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The party and Grunter moved further into the hills. They saw some explosions in the sky that afternoon in the direction of the castle. There is a huge black cloud-bank over that area, so bright explosions showed up nicely.
Found a cave. Quiet night.
Next day, passed a gnoll pallisade. Avoided it.
Another invisible wizard was captured following them. They did their usual Hear Noise and Faerie Fire, and a Detect Charm this time, and got her easily. It was another attractive Luln girl. She was called Christie. They stashed her magical gear - the necklace and earrings of communication, and her magical dagger. Bookem kept her spell book.
Psi Guild contacted Stanley and relayed messages from Captain Osterman. Osterman said report when you can see the castle. He was very clear on this.
They found another cave for the night. It had a backdoor tunnel. Lon explored. Found some gnolls. Fled this cave. Grunter found another safer cave nearby. Quiet night.
Next day crossed a ridge. Saw castle in distance. Descended into valley into scrubby alpine forest.
Burnt meat smell. Found a badly-burned human-shaped corpse, who had fallen from a great height at high speed. It had a ring and choker which detected magic. The choker said "Property of Specularum Wizards' Guild", so Bookem put it on. This allowed him to communicate with the Guild. The body was an WG operative called Helga Boatman and was in communication with the Guild when she died. She reported approaching the castle, then flying things, then leaving vicinity. And then hysterical screaming before transmission cut-out. The WG told Bookem the ring was a Ring of Broom Control.
Lon fashioned a functional besom out of some branches. He tried the ring out and did some rudimentary flying (but not too high). He tried a few tests: It is all voice activated. It won't work unless you have the ring on and are touching the broom (with skin). The Guild warned them not to try tying onto it (because if you fall and hang, the broom switches off). If someone else touches it, it also turns off. But they didn't try hanging cargo (or another person) beneath it with straps or rope, so don't know its weight allowance.
Several hours of tramping through the scrub, they came to a cleared area and found another cairn line.
(To get a mind's-eye map, think of Mt Egmont, with the castle at the top, circled by a 5km radius ring, 500m wide. Ridges and valleys run down the sides)
They watched it all day scheming and trying to come up with ways to get past it undetected. Several times during the day a shambling thing wandered around the skulls doing something to them: maintenance?
Night fell and they made their move.
It was utterly pitch-black dark (overcast, no star-light), but the castle (about 5km away) had a light so this was used for Randy to get an initial bearing on a cairn. Randy psi-camouflaged and carried three Darkness stones in his pockets (cast by Bookem & Oprah). He placed them around a cairn. Then called the party to wander over. The group stumbled blindly over to Randy guided to him by his voice.
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