The adventure

The monks' leader introduced himself as Anselm, the leader of the Brotherhood of the Ascension, which sounded familiar to the chums: they were the people who had abandoned the monastery by which they had crashed.
He was a worried soul. He claimed that the time of The Ascension to be cosmic lords was at hand, but that the Destinae Dominus was irretrievably lost; he had searched near and wide, and lost many monks in the hostile lands. He had little to offer but his learning, which he shared with Quentin, teaching him about divine magic, in particular how to create a magical screen to protect a party from hostile magic. After their encounters with sprites, undead heads and the magical fire of the scorchers, this knowledge sounded invaluable to the friends, as indeed it was to prove.

They continued exploring the wilderness, and saw ahead of them two golems. Golems, they knew, they could fight easily, so they chased the creatures down, around behind an outcrop. Sadly, the golems were accompanied, and the friends ran right into a blistering scorcher, a more vicious version of the creatures they had already met. This proved to be more unfortunate for the scorcher than the friends, as up close their weapons killed it before its flames started much cooking at all. Feeling a little overheated, the friends finished off the two marble golems, only to be met by two gibbering heads, which had chased down the noise of the battle.
The heads would have been dangerous if their magic had turned Vi, Salva and Karen insane during a fight with a large golem, but it was only a small inconvenience, as Quentin and Shu Ting chased the floating monstrosities down.
The friends also hunted some flying snakes, before Salva spotted on his scanner some movement from within one of the hillocks in an open valley. As they approached the mound, they realised that it was a barrow, as presumably some of the others were too. Outside they found a skeleton, lying in the tunnel mouth, arm outstretched as if to crawl away. They took the vials of potion still lying by the bones and edged into the dark, twisting tunnel. As they came to a corner, they could just make out beyond the turn a larger chamber, and Salva's scanner showed that the creatures would be within. Quentin took a quick peek and identified two more gibbering heads and the colossal skeletal figure of a Death Lord. He quickly put up a protective spell, a soul shield, to guard against the nightmarish magic of the powerful undead. Margreet threw a firebomb into the room to attract their attention, and Karen and Shu Ting waited to pounce from within the limited protection of the doorway.
The Death Lord attempted to sap their souls away, and Quentin strained with his barrier, whilst the heads foolishly bobbed right into the doorway, where the girls were waiting. Karen chopped one apart, passing out from the combined exertion and the magical 'ego whip' the creature used to lacerate their minds. She never had much of an ego at the best of times. Shu Ting moved with lightning strikes to slaughter the other before it even saw her standing below it, its attention caught by the larger figures behind her. The Death Lord continued his soul-sucking, the spirit unaccustomed to such resistance, and the friends rapidly broke the tatty armour and bones of the giant skeleton, it starting to fight rather than play at magic far too late to save itself, although its giant's sword did make heavy contact with Karen.
The barrow contained three tombs and two trapped chests. Salva took a long time with the traps, which, he explained, were quite complicated and intricate. One was cursed, and the spell made their flesh decay and drip off, leaving zombie-like creatures exclaiming with pain, and Quentin, Vi and Margreet used their magic to heal the party. Tripping the curse did open the chest, revealing nothing worth so much pain. Salva also tripped the guardian trap on the second chest, summoning an elemental water lord, who killed him with two punches. Karen and Shu Ting managed to splash the elemental apart, and Salva was re-animated, Margreet watching Quentin closeley. This time, he was motivated to be a bit more careful and managed to slip the lid open without summoning another elemental. The treasure inside wasn't, in Salva's opinion, worth dying for, but the others were happy. Quentin managed to salvage two canned elementals from the trap mechanism, which was a cunning piece of spell-work.
Searching the tombs revealed the greatest treasure. They found an enchanted broadsword, a wonderful mace called Diamond Eyes, which Quentin kept, being the only one who used a mace, two magical ankhs, a ring and a wooden staff. The staff seemed normal, but the inscriptions around the stone coffin identified it as a 'Staff of Doom', a powerful weapon with the essence of death contained within it. Quentin could feel a curse in it, so although it was tempting for Margreet, who had become practised with her quarterstaff, to take it, they packed it away for keeping. Margreet had found a winterwand behind the waterfall, which suited her better.
They continued, through a troupe of fire ants, on to a little pathway, which led them into some Rapax guards. Salva stunned two with shots from his gun, allowing himself a little chuckle, Margreet stunned two with the effects of a toxic cloud, and Quentin paralysed two his a spell, leaving the battle more akin to a clean-up operation than a fight.
They passed the turn which Vi explained led to Rapax rift and other Rapax territories, and followed a little tunnel she knew of which was the entry to an abandoned mine. This one was fully blocked-up, but did take them through a pass to the areas Vi called the South-East wilderness.
Exploring took them close to three more flying snakes, these ones more magical creatures called acid wings. The friends chased them, eager to get a closer look at the undiscovered creatures, and ran into 5 tanto wasps as well. Margreet tried a new spell she had concocted which made the very land around absorb creatures, rendering them, quite literally, into fertiliser. It didn't work, perhaps because flying creatures would be a hard target for the land to soak up.
The buzzing enemies proved frustrating, but were eventually killed. Margreet continued to consider the spell, and Quentin explained resurrection to her.
Soon they came to a gazebo, a sign of habitation, which had ammunition and a magical instrument sitting in it. They looted it while no-one was around and followed a path up a hillside, Salva monitoring his scanner for life. He soon informed them that there were three creatures ahead, and the friends could see a paved plateau, so they rushed out, ambushing three of the siges who, with their pets, cause so much trouble on the Arnika-Trynton road. Quentin regretted not setting his stopwatch, as the women, caught entirely by surprise, died in what must be a record; the friends estimated 10 seconds. It took longer to clean the weapons than fight.

