Tairn

1532.7.10 – Morning
Keddick reappears by the pedestal holding the book. Malperder and Kordis walk towards him while Varende searchs out Banic and Jack. Everyone meets up in the lion room. Keddick examines the book for auras and discovers none, but he see that the pedestal has an aura on it, and the body in the corner has a faint aura. He approaches the body and pulls a bone wand six inches long from beneath it. He also appropriates an oak quarterstaff lying nearby. The party limps back to the training room and lets a day pass to recover strength from the onslaught of the shadows. Keddick examines the book and comes to believe it is a false book with mostly blank pages and gibberish written in the front of the book.

1532.7.11
Banic heals many and the party sets out for the crypt.  Malperder and Banic lead the way into the crypt with many spells upon then (haste, shield of faith). As they approach the body of the priest, Banic casts detect magic again. Kordis waits tensely in the hall. Malperder snaps the silver holy symbol of Andreja off the neck of the apparent priest. With Banic’s guidance, he reaches for the hammer when the shadows strike. Banic feels icy tendrils of death sapping his strength from the wall, and Varende sees the inky forms “arm” slide toward him and dodges it. Kordis sees the form slide back into the wall. Varende tumbles to the far end of the room where the strong aura was and starts to look in crypts. He starts to yank the bodies out crumbling the bones into a heap at his feet along with long decayed cloth. Meanwhile the other five are busy fending off attacks of two shadows. One of the shadows falls, but the quicker continues to harry the group. Keddick approaches the crypts and casts detect magic. He searches for several rounds and finds a pair of gold lion statues, one manned and one unmanned in the top crypt. The shadow focuses briefly on Varende but has a terrible time hitting him. He attacks Kordis a number of times and is finally vanquished. Keddick grabs a single ceramic bottle from a wall niche. It is filled with a liquid and sealed. Everyone retreats up the stairs. Plans are discussed, and eventually a plan to search in the lion room is decided on. Back in the lion room, Varende searches the pedestal. As he touches it, he disappears and lions coalesce out of motes of light. The lions again attempt to subdue people instead of killing them. Kordis wreaths himself in fire as Keddick casts expeditious retreat. Jack is pinned to the floor and bludgeoned unconscious as is Banic. Keddick darts into the room, touches Malperder and Banic, and teleports to the top of the stairs. Malperder hands him a healing potion for Banic and runs to join the fray. Keddick turns invisible and runs to join the fray as well leaving Banic’s body unguarded. Kordis flees the room, and one of the three remaining lions paws the spike from the floor and the door shuts. Keddick teleports back into the room and plays mouse to the lion’s cat for some time as he climbs like a spider across the wall looking for an opening to get Jack. Varende reappears in the room and defends himself from the cats with great quickness. Keddick has been caught by the cats’ keen senses several times as he moves loudly across the walls. Keddick casts knock on the doors again and tells Varende they are open. Keddick turns himself gaseous in preparation to exit the room. Malperder and Banic throw open the doors. Malperder tries subduing a cat with the flat of his axe, but things get out of hand, and soon lethal blows fall on both sides. The last lion disperses back to its otherworldly home, and Jack is revived.

As everyone rests back in the training room, Banic discusses touching the pedestal himself. Varende says it was quite confusing and that Banic might be unable to win his way free. Varende plays with the bracers and poles and thinks that standing on one of the pillars would simulate a giant fighting someone in the center of the posts. All rest. Many eat of the dwindling food supply.

1532.7.12
Banic heals the wounded in the morning, and Keddick using his rod and spell makes Varende gaseous to explore the rooftop. Varende sees two normal apeas and a girallon. The apes are grooming one another. Varende does not see the escaped ape with vestigial arms. He sees the area where the white smoke rises, and some nests in the archways of the cloisters where he thinks the apes sleep in the cover of the arches. Varende sees no sign of statue or book.

Banic presses his idea, and so all head back to the lion room. The door is allowed to close with Banic and Keddick inside. All others wait impatiently on the outside fearing their deaths. Keddick turns invisible using rod and spell. Then he eats a live spider before climbing up the wall to the apex of the room. Banic creates a mental bond between himself and Keddick and then touches the pedestal. Lions appear as the dwarf disappears. The Lions prowl the room and obviously scent Keddick but do not leap up at him as he cowers by the roof out of reach. Time stretches onward. Banic is hopelessly lost in the planes of force. After what seems a long time, but before the invisibility fades, Banic reappears just as the lions wink out of existence. Keddick knocks the door and it is re-spiked.

Everyone convinces Keddick that there are plenty of the liquid filled faint transmutation aura jars in the room below and that someone should open it. Keddick relents and Malperder opens the jar. Nothing happens. Kordis smells it and then sip it. He announces that it is blessed water. With that, all ask Keddick to identify the gold lion figurines. Keddick agrees and spends an hour in the training room with wine, pearl and feather. At the end of the time, he announces that they could be used to summon a pair of lions to aid the summoner. They could be summoned by saying the Elvish words “Euravo! Euravenne!” The words are the male and female versions for a large cat such as a lion or panther. Varende recalls that the words were written on the tails of the lions next to the monk in the fresco on the ceiling of the lion room.

The group takes note they are running dangerously low on food, especially since they must make a trek through the mountians and hills without a guide.