Fun and Games with Ramses, Octopus
We interrogate some Throkians. They tell us that the City of Dreams allows you to 'dream up' something you want, but first you have to fight through all your worst nightmares. They dreamed up a cloud of vengeance to blight the elven lands. We distribute the remaining treasure, Quest the prisoners, and get our fallen friends raised.
The Fatimid Caliph want's to speak with Harald, so we go to see him. He rudely refuses to acknowledge Harald as the messiah, so Harald turns his bones to jelly. We fight a bit but the Caliph escapes and we come to a truce. Being all of a sudden much less welcome in Cairo we head off to bring Ramses II his tribute.
We make it through several familiarly painful rooms full of new terrible monsters in to Ramses chamber. He seems very pleased with his tribute. So pleased in fact, that he offers to answer one question for us if we can beat him in a game of Senet. Oh, and if we lose he'll take some of our stuff and send us away. Our awesome senet strategy prevails, and he answers our question and does not beat us up. He even throws in the genealogy of Adam from the Emerald tablets as a bonus (Set, Enoch, Enoch, Methusula). He also mentions that the Amulet of Aka-A-Kahmin is very protective, particularly against wards. It is a Golden amulet located in a submerged pyramid. Phillip IV is after it.
Who dwelleth at Mamruth? In the south of the Atlas Mountains with hideous free folk ancient city. The temple is the largest and most beautiful building, on one has ever seen a temple there. The place is protected by an ancient and beautiful God, yet no one has ever seen a God there. Ramses went there once, and saw nothing and no one. He gives us directions and even summons up a nifty stargate for us to travel through.
At Mamruth we meat some Blemi - headless men with big mouths in their bellies. Harald manages to convince them that he is their god by knowing about the valley of Chaki.
We find the ruins, and indeed see no temple. We do see two 50 foot black stone statues. There is also a robed fellow hanging in the air about 30 feet up behind an invisible barrier. Of course the statues come to life and throw their smaller statue friends at us. They are super tough but we finally manage to take them out. We determine that the barrier is actually an invisible castle of some sort. We beat up the air elemental guarding the door and head on in. The man inside is very weak and pretty crazy. He calls himself Eugenius but says that is not his real name. We apparently suffers from some variant of space aids and does not have long to live. Anyway, he says, the god of this place is coming soon to kill us all. Sure enough, an enormous invisible octopus comes bubbling up through the sand. Harald quickly summons the avatar of Thoth and points at the Octopus in answer to his riddle. Thoth is satisfied, and says he will meet us at the boat tomorrow to take us to his library. He heals us a bit and cures Eugenius's space syphilis. Then he leaves us to fight the Octopus, who has just pushed through a wall of burning thorns like it was a curtain. We give Eugenius Severer so he can help fight the octopus. Instead he chops off Mamun's arm. We hold our own for a round but things are looking bad so we teleport away.
The next day Thoth comes to the boat to take us back to the happy plane of nice things. Harald does lots of exciting library research, while Ailyll, Nici, Leila and Farasha(of the Brotherhood of Purity) go off to rescue Gayick from Semuwanialand. Things go off surprisingly well - Semuwania is friendly and chatty and we get out of there as fast as we can... Back at Thoth's tower Thoth stops us at the entrance and warns us that Semuwania has cursed us, and if any of us sees Harald he will die.
We travel to Tir'na'nog to see if any of Ailyll's gods will help us out. Bellen cures Ailyll in exchange for a Geas, but says the others will have to apply to their own gods. He tells her that the grand druid Kithro has been in power for far too long and is perverting the druidic ways. He tells Ailyll to get rid of him within a year, and makes her his representative, granting her the spell 'standing stones'.
We all blindfold ourselves for travel home, and head off to the Lao Tournament. Gayick and Farasha seek out their own gods in hopes of a terrible side quest that will cure them of their Harald killingness, and Leila and Nici head off to Jerusalem on a similar mission.
