December
The Beginning of it all
This was the month everything began in. It was just after the holidays when a man named Lord Nicolus had been kidnapped by a then unknown man named Keeonean. Although my ship had nay arrived in Brittainia yet, Lady Eve was alive and well during this time, and was able to provide an account of the Advemnture.
12/22/99 - Report by Eve
The sun was setting as I appeared atop the Royal Bank in Trinsic, and I was growing tired as the day slipped away. My friend Lynx Yorkshire had asked me to loan him a sizable amount of gold, and hesitantly I told him I'd meet him in Trinsic for the exchange, adding one more chore to my list before I could finally retire for the night.
Pushing through a rather large crowd, I scanned the bank for a sign of him, but to no avail. I was quickly becoming annoyed, as my bed was seeming so far away lost amidst these people, searching for a needle in a haystack. Pushing a little harder through the crowd in my anger, I almost knocked over the town cryer, who was barely able to keep her footing. After glaring at me, she informed me that a man by the name of Reszni was seeking assistance from the public in front of Castle Britannia, and that if I would stop shoving people so rudely, he might accept my help.
Realizing my friend wasn't going to show, I quickly spoke the incantation for recall, and appeared beside the First Bank of Britain. After a quick sprint, I arrived in front of the castle, only to find a man in a brilliant white cape, explaining that Lord Nicolus, a noble of British's Court, had vanished, and that some trace of the kidnappers might possibly be found west of Trinsic.
I quickly opened my runebook, and opened a gate back to the city of Trinsic, with the assembled crowd leaping through after me. Quickly rushing to the stables, I claimed my steed Go and rushed off into the forests west of the city, not knowing what dangers lay ahead.
After quick recons of the Hidden Valley and the Shrine of Spirituality turned up nothing, I returned to Reszni, reporting that we were unable to find any sign of foul play in the woods. He instructed us to search further west than the Hidden Valley, and after a quick jaunt through the woods once again, we stumbled upon an incredible structure...
Nestled amongst the trees, a stone building encased in ice lay before me, hordes of skeletons pouring from the inside. A small band of warriors had already engaged the enemy, but were unable to gain entry into the building, and so I began to hurl my magicks into the midst of the undead.
After a heated battle, in which more than one person fell to the skeletal horde, we broke their defenses, leaving a pile of dead at the door. Surveying the interior, we discovered a letter addressed to the apparent occupant, pointing us to two other locations, one north of Vesper, the other south of Wrong. The letter is shown in three pages:
After jumping to the gates of Castle Britannia, I reported our discoveries to Reszni, alerting him tothe fact we had discovered two more locations wherethe forces that held Nicolus were based. After recieving his blessing, I leapt through a gate to the city of Vesper, and rushed across the bridge to the forests to the north.
Coming upon the second ice and stone building, I found the situation was already well in hand, and decided that perhaps leaping ahead to the location south of Wrong would be prudent. Recalling there alone, I quickly realized that charging into an unknown situation unaided was a mistake...
Appearing at the entrance to Wrong, I found a young man valiantly battling a horde of zombies that had pinned him to the wall. I attempted to heal him with my magic, but I was unable to target him in the midst of so many adversaries. I watched in horror as the zombies tore him limb from limb, devouring the bloody corpse before it even hit the ground.
And then they turned to me...fear creeping into the depths of my soul, I quickly turned southward and sprinted down the path, not realizing until it was too late I was running in the direction of the third encampment.
Alone, I faced a formidable army of the walking dead, their rotting flesh bringing me to dizziness as they clawed at me from all sides. Gathering my wits, I trapped them on the other side of the building, using the stupidity inherent in rotting brains to my advantage. Calling forth a rain of lightning from the gathering clouds overhead, I brought them all near death as the lightning bore down, dancing throughout them in a brilliant flash of light and sound.
But my spell left me spent, and as I began to meditate, I realized I was in far over my head. The massive swarm of zombies began to stream from the building, their eyes rolled back in their heads as they slowly made their way toward me, their hands outstretched to rend me apart...
And then it happened...a wall of fire shot up in their midsts, the screams of the undead echoing through the darkened skies, horrific and terrible in their echoes. Two massive daemons waded into the fray, their massive fists tearing zombies apart in effortless motion, spraying gore upon the walls of the iced building. The undead turned from me, and began to retreat into the building, as the flames began to spread throughout the small battlefield. I could scarcely breathe, the air clouded with the scent of burnt flesh, but I found the will and strength to call forth my magicks once again and leap into battle once more...
A shower of meteors swept through a group of zombies at the door, knocking them to the ground with a force that brought forth the sound of breaking bones. With an opening before me, I teleported past the burning corpses into the center of the chaos inside, rushing up to a desk littered with papers and vials. Pulling my cloak tight around my shoulders, I felt a cloak of invisibility envelope me, granting me enough time to view the contents of the desk unmolested by the undead desperately trying to escape the fires that tore through them...
The heat becoming unbearable, I scanned the document quickly, escaping through recall just as I began to lose my breath amidst the smoke inside. Stumbling, dazed, and bruised from the battle near Wrong, I rushed up to Reszni, reporting the news of the battle and the clues I had discovered. After a moment of thought, he directed me to Minoc, in search of the man named Gondor referenced in the last letter we had discovered.
