Hexblade Diary

[Mike Garrison]

To whom it may concern, I'll probably be dead, or worse than dead, if this is ever read. But I want somebody to remember who I was.

I'm Desdemona. Des, I usually go by to my friends. Those I have. Which isn't many. I'm a drow. Not one of those spider-lovers, though. I've actually always hated spiders.

I have always been weak and clumsy. It made childhood hell. I got beat up over and over and over. Although, it did teach me to talk my way out of fights. And, whatever else it did, it toughened me up. I probably would have been "culled" if I had grown up with the spider drow, but my parents didn't like that. They're gone now, though. I'm on my own.

Well, sort of. Because I met ... someone ... else. Someone or something. It promised me that it could help. It could give me a blade that I could use with my wits, not my feeble strength or clumsy fingers. And so I jumped at the chance.

And things were just starting to get better for me when ... this happened. And now I'm going to die.

I'm not sure how it even happened, but I ended up the prisoner of a mindflayer. After I awoke I watched it put a THING into the eye of some githyanki woman. And then it -- I can hardly write this -- it did it to me. I know that thing is inside my head. It's going to turn me into one of them. And there is nothing I can do.

==========

Des is a female drow. Her left eye is purple, but her right eye is kind of washed out in color. She has some facial scars from her rough childhood, but she got some tattoos that mostly let the scars blend in. She wears her hair short and has it magically colored a sort of teal with pinkish highlights. She's about 30. Like most drow she's messed around a bit with people of both sexes, but she prefers other women. She doesn't mind non-drow, but it gets tiresome that either they fear her or they think she is some kind of exotic animal.

S:8 D:8 Con:16 I:12 W:14 Cha: 16

[Mike Garrison]

We went back up to the top. What else could we get this machine to give us?

A fight. It gave us a fight. I must have said the wrong words.

This damn machine. Lae'zel swung at it four times, and it dodged every one. Gale hit it with magic missiles and it shot lightning back at him. Shadowheart missed it when she tried a guiding bolt.

I decided we needed some help, so I started my drow sword singing.

It was incredible. It went after SH and had her down immediately. We tried to strike at it, but it managed to get both SH and Gale down again. Lae was just trying to keep them alive as I tried to fight it. It was flooding the place with lightning energy.

And then, it shut down? Rested? Something. While it was incapacitated, we killed it. Or, I don't know, shut it down? Can you kill something that was never alive?

The armor suits were all hostile as well, but they were helpless because of the flowers, so it was trivial to kill them all.

[Mike Garrison]

As we were cleaning up (looting) after our fight, I sat down on a stool. And ... I was strong! As strong as a giant! It was amazing! I've never been strong. Never. And now I was strong!

I was so excited I leapt to my feet. And the strength was gone. WHAT? I finally was strong than then not again?

I was so angry I grabbed the stool and threw it across the room. It shattered. But one of the stool legs remained. When I picked it up I was almost as strong as when I had sat on the chair.

A club of strength, I guess. But ... I'm not sure it would do me any good. If I used it I could be strong, but what about my hexblade magic? Do I really want to be just a brute with a club, even if it does mean I would be strong?

Lae'zel tried it, and it even made her more strong, but she said she likes a greatsword better. Gale prefers magic.

So Shadowheart said she might try it. She mostly uses magic too, but a stick of strength might be nice.

So now what? I guess we have our mushrooms for Omeluum. I looked around Lenore's tower, which we had looted and trashed. We broke her machine. We killed her pet bulette. From her letters, it seemed that she had already been depressed. I started to feel guilty.

Well, who knows? Maybe she's been dead for 10 years, and so none of this matters. We can always hope, I suppose.

[Mike Garrison]

We went back to see the mindflayer. It prepared its potion for me. Disgusting, but at least it didn't make me sick. The tadpole fought the intrusion, but my willpower was strong and I took no damage. Then Omeluum shouted in pain. It seems the tadpole had forced it out of my mind.

In the end, I think my tadpole became even stronger.

I did manage to talk Omeluum into giving me a ring of mind shielding. It also had some other trinkets it was willing to trade for.

I know that Lolth drow routinely trade with mindflayers, but I don't think the spider-lovers consider them *safe*. I don't know what to think about this Omeluum. It really does seem different from other mindflayers, but is different good? Or is different just another kind of bad?

[Mike Garrison]

Anyway, we were all exhausted. And I had DIED. Seemed like we could use a night's rest.

[Mike Garrison]

Day 16.

Still not a mindflayer. Still infected. Not dead.

