Session Note 6: Mistress Showdown

    The party replaced spent air plants in their mouths. Uruk gave some to Nastasha and the combat dog exhaled roughly in clear her snout. Everyone was silent except for the soft wails of the paralyzed Ettin as it complained of it's disabled fate to itself.

    Ozzy swam quickly to the others and whispered fiercely about what he heard inside the palace. Alarmed by the prospect of needing to fight two more of the huge dinosaurs soon, the group began using healing magic. Spells, wands, magic items, and potions are used to magically stitch together the worst of the wounded.

    Uruk loomed over the downed Ettin as he was being healed by Zarek.

    "Who is the Mistress talking to inside the palace?" the Ogre growled.

    "It's all the Mistress." "Yeah."

    Garrison looked at the Ettin intently and asked, "How many Mistresses?"

    "All of them. All three." The other Ettin head raised a hand and counted off on his fingers. "Mistress Mylassa, you know? Mistress My, Mistress Las, and Mistress Sa. Um, yup, that's them."

    "And which one is in charge?" Zarek asked.

    "Huh?" The Ettin's heads looked at each other as if the question made no sense. One of the heads looked at his montionless legs and moaned, "Look at dem! Dey is worthless! Poor legs!"

    Uruk snapped his fingers to draw their attention back to him. "And what are the powers of this coven of hags, eh?"

    "You look at dem and you pee you-self." The other head nodded in agreement. "He pees his-self. I always fine." "Nuh-uh!" "No shame in it, bruder."

    Garrision nodded sagely, "And that's why your legs don't work anymore."

    Both Ettin's eyes grew round and the heads glanced at their legs. "Oh!" "Oh, dear." One of the heads glared accusingly at the other, who blushed.

    Verdi spoke up: "Hags have a horrifying appearance. We need to prepare ourselves for a hideous sight."

    Uruk knelt to bring his face close to theirs. "What powers can they bring to bear in combat? Tell me!"

    The Ettins spoke quickly. "Mistress Sa can talk to Lev'necks." "Yeah, it's scary!" "All of dem have much magic and shiney powers." "Very shiney!" "And dey eats thems dat makes em mad." "Raw and sometimes cooked!" "And they have eyes everywhere. See?" And the Ettin held up one hand and pointed to a gold ring that has a clear gem mounted in it.

    "You mean they can see us through that?" Noxen asked.

    "Sure." "All us minons got one." They gestured to the bodies laying around the underwater garden. Sure enough, there was a simular ring on each hand.

    "They know we are here," hissed Noxen. He began collecting the rings and stuffing them in a dark pocket.

    Zarek puffed out his chest and glared at one of the rings. "Hello there. We are coming for you next!" he said, with a tone of bravado.

    After the flurry of activity and conversations, Ozzy raised a hand as his ears twitched.

    "The two Lev'necks have put their heads above the water of the lower level of the palace. I hear a voice talking to them, but I can''t make out any words," he said quietly. Ozzy suddenly stiffened. "Both the Lev'necks are swimming out towards us. Slowly." 

    The Lev'necks swam out from under the palace. Each one carried a long stick with a white bit of cloth attached to the end. They swayed their heads back and forth, waving the flags.

    "Okay," Zafirah said slowly.

    "Seems like the Mistress wishes to have a parley." Ozzy said.

    "What are the Lev'neck's names?" Zafirah asked the Ettin.

    "Uhh..." "Dey both called Lev'neck. I tink dey are twins or sumthing." "Yah, it's a common name, me guess."

    "And what's your name?" Garrison asked.

    "Duh, Me Top." "Me Knot." "Heh-heh, Top-Knot." "Nuh-uh! It Knot-Top!"

    The Lev'necks had stopped swimming. They waited, swaying their flags. One got distracted by a school of fish, dropped it's flag and snapped at them. But neither one moved from their position.

    "This feels like a trap," Ozzy muttered.

    "No, it feels like someone with some brains," Garrison said, motioning to the field of corpses. "They want to talk to us instead of getting chewed up like these guards." 

    Natasha growled in annoyance at the thought that someone who needed chewing wanted to talk their way out of it. She hoped it wouldn't end peacefully...

    "Fine, who is good at speaking? Who is going to talk to the Mistress?" Ozzy asked. "It's not going to be me, let me tell you!"

    "Probably our bard," Nemean said, pointing at Garrison. "Or perhaps the Pixie."

