The rest finally tracked her down and freed her. Morcleb's anger at his sister's betrayal was barely held in check. His own personal problems were forcing him to look at his life in a different way, sending him away from the faith of Elistraee. He was only a follower of Elistraee because of Corrie and now Corrie was betraying that faith...
The party left for Calimport with a strained atmosphere about them. They arrived in Calimport in the early evening and while none of them had been here before, they had heard enough about it to be very wary. They had Calimport coinage from the previous visit and sought out the nearest seller of GOLEMIC SCRIBES for information, in particular if the ship carrying the Drow had arrived yet. One item of news they noted however, was the news of fighting in the Elven quarter and that a very old priestess was in a coma. They immediately thought of the old priestess Corrie had met before, Vilherena, Priestess of Elistraee. They had no idea, though, where Elvenhaven was, but they met a woman who introduced herself as Jay, who knew the city. She seemed familiar to some of them for some strange reason nobody could put a finger on. With Jay leading them, they hurried to Elvenhaven and their reception was chilly until Akordia announced she was a Priestess of Elistraee. They were hurried in and met with the Knight Protector of Vilherena, Askarn. It also appeared that Jay was a worshipper of Elistraee, so agreed to stay with them to help. She seemed to be awkward around Akordia as well. Lutiar's suspicions were raised by this, as well as her admission that she knew his daughter Midnight.
He explained that they were attacked by Drow, led by a well known Drow leader Maya of the Blinding Sword, a fearsome fighter and mother of a trio of Bladesinger daughters. They managed to poison Vilherena with a crossbow bolt which was bounced off two walls. On examination, the bolt had the familiar symbol engraved on it - a brain with two drips beneath it - the same as that which poisoned Qilue and others. Danilo, using the Alamir's Fundamental Breakdown spell was able to discover the ingredients of the poison. Askarn passed this to the elven mages and alchemists who after a while announced that they might be able to find an antidote, but the ingredients would be difficult to obtain. Meanwhile, Askarn explained that they had managed do drive the Drow attackers off and had pursued them down into the sewers, but had to break off pursuit when they were attacked by a contingent of Wererats. This implied the involvement of Guild Angaril who was known to deal with the Wererats of Calimport's sewers.
The days edition of GOLEMIC SCRIBES provided no answers either.
The party booked into an inn not far from Elvenhaven, one recommended by their former colleague Overelle, who had stayed at the Temple to Lathander on the last visit to Calimport. During the night, they were woken, as were many across Faerun, and experienced an astonishing vision: One of the Tears of Selune appeared to fall from its place following Selune in the sky, and rushed across the sky to crash to earth somewhere to the north.
The next day, the city was agog with the stunning vision of the previous night. On a more mundane note, news of Vilherena was unchanged and Askarn was arranging an expedition to obtain the ingredients of the poison antidote. Styrel wished to visit the Mystra Temple as since the battle of Waterdeep he had felt a more religious calling. Morcleb also felt the need for religious instruction, but this time instead of looking for Elistraee, he went to the temple to Helm as he felt this was more toward his needs. Danilo and Jay decided to visit the Purl Information Brokers to see if they knew anything about the Drow or the Sword.
He managed to get some information and also managed to 'sell' them one of his articles from Visage, concerning the New Fashions of Waterdeep! They somehow did not seem to be all that impressed! He did, however, find out that a Haldeman ship arrived a couple of days ago, carrying an important cargo. They did not know what the cargo was, but had a witness who was sure a group of people had vanished into the sewers with it.
GOLEMIC SCRIBES mentioned the apparition of the night before, but also described a strange outbreak of rats coming to the surface in droves near the place known as Heaven's Lathe. This was a famous open air restaurant, and the party decided to go and take a look themselves, especially as one other piece of information Danilo had obtained was about how the Dwarven engineers were concerned about contamination of an underground water reservoir, and "other" goings on.
They arrived at the square which contained Heaven's Lathe and very soon were confronted by the image of an insubstantial elf - the Spectral Elf they had heard about from the first Calimport party! It came to them and begged they help - he was besieged below and... But before he could give them any more information, his image faded as though something were interfering. This led them to the conclusion that they must descend beneath Calimport to continue the hunt. To this end, they went to Dwarf Forge to hire a dwarven guide to the sewers and catacombs beneath the city. They agreed to start out first thing the next day.
The following day's GOLEMIC SCRIBES mentioned their meeting with the Spectral Elf, as well as Danilo's contribution to fashion reporting in the city. Meeting their dwarven guide, they entered the sewers and soon were descending further into the earth. They came to the edge of a vast underground lake, where they were attacked by a giant worm, but fought it off. Passing through a maze-like set of passages, they were attacked and their Dwarf guide vanished. They found him apparently dead a little further away, where the rough cut passages tuned in to a long corridor of dressed stonework. The dwarf animated and attacked Akordia - an undead assassin, but was destroyed.
