On the side, Thora arranges with the local Jarl to have his two children, Thorhild Thorunndottir and Arni the Seal, trained and made wise to the world, and preferably not as a berserker. They will travel with us for a while. Arni is a strong swimmer. They have both seen action before. Arni is the more cautious of the two, and Thorhilde, the sister, has the potential to be a berserker - this is not desired. Neither are cowardly. Arni is very devout, and makes a sacrifice to the deities every day before dinner. He takes his vows very seriously.

Back to the giants.

We find a cave entrance, with smoke coming out. I have a small argument with Thora about killing baby giants. We search the area, and Roland finds a smoke hole. Turia goes down to scout. After 15 minutes, she hasn't returned. We head down. The walls of the cave become worked, with abstract scenes.

A wall of stone blocks off our exit.

We proceed. We take damage from Rock to Muds cast on the ceiling. Remus gets downed and captured as a result of his own foolishness (charging off and getting caught behind a wall of stone).

We enter a large room, with many archways. A dozen giants and three dire bears attack us. We defeat them, but a number escape.

We catch up to some of the ones we wounded. We attempt to communicate, poorly. They return Remus, and we leave. However, Remus is dead, so we're not too happy. I believe they believe we won't return. However, we believed we'd be given a living Remus.

We return to the dragons, and inform them of the events.

Before proceeding, we will raise Remus (who is still in human form) from the dead. We do this at the Temple of Hades, where a funeral is in procession. Remus can foot the entire bill, considering it was his foolishness that got himself killed.

Remus comes back, and he gets a tongue lashing from Thora.

We rest for a while. The two Jarls' children join us.

I mention my wacky idea of flying to the moon, and maybe write a book about it.

We decide to go to a Temple to Hecate, and chat with them about it. They don't know what's on the moon. They do know of other heavenly bodies, including Damocles, the destroyed planet. Apparently Damocles was destroyed during the great war - it is believed that the comet was from Damocles, the one that somewhat hurt Darokin. Again, the stories say it was caused by the Master of Hule.

The people at the temple can give us maps of the surface of the moon.

We decide to pass a week.

Get items identified.

A wand of shocking grasp, 9 charges. 135gp. Gauntlets of Ogre Power. 4000gp.
A tome of clear thought, +1. 27500gp.
A stone horse. (turns into a horse upon speaking the command word) 14800gp.

We split the items.

Thora reads the runes, and determines that there is nothing beyond what we already know to prevent us from returning should we venture to the moon.

Zim has determined that sky gnomes that that left for the moon had engines powered by fire elementals, expected to use fireballs to get past the sky shield, and had air elementals to produce the air to breathe.

A divination determines that we should be able to get to the moon and back safely with the preparations we've discussed.

We decide, well, why not?

Preparations have been made. We now have 6 potions of air (at 11th level), and 10 potions of air at 5th level.

I buy the disintegrate spell.

Leo does another divination. Leo determines that Thora has met the descendents of the gnomes who left for the moon many years ago.

We take to the skies! One needs a disintegrate to get past the sky shield.

We see Mystara from orbit. Awesome! There's a whole continent we aren't even aware of!

Fly fly fly...

We overshot the moon already! We're now decelerating and shall shortly begin heading in the correct direction once again.

Before we got too close, we noticed that our direction of travel was being unduly influenced by some invisible phenomenon.

Not long after, we observed a different moon, a blue and green moon! It was originally hidden from view by some sort of magic, but when one is close enough, it's possible to see it.

We'll get there late tonight.

Well, it isn't Matera, the normally visible moon, that is necessarily the interesting moon. The blue-green moon is definitely interesting though.

Oh, we've determined that there is a lack of air outside the radius of the create air spells.

(early)

We have arrived at the moon. It, like Mystara, has a sky shield. Having disintegrated a portion of this, we fly into the moon. We're here.

The communicators still works.

Interestingly, the sun here looks reddish, much like in the Hollow World. The gate still works.

This world seems very wet and green.

(later)

Rih spots some cultivation and rows of crops. But not wheat coloured crops, green crops.

We land, and find Rakasta! The environment is very hot. The Rakastan who first greets us is wielding a fine sword, possibly magical. We are politely invited inside their abode, which resembles an Ochealan abode.

The Rakastan seems to be of some importance given the number of servants he has.

Minora chats with him and finds out stuff. Our host is a retired warrior, now a landowner. The local political structure is similar to the Jarldoms. This man is a bit like a knight, and he in turn owes fealty to another man. This other man does not seem to have any bosses.

There apparently are no other people like us. He is quite curious about us, but is too polite to ask too many questions.

They do have adventurers.

Apparently the Heldannic Knights have been here. They tried to conquer this moon, but failed.

(evening)

We treat him and presumably his family to our food. We go through the gate to get it.

As the day wears on, the sky changes from a dark red to a purple. However, the night is still very bright, as we can still see Mystara. It's probably as bright as an overcast day in Mystara.

We cannot see any stars, even when we think we should be able to.

Before sleeping, Thora does a commune with nature. She detects a powerful unnatural creature towards the edge of her detection.

I try teleporting, and am successful.

We sleep.

We head towards this fellows master, on foot (well tigers and the like anyway).

It is in the direction of the master that Thora detected the powerful unnatural creature.

