The morning dawns. A cold mist drifts across the field, swirling around the stilled bodies of those stricken by the night's curses. From the tented shrines comes the mournful call to prayer, a cry flavored by the savage calls of the gray birds overhead. Slowly, the company assembles. Chris (Tonk Sangaree) moves about the field, seeking for the remains of his comrades. Chuck (Darg Sangaree) draws himself up. The servants scurry to gird him about with armor and fell weapons. Bruce (Longfellow Yost) leans heavily upon his carven staff, his face still colored with the humors of those recently passed.
A freezing grasp of fate settles upon those not yet gone. Paul strides forth from his citadel, the towers yet untouched by the rage of those outside even as his chanting fanatics have drawn the black arrows of Apollo down from the skies upon his enemies. He holds forth a dark sign and proclaims that Billy (Andrindor) shall not be among those who oppose him today. A ululating cry tears up from the hospital tents. Another has passed. Tim (Anpago Yost) drifts among the ranks as like a ghost, confessing that he is drawn away by the lures of forbidden truths and secret knowledge.
Thus diminished, the company draws up into line and rank. The trumpeters, once boys but young no longer, sound their plaintive challenge to the uncaring walls. And the gallants march to their fate.
It is getting light, and servants are starting to move around in the outbuildings on the outskirts of the campus. The characters see a young boy of about eleven years sitting on a fence looking at a torn scroll. Tonk Sangaree yells out, "You there! Boy! Where'd you find that?" The boy protests, "I didn't find it! It's mine!" Tonk comments, "Let me see that for a second, I have the matching piece." The boy objects, "No! I won't let you see it! I'll only give it to you for 100 gold!" Tonk negotiates the rental of the rest of the scroll for 10 minutes for 1 gold. He confirms that it matches the fragment he already has. Then he discovers that it is an alchemical formula, and nobody around has Alchemy. He curses, "All of our alchemists are off doing other things. Fuckwits."
Then Tonk remembers that he is a Regent of the University. He gives the boy an IOU for 99 gold pieces, payable by the Pursuer of the University. The boy protests that he can't read the paper and refuses to accept it. Darg Sangaree manages to win him over by giving him a giant-sized cleaver.
Faced with a total inability to understand the scroll, the characters decide to look up one of the faculty. They debate whether to try talking to Ivarra Carnen, the hot half-elf Professor of Divination and Alchemy whom Tonk might have stood up last night, or Vermmond Haggis the paranoid dwarf. The other characters put their thinking caps on and eventually figure out that Tonk stood up Odelia, the married scribe. It is still safe for him to talk to Professor Carnen. Tonk complains, "Aww nuts! I could have had hot animalistic sex with no consequences or fear of commitment, but instead I got attacked by demons in an alley."
Fortunately, today is "Open House Day" at the Arcane Academy. The characters walk up to the campus gate (except for Longfellow Yost, who rides on Tonk's shoulder) and explain that they're here to talk to Professor Carnen. The guard tells them to wait while he fetches a guide.
The guide turns out to be the half-orc Torloff, a graduate student in Abjuration. He gives the characters a very forgettable patter as he takes the characters over to Professor Carnen's office. It turns out that there are quite a lot of buildings on campus, thanks in part of the school's founder Sorkavi, who used magical building spells and the help of the local townsfolk to quickly construct the campus. Tonk wonders, "What kind of spells do you think he might have used? Maybe he threatened to throw fireballs at the local residents' houses until they built him a campus."
The characters eventually manage to convince Torloff to tell them that Professor Ivarra Carnen lives in the Havermill House, where most of the professors live. Staff who live there are not charged rent. Tonk pesters Torloff until he admits that there is an passage in the main stables leading to the tunnel system underneath the university. Torloff indicates that some foolish students sometimes try to explore the tunnels, and denies that any students have gone missing. Though he does admit that some have unexpectedly returned home. The access way is in the northern barn and is covered with a heavy grate.
Torloff is a bit concerned about disturbing Professor Carnen because she normally doesn't get up that early. Though he claims that other peoples' affairs are none of his business.
Along the way, Tonk Sangaree notices that his skin is feeling rather itchy. He sits behind a bush and finds the itchy part on his arm. It's rather dry, scaly and dark. He takes out a knife. The other characters are disturbed by the scream, but only Torloff is visibly upset. Tonk returns, rubbing a new bandage on his arm. He reassures the others, "I just took a little skin sample. Really."
