Session 05

The heroes of Magma Force had just stepped into a room with three angelic creatures when suddenly before their eyes the three angels transformed into hideous looking hags and attacked! The room fell dim as the evil nature of one of the hags absorbed the light. Camero's Eladrin eyesight allowed him to pierce the gloom but the others suffered, finding it hard to see properly in the gloom.   The largest of the three hags, a bog hag, lept down off the platform the evil crones were standing on and laid about it with reckless abandon. It was strong, and powerful and lashed out with wicked claws. As the warriors stepped up to engage it, Camero dropped an ice storm on the platform, imobilising the other two hags. But one of them teleported down into the fray and began howling, a shriek which caused the ears to bleed. The final hag, a night nag and a very dangerous foe, worked its way slowly over to the melee.   The bog hag was quickly dispatched with all the heroes concentrating their fire power upon it, but by this stage the night hag and howling hag had jonied the melee, concentrating their attacks upon the paladin. However these two were not melee foes and they were swiftly defeated. Morgan dicapitated the howling hag but the night hag was smashed into submission.   The party bandaged their wounds, tied up the hag captive and then shook her till she woke. They interrogated her and found out that she worked for Nabthatoron, the Lord of the Demonskar. He knew they were here and her job was to eliminate them. She also told them that Nabthatoron was involved in organising the attack on Redgorge by Cauldron's troops. He was in league with a person called Orbius (a name the party remembered as belonging to the Beholder they had met back in the summer of last year when they had just arrived in Cauldron). Orbius apparently represented an organisation in Cauldron, but they didn't get a name for this organisation.   Nabthatorn was working with Orbius to get the troops of Cauldron to attack Redgorge. When this happened Nabthatoron would lead the demons of the Demonskar to attack the village as well. Once Redgorge fell Nabthatoron could finally return to the Abyss and home. She didn't know any more about the corruption in the city though. She told them that Alek had entered a mysterious artifact called the Starry Mirror a few days earlier and had not been seen since. Nabthatoron wanted Alek dead so that he could not recind his challenge on Lord Terseon and thus the attack on Redgorge would continue. The party also asked her about Alakast and she admitted to having stolen the artifact from the tomb of Surabar Spellmason and that it was hidden in a secret compartment in another room, guarded by the skeletons of three spellweavers. In exchange for this information the group let the hag go and she left Vaprak's Voice to cause mayhem elsewhere in the world.   The group decided to go and get Alakast first and then go to the Starry Mirror and see if they could find Alek. They went through the door to the room where Alakast was supposedly hidden and sure enough as the door slid open they saw the skeletons of three tall humanoids with six arms. Worryingly these skeletons each wielded four scimitars! One of them was fast to react and rushed the group, its scimitars a whir of blades and death. Camero reacted next and dropped a sleep spell on the ancient undead creatures which turned the whole battle. The back two skeletons dropped to the floor and the party moved in to smash the unconscious foes to little pieces before they came around. The last skeleton was a tough opponent but was eventually brought down. The group searched the room and in a secret compartment found a gem studded weapon which each agreed was magical. It had the unusual property of changing shape into the form most helpful to whoever wielded it. So in Camero's hands it became an orb and in Braken's a mace. Harley was charged with holding the weapon they believed to be Alakast and in his hands it appeared as a gem studded rapier with a razor sharp edge. Braken knew something about Artifacts and explained that although Alakast was almost certainly sentient it would not necessarily be instantly communicative. He said that it would also probably only hang around as long as the wielder was using it towards its own goals. And that the more the wielder did what it wanted the more powerful it would become. Intrigued, Harley strapped the weapon to his side and the group moved on to where the hag said they would find the Starry Mirror.   Upon reaching the chamber of the Starry Mirror the group found a throne with 6 arm rests - probably a spellweaver chair - facing a pentagonal mirror. Around the chair was a device painted on the floor showing six colours in a sequence. After much proding and searching and examining of the room and a great deal of experimentation they got nowhere. They had figured that this was probably a teleportation device of some sort, designed to let the Spellweavers travel around to various fixed locations across the world. But how to operate it? In the mirror they could see five windows floating. 4 showed nothing but a white mist but in the fifth could be seen Alek Tercival. Nothing they could do seemed to alert him to their presence. In the end they decided to ask Alakast if it could help. Harley found himself feeling like the best thing to do was to step into the mirror itself and go from there. So, being brave and wanting to trust to the powerful artifact, he did just that. Not wanting to be left behind, Camero immediately stepped through after him. Each found themselves in a different 15' pentagonal room with 5 mirrors, one on each wall. The rooms they were in glowed with a coloured light and each mirror also was lit with a different coloured light. They found they could hear each other and also Braken and Morgan, still back in the Throne Room could hear them as well. They experimented with stepping into a coloured mirror and found this took them into a room of the same colour as the mirror they stepped into. Now, when they had examined the hegemonic plate that depicted this location they had found a key on it: 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3. So they started to come up with different theories for how to use this key to get out. Eventually, after some experimentation Camero went through a sequence of mirrors based on the numbered sequence and the coloured pattern in the throne room and as he stepped through the last one, the room he appeared in went dim and grey. Each mirror was white and showed the same scene. This was a picture of Alek Tercival sitting in a small room next to a thick looking iron door, deep in despair. Harley followed the same sequence and ended up in the same room as Camero. The other two were still back in the throne room.   A brief experiement throwing coins into the mirrors indicated that each mirror lead to the same room where Alek was sat. This did not appear to disturb the paladin who seemed lost in his own thoughts. So it appeared that the only option left was to step through one of the mirrors and presumably find themselves in the same place that Alek was, apparently trapped. Camero prepared to step through the portal...