Vesta's Journal.

Dirk, Nova, Elena and I enjoyed stuff mushroom and delicious bread and suddenly, the entire scene seemed to change to an outdoor scene, but with a door. I was ready to blame the 'shrooms. The counter was a rocky outcrop, the bottles were turned into a cascade and the patrons seemed to turn into green beans...or chairs. The bar tender had a distinct coloration of the gray, er, grey variety.   He shooed out the other patron and cleans things. I asked why he didn't shoo us out and he just tempted to stack glasses in a pyramid. I really wanted to push them off.  He threw his towel over his shoulder, and Dirk tried to hand over his pipe and hat but the Grey Archer wanted the signets back since they were on limited return.  I miss mine, it was quite handy.  He mentioned the dragon plaguing a city.  He thought there may be a connection between our current employer and the dragon. He was rather reluctant to give the information we needed, he wanted our "insignificant" time.  He wanted twenty-four hours of our time, in exchange for a magical playing cards and a dangerous something or other and pulled a contract from what appeared like thin area.  The contract was rather vague for some reason, rather unsettling, and it repeated itself quite a bit. We all noticed a bit on the bottom that said the time for it depended on the plane's version of time.  That could get quite costly.  Sneaky mate.  Dirk called him on it, the Grey fellow waved his hand making the words disappear.  After a while, he cast a spell on us that would last for an entire day where we had protection from quite a bit... probably something like "Mind Blank."  He handed each of us a magical playing card. We have to be invisible once we shift to our proper place, to get out of dodge because we had been being watched where we were.   Quickly, we realized we had no plan to figure out where one another was so Dirk softly whispered "Let's go back to the room." Elena had the bright idea that if we were being watched, they knew where we had been sleeping.  We made plans to go to the North Wall.  

I went the way that made the most sense to me, and I was in crowded street which probably separated me from my invisible mates.  I darted in zigzags between my mates, where I came upon a small leather bag. There were a dozen small gems in, the string on the pouch had been cut.  After not too long, we all became visible.  I quickly detected magic and we all continued to glow along with our new cards. A wolf creature came out of the woodwork with amber eyes.  It spoke to us in our brains and when it licked me, I felt my minor scrapes heal themselves.  I like our new friend!  Nova called it a... Moon dog, or something of the like I believe.  He was very determined about defeating something evil and mentioned undead being nearby.  When I'm near him, I didn't feel any fear and somehow felt that nothing evil would bother me.  Rather comforting, really.  Dirk called him... Twad Cakes... Twad paws... I'm sticking with Twaddy.  Well, when I followed Twaddy to the point where he was incredibly puppy like and this gnarly hand comes up and tried to scratch at me.  I love my cloak of displacement!  We went straight into battle without a second thought as the nasty undead tried to bring us to their ranks... no pun intended, haha.  I turned undead and set it on it's way with my holy might before sending Dirk, Nova and Twaddy on its buttocks.  It was a sight to see it scamper off. Dirk and Nova had a joyous time sending damaging bits to it before making it a smoldering white bit coating the lovely countryside.  We found quite a bit of lovely loot in the lair.   Twaddy told us he'd watch out while we slept, but told us that we smelled of weird magic. Didn't realize that magic smelled, but I suppose it's because I don't have a mutt's snout.  ...XV