    The group began to debate the merits of who should speak, who should go first, and who was going to hide behind who. Many times, some of them looked at the Lev'necks, but the dinosaurs just waited. The other one had dropped it's flag, too, and it was now snapping up floating zombie bits that had drifted over from the battleground.

    "It is somewhat pointless to make plans here, since they can see and hear us," Alba pointed out. 

    "Then we might as well just go on in and stop debating things," Ozzy said with a fatalistic tone of voice. "They are clearly ready for us. I can't hear them talking up there anymore."

    "I vote that we go up as a group," Min said. "I don't want to be left in the water with those Lev'necks."

    "Yeah, but I want the good swimmers to carry us, because I don't want to be left behind," Verdi added.

    The group gathered together and swam as non-threateningly as they could manage between the two huge dionsaurs. The beasts noticed their passing, but remained almost unnaturally still. Only their necks moved - lashing out to snatch up tidbits of flesh that floated near them. But their bodies remained stationary.

    Nemean rode on the back of Natasha, since he was missing the goose he normally rode - bareback, of course. Garrison dog-paddled. Rushan was hauling many of the group who were poor swimmers in his tentacles.

    The bottom of the palace was open to the sea with a huge, graceful arch. The Lev'necks stood on either side of the archway like sentinels. Their motionless bodies was clearly some kind of magically-induced state.

    Once inside the palace arch, it was clear that this are was a rather large reception area. Another arch at the other end of the hall was open to the sea. Along the side walls were beautiful mosaics made from colored stone, shells, and bits of coral depicting Kuo-toa royalty in various situations, such as hunting sharks, feasting, and worshipping.

    Despite the finery of the building, the floor and edges of the room were covered in trash, debris, rotting bits of discarded meat, and green scum.

    "What a dump," Zafirah muttered.

    "No one has entertained here recently, that's for sure," Alba said. 

    Above them was a lit oval which had an angled ramp leading from the water up to the portion of the palance that was filled with air and what looked like magical torches providing light.

    The party swam up to the ramp that went around the entire edge of the oval opening and found that they could easily reach the bottom of the ramp and walk up into the dry part of the palace. 

    "This is nice," Ozzy admitted.

    As they broke the surface of the water, another reception hall greeted their eyes. It was decorated in what could only be assumed was Kuo-toa finery. Artwork, statues, and interesting patterns of tile were in great abundance. The reception hall went up two-stories in a grand dome. Twin staircases lead up to the second floor, which had a bannister running around the inside of the space open above the recption hall.

    Standing behind this stone grating, on the second floor, stood three sea hags.

    They were absolutely hideous.

    Vaugely human-looking, each had blotched warty skin, misshapen noses, and pointed wonky teeth. They wore different cloths and armor, but all of it seemed filthy. Not as dirty as their hair, which looked like it was matted, tangled, and saturated with filth. Bits of drool and phelm dribbled from the corners of their mouths. Their eyes sparkled with malice and didn't seem to quite be the same sizes. Altogether, their looks were disgusting and the ugliness of them seemed to slap the party members in the face in way that defied mere bad looks.

    Garrison, Ozzy, and Min was so affected by their horrid looks that they almost collapsed. Ozzy was hit the worst by it as he almost dropped his weapons, began swaying, and quietly gibbering to himself. The rest of the party winced at the sight of the sea hags, but managed not to feel magically weakened.

    "Ugly, so ugly," Gasrrison kept whispering over and over in a weak, reedy voice.

    "Argh! Why! Why!" Min croaked as he slumped almost to the floor.

    "Hebbi-beebi-aeeiie," Ozzy mumbled. Or something like that. It looked like the weight of his clothes was too much of a load for him to carry, but the worst was the look of madness in his eyes that were somehow still locked on to the hideous visages of the sea hags.

    Others in the party tried to put on a bold front in the face of the magically ugliness.

    "You're not as ugly as my sister," Zarek said with a sneer.

    Alba's mouth dropped open. "What?"

    Zarek gestured to the hags and helplessly tried to convey that he was just doing some pre-battle bluster.

    Alba was not amused. Her eyes narrowed icily and she whirled to show him her back.

    "I'll pay for that later," Zarek mumbled.

    "Ah," Uruk said fondly, "Siblings."

    The hags preened, flipped their hair, and flounced as if they were being admired.

    "Ah, they have noticed our, beauty, Sa."

    "Indeed they have, My. Indeed they have!"

