of liberty, and death

We left the caverns with Koobolas, noting that as we passed tinges of green reappeared on the rocky walls and small mushrooms had begun to spout around the geyser. Melora’s moods are the very seasons, and just as the autumn passes into silence of winter so too nature is reborn again in spring. My elven friend seemed to be that spring, the tidings of a new season in the struggle against the unnatural, evil outsiders.

We met the village women waiting for us outside. The priestess was quite perturbed by the insult that Gorath had given to the goddess, and kept asking Koobolas whether he had yet applied the” ritual punishment” for desecration. The elf demurred, and assuring her that the minotaur’s punishment would come at a time of Melora’s choosing.

As for the bull-headed one, he tripped over several vines as he swatted away a cloud of mosquitoes that seemed unnaturally attracted to him. A harbinger, perhaps, of things to come?

After a short parley among us crewmates, we decided to renew our former plan: we would march north, liberate the villagers’ menfolk, cross to the larger island, defeat evil, possibly rescue the flaxen-haired waif/harbinger of doom, and save the world—or possibly destroy it.  Arrrrr!

While it all seemed straight-forward enough, Arannis seemed distracted, incessantly questioning Koobolas about what he had seen in the feywild while all the time fiddling with the portal keys that he had obtained from the bard (who had, or had not, stowed away onboard the Skua II). By my counting of things, we were at this point a bard and a gnome short, and up a dwarf of unknown origins. Arannis seemed to understand all of this, and even sought to explain it with reference to “the great temporal-dimensional rift,” the mystic “lands of ether and pink,” and the complex and arcane legacies of an ancient powerful portal-mage known only as “Liza Minnelli.” This set my mind at ease, sundering my misapprehensions.

Curiously, when I mentioned this latter fact to Arannis, he only winced.

We left the village women in the care of Melora’s priestess at the caverns, and pressed northwards. The jungles of the isle were majestic in their greenery and wildlife, making the presence of abomination and necromancy here even more disturbing in its affront to Melora. The lush jungle also made the way difficult, especially as the weather was so very hot and humid. The others seemed to have some trouble of it. I, however, hobbled along merrily, stopping only to pluck the occasional low-hanging mango from the plentiful fruit trees. This wasn’t my first time beneath the tropical sun—I had plied the warm seas of Suwarriin,  traded crystallized purple worm spoor and spices with the nomadic Bedubbits of Zuul beneath the Mid-Summer suns, even visited the great canoe-cities of south Syrrah. Arrrrr, how I missed those days. I think.

We took but a short sleep that night, hoping to arrive at the prison camp at dawn when the sun would be in the eyes of its defenders. Our timing was off a little, however, and we stumbled upon the cavern set in a high hill when it was still quite dark. Koobolas, stealthiest among us, was sent forward to scout.

Sadly, my scaly ranger friend was not quite so stealthy as he hoped, and was spotted by a goblin guard who immediately gave the alarm. These were not yer grandmother’s goblins, moreover. They were tough and wiry, as if fortified by some dark powers. Some shot arrows that would ensnare the target in dark tendrils, slowly squeezing the very life from them.

Arannis heard Koobolas shout, and turned to me. “Oh, I’ve just had an idea. I’m sure you can handle this. Give Koobolas my best, I’ll be back soon!” Then, in a flash of pink light, he vanished.

His timing was mighty poor, I’ll tell you. I did what any good one-eyed, one-legged sea captain would do under the circumstances, and shouted to me shipmates to charge the enemy.

The cavern was uphill from us, cut into the very rock of the hillside, and preceded by chasm of sorts. There had been a small wooden rope-bridge over this when we arrived.  As soon as battle began, the goblins cut this free, making it even harder to close with them.

Worried about my scaley friend, I peg-legged by way up the hillside as fast as I could. Oddly, Gorath and Thoradrin seemed to tarry rather more—temporarily immobilized, I would later learn, by the tendril-arrows of our foes.

To my left, I saw Koobolas leap across the gap and plunge into the fight. I did the same, finding a narrow part where it was easier to cross. As I did, a horrible stench hit me. The chasm wasn’t so much a chasm, as a pit, perhaps a fathom in depth. At the bottom was strewn all manner of refuse, offal, feces, and body parts. I felt as nauseous as a landlubber in a force-nine gale. Still, I pressed on.

More goblins issued forth from the cave, hiding behind dark shambling forms that advanced before them. Zombies! Clearly, there was necromancy at work here, as there had been in the village. I squinted in the moonlight with my one good eye, and threw Betsy—impaling one of the undead abominations, and pulling it back towards me through The Whaler’s power.

The zombie collapsed before me, bleeding very red blood and looking for all the world like a bound and gagged villager.

Ooops.

I shouted a warning to the crew. “Err, don’t hit them there zombies, lads… they’re not quite dead yet.” I looked down at the body. “At least, most of ‘em aren’t.”

Koobolas was already at work, stabbing with his blades, casting dark incantations, and slipping insubstantially from shadow to shadow as the elven do. I heard a bellow of rage, and a splash. Gorath, it seemed, was still somewhere near me, while Thoradrin’s dwarf legs had proven too short to propel him across the gap. Instead, he had fallen with a sickening splash into the putrid muck below.

Three of the goblins surrounded me, stabbing with wicked curved scimitars. It was then I decided to try an arcane trick that Arannis (wherever he was) had been trying to teach me for some time. Taking an enchanted rod from me quiver, I twirled three times and clicked my heels together.

There was a flash, and a clap of thunder, and the smell of singed goblin. I materialized a good ten paces away. Me mother—a sea nymph, ye know—would be proud!

About this time, Gorath leaped across the gap, and soon laid into the goblins with his axe. Thoradrin clambered up from the pit, struck at a goblin, and taunted another. The goblin charged—pushing the dwarf once more into the pit. A stream of curses followed, several of which seemed to cast aspirations on the parentage, culinary habits, and personal hygiene of pretty much all goblinoids everywhere. If I understood the tone correctly, the usually taciturn warrior was more than a little annoyed.

I stabbed at the bilge-rats with me javelin, and shouted words of inspiration to Koobolas, who by this time had take more than a few wounds. Gorath arrived at my side, cleaving goblins in two, and sometimes four. Shortly thereafter, a foul-smelling Thoradrin joined us. The last of our foes went down, save two who fled into the darkness.

With this, we untied the surviving villagers. Koobolas could speak a smattering of their language, and asked them what we should expect inside the cavern. Not much, it seemed. There were but two passages, one leading to what had been the goblin sleeping-quarters, and the other to a cave-prison secured by a wooden grate. Lollaloolloplzii, the villagers exclaimed wildly, apparently warning us that a large spider lurked in the cave beyond watching over the remaining prisoners. We decided to let the dwarf open the cage.

Whether due to the bright light now glowing from Gorath’s enchanted axe, the noise we made, or perhaps the dwarf’s putrid odour, any spider within the chamber had scuttled away through cracks in the cave wall. There were, however, another half dozen emaciated men from the village, bound and gagged as the others had been.

We cut them free, and gave them what food and water we could spare, as well as mangoes and berries from the nearby forest. They told us little that we did not already know: they had been captured, taken here, and from here been taken to the other island for use in dark necromantic rituals. Indeed, just a short while before, a group of them had been taken away, including their tribal leader Jaguar-son. We told them where the priestess and the women were, armed them with weapons looted from the goblins, and sent them on their way. From the way they carried their bows and knives you could see they were expert hunters, and we had every confidence they would make the journey to Melora’s cave successfully.

The tribesmen had mentioned boats that the evil ones used to move between the islands. Figuring that these were most likely moored in Boobie Bay just to the north of us, I led me crewmates to the top of Goblin Hill so that we might look down the cliffs to the anchorage below. Sure enough, a catamaran could be seen departing, with a half dozen paddlers, two goblins, a taller figure, and several bound hostages on board. Using our magicked rope we clambered down the cliff, in the hopes of finding another boat with which to pursue them. All that met us there, however, was a hastily-abandoned campsite.

