Now that the Prince and the King and a good part of the kingdom is dead or dying, we are once more left with our brains and little more to find a solution to the problem. I am desperate to go back to fighting, learning more about giants and drinking some proper beer in a proper tavern – as opposed to one with barely anything stocked and barely anyone left.

Cassil, she is becoming quite good at handling her hatred of undead. She has decided to channel it just enough to interrogate the Prince. She asks him five questions and we get five interesting answers. The prince’s quest was to grant more power to his master – Zaxhus. This Zaxhus wants to overthrow Orcus – the demon prince of undeath – just that, mind you.

We roll our sleeves up and get to work in Abavius’s library. My mind is still clouded by my recent shortcomings and I struggle to focus on the task at hand. How can we stop the pyre? How can we make sure the land is pure again?

The rest of the party finds that priests are able to cleanse the area. Even Ryden manages to find relevant information about drow history.

Out of frustration, I decide to go and round up some priests so that they can perform their magic. I am not particularly hopeful as I found out the hard way in Uskholme religious people are usually cowards with weird rituals. I had to “convince” them to heal children, but then again cowards. I get one very oddly keen guard, Bob, to lead me to the nearest church. Once there, I put on my loudest and firmest voice and try to fool anyone who could be hiding into believing we have come to rescue them. Cowardice is strongly rooted within these people – as I have said. It definitely reminds me of this one time in battle … I diverge.

I end up opening a locked door. Father Septus is quick to realise it’s a matter of great urgency and utmost importance and I am also quite the annoyed strong Goliath. Bob is kind enough to pick up material that could help with the ritual, I assist him. I am not too sure on what to grab – better safe than sorry, I go for anything I can transport.

In the meantime, my party has found that Zaxhus was a great wizard who ended up becoming a lich under the power of Orcus, it seems. Apparently, killing a lich entails finding its phylactery – basically its soul storage. For some reason, I don’t think it’s going to be particularly easy locating this amulet. If it were me, I would hide the one thing that could kill me as well as I could. Since I am pretty smart and I trust this lich to not be half dumb, I believe this would have been their course of action too.

Ryden and I entertain the idea of trying to play Orcus against Zaxhus. It would be nice having a powerful demon on our side to destroy this abomination. Then again, a demon is also an abomination.

Abavius tells us of a network of ancient libraries – which were part of the old Empire – eons ago, when Zaxhus’s war raged on. They were quite the neat little thing, they would have copies and be able to synchronise quite rapidly if not instantly between them. He also finds that there is one that was located South of Reusinia – the Massahata archive.

We decide to explore this lead. But our night ends up with Cassil picking up a fight with a dwarf who wanted nothing short of being left alone, me armwrestling Ryden and sleeping myself drunk on the floor. Life can be strange.