“Welcome into my lair, what do you think of the place?”
Her words were casual, as if she had not tried to murder us a couple of times already.

“come on, don’t be shy”
There was a small open area where were standing, behind us rows and rows of books were filling the area, walking through them were “esk’s” multiple of copies her, browsing, reading some writing. In front of us under a chandelier of stars each reflecting what seemed faces, faces of goblins, gnolls.. humans.. elves, was standing.. Esk prime? The original? With next to her, her golem, now armoured with metal plating. Esk herself, her black eyes staring into us, bald head, but the rest of her covered in, what could only be, magical clothing.

“well.. in any case.. I’m glad you are here. I could use some help in my current endavour.”
“What are you doing here Esk? what is this endeavor of yours, why are you killing?”

In the next half an hour we questioned her thoroughly, trying to get as much information out of her as possible… going as far as checking her under zone of truth spells.
Many years ago, millenia, eons, This plane was the home of a single god, the elder god. He created the Dragons and the Giants. They lived in harmony for a while, but then we came. The small races.. and our gods. We were fleeing from something, something from outside the planes..
When we first arrived we were welcomed, but i twas not long untill the dragons and giants discovered that they could harness the worship.. and sacrifice of us to get power themselves. The be granted almost god like status. This caused division among them, the started fighting between themselves, while taking more and more power for them. The elder god was not happy to share the attention, and decided that a good old smiting of all things living was in order. In order to stop the elder gods de giants dragons and smaller races worked together. Millions of souls were “willingly” sacraficed to turn one creature into a god. This god was then immedialty locked away in boxes, each box being the lock of a seal. The seals together locked away the elder god.
The small races were not all to happy to be sacraficed so the left “dummasia” and fled to a new place via the sea and underdark. The halflings being the first to leave, while the tieflings stayed the longest, being sacraficed untill there were almost none left.

Now we have started opening boxes, the seals of the eldergod are weakening, and it’s breaking free will be a matter of time. Esk has spend half a century, walking the planes in order to gather information, to find ways to stop this from happening. And she has found a way.
By opening up all the boxes, locks can be re-made. However, this would need a new god. Which would need sacrifice. Esk has deemed herself worthy to be this god. She is gathering souls, she doesn’t need millions anymore, just thousands, will grant her godhood is she also has ALL the boxes.
She has most already but 2 are still missing, and this is were we could come in. Help her steal the boxes. Both are still in the necropolis, one guarded by a lava-worm, and the other by the lichking. Esk can open a portal to the boxes, but we would need to fight the creatures that accompany the boxes in order to claim it. With the help of Esk of course.

Before saying yes to this important decisions I decided to check her work, a week I spend with her research. But I could not find anything.. anything that would give us any other way out of this mess. In the meantime Ka’Tau prayed to his god, to no avail, only hearing screaming. The others trained, getting as strong as they could before facing off against a foe again.
In the end we decided to help her. Just leaving the word to be destroyed by the elder god was not really an option anyway. But we convinced her to leave Soro and its surroundings alone, she would gather her souls from other places. Also we all got to pick a magic weapon ^^. An headband of intellect for garritas, an amulet of constitution for Ricardo.. I myself took the staff of healing. These people I’m traveling with, my comrades.. my friends, they get themselves in a lot of trouble, and although a full fledged cleric, healing is not very much in Ka’Tau’s domain.

Esk had mountains of knowledge, she explained that there was a dragon, some miles away to the south east, that boccob was in on her plans and condoned them. That Ka’Tau’s son was in the hands of the HaugBui after all. And that even if we managed to stave of this disaster, there was still someone else who was stirring up trouble, the person who made the triffids, and who was leaving the boxes everywhere. A world hopper just as Esk..

I tried to sneak off at some point. During the whole time, as soon as I woke up after touching the giant runes, the presence of the words of creations were buzzing in the back of my mind. Calling to me, luring me back to them. I think of myself as quite sneaky, but the hammers are professionals. I didn’t get far before Garritas and Ricardo caught up to me. The convinced me to wait, wait for a better opportunity, and in the case of Ricardo wait in his bed. I let them convince me, they were right it was going to be dangerous. A few more days should be fine.

We decided to leave the boxes for now, we should have some more time before the seals would collapse, in the meantime we could train, and help Soro. We decided to head east, towards the dwarven mines, see what had happened there and see if we could try to get the mines up and running again.

Just before we left I got my chance again. I again headed to the runes, spelling out the words of creation. But this time not alone, under the dark of night. Now I was going with head high, ready to face it’s dangerous, surrounded by.
friends.
Spells cast upon me, them standing by ready for everything, I touched the rune.