What has happened to your characters, and what they have learned since arriving in Saltmarsh
Our four intrepid adventurers, Abraham, Dripp, Reese, and S.A.M., met up on the docks of Saltmarsh, and agreed to work together to explore the abandoned and haunted home of Caspar Stiobhard. After hearing an old poacher's tales of a horde of ghosts, they did some shopping, met some of the locals, and then set off for the mansion.
Arriving at the mansion after a few hours' walk, they split up to enter the garden inside the house's walls. Dripp entered through the crumbling parts of the wall, while Reese went in through the gates. Near the gates were four Giant Weasels, who attacked the party. Abraham was downed briefly, and tried to drag Reese back to their lair. After dispatching the weasels, the party rested for a bit, then proceeded in through the back door of the house.
Inside, the party explored the kitchen, and found tracks leading through to the next room. There, they found a set of stairs. Stepping on the top stair triggered "hideous screams — as if of a soul in torment" to rise from the area below, scaring Reese for a time. Down those stairs, they discovered a wine cellar with a dead body, and were attacked by two Swarms of Rot Grubs. Once the grubs were dealt with, they took a suit of Plate Armour, a Longsword, a Shield, and an Explorer's Pack from the corpse, as well as a single bottle of rare wine which had rolled under the wine racks. then took another rest before following the tracks into another room.
This room had a large table, cooking stove, and a series of ten beds. Each bed had a footlocker at the base, bearing 7gp15sp, yielding total cash worth 85gp. One door led out of this room to the East, one North, and a trapdoor back upwards to the West wing of the mansion. Before checking the other doors, the party tried the trapdoor. On approach, they heard a loud and malevolent voice yell "Welcome, fools — welcome to your deaths!"" Booming, fiendish laughter followed the spoken message. This time, it was Abraham who was mortally terrified and unable to calm himself for some time.
After checking that the immediate upstairs room was empty, they went back down, and checked the non-barred door that headed North. This door led to a bedroom with a much nicer bed. Investigating that room yielded
Not wanting to pass through the door marked Danger quite yet, the party retreated upstairs, and searched through the remaining rooms. The rooms in the West wing were searched. The first room contained three books which were damaged a bit, but still worth 7gp each:
From there, the party cautiously proceeded to the East wing, where they found two largely empty rooms. The first had two cut pieces of blue quartz, and the second had nothing but plaster dust on the floor, indicating that the room upstairs has weak floors. Lastly, they explored the two rooms they'd so-far left unexplored in the North wing. One was empty, and upon entering the other and approaching the fireplace within, the party were swarmed by spiders.
The battle with the spiders resulted in Abe going down briefly, but his allies were able to keep him in the fight by feeding him some of his newly-acquired healing potion, and the spiders were killed. A loose brick in the fireplace chimney was removed, revealing a small wooden box with 30cp and two small pouches of alchemical powders.
Heading upstairs, the party found that the rooms of the North wing were largely empty. The only notable thing was a small pile of clean clothes, in a room otherwise full of moldy laundry. On their way to the East wing, S.A.M. barely jumped out of the way as part of the entry room's balcony fell apart.
Jumping across the bad section of the balcony, the party headed to the East wing. There, they encountered Ned, a bound and gagged man with a lump on his head, who claimed to be a traveler, who'd entered the house the night before, looking for somewhere to sleep. Ned was assisted with getting back his clothes from the North wing, and Dripp escorted him out to the camp outside the front gates, where the party had rested earlier. Ned took this opportunity to ambush Dripp, but was ultimately easily dispatched after a running fight through the house. The only worthwhile thing the party took from Ned was a single shortsword.
The party stopped for an hour to rest, and during this rest, Abraham was able to build some makeshift stairs up to the attic. There, the party discovered half a dozen Stirges nesting in the rafters. The stirges went down quickly, and searching through the detritus of the attic turned up a porcelain doll costumed to look like a sailor. The doll’s eyes were made from two small pieces of jade.
After all this, the party decided to head back to town to rest for a night. Everyone headed to the Snapping Line for some stew. S.A.M. and Reese tried the Claw Wine, a local specialty, and Abraham swapped tall tales with some of the local sailors and fishermen.
Waking up at the crack of dawn the next morning, the party each spent a bit of time getting ready before heading out. Dripp read the treatise on Iuz, Reese went to Winston's Store for some more flasks of oil, and S.A.M. and Abraham went to The Dwarven Anvil to sell some of their stuff, and get the dents hammered out of S.A.M.'s new armour. S.A.M. had an interesting interaction with the owner, Mafera, and got his armour most of the way flattened out.
After two uneventful hours on the road, the party arrived at the Haunted House once more, around 8:30AM. They proceeded to the still-unexplored West wing of the upper floor. The only notable thing there was a ragged, stained cloak, which contained spores of Yellow Mold, nearly killing Dripp. After S.A.M. helped them recover, the party headed back downstairs.
On their way back downstairs, the party were much more quiet, and managed to catch one of the bandits who seem to have been living here. The bandit fled through a secret door, but was shot and killed just as he went through. After dispatching him, the party searched the again-closed fancy bedroom, and there they fought a tall man with a shaved head and piercing green eyes. From him, they gathered a smoking pipe and a set of gaming dice Reese and Dripp scouted ahead, followed by S.A.M. and Abraham, but once the path led to a fork in some natural caves, they retreated back to the main cellar, to tackle the barred door.
Inside the barred door were half a dozen skeletons, covered in some sort of alchemical reagent. During the fight, a glowing light came from the seam of a door in the other corner of the room. After about one round of fighting, the party managed to close and re-bar the door. They poured out some of Reese's new oil flasks, then opened the door and used Dripp's magic to ignite the oil once one of the skeletons had stepped onto it. This helped them overcome the damage resistance that the skeletons possessed, but there were two complications. First, Abe went down again. Second, there was now an additional skeleton present; Caspar himself!
The Skeletal Alchemist lobbed acid at the party, and goaded the other skeletons forward into the flames to try to defeat the party, but proved quite ineffective. Abraham, however, had had more than enough of being knocked out in fights. He dragged himself back to consciousness, rose to his feet, sprinted into the room, and finished Caspar off with his sword. With Caspar dead once again, the party looted his body, and were able to pass into the next room, where they looted Caspar's alchemy lab.
Loot from Caspar and his lab:
Having looted Caspar's lab, the party rested for a bit, to heal. Reese identified the stone, and Abe identified the Pipe. Proceeding into the caves, they encountered a small group of scouts. Combat with the scouts was deadly, and Abe and S.A.M. both nearly died.
The party retreated to Caspar's lab to wait for their near-dead members to recover. When they emerged, they found that the smugglers had largely left, with only two hobgoblins remaining. The hobgoblins were bribed into leaving, and the party were then free to capture the silks and brandy contraband in the area, put it on the smugglers' own boat, and sail it all to Saltmarsh.
On returning to Saltmarsh, the party were questioned by Eliander Fireborn, the captain of the town guard. He dispatched guards to check their story, and while waiting for him to release them, the party reached level 2. On his return, the party were released with a 200gp reward.
This led to the party's first real chance to take some time for themselves:
Downtime was, however, interrupted. On Wednesday morning, a man approached Reese and Dripp at the Wicker Goat. He introduced himself as Slate, and explained that he was a statue brought to life by Caspar during one of his many experiments, twenty-five years ago. He was dying, and needed the party's help securing enough money to ensure his family were okay. They ventured up the shore with him, to kill One-Eyed Sally, a giant octopus whose ink he needed for water-breathing potions. With Sally and her ambush-happy mate slain, the party stopped for a short calamari lunch, while Slate headed back to town.
With the potions ready, Slate took the party out on his fishing boat to a shipwreck, The Moon, which he knew to contain a large quantity of silver. The party swam down into the shipwreck, found their way into the hold, and found the chest with the silver. On touching the chest, several shadows emerged from the skeletons of the original crew, and attacked the party, slamming shut the door, and cutting them off from each other. The door was bashed in, and the shadows dispatched, with Dripp significantly weakened by the ordeal.
On returning to the surface with the silver, the party discovered Slate had passed on, turning back into his original stone. With the silver secured, the party decided to return to the wreck while the waterbreathing potions still lasted, and ran into a group of reef sharks. The sharks approached the party, who prepared for battle.
Loot:
The party finished dealing with the reef sharks, with S.A.M. nearly dying at one point, and then scoured the rest of the wreck of The Moon. Nothing further was found, so they returned to Slate's family, and informed them of his fate. Pledging to find a way to return Slate to life, they turned over half the silver, splitting the rest between themselves.
That evening, Abe recieved a letter from his order, and S.A.M. had a vision from his god. S.A.M. set out to put this vision into motion, and Abe set off to visit the town druid, Ferrin Kastilar.
The next few days, the party spent on downtime:
On Saturday morning, the party were all approached by messengers, summoning them to the Town Council's chambers. There, they met the five members of the Town Council, and were hired for a job. They were promised 400gp upon return if they would assault the ship that had been working with the smugglers, 'deal' with everyone aboard, and secure any contraband. The standard bounty would be paid out for the contraband, and anything else the smugglers had with them would be considered 'salvage'.
The party agreed, and that night, they were escorted to Caspar's home by two members of the town guard. They waited through the night, with Abe doing his best to repair some of the broken-down parts of the house. Eventually, they saw the signal from the ship, sent the return, and then rowed their way out to the Sea Ghost.
Boarding the ship, they were able to bluff their way on, and avoided letting the crew alert the officers right away. However, when they opened the door to one of the rooms on the top deck, they alerted the captain, who yelled out. The captain and a wizard were quickly dispatched, allowing the party to clear out their rooms.
From there, the party proceeded towards the bow of the main deck, encountering a group of lizardfolk. The lizardfolk were hesitant to talk, but also didn't quite seem willing to attack the party, either. After some discussion, the party left the lizardfolk, and cleared out the rest of the main deck without problem.
The party now started to explore the lower deck, working their way from prow to stern. First, they encountered five sleeping bandits. Reese attempted to steal the bandits' weapons before they awoke, but the noise started to wake them up. He was able to kill one bandit before she woke up properly, and then the party dispatched the rest of the bandits fairly easily.
From there, they checked the main hold, which held only casks and bolts of silk. After that, they proceeded to the officers' quarters on the lower deck. In one room, they faced off against the swashbuckling first mate, and in the other, they dealt with the deadly hook-handed Bosun, who had emerged into his room from a secret door. Having dispatched these two officers, the party prepared to head into the door, and see what lied beyond.
Loot:
Opening the secret door aboard the Sea Ghost, the party met a sea elf. After some communication issues, he introduced himself to Dripp as Oceanus, and explained that he was from a sea elf tribe not far from Saltmarsh, and that he had been sent to investigate the Sea Ghost, as his people were curious what it was doing. While sneaking aboard, he was caught and imprisoned, and now he offered to help the party clear out any remaining pirates.
Clearing out the rest of the ship, the party found Oceanus' confiscated weapons, 200 sp, two Potions of Healing, a single dose of Antitoxin, and a number of Maps. They also found a second secret door, leading to a room with a large cache of weapons.
Confident that the ship was cleared of smugglers, the party headed down into the bilges. There, they found mostly trash, rats, and some rot grubs, who were quickly dealt with. They called for the two guards who had joined them on the raid. With the guards' help, they were able to get the Sea Ghost moving, and head back to Saltmarsh. Once there, they debriefed Eliander at his office, got paid for the job, and reached level 3. The party were also given use of the Sea Ghost as their ship, and a crew of eight for a year.
The Sea Ghost was promptly renamed Serenity.
The party then had eight days to themselves, to spend on downtime:
On Monday, S.A.M. was approached by Wellgar, with a request for help. A small town up the coast had a fort just up the road which had housed an order of paladins, the Templars of the Trident. The templars hadn't been seen for a couple of months, even just to get food and supplies. Some of the locals had checked the place out, but some sort of wailing noise had scared them away. Since the party had experience with investigating 'hauntings', Wellgar wanted to know if they would take a look into it. The party agreed.
Sailing out to the small town, the party were ambushed along the way by a group of goblins aboard a flotsam raft-ship of some kind. Armed with jellyfish, the goblins were able to poison and electrocute the party. Despite several waves being flung up onto the ship, including a boss armed with a Jellyfish Whip, the party prevailed easily, and dispatched the goblins. Salvaging some lumber, and scuttling their ship, the party moved on to the town.
Arriving at the town, the party were given instructions to the fort, and headed out. The bridge to the fort was rickety and broken, but Abe was able to lash it back into better shape using some of S.A.M.'s spare rope. Exploring, the party found a number of abandoned rooms, and stone spiral stairs which were collapsed leading downwards, but intact leading up.
Upstairs, the party met Serena Alexios, the undead last survivor of the Templars of the Trident. Serena explained that her order had been ambushed by Sahuagin, who had summoned some sort of foul devil. The Templars had slain the devil, but their numbers were thinned too much, and the Sahuagin had finished them off. Several templars had awoken days later, returned to un-life as Revenants. A counter-attack against the Sahuagin was mounted, but their priestess had prepared wards against the undead, and the Templars were weakened.
Only Serena had made it out 'alive'. The wards below were now strengthened, and she could not deal with the Sahuagin. But she was also bound to the fort by her new undead state, and could not leave.
Serena asked the party to help her see her duty fulfilled, that she might pass on. They agreed, and she offered them each the chance to pledge the oath of her order. Abraham, Dripp, and S.A.M. agreed, and recieved a Charm of Heroism. Serena told the party that if they continued up and around the fort, they would find an approach to the sea caves below.
Entering the caves, the party were able to separate the sahuagin, taking them out largely one-by-one. The priestess had been attempting to open another portal to the Nine Hells, to summon something quite large and nasty. But, because the spell was incomplete, Reese and Dripp were able to work together, and un-ravel the incomplete portal. As it closed, a single imp came through, but Reese was able to stab it and kill it before it could do anything.
Returning upstairs, the party found that Serena had, in fact, passed on, with a slight smile on her face. The party returned to the nearby small town, where they were thanked, and told that the now-empty fort would be turned into a memorial.
Sailing home, the party had an encounter with some local Flying Fish. They were able to capture seven of the fish's wings, which they can craft into a one-time use of the Colour Spray spell (At first level).
Returning home from their travels, the officers of Serenity told Wellgar of the fate of the Templars, the Sahuagin and their portal, and were thanked for their troubles. They then spent a week around town, working on various things:
During this time, Ferrin approached Reese, asking him to confirm that the party had, indeed, fought sahuagin up the coast. When Reese confirmed this, Ferrin explained that he'd conducted a ritual recently, using the power of Celene being full. Through that ritual, he'd come to find that the sahuagin were becoming more of a problem overall, in the area. He asked if the party might take Serenity to investigate a small group nearby, who had taken a number of animals captive, and were charging their kin money to see the animals.
The party agreed, and Serenity headed out, with the officers easily able to approach in the Jolly Boat. Inside, they calmed things down with the two sahuagin in the cave, and were able to pay to see the 'animals'. The sahuagin toured them around the tide pools, and then tried to shoo the party out, but Dripp had spotted a tunnel underwater in one pool. Abraham kicked off a fight, and the two sahuagin were quickly dispatched.
One of the sahuagin was taken prisoner, and Dripp interrogated them, in hopes of tricking whoever was on the other side of the tunnel. That sahuagin was then killed, and the party started scouting through the tunnel. Heading through to the other side, they encountered a sahuagin, a sahuagin priestess, and two reef sharks. Once the sahuagin were both dead, the surviving shark stopped attacking, and the party were able to free the sea otters and giant octopus that the sahuagin had captured. They also got 70gp and a driftglobe.
The Serenity then returned to town uneventfully, and another week passed without incident
At the end of this, the Serenity's officers were summoned to meet the council. They were joined at the meeting by Oceanus and Will Stoutly, who is in charge of Saltmarsh's marines. The council explained that the marines had scouted the area the lizardfolk were known to be, and they were asking the party to help deal with that situation.
Eliander thought that the lizardfolk were allies of the Sea Princes, and preparing to attack Saltmarsh. The elves of Manaan thought that the lizardfolk were allying with their enemies, and preparing to attack them. The rest of the council weren't quite willing to believe Eliander, but were worried he might be right.
The Serenity headed out, with Oceanus aboard, and the party headed to the Lizardfolk Lair. Taking Gellan's laughing suggestion to be a good idea, they knocked on the main gate. They were taken by guards, stipped of their weapons, and led them to minister, Sauriv. He chatted with them a moment, then they were escorted to the throne room, to meet with the queen.
The party found that the lizardfolk were gathering allies, and among them were the evil Koalinth! The queen sent them out, to try to convince her people, and told them they had only a single day to do so.
Between them, the party were able to win over the commoners, guards, shamans, the minister, the queen herself, and the ambassadors of both the Locathah and the Merfolk. The Koalinth, meanwhile, left. They had decided they wanted no part in this war. Also, the party discovered the truth of the war; the lizardfolk were purchasing weapons from the Sea Princes, but nothing more. The war preparations were to defeat sahuagin, who had invaded the lizardfolk's true lair a year before. The lizardfolk don't know why, but the sahuagin have managed to sink some of the lower levels of the lair beneath the waves.
With Queen Othokent and her people convinced to offer Saltmarsh a position within the alliance, the party reached level 4. As well, the queen offered two optional jobs for the party. The first, to kill a giant crocodile, Thousand-Teeth The Devourer, who was threatening the tribe. The second, to recover a stolen artifact of some kind from some Bullywugs in the swamp nearby.
Agreeing to both of Queen Othokent's tasks, the party set out with their new lizardfolk guides. First, they would head to the bullywugs' ambush, then to Thousand-Teeth.
Upon approaching the ambush, Whiskers was sent ahead to scout. He found where, precisely, the ambush would be happening, which meant the party were able to send in only Abe and S.A.M., with Dripp and Reese being farther back, picking off targets. The first wave of the ambush were easily dispatched, but after most of them were defeated, the are got very noisy all at once.
At one end of the ambush, a large bullywug arrived, escorted by two ordinary ones. At the other end, their king appeared, riding a Giant Toad. And all around Abe and S.A.M., bullywugs rose to the surface, chattering and croaking, seeming to only want to watch the fight. The large bullywug reinforced his allies with strange, croaking, eldritch songs, but the party were able to drop all the bullywugs, and the Croaker.
On his death, the king surged forward on his Giant Toad mount. The toad tried to eat Abe, while the bullywug king tried to kill S.A.M. Abe was able to stay un-eaten, and the party managed to kill the toad and its rider, at which point all the bullywug spectators retreated into the marsh. The king had been wearing the lizardfolk's Helm of Underwater Action, which was later given to the party, and his giant toad had crude saddlebags containing 325pp.
Next, the party headed further into the swamp, to chase down Thousand-Teeth the Devourer. On the way, Reese and Abe fell into a bog pit, and the others were ambushed by a pair of Shambling Mounds. Garurt and Vyth led one mound off into the swamp, while Dripp and S.A.M. engaged the first. As Abe and Reese emerged from the pit, Reese was able to warn everyone that the enemy would heal from lightning, and with that knowledge, the party were able to destroy the thing. It injured them a bit, but was unable to engulf and digest anyone before dying.
After that, they finally were able to rest up, press on, and make it to Thousand-Teeth's lake. On the approach, they spotted, and started to deal with, a pair of Giant Constrictor Snakes. The fight was noisy, however, and attracted the giant crocodile's attention. It approached, scaring off the surviving snake, and joined the fight, but was no match for the officers of Serenity
Removing its head, the party also skinned its hide, then headed back to Queen Othokent, who rewarded them with the bullywugs' stolen helm and a Potion of Superior Healing. From there, the party headed back to Serenity, joined by Garurt, Vyth, and Oceanus, and returned to Saltmarsh. The council were relieved to hear about the lizardfolks' friendliness and concerned about the sahuagin threat, and began negotiations with the two ambassadors right away. With their reward of 700gp in hand, as well as a 600gp payment for Thousand-Teeth's hide, the party then had a week of downtime to look forward to.
Downtime results:
On Waterday the 12th, the party's rest was interrupted. Abe recieved a letter from his order, thanking him for his good work so far. While reading it, a young, armoured, and recently-heavily-scarred woman approached him. She introduced herself as Sarra, a former knight of the Church of St. Eadrine.
She explained that the church had been long-time allies of the Order of the Lycan once, but had changed over the years, but their most recent leader had changed things, shifting their focus from evil shapeshifters to shapeshifters of all kinds. They stopped focusing on helping keep the Dreadwood safer, and instead started hunting down any shapeshifter anywhere in southern Keoland, filling their prison with doppelgangers who hadn't done anything wrong, other than be a doppelganger.
One day, months ago, there was a jailbreak. The order were slaughtered, as were most of the doppelgangers. Sarra barely escaped, and was heavily injured. Since then, she wasn't able to find work; she's a trained warrior, so anything she could do well, her scars and injuries have stopped her from doing. But, she remembered that the church's treasury, hidden deep in their temple, had a cache of platinum pieces. If the party were willing to split the money 50-50, she would guide them through the temple to the treasury. All they would have to do, was deal with anything still inside that was hostile.
The party agreed, and they set out up the river the next morning. Stopping where Sarra indicated, they hiked into the hills, to the church's hidden temple. On the way, they found a dead elf, and then encountered the elf's killer, a hill giant named To'bar. To'bar was hungry. To'bar wanted gnome. To'bar knew the party had gnome. He smelled gnome. To'bar offered to trade a sword for their gnome. The party offered rations. The rations were too salty. To'bar didn't like the salty rations. S.A.M. offered to cook the rations. To'bar agreed. S.A.M. didn't do well. To'bar hated the cooked rations. To'bar got angry and attacked. To'bar hit S.A.M.. To'bar hit S.A.M. again. S.A.M. stopped moving. Dripp fed S.A.M. a potion. S.A.M. lived.
Having defeated the hill giant, the party were able to take the sword, which Reese identified as a +1 Rapier. Then, they proceeded to the hidden temple, which Sarra explained had once been more conspicuous, until their last leader had ordered them to be more secretive about everything. Proceeding inside, the party explored around, finding a number of corpses, some church members, and some doppelgangers. The only notable loot they found was a small emerald in the algae-covered cistern. As they explored, they eventually came to a room with two chests. While investigating them, one chest reached out with a pseudopod and touched Abe, sticking to him. It then opened, showing many teeth inside, and revealing itself to be a mimic.
After dealing with the mimic, the party looted the other, mundane, chest. Inside were religious texts and holy symbols. Next, they encountered, and then backed away from, a choker in the church's mud room, before deciding that the main area of the church was otherwise secure. With that, Sarra showed them where the secret door was, that led into the old church, which had been converted into a jail.
