Treasure Hunters of Jesenreth Campaign

Campaign taking place in Jesenreth (Crystal Sphere) (mostly). This campaign's first session was 2020-01-04.

Ship of Fools

Session Date: 2020-01-04

Late in the year 1115 CY five disparate individuals receive letters summoning them to the city of Sablos, Ketten Islands, to attend an audition to join a adventurer's guild called the Legion of Llandos. Given free sailing ship tickets, they sail aboard the Splendid Anger from the city of Lutran. Kostix, Bostix, Ember, Lunafreya, and Arkakas (and Chicken!) get to know each other. With only a week left in their journey, after a raucous new year's celebration, the party awakes to find something wrong on the ship: it is silent, and drifting. It seems that the whole crew is paralyzed, and the walkway through the cargo deck blocked by a strange overturned chest, apparently opened by a crewman. A weird purple glow comes from within.

Before the party can find out more, they are attacked by four minor ghosts called shrouds, who are in some way connected to the strange, curse-producing chest. They defeat the shrouds, and eventually correct the course of the ship and figure out that tossing the chest overboard may break the curse. It works, as several feet of salt water block the chest's magic.

Captain Braveros, awakened with the rest of the crew, angrily punishes the crewman responsible, Bunkle, locking him in the ship's tiny brig. She rewards the crew with a 10 gp gem each, and promises them one free passage on the Anger. The ship sails on and docks in Sablos, the PCs all knowing that they have the same mission: find the guild hall of The Legion of Llandos and participate in the audition, hoping to gain membership and the rich rewards it promises.

Adventuring 101

Session Date: 2020-01-12

After another week at sea, the Splendid Anger docks in Sablos. The party takes their leave of the captain and crew and make their way through the city to find The Legion of Llandos guildhall. Once there, they meet Camarion Llandos VII, who makes them welcome and tells them that tomorrow will be their audition for membership. He also admits that the Legion has fallen on hard times, and he is the only member left, being well over 60 and walking with a pronounced limp. He hopes, however, that the party will prove to be worthy of restoring the Legion to its former glory. The party settles into the dorm rooms, and gets to know the city, including The Lower Deck.

The next morning the party assembles near the banquet tables and Llandos tells them that he is taking them to the building's lower basement, which is magically mutable and has been set up to duplicate many of the challenges and dangers of exploration and reclamation work. The party descends a set of steps from the wine and rations room, and works their way left through several rooms beset by traps, talkative paintings, a strange pool of water, and Devet-worshiping Drow, who the party slays. In the next room, the party finds the ghostly remains of of Lua Llandos, the young wife of Camarion Llandos IV.

In the next room the party finds the way up to the street and out of the dungeon, completing the test. Llanos VII congratulates them and offers them guild membership, telling them the benefits and responsibilities. They accept his terms, sign contracts, get the tour, and move fully into the guildhall. There follows a week of downtime, in which the PCs pursue their interests: research in the library, annoying Clowder Finisbaer, setting up the workshop, teaching themselves blacksmithing, cataloguing the city's bars, etc.

At the beginning of the third week of the first month, Llandos calls the party together: they have a job! A local noble wants to reclaim an old lighthouse his family owns near the town of Liparo, three days up the North Coast Road. The party's job is to travel there, assess its condition, drive out anything or one dangerous, and report back. The party accepts the job and sets out toward the town.

One their second night on the road, the party is assaulted by bandits, whom they swiftly and gorily defeat, capturing one of them and tying him to Kostix. The next morning they take their captive with them, hoping to turn him into authorities at at town or village along road or in Liparo.

The Darkhouse

Session Date: 2020-01-18

The party, with its bandit captive strapped to Kostix's back, head up the Road and discover the village of Jinto. There they meet village head Dagur Dain, who reveals that their captive is actually wanted criminal Beff Touff, the leader of a bandit gang called The Jackals. The village can't hold Touff, so Dain advises the party to take him up to Liparo and Sheriff Hodbar. Before they can do so, however, Touff attempts to escape, leading Bostix to kill him. However, they share some fine brandy with Dain and get some very fine handmade soap from Tella Dain.

Camped along the road that evening the group finds a scout from The Jackals, but lets him go. The Jackals trouble them no more, and the party makes it late the next morning to Liparo. Asking about the lighthouse at Phosabo's Inn and Bar, they meet local wood merchant Malzahar Del'anor. As a concerned citizen and someone familiar with the lighthouse, he offers to guide them up there the next morning. The PCs accept, and spend the rest of the day and night mostly getting drunk. All come home safely save for Kostix, who finds himself in the town's drunk tank. After he swears it will never happen again, the Sheriff let's him go, and he tries to find the inn. He fails utterly, winding up at the Shrine of Raketra, where the priests are delighted to discover that he is a true believer and has a lovely singing voice. The party finds him leading a song service, and eventually pry him away from the appreciative believers.

The party and Malzahar make their way to the top of the cliff and enter the lighthouse. They slay a swarm of rats and discover a secret door in the cellar's floor, but cannot open it. Moving up the tower, the party finds the remains of the last lighthouse keeper's life and finally, on the top, the remains of him. Then his ghost appears, warning of an "Evil Below" and asking the party to drive it out, "find my treasure" and "release me." Determined to find out what this evil is and what lies beneath the cellar, the party tries the secret door again, which Malzahar eventually gets open.

They find a tunnel sloping down into the cliff, and come across a cavern full of bats, which attack them as a swarm. Defeating the bats, they venture on and find some sort of temple cavern, containing small huts, a grisly sacrifice altar, and a deep pit. Kostix tries to sacrifice Chicken, but fails as usual. Ember, looking in the window of one of the huts, sees movement and alerts the party. When she, Bostix, and Lunafreya investigate, five cultists spring out and attack. Malzahar reveals himself to be the evil mastermind behind it all as he turns the floor of the cavern into slippery mucus and attacks.

A savage battle ensues, in which the powerful sorcerer and his aberrant minions knock several of the party out and slay Kostix. With determined bravery and the surprising assistance of Chicken, the party battles back, slaying the cult leader and the cultists...but Kostix is dead. Bostix, desperate to save his twin brother, ties his body to his back and sprints back to town, the party on his heels. Crying out for a cart to transport his brother back the Legion, where maybe Llandos can help, they are found by one of the priests from the Shrine, Clisteme Bortus who, devastated at the loss of one so faithful to the goddess, brings them all to the Shrine.

There, the head priest, Mylani Cuturo, manages to raise Kostix from the dead. He sees his ancestors galloping the celestial plain, and they salute him, but his brother's grief and his Lady's will bring him back. But at a price: she places upon him an as yet unknown burden...

The Long, Hard Road

Session Date: 2020-01-25

On the road back to Sablos, the party is attacked by two displacer beasts, whom they force to run and then pursue into the woods, losing the beasts but discovering an ancient, ruined keep. Exploring it, they call into an abandoned underground hideaway for the kings of the Ketten Islands. The party explores the dungeon, encountering and befriending a tribe of kobolds whom implore them to ride the complex of its dangers, in return for being shown the way back to the surface. The party agrees, following the path described to them, battling giant spiders before clashing with a sinister "flamewrath" wizard, using the place as his lair. Lunafreya is killed by his Fireball, but the party defeats him.

Owing the party for clearing out their home, the kobolds use a scroll of Raise Dead to return Lunafreya to life, and the party returns to the surface.

The Thuvium Job

Session Date: 2020-02-01

The party takes stock after two of them die and are resurrected within three days, and decide that they just want to go home. The trip back to Sablos takes another night of camping out, but soon they are back at the guildhall, and Llandos is happy to see them. Happy, and astonished at the extent of the danger they have faced. He throws them a feast and grants them a month off, as he negotiates a big new contract with an important client.

During this month off, Arkakas finally makes inroads with Clowder Finisbaer, getting accepted as his apprentice IF he can find out exactly what his patron is. And Arkakas does get some important clues: a female tiefling, and a pillar of violet flame, coming to him in dreams. Meanwhile, Kostix masters the basics of blacksmithing, Ember tinkers with her tools, Bostix becomes the most famous bar lizard in Sablos, and Luna goes shopping.

One month after their last mission, Llandos summons the party to his office and introduces them to Dreder Kohn, a blacksmith who has been granted an amazing commission: the Royal House itself wants him to reforge the ancestral sword of King Oriel, shattered by magic long ago in slaying an evil wizard. To do so, he needs a very rare metal, that is known to be found in only one place on the planet, the Mines of Godrum. The party accepts the mission, and the next day sails on The Pegasus for Greta.

Arriving two weeks later, they find the River Road leading towards the Mountains of Mourning and travel north along it for a month and half, finally finding the collapsed entrance into the Mines. Before they can enter they are assaulted by a fearsome camo-troll, and defeat the monster, despite grievous injury to Ember. Finding a passage inside, they explore the dark, cold, wet, dirty interior, finding plenty of signs of the struggle of the dwarf miners against the monsters, so long ago.

Going left, they find a mined cavern in which floats a horrific oculo swarm, but manage to defeat the aberrant being. Extensive mine passages lay ahead of them, but no sign of any thuvium.

Terror in the Mines

Session Date: 2020-02-08

Having slain the weird oculo swarm, the party ventures into the next chamber. They notice two things, a corpse in a rotted black cloak holding a metal rod, and, in the distance, heat, fire light, and creatures laughing and giggling. After Dog triggers the trap on the corpse and eats a fire blast, the party finds a chamber light by a very hot wall of fire and four agnibarra, who, in awe of Ember, but thinking she'd look better on fire, attack. The party slay most of the them, but the last escapes into the rift of flames.

The party treks on, coming across a strange sight: then dwarven skeletons, hand axes in their hands, around a pool of dark, thick red liquid. They quickly discover it is a blood elemental, which attacks. The elemental animates the skeletons the party does not destroy, but they destroy it before they can attack.

The party goes right, finding the nest of a three-headed cobra. In the battle, Kostix, already wounded, leaps up on to the creature's nest, and gets torn apart by its bites. Dead, his body slumps across the rocks. The party slays the beast, but Kostix is gone. Shattered, they carry on with their mission, meeting Sigismund the Keg Golem, who joins the party after they convince him that his mission, protecting the miners' ale, is... no longer necessary. Sigismund warns them of the trollkin who live further into the mines.

The party battles a patrol of trollkin warriors, who kill Chicken, but the fight is stopped when a female trollkin shaman arrives and interrogates the PCs. She denies them access to thuvium, unless they destroy a "spider monster" deeper into the mines. The party agrees, and journeys to meet the monster, leaving Kostix's corpse with the trollkin. They find the drider in its lair at the edge of a great pit that goes very far into the earth. They slay it, and return it's head to the shaman, who is as good as her word, giving the party six ounces of what she calls "power metal". The party exits the mines, with corpse and metal in tow.

