Prequel: Zosia and Brother William

Zosia (played by Annette)

Beauteous elf maiden (though rather a short-arse, at only 4'6"). A warrior-mage, and able to regenerate damage even after death, though not from fire or acid damage. She has a daughter somewhere by the name of Arvhran, who had been sent off to train as a druid in her youth.

Brother William (played by Scott Russell)

Human male, 6'4", priest of Freya, of no fixed abode.

In the far and distant past...

After meeting at the Dancing Dog, a well-known haunt of adventurers and the like in the northern city of Reic, Zosia and Brother William took employment with a wealthy but curiously naive band of pilgrims who had been enjoined by their god to bring a massive sacred juggernaut to the Throne of the Gods. With considerable loss of life, this was achieved and our two heroes took the opportunity to sit on the throne and thus obtain a boon of their gods. William asked for, and was granted, the strength of a storm giant, while Zosia asked for a purpose, a holy quest, and received a series of ambiguous and unsettling dreams involving images of death and corruption and icky stuff. For some reason, they decided to go to the great southern city of Hyarfalas (I forget why). In any case, they legged it to the port of Clancapaill and booked a passage southwards.

Our two intrepid adventurers made their way south by ship. During the journey, the vessel was attacked by hideous drowned undead zombie monster things, which climbed over the gunwales in the night and wiped out every living thing aboard with the exception of one guy (who hid somewhere while the fight was on) and a Mysterious Stranger who had been occupying the forward cabin and of whom no sign could be found afterwards. Completely at the mercy of the winds and living on manna from heaven (courtesy of Brother William), they eventually drifted ashore not too far from their intended destination. In true D&D style, they towed the ship along the coast by virtue of Zosia transforming herself into a dragon and towing it, and in this manner came near to the ruins of the old city of Éabar. There the tiny group were attacked by some sort of ghost or spectre which possessed the hapless NPC, forcing them to kill him. The boogie-monster emerged from the corpse and attacked Brother Will psychically, turning his hair white and aging him forty years overnight (giving him the apparent age of 65 years, and grumpy with it).

Deciding to leave this haunted coast, the two remaining adventurers towed their ship across the bay to the city of Fridæl where they sold it for a tidy sum, and then took passage back across the bay to Hyarfalas. There they heard that the island across the straits (where the necropolis of Éabar lay) had become infested with the undead and all sorts of creepy things, with the blame being laid at the door of a necromancer named Gnaeus Praen. Zosia's dreams had steadily become more urgent and specific, and eventually she decided that her quest somehow involved this necromancer, who lived (so to speak) in Éabar. Brother William, who was very interested in getting hold of some means of restoring his lost youth, reasoned that a necromancer might be likely to be in possession of such a thing, and was thus well in favour of looting and pillaging him for all that he was worth. With this end in mind, and by way of making a token attempt at "planning" (hah!), they went to the Great University and checked out an out-of-date copy of the wizardly Who's Who.

While out carousing that night, they met a Potentially Useful NPC by the name of Red Rackham, a dissolute and penniless rogue of many and varied skills, with a penchant for drinking to excess at the drop of a hat. Somehow (I forget exactly how) they convinced him that accompanying them would be a good idea. He is not actually as stupid as this might make him appear.

Zosia advertised on the public noticeboards at various generic "World-O'-Magic" stores for a couple of new spells, offering others in return. She got a reply incorporating a magical feather, which she was supposed to burn in the flame of a special "Baby's Blood" candle. Alas, when she tried out this simple charm, she and Brother William both utterly failed their saving throws (both throwing l's!) and were rendered unconscious by the noxious fumes emitted by the feather. While in this state, they were looted of everything appearing even remotely valuable by a young chamber-boy named Pugot who has since disappeared. Brother William swore a savage and brutal revenge on the venal (but now indescribably wealthy) Pugot. With great travail and expenditure they managed to retrieve most of the stuff, though Zosia is now in the unfortunate position of being a runaway pet of the local sheik's daughter (it's a long story) and should therefore be careful about where she lets herself be seen. Most importantly, Zosia has managed to retrieve her books of magic, along with the Portable Hole they were stored in.

Zosia, Brother Will, and Red spent a profitable evening in the hotel planning their great assault on the lair of the necromancer. None of them seemed to be overly concerned with the fact that they knew nothing at all about the exact whereabouts of his tower, of the layout of the tower, or how many undead servants he might have, or anything at all about his defences. The wine flowed freely, and eventually they settled on a time-honoured plan — sneak in, kill everything in sight, march out triumphantly carrying great loads of treasure. The "sneaking in" part was to be accomplished via a Potion of Gaseous Form, with some Oil of Ethereal Action held in reserve for an escape in case their foolproof plan should inexplicably go wrong. The effort of such immense intellectual effort, combined with the considerable quantities of the house red consumed by the lads, eventually told and both Red and Brother Will collapsed into a drunken stupor. Zosia dragged them both upstairs by the heels, depositing them in their rooms.

