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We knew we had to find Vandriel, and while we knew she returned to heaven at the end of the conflict so long ago, we didn't know beyond that where to locate her. I did some research on what each level of heaven represented, and Grey did some research on Vandriel herself to determine what kind of person she was. The conclusion we came to was Celestia, the obviously Virtuous but Order-oriented plane of heaven.

Grey also researched Farnian gate locations and eventually found one that could get us to our destination. We then made a brief stop in to visit Kaz, and had him send us to the gate location.

From there, we stepped through and appeared in Celestia.

After asking around a bit, we eventually ended up in the Library of Souls, attempting to acquire an address for Vandriel. We talked to a celestial guy named Isokas, and he told us it'd take him a couple of days to look up information on Vandriel. So we headed off to the area of Celestia where the the Farnian souls of the deceased tended to hang out. We searched through the people there for some of the red-headed girls whom Veris had killed in order to steal Azranael's power from them.

We did eventually find 3, and I was able to use a power on one of them that allowed me to see her thoughts as Grey prompted all three to relate what they could remember of their kidnapping, lives following that, and unfortunate end. Reliving their stories in their minds along with them was pretty agonizing for me; it made me sad to force them to re-experience such terrible things, and even though I had not experienced it first hand, even secondhand was pretty soul-crushing. Of course, it just served to make me all the more furious at Veris and Anzja, and everyone involved in that blasted cult.

The girls basically conveyed that they were both drugged in some way and magically befuddled from the time they arrived at Veris's palace until the moment when they were murdered inside the cathedral in front of an enormous crowd. It did make me glad to know that if we did decide to jail-break those who were being kidnapped and held by Veris, that we wouldn't have really any resistance from them. I had been worried that somehow these people had been brainwashed into thinking they were doing something noble by sacrificing themselves for some ridiculous “cause” that they happened to believe in completely. Because that would've made it infinitely harder to rescue them. But now it was seemingly possible to accomplish this task. We just needed to find a safe (very safe) place to hide them until Veris could be taken down, and only then we only then could we go rescue them.

After we finished with the three girls, reassuring them that their having to endure that agony again in their minds would go toward putting these miseries to a stop for everyone, we returned to talk to Isokas. Isokas informed us that Vandriel had been summoned to service about 100 years ago, to a Torilian Wizard named Thrass Zal. And we were like… “whatwhere?” He explained that it was another plane of existence. We asked him if he knew anyone who could perhaps get us there from here, and he recommended an old wizard named Artoh Grimwolf who could probably help us.

He gave us the man's address, and we headed off.

Artoh was kind of a silly old man, although no big bushy beard like I had expected. We ended up exchanging Grey's cooking services for transportation to Toril. Grey made some kind of paprika-based chicken dish. Boyce, Trent and I got the failed-experimental version of the dish, but Grey was able to muster up enough creativity to nail the dish really well for the version he presented to old Artoh.

And so, Artoh did some wizardly magic (not like any magic I'd seen before), and suddenly we were in an alley in some city on Toril called Highmoon.

As Grey was so good at doing of late, he accosted someone on the road and was like, “IN THE WHOLE OF THIS WORLD, DO YOU KNOW A THRASS ZAL?!?!” The man didn't understand a word he said, and just stared at him. I activated a power that would allow me to converse with the man and asked him the same thing. He replied saying that he just passing through this town and didn't really know anyone here, but that we could visit The Rising Moon Inn where he was staying and talk to the innkeep there, who seemed to know a thing or two.

The first thing we noticed as we entered was a huge axe on the wall behind the bar that was glowing like 10 suns with supernatural powers. The innkeep stood below it, also utterly covered in supernatural do-dads's. I went up to speak with him. He introduced himself as Drellin Orcbane, and I gave him … an alias. After offering him a gold ingot, I explained that we were looking for a man named Thrass Zal. He mentioned that the name sounded Thayan. I replied that I'd never heard of the place, and asked him how far it was. He explained that it was about 3 weeks or so via horse, and I fumbled around asking if there were any Manifests or such whom we could talk to who might be able to get us there in less time than that?

He chuckled and commented that we're not from around here, are we? I told him that this was the first time I've set foot in his plane of existence, so I was not familiar at all with any place in this world.

His reaction was not what I expected. He told us that if we'd tell tales of our adventures in our home world to the evening crowd, we could stay in the Inn and have food and drinks free of charge. I was taken aback; we'd never been offered any kind of hospitality like this in our world. I mean sure, we were working for it, but telling tales was not that hard. I told him that sounded like a good deal to me.

Anyway, to answer my earlier question, he went on to say that he had a friend, Sasell Hillanden, who might be able to help us with just that. He explained that he usually comes by in the evenings to have a beer, so we could talk to him then.

I couldn't help but ask him about the big axe, if it was his, and stories of the things he's done. He told me that he could chat with me about that later when he wasn't working. I told him alright.

The Inn had a nice little stage setup, with some kind of supernatural power enchanted into it that enabled the speaker's language to be translated so that all could understand them.

So both Boyce and I took turns telling of our recent adventures, although still in slightly vague terms, as even in this faraway place I did not want to let drop too much info about helping out Parnth and working against Veris.