Brotherhood

Session Date: 2020-02-15

The party leaves the Mines of Godrum, having found what they were looking for, the thuvium, but losing their beloved brother and friend, Kostix. They bury his body by the side of a tranquil tributary of the Illusarnae, each party member leaving a touching tribute. Bandits who try to loot the grave are brutally disposed of. Confident that Kostix's soul is in a better place, the party travels back to Greta with Sigismund the Keg Golem in tow.

There they sail The Pegasus back to Sablos, with Sigismund deciding to become the butler at the Guildhall. They arrive back almost 4 months to the day after they left, where they relate the bad news to Llandos, who is devastated, and blames himself. He gives them unlimited time off, in which Bostix and Sigismund found a bar in what used to be a meeting room, and Arkakas Malbolgia, having discovered the identity of his patron, Y'chak, successfully becomes a scroll-making apprentice of Clowder Finisbaer, though his initial attempts at making a Charm Person scroll go badly awry. Eventually, however, he feels he has a good one, which he saves.

Two weeks after their return, Llandos has another mission: he introduces them to Nystra the Dark, who relates that a powerful magical artefact, the Chalice of Reekz, has been stolen from her tower, Cloudburst. She teleports the party there and tells them all about the city of Xios. The party decides the best lead on The Brotherhood of the Six Fingers, the magical thieves responsible, is to be found at The Flask and Ghost, where they eventually meet its owner, Cilia Reyne. Reyne decides to reveal to the party that the Brotherhood's hideout is indeed underneath her bar, hoping the party removes this thorn in her side, and cleverly stages the party's entrance into their lair.

They venture down, fighting increasing numbers of thieves in the extensive underground complex, eventually battling elite Brotherhood agents in a storage room. There Lunafreya Stargazer is knocked out but survives, but Arkakas dies. The party gains the upper hand, however, and the leader of the Brotherhood, an elegant gentleman calling himself the Master of the Six Fingers (and who has six fingers on both hands), appears and offers them a deal: take the Chalice and begone, killing no more of his men and not revealing the lair's location.

The party takes that deal, and returns to Nystra with Arkakas's body. There she is delighted to have the Chalice back, which she relates holds powerful magic relating to reproduction and pregnancy. The party declines to take advantage of it, and choose to have her call in a favor to revive Arkakas rather than taking a Wand of Wonder as a bonus payment. A priest arrives, and as his temple owes Nystra, succeeds in reviving Arkakas. The party is teleported back to Sablos and reports their success to Llandos, who grants them another extended time off.

New Blood

Session Date: 2020-02-22

The party retires to rest for the evening, in their various ways, save for Arkakas Malbolgia, who leaves to find materials with which to re-summon Chicken. Just as he leaves the guildhall, however, he hears beating wings overhead. Perched on the roof of the hall's tower is aarakocra ranger Zinra Ravara, come at last to answer the same letter the rest of the party received. After Arkakas brushes her off, she goes inside and meets Bostix and eventually the rest of the guild, who question her briefly before accepting her as a member of the Legion without an audition. She moves into the central room on the second floor.

A month of downtime follows, in which the party pursues their various interests: drinking, poison buying, setting up a kiosk and selling mechanical toys, enlisting criminal minions to to surveil Clowder Finisbaer, or ending the same by taking an urban bounty. During this time, Llandos is meeting with various clients, but no job presents itself...

Until he gathers the group and shares that an old adventuring friend of his, currently part owner of the Xerxos Pit on Zaxos, has asked him to send a capable group to adventurers to rid the mine of hordes of salt mephits which has effectively shut it down in the last month. The party accepts the mission and sails for Lymoxersia on the Swallow's Wing, and arrives their three days late after the ship stops in Euphro on Kefalon so the group of elven scholars it carries might visit a book vault.

The party goes to the mine and meets Llandos's friend, Grigary Molden, who shows them into the mine, where they head down the walkway of the massive pit. Fighting through salt clouds, many mephits, salt zombies, and just stupid amounts of salt, the party arrives on the shores of the brine pit at the bottom of the shaft. There they find strange, glowing, floating, salt crystal, which raises a salt elemental, who attacks. The party battles the elemental, but figures out that destroying the crystal might destroy the creatures, and they are correct.

Once both are gone, Ember finds a ring with four tiny gems in it, which she studies but pockets for later. The party heads up to the surface, where the find Molden wounded in a battle with a huge flock of salt mephits, which has left the pit as they are resting. His staff are dead, and most of the mephits escapes. Fearing the worst, the party heads for town, only to discover it unharmed by the mephits, who have disappeared.

Molden beings to rebuild his business while letting the party stay at his mansion in town. The party meets Luciel Braveros in a tavern and she offers them free passage back to Sablos, but not before Lunafreya Stargazer gets herself arrested for trying to purchase illegal items (poison, again). Ember pays her penalty and frees her, while Zinra obtains for her a deadly poison from a strange hag who lairs in the town wall. The party then sails back home, arriving without incident.

The Catacombs of Rurk, Part I

Session Date: 2020-02-29

Back at the guildhall, the patty is welcomed home by Llandos, who has an unusual guest, the lizardfolk cleric Sibok Ecot Yaool, who hails from Varlask on Marbindor. He brings the Legion their next mission: to accompany him to Leftkada to discover and recover sacred artifacts from some recently discovered ancient lizardfolk burial catacombs. The party accepts the job, and leaves the next morning, sailing aboard the dwarf ship Sturdy to Sicomnos.

The party arrives not long before the culminating party of the island's yearly Harvest Festival, where they spend the evening stuffing themselves silly, watching plays, and engaging in competitions, with Zinra and Bostix triumphing in archery and arm wrestling, respectively, winning gold. After a night's carousing, the party departs in the morning, traveling towards the village of Bhrytarnacia, where Arkakas and Sibok think they are most likely to find lizardfolk ruins, according to local lore.

The first day out of the village ends in a hamlet tavern, avoiding a friendly bar fight. Moving along the road towards the center highlands of the island, the party travel across open grasslands, where, the first night they meet and befriend Bush, who travels with them. Passing through a forest, the party is attacked one morning by a savage owlbear, which they slay. Moving into arid, rocky highlands, the party is hunted and attacked by three fiendish leucrotta, but manage to defeat them, with Sibok's mastery of the line between life and death proving handy.

The next day the party descends into a fertile valley, walking along a road between harvested fields. There they discover a lost child, Tia Telric, crying in a ditch. She explains that her mommy was taken by some mean men, and the party sets out to find the child's mother, tracking the vile kidnappers into a some dark woods, where, with the "help" of a quickling named Poppo, they find the kidnapper's shack, slay them, and rescue the mother, Maera Telric, who explains that she was fleeing the village with her daughter from her abusive husband, named "Telric", some important man in the village, who beats her and the child, and has many other wives. The party tells her to wait for their return in the shack while they finish their mission.

The PCs arrive in the village at night, and are promptly accosted by the village guards, thugs really, who say they serve Boss Grommo Telric, leader and richest man of the village. The guards tell them that if they don't want to be arrested, they had better go drop a lot of money in the Boss's tavern across the village green. The party complies, drinking at the bar, before a round of drinks is bought for them by Boss Telric. Bostix, wary, figures out that the beer is poisoned, and confronts the boss with Ember. The Boss denies trying to poisoning them, and tells them that there's no dirty lizardfolk ruins in or around his village (which Ember knows is a lie), and they'd better blow the village, now, or there will be trouble. Strangers are not welcome. The party weighs their options and decides to camp along the road outside of the village, strategizing how to find the ruins and get revenge for themselves and Maera and Tia on the evil Boss Telric.

The Catacombs of Rurk, Part II

Session Date: 2020-03-07

Passing the night outside of Bhrytarnacia after being driven out by Grommo Telric, who party arises in the morning and discusses strategy for a full hour. They try asking nearby farmers if any know of the lizardfolk ruins, but strike out. They ultimately decide to return to the village and make Telric tell them where the ruins are. In the process, they fight his guards in the village streets, then his thugs on his property, and ultimately him, slaying them all. With the villain and his henchmen dead, his wives take over his estate and authority, forming The Sisterhood, and bringing a new era of democratic rule to the village. They also find records in his office which reveal the location of the ruins.

South of the village, in the dense wilderness, the party finds a demolished obelisk of lizardfolk origin, which Sibok Ecot Yaool is able to decipher and use to open a portal into the Catacombs of Rurk. Venturing down, his heart is broken when the party finds that the catacombs has been not only raided but purposely desecrated by troglodytes, which Sibok claims are degenerate forms of lizardfolk. He collects what sacred relics he can, and the party clashes with a gelatinous cube and several troglodytes.

Exploring further, the party finds many huge mausoleums, some of which contain undisturbed relics, some of which contains portions of the wealth and prized items of the ancient lizardfolk rulers, which Sibok gladly gives to the party. The party encounters a strange pit of Abyssal fire, and battles two barlgura, summoned from the Abyss by the desecration of of the holy sites performed by the troglodytes. The battle defeats the demons, finds more relics and items, and leaves the catacombs.

Back in the village, the party is celebrated by villagers and The Sisterhood, the new rulers of the village. The party spends a couple of days there recovering, bring Maera and Tia back from the kidnapper's shack. The villagers decide to honor the orginal lizardfolk inhabitants of the area by renaming the village after Sibok, and the party departs for Sicomnos. Sibok takes a ship for Marbindor, after saying a grateful goodbye and thank you to the party, and the party sails for Sablos which a large haul of gold and items.

The Rivals

Session Date: 2020-03-14

Returning to Sablos, the party arrives at the guildhall late at night and soaking wet from an autumn thunderstorm. Llandos welcomes them home with towels, and takes their scattered mission statement. He tells them they have at least a week off, as there are no good clients at the moment. The party spends a week drinking, scaring citizens, reading, flying money back home, and getting out-competed in the market place.

One very early morning, the Llandos summons the party to the banquet tables with an urgent and stupidly well-paying mission. It seems the Baron Pyron Emarkos has a strange library showing up in his mansion and wants the party to find out how to remove it. The party goes there and meets the Baron... and the Baroness Tula Emarkos... and another adventuring party, who call themselves The Searchers of Glory, hired by the Baroness. The Baron and his wife decide that both parties should explore the strange library, and both enter. The other party is very together and professional, and after investigating the strange chamber, full of book shelves and with an open sky, clouds and moon overhead, decide to go right, with the Legion going left.

In the next chamber they party runs into four grell, who seem to be acting as librarians, shelving books. Very hostile librarians, who attack. The party has little difficulty defeating them, however, and, in the next chamber, discover the fiendish Index Incarnatus. Each of them tries to read it, getting a question answered by the book if they can resist its psychic attack. Arkakas, Zinra, and Luna also learn a Forbidden Secret, a horrible truth. Zinra learns that the Archive's doors can open to anywhere in the multiverse. Luna says the book told her that Ember is cursed to be a thrall of Elemental Princes, and says so, but the party cannot convince Ember to part with the Ring of Elemental Power, and ultimately can't decide if they trust the book.

