Paul calls up early to point out that he has loaned his car out, and needs transportation. In the background, Billy (Andrinor) points out that he needs transportation as well. Chuck (Marcus Sangaree) suggests that Tim (Anpago Yost) should handle the transportation situation. Chris (Tonk Sangaree) indicates that this is okay by him, as it doesn't require that he do anything. But he points out that Bruce (Longfellow Yost) could contribute: he's a dancer and he has the legs for it!
The characters have just finished healing themselves and recovering their spells in the Temple to Hieroneous when they hear horns outside. Tonk Sangaree listens carefully and hears the sounds of battle as well. Longfellow Yost flies up and sees a contingent of goblins heading towards the tower, escorted by a group of spider-mounted outriders. Much farther off, it appears that the town is under attack.
Anpago Yost tells the others, "I need 100 experience points." Marcus Sangaree responds, "I need 4000. How much is a sleeping pixie worth?" Longfellow Yost offers, "Depends on what level he is." Anpago, apparently unaware or uninterested, chirps up, "Ninth!" Tonk Sangaree very helpfully adds, "And if he's sleeping, all you need is a pillow!"
The local caretaker is Aramis Silverbrow, Caretaker of the Battlefield Shrine. He no longer needs to pray at the shrine every four hours, thanks to the fact that the characters have slaughtered Kurge the Executioner.
Anpago Yost looks out over the field and takes aim at a group of three bugbears and several goblin archers. He lands a Fireball right between one of the bugbears' eyes. Anpago is dismayed to see that while the goblins have been transformed into charred skeletons, the bugbears are all still in fine shape. Much to his surprise, he sees that he managed to kill one riding spider, leaving the spider-knight singed but alive.
Tonk heads down to the front door of the shrine just in time to see five spider-knights charge. He watches as they thunder down upon him and comments, "Man, those guys can book. I didn't thing they'd get on top of me like this." He is also a bit discomfited to realize that the bugbear barbarians are just behind the spider knights. On the other hand, he has equipped himself with the Lord High Marshal's Shield, and hiding behind it makes him feel better.
Far behind the riders and the bugbears, the goblin archers open fire at the tower top. Tonk looks up at the swarm of arrows and thinks, "Well, maybe heading down here wasn't such a bad idea." None of them come close to hitting. Andrinor calls down, "Ha ha! I think some of those arrows came closer to Tonk than they did to us."
Longfellow decides that he absolutely has to show off some of his new spells. He brings down an Ice Storm on the pack of bugbear berserkers. He is disappointed to see that they all survive, though some of them look rather injured. Marcus shows him how it's done by skewering one of the barbarians with three arrows, sending him to the ground. Then someone out on the field points out that he has figured out where the Ice Storm came from by casting Cause Blindness at Longfellow, who resists the spell.
Down on the field, Tonk steps up to one spider-knight and gives him a nasty slashing. The spider knight complains, "Look what you've done! I'm bleeding all over my nice tabard!"
Then Anpago hits the barbarians with Confusion ("It's just like instant death!") and Andrinor follows up with a spider-knight-flattening Ice Storm. One goblin mournfully calls up, "I'm confused, and cold, and there are wolves after me! And the ice weasels are going to attack!" Andrinor continues to transform the battlefield into a goblin Stalingrad by throwing an Iceball at the remaining goblin archers, freezing a dozen of them solid. The few survivors proceed to run for the hills. One of them screams, "We thought we'd be safe way back here! Why are they throwing spells at us?"
And then the spider-knights charge Tonk. Tonk boasts, "Thanks to Evasion, my armor class is 29! And once they get close to me, I'll be able to execute a Whirlwind Attack against both the riders and their spiders!" None of the spider-knights come close to hitting Tonk.
The one dismounted spider-knight comes running up to help his fellows only to be hit simultaneously by a Flaming Sphere from Longfellow and three arrows from Marcus. One arrow goes straight past his clavicle and into his organs. Tonk looks over an notes dryly, "Yep, we call that the death-funnel."
Tonk transforms into a whirling dervish of lethal edges and maiming strikes. Spider-knights stagger back dripping blood and trailing organs. Wounded spiders squeal in pain and frustration. Two knights don't stagger far: Anpago and Andrinor each take one out with sprays of Magic Missiles. Anpago notices that Tonk no longer flinches when the magicians nuke guys right in front of him.
Tonk feels momentarily compelled to stand there while the spider-knights attack him, but then he thinks, "Screw that!" and kills a couple of spiders instead. Anpago looks down and comments, "Woot! Blenderiffic!"
Longfellow drops a Flaming Sphere on one spider. Morgan ends it with arrows. Then everyone else cleans up the remaining barbarians.
Nobody ever manages to find the (Invisible) magician who was sniping at Longfellow and Tonk.
