• Maervahr - stoneskin, invisibility
• Jacob - stoneskin, invisibility
• Josalyn - stoneskin, invisibility
• Fandilas - stoneskin, invisibility
• Lazathu - stoneskin, invisibility
• Oriyan - stoneskin, invisibilty
• Elias - stoneskin, invisibility
• Erasma - stoneskin, invisibility
• Thorgard - stoneskin, invisibility
• Tatrin - stoneskin, invisibility

We are currently in High Dell and are planning to return back to Solat Peak and the Pyramid beyond the Sphinx Teleporter.

• Jacob has requested once again of Maervahr to turn a Bull into a Sabertooth Tiger. Bull's are considered semi-intelligent. The Bull FAILS ITS SAVE and it is now a Sabertooth Tiger. Jacob immediately befriends the Tiger using his Ring of Animal Friendship so now we once again have two Tigers.

• Jacob gets a Hippogriff Egg from our Hippogriffs who are now a breeding pair. We can check for an egg every 25th day and a Hippogriff requires an additional 350 gp upkeep. Jacob also acquire's Kek's Hippogriff.

• IMPORTANT NOTE: A Fly or Levitate spell will allow you to cast a spell in flight.

• Kek paid his upkeep during the last session for his Hippgriff.

• Oriyan's Scale Mail is ID 99.

• There are two Clerics of Zo and a bunch of Men-at-Arms available to accompany us, a contingent from the Temple of Zo. The Temple wants to gain control of the “way-sphinx”, or Teleporter, for the Temple of Zo and are coming with us.

• We also have a contingent from the Temple of Venha, including a priest: Vasatrix (CLR2) along with 8 Men-at-arms wearing chainmail and carrying guisarme-voulges. They want to gain access to the “way-sphinx” Teleporter.

Maervahr bought a Bullseye Lantern and sold the Hooded Lantern.

We head out to the location from Mombafra, a large contingent.

As we are camping on the first night, Josalyn is keeping watch along with the Temple of Zo's Men-at-arms. Josalyn notices three shapes flying in the light of the moons that look like great bats. She raises the alarm as they begin approaching at great speed.

They are 40 yards away as they descend into the pass, in the same direction we are traveling.

Maervahr immediately casts Lightning Bolt and shoots an 8“ long bolt from his hand at the Large Bats.

Everyone starts to put on their armor except for a couple of people. Maervahr does 27 damage with the Lightning Bolt!

Suddenly, their forms change into that of 2 Men and a Woman and they are standing before us in black cloaks. Some of the Lightning Bolt had bounce off of their forms after it was discharged! There were two that made their save and they took half damage and then another half. They only took 7 damage while the other took 14 damage.

Their red eyes flicker incessantly as they gaze upon us. They try to catch the gaze of Maervahr, Fandilas, and Erasma.

Maervahr fails his save versus the charm and HE IS CHARMED! Maervahr and two of the Clerics have their guards lowered. Then, the group of three Vampires announce that they “have come to rescue us from certain doom as we are to be sacrificed by these interlopers. They were deceiving us.”

Maervahr gets on his Hippogriff to get out of harms way as our allies flee before us. “You stand no chance that you will live to see the dawn”, one Vampire threatens us. The other two Vampires lunge forward at incredible speed.

We have no power over these with a Chaotic Good deity but a Lawful Good deity would effect these Vampires, and indeed, THESE ARE VAMPIRES! They are charging at the party.

Elias is currently visible and both go straight for him. Retcon: MAERVAHR IS ACTUALLY NOT CHARMED!

Fandillas goes after Elias. Fandillas uses his Ring of Shocking Grasp and does 15 damage to one, which only does half damage. It instantly recoils from the holy symbol he wears. The other one is going straight for Elias, who has AC 7.

Elias is struck and takes 1 damage. HE IS DRAINED 2 LEVELS AND IS NOW LEVEL 3!

Meanwhile, Oriyan's warhorse BOLTS!

Maervahr moves to his Hippogriff while psionically invisible as Thorgard says, “As tribute, we will give you two magic potions and a pearl if you are willing to end this madness.” He makes a Reaction check and rolls a 52, not good enough. The Vampire closes in on Thorgard and says, “Now when you are pressed you offer up such paltry gifts, as your friends flee? Soon you will be dead and gone.”

Fandillas casts Mirror Image and now there are two images of him.

The Vampire is transformed into a Bat due to the holy symbol. The one going up against Elias says, “Surrender or you will join us”.

The third one charges in and Elias is leapt upon. He takes 1 damage and is, once again, drained for 2 levels!

Maervahr casts Mirror Image on himself and then goes psionically invisibile.

