The Holy Scrolls - Issue 9
The Holy Scrolls - (taken from Issue 9 of The Burning Paper)
The Fellowship of Light: Dear Comrades! Your call has found my ears again, but this time I feel very sad to explain our party’s progress in the last months. It all started well, very well indeed. Back in Munsk we quickly found old and new friends in Zacharel, a fellow priest of Garthrana, whom I’ve known for years, as well as a young couple, Shal and Merimir, two elven mages, married to each other. Actually they first tried to conceal their love for one another from us, for reasons I am not sure of. However it took our seasoned party members just days to discover their status. Arguld, our elven mage, who has been with us since the very beginning was the only one, who appeared a bit disappointed at the news of our other mages’ marriage, but they quickly became friends afterwards.
So we accepted a few temple quests to bolster our inexperienced members, killing a imp, then some cavemen and finally a werewolf, all of which threatened local life in Munsk. It was at that time when we heard of the idea of an alliance tournament, and although we are young and just a group of twelve we eagerly wanted to match our skills with all of you. So after paying the entry fee, we awaited our trusted friends, The Royal Assassins, who we tied with in the contest for spiritual beliefs just some days ago. We did our best, but after initial success the leaf began to turn quickly, as The Royal Assassins proved to be much tougher and more experienced. As we saluted the fair winners, I had the feeling that we can learn a lot in these mock battles.
Our next mission appeared to be a tough but very rewarding one, as we accepted the quest to kill all the foul beasts dwelling on level two in the Crypt of Ultimate Evil. We arrived there very quickly and well equipped just some days ago. From then on, the horror began. We were greeted by 36 kobolds, 20 skeletons, 8 orcs and a gatherer before we could even reach level 2. Surprised by the strength of our fighters, the resourcefulness of our mages and our spiritual beliefs which allowed my colleagues and myself to quickly destroy the undead, we were pressing forward. By then we had found unbelievable riches and magical items beyond our wildest dreams. On the lower level, we dispatched 26 goblins, 12 skeletons, 9 hobgoblins, a gnome, a ghoul, 6 bats, 4 cavemen, 13 zombies, as well as 4 rats, finding even more treasure, but making us very, very tired. We are getting way too little sleep in this sinister crypt. Statues of twisted creatures and an unholy aura surrounds us wherever we dare to venture. Arguld stated, that his stock of magical components is declining much too fast, and still there are so many monsters in here.
Then there was yesterday. I am not sure, whether it was the wish to finish our quest and get out of here as fast as possible, our greed for even more magical weapons, armours and other toys, our faith in the gods above, our past success, or plain stupidity to make our way further in those damned halls, even though we were tired. We should have known better after our first encounter this day, the first one we lost in a long time. Some fairies, beautiful but evil, led by a queen, sent us to sleep, charmed us and attacked us with powerful magic. After retreating, we decided to solve this fairy-problem later and successfully attacked and killed 5 goblins, 9 orcs, 2 gatherers. Just before the end of the day we ran into 20 skeletons. My Kill Undead spell was the last of all our priests that day, killing just 3 of the undead. To make matters worse, we had no other spells, including healing spells left. It was a long fight. Very long. Somehow and just because of the will of our fighters we gained the upper hand, slowly decreasing the number of our enemies. Enemies that will never flee, but rather die first. The skeletons were not the problem. Not even the archers or the skeleton warriors. Our problem was the lich, leading them into battle. The evil dead necromancer used his minions wisely to block our path, so that he could cast his most dangerous spells. Shal was struck twice by major magical blasts. Then a bony skeleton warrior, hit her in the head and Shal fall silently to the ground. We were shocked, disbelieving in what had happened, angered that we were unable to protect the only female character in our party, and such a brave, clever and beautiful one. My trusted friends, I will never ever forget the look in Merimir's eyes. With Beregard and Balorak still hacking at the undead, Merimir dropped his spell book and smashed the head of the grinning lich with a single, inhuman blow. The rest of the undead were no match for us, then. We retreated into a small empty room carefully carrying Shal. After moments of silence, which appeared like hours to me, Beregard finally spoke, evaluating our situation and weighing our options. Merimir sat silently in a corner, his hands holding those of his dead wife. Stunned by the unbelievable sacrifice Shal has made, all of us assured him that we will not let it end like this. Our thoughts of immediately leaving the dungeon, using one of Arguld's spells, came to our minds. Then we could teleport to a nearby city and have Shal resurrected at a local temple of Baldor. Arguld sadly explained that he is much too weak to cast exit dungeon spells, and looking into his tired eyes, I then felt my own wounds bleeding and the inability to heal them. It was a tough night, maybe the worst in my whole life, including the ones with the horrible nightmares when I was a child.
