All The Madness Of The World In One Place

Where to even begin? Today I've seen more crazy and amazing things than I saw during my decade of travels across Ninchan. But, I guess could begin from where I ended the last time I wrote.
 
Once we entered the grand temple, there wasn't anyone there yet. But people soon began to gather and then we saw him. Wolfram Hades himself came to give a sermon, along with the woman we came to rescue, Elona, and some other masked fellow. Darvin pretty much immeadiately began having the chills from Hades and the whole place after that. Oh, and I almost forgot. Kaerwyd and I noticed that there was someone in the roof of the temple when we entered, making his way towards the altar where Hades was holding his sermon. And then the man dropped on him with his daggers drawn, yelling something along the lines of "Give me back my wife!"
Not the most subtle way of assassinatting someone, but effettive. Or should've been. For you see, Hades just stood up after this like nothing had happened. Just the fact that a grown-ass man fell from such a height right on top of him should've broken his neck, but no, there he was. Standing on his own feet. His guards didn't even have to help him stand up! We left soon afterwards and ran into the two guards escorting the man on the streets. Since there was no one around, we decided to help the poor guy. Eldove used her witchery to trick the guards and then we took them down. Or so we thought. As we were getting rid of the corpses, which we noticed were weird even earlier when we fought them when they were still walking and standing, one of them grabbed Eldove and almost dragged her along to the acidic river. Good grief, this place really is creepy.
 
We then returned to Baron's Mausoleum to talk to our new dark elf friend. He introduced himself as Gaares Grimtooth, and he was a bounty hunter. He was after someone named Christopher Flame, a deserter and a thief, as far as I understood. And apparently Darvin had fought in the same army but he didn't really know the man besides his name. Christhopher's trail had led him to White Path and his wife had also somehow, I don't remember how, ended up in White Path as a prisoner of Wolfram Hades. And so, being injured himself he gave his wedding ring to us to help identify his wife who held a similar ring, which actually glow brighter the closer they are to each other. We decided that the best course of action would be to infiltrate the temple early in the morning through the roof, just like Gaares had done.
 
Once we got in we searched every nook and cranny on the floor. We found some interesting notes, books and journals, (if I remember correctly some of these notes we found pretty much confirmed our suspicions about Wolfram Hades and Christopher Flame being the same person) but no way to travel to the basement where some sort of magical trail had went from Hades earlier that Darvin had seen. Until Halla found a switch on the statue that was standing on the middle of the floor. The statue moved and a staircase was revealed. So we went down and were faced with two paths. Right or left. Seeing as we heard some unusual, maybe even disturbing sounds coming from our left, we went to our right. There was some kind of trapfloor but one of the notes found gave a clue and we got over without a problem. Then we encoutered the scene of a massacre in a dining room of sorts. With literal skeletons in a closet. After that was a bigger hall where we encoutered and fought some cultists. And we fought some of them again because one of them somehow brought a few of his fallen comrades back up again. And whilst Halla was preparing a magic to identify any traces of magic on the strange, colored doors, one of the corpses suddenly shuffles towards me and grabs my leg. Yeah, I admit, I freaked out a little and cut off it's damn arm.
 
When Halla was done she found there was no magic on the doors, but when we tried to open them, we found them to be locked. With no keyholes. So there seemed to be some other kind of mechanism to open the doors. So we entered the only other door in the hall and found a room with a pillar at the center and a painting with an eye in it. The three other walls of the room also had drapes matching the colors of the doors in the hall and some paintings on them, can't remember what the paintings were about though but they also had colors connected to the doors'. Well, after some trial and error, Eldove tried moving the eye painting on another side of the pillar. It activated a mechanism, or magic, or something and opened the wall to a secret room with a lever at the far side of it. We did it again on another side and same thing. Buuut, with the third one there was a slight hiccup. It turned out that there was a mummy or something in the last room. Lovely. But we managed to take it down and pull the last lever too.
 
With the doors now unlocked we first went through the purple door. It lead to some sort of living quarters first and from there to what was labeled as 'storage room', where we suspected Hades' prisoners were being held. But what we saw was something we never expected to see, despite how weird and creepy White Path had already turned out to be. There were cells on the sides of the room where the prisoners were being held, sure. But there was four cultists just standing in the middle like statues and behind them was.... I don't really know what to call it. Some sort of horrifying flesh golem would propably be the best way to describe it. It was a hard battle but eventually all the enemies were down and just to be safe we decided to burn the corpses with the flames from the alchemists fire that Halla had launched and missed earlier.
 
Then we helped the prisoners. We found Gaares' wife from among them, though it seemed like she couldn't talk. Her tongue seemed to be fine but she had a cut on her throat, so my best guess was that there was something taken from her throat which led to her being unable to speak. There was also another person of interest among the prisoners, for the lack of a better term. Zacharias Zombell was his name I believe. Halla recognized the name as someone who writes books about his travels and his travels had led him to White Path where he had gotten himself imprisoned. Talk about bad luck. But once we were certain that no one was in any immediate danger of dying we continued to search the rest of the rooms.
 
