Ari leaned on the desk in her room, writing intently on the parchment she had begged from one of Baron Kraven’s servants. There was ink on her fingertips, and she resisted the urge to wipe it on her heavy skirts. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she wrote:

From the Great Foxwood Tree:

-          1000 years ago, “his servants” brought tree blight and disease to the woods.

-          Saplings, tree and dryad alike, were especially susceptible and died of the blight. Older trees survived but were scarred.

-          Disease specifically struck and killed elven women, to the point that the Great Tree was pleasantly surprised to see Mel alive.

Ari stopped, frowning at the paper. She didn’t want to write down things that were her own conclusions, even when they seemed tremendously logical. Like the elven women. If a disease had been wiping them out, protecting them at home would make sense, even be necessary. The women might even have volunteered. And consolidating the population in one city would have made sense as well with the survival of the race at stake. A couple of generations without disease, though, and the original reason could have been lost. Only the need to protect remained.

But what of the dryads? Mel said they used to have close contact with the elves, as far as she remembered her legends. Hamadryas had been surprised that they were no longer around the elven city. Their presence their made sense. If you were a tree-race of only one gender, needing another race in order to breed, where better to settle than around a race that venerated trees? The available males… oh.

-          Disagreement between elves and dryads?

Perhaps the loud mouthed young elf in Southbridge had not been making up his story whole cloth. If a disease had seriously cut down the numbers of available women, and there was a female-only population sitting on your borders, a population likewise needing to rebuild its numbers as its young had died…

Suspicion began to grow into a quiet anger. The elves retreated to protect their race. With the dryad “seedlings” dead of the same disease, and the older dryads physically unable to pick up and move, whole communities would have been left to slow, lonely death. The ones that were old enough to survive then would be older than Hamadryas now – they’d have long since died one way or another. Abandoned by lovers, brothers, and sons who saw no further than the survival of their own race.

Is that it, then? Am I among the last of a truly dying race? The chances of finding more dryads in that scenario were remote at best.

No. Only a couple of generations ago, Ari’s great-grandfather had dallied with a dryad. The exact details were lost, but family stories did not have him exactly far travelled in the world. The story definitely implied that her dryad matriarch had been local. And there had not been any wood elf settlements near there, or at least there were none of the Great trees.

Had they perhaps had other settlements, relying on other races? Or maybe some of the young had survived and managed to find someplace new? But why then had she never found them, or they never found her?

Ari sighed and put aside her pen. Feeling she was upset, Rend put his shaggy head in her lap. He’d grown so big he barely had to lift his chin to do so. Scratching him behind the ears, Ari frowned. This logical conclusion was leading to another one – when the time came, if she survived that long considering the life she’d been leading, she would have to “put down roots” and live fully as a dryad. She could not willfully abandon a race – her race – to slow, lonely death.

She just hoped that before that happened she would find the right person to think the same of her, so that she too would not someday die old, quiet, and alone.

After a little recovery and relaxation time, it’s time to go fight horrible evil again. Ari spends a chunk of time in local records trying to get some idea of the immediate area before they go, amusingly finding a warning about the mine since they’ve gotten back. As they get ready to leave town, new soldiers heading to the troubles in the north are coming up from the south. They listen for a bit to the bard’s heroic tales, pause to warn the veterans to burn their dead, and head on their way.

The compass, when consulted again, seems to be pointing them along the Old Vale Rd, a little to the north. The road is overgrown, warning signs are posted along the way, and the map shows a skull symbol near where they seem to be heading. Still, they go on anyway.

The road dips into an area that looks less and less healthy, a swampy vale of dead things, decay, and mold. After several miserable days of that, the end up in the ruins of a small settlement. The compass is pointing directly at an impressive ruined church in the middle of it. Lawrence seeks to free the church of the corruption, and in they go.

Entering the church is a strange experience. Unfamiliar iconography is on ruined statues – a figure with a key, a figure with a crown, and a figure with a lantern. Inside, there are signs of fire and destruction. But every once in a while a flood of blue light comes through, and then what they see is alive and whole. The figures repeat in the stained glass windows. And an attack comes, and people die, often in fire. Glimpses of books show an old liturgy to a god of the cycle, but the name is conspicuously absent.

As they make their way into a large room, a more involved vision of the past becomes clear. In an altar room with ruined pews, they see priests leading a service before a golden crystal. The head priest wears a crown, and beseeches the god for guidance in dark times. Beside him, twin priestesses bear the lantern and key. Suddenly, the crystal goes black. The head priest is rocked back and his eyes go black as well. The people in the pews go mad, turning on each other in a frenzy. The priestesses are almost effected as well, then they recover themselves, throw off their holy symbols, and run from the temple.

One last vision shows the head priest, part of his face now consumed by black, screaming as he’s killed.

