The Search for the Holy Lance of Antioch

A record of the events in the search for a religious artifact, the Holy Lance of Antioch.

Written by Callas Verdicini.

December 1992 AP

Guild members on the Adventure

Brother Rowan

A wicker professing to a priest of Chantris.

Dillenger

First half of the twin pack, a shadow celestial mage.

Sinn Fein

Known as SF, the second half of the twin pack. One mean mind mage.

Callas

A good looking earth mage and party scribe.

Kesha

An elf, a rune mage under all the ceramic armour.

Shoka

The party's battle orc.

Diary of Events

September 30 1992 AP

After the Guild meeting we are met by Slave, a flying humonculus with a large necklace wound around its neck several times. He says his master is willing to pay 10,000 sovereigns per member (about twenty thousand silver pennies) to find and retrieve the Holy Lance of Antioch.

Later in the evening we go outside the Guild and Slave, carrying a large bowl of gruel from the Guild mess, uses the necklace to transport us back to his master. We arrive in a stone room lit by torches. There we are met by Thain, a tall albino human with a long white beard looking about 30 years in age.

Dillenger gets Thain to change the payment to 70,000 sovereigns to the party, regardless of how many make it back.

October 1 1992 AP

It was current September 1228 AD (late summer) locally. We arrived on the island of Cyprus, west the Syria (the Holy Land). Syria was currently occupied by Christian crusaders (from the lands to the north west of Cyprus) but the local populace are Muslims. The war is over religion and the occupation of the Holy City Jeruselam. There was also an Inquisition happening where groups of people from the Holy Roman Catholic Church would roam the lands seeking out heresy and heretics. These included political opponents of the church, those had didn't pay their dues to the church and any non true believer. People who practiced magic of any kind (which was very uncommon) were also branded heretics and burnt at the stake after been tortured for a confession. These groups were a power in the land since they were backed by the mother church of the Christians.

An astrology reading gave us 'Place of birth and beginning of order, place of final resting'. The lance seems to block attempts to magically locate it.

We meet Brother Luciano, a old priest with one of his eyes covered by a copper celtic corss. He said this enables him to read forbidden texts. Luciano was once a monk but he read too many of the wrong books and became a demonologist. He knows where a book which contains a reference to the lance is kept. The book is in his old monastery in Syria, some 150 miles east of Cyprus.

We were required to enter his old monastery in Syria to retrieve a book with contained references to the location of the lance.

That evening Dillenger, Kesha and Shoka fly to look of the monastery and create a rune portal to some where near it.

October 2 1992 AP

Go through the portal at about 10 AM. After walking for several hours we arrive at the monastery. It looks more a fortress, with a single tower surrounded by a 50' wall. On the side of the tower it is on top of a cliff. To one side is a graveyard. Kesha created another portal near to the keep (but out of direct sight) and we head back to Cyprus.

That evening Dillenger kills himself when a dark elemental which he summoned turned on him and body slamed him into the ground. Thain sent him back to the Guild to get resurrected.

October 11 1992 AP

At 11 PM we attacked the monastery on shadow wings. After a short fight in the courtyard, in which Shoka got his collar bone and shoulder broken, we stormed the keep. We quickly went up the keep through the ex-purgatory into the library. There we captured a German fighter called Helmut along with about half a dozen priests. Above the library was another room with a very large book, spinning about without help, all wrapped in chains, hanging from the ceiling.

A little later Dillenger arrives and says Kesha had been killed. The party hired Helmut and with his help we take Kesha's and the templar who killed him's body back to Cyprus. Later we returned the the library.

At this point I get teleported into the book and die. What happened for a while is second hand. At some point a group of about twenty templars arrive at the monastery. They were able to neutralize the book but in the fight that killed them much off the book gets badly burn. When my page was torn out the top half of my body was missing (presumed burnt).

November 16 1992 AP

Helmut, a fighter we subdued during the fight at the monastery, decides to join us for a fee and it equipped with the latest armour from the Guild. We return to Eyrth that day.

Brother Luciano says the book has been taken to Al-balu-ah, as it had been ex-purged by the inquisition.

Al-balu-ah turned out to be a small island is a scummy, shallow lake about 200 miles inland in Syria. On the island was a small stone tower, half buried in a low hill.