Bostix finally asks how they party can remove the Accursed Archive from infesting the Baron's mansion. He is told "Spread. Growth. Extension. Spread the books," which the party figures out means that they should take books out of the library and spread them around other places. Arkakas is very happy to do so, and he and the others load themselves down with heavy, sinister tomes. They then go back the way they came, and exit the Archive through the door they came in, with no sign of the Searchers.

But they are NOT back in the Baron's hallway when they go through the door. They find themselves in some large, well-appointed noble's bedroom, with a human woman asleep in its giant four-poster bed. They manage to sneak out of the room and down the hall without waking Lady Trinia Fondam. With the help of Zinra's bluffing skills, the party gets past the house's butler, out the door and down the lane, convincing some very confused guards to let them out of the gate. They run and run, with no idea what the large city they are in is. They find out from a passing youth that it is Evensell, capital city of the Confederation of Uth. They are several months from home.

The party decides to throw themselves on the mercy of the church, and finds their way to the Cathedral of Hephemia. Their friendly priests take them to see Vergen Dalbor, the Cathedral's head priest. This gentle and good man complies with their request to use the Sending spell to contact Llandos to ask for instructions. The guild master tells them to stay put, he will come get them. In the meantime, the party rests and sees some of the Cathedral and city. That evening, the party and other souls needing help feast with the Head Priest and the other priests, and tell their stories, which amaze Dalbor.

Later Llandos shows up by means of a borrowed Ring of Teleportation. He scolds the party like a stern dad, but Dalbor welcomes him, and allows the whole Legion to stay in the rectory. Before bed Llandos demands the whole story from the party, and is horrified to learn that they have simply complied with the wishes of an obviously malevolent entity that wishes to spread its sinister influence. He orders the party to destroy the books, which Ember is all about, but which Arkakas vociferously refuses, willing to fight the whole party and Llandos to protect the books. Llandos finally says that Arkakas can keep the books, but forbids him to keep them at the guildhall, on pain of being kicked out of the Legion, and leaves to go to sleep. The party look at each other, not knowing what to do...

Some Like it Hot, Part I

Session Date: 2020-03-21

Teleporting back to the guildhall with the party, Llandos immediately commands Arkakas Malbolgia to get all of the books from the Accursed Archive OUT of the Legion's building. Arkakas complies, struggling under the heavy weight of the books that won't fit in the bag of holding. He finds his way out of the city and to the outskirts of the town of Jemnos, discovering a mysteriously abandoned farm. In the farm's barn's cellar he places the books, unable to find any clues as to why this long abandoned but clearly still serviceable farm should be abandoned, besides a painting of a family which hides a locked safe in the wall. Unable to open it, he saves that mystery for later.

Back at the guildhall, while the party relaxes from their latest trials, Ember decides to visit Llandos in his office, just to ask about the news of the city, some rumors she's heard, and share some whiskey, leading a discussion of Edrigo Damm, recently put in King Oriel's dungeon to a betrayal allegedly involving an elemental cult. This leads to several members of the party sharing their backstories, with the notable exception of Zinra Ravara, who refuses.

Ember next attempts to survey the Coral Palace, with Bostix tagging along. They find it to be extremely well defended, almost impossible to break into...unless one goes through the city's sewer system, which Ember finds a map to. Back at the guildhall, she attempts to convince Lunafreya Stargazer to come with her on her attempt to break Damm out of prison, as Ember insist's he's innocent. Disturbed by this sudden change in her friend, Luna alerts Llandos, who eventually drags out of Ember that she is laboring under a curse put upon her by the Ring of Elemental Power she wears, making her a thrall of the elemental princes, in particular Imix, the Prince of Elemental Fire, who has commanded her to free Damm, help him escape the Islands, and burn down the Royal Palace.

Ember finds it nearly impossible to resist the Prince's commands, rationalizing away the parts she'd normally find repugnant, but her friends convince her, with great difficulty, that she is cursed after Clowder Finisbaer confirms it, and reveals the only way of breaking this primordial curse: they must slay 1 fire elemental, 1 earth elemental, one water elemental, and one air elemental, capturing their essences and brewing them into an Elixir of Elemental Chaos, which Ember must drink and survive. The earth elemental is easy enough: they use Ember's Elemental Earth Gem and slay the creature, though Ember tries to escape. The group is able to capture the elemental's essence and persuade Ember to accompany them on quests to find and slay the other elementals. The Legion is able to determine that the nearest place they are likely to find a Water Elemental is the Strait of Armahze, the nearest place to fine a fire elemental is the active volcano the island of Rytaeus, and the nearest place to find an air elemental is up in the clouds by means of Spelljamming ship.

The party elects to travel to Rytaeus first, and sails threes weeks on the Black Swan to the uninhabited, volcanic, jungle island, where they hack their way through the sweltering jungle until evening, taking shelter in a cavern in a bluff. They discover, however, that the cavern is occupied by at least two cyclops, who attack. The party defeats the two cyclops and decides to take a short rest before a tunnel heading down in order to tend the grievous wounds dealt by the one-eyed giants.

Some Like it Hot, Part II

Session Date: 2020-03-27

After taking a short rest via Rope Trick, the party ventures further into the caverns and tunnels leading to the volcano. In the cavern of and underground river, they battle and defeat three ropers. Further on, in another cavern, they meet Lem the stone giant and his family, who, once they learn the party intends to slay the what he calls the fire people, welcome them to a meal and send them through their tunnels towards the lair of the fire elementals, while warning them against a mysterious evil giant known only as the "Bag Man".

A day's trek later, the party encounters and battles the Bag Man, who turns out to be a fomorian in the possession of a Bag of Capturing. They defeat him and a couple of fire elementals he captures. With the elemental essence collect, the party travels back the ruined town, finding in it nothing of interest... and no ships. Zinra flys off in pursuit of one she sees in the distance, though her manner with them when she reaches the ship ensures her a frosty reception. She trials the ship until it make port a few days later.

In the meantime, the rest of the party has, by means of smoke signals, attracted the attention of ageing noble playboy Wylan Legon III, who, in exchange for a good story over dinner, takes them back to Sablos on his ship, the Zephyr. Meanwhile, Zinra is able to return with a ship to Rytaeus, only to find that the party has found a way home. She can only continue south on the ship, which is bound for Akupara Freenma.

Some Like it Hot, Part III

Session Date: 2020-04-03

The party, save for Zinra Ravara, returns to Sablos, reporting the situation to Llandos, who instructs them to immediately find a wizard and pay for enough Sending spells to find out where she is and how they can find a Spelljammer to reach the clouds, in order to find an air elemental. They contact her while she is at The Wizard's Cup in Rossidi. She tells them they should travel to Numia, go to the House of Stars, and book passage on the Heart of Platinum. She will meet them two days later in the air over Numia.

The party reaches the House, but the Heart is not there. The booking agent, Zigmun Zoola, takes a bribe, however, to allow them to go up the ship docking area, where a ship called the Dexy's Luck is docked. There, the party meets s captain, Fallura Firetide. Her crew is on two weeks shore leave, but, for 100 gold, she offers to take them up to the clouds herself. The party pays, and soon they are in the clouds looking for air elementals. They are joined in short order by Zinra, and, after some displays of elemental magic, manage to attract an air elemental.

Because the creature seems innocent and is not hostile, even curious and friendly, the party is reluctant to kill it in order to obtain its essence. After some dangerous trial and error, however, another way is found: Zinra, familiar with riding winds, manages to remain within the elemental's body long enough to scoop up some its essence without harming it (indeed, the elemental regards it as tickling). Captain Firetide offers to take the party to the Strait of Armahze in order to find water elementals, and the Luck shoots off, breaking the sound barrier.

Two hours later, the ship floats in the Strait. After some more magical displays, water elementals are indeed attracted: hostile ones, along with three very hostile sea hag. The party defeats them, however, and Ember collects the last of the elemental essences she needs for the Elixir of Elemental Chaos. The Luck flys back to Numia, and the captain is very glad of it. The party leaves the House and goes to The Wise Mosquito, all save Arkakas, who goes back in and makes an appointment for the next morning to see Sishem Rhasha.

With the party tagging along, Arkakas visits with the Master of the House of Stars wizards, telling them about his aim of slaying Y'chak but retaining the powers that being grants him, and does the wizard know how. The astonished wizard informs him that this would be tantamount to slaying a god, and they have no idea how one would do that....but they are intrigued by the idea. They take Arkakas's address and says they will send him a letter advising of what they find. The party makes their way back to Sablos.

In her workshop, with Llandos giving her no choice, Ember brews up the elixir. She drinks it, and it works. The Ring of Elemental Power breaks and falls off, the curse is broken, and the angry voice of Imix, the Prince of Elemental Fire fades from her mind. Ember is horrified to realize how dominated and violated she was, but everyone else is ecstatic to have her back to her old self. The next day a raucous party is thrown, with over a hundred guests and a one-man band. The guildhall entrance room is trashed and soiled, but a good time is had by all. Meanwhile, the End of Year Festival is being celebrated all through the city, in this the last week of the year 1116, and Arkakas is disappointed to not find a letter from Sibok Ecot Yaool.

The next day, after the party has slept off their hangovers, Llandos relates a curious story: a little bird told him, literally, about the Circle of the Kapok druids of the Kyrion Forest, who have recently uncovered a mysterious ancient evil artefact, and want the Legion to come and take it away. Llandos gives them an Anti-Magic Containment Chest, and they set off for the town of Messide, a day and a half away and just before the forest, along the South Road.

Along the road, Arkakas decides to check on the books he left in the abandoned farm's barn's basement, finding two disturbing things: some of the books are missing, and in the back wall is a door looking very much like those found in the Accursed Archive. He sets to cataloguing the books, and the party finds him, figuring out that what Llandos warned of has happened: the Archive has spread. Arkakas does not care, and shews the party away, saying he will meet them in the Forest after he finishes cataloguing the books. The party sets off down the road, and he does so.

Right before he leaves, smitten with curiosity, he decides to open the door, which none of the party had been brave or foolish enough to do. He finds the Accursed Archive, looking exactly as they first saw it. Satisfied with continued access to the Archive, he goes to shut the door, but right before he can, a bent rapier blade lodges the door open. It is flung open, and standing there is a wounded, emaciated, rag-wearing Slar of Chumash, of The Searchers of Glory, who looks up at him and says only "Help!"

Risky Business

Session Date: 2020-04-10

On the outskirts of Jemnos, under the abandoned farmhouse's barn, with the door of the Accursed Archive open, Arkakas looses a grappling match with Char of Chumash, and finds himself in the Archive with the door closed and a horrible tentacled abomination, The Silent One, reaching out for him. He bravely stands to fight it, but is immediately crushed.

