The Netherese Among Us

July 10, 2007

We woke up the next morning in Daerlun rather somber. I personally woke up to two more shadow magic books in my room. These are more academic in nature than the Netherese book was. I know the dragon is the one to leave them for me, but they don't seem to be biased toward anything specific, so I start to look at them. I figure I have to use any weapons I can get, even if it is the enemy that gives them to me. Looking at these basically mean that I almost missed breakfast. Tequesta had eaten almost everything by the time I got to the table.

None of the party seemed pleased. Personally, I was feeling extremely guilty. No one has come out and blamed me for anything, but I still feel responsible for a lot of this. I don't know exactly what I could have done differently, except maybe never picked up that book, but I did, and here we are.

Tequesta, Malcolm, Azle, and Aurora headed back to Arabel to find out if there are any sightings of the dragon and to put the word out that we are looking for it. The rest of us headed back to Suzail to pay attention whether anything interesting was going to happen there.

We spend a couple of uneventful tendays and we get word that there has been a black dragon sighted in the Knightswood. We all pack up and head to the Blisterfoot Inn. From there it's only a few hours walk to the ruins where the dragon was sighted near. We did have to get an Adventurer's Charter because we were now five people. We had to come up with a name for the group. This was an interesting discussion as Marcus kept wanting to name us some fuzzy loving light name. We finally decided on "The Alpha Pack." I like it. It's got a good power feel to it, but still neutral.

When we get there, I got sucked into a reveal and it turned me into a pop-sickle. I managed to see an archway and on the wall near it was written in Elvish that Illifarn and the Dwarvish clans are connected via a series of portals. In Draconic next to it was scratched, "Now I will have my revenge!"

We approach the area and it appears to be warded against shadow magic. Reese got hit with energy and got a burst of magic. There was a voice that said in his head "Accept your heritage. " Marcus and I were very close to him at the time and all three of us get a major boost to our magical abilities. I seemed to get flooded with magical knowledge and even a boost of my energy reserves.

After that, a being appears and said the powers are of Netheril. When we finish dealing with the dragon, he has a larger, more difficult quest for us. He was known as Eolim and Reese is of his line. One of his ancestors is still in lichdom. Two were the worst criminals in Netheril history. This one happens to be the one who discovered how to cut off a mountain top and turn it over and turn it into a flying city, with Mythlaars.

After that pleasant encounter, we approached a magical portal in a space which I saw in my reveal. It would be easy to activate, but it appeared to be trapped. It seemed to be laced with shadow magic. Lisha and I worked to disarm the trap and managed to partially do it right. Unfortunately, not completely. Tentacles of shadow reached out and grabbed all of us and pulled us through.

We ended up in Undermountain in an old dusty room that looked like it could have been one of Halaster's living quarters, a long time ago.

As I was looking at some scrolls on the shelves, several drow said that they belonged to them.

Well that was disconcerting.