In Hong's world, or, actually, the valley where we are, there are three small kindgoms, I'm from a city in the southern-most kindgom. A volcano has somehow just formed north, just beyond the valley and it's driving monsters of all sorts away from the area, many coming down to the valley.
When we started, the various members had wandered into a tavern. I was just passing through the town. A bard named Derrek was in this tavern, and he offered to any willing to go with him a share of a legendary treasure that's supposed to be hidden on the top of a great sheer cliff known as Heaven's Gate.
The various members of the party. A tall oriental man, a young blond human guy, a male and a female elf, and me. And about a dozen people in the bar followed him, and were lifted up to the top by a bizarre horse-driven elevator the bard set up with the help of the strange asian one.
After everyone had reached the top, everyone kinda split up, and I followed the interesting people. The towns people were a pretty boring lot. We heard a scream of a young girl from beyond the small wooded area, we ran there, and saw a lot of bodies, a girl cowering by a tree, a great winged lizard, severely wounded, and a soldier and a dwarf standing between the wyvern and the girl, and another pre-killed wyvern on the ground.
Well, since I didn't know much about wyvern's, I ran forward, the elves moved forward a bit, the girl shooting with a bow, and the other standing, seeming to protect her. The oriental man and the blond human ran off and around to the side. We attacked, and succeeded in taking the great beast down. The elven girl succeeded in hitting the fighter in the back (good way to start a working relationship. Go David! haha). It was funny, sue me.
Well, after we cleared all that up, introducing ourselves to the wierd dwarf, the girl, princess Fiona, and Cormell, her guard, we went back to check on the townsfolk. They were good and burned. Er, well, Felix and I determined that they were most likely all grouped together and someone had cast Burning Hands on them. The bard was nowhere to be found. Nice and sweet of him, wasn't it? So we left the way that the princess told us was a lot easier.
Magical teleport to the base of the cliff. Truly interesting. It would seem that those who had once lived in the ruins on top of Heaven's Gate were quite interesting folk. We went with Fiona and Cormell back to their castle, and talked with their king. He rewarded us for the rescue of his daughter, and told us of a wandering swordsman, and of the newly formed volcano to the north, and an oracle beyond that. He knew me, or, my family at least. It's not a large kingdom, and the Harlan family stands out somewhat.
Felix of mysterious nature (I figured he either had no memory, or lost it somehow. Out of character, S told me that he was actually a summoned person, he HAD nothing to remember until about a month ago.) wanted most defintely to see the oracle. The oriental one wished to go to the volcano, the elves wanted to go to the oracle also. I wanna see the volcano. It sounds neat, and anything that can scare stuff like wyverns has gotta be interesting. Dunno what the shortie wanted to do. (Chris wasn't there, so Hong was running him.)
But since the way to the oracle passed the volcano, we all left the same direction for now. Should note, the party doesn't really get on all that well. The elves are too quiet and keep talking to each other privately. The oriental one and Felix seem to get on alright, both being strangers to this land. The dwarf I dunno about until we started riding, and he couldn't ride quite as fast, and I laughed at him, and he started throwing rocks at me. None hit, and I was going to throw stuff back, but it'd probably kill him. I can throw pretty good.
We rode back to the castle, and spoke with King Hasse, he told us that if we wished to see the oracle, we should first go to a town not far from it, as priests there were the only ones who knew the final path. He then gave us a pass that would allow us to pass the army blockades, and a box that would teleport messages from us, back to him, and then told us about an ancient tower that appeared around 100 years ago not far from that town, and odd noises coming from the tower. And so we set off, and got caught in a swarm of ants eating it's way through a farm's crops. After a lot of confusion, we figured out how to kill them, and Sun got several farmers to run off to other farms to warn them, and we continued on.
And then we got ambushed by a bunch of three foot frogs, which we made short work of, and then a group of Kobolds surrounded by a short thin humanoid, we made even shorter work of the Kobolds... damned half hit-die creatures...
We eventually got to the town, and found that the guide was just gone with a group to the oracle, and wouldn't be back for about a week.
The next day we went off to a tower outside of town, rumored to have suddenly appeared there long ago. When we got there, and ventured into the ruined dark tower, we saw a small pedestal, and stairs around the inside of the otherwise empty room, circling up out of sight.
