13th day of Haze In Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's Defiance14 days later, the Guardians were still making their way through the jungle. Coming to a wide ravine, they found a way across, over an old broken tree. As they balanced their way over, they were suddenly ambushed by a living tree and some halflings, who took advance of the Guardians being spread out. But, alas for the halflings, their divide and conquer tactics were not enough in order to get the upper hand against the Guardians, and soon the fight was over, and the Guardians made away with some very powerful poison.
15th day of Haze In Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's DefianceA couple of days later, the Guardians stumbled upon a clearing with a big lake. There they ran into Sunflower, an elven druid. After proving to him that they were not defilers or wielders of magic, the Guardians learned that the lake was his protectorate. He also told them about the place where they knew the Temple of Water to be. That "snakemen" lived in the area, and venerated the temple, and that the temple was underwater and protected by a magical whirlpool.
16th day of Haze In Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's Defiance
The very next day, soon after leaving the area under the protection of Sunflower, the Guardians were attacked by a group of big phase spiders. Their poison which knocked people unconscious gave the Guardians some trouble, but nothing they couldn't handle.
20th day of Haze In Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's Defiance
4 days later, the Guardians once again entered the territory of a halfling village. They were stopped by a lone halfling shaman, who demanded they pay the toll to pass. Any one of their own, except Tweeks or Tic-Tac. Obviously, that sort of demands didn't go over well, and soon the Guardians were fighting the shaman and the 4 other halflings that had been hiding. Different tribe that the other halflings, but same result. The Guardians moved on, some powerful poisons richer.
21st day of Haze In Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's Defiance
The day after, they finally arrived at the lake with the Temple of Water. There was also a temple on the border of the lake, guarded by Yuan-ti. Being slightly worn after the month-long trek through the jungle, the Guardians decided to stay hidden for the night, and explore the next morning.
22nd day of Haze In Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's Defiance
At first light, the Guardians moved in on the temple. Using Henry as bait, they lured the Yuan-ti guards away from the temple and fought them out in the fields of grass. With the snakemen dead, the Guardians moved inside the temple, where they found the leader, a Yuan-ti necromancer and his cohorts. It was a short but pitched battle, where the Guardians managed to deal quickly with the necromancer.
After dealing with the snakemen, and after finding a very nice axe for Jelastra the Guardians headed down to the Temple of Water, which proved much harder than expected. The whirlpool was hard to navigate, and especially Jelastra came very close to drowning.
After getting out of the whirlpool, the Guardians swam up and inside the temple, which had some sort of magical barrier keeping the water out of some parts of it. They decided to stay in the first room and get some rest.
23rd day of Haze In Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's Defiance
After getting some rest, the Guardians proceeded deeper into the temple, and were soon victims of a trap. The floor disappeared, and some fell into water caused them to enter an enchanted sleep. It was a sorts of battle of wills, but in the end, they managed to get past the trap.
Continuing, they arrived at the last room, holding the key and the portal, where they faced 3 water guardians spread out over the multiple leveled room. The battle was long and fierce, with several Guardians coming very close to a final end, but they won, although barely. After dealing with the guardians, they picked up the elemental keys, and deciphered the "coded map" showing where the Temple of Air was. Apparently, it was just south of Tyr, in the middle of gnoll-land. After finishing their business in the temple, they managed to activate the portal, which sent them up into the temple of the Yuan-ti.
Then they turned east, and made their way towards the Temple of Air.
28th day of Haze In Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's Defiance
5 days later, and still in the jungle, the Guardians were ambushed by 3 bulettes. After an initial shock that put them on their heels, the Guardians quickly turned around the fight and dealt with the 3 burrowers.
5th day of Hoard In Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's Defiance
Another 12 days later, the Guardians found themselves back in the Ringing Mountains. As usual, Tweeks pet bird was scouting, and it spotted about 15 Tareks further down the pass they were travelling. The Guardians made an ambush and waited for the Tareks. As they ambushed them, part of the platform where some of the Guardians had been hidden gave away and sent them crashing to the ground. The fight proved somewhat hard, but in the end, they managed to capture the leader of the Tareks, and questioned him. He was here to avenge the Guardians' defiling of their holy temple (Temple of Earth), but with everything else dead, he proved realistic and a deal was struck. He was to be set free, against promising to leave them alone.
14th day of Hoard In Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's Defiance
Having traversed the jungle and the mountains, the Guardians finally arrived at their destination, the location of the Temple of Air. It appeared to be a fort in a deep pass, guarded by templars and soldiers of Tyr. The fort had a huge pile of rubble in the courtyard, and the Guardians surmised that the entrance to the temple would probably be beneath the pile.
As they were watching, they saw about 20 soldiers led by a dray (dragonborn) leave on erdlus, leaving the fort in a weakened position. Be careful, they sent the bird after the soldiers, and to their surprise, they found out that they were hiding not far away, ready to return to the fort quickly. It was a trap to lure them in.
