Book 2: Notes

Dear diary,

With my book stolen, my lodgings destroyed and a fight with my teammates I thought my adventuring days were over. However I have learned that when life gives you lemons it is best to make a nice refreshing drink with those lemons by adding a lot of sugar and using a prestidigitation spell to cool it down. With nothing to lose I unleashed the awesome forces of wizardry to rain fire down on a band of orcs who had slaughtered a defenseless dwarven monastery. It seems that the council was right to send us on this mission for the ruffians had attacked the temple through a tunnel unknown to the inhabitants.

As we neared the tunnel at the bottom of the monastery we found a horde of orcs ready to attack us. Even an orc shaman dedicated to their dark and horrible god was present. It was a long arduous fight and the presence of an almost sentient roaring flame led to the near destruction of the party. Many of our tough fighters were laid unconscious by the viciousness of the fight. Emtih and Aurel were at death's door but with the aid of Corrin and myself we did not lose them. Unfortunately someone had to go tell Borden's Watch that the tunnels had been infiltrated so Emtih and And have gone. Hopefully things work out alright for them.

And that brings us here. Resting after dealing with something orcs and just about to go into a corridor. I think I can see a statue at the end of hall, it looks familiar some how.. anyways let me go back for a minute.

After we had destroyed the orcs in the temple we met a dwarven paladin named Kalad. He's the one who told us about the “Vents” being over run by orcs. At first I thought it wassn't that much of a problem since the Farstriders had gone there and a party like that would have no problems dealing with a bunch of orcs. However we did go and it was a tough journey I had mentioned, using my knowledge of underground caverns from Epic Tales #109: Mysteries of the Usurperious Underdark that all forks in underground passages can be navigated using a secret code: Stalagmites? This way is right. Red Fungi? Go this way to die. But it didn't seem to work, most likely some dwarven trick to confuse experienced dungeoneers like myself. Anyways the place was very hot and sulfur and toxic gases overwhelmed me most of the time but everyone else seemed to be okay. Eventually though we met with a sorcerer from the Farstriders, Atherton, who seems to be fairly powerful (which he would have to be to be part of the Farstriders). I'm sure with him helping us we'll be okay.

Emtih's Journal

You know, sometimes I wonder about the folks who build rickety stairs in dark caverns. I mean, what really were they thinking? 'Hey, lets build a long set of stairs that's easy to fall off from in a very dark cavern. That'll be great! It'll keep the monk population down.'

Well, none of us fell off, but a few of the orcs sure did. They used the darkness to their advantage and left us attacking the darkness trying to respond. A well placed sunrod however, lifted the shroud of darkness that surrounded us and lit the place up nice and good. Its pretty crazy how much light comes from one of those sunrods it makes fights like this much easier.. for us that is.

Anyways, it looks like there's one more room in this area, Arel said its a forge area and there's a whole wack of orcs ahead waiting for us. We'll be throwing caution to the wind and charging in head first and seeing how things turn out.

Why oh why couldn't we just stay in the forest where its nice and safe?

-Emtih Tnod