We need to get to Moonrise Towers. We have agreed to save some gnomes and kill a drow named Nere. Lae'zel insists we must find a creche. And somewhere out there is an Adamantine Forge, a relic called Nightsong, and maybe even a way for SH to become a dark justicier. Plus, Gale still misses his cat.

I am RELUCTANT to get back onto that boat, considering that I died the last time I did, but it seems like that's the best option anyway.

[Mike Garrison]

We stepped off the boat and some incredibly impolite duergar tried to bully us around. I hate bullies. We taught them a lesson about politeness that they remembered for the rest of their lives, which was about 10 seconds.

Then we found one of the dwarfs with a bunch of spiders. Ugh. I hate spiders. And they seemed to be displaying dead drow in public cages. I asked Gale if he could do something about that, and he said, "Like what?" "A fireball, maybe?" "Isn't that overkill?" "No." Boom!

Only one spider survived. A few seconds later, the dwarf and that last spider were also dead.

Two fights in about a minute after we got there. I wasn't in the mood to play nice. But we did need to take a short rest and talk things over.

"I think we should pick these dwarfs off in ones and twos, like we are already doing, Any objections?" No one objected.

We walked over to where two dwarfs were making a gnome bring them drinks. They were also incredibly rude. Lae'zel heard enough from them, and just went *wild*. Before either they or any of us could do anything, she had killed one and about half-killed the other. It was beautiful.

But the one that survived was also fierce. He smashed Lae twice with a hammer and then tossed her over the side of the stairs. We finished him off, but she was hurt. And proud.

So we walked on a little bit and saw some dwarfs tossing gnome bodies into the lake. I hit one of them with an eldritch blast and Lae went to town AGAIN. Again she had one dead before they could even react. Gale shot some rays of fire at the other one, and Shadowheart just ran up and finished him off with her new stick.

We're a deadly little crew now. I think back to less than two 10-days ago, and it's amazing how far we have come along.

Lae'zel found the whole thing with the pile of corpses to be revolting. She insisted corpses should be buried or burned. After I checked them for anything useful (found a nice ring!), I tried tossing some alchemist fire onto them. But they were still too freshly killed to burn that way. Oh well.

[Mike Garrison]

Then we met another dwarf. But he was polite. He said he had "no mind for slaving" and was a stone-worker. He wanted help investigating what had happened here long ago. So I looked around.

Many years ago, a great hell-beast had rampaged through the area, melting and breaking the stone itself.

The mason was pleased with my work and gave me some infernal metal he had found. Then we carried on some trading and parted company peacefully. "Always a pleasure to meet a fellow academic," Gale said to me.

The relationship between drow and duergar is like that. If both groups choose to be polite, it can be just fine. But it can also turn violent in an instant, as we had already proven to those other dwarfs.

Anyway, we moved along and found some rothe. One of them was ancient, and had memories of "the Ketheric Thorm". He remembered Thorm's army, and also a great hell-beast the destroyed the army. And he said that Nere is somehow connected to Thorm.

We looked around and found some supply crates. One of them contained a crossbow that SH recognized as Sharran in design. And we found skeletonized dark justiciers. Ominous.

We found a chest out on a ledge that had almost fallen into the void below. I tried to disarm the trap but was once again too clumsy. I did dodge most of the explosion, though. Once I got the lock open, it contained an interesting shield. Apparently the work of that same Yrre who had been Lenore's friend.

Then we found some duergar trying to whip some rothe. Again very impolite to me. So I turned to the rothe and said, "How about it? Want to kick some dwarf ass?" They did. We did. Shadowheart and Lae'zel got hurt pretty badly, though.

We went back to the polite trader and exchanged a bunch of broken Sharran and duergar armor for nice, unbroken gold coins.

We moved along and i found a sort of causeway, high up above the main floor. But it was covered with traps. I was afraid to try to disarm them, so instead I very carefully moved along, jumping over or passing around everything that looked to be a trigger plate. At the end of it was a closed gate. I used a scroll of misty step to jump through it.

As I had hoped, there was a way to disarm the traps there. I also found an idol of Shar. I figured that might be a nice gift for Shadowheart. She was pleased. I'm glad that the whole party/kiss thing hasn't kept us from being friends.

[Mike Garrison]

We found a way to ride a metal platform across open space and get to the other side of the boat bay. And then Shadowheart jumped off.

No really, she just jumped all the way down to the lower level and was knocked unconscious. I think she was trying to make a much shorter jump and just ... missed. {hilarious misclick}

But we all needed to rest and heal up anyway. And we've all learned from this little mistake. {level 6}

[Mike Garrison]

Day 17.

