Party Mutt Death
We offered to have a service for Aeschere, such as a barbecue, but Sheaf refused us the opportunity to respect the death in such a fine way. I think I was initially suspected of killing Aeschere since we have had a tumulteous relationship in the past (such as my desiring it's absence from our party by whatever means necessary), but sadly, I cannot take credit for such a fine kill. The bat bites on the dog implies that Lucan finished it off...clearly Lucan was not all evil.

Final Showdown
I left off the last entry with the centipedes because our next discovery was Lucan. We immediately withdrew for final showdown preparations. We were all sick of chasing this loser vampire all over Khorvaire. I was now fully ready with mage armour, owls wisdom tap, healing, and undead baned hands. The others apparantly prepared in their ways too, but I was a little focused on myself for obvious reasons. I was pretty determined to come out of this alive, just to spite Lucan. I was chosen as leader for the rush-in (for reasons I'll never be clear on since I still needed a lot more healing), and the archers would follow with undead baned arrows...so I rushed into an empty room. I did stop halfway in, fearing the hole towards the end of the room. Sheaf rushed in past me right to the hole. He successfully located the tip of Lucan's sword. While it was helpful for the purposes of locating Lucan, his technique of search is a bit rusty. Perhaps the wolf should have not been left in the circles in the other room and pitched headfirst into the hole. Then two mighty purposes would have been served...Aeschere's death and Lucan's location.

I digress.

It did not take Lucan long to turn into gas, but a major difference in this particular combat is that we obviously managed to injure him BEFORE he turned into gas, instead of simply being bored with us. He came back into shape briefly, then gas, then went down the hole. Xander, fully sick of Lucan, simply jumped into the hole after him, apparantly supremely confident that his potion was feather fall. Fortunately, for his sake, it was Feather Fall. Tic cast the same spell onto herself, Sheaf and Sal, and jumped down - while Duval, Anvil and I beat it down the stairs and around to where the room below the hole was. Another battle ensued with the human form of Lucan, where Duval managed to snag the sword, which turns out to be quite essential...another battle with Gaseous Form, and suddenly, Xander's last touch of the cure wand caused the gas cloud to dissipate. We were all very angry and frustrated by this point because we needed his body for the biggest chunk of the reward. We had the sword, which was packed away with great care, but not the body.

What a bust.

Ziggeraut
The ziggeraut that could be seen at a distance seemed to be our destination, as it seemed like a likely place for Lucan to go...it was on a lake island, so Sheaf did some track investigating before we committed to crossing the lake. He did locate some tracks of which both of us when followed - only to discover a small hut with a small elderly woman that lived there for many years, but avoided the "haunted temple with much evil." She seemed very kind, and fed us, so we returned to fetch Tic and leave her in the woman's safe keeping until we concluded our business...once and for all.

Anvil walked across the lake (or rather, walked on the lake floor) while the rest of us got over in a boat. Sal baned my hands for undead and Sheaf tapped me with the wand of owl's wisdom, so I was ready to destroy anything that came my way, especially undead. Our first encounter involved a rather nasty cloaker, of which proved somewhat difficult to destroy. I took a final one-two punch on it, but was struck with fear as it fell on Sheaf. I think we all froze in place before we realised that it had fallen on him...dead.

We started investigating the rooms after that...there was an alter room with demon frescos, ran into a rotting bull bent to kill us, and then upstairs to more demonic fescos with circles embossed on the ground. This is apparantly the centipede room, and the place were Sal decided to play fire tricks that involved greatly injuring me. THEN the centipedes bit me, slowing my reflexes greatly....between the two, I was limping around the room like a wounded puppy on his last leg. Sheaf had to use a lot of wand taps on me once Anvil finished off the dreadful little buggers.

Train
It would seem that this task requires the use of every type of transportation in existence. We went through the wreckage to find a young child that Xander and I took a partiality to in order to ensure he would be all right. While Duval, Xander, Sal and I worked to free him, the others successfully battled air elementals. Anvil, Duval, Tic and Sal decided to join me when I took the boy, Timmy, to the nearest town, which turned out to be Sturm's Gate. I took her straight to House Jorasco and left them the silver we found in the wreckage. The next morning I bought a keg of ale and beef for the others still at the wreckage. After everybody finished burying all of the bodies, we all headed back to Sturm's Gate together.

The following day Xander and I followed up with Timmy and got supplies. Since the air ship crashed, we decided to continue onward to our destination on the Lightening Rail, thus another type of transportation to experience and possibly blow up or destroy. We were denied passage even though we had tickets by the ticket collectors, but they also had a "glaze" over them that made us push through and get on anyway, through their dead or unconscience bodies. We suspected that Lucan would also need another form or transportation, thus the train, so we tried to speak to everybody on the train, but there was no sign. The caboose was locked, and Gerald, the engineer up front seemed quite unconcerned about the locked door.

Suddenly, we saw horses galloping alongside the train, with riders looking to board, as well as smaller creatures swooping down from the air with halflings riding them. A fierce battle with warforged ensure throughout the train. I nearly died from the battle, but my life was saved just in time from the wand of awesome. We decided to initiate a room by room search after that incident, using the battle as an excuse to check the rooms, despite the House Orien policy of extreme privacy being extended to all passengers. Xander and I had gotten through a few cars in this search, when the train started slowing unexpectantly. Anvil and Sal went to investigate...we had left Tic to watch Gerald, but the door was locked and Tic was not responding. While I ran back to wake Duval, Sal went over the roof only to see a new engineer in an apparant trance slowing the train while Tic stared blankly. Sal then went underneath the car and opened the door. It would seem that Lucan had been posing as the engineer, and was now gone, so I removed this engineer from the controls and Duval proceeded to knock everybody out since we did not want the train to start without us as we disembarked to pursue Lucan.

I grabbed Tic and we disembarked to head off to hopefully finish this task once and for all...