Here we go

Here is a quick plot synopsis:
After purchasing some items from our previous adventure in Waterdeep it turns out some of the money we were using to purchase our wares was indeed form an ancient society.

Hey gold's still gold so the shops accepted our payment, but our transactions piqued the interest of a Loremaster named Elsberry. He is the proprietor of a local museum that holds ancient books and curios. There had recently been a break in and the reason that we were over there is that the loremaster could link the civilization that both our gold and the items that were stolen came from. Unfortunately, that did not mean much because he had little information other than "old", and they were from the same people.

Elsberry did give our group the location of the person who had originally sold him the box and its contents, one Romilia Delascoe. She resides in a cottage just on the Western edge of the Ardeep forest near Waterdeep.

She seemed a hospitable person and graciously allowed our adventuring group the liberty of camping in her front lawn, Melchiah was nice enough to provide food (cleric's are handy!)

Romilia told us her father used to belong to a group of adventurers. These adventurers had originally built the cottage as their group's meeting place. The cottage is strategically placed close by to a twin set of portals. One of which is a one way that leads to a gnome's lab in Silvery Moon. The other leads to a mountain several hundred miles east. In that mountain top there are portals to several other places all over Faerun. The key feature our party had to go on besides old, was the fact that there was purple sand/dust in the container. We found a journal of Romilia's father that talked about a purple desert. Sure enough one of the portals in the mountain top led to a purple desert.

We now know the name of the desert as the plains of purple dust.

The place got blasticated some time ago. We found out that there are some serious artifacts in this desert. We also know that an ancient civilization used to exist out here.

After tooling around in the purple desert for a little while we learn that there is a brown dragon that lives in a geode. The geode utilizes extradimensional space in almost every aspect of its construction. There are apparently drow in the geode working with the brown dragon and looking for something.





There is also a wandering monk who, it seems, has a fantastic cartography hobby. With the wonderful psionic powers of Dace, we have the map memorized and stored away along with several books.

The map has given us some clues about several key features of the immediate region. Besides the geode that we have explored as well as our initial portal (which has a once only every 24 hours stipulation) there is a haunted citadel, as well as a couple of towers and a giant pink crystal castle infested with undead.

The castle is on a island/moat and is somewhat sunken. It appears that the undead are mindlessly searching for an artifact. We would like to get to that artifact first. Aen has been having a blast chopping up undead but it appears that the zombies are not as simple as they appear to be. These zombies seem augmented somehow as if they were created by someone who finds art in the creation of undeath. We know that the zombies are stronger, more coordinated and better armed than normal zombies. We also know they have a chill about them, and when one dies they explode in a wave of negative energy.

And with Portia's bardic music those zombies have been exploding very frequently


We have made good head way into the castle and are now about to hopefully get some answers. With the help of our "Rod of 1 Minute Monkeys" Melchiah has scouted out that through the next portal lies a lot of stuff. We step through to see An array of undead before us and at the end of the large room is a giant crystalline Golem, seemingly crafted out of the same material as the castle. Iocuno hates golems, or rather he hates the anti-magic capabilities golems possess.