was attacked by the one who was fighting Josef. Vinz and Recnam, having just finished their opponents, ran to help him. After a couple of rounds of concerted attacks (including one critically failed attack from Vinz and Leif), Recnam finally put the undead to rest with his staff.

We didn't even had time to relax a bit when Leif heard someone asking who had killed all his knights. Then a 15-foot high humanoid silhouette emerged from the dark. It seemed to have human features, but it was impossible to detect if he was alive or not. He was wearing some kind of metal armor, and was armed with a gigantic two-handed club.

Leif, Mushamee and Vinz started moving toward him, apart from each other so they could attack the monster from different sides. Recnam followed them, but was at half move and dodge. Rufus grabbed a spear and tried to get nearer, but eventually passed out from his wound. Kaeso ran to the place he had dropped Vinz's repeating crossbow in the preceeding fight.

Leif was the first to get in range of the giant (who had a reach of 4). The giant swung his club, but Leif dodged (there was no way such a massive attack could be blocked or parried). Leif started taunting the giant while Mushamee and Vinz tried to flanked it. The giant was no fool, however. He turned around toward Mushamee and howled like a madman. The shockwave was enough to stun Mushamee. Vinz drew first blood by attacking the monster's leg (its vitals being way out of reach). Mushamee came out of stun and also targeted the legs and hit. The giant moved a bit and raised its club in the air; lightning started coming out of it. We closed in. The giant brought its club down on Mushamee, who dodged. Mushamee and Leif attacked it in the groin area, inflicting good damage. Again, the giant raised its club in the air, then smashed it on the ground between his three opponents. Lightning immediately lept from the club toward the trio. Leif and Vinz successfully jumped aside, and were zapped for one dice of electrical damage. Mushamee missed his dodge and was zapped for 3 dices of damage (luckily for him, Sean rolled low). At his next turn, Leif swung at the monster's vitals (his greatsword was long enough) and scored a critical hit, bypassing all armor. The giant crashed down on the ground. Kaeso, who had finally recuperated the crossbow, fired at the giant's groin, but his bolt didn't do enough damage to go through the armor. The giant didn't move. Mushamee stepped forward and attacked it to the vitals, doing massive damage. Still, the giant didn't move. We looked at his face and realized Leif's lucky shot had killed him instantaneously.

Recnam knew that the type of undeads we've just faced had a tendency to come back as spiritual undead to their take revenge on those who had destroyed their body. He insisted we threw all the bodies into the fire. When that was done, he started a long ceremony to send all their spirits to Necros.

Meanwhile, Leif and Mushamee started patching up people. Leif threw a dead rat at Josef, who was the most badly hurt, healing him for 20 points of damage. They then bandaged everyone and started working on first-aids.

Vinz took care of cutting the giant's head off, using the occasion to loot the body. The club and armor were non-magical, but the assassin found a massive amulet that was definitely emitting magical energy. He removed it from the giant's neck. Since we had no way of finding out what was, Recnam contacted the giant's spirit to ask him. The spirit told him we would have to figure out its uses by ourselves. When asked if he would like to be sent to Necros, he said it wouldn't do anything, that he was bound to come back, and that all we had done was free him of this giant form. Before Recnam cut the contact, he said he's be back to take his revenge when we would least except it.

Still in the dark about the amulet, Vinz decided to put it around his neck very slowly. His Danger Sense didn't piped up, so he assumed it was probably safe, at least for the time being.

Kaeso wanted to bring the gigantic metal armor in case we needed it for the boat, but abandoned his idea when we told him he'd had to bring the three hundred pound of metal by himself.

Since some of us were still grievely wounded and / or unconscious, we decided to sleep around the fire for awhile.

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Chapter 49 - Crazy Barbarian Island

After such a ferocious battle, we slept for eight hours. Nothing disturbed our sleep. Recnam tried to contact the Serpent Queen, but failed. Unhurt, Kaeso took two watches and took some time to install some traps around the camp.

