Rescue Missions Galore, Fun With Zulfukar
Back in Aachen Niorei is confronted by an insecure looking druid named Dirbergail. He challenges her to a game of dice which she promptly looses, bringing her back down to first level. Meanwhile Mamun and Ailyll get healed up, although Ailyll is still feeling stubbornly wolfish. Suddenly Raheeshand Orm's_Moorish_Allies pop up out of nowhere. There is some discussion over whether the Christian and Muslim paladins should engage in deadly combat, but some gold changes hands and we all sit down to chat. They have come to see if the Wolf Idol is about, and are disappointed to hear we already finished him off. Aaqib notes Harald's absence and we explain that he is off on a short errand. He looks alarmed and immediately teleports us off to find him. He errs quite a bit on the high side, but Ailyll manages to enlarge some beetles to catch us. Aaqib gets Freya's Cloak of Feathers tangled up in his beetle's wing and falls back as Ailyll and Mamun fly down to the dragon cave.
Meanwhile Harald and Akim nurse their wounds and Nali collects supplies, as all sorts of slimy creatures come up and sit on the dragon eggs. They rest for about half an hour when suddenly who should show up but Eryx and the Grey Executioner. Eryx monologues about his clever trap for a while then demands that Harald throw down his arms and accompany them to Slaad City. Harald makes his last excuses to Demeter for not being able to fulfill his duties and leaving her eggs unguarded, not to mention letting these jerks tell Jetterlace to kill her pretty dragon and splash blood all over her nice tomb. Eryx takes exception to his prayer and attacks just as Ailyll and Mamun come tumbling out of the sky to the rescue. A bloody fight ensues and Harald hastes us all and tries to get around Eryx's magic resistance. The Grey Executioner finds hasted velociraptor Ailyll a little too much to handle and turns to a mist to flee. Eryx follows and we pursue for a while but quickly loose them. We fly back to the boat on beetle back, filling Aaqib in on the Octopocalypse as we travel.
The next morning we head off to meet Walid and hand over Zulfukar. He gives us a list of places to go and find cool stuff and agrees to come with us as we try to re-unite our scattered crew. We stop by the Nautilis' coral cove and find it deserted. We hear a horn call and see some men in the forest a little way off. They tell us that Bujiba, the ancient goddess of this land, was recently freed from her temple. She killed all the monsters and took Picketypockety and Rani with her. We go investigate the buildings, reputedly the oldest in the world. The whole thing is decorated with awesome spiral designs, man they are cool. Ailyll thinks that if this whole adventuring thing doesn't work out, maybe she should just come back here and look at those spirals. Zulfukar fortunately dispels her insanity and we continue on into the cave. Inside we are attacked by a bunch of giant manta rays and a flying invisible ixaxtihithisomethingish monster on fire. They beat us up for a bit and knock Harald unconscious and we are forced to flee. After healing up for a bit we scry and then try to just teleport directly to our wayward friends. Instead, we find ourselves once again lost in Antarctica. A frost giant attacks us, wielding a giant block of ice. We beat him up and take shelter from the cold in an abandoned building. Ailyll calls up a wall of fire to keep the place warm and hopefully discourage any attacks as Harald rests to get his spells. We spend a harrowing 8 hours watching Ailyll concentrate on keeping the wall going and on not turning into a werewolf with more hit points than the rest of the party combined. Harald then takes us back to the boat once again and we ponder our next move.
