The Second Letter to the Followers of Gozreh in Falcon’s Hollow
Part 1 – The Introduction and the Sojourn of Bay-Wynn 

Dear Friends,

About two weeks have passed since I last wrote you. We have had many adventures and harrowing experiences exploring this ancient temple, and the task has fallen to me to record a conclusion to these events, and to find some meaningful lessons in them. What I once referred to as “the Party of Godric” has become over these many weeks, in my mind, the Party of Bay-Wynn. Bay-Wynn’s journey, you will discover, is one that is shared by us all. To understand this, we must first come to know Bay-Wynn.

Bay-Wynn, you see, was orphaned at a young age. She was told that her parents had been killed in a Dwarf raid long ago. Later, she learned the truth; her parents had died while involved in criminal activity. This instilled in Bay-Wynn a sense of alienation and distrust. She found some solace in the study of music for a time, but was then kicked out of the school ran by her Bard’s guild, more for her teacher’s envy of her talent than for anything she had done wrong. In conversation, Bay-Wynn confided in me that to this day she still “wanders the world looking for her place in it.” To some degree, I believe that we are all Bay-Wynn in this regard. What follows is the story of how Bay-Wynn and the rest of us found our own place in the world and what the journey to that place has taught me.
Just a couple of days ago, I overheard Pint and Bay-Wynn having a disagreement about items looted from this place. Not long after this argument, Bay-Wynn went missing from our group, disappearing into the shadows. ..

We were able to get some rest as we held up in the room with the six lobes that my dwarven friend Pint had described as “boobs”. (These dwarves have an uncanny ability to map any underground location in their minds, translating what they see into an overhead view.) Once we all arose from our rest, I sought out Mira, who had been drained of her constitution by some of the undead filth in this place during the preceding battles. I called upon Gozreh as I knelt before the half-Orc and was granted the power to restore Mira’s her constitution. In the condition she was left in, she may have soon become one of ‘them’.

Each member of the party made their usual preparations before assembling in the usual marching order, minus Bay-Wynn. We slowly moved our way down a long corridor that ended in a large room. Into this room there appeared an animated corpse with no weapons or amour that we identified as a mummy. Before we could approach the mummy, or it could react to us, three arrows flashed from an opening to the right of the mummy. The arrows glowed with a blue light of a pure flame as they struck the mummy from the side. BAY-WYNN WAS ALIVE!

I followed closely behind Pint as we charged the mummy, a maneuver that we had performed so many times before these past couple of weeks. Pint hit the mummy while I nearly lost my grip on my trident in a wild miss. An instant later, magic missiles arched overhead with a whoosh, striking the mummy, as Mira pulled up beside us. Bertha feinted and charged to try strike the mummy from the rear. Instead, two ghouls rushed down the corridor beyond this room to outflank Bertha. She was caught in the surprise attack and paralyzed. The mummy was finally brought down with a hit from Mira, three more arrows from Bay-Wynn, and scorching rays from Osric. Then Mira sliced through both ghouls to save Berth from the death she seemed to be so eagerly seeking.

Bertha was in terrible shape as her paralyzation wore off. Although Bertha protested, Mira and I did what we could to heal Berth’s wounds. Bay-Wynn joined beside Mira and I as if she had never left us, without saying a word about what had transpired over the past few days. Once we had all had the chance to catch our breath, Bay-Wynn explained what had happened during her absence without giving much explanation about why she had left.

I think that in part Bay-Wynn realized that she had overreacted to whatever threats Pint had made against her. After all, no one else in the party had made a threatening move toward her. Yet, Bay-Wynn never admitted to any error in judgment. She only mentioned that she observed undead still being drawn into the temple from the outside as she considered escaping the temple on her own. There were too many undead for Bay-Wynn to get out on her own. As she made her way down into the lower level of the temple, she chose to go straight where the rest of us went left. This is the point where the party soon entered the room with the six lobes.

Meanwhile, Bay-Wynn went down a hallway into a thirty-foot-diameter antechamber. In the center of the room was a large green transparent crystal. Large iron chains extended from the crystal into the ceiling, holding it a few feet above the floor. Within the crystal was a heavily tattooed man dressed in a hooded robe of archaic style, a century or more out of date. Bay-Wynn identifed the tatoos as sacred symbols of Pharasma, the god of fate, death, prophecy and birth. A piece of the crystal was broken off, exposing the man’s hand, and tiny fragments of the broken crystal were scattered about the floor.

Just as Bay-Wynn entered the chamber, the tattooed man contacted her telepathically. The man identified himself as a seer and warned Bay-Wynn that a reckless necromancer had broken the ancient seal entombing the ancient master of this place who he referred to as the Whispering Tyrant. The seer continued, explaining that the Seal is one of several that keep the Whispering Tyrant imprisoned. Furthermore, the Whispering Tyrant has become aware that the one of the seas has been broken. If the Wispering Tyrant continues to gain strength, the seer fears he could be strong enough to seize mental command of the necromancer, using him to locate and break the other seals. The seer begged Bay-Wynn to destroy the invader and either reseal the Vault or collapse the tunnels leading to it.

The seer told Bay-Wynn that he attempted to defeat the necromancer at the time he first arrived at the temple, but woefully underestimated the necromancer’s strength. Though the seer was unable to kill the immortal priest, he did manage to drain him of all his powers, leaving him hanging helpless in his crystal. The seer also bound an undead spirit of one of his former allies within him in effort to gain the strength to defeat the necromancer. But the seer explained that he could feel the necromancer watching him though the spirit of his former ally.

Soon after the story was finished, Bay-Wynn noticed that r the crystal began to sway menacingly. The seer’s face, within this imprisoned shell, contorted into a menacing snarl as he telepathically spewed forth curses in a fiendish tongue. Then, Bay-Wynn saw the undead spirit bound within the seer escape seer’s body through the seer’s mouth in the seer’s silent scream. The seer collapsed to the floor, leaving Bay-Wynn face to face with a wraith.

Somehow, Bay-Wynn was able to defeat the wraith without it doing much harm to her. Bay-Wynn mentioned that she had to use a gift from a goddess in order to survive the encounter. The details of this encounter are the bard’s tale to tell.

After defeating the wraith, Bay-Wynn started back down the tunnel to find the rest of the party. With Bay-Wynn’s fateful sojourn and the information gained from it, the reunited party might be able to prevent the escape of the Whispering Tyrant...

Continued in Part II