LongestRoad Run5

The following is an excerpt from Michael's Journal:

Today I decided that it was time to move on. I have devoted much time to trying to improve myself so that I may better serve Virton without being a hinderance to those around me and to my god. I feel that I may finally be able to serve as his instrument of justice once more. I made an oath to him in front of my companions and our hosts, the silver dragons, that I would find the gold dragon orb and return it to its rightful place.

I have placed more confidence in my adamantite katana over the last few years. I feel that it has become an extension of my self. My other swords do not seem to share the same bond with me. I shall not part with them due to their usefulness, but they shall never be able to replace "name of katana."

We all tied ourselves together again to travel so that we would not be separated. I think I would have been fine on my own since I seem to be able to fly really well in the plane of air. I suppose that with us tied together, I could help the others get to where they wanted.

While we were flying along, I suddenly realized that we were being sucked into a storm. No matter how much I pulled at the rope against it, I could not pull us out of it. As we are being sucked in, Sil said that we were being watched. I briefly blacked out, and awoke floating in an icky liquid. After looking around a bit, I felt like the walls were made out of something living. Ezel said that it was probably a sentient plane being named Neth. I'm not really sure how something could live where there is nothing to contain it, but I've learned not to think about these things too much. Ezel warned us not to attack it.

We noticed that there seems to be another group of people further up a bend in the fleshy corridor that we are in. Sil then asked "What if they attack it?" Unfortunately, it seems that they chose to attack the walls at that moment. There was a bunch of loud noise, the walls pulsed wildly, and we were sloshed around in the fluid.

We began swimming furiously to avoid being pulled down the corridor. We then encountered several "cleaners" coming down the corridor with their arms spread wide like nets. There was no way around them, so we split up with two separate spell groups. Ezel teleported with Jeralyn, Oraine, and me. Ellowyn dim-doored with Sil, Querca, and Evathyth. We reappeared on the other side of the cleaner. I was glad that we managed to avoid the cleaners, but it was slightly challenging to continue swimming properly during the teleport.

We waited around until things calmed down and for Ezel to tell us that it was safe to move again. At that point we swam towards the head. As we got closer to the head, the current began to pick up again, carrying us to the head faster. Soon we encountered a huge cavern with a giant wall of faces that we were being pulled towards.

"Are you here to hurt Neth too?" one of the faces asked. There was a brief pause where no one was speaking, so I answered, "I don't know why we're here. We just got sucked in."

Ellowyn began speaking to Neth about what we were doing. I think that he may have been trying to convince Neth to help us without making us seem too interesting. We said that we did not know the people that had hurt him, but Neth said that they knew us. He showed us their faces in the wall. I did not recognize two of them, but the third was a half-dragon named Zahn that Sil, Jeralyn, Oraine, and I saw before. It seemed that Zahn had got away from Neth, but the other two were caught.

Neth agreed to send us to the abyss if we would escort one of his children there. He had been interested in learning about the abyss, but all of his children that he sent there failed to return.

The Warfront

Once we were in the abyss, Evathyth started leading us to a pit that would bring us to a lower level of the abyss. As we approached the pit, we realized a little too late that we were being caught between two opposing armies of demons. Each army was being led by a Balor which were yelling at each other in Abyssal. They each seemed to think that the other summoned us in to fight. Overhead there was a large ugly beast that Ezel called an Klurishir. The armies charged at us while we were stuck in the middle. Querca used windwalk on a bunch of the party while I flew with Evathyth and Sil ran with Neth's child on her back.

Sil, Evathyth, and I barely escaped from the clashing armies. Sil was running the gauntlet while Evathyth and I dodged thrown weapons. We continued to flee until we were no longer in danger from the warring armies. We decided that we needed to find a different pit since that one was now blocked by the war. Evathyth knew of another nearby pit that would take us further down in the abyss. We would then be able to find another pit down there that would bring us up to the levels that we wanted to search.

As we journeyed on, we noticed that we were being chased by the big Klurishir that was in the battle (actually I think that I heard that Neth's child spotted it first. He was always asking "What's that?" about everything).

Klurishir

We decided to make a stand and prepared for battle. Ellowyn used a spell that I hadn't seen before called "Greater Blink" on Jeralyn. Evidently it makes it where attacks sometimes pass through you without an effect. It resisted most of our spells, so had to rely mostly on melee attacks. I think it probably shouldn't have landed, but it wasn't very maneuverable, so it would probably have needed to make strafing runs. We managed to win without taking too much damage mainly due to the fact that it concentrated on Jeralyn who it was having trouble damaging due to Ellowyn's Greater Blink.

Anyway, Ezel flew off chasing after some little quasit that was watching us fight the Klurishir. There were actually two, but it Ezel could only chase one of them, and I couldn't see them to chase the other. He caught the one that he was chasing and brought it back for questioning.

Evidently it was observing things for his lord who was the leader of one of the two warring armies. This means that the other one was probably a spy for the other leader. After some debate about what to do with it, we decided to leave it unconscious?

Once we reached the pit we discovered to our dismay that there was now a river flowing into the pit. Ezel informed us that it was actually the River Styx and that if any of us touched it, we would lose our memories. I don't know how we are going to be able to deal with this newest problem. Maybe we should check to see if the first pit we were headed to is no longer blocked by the war. But that might take some time.