Welcome to Gaia! ::

When Darkhom is ready, he will post his character information. If everything is in order we will begin, and Darkhom will have 3 weeks from the time of his first post to complete the mission.

As with all initiations, you may play any character and any race withing the confines of tolkien style fantasy. Anthromorph characters are fine, time traveling space marines are not. Your inventory may be anything you wish within reason, with a few limitations.

No magic items, unless I have oked it specifically. Keep the amount of items you are carrying realistic.

If you wish, I can generate a loadout based on your character description as well.

Name is now fixed.

Darkhom? what happened to Aiden? XD But that's fine XD

Your gear sounds good. the Pocket watch is a complex dwarven device that is your prized opsession. clockwork is rare in this world and so it is extremely valuable. your dagger has a built in sword breaker and was made by the same dwarven Mechanist that produced your watch. He was an old friend of the family. You are of noble birth, but due to turmoil in your native lands you have left the country, and are now working as a mercenary adventurer.

As far as your shortsword is concerned.... you mentioned being a sqwashbuckler... do you mean small sword instead?



A short sword



A small sword

The latter works a lot better for swashing buckles.XD

Its he direct descendant of the Rapier, It is called a small sword because it is smaller than a rapier is... not that this means that is terribly short, as you can see it is quite a bit longer than the short sword. but Rapier's are increadibly long.

However, due to their more median size, small swords are a far deadlier weapon in a lot of respects.

So, now that that is finalized, are we ready to begin?

Alright, since you're all set...

The situation is thus: One night, as you are sitting in a quaint roadside in, cursing the lack of contracts, decent food attractive maidens and just your luck lately in general, a figure brushes past you, bumping into your table and dropping a letter on the floor, which you immediately move to pick up. As you do, you notice that it has the name Darkhom Illuminari scrawled across it and that it is sealed with crest of the local Duke, Vedic Brisbane. By the time you look up, the messenger has vanished. You open the seal, melting it thuroughly, as being of noble birth, you recognize a clandestined proposal when you see one, You carefully read the contents of the letter. Brisbane wants you to track down a group of bandits who are using an old abandoned temple as their base of operations. Their leader, Malarus, is an expert in the black arts, and seems to have come into possession of a letter from the Duke to The Countessa of Betany containing information of a rather personal nature. It would be disasterous if this information got out. The mission is to find this letter and destroy it. If, however, you find that the seal has been broken, you will also have to kill Malarus to insure the information dies with him. You will be compensated handsomly for your efforts. Enough to live almost as well as you used to, and for a good while at that. You follow the letter's directions and approach the forest, a little ways in, a voice calls out to you, and you draw your small sword as you turn ready for anything.

"Easy, friend. My name is Triskal Vern. I'm Duke Brisbane's man, sent to asist you in this endeavor."

You recognize him by his garb as the man who Dropped the letter at the inn. He lowers his hood, and you can see that by the combination of his pointed ears and growth of stubble, he is likely a half-elf, his bow, arrows and hatchet mark him as a forester, not to mention the fact that he snuck up on you like a ghost.

"I would have contacted you directly at the Inn, but I wanted to scout ahead and take care of straggelers in the wood. I also took down a descent sized hart. Perhaps if we survive this, we will celebrate with fresh venison."

Triskal leads you to the outskirts of the temple. The temple is located in a clearing in the middle of the forest. The clearing is roughly circular, with the temple sitting about 100 feet away from the edge of the forest from any given point. You are facing north and are protected from view by the treeline. you can see the main entrance to the temple ahead of you. the temple is old and its stonework cracked and crumbling in places. It is roughly round in shape and domed at the top, but on the western side you can just make out that it branchs off slightly. The Main entrance is guarded by 2 bandits wearing rough leather armor, the one on the left is armed with a cruel-looking Sickle, even from where you are you can see the blade is stained and has seen a lot of use and is an exteremly deadly weapon. The bandit on the right is leaning on a gonne attached to a swivel... his slow match is not lit, and he is idlely wrapping and unrapping his fist with it. Niether of them can see you where you are, but, while certainly looking bored, both are alert, and would certanly spot you if you came out from the trees.

It is now your move.

As yuou make your way to the western side of the temple you make note that while the main, domed section of the temple has many windows, all of them are boarded or bricked up. There are several cracks in the upper parts of the dome, and when you look carefully, you note that smoke is rising from some of them.



The western part of the temple branches off from the temple proper. Tere is a low flat roofed squared section. on the western most end is a door, and guarding that door is a lone bandit, he is leaning heavily on a pole weapon that looks like it was used to prune trees in a former life... He looks positively bored.

North of the temple on its western side you can see a small adobe outbuilding.... you cannot see any entrances or windows from your position.

As you pass the small outbuilding, you notice it has no roof nor windows, and that the entrance faces due north, pointed at the forest. Most of all you notice the foul odor emmenating from from within. You also hear some grunting coming from inside, and see a humanoid shape squatting. It does not detect your presence, however, and merely procedes with its "business."

the northern side of the temple is even more overgrown than the rest of the temple. There appears to be a stairway going down, but no guards present whatsoever. It is Eerily quiet in this part of the clearing.

"I can try it..... but it will be a tricky shot... its shady in there and I can't get a direct look at.... whatever that is."

((by the way, since I forgot to mention it, you have 5 spell charges at your disposal, and the following spells, Magic Missle, light, Sleep, Detect Traps/Magic, and fireball. Fireball uses 2 charges, the rest use one.))

Sleep has no duration, but you need to be close to use it. within 5 feet or so. you can cast it on multiple targets at once, though up to 4 on a roll of 1d4. Light is centered on yourself or an object you cast it on... and extends as far as torchlight.... if cast on an object you must be touching said object.


On the eastern side of the building you see a row of cages... 3 medium sized cages and one large, man-sized cage. There are smaller cages lying on top of the medium sized ones, but most seem to be open and empty... Sitting next to the large cage in a worn chair is an old man. He appears to be asleep.