When Doske returned to the surface, he revealed all that he had found, even the gem. He requested that he hold onto it, though the rest of the gold was split amongst the seven of us. We continued our trek across the lake balanced on the floating disks.

Thick vines plagued the water. Fortunately we were above the surface of the lake and not sailing through it, as our wagon would certainly have been able to go no further through the ruffage. Before it got too thick, Doske was returned to the wagon so we could all travel together again.

Before too long, we found a plethora of corpses floating in the water and intertwined in the thick vegetation below the surface of the water. Also tangled in the vines was the body of another huge crustacean body. As with all the rest of the bodies found, Mystaria gave it a brief blessing as they drifted by.

In the return to the shore, we came across a peasant trapped on an island in the middle of the lake. How he got there we do not know. We brought him aboard and fed him, also tending to his wounds. From being in the water, he had caught blinding fever, a disease that would render his eyes completely useless in a matter of days if left unchecked. Barring licking his eyeballs, however, we were safe from catching the disease too, though we regularly checked Doske and Nikolai for signs of it too, since they had also been in the water.

We bandaged the man and allowed him to rest in the wagon. Ap’rald and Vermer continued to lead the wagon back to solid land. We found another island on the way. This one was of extra thick vegetation as opposed to rock such as the one where we found the peasant. On the second island, the skeleton of a humanoid lay. The party looted the corpse, but faced difficulty when we tried to get his magical ring. It seemed fused to the body, so we attempted to sever the hand. The hand, however, seemed fused to the vines. Eventually we cut the arm from the island, and the pipe that was holding it there rapidly descended deeper into the water. It implied there was something much heavier than anticipated at the other end of the pipe.

Doske left the wagon to attempt to find what we may have lost. Our reasoning was that whatever it was, it deserved to be hidden away from the castle and in the water below this mystery vegetation and in contaminated water. He cut his way down into the vines, eventually breaking below the surface, and he continued farther. We had a rope tied to him for good measure.

Doske lowered himself down through the vegetation, and eventually reached a break in the vines. There, he found a rusted iron box, overgrown with the same vines that hid it. It was five feet to a side and had a similarly rusted lock holding it closed. Doske broke the lock open and opened the lid. The box had been densely packed with body parts. Since it had been packed however, significant rotting had occurred, so the box was not as tightly, or cleanly packed when Doske opened it.

Buried beneath the limbs and other parts, Doske found a single scepter, approximately three feet long and made of platinum. The shape of a snake wound around the scepter and its jaws opened at the top in such a way that it looked as if a gem may fit inside. Doske tugged on the rope and he was pulled to the surface.

Doske, Captain Merddyn, and Ap’rald took turns attempting to find a way to place the gem Doske had found earlier into the scepter. Eventually Merddyn found just the right way to set it, and the scepter and gem became… a more different scepter! Each of the three gave the scepter a good looking-over, and tiny flaws in the gem were found. Merddyn and Doske passed it back and forth between them, and again, Merddyn figured it out.

When held at precisely the right angle, a symbol appeared in the imperfections in the stone. Eventually, Captain Merddyn drew the symbols in the air with the scepter and a message revealed itself. “Beware the fallen light from which your foe will strike.” On occasion, the symbols would change themselves, but the message was always the same. In addition, Merddyn and Doske developed a deep distrust of each other.

Eventually, we returned to shore. We camped, slept on solid ground for the first time in days, and had a hardy breakfast before setting out to Ryshbell. The whole time, Doske suspected Captain Merddyn of watching him, and vice versa. It appeared to Doske that Merddyn’s sleep was very troubled, though when he pointed it out to Mystaria, she saw no difference from any other time he slept. Both men asked Mystaria and Ap’rald to watch over them for any unusual signs.

On the way to Ryshbell, we were still without horses to pull the cart. Fortunately, during the long float back to shore, Ap’rald was able to fix the wheels on the wagon, so it was in moderate working order once we reached land. Doxl Mayne also attached all the blue carcass to it so we looked pretty snazzy. Unfortunately, it means that by the time we got to Ryshbell, we were in a blue armored wagon being pulled by an elderly gnome on a floating disk. We bought horses immediately.

Unfortunately, we received no discount for destroying the monster of Confusion Lake that had been plaguing the countryside. In fact, the merchant had never heard of such a beast. No one in Ryshbell had. What’s worse, they hadn’t heard of the ranger who warned us about it or the four archers who helped us defeat it! Something very strange was going on.

Back in a city that had been implied to have been in her past, Doxl Mayne started trying to remember some of her life before she lost her memory. She found herself back on the top of the clock tower, and that’s when she decided to remember. She had thrown herself off here before. Apparently the force of the memory was so strong, she did it again. She nearly died from the fall, but by some miracle [I attribute it to Salyan], she survived. It took about a week for her wounds to heal, so the group stayed in Ryshbell for that time.

Captain Merddyn donated his time and services to the town guard. Vermer assisted the clock master in improving the design of the clock. Doske and Mystaria waited with Doxl Mayne. And Ap’rald did more research about the town and the castle we just left.

Near the end of the week, the clock approximately exploded, though no link could be traced back to Vermer. As it did so, several people who had been nearby at the time were injured. The doctor who had been tending to Doxl Mayne decided she could go early for the sake of freeing up the bed for the new slew of injured coming in. Knowing that Vermer had been helping with the clock, the party felt partly responsible for the injured and stayed a few more days tending to them.

Eventually we left again, heading to Hogsmead Inn to check up on Brr. Unfortunately, the innkeeper said that Brr had gone on a week’s vacation to Quivarra, so we didn’t get to meet up with him. We were going there anyway, so we figured we might meet him on the road.

In Quivarra, there was so much to do. Mystaria, Ap’rald, and Doske went to the temple to warn them of Shamash’s betrayal. Vermer went to the library to learn what he could. Everyone else went to the Wizards’ Tower to find out about the new items we found and to inform them of Rahsorn’s untimely death. Unfortunately, they could not show the scholar in the tower the scepter because Doske had it, and he was at the temple with Mystaria. When he finally did arrive though, he still couldn’t show them. The scepter was gone.

A wild search ensued to find it, eventually leading them to a poker-playing Giant named One Tooth. Ap’rald, Doske, Doxl Mayne, Captain Merddyn, and Nikolai stalked him from a halfling’s house to his own home. Rather, Doske was led there, because he got caught, and the others followed behind in the shadows. Eventually Nikolai ran off to get Vermer and Mystaria, who were both at the temple.

