Lord Channis Lauros Journal

After the initiation

When the ceremony came to an end, we all ran to look after Ibizar with concern but it seemed the dwarf was all right. He somehow managed to resist the powerful binding compulsion. Then we all gave our congratulations to the Knight of Abraxxas and had a little chat with the priest Father Angus.

He told us he could consecrate again the altar to Abraxxas but needed the statue to be rebuilt. I asked for resources to the task but this seemed to annoy the priest and refused to give us any monetary help. After some wonderings about what new steps the followers of Abraxxas would take, we all decided to leave the cave and use the arts in order to teleport to Rjurik, to the headquarters of the Church of Good and the Scarlet Brotherhood.

With Malek’s help, we appeared outside Rjurik and started to walk toward the city gates. The guards recognized us and let us pass promptly. An air loaded with sulfur notes could be felt while we were walking down the streets of the city of paladins, although there were too many devils at that time.

While we were advancing through the city streets, Bahmut’s sword, Goldwind, started to shake emitting a bright light, a typical sound when the powerful sword felt demonic presence. Bahmut tried to calm down his sword to avoid calling unnecessary attention to us, but it seems it was too late. A powerful demon appeared from nowhere and challenged Bahmut with contempt. Bahmut firmly told the demon he should take care when addressing a Lord of Rjurik. The demon seemed to be intimidated by these words, mumbled a threat and disappeared from scene leaving behind a fine sulfuric dust as a trail. After this incident Bahmut, Addon and Ibizar decided the city was no more a friendly place for paladins, so they decided to leave the town immediately. The rest of us continued our way alone with Alesco, Father Angus and the knight.

After the incident mentioned above, nothing else happened and we managed to reach the central plaza. There we coordinated with the followers of Abraxxas for future contact and we started our departure from the once bastion of goodness. We started to fly over the city when two vrocks approached immediately arguing it was prohibited to fly inside the city. We identified ourselves as lords of Rjurik and continued our way on foot. It was really sad to see the city ruled by demons, but this problem would not be solved by using brute force.

Outside the city, we found our friends arguing about the new order of things inside Rjurik.
Suddenly, Alesco appeared without notice and asked to go with us to our lands. We agreed and started the two day journey to our keep.

During the two day journey to our lands, we had time to share ideas with Brother Alesco, he confessed to us his feelings about the initiation of the knight. He thought it had not been a good idea. When we asked why, he told us Abraxxas was not exactly a God from the Second Pantheon. Abraxxas was a powerful entity beyond mortals and Gods.

Alesco also told us the Scarlet Brotherhood didn’t worship a single deity, instead they allowed their members to show allegiance for any god of the second pantheon, but it seemed Abraxxas was not on his list. When we asked which god he had allegiance with, he preferred to maintain such information in private. We respected his decision but this episode left us with some questions about brother Alesco and his motives.

Priorities

We arrived with no serious incidents at our keep and found Arath, the priest of the sun, with good news to give us. His immunity to compulsions was confirmed and we could proceed to remove from his chest the painful dark seed. I immediately contacted Eladan mentally so he could speak to one of the druids. After a couple of hours a giant eagle descended outside our chapel of Moradin. Once over firm ground, Jaana took human form and said hello.

We gave the good news to the druid and he told us about the risks of killing the dark seed. The priest would receive physical damage equal of the one inflicted to the seed. We all helped the priest with items and spells so he could resist more punishment and Jaana started to invoke a powerful incantation, a Horrid Wilting conjure. After the chant, all moisture seemed to evaporate from Arath and the priest screamed in agony. He was alive. Jaana then confirmed the seed was destroyed using a spell for plant detection. Arath smiled and cured himself. I must notice half the damage inflicted to Arath was received for Addon, the peregrine priest. He casted some type of share pain spell over Arath. I was amazed of the sacrifice done by Addon for someone he had just met.

We then gathered at the chapel of Moradin in order to discuss our pending quests to order them by priority. I have written a list to the tasks we had to accomplish:

- Go to the Great Harvest God to look for a new administrator.
- Fix the precarious peasant situation in our lands.
- Gather some wizards from Mathgathmna to help us clean our keep from potentially dangerous spells.
- Implement some sort of security system in our lands and our keep.
- Talk to the student in Mathgathmna that is natural to Antaria.
- Check what’s happening with the gathering of the Horde.
- Find the legitimate heir from King Cyril.
- Find out about the map found by Canrith in the ancient temple.