Torloff takes the characters to Havermill House and says goodbye. Tonk comments, "He'll make a good bureaucrat someday."
The characters walk up to the house guard. Longfellow Yost cries out, "Aaawk! Want to see Professor Ivarra! Aawk!" The guard, who clearly sees stranger things on a regular basis, asks Tonk, "That's freaky. Are you a ventriloquist?" Tonk responds, "No. that's our cousin. He got killed and resurrected." Darg Sangaree helps out by explaining, "It's a druid thing." Tonk presses the guard, "We gotta talk to Professor Carnen. We think someone is raising demons on campus. It's an emergency." The guard utters a heavy sigh and agrees to try and rouse her.
The guard returns and leads the characters to Professor Carnen. She was aroused by the guard and is ready to receive the characters. As Darg puts it, "Erotic is a feather, kinky is the whole chicken."
Professor Carnen's rooms are decorated in a sensual but over-the-top manner. She seems a bit groggy. "What's the emergency?" Tonk explains that someone on campus has been making nightlings out of students and orcs. He shows her the scroll and explains the various rapacious and infectious aspects of the nightling problem, then confesses that of his two cousins who know alchemy, one of them is sitting in a tavern listening to some kind of epic about heroes and the other is desperately searching the gutters for pixie sticks.
She looks at the paper and admits that it will be difficult to understand what it is. It will take her some time. Tonk points out that time is of the essence. She hopes the characters find the missing students, especially Nalix; she misses him so. Darg asks her, "He didn't wear gray robes, perchance?" She raises an eyebrow and responds, "All the students wear gray robes." Darg curses, "Shit. How many students do you have?" She tells him, "Three hundred. But one of the common problems with magical universities is that you can never keep track of how many there are."
For no reason at all, Professor Carnen admits, "The smell of urine, vomit and beer just instantly takes me back to the horse races. Go number six!"
The characters leave the alchemical formula in Professor Carnen's capable hands and head over to the stables. The grate in the stables is loose, but heavy. Darg and Tonk have no problem heaving it out of the way. The group finds a large cavern and enters it. Then two exceptionally large carrion crawlers move in from another entrance. Tonk comments, "I bet they're really well fed."
Longfellow starts off by throwing a Flaming Sphere at the first carrion crawler. It gets a bit singed. Then Darg rushes past him and straight into the creature's tentacles. He drops like a paralyzed stone. The second crawler advances on Tonk, who gives it a scratching it won't long remember. Tonk howls out to Longfellow, "Obscuring Mist! Obscuring Mist right now!" Longfellow confesses, "Err... I don't have one in mind right now." Tonk responds, "Fucktard! Every time we go to the House of Easy Women the only thing you can do is throw those things around, but now when we need one you've got nothing!" Longfellow brings up an elephant instead. It handily squashes the crawlers into juice. Tonk shakes his head and reflects, "Well, that suddenly made that battle a lot more winnable."
The characters discover that the crawlers were living underneath the outhouses. They got fat living off student filth. Yecch.
Tonk reaches into his bag of fuzzy animals to produce a wolf. The characters enter a much bigger cave, full of a dozen nightlings. Darg thinks about rushing in to attack, but remembers previous experience and decides to just stand back at the door. Tonk joins him. They quickly discover that nightlings are able to perform not just a standard claw-claw-bite routine, but a claw-claw-bite-tail-gore routine. Tonk reflects that the only way they could improve on this would be by adding on a pelvic thrust.
The nightlings start to crowd in on Tonk and Darg while Longfellow peppers the creatures with Flaming Spheres. Tonk chops one in half. Darg matches him by chopping another in half, then takes enough attacks that he staggers from blood (and hit point) loss. Longfellow tosses in a quick Cure Moderate Wounds to revive Darg, then continues the grim work of cooking nightlings with Flaming Spheres.
One nightling ignores a Flaming Sphere to eviscerate Longfellow. Feathers and gore spray against the wall. Longfellow whines something about incredible sudden pain. Darg minces out, "Save me, Tonk!" Tonk shoots back, "What, did that last one hit you in the groin?" Darg explains, "I'm an elf, now!" as he sucks down a healing potion. While he is distracted by the process of drinking a nightling scampers up and claws him open. Darg feels a strangely infected burning from the attack. Tonk comments, "Welcome to the gang, Darg! Soon we'll both change, and then we can gang up on Longfellow!"
