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 (meeting door guards Bim Chamfer and Boffo Corbel), 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.

Storm King's Thunder, Part II

Session Date: 2020-08-21

Standing in the snow-covered market square, the party are approached by a group of City Guard, who demand to know who they are and what they doing here: did they bring these monsters, will they now attack the city? The party pleads that they are the good guys, but the guard will hear none of it, and almost arrest the party, before a cleric of Qulphine, the one whom they met first, comes out and vouches for them with the guards, who warn the party to start no further trouble and move off to assist other Guard and Army members who are preparing to drag away the corpses of the giants.

The young human female cleric, who identifies herself as "Alluwey", brings the party back to the meditation room inside the church and asks them if they are in fact seeking the Cult of Faerlak. When the party confirms that they are, she tells them she has an associate who deals with the Cult and who can help them, giving them an address and telling them to meet the man tomorrow at noon. The party goes to the The Grog Barrel, where Salt has a standing contract to play on its rickety stage. He begins to play, and Bostix joins him on the bagpipes, though the combined effect is horrible. Otirry and Ember leave to investigate the place of the next day's meeting, finding it to be a small plaza outside a cathedral of Hephemia. Finding nothing amiss there, they return to the Barrel, where Salt and Bostix have finally found the same tune, bonded through music, and attracted a big crowd to the small dive bar, earning a nice haul in tips.

Otirry joins the "band" as Ember leaves the crowded tavern to rest at The Gentle Willow. The "band" plays until the bar closes, making more money, and the owner asks them to appear the next night. The party begs off, saying they must save the world, though Salt is only in it for the stories and song ideas. The party awakes the next morning, and all find each other at breakfast at the Willow. They walk around the city, enjoying its gardens and public art, until noon, when they return the plaza by the church. Noon arrives, and the promised contact is late. Finally, an elderly male tiefling ambles up, and begins asking the party at lot of questions about what they know about the Cult. When they party reveals a little too much, he suddenly seems to disappear, and several undead beings appear and attack the party.

The party destroys the creatures, has a misunderstanding with the father's clerics, and searches the city for the old tiefling who set the creatures upon them. From a group of street urchin pickpockets, led by Kittia, they discover that the tiefling's name is Krumash, and that he is a very bad and nasty man. The children tell the party they should search for him in the Weshea Slums, where they travel and ask around. They meet Old Woman Butha, who has nothing nice to say about the dastardly Krumash, and gives away the house he is hiding in. The party break in, catching him as he is fleeing to an underground lair. The party ties him up, and uses him to trigger a trap as they explore. They find an alchemical lab dedicated to making necromantic potions, and search the further through the compound, encountering an old human male who tries to flee towards a room with a magical sigil on the ground, but the party captures him.

They force the man, apparently a potion maker in league with the Cult, to tell them where they Cult is: "up north" reachable by using the sigil, which he calls the "teleapparator". The party kills Krumash as he is bound and helpless, deeply shocking Otirry Steelfarmer, who does not accept their reasoning Thatcher are eliminating a villain who will go on to hurt others. They take the old man with them as they step on the teleapparator, appearing on the far northern plains of Itrefaulk, in the lands of the centaur Confederated Tribes, which Bostix recognizes immediatley. Before them is one of the temporary tent city of the Long Eagles, Bostix's own tribe. But it is completely deserted, as if the people there just suddenly left, taking very little. The party stays the night in the tents, hearing centaur gallop in the distance, though none approach.

They next morning they head north, towards the next place in the cycle of the where the tribe builds its cities. Hours later, they see a small group of centaurs approaching, weapons out and war cries sounding. Bostix identifies himelf, and centaurs stop, recognizing him. The group consists of Talassa Redbird, four of her husbands, and her young daughter Lalies Redbird. The chief reveals that the tribes have been corrupted, conquered by what she calls "the skulls," meaning undead. The centaurs slay the potion maker. The party explains their mission, and the centaurs lead them towards where more of the creatures are, explaining that they themselves are part of a small group who resist the undead.

The party and centurs travel at a very fast pace for several hours,with Lalies crushing on Bostix, before the group's scout spies a creature in the distance: some sort of undead warrior, standing over the corpses of several freshly dead centaur. The group hides, and the chief sends her daughter ahead to get a closer look. The young adult centaur, trying to impress Bostix, fires rashly at the undead, missing and giving away their position. The party and the centaurs attack the massive armored, great axe wielding knight, who is powerful but falls to the party and the centaur warriors. When destroyed his armor, cape, axe, and a leather satchel are left behind at the physical form vanishes. Bostix takes the axe, and Otirry discover a map in the satchel which allows Ember figure out where the Cult's headquarters, and Hekaton, much be: the island of The Lich Queen Faerlak, far to the north.

Storm King's Thunder, Part III

Session Date: 2020-08-28

After Ember explains her theory on the whereabouts of Hekaton, Chief Talassa Redbird and her warrior husbands inspect the bodies of the centaurs slain by the undead slayer. After conducting rituals to see their souls safely into the afterlife, she tells the party that she and her men cannot accompany them north to the island, but must stay and continue helping her people. Lalies, however, begs the party and her mother to let her come with them. Her mother allows it, though Bostix is cold and cruel to the girl. She stays with them, and the party heads north.

A day later, they find a band of corrupted centaurs and attack them. After slaying them all, they discover a small amount of treasure and that the centaurs were taking a message somewhere, a message from which Ember figures out that the Cult is planning to drain the King's lifeforce and magical energy to power some sinister ritual. When the party rests that night in a Leomund's Tiny Hut, Lalies asks Ember if Bostix hates her, and why he is so mean to her. She is told that she is too young and immature, which she resents, giving the party the cold shoulder, Bostix especially, but she continues with them.

She leads them almost two days north, where on the frigid northern coast the party finds a black stone structure guarded by two hulking zombies. The party destroys the zombies and dispels the magic locking the door into the building. Inside, they find it to be a massive crypt, full of stone coffins. Exploring it, they find a giant flesh golem guarding a portal. After destroying the monster, they step through the portal and find themselves on the aft deck of a great galleon, anchored just off the coast of the Island of Faerlak. On the ship they find a Cult warlock and several undead conducting a ritual which is drawing energy from Hekaton and beaming it inland, presumably to blast open the magical prison of The Lich Queen Faerlak.

The party attacks, hoping they are in time to disrupt the ritual before it frees the mighty archlich. The battle is brutal, and Bostix nearly dies, as the many of the party are put to sleep by the warlock. Due the heroism of Otirry, Red, and especially Lalies, the party makes a comeback, slaying all of the Cult members and stopping the ritual. As they are deciding what to do with the still unconscious, now full-sized King of the storm giant, his eldest daughter Mirran shows up and claims the body. Ember, however, remembers how the King's older daughters where unhappy with his decisions and possibly complicit in the King's kidnapping and maybe even the death of their mother, who they resented for her closeness to the small folk.

Ember tries to stop Mirran, but the giant smacks her away. Then a great storm starts, and Princess Regent Serrisa shows up with four warriors, and is convinced her sister is responsible. When Mirran tries to escape, the warriors capture her. Serrisa thanks the party, and gives them a diamond worth 10,000 gp. The giants then disappear in the storm, and the party is left to figure out how to get home, which is months away...in the massive galleon they now own.

Into the Dark, Part I

Session Date: 2020-09-04

With the Cult defeated and the giants off settling their family affairs, the party is at leisure to search their new ship, which they discover to be The Dark Lady. They also find some treasure, apparently belonging to the human warlock they slew. Under Bostix's tutelage, the party learns the rudiments of handling the ship and collects ice to make water for the voyage. They sail to the coast of Itrefaulk, where Lalies Redbird takes her leave, telling Bostix to look her up when he needs a mate. The party collects more drinking water and sails south, narrowly avoiding a mysterious whirlpool that appears in the sea.

Halfway to Lutran, they find some castaways, drifting on a piece of wood, apparently having done so for weeks, and being in bad shape. They are Topher and Sina Siguardian, a young girl from a wealthy family and her strange avian bodyguard. The party learns that the ship she was sailing on with her parents and siblings was attacked and destroyed by strange flying ships, which the party learns were from Syndecol Industries, looking for something valuable and kidnapping people, according to Topher, who primarily communicates in sign language. The girls makes friends with the party, especially Dog, whom she names "Baduky Wansigg Tolliver Mekelshans IV."

After seeing the girl to her destination, Lutran, and Topher taking her to live with her aunt and uncle (with TWO Ember mechanical toys!), the party invests in the long-neglected maintenance for the ship, and sells various items found on their adventures, as well as finding out that Arkakas's book was once magical, but is now just a blank book. Salt and Bostix naturally hit up his old haunt Tipsy's Tiny Tavern, where they become, as always, quite popular with their playing. After a week, when the maintenance and provisioning are accomplished, the ship sails south again.

They run into a series of terrible storms, possibly caused by warring storm giant, which throw them off their course. They recover, and sail south again. A month and a half later, after fighting of savage biduzan, and not far from Sablos, they witness the Ketten Royal Navy defeat a group of pirate ships, and sail on. Finally, 8 1/2 months after they left, they dock in Sablos and register their ship with the authorities. They go home, finding the guildhall as they left left it, sans any sign of the Ravara family, and with a hibernating Siggi. They manage to revive him and settle back into normal life, with Ember finally perfecting her food replicator, to her great excitement and so, so many soufflés. Otirry has a conversation with her about the Legion's ethics in handling prisoners, and Ember posts new rules about it in the main hall. Salt reluctantly signs a contract to join the Legion, hoping it pays off in song and story.

Soon after, one afternoon while Ember is copying and revising her design, a black substance flows around the office door. It becomes a portal, and Nildax Do'Arin steps out, smoothing things over with Ember from their last encounter, and explaining that the Queen of Shadows has sent him to employ the Legion to recover an artefact known as the Horn of Hrux from deep in the Underdark, in order that the Queen might stave off a challenge to her rule from a conquering general. The party accepts the mission, and Do'Arin uses the Queen's Ring of Portals to transport them to a place aptly named the Forest of Mushrooms. Exploring, the party deals with poisonous and aggressive fungi. They forge ahead, and Bostix becomes aware that gun-armed adversaries are around the next corner of the tunnel. Successfully sneaking up, he reaches for the barrel as it points at him...

Into the Dark, Part II

Session Date: 2020-09-11

Bostix grabs the drow gunslinger's pistol away from him, but fails to hit him with it. A fight breaks out between the party and a group of five gunslingers, evidently agents of the High General's. The party kills two, and the others retreat into the dark caverns beyond their sight. The party leaves a grease fire and an illusory wall to keep them from following, and explores the other tunnels and chambers of this region. They ultimately decide to come back the original way, however, and are attacked again by the remaining gunslingers. They kill another one, and the other two flee deeper into the Mushroom Forest.

The party pursues, but finds no sign of them. They do encounter another agent of the Queen's, however, sent to watch over them and make sure they do not ally with the Queen's enemies. The watcher points the way to the illithid complex, and the party enters, after Bostix shoves in its heavy metal door. They find themselves in a strange, twisted, green metal nightmare of sinuous shapes and pools of brine frothing with illithid tadpoles. The party explores the vast complex, discovering that another set of the High General's agents are there too, invisible and attempting to let the party do the hard work. The drow agents trick the party into getting trapped behind an energy screen, but Salt teleports past it and disables it. Finding the drow party gone, the Legion continues to explore the complex.

They find a vast, open chamber, in which their old foe The Master is ladling the brine of a pool over his pet/lover (?) the Sleeping Eye. Beyond them is a 4ft. long, 200 lb. curved horn, evidently the Horn of Hrux. The party debates strategy, seeing no sign of the drow party, finally deciding to just attack The Master and the beholder. The battle goes poorly for the party, with Otirry being charmed and Bostix nearly petrified. Things are not improved when Salt just up and runs away. Ember's bolts into The Master turn the tide, however, and the Eye escapes with the illithid's body by means of some sort of mind flayer teleproter. The party takes the Horn and escapes the complex.

