Riloth 19th the 1233th

The duergar directed the pair of golems to begin piling loose stones towards the stairs. The fortress had seen better days, and the floor was littered with chunks of rock that had broken loose from the ceiling, and they were constructing a fortification with the rubble.

The duergar then directed a group of kobolds to go toward the stairs.

“Now or never,” Dagmar whispered, drawing her swords.

I began casting Lightning Bolt, and at the end of the casting, ran into the open at the bottom of the steps, sending the arc straight down the center of the hall. The spell banished the darkness in the hall, and those that didn’t fall dead to it shielded their eyes from the sudden brightness. By then, Dagmar had taken a stance in front of me, but no kobolds remained standing to charge. I blinked away my own blindness, as colorful afterimages of the lightning mingled with the auras of my Willsight. One duergar lay down on the ground, felled by my opening attack, while the other ran back through the door he’d just exited.

The golems advanced, stepping on the fallen kobolds without a care, bringing back memories of my own past bodies being crushed underfoot.

I sent a Magic Missile into the lead golem, the darts each impacting in the center creating sizable divots. The familiar sound of magical darts on stone followed by the clatter of falling chips further stirred memories from the taking of the Dahn.

Dagmar ran at the golems, ducking under their first swing and slashing at their legs ineffectually as she got behind them. Both golems turned to her as I sent two more Magic Missiles at them. Dagmar jumped and rolled, dodging each of their attacks as she leads the pair down the hall away from me.

Steadily I sent bolts of magic at the initial target and was beginning to think this may be possible, when two more golems stepped out of the other door, accompanied by another pair of duergar, enlarged to be Bearskin’s height. My next Magical Missile attack swerved wide around my intended target and flew to one of the newcomer golems, disappearing into its chest without any apparent effect.

“Force anchor!”” I yelled at Dagmar.

She did not last long after that.

New plan.

I cast Fly. The tunnel was too narrow for me to actually fly, but the spell itself served as an incredibly flexible movement spell with all my practice with Wind Run and Wind Jump. I charged at the golems, and when still four paces away leapt as I leaned forward, propelling myself up towards the ceiling above the heads of the golems. I overshot slightly and crashed into the ceiling, but neither golem reacted in time to catch me. Kobold corpses cushioned my fall, and ran at the next two golems, outpacing the one behind me. The next two stood their ground, while the duergar fell back.

This is not going to work.

I thought quickly to myself, really wishing Space magic worked here.

Flood, one of these is probably a Spatial anchor too. Not that it matters, I suppose.

All this went through my head as ran at the pair and dove, summoning a massive blast of wind to propel me through the gap between their “waists”. Something clipped my calf as I passed, and I landed without the benefit of dead feral kin to break my fall.

“Any chance you guys want to talk?” I asked as I lay immobilized in the filthy.

The duergar stopped at my words and commanded the golems to do the same.

Wow, I didn’t expect that to work.

One of the duergar went into the room and came out soon after with a crossbow and a device I was familiar with from Dagmar’s descriptions. A Will collar.

With gestures, the pair instructed me to raise my hands as they came and placed the collar around my neck. They dragged me into a room—after blindfolding me, and tended to my leg and took all of my stuff.

Then they let me sit. And sit. And sit. Until the reset occurred and I was back in

Riloth 19th the 1234th

“I guess they didn’t want to talk,” I mumbled to myself

“What?” Dagmar asked.

“I let them capture me after you died. They just stole my gear and left me tied up until the reset. I was hoping they’d ask me questions, and I’d figure out what they were doing. Where did you think they got the golems? I thought those were dwarven inventions.”

“They are,” she asked, anger in her voice. “They must have broken the passcode on some they captured from the Hardune outposts, or broken the protection somehow”

I sent a message to Levar through your pages summarizing what we’d found. He in turn gave me a list of ingredients to gather from his shop, and after Dagmar cleaned herself up, we gathered some other supplies headed back.

* * *

”And then they left me there until the reset,” I told the gathered party, giving a more thorough explanation than I’d written.

Dagmar sat in the corner, drinking heavily. She’d spent the whole of the trip back getting a head start on the “supplies” she’d loaded. The whole ride she muttered to herself some variation of “Not again” but with more cursing.

