Dearest Grun,

Well, I’m catching you up piecemeal. I’ll start with the events right after we left the angel’s chamber.

The angel had given us some ideas and a name - Urkel - who used to work for the evil lord, but could give us some help. He/she/it lives(?) north of the city and down in the catacombs. As we walked down through the room of bones, half the party felt compelled to dig around. Someone found a trap door, “Pockets” opened it, and Fafnir climbed right in. The rest of us followed, not wanting to get split up, even though this wasn’t the way to the north of the city!

We found ourselves in a passageway beneath the city. Several party members wanted to explore, so we decided to at least follow it northwards, hoping to have a safer trip than aboveground. We didn’t get far before we were surrounded by wraiths, which we fought off, but not before they weakened Drusilia pretty badly. We tried moving on, finding underground chambers and rats as we travelled the ancient sewers, but we were set upon by more wraiths and wights, and decided that walking in the sunlight and open city would be easier, after all.

We found that a lot of nasties had been following us, of course! And “Pockets” had been given the sword of Pelor, but he’s useless for fighting with it - ran for the back of the party as soon as anything he could damage showed up. *siGh* .. I guess Drusilia meant well but that was not the best decision. We all made it back to the ladder and spoke briefly with the angel, but he couldn’t help us any more than he already had. Aramil became really paranoid that we were being watched by invisible eyes, and I was embarrassed to be there anyway after wasting half the morning on a wild goose chase, so we finally left the tower and headed north - aboveground.

The city, of course, provided its own set of distractions. Fafnir watched avidly for any sign of old magic shops, and finally found one. I stayed on the street, watching for trouble, while people banged about and argued inside. Finally Fafnir came out with new jewelry, an earring that they couldn’t identify until Valon had the idea of reading the magic word on it. The earring became a set of thieves’ tools, so he handed it to “pockets,” thereby offending Fafnir. Better luck next time, I guess.

Drusilia was distracted next as we travelled, finding a broken-down house with a sun symbol over the door. The place was empty, except for a deep hole in the ground in the back room. It didn’t look like the entrance to the catacombs, so we made note of the place, but moved on. The next building we checked out was an old armory, full of skeletal bats - one of which paralyzed me as we were destroying them. I found out Aramil’s a bit dense - he just couldn’t understand why I’d stopped talking or moving, and finally put it down to me being angry and in a sulk. Halfies. At least “Pockets” had the thought to try to heal me with the sword! Finally I could move, and we started north again.

Unfortunately, we reached the edge of the city before any entrance to the catacombs was found. The mountains rose up with no sign of a cave, so we began to search along the outskirts. Night was falling and a storm was brewing, so we wanted to find the entrance, or shelter of some kind! Aramil had another paranoid spell, which also got us moving. (I’ve edited out a lot of the arguing we went through that day, Grun - it wasn’t one of our finer days for staying on track, as I’m sure you’ve guessed!). “Pockets” saw a half-roofed tavern and offered to buy us a round.. but the room was full of more evil creatures. They murmered and fascinated me, but Drusilia chased them off. Fafnir became a small dragon and checked upstairs, but we decided it wasn’t safe for long, and headed back into the storm.

At least we got to know our new members a little better, but I can’t say much for our efforts otherwise that day, Grun. I’ll fill you in on the rest later!

With love,
Ghelt