    "Small wonder that some of them are almost overcome, Las."

    The three hags cackled gleefully.

    The hag in the middle, Mistress Las, put her hands on her hips suddenly. "So! We watched you destroy our minons."

    The hag on the left, Mistress My, nodded. "Right in the middle of their pufferfish badminton game, too."

    "It was very entertaining," said the sea hag on the right, Mistress Sa. "Much more so than their silly game."

    "But wasteful!" cried Mistress Las. "All our lovely minons killed?"

    The other two sea hags shook their heads gravely and made tsk-tsk noises.

    Min recovered his wits somewhat and spoke in the silence, "You three look like your insides are on your outsides."

    The party gasped and tried to shush the Kenku. Zarek harshy whispered, "That was mean!" 

    But the sea hags did not act offended. They preened some more.

    "Ah, the bird-man is overcome with our beauty," Mistress Sa said in a simpering tone.

    "A common burden that our visitors share," nodded Mistress My with a sickly-sweet grin.

    Mistress Las merely shimmied as if showing off her figure. Why she would wish to draw attention to that was anyone's guess. Many of the party members shuddered.

    Mistress Sa chuckled once more, then spoke in an oily tone, "We have a... uh... a propisiton for you. That's why I sent my Lev'necks to bring you in for a little chat."

    "Aye," Mistress Las said. "We find ourselves suddenly in need of new minons."

    "And since you are stronger than the old ones, we felt that we would offer the job to you," concluded Mistress My.

    "Okay..." Garrison managed. "Not what I was expecting."

    "Yes," drawled Mistress My.

    "What brings you all the way down here, anyway?" Mistress Las asked.

    "We were attacked by a bunch of fish-men," grunted Uruk.

    Mistress Sa waved a hand lazily. "Yes, they have standing orders to do so."

    Mistress My nodded and licked her disgusting lips, "Yes, or we eats them."

    Mistress Las clapped her hands. "Were you shipwrecked on the reefs? Are you stranded here? Wouldn't that be a shame, my sisters? Why, they'd be trapped here! How sad!" The three hags chuckled together.

    Veredi cleared his throat. "Our ship is fine. And I'm sure we can have a discussion without mentioning how ugly you all are. None of us want to be rude about your unfortunate looks, after all."

    Many party members glared at the Pixie. That was far from the diplomatic responce they all expected. Perhaps they expected too much?

    The three hags laughed, leaning on one another for support.

    Mistress My shook her finger reproachfully at Verdi with a grin that sadly showed all of her teeth. "Flattery will get you nowhere, little fey."

    Mistress Sa suddenly stopped laughing and looked thoughtful. "His flattery might get him into my stewpot," she mussed.

    "Say!" Mistress Las said suddenly. "Did those wormy Kuo-toa help you to come down here to attack our minions? Why, I'll skewer the lot of them!"

    "Oh! What naughty fishies!" chuckled Mistress My, rubbing her hands together.

    Mistress Sa made claming gestures. "Now, now. The Kuo-toa aren't bad." She continued in a quieter voice, "They taste alright. And those that aren't fleshed out enough to eat make decent zombies."

    "We forced the Kuo-toa to bend to our will," Uruk said.

    "Ah? You are halfway to being our minons already," hissed Mistress Sa with an evil and knowing grin.

    Ozzy started pawing at Verdi. "Do your job," he whispered with chattering teeth. "Talk to them and make them look at someone else."

    Verdi shooed the weaked man-bat away disdainfully.

    "We came all this way in order to study the Lung and Temple of Krill'thak," Verdi exclaimed boldly.

    "Oh, that place! Piffle!"

    "A worthless endevour! There is no way to open the door."

    "You can look at it all you like on your time off from being our minions. How's that, eh?"

    "You tried to go inside?" Zarek asked. "Why?"

    "Treasures!"

    "Shinies!"

    "Magics!"

    The three hags looked elated by the idea, but quickly deflated.

    "But it's no good. It's just a door that can't be opened," Mistress My said sadly.

    "Reguardless," Mistress Las said expanisively, spreading her arms wide, "How about our offer, eh? Can we hire you on as our new minions?"

    "And what might being a minion entail," Zafirah drawled.

    The sea hags got excited as they spoke of it.

    "We don't eat minions, for one thing, dearie. That's a plus!"

