����������� Book Four, Chapter Six, �What do we do now? We survive the genocide of two cities!�

����������� 29/04/2000 - Martin has grown his beard again, and it�s a few minutes or even eleven months later. Healing is the first order of business. Aruth is healed first and then Daniel.

How to escape from the underwater temple in the underwater city. We decide to go out the back exit. Sir Martyn and Zytsi leave some spare clothes and a lantern. Aruth ties a rope round leaver to free the sharks, but Aruth, Sir Martyn and Zytsi pull the leaver off the wall. That didn�t work then.

Through the back door into a corridor, shutting the door behind us. There are five doors on the other side of the corridor. Top most one is 40 by 40 with a fishman in here. Aruth uses a spell to allow Sir Martyn to speak to him. A short and monosyllabic speech �where is the way out�, aggressive reply and it swims for its trident so Sir Martyn shoots it with his mace. Fishman gets trident and shield, new round. We intercept him, and it shouts a lot. One, two, three hit him one the head. It survives the first round but not the second. Back out into the corridor, three of the other (non-Temple) doors are open. Guard types coming out, it�s the middle door, which isn�t open - guess that�s the one we want then. Aruth shoots one with an arrow so it doesn�t move up, but the other seven do. Daniel does nothing but pilot the submarine. He can full submarine move and full parry, or half move and attack - oh what a choice.

They move up. Sir Martyn gets 3, Aruth gets 1, Daniel gets 1 and Zytsi gets 2. Zytsi kills one of his (or rather it dies in two rounds), Sir Martyn stuns and knocks one of his out of melee, Aruth does the same to his. Next round - Daniel keeps moving and we get to the middle door. Aruth�s one comes back in on to Zytsi and the eighth (who had been shot by Aruth) goes to open the door into the main temple room. Sir Martyn and Zytsi stop one each from attacking. The escaping eighth one goes through the door. Daniel goes to open the door, but it�s looked. Zytsi picks the lock while Sir Martyn holds them off, or rather he tries to. He fails and the lightning trap goes off and knocks him out. However Sir Martyn kills the one on Aruth and Daniel (well it will in six rounds) and fights on. One left which effectively dies.

Aruth uses magic to wake up Zytsi who picks the lock again but the trap doesn�t go off and then again it finally works. Three sharks come into the corridor and we pile in. Two guards stab Zytsi, as we go through. It�s a 50-foot square we�ve come into the middle of one of the walls. Ornate room with comfortable bed (rock) and no other visible exit. There are a total of four guards and fishman in robes and circlet. We pile in and shut the door behind us. There is an exchange of lightning bolts (balls) three from Aruth and one from the evil bad dude. The baddy�s one wasn�t nice and took Daniel down to minus four hit points (this is getting routine). The evil bad dude is untouched, but his two guards aren�t. Sir Martyn ties to wedge the door shut, and fails. He ties to stop four sharks from bashing the door open, and fails.

Evil bad fish tries to Dark Stun Aruth and fails. Zytsi fights his two guards, Sir Martyn fights his sharks. Aruth stun manoeuvres some healing herbs into Daniel, who comes round. Zytsi fights his guards and Sir Martyn fought his sharks. Exchange of spells results in Aruth even more stunned as he pulls the trigger again on his staff and stops the guards from coming in. The fighting continues.

New plan - advance on the evil bad fish dude fighting as we go. Only one of the four guards is currently capable of combat at this point, and the four sharks of course. Aruth is lightning bolted by a ray like creature (oh all right it hit with the tail and bite attacks) and falls over. The ray is very hard to see, Zytsi had a couple of perception rolls to spot it, he had to roll over 200 to spot it Daniel starts stuffing herbs into Aruth. Zytsi kills two of the guards and Sir Martyn hitting the heavily camouflaged ray creature. The spell caster tried to stun Zytsi, but failed. Zytsi kills one guard and Sir Martyn kills the ray like creature.

The city of fish men are in the main temple room by now and then coming for us.

Sir Martyn is thinking about going frenzy, well actually he has been trying and failing to for the last two rounds. If we kill the halibut it would have a chance of snapping him out of the frenzy, if it happens. Zytsi kills the last guard and Sir Martyn effectively kills one of the sharks. Aruth lighting bolts the last three sharks and kills one of them. Sir Martyn kills one of the sharks, and the last isn�t yet half hit pointed. Daniel sings at the evil bad fish dude and he saves, Sir Martyn fires his mace at him, Aruth lobs his staff at him, Zytsi thinks about throwing his war hammer at him but Larani all seeing wisdom showed him that he would miss by a mile so he hit the shark instead. They we did it again and the shark has accumulated enough minus over 100%.

At the end of that round he is between us the door we came in, and we can see the first of the three-and-four-pence. There are no other visible exits, but they are up against the far wall and could have a secret exit in. Larani aid us which wardrobe do we go to. North wardrobe. We head that way and a Sudden Light goes off, which does nothing. We get there and Zytsi finds the secret door and a secret compartment. Behind us there is eight sharks and eight blokes between us and the main bloke. We leave the treasure behind, oh no we don�t Sir Martyn punches it with his mailed fist and breaks it open. He gets the trap but gets nothing major. Inside there is a jewellery case which he takes. Zytsi opens the secret door into a short 10ft corridor going away. Daniel is piloting the submarine and it looks like Aruth is the rear guard. Mind you they can still get at him. Aruth puts up an Airwall and the eight sharks and the eight tridents miss!!!

