Campaign Journal 13 - Part 1, Beyond the Gate

We left our characters in a partially ruined building, with a magical gate set into the cliff face behind them (into which the building was built). The gate had gone dormant after they came through...

With the magical get having closed behind them, and there still being several hours of daylight left, the group needed to decide what to do. Duncan's arcane knowledge led him to believe that since a command word had not been required to open the gate from the other side, this was probably a gate that would be dormant for some period of time before being able to be activated again.

Gate Exit Area (Players' map)

Deciding to explore the immediate area, the party began to look around. The gate had put them in the back room of a stone house at the top of a hill. The back room was fairly intact, including a roof and closable door, but the other parts of the house were partially ruined. The view from outside the house showed that they were on top of a hill, with a number of other clusters of ruined buildings and towers scattered around the hills and valleys within sight. To the south (which they could tell from the position of the late afternoon sun) was a mile-wide lake with a small rocky island in the middle. The island also seemed to have some ruins.

With it being near dark, a quick view of the surroundings was all that could be managed, and the party slept in the house they arrived in.

The following day (Saturday May 25), the group restricted their exploring to the smaller hilltop area that they had arrived at, during which time they were attacked near dusk by a pair of gargoyles, killing one and badly wounding and driving off the other.

Two observations struck the party. First, these ruins seemed to show much less deterioration than very old Onorian ruins they had seen in the past (perhaps only 20-30 years as opposed to hundreds). Second, that some of the buildings seen around the area seemed to be very large columned or low pyramidal buildings that might be government or temple buildings (or some other special function).

As darkness came, the party decided to spend the night in the mostly intact ruins of a 3-story tower at the very top of the hill. The night passed without incident, although during Niam's watch from the shattered top floor, there was a brief period where flashes of greenish-yellow light could be seen on the horizon far to the south beyond the lake.

First thing in the morning (Sunday May 26), the party made their way back to the location of the gate. It activated when approached, and the characters stepped through one by one, appearing unharmed in the chamber they had arrived from. The party marched to Olmsby and spent the night there, arriving back in Linden late in the morning of Monday May 27.

Next (13, part 2) - Frayka and the Dawnstone.