After Doske had made “stew” for the giant, he was locked away in a crate that the giant used as a pillow. The rest of the party, now reunited, shanked the giant in his sleep, nearly killing him. They chained him up while he was unconscious and attempted to interrogate him when he came to. Unfortunately, the giant would have none of it. He wouldn’t stop screaming once Captain Merddyn gave him a healing potion, and eventually a crowd gathered.

Having thoroughly exhausted all other options, we told the growing mob that the giant had a chest full of gold, and we left them to it. In the process, Vermer also took a few handfuls, causing the mob to become hostile against him. They attacked before he could escape, and the rest of the party was pretty much powerless to help him, save charging in to also get murdered in the gold rush. So Captain Merddyn stayed behind to make sure he got out okay, and then everyone met back at the docks where some of the party members had considered getting a turtle to take them to a city closer to Mechanatropolis. Proper discussion will happen at a later date.

In the middle of the night, while Mystaria and Nikolai were on watch, a panel in the wall that we had not previously seen began to move. Mystaria only had time to awaken Doxl Mayne before the door opened and two humanoids walked in. They were Doske and Captain Merddyn, a Shardmind Shaman and Human “Swordwizard,” respectively. Confusion ensued, and eventually it was determined that we were not out to get each other and we all calmed down. Fortunately, the entire group had sufficiently rested by this point, so we decided to continue our exploration of Blackrock Keep.

Somewhere in our roaming, Shamash wandered off. We had not noticed his absence until we entered a room that seemed suspicious. Upon further entry into the room, we were greeted with a primal roar and we were charged by a Mourning Haunt and a host of smaller shadow shades. Epic combat ensued, fortunately with the help of our new companions, and we took the beast down surprisingly quickly.

As we further explored the room, we found a chest of spiffy items and a stairway leading down and a doorway to the left. We entered the door first to find stacks of more recent records and various almanacs. Captain Merddyn and Doske, being of studious nature, were thrilled with the discovery, but there was still more to explore, so we left the things there with intention of returning at a later time.

Down the staircase was more sinister. Several flights down, the smell was the first to greet us. Rot and decay assaulted our senses as we descended into the darkness. At the bottom, we were found the demonologist, his entrails spread across the floor into an arcane symbol, creating a link between this and the Shadowfell. Mystaria gave the man his last rights and returned to wait at the top of the stairs with Doxl Mayne, Ap’rald, and Doske. Vermer and Captain Merddyn stayed in the basement as Nikolai blasted it with lighting to destroy the link. With a pop that was audible to even the people upstairs, the like dispersed. An unidentified arcane ritual that also lingered among the debris also began to fade.

Satisfied that we had broken the link, we all traveled back to the very first room to explore the last possible route: up the stairs and through the gigantic door. When Doxl Mayne opened the door, she looked in just in time to see the ghostly forms of the demonologist and the Paladin we knew to have owned this castle, dispersing. We later realized that the ritual from the previous room was possibly Speak with Dead, and we had blown our chance to learn what they had linked their souls to this castle to tell us. Oops.

We left the castle, returning to the stables to collect Ap’rald’s wagon and horses only to find them gone. All that remained were the tracks and the discarded holy symbol Shamash had cast away. In a fury, Nikolai ran off in hopes of catching him, but he was nowhere to be seen. The tracks from the wagon lead directly off the edge of the broken bridge and an imprint in the sand at the edge of the island showed that he had jumped off the wagon before it even mounted the bridge. Nikolai continued to search for Shamash after confirming that the wagon, all of our stuff, and two horse corpses were indeed at the bottom of the lake. He ran a perimeter of the island hoping to find where Shamash had gone while the rest of us stayed behind to save what we could of our belongings.

By the time Nikolai had returned, we had retrieved everything but the horses, and there had been no sign of Shamash or any lake beast. We balanced the wagon on two floating disks and began floating it across the lake, back to the mainland. Doske, having no need to breathe, agreed to be tied to the end of a 120 foot chain and dragged below the floating wagon, searching for any signs of the traitorous paladin.

While Doske saw no sign of the Shamash, he did see something glinting in what little light he had. We stopped our progress and sent him down for a closer look. When he reached the bottom, still holding on to our makeshift line of ropes and glowing forks, he found a chest of several gold pieces and a sparkling gem. Doske gathered all of the gold in his pack and held the gem, and he began climbing back up to the surface.

On the way up, Thomas asked George what his Will defense was. After answering, we heard the worst possible phrase we could have heard at this point: Okay. This is where we’ll stop for the night.

After a restful night in the protective fort made by Vermer, the party woke up and set out again. The primary objective for the day was to more extensively explore Blackrock Keep. After finding a library, a dining hall, a fake portal, we had effectively learned nothing new except that someone had been here within the last two or three weeks. This was denoted by a missing painting and footprints by the trap.

The only item of note that we found was a book by Baron Moxeir Freihdrick Von Reichkenbach called “Is Beauty Only Skin Deep: A Treaty on Cosmetic Necromancy”. The Baron was known in his day for writing frivolous texts, this one proving to be no better. Though the tome itself is effectively Cosmo for the necromancy world, notes written in the margins, presumably by the Baron himself, proved most useful in future checks on undead.

Eventually, we returned to one of the first rooms we had explored. It was fairly narrow and had two doors: one at the west side of the room and one at the south side. The south door had been blocked by a series of chains that wrapped around the two statues flanking it. When the west door proved fruitless, we tried our luck at the south one, Doxl Mayne unlocking it and we carefully collected the chain.

On the other side was a chapel built in Jurari’s name. A small pile of chests sat magically protected in the corner. Unfortunately, despite all the help we had attempting to unlock them without making them explode, we blew it. Quite literally. While some impressive items were inside, not all of them survived the explosion. Most of the loot though was most suited for a Paladin though, so Shamash unarguably got the lion’s share. Already at this point in our exploration, we had encountered a couple quotes from a notable Dwarven Paladin, so the nature of the items in the chest were not surprising.

We proceeded up the stairs in the chapel. Once inside, we all spread out a little bit to explore what must have been a mess hall once. Fortunately, the area was not as spacious, so when Rahsorn was swarmed with Grief Motes, help was not too far behind. Not so fortunately though, the path to get to our companion was not an easily traversed one. One true doorway and two kitchen passovers were the only entrance to the room.