Arnie plays deice with the guards. They use gold and silver and the like.

Urgh, the sun rises too early today. Apparently this happens.

(later)

We arrive in a small town. Many people gawk and point small claws at us.

We are led to the boss. Our friend, Sir Growl, requests permission to hunt down the powerful creature. He is granted permission. We will assist.

He doesn't know what sort of powerful creature it could be. Apparently they occasionally get deformed, broken, mutated creatures turning up. This has been happening since around the time that Alphatia disappeared.

The Rakastans did not experience any week of no magic, or ongoing days of no magic.

A picture is drawn of the typical appearance of the monsters. We'll get Gwen to see if anyone can dig up information about it in the library.

We are guided in our hunt by a tracker/hunter type.

Thora says there are now six of them.

We go.

(later)

Night falls, and we're close to where Thora detected the creatures. The Rakastans can see in the dark.

(later)

We find a large rock that has fallen from the sky, and squashed some trees. It's magical - transmutation, moderate. It looks like Iron Ore. It could be meteoric iron?

It is hollow. Not that thick.

We find a door. It opens strangely.

Inside are some spears, chests, and chairs.

We are attacked by two of them!

We defeat them. However, Sir Grown says they are not like the other creatures.

They are both killed, as they are not the sort to be taken captive.

We decide to stay here, and guard the stone object.

Zim finds some clothes within, suitable for a humanoid with two arms and two legs.

We discover that they came back, and must have seen us. We follow their tracks. Thora, Remus, and the Rakasta tracker stay behind at the rock.

(later)

Their tracks are leading back to the rock.

Thora is attacked, but we teleport back, and deal with the creatures. Well, Thora mostly deals with the creatures anyway.

We take one captive. It is, again, a snakelike creature.

We manacle it to a tree. However, it changes shape into a snake, and escapes the manacles.

It then starts to change shape again, but I thunk it into unconsciousness.

How to take it prisoner? Thora obtains some herbs, and doses it into a deep sleep. We then dig a deep pit, put some walls of stone in, and toss it in.

(evening)

It stirs. Minora and it have a conversation.

These creatures are here at the request of their dark lord in order to conquer this place. She isn't sure where it came from, but it was from far away, and somewhere in space.

They did arrive in the rock. The rock was made by their dark lord.

When Minora attempts to question it regarding the dark lord, it becomes very angry, and starts using some sort of ability to make people fear snakes.

Zim charms and chats to the snake man. Snake is two years old. He is part of an invasion force. He came in one of probably a dozen or more pods that have also landed.

>From what he knows, the dark lord is looking for a new home, since his current one has become unliveable. He lives on pieces of rock out there in the void.

Apparently, long ago, some dark lords tried to conquer Mystara, but lost. Now they're back, apparently.

A dark lord is dark, not scaly, with legs, around our height, white hair, similar facial features. They have pointy ears. Possibly dark elves?

These creatures like warmth, and dislike cold.

We kill him, as he's expecting to be communicated with magically, soon.

Interestingly, the pikes are made of local wood, or at least wood very similar to the local wood.

We head back to town.

The local lord is worried.

We shall spend a while learning the local language.

We hire researchers to investigate dark elves and the snakemen.

We have learnt the informal language that they speak. They also have a formal language.

They refer to this moon as Myoshima.

Dark elves: universally hated, sadistic, individually incredibly nasty, and live near the surface. They keep slave races. They sometimes fight with the shadow elves for living space.

Dark elf history: turned up around 2000 years ago. Don't know where they came from. They didn't fight the surface elves, but fought humans in the region now known as the Northern Reaches. The humans in the region, aided by dwarves, banded together and almost managed to kill all of the dark elves. The humans were led by two generals, Frey and Freyja.

Thora does some divinations. The time scale for the invasion is as yet undetermined. But it won't be within the next few months.

Leo divinations:
Between 20 and 50 scout groups landed.
Unknown if any dark lords landed.
They are not from Matera.
They are and are not from the ruins of Damocles. The Dark Lords are and are not Dark Elves. None have recently landed in Mystara?
No native allies here.
They have not yet infiltrated any of the natives here. There are more pods in this region.
The Dark Lords have no bosses.

Thora does another casting of the runes: The tiger rider Graarnt saw another pod land.

We travel to meet him.

Graarnt seems to know much. He apparently has some contact with the Rakastans on Mystara. But he's a bit tight-lipped, so we don't lose much. He does know the size of cities on Mystara though, for example. He's probably been there before, by the sounds of it.

We arrive at the stone egg. There are tracks, but they're too old to follow.

Thora finds a bird that tells us where the snakemen headed in. However, this is just towards a major road.

We get Leo to do a commune, and determine which city the snakemen have headed to.

We arrive at the city. We summon Avoral Guardinals, make them invisible, and send them off to search for the bad guys.

We are summoned to the local lord.

We chat.

The Guardinals find the snakemen.

We go to the house they're renting, invisibly. Our Rakasta friends go to get the local authorities.

(30 minutes later)

The authorities arrive.

They deal with the snakemen. One of the snakemen looked like a Rakasta. The snakemen seem to differ in appearance. Some more snakelike, some less.

There were four killed.

We are invited to speak with the ruler once again. He seems to believe us now. He will turn up to the meeting that is being organised.

This has turned to our advantage.