This is Why I Hate Dogs

Well we finally started up the stairs of this old house and I have one thing on my mind, “is it time to go home yet!!!” On the second floor of this hour of fun, this is incidentally the third story of the building. Not that, that was too important other than the fact that if we planned this a little better and thought about it we would have known that two of the three doors would have contained a fire elemental, but I digress. The orc and I opened the single door on the one side and began to investigate it. It turns out that the room was an old kitchen and contains what looked like imps that were shooting ice at us. As we began to fight them off everyone else from our party barreled into the room, it seems that in their infinite wisdom they had released the fire elemental from its room. So we found ourselves flanked on both sides, being attacked by ice monsters on one side and fire on the other, ironic huh. So I cast and illusion of an ice wall to keep the elemental at bay, whilst the remainder of the party dealt with the imps. After what seemed like an eternity they completed the task and we were safe. One problem remained, where’s the wolf. Apparently it was sitting outside enjoying itself. My plan was to let the thing fend for itself, but that wasn’t good enough, the selective druid had to go get his master. So it was up to Roywyn and me to keep the fire elemental at bay, while the idiot went to retrieve it. Once that was accomplished we were free to head up to the next room. Unfortunately my gamble that the fire elemental wouldn’t follow didn’t work out so well and we were forced to fight it. After a while we managed to defeat it and are safe to rest awhile before continuing. As I sit here starring at Roywyn as she sleeps, I again think of one thing, “is it time to go home yet!!! No it’s not what she wants, so it’s not what I want.”

Fire and Ice

Mirtul 30, Mysterious Tower

I decided to go ahead and wear that magic ring, though I can’t tell if it does anything yet. We all headed up the steps (accept for the wolf, who continued to sit outside the main doors). We found three doors— what fun! I could tell my companions were excited about seeing what lie behind them, as Windy and Kor’tac opened one at nearly the same moment that Seren opened another. Cold blasted out through the one Windy and Kor’tac opened, and Seren caught on fire as she hastily closed her door! I ran over to Seren, who was casting a water spell over herself, but not managing to get the fire put out. I rolled her around in the resulting puddle as Mishklo healed her quickly. She was upset that she’d let out a fire elemental, and I was about to congratulate her on her quick thinking by closing the door, when the door exploded in a shower of burning splinters. The three of us ran across the hall to where Windy and the orc were.

Not much better— they were fighting a bunch of ice mephits in a kitchen area flanked by more doors. The mephits stayed up around the ceiling of this (very cold!) room, blasting us with shards of ice. Windy and I assessed the entire situation— he put up the illusion of a block of ice in the door to keep the fire elemental out, while I made fire appear to crawl across the ceiling toward the mephits. It worked well enough too— the fire elemental was obviously frustrated by the apparent icy barricade, and I was able to herd all the mephits to one corner, where Kor’tac did a great deal of damage to them. It was hard to concentrate; their attacks were bitterly cold, but we were all able to shake that off once the last one was defeated. After that, Windy kept up the wall of ice while the rest of us shot the fire creature though it. It decided it had enough and wandered off towards the stairs down, at which point Mishklo remembered he’d left his wolf unprotected!

The panicked druid ran out of the room and lured the fire elemental back towards us! Windy created another wall of ice, though with the druid running back and forth, it was amazing that the fire elemental didn’t realize it was an illusion. I begged Seren, who has some gift with animals, to call the wolf up the other set of steps, but either it didn’t hear her, or didn’t care.

I did the only thing I could think of to help— I attempted to fascinate the fire creature by juggling balls of “fire” while Mishklo ran past it to retrieve the wolf. The wolf didn’t want to budge, so he had to drag it past the elemental on the return trip. The entire time, the fire elemental just stood there, entranced. That was fun! When the druid was safely out of harm’s way, I dropped the act and made a mad dash for the chilly kitchen. When we were all safe, Windy put an ice illusion in front of the door. The rest of us swarmed through a door leading up to the top floor. We found ourselves in an ornate (but dusty) living room full of neat furniture. I called to Windy to come up and see as I started to poke around. When he thought the fire elemental was no longer bothering with us, he ran up to join us— and then we realized the wolf was still down in the kitchen. We got him back with the group and closed the door to the living room, turning to a door leading to a very nice bedroom, also apparently long unused. As we looked around in this room, we noticed a glow from the living room— the fire elemental decided to bother with us after all! We were trapped in a room with no other exits—if the fire elemental didn’t burn us alive, the resulting smoke from burning furnishings would kill us. I made an illusion of wave of water flow out of the bedroom— it was effective in keeping the elemental out in the other room, but, even though I thought Kor’tac was concentrating on fighting the creature and facing away from me, the wave managed to knock him over. My illusions must be better than I thought! He got up, grumbling, and continued to beat on the fire creature while Mishklo healed any and all return fire. We all shot at the thing, hoping that our bolts weren’t providing it with fuel. Eventually, we defeated the elemental, but it took a lot of effort!

Now, I was going to identify some of these magic items while some of my friends took turns sleeping in this bedroom, but I guess I nodded off right after pulling out the scroll I was going to use. I wonder why Windy didn’t wake me up to take a shift watching? I had a very weird dream: I was me, but I was much smaller, and flying, and I could see myself walking a dozen or so feet below. The “me” below put an arm out, and I was flying towards it when I woke up, slightly disoriented. Now, where did that scroll get to?