A gift from the Gods! Not only is Jezrab Flinchal blessed with a wish spell but the party are also made aware of an important portal closing. On this advice they all travel to the Great Golden Room where they meet the aspect of Bahamut, offering them one last chance to leave the Demonweb without completing their quest, before the Portal to Arvondor is shut forever.

In the old days they always used to say…..“Don’t split the party”
In recent times they still held by this dictum.
Now, in Gossamer, we find the that not much has changed.

Inside the Room of Three Blessings, the Questors are attacked by nine undead neopriests on two fronts. Most questors follow Kane the Traveller, but Sir Keoghen charges by himself into a group of five priests that isolate him from his friends and lead to a very sudden (but honourable) death. Jezrab Flinchal‘s spectacular spring attack turns out to be less effective than his other magic. Tippit remains alive but is visibly shaken by the ferocity of the neopriest attack on the Paladin. Aibron Torromson continues to struggle against the creatures with his slashing weapon and Baris the Black laments his critical hit ineffectiveness against such creatures. Quintine Excavar is unable to prevent Keoghen’s demise, but bolsters her fellow adventurers with positive energy and good vibrations.

With the neopriests destroyed, the Questors travel to the Valley of Divine Light to replenish themselves. Jezrab’s help with a small mushroom harvest is much appreciated by Gerald Scarfe, as is Traveller’s storytelling technique. A new morning starts out with a failed attempt to investigate a portal that elicits an Entropic Enemy attack. Once destroyed, the attempt is repeated and Jezrab looks into the dark portal window of the armoury.

All is dark except for a Marilith dead ahead, sheathed in faerie fire about 50’ away. Looking carefully, Jezrab also notices three other pinpoints of faerie fire. Two undead drow outlined by Faerie Fire guard a passage to the right about 60’ away. Behind the Marilith, over 160’ away are two more groups of undead drow guards, about 100’ apart.

Time to prepare…

Leaving the bodies of the looted undead warrior drow of Eillistraee in the web strand, the Questors move quickly to the next intersection in the Demonweb. All seems quiet but when the party enter, three camouflaged sporebats fly from the roof and begin to attack. They are soon despatched, however, and the group look around the room to find three teleportation circles, a statue of Eillistraee and a pattern on the wall, which they discover to be a map.

With this in hand, they use the portal to arrive at the Room of Three Blessings. Finding a secret door, they discover magical writing which Traveller knows to be Doctrine of Eillistraee. When he reads it out aloud, a doorway opens and the party move through a series of triangular rooms until they come to one with a statue of Eillistraee draped in a silver chain with a Crescent Pendant. Jezrab identifies this to be a greater portal key, and when he puts it on, all doors in the system are opened. But the Questors face undead Neopriests on either side of them.

By defeating Iuz and determining the whereabouts of the Chains of Gond , the Characters have completed the first of the Droomalith’s Tasks.

They have already used the Heart of the Dracolich (now wielded by Baris the Black) to start the second quest, Savandem, which is aligned with Gossamer, in The Demonweb.

A domed ceiling arches high above this octagonal room, which is lit by a flickering radiance from a broad circle of fire on the floor. Within this circle are three smaller circles, each defined by a rim of flickering runes like the larger one. High above, three balconies (each encased in a dome of reflective silvery metal protrude about 5 feet out over the floor. Three immense, deformed humanoid forms move restlessly about the larger circle. A human female stands within one of the rings. A human male stands within another.

As the Questors enter this room they realise that this is the destination of their first Quest. Realisation and resolve, together with memories of the Quest so far and the hardships they have overcome serve to reach deep into their very souls where a great fire is kindled, igniting the soulfire within each person so that Divine Inspiration seems to shine from within each Questor. For a full minute, this power suppresses the latent Primordial Energies within the temple and each member of the group feels directly inspired by their God.

