Adventure: The Demons' Prophecy (3)

Therendor 9, YK 999

After a fairly cursory search of Erv's shack, the Wolves found an elaborate key around Erv's neck and a locked trap door, hidden beneath a threadbare rug. Pel determined that the door wasn't trapped, and as the Wolves joked about the Silver Flame's lax security, he turned the key.

At which point he discovered the true nature of the Flamekeep Archives security, which was partly based on deception. The door wasn't trapped, but the key was, and Pel barely resisted the sleep poison that a hidden needle injected into his finger.

While Pel steadied himself, Brand used a piton to spike the door to the cottage shut and Luggoth and Lysander tied up Brother Erv.

The trap door opened to reveal a deep pit, with a faint glow emanating about 100 feet below, visible by Lysander's low-light vision. The Wolves used a rope to climb down, at which point they found a medium sized chamber with a glowing Silver Flame sigil in the floor and a glowing silver-blue wall on one edge. Maechen identified it as a Wall of Force, and assured them that there was no easy way to dispel or destroy it. However, teleportation would allow them to bypass it.

Brand decided to go first, using his dimension leap ability to jump past the wall, and he found himself in a deep, thick, magical fog that slowed his movement and made it impossible to see more than five feet in front of him. He cast Embrace the Wild to enhance his senses and began scouting by moving along the walls, determining the width of the room and extent of the fog. When he emerged from the fog, he saw a room with three dragon statues at the far end, guarding an enormous wall of silver flame, and a stone statue in the center of the room that he took for a golem.

After reporting back via the ring of communication he had borrowed from Pel, Brand dimension leaped back to them and then, using his dimension door and the dimension door scroll they had purchased, the group appeared in the fog.

Luggoth was the first to step into the center of the fog, rather than along the walls, and so he discovered the deep chasm in the center of the room. Fortunately, his feather fall token saved him from a deadly fall, and he climbed back up the side of the chasm.

Slowly, the Wolves began emerging out of the fog and into the other room. Within a few seconds, one of them had accidentally wandered into the range of the stone golem, which was activated by the presence of intruders. He quite deliberately stepped on a pressure plate, causing one of the dragon statues to spew a fireball from its mouth, which blasted half of the Wolves, even as the golem stepped up and punched Maechen, cracking his ribs and forcing him to step back into the fog and drink a potion to cure his wounds.

Luggoth charged into battle, but couldn't quite get his sword to bite into the golem's rocky exterior. Brand, using the adamantine longsword, was luckier, slicing a small chunk off the creature's side, but triggering a fireball from one of the other dragon statues and suffering a brutal head blow from the golem as a result, knocking him unconscious. As Lysander reached out and dragged Brand back into the fog, Pel tried the passwords they had gotten from the Kundarak courier, to no avail, and cast resist energy (fire) on Maechen.

Planning to lure the golem into the chasm, Maechen cast grease on the area in front of the pit and then readied a flask of acidic fire to throw at the golem. Pel cast Sanctuary to avoid the golem's attack so that he could try to disarm the dragon traps, and Lysander cured a healing spell to awaken Brand.

As Maechen threw his acidic fire, burning a small hole in the golem's right shoulder, Pel managed to reach in and disarm one of the dragon fireball traps. Lysander cast mirror image on himself to attract the golem's attention, but it strode over to Maechen, activating another fireball before it swung a rocky fist and caught Maechen in the solar plexus, briefly taking his breath away.

Grievously wounded, Maechen stepped once more back into the fog, but Lysander and Luggoth stepped back out to engage. Luggoth drank a potion of bull's strength and took the adamantine sword offered by Brand while Lysander moved in and found his weaponry somewhat ineffective against the stony defender.

As Pel continued to work at disabling all three dragon traps, Brand called forth a black bear from his bag of tricks and Luggoth shifted, entered a rage and began swinging the adamantine sword with great force to begin carving up the golem. Lysander switched to support mode, casting healing spells on the shifter.

Maechen took out one of the stone to flesh scrolls he had gotten when he had joined the Wolves and cast it on the golem, momentarily reverting the creature to a fleshy form. This more vulnerable form suffered serious damage as Luggoth, Brand's bear and Lysander all struck successful blows, and Maechen followed up with a burst of magic missiles from his wand.

The golem continued to pummel Luggoth, but it had been worn down by the battle and by Maechen's magical gambit, and Luggoth swung a final mighty blow with the adamantine longsword that shattered it.

After taking a bit of time to heal the damage they had suffered at the hands of the golem, Maechen and Pel worked out that the dragon traps, if reactivated and triggered with heavy chunks of stone, might drain enough magical fire to temporarily bring down the wall of fire they were guarding.

This worked, and the Wolves soon found themselves in a short corridor with locked stone doors on either side. Pel determined the doors were not trapped, and the Wolves decided to try the one on the left first. After two tries, and with the help of guidance spells and songs from Lysander, Pel managed to pick the unusual lock, which was clearly meant to respond to the amulets that the Cardinals wore.

Pel, the first one through the door, saw that it opened into a hall with four statues, each one a great Thrane hero from the war. However, he quickly determined that this was an illusion, and instead realized that the room was a gigantic pool, with slick, 3 foot ledges on either side. He had scarcely had a moment to take it in when a huge water elemental emerged from the pool and attacked.

As Maechen entered prophetic favor, Lysander and Luggoth both focused their attention to disbelieve the illusion and see the pool for what it was. Lysander moved in and hit the elemental with his rapier, but Luggoth slipped on the wet ledge and fell into the pool.

