May 8th

Well, if I'm going to write a journal about this crazy adventure I suppose that I should maybe catch you up on what happened before I got this little blue book. Of course I'm not sure who I'm writing to, but writing to some unknown who may someday read this seemed more sane than writing to myself, and this party has had more than enough crazy to go around believe me.

This all started when the mayor of Sutulak pulled me in. He'd heard about my heroics in the village of Amarego, but apparently he missed the part where I work alone. Instead of the private meeting I expected there were a bunch of other adventures in attendance. Then to top it all off the mayor took his sweet time and I had to sit in a room with that rag tag bunch while we waited. I still wish I'd just left.

The group consisted of Ariella the Pixie Witch, Kough the Minotaur Cleric, Kubaba the Shardmind Paladin, Raiden the Human Monk, Garr the Goliath Avenger, Stealthlina the Dryad Assassin, Lily the Shifter Assassin, and Song the Tiefling Bard. There were a seriously chatty bunch and had a never ending stream of questions. What's your name, where are you from, what are you doing here? Not sure what they expected, but I work alone, I wasn't interested in sharing the details of my life.

When the mayor finally showed up he explained that diggers had been disappearing the catacombs under the city. Can't honestly say I was surprised, I always thought that building catacombs under your city was sorta like begging for an undead problem. Burning the dead is really the only practice that makes sense. Naturally we agreed to go into the catacombs, for a price. Honestly, I wasn't all that interested in the money, but I'd heard rumors of a lich king and I'm always itching to prove myself and I figured I could take this guy.

The journey through the catacombs was twisted and more than a little crazy. We were joined by Rouge the Dryad Paladin, another Monk, and briefly met up with Skylara the Wilden Paladin. We fought a group of possessed Dwarves. Stealthlina actually drove one of them insane with her poisoned dagger. From time to time party members went in different directions, Song actually left the party, he found a much more lucrative adventure. The party was split by a series of traps and were finally reunited only after fighting a nest of evil spiders and freeing half of the party from the tangled webs.

Of course we later discovered that the half of the party we rescued from the spiders were, in fact, not rescued. The actual party members were being held by the lich king and the group we freed were evil doppelgangers. Of course a huge battle ensued, where we had to fight people who used to be our allies. This isn't something that affected me, the arena is full of broken alliances, but I could tell that some of the others were quite shaken. During the battle Evil Stealthlina used her poison dagger to drive Kough to madness and Raiden perished at the hand of Evil Monk. Luckily, the true heroes triumphed. As we stood in the room exhausted and battle worn the Lich King revealed himself.

In the ensuing battle we freed the actual half of our party, Kough revealed his madness, and eventually defeated the Lich King. We returned to the mayor near death, but triumphant. Kubaba decided to retire to the mountains and Kough was taken to the temple because he was viewed as a danger to himself and others. Things seemed to be settled down. The Lich King was dead, we were rewarded, and it seemed like I would be free of this crazy party and could move on to a new town and new quests.

All that changed two days ago. I was minding my own business at a local tavern when a runner from the temple came with a message that demanded I show for an audience with the high priest. Naturally I refused, in a not so polite way. Luckily for the temple they rethought their approach and decided to politely invite me to have an audience. When I arrived I found some of my old party members (Ariella and Rouge) as well as a selection of new so called heroes. A Hengeyokai (Fox creature) Ranger, who they call Foxface, Shallahai the Wilden Shaman with her spirit bear Fluffy, and a human dressed in complete black that I decided to call the Dread Pirate Roberts.

The High Priest brought out Kough and informed us that the temple had discovered the existence of an artifact that would help heal him and the mad dwarf. He informed the people that were a member of the catacomb party that it was our duty to right our wrongs by finding this artifact, and asked the others to join for coin, glory, or a desire to do good. He also told us that Stealthlina is wanted and should be turned in. Everyone by me agreed to go on the quest, and the priest told us to meet back at the temple in two days ready to disembark.

I spent the next two days in the arena, fighting and defeating any gladiator that came my way. I built up quite a reputation, and earned the arena moniker of BattleAxe. I discovered the Dread Pirate Roberts watching me, and we had a short conversation about the dangers of messing with me. He knows I don't trust him and I know he doesn't like me. That works for me just fine, we know where we stand, and that I appreciate. I walked into my final fight last night to find myself facing Kough. He told me he was scared and tired and missing chunks of time and hated not knowing who he was, or what he was doing. He begged me to go on the quest to help him heal, and offered me his great axe, as a token of him. No discussion, argument, demand, or amount of money could have persuaded me to go on this quest, but I know what it is like to not know who you are, so I agreed.

This morning I waited outside the temple. It was there I learned that Stealthlina had been caught and forced on this quest. Lily, Skylara, a Halfling Rogue named Milk, and a Human Artificer called Endra, were also joining our caravan. This proved to be a group bigger than any I had ever worked with before, and that made me very nervous. We set out along the road, under Skylara's direction, but made it barely half a day before we were ambushed by a group of bandits who had control of a cave troll. I know a thing or two about cave trolls and with a little help from Ariella I conjured a dragon illusion and breathed fire all over the troll. The bandits fired on me and then battle really broke out.

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And then we ended the game for the evening. More battle next week.