Alert: may contain spoilers for the adventure “Scourge of the Slave Lords”

[doodle of Ezekiel talking]

[doodle of Ezekiel looking annoyed]

[doodle of Ezekiel sitting and looking asleep]

Raven and Mikael finally back from recon. Mikael went as a bat, Raven as a monk with a pebble of silence (courtesy Ezekiel).

Mikael says there’s a garden on the east side where a harpy tried to sing at him, but his super bat-ears ignored her. The central building of the temple complex doesn’t seem to have any handy windows to sneak through, but we should be able to access it from the garden…which means we can by-pass the main courtyard area with two portcullises and a crowd of guards.

Apparently the courtyard with guards is the only place they had a torch this evening – but fortunately Luna was bright enough to let Raven climb the wall into a courtyard west of the main entrance. He says it smells rotten, and he’s pretty sure there’s a wight living there, but it seemed confused by his aura of silence, so he got away.

That courtyard also has a bunch of plants that said their job is to grab him, but Raven avoided them, too (because yeah he can talk to plants apparently…).

The last thing we’ll have to look out for is the southernmost courtyard. Mikael says there are a bunch of statues there – statues that look like people and creatures frozen in various poses. So we have one of those to deal with.

There are buildings along the west border of the complex, but they have gaping holes in the walls here and there, and our spies report they don’t seem to have floors inside to speak of. The whole place was burned and trashed some time back, and I guess the current residents have focused on rehabilitating the main building on the south-east side (there’s a new roof, but they didn’t build it as high up as the old external walls). So that’s probably where any prisoners (ahem) are going to be.

While we were waiting, Ezekiel did his whole “sink into a trance and try to contact higher powers” thing, and he says the info he got is: the Earth Dragon doesn’t really “do” temples, so this isn’t really a temple to him. He thinks it used to be Beori, but there’s been some…confusion lately. Most importantly, the temple is largely a cover for the business of the Slave Lords, which is enough motivation for us.

Lastly, Ezekiel says he “received information” that our enemies “filed a request” that their spells work on him, and “the request has been granted” for an unspecified length of time. Whatever that means. He says he won’t be able to talk in silence spells anymore…so there’s that.

Sunset comes early enough that we had time to find an inn and settle down before it got too late. Quite apart from the time of year, I think this is not the kind of town where we should sleep out of doors. Ezekiel talked a big game about camping in the alley, but he should know better after being kidnapped.

He’s going to buy Bornthene a bow and quiver tomorrow, and we enact our Grand Plan tomorrow night. Should be exciting, to say the least…

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