We have just returned from our latest task as the Champions of Light. I find that I am curious as to how this is all going to play out. I wonder if the Champions of Dark (or whatever they call themselves) participate in the same challenges we do and it is a race, or if they have separate but equal challenges and it is still a race or if it is not a race at all and simply succeeding is enough. Mostly I wonder because we have never come face-to-face with the opposing team, except at the very beginning (not that I want to, they were quite frightening). I suppose that we will never really know the outcome of our struggles, although Ygritte mentioned that, as mortals, we wouldn’t really understand it anyway. Ah well…

So, Tarius picked us up yesterday morning and told us that he was going to take us to our destination. We strapped ourselves in (luckily we had enough spots for our new additions to the party) and he took off. For some reason, this time as he shifted through the ethereal plane it just didn’t sit well with me and I became nauseous; much to the chagrin to those strapped in behind me (sorry, Thip).

Once we landed and Janelle could settle my stomach (the solid ground didn’t hurt either), we took a survey of our surroundings. We were on a huge island. It was tropical and lush, with an apparently (hopefully) dormant volcano near the center. Tarius informed us that our task on the island was to complete a “physical challenge”. Yup, that’s it. That’s all he told us. Armed with such knowledge, we decided that the logical location of any sort of challenge would be the volcano in the center of the island.

We made our way slowly through the jungle; Chang leading us unerringly toward the center. We had not been traveling too long before we heard something approaching, very quickly. No sooner had we all been alerted than a large smoke elemental (or something, we are still not sure exactly what it was) burst out of the trees and grabbed Thip-papa. The creature was huge and looked like a column of black smoke. It made a piercing but guttural wail that still gives me chills. It lifted Thip with no effort whatsoever and began draining his magical energies. The rest of us immediately started doing what we could to kill it. The creature took a lot of punishment from us, but it finally let Thip go and started fleeing. Not sure if this was the challenge we needed to defeat, we started to pursue, but it was incredibly fast and we could not keep up. We figured that the volcano was still the best bet for our task and continued on our way.

There were a few other encounters on the way to the volcano. The most interesting (to me) was when we happened across a sloth of bears. The unusual, and interesting, thing about these bears is that they were white! They were polar bears, living on this tropical island! I immediately thought of attempting to link with one as a familiar, but I did not want to engage the whole group of them, and as that we were on a mission of some urgency, I did not have the time to wait for one to be separated from the group. So we left, but I made a special note of where we saw them, so I could come back after the challenge was completed, if we were able.

Eventually, we arrived at the volcano. We searched about and located a not-so-secret door; it had simply been hidden by overgrowth. However, it was locked. A locked door is the bane of all adventuring parties. Chang and Janelle are aware of this fact and took steps to learn how to bypass such obstacles. Unfortunately, neither is quite a master of the lock and they were unsuccessful after spending more than 10 minutes each on the lock. Thip-papa came to the rescue, employing a magical spell that attempts to unlock such impediments. It took a few castings of the spell, but… success!

We entered a very large corridor, ten feet wide and nearly fifteen feet high. The construction was rough; I figured that an existing lava tube had been modified by an earth elemental to make it more uniform and provide a level floor. We used our darkvision to maneuver as an attempt to keep our presence here a secret for as long as possible. After a considerable distance we came upon an opening on the right and left sides of the corridor. The chambers beyond were enormous and although one was empty, the other held rows and rows of shelves stacked with metallic objects. We saw a strange mechanical construct that appeared to be stocking the shelves. We kept clear of the creature and continued on down the main corridor. We passed several more of these large chambers that were already filled with shelves of other metal items.

We bypassed the rest of the rooms and came to a large cavern. There were three other exits similar to the one that we entered and a vertical shaft in the center. A quick examination revealed the other three passages lead to other room openings. We did not investigate to see if these were filled. We decided to follow the shaft down. Thip-papa cast flight on all of us and we began our descent.