Following the map given to them by Do'Arin, the party finds a drow moving tunnel, which takes them rapidly to Tynankrel. The party is met by warriors and escorted to the Shadow Chamber, where they encounter Do'Arin and the Queen of Shadows herself. While Nildax is taking the Horn to the impatient Queen, the sounds of violence are heard outside the room. The party prepares for battle while the Queen takes possession of the Horn. There's a pounding on the door, Salt throws it open, and two drow shadowblades enter and attack. They are joined soon by the High General Shulvallriel Coloara herself, and the party fights against the three with Nildax and the Queen, who promptly morphs into a giant spider. The General and her blades nearly kill Ember and Otirry, and the General manages to seize control of the both the Queen's throne and the Horn, which allows her to take control of the Shadow Chamber and uses its abilities to savage the party and kill Do'Arin.

Though the party's bravery and toughness, however, they turn the tide and the shadowblades are slain. The General battles on, before sensing herself losing and attempting to flee, only to be sliced in half by Bostix.

War Stories

Session Date: 2020-09-18

With the High General and her aides slain, the party is faced with a squad of drow warriors, rushing finally to their Queen's aid. The Queen is in hysterics over the loss of her lover Nildax, but orders the warriors to stand down, and instead to clear away the dead and the mess in her chamber, as she talks to the party. She says she finds them capable and heroic, for upperworlders, and declares that she will give them a gift no other non-drow has. She sends a warrior away on a special mission, then goes into her office and draws up documents that grant the party ownership of a large apartment in a nearby spire of her royal complex, and the right to live in Tynankrel in perpetuity. The party accepts, but also wants to be paid their fee. The Queen tells them to check out the apartment, as they should find more than enough of value there.

The party is led by a couple of warriors to their new digs, and find it to be a large suite of rooms on an upper floor of a nearby spire. Rooms that were until VERY recently lived in by someone and their family, as the party finds nearly all of their stuff still there, just as they left it. Apparently, the Queen kicked someone out and give their home to the party. The party rests, and then explores the apartment. They gather that it used to belong to a wealthy, scholarly aristocrat of some kind, maybe a government official or advisor. Some one on the outs with the Queen, certainly. The party finds in a safe a large amount of platinum, and faces a moral dilemma: should they at least return the former owner's belongings? It is right to keep his/her/their living place? The party's consciences are eased somewhat when Ember discovers that the former owner was a devout follower of Hrux. They decide to keep the money and request to have the persons' things moved out.

They then look for a tavern, but nothing they like is nearby in his drow city. Ember does make friends, eventually, at Mizzarel's Fine Cheese and Wine, and gets some language books from a school. The party eventually packs up what they can carry from the apartment and ask an audience with the Queen, that she might send them home with her Ring of Portals. She does so, and the party spends a night and a day relaxing back at the guildhall, trying by various means to learn Undercommon. The next night, after dinner, comes a knock at the door.

It's Vinarak Fragern, a bounty hunter from Oerth, who just happens to have been the lieutenant of Otirry Steelfarmer's old army unit. This leads to some tension, because Fragern lead him in doing some terrible things in the heat of war. Otirry turns him away, until Fragern tells him that he is on Jesenreth (Planet) to capture Dar El-Burem, a hated and long-sought war criminal from the Greyhawk Wars. Fragern believes the Scarlet Brotherhood member to be in Sablos and have a hideout in the King's Pavilion. Otirry agrees to join forces to hunt El-Burem, and Fragern signs a contract with the Legion. They walk to the nearby theater, finding it oddly closed, dark, and quiet on a weeknight, with a signs saying that shows are cancelled and no refunds! Salt wants blood.

The party breaks in a side door, discovering and avoiding a pair of monstrous grey renders. They find a secret door leading to the underground hideout, where they kill a sleeping, drunken guard. They party confronts El-Burem, four of his monks,and a yuan-ti wizard as they plot ways to infiltrate his majesty's government, and a battle breaks out. Otirry is nearly killed several times by the brutal El-Burem, and Fragern banished by the wizard, but the party slows defeats the monks, causes the wizard to retreat, and at last Otirry slays El-Burem, to Fragern's chagrin. The bounty hunter gives Otirry's the criminal's items, pays the Legion's fee, and takes the body back to collect part of the bounty. The party flees the hideout, avoiding the sleeping grey renders and vowing to have revenge on that wizard one day. They return to the guildhall and sleep off their wounds.

Hard Days' Knights

Session Date: 2020-09-25

The party heads home from the King's Pavilion, leaving the unfinished business for the next day. The next day starts very early, when a group of young adventurers calling themselves the Knights of Sablos bangs on their door, explaining that they'd love to have the Legion mentor them AND they have a map to the long lost lair of an old bandit "king", Mortan the Brutal. The party, once they are sufficiently awake, agree to take the noobs on and accompany them to their dungeon, sailing the The Dark Lady to Xios and then setting out over the southern plains of Sablos Island, finding the entrance to the bandits' lair.

The combined parties venture inside, finding hallways! More hallways! Dust! Doors, and rooms! Skeletons, and a chest full of gold. Then they stumble into sahuagin, unusual so far in land. They defeat the creatures easily and explore the rest of the level. They find stairs down to the next level and venture down, the noobs learning from the Legion the Rules of Adventuring. They battle more powerful sahuagin, who are apparently collecting treasure from the dungeon. They explore more, learn more lessons,including about mimics, and then find the way down the third level, where they are promptly assaulted by very strong sahuagin warriors. In the fight, the talkative young wizard Jerrassia Kylos is decapitated by the creatures. The Knights are shattered by her death, but the disciplined Legion battles on, soon slaying the creatures.

Ember then revivifies her body, even reattaching her head in a mighty display of artificer magic, returning her to life, to the utter astonishment of the Knights. The party, exhausted, decides to rest inside a Leomund's Tiny Hut. While they do so, however, several sahuagin warriors come and inspect the opaque hut, unable to get inside. The party sees a female sahuagin caster arrive, and she orders the warriors to watch over the dome. When the dome fades, the party springs upon the sahuagin. The Knights, having learned their lesson, retreat and fight well at range, while the Legion takes the lead in melee. The heroes are still hard pressed, especially when the caster returns, but they slay the warriors and the caster, with Jerrassia getting the killing blow with a fire bolt. She celebrates a little too much.

It Came From the Stars

Session Date: 2020-10-02

With the sahuagin caster burnt to a crisp and Jerrassia still celebrating, The Legion of Llandos asks the Knights of Sablos if they want to continue to explore the dungeon or leave. They elect to see their first dungeon to the end, but let Bostix take the lead. He scouts ahead down a long hallway, hearing creatures moving and voices ahead. More sahuagin, and the sound of water splashing. The parties make it to the final room, seeing a sahuagin baron seeing off the last of his people as they leap with some scavenged treasure into a fast-flowing underground river. The baron attempts to leap after them, but the party stops and slaughters him. The Knights then take an account of the remaining treasure, and the parties explore the rest of the dungeon, then depart (leaving two sahuagin warriors trapped in a room).

The parties return to Xios and relax with a ale and a meal at The Flask and Ghost. They then board The Dark Lady and sail back to Sablos. On the way, the Knights get their share of the treasure from Ember, and it's more wealth than they've ever had, thanks to Legion's allowing them to keep the Lion's share. They thank the Legion profusely, and admit that despite the danger they are hooked on adventuring. Upon arrival at Sablos, the Knights go to depart, but the Legion asks them for dinner. After dinner the Legion discusses granting the Knights junior membership in the Legion, and the offer is accepted, with tears and rejoicing. The Knights cannot believe their good fortune as they take up rooms at the guildhall.

Three weeks of peace and quiet pass by, as the party pursues their interest in language learning, music, and pranks on each other. The full Legion visits the villa of Camarion Llandos VII for dinner one night, who is very happy to see his beloved Legion thriving again, moved to tears even. The next day there's a knock on the guildhall's door. Ember answers it, and standing there is a male tortle with a deep layer of mushrooms, moss, lichens, fungi, molds, etc., on his shell. He says his name is Leeram Oot, and he is here because the stars told him it's time. Time for him to be there with the Legion. Ember invites him in to discuss what he means, and he sits down for some water with the party. He explains that he is a hermit and druid from the Kyrion Forest who has been informed by his study of "ass-trology" that something "big" is coming for the Legion in a about 1 to 4 years, and that they will need his help, and, well, here he is. The Legion accepts him, and he moves into the guildhall.

Late the next evening, as the Legion sleeps, there's a frantic knock on the door. A government official is there, and shoves a bag of coins into Otirry's hands, who answered the door. The offical, who came in a large carriage drawn by four white horses and accompanied by several soldiers, explains that the main palace of Lyndear Palagos, the Grand Duke of Sablos and King Oriel's brother, has been invaded by "ghosts", and the Legion must come at once to clear it, as the Guard and the Duke's men have failed. The Legion hastily assembles and rides in the carriage to the noble's estate, which they find to be surrounded by the Army. They go in, appreciating the Duke's taste in interior design, especially the indoor fountain.

They explores the vast house, finding it dark, quiet, and deserted, until Bostix hears creatures speaking Sylvan. Fey, apparently planning to ambush them. The party attacks them instead, and the creatures turn out to be assorted evil fey: alps, kikimoras, and selang. The party is hard-pressed, but gains the upper hand, slaying most and turning others into slugs. One of the kikimora, who calls herself Clowdida, surrenders and is taken prisoner. Some of the fey esacpe, and the party gets out of Clowdida that she is part of something called "The War Band", a militant off-shoot of the well-known fey Wild Hunt lead by the Lord of the Hunt, an archefey somehow deposed from the Wild Hunt. The party turns Clowdida over to some bewildered soliders outside the estate's wall, and returns to continue clearing the palace.

The Most Dangerous Game

Session Date: 2020-10-09

Continuing to explore the once again dark and still palace, the party finds in the Great Hall a huge obelisk with glowing, pulsating runes. Ember determines that this is likely part of how the War Band reached this plane. Having cleared the first floor, the party goes upstairs, and searches more rooms, finding no fey but a pretty luxurious bathroom, which Salt enjoys. He is still on the pot, in fact, when the rest of the party discovers and is attacked by a Green Knight of the Woods, an ijiraq, a korrigan, and a three quickling. The battle is tough, but the party prevails, slaying them all. They then explore the rest of the floor, discovering strange rapidly growing vines, rampant bushes, and another portal to the Feywild. Boxtix manages to destroy this one by breaking its stone frame.

The Legion explores the rest of the floor, dispelling a magical fire and finding a set of smashed shrines. They also go up the stairwell of that tower, finding themselves facing a massive and powerful portal. They decide to go back down and approach it from the other side, going up the stairs of the tower opposite. They emerge in a suite of very fancy rooms, likely the main rooms of the Duke's family, and are attacked by a dullahan, also known as a Headless Horseman. Bostix is knocked out, but the party manages to destroy the creature. Then they hear creatures arguing in Sylvan, who turn out to be some faerie-like creatures who decide, ultimately, not to challenge Bostix and the other conquerors of the mighty dullahan.

The party explores farther, finding the strangest rooms yet: a room full of snow, a room stuffed full of flowers, and a room containing a rare type of fire elemental. After Otirry loses his sword to the creature while trying to "charge" it with elemental fire, Ember manages to communicate with the creature, who was brought here against his will and just wants to go home to the Plane of Elemental Fire. The party offers to help it, and Ember takes it in her bag until they can find a way to do so. Exploring on, they encounter a very cross and defiant giant raccon, who tells them they will fall before the full might of the War Band and the Lord of the Hunt. When the party shows no fear, the creature manages to summon from the portal the Lord himself, who savages attacks.

The extremely powerful archfey immediately charms three of the party and gravely wounds Ember, but she figures out that wounding her friends might allow them to shake off the Lord's influence. It works, and eventually the party are all back in control of themselves and they lay into the Lord, who still manages to almost kill then. Salt flees to get help, and the party defeats the archfey when he by chance loses his mighty Huntsman's Spear. With the fey vanquised, the party collapses bloodily onto a very expensive rug to rest, as the Army finally approaches the palace and Salt goes to relieve himself in an Army tent.

My Home is the Sea, Part I: Gnawing and Gnashing

Session Date: 2020-10-16

The party, exhausted and wounded from their battle with the War Band and the Lord, rest for a while on the Grand Duke's rug, mostly ignoring the Army officers, city officials, and Duke's servants who come to question them. They learn that the palace is free of fey, but an unknown number of them probably escaped. When they are feeling up to it, the party, with a bonus of five rubies from the Duke, returns to the guildhall and goes straight to sleep, sleeping late...