On entering the jail, Sarra was accosted by a pair of wraiths, one an Eadrine priestess, the other a doppelganger. The wraiths called her a traitor, and moved to attack. In the ensuing battle, Sarra was drained of much of her life, and nearly died, and Reese was also significantly drained, but the wraiths were ultimately defeated. Searching the cages in the makeshift jail led to no discoveries, but Sarra pulled herself together long enough to show the party to a pair of doors in back, one of which was the treasury she'd spoken of.
Inside the treasury were eight Flasks of Holy Water, three Potions of Greater Healing, a +1 Mace, and 250pp. In the other door was a small storage room, mostly with rotting food, wooden holy symbols, and other basic supplies. On the ground, however, was Sarra's dead body.
The Sarra who was with the party reacted strongly to seeing her own body, and fell to the ground, nearly unresponsive. The party almost decided to kill her, but instead chose to talk to her, and she explained that she was, in fact, one of the doppelgangers who had been captive here, and her real name was Feign. The real Sarra had been responsible for the breakout, and had been hoping to get some of the unjustly-imprisoned doppelgangers out safely. One of the freed prisoners, however, had decided otherwise, and started opening every cage in the place, releasing everything that had been held captive. The situation has devolved into chaos after that, with the rest of the Eadrine cultists discovering what had happened, fighting breaking out everywhere, and nobody being able to keep track of who was who. Among that chaos, Sarra and Feign had fled to the storage room, but Sarra was mortally wounded on the way. They'd waited for the fighting to stop, and things to go quiet, and while they waited, Sarra died in Feign's arms.
Feign headed back to Saltmarsh with the party, hoping to be able to use their share of the money to build a new life for themself, and move on from what had happened. As Serenity headed back into the docks, another boat drifted in; a small fishing boat whose sails weren't set, and with no crew at the oars. A crowd was gathering to see what had happened, with Eliander and Eda trying to keep them back. The ship, the Quipper Bait, was one of Eda's, and should have had a crew of four, including the Halfling captain, Sylos. They asked the party to investigate, and the ship was found to be empty, as if the crew had simply gotten up and walked off. The only lead was a large, double-headed electrum coin with a symbol of Iuz on each face, and a series of lines carved into it.
Taking the coin to Xendros, she explained much of what was probably going on. Her former boss, Fehr, had stolen some artifact of Tharizdun from a cult of his in Seaton, hid it away, and then got himself killed. The coin was Fehr's, made by transmuting a gold and silver coin together with magic. He was a capable mage, if unreliable, and had previously been known to use traps involving banishment to the ethereal plane.
Speaking again to Eliander and Eda, they showed the council members the coin, and were told that the strange lines resembled a rock formation on a small island out at sea. Serenity set sail the next day for that island, where they found six large rocks jutting out of the ground. One of those rocks had a slot carved into it, where the coin would fit. When it was placed inside, the sand swirled away from the middle of the rock formation, revealing a pool of water. Diving in, the party found a lower chamber cleared of water, with a dead fisherman's body, followed by another channel of water leading upwards. There, they were attacked by six giant eels, who nearly managed to kill Dripp.
Pushing on upward, past the eels, they found a room with a small stone altar, and seven burnt-down candles in a heptagon. Reese's experience with the arcane was enough that he quickly realized the functioning of the magic. Some sort of fiend had been bound here, and was powering magic that kept the fiend and the artifact permanently bound to the ethereal plane. Lighting the candles would bring them back into the material plane, but only for as long as the candles remained lit. Unfortunately, Fehr's work was sloppy, and lighting the candles would restore the artifact well before the fiend, meaning that it wouldn't serve as an effective guardian. It seemed that the fishermen had stolen the artifact and left, and had gotten themselves banished with it when the candles had run out.
Lighting the candles, the party prepared to engage with whatever fiend Fehr might have used. Instead, a tentacled aberration of some kind emerged, conversing with them. It explained that there was a simple way to undo the magics present. A mere sacrifice of a life, as a gift to Iuz, would make the artifact free to take, ending all the magics involved. It also explained that it was once a fiend, but was now something else.
Being unwilling to sacrifice a life, the party instead moved to attack this creature. It fought hard, and proved resistant to Dripp's psionic blades, but ultimately was dispatched. On its death, the heptagon in the sand vanished, and the water behind the party bubbled and dropped, as all the enchantments on the island dissipated.
Serenity headed back to Saltmarsh, where her officers found that no crew had yet emerged from the ship. Exploring the Quipper Bait once more, the party found that they had returned, but were now undead. After killing them, the party found a strange fish eye on Sylos' body, which seemed to stare at anyone who looked at it. Xendros explained that this was because it held the power to transform anyone staring at it, into the the aberration the party had fought. Rather than hold on to such an evil and dangerous thing, the party gladly traded it for five doses of Keoghtom's Ointment, one of which was immediately used to treat the Bluerot that Reese had acquired from the undead fishermen's rusted blades. They were also allowed to keep Fehr's Coin, which always lands on its side.
The party then spent a few days relaxing, waiting for the upcoming celebrations of Wiccrhys.
Downtime results:
Wiccrhys morning came around, and Ferrin and Wellgar showed up at Serenity, with a job for her officers to take. On this day, summonings of all kinds are easier, and all sorts of evil cults may attempt to summon powerful beings on this day. Each year, the two of them would put together their various divination magics, and make sure nothing nefarious was happening. This year, however, they could feel that something was wrong right away. Something powerful was being summoned. They'd pinpointed where; a small island avoided by supersitious locals due to a kraken skull long fossilized into the cliffs, and they hoped the party would go out and try to stop whatever was happening.
Heading off to the island, the party successfully navigated their way around the storm. During their travels, they traded with a pair of odd dolphins, earning some fresh fish in exchange for some of their own salted meat.
On arrival at the island, the officers found two ways into the cave system within. They could head up a small walkway to an opening in the cliffs, or investigate a small cave opening out in the water, that Reese had identified. Making their decision, they headed to the underwater cave entrance. Before heading out, however, one of the crew pointed out that the storm from last night was heading straight for the island, and getting stronger.
Swimming through the current there was difficult, and the party were faced with some sort of fish-person. It was dispatched easily, and they proceeded further into the cave, though S.A.M. was exhausted by the hard swim against the strange current. On emerging from the water, they saw two more fishmen, accompanied by another whose appearance was completely different. The strange newcomer let out a psychic scream that stunned Dripp, but the party were able to defeat the enemies, and continue.
Further in, they found more of the same enemies, accompanied by a number of cultists. The leader was using a chain mechanism to open shutters in the cave above, which triggered a whistling noise throughout the caves. As combat began, he smashed the mechanism used to turn the chains. Then, after the party cleared the cultists, he used the same psychic screech as before and tried to run away. The party were faster, however, and he was chased and killed before he could get to any other members of the cult.
Reese scouted ahead, and found that the cult's priest was conducting a ritual of some kind with several cultists. The rest of the party worked together to figure out a way to close the shutters, with S.A.M. and Abe ultimately proving able to simply work together to haul the shutters closed. As the noise faded, Reese watched the cult leader dispatch one of the cultists to investigate. Reese laid several traps for the cultist, then the party headed into the main ritual chamber through the other path they had found.
Entering the ritual chamber, the party found that the cult had summoned a kraken, with two of its tentacles rising up from the pool of water in the ritual chamber. The tentacles reached out, seizing Reese and one of the cultists. Fortunately, the kraken chose to eat the cultist, and then left without causing further harm. The priest's spells were largely shut down, and with his death, the cult was defeated.
Exploring around, Reese found a spot where a prior passage had been covered over by a false wall. S.A.M.'s magic mace was able to smash through the flimsy false wall, revealing a burial chamber of the cult's original founder. There, they got 49pp, 532gp, 484sp, and 623cp as well as a pewter crown and a +1 Rod of the Pact Keeper.
On the way home, the party rescued a fellow sailor who had been stranded. Greta Amberhair had an odd pedal-powered boat, the Water Wagon, which had been hired to transport some of Ferrin's supplies for the upcoming Wiccrhys celebration. After the storm the night before, her crew had been attacked by koalinth. The koalinth who had raided their supplies, killed some of the crew, and taken others captive. The officers agreed to give the Water Wagon a tow to Saltmarsh, and invited her aboard for lunch along the way. On reaching Saltmarsh, she was thankful, and offered the party a strange, curved, magical weapon.
That evening were the Wiccrhys celebrations. Abe got to talk to some of the other members of his order, who brought him a letter from the Chief Warden, along with a strange ruby. Dripp met with Xendros, who asked if Dripp would join them later that week for drinks, as she had something to show Dripp, related to Dripp's telepathy. Dripp was quite surprised, as they had never told Xendros about their telepathy. S.A.M. had a brief chat with Manistrad Copperlocks about the soon-to-be-finished temple of Moradin.
This then left the officers of Serenity with three days free.
Downtime results:
On Friday, Xendros showed Dripp an interesting fact about the town jail; one of the cells is warded against all forms of divination magic and teleportation. Inside this warding, Xendros told Dripp of a ship, the Emperor of the Waves, which had aboard a highly secured box containing a number of moderately dangerous magical items. The ship had been lost at sea, and the wards upon the box meant that the ship could not be located. Xendros had recently gotten word that the Emperor had been spotted near Saltmarsh, perhaps a day's sail away for Serenity.
On the one hand, the Faithful Quartermasters' precautions meant that there would certainly be no outside interference, and the ship should be long-empty. On the other hand, Xendros didn't want to take chances, and Serenity had proven adept at dealing with a number of dangerous situations. She asked if they would check it out, and bring back the box. In exchange, as payment, she would provide each of them with a magical item of some power She had a crate of some supplies for the party, as well:
The party agreed to help out, taking Serenity to the area Xendros had indicated. S.A.M. was able to accurately judge the local currents, and work out where the Emperor had drifted. She was a sorry sight, with all her rigging lost, a list to the port, and was riding low in the water. Towing her back to Saltmarsh would be impossible; she'd never survive the trip intact. Given the risk that the Emperor might sink, it was too risky to take Serenity there, or even to leave the jolly boat, so it was decided that the party would take a couple of the crew with them, to get the boat back to a safe distance afterwards.
Heading aboard the Emperor of the Waves, the party started investigating. On the main deck, they found the original captain's office, with a profane altar of some kind. Dripp identified the altar as being decoted to some foul demon-god, around the same time that a number of spiders attacked, aided by a massive purple spider-thing.
The various spiders wounded the party heavily, but they were able to overcome the attack, finding the captain's log in the debris, as well as a sack containing ten small rubies. A similar attack occured in the original navigator's office, where the party found more of the same spider creatures, as well as the original navigation charts. The navigator's office, however, was much harder to fight in, being thickly crowded with webbing.
Heading down, the party found that the bow half of the mid-deck was similarly choked with webbing. Therefore, they instead chose to start exploring the mid-deck from the stern, using the stairs in the captain's office. The first room they entered was a largely-abandoned galley, with a door towards the bow, and a barred hatch down to the hold.
Moving forward, they ran into a half-orc druid, with several giant spiders and a phase spider. Conversation and negotiation broke down quickly, and turned to fighting instead. The phase spider lurked among the party, but Dripp was able to keep the druid from using many of his spells, and the spiders were largely able to be killed. The druid fled further into the ship, dragging the party into battle with more monstrosities, giant wolf spiders, and more swarms.
Abe was first through chasing him, and identified that the hatch down into the hold was rotted and damaged. As a result, the party were able to get past it without falling in, chasing down the final spiders. The party looted the druid's belongings, getting the following:
Searching the rest of the mid-deck, the only thing of note was the room at the bow, which held several strange, human-sized bundles wrapped in spider web. The party chose not to inspect those, and instead opened the barred hatch at the stern of the boat, down into the hold. In the hold, they were attacked by four ghasts, with S.A.M. able to turn two of them, allowing them to be rapidly cleaned up.
With the ghasts defeated, Abe moved to pick up the box that Captain Xendros had sent them after. That was when the giant octopus attacked.
A giant octopus's tentacles started slamming into the ship, cracking the timbers, letting water pour in, and slamming into everyone inside who was still alive. Abe grabbed the box, and the party made for the ladder up to the mid-deck. The ship shifted and lurched, its list going from a few degrees to almost thirty, but the party were able to mostly avoid slipping, and make it to the main deck. There, they found four maw demons who had been inside the human-sized spider web coccoons earlier.
The demons were wounded by the octopus, as were the party, and the fight was quite damaging, with S.A.M. going down at one point. When the demons went down, S.A.M. attacked the tentacles out of anger, and found that he was in fact able to discourage them. The party damaged the giant octopus enough to keep it from accidentally killing them as they waited for their approaching rowboat. Once the rowboat arrived, the party quickly transferred the box, climbed aboard, and rowed back to Serenity as the Emperor of the Waves sank.
Returning to Saltmarsh, the party turned the box over to Xendros, who thanked them, and gave them the promised payment (tentative, may be changed prior to the next session):
Having gotten their rewards from Xendros, the party spent a couple of days relaxing in town, with S.A.M. finding that the new Temple of Moradin had been completed. On the morning of the 27th, Oceanus paid the party a visit. He was in town as part of his new responsibility as a messenger, co-ordinating the new anti-Sahuagin alliance. He told the party that his king's eldest daughter, Princess Tiliashanna Perlantasil, had been kidnapped. Details were light, but the party were able to get the location and a rough description of the ship that had kidnapped her.
Heading out, the party found the Nostalgia for the Reef, which turned out to be a ghost ship full of undead. S.A.M. was able to turn and destroy many of them, resulting in the fight rapidly becoming a rout. That rout then proceeded to the lower decks, where the party quickly cleared out a number of additional undead. After defeating the undead, the party found themselves with a number of situations to resolve.
Firstly, the Princess was behind a magically-locked door. Dripp was able to open the door, allowing the Princess to be freed. Secondly, the lower hold had a number of prisoners, fishermen from a ship that had been raided the day before the Princess was taken. S.A.M. was able to find the keys, free the prisoners, and get them some food and water to help them recover. Thirdly, the ship needed to be looted. Searching around, the party found:
The last problem aboard the Nostalgia was the large sarcophagus that the undead captain had been guarding. There were a number of scattered notes, which the party were able to decipher with some effort. These indicated that there was something sealed inside the sarcophagus, which had leaked out enough to affect the captain of the Nostalgia. It was trying to devise a ritual that would un-seal the sarcophagus and free it, with blood sacrifices needed in the current working version. The party took the sarcophagus to Castellan Shadowbreaker of Burle, so she and the others of the Wild-Flame Pact might be able to destroy it properly.
Resuming their downtime, the party were interrupted again on the evening of the 28th. Just after sundown, four bright lights appeared on the entrance to Saltmarsh harbour. These lights were rowboats, with each piled with burning debris and heading towards one of the ships in the harbour. One of the targets was Serenity, and the other three were some of Primewater trading's ships.
Dripp acted quickly, using their new cape to get themself and Abraham to the farthest dock, where they were able to both jump in and swim to the four boats. They found each rowed by a sailor, with a pair of magmins on each boat as well. The sailors and magmin were quickly dispatched, with only one of the boats being destroyed. Gellan thanked the party profusely, and offered to pay for any one Superior Ship Upgrade.
The party resumed their downtime, finishing with a total of five days spent this session, with the following results:
Lastly, the party started the installation of two ballistas and a mangonel. Modifications to Serenity began on the 1st, will be done on the 7th, and the ship will be ready to go on the 8th.
On Moonday, Reese brought a concern to the rest of the party. A family of gnomes, the Tizzles, were supposed to have come to town for the weekly market, but hadn't made it. He'd been hoping to purchase an Alchemy jug from the family's mother, who was an accomplished herbalist and alchemist.
Heading out of town, the party searched all the way to the Tizzles' home in the hills, without finding any clues. There, they got confirmation that the Tizzles had left two days prior, and they also got one of the Tizzles' shirts, for Abe to use to track them by smell. Armed with that, they were able to rent horses and track the scent to an inn along the road. At the inn, they were able to learn that the Tizzles had stopped there two nights earlier, and left the morning before. On their way, they were planning to investigate White Ridge Overlook, a tower two miles from the inn, as the tower had been burnt several decades ago, and the sites of such fires can sometimes grow interesting herbs.
Arriving at the tower, the party found a smashed handcart, and several trolls in the courtyard around the tower, peering over one troll's entrails. Moving into position, they lured one of the trolls to the gate, and S.A.M. and Dripp were able to use their magic to slow the trolls inside the Hunger of Hadar. The acid and cold combined with the slow to make short work of the trolls. During the fight, however, the party had rocks being thrown at them from above, forcing them to head inside for safety.
Inside, the party found burnt remains of furniture, a barred door to an escape tunnel, and rubble where the East end of the tower had collapsed, crushing the stairs. They were forced to climb up, where they found a venom troll sleeping atop a bed of rotten meat. They set to sneak past the venom troll without waking it, and Dripp used Whiskers to scout ahead, finding a three-armed troll and another who had been scarred heavily by fire.
Proceeding upwards, the party inadvertently woke up the venom troll behind them. The three-armed troll turned out to be a Cleric of some kind, who casted magic before attacking the party with tooth, claw, and a burning club. A lucky strike from Abe took off the fire-scarred troll's head around the same time the venom troll showed up, and from there the heroes were able to finish the trolls off, though several of them were nearly dead from the poison and magics by then.
The Tizzles were thankful for the help, and Abe and Reese were able to get their cart repaired, so they could gather their things and resume the trip to Saltmarsh. Exploring around, Reese found the other end of the escape tunnel, and Reese was able to explore enough to spot a Black Pudding without it noticing him. The party rested up, and took on the Black Pudding. Abe's sword split it into four smaller puddings, which were able to bring S.A.M. to the edge of death. Nevertheless, they were defeated, and the party found a dead body in the tunnel, mostly dissolved, with a couple of vials being all that remained intact.
With everything defeated, the party rode back to Saltmarsh after a long day. The Tizzles then gave the party a reward, and the total loot was:
The next morning, Dripp awoke from strange dreams, as though they had been glimpsing fragments of someone or something else's dreams that night. They found that they had been sleepwalking, and that they had drawn six faces and a map. Scrawled across the pages was one word, over and over. Golbuldoolpulg.
Asking around town, Eliander was able to identify one of the faces as Sergeant Wynna Rawley, who had failed to return from patrol the previous day. Some of the local fishermen at the Snapping Line were able to recognize two local fishers, Geoff Thorne and Hobbs Buck, who had left town the day before to go check some crab pots along the shore. The map was also identified as representing The Pillars, an area up the coast from saltmarsh with some stone pillars jutting out of the water. The area was known to be good for crab fishing, but dangerous for larger boats, and Geoff and Hobbs were probably fishing in that area.
Taking out Serenity, the party approached The Pillars by rowboat. Whiskers was able to scout ahead, and identify several Kuo-Toa, as well as three people chained to one of the rocks. Climbing up, the party engaged the Kuo-Toa, with Reese freeing Sergeant Rawley during the fight so she could join them. Once the Kuo-Toa were dealt with, the party freed the other prisoners, and destroyed a strange salt pillar that was radiating some sort of aberrant energy.
The prisoners explained that three others had been taken underwater earlier that morning, through a passage down in one of the pillars. After a short rest, Dripp secured some climbing ropes, and the party headed down to the caves below. Several eels ambushed the party, grappling at Abe and Dripp. S.A.M.'s magic was able to force one of the eels to drop Dripp, and the eels were then quickly dispatched.
Proceeding further into the caves, the party found the three other prisoners. All seemed to be easily breathing the water via gills, and fled when approached, chanting "Golbuldoolpulg". Following them, the party found a weakened Aboleth. It asked for their allegiance, and tempted Dripp with promises of fame, money, and understanding of their curse.
The entire party refused, and Golbuldoolpulg was quickly defeated, with Geoff unfortunately perishing in the fight. Returning to Saltmarsh, the party were able to pay for Wellgar Brinehanded to ressurect Geoff. After all the excitement, the officers of Serenity took a well-deserved rest for a few days. During that time, Doranthil, a half-elf tailor and clothing trader among the victims, sent Dripp a fancy outfit as thanks, having never worked with feathers before, and taking it on as an interesting challenge.
Loot:
The party did the following during their three days' rest:
On the evening of the seventh, S.A.M. overheard some of the dwarves at the temple talking about an attack on some of the local miners. They weren't there, but through basic gossip they knew that some of the miners had been working on another job, and had been attacked by "demons". They'd also heard that Manistrad was trying to get Eliander to send some guards to deal with the situation, but he didn't have the manpower.
Talking to Manistrad, she explained that Clan Copperlocks had taken on a contract to expand the tomb of the Stregones, a wealthy family that owned a large stretch of farmland in the area. There had been troubles from the start, with a minor tremor and collapse forcing plans to change, and with the head of the family being picky about things, but work was going along fairly smoothly. Then, the previous day, the dwarves were attacked. They'd fled the tomb, returned to Saltmarsh, and now Manistrad couldn't convince a crew to head back. She was planning to head out there herself the next day to smooth things over. If the party would go with her, she figured she'd be able to convince a work crew to go as well, and start work as soon as the tomb was safe.
Further conversation with Manistrad and one of the survivors led to the party learning that there were two workers still inside the tomb, at least one of whom had died. In addition, the possible survivor, Fallund, had been visited by his twin daughters, Fallthra and Falkrunn, who were bringing him a homecooked meal while he was working a double-shift. The twins hadn't made it out either. Lastly, the party got a description of the creature as being a bulbous, four-legged thing, with razor-sharp teeth, and un-natural healing.
The next morning, the party headed out with Manistrad to the Stregone estate. Entering the tomb, they found a pair of troll beasts picking clean the body of the confirmed-dead dwarf. The beasts were easily killed, and behind a nearby door that the beasts had been scratching at, they found the collapse Manistrad had mentioned, and a terrified Fallund. He was weakened from hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, but once he was convinced to un-bar the door, he quickly fled out to the dwarven workers' small camp nearby.
Heading east into the other side of the tomb, the party found four sealed burial chambers. The Northern two were still sealed, but the Southern two had been smashed open. Evidence indicated that the first two chambers were magically warded, but before the party could figure out details, they were attacked by a four-armed troll coming in from a cave system that the miners had dug into.
The troll attacked the party, and during the fight Dripp was able to restrict it from attacking, making it flee into the cave. There, the party found bones and carcasses from troll and troll beast meals. Further on, the troll cleared its mind and turned to resume fighting the party. It also yelled out, and called for two more troll beasts to join the fray.
After dispatching the troll and beasts, the party searched around, found some gold, and then proceeded even deeper into the cave. There, they found the twins, Fallthra and Falkrunn, and helped them get out. While S.A.M. and Abe helped escort them, Dripp and Reese proceeded further into the cave, running into a second troll.