The vision leads them to where to go next – a set of stairs behind the altar, leading down. In the vision, it was behind a curtain. Downstairs, they have their first glimpse of true undead, rather than just ghostly images – three priests in tattered robes, all bearing the lantern symbol. It’s a nasty little fight, but they all survive (and Ari happily got the killing blow in on two of them). They head what they can and continue, now worried because they have a long way to go and are pretty much out of healing. Lawrence has an idea – to go back and grab the robes from the smashed skeletons and pretend like they belong there so they won’t have to fight their way through.

This works for a while. Skeletal figures converse with three shadowy wraiths, but our three continue on their slow shuffle deeper into the undead church. They check out a side room with a massive sarcophagus when they are attacked by its former resident – the old head priest, now mummified skin and bones, with the top of his scalp missing. They defeat him, but his screams bring the other undead things from the hall and Lawrence tries to hold them up in the door.

Mel notices that there is actually a passageway under the sarcophagus. She tries to pry it up using Ari’s quarterstaff, but it doesn’t move. (Bad 1 rolling dice!) Ari joins her, using her ability to turn into a tree as leverage and yanks the stone aside. They then let Lawrence know it’s open, and he follows them down the hole, skeletons close behind.

Lawrence tries to hold the undead back at a bottleneck, while Mel scouts ahead and Ari tries to provide support in the middle. The wraiths join the skeletons, and only Lawrence throwing holy water seems to do any good against them. Mel runs through a room filled with sarcophaguses to find a slightly open stone door at the far end. She ducks through, to find a room that suddenly doesn’t feel as evil. In the middle is a skeleton, wearing plate armor, kneeling as if in prayer, with his sword lodged in the stone in front of him. Her attempts to remove the sword are useless.

Ari sees the movement and runs for it as the sarcophagus begin to rattle. Lawrence stops the controlled retreat and runs for it as well, right behind her. When he comes through the door as well, Ari uses her tree form transformation to shove the stone door closed behind them and hold it. Mel gestures to Lawrence about the actually dead skeleton. At her prompting, Lawrence takes the sword, which starts to glow. The body crumbles to dust. Looking at his things, he finds that the skeleton was Sir Stavros Sunblade, the paladin being sung about at the inn before they left. Lawrence gathers up his remains and sends them through the magic bag with a note to the priests at Calidus.

He then consults the compass again, and it nearly rolls off his hand as it points at a completely black room beyond. Lawrence asks Ari to go back to holding the door while he and Mel seek and destroy the crystals. It turns out instead to be three crystals, each one significantly larger than the crystals they’d found before. There is room for one huge one, like the one they left at Hightower, but fortunately no crystal there. The crystals are sent through the bag one at a time as the undead try to pound their way through the stone door, the wraiths disintegrating as each stone goes through.

As the last stone is sent to Calidus, the shuddering at the door stops and the darkness lessens. Ari turns back to see the stone cracked, ready to crumble under a couple more blows. With Sir Stavros’s journal and sword, the three make the long trip back out of the Old Vale to the city they left from to relax and recover once again, then make the long journey back to Calidus. There was much they saw that they need to discuss with the church.

Before they go, Mel tells a bard of the recovery of the sword (but without some of the church secret details that they’re now worried about), and it’s quickly made into a song, already outpacing them as they head back north. They return to Calidus and head straight to the temple complex to meet with the Hierophant. The temple of Pharazon is undergoing repairs, due to a groundshaking backlash from destroying the crystals.

In private meeting with the Hierophant, Lawrence takes out the three symbols. This clearly shakes the priest, and then he speaks of what all they saw and the conclusions that they drew – this was not a heretical cult, but rather the mainstream followers of a god. A god who fell and was corrupted. Not only that, but they theorize that the twin priestesses who fled were the ones who rose to take his place – the Twins of life and death. The Hierophant does not confirm everything overtly, but he does tell them more of the purgation, the period 1200 years ago when the entire church had to be rooted out. Large scale battles in one wave, small insidious cult in another.

Ari comments on the 1200 years, the same period ago when Grandmother apparently “put down roots.” When he inquires and she explains the name – Hamadryas – she learns that apparently the old dryad was a powerful druid and adventurer in her own right. He then brings up Ari’s testing. Lawrence starts to chuckle, but Ari agrees so long as they go outside. Which they do, and she turns into a tree for him. He signs the finalized paperwork, then sends them with a letter on to speak with the head priests of the Twins.

The priests of the Twins are troubled that they know what they do, and read them as passage from a secret book. It is the very thing they saw, from the point of view of one of the twin priestesses. The priests are also unwilling to comment on whether they were indeed mortals who became gods, but there is precedent in legend. Of course, all three priests want to make sure that the three youngsters aren’t going to spread around what they saw, to which they readily agree.

Things continue as normal for the three of them. Lawrence tries to hide from his song. Ari sells off herbs and heads back into libraries, this time for more information on the Purgation and on Hamadryas’s stories, and confirms Lawrence’s worry that the threat spread beyond Calidus. And Mel realizes that today, she turns 121. Ari arranges an elven meal for her and Lawrence buys a ridiculous extravagance of a dress. And aside from that, about a week passes in the city without incident.