We flew passed a few other levels, one of which seemed to have lots of activity (a work area – as opposed to storage – perhaps?). We had to scramble to get out of the way of another automaton flying up the shaft, carrying a pallet with a block of metal. We continued down to the bottom level which opened onto an enormous opening. At the far end, more than 1000 feet away, we could see the exposed caldera of the volcano, lava bubbling at the surface. In between us and the magma were hundreds of mechanical creatures, similar to the two we had already encountered, but also different. They reminded me of insects. Each type of creature seemed to have a particular job or purpose and it did so mindlessly. We made our way to the opposite side of the opening. As we approached and got a better look, we could see a creature, much larger than the others, working with the lava and it seemed to be tapping into the raw magical energy of two converging ley lines. It used three legs for stability and the others for its task, whatever it was. This queen, or master, had guardians; and one had spotted us. While it engaged us in combat, the other creatures continued about their business, seemingly oblivious to the melee occurring above them. The other guardian creatures began closing with us.

The guardian creature was tough, but we destroyed it and continued toward the master. It may have been a little unclear at first, but the group determined that stopping the master creature was our likely challenge. We were close enough to affect the master. Thip-papa and his pseudo-dragon familiar, Sinthalus, began casting spells. Not at the creature itself, but at the stone it was using to support itself. The creature was hanging dangerously over the molten rock. Our best option was to have it fall in the lava. However resistant to heat these things may be, the magma was still likely to do significant damage.

Thip-papa and Sinthalus started turning the stone around the creature’s anchored feet to mud. This succeeded in throwing it off balance and sending it into the lava. This also had the secondary effect of diverting the attention of the approaching guardian creatures to assist the master in getting out of the liquid magma. The rest of us tried to affect the entity as best we could. This strategy worked very well and in short order, the master creature was destroyed and we decided it would be best to attempt to flee out the caldera. However, during the combat, more guardians arrived and Thip-papa was killed. I scooped him up and we were fortunate to find another lava tube that opened to the outside. We successfully returned to Tarius.

There was a short discussion about restoring the undead Thip. Tarius seemed very much against the idea, but we convinced him using the argument of “he may be needed for future challenges”.

I was still thinking about getting a polar bear as a familiar, so I asked Tarius if there was any time requirement. There was none, so I decided to go off in search of the bears. I was successful in isolating one, and prevailed in linking with him. Tarius was able to carry him back with us. I need to decide on a name…

I suppose I should just learn to expect the unexpected…

The night of the 14th, Ygritte received a dream that Tarius would arrive the next day and we would have to perform the next challenge. This one was a little different from the past two. We didn’t have to go anywhere, or get anything. In fact, we had to do just the opposite. We had to sacrifice something that was very important to us. Each of us needed to give up something, and we knew that the other team would receive whatever we gave up.

Ygritte, immediately new what she would sacrifice. It was something dear to her and she felt that the other group would not get any use out of it. She decided to give up her divine magic item, the Rod of Io. The assumption being that they do not have any good priests at their disposal, so it would be useless to the Champions or Dark. Chang decided to give up his original set of carpentry tools. It was the set that he built his first boat with. It was quite a sentimental sacrifice. I surrendered my innate magical thread. It was sufficiently high that it would soon provide me an innate magic resistance and most likely whoever received it would have a very good magic resistance. Finally, Janelle sacrificed all of her 5th rank healer abilities. This was an unprecedented offering.

Although we are unaware how this challenge is scored to determine who “wins”, we felt confident in each of our sacrifices. Later that evening, we received an emissary from the evil group. The small demon tossed down two voodoo doll looking things that promptly transformed into people. He then tossed a miniature flail to the ground that then grew to a giant-sized two-handed weapon. It seems the other group had a similar thought to Ygritte. The final thing offered was a ball of glowing yellow energy. The demon held it out and asked, “Who will receive this?” I asked the creature what it was, but received no response. I offered to receive it and the energy flew into me and I suddenly felt much, MUCH healthier. I had received a significant boon to my innate “life force”.

Next, we turned our attention to the two new arrivals. One we all recognized immediately; he was Thip-papa, the mage we had encountered when all of this mess with the Champions of Light and Dark started. We were not sure what he had to do with all this, and why he would be a sacrifice from the evil group. Thip did not know either, because his memory had been erased. He had very little recollection of his past. He did not remember previously meeting us at all. He had a familiar with him, a little pseudo-dragon that Ygritte had a good time interacting with.

The other person to arrive via voodoo-doll was a human girl that had also had her memory erased. She called herself Moon Light and seemed to be a fighter of extraordinary talent. We discovered later – through the pseudo-dragon, Sinthalus, who had not had his memory wiped – that she was the daughter of the lich, leader of the Champions of Dark. I wasn’t feeling too good about our sacrifices at that point.

