(Jorann appears at the alter looking downhearted and she is not wearing the holy vestments as she always does)
My friends, I have come to tell you of my last adventure and the faltering of one who was not pure enough.
This last adventure was one unlike anything I had encountered before. My companions and I left for the Monastery on the 17th day of summer. The group consisted of myself, Mazlor, Sally,Isty, Jakar, Pyria, Beladur. We returned to the Monastery intent on getting as far in as we could. We found the monastery just as we left it and proceeded quickly to the stairway. Everything was oddly muted and seemed strange. Even the fire seemed to burn oddly. We encountered no resistance and continued on.
For once, we weren’t even attacked by the sturges. We reached the lower level and again, there seemed no resistance. We checked the fountain, but it was full of chaos energy again. We proceeded down to the lowest level and things seemed even stranger than before.
We decided to continue where we had left off in exploring this level. The strange biting creature could be heard in its room, but we decided to explore further. We came to a large chamber with chaos pillars and three of the strange flying metal creatures. We fought them, but every few seconds one of our party would randomly teleport to another part of the chamber. It was a difficult battle, we eventually overcame them, but this is where Jakar fell. And, this is where I failed Tangadorin. I did not like Jakar, I will admit that. His constant insults to Tangadorin and the worship of Him had filled my heart with bitterness towards him. Add to that his unpredictability and his proclamations that chaos is fine, it just needs to be in balance. These things just rubbed me wrong. When he fell, I allowed that bitterness to convince me to act in a spiteful manner. I, a priest of Tangadorin, and His emissary in this world, acted with bitterness and spite and took an item off his dead body. It was purely an act of spite. Needless to say, Tangadorin objected and forcefully rebuked me. He made his displeasure known, and I feel that it is my duty to let my failure be known. I can only try to be more worthy of Tangadorin. But I give you all my word, that I will do better and I will try my best to live up to His expectations.
Suddenly from out of nowhere teleported in a huge human by the name of Boraen. He seemed as confused by his entrance as we were. However, at once we could tell that this was a friend and that he was here to aid us in our quest. We continued on and came to an octangular room with a wall of chaos at the center stretching the entire length of the room. It moved forward every round and we dared not let it touch us. We retreated back to the corridor and the wall reset at the back. Revealed to us now were two awful creatures. One was a mutated chaos human who was fairly identical to the one we had encountered before that was only affected by magical weapons. But the other creature was nightmare itself. It was clearly a being in the process of transforming into a Dark One! We were sure that this must be Rho. He had terrible mind attacks that confused and left people helpless.
The mage Pyria used a scroll of protection from magic and dispelled the wall. We killed the two creatures and decided to drag the corpse to throw into the portal. We continued on to what turned out to be the final chamber. There in the center of the room stood the portal, with a Dark One in the center!
Rho stood before it, and he was even more like unto a Dark one than the last creature. We charged in, but he cast a spell which made duplicates of him. No matter how we tried, we could not touch him. I dispelled his magic, which allowed us to fight him. It was no easy battle, as his mind blasts were very powerful. However, we were victorious! But, just when things looked brightest, the Dark One hit us with a mental blast which immobilized the entire party! Then he began to pull himself through! It looked like we were doomed! Fortunately, it soon became clear that he could not pull himself out and that the portal was closing. However, he proceeded to tell us that this was a minor setback. They were already in this world and were coming!
After the portal closed and we were freed, the striped mage teleported in. He told us that he had heard the Dark Ones proclamations and believed them. Since it was his apprentice that had caused all this trouble, and only the life force of a mage could seal the portal properly, he was going to seal it. He told us to get out as quickly as possible.
So we fled back the way we came. Every chaos creature seemed to be dead, except the mad biting thing. It left tracks showing that it was not dead. We made it back to the chaos stairway, but it was not there! Luckily I had my maps and knew how to get out (more or less). We followed my maps and escaped back to the top level. We made it out, but as we exited, we saw a large force of black clad humans. They told us that their masters were coming and that we had just delayed the inevitable. Then they mounted and rode off.
We made it back to town and to our amazement found that it was now the 14th day of summer! Somehow, time had gone backwards and we were now back three days before we left!