Editing Game-Summaries:4/11/2020 Recollections (section)

==Recollections by [[Tallulah]]==
The time had come for Jeroy and I to return to the Temple of the Moon to complete the next legacy weapon ritual for Jeroy’s Bloodcrier and my Blackbow.  Accompanying us was Ford, Dereth, Rezik and Wethril of course.  Wethril and I navigated the group North to The Great Waste—I’m sure appreciating picking up those cartography skills now.  We travelled easily and as the Temple came into view, buried upside down in the sand, it felt somehow more formidable than it had the last time we were here.

To enter the Temple we had to drop down to the ceiling with the staircase above our heads.  We all managed to get inside OK, Dereth was a bit clumsy but no harm done.  Dereth cast Telepathic Bond so we could communicate in silence and I continued to map our route along the way.  Wethril and I took the lead with Jeroy, Rezik, and Dereth in the middle and Ford bringing up the rear.  We wound our way along the ceiling of the temple going deeper and deeper underground.  With each level we descended, the air got darker and more damp and dank.

As we approached another turn, I heard a rock scraping and dragging against other rock and communicated to the group we’d need to pass slowly.  I cast Pass Without a Trace as we crept up to the corner.  Dereth’s toe met a rock as he moved which skittered ahead clacking along the ceiling—the rock scraping noise stopped.  I held my breath and listened…nothing.  Dereth decided to send his owl familiar Gaewynn around the corner which reported a large golem creature made of boulders and wearing armor still as a statue.  We called out to it that “we mean no harm” but it still did not respond or move at all.  Carefully we rounded the corner and crept passed the enormous stone statue/creature.  It was eerie and I think the whole group felt it; Rezik cast an Alarm to be triggered by any movement in this area after we’d left and we moved on into the dark.

Down, down, down we went.  About 8 hours after we’d encountered the stone golem Rezik’s alarm went off.  We were certainly on alert now so as we approached the stairwell to the 6<sup>th</sup> level down, Gaewynn scouted ahead.  There was nothing visible to deter us moving forward but as I dropped down to the 6<sup>th</sup> level and entered the hallway I got the feeling we were being watched and soon we all felt it.  Moving carefully and deliberately forward I walked right into an invisible wall!  With True Sight Dereth saw the Force Cage surrounding us.  Magical symbols appeared on the floor and as I examined the rock wall in front of me I noticed a tiny pock mark in the wall.  Next thing we knew the entire wall was covered in green gems that seem to blink back into stone when we interacted with them.  We didn’t have much time to marvel at these gem eyes as the walls on either side of us began to close in around us.  Ford, noticing a pattern in the symbols on the floor, was able to unlock the Force Cage and with moments to spare we bolted ahead as the walls closed in behind us.

That was entirely too close and certainly enough excitement for one day.  We set up camp for the night and I fell fast asleep against Wethril’s shoulder but awoke suddenly a few hours later as walls were closing in around me.  It took me several seconds to get my bearings in the dark, musty chamber and realize it was naught but a bad dream.  I took a long stretch, gave Weth a couple scratches around his big ear and glanced around at my companions who I felt incredibly lucky to have to my back.  I fell back to sleep for a couple hours and when we were packing up to move on I decided to express my gratitude for the group with an inspiring speech to carry us forward for the day ahead.

Shortly after beginning our second day of adventure we came across a large antechamber.  On the floor above us was a circular portal glowing green and bathing the chamber in weird greenish light; on either side of the portal were 2 steel prisms attached to the ground that appeared to have been broken open, remnants of the cages lay around us on the celing.  We set about trying to determine how to proceed.  Rezik sent a rock with a string tied around it through the portal—it returned intact though warm.  With nowhere else to go but forward, Rezik and Jeroy used a rope attached to Jeroy’s immovable rod to allow us to climb up into the portal.

