Crystal Quest Aftermath, Part 9
12-22-04
Using her leftover blessed water, Oy-hat consecrates the altar, and the entire marble floor turns a pure, bright white.
After doing a spot of leftover healing, the group continues exploring the place, moving outside to a courtyard, populated by several more guards and other unfriendlies.
The group makes short work of them, just in time for reinforcements to show up. After an extended fight, whereupon more and more guards show up, the last two living guards make a break for it, and are hotly persued by Akili and Sarai. After a brief moment of indecision, Andune and Oy-hat follow.
Akili finds himself in a stable, and discovers a nook that contains stairs going up. Akili dashes up the stairs, and comes to a closed door. He can barely make out the sound of running footsteps, so he bangs the door open and runs after them, the group just behind his tail. He comes to a T-intersection with two closed doors; growling, he listens again, and still hears the sound of running feet, and tears after them again. He emerges into a circular room of four doors, and this time fails to hear them. Growling, he picks a door at random, and sees a long hallway with four doors down each side. He's about to roar with frustration, when he sees two panicked guards at the far end, frantically trying to open the door at the far end. Akili flings a Wild Strike at them, but nothing visibly apparent happens, and the guards manage to open the door and continue running.
Behind him, Sarai tries another door, and finds an armory. She starts filling her Bag, assisted by Oy-aht. Andune follows Akili down the hall, where the two end up in some kind of arboretum. The guards turn around and fire bolts at Akili, one of which misses, and the other bounces harmlessly off of his chest, like it was made out of rubber, or foam. Charging in, Akili attacks one of them, and Andune takes out the other with a single Magic Missile spell. The guard draws his sword and attacks Akili, but it has also turned to foam. The guard, astonished, drops his sword and runs. Akili finally drops him before he can get away, and the combat is ended at last.
The group spends another six hours or so searching through the rest of the place, and finds no more bad guys. They find various and sundry potentially magical items, and stash them for later identification. Akili runs across a black sword, and gets some damage while trying to pick it up. An attempt to pick it up with the scepter results in a gigantic explosion, damaging many, and flinging Akili against the wall. It also incinerates the letters that Oy-aht were attempting to read.
When finished, they return to the Tower of the Watchers without incident. The group is duly congratulated, and they attempt to locate Salervan using the remains that Sarai found, but conclude that there's not enough of him left for them to do anything.
After some more discussion, the Watchers turn the table into a scrying device, showing a red tower being pulled on wheels by about 20 of those flesh golems, surrounded by an army. It is the Red Tower of Koron, with a balcony occupied by several priests, and a big ball of flame at the top. The tower is moving away from an extremely large castle at the coastline, which has been taken over and is being used as a supply line for the marching army.
Even more disturbingly, the Red Tower is on a path towards Telvin of the Falls, which is also home to the Tower of the Mages. Curiously, the Watchers have been unable to contact the Mage tower, and are hoping to soon get reports from messengers that they've recently sent on. It is also learned that another host of Koron's forces has been approaching from Vortex, and no one knows how they got there in the first place.
There is much deliberation about where the party should go from here, but no decisions are made yet. The group prevails upon the Watchers to identify some of the magical and other obscure items they received while going through Sir Thomas's Castle and eliminating the occupying forces. The game is paused here.