Bringing Light to the Darkness

Scribe Notes

Summary

Adventure: Bringing Light to the Darkness
GM: Paul Schmidt
Season: Winter 800 WK

Party

• Father Rowan Wiccan Male Human (Mil Sci, Scribe)
• Turf Namer Elf Male (Leader)
• Glynn Air Elf Male
• Ithilmor Celestial Elf Female
• Bleyze Fire Elf Male
• Killramadrum (Drum) Non-mage Giant Male
• Basalic Earth Human Male

Time on adventure

1st Frost 800 WK to 26th Ice 800 WK

Employer

Father Heizuus O’Connor

Mission

Find the Light of Reason and re-establish the Church of Chantris in Gunlion Hill.

Planes

Greyhawk/Astral/Alusia

Places visited

Greyhawk City

Delrenbrass

Paraelemental Plane of Ice

Istven

Gnome city in the UnderDark

Githyanki City in Astral

Gunlion Hill on Brastor

Major NPCs encountered

Lawfakir

Ignatious Knobnose

Kessel - a priest of Pelor

Trusty Jack

Original Scribe Notes

Media:Snwi0004.zip

Scribe Notes

(These scribe notes supplied by Basalic)

Met my fellow adventurers: Glynn. A 6'4" elf who professed to be an air mage Ithilmor. A female elf 5'8" with long black hair wearing dark plate mail. She's a Star Celestial and a priestess of Elbereth. Turf. 6' tall, stocky elf with long white hair and furrowed brow. He’s a Namer. His cape was dark purple with shimmering runes. Kil...(something) 'Drum'. 9'6" hill giant warrior in plate mail. Father Rowan. Short human. Priest of Chantris and wiccan. Bleyse - Elven male firemage And I'm Basalic. Earth mage and warrior. Turf became the party leader while Father Rowan was the military scientist and scribe. Our mission was to aid Father Heizuus O'Conner from the Reformed Church of Chantris. He had a vision, after being blown off his roof by a lightning strike, of setting up a church in the Dark Circle, specifically at Gunlion Hill and spoke about finding the Light of Reason in a place called the Silvery Vault. He had also caught a certain gnome, Ignatious Knobnose, trying to steal from his church. After visiting penance upon him, Heizuus brought him to Seagate to get assistance. After some persuasion, Ignatious agreed to lead us to the edge of the Circle, but no further, claiming he was cursed to commit treason against friends. He also claimed he was cursed with good luck. Could do with a bit of that myself sometimes. However we would have to wait a week for him to return as he had urgent business to conduct. While we waited, I put Lessers on everyone and paid Scratch for a 12 point Greater at cost. Some of us also learnt Grenado as it would be useful in throwing Holy Water. I ended up keeping three vials of what Father Rowan had made up. 8th Frost. However, at the end of the week, there was no sign of Ignatious. Turf went to the plane of Greyhawk to investigate. There, he discovered that Ignatious had been incarcerated by the Greyhawk Tax Department for failure to pay taxes. Turf soon discovered that trying to get information out of them was like trying to get blood out of a stone - and they wanted payment for everything, with interest. Even talking to someone cost money, payable in advance. After being cleaned out by them, and getting nowhere, Turf then visited Lawfakir. Lawfakir was willing to pay to get Ignatious out but, in return, he had a problem with his library. So Turf went back to fetch the rest of us. So we went through Dead Man's Alley and into the plane of Greyhawk, making sure we had copper coin to distract the tenticled entity lurking in the mists. I later discovered it was a Lurker from the Beyond. When we got to Lawfakir's place, we discovered he wanted the library shelves dusted. Seemed simple enough but nothing about Lawfakir's library is simple. People going in there have to be very careful about what they do and even what they think, otherwise strange things happen to them. Even trying to think about nothing doesn't help. After several misadventures we finally emerged from there, but not before most of us were scathed in body or soul. We then retreated back to Seagate for further preparations. However we did discover that the Silvery Vault was something to do with the Astral Plane and that we may need to retrieve something from a very cold place, presumably the Paraelemental Plane of Ice. 9th Frost Visited the Temple of Celestron on Greyhawk. There, after spending most of the day going through their library, we found out that the Silvery Vault was another term for the Astral Plane and that the Light of Reason referred to an angelic being that had been destroyed by the forces of Darkness. They suggested that the Temple of Pelor may have more information. There, they told us that they required assistance because an evil force was spiriting children away to some dark fate. Of course, none of us were going to stand for such nonsense so we agreed to do something about it. The person to contact was Father Kessel, the priest in charge of a subchurch down at the docks. .2. So we headed down there. We didn't want to attract attention so the elves in the party were wearing robes and hoods. Unfortunately the guards were curious about what was under the hoods. Father Rowan tried to hint that they should be isolated because of possible infection. This caused Drum to declare in a loud voice "Unclean! Unclean!" This caused the local populace and guards to be extremely nervous and we got an armed escort - straight to the unclean area just outside the city. So much for being discrete. Father Rowan and Bleyse did what they could for the poor unfortunates there. Then the elven, Nyronesse ambassador, Ewayne, arrived and she, and her escort, conducted us to the dockside temple of Pellor, without further incident. Kessel was a large man, 6' 10" wearing a two handed sword on his back. He has had to use it to defend the temple and his charges. He told us that the children were being stolen by some river gypsies who take them by barge upriver to Nyr Dyv, an inland sea, presumably to be sold into slavery. These gypsies keep to themselves and dislike cats. After some planning we hired a barge so we could keep an eye on them and follow them when they left. According to DAs, the gypsies were human. Father Rowan obtained a rat familiar and sent it aboard the barge. Not much suspicious yet although we did find a room containing silvered restraints and chains downbelow. The manacles were hobbit sized. We watched as bales of goods were loaded on the barge. Just then Turf DAed one of the gypsys and discovered he was a wererat. At the same time the rat detected children inside the bales. Then their barge captain shoed up. I DAed him and determined that he was a Greater Lycanthrope wererat and had a mixture of charm and wiccan spells. So Father Rowan put a Protection from Weres on the bow and centre of our barge. 