The arrival in Bellhaven, and the events that transpired therein.

Our entry to Bellhaven was relatively uneventful... if you consider my use of the word 'relatively'. Blood was on my hands. I do not know how the others coped with this knowledge, I suspect I was the only one who had never before taken a life, but for me it was more difficult then I pretended. Our captives were no doubt interesting, but I had no cause to speak to them. I maintained an aura of detached noninterest. Nothing had happened yet that I found a cause for real concern. I mean, the end of the world was coming, but I didn't believe my intellect would dramatically assist us at this stage. Maserati and Magnus were both better at weaseling information from the unwilling than I, and there was not yet a puzzle for me to solve.

Not yet.

'Pon our arrival we were whisked to see the military defender of Bellhaven, the Lady Aken-shi, a matron of some kind of the House of the Distant Shore. This conversation was interesting, indeed, but largely irrelevant. What was relevant was we were hired to retrieve a certain object from a nearby temple. A certain bell. This was no coincidence, this was sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Of course, we unanimously agreed to this without a second's hestiation ...

Sort of.

Afterwards, we found ourselves plagued by a most unusual phenomenon. Rats, of a semi-sentient kind, were almost assuredly stalking our movments! We trapped a few of these, but they seemed immune to any sort of communication, and at midnight they dissolved into nothingness.

We went to a local library, and a dwarf librarian gave us a particular book for me to look over. The nature of the book, as well as the ruins I found later at the temple, are a matter of some interest that I shall discuss at a later date.

We made our way then to the temple where the bell was located. We were taken by boat piloted by the House of the Distant Shore. It was there that we failed to solve the riddle of Supplication and had to defeat the guardians of that place.

Then we defeated more rat creatures, thus tying the beasts we met the night before to our foe here. We stumbled upon the chief rat himself, and despite Tor's protests, struck a midnight bargain with the beast. We helped him clear out the last of the rooms and thus combined our forces to open the door to the final chamber.

What lay therein shocked us to the core...!