DavesGaming

Chuck

We first headed back to Nalia’s Keep. We wanted make sure all was well, and get at least one good night’s sleep before it was back into trouble.

We took care of a little business, mostly all was well around the Castle. So we set out for Athkatla. When we got there, Keldorn decided he needed to check in at home. This led to some awkwardness, but we decided to let Keldorn take some time with family, we would check back with him later.
A few weeks back, when fighting slavers, Aerie had found a small ruby she was attracted to.

We ran across a man, a beggar by the name of Vittorio. He reported a mercenary named Captain Dennis owed him some money that he was unable to reclaim without some help. I thought we should help, Sarah quietly said to me this smelled like trouble. So we set out to meet Captain Dennis.

The upshot of this was, it was the first time I’d seen Imoen laugh *hard* since we rescued her! Dennis was considering splitting Vottorio in two, but we convinced him to wait and let us track the gong down.
This involved a lot of running around! First to a fence Vittorio knew, then to a troll out past Trademeet. From there to an Ogre Mage, who ran his own farm.

Yeah, the Ogre had been using the gong as a farm implement. We washed it out in a stream as best we could, and agreed Captain Dennis would not hear *all* the details of our adventure.

On the way back, we ran across an old Harper associate of Jaheira’s. Apparently he had decided she should die for choosing my side in an earlier Harper dispute.

But I am deeply thankful for Jaheira’s loyalty to me and my friends. It is a shame it cost several Harper’s their lives. This situation will need to be straightened out some point. We can’t have Harper’s continue to attack us!

We also met a Ranger named Valygar. He had been hiding from the Cowled Wizards. Something about his blood being needed to open a large metallic sphere that had landed in the city of Athkatla a few weeks back. It was an artifact built by a member of his family, Lavok, centuries ago. It had reappeared a few times since, and often took family members with it when it left. We talked for a bit, and decided the thing to do was investigate this sphere, and see if it was safe.

Back in the City we asked a little what was known of this large oddity. The answer seemed to be, nothing. We didn’t poke around too long before a doorway opened on its side when Valygar touched it. This thing was obviously much larger inside than out.

Exploring this thing, we met quite a few occupants. Several had to be fought, like Sahuagen and savage halflings. Some were friendly, like a group of knights from someplace we’d never heard of.

And we met Valygar’s ancestor who had built the great sphere. He was possessed by, something. It had taken him to travel the planes in this great contraption, and it fed on the life energy of Valygar’s family. But we battled it and won. Now we had a 400 year old man dying in front of us. He explained the sphere had traveled again when we entered. He could set it to return home again, but he would need a power source. In the form of a demon’s heart. Which should be no problem since we’d traveled to the Abyss.
We got directions on how to use this power source, and went outside to go hunting.

So that was fun. Soon we had the Great Sphere powered up and it took us home.

He’d lived so much of his life terrified of his family curse. But it wasn’t what he thought, Lavok was perhaps foolish with the device he built, but he had never intended harm for the family. I think they both found some healing sitting there in the sun.
And it left me with a little to think about, with family bloodlines and curses…

Finally we said our goodbyes to Valygar, and went to meet Keldorn.

*****

I am using the “Wings” mod for the first time. It boasts a friendship path (or expanded romance) for Aerie. Its been fun, with quite a few extra fights against slavers, and an Avarial con-artist. But significantly, Aerie ends up with a unique familiar! A sort of mini-phoenix.

Obviously this was a lot of cleaning up loose ends, no main plot progression here. I think I’ll continue this for a few days, cleaning up loosed ends before we hunt down Bhodi.