Given this, we had little option but to press on the tidal bridge that connected the two islands at low tide. If we hurried, we could cross it by midday. However, it was clear that our lack of rest the night before was beginning to weigh on the crew—save Koobolas, who seemed in little need of rest since our encounter with the avatar of the goddess. Instead we rested, to attempt the crossing at night when the tides were low once again.

Approaching the shoals, sandbars, and rocks that marked the way to the island beyond we came across a most disturbing sight in the moonlight: a huge totem made of skulls and limbs, posted as a warning to those who might cross. It deterred us little, though—we had seen sights far worse on this quest, and seemed likely to see more afore the voyage ended. In searching it, Koobolas also found a small and rotting leather pouch that contained a wooden bird of sorts. We suspected it a magical item, but with no Arannis to identify it we had no clue as to the powers it might hold.

Slowly we picked our way across the causeway until a stone tower rose before us, marking the shore of our destination. Around its base were a pile of bloated bodies—further evidence of the dark necromancy now at work on these isles.

A torchlight on the ramparts and a shadowy figure stood beside it seemed to indicate someone on lookout. It seemed unlikely we could slip past it across the rocky beach—indeed, the tower seemed to have been placed here for that very reason long ago. A direct assault was risky, since we nothing of the garrison.

Instead, we hit upon a cunning plan. Using my potion of  mimicry, Thoradrin would disguise himself as a wounded goblin survivor of the prison-cave. He would approach the tower and draw their attention to the north, while Koobolas used his stealthy skills to approach unseen from the south, thereby positioning himself to strike by surprise. Gorath and I would hide behind a large rock further back, ready to rush forward when signaled by our companions.

At first, our ruse seemed to work, as the figure atop the tower shouted a confused serious of questions in the local tongue at the mock-goblin. At the last moment, however, something in Thoradrin’s behaviour raised his suspicions, and he struck a large gong to sound the alarm. The corpses around the tower rose up as one—animated zombies, of the sort we had fought far too often these last bitter months. They started to chase after our disguised dwarf. At the same time, a particularly evil looking hippogriff rose up from the tower, and spotted Koobolas in the gloom. The battle was on.

Gorath and I ran forward to help Thoradrin, who by this time had been beset by three or four of the corrupted corpses. The hippogriff flew down, and slashed at us with his talons. Both Gorath and Thoradrin were in fine form, inflicting grievous damage upon the winged beast and the rottings ones too.

SPLAT! One of the zombies fell cut in two, but as it did so it exploded in a mighty burst of pus, rot, and necrotic evil. I was blinded for a moment, and rather than swing at foes I could not see I instead drew my potion of regeneration, hoping it would sustain me through this desperate struggle.

My sight recovered quickly, but as it did I heard a single elven voice calling weakly from within the tower. Koobolas! I had lost track of him during the melee outside. He must be in trouble!

Grasping the warlock rod in my hand, I magicked myself into the stone building. There I found the chief watchman—and a badly wounded Koobolas, dazed and bleeding. I shouted words of encouragement to the elf and stabbed at the enemy. Although he took a wound from me, then ducked back and fired at me with the odd black bow he carried. The wounds it inflicted were grievous ones, and the arrows coated in some noxious poison. The room began to spin, and all went dark.

I awoke to find a worried-looking Koobolas preparing to administer my last potion of healing. Fulith-hil-xinthil, ya Finius? he asked—”once more back from the dead?” Not quite this time, however—the potion I had taken earlier saved me from once again making that particular voyage. I resolved to stock up on more for the future.

Outside we found Gorath tending to an unconscious, Thoradrin, surrounded by an assortment of severed zombie limbs and hippogriff feathers—the brave dwarf had been knocked out by the detonation of the final corpse. He was soon on his feet again—dwarven constitution is a remarkable thing—and as he stood he laughed at the carnage he had wrought.

Plink! It was then, our party battered and knee-deep in gore, that a pink light flashed and Arannis suddenly appeared—a flaxen-haired waif in one hand, and a grizzled creature cloaked in rat-skin garb in the other. “Sorry I took so long, fellows,” he called out, with a pained look on his face. “Might I suggest that we hurry?…”

Goddess issues

The one problem with restraining an eladrin warlock is that they don’t really stay where you put them, but rather bob about like driftwood on the tide. Sure enough, when dawn broke—and the priestess’ sedatives apparently wore off—Arannis popped out of sight in a flash of pink light, and flashed back into existence some distance outside the hut where we had him under guard. With a yell, we gave chase. Koobolas seemed to be particularly exercised by his escape, muttering the name of the holy goddess Melora several times, as well as several references to decapitation in a particular crude turn of the elven vernacular.

Despite our best efforts, however, the warlock’s speed and teleportation proved too much for us. After several minutes of chase, he once more disappeared in another flash of pink light, and could not again be found. We returned forlorn to the village, worried at what seemed to be the loss of our friend to the dark side. Or the pink side, perhaps—I hadn’t remembered Arannis’ previous teleportations having been such a lovely shade of carnation.

A few hours later, the warlock returned, tight-lipped about what had transpired, but with the evil amulet no longer around his neck but rather thrown aside on the ground beside him. Beside Arannis was a stout but taciturn dwarven warrior—Thoradrin by name, it seemed. Wrenn, oddly, was nowhere to be found, nor did anyone seem to notice this. While this confusing change of characters from slight gnomish mage to stout dwarf might well have befuddled a more-ordered mind, my own mind had the singular advantage of being so ill-ordered as to take it all in stride. I had seen stranger things or three.

We asked Arannis what had happened, and what had convinced him to abandon the dark path he had been on. But he would say nothing of what had seen and experienced in the worlds beyond this one, and instead fussed over the creases in his cape. It seemed something he wished to put entirely behind him.

With our party once more at full strength, and rather less semi-evil and more dwarfy than before, we conferred with the raven-haired priestess. Following her advice, we decided that our best course of action was to taken the accursed object to a temple of Melora that lay a few hours away across the island. Perhaps we could find some guidance there. At the very least, we could put the thing beyond the use of the Elder Ones.

Before we could set off, however, we heard a screaming in the sky above. Two dark objects hurtled down towards us—hipogriffs again, but of such evil appearance that they immediately put to mind the Deadly Screaming Death-Cod of the Gulf of Beepee–well, other than the wings, and the complete absence of scales, or for that matter the complete absence of any sort of lingering fishy after-odour. On the other hand, they did have a dank and evil oiliness too them that was very reminiscent of the Gulf. I shuddered at the memories (at least, I think they were mine).

We drew our weapons, and fought. One of the creatures I harpooned with Betsy (a name I had decided to bestow upon me whaler in fond memory of an ivory-haired ship’s chandler I had once known), and in a flash shoved it down the village well. I signalled to Thoradrin to cave in the sides of the well with a mighty kick of his rather small dwarven boot, but that didn’t quite achieve the effect I was looking for. Instead, we stabbed both of them to death with pointy things, which worked just as well.

With the creatures out of our way, we set off to the cave that, so we were told, contained the goddess’ temple. On the way, the ever-pious Koobolas whispered silent prayers.

The cave-temple itself lay deep within a mountainside, near the coast. It was humid and green, and from time-to-time whisps of steam could be seen escaping from the cave-mouth. the priestess would come no further, but bade us to be humble and continue on in the hopes of securing the goddess’ favour.

As we walked on, it grew warmer and warmer, to the point that I was more than a little uncomfortable in me armour. Eventually the path opened up into a larger cavern, within which a large geyser or mud-spout could be seen, surrounded by geometric designs of shiny pebbles, and what seemed to be hundreds of small, moving mushrooms.

“Arrr,” I called to the others. “Walk carefully… there isn’t mush-room!”

They all scowled, except Koobolas who ignored my common tongue and continued with his prayers.

