It has been many days since I last wrote.
You, mysterious reader, have therefore been left in the dark. Just like us.
Well, welcome to the party. Don’t mind the screaming. Here have a drink. Oh thank you don’t mind if I do.
So, i was saying. It’s been a while since I wrote. Because here in the dark there are some aspects that are public.
Take for example the writing of this journal that you are reading.

And some aspects that are private. Let us for the moment NOT give an example but merely accept there is a long list of activities, the account of which would never under ordinary circumstances be entered into such a journal. In fact these activities would ordinarily never have any logistical relationship whatsoever with something like this journal. Remember that we have placed this journal into the logistical category marked “public aspects”.

Nonetheless, and largely through an ill-considered lack of paper products in the standard adventurer’s kit, on a recent day some of the pages of this journal went missing. The next day some others were missing as well. And so each day the mysterious phenomenon clawed a little further backward in time, erasing our very history, consigning this account to darkness. Or at least to regions from which it’s unlikely to be ever recovered.

Now that the matter has been briefly discussed amongst the party members, and now that sources of light have been identified, with which one can, at any hour of the night, be able to tell the empty pages from those that have been written upon, we shall never speak of the matter again.

Let us sum up the intervening chasm in our account by saying that, many many evildoers have been felled, and at least one was temporarily nailed to the floor. And then having summed it up, let us ramble our way through a fuller account anyway.

Further adventuring led us, with the help of Rendell Halfmoon, to the Blood Reaver hideout. There was a shrine to Torog, some statues of winged demons, some symbols depicting eyeballs with other eyestalks coming out of them. Quite lovely if you’re into that sort of thing. Oh and many enemies. And Chief Krand.

Chief Krand was delightfully hospitable in allowing us to not only kill his entire crew, but to cut down and then skin his dire wolf companion (BFF!).

The only clue we picked up unfortunately, was a name. The name of a Duergar who had been receiving the Blood Reaver’s captives. The name which hopefully someone else wrote down. The name was on a note from the Blood Reavers to some force of Duergar, presumably further down towards the Underdark. Oh greatest of joys we may now journey deeper.

The last name of said Duergar, was the same as the name on the potion shop in the seven pillar hall, so we resolved to pay them a visit. In addition to picking up this clue, we also severed Krand’s head and carried it along with the dripping bloody hide of his dire wolf, back to the seven pillar hall.

Friends were made. Who doesn’t like to talk to someone carrying a bloody hide and severed head?
So we went back to the Inn, I got thrown out of the Inn, we ran into the halfling, his aunt the innkeeper, the enforcer Brug, Brug sent us to talk to the Mage on duty, we paid the visit to the Duergar alchemists and rather offended them by insinuating a family connection to the slavers. Not necessarily in that order I’m afraid. (I owe another debt to Beulah for her help dressing and curing the wolf hide) We also stopped by an adventuring shop. I bought an old minotaur book, actually written for children it seems, to bring back and show Valthryn. And the same shopkeeper told us where there was a Duergar stronghold and we decided to check that out next. He also told a story about an old scepter with a skull on the end, and if we should find it and return it to him he’d be most obliged etc etc.. Some amount of moneys were mentioned. I’ll have to ask Carn how much. I wrote it down the first time, but as was mentioned previously the original account of these events perished most horribly in a way never to be discussed.

Our journey to the Duergar stronghold was uneventful, but our failure to be sufficiently stealthy resulted in an impromptu assault on said stronghold. Quite to our own surprise, we prevailed. Klajdu even inflicted the indignity of wrenching a hobgoblin’s spear away from him, through a stockade wall no less. And searching the rooms beyond we did in fact turn up a Scepter with a Skull on it. Unless we turn up one in every room this is probably the very one our shopkeeper friend asked us to find.

And that brings us up to date. Here have another drink.