Fall of the Four Winds

The central room of the Temple of Four Winds is guarded by a dozen goblins. In the center of the room is a work table covered with chemical equipment.

As soon as people enter the room, a cloud of purple smoke arises on the worktable. It hangs over the tabletop, roiling and sparking like a miniature thunderstorm.

The goblins attack!

BROTHER AQUILA and RETARIUS brace against their charge. SYLVIA shoots an arrow right past Brother Aquila’s head, then another, which helps. RETARIUS chops ‘em down. One of the goblins is enraged by this, and climbs over Retarius’ shield onto his head, hammering him with his knife. But Retarius has an excellent, distinctive helmet, and is unharmed, until POUNCEQUICK stabs the goblin out.

The remaining goblins flee. CONNEL, with the Barkskin spell on him, brings Rosa a fresh goblin heart, then runs after the survivors out the North exit.

Retarius and Sylvia check out the West exit while DECINQUE sneaks to the East.

Brother Aquila approaches the stormcloud. Three pairs of slanted red eyes appear within it.

“What have you to report?” says a languid, somewhat feminine voice.

“Nothing, save the destruction of your demonic reign!” Brother Aquila replies.

“Are you from the past?” asks the cloud. “The destruction of that Temple happened years ago.”

Brother Aquila prays to detect evil. There’s a lot of it. The six eyes are linked to a mighty evil, stronger than Rome itself, which is pretty darned evil if you think about it. But that evil is many miles away to the northeast.

“We face a mighty evil,” he informs his friends.

“Well … yes,” says the thundercloud. “Step forward that I may see your face.”

“You will see nothing but your doom!” he says, and opens a vial of holy water.

“No, don’t do that!” says the cloud, but too late. In a snap of blinding purple lightning and a boom of thunder, the cloud is dispelled.

ROSA looks over the materials on the table and identifies several plant extracts, some very valuable. But most are fungi, and most of them unknown to Roman science.

Then she goes to see how Connel is doing.

Battle In The East

DECINQUE sneaks up to a room with a sand table showing a terrain model of the surrounding countryside, an obelisk of creamy gray stone, and an inlaid rune circle in clear glass. Also there are some goblins and a huge goblin-like ogre, armed with ogre-sized weapons.

Decinque snares the goblins in his fishing net and runs back, shouting, “It’s HUGE!”

Brother Aquila knocks over a table to bar the way. Vesuvius, Retarius, and Junius hasten to hold the barricade.

Vesuvius summons a bear to fight the ogre. The ogre screams and cries in pain, but gets the better of the bear once he can bring his massive sword into play.

As the bear dies, Retarius hurdles the barricade and starts stabbing the ogre, commenting on each thrust as he does so. “Let’s see, first you stabbed the bear HERE,” he says, “and then a cut right THERE, and then, I believe, you hit him HERE,” and each emphasized word is a hammerblow to the armor or a deep cut.

“Please stop stabbing me!” says the ogre. Then he manages to knock Retarius’ sword away and puts his sword edge at Retarius’ neck.

“Look. You ‘ates the goblins, yeah? Ow bout I give you them gobbers be’ind me, and you lemme go? Eh? Ow-ood-at-be?”

Brother Aquila does not detect inherent evil in the ogre, whose name is Gnorfank, so he agrees. Retarius finishes the goblins.

Battle In the West

Several goblin mages hit Pouncequick in the head with an invisible fist. He plays dead. They drag his body back into the western room. But Sylvia shoots one, and the other drops Pouncequick to launch a spell. Sylvia ducks around a corner, but apparently the Magic Fist spell doesn't require line of sight. However, she thought to buy a pot helm, so she's not badly injured. She does, however, call Vesuvius for help.

Pouncequick, nursing his second major head injury this week, stabs the goblin shaman all to pieces. Vesuvius uses Magesight to locate the last shaman, but that shaman summons a bear of his own! Pouncequick stabs him, too.

But it turns out he wasn't the last shaman, merely the last but one! The last one summons TWO wolves, using them as a distraction to run out past Pouncequick. But he gets stabbed, too. Pouncequick's stabbing arm is getting stronger from all this exercise!

Battle in the North

Rosa enters a room with a huge pool of clear water. Connel is fighting an Arrow Mage, who can't get a good shot at him because he's running around the pool's edge, rolling and flopping and reversing direction a lot. Actually, she has hit him with several arrows, but so far his Barkskin has kept him healthy.

Rosa enchants her shillelagh so that fresh leaves sprout from it and its core hardens like the heart of a mighty oak tree. Sylvia enters and shoots at the Arrow Mage, who devotes her attention to the archer and not the herbalist. Fatal mistake, because Rosa wallops her in the head and puts her fire out for good!

The Loot

Pouncequick finds a treasure chest marked III IV I II. He says, "one two three four?" and Sylvia replies, "No, three four one two!" When she says that, the lock clicks open. Inside are 5000 silver sesterces and two scrolls. One is the Book of Eibon, the spell-crowded testimony of a wizard from the Age of Atlantis, and the other is St. Andrew's letter to the Caledonians, which contains useful clerical spells as well as priceless Apostolic history.

Rosa finds four glass beakers in the pool, invisible from the surface. Vesuvuius identifies them as alchemical potions: Oil of Slipperiness, Potion of Haste, and Elixr of Ethereality. He cannot identify the last bottle, which has a teaspoonful of mercury on the bottom and silver wires up the side, but Brother Aquila can recognize a Spirit Jar. Shake it up so the mercury coats the wires, and you can trap a spirit inside it. Indeed, there may be a spirit trapped inside right now ... no, wait, if there were, the inside would be coated with mercury, and it isn't. The Jar is currently empty.

Brother Aquila also finds a map showing the Temple's understanding of the surrounding country; it has marks on it corresponding to the location of the other temples. There are apparently three other small temples, one each of Fire, Earth and Water, plus the "Mother Temple" beyond the Black River.

He also discovers a Listening Stone, which when a piece of stone is touched to it, allows one to hear what is going on at the place that piece came from. A handy spy item, but at 1200 pounds not perhaps the thing for stealthy infiltration.

Pouncequick grabs a pot of belladonna lotion (very toxic).

Sylvia takes the golden arrow with lightning-shaped fletches which the Arrow Mage was unable to shoot at Rosa due to her (the Arrow Mage's) death.

Decinque and Retarius don't get anything. Even Charlie Brown got a rock!

The Scoop

Gnorfank knows that:

1. The Temple of Elemental Evil has the treasure from the caravan, and has taken it to their "Muvver Temple" across the river.

2. The Temple is not run by goblins at all, but men. Scary men devoted to opposing God with Nature's elements.

3. The Arrow Mage was named Karethia ("Gorrefia" in his ogre dialect) and had quite a number of deadly spells at her disposal. Good thing she was distracted by the wolf!

4. If you try to open the treasure chest without saying "three four one two" it explodes in magical flame. Pouncequick adds an extra lock.

5. The Mother Temple has about a hundred men defending it. Well, men, orcs, goblins ... it's a bit of a mixed grill.

All participants gain 2 xp