At this point, Zosia made what might be charitably described as an error of judgement. She decided that, while he was unconscious, she would rifle Red Rackham's belongings (purely in the spirit of curiosity, you understand). Red was certainly in no condition to object, but what Zosia did not know was that both Red and his gear were under the protection of an invisible and amorphously serpentine entity celled Ruprecht. Once it became clear that Zosia's interest in Red's gear extended beyond merely removing it to allow him a more comfortable repose, (she had decided to steal — or as she put it, "borrow" — his stuff away to her own room for more convenient identification) Ruprecht moved to protect its master's interests. Zosia, able to see into the infra-red, detected Ruprecht and took fright, jumping into bed with Red and cowering behind his recumbent body, while Ruprecht took up a watchful position around one of the bedposts. For some reason, she decided that she would try to escape using the unconscious Red as a human shield, and tried to carry him out of the room. Ruprecht became very alarmed and agitated, and moved in to the attack, striking at Zosia's legs. She felt nothing except an increasing coldness and numbness of the extremities, was unable to do Ruprecht any harm with her sword, and eventually decided that discretion was the better part of valour and fled the room. Ruprecht did not pursue, electing instead to remain with its intoxicated master.

Back in her room, Zosia examined her legs by lamplight and found them to be hard and cold to-the touch, her knees and ankles stiffened almost to the point of immobility. Ruprecht's attacks had been gradually petrifying her. Understandably, she was somewhat distressed, but was unable to rouse Brother Will for some time owing to his advanced state of inebriation.

The following morning, when William could finally be wakened, she described the events of the previous evening, and though unsympathetic, he went to see Red to see what (if anything) could be done. Red Rackham was in a poor mood, being badly hung over and not terribly keen on having his belongings interfered with by an elf of very short acquaintance, and though coolly polite, offered no immediate solution to Zosia's problem. After hearing her version of events, he merely offered his sympathy for her predicament and retired, returning with little parchment tags inscribed "Kindly refrain from touching" attached to all of his equipment. The snub was not lost on Zosia, who became mightily wroth and, once in private with William, swore a bloody revenge on Rackham. William took issue with her, stating clearly that she had no-one to blame for her predicament but herself. He agreed to take her to the local shrine of Bridget at the university to see if anything could be done for her there, but alas, without any real success.

Leaving Zosia at the shrine, William went back to talk again with Rackham. Red, having indulged in a hair of the dog, was in a better humour, and eventually agreed to have Ruprecht do what he could to reverse the petrifaction of Zosia's legs, and Zosia in her turn apologised for her ill-advised curiosity. There remains a coolness between the two, and Zosia has not renounced her vengeance, though she hasn't actually said anything about it to Red Rackham. Ruprecht removed the petrifaction from Zosia's legs, and she is pretty much as good as new.

Attention turned to equipment for the expedition. Zosia had no magical weapons of any sort, and very limited resources. She sold a surplus potion (a Philtre of Persuasiveness) for a reasonable sum, though not nearly enough to buy a weapon of any great power. She went to visit Pankreas the Artificer, but found him away from home for the next three months. She put out a fire in one of the workshops with her Wand of Extinguishing, and offered to sell or trade it for a weapon, but found no-one with the authority to make such a trade. She was, however, given a letter of introduction to a master swordsmith, and went off to the Street of Swords to see what she might be able to buy or trade. The swordsmith (Mikelotes) offered to make her a sword in return for obtaining for him a few items not readily available — the brain-stone of a basilisk, the tongue of a cockatrice, and spikes from a manticore's tail. Zosia made a brief and unsuccessful attempt to obtain the basilisk's brain-stone by polymorphing a cow into a basilisk and then killing it, only to find that all she was left with was a dead cow. At that point, she became despondent, and decided to fall back on charity.

She went back to the shrine of Bridgit to beg for some sort of material aid, which they granted after consultation with the god. She was loaned a small sword and shield of brass, charmed with a bane against undead, a small floating eye, and a box of a metallic grey powder, also useful against the undead.

While Zosia was running about trying to get herself equipped, Brother William was spending a good deal of time in the University Library, researching necromancy and trying to find out how he might be able to return his lost youth. He found a certain amount of information, which served mainly to convince him that his best chance of finding something useful was to pillage Gnaeus Praen mercilessly, he being the nearest available necromancer.

Without further delay, they settled their bill at the hotel (to the tune of over a hundred gold pieces for their three weeks or so in residence) and headed off to Éabar, to make their fortunes.

By the stratagem of Zosia polymorphing into a pegasus and carrying the other two, they rapidly made their way to the small hills overlooking Éabar. They decided that since they had no idea which tower might be the one Praen used as his lair they'd just go for the tallest one first, and then try another if they had no luck there.

They entered the tower in gaseous form as they had planned (though Zosia's dose of the potion expired prematurely and she fell 18 feet to the ground, having to fly up to the balcony in the usual way), and found it apparently deserted. They inspected the interior of the onion-dome and found nothing there except birds' nests and guano, and so began to make their way down the stairs to street level. On the second level down, they found a small group of skeletons which made no hostile moves towards them. Zosia took the opportunity to test her dust, which made one of the skeletons collapse most satisfyingly into a pile of bones. They proceeded down the steps, and on the next level were attacked by twelve armed skeletons, obviously sentries. They dispatched all of them, though both Zosia and Brother William took significant damage and began to realise the implications of the combination of a multitude of foes and less useful armour than they were used to.

There was no sign of Gnaeus Praen, apart from the presence of the animated skeletons, which were presumably his work.