(Note from Lee: I was thinking of how to fit Ray's description of Bob tripping, falling on his sword and then wrestling with the gnoll. I forgot to include that part, the comedic element is important. I also forgot the description of where the gnolls from the horn emerged from. Ray did mention it and also described them a bit differently.)

Recorded by Lee and Ray G.

Quest for the Oracle

• Expedition into the forbidding valley to find the mythical Oracle.
• Witnessed aerial passing of a three-headed dragon and two-wingmen down the valley and turn to the north.
• Triad gives good information and is helpful.
• We found a lost road in the forest that at first went up a hill and then disappeared into the hill. It was paved with massive stone slabs.
• We then found a four foot high road marker with two Giant runes on it. Could not understand them but copied them.
• Many have trouble sleeping and a flicker of light is seen far away in the dark.
• Find the signs of a very big snake. A skeleton and splattered blood.
• Bob shows up and Triad becomes a player.
• Find the snake house.
• The party is attacked by a sucker footed, eel-skinned, taloned, odor breathing elephant. One of the dogs is badly injured in the fight but it was defeated.
• Enter then snake house with 800lb Triad in the lead. It didn't have any snakes in it but it was named so by Snogabaek.
• The room is circular with stairs on the opposite side.
• Triad walks straight across. Realizes that the floor is creaking. The oblivious priest of Sif follows closely behind. Triad keeps walking so discovers the weak spot in the floor and crashes through the floor. The priest of Sif is not yet alert so does not recover in time, thus following the giant through just made giant sized hole.
• Triad by way of his shear bulk crashes through the next floor continuing of his journey to the bottom floor.
• Snogabaek comes to his sense as he hits the second floor be fortunate enough to end his journey there.
• A brief moment of silence descended as those left behind peer down the giant size hole to learn the fate of the bold pathfinders. They looked upon two prone figures trying to come to their senses.
• But on the bottom floor they could detect other movement in the shadows.
• The gallant skald, Donny Asmund Seaeyes, carefully raced around the edge of the floor to the stairs to quickly come to the aid of the fallen giant.
• Triad, the giant, recovers to face the sight of skeletons and some still freshly dead gnolls.
• The fight against the undead commenced and was quickly over when Snogabaek finally entered the fray and use the Diadem of the Undead to banish the ungodly creatures. All but two of the skeletons were smitten into ashes and the remaining two cowered in a corner and quickly dispatched.
• As we took stock of our situation after the battle we noticed a number of gold coins on the ground. After some further thought we determined that there were coins on top of the debris that moments earlier Triad had brought own with them. Triad then went back up to next level to find out the source of the coins. He found a chest that had been split in half by Triads collapsing of the floor. It was wedged in and still had some gold in it. Triad then using his deft skill, reasoning and still feeling lucky, decides to balance his 800lb mass by holding on the support beams on the ceiling (the ceiling was 12 feet above the floor, Triad is 10 feet tall) . He reason that he would then be able to go out and retrieve the box without creating another hole in the floor. It wasn't mentioned where everyone else was so it is possible he would have fallen on some of the party below.
• When the floor started creaking again and Triad tried to grab the box thus putting all his weight on the weaken floor, cooler heads stepped in. Snogabaek bade him to stop and come back and suggested an alternative plan. Instead of sending an 800lb giant to fetch the box, Snogabaek secured himself to a rope and had Triad hold the line. He then went out to the box and precariously hung over the edge and retrieved the remaining gold. While doing so he noticed a small pouch nailed the back of the box. After throwing the bag of gold back to the party he retrieved the pouch and in it found a ring. Feeling lucky he put the ring on while still hanging over the edge. He did check to see if he could take the ring off (a result of a previous experience with a cursed ring).
• The party then chose to go through the set of double doors, leaving the stairs leading down for later. One of the dogs was severely injured from the fight with the warped elephant so we sent both back to wait outside for our return. Asmund offered his two potions of healing to Triad but discovered that they had no effect.
