From the Diary of Rudolpho Milano

Dear Diary,

Zotzilaha is dead.

We finished the boring trip from the village of Tanaroa to the volcano without further incident. Mystic Z had the rare foresight to prepare spells to protect us from the extreme heat of the caverns under the volcano.

We soon found the main temple room where a statue of Zotzilaha had its arms raised high above its head as if it were holding whatever was once contained in a now-empty niche in the wall. As the rest of the party searched the chamber high and low, they insisted that no one do anything “stupid”. Maybe it’s just me - but that comment seemed to be directed at Daria and me.

Whether it was or not, Daria immediately announced that she needed to check out the niche. I gave Daria a lift up to the top of the statue's head and she climbed into the niche. After checking it out, Daria reported that there were no traps.

It was then that things went wrong. I was waiting for Daria to climb down when she just up and dropped down her leather pants and dropped a pooty on top of the statue's head. As she and I were giggling (and Ortho was griping) a big bat-person walked around the corner catching us off guard and breathed some kind of cursed fire on all of us. Not only did it burn us, it also seemed to damage our very health. After just one of those, I was felling pretty crappy.

That other Zotzilaha must have been a ringer because this one was a lot tougher fight. This moron was a lot smaller than the last one and looked like a hairy guy with bat wings growing out of his back. As if things were not irritating enough, he summoned a dozen of those damnable fire bats to harass us.

Nesta began fighting by yelling “Ignore the bats! Focus on big guy! Take down Zotzilaha! Ignore the bats!” So, I grabbed my falchion, and charged the big bat loser. The battle raged on for far too long and every time Zotzilaha clawed me with those talons of his, my muscles seemed to slow and lock up. I figure that everyone else probably got the same treatment. All the while Nesta was yelling “The bats! Get the bats! Oh, Ehlonna, help! It's got me!”

Anyway, like I said, we killed Zotzilaha and his stupid fire bats but not before he beat Kongu into his inert state and fried Daria to death with a send blast of his evil breath. Hours later, as we were inspecting some really cool loot, Mystic Z used a scroll to bring Daria back to life. At first, we weren't worried about Kongu. He's been inert plenty of times and come back just fine. This time when we tried to repair him, he stayed inert. We've got to figure out how to fix him now.

Later that night, Gwendolyn told me the story of a berserker warrior and his magic greataxe. This legendary barbarian was supposedly able to channel his rage through his axe to destroy his enemies. That guy eventually died and his famous greataxe was lost to history. It was a good story with lots of killing and maiming and it really helped me sleep. Thanks, Gwen.

I was still dwelling on that story this morning and it got me thinking. If that story is true, then I figure maybe I can find a mystic to make my falchion do the same thing as that guy's axe. So far though, I haven’t found the right person either among the primitives on the Isle of Dread or the settlers at Farshore. Gwen better not have been yanking my chain.

-R