The characters quickly find themselves rather desperately pressed by nightlings to the left and nightlings to the right. Everyone is wounded. Longfellow and Darg are actually wounded quite badly. Tonk responds to this situation with a whirlwind attack that hits three of the creatures and takes two of them down. Tonk screams, "This is my kind of fight! They can't hurt me except with their claws, and I can use whirlwind attack! I've used it three times so far, and they just keep on coming!" Darg steps in to save Longfellow from a second nightling. Longfellow is now so covered with nightling guts that he couldn't possibly get airborne if he tried. Tonk points out, "Hey Darg! Now you could use your Cleave trick on Longfellow!"
Tonk watches as Darg fails to kill yet another nightling. He yells out some helpful advice, "Swing from the shoulder, not the wrist! Use your strong arm, not your pussy arm!" Darg moans, "If we live through this, we're so gonna have our missing cousins captured and shaved. Run, Longfellow! Find someone to avenge us, and to bring back our stuff from the nightlings!"
Longfellow responds by frying one nightling (the creature was too stupid to move away from a Flaming Sphere) and throwing a Cure Light Wounds on Tonk. Tonk deals with the situation in his own special way by chopping down two more nightlings. Darg manages to kill one, then Cleave up its comrade.
The next round of Flaming Sphere damage takes out two of them. Longfellow exults, "I got two of them! I am the baddest bird Druid in the entire catacomb!" Darg pays him no heed as he cuts down the last nightling.
Thence follows a brief session with the Cure Light Wounds wands.
Tonk asks, "Were the nightlings drunk? Maybe they wouldn't have attacked us if they weren't drunk." Longfellow ignores him. Darg just moans in pain.
Longfellow moves carefully around the circumference of the cave and determines that the southernmost entry shows the most evidence of nightling traffic. Tonk announces, "We go that way!" The characters advance down the tunnel for about sixty feet, then reach an intersection. Longfellow reports that the nightlings mostly went to the right, but something with wolf-like pads went to the left. The characters go left and encounter a chamber with eight wolves in it.
Tonk looks into the chamber and asks, "What the hell are wolves doing down here?"
Longfellow applies his nature lore to the problem. He tells the others, "Those aren't wolves, those are worgs! They're like wolves, but evil and intelligent." Tonk replies, "Well, that explains why they haven't attacked us yet." Darg calls upon his rather less-developed nature lore and announces, "Oh, those are just dogs. Let's just march in and kill them all."
The characters wait at the doorway. Longfellow casts Summon Swarm into the room, bringing up masses of poisonous centipedes. He comments, "I love this spell!" The worgs respond by moving to the edges of the cave. Darg throws a tanglefoot on one of them. Tonk watches with distress as the worgs charge. Darg is quickly overborne and knocked to the ground.
But then Darg steps back up. Tonk and Darg chop their way through the worgs in a grimly businesslike manner. Noticing that the worgs don't appear to mind centipede bites much, Longfellow gives up on his swarm and tosses a Flaming Sphere at three of the creatures. Tonk asks Longfellow, "Say, why aren't you throwing burning pine cones at these things, like Gandalf did?" Longfellow grouses, "I can't throw things."
The characters cut the worgs to pieces, then spend some time firing a series of arrows into the last worg, which is both stuck to the floor with tanglefoot and on fire.
Longfellow and Darg search the place. Longfellow announces, "I've figured out this place has a floor!" Darg concurs, "And it has a ceiling too!" Tonk helpfully continues, "I think we're in a cave!" Then they stumble upon some actual wealth:
Longfellow wonders what use the worgs have for coins until Tonk reminds him that they're intelligent.
The characters continue on through the catacombs. They find an iron door. A locked iron door. A locked iron door that they can't open. They head on down the corridor further, until they reach another closed door at the top of a ladder. Both Tonk and Darg try their utmost to break it open, with lackluster levels of success, until they try in unison. The doorway leads into the horse-tack room in the stable of the necromancer's tower. Apparently the door was once a secret door. Tonk offers, "Well, it's not secret any more. Let's go back."
The characters head back down to the right passageway and straight into yet another chamber with a dozen nightlings in it. The characters notice that these nightlings are a lot less casual about approaching the characters than their predecessors were.
Things look a bit dicey for quite a while. Darg and Tonk very valiantly chop away at nightling after nightling while Longfellow sprays Tonk and Darg with a continuous succession of Cure Light Wounds spells from his wand. Things look very bad when Tonk takes a hit and goes down. Things look even worse when Darg goes down. Longfellow thanks his lucky stars that the last nightling succumbs to a Flaming Sphere before the creature has a chance to get himself some eagle bits.
