Pressing onward, the group explores a small and intimate hidey-hole. Whomever lived here, it is clear that he/she/they/it loved books, as there is an altar to a deity of knowledge and learning. Later on, the group (after battling another stone golem) discovers a library – completely devoid of any books, though the warped and bent shelves tell a tale of many tomes once stacked thereupon. They also find a book detailing how one progresses to lichdom…an ominous sign. More ominous, they discover many half-empty jars of the components needed to help one along the path to unlife. Along the way they thrust the paladin into a corridor full of flesh eating grasshoppers and deadly rot grubs, and they pass by two trapped and locked doors.
After exploring every available option except two – they choose to exp[lore one of the remaining rooms. There they find a moldering skeleton sprawled across an open tome. Stacked all around it are hundreds, nay thousands of books. As they take in the scene, the remains speak!
Choking back the urge to annihilate the creature. they do the unthinkable and listen! They quickly realize that this figure – though amoral is not inherently evil – just a bibliophile of such proportion that he chose to cheat death in order to look after his precious books. The group aids the creature in returning the books to the altar of the knowledge god and upon doing so, the creature is sucked into the heavens. As he departs, he warns the group that “Melkierech will be looking for you. Be so warned.”
The group investigates the loot they have procured, find it to be mostly magical texts of level advancement and stat changing. After the wood subsides they retreat into the mage’s extra dimensional club med and spend a few months reading books and working out. From there they plane shift back to the vicinity of Arabel and make contact with their sponsors.
After enriching their patrons with vast sums of wealth, the party swiftly climbs in the eyes of their sponsors and are entrusted with a mission that puts the very honor of their patrons in the balance.
It seems that another sponsored adventuring party has gone rogue and refused to pay the appropriate tithe to the trading coster. The party is dispatched to fetch the offenders and have them face their just desserts. The group travels to Thunderstone and makes a few contacts.
It seems the offenders were around in the not-too-distant-past and voiced an interest in journeying into the swap to take on the fabled black dragon that is said to live therein. “That sounds like fun” says the group and so they plan to enter the swamp in pursuit of both adventurers and dragon.
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