diary

[cellio]

September 10 (Tuesday)

Colm said that he'd like to stay here in Edwest Burrows for about a week. We're only about two days' travel from Shepford, so this afternoon I wrote Brion a letter telling him about recent events. I also asked if the rat-kin have told him anything more about what was chasing them; they were being pushed from the north, which is approximately where we are now. I wonder if it was giant roaches.

Delroy has started to make repairs to his floor. He said not to worry; the food will keep coming while this is happening. The food here is really good, so I'm happy to hear that.

Hrolf has been eager to help in our fights, and I've been afraid he'd get killed. I think I've figured out how to make magic items, though, so as long as we're going to be here a little while anyway, I'm going to attempt to make something to protect him.

So Hrolf and I went shopping this afternoon. We were looking for a jeweler or metalsmith. We found someone who can help us. He was pretty incredulous when I asked him to make a fine, strong chain "harness" for Hrolf (you want what?), and even more incredulous when I asked him to make little copper feathers and attach them to it. The feathers are important; the aesthetics are just all wrong without them. And, as I told the jeweler, it's important that my friend Hrolf look his best! He insisted on half the money up front; I think he thought this was a prank or something. He said to come back Friday.

We also found the local cleric, a nondescript young fellow named Berill. I didn't recognize the symbol he wore; maybe he worships some local or halfling deity, though he looked human to me. He was willing to sell a couple of healing potions, so I got one for myself and one for Liandra. Liandra said she's going to make some, but today she's busy tending to people and tomorrow we're going to clear out the sewers and maybe that house, so I thought we should have some now.

Tonight Toby the bard wanted to know all about Dalia's rescue. He looked kind of squeamish when we told the story, and I noticed that his playing was a little off tonight. I wonder what motivated him to go out adventuring in the first place. He seems happy to be retired.

Meanwhile, Dalia has been fawning all over Kyle tonight. Her parents wouldn't let her out all day -- said they wanted their doctor to make sure she's really ok. I also noticed a lot of chicken soup headed toward her room. It smelled good but a bit underspiced, so I helped it out a bit when no one was looking.

September 11 (Wednesday)

Today we cleared out the remaining roaches in the house, which have apparently been sitting there in some sort of catatonic state since Monday night. The town guards didn't want to clean it up themselves, though.

We were there when Berill came to remove the bodies of the people who had lived there. They were in really bad shape, and were full of regular-sized roaches. Yuck! Eventually they managed to get the bodies out so they could be buried.

Then we went down into the sewers (which still stink) to make sure there aren't any more giant roaches waiting to attack the town. We found a room (yes, room! in the sewers!) with a few roaches, which we killed, and also some skeletons of some long-dead humans. One of them was carrying a note offering a reward for a magic cookbook said to be owned by halflings. Aha! No wonder the food is so tasty. We'll have to let Delroy know that someone is after him.

We found another room that seemed to have been a bedroom. What, did these people live down here? This was behind a big, rusty door that hadn't been opened in a long time. When we finally got it open, we were attacked by some sort of undead thing. It was gray and withered and really stank. I guess you would too, if you'd been sealed in a room for several years without bath water. I guess undead don't need to breathe, either.

We fought this thing off and it eventually died. I tried to disrupt it but failed; Prolix then said something like "here, I'll show you how it's done" and then disrupted it. I was about to fire some missiles and ask if he can do that, but the thing died before I could.

There was some money in this room amidst the ruins, and also a nice dagger that later turned out to be magic, but the prospect of picking this stuff up was pretty gross. So I did it with my mind, and we dumped everything into a sack to be washed off later. I also remembered Ferdinand saying that some spells require undead bones as components, and I don't have any of those, so I telekinetically picked up some of those too. Liandra had been busy burning the body to make sure it didn't come back, so I got some clean bones without flesh and gunk on them. You can never be sure when you're going to need stuff like this, after all.

We found one more room, and this one had large rats in it. (There was also a pool of sewage in the middle of the room. It smelled pretty bad in there!) Turok went in swinging his sword and swatting them in groups. Prolix went in for some reason and ended up kicking one. Meanwhile, I had a feeling that I could now make small balls of fire kind of like my missiles only bigger, so I did that and was pleased o discover that they stayed around for a few seconds. I could even move them! So I kept rolling one on top of rats until they were all dead.

We investigated all passages that we found, including a tiny one that only Prolix could go down. When he came out he was smaller than he had been when he went in. He was also wet and filthy. I know that clothes can shrink when you wash them, but I didn't know it applied to gnomes. He spent the next 20 minutes or so thoroughly scrubbing himself with a prestidigitation spell. Didn't last, though, because this was before the rats so he got goo all over him again anyway. I probably would have done the same thing, though; I can't stand being dirty and smelly when it's so easy to fix.

September 12 (Thursday)

Today has been a slow, pleasant day. Delroy has covered over the hole in his kitchen floor and things are pretty much back to normal there. Dalia is back to work, and Delroy and Maggie are still yelling at her for spending so much time fawning over Kyle instead of cleaning tables and sweeping floors. She also spent a lot of time talking to Toby, though it's clear she's not lusting after him the way she is after Kyle.

We did some testing of the magic dagger and discovered a neat trick: if you throw it, it comes back to you. This sounds like just the sort of thing Kyle can use.

Hrolf asked me if he could go hunting with a zapping hand spell again, so I let him. We're also experimenting to see how long he can "hold the charge", so to speak, without it going away on its own. Last night he held it for at least 6 hours, he said, which is a lot longer than I thought it would last. I wonder if it sticks around until used, no matter how long that is? It also didn't seem to weaken in that time, as he brought back another large rabbit with it.