Darg curses, "I hate my cousins who didn't show up for this fucking party. I gotta take off my boots: they're full of blood." Tonk moans, "Heal... us... bird... Longfellow... stop... pecking... at... eyes..." Longfellow casts more healing spells from his wand. Darg and Tonk finally stop complaining.
The chamber leads to another corridor that winds on for a ways and ends in a hidden exit along the mountainside. Longfellow flies out to take a look around. He concludes that this would be a fine escape route. The characters investigate another offshoot and find yet another escape entrance.
The characters pick up a couple of improvised crowbars at the necromancer's stable then head back to the mysterious closed iron door to have another try at opening it up.
Tonk manages to break the door open with a crack and a foom! The "foom" is the sound of the exploding fire trap. Tonk screams, "No! You motherless Christ-fuckers! If only I hadn't bathed in rocket fuel!" He stops screaming when he realizes that the blast did less damage than a good hit from a nightling. Inside is a room with five chests marked with the symbol of Pelor, three more ordinary iron chests, and a silver necklace with a platinum star lying on the ground.
Longfellow remembers that the high priestess of the Temple of Pelor was wearing that necklace at the party.
Tonk picks up the necklace with his iron bar. Nothing bad happens to him. The characters work out a complex system to open all the chests so that only one of them is at risk at any one time. They are disappointed to find that none of the chests is trapped, or even locked. They turn out to be full of gold pieces, tens of thousands of them at least.
The characters conclude that this money was probably donated at last night's fund-raiser, and that the high priestess brought it down here for safe-keeping.
Then the characters locate a secret door at the back of the chamber. The characters go through and find themselves in a 20-by-40 foot room. Longfellow suddenly gets rather a blank look on his face. Tonk shouts, "It's a spell that only affects eagles! Those blind motherless eagle-hating bastards!" Then arrows come through the wall, as if it didn't exist. Tonk gets hit by a crossbow bolt. Tonk charges the wall. And smacks into it. He cries out, "Ouch! The wall's real! My nose hurts."
Tonk gets hit by a couple more arrows. He rushes over to the candle and extinguishes it, all the while pulling on his Goggles of Night. And then two giant worgs come through the wall and knock Tonk down. By now, it is clear that both Longfellow and Darg are magically Confused. Darg stands around with a blank look on his face, while Longfellow screams in and attacks one of the worgs. Tonk stands and hits the worg Longfellow just attacked. He notices that these worgs are wearing collars.
A spell shoots through the wall to hit Longfellow. His intelligence drops to 1. He becomes about as intelligent as a lizard. Darg is exuberant, "He stopped talking!" Then he wanders away, still confused. Tonk grabs Darg and heads through the secret door, leaving Longfellow to his fate.
By this time the Confusion spell has worn off Longfellow. The others can hear his panicked cries of "Awk! Awk! Awk! Awk! Awk! Awk! Awk! Awk! Awk! Awk!" from inside the room.
Tonk kills one worg. When it dies, it shrinks to about two-thirds of its original size. Tonk starts to suspect that he might be dealing with some kind of magician.
A voice calls out from behind the one-way wall, "You can't hide from us! You might as well give up! I'm giving you to the count of three!" Tonk pulls a black bear out of the Bag of Tricks while Darg throws a smokestick inside. Someone starts speaking mystical words. Part of the wall turns into mud and falls away. In the chamber beyond, the characters are able to see a magician, an assassin and a female thief, plus the surviving worg and a few nightlings. The magician is pretty clearly Chancellor Cavanaugh. He, the thief and the assassin are all under cover. Chancellor Cavanaugh yells out, "You should have given up while you had a chance!"
Tonk calls out, "Here, Longfellow! Here! Give me the elephant!" Longfellow flaps over to Tonk's arm, delivering the elephant. Tonk proceeds to bring up the elephant and send it after the nightling. Darg rushes in to attack the magician and quickly finds out that he is well-protected by a Stone Skin spell. And a nightling takes the black bear apart.
The characters are very confused to see the nightling behind the Chancellor attack him, albeit to no effect.
The Chancellor draws out a three-foot leather bag and pulls eight severed arms from it. He throws them all around Darg. The arms proceed to attack Darg. Darg suffers little damage, but does get a serious case of the heebie-jeebies.