From behind the yellow door we found a long, narrow hallway leading to another door and the masked guy who was with Hades waiting at said door. Medicine Man, he was called. Apparently some sort of mentor of Amariel. And also the old friend who had sent the letter to her. He was co-operative, but annoying as all hell to say the least. We cuffed him and put him in one of the secret rooms we had found and then went to the blue door which he suggested, or urged, we do to find a 'key' to stop this madness. But, once again, we found something we never would've expected, despite what we had just witnessed earlier in the storage room. There was another long hallway and a door. Behind that door was a round room with a pit in the middle, that was just oozing of 'bad feeling'. And then we saw it. A human skin hanging on the other side of the pit. And it was alive. He said he was the former Keeper of the Grave and how Hades had begun to go mad after his close brush with death and had desecrated this sacred pit or something. The pit was somehow filling the room with madness. But we had to get the book that was sitting on the pedestal in front of the pit. So, we tied a rope around me and blindfolded me and off I went. The journal was no problem. Helping the former Keeper was another thing. The first attempt failed because Darvin saw some kind of ethereal hand reaching out to me, so they pulled me back. On the second try they tried to have Eldove blast the hand with her magic now that they knew it was coming. And it did come. And she blasted it with her magic. The screams. Oh, by the ancestors, the screams! Like an entire city had gone up in flames and all the citizens screamed at once and you were standing in the mibble of the town square, unhurt by the flames, listening. It was... terrifying to say the least. But I got to the old Keeper, douzed him in holy water first and oil second. Then we threw the alchemists fire at him. He certainly seemed relieved to finally embrace death.
 
After that we finally went to the last door and we found Hades with some of his followers performing a ritual. They were trying to sacrifice Elona who, as we had learned from the old Keeper, was apparently the avatar of Sinnara! We wasted no time in attacking these cultists. I beat down one of them right away and then Amariel used her magic to really badly hurt the rest. I think a couple of the weaker ones actually went down from that. Kaerwyd and Halla really got on Hades' nerves by attacking and taunting him, and Darvin also by summoning his spiritual weapon right behind Hades, they got him to stop the ritual. Seeing how his master was in trouble the last of the cultists tried to go help him but was subsuquently thrown down the stairs leading to the altar. But then the trouble began. Hades transformed into... I don't even know what to call it other than an 'ogre sized undead'. And he just wouldn't go down! Eldove even managed to cut off his other arm in a single strike (amazing feat, by the way), but he just slowly grew it back like it was nothing.
 
But then Kaerwyd noticed something. Apparently Hades was really protective of his other arm. Quite likely because of the ring on it. So he told us about it and we began to try to cut the other arm off. We succeeded in it quite soon but we still needed to get the ring off the finger because losing his arm didn't seem to really have an effect. Easier said than done though. We tried to pull it and Kaerwyd eventually managed to get it off. At the same time, Halla had managed to remove the gag on Elona and she began to speak in a language that I don't think any of us understood. Then Darvin joined her with prayer it seems and lo and behold, Hades was weakened and then once the ring was removed he transformed back in to human form. Well, what was a human anyway. He was in a really rough state with bones sticking out of him and covered in blood. Like his transformation back was faulty or incomplete. For a moment I contemplated whether this excuse of a human at my feet would deserve the release of death. But I thought 'let the gods he so tried to defy judge him' and lifted my spear above my head and dropped it on his neck. The look of horror and realization on his face when he saw the blade come down was... I don't know. Pitiful? Sad? But I certainly didn't feel sorry for the man, he had brought so much pain unto others that he deserved what came to him. And it seems his cultists also finally, actually, died with him. They turned to ash and for a while that day it rained ash in White Path like it would've rained snow.
 
And then we get to what happened when we got outside the temple. Despite everything maddening and horrifying and crazy things we saw in the temple's basement, this was even more amazing and crazy. Right outside, 'Baron' was waiting for us. And with him an old man. They thanked us for saving Elona and that our reward was waiting for us in the Mausoleum. When we asked the old man who he was, since we knew Baron but not him, he said the words I'll never forget. He adressed Baron as Gambler and he in return adressed the old man as Cronos. Considering we had just saved an avatar of Sinnara (or maybe even Sinnara herself, who knows!?) I didn't really feel like doubting them. But I do regret that I didn't get to talk to them more. I was just so exhausted and so in shock from what I heard that I just couldn't say anything. I would've liked to ask them about my ancestor, whether they knew him, whether he truly had become one of them, a god. But alas, they disappeared in a swirl of wind and ash, leaving behind a black mask with the symbol of Sinnara on it, on top of a pile of ash.
 
And when we got back to Mausoleum and went to look for our reward we found a note on the door for us. It mentioned a certain bottle and in the bottle were keyes. With the keys we went to the owner's room and found a chestful of gold for us and couple of letters. One was a thank you note for all that we did for them, with a little PS to tell me to look under the bed (there was nothing under the bed, but instead under my bed, damn trickster!). The second letter turned out to be the deed for the tavern. So, that's how we ended up becoming entrepreneurs. And when I went to check under the bed under my room, it took me a second to realise what I had just gotten into my hands. It was the Golden Feather Chainmail Shirt of our great ancestor! And with it was a note that said that 'a previous visitor had left it behind'. A few questions came to mind that instant. First, how gods damned careless can she be to just leave behind such a treasure? Secondly, what in the world was she doing in White Path? And third, by how much had I missed her? Days, weeks?
 
I just hope that she isn't part of the conspiracy that we uncovered when we questioned Medicine Man under the Zone of Truth magic. But, I guess I should help in getting this place ready, the emissaries from Fourways and Gammelkonge should be arriving any day now to help deal with this mess of a power vaccuum that is the present White Path. And I think I heard someone knocking on the door despite the sign saying the place is closed. What could that be about?