The Downfall of a Paranian Kingdom:

Hermit and the Frog

The four of us left Bethu on our journey to the Capital City Paran. We encountered little resistance across the grasslands, and then we entered the forest that surrounds the capital. We tried to enter the city, but were turned away as we were not merchants with approval. We were unable to bribe our way into the city, so we circled the city and eventually gave up and started our journey towards the eastern swamp lands.

As we moved through the forest, we began to hear voices warning us not to continue along this path, but we continued anyway. We came upon a open grove, Shiver's Grove, inhabited by six wraiths. The wraiths charged us, and we had a difficult time defeating these ethereal creatures. We examined the area and found a hidden stairwell that went down into a tomb. Under the ground there were a dozen more wraiths. Blurp charged right into the middle of them, while Malyus unleashed an Ice Storm on the pack of wraiths. Ahlara and Greggor charged after Blurp, and Malyus continued to unleash destructive magic on these creatures, as it seemed to be the most reliable weapon against them. A few of us got struck by those foul creatures, and our strength was drained. This required us to sneak into the city and look for a church to restore our lost power.

After making a donation to the church, we continued east towards the swamp. Before we got to the swamp, we had to cross a couple rivers, and a group of ogres was guarding a bridge that we needed to cross. Not wanting to pay a toll of any sort, a battle ensued. Malyus called down an Ice Storm and Sonic Storm on a pair of ogres, and Blurp and Ahlara attacked an ogre and an ogre-magi. And Greggor flanked both remaining ogres with Blurp and Ahlara, allowing them to slaughter the band of ogres. We crossed the bridge and started to enter the swamp, and Malyus became very familiar with a frog who helped guide us through the swamp.

One night while the party slept, we were captured by a group of people covered in caked on mud. They tied us up, and carried us to their city in the swamp. We were brought before the leader of this clan, the Dartans. He informed us that we were trespassing in their homeland without permission. We let him know that we seeked a hermit who came from the west, the leader realized who we spoke of, and sent for him. On his arrival, we spoke of Master Dilherst and his instructions to seek the hermit out. The hermit remembered Dilherst, so our lives were spared by the Dartans.

The hermit took us to his hut and we spoke more of our mission to seek out a dragon for assistance in our attempt to hold back the Paranian Army. He gave us a Wand of Dragon Control to use on the Ancient Black Dragon from the swamp to the north. We accepted his gift and went to the leader of the Dartans and informed him of our mission, and that we would earn their trust by defeating the Evil creature. He wished us luck and never expected to see us again.

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In Search of a Dragon

We purchased a new pack animal indigenous to the swamp to help us traverse the swamp land. A few days into the swamp, we found a corpse of one of these same creatures, so Malyus added it to our little army. Later that day we felt the ground rumbling, the water was vibrating, and then we heard a big roar of a Tyrannosaurus Rex as it charged us. It took a big hunk out of our living pack animal, allowing for the rest of the party to hack, slash, and electricute the huge beast. We continued northward and were ambushed by a small pack of Raptors. Once they were slayed, Malyus released all of his remaining undead, and animated four Raptors as his new "army".

We finally came upon a lake with an island in the middle of it. We found a fallen tree, and used it as a flotation device to get to the island. Once we got to the island, we found nothing there. Blurp eventually went into the water, and he found an entrance under the water. We followed him into the water and up through the entrance. We descended down a long tunnel and found the Ancient Black Dragon. The dragon sensed something about Malyus, who has the Dragon's Stone, and told us a tale about David of Arimithaya, and how Malyus is a decendant of David, and how I'll be the cause of the downfall of Paran. We weren't confident in the strength of the wand, so we left him alone. But as we left the cavern, three young dragons waited for us up on the surface of the island. We used the wand on one of them, and tried to use it on the other two, but there was only one charge with the wand. The dragon that we controlled dove back under the water to get us help for our destructive plans, while the other two saw through our magic and attacked. These young dragons were no match for us, but we took part of their corpses as proof of our survival against the dragons.

As we journeyed back toward the Dartans to see if they would be willing to provide us with help against Paran, Malyus decided to replace his Raptors with something bigger. So he dismissed his Raptors, and animated the T-REX. We went to visit the hermit first, and he told us that the Paranians had come to the swamp, and have taken over the Dartan city. The hermit told us that the Paranians were rounding up all of the Dartan clans into small internment camps. We figured that if we were able to defeat the Paranians, then the Dartans would feel obligated to help us... and killing Paranians is always fun anyway. Our first objective was to rescue the leader of the Dartans. We went invisible and snuck into the main house, and found the leaders of the Paranians in the Dartan leader's chamber. Blurp snuck up to the leader and slayed the leader, and he left the remaining members to the rest of us. We then found the Dartan leader in the same dungeon that we were stuck in. We released the leader, and Greggor was sent to the internment camps, and he began an uprising from the camps. While Greggor was gone, Blurp, Ahlara and Malyus began to kill the Paranians.

After the Paranians were defeated, the leader of the Dartans agreed to help us against the Paranians, if Gunther would also seige the city. We informed him that Gunther's army was already on route, we didn't mention that we were Gunther's army, and that we would get even with the Paranians.

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The Seige of Paran

When we reached the city of Paran, we found that the city was already under seige by the Kesanans, a clan from the north that is usually peaceful with the Paranians. However, the Paranians have stopped all trade routes with the Kesanans, so the Kesanans have come to investigate. While investigating the city of Paran, we discovered that the Paranains had already sent it's main force out after Gunther, thus why they were having to negotiate with the Kesanans. And they had recruited the Tabatan clan as militia for the city.

