Grrumph.

Dearest Grun,

Today has been... frustrating. I am worried about where we are going - and why. Yet, when we tried to communicate with a being other than the lich, our party divisions doomed the project.

The day started with me offering to help Fafnir buy a teleport-without-error spell, which made sense, since he hasn’t been to the Bone March before, and we all remember Valon’s adventure with teleporting to a point several miles above his destination by mistake! He eventually decided to just research some more. I hope that works out OK.

Before that, however, Drusilia asked us to come to her temple with her while she summoned a planar creature of her deity about our “mission” and the truth of the lich’s words. This seemed like a very good idea; we went to her church, she cast her spell, and wow! This big humanoid with wings instead of arms arrived! Drusilia began to talk to it, while I clapped my hand over “pockets”’ mouth to keep him from asking this being for lots of weapons too. He tickled me. Hrmph. Next thing I know, the being asked for the healing sword!

We had a quick discussion, and only Drusilia and I were willing to give it back. I asked the being why it wanted it, and it said the Sword of Pelor was needed elsewhere. Well, Grun, this made sense to me: it’s Pelor’s sword, it’s meant to be used to fight undead, not heal us up whenever we get into a fight. We’ve been spoiled. How spoiled I didn’t know until then - even though the being’s words convinced Fafnir, too, to give the sword up, “pockets” and Aramil just couldn’t see letting their instant healing out of their hands. And guess who had the sword?

Finally, Drusilia gave up, apologized to the being, and told it we wouldn’t be needing its services after all. She and I were both so angry! The argument continued, and I told those two just what I thought - that I would not go to the Bone March under these circumstances, that they had better pray that sword keeps working (which is under no means certain); since they’ve decided it’s more important than our goodwill, or at least mine, they may well find themselves in trouble and out of luck and right now, I don’t care! I refuse to help them make things worse when we don’t have any confirmation this is the right thing to do.

At this point there was a commotion at the doors, and a blood-covered paladin of Pelor collapsed inside the temple. Drusilia ran to him and healed him enough that he woke up and asked for the head of the Order.. who is currently mad. They brought him anyway, and Drusilia tried to heal him, too, but it didn’t work. The paladin told us all that he was from the Kingdom of Geoff, just to the south, and that they’d been under attack from orcs and giants, but two days ago, there came a plague of undead from the mountains, and they’re infecting the people, now, too. Poor Drusilia turned pale - the Heart of Nerull came from around there. She fears we’ve released something there, too. I immediately volunteered to go help fight; it seems less a fool’s errand than following the lich’s directions. I pointed out to the others that this was exactly what the Sword of Pelor was made to fight, and suggested that Drusilia’s god was trying to give us a hint, but it made no difference to “pockets”.

I pointed out that his god might not think much of this behavior, and he ran off, saying he’d ask. He was back even faster, to show us his high priest - or what was left; a skinned, eviscerated body that he demanded Drusilia resurrect! Poor Drusilia tried to explain that she can only speak to the dead, not return them to life, but this wasn’t good enough; he left in a rage, thinking that she was being vindictive. That’s not Drusilia. He should know better.

Things had settled down for the time being at Drusilia’s temple, and “pockets” was off with his dead body to parts unknown. Fafnir and Aramil left to research a trip to the Bone March, and I decided to pray at my own temple. Drusilia was trying to make sense of her mad cleric’s words, and I came here to pour out my woes to you and to Moradin. Watch even came with me, and has been a real comfort.

A few hours later, and Drusilia’s come here. She wants to try to speak to an avatar at her temple again tomorrow. She thinks we’ll have to go to Redcastle anyway, but she’s hoping this one doesn’t ask for something we can’t give in return for that information. Bless her for trying!

Wish me luck, Grun, I’m having trouble keeping my temper these days.

With love,
Ghelt

Fafnir's Journal Entry 40 - Wasting Time

Well, another day gone, and we are no closer to our goal. Drusilia decided that rather than seek guidance from Pelor, she would rather summon a planar creature, and talk to it. Before doing so, she warned us that it might request something from us, but that we could refuse if we so desired.