The next day was spent in healing and resting. In the morning, those who hadn't received first-aid the night before were treated. Leif used his special healing on Ilya, Oleg, Vladimir and Rufus. Kaeso and Leif hunted the entire afternoon, with Kaeso being much more successful than the barbarian. Vinz spent his time installing some warning systems around the camp (as it was evident we'd had to spend another night there).

We ate supper. Dusk fell. Vinz tried to cast False Aura on himself, so that any being searching for him with magical or special senses would see him as an undead. He rolled a critical success, and all of the group except Mushamee (Magic Resistance) had their aura changed. One of the High Imperial Guards took the first watch, Leif the second, and Recnam took the third and fourth ones. During his watch, Leif healed Seamus and Recnam. While sleeping, Recnam tried again to contact the Serpent Queen, and this time he succeeded. In the morning, he told us she had identified the functions of both the medallion and the red wand. The medallion made the wearer immune to lighting/electricity damage, although she didn't know if it was a complete or partial immunity. The red wand was called a blood wand, and is a device allowing a mage to put more energy in a spell by burning hit points at ratio of 1:1, and no associated casting penalties for hurting yourself. The drawback is the possibility of evil entities being summoned some way or another.

Leif healed Josef and Vinz. When everyone was ready to leave, Leif started following the undeads' tracks back to where they were coming from. A couple of hour later, him and Vinz saw some mounds in the distance. We stopped, and Leif, Vinz and Kaeso stealthily went to inspect them. They found fourteen man-sized mounds disposed in a circle, thirteen of them with a big hole in their center. In the middle of the circle was a much bigger mound, at least three times the size of any other, with another big hole in its center.

Since the place was deserted, Leif improvised a torch with some brambles, and used it to signal the others to join us. He then thrusted it into one of the normal-sized mounds. The stench was almost intolerable, and he looked inside just enough to see it was mostly empty, except for some rusted swords and shields.

We decided to inspect the big mound next. When Leif lowered his torch in the opening, we immediately noticed there was a 20-feet long boat at its bottom! We lowered ourselves to the bridge. Kaeso noticed that the boat was in perfect condition, which made no sense since he had been buried underground for who knows how many years. We concluded it had probably been magically preserved for all this time, although the boat itself was not magical. We found two intact stone chests. Vinz found no traps on them. Mushamee and Leif combined their strenghts to slide one of the covers aside without damaging the boat. They found the chest was full of gold; crowns, amulets, rings, etc. The second chest contained the same exact thing. Mushamee and Leif started dancing, then proceeded to put on necklaces, amulets and rings, as if all this only belonged to them because they were the ones who found it ;) Kaeso found a much smaller box and opened it, revealing a golden skull. Kaeso just threw it aside, where Recnam grabbed it quickly. By looking at it, he found out the thing was magical and evil. Rufus looked at it with his special vision and saw a foul, ugly spirit coming out of it.

Now we had a big problem. We finally had a boat, but we were a full two-days's walk from the nearest water. Also, as we could see, the boat was pretty well-made, massive and heavy, so extracting it from this tomb and carrying it would be awfully slow (we estimated it would take somewhere around a full month). And we had no wood to act as sliding devices, and no tools to either made some rock wheels, or separate the boat in smaller pieces and let Kaeso put them back together in the water. A quicker solution would be for Recnam to create a lot of zombies from the villagers' corpses and made them extract and carry the boat. We estimated we could at least save one week this way. Still, we would seriously be behind our schedule, and would be running the risk of being stuck in ice.

We put that aside and decided to dig through the still intact mound, using spears and shields. As we were working, we started hearing some voices on the wind. Recnam detected the presence of spirits and immediately talked with them. When he was finished, he immediately told us to stop what we were doing. The spirits had told him that was in the mound was a really powerful entity whose goal was to protect these tombs and their inoccupants, and that it was much more powerful than everything we had faced before. We decided to heed the Priest's warning and stopped digging.

