Diamond Cascade: The Unholy Lagoon of the Bitch Queen
Little can be said of the Unholy Lagoon, for it was a terrible place, filled with secrets that cannot be spoken and best left far from the hands of men. Let it be known only that Diamond Cascade escaped, his life and the lives of his companions intact, though scattered we became, and what fate befell the mighty warriors who fought beside him he did not know; by the skin of their teeth alone, Diamond Cascade and his friends took the terrible magics that lay in that place and tore a hole though space itself, fleeing in one sorcerous bound across the land to the ruins of once-brave Mektropica!
Tricky, this. Turns out the Unholy Lagoon of the Bitch Queen isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be. A lot less peril than expected and a lot more don’t-tell-anyone-what’s-actually-here. Old friends were met and uncovered as being not quite the people I thought they were (except the blind elf monster-hunting idiot Tiarth, who is pretty much what he say on the tin, even if he’s now somewhat more suitably employed as the lagoon’s ferryman). And it’s true that Caleb Knight of Something and Crazy Dwarf vanished in the night, and now I’m surrounded by elves. Wizard Daftboy is still here and so are the two idiots from the North Coast and now there’s some fellow who hasn’t even bothered to introduce himself.
No sign of Shifty. Can’t do anything but assume that he went down with the ship. I hope he didn’t but I have to be realistic. So I’m the last one, and Gammersbridge seems such a long time ago. It was nice to see Emmet again, even if he wasn’t as dead as I’ve spent the last year thinking he was and even if it turns out he’s been part of some great plan that’s been playing me all along. I can forgive him that. He was a good friend for a while and he taught me to play. The rest of them, the ones he’s with, now there I’m not sure. How far does it go? How long have they been setting me up for this? I have no idea. If they have anything to do with what happened to the Scales, if they have anything with what happened to Nomonic or any of the rest of my family, well then I might just be sailing back out to sea and diving down and looking to get back that amulet I cast aside.
There’s no sorry, no apology. There are some gifts and some hospitality and an expectation that we’re going to do something, although of course, we’re all free to do as we please. There’s no please, no thank-you, just here’s-some-stuff-get-in-this-teleporter-and-come-back-with-what-I-want. So now we know. It really is the unholy lagoon of the bitch queen. Just not the one I thought it was.