Game Date: Sunday, August 26, 2012

When last we left our heroes, they were resting after a tough set of battles in the Dambrathi town of Verdant Fields. They helped the mayor/priest of the town, Oman Ra, in his slow recovery from massive injuries. They read-up on many texts in the library (overseen by librarian Egremont Barrington III). They interacted briefly (and awkwardly) with Sunquartz, the shardmind arcanist/hermit who helped the party regrow/repair the containing magical crystal around the infected drow Kyone Velve. They listened to tales and tried not to get swindled by the town’s innkeepers, the Thenardiers. And they spoke further with Ssussun Beluth, who apologized for his earlier mentality and tried to make amends while burying his brother.

Word came from the capital after about a week and a half. Given the extent of Father Ra’s injuries, Ssussun was to serve as interim town priest (and mayor) until a permanent replacement could be found. Also, the party was invited to join several cardinals from the Pelorian Church leadership at a special dinner honoring their contributions to the nation, fighting the enemies of the Sun. To that end, three messengers/cart-drivers/lackeys were sent to assist the party in getting their carts to the capital city of Solaria (about 2-3 days’ travel south).

Heading south, the party was treated to extensive conversation with the three human cart-drivers, all of whom were soon-to-be up-and-coming hopefuls in the lowest levels of the church, but were True Believers in all that Pelor had to offer. The most vocal of the group, Jimmy, seemed to possess an endless supply of statements about Sun-related blessings, and how all other gods somehow owed their power and place in the world to the Sun. These were not spoken with any malice, just with the ignorance of a very singularly minded zealot.

The non-stop solar infomercial was interrupted on the second day of travel by a barefooted young sun elf girl, who looked quite relieved to see the party. Her name was Sora. She told the party that her martial arts monastery, the Monastery of the Sunning Stones, had experienced “something strange”. She said that the grand master had been in seclusion for several weeks, and that the other monks in the monastery had all begun strange chanting, which made a “fiery snake” that they didn’t seem able to see (though she could). Sora wished her father was there to fix things, though she said he had left her at the monastery years ago so he could go fight evil (he was called The Lone Wolf, by the way). Sora was left with the cart drivers (and Nulath/Casey, since Casey wasn’t yet here), while the party climbed the mesa to investigate the monastery.

Outside the monastery, several monks were indeed meditating and chanting atop super-heated stones, though they did not seem to be burned by them. In their midst appeared a psychic flame snake, which taunted Scout/Johny into a one-on-one combat of sorts. The rest of the party arrived, though, and took out the chanting monks, whose psychic energy appeared to be fueling the snake, and it disappeared. The party also quickly realized that they might still be able to save the monks who still physically looked like elves, but that if they killed them, the serpentine nature would take over and release a monstrous snake.

Moving into the monastery, the party wound through several crystalline hallways, exercising stealth of body and mind to prevent detection by the inhabitants, and also realizing that a Zehir-related item had tainted the water supply used by the men of the monastery (Sora, the only female there, used a different water cistern, which must have prevented her from being infected). The party removed the cursed token (a coin-like item), and Scout was able to wrap it up without letting the dark energy infect him. The party snuck into the main room, where the grand master (whose shed flesh they found in the previous room) was a full-on Yuan-Ti abomination, and several other monks and Yuan-Ti were meditating on their dark god, Zehir, trying to create more of the snake monsters.

The battle was fierce, with Praxis/Lisa almost going down several times, and quite a lot of ongoing poison getting passed-around, and a blessing from Pelor helped the party barely hang on a few times. The tides finally turned when (Casey arrived and) Nulath came charging through the doors, tipping the scales in the party’s favor. After the battle, the central disk of Peloric symbols glowed strangely to Akara, who saw a shield glowing in the middle of it. Strangely, she seemed to remember this shield as once being hers (in a previous life), and as she reached out for it, the item reforged itself to match the wing-style shield on her arm.

The game ended with the party resting at the temple, trying to figure out how best to deal with the unconscious bodies of the semi-infected monks.

Experience: 300 XP (total should be at 4900 right now… level 5 is at 5500)

Treasure:
- Gem of Colluquy (supernal)… purchased by Scout in Verdant Fields
- 100 GP
- 6 containers of Sun Balm (50 GP value, +2 Endurance vs. sun exposure for 12 hrs)
- four 50 GP gems [Scout]

Quest/Plot Items
- Zehir’s Flame Serpent Token [Scout]