Maechen began firing magic missiles at the elemental, even though he hadn't been able to disbelieve the illusionary room, and thus couldn't see the pool. Lysander tumbled past the elemental to allow room for the other Wolves to enter and struck another glancing blow with his rapier, and the elemental responded by reaching over and grabbing Lysander in one arm. As Pel opened up with a scorching ray, turning part of the elemental into superheated steam and earning a satisfying roar of pain, Brand began firing his bow at the elemental.

Maechen fired off a lightning bolt at the elemental as it reached over and grabbed Pel, who fired off another scorching ray from his wand despite being grabbed. The elemental struck Luggoth with the hand that held Pel, but in return he suffered an attack from Luggoth's sword, and Brand continued to pepper the creature with arrows.

As Maechen began unleashing magic missiles from his wand, the water elemental pushed Lysander and Pel to the bottom of the pool and let them go, intent on grabbing the others.

Luggoth, Brand and Maechen pressed their attacks as Lysander and Pel began swimming to the surface, and the elemental turned into a vortex, trapping Lysander and Pel in the water and crushing them with its swirling waters. However, Pel and Maechen continued to blast it with spells and Luggoth continued to swing with his greatsword, even though it meant being dragged into the vortex as well.

Before the elemental could drown or crush the Wolves, however, Maechen's continual barrage of magic missiles did enough damage and caused the creature to dissipate.

Once past the pool, Pel picked the lock on the double doors at the end of the room and got the Wolves into a room filled with what seemed at first to be random debris and colored glass. Maechen realized that it was in fact some kind of map room, with markers indicating significant battles of the Silver Flame or Thrane in general, and Pel was able to determine that some of the glass markers had been moved and in some cases removed. However, despite analyzing these clues, the Wolves were unable to figure out exactly what the map meant.

At the other end of the room, the Wolves saw an immense pair of iron doors with the same unusual round lock and three stone tumblers with numbers on them. Pel set one of the codes on the tumblers and, taking about five minutes, managed to pick the lock.

Once past the iron doors, the Wolves found themselves in a hallway with a series of alcoves leading up to a solid silvered steel door with no lock or handle or obvious means of egress. Each alcove contained a bookshelf full of thick leather-bound books. The books were marked with a silver embossed symbol (a sword and axe, an armor and shield, a robe and boots and a hammer and pick) and an inscrutable character. The Wolves figured out that since there were 26 different symbols total, they probably indicated letters of the alphabet, but they still weren't able to work out what the books meant.

After trying to puzzle out the system and figure out what the books meant, Pel spoke the pass phrase from Kundarak to get the silver door to open. The Wolves then saw a smaller room with four alcoves, each one marked with a glyph matching one of the four symbols on the books. Each alcove contained three dials (one with A-Z, two with 0-9) and a lever, and Pel managed to work out how the device might work. After much debate, Pel set a random sequence of numbers and letters into the "Robe and Boots" alcove and pulled the lever. A pair of magical gauntlets appeared.

There was further debate and attempts to decipher the arcane coding, and then the Wolves determined to try random selections on the other alcoves. As a result, they wound up with one item from each alcove, and then they would produce no others. Using Detect Magic and Identify, they managed to discover that they had gotten a pair of Devastation Gauntlets (which went to Pel), a +1 Brutal Surge Whip (which went to Brand), a suit +1 Buoyant Splint Mail (which went into the bag of holding) and Daern's Instant Tent (which went into the Haversack.)

After taking some time to heal, the Wolves went back to the other door and picked that lock, skipping past a mundane library of Silver Flame information to find a small reading room with two portals, one purple and one blue. Recalling the color of the paper from the Kundarak courier, they jumped into the purple portal, and found themselves in an immense other-dimensional library with a comfortable warmth, magical lighting and a massive array of books. All of the books appeared empty, but Brand quickly discovered that by speaking the name of what they sought, whatever information the Silver Flame archives contained appeared within it.

They researched a variety of information, including the nature of Nalos Venteri, who turned out to be an agent of the Argentum, a branch of the Silver Flame devoted to securing magical items for the church. They also learned that Cardinal Ossul Hetrion was a devoted healer, traveling often to bring his healing gifts and the word of the Flame to the world. Most importantly, they found a fairly complete history of the Order of the Cleansing Flame.

The Order of the Cleansing Flame was formed in YK 970, during the Last War, by a priest named Solgar Dariznu. It's mandate was to "Keep a wary eye out for the return of lycanthropes or the undead threat, and burn such dangers down to ash before they can grow."

The membership of The Order was kept small, about a dozen clerics, paladins and warriors at a time. They operated fairly autonomously, but there are records going back to almost its founding of discipline against its members. One was excommunicated in YK 972 and fell in battle alongside the Emerald Claw two years later. One was executed in YK 974 for crimes against humanity that included a massacre of women and children "suspected" of being in league with the Lords of Dust. Each time a member fell, another was recruited. In 977, when their massacre of an entire tribe of shifters was revealed, the entire Order was to be tried. They escaped the judgment of the Silver Flame and fled. At the time, their membership of twelve was led by a paladin named Suthar Askarda, and he managed to get half of the Order out of Thrane. The other half were killed in the escape attempt. They have never been caught.

Solgar Dariznu left the order in YK 974, and began moving up the ranks. In 994, just after Jaela Daran assumed the mantle of the Silver Flame, the first Archbishop of Thaliost,a large city on the northern border between Thrane and Aundair, died of old age and Solgar became Archbishop.

Lysander sketched out the images of those who were members of the Cleansing Flame, and after the Wolves determined they had enough information, they walked back into the portal and found themselves in a glade within sight of Erv's hovel.

XP:
Maechen 2920 XP
Brand 2920 XP
Pel 2485 XP
Lysander 2485 XP
Luggoth 2485 XP