The female thief decides that her crossbow is doing her little good, so she turns herself invisible. Longfellow and the elephant descend upon the assassin. Both of them do damage, but the elephant does the lion's share by far. The assassin exclaims, "Oh god! I'm being attacked by wild animals! I surrender! I surrender!" Unfortunately, he is fighting with two creatures that can't understand him at all. The elephant squashes the guy into mash. Tonk looks over and offers, "Hey, we can sell assassin-brand toothpaste! Made from real assassins. And real teeth."
Chancellor Cavanaugh steps back, casts a spell, and steps through the Dimension Door that appears. Two of his pet arms start glowing purple. One of them hits Darg, who feels agony as his life-force is drained away by necromantic magic.
Tonk steps in and watches Darg fail to turn the arms. He deals with the problem by just chopping one to pieces. It takes Darg a few tries, but he finally manages to turn the arms and send them all running into a corner.
After Chancellor Cavanaugh and his thief lady escape, the characters find that the only other creature still in the room with them is the sympathetic nightling. The creature can't speak, but it seems like it can understand them. The room includes a staircase up and two wooden doors. One door leads to a cellblock. The characters find the Anchorite Julia in one cell, some students in a second, two wounded priests of Pelor in a third, and the high priestess of Pelor and her assistant in the fourth. She explains that the cells are locked, and the whole area is covered by anti-magic so none of them can use spells. She asks Darg, "Are you here to torment me or rescue me?" Darg responds, "Both."
Tonk manages to tear open the high priestess' cell with a crowbar. Darg opens another one. It takes the two of them some time to rip them all open. Darg really has his chance to shine here, as he proves to be quite adept at breaking locks.
The Anchorite Julia emerges from her cell. Longfellow perches near her and tries to pick hair off her head. Darg scolds him, "Longfellow! Don't eat that! Say, Tonk, have you noticed that Longfellow is acting really strange recently?"
The other door leads to a dormitory with twenty beds. There is a chest at the foot of each bed. Most of them are easy to open; they prove to contain a total 660 gold pieces. The last is made of iron and contains a spellbook and 1500 gold pieces. The characters take all the gold and the spellbook, and some writing materials, which they use to communicate with the nightling. They learn that he is Nalix Corrv, once a student at the University. The Chancellor changed him into a nightling in the secret lab. For some reason, he kept his mind after the change. He doesn't know of a cure, but he does know the Chancellor's mansion is upstairs.
Tonk tells the others that there is another way out, but it takes an hour's walk. Or they can follow the characters upstairs, which might be dangerous. Nobody has seen the Chancellor doing anything with other members of the faculty. The priest-types are pretty badly injured as a rule, and don't want to get involved in violence, but agree to follow the characters anyway.
Tonk thinks, "I wonder if those two necromantic arms were the necromancer's arms." And then he finds necromancer Alton Loroc's head sitting on a countertop at the back of the lab.
The characters head up the stairs. They emerge into a greenhouse packed with various exotic plants. Tonk announces, "For god's sake, nobody touch anything. Is there a door? We head for the door!" The door leads to a terrace on the second floor of the Chancellor's mansion.
Longfellow thinks, "It's a beautiful day! I need to fly!" The other characters watch with amazement as he proceeds to fly right into the side of the mountain. Darg muses, "He really is only as smart as a lizard." Tonk comments, "We may never see him again."
Professor Carnen says she has a cure, but it must be done in conjunction with a Remove Curse spell to remove the curse on those already transformed. The antidote will work on someone who hasn't transformed without the additional magic. She is terribly happy to be reunited with her missing sweetheart Nelix. Their reunion is inappropriately passionate.
Tonk reminds them, "Could we have that cure now? Please? Some of the rest of us are also getting black and scaly? Oh heck... CURE NOW!"
The priests tell the characters that they're heading back to their temple. Tomorrow morning they will help Longfellow, whose mind was destroyed. There will also be a monetary reward and a 20% discount on future temple services. Tonk resolves to give the high priestess her necklace back tomorrow morning.
By late the next day, everyone is cured. Professor Carnen determines that everyone on campus has to have the antidote: the water in the barrels in the catacombs was infected, and had contaminated the water supply. The Temple of Pelor gives the characters get a 2000 gold reward.
About a third of the gold downstairs turns up missing. Nobody knows where ex-Chancellor Cavanaugh went, but he is never seen again.
The various nightling and worg fights netted the characters 4767 experience points. This pushes Longfellow to 7th level (Druid 6), Darg to 7th level (Cleric 3) and Tonk to 8th level (Fighter 8). Paul promises to figure out the experience for the last fight next time.