Travelling down the long straight corridor, they were twice attacked by lightning bolts were unable to see or attack their assailants. They moved off the long corridor as soon as they could, and found a series of rooms with obvious Elven decoration, but ancient and uninhabited for decades if not centuries. Avoiding numerous traps, they fought a number of creatures like Gelatinous cubes, moulds and slimes, until they were attacked by a trio of female drow who used sword and spell together in very similar fashion to Kira - the three Drow Bladesinger sisters they had heard about! The battles was fierce and close until Alarra managed to trap one with her psionics. They killed her and managed to drive the others off. Lutiar and Alarra decided to try to find out what Jay knew about their daughter and while they were all resting, Alarra invaded her mind psionically and dragged the information from Jay. It seemed Jay knew Midnight as an adult, not a baby as they expected. They were puzzled by this and decided to wait and see what would happen. Someone was not so happy with them for the next day, they found themselves unable to cast the most powerful spells in their repertoire.
Some hours of exploring later, they discovered a dead magic zone and within that zone, a room where the Spectral Elf was trapped. He appeared to be emaciated and apparently dead. They took his body outside the dead magic zone and he seemed to come alive again, but not real life - Undead Life! This was a Baelnorn, a special form of Elven undead - a guardian of important sites, who had willingly undergone this transformation into undeath to serve the Elven community. He introduced himself as Arranarran of the House Durothil. Later he mentioned how he had been visited by a great grand nephew the year before and they realised he was talking about Lassarail Goldmane, Marie's father!
He explained that they were in an ancient complex which originally housed a great temple to Corellon Larethian back when Calimport was smaller and the elven enclave was directly above here. The temple was disused, but he had become the guardian of it. Last year, he was attacked by forces loyal to Ghaunadaur, God of slimes and oozes, but with Lassarail's help, had fought them off. A few months ago - at a time they worked out was when the sword was taken from the Promenade, a combined Drow and Ghaunadaur force took the temple and imprisoned him in the dead magic zone. Thus it was revealed that the alliance was now a triumvirate of Lloth, Cyric and now Ghaunadaur.
They had to attack as soon as they could or else risk loosing the trail of the sword. They burst through the dead magic zone where it overlapped the vast main chamber of the temple. There they saw their Drow foes and a Deepspawn - possibly the same one as the previous Calimport party had encountered. They were attacked by strange undead creatures, Minotaurs and the specially devoted followers of Ghaunadaur - Ghaunadars, who could change their bodies to an ooze. One female was accomplished in unarmed martial arts and her ability to control the composition of her body gave her a very long and terrible reach. There was a high priest of Ghaunadaur there as well, but he kept out f the fight directly. The Drow were led by a striking Drow woman wielding a flickering blade - Maya of the Blinding Sword. Her two surviving daughters were also with her.
The party's fighters, however used the edge of the dead magic zone region to their best advantage. Here the magic of the bladesingers was useless so it came down to a clash of steel versus steel. Morcleb and Maya fought a titanic struggle, while the others had to deal with the Minotaurs and undead creatures. Danilo joined Morcleb against the Drown swordswoman and struck a terrible blow with is glass scimitar which virtually sliced her leg from under her. This slowed her reactions, allowing Morcleb to finish her off. In the meantime, Alarra was trying to avoid the female Ghaunadar as she made her way out of the dead magic zone to use magic upon her.
The Baelnorn, Arranarran had gone to one side, out of the dead magic and was involved in a titanic magical battle out of their immediate sight. Styrel decided to find out what was going on further down the vast temple cavern and magically shrank himself once out from the dead magic. He found other drow escorting a large coffin and they were heading towards a strangely glowing portal at the far end of the room. He was unable to stop them but did manage to bring down a couple of the drow, but not enough to stop them escaping with the box. Last through the portal were the two remaining Bladesinging sisters.
Akordia cast a Slay Living spell and attacked the Deepspawn. Her first blow landed and since its innate magic resistance had been lowered by some of Arranarran's earlier spells, it was unable to resist her magic and was killed outright. The fight was over - they had won the battle, but the Sword had gone.
Searching Maya's body, they found a single clue: Velaprintalar, Eleasias - a place halfway across the world and time several months away. They went with Arranarran to his secret chambers where he made them a gift of one of his spellbooks as thanks for their help in ridding the temple of its invaders. The party decided it was time to head for home, so they left taking Jay with them as she wanted to join them.
On arriving back at Fallow's Cross, they discovered that Chartrise had come back with them, along with her pony, Lightning Thunderfoot III - the amulet had decided to bring her back as well. The found the location of Velaprintalar - the capital city of Alagrond!