Although having the daughter of the lich join us was concerning, most of the attention remained fixed on Thip-papa. We discovered that he is undead (after a fashion) and this caused all sorts of problems for the group, particularly for Ygritte, as her goddess, Tamora, is the enemy of all undead. He required fresh humanoid blood to live (like a vampire). I knew this could be a big problem, given the disposition of the group, so I offered him one of the magic items I had picked up while in the necromancer’s home in the Southern Kingdoms. It basically curbed a vampire’s need to drink blood and sustained the undead creature magically. After Ygritte had spoken with Sinthalus at length and come to terms with the fact that keeping Thip alive for the time being was in the best interest of our goals as the Champions of Light, she settled down.

We got them both set up in the estate we were staying at while in Kalamar and slept the night.

The next day, we decided to take the giant-sized flail to an alchemist to see if we could change it into something that would be useful to us. While en route, we were accosted by a group that seemed to be affiliated with the church of Apollo. They were led by a holy knight of Apollo and they were intent on killing the evil undead that had entered the city. Ygritte tried talking sense to him, but surprisingly, the fanatical paladin would not be dissuaded. We were forced into combat to protect the day-walker and during the fight we killed the holy warrior and several of his companions. When the paladin fell, Ygritte addressed the remaining fighters and bade them to take their fallen back to their church to be resurrected and to speak with their leadership regarding Thip-papa.

Leaving the ambushers to handle themselves on their own, we continued on to the alchemist. To make a long story shorter, Malchizadek was unable to alter the weapon. He agreed to hold the item for 6 months before selling. We wanted to keep the weapon from falling back into the hands of the Champions of Dark. In exchange, we received three items that protected the wearer from psionic attack in descending levels of potency. I received the strongest resistance, Chang the moderate and we gave the lowest resistance to the new arrival, Moon Light.

On our way back from the Alchemist, we stopped by the church of Zeus to see if there was any influence Keldruth could exert on the other pantheons to not pursue the execution of Thip-papa for the next few months. We shall have to see whether it will make any difference.

Upon returning to our estate, Thip was insistent on returning the favor I gave him in the ring of Vampiric Sustenance. In reviewing his spell knowledge, I discovered he knew mystic portal and was willing to teach it to me. However, given our current level of expertise, it would be very unlikely that I would be able to learn the spell correctly from him. Putting that spell on the backburner (to learn later) he offered me another useful spell, flight. We spent the next two weeks with him teaching me the spell while the others spent time learning other skills.

On the morning of the first (3-1-251) we received news that we would be participating in the next challenge. I hadn’t finished learning the flight spell, and the timetable seemed to have been accelerated. I wonder what the next challenge will entail…

Well, to start with, the Kalamarians (Kalamari?) certainly know how to party. After getting back from the underdark, we kicked back for a few weeks and spent time researching whatever we individually felt we should focus on. I, myself, decided to focus on broadening my base of magical knowledge.

While I stationed in the army, my training was very narrow and focused solely on wizardry. Since then, I have discovered the need for a much broader fund of knowledge, with regard to all things arcane. So, I got a crash course in different types of magic: wards, rituals and even necromancy.

During the last week of the year, the people of Kalamar pretty much stop everything and spend the week partying. Everyone participated, from the top ranks of royalty to the lowliest wage earner. The New Year festival is a time for everyone to celebrate. Our group was fairly divided as far as our experiences during the festival. I cannot speak for them, but I had a phenomenal time. I spent my days wandering the streets, rubbing elbows with the “common folk”. They are more my style anyway. I don’t have much in common with the big wigs in their grand palaces and whatnot; I never did fit in with the noble crowd.

I cannot remember a time during that week that I did not have a drink in my hand and a fistful of beads to hand out. Apparently, one of the traditions of the festival allows women (and men) to reveal themselves in public. The “reward” for doing this is that they receive a necklace of cheap wooden beads. There is some amount of acclaim given to those that have been given a large amount of these necklaces. Personally, I think it is an excuse for public debauchery. Just my kind of party!

I won’t go on for much about this because there was very little variation to the days. And it is pretty much what you expect. Just let it be said that I had a great time and will be sad if I am unable to return next year.