When Ari mentions that she really should send a letter home, Lawrence insists instead that she should visit, seeing as how they might not make it out of the next mine or crypt. It’s a long trip, back through familiar territory. The first place they stop for a bit is Longmarch, back where their adventures started. The damages have been repaired and the walls rebuilt even better than before. Asking around, the kobolds have not troubled the town since. Asking after Maya, Ari’s old assistant, is troublesome, because apparently the girl left home a bit after Ari left town, heading into the woods and hasn’t been seen since. Mel heads out to look for her, but the only thing of note she finds are some blighted, fallen leaves. Meanwhile, Ari has a brief standoff and medieval version of “shove it” with the priest who made her leave town before.

They continue on to Graymill in the morning, still no closer to finding out where Maya went, and only knowing that the blight seems to have come from the north. There is a cheerful reunion with Ari’s parents, and Ari reveals that she doesn’t have to worry about the church anymore (though she does not fully explain) and she pays them back for the start they gave her. She confirms the family dryad legend, and suggests that her father let her brother know when he comes back from war. Ari’s not too good at lying, and her mother picks up on that she now has to worry about both of her children being safe, not just her son. Mel, meanwhile, decides to give the villagers a good first impression of elves, buys them all drinks and teaches a town musician Lawrence’s song. She also encourages him to write one for Ari, as a local hero. (Lawrence is embarrassed by his song. Ari’s more amused, except for that it’s really not the good way to tell her mother what she’s actually doing.) And Lawrence consults with the mayor and the church to set up a war widows fund, giving a generous donation to get it started. It’s his plan to continue this in other towns and really get something going. Seeing the small village is growing in prosperity due to the nearby mine, he also has a business idea and makes a contact with the local blacksmith’s apprentice.

The following morning (followed by her mother’s shout as someone talks to her about the song) the three of them head back into the woods to try and find out what’s going on. They follow the direction sense of the trees, telling Ari which direction the blight is coming from. As they get closer, trees are getting sicker. When Ari treeforms on her watch, it actually physically hurts. Finally, they come across a grove with a large, dead oak in the middle and a general sense of evil.

Mel’s sharp hearing picks up some rustling behind them and goes to check it out. What she finds is Maya, emaciated, scratched, and dirty. She is panicky and not entirely herself. When Mel drags her back to the group, she alternates between terrified warnings about “the Lady” and rather evil laughter. Mel ties her up and Ari drugs her, and then something steps from the dead oak – a dryad, her bark gray and sickly, her hair and clothes moss and fungus. She is definitely evil, and Ari is horrified. Lawrence gets in a lucky shot, killing her pretty quickly, and sets her body on fire before Ari can take a closer look.

Maya comes to her senses and back to herself on the way back to Longmarch. She explains that she met the Lady in the woods shortly after Ari left, and that she talked about plants the way that Ari did. She recommended some remedies for some villagers who had fallen ill, but giving them these remedies made them sicker. When Maya stopped, they got better again. When she confronted the Lady over it, the Lady took her.

They take Maya home once again – probably to lock inside the town for the rest of her life – and take a look at the map to see where they haven’t looked. Nearby, the compass is only pointing at Ardmore and Hightower, both places they are not ready to race. So they head south to areas they have not yet been. On the way, Mel shows kindness to a hawk who starts discretely following the party.

They make it as far as Southbridge before the first of the cold weather hits, and they realize they will have to stay here through the winter. Mel’s worried, as this is much closer to her city than they were before, and one of the first major human settlements the elves tend to go to. They check in at the church as usual, and knowing she has time to get to know the area Ari starts chatting with the garden plants (what can I say – city plant gossip is fun). All is pretty normal, except one bush in the corner that is saying over and over “The gate is closed – The key opens the way” – part of the imagery they saw in the Old Vale.

Ari tells Mel and Lawrence about what she heard. Mel is a lot more vocal about there being some corruption in the church, but Lawrence theorizes that it’s just repeating what someone said near it. He thinks that because the unspoken fell, there is nothing leading the dead to the afterlife anymore, as the Twins don’t include the same afterlife imagery in their churches. Mel gives in when Lawrence detects no evil around, and Ari is quietly not so convinced. (Never mind that the only ones who would speak of such things would have to know the big secret, which as far as we know is only known by ourselves, the head priests, and probably Gavril – not exactly something that would be openly discussed. I forgot that in making my concerns known to Lawrence.) She spends much of the miserable, sleety night as a tree, spying on the gardens and hoping to find out who spoke of such things. Thus far, no luck…

Backing up slightly to before Ari met Grandmother Hamadryas, there is a trial of the captured gnome. All evidence is presented – Mel almost gets in trouble for breaking and entering into the gnome’s room – and it is decided that the gnome is more guilty of stupidity than knowingly consorting with evil. He is given a mark of justice to not consort with those types in the future, not go dancing drunk on the bar tables, etc. Afterwards, Lawrence speaks to the gnome and convinces him to help find those that were about to horribly trick him into undeath. The gnome agrees.