But not, apparently, killed. He wakes up in the dirt of the road to Messide, which Chicken very cross with him. At length he catches up with the party, and they arrive the next afternoon in the town of Messide, doing some shopping at Kasia's Goods. They then venture into the Kyrion Forest, which they find to be sick and dying. They soon are meet by Ellewyn Vinoss and her druids of the Circle of the Kapok. They lead the party to where a demon cage has been uncovered by a lightning-killed tree.

Perciving that i contains demons, the party tries to gingerly place it into the Anti-Magic Containment Chest, but fail, releasing four hezrou. With the aid of the druid, the party slays the demons and leaves with the cage in the chest. That night, on the road back to Sablos, the party is approached by a group drow, lead by Nildax Do'Arin. The drow mage says he serves the Queen of Shadows, who wishes the demon cage, and he asks the party what they would take in exchange, offering them as much as 3000 gp.

During the tense negotiations, however, a wizard and several agents from Syndecol Industries show up, and make a counter-offer for the cage. The three parties argue, with the agents discovering the presence of Lunafreya Stargazer and deciding they want her more than the cage. The drow allies themselves with the party against the agents, and Luna at last kills the wizard. The drow leave, saying they are gone to get the gold, only to send an invisible drow to steal it, whom the party slay. The party takes the chest and runs for Sablos, before the drow or the Company can do worse.

Meanwhile, Arkakas had left Messide without the party the day before, and, in an argument with Chicken finds out what happened with he was defeated by The Silent One: Y'chak saved his life, at great sacrifice, by ceding certain "valuable properties" to the Archive. Chicken explains that this was done because Arkakas is important to the Elder Evil's plans to build mortals to their maximum potential, only to destroy them when they are at their greatest. Arkakas makes a deal: if he can return Slar of Chumash the Archive, appeasing it, accounts will be settled with Y'chak, who wants to maintain good relations with the Archive.

Arkakas, back in Sablos, finds Slar and coaxes him back to the barn where he is feed to The Silent One. Arkakas then returns to the guildhall, only to find himself very much on the outs with Llandos, who accuses him of treachery and cowardice unbecoming of a Legion member, and tells him to take his shit and leave (after giving him a letter from Sibok Ecot Yaool. But Ember intercedes on his behalf: if he lets them destroy his Archive books, he can stay. He agrees, telling them of his plan to slay Y'chak. The party burns the books while Arkakas dreams in his library of seeing Sibok again.

New Years Blues

Session Date: 2020-04-17

The party awakes on the first day of the year CY 1117, and goes about their business. Arkakas Malbolgia eager to see Sibok again, heads down the docks to wait, whilst the rest putter around the house, except for Lunafreya Stargazer, who leaves without telling anyone where she's going. Arkakas meets Sibok and three other lizardfolk cleric, who are spending a night in the city before heading to Leftkada. The warlock and the cleric kill and blacken some Demon Ward rats before having a date on the the hills overlooking the vineyards north of the city. Arkakas tells Sibok of his patron and his desire to be free of it. Sibok suggests finding a god to have faith in, such as his own, Symunon. Arkakas says he will look into it, and takes Sibok back to the guildhall, where everyone drinks and talks late into the night, before the cleric leaves, promising to keep in touch.

The next day passes without incident, kinda boring, except for Ember learning from Llandos of a possible long expedition: Wylan Legon III has written the Legion about hiring them to accompany him on a voyage to the islands of the northern Ocean of Nimran. The party talks it over, and agrees provisionally to accepting the offer, depending on getting more details, and Llandos sends the Legion's reply.

Late that night comes a pounding on the hall's doors and a cry for help. It's Syllesta Ashar, scared and worried, saying that The Lower Deck has been taken over (apparently by it's mysterious owner's instructions) by some cultist types who have some poor creature in a box, and seem prone to do something horrible to it. Can the Legion help? But of course...

The party arrives at the Dock Ward bar, finding the doors locked and the windows blocked. A strange chant in Abyssal (Language) comes from inside. The party tries to smoke them out by blocking the chimney, and whoever is inside breaks out the windows and continues the ritual. Bostix sees that inside are indeed cultists, about to sacrifice a pegasus. He busts in and the party slays the fiendish cultists. As they are freeing and tending to the wounds of the pegasus, a huge figure blocks the doorway. It reveals itself to be a 9ft. tall goat humanoid that calls itself Father Goat and attacks them. The battle gets the upper hand against him, and he blasts a hole in the floor and escapes first into the basement then into some deep underground dungeon.

The party gives chase, exploring the dungeon, finding several room and hallways. They discover a two-person airship and a room full of treasure, which they take. Then, using what seems to be a master key, open a door they could not before, only to be attacked by a blue pudding. They slay the creature and its smaller bits, but decide that they should exit the dungeon to tend to their own wounds. While they are above, being interrogated by the City Watchmen (the pegasus escaped), the building is shaken by a short but powerful earthquake. The party finds that the building has sunk about a foot and where the basement and dungeon were is only a massive, deep hole. Father Goat, the rest of his cult, and their hideout have somehow escaped.

Some of the party goes home, some go with Syllesta to the Watch station to give information on what happened. Syllesta decides that this is the push she needs to needs to take some friends up on their offer to go adventuring, and thanks and takes her leave from the party, headed for a new and exciting life. The party, back at the guildhall, divides their loot from the dungeon and goes to bed.

Voyage to Chibouholm

Session Date: 2020-04-24

The next day, Arkakas receives a letter by courier, one which gives him a curious obsession with stars and mirrors. That afternoon, Wylan Legon III visits the guildhall, and explains that he wishes to hire the Legion to accompany him on a long-term expedition to explore map the underworlds of the Chibouholm Isles. The Legion agrees, deciding to bring Sigismund the Keg Golem with them, and is treated by Legon to a dinner that night at his luxurious villa in the hills to the north of the city.

The next day at noon the party boards the Once Was a Mermaid, captained by Lusca Yuval, and sets sail to the north, on a voyage that will take about 2 1/2 months. The voyage is mostly dull for the passengers, day after day of nothing to do but stare at the blue expanse of the Ocean of Nimran, though the evenings are made a bit more pleasant by Legon's wine tastings. during the first month, Lunafreya Stargazer reveals that she is on the lam from Syndecol Industries, after refusing to carry out a contract she has an agent. She is afraid that her being with the party bring down the wrath of the Company upon them, ultimately destroying them. The party tells her that they will help her find a way to get out of her contract, such as by destroying records, but she thinks the only way would be offer the Company something they valued as much or more that getting her back.

Also in the first month, Arkakas and Ember ponder the cryptic words of the letter he received, which explained that if he wished to kill Y'chak, he must "show the inner to the outer" using a "mirror made of stars”. They reason that this means revealing to the Elder Evil its true being, which would, presumably, destroy even that mighty being's mind, but are stumped by what a mirror could possibly have to do with stars. Soon thereafter, the Mermaid is attacked by the fiendish pirate Rajan Nilak and his ship The Final Blow. A furious battle ensues between the crew of the Mermaid and the Legion and the pirates, who include in their number crossbowmen, a great brute, a musketeer, a mage, and many cutthroats. The pirates are eventually defeated, with all but a few cutthroats and some other crew left alive. They are left adrift in a disabled, looted ship as the party sails one. The Mermaid's dead are given all honors and buried at sea.

A month and half later, the expedition drops anchor near Nidan, the first of the Chibouholms, a flat, rocky island with a central forest, where stand four ruined towers. The Legion and Legon are rowed ashore by a crewman, and set a fast past toward the towers. They search the towers, finding not much, but encounter a small herd of disenchanters. The strange beasts drain magic from items held by Bostix and Arkakas, and the party kills most of them in revenge. The party rests the rest of the day, then inspects the final tower the next morning. They find nothing, until Legon falls through some manner of trap door and plummets into a very deep hole, caught by some kind of energy field which lowers him, and eventually the rest of the party, down to a long-abandoned underground complex. The party encounters therein and defeats a group of chuul.

I,Tyrant

Session Date: 2020-05-01

Standing ankle-deep in chuul guts and ichor, the party presses on into the structure, finding a chamber full of old, scattered and rotting books. While investigating, Arkakas overhears the telepathic communication of some spectators, who are apparently coming to investigate what happened to the chuul, worried that someone called only The Master will be angry. Soon the party encounters the flying aberrations in a hallway and a battle breaks out, in which the party easily triumphs, despite the creatures' powerful eye rays.

Continuing to explore the chamber, the party hears a cheerful whistling, produced by an approaching creature. It is a flumph named Hachoo, who apparently lives here and is a great fan of art. He shows the party several faded murals on the walls of the rooms of the dungeon and leads them around, telling them of the Master, the trash monster, The Master's other minions, and that The Master is up to some strange purpose on the lower second level of the dungeon. The party has him lead them to the stairs to that next level.

There they discover a brightly lit, tiled hallway, opening on a room where an illithid is hard at work on something at a table. The party eventually catches its attention, and it demands to know why they have intruded on what he calls "The Sepulcher of the Sleeping Eye", of which it claims it is the "Seneschal". They party argues back that Hachoo is actually the rightful owner, having lived here longer, and the pissed-off Master, for that's who it is, commands his pet, some kind of aberration called Bertolak, to kill them. The Master fights for a round, then flees deeper into the level, which was evidently the library of an ancient elven academy (Arkakas obtains several texts in Elvish).

The party defeats Bertolak with difficulty, then pursues The Master. It finds them, followed by the now-awakened Sleeping Eye, a beholder. The party wisely flees, though Zinra Ravara is hit by an eye ray, greatly frightening her. This helps her run though, and the party escapes the level. Meeting Hachoo again, he helps them explore again, feeds them some of his mushrooms (poisonous), and then flees with them when the Sleeping Eye emerges onto the level. The party returns to the area where the energy field is, which lifts them back to the surface, where Hachoo is greatly freaked out by so much light, space, and many strange things, like bushes. The party comforts him and he becomes excited to explore the world like they do.

The party rests, then decides to explore the area which the map describes as an abandoned farm. The party indeed finds a dilapidated farm, but it is not abandoned, exactly: a zombie farmer drives them off his land. The party returns to the Once Was a Mermaid, rests, then sails to the northern point of the island, where, in a ruined castle, they discovers several treasures. The Legion returns to the ship and sets sail the next day for Huwer, the second island in the chain.

Arriving the morning after, the Legion, along with Siggi, Legon, and Hachoo, treks overland to where the map indicates a complex of pyramids exists. The party finds it, in, strangely for this latitude, a full-blown tropical rain forest. The party explores a few ruined buildings, before Arkakas discovers the tracks of skeletal feet, which the party follows, to discover a secret entrance into the largest pyramid. Inside, they discovers five sick, injured, and delirious humans in a huge cage, apparently slaves or sacrifices. The party hears something approaching, and, hiding, sees a couple of skeletal warriors take a human from the cage. The party frees the others after Bostix bends the bars, and are in the processing of taking them out when a skeletal warrior discovers them, and soon a squad of them appears, ready to attack.