They decided to wait, and hide in a cave not too far from the fort. During the night, the dray came back with the soldiers, and tried to catch the Guardians sleeping. The fight was sorta like a stand-off with the Guardians in the cave and the soldiers outside, which Jelastra broke when he got bored, teleporting outside and attacking 20 soldiers on his own. Making good use of poor lightning conditions, the Guardians managed to deal with the soldiers, and capture the leader, the dray (dragonborn). He confirmed that they had been sent there by Amanada and the templars, as well as he told them the number of templars and soldiers in the fort.
15th day of Hoard In Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's Defiance
Realizing they needed help with all the stones, the Guardians took a detour, and headed down to Fangren, the gnoll leader they had met months earlier, and who owed them a favor. After a little talk and negotiating, he agree to find as many gnolls as he could, and send them to the fort.
When the Guardians came back to the fort, with the gnolls some hours behind them, they found an empty fort. Cautiously, they entered the fort, and just as they were about to enter the main building, they were jumped by 4 templars and a lot of soldiers. Surprised by the number of templars (they were only expecting half of that), it seemed as if the Guardians had finally met their match. And then, with a few luckily hits, the tide turned and soon the Guardians had control of the fort.
The gnolls arrived late at night, and the work was postponed for the next day.
16th day of Hoard In Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's Defiance
The gnolls worked all day, moving stones. The Guardians mostly tried to keep the peace and help out with logistics. When a small revolt threatened, the Guardians gave the gnolls the fort, or rather all the inventory, in order to sweeten the deal.
As the sun was setting, the gnolls were done, both with the moving of stones and looting of the fort, and they departed. They had uncovered a magical circle of some sort, a portal to elsewhere. The Guardians used the 3 collected elements to activate it. As they were waiting for the magic to complete, a huge lizard burst through the gate, carrying the Beast of Tyr and 4 more templars. For the second time in a day, the Guardians found themselves caught up in a fight for life and death. The Beast, first gladiator of Tyr was just that, a beast, and the 4 templars did not make things easier. But eventually, the Guardians prevailed, beat the master of the arena and his templars, and managed to catch the magical gate, which ported them 3 miles up in the air, in a magical area of stone platforms in the clouds.
There, after a short break, they moved up, eager to find out the secret, going from platform to platform, via a huge amount of stairs. They ran into some air elementals, not that dangerous in themselves, but both Henry and Jelastra were almost pushed off the platforms, almost suffering a 3-mile drop.
Going up and up, they finally arrived at their goal. A pyramid-like structure of platform and stairs, with a portal on top. Unfortunately, it proved to be protected by 3 guardians, each more terrible than the other. The fight was long and excruciating hard. Never had the Guardians been so challenged, never had they needed so much luck and skill to overcome their foes. For what almost seemed like hours, they battled the air guardians on the "pyramid". Almost everyone was down and out of the count at some point, with both Jelastra and Heian being pushed off and falling 100 feet down on another platform. Had it not been for the collective effort, some amazing luck and Henry's ability to stay on his feet, there would no longer be any Guardians.
With the fight over, and the Guardians completely depleted of energy, they decided to rest before entering the portal. At the portal, they found 5 rings.
17th day of Hoard in Sun Ascending, Year of the Priest's Defiance
The Guardians entered the portal, and found themselves in a room, a map-room, a library, a laboratory of some sorts. Before they could even wrap their brains around the huge oak-table in the middle of the room, a huge iron-golem stepped forward and told them to wait for the master. And the master came.
In came the master, obviously undead, clad in robes and garments. He bade them sit, and told them a story:
Magic works in mysterious ways. Many years ago in Sigil, far away from the gods, and driven by inexplicable dreams, Gorgyr, a young fledging mage haunted by dreams of a world, drew a map of an unknown world. The map clearly became infused with magic, and soon he found that by focusing his mind on certain locations on said map, he could see the world, that he thought he had created in his mind. He could even see the imaginary people inhabiting it.
For years, Gorgyr studied this miniature world of his. Of course, it was something of a shock for him to realize that they had a long history and thought they were part of a real world. It took some more years, but eventually Gorgyr found out where the original Athas came from, and thus realized that this was not merely something from his imagination.
To say that Gorgyr was obsessed about the miniature world, would be an understatement. He wanted desperately to liberate it, but he had no idea how, nor the magical skills to even begin to contemplate how to.
He did manage one thing though. He learned how to communicate in a rudimentary way with some people in the map-world. He told and showed them to build elemental temples that together would fuel a gateway out of the map-world and into Gorgyr’s workroom.
Years passed, and the temples were not completed, and Gorgyr was getting old. But he was determined to liberate the map-world or at least the people of the map-world, and he was not about to let death stop him. Luckily he had finally achieved enough power to transcend to lichdom, so he had found a way to pursue his quest.
With the temples completed, Gogyr (now a lich) started to impart knowledge of the real world into those he could contact. He also told them of the temples, and how it was a way out. Unfortunately, quite a few went mad, while others were killed. In fact, a statistically unexpected high number of those he told the truth died violent and sudden death. But Gorgyr could not figure out how the templars knew. No one ever came through the elemental temple-portals, and eventually, Gorgyr gave up hope, shoved the map in a corner of his tower in Sigil, and went on to study other things.
Daily (Minor Action)