Ari goes off to do her usual intown things… and wanders off further for my between game scene. When it starts to get dark and she has not reappeared, Mel goes to look for her and runs into her on the road coming back to town. There’s a week until the meeting for the exchange was supposed to take place, so the three are stuck in town for several days. Lawrence spends his time practicing in the church yard, and Ari… well, Ari keeps wandering back to Grandmother’s grove. After a couple of days, Mel gets curious enough to manage to track her, and after some confusion due to the fact that Ari is practicing to be a log when she gets there she too is introduced to Grandmother. Grandmother is surprised at Mel’s exile from her people and the fact that there are no longer any dryads near the elven city. She suggests Ari look into that.

Lawrence, meanwhile, gets in a discussion with those at the church. He asks them about the ghost and the fact that he was briefly able to hurt it, then wasn’t. They question him a little and then tell him that he is actually a paladin, chosen by Pharazan. And they talk a bit about what that means – Lawrence’s drive to right wrongs, his lack of fear and the general courage he lends to those around him.

That night, Ari gets back and tries to get everyone to have dinner together so they can talk. That doesn’t work so well, because Mel gets back to the tavern first and gets drunk off of one glass of mead, proceeds to thoroughly embarrass Lawrence with her affections, and then runs off. Lawrence, flustered and blushing, runs off as well.

The next morning Ari and a very hung over Mel go to find Lawrence at the church before Mel heads off for her lesson. Lawrence tells Ari that he’s officially a paladin, and Ari tells him that she’s definitely a dryad. They talk about what each of them has learned, and Lawrence comes to the disturbing realization that he may well have a significantly shorter natural lifespan than either of his friends. He also latches on to the fact that Grandmother was surprised by how the elves treat their women now, and asks to meet her as well.

So Ari takes the whole group of them to meet Grandmother. Lawrence is very polite, though still reeling from her age. But she asks Grandmother about the elves, and she says again that the elven women used to be able to come and go as they pleased. So Lawrence has an idea – if the elves are based in tradition, and they can prove that the whole society has broken with tradition rather than Mel, perhaps they can make a peace between her and her people.

Days pass, training continues, and then it’s time to see if they can go after the crystal. The compass and the gnome’s knowledge match up, and they three head south. Eventually they come to the foot of a hill with a mine set into it, and a pair of clearly dead people standing guard out front. They don’t hesitate, killing the two and then heading into the mine.

It is a long journey of horrible undead things. Zombies. Skeletons. Horrible things that eat the dead. (Those things actually made Ari angry.) Injured, tired, running out of magic, the group works its way down through the mine until they come to a small tunnel, and a room with chanting skeletons beyond. They shoot what they can from the tunnel, but the skeletons soon climb up and overwhelm them. In the midst of the fight, the torch goes out until they’re fighting in the dark. Eventually they prevail, but not without Mel almost dying and Lawrence in horrible shape.

Leaving Ari to keep Mel alive a couple minutes longer, Lawrence enters the last room. A figure sits over an altar. Lawrence beheads him with one blow, and the figure starts to fall into a pit. A wild grab gives him the crystal before the body falls… and then something horrible begins to rise.

Lawrence grabs Mel and they make a run for it. They escape the mine, run back to town, and eventually Ari collapses bringing Mel to the church. Lawrence manages to grab the gnome mage to collapse the mine before he too seeks the church for healing.

(Short, downtime RP – I have an interesting gaming problem. I play characters, not sheets. Which means with the transition over to D&D, there were suddenly a bunch of things on Ari’s sheet that I had no reason to think of going. Talk with animals? Walk through trees? Not really things she’s tried. Animal Companion was easy enough, thanks to how already attached she’s been to her horse. This short game was our answer to getting full sheet access, and had my giggling most of the way through it.)

As they’re stuck in town for a couple of days for the questioning and trial of the gnome mage, Ari takes to wandering around a bit. She learns what she can of local herb lore, then wanders some of the nearby meadows outside of town for more practical knowledge. Late afternoon, while wandering around out there, she sees a spot of deep green among all of the dry grass. She rides Wind to it to find the largest oak tree she had ever seen. It would easily take five of her to wrap her arms around it. It’s in an area of thick moss, its roots reaching over into a large, brilliant blue pond. The area is full of life and generally peaceful, nice feeling.

