Obegard's Spire of Magical Delights

We finally got to see the school where Obegard learnt his trade—The Spire.

Such a grand name. Maybe it would live up to it if we had seen more of it but as it was the trip started with Obegard running around saying “The Spire is in trouble. We have to go. It must be the undead, but how did they breach the shield???”

Well okay, maybe it wasn’t that whiny but I wasn’t really paying that much attention. Everything’s a crisis in the Upworld so I’ve started tuning a bunch of stuff out. Like which of my companions panics in what particular way.

Leaping into the middle of trouble with no real knowledge of what’s happening really upsets the spellcasters. Livia seems a bit more easy-going, and Durthen and I, well, we kind of just try to deal using the skills we’ve developed.

The thing that had me really concerned about this trip was the whole undead aspect. I mean it’s hard to stick my blade into something vital when there is nothing vital to stick it into. And the feel is wrong—once you get through their armour there’s no feeling of resistance as you guide it towards its target. Oh yeah, I have my bracers that allow me to do a few magically enhanced blows but even then it’s still missing that look of shock and surprise, or perhaps outrage, you see on the faces of the living. With the undead there’s just the frozen features of a corpse. No, not satisfying at all.

The others eventually talked me into going along and Obegard cast a teleport spell. We wound up in the office of the boss dude, who gave us a brief rundown. Yep, it was undead. They’d brought down the shield (whatever that was) and were invading, killing everyone that couldn’t get out fast enough. The Spire has a bunch of teleport devices but they needed help protecting people long enough to get to them, and then to activate the devices so people could teleport.

The one advantage we had was that as agents of The Spire we would be able to bypass the wards against movement spells, where the undead would be unable to cast such spells, or apparently even move through walls in their incorporeal forms.

We jumped from the office to some other part of the building. I have no idea where it was relative to where we’d been and I wondered whether the inhabitants of The Spire even know its layout. I mean, does it even have passages and stairs and things that link everything together? Or are they only used in small sections of the building to avoid having to blow their daily spell reservoirs?

There was a whole bunch of undead where we landed, and we killed a few before moving out to act as rearguard for a bunch of residents. It was almost like these guys wanted to be ghoul snacks they were moving so slow, but Durthen blocked the corridor behind them and most of them made it to the device and zapped out with us close behind.

Not much later we get contacted by Lord Robert, current leader of the Free Kingdoms. He was almost killed because one of his knights, Sir Tython, had let the elves through and has since gone missing. We were asked to track him down and “take care of him.” See what I mean about panic, panic, panic all the time here?

When we found him there was carnage everywhere. It was suggested we try talking to him, but as soon as he saw us he charged into combat. His glowing red eyes suggested something foul, but we had little choice other than to take him down.

I got in a few good licks and my ring stopped him from hitting me back anywhere near as well. Durthen was also whacking him but good, but he seemed to be able to avoid most of the spells our casters were trying.

Malakar pumped in some healing spells, though truth be told I hadn’t really been touched so it was just fixing a few scratches. Durthen seemed to have need of it though. Maybe we should get him a blinky ring as well.

We’d taken many chunks out of this guy when all of a sudden he started glowing. Experience tells me that when things that don’t usually glow start glowing, trouble is usually close behind. You have to love experience. Next thing I knew, the guy exploded sending chunks everywhere. Naturally I dodged all the chunks that flew in my direction, but others weren’t so lucky. Malakar was killed by it, and Durthen would have been as well if Malakar hadn’t just finished casting some spell to protect from just this sort of thing, though I think Malakar was expecting the damage to come from the melee attacks the guy had been slicing Durthen up with, rather than him going boom.

It took most of the potions in Durthen’s kit to get him stable before Malakar’s spell ran out but their was nothing we could do to save Malakar.