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Although it was the cause of much deliberation (and self-deprecation on behalf of the young gnome), it was eventually decided that Levi should have the opportunity to read the Book of Exalted Deeds and to carry out the instructions that it contained over the next week. Fonesca took the opportunity to research some new spells from the spellbooks of one of the Puppetmasters. She failed to learn Ice Storm, but managed to comprehend Polymorph Other. The others gossiped and passed the time until Levi was again available. When he returned, he was wiser and more capable than before and he still did not desire to have his hand replaced, though Gaspode teased him with it. What he did want to do was to find out where his parents had fled to, so the Mothers returned to the office of the Lord High Seneschal of Arabel to whom they had previously delivered missives sent from Suzail. On entry it became clear that he did not know the details of many of the refugees as many records had been destroyed during the occupation of the city. He took as many details as could be offered on Levi's parents but could not guarantee any level of success. During the conversation it became clear that the Mothers expected that refugees might return to Arabel at any stage now due to the peace in the city, the Lord High Seneschal said that it was a most unusual peace, because the forces of Iuz that were still present to the northeast had not been active or aggressive as was their wont, rather they were withdrawn and defensive. He wondered aloud, whether their master, Iuz, had been distracted from his campaign on Faerun. He said that he had come upon some strange evidence of this. A group of Iuz's forces were captured and unfortunately most of them slain by a patrol of Purple Dragons. One amongst them, a human, seemed to be a quartermaster of some kind due to the records that he had of the movement of supplies and arms around the various camps of the Iuz forces. One late entry in his documents, however, was unusual. It was a requisition for a large quantity of ale for a celebration and the note accompanying it said "For the sack of Tovag Baragu and the ascension of Iuz". The Lord High Seneschal was unable to obtain any information from the sages in Cormyr as to where this Tovag Baragu might be, but he was mightily concerned as to what the ultimate consequences of this activity might be. He asked the Mothers to investigate the issue, to try to find out where or what Tovag Baragu was and to determine what Iuz might be up to. Fonesca signed the Mothers up to this quick smart. Gaspode quietly groaned.

The Mothers withdrew to debate the best route to get to the information that they required. Finally they settled on Sigil as being the best place to find these things out. Unfortunately, although they knew a fairly quick way to get to Sigil, they had no quick way to return to Cormyr. So they visited Fonesca's War Wizard friend to see if they knew about any portals that they could use in the kingdom. He was only able to tell them of rumoured secret networks of portals controlled by the Druids and the Harpers, but he felt sure that these were Faerun bound and would provide no access to Sigil. So the Mothers took the plunge, took out the cubic gate and ended up in Plaguemort (again). The passage of Tenebrous had made their arrival point somewhat less complete than the last time they had visited. The abbatoir had a gaping hole in its roof and half of one of the walls was missing. This made it all the easier to go out into the main square where they briefly eyed the great gate to the Abyss and it's scaly guards who eyed them nervously before heading off to what constituted the government buildings of this depressing gate town. The guards there took them in and they were ushered into the offices of the Arch-Lector. He asked them to quickly "use the facilities" and get out of town. The Mothers proceeded to the throne room and exited through the gate to Sigil's Lower Ward. Hailing a cab, they were soon sipping beers with Stronghoof in the Golden Bariaur Inn. Stronghoof thought that Iuz was some kind of demi-god but didn't really know any more than that. The Mothers got their usual stall and then decided to hit the anarchist library for some information on Tovag Baragu and Iuz. The small wizened anarchist librarian took their coin and searched the book stacks in a seemingly random fashion eventually returning with information, even if it was not entirely intelligible. A few things stood out:

Tovag Baragu meant "Navel of the Oerth" in Ancient Baklunish (a language of Oerth); Tovag Baragu is a place on the shore of a lake in the Dry Steppes on the continent of Flanaess in the land of Oerth and Iuz is a demigod ruling over a kingdom or an empire in Flanaess.

Wanting more information, the Mothers decided to go the bureaucratic route and talk to the people in the Hall of Records. After another hefty fee a history of Iuz was laboriously intoned to them. This was more than they needed, but it at least corroborated the anarchist's account. So all the Mothers had to do now was to find a way to Tovag Baragu. Stronghoof suggested asking the touts of Sigil whom they might pick up in the Great Bazaar. The first one they found wasn't much use, but the second, for a small retainer, found them a strange shop just off the bazaar, not far from Bits and Pieces. The sign outside had images of globes mounted so that you could spin them on an axis, but not only globes, spindles and areas of flat land were there too, suggesting strange locales. They entered without ceremony and thus must have startled the owner who descended from his hiding place as a black cloud from the ceiling. The grey dwarf was somewhat sharp with the hired tout for his behaviour but agreed to research the location of a portal to Oerth for the Mothers. They are due to return in two days to obtain the information.

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.

