We go to tackle the little ghost, which turns out to be Belladonna. Oops. She's partially freed now. So we go off to find Salris, and aid him in his situation at Viper Cove.
Ryltar has shown Moon the cards, and has a feeling that Moon is going to die.
A squirrel appeared at the Regular Inn, and spoke in Bugfood's voice, saying that Salris needs our help. We ask Bugfood what he means. He says:
Salris is not safe. Going
to Viper Cove. Salris said
not to disturb them, but
they'll kill him, probably.
I'm dealing with my own —
Tomorrow;
6 a.m. appointment with the spectre
10 a.m. appointment with Ascendants
2 p.m. appointment with Dirius, to prevent a 14k gold problem
but what if we have to do things with Salris.
Deals with a Devil
Well, we've been instructed not to tell the Ascendants that Belladonna is the being who tried to end the world a thousand years ago, or that Salris used her as a patron, or that she's up and active.
So we resolve to tell the Ascendants to talk to the deans of SDA. And that there's a huge threat under the place where the dragon used to live. That SDA is setting a perimeter.
We could avoid the Dirius event by simply Sending to Rezzik Brazzik to cancel the deal. Ryltar explains this to Percival, who doesn't know about the deal, and Ryltar tries to explain all the history. Percival suggests that maybe we shouldn't do this in a highly religious city. Jerry suggests going over to the World Spire to do this.
Ryltar would like to meet about his deal, in the forest northeast of the Quadroads.
We hear back, in the most monotone and demanding voice that Percival can muster:
Intriguing. I'll meet.
So we head there now. Evening passes into late dusk, and we head out of the northeast gate, past the barracks, and into the forest outside the city.
Ryltar stands off the path, out of eyeshot, but sets some Dancing Lights about.
The sun sets and the Moon rises; the night life comes to wakefulness.
"Rezzik. I'm holding you to your word," calls Ryltar. It's cold out. We see our breath in the air. Jerry is hiding under a pile of leaves; Percival and Vurguron stand at the edges of the clearing.
Ryltar discovers suddenly that he is standing in the middle of a field. "I think I need to be alone," he says. "It'll be fine, guys. My deal, my comeuppance. Just head back to town."
Vurguron and Percival leave. After five minutes of nothing happening, a pile of leaves leaves the clearing. After four minutes, a voice comes out in his head: "I don't usually make house calls."
Ryltar: "Buit you do for your best friend."
"And why?"
"I want to call it off. I suppose you get that a lot."
"No. When someone has vengeance in their heart, as you do still."
"I think I've grown up a bit."
"Have you?"
"I'd like to think so."
"No."
"But that's not what matters, is it? What does it take to call off the deal?"
"Heh." The devil chuckles. Ryltar's persuasion is 12. "You confuse me with such lowly demons. When a contract is forged, it is to be completed."
"I don't think I confuse you. I think you could be convinced to amend that deal. Every contract can be amended, if both parties agree. And this could be amended to be completed."
"If you want this contract to be completed, or voided, as you so choose, all it is the ending of one life. Should someone else do that before me, then I have no say in that."
"I don't accept those terms. I think you coming to talk to me, you're open to something. And I don't care whether Dirius lives or dies that much. I think your time is better spent doing something else." 21 Persuasion. He feels a presence behind him, and turns. He's looking at the belly of the devil. He looks up.
"There are others who always wish of vengence."
"I think your pacts are much more fulfilling if they're passionate, and I don't have that passion anymore. Dirius doesn't matter."
"Does she? Let's say this: A payment due."
"Of course."
"Dirius is free from my purview, but. I will require reconciliation. There is someone who I believe you are so intimately involved with, that when the time comes, shall be ended." Probably Moon, Salris, or Thrai.
"I wouldn't pick up killing another, just for indifference."
"It's not one of your allies, I assure you."
"Is it one of my enemies, living under a big tree?"
"Hm~! One day."
"Payment owed. Bury that bitch under the tree. Fail, and vengeance gets paid."
"I will kill Belladonna myself if I have to," says Ryltar. Rezzik pulls a contract scroll from his pannier, and flames flash onto it. "A contract. Failure, and you're mine."
"I think that's the path that we were already on. Rest assured, failure is not an option. Belladonna will be dealt with."
