Chapter 4: Adventures in Blingdenstone

Hunter's suggestion is relayed to whoever is in charge of their supplies and a short time later you are presented with 10 oil-dipped bolts.

You set out from Blingdenstone with a group of four priests and a dozen warriors, all that the city could spare from its defenses. The caverns you travel through are strangely quiet. You'd guess that very few creatures want to tangle with almost two dozen armed warriors.

Sarith leads the group expertly through the tunnels; even knowing his path from memory, the march is slow and boring, constantly having to watch for danger, climb walls that Sarith circumvented with his levitation abilities, and the constant stopping for prayers. It takes nearly two days to get there at that pace.

Sarith finally leads you up to a small, nearly invisible pathway leading up high along the wall and through a small opening. You enter a large chamber, a large number of stalactites and stalagmites cover the floor and ceiling, and you can see a large rune circle, glowing with a faint light in the center of the chamber. A sense of peace and safety wash over you in the presence of the gnome god's holy place.

The gnomes all stand and stare in awe, but only for a moment as their sense of duty takes over and the fighters fan out to make sure the chamber is secure and the priests sit in front of the circle and pray.

After about an hour of preparation, the priests take positions around the summoning circle. They begin chanting very quietly, and you can tell they're all saying the same thing, though you can't understand the words. They go on like this for some time, but eventually they begin speaking louder and have a blank look in their eyes, as if they're not quite there.

After a few minutes of this louder chanting, the floor begins to shake and you see a stone hand emerge from the circle, and then another, and a huge elemental pulls itself out of the stone floor and moves to stand outside the circle. This repeats over and over until 14 elementals stand in the room with you. The chanting ends and the priests slump in exhaustion and look like they could sleep for a week.

The lead priest stands, "We'd best get back home so we can deal with these slimes," he says and is picked up by one of the elementals for transport and you start on your way back to Blingdenstone.

The trip back to Blingdenstone is relatively uneventful; who would mess with war party of earth elementals? Once you get back, plans are finalized and you are asked to perform a very important role.

"We are needed to guide the main battle, but someone has to find and kill the leader. We're hoping that the oozes end their attacks once he's dead. We were hoping that once the main host of oozes has been engaged, you all could take one of the elementals and seek out their leader?"