Wizard Vayne, Cleric Shyrath and three Giant Rutterkins are the physical enemy here at the moment and the battle begins. Tippit cast Magic Jar but fails to possess a demon. Aibron and Keoghen wrestle with the demons, falling prey to their deadly snap-tong grapples. The cleric’s Confusion spell confounds Aibron. In a ripple of Divine Power, Sven is replaced by Baric the Black, immediately wielding the Heart of the Dracolich. Enbabling the True Seeing function, he determines that the Wizard in the hall is a Projected Image and that the real foe is behind one of the balconies, which are in fact rooms shielded by One Way Mirrors and strengthened by a Wall of Force. Tippit disintegrates the Wall and Traveller flies over to it and starts beating on it, while the Wizard within strengthens himself with spells. Quintine casts a potent Dispel Magic spell, which lifts the Invisibility Purge and Jezrab does his best to move between the fighters, helping Quintine to heal and bolster them, while Baris attacks the cleric and demons with deadly knives.

Soon both the cleric and two demons are dead, but not without loss. Keoghen is killed by one of the demons. As Traveller is starting to crack the capsule, the Wizard, armed with Mirror Images appears on the opposite side of the room. Traveller immediately flies to the attack.

As the Questors round the corridor of the passage to enter the Blue Steel doors, they are beset upon from behind again. The Arrow Demons are attacking them in a group of four, one using Dimension Door in and the other Dimension Door out, with their colleagues firing arrows, such that they appear, fire a rain of devastation and disappear in the same turn. Traveller moves to the predicted spot of appearance so that some of the reappearing Demons will be shunted when they arrive in the spot, while marksman Sven hides and readies his deadly crossbow bolts.

Near the doors, the paladin, Keoghen, and the fighter, Aibron, battle against Bar-Lgura skeletons issuing from a room up ahead. Kassadin readies himself for unexpected attack in one of the smaller chambers and Jezrab prepares to take on the main healing duties in the absence of the cleric. Although the Questor’s tactics are effective, they are not able to prevent the tragic death of Tippit, who succumbs to a deadly onslaught of giant arrows.

In a skirmish of deadly attrition, the Questors gradually wear down their foe – turning and battering exploding skeletons and depleting the ranks of Arrow Demons, while all the time moving closer to the entrance of what they discover to be The Temple of the Old and the Dead – a temple containing shrines and statues to both Iuz and Nerull. The room is filled with Desecration and Invisibility Purge and commanded by two Clerics – a male hobgoblin and a female human.

As the Questors force their way into the Chapel, Traveller despatches the hobgoblin Cleric of Iuz with his explosive Eyes of Light. Out in the corridor, two Entropic Enemies appear and Kassadin, able to see them clearly, attacks with his Bow of the Night, gaining extra advantage by using his Careful Strike and Dead Eye feats. Jezrab bolsters the fighters with song and heals them with his wand, carefully minimising the appearance of more Entropic Enemies.

As Traveller battles with the Cleric, Keoghen and Sven move into the room to combat the few remaining demons and skeletons, but two of them Dimension Door into the corridor, where Kassadin succumbs to a mortal barrage of giant arrows that decapitates him and lays his body flat. Near the end, only the one Arrow Demon and the female cleric remain. She knows her time is nigh but as she dies, the Statue of Nerull explodes. From the smoke she rises again, new life in her body through the Divine Power of Nerull. She commands the last remaining Arrow Demon to whisk her away. “Take me to Vayne NOW!” she screams and he uses his _Dimension Door- ability for the last time to place them in front of the doors at the end of the passage.

Opening the door, she manages to escape. While the Questors finish off the last Demon and the remaining Turned Skeletons, the Blue Steel doors ahead shut with a bang! A few minutes are spent gathering magical items from the fallen foes and then Quintine is resurrected through the fading power of the Divine Time Lock, but in arriving, her most powerful item, the Scroll of True Resurrection given to her by Pelius, her brother in Pelor, is destroyed. A minute later, Tippit is resurrected with the loss of his powerful Bracers of Defence.

Kassadin does not return. His soul, it seems, is no longer with the party and their quest. After everyone has magically healed themselves, the Questors waste no further time, and enter through the Blue Steel doors, through short passage, and push open the doors to find a large room populated by three Giant Rutterkins, the female cleric, Shyrath and a thin scrawny man with a staff, who must surely be the wizard Vayne – all ready and waiting. By the shape of the room, the strange spherical balconies and the four burning magical circles inside, the Questors believe they have arrived in The Hall of Beckoning.