Today is the first day working undercover trying to bringdown the oppressive forces at work in this realm.I kissed my Wife goodbye and reported to the beach as requested by the Guard.

On the way I met a Dwarf by the name of Thuldrum, and he seems like a helpful sort. I can see us being friends. I wonder how he would react to my true mission???

I have seen many a ship crash, and today started off no differently. However, things went sideways in that a ship fell from the sky this time. There was near total devastation near the crash site, and against all odds a Gnome emerged from the wreckage. His name is… well never mind that, we just call him Buckle. He talks to a chicken, so clearly the crash has addled his brain.

The Dwarf and I did what we could to aid the crash survivors, but the number of dead washing up on the shore was soon overwhelming us. The Guard ran like the cowards that they are and that left us to either fight against the rising dead ourselves or retreat along with the Guard. There was only one choice in the end.

Along with the Gnome, we helped fish a Human and a Tiefling out of the water. The two of them were obviously Wizards. This will not end well for them.

I spoke to soon. I am being annoyed to find out that there are several of us that have Wizard talent, so we are being drafted into attending the College, for training and indoctrination. So this is not ending well for any of us.

More to come.

Today is the first day of class at “Wizard College”. It should be a Clown College. While I have no previous experience with this, there must be a better way to organize mystical learning.

They gave everyone a space in a building called a Dorm.I, of course, declined and have made a space for myself in the nearby woods.The building is as unsightly as it is off-putting. A grove of trees out in the forest would be far better. Clearly, it was designed and built by Humans and/or Daemons.

I have found myself not really caring about the normal 8 schools of magic. However, over to the side, there is a smaller enclave for teaching Wizards some more tactical aspects of magic-using. I will throw my lot in with them. It seems like survivability is a key talking point for them and this appeals to me greatly.

In a small bit of good news, I am in a general class with the 4 other folks that I met on the beach not to long ago. The other students are nameless and faceless so far as I am concerned. Lastly, I must state that there is one jokester who may prove to be an annoyance in the days to come.

More to come.

Today we are in a good news, bad news situation. The professor for the general Magic Studies class (more on that later) issued an assignment where a group of us have to invent a new way to use an existing spell. This is the good part. However, the application of this is horrible. We, as a group, have to clean a shed. A SHED. Not one word about the need to keep a shed, to begin with. She could have sent us out into the forest, instead, we have to clean a building belonging to some shmuck. This is the bad part, obviously. If there is any consolation, each group in the class has their own space to clean. One group, in particular, is pretty snippy, so we have decided to protect our “work” using alarm spells.

A quick word on the professor. She is a Tabaxi. Some sort of feline humanoid. It can be quite distracting. Not for me, of course.However, the more juvenile humans keep making cat lady jokes and I do not quite understand the source of the humor.I mean shouldn’t she want to hang out with her kin. Also, cats breed in liters so if she is with many of them, then why would that be funny? That said, it can be “uncomfortable” when she looks over my shoulder when I am working in class. She will rub against me like a domesticated cat since she is a grown woman… Well, you can see where this is going.

I should make contact with my wife.Soon…

More to come.

The aforementioned homework assignment has worked out better than I could have dreamed. The group of us were experimenting with a few different ways to make the cleanup go quicker. The locus of our efforts where Unseen Servant and also Prestidigitation. The would not let me use any of my ideas, so I was aiding in their research instead. Nevermind that my ideas all involved in the destruction of such an unnatural edifice.

In any case, we had just about finished our cleaning when I happened upon a secret trap door. This is where things start to pick up. The trap door was on the floor, and we resolved to investigate what lies beneath. I have to admit that I am still a bit confused as to what we found. The top part of the secret area is very hazardous, and you need rope or magic to traverse the space to the lower levels safely. One must ask, why? I mean, you have to locate the secret entrance before you can get to the underground, to begin with. Why go to the trouble of hiding the entrance if you are going to make it difficult to move about? You should just put your energy into obfuscating the entrance as best as possible, then you can move freely about your hidden domain. Having said that I hang out with a Gnome who speaks with an ordinary chicken, so perhaps it is me ? Nah.

When we got to the lower level, it was discovered that we were not alone. There was a small tribe of WareRats living down there. There was a Chieftain and a small number of followers. They did not take our presence very well, so we had no choice but to dispatch them. It was a quick fight.Annoyingly, the Diviner of the group killed more of them than I did. My magic does not seem to hit very hard at this moment.I must research how to remedy this.

We found some trinkets amongst the dead and debris. We have taken them to sell for spell components. However, the most important thing we found was an additional secret entrance. This time it goes out to the desert. This is a big deal. We no longer need to pay the “tax” of the merchant guild to go out into the frontier.

More to come.