We went back to thinking about how to get the boat out of the big tomb and into the water. Recnam told us he could at least ask his father to remove the boat from the tomb, since all the tombs and what was inside them was Necros' business. We told him to go ahead.

He conducted an hour-long ceremony during which our eyes started bleeding. At its conclusion, the earth trembled and the ship came out of the tomb and settled on the ground. Recnam crumbled, completely exhausted and badly hurt.

Spurred by an off-remark about us having powerful magical artifacts, Vinz retrieved the spherical water artifact we had appropriated on the Island at the End of the World from Kaeso's backpack. He took it in his two hands and started concentrating on producing a small trickle of water. After a couple of minutes, he started feeling rain. Then thunder flashed in the sky and lighting stroke him. Luckily, the giant amulet protected him completely from injury. He immediately let go of the artifact (although he had to make a roll to do so). The storm immediately subsided.

Mushamee, Leif and Kaeso immediately started thinking about how we could generate such a storm as to flood part of the island and have the boat glide to the ocean. Vinz was against it, evoking the power of the artifact and the lack of control he had over it. They insisted, but Vinz was still really hesitant. Finally, Leif said something about how Vinz should let him use it (as if Vinz would let such a retarted barbarian kid like Leif wield such a powerful magical artifact... :)). Knowing the others wouldn't let up, Vinz finally relented and agreed to do it.

We all climbed into the boat. The two chests were carefully sealed and secured with ropes. Leif and Mushamee attached two ropes to Vinz, one on each arm, so that, if necessary, they could pull apart the assassin's arms and make him drop the artifact. Vinz grabbed the blue sphere again and started to concentrate on water. The rain started again, and the thunder came back. Two dark gigantic clouds started forming over us. The rain's intensity raised higher and higher. Vinz opened his mouth and water started coming out of it, slowly at first, then in greater quantity. He didn't feel like he was drowing, however. The intensity of the storm continued to rise. Eventually, the boat started floating a bit, then rose enough to actually start moving forward. Vinz was still conscious, but completely disconnected. His body started to turn on itself, with water pouring from his mouth, fingers, eyes, etc. Leif and Mushamee were forced to let go of the ropes attached to Vinz's arms. As the boat started picking speed, Leif noticed that the water coming out of Vinz had started taking a slightly pink shade, so he healed him.

During the next hour, the storm grew in violence, and the volume and speed of the running water rose steadily. Vinz had to make tens of HT rolls to support the shock of all this water coming out of his body. The middle portion of the trip went relatively smoothly, but Leif had to heal him again during the last part. Finally, the boat reached the end of the isle and crashed in the ocean. Using Mushamee's and Kaeso's luck, it made its HT roll.

Kaeso, Leif and Mushamee tried to tell Vinz to let go of the sphere, but the assassin was so far gone that he didn't even hear them. They tackled him and tried to pry the sphere from his hands, but his grip was too strong. Luckily, the shock of being tackled woked him up and he was able to let go of the sphere by himself. The storm immediately dropped in intensity, and in less than a minute, completely disappeared. Vinz made his HT roll to resist the permanent loss of one HT point. He coughed out the water still in him, then, completely exhausted, went to sleep right there on the bridge. Kaeso put the sphere back in his backpack.

We decided that we needed to go back to Leif's village to get some food and water for the voyage home to Roma. It promises to be a 'fun' voyage since it's at least five days away from our current position, and we have no food nor water (except for the rainwater already in the boat).

That's where we stopped for the night.

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Chapter 50 - Crazy Barbarian Island - Leif's Village - Roma

It was night time and we had just left the crazy barbarian island. We decided to go east until we encounter some lands. Once we would be able to orient ourselves correctly, we would go to Leif's village, then back to Roma.

Day after day we rowed. Leif spent his days fishing but was only midly successful, leaving the group to eat about half what they should. During the fifth day, he broke his fishing gear. Kaeso improvised one with a spear and some rope. He then made another one for himself and started fishing too. It meant we were going a little slower, but at least we had more to eat.

