I managed to make a rather decent sea devil, so I swam on down to where I thought their lair might be. After a bit of searching, I found a tunnel entrance guarded by two smaller sea devils, each with a trident. I swam past them as if I were supposed to be doing that.

The tunnel eventually opened up into a larger underground cave, and this lead up to a shallow beach. On the other side of this long beach was another pool of water, leading off to another area. To the right was a smaller pool, leading off somewhere else. There were no more devils around, so I took the smaller one to the right.

This took me through a small tunnel into another underground cavern, and this went aboveground to a cage type thing. There were two more guards, both the same size as the younger ones at the entrance.

I then headed back and heard a bellowing from the main room. The two guards behind me swam up to and past me to the main room. There was a gethering of sea devils there: many that were younger than the one I copied, there was a female that got away inthe earlier scuffle, and there was a very large one; he was about the size of a hill giant. The female was wiping some gunk on the eyes of the sea devils, and did so to me, too. The world got a little dimmer when she did so. (Apparently they were going to go up during the day. Interesting.)

The two guards from the prison went back to their station, and everyone else -- it seemed like all the remaining sea devils -- went out into the water. I lagged behind, and when nobody was looking, I went back in and to the prison area.

When the two saw me, they seemed, I dunno, annoyed? Distressed? Guard-like? They jabbered at me and waved back the way I had come. I jabbered back and waved at them. They brought their tridents to bear and jabbered again. I attempted mimicing the jabbering. They attacked.

I managed to take them down using fire psionics rather quickly. I shifted back to human form and tried to calm the townspeople, mostly women and children.

The door wasn't really locked, so I opened it up and let them out (even though they couldn't go anywhere yet).

I looked around and saw an area that could possibly be the air hole; after all, air had to be getting in here somehow. I shifted forms and went up to it, but found out that it was just a small, long fissure; nothing a person could fit through.

I asked one of the women, who turned out to be a cleric, how they were able to survive the trip underwater. She said that it had something to do with the nets. That they allowed them to breathe underwater.

Seeing a way to get them out, I went back to the main room. Not wanting to leave without fully exploring this lair, I went into the pool that lead to the place I hadn't gone yet. This opened into a large area with many items, one of which was a very expensive-looking statue of a shark.

I went into the front pool, made myself invisible, and went to check on the guards at the front. They were gone. Pleasant surprise this was, I went back to the others. I could only fit three adults in the net at a time, but I could get six children. I decided to get the kids out first. I took them up the shore, away from where I thought the battle would be taking place. With them under cover, I returned for the adults.

I was able to get them all out safely. After this was done, we headed back to the town. Once we got close, I flanked around looking for the others. The beach was empty, as was the town. I did Clairvoyance on The Immortal and got a vague impression of where he was. We headed that way and met up with The Immortal and Korendir. Re-Roll died again, but instead of burying him, we decided to take him back to town and see if anything could be done with him. The Immortal also persuaded me to ignore the treasure in the lair of the sea devils.

We took the people back to town and I gave a full report to the Khalif. After that, I checked with some clerics and the Mad Arab to see if they could figure out a way to get rid of the sea devil curse. They couldn't, but they did determine that the curse was tied to something specific. When I asked if it could be tied to a statue of a deity, they said that that could be the case.

We went back to the fishing town and we went back to the lair. Everything was gone. No items, no dead sea devils, and no statue. The Immortal noticed a very large footprint in the stone of the beach. I did a scan of the recent past and saw a very large sea devil being directed by three things that looked like creatures from a black lagoon. After they got everything, I saw that they went off into the deep sea. The Mad Arab would later identify these things for me as Deep Ones.

We went back to the capital and Korendir and I did some more preparations for our weddings. While this was going on, Gibríel was watching some of the shipments through the city -- she does that a lot; always looking for useful items -- she noticed that inside some barrels that were supposed to be oil were actually human blood.

During this time, Re-Roll's character seemed to be knitting himself back together. After a few days, he got to the point where we were actually able to have someone cast healing magic on him and have it stick. He was then brought back up and told us that his god, Grimlok, said that he had more things for Re-Roll to do, ergo he wasn't allowed to die just yet.