Ryltar hands over fourteen thousand gold, and takes up the contract.
"Destroy" Belladonna.
"What if she's not able to be destroyed," asks Ryltar with a Nat 20. "If our mighty warriors weren't able to destroy her a thousand years ago, I might not be able to. So that will need to be amended. I will destroy or imprison her, at least, until the end of my lifetime." 18 Persusasion.
"To the end of mine," says Rezzik.
Ryltar signs, and now within his cold heart, there is a hot burning coal. "A displeasure, as always," says Ryltar, and Rezzik casts a mocking bow.
Jerry moms at him. We think he'll be easier to kill than Belladonna, at least.
We catch up with the rest of the party, tell them of the New Deal, and go off to the World Spire to meet the spectre, since we're still awake.
World Spire
There's more lanterns, more guards, more guardposts, to keep passerby safe from whatever this is.
Ryltar chats with the guards: "We were sent to have a chat with one of the ghosts?" "We were told you would be coming." "Does it speak?" "Brokenly. Greg over there tried to talk to it, and it said his name." "Does it attack?" "No..?" "Not in a traditional sense?" "That's what you're here to investigate." "And we just need to get it to go away?" "Shrug." "And none of the priests could send it away?"
"Where was it last seen?" asks Jerry. The guard points to a half-melted homestead, with warped stone walls, like the house and the mountain had been made of hot wax. And there's a faint wisp of smoke, with a face, which flickers in and out.
Ryltar sighs and walks over. "Hello?"
It shifts.
Jerry pokes at it with the Moon Scythe; it retreats.
"Why are you here?"
"Why? why why. Here."
"Can we help you? Is there something you need? Someone you want to meet? Someplace you need to go? Some action you need to take?"
Jerry knows that this isn't Undead. It's not formed enough.
Ryltar tries speaking in Primordial, air variant. It replies in Auran, the language of Elemental Air: "Help."
"What do you need?"
"Loss."
"Where?"
"Help."
"Where do you need to go?"
It drifts away.
Ryltar points up. "There?"
The mist forms a face and looks in whichever direction it is looking. "Up."
It doesn't remember how to fly!
Percival has Greater Restoration, which can restore lost memory. He prepares it at a cost of 100gp, and casts.
There's a boom and we all make Con saves. Percival fails; the rest of the party succeed and take half. 21 psychic and 24 thunder . Percival takes twice that. All are thrown back, and we just hear a feminine voice, a child running through a grass field / "Come Lily, come this way" / flash / a teen black-haired girl walking through a srawling landscape of twisted plants / alien creatures / flash / joyous laughter among ferns and fauns and pixies / darkness / a bubbling cauldron with sulfur and putrescence / "you have the power" / flash / a bellowing voice "banishment!" / sadness / fear / mind-wrenching / flash / anguish / flash / terrible loss / a joyous party and hearty laughter / red, everything red / black-haired girl looking up / flash / looking up to an impossibly tall tower of ice at the eye of a storm / a pallid elf sitting on a throne of ice and stone, hands steepled / "and what of your sister?" / anger / feminine voice: "Sister!" / hug, warmth / doubt / same voice: "Power." / sadness, sadness, crying and pain / flash / cold, dark / warmth / "she's overr here. I think I've found her!" / crystalline shattering / Deep howl: "No!" / pain, claws / "Pain. Power." / "Must be done." / chanting / power coursing through you, through the girl / rising in power, forces beyond yourself, shattering. / silence / silence / … / voices! / "Oh, this is good soup!" / more voices, throughout time, and goblin voices, and Salris's, and ours / shattering / "Power." / remember / remember / rembember!
We fall out of the memory, and there where was once a wisp, is now a dark green feminine figure, floating in midair. Her skin is a crawling vapour, eyes glowing black.
We have no idea what this is. The power necessary to do something like this is beyond understanding. There's a pulse of something that repels stuff around this figure. The figure is eight feet tall, still floating in midair, in the middle of a 30' radius spherical crater, which we are slowly sliding down the wall.
The entity without moving or speaking projects a voice: "My time has come again." A deep, feminine voice, echoing. What dying energy this city had is now awoken: bells and other things. "This world will be made anew. Only those who follow in my light shall see the Eden beyond its destruction."