The battle was a long and difficult one, but we eventually made it through with only one loss. Rahsorn did not survive the battle, and Mystaria and Ap’rald weren’t doing very well either, but the latter two eventually pulled through. With one last chatter and a puff of smoke, the imp skull familiar vanished from the material plane.

Finally the motes [and the Warlock] were killed. After stabilizing the fallen, plans for how to rest safely in this place were discussed. Really, they were argued, quite vehemently. And at great length. Eventually everyone reached a compromise and we laid down for another rest.

After a rest, the party enters Blackrock Keep itself. Upon opening the outer door, they are confronted by a more solid stone door. Doxl Mayne made quick work of breaking the chains holding the door in place and we moved into the keep. Inside, once going down the stairs, of course, there were columns and braziers everywhere. Also, two large arcane symbols sat etched in the floor in the middle of the room. Rahsorn identified them as some sort of portal, but they seemed to be inactive and we couldn’t figure out how to work them.

So we started exploring the rest of the entry room. Small closets on both sides housed a plethora of places for awesome loot, but none of the actual loot. All the while, the portals hummed louder. By the time we had finished searching the empty closets and moved on to a ballroom sort of place, the portals were so loud that even Rahsorn could hear them without trying! And that’s when we met Vermer, a gnomish psion. He was floating on a disk when he entered, and he looked as confused as us.

While we tried to get a story out of him as to why he was he and thought he’d be able to survive, we were confronted by several shades and their pet tomb motes [they’re so cute!]. In a very intense battle, we fought side by side with our new acquaintance. He proved useful, and the fact that after the battle he hollowed out a place for us to rest in the rubble only strengthened our blossoming friendships.

We return to the party just after their victory over the beast from Confusion Lake. They were celebrating with a large pot of seafood stew. The party, he four archers from the hunting party, and the elf that did absolutely nothing for the entire thing but bring the four archers. Ap’rald made it a point to exclude the elf from conversation.

In the morning, the hunting party returned to Ryshbell each with at least a claw from one of the babies, and the heroes hacked apart the mother beast in hopes of using her cleaned carapace as armor plating for the wagon. We didn’t have the tools necessary to attach the pieces ourselves, so we loaded them into the wagon and moved on toward the demonologist.

We took the bridge across Confusion Lake only to find part of the bridge was out. Nikolai and Zimir leaped across to the column that still stood in the middle, some more successfully than others, and Zimir continued to the other side of the bridge. Zimir ran off and quickly scouted the island. He gave his report and it was decided we would cross the gap rather than going all the way around.

With Zimir on one side, the rest of the party on the other, and Nikolai in the middle, we connected the sides with a rope and balanced the wagon on Ap’rald’s Tensor’s Floating Disk to get the wagon across the chasm. It took several trips to get the wagon, the stuff that had been in the wagon, and all the people across, but we finally made it and moved on.

Once on the island, Black Rock Isle, we carefully moved toward the castle that Zimir had mentioned. Upon approach, we found a large statue of a Dwarf, not surprising since Shamash already told us this was once a Dwarven outpost. The statue radiated magic, so Doxl approached and said hi. The statue, though remaining on the pedestal, moved out of its heroic pose and spoke. It was Dwarven gibberish.

After a conveniently place Comprehend Language ritual, Ap’rald could understand, read, and even speak Dwarven, so he addressed the statue and translated for the rest of us: “Go no further. If you proceed, abandon all hope” or something like that. When asked why, it said, “Danger abounds. Many monsters lay beyond this gate.” When Ap’rald asked when the last time it warned travelers to go no further was, it replied, “About twenty seconds ago.” It couldn’t give us specifics about those who passed before us.

Like all adventurers, we ignored the statue’s warning and proceeded through the outer wall of the castle. We were greeted with a pleasant little town, complete with a tavern, an inn, and a stable immediately at the front of town. All were abandoned though. In the tavern and stable, we found a whole lot of nothing, and one bottle of what Nikolai took to be vinegar.

While Ap’rald, Doxl, and Mystaria housed the wagon and the horses in the stable, Rahsorn and Nikolai explored the tavern, where he found the vinegar. Zimir and Shamash looked in the inn and found four tables, stairs leading up, and a horde of skeletons. Zimir called out a warning to the rest of the group, and despite several suggestions to just close the door, he charged in.

Shamash was the only other one able to act, because the rest of us had to run over from wherever we were, which took a full turn for all of us. He took a step back, opened the other door, and described what he saw to the people who had obstructed views. Zimir was eventually surrounded, leaving him in the perfect position for a fantastic monk move that would have done a lot of damage and allowed him to move out of that position, but he was killed before he could complete the move. Slowly, everyone else took down the skeletons, but not in time to save Zimir. He was utterly destroyed, becoming “600 pieces of goblin.” It was an intense battle for everyone, but finally the last skeleton fell.

After Rahsorn explored the lower level and everyone else rested, we moved upstairs, weary for more undead. All we found were several small rooms with rotten mattresses and a store of grain that looked like it had been there for at least fifty years. We found that the skeletons themselves had also been waiting around for fifty years. With nothing else interesting in the inn, we moved back to the tavern to finish exploring that.

Beyond the tavern was a little restaurant, though only the tables were left. Apart from there, Nikolai found a small safe hidden in the floor, so we took it with us. We left the bistro and continued to where we found what once was an alchemy shop, and an even more abandoned building. There was nothing interesting in the latter, but Nikolai had found a button behind the counter. After announcing it was there, he pushed it before his friends could do anything to stop him. Ap’rald, Rahsorn, and Mystaria were attacked by a solid chunk of what was once an entangling mass but was now very painful. Those three received ten damage and Nikolai received three dirty looks and a stern warning to think before he acted.

From there, we moved further along until we got to the gate before the inner city. Rather than trying to open the giant door, Ap’rald just broke through it. He left an opening large enough for us to run through one at a time if need be. Right inside the door was a blacksmith and armorer’s shop, and we could tell from scratches at the bottoms of the doors and at the boarded windows that something had been trapped in there. Everyone was very cautious, fearing both another ambush and another ally-triggered trap. However, upon opening the door, the room was empty. Only the skeletal remains [unanimated] of a Dwarf lay within. He wore a magical belt of protection against poison, but other than that the only thing left to do was give him a proper funeral. Mystaria said a brief prayer over him and they left him to rest in peace.