After moments, it is clear that the characters thoroughly own the battlefield. With no further goblin resistance, they go for the loot. In particular, they skip the mundane gear and go straight for the magical loot:
Longfellow flies out over the town to see what the situation there is like. The human defenders seem to have repelled an attack by a mixed force of goblins and bugbears, though they took many casualties. Several sections of the town have been reduced to rubble. There are several pockets of invaders still fortified inside the town.
The characters move in to the town to mop up. They are happy to see that their old friend Robert the Werebear is among the defenders. He tells them, "I'm just here to help stop these goblins who want to destroy the pure jungle and replace it with their black forest." Longfellow replies, "Word!" Robert asks the characters, "How's Watches-Birds?" Longfellow casts his gaze down and explains, "My dear friend Watches-Birds-at-Dawn was killed by Chaiya the iron-fisted! I am in mourning. Aawwk!" This takes Robert aback a bit. He asks, "Who are you?" Longfellow realizes that he has gone through some personal transformations since the last time he saw Robert and explains, "Oh, right! I'm Longfellow! I was human when you last saw me, but now I'm a crag eagle!"
Robert describes how the goblins are ranging over the countryside, ravaging small towns and villages and destroying the ability of the people to feed themselves. He suggests that the characters should talk to Sir Natua if they wish to help. He is here leading the humans to defend this place. Tonk rather randomly comments, "And he's a crag eagle! Craaawk!" Robert glares at him.
The characters search out Sir Natua. He turns out to be a rather stout human knight with bristly, walrus-like moustaches. His crest is a brown falcon against a green tree over a yellow background. Longfellow, "Aaawk! She's quite a looker! Related?" Nobody else has any idea what he's talking about. Marcus rather lamely comments, "Umm... no..."
Sir Natua compliments the characters upon their surprisingly stiff defense of the Temple of Hieroneous. Tonk warns him of an invisible spellcaster that the characters weren't able to locate. Sir Natua tells him, "Because of the goblin raiders, Southport is starving. There are extra supplies at Serene and Sorgen Bridge, but we can't reach them due to the raiders. The best way to bring the food here would be skyships, but Highthrone has refused to provide any." The characters inform him that many of Highthrone's skyships were destroyed a few months ago. "But with a few brave men, we could hijack one, and..."
The solution Sir Natua was actually hoping for was to go to Highthrone and speak to the Council there. The problem is that the road from Southport is rife with goblin raiders.
Robert the Werebear comes up with a dire bear for Longfellow's new animal companion. Tonk gasps, "That thing is sixteen feet long! It weights 2000 pounds! You people hassled me about feeding a spider, what are we going to feed this?" Andrinor tells him, "Don't worry, it eats berries." Longfellow adds, "And sometimes he eats trees for the roughage. Meet my new friend!" Longfellow preens like a proud papa. Sir Natua looks at it and gasps, "Oh Holy Mother of God! That thing lives in the woods near here?" Andrinor asks Longfellow, "What's its name? 'Oh My Fucking God' works for me." Longfellow introduces everyone to Long-Claws-Tree-Breaker.
For all their preparations, the characters enjoy a very uneventful trip to Highthrone. Apparently, the goblin raiders are smart enough to avoid ambushing an armed party who use braided goblin scalps as saddle blankets.
Upon the characters' return to their townhouse, their manservant Flutie rushes up to tell them, "Julia the Anchorite has been looking for you! Damn, that bear grew! What's the druidic stance on steroids?"
The characters promptly go to the Anchorage. They find the door shut, but they can hear banging sounds inside. Tonk calls out, "Hello? Do you need help inside?" The banging increases in intensity. Marcus opens the door as Tonk frets about what sort of horrible animal might be inside. They see nobody inside except Sister Julia, but she looks in very poor shape. Thinking fast, Andrinor hits her with Disrupt Undead. She takes damage. Then she lunges at Tonk. He strikes back, and she falls. He notices that she has stab wounds in her back.
Marcus searches the place. He finds a rather grim note left where it can be found. It reads, "I have foreseen that I will die at the hands of one I trust. The soul of the spider in this plane is connected to the soul of the one who brought it to this plane. If the two are physically united, the spider shall be sent back to its home." Tonk pulls out the dagger and demands, "So, you better explain yourself. Is that you?" Sir Melkin The Avenging Dagger replies rather hesitantly, "Maybe..."
The characters continue in their sweep of the grounds. They find a priest cowering out in the garden. Andrinor quickly casts Disrupt Undead at him to verify that he's not undead. He shows no ill effects from the experience, so the characters conclude he must be all right. Tonk asks, "How are you? And what are you doing in the backyard?" Andrinor chimes in, "And are you aware that Julia's been kicking around as an undead for at least an hour?" The priest replies, "Yes. I know about the evil fate that has befallen our beloved Anchorite. I couldn't bear to kill her. And I only slept with her once or twice. It's been a few hours since she turned." Andrinor asks, "Who did it?" The priest responds with unaccustomed vehemence, "Partos Kincara!"