    "Nor will we turn you into zombies! Well, not unless you die, but then you won't mind it if that happens, will you? Can't ask for a fairer offer than that, can you?"

    "Hee-hee-hee!"

    "That is a fair point," whispered Ozzy in a numb tone of voice.

    "And! The Kuo-toa need discipline and a strong hand. You'll get to abuse them as you please! Giving in to your every evil desire!"

    "Indeed! You will love lording over them! And you, doggie! You could chew on them whenever you like! Think of it!"

    "Yes, those wormy fish-folk were down here wasting their time with frolics and feasts before we came down to set them to meaningful and useful work!" 

    "Our magical storms and the Kuo-toa collecting those who are shipwrecked yields much gold and cargo - of which we will share some."

    "Not much, mind you!"

    "Of course not - but some is better than none!" All three of the sea hags nodded greedily.

    Uruk ffrowned deeply. As the sea hags grew quiet after making their offer, he spoke. 

    "None of this sounds very honorable."

    "I decline," Nemean said. "I obey the stars, not some creepy ladies. One can't even see the stars down here."

    The three sea hags stiffened in anger and indignation.

    Mistress My's face was a mass of angry and confused creases. "How can you say 'No' to the idea of torturing so many little fish-folk? I don't understand!"

    "You dare to spurn our kind offer? Fools!" Mistress Las spat, with a spray of phelm.

    "Maybe one of your... friends... will turn on you, star-druid," Mistress Sa grunted as she balled her fists.

    The party burst into laughter at the idea. The sea hags grew purple with rage at the mockery.

    Uruk drew his blades, pointed one of them at Mistress Sa, and shouted, "I challenge you, hag! To the death!"

The Battle

    "Eh?" Mistress Sa said. She looked down at Uruk in confusion, having never been challenged by a knight before.

    Ozzy lost it and started screaming, "Burn, hag! Burn!" He cast a spell on Mistress Las that sent motes of fire into the sea hag's nasty hair. With a sweep of her warty hand, she dispelled the magic. "I think not!" she laughed.

    Nemean brought forth a brillant light which shot rays of starlight at Mistress My. The beams sizzled into the sea hag and she hissed in displeasure.

    Natasha ran up the stairs, barking furiously. She tried to bite Mistress Sa, but the sea hag was protected by some kind of magical armor. Her teeth skittered across the laughing sea hag's body without finding any purchase.

    Noxen shouted that the hags were protected by mage armor and many other magic protections.

    Verdi cast a magic spell to peer into the thoughts of Mistress Sa. He was a bit worried about what he might find, but he heard: "I'm going to call my Lev'necks and have them eat these fools from behind! Hee-hee-hee!" Verdi wasted no time sharing this information: "Ware the Lev'necks!" he shouted to his friends.

    Zafirah ran up the stairs with a slight nimbus of flames trailing after her.

    Uruk dashed towards the sea hag he had challenged and took a heavy swing which cut deeply into the vile creature. Mistress Sa shrieked and dark green blood sprayed from her wound. Hatred glittered in her eyes.

    Alba fired her rod of flame casting, but the tiny fireball sputtered out upon contact with the magical armor of the sea hag she targeted.

    Noxen run underneath the balcony the three sea hags stood on. As he passed underneath them he tossed a fuzzball from his bag of tricks. The fuzzy ball grew into a summoned animal. This time, it was a weasel. The weasel took one look at the hideous visage of the sea hag he had been summoned to attack and flopped over on his back with a weak squeak of terror. One of his back legs twitched.

    Mistress Las cackled evily and stomped on the helpless weasel. Noxen roared in outrage.

    Zarek gritted his teeth and took a snap shot at Mistress Las. Her head snapped back as an electrified T-Force cannon bolt slammed her right between the eyes. She dropped like her stings had been cut as the boom of the firearm echoed hideously through the chamber.

    "Las! My sweet sister!" "No! What has happened!" the other two sea hags cried out in dismay. They looked from the dead sea hag to Zarek's smug face and his weapon in utter confusion.

    "Never seen a gun, eh? Well, it serves her right for being a bully!" shouted Zarek.

    Rushan ran closer to the railing, reached out with his tentacles, and grabbed Mistress My. With a mighty yank, he pulled the screaming sea hag right over the edge and slammed her into the floor. Rushan had four rapiers in his other hands, waving at the ready.

    Min tapped his fingers together while muttering to himself. "I have a fun plan, but it has a 5 in 8 chance of an undesirable outcome."