The Khalif had another mission for us before the weddings. There was yet another costal town that had been out of contact for a while, and the Khalif wanted us to check it out. Gibríel and Daphne were going to follow the barrels to the city to the south and see if they could find out why they were going there, who wanted them, etc.

So we went out. It took us a few days by psychic skiff to get to the town, but the first thing we noticed was a human body hung upside down, with his intestines removed. Underneath him, written in blood, were the letters "TK". Naturally, we took this as a bad sign.

After getting to the town, we found it dead: nobody was around except for corpses. We did find one man, though he was insane.

I did the history thing again and saw what had happened to the town. It drove me mad for a little bit. But I learned what happened:

A great storm came and killed all the men that were in the town, and impregnated all the women (regardless of age). Later, a second storm came and the women gave birth; the process of the offspring clawing their way out of the women ended up killing all the women and most of the offspring. One survived, though, looking entirely human, and it killed some of th men who had returned to town.

Walking away from the town, we noticed that some of the other corpses hung in the trees seemed to have been done as the perpetrator was walking in that direction -- away from the town.

We retraced our steps back to the capital and encountered a town we'd just been through, though this one now looked like the last. We went very quickly back to the capital.

After getting back, we found out about a murder similar to the ones we'd seen that had taken place in the city. After three more of these, we found out that he was killing in such a way as to spell out his initials. One of the places he'd eventually come was the palace.

We went to other places trying to find him, but he was always at one of the other points. However, we did manage to catch up to him at the palace.

The Mad Arab had already drawn up a circle of protection by the time this guy just slid quietly out of the shadows. The battle commenced.

Everyone there was in on the battle, the Khalif included. Unfortunately, he got his head lopped off by the demon thing's second attack. We all managed to do enough damage to it to bring it down. I was going to try to hit it with the ingot of orchalcam we'd found earlier, hoping to trap it, but it died before then. The Mad Arab, however, did shoot a black ray of nasty stuff from his finger at the demon, hurting it bad.

The body started to disipate after that. I tried to cast Dimensional Anchor in his breastplate to keep it from leaving, but the psionic just fell off it like water off oil and it left, too.

I did manage to get a new weapon: a vorpal scimitar. I also used the demon's sheath in a ritual to make the scimitar keen. (This would become very handy very shortly.)

We'd also managed to pick up a new healing staff, and Daphne used its resurrection power on her father, allowing for his head to be reattached and himself to be brought back.

Not long after that, a few of us were down at the point where incoming trades come, looking for stuff. I fell asleep shortly after that.

When I came around, Gibríel was missing. We asked around and found out that an archer wearing green and a few other people had absconded with her. We did some research and found out the culprits: the Emerald Archer, the Red Ronin, a psionic by the name of The Lobe, and Strong Guy. I also found out that most of my psionics were blocked. Immediately I assumed that The Lobe locked me out, and that it was the halfling from the southern city that had hired them to do the job.

We went down there and tried to find them. In the town square, Korendir called out something like, "Come out, coward! Your death is here!" and pointed at me.

A demon suddenly appeared, muttering something about knowing that his ruse wouldn't last forever, and attacked me. He attacked with Harm, and I was very hurt. I retaliated with a swing of my scimitar and decapitated him. I tookk his stuff, too. And his body. (That went into the Bag of Holding; his head went into Korendir's Ring of Storing.)

We managed to trace the quartet to a bar, and I walked up to their table when I saw them. We managed to get to talking, them saying that it was just a job. In trade for the demon's corpse, we managed to learn that it was the Mad Arab who wanted her abducted. Apparently the black thing he'd thrown earlier was demon magic, and it hit him as hard as it hit the demon.

We spent the next few days planning how we'd get Gibríel back, going over notes in the Arab's rooms. Lots of maps with lines of power, nexi of power, and things of that nature. (One nexus was on the capital, and another was out to sea north of the capital. That was where we deduced he was heading.)

Plans continued to be made.

This page last updated on Saturday, 08-Mar-2003 10:47:38 CST | webmaster @ infiniteshadow . net