You know, I really think that elves are stupid.

Okay, that’s not fair. But the elves that lived up in those horribly cold mountains must’ve been dropped on their head or something.

Almost immediately after we met the first elf, we found a bunch of orcs attacking a small number of elves. We joined in the fray and killed them.

You know, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone killed by stew before.

Eh?

Never mind.

Anyway, after we killed the orcs we talked with the elves. Apparently, the orcs we killed were only scouts for a much larger force.

More specifically, an army.

We traveled towards the army (see what I mean?) and got to a cave. The most notable feature of this cave was a small pool of water that apparently had magical qualities.

You see, it could be used to scry far away places. So we used it to determine if the rest of our erstwhile party were still alive.

They were. Unfortunately (for us) they were in someplace warm.

Which meant that they were nowhere near us.

At this point, the elves told us their story.

The orcs had been formed into a large army to sack a town. Specifically, the walled city we were so rudely ejected from a couple of weeks before. They were looking for something called the “Aegis Shield”.

A more complete description made it clear to us that this ‘shield’ was none other than the amulet that was given to he giants.

By this time I was getting really sick of the damned things.

In any case, the elves informed us that they were sworn to defend the city. With their lives, if need be.

They also couldn’t warn the town because, get this, the people of the town hated the elves and would kill them on sight.

Stupid.

So here was their great plan.

They wanted us to sneak into a city full of people that would kill us if they ever saw us again, steal the Aegis Shield, which we then found out was their most sacred possession, and escape with our lives.

I thought this was one of the stupidest plans I had ever heard (and I’ve heard some of Molistaad’s) and said so.

They then told us that one of the elves that lived in their village was a elf of great magical power who could teleport us back to our friends.

Just take a guess as to what the price was.

Humph. Maybe they weren’t so stupid after all.

To confirm the deal, we had to travel to the elven encampment.

This took two days.

One thing of importance happened during that time.

Granted, at the time I didn’t think it was very important.

While I slept, I had a rather strange dream. At least I thought it was a dream.

I saw a featureless plain.

Annu and Falahara were with me.

Facing me was a woman. A cleric of Shar –

Yes, THAT cleric of Shar. Annu had mentioned her a few days ago when they had first met, but I discounted it.

She demanded that we give her the amulet.

A brief fight ensued. She escaped and we awoke.

What made that fight so interesting? Well, that damnable amulet that I had been carrying around since the priest of Mystra gave it to me was around my neck when the 'dream' started.

My attempts to remove it were in vain.

The second thing was that I was apparently invisible to the cleric. I didn't quite realize it at the time, as I was, er... concerned with asking the cleric a few questions.

I think I thought she was ignoring me. I don't entirely remember.

In any case, we awoke. As I was a touch upset about someone entering my dreams, when Annu remarked that "None of this would've happened if you had given me the amulet" I gave it to her.

I thought that I was rid of the thing.

Not that it mattered. She gave it back to me a day later.

Should've known it wasn't that easy.

At the end, we came to the encampment, which seemed to consist of several tents.

The mage appeared nice enough. He offered to make us some magic items in return for our coorporation.

Basically, as I outlined before, he wanted us to sneak into the city, steal the Aegis Shield, and bring it back. He would be waiting just outside the anti-magic field-

I never mentioned that?

Oh. For some reason the city was in the middle of a rather large.. er... area of "Dead Magic". Nothing magical worked inside the city proper.

Anyway, the mage would be waiting outside the dead magic area and would teleport us all to safety.

He also told us that they had a contact in the city, and how we could meet her.

So, a relatively quick teleportation later, myself and Falahara were at the edge of the dead zone, waiting in a clearing where their contact would show up.

The elven contact happened to be the same woman who told us that she'd kill us if we ever saw her again.

Of course.

She told us where the Aegis Shield was and informed us that there was absolutely no way we'd manage to get to it and escape. She also told us what would happen to us when we were captured.

That woman certainly had a vivid vocabulary.

She was also as crazy as a gibbering mouther.

That evening, we snuck into the city. Of course, the woman had warned the rest of the city about our arrival. We expected that. The building where the Aegis Shield was was heavily guarded. We expected that also.

What we didn't expect was three different Aegis Shields in the room.

And we certainly didn't expect that crazy lady to show up with a FOURTH shield and stab her guards.

We managed to get all four shields and escape the city, with I expect the entire guard force and half the militia at our heels.

That Bloody bitch! Mystra please grant me her name one day too better curse agianst the shadow weave! Not only did this horrible woman encroach upon my sanity with her dark dream magic in the day but to abduct my friends as well for her ridicuous nighttime threats?! I could just JUST JJJUSSTTT FLAY HER. Or at the very least bruise her into tenderness with my mace, throw her into a scalding stew, and feed her to the gnashing teeth of the sinister and starving monsters that accompany her!

How fortunate Mystra is not without humor else I would so easily lose myself to Shar's nightmares and my own murderous thoughts. To think that blackhearted wench was forced to endure masses of Mystra's Sweetest desserts clinging to her holy robes! What fun to be found in such a hell as were in! That leads to stranger thoughts, where were we anyway? Better not to explore the dark places of the planes even in memory, it is after all nowhere I wish to ever see agian awake or otherwise.