Further along, the path stopped at the corner of a manor and the castle keep. The five of them [because Zimir was dead and Shamash stayed behind to protect the wagon in the stable] entered the manor. Inside, again, was a whole lot of nothing, however, a single room full of zombies.

Fortunately, the room and the party was arranged in such a way that the zombies could first only reach Mystaria who was certainly taking the full party’s share of hits, and Ap’rald who ended up pulling back to focus on magicking them from afar. When the first zombie fell, we were all surprised to see that it hadn’t granted Rahsorn another token for his reaction attack. We killed it four times before Mystaria moved back and attacked it with divine power. Eventually, Rahsorn also started using radiant magic and zombies started exploding left and right. Unfortunately, Rahsorn also fell, but only unconscious.

By the time the battle was over, Ap’rald had used all of his healing magic on Mystaria because she had been taking all of the hits for the first half of the battle. Though when she moved back, the zombies moved in and started attacking everyone else. This was, of course, the turn right after he used up his last healing spell. Figures. So Mystaria bound Rahsorn’s wounds and stabilized him, at least long enough for Ap’rald to rest and get his healing powers back.

Once the zombies were cleared out, there was no sign of anything else of note in the room, or in the entire manor for that matter. We’ll have to wait another two weeks to find out what lies in the castle’s keep.

After getting all the legalities with Lady Dimpleton’s will taken care of, the party returns to the sewer to have Father John check up on the fey fertility statuette. He had only had a physical description at this point, as well as an attempt to see it earlier, but it came out a rat’s corpse. Standard.

So Mystaria and Shamash entered the cult’s room to take Father John the statuette. He looked it over and could give us no new information on it, so we informed him we would be taking it to a demonologist to review. While he disapproved of the deed, he also knows such unsavory tasks are the life of an adventurer, so he wished us luck. They had given the temple 10g for a Sending ritual on the whereabouts of Lady Dimpleton, but since she had been found, the party instead left a request to use it to keep them updated on any pressing information about this cult.

Then they set off to find the demonologist to whom they had been referred by the Wizards’ Tower. They stopped in a town called Ryshbell, known for its clock tower and export of lumber. Doxl may or may not have been here before, but we will never know. They learned about a crime that had happened lately and tried following up on it, but to no avail. Instead, they stayed the night and set out again in the morning.

Before even making it to Confusion Junction, much less the demonologist’s lab, they were stopped by an elf who could only be assumed was a ranger. He warned us not to go further because a beast had arisen from the lake and was laying waste to the surrounding countryside. He was in search of a hunting party to bring it down.

The party of heroes offered their support in taking it down and said they would wait for him to get back with the militia. After he went off, there was discussion [pronounced: heated argument] about how to go about this, and the next morning Nikolai ran off to scout, hoping for a glimpse of this “huge black monster that could swallow cows whole.” His search was in vain.

The party had moved to within an hour of the lake and hid their wagon. There, they waited for the hunting party and Nikolai’s report. In the middle of the night on the third day of waiting, the hunting party finally caught up to the party, and Doxl led them back to our camp. Their party consisted of four scarred villagers only, for the elf had refused to fight the beast. In the morning, they set out to the edge of the lake.

Nikolai took the form of a small cow and waited near the water’s edge. The rest of us looked on in silence. The group waited into the afternoon, and still into the evening. Finally, at sunset, Nikolai had lost patience. The creature was believed to be crepuscular, active at dawn and dusk, so this was our chance to see it, though it did not appear. Nikolai sauntered up to the water’s edge to take a drink. Only then did the beast attack.

It rose from the water, its thick carapace the same color as the water’s surface, and it reached a giant claw at the surprised calf. The party, including the villagers, jumped into action.

Shamash healed Nikolai. Ap’rald removed the beast from the safety of the water while Nikolai attempted to freeze it. In its slowed state, it could merely bounce to Nikolai, attempting to finish what it had started though the calf had returned to a more human form. The villagers, Ap’rald, and Rahsorn kept their distance and fired at it from afar, while Shamash, Doxl, Zimir, and Mystaria moved to flank the beast.

The battle raged on, and in a glittering arc from Mystaria’s axe, the beast was finally bloodied, spilling its babies from the cracked carapace all over the place. They attempted to attack back, each of the babies going after one of the heroes flanking their mama. The battle sped on from there, and the mother died scant moments before the last of her children.

The villagers were in shock that they assisted in killing this massive creature. The elf ranger was just as surprised, as he watched the entire battle from the safety of the trees. We left off while trying to decided what to do with the beast’s carcase, a question best left for another day.

In the morning, before we could even get out to tell the guard about the bodies, Captain Fredrick Marx shows up at our door. He asked a few questions about the ogre to confirm that it was us. So of course we told him it was, as well as the halfling. Captain Marx was a bit puzzled at this. He said there was already someone in custody for the murder of the halfling and requested a couple of us come down to the station to free the guy and clear up the paperwork.

Ap’rald and Mystaria accompanied Captain Marx to the Guard Tower and head straight down to the cells. There we find a goblin monk Zimir. We explain to him the situation, apologize for the inconvenience we cause him, and move to leave. He starts talking, and doesn’t stop until he’s explained where he comes from and his goal to learn through adventuring. Ap’rald suggested he come with us, saying we need all the help we can get in the matter. So he does.

Meanwhile, Rahsorn went to the Wizards’ Tower to get the two daggers looked at. The vicious dagger has no curse on it, however the one the ogre carried is another story. While not officially cursed, it was forged with dark intentions, and it now possessed the life-force of the Warforged it had killed, preventing it from coming back to the body. The only way to release it would be through destroying the blade in a blessed forge by very careful means.

The archivist at the Wizards’ Tower also received a response from the demonologist, but the entirety of the message was blotted out by ink stains and was in turn unreadable. Once Rahsorn informed the rest of us of this detail, everyone got worried, fearing the worst. It was agreed that once the current case was closed, we would travel north to check the well-being of the demonologist.

Ap’rald and Mystaria returned to the temple, followed by Zimir to check up on the body of Zoidmier. They met up with Rahsorn immediately outside the temple and he informed them of the cursed dagger. After confirming the Raise Dead ritual did not work, we were directed to the temple’s forge where we found the blacksmith near drunk before 8am. He destroyed the dagger in the blessed forge, but his exact practices may not have been up to par. Eight hours later, the priests could still not revive Zoidmier.