She lets Wind go to drink from the pond and walks over to the tree, eventually sitting down by the roots and falling asleep. She wakes to find a blanket of moss tucked over her and a positively tree-like old woman nearby. She has leaves for hair, her skin is like wood, and her toes dig into the earth like roots. Ari is more than a little shocked. The old woman is very kind to the youngling that wandered over to meet her, asking what she is doing there. Ari tells her of her travels to the nearby town, and that she saw the tree and had to take a closer look. When the old woman replies that of course she did, Ari gets up the nerve to ask if she’s a dryad, which the old woman confirms and then realizes that Ari has been alone in this respect.

Ari explains her family background, and the old woman says that they have been others like her, usually drawn to the paths of the druid or ranger, close to the earth, never knowing and living and dying as a human. As they talk, Ari realizes that the old woman is ridiculously old. She speaks of her travels “before she put down roots” and asks if there is still a forest to the north. Ari pulls out her map, and the woman – Grandmother something-I can’t-remember – comments on what has changed. She says that there were dryads in the swamp, or should have been, but that they may have wanted to be left alone. She tells Ari that some day she will have to make a choice, to put down roots as she has or to pass on as a human. But that day is well off, especially by Ari’s reckoning of time as young as she is.

She talks about what Ari knows and what she doesn’t, and decides to show her some of what she’s missed. Specifically, first of all, to be a tree herself. It’s weird, but Ari does manage it before startling herself out of it. Grandmother also knows something of the teachings of the druids, and tutors her a bit in that as well. Over the next couple of days, Ari returns to Grandmother to continue to learn, and when the old woman trusts her she teaches her how to enter a tree. Which is especially strange, since the tree is, in fact, the old woman – the human-ish looking thing that Ari has been talking to is in fact nothing but a wooden construct, animated by her spirit.

(We officially changed the system to D&D 3.5 with this game. M&M, as fun as it is, was making the characters too epic to fast and hurting our GM’s brain. Now with templates to follow and a monster manual to grab easy stats from, things are running much smoother. Of course, I had to be the complicated one with a character we had to adapt from a monster, but it worked. And we added another player, who with any luck will click with the group better than Hamar did.)

They continue south along the road. At one point, Mel’s sharp eyes pick up something glinting in the sunlight in the distance. She goes to investigate… and goes, and goes, all through the night. Much farther away than she thoughts. It turns out to be a giant sword, like building sized, point down in a hillside. She rides back to the group to tell them what she saw before collapsing.

When she’s awake again they all head off towards the sword. As they take a look at it, they are attacked by a group of orcs. Or, well, almost attacked. Ari’s vines hold most of them, and one of them is killed by a well aimed shot with Mel’s arrow. Lawrence calls out his usual call to surrender, and the three hurry back to the road… remembering that they’re really supposed to be making all haste to find these stones.

Meeting up with the road, they find a caravan headed in the same direction they are. There are several wagons, human guards, a gnome on a riding dog… quite a good sized group. Lawrence hails them and rides up towards to front, where he gets into a conversation with a man riding on the first wagon. (This would be our new player addition, of course.)

Tevin is an older man who works as a guard for hire on various traveling groups. This group is heading south, which makes Lawrence nervous since that is exactly where the magical compass is still pointing. He volunteers the three of them – though he actually doesn’t volunteer for them this time, it just kind of happens all at once – to ride with the caravan and offer their services heading south, since they are riding the same way.

Ari offers to help the cook, Mel scouts and Lawrence joins the guards, and they continue south at a slower pace. They get to know Tevin on the way, and slowly reveal the holy quest that they’re on and the fate of Hightower. (We actually had a lot of fun with this – Tevin’s a 35 year old human. Ari is 18, Lawrence is 17, and Mel is 150… not old enough to be let out on her own by elf standards. And the fate of the world is relying on these three? Plus, he follows the same god as Lawrence – Pharazon, god of fate and justice.)

As they continue down the road, they spot a bandit ambush and prove their helpfulness. Ari captures one group of bandits in her vines before they can even spring their trap. The other three wade in, taking the bandits out one by one. A second group of bandits attacks the caravan from behind, but these are easily handled by the guards and the gnome, who is a mage. The fight is over with minimal injuries on the one side and all but one dead on the bandits, and Ari helps bandage everyone up. Tevin brings everyone their share of the bandit’s gold – another amusing moment, since we have never gone rooting through our slain enemies’ pockets.

Finally they arrive in town… whose name I am once again forgetting. The caravan sets up shop, and Lawrence consults his compass to see that it is still pointing south. They plan to head onward the next day after a good night’s sleep in town, and Tevin insists that he’ll be joining them. They warn him that it’s pretty horrible stuff they’re dealing with, but he insists. Everyone goes their separate ways for things they need to do. Ari goes herb trading. Lawrence checks in at the church, letting them know what’s going on. And Mel hangs out in the tavern, where she overhears the gnome speaking with a shady looking fellow.

She follows the shady looking man back to the bad part of town. There she watches him talk to Gavril through a red crystal about his contact with the gnome, and bringing him one of the crystals through another contact. Gavril says to make sure the gnome does not open the box with the crystal until he is alone. When the contact fades out, Mel rushes back to the tavern and gets Tevin to help her in keeping an eye on the gnome through the night.

