Heroes of the Mist

Gathering ourselves and then moving on, we encountered a blind man sitting around a camp fire. Stryfe explained to us that this was Christophe, a seer. We approached him and asked for news, to which he spewed off something about the palace and the occupants of this land. We thanked him and were about to move on, until twelve dark shapes rose up around us. Christophe informed us that there was a price to pay for his knowledge: he desired a life in return. Feldon quickly suggested one of my guard dogs, which I wasn't too pleased about. Jackson instead rushed him and smote him with one blow. The twelve apparitions vanished, and we were quickly making tracks away from there.

The rest of the journey to the palace was quite trippy. It is always night in this land, or rather twilight. On the way we met lots of talking grass, strange creatures, and beautiful faeries and women. Perhaps owing to the fact that I was a curiousity, several of these charming creatures appeared quite enamored with me. When I have more time I will definitely consider returning to this odd realm! Finally however, we made it to the Malachite palace, and entered its great gate. The palace is about seven stories high, with four towers one on each corner, in the middle of which resides the eternal flame, a huge bonfire that reaches past even the height of the palace.

After a close brush with a glass golem, thanks to Aven's poking around, we decided to head straight for the top. There we could finally reach the eternal flame, though of course now we had to find a way to retrieve the crown. Aerin borrowed my magic sword WoodHold, and after Feldon cast a Resist Fire spell on her, jumped into the fire and fell seven stories to the bottom. There she used WoodHold to fly around and find the crown, and then fly back out to us. That's when we found out we had been spied on ever since we entered the palace, as our own shadows materialized into shadow elves and attacked us. The fight was close, and I very nearly met my maker again. My own shadow formed into the shape of Leilo, who used to be a companion of ours. Though I cannot be sure it was her, I fear it is true. In the end, a Web and Fireball spell finished off my adversaries, or so I thought. Looking through the smoking blast afterwards I could not find their bodies, and can only guess that they somehow escaped me. The monk among us managed to single-handedly finish off the captain of these shadow elves, and from his corpse took his mighty scimitar. Feldon managed to claim the rights to it, though in the end lent it to Weylyn for it had no sword of its own. We now push onwards to the Obsidian Gate, which we hope to close forever.

As we were making tracks, a group of small faeries riding foxes appeared and were clearly sent to stop us. The riders chanted a war cry that confused our little monk and drove him mad. He was soon tearing into us instead of the enemy, and I very quickly fell to his blows. The others were able to subdue him eventually, as well as kill off our measly adversaries. After that encounter, we decided to find shelter for the night, which Stryfe kindly led us to (after first demanding two gems in return). He brought us to a small settlement of shrew-like creatures that had an apparent gift for tinkering and creating small mechanical devices. I decided to head to my room immediately and rest. In the morning, I identified the crown that we had retrieved earlier, and found it to contain extraordinary powers of mind influence. I can't wait to try it out on some of my companions.

As told by Jackson Thrash

Lessee... Where to begin. Oh, uh, this is Jax, heh. Um... Hey, that was ORCS I was partyin' wit', not goblins! An' dammit, I probably got the best damn sense of humor in this whole damn party! Lousy sonuva...

Well, anyways, this last stretch of our time in the Shadow Rift was SO not even cool. Okay, we had to climb down this like 500 foot cliff, where I almost fell TWICE, and the little freaky monk fell, for real. Him an' Tanus took a nasty spill when Tanus dove for him, but Krellin was lucky he did, 'cause he woulda been totally toaster-caked. So when we finally got down, we were in this like wasteland. It was creepy, right after bein' in trippy land.

So we're walkin', an' we're walkin', an' suddenly the ground falls out from beneath us, an' we're in this like coloseum/arena-lookin' thing, an' Jory starts shoutin', "Okay, we'll move the damn horses!" An' I'm just kinda creeped out, so we sit there for a minute, an' nothin' happens, so we go to the wall to climb out, an' these little faces poke out an' frown at us, an' I'll be damned if I didn't just wanna poke 'em in the eye, or somethin', heh. So then these li'l people step outta the wall, an' they got like pick-axes, an' I was like, hmm, maybe we should get ready to fight, but the freaky li'l monk started talkin' to 'em, an' it turned out that they were anti-Loht, so we talked wit' them for a while. The Dwarf got in real good wit' 'em. He even gave up his beloved Two-handed axe to their leader as a gift. Well, it wasn't SO selfless, hehehhe it wasn't like HE was gonna use it, what wit' only havin' one hand, heh.

So anyways, they showed us to this tunnel that would let us skip like a nasty swamp, which was cool, swamp gas makes me sneeze. So we finally got to the Darkenheights, or somethin', an' we found out that we had to climb a MOUNTAIN MADE OF OBSIDIAN! (Tanus: btw, Jackson is a were-tiger who is vulnerable to obsidian) An' I was like, NO way. But I figured we'd better go ahead an' keep goin', it was kinda the whole quest. I'm very much pissed off at the freaky li'l monk, an' I'm gonna kick his ass some day, 'cause he freakin' taunted me the whole way up the mountain, like, "Gee, Jax, how you feelin' wit' all this obsidian, hmm? Gee, guess it must suck to be around all this jagged, pointy, sharp obsidian, hmm? How's that eye feelin'?" I swear I'm gonna kick his ass. So we carefully hiked up the mountain until we came to a huge sheer cliff face. The freaky li'l monk was like, "Hey, I'm the strongest, since you got your girdle stolen, so someone fly me up to the top and I'll pull everone else up." So while they all argued the physics of the whole procedure, the dwarf handed me a potion of Etherealness, an' I floated up the rest of the way to almost the top an' waited for them to catch up. So as soon as I solidified, I started praying, an' right as I finished, a damn rock slide collapsed on me. I didn't even hear it comin', 'cause I was prayin', ya know? I got the worst damn luck. So add an ear to that missin' body-part list, 'cause I lost half mine to that cave-in. I REALLY hate this place.