Agreeing to this, the party gathered together, and Drusilia cast her spell. A winged creature appeared before us, and Drusilia explained what we were requesting. The creature said it wanted us to give it the Sword of Pelor. Drusilia and Ghelt thought this was a great deal, but it didn’t seem like such a good idea to me, Pockets, and Aramil.

The sword had come in very useful during our travels, and turning it over to some creature who might not even know the answer to our questions just didn’t seem like a good idea. Pockets and Aramil also wanted to keep the sword, but I am not sure of their reasons... It may be because they view it as a valuable asset to the party, or it may be just that they like being able to beat the crap out of each other and “stab” themselves back to health. In any case, it seemed that a decision had been made.

Seeing that we weren’t interested in giving it the sword, the creature then made the additional comment that the sword would not work forever, as it was draining power directly from Pelor, and that his power would be needed elsewhere. Drusilia seemed to believe this to be true, so I changed my mind, and told her that if she felt we should turn over the sword, to go ahead and do so. Pockets and Aramil were still not convinced however, so the creature disappeared before we could come to an agreement.

Ghelt and Drusilia were very angry. Ghelt insisted that she would not do anything to help stop the void, so long as Pockets kept the sword. This seems kind of stupid to me, but she is a dwarf, and they rarely seem to make much sense.

I wanted to head off to Redcastle, with or without Ghelt, but Drusilia was more interested in staying at the temple and “helping out”.... I realise she is a cleric, but I would think that stopping a force such as the void would take precedence over feeding the needy. After all, if we don’t stop it, their won’t be any needy to feed! Also, Drusilia would be able to pray for spells in Redcastle as easily as in Greyhawk, so we might as well be on our way. (If it turned out to be the “wrong” way, we could turn back... it’s not like sitting around Greyhawk is getting us closer to our goal.)

Anyway, while we were talking about this, a bloodied Paladin arrived at the temple telling of a horrible plague in the land of Geoff. Much to my surprise, Ghelt wanted to run right off to help them... had she forgotten about the Void?!

Luckily, Drusilia talked her out of it, and sent her off to the temple of Moradin to pray for guidance. Hopefully she will be a little more reasonable when she returns.

At this point, I returned to the library to do some more research, and then went back to our inn. Pockets did stop by to question me on bizarre ways a person could die, but I did not try to find out why he wanted to know. It just seemed safer that way.

Towards the end of the day, Drusilia sent a runner to find the party and bring us to the temple. I was the only one he could find. Thinking that maybe Drusilia had succeeded in “talking” with Pelor, I followed him back to the temple.

It turns out that Drusilia had been fighting with some other planar creature, and had thought maybe we could help. The battle was long over however, so I instead ended up talking to Drusilia about the situation our group was in.

Agreeing that we needed to get everyone “back on track” we gathered up Ghelt and Aramil, and are proceeding to look for Pockets. She is going to try and commune again, and hopefully it will go better this time.

If not, I am going to talk to Pockets, and see if he can help come up with a scheme to get this group out of Greyhawk. After all, he is pretty good at playing tricks, and I think if we can manage to get moving along again, things will work out in the end. HeHeHe.

~=Fafnir Flamebrewer=~

Uhh Oh....

We start out as normal, arguing. Someone, Drusilia I think, summoned one of them ‘angels’ and asked it for information. Drusilia said we can say no to the creature’s request, when we did, the clerics went nuts. They think we should trust anything with wings?

Then the real problem started. I went out to talk to the cleric I met the other day, just to find him dead. Not just dead, no, gutted and skinned. I took him back to Drusilia to get help, begging for her skills. SHE SAID NO!

So out I go looking for another cleric, unable to find one willing to help I returned to the guild to get help to bury the man. There I found that the assasins guild has declared a bloody war on the thieves guild. I ask for the name of one of the killers and head off to find him. And, one more thing, the cut-throats are led by Durll. This is not going to be a safe town for anyone.