The afternoon did not pass well. In an attempt to uncharm (if charmed he is) the Baron, Thora flew off and began to cast dispel magic on him. Although we had palced several protection magics upon her, she was attacked by several mages. Things were proceeding poorly, which lead to Roland, Lani, and myself flying after to help, although we each left at different times.
The attempt on the Baron was unsuccessful. Worse than unsuccessful. Thora now lies dead, Lani has been captured, and Roland is missing. The enemy were thoughtful enough to return Thora's body to us for proper burial. I'm afraid the ceremony will have to be rushed, given our current predicament.
We no longer feel confident in our ability to successfully deal with the Baron, or even that mage. Our options seem limited to waiting for reinforcements. We have been informed that with the enemies present forces, they should be unable to win. The hope is that they do not get reinforcements before we do.
The constant rest/rememorise/attack cycle is beginning to tire me. The mages from both sides, myself included, have had a number of short sharp fights, with little accomplished except to allow the troops to fight without magical interference.
Some reinforcements have arrived, a group of knights. However, although they fought well, they have been unable to fight through the town. They have set up position outside of town.
Rolands body was also returned recently, and, understandably, Safranna is greatly upset. Turia has tried to comfort her, although I do not think there is much which can be done to help her overcome her grief. Instead, we have pursued the option of having him resurrected.
We had Leo find out how someone might be resurrected, but found there is no easy way to bring someone back to life. There are four possibilities:
The only viable option at this time seems to be to ask Liril to cast wish. Unfortunately, that is expensive, but given the frienship the party has with Liril and Or-len, they should charge less.
Having already done a sending to Liril, they have indicated they will get here when they can.
Much changed today. Liril and Or-len arrived, realised that a civil war was going on, and decided that it would be good if the civil war stopped. So they stopped it.
The other mages had little chance against Liril. Liril cast power word stun on most of them, although for variety she did cast maze on a few. Liril and Or-len pretty much single handedly ceased the civil war. Although it can be said that the King would most likely have emerged victorious, it would have taken longer.
Our side has captured almost all of the important enemy figures. However, Kelvin the Magus is nowhere to be seen. On a whim, I will perform a sending to him, wishing him best of luck in his future endeavours.
Thora and Roland have both been resurrected, at a very reasonable price too. Liril charged 40000 gold for each resurrection, which is how much it will cost her to recover the age she will lose by casting wish.
Apparently there is a possibility that the resurection can fail. It is possibe the caster may not be able to handle sudden aging, and thereby die. Liril did not show concern at this possibility. Furthermore, it is possible that the subject being resurrected may not be able to handle being brought back to life. Only one attempt can be made to resurrect someone. After the first failure, they cannot ever be resurrected again.
Another limit on resurrecting someone, by whatever means, is that after 28 days, the persons soul arrives at wherever it was destined. At this point, one requires the permission of the appropriate deity for the resurrection to succeed. I imagine this is the extra information Leo indicated existed.
Liril and Or-len also bring news of events in the Alphatia/Thyatus part of the world:
The King threw a party today. The best part was where we got rewarded for our help (well, rewarded for bringing Liril and Or-len along).
I snatched up a few potions and a scroll with some pretty nice spells on it. Turia grabbed a dagger +2. The others took various trinkets, or asked for things, such as favour. Liril and Or-len got first choice, so they snatched up a Libram of Silver Magic, and an Amulet of Life Protection. Liril cannot use the libram, as she's already read one before (she got that one because of us as well). However, she should be able to make quite a bit of money from this. And they didn't have to work very hard.
It looks as though our group will be a little smaller from now on. Phoranin has announced she will be returning to Aengmor, and Al-Alim will be staying here at the temple. We threw both of them a party. Unfortunately, Roland decided to be somewhat of a spoilsport. He argued against getting Phoranin drunk by spiking her drink. I guess I'll never get to see her drunk now. Gee. I think I'll keep such suggestions to myself and Turia in future. Some people can be so boring at times.
Thora has indicated that she isn't really in trouble with Freyja for failing the quest.
There will be a trial in several days.
The Baron and the Count were put on trial today. It was recognised that the Baron was magically influenced in his belief the King was under magical influence. He certainly realises now that attacking in order to free him was a stupid approach to the matter, and caused unecessary bloodshed. Given he was magically influenced, he was aquitted.
Not so lucky the Count. The Count claimed he was also ignorant, and due to the benefit of the doubt, he was only banished, rather than being hanged. Strangely detect lie spells are not allowed, although some of our group used them anyway. The Count was lying.
We spoke to a sage today regarding dragons. We believe that the best way of finding out which dragons in the area might be red but not red is to ask a dragon, but preferably a dragon more inclined to be friendly (although Lani seems to think every dragon is cute and snuggly and will obviously be friendly).
Liril and Or-len have told us that the metallic dragons tend to be more reasonable, although it is always good to show great respect to dragns, as they believe they are a superior species. Bearing gifts (bribes) is also a good idea.
At any rate, the sage indicated he knew of two dragons in the region (other than Pyre). The first is in the trident isles. He is not sure of its colour, except that it is probably metallic. The other dragon is in goblin lands, and is very definitely not a friend of the goblins. Indeed, some countries would like to ally themselves with it, if they could just manage to find it. It too is likely to be metallic.
We do need more information. It seems reasonable that there may be a sage in Harath that would know more of where these dragons may be, so we have decided to head there.
We got to the falcon today, and have taken off, heading for Harath. Thora went ahead via trees to hopefully speed things up. Shouldn't be that long before we get there.
(3 am)
Bad bad bad bad bad... Nooo magic. Not good. Like nothing magical is working.