The last few days have not been optimal. Firstly, correctly surmised that another group of students was going to try and sabotage our work. Credit where it is due, however. They simply wiped out the documents we prepared for class. Good thing for us, the Teifling had it all memorized and we did not really suffer for it. That said, we did get in a lick of our own, in that we found their shed and did a pretty good job of creating a mess. Alas, there was little penalty to them for having a messy shed. I should have guessed that would be the case. We are talking about a small building for storing items not important enough to place in a home after all.

The snippiness between ower two groups came to a head and the professor gave us another assignment and even stuck one of them with us for the duration of said assignment. The assignment was that we would have to go into the underground network of the city and clean out some Oozes that have run amok down there. Interestingly, the city uses Oozes down there to help keep things clean. Clever. In this case, it seems that the Oozes have multiplied and are in need of culling. We have to dispatch a few of them and bring in their remains for analysis.

We will meet with the city watch who will let us into the underground, and also be given a map so we don’t get lost.Pfft. As if that was a concern, to begin with. I have an excellent sense of direction and there is a Dwarf in the group. We almost can’t get lost while underground. Having said all that, I know I am going to smell like filth for a week afterwards. So I am not looking forward to this at all.

More to come.

Well, I was wrong about something from my last post. It is over a week later and I still smell like filth. Not helpful is that I spent almost all of the entire time in the underground covered in Ooze. I must disclose that I walked right into one, and did not know until it was almost too late. My companions were instrumental in freeing me from the grip of the Ooze. The interloper must have been laughing his ass off (on the inside). With two exceptions, the entire time in the underground was actually pretty awful and unremarkable.

Firstly: I found a marking from the resistance and steered the group away from it. I am not so sure I fully trust them as of yet. I will make some time to seek them out. And report on what I have found so far.

Secondly: We happened on an orgy. Some nobles cleaned up a chamber and were having their way with all sorts of beings. Normally I would not care about folks having consensual intercourse with each other, however, some of the people did not seem to be there of their own free will. We broke up the party and sent them packing.

As a final note, I have taken on an extra task for the War College in order to scribe a few more spells into my spellbook. I have taken to calling it my “Book of Armaments”. I will officially call it that when the binding breaks down, or I run out of space and have to switch to a bigger one.

More to come.

This past day I was observing Buckle converse with a merchant and it appeared if they had made some sort of deal, but no merchandise changed hands. I felt at the time, that this was a bad omen.

Turns out to been right on. Buckle came to us, and said that he agreed to help the merchant with a small task. Evidently this merchant's home has become uninhabitable and he would like us to help exterminate the pests inside. At first glance, this seems to not have been a bad quest to undertake. This would prove to be a terrible take, and I should have retained my wary attitude.

I will cut to the chase here. As it turns out the infestation was of the Vegepygmy variety. Also when they received enough damage, they would explode, and deal some damage to those nearby. These folks had nearly comply taken over the place when we arrived. Fortunately, we were able to save a few of the servants, more on them soon. When we got to the basement, we found the heart of the infestation along with some crates of this dark powder that was highly unstable. Meaning if it came into contact with flame, then it would explode. At this moment, I do not know why such a substance would be stored in a home and not in a mine where it may be useful. This part is important because in the course of the battle we set some of it off, and then we had to quickly evacuate the home. In some good news, my new spell Web came in VERY handy in corralling the enemy into manageable chunks. Put another way, we had control of the battlefield. That is, until is caught on fire and came crashing down around us.

1. This house was owned by someone, who was not the man who hired us to help out to begin with.
2. The infestation of Vegepygmies started this very day.They received a box of some foreign substance and no sooner had it been opened, than the infestation started.

Me thinks that someone has successfully set us up.

Almost as bad, is that the actual owner has arrived on the scene to witness the final stages of his home being burnet to the ground. He is not happy. The good news is that he is yelling at Thuldrum and not at me. I am sure there is more to come from this.

More to come.

I need to start this post with a rhetorical - How well does a Wood Elf react to being underground, in a MINE. Not well, to put it mildly. I was just feeling comfortable being clean again after the sewer debacle. Now I am dirty all over again. Not to mention dirty all over. Now, let me be clear. I do not mind being dirty as in having dirt on my skin. However, the crap that was covering me was mining soot. Far more course than your run of the mill dirt. I think I may need to research a clean person spell because the amount of crap (literal and figurative) I have been covered in, has been monumental.

What would any gods fearing Wood Elf such as myself be doing in a mine, you are asking. Well, it is our payment for torching that guy's house. I maintain that we did not technically do anything wrong, and that we were the victims of circumstances. However, my argument was not well received.

As for the mine itself, we found that it was composed of a few different parts. The upper part was that of an active mine. We had to go down into the next part of the mine what was being worked by skeletons. That is not a mistake. Actual Skeletons were mining things.What was not clear is if these skeletons were just doing what they had been doing in life, or if they were actually under the control of someone / something and were accumulating ore for some end. Regardless they were not bothering us so we walked right past them.

