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apulog4
Cultists are active in Five Fingers. The BRT raided an established stronghold last night in the process of recovering The Mask. They had several servitor creatures of kinds I had not seen before. The first type were small, vicious things that seemed impervious to pain, were far more difficult to kill than they should have been, and had a disturbing tendency to aim for the groin. The second appeared to be a human, but his eyes were… wrong. He attempted to parley with us, but as a general rule, harmless-looking elderly men who hang out in an underground room with walls covered with runes are invariably incredibly dangerous and should be killed as quickly as possible. I walked up to him, cast Silence, and instructed the others to kill him. Some of the others hesitated, but Toad trusted my judgment, and was able to dispatch him quickly. Like the small groinbiters, he was more difficult to kill than he should have been.
Once the ‘elderly man’ was dead, Fabrizio threw his body into the adjacent chamber, where it was rapidly consumed by monstrously large grub-worm creatures, and Sister Helga and I examined the runes on the wall. We eventually determined that they were prayers to the forgotten ones, and Sister Helga found suspicious cracks in the stone wall.
Back in my days at the university, I was immensely annoyed at Instructor Alacandaromos, who insisted that all students learn basic incantations from each of the elemental Colleges, and justified his reasons with long-winded, boring speeches about ‘the importance of adaptability’ and ‘understanding the foundation of the cosmos’. At the time, I believed specialization was the optimal approach, and that learning a few magics from a variety of colleges was the sign of a dabbler, not a serious practitioner of the Art. Alacandaromos, you were right, you cantankerous old windbag…. without your insistence that I learn a few spells of the Arcana of Earth, we would have progressed no further that day, and a cult of the Forgotten Ones would be that much stronger. Thanks you you, I was able to shape the stone and open a passage to the hidden hall beyond the wall. The effort drained me- I simply must find or purchase some powerstones, or learn to make my own- and Sister Helga and I rested quietly, recovering our strength for the confrontation.
The hall led to a series of rooms. One was a living space, the others were a library and two storerooms. We were not particularly stealthy, and a man in the libary heard us, and began speaking through the door, trying to negotiate. He offered us nothing of interest. Another lesson learned- we must learn to convey tactical information via gestures. At some point, our lives will depend on not alerting our target that we are coming.
Thanks to resting in the chamber of runes, I had regained enough strength to shape the stone that held the hinges. I created a blinding flash of light on the other side of the door, and in the next moment, shaped the stone holding the door away from the hinges, causing the door to fall inward. Fabrizio and Toad rushed in, and… well, my memory fails me. The man was speaking, about what, I do not recall. I do remember that it was important. Then it was gone, and I looked to see Toad and Fabrizio standing over the man’s body. Sister Helga said he had cast something that held us in place. I do not know what magic it was, it is not a spell I know, and we did not recover his spellbook.
We then explored the other rooms, finding various mundane items, a number of preserved specimens, some reference manuals, and so on- the sort of thing you might find in a low-end lab at the guildhall. No enemies to be found. Fabrizio wandered off while we searched the storerooms. Once we satisfied ourselves that there were no traps or hidden cultists, we continued deeper into the complex.
[tbc]