Only to be woke the next morning by the members of the Knights of Sablos, who make them breakfast in return for Bostix's exaggerated tales of their adventure. The party enjoys an extended breakfast, and Jerrassia Kylos is introduced to Ember's food replicator. Weeks pass without a client, and the party goes about downtime activities: learning Dwarven, selling a suit of magic armor, touring the city taverns to play music, and general fiddling around. A client does come, an area butcher who has a giant rat problem, and Ember decides to send the Knights. They go in the morning and return that night, wounded and exhausted, telling a harrowing tale of not only vicious giant rats but also skeletons, found in some kind of crypt deep underneath the butcher shop, whome they narrowly defeat.

The Knights tell their story upon returning, but are then reminded that they haven't collected the 100 gp for their mission. Aveniel Thallassa slips away to find it, but does not return in a timely fashion. Grumbar Torveld goes looking for her, but he does not return either. Salt and Jerrassia go, finding the butcher shop deserted. They go to Torveld's flat and find him disoriented and recovering from a nasty bump on the head, one Aveniel had given him when he tried to get her to return with the money. They track her down at a pub, where she is furiously gambling, and refuses to stop. Salt realizes that she might be under a curse, one given her by a brass ring she found in the crypt. He uses Greater Restoration on her, breaking the curse, and they all return to the guildhall, having learned an important Rules of Adventuring.

The party throws a big party for the New Year's Festival, and the first week of the year 1119 passes without incident. Then Memnia Jolen comes to the guildhall, explaining that the Temple of the Sea wishes to hire the Legion to find an expedition they sent to an ancient underwater city called Maranassa to recover some ancient texts of the faith of Raketra. Her husband Frodish Jolen lead that mission. The party accepts the mission, and decides to take the Knights on The Dark Lady as its crew. The parties prepare and the Lady departs, sailing straight south from Sablos toward the coordinates given.

One month in, their ship is attacked by two gnoll Ravager ships, along with a strange flying vessel piloted by a goblin sorcerer. The gnoll ships pound the Lady with cannon and close to board, but Bostix rams one of the ships and the parties fight hand to hand with the gnolls, eventually slaying them all. Meanwhile, Salt destroys the flying ship and its pilot by flying up to it, turning into a giant ape, crashing it into the sea, and pummeling to death the pilot. He then turns into a giant shark and assaults the rammed gnoll ship. The second ship turns to flee, and the party lets them go, freeing the damaged ship and letting its non-combatant crew of 12 live. The parties repair the Lady's battle damage and sail south again for another month, encountering no more resistance.

They arrive at the coordinates, which appear to be just a random spot on the open ocean. Leaving the Knights in charge of the ship, they attune to the amulets given them by the Temple that allow them to breath underwater and dive in, swimming down over 500 ft. On the seafloor they find a great fissure, which Bostix investigates, only to be grabbed by the tentacles of a huge octopus-like monster.

My Home is the Sea, Part II: Fifty Fathoms Down

Session Date: 2020-10-23

With Bostix in the tentacles of a great Leviathan, the party has no choice but to fight. The creature grabs and lashes with his many tentacles, and sprays clouds of poisonous, blinding ink, but the Legion finally slays it, with Leeram Oot battling as a giant octopus, Leeramtopus, after using Wild Shape. The party swims on, discovering a maze-like structure of rocks. Exploring it, they are attacked by two giant sharks with gems in their heads which fire destructive beams of light. The party triumphs over the obviously modified-by-someone creatures, and swims on.

Eventually they come across the ancient wreckage of a sunken ship. They find various treasures and non-valuable items in its remaining intact chests, crates, and barrels. They swim on, finding after a while another sunken ship, this one broken in two but much more recent, maybe only a few decades old. The party is quickly set upon by a patrol of kuo-toa, consisting of a shaman, seven warriors, and some manner of undead humanoid in their service. The party is hard pressed after all of their struggles, and Otirry goes unconscious, but he is saved and the fishfolk are slain. The party loots the bodies, in true adventurer fashion.

The Legion swims on through the ocean floor murk, finding after a while an area where appearently some ship jettisoned its cargo. The party finds treasure among the former cargo of some manner of freighter, then swims on. After crossing a wide area of empty sea floor, they find, partially embedded in the sand, the skeleton of a huge, reptilian, winged, horned creature. Otirry claims it was a dragon, which he knows to be historical facts, but Ember still firmly believes such things were myths. But something else is among the nearby rocks: whatever it is charms Bostix and draws him near, adding him to the collection of random objects on its back. It is a large purple octopoid creature of an unknown sort, and there are two of them.

The creatures attack the party in order to also add them to their collections, attacking with mighty magic and smashing tentacles. Salt is blasted unconscious by a lightning bolt, and the rest of the party hard-pressed before Bostix finally breaks the charm effect and attacks his former beloved. The party slays the collector creatures and loots some valuable items and a lot of useless junk from their backs. They then argue again about the reality of dragons, Otirry insisting that they should search the skeleton for the dragon's horde. Rolling her eyes, Ember helps him, along with Leeram, and he indeed finds something: a magic sword Ember later identifies, to her shock, as a Dragonslayer long sword. Could dragons have been real? She's not fully convinced, and after a short rest the party swims on, seeing what might be their destination city in the distance.

After swimming across a vast undersea desert, the party comes upon a great city of round green towers organized in many concentric rings, each appearently serving a different function. They find themselves in a place called "Agricultural Services Center X23" in the Aquan characters on its wall, and see a ancient message image summoning whoever lived and worked there to "Sector A 17". The party resolve to search the city ring by ring, looking for the lost texts and clerics.

My Home is the Sea, Part III: Maranassa

Session Date: 2020-10-30

Swimming away from the aquacultural rings of the city, the party investigates the numerous rings of the city devoted to housing. Searching through several buildings, in one they encounter a kraken priest and a baby kraken, killing the monster and capturing the priest, who threatens them with the wrath of someone named "The Pasha". Leaving the priest tied up, the party swims on, with Ember witnessing some more fishy humanoids escaping, possibly warning the other hostiles further towards the city center.

Exploring the next set of rings, the party finds them apparently devoted to industry and manufacture. Encountering no creatures there, they swim on the next ring, which contains many tall, resplendent buildings and many statues of dolphins. In once such temple-like structure, the party encounters a large group of merfolk in the act of worshiping an idol of a dolphin god. The merfolk seem about to attack the party for interrupting their service, but Leeram is able to translate, and they learn they the worshipers are the distant descendants of the builders of the city, which they regard as a holy place, and have pilgramaged here to worship.

They are not exactly friendly, but do reveal themselves to be the enemies of this "Pasha" and relate they are aware of humans who came to the city several months ago and were slain and/or captured by the Pasha's minions. The party leaves them to their service and swims on. They find a set of rings devoted to business and storage, exploring what seems to be a warehouse, finding some treasure. Going on, they find a large building similar to a shopping bizaar, wherein they slay two large sea serpents and find more treasure.

Finally, the Legion arrives at where they have been told this "Pasha" resides, the largest palace in the city's center. The party finds only one way in, and a paralysis field blocking that door. When Bostix gets in, he is attacked by two huge blue aquatic giants with massive swords, marid warriors. The party battles the giants until a female marid shows up and uses Heat Water and Poison Quills against the party. As the battles rages on, the Pasha himself appears, and attacks the party. The battle goes against the genies, the two warriors are slain, and the Pasha Plane Shifts away, leaving the Legion to finish off the spellcaster.

Searching the palace, the party locates Frodish Jolen, the senior cleric, and one his sub-clerics, Takara Lenia. These two thank the party for saving them, and find the missing sacred texts, explaining that on their expedition they had been ambushed, two of their number killed, themselves captured, and their ship destroyed. The party and clerics return The Dark Lady, and the combined parties sail for two months back to Sablos, with Bostix adding some sacred songs of Raketra to his repertoire.

Back in the city, they are greeted by the faithful masses, the clerics having Sent word ahead of their return. Memnia and Frodish are joyfully reunited, the Legion gets a parade through the city and a feast at the Temple (lots of seafood), and returns late that night to the guildhall, having been allowed to keep the amulets and being named Knights of the Church of Raketra for their heroism. They party goes to bed, including Ember, who finds, standing in her room, a seductively dressed, unknown female fire Genasi who greets her in a very familiar fashion, saying "Did you miss me?!"

Family Ties

Session Date: 2020-11-06

The strange woman in Ember's room reveals herself to be her mother, Qaja al-Kadjar, back in her life after a 40 year absence. al-Kadjar claims to be just visiting to catch up, but soon reveals her real purpose: her family's interplanar trading empire has collapsed and been absorbed by its competitors, Ember's grandfather is in a debtors prison in the City of Brass, and she herself is on the run from assassins who want her life and the family's most valuable possession. Ember reluctantly lets her mother stay, but only as a client.

Qaja eventually meets the whole team and alternately charms and horrifies them with her wanton and seductive ways. She engages, reluctantly, the services of the Legion for gems she considers to be only rocks. Qaja reveals that the possession is a black cube that serves as a gateway to The Nowhere. The cube gets you there, where their could be fabulous treasures and power, but no one has ever returned, even though theoretically there's a way there somewhere. She and Ember fight about her mothers absence, but Jerrassia manages to help Ember get in touch with her true feelings and desires, using lessons shes learned in her own counseling with Danwell.

The party goes about their business, with Qaja spending most of her time alone, unable to communicate with her daughter, and Otirry learns a lot about spores, mold, and fungi from Leeram. Salt comes back to the guildhall very late the next night from performing, and finds five efretti assassins, who demand the cube. A battle breaks out, involving the Legion, the Knights, and Qaja against the assassins. The powerful elemental fire beings threaten to overwhelm the party, and Qaja uses the cube to take the party to The Nowhere. They find themselves in an eternal infinite white void that is nothing, and is nowhere, a condition of being lost even more lost than the Astral Plane.

The party discovers how to move by willpower, and after an unknown time in a place where distance has no meaning, finds various objects and beings, one of whom, a very lost sea turtle, who somehow can speak, directs them to a pack of Nowhales, one of whom swallows the party, and they find themselves by the door they had heard can get you home, but it is guarded three sphinxes, who demand the party either fight them or answer their question: "What is the Meaning of Life?". The party only gets three guesses, and uses the first two up quickly. They work together and figure out the answer: the meaning is different for every individual and must be set by that individual.

The party each give their answer and disappear. They find themselves back in the guildhall, but Jerrassia is missing, having answered last. They search the guildhall, but she is nowhere to be found. Qaja says either those beings tore her apart, or she's still in The Nowhere. Did she not give an honest answer? The party, despite finding out that seven weeks have passed back in the world, resolves to return to The Nowhere and find her.

The Search for Jerrassia

Session Date: 2020-11-13

The party decides to rest first, and sleeps until the next mid-morning. Rested and ready, they decide that Danwell and Grumbar had best stay in town and investigate what became of the efretti assassins and the 2000 gp they apparently took. Ember's mom again uses the Nowhere Cube, and the Legion finds themselves back in the blank white void. Remembering that in The Nowhere existing attracts existing, and that they have only to think of an existing object to find it, they think of Jerrassia, her curly brown hair, her big brown curious eyes, her bright smile, and they find themselves...

facing a horrid stone passageway covered in blood. They venture down the passageway, and find themselves in a stone room in what appears to be some sort of castle. They explore its many corridors and rooms, finding guts and gore, traps and puzzles, and undead monsters, all of which they overcome. They encounter and overcome a horde of zombies, a soul-stealing gem, fiendish temptations and illusions, a sulfurous slime, three coffins containing withered remains, and taunting voice that they determine to be someone from the Blukrace family, nobles of Ploi Drajit long ago discovered to be vampires and driven away. They linger on here, in some manner of demi-plane, where they torture creatures they lure in for their amusement, including the for-now still alive Jerrassia.

Having cleared what seems to be the basement of a manor house, the party steps on a teleportation sigil that transports them to another stone room. Beyond it they find another coffin which gases them, a lot of blood and some bones, and Jerrassia's spellbook. They open a door and manage to defeat a quartet of sword-wielding skeletons. Gravely wounded and exhausted from all the battles and other dangers, the party decides to rest, and does so inside a Tiny Hut.