We pile through the door and Zytsi wedges the secret door shut. Down the short corridor, pick the lock and open the door and we are out into the streets again. We start the mad dash to the exit, south to a crossroads and there is 6 guards types and 4 passer byes. South and the guards catch us up. Sir Martyn puts the shields up (Guarded Temple) and they attack it instead of us - good move. Another crossroads and some more innocent bystanders and some more damage on the shields. A T-junction and onwards. We pick up a patrol of four with a shark. Onwards to the exit house, at least we know where we are on the map - Scud Street. We acquire another guard and the shields go down. Sir Martyn puts the shields up again and onwards. The sharks are biting chunks out of the shields, but the tridents have stopped being quite so effective, first few were just seriously lucky.

On Shady Street the shields come down again, so Sir Martyn puts them back up. A large number appear in front of us from the Temple, and with our mob behind us we go onwards. We get to a crossroads we see a wave of them coming down to attack us. Shields down again and then immediately up again. The evil bad fish dude is back but his spell doesn�t get through the wall which is solid. Massed attacks - my God this is slow. Shields down and then up again.

Get to the door of the exit house and shields are still going. Less have a go at us when we get in through the door up through the trapdoor area. More attacks and on and the bloody shields go down again and up again for the last time due to lack of power points. We get to the top and now it a tricky manoeuvre where we drop the shields and get out. Daniel has to be last out - Aruth, Sir Martyn, Zytsi and Daniel in that order and the sharks don�t. We are out!!!! Climb out.

Now all we have to do is get off this small island. We leg it to the boat. Eric the halibut scouts the sea and there are patrols of sharks. Damn we decide that we are better off using the submarine with shields up. We spend the night in the wild boar�s cave. In the middle of the night several very large crabs on the beach that are noisy and find and destroy the boat. Healing up and getting power points back. In the jewellery box is a necklace worth 15,000d.

Next day the user Daniel tells every one that the necklace is half of an item that can control a kraken. Lucky we�ve got it, so it can�t be used against� us.

The plan - we wait to the next night and use Darkness as cloaking and Silence for silent running. Zytsi is the submarine captain for this use. We go - radar is Intuitions - and we get found second minute in the last 3 minutes of the journey. We wait and they don�t find us. So Intuitions we get found in the last minute - we go for it. 60 yards away from the shore we get spotted by 6 sharks and quite at least a dozen fishman. Shields up. We get to the shore ankle deep in water, bring down the shields with an Airwall at the back of the submarine, and we run up the beach followed by a Sudden Light and a hail of tridents. We make it!!!!

It�s the 5th� Halane by the day when we went into the city, got to the main island on the 6th and back to our original beach on the 7th Halane. The boat is due back on the 21st Halane. Sir Martyn unfamiliarises himself with Eric the Halibut, and is at in minus 25% for a week.

On the 15th Halane the small island turns into a volcano and blows up. Well I think that deals with that city - thank god. Nothing else (!), apart from Sir Martyn beach combing. 120d worth of random stuff is found. Zytsi decides to check to see if the coins from Arcadia are shrinking. He drew round one on a piece of paper - he thinks it is shrinking. This is the day that the boat is due back.

The boat turns up! We leave!! Three days later we get back to Ulfshafen!!! On 24th Halane.

Important note: We are due 5000 eps if we take the Eye of Kor where we are supposed to.

The gold is losing 1/2d in value in a week.

We go from Ulfshafen to Elshavel. Zytsi writes a letter - gosh I wonder who to. Sir Martyn receives a letter from the someone - the Agrik bint. Written recently in Trobridge, says Daniel finding a use for the Origins spell. It just acknowledges receipt of his letter and hopes they will be �united� again.

Daniel gets the spec (but not the bad effects) of the Eye of Kor, but Robin hasn�t written it yet.

After Martin left we meandered on for a bit.

Daniel receives a message to go to the Silver College of Harper�s to meet Niltiniel Risfuin. She came form Midgaad, as is her brother Galeroth. The Harp of Galeroth is our next quest on the double session in August. Nice big long legend, sounded pretty good to me.

Sir Martyn dished out 3,000d each out of Party Fund not-made-it-in-yet after selling a bunch of stuff. We discover that Sir Martyn is still carrying around a 5 lb. bag with 10 stones in it (i.e. 1/2 lb. each) that he acquired from the mad druid. Seemed like a good idea at the time, apparently it still does. He decides to send his ladylove another letter.

A couple of copies of the existing notes were taken on to diskettes for people to read. Hey no bad thing as Robin later said:

�Danny,

Please aware yourself 12000 eps for sterling service as keeper of the holy records. They are most entertaining and highly informative although I have not read them all yet.�

12000 eps - yes three zeros. Made a level!