Not All Goes As It Should

Immediately after the attempt to turn the vampiric party members back to their un-undead selves, Gurrik found the group one member short. He hadn't counted on the boon that drawing from the artifact deck of cards had granted the rogue, who had used it to escape from the destructive power of the wand, along with, it seemed, the entire demiplane. The rogue would surely be missed in the adventure to come, but they could make do with wizard and cleric spells in his place.

As Gurrik predicted, Vecna indeed answered his prayers, raising the party from death and restoring them to their living forms. Luckily, the wizard having been returned to his original demeanor, didn't seem as irritated as Gurrik thought he might. The warrior and paladin let forth no protest at the matter.

Thinking to restore the paladin's powers, Gurrik then performed the atonement ritual for Caleb, asking that Heironious re-pledge his holy power to a paladin, who having beat undeath, desired to return to his service. The ritual succeeded, but unfortunately for the paladin, Vecna, apparently still interested in the situation, intervened. The paladin's powers had returned, but they came at Vecna's whim rather than Heironious's. Not pleased, but having no other choice, Caleb accepted this.

Though it seemed the paladin was just being bounced around like child's toy at this point, the affects it must be having on his mind interested Gurrik quite a bit. From faithful holy power to dark and evil undeath and now just as his hope had been returned, a mischievous god strung him a new marionette line. Yes, surely this would be an interesting topic for later. Assuming the warrior of gods maintained his sanity long enough to escape Acerak's demiplane.

After a few encounters of random disinterest, Gurrik noticed that the wizard indeed had seemed to grow stronger by the hour. Perhaps a side-effect of the resurrection, or perhaps something less covert. Another mystery for later. However, there was no doubt the wizard's spells were making progress through the various empty towers of Moil easier.

At one point the party found themselves in some sort of large room, a lone armored figure brandishing a well-made greatsword in the middle. Gurrik didn't recognize him from any Vecna or Acerak lore, but it didn't seem like the sword-wielder intended to discuss his past. After issuing a challenge to the group, the paladin easily bested him with the aid of his new hippogryph mount.

Gurrik idly wondered what affects summoning a celestial animal into a negative energy demiplane might have on the creature. Later, he thought. Finding Acerak was the priority for the moment. But so many interesting things had happened...

Later they came upon a hollow tower filled with green, glowing webbing. No knowledge of the undead or occult came to him to explain them, but the wizard thought it might be a sort of powerful demon- or devil-born spider. Several spells later, large holes had been produced in the mass of webbing, but they quickly regenerated. An interesting ability, Gurrik realized. Would the webs still grow if separated from the mass? If so, the potential they possessed was immense.

But even as he pondered this, the wizard had already tried using the wand of daylight on the creature. It recoiled briefly, but seemed largely unaffected, as much so as were the webs. But spying something deeper in the tower with his magical sight, the wizard teleported underneath the webbing and disappeared from view.

He immediately returned, describing a large black box inscribed with red runes. Also hanging from the box was one of the skeletal undead they had fought earlier, skull aflame. Gurrik was somewhat sure now that these undead were called winter wights, but without remains to study he could not say for sure.

While Gurrik distracted himself considering the purpose or contents of the box, the wizard cast another powerful spell, creating acidic vapor around the large mass of webbing that dominated the center of the tower below. Immediately the mass of webbing began rising out of the dark, creating new tendrils of webbing further up the inside of the tower as quickly as the acid burned through old ones.

With the glowing green mass approaching them, Gurrik hurridly cast a spell to neutralize magic in his immediate vicinity and waited at the entrance for the bulk to approach. Showing no sign of pausing in the dead magical space, Gurrik unleashed a powerful destructive spell at the creature hidden inside. Had it succeeded, the creature should have been destroyed utterly. Of course, to Gurrik's chagrin, it did not. Nor did it even slow the creature down.

Gurrik backed away down the connecting bridge slowly as the rest of the party fled to a safe distance. But once the group had gone far enough away, the green mass receded, not showing any signs of chase or even interest.

After the quick and ineffective battle, the wizard again teleported down to the black cube and used a powerful spell to completely destroy it. Apparently this caused the wight to fall into the blackness below, cackling something about waiting 33 days for it to "grow back." How Gurrik longed for Vecna's astral library. Any detail as significant as this would surely reveal the box's purpose. Not to mention finding out exactly what the demon/devil/thing inside the mass of webs was and a way to defeat it.

Leaving the spider tower for now, they ventured into yet another, this one showing the signs of scientific medical practice. Many of the instruments were beyond Gurrik's knowledge of healing, but he had always depending on his divine gifts rather than splints and tourniquets.

One room however was quite interesting. Large pools of bluish bubbling liquid in square depressions were set into the floor like grid work. Immediately after entering the room, Gurrik felt slightly weaker. The cold here was more than his protection spells could handle. But still, the bubbling liquid at such an extreme temperature interested him.

As Gurrik moved further into the room with the warrior and wizard in tow, he fished an empty vial and a set of calipers out of his brewing kit and filled the vial with the bubbling liquid. As a drop landed on his finger, he felt the chill down to the bone. But the liquid in the vial quickly warmed after being separated from the pool. Unfortunate, he thought, but definitely warranting further study later, perhaps on a plane of ice.

Peering into the pools, the party discovered that each contained a body, very dead, but very well preserved. The wizard, after locating a large pole hook, pulled the body out of the nearest pool. The figure, looking to be an original Moilian, spared the affects of Orcus's curse, seemed to have died from a head wound.