At the end of the ninth day, Leif detected the smell of a grilled fish His senses being what they were, he also noticed some other strangely familiar scents. A couple minutes later, in a state of extreme exhaustion, we reached the harbor of Leif's village.

Leif talked to the guards, and one of them went to wake his father. When the shaman arrived, he said he was proud that Leif had successfully mastered the Island. He led us to the purification chamber for a late snack. After lunch, most of us went to sleep. Mushamee decided to get back to the boat to guard the gold. Vinz decided to go with him, mainly because he doesn't trust Mushamee with all that gold. :) Sometime during the night, Leif came to relieve Mushamee.

In the morning, we met with Leif's dad again. Leif told him about what had happened on the island. The shaman seemed a little skeptic when he was told about the giant we had fought, but our giant funeral boat was proof enough. He said he was proud that Leif had finally accepted his destiny of becoming a shaman. Leif had to repeat he didn't do it to become a shaman; he was acting more like a demon hunter for his grandfather. His father said that while demon hunting was a perfectly acceptable profession for a barbarian, it was also really dangerous, and that demon hunters would often unvoluntarily start transforming into wild animals. Leif's regular aggressive actions while sleeping were proof of that.

A little later, Leif and Vinz went to some of the merchants in the village to buy a big sail, many furs to help us against the cold when sleeping, many fishing equipments, and enough water for 25 days (we estimated our trip back at 20 days). We filled the space left with food that we would complement with fresh fish. In all, it costed us five or six gold rings and a gold necklace.

We left before the end of the day. Our trip to Roma was completely uneventful, and still Leif was unable to catch a shark. At the end of the 20th day of our trip, only two days before the Smet festival (festival of the dead), we finally arrived at the Roma harbor. We were releaved when we saw Vasili's flag still floating over the harbormaster's house.

We moored the boat and got on the quay. We went to the harbormaster's house to present ourselves. A little later, a group of legionnaires showed up to escort us to the Imperial palace. We made them carry our two stone chests.

As the city streets were getting darker, Vinz's Danger Sense started ringing. Leif caught some movements in the corner of his eyes, coming from the roof of the surrounding buildings. Suddenly, a feline forms hopped down in the street, jumped on one of the legionnaires, and immediately jumped up on another roof. The soldier's head slowly dropped from his neck and the body crumpled to the ground. We just had enough time to identify the beast as one of the four stone jaguars from Tecl´.

In the middle of the road we fell extremely vulnerable, so we ran to the nearest door and went right through it. We found ourselves on the first level of a two-storied deserted shop. After a couple of seconds, we started hearing the jaguars walking on the second floor. We then heard some hard knocks on the ceiling and realized it wouldn't last long under the assault of four stone beasts. We told the legionnaires to move away, then formed a circle around the place where we figured the jaguars would come through.

A couple seconds later, part of the ceiling crashed in the middle of our circle and the four jaguars jumped on us; one on Recnam, one on Mushamee, one on Vinz and one on Leif. But frankly, having lost the terrain advantage, they were simply no match for us. Leif and Recnam were able to block their respective assailants until Mushamee destroyed his and came to help them. He seriously damaged Recnam's opponent before someone else (I don't remember who, please help) finished it. Vinz didn't had much problem with his opponent, but had to hit him for at least four or five times before it was finally destroyed.

The only problem we had was with the one attacking Leif. On one of his attacks, the barbarian got a critical failure and lost his greatsword. The jaguar bit his throat and didn't let go. On the next turn, Leif tried to break free, but without success. The jaguar bit even deeper. Finally, Vinz and Mushamee arrived to the rescue. The assassin hit the thing two times, before Mushamee destroyed it with an all-out attack.

Leif was now grievously wounded, well into negative HT. He did make his next 60 HT roll to stay conscious, the time it took him to prepare a dead rat. He hit himself with it, rolling a 4, and was back in full HT and no fatigue. :)

We decided to wait next week for our meeting with Vasili.

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