    Garrison heard him. "That sounds like a bad plan."

    Min sighed. "Very well, I will not use explosives this time." He pulled out his hand T-cannon and took a shot at Mistress Sa. The bullet bounced off her magic armor. Min yelled in frustration, "This is why I like bombs! They always do something, at least!"

    Mistress Sa peered up at Uruk with a glare, holding the wound she had taken from his blade. "Look into my evil eye, fool!" she shouted with a terrible voice.

    Uruk barked a short laugh and yelled back, "Your angry look means nothing to me, witch! My honor is too strong for your wicked magic! I've seen uglier Ogres back home!"

    "Awk!" Mistress Sa said with shocked disbelief writ large on her twisted features that her most powerful magic had failed.

    Verdi, still listening into her thoughts overheard her regreting her choices: "I'll call my pets after I whither this musclebound idiot with my evil eye... Oh, no! How did the magic fail me? I should have called to my Lev'necks instead! This can't be happpening!" He grinned. It sounded like another polished enemy was getting some humbling. Marvelous.

    Garrison weakly lifted his firearm and took a shot. His bullet also richocheted off the protective magic armor of Mistress Sa. In his weakened state, Garrison almost pitched backwards into the water from the recoil. He waved his arms in an attempt to retain his balance.

    Mistress My fired off a spell into Rushan's body from her position on the floor. Rushan tried to ward off the magic with a rapier, which sliced the sea hag with a small cut. Her magic still burned! Rushan howled in agony as magical fire blistered his flesh and she cackled with glee as his pain.

    Ozzy sat down heavily on the floor, trying to hide his eyes from the sea hags. He watched the water warily. If any Lev'necks surfaced, he would burn them.

    Nemean brought forth more starlight and fired it into Mistress Sa from the back of Natasha. Mistress Sa fired an arrow into him as she saw the motions of his spell. The arrow burned as acid was injected into the wound. The rays of light sizzled into the sea hag and she shrieked.

    Natasha grabbed the sea hag by the throat and shook her head violently back and forth. The sea hag's wails turned into gurgles, then stopped with a crunch. When Natasha was done, she threw the limp sea hag into the wall like a discarded chew toy.

    "Brutal!" Uruk said with approval.

    Verdi fired a small arrow at Mistress My who still was on the floor in front of Rushan, but his arrow was deflected by her still active mage armor.

    Zafirah had reached the top of the second floor by this time, but the only remaining sea hag was below her. With a wild yell, she jumped down, hoping to slam her elbow into the prone sea hag. Sadly, her aim was off and she slammed into the tile floor next to her.

    The sea hag My, even in her dire straits, managed to point and laugh at the discomforted desert mystic.

    Uruk was going to leap down as well, but he hesitated after witnessing the antics of Zafirah.

    Alba stabbed at the sea hag, but her weapon was deflected by the mage amor. She cackled, "You will rue your choices, fools! I will raise my sisters from the grave and we will hunt you down!"

    Zarek grunted as he ran up with his twin scimiters. "Not likely," he said in a deadly whisper. He brought his swords down and her head rolled across the floor, even as her body was still wrapped in Rushan's tentacles.

    Rushan quickly retracted his tentacles with a jerk and examined them. "You didn't chop me! That's amazing skill!"

    Zarek winced. "Um, yes. That was totally skill and not luck. Absolutely."

Aftermath

    Ozzy dared not turn to look at the sea hags. Even in death they haunted his waking moments. Would he ever be able to think of sea hags without shivering? He doubted it. Instead he focused on the threat of the Lev'necks.

    Instead of attacking, the two dinosaurs seemed to jerk with the death of Mistress Sa and were swimming towards the Dank Forest cave - chasing after a school of fish.

    "The Lev'necks left," Ozzy said in relief. "I think the fight is over." Many of the party members sighed and sat heavily on the floor at the news.

    Noxen cast his enchanted gaze over the bodies of the sea hags in appraisal. "These hags are covered in magic items," he said.

    The group, somewhat tentatively and with many exclamations of disgust, removed the magic items from the revolting-even-in-death sea hags.

    A large pile of loot was collected, while the reeking bodies of the monsters were pushed to one side of the reception hall.

    A painstaking search of the palace followed. They found several chests of gems and coins, which they immediately decided were part of their spoils and hid away from later use.