Elias is the only living target in range as he is being attacked by two Vampires. He is DRAINED for a third time as the undead feast upon his energy, Elias is Dead! He is at -1 levels.

The other Vampire Bat flies over to the north toward the Men-at-arms. They stand next to the two Clerics that they protect. The Bat turns back into a Vampire form and begins addressing them.

Maervahr casts Mirror Image and has 3 images. He then goes invisible. There is extreme fear amongst the Men of the Venha delegation. The Zo delegation also gives off an ill feeling as they move toward us.

Maervahr moves within 4” of the Vampires, but stays behind the tents. At this moment the Vampires turn into Bats and fly up, surveying the situation. They then move in the direction of the other Vampire.

Tatrin, Lazathu, Jacob, Josalyn have all fled and are gone. Fandillas is still leaving. The Vampires are now commanding the delegation of Zo and their Cleric is in a daze from the Charm spell.

Maervahr begins to cast Polymorph Other on one of the Vampires, on the one that charmed the delegation. HE SUCCESSFULLY CASTS IT AND TURNS IT INTO A JELLYFISH! The Vampire suddenly becomes translucent and morphs into a jellyfish with a big pink dome. Maervahr becomes invisible as the other two Vampire Bats move into attack him at -4, due to invisibility.

Maervahr runs away to his Hippogriff, which is now 12“ away as the forces of Zo and their Cleric run to the rock where Maervahr was hiding. Maervahr then goes to the body of Elias and summons Elias's Warhorse.

The Vampires begin heading south in pursuit of Maervahr's allies. Due to the assistance given to Elias and the Warhorse, the Vampire knows where he is now. Eliases Warhorse was 16” away from The Bat form Vampire and from the Cleric.

Maervahr moves his Hippogriff away from Elias's body.

The Bat form Vampire gets to where Elias's body is as Maervahr remains psionically invisible. He disengages without being hit up to 4“ away. At this point, Maervahr casts Polymorph other from behind on the Vampire.

As he begins casting the spell, his position is revealed and the Vampire moves to engage Maervahr. He finishes the spell, though if it fails, the Vampire will attack next round.

The Polymorph succeeds once again and the Vampire is turned into a Carp fish!

Maervahr tries to kill both the fish and the jellyfish, and he does so. Both are now dead.

Maervahr tries to pull the delegation of Venha with him along with the charmed Cleric who follows us back. The other party members have all fled.

For Maervahr, he is not surprised. He is traveling back to High Dell.

When we comes around a bend in the pass, he notices several Wolves just lounging around outside of a cave mouth. There are 6 Wolves and they are 13” away.

One of them is in a sitting position and the others are pacing around the cave. They do not seem interested in attacking. He puts himself between the Wolves and the Men-at-arms and they do not attack.

We get back to High Dell.

It is the morning of the third day.

Maervahr is sure to give Elias's items to the person expressed in his will.

The rest of the party has returned to High Dell, where Maervahr explains the encounter with the Wolves. We will head out to the cave of Wolves that he found.

Meanwhile, the contingent of Venha had departed the city and nobody has seen them since. The other members of the delegation of Zo have also not been seen.

On the second day out, we are close to the cave of Wolves.

We come upon the cave once again. Josalyn is able to tell that the Wolves regret not eating Maervahr when they first noticed him. These Wolves are not friendly. There are only 5 Wolves outside right now and they are 19“ away.

• Jacob moves to engage.
• Maervahr goes psionically invisible.

The Wolves charge forward! They can get to us in time, as they begin barking and yapping. Then, another 7 Wolves come out of the mountain cave behind them.

Three of the Wolves fall asleep from a Sleep spell. We tossed some rations as a distraction so the remaining ones stop at the rations to eat. All of them run to get to the rations and start looking over their shoulders at our party.

There are still 9 Wolves left.

Maervahr moves to engage. The Wolves have AC 7.

Our first Sabertooth Tiger hits one for 8 damage and then the other hits for 1 and 8 damage. There are 2 dead and 1 wounded. There are now 7 Wolves attacking or trying to flee.

Only three of them get back into the cave. Maervahr starts throwing daggers at the 5 Wolves and Oriyan is tying up the sleeping Wolves. There are 4 attacking Erasma, 1 hit! She takes 8 damage but it deflects off STONESKIN!

Maervahr charges and kills one after doing 6 damage. Jacob also kills one.

We eventually kill all the wolves and the rest of them have been tied up.

Inside the Wolves' Cave, Fandillas is looking for secret doors but there is none and there is no sign of life or marks. However, there is a pool of water. Fandillas lights a torch and finds that there is the tip of a metal box of some kind and a flat rock on the edge of the pool. The box is not concealed very carefully but there is a thin piece of slate on top of it.