Sun found a tiny hole in the top of the pedestal, so he stuck a pin in, and a small emblem on the top clicked up. Nothing else happened. So we took four hours to walk all the way up, around and around to the top of the tower. Where we kicked a door in and found an equally ruined room.
Nothing here, I left. Felix and Rocky came downstairs again with me, and we fiddled with the emblem until the pedestal, and the floor around it started to rise, and then suddenly fall and crash through the floor.
Eventually everyone got down there, Felix, Rocky and Miranda somewhat worse for wear. Down through a repetitive mazelike passageway we found a room full of old skeletons, and a glowing green orb in the center. Rocky touched it, and it almost drained his life.
uh, so we went down another floor, and found a room with skeletons chained to the walls, which then came to life. Which then again shortly died. :) Sue us, we kill things.
The next floor down led us to a minor Living Wall, which after some fiddling about, we managed to defeat. Beyond the wall was a box, which sorta foolishly, I walked up and opened. 4 hands dropped onto me. They uh, died. :) Inside the box was a simple gold ring, which was apparently magical, but unknown nature. I kept it. I think it looks nice.
About all done here, we went back to the town, and ran into our old friend, Derrek the bard in a tavern. Rather hastily, I walked up and smashed his face into the table, so he would come along quietly to turn him over for killing those people. Of course, being too quick to ask, he actually -had- turned himself in, and was waiting for authorities to come get him.
Oh well... After a short standoff, I took off, and Felix had to pay a fine for causing trouble. I paid him back though. And soooo we had to get rooms in a new in. hehe.
We waited the rest of the time, and then were on our way to the Oracle. Late the next day we arrived at a small cliff going up, and something burst -out- of the top of the cliff, some sort of man who landed behind us, then bounced off giggling and laughing.
The monk who took us there opened a portal into the cliff and ran in, and so the rest of us followed him, after a distance we arrived in a larger clearing in the rock strewn with bodies of other monks, and the unconscious form of a young woman. One of the men was still alive, and the monk cast something on the woman, encasing her in a blue field. He told us that she had been poisoned mentally and was dying, and that we needed to return a letter to the monks in the town.
We stayed the night in there and then hightailed it back to the town, giving them the note and then were left standing there for a while before another monk came back and offered us rooms for the night.
In the morning, we talked to the monks again, and they told us of a flower that would be able to restore the mind of the Oracle to the body, but that they knew only vaguely where it was, but that they would give us a ship and crew that could take us there. We asked how long it would take us to get there. Three months to the island, give or take, they said.
Rocky passed out.
The rest of us prepared for the next 6 months at sea, and then when we were ready, set out to sea. It was a largely uneventful 6 or 7 weeks before in the early morning the ship was attacked by about 20 bipedal sea creatures. Much of the crew was killed or wounded, but all of the Sahuagin were killed.
The quiet sailing continued on for another week or so before a great storm blew in and broke up the ship. We managed to lash ourself to a large section of the ship, still floating, but before long we all passed out.
We awoke slowly on a small beach, covered in salt and feeling like hell in general. We explored the island and at it's heights, found a large crater, floating above it a small white marble building. I ran up the wooden plank up to the building and stepped inside. A forcefield appeared behind me and I was standing on a small brick in a room full of lightning, a pedestal standing in the middle.
On each of the three sides of the stone were three others, each with an arcane symbol, seemingly random words. Not waiting, I stepped on one. It hurt, but I was transported to another stone, and the forcefield dropped, Felix stepped on that one, and the field appeared again. Still confused and impatient, I stepped on another symbol, it didn't hurt, and I was transported again. Felix chose a different symbol, the one in the direction of the second stone, and he appeared on that stone unhurt. Rocky stepped on the first stone. This continued on, Miranda leading, Felix and Rocky on the next stones behind for another few stones, some hurting me, some not, before Hakuyru cast Detect Magic outside the door. 4 lines of characters appeared, corresponding to the tiles on the floor. It took another few stones of experimenting and a few more of my random guesses to decipher the pattern.
When I finally reached the pedestal, the lightning vanished and a floor appeared. I grinned as I reached forward and pulled a petal off the flower. A spectral woman appeared, asking why we wanted the petals, and we told her why and she agreed to let us take them. She knew we were trapped on the island, and offered us a way home, if Felix agreed to stay with her to learn from him.
