Also note, a miscreant by the name of Shodon was killing folks on Tower grounds. Kill this one on sight, he has violated the sanctity of the Tower, and his protections have been removed.

Well, once we recovered from or shock, we began to question it in earnest. It seems that it is one of 3 leaders of the Gelidum, given the gift of speach from a mage called Gavin (whose talents with Ice magic is in evidenced in his home in Moonglow, just South of the Mage Tower). As we tried to infiltrate ourselves into this massive creatures graces, it seems one of our crawlers broke ranks and actually joined with the Gelidum. I won't name names, afterall the stance of the Tower is neutral on such issues. But while they were off discussing a mission, we agreed to join together with some valient tamers that had also arrived. So when the Wyrm emerged, we jumped it. Alas, the tame dragons would not attack, nor would tamed polar bears. But the attacks of the mages and warriors seemed effective enough. Paralyze, poison, e-bolts and flamstrikes flew. The Wyrm ran off like a thunderbolt and we pursued... unfortunately, as we chased it, he (she?) invoked some arcane powers and ALL of us began to see ghosts images of ourselves and the Wrym. He led us to a group of orcs, which normally would be nothing but meat for us, but due to this "ghost" condition we were in, they were INVISIBLE and ATTACKING WHILE INVISIBLE. Yikes!!! The attack floundered, and we regrouped in the halls.

A place like the Ice Caves are MUCH more difficult when afflicted by this evil "ghosting" magic, and a few of kept dieing. At one point, the Wyrm approached us cautiously, and we explained we were just demonstrating our prowess with arms and once again asked to be inducted into it's service (I'm not sure if he bought it). We discussed strategy for achieving it's goals, and left on "neutral" terms (he didn't try to kill us and we stopped trying to kill him). All in all, a wild night - we DO know that the Gelidum is seeking the mage Gavin in order to learn his magics and FREEZE THE WORLD!!! When we got back to the Tower, those that had never seen the house of Gavin were given a quick tour, and we searched it for new clues. It seems Gavin is off in the mountains searching for some types of fungus to break the speel afflicting the frozen ranger. If anyone finds any news, let us know.

Tower crawl. I arrived late, after some trouble with the Dereth to Britannia transfer. But to my surprise, S'roneous
was the only person present. We chatted, and waited around. Minerbabe arrives, who I had not seen in months.
Then a OEB member named Skilsaw McGurke, who I had not met before, but seemed a good fellow. Tired of
hewing trees, he decided to join us. Morgan came in to say hello, and drop off some books. He said he would try to
contact Tor, to join us. Then Brask arrived, stumbling around as usual. Tor showed up, clad in a deathrobe, and ran
off to find some armor. When he returned, it was off to Papua, and a gate to Titan Valley.

Just around the first corner, we meet 2 cyclopi. A brisk warm-up, to get us back in the swing of things. Skilsaw
discovers that unlike trees, cyclopi hit back. Both fell quickly, wounds were bandaged, and we moved on. Up the
passageway, a titan. S'roneous unleashes a spell at it, which attracted its fury, as the warriors were just arriving. It
charges thru the pack of warriors, hot on his heels. Then, craftily, it curses S'ron, rendering him overweight and
unable to move or teleport. I move under the titans feet, drawing its attention, as others try to heal S'ron, who is
taking a terrific beating. Between my distractions, and the healing efforts of others, he survives. The warriors focus
on the titan, and it goes down as well.

We have the rythym again, and the next few seem almost routine. Then a cyclops and titan attacks us from the rear.
In my rush to get back there, I foolishly engage the full mana titan, while the other warriors are finishing off the
cyclops. He unleashes a ferocious spell combo, punctuated by massive blows of his fists, which cunningly dodge
my shield each time. Attempting to withdraw, I fall. S'roneous utilizes his powers to their fullest, and restores me to
life. After recovering my belongings, including the ones stolen from my body by Brask, we moved on. His excuse, "I
thought that was the titan body" How even a drunkard can mistake my small corpse for a titanic body is unknown to
me, but he managed.

We move on, into the valley itself. More titans and cyclopi are dispatched, along with ettins and scorpions. A ghost
arrives, by the name of N.O.S. A bit of my healing arts, and several of us leave to help him recover his belongings
from the cyclops that caused his death. A brisk battle we had, as the cyclops had invited friends to help him keep
his hard won treasure. They did not prevail, and N.O.S. was left happily raining death down on more monsters, from
his perch atop a hill.

Back in the valley, arc of OEB arrives. Shortly after, Sir Patrick arrives as well. We move back into the maze. Then
someone announces that an old enemy is nearby. Krom, nPK. A foul looter and murderer, who with the aid of some
nefarious friends, had got the upper hand in 2 previous battles. He loots a fallen kill of ours, and offers some insults.
S'roneous offers his nether regions for Krom's inspection.

