Mandraiv's Diary 25

We made it to Kaer Maga without further incident where we rendezvoused with the pain priest, his demon woman and the ugly pain priestess we met in Korvosa.  We managed to get a little more info out of them about our quest, and discovered that the point of the trip is to retrieve a sword.  This sword was wielded by a legendary hero named Mandraivus many years ago to slay the draconic source of the queen’s relic, and we are apparently going to need it to kill the queen and seize my throne.

Then it was another one of the gypsy ghost’s irritating predictions of the future, and time to bring the warrior’s woman back to life and head for the castle, apparently held by orcs.  Upon our arrival, we scouted the place carefully and found the outer barbican manned by a few orcs.  Surprise, surprise, surprise.  The castle was built on an island inside the crater of a volcano, surrounded by a lake and with a bridge to a barbican conveniently located on the shore of the lake, on the side we were approaching.  We decided on a surprise attack of the gatehouse  and were all happily sneaking towards the place when four-arms managed to drop three knives simultaneously, with all three hitting a large stone and each other and making quite a racket.  Fortunately, we were close enough that this had little impact on our attack, and we went in.  The fight was an easy one and over quickly, although for some reason we accepted the surrender of one of the orcs.

We interrogated the cowardly orc survivor, gleaning little of value.  Apparently there is a tribe of orcs not too far away, and they send a rotating guard here to ensure that none of the undead dwelling within the castle proper escape.  The ugly priestess of pain asked leave to borrow the orc briefly, but her attentions were cut short when the warrior decided that her fun was “torture” and that we should therefore let the creature go. I can’t see how he didn’t deserve some punishment for daring to fight us, but what can you do?  Not caring that much about his fate, we released him, even allowing him to retain some of the gear he and his companions had used against us.  Of course, this is not a good idea, as he is bound to return with more of his tribe, but then again, they shouldn’t present too much of a problem, provided we don’t encounter them in a particularly vulnerable state.  Sadly, there is a good chance that we will run into them retreating from a tough battle inside the castle against undead, but I guess them’s the breaks.

After watching the orc march off into the distance, we headed across the causeway and into the castle proper.  A few steps onto the bridge saw an unusual magical effect, where the gypsy spirit was sucked out of the deck of cards and was almost sucked away into nothing, but the cleric was able to use his divine powers to save her.  In order to protect ourselves from more of this, we stashed the cards in an extra-dimensional backpack, and soon found that this was inaccessible within the castle.  With a bit of luck we won’t have to hear her ridiculous predictions of the future anymore, but I suspect we’ll find her trapped somehow in the castle, and that she will return to irritate us with her soothsaying once we find Mandraivus’ sword.  We were also, almost immediately after this, attacked by a group of platemail clad skeletons and a skeletal knight.  The knight was pretty tough, but since his allies weren’t the fight was quickly over, and we headed into the castle.

We discovered a murder-hole infested entrance, guarded by giant skeletons.  We prevailed once more, although we found some disturbing effects in the place.  Firstly, it is so infused with undead that when our priest tried to detect their presence he was stunned by the overwhelming response.  Secondly, and far more disturbingly, there is some extra-dimensional shenanigans going on, and I am not able to summon creatures from the outer planes while inside the place or on the bridge leading to it.  This is most disturbing, but I suspect that if I were to stay behind for the rest of the exploration, my leadership of the group would come under question, and I may be unable to claim the prize of my namesake’s sword, which I will need if I am to dispatch the queen and claim my rightful crown.

We withdrew to the barbican to rest, and resumed our quest in the morning.  Disturbingly early in the morning, but I can’t seem to explain to the others that there is no need to start adventuring at the crack of dawn and that the early afternoon is a much more civilised time for it.  I can’t wait until the cleric is capable of casting powerful provisioning and protecting magics and we are forced to break our fast with an hour long feast.  

Our resumed exploring of the castle soon uncovered trouble, with a huge pile of strangely preserved bodies came to life, or at least unlife, and attacked us.  Strangely preserved because the bodies were all dressed as if from a few hundred or maybe even thousand years ago, and yet didn’t stink up the place.  Either way, I don’t think they’ll be animating again, I just hope that they don’t start to smell.

We also encountered a strange undead trap thing, and in the same room the viscous undead spirit of a corpse sitting in the corner.  We defeated the undead spirit and survived the trap, discovering that the armour on the corpse was apparently quite impressive.  Impressive enough, at least, to have thee warrior drooling over it.  Four-arms, of course, was knocked unconscious in the fighting, but we have come to expect this quite regularly and indeed were somewhat surprised that he had remained awake through the last few fights.  I guess his cowardly sneaking around throughout the fight with the orcs paid off.  Maybe he'll repeat the act in future fights and stay awake more because of it.  I doubt it though.  

Somehow our storming of the castle seems to be going very well indeed.  This is starting to give me a bad feeling...