The Keys of Telku / Into the Fire pt. 3 / Von the 20th, 3593 CE / 5-30-21

The Adventurers' questing has taken them to Mount Galadea, where they are on a mission for King Tharin of Amarath to discover the fate of both a missing cadre of knights and his uncle, once thought long-dead in an accident at sea. King Tharin has promised boons to several of the party-members, including granting land rights to the tiefling Doctor Marrow, and a way for Adrienne to escape the persecution of her former employer, Tarrus the One-Eyed. In addition, one of the mysterious and powerful artifacts known as the Keys of Telku was lost with Tharin's uncle Lomaran, and clues to its whereabouts may yet be found if the party can discover why one of the mortally wounded knights returned off the mountain bearing Lomaran's necklace, which should by all rights be at the bottom of the Anorian Sea. As the party used a map and directions provided by the commander of Fort Silan to retrace the steps of the missing knights, they encountered a half-elf bard who joined the party after being menaced by some stone giants. They negotiated their way across a bridge guarded by ice trolls, learning that one of the hapless knights had previously met his doom there. They were also joined by a healer named Baijo who had followed them from Fort Silan hoping to lend assistance to any injured knights they found. However, this prospect became less and less likely as they discovered the graves of three more knights, leaving the possible number of survivors from the original seven now at two. At the gravesite the Adventurers were ambushed by kobolds, and after slaying most of them, the party tracked the fleeing survivor, hoping she would lead them to the object of their quest. The kobold's tracks lead to a mountain lake, where an ancient and decrepit tower had been gradually sinking into the mire. Adrienne used her underwater abilities to investigate the submerged levels of the tower, bringing back a waterlogged and decrepit corpse, much too old to belong to one of the missing knights. On the corpse the party finds some magic armor and an intelligent sword named Mironus, a "sister" to Ironlaw, the intelligent sword the party recovered months ago in the Tower of Xavian. Mironus tells the party that she was last in the possession of a brave knight named Sir Frederick, who served the tower's master, Uthion. She also reveals that this tower, like Xavian's, contains magical portals that lead to other wizards' towers. The Adventurers use a makeshift tree-bridge to cross back over to the tower to complete their investigation. As they ascend, they notice that kobolds have assembled on the shore. With a signal from the same spell-casting kobold who previously escaped them, the monsters' trap is executed, and the tower finishes its collapse to the ground. Now trapped within the fallen edifice, the shaken party continues making their way through the levels of the tower, discovering among other things a workroom where John recovers a potion from several that fall from a hidden compartment, the rest shattering against the tower's now-horizontal wall.