A few days after finding our way back to Rockhollow we were again out in the wilderness this time on the hunt for the suspect ratling which had evidently hired the goons that took out our companions. The gold talons we found on their bodies had the stamp of Blackgut but it was defaced with a strange scratch design scribed next to the defaced stamp reminiscent of ratling-scratch. The ratling was probably one of Blackgut’s minions that had escaped us whne we raided his lair who now obviously controlled a hidden cache somewhere. We had followed the map we obtained from one of the corpses of our would-be assassins, the marks at the bottom the same ratling-scratch marks as on the gold. I was watching Vorox the monster rider trying to figure out how to open a large, locked bronze double-door with a danse macabre motif on it. We had crawled through a spider-hole in a ruin with a single intact chamber which had newly stocked with supplies, the bags and chest bearing the same symbols as the map and gold. The spider-hole lead down into a mostly collapsed room with only the double-doors as a feature besides dirt, cobwebs and rubble that is. Having not sensed any magic emanating from the doors and since I didn’t have any spells which could be of any use towards our endeavors to get through them, I pulled out the pair of dragon-bone dice with jeweled pips that I had been carrying for a while.
We had buried our companions behind the mostly finished forge the previous day raising a cairn above each of their graves. We put Tweena to rest with the gear she had been wearing and split the rest of her money and her remaining items as we knew she would have wanted it. Both I and Vorox were shocked as to the shear amount of wealth she had hoarded. My share was: a set of Highest Quality Thief’s Tools & lock-picks, a superior quality Pick Axe, 10 spare bowstrings, 10 torches, 1 bottle of superior quality wine, a silver goblet, a potions of See All, Fly, See Invisibility and Stone to Flesh; a quiver of torch arrows, 4 quivers of arrows, 4 quivers of high quality arrows, 2 potions of healing, a superior quality magic alloy arrow, 3,700 gold pieces, 3,584 silver pieces, 298 copper pieces, 130 gold talons, 124 platinum pieces, 9 rubies, 8 pieces of tiger eye, 1 diamond, 4 iron pigs, a Manual of Design, 16 large rubies, 2 alexandrites, 8 star metal pieces, a superior quality composite shortbow, and a quiver of magic arrows. My dream of altering Greenskull (the giant green lotus) with the troll marital salve I had acquired in our campaign against Blackgut, a bit of the Death’s Head Lotus and with a piece from a living Arborean the last item I still had yet to acquire. Of course slicing off a piece of a living tree-man in order to create a humanoid, intelligent lotus with the abilities of a Death’s Head creature probably would have traveled a little way into morally questionable territory. I had just transplanted Greenskull and a large number of various types of lotus from the Green Tower to the planters on the battlements of my tower. I tossed the dice against door while Vorox was trying to find purchase with his crowbar.
The dice glowed and it felt as if they had unleashed a burst of positive energy possibly healing us completely had we been injured. Puzzled, I threw them against the door again. Vorox was had just found purchase on the doors and was beginning to pry. A burst of blinding light exploded from the magic dice. I knew I was in trouble when a muted scream ripped through my brain and the emerald around my neck shattered into powder. There was a clatter as the crowbar hit the ground and I saw Vorox crumple into a pile of dust. As I disintegrated seemingly in slow motion all I could think was I could really use a little snuff of lotus right about n…
End of the Campaign (played between August 2014 and January 2015).
