Session6


 * 1-26-13**
 * Journey to the House of Tomes and back**

Dominic and Amynta help to see us off, as Ursus, Maliumpkin’s new friend, brings Melloran from the Refuge for Mally. Posy and Thorn have been hard at work training new riding dogs. Annaisaru gives us a few elven horses for our trip… with Yuki accepting Erevin’s offer to ride with him, and Wren riding with Kale. Just as we’re leaving… Jerrandis Mercer rides up on a horse, hurrying to catch us before we go… he wanted to see us off. Everyone kind of exchanges glances. Jerrandis makes mention of the invite Erevin had extended to him to come see Myth Coramanth and how he’s looking forward to it… Erevin tells him he’s welcome to come with us, and he seems eager to do so.

As we journey out, Wren and Yuki tell the everyone the tale of Samira’s Plane of Air adventure filled with a sultan djinni and his harem of captured beautiful women, as well as the djin, jann, and elemental inhabitants of the area. The great powerful storms with life threatening lightning! …and the strange self-willed gravity. They mention the possible lead of her mentor, an old man named Rosche… who is supposed to be well educated on the plane of air. They hope to speak to him when they return.

Jerrandis tells Erevin about his Tyrite order and his witch hunting training, and how it had really been formed after the problems with the Medici family.

We ride the path to the Hill of Tombs, where we run across riders from the Order of the Spring, another group of Lathander followers. We meet a paladin woman from the group, known as Antonia Grim. She warns us to stay away from the area, as they occasionally have problems with undead… and to stay in an inn at night. Jerrandis tells us that lots of battles have taken place near this area, and over the years… with so many buried here… it became the Hill of Tombs. It is watched for any problems with undead, and it must simply be the Order of the Spring’s turn to watch it.

We ride on and stay on the roads, taking Coast road to the north, resting for the night in a nice inn in Mistral Post.

Move on to the Town of Filur, small with only a population of about 50 people… farmers. We are welcomed by Johann Strauss, the town mayor, and he offers us rooms for the night. Nice books are laid in several locations. We meet Strauss’s daughter, Jessica, and his wife, Olga, who tells us that a glyph scribe (also known as a priest of Denier – the god of knowledge and the written word) by the name of Wilfred Heinrich had taught the villagers how to read. He had discovered a lost library and gathered the villagers to rebuild the bridge to it.

Go to see Wilfred Heinrich who has a home here in town… he’s a hoarder with stacks of books everywhere. We find out that the library he discovered is The House of Tomes. He draws us a crude map of the library and loans us each books of interest to read.

With everyone retiring for the evening with their chosen book… we find out that there are runes in the books to bring on a kind of mind control on the people who read them. Yuki, Posy, and Erevin fall prey to the runes with Posy trying to strangle Mally, Yuki trying to capture Wren in her ribbon, and Erevin raises his sword to Thorn, who hid himself in a little bit fort. The girls work to help Yuki, finding that if they burn the books they can stop the spell, while Posy runs outside to avoid hurting anyone. Meanwhile Kale tries to help Erevin deal with his possessed arm and Jerrandis erases the mark with soul soap. Thorn goes out and tries to help Posy fend off the mayor while the other villagers are fast approaching.

Erevin runs into the girls’ room, hearing the commotion, and erases the mark from Yuki. The villagers bang on the door, “Don’t let us in! We’ll kill you!” We find Posy and get her healed with the last of Jerrandis’s soul soap. We round up all the books and go to confront Heinrich who doesn’t answer his door. A lightning bolt trap on the door nearly kills Mally, leaving her blown out into the street, with spiked static hair, and looking singed. Yuki runs to her side and gets her up and healed. We throw the gathered books into his house and set the whole house on fire… The books scream as they are engulfed in flames.

We find tracks from the back of his home that tell the story of his escape to head to the library… chasing after him, we find him on the bridge, with his disguise down… an undead lich… we take him down with arrows, his body falling off the bridge.

We move across the bridge toward the library, to find a passage through the trees. Trees in the area have been gnawed down to stumps with sap still seeping out of them. It leads to a tunnel, where we see a large cloud of bats fly out… but looking closer, we discover that the “bats” are flying books, watching in horror as they devour a deer at the edge of the forest so quickly that they leave the standing skeleton to fall when they fly away.