• Snogabaek explained that this was a result of the adventure in which Val Valorian caught on fire and Snogabaek also did when his spell backfired. With all the dispel magic spells used no one considered the area of effect of the spell and that the potions were also affected by the spell. Thus potions that are no longer magical.
• Gareth Ironhand, henchman of Snogabaek was severely injured from the elephant battle, he elected to stay with the party and consumed a potion that made him disappear.
• The room on that level had a spherical indention on one of the walls. We couldn't determine what caused the indentation.
• Past the double doors was a room (hallway?) with a door. Ah, wait, I remember. It was a large room/hall. On top we could see the roots of trees above, and skeletons were entangled. There were also missing spherical "sections" in the room.
• We went through that door to a room; door on the right, double-doors ahead. As we made our way in we came across a huge room that had indentations on all sides. It was like there use to be a large sphere in the room that was now gone.
• We entered a room that had more skeletons that started to rise to greet us. The Diadem again proved effective. There were several dead gnolls there and one the one that looked like the leader we found a Bronze Horn with runes on it. This was given to Asmund to replace the one that is partially embedded in his front teeth.
• We then went through another set of doors leading out of the big room. Waiting for use were three gnoll archers who let fly their arrows. They were quickly dispatched.
• From that room we went through another door to a room that had two doors leading out of it
• Asmund listened at the doors. "whistling" on the door at the right, Dogs/hyenas at the double doors.
• We retreated out the door and shut it to a crack, then the doors in that room burst open. Gnolls and hyenas (as we peeked in). They looked about in confusion as they expected to fin us there. They then approached our door.
• The door out to us burst open, and 2 hyenas leapt in. Asmund threw a Fear, and one hyena ran back, knocking over a gnoll and ran away. Triad again thought of charging into the room so all the gnolls could attack him at once but he was held back.
• Hacking and slashing ensued (Bob rolled one of many ones?), some gnolls retreated back through the double doors.
• Bob's PC with his mighty mass tried to bash the door twice but it held, figured out it was barred, so we went through the right door. Went down a corridor, made a left , went through a kitchen, etc. eventually popping out in a large hall, with double doors at the end. We went through (or did the gnolls open it?) Actually we discovered that the invisible Gareth opened the door for us. We just didn't realize it.
• 4 gnolls, in a room with a staircase(s), and a barred double door on the left (the other side of the one before). One gnoll made a break up the staircase (was it spiral?), Bob's PC chased it, and did some mano-a-mano with it. (Also note that this is where Bob rolled another fumble).
• Asmund threw a Hypnotism, catching all 3 gnolls.
• Since we didn't speak gnoll, we ended up killing them.
• Asmund suggested, that it seemed the staircase went up, yet we all agreed we should be going down, that we go back to stair well and take the stairs down. And so we did.
• When we reached the bottom we found another door which lead into a large cavern. Inside we found another batch of skeletons. This included another batch of freshly dead gnolls. Snogabaek again pull out the Diadem of the Undead and this time discovered that it had even more power than previously thought and smote many of them to ashes.
• Once we finished the minor skirmish (Bob didn't fumble here), we continued into the cavern.
• Then as we were strolling along Triad got his weird look in his eye and ran off ahead of the party.
• The rest of us briefly considered this strange move, but it fit the profile so we took off after him.
• We ran through this one cavern that chilled up to the bone and observed Triad come to a door and perform some intricate maneuvers on a panel next to the door which caused it to open. We were puzzled as to how he knew the combination.
• The door opened into a well lit room that had a circle of stuff from another place - half of a table, a pool and tiles that were sliced in half. Triad immediately went over to the desk and started to read aloud from a tome with blank pages.
• The rest of us just sort of stood there watching this scene unfold. There was a depression in the floor with a skeleton chained there. Suddenly a plate of food appeared and the skeleton started to eat the food and to fill out his form.
• Stry also went over to a table and started to brew potion from materials that he pulled out of thin air and then threw them into the pool with the skeleton chained to the bottom.
• We thought that the skeleton was the Oracle we were looking for.