We decided to start with King Cyril quest and along our way try to complete the minor tasks concerning our lands, our keep and our people. But first I convinced Bahmut and Malek to talk to Alesco about some endeavor of mutual benefit.

I presented Alesco with a proposal for conceding administration rights to the Scarlet Brotherhood in exchange for a royalty fee. They would be in charge of the temple, and their responsibility would have to protect and maintain the relics inside it. They would charge their followers for a tithe and give us a percentage. All the administration plans and preparations would be ready in one month. With this pact, we should better prepare for a big number of visitors to the temple. A lot of people would gather around our lands and this could bring economic prosperity. Maybe we could be the founders of a small city around the temple. Only time will tell.

Visiting Rjurik again

After our conversation with Alesco, we left our lands and traveled to Rjurik one more time. We have found that in order to start with the King Cyril’s quest, we needed the relics we once gave the Church of Good into custody, the sword and armor of the King Cyril.

We had no surprises in our trip more than a couple of bandits that were not brave enough to attack us. But when we approached the city, we could notice the outside farms filled with decadence and poverty. It seemed the peasants were having a pretty bad time with this cambion as king. I knew that wouldn’t be happening under the reign of the old king.

Before entering the city, Bahmut hid himself inside one of Malek’s bag of holdings. We didn’t want to start a fight in the middle of the city. Then we entered the city and went directly to the Church to claim for our possessions.

We found a cleric who promptly gave us our magical items. Everything was indexed in a big book managed by the priests so they could easily find our belongings. We dumped everything inside our bag of holdings and went out to find a secure place to teleport out from the city.

Vazud

Malek handled the arts to teleport us the best he could near Vazud, because our next destination would be the Great Library of Vazud, a suitable place where we could look for some answers. It would be nice to visit my old man here. Definitely those days I was having more affection to Vazud than to Rjurik. It was a good idea to find a secure place for my father here at the Great Library.

We identified ourselves at the entrance and call the gnomish chariot driven by a dwarf, our preferred form of transport inside Vazud. The driver threw us a happy smile and seemed to be pleased to meet us once again. We headed directly to the Great Library and while the trip took several hours, it was good to witness prosperity had embraced most parts of the busy metropolis.

We arrived at the library and as usual, several people were gathering at its entrance. Some of my friends used their nobility status to claim preference while others paid a hustle fee of 150 gold pieces. At the end of the day, all of them had meetings with the scholars and commissioned them with research tasks of several topics. While we were waiting, my father came out and surprised us. I smiled at him and gave him a strong handshake and emotive hug. As I expected, my old man was more than happy here.

When my friends finished their endeavors, we all went with my father to his private office where we had a little chat. After some considerations, we decided to show our map to the city’s cartographer, who according to my father was one of the best cartographers in the whole world.

We found the cartographer Trevor at his workplace in the central plaza. Of course we got there using the dwarven chariot, our favorite way of transportation here in Vazud. I entered the place with my father alone and my friends waited inside the chariot, to avoid calling too much attention.

My father introduced me to Trevor and he inspected a copy of the map. Unfortunately, the copy was not good enough for him to find some clues about the locations in the map so I had to go out again to ask my friends for the original map. With the original map in my possession I entered the building one more time and showed it to the expert. This time Trevor immediately recognized we were talking about the great mountains dividing Cohen and Rjurik, with the Sea of Sand and the River of Agony as geographical notorious accidents.

Trevor made me notice four thousand years ago, the Sea of Sand was part of the ocean. It seemed the sand had somehow gained terrain to the waters during this period. Another thing that came to light was the big X marking a spot in the map. It seemed the mountain chain was continuous but at some point of time the Dark Passage was created, because the X was marking a location right at the middle of the Dark Passage. We could give no more information to the cartographer and went out with my friends with the news. My father came with me and we all stepped into the chariot for another travel to the Library.

We had to wait several days in order to receive the information from the Great Library, but it seems we were uncovering parts of the ancient history of the world with our recent findings. We were talking about these matters when the chariot suddenly increased his speed noticeably. When we asked the driver about this he was too busy driving with a frightened expression on his face. He only managed to scream two words: “The mist!”