Felix, still new to the world and eager to learn from someone like her readily agreed to this, and so a sphere of light appeared around the other five of us, and flew off back towards the town where the Oracle was dying.
A half day of flight in this magical sphere, it's speed began to falter, wavering in height slightly. It started to crack and the sphere veered off course and crashed us into the beach of a small island. We smashed at very high speed into a whoooooole lotta crabmen. Only six survived the impact, and a struggle ensued.
During the fight a halfling ran out of the trees and killed two of the giant crabs.
After the fighting was over, the halfling introduced himself as Hokfur Lockless. He'd rode to this island on the back of a Roc, who flew into a cliff on the far side of the island. He was hiding in that cave and watched us crash onto the ground.
We explored the island somewhat, and happened upon a long abandoned village. Finding nothing there but a very pure well and a lot of dust and dirt, we left and explored the forest of the island.
Hours into the woods, we started to smell a foul stench. It grew and grew for a long time, and we were ambushed by two Harpies. Fighting them off without too great trouble, we continued on and came upon an old church.
Inside was filled with goo. Stinky, ugly goo. And two more of the winged women. Several of us were badly injured in the fighting, but we ventured into the lower levels.
Finding an abandoned level of bedrooms and dusty beds, we managed to find a third level. A garden of sorts, the plants spewed a nasty pollen out at us, paralyzing Hakuru and Rocky for a while. At the far end of that floor was a door. Inside were three sets of two iron statues with spears crossed blocking the passage.
Anyone who stepped forward was struck by one of them, as discovered by me when I climbed on one and drew on it's face... We struggled for hours to pass the guardians, and at one point Rocky broke one of the spears, resulting in the statue chasing him around the building for uhm, around 4 hours.
Eventually Hakuru and Sun went and searched through the Harpy goo. (EEEEEEWWW!) They found a few things, and two bracers, a ship in a bottle and a carving. They puzzled out how to get the guardians to allow passage. At the far end of that room was a door leading to another which contained a map of the entire world.
Satisfied of our success, we went outside and Sun killed the golem chasing Rocky and then we returned to the old village and prepared for the journey back to the valley where we started so we could bring the petals of the Flower to the Oracle.
We left the island, and sailed in a halfassed manner towards the city we left from. A few weeks into the voyage, the elves refusing to go belowdecks, and the dwarf refusing to come up, a big... er, squid thing climbed up on decks and attacked. (shuffles for his MM... oooh! it was a Morkoth. hmm. wow.) Well uh, it actually died really quickly, and then the rest of our voyage was uneventful until we arrived at cliffs.
We sailed along them a few hours until we reached a port, and turned out to be the city we left in. After a few errands we got new horses and left, in the late afternoon we came upon eight ogres chasing a bunch of farmers, and so, natch, we stopped and fought with them. A fairly long and spread out fight, Hockfur again fell from damage from the giant men.
Dispatching eventually all eight, we heard yet more screams from the farm houses, charging in (okay, I waited until the ranged weapons had gone first. sheesh...) we found five more ogres tearing down one of the buildings. We actually made quick work of these five, and I was proclaimed a combat monster again. (How can you talk that way to such a nice little noble girl?) Hey, I'm not the one with a +4 to damaaaage! I think I just do more because I run into battle with wild abandon... (What she lacks in sanity she makes up for in.. er, insanity?)
And again, more screams from the field. Finding another seven ogres spread out over several acres of fields, ripping apart and eating cattle (mono-headed brahmin!) they came at us only one or two at a time... oh well.
We finished there and settled up with the farmers, and then continued on to the forests.
After three or four attempts to pass into the forest, we realized we'd forgotten to get one of the guides... so Sun went back and got one, but we quickly recieved word from a messenger that the only guide had gone south to a village.
We all went back to the city and then on to the village, where we found the guide severely wounded. The next day we headed off and ventured through the forests and back to the Oracle.
Giving the petals of the Flower to the monks there we watched them prepare the potion and feed it to the Oracle. Informing us that it would be several days before there was noticable effect on her.
If there's on thing life has taught me, it's that troubling chaos follows me everywhere I go.