    Each of the sea hags had disgusting nests in the three largest bedrooms and searching them was a chore that everyone did with one hand pinching their nose. Even Natasha wouldn't go near the bedrooms, saying they stank too much.

    A hidden vault was found that had many chests filled with fancy (and worthless) seashells.

    "The great treasure of the Kuo-toa," Zafirah said wryly. "We might be able to use this to ensure the Kuo-toa don't back out of their deal with us." 

    Noxen collected all of the hag eye rings, saying mysteriously that he "might have a use for them." He also took the Amulet of Whispers that Mistress Sa used to control the Lev'necks. Apparently, it would only work for sea hags, but he looked quite sneaky and kept it anyway.

    A few wands, useful potions, some magic weapons, and a dragonturtle breastplate were also collected, but not all of them were deemed immediately useful by the party members. Natasha was given a magic ring to help her if she got surrounded again and was quite happy with her new bit of jewelry. All of the magic items were kept, of course, in the hopes that they might find some use for them at a later date - or perhaps a buyer for them at some future port of call?

    After dividing up the magic items and useful loot, Garrison made a proclamation: "I want to see the Lung and Temple of Krill'thak before we tell Tundor and Bianca that the way is clear. I don't fully trust them."

    The other party members agreed.

Exploring The Lung of Krill'thak

    Filling their mouths with fresh wads of air plant, the party swam past the Kuo-toa palace and towards the roiling surface of the area they knew to be the Lung of Krill'thak.

    The water churned and bubbled quite violently. When they came out of the water, the amount of blowing wind - the fierce air pressure that buffeted them - was quite amazing. It felt like they were in the midst of a terrible wind storm.

    "No wonder there is so much fresh air down here!" Min shouted.

    "What?" many of the party yelled back.

    Min, Garrison, and especially Ozzy had to be assisted as they were still quite weak from the magic of the vile sea hag's looks. The other members of the group helped them limp up out of the water and onto the rocky shore.

    Nemean helped Ozzy and asked if he would like to hang onto a rope so he could fly him like a kite. Ozzy laughed, but declined.

    As they walked towards the source of the wind, they noticed that the blast of wind was not constant, but came in gusts. They also saw that there were small holes or caves in the ceiling and walls, which whistled and howled in a horrible blast of noises. During the stronger gusts, they had to lean into the wind to make progress.

    "No worse than a sandstorm!" yelled Alba.

    "Better!" cried Zarek. "It is only wind - there is no grit!"

    Rushan was perplexed. "You dry-landers have complained about too much water and now you talk about there being too much air? Strange!"

    At the bottom of the cave, the found the source of the winds. Carved out of the living rock was a short pillar or altar made with five sides. On each side was a glowing white hole about 2-inches in size. From these holes the wind blasted. It bounced around the chamber before finding it's way into the small caves and pushed past the surface of the water.

    Nemean took one look at it and said, "Nope. That is not natural. At all."

    Zafirah rolled her eyes. "These are clearly one-way magical portals to the elemental plane of Air."

    "The what?" asked Uruk with confusion.

    "These holes breathe for the caves and they never stop exhaling."

    "Ah."

    "This is not a trivial amount of magical power," Garrison said worriedly.

    Noxen nodded in agreement. "The altar is overwhelming in power - it is some kind of lessor artifact, but I'm unsure as to what else it might be doing. There is a lot of Conjuration power here."

    Ozzy shook his head in dismay, "That's horrifying." He waved his hand over the powerful air-flows and discovered that the top of the altar was totally void of air currents, like the eye of a hurricane. He jerked his hand away.

    Near the altar, some of the party discovered that there were deep carvings in the walls, with them becoming more frequent the deeper they went into the cave.

    The images and writings were quite large and took some time to trace and figure out what they were. The images were of people who were worshiping air, magic, and Timonium.

    Min squawked excitedly, "I recognize some of these symbols! There is a large exhibit of this kind of thing, unidentified, but labeled as being about 12,000 years old, in a museum in Condottieri! Let's see... Yes... This says that this is the Temple of Krill'thak... That's apparently some kind of god or demon or something..."

    "A demon?" Uruk said with a frown.

    "Maybe? It's a bit unclear," Min said, "Anyway, this says that the unworthy should not attempt to enter the temple. That it's secrets are protected by a password and dire traps that only those who follow Krill'thak will know."

     "Are we sure we want Tundor and his scientists to mess with this?" Alba said worriedly.

     "Not alone," Garrison said with determination.