In the middle of the night, there are sounds like stressful sleep inside the room. Tevin picks the lock, to find a ghost hovering over the gnome, who is thrashing in his sleep. Mel shoots an arrow at the ghost, which has no effect except to make it turn towards her. Tevin runs in terror for the city guard, while Mel picks up the gnome and tries to get out of there. The disturbance wakes up Lawrence, who tries to jump between her and the ghost. And eventually it wakes up Ari, too, who is terrified but tries to help Lawrence. Mel carries the gnome to the church, and eventually Ari and Lawrence flee in that direction as well. Tevin meets up with them there. The church banishes the ghost and takes the gnome into custody.

Lawrence and Tevin decide to stay in the comfort of the church for a night, while Ari and Mel head back to the now pretty deserted tavern for a quiet rest of the night’s sleep.

The run south is horrifying. For hours they run their horses, walls of undead fanning out behind them. The very earth dies and scorches behind them with horrible heat. They run until the horses are in danger of dying beneath them. Ari stretches her powers farther than she has before, reaching her healing to the horses and taking their exhaustion in to herself. Mel catches her before she passes out and falls off the horse. They tie her to her horse and her horse to Lawrence's, and keep running. They run through the night and into the next day. Finally, Hamaar stops. “The earth speaks,” he declares, and turns around. He roots to the earth, and waves of healthy earth pass out from him, towards the scorched earth rushing towards them. It halts the attack, and does not move. Recognizing his stand for what it is, the other three continue to run.

They run at an easier pace now, like their earlier heavy pressed but able to rest pace. They get back to the burned out town with the ghosts, and instead of cutting through the undead goblin infested forest, Mel leads them cross country towards the river. They come across several abandoned farms, before finding one still standing and thriving. They stop for resupplying, a meal, and a little rest before heading south along the river.

When they come to a bridge across the river they run into a group of the local baron's lands. They get directions to the manor house in order to warn him of the dangers just to the north of his people. They are led up a winding path to Baron Pollard's home (past an area that apparently once had a more direct route) and brought before him, where Lawrence tells of the horrors they've seen and what they carry. They refuse to stay inside the manor, but request a group of guards to escort them to Calidus.

The next morning the Baron meets them with his household wizard. Apparently the wizard had felt the horrible evil of the things they brought with them, so the Baron is not offended that they declined his hospitality. Lawrence asks the wizard if he could ask his fellows in Calidus if there might be a way to use the crystals to track the other ones that are out there. He agrees to ask, and the Baron gives them a letter to give the king to tell of the news from the north. He’s also mobilizing to defend his borders.

Now with a small group of soldiers the group continues south. There are a couple of incidents along the way. An ancient boneyard of yellowed, incomplete skeletons attacks them. A village’s graveyard empties suddenly and goes after the boxes. And one night, as they camp, ghosts appear. The boxes seem to levitate and want to leave on their own, and a horrible shriek erupts from somewhere nearby. Several of the guards turn into a mad frenzy and run, and are quickly subdued by their fellows. With some restraint and some herbal help from Ari, they are fine come morning, though they really want to go home.

Finally, they make it to the capital. Instead of heading straight to the church this time, they head towards the wizards’ quarter. They draw quite a bit of attention when a group of wizards suddenly appear in the street ahead of them. When Lawrence explains that he spoke to Baron Pollard’s wizard and what help they were looking for, the wizards ward the boxes and escort them to their headquarters. The boxes seem to actually fight the wards, especially the one with three stones in it, and it takes several wizards each to ward them. But they do get them safely to the headquarters, a building that practically buzzes with power.

The are taken down into a lower room, where finally the head wizard takes a look at the stones. They tell him of what they’ve seen and done as he questions them. The lantern he identifies as a witch light, a trapped power in mockery of a church lantern. Extremely hard to obtain, and who knows what power it had contained, for it’s not broken. After some time of study, they are able to come up with something like Lawrence is looking for – using a chip of the corrupted stone from the inside of the chest, they essentially create a device that will point to the nearest one of these crystals. The wizards hold on to the lantern to try and help with a way to track Gau, and the three take the stones to the church to be destroyed.

The priest who helped them before is both dismayed and shocked at the news they bring, and the fact that they carry with them four of the crystals this time. With how hard it was to destroy one of them, he knows destroying four will take considerable time and priests. He tells them a bit about the stones – powerful necrotic artifacts, fueled by death. Who knows what power the deaths of 40,000 at Hightower could have given them? Whether they function as a powerful set, or are combined into one powerful item, he does not know. He gives them a letter for the king as well, explaining the situation from the Church’s point of view.

