Report: The Tower of Earth

General Summary

If you’ll recall from our last adventure, Sir Devlyn Bluebell had bravely (if foolishly) led the Knights Sapphire in into the earth, water, and fire copies of the Deadstone Tower, only to disappear. We had already rescued the body of Sir Luxarius Silverborn from the tower of water, but had no more primal essences to travel to the others. Dame Tessia had left to find treatment for her knight and get some more essence, and we had gone to attend to personal business of our own. I agreed to meet her back at the tower with a similar group in a few weeks time. I personally wanted to find out more information about my missing parents, as well as help out the Knights Sapphire - they seem look good people. Even Devlyn.

Stiks, Ryth, Sir Luxarius, Daisy, and myself, Russell, returned to the tower, to find the Dame waiting for us - with the much-better-looking Sir Luxarius!. We just had two more knights to rescue - Sir Lynees Sutherland from the Earth tower, and Sir Bluebell himself from the Fire tower. Dame Tessia, clearly the most powerful of us by a wide margin, agreed to retrieve Devlyn herself - the fire tower was clearly the most dangerous of the towers, but we knew she’d have no trouble. As for us, Daisy stood guard over the main Deadstone Tower, while the remaining four entered the slightly less intimidating Tower of Earth.

It was dark. Very Dark. Some could see in the dark but I could not, so resorted to fumbling around until someone lit a dim light. We were in a small entryway, with half a dozen sconces and a locked door. After lighting the sconces we could see better, but it quickly backfired, as we realized we were running out of air. Unable to open the door and running out of breath, we haphazardly smashed the sconces to access the small amount of oxygen held within. With seconds to spare, I started touching the remains of the lights, but nothing happens. The others joined in, panickedly slapping at the wall. Starting to collapse, we finally managed to mimic the mad combination Malkor had set up, and the door opened!

Collapsing into the corridor, we had barely a moment to catch our breath before we saw another threat - some very imposing rocks. Much more alive than the stone of the prime tower, an earth elemental was charging us at an impressive speed. Fortunately, it turned out to be far scarier in presence than in battle. As it dropped it like a sack of rutabagas, the bruised corpse of Sir Lynees dropped out. While this was our original goal, curiosity got the better of us, and we decided to explore the rest of the tower before returning. We did first return their body through the portal, to hopefully be raised after we returned.

Venturing onwards we saw a very strange garden. A bit of an amateur gardener myself, I was quite intrigued. It turned out to not only be strange, but full of terrible puns. Set upon by “Dandy lions” spewing their “Paw-len” at us, we were quick overwhelmed. An image of Malkor showing up and taunting us didn’t help the situation, but the lions did finally die with a very satisfying “Ding Dong” death. Still not sure why they made bell noises when dying, but it was a bit of a lighthearted break before we turned to Malkor. Upset by this poor, incorporeal, 3-eyed copy of me making bad jokes and pale insults, I jumped inside his image. Proceeding to dance, I made sure to make him look like even more of a raving lunatic than he really is. Unfortunately, he does not have a sense of humor, and promptly knocked me out.

Waking up from that VERY powerful spell, I thanked Luxarius for his healing magic (that guy is great! Really glad we rescued him from the sharks). I really needed a rest, but we had to press on, as Malkor’s copy was watching us. And apparently could cast crazy magic even though he wasn’t there. We REALLY need to figure out a way to sneak in there without him knowing if we get back - that projection spell of his is quite obnoxious.

Onward through some winding passageways, we encountered a room with a Naga in it. Seemed like an easy fight, but Malkor made it a lot worse by attempted to reanimate several piles of bones, and turn Luxarius into a snake. And by attempt, I mean utterly succeeded. Despite my best efforts with counter magic, everything he cast got through. I can’t even come close to matching that guy with my abjuration abilities, so I decided to fall back to one of my other strengths. FIRE!!! Blazing through the room the bones and Naga quickly melted away. Meanwhile, Stiks had solved Lux’s snake problem with a quick poke of his sword.

After breaking through a series of arcane locks with our superior linguistic skills, magic, and luck, we saw why Malkor had been so keen to keep us out of the next room. It was cluttered with notes and scrolls, and a crystal bed and chest. I’ll say one thing - he does live in style. I won’t go into details about what the notes said right now, but their mention of super soldiers was a bit frightening. We didn’t get to look for two long, as 3 more 3-eyed copies of Malkor appeared, and started blasting us with spells. These copies were a little easier to deal with, as we could actually hit them, and their spells were a little easier to counter. They still brought us all to the brink of death. We did at least manage to Acquire the key to his chest from within a crystal block next to the chest (Who leaves a key right next to the lock it goes to??? His arrogance clearly got the better of him).

At this point we NEEDED a rest. Or to leave. I wanted to go on, trying to find any more information that could help me find my parents. Stiks kept trying to go into the next room even without a rest. Ryth wanted to leave, and Luxarius was just going along with what everyone else wanted. Eventually we decided to try to hole up in a rope trick near the door, and leave if things went poorly. We were hoping to get in a quick rest before the room which we think might have contained the supersoldiers. Unfortunately, you CAN dispel a rope trick from the outside (who knew?), and Malkor did just that, just asa FIVE-eyed version of himself arrived. Rested we would have had a chance, but as it was we ran as fast as we could for the portal back. Even a giant grasping hand chasing us through an earthquaking mess couldn’t stop us, and we collapsed through the portal, back into the prime Deadstone Tower.

Dame Tessia was waiting for us. Looking similarly beleaguered, she was carried the limp, but alive, body of Devlyn Bluebell. Two of the most powerful knights I’ve ever met, both bested by Malkor’s fires. We’ll have to go back in there at some point, but we’ll definitely need to prepare. If we can find some way of getting in without alerting Malkor, that would greatly help. It’d also help if we weren’t so reliant on fire magic ourselves - pretty sure Blazing into a fire elemental will just tickle it. Even more frightening, the Malkor we saw at the end had five eyes, but he’s known as the NINE-eyed sage. Clearly this was just another copy, and even the copy was a lot to deal with.

Scribed by Russell

Adventuring Party:  Russell, Ryth Venali, Stiks, Luxarius Silverborn

Date: 30JUL22

Report Date

14 Jun 2022