Beyond the large cavern was a second, and we continued on to that as the mushroom-creatures cleared a path for us to follow. There, in a grotto of luxurious grotto of lush vegetation, was a creature, a woman of the most exquisite natural beauty, attended by plant-consorts. I was awestruck.

“Approach and kneel before me…” said a voice in my head, the lilting tones of which seemed like a fresh spring breeze carried across a meadow of wildflowers. I did so, mesmerized and without hesitation. So do did Arannis.

Koobolas too looked intently at the creature, uttering yet another prayer.

“Kneel…” the beautiful voice once more ordered us, as I imagined butterflies and the starry sky and osprey performing acrobatic feats as sea turtles danced on the shoreline.

“No,” replied Gorath, as he snorted. “I kneel for no plant, or creature, except for Kord!”

“KNEEL…” the voice grew harsher, like a school of sharks descending on a shoal of tuna, or lightening rending a summer sky. “KNEEL!” The beautiful woman, dryad, avatar, or whatever she was, stepped forward and slapped the Minotaur much more heavily than her thin frame suggested was possible. He stumbled back a little and clutched at his weapon, snorting in anger.

In that instant, a worried-looking Koobolas drew his bow and let loose a single arrow at the woman, praying even louder in evident alarm and confusion. The arrow struck home.

The woman became a primal thing of sharp and jagged branches, and once more struck at Gorath. Her consorts became terrible creatures of vegetation, and struck at Arannis and I. The myconids from the earlier cave swarmed forward to attack us too. Whatever this place was, we had earned its wrath.

The fight that followed was desperate—all the more so because or elven ranger took no further part in it. Instead, he sang prayers of apology and forgiveness in his low raspy voice, while all the time walking towards the central geyser. Even more strangely, the myconids let him pass even as they swarmed the rest of us. A stairwell of sorts appeared where the geyser had been, and my scaly friend vanished from sight.

Finally the rest of us vanquished our attackers. As we did so, the natural beauty of the cavern gave way to a sense of death and decay. We had done something wrong. Terribly wrong.

“Don’t look at me,” said Gorath as he kicked self-consciously at a few shrivelled mushrooms with a hoof. “I only kneel for Kord! I mean, I respect her, I just don’t kneel for the bitch.”

I remembered Koobolas, and started to hobble down the spiral stairs in the direction he had last been seen. A few minutes later I spied him at the bottom, returning from some sort of portal. I stopped, as if the sights and sounds and smells of this place had triggered something from my childhood—distant memories of the Orcish gypsy woman Waaaaghina, whose herbs my mother would have me buy from her muddy, mushroom-filled cave by the sea… and memories of Waaaghina’s mysterious prophecy:

Koobolas’ prayers did not go unheard.

Melora is at once gentle as a summer breeze and destructive as a tidal wave. She is also unpredictable as the shifting winds in the storm.

Gorath’s insult, and Koobolas’ treachery were not unnoticed by the mercurial goddess. Nor was Koobolas’ supplication.

Long had Melora watched the elven ranger as she plied her trade in the forests of Avalon. Living at one with nature, and slaying those who would destroy its beauty. Then there came a change. All at once, Koobolas was somehow transformed by wicked magicks on a forgotten Isle.

The storm that brought the elf to the Isle was not of Melora but wrought of alien magicks. There the elf maid was changed, turned into something different, a gestalt, a being between two bodies, souls were split and smashed together like blobs of clay to form something new. The souls were separated, as one Koobolas left the other behind.

Then in the blink of immortal Melora’s eye the sundered souls were together on the Isle again. On a whim the green goddess thought to make the souls whole, with her own wicked twist. Transformed from the ranger of the wild, beautiful and lithe, Koobalas was completely reborn in the scaled body of another. No longer the ranger she remembered, but now HE was possessed of something darker. A creature of dark fury who could kill with a glance, and yet was possessed of an elven sensibility.

The time would come for a test.

Gorath’s hubris would be the key that unlocked Koobolas’ fury. The green goddess’ chosen fell to Koobolas’ blade. Such was the nature of things. All things must change, this was the chosen’s winter, and Koobolas’ spring. His fury abated, Koobalas found his elven self, and asked forgiveness.

Twas then he was transformed. The green goddess had a new champion, reborn in a dark cave, sitting atop a portal to the Feywild. Where ancient lines of power crossed, and worlds opened to each other, Koobalas would now truly have to prove himself to his divine patroness. Presented with a gift, Koobolas was born again…to what purpose, only time would tell, and only the mercurial Melora knew.

Koobolas looked at me with a steely gaze, confident of some new purpose. Glinith xil jilwadd-thi, ya Finius. Glandil-ri-prithonik. “What is done is done, Finius. Now, we have some killing to do.”

As a mariner, I knows well the mercurial nature of the Goddess, on whose whims every sailor’s life depends. We pray to Her, but we know it makes little difference. She is, for the most part, beyond our voices. She is the greater power of the seas and oceans, of the currents, shoals, winds and storms that shape our trade and very survival.

Amongst the Gods, Melora understood best the deeply-rooted instinct of survival, of loyalty to the pack, that led Koobolas to draw his bow against Her avatar. It is, after all, what makes us all Her creatures. Yet in the case of my scaly elven friend, even those most basic impulses were tempered by his profound devotion to the Her, one that led him to pray in atonement and supplication even as the battle continued around him.

Nature is a chaotic, violent balance, beautiful yet terrible. It is the rough sea upon which we must all make our destinies. We must always appreciate how much beyond the knowledge of anyone creature it all is.

The evil we fight is from outside of the natural balance. It is an evil of twisted abomination, of dark necromanacies, of contamination, of a fundamental disregard for life. It has no sense of humour, either. And it took me eye, me hand, and me leg.

Yarrr, I really could do with a mango at the moment.

the last temptation of Arannis?

There we all stood, mouths gaped open like a school of seabass at this most improbable turn of events: dark, scaly Koobolas and this flaxen-haired elf girl, staring at each other with profound confusion and equally profound connection. With all that had happened these past weeks, with the psychic powers of the Outsiders, and the many magical and arcane mysteries we had encountered, there was only one answer for it—however incredible it seemed. My mind struggled to grasp the enormity of the sole, inevitable conclusion.

They must have gone to elf-school together.

“Yarrr,” I said to the two confused feylings, as I returned my harpoon to its quiver. “Ye’ll be plenty o’ time to be catching up on old school tales later! For now, we’ve got evil to find. What be yer name, little fey? Where be yer home port?”

The elf didn’t reply in the usual tongue of her people, but instead barked  in an oddly familiar series of yips and yaps. That must be her name, I thought: Yip. It didn’t sound elvish, but then again they’re a mighty mysterious folk.

Yip gestured with increasing urgency, and pointed to the northeast. Her home, perhaps? Her people? Mangoes? In any case, it wasn’t that far off the direction we needed to go to reach the tidal bridge. We started on our way through the jungle. After an hour or two, we came to a valley. Yip seemed wary, and the rest of us followed her cue.

“Yipyapyapyap,” she said, pointing. There in the distance we could see a small village of wicker huts. One or two look liked they had been recently torched. Several frightened women set about their daily business, overseen by angry-looking hunters with bows and clubs. Most ominously of all, there were two bloated corruption corpses tied outside the largest hut. I shuddered at the memory of my fatal encounter with those scurvy abominations in Hampton’s Port.

“Our… err, her people need rescuing,” said Koobolas, as he slowly pulled his scimitar from its sheath. It was unusual indeed for Koobolas to be eager to go first in battle, and even more so for him to draw blade and not bow. Still, there was no stopping him. Quiet as a squid in the seagrass he crept forward towards the closest of the burned-out huts, hoping to use it to cover his approach. As he reached it, Wrenn set off on the same route.

While this strategy served well against the guards in the village, it was rather less successful against the gryphon that circled high above us, and which none of us had noticed until that point. With a scream, it dove down at my friends and companions, razor-sharp talons thrust before it.

