Minding our own business one evening, we happened upon an individual named Molmus. Alone, that doesn't sound too bad, but unfortunately this individual happens to be the fully recovered fully fleshed out creature who was creating runes on an obelisk in a certain fortress north of Hackby. Yes, that's right, it was the lich thing that we hacked up, put in a back and burned. Somehow he is back.

Initially I thought we were all screwed. I was immediately looking for a direction to run, but I didn't think the other guys would appreciate it. Besides, I couldn't leave them alone. Without me they would really get hurt. Look what happened to Eric the last time I wasn't around. And what would have happened to Victor if I hadn't been there to get help when he got hurt by the owlbear.

What was interesting was that when we approached him, he just greeted Eric and Victor as Jack and Terry again. He was cheerful and, funny enough, forgiving. He wanted introductions and I told him my name was Joseph. Reese, ironically, stumbled over his words and ended up saying Maryreese. The whole time Molmus was calling him Maryreese, I had to choke down a laugh. You could see the irritation on Reese's face.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Molmus told us that after we ruined his last experiment, he had to come up with another way to complete his work. I really kinda lost interest in it at that time, but I did catch that we were going south. I was too interested in the purse of GOLD and PLATINUM that Molmus was passing to Randon. I couldn't believe how much money he was throwing around. I had to try to get to it. My opportunity came when Molmus was ordering some drinks. I tried to take his purse and got a major shock that seemed to sap every bit of energy from me.

When Victor suggested I go get our gear, I went upstairs to get it but I ended up falling asleep. Next thing I know, everyone was around me and I think Victor was mad. I kinda got the impression he didn't really want me to get the equipment. After things settled down a bit, I relaxed a little bit and rested my eyes. Aparently Eric had been faking being sick because Molmus offered to help us both and cast some sort of spell that woke me up and I was feeling quite a bit better. It had a strange effect on Eric. He was really hyper.

We then proceeded to the stables to get ready for the journey south and someone mentioned the lack of provisions. Molmus was getting irritated because he couldn't believe we could ever get anything done if we always worked like this. He said that he would get everything we needed and we were just to get everything else ready. Victor sent me to tail Molmus.

The strange thing about all of this is that Molmus never made one suspicious act. He did exactly what he said he was going to do. That was painfully obvious when the priests arrived and pointed out that he hasn't done anything wrong, and he was throwning around a lot of money. It would be a shame to put an end to all of that.

Anyway, they had nothing to tell us about Molmus. Apparently a priest of Chauntea has no power over undead at all. Which, as far as I am concerned makes those priests useless. Saying a quick prayer to Tymora, we just kind of accept what is happening, and follow Molmus outside of town where he opens a circle to a place further south. It was strange. One step was on regular ground, and the next step was a long ways south of there.

Molmus had been very vague about what we were doing. I tried to ask him and he just said, "Remember Tilverton?" That kinda spooked me for some reason. I don't know what happened at Tilverton, but I realized it was bad. He said the 'others' were at this Rivior's Keep. That is supposedly where we were headed to find another piece of something. Some sort of artifact. Too bad for us there is a whole tribe of Mountain Orcs held up there.

We set up camp and went to bed. In the middle of the night we woke up to the sounds of battle. Victor asked me to scout out what was happening. What I saw was straight out of one of Reese's stories. A knight and a wizard were battling two huge orcs. The knight was getting beat up pretty bad and it looked like the orcs were shrugging off the lightning bolts the wizard was throwing at them.

Soon, the other three were joining the battle and helping the knight and wizard. I was about to take out one of the orcs by myself with my bow, but everyone kept getting between me and my target. I was forced to let them do things the hard way. That was evident by the wound taken by Victor. He appeared to be disembowled. It was pretty gruesome. But when the battle was over, the wizard handed a vial to Eric to give to Victor. He seemed to have healed right in front of our eyes. Unfortunately, the knight wasn't as fortunate. The knight's name was Nigel and the wizard was Martin. We took them back to our camp to help them and realized that Molmus was nowhere to be found. There were impressions in the ground where his tent was, but not tracks leading away.

Nigel was unconcious, and not looking too good. Victor dresses his wounds when it becomes obvious that Martin didn't know what he was doing. Then Eric had to open his mouth about his brand. Asking everyone whether or not they could help remove the brand. That brought unwanted attention to them on all of us and Martin just realized we are escaped prisoners. It was about that time we recognized the symbol of Tyr on the Nigel's armor and shield. This was going to be a problem. Martin agrees that Nigel may not take too well to being around four escaped prisoners. But apparently Nigel is a minor noble who came up here with a group of adventurers to look into the keep. They ran into a lot of trouble and a couple of the women were taken prisoner by the orcs. Others are dead and Martin and Nigel are the only two left of the original party. They have been running from the orcs for the last couple of days. We have offered to help them recover the two women from the orcs. We were going there anyway, and we would rather know what Molmus is up to than run away and pay no attention to the problem. We want to get to the artifact to find out what Molmus is after. Too bad for us, that means wading through a tribe of orcs.

Say a prayer to Tymora for us.