In the Temple of Hrux

Session Date: 2020-05-08

The Legion battles the squad of skeletal warriors, defeating them, despite Wylan Legon III and Hachoo getting knocked unconscious. They survive (Hachoo by simply getting up, his wounds miraculously healed), and immediately after the last warrior falls, Hachoo says that he remembers this place, he's been here before, how or when he knows not. He also says that the ruler of this place is even more sinister than The Master, but can't say how he knows that.

It is then, as if to prove his words, that a horrible voice resounds through the pyramid's interior, cursing the party for destroying its "fanatics" and sending a cluster of will-o-wisps to lead the party to itself. In a horrifying throne/torture chamber, the Legion meet Aman-Bouhkriss, a hierophant lich of Hrux, who demands to know who the party are and who they serve. Frustrated in this aim by their tomfoolery, he summons several four-armed skeletons and succeeds in paralyzing Ember, Arkakas Malbolgia, and Bostix. These last two are deposited by the skeletons upon the bloody alter to the god of death and destruction, while the rest of the party, including Hachoo, battles the lich.

When the skeletons are defeated, and Aman-Bouhkriss unaccountably flees from Hachoo, the party finishes him off and searches some of the rest of the pyramid, finding some odd treasures and freeing some more sacrifices. The Legion leaves the pyramid eventually and journeys back to the Once Was a Mermaid, where the sacrifices, who turn out to have been unfortunate sailors, are accepted into that ship's crew to replenish its ranks. Some music lessons are paid for and given, and the ship sails the next morning for the next island, Ottusk.

There, along its long eastern beaches, the party finds several huge stone humanoid heads. While investigating them, Bostix is approached by what appears to be a beautiful female centaur, who places a curse on him and charms him. The party battles the creature as it attempts to take Bostix away, discovering it to actually be a lamia. The creature escapes by running into one of the stone heads. The party follows, and finds itself in what appears to be a wizards' lair. Ember identifies it as that belonging to the famous and thought disappeared historical wizard Hiraculon the Mighty. The party explores the lair, finding several rooms of magical apparatuses but no creatures.

The last of these rooms contains another portal, like the one they stepped out of to get here, and they go through it. They find themselves in a dark, dank, fouls-smelling lair of spiked walls and vines, cold and full of evil sounds. They explore this second level, and are attacked by a fiendish nycaloth. Defeating the fiend, they discover that Hachoo has gone missing, wandering off during the battle, muttering something about "it's right over here." The party tracks him through some winding corridors, hearing his voice up ahead, arguing with several female voices in a language they don't understand. Carefully, they approach...

Revelations

Session Date: 2020-05-15

The party enters a large chamber, where a now-huge and glowing Hachoo is arguing with six lamia around a pedestal on which stands an immense egg. A long conversation/argument ensues, in which the party learns that Hachoo is not a normal flumph but a "Great, or Celestial Flumph," creatures who "travel the planes doing good works and bringing the light of knowledge and civilization, and resist those who would destroy the same.” Long ago, Hachoo, whose full name is Hachoongeruadan, "came to this world... finding it ripe for that purpose." He built and populated the structures the party has been exploring, intending them to be a beacon of good in the world, but the inhabitants fell to evil, an experience so traumatic for him that he forget his identity, lost his power, and "shriveled to the poor thing you found, aimlessly studying the very same murals that I had created."

Now that the party has helped him recover, he plans to rebuild the islands, but the lamia want none of it: the egg is that of the tarrasque, a world-destroying monster destroyed long ago, but regrowing, as "there’s something about the multiverse that seems to need the tarrasque". The lamia threaten to destroy the egg and release it, unless Hachoo frees them from the magical bonds he placed them under when tried to steal it, long ago, AND give them control over all the islands. Hachoo struggles to know what to do, and the lamia crack the egg repeatedly, but Arkakas comes up with a solution: they can enter the service of Y'chak, who demonstrates his power. The lamia agree, Hachoo frees them, Ember repairs the egg, and the party takes their leave of the islands, as Wylan Legon III has decided he's had enough of adventuring, thank you very much. Before Arkakas leaves, he asks Hachoo the meaning of "mirror of stars," and the Great Flumph tells him.

The party sails 2 1/2 months back to Sablos, arriving in the middle of the sixth month of the year. They return to guildhall, finding it empty but remembering that Llandos had told them he would travel the Ketten Islands while they were gone. So they go about their pursuits, Arkakas visiting Sibok in his new temple, playing instruments, etc., not thinking much of the guild master's absence until they find he has left no note and the place in uncharacteristically unlived-in. They investigate at the docks, and talk to an old friend of Llandos's, finding nothing until they get Sibok to use the Sending spell to send a message to him. The only answer is pain: Llandos is injured and suffering. They don't know where until they visit Clowder Finisbaer and get him to cast Scrying. Finisbaer describes seeing Llandos bound and in a pit, and sees out the window a temple on a barge in a harbor, which the party realizes is in Liparo.

The next day the party heads to Liparo, arriving a day and half later, finding the town going about business as usual, until they notice some very strange behavior in drinkers in a pub: dull-eyed, mechanical, and with a ghostly gray thread leading out the back of their heads. Zinra Ravara traces the threads back to Fisherman's Commons, to a house near it. The commoners of the town, however, begin to crowd around them, and the party, not wishing to harm them, try to go the docks and Shrine of Raketra, only to get trapped by the townsfolk atop a building. Zinra and Arkakas fly back to the house to investigate, Arkakas prying open a window, only to get Eldritch Blasts in the face. The party regroups and decides to assault the house, with Bostix charging through the door.

It opens as he rushes in, and he finds himself inside, with their old foe Malzahar Del'anor, revived and a warlock now, looming over him. A battle ensues, with the party easily getting the upper hand, until Del'anor threatens to slay Llandos by speaking a single word unless they surrender. He also begins to morph into something resembling a aboleth. They party hesitates, arguing over whether they can risk the guild master's life. Del'anor keeps changing...

The Last Legionnaire

Session Date: 2020-05-22

The thing Del'anor turns into is an aberrant hulk, which savagely attacks the party. They manage to defeat it, only to have it morph back into Del'anor, declaring that they cannot kill him, he will only reform, and besides, he has already won, telling them to "go attend the final minutes of your pathetic master" before melting. The PCs rush to follow the bundle of ghostly threads, finding it stuck into the chest of a wounded, emaciated, dehydrated Llandos. Ember heals his wounds, but he does not awaken, and Arkakas determines that the threads are Del'anor's aboleth master's means of controlling the people of Liparo, and while a Dispel Magic can destroy the bundle and free the townsfolk, it will also kill Llandos.

The party decides to let him die to free the people, then try to resurrect him. However, none of them can cast the required spell. They remember the dwarven mage that was in town, Thulmir Vonnar, and Zinra goes to find him. She does, and he casts the spell, destroying the threads and dropping the townsfolk unconscious onto the ground. They scoop Llandos up and pick their way over the bodies, heading at full speed for the Shrine of Raketra, which once raised Kostix, but suddenly a bright light fills the sky. A pegasus descends, the same one the party saved from the cultists of Father Goat, nuzzles Bostix, then licks Llandos's face. The voice of an unknown celestial benefactor tells them that the good deed they did in saving the pegasus has been rewarded, and the pegasus flies away. Llandos is raised from the dead, the townsfolk recover, and the party fills him in at Phosabo's Inn and Bar. The next day, they return to Sablos and take a week off, with Arkakas Malbolgia, training with Sibok, gaining proficiency with a healer's kit.

About a week after they return, three Ketten Royal Navy officers, lead by Captain Yessara Delbeck, arrive at the guildhall, to grant the party the Silver Cutlass, the Navy's highest civilian honor for destroying Rajan Nilak. The captain also offers them a mission: underneath the Navy's base at Port Tellio, some workers renovating the lowest levels have discovered an unknown structure under the fort. A Navy team has gone in but disappeared, and the Navy wishes the League to investigate. They accept, and sail to the fort aboard the KNS Thunderstrike. There, they meet the bases' commander, Commodore Deisia Atythios, and are escorted down to a hallway on the lowest level.

The party finds a sigil of activation, and goes down the hole, through the silver mist, and finds a colossal machine: gears, chains, cogs, plates, etc., all dormant. They also find a deactivated mechanical man, and the Navy history and civilian architect, both dead. Exploring further out, Zinra encounters a squad of clockwork soldiers, who pursue her and attack the party. They defeat the metal men, save for one, who escapes by leaping down into the depths of the mountain-filling machine. The party explores further, hoping to find some way of destroying or deactivating the machine, which has started to function, doing they know not what (but assume it's nothing good). The find a system of chains they might disrupt, but are suddenly attacked by another level of the machine's defense mechanisms: two clockwork guardians and a mighty clockwork mage.

The party is hard pressed in this battle, and Arkakas dies. Bostix is dropped as well, but before the party can come to his aid, the mage stands down as a strange tentacled creature appears....

Time is the Longest Distance

Session Date: 2020-05-29

The newly appeared creature converses with the clockwork mage in a strange, fluting language as Ember races to Bostix and heals him. Luna and Ember help Bostix to his hooves as the mage dematerializes. The party watches uncertainly as the tentacled creature causes a glowing box of many colored squares to appear in the air and starts moving them around upon it. Luna approaches the creature, who seems to be ignoring them, to ask it questions, but somehow it seems to know all she was about to ask, and answers before she can: it is a member of the Great Race of Yith, the machine is a "Time Manipulator" by which the Race travels in time, and this one had gotten lost until the party activated enough of its systems, allowing it to be detected. The Yithian, who seems to see past, present, and future as all happening at once, says it is fully activating the machine and taking it back to the "time steams", and the party should leave. They grab Arkakas's body and flee the machine, helped by the Yithian.

In the meantime, the activation of the machine has started an massive earthquake in the mountain that Port Tellio is built into, and the party and the Ketten Royal Navy is forced to evacuate it. They all watch in horror from the ships at sea while the base collapses into itself, killing hundreds, as the machine which had been (unbeknownst to anyone) supporting it disappears, moving to a different set of spacetime coordinates. The Navy debriefs the party, starts to reclaim its dead, and has a ceremonial burial at sea for its them. The Navy offers the some honor to the party for Arkakas, but they elect to take his body to Sibok Ecot Yaool, which the Navy facilitates aboard the KNS Thunderstrike. The Navy continues to pick up the pieces after the calamity.

The party arrives two days later in Sablos with the magically preserved body of Arkakas, which they take immediately to the Shrine of Symunon. Sibok seems to know already, by means of a vision from Symunon, that he is dead, and is heartbroken. He does his duty as a death priest, however, and with his attendants, prepares the body for burial. Meanwhile the party returns to the guildhall and breaks the bad news to Camarion Llandos VII, who is crushed. They also are introduced to the halfling man with him, Otirry Steelfarmer, who they are told had appealed for membership in the Legion while they were on the Chibouholms. He accompanies the party to Arkakas's funeral in the small plot behind the Shrine, reserved for the beloved of Symunon.