Not a thing. Is it this land we are in? Oh boy, not good. Even the magical
creatures, like Lani, are feeling sick. Safranna and Roland were in the
extra-dimensional space that is no longer there. I don't even feel like I
have any spells memorised. I certainly can't cast anything. Good
thing Zim is a good pilot; I doubt anyone else could have have managed
such a controlled crash landing.
Poor Turia is feeling sick too, though I find that strange. She is human, but I feel fine, if a bit tired since it is three in the morning.
Not good. I'd really like to know what is going on. Well, in the morning we can go to a nearby town and ask if this is normal. I really hope this is a very normal thing.
(morning)
Gee, Leo is real sick. Obviously he is the most magical of us all. Gurzurk seems ok.
Whatever is happening is not normal. The people in the Rakasta town (cat people) are all feeling sick. No-one knows what is happening. We spoke to a fellow adventurer, a cat person called Ki-tin. He seemed reasonable enough, and was obviously able to hide his sickness better.
Turia is also doing a good job of hiding how sick she is feeling, though I know she is not having a good time.
I looked at my spellbooks. They really are filled with mumbo-jumbo words and nonsense. On ordinary paper no less. This begs the question of what on earth is magic anyway. Very strange comes to mind.
Why do I get the feeling that something big is happening? I wonder if Thora is ok. I wondr what's happening to Roland and Safranna.
Well, there was a day a few years back which experienced some magic problems. That lasted only a day. Perhaps things will be better tomorrow.
Oh man. I'm thinking of a phrase which rhymes with "clucking bell".
Well, I may as well try to get some research done. This sort of thing doesn't exactly happen every day after all.
Oh, we appear to be about 20 miles from the Rakastan capital.
Magic has still not returned. This is real bad. I'm beginning to wonder if it's going to come back at all.
Up until now I have been trying to do research. There's basically one conclusion I can draw. It is basically as if magic does not exist. Even as if it never existed, as far as I can tell. It is very strange.
I have come to the conclusion that magic is not something generated by the soul, for surely it would be hard to take that away. Instead, I feel it must be some environmental factor. Something in the environment allowed us to cast spells, etc (well, it used to anyway). I wish I knew what happened to it.
I have a few tentative suggestions as to why Turia may be sick. The first is, if magic never existed, or does not exist (as at present), then, as Turia is from another plane, then she would never have been able to get to Mystara, hence she is, in a sense, magical.
The other suggestion is that, although she is human in practical meaning, she is still, in some way, a magical creature. A magical human. Whatever the case, it's definitely to do with her coming from another plane. I just wish she'd get better.
Lani is somewhat unhappy. She can't fly. I always thought that she didn't look very aerodynamic.
I don't feel that there is any more research I could accomplish. Since there are sick people, and few who can tend them, I feel I should help as best I can.
Still no magic.
Leo seems to be having a crisis. He's all depressed about how he may be stuck as a mortal indefinitely.
Well, we can wait a while longer yet. This really is bad though.
Ahh, magic is back.
Thora returned.
I was awake at the time it returned (3am). It was an instantaneous return. It felt like a prickling sensation. Roland and Safranna are also back now. They had no food or drink for all that time! The extra-dimensional space must really reek.
We rested and rememorised earlier, and also asked Leo a question. Also, after some sendings, and scrying...:
We also have a number of issues to worry over. Namely, if Vermissa was magically imprisoned, then has she been released. That would be bad.
Thora has left to find out what she can.
Oh dear. The sky started to turn red today, so we are currently fleeing it. It would appear that the vermeil is spreading. That is real bad for this region.
Now that we thought about it, I think I heard somewhere that Harath, the country of mages, was trying to contain the area afected by the curse. I guess they used magical means.
There are going to be a lot of newly cursed people. The price of that stuff they require for spells to prevent nasty side-effects is going to go up.
I wonder if the cursed area spreading slowly is tied in with the (possible) weakening of magic over time. Perhaps magic is slowly being consumed, and the biproduct is this vermeil stuff.
Unfortunately, the spreading of the vermeil is not the only majorly shocking news. Thora has found that Sundsvalle has been flattened. She is staying there to help people recover. When we need her, she will return. Liril said that the council (of Alphatia I guess) is going to attack Glantri.
So I guess that Glantri's device channeled all of that magic onto Sundsvalle. For a whole week? Maybe whatever means they used isn't terribly efficient.
Argh! Too much happening in too short a period of time.
The sky is still red. We are heading northwest, over land, just in case Rad gets triggerhappy.
I did some sendings to the Enduks. The vermeil is not there (yet?), and they confirmed that Harath has been containing the vermeil. Not any more I guess.
Good and bad news today. We escaped the newly cursed region, so we ourselves are safe from being cursed.
The bad news. Well, where to start? Gurzurk's deity says Thora is dead (after a divination). We did the divination because Liril said that Alphatia was, simply, gone. The entire continent no longer there. Liril found this out since I told her I couldn't get any sendings through.
Where Alphatia was there is now nothing but open water. I bet that Glantri didn't do this. This sounds like the gods interfering. Again. I should have guessed. They only pay attention to their rules when their rules suit them. When not... well, ignore them.
The question is why? Why remove the continent? Surely it would be easier to just kill everyone in it than actually remove everything in the entire region.
Well, who understands gods anyway.
Why do it in the first place? Was Alphatia (deity and country) going to do something they deemed unnaceptable? Well, in the god war, Alphatia has just lost.
It is pretty monstrous. If everyone in what used to be Alphatia is dead... Well, that's genocide if ever I heard it. They were willing to kill millions of innocent people. It's not like children deserved death. Or the elderly.
They do say that in war, the innocent are hurt most.