Looking around them, they saw that these had been patrolling, or perhaps just walking, outside the front of a giant temple. If this was the home of the evil sorceresses, the friends were keen to express their gratitude for the friendly welcome that the black magic users had given them. The entrances both opened onto a semi-circular corridor that joined them together, half-way along which was the towering opening into the vault of the black cathedral. In the wall opposite this entrance was a glowing blue stone, which the friends decided that they would pilfer. Or rather, Salva decided to grab, and the friends, running across the entrance, dragged him away with. One glance inside the leaping arches of the main aisle had revealed a number of cultists, two Death Lords and a Sorceress Queen holding some sort of vile communion. That they had been disturbed was revealed by their movements on the scanner. However, the service had some sort of pull for them, because instead of chasing the friends down, after walking a little way up the long aisle, it looked like they were returning. This did not suit the friends, who decided that enticing them into the narrower confines of the entrance corridor would be preferable to charging into the open vaults of the cathedral, to be exposed to everything that could be thrown at them. A few more unsubtle peaks around the corner achieved this goal nicely, with the sorceress queen leading the way, a better result than they could have hoped. She was likely to have the worst magic, and a few sword holes in her would help the friends deal with the threat she presented. Once again, Quentin concentrated on his magic screen and soul shield, and the four combatants, Vi, RFS, Shu Ting and Karen, killed the queen quickly, although not before she had called down a firestorm on the group. Fighting through the flames, they also knocked apart a Death Lord who blocked the entrance, he and his fellow giant concentrating more on draining their will to live soul-to-soul than fighting with their 8 foot swords. This was a mistake.
The cultists had all summoned elementals to fight for them, and encouraged the elementals to lead the way as they all closed on the entrance. Two ran around the other way, to get at the friends from behind, a large fire elemental closing on Salva at the back. They were beset from all sides, unsure where to strike first. Salva was proving no match for the elemental, which was quite at home in the magical flames.
This prompted Margreet to put as much power as she could into her new quicksand spell, the centre of which she aimed just at the entrance-way, timed by Salva, who was still using his scanner to check who was where in the hall. This time it worked beautifully, with many cultists and elementals sinking into the stone with fearful screams. No doubt their souls would haunt the places where they had been trapped, but someone else could worry about that some other time.
The firestorm, however, was taking its toll and Quentin, gasping and sweating, collapsed dead from the burning heat. RFS died immediately, his android mind providing no resistance at all to the Death Lord's insistent death magic. The others, the magic corrupting their minds with fear, fled, stumbling over Salva's dead body and dragging it with them, grateful that the fire elemental blocking their retreat had succumbed to the quicksand spell, even if it had injured Salva too badly first.
Margreet, in between using the last of her healing magic to save herself from dying fromt he firestorm, which followed them outside, desperately snatched the resurrection powder from Quentin's still hot body. Bearing in mind his hurried explanations of how he thought it worked, she sprinkled it into his face. He was alive instantly, saying
"I had hoped that would never be needed for me, but I made sure it would work for anyone on me, just in case. You have to put a little bit of soul into the use..."
He spoke as he was helped to his feet, but there wasn't time for much conversation. Karen had been killed by a punch from an earth elemental and Shu Ting was gamely holding the beast up while Vi healed her own burned and battered body. With Vi healed and Quentin and Margreet back in action the elemental that had chased them, and the cultist with it, died promptly. The Death Lord, the last of the crowd, didn't appear as the friends gasped the fresh air, the firestorm finally wearing itself out after the death of its summoner.
With some trepidation, and with what help Quentin could offer, Margreet attempted a resurrection spell of her own, not tied to rare and difficult to use powders. It certainly worked on Karen, who rolled onto her feet in time to help Shu Ting and Vi kill the stragglers from the crowd of cultists and summoned elementals.
With the Death Lord trapped, perhaps, inside the temple, the friends took a minute or so to rest and re-animate Salva, and then RFS (whose re-animation was more a jump-start than life itself). All together once again, they slaughtered the Death Lord in the temple, and explored the nave. Up in two pulpits they found some valuable potions, which Margreet stashed away and a strange metal belt, which Salva laid claim to for future gadgetry. A corridor led away from the choir, and following it them ambushed four mummies, including one known as 'The Scythe'. The undead proved no match for the friends, and the tomb they guarded was looted. Whoever had been buried here, his equipment was certainly superb, and not at all what one would expect from a hero of dark magic. His magical plate armour Karen took, his dark, almost black, sword, Fang, Shu Ting took, it being twice as good as the worthy Demonsbane that is itself a fine weapon.
The magical crusader's helm, granting protection from dark magic, they kept, but the metal was dented and weak, so they hoped the reinforce it or copy the magic, rather than use it. Finally, they gave RFS some boomerange shuriken. His ability to cause damage with thrown objects was minimal, so something enchanted to return to him was a perfect was to avoid wasting money on endless ammunition.