This troll yelled at the party in Common, not Giant, and seemed angry about her daughters. Combat ensued, with the troll proving capable of spellcasting, launching a fireball and counterspelling some of the party's own spells. Despite this, the troll was quickly killed, at which point a ghost emerged. The ghost proved to be the true spellcaster, and continued attacking the party.
The ghost wasn't able to possess a new target right away, and the party were able to destroy it despite its attempts to avoid them on the ethereal plane. Once it was stopped, the party checked the rest of the caves, and then headed back out of the tomb altogether. Dripp and Reese talked to Petro Stregone, and put together more of the facts, determining that the ghost had been the family's founder, Aurora Stregone. Circumstances of her death were unclear to Petro, and he hadn't known her to be a spellcaster of any kind, but she did indeed have two daughters who had died with her, and were buried in the other warded burial chamber.
S.A.M. and Abe instead went to talk to the dwarves. Fallund, recovering from his ordeal, thanked S.A.M. profusely, and talked about his grandfather, who had been a priest of Clangeddin. Fallund had his grandfather's old prayer beads, and asked that S.A.M. take them. His grandfather had claimed them to have some magic, though Fallund didn't believe it.
With the threat resolved, the dwarves recovered the body of the worker who had been killed, and were able to resume work. The party headed back to Saltmarsh with Manistrad, and she paid S.A.M. for his help.
The total loot earned was:
The party spent three days resting around saltmarsh.
At the end of this downtime, Abe realized he hadn't heard from Ferrin in a few days. The druid had been planning to investigate the Cerulean Strand, a strandplain which had apparently been scoured of sand. Abe gathered his friends, and they decided to head out to the Strand and see what had happened.
Arriving at the Strand, they found that there was a large thunderstorm raging over the area. The sand had indeed been scoured away between the cliffs and the sea, and a Dust Devil swirled through the area. It flew into the party, slamming them and throwing them around, but they were able to disperse it and proceed onwards.
There was an obvious large wooden door, and Abe noticed a small tunnel to the South. S.A.M. and Abe headed in the door, while Reese and Dripp headed into the tunnel. Both groups quickly ran into blue kobolds and guard drakes, resulting in a long fight through the tunnels and the carved-stone rooms they connected to. Abe was nearly killed, but the kobolds were defeated, allowing the party to stop and rest before proceeding onwards.
Before the rest, however, the party took the time to examine a potion in an alcove in one hallway. S.A.M. read the Draconic sign, which identified the potion as "A gift from Rytheria. Emergencies Only.", and stepped forward to grab it. The sand he stepped onto gave out, and he barely had time to jump back to the safer walkway. Whiskers was able to grab the small vial, which turned out to be a Potion of Speed.
Down the last unexplored hallway, the party found a tall room, with stairs heading downwards around the room, and a large statue of Tiamat in the middle. Entering the room, the party found some dragon cultists worshipping the statue. Combat began, and a pair of guard drakes rose up through the stone stairs, but the party prevailed easily.
During the fighting, Whiskers sat on the blue dragon head of the statue, unlocking the door forward. Through that door, they found a pair of additional cultists and a large crystal. One of the cultists activated the crystal somehow, causing it to glow. The pair fled, but Abe was able to take one down before they got away. The other activated a second crystal in another room, but then was killed.
With the cultists dead, Reese stepped out onto another section of sand, towards where the party could see Ferrin, gagged and tied up. As he stepped forward, a Young Blue Dragon rose up from the sand and attacked the party. The dragon's lightning breath hit S.A.M. and Dripp hard, but Dripp's magic was able to stun the beast. They also managed to destroy one of the crystals, further weakening the dragon.
The fight with Rytheria was tough, but the officers of Serenity prevailed. Afterwards, they sought to destroy the remaining crystals, as well as some guard drake eggs. While doing so, Reese was ambushed by a kobold scale sorcerer, leading to one last running fight through the last stretch of kobold warrens. Dripp was nearly killed, one sorcerer was killed, and two escaped, but the entire location was now empty and silent.
The party looted the dragon's modest hoard, and then headed home to Saltmarsh, noting that the thunderstorm overhead was already breaking. Ferrin asked Abe to join him at his grove that evening, thanked him again for his help, and gave him a pin that he'd used back when he himself was an adventurer.
Total loot:
The party finished errands they had in Saltmarsh, including selling the blue dragon's hide for 900gp. They then rested in town for five more days:
On the morning of the 18th, two men showed up to Serenity with a job. They introduced themselves as Tom Stoutly, one of the men in charge of Saltmarsh's marines, and Guildmaster Tabeth of the local Mariners' Guild. They wanted the party's help with Abbey Isle, a large island off the coast of Saltmarsh that was a significant hazard to local ships. With more and more trade in the area, Keoland had wanted to put a lighthouse there for years, but there was an abbey there of some religious order, who'd proven reclusive and paranoid.
Pirates from Monmurg, however, had raided the abbey. Stoutly and Tabeth didn't know all the details, but the pirates' raid had been pushed back, and the guild had hired some of Stoutly's marines to help them deal with the pirates. The party were offered 2,000gp to head out, investigate the island, and make sure it was available for building a lighthouse. They agreed, and were told to head to a nearby island and talk to Major Ursa for more details, as he'd been more directly a part of things.
Arriving at the smaller island, the officers of Serenity met with Ursa, who was the lighthouse keeper on the much smaller island. Ursa explained that the island was basically just a sheer rock, with a difficult climb and sharp rocks below the cliffs. The southern end of the island was the only place there was a beach suitable for landing was the southern end. The beach there, which Ursa called the Skull Dunes, was filled with skeletons hidden in the sands. Any time anyone tried to head up the beach, the skeletons would swarm up out of the sands and attack.
Ursa didn't quite know how the pirates had gotten to the abbey, but suggested that the party could try to follow whatever path they'd taken through the sands. He also had no idea the fate of the abbey; the guild and marine forces had arrived as the pirates were fleeing. They'd routed the pirates handily, with only one ship escaping. Then, they'd witnessed smoke rising from the center of the island for two days.
The party took Serenity to Abbey Isle, and then took their boat to the Skull Dunes. S.A.M. was able to find a mostly clear path, almost getting to safety, but the party ended up in the wrong area, being ambushed by over a dozen skeletons. S.A.M. dispatched many of them by Turning Undead, and the skeletons were easily cleaned up from there. They then backtracked, and chose to head directly North. This led them into yet more skeletons, but the party had little difficulty clearing through them. As they thined through the skeletons, however, the party triggered a much stronger defense.
Every skeleton within 300 feet rose at once, and their bones separated and swirled around, forming into three large skeletal swarms, and a massive towering skeletal juggernaut. The swarms surged forward, attacking S.A.M. and Abe, but were destroyed just before the juggernaut could catch up to the party. The juggernaut wasn't able to hold together solidly, and once the party damaged it, it started falling apart on its own. This helped the party to quickly destroy the juggernaut, after which the Skull Dunes went quiet.
With the Skull Dunes cleared, the party proceeded along the island to the abbey. As they approached, they spotted two people outside, chatting. Dripp teleported themself and Abe over before the party could be spotted, and together they managed to kill both guards before either could raise the alarm with any other survivors.
Exploring around, they found that nothing was left of the abbey except some of the foundation stones, ash, assorted scrap metal, and a sturdy basement/cellar door. Opening the door, they called down to the other survivors, threatening them. Abe and Reese then worked together to pour a lot of lamp oil down the stairs into the basement area, hoping to burn out the survivors, and Dripp sent in Whiskers to investigate. Whiskers spotted an elf, an older priest, the head priest, two more guards, and four other disciples.
The party closed the door, set S.A.M. next to it to guard it, and started to set themselves up for a rest. That rest was, however, interrupted, when a painfully loud ringing noise erupted from the door, as Shatter blew the door apart. Combat began, with S.A.M. backing off away from the door.
The battle with the cultists was hard-fought, with many of them having some degree of spellcasting. The guards in front were well-defended by magic, and the head priest was able to dispel Dripp's attempt at using Hunger of Hadar to catch a large group, but the cultists were steadily ground down and defeated.
As the fight was winding down, the Elf Bard among them cast Invisibility and fled, then asked to negotiate their surrender. They introduced themself as Bayleaf, and explained that they were a mercenary hired to train the abbey's guards. They wanted passage off the island, but also enough pay that the party were effectively buying out their existing contract. After some negotiation, it was agreed that the party would pay 500gp, and Bayleaf would show them a hidden treasure in the remains of the abbey, which was well-guarded, but valuable.
Abe and Reese cleared out the cellar, and everyone stopped for a short meal before Bayleaf showed them the hidden door behind a curtain, then headed on their way to Serenity. In total, the party found and took:
With the abbey itself cleared, the party proceeded to open the hidden door that Bayleaf had pointed out. Entering the doorway, they found a large room, with two minotaur skeletons and a bodak. When Dripp entered into the room they were in, the undead looked at them, looked at the medallion, then ultimately remained passive. The party were able to pass them by, then proceed through a door into a maze. There, a message read "Dear Thief: Good Luck".
Proceeding into the maze, the party's keen senses, aided by the light of Abe's flaming sword, were enough to spot many traps. Each was disarmed or bypassed, and the party explored forwards until they found a mosaic pattern on the floor in one spot. Past the mosaic was another note, reading "Dear Thief: Your luck runs out here" above a door. S.A.M. took the party's collapsing pole, and poked forwards, setting off a glyph of warding.
With that trap sprung, the party headed into that door, finding three ogre zombies and a large crystal statue of a minotaur. The zombies were again pacified by the medallion, but the statue was motionless and blocking the doorway. The party approached it cautiously, and Dripp tried touching the medallion to it. Upon making contact, the statue roared to life and attacked. The party were able to destroy the statue by using the zombies to obstruct it, and then headed through the door.
The next section of the maze had a number of pits with illusions hiding them. Dripp was able to use the Gem of True Seeing to see past the illusions and guide the party safely. Then they used Unseen Servant and Whiskers to probe forwards and explore a bit, and the party eventually found another such mosaic. This time, the message said "Dear Thief: Enjoy the spoils of your effort"
After that was yet another chamber, with a large jade statue, and what appeared to be a lot of treasure. When Dripp went to investigate, the statue awoke and attacked. After defeating it, the treasure was examined, and found to be fake. The statue had mostly crumbled into dust, but there was 150gp worth of loose jade bits that hadn't crumbled entirely. The one locked strongbox was opened, and contained rags and another message, "Dear Thief: A lot of work for nothing, wasn’t it?"
Behind the strongbox, the party noticed a secret door. Heading through, they found another message, reading "Dear Thief: Think you’re clever? Best of luck with this". That message hid another secret door, behind which was a room made entirely of black iron. Dripp used the Gem of True Seeing, and found that the room was merely illusioned to feel hot and look like black iron. As they did so, the party observed a shift in the shimmer of the heat. To everyone but Dripp, two large iron golems appeared between the pillars in the middle of the room. To Dripp, the golems merely stepped out while the shimmering illusion hid them. The golems then moved to attack.
The iron constructs were slow but brutal, with one hand made of a hammer, and the other hand a long blade. Charging forward, they situated themselves between the part members and spun rapidly, hitting almost everyone and causing severe injuries. After that, they fought more conventionally, but enough damage had been done that everyone except Dripp was knocked unconscious at some point during the battle. S.A.M.'s magical healing kept most of the party in the fight, but he himself was knocked out a second time near the end. While his periapt kept him stable, he was unconscious when the statues finally died, so the rest of the party chose to drag him into the room, close the door, and rest for a while.
Inside that room, the party found bags, boxes and the like, containing many treasures:
Retracing their steps, the party exited the abbey, and returned to Serenity. There, the officers found Bayleaf charming the crew. Dripp tried to match Bayleaf's charm, but only embarassed themself, which was quickly covered up by issuing hazard pay bonusses for the trip. The crew then set sail, and left the Isle of the Abbey.
As they left, S.A.M. noticed that a ship nearby, the Wavehammer was acting suspiciously. The officers started discussing it, and the Wavehammer's lookout called out to their captain. The ruse was up, as they dropped their Velunan flag and replaced it with the flag of Monmurg before moving to attack.
The Wavehammer's crew fired on Serenity's sails, while the crew of Serenity focused on destroying the Wavehammer's weapons. After some time spent closing distance and exchanging shots, the Wavehammer pulled up bow-to-bow with Serenity, and boarding began. The officers of Serenity were only mostly recovered from their earlier fighting, but Reese convinced Bayleaf to help, the boarders were repelled, and the Wavehammer captured to return to Saltmarsh.
Returning to town, the party collected their reward for clearing the island, and turned over the Wavehammer and her crew, getting Serenity repaired in exchange. They then spent a day relaxing and doing other things:
On the morning of that rest day, the party got two leads on jobs they could take on, as well.
The first was the lizardfolk ambassadors, Garurt and Vyth, with a tale about the nearby silver mines:
Garurt and Vyth, the two lizardfolk ambassadors, have a bit of a problem.
As part of the new alliance, a few of their people have been visiting Saltmarsh and the area, and vice-versa, trying to see if there’s anything that either people has to trade/etc. to the other, in the hope that stronger economic ties will make everyone more interested in the budding alliance.
One of their people visited the various mines nearby, and while there, she saw a cliff whose side looked very similar to the lizard egg symbol of Semuanya.
The resemblance is only superficial, but Queen Othokent wants to declare this as a sign that the alliance is blessed by their god, and have the cliff itself declared holy.
Clan Copperlocks are set to start mining out that cliff sometime next month.
This is understandably going to cause some conflict.
The ambassadors have brought this up with Eda, but the senior councillor hasn’t been forthcoming with them on the issue since they first talked about it, and seems to largely be dismissing their concerns now.
They wanted the party to bring things up with her, investigate, and find out what’s going on.
Garurt and Vyth's Complaint
The other was a letter from the town mage, Keledek:
Captain Write and Company,
Several miles southwest of Saltmarsh, across the mouth of the river, is the wizard tower of Zenopus, a mage I’ve worked with previously.
He has not been seen in some time, and I believe him to be dead.
While he was a vastly inferior mage to myself, he specialized in alchemy, illusionry and various rituals, so I wish to acquire his spellbook.
Unfortunately, such spells shall also comprise his defenses, and take some time to unravel, which I can ill afford.
My own workings require me to be home for some time each day for the next several months, so I’ll not be able to pull apart his defenses properly.
Thus, I’m seeking to hire someone to take a more brute-force approach, hoping his incompetence will allow such a thing to suffice.
You and your officers have proven adequate at such tasks, so I offer the contract to you.
Enter the Tower of Zenopus, retrieve his spellbook, and bring it to me unmolested.
In exchange, you may keep anything else you find within the Tower.
Keledek's Letter
Dripp went to Manistrad Copperlocks on Earthday morning. The councillor explained that the cliff was near a large silver vein. The clan had been mining nearby already, but the existing mine was attacked by a Xorn, and she'd lost people, and had to abandon the mine. Now, going back to the vein through that cliff was the only reasonable option.
She also explained the basics of Xorn. They're earth elementals, usually found on the elemental plane of earth, or deep in the underdark. They glide through rock and stone, sniffing out gemstones and eating both those, and metal-rich deposits. Normally, they're not very aggressive, but this one was in a rampage.
Armed with this information, the party headed to the mines. Serenity got them most of the way, then they took the boat up a small river to where the mine was. The entrance was a simple opening in a cliff wall, with cart tracks coming out, and some trees and rocks nearby. As the party approached, Abe's keen senses alerted him to a kobold in one of the nearby trees. He started to warn the party of the kobold's presence, but ended up alerting it that it had been spotted. The kobold yelled out "Attack!"
The party were swooped down on by a winged kobold, who attacked using unarmed techniques. Two other kobolds attacked from the trees using slings. The party easily killed the winged kobold and one of the slingers. The second slinger climbed down from the tree it was in, and tried to flee, but was caught and killed. Searching around, the party identified tracks indicating that more kobolds were likely inside.
Proceeding into the mines, the party started by following the mine cart tracks. As they headed in, they found a door on the left of the mine caves, and entered. There, they found a pair of kobold inventors, working at a pair of workbenches, and surrounded by failed experiments. They engaged them in a fight, fending off pots of snakes, and several forms of blinding smoke.
One of the inventors tried to flee through a hidden passage to the outside, but Reese was small enough to chase after him. The inventor then surrendered, and was captured. The captive was interrogated, and the party learned that they considered the xorn to be "The Blessed One". Dripp then released the terrified kobold, giving it a healing potion and telling it to run away.
To recover from the wounds they'd sustained, the party closed the door to the workshop, and stopped for a rest. After that recovery, Reese spent some time searching through the inventors' notes. He needed S.A.M. to assist with translation, but was able to get the gist of some of their experiments. They were working on smoke bombs, and had developed a version that didn't produce much smoke, but burned away at the eyes of anyone it was thrown at, blinding them.
Heading back into the main passage in the mines, the party started exploring forward stealthily. They came to a pair of additional doors on the left. Taking turns listening at the first door, even Abe couldn't hear any sounds from inside. At the second door, still hearing nothing, the party opened the door carefully. In the chamber beyond, they saw a kobold with a rapier at its side, up on a ledge, bending over and doing something. Seeing this, the decision was made to close the door quietly, and proceed onwards.
Continuing further down the main path, the party reached a wide turn to the right. There they found another small secret passage, this time unhidden from view. Proceeding down it, Reese found that it curved back to the left, and opened up to the room where the rapier-wielding kobold had been seen. Reese reported back to the party, who chose to continue onward. Going around the turn, they started to hear a hissing noise from the rocks around them. Reese identified the noise as the same species of poisonous snake that the inventors had employed, so S.A.M. chose to head out ahead of the rest, expecting an ambush. He was quickly attacked by a massive swarm of snakes, who were almost entirely stymied by S.A.M. and Abe's armour while the party slaughtered them.
Once again, the party resumed exploring down the main path. They found the mine cart that had originally been on this track, damaged and set up to block the path ahead. Behind the cart were two kobold slingers, with a pair of kruthiks, who ambushed S.A.M. when he headed up to the cart to investigate. Dripp used the hunger of Hadar to damage the enemy, but the kruthiks burrowed through the stone, and the slingers peppered Dripp with rocks until the effect was dropped. When the kruthiks popped up, Abe got the killing blow on one of the immediately, and the other soon followed.
The party clambered up and over the cart to run down the two slingers. One was defeated, but the other fled further into the mines. Reese gave chase the fastest, with the rest of the party following behind. He caught up to the slinger just as they entered into the first of the two doors the party had skipped earlier. The fleeing kobold slinger was killed, and just as Reese stepped back from the kill, he looked up into a giant scorpion facing him down.
Seeing the giant scorpion, Reese chose to immediately close the door to that room, and wait for the rest of the party to catch up. Gathering in the main mine area, the party prepped for combat. Both un-explored doors opened, and the scorpion emerged, along with two rapier-wielding kobolds. The kobolds and the scorpion were killed, and the party headed back to the alchemy lab to rest again.
After that, they headed out to the deep parts of the mines again. There, they found four more kobolds; two with shields, and two who were obviously sorcerers. One of the shield-wielders called out to the other three to get ready for a fight, and the party moved in. Unfortunately, the sorcerers' fireball spells quickly downed most of the party. Dripp was only barely able to get to the party, close up some of the worst wounds, and signal to the kobolds for surrender. The party were then able to retreat from the mines and get back to town.
Heading back to town, the party took a day off to relax, and then headed back out to go to Zenopus' tower. Approaching, the party headed into a small forest around the tower. Illusion magics kept turning them around, but Dripp was able to navigate by sending up Whiskers to get a higher-up view of things. Approaching the tower proper, they found that it too was protected by illusions, making it difficult to get an estimate of how tall the thing even was.
Heading into the tower, the party explored the lower living area. Dripp discovered the fireplace to be suspiciously magical, but nothing else interesting was visible, so they headed up to the second floor.
In the second floor, the party found an alchemy lab. Reese searched around, and found a number of notes on alchemical research. There were also several potions and oils to be found:
Proceeding up again, the party found that the stairs only went to the third floor. There, the level was bare except for a single magical circle engraved near the southern wall. Dripp approached, but was attacked by an invisible stalker. The party engaged in combat with the stalker, but Dripp was able to dispel the binding magics holding it in place, and it vanished.
Dripp examined the circle, but couldn't figure it out. It clearly responded to speech, but nobody was able to figure out what would trigger it. Eventually, Dripp used Whiskers to get sight on the next floor up, while Reese was climbing the outside of the tower. Dripp's use of Thunder Step was enough to trigger the circle, which also teleported S.A.M. up. Abe was able to join them, by climbing up ropes as Reese had.
The fourth floor had the other half of the magic circle, as well as four levers. Trying the levers, the party found that three of the four opened into spiked pits, with Abe and Reese falling into two of the pits. The fourth opened both a pit and a similar trapdoor in the ceiling. The pit contained no spikes, and Reese tried climbing into it. He was immediately tossed upwards by a field of reversed gravity, landing in the fifth floor. The rest of the party then jumped into the pit, and flew up to join him.
Floor five had a large number of smashed-open cages, and two large owlbears. S.A.M. was able to approach the owlbears safely, and successfully pacified them with some of his ration. While they ate, the party took the stairs up to the sixth, and last, level.
Level six was a large library, filled with shelves and books. Zenopus' spellbook and diary were retrieved, with the latter revealing the passwords and other secrets of the various aspects of security that the party had dealt with. Dripp copied a couple of spells out of the book that day, before returning it to Keledek. Keledek was curious about this, and when Dripp explained that they are able to copy ritual spells, the two made a deal. Dripp can pay Keledek at any time for access to the ritual spells which are in Keledek's or Zenopus' spellbooks.
The party spent two more days in town, and were approached mid-day on Moonday by Xendros. She had a job for the party; the Faithful Quartermasters think they have a lead on the location of Daoine Gloine, the City of Glass. Daoine Gloine was the last place Kwalish was heading before he vanished, and the Quartermasters hope that there the party will be able to find an Apparatus of Kwalish. The party agreed, and Xendros arranged to meet them the following evening to arrange transport to the Vale of the Mage.
Downtime Results:
Captain Xendros' Current Stock:
While waiting for their meeting with Captain Xendros that evening, Reese made a proposal to the rest of the party. He suggested that they return to the silver mines, subdue the kobolds, and deal with the xorn. By not killing any of the kobolds, they wouldn't be breaking Dripp's earlier deal. But by dealing with the xorn, they would presumably be able to encourage the kobolds to leave and stay away.
The party agreed, and headed back to the mines. Dripp sent Whiskers in to scout, and peered through their eyes. Whiskers found that the various doors had been closed, and no kobolds could be found in the areas he could access. The party simply proceeded directly towards where they had been defeated before.
