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Once the dust settled, the five of glanced around, quickly assessing our conditions and situation. We had suffered a lot of injuries, and not just from the fireball. I said quickly that I could banish it if it follows us before we're ready to face it. The druid and fighters decided to take it on farther down the hallway, in a junction.

I hung back a little as the more injured of us healed up and withdrew, waiting with a banishment spell ready if the golem appeared before they had completely withdrawn. Luck was with us, and it had some amount of trouble getting through the floor.

Once the others had successfully withdrawn, I did as well.

We spread out down different hallways; I positioned myself a little ways behind Logru, planning to act as his personal healer. When the golem finally came blundering through, I dropped a twin haste on Logru and Thilius, blinked out, and let the two go to town.

Logru and Thilius took some damage but it was nothing unmanageable. Thilius ended up getting more of the golem's attention due to the fact that he was quite handily preventing him from pursuing Logru to the fullest degree. The druid also recieved some “love”, probably because of his moonbeam spell that kept inflicting injury while he was powerless to do anything about it – no dispell nor move.

With some good flash-planning and a lot of luck, we were able to destroy the golem without much loss. From there, we picked up the item – a heavy rod of some sort – and a pixie retreat armada was summoned, a few fly spells later, and we were out of the sewers. Meepo was catatonic at the entrance with terror.

Overhead, in the sky, floated one of the great generals from the invasion 50 years ago. A beholder named Thorath, that was apparently the “constable” of the area. They knew at least something of what had happened and were searching.

So, we decided that since Kethys was out of spells to help us escape, that we should try to blend in with the search and march inconspicuously back to the escape quadrant. I had to stay out of sight, because the beholder would see through my magical disguise. We were stopped by him once, questioned, but the boys handled it amazingly. Such relief.

Just as the Wyvern armada showed up, we escaped to the tunnel, back to the well plaza, and into the slums to see if Ohlo could help identify just what the heck this item. He knew it. It had belonged to Denlorn. He'd never seen it before, but he said it had been called the “Master Control Rod”. It was a magical rod, it could absorb spells from wands, it could be used as a magical mace. It could be used as an arcane focus. Ohlo had to activate it with his ring to turn it on, but he didn't seem at all put-out to release the Master Control Rod into our care.

The boys all thought that I should take the rod, should be the one to wield it. Not sure why, my arms are like toothpicks. But anyway, one focus was as good as another I suppose. I passed the star stone off to Caed so he could have a fiddle-free arcane focus too. We cleaned Ohlo out of some scrolls, thanked him for his help, and headed back into New Phlan to turn in our completed quest.

The quest turn-in was somewhat more awkward than usual – we succeeded in reuniting the dwarves, but we informed the council that there was no auction because the item had been stolen, so we both could not put eyes on the Lord of the Ruins, and could not acquire the item. So we accomplished these two tasks by essentially doing nothing (such that they knew).

Good enough for them, I guess; we still got paid in full – paid a ton!! – for it. A bag of holding with 2500 platinum and some healing potions!! Woot woot! And now, to lay low and peruse something on the proclamations board that will keep us out of the middle of all the fuss we'd caused over in Podol.