Once through the portal nothing but a stone wall lay behind us.  The air was dark and dense and the pressure caused an intense ache in my head.  Around us were glass orbs of various sizes.  Upon investigation it appeared that there were spells written on the inside of the orbs though much too long and complex to make sense of here, Ford carried about harvesting mushrooms and as I paid attention to our strange new environment I sensed air moving in and out of the chamber—seemed an awful lot like breathing.  I scouted ahead in the tunnel; the breathing stopped and I could have sworn I saw a rock move and disappear from sight.

We pressed forward and eventually came across a large rock creature resembling the statue we encountered the day before.  Rezik approached announcing that we had only come to explore.  The Earth Magus replied in a low, rumbling language none of us could understand.  Dereth cast tongues and repeated Rezik’s words.  The Earth Magus rumbled “you will not take Zaratan”.  Understandably puzzled, Dereth inquired further about Zaratan but to no avail.  As the Earth Magus became aware of Jeroy it exclaimed, “hey, that’s mine” and suddenly Jeroy’s Bloodcrier was in his hands!  As this was happening 4 smaller (though far from small) rock creatures flanked me and Wethril from behind.  The Earth Magus stomped its feet and the ground shook—the battle was on.

Wethril and I attacked the creatures in our immediate vicinity—it was clear these foes were going to be difficult to defeat with arrows and teeth though it didn’t slow us down.  Again, grateful for our friends: Rezik slowed the smaller creatures and attacked with a fireball, Dereth wielded Excaliber, Jeroy, enraged, went full barbarian with Soulmate and his shield and Ford sneak attacked as he does best.  Meanwhile, the Earth Magus created allies by tearing off pieces of rock from his shoulders which grew into other enemies for us to contend with.  With a shove from Jeroy’s shield all the crystals in the rock monsters began to glow and we were bathed in orange light.  The Earth Magus stomped its enormous stone foot knocking most of us to the ground and held Jeroy firmly in his grasp.  Rezik, still on his feet, cast Magic Missile and Jeroy was able to break free and give the giant another shove.  The large rock creature began to pick up rocks and hurtle them towards my companions—somehow, Ford managed to catch one saving Jeroy from its trajectory.  I cast Lighting Arrow at the Earth Magus with my friends far enough away from it to avoid getting caught in the friendly fire and Rezik cast Disintegrate which certainly seemed to have an impact on the creature but did not disintegrate it.  With one final enraged blow Jeroy swung his trusty ax and the Earth Magus turned to dust on the floor.  He sifted through the dust and, further incensed when he did not find Bloodcrier, took out his rage on the final rock creature destroying it leaving us to catch our breath.  In the moments after the battle Jeroy came to realize that Bloodcrier was, in fact, on his belt.  We had unlocked the Legacy of Bhazad Khrar.

In the silence that typically follows a battle, we could still hear and feel the breathing from deeper in the cavern.  We approached an enormous, gaping maw with dirt strewn and piled all around it.  Dereth inquired cautiously, “Zaratan?” and the being exhaled toward us—everything around me went hazy and I succumbed to the darkness.

A short bit later I awoke to find that Rezik and Jeroy had also fallen unconscious as a result of our encounter with Zaratan and though Ford and Dereth had not collapsed, they seemed somehow different.  Once we’d all come to, Rezik decided to try to learn more from this being and moved the loose earth around its head in order to reveal its eyes.  Rezik locked eyes with Zaratan and entered a trance briefly until he collapsed, lifeless on the floor.  Rushing to his side we discovered he was in fact dead until Dereth could revive him.  Despite this severe consequence and much to our disbelief, Jeroy decided he might be better suited to the job of communicating with Zaratan and also locked eyes with it.  Sadly for Jeroy, he fell victim to the elemental’s stare immediately and also needed to be revived by Dereth.

As satisfied as we could be that we had learned all there was to learn here, we collected a few of the glass orbs in the hopes of deciphering the spell scrolls inscribed on them and returned to the Magistery.