The party puts down the west wind Zephyr, who has usurped the Kirsi god Boreas. They liberate the Kirsi Oracle, who tell them Prosper is in Hollin's City of the Dead. There, they find Prosper and a resurrected Alaric Volker controlled by Volker brain probes and have to kill them. They meet a second Prosper, who answers Ord's questions and heads for Renhannes with the dead Prosper.
Having beaten the Raven House evil priests at the end of Game 17, the party now turned to clearing the temple and finding the Kirsi oracle. They pressed beyond the large foyer where they'd been confused by the will-o'-the-wisp, moving toward the back of the temple, room by room. Ultimately:
The characters enter a large roughly circular cavern with a high ceiling. The temple is built into the front of a cliffside, and it seems this room is inside the cliff rather than the constructed part of the temple.
In the center of the room, there's a dais with an altar on it. You see a lean, gray-skinned figure sitting cross-legged on it. He is wearing a loose white cloth around his waist and legs, and he's wearing a laurel crown, but he's barechested and barefoot. He has yellow eyes.
He addresses each party member by name, saying that he has monitored their progress since the entered the Kirsi Valley. He says that since he knows who they are, it's only courteous that he introduce himself, and says, "I am Zephyr, the West Wind, god of the Kirsi. You've killed my servants, the Raven House priests. Now this usurper Bruhl will acknowledge me as his god or I will kill you all."
To Zephyr's (and my) surprise, the party immediately doubted Zephyr's claim that he was a god. Incredulous, Zephyr argued that the West Wind had been known as a god throughout history, and by many civilizations. But the party wasn't convinced, and soon a fight began. Zephyr rose from the altar and a wind picked up in the room. It strengthened into a rotating hurricane with Zephyr in the eye of the storm, and water accumulated around the characters' feet.
Zephyr had the stats of a level 9 gargoyle, including Fly 8 and the Gargoyle's Swoop Attack power. He was also Insubstantial, and had the powers Howling Wind and Lightning.
Two elementals also appeared in the storm. But despite Zephyr's claims of godhood, the party did beat him and the elementals.
With Zephyr defeated, the party could now look around the altar room where they'd fought. Soon, they found that Zephyr had unceremoniously dumped the Kirsi god Boreas in a corner there.
Previously, the Kirsi king Aurelien told the party that Boreas had the form of an idol. Now the party sees that the "idol" Boreas is actually the wooden figurehead of an ancient ship. The figurehead is a woman in a gown with flowing hair, holding a star in front of her in her two cupped hands.
Searching in the adjacent rooms, the party found and freed three imprisoned priests of the Kirsi oracle, Elderberry, Aurora, and Polaris. The priests set Boreas on the altar again, then restarted the Kirsi oracle. The party discovered that the Kirsi priests could speak with birds, and that birds brought the oracle news from all over the world.
Soon, the oracle priests we able to tell the party, ominously, that the Volker brothers had taken Prosper to a "facility" in Hollin's City of the Dead. They also gave the party two surprising pieces of news: Beowolf's family weapon store, the Winter Wolf, had been burned down; and on an unrelated note, that Inkeri barbarians from Hilde were in Hollin looking for Beowolf.
Their missions for the Kirsi accomplished, the party made for Hollin's City of the Dead with all possible speed.
The City of the Dead is about two miles from Braddock, the Hollin borough where our action is centered. You can easily get to the City of the Dead from the Mooncalf by following the market road that goes through the market and Shambles south for about 2 miles. The market road first passes through Cripple Gate in the ancient wall surrounding Braddock, then about 1.5 miles later through Hell Gate in the newer (but still ancient) outer wall. Although the City of the Dead is an integral part of Hollin today, if you look at the map you'll see that when the outer wall was built, it was clearly intended to circumvent the City of the Dead and separate it from the rest of Hollin.
The City of the Dead has a population of about 100,000 people. It has dusty cramped streets, with about a one-to-one mix of tombs or graveyards to family houses. Sometimes a house is a converted tomb or is built on top of a tomb. The area originally became a graveyard because it was outside the city, but when the cities rulers started to build elaborate funerary monuments to themselves there, a small population of maintenance families started to live there; also, many of the monuments were "living" monuments, which glorified the deceased perpetually by combining the tomb with a school or something else that serviced Hollin's poor. This had the effect of encouraging some desperately poor people to come here and take up nearby.
The population grew when the Anhault Charter Company took over Hollin and displaced many of the natives from the city center; also natural disasters that destroyed housing displaced people to the City of the Dead; also, many rural folk who come to Hollin with nothing end up in the City of the Dead. Many of the people who live there are desperately poor, making a living by sifting the city's garbage, or by raising hogs on garbage.
Knowing only that the Volkers had taken Prosper to a "facility" in the sprawling City of the Dead, the party initially had little hope of finding him. But arriving there, they spied a lightning rod on the roof of the highest building there, just like the lightning rod the Volkers had installed at Meade Hospital.
Entering, they saw two unfortunate men controlled by metal probes in their brains - just as Ignatius had been in Game 9. They recognized them as a resurrected Alaric Volker, who Beowolf had killed in Game 10; and to their horror, their friend Prosper. Alaric and Prosper attacked the party, who had to destroy them.
Having killed the old friend they'd been trying to save, the players were looking dejected when to their surprise, a second Prosper came in. He talked briefly with the party and answered their incredulous questions. Ultimately he left with the first Prosper's body, saying he'd take it into the west.
In Game 16, the Kirsi king and queen told the party that their god Boreas took the form of a stone idol, and that Prosper had carried Boreas wrapped in a cloth. But, I forgot those two things when I made Boreas a ship's figurehead in this game.
The floorplan of the temple of Boreas was borrowed from the Wizards of the Coast's "Temple of the Dark Moon."
The name Polaris was accidentally reused for the fairy craftsman Polaris in Game 29.
The characters went to fifth level after this game.