In our downtime, Rahsorn and Ap’rald searched the manor to see if there were any other items of note that might be hidden among the collection. Only a single bag, enchanted with some sort of illusion magic, was found. Upon opening it though, an unpleasant smell wafted out, and when Rahsorn turned the bag inside-out, a very decayed rat corpse tumbled into the bowl. Three stones were lodged in its ribcage. The artificer at the Wizards’ Tower had no helpful comments for us on the matter.

Alexandra Soehound, the housemaid at Dimpleton Manor, was sent to the temple to sleep, so she could be protected. Two guards were posted at the house to prevent any more attempted break-ins.

We purchased a cart to transport the body to Mechanatropolis, the only place where it could be reforged into a new creature. We agreed to stop by the demonologist at the crossroads on the way. With the gold put down for two Sending rituals with information about the cult or Lady Dimpleton, we set out. When Quivarra was only just out of view, we heard a horseman racing toward us at record speeds. We stopped because the messenger was wearing the symbol of Salyan. When he reached us, he informed us that Lady Dimpleton had been found and was in grave danger. We returned as fast as we could, left our wagon and horses in the street for the priests to handle, and ran to the sewer where she was suspected to be.

We traveled a short way through the sewer and found an alcove dug out in the wall. Inside were two doors which we later learned lead to the same room: a large set of double doors and a single heavily locked door. Never being ones to take the easy route, Doxl picked the lock and we snuck in the back.

We were confronted by eight more beta-forged and four more spellscarred halflings. Intense battle ensues and it appeared we have the upperhand until not only that same imp shows up, but one of his imp friends and a halfling cleric. The party was able to make quick work of the beta-forged, but the tides turned and we started to falter. We struggled back to the top, Mystaria, Zimir, and Ap’rald taking heavy damage, but finally Ap’rald took out the imp that had been taunting us for so long. Rahsorn took out the other imp and Zimir, the cleric.

As Nikolai brought down the last of the spellscarred, Aprald, who had fallen, recovered quite quickly and gathered the corpse of that stupid imp. He vowed to have it either stuffed or turned into something, to represent the triumph over the imp. We then investigated our surroundings. There was an alter of boiling blood that had been healing the cultists if they stood close. A large claw like the tattoos found on the assassins we had killed the night before was etched into the floor, as well as embroidered on the robes of the cleric and the symbol he wore around his neck. Enchanted armor and swords also littered the room where the beta-forged once stood.

Unfortunately, in a room separate from the main room in which we fought, Lady Dimpleton hung from a hook, bled out. It was likely her blood was fueling the alter that had been healing the others. Zimir, Rahsorn, Doxl, and Nikolai stayed behind as Ap’rald and Mystaria went to inform the guard and the temple. Captain Marx put the entire case, now that it was effectively closed, in the hands of the church. The church sent Father John, the priest in charge of raising Zoidmier, and four young paladins to tend to the alter and body underground.

While we had their attention in the sewer, Rahsorn and Ap’rald took the time to show the priest the items Lady Dimpleton had originally sent us to retrieve. He was uninterested in the back skritcher, the Giant sign, and the kidney stone. Unfortunately, when the fertility statuette was pulled from the bag, it looked, and smelled, like a rat corpse. The corpse still glowed with the same magic of the statuette, so we opted to keep it out of the bag for an hour and return to the sewer to show him then.

We left, at great insistence from Father John, and tied up a few more loose ends. Alexandra informed us that Lady Dimpleton’s will was likely under her mattress. We returned to the manor to retrieve the will and found a string of pearls in the muck where the first rat corpse had been dumped. Lady Dimpleton had left her husband’s collections to the Wizards’ Tower and her wealth, house, and land to the temple. All that was left to do was wait the hour, hopefully clean up the statuette, and return to the sewer to have Father John look it over.

We part ways with the merchant at the crossroads at Hogsmead Inn. Hoping we’ll be able to find Brr, we go in. The place is hopping. And Brr himself is manning the bar. There is a bard on stage and everyone is dancing and singing. General merriment all around. Nikolai waits outside. Zoidmier waits just inside because he doesn’t eat or drink. Rahsorn, Ap’rald, and Mystaria work our way to the bar, Ap’rald to talk to Brr, the other two of us just to get a drink and hang out.

Doxl looks around to see if there’s anyone around she recognizes. She does this every time we go somewhere, whole amnesia thing. As luck would have it, she does recognize someone, other than Brr of course. The bard, or rather, the song the bard is playing. She goes to ask him about it after he’s done, and as soon as he sees her, he bolts.

She calls out, “Warforged!” and Zoidmier stops him at the door. The rest of us are listening, but still where we were. They ask the bard about the song, and he lies. Ap’rald approached at this point and called him on it. The bard explains that he’d rather not talk about it in here. He offers to go outside, but Doxl doesn’t want him running off again. He offers a room upstairs.

Mystaria stay downstairs to keep watch if in the event he tries to run again. Rahsorn stays downstairs too, I think. Everyone else, including Nikolai, go upstairs. Posted in various places in and around the room, the bard starts talking. He explains that he heard the song from Content Not Found: kittycat, a scientist in Mechanatropolis. When pressed about why he tried to run, he explained that Doxl had tried to kill him once. He had a bit of a gambling problem and he had owed some people some money. Eventually they decided they had all the information they could get out of him and let him go.

We got some dinner before setting out again. Boar steaks. Apparently the elf lady everyone was harassing so much on the way in was a local hunter, so she was bringing in game and Brr was cooking it up. Speaking of Brr, we asked him how he had gone from wandering child to bartender. He said there was a male elf when he got there that said he could fix him. So apparently he did. We have no idea what that means.

The crowd was starting to call for the bard, so Doxl went up to check on the bard who hadn’t come downstairs. She found him gone, and the sheets tied together and going out the window. She jumped down to see if she could see him, but he was long gone. She came inside to inform us of the catastrophe. Ap’rald, being a bard, entertained the crowd while the rest of us went out to look. In the confusion of getting Ap’rald on stage, we apparently forgot to go outside and check for footprints. Damn.

Brr talked us into staying the night for a discount, so we did. Morning came around, everything was fine and dandy. We had a quest to collect on and a bard who said he was going to go to the Heartlands. We went to take care of the quest first, and made our way back to Quivarra. It was a pleasantly uneventful journey.

When we got back to town, the first thing we did was take the demonic idols, the two rings, the back skritcher, the kidney stone, and of course, the statuette to the alchemist. Doxl knew that he was the only person to publicly admit he might know something about this stuff, so he was our first stop. He couldn’t tell us anything about all of the former items, but he referred us to the Wizard’s Tower for the statuette. We thanked him and went there.