I drew me harpoon, and threw it, hard. “Arrr, ye’ll not be eating the little gnome, ye great four-legged overgrown parrot!” I muttered as the harpoon struck the beast , lodging deep in its shoulder. With a word, I recalled the enchanted weapon to my hands, the gryphon skewered as well as any ??? kabob. Turning to Gorath beside me, I nodded at the screaming, clawing creature. “Would ye, please? I’ll be wanting to use this again.”

The minotaur drew his axe and swung, neatly severing the eagle-head from its mismatched body.

While the threat of the gryphon had been eliminated, we still had the knaves on the ground to consider. Several loosed arrows at us, while others seem to be threatening the women and driving them towards the jungle. Most ominously of all, some sort of evil shaman emerged from the main hut, and loosed the zombies. With terrible moans, they started to shamble towards us.

The fight was bloody, but relatively short. Wrenn’s magicks felled several of the guards, and Arannis was

in his by-now usual bloodthirsty form. Gorath cleaved down the corpses with his axe, assisted by my harpoon (from a safe distance, mind you).  As for Koobolas, he seemed to have adopted a new but strikingly effective fighting style: making little use of his ranger bow, he instead, made ominous gestures at his foes with his fingertips before slashing at them with his blade with a dark and almost professional precision. Within a few minutes, our foes lay dead (or, in the case of the zombies, even more dead).

A tall and striking woman, with jet-black hair and tattoos of entwined serpents on her arms, stepped forward. She seemed to be the leader of these people, and possibly their priestess too. She spoke a few words of apparent greeting in their unknown tongue, then caught sight of Arannis and stopped cold. A flash of fear, mixed with confusion and hate, crossed her face. She raised her hands, and uttered an incantation of sorts…

Arannis, for a moment, stood still, as if perched precariously upon a great moral fulcrum. Beneath his robe, upon his chest, something stirred, as if being drawn towards the priestess.

“No,!“ he muttered darkly.”You shall not have Him.” With a shake of his head and his eyes blazing, he threw off the spell. The priestess looked even more concerned, and stepped back. As she did so, my friends stood between them.

I didn’t much like the look of this. Nor from the look of him, did Koobolas.

For now, however, we had other mysteries to solve. We had earlier found a page of native phrases on the tiefling we had fought on the beach, and I tried out a few of them now, gesturing at our group while repeating what I hoped was the word for “friend.” As I did so, Yip took the priestess’ arm, and pointed at our ranger. The priestess’ eyes widened. Perhaps she too suspected them of being schoolmates? In any case, she muttered a few words of incantation, and reached out to softly Koobolas’ elven snout. Briefly she gained the gift of understanding our tongue, and he of theirs. Arannis too cast an incantation that enabled him to follow the exchange.

“You are… the other?” the priestess said, according to what the ranger later

told me. “The souls that have been shattered are made whole… but the bodies… the bodies are wrong?” Koobolas responded, speaking with an unaccustomed solemnity and clearly understanding more of this situation than I did. “Souls are all that matters, my lady—for we are all servants of Melora., and each serve her as best we can.”

The priestess nodded. “This is certain. You are a hunter in the service of the true Melora, then? Not the false goddess that our enemies worship?”

The Kobold spat in disgust at the mention of a false-Melora. “Indeed, I serve our Lady’s hidden hand. I am the unseen bringer of revenge. I am death from the shadows…”

This seemed to mean rather more to the priestess than it would have meant to any of us. She continued:

“Our enemies, they have become servants of the false Goddess.. they farm the dead against all nature, and kill and enslave us. Thank you for freeing our village. Will you now free our menfolk? Or have you come to right the wrongs in the sundered temple? And why does that one bear the…”

Koobolas cut short her question. “The eladrin will be saved, one way or another—fear not. As for your menfolk, let me ask my companions.”

A short discussion followed, and we soon agreed to attempt a rescue of the men of the village, who were apparently being held  further to the north as prisoners, hostages, and as the raw material for more undead abominations.

We had only begun to communicate this, when two arrows whistled from the tree line, one striking Wrenn in the side. We were under attack! A strongly-built native barbarian and a half dozen undead warriors charged into the village clearing. Urging them all forward was a tall, thin dark shaman, festooned in warpaint and tattoos. It was not his body decoration that sent chills down me spine, however, but rather what he wore: a cloak seemingly sewn of human skins. Clearly he wasn’t a good guy.

Wrenn shouted out in alarm, as he was hit again. I shouted at the bloodied mage to take shelter in one of the huts as I drew my harpoon and threw it, felling one of the undead.  Gorath charged forward, axe in hands, to take on the barbarian and necromantic shaman.  Undead crowded forward, almost surrounding Arannis. The warlock, however, seemed eager for battle—he took a step towards Wrenn, click his heels three times, spun around in a vortex of deadly energies, and vanished with a pop. Several of the undead fell to the ground. So too did the weakened gnome, who had been too close to the blast.

Koobolas ran forward and, as I stabbed at the undead with my spear, poured a healing potion down Wrenn’s throat. The gnome rose to his feet, and stumbled a few paces, before falling to the ground once more, clutching his head in a high-pitched squeak of pain. Koobolas cursed several times, and looked to the left. Following his gaze, I saw Arannis, eyes closed as if enraptured in satisfying delight, his hand outstretched towards our fallen companion.

Xlijil liii-nithwana, warned the ranger. “He’s feeding. He can’t control it any more. He must be stopped.” Gorath noticed too, and shot us a reluctant grimace of understanding.

We could do little about it all until we had finished of our foes, and so we turned our attentions to this for the moment, as Arannic cackled and Wrenn slowly bled in the dirt. The native barbarian went down under the force of Gorath’s axe and Koobolas’ blade. For now,  Arannis turned his attention from the gnome to assist us in our fight.

Then we turned on him. The ranger afflicted our friend with dark shrouds  and asphyxiating incantations (abilities I had not previously known him to have, but must have been awoken by his encounter with Yip), while the minotaur used the cruder but equally effective tactic of hitting the eladrin heavily in the side of the head with his axe. The warlock fell, and as he did so I hobbled to Wrenn’s side, administering to his wounds just in time to prevent him from making his own journey to meet Death.

“What happened?” asked the gnome, clearly confused as to why Arabbis was laying unconscious on the ground with Gorath’s hoof at his throat. “It’s that priestess, isn’t? I think she attacked me too!”

It took some time—and a whale of a fisherman’s tale in the best sea-faring tradition—to convince Wrenn that Aranis was slowly succumbing to the dark evil of the amulet.

I’ll soon have him rid of this thing,” said Gorath as he took his axe and carefully cut at the leather thong holding the amulet around the warlock’s neck. Nothing. He pulled harder against it. Still nothing. He tugged and tugged with the sharp blade of his ancient artifact, finally bellowing in frustration. The leather showed not a trace of damage, although it looked as if Arannis might soon be throttled by the force of it all.

Hilglinith uli-liglen, suggested Kooboas. “We could always cut the head off.” We all looked at him. He wasn’t joking. For elven rangers, amulets somehow linked to false-Melora-worshipping-necromancers-bent-on-destruction-of-the-world” are no laughing matter.

We resolved to restrain Arannis, and discuss with him in the morning the matter of his consorting with evil magicks. To make sure that he stayed unconscious and thus would not simply teleport from his bonds, the priestess supplied us with an elixir made from local roots and berries, that would—we all hoped—keep him in a deep sleep through the night.

Taking turns to both watch over and guard our friend, we settled in to get some much-needed rest. The morning, as ever, promised to bring new adventures.

Castaway, on a desert isle

Arrr, there be more than a little irony in our present predicament, for we be right back where I last remember meself backs when I could remember all me proper rememberences: marooned, that is, on the accursed Isle of Tistfitmoys.

Even more confusing, Koobolas seems to have met himself.

But I’m starting into the tale sternwards, which is a poor way to sail into stormy seas. So let me start instead at the start, or at least the part of the start that’s nearest the parts ye needs be knowing about.

