Well, this seems as good a place to lie low as any, or so I first thought. Volunteer for the army being sent out to the desert border, and then scarper when things look like getting hot. Not that I can’t look after myself these days, since the deal was done, but no sense making trouble for myself. Trouble is this place is buttoned up like a snake’s arse, and there is no where to go anyway, except downstream. And I saw what they did to some guys who tried to run away that way. So kept my head low, and made sure that I was useless enough not to get picked, but not so useless that I get nailed for anything. And I mean nailed up. It was all OK until a few days ago, and then the main force moved out, and we were left to garrison this dump. Opportunity at last I thought, but this complete stick-up-the-arse aristocrat has put himself in charge of our squad. We seem to be all the awkward bastards and misfits and I think a bunch of them are playing the same card as me and appearing a lot more useless than they are. There is one girl who is nice enough, except she keeps playing with fire the whole time, like literally. I think she is a few loaves short of a bakery shop, if you ask me. And this dwarf who is the grumpiest sod I ever met. And a complete meatheat who is so up himself its not true, and his slimy sidekick. Plus the aforementioned nob. And some kind of hippie chick.

Anyway, night before last we were doing duty on the rampart, and suddenly heard a kerfuffle out in the desert. Black as pitch out there, but of course that doesn’t cause me no problems, not with my witchsight. I could see what was going on – some bloke in desert robes fighting with some kind of creature. Unnatural looking thing. Anyway Stephen, the nob, Stephen de Hautville he insists on being called, he shouts a warcry of somekind, and jumps over the frigging rampart. Must be a twelve foot drop to the bottom. Brains of a tadpole that one. Brave, I’ll grant you, but I’m amazed he has lived thsi long. Anyway, he goes pegging off towards the fight. The flight is getting closer, and I think the others can see what is going on now, including Stephen. The thing is definitely unearthly now, but Stephen doesn’t slow down. I think there really is quite a lot of brain missing there. Anyway, he gets in close and starts slugging it with his mace, which is quite impressive – blasts of light as he hits it. He looks like he is having far too much fun though, so I banish it back to wherever it came from. Works like a charm as well. Kill-steal! The nob looks a bit disconsolate but pulls himself back together and tends to the wounded bloke, then carries him back in. They vanish off with the rest of the boss types, so I go back to staring at the desert.

Next morning, its all go. Seems we now have a top secret mission to go on. Must be related to the bloke we rescued I guess. Anyway, far to top secret for me to know about, except that I am quite good at knowing about stuff that I’m not supposed to know about. Apparently we need to go into the desert, through some sort of great pass, and find the temple of Death. Not sure what we are supposed to do there, but I guess a bit of mindless violence will be called for. Anyway, first step is to travel up the river for a couple of days and through a marsh, then strike out across the desert until we hit the caravan route, and pick up a caravan. They try to but be on raft loading duty, and then realise that its really not what I do, lugging stuff around. So I get to round up the camels instead. Evil bloody creatures, but smart. They rapidly realise who is boss, once you give them a quick mental picture of what true suffering really is. The Stephen nob gives us a speech about how we should be proud to be doing the will of Helim. Utter claptrap. We spend most of the day doing this, and then someone spots something in the sky flying towards us. We take cover and the dragon flies pass with a bloke on it. I send Faustus up to have a look, but he can’t keep up with it and the sunlight hurts his likkle eyes. Couple of hours later, its back again, and this time its heading straight for us. We go to take up a defensive position, but suddenly the bloke on the back gestures and a mote of flame flies over and explodes in the centre of us. We’re not too badly damaged (or at least I’m not), so I blast him back with a fireball of my own – not just him, but the three trolls who have just hopped over the palisade to support him. Stephen goes charging off at him again – the guy seriously only seems to have one tactic. The flight is relatively short – I blast off a few more eldricht blasts, but make sure to keep myself well out of harms way. The hippie-chick summons a pack of wolves, which is quite impressive. They don’t last long against the trolls, but it makes it just too complex to be bothered woring out who I should be blasting. Starts getting pretty boring towards the end – the wizard on the wyvern dies quite quickly and the wyvern buggers off fortunately. It quite funny watching them chop up the trolls, which keep pulling themselves back together. Finally they start hitting them with fire spells – the nutjob with the fire fixation is obviously fairly good at that, and the nob has a neat trick where he gets his mace to burst into flames when it hits, so they all stay down in the end.

The slimeball has had a root through the pockets of the wizard by the time I get there, but my arcane sight shows me that he has a magic ring on, so I get the Brazen Tome out (a sign of especial favour from my infernal lord) and start preparing a spell of identification.