"Whelp! Put that wand back where you found it, or I'll turn you into a tree frog! Be careful with that torch, as well, or you'll burn the place down! My storehouse is not a playroom. I have so few rules, I'd think you could obey some of them! If your mother wasn't such a highly-placed and devout Cleric of The Hand, I'd teleport you to Orc lands!

"Hey, what's that you've got now?! Oh... that old robe... Well, now, that takes me back. Set the torch into that sconce over there, and sit down, boy. Tonight, I'll tell you a real tale of epic adventure.

"Before we were known as The Hand, we were proper adventurers. Sure, we still get out now and again to save the world and defeat the evil riffraff that sprout up in the streets of Sharn, but not like we did in those days! It wasn't entirely the same group of us, mind you. Back then, we had the Dwarf with us... now what was his name? You know, I can't rightly remember anymore. Hey! Pay attention, boy, and leave that amulet be! It's messing with strange things that led to my first death!

"Where was I? Oh, yes. There was a time when we were out against a dark business consortium, known only by the unspoken name of Wan Mavir, who were certainly up to no good. They had been taking over smaller businesses, a sort of economical malevolence. Certainly, they were up to no good. We had been tasked out by our benefactor, Brian, to track them down, before they could use this position of power to unleash dreadful evil upon the world. In fact, for a while, we were even storming those stores recently bought out by Wan Mavir, in the hopes of dissuading them from continuing.

"One of these stores... funny, how I still remember. It had a little gold bell on the door, so when we entered the door rang sharply. It made my heart skip a beat. It was loaded with swords and armor, ancient relics and mystical devices. Almost everything in the shop was radiating with magic! As our research had revealed, it had a rather ingenious protective magic upon it, as well, one we couldn't rightly break without tripping its alarm enchantment. So, instead, we aimed for a more brute force approach. While we set two of our party outside as scouts, the Dwarf and I barged straight in during the day. I was sweating horribly, but whether it was from the hot summer sun or the tension of the mission, who knows. With Big Green waiting nearby to assist us if we needed help, we felt confident in our approach. After entering I asked a few clumsily questions, trying to find a good angle for this job; the Dwarf took matters completely in his own hands.

"He pulled out two wands, pointed them directly at the shopkeeper, and cried, "Stick 'em up!" in his deep, booming voice. It still rattles my stomach to think of it. I don't know if it was I or the shopkeeper who was more shocked. I hardly knew what to do, and it took me a moment to rally myself. We had definitely intended to use force, but this was not part of the plan. When I realized the shopkeeper wasn't responding violently, but was as taken aback as I was, I grabbed a wand of my own and pointed it at him, backing the Dwarf's threat with my own considerable arcane might.

"'How long until your magic-security people know we're here?' the Dwarf asked, once the situation was deemed fully under our control.

"The flabbergasted shopkeeper managed to stammer out, 'A-about two m-minutes.' That was all the time we needed.

"We called in Big Green, who nearly bust down the small door trying to get through it so fast. The look on his face only made it funnier. He wasn't expecting a flat-out robbery any more than I was, but we worked it all out very quickly. Anything that wasn't bolted down was thrown into a bag of holding, wrapped in cloth if it was sharp. I lost my first bag of holding, and a nice magic sword, learning that lesson the hard way. Anything that was bolted down, Big Green removed anyway and tossed in the bag. We cleared the shop in a little over a minute, but before we left, a secret stash caught my eye. Opening the trapdoor, I saw a chest-sized gold box with arcane runes inscribed into it. Grabbing the heavy metal box, I followed the others out, and we made our escape back to the airship.

"Now, the airship's in a museum, of course, or all that's left of the airship anyway, and any decent arcanist knows everything that was ever made public about that thing. But, I can read you well enough, you lazy wretch, to know you are wholly ignorant of its power.

"You see, it possessed two elemental rings for power, or at least it did in those days. Such a marvel can't be bought, of course. We inherited the airship, so to speak, from an early task gone wrong. Not long after we got it, we ran afoul of a black dragon, which we dispatched in heroic manner. Not content to ride an airship whose only unique trait was its second ring, we mounted the dragon's head, tail, wings, and scales to the ship. The Dwarf worked some odd divine magic and trapped the dragon's soul in its head, just to spite it. We also enchanted the rest of it, so it looked like a huge dragon in flight as it went.