Approaching the final door before that room, Dripp cracked the door slightly and sent through Whiskers. Whiskers found just one of the shield-wielding kobolds, talking to one of the sorcerers. The burlier kobold spotted him, and tossed a short hunting spear at whiskers, causing him to vanish. Eavesdropping, the party found that the kobolds were now emerging into the large chamber ahead of the party, searching for the 'food' they expected to find.
Seeking to set up an ambush, the party split up, with Dripp and Abe going around a different path, hoping to loop back to the main chamber. Reese and S.A.M. instead waited where they were, and listened as the kobolds called for help from another kobold nearby. Once Dripp and Abe came around towards the large chamber, they saw the extra kobold was another sorcerer, and attacked. The fight was very short, with the ambushed kobolds barely able to get even a single attack.
Dripp found that the stray sorcerer had been poking at a hoard, consisting of assorted coins and gems, and a of Melf's Minute Meteors. The party confiscated the goods, and Dripp left behind some medical supplies and a healing potion for the kobolds to use when they recovered.
The party spotted a hatch behind where the two kobolds had been, and found that it led down to a lower cave, which appeared to be natural in nature. Dripp and Reese investigated, finding it to be hot, large, and unoccupied, as near as they could tell. The two sneakier members of the party then explored back through the mines, out of concern that the tied-up kobolds might get found by the other shield-wielding kobold, who hadn't yet been found.
The final expected kobold was found in the large storage and sleeping area to the North. As Dripp and Reese engaged him in combat, he fled towards where he expected the rest of his allies to be. There, he found Abe and S.A.M. standing guard over those allies, tied up and unconscious. He immediately surrendered.
With the kobolds dealt with, the party headed down to the lower chamber. Reese and Abe proceeded into the chamber, when the xorn suddenly amushed S.A.M. The party fought hard against it, with mud mephits emerging each time they hit it. Dripp tried talking in Primordial, and found that the xorn was suffering from the fires burning inside it. Firing the final shot to defeat the xorn, they found that inside it were gems, including an Elemental Gem of Fire which had been cracked by its digestion. A fire elemental emerged, and began attacking everything in anger.
Dripp was able to convince it to calm down, and once the mephits were defeated, they explained that they could try to dispel the magic keeping it in this plane. The party waited for an hour, with Dripp regaining their magic around the same time as the kobolds awoke. They showed the kobolds that the xorn had had an elemental gem inside, not a dragon egg, and the kobolds gathered their things and left. The xorn was ressurected, and left, leaving the party half the rubies it had eaten previously, as well as the remaining intact Elemental Gem (Red Corundum). Lastly, the fire elemental was able to be dispelled back to the plane of fire.
Returning to Saltmarsh, the party reported success back to Manistrad and the Lizardfolk. For their work, they were paid 250gp They then spend some time preparing for the meeting with Xendros. She explained that the expedition was being run by Anaxi Zephries, a mapmaker commonly known as the Cartophile. The Cartophile had some maps and notes that he believed indicated the path Kwalish had originally taken through the Barrier Peaks.
After some last-minute shopping for the few things they could get in town, Xendros teleported the party to the Cartophile's office in a small village at the North end of the Vale of the Mage. There, the Cartophile nearly had a heart attack at the party's arrival. After more calming down, he sent the party to the town's pub, to get his assistant, who would also be going on the expedition. He also recommended that they get proper winter clothing at the town's general store. Heading there, the party found that it was largely set up to gouge tourists heading through on expeditions into the Peaks.
At the town bar, the party met Garret Levistusson, the Cartophile's assistant. He was just as surprised as Zephries to see the party so soon, but quickly gestured for them to join him for another round. He indicated that he's been up in the Peaks a few times before, has been working with the Cartophile for a short while, and explained in in-universe terms that he is mechanically a bard/rogue multiclass. After checking on the party's equipment, making sure they were ready, and finishing up one last drink, he led them back to the office, to head out that evening.
Back at the office, Anaxi explained that in exchange for the maps and notes he was providing via Garret, he simply requested that the party provide him, via Garret or the Faithful Quartermasters, with copies of any notes, maps, etc. that they find. Garret, meanwhile, grabbed a small mechanical contraption, which he explained that he'd found in the Peaks, and reprogrammed to work as an orb of direction, an orb of time, to be able to cast light, and to be able to assist with any analysis or operation of mechanical devices or similar.
Heading out, the expanded party started trying to navigate through the foothills leading to the Barrier Peaks proper. Navigating through the forests, crags, etc. was difficult, and they found themselves having to bed down for the night in one of the forests. While setting up, they were attacked by some strange contraption. It looked like some sort of self-propelling ballista, but without any visible spot for ammo to be loaded/stored, no windup arms, etc. The mouth of it was glowing, and it approached to attack.
Attacked by the strange machine, the party quickly moved to destroy it. Dripp was harpooned and dragged towards it, getting heavily injured, and had to thunder step away. The rest of the party moved in to attack, getting blown up by an explosive bolt for their trouble. Despite all this, the device had issues with aiming and movement, and the party were able to bring it down easily enough.
After it stopped moving, Garret moved to take it apart. Reese tried to assist, and the two came to a bit of a disagreement between Reese's formal education as an engineer, and Garret's self-taught local knowledge. Garret left Reese to the task, and headed over to help the rest of the party set up camp. With Gearbox's help, Reese was able to decipher some of how the strange device functioned, but much of it eluded even him.
The next day, the party headed further up, into the Barrier Peaks proper, and reached the entrance of a cave system that Garret was certain Kwalish had planned to pass through. As they explored the caves, they found writing in both Common and some other language, mentioning a Grand Master, a monastery "of the Distressed Body", and pointing the way, somewhat. Most of the text was utterly deranged. Dripp used Comprehend Languages to double-check Garret's translation of the text, and Reese pointed out some Thieves' Cant messages which roughly translated to "Welcome to someone’s turf, no cops here, don’t stir up shit, etc."
Wandering the caves with only Gearbox to tell time, the party spent hours trying to get to the "Monastery" that the messages mentioned. As they did so, Abe spotted a stalagmite that had metal plates on it. Pointing it out, Garret realized the danger and warned everyone to get ready for combat just as the stalagmite revealed itself to be a partly-mechanized Roper. It sent out its tendrils, reeled people in, and tried to eat Garret, but the party were able to cut it down fairly easily.
Garret got to investigating the dead roper, finding that the mechanical bits were largely replacements for things like its eye. Reese continued to investigate as well, finding a fascinating structure inside. After checking with Dripp and Garret, he was able to confirm that none of the replacement eye was magical. Garret explained that while he hasn't seen specifically a part-mechanical Roper before, he has seen creatures with replacement parts before in the Peaks, and they're never magic.
Spending the night in the caves, the party continued exploring the next day, finding themselves emerging into the brightness of day after a few more hours. They were atop a ledge, overlooking a bowl-shaped crater-like valley. Suspended over the valley was a large flying island, supported on columns of flame. Atop the island were structures made of metal, and on a lower ledge of the mountains was a dock of metal, with a sphinx lazing on top.
Picking up their jaws and heading down to the lower ledge, the party only spoke briefly to the sphinx. She mentioned the paying of a toll to reach the Monastery of the Distressed Body, and the party instead chose to talk to the eladrin they'd now spotted nearby. She introduced herself as Mary Greymalkin, and it was discovered that she'd previously been a planned part of Anaxi Zephries' expedition, but had left on her own out of impatience. The tarot cards she was shuffling seemed to have told her to join up with them, so she and her familiar, Tabitha, accompanied the party back to the sphinx.
Just before leaving, however, she offered for the party to draw a card from her deck. Not quite the proper Deck of Many Things, her deck nevertheless had similar powers, though she explained that its effects were 'rarely' permanent.
With the cards no longer being drawn, the party headed back to the sphinx. She explained that they would each need to ask her a question. If she was unable to answer, and they then provided the answer, their toll would be considered paid. If not, then the toll would be paid in some other way, which turned out to be a draining of their intelligence.
With their tolls paid, the party watched as a metal skiff, flying on another column of fire and smoke, detached from the far dock and approached. Aboard was a single humanoid ferryman, controlling it by pressing and adjusting various buttons, dials, etc. on the skiff. They wore a heavy hooded robe that obscured their features entirely, and silently gestured for the party to get aboard. Once everyone was aboard, they directed the skiff back to the island, and gestured for the party to disembark. There, they were met by yet another person obscured by their robes, who assumed they were new recruits, and asked if they wanted to visit the Grand Master immediately. The party declined, and were instead allowed to wander the grounds.
Exploring the lower grounds, the party found a number of similarly-clad monks going about various duties. The monks were largely uncooperative, seeming to want to return to their work. The buildings, meanwhile, were mostly just empty storage rooms, but the party found more graffiti there. They also spotted some sort of swarm of bat-like creatures, whose bodies appeared to be human faces. Lastly, they saw wires running throughout the area, leading towards the back of the upper level.
Following the wires, they ended up passing a second, smaller floating island, isolated from the first by a moat of air, which would drop them to the mists of the valley below. A series of floating disks of energy, resembling Tenser's Floating Disks, seemed to form a bridge across to the island. Unfortunately, the disks vanished as the party approached. Whiskers was sent over, and Dripp found that their mental connection didn't work while he was close to the island.
Continuing, the party found that the wires ultimately led to a hexagonally-shaped building. Entering, the party found a central main chamber, with five doors leading to other rooms, in addition to the one they'd just come through. In the center was a console, where the wires seemed intended to lead. But, they instead flowed out to the five other doors. Opening them, the party found each was occupied by a Brain in a Jar, and each one was talked to in turn. Checked out the wires building. Brains in jars.
First, in the room labelled Internal Security, the party met a barbarian named Corliss. She slammed the doors out of the building shut, locking the party in, and accused them of being monks. Her overall goal seemed to be to starve them, out of hatred of the monks that she believed them to be. Dripp asked her to look into their mind to see the truth, but that only gave Corliss a headache, angering her. The conversation came to an impasse, so the party moved on to the other rooms.
In the next room, "Auxiliary Control 1", they met Alton, who was much nicer than Corliss. The party made friends with him quickly, and he explained that he'd been part of Kwalish's original expedition. He was pretty sure the sphinx had killed him, but Kwalish had saved him as a brain. He offered to help the party any way he could, including keeping two of the disks active if they tried to cross to the floating island, which was a treasury. He also sympathized with their Corliss problem, explaining that she was always bullying him, too. The only way he'd found to deal with her, was to lie, because as he put it, "she'll believe anything".
After Alton, the party went to Auxiliary Control 2, and met a nice old lady named Editha. She mostly just seemed to be bored, and was quickly impressed by Reese's stories about the journey into the Peaks. In exchange, she explained that Kwalish had still been researching Daoine Gloine after arriving here, and that his notes were likely in the treasury. She also pledged to keep her disks active if the party wanted to go to the treasury to investigate.
Fourth, the party found Dunstan Stonehill in the "Security" room. He seemed mostly interested in talking about the nature of the island itself. Reese explained what he'd found of the technology so far, and listened to Dunstan's ideas, endearing himself with the man. Dunstan explained that he had come investigating a bone devil, and had been killed by it, then placed in this jar. He also explained that this strange floating island was some sort of flying ship, designed to travel through the air, and also between the planes. He pledged to assist the party with reaching the treasury, and asked if they could find the bone devil and destroy it.
In the last room, the party found Broderick, a military man who assumed he could just boss them around as their superior. The conversation with him was less a chat, and more just the party being yelled at. Ultimately, he ordered the party to go kill the Grand Master, who was the bone devil Dunstan had mentioned. Lastly to Broderick. Military type, ordered them around.
Returning to Corliss, they explained to her that they were planning to kill the Grand Master. This, she believed, allowing them to leave for that purpose.
Entering the large, central abbey, the party found the Grand Master. A large bone devil, he was wearing a leather cloak, and had claws covered in metal shards, which Reese identified as the shards of a Vorpal Blade. Flanking him were two bodyguards, more monks with rapiers at their sides. He demanded that the party submit to his rule, and they instead attacked head-on. Instead of rising to face them himself, the Grand Master instead gestured for his bodyguards to do so, saying "Do try not to kill them, they'll be useful if we can put them to work."
The fight with the bodyguards began with Dripp summoning a brown bear from their bag of tricks. As the bear joined the party in melee with the two half-orcs, Dripp withdrew yet another brown bear. The fight was relatively quick, with the guards dropping without accomplishing much. Their deaths, however, revealed that their faces had been removed, leaving only exposed skull at the front of their heads.
Their deaths, however, prompted the Grand Master himself to enter the fray. As he rose to fight, his leather cloak could now be seen to be made of sewn-together leathered faces. Also, he had a pair of bracelets on, which connected to strange flying portals that would have allowed him to reach the party from anywhere in the room. Fortunately for them, the bracelets were immediately disabled by Dunstan, who apparently had control over them.
Despite his bracelets being deactivated, the bone devil was able to kill one of the bears immediately. He had a much harder time dealing with S.A.M.'s heavy plate armour. That armour bought the party enough time to defeat the Grand Master, with Abe striking the finishing blow.
As Abe struck the last blow, his sword carved through the Grand Master's head, revealing it to be a mechanical construct. Inside the head was a quasit, who immediately tried to surrender. It used the surrender as a distraction to try to get away while invisible, but Abe grabbed it anyway, and simply ripped its head off.
With the quasit's charade revealed, the monks in the balconies began to flee. The party went around the room, looting the monks' swords, and the Grand Master's scepter and crown. Garret set to examining the 'Grand Master', to see how it had been built. Reese, on the other hand, set about examining the throne, archway, scepter and crown. He quickly determined that they were tied together, and was able to activate them. The archway revealed itself to be a portal, and the sheer evil pouring off was enough for the party to realize it linked to the Nine Hells. As everyone reacted in a panic, Reese quickly found the necessary controls on the scepter to deactivate the portal, and Abe then set about dismantling it entirely.
While Abe destroyed the portal, and the rest of the party rested, Dripp set about identifying the various things the party had found. The bracelets were identified as being a pair of Local Teleportation-Field Bracelet sets. The swords used by the half-orc monks were found to be a Rapier of the Medusa and a Polymorph Rapier. The scepter, crown, throne, and archway proved to be tied together magically, with the loss of any one making the others unusable. Despite this, the party kept the crown and scepter, as both were jeweled, and should be valuable.
Leaving the central abbey, the party found that the monastery was in chaos. Many monks were fleeing via the ferry, with others decrying their brothers as cowards and unfaithful. Seeing this, the party chose to check out one of the other nearby buildings. There, they found a small group of still-faithful monks overseeing slaves, who were shoveling ore into massive fires burning beneath the building.
Talking to the monks, the party quickly came to the decision to kill them for the slavery. The fight was quick, with Mary stunning many of the monks, and the party making short work of them. After they died, the party gathered their strange weapons (A Force Pike and five Hooked Polearms), and got an explanation from the prisoners - this was the engine that kept the monastery aloft, and the slaves were responsible for mining out ore and keeping it running. They told the party where to find the dorms, prison, and the Leatherworks where everyone's faces were being removed.
Returning to the brains, Broderick tried once again to order the party around. This time, Abe pulled rank, and was officer-like enough that Broderick immediately fell in line, and pledged the party his support in reaching the treasury. Broderick mentioned 'Zephries', and explained that the kindly older brain, Editha, was Editha Zephries. Garret explained that this probably meant she was related to the Cartophile. Talking with the other brains, the party also got Corliss to pledge assistance entering the treasury, and were told that there was a second lab somewhere.
Hoping to help the freed slaves, the party next investigated the leatherworks. There, they found the place was largely abandoned, with only a single prisoner left, tied to a table. Their face had already been removed, and they were unconscious. Dripp investigated what appeared to be a person in leather armour, but instead found a strange suit of leather armour. S.A.M. took the leathery face next to the victim, placed it on their head, and used healing magic, which fused the face back to them, and woke them up. A swarm of face-bat creatures attacked in that moment, but were easily killed.
Knowing more about the faces, and aware that they could be reattached, the party headed to the prison, in the hopes of freeing all the slaves, giving them all the faces, and giving them some money and supplies to get to safety and get healing to restore their faces. In the prison, Reese opened some shoddy footlockers, finding Dripp's vanished equipment. The prisoners were mostly all freed, except three who had gone insane from the experience of losing their face, and were mad with rage. Once the other prisoners had cleared out, Dripp started using Eldritch Blast to put them out of their misery.
Once the psychotic prisoners were eliminated, the party headed to the dorms. There, they found a dozen monks playing cards and looting, in a very un-monklike manner. Dripp tried to talk them into joining up, getting their faces back, etc., but the monks instead decided to attack. A short combat later, the monks were left for dead. The party took their stuff, took a rest, and then took a trip to the Treasury.
At the treasury, the party encountered the brain of the Bone Devil who had originally been the Grand Master. It had gotten itself accidentally Brain-in-a-Jar'd centuries earlier, and its Quasit slave had built the mechanical body and taken over the monastery. Kwalish's journal was present, and the brain taunted the party that they couldn't take it without setting off a booby trap and plummeting the treasury to the ground. Much discussion was had about how to deal with the situation, while the party stole all the un-secured loot in the room. Ultimately, Reese was able to figure out that the large eye secured into one of the walls was a Beholder's antimagic eye, and was powering the antimagic field over the treasury. With the field turned off, Dripp took the risk of tripping the failsafe, knowing they could teleport away.
Fortunately, Dripp was able to deactivate everything, and take the journal successfully. The brain vowed that it would track the party and their loved ones and descendents down, and slaughter all of them. In a few centuries, when the treasury's fuel ran down and it finally killed the brain, allowing him to ressurect in the Nine Hells.
With the last of the monks having fled or died, the party returned to the situations of the prisoners and brains. Some of Kwalish's experiments were used to put the main five brains into the bodies of some of the dead monks. Others were used to reforge the Vorpal Sword shards into a greatsword for Abe, and to turn Garret's longsword into a shortsword. By this point, it was late at night, so the party, former-brains, and prisoners all took a night to rest before heading out.
Leaving the next morning, the party found the ferryman unconcerned that the monastery was likely about to crash to the ground. He simply explained that he would 'return home' when it did. Similarly, the sphinx was unable or unwilling to leave, having been charged with guarding that spot, even if the monastery was no longer there. The prisoners and former-brains, with faces for re-attaching, took a copy of the party's map, and headed back towards the Vale of the Mage. The party instead headed around the crater-valley, onwards towards Daoine Gloine, following the path laid out in Kwalish's journal. Just before they entered back into cave systems, the engines on the monastery failed, and it crashed into the ground, leaving only the treasury flying alone.
Traveling through the caves, the party had a brief encounter with an Earth Elemental. After a bit of conversation, they convinced it to let them pass, and then they were able to navigate to Daione Gloine by the following morning.
Standing over the City of Glass, the party found it inhabited not by glass people, but by unmoving glass statues. The towers throughout the city were damaged, crumbling, and covered in vines, but a strange film lay over the city, with everything gleaming below it. Many of the fallen bits of tower seemed to be floating atop the strange barrier. Investigating, they found that it was actually the top of a city-sized gelatinous cube, filling the entire city to a height of thirty feet.
After a bit of teleporting, climbing, and jumping, the party got into one of the city's towers, and were then able to navigate across the city at will. They set out for the tallest tower of all, with S.A.M. leading the way there. Travel above the slime layer was achieved by walking across the various bits of crumbled tower that laid on top. On arrival to the tower, they weren't able to enter, instead having to navigate up the outside.
At the top of the tower, the party found a dome of glass, made entirely of glass statues, wedge closely together. Abe smashed a couple of them, allowing the party to squeeze between them. Under the dome, the party found a temple built onto the top of the tower. Inside, they found a strange glass panel on the wall, clearly made of some of Kwalish's technology. While poking around, a large, snake-bodied skeletal woman appeared, with snakes for hair. Just seeing her, the party could feel her magical gaze turning them to glass.
The battle with the glass medusa was initially a worrying one, but Dripp quickly had the idea to grab a mirror, and hold it up. This caused the medusa to vitrify itself, ending the fight.
Loot Summary:
With the medusa dead, the party were able to investigate the immediate area. Reese searched over the glass panel, and it displayed an image like a scrying pool, showing some alchemy equipment set up in a metal room somewhere. Abe looted the medusa's body, finding a gold necklace, a pair of gold bracers, and ten gem-studded gold rings. Dripp removed one of the eyes from the head, hoping to use it in their plans to un-petrify Slate.
Exploring the rest of the tower, the party found storage and living quarters for the clergy who had once served the temple. At the bottom, they found yet another archway in the ooze at the bottom, similar to the gate back at the former Monastery. The living quarters and storage rooms held Spell Scrolls of Animate Dead, Flock of Familiars, and Greater Restoration, a pair of strange mechanically-augmented boots, and delicate glass statues, depicting a pseudodragon, an imp, several will-o’-wisps, and various hearts and brains.
Heading back into the rest of the city, the party navigated to the other distinct landmark - a squat tower, broader and shorter than most of the rest. S.A.M. once again had the skills needed to get the party there uneventfully. The building had large double-doors opening to a balcony area above the slime level, and inside was a single massive room, like a hangar or garage. Dripp stood outside and threw in a dagger, which activated three constructs that attacked.
Dripp was able to Banish one of them, a variant of a Helmed Horror. Meanwhile, the party dealt with one of the constructs using a variation of the Slow spell. Despite the slow effect, the party were able to destroy the other two constructs without Dripp losing the Banish effect. That allowed them to surround the last construct before it reappeared, making the fight easier.
Throughout the entire fight, voices, noises, and other sounds were echoing out through the room. Tortured screams, begs for mercy, and more filled the area, but stopped around the same time as the fighting stopped.
After a short rest, the party headed further into the garage. The screams and noises resumed, allowing Abe to track their source, now that there wasn't the noise of a fight. They navigated through large piles of discarded inventions, eventually finding a Clockwork Kraken, with a Stone Defender protecting it. Hunger of Hadar should have shut both down, but the Kraken had put its mecha-tentacles into Local Teleportation-Field Bracelets, allowing it to harass the party despite distance.
The second wave of constructs were ultimately defeated, and Reese made two discoveries. The first was that a prototype Apparatus of Kwalish was lying nearby. The second was that part of the Kraken was a sort of coffin that could be opened. Checking inside, he found a long-undead Kenku, powering the machine. She was the source of the ever-repeating noises, and Reese was able to free her from her shackles.
The Kenku gestured for the party to follow her to the tallest tower in town, mentioning "Gloine Nathair-Nathair". Being old Gnomish for "Glass Snake-Snake", the party understood this to be the name of the medusa. Abe pulled out her severed head, and the Kenku foolishly attacked, dying quickly. Looting the area, the party found the Helmed Construct's Helmet, and ten magical-mechanical experiment components.