We move on, ignoring the criminally flagged heckler. Tor engages a titan in close quarters, and Krom unleashes a
volley of Wall of Stone spells, blocking us from aiding Tor. Tor falls. I leave the titan to the other warriors, and lay my
broadsword into Krom's tender hide. Revealing his true character, he runs. I sneak in a hit or 2 on the titan, while
waiting for his return. He comes back, chanting Corp Por, Corp Por. In the confusion, Minerbabe falls. I catch
several of Krom's Ebolts, and had a close shave with death. He runs again, having caught some explosions,
ebolts, and a broadsword hit of his own. Meanwhile, the titan is happily crushing away at us from behind. I return my
attention to it, and administer a few bandages to companions. Krom makes another hit and run attack, and drops
Brask. Tor and Minerbabe are returned to life, and the titan falls finally. I apply my healing arts to the ghost of Brask,
but fail my first attempt, as Krom returns yet again. He unleashes some ebolts, and catches my broadsword,
several other weaponstrikes, and a seeming unending volley of Paralyzes from S'ron. Again he withdrawns, but not
far. I succeed in ressurecting Brask.

Tiring of his cowardly hit and run tactics, I sheath my sword. Krom returns again, and unleashes a volley of spells at
Skilsaw. The other warriors close. I circle around, and catch him from behind as he tries to run again. My secret
weapon is revealed. Not a broadsword crafted by any so-called "grandmaster smith" do I hold now. A katana,
forged by the hand of Cygnus Stargazer himself. But this blade does not shine brightly in the mountain sun. For it is
covered with the deadliest poison, applied by the hand of Nagash. The blade strikes true, the poison runs swiftly in
the veins of Krom. The coward is trapped. He attempts to push past me, as the full fury of the magetower is
unleashed on him. He attempts to recall, to no avail. The mages release their spells, the warriors strike again, and
he falls beneath my heirloom blade.
 

• Executioners Cap on Corpsers
• Fertile Dirt on Earth Elementals
• Blackmoor on Lich Lords
• Bone on Skeletal Magi and Bone Magi
• Dead wood on Reapers
• Vials of Blood on Blood Elementals

Buoyed by this success, Brask (Chief Mage and Expedition Leader) decided that it would be great fun to melee some blood elementals. Like sheep to slaughter we followed him to the blood elemental spawning grounds. When we arrived, a valient warrior by the name of SnorT was engaged in a battle with one of the beasts. As it hurled spells at him, he used the features of the terrain to keep it from closing in on him. We asked if he would mind if we rushed the beast as long as we let him keep its treasure. I know that he came to the immediate conclusion that we were all insane, but he agreed to let us attack the beast he had been engaged in. The creature was running very low on mana, but was full of life. We charged, and the fun began....

Arthur was the first to the fell creature and it attacked him with great fury. As the rest of us tried to cut the beast down, SnorT, Brask, and Simean kept a constant flow of magical healing energy rushing into Arthur's body. I applied what few bandages I could, but it was the magic that kept Arthur alive. At the midpoint of the battle, the beast turned its attentions to me. I am not sure why it decided to switch targets, but I suspect that it was frustrated that Arthur had stood up to such tremendous punishment and lived. At any rate, the blows that beast rained down on me were like none I have ever felt before. Even wearing my best armor and skillfully using my shield, the beast came near to bringing me down with every blow. The skilled healing of the mages in our group was the only thing that kept me on my feet. Finally, the beast fell to one of my many war axe blows and there was great rejoicing amongst the troops.

The second blood elemental to spawn decided to take up where the last on had left off and attacked me. I was ready for the crushing blows this time, and the battle was raging when the unthinkable happened. Brask had been healing me and ran out of reagents! (damn inexperienced chief mages) The other healers tried to jump in, but the delay was too great and I fell to the fierce creature. At this point the elemental rushed into the rear of the party and attacked Brask. The shift in the battle brought confusion and Brask was grievously hurt before he received his first healing. Althought the healers made a valient attempt to save him, they could never quite catch up with the damage the beast was doing (and SnorT ran out of mana, which didn't help). At this point it looked very bad for the visiting team. Somehow the gods were smiling on us and an adventurer named FrozenBlaze happened across the battle and helped to slay the beast. He then resurrected Brask and myself. It was good to find a noble mage at that point in the evening.

