Where in the World is Cui?

Boats get back home, only to discover Haizea is gone and Mamun is back in charge. We scry and find her dead on the banks of the Nile with the crown, orb and scepter. A sub party goes off to rescue her and return successfully, having had no levels drained by undead Haizea. Yay! No one else puts on the crown, orb and scepter, no matter how shiny they are.

Harald, Quiteria, Ruber, Akim and Thora go off to find a harmonious stone to cure our various nasty curses. We first head off to the steppes. The steppe people's leader (with whom we have no common language) invites us to go hunting together. He warns us about the cattle of the Cui, and makes us promise not to start the horn of Tengri if it stops. He tells us Cui is no longer here, but that we should go south, past the Roof of the World, all the way down. He's heard Cui is looking to chump out Jayavarmin.

We teleport to Jayavarmin's palace, where we meet his brother in law Divacara. After some brief misunderstandings we make friends, and he shows us the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. We warn them that Cui is after the king. We also learn that Princess Tyrith was kidnapped from here by a different nasty genie and in need of rescuing. After further investigation we learn that the king saw a beautiful temple in a dream. He tried to reproduce it but every time it was destroyed by random catastrophes. A demon lady told him to stop trying, as it would anger Cui. He made an awesome not at all Faustian bargain by which he put off further catastrophes by 1000 years, but his construction efforts continue to be thwarted. He offers to not execute us if we will put a stop to this, which sounds like a fine deal to us.

Indurpura is on the salt sea, east of here. It is the capital city of the Cham. The temple of Cui is about 70 miles from there.

While we are there we try to get some info on Indian monsters. Naga left India years ago, most of them went East, but less East than we are now. There was a king Dutabaum who married a Naga. He was king of Burma, ask around there. Rakshassa go to Taprbain. Turtle maybe Indian Ocean, between India and Arab lands. Priests of Colin Theta might know. In Taperbing, or palae of Dragon King north near china might have info near mouth of Lo Yang river.

They don't like Dr Lao - he rules with an iron fist and crushes all opposition. Also he's not really Buddhist.

Next we teleport to the Temple of Harmony. It is very hot. Our local guide, Ynavi is some sort of epileptic priestess. Mamun and Akim sneak around. Mamun finds a gold fetus on guard. We eventually sneak in and face a large 3 headed elephant, which we fight then enslave, after removing one of its heads.

We next come across what looks like a monkey gym, and meet a pale lady dressed in black, who identifies herself as the lady of the house. We bicker about whether or not it is polite to sneak into someone's house, behead their elephants and generally make a mess, and she challenges one of us to face her finger. Harald rises to the challenge, makes his saving throw, and the lady tells us we may speak to the master, but we have to clear the dungeon first.

We fight assorted snakes, snake librarians, giants, stegosauruses and other nasties. We meet a lady, Varwijiwud who wants 'the creuse'. She joins our party for now. Ynavi tells us her main reason for coming here is to get the twin swords of Fan-Wen, to maybe give to her King, when he's ready.

More later...