Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.
13 Gozran 4709
Today whilst I was cataloging tomes in the library of the Academae I uncovered an unusual find. It was an obscure tome entitled ‘Whispers of the Immortal’ written in an older dialect of Hallit. It may prove to be of worth in my research.
Regardless the first order of business will be to secure proper provisions and recruit suitable companions in my endeavor.
From information that I gained in Almas I believe that the seal is located somewhere in the catacombs beneath an ancient dwarven monastery in the shadow of Droskar’s Crag at the foothills of the Five Kings Mountains. Hopefully Grimbal lives up to his reputation as the best trapfinder in all of Andoran. The catacombs will undoubtedly be trap-laden when we arrive.
We have located the Seal of the Whispering Tyrant within the deepest vault. It is exactly as it appeared within my dreams. Now all that remains is to unlock its ancient secrets. I stand at the threshold of greatness.
5 Kuthona 4709
Abandoned dwarven monastery
While we were examining a room in which the ceiling had collapsed, Liake found a gold scarab pin that radiates magic. No idea what it does. We went though a door carved with prayers to Aroden (again written in Old Hallit) to find some rather disgusting ghouls that needed killing. Once that was accomplished, we found some magical armor and a rather nice bastard sword. We also noticed that the room had many chains hanging in it, and had an altar being used as an alchemical bench with some horrible-smelling liquid sitting on it. Candal picked it up and managed to cover himself with it. I’m curious to see if he turns into a ghoul now, as I’ve since read some passages from a nearby book. I let the tome fall open to the most-used pages and found a recipe for “Necrotizing Serum.” Should be interesting.
We also read a journal by someone named Henrik; the last entry was a few months ago, and he appears to have been looking for the Seal of the Whispering Tyrant. I wonder if he is one of the bodies we just encountered. I decide to see if any tracks other than ours lead back out of the altar room, and find some steps leading down which have fairly recent tracks. Unfortunately, they enter a room filled with green poisonous gas. I cast a wind wall to try and dissipate the gas, which gave Candal enough time to run down and discover a furnace belching out more of the noxious fumes. We’ll need to prepare better to come back.
To pass the time, we check a few more areas that do not contain poisonous gas. Candal found a room filled with statues of Shining Crusades Knights. We find some more undead as well, and yet another one explodes on me— Candal is attempting to use his holy powers to remove disease on me— I wonder if he can actually do that.
Liake has been walking with Kasa, and it sounds like they’ve just found a secret door….
5 Kuthona 4709
Abandoned dwarven monastery
Candal ran to open the door and stepped down into a room full of disembodied eyeballs. The gnome immediately began to cast fire spells at them, while simultaneously, an elf appeared in our midst from an unseen hiding place. Before introductions could be made, a creature of all eyes and mouths appeared amongst the eyeballs, which we then had to dispatch.
At some point, Kasa, never particularly sneaky, managed to pull a box from Candal’s bag. When he noticed it missing he chased her with an axe! I would have killed him on the spot had not several other things happened concurrently. I got the box from Kasa as she dropped it, and handed it off to Tythe. Her eyes lit up and whispered “run!” to me. We took off after the mammoth, with Liake and Salma also in pursuit. We soon outdistanced the paladin and our new elven companion and stopped to rest, and open the box— I had the key in my possession, for it was THE BOX for which we were questing. Feeling a bit weaker after opening the box, we found it contained a 1’ long quartz crystal wrapped in gold and rubies, resting in a bed of gold coins. Salma said it radiated magic, but not evil. Touching it, she disappeared. Liake touched it as well and did the same. After a quick glance at Tythe, I grabbed Kasa and the three of us touched the crystal as well.
We found ourselves standing in a volcanic crater under a blood red sky. An iron fortress with four octagon towers stood in front of us. Hundreds of iron chains hung from this, and from them, hundreds of screaming souls….