As the battle stopped and I began to assist the wounded, I used guild chat.

[Great job everybody. We need to stay on our toes. The Lich is not really dead till its soul item is destroyed. Otherwise, it will be reborn sometime in the next 10 days. If it does respawn it will be very close to its soul item so remember the location, in case we can kill the lich before the lich moves it. The soul item usually looks like a necklace with a box hanging from it, but can look like a decanter full of glowing fluid and other things as well. Don’t consider those shapes the only possibility. Plum take you teams and start searching the temple carefully. I’ll join you once everyone is stable and recalled back to Danuholm. Any Item you have a question about, bring to someone that has ID and can check if it’s the soul item.

Fannon came to me and asked, “Why do you keep calling it a soul item? Don’t they have a name?”

I reply, “Eh, when Gygax wrote down the lore, he called them Phylacteries, because he thought they were cool. Phylacteries are used by a specific faith on my home world to store pieces of holy scripture. So, converting Phylacteries to something used by evil undead magicians, was just a little… creepy. The only other word I know for them is Horcruxes, and that’s only close approximation as one mage can have multiple of those, but only one Phylacterie per lich in the Gygax lore. Until I know for sure the lore and how they work, calling them soul items is less douchey, and keeps me from being too locked in to an idea of how they work.

I walked over to where Jimni was back in his original shape, laying on his side, panting. I crouched down in front of him and said “Why don’t you recall back to town and see how Thorbjorn is doing. I think we can handle this now.”

Jimni met my eyes and nodded muttering “in a sec, let me catch me breath”.

I patted him on the shoulder and then went to explore the inside of the temple.

As I walked, I made lists in my head of the things I’d learned today and what I could do to prevent the problems in the future. Once I had an item solid, I pulled a piece of thin wood out of my inventory and added it to the list. If we didn’t lose anyone today, it was by blind luck, not planning. Blind being the key word. I was thinking of this as some leftovers from low level that we were going back to finish off. I couldn’t have been more wrong. One flyover or scouting mission would have showed up how wrong I was.

As I stepped into the temple, the path took a pair of 90 degree turns, up against a bas relief, clearly designed to prevent you from seeing in until you walked around it. Inside Plum and his men were searching everywhere. The temple was dark with only the reflected lights from the door. The candelabras on the walls and the chandeliers were all dark with stubs of candles and melted wax dribbling down. Guards were going over the pews looking for the soul item, knocking for secret hidey holes.

I walked straight up to the altar and said a quick prayer to Danu. Then I put my hands on it and bowed my head.

I thought yes and watched as a wave of blue light shot out from the altar and restored the temple to factory new condition. The altar was covered in blue cloth and all the candles were lit and standing tall like brand new. Up on one of the chandeliers, blue sparks blasted several times, ZAP ZAP ZAP, and a cloud of smoke drifted up.

Danu spoke then [That takes care of the Lich, she’s not coming back any time soon.]

[Glad to hear it. We got you that temple you asked for, finally. And the headwaters are claimed, does that give you a big power up or something?]

[Yes, and tales of this battle will spread down river along with the Blue Danube trading company. Thanks for that, by the way.]

[Don’t thank me, that was all Ramon, I just rolled with his ideas.]

Danu said, [Either way Bill, you get points for that and taking the temple.]

[Can you use them to help Thorbjorn out, or any of our other wounded? I don’t want to lose anybody]

[Honestly Bill, you gave Granny Gatlin free hand with the healing house and control over the purse strings. Do you really believe she’s not ready? Anyone who got home alive, was stabilized by the magic of the tree and the glen. Nobody was unable to hold on for 10 seconds with a healing potion in their inventory just in case.]

I came back, [Glenn? Is that it, I’ve been calling it all kinds of things in my head, glenn, mott, dell, clearing I can’t keep it straight. “Hello this is the city of Danusholm, his name is Glenn.” That should be easy to remember.]

[Don’t tempt me, a talking tree would be pretty bad ass]

[If you do it, promise me you’ll make it curse like a sailor, a foul mouthed talking holy tree would be awesome! Point Bill!!]

[Ha ha Bill. It’d be a holy tree, not a parrot. But seriously, this significantly increases the bandwidth I can put into this world. A full on temple is kind of a big deal, that’s why you were located here to begin with. Is there anything I can give you?]

[A ride back to home to my wife, and a beer?]

[You know you can’t Bill, if you go back there, you’ll be dead already. BZZT like a mosquito in a bug zapper.]

[Yeah, I figured. It was worth a shot. I’m not broken over it anymore, but I really do miss them. Promise me you’ll give them the chance to join me, when they’ve had long and happy lives there.]

[We already agreed to that, I’m a lady of my word.]

[I’m still up for that beer though]

The End