Wolf Like Me

Session Date: 2020-11-20

When the Hut fades, the male voice tells them that its side,too, has rested and prepared, and that despite "mother and father" wanting to destroy them, they were convinced to keep the party alive a little while longer, for the entertainment value. The Legion of Llandos explores further, finding themselves unable to leave Blukrace Manor, though they are told a demi-plane called the Domain of Dread lies beyond. They discover a room full of savage werewolves and defeat them all after a long battle, including the enormous alpha demon wolf. They also see a misty humanoid form, which they follow, but it alludes them.

The party explores on, find a floating bed, an empty stone case, a pool of blood, and battling an enormous bat and a giant armored skeleton. Destroying them, the party is taunted further by the voice, finding other odd things in other rooms. Finally the voice tells them they have earned the right to reach the next floor, and they reach it by another teleportation circle. On the next floor, they encounter clouds of gas, walls of gas, pools of bubbling acid, and a room of strange, yet oddly familiar, enemies: a mummy knight on a skeletal horse, a swarm of skeletal rats, a skeletal snake, and several shadows. Destroying them all but being gravely wounded, the party rests again in a Tiny Hut.

Soon after they erect it, however, five female vampire spawns enter the room, followed by an individual they take to be Lonno Blukrace himself. Blukrace taunts them, and the vampires wait until the hut fades, promising to slay the party once it does. When the party attacks, however, the vampires are all illusions, and Lonno laughs. While exploring the floor further, Ember has an astonishing idea: what if all this is really only in Jerrassia's mind, a manifestation of her fears and desires, a mental prison the sphinxes of The Nowhere put her in when she somehow failed to give a satisfactory answer to her question?

As they ponder this possibility, the voice comes again, and tells them how to reach the next level, and that it is time to put an end to them. The party takes another circle in an oddly silent room, and finds itself in... a bathroom. With a skeleton floating in a bathtub. Beyond this room they find a well-appointed comfy room with a bed (with two skeletons curled up on it), a crib, a desk, a bookshelf, etc. In the desk Salt finds some papers which seem to tell the life story of a young girl, but she is not named or described. Outside the room, the party finds more living space and more bones, and very closed door, which an unknown female voice tells them "NOOOO!" about when they try to open it. They open another door, and see what appears to be a purple spectral dragon, which roars at them.

A Nightmare Within a Dream

Session Date: 2020-12-04

The dragon, if that's what it truly is, attacks the party. A brutal battle ensues, with the party hard pressed to counter the dragon's breath weapon, claws, bite, and ability phase like Red. Things are not improved when Lord Blukrace, the vampire patriarch appears and savagely assaults Ember. She fights back, but is killed. Her body, curiously, disappears, and Lord and LADY Blukrace join their dragon battling the party. The Legion eventually triumphs, however, thanks to a couple of polymorph spells from Salt and Leeram which turn Bostix and Otirry into a T-Rex and a giant ape, respectively.

Meanwhile, Ember wakes up... but not in the afterlife. She is in a stone room next to a cage, wherein sobs a despondent Jerrassia. Whilst the party defeats the vampires and dragon, Ember manages to convince Jerrassia that she does not deserve to be here, in a prison formed from her own mind, and that everyone makes mistakes. What makes us heroes like the Legion is that we overcome them (Ember is not actually dead, as it is all in the young wizard's head). Jerrassia recovers and leads the party to a portal that transports them back the guildhall, where they surprise the rest of the Knights and discover that four days have passed back on the Prime Material Plane.

The knights, lead by Aveniel and utilizing her underworld connections, have been busy in that time: they've discovered the efretti seem simply to have left, so someone else must have taken the gold. Also, someone is very interested in stopping the investigation. A week later, some celestial force baths the hall in light, and tells Qaja that her deal has been accepted, and she must turn over the Cube. She starts to, but wants to change the deal, as she no longer wants what she wanted. Her change of heart is seen to be true, and she is asked what she would now have. She tells them to "Give my daughter what she wants." They take the Cube and grant this wish by giving Ember a single casting of Wish. Once this is done, her mother asks Ember to forgive her and explains that she needs to leave again, to work on freeing Ember's grandfather from his debtor's prison. Ember grants forgiveness, and her mother tells her that she loves her before vanishing in flames.

The Legion spends some time investigating and going about other projects: Maximum Force, the band, plays several venues, but fails to find any clues. Jerrassia eventually manages, after a month's work and the expenditure of 6000 gp, to create a shield around the hall that should be impenetrable to interdiemensional travel. Aveniel, after spending some long time away, returns with disturbing news: no clients have come in a month because shadowy forces are using various means to dissuade anyone from hiring or working with the Legion in any way. Economic war is being waged against the Legion, and they have no idea by whom. During this month of nothing to do, Salt has become addicted to silly moss and hookers.

While they are trying to figure out what to do, and perfecting the shield, the party receives a letter from Llandos summoning them to his villa the next evening. They go, save for Salt, and find the villa strangely dark and quiet. They also discover him dead, for likely more than 24 hours,with his chest, arms, and face covered in what look like acid burns and an exploded jar at his feet. A note on a table in the room says "Dear Legion, Enjoy. The Knights are next." The party races back the guildhall, finding the Knights fine but devastated by the news of Llandos's death and the bounty on their heads. They party raises the new shield and goes to if their close friend Sibok Ecot Yaool is okay, as their enemy seems to be trying to destroy everyone and thing they care about. He's fine, and confirms through prayer that Llandos's soul has gone to its reward. He also uses the spell Commune on their behalf, to ask Symunon three questions, from which they learn that their enemies are someone or ones they know, they are both in town and out, and Aveniel is not in immediate danger. Salt is eventually found, brought back and told what is going on, whereupon he cracks jokes as the party sits down to figure out who could be behind this.

Plant Ice, Harvest Wind

Session Date: 2020-12-11

The party has a long discussion about whom their enemies could be. Malzahar Del'anor, The Master, The Searchers of Glory? Who could have the grudge, the resources, and the knowledge to do these things? The party comes to no firm conclusions, but decides that perhaps Wylan Legon III, with his connections and resources, or maybe their ambiguous ally Clowder Finisbaer could help, and resolve to visit both on the morrow.

The next morning, at breakfast, Aveniel Thallassa shows up, saying nothing and acting strangely. She sits down, eats a bit, then, moving faster than anyone can stop, stabs each of her Knights colleagues with some manner of needle. They end up in a very powerful paralysis, and she is clearly possessed by some magical force, saying later, with a voice not her own, "YOU WERE TOLD THE KNIGHTS WERE NEXT. HOW MANY WILL YOU LET DIE BEFORE YOU SURRENDER?". She is restrained, eventually the magic gripping her is dispelled, and she is devastated to learn what she has done. The Legion also realizes that whoever got to her probably knows the password to the guildhall shield as well, leaving them exposed.

Ember gets to work on an antidote the paralysis poison, Otirry and Leeram go to see Legon, Salt experiments with turning Jerrassia into a tressym (and fails), and Bostix guards the hall. On their way north, Leeram suggests to Otirry that they should give a proper burial to the body of Camarion Llandos VII AND see if there are any clues around the villa. While Leeram and his fungi see that the body returns to nature, Otirry notices that the jar that exploded on Llandos is made from a strange ceramic that shines like polished silver. He also discovers the crate the jar came in, noticing that it is written on in very old and formal dwarven runes. Armed with these clues, the pair still visit Legon, who promises to pass on anything he hears.

Meanhwile, Salt has camped out on the roof of Clowder's tower, who does not seem to be home. No matter: Salt waits, observing the passing clouds. Back at the guildhall, Ember has made good progress on her antidote by time Otirry and Leeram return. They share what they have learned, and it is figured out that the pottery comes from the shop of Aewild Nerys, and the runes possibly involve the Dwarven Cultural and Historical Society. Otirry and Leeram are sent to visit Nerys, to see if she knows who had her make the jar. She reveals that she was forced to make it, lest the secret of her pottery be revealed, and tells them she was told to say "The young dwarf knows the answer," by a dark-cloaked halfling.

Leeram and Otirry report this, and it is figured out that the "young dwarf" is likely Sarra Brongiel. Arriving at the Society hall, the party is greeted warmly by the young woman, who tries to be helpful in deciphering the dwarven runes, though she had no idea what "the answer" is supposed to be. With another scholar's help, she finds a secret message in the runes: "The Demon's", before being stricken by some manner of curse. While the scholars attempt to save her, the party is thrown out, but are told that the full message is "The Demon's Ward," a crime-ridden slum section of Sablos.

With the Knights of Sablos finally freed from their paralysis and staying at the hall,and Salt back with them, the Legion heads to the Demon's Ward the next morning. There they discover that a weird devilish creature is watching them, and it leads them to a robed human who tells them that The Black Chorus, a name that Aveniel revealed to them earlier as the name of their tormentors, await them through what looks like a solid wall. The party goes through, and finds themselves in a strange, labyrinthine dungeon, where they battle first shadowy bat-demon things, and later a brutal menagerie of monsters. The party is hard-pressed, but vanquishes their foes and steels themselves against whatever further torments await them in what is essentially a gargantuan trap.

The Gates of Delirium

Session Date: 2020-12-18

The party continues to explore the dungeon, discovering that they are being followed by an invisible creature, one they fail to capture. They next find four suits of dwarven armor, which animate and attack them, joined later by the invisible creature, who turns out to be the wizard that told them where to go to reach the dungeon. These enemies are all destroyed and looted, and the party then finds creepy dungeon decor, obviously created by an unwell mind. They also find lists of materials and craftsman for constructing a dungeon very much like one they are in. The papers call this structure "The Grinder".

The Legion explores on, finding one of those craftsmen, Torik Urthune, locked up for some reason they never ask him about. He was one of stone masons who helped build the dungeon,("Just the finishing touches, really"), and knows it pretty well, at least this first level. He warns them about some gnoll, whom the party soon encounters and defeats in a strange forest of ferns, right there in the dungeon. They next find a strange illithid object, and encounter some goblin with a magic ballista, which they kill and destroy. Ember finds some scrolls.

Having cleared this level of the dungeon, the party goes down a set of stairs they found earlier. On the second level, the party encounters several traps, like pits and giant rolling boulders and suspicious gold. They are continuing on when they encounter a group of dwarven mercenaries, who give the exhausted party a very tough fight, almost killing Bostix and Torik. Eventually they are slain or escape, however, and the party, bone weary, collapses under a Tiny Hut to rest.

The Black Chorus

Session Date: 2021-01-02

The party gets a nice nap under the Tiny Hut, but when it comes time for it to fade at the end of its duration, it doesn't. They are trapped. Salt teleports out, and the rest of the party finds that nothing they do can penetrate the Hut. Then Salt dispels it, and they explore on. Finding an area of many pit traps to the south, they go north through the Grinder's labyrinthine corridors, finding a blinding sphere of light, a chest with their missing gold in it, and not much else, save a giant spider that they handily defeat.

Making a circle back down to the south, the party opens a door and goes down some stairs to the third level. There they find a wide hallway with seven different kinds of energy fields blocking it. Bostix hits on the idea of destroying the devices projecting the fields, and the party moves safely down hallway, where Otirry Steelfarmer finds a table full of weapons, which of course are cursed. Of course he picks one of the swords up, and gets the curse, becoming convinced that this is the greatest sword ever, even though it makes him actually a worse swordsman. Salt tricks him into a high-five and casts Remove Curse, removing the curse (after Dispel Magic fails).

The humiliation of this sends Otirry into a rage, and he starts running around kicking down every door he can find. He finds a memory crystal, but also The Black Chorus, who turn out to consist of Father Goat, Udralak the Extinguisher, The Master, Chicken, and Malzahar Del'anor. The Master tries to monologue, but Otirry immediately attacks. A furious battle ensues, in which Otirry is killed by Father Goat, and Bostix and Salt drop (Salt twice). Our heroes battle back, however, partly with the assistance of an enraged Chicken, who attacks any and everything, even his supposed allies. Torik Urthune gives a fine showing for dwarven bravery, though he's not really a much of a fighter.

Father Goat is killed, the Master nearly kills Ember, but Bostix saves her from the acid pit, and she sucks the illithid into the Bag of Capturing. Mal'zahar is destroyed, Chicken falls, and Udralak, severely wounded, teleports away. The battle is won by the Legion, but they all feel nearly dead and Otirry is actually dead. Ember revives him, and the party partially explores the level, especially the memory crystal. Ultimately, however, they decide to leave it for another day, and trek back through the dungeon, leaving it and returning to the guildhall.