Once the New Year dawned, everyone slinked off back to the drudgery of their day-to-day lives. I returned to the intense tutoring of all things magical.

We were unsure of when the next “call” would come and we would be whisked off to the next challenge. I guessed that it would be related to the lunar cycles, like the other challenges. The first, when we had to retrieve the Chalice of Zeus was on the new moon of the eleventh month (11-15-750). The second, retrieving the Whip of Llolth was on the full moon of the 13th month (13-1-750). The pattern seemed to be that the “good” challenge was determined on the day of greatest darkness and vice versa for the “evil” challenge. If the pattern held, and they continued to skip a month, the next challenge should be undertaken on the new moon of the second month (2-15-751). Only time will tell. In the meantime, we are trying to make the most of the time that we have available to us before the call does come.

My name is Korlan and I have decided to start keeping a journal of my exploits. I may make references to the past, or keep it strictly on current events. Only time will tell…

We had been chosen to be the Champions of Light; mostly because we were the only ones to show up. We aren’t exactly what the gods had planned on, but they aren’t likely to look a gift horse in the mouth, so here we are, deep in the underdark in a “neutral” trading post town trying to complete the second task in this challenge…

The battle went better than I had ever expected it would. We truly are the champions of light, because we must have had the gods on our side. As we were investigating outside the house-complex of the drow priestess we knew had the Whip of Llolth, we noticed a small scale battle happening one level up and near the other side of the city-cavern. There was an obvious magical battle happening and we could hear the distant cries of hand to hand combat.

Leading up to the battle, there had been very little movement in the House Talin complex. I noticed that the activity there seemed to indicate that they were preparing for a siege, or at least securing their home for defense. Before I could alert the rest of my companions, the gates swung open and a small troop of drow came filing out. There were seven of them total, with only one female. I quickly identified her as our target and proceeded to follow them.

They passed right by Chang and the others without giving them so much as a second glance. It probably helped that the group was surprised to see the drow squad coming toward them. Ygritte started things off strong and zapped them all with her blast of holy fire.

Surprised, the drow turned around and regarded us for a moment. Both their wizard and the priestess sent out magical attacks at Ygritte, which she shrugged off effortlessly, or at least it appeared to be effortless. Needless to say, this got the attention of the drow and they made their way back toward us. As the combat heated up, we were incredibly lucky and they made a few tactical mistakes that we capitalized on. Finally, only the priestess was left.

As she died from the effects of my flame globe, the whip phased out of existence. Damn! We knew this was a possibility, but I had hoped that it wouldn’t be the case. I started busting out my magic crap to track the magic relic and realized that it was traveling through he astral plane back to hells knew where. Not able to follow (easily at least), I asked Ygritte to try to raise her. Quickly! After that didn’t work, I pulled out one of my big guns. I used the Raise Dead charge from the gauntlet Jorell gave me when I was first sent to be the Estonian contact in the Southern Kingdoms. That seemed like a lifetime ago (no pun intended), but the magic worked and she breathed deeply as she was once again alive. Fortunately, the whip reformed next to her.

Janelle promptly picked it up, and it tried to do something to her magically. She resisted the effect, but it made all of us a bit wary. We put it in my backpack and started working on our plan to get out of there. Chang put the enchanted manacles on her so she would be more compliant when she finally awoke. We quickly moved away from the site of the battle and tried to change her clothes so she did not appear to be a priestess. We covered her hands with a cloak (to hide the manacles) and made our way to the exit. Oh yeah, did I mention we were invisible? We were, even though I had a concern that that could possibly bring more attention on us, I figured if we were not actively moving against any of the residents, we would be OK. I just really did not want to happen across the “evil” group as we made our escape.

As we moved through the city, Ygritte was very agitated and incredibly concerned about getting out with a drow priestess in tow. She was practically grilling Janelle (our resident expert on drow) about what the better option would be in getting out. I tried to tune it out, quieting them a couple times when they got too loud and others near us started to look around for the source of the voices. I tried to tell her that we should be fine, but it didn’t really calm her down. Janelle, knew the dangers in a true “drow” city, but as this was a neutral trading post, the rules would be different. After some tense nail biting leading up to the exit, I turned us all visible and we all walked out… Without so much as a raised eyebrow from the posted guards.

