Before we managed to set out, the Mad Arab showed back up, looking very beat and almost dead. He said that he'd been attacked by invisible demons in the desert.

We confronted him about what had happened, and he told us that things didn't happen the way we saw them, that the quartet of mercenaries were the ones to blame. We considered going back to see them, and the Mad Arab mentioned that he had a scroll of teleport back to the city where they worked out of.

After using the scroll, we got the distinct idea that, perhaps, we shouldn't have left. We decided to talk to the quartet anyway. Our suspicions were confirmed that the Mad Arab was behind everything, so we rode back to the capital. It took us three days and the lives of the camels taking us there, but we still didn't get back before the Mad Arab had left, and this time with Princess Daphne.

We went around inside the treasury getting equipment, particularly ethril helms. Re-Roll managed to find a helm that perfectly fit his saurian head, and that one was actually pure ethril.

We got a hold of a psychic skiff and headed out to the island-that-should-not-be. We took a navigator with us, a guy who was used to life on the sea. We showed him the map, and he said that he wasn't sure why something was drawn there, and that nothing land-like should be there.

When we got there, he was very surprised that there was actually land. He was also surprised at the giant that was throwing rocks at the skiff. (I was pretty happy that I wasn't the one piloting at that time; Korendir had picked up latent psionics earlier on, and he was the current pilot at that time.)

After getting close enough, we landed and took the giant down. Shortly after that, two creatures came after us, and they both looked like the Deep Things that were in the Sea Devil cave a while back.

While we were fighting them, Gibríel came out of a cave nearby and started throwing lightning at all of us. The Immortal moved to try to subdue her, but didn't quite make it; she Dimension Doored out at the point when she was looking really bad. The Immortal turned his attention back to the Deep Ones and they were taken out very quickly.

We went down into the cave and eventually came upon a trap. It was a magical one, and Korendir said he recognized it as a Rune of Collosal Inversion. After a bit of debate, we managed to find a way past it: we all went into the Bag of Holding and Korendir Dimension Doored past the trap. There was another trap along the way, but Korendir managed to disarm it.

After that, we found a passage down and it eventually had some kind of mist in it. An alarm went off when we went through the mist.

The passage opened up into a large room with large doors at the other end. Re-Roll went up to open the doors, and the rest of us stood very far back from them.

The doors actually opened surprisingly easy for Re-Roll, which we quickly found out why: there was a giant slime coming out of the door, moving to encompass the entire floor area.

Those with flight got those without it past the slime, and we went back to the doors. The doors continued to open and revealed a giant golem-like thing. It had ho hands on its arms, but empty tubes. There was another concave thing on its chest, and another tube on its right shoulder. It activated and attacked us. We managed to outlast it; it stopped working after about a minute.

We walked past it to the back of the room and found a small door. There was chanting on the other side: one man's voice and two female voices.

The door was not hard to get past, what with two of us knowing Knock, and we got in just fine. We found the Mad Arab, Gibríel, and Daphne standing near a circle and chanting. The fight was on.

Korendir went to disable Daphne, The Immortal went to disable Gibríel, I curcles around to try to get behind the Mad Arab (so I could TK the orchalcam block and try to hit the Arab with it, imprisoning him), and Re-Roll bum-rushed the Arab.

The Mad Arab, however, managed to sidestep Re-Roll, and Re-Roll ran smack into the circle. Since he was playing a race not native to this world, he was imprisoned. (He would later feel the presence of something from deep space trying to enter, eating away at his soul. He would then attack it with his sword, but the thing would grab his sword and pull it through the slowly opening rift. Re-Roll would not get free until after the battle.)

Korendir had little difficulty subduing Daphne, and after that he moved his attention to the Mad Arab. The Immortal had some difficulties with Gibríel: he would try to subdue her, but she would keep casting spells at him. In an attempt to throw her concentration, he physically attacked her arm, the one holding the Staff of Eldritch Might. He would get close to cutting it off, but then she'd heal herself. This went on for quite some time.

Korendir was having a few difficulties with the Mad Arab, and I was having some troubles trying to get the proper angle to throw the ingot of orchalcam. I decided to change my tactics when the Mad Arab put one of his hands on the sphere of the barrier, pointing his other at Korendir and issuing massive damage to Korendir. I pulled out my scimitar and attacked the Mad Arab's arm.

Eventually, Korendir and I got the Arab to be knocked unconscious, and with him out, his control over Gibríel was lost, and the thing being summoned was no longer being summoned. We managed to break the circle and get Re-Roll out, too.

Many things happened then. For one, we weren't sure what to do with the Arab, so we put an ethril helm on him, bound him, and threw him into a Ring of Storage. Since they hold things in stasis, he wasn't going to die any time soon in there.

And as soon as the Mad Arab went down, my psionics came back. We also decided that, considering the current setting, it might be a good time to try something regarding the shark statue of the sea devils.

We all went through a ritual, attempting to sever the tie between me and the statue. Things weren't going well, but when The Immortal stabbed me in the heart, we all felt a feedback loop that went back to the statue and detonated it. I was no longer cursed.

We also picked up a lot of stuff. Gibríel liked the star map that was on the wall, (which also was magically animated), and she also managed to get the golem thing working again. She found another Ring of Storing and put the golem in there, as well as donned the psionic control ring for it.

The Immortal noticed that this day was also the winter solstice, a very magical time. And what with us being at a nexus, this was a very opportune place to enhance some of our weapons and items. Which we all did. Korendir & Daphne and Gibríel & I enhanced our wedding rings so that the wearers could read the thoughts of the other, they would allow the wearer to know the direction of the other wearer, we could teleport our rings back to us if they were tken from us, and, if the other was in great distress, we could also teleport the other person to us.

(I also later found out something about Gibríel that I never would have guessed. Deep down, hidden away from everyone else, she's scared. She's scared of Loth, the Drow demon queen of spiders. Gibríel used to be a cleric of Loth when she was younger, but left after having grown tired of it. She's afraid that Loth will send some minions after her to bring her back, and she finds comfort in having others around. I kept this to myself, though, not wanting to let this secret of hers out.)

We left the island and went back to the capital. As we were leaving, we saw some creatures coming out of the water and heading for the cave; we couldn't tell if they were sea devils or deep ones.

Once we got back to the city, we found out that the Mad Arab's place had burned to the ground. Good thing we pillaged it before we left.

This page last updated on Saturday, 08-Mar-2003 10:47:39 CST | webmaster @ infiniteshadow . net