Zoidmier stopped us as we were leaving the alchemists. Why do we need to do so much research on these statues? Let’s just give them back to Lady Dimpleton and be on our way, end of story. Everyone had a reason for him. Rahsorn and Doxl stated plain old curiosity. Nikolai and Ap’rald went for the ‘to protect the old lady’ route. Zoidmier didn’t care about any of that. This is another proud moment of RP for me.

“Our entire reason for taking this quest, let’s be honest, was publicity for the temple. If we just go and get Lady Dimpleton’s artifacts and give them back, it says to the people that we care more about the rewards we gain than the people for whom we do these tasks. If this imp comes after her, it will show as negligence on our part. However, if we put the effort into this that shows that we aren’t just money-greedy adventurers, but that we actually care? That shows more favorably on the church than anything else we could do.”

Zoidmier insists that it’s because of arcane magic that he had lost his human form, so he’s pretty anti-arcane. So he and Mystaria trekked off to the temple to tell them about what was going on and get their advice about the statuette. They looked into their libraries to find any accounts of demonic activity in the area for us. We stayed the night but didn’t get any really helpful information.

At the Wizard’s Tower, they rest of the party had their fancy-pants arcane people look at our statues. They only showed the demonic idols, the kidney stone [to find out if that’s what it really is], and the statuette. They didn’t get much. Nothing at all on the idols, and any difinitive information on the stone or the statuette would take more looking into. So Nikolai went down the the archivist to give an account of our travels. Rahsorn and Ap’rald stayed the night there to help with the research and to make sure the items didn’t leave their sights.

Doxl came to tell us what they were doing, and then she went down into the underground with her people to try to get the lowdown on this bard guy. It turns out that he’s still on the run, and there’s a heck of a bounty on him. He had quite the gambling problem and ended up borrowing money from every mob boss in the city. And not paying any of them back. Only one has actually put a price on his head, but it’s a hefty one. She ended up staying the night at an inn in the underground.

Doxl met up with us at the temple and we went to the Wizard’s Tower to meet up with the rest. Turns out the kidney stone has some sort of precious gem in it. That it wasn’t actually a kidney stone at all. That statuette is confirmed fey, it is full of arcane magic, but it’s not demonic in nature. We have no idea why the imp is following it, if that’s what it’s following at all.

So, we took these things back to return them, except for the statuette, to Lady Dimpleton. When we got there, we found her servant woman, Alexandra, sobbing. Apparently Officer Marx came to talk to Lady Dimpleton and get the keys to the museum. He took her down to the station. She came back angry, muttering about whores, and left. That was at about 3am. We went out to look for her.

Doxl and Rahsorn went toward the underground, asking people on the way if they’d seen her. Turns out they had and they were heading in the right direction. Mystaria went to the temple to tell them to send a guard to the manor to protect Alexandra. Zoidmier stayed behind to act as a messenger if she returned while we were gone. Nikolai and Ap’rald went to the Guard Tower to try to figure out where she may have gone. Officer Marx explained that he brought her in and told her that the building had been bought for a brothel. It’s legal, but she didn’t like it.

We all got the same general suggestion on where she is: the museum. We basically met up there as Doxl was picking one of the huge padlocks which were all locked from the outside. Mystaria pointed out that if Lady Dimpleton is here, she must have taken a different door in. We found a side door further down, relocked the padlock, and used the side entrance.

We found a set of footprints with swishy cape patterns fresh in the dust on the floor. We followed them only to find two more sets of footprints and a whole in the floor. Yes, signs of struggle. We went down the hole in the floor. It was dug into from the sewer. We have no idea who would have taken her.

There was no indication which direction they went because ground gave way to a waist deep river of, well, waste. Ap’rald made a Tensor’s Floating Disk, but it could only hold four of us. So Mystaria volunteered to be on foot. We went half an hour in one direction, back, and then about forty-five minutes in the other. I was making Endurance checks every half hour. Thomas whispered for me to roll the first one. I did. Everyone got really paranoid, so they started rolling too. He said, “I don’t know why you guys are rolling Endurance checks. Bad things happen if you fail.” They stopped.

Eventually we left the sewer through a man hole that lead to a sewer worker hut thing. We told him about the hole carved to the future brothel. He seemed pleased with the news. We went back and told the city guard about it, effectively filing a missing person report. They said they would look into it. Hopefully they’ll take better care of that then they did her items.

We went back to the manor to let everyone know how things were going. I changed clothes at the temple first. We stayed the night at the manor to ease Alexandra’s nerves. We put her in a windowless room first. Zoidmier and the guard, a Dragonborn Paladin of Salyan, watched the front door. Doxl was watching Alexandra’s room. Ap’rald was sleeping at the back door so it would wake him if it opened.

We all woke up to the sound of metal being stabbed into metal. A massive hulking creature was holding the knife, and everyone went running. Except for Mystaria, who stayed in the room with Alexandra, axe at the ready by the door. The party ended up chasing down the ogre who had grabbed the Warforged and ran. Zoidmier hung limply in his hands.

After killing the ogre, Nikolai, Ap’rald, and Shamash took Zoidmier’s body to the temple to see if they could raise him. They busted into one of the side doors into the kitchen, interrupting a priest in his jammies. He ran to get someone who could help. They dumped the body on the table. We all had a good laugh about that. “Hmm… I think I’ll have some bacon and eggs this mor—Oh god!” The party couldn’t pay for the ritual up front, so they promised to pay back in work. They dropped Mystaria’s name and the ritualist got to work. Shamash stayed behind to help with the ritual.

Doxl searched the ogre and found a religious symbol tattooed on his back. There was also a really impressive dagger. A special knife of construct-killing, basically. It’s most likely cursed, so Rahsorn was going to take it to the Wizard’s Tower to look for afflictions that may need to be removed.

All the while, Mystaria was left alone at the house guarding Alexandra. Fortunately, with a ridiculous passive perception, she heard someone climbing up the side of the building. She told Alexandra to hide and went and waited by the window the climber was aiming at. Upon looking down, she saw the intruder was wearing black robes similar to what Shamash told us the ogre was wearing. She took the time to make him her Oath of Enmity target and then readied the action to axe the fuck out of his face as soon as he opened the window.