It was decided that the centaurs would hand back on the other side of the tower from the door. Jito would stay with them in order to coordinate their attack once the rest of the Mothers can get the cultists out of the security of the tower. Gaspode and Fonesca would use invisibility to get to the front door and hopefully open it. They decided that to combine this with a silence spell would be difficult. Gaspode did not detect any traps on the door, but he could not open it. Fonesca then lobbed a fireball to explode over the higher windows and the roof. This exploded to great effect and soon the door opened and a number of cultists came out, slightly singed. Unfortunately, the singed cultist warriors were not the only ones to emerge. Another fireball exploded, this time amongst the Mothers. They were all still standing and they started attacking the cult warriors. Fonesca痴 missiles struck unerringly; Gaspode痴 sword sang; Levi痴 blade always struck back and Guthranka used her healing touch to ensure that she might last the fight. But these warriors did not give ground easily, they fought back with equal intensity, backed up by the power of a mighty mage. Seven missiles struck Gaspode and he was sorely injured. An invisible creature was summoned and it joined the fray. Fonesca attempted to put up a wall of fire to block off the mage from future attacks, this proved effective for a short time and allowed the Mother痴 to handle a number of the cultists. Levi even shifted one off to a random plane and summoned a horde of insects to bite and swarm over the enemy. But the wall was dispelled, and a human was not present on the other side, bit rather a globe of shimmering light sat there. They realised that the mage was within when another volley of missiles emerged and smashed into Levi. Fonesca concentrated her attacks on the mage, but her missiles did not seem to penetrate the globe. It was a better story with the warrior cultists ｭ the Mothers finished these off finally also slaying the invisible stalker. Seeing that his allies had been finished the mage loosed another ball of fire, this one of even more intensity than the last. Gaspode and Guthranka fell. Fonesca managed to dispel the globe surrounding the mage and Levi approached, but the mage teleported away. The battle was finished and the re-enforcement痴 finally arrived when the insect plague dispersed. They dragged off their dead to the centaur camp and rested. Levi prayed for the power to raise his comrades from the dead and in the morning he performed the ceremony. Tyr obviously had no qualms about raising the pious paladin and Guthranka痴 eyes soon opened, and she looked out clearly, though weakly on the scene as Levi moved on to Gaspode. The life force rushed back into his body, but he convulsed and gulped and it seemed for a moment that his body would not accept the life that was being given back to it, but finally, he lay back, still, but breathing.

As normal the Mothers decided to go left. This meant passing through the rosy hued portal. This was a bit of a surprise as when they got to the other side Gaspode and Levi found themselves floating off into the inky blackness of this weightless parallel. Guthranka, Fonesca and Jito had not stepped through the portal so forcefully and so were just floating near where they had entered. Below them was a few boards of what had once been a rope bridge, which may have lead to any of the other portals, but only a few feet of it remained, the rest having been gnawed away. Gaspode thought quickly and threw one of his silken ropes at Levi managing to propel himself slightly back towards the others in the process. Levi started moving faster away when he caught it though. Meanwhile Jito and Fonesca had steadied themselves against the remains of the bridge while Guthranka thought it best not to risk moving. Fonesca then started to use her telekinesis spell to start bringing Levi back. Levi managed to throw one end of his rope back to Gaspode who managed to grasp it. Jito also threw a rope towards Guthranka. Soon the Mothers were withdrawing back through the portal. At least they would know what to expect next time. Then the Mothers went right, through the black portal. This brought them into another circle, this one quite pleasant. It stood on an island in a vast pink ocean. Other islands were also visible in the distance, some cultivated some just appearing green. The nearest, however, had a pall of smoke hanging over it, and it was clear that the fields on it had been torched. Perhaps the architects of this grand plan of husbandry were camped in the eight tents arrayed in front of the portal within the circle. At their apex was a large cooking pot with an equally large purple skinned warty ogre. The Mothers reacted swiftly and mercilessly killing the ogre before it had a chance to raise the alarm. This left the Mothers the chance to form a plan. Some would see this as an advantage, but, whatever. Levi cast two silence spells over the tents on the right hand side, hoping to encompass four of them. Then Guthranka and Levi started chopping guy ropes on the two left-hand most tents. The ogres did not seem too happy about this, judging from the noises they were making. They started trying to exit by the back of the tents. This alerted the two other tents who could still hear. Soon seventeen ogres or half-ogres were advancing on them. Guthranka used her wand to set up a wall of fire along the middle of the tents to try and cut off half of the ogres from the battle (and singe their nose-hairs). This left hand to hand combat and the ogres proved quite capable and hardy. After managing to kill about eight of them the Mothers decided to withdraw. They then rushed to another portal to try and ensure they were not followed, but they ended up somewhere that they had not been before. They had inadvertently stepped through the portal that had yellow motes of light. A single moon lit this parallel, it's yellow-green radiance casting a weird glow on the circle of stones and the wire that was tightly secured all around them in a large wall or cage. It seemed that the cage was not to keep people in, but rather to keep the hordes of ghoul-creatures out. Beyond the wire, stretching to the limits of their view the Mothers saw a massive graveyard, full of desecration, with all of the graves lifted and their inhabitants now wandering malevolently around. Within the circle opposite the gate that they had just used stood a rude shack backed up to the edge of the circle and the fence. Without waiting the Mothers turned and went back through the portal. They decided that they should rest in the inn and they settled on the master bedroom again. This time, both Levi and Fonesca needed to regain their spells, so single watches were called for. Unfortunately, they did not repeat their caution of the previous stay here. The sole remaining resident of the inn was able to attack a single watcher. Guthranka was the unfortunate one who encountered the vampire, but luckily she did not succumb to his charm. Rather she fought him with all her strength, calling to her colleagues as she did so. But it was taking them too long to rouse themselves and Guthranka was bitten twice by the creature, before the power of Tyr that Levi brought to bear drove the thing off, turning into smoke and dissappearing. Guthranka looked very pale and had obviously been seriously affected by the attack. Worse still, the spellcasters had not regained any spells and Levi did not believe that he had the power to restore Guthranka to full health. The Mothers thought that it might be best to withdraw to a temple in order to find some solution to Guthranka's condition and that they might use the cubic gate to get there. Unfortunately, none of them could remember which words brought them to which location, despite everyone searching their packs diligently.