Ceolsige Bay

An eventful day has passed. When i woke up from a short nap in town, Durin Stonemaster had arrived and was in a conversation about the fountain with Newt. Soon we steered the talk to the reason for his visit and he told us that the Elders had contacted him to forge a weapon for us. He muttered quite a lot about not being a smith, being unable to reject the Elders and other unrightousnesses and it was not until i provided a barrel of beer for his dry throat that his mood became better. He still complained about the list of orders from the Elders and the urge of speed, but he took all the items we had gathered and promised to work swiftly. He will come back to Arilon as soon as he has finished the weapon. We agreed he could give it to any Arilonian as long as there were other witnesses so the weapon won't be missing all of a sudden. I hope whoever meets him will provide some beer for him to keep him in good mood.

Later i was to lead an expediation to the west. I intended to check the pirate docks, Ceolsige and its harbour for signs of the arrival of the Dor'Shak as well as his hidden laboratory. A huge group of up to 20 people followed and so we arrived at the pirate docks soon. Only 2 ships lay anchored there and although i couldn?t make out their names, they seemed to be the ones lying there for some time now. Because of this we headed on, Ceolsige being just a short trip away thanks to Leda activating the magic portal for us. The town looked unchanged, nowhere were signs of alchemy or Orga to be found. Only a big spiral-clam attached to one of the stone-pillars attracted my interest and i was wondering if it had always been there. This observation proved to be valuable later on. In the harbour we were surprised by many-oared pirate galleys, but our sheer number enabled us to battle and eventually sink them. We advanced to the gigantic ship anchored in the harbour and tried to climb it, but unsuccessfully. The main deck was simply much too high above the waterline. I had just called for a break in town and was pondering about the best way to search for another harbour or town in the west, when Lider contacted us with an urgent message. The Elders had managed to tranlate another nearly unrecognizable rune from the scroll, named shibumi. As it turned out, the rope ladder of the ship had been magically constructed and this was just the command to make it roll out and provide a way onto the ship for us! The deck showed many signs of being home to the Dor'Shaks minions, Pirates and Orga alike tried to drive us back into the water as soon as we set foot on the deck. But our group was big and experienced enough to kill the deckhands swiftly. The interior of the ship seemed to be acessible by two ladders and one door, so i decided to check the southern ladder first. It seemed easiest to search the cargo rooms in the belly of the ship first and leave the captains and officers quarters as last, as i expected resistance to be greatest there. The first people had just climbed down, when we heared yells of pain. The room turned out to have no cargo, but lightening-pillars instead! After some confusion, we regrouped on deck and after assigning some healers as rod points, we managed to destroy one pillar after the other and killing every moving foe around too. Suddenly a hooded fighter came running from the back of the room and caused confusion and deeps wounds among us. It took some time to trap him and get the group together again, as i couldn?t give proper orders, laying fallen in the middle of the maze-like wooden walls serving as room-deviders and therefore seeing nothing. But thanks to some boosts of our mages and the never-wavering wall of weapons being flung in his direction, we finally defeated the Merirosvo. In his robe we found a clam, looking like the one seen in Ceolsige. After searching the rest of the room i ordered the group off the ship and towards the stonepillar. Placing the clam on its counterpart a hidden door opened and we could enter the pillar. A small note dropped there showed another password. My luck held, as exactly this was needed to unlock the trapdoor of a ladder leading deeper into the middle of the ship. Here we had to deal with drunkards, throwing bottles of rum after us and more pirate wizards, who sent clouds of acid rain towards us. We couldn´t reach all of them and so had to fight the next robed pirate wet and smelly.
This one had a differently shaped clam, opening another room in the stone pillar and providing another password. Nothing but the captains quarters were left now and we readied ourselves for a final effort. The room behind the door looked like a small laboratory, but we unlocked the door and went through the hole down the ladder.

Finally we seemed to have reached the laboratory, what else could be behind a sparkling door barred with a statue and two pillars and guarded by countless stormcasters, Orga and pirates? To our surprise the door led into a stone, so the ship seems to have anchored in the harbor long ago for the workers to be able to contruct a tunnel to the pillars next to it. Much to my and several other Kyttyns despair we then had to swim underwater to move on! We waited in the dry while the others searched a way and cleared it of fish and then moved as fast as we possibly could. Only my curiousness kept me going, i´m not sure i´d swim there again. What followed was a search of every room we found, some holding the nasty surprise of yet another dive. We had a critical situation once, when some pirate bombers decided it would be funny to throw bombs in our midst and to our fallens, but thanks to the combined knowledge of all the present healers everyone could be raised.
In the end we arrived in a room with bookshelves, strange signs on the floor, some tables and 3 mirrors. The books seemed to be nearly all about the Orga, one was even about Merown. But there seemed to be no way to activate something, open another hidden door or move on. After a small break we decided this would surely be the mysterious laboratory of the Dor'Shak and headed back, as it had become quite late. Knowing the way and having reduced the defenders lines drastically, the way back was pretty fast.
All in all the Dor'Shak seems to fear Kyttyns a lot, if the location of his laboratory has any bigger meaning. And we saw once more that when working together, we can achieve a lot!