Josalyn casts Find Traps and we find there are no traps around. Fandillas picks up the box and we can tell that the stone was set down recently. We can see by the manner of things lying around that the stone was put down here multiple times. He can feel that some are things rolling around in it. Bigger things and some smaller things.

Maervahr casts Invisibility on Erasma and then we depart.

We are heading to where we located the Vampires. It is a small peak that we can use to Dispel the fish and the jellyfish corpses and where Maervahr can cast Dispel Magic.

He casts the spell and they transform back into Vampires. Their bodies begin to flake off into the air, their screaming eventually dies down as the bodies decompose more and more. The carried the following:

• 1 potion
• 2 cloaks
• Maervahr collects Vampire parts and Vampire dust.

Trying on the Cloak, the group does some sparring. This does not reveal anything with the cloak. Maervahr used psionic Detect Magic on these and saw a minor magic aura inside of the potion but no magic on the cloaks.

We depart back to Solat Peak.

It is an uneventful travel all the way from the Temple of Zo in High Dell to Solat Peak. The delegations are no longer around and there are no Centipedes in the wall as we progress through the known passages of the ruined depths. We enter the Chamber of the Sphinx.

• Scroll of vellum with Arcane Magic.
• 3 gems

Using the Teleporter on the Sphinx, we fade out in the course of a minute and end up back inside the chamber of the winged Gynosphinx on the other side.

After we appear inside of the Gynosphinx chamber, we do not see anything different than before.

• Fandillas casts Strength on himself.

Thorgard, Jacob and Fandillas are opening doors. They push open the door and we wander past the stone block.

We see the following inscription that we are now able to translate:

Outsiders and outcasts doomed
By this way descend now to their end
Frozen below or above
It is all the same to the wind

The way is still open, the passage that we previously trapped with a Web spell.

We get to the bottom of the stairs and can hear scraping. It is the sound of lots of things moving around in the dirt, like hard bone or metal.

Jacob and Thorgard advance, each with their magic light sword.

There are undead here.

We come across 1 Skeleton and 1 Ghoul in the room before us and there are 2 Skeletons to the south. The Skeletons move back but it looks like a total of 6 Skeletons and 4 Ghouls in here.

• Fandillas uses his Ring of Shocking Grasp.
• Maervahr begins to cast Polymorph Other on one of the Ghouls.

The first Sabertooth Tiger is hit and takes 5 damage. There are now 3 Ghouls on Fandillas and 1 on the Tiger. The Ghouls missed Fandillas! However, Fandillas is immune to the Ghoul's paralyzation effect. He has an AC 0 and no claws hit then 1 hits breaking against his STONESKIN!

One Ghoul is Polymorphed into a Jellyfish and another takes 8 damage from Fandillas.

A Turn Undead is used and all of the Undead in here are turned! As they begin to flee, Jacob kills one of the Ghouls and another takes 6 damage from Thorgard, destroying it. One of the Skeletons takes 3 and 6 damage from a Tiger, leaving only 4 fleeing Skeletons left. Jacob destroyes another Skeleton.

As we pursue them, we destroy all of the rest of the Skeletons and Maervahr dispatches the Jellyfish.

There is no treasure to be found.

Maervahr goes to sit in the Chariot and we try out the rein we found, which is one-half of the set of reins. Thorgard attaches the other set of reins, the other half, and the reins fit perfectly.

Maervahr lights up his bullseye lantern.

We search through the walls and the room and pass into the cold chamber. As Fandillas passes by the cold area, frost forms on his armor. He notices a secret door where it is more frosty. Cold air emerges. There is a thin layer of frost the area has been disturbed.

This area is abnormaly cold and will require winter gear or a warmth enchantment to endure. The secret door feels very frosty but Thorgard opens it.

Suddenly, A Rune of Frost manifests on the side of the room and explodes. He must save versus breath though Thorgard gets a +2 on this save. HE SAVES!

Thorgard takes 8 damage from the cold blast and then the Rune dissipates.

Inside, beyond the secret door is another chamber. A Cure Light Wounds spell is cast and Thorgard is back to full health.

Inside the secret room we find more coffers that are piled high with many coins!

• 6500 sp
• 500 gp
• A wrapped up leather package with twine, feels like crossbow bolts inside.

Maervahr uses Detection of Magic and sees a minor aura and faint magic aura inside the leather wrapping. Inside is a rolled up piece of vellum

• 4 Darts, that are more magical.
• A scroll with arcane runes.
• 3 gems (1,000 gp deep emerald, 500 gp peridot, 10 gp lapis lazuli).

Thorgard does not find another secret compartment or the other set of reins.

THE ADVENTURE IS PAUSED.

We do get the Vampire combat XP:

• Maervahr 1,608 xp

Maervahr's total is currently 96805 xp