The characters actually know who Partos Kincara is. He is the old man who owns The Missing Page, a nearby shop. In the recent past, he gave the characters the information they needed to go after the Flame King. From what the characters can tell, Kincara stopped by to speak to Julia some hours ago. After he left, she was dead. And soon after that she rose up and started calling out for brains.
Andrinor does his best to figure out the priest's motives, but fails. Anpago simply throws Charm Person at him and asks again. He doesn't get a story any different.
The characters head in to Kincara's shop and take a look around. The place has that nice, flammable library smell. The shelves are loaded with old books and sheaves of paper and bottles of ink. Partos Kincara sees them and asks, "What can I do for you?" Anpago bellows out, "Charm! Make a Will save. Confess!"
None of this performance ends up being as impressive as Anpago might have hoped. First, he can only bellow in a high C, so he sounds like a robin with a throat ailment. Second, Partos Kincara reacts by raising an eyebrow and asking him, "What are you doing casting spells in my store? Especially spells like Charm Person? That's not allowed!"
Anpago is not to be dissuaded. He shouts, "Feeblemind!" Apparently, in Anpago's little world anyone who can resist his mind spells must be evil. By that standard, Partos Kincara must be the worst blackguard Highthrone has ever seen: he shrugs off the second spell with no more trouble than the first.
Tonk decides that the group's strategy has already been defined, so he demands, "What did you do to Sister Julia! Someone killed her and raised her as a zombie. And you visited her earlier today!" Partos asks Tonk, "Are you accusing me?" Tonk replies, "I'm thinking yes."
Longfellow, who had been sitting off on the side of this very exciting confrontation, notices something cloth-wrapped and bloody, hastily tucked away behind some scrolls. It might be a dagger. Longfellow announces, "I become a baboon!" While Partos is standing still, shocked by this sudden development, Marcus steps over the counter to pick up the object. Partos asks Tonk, "Why did your pet eagle suddenly become a baboon? I don't understand how that helped anything at all..."
Suddenly Tonk becomes homicidally angry. He pulls a sword and attacks Partos. Both Longfellow and Marcus throw Charm spells at him, both of which he shrugs off. Marcus shrieks in alarm, "Tonk's not acting like himself! He doesn't normally make those saves!"
Partos does surprisingly well against Tonk's onslaught, as he has a Stoneskin spell available on contingency. Andrinor throws a Web spell to try and stop Tonk. The room fills with webs, but it does not stop Tonk with his Cloak of the Spider, nor does it stop Kincara, who is wearing a Free Action item. Tonk continues to chop pieces out of Partos Kincara. Everyone else starts to remember that Partos Kincara is actually supposed to be some kind of kick-ass magician with all sorts of gnarly powers.
Marcus throws Invisibility Purge, hoping to reveal the hidden mage who is causing all the trouble. He sees something coterminous with Tonk, something inside him that looks like a kind of huge, distorted baby. Actually, more like a fetus with a horribly swollen head. Andrinor gasps, "That's his inner child? That explains a whole lot."
At this point, Partos Kincara decides that enough has got to be enough. He creates a Force Cage around Tonk. This also traps the scary aethereal baby.
Everyone calms down, except for Tonk. Kincara examines the creature possessing Tonk and announces, "That is a Forgotten One. The Forgotten Ones are creatures that were spurned and forgotten by the gods at the dawn of time." Marcus comments, "Yeah, I forgot about them." Kincara goes on to explain that he is a member of a secret society called the Loremasters. They know that some of the Forgotten Ones are still around. The demon spider Atseyet that rules the goblins of the Spider Woods is also a Forgotten One. The creature possessing Tonk is Absoab. Kincara tells the others that Absoab once spawned the terrible race of the fomorians. If he is reduced to possessing the likes of Tonk, he must be much diminished from his former power, though he is clearly a force to be feared.
Partos Kincara then reveals that Julia was also a Loremaster. He tells the others, "We must find her immediately and bring her back!"
In the background, Tonk continues to rage at the other characters, flinging himself at the walls of his cage again and again and again.
The characters rush back to the Anchorage to find that Julia's body is gone. Andrinor mourns, "If only we had somebody who could track!" Longfellow looks around and explains, "Someone dragged her bloody body off that way." The trail goes through the Meditation Gardens of the temple, then back to the golden Disk of Pelor and ends. The characters search for the secret door. Marcus finds it, then figures out the catch to open it.
