A Shade to be Made

June 19, 2007

After witnessing the couple try to rip apart the bums, from a rather uncomfortable slump, Deuce went over several ideas of how to find the temple that appeared in his vision. He had to try to find a way to detect and track shadow magic.

After some thought, Deuce asked for a full slice of a large tree trunk. Using this cross section, he spent the next day carving feverishly at the wood. He was carving a rough model of the city of Suzail. He had Marcus go around town finding landmarks in a number of different sections of the city. Deuce asked him to bring back a piece of each of the landmarks. Deuce embedded those pieces into the model to create a link to the sections of the city.

This model was going to be able to localize the detection of shadow magic. Late in the day, Deuce cast the magic which allowed the model to do its work. After a while a section around the Temple to Oghma began to darken in shadow. There were several sites that could be the source, but Marcus and Deuce decided the temple would be the most likely source if they were dealing with followers of Shar.

Marcus and Deuce then left to sneak to the section of the city and approached the Temple from the rear, in the dark. While surveying the temple, two figures in shadow were seen approaching the rear wall of the temple. Closer inspection revealed a human sized person and a smaller, probably halfling, sized person. Using his magic, Deuce elevated the light levels to take in a few more details. They were focusing on a certain area of the wall and Deuce used the shadows to spy on them.

Deuce was truly shocked when he saw Malcolm and Lisha from the front. Deuce and Marcus approached them and found that they had been following a string of thefts of major artifacts which led them to the Shar followers in this temple. They had carved out their own temple under the Temple of Oghma. Apparently, Goldenlight, the holy hammer of Lathander, had been stolen along with Brandon's ashes. In addition to those thefts, a starry cloak had also been stolen. Lisha and Malcolm were following leads to this temple and these people.

Marcus used his vision to detail what is behind what was a secret door right in front of them. There is a spiral staircase and a priestess and two warriors down there, all women. The priestess was dealing with a demon in a very authoritative tone. This was not feeling good.

Deuce summoned Mym and Kall and the six of them went down the stairs to deal with this threat.

Without going into detail, The priestess and one of the warriors managed to teleport out somehow, but the good guys managed to kill one of the warriors. Kall managed to take enough damage to force him to retreat back to the astral plane to recover, but mostly we did alright.

After that, Malcolm searched through all the paperwork in the room and it appeared to be preparation for a major ritual to call forth a shade lord. The stolen property seems to be important ingredients to the ritual. Deuce sent Mym back to be with Kall and the four of them headed back to the Dragon's Claw.

Malcolm had a lot of papers to study and Deuce had taken a lot of damage and just wanted to go to bed. Lisha and Malcolm stayed with him, since they didn't have any place to go.

The next morning Deuce woke up with Lisha sleeping with him. It was more a situation where they were both clothed, and she needed someplace to sleep, but it was still surprising to Deuce. She had her arm draped over him and it was a little more casual than necessary. She woke up right after he did, looked at him and slapped him. She accused him of taking advantage of her and he was even more confused.

Lisha looked at Malcolm and discovered that he hadn't slept at all. Big surprise.

After that, Malcolm called in the rest of their party and I had them check on Reece and ask him to come back from Arabel. He had went back home to look after his family.