Examining the Apparatus, the party found a number of Kwalish's notes and journals, detailing his time in Daoine Gloine. He'd built the Apparatus so he could secure his new, demi-plane lab's entrance inside the ooze. So, the party got the Apparatus running again, and headed into the ooze to find the lab. The relevant crystal bauble was easy enough to find amid the glass ones strewn throughout the city.
Entering Kwalish's lab, the party found the most advanced technology yet. Delicate glass alchemy equipment, incredible electronics, and even an imprisoned Mind Flayer. As they gawked, Kwalish himself emerged from another room, rather quite astonished to have visitors. The party explained who they were, and why they were there, but the thing that Kwalish paid the most attention to was S.A.M.'s situation. He told S.A.M. that he could help the Cleric out with his situation, but the party would have to stay with him for the rest of the day while he worked.
After spending the night, the party headed out in the de-Atropal'd Apparatus, dropping Garret and Mary off at the shores of the slime lake. There, they triggered the teleport scroll that Captain Xendros had given them. Moments later, they found themselves standing around in her office's back room, where they'd initially left Saltmarsh. The apparatus was nowhere to be found, and Xendros soon showed up to thank the party, letting them then go on their way. Two weeks then passed.
Downtime Results:
After the two weeks, the party were summoned on Saturday morning to the Council Hall. There, they were briefed by the war council on the need for intel on the nature of the Sahuagin lair. The party were asked to infiltrate the lair, and get the council any information they could about entrances, the layout, troop dispositions, etc., so that the impending attack on the lair could be more successful.
That night, the party headed out, taking Serenity to within a half-hour swim of the island. Being entirely capable of staying underwater, they were able to make their way along the ocean floor, gaining initial access via what was originally the lizardfolk's main entrance, now sunk eighty feet beneath the sea.
Heading inwards, they found a stone slab blocking the path, which had been damaged and shifted out of position. On the other side, they found a prison cell, with a dead giant eel inside. Exploring past that cell, they found that the main prison area beyond had several Sahuagin torturing a Locathah. The Sahuagin were quickly ambushed and defeated, and the Locathah freed.
The Locathah introduced himself as Borgas, and explained that he and his giant eel companion had been hunting in the area when they were captured. He was able to give the party some information on the layout, and also mentioned a Triton and Sea Lion in the other cells. The party freed the Triton, who introduced himself as Kyth, and gave a similar story, though he knew nothing of the layout of the lair. Both prisoners offered to help the party in their venture, but the offer was declined, and instead were told to do their best to get away and get home.
Heading further into the lair, the party passed through several hallways and intersections, eventually coming to a small barracks. Reese tried to sneak into the room, to scout out what was inside, but he was spotted, and the party forced to engage several Sahuagin, one of whom turned the very water of the room into a swirling whirlpool against them.
Finishing up the fight, the party tossed the bodies into the seaweed beds in the room, hiding them. Moving to the adjacent storage area, they found an armory of weapons, obviously intended for the wealthiest Sahuagin. The weapons were smashed with six small pearls recovered from them.
Exploring further, the party found an arena, with two Sahuagin fighting to the death, and dozens more watching from the stands. Retreating from that, they then came to a guard post. The guards attacked and killed Whiskers when he moved into the room, but that was enough information that the party were able to ambush the guards, killing them easily. Reese pressed onwards from the guard post, finding the large cavern full of Sahuagin that Borgas had mentioned earlier. The net trap in the room was sabotaged, and then the party resumed exploring the lair.
Heading updstairs, they explored around, finding a room full of seaweed with something moving inside. Assuming that it had sharks, they skipped past that room, to a large banquet hall, built to seat hundreds. From there, they stealthily moved past the throne room, where the Sahuagin leader was holding court. Further exploration brought them to a large room with stairs leading up to the top level. They could see the water's surface, and hear workers and voices from above.
Wanting to explore the lower level further, the party stayed below, eventually finding a temple. Inside, three Sahuagin priestesses were sacrificing something on an altar, with a massive two-headed shark circling above them. Believing this to be an avatar of Sekolah, the party retreated, and chose to head upstairs instead.
On the upper level, the party emerged into an unfinished room, with a work crew of slaves mining and tiling, getting the room complete. The Sahuagin overseers attacked, but the party were able to easily kill them all.
The orc and hobgoblin slaves, upon being freed from their shackles, ignored the party's warnings and immediately fled. The two lizardfolk slaves seemed ready to do the same, but S.A.M. spoke to them in draconic, and calmed them down enough to start talking. They didn't know the way out, but could draw a crude map of the immediate area, including a storage room and the slaves' pen. When the party explained that they were going to rescue the slaves, they asked if the party was also going to save Elmo.
The lizardfolk explained that Elmo was another slave, who'd been here far longer than the two of them. He was back in the pen, so the party decided to head there next. Just outside the pen was a guard outpost, with the bodies of the orc and hobgoblin prisoners lying on the ground. The sahuagin had been eating their kills, and attacked the party in a rage, but were themselves killed.
Opening the gate into the pen, the party found Elmo's body. When Reese approached and prodded him, however, Elmo proved to be just shy of his actual death, emaciated and weakened from exhaustion and starvation. They party were able to gather that he'd been part of a group from Monmurg who'd tried to similarly infiltrate the lair, but got caught and enslaved instead. He mentioned his party's things being stolen, but when he saw Reese's cloak, he assumed they'd already found it. Moments later, he finally passed on.
After a brief debate, S.A.M. cast Revivify on the man, restoring him to life, though still weakened. Elmo was able to focus better, and remembered a secret door he'd helped build weeks earlier, in the same storage room the lizardfolk had mentioned. Heading there, Reese investigated the door, and found a Glyph of Warding. A bit of jimmying later, the door was open without setting it off, and the party were able to loot the contents:
The secret room seemed like a good spot to rest, so the party stopped there to bandage wounds a bit, before heading back into the lair. They quickly found themselves in another armoury, where Reese poured acid into a couple of coffers full of daggers, and Abe started smashing the racks of larger weapons. The noise brought the attention of a single Sahuagin, who was easily killed. Reese and Dripp then explored the path he'd come from, and found one other Sahuagin waiting for his comrade to return, next to another winch-and-gate mechanism.
Reese carefully lined up a shot, and blew the Sahuagin's head off with his musket, but the noise alerted the enemies on the other side of the gate. The party quickly got into position while the gate started to open. The fight was tough, but the party prevailed, and found that they were now at the surface-level entrance of the lair. S.A.M. took the slaves out, helping the lizardfolk to escape to Serenity. The rest of the party explored further, but the remaining areas on the upper level were largely empty of both Sahuagin and objects of any note.
Returning to town, they debriefed the war council, with Dripp providing maps of what the party had explored. They also gave estimates of the army's size, the locations of barracks/armouries, and how much damage they'd achieved via sabotage. The Sahuagin leader they'd seen was also mentioned, as well as the large two-headed shark, and the related rituals. The council then told the party they were dismissed for now, but that they'd be called upon when the actual assault was set to begin.
Downtime summary:
The war council called on the players again, and explained the plan for the siege of the Sahuagin lair. The human forces, along with some of the lizardfolk, would attack the upper level of the fortress via the front door. This would draw most of the Sahuagin forces to the upper, air-filled level, where they're not quite as capable, and wouldn't have any sharks to assist. Then, the Locathah, Merfolk, and Sea Elf forces would attack the lower level through both known entrances. The hope was to pincer the Sahuagin forces on the lower level, and then do the same to the mid-level by attacking from both above and below.
The request to the party was simple. The army wanted them to act as the tip of the spear, leading the initial assault. To that end, the party were given four invisibility potions, and four potions of gaseous form, with which to invade the lair. Their goal would be to open the gates, and cause as much havoc and destruction as possible. The party readily accepted, eager to take the fight directly to the Sahuagin.
The next morning, the party headed out with the army, landing a few miles from the lair, and approaching overland. The army set itself up outside, and the party headed across the causeway, ready to engage the enemy. Everyone drank both potions, and then headed through the door. On the other side, they reverted to physical form, and S.A.M. used a spell of silence to prevent the large gong in the entrance room from being struck. With that spell cast, he became visible amidst the many guards at the entrance, and the fight was on.
The fight went well for the party, and the barred door was quickly opened. Unfortunately, this left the large bronze gate to be dealt with. The solution for that was that Dripp used their cape to teleport Abe across to the other side of the gate. There, Abe started carving through more Sahuagin defenders, while Dripp opened the gate. With the gate opening, Reese and S.A.M. were able to join the fight, quickly helping to clear out the second guardroom.
From there, the party proceeded to the armoury they'd seen before, finding a large contingent of Sahuagin. The battle was fierce, but the party used the armoury entrance as a chokepoint, helping them to funnel in and kill their enemies. Partway through the fight, however, a massive roar echoed through the entire upper level, and then Baron Kepmak, leader of the Sahuagin, emerged. Accompanying him was his High Priestess Thadrah, and a number of their champions.
The baron's presence caused many of the other Sahuagin to break and run, unwilling to even risk the chance that they might be in his way. The baron quickly charged towards the party, but S.A.M. dumped some Oil of Slipperiness on the ground, while he and Abe consistently avoided being affected by the high priestess' spells. The party thus took down the baron and high priestess relatively easily, though certainly not without wounds. As the fight with the baron and high priestess finished, however, the army started to pour into the area, taking up the fight, and pulling the party back for medical help.
After retreating back across the stone causeway to the mainland, and getting a few minutes to start recovering, the party were approached by one of the lizardfolk. The fighting below was going well, but nobody was willing to approach the two-headed shark in the temple. The party quickly signed up to do so themselves, and were led below to the temple area, where they faced down the Maw of Sekolah and three Sahuagin Priestesses. It was all set to be an epic fight, with the priestesses managing to briefly paralyze abe, and the Maw in position to start tearing into him, but S.A.M. used his magic to drain the water from the room, breaching the massive beast. That was all the opening needed to quickly isolate it, and finish it off, with Abe taking its heads to have stuffed as a trophy aboard Serenity.
Returning to Saltmarsh, the party were hailed as heroes.
Loot and rewards:
With the Sahuagin war completed, the party spent a week in Saltmarsh relaxing. Downtime results:
At the end of the week, Dripp approached the party with a proposal. They'd learned some details about what sort of thing was probably behind their power, but they wanted to know more. One thing they'd learned was of a destroyed village called Warthalkeel, which might have some clues for them. Warthalkeel, they explained, had once worshipped something evil. A Procan priest had converted them, but then the town had been destroyed, sheared off the cliffs and sunk into the water, presumably by the thing they'd once worshipped. They offered to hire the party, even saying they'd give up their share of loot, in exchange for the job getting done. The party readily agreed.
Sailing out, the party arrived at the long-sunken village, finding only a handful of stone buildings still standing under the water. They headed for the sturdiest one first, where they found a large vault door. Touching the door triggered some sort of defenses, which psychically attacked people. Dripp dispelled the defenses, and the Arcane Lock spell on the door, allowing Reese to easily open the lock. Inside the vault was a very large, very heavy chest, which looked like it might still be sealed against the water. Abe used his Potion of Growth to easily pick the chest up, and swim it back to Serenity.
With the chest secured, the party next headed to the large squat building in the middle of town. It was the town's temple to Procan, but several kraken cultists were attempting to damage and desecrate the altar. The party quickly dispatched them, though Abe was nearly killed at one point. Exploring the temple further, the party found only a profane altar with a skull fashioned to look like a kraken. Surmising that it was part of the kraken cult's attempts to defile the temple, they avoided contact, and next proceeded to the town's windmill.
At the windmill, the party encountered a strange creature, which resembled a mutated merfolk. Dripp started conversing with it in Aquan, but halfway through the conversation Abe realized what this was; a Merrow. He immediately charged it. The merrow's two amphisbaena pets helped to restrain him, and the merrow itself wielded powerful lightning magics, with Abe losing control of himself at one point, sinking into werewolf bloodlust. Despite these setbacks, the party ultimately got the merrow to attempt to flee. It didn't get far before being cut down.
After exploring the last few smaller buildings, and finding nothing of use anywhere, the party finally turned towards the tallest building in town. Stepping inside, this was obviously a temple to the kraken that the cult worshipped. On the first level, the part found a drow priestess, who talked openly about the town's worship of Vaalastroth, who they believed to be a prophet of The Great Devourer. Dripp recognized this as The Leviathan, one of the Elder Evils on par with their patron. The conversation went just long enough for Dripp to get the information they needed, and then the party attacked. The fight might have been harder, but Dripp managed to banish the priestess to a demiplane, allowing the party to dispatch her sea spawn guards. When the priestess was brought back into reality, the whole party was in position, and she died quickly.
Exploring the rest of the temple, the party quickly found the body of the temple's high priest, who the drow had mentioned killing. He had a strange tentacled rod, as well as a journal that was surprisingly well waterproofed. The journal detailed his exploration of the city after its destruction, and indicated that he'd re-secured the vault, which had only 'the most crucial' chest still inside. He also indicated plans to desecrate the Procan temple, which the party had thwarted earlier.
Reading this, Dripp surmised that perhaps they had found what they were looking for at the very beginning of their exploration. The party found little else in the rest of the building, save a curious but wary giant octopus, that Dripp failed to befriend. Thus, they headed for the surface, where Serenity was waiting with the chest on board.
As they broke the surface, the party found themselves somewhere strange. They were inside a cube, with water on all four sides, and a strange rocky island winding around. Looking up, they saw a strange creature, which Dripp and Reese both recognized as a Morkoth. It attacked the party with strong lightning magics, and reflected S.A.M. and Dripp's own spells back at them, while keeping Abe charmed most of the fight, but eventually it was defeated.
With its death, the strange cube began to dissolve out of existence, leaving the party suspended in the air above Warthalkeel. The crew quickly brought Serenity around, getting her underneath the officers. More importantly, they brought the ship under the Morkoth's corpse, and the hoard full of loot it had possessed.
Going over to the chest the party had first found, Dripp read through the three books contained inside. The first was merely a ledger for the vault it had been found in. The second was the journal of the cultist who'd once been responsible for maintaining the vault. The third was a handbook for the cult's leader, detailing everything from rites and prayers, to the nature of the cult's enemies. Towards the end, it detailed some of the same Elder Evils Dripp had encountered in their research. For one, it described a symbol Dripp hadn't encountered before. Looking at that symbol, Dripp felt something akin to recognition from the other end of the connection to their power. Dripp now knew where their power came from.
Loot summary:
Returning from the trip to Warthalkeel, the party relaxed for a couple of weeks. Downtime Results:
On the last day of their rest, Abe came to the rest of the party, with a half-orc they hadn't met before. He had a job, but was being cagey about the details. He led the newly-expanded party into the hills around Saltmarsh. Partway there, he explained further; the party were trying to track down the source of deaths and damage in a halfling village near the Dreadwood.
Along the journey, the party found a hill giant running a toll bridge of some sort. It demanded an exorbitant fee for the party to pass. Abe rebutted by using his wrist laser to obliterate the giant's poorly-spelled sign. The giant thus attacked, and called for his hidden ogre allies to ambush the party from the top of the small nearby cliff. Unfortunately for them, the party prevailed, killing the giants and taking their loot - 200gp and A whistle made from gold-colored wood.
Proceeding to the village, the party asked around, talking to locals. At one of the farms in the area, they found a number of dead sheep. Abe was able to identify that the sheep had been killed by a pack of Blink Dogs, and he, Grug, and S.A.M. were able to track the dogs towards the Dreadwood. Following the tracks, the party approached the vast forest, where a number of grubby-looking fey were watching them. The fey taunted the party and scattered as they approached.
Entering the woods, the party found that the canopy was heavy enough to darken the woods significantly, except for stray sunbeams shining down. Everyone but Grug quickly noticed that the beams were moving, in ways that seemed unrelated to the movement of the trees. Distrusting them, Dripp threw a dagger into one. The fungus on the nearby trees suddenly burst out spores into the area. Another tree, much larger, stood up and revealed itself to be a fungus-infested treant.
The treant attacked the party, animating two other trees to assist it. The party attacked, burning the treant, and ultimately defeated it. That should normally have caused the trees to un-animate, but they somehow initially remained active. They only reverted to un-sentient trees when a dryad showed up, forcing them back to being normal trees.
The dryad introduced herself as Mother Stag, and asked the party to join her at her nearby cottage. They agreed, and she guided them past the sunbeam tripwires safely. Once they arrived at the cottage, she introduced them to three other dryads, Mother Skunk, Mother Mole, and Mother Hedgehog, as well as a satyr assisting them, Olitor. They explained that this part of the Dreadwood should normally be filled with good fey, serving to defend the lands beyond from the fell things deeper in the forest. A corrupted unicorn, Banrion, had recently arrived, and was destroying or corrupting the entire area.
The dryads requested that the party assist, by capturing Banrion. They hoped that the party could capture her with a Bridle of Capturing they had, which would be able to work on the Unicorn. They also gave the party several woven tree-branch crowns, which they said would enable the party to see the sunbeams, which were all set to trigger strange and dangerous effects. Lastly, the dryads said that Olitor would accompany the party most of the way, guiding them to the ruins that the unicorn occupied.
The party agreed to all this, but were skeptical of some of the dryads' claims. As they left the cottage, most of the party were cautious regarding the crowns. Reese refused to even put his on, instead using the hood of his cloak to hide the fact that he'd stashed it. Nevertheless, the crowns did work, enabling the rest of the party to travel through the forest safely. Olitor was able to quickly lead the party to the ruins of a long-destroyed city, though he refused to enter, and instead left the party there.
Reese and Dripp used their magic to identify the things they'd been given. Reese quickly identified that the crowns were actually made such that anyone wearing them was unable to see through magical illusions. Looking back, the party found that the moving nature of the sunbeams was indeed illusory after all, with the illusions presumably being tied to the magical tripwire effects. Dripp, meanwhile, was able to identify that the bridle was exactly as advertised - a modified Bridle of Capturing, adapted to work on Unicorns.
Proceeding into the ruins, the party found that part of the city was atop a plateau, with a wide chasm separating the two parts of the ruins, and a fallen clock tower partly bridging the gap. Exploring the city, they found many engravings carved into the remaining stone, depicting daily life in the city. Reese recognized that some of the engravings resembled wires, and on following them, he pointed out to the rest of the party that the engraved wire converged on a carving of a machine, similar to those the party had previously encountered in the Barrier Peaks. Having no further leads, however, the party headed to the fallen tower. It supported most of them, with Abe flying across instead, but S.A.M.'s weight was too much for the tower, and he slipped and fell. Dripp dove after him, activating their cape, and teleporting the big guy to safety.
Now safely on the plateau, the party approached the most intact building - the keep where Olitor had indicated Banrion would be laired. There, they found a completely ordinary unicorn. Abe and Dripp were able to talk to her, and Dripp convinced her that the part weren't hostile. She then explained the truth of the situation. The 'dryads' were a coven of hags who had been corrupting the forest. Banrion was essentially the last bastion of good in the area. Though she could teleport across the chasm, she couldn't do it more than once per day, so she'd been loath to leave the plateau, for fear of being trapped, unable to return.
The party offered to help Banrion destroy the hags. She teleported much of the party across the chasm, with Abe having to carry Reese across. The trip back to the cottage was uneventful, with Banrion able to easily keep the sunbeams at bay. Pretending to have the unicorn bridled allowed the party to get close, but Mother Stag noticed the lack of the branch crowns. Realizing the ruse, she alerted the others, and the fight was on.
The hags counterspelled much of Dripp's magic, and Mother Skunk was successful in repeatedly paralyzing the party's melee combatants, but the deaths of both Olitor (revealed to really be a redcap) and Mother Stag signalled the turning point. Mothers Skunk and Mole both attempted to turn invisible and escape, but S.A.M.'s good senses, and Dripp's use of their Gem of Seeing were enough to foil those plans.
With the hags defeated, the party searched the cottage, retrieving a set of Brewer's Supplies, a Potion of Climbing, a Potion of Healing, a Potion of Watchful Rest, a Bottled Breath, a Philter of Love, and 250gp. With the hags' belongings cleared out, Banrion used the rest of her magic to release Querca, the true dryad of these trees. Querca thanked the party, and gave Abe a gift; a Potion of Vitality.
Banrion then asked the party to accompany her back to the ruined city. Somewhere in the ruins was a machine that radiated strange magics, which she wanted the party to check out. Returning to the fallen tower, Banrion guided them to the still-standing first floor. Inside, they found a panel, similar to the ones from the Barrier Peaks. Reese examined it, and found that it was non-functional, with two empty sockets where parts were missing.
The party's first few ideas, of using the power cells or magical-mechanical components they carried, didn't pan out. Searching around, however, they found two buttons, looking like they were made of red and blue gemstones. The Identify spell found that the buttons were related to the transmutation of time. Socketing them into the panel, it seemed ready to use. Before doing that, though, Dripp took the time to cast Comprehend Languages on Reese, so he could read the readings on the panel.
First, Reese tried the blue button. There was a whooshing sound outside, and the party found that the tower laid across the chasm was now more solid than before. Then, Reese tried the red button, and the tower collapsed to the chasm floor with a loud crash. Finally, another push of the blue button resulted in the tower repairing completely and standing up. Exploring the tower found it to be entirely empty.
Returning to the ground level, the party found Banrion, asking for assistance. With their control over the tower, she wanted them to set it back to being a solid bridge across the chasm. They did so, and she headed across to the plateau. After a few minutes, she returned with a number of fey creatures she'd been protecting. With that resolved, she asked the party to either completely restore the tower, or crash it to the ground - either would result in passage to the plateau being harder, making it a more defensible position if she ever needed to retreat there again. She also wanted them to take the Bridle and Crowns, removing the last of the hags' magic from the woods. Reese restored the tower fully, and the party headed back to civilization.
On their way through the hills, the party heard a voice ahead of them on the road. Dripp sent Whiskers ahead of the party, who found Kwalish standing in the road, talking to nobody at all. Approaching, the party found that it was an obvious illusion, playing a recorded message warning them of danger. Abe wandered away from the rest of the party, and then the illusion vanished for a moment, replaced by a live video call with Kwalish.
Kwalish explained that he'd been investigating time magic since the party had left, to figure out why and how some of his creations were being stolen before he built them. In his investigation, he'd found that most (if not all) time magic in the world was tied into the Infernal Machine of Lum the Mad. The city that the party had found, was likely where Lum had first found the Machine, and the components were parts of it. The Machine had long been destroyed, but its various parts still had powerful magic, and at least two other forces were moving to obtain them. Worried about the Machine's power, Kwalish asked the party to help him gather tha parts, to keep them out of less-scrupulous hands. He said he'd continue researching on his end, and the party should just wait; no doubt, representatives of the other forces would contact them soon.