* * *

Back in the Bone Hills, as all will remember, we had lost both the Frozen Duke and with him that poor flaxen-haired waif Aerdrya. I suspected that the Evil One had taken the young girl to the Isle from the description that Wrenn had given of the scene through the portal. If so, time was of the essence. First, however, we had Wrenn’s other charges, the remaining children, to take to safety.

We thus set out for Sage’s Cross. There we found the battle had largely ended, and the town still intact. Some quick research was done by our crewmates in the the famous libraries there, while Koobolas and I secured provisions and horses for the next stage of our voyage. Among the items we found for purchase was a battered shield, in the shape of a ship’s wheel. It seemed an odd and endearing thing, and I was pleased to find it.

The next day, we rode south. We recovered Wrenn’s pony and cart from the Lady of the Fens, Kyleth. She seemed not only more ancient than we had seen her last, but darker too, as if the loss of her “beauty” was eating away not only at her power but at her very soul.

Upon further questioning, she revealed several more parts of our ever-changing puzzle. Kyleth herself, it seems, had first called forth the Seven from the heavens beyond a millenium ago. The Seven, she explained to us in a weak and haggardly voice, were the Seven Sins personified, the embodiment of each of the greatest evils: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, Pride, and Wrath.

Moreover, we discovered, Aerdrya was none less than Kyleth’s daughter—and, from what Gorath cleverly surmised, the Rat-Catcher was none other than her father. The young girl had been placed in the care of a woman in Hampton’s Port to keep her safe, under her father’s secret watch. Clearly, that hadn’t worked so well.

Arr, it was all so complicated that me head twirled like an empty bottle o’ rum tossed upon storm-lashed seas!

We left the fens, and detoured quickly to the Red Wood, in the hopes that the Druids of the Old Order knew something of the the Seven evil ones. They had little to offer, however, caring hardly at all for the ways of men and preoccupied instead with tending to the forest and beasties within it  that they protected. They did note, however, that strange men had come to them earlier, asking of similar such things and seeking to access the waters of Bottomless Lake. This, we surmised, was Swann and his fellow plotters, recovering the key that released the accursed Frozen Duke.

They also noted that the stars themselves were set to align in a very rare way, seen but every one thousand years,. This would place the heavens at their closest point, and the barriers between our world and others beyond at their weakest. Clearly it had been in such a time that the Seven had last been summoned. Clearly too it was the reason too for the conspiracy now. We had, at most, three months to stop them, for at the Winter Solstice the alignment would reach its peak. Yarrr!

Next, we travelled to Hampton’s Port, doing our best not to draw excessive attention to ourselves. With Wrenn acting the role of merchant-in-need-of-a-boat, and using the valuables we had acquired in the Bone Hills, we purchased a ship. A crew took a few days more to procure, but with some tacit assistance from the Rat-Catcher (who continued to communicate only by messages, and not in person) we found a group of hardy mates who looked like they might be reliable.

Asking about town, we also learned that someone else seemed to be traveling the same voyage as were we. There had been a break-in at the Cartographers’ Guild shortly before our arrival, and valuable maps—including the charts of the sea to the south and west—had been stolen. Shortly thereafter, Hampton Port’s most skilled navigator vanished, and a ship had been taken from the harbour, by scoundrels unknown. Could they be part of the evil conspiracy? Certainly the Frozen Duke, who could travel by portal, had no need of a ship. His followers? Others, perhaps, on the same route as we? There were no answers.

We asked at the temples of The Voice, the ancient order once dedicated to battling the Seven. We received no satisfactory reply, and suspected that much of the order had lost sight of their ancient purpose.

There was also no map, or maps, to be had for our voyage, since the Guild had yet to obtain new ones. There was, however, one person who might know the area where we planned to sail: old Mulligan One-Eye, a salty old sea dog who plied the taverns along the dockside in the way he had once plied the seas. It didn’t take us long to find him

“Yarrrrr!” I said in greeting, holding out me hook.

“Arrrrrrr!” he replied, holding out his. We shook hooks, and sat down in a corner of the inn. It was little effort to loosen his tongue with a bottle of rum. As we hoped, he remembered something of the waters around the Isle, and carved us a rough map of the only safe approach on the wooden tabletop as we drank and arrrr-ed. He had a warning, though, of the dangers we faced—the Isle was a dangerous place, best avoided. In a low, rough voice, he started to sing a sea-shanty that told of its dangers:

There once was a maiden of Gorschtt,
Who sailing a schooner got loscht
While checking her charts…

He stopped a minute, took a swig of his rum, then started a new, this time with the right shanty:

Just sit right back and ‘ear me tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started ‘ere in Hampton’s Port
Aboard a sailing skiff.

The mate be a mighty sailing man,
The skipper be brave and sure.
Five passengers did set sail that day
For a three tenday tour, a three tenday tour.

The weather started getting rough,
The tiny skiff was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The Sardine she’d be lost, the Sardine she’d be lost.

The skiff set ground on the shore of this horrific desert isle
With Mulligan
And ‘is Skipper too,
The merchant Prince and his wife,
the singing bard,
The alchemist and Mary Ann,
There on Tis‐fit‐moys.

So this be the tale of the castways,
That be there for a long, long time,
They be makin’ the best of things,
It be an uphill climb.

The first mate and the Skipper too,
Did be doin’ their very best,
To make the others comfortable,
In the tropic island nest.

No food, no rum, no clean latrines,
Not a single luxury,
Did be goin’ well enough,
‘Til a gruesome discovery.

An ancient temple, cleft in two,
Did dominate the big isle,
And there be found the horrors,
Of the cursed atoll.

The Alchemist,
He be makin’ pacts,
with all manner of filthy beast.
Twas only by Melora’s fate
that one be makin’ escape.

The horrors that be,
on Tis‐fit‐moys’d be better left alone
Afore in Davy Jones’ Locker
Any explorers finds ‘is home!

Equipped now with a rough chart, we planned to set forth by cover of night, in our ship—the newly-christened Laughing Skua II.

Arrrr, it would not be so easy! As we made our way to the docks, we found it blocked by a dozen or more ruffians and scalleywags. We could not leave, so they said, without paying a tax to their boss, one Captain Dagon. Our requests to the ever-corrupt city guards came to nought: they merely shrugged and scattered like a school of cowardly sardines. Dagon himself strode up, looking every inch a blackhearted picaroon, and doubled his demands of us.

It was Gorath who hit upon the diplomatic solution to this impasse: he took his axe and cleaved one of the scurvy knaves in two. A bloody brawl quickly ensued, in which our opponents were soon looking the worse for wear. Even Dagon himself has been mightly injured by Gorath’s axe-blows and Koobolas’ arrows, and looked as if he might soon succumb to his wounds.

Instead he jumped off the dock into the water, and—as we looked on with amazement (and not a little annoyance)—transformed into a large shark and swam off. Yarrrr, a formidable opponent indeed!

Rather than letting our opponent regroup his forces, we set out at once for the Skua anchored in the bay, using both our own skiff and one taken from Dagon’s men. In the latter , however,we found more than we bargained for. In a secret smuggler’s compartment there lay bound and gagged that most notorious of cargos: three human slaves. One appeared to be a cleric; the second a rich merchant; the third a lithe, muscular woman from the southern lands. They certainly weren’t the usual slaver fare. What did Dagon want with them?

We cut their bonds, but had no time to take them back to shore. They would have to join us aboard ship until such time as we had an opportunity to safely set them free in a safer port.

The crew went to work immediately that we clambered foot (or peg) on deck, setting the sails and raising the anchor. We had hoped to make a surprise assault on Dagon’s ship, in the hopes that with much of his crew dead or dying on the docks he would be in little position to stop us. Unfortunately, his black-sailed ship fled as we approached, and we eventually lost it in the gloom.

Knowing that too much time chasing our foe would take us only further away from Aerdrya, we finally changed course and set sail for the Isle of Tisfitoys—about two days sail away.