Scratch gave me a pair of pristine meshtoe sandals! Thank you, Scratch.

Shadowheart's massive trauma from leaping off of a height of probably about four stories onto bare stone healed perfectly overnight, so we're good to go out adventuring again.

[Mike Garrison]

We went back to where SH made her misstep. Then we explored. We found some bloody footprints, but couldn't figure out what had happened. Continuing on, we found a chapel to Shar. Inside was a merregon, one of Hell's footsoldiers. And three hellpigs. We killed them, but they did set a few of us on fire.

We came to a cliff, and Gale cast featherfall on all of us. Then I jumped off. I was immediately hit by a surprise attack by three slime monsters. Before my allies could even do anything, I ... was killed. {damn it! the other three never entered combat, and I never got a turn so I could get them involved}

The next thing I knew, Lae'zel was standing over me. They had revivified my corpse, using a scroll. (The others had killed the slime blobs.)

I took some health potions and we all took a short rest.

[Mike Garrison]

We climbed up a rocky trail and found the "Contemplation Chamber of Shar". The doors were locked, but that was no matter because just next to the door the wall had been knocked down, and we could just walk inside.

Inside, we found a crazed gnome. She was standing next to a whole barrel of smokepowder, and she ignited a flame in her hand.

I tried to convince her not to do it. Very, very, hard. {failed persuasion and FOUR inspiration re-rolls!} But she screamed out something about Ironhand, and then ignited the powder. Everyone except Lae'zel was knocked unconscious. Lae'zel was barely on her feet, but she aided each of the rest of us to make sure we didn't die. What a waste. We came here to *save* her, but she wouldn't listen to us.

[Mike Garrison]

It had been a bad day. Killed by slime monsters. Blown up by a gnome. Luck just wasn't with us. I said we all needed rest, so we set up camp. So ended Day 17.

[Draknalor]

You are amazing :)

[Mike Garrison]

Day 18.

We broke camp a lot more somber than a few days ago. It's hard to believe how confident we were when we first came to this place. Now everything seems to be going wrong. But we're soldiering on.

We were trying to find our way back out to the main area, and we walked into a half-flooded dining room. It was the long-rotted scraps of a Sharran nightfall feast. I was disgusted, but Shadowheart said it was a "sacred rite".

Where the crazed gnome had been camping, there was a crude map that pointed to a stash of smokepowder. We followed the map and found a few sachel charges. Nothing like the one she had nearly blown us all up with, though. That had been a truly massive explosion.

Next we found a couple of dwarfs standing apart from the others muttering. They were talking about a gnome who ran off with smokepowder! Huh. I think I know what happened to her.

Then he started talking some crap to me, and I was in no mood. I said I would spill his guts on the floor if he wasn't careful. He wasn't careful. He was angry. Fight!

We spilled his guts on the floor, of course. But after we did it, one of those floating eyes showed up and started to follow us. I didn't like that, so I nodded to Gale. SHATTER! No more eye.

We picked up a journal off the body of the mouthy dwarf. It seems he may not actually have been in favor of the Absolute. Oh well. Not my concern now.

Oh hey! We finally found the gnomes. (Those that aren't blown up.) And many more dwarfs. And a giant rock pile. And a dwarf with no boots!

She turned out to be a believer in the Absolute. She said Nere ordered this dig to try to get to some old temple. At Thorm's command. But a trap brought down the rockfall.

I gave her the boots. She gave me some monk robes. I have no need of monk robes, but I suppose they must be worth something.

Hey! I know that gnome! The one we saved from the goblins. But he was not wanting help from "one of you". A drow, I suppose. Well, keep digging rocks, then.

[Mike Garrison]

There was a sort of arch up above the area, with a guard who had a crossbow. Looked like a commanding spot to get tactical advantage for the guard. Or for us...

Lae'zel whacked her with a sword a couple of times and then pushed her right off. Ha! But the guard climbed right back up and then pushed SH off. Hey! That's our trick!

One of the dwarfs cast "mind mastery" on Lae, but Gale stuffed so many magic missiles down his throat that he lost his concentration.

Lae killed the woman with the boots. I guess they will be our boots again, now.

Shadowheart cast spirit guardians, but a dwarf attacked her and broke her concentration. Hey! That's our trick!

Well, there was more. Gale got mind-mastered and threw a firebomb at me. Stuff like that. But we did it. Killed the dwarfs.