With that, the party returned to Saltmarsh and rested for a week while waiting for something to happen. Downtime Results:
During the downtime, Dripp confronted Captain Xendros about something they'd found. Some of the party's purchased items had a curious curse on them, which allowed her to read the party's minds while attuned to those items. Xendros readily admitted it, and indicated that it was standard procedure, as part of the Faithful Quartermasters' search for an Apparatus of Kwalish. Since they now had one, they had no need to monitor adventurers for signs of it, so the curse could just be removed. Dripp brought Xendros the relevant items, Xendros removed the curse, and the party were able to keep using all their stuff, with no worries about espionage.
After the week's wait, Abe and Reese were woken up the next day by a commotion outside. Heading out of the manor, they found two dead couriers. Rather than couriers-for-hire, they were each wearing specific livery. Each bore a letter, from a Lynx Creatlach and a Sir Ursas, each inviting the party to visit them in/near Seaton to discuss the party's recent finds. Before heading out, the party went to Saltmarsh and spoke to Eliander, asking him if he'd heard of either name. He indicated that Seaton is a city full of various minor nobles, all vying for power/prestige, and he hadn't heard of the specific two in question. With no other leads, the party headed to Seaton.
First, they headed to a manor inside Seaton itself, which belonged to Lynx Creatlach. She proved to be a tiefling treasure hunter, and showed the party throughout her manor. As she did so, she explained the provenance of each of the various artworks throughout the building. She also asked the party to share stories of some of the various things they'd retrieved over the course of their adventures.
Eventually, the talk came around to their most recent acquisitions; the two buttons. She explained that they were likely components of the Infernal Machine of Lum the Mad, how dangerous they were, etc., and offered to purchase the two components for a couple thousand gold pieces each. The party said they'd have to think about that, having no intention to hand them over. She then told them why she wanted the components. She'd located a few others, in the fabled Tomb of Horrors. Unfortunately, that Tomb had been plundered a year or so earlier, and the components were nowhere to be found. With a couple of components, she could possibly travel back to when they were still at the Tomb. With enough components, she could plunder some of the greatest lost historical treasures of the world.
Bidding her farewell, the party headed just outside of town, to the estate of Sir Ursas. A servant met them at the entrance to the estate's hedge maze border, and guided them through to a courtyard in the maze. There, Sir Ursas was having tea at a gazebo, waiting for the party. He was a large man, wearing plate mail at the table, with a bear's forearm and paw attached to his left elbow. He invited the party to tea, and started telling stories of some of the great evils he'd vanquished. He even claimed to be the subject of the painting, A Paladin In Hell, and said it was of an expedition he'd led into Avernus itself. That expedition was even where he said he'd lost his original left forearm.
He then asked the party to share some of their own stories of the enemies they'd defeated. This let him segue into asking about their recent journey into the Dreadwood, and the components they'd found. he explained that they were likely components of the Infernal Machine of Lum the Mad, how dangerous they were, etc., and offered to purchase the two components for a couple thousand gold pieces each. The party said they'd have to think about that, having no intention to hand them over. He then told them why he wanted the components. He'd located a few others, in a well-known Temple of Moloch. Unfortunately, that Temple had been plundered six months or so earlier, and the components were nowhere to be found. With a couple of components, he could possibly travel back to when they were still at the Temple. With enough components, he could then launch another assault on Avernus, and possibly defeat even Zariel herself.
Returning to their own manor, the party had another conversation with Kwalish. He agreed with the two plans; the party should head into the past, recover more components, and make sure they could be adequately secured, if not destroyed. To that end, he'd constructed a machine capable of interfacing with the existing components. Gearbox then teleported in, greeting his old friends. Reese installed into Gearbox the two components the party'd found, and Gearbox was then able to scan across time itself for more. After filtering out interference from the recent exploding spaceship, he was able to locate three sources:
Wanting to know more, the party spent five days training and researching. Downtime results:
Armed with new knowledge, the party temporoported to the Tomb of Horrors. There, they found themselves in rolling hills. The hill to their south was obviously the site of the Tomb's construction. Three entrances were in front of them, and a workers' camp was visible halfway up the hill. After some debate, they headed for the right-most entrance. Inside was a man, who initially assumed they were there looking for work. The party tried to indicate as such, but he saw through the lie. Eventually, the party came clean about their search for the components, and he made them a deal; he had sent a team to the Temple of Moloch nearby to acquire the fabled rubies from the statue's eye. If the party would head there, and recover his gemsmith and the rubies, then he would trade for the components.
Agreeing, the party used Gearbox to temporoport to the Temple of Moloch. There, they found themselves in a fen, just outside the entrance to the largely-underground temple. Ignoring the nearby village, they headed down the stairs. On the way down, they saw strange arrow-slits in the walls of the stairs. In the entrance room, they fought and killed a strange owlspider creature. Proceeding from there, they encountered a group of lizardfolk guards approaching them. Conversation failed, so the party engaged them in combat, killing them all.
Proceeding along, the party found doors to either side of the end of the hallway. The door on the left was open, leading to a guardroom with some lizardfolk still inside. Reese and Grug were able to sneak up fairly close, with Reese opening hostilities with a single gunshot, killing the first guard. The party stormed into the guardroom, with Abe heading down a trapdoor into a hidden hallway to another side room. He found that it led to a second, hidden guardroom, with arrow slits peering over the entrance hallway.
As Abe did that, the other door opened back in the previous hallway, with a second guard shift of lizardfolk streaming out of a barracks room. Gearbox was attacked and damaged, forcing the party to reposition to defend him, lest they be stranded in the past. Whiskers used the party's Wand of Fear once again, allowing the rest of the party to swarm over the lizardfolk.
Cleaning up, the party turned their attention to a recently-dead body in the barracks. S.A.M. had noticed the corpse, and they found that it was a youngish human, wearing adventuring clothes. He seemed to have died only that day, and the lizardfolk had obviously been eating him. S.A.M. cast speak with dead, and found out that he was named Gadai, and had been part of the group Moghadam had sent along with the missing gemsmith. While this was happening, Reese was able to repair Gearbox of the damage taken.
Proceeding onward, the party went back to the path they'd originally been on, before initial contact with the lizardfolk. Skipping over one side hallway, they then found themselves at another, which led into a prison area. The first prison cell had several lizardfolk inside, who pled with S.A.M. to let them out. The second had a pair of humans, also from Moghadam's expedition. The third was empty, and the fourth held exact duplicates of the people in cell 2.
As most of the party dealt with those two strange situations, Abe continued down the path. In the fifth cell, he found an autumn eladrin, sitting in the cell, reading cards. As she stood up, he recognized Mary Greymalkin. He started talking to her, while the party started opening some of the cells. This was all interrupted when the prison's warden stepped around a corner; a giant owl with the head of a human, in charge of the prison and prisoners.
The warden identified himself as Stolos, and tried to make a deal with the party. If they would put the prisoners back, he'd look the other way, assuming they also helped him out with something. He'd previously been a human and a giant owl, but some strange experiment had swapped their heads. He wanted the party to find his counterpart, Andras, and interfere with his duties as head torturer. The party objected to this deal, violently. The fight was quick. Stolos wielded magic to turn Abe against his allies, but Grug carved him up, ending things.
Unfortunately, Grug had stepped too closely to the sixth and final cell, which had a glass door instead of bars, and was filled with several inches of red slime. Reese and Dripp quickly identified it as an Oblex, but not before it had eaten some of Grug's memories. He was quickly pulled away, and the party gave the oblex a wide berth, leaving it sealed in its chamber.
With the immediate situation resolved, the party turned back to the prisoners. The lizardfolk had slinked out in all the confusion, but there was still the matter of the identical pairs of humans. S.A.M. used Zone of Truth to interrogate them, determining which set were original. The other two confessed that they were clones created by the torturer's strange experiments. Ultimately, the party decided to let both pairs go free.
While S.A.M. and Dripp were interrogating the clones, Reese and Abe were searching the warden's office. There, they found a trapped box with the prisoners' property inside. Mary gathered up the prisoners' personal effects and handed them back, with Reese being quite rude to her about it. When she and the four others were leaving, Dripp asked them if they could give any information, but Mary decided otherwise, as a result of the insult.
With the prison area secured, the party decided to take a short rest to let Grug recover from the Oblex's attack. To that end, they headed back to the earlier barracks, hoping for safety. While resting, Dripp cast identify on several items, checking on the party's recent loot:
Emerging, the party were ambushed by a small group of flying cats. The cats, it turned out, were fleeing from a massive Thessalhydra, approaching from the same way the party had originally entered. The thessalhydra sought to melt the party with its acidic saliva, but was eventually overcome, with Reese then able to extract some of the venom from it.
After this, the party chose to return to the entrance, and explore the other paths they hadn't taken there. Abe headed down the West corridor. Stopping at the door at the end, he heard loud wind on the other side, and chose not to open it. Instead, they all headed down the longer corridor to the South.
At the end of that corridor, they found a room with several large slabs, bearing bodies on them, in various stages of funerary preparation. At the south end of the room, they spotted several strange knobs. Abe and Reese couldn't figure out the knobs' purpose, but Grug noticed that three of the knobs were slightly worn, as if by being repeatedly touched. After touching those three knobs, a secret door opened, allowing the party to head south further into the temple.
On the other side of the door, the party had the choice again to head West, South, or East. Proceeding south carefully, they found a room full of sculptors, working on a number of statues of various sizes, in various states of completion. Choosing to avoid that, they instead headed east, where they found the temple's famous Statue of Moloch, with the two massive ruby eyes. Continuing their caution, Reese examined the statue and cast identify, finding that the eyes were connected to five other sources of magic elsewhere in the temple.
Not willing to mess with the statue, the party examined a small attached alcove, where they found a smaller statue. There, they were confronted by a spirit, which claimed to be the temple's high priest. Abe chose to attack the spirit, which fled towards the massive statue. Once there, it inhabited and animated the statue, attacking the party. They were able to damage the statue enough to eject the spirit, and it then chose to run away.
Dripp, S.A.M., and Grug took off quickest, chasing the spirit towards the sculptors' area, while Reese and Abe stopped short as lizardfolk guards emerged from a hidden door behind a tapestry. The spirit continued past the sculptors, phasing through walls to do so, which led the others to return to help with the guards. At about the same time as the guards were defeated, another statue, this time of a great angel with a sword, attacked. Most of the party engaged it, while Reese headed through to the guards' station. Grug was nearly killed, but the statue was defeated, and the spirit dealt with before it could find another. This was quite the relief, as Reese had found an entire corridor full of statues of demon lords and archdevils, which could have been used.
Having interrupted them, the party chose to actually talk with the sculptors now, who were barely calmed down from the panic of the combat passing through. They found the sculptors largely friendly; they realized the party had been sent from the Tomb, and asked if the party could help them; other sculptors had headed to the tomb for work, and hadn't returned or sent back any messages, and the ones still here were worried.
Agreeing to try to help, the party then headed down the west corridor, to a room with a locked door. Reese couldn't seem to open the lock, so they simply knocked it off its hinges. Inside was a genasi woman, the gemsmith Seodra that they'd been sent to find. Despite the party looking to rescue her, she refused to leave without the rubies. The party told her to wait, saying they'd get her on the way out, after they'd explored and secured the rest of the temple. She did, however, explain that everything north of the funeral prep area was a series of labs, and the temple proper was the current section, to the south.
Heading further south along the west corridor, the party found a guard room occupied by several massive Lizardfolk Renders. The fight with them was harsh and vicious, with Grug falling unconscious near death once again. Past the guard room, the party found quarters for more regularly-sized people. Searching those quarters, the only thing of note was a pair of small statues of lions, wrapped in paper. The paper was a flyer of sorts, advertising exorbitant wages for masonworkers, sculptors, and the like, if they would head to the Tomb of Horrors for work.
Heading into the last corridor along the west end of the temple, the party found stones piled aside, as well as a statue being built out of them. Past that, they found quarters which were much less spartan than the others throughout the temple. A quality bed, finer clothes, and a finely-detailed fireplace mantel, shaped like the famous statue of Moloch. Inside those quarters was a man who at first took the party to be new worshippers, come to the temple for reasons of faith. He explained that he was the head priest, and the party decided to attack. The high priest managed to banish Abe and Grug from reality itself for a time, but the rest of the party defeated him handily, returning their allies. The party searched around, found nothing especially valuable, and left, with Dripp taking a single spare cloak for their collection.
With the high priest's death, the party headed into the last remaining unexplored part of the temple section, to the east. There, they found a number of animal pens, filled with chickens, goats, and pigs. As they spread out to explore the area, some of them encountered a massive Ettin, who introduced itself as The Demogorgon. The two heads bickered at the party, and then yelled for "Sticky" and "Slippy". These proved to be a pair of boggles serving as the ettin's stewards. They ran back and forth delivering messages between the two heads.
The party, realizing that the ettin was completely insane. Thus, they fell back on their tried-and-true method of dealing with creatures; violence. "The Demogorgon" quickly lost one of its heads to Abe's Vorpal Sword, allowing it to be defeated very quickly.
The boggle servant who was nearby at the time then mentioned that he'd been forced to work for the ettin as punishment. He'd tried to break into a vault somewhere in the temple complex, got caught, and was sentenced to work for "The Demogorgon". He offered to help the party break into said vault, in exchange for splitting the cash inside. Abe then dissuaded the boggle from any idea that it might get a cut of said vault, leading it to run away terrified.
With the temple section fully explored, the party then headed back to the labs section. Before leaving, Reese headed to the damaged Moloch Statue, removing the eyes. The rubies were thus disconnected from whatever they'd been wired to. After that, they headed back past the funerary preparation room, to the main entrance.
Heading back through the labs section with the intention to rest, Abe at the lead spotted a strange man. He was mostly human, with the head of an owl, and he spotted Abe at the same time. Shouting, the strange man ran off down a hallway, with Abe giving chase, and the party trying to catch up. As they got to the corner at the end of the hall, a ranger came around with a hellhound, adding to the engagement. The resulting fight was rough, but the party prevailed.
Seeking a chance to rest and recover, the party headed back to the main barracks. While resting, a group of lizardfolk guards came by, investigating the many corpses strewn about. Fortunately, S.A.M. was standing guard by the door, and heard them approach, so the party were able to prepare for the fight, and came out alive despite their existing injuries. With that done, they secured the room better, piling a bed against the door, then returned to their rest.
Heading back down the earlier hallway, they found a vast number of owl cages, and a large pen filled with bears. Dripp and S.A.M. fed and calmed the animals respectively, and the cages were able to be opened safely, allowing the animals to flee the temple to safety. Past those, the party found a pair of lizardfolk shamans overseeing cages with a pair of locathah. The party charged the lizardmen, taking them down quickly, and freeing the locathah as well.
While others were dealing with the locathah, Grug poked his head around the next corner, to find a number of lizardfolk dealing with unruly owlbears, including a large two-headed owlbear. The sounds of their struggle were loud enough that Grug was able to back off undetected. The party chose to head another way instead. On the way, however, Grug noticed a control panel near the locathah's cages, which held one component of the Infernal Machine. The next room they discovered was a sitting room. Looting the area, they found some stuff, as well as a tiny mimic, that Dripp then adopted.
From that sitting room, they proceeded into a barracks, with beds sized for much larger creatures. One of those beds was occupied by a just-waking lizardfolk render, with another more-awake render elsewhere in the room. The party charged in, eliminated the two, and then took note of the large double doors in the room. Those led to what was ultimately Thessalar's bedroom, with various notes, and a large key, bearing a ruby embedded in the head.
The next area to be explored was an alchemy lab of some kind. The various vials and mixtures throughout were looted, as well as a second of the Infernal Machine components. A side room in the alchemy lab then proved to have several massive tanks of fluid, with bodies floating in four of them. Three of the bodies seemed inert, but a fourth showed awareness of the party, and soundlessly begged to be released. The party released the body, and it claimed to be Thessalar himself. He explained that one of his clones had stuffed him here and replaced him, and bade the party to help him out.
Not willing to contradict him, the party followed him to his office, just outside the labs where the locathah had been, and where the restrained owlbears were. On the way in, Thessalar told the lizardfolk to just dispatch of the owlbears, instead of bothering to keep them alive. Inside the office, the party encountered another, better-armed Thessalar. He claimed that the Thessalar from the tank was just a clone that had developed accidental sentience, and needed to be culled. A fight ensued, with the party using one Thessalar to help defeat the other, then cleaning up completely. During the fight, Grug quickly swiped an Infernal Machine component from a control panel near the owlbear situation.
Once the fight was over, the party retreated into the office and closed the door, so the lizardfolk wouldn't notice that their boss was dead, after they stopped being distracted. Once the room had been fully looted (including a fourth Infernal Machine component), they opened the door just as one of the renders came by to report that the job was done. The render spotted the two dead Thessalars, and attacked, starting the last fight of the day.
Taking all the loot from the office, including Thessalar's breastplate and dagger, the party then headed back to the clone room. The other three bodies remained inert, but the party chose to smash them free and kill them anyway, for fear that Thessalar might revive into one. No longer distracted by clones, the party then headed through the other exit from the alchemy lab, which took them to the room of Andras the torturer. His room was looted, finding yet more notes, and some more items inside a trapped strongbox. Past his room was the torture chamber he operated. There, the party met a pair of mercenaries, Mack Francache and Big Gadai. Mack was the leader of the various mercenaries Moghadam had previously hired, and Gadai was the sister of the body S.A.M. had previously cast speak with dead on. They were released, with the party informing Gadai of her brother, and showing her to the body.
With that, the party grabbed the last Infernal Machine component from the torture room, found the gemsmith Seodra, and headed out of the temple. Despite it being only early afternoon, they needed a good night's sleep already, so they headed to the inn in the nearby town to recuperate. On their way in, they met Mack's Mercs on their way out, heading back to the Tomb of Horrors.
Loot Summary:
During the afternoon at the inn, Dripp identified the fancy key, Thessalar's Breastplate, and the high priest's mace. All were non-magical. Meanwhile, Reese and S.A.M. scrounged together materials and crafted Reese some new musket bullets, with S.A.M. smithing the balls, and Reese putting together the gunpowder.
Waking up the next morning, the party temporoported back to the in-construction Tomb of Horrors. Approaching their initial contact, he was laden down with paperwork, and just off-handedly told the party to head inside. He explained that if the party took the first right and kept going, they'd come to Phenex, who would have their pay. Heading in, most of the party followed his directions, though Abe kept going down the main hallway.
The "first right" was a plank over a pit trap, leading to a not-yet-hidden side hallway. Down that hall, the party came to a small room with sculptors busy working, overseen by a massive girallon. The ape initially prepared to attack the party, but the pass from Moghadam pulsed with magic, as did an armband on the girallong, causing it to back down. Talking to the sculptors, the party learned that they were among the sculptors who had fled the Temple of Moloch, and that they were being kept prisoner under watch at all times. The party talked a bit about the situation of the folks back there, and then mentioned they were looking for Phenex. The sculptors were concerned at that, and warned the party not to go. They even pointed out a rhythmic chanting that the party could just barely hear.
Back in the main hallway, Abe found a massive red form shackled to the far wall, its life being drained. The captive balor went ignored for the moment, though, as he spotted a hidden side passage and started exploring. It reduced quickly to a small crawlspace, then opened into a filth-ridden prison cell. Inside was an unconscious man, nearly at the edge of death from blood loss. Abe revived the man with a healing potion, and found that the man's blood was being used in the paint of the murals in the main hallway.
The party headed on past the sculptors to another large hallway like the entrance, with sculptors and muralists working under a second girallon's supervision. They were producing a massive mural on the walls, incorporating a number of colored spheres. As they got there, Abe caught back up with them, pulling Dripp aside and asking them to join him with the prisoner. Heading there, Dripp was able to teleport the prisoner out, who thanked them profusely and promised a reward. Abe, on the other hand, crawled back out of the cell the normal way. He emerged as Dripp caught back up to him, which was when the balor struck up a conversation.
The demon introduced himself as Tarnhem, being the mightiest of the balors, and the father of Acererak. His life was being drained into a massive black sphere, which Dripp identified as a Sphere of Annihilation. Abe tried to approach Tarnhem, but the sphere blocked his approach. Tarnhem had a chat with Dripp, offering them a deal. If the party freed him, he would destroy Moghadam and Phenex, and leave. The party would be spared. He even offered proof of his generosity, in the form of a warning about a trap the party might encounter - if they found three chests together, all would need to be opened simultaneously.
Dripp neither agreed to nor denied the deal, leaving noncommitally to rejoin the rest of the party. When Abe and Dripp got directions and caught up, they found everyone else outside a door, obviously the source of the chanting. Opening the door, the party found a chapel, with a Vecna priest conducting cultists in worship, with girallon bodyguards flanking him. The altar had the three components worked into it, as well as a massive whip and sword, and glowed with magic. As they opened the door, the priest gestured for the party to "have a seat", and most of the party's eyes glazed over, as they moved to obey.
Abe and Grug proved able to resist, and proceeded into the room armed. Whiskers also proved unaffected, allowing them to try to scare off the party with Dripp's wand of fear. Unfortunately, that mostly only affected the otherwise-free Abe, so Grug had to take the bird out on the way past. Drip, S.A.M., and Reese, on the other hand, all took seats in the pews of the chapel, among the cultists and a series of large black rocks. As they sat down, their life was drained off, and the party even watched as some of the cultists turned to stone. Through the course of the fight, however, the party slowly overcame the mind control, and engaged the fight in earnest.
Phenex eventually fled to the ethereal plane for a while, but Moghadam teleported in to replace him, wielding a massive magic greatsword made of rust. The tomb's architect tossed around some magic, but was quickly felled, as was one girallon guard, and Phenex when he reappeared. The remaining girallon, fleed from the control of the armband, rampaged but was killed, while the remaining cultists fled in fear. With the fight complete, Grug headed to the altar, looking to remove the components. They turned out to be worked into the altar quite securely, and he set off a magical trap, triggering a fireball from the whip. The fireball toasted him, Reese, and Abe, and the party decided to all step back, and let Reese and Dripp remove the components more carefully. They did so without tripping any further traps, and got the components installed into Gearbox. Meanwhile, Grug grabbed the rusty magic sword, throwing it into his bag of holding.
The party prepared to leave, but Dripp remembered something from their earlier research. Based on stray descriptions of the tomb, they were certain there should be more to the place. Searching, the party found a secret door, leading to a long hallway with several pit traps, like the entrance. Each pit had piles of bones at the bottom, as well as a door leading out to the south. Dripp levitated down into the first pit, and tried the door. As they did so, a slab of stone slid closed over the pit, it started to fill with water, and the bones rose up into skeletons to attack. S.A.M. pulled out his pickaxe, struck a single blow at the slab, and smashed it to large pieces instantly, allowing the rest of the party to join the fight, and Dripp to get out.
