diary

[cellio]

December 2 (Monday)

I've been thinking about the message from Marius for the last few days. I'm worried about the folks back home, so Liandra very nicely agreed to send a bird messenger to Brion for me. (I made sure to show Hrolf the bird and told him to leave this one alone.) Of course, he might not be able to get a message back to me, but I can try. We're going to go to Haven (Liandra's home in Tergia, as it turns out) to seek information, so I told him he could reply there. With luck they'll relay a message if we miss it.

(When we talked about going to Haven, Turok asked if there are taverns there and Kyle pointed out that taverns are dangerous. I heard Liandra mutter something like "home is so beautiful; maybe we shouldn't go there". Sigh; we don't really break every place we come into contact with, do we?)

December 3 (Tuesday)

Yikes. What the heck was that thing?

This morning we climbed the mountain to the dragon statue. Well, Liandra, Prolix, Hrolf, and I flew, and Turok and Kyle got to swallow live spiders. Ick. The climb looked pretty rough; there are some steep, almost-unclimbable spots there. I wonder how whoever put that statue up there carried it up. Magically, I presume.

There was a sort of balcony with a huge -- half-again as tall as Turok -- dragon statue, in that same reared-up snarling position. This one was more detailed than the others we've seen. It's also very, very old. But it's not magic.

At the back of the balcony were huge stone doors. They were locked, but Kyle took care of that. Then, before we could do anything, the doors opened all by themselves! And we saw a large stone humanoid "statue" that spoke and demanded the password.

We tried everything we could think of, but apparently we don't know the password. It kept walking toward us, flailing its arms. When it looked like it was going to attack us, we started attacking it.

My missiles were completely ineffective. So were some hits from Turok's sword, but others appeared to do damage. (Maybe it has really good armor. It's a statue, after all.) It did seem to react to my flame-balls a little. I don't think Kyle even tried throwing a dagger at it after it shrugged off Turok's sword. Meanwhile, it was swinging its big stone arms at Turok. Someone suggested that we might need magic weapons, which we can temporarily produce, so we decided to leave and return here tomorrow better-armed.

So we flew and climbed back down and returned to the cave. Mellan was in a pretty foul mood; apparently he did something to annoy Slade and Tasha, and they spent the day snarling and growling at him. Serves him right, whatever it was. He also complained that the dogs stink, so I gave Mellan a nose-full of a very strong scent of roses. (It's not bothering the rest of us.) That made him complain that he's allergic to flowers. That's when Kyle got fed up and gagged him.

December 4 (Wednesday)

Today we went back up to the cave. The doors were closed again. When we opened them, the statue demanded a password again. We tried everything we could think of -- open, Agon, Agondre, words other people spouted in other languages, even "password", but none of it satisfied the statue, which was moving toward us during all this. (It looked like "Agondre" caused it to pause momentarily, but nothing else had any effect.) So it attacked us, and we had to fight it. Turok's sword was able to do some damage, as were flame balls, and Liandra also had a flame blade that seemed to help. I think she blessed some weapons, but I'm not sure. Kyle tumbled past the fight to look around the room, and he reported that there were some papers in there. I sent an unseen servant in to collect them, just in case I had to lob a fireball in there later. (Hrolf said he was glad I didn't send him; he's afraid of statues that fight back. I decided not to ask...)

Eventually Turok "killed" the statue, or at least shattered it into a bunch of pieces. The servant brought me the papers, which had been sitting on a chest. These turned out to be a letter and a recipe, both fascinating.

The letter is from someone named Renard and is addressed to someone named Therion. It's probably hundreds of years old. And he's talking about the "crisis". I think he means the Cataclysm, and it sounds like he was alive when it happened. The letter closes with "may the glorious Dragon Empire of Agondre last forever!". Well, that didn't quite happen, at least here. (I mean, it's still here, but I haven't heard anyone call it "glorious".)

I've been wondering whether Turok's Gurosha-Kara and our Agondre were the same empire; it's possible that it was and Agondre only fell on hard times here. When I mentioned this idea Turok told me that 500 years ago the emperor of Gurosha-Kara divided his empire into two parts, though I'm not sure exactly why. I'm guessing that we've found the other part. (That would have been at about the time of the Cataclysm. What in the world did he do? From listening to Turok it sure sounds like Gurosha-Kara could still be described as "glorious".)

Renard had some advice (including to seek out the temple of Dorl Tavyani near the headwaters of the Findemar river). We'll do that. We were already trying to investigate the odd events here anyway, and we're looking for something else in these mountains (though we'll probably have to go to Haven first for more information).

Renard also left some useful items for Therion, which we have taken. (Well, we left the masterwork harp, as none of us can play it and Therion can, and we left a note for Therion telling him what we had done. Just in case he's still out there somehow.) The note named them but didn't tell us what they really were, so we spent a while testing them.

There are two things that especially appeal to me. One is a recipe for a magic item! Someone has done all the research, it appears, to make some wards against disease. This is powerful stuff. Mind, I don't know where we're going to find a unicorn to help, and we'll have to search a while for the pearls, but if we can get the ingredients, I can make these. (Once.) I wrote out a copy of this recipe and gave it to Liandra, just in case something were to happen to me.

The other is a magical mirror. As I looked at my reflection in it, my face seemed to come into sharper "focus", with perhaps a bit more of a radiance. I seemed to be speaking a little more smoothly and diplomatically, and Kyle even did me an uncharacteristic favor! (And the zit on my forehead faded away.) I don't think it's an illusion; I think it really is making me prettier and more confident and diplomatic. I feel like it might even help me unlock a little more magic, if I use it right.

(At one point I saw Hrolf gazing into it, and he seemed cuter and less sarcastic than usual. Interesting. But it only seems to work on one target at a time, so he's going to have to settle for his natural charm.)

On the way back to the cave we talked about what to do about Mellan. Turok, or maybe it was Prolix, suggested that once in Tergia we find a tavern, get him thoroughly drunk, and then slip out, leaving him with the tab. That could work.

December 5 (Thursday)

Today we rode north through more snow. We are now camped at the top of a part of the gorge that we can lead the horses across. It'll probably take all of tomorrow to climb down this side and up the other, but at least Prolix isn't concocting plans to swing horses like pendulums, so I'd say we're in pretty good shape.

Comments

[cellio]

This could be amusing. Do tell, what flavor of come-on does he use? Boasting of his own qualities, flattering his targets, something else? :-)

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Probably boasting of his own qualities, particularly his rank and family status. (Which would be especially ironic now, but he's not one to let common sense stand in his way.)

There may be empty promises ("We could rule Draneken together") as well.