• Then we were assaulted by a fireball that destroyed the skeleton. We turned around to see a gnoll shaman had cast the fireball and was protected by four gnolls and an ogre.
• The evil shaman cast a spell that held both Snogabaek and Asmund in their place. The remaining free Cullen in desperation slammed the door shut used his spear to bar it shut. Tense seconds passed as the door was battered down by the ogre and the Cullen waited to see if the held figures would recover in time. As the door was finally battered down the heroes recovered from their frozen state.
• The fight was on.
• Snogabaek and Cullen leapt in to confront the ogre and gnolls.
• In the meantime, Triad and Stry continued with their magic's.
• It was then that Gareth Ironhand let his presence know by dealing a mighty blow to the back of the gnoll shaman, killing him. It was then that the undead fire giant skeleton appeared out of the shadows and delivered a fatal blow to the loyal henchman, smashing him to the wall. We also then viewed the humanoid spell caster and the two pale humans in chains behind the giant skeleton.
• Asmund cast a series of spells: haste, guardian and dancing sword.
• The undead fire giant then dealt some mighty blows to Asmund and he was forced to step back but not before dealing some damage himself. Snogabaek also delivered some blows to the giant. The evil priest drain the life from one of his captives and it collapsed to the ground. It then turned the remaining human into a wraith and let it loose against Snogabaek, who was forced to turn his attention away from the giant skeleton.
• Asmund then used his newly found horn in an attempt to raise the spirits of the party. Unfortunately it instead called forth gnolls for the nether regions. The Asmund and Cullen then had to defeat these evil creatures as well.
• Snogabaek again attempted to use the Diadem of the Undead against the Wraith and was at first successful, but the will of the evil priest was stronger and the wraith again obeyed its command.
• It was then that the forces that possessed Triad and Stry released their hold. Triad charged into the fight and dealt some mighty blows to the undead fire giant but they had no effect. He was again dealt a blow by the giant and was almost at deaths door.
• Triad seeing that he could not hurt the undead creature barreled his way past the thing in an attempt to reach the evil priest. The priest sensing the imminent defeat of his minions ran away like a little girly. Triad then ran off after the priest and disappeared from our sight talking to a skull that he held in his hand.
• The wraith and Snogabaek continued their dance but the creature was unable to lay a hand upon the priest and was finally destroyed
• The undead fire giant was finally destroyed by the magic's of Asmund and Snogabaek defeated the Wraith in single combat without the wraith touching him.
• As the silence descended after the struggle it was found that Gareth was indeed beyond the concerns of mortal men. Of Triad we had no knowledge of his fate.
• As we were cleaning up after the fight, Triad walked back in. In his hands he held a glowing staff and a skull. Upon his head he was wearing a helm. The skull was the Oracle.
• The Oracle could not actually speak. It can sort of wiggle its head to answer a question. The fireball destroyed its body. But we can communicate with it via the Priestly Speak With Dead spell. Fortunately Snogabaek is well versed in this and was able to communicate with the Oracle to ask questions.
• From questioning the Oracle we learned the Following:

1. What we must do the destroy the beacon.
2. The staff has four functions one of which is to cast lightning. This will be needed to destroy to beacon.
3. The helm confers the ability of true seeing to its wearer.
4. The ring confers the safety of feather falling.
5. There are no traitors to our cause.
6. The leader of our enemy was the humanoid wizard we just faced. More specifically it is the thing that is attached to the back of the wizards head.
7. The wizard is currently located with the enemy force at the SW keep.
8. Our buddy, Raff is leading an armada from our village to attack the free city of Ithica.
9. The location of the three passes over the mountain.
10. That the three headed dragon is located at the beacon.

• We then left the snake house and ventured outside. We only found the uninjured dog still alive. Of the other dog we found it's skeleton and blood splattered about. The party was too beat up to attempt to investigate the mystery. On our trek out the only disturbance was at night when the Wyvern Watch spell was set off by an intruder. It was believed to be the big snake that we found signs of before. We then finished our way back to the Monastery.

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