Things then got dicey when we happened upon some Giant Bats and a Giant Spider.We found that if something bumped into a skeleton that it would stop what it was doing and join the fight. So we took extra caution when making attacks so that we would avoid interacting with the undead.

Further down the undead portion of the mine we happened onto some beings that could be widely called orcs. However they were larger, green and could speak the common tongue. They also were dressed strangely and had weapons that can not really be described. Buckle seemed to be particularly perturbed by their presence. Any chance at a parlay ended when he launched some magic into them. Good for us that again, the Web spell, caused them to remain in place and we were able to control the battlefield.

We did not really get a chance to question Buckl on why he acted in such a way because we had to investigate the remaining portions of the mine. The weirdness continued in that Thuldrum and I disagreed on what could be seen below. You would think that a Dwarf would be adept at being able to perceive things underground, but then again he is very short.

At the bottom of this section of the mine we found a side room and the object of our quest. In the side chamber there was a Displacer beast who had been wounded by some Carrion Crawlers. We dealt with those other creatures and freed the Displacer Beast. Normally this would be a terrible idea, but it seemed to work out for us. So far as I know it is roaming the wild in its natural state to this very day.

In the main area of the mine, we found some Trolls and a Fire Giant. One Troll was already dead, and the other one was walking on some reciprocating machine. As a quick aside, one could really get a work out on such a machine. If we could find a way to make smaller ones, this could be a great thing to sell to urbanites who can't just run around outside.

We slew them all, and unfortunately this triggered all the Skeletons into attacking us. The few on the bottom most level were easily taken care of. So we did not have infinite time to look around for answers. We quickly gathered some loot and made our escape. Errol was quite sheepish about this quest. Having said that, he is a diviner, so who knows what manner of omen we just stepped into.

More to come.

Before I really get into this post, I feel like I need to come up with a name for our little group because constantly saying 'our little group' feels a bit wordy. That said '4 heroes and a Dwarf' is even more wordy. More on this, as I ruminate.

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."

I am amazed that the above quote is so apropos. Because I am not sure how I got here. After we got back into town from the mine, we made contact with the Gnome who's house was burnet down whilst we were in it. We consulted with him and it turns out that we have been duped by a man named Lord Blackwater. He was among the nobles that we shamed that night in the sewer. Sigh. We can not have this vengeful person on our case, so we decided to take our grievance right to him. The first part of the quest was pretty simple. I snuck around the house (again, these folks and their silly edifice). A few guards and Blackwater was siting down to eat. It did not take very long for us to wipe out the guards and get the master corned. Then things got weird.

A being from the lower plains came down some stairs and interjected himself into the fight. It kept saying "Blood for the Blood god, skulls for Skull Throne" like it was its job. In the end its rage cost it dearly, as we were able to banish it back to the Abyss.While this was going on, we were also able to dispatch the master. More on this later.

After a search of the lower level, we found some baubles and put them in our loot bag. Wouldn't you know that the ass that ran the place had a Mimic amongst other chests. Damn thing nearly ate my arm. We also told the remaining servants to get lost.

Then we made our way up to the second floor, and the weirdness continued. In the biggest room of the second floor we found the Gnome alive and unharmed. Yes, he same one we dispatched not 10 min before. He told us to scram, so we took our winnings and made haste. Later after some deliberation we came to the conclusion that we had just dealt with a Vampire Lord and merely had destroyed a single body, and that we probably would not have survived its full might.

We also decided that we had better avoid running afoul of Blackwater again. However, I am not super happy about leaving a Vampire Lord out there, with an axe to grind.

More to come.

Among all the dumb things I have done, this one is up there.

The church of Ra has been a thorn in everyone’s side for as long as anyone can remember, and yet they persist.

I may have mentioned this before, however it bears repeating that in this place the dead do not stay dead. Shortly after death they get backup again as zombies, and go on a hunger filled rampage. As one does as a zombie. The Church of Ra, has found a way to control the newly dead and has put them to work. This sounds all nice and good, having an endless supply of free labor. However, what if you don’t want to serve after death? What if the mechanism they use to control the dead fails, what safety measures do they have in place, or are we all f***? What if we just find the presence of undead abhorrent? The people have no choice in the matter because it is the law that all the dead are to be turned over to the Church, so that they can be used as labor. If anyone dares to question the Church they are silenced, or worse.

Back to the matter at hand. There are many houses of worship dedicated to Ra scattered around the city, however there is one main temple at the center of town. I decided that it would be a good idea to do a little snooping around this temple to see if I can get any information on the dealing of the priests.

Annoyingly, I did not get all that much information, and the guards have been alerted to the fact that someone was there. What I did get was a copy of some wall art, that I have yet to decipher. In addition to that I have a better idea of the layout of the place, so if we ever decide to invade, we will be slightly better prepared.

All, in all perhaps not all that awful, however they will now be on guard for future intrusions.

More to come.