There they deactivate the shield, and Ember tries to enter the building. She finds the door hard to push open, as it is blocked by a lot of stone and rubble. The floor of the entrance hall has been torn up, and a huge bore-machine blocks most of it. A magically amplified voice calls her a "False Master" and demands she come forward. Beyond the machine she finds an armorer artificer from the Academy of Magimechaniks, her school, who accuses her of getting her Master Artificer Certification falsely, telling her the Challenge to keep it is to defeat him in one-on-one combat, or the other artificers he has with him will kill the defeated and chained up Knights of Sablos. Ember ponders what to do...

The Golden Whale

Session Date: 2021-01-15

As cost of her inattention dawns on her, Ember tries to distract the artificers with threats of the Guard, or of what the Academy will think. The Master Artificers is not moved by any of this, and criticizes Ember and her father for violating the Academy's traditions. He threatens that if she does not fight him now, he will have one of his apprentices shoot Grumbar Torveld in the head. She doesn't do anything, and Grumbar gets his brains blown out as the rest of the Knights scream in horror. The Legion promptly attacks.

In the battle the Legion struggles against the mighty armor and weapons of the artificers, though Heat Metal does do some damage, and Salt uses Wall of Force to protect the remaining Knights and block temporarily some of the apprentice artificers. He also gets into their bore machine, and after doing further damage to the guildhall, learns to drive it and uses it to impale one of them. The master is slain by Leeram with Blight, and the remaining artificers surrender, claiming they had no choice but to assist "Master Egan" and did not mean to hurt anyone, and it's Ember's fault, for how she got her certification and for not accepting the Challenge. Ember angrily rejects this, and the City Guard is summoned to arrest them all for multiple crimes.

Grumbar is revived, and the Knights recover has the Legion parks their new bore machine out front and sends for Torik Urthune to assess the damage. He says it will cost them about 4000 gp and take two weeks, and the Legion employs him. He and his apprentices work throughout the next week as the party rests and recuperates, drinking, playing, getting the cold shoulder from Dwarves, and writing a very sternly worded letter to the Academy of Magimechaniks about the conduct of this Master Egan. The Knights go on a vacation for a week or a month.

A week later Wylan Legon III shows up at the guildhall, saying that he has won ownership of a tavern in Sablos called The Golden Whale in a card game but does not want it, and gives it to the Legion. They eagerly accept, particularly Bostix, Salt, and Siggi. The party goes to visit their new business, and finds it a nice, middle-of-the-road place, popular, busy, and staffed by good people. Bostix reveals their ownership and takes over, but leaves operations mainly alone, save for performing there with Salt on the stage and giving the staff a raise, which instantly wins their loyalty. Bostix, Salt, and Siggi spend a lot of time at the Whale, while it's of less interest to Leeram, Otirry, and Ember.

The next afternoon Ember receives Lady Elyn Wynney, who wants to hire the Legion to retrieve an artifact recently stolen from her by an insane sorcerer called Kluxar the Damaged, who she says has taken it to Eodora, where he plans to use to open a portal to the Far Realm in order to raise an army of aberrations. The party takes the mission, leaves Siggi at the Whale, and takes The Dark Lady on the 4 1/2 day trip down south to Eodora.

They find it to be completely covered in dense jungle, though Bostix, through his attenement to nature, can tell it is the site of many ruins as well as dangerous beings and a strong influence from another plane. The party hacks through the sweltering, insect-buzzing jungle, and discovers that they are being watched. Forging ahead, they are ambushed by savage lizardfolk and dwarf.

Feel My, My, My, Serpentine

Session Date: 2021-01-05

The Legion battles the ambushers, who they see are being directed by a well-dressed lizardfolk wielding both magic and a rapier. The savages hit hard, but the party overcomes them, in large part due to Salt's Wall of Force. The savages are killed and the lizardfolk, named Brakazo Kras, surrenders, bargaining for his life and freedom. He tells the party about several of the monstrous minions awaiting them, but reveals that he is simply stalling, to give Kluxar more time to complete his ritual. Ember ends up scooping him into the Bag of Capturing, finding out in the process that The Master has somehow escaped.

The party follows the sound of rumbling and flashes of lightning deeper into the jungle. They eventually come across ruins and statues belonging to the Pelgarians culture, and explore them briefly. Further inland they are attacked by two horrifying undead and their pet zombie Tyrannosaurus Rex and zombie Ankylosaurus. The undead quickly drop Ember and drain much of the life of the party until Bostix slays one of the creatures. Ember is healed, and she uses a Scroll of Control Undead to force the zombie dinosaurs to destroy first the undead then each other.

The party tries to take a rest under a Tiny Hut, but a gargantuan stone rolling vehicle appears and tries to ram down the hut, but cannot. After several tries a small, monkey-like creature climbs out and curses them before driving away. The party finishes their rest and hurries toward the now-increased rumbling, lightning, and aberrant voices muttering madness, following the flattened trail of the roller. Many ruins are ignored as they rush to what is surely a fatal confrontation with the mad sorcerer. A short time later he is found, having already opened the portal to the Far Realm and having pulled through two horrific atropals.

Kluxar declares that the "fools" are too late: he has succeeded in opening a "portal to a realm of infinite insanity!" and he, the atropals, and the roller and its zorbo driver attack. The party is devastated by the mad magic and life draining abilities of their foes, with Ember going down again and Bostix and Otirry having their minds switched to the other's body, causing considerable disorientation and much fumbling in combat. Salt uses Wall of Force again to disable the roller and slays the zorbo. He also turns Ember into a T-Rex. The party battles back, slaying one atropal, then Kluxar, then the last atropols, all the while avoiding being sucked into the portal.

Ember is returned to her old self and collects the Orb in a bag, closing the portal. Otirry tries to drive the roller, but ends up destroying the controls, to Salt's deep disappointment. They leave it standing and head back the ship, though Ember goes back to the biggest statue and finds inside it some magical gold bars. On the shore she dumps out of the bag the lizardfolk, who is angry they are leaving him there and swears revenge. The party lifts anchor, unfurls sails, and leaves Eodora for Sablos. Two days into the voyage, Leeram Oot discovers a strange new door on the ship, which, when investigated, leads to The Blade and Bow. Bostix goes in immediately, followed by the others more cautiously, where they meet Joonwa and drink some excellent whisky.

Undermined

Session Date: 2021-01-22

Joonwa asks how the whisky is, and it's delicious. The party hangs out for hours in The Blade and Bow, and gets to know the proprietor, who doesn't seem to know how exactly it works, or how she got there (but she can summon food and drink by laying down coin and concentrating). Otirry Steelfarmer badly looses a whisky drinking contest with Bostix. Joonwa is an excellent host, the life of any party, and the Legion greatly enjoys their days and nights in the bottle shop until The Dark Lady docks in Sablos. Joonwa makes a deal with the Legion to open their ship to customers for as log as the bar's door stays on the ship. Dog stands guard.

Meanwhile, the Knights have not returned, and Siggi is apparently spending his time the The Golden Whale. Bostix goes there to see how things are going. Well...except for Siggi's overbearing leadership. He has basically taken over the place, bossing everyone around and endangering the tavern's profits with his too-generous beer deals. Bostix and Salt try to intervene, to no avail, until Ember finally succeeds in making the ancient keg golem see reason. Sadly, he departs, having agreed to let the employees of the Whale run it as they know best, in exchange for holding a weekly beer tasting. Back at the guildhall bar, he, Bostix, Otirry, and Leeram party like it's 1099. Ember does paperwork and pays bills. She and Leeram also deliver the Orb and Kluxar head, collecting the rest of their pay from Elyn Wynney in Lapathina.

The next afternoon, late, Jerrassia Kylos returns to the guildhall. After asking after their mission, she says that the Knights might have stumbled onto an adventure: during the last several weeks, many people, of all levels of society, have gone missing, and the Guard has no clue. But Danwell Alandos might have one: last night he saw shadowy figures pull a beggar woman into the wall of a leather worker's shop. Though the people inside denied knowing anything, he knew they were lying. He told the Knights, and Jerrassia asks Maximum Force to assist in their investigation, which they consent to.

The whole Legion gathers that evening at Leear's Leathers, where the master, his daughter, and apprentices are obviously hiding something. Using magic, the Legion discovers a passageway in the stone beneath the shop, and later that night sneaks into the shop and down the passageway. They find it to connect to a well-developed mine complex, though they have never heard of such a thing existing underneath the city. Exploring, they find a pile of skeletons and a heavy steel cabinet that, once Ember opens it and sets off its blaring alarm, proves to contain a relatively large amount of the extremely rare magical mineral shadowstone, held at a below freezing temperature. The party ventures down a mine shaft, knowing that whoever runs this place knows they are there. What they soon find is shocking: emaciated, wounded, filthy enslaved Sablosians, working to mine the rock underneath the lash of several slavers. The Legion makes themselves known, and battle is joined...

Emancipation!

Session Date: 2021-01-29

The Legion battles the slavers avidly, but (mostly) tries to avoid killing the enslaved people, who fight only reluctantly. The slavers are killed and most the slaves freed and sent back towards the surface. A captured slaver tells them he works for the "dark dwarves" and something called the Kurghiz Mining Concern. They leave him tied up. The Legion forges ahead, only to be attacked by yet more slaves, whom they either kill accidentally or persuade to lay down their arms. Or convince them to turn on and slay their slavers. All of the slaves appear to be captured Sablos citizens.

In exploring the complex of mined caves, Leeram Oot finds a pair of women who have been beaten and used, whom he heals and leaves the party to make sure they get back to freedom. He also summons the City Guard and has them moving through the secret mine behind the party as they clear it out. The Legion comes across a slave who begs them come no further, lest a bolt be put in the back of his head. [[Ember}} uses her silly hat to save his life, and he leaves. The party explores some passages beyond some open stone doors, where they are ambushed by, indeed, some dark dwarves, or duergar. The party defeats a rogue, a wizard and three crossbowmen, but Jerrassia Kylos is captured, held, and ultimately killed by some more duergar. The party kills them and revives her, and burns their way through a web blocking their path. More duergar assault them, only to be killed as others flee.

Moving on, the party finds their way blocked in two separate tunnels by energy barriers, but finds out how to disable them. They find an office and a banquet hall, abandoned, and further on encounter duergar who seem to be in charge, an individual in black armor and what appear to be twins in silver armor, accompanied by more warriors. These try to bargain with the Legion, but they make no deals with slave holding villains! Battle is joined, and all of the Mining Concern operatives are killed save for two of the warriors, who manage to make it through a door, down a hall, and to a teleportation circle. When the party gets there, they are gone. The Legion makes a momentous decision: to pursue the hated slavers to whatever evil hole they have fled to. They step on the circle, Ember says the activation words, and The Legion of Llandos disappears.

The Rock of Bral, Part I

Session Date: 2021-02-05

The party reappears in a huge chamber, surrounded by dozens of duergar and other warriors. An illithid, who seems to be in charge, telepathically tells them that they are outnumbered, and their only hope of living is to surrender. If they surrender, Kurghiz Mining Concern can make use of them. The Legion, seeing that the situation is hopeless, reluctantly surrenders. They are stripped down to their underwear and of everything they own. They are then shackled and marched deep into the recesses of the huge Kurghiz headquarters building and mechanically and magically locked in a small cell.

There they stew for many hours, finding a bathroom but not much else. Finally they hit upon a plan of escape: destroying a light fixture in the room, they use magical fire and heat to destroy one of the cell's walls. Busting out, they are confronted by four guards, whom they slay despite not having any of their own weapons or armor. When the last guard is dead, they hear a clapping: it is the illithid, who identifies himself as Board of Directors Member Green, congratulating them on "passing the first test" and summoning them forward to receive their first mission. The party refuses, but Green reveals that eating the gruel provided, and being in the cell, has imposed a magic on them that allows it to track them and paralyze them at will.