For the second pit, Dripp blasted the door instead. It was flimsy and fell off its hinges, triggering an identical trap. The third pit, however, had a real door, through which the party explored. After some walking, they came to a large metal door with a carved tortle, bearing a map on its back. It asked the party who "The Master" was, and they quickly guessed the answer to be Moghadam. It opened, allowing them through, though Dripp quickly sketched a copy of the map. Past the door were three curtains blocking the hallway forwards. The first two were magic webbing, which Dripp overcame with their magic. The third was a Trapper who attacked and tried to eat Dripp, but was quickly hacked apart.
At the end of these traps, the party found a room with Seodra, the gemsmith they'd rescued the day before. She thanked them again for their help, and had a friendly chat. She wasn't terribly upset to learn of Moghadam's death, though, as she'd apparently been hired by Acererak himself.
Heading back to the pit-trap hallway, the party headed to the end, where they found a massive magic circle, containing a large unstable portal. Though unsure exactly where it went, the party were certain that it wasn't a good thing to find, nor a good idea to try to explore. They debated for some time, considering various spells, divination options, etc., before deciding to back off and leave the portal for possible later solving.
The party then headed back out through the tomb to the entrance, to try to deal with Tarnhem. On the way, they found that the girallon guards had rampaged somewhat, killing some of the sculptors and muralists through the various halls. When they got to him, the demon could tell that the chanting had ended, and asked that the party use the nearby controls to free him. Like the portal, this situation sparked much debate. Dripp tried to banish Tarnhem back to the abyss, but balors are not easily banished. Ultimately, like the portal, the party chose to leave the situation for later.
Wanting to explore the entire tomb before leaving, the party headed back to the hallway of spheres. Behind one sphere was a not-yet-hidden door. A magic barrier warded it, but Dripp was able to dispel the ward and allow the party passage. On the other side, they found a stone statue of a winged girallon, as well as a half of a torn book. Emerging from that doorway, one of the surviving sculptors explained that it was half of a manual of stone golems. They'd been planning to use it to try to animate the girallon statue, so it might get them to freedom. Dripp handed over the book, and told them to get their friends, and head back to the Temple.
The last remaining hallway was then explored, leading to a room with bones, supplies, and three chests. Reese checked for traps, and confirmed that there was some magical warding in place on each chest, and that they were connected. This seemed to agree with Tarnhem's intel, so they assumed that the chests indeed needed to be opened at the same time. All three, however, were locked. Using Gearbox's power over time, Reese and Dripp were able to split the duties between them, opening all three chests in what was essentially the exact same moment. The bones in the room stirred slightly, but nothing attacked, and the party were able to loot the chests.
With the tomb cleared out to their satisfaction, the party temporoported back to the Temple of Moloch, and stayed at the inn in the nearby town once again.
Loot Summary:
Waking up the next morning, the party had Gearbox transport them to White Plume Mountain. On arrival, they found themselves on the mountain's North face, overlooking the surrounding fens. Atop the mountain was the massive geyser, rising up like a great plume over the mountain, and roaring loudly and constantly. S.A.M. remembered from his research that there was a cave entrance somewhere they'd need to find, but the party weren't sure where it was. Seeing a single large hut on a rock in the distant fens, they decided to head that way, hoping its occupant(s) would know where to look for the cave.
On the way to the hut, they found an old lady scraping and collecting moss off some of the trees in the area. She warned them that the hut was occupied by a witch, and that locals knew not to bother her. The locals also knew not to bother Keraptis, the mad wizard in the mountain. Undeterred, the party thanked the woman for her help, and continued on to the hut.
Arriving at the hut, the party knocked on the lone door. Mary Greymalkin answered, saw Reese, and shut the door on the party. The party knocked again, and convinced Mary to talk at least a little bit. Unfortunately, Mary wasn't the witch of the fens, but instead her apprentice, and she knew nothing of any way into the mountain. The old lady from before then arrived, and proved to be Thingizzard, Witch of the Fens. Since the party had been polite before, Thingizzard was willing to tell them that the entrance was simply on the south side of the mountain, claiming that the party simply couldn't miss it if they went around.
After trekking back to the mountain, the party headed around it to the south side. There, they started to hear a whistling noise over the roar of the geyser. Scouting ahead, Whiskers found a cave mouth, which appeared to slowly be breathing, inhaling the surrounding air, and exhaling steam. When the party caught up and explored, they found that the cave was large, deep, and mostly uncomplicated, with a crevice in the far wall providing the airflow and whistling. The steam kept the entire cave exceedingly humid, with a thick layer of mud and muck on the floor.
The crevice was too small to enter, so the party searched the room thoroughly for a way forward. After searching for a while, they decided to back out, and have Gearbox use the Infernal Machine components to try to manipulate time. He was able to stop the steam flow for a moment, with the party able to spot something on the ground as the muck receded somewhat. Dripp froze the muck around that spot, and cleared some of it off, unearthing a rusty trapdoor. Once S.A.M. used his crowbar to shove it and knock some of the rust loose, the party were able to open it up, and descend the stairs beyond.
At the bottom, they found themselves in a space that had clearly been carved out and constructed, rather than the natural cave from above. The hallway was still quite hot and humid, with a foot of water on the ground everywhere. heading around the corner, they encoutered a magical wall, behind which was a sphinx. She greeted them politely, and as expected posed a riddle. Reese piped up immediately with the answer, and the sphinx removed the wall, stepped aside, and allowed the party to proceed down any of the three paths behind her. Gearbox reported that he could at least tell that each path had one of the three Infernal Machine components the party were here for.
Having no reason to choose one path over another, the party chose the left path first. The mountain immediately showed its hand as a trap-riddled place, with Abe nearly falling into a pit hidden under the water. Once the party were aware of it, however, they were able to easily pass it by. After that, they found a hallway with large metal plates on the walls. Poking one with a javelin, Grug found that it sparked slightly, indicating the presence of some sort of lightning magic. Dripp tossed a dagger down the hall, and it heated enough to boil some of the water when it landed.
After some debate, Grug chose to head across ahead of everyone else, belly-crawling to stay partially submerged in the water. During the trip, Grug suffered no major problems directly, though all the metal he carried was heated significantly. Seeing this, Reese chose to join Grug, wading through. Though the water slowed him, his lack of height meant he was still quite submerged while walking, so the heating of his armour was only slightly harmful. He and Grug reached the end around the same time, which was also approximately when a secret door opened, disgorging ghouls into the chamber they'd reached. S.A.M. got out his Decanter of Endless Water, dowsed himself, and proceeded to walk across while cooled by the excess water. Dripp, on the other hand, grabbed Abe and teleported the both of them across.
With the party all either across the plated hallway, or getting there, the ghouls were easily dispatched. All that remained was to get Gearbox to the other side. Eventually, Dripp simply removed their metal-studded armour, walked across safely, and teleported the entirely-metal monodrone past the obstacle. With Dripp's armour re-equipped, the party were then able to move on, rising up some stairs out of the water, into drier parts of the dungeon.
The next trap was a room which blocked the party's magical movement. Ahead on the floor was a large pit, with rusty razors at the bottom. Past that, a section of shiny floor, and then another identical pit. Dripp tossed a dagger onto the shiny section, and it skidded across quickly, showing that area to be extremely slippery. The party tried seeing what Gearbox could do to manipulate time, and found that he'd simply un-rusted the metal, removing the chance of super-tetanus.
With the obstacle thoroughly examined, Grug took one end of a rope, jumped across the pit, and used his immovable rod to stop himself just before the other pit. He fell flat on his ass in the process, finding the floor to be magically frictionless. S.A.M. and Dripp set about using the decanter and magic to create an ice path across the first pit for the rest of the party. A piton was then hammered into the near end of the frictionless floor, scuring the other end of Grug's rope. With that, S.A.M. and Dripp had a line secure enough to get across, and freeze a bridge across the other pit. The party got across the room, secured the other end of the rope with a second piton so Grug could take the rod back, and proceeded onwards.
Hitting a junction, the party chose to head right, further into the Northwest corner of the dungeon. There, they found a large room with a stream floating through it in mid-air, and half a dozen kayaks laying around. Maneuvering the kayaks, they were able to follow the stream through a tunnel into another room, where a band of knights attacked them. The knights fought hard, but S.A.M. was able to charm them briefly, and Dripp was able to stun several for a moment, allowing the others enough time to kill the entire group.
While healing and recovering from the fight, S.A.M. thought to search the current room for secret entrances, other than the stream looping through. After some searching, he found the seam of one, but nobody in the party could figure out how to open it. Undeterred, he pulled out his trusty pickaxe, and started smashing his way through the door. After a while, he got through, finding a small hallway. At the end was yet another door that had no visible means of opening. Now that they were on the inside, however, Reese was able to figure out that the mechanism responded to the presence of some sort of magical key. Heading back, he found a smooth stone on the body of the head knight, which opened the door. This put the party back near the entrance of the first room with the floating stream, so they then elected to head south down the remaining passage in the wing.
The next room was a vast terraced aquarium, with levels containing a variety of creatures. The levels were largely separated by just glass, with the various creatures inside approaching the party expectantly. The only way to proceed seemed to be a door on the bottom level. Unsure how to proceed, they searched the room thoroughly first. While doing that, a black pudding attacked from the corridor the party'd originally come down. Once it was handily dispatched, Dripp finally decided to do do something about the aquarium, shattering one level of the glass. With that, the door forward was encased in a magic field, and the various creatures all started to move to attack the party.
The fight with the monsters was long and painful. The giant crayfish swarmed up to the party's level, and the manticores started launching constant volleys of tail spikes. The sea lions prepared to jump up to the party, but Whiskers used the Wand of Fear to keep them at bay for some time. One of Reese's bombs opened up the level with the giant scorpions. Their venom was dangerous, but they had trouble climbing up. Once the party had nothing left to deal with but the manticores, who were stuck at the bottom level, they left the area.
Heading back to the room that had held the knights, the party secured the area by freezing the stream's inlet with Dripp's magic. Resting for an hour, they recovered from the fight, then returned to the manticores. Back in the aquarium room, the water on the lowest level had drained somewhat. The manticores, being almost completely out of tail spikes, were easily killed from a distance, so the party could investigate the door. The safe on the lower level was opened, revealing 6,000gp and a fancy brooch. Dripp spent the time to identify the brooch. It was found to be non-magical, but the water level fell more while the party waited the ten minutes for the spell. Becoming impatient, Gearbox was ordered to try to manipulate time, which drained the remaining music instantly.
When the water fully drained, the magic field vanished from the door, allowing the party through. Past a tunnel, they found a room filled with expensive rugs, silks, and furniture. A man-sized hookah bubbled in the corner, and a halfling was sitting on one of the chairs. The halfling introduced himself as Qesnef, and bid the party to join him, relax, and even share the smoke from his hookah. When asked why he was here, Qesnef explained that he'd lost a bet to Keraptis, and was now required to do the wizard's bidding for a time. When asked why they were here, the party mentioned the Infernal Machine components, and Qesnef then dug one out of the cushions of his divan. Unfortunately, his debt to Keraptis meant he was required to guard it, so he couldn't simply hand it over.
Abe, however, wondered if Qesnef might be open to gambling for it. Grug offered Ruinblade as the party's bet, and Qesnef accepted, reasoning that he was still acting in Keraptis' interested if the bet was for something that matched the criteria of what Keraptis planned to have Qesnef later guard. The party huddled up, and decided Dripp would take Qesnef on in a game of cards. After a tense game, Dripp emerged victorious, with Qesnef handing over the component. On the way out of his room the party, who had been suspicious of his appearance the whole time, asked what he really was. He chuckled a bit, and turned into a massive, blue-skinned ogre mage, offering the party a draw on his hookah one last time before they left.
Back in the aquarium room, the party installed the component into Gearbox, and had him take them back home, so they could take a couple of days to rest. On arriving home, their was a knocking on the manor door. Investigating, they found a package laid on the doorstep, from the man they'd rescued in the Tomb of Horrors. He turned out to have been Nolzur, and had sent two pots of Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments for Dripp and Abe.
Downtime Results:
Returning to the mountain, the party quickly re-answered the sphinx's riddle. Heading down the middle path due North, they passed a large drain in the floor, slowly draining off the water that covered the floor on the entrance level. Past that, they found a large open room, with three mermaids calling out. The 'mermaids' tried to magically entice the party closer, with only Grug falling for it. Abe quickly grabbed Grug so he couldn't drown himself in the water, and S.A.M. magically freed Grug from the effect. The party tried to just go past, but the 'mermaids' blocked them, and then attacked, revealing themselves to be kelpies.
When only one kelpie remained, it tried to flee from the party, but S.A.M.'s keen eyesight spotted it, and he chased it through an underground door. There, it was finished off, and he found a small hoard of treasure.
Leaving the kelpies' area, the party walked up some stairs out of the water, and had a choice to continue straight through a door, or turn right through another. Opening the door to the right, they found a spinning hallway, with a distracting pattern painted on it, and grease coating it. Dripp threw in a dagger, which slid, though not to the extent it had in the frictionless chamber.
Approaching the spinning hallway carefully, Dripp sent Whiskers through first. Nothing happened. Dripp then levitated themself through. Halfway, a man appeared through the shuttered window ahead, and fired a flaming crossbow bolt at the chamber. He closed the shutters as fire rose up around Dripp.
The party quickly charged through to the other side, where they crowded up next to a door. The door opened, and the same man charged through with a glowing sword. Hastened by a wizard in the other room, he attacked Grug, who'd fallen from the grease. The blinding magic went off, and several hits later, Grug was in bad shape. S.A.M. acted quickly, however, promptly paralyzing the presumed-paladin, and allowing the party to quickly dispatch him. When the paladin fell, the wizard shifted into werewolf form out of rage, attacking the party with her claws, but falling quickly.
Searching the room, Dripp tried to read her spellbook, triggering explosive runes, which almost finished off the injured Grug. In the next room, the party found the dead couple's lavish bedroom. Dripp swiped all the fancy curtains and tapestries, while Reese checked the nearby chest for traps. Finding a magic trap, he signalled for Dripp to dispel it. This un-trapped the chest, but also removed the illusion on the chamber's meagre furnishings. Dripp threw the ratty tapestries away in disgust, and the party got 400ep, 300gp, and seven gems.
From there, the party headed back to the last fork in the corridors, and this time headed north. Proceeding past a set of flood-prevention doors, they entered into a long corridor that opened out into a magical bubble. The bubble was inside boiling-hot water, and had a huge giant crab guarding a chest. The crab was hostile, but didn't wander too far from the chest it was clearly guarding. Dripp used their magic to become invisible, and snuck around the crab. Grug distracted it and lured it away, while Dripp opened it, and quickly swiped out the Infernal Machine Component.
Heading back to the entrance, the party proceeded down the last remaining of the three paths. Walking along it, they hit a patch of corrosive green slime, which tried to eat their feet. Once spotted, Reese realized the solution, and drew his sun blade, which instantly boiled off the sunlight-vulnerable slime. Past the slime, they found a fork, and chose the path on the right.
The room at the end of this corridor was largely empty, with nine mirrored glass spheres hanging from the ceiling. The door slammed shut on S.A.M. and Grug while they were preparing to leave, and proved magically unbreakable. S.A.M. smashed open a sphere, receiving a ring and a key for his trouble. He quickly put the ring on, used the key to open the door, and the party left the room behind.
Down the other path from the last fork, the party found a room with five numbered flesh golems. The golems posed a riddle that was instantly solved, and Golem Nine joined the party as a result.
Heading on past the golems room, the party found a large metal turnstile. Not wanting to get trapped on the other side, they ordered Golem Nine to smash it. Some time passed, but the construct was steadily able to destroy the turnstile, allowing free passage in both directions.
Around another corner, they found a large open cave, with the floor hidden below a level of boiling mud. Geysers in the mud were going off regularly, and the party needed to jump across a series of disks suspended from the ceiling by algae-slick chains. Grug and Reese made it over easily, Gearbox and Abe flew across, and Dripp teleported S.A.M. after he nearly fell.
Past the geyser room, the party identified S.A.M.'s new ring, which hadn't worked as he'd expected it. Reese cast the spell, and found that the ring was a trick by Keraptis, and that it would be utterly non-magical from now on.
The next room was pitch black for everyone but Dripp. They were able to see a dwarf rise out of a wooden box, and come towards the party. S.A.M. used his driftglobe to light up the room, and the party engaged with the dwarf, who identified himself as Ctenmiir, the former wielder of Whelm. During the ensuing fight, the party clued in to his status as a vampire, and once Reese turned on his sun blade, the fight was quickly finished.
Searching the room, Reese found a small niche hidden beneath the coffin.
Loot summary:
With the last component installed, Gearbox had bad news. He was unable to exit the mountain, with something blocking him in. He also warned the party that their next trip back to the future would be the last; with all components retrieved, he wouldn't be able to lock onto the past. Lastly, he also said that someone had now set a trap for them. On the next trip forward, they would be intercepted.
With all of this information, the party chose to rest up in the vampire's room, head back through the geysers, and leave. With more information, the geyser room was handled better, with Dripp teleporting an exhausted Grug, and the rest of the party making their own ways. At the junction near the exit, however, the party found that the wall of force was present again, though the sphinx was gone. Keraptis yelled out, taunting the party, and his last two guards, Nix and Nox, attacked. They used both magic and scimitars, summoning a wall of fire and a fire elemental, but the party dispatched them easily enough. With that, they left the mountain, headed back to the Temple of Moloch, and spent yet another night at the inn in the nearby town.
In the morning, the party returned to the Temple of Moloch, hoping to explore the last few areas they hadn't already searched. Shortly after arriving, they encountered the Thessalhydra, alive once more. After defeating it again, they chose this time to skin it, cut off the heads, and burn out its heart.
They then split up, looking for possible leads on the treasure vault they'd been told of by the boggle. Dripp was the first to find something, noticing that the High Priest's room/chapel had an offering brazier, but didn't have any way to burn any offering. They dropped in a small ruby, and the brazier burned it magically, and then unlocked a secret passage through the fireplace. Proceeding along, the party found a room with supplies, including an Apparatus of Kwalish. Gearbox was especially astonished - the party were several decades before the Apparatus' invention!
The secret passage also included an alternate set of stairs down to the lower level. There, the party found a large lake, with some rubies visible on the lake floor. Proceeding cautiously, they baited an attack by the lake's guardian - the mighty Thessalkraken. It swallowed Abe, and emitted an ink cloud to defend itself, but the party were victorious in the end. The party stopped to skin the strange monstrosity, hoping to sell its hide to Kiorna Kester back in Saltmarsh. S.A.M. also spent some time searching the room, finding a handful of additional uncut rubies.
Heading back to the entrance, the party also searched the door they'd skipped earlier, with the heavy wind behind it. There, they found a small pool of water that seemed to feed the large lake below. S.A.M. spotted a corpse, covered in lime, which held a key in its hand. He grabbed it, though a cylinder detached and was carried off by the current without the party recovering it. The key matched the existing fancy key that the party already had, which they presumed would open the vault.
With no further leads, S.A.M. headed to the room with the Thessalclones, using speak with dead to interrogate one. The responses led the party back to the room with the dead Ettin, where they searched thoroughly. Dripp headed into the stewards' rooms, and found the schedule for them cleaning and feeding the animals in the pens. They noticed that the boggle stewards had never been assigned to the goats' pen. Searching that pen found the vault's secret door in the back, which the party opened and looted.
Returning to the inn, the party rested before heading back to the present. On arrival, they found themselves in an antimagic prison, overseen by a mechanically-enhanced medusa. She thanked them for having killed her undead great-grandmother in the Barrier Peaks, and said she would kill the party quickly for it. Before she could even start, however, a massive construct attacked, with five brains in jars. The party destroyed both, and found Gearbox nearby. He explained that he'd been here for a few hours, and that Lynx Creatlach had taken the various components a while ago.
Exiting the cellar they were in, the party found themselves outside Lynx's manor in Seaton. Gearbox confirmed that Serenity was at the docks, and headed there. Proceeding upstairs, the party fought two competing groups of fiends, each supported by a humanoid caster. Past them, they came to a room upstairs where Lynx and Sir Ursas were facing off, with the Infernal Machine at the room's center. Alongside the machine was a man Lynx introduced as Baron Lum the Mad himself.
Thus began a long and difficult fight, with the three forces all battling each other. Lum started the machine up fairly early on, with the party expending effort to keep him away from it. Dripp used telekinesis, Reese stabbed him with the Sun Blade, and S.A.M. used hold person to keep the others at bay, but in the end, Lum crawled into the machine just as it activated, vanishing across time. Ursas and Lynx were both defeated, and the last of Ursas' cult surrendered.
With that done, the party headed home, looking forward to some rest and relaxation.
Loot Summary:
48 days.
S.A.M. came to the party with a request from Wellgar. The Procan priest had requested that they head to the Styes district of Seaton, and check in on his friend, Refrum. Refrum had sent a message requesting help, but Wellgar's divination had warned him against going, and seemed to say he should send the officers of Serenity instead. The party got on their ship, and headed out, getting to the Styes the next morning. There, they found a district of squalor, filth, and poverty.
Arriving at Refrum's place, he greeted them, and introduced Eleanor Loveage. His main concerns involved Eleanor's brother, Jarme Loveage, and a recent string of killings referred to as the Lantern Ghost murders. The killings had been happening for half a year or so, and the district had been a powderkeg of worry, panic, and distrust. The militia were entirely useless, only able to clean up the scenes of each grisly crime. A week earlier, however, a constable had accidentally stumbled into Jarme, standing over the latest victim, holding the bloody knife.
The militia had quickly declared the case solved, and after only a brief stay in Hopene'er Asylum, Jarme had been hanged. But Refrum didn't believe that to be the whole story. As the closest thing Jarme had to a pastor, he'd tried to visit him at the Asylum, but hadn't been permitted. Refrum had also offered to Speak With Dead with Jarme's corpse, but the militia had refused him, and then sent Jarme's ashes to Eleanor the same day he'd hanged.
This was already enough that Refrum assumed there was someone powerful behind the murders, using Jarme as a fall guy. He wanted to investigate further, but felt that there was too much pressure, now that he'd gotten so much attention from the militia. This was why he'd asked for Wellgar's help with all of this, but something else had now happened since. Another body had been found the day after Jarme's hanging. The militia had quickly gotten the body removed and cleared out gawkers, and was trying to hush things up, but the rumours were already swirling that the real Lantern Ghost killer was still on the loose.
Refrum wished the party luck, and let them know that he was leaving town to make sure he didn't face retribution for his recent nosiness. He figured a vacation with a colleague in Saltmarsh was in order. The party had two leads to follow up on: Hopene'er Asylum, where Jarme had briefly been held, and Constable Jute of the milita, who had found Jarme over the 'last' victim. They split up, with Abe, Dripp, and Grug taking Serenity across the harbour to the garrison to find Jute, and Reese and S.A.M. walking across town to the asylum.
