moi

The Mothers spent their time waiting most valuably, catching up on gossip and trying to remember why they cared about Tovag Baragu in the first place. The two days passed very quickly. On returning to the shop, the grey dwarf informed them that he had found a portal location that would bring them to Oerth. They had to travel to the Great Gymnasium, to the third arch on the left of the entrance and simply say "Oerth" in the common tongue, to open the portal. This they proceeded to do with all haste and duly the portal opened before them.

On stepping through, the first thing that the Mothers noticed was the large stone paved area around them. A moment later they realised that they had stepped through a large stone arch and that there were several other such arches in the area. Finally they noticed the mountains and the salty lake, both not too far from their current location. After a quick look around the Mothers discerned than they were on a large circular paved area over a mile in diameter. There were a series of concentric rings of standing stones within this area culminating in a tight circle towards the centre, with perhaps sixteen stone arches. From this central circle smoke was rising. The stone slabs were coloured by salt and had a scattering of coarse sand and many of the arches contained strange visible effects, glowing mists, points of dancing light, distortions of vision, glaring white light, utter darkness and the like. Moving towards the centre of the circle they discovered an area that had been used as a campsite by a large force, tents had obviously been pitched there as well as fires lit.

On reaching the centre circle, the Mothers found that the smoke was coming from a piece of the paving that had been thrown out of its position in the centre and now smoked with heat from its angle resting against another stone. The blast marks around it made it seem as if some mighty magic had hurled it there. After some investigating of the area they found a small number of burnt humanoids each of which had the same tattoo on their wrists: an eye within a skeletal hand. Four of the archways were displaying unusual properties, one was pitch black, one had strange sparking motes of light in a mist, one had pulsating and sparking bands of purplish light and one made things appear to be a lot closer than they seemed. Fonesca attempted to use a spell to determine where one of these portals would lead, but it failed her. The group decided to rest and allow Fonesca the time to get some more spells together. After some time watching with no incident Fonesca again cast spells, this time revealing that at least two of the portals lead to Tovag Baragu and that neither needed a key of any kind to activate it.

The party then decided to try one of the portals, choosing the one with the bands of purplish light. They stepped through as one and found themselves in a watery environment where they were immediately attacked by some fish-men who had poisonous tridents and spell casting ability. Only Levi and Gaspode, who were not disoriented by the sudden dunking, noticed that there were a number of stone arches here as well, one of which was filled by darkness. They both tried to pull the others back through the portal. Unfortunately Levi was pulled up short by a spell which held him in position. Gaspode pulled Guthranka out into the circle again and they caught their breath. Fonesca acted next after she realised what had happened, she tried to pull Jito with her but couldn't grab hold so she went through the arch to avoid drowning. Jito was also afflicted with a holding spell. Gasp and Guthranka then plunged back in and pulled Jito and Levi out while getting speared by the tridents of the fish-men. The party cast some healing spells and now sit panting and wet in the stone circle, trying vainly to get some heat from the smoking stone so that they don't catch hypothermia.

In order to avoid freezing to death the Mothers decided to brave another of the archways. They decided that the pitch black one looked too imposing so they went for the arch which had the sparking motes in the mist. When they stepped through, the first thing that they noticed was the heat. Although the sky was dark, apart from a few dim red stars, the temperature in this circle was much higher than in the one they had left. The familiar stone arches surrounded them, but off in the distance they could make out a few rocky mounds that were not the regular structures that they had become used to. Before they could investigate them, however, the mounds, or at least two of them, attacked the group with strange writhing rocky tentacles. When these hit they grasped the unfortunate characters and started pulling them out of the circle towards the waiting rocky 'stalagmites'. Levi got to work early, chopping one of the appendages in two and the rest of the party started to follow suit. Then the whole group were hit by a wave of psionic energy, stunning a number of them and making them unable to act. Guthranka was one of those being pulled helplessly towards the creatures. Fonesca's magic missiles could not sever the appendages but did seem to have an effect whenever targeted against the body of the 'mounds'. Eventually one of the mounds was left as a stump with no appendages but those attacking it thought it wise not to finish it off, rather to get out of the area as quickly as possible. Levi and Gaspode arrived at the other creature just as a new sinister looking appendage was heading directly for Guthranka's skull. It looked as if it was going to suck out her brain. Both Levi and Gaspode managed to sever appendages, one of them being the brain-seeking one. This time the Mothers had no compunction to spare the creature's life. When they finally defeated it a wave of mental force washed over them, momentarily disorienting them. Discretion proving the better part, the Mothers headed back through the arch to lick their wounds.