Consenting to the mission, the party learns that a certain human noble of "The Rock" (they still don't realize where they are) has been causing problems for Kurghiz, and the company wants him dead. The party is to go to a tavern and inn called The Laughing Beholder where Grosovener Pale likes to take his lunch and do the deed, bringing back proof. After being smart-alecky about what proof would mean, and experiencing the paralysis, the party leaves to conduct the mission. They find out from a passing hadozee sailor who is amazed by centaurs where the bar is and head that way. On the way they discuss how to make it seem like they've completed the mission without actually killing him, and Otirry Steelfarmer and Aveniel Thallassa get into a particularly nasty spat.

Finally the Legion decides to somehow make a deal with Pale and arrives at the tavern. The find it full and busy at lunchtime, and are warmly greeted by the beholder owner and bartender Large Luigi. Getting to know Luigi, they learn that Pale is here, and enlist Luigi's help in approaching him. Ember meets him, and explains what has happened to them. Together Pale and the party decide to use him as bait, bringing him back and delivering in the process a device called a thought bomb, which will apparently destroy Kurghiz, a device given them by another illithid, an advisor of Pale's, called Gluack. They party departs the tavern with Pale tied up and the device in Ember's Bag of Holding.

The party is brought before Green, who is surprised at what they have done and demand what the party kill Pale in front of him. As Bostix prepares to do so, Ember activates the bomb, instantly incapacitating most people in the building. Ember, Danwell, and Jerrassia battle Green and his minions, as the others on both sides slowly throw off their incapacitation. The party gets the upper hand as Green discovers that the bomb has disabled his control of them, and it is slain by Bostix. As the party finishes off his minions, another illithid appears, Blue, and begs for peace. Pale asks it to accept a fore-made deal, and Blue, with most of his allies helpless, agrees. Pale now controls the company.

The Legion requests as their reward for conquering Kurghiz that the new company, Pale Consolidated Mining Enterprises, never use slaves, to which Pale agrees. He also explains to them exactly where they are, on the Rock of Bral, several crystal spheres away from Jesenreth (Crystal Sphere). The party gets its money back and leaves the building, resolving to find a way home, after spending maybe a week exploring the Rock...

The Rock of Bral, Part II

Session Date: 2021-02-12

Most of the party heads back to The Laughing Beholder to rest, while Salt goes immediately out to find some place to play at, ending up at Bral Dwarven Ale House, where he eventually wins the patrons over with his playing and their singing. Meanwhile, the party gets rooms at the Beholder and learn where in the town they can find the things they're interested in: swords, image takers, a ship home, etc. Otirry and Bostix visit Balic's Blades, where Otirry drops 2000 gp on a four high-end swords made of special materials. Bostix asks after armor, and is directed to Curgric's Irons, where he negotiates the making of special heavy breastplate of dwarven iron for himself, ready in five days. Ember meanwhile visits the docks, finding that a ship is going their way, but at a cost of 5000 gp for all of them.

After more exploring and carousing, the party meets up the next morning at the Beholder and discusses plans for getting off the Rock. The price Ember got is a bit high, so it is decided that Bostix will go and try to negotiate cheaper passage, perhaps by working. His effort to find a wizard to teleport them home comes to no avail. Ember goes out to find an image taker, and does so, after being hit on by an orc named Kurn and buying something from his junk kiosk in the Great Market. Bostix succeeds in getting an better offer (on the same ship, the only one going their way), involving 1000 gp and working as a salvage team, as The Sly Brigand's has quit. The whole party goes to meet the shipping agent and ultimately Captain Elbereth Yavanna and the rest of the crew.

The Captain gives them a tour of the ship and explains what happened to the last salvage crew: while exploring ruins on an asteroid, they incurred some manner of curse and went crazy, having to be killed or locked up until they got back to the Rock and left. Purely a one-time thing, freak thing, she promises. She also tells the party about why a new salvage team is needed urgently: the crew has intelligence about an derelict neogi ship floating out near the shell. The Legion agrees to join the crew until they can get back to Jesenreth, and returns to the tavern and says their goodbyes. Bostix gets his armor early, and the party leaves the next noon as the Brigand casts off the ropes and rises into space above the Rock. The party decides they will miss this strange and wonderful place as it dwindles into the distance.

For ten days the Brigand shoots though Bralspace towards the shell. Otirry gets to know Darwyse Janton, as they both come from the same region and know some of the same people. He and Ember also make plans for a holster to hold all of this swords. Then suddenly the ship stops due the gravity of, indeed, a heavily damaged, drifting, neogi Deathspider. The captain observes the ship as they carefully approach: much damage, no signs of life. After the ships dock, she and Maximum Force go over to explore, coming out on the main cargo deck, where they find three very dead, half-eaten umber hulks and an equally dead, equally dead, neogi master. Ember finds some large hatched eggs. There's also a weird buzzing noise, and the party is attacked by flying purple things which attempt to paralyze and dissolve them. The party defeats the creatures and finds some caches of loot that the neogi had presumably taken from captured slaves.

Rough Times on Refuge

Session Date: 2021-02-19

With this level searched, the Captain points out that there are three ways to go, from her knowledge of neogi ships (admittedly secondhand): the open hallway ahead, likely leading to crew quarters and the spelljamming helm room (which she warns is a gruesome life helm), the hatch to the main cargo deck below, and some stairs leading to the combat deck. The party decides to go down the hallway first, finding what indeed seems to be quarters, full of dead neogi and umber hulks(one contains single neogi hatchling, which the Captain insists on killing). At the end of the hallway they find the spelljamming room, where two huge insectoid/reptilian things are feasting on dead neogi (already eaten slaves lay around the life helm). The party slays the beasts and clears the rest of the rooms on this floor, finding not much of interest.

They open the cargo hatch and go down to the level below, finding more cargo, more bodies, and more blood. Exploring the level, they are savagely attacked by a huge "moth dragon" creature, who impales Ember. She escapes, and the party kills the monster, finding some holding cells and more gross neogi whatevers, which they wisely decide to leave alone. Going the other direction on the same level, they are again attacked by more bizarre creatures, one of which swallows [[Red], though the party eventually slays them all. They find a large chest with more valuable spoils in it, and go up to the top level of the ship, which is apparently deserted. The party finds a crate full of gold, which the Captain theorizes explains why there isn't much cargo on this ship: the neogi recently sold most of it and made this money. She offers the party a deal: they are adventures and need items like the ones they've found, while her crew mainly needs money. Since they aren't a normal part of the Brigand's crew, what if the ship kept the gold and the party got the items? The party accepts this deal. Ember also takes images of a weapon the Captain calls a "medium jettison."

The captain is explaining that she will send crewmen in later to lug this gold over to the Brigand when the voice of Jinzic Borwass echoes through the derelict deathspider: a very much intact deathspider is headed this way! The captain orders everyone back to the Brigand and it to leave posthaste. It does, and outruns the deathspider, eventually jumping to spelljamming speed and escaping what would have been a losing battle. Ten days later, the Brigand approaches the crystal shell, which appears as an infinite black wall. While the ship awaits a portal, the Captain explains to the Legion the nature of the Phlogiston, and the absolute importance of not lighting any flames, however small, within it. The party and crew prepare, and then enter the flow, surfing along the Arcane Inner Flow for 28 days until they reach Refugespace, the central hub of the Arcane in this part of Wildspace. On the voyage the party and crew become closer, especially Otirry and First Mate Janton, who share her bed.

The Brigand enters Refugespace, and lands first on Welcome. While the Captain and First Mate go to register and conduct other business, the party goes to Dark Rock Bar, where Ember winds up getting into a fight with a human over a game of Dart Birds. She wins (narrowly avoiding killing him), and wins the game, and the party gets to know her opponents, two half-orc mercenaries named Juc and Groob. Eventually the party makes its way back to the ship, and the Brigand proceeds the ten hours to the moon called Refuge, in orbit around Below. The Captain announces that, after some business, the crew, and thus the party, will have seven days of liberty on the luxurious resort moon. The party goes drinking and selling and generally having a good time over the next four days. This is brought to an end only when an announcement from the Arcane announces the need for adventurers. The party responds to the call, being summoned to a bar called The Marble Arms.

Once there, they meet Harmond and Vrentnya of the Hundred Keys, who relate that very recently, a group of wizards, known as the Witches of Prexilba, who were working on some manner of project for the Arcane, went rogue and stole some material and information. It is believed they fled to the transportation and storage tunnels beneath Refuge,and the Arcane want adventurers to find them and return the material. The party accepts the mission, for which they will be paid 1000 gp each. They are lead down to the tunnels, which they find to be a strange and random labyrinth with puzzling contents. Wandering around it, they are confronted by what Ember recognizes as a gibbering mouther...

99 Problems and a Witch Ain't One

Session Date: 2021-02-26

Bostix slays the mouther with two quick attacks, but the fight is far from over, for a Greater Mouther, and Evil Star, and a four-armed ghast soon join the fight. These creatures are eventually slain, though, and the party explores the strange storage area further, until they find a long, straight tunnel, the transportation part of these tunnels. They find themselves, after nearly a mile's walk, in another storage area, a series of corridors and rooms wherein they hear a loud mechanical noise coming towards them. This turns out to be a giant armored construct on tracks with a gun that fires radiant energy (a fucking tank!). It almost kills Otirry, but the party destroys the machine and heals him.

They explore further, finding many odd objects in storage, including more machines...which Ember is tempted to tinker with until she notices that one is rigged with a bomb. More defenses laid by these "Witches of Prexilba." After finding many more objects, they locate another transport tunnel and follow it for about 300 ft, where it ends in a room connected to a shorter hallway, down which are coming three voices. The voices turn out to belong to a male lizardfolk, a male bullywug, and a female gnome, who are apparently engineers working for the Arcane on more amusements. The Legion allows them to believe that they too work for the Arcane, in the "Retrieval" department, and the workers go on about their business. The party finds more strange items in storage, and Ember gets so caught up that she is attacked by surprise.

The Legion battles what appears to be the Witches, who come very close to killing Red, Leeram, and Ember. The party wears them down and slays them, however, and slumps down to rest in a Tiny Hut, coming out to search the bodies, finding several magic items... but not the info and materials they are looking for. These ladies were not the Witches of Prexilba, or at least not them main ones. This is confirmed when another Witch appears while they are in the Hut, explaining that the Legion is too late: the Witches have almost succeeded in activating the "world helm," which they say will allow them to move Refuge out of its orbit and fly it though space like a ship! The party can join them or die, she says, and then vanishes back whence she came.

The party, of course, are having none of this, and complete their rest, feeling a strong tremor during it. They suit back up and follow another long tunnel, which leads them to another storage area, where a loud hum and some arguing can be heard. They party find more Witches with a large object, presumably the world helm, and they don't seem to be getting it to work after all. The Legion attacks, getting surprise themselves this time. The Witches fight back with very powerful magic, including sending Otirry into a demiplanar maze, but the party, at full strength, gets the upper hand, killing one of the senior Witches. The others declare that they will live to fight another day and revenge themselves on the Legion, magically escaping after setting the helm to explode. Bostix tries to turn it off as most of the party runs, but Leeram and Otirry are caught in the blast when it blows. They are barely alive, but are brought back by Ember, and there's no sign of the still living Witches. The party searches the body of the one they killed.

The Voyage Home

Session Date: 2021-03-05

The party finds enough on the body of Sister Hex to determine that she and her sisters worked for the Arcane in developing the world helm, but got greedy and decided to take it for themselves. The helm didn't work, and is now just a pile of junk and any information or plans were taken by the escaped Witches. Taking pieces of the helm and plenty of images, the party makes their way back to the streets of Sector 12, which they find deserted, as is The Marble Arms, with the exception of their contacts, Harmond and Vrentyna. Harmond opines that they Legion has only partially fulfilled their mission, and gives them only half the reward. Satisfied regardless, the party enjoys their remaining two days on Refuge, hearing of the various adventures of the Knights of Sablos and the crew of the Brigand.

Eventually the ship departs Refugespace, entering the Arcane Inner Flow and passing the seven days to Realmspace. Herein they sail across the sphere, the trip uneventful. They land in the city of Waterdeep on Toril, their unusual natures (especially Bostix's), attracting a lot of attention in the city. They eventually make friends with a City Guard lieutenant named Joric Kelm. They ask about adventure in the city, and he shows them, after his shift, to The Yawning Portal, where they consider going down into the dungeons underneath Mount Waterdeep, but decide ultimately to keep it for another day. They enjoy the city's taverns for another day and then depart on the Brigand for Greyspace.