Still expecting the champions of dark to ambush us at any moment, we hurried to the rift that would take us to the shadow plane and where Tarius was hopefully still waiting for us. Long story short, we made it and he was. If I may say so, he appeared quite surprised that we brought the priestess with us. I think he was also impressed that we accomplished the feat so quickly.

We strapped on the priestess and he shifted through the planes, making all of us a bit queasy in the process. Fortunately, none of us became sick. We promptly arrived in Kalamar and Keldruth was happy to receive the whip. He was a bit less than happy about the drow, but said he would take care of it regardless.

Having completed the second task, we looked forward to another break and relaxed for the rest of the day. But we knew there would still be more challenges and did not stay idle…

The current story thread finds our heroes struggling to defeat the forces of evil in a series of challenges to determine the balance of good versus evil across the planes.

A brief introduction: Korlan – soldier, wizard, once-king; Ygritte – high priestess of a dragon god; Chang – warrior, sailor; Janelle – healer, survivor.

While adventuring through the dense jungle after rescuing an enslaved priest of Dionysis from a surface Drow city, the party stumbled across an ancient pyramid, overgrown and hidden from sight. Korlan, the soldier (battle-wizard), noticed it giving off a significant amount of magical energy and the group decided to investigate. After climbing to the top and investigating the strange symbols, Korlan realized that the magic was reaching a crescendo and whatever the purpose of the magic was quickly going to happen. Taking a chance, Korlan instructed his other party members to step on certain parts of the diagram on the top of the ziggurat. After a tremendous flash of energy, they found themselves in a chamber of sorts, but one that did not seem to have walls. They were surrounded by the aspects of twelve gods. Ygritte, priestess of Tymora, a dragon god, recognized several of the aspects as being leaders of various pantheons of light.

There was some surprise and concern from the avatars. The party was not what was expected, and the god-aspects had anticipated many, many more. The situation was briefly explained to the mortals… and the party explained that the pyramid they came from was a ruin. No one lived there any longer, they had just stumbled upon it by happenstance. Given this information and with the evidence that no others had appeared the avatars of good challenged the party to a task… they were to find out what happened to the Champions of Light.

The party was sent to several different sites where good creatures were supposed to send their champions to fight for the side of light. Each of them had been destroyed, very recently. The gods of light were outraged at the evidence that the pact had been broken and the challenge had been sabotaged. It became clear that no champions were going to be sent to represent the side of good. The gaze of the avatars settled on the assembled individuals. Would they accept this mantle? Would they become the Champions of Light?

After a brief encounter with the opposing force for evil, in which they suggested the party simply give up now and save themselves a lot of trouble, the heroes had six months to prepare. Although they were not sure what to expect, they set about trying to anticipate what they would need to do.

First, they needed money to fund their efforts. They spent some time tracking down possible leads. Overall, they were largely unsuccessful in obtaining the amounts needed to purchase magic items and other things to give them an edge.

Finally, the day was upon them and they were surprised to find that a dragon had arrived and took them off to their first challenge, chosen by the side of good: retrieve the Chalice of Zeus. In brief: the heroes promptly made their way through the maze of obstacles and succeeded in finding and taking the Chalice. Tarius, their dragon mentor/transport, promptly took them away from the mountain side where they were dropped off and delivered them to a temple of Zeus in the Kingdom of Kalamar.

The local priests were overjoyed to have this holy relic returned to them and when told of the Champions’ quest, made available to them a vast amount of money (by way of credit toward the merchants in the city). The party made good use of the gold and much fortified their magical equipment and Korlan’s magical knowledge.

On the new moon of the 13th month, Tarius arrived and whisked them off to the next challenge, chosen by the side of evil. They needed to enter a Drow underdark city and retrieve the Whip of Llolth.

If the true Champions of Light had received this challenge, they would have had a near-impossible time of it. Our heroes, however, were uniquely suited to the challenge. Janelle had been a slave of the Drow for several years and had gathered much information about them. In fact, she was something of an expert. While going to rescue the enslaved priest, Poltavius, the other members of the group had also learned much about the Drow, including how to speak and read their language. All these things conspired to aid the “Champions of Light” in locating the Whip of Llolth and attempting to retrieve it before the Champions of Dark.

We now join our heroes as they are coming to the end of their battle with the drow priestess that has possession of the Whip…