Catching up to Ghorul and Raelith at last

November 20, 498

On Ghorul's Trail

The party decided to waste little time tracking Ghorul. They skipped a night's rest to make up ground. Slowly but surely, the tracks were getting fresher.

Finally though, the party had to make camp. The mountain road had high walls making ambush difficult, though retreat nearly impossible. Luckily, they were able to find a secluded area where they could fortify for the evening.

Having nearly closed in on Ghorul, the party decided to use their Coin of Location that Oskar gave them. Activating it let Oskar know where they were, and using a device of teleportation, was able to catch up to the party in a matter of minutes.

Kadriel and the Rods

In this span of a few days, Oskar researched what he could about the Rods of Kadriel. Despite the ample time to research the subject, Oskar was able to find very little information. Almost nothing is known of Kadriel or the rods.

Kadriel was an old warrior-mage who fought the Shoggoth. The Rods of Kadriel were supposedly magical artifacts given to him by his god (it is unknown who that was). After defeating the Shoggoth, Kadriel and his army was cut off from his homeland, so he decided to hide the Rods so that no one could use them for evil or personal power. According to his notes, Raelith supposes they are hidden in the ruins of a temple erected to his god somewhere in the Burnt Lands

Passing Travellers

November 21, 498

After some much needed rest, the party travelled on. A few hours into tracking Raelith's captors, they came across a party of travelling men and elves. After introductions (to Tholing, Froa, Nirion and Lerras), the party learned that they had recently passed a group of men who seemed to have a wizard in tow. They hid, since the men looked like ruffians, but they were only an hour behind them.

With luck, the party would catch up with them by nightfall.

Catching up to Them by Nightfall

After several more hours, the party finally caught up to Ghorul and his men, who were camping. Most of the men were asleep while a few stood watch. Ghorul was on a large rock by himself, playing a lyre.

Eager to try out some new skills, Cortes cast his first Sleep with some success. While half of the men were asleep to begin with, now most of the others were. However, things didn't happen as expected. The men that were magically put to sleep woke right back up when Ghorul walked next to them.

The party ran in anyway, hoping to use surprise to their advantage. A coup de grâce here and there certainly helped. However, the skirmish took a turn for the unexpected when Ghorul shouted "Do something about this wizard!"

Immediately recognizing that Raelith must be working with these bandits, Cortes stepped in with a truely beauiful critical hit, slashing the wizard nearly in two. It was only after a few seconds when a nearby bandit grabbed the wizard and kept his hands bound that the party realized that Ghorul was talking to his men about the wizard, and not to the wizard.

Oops. But it was a really good hit.

Raelwin cast Flaming Sphere against one of the bandits, and finally killing him with it. Next, she moved it to Ghorul; however, it immediately blinked out of existance when it got withing ten feet of him.

Ghorul used the Flaming Sphere to his advantage, and continually stepped back. When he was far enough away, it blinked back into existance, doing a little fire damage before going out on its own.

Finally, the bandits were defeated, and Ghorul was killed. The party immediatly started apologizing and healing Raelith, telling him it was a battlefield misunderstanding; friendly fire.

Ghorul's Motives Revealed

After battle, two things were immediately obvious. One, Ghorul seemed to posess some ability to dampen and even negate magic near him; and two, there were no orcs present.

Aside from his recent wounds (thanks to Cortes), Raelith seemed to not have all of his faculties. His memory was fuzzy and couldn't remember how long he had been a prisoner, or where the orcs had gone to (nor did he even remember any orcs).

He did recall that Ghorul had been hired by a sucessful merchant here in the Burnt Lands to retrieve the Rods of Kadriel. He knew that there should be the ruins of a temple in this part of the Burnt Lands where the Rods had been hidden for nearly 500 years. He was pretty sure that he had revealed the location to Ghorul and his men/orcs.

The missing bandits led the party to believe that there was now a race for the Rods. The party decided to set out and be the first to find them before they fall into the wrong hands.

Ghorul's Anti-Magic

Ghorul, despite his lack of arcane abilities, seemed to posess the ability to supress magic with little or not effort. This is how he was able to seige Raelith's keep, and to keep Raelith as a prisoner.

On his body, the party found little of worth, and nothing that screemed magical artifact. However, Detect Magic revealed nothing -- too little in fact. It seemed that within proximity of Ghorul's gear, no magic seemed to work.

After a clever binary search of his things using the few remaining Detect Magic spells Cortes had at his disposal, it was determined that the source was a single amulet. This amulet was completely unadorned, and looked nothing like a "normal" magical item. It seems to be made of dark grey and black clay in a series of three concentric circles.