Liandra spent today making a healing potion. Prolix spent it writing scrolls. Turok and Kyle spent some of it practicing their flying-halfling maneuvers, to the amusement of Maggie, who was watching from the inn. Dalia went running at one point, convinced that Kyle was hurt, but he sent her away. She looked so worried! Poor thing; she doesn't know that they've been trying to develop that trick since Duvik's Pass.

September 13 (Friday)

This morning Hrolf and I picked up his harness. It looks great! The jeweler had to make some final adjustments for fit, but that didn't take long. Then we went back to the inn, where I set out to enchant it. Delroy gave me another room to use for the day, because Liandra was in our room making another potion and I didn't want to disturb her.

This is neat! It took all day and I'm tired, but I made a harness of mage armor for Hrolf. He can trigger it by tapping one of the feathers with a claw, and he gets magic armor for an hour. I worked especially hard on the visual effects; when he uses it the feather he tapped vanishes in a tiny wisp of copper-colored smoke, and then all the feathers move around toward the front of the harness to fill in the space. I wouldn't want Hrolf to have to reach behind his neck or something to get the last few charges, after all. It's a pretty neat effect. And after all, appearances matter!

Hrolf promised that he wouldn't waste charges. I made him promise that he also wouldn't hold out and try to avoid using it if he's in danger. It's there for him to use when he needs to. I'm going to pay attention to the feather count for a while.

September 14 (Saturday)

Today I made toys. Well, decoys, maybe. I've been wanting to use my mage hand more; chasing Colm with apples and Maria with swarms of bugs is all fine and dandy, but I ought to be able to also use this to distract people in combat.

This morning I bought some leather, and then I spent most of the morning making a bat. Hrolf was very helpful in explaining how the joints in the wings should be so that the bat will actually fly. I took a couple tiny slivers of that bone I picked up and made tiny little fangs. (I painted the tips red to look kind of like blood.) I also made beady little eyes. If you look at it closely it's obviously a fake bat, but I have hopes that if it's flying toward someone's face unexpectedly, it'll look real enough.

I spent some time practicing with it, with Hrolf coaching me, so it looks like it's flying. Then we went out into the woods to practice a trick I want to learn: Hrolf flew up about 15 feet and dropped the bat, and I picked it up with a mage hand and moved it forward and down as quickly as I could. I'm getting better speeds than I would if I just started with it in my hand; having Hrolf drop it really helps speed it up. This makes sense -- just like dropping snowballs on Maria's head from the barn roof made much more of an impact than just tossing them at her.

Tomorrow I'm going to make a couple more bats, now that I know how to do them.

September 16 (Monday)

I got a letter from Brion today. Things are going all right, but he seemed a little worried or edgy or something. I wonder what that's about.

[Above paragraph to be edited when I actually see the letter. :-) ]

Last night Toby sang a new song for us, about our rescue of Dalia. Funny, but Kyle had a much grander role in the song than I remember. But it's still a decent song.

Delroy had a talk with Kyle today. He wanted to know how serious Kyle's marriage plans were for Dalia. Poor Kyle; no one told him about those plans. Delroy and Kyle were both very polite about it, especially once they figured out that it was Dalia's doing. But they both looked relieved when the conversation ended.

Colm packed up his wares today. We're going to be heading out tomorrow morning.

September 17 (Tuesday)

It seemed like half the town came out for our departure this morning. Dalia gave Kyle a handkerchief to remember her by. He ended up giving her a dagger to remember him by, which was sweet. Once we got underway, though, I asked Hrolf to check and make sure Dalia wasn't following us. That could be embarrassing.

September 18 (Wednesday)

Tonight we arrived at Buckspil Gate. The inn isn't as good as at Edwest Burrows, but it'll do.

September 19 (Thursday)

Very early this morning Hrolf came in carrying a bird. He said it was odd; the bird was just sitting there near our wagon, not moving. I immediately worried that it might be sick and warned Hrolf not to eat it just in case, but it was too late.

As he was eating, I saw that there was a note wrapped around its leg! It's from Brion. Something bad has happened, and he's calling for help. I told the rest of the group about it; Colm was hesitant and Prolix really wanted to keep going, but Liandra and I said we wanted to go, and Kyle and Turok seemed agreeable, so we're going. This is my home town, and if my family and friends are in trouble, we have to help them! I hope Colm can push the horses a bit so we can get there quickly!

I wondered how Brion was able to send that bird to us, and Liandra said she knows that spell. (I didn't know it was a spell.) So we sent a note back to Brion letting him know that we're on our way.

Comments

[indigodove.livejournal.com]

Liandra has been calling Kyle some word (a name) that makes him stamp his feet and glare at her...little does the rest of the party know that it's the halfling equivalent of "studmuffin" ;-)

I love Larissa's journal!!!

[cellio]

:-) And when the opportunity arises, will we hear the halfling words for "airborne studmuffin"?

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Some minor corrections:

-The cockroaches were not at all catatonic after the "queen" died. (That was why y'all left through the window.)

-Kyle could have gone down the crack in pursuit of the cockroaches instead of Prolix. He simply chose not to do so.

Thanks for the journal entry--I'll try to get Brion's response out today.

[cellio]

Roaches: oh, whoops. Sorry about that!

Kyle: thanks for the correction. Are Kyle and Prolix about the same size, or is Prolix bigger than Kyle?

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

I think Prolix is slightly larger.