10th Frost. Kessel had supplied 14 crew along with the barge and we made plans to take them out. Finally, at midnight, we struck. Turf did Wiccan Counterspells all around and Father Rowan did a Summon Lycanthrope with the idea of getting an unwary captain into our trap. But, believe it or not, someone else appeared, a person by the name of Brannis who was also a Greater Werecat. After making apologies and explaining what we were up to, Father Rowan tried again. This time we got the captain but he realised what was going on and was ordering his men to hold him back. So we went on the offensive. Turf and I charged over while Ithemore swept the deck with blackfire. A mass of rats were also swarming onto our barge and up the gangplank after me. However, a blast of fire from Bleyse took care of them. Turf had leapt from barge to barge and was engaging the gypsies on the deck. Meanwhile I had charged up with my glaive in an attempt to get the captain. I hit but I got the strong impression from his reaction that he wanted to be scratched on the back a little lower to relieve an itch. The captain then leapt on Turf in an attempt to infect him with lycanthrope. That didn't work but, while I was drawing my sword, the captain leapt into the water with Turf. A lightning bolt went in after the captain and a swarm of rats emerged. I threw Turf a rope and hauled him out. While the others dealt with the remaining rats, I went and rescued the children. I found eighteen of them, ranging in ages from 5 to 9. By the time I had seen them safely to the town guard, the others were mopping up. Cats were also plowing into the rats. Turf had a rat in a cage, a rat with a white streak in it's fur, the last surviving part of the greater wererat. During the cleanup, a coffer containing 1000sp had been found. This had been turned over to the town guard. A search was then made of the barge and a couple of rings and other stuff was found in a rat sized hole, presumably the greater wererat's private stash. With some difficulty we were able to get it out. The wererat, after changing into a rather small person, wanted to negotiate and also wanted to be released 20 miles downstream from the city. So we took him there. He told us that he was working for himself and had blackmail material on quite a few important people in the city. Evidence, and a treasure cache, was in a room underneath a local inn. He also had knowledge on the Scarlet Brotherhood, a group of evil wizards. One of the ambassadors to Greyhawk City was a priest of Nerull. The wererat was released but Bleyse, Ithemor, and Turf attacked and killed it. For a short time I thought that this was a dishonourable act but, upon reflection, it was probably the best thing to do as it was likely to perform more evil acts elsewhere. The rings were checked out and were shown to be size alteration and water walking. Upon investigation we discovered that the secret room had been cleaned out and several other wererats and other flunkies had fled. We passed the information gained to Kessel then went to check out the ambassador. However we discovered from his servant that he had been called away unexpectedly. Another villain had scarpered. .3. One of the carpets was magical so Turf divinated it. It was a Carpet of Arriving. There was also a small metal cylinder linked to it which would point at anyone standing on the carpet. Inside the cylinder was something that seemed to be very similar to a Dark Sphere. We suspected that it was shot at any unauthorised arrivals. So Turf dissipated it, taking eight hours to do so. When he finally banished it, the cylinder folded into a sphere and vanished. The next thing to do was to remove the death curses that Ithilmor, Bleyse and Turf had picked up so we headed off to the Temple of Istar. They wanted poetry from Bleyse, summing up his life, a song from Ithilmor describing her aspirations and a dance from Turf describing his soul. They would then have to swallow a gem. While they were composing their epics, Father Rowan explained our mission so him and I were invited to view a special tapestry that the priests had on their loom. It was a Tapestry of Fate and, by closely examining the threads we were able to view varius events. What we saw was a battle between the Suel and the Precluni that had occurred several hundred years ago. It was a terrible battle and the priests were calling down devastating magic. A grey mist rolled across the battlefield and, after it passed, all that was left was grey dust. Another scene showed the opposition calling down multicoloured fire which pulverized everything it touched. A third scene showed refugees fleeing a city that was being destroyed by these fireballs. We learnt that two great empires went to war. Suel had called down the devastation on the Precluni who had retaliated with their holy fire. However the gods had tried to prevent this from happening and, when that failed, they turned away from their people in disgust. One of them was Phauklton, the deity of Light and Reason. As I put it, the first casualties in any war is reason and truth. The symbols of Phauklton was a book and a candle. A related deity was still active in the area but it was believed the two were not connected. Also Phauklton and Chantris had made several holy items that were fated not to be used in Greyhawk. Once the curses were removed, and the performances were interesting to say the least, we headed back to the Temple of Celestron to see what aid they could give us to a journey into the Astral. They had some ungelents that would protect us against wandering minds at a cost of 1000sp each. So Father Rowan paid them by creating Amulets of Luck. This took several days.