From the diary of Silvan the Dryad Session date: 23.11.2003 We began studies of life magic today. It was pretty hard. The head druid came to ask if we wanted to join the mission to the cave today. We said we did. We came to the cave. It had been constantly guarded, so no demons could get out. The demon suggested we use a net over the cave to capture some demons alive. Longfoot retrieved a net and we laid the trap. We began to wait. Some of us went inside. They saw a corpse on the floor, one that had been ritually murdered. The demon said it was a ritual killing the demons did for traitors. There was a hole in the wall. It looked like it'd been made from the outside. The other druids wanted to leave, unwilling to start hunting demons. We also found small skeletons, who looked like they might have been the villager's lost children. We saw no imp skeletons that would've supported the "we ate our weakest demons" claim we'd been told. We reported to the villagers the situation. They were a little suspicious, saying the kids had not been the only people they'd lost, and suspected the druids might have taken those. We went to bed. There was noise and we woke up. It was a crowd of villagers. They were angry about not getting to talk to their relatives who'd joined the druids. We managed to calm them down a bit, but they left uncontent. The head druid sent us to Mercantile Keep to buy more food. The Knight of Dawn we had with us said he'd be leaving, to report of the dragon skeleton he'd seen in our map. We were also told that it might be a good excuse if we told the Master that the beast god had Azmodan's amulet, and that was the reason we did not want to use the pin the Master had given us to slay the beast god. The KoD was unwilling to wait any longer, but said he'd leave us a message anyway. We were given a wagon and money and headed for Mercantile Keep. It was quite a keep. We told the merchants who we were and they let us in, telling us to talk to Dimmel, who'd been handling the trades with the druids. I saw kids playing on the wall of the keep, and went to talk with them, since it didn't seem like they'd be needing me. They were playing some sort of game where one of them was wearing a demon's horns. Then Dimmel showed up and told them to go to class, and they did. This was a bit odd, since I wasn't sure if kids knew of demons around here. We were brought in and served refreshments. Dimmel went away for a while, came back, and we gave him a paper with our orders. We sealed the deal and went on our way. On the way, the undead spotted a demon who'd apparently been following us for a while. Our demon attacked the hostile demon from the air and took it as prisoner. We the druids a demon. They took it prisoner and went to interrogate it. Dorgan wanted to speak to us. He did. He said he wanted Fangas' Scythe from the Master, since Fangas was worth rescuing. Dorgan, on the other hand, had no use for Azmodan's amulet. He had plenty of plans, but we rejected them all. Then he decided to just go catch Master's contact among us. We studied magic again. Life magic was still challenging, but now I managed to understand the basic principles. Dorgan sent a messenger to the Master. The messenger had carried a message to the Master, suggesting a trade: Azmodan for Fangas. The Master had killed the messenger in the interrogation and thought for 2½ hours before replying to the message. Me and Longfoot left to brief the Old Man of the situation while the others went to conduct the trade with the Master. We ran into the others at the Inn. Daylo had returned. We discussed matters Returning to the druids, we noticed that there was an unusually large amount of sword elves standing around. The undead became an illusion orc with the help of the illusion ring and gave a beggar a letter to be passed on. After the beggar had passed on the letter, some of Master's men grabbed the beggar and dragged him away. We decided to leave. Somebody climbed the Royal Statue and began shouting. The druids went there. Sword elves came out of the gate and ran to the statue too. We didn't hear what the man was saying. A moment later, two druids came dragging the man. They lifted the man on a wagon, which left the town. I was sent to steal a child's clothes. I dressed up as one, and went to loiter around the big event to see what was going to happen. The druids left for the statue, and two of the Master's merry men went there as well. At some point, one of the MMM gave a very obvious sign, even though it probably wasn't very obvious for the druids. Lots of heads went up by the wall, and lots of arrows began raining on the druids. The Queen's orc bodyguard was there shooting as well. The mage we'd hired to transport the artifact away had been shot dead. The MMM left, and the Master was approaching with sword elves and mages. They took Fangas' scythe and the Master went to hold a speech. "I hope this removes all doubt of me having stolen Fangas' scythe," he said. "For it was due to my hint that the artifact was retrieved. These druids also have another artifact, which shall be retrieved as soon as we can mass enough forces to get it." We decided to leave the city ASAP. On the way, we saw a stopped wagon and approached it. Around it were gathered robed men. They approached us and asked us what had been happening in the city. They hesitated on whether