[And now back to big pickle I was getting myself into on Yacg'harr Island.]
DAY 537 (22nd Eleasis) (August) cont ...
It had seemed such a straight-forward thing to do. Before starting to fortify the Barrow, and draw attention to ourselves, first check how many baddies there were on the island and deal with them. The last thing we needed was a horde of pirates turning up while we were in the middle of building walls around the place.
No big baddies had been much in evidence, but I had decided to check out the scholar, the inn keeper and the retired pirate captain. And now here I was blundering right into a huge mess that I will now record here before I put my head down for a few hours to recover my spells.
Anyway, you may remember I had just opened the chest in the 'magical' room of the pirate captain. Well, firstly I was hit by whirling poisoned blades, which wasn't much fun, then three flaming skulls flew out.
Now, I've battled these things before, they were defending a library in the Plane of Shadow, but in the heat of the moment I forgot everything that I had previously recorded or read about them.
As the skulls swept about the room I left and closed the door behind me. I heard voices so peaked back in, only to be attacked by the annoying things. I shut the door again, but they started blasting away at it, then something pretty serious happened and it exploded from its hinges.
I unlocked the front door, but when I saw the pirate captain come into the hall and shout, 'Who are you?!' I turned (note that I was in the disguise of a sort of ninja type person) and hissed 'You know who I am!' hoping this would confuse him.
'What have you done, you half-wit!' he yelled.
'I opened the chest in that room,' I replied honestly.
'You half-wit!'
He fumbled with his sword and scabbard then made to come at me.
I couldn't be bothered with any more of this carry on, so I left the house.
'Come back and help tidy up your mess!' he yelled at me again.
That was pretty much what I planned to do, but I wasn't taking orders from a man who kept such dangerous undead beings in a populated area. Out of sight I teleported to where the others were and we all double-timed it to 'Skull House'.
So the clean-up crew were me, Jiggles, Sylvia, Dak and Irritator. The others (Lavinia, Molly and Rolanda) were guarding the Barrow.
Jiggles was the first to spot one and she shot an arrow at it. It responded with a fireball that hit some of us in a painful explosion of fire.
We staggered, but came on, with Dak rushing up to the skull and giving it a swipe with his two-handed falchion.
Sylvia then Turned Undead and the skull crumbled to dust. Dak muttered as he turned to look at her with a shrug. Another fireball then hit me and Irritator.
That was twice I had been fireballed! My new dragon armour was holding up well, but that was my eyebrows and most of my beard gone. It was just as well I had all my healing bit-and-bobs - nuts, belts and the like.
Jiggles shot off more arrows and Dak charged in once more. Irritator, as always, shot off volleys of Empowered Magic Missiles. This time Dak got the kill, sending the skull flying into pieces with a mighty sweep of his weapon.
The third skull was nowhere to be seen so we entered the house again.
'Who the hell are you?' screamed the captain when he saw the hulking form of Dak in the doorway. 'Get out of my house!'
I changed my disguise to that of an Adept of Silvanus and in this guise I entered to try and calm things down a bit. Dak really wanted to fight the pirate though, and he was now in the habit of provoking his pet snake (that I gave him, you may remember, when it was Polymorphed from being a goblin) to strike at people he was about to attack.
'Please, brothers!' I cried, so sadly that the captain faltered. Dak went to grapple the old fellow and I joined in. Together we wrestled him to the ground then bonked him on the head. Once he was out cold we tied him to a chair and left him there.
Meanwhile Sylvia and Irritator had found the other skull. We joined them as it was being cornered and dealt with. Once it too was rendered to dust we decided what to do next.
After some discussion we all teleported back to the Barrow and threw the old captain into one of the side chambers for safe keeping.
It looked like it was all over, but then Rolanda, who was on watch came and told me;
'Err, boss, sounds like trouble in town. Lots of screams and explosions!'
We rushed down to see what was going on. Those blasted skulls were back! I then remembered that when we had destroyed skulls like these in the Plane of Shadow that they had regenerated after a short while.
'Gods dam them!' I cursed and rushed back to the Barrow, while the others continued into town.
I roused the captain and asked him, 'how do you destroy those skulls?'
'I dunno,' he snickered. 'That's why I keeps 'em in a box.'
'Old smart arse!' I snarled and shock my fist at him.
I then went to my books and flicking furiously found an entry in "Rasirh's Fantastycle and Mythycle Beasts of Lore" that was what I was looking for.
I ran to catch up with the others, gasping 'Holy water!. It's Holy Water we need lads!'
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