From the Diary of Rudolpho Milano

Dear Diary,

I think that an evil demon may still be impersonating Daria.

One of the few stone buildings in the village had a basement with four doors in it so we decided to investigate it further. We chose the north door and found an ancient crypt. As the rest of the party cautiously made their way down the sarcophagus-lined hallway, I charged to the end of the hallway to the bat statue at the end.

I had just got there when Daria began to poke about in the individual tombs for loot. She managed to awaken three mummies. I left my current project to help in the battle. A combination of Vin’s holy powers and good honest bladework ended the battle quickly. While Z cured Daria’s sandy coughing, Kongu and I moved the statue to reveal a treasure chest and a bunch of gushing water. As the water began to rise in the hallway, Daria opened the chest. Vin estimates that there is almost five thousand pieces of gold in that chest. Finally! A reward for all my diligence, hard work, and good deeds!

I swam up the water channel to come out in a room that was rapidly draining of water. I swam back to report this, as the party was trying to get through one of the side doors off of the crypt hall. While Daria worked on opening one of the stone doors, I bashed the other one down.

Vin and I entered a room with a sole sarcophagus as we opened it, we were assaulted by a vaporous loser. With a couple of spells from Ortho to back us up, Vin and I made short work of the loser and found a melon-sized pearl.

Daria was not having much luck removing the lid on the sarcophagus that she had found so Kongu and I removed it for her. Inside was a single dagger that Daria somehow imagined that we didn’t see. She grabbed it and took it to Z to identify.

After all of the hoopla, the entire team ventured through the water pipe and into the cistern room. From that room, we ventured into some kind of ceremony chamber. Daria casually asked for the pearl and placed it on an altar as the rest of the team gathered in the room, but were careful to stay outside of a figure drawn on the floor.

As soon as the pearl was in place, an eight-foot-tall frog guy, much like the one that fought on the deck of the Sea Wyvern, appeared. Daria mumbled something to it and then motioned in Kongu’s direction. Then, everything got crazy with the beast attacking Kongu and us attacking the beast, eventually I decided to fake Kongu’s death by cracking him over the head with the broad side of my falchion and pronouncing him slain when he fell down.

Gwen used this momentary distraction to talk to the thing and found out that it I was here to claim a sacrifice. I took Kongu’s still-living form and placed it on another altar. My fake-out didn’t work because all the beast did was summon a brother and renew his attack. It was a tough battle but we prevailed. As of right now, we are resting, trying to figure out what that was all about, and what to do with Daria.

-R