Beyond the door is a storage room holding all manner of things for the temple, including robes, silverware and incense. A winding tunnel leads downward from its back. The characters proceed down the tunnel to find themselves on a ledge over a wide cavern. The find the priest Abelard standing there, instantly recognizing him from the garden.
Andrinor chirps in his deepest pixie chirp, "Abelard! I accuse you!" Abelard mocks him, "You accuse me? You tracked me all the way here? Bah! I scoff at you and your so-called tracking!" Longfellow intones, "We are wise in trackery!" Andrinor continues on, "And we aren't frickin' blind!"
Abelard draws himself up and tells them, "You are on the wrong side! You cannot defeat the Forgotten Ones!" Everyone notices that the ledge overlooks a huge cavern filled with ruins that look like the ruins in the Forbidden City. Marcus swears, "Dammit! These people built not only on top of an active volcano but also on haunted ruins! Who was their real estate agent? Mister Magoo?" Andrinor ignores his cousin and addresses Abelard again, "Did you bring the Forgotten Ones here?" Abelard replies, "I did not bring them! They were already here! They will rule the world! When the Black Jungles of Atseyet cover the world and Vagmor the Devourer rules the underworld all will be complete!"
Marcus asks Abelard, "How do we get Tonk back?" Abelard's answer is straightforward, "You must release Absoab!"
Marcus replies, "How do we do that?" Abelard explains, as if to a small child, "Get rid of the force cage!"
Marcus expresses great sagacity by telling the priest, "Oh no, we're gonna let Homicidal Tonk out." Then he confronts Abelard, "Did you kill the Anchorite?" Abelard admits, "I loved her, but she never loved me. I had no choice!" Anpago reassures Abelard, "Well no wonder. Dealing with evil demons is no way to pick up chicks. You get the occasional Goth chick, but that's about it." Abelard looks as if he's about to blow a gasket.
Anpago decides that he's had enough to chatting with Abelard, so he throws a Hold Monster on him. Abelard shrugs off the spell, then mentions, "I've been blessed by Absoab!" and swells up into a fifteen-foot swollen monstrosity. He looks a lot like a fomorian. And then he strikes at the closest thing he can see. Longfellow quickly Flame Strikes him. Abelard shrugs the attack off, only barely wounded. Anpago lights out with another Hold Monster. Marcus hits him with arrows. Finally Abelard notices that he's under attack. Then he hits the bird. The bird gets hurt.
Longfellow dumps Spike Stones on the area Abelard is standing in. Anpago throws Improved Invisibility on Marcus, who lights up Abelard with arrows. Now that he's invisible, he gets all sorts of juicy sneak attack damage. Apparently, fomorians are full of organs. Marcus inflicts 46 points of damage. One arrow goes into Abelard's eye and through his brain, but apparently the brain is not a vital organ for a fomorian. His return strike misses only barely; Marcus gets pelted with stone chips. Anpago howls, "Get him, Legolas!"
Andrinor fires a pair of Ice Bolts and takes Abelard down. The fomorian-priest falls off the edge, until Anpago hits him with a Levitate. Now safely dead, he turns back into a cleric. The characters loot him, and are quite disappointed to find that the only thing he really needed was the ability to turn into a fomorian.
Longfellow continues to track the trail of Julia's body. It ends in another chamber with lots of blood, all around a stone. There is a pool of murky, unclean water in the back of the chamber. Longfellow tries Commune with Nature to find Julia's body. The others spend the 10-minute casting time figuring out that there is a trail of icky water and slime going into the murky pool. Off in a side passage they find a chamber with the remains of a campfire and a sleeping mat in it. Looks like somebody has been camping out here.
Andrinor decides that something unnatural is in the puddle. He throws a Lightning Bolt into it. Anpago peers into the water. He sees a huge, distorted face. It looks a lot like the thing that has Tonk in its thrall. Andrinor proclaims, "That's its physical form! Let's kill it!" Anpago announces, "I Levitate it out of the water!" Andrinor screams, "No! Don't wake it up! We kill it where it stands!" Anpago Levitates it anyway. As it comes up the characters feel an aura of unease and sickness come over them. They are overcome by the power of the evil aura and take a -2 penalty to all rolls. Marcus shoots it full of arrows. Eventually, it dies.
The characters return to the Missing Page to find Tonk much recovered, though still trapped in his Force Cage. They persuade Partos Kincara to let Tonk out.
The character hold a funeral service and bury Sister Chiron's body. Many tears are shed, and much beer is drunk.
Longfellow flies off to his aerie to cast Awaken on his mate ("Did you name her White Meat after her breasts?"). He explains to the others his intention to Awaken all of his crag eagle progeny once they have grown.
Andrinor casts a Permanent Reduce on Chaiya's Blade and gives it to Tonk.
Tonk gains 2400 experience points. Everyone else gains 2650 experience points. Longfellow burns 250 of his by casting Awaken.