In a fortified tower in the Astral Plane, many years after the fabled Earthquest of Shimring the venerable Astral Stalker sorcerer, SCHNEFFRAK, plays out the end of his long life by telling stories of his hunting adventures to his attentive grandchildren.

“I shall finish telling you about the time I travelled to Shimring and how I escaped from the dreaded Death Slaadi of Olidammara…You know how we Astral Stalkers love hunting, and how difficult it is to find worthy prey? Well, on this time, a dark messenger came to us – some sort of elfcreature – and she shows us a way into Shimring, telling us where to go and what time to arrive at a certain place. It was all very mysterious and I didn’t like her one bit, but our priest, SHOBBAKHAN, had some kind of deal going on with her, so we went.

Shimring is a horrible place and you can’t get there from here. You have to find the world in which it exists and then fly for miles across the sea, past mighty dragon guardians. Five days it took us on SHOBBAKHAN’s magic carpet, and thrice we nearly got eaten… But eventually we got to the land we needed to be in, and flew low to avoid the wyrms.

We knew more or less where to go and we knew what we were looking for – six mighty human deathdealers. The kind of creatures that even if you just look at them, they want to kill you. Worthy prey indeed! At first we couldn’t find them, and VLALDINGERT, the other sorcerer, thought we had been led astray, but SHOBBAKHAN and the other priest, NERUTETST, kept on doing these Commune spells until they eventually learned when they were coming and where they would go.

That night we hid like we never hid before. We had two young fighters with us, GRINDIG and DORFMEISTER – both keen and both very, very strong! VLALDINGERT and me just had our spells and our claws and throat darts, but these two had mighty weapons, armour and shields. When we first caught sight of the deathdealers they were flying around looking for a place to sleep. Humans are lazy creatures that avoid the beauty of the dark whenever they can. Eventually, they found a small cave on a forested hill and went inside. They had a construct with them – a horrible giant machine of death – and they put him outside to guard.

We knew these monsters wouldn’t be easy to kill so first me and VLALDINGERT both sent in our Arcane Eyes to get a good look at them, and also to help us follow them if they tried to escape. Yes, humans are cowards as well. Always trying to escape death, they are.

After a few hours we moved in. The two young fighters sneaked up first to attack the construct. We knew there would be two other human guards as well but we went for the construct first. We destroyed the construct quickly and one of the other guards came out to fight. GRINDIG and DORMEISTER would have finished him off, but the deathdealer priest cast a Destruction spell that smote young GRINDIG in the prime of his life, poor chap! VLALDINGERT and me were flying on the outside firing Magic Missiles – we didn’t want to get in with all those swords flying about. NERUTETST took the fighter’s place and killed their strongest warrior with a single blow, when one of their wizards started trying to trap us with Blade Barriers. Of course, these are easy to avoid, but what we didn’t expect was that they could see us so easily – a couple of them had True Seeing and they started telling their comrades where our priests were.

That was when VLALDINGERT and me decided we should just fly in and finish them off. But that’s when we heard the music. Horrible loud music that bangs in your ear and makes you want to scream. Only Olidammara, the Bard of the Gods, can play such terrible sounds. And not only that, but Death Slaadi – hordes of them. From out of nowhere they came, with their stunning attacks and their death rays. I saw both priests fall and I took one look at VLALDINGERT and we knew we had to flee if we were to live the rest of our lives. It was too late to save young DORFMEISTER, but I’m sure he died well.

Those humans must have had mighty friends to have gotten such help, and I tell you, they were cruel and deadly, but we would have brought them home in a carpet of silk if it hadn’t been for those Death Slaadi.

But it is late now, and you two younglings need to get some sleep. Tomorrow night I shall tell you how VLALDINGERT and I escaped from Shimring and killed the mighty Gold Dragon."