17st Ches

Dark times befall the Elves of Myth Drannor...

The solidified barrier of the Mythal traps the residents of Myth

Drannor within their own City.

Outside the transparent cage, a circle of dark runes can be seen,

written in a language not seen on the surface world since before man

walked the lands.

Beyond the ring of darkness, a tent city has appeared, and is growing

each night when the dark fog approaches.   Implements and vehicles of

war are being constructed from the trees in the area.   Most

unnerving, is that no-one has been seen outside the city... with the

setting sun, the drow's magical darkness rolls in, and when it

retreats with the dawn, the city has expanded.

The smell of Fear and dread hangs heavy in the air.  The Coronal is

not seen, as she works with the other mystics of Myth Drannar to

discover a way to pierce their own mythal.  The priests try to bring

hope to the people, as the watch attempts to bring order, but the

constant knowledge that they are trapped causes even the most

territorial citizen angry that he cannot leave.

It is rumored, at the taverns and bars, that the changed mythal has

other properties... that it causes people to forget things... that it

makes people commit horrible acts.... that is solidifies ghosts of

dark tragedies... and even, that it causes some people to disappear...

forever.

Whispers shared by children and men question whether they are alone

within their prison, wonder what could have been trapped within as

well.

Dark times befall the Elves of Myth Drannor.

A new member joins the team as we begin a hunt for the drow and a historical look into the arcana of the Mythal.  Forgotten is the new guy, a little pallid skinned and cold slammy hands.  The hunt goes extremely baddly, but the history check goes well.  The dark ring around the mythal has the ancient underdark language on it, that is telling a story. The outter ring gets smaller and the story gets shorter, and changes the story as it looses letters.  Darroth, was watching the letters, but hes disappeared. The mythal team found out hes gone, and the rest of the team has accepted that watching the mythal might make people disappear.  The sphere is contracting, and its conjectured, gradually making the city disappear from existence and memory.  The search has gotten a good deal of information about how the Mythal was corrupted, but has not yet fixed it.

The hunt team have found a few drow squads and hid in the basements or dungeons of towers.  Doors open for the drow unfortunately.  Priest Gwandell of Shavarash has vouched for the new guy Forgotten, who is an Assassin/Avenger he wears leather and carries a large jagged Glaive, he is sneaky and hurty. He is a half elf (and this isn't written in my Journal, but he is a Risen) and the shadows of dark seem to follow him around. The hunter team is checking the basements of towers on the north side of town.  Many of their battles are fought down there, and it seems that the drow are looking for things. Late in the month, Arust sees the druid shrine alone in the forest has some white stuff on it.  Its a circle of stones in a clearing used by the druids and priests of Myth Drannor.  It is now covered in a thick white wax that is being built up by white spiders.  In the middle there are six lumps that are elf sized. They return to a guard tower and inform the watch of the spiders.

Then the hunt team comes to the palace and get us. Since its the middle of the day, we all head back.  Brenna suggests we stop by and find an old druid or ranger who might know of the Fauna.  Feiniroth is an old Eladrin ranger from early in the crusade, early Paragon. Straelyn has heard whispers of rumors of legends of these, and he believes they are called Keepers of the Silence.  They come from a Plane called the Fey Dark, a dark reflection of the Feywild.  They spread Croach, or that thick wax.  Individually they are weak, but have a strong poison.  Since they are weak, we circle around to observe it, and find tracks going south, southwest, and northeast.  Heavily laden elf shaped boot prints are all three trails. We kill the first spider and the rest charge, then they are quickly taken out. Arust sends Feiniroth to tell the guards of the encounter and thanks him for coming with. Walking on the Croach is like walking on the frozen snow, your weight breaks us through.  When we reach the bodies, we find they're dead, but being kept alive without their souls by some horrible property of the Croach.  With everyone's assistance and bits we bring together, Straelyn deduces that these priests were trying to pierce the Mythal to get to the Fey Wild and got the Fey Dark instead, which brought in these monsters by mistake. 

Forgotten gets a sample of one body, and Flick takes a spider corpse, and we go to the Coronal Castle and we talk to the watch sergeant there.  Sergeant Evorial is elven, and Arust tells him the Druid Circle was covered in the Croach (Arust points at the bag Flick has), being put on my those spiders (Arust points at the dead spider on Flick's axe), where it had killed six priests (Arust says one part of one dead priest is in the scroll tube Forgotten is carrying).  We are shutted to a side room, where Priest Celegor of Corelon joins us.  He addresses Straelyn and they discuss the events.

Celegor asks if there were nine in the ritual, and says Niraen said he was going to try the ritual. Celegor confuses the Shadow Wild with the Fey Dark, which are two intersections between the Fey Wild and the Shadowfel.  Talking to Celegor we find the names of the three that walked away are Sonyastar (f), Silmo (m), and Nantil (m).  Two groups from the guard come to assist us and we meet up at the Stone Circle. We put two of them on the right track, and we take the trail going northeast. We talk small talk with the groups for a few minutes then set out on our own paths. After going due northeast with little deviation we arrive in short order at the Mythal.  The footsteps walk through the Mythal, look at the Dark Runes a bit, then jump over, goes between the tents and continues on its way out. Straelyn thinks that whatever it was that walked away, it is or was foreign enough that the Mythal didn't account for it, and thus didn't block it. It is a type that is most likely new to us.  Arust reports in to the other groups, the southwest group got theirs as far as the road and is waiting to enter a building it went in to, the south group lost theirs at the road. They're Elf ranger and priest, and Eldarin swordmage, rogue, and wizard.  They surround the building and we go in.

Inside the large first floor room, there are halls leading back, and a stairs going up. A voice upstairs is praying. This is the house of a heroic tier priest, but not the home of one of the three we're tracking.  Arust, Tharivol and I go upstairs to find the singer, and he is finishing his song.  Downstairs Flick and Forgotten look down the stairs that go under the stairs going up. A door was busted in from the outside.  Flick stones up to say this, and Arust says I should interrupt his song.  He introduces himself as Balpityo priest of the Seldarine. I inform him of the break in and we come downstairs. We talk a bit with him and Arust informs him of the facts that led us here.  Arust says we are going to treat this as an incursion, and he is welcome to join us.  So he says he would be honored, goes upstairs and gets his gear, and then comes back down. We form up and go into the basement, which is his root cellar.

Down there, all the doors are broken open, and tracks lead into the side rooms and then walks out. Then the big door, leading down further is broken open.  Something would have to be as big and as strong as an ogre or giant to do this.  We go down three more floors of the same, old ancient storage rooms that haven't been used in a century. All the doors are broken open, and the trappings of old ages litter or fill the rooms.  On the third floor down, we see webs and more of the small spiders. The Croach is coming up from the level below.  Arust draws and fires as we take defensible positions in the passage. Then they swarm up at us. We push forward slowly and make our way down, before we get to the split. Five to ten minutes later we get to the split. The stairs split into five foot wide passages and we split half and half.  We regroup at the bottom and push forward.  We're climbing over the corpses and bodies of hundreds of fallen spider corpses and the Croach. We see a large spider advancing towards us as we join up.  Soon from among the bodies, a few larger Praying Mantis like insectish beasts approach.  They spit goey webs at us, as we hack apart their smaller kin.  Soon we've downed them, and again two large black husked upright bug monsters stand before us.  The group readies for one last blitz and both are felled quickly before they hurt us too much.

WIthout resting we head further down the tunnel.