diary

[cellio]

September 24 (Tuesday)

That was some party. Turok and Kyle were really, really drunk. Yes, the wine was very very good, but that doesn't mean you have to guzzle. Oh well. I'm glad that Liandra and I didn't drink very much, at least. That gave us four to keep watch, if you count Hrolf and Slade which of course I do. And there were no monsters, for once. I guess Prolix wasn't too drunk either, though it was kind of hard to tell. Where was I? Crazy gnomes -- right.

We explored one of the passages from that large room, and very suddenly the construction changed. These had been (apparently) natural tunnels and caves up to this point, and suddenly the corridor changed to planned construction -- stone blocks and mortar, squared off, level floor, and everything. Like that one set of rooms back in the rat-kin space that was different from everything else. And after a few feet, the corridor ended. But there was a wooden panel. No handle or hinges, but obviously there was something behind it. Something with lots of magic, according to our wand.

We tried to open the "door" and we heard some mumbling from the other side. A spellcaster, specifically. As the "door" moved aside noisily (so much for stealth), Turok shouted that we meant no harm. We were apparently standing in the back of a closet; there was another (open) door a couple feet in front of us, and truly massive quantities of junk that came tumbling out at us.

We caught a glimpse of the spellcaster, and it was a gnome. So Prolix started talking to him, sometimes in a language we could understand and sometimes not. The other gnome turned invisible, but Prolix followed him anyway. He was trying to haggle for spells! Here we are in the middle of slime central and Prolix wants to trade spells with this guy. Not only that, but he criticized the other gnome's lab. Yeah, it was sloppy, but you don't irritate the guy you're trying to negotiate with. I thought everyone knew that. So eventually Nithelin (as we later learned his name to be) tried to slip away while invisible, but Liandra tackled him and Prolix charmed him.

Nithelin is a lunatic. He might be a brilliant lunatic; I can't tell. He's been doing spell research, particularly transmutation, and he has found ways to "enlarge" things. So he took some cheese and made more cheese from it. He made the rat-kin; they were ordinary rats until he started tampering with them. And he made the slime, though he didn't mean to (and didn't believe he had, but we showed it to him and I think he realizes his error now).

He did a lot of raving about how no one appreciates his brilliance. He also kept talking about the "great upheaval". Apparently, he had been secluded in a tower doing research, and some priests would leave food and supplies for him every day and he never went out, but then the deliveries stopped. We pointed out to him that he is not in a tower; he's under ground. Eventually he showed us around his living quarters a bit, and outside his front door there is a bit of corridor (like where we came in) and then it just ends in a wall of rock. The whole area of man-made construction forms a circle. A circle that doesn't belong here, and that must have been magically moved. The "upheaval" he talked about wasn't an earthquake like he thought; it was the physical transportation of him and his surroundings to this hunk of underground. What the heck caused that? And has it happened more than once? It sure looks like it's happened twice just in Shepford, and if dragons have suddenly appeared in Stross then maybe it happened there.

I don't know if Nithelin caused all of that or he just got caught up in it, but if we can manage it Prolix and I should scour his library to try to understand what he's been working on, just in case. Meanwhile, I understand now why the rat-kin have been so vague about some things; they were "born" in Nithelin's lab and escaped. (Looting some of his stuff -- we recognized the mark on that scroll case on other items in his lab.) They don't really have a history, and they probably had never seen daylight at all until we encountered them. This will surely have theological implications for Brion.

So anyway, we took Nithelin on a not-entirely-cooperative tour of the slime-infested areas. He doesn't know how to counteract the slime pond; he never got that far in his research. He became a little more cooperative after that, though, and joined us when we returned to the tavern. And he had some magic crackers that he somehow used to turn Jehan's wine into very good wine.

We offered to take Nithelin to Covanion, where he could do much better research (more wizards, supplies, etc) than he can do here. He seemed agreeable, but last night he tried to sneak out. (Turok and Slade slept in front of his door, so they stopped him.) I don't really care if he goes to Covanion or somewhere else, so long as he goes far away from Shepford. He's caused quite enough damage here already.

September 24, addendum

This afternoon we went back in to try to clean up more of the slime pool. (No more creatures, fortunately.) While we were looking at it Liandra said it looked like a wound, and that led to someone suggesting that we heal it rather than burning away at it. (We've already cauterized it, I guess.) That sounded like kind of a goofy idea, but it actually worked! That's really weird. We'll need to spend another day or two doing this; we ran out of spells before we ran out of slime. But there's a lot less of it than there was.

We had a lot of free time today (no more monsters, ran out of healing), so I've been practicing magic again. Brion and I talked a few days ago about being able to conjure up servants, and I find I can now do it, sort of. They're stupid and not very strong, and I have to supervise them at least somewhat, but I can do it. I set one to cleaning up the tavern's main room after the mess the party made last night. I couldn't teach it to cook, though.

And I think I know how to grow wings -- and other things too; I found myself growing a tail without really trying, earlier. Hrolf is excited about this; I think he imagines that this is the first step toward teaching me to hunt for my dinner.