It was slightly after three bells of the forenoonwatch the next day when our lookout spotted what first seemed a storm on the horizon, approaching from our stern. Over the next hour, it gained on us, despite off-shore winds that ought to have driven it in the other direction.

“Glanthiliwil lan-glantirith,” said Koobolas, as he returned from atop the mainmast where he had sought a better view of it. “That’s no storm, Finius—it’s a dark maelstrom of some sorts, and more conjured than natural I reckon.”

We added more sail, trying to outdistance it. In the meantime, I addressed the crew, trying to calm their nerves and prepare them for battle.

“Yarrrr, proud crew of the Laughing Skua—There be evil on our stern. But fear not swabbies, for we’re prepared as prepared could be…”

Suddenly, even before I could finish, there was a shout from Godric, our dwarven lookout in the crow’s nest high above. His cry of “sail ho!” was accompanied by the roar of churning water to our starboard side. Out of the very depths from the sea appeared Dagon’s ship, surfacing like a dark and evil shark and its bows clearly set for ramming us amidship. The maelstrom behind us had been an illusion of some sorts, a phantasm meant to distract us while he used dark magicks of some sort to ambush us.

I turned to the crew. “Arrrr, OK, we’re not so much prepared for that. Action stations, lads! Prepare to repel boarders! ”

“That ship over there,” said Arannis to no one in particular “…is alive.”

I had no time to ponder this. I shouted up to Whisper (our half-orc helmsman) to bring us hard over, while the rest of the crew scrambled to their battle stations. There were the deadly sounds of crossbows being fired down onto us, and the louder thuds of huge grapples being fired at our masts to foul our rigging. Seconds later the dark ship collided with us in a mighty splintering of wood and a jarring impact that almost knocked me from my feet (or foot). With a cry, their boarding party roped across to our decks, and attacked.

With my harpoon in me hand, I stood beside Gorath and stabbed at the nearest of the bilge-rats, cutting him deep. The minotaur swung his axe, cleaving another. Koobolas and Wren, situated at our prow, fired arrows and spells into our attackers to much bloody effect. I was particularly proud of the crew: crossbows and cutlasses in hand they killed several of the enemy, defended the steering deck against all comers, and carried our wounded beneath decks where “Blistercutter” Giovanio, the ships’ surgeon, could tend to them. Our clerical ex-slave-become-passenger helped with the healing too.

At this point, while trading jabs with one of the knaves amidships, I received a blow to the side that sent me reeling across the deck—and over the side of the ship. Fortunately the shield I had purchased before our departure carried magics that kept me afloat despite my heavy armour, and the collision had halted any forward movement of the ship that might have carried her away from me. Bosun Pinkerton and Afhiel threw down a rope-ladder, and I clambered up the side of the Skua to rejoin the fight, shifting back towards the wheel to prevent the enemy from seizing it.

By this time, several of the crew had been wounded. Although most had been tended to promptly, Godric was missing—shot down from his high perch by a crossbow bolt, he had plunged into the water below. Amid the chaos on the ships and the swells at sea, we had lost sight of him for now.

Slowly, the fight began to shift in our directions. The Laughing Skua began to tilt too, and for much more unwelcome reasons: the grapples fouling our masts and rigging were connected to huge winches on Dagon’s ship that were gradually being tightened. The snapping of ropes and the groaning of wood suggested that if this weren’t stopped soon, the Skua would be unmasted, or worse.

Before I could even contemplate a course of action, Arannis stepped forward and shouted up to me. “I’ll take care of it… there are too few souls left here harvest anyway.. err, foes to fight.” With an uncharacteristically deep laugh he leapt onto the deck of the other ship, and started to hurl his fearsome destructive incantations at the winch-crews. They scattered like ashes—in some cases, quite literally so. Our huge Echelese deckhand Tiny approached me as I watched, nursing a severed arm. I was pleased to see it wasn’t his, but appeared to have been ripped off one of the boarders. “Bad men almost gone, Cap’n. Can Tiny go play on black boat too, like Nissy?” He pointed the severed arm at our warlock, and smiled.

“I think not, Tiny.” whispered Whisper, who although wounded had remained at his post at the wheel throughout the battle. “That ship seems to be returning to the briny deep…”

Sure enough, the accursed black vessel had begun to settle beneath the waves. Koobolas shouted a warning to his fey friend, who hastened back to the Skua just in time to watch the waves close over Dagon’s vessel.

“Glad to have you back, Arannis,” said Wrenn, as he joined Koobolas searching the bodies on deck for things of interest.

“It was good to feed… errr, feel useful,” replied the mage. His eyes were wide and his stance tense, as if he had inhaled some potent drug. His robes were tattered, soaking, and torn. Once more I noted the changes in him this past week or so.

As my companions cleared the deck of bodies (finding precious little upon them of value, which in any case was split among the crew as a reward for their valour), I remembered our poor dwarven lookout. “Mr. Pinkerton! Have Whisper, bring the ship about! Koobolas, Gorath—scan the seas for sign of Godric. I turned to the three twins. “Arnit, Flit, Smit—ready the skiff! I’ve been but captain of this Skua a day, and by Melora’s holy barnacles I’ll be damned if I’ll lose a member of me crew our first day out!”

The ship, battered by the earlier assault on her, groaned as she turned. She was in bad need of repair, but there was little time for that now.

A triumphant cry came from Henshepheb,. “I see him, Khan Finius!” Afhiel echoed his cry. “Indeed he is, Captain… bobbing like a dwarf in the drink!”

The skiff was quickly lowered, and Arannis scrambled aboard with the three twins. The started a-rowing towards the motionless body, as wel all prayed a silent prayer that it wasn’t too late.

It seemed it might be. Before the launch could reach Godric, he slowly began to vanish beneath the waves. Arannis, however, had no compunction about denying the sea goddess this prize. With a quick incantation he teleported the waterlogged dwarf onto the skiff, knocking Arnit to the bottom of the boat in doing so. When the sailor sat up again, his nose was much shorter and his face peeling, a change in appearance that immediately made all of us (except Tiny) deeply suspicious.

Arannis turned and glowered at the disfigured crewman. “A disguise? You’re wearing a rubber nose? Don’t move, imposter, or I’ll drain your very soul from you.”

Arnit said nothing, and sat motionless in the small boat. His two supposed brothers looked nervously at each other as they rowed the skiff back the Skua, where Blistercutter was waiting to tend to the dwarf.

“Arrr, Cap’n, he’s taken in a lot of water, but he’ll live… its nothing that a large leach and an even larger flagon o’ medicinal rum won’t fix,” said our surgeon after he examined the still unconscious body. He gestured to several of the crew to help him take the patient below decks.

“Not so fast there, you three bilge-rats,” I muttered as the three brothers tried to slink away, waving my hook under Arnit’s battered false nose for emphasis. “Run a rig on me, will ye? Yarrrrr, by the lonely sea wenches of the Thirteen Shoals, ye’ll be telling me what’s going on here, or ye’ll all be walking the plank!”

Koobolas slipped below decks to search the imposter’s room while we started the interrogation. Arnit claimed to be a bard by the name of  “Mose,” who had hired his supposed “brothers” and disguised his face so that he could find passage on our ship to the Isle of Tisfitmoys. He told a tale so incredible, so remarkable, so unlikely, that we all believed it at once (except Koobolas, who still wanted to impale his head on a pike):

I come from the city of Caernegan, in northern Echelon. It is of no fault of your own that you do not know it, for it doesn’t exist, yet.