Religion check: Nope!
Ryltar calls out, "And what if we destroy her first?" 21 Persuasion. 14 Constitution, Plus Percival's Cutting Words, He takes 47 Thunder, splatted against the wall.
"I am only the beginning. And I shall be your end. Follow into my light, and you shall be saved." The figure begins to rise up, to begin another proclamation to the world, when it is suddenly hit by five different but incredibly powerful spells, in tandem. The figure crumples into a three-foot sphere, and then disappears.
"I thought this meetings was for tomorrow," says Ryltar, as five Ascendants crest the edge of the crater.
"It was," says the High Priest of Pellor. "This meeting needed to be accelerated."
Jerry describes what went on. The priest calls over the three remaining guards. "Secure this location. We need to talk."
What was that?
The Ascendants are regal in their nightwear, but they're still wearing the bear minimum to be presiding in the central deliberating chamber. They're down here with us in the ground floor.
"First of all, thanks for seeing us, second of all, ow," says Ryltar.
"Third of all, do you know what that was?" asks Jerry.
The Ascendants are talking among themselves: avoiding a break, keeping people safe, keeping people from losing faith.
We ask them if they know what it was, because that will help us determine if it plans to return here.
They shut up and think for a moment.
The silver Dragonborn, of Bahamut, says: "That was a threat to Quadroads, to what we hold dear." Well, yes. "What transpired there, we were only able to transpose its position. It escaped. What do you know of it? Nothing like this has happened before."
Jerry provides a summary of the encounter with the beast; the things we saw in the vision; the pallid elf in the vision being Wint; maybe this is Belladonna? Parallels between the green being and the green dragon.
"She is a threat. The scope shall be sequestered, so not to cause a panic."
We continue: So there's some sort of haglike creature that lives under a big tree, over in the Eagle's Crest woods, near the Woven Council. There was a green dragon that used that creature's services for its own purposes, drawing on some demonic power. And now that creature has more freedom of movement; has a partnership with the mummy lord from the pyramid near Sky Diamond (whose jars have been smashed), and has access to the corpse of Kerjes, despite our best efforts. The Sky Diamond deans have taken efforts to contain that, but we have not yet heard back from Kamal. A recap of the battles of Lanthet, and mentioning the creature which was trying to come through the portal, and the portal-causing Alkaliths themselves.
Murmurs. Aides are coming and going and taking notes and leaving. They suggest that it might be a "greater grandmother hag."
Jerry asks how old they can be.
"It has only been theorized. We only have one other example," and then we ask them to explain more. All eyes turn to two people: the High priests of Ioun and Pellor.
Together they tell us, the epithet: "Night mother."
We confirm that is the creature under the tree.
They say, "that was her."
"That was her, or was something of hers?" asks Jerry.
The staff are ushered out.
Insight rolls: During the flashes, everything that we experienced was from the point of view of the creature, or a perspective of it. There's a feeling of our entire existence being pulled and shattered. Was this perhaps a fragment of her? Did she work a part of herself through the grate, and then Greater Restoration brought her back?
We say: The creature appeared at the base of the World Spire, and everyone was working on the pretense that it was Undead. The Ascendants say that it was no mere Air Elemental; they were able to transpose it. Air Elementals of that power grow in size; and it was definitely the Night Mother. They tried to destroy her just now, and they were the ones who cast the simultaneous five spells to crumple her. They could not imprison her; she escaped.
We come to the conclusion that there may be other parts of her floating about, which could be contained to prevent her from regaining her full power.
The problem is, they say, not one single containment strategy may be enough. There are certain known spells that can contain it for any length of time, such as the 9th-level spell Imprisonment. Hags are notoriously slippery and hard to contain, as they have dealings with extraplanar entities. Five Disintegration spells could not finish a shard of her.
"The world has grown darker this day. It is hopeful that we could see her to a new dawn. Precautions will be taken so that the city and its occupants are kept safe."
"How do you propose to protect the city against something you couldn't disintegrate," asks Jerry.
"We have stood the test of time, and we will stand the test of time again." We are dismissed.
Midnight
We go back to the hotel and rest.