November 17 1992 AP

Around mid morning Dillenger shadow walks into the tower while carrying the unconscious body of Kesha. Later we all portal in. Inside the room was a stone coffin. While searching around it Kesha fell into a pit trap and was almost killed by a whyte.

After resting back in Cyprus for six hours we began searching the tower. Some of the stairs were trapped. The first room down looked as through it had been looted, with remains of burnt books. The auras on the ashes say the burning occurred about forty years ago.

Down another 30' for stairs and we found another trap. Down some more we found a 10' x 10' room with three doors. The first was cursed with aging, the second had a ward which turns you into a pillar of salt and the third was trapped with a blindness curse.

November 18 1992 AP

Dillenger got Thain to collect a couple of street urchins. Returning to Al-balu-ah the beggar is forced through the aging door. Behind it was a water trap into which he fell but was rescued by Shoka.

The beggar was then pushed though the blindness door and was blinded. He was then forced though the pillar of salt door but resisted the magic. The beggar then tried to get away and went back through the blindness door into a 20' corridor. Brother Rowan chased after him into the corridor which fell down sending both to their death through sharp blades and onto metal spikes.

After retrieving the bodies we continued to search, leaving the other doors behind. Eventually we found the library behind one of the traps on the stairwell. We spend the remainder of the day looting the library and taking it back to Cyprus.

Brother Rowan was sent back to the Guild and to be resurrected. Luciano says the lance is a holy weapon of one of the Templar orders. It is believed it was lost during a large battle near Antioch. The order now has its keep at Belen.

Later Kesha, Shoka and Dillenger fly to Belen to create a rune portal.

The Templar Order resides in a hold dug into a cliff side. At the bottom of the gully is a medium sized town. SF, using telepathy, gets an estimate of the number of people, 12 on the curtain wall, 10 grouped together somewhere in the cliff, 43 scattered around behind the cliff and 4 in the tower at the top of the cliff.

Using a crystal of vision we began examining the hold, starting with the tower at the top. In the tower was two people on watch and two below in bunks.

November 22 1992 AP

Brother Rowan returned and we continued to search through the hold using the crystal of vision.

November 24 1992 AP

Having searched the hold Dillenger decided to shadow walk into the chapel with Kesha. Shoka, SF, and Brother Rowan flew across the ravine and attacked the tower. They defeated the guards and SF change form and heading down towards the chapel.

Mean while Dillenger and Kesha were attacked by a demon, summoned by a ward around the alter. During the fight SF turned up, the demon killed Dillenger and both Kesha and SF manage to withdraw to the rooms behind chapel.

November 25 1992 AP

Early in the morning Kesha and SF return to where I was, opposite the cliff on the other side of the ravine where we had been using the crystal from, with the body of Dillenger.

Later Dillenger was sent back to the Guild to get resurrected while we spend the next couple of days continuing the search of the hold using the crystal of vision.

November 30 1992 AP

We learn that the location of the battle where the lance was last seen was 50 miles south east of Belen and is now a swamp with a small church at the edge of it.

December 1 1992 AP

We searched around the church and entered to meet a mad cleaner. Inside was a flag on a pole, the holy standard of the templar order. When used in battle the troops have improved moral. The standard has magic to 'smite the godless'.

Talking to a ghost we found the lance had been moved to near the birth place of the creator of the order in the hills near Ordo, some 100 miles south west of the church. We searched the church some more but found little of interest.

Dillenger, Shoka and Kesha fly off to create rune portal from the river specified by the ghost back to Cyprus.

December 2 1992 AP

We heading up the river until it entered a cavern. From the cavern we continued up a passage way, occasionally setting off traps until we entered a domed room with a barrier across the center of it. To pass through the barrier we must have been on a 'Quest for the Holy Lance'. SF used geas on us all so we then were.

We came to a large 100' x 80' room. At one end are seven chairs with creatures sitting on them. They are arthromorphisms of wrath, lust, glutony, avaris, envy, sloth and pride. The lance was also in the room.

After a short combat most of the seven deadly sins were destroyed or held and we managed to get the lance, where upon we return to Cyprus and later back to Seagate.