Our Brief – 

To travel to the Garden of Elements Waystation and meet with representatives of the Labyrinth of Xenos. The Labyrinth have been overly aggressive lately with their harvesting of items. While there we were also asked to collect a number of Magic components to aid with potential travel to the Conflux plane. 

 

Myself – Grey Sorcerer and Party leader. 

Ksndra – Red Sorceress

Ichabod – Blue Sorcerer 

Kyle – Eminent Sentinel

Kurt – Humacti Warrior

Bill Jingle – High Priest of the Hospital

Mallice – Druid High Priest

Jux – Reaper

Sir Verrick – Knight of the Order of St Michael. 

Nathan – High Priest of balance. 

Drakk – Half Orc Warrior

Rannarck – Half Orc Warrior

Ginny – Librarian and guide

The Magical Essence 

We were asked to collect a number of essences of pure magic. To do this we travelled from the garden of Elements waystation to the Garden of Elements plane. This seemed to be a demi-plane that can easily be accessed from the waystation. A simple ritual involving all eight elements was all that was needed. 

The garden itself was (as expected) populated almost entirely by elementals. Most of these were standard non-sentient aggressive elementals and we managed to “collect” the whole set. There were two sentient elementals who were able to hold conversations and gave us information about the nature of magic and elements. For those interested I will submit a separate essay on this subject soon. 

There were a number of members of the Concillium who also had ways of accessing the plane and where there conducting experiments. 

Each of the essences we had to collect was protected by a number of pure magic elementals. These manifest in a similar way to normal elementals but are purple in colour. They have huge skill with all magic and seemed to be able to cast it almost at will. They also had the ability to supress all mana within an individual. Doing this removed all lasting magic effects, both hostile and beneficial from the individual. The essence crystals themselves fired off random magic which was worse when multiple were brought into contact with each other. 

We had a few small attacks by the forgotten and one large group lead by a powerful possessed individual. As the fight was gearing up Nathan was able to Unshackle the Spirit bound within the leader. This is almost certainly the best use of an unshackle spirit that has ever been recorded. It saved us a potentially difficult fight and gained us a lot of information and hopefully an ally within the Forgotten. 

The leader was Amrit Soldan. He told us that the Forgotten are not all in thrall to Calex and the Black Queen. Calex is using forced embodiment of spirits in the high ranking individuals so that their subordinates are forced to be loyal. The Red King is also still alive and is being held in a cell by Calex. Amrit believed that if the Red King were freed he might have enough support to challenge Calex to be Nation leader. There are voices of descent within the ranks of the Forgotten and though they are not open, if support is available they are happy to act against Calex. In the mean time we agreed to provide what help we could and to try and unshackle more possessed individuals. 

 

Hordlings 

Steelday morning we were attacked by a small force of Hordlings. I mention this only because it is hopefully a good sign that the mists are beginning to return to normal. 

Creatures and Void

There were a number of hostile woodland creature in the area. This is yet more evidence that the land is being corrupted. There was also a powerful wave of void that swept over the area. This was followed by void creatures and then a pair of Soul Harvesters who were possessing a number of Concillium members. It turned out that this was a result of the Calex attempting to use the Mystic Gate, presumably to access the POTSD and find Cardinaris. Chancellor Marius, nation leader of the Wizards Concillium arrived shortly after this and tried to blame us as we had previously asked to use the Gate to access the POTSD to help recovering the members of the Sacred Sword. We were able to verify that Calex did not travel successfully and after agreeing to teach the Concilium the ritual of protection and myself and Nathan agreeing to travel to the Concilium to help investigate the extent of the problem the Chancellor left in a calmer and more reasonable state. 

We met and spoke with High Enchantor Hephestos of the Labyrinth. We had a long conversation that covered a number of points. The important elements are can be summarised as follows

 

No mission would be complete without some Khalid. They attacked a small force of Pathfinders we had asked to take the magical essence back to the Valley while we finished our mission. This was potentially a targeted attack rather than random Khalid forces. This suggests that either we were careless in who we discussed our plans round and the Khalid have spies who overheard or that they had somehow intercepted a whispering wind. There were larger Khalid attacks later that night including a blue sorcerer who could have been teleporting groups into the area. Of note one of the Khalid waves included Hepaths and the Khalid seemed to have pacts with Balor in a very similar manner to The Fortress of Pentar.

Our Final count of Khalid slain was 20, though there was some debate about whether creatures and Hepaths wearing Khalid colours count, I have not included them in this count.

As ever if you require more information or clarification I can be found within Darkhome or the Grey School. 

Khandis Greyspider 

11th Sorcerer of House Drannath