He opened the window. Mystaria axed the fuck out of his face. He lost his grip on the wall and fell. She was able to shoot a ray of Radiant Vengeance at him as he ran away. Doxl, who had returned to the house by this point, saw the blast and went after him in Mystaria’s stead. She knifed him down in an epic chase scene duel thing. She killed him and sure enough he had the same tattoo.

When Ap’rald, Nikolai, Rahsorn, and Doxl got back, they guarded Alexandra while Mystaria went to look at the symbol on the halfling’s back. She couldn’t place it [pronounced: rolled a 3], so we went home. We’ll ask the people at the temple in the morning. Doxl is super excited about the Vicious dagger the halfling had. Rahsorn will be taking both daggers to the Wizard’s Tower to have them look for curses.

Shortly after leaving the swamp, the party was walking along the road when they heard hooves coming up behind them. It sounds as if it is an over-burdened horse with a cart and moving alone. They step off the road to wait for it. Zoidmier got really angry that everyone was waiting for it, and he stormed off to the edge of the swamp where there was a pitiful tree he could stand behind. When the cart approaches, it is a single Half-Elf driving a horse and carriage. He is a mail carrier, trying to get at least as far as Hogsmead Inn. He offers the group a job of protecting him. He had already been attacked a few times and his horse wasn’t up to running away anymore.

They started moving along with this cart, and eventually Zoidmier joined us again. They hadn’t gone long when three horsemen appeared, blocking the path on the road. That same imp from earlier showed up, confirmed that these were the right people, and left again. The horsemen demanded the statue. While Ap’rald, the bard well-versed in diplomacy, tried to talk them down from it, and before he could ask what exactly they wanted, Rahsorn pipes up, lying, saying they don’t have it. It was a little obvious they had been talking about the statuette, but Ap’rald was trying to get all the information. When Rahsorn lied though, the horsemen started attacking. And so did the four spellscarred halflings, and the eight human minions.

The battle was actually pretty epic. Half of the party had readied actions, so of course they went at the first sign of hostility. Then the rest of the party started going. Initiative was basically four of us, the three groups of them, and then the other two of us. It worked out fairly well. So, we did their attacking, and some of us were even effective! Then the enemies went, and Mystaria got attacked a lot. She didn’t go down though! Until four of the minions decided to attack her. Then she went down. Ap’rald healed her on his next turn, even though he was pretty hurt himself. She stood up and immediately axed a halfling into two quarterlings. She should have used a second wind though. The next round the enemies went, she went down again. Ap’rald had already used his other Majestic Word, so he couldn’t help.

After one round of staying down, Mystaria ended up rolling a natural 20 on her death saving throw. She got up and beat the snot out of another halfling. And then went down again >< Another 20 on a death saving throw [my new dice like me!] and a second wind like a smart person! Good thing too, she would have gone down again if not for that healing surge. Ap’rald ended up going down in the very last round, but he also rolled a 20 to get up on his own before anyone could get over there to heal him the old fashioned way.

So, Ap’rald and Zoidmier each kept a horse, but Mystaria ended up getting on the last one while still in battle. She gave it to the mail carrier as an apology for dragging him into this, even though neither he nor his cargo were harmed in the fray [Danny’s idea. A fantastic one, at that]. The enemies were strictly after us, not him. So, we collected loot and stuff from them, and would continue toward town next time!

When the party awoke the next morning, there was still no familiar. So they took off in search of it. They eventually got to a different room where half of the ceiling had caved in. There was no way out though. So, lucky Zoidmier, he got to smash through the wall and it lead us to a little alcove where a statue of the demon lord Demagorgon. Everyone rolled perception checks to look at the statue but me. I rolled dungeoneering to see if it was likely the rest of the ceiling would come down on us. My roll was too low to really determine. In response to the perception, Thomas said, “For those of you with a 25 or higher…” then waited for those people to speak up. The highest perception they made was a 22. So, with my dungeoneering being finished, I figured I should roll perception too. He was looking all smug because we didn’t get to learn his little secret. With a sort of shit-eating grin though I announced my perception check. 25 exactly. It’s great having a +11 at first level! So, Mystaria saw that the statue was actually carved out of the rock that made the cavern. As in, when they dug out the cavern, the carved around this thing to make it. It was all attached.

Everyone noticed the two-by-two box thing at the base of the statue. The arcane people saw that it was magical, but couldn’t figure out how. They tried poking it with arcane power and nothing happened. It was decided that perhaps it needed an opposing kind of magic to open the box. It was demonic in nature, so the divine caster in the group stepped in. Like idiots, they all stood there while she poked it with radiance. The entire area around Doxl, Rahsorn, and Mystaria went black and they heard muttering in Abyssal. Thomas asked for our Will defenses, and then rolled a nat 20. We were screwed, we could tell. The three of then asked if we were okay, and then figured a plan to get out of the darkness. Hopefully.

The rest of the party, however, also heard chattering in Abyssal. The way Thomas said it though, it sounded like what they heard was different than what the other three heard. He also said that they heard the conversational tones after making sure the three of the people in the dark were talking. Suck.

The three, I’m going to call them Demon-struck, held hands and walked along the wall until they found light. the others, waiting just outside, eventually saw a black, demonic claw reach out of the darkness. They all readied their weapons until the blackness fell away and revealed an elven hand. When they finally got out, they were ourselves again, but the Demon-struck couldn’t hear everyone else and everyone else couldn’t hear them. They could all talk amongst the groups. The demon-struck heard demon-struck and the healthy heard healthy.

Luckily, Nikolai had a lot of chalk with him, so everyone passed it around us to write on walls to communicate what happened. The demon-struck explained that Mystaria tried activating the box with divine magic and that worked. Everyone knew, via insight checks, that there was something fundamentally wrong with the three demon-struck. Rahsorn’s magic worked just fine, but Mystaria felt mine resist when she tried to use it. When Ap’rald tried to heal her, it actually hurt her instead. She tried her own healing surge, and fortunately that still worked.

Not knowing what to do, Doxl went back into the darkness for a moment and then came right back out. She reported that she felt more at home in the darkness, and that she still heard the demonic voices, but that’s about it. Ap’rald suggested we go back in and try to do exactly what was did the first time to get then into this mess. After confusion and other suggestions, that is what they decided to do. So they tied a rope to the Demon-struck, Mystaria at the end and the other two closer to the middle, and they stood just inside while she went in to try to find this box in the dark. What she found instead was that the box, and the statue for that matter, were gone. She panicked and told everyone else to get out. This statue was literally huge, so I was afraid it was lurking around somewhere in the dark with us. They went back out and informed everyone else.