So the three get ready to go to court. Lawrence submits the letters to the Seneschal who makes them an appointment, and the girls go to a seamstress for appropriate court attire. A couple of days later they are called into court. Due to the urgency of their matter, they are called forward sooner that Lawrence’s status would actually have them called. Lawrence gives the grave news from Hightower. The king is appropriately saddened by the news and prepares to mobilize his kingdom against this threat. In the meantime, the Seneschal will see that they are rewarded. They are also allowed apartments in the palace until they are ready to leave again.

While waiting for the court to be over so that they may speak to the Seneschal, the ambassador from the elven courts appears with his retinue. He spots Mel in her dress immediately. Apparently, the elves that they had run into in the woods had filed a report of their encounter with her. “Ah, fumblefeet!” (Yeah, the elves definitely left getting caught out of their report.) The confrontation goes badly quickly (Mark described the scene as Mel “blowing up” bridges), and there are bound to be repercussions, but nothing can be done right now in the King’s court.

The seneschal informs them that the king will grant them each one boon – within reason, of course. Mel quickly knows what she wants – to become a citizen of Calidus and to have sanctuary within the realm. The next day, the king agrees – partially just to piss off the overly haughty elven ambassador. Lawrence tosses back and forth ideas of what he might ask for – a sword that can slay undead, an amulet so that just being tired won’t kill them, etc. And Ari has no clue what to ask for. She can’t ask for anything that would pit king against church, and other things she can think of would still require her explaining what she can do first. Which degenerates into an argument of sorts between her and Lawrence, with Lawrence telling her to just get used to the fact that what she does is not going to be outright accepted and she needs to find some way to either hide it or call it by another name. Ari’s tired of hiding it, though, and storms off.

Mel tries to explain Ari’s reaction to Lawrence, then runs off to find where she went. Lawrence, meanwhile, realizes that Ari is probably going to do something stupid if this keeps up, and goes into church law records for ways that special dispensation may be granted. He finds that they used to be able to be bought, but that practice has been outlawed. Direct divine intervention obviously works just fine. And that the church does not press its laws on non-humans. With that in mind, he goes to speak to the priest to discuss Ari’s case – without names, but it would be ridiculously obvious who he’s talking about – as a dryad and thus outside the church. “Her heresy isn’t blasphemy. It’s just annoying.” He points out the main problem is that she looks human, and so requests a letter so that there will be no misunderstandings with other priests. The priest agrees, if she’s willing to sign a document stating what she is, and that she will not teach her heresy to others. When time allows, she will also have to submit to testing of her claim.

In the city, Ari wanders. She stops in an herb shop briefly, then in a map makers. She finds a basic map of the known world for their upcoming travels before heading back to the palace. Mel, out looking for her, traces her to the herb shop and then loses her entirely. Back at the palace, Lawrence finds her. She shows him the map that she purchased, and he hands her the document to sign. Ari’s a bit floored by it, since it means she’ll be signing something saying that she’s not human – “My mother’s going to kill me.” – but signs.

Lawrence takes that back to the church, while Mel finally finds her in her rooms. Ari’s trying to explain what Lawrence just did – which definitely falls under the heading of sweet but weird – when he comes back with the official dispensation document. When Mel sees it she jumps up, hugs Lawrence, kisses him on the cheek, and runs off embarrassed. Ari gives him a less exuberant thanks, and goes to check on Mel… who tries to pretend nothing weird just happened.

The group makes the best use out of extended time in the capital they can, for as long as the crystals have not been destroyed the compass is going to point towards the church. Lawrence consults with the wizards about weapons capable of killing undead. They recommend he switch to a mace, but Lawrence is really partial to, and best trained at, his swords. They do have records of possible magical weapons, ones with great names and stories attached to each. There may be some in the king’s treasury.

Ari spends time in the library, looking into what she’s now officially saying she is. She does manage to find more concrete information than the legends that were all she had before, though still not particularly recent. She does find that they are all female, mate outside their species (and usually with humans) to continue their line, and that male children are returned to their fathers. How far down the bloodline can go after that is unknown. She also reads a little bit about things they can do, such as wood crafting similar to Hamaar’s stone crafting.

While in the library, Mel finds her and admits that the incident the other day was because she likes Lawrence. They chat for a while about nobility and relationship issues, and meeting the king. “Hey, he’s your king now, too. Wait, did I just make him *not* my king?”

Mel consults with the wizards about her bow and what it can do that she was not taught. They study the runes and manage to unlock some for her, though doing more will take practice. In return, she divulges everything she knows about the elven culture, down to sensitive information like the location of their city. (I’m sure that will come back to bite us all.)

Ari enjoys time in the palace gardens, where the plants are particularly chatty. They tell her of the Baron’s wedding which has been moved up, since the Countess is very ill. Ari rushes to tell Lawrence, who decides to use his boon from the king to ask for the wedding not to go through. The king declines the request, but Lawrence may still ask for something else later.