During the twenty-two day voyage to that sphere, Darwyse Janton tries to convince Otirry Steelfarmer to stay with her, to leave the life of an adventurer, maybe even settle down on Oerth. He steadfastly refuses, enjoying her company but loving only swords and the life of slaying monsters. After he rejects her, she gives him the cold shoulder for the rest of the voyage and even turns the crew cold to him. In the city of Greyhawk he plants himself in the Green Dragon Inn and drinks away what little pain he feels. The rest of the Legion explores the city briefly before the Brigand takes to space again four days later and heads for Jesenspace, arriving six days later, dropped off by the ship right next to The Dark Lady, which is intact (as is Dog), though it needs a good bit of maintenance, and The Blade and Bow.

They find the guildhall much as they left it, and The Golden Whale flourishing. The Knights leave for their own adventure up north. During some downtime, Bostix founds a market on the sight of the former The Lower Deck. By the end of two weeks, the market boasts three stalls and a bar run by Siggi, including a candlestick stand, an exotic meats butcher's stand, and a bakery specializing in sweets owned and operated by Cinna Bon. One morning at the guildhall, right in the middle of breakfast, the hall is flooded by a bright white light. When it fades, an angel is there, with a blue orb floating in the air. It says that the party has been selected by the gods to destroy an evil artefect called The Demonomicon of Iggwilv, by taking it to Adon Aither and finding a way to ring all of the island's 333 celestial bells at once. The party reluctantly accepts, settles their affairs for another long trip, and then sets sail for the six months it will take to reach the distant northern island.

Over a month into their voyage, the Lady is surrounded by four Syndecol Industries daggerships, which surround them and demand their surrender. As the demand is accompanied by a familiar giggle, the party soon figures out they it is actually Lunafreya Stargazer, alive and in command of this squad of ships, with Zinra Ravara as her second. They get caught up on each other's adventures, though neither will fully share what they are up to now. Luna relates how she was imprisoned, put on trial, and forced to work in the mines of Iredol, soon joined by the captured Zinra. They, in time, foiled a plot to kill the mines' Director Warden, were promoted to office work, and worked their way up to commanding this patrol squad. After sharing a drink together, Luna and the ships depart, wishing the party well.

The party sails on northeast, encountering many strange sights of the sea, before finally, almost exactly six months after leaving Sablos, catching sight of the verdant island in the distance, and hears its melodious bells on the wind.

The Bells

Session Date: 2021-03-12

Observing the paradisiacal island, and recalling what they know of its contents and structure, they decide to explore first the village of Wastoh, which they find as described: abandoned and almost compltely run-down. Exploring its buildings they find a warehouse, and then, in a dormotory-like building, they meet what seems to be a human pilgrim, a man named Mantaleo Luo. Saying little about himself, Luo asks them all sorts of questions about themselves, and expresses considerable interest in their ship. He tells them he's been there 33 days, and before the party can stop him, he traps Ember within the dorm, which has a strong magical shield, and flees to The Dark Girl. The party engages him in battle, and he proves to be a mighty cleric of Devet. He is defeated, however, and Leeram frees Ember, who has found the dorm to posess a library of religious tomes.

The party resumes their quest to find a way to ring all the bells of the island at once, in order to destory the Demonomicon, but can think of no practical or magical way to do it, as the bells are distributed over more than a dozen miles in all directions. Stymied, they decide to go back and re-examine the books in the library. There, after a few hours of research, Ember and Leeram find a clerical ritual that might help: Spirits of Supelvo, which summons hundreds of spirits of the rigteous deceased. It is a lengthy and complicated ritual, however, and can only be cast once a day. The first casting summons only seven spirits, no real help with the bells. Instead, Salt plays poker with them for the hour they last (winning his own money big!) as the party returns to sleep for the night on the ship.

The next morning they return to Wastoh and cast the ritual again, this time summoning 163 spirits. With their own abilities and those of the spirits, they prove to be just enough to spread out over the island and ring all the bells at once. Timing it perfectly, they do, destroying the containment orb and buring the evil tome to ash, which blows away in the holy wind. Only one problem: a mighty balor was trapped within the book, and its destruction frees him. The huge greater demon savagely attacks the party, summoning two more demons to aid him. In the hellacious battle the party is almost wiped out when the dying balor explodes, but the Legion hangs and destroys the last demon. Exhausted, they resolve to leave this island, but first Salt insists on returning to the library and getting the book that contains the Spirits ritual. He does, casting the spell agian as the party heads for the ship. He wants another poker game.

Somthing goes wrong, however, and the 139 spirits, when they come, regard him as unrighteous, and attack him. He is burnt to a crisp in their holy radiance and dies. Back on the ship, the party waits for nearly an hour before going to check on him, when they find him very dead and beyond the help of their reviviifying magics. They put his corpse in the Bag of Capturing, which slows his soul's progress in the line of the dead, and the party sails the six months back to Sablos, planning on getting Sibok Ecot Yaool to raise him when they are home. The trip home is long, boring, and uneventful, but something is very wrong with the city upon arrival: its harbor and docks are deserted, and the city is dark and still. The party sails the length of the docks and harbor wall, seeking any sign of life.

Finally it finds them when a platoon of beleaguered soldiers flags them down. The commander tells them what has happened: for the last two months the city has been repeatedly attacked by huge waves of undead coming from the south. The Army and Guard have fought back, but they are finite and the skeleton and zombie hordes seems endless. The Knights of Sablos, the commander tells them, has been defending the city with distinction, and even captured the villains responsible: The Master and Udralak the Extinguisher, who they found and defeated. In the king's dungeons, those two revealed what they had done: restored a destroyed lich and made a deal with him to send these undead hordes to conquer the city and eventually the whole country. The king, upon the advice of his new personal guards, the Knights, has bidden Maximum Force to go south to Mt. Othrys, find this lich's lair, destroy him, and thereby stop the undead from attacking the city.

The party accepts, and makes a quick trip back to the guildhall, escorted by the soldiers, where they learn that Siggi, like most of the city, is evacuated or in hiding (like the staff of The Golden Whale). They also visit Sibok, who has stayed in the city to minister to the few lizardfolk citizens who have stayed. He raises Salt, whose first concern is the book with the ritual. Sibok gives them a few gifts to help them before they sail two days south and anchor on a sandy desert shore, in sight of the mountain that holds the lair of the lich.

Resting Lich Face, Part I

Session Date: 2021-03-19

The Legion leaves The Dark Girl anchored on the shore and treks across the dunes towards the mountains. About four hours into the trip, the party encounters some of what Sablos has been dealing with for more than two months as a horde of zombies rises from the desert and attacks. Swarmed by the desiccated undead, the party nonetheless slays them all. They continue across the desert toward the mountains, arriving at nightfall in the rugged foothills, finding a stream flowing down the mountain and a trail leading up its steep slopes. The party climbs the mountain, encountering strange earth elemental guardians who can turn their fists into lava. The party prevails, but are beginning to feel like they are not welcome on this undead-infested mountain.

They climb further, encounter strange beings, like an undead trudging along with a great tombstone on his back, and an undead centaur shaman leading a herd of skeletal horses, both of whom do not attack the party when they are left alone (perhaps they could have been spoken too...). The Legion makes their way over a deep ravine after resting for the night and seeing a huge flock of skeletal bats leave the mountain for the city. They climb further, encountering and slaying a skeletal dragon. Up the narrow trial they go until they find an opening in the rock which they assume must be the way into the lich's lair. They are correct, finding themselves in an extensive, dark, foul-smelling crypt.

A voice, seeming to come from all directions at once, notes that they are not "the tentacled one or my wayward former apprentice", and asks who they are. The party tells, and asks the voice, presumably Uddagon the Merciless, to please stop sending undead armies to attack the city. He says no, and tells him to enjoy his lair before they die. The party disagrees that this will happen, and explores the halls and rooms, finding coffins, crypts, organs in jars, candle golems, handsy skeletons, an alchemical lab, a giant golden cobra stature, a miniature dead beholder in a vat, a well-appointed bedroom, and eventually Uddagon himself who says "Hello" and promptly kills Ember with Power Word Kill.

Resting Lich Face, Part II

Session Date: 2021-03-26

With Ember dead, the party tries to stay out of the range of the two(!) liches, Uddagon and the "Candlemaker". Except for Red, who, incensed by the death of his mistress, uses his ability to go through and stay inside objects to stay out of the way of, attack, and even stay inside his enemies. Bostix is charmed by Uddagon, and Otirry nearly killed, but they wear the liches down until Uddagon is trapped in the Bag of Capturing and the Candlemaker is beheaded by Otirry. The downed lich turns to black ash and blows away in a spectral wind. The party rests, while Ember, in the Line of Judgement gets closer and closer to her fate, while planning to suggest some improvements to its procedures.

After the rest, Salt uses Raise Dead to reach out to her and harangue her come back to life, which she does, though he's not certain she's the real Ember... Ember, who is real, realizes the two liches were each other's phylactery, and now they both are destroyed, they should stay that way. The party searches the now seemingly deserted lich lair, finding several treasures and making friends with a freed miniature beholder. They then make their way back to The Dark Girl, then The Dark Lady, then sail back to Sablos, which they find to be still a nearly deserted armed camp. They are met by soldiers, who immediately escort them to the Coral Palace and an audience with King Oriel and his new personal guard, the now very officialKnights of Sablos. After a very happy reunion with their charges, the kings thanks them on behalf of the nation and asks them what they will have as a reward. The Legion, though, is too exhausted to ask for anything save sleep.

The Knights also drop a bomb shell: they have gone out on their own, as their own company, and left the guildhall. The king decides the Legion can call on a royal favor in the future and lets them go home. They find the hall just as they left it, and settle down into a very long rest. The call goes out that the city is saved, and gradually, over the next few weeks and months, the city is repopulated and rebuilt, with the Legion being very generous to the people and gaining even more legendary fame than before. Now they cannot walk the streets without being mobbed, and The Golden Whale is packed solid every day and night. The party enjoys something like normalcy for the first time in a long, long time.

Three months later, fate asserts itself again, as Diogenes Euripos arrives one evening at the guildhall, with a JOB: recently, one of this merchant ship captains found some debris floating in the sea, and among it, the glint of gold. The gold turns out to be a very large, solid gold goblet in the shape of a roaring lion with diamond eyes, and there's also a map that shows the southern seas with an island that should not be there. He hires the Legion to travel to this place on the map and see if this island is really there, and if so, do they have more of these exquisite goblets, or the maker thereof? The party takes the job, prepares, and leaves the next morning for the three month trip to what looks like nowhere.

It is not, of course, nowhere. One morning the ship nearly sail straight into a huge wall of grey swirling mist, stretching up hundreds of feet and as far left and right as they can see. After investigating it, the Legion decides to sail in, slowly crossing through the utterly silent and frigid mist for several minutes, until without warning they are in the open sea and under a clear blue sky again, with an island of green plains stretching before them. The party sees no signs of intelligent life, and decides to go ashore on the narrow, rocky beach. They walk west across the flat plains, still seeing no civilization, until they enter woods where they find trails, which lead to a north-south dirt road. West from this road runs a smaller one that is obviously well-traveled.

The party heads down it, seeing in the distance a small village and some farmland. Closer to it, the party startles an elderly peasant woman coming out of the woods with a basket. She is some kind of lionfolk, and instantly screams and runs away from the party towards the village, quite fast. The party lets her go but follows slowly. Twenty minutes later, they see a large two-wheeled cart coming down the road towards them, drawn by two large dog-like creatures and driven by a male lionfolk peasant. He stops the cart and starts speaking in a language they don't understand while motioning for those of them that fit (NOT Bostix or Leeram) to get into the back of his cart, and saying the word "Perrolla" over and over, of which he seems deathly afraid. Salt casts Tongues on the man, and he fears he's been cursed for helping "Outsiders", but is more afraid of this Perrolla. The party gets into the cart (or follows behind) and heads towards the village.

In Search of the Unknown

Session Date: 2021-04-02

The peasant lashes his beasts into and through the village, where the party sees leonine faces peaking out of the windows. At the house of the man and his wife, the lady with the basket, he rushes the party inside and locks the door. He asks who the party are and why they are here. They tell him, and he reveals that he is Ision Antiphales, his wife is Kynna Antiphales, and they are farmers and elders of the village of Lunidios in a place called the Kingdom of Phyllestria. The folk of this place are called Leonin.