One of our plans of attack was to poison the people of Paran, so we cut off dying flesh from the T-Rex, aka Sparky, and Malyus went invisible and infiltrated the city and began poisoning the wells by dropping in the dead flesh. While he was on this task, a blind man approached him and called out to him. The blind man asked him to follow him, because his master wished to speak with him. Malyus, still invisible, complied, so he followed the blind man down some alleys and into a small building. Inside stood two people he recognized and a third person was sitting down, it was Krytir and her henchmen. Krytir was the head priestess of the Paranian chruch, and she was weaving a chaotic chain of events in the name of Kortamus, the god she really worshipped. She told me of her planned events, and urged us to do something before peace can be made between the Paranians and the Kesanans. And that is exactly what we planned on doing...

We saw that the Kesanans and the Paranians were close to coming to terms over the stopped trade routes, so we decided to intervene for the betterment of... us. We killed a couple Paranian guards, and carried their bodies into the Kesanan encampment and slaughtered a few Kesanan guards and left the Paranian bodies behind. Later, we snuck into the encampment and discovered that Reiko was leading the Kesanan force against Paran.

We then met up with the Dartans who were coming from the south, and informed them that another ally was attacking from the north, and that we, Gunther's Army, were attacking from numerous points to the west. We instructed the Dartans to prepare their encampment to the south, as that would be their staging area for the assault. After we left the Dartans, we headed to the west in order to begin our Reign of Chaos... No, we didn't go play WarCraft III, it wasn't out yet.

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Assaulting Paran

As the party moved into position on the western side of the city, they encountered a group of four trolls in the forest. The trolls were tracking the big foot prints from Sparky, and they were looking for a big meal, unfortuantely for them, they found out that Sparky had friends. After killing the trolls, we turned them all to stone with our dagger of petrification... as we had plans for them later.

We used Sparky to break down sections of the walls, killing off a few guards and priests whenever we could. We caught a messanger coming from the west. His letter told of a Battle at Bethu, and that many of the men have died fighting Gunther. We bribed the messanger, and wrote a new letter to the King of Paran, informing him that the army was bored, can't find Gunther, and wished to come home. We never saw any action from this, but we had hoped it would inspire the King of Paran to recall his troups to save his city.

Later that night our attack on the city began. The first goal was to cause distractions within the city, so attention would not be directed wholely against us. Distraction began by turning one of the statues back into a troll, and then with Malyus Levitating, Greggor pulled a rope and got Malyus, Greggor and the Troll flying over the city. Malyus droppped the troll in one section of the town. Also while flying over the town, Malyus unleashed a Fireball into the Tabatan area, igniting a large section of rations and equipment. Malyus also used one of his rings to cast Plant Growth on the orchards surrounding the catherdral. Once Greggor and Malyus arrived back on the southern side of the city, the party began it's journey towards the city.

Ahlara, Blurp, Greggor, Malyus and Sparky invaded the city, we spotted a few guards, but we were not able to kill all of them before they fled, and they just seemed to watch us from other alleys. We destroyed many buildings as we moved deeper into the city. When we came into a large courtyard, troops began attacking. Archers came in from the northwest and northeast. Ahlara engaged one group of Archers, Greggor did what Greggor does and helped flank Archers with Ahlara. Sparky and Blurp engaged the other group. Malyus levitated up into the air to get a better vantage point of the battle. Fighters and priests came in from the southwest and southeast to complete their ambush. The archers were getting slaughtered by Ahlara, Blurp and Greggor. Sparky turned his attention to the priests, while Malyus cast Dispel Magic against the priests enchantments and brought down Storms and Bolts against the enemy. However, the Archers and Fighters were beating the crap out of the 60 foot tall T-Rex, and Sparky was almost dead, but Malyus used the Amulet to cause terror in the remaining enemy force. We returned to the outside of the city to regroup, and let Sparky rest.

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Downfall of Paran

While we were resting, we could hear the continuation of battle between the forces of the Paranians, Tabatans, Kesanan and Dartans. And during the night, an elf entered our camp. The elf introduced himself as Kcalb, from the elven clan that we banished from the Paranian Kingdom. He told us of a plan by Krytir to animate a horde of undead from elven corpses, which we had no problem with, but he told us that she had plans to use them to defend the city of Paran, which we did have a problem with.

We went back into the city, and snuck our way towards the overgrown cathedral. Inside we saw Krytir creating a huge magical portal, and her henchmen were standing guard. Greggor snuck up to one of them, while Blurp snuck up to the other. They both attacked at the same time, and they both slayed the henchmen. Krytir stopped her spell of summoning to grieve over her fallen friends, and we informed her that we could not let her prevent the fall of Paran, and she said she was trying to summon Gunther because he was in trouble. At that moment, Kcalb entered the cathedral, and the doors slammed shut behind him. He told us that he was here to avenge his brothers, and he polymorphed back into a Black Dragon. The Dragon spewed it's breath at us, and we unleashed our fury back at the beast and slayed it within minutes. Outside the cathedral, the city was full of Dartans and Kesanans running through the streets, looting buildings, and ransacking the town... The City of Paran was no more. With our work here done, Krytir packed up her things, and we left the Ruins of Paran and began our journey home.

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Epilogue

When we got back to the Academy, we found out that Gunther was slain during a battle at Bethu, and that Mistress Dileia, Gunther's elven wife, was now in charge of the Academy. Master Dilherst was at her side, along with the new Captain of the Guard Tiberius. Krytir continued her journey to another region to cause more chaos. Blurp convinced Mistress Dileia to construct a Gladitorial Arena in the Academy, Malyus began to research new spells, Ahlara sharpened her axe, and Greggor practiced his defences. What they did after that is for another time and place...

Prior Adventures...

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