Tormeron's events: the Stories

[Gergel]

As the group gathered in Gadgetzan, Adrenus informed them that the part of today's adventure that they'd dreaded the most -- a long trek through desert or a flight past pirates and their cannons -- would not be necessary. He had hired a rowboat and a crew to ferry them to the south end of Tanaris. The trip was fairly quick and uneventful. Their boat maneuvered around pirates in their cove and ended up in the northmost end of the Land's End Beach.

Immediately Gailia noticed a group of -- for the lack of a better description -- shades, moving in the mountains as if fleeing from something. One of the shades appeared before the group and attempted to possess a few people before temporarily managing to hide inside Claraa. While semi-possessing the rogue, it shouted out a warning about "do not go there!" The shade was quickly drawn out her by Lilandris, who destroyed it.

Just a little further, Lilandris' sense of undeath discovered a large cover stone under the sand of the beach. It was engraved with the exact signs and symbols that the gem from last week's shipboard expedition had shown to its holders in visions. Ignoring the warnings engraved on the cover stone's seal, it was decided to open the tomb. Chepi set up her explosives... which fizzled. Then fizzled again. And finally, just as everyone had thought the explosive was a dud, went *boom* most spectacularly.

The cover stone cracked, crumbled, and was ripped apart by a giant undead pirate captain that crawled out from the tomb. Polite discussion bore no fruit (the pirate quickly decided that the adventurers were agents of his mutinous crew, who had originally buried him alive in that tomb) and so a battle started. The pirate swung around a massive blade "three times the weight of a normal two-handed sword" and followed up with blasts of frost, shadow and lightning. Surprisingly, no one was seriously injured. For Zeneth, Thelarwen and Aroona, who were engaging the giant in melee range, it was fairly easy to dodge the massive blows as the sword was quite unwieldy. As for the spells, they did little damage. Because the pirate was wearing light leather and cloth, just your typical pirate gear, the attackers' blows ripped him apart pretty quickly. In no time the giant undead pirate's body crumbled into pieces.

Its spirit attempted to jump from the shattering body and enter Thelarwen, but never made it there when Lilandris shot it with her Light-infused blessed pistol. The spirit scampered off and was not seen again.

Now that the tomb was open and clear of hostiles, the treasure-hunting members of the adventuring party jumped into it and discovered a sealed chest inside. There were no locks or lids, it seemed monolithic, but Aroona quickly bashed it apart in her bearform. Only one item popped out of the remnants of the box: an amulet that appeared to have two empty slots for gems. Sadly Tessliana, who still carried the gem from last week, was not present so these two parts could not be reunited. While holding the amulet, both Aroona and Lilandris were given visions of Stormwind, the statue of a general at the gates (not sure what was up with that), and the King's throne room. And under the throne, another gem glowing sickly green.

While the group debated as to how exactly they should proceed with their task, can't just walk into the King's throne room and ask politely for a permission to conduct a search, a gnome appeared in the darkness of the tomb. The gnome spoke of "an artifact" which had been split into three pieces, and must never be recombined. As the "gnome" shapeshifted into an image of Tessliana, "she" indicated that Tess has one part (the gem from last week). Another shift into Draenei form and she pointed at Lilandris, who had the second part (the amulet). Back into gnome form, and finally he told the group that he cannot tell about the third part, as this was forbidden to him. Once again he urged the group to return those pieces they had already found and not look for the third. Being a magical construct, it then disappeared into thin air.

But of course no one considered the option of just leaving the artifact be. Next week they would be gathering in Stormwind and trying to find the final fragment, the green gem in Stormwind Keep.

Just as everyone was preparing to leave Tanaris, a slimy... something... crawled up from the sand and into Chepi's backpack, where it promptly set off Chepi's fireworks and explosives. Aroona, in a moment of not-so-clarity, decided that the best way to get rid of the slimy entity would be to eat it. Fortunately she was not injured by the blast of all the Chepi's explosives going *boom*, but she did get quite a bad case of indigestion...

Next week, the end of the chain in Stormwind.

[Adrenus]: Or is it?...