progress report

Mistress Jevvica,

We have received an important lesson in not leaving any stone unturned.

After disposing of the Lady Vladaam, whose family the others assure me leads a cult of werewolves, we returned to the room where the xorn had been. The gem still detected as evil and Aeriana took it in its glass case for safe keeping. (We later discovered that the gem is some sort of artifact that causes bad dreams—what’s the point of that?)

Checking the room just up the hall we found something interesting. The was an inverted crucifix with what looked like a dead diva attached to it. Searc said he could detect faint signs of life and when he attempted a healing spell claimed to have seen a brief image of the creature restored.

We freed it from the crucifix and it was immediately restored to its normal form. The others seemed unable to sense it in the same way as I could—I was particularly surprised when the priest had to ask what it was but then I keep forgetting that there are different kinds of priest.

The diva offered to heal everyone but apart from Damien, who had returned to town, everyone had already been healed. He also gifted us with his horn, which was, well, less than inspiring and we decided to sell.

Next was the corridor of lightning. Rather than risk having someone run the gauntlet only to be trapped at the other end, we thought we’d see whether we could find the other end by going through the conflagration.

The trip through the conflagration was uneventful, and we discovered the door at the other end of the corridor to be unlocked and untrapped. And uninteresting. What was more interesting was another apparent prison room. When Ignitz entered the room an undead jailer charged out. It was hard to keep a straight face as the chained skeletons on the wall also attacked. By spitting their teeth! They didn’t last long with Searc exerting his divine power.

We then wandered back into the conflagration to examine the lava pit. Deathspank climbed down to check the side passage. It turned out to be a small recess but somebody had concealed some valuables there which Deathspank recovered. Nothing magic, unfortunately, but worth some money we could put towards something else.

Continuing on from there we discovered a long room decorated with sword motifs. The room itself was uninteresting, but in a large dirt pile we found a book with a passage circled that I believe to be the key to the room of statues in order to get through the prismatic wall.

Before testing the theory we decided to try again to get through the corridor with the weird light patterns. Searc decided to try his luck with the double doors at the end as he was able to use his darkvision to traverse the corridor without any light sources, thus avoiding the hypnotic light patterns. When he grasped the door handles he was struck by an immense shock that almost rendered him unconscious even though he believed he had avoided the worst of it.

We were ready to return to town but despite having been almost killed Searc was keen to return to the black pit where we were sure something was imprisoned. Damien had rejoined us and when he felt the soul magic implanting a spell in his mind he cast it.

What sprung forth was a huge air being. It managed to flatten Damien but with some spells and hefty swordwork it was quickly dispelled. Damien was only unconscious and easily healed but now we had the choice of returning to town to cash in and restore ourselves, or proceeding to the room of statues and we wisely chose to wait until we’d refreshed ourselves.

Eternally yours,
Avach