A little over three years ago – by my reckoning – my companions had been traveling the north in search of fame and fortune. I, having enough of both but lacking in adventure, had joined them. After saving a small town from raiding Harpies, we were treacherously poisoned by the agent of one ‘Lister’. A person none of us had ever met. In exchange for the antidote we were tasked to retrieve a relic from nearby ruins, a place he referred to as ‘Lothlorynne’s demesne’. The relic was a magical gem known as the Blue Star of Ishtvan, yet another name that meant nothing to us. Lothlorynne, however, was not as obscure. She was known as a legendary sorceress and queen of the elves, which you may already know…

With little choice we investigated the ruins and discovered that this ‘demesne’ was in fact her prison. The lady was held in stasis in a stone bier which was covered in both dwarven and elven ruins, which we found most alarming considering the history of the sund..

At this point, our eladrin warlock set about in a fit of fierce coughing. When he was right again, the tale was continued:

Very well then, where was I?

Oh yes. We managed to free Lothlorynne from her stasis and she…well, she transported us back in time. 2000 years back to be precise, though we didn’t know it just yet. We appeared in the midst of a large battle between dwarven and elven armies. A band of dwarves, spotting us with the lady, charged and we did our best to defend her. We held for a minute or so before a dwarven templar reached her. One of them, perhaps both of them, cast some kind of spell and they all vanished.

We were stranded in the middle of a war, so we fled to the south. After several days we stumbled upon a lone inn and took refuge inside. Speaking with the people there, we discovered where – or rather, when – we had been taken. Needless to say this disturbed us greatly. At the inn we met a strange man by the name of Llewellyn to whom we explained our plight. He claimed to be a sage of great knowledge and indeed seemed completely unfazed by our story. On a side note, although he appeared to be human, I detected something far more wonderful in regards to his nature…though that is for another time.

Llewellyn instructed us to seek out a great sorceror named Garibaldi who supposedly inhabited a tower further to the south. He claimed Garibaldi was very knowledgeable in the matters of time travel and would be able to help us.. We located the tower and although Garibaldi was nowhere to be found we discovered a vast wealth of knowledge in the mage’s library that may or may no longer be relevant…. Unfortunately Garibaldi’s tower was not a safe haven, and one of my companions was injured.

We retreated to a nearby town to rest and plan our next move when we also discovered that the poison that had been inflicted on my by Lister was in fact a form of lycanthropy which was beginning to take effect. From the townsfolk we learned that a hermit, Alenea, living in a nearby swamp might be able to help us. We tracked her down and in exchange for slaying a black dragon that was plaguing the area she healed me. She then told us that the dragon served a terrible witch that also inhabited the swamp. A witch by the name of Kyleth. Kyleth was apparently building an army of gnolls and equipping them with some sort of blighted weapons which were poisoning the land and waters.

We decided to put an end to this and assaulted Kyleth’s swamp palisade. We managed to slay the ogre smith who was creating the weapons, but became trapped deeper inside the fortress. Out of desperation, my companions and I activated a magical device of unknown purpose and…that’s when we were separated.

I appeared outside of Sage’s Cross some 3 years ago, 1000 years closer to home…but still so far. My companions were gone. I spent some time getting my bearings and when I realized what had happened, I continued my quest to find a way home. Since then I have been traveling back and forth across Echelon, researching ancient tomes and libraries, trying to find a solution.

My studies revealed some startling information. It turns out that some of my companions had also been shunted forward in time, some several hundred years, others a few dozen. I discovered that they too had done their own searching, and left traces of their research scattered throughout the land. Some of it has been helpful, but it appears that none of them were successful, and have most likely died of old age long before I re-appeared.

Most recently I have discovered that the Blue Star of Ishtvan, which we had been searching for originally, could be used to send me back home. Our mutual friend the Rat-Catcher informed me that the Star is most likely on the Isle of Tisfitmoys. I have been disguising myself primarily to avoid being recognized or associated with any distant ancestors. Though in hindsight that now seems unnecessary, old habits die hard.

And so, that is why I am here.

One part of his story, at least checked out: Koobolas searched his cabin and found a necklace of keys hidden therein. They seemed magical too. Certainly, this bard had fought bravely by our side in the guise of “Arnit” when we had been boarded by Dagon’s men less than an hour ago. For now we decided to trust him, albeit under watchful eyes.

The next several hours were spent repairing the ship. With the formidable strengths of Gorath and Tiny put to that task, we managed to reseat the mast, while Koobolas scrambled in the rigging to affect repairs there. Below decks we had taken on some water, but the hull had remained fortuitously unbreached by the earlier collision.

As the wind picked up, we once more set sail for the Isle, traveling at a good eight knots or more through the remainder of the day and the night which followed. Earling the next morn, while inspecting the ship, I came across Arannis looking tired and sallow, oddly poking a piece of cheese on a stick into dark recesses of the hold.

“Arrrr, hello good eladrin.. and what be ye doing?’

He looked at me, his eyes a little more sunken than I remembered. “Rats. There are no rats on this ship. Isn’t that odd?”

“Odd indeed,” I replied. My mind wandered to the Rat-Catcher. He has certainly helped us obtain vessel and crew, but it seemed odd he had not joined us in the effort to rescue his own daughter. Perhaps he had.. perhaps he was hiding somewhere on board? I had never seen him… could he be disguised as one of the crew, as the bard had been? Indeed, for all I knew he was the bard…

Arannis poked some more, uttering a surprisingly dark curse under his breath.

“Arrrr, leave the rats my friend, and why don’t you join me for breakfast?” I said, slapping him heartily on the back. He glowered a moment.

“That’s what I’m trying to do, you mortal fool…. “ He stopped, and his more familiar eladrin smile returned. “Yes, food. That’s what I meant, mortal food. Sounds lovely. Thank you.”

Willie did not disappoint. Our ship’s cook had prepared a fine meal of buttered halibut, with halibut bread and halibut salad. The halfling loved to cook. Indeed, some said he did it just for the halibut.

It was about an hour before dusk that we arrived at the Isle—or rather, Isles. As we knew from One-Eye’s map, and as I vaguely remembered from me own time shipwrecked there, there was but a single safe passage through the surrounding reefs and landing on the southern shores of Lesser Tisfit. To the north, a shoal linked it with Greater Moys at high tide. It was there that the mountain would be found, and the cleft temple told of in the legends. Far off in the distance was a ship. Whether it was Dagon’s slaver, the stolen merchantman from Hampton’s Port, or another, we could not tell in the now fading light. It was too far away to approach tonight, and we had no time to make landfall.

“Not tonight, Whisper” I said to our helmsman, who whispered back his agreement. “Aye, Sir…. charts will be of no use to us until the morning.” We set the sea anchor, doubled our lookouts and guards, and waited.

The night was uneventful, a rarity in these recent weeks of death, adventure, and dark conspiracy. At first light, the ship we had spotted the night before was nowhere to be seen. Arannis looked in worse shape than the day before, hungrily eying the seagulls that wheeled in the air above the island. I supposed he liked halibut rather less than I did.

I called Edgerrin Pinkerton to the deck. “Mr. Pinkerton,” you’ll be in charge while we’re ashore. It’s yer first command, I know, but I have every confidence in ye.” In fact, I trusted Whisper at least as much, but it was important that the crew have faith in their first mate.

“Thank you, Captain,” replied the Kalandran. “I’ll take good care of her.” Arannis walked past at this moment, and patted the side of the ship. “Do that. The Skua indeed has a good heart… somewhere within her.” The warlock raised an eyebrow at me with the last remark. I wasn’t sure whether he was hitting on me or making one of those arcanely incipherable observations for which eladrin are famed. I let his comment pass, and turned to the rest of the crew.

“Lower the boat! Flit, Snit, you’ll be rowing.” These two seemed solid enough crew, but I figured the exercise would do them no harm, and perhaps remind them of the costs of their earlier deceit of the captain of their ship.

“Now listen, men—Mr. Pinkerton will be in command while we’re ashore, and ye’ll obey him as ye would me, or by me Nipper’s sharp crustacean claws, you’ll all answer to the hook!” The remark was met more with grins than grimaces, suggesting they all well knew their place. “I’ll not deceive ye… danger lurks everywhere in these accursed Isles. By Melora’s grace, we’ll all return safe and sound, and hopefully with gold, silver and mangoes to be had. Do make sure you’re waiting for us when we return, or you’ll not be able to claim yer share!”