But, I fear for the others well being.

That they for even a brief time were forced to experiance such ill will interrupting what little rest we can muster in the middle of a hopeless battle. To see Xon's self-confidence shaken was more unnerving then any conflict. It's not his rejection of the valuable amulet that concerns me... if he continue's to ignore words of flattery and vanity in the morning I will know that his mind is sicker than it has ever been. And for all my curing I have yet to find a way to dispell his unnaturally perverse ego.

Mystra protect me please from attempting THAT burden, with the strength of his human passions who knows the damage trying to repair his libido could inflict upon me!

Xon will recover from the dark dreams with the coming dawn I hope, besides we have larger concerns, I may even say giant ones.

The ages shield, the amulet of a race of Giants. From what we have gone through and what is surely to come...let it at least be worth losing tonights sleep over...zzz....

The elves were elated.

The fact that we had three exact copies of the Aegis Shield meant that it would be relatively easy to fool the orc army into believing that the shield was elsewhere.

Of course, there was the slight matter that now myself and my friends were now sworn enemies of the city we had just robbed, but that didn't concern the elves overmuch.

The elven mage, after giving us the items we asked him to make, told us he would be willing to teleport us to the location where the rest of our party was.

We discovered the limitations of his skills at that time.

After the third unsuccessful attempt at teleportation, we gave up and decided to try to track down the rest of our companions on our own.

Besides, the mage teleported us somewhere warm. Always a good thing as Falahara and Annu regularly went about wearing almost nothing.

A quick search of the outlying area showed that there was a mountain several days away and a river, also several days away in the opposite direction. Finally, there was a cloud of smoke in a third direction. It looked like something was burning.

A previous attempt at going towards the mountain proved that there were apparently a large amount of kobolds there, so we headed towards the smoke, figuring that our companions probably went that way. Reasoning that wherever Bellum went, something was likely to get burned down. Or at the very least destroyed.

A reached the smoke at dusk. It appeared to be a small town, now ruined.

No sign of our friends, however.

So we settled down for the night.

Around midnight, a couple of what we thought were dwarves approached our camp. They only spoke dwarvish, so the only person who could understand them was Annu, as she had a device that could understand spoken languages. However, as the device didn't allow you to speak the language, just understand it, this led to some interesting dialog.

In short, all their friends had been captured and they needed our help.

We were tired, but agreed. We were led into a cave. Inside, there was a ettin.

Nasty, brutish fellow, who's personality was not helped by the fact that he happened to be dead.

After killing him, we discovered we had been duped. Apparently the 'dwarves' weren't dwarves after all. They were some kind of wierd furry humanoid with large ears.

Apparently a number of their fellows had been captured by the ettin and they needed our help to get them out.

Funny, if they'd asked we probably would've helped them.

While we were searching the cave for treasure, we were accosted by a rather strange creature. It had three arms, three eyes, three legs, and ate metal.

Yes, really.

I'm not entirely sure it wanted us dead. Personally I just think it wanted to eat most of our stuff. However, Falahara managed to provoke it so we killed it.

By this time dawn was breaking. Annu rested to regain her spells and discovered that Mystra had blessed her with a new spell. One that would allow her to contact our friends.

So we did. Specifically, we told them in general terms were we were, asked them where they were, and told them we'd contact them again tomorrow.

Unfortunately, we contacted Molistead, so the response was less than helpful.

So we decided to explore the town.

We rapidly found out that the word 'town' was stretching the term a bit. It consisted of four buildings, all completely destroyed, a lot of kobolds, all dead, many missing ears and teeth-

As a matter of fact, that did confirm the fact that our friends had been there.

Beyond that, the only other thing in the town were two gargoyles. Unfortunately, they were alive and attacked us. We slew them fairly quickly.

At this point, a discussion ensued.

I had been carrying the amulet around since before I met the rest of our earstwhile band. I had never touched it with my bare skin even.

I generally don't trust magic. It can turn around and bite you very easily.

Besides which, I was given the amulet by someone who was dying. For all I knew, the amulet was cursed to give it's owner a horrible death.

And there was the matter of it's properties to consider.

Given it was supposed to open the gateway to uniminagible power or something like that worried me.

You see, I had always considered myself to be a modest man-

Quit snickering.

I never wanted to do anything spectacular with my life. I was quite content living where I was living, making money where I could, and generally having a good life.

Then I met Falahara and the rest and my life took a decidedly different course.

At this point, I decided it was pointless to continue to try to dodge Fate and put the amulet on.

So I did.

I soon enough figured out part of it's power when Malaks' henchman showed up.

Malak? He was the gentleman responsible for the death of the high priest of Mystra all those months ago. At the time, when I was first attacked by the assasins, we captured one and questioned him. He told us who sent them, but that was all.

Anyway, Malak sent us a message saying that he knew where we were, and to surrender the amulet and die.

Note I didn't say 'surrender the amulet OR die'.

It's henchman was... Well, we never figured that out. Whatever it was it was invisible.

We slew it. Barely. I can say in all modesty that we probably wouldn't have if I hadn't put on the amulet.

So I began to have an idea of what it could do.

I worried about that because I knew that with great power came great responsibility. A quality I tend to lack at times.

What I forgot was that great power comes with a price.