"The two elemental rings reached around the whole of the ship, held by the dragon's own arms like it was fitting a collar. It was truly spectacular sight to behold, especially when the air elemental's ring fed right back into the fire ring; the whole thing flared quite remarkably. On more than one occasion members of our crew left, saying the ship just wasn't natural. Of course, they were right, but not in the way they thought.

"The ship also possessed a strange magical device linked to the rings, which was itself connected to seven dials. Special flat, blue, dome-ish artifacts fit into those dials, and at the time we only had two. Turn those dials the right way, and the whole ship would turn invisible, speed up, or any of a number of other bizarre, but beautiful, effects. If that wasn't enough, the Dwarf enchanted the ship's interior with size enhancements and all manners of magic traps. Well now, I seem to have drifted quite off topic. It's time I got back to what happened after out escape.

"Once we got the strongbox near the ship, we could tell there was some kind of connection. The five of us were compelled to each put our hand inside.We never discussed this strange experience, so I don't know what this was like for the others.

"When I got my hand in there, everything went kind of dark and I felt very conflicted. I found within a sort of squishy sphere; I knew it could somehow be made to work for the airship, but I also knew I had the choice of shaping it into a powerful item of magic. Though I was bound by duty to my group, I realized my only true course. I can usually ignore my selfish impulses, but this was too much raw power. I took the item instead of helping out my comrades. I admit that this was a darker time for me.

"It felt like some minutes in that weird place, making that choice, but we all pulled our hands out of the box at once. I saw in each of my companions' hands a flat, blue, dome-ish artifact. We looked around at each other, but once their eyes found me, they passed no further. They looked at my hand, and saw not a blue dome, but instead, ineffably, a robe. A kind of fear flooded through me as their eyes, in pairs, caught my own and held them with malice. I thought for a moment I might be a dead elf; I nearly was.

"I don't remember if it was Big Green or The Dwarf who moved first, but before I knew what was happening, both were diving for my throat! Quickly, I jumped away and darted for the huge wooden door that led down below decks. The normally warm corridors felt unusually cold, undoubtedly The Dwarf invoking the magic he had placed throughout the ship. Swiftly donning my new robe, I was startled with the power it granted: I could see everything around me all at once! I later found out it was called a robe of eyes. That robe was quite a boon when I was looking for a hiding place to wait out the raging pair chasing me.

"Unfortunately for me, The Dwarf's protective wards turned the place into a confusing maze, devoid of any clues to help me find my way. Exhausted from running, I eventually found myself at a dead end. Big Green found me first, and he was about ready to break my leg when I suddenly thought to dimension door completely outside of the ship. To fool Big Green, though, I made it a whole showy affair with flames and sparks. Further hiding my true intent, I disguised the incantation using simple words to sound like I was merely turning invisible. Even outside the ship, it was easy to hear the bangs and roars of the two tearing the ship apart trying to find me.

"I didn't show my face around the ship for a couple of days. Once I finally did, both The Dwarf and Big Green were still furious at me, but cooled off enough to not actively seek my death. Big Green's anger was tempered somewhat by his preoccupation with my new robe. He acts dumb, but he usually knows what's going on better than the rest of us. That robe really clicked with him; he promised me one day he'd be the one wearing it, and he wasn't wrong. He had to take my head off to get it from me, though... That was my second death.

"In time, and after many pitchers of brew, my companions got over my self-indulgence. It was rough for a while, though, enduring the Dwarf's bitterness. Had I opted for the blue artifact like my friends, it would have made seven of them; instead, our set was still lacking its last piece. We searched for weeks trying to find a replacement, to no avail. Finally we found the location of a seventh artifact; unfortunately for us, it was in the hands of our worst nemesis. That's another tale, though, and one best left for the light of day. Come, Irrelan, let's get back home."

[wizard: Thanks to the Kender for a lot of help keeping the story coherent and interesting!]

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