Somewhere after this, but I don’t remember exactly when, Ap’rald got fed up with not being able to hear the demon-struck, and he stepped into the darkness and back out. Now he too was demon-struck and could hear the others.

Not seeing any other way out of the room, we tried activating the statuette again. Unfortunately, it was Rahsorn who activated it. His magic had been tainted by the demon magic, so it ended up teleporting us directly back into the darkness. Now Zoidmier was also demon-struck, but Nikolai’s Will was high enough to fight the power. So he was the only one that couldn’t hear anyone. He handed Rahsorn a rope, while still in darkness, and started wandering around, trying to figure out where they were. It was technically only then that we learned they were back in the same darkness they just left. And really, it was only Nikolai that knew. He pulled on the rope to indicate that he wanted everyone else to come out following the rope, but Rahsorn mistook the signal and dropped the rope.

Everyone else was pretty much standing in the dark with their hands on the statuette, fearing to leave its safety, when Ap’rald finally ventured out too. He made it to the light, and with chalk confirmed with Nikolai that we were, in fact, in the same room. So he went back in, Ap’rald that is, to inform the rest of us. Mystaria then ventured away to try to find the empty hole in the pedestal where the box used to be. I found it, and zapped it again. The darkness went away and we were able to hear each other again. However, I still had to make a saving throw every time Mystaria used a divine power. So they weren’t finished here yet.

Nikolai was able to use primal power to activate the statuette to get everyone back to the main room. Zoidmier was asking if we could go yet, even though we didn’t have the familiar or divine connection. They told him no. He didn’t care at all about the familiar, he needed the connection to his god too if he ever wanted to get his body back. If Mystaria had lost some of her connection, he had probably lost some of his. The party moved on to try to figure out what to do again.

They tried to move through one of the portals with the statuette, considering it seemed the most powerful, and almost a key to use said portals. Unfortunately, it was the demon-struck who went. Every portal we tried took us back to that room where the demon statue used to be. Mystaria tried divine magic on the statuette; Ap’rald and Rahsorn tried arcane power on it. It took them back to the same spot. At least the darkness was gone. However, they realized that they were now stuck in this room, and the only person who could successfully activate the statuette was still up in the first room, afraid to teleport with the demon-struck because of what it may do to him.

So, eventually, Mystaria climbed on Zoidmier’s shoulders and up through the hole in the ceiling where it had caved in. She had the best acrobatics at this point [because while Doxl was technically with us, Danny had taken a homework break and wasn’t at the table anymore], so she climbed higher as delicately as she could to see what would happen if we try to dig a way up. She went up a really long way, and was eventually greeted with more stone, but also a voice. She was about to come up through the floor into the room Nikolai was in. He helped by moving the floor stones, then both of us climbed down and he teleported us back to the main room.

Since Nikolai [and technically Content Not Found: wasffle, but I haven’t mentioned her up until this point because she wasn’t able to make it to the session, so she doesn’t count at all] was the only one who could go through the portals and get him back to where they used to take everyone else, he was the one that went throughout the dungeon, looking for anything that had changed. When he got back to the room that had a whole bunch of statues in it, he went back to the sarcophagus only to find a small statue of Demagorgon and a tiny little box. He came back to inform us. Mystaria suggested he not touch it directly, so he used some cloth to pick it up and bring it back to the group. They took it and went back to the room where it originally was. They teleported down, and sure enough, when we got there, they statue and the box went back to being the same size they once were.

Tired, frustrated, and desperately hoping we could finally zap the box and get back to normal, Mystaria warned everyone and tried. Her magic worked just fine. Woohoo! So, they used everything else magical to try to open the box, but it wouldn’t budge. So eventually, we let Zoidmier smash it open. Out came the crumpled little body of Rahsorn’s familiar. It was alive, but unconscious. At least they had found it. So finally they could go, but Zoidmier wanted to stay behind and see what would happen if we unactivated the stretch button with someone down in this room. So they tried.

Like idiots again, we let Zoidmier stay down there, because he was the curious one. We had to tell him over and over again not to destroy the demon statue while we were all down there, and then we went and left him alone with it. Of course, he smashed it as soon as he was alone down there. There were probably miles between him and everyone else, so even though there was a hole connecting the two rooms, they didn’t hear a sound. When he came back up, he said the statue broke. Technically it was the truth, so the party continued without question.

When they pushed the stretch button, deactivating it, it shrank the statuette down to actual statuette size. About three inches. It was much easier to handle like this, so everyone was happy.

Now, they had the items, the familiar, and divine assistance, they were ready to go. So we started heading out, and sure enough, there is a pack of people heading their way. They found an imp, two armor minion things, and four bullywugs. Mystaria almost died because everyone but the imp [who disappeared as soon as it was its turn] attacked her. Everyone else did really well though, so we took them down fairly easily.

There were the two armors that both had a +1 enchantment on them, so Ap’rald and Zoidmier claimed those almost immediately. There were a few worthless leather armors from the bullywugs that Rahsorn took for selling purposes, as well as the two longswords the armor guys were using. The imp never came back, so we got nothing from him. The four spears the bullywugs were using were claimed: one by Rahsorn, one by Ap’rald, and two by Zoidmier. And then they found two chests that the monsters had been carrying. Doxl agreed to pick the locks but only if she got first dibs on one of them. So she did, and inside was 110 gp, 20 of which she gave to Ap’rald for his ritual castings, the rest of which she took, six demon statue things that various people claimed [one for Ap’rald, Doxl, and Nikolai, two for Rahsorn, one for the group]. And in the other chest there were four low quality aquamarine gems [Doxl and Ap’rald wanted to make necklaces out of them. Rahsorn wanted one to see if it could be enchanted at all]. Before they clarified their reasons though, I asked if anyone wanted one for the sole purpose of selling. No one did, so I said Mystaria would hold onto the last one to sell when we got to town. I’d give everyone a share of it. The same with the 110 gp we found in the second chest. Except for 30 that went to Nikolai straight up for making the campsites along the way, and 10 to Ap’rald for creating the floating disk to carry the statuette when it was still ginormous. He still had the disk, so we opted to carry both chests and all the loot we found and didn’t pocket. Doxl and Ap’rald even rode on it because there was the room. We then started back out of the swamp.