“So, do you think you can take them?” Trish asked, getting right to the point.

Dagmar and I looked at each other, neither wanting to say it.

“My amazing intuition for the human and dwarven condition is telling me that's a ‘no,’”

“Aye,” Dagmar confirmed.

The room grew quiet until Bearskin broke the silence with his booming voice,“Finally. We will help. This sounds like a good Contest.”

“No—” I started, but Trish cut me off.

“Tal, if you don’t let us out of this tower soon, we are going to kill each other and or ourselves. I would rather die facing these stupid ‘imothies than spar for a fight that you won’t let us have”

Roland pointed to Trish and added, “What she said.”

Daulf nodded, “Yes, but without the murder-suicide. This is all getting a bit tedious. It was bearable when we were searching for the prison, but now that it's found, we will help.

“But what if you die?” I asked. “You won’t come back.”

“Tal,” Daulf said, and then paused, signaling the lecture to come. “I’ll have you know, that I have made it to the ripe old age of fifty... something without dying. I’ve not quite sure how long we’ve been in here. I think you’ve grown too accustomed to your methods, and have forgotten that most adventurers don’t get to come back from death. This is nothing new. You’ve done amazing things, and progressed fantastically, but you are not alone in this. You followed me into that Hardune stronghold without a day of practical experience under your belt. We’ve got a bit more than that between us, so let us conquer this fortress with you.”

I sat, considering.

Honestly, if they had any means to get to the cave without my flight, they would have long ago mutinied. I’m only in charge by dint of my ability to refuse to comply.

“Fine,” I said, causing the tension of emancipation to burst. Bearskin smiled, and Trish kind of did a little dance... which was odd for her.

Maybe she really does need to get out of here.

“But,” I continued. “We are going to prepare. Dagmar and I will attempt a few more times to make sure there are no surprises.”

“Sure, go kill yourself for more information a few more times,” Daulf said. “But you are going to need to break yourself of this habit before we get out of this situation.

Riloth 19th the 1235th-1278th

I made many attempts to defeat the 'imothies and their handlers with varying degrees of failure, but I learned a lot.

There were twenty two kobolds, four duergar, and four golems. One golem was probably a Spatial anchor, which didn't matter since no Spatial magic worked inside. Another was a Force anchor, which was really bad for me. Dagmar guessed the other two were probably Earth and Gravity anchors if they had been acquired as a set.

I checked all the area's on the previous floor we'd skipped. They were filled with traps and nothing else of worth. The layout of the golem's floor has hallways like a giant rectangular"8" with two large chambers between. The stairs took down were at one side of the middle of the middle hall with the way down on the other. There's indications another hall lead off from one end of the other halls but a cave in saw to that.

Some good news was the the anchors only have a range of about fifty feet, something I never had the opportunity to test with Timothy in the confines of the Dahn.

Other good news: I found a way to catch all the kobolds and a duergar off guard and together in a single Lightning Bolt. Also, Abby's abilities are somehow blocked by the wards of the fortress. Which suggests we could somehow ward against her, but blocking access to a Font wasn't the correct method.

Medium news?: The duergar aren't that martially inclined. They aren't terrible but I'm pretty sure they are artificers or runesmiths of some sort. The quality of their runed gear far exceeds what I'd expect of soldiers of their middling ability. That's not to say they are terrible, they are far better than me. On top of growing to Bearskin proportions, they can also turn invisible which... was actually funny since I relied on my Willsight to see in the dark, and they became more visible to me when they activated the magic.

The bad news: These guys were the B team.

I succeeded in getting past the golems once, and ran down the stairs at the opposite end of the tunnel. It led to a long cavern that descended downward and ended in an enormous cavern.

As soon as I walked it someone appeared behind me and slit my throat, which I got to say is not a good way to go. I definitely prefer being crushed.

Oh yeah, great news: I FOUND THE PRIMORDIAL OF TIME.

I had to run to escape my tail as I fled down the cave, but managed to check a Will detector on the way down. As soon as I completed the rune the light rune lit up. Not only that, the air grew thick in my Willsight, white occluding the typical gray. When I rounded the last bend, the chamber was completely flooded with a brilliant white that made the intensity of Tilavo's aura a spark in comparison.