Not surprisingly, the mention of mangoes brought enthusiastic cheers. Druids, the lot of them.

We climbed down into the skiff, and set out for the shoreline through the gap in the reef.  The surf was rough here, but the two brothers rowed us true and after ten minutes of hard work delivered us to he sandy shores of Lesser Tisfit. Even before we disembarked I recognized the scrap wood that littered the shore. It was the remains of me first Skua, wrecked here those many, many months ago. I could only hope that we would be more fortunate with our present vessel.

Apparently not. Our party had been on the island a few minutes when there was a shout from offshore. Snit and Flit, who had been rowing back to the Laughing Skua II with the skiff, were shouting in fear as the pulled madly at their oars. No wonder, for bearing down on them was a huge fin, of a sort I hadn’t seen since my days playing the tropical waters of the Syrrahian coast: a Great Blue Sea Behemoth, and a massive one too by the look of its wake. Koobolas grabbed his bow, and loosed a few arrows at it. On the Skua, I could see Afhiel do the same. It made no difference. With a mighty crash the sea-beast smashed into the skiff, breaking it in two. It thrashed in the water, looking for its pray, but in pounding waves upon the reef appeared to have momentarily lost track of the two crewman, who had started swimming for their lives towards our vessel.

The Behemoth vanished beneath the waves. On the Skua I could see the men assembling on deck, crossbows in hand, scanning the sea for signs of it, while all the time urging Snit and Flit to swim more quickly. On shore, I felt helpless: even if we were to swim out to aid them, we would be all but defenceless against such a creature. We could only hope the Skua would be safe from its attacks.

There were more shouts from the Skua, and its bow dipped deep in the water. For a moment I thought it had been holed by the beast, but then I realized something else was happening.. the creature appeared to have grabbed the anchor-chain, and was pulling the ship away from the Isle. Surely Pinkerton would have the crew cut anchor? Surely my ship could escape? More shouts, more distant now, and a thrashing in the water. Between this and the surf crashing on the reef and rocks, it became difficult to spy what was happening. We needed to find higher ground if we were to know.

Just then I notice Koobolas turn sharply in place, knocking an arrow and pointing it at the edge of the dense foliage just beyond the beach. As usual, the sharp-eared elf had been the first to detect a new threat, in this case a half dozen natives who emerged from the jungle bearing weapons at the ready.

Gorath cocked his axe, and seemed read to charge. I whispered to him “stay your blade, mighty minotaur… we have no way of knowing these folks be hostile. After all, we’ve just come to their island unannounced, and they have every reason to be armed and wary. I’ll attempt…”

As I was calming our headstrong barbarian, a woman clad in an ornate feathered cosume stepped forward—a priestess of sort? She called out in an unknown tongue, seemingly invoking the name of Melora, and slammed her staff hard onto the sandy ground. Almost immediately, huge claws of sand and stone arose from the very earth, grabbing at Gorath. From the jungle, two arrows were fired into our party. The others began to charge at is, brandishing weapons—among them a tiefling who seemed far more ragged buccaneer than island native

“…a parley.” My voice trailed off. Perhaps it was a poor time for diplomacy?

Gorath sidestepped the sandy fingers, and charged at the priestess. Koobolas started firing arrows in rapid succession at our opponents, while Wrenn and Aranis blasted them with arcane powers. Our new bard also joined the fray, drawing his sword and using it with much skill against our foes while all the time singing inspiring ditties of yesteryear. The tiefling was the target of many of our initial attacks, and soon he was bloodied. As he was, however, there was a burst of darkness that surrounded him. I could see no more, and from the sounds of it I wasn’t the only one to be blinded.

“Stop this, in the name of Melora!” I shouted blindly, in the hopes of influencing the priestess. It had no effect. With sounds of battle around me, I guessed at the location of my nearest foe, and thrust in that direction with the butt of my harpoon.

Judging from the string of elven curses which followed, however, I had just hit Koobolas.

I tried once more. This time I heard a loud bullish bellow. Gorath, I was guessing.

I stepped back from the fray to give my eyes time to recover. As they did, I saw the tiefling dead on the ground, as were several of the natives. The priestess was hit hard, and also went down in a bloody mass, leaving only two archers on the edge of the jungle, who immediately set off running. Koobolas cut down one with an arrow almost immediately, and the other was felled too before he had gone more that a score of paces. I, however, pegged my way to the fallen priestess and, uncorking one of the healing potions on me belt, poured it down her throat. Perhaps this sign of mercy would win her trust?

She spat in my face, which seemed to amuse Koobolas and Gorath no end. Mose helped me immobilize her, as we started to bark questions at her. She seemed to speak none of the Common tongue.

“Perhaps a ritual would help,” suggested the bard. He cast his incantations, and in so doing so was able to discern what she was saying. It wasn’t pleasant.

“This might help too,” suggested Wrenn, who had found what looked like a simple phrasebook among the tiefling’s possessions. We tried that.

Nican mitaca! Calpolli… calpolli..

She replied with further vindictive curses. No one who came from the sea was good, she told us. If she could not kill us, her village would call the flying cats (gryphons, perhaps?) upon us. In any event, Melora’s husband and daughter would destroy us. There were several other curses, mention of a graveyard, and attempts at more spitting.

The nautical traditions regarding prisoners and hostages are complex ones, and had she been one our next steps would have been fraught with complex moral calculus. She, however, was neither. She was a soul that had been torn back from the netherworld by potion, and whose thread of fate was in my hands. I had cheated the netherworld once already in my previous escape from Death, and only yesterday we had taken Godric from Melora’s grasp. I had no desire the antagonize the mortal balance a third time by keeping this one alive. It seemed a fair trade.

I nodded to Koobolas. He drew his scimitars, and in one clean scissor motion removed her head. For a ranger, that elf had quite the assassin in him.

The sight of the now headless priestess bleeding out on already the pink sands seemed to startle someone, or something, hiding in the jungle. A blonde, tattooed maiden rose from behind the dense foliage of a bush, and started to flee down a narrow game-trail, yipping in a strange tongue that none of us recognized.

Another native? Possibly fleeing to warn her village? She had to be stopped!

We all ran off after her. Up ahead, we heard more yipping, then a crash. Our quarry had tripped over a low log, and had fallen prone into the damp earth of the jungle floor. As she did, we could heard other noises, coming from all around us. Her tribe? They didn’t sound human, or even humanoid.

They weren’t. Scrambling into sight were a half dozen or more lizards, each the size of a dog, but with long barbed tails and sharp teeth. They started to converge on the young woman. She looked terrified.

Gorath was the first to step forward, rushing to where the girl lay on the trail, swinging his axe into one of the reptilian creatures, dropping it in its tracks. Koobolas dropped to his knee, and fired two arrows in quick succession. Two more dropped. I slew a third with me harpoon, and me crewmates also joined the fray.

The beasts weren’t terribly formidable opponents, but it soon became clear that they were but a litter of young-lizard things hunting what must have seemed simple prey. They also had parents, and Mommy and Daddy lizard were none too pleased to see their slaughtered hatchlings strewn across the trail. One charged Gorath, and another came at me and Mose. I narrowly avoided being bitten on me good leg, an arrow from our scaly ranger having disrupted the beast’s strike. Within a few moments and after several well-aimed blows from our weapons, these larger lizards joined their smaller offspring in whatever great reptilian afterlife awaited them on the other side.

We walked up to the young woman, and she stumbled to her feet. She was, we could see, elven, wearing primitive clothes, and marked with tattoos that were quite different from those the earlier natives had worn.

As for her, she paid no heed to the rest of us, but instead looked at Koobolas with a quizzical, penetrating stare. She stepped forward, and with eyes wide in amazement reached out to touch the ranger’s face. As she did so, a single long-forgotten word of the Common tongue came from her lips:

“Me?”