There are eight gods in our world. And with so much healing spells cast we were always close to Baldor, although I always wanted to be as close as possible to Garthrana - the avenger. Goddess of war against the undead. The undead that have taken Shal's life. In this hour I was as close to Garthrana as I have never been before, killing so many foul creatures of darkness. And yet I feel ashamed when I look into the eyes of Merimir, or at the lifeless body of Shal. I had to make a decision, and a fast and utmost important one.
In the morning I was sure of what to do. We will not surrender our fights against the undead, but there are things much more important. It took me hours to convince all the others that it is necessary to stay in the dungeon, for our sakes and for Shal's. With the help of Talmor, Zacharel and Raoul, I cast a lot of healing spells to help our wounded. Our alignment is slowly shifting away from Garthrana back to Baldor. I am sure that with our combined spiritual efforts, that helped us win the faith competition, I can call a lifebringer. It has to be possible, although I’ve never attempted such a difficult spell before. Our trust in faith in Baldor has to be boosted before so we started praying to the god of healing. It is getting evening again, and we prayed for Shal and to Baldor the whole day. I am feeling tired, but my spirit is strengthened and my hopes are renewed. Maybe one or two more days and our alignment will be back to Baldor again. Then it is up to him and his servants to raise our fallen friend or let her rest in peace, forever. In the meantime we will not rest, but try to have our revenge at all the others of those evil beasts in this dungeon.
Send us your prayers, my trusted friends as we are in need of them. My best wishes and hopes will accompany your travels as they always do.
Greetings,
Consheltuen
High Priest of the Fellowship of Light.
Garthrana’s Paladins:
After our last report we journeyed to the village of Buffaloy (112) where we healed the wounded and buried the dead. It was an honourable service with the customary Garthranian verse and prayer, after which we stood silently with our own thoughts. Angered by the deaths of our friends, we set off in pursuit of the Kresh we were hunting. When we set upon them, they were butchered within minutes. As I stood back watching the fighters battle, I felt the anger of Garthrana flow through my body, as did my comrades. We won’t forget the Wolves of Kharne (1375) and they will face our wrath one day.
After completing this temple quest, we decided to head for Leuch (15) to rest and prepare for our next quest. During this time, we got back to full strength, restocked our mages powders and recruited a new fighter, Lestat. So far during his time with us, he has adapted well to life as a Paladin and is living up to expectations superbly.
After searching for a dungeon entrance North of Leuch , we finally embarked on our mission to destroy all monsters on the first level of The Hall of The Undead. Over the few days we have been here, we have encountered many evil creatures and collected many scalps. As we rested, we received word of our comrades, Lightbringers, Fellowship of Light and Maximo 20 Caracteres suffering deaths at the hands of strong creatures both above and below ground. After praying to Garthrana for aid towards our friends, we continued our quest and brought death to the monsters as a sort of revenge for our dead comrades. However, to bring you up to date, we have been down here for a long time, nearly two weeks and we are going to return to Leuch and then Munsk (11), to meet up with our alliance comrades and refresh ourselves before returning to the dungeon to finish of the evil that lingers there. Until next time, fare thee well, my brave friends.