Sir Xavier's tale
 

Twas a hard fought night for the people of the LS Mage Tower and many others. We had a meeting at 9pm
to disscuss the sinking of the Mage Tower that had happened before. Althought that is not the important
event that had happened. Halston showed up at the Mage Tower while we were at Covetous cursing a
ruby. When we got back we knew something was wrong as Halston said we must gather as many people
as we could and go onto Buccaneer's Den where FoA followers were gathering. When we got there there
were several onslaughts of orcs ettins, evil tred mages and evil black mages. Twas a bloodbath and a few
died. We then went into a building were Trool a FoA warrior was at. He told us to find a Mage by the name
of Onjann in Minoc. When we arrived in Minoc, Halston sent out scouts to find Onjann. I quickly ran to a
place I thought he might be at, The Barnacle. He was indeed there. Halston managed to get some
information out of him. The information was to find a gypsy by the name Martha by the Yew Mill. The party
went onward to Yew and Martha told us that the Leader of the FoA went to a dungeon over yonder, which
was indeed Shame. This is when everything went wrong the party was seperated many times, but we all
mostly survived. When I caught up with Halston and part of the party we were in the dreaded Blood room.
There was of course a Blood Elemental there, so Halston and I quickly attacked it. Halston almost died
when another Blood elemental spawned near him. After this I was lost along with 5 other people, but none
the less the rest of the party and Halston found the Leader of FoA and Gthunk. As I was not there I can not
tell thee what had happened but it was a blood bath as when I finaly managed to find the place in Shame
there were four to five ghosts and the corpse of Gthunk. Someone was lucky enough to get Gthunks Fist, a
very powerful war hammer. After everyone was ressurrected we headed to the Yew Court of Truth were the
Leader of FoA surrendered. Every member of the party was given a small reward. Halston said there
should be a trial for the Leader of FoA in the near future.

- Sir Xavier, The Drunken Miner, TMT
 

As all but the most book-bound of you noticed, a few weeks ago we had the misfortune of our entire Tower falling into the sea. Many different explanations have been offered, ranging from drunken mages to the appearance of the group that Sage Wedley warned us of so long ago. I have since investigated many of these issues, and wish to provide my findings to the Mages of the Tower. Further, I have learned some new information from Weist Fielding which may shed some light on this situation.
Thus, I am calling all who consider themselves wise and who wish to aid us in solving this conundrum. I will be running a meeting on the second floor meeting room of the Mage Tower on this coming Thursday. The time will be our usual, 9PM CST. If our wits prove sufficiently sharp, we may come to the problem of this long standing mystery.

Off we ran, and there Halston filled us in. It seems like the FoA had used the corrupted black rock to create black pentagrams. With these, they created some Dark Wisps, whose purpose was... the END OF THE WORLD! Yes, wisps have the power to end it all, and these corrupted ones would probably do it. So we were off to destroy them. Halston had gathered others to his cause as well, and trapsing through the woods saw a few lost folks, but the armies eventually arrived and combatted the foe. Yes, the Dark Wisp was defeated, and the armies of the FoA (trolls, evil mages, and orcs) was routed. And our very own Van-sama got in the death blow. A glorious battle, with only a few casualties on our side.

Huzzah!

We (with the help of Seer Aldron) summoned our patron demigod, the son of the Lord of Day and the Mistress of Night, Twilight. Our invocations were NOT in vain, as after of a week of fasting, chanting and begging the Tower rose out of the sea, and once again floats in the air above the Sea north of Moonglow. There have been some small changes, as well. We have a new bullitin board out front, and the rooftop never looked better (although we seem to have lost our keg). And a special thanks to demigoddess Minx, who came and assured us that our prayers were being heard. Her kind words came in an hour of despair, and they really helped.

• The higher your evaluate intelligence, the easier it will be to overcome your target's magic resistance skill.
• The higher your anatomy skill, the more damage you are likely to do to your opponent with each blow.
• Strength no longer gives a bonus to archery damage.
• The parrying skill is twice as effective as it used to be against ranged weapons.
• We are testing a new skill to be called Meditation. This is often referred to among players as "channeling." The higher this skill is, the faster your mana will regenerate. However, the more armor you are wearing, the less effect you will get. We are temporarily using theSpirit Speak skill as the value of this Meditation skill.

And on the next night (last night, that is), we experimented with some decorations, hoping for a lockdown. We need a plan in order to be able to proceed. After a little interior decorating, and sitting around the "long table", a few of us got together to scout out the Terathen Keep. I had to leave early, and did so in one piece. Well, it looks like Secret Agent Man was the only other one to make it out alive. A little persistance on the part of Apollo got their stuff back, though. Good work guys. The fight is never over until you give up, huh.