Back at the guildhall, Llandos reveals that this death has been the last straw: he is retiring and giving the guild to the party.They are stunned, but they cannot refuse. The party starts to get to know Otirry, who explains he is a fighter from Oerth, teleported here to escape a mercenary band that was hunting him. Bostix takes an immediate dislike of him because he is a halfling, but the rest of the party warms to him, accepting him as a member on a provisional basis. The next day Llandos keeps his word, drawing up the paperwork to give the guild to the party and having them sign it. He takes an amount from the treasury and moves out, saying he intends to buy a small house in the wine hills to the north and maybe work on his memoirs/a history of the Legion. At any rate, his is permanently retired.

A few days pass as the party gets used to all the tasks involved in running an adventuring guild, such as managing the books and getting customers. They learn that business comes usually by word of mouth/connections, which they start to build. Bostix does his part by walking the streets with a sandwich board. They also find a new pub, The Wrinkled Sail, where they continue to befriend Otirry. A few days later, business comes: Hafil Nasri, the mayor of Bone Town, visits and explains that his town, in the Desert of Pliny, was recently buried in sand as a nearby huge, ancient sand dune was a mysteriously blown down all at once (and onto them). They dug out, losing a few lives, and discovered that where the dune stood now stands three strange structures: a large obelisk with several surrounding smaller ones, the remains of a tower with a huge glowing crystal at his center, and a deep pit with some stone structure suspended at its center. The townsfolk want the party to explore the structures, make sure they are safe, and find for them any valuables therein.

The party travels to Bone Town through the Hedeos Mountains with the mayor, and sees the huge skeleton that gives the town its name. Otirry swears it is that of a dragon, but the rest of the party assures him that dragons never existed and are just kid's stories. The party stays in the mayor's luxury tent that evening, has a big breakfast the next morning of dates, goat's milk, and mangoes, and then rides camels with the mayor to the obelisks. While they are exploring them, a sandstorm arises, and several accursed defilers swarm in to attack the party. With difficulty, the party defeats them, and while they rest in the shadow of the great obelisk, Ember finds a way to open it, revealing stone stairs going down. The party heads down, finding a cool, pleasant, garden-like building, with many rooms, some with treasure, others with traps. They go left, and are attacked by swirling red clouds that smell like blood.

The Black Angel

Session Date: 2020-06-05

The party battles the vampiric mists, destroying them, leaving only splats of blood on the tiled floor and walls. Drained and wounded, the party takes a long rest, during which they hear creatures moving in the hallway ahead, but see nothing. They continue to explore, and are attacked by three angatras, who give them trouble but are eventually destroyed. The party finds torture chambers, and the quarters of torturers, all empty. They next discover a throne room with a wounded, tortured angel, Abalon, chained to the throne. He pleads with them to free him, and shares how he was summoned, deceived, captured, and tortured. He mentions his main tormentor, a necromancer named Udralak the Extinguisher. After he convinces the party that he will not harm them, they free him, and, after resolving a crisis of conscience in favor of good, he is redeemed, regaining his radiant angelic form. Abalon warns them of the necromancer again, and disappears in a pillar of flame.

The party leaves this complex and heads to the next structure, the remains of the lower floor of a great round tower. The party investigates an odd structure at its center, finding a way to open it, as well as the names of people (who lived thousands of years ago) and creatures on pillars around the structure. The party enters the central structure and finds themselves in long hall, where two stone golems attempt capture and take them away, but the party destroys them. The party explores the rest of this complex, finding it to be some king of prison, full of dead humanoid bodies and monsters that are busty eating them. They also find a portal, and are transported to another structure.

Finding themselves in a long hallway, they explore a series of rooms that seem like temples devoted to death (complete with bubbling pools of blood) and an office and living quarters. Some wizard's lair, surely, presumably that of the aforementioned necromancer. Exploring on, the party encounters and destroys four female ghosts, and then meets a male human, pale of skin and skeletal of face, maybe 60 years old, in a purple robe, yellow cape, and pointy purple hat. He is confused, disoriented and cannot remember who he is or where he is, but from the things he says, he is from very, very long ago. Again, this is probably Udralak. He suddenly tries to flee the structure, as if he had just remembered something. Bostix grabs him, but the wizard uses a spell to transport himself, Otirry Steelfarmer, and Bostix somewhere...

They rest of the party races back the surface, and finds those three next to the third structure revealed by the vanished sand dune, a great pit with a strange structure suspended at its center. The wizard tries to escape, but the party ties and gags him, and debates whether they should kill him, simply for being a necromancer. The explores the structure in the pit, and a staircase at its center takes them back into the complex they were just in, which is apparently bigger on the inside, or is in an extradiemensional space. They party interrogates the wizard, who admits to having recovered his memory: going to the surface broke the last of whatever spell had buried his complex and taken away his memory. He admits to being Udralak, but seems oddly relaxed and cheerful for someone the party is deciding they should definitely kill. They find out why an instant later when five mummies attack!

An Evening at The Wrinkled Sail

Session Date: 2020-06-13

As the party battles the mummies, Otirry Steelfarmer has an idea, and brutally stabs Udralak through the neck, killing the helpless necromancer instantly. This frees the mummies of their summons, and they attempt to return to their crypts, but they party burns and slashes them to dust. They then leave the lair with the wizard's body, returning to Bone Town and briefing the mayor. He thanks them, pays them, and the town throws an all-night party in their honor. The next day the party returns to Sablos, as the townsfolk sets off the plunder the now-cleared dungeons.

The party arrives three nights later, and sleeps the journey off. The next day they go about their business, and Lunafreya Stargazer proposes that that they all go out together to have dinner and drinks that night at The Wrinkled Sail. Bostix is suspicious as to why she is so insistent, but can't figure it out. Instead, he, Otirry, and Zinra go shopping, with Bostix seeking a lute, but not find any to his liking. Otirry strikes out likewise in his search for a magic rapier.

That evening the party goes to the Sail, finding it full of regulars as well as a few people that they've never seen, but taverns attract all sort of people all the time, so no big deal. Bostix befriends a drunken dwarf, and gets in a skirmish with some rough, crude, and aggressive dock workers, which Zinra quickly ends. Thereafter it's free food and beer from the grateful bar owner, Tasoula Kritikouli and her daughters. Meanwhile, Otirry makes little progress at making friends, especially among the non-regulars, who seem tense and like they are waiting for something.

Eventually Zinra is fed up and leaves. Right after she does so, a gnome from Casar leaps upon a table, draws a pistol, and orders everyone not interested in the "bidding" or the "map" to leave. The commoners do so, the bar keeps close the bar, and, not knowing what's going on, the party begins to leave as well, but Luna urges them to stay, saying they will want to see this. They ask her see what? as the gnome acknowledges all of the bidders in attendance, including Luna and the party. He then pulls an yellowed, tied scroll from his coat and, hinting that the scroll is a map which shows the way to a very valuable long-lost dwarven hold, he starts the bidding at a mere 100 gp.

The party, reluctantly, following Luna's lead, bids, and the bidding goes as high as 1001 gp. The others bidders get angry and aggressive as the party wins with that bid from Ember, and suddenly a fight over the scroll breaks out, all v.s. all. In the chaotic battle Ember is deeply confused and Bostix cursed with a Crown of Madness, but Luna and Otirry manage to secure the map from a tiefling thief. As the battle turns against them, the other bidders escape, as does Bostix, with the map, galloping back to the guildhall, where the others eventually catch up with him.

Zinra is dragged out of bed to see what the party has found: an ancient map, showing Sablos Island as it was about 3000 years ago, including as being governed by Dwarf warlord named Karak Azgul from a hold in the Myrmrion Peaks. The party decides to go explore the hold, but first waits a few days to see if they are being followed or are attacked by the other bidders. During the next five days, Ember makes a copy of the map as well as fake maps, and, sure enough, the thief they fought is found in the hall after he steals a map. They party finds him by throwing flour everywhere, and he is captured and eventually killed, after Luna blurts out that the map is a fake.

The party leaves the city after Bostix receives a custom lute he commissioned, engraved with the image of the party, and begins to take lessons from Mirimey Veka. They travel the South Road and find a military camp where Jemnos used to be, a single door being all that's left. They travel through Messide, the Kyrion Forest, along the banks of the Halia, and into the Forest of Urios. They climb the peak in which the Hold is said to lie, and find an entrance beyond a hole in the rock face. Following a tunnel, they emerge into a cavern which holds the entryway to a massive stone fortress of the dwarves, thousands of years old and seemingly long abandoned. They enter, encountering and slaying a swarm of cranium rats, and finding a few items of treasure. The exploration continues...

Secrets of the Dwarves

Session Date: 2020-06-19

The party searches the rest of the hold's entrance area, beginning to wonder what happened to the dwarves. There's no sign of battle, invasion, disaster, or even a wide-scale evacuation, as many things were left behind. Most things are also remarkably well-preserved. As they try to continue deeper into the structure, Ember finds the hallway blocked by an illusory stone wall, one that was NOT there when they first entered. Bostix charges through it, and the party finds themselves in a large living area.

While they are exploring its many rooms and finding more signs of normal daily life, Lunafreya Stargazer alerts the party to another swarm of cranium rats, which skitter past and seem to be... chanting. That chanting pays off, as suddenly a furious demon appears, and with the rats, attacks the party. The party fights, and Bostix is charmed by the rats, used by them to attack the party. The rats meanwhile run off and barricade themselves inside a room, preventing the party from killing them as Bostix continues to savage them. Luna finally gets the door open, and Zinra Ravara slays the last rats, freeing Bostix, who says sorry by pouring everyone a beer.

The party rests for a bit, then goes left, as they are wont to do. In a area full of many sleeping quarters, they are attacked by three horrific venom troll when one of them grabs Luna, who is very nearly killed in the ensuing battle. With the help of poison resistance and Ember's fire, the party finally triumphs, but is seriously wounded and winded. They go into one of the bedrooms to take a long rest, while Dog stands guard outside. After about 4 hours, he starts barking at something, but nothing seems to be there. By the end of the rest, however, he has disappeared without a trace. Zinra manages to track him nonetheless, leading to another area and a strange sound: children playing.

The party investigates, discovering a githyanki creche, which Ember remembers is where these beings, normally denizens of the Astral Plane, come to raise their children, due to the non-ageing effects of their usual home. There are seven or eight young githyanki, four caretakers, five warriors, and a githyanki knight. The party decides to announce themselves and ask for Dog back. The githyanki leader is willing to make them an offer to prevent their having to be killed for knowing the location of a creche: come to the Astral Plane as the githyanki's slaves (that was the unwilling fate of the dwarves, he explains). The party refuses, and battle commences. It is tough, and Bostix goes down.