they should continue this particular night but thought they maybe should, since the wagon, which was not the same that we had seen earlier, carried Lord Wiltshire's hyvitykset. We returned to the druids. There weren't many people around. The whole camp was pretty empty. We found the ArchDruid, who put away something he'd been carrying and then talked to us. He thought this was really bad and was worried about how valuable members they had lost and how they could not retrieve the bodies for resurrection. He didn't want to tell us where the rest of the druids where, but said they were part of another operation. After briefing the ArchDruid, we returned to Dorandor. We ate in the Ashtray Inn, and got a report from the Old Man about Dorgan. After a while, we decided to report to the Master. We told him that we had fled the Druids after they had captured our contact with the Master. From what he said, we got the impression he had Azmodan's amulet. We returned to the druids and practiced magic. I finally learned how to actually use Life magic. Then we went to bed (even though I went to tree). During the night, I was roasted out of my tree and the druids took me and the others as prisoners to the chapel (WTF?!?). We saw other prisoners there as well, four of them in total. One of them claimed to be the crown prince of Dorandor (major WTF:ing). One of them had a weird helmet that seemed to prevent any seeing or hearing. We tore the helmet off the one guy's head. He was an elf, and stretched his jaw. "It was about time," he said. He introduced himself as Quaylan, and wanted to see what one person in the cell looked like. We turned the guy's head. Quaylan said he was called John Gwynneth, and they'd apparently had previous dealings with each other. Quaylan shouted at the last sleeping fellow, who was called Dinah, the royal metallurgist. Quaylan also told us that he'd always had fights going on with Arias. He told us that while he was visiting Aleandor, his dragon was suddenly assaulted by a huge group of arrows. The dragon perished, but Quaylan managed to conduct an emergency landing. He lost his goods, though, including his great Staff of Summoning +80. When he fell, he ended up in the middle of many, many demons. They took him prisoner. We told Quaylan about the druids (?), and he and Arian were very surprised. The door to the cell was opened. Dorgan stepped inside, escorted by A Big Demon. ABD resembled a succubus, but its legs were not a human's legs anymore, and it was huge. We were asked to move to the wall so he wouldn't need to kill us in case we were trouble. Dorgan removed his cape, and we saw that he resembled a demon, and had a demon's horns, too. The two demons discussed John Gwynneth, who was the son of the ABD. ABD was angry about the way Dorgan had interrogated the prisoner. ABD reminded Dorgan of how ABD had gotten Dorgan his position, and Dorgan promised ABD would be third in the demon hierarchy once Azmodan was resurrected. The two fought, and ABD ended up getting tossed against the wall. Some demon had apparently become Dorgan. Dorgan revoked our demon's wings, and said she'd been stupid for thinking that Life magic could've been used to restore her wings. Only Demonic magic could do that. Dorgan said the death of his druids had been a little unnecessary, and he'd underestimated GalileoTheMaster. Nonetheless, Azmodan's amulet was now in Dorgan's possession. The real amulet had been returned to the Sentinel Tower earlier on. His plan was to gather the Band of Brothers & Azmodan and drive everybody from the face of Karya. Longfoot asked why'd they were called brothers, and Dorgan, amused, explained that their earlier hosts had all been brothers. Dagardan was no longer very interested in getting back to line, though. At first they'd thought they'd kill us, but since we'd been their spokesmen, they thought that we'd make for excellent scapegoats. One of the druids came down, and he looked like an incubus. They discussed the trolls they had guarding the temple, and an order was given to move the trolls here to prevent our escape. The amulet we'd given him, the amulet we'd thought to be Azmodan's amulet, was an Amulet of Gating +666. It could be used to even gate Dorgan, and at some point Dorgan would be gated to the Master. We were told that what we'd thought to been Life and Elemental magic was actually Demonic magic (it could be used to corrupt and spawn). In case the Master still wasn't weakened enough, Dorgan had Tamaol's leaf on him. "Those probably won't be back in a moment," Quaylan said. "When I was brought here, I tried to weaken one of the walls using Alteration magic. That wall's actually sand now - you might be able to dig your way out. The only thing dumber than a troll is a summoned troll, so they might not pay you any attention if you don't come through the door. And don't forget me when you get out, like everybody else has forgotten me, damnit." We began digging our way as fast as we could. We took the Crown Prince's boots, since those might be used to signal the castle guard that this was really something urgent. We dug and dug and dug and finally got to moonlight. There were trolls outside. We began running towards Dorandor as fast as we could. There were so-called druids on the road behind us, and they saw us running. Two trolls were sent after us. We ran to the