Antiphales reveals that the Perrolla he is so afraid of, and risked his life to hide the party from, are a vicious military police which enforces the dictates of King Lycophon, a murderous tyrant who sends his goons to crush any criticism of his harsh laws and crippling taxes, which are collected by greedy villains called the Phudamon. The Perrolla also murder any outsiders. The party does not like what they are hearing about this place, and ponder regicide, but their conversation is interrupted by hard knocking and demands from outside. Knowing it is the Perrolla, Ision has Kynna hide the Legion in the attic while he goes to the door and tries the talk them into leaving. This fails, and he is stabbed in the belly by a the cruel and cunning Commander of this unit of Perrolla. Hearing his cry of pain and Kynna's scream, the party attacks.

A savage battle ensues, during which the Perrolla prove to be tough opponents, especially the wily Commander Xyala Xerxes, who eventually captures Ision and Kynna and threatens to kill them unless the party surrenders. Ember rescues them and battles the Commander, catching the worst of the fight until the last of the Perrolla officers falls, at which point the leonin drinks a potion of invisibility and flees. The party gives chases but cannot find her. They release Ision and Kynna, who are certain the Commander will bring down the whole army on them, killing the party and the whole village if they cannot find them. The party helps the old couple flee to a city where Ision has cousins, after he and Kynna warn the rest of village. The Legion makes a show of going in the opposite direction of the Antiphales.

They flee over the next two days southwest through thick woods, hoping to trap any pursuers. When none come, they head for the mountains, to be able to overlook the terrain and find anyone coming after them. That night under a dome, they are visited by the Commander, who flies in and demands to know who they are and where they come from. Eventually she reveals that the island can hop between worlds, and under its evil king does so, trying to conquer whatever world they land on. The Commander reveals that an army is headed this way, which will kill the party. After she flies off, the Legion flees for the coast and their ship, hoping a head start and fast movement can keep them out of the clutches of the large force of Perrolla.

This works, for most part, despite the Commander following them in the air and informing the soldiers where to find them. The party barely makes it to the ship and sails away, with several warships in hot pursuit. Despite being bombarded by cannon fire, the party escapes through the mist, the warships declining to follow. The Dark Lady sails back to Sablos as quickly as it can, and once there the Legion informs the Ketten Royal Navy and the King of the danger. Then they go home and relax with Siggi at the bar, and take lunch the next day at The Golden Whale.

The Last Dragon

Session Date: 2021-04-09

An uneventful week passes for the Legion. The end of the year 1121 is approaching. Then there's a knock on the door. Standing there is an elderly Half-Elf woman. She introduces herself as Liandrel Fuil and says she wishes to hire the Legion. She meets the party and drinks beer with them, promising Siggi a hook-up for some Oakbeard's. She explains that she is from a far-away planet, Thraekon (Planet), and was, in her early days, an adventurer of some note. She claims to have save the world a few times, then married one of her group and settled down. After even more adventures, she and her husband traveled the multi-verse for centuries.

Not long ago, she says, he passed away of natural causes. She came to Jesenreth (Planet) to settle down and peacefully spend the rest of her days, having out-lived everyone she she has ever known. She brought with her her father's sword, an artifact called Sword of Vinigo. She had it locked away and magically warded, but Thulok Karn somehow managed to steal it anyway. She wants to hire the party to come help her take it back. They agree and all teleport to the Black Spire.

They find themselves inside and battle kobold guards, the leader of which activates a magical trap which locks them in the lowest floor of the tower and slowly drains them of life. The party, well, mainly Ember, solves the puzzle (giving purple eggs from the snake mosaic on the floor to the three differently-aged statues around the room). The spire stairs, which had disappeared, reappear, and the party heads up to the second level. They slay a lizardfolk wizard and some warriors and search the Spire, not finding the Sword, but finding many gruesome and decadent sights. Liandrel wonders why they are not encountering more resistance, but the party persists.

On the third floor they find opulent living quarters, but no more resistance and no Sword. Ember is caught in an extra-dimensional trap, which the party is unable to save her from until Liandrel casts Wish. With Ember returned, the party makes their way to up to the final floor and confronts Thulok Karn, who is sitting upon his throne calmly. Liandrel demands the sword, but he instead reveals that he knows her secret. The party does not know what this means, and she threatens him, but he only takes out a strange orb, which he uses to somehow change her into her dragon form (she is truly a half-ancient silver dragon and control her, forming a mental link. The dragon and Karn savagely attack the party.

They are nearly killed several times, before wearing Karn down and striking the orb, which returns Liandrel to her normal form, though she is falls unconscious. The party fights on, Bostix managing at last to slay the vile sorcerer. They take shelter inside a hut and revive Liandrel who, very weak, whispers something about the throne. Otirry, determined to find it, goes to Karn's throne, and with Bostix's help and more clues, manages to destroy it and free the Sword. Liandrel claims it, staring at it and remembering her father. She regrets putting the sword away for so many years, and decides to bestow it upon Otirry, after making him swear to always be a hero. This is an easy deal for him to make, and he gets his heart's desire, one of the most powerful swords in existence.

As they rest, Liandrel reveals that she is indeed a dragon, and they were in fact real, much to Ember's chagrin. She relates the history of dragons, up until their transcending to a higher plane of existence over 600 years ago, partly as a result of her actions. She stayed behind, the last dragon, mainly for Mac'Tir Fuil. Salt eagerly takes down her story to turn into songs as the exhausted party rests.

The Shell Sickness

Session Date: 2021-04-23

As Liandrel and party rest under the Hut,The Black Fangs fill the chamber but cannot penetrate the Hut. The corpse of Thulok Karn morphs into a huge snake, and he directs his army to assault the Legion when the Hut falls, but Liandrel awakes and teleports the party back to the guildhall before that can happen. There, she pays the party for their services with two 1000 gp diamonds and asks them if she can spend the night. She does, sleeping on a couch in the library, and the next morning at breakfast she visits with the party for a long while, giving Salt more stories, before bidding them a final thank you and goodbye, then turning into a colossal ancient silver dragon on the street and flying away.

Her transformation knocks over a courier bringing the mail, but he's okay. Among the mail is a letter for Leeram. After reading it, he tells Ember what it told: his cousin Kimal Oot, an architect who works for Grand Architect Rumolo, ruler of Okitt on Akupara Maeus, reports that the turtle island is dying of a corruption or sickness that is getting worse and spreading. Local efforts to stop it have failed, and she asks the Legion to come and help. They agree to, and Leeram uses Transport Via Plants to take them there. They appear in an apple orchard that is mostly dead and covered in spider webs. Leeram hears a voice he recognizes screaming for help, that of Serralu Kemp, who is being wrapped up by a huge spider. They party slays the creature and talks to Serralu, who relates that the sickness started a year ago, and by now has spread to every living thing, causing most of the nation's still-living people to retreat to a series of fortress on the other side of the island.

She stayed behind to try to save her orchard, a doomed effort, not the least because of the many monsters which have appeared. They even have mutated the animals, like that poor spider. When the party expresses that they have come to help, she tells them about a pit in a local village which she's seen the monsters come from. Serralu goes into hiding as the party finds the hole and fights their way past aberrations into a series of tunnels and caverns acid-burned into the akupara's shell, wherein they battle many other creatures until they come upon the lair of a 40ft. tall humanoid aberration, accompanied by three mind flayers. The creature, evidently the cause of the corruption, offers the party to join him, which they refuse. Combat ensues, and the party is hard-pressed but finally turns the tides and destroys the foul entity.

Destiny's Children, Part I

Session Date: 2021-04-29

With the great aberration dead and sinking into the undershell lake, the party notices Leeram is sitting at the edge of the water, weeping. He stands and announces his intention to retire from adventuring and come back here to help his people rebuild, once the party has done "what the stars had me join y'all to do", which he senses is very, very close, but does not say what it is. He does suggest the party find Miss Serralu and the surviving tortles, including Kimal and his family. They find the old orchard tender, and then are lead by her five days through through ruined nation towards a large fortress, gathering a following as they go. The are found and escorted into the fortress by tortle soldiers, where they eventually meet Kimal and Grand Architect Rumolo, who decrees that they have the gratitude of the whole nation, once they relate what they have done. They spend a blissful 5 days as heroes and honored guests, before transporting home.

They party passes two months with no missions, going about their normal activities, including a lot tinkering and drinking and celebritizing. Then, one morning at breakfast, a portal of light appears in the floor of the entrance hall. After investigating it, they realize that Arkakas Malbolgia is at the other end. They go through, finding themselves in the Library of All Souls, where they meet Arkakas, who tells them that something is stealing soul books and the goddess Symunon, through Arkakas, wants them to get them back. He suggests that they investigate the floors of the library, looking for clues and talking to the librarians. They find both the floors and the librarians to be many and strange, and no particular clues, until Ember discovers a palm-sized silvery sphere engraved with Abyssal (Language) characters in some kind of code. They part, at long last, finds all the spheres and deciphers to the code, putting the spheres together in the correct order, and is suddenly teleported to a resplendant entry hall in a great silver mansion. Standing there is goristro demon.

Who turns out to be a head butler and chief named Mordax, who welcomes them and tells them they have an appointment with the "Serpent Sisters," who turn out to be four powerful greater lamia. They challenge the party with riddles, which the Legion solves easily, enraging the sisters, who attack. After a savage battle, the party slays the sisters and is alone in the Argent Palace.

Destiny's Children, Part II

Session Date: 2021-05-07

The Legion is badly wounded from the battle, but gets no time to rest, as a great goristro Fiends attacks! With some difficulty, the party slays the beast, with Bostix gorily exploding out of the creature's chest. With it fallen, they manage to catch a lengthy rest inside a Tiny Hut, undisturbed. Waking, they explore the silver palace further, and Otirry, Ember, and Salt become affected by the Madness of Graz'zt, the demon lord whose palace this is and who is behind the theft of the Soul Books. Eventually they discover this throne room.

He nonchalantly tells them he has all of their books, and has re-written their fates to be destruction, shortly, unless they serve him. After Leeram outsmarts him, he is goaded into fighting the party, and with his incredible magic and power the party is very nearly defeated and slain, with Bostix and Ember dying, Salt and Bostix banished to an extra-dimensional prison, and Leeram standing alone against the demon lord (with Dog and Red). He brings the two who remain present up, and Otirry slays Graz'zt at last. Salt and Bostix reappear, and the party searches the strange mansion. After another rest, Leeram Plane Shifts the party back to the Library of All Souls.

They return the Soul Books to Arkakas Malbolgia, and he gives to Bostix the "key to your destiny", a magnificent golden, jewel-encrusted sextant. He also gives them, as promised, magic items from the goddess's own collection. He then asks the party to take care of the guildhall library and sends them home. There they find that only two days have passed, it is noon, and they drink into the evening. Then, Leeram decides it's time for him to go and bids a teary so-long to the party. He then leaves for Akapura Maeus by Transport Via Plants. Sad, the party goes to bed, save for Siggi and Bostix, who go The Golden Whale and drink and tell stories til closing time. They sleep in the hayroom Bostix made for himself. His sleep is not restful.

All night he struggles with nightmares of fighting great monsters in darkness, finally seeing a vision of a great manta ray-scorpion thing flying through space with a city on its back. Coming for him... then he wakes up. It's morning, and he stumbles toward home, but something strange is happening. The city is in a near-panic because dozens of Spelljammers are entering the atmosphere. They seem to be fleeing space, no matter how large or well-armed. Bostix runs home and alerts the party of the strange event, who confirm it for themselves. They decide... to eat breakfast, and habanero sardines from the Argent Palace are passed around.

Arrival

Session Date: 2021-05-28

The party is asked to investigate a Spelljammer that is blocking the street. They do, finding it's owner, who warns them that THE Spelljammer is in orbit. They fly the ship up and land on The Spelljammer. The ship is dismantled by shivaks and they go to the Open Air Public house, and learn about life aboard the ship. The they meet the centaurs, and ally themselves with the minotaurs. The minotaur tower is attacked, and they party finds them a new place to live. While going to speak to the Dwarves of Kova, they are attacked by ogres and an ogre mage, whom they beat.

Realpolitik and Alliances

June 2021