Fonesca eventually searched through her pack and discovered a scroll of Leomund's Secure Shelter and she quickly cast the spell from the scroll. A small building appeared which looked to all intents and purposes to be a low stone barracks. It resembled a barracks because the door was iron bound and looked unlikely to yield to anything but a battering ram. All of the windows had secure shutters. Once inside, the Mothers took the furniture that they did not need (everything but four beds) and started breaking them up for use as firewood. Fonesca set them ablaze and Gaspode stood first watch. After a comfortable eight hours of rest and re-spelling the Mothers emerged from their shelter more able to face the challenges of the stone circles. Perhaps it was this comfort that made them somewhat over-confident, for they decided to return to the strange dark circle to see what lay beyond the rocky tentacled horrors which nearly de-brained them the day before. This time it was almost worse. Soon half their numbers were stunned by the mental force waves that the creatures sent out and it was all that they could do to retreat and live to fight another day.

This time the Mothers decided on the most forbidding looking of the portals, the pitch black one. When they stepped through, they found themselves in yet another stone circle, this one surrounded by jungle. The more pressing feature was a thirty-foot tall tower in the centre of the circle. One the edge of the jungle to the right of the Mothers was a collection of large tents. The party decided to approach the tower to see whether they could find out what was going on. They did manage to have a conversation with someone who sounded human, who was either within the tower or on top of it, though they did not manage to get to see him. Unfortunately, the Mothers managed to intimate that they might be favourable to Iuz and his followers (in an attempt to find information) and this set the denizens of the tower into a rather violent frame of mind. It became clear to the Mothers that these people were excellent archers as they ran for the exit portal with a few arrows in very tender places.

Another secure shelter was summoned by Fonesca and much time was spent in it planning their assault of the tower. Eventually it was decided that everyone would have invisibility cast upon them and two teams would also have in their possession a coin with a silence fifteen foot radius spell cast upon it. In this way they would avoid getting peppered with arrows as soon as they stepped through the portal. This plan was put into effect, but one aspect of the plan had not been fully threshed out: the rendezvous. So the first team went through and went immediately to the left (as Mothers are wont to do) heading for the edge of the forest. The next crew came through and also headed in that direction, but not precisely in that direction. They also had different thoughts on how deeply into the undergrowth they should penetrate. Thus a goodly amount of time was spent sneaking around trying to find each other without revealing themselves to those in the tower. Eventually, they managed it and became more interested in the tents on the other side of the clearing in which the tower and the stone circle sat. They decided that a bit of scouting was in order and Fonesca volunteered to manage this. She turned herself into a bird and flew up and around to see what manner of creatures had erected the tents. While flying across, she noticed that a silvery hemisphere encompassed most of the top of the tower, but she pressed on to the tents. There she saw that a large group of centaurs were encamped there as well as a strangely huge weasel or ferret that seemed to be some sort of a pet or a guard beast. She reported back to the Mothers and they decided to try and make some allies. They circled the tower by heading deep into the undergrowth and came around behind the tents.

Soon they were talking to Balophan, who seemed to be the leader of the centaur group. It transpired that these centaurs were nomads who normally wandered the Dry Steppes. They had discovered that their sacred place (Tovag Baragu) had been invaded and desecrated (as they saw it) by Cultists of Vecna. These cultists had been in place for a number of years and had ensconced themselves deeper within the parallels (as they called the various stone circles). The nomads were here to try and oust the cultists. They did not know how to attack this tower successfully as they were too large to go within and root the cultists out and they had no magic or siege engines to level the structure. They had started this attempt following the entry of Iuz’s forces into the parallels. They felt that they should not pass up this opportunity in the wake of the two parties’ conflict. They had heard that Iuz intended to destroy Vecna and this couldn’t be a bad thing. The Mothers then started to plan a full assault of the tower with the help of the centaurs.