We entered another room, this time with a taller ceiling. Inside were two stitched together monstrosities. We (meaning Ghelt) dealt with them as quickly as possible, though we found that they seemed to be immune to magic, and had an extreme strength. After healing ourselves (it is still unnerving watching Drusilia stab people to heal them), headed up the stairs yet again, only to be attacked by a pair of wraiths. Drusilia destroyed them both, and we continued up to an extremely tall room.

It must have been 80 or 90 feet tall. There were creatures shooting bolts and hurling rocks at us from above, from a balcony that ran around the top ten or so feet in the room. I headed straight for the stairs, followed by most of the group. When we reached the top, we found that our attackers were nowhere in sight. We could see a ladder that led up to a trap door, though. I prodded the door with Ghelt’s greatsword, and found a large amont of resistance to the prodding. Fafnir turned the door invisible, and we could see a bar across the door. Climbed the ladder, and it fell away from the wall and towards the long fall from the balcony. Ghelt managed to catch him, and Pockets scrambled up the ladder and back onto the balcony. Pockets opened the door, and we began to argue who should go up. Two spawn of the master started to come down to attack us, but Drusilia managed to destroy both of them. Fafnir sent an illusion of Ghelt up, then Pockets pulled a cat (!?!?) from his person and sent it up. Neither had any effect. Ghelt jumped through the trap door (using Fafnir’s ring of jumping) and Drusilia followed up the ladder as quickly as possible. Drusilia got quite a suprise when she got up the ladder, as Ghelt began to attack her! She dropped back through the small trapdoor, and Aramil scrambled up the ladder, shouting something about creating a diversion. He did, and we heard his two halves hit the floor a couple seconds later.

Pockets tossed up a small bag filled with marbles and a couple flasks of alchemist’s fire, though they seemed to have no effect either. Pockets then tossed a small object up through the hole, and the trapdoor was covered by a mass of tangling strands. Drusilia and I cut through them, and I tried to stop Ghelt from attacking us by fascinating her. It failed miserably, and the Vampire grabbed me before I could drop back down. Corellon Larethian and Pelor seem to have had other plans as Drusilia was able to get the Vampire to retreat from us, and Ghelt shook off the vampire’s control.

We freed a celestial named Aramis from the room we managed to clear, and he helped to heal the party and revive Aramil. He also told us a great deal about the Heart and how we need to destroy it. It ends up that we will have to fight that damnable vampire again. I pray that we can destroy him this time.

No person should take the will of others away completely, and those who do should not be allowed to live, or unlive as the case may be.

We rested a short bit in the tower, but we were urged to leave as soon as possible from the tower by Aramis. He told us to look for a creature named Urkel in the catacombs that are in the north part of town. The party had a short discussion about our disorganization, and decided that having a party leader of sorts would not be a bad idea. I suggested that Ghelt be the leader of the party, though she did not seem to be interested in the task. Dursilia then suggested that I be the leader of the party. No one else seemed to have a problem with the arrangement, so I agreed.

We headed down to the first floor of the tower, and began digging through the bone littered floor in search of….well, anything. We managed to find a trapped trap door in the floor and Pockets easily disarmed the trap and opened the door. Fafnir headed down first, followed by the rest of the party…odd that Fafnir went first…he never wanted to before. We found ourselves in a long stone corridor that headed north and south. Since we were told to head north, we tried to follow the corridor to the north as best as we could. We were attacked by 5 wraiths, which Drusilia had no trouble turning 3 of them, then Fafnir and Ghelt each killed one. I know that we did not win the quick battle with out injury though, as I had been touched and weakened by one of them and I believe Drusilia had been as well, as she did not look as healty as a few minutes before. A few voiced concerns about our ability to continue traveling in the catacombs, but I still felt that we should try to continue on. We did, but were then ambushed by 2 wights and 4 more wraiths we escaped that encounter, but I felt that it was not such a good idea to travel all the way to the north through the catacombs. We headed back to the ladder where we entered, getting ambushed once more by yet more wraiths. We survived and made it back to where we started, with Aramis.

Aramis offered a little more information on Urkel. He said that Arkon had once controlled Urkel, but Urkel had broken from Arkon’s control. We were also told that Urkel was once a humanoid like us, but he no longer is. I remember hearing stories about how our gods are not able to interfere directly with the happenings of the world. I wonder if the angel is not able to interfere, either. It would explain why he couldn’t give us better information. A fter a few minutes, Aramil began to feel like we were being watched, and urged us to leave.

We headed to the north above ground, and found an ancient magic shop. Fafnir found an old iron box, which was filled with a few gems, some coins and a mysterious earring. Fafnir put it on but could not determine what the earring did. I took a look at it and found an inscription of the word cirsus. After putting it on and saying cirsus, I found that the earring was actually a miniature set of thieves’ tools. I gave the earring to Pockets as he was obviously the person who would benefit the most from it.

We continued north, and Drusilia spotted a house that had a sun carved crudely over it. The house was empty, but there was a hole in the back room that dropped fifty or sixty feet to a stone passageway. Fafnir seemed eager to return to the Catacombs, and as much as I would like to, I fell that the party as a whole needs to rest. I do not know if Fafnir realizes this, or if he just has a death wish. Drusilia has been turning the dead away from us all day, she must be exhausted.

We traveled further north and came upon a small weapons shop. I used a detect magic spell on the house and detected something magical, but we were attacked by skeletal bats. Ghjelt was paralyzed by one, but otherwise we managed to make it through relatively unscathed. I returned to the counter and found 3 magical crossbow bolts, which all had a lightning motif carved into them. I believe that they are Bolts of Lightning. I gave the bolts to Fafnir, since I did take the earring that he had found. We are going to continue towards the edge of town, though it is getting towards night fall, and it looks as if the weather is not going to be very friendly…