It all started with a band of the "usual suspects" showing up at the Mage Tower for Tuesday night's scheduled crawl (and with Brask the GM Drunk along, you quickly learn why it's called a crawl). During the pre crawl preparations, which consist of the swilling of beer and the girding of loins, a bruised and battered Weist Fielding limped up to Tower.

Weist, in his position as assistant to Sage Wedley, had accompanied the Sage on a exploratory trip to Shame. The Sage had been conducting some research into elemental magics in following a splinter group of the FOA that was working on a limited armageddon-type spell, specific to single structures. Weist told us of a horde of monsters that had attacked them in the depths of Shame as they approached a building. The Sage was quickly overcome, but he managed to recall out using a scroll to seek help.

The Mage Tower folks were familiar with the Sage and his work, and quickly (well, relatively quickly) put together a search and rescue operation. We had to start at the beginning in order for Weist to retrace their steps. With our own "horde" of sixteen, we dove into the entrance....

....and hit our heads on a wall of monsters. Some bandit looking for cheap kills had brought several elementals and scorpions to the very entrance of the cave, where people newly entering could be taken off guard. People like me, unfortunately (orcs always rush ahead).

Despite being slammed from the front and poked from behind (by S'roneous' halberd), I managed to teleport behind some rocks and draw off a few of the critters. This gave the rest of our group the chance to come in and overwhelm the remainder. The silly fool who started the whole mess even got to die twice...:) Editorial note: I don't use a halberd.

Weist then led us through some twisting passages guarded by an occasional earth elemental, which was quickly dispatched. At one point, however, when Weist stopped to ponder a fork in the cavern, we were ambushed by 12 earth elementals and several scorpions. It seemed that someone or something did not want us to find the Sage. Not a pretty picture, but we made it through relatively intact (as intact as semi drunk mages can be).

We went through a black gate that Weist recognized, and made our way along a long passageway with several bridges. The earth elementals apparently had given up, but were replaced by a swarm of air elementals (of course). We encountered several ghosts along the way, but none were the Sage.

We went through a second black gate, and headed westward to a building that Weist seemed to recognize. Alas, it did not contain the ghost of the Sage (although it did contain the ghosts of several party members at various times while we investigated!). Weist led the group to a second building where the Sage's ghost was found, guarded by some red mages. Unfortunately, additional members of the group joined the Sage in his otherworldly status in the process.

The Sage was gated back to the Tower and resurrected there. As soon as the Tower group assembled, the Sage began to tell his story (I believe some of the members took detailed notes, and perhaps can provide them here). In his experimentation with elemental magic, he had developed a potion of mana. But that was not his reason for going to Shame. He had learned of the mini-armageddon spell being developed, and was working on a counterspell. He believed he had successfully developed one and was telling us the details when some mage in a red robe popped out of hiding and killed him with a large explosion of some sort. The Sage died instantly (and unfortunately, either due to his advanced age or something in the way he was killed, his ghost did not appear and he could not be resurrected).

The red mage, named Severian (I and others had seen him around the Tower and he had appeared a friendly sort, but that red robe should have been a tip off), quickly ran upstairs, down the back steps, and out the front. A handful of mages gave chase, and Justarius managed to tag him with an ebolt just at the entrance. Unfortunately for Justarius, Severian was reflecting spells right and left, and Justarius only managed to burn off his own eyebrows (nice look, though).

A crowd gave chase, and apparently this Severian had a Wand of Explosion because explosions were also going off left and right. I leave it to those who actually kept him in sight to tell their stories, but ultimately, Twig, Justarius, and Baron Zythril caught up to him and finally took him down. Unfortunately, Severian was carrying nothing of importance except an exhausted wand, exhausted necklace, a handful of reagents, and a single rune. The rune turned out to be to the Mage Tower itself, and there was nothing to identify who Severian was or from whence he came.

Any news of Severian or his whereabouts will be greatly appreciated.
 

We'll be giving away door prizes. There will be contests, games, entertainment, and just an all around good time!

The festivities begin at 9pm CST. So come! Bring your friends to the Lake Superior Mage Tower to celebrate our first birthday!

• Mondays: Drinkee Fest - the winner becomes the GM drunk for the week
• Tuesdays:  Dungeon Crawl - where depends on who shows up
• Wednesdays: Practice night. Hang out at our bar, and summon, fight, or whatever.
• Thursdays: Summoning contests - a battle of the elementals, and a lesser summoning round robin contest
• Fridays: Free for all Fridays - show up, and lets decide together what to do.
• Saturdays: Dungeon Crawl - like our Tuesday crawls.
• Sundays: Wrestling night - we gate in daemons, ogre lords, drakes, or whatever and wrestle them.

The Triumvirate

S'roneous the Purple Mage
Twig of Jhelom
Abby Redux