The news was met with reserved hope. We'd had false alarms before.

The next time I made it down, I didn't use my Willsight, and flew into the room dodging a slit throat in the process. Hovering in the center floated an enormous orb of... time? The sphere was at least fifty feet across, and it's perimeter stood perfectly still, but within flickered in an unending kaleidoscope of images. The images flickered to fast to identify but the orb illuminated the entire chamber with a faint glow. I only glimpsed it for a moment—someone shot me out of the air immediately—but in reviewing the orb through your avatar in my vault I saw a window into the past, present, and future.

It took days to sift through all the images, and even attempting to drained my Will. I saw a black nothingness, I saw the sun being formed by enormous beings, I witnessed the battle to capture Faust in Kaltis, and I saw two human looking beings capture the Primordial in that very room. I also saw whole cities fall to dust as the Primordial appeared in their center, sending it's inhabitants far through time or accelerating their aging. I could have dug into the visions of the Primordial for months, but... Trish was really antsy to get started.

But she had to wait. We had to plan.

Riloth 19th the 1279-1299th

First, we worked out a plan. Daulf took all of the spare space in the Dahn and restructured the first floor to replicate the hallway we would be fighting in. He went so far as to change the stairs to match the ones leading up to the trapped living quarters.

Bearskin led the strategy meetings. I won't bore you with the plan, you'll hopefully see that for yourself tomorrow, but I'll fill you in on the preparations.

Levar selected potions for us all. For Dagmar, Daulf, and Bearskin, he gave potions of giant's strength. Dagmar's was far stronger than the others, but it also would also cause her muscles to completely fail on her when it wore off, causing her to slowly suffocate. This wouldn't be our only attempt, but we chose to hold nothing back.

For Trish and Roland, he'd chosen a potion of cat's grace. It allowed them to move faster and increased reaction time.

I was given a sack of clarity potions and told to drink up.

I'd dropped into town to gather some ingredients for Levar, and the place had been a disaster. The pack rats were not handling four years of resets well. By the time I got there, the fire bad been contained, but there had been fires. Many fires.

Dagmar and Levar crafted weapons. Bearskin's giant ensouled club sword thing—which he refers to as a club, but it's sword-shaped and I can't get over that. Anyway, it could crush stone if he swung hard enough, but Dagmar and Daulf needed tailor-made gear.

The pair produced a runed shield that should survive a few blows from a golem, a pair of war picks for Dagmar runed for piercing, and a larger one for Daulf. All three weapons were oversized, and nearly unwieldable without the aid of the strength potions they planned to take before the battle.

Daulf tested the shield against a potion-enhanced Bearskin. It held up extremely well, but having not taken a potion himself, Daulf's arm snapped like a twig.

Early in the planning, Trish brought up an old topic of debate.

"Why don't we go get help?" She held up a hand forestalling my response. "I know why you don't trust someone like Tilavo to know about the Primordial, but why not that Renn woman?"

All eyes turned to me.

"I'm tempted to," I answered honestly. "But I think that's my selfish fear that you all will die and forget all our time here. We could get help, but they'd only get in the way. Working with Dagmar over these past years, I've learned how powerful well-coordinated teamwork can be. We could try to convince Renn, but I doubt we even could. She never once stepped up in a demon attack that I saw. We could hire some random mercenaries, and use them as fodder, but... what then? We succeed, and end the resets with their blood on our hands?"

Bearskin and Daulf nodded in agreement at my words and a brief silence followed.

"Alright," Trish relented. "That does sound like a barnacle sack of a thing to do."

"Aye," Dagmar said. "Also, I really can't let you all tell anyone about the Primordial unless I truly believe it to be in the world's best interest without breaking my oath to the Hardune. That would end very poorly for me. Tal told all of you about it, and I trusted he was making the right choice, but I agree with Tal now. A master stone cutter is worth a thousand Waatin with chisels."

Throughout the planning, everyone took some of your pages and wrote something to themselves in the event they died and lost their memories. Roland's was surprisingly long, and he made me show him three times that I couldn't summon the pages without his consent.

Tonight we rest.

Tomorrow is the day.