An adventure demonstrating the typical battle-cry of most adventurers - "Why are things never easy?"

The adventure opened with the party doing its usual thing of late - enjoying themselves in a tavern in one of the Outlands' gatetowns. This time, they were in Ecstasy, the gatetown to Arborea. As per usual, a shady-looking character (a runt of a bariaur in this case) approached them with a job offer. (The "them" in this being Shazarr, Rusteen, Oz, and Twig.)

This time around, the requested job was simple - to act as messengers and deliver a letter to a person in Torch (gatetown to Gehenna), wait for a reply, and then bring the reply back to their employer. This was to be a quick job, with reasonable pay for the inconvenience. Of course, the bariaur refused to give his name, and only had a name for the intended recipient of the letter - Daruib Chamek (no further details beyond "you'll find him in Torch"). However, the party decided to accept the task anyway, mainly in light of the fact they were running out of money to pay for their bar tab.

After their acceptance, their employer departed, leaving the scroll in Twig's possession. This immediately prompted the curious Rusteen and the annoying Oz to try and steal the scroll away from her to read its contents. Eventually, Rusteen managed to steal it away and quickly left the room to read the contents. Once read, the rogue returned and reconcealed the scroll - on Oz. Oz started to read the scroll openly, causing Twig to punch him in the face and take it back. Of course, once she got to her room, she read the contents. (Eventually, the entire party read the contents of the private letter.)

The contents were two pieces of paper. One was a letter penned from a priest to the person to whom the party was to deliver the scroll tube. The priest mentioned that he had received visions revealing a way to remove the ability to teleport across planar boundaries from all fiends across the entire multiverse. The priest was hoping that Chamek would be able to locate some heroes who could undertake this holy mission. The other piece of paper in the scroll tube was an excerpt from an older work, talking about how before the start of the Blood War an ancient fiend of Carceri, Daru Ib Shamiq of the Clan Baern, corrupted a powerful solar and turned it into a... thing which the fiends could then use for their own purposes. (Although no clues were given as to what those purposes were.)

Despite feeling that they were about to get involved in something big and ugly, the party travelled to Torch to deliver the letter. In trying to find Chamek, they were eventually led into the presence of an aged male drow who apparently knew just about everything that happened in the gatetown. (Had Jack been present, he would have appreciated the old elf's lifestyle - he was the owner and operator of a festhall which included gambling and dancing girls.) He agreed to tell them where to find Daruib, provided they did him a favor and destroy a safe-house belonging to one of the local thieves' guilds. Or they could pay him a lot of money. Being naturally cheap, they opted to be enforcers for hire.

Once again, the party took the opportunity to prepare for the coming battle and very quickly decimated the "token" force which was guarding the building. The task quickly completed, the party returned to the old drow and got their information as to the location of the letter recepient.

When we next game, the party will finally divest themselves of the pesky scroll tube. Of course, they've got to wait for a reply to its contents before they can leave and get their money...

Authored by: Ken Lipka E-mail me: krlipka@yahoo.com

Return to Stories Page