Ember goes for a desperate solution: she Dimension Doors next to the children and threatens to burn them unless the warriors and leader allow the party to leave. The party gets Dog back as the leader surrenders, walks into the creche room, and then triggers a device that opens a tube portal, white light washing over everyone. When the party can see again, they are floating helplessly in the infinite astral mists, while the githyanki board a dwarf-operated void cruiser and shoot off into the infinite. Ember figures out how to move on this plane, with its subjective gravity, and the party lands on a mote of elemental earth, where they spend a seeming eternity trying to figure out what to do. They are stranded.

Ember knows that they must find a color pool that goes back to the Prime Material Plane, but has no idea how to find one. They have no choice but to travel until they find one, even it that takes the rest of eternity. An unknown time later, they come across an astral skimmer, where they meet Ukora Fellesfar, who, after hearing their plight, offers to help them get back IF they will help her get revenge on her "rival" Ekelis Asseum, who has done her some great wrong she won't talk about. They party agrees, having no real choice.

Fellesfar shows them around her ship, but is suddenly is grabbed and teleported away by some huge black creature. The party tries, with little success, to control the ship, and explores the wizard's belongings, finding few clues. They decide that most likely Fellesfar was captured by her rival, and that their bet is to continue on and rescue her (the ship seems to be automatically set on its destination). After another time period that could be 10 minutes or 10000 years, they see a huge mote of earth ahead with a great temple set upon it... and many catapults magically loading themselves to fire.

Astral Weeks

Session Date: 2020-06-26

The catapults fire, and the ship is hit twice, taking serious damage. The party fires back with the ship's ballistas, and makes their way to the big rock, either by astral flight or anchoring and pulling in the ship. They try the temple-like building's massive iron doors, but cannot open them. They hear beings speaking an unknown language within. They decide to scout around the building for another entrance, and find a plugged water spout, which Otirry Steelfarmer is able to climb into. He sneaks around the building like he was a rogue, avoiding patrols of its defenders, trying to open the front door for the party, until he doesn't. Strange green-skinned brutes attack him, but the rest of the party is able to come to his aid when Ember Dimension Doors herself and Luna inside, followed by Bostix ripping the door open.

The party slays the brutes, then is attacked by a huge snake creature with a human female face. Due to some unorthodox tactics, they surprise and kill it very easily. They then decide to take a rest, but it is interrupted by another unknown humanoid, who signs for them to follow him. They do, and are lead to the throne room of Ekelis Asseum, the master of this strange place, where they see him, an orange energy cat, a blue giant with a wand, and the astral tracker who nabbed Ukora Fellesfar and is holding her, securely bound. Asseum demands they stop or he kills their master, but the party explains that they just met her, and only want to go home.

Asseum says he can get them home himself, IF they do something for him. He asks what they have of value, and when they can tempt him with nothing, he suggests a service instead, since they are adventurers. He demands they they bring him the eye of an astral dreadnought, and he will take them home. Fellesfar's life, he says, is none of their concern. They party huddles out of ear and telepathy shot and debates what to do. They think about trying to get the eye of a dreadnought, but decide that attacking such a mighty creature would be suicide. Instead they opt to attack Asseum and force him to return them to the Prime Material Plane. Ember walks up and manages to grab the energy cat in her Bag of Capturing.

Battle begins, with Asseum and the blue giant, Yuel, using mighty spells and managing to knock Ember and Otirry unconscious. The astral tracker and Ukora seem to have disappeared while they were debating. Yuel is slain, and Ekelis surrenders, getting crossbow-whipped unconscious by Luna, who drags him before the party, planting her high-heeled boot on his head. Bostix ties the caster into his throne and the party forces him to summon the tracker, Gitel, again. When the being appears, Asseum telepathically offers it his entire fortune if it kills the party, but the party points out that it could have HIM and his entire fortune, if it brings back Fellesfar. It takes the latter deal, returning the wizard and vanishing with the screaming Asseum, saying that he rarely keeps his deals.

After plundering the riches of the the temple, the party goes back to the Thought Crime, where Fellesfar is revived. Deeply humbled by the party's selfless heroism in saving her when they owed her nothing, she pledges herself their permanent ally, gladly taking them to a color pool farm, where out of the many possibilities, they choose to return home. Zinra Ravara lingers last, tempted by the offer to be taken to the Plane of Elemental Air, where her races originally hails from, but decides that she has too many ties back on the Prime Material.

Appearing back where they departed from, the Great Hall of the ancient dwarven hold, they decides to explore it more, finding several treasures, before returning to Sablos. On the way, they ponder the mystery of the disappearance of Jemnos again, and leave their card with the military. They return to the guild hall, finding that what was two weeks to them was a month at home. Exhausted and glad to be back, the party decides to take some serious downtime.

The Royal Mayor's Grand Ball

Session Date: 2020-07-10

For the next month, The Legion of Llandos has no clients and enjoys the time off: after selling the Dwarven artefacts to the Dwarven Cultural and Historical Society in Rock Home, Ember distributes the other treasures from recent adventures to the party and constructs a magical cage in the lower halls to hold the bizarre orange energy cat creature she captured (apparently it is a braxeg). With Bostix's help, she manages, by the end of the month, to tame the creature (she's pretty sure it's tamed, but she doesn't yet let it out of the cage). Bostix and Otirry spend most of the month drinking and carousing, trying, with no success, to find an underground fighting ring. Luna apprentices herself to a shipbuilder at the Royal Shipyards and begins to learn the craft of shipbuilding. Other party members go in for education as well: Otirry learning Dwarven and medicine, and Bostix studying the lute. Zinra does not do much of anything, just hangs out, writing her letters home.

On the first day of the tenth month, Yannis Kuopolis, Third Secretary of the Royal Mayor of Sablos, Konstantikos Yuripedes, arrives at the guildhall and tells the party that they have been selected to be among the honorees at the mayor's annual Grand Ball, which honors distinguished Sablosians. The party agrees to attend, and sets about getting some fancy clothes for the party. Three nights later they arrive at the mayor's mansion, and are introduced to the beautiful people in attendance: nobles, wealthy merchants, higher ups in the military and churches, artists, entertainers, etc. They hob nob with the rich and famous for a while, with Ember and Bostix thrilling the assembled worthies with tales of their adventures, Zinra meeting a nice noble family and agreeing to give Zinra-powered flights, Otirry sharing some war stories with retired generals, and Luna getting laid by two very cute young nobles.

A few hours into the ball, Otirry smells smoke, but sees none. He tells Ember, but she thinks he's had too many champagnes. They notice Luna is missing though, and are going to find her, when several pillars of smoke fill the room, dissipating to reveal many spined devils. The devils attack the party guests, trying to grab certain ones. The party fights back even as more devils appear, eventually slaying them all, but the Royal Mayor is abducted, along with a noblewoman. The party tracks the devils to an open sewer cover, and ventures down into into the sewer to rescue the mayor and noble. They find a dark, dank, stinky, disgusting, and illogically laid-out sewer, where they are promptly attacked by more spined devils, whom they slay. Bostix loses his magic axe in the process, along with his magic hammer when two chain devils ambush them next.

The party is pushed hard, with Ember going unconscious, but they finally defeat the devils. Exploring the sewers further, they come across the dead bodies of humans who appear to be thieves in what appears to be their hideout. Something has brutally killed them all... and is hiding behind magical darkness in the last room. The thing reveals itself to be an ice devil, holding the wounded body of the half-conscious mayor, who, the devil explains, made a deal with the devil. The mayor's end was not fulfilled, and the devil threatens to kill the mayor and take his soul, unless the party makes some kind of better deal, like say all of their souls in return for the mayor's. The party refuses, and the devil even offers to not collect immediately, but no deal. The devil dispels the darkness, chops the mayor's head off, and vanishes into a portal, promising to one day have the party's souls as well.

The party looks for the noblewoman, but finds no sign of her. Opening a safe in the hideout, they find a stack of papers containing blackmail material on dozens of rich and famous people. The party decides to take the mayor's body, head, and the papers up the waiting city guard, who take them and the party to the local guard headquarters, to try to straighten out this mess and notify next of kin and city officials.

Past Due

Session Date: 2020-07-17

The party is interrogated at City Guard Tower Three, but the Guard investigators don't buy their story and lock them in prison for a night, to interrogate them again as to their true role in the mayor's death. In the morning,however, Wylan Legon III gets them exonerated with his money and influence. The party goes home and takes baths and a week off, during which Ember tries and fails to build her food machine, Otirry learns Medicine, Luna works on her shipbuilding apprenticeship, Bostix spreads his story and looses a wrestling match, and Zinra does, again, not much of anything.

Until one late one night, at the end of the week, she is returning to her room and finds a black aarakocra feather by her room door. Spooked, she tries to go elsewhere, but is attacked by four aarakocra assassins. The rest of the party is soon involved, the assassins are defeated, and one is taken alive for questioning. He refuses to talk, and Zinra kills him when he suddenly mentions the names of her husband and children. The party demands that she tell them what is going on, and let them help her, but she refuses, claiming she will just deal with the other assassins who will surely come.

After their attempts to persuade her fail, the part tries to find information in her file in the guild office, but finds that she has none. Luna, Bostix, Otirry, and Ember go to visit Camarion Llandos VII at his house in the hills north of town, and he shares what he knows about Zinra's past: that she was framed for murder, wrongly convicted, and exiled from her planet to protect her family. The party returns to the guildhall, resolved to convince her let them help, but finds her gone. They discover that she has gone to Numia and the House of Stars, likely in order to catch a spelljammer off-world. To beat her there, they buy the use of a teleportation circle from Clowder Finisbaer.

Zinra and the party wait in Numia, separately, until a ship arrives, which just happens to be the Heart of Platinum. To the great frustration of Zigmun Zoola, the party goes to the top of the tower, where they find Zinra in negotiations with Xaphod Bennelbrox and Kerga One-Eye. She is not leaving, it seems, but asking the captain to take a bag of gold to Fythia and hire mercenaries to protect her family from Sulir the Alchemist. The captain finally agrees, Zinra leaves, and the party learns a little more from him about Zinra. A day later, back at the guildhall, and after much argument and persuasion, the party gets her to tell her full story and convinces her to let them travel with her to Fythia, find evidence to prove her innocence, and possibly get revenge on Sulir.

The party prepares for a long voyage, then heads back to Numia, where they are able to engage travel to Fythia aboard the Heart. The party moves into their cramped quarters, the ship leaves Jesenreth (Planet), Zinra takes all but 50 of her gold back, Bostix drinks with the captain, Luna stays on her hammock, and Ember and Otirry appreciate the dark beauty of space as the Heart spelljamms towards the great blue air world.

Sins of the Mother

Session Date: 2020-07-24

The Heart of Platinum flies through interplanetary space towards Fythia for five days, as the party makes friends with the crew (Bostix loses a bagpipe playoff to Mramis Crackelar). They stare astonished at the sight of the great air world, four times the size of Jesenreth, and the Great Trees as they float on its endless winds. The ship winds its way through the massive limbs and docks at a tower in Houlerc. The party, joined by Xaphod Bennelbrox, ventures into the city, trying to find a way to find evidence proving Zinra Ravara's innocence, or at least get them into the mansion of Sulir the Alchemist.