Gurrik, figuring the party could possibly gain some information from the thousands year old man, used one of the group's diamonds in a powerful resurrection spell. Once the language barrier had been broken, the group learned that the Moilian didn't know much of anything about what had transpired. This interested Gurrik simply in the fact that this was a living, breathing specimen of pre-Orcus-cursed Moilian. Many things could be learned about the history of the city from this man. Only the current situation prevented lengthy discourse, but after they had found Acerak, the leftover Moilians would certainly be a treasure of wealth unimaginable.

Shortly after, they encountered a fascinating mechanical construct called Doctor Tar. The construct seemed almost over-eager to operate upon the group after confirming the resurrection and health of the Moilian. Gurrik, and in fact the entire party, declined this examination and moved onwards. Another room in the tower revealed a sort of construct nurse who immediately bounded off after Gurrik inferred to here that she had a new patient to manage.

In another room, they found a large, but apparently unmaintained machine, the figure of a man hollowed into the side. Casting a powerful knowledge spell, Gurrik identified the machine as a regeneration unit of some kind. Moilian society must have been fairly brutal for such a machine to exist in the first place. And seemingly lacking in holy healing magics given both the machine and the pools of preservative liquids.

Yet again Gurrik found himself interested in the wonders of Moil. Eagerly serving constructs, seemingly thrilled to find themselves useful again, but showed no apparent emotions physically. Along with a machine that apparently accomplished what only powerful healing spells or magical items could back in his own plane. He didn't have time to determine whether the constructs or machine were magic or mechanical in nature, but again, after dealing with Acerak...

Another tower later, the wizard identifying it as the Tower of Discipline, Gurrik was using his anti-magical spell to sever the hold a large man wearing a dark hood and wielding a powerful-looking greataxe held over the party warrior. Failing to entice his first victim, the man, which turned out to be another Moilian construct, attempted to command Gurrik to show his neck for the reaping and was met with a smirk. The warrior and paladin quickly dealt with the now non-magical executioner and the warrior had yet another powerful magical weapon at his disposal.

In another room they found a cocoon-wrapped and dessicated corpse. The corpse wore only a necklace with a small vial. Inside the vial on a piece of parchment were scrawled the words "tortured until confession."

Yes, surely this place would please Vecna greatly, Gurrik realized. So much lost lore and so much death and pain. The dark god of knowledge would surely love to call this plane his own. But first, the group would have to find a way out or deal with Acerak or both. More towers waited, perhaps holding answers or as previously found, more death, puzzles or worse.

On Undead and Why They Like To Stay That Way

Having spent a reasonable amount of time in the astral plane researching all sorts of life, death and purely coincidental subjects, Gurrik had learned a decent amount about the undead species. Most, obviously, are about at clever as a rock to the skull, but occasionally powerful wizards, sorcerers, gods or other fools bent on evil will come up with a good one. But one thing he was fairly certain of was that a paladin-turned-undead-blackguard was probably not something the poor guy really intended on becoming.

Ordinarily the plight of others wouldn't much interest Gurrik, less involvement with some sort of intellectual pursuit, but as his cadre made their way through the abandoned towers of Moil, he realized more and more that a paladin would be of more use here than a blackguard. Sure, the blackguards new-found ability to control undead had come in handy, but it simply couldn't compare to the power of holy devotion when it came to dealing with undead.

Gurrik thought long and hard about the situation while the vampires flitted about, exploring the towers. The unfortunate part about becoming an undead is that even the most powerful resurrection spells will not bring you back to life. This would be a major stumbling block in transforming the paladin back to his original self. However, once slain, an undead can be brought back to life. Following this, a simple spell of atonement, an appeal to the paladin's god, should restore his powers -- even here in Acerak's demi-plane. The trick, Gurrik believed, would be the pitch.

Having come up with a plan to save (and Gurrik used this word loosely) the paladin, another problem came to mind. No self-respecting paladin of any righteous god is going to be okay with walking around with a bunch of animate corpses. The paladin could be saved, but now the vampires, extremely useful thus far, had become the problem.

But as all geniuses must, Gurrik put all the pieces together and knew what must be done. The loss of the undead powers the vampires possessed would not be a minor setback, but the abilities the paladin would possess outweighed the loss of a mist form and addiction to blood. The vampires would understand after the fact. Probably.

Caleb, the paladin-turned-blackguard was quite receptive to the idea. It turns out that when you break a paladin in such a manner, they have some serious issues dealing with their past and present selves. The internal struggle interested Gurrik but unfortunately Moil was neither the time nor place to get into it.

The plan was simple: Gurrik and the blackguard would wait for an opportune moment, trap the vampires in a room, and use the wand they had found previously to disintegrate them. Gurrik was fairly certain this would work even on the dimension dooring mage. The thief and warrior should be no trouble at all.

After the vampires had been dealt with, Gurrik would slay the blackguard with a single spell. Following the "death" of his entire party, he would then use the most powerful spell in his arsenal to call upon the most mighty and knowing Vecna for divine intervention in restoring the entire party to their former, living selves. He had faith in Vecna, but he also knew that his god desired the knowledge of Acerak's location, if not destruction. Vecna would answer his prayers.

Now that the plan had been agreed upon, Gurrik and Caleb only need wait for the right moment. With any luck, and Gurrik didn't believe in luck, he'd be adventuring with his not-so-evil and much-more-sane party again shortly.