The Royal Assassins:
It has been a long time since our last report but here’s what’s been happening since then. We finally recruited our fifteenth member, a dwarf fighter named Patchcoat Grey who has quickly established himself as a great fighter and has also used his skill to give us an advantage during combat.
Anyway, as a fully fit party we left Munsk (11) in search of Katar, an outlaw who had been robbing the city’s temples and had a 15,000 gold reward on his head. However, after nearly locating the thief, we received word of wars beginning between other alliances and felt that as we may be asked to step in at some point, we should prepare ourselves with better armour and weapons. after this, we decided to let Katar live a little longer and directed our attention towards a seer who had been terrorising the local inhabitants with his doom-like prophecies. A quick teleport and a successful Engulfing Globe ended the seer’s visit to our land and gave us nearly 20,000 gold for our troubles. Then we once again returned to Munsk and trained solidly for two days. Feeling refreshed, we re-embarked on our quest for Katar. During our travels, we came across a small band of cavemen and after the melee that followed they we all dead but one and we had no one wounded amongst us. We finally caught up with Katar and showed no mercy to him as vengeance for his evil deeds. He shall never rob again.
After finishing this mission, we teleported back to our HQ city and accepted two new Temple Quests. The first to return a mirror to an antique collector after it was stolen by some bats and the second was to hunt another outlaw, Oduromor. Reluctantly we accepted the second quest as there were no others available and we were saving towards more training and equipment. Before leaving, Grandmaster Zakath and Duke Death trained a little and are becoming stronger all the time. We also fought our first Arena battle for the alliance against our fellow comrades The Fellowship of Light. We won the battle and heartily received the three points but we were surprised at the skill and technique of our friends especially as they are so young to this world. This group of young adventurers will quickly establish themselves as fearsome opponents to the evil of this land, we are sure.
The next day we set out in search of Oduromor as we felt we needed to get the boring quest out of the way first and we made our way to Bad Death (37) via Westlo (8); his last known location. Over the next few days, nothing very exciting happened. Our priests spent their time ranking miracles ready for our next battles in the Arena and Arakor Nicodemus, our most powerful mage, learnt some new spells. We did, however, encounter a Garthranian Servant who we managed to survive against mainly due to our armour soaking up a lot of the damage. We were also thankful that we trained so vigorously as our injuries were quite bad but not serious. It was an interesting battle and one day we will ask Garthrana herself to send another servant to fight us. We found Oduromor and he was actually very friendly and explained that he was forced to rob because he had no gold to feed his family. However, he had robbed the temple of our Goddess and we decided to return him to the nearest city and hand him over to the temple. May be this way he can repent and his life be spared.
During all this, we had been informed that we had won the alignment title along with our friends The Fellowship of Light and that the prize money was to be shared equally. With the 5000 gold received, we paid our entry fee to the Arena League of 1000 gold pieces and donated the rest to our struggling companions The Council of The Flame, (although we hear they are not struggling quite so much now – only with walking with all the gold they’ve found in that dungeon, hey guys….) Anyway, after taking Oduromor to Bannem, we set out after those two bats we mentioned but not before fighting in the Arena against the Ace Paladins (1555) of Cataclysm, whom we have been negotiating with about joint information sharing. The battle was a good one, with both sides quite evenly matched. But as with our close friends, Garthrana’s Paladins, the slight difference between some of our weapons compared to those of our ‘opponents’’ was enough to swing the battle in their favour. We had both agreed on a 100% flee factor and there were no deaths. After this satisfactory result, we decided to upgrade our weapons and most of our fighters now have enchanted crossbows made of superior quality compared to their old ones. We were also granted a return match against the Ace Paladins in the future.
I find I have run out of time my friends and must finish here. The rabbit stew’s ready! More reports next time.
Next issue: The death of the Bats....