We assembled an interesting party, 3 thieves, a cleric and apprentice, a ranger, a druid and myself. We headed out of Enonia towards the Monastery. On the way we hailed the Striped Mage and this time he came down to see us. He seemed even crankier than usual; seems the Chaos followers have been bothering him. We told him about the forest room with the pillar and that sparked his interest, the pillar is some form of power cylinder. He would not elaborate more on what it was or could be used for, but he strongly suggested we did not mess with it. He refused to recharge my wand, suggesting instead I go to Irecia and study…. alright for him he can just float over the Orcs!

We carried on into the monastery to find Mazlor’s glyph had been tripped. There were a few remains of Chaos followers, nothing of value remained on them, which was somewhat disappointing to Kallister, Tip and Tobias.

As we did not have Mazlor or his ‘keys’ with us we had to take the long way round to reach the area of the forest. We got to the cavern with the raging river without incident but here we met a large number of the followers, with them were two magic users, seemed to be clerics. We made short work of them, sleep spells always works in these situations, unfortunately Cujo did take a lethal hit, a sad day for Jorann.

We proceeded through the caves to the river landing and boarded the boats, interestingly the band of thieves stayed together……. We explained to them that this ride may seem a bit weird but not to worry we would be with them all the way.

We made it all the way to the forest room without seeing anything but when we opened the door we were assailed by a disgusting rotten smell. The plants we had hacked before were decomposing, which was good news. We followed the path, Tobias went on ahead. He had slipped on one of the cloaks we had taken from the mob earlier, hoping this would provide him some protection. As we reached the Northern corner of the path we heard him scream and he was running back towards us. What followed was a strange site. A purplish flying creature with no wings appeared, an organic body grafted onto some metallic plate. There were mechanical and organic arms flailing, a strange chattering/shimmering/hissing sound emanated from it. I fired a magic missile at it and caused some damage, but it looked like it passed through some kind of shield. Dargellon’s first arrow bounced off the metal body. The sound changed and we saw a glow from the organic hand followed shortly by an arc of flame. We were all caught in the blast and suffered some damage. Dargellon fired another arrow, this one was true and the beast exploded, the mechanical parts falling to the ground. We examined the remains and found the mechanical arm to contain a poisoned needle.

Tobias had gone to the door, the rest of us proceeded to destroy the remaining plants, but after the first pulse of magic both Kallister and Tip decided to leave and join Tobias. Dargellon, Jorann, Ceresai and myself remained. We did manage to clear the remaining plants, no more mutants coming from this field!

We headed back to the door expecting to find the three other there when we heard sounds of battle coming from some distance off. When we reached the corridor we saw it was coming from the other end and floating there was another one of those purple tripods. We planned an ambush by the door, but it went the other way, we guessed Kallister, Tip and Tobias were the focus. We ran up the corridor and later found that the three of them had been having some fun. Kallister and Tip had stumbled upon a ritual involving a huge and heavy symbol of the three fingers. Tip had killed the leader with what looked to be a clean, powerful strike to the neck – the head was lying some distance from the body. They then killed the other three, who strangely did not attack them but did keep pushing this symbol at Kallister. Tobias had taken a serious blast from the tripod and was unconscious, but looked like he would recover.

Kallister had been removing the gold covering from the symbol, there was a considerable amount of gold and this would not be a quick task. I stayed to help her while the other explored the area, suddenly they returned and Dargellon was not looking good. He was pale, shaking and had malodorous pus and blood oozing from a rent in his right arm. The door to the North contained some ugly creature that had attacked them when the door was opened, fortunately it was chained to what looked like an alter, so could not follow them.

I poured a vial of Holy water on Dargellon’s wound but this had no effect. Kallister dug out two scrolls they had found and handed them to Jorann but there was nothing of benefit. We decided to head back to Enonia as quickly as possible and take him to the Temple.

As we entered the room of statues we found ourselves confronted by another group of followers, we dispatched them quickly, my sleep spell and Jorann’s hold significantly evened the odds. We bound one and took him captive. The remainder of the journey was long and uneventful, we tried to be gentle with Dargellan as we hauled him up and down the dungeon. He could walk but was unable to climb.

Darellon was clearly getting worse all the time. As we passed the Fountain of the Light we stopped to see if this would help. There were obscene symbols surrounding the entrance and several red candles burning in front of the door. Mazlor is not going to be happy. Ceresaii decided to kick them out of the way, unfortunately he tripped a glyph and was knocked unconscious, these followers have some serious magical powers among them. Drinking the water did seem to give Dargellan more strength. He plunged his arm into the fountain and the wound was cleaned and healed, however, the real damage could now be seen. The disease was spreading through his body and looked to be killing his flesh as it went.

We left the Temple and pushed through the night arriving at Enonia exhausted about 4am. We hurriedly explained the situation to the guard, who let us pass so long as someone stayed and explained what we had brought back, Jorann and his apprentice volunteered!

We did get Dargellon to the Temple and Averin did heal him and ordered several days rest for full recovery.

These followers are growing in number and the tripods are not easily defeated. The power cylinder may be a key but the Striped Mage warned not to mess with it, we have some serious thinking to do……