Flipping through my runebook, I opened a gate to Minoc, and leapt through, the energies of the magic coalescing around me as I tore through the nether and appeared miles away. Glancing at a map I had accidently left in my bag ages ago, I found the location of the tavern, and ran as fast as I could towards the structure, far behind some of my collegues.
Already assembled inside were about ten or fifteen individuals, all clamoring for the attention of a very intoxicated man who looked very confused, and a little entertained, by the chaos around him. Reacting to every question with laughter, inane responses, or drooling, the man obviously did not have his wits about him, and refused to accompany the group back to Castle Britannia, where he was to be questioned by Reszni for his involvement in Nicolus' disappearance.
Eventually, the whispered request for a Jaana's Hangover Remedy began to circulate, the foul drink that would sober even the most ancient of drunkards up instantly. Finding none on the premises, I called upon the power of recall, and rushed to my house...
After rummaging through countless candies and pink champagne bottles from Valentine's Day, I discovered a single bottle of the concoction, and quickly returned to the tavern, the bottle held tightly in my hand.
Rushing into the crowd, I offered the bottle to Gondor three times, before he finally accepted it. Upon taking it, he promptly downed the entire bottle, but it apparently had little effect. Still hiccuping, he would not budge for yet another ten minutes, even after bribes of money, ale, and other "sins" were offered. I'm not sure what eventually convinced him, but at some point he stood up and proclaimed he would follow, so I opened a gate directly next to Reszni, so that he would face his fate immediately.
After a few transportation problems, the crowd from the tavern appeared with Gondor in tow, presenting him to Reszni with great pride. Grabbing him by the collar, Reszni demanded the man reveal the location of Lord Nicolus, threatening bodily harm if he did not. After a lot of cowering on Gondor's part, the fugitive drunk finally agreed to open a gate to the place where Nicolus was held captive...
But it was not a normal gate travel spell, for a purple haze swirled through the portal, and a cold wind blew from within. Stepping through the gate, I found myself in a cavern I had never seen before in all my travels (and I've been everywhere, I assure you). Appearing within this bitter cold tunnel, I found myself in the midst of a great battle...
All around me, frost trolls and ice elementals lay locked in mortal combat with the heroes that had leapt through the gate for this daunting task. I began to throw healing spells in all directions, often too late as so many fell beneath the raging fury of the cavern's denizens. Realizing the battle would surely be lost if the leader of the monsters was not defeated, I teleported past a pair of trolls that were descending upon me, and rushed deeper into the recesses of the cave...
Downing a potion, I felt my eyes adjust to the darkness, and I fell into shock as I focused on what lay in the tunnel ahead. A building, much like the ones found earlier, but twice in size, lay wrapped in ice and surrounded by ice elementals. In front of the doors, a mage in regal armor, the Dread Keeonean, stood screaming at the crowd bearing down on him, his skin an odd purple hue. Outnumbered, the man desperately threw a number of offensive spells into the oncoming horde, but it was not enough, and beneath the blade of a number of warriors (and a nice energy bolt from myself, I might add), he fell quickly, his rantings silent as his blood spilled across the ice cold floors...
Rushing inside, I discovered a few men had already released the cold and broken Lord Nicolus from the cell that had held him, and were attempting to escort him out. I gestured to them to follow me, and quickly opened a gate to Castle Britannia, where Reszni would surely be waiting for the return of his friend.
As we assembled outside the castle, we noticed that Nicolus had not exited the gate, but had apparently stepped through. Worried that he had somehow been lost between the gates, I rushed back to the cavern, where I was unable to find him. Quickly recalling once again to the bridge of the castle, I was assured by Reszni that he had indeed escaped, and that the rescue was a success, in every respect.
I accompanied him back to the lair of the fallen mage, where we discovered another letter, this time signed by someone calling herself "Your Mistress", and nothing more. Copying down the information I found within, I realized that although this battle was over, there was something darker, and more sinister, on the horizon. On this day, we had battled nothing more than a soldier in someone else's army...the hell that the ones who commanded him promised was one I shuddered to think of...
Scouring the cavern for anything missed, I chanced upon the following in a dark and twisting tunnel, it's swirling mists revealing the streets of Britain...
I opened gates for the assembled crowd back to the castle, and followed Reszni across the drawbridge, where he soon vanished into a passage I was unable to follow him down. No one could point me in his direction, and so I waited in the throne room for some time, hoping to catch a few words with him about what I had discovered. It seems luck was not with me, though, and other than watching Lord Nicolus take Christmas requests on the throne, my trip to the castle was all for naught.
Deciding a quick return to the cavern may reveal more clues, I once again stepped through the purple gate, immediately noticing rocks had begun to fall from the cave ceiling and decorate the floor.. Approaching the lair of Keeonean, I met up with Senior Counselor Snowball, who was searching for anyone left behind. After a short discussion which led to no new information, we parted amiably, and I felt the words of recall slip from my lips and catapult me through the aether to my front door.
I finally retired to my quarters, far off in the warmth of the southern jungles, where sleep beckoned me like a lustful siren. I fought off the urge to collapse long enough to compose this missive, but it was difficult, fatigue and soreness setting in like fire to a wheatfield...