Finally it is decided to simply walk up the evil artificer's house and offer their services as monster hunters with a ship. Sulir's doorman takes their story, but never returns. They party makes their way in, immediately getting attacked by guards with short bows. The party defeats them, and ventures further into the compound, getting attacked again by a trio of mages. The party defeats them, only to have Otirry Steelfarmer challenged to single combat by an aarakocra swordsman with a magic sword, and he loses. The party kills the swordsman, however, healing Otirry, and the party explores the second floor of the mansion, finding nothing of note.

Back on the first floor, however, a previously locked door is now open. Zinra looks in, finding a warrior and a mage, who magically turns the floor transparent, revealing Ruck Ravara, Ella Ravara, and Ekka Ravara, all in a pit, bound and gagged. Sulir enters the room and explains that he sent assassins after Zinra, and captured her family, to tie up any loose ends standing in the way of himself being appointed Chief Advisor to King Zike III. He asks Zinra what she will give to save her family. She says "my life", and Sulir commands her to drop her weapons and kneel to be decapitated, which his warrior almost does, before the party attacks. In the ensuing battle the mage is killed, then the warrior, but Sulir magics himself away. The party flees the compound, Ember having already used her magic hat and bag to get Zinra's family away.

The party arrives back at the ship, after a feather-raising run through Houlerc. The captain orders the Heart to take off, and it does. In the upper atmosphere, however, Sulir appears, grabbing Ella and putting an arcane dagger to her throat, threatening to cut it if the ship does not return to Houlerc, and Zinra surrender to the authorities there. Zinra instead fires at his hand, destroying it. The party savagely attacks the stunned artificer, binding and gagging him as the Heart reaches space. There, Bostix takes the kids below as the party uses Red the braxeg to push Sulir into open wildspace and kill him. The last the party sees of the villain is his psychically drained corpse floating off into the empty void.

The ship flies back to Numia, the Heart leaves for other adventures, and the party returns to the guildhall, where Ember moves into Llandos's old room as the family takes her old one and Zinra's. Ruck, it turns out, is a professional chef, and her takes over all guild cooking duties. The kids begin to be home-schooled during the last two weeks of the year, the kitchen and pantry are expanded for Ruck, and the party rings in the new year with a massive party. All are together and filled with love and joy, while, out in the dark, and old evil plots its revenge...

Accursed

Session Date: 2020-07-31

The party wakes up after their raucous New Year's Eve party, and goes about their morning business: more sleep, breakfast, office work, etc. There's a knock at the door at mid-morning. Lycus Kyrill, a Commander in the Ketten Islands Army, tells them that the army camp defending and investigating the mysterious door where [[Jemnos}} once stood is gone, presumably the same way as the town, replaced by a field of doors. The government wants them to investigate, destroy whatever it is, and get its personnel and the townsfolk back. The Legion quickly realizes it's their old foe the Accursed Archive, and ask for more money, the land where The Lower Deck once stood, and a pink tutu for Bostix. The Army agrees.

The party travels to where the town and camp once were, and find the field of doors. They investigate them, going into one. In a vast library of many rooms and many, many shelves, they battle a Greater air elemental and discover that the townsfolk have been somehow been turned into books in the Archive. They collect a few and continue to explore. They face apparitions of Father Goat, Malzahar Del'anor, Wylan Legon III, and The Master, whom they defeat. Leaving this part of the archive, the party ventures into another, where they face more monsters and find more people books.

Chased by a cloud of poison gas, they exit the second library to rest, but are harassed by the doors, realizing that the Archive is just toying with them. Through the next door, the next morning, they find a ruined library and face a terrific battle against more servants of the archive: skeletal archers, a mage in a skull mask, ghouls, and a large floating skull. Lunafreya Stargazer is almost killed by the necromancer, but the party finally defeats these last minions. The voice of the Archive speaks again, saying it is "tired of the game." The party demands it show itself, and the voice says "through the next door you shall find me." The party steels itself for the final confrontation with the Accursed Archive...

Homecoming

Session Date: 2020-08-7

The party decides to rest first, and while they do so all sound slowly disappears from this part of the Archive. They go back through the door to this place, finding themselves not back in the field of doors, but in another section of the Archive, facing, in the distance, a silent, gargantuan mass of swirling midnight black, icy cold tentacles. They presume that this is the embodiment (master?) of the Archive, known as The Silent One. It does not at first react to them, but suddenly Camarion Llandos VII walks out of the shadows, and urges them to flee. They refuse, and this avatar of The Silent One, for that's what it truly is, attack them, soon to be joined by representations of Sigismund the Keg Golem, Clowder Finisbaer, and Arkakas Malbolgia.

A brutal battle for their lives, minds, and hearts ensues, with the party having to kill the spitting images of their friends and allies. Eventually they push the battle to The Silent One itself, and face a battering from its tentacles and even a storm of books. Finally however, due to Ember keeping the party alive, they beat the aberrations down and strike the killing blow...upon which it and the entire Archive quickly dissolve, leaving the party in mid-air, falling. Ember recognizes the city below as her hometown, Pleus Scon, in the Genasi and Aasimar Confederation, over 4000 miles from Sablos and falling fast...

Ember casts Feather Fall on the party and they set down in the middle of a busy street, almost hitting a fancy horse-drawn carriage. A woman sticks her head out the rear window of the carriage, and its Ember's Aunt Jehny Hasparat. Elated to see Ember, and happy to meet her friends, the ebullient and talkative woman brings the party back to the House of Hasparat mansion, where they meet Ember's grandfather, Lord Memlin Hasparat, and her father, Mekeline Hasparat. They are very happy to see Ember, and throw a feast lunch in her honor. The family and Ember catch up, and they get to know the Legion. The family wants to know if Ember will stay in town now, and try for her Master Artificer Certification. She is noncommittal however, feeling that she has found her niche with the Legion.

After lunch, Ember and her father, down in the mansion's underground workshop, improve the design of Dog. The Legion, that evening, explore the city and the Hasparat family alcohol room, with Otirry Steelfarmer winding up naked and passed on the room's floor. The party helps him sober up, though, and at a late supper Ember's father gives her perfected plans for the food replicator and says he will attempt to get her awarded her Certification in absentia. She is very happy, but still sees her life as being with the Legion. The next day, after lunch, she and party bid farewell to their hosts and are teleported by wizard's assistant back to Jemnos.

Which they find whole and intact, the people unaware that they have been disappeared for months. The party leaves the town the approaching army, and goes back to Commander Lycus Kyrill at the city's Army compound, and receiving their payment: 3000 gp, the deed to the land on which The Lower Deck once stood, and a pink tutu. The party returns to the guildhall and goes about daily life for a week, during which Ember makes up with Red and Bostix begins to draw up plans for his new bar, eventually with the help of Ember. Luna works at her apprenticeship, and Zinra enjoys life with her family.

The first day of the next week, however, breakfast is interrupted by the ground shaking, screams, shouts, bellowing in Giant, and great crashes and thuds coming from outside. The party goes into the street to see the City Guard being demolished by four female hill giant, who are obliterating everyone and everything as they crash down the street towards the guildhall. The party engages the giants, and without too much difficulty defeats them. More Guards and the Army show up to take charge of the scene, and the Legion goes back the guildhall, only to find the Ravara family huddling in the corner as their old stone giant friend Lem sits in their great hall, happy to see them.

Storm King's Thunder, Part I

Session Date: 2020-08-14

The party asks Lem what the heck he's doing there, and he relates that he is now a Dream Walker, like his father before him. That doesn't tell them a whole lot, but he continues: he's there because 1) the Ordning is broken, throwing the giant world into chaos and accounting for the recent attack on Sablos, and 2) Hekaton, king of the storm giants, has gone missing while searching for the murderers of his wife, Queen Neri. Their daughter Serrisa, the new Princess Regent, believes he is being held by villains, and wants the party to find Hekaton, hopefully bringing peace to back to the giants, if the king can restore their place in the Ordning. Lem fades away like waking from a dream, and the party accepts the mission, leaving the next morning for Thoiles Town, after figuring out that a clue Lem gave leads there, on The Sad Manta.

A couple of uneventful weeks into the voyage north, the ship is surrounded by four Syndecol Industries daggerships. An amplified voice from one of the ships demands the return of their "property", meaning Lunafreya Stargazer. Realizing that the party cannot defeat the four powerful spelljammer ships and their well-equipped crews, she goes willingly, telling the party that her time with them has been the best time of her life, and that she loves them. The party wants to fight for her, but she begs them not to as she boards one the ships. Zinra Ravara cannot accept this sacrifice, not when Luna and the others went to such lengths to help her her family. She refuses to let Luna go, and fights savagely against the Syndec agents, along with Otirry Steelfarmer.

In the end, both are defeated, with Zinra almost dead, and the Manta is sunk. The party, most of the crew, and Captain Narlana Mai survive in lifeboats and row for the rocky, steep coast of Marbindor. Zinra swears she will rescue Luna, as soon as the party can re-group, though most of them want to continue with the immediate mission and save Luna sometime later, realizing that the odds against them right now are impossible. Zinra will hear none of it, though, and after the party recoups in the Gretell settlement of Waystation #1, at The Rusty Spade, she leaves the party. The captain and crew, with donations from the party, head for Gretell to find a way to get back on their feet. Disheartened and feeling alone, the remaining members of the Legion travel by dwarven tunnels to Thoiles Town, going off a lead from Captain Mai to find an individual named Igon Millar, whom she says knows everything that happens in the underworld there. If the King was taken through there by some nefarious group, he will know about it.

The party makes their way to The Black Hammer, an old haunt of Bostix's, and gets acquainted with one of his old friends, bar owner and retired mercenary Uindis Cavo. She reveals that Millar will be there later, and sure enough, he suddenly shows up at their table after midnight, conducting some mysterious transaction with Cavo. The party then asks him about the King, and he relates, in exchange for a later favor, that the king was cursed and captured by the Cult of Faerlak, and taken to Weshea. The party crashes in a storeroom of the Hammer and leaves in the morning, after breakfast, on a fast sloop called The Eidolon, under captain Lianel Maxos. That ship takes them north, through Dref Dral and on to Weshea.

Therein the party tries to find clues about this cult by going to a church, and finds by chance a church of Qulphine. While waiting inside to talk to somebody, the party hears the tell-tale signs of a giant attack outside. As the clerics prepare to defend the church from inside, the party rushes out to engage the giants, finding three feet of snow on the ground and four frost giants smashing everything in sight. The party manages to down two of them, but are gravely wounded against two fresh giants. Then a mysterious stanger, Salt, appears atop the battlements of the church and intervenes, healing the party and turning Otirry into a T-Rex. The giants know no fear, and fight on for the glory of their place in the Ordning, but the party and this stranger slay them. The person flips down and introduces himself, stuffing goodberries into the still bewildered Otirry.