I told the tale of acquiring the dragon-poop plant. I did a pretty good job, I think, and at the end of my tale I held aloft my necklace of fire dragon scales to sort of bring my wondrous tale more down-to-earth for the audience.

Boyce then did his turn, also doing a pretty good job.

Eventually Drellin's friend Sasell walked in, and I could tell it was him before Drellin even said anything as Sasell's eyes nearly popped out of his head as he noticed us. Drellin introduced him anyway, and we talked to Sasell for a bit about what we were trying to do. He said he could help us, but of course, for what payment?

Eventually it was decided that we would speak to him about our nature as Manifests and that Trent would spend a few days making tass for the guy, and then he would teleport us just outside of the main city in Thay.

[ Antics in Highmoon ] – Lame and sappy, you don't really want to read this

And so, three days later, we stood in the foothills of the big mountain that was the country of Thay, looking across a distance of rural green space at a rather menacing-looking city of some size up the mountain from us a ways.

Grey and I had disguises up, as Sasell had indicated that all Thayan “wizards” were bald, tattoo-ridden, red-robe-clad… jerks. Boyce and Trent were our “slaves”. Ugh, a slave-state. I was beginning to wish we could burn the place down as well before we left.

Anyway, Grey and I modified our disguises as we encountered the people we were trying to mimic. We both redid our tattoos to be more similar to those of the red wizards wandering around rather than just random tattoos (or none at all).

Then, we stopped in at a magic shop. After some finagling, and Grey somehow getting the proprietor to cower beneath his gaze, we came out with two universal communicators for Grey and Boyce, and I acquired this “Bag of Holding” thing that Drellin had told me about a few days ago when he'd been telling me about his adventures.

Now that Grey could communicate, we accosted yet another person, a red wizard, wandering around in the street and asked them about Thrass Zal. And this time, we actually got a somewhat affirmative response. The man told us that Thrass Zal was a Lieutenant of the School of Conjuration, and that he lived somewhere up the mountain.

So with that we acquired a map and attempted to decipher where this conjuration school or whatever it was called might be located. We found something on the map that looked reasonable, so we spent several hours climbing the mountain (on horses), heading up that direction.

I guess the place we picked ended up being the head of the school of Conjuration's sort of “area of the mountain”, and not specifically Thrass Zal's home. But the people wandering around this area were able to actually give us his exact address after a bit of not-so-good-natured taunting. I guess Grey and my tattoos indicated we were of a different school of “magic”, Grey was Enchantments and I discovered my tattoos said I was Abjuration. What is Abjuration anyway? Oh well…

We eventually arrived at Thrass Zal's house. A Pit Fiend named Janet answered the door. We had a bit of banter with Janet in trying to get her to let us in or at least talk to Thrass Zal. Eventually, Grey's confounding word-spinning confused Janet to the point that eventually Thrass Zal came to the door and asked us what we, pitiful peasants that we were, wanted.

Grey explained that we were extra-planar beings, and that we were here to speak with one of his summoned slaves. He let us in to talk to him, into his courtyard, and then he and Grey did some witty exchange of words, where I think Grey got in some good jabs. But, eventually Boyce showed him his Manifest form to make him believe we were from elsewhere, then we finally got down to business.

He summoned Vana in, and we asked her if she was the daughter of Azranael, to which she replied yes. So Grey negotiated an exchange of the extra-planar (Farian) enchanted chainmail bikini for an afternoon of speaking to Vana. Although that deal included that Thrass Zal got to sit in on the Q and A session. Which was fine, because we were doing all of our real questions over a telepathic link which he couldn't hear, and … we may need him here if what I suspected to be the case was true.

As soon as he gave Vana leave to answer all our questions, she began answering my questions telepathically while Grey asked her questions out-loud. I asked her the important ones, Grey asked her general, esoteric stuff.

It basically boiled down to the fact that she could only help us if we freed her. I figured this would be the case, especially as soon as I discovered, back in Highmoon, that Thay was essentially a country full of assholes. And as I also figured, we would have to kill him; simply breaking the enchantment was not enough… he could just summon her right back.

Vana said into my mind that if we could kill him, which would free her, then she could plane-shift us all out of there and back to Celestia, and that she would help us however we needed as long as it didn't require her to return to Farne.

And so, this is how it went down. Janet was still in the room, and so was a force to be reckoned with once we engaged Thrass Zal in combat. Grey was going to attempt to occupy him (her?) while Boyce and I carved up Thrass Zal.

I walked past Thrass Zal, brushing up against him, and used a power that would cause him to lose his fine-tuned mobility (Sasell had explained previously that Torilian “wizards” needed to be able to wiggle their fingers in order to cast their spells). My surge of power, however, was so strong that it dropped the guy to the ground, although he was easily still alive.

So Boyce and I went to work on him, while Grey did his best to keep Janet occupied. At some point Grey disarmed Janet, and so she decided to drop a big fire spell thing on us. Somehow I managed to avoid most of it, but Boyce got burned pretty badly.

Luckily, before Janet could do anything else more horrifying than that, we finally ended Thrass Zal's life and in a blink, Janet disappeared, returning to his (her?) own plane. After hearing a few more teleportation “poofs” of summoned creatures leaving, while we scooped Thrass Zal's magical-item-ridden body into my newly purchased bag of holding, Vana was able to cast her plane-shift spell and return us all to Celestia to have a big, long talk.