Hi all,
We've passed 100 sessions of Giraine gaming… wow! I am still having loads of fun coming up with stuff, and playing it. I hope you are, too. I am really enjoying doing the quest- it has allowed me to go wild creatively, and tie some things together too… in a way it is good that the Baronet died. Just don't make a habit of it! :)
Last time, you faced the rotten crew of what you all eventually realized was the Sekelchi; the Kralorelan vessel you sunk and assassinated its wicked wizard-captain Mister Home, weeks ago in New Arvonesse. At first it had seemed like just some anonymous shipwreck and undead ghoul-zombie-things, but you saw through the veneer of these roles to their inner nature soon enough. The crew shambled out of their wreck-lair, howling miserably with peals of mad torment that made your hair stand on end. But you stood firm and faced them.
The shadowy form of Mister Home was lurking back in the wreck while the driftwood club-bearing thuggish crew, still sporting wounds from your brief fight with them (or appearing drowned/burned from being palsied and knocked in the water, or trapped and going down with the ship or its immolation). Mister Home sent venomous, acrid tendrils of magic to burn you badly, if they caught you, but Maugis soon put a stop to this with a powerful Palsy spell that left the ghoul-wizard shuddering and helpless. Inyana was struck a nasty blow that badly wounded her arm, and she almost fell to this but miraculously avoided losing her arm to it. Ciddar and even Cyroosta proved themselves incredibly effective against the zombie-thugs, while Boamund noticed that they quailed before his flaming sword, perhaps retaining some memory of the flames that killed many of them. They were meek and slow creatures, brutish and stupid, and came in waves at you, trying to mob you with clubs or bites and sheer numbers, but they came too poorly coordinated and equipped to do much harm. You gradually wore them down, and everyone had a hand in dispatching them (except the peaceful Inyana, who protected her lover's body and healed the wounded). Soon they all lay crippled and crushed, and Captain Ahappi ran to deal the death blow to the wizard (his prey defeated at last! No Baronet around to steal the glory this time!). You moved on.
You came next to a sludgy river, with pale lumps of flesh floating in it. There, where the river met the sea or lake or whatever it was, a crowd of dead folk gathered on the muddy shore, awaiting something. You pressed through the listless horde as you saw a shadowy boat approach across the water. Just then, the crowd pushed forward and Inyana was left behind with ?Boamund and the Baronet's body in the wheelbarrow. You had to shove and push and wriggle your way through the crowd and clamber on board the sinister boat, which was a struggle but soon everyone had made it.
There you found that the boat's stern and pilot were one and the same-a huge undead figure with ragged wings like sails watched over the crowd and rowed the boat of the dead across the dark waters. It commanded you to move to the front of the boat and you reluctantly did, pushing through the dead which were restless and suddenly quite aware of you, poking and prodding and begging for your life-blood. You saw some of them ripping off their flesh and dropping it into the waters, and others weeping tears into those same waters-perhaps this way the Lake of Abandoned Raiments was formed?
You gathered from the few words that the dead spoke that they were freshly dead folk from the lands around Giraine, moving from the frontiers of the underworld (e.g. the dragon skeleton you'd passed through, and the desolate swamp/shore you had just left) into a different region, closer to where the dead would be judged. Indeed, this next region was likely the land of the lost dead, where sinners and miscreants might become trapped eternally, held away from solace or judgement; a kind of purgatory. As you approached the next shore, with Cyroosta? gifting some of the dead with blood from a knife-cut to her hand(right?), you saw it was indeed bleaker and greyer than any lands before. The crowd, now all skeletal and bloodied and weeping, pushed their way out of the boat onto that shore, and again you had to struggle to avoid being knocked down and crushed or pushed into the foul waters.
As the crowd of dead sulked off down a path across barren lands, one figure was left behind: a short, squat form with its back turned and its features hidden in shadow. You were unnerved by it, and it would not respond to calls to it. You tried to pass, and Inyana sensed that it was something of ill omen for her, so she trembled. It was not Lynistor as Cyroosta had hoped/feared, but rather the shade of her former guardian/father-essence, Modor, the cruel dwarfish figure that had fought with the Baronet before on Nekeros Island. It could only grunt and mumble, and tried to grab her as she passed but she nimbly danced aside. Inyana was saddened to see it, reminded of her past “life” and family, and pensive about her true place in the world. Who was she and where did she belong?
You wandered on down the cracked brick roadway, surrounded by grey dead lands, until you saw that the crowd of the dead had thinned away and only a few figures stood ahead… but they were still, and facing you, and sitting atop great long-legged corpses of beasts. As you pondered what they might be, you saw more closely and realized they were old foes whose fate still was a mystery but now became clear: although outwardly appearing as anonymous skeletal dead, their lances and undead mounts gave them away as the Order of the Golden Lance, lead by the draugr of Sir Not himself! Ahappi grinned with exhilaration at the battle to come, as the foes lowered their lances and charged. Behind them, holding a rod with an evil pale light at its tip in one hand and a chain leading to a dark, crouching figure in the other, must be the revenant of the Vicar Rupert!
In your travels through the underworld you had wondered about the foe Malia that your myth-path spoke of. There had been little hint of disease or other such things on this quest so far. Indeed, the enemies had mostly seemed to be dead versions of past foes- the myth was wrapped around your own past history, and that of the Baronet. Was the enemy not disease, but unlife? Perhaps Malia was not the real foe here, but she was a metaphor for something else- the necromancer Yomil himself, or some other entity not yet revealed? Thoughts of this flashed through some of your minds as these enemies came, but there was no time for philosophical digressions! Mortal danger came mercilessly pounding forward on worm-ridden hooves…
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