The screaming voice talks about burning fires and pain, and the group goes to track down what it is. Ghostly wisps start to appear in the village, the shades of dead villagers. Finally, they find a stooped over old woman. When she looks up, she’s not alive at all – the is a burning shell of a thing with another necrotic crystal around her neck, slowly sinking in to her.

Hamaar grabs it and tries to crush it, but obviously that will do no good. Lawrence yells at him, they manage to kill the undead old woman, and Hamaar makes a stone box to put the crystal into. So now they have another crystal like the first, but they decide to continue on north to Hightower to see how far problems go before they take the crystal back to the capital city (whose name I keep forgetting and making Mark annoyed with me.)

They ride/walk across grassy plains, this time without being attacked by skeletal armies for all that they have another evil rock with them. There is a small wood up ahead, though, and once again it does not sound right. It’s not just silent to Ari, but to Mel as well, no sign of animal life. They decide to ride around the wood. Which is definitely a good thing, because even riding that close they end up fighting off swarms of undead birds.

They eventually make it to Hightower, to find it open and deserted. They ride in towards the tower that gave the city its name, which now has a gathering black cloud near its upper reaches. When Hamaar tries to talk to the stones of the tower, the now evil voice of it begs him to bring the stone in, to make it more complete. It is immediately assumed that there is another stone in the tower. They’re not about to bring this stone in with them, so Ari and Hamaar stay outside while Mel and Lawrence go inside.

Inside, the walls seem to be lined with obsidian glass, with strange ghostly, skeletal images inside. They climb the tower until they reach its high room. There, they find four more crystals, along with sconces for more crystals.

Outside, Ari and Hamaar are watching the area when an old man approaches with a lantern with a blue flame. Ari immediately begins to panic and gives a frantic explanation of their last meeting with Gau the betrayer. Hamaar’s attacks from a distance do no good, and shortly Gau is upon them. He remembers Ari and asks for the stone, pointing out that he will not be fooled again. He attacks, knocking Ari down. Hamaar fights back, eventually knocking down the lantern and making it crash to the stones below and shatter. Gau is furious and gives up on them for the moment – his minions will deal with them, while he deals with those in the tower. Ari and Hamaar run to help them, and behind them a shrieking begins.

Inside the tower, Lawrence is gathering up the crystals when Gau appears. There’s the usual posturing and bluffing, a brief fight that Lawrence can’t hope to win, and then Gau seems to become part of the tower as the shrieking begins from below. They meet Ari and Hamaar on the stairs, and now they all have to fight their way out. Lawrence is amazing with his sword, Mel shoots down with her arrows, and Ari and Hamaar throw rocks. One of Mel’s arrows hits Lawrence, and Ari quickly scrambles forward to remove it and heal him on the go. And they keep going, killing as many of the undead things as they can as they work their way out of the tower.

Once outside, it’s Hamaar to the rescue. With their horses and their new cargo of rocks, he gets the earth itself to bear them up over the walls, past the undead hordes who were once the human citizens of Hightower.

Things get a little tense when he approaches Ari and Mel and tells them it’s time to go. Ari wanted to wait until they were out of the city to have this talk, but Lawrence insists, so she goes over the things that had her and Mel bothered. For one, there is his condescension, which Lawrence insists is all that he has left of his noble heritage. Then there’s making decisions without thinking of the group, which he doesn’t see at all. Basically, the whole argument leaves them both upset and feeling hurt and misunderstood, so it’s a particularly cranky, tense group that leaves the city together.

At the first evening’s stop, Lawrence makes a silly show of going in to the inn and leaving the girls to do whatever they want to do. In return spite, Ari and Mel decide to camp out… until Mel ends up getting sprayed by a skunk when trying to catch game. Ari gives her some herbs for the smell and hurries in to the inn without a word.

They continue north. On the road, in their pissy, not riding together state, they are attacked by bandits. Lawrence is trying to intimidate them into giving up, Mel is trying to guess how quickly she can get them with arrows… and Ari decides “enough of this” and manages to snare all but one of them. The one uncaught runs, and Lawrence ties up the others using the vines before they release them. They leave them there on the road, and report their existence and location at the next town.

The next town is one of the last settled areas before the Ironwood Forest. They stop in another inn, and encourage gossip about conditions north of them. They hear tales of the horrible goblins and other unnamed things to the north. And they discover that the elf can’t hold alcohol at all.

The next morning the continue north, passing the last patrolled areas and on to the road into the forest. They manage to uneasily patch things up as they continue on the way. Before long, it’s clear that the forest is not well. Old, blighted trees start to appear, sick and dying. And further on, in the distance, Ari hears nothing but silence from the wood. They stay close together. When they get to the part that felt wrong, they smell something horrible. Mel tracks it to find a dead, rotting goblin hanging in one of the trees. They continue further, and now each blighted, dead tree has a dead goblin in it.

Suddenly, the dead goblins shriek and start to reach for them. They take off, running down the road, and finally stop in the next village – now nothing more than a burned out shell, all the people dead and gone.