So after they caught up from climbin' an' fightin' all kinda nasty undeads, we went into the place where the gate was, an' fought wit' Loht, but he opened the gate an' let some damn crazy dozen-legged freak through, which kicked his ass, an' all of ours, too, heh. We were lucky that Tanus was able to get the crown in, 'cause that closed the gate an' saved us. So Aerin grabbed Loht's sword while he was out, an' we made our escape, back to the Fracture. I walked out wit' a neat new helmet, an' Aerin was all paranoid. There was a few other changes, but I don't really remember what they were. As usual, we didn't remember anythin'. So we went to see Maeve, an' she fixed the people of Briggadarrow, an' the Dwarf, too, 'cause he couldn't eat nothin' but faerie food. Maeve wants Tanus's body, for some reason, an' she also doesn't want us to take the sword, but too bad for her, heh. We need it. She told Stryfe that he had to go wit' Aerin an' guard her, an' make sure the sword got returned, or she'd have him killed, so I guess we're stuck wit' him for a while, heh. Well, tha's all I got. An' I have plenty of sense of humor, god dammit!!!

As told by Tanus

Hmm... I might have to re-evaluate my "open" policy about letting people write in my journal. I've never seen such atrocious spelling! It definetly matches his personality however (grin). The last part of the Shadow Rift was indeed as chaotic as Jackson described it, though I don't see why he thought Aerin becoming paranoid was anything out of the ordinary (isn't she always?). Lady Maeve was VERY grateful, and I guess in all the excitement I kind of forgot to give her back her signet ring. Just gives me all the more reason to come back and serve as her consort (heh).

We all headed off for Remma's place, and were trying to figure out what to do next. She informed us that we now had in our possession one of the items we required (the sword of Loht) to bring the land of Akken back to Toril. However, we will also need a personal possession of Ziinnj's, and only then should we bring the two items to the birth place of Ravenloft (namely Barovia). She called in a favor, and was able to get some of her fellow Vistani to transport us to Ziinnj's domain.

Once there, we set out for the city of Akken, which we found still bravely fending off Ziinnj's minions (rather incredible really). Feldon introduced us to a friend of his, Momotar or something like that (Mommy's Boy?), another priest of Xvim like himself. For some strange reason this guy instantly developed a hatred for me, and we had a couple of intense moments between us. Actually make that between me, Moldering-Tar, Feldon, and the little freaky monk who came to my defense. I don't know why we keep picking up ruffians and then wonder why they back-stab us later.

We had a short meeting with Lord Akken, who informed us of the general direction of Ziinnj's abode. The next day we set out, after first disguising ourselves as a bunch of chaos warriors and fiends (which was surprinsingly not that hard to do). When we approached the perimeter of Ziinnj's encampment, Aerin was able to procure us passage for a small fee (Yugoloths are so predictable). Proceeding onwards led us to a huge crater, with tunnels honeycombing the sides. We picked a tunnel at random and tried our best to keep moving downwards, figuring that Ziinnj would be at the bottom of this (muhaha, I love puns). As fate would have it, we passed Tara and Youri on the way down, the dark Vistani who had stolen two of magical items a couple of weeks ago.

They hadn't recognized us at first, but Hate-Master (that's his title, I swear) Momotar thew a rock at one of them out of habit (yes, he does this on occasion), and they did a huge double-take. Youri immediately skampered off to warn the rest of the place while Tara tried to hold us back. We eventually managed to knock her out, and in the mean time Aerin had left after Youri. While the others were debating what to do with Tara, me and Feldon's bed buddy Momotar spotted a group of large Yugoloths down the hall. He blocked off their retreat by shaping the stone behind them to close off the tunnel, while I unleashed a lightning bolt. While it did prove successful, and several of them actually got caught twice by the rebounding lightning bolt, it also barely fazed them. Jackson told us to flee while he would hold them off. Several of us in the group flat out refused, so I cast a web spell in front of us while Mouthering Ted cast an area affecting darkness spell. Now having no choice, the group fled. I wasn't thinking too logically that day, and after the Yugoloths had cleared the web I instead flew over them in the safety of the darkness. I was now stranded by myself.

I wandered aimlessly for quite a while, until I heard a feral growl that sounded a lot like Jackson. I found Jackson in tiger form tearing into the rest of the group, obviously out of his mind. While I helped out the rest of the group in fending off Jackson (well maybe I was doing more that just fending off) Weylyn picked up Tara's body and threw it in front of Jackson, who promptly devoured it. Every one kind of just stopped, some in disgust, and when Jackson finally finished his meal he fell asleep and transformed back into humanoid form, now bleeding profusely. We healed him and brought him with us as we continued downwards. I asked him about the whole incident later but he didn't seem too eager to talk about it.