undead-infested temple, hoping the trolls would get stuck fighting the undead there. The trolls stopped outside. We got into the catacombs. A figure welcomed us. Our undead walked to him, and we saw that it was Lord Wiltshire. He said he was the only undead here, and there had never been any others. Any other undead on the isle had only been recently-killed people raised from the dead, but not healed in any way. His own master had asked Wiltshire to travel here and bring the undead here. His own keep now under the control of Wiltshire's major domo. His major domo now controlled him, but the MD did not control Wiltshire's creations, so Wiltshire had the power to control our undead. At some point, we could contact Wiltshire. We gave Wiltshire an info dump of the recent happenings, and asked him to report to the royal house and the Master. We found out that Wiltshire's traitorous major domo had been the one responsible for Wiltshire's recent death. (Much unnecessary arguing. Signed, Longfoot.) Wiltshire went out, turned into a bat, and flied away. We began running away. The two trolls we'd seen earlier were on the run towards Dorandor. For comparison, another transcript of the discussion we had in the dungeons is recorded below. It is written in an unknown tongue. "Dorgan ja Demoness Juliana keskustelevat John Gwynneth:istä, tappelevat ja sen jälkeen Dorgan puhuu hahmoille: -Vaikka osa 'druideistani' kuolikin Dorandorissa saitte tehtävän tehtyä. Tarkoitus oli viedä mestarillenne väärennetty amuletti, joka muistuttaa alkuperäistä amulettia kaikkine lumouksineen niin paljon, ettei kukaan muu kuin voimakas demoni pysty sitä erottamaan alkuperäisestä. Kun hän sitä käyttää, ja lupaan että hän näin tekee kun hyökkäys alkaa, ilmestyn (gate) minä paikalle ja ei edes mestarinne kaikkine artifakteineen pysty puolustautumaan voimakkainta Incubusta mitä koskaan on siinnyt (spawn) vastaan. Varsinkin kun en ole enää tavallinen demoni, vaan itse Dorgan petojen jumala. Pitäisi kai muuten vielä lopuksi antaa hyönteisteni tuhota pellot, jotta muistavat että minä olen se joka tuo nälän ja tuhoaa sivilisaatioita (famine). -Myönnettäköön, ettei suunnitelmani toiminut täydellisesti. Jouduin nyt nopeuttamaan aikataulua ja aloittamaan hyökkäyksen heti, sillä on vain ajan kysymys koska Dorandorissa tullaan huomaamaan 'Druidien' todellinen henkilöllisyys. Lisäksi tuo typerä fiend ei kyennyt hillitsemään ruokahaluaan ja puheitaan. Hän tappoi kylän lapsia ja emme siten saaneet kylää täysin puolellemme. Petturin uhrimurhaa hän ei saanut suinkaan siksi, että hän luovutti amuletin, sillä niin hänen pitikin, vaan siksi että hän paljasti teille trollien kokoontumisen maan alla. Onneksi olitte niin tyhmiä ettette välittänyt kertoa kenellekään kuinka paljon niitä tuotiin ihan kaupungin laidoillle (ennenkuin kukaan urputtaa, tässä ei viitata älyyn vaan kokemukseen joten heittoja ei tehty vaan pelaajien piti itse tajuta). -epäkuolleiden tulo saarelle oli erittäin suuri tappio. Menetimme Azmodanin amuletin takaisin Sentinelleille ennenkuin saimme sen 'druidien' käsiin. Lisäksi Fangasin Scytheä emme saaneet, vaikkakin sen varaan en paljoa laskenutkaan. Nyt ne ovat molemmat tornissa, ja keräämme ne sitten Dorandorin raunioista hyökkäyksen jälkeen. Hah hah (kolkkoa naurua, ei kuitenkaan muhahahaa). -Pian ovat veljekset taas yhdessä. Dorgan ja Fangas. Necreegin löytäminen on vain ajan kysymys, nyt kun olette kertoneet minne se kirja on mennyt. Dagardanin kohtalo surettaa. Miten voi yhdellä hovinarrilla olla sellainen mahti, ettei edes sodan jumala ole enää entisensä. Ehkä Azmodan on halukas vapautumisensa jälkeen ottamaan Dagardanin paikan. (sitten hän puhuu teille taikaluokistanne ja miten te olette toimineet druidien keulakuvana kiitettävästi) (ilmoittaa kuinka örkit väistyivät kaivoksesta ja kuinka heille on luvattu sodan jäänteet (spoils of war)). -Sinulle petollinen Succubus, en voisi keksi kovempaa kohtaloa kuin jäädä raivostuneiden eloonjääneiden ja muualta tulleiden apujoukkojen kynsiin, kun he paranoidisesti alkava etsiä lisää Incubuksia ja Succubuksia. Teidän muidenkaan kohtalo ei kovin hyvä tule olemaan. Väki ei katso druideja täällä seuduin kovinkaan hyvällä. Toisaalta kyllä jokin palkkiokin olisi hyväksi teille teidän avustanne. Heeraa, sinä saat ilmaisen siipien poiston. Ne ovat niin hankalat kun yrittää piiloutua väkijoukkoon, joten kiität minua vielä. Silvan, sinä saat kunnian nähdä edes kerran Tamaolin lehden. Tamaol on tulostaan saakka roikkunut kaulassani (näyttää Tamaolin lehden). Tamaol parka. Hän luuli tulleensa palvojiensa joukkoon, mutta ei edes hän pysty pakenemaan lukuisten raivoisten demonien kynsistä. Buran, olemme saaneet kopion örkkien kartasta sotasopimuksemme lisänä. Kun meillä on aikaa, teemme pienen retken pohjoiseen ja valtaamme kääpiökaupungin. Kiitokseksi avustasi, lupaan ettei perheesi joudu orjiksi eikä heitä kiduteta, vaan heidät tapetaan heti. Grunk, sinä olet todellinen hylkiö, enkä oikein tiedä voinko sinua mitenkään piristää muuten kuin lupaamalla että mestarisi ja Arias metsänvartija tulevat kuolemaan. Longfoot, sinulle lupaan että sirkuksen johtaja tulee mukaamme ja viettää lopun elämäänsä meidän kanssamme kunnes tekee itsemurhan. Se on kumma juttu, mutta jos heitä ei kahlita, vahvinkin lopulta tappaa itsensä. Hyvästi. Minulla on nyt kaupunki tuhottavana, maageja tapettavana ja torneja ryöstettävänä."