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Fun with Alchemy

Fortuna’s Journal

Reaping 8, 594 CY
Rattedaumen

…and were attacked by suits of armor and swords. Thankfully the armor wasn’t wielding the swords. It was a clumsy fight around a trapdoor in the floor. Elizair “slew” one of the swords, and the kobold took out a suit of armor. I fought a sword off that attempted to attack the kobold and then finished off the other suit of armor. I could see Janet out of the corner of my eye one minute; the next she had yanked the trapdoor open and was down a stairwell. We all followed her down as quickly as possible, listening to some strange, rhythmic music coming from somewhere below. We saw a light, and headed towards it, the “music” getting louder as we approached.

We were met with a strange sight: a stone creature with a huge block of granite where one leg should be, stomping around in a circle, while waves of distortion and lightning leapt forth from a ball in the corner of what must be the alchemist’s lab. Near that, a half-naked, limp human lay on the floor. Sure that it was Lord Zadrian, I quickly made my way towards him, having to wiggle out of some chains that kept trying to grab me. I got to the old man, but couldn’t rouse him right away; thankfully Janet had snuck past the dancing rock monster to heal him. As she did so, vials of some rather nasty (and painful) liquids kept smashing into us. The man did not regain consciousness until Janet wrestled a bronze helmet off of him. He started to rouse when the helmet leapt out of her hands and landed squarely on his head again! He went limp again. I managed to wrestle the helm back off as torches flew off the walls to hit us, and Janet shoved the helm into her haversack before it could undo our progress again.

The man, who did turn out to be Zadrian, said that he needed quicksilver to stop the attacks from the normally-inanimate objects and the other weirdness that had befallen his home. I remembered the quicksilver in the first room we’d fought our way through, so I ran back through all the rooms to retrieve some. Thankfully only a few knives and books followed me back to the lab. The two sorcerers were fighting off the stone creature while Munthrek appeared to be keeping the animated chains occupied.

Zadrian told Janet and I that we need only hit a crystal on the pulsating sphere in the corner with a drop of the quicksilver, without actually touching the sphere ourselves, and the dimensional rifts it had caused would disappear. No problem! Just as I was about to hit it with a bolt, a flask of something that blurred my vision hit me square in the face. Thankfully Janet has that innate ability that halflings have, and was able to hit the crystal with a sling stone on her first try. Everything that had been zipping around the room dropped to the floor. We found ourselves in a basement, staring up at the open sky. Apparently the rest of the mansion got sucked into the various planes that had invaded the individual rooms. Elizair was greeted with the familiar, rude-sounding squawk from Babble, and we could see the empty stable beyond the walls of the cellar.

We decided to spend the night with the alchemist, who assured us that he could restore much of his lost mansion easily enough. He told us of his attempts to create an “interdimensional web” had resulted in entities coming into this plane and possessing various objects in his mansion—and when he attempted to abort the project, the helm of sleep attacked him, keeping him, well, asleep!

In the morning, Zadrian told us he need not accompany us back to town for any supplies, but gave us a note and his signet ring to show our employer he was alive and well. The kobold sorcerer decided to stay with the elderly human—I assume he will help restore the lab—both he and Zadrian seemed pleased with the idea.

We are home again, and Elizair and I went to have some items identified. I’m sorry to say the robe of stars we found is cursed, but even knowing that, one of the local merchants purchased it. I got to keep the shortsword. Elizair and Munthrek kept calling it a “dagger” but it’s very clearly a shortsword made for someone my size (Janet prefers weapons that “bash” things to swords, so we needn’t even offer it to her). The sword has some potent magic, and my friends seem to think it would be good for me to use when I sneak up on something. And, since they’ve now invested the best piece of loot in me, we must go find something equally awesome for each of them. Back to the Staggering Lich to wait for work to find us!

Posted by Kristin on October 11, 2007, 19:08 | Fortuna’s Journal