20 ghostly monks walk from the tunnel, robed and chanting. Follow them silently. They go to a room where they write the runes on the books… flying books come in through a window, pausing to wring out blood into the inkwells of the monks.

We decide a necromancer must have awoken the monks and sent them to do his bidding, we step out of the tower to find an easier route up only to be spotted by large undead black dire wolves, bones protruding from their rotting flesh. Skeletons come out of a building next to us… There’s a big battle. We stay close together and use our strengths to fend them off. Jerrandis Mercer abandons Yuki as he moves up with Kale to fend off the two wolves coming in for Wren… aww my hero… she returns the favor by launching arrows into the wolf. Thorn works hand in hand with Melloran and Mally on one side, while Posy fends them off from the other. Erevin stays with Yuki in the center as we all work better and better as a team.

Tired from a rough battle, we see a cyclone of books coming our way as the last skeleton goes down… Wren quickly levitates up to a window and ties a rope inside, to help the others escape. Kale slings Yuki over his shoulder as he climbs up, and Erevin comes up last, fending off the books with arrows to allow the others to climb… we pull him up and in, just in time to slam the window shut as books rapidly hit up against the glass.

Yuki feels out the area to get us a direction of evil, a force so powerful reflects back into her chest… so cold! So evil its almost painful. We move up the stairs quietly, and see a large wooden door with what looks to be carvings from fingernails writing out “Be quiet or they’ll hear you”… Thorn works his magic on the lock of the door, letting Posy take the lead in. Bookshelves lined with books… a figure sits at a desk writing in a book, his robes are red and faded… A spectral wizard of Thay. He stands and closes the book, “Are you here, sent by my master, to relieve me? …I have been here for so long…” Erevin steps forward and speaks, “Yes, we are here to relieve you…” as he draws his bow. The figure growls at him, “You are not from my master… You stink of the living!” Posy charges in, gashing him open with a mighty swing! Shadow beings peel off the corners of the room and move in, sapping out strength from those they touch… Weapons seem to go right through them, but Erevin is able to fight them with his new ghostly bow. Yuki throws vials of holy water to us to fight them. Thorn uses his dagger port to move to fend off one of the creatures, keeping it away from Posy as she battles on with the figure in the room. Little children with bestial skull faces, carrying little stuffed dolls, known as Attic Whisperers, fade into the room, they tug on Erevin’s and Mally’s sleeve and hold a finger to their lips… and suck out their voices. Lightning lashes out from the robed specter and drops Yuki to the floor in an ashy heap. Wren gets her up with her new gifted wand. Posy finally drops the specter, leaving us to fight off the shadow beings and the children who are now chewing on people bringing on fatigue. One bites Posy, bringing her out of her rage and into exhaustion… Worn, exhausted, barely able to move anymore… we bring the last of them down, and the library goes quiet. A brazier stands eerily by the desk with green fire. Holy water doesn’t seem to put it out. Erevin uses the ice rune in his moonblade to shatter the necromantic gem within… BOOM!... it knocks him into the air and to the floor, but he is okay. The spectral monks fade away and the books stop moving.

We search through the books and obtain one of the ones on our list, The Boundary Between Worlds, by the former Queen of Impiltur.

We also find a magic book for each of us to boost a choice stat. Woot!

We find a trap door that Thorn picks open… trapped! He’s poisoned with some sort of non-stop laughter… We go down, Wren dragging the laughing Thorn along with them. Find the rooms that only be the rooms of the Guardians of the Tome.

In Esme’s room, Mally finds a wooden rod of thorns, topped with an emerald (an extend wand ) In Falco’s room, Thorn finds a Ring (of lock picking) In Jerome’s room, Posy finds “the nutcracker” a horned helm (with improved charge) In Raven’s room, Wren finds a chest engraved with “For my beloved Wren”, inside she finds a bone rod with feathers (Rod of Minor Empower Spell ) In Magarite’s room, Erevin finds bracers (of moderate archery) In Avidon’s Room, Yuki finds women’s clothing? "Wahhh! My daddy is a cross-dresser?!" Sunite styled lingerie. (Mantle of Lesser Faith stitched with the initials A.V.)

We also get magic books for everyone to boost a stat of their choice by 1… Woot!

We find a stone room down some stairs with a sarcophagus … large... much larger than human size... but its open and empty. Yuki cleanses and consecrates the area…

We return to Lyrabar.