The group at the garrison got there fairly quickly, but Jute wasn't present, being out on patrol. They chose to head out to the nearby market where she was working. On the way, Grug started having problems and rubbing at his eyes constantly. Eventually, they got to the market, and Jute told them some details. Jarme had been confused when she found him, then rapidly slipped into madness after his arrest. Abe asked about the murder weapon, and the crime scenes, and Jute agreed to help the party, since her shift was just ending.
Meanwhile, at the asylum, Reese and S.A.M. met Emily Trantor, the halfling who ran the place. She seemed sympathetic to what had happened to Jarme, and indicated that for all his issues, when he claimed his innocence, he sounded more genuine than anyone else she'd ever had in the asylum. When asked about visitors, she said that the militia had been quite specific; only one person was able to visit. That man, Mr. Dory, was a member of the Council, and had visited all of once during Jarme's stay.
Miss Trantor also took the two to Jarme's cell, explaining that they would want to see what was there. It was in the deepest part of the asylum, and S.A.M. was quite strongly affected by the clamor of the other nearby inmates, and the sight of the strange drawings that Jarme had made on his cell's walls. Reese was able to decipher most of it, recognizing a massive tentacled beast destroying the Styes, chained and collared by an aboleth. He quickly sketched out a copy, took some quick notes, and then he and S.A.M. headed back to meet up with the rest of the party.
At the garrison, Jute gave Abe the murder weapon, and showed the party to the place where she'd found Jarme. Abe used his blood magics to try to discern what had happened, finding that Jarme was indeed the murderer. In the vision Abe got, he seemed detached during the killing, but that was about all Abe could discern. The more recent murder scene, however, was more useful. There, the party found strange webbed footprints leading away. Following them led to one of the town's mud regions, the Hemlock Pit, where Mr. Dory had his warehouse and home.
Jute headed back home, and the party considered their plan to infiltrate the warehouse, and the boat that was suspended on a crane, where Mr. Dory actually lived. Ultimately, not wanting to get in trouble with the local 'law', the party decided they would have Dripp try to disguise them, so that if they got spotted, they wouldn't get in trouble. Reese started asking around to get in touch with what passed for a criminal underworld in such an already-lawless area. Meeting with a contact, he picked up the necessary disguise equipment, and also got a lead on someone else in the area who was planning a job on Dory's place.
The party headed to meet up with the new contact, a gnome 'adventurer' named Grotten Longflint. She was apparently planning to rob Dory's place, having heard of some pearls worth stealing somewhere inside. Reese had to pay a "Consultation Fee" for some info, and agree to cut her in on 20% of the loot She warned them that the place had guard dogs at night, strange fish-people guarding it as well, and some sort of Fish Golem.
The party took some time to put together a plan of attack. Ultimately, the settled on using disguises to avoid legal troubles, and having Dripp teleport themself and Grug up to the crane. There, they lowered a rope for Reese to climb up with, allowing the three of them to poke around, while the much-louder Abe and S.A.M. stayed at ground level. The three saw no guards on the crane, or on the ship's deck. Reese looked under the door back to the warehouse, and saw movement suggesting some sort of flying creature(s) inside.
The party crossed a rickety wooden bridge to the boat, and Dripp sent Whiskers into the bow to investigate. They saw a pair of strange fish-person aberrations, lounging and almost-napping in a pool of nearly-boiling water. Expecting a fight once they got down there, the three party members signaled for Abe and S.A.M. to join them. The last two flew up onto the boat, but the noise alerted a cluster of aberrant guard creatures hiding inside the crane. A fight began, with Abe and Reese rushing to the bow compartment of the boat, and the others clearing the guards who'd been in the crane.
Heading into the ship, the party proceeded through to the stern. After another fight in the midship, they reached Dory's own room, where they found the Fish Golem. Around when it went down, Dory revealed himself to have been hiding invisibly. He cast Cloudkill, but Dripp was able to disperse it, and Abe promptly chopped the man's head off. Looting the room, the party found notes indicating that Dory was working with a cult of Tharizdun, who were meeting in "the evening shadow of Frother's Lamp". With this information, they decided to head back to the warehouse, to see what else they could find there.
Loot:
Reese popped open the door silently, and the party headed in, where they fought a red slaad, and three 'guard dog' manticores. The slaad scored a good hit on Grug at one point, leaving him with an odd queasiness after the fight ended. The last manticore tried to flee, but had trouble fitting out the front door, and was finished off before it could get out. S.A.M. set about curing Grug of his newfound sickness, while Reese opened some of the crates, and the rest of the party checked over the paperwork. All indications were that the warehouse itself was an above-board operation, so the party left the actual business alone, and took their leave.
The next day, the party face a shakedown from one of the local militia, using an excuse about a docking permit to try to extract a bribe. Dripp was able to lie and pretend that Serenity was all paid up, so the party quickly headed to find Grotten Longflint, giving her two of the rubies they'd found. During this, Grug was suffering from blurred eyesight. Grotten, being a local, instantly recognized it - Redface, a common affliction among visitors to the Styes. She explained that Grug would be permanently blind in a few days, but S.A.M. used some of his ointment to heal Grug. Grotten was also able to explain that Frother's Lamp was the name of the lighthouse in the Low Quarter.
Heading there, the party first searched the lighthouse itself, before poking around in the waterway East of it. There, they found a temple of Tharizdun hidden away in a building built atop a long-beached ship. Aberrations were serving as various stages of guards, with a chuul ambush paralyzing Abe several times, but the party easily dispatched them anyway. Inside the temple were a number of cultists, most of whom ran away when the party approached. The few who stood their ground were no match at all for the party.
At the end of the fight with the cultists, the giant shark carcass on the wall detached itself, animated, and began attacking the party. Though they could hit it, and were clearly damaging it, the flying shark seemed entirely unimpeded by their attacks, and consistently struck true, even against S.A.M.'s heavy armour. This allowed the party to quickly determine that magic was involved, and Dripp dispelled the shark, showing it to have been illusory all along. Searching the water nearby, they finally found the aboleth that had cast the illusion and was clearly behind the cult. Dripp was charmed, but before they could do anything to attack their allies, the cornered aboleth was destroyed. Behind it, in the watery channel beyond, was a flooded passage. At the other end of the passage, they saw a symbol of Tharizdun highlighting some ruins that Abe recognized as Landgrave's Folly.
Taking the newly-named Argos into the ruins the next morning, the party found two aboleths arguing with one another. Dripp conversed with them using telepathy, and convinced them to let the party deal with the kraken in the ruins' deep pit. The aboleths retreated, and the party disembarked the apparatus to approach the pit. There, they saw strange glowing runes and symbols, and a juvenile kraken, which surged into the ruins themselves and attacked. It focused on S.A.M., taking issue with his use of magic to part the water out from the ruins. He nearly died, but a casting of a guiding bolt spell finished the hideous creature off just before it could do likewise to him.
Dripp studied the symbols, determining that they were channeling all the hatred, sorrow, despair, anguish, and other negative emotions from the Styes into the kraken, accelerating its growth. Grug was pointed to the specific key areas, and quickly swam around, smashing everything and disrupting the magics. The party checked the rest of the area, verifying the pit was empty, tripping a magical trap, and ultimately heading back to Serenity. The next day, they took the kraken's body to Burle to collect a bounty from Kiara Shadowbreaker, who paid a thousand gold for the defeat of the kraken and the aboleth, and the defeat of the cult. With that, they headed home, and took a two week break to rest.
Downtime Results (14 days):
The party were contacted by Kwalish, who had detected further use of time magic near Saltmarsh. Concerned by the possibility, the party headed out to the cave he'd pinpointed, where they found themselves in a trap. The entrance to the cave vanished, and a hissing voice taunted them, identifying itself only as a past enemy they'd defeated.
The voice taunted them about having murdered their ship's prior crew and taken it like thieves. As it did so, a wooden deck rose up, followed by water filling the cave. A surge in brightness made them all blink, and the party found that they were standing on a ship rocking in the open sea, with the sun visible overhead. The former officers of the Sea Ghost then appeared, looking to reclaim their ship. Dripp was heavily injured early on, but their banishment spell worked wonders. The deck wizard was completely shut down by Grug's axe, and once Dripp got out of the melee, the other officers died quite quickly.
With the officers defeated, the party felt the ship start sinking beneath them. As the water rose up past them, they then found themselves in the Sahuagin throne room. The voice continued to taunt, accusing them of having dragged Saltmarsh into a war it had no reason to be part of, and having murdered the Sahuagin. That was when Baron Kepmak, Baroness Seklaz, High Priestess Thadrah, and Blademaster Makaht all appeared, along with another soldier and a giant shark. S.A.M. was able to paralyze the high priestess and the other soldier, which sped the battle up quite a bit.
By now, Dripp was taunting the voice back, enraging it further. It gave them a choice of one of the cults they'd previously fought, and the party chose to face the Cult of the Elemental Eye once again. The voice taunted them about having engaged said cult in combat without ever even thinking about talking. The cultists fought hard, but their main melee enforcer's head was quickly removed by Abe's Vorpal blade, speeding the fight along. During the fight, Dripp talked with one of the cultists, learning that they knew the voice's identity, but sadly nothing was quite revealed yet.
With the cultists dispatched, the party found themselves back in the original cave, though the exit still wasn't anywhere to be found. A pit opened up, and the party were invited to drop through when they were ready. There, they found a large open area with a floor of sand. Rising out of it was a massive undead blue dragon; a revenant Rytheria, the source of the voice. The fight with her was especially dangerous, with S.A.M. nearly dying, and her lightning breath endangering the whole party.
When she was finally defeated, the party did their best to prevent any possible further ressurection, and then buried her desecrated body, and headed home.
Downtime Results (7 days):
TODO: Soaring Huntsman description
Downtime Results (7 days):
TODO: Eye of the Storm pt. 1 description
Loot Summary:
TODO: Eye pt. 2 description
Downtime Results (14 days):
Notable people that the party have met during their travels.
Captain of the town guard, and a retired soldier from elsewhere in Keoland. Eliander speaks a large number of languages, and owns the largest library in town, which he employs Krag to look after, organize, and help with translating. Due to injuries sustained in military service, Eliander has a wooden right leg.
Female Dwarf, 250-300ish
Manistrad is the head of the Copperlocks Clan, who own the mining company in town.
Anders is the inheritor of the Solmor Fishing and Trading company. Not the wealthiest, but the company tends to do well during downturns.
Gellan is always dressed better than anyone else in the room. Sometimes comes off a bit foppish, but he has single-handedly built the Primewater Trading Concern into the wealthiest company in the area.
Early 60's Female Human
Eda is the seniormost member of the council, having been elected repeatedly. Owner of many fishing boats, Eda is the archetypical well-respected elder in town.
Ferrin is the local druid, running a shrine to Obad-Hai, and handling most matters in town related to druidism or herbalism.
Keledek is feared by many of the townsfolk, who often refuse to even speak his name. Nevertheless, he is the closest thing Saltmarsh has to a town wizard.
Female Human
Kiorna runs the town's leatherworking shop. She has an interest in the hides of all sorts of rare, exotic, and dangerous beasts, and will pay the party to recover any such hides.
Krag is Saltmarsh's gravekeeper, looking after the small cemetery at the East end of town. He also spends time working in Eliander's library, helping with organization and translation of the many books.
Xendros is the head of the local office of the Faithful Quartermasters of Iuz. Always wearing a strange assortment of rings and other jewelry.
Elderly, Dark-Skinned Female Human
Mafera runs the forge in Saltmarsh, and has had a number of small issues with the local Dwarf population.
Old and Weathered Male Human
Former sailor and whaler who lost one of his legs, and retired into the clergy of Procan. Hired the party for the Templars of the Trident job.
Middle-aged Male Human
Cagy about his past, Winston runs the local general store, and has a secret inventory of less-than-legal items available to some of the shadier people in town.
A mapmaker and map collector from Geoff, with a longstanding interest in Kwalish and Daoine Gloine.
He was the primary backer of the party's expedition to the Barrier Peaks, supplying maps and notes about where Kwalish's original expedition had gone, centuries earlier.
Despite being a bit of an alcoholic, Garret is trusted by Anaxi to be his assistant, and to serve as the primary cartographer and navigator for the expedition.
Garret plays several instruments, is handy with a blade, knows some magic, and is a competent cartographer as well.
Has been modified by Garret to function as an orb of direction, an orb of time, to be able to cast light, and to be able to assist with any analysis or operation of mechanical devices or similar.
Does not seem to care about Garret's constant trend of using different names to refer to it.
Claims to be "Apprentice to Thingizzard, Witch of the Fens, and granddaughter of Drelnza." Generally seems to use this name-dropping as a way of impressing others. Has a familiar named Tabitha.
People not from Saltmarsh, who are otherwise notable and deserve a spot here.
A scout for the nearby sea elf tribe of Manaan, Oceanus was found captured aboard the Sea Ghost, and joined the party on their journey to the lizardfolk lair.
His grasp of Common is still sometimes not quite perfect, but Eliander has trained him well enough.
40's Female Lizardfolk
Queen of the nearby lizardfolk tribe, Othokent has done what few lizardfolk ever manage, uniting together a large tribe, not led by the shamans.
Her shamans distrust her because of this, many of her citizens distrust her because of her political moves, but Othokent has nonetheless managed to keep her people together as a tribe after their devastating loss to the sahuagin.
Now, she is building an alliance of multiple races, to stop whatever the sahuagin are planning, and retake the tribe's rightful home.
20's Male Lizardfolk
Lizardfolk Scaleshields who served in Othokent's equivalent to a Royal Guard. As two of the only guards who spoke common, they helped guide the party around the swamps, and are now serving as ambassadors and negotiators with Saltmarsh for the same reason.
The party have been told of the following bounties or long-term quests that they can turn in:
| Harvester | Starday | Sunday | Moonday | Godsday | Waterday | Earthday | Freeday |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
|
8 Party meet Start of adventure |
9 Second day at the Haunted House |
10 Downtime 1 |
11 Downtime 2 |
12 Mission with Slate S.A.M.'s Vision Abe's first letter |
13 Downtime 3 |
14 Downtime 4 |
|
15 Downtime 5 Council Briefing |
16 Sea Ghost Raid Downtime 6 |
17 Downtime 7 Sea Ghost becomes Serenity |
18 Downtime 8 |
19 Downtime 9 |
20 Downtime 10 |
21 Downtime 11 |
|
22 Downtime 12 |
23 Downtime 13 |
24 Goblin Raft Ambush Templars of the Trident |
25 Downtime 14 |
26 Downtime 15 |
27 Downtime 16 |
28 Downtime 17 |
Brewfest | Starday | Sunday | Moonday | Godsday | Waterday | Earthday | Freeday |
|
1 Downtime 18 |
2 Downtime 19 |
3 Downtime 20 |
4 Tide Pools |
5 Downtime 21 Last day of Reese's Training |
6 Downtime 22 |
7 Downtime 23 |
Patchwall | Starday | Sunday | Moonday | Godsday | Waterday | Earthday | Freeday |
|
1 Downtime 24 |
2 Downtime 25 |
3 Downtime 26 |
4 Trip to Lizardfolk |
5 Lizardfolk Day 2 Bullywug Ambush Croc Hunt |
6 Downtime 27 |
7 Downtime 28 |
|
8 Downtime 29 |
9 Downtime 30 |
10 Downtime 31 |
11 Downtime 32 |
12 Downtime 33 Abe's second letter |
13 Church of St. Eadrine Quipper Bait |
14 Fehr/Tharizdun |
|
15 Downtime 34 |
16 Downtime 35 |
17 Downtime 37 |
18 Wiccrhys Kraken Cult |
19 Downtime 38 |
20 Downtime 39 |
21 Downtime 40 Hired by Xendros |
|
22 Travel to the Emperor |
23 Emperor of the Waves |
24 Return to Saltmarsh |
25 Downtime 41 |
26 Downtime 42 |
27 Nostalgia for the Reef |
28 Downtime 43 |
Ready-reat | Starday | Sunday | Moonday | Godsday | Waterday | Earthday | Freeday |
|
1 Downtime 44 |
2 Downtime 45 |
3 Rescuing The Tizzles |
4 Golbuldoolpulg |
5 Downtime 46 |
6 Downtime 47 |
7 Downtime 48 |
|
8 Stregone Tomb |
9 Downtime 49 |
10 Downtime 50 |
11 Downtime 51 |
12 Rescuing Ferrin |
13 Downtime 52 |
14 Downtime 53 |
|
15 Downtime 54 |
16 Downtime 55 |
17 Downtime 56 |
18 Isle of the Abbey |
19 Downtime 57 |
20 Xorn in the Silver Mine. |
21 Downtime 58 |
|
22 Tower of Zenopus |
23 Downtime 59 |
24 Downtime 60 |
25 Silver Mines 2 Barrier Peaks Forest |
26 Barrier Peaks Caves |
27 Monastery of the Distressed Body |
28 Barrier Peaks Caves 2 |
Sunsebb | Starday | Sunday | Moonday | Godsday | Waterday | Earthday | Freeday |
|
1 Daoine Gloine Kwalish's Lab |
2 Return to Saltmarsh Downtime 61 |
3 Downtime 62 |
4 Downtime 63 |
5 Downtime 64 |
6 Downtime 65 |
7 Downtime 66 |
|
8 Downtime 67 Manor Repairs Completed |
9 Downtime 68 |
10 Downtime 69 Abe's Bedroom Complete |
11 Downtime 70 |
12 Downtime 71 Alchemy Lab Complete |
13 Downtime 72 |
14 Downtime 73 |
|
15 Downtime 74 Sahuagin Lair Briefing |
16 Sahuagin Lair Infiltration |
17 Docks Complete Downtime 75 |
18 Downtime 76 |
19 Downtime 77 |
20 Downtime 78 |
21 Downtime 79 |
|
22 Downtime 80 |
23 Kitchen Complete Downtime 81 |
24 Downtime 82 |
25 Reese's Bedroom Complete Downtime 83 |
26 Downtime 84 |
27 Downtime 85 |
28 Downtime 86 |
579 CY | Needfest | Starday | Sunday | Moonday | Godsday | Waterday | Earthday | Freeday |
|
1 Downtime 87 |
2 Downtime 88 |
3 Assault on the Sahuagin |
4 Downtime 89 |
5 Downtime 90 |
6 Downtime 91 |
7 Downtime 92 |
Fireseek | Starday | Sunday | Moonday | Godsday | Waterday | Earthday | Freeday |
|
1 Downtime 93 |
2 Downtime 94 |
3 Downtime 95 |
4 Warthalkeel |
5 Downtime 96 |
6 Downtime 97 |
7 Downtime 98 |
|
8 Downtime 99 |
9 Downtime 100 |
10 Downtime 101 |
11 Downtime 102 |
12 Downtime 103 |
13 Downtime 104 |
14 Downtime 105 |
|
15 Downtime 106 |
16 Downtime 107 |
17 Downtime 108 |
18 The Unicorn and the Hags |
19 Downtime 109 |
20 Downtime 110 |
21 Downtime 111 |
|
22 Downtime 112 |
23 Downtime 113 |
24 Downtime 114 |
25 Downtime 115 |
26 Lynx Creatlach and Sir Ursas Start of Infernal Machine Rebuild freedom. |
27 Downtime 116 |
28 Downtime 117 |
Readying | Starday | Sunday | Moonday | Godsday | Waterday | Earthday | Freeday |
|
1 Downtime 118 |
2 Downtime 119 |
3 Downtime 120 |
4 Tomb of Horrors 1 Temple of Moloch |
5 Tomb of Horrors 2 |
6 White Plume Mountain 1 |
7 Downtime 121 |
|
8 Downtime 122 |
9 White Plume Mountain 2 |
10 Temple of Moloch 2 |
11 Lynx's Manor Infernal Machine Fight |
12 Downtime 123 |
13 Downtime 124 |
14 Downtime 125 |
|
15 Downtime 126 |
16 Downtime 127 |
17 Downtime 128 |
18 Downtime 129 |
19 Downtime 130 |
20 Downtime 131 |
21 Downtime 132 |
|
22 Downtime 133 |
23 Downtime 134 |
24 Downtime 135 |
25 Downtime 136 |
26 Downtime 137 |
27 Downtime 138 |
28 Downtime 139 |
Coldeven | Starday | Sunday | Moonday | Godsday | Waterday | Earthday | Freeday |
|
1 Downtime 140 |
2 Downtime 141 |
3 Downtime 142 |
4 Downtime 143 |
5 Downtime 144 |
6 Downtime 145 |
7 Downtime 146 |
|
8 Downtime 147 |
9 Downtime 148 |
10 Downtime 149 |
11 Downtime 150 |
12 Downtime 151 |
13 Downtime 152 |
14 Downtime 153 |
|
15 Downtime 154 |
16 Downtime 155 |
17 Downtime 156 |
18 Downtime 157 |
19 Downtime 158 |
20 Downtime 159 |
21 Downtime 160 |
|
22 Downtime 161 |
23 Downtime 162 |
24 Downtime 163 |
25 Downtime 164 |
26 The Styes 1 |
27 The Styes 2 |
28 Landgrave's Folly |
Growfest | Starday | Sunday | Moonday | Godsday | Waterday | Earthday | Freeday |
|
1 Downtime 165 |
2 Downtime 166 |
3 Downtime 167 |
4 Downtime 168 |
5 Downtime 169 |
6 Downtime 170 |
7 Downtime 171 |
Planting | Starday | Sunday | Moonday | Godsday | Waterday | Earthday | Freeday |
|
1 Downtime 172 |
2 Downtime 173 |
3 Downtime 174 |
4 Downtime 175 |
5 Downtime 176 |
6 Downtime 177 |
7 Downtime 178 |
|
8 Revenant Rytheria's Retribution |
9 Downtime 179 |
10 Downtime 180 |
11 Downtime 181 |
12 Downtime 182 |
13 Downtime 183 |
14 Downtime 184 |
|
15 Downtime 185 |
16 The Soaring Huntsman |
17 Downtime 186 |
18 Downtime 187 |
19 Downtime 188 |
20 Downtime 189 |
21 Downtime 190 |
|
22 Downtime 191 |
23 Downtime 192 |
24 Eye of the Storm |
25 Downtime 193 |
26 Downtime 194 |
27 Downtime 195 |
28 Downtime 196 |
Flocktime | Starday | Sunday | Moonday | Godsday | Waterday | Earthday | Freeday |
|
1 Downtime 197 |
2 Downtime 198 |
3 Downtime 199 |
4 Downtime 200 |
5 Downtime 201 |
6 Downtime 202 |
7 Downtime 203 |
|
8 Downtime 204 |
9 Downtime 205 |
10 Downtime 206 |
11 Final Adventure Begins |
12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