Our small little hotel, with Magnificent Mansion inside.
Jerry points out that Salris' new patron drove Salris' old patron out of Salris. Salris' old patron was Belladonna. And that means that Salris' patron and spells may be effective against her.
The key appears to be the same.
Our calendar for the morning is open, though, so we can go straight to Salris! Our problems have gotten worse.
We decide to leave a note for Moon, which prompts Ryltar to open his note from Moon: "I forgive you."
Morning
We go to the Temple of Ioun to ask for information about Viper Cove, where Salris is there or will be there.
The Temple of Ioun is abuzz. There's a line formed at the outside waiting to get in to ask what the fuck happened. Ryltar walks right in. There is heated argument among the entrance desk. What was once a flippant secretary is very tense and short with the petitioners. "What are you doing here?" she asks, and upon hearing that we're looking for a map, the High Priest appears, and leads us to the relevant information. "There has been an increased fervor of people trying to understand what happened. People are in an uproar."
We get enough information for Ryltar to get to a "description" level of distance. We thank the High Priest for his assistance, and discuss among ourselves where we want to go: the cove, or to Salris, or his ship?
The High Priest takes out a pendant and casts several Location spells. It's about 9 days' travel north-northwest of Grey Harbour, in the Red Wastes desert.
The teleportation.
We need a 74 or better to get where we're going, without mishap, and Ryltar rolls a 22, a Major Mishap, and then a 54 (displacement), and a 3 on a d20 and a 9 on a d10.
Ice forms around us and shatters. We land in the water. Jerry casts Water Walk, and then looks for directions. There's a cliff face, a ways away. We move off at a fast pace, and over an hour, we get halfway there. With a 25 perception, we see that the cliffs are 50 feet tall, blanched white. And there is a black spot at the shoreline. We cast Water Walk again and continue the rest of the way to shore, aiming a mile to the left of the black spot, which resolves itself as the Nightmare, Salris' ship. We're about a mile offshore, so Jerry casts Water Walk a third time and we go south for a mile and stay out of range of the ship, as much as possible. Jerry also casts Pass Without Trace and we move stealthily to shore.
The cliff is sheer; Jerry climbs it and carries people up to the top.
At the top, we see why it is called "Viper Cove": The cliff face beside the Nightmare recesses into a bowl, with two stalactites that hang down like teeth.
We stealthily move along the cliff top, and get within about 100 feet to the top of the cove.
There's a few people walking around on the ship's decks, but none undead. No signs of Salris. The ship is about 10 feet from the cliff face, and we can't see what's inside the cove. On the cliff, there's some rocks, and then it turns to sand further inland.
There don't appear to be any boats attached to the ship; they must already be inside.
We split up to search the top of the cliff to see if there's something that can be found.
Jerry's Survival is 17
Vurguron's Investigation is 19
Ryltar's Nature recollection of the charts and maps is 9
Percival's Investigation is 19
In the time it took for us to grid search, we find a low stone outcropping with a natural oculus the size of a fist. We hear grinding stone noises coming from the hole. 25 Perception, and Jerry sees a conical shaft, and about 30 feet down, a person wearing deep red.
Jerry receives three separate hits, despite Multiattack Defense, and takes 36 force damage, pulled flat against the hole, and her movement speed reduced by 30. Something has pulled her down: a murky green energy blast. Perhaps Eldritch Blast.
Next Session's To-Dos
Roll Initiative
Rescue Salris
Grand opening for the Irregular Inn, pending construction work on expansion
Shopping List:
Spell Scroll of Comprehend Languages
Healing potions
Clean out Ren's House before the end of the year
Percival's Treasure Map
We may need to aid the Magister at some point.
Check in on Salris and his brother: They're tied to Belladonna/Nightshade, the sister and poisoner of the Mother of the Forest. Is she their patron?
We know how to trap the Jester, with Magic Circle.
What's going on with the stars? Are Ryltar's theories about colors and significant plot-relevant things' colors correct?
Red: Burning Blood
Blue: Ice Heart of Winter
Green: Kerjes or Percival's Bracer
White: Not the Platinum Scale of Bahamut?
Fading to Black:
Missing:
Our castle?
Meet Zelrathi at the World Spire at the Autumn equinox