Proceeding to the small copse of trees near the bottom of the hill from which the obelisk rises, Wrenaldo announced that he could sense fiendish energy faintly from the trees. Everyone went to high paranoia mode, having been distinctly unimpressed by the last fiend they encountered.

Careful approaches were made, gentle, encouraging touches were tentatively extended by Morwen (resident tree whisperer), and eventually it was established that the being covering the entrance to the ancient Eld facility was, in fact, a tree. It was a very sickly tree that had its roots very near to the access pad for the facility entrance, which glowed with a sickly pulsing green light.

Axes came out, the tree was cleared quickly and without demonic incident.

Paranoia still being the order of the day, a magic circle was established outside the door. Morwen, being one of the few almost-eld able to open these antique doors, placed her hand on the activation panel while everyone else stood in the circle, weapons to hand.

The moment her flesh touched the stone, she felt her hand wither and feel as if it were being drained of life. As she withdrew her hand to the sound of the door opening, she felt something's attention shift to capture her in it's horrible gaze before the connection was broken. Shaken, the group, after making sure that nothing was about to come surging out of the darkness at them, proceeded into the building.

The entry room was high-ceilinged and round, about fifty feet in diameter. Near the centre of the room close to the three doors which seemed to lead deeper into the tower, laid a pedestal upon which rested a panel covered in glowing writing much like the one Decimar had used to convey information about making repars to the equipment on his island. The team's spirits started to rise at this apparent stroke of luck, since they intended to make repairs to this non-functional facility.

The gods may have been smiling, but in reality it was more of a smirk: the pedestal, panel, and line of carven runes leading towards where the obelisk must lie were suffused with the same pulsing green energy that Morwen had touched earlier. The decision was taken to not touch any green glowy things unless it was required, and also to not follow the glowy runes to the center until other options had been exhausted.

Going cautiously at first, then more confidently, the group explores the apparently empty complex, finding various inscrutable crystal instruments and further work surfaces covered in green energy.

In one room which was clevery concealed in wall engraving, a corpse was found to Merrin's delight. He called it back from wherever its soul was and had a quick chat about what the facility was, what happened to it, how it might be repaired, etc. It turns out there is a portal to the Eld's grand concourse in the central room, and that a demon has likely been feeding on the energy generated by the obelisk since the disaster that ended the Eld civilisation millenia ago.

In several other rooms behind a no-longer-hard-to-see doors, various panels mounted to walls were discovered. With a brief touch, they sprang to life, and with a bit of luck, Varis (our scholarly bard) was able to figure out what the status of the facility was, and how to operate it.

The obelisk was functional, but disconnected from all other nodes in the power generation and distribution network. Varis confidently declared that he could shut the system down and then turn it back on again later. Given Varis' confidence, the commands to shut down were issued, and the lights slowly extinguished.

Once the lights were out, a roar loud enough to make the thick stone walls and floor tremble was heard. Something was not happy about feeding time being over.

A bit of careful exploration later, and the central room was viewed from several directions showing a writing green ooze which appeared to have grown around the obelish, a couple of translucent beings, and a decrepit looking humanoid linked to the ooze via a line of green energy.

Whe the thing wrapped about the obelisk was continuing to try to free itself, the decision was made to hit fast and hard to try to take the undead out before the demon could free itself. Merrin, remembering the previous encounter with a demon, laid down a magic circle into which everyone stepped. Luckily, during this lengthy process, the beings in the room did not waver from their tasks.

Arnik opened the day's entertainment with a popular choice: fireball to the centre of the room. Despite a very satisfying explosion and thunderous boom, the occupants of the room were unimpressed. "They don't burn" he yelled at everyone else.

Morwen brought forth a circle of moonbeams, managing to capture the central creature, and the demon to which it was linked in the silvery glow. The demon flinched, and the undead eld(?) in front of it started to smoke. Merrin followed quickly with a guiding bolt, muttering under his breath that maybe this would be the first time this spell had ever worked. The central figure sizzled nicely, and Wrenaldo, spurred on by this success, cast another moonbeam hitting the same createures that Morwen already had. He then bravely moved to the front of the group to protect everyone from evil.

Not willing to step out of the circle for some reason, Shade positioned himself in the mouth of the hallway that was plugged by the magic circle and waited for the inevitable reaction of the no-longer-surprised opposition.

Arnik dispatched the demon-linked undead with a quick magic missile, and the demon quickly flinched out of the way of Merrin's sacred flames after reeling a bit from the continuing damage of the circles of moonbeam.

One of the ghosts which had earlier faded into the wall emerged right beside shade and started to attack, but the ever-vigilant Wrenaldo reacted more quickly than even he expected and poked his darkwood glaive into the creature's face. Too much to bear, the ghost dissolved into smoke before blowing away.

Still unwilling to leave the circle, the companions kept careful watch for the remaining ghost, and got to witness the ooze detach itself from the obelisk and take a hideous gelatinous form with too many arms and a tiny head. The gigantic apparition proceeded to rush down the hall towards everyone, picking up rocks to hurl at Shade as it came. Luckily Shade's shield sufficed to deflect them harmlessly.

Shade and Wrenaldo were, by this point, quiverin with anticipation and the effort of holding their attacks until they would be most useful. The quivering was not helped by Arnik's application of Hast to Shade (now fondly referred to as the blender). Myron got in another guiding bolt, and Wrenaldo managed to reach over everyone's heads and jab the demon as it approached. Shade finally got to release his pent-up energy as the beast moved to the edge of the circle and stopped. He grinned as he opened a nice gash near one of its arms.

Overwhelmed by the circle's confounding and repelling nature, the fiend couldn't seem to see well enough to connect with any of the party members, much to everyone's relief. In a truly impressive display, first Wrenaldo and then Shade demonstrated their prowess with their weapons (3 attacks from W and then 5 from S) and, after all of the damage the thing had taken before this point, pounded on it until it dissolved into a green smoke.

The smoke drifted quickly back to the obelisk, as if looking for refuge or solace. Two deadly moonbeams followed it relentlessly and made sure that nothing of that beast survived.

With a bit of guidance, Decimar was teleported and proceeded to guide Varis through the re-start of the facility, and its connection to Decimar's island to help avoid the cataclysmic explosion by sharing the energy load across two locations. Apparently two more will need to be connected to the network to ensure that the entire region isn't turned into a giant wasteland.