On the paved path next to the gazebo they fought four vampire bats, which proved little match for them. They followed a gravelled path over a hilltop, to another valley below, where they attacked a brute hogar. The large, muscular, bull-like creature knocked out Shu Ting in its first charge. Quentin re-awoke her with some magical smelling salts, the perfume of which was too much for her little nose. The hogar's thick skin took the punishment, knocking out in turn Vi, Quentin, Margreet and then Shu Ting again. Only Karen's sturdy constitution and armour, and Salva's bullfighting knowledge, kept the hogar under assault, and finally killed it.
They waited for Margreet and Quentin to awake, carrying them away when some nightmares came in sight. The mythical horses didn't pursue; perhaps they were merely being territorial.

As soon as Margreet woke she teleported the tired, hungry and exhausted group back to Marten's Bluff. They dragged their heavy loads to Sadok, where they sold a good deal of it, Sadok's prices proving very good. A little lighter on their feet, they used the T'Rang teleporter to travel to Arnika, where they collected from Antone the ebon staff and steelhide armour that they had commissioned, offering in exchange some of the fine haul they still had; he accepted a giant's sword from a Death Lord as almost full payment for both items. They rested in He'Li's inn for quite a while, relaxing with drinks, Margreet also fiddling with their potions. She sent Shu Ting to Anna for any potion ingredients she might have, and Quentin went to Lord Braffit, from whom he hoped he might purchase some more spellbooks. However, he had no more that Quentin or Margreet did not already know, so he settled down to prepare some of the easier potions before Margreet finished the more advanced alchemy.
They sold the potions to He'Li, as agreed, and Shu Ting told of their adventures, her loud recounting even drawing Myles in from outside. Eventually, with a little Dutch courage, they wandered over to the Town Hall and delivered the Umpani's alliance offer to Screg. As Quentin had suggested, Screg saw nothing wrong with accepting them as official representatives of the Imperial Umpani Federation, and drafted an alliance acceptance at once.
The friends returned to sleep at He'Li's happy, after a few days' good achievements. They sorted their room, arranged what they'd take with them on the next expedition, and lay down for a well-deserved rest.