Session 59: Into the Abyss (September 5, 2024)
Last session, our heroes set about planning for the rest of the longest day of their lives. They focused on how to disrupt Sentin’s plans to extract memories from Izume Hojo without exhausting their now very limited strength. They decided to ask the late Alsa Peonybark for some information to make a more informed decision. Maho stabbed her katana down into the attic floor and a misty specter of Alsa appeared above it, granting Maho five questions before she passed on beyond the Shroud.
Alsa informed them that Sentin is no expert in memory magic (that’s her area of expertise), but likely he would still attempt it if he could get ahold of the five sensory ingredients necessary for the ritual. These items were the smell of a wine native to Hojo, the sight of a beautiful mountain vista, the touch of fresh fallen snow, the taste of a plum cake, and the sound of spoken Giant. With Alsa gone from this world, the party set about blocking access to these items. Ana left to destroy some Giant phrasebooks. Rormir and Karrl found every plum cake seller in town, and did a combination of buying them out and shit bombing their carts. Rormir then made himself sick trying to eat all the cakes he bought. Maho caught up with the drunk goliaths on their bar crawl, and found they had discovered the underground source of Hojo wine in Bad Zamdorf. With their direction she headed to Dirty Dan’s Mud Pit and purchased the rest of his warm stock while declining the offer to get in the pit with him. Elias paid off a caricaturist to tell him where the mountain vista paintings were, and then proceeded to throw down an illusory break-dancing Iron Golem and destroy the paintings, as well as the artist’s other work, in the chaos.
Back in the attic, Heph worked on his mask removal device with the help of Delilas’s steady hand. He reached a point where he needed Maho’s help with the runes around when she arrived back at the building. On a nat 20 persuasion, she gave Tertel a bottle of the wine as a gift and he voiced his appreciation, remembering the wine from his time in Hojo in the past and recommending she drink it on the roof by the chimney for a “pastoral view”. Maho helped Heph finish the device and test it on the sword-wielding agent from earlier. It worked, lifting the mask off and revealing a scarred face. They splashed water on him to wake him up, and after finding a common language of Goblin different from his seemingly-native Holden, Heph rolled a nat 20 persuasion to convince him he had been captured by an evil man. He then jumped out the window, picked up Sentin’s scent from his old wagon, and bolted off into the city, with Heph and an amused Maho following behind.
Elias, meanwhile, rolled a nat 1 stealth and was spotted by a grocery-list-toting Sentin as Elias was trying to leave the plaza. He ran, but Sentin pursued, hitting him with a crossbow bolt before Elias could throw up a Wind Wall. Sentin shot off a spell and missed, allowing Elias on a nat 20 stealth to Misty Step into an alley. Sentin looked around, but was suddenly tackled by a flame orange tiger bearing a scar on its face. Sustaining one slash from the tiger, Sentin turned invisible and flew away. Elias tripped over a plum cake-sick Rormir and they caught up with Heph and Maho. The party then headed back to Tertel’s where they pulled out some wine and sat down on the roof at Maho’s suggestion. They smelled a sweet scent coming from the chimney, which reminded Elias vaguely of home.
- Elias sniffs the scent again, and asks Delilas if
she can smell it too
- Rormir suddenly gets a pain in his stomach, drops his pants and takes a shit
- Elias uses Minor Illusion to blur out this scene, and Rormir uses Druidcraft to make it smell better
- Elias uses Mage Hand to grab the shit — it’s quite soft and watery — and he drops it off the building
- Elias and Delilas recognize the scent, and smelling the wine it doesn’t smell like that
- Heph and Maho peer into the chimney, the smell is stronger but it is pitch black, and it seems deeper than the building is tall, and it leads somewhere
- Elias lowers a lantern he lit with Light down with a Mage Hand
- Not seeing much else, Elias lights a candle with Light, then drops it in
- We watch the candle drop until it just appears as a speck, then disappears
- It seems to be a portal to somewhere, but it’s not clear yet
- After some more discussion, the group decides to rest and sleep off the long day
- Rormir heads downstairs and passes out, but the rest of the group
climbs back inside
- Heph and Elias tie up Thom and put him with the dolls, since it seems they helped contain Jörnann the previous day
- Harris is tied up, and the remaining masked guy seems like he’ll stay unconscious, so Heph removes his mask and lets him sleep it off
- The masked man has a beautiful face with blonde hair, a strong jaw and a permanent determined look in his brow
- Elias and Delilas keep watch by trading off trancing so the group is watched over
- Elias trances first while Delilas keeps watch, and
then after a few hours they swap places
- During Elias’ shift, around 5:30am, he receives a sending from Mort that says “Alright, Ivalgo, here we come! Ah, fuck, wait, Sprausy, ya’ gotta be in the house. Ah fuck.” and then a bunch of cracking wood and magical wind and screaming, then it quiets down and Elias hears creaks of a settling building, then he hears “Oof. Okay, uh, the short guy ran away.”
- Elias responds “This is your first mistake so I’m going to go easy on you, did he go somewhere?”
- Mort replies “Yeah, the short guy’s dad, he was mumbling ‘what the fuck am I doing, Heph is cleaning up my mess’, and I was telling him to calm down, Heph seems capable although I don’t believe it, and as I was about to leave he booked it”
- Elias asks “Do you know what that’s about?”
- Mort says he doesn’t pay attention, and Elias tells him to go get himself some ice cream, and Mort replies he’s going to go get drunk
- Elias walks over to Heph, and gently nudges his hammock, and tells him the house was moved successfully, but his Dad didn’t go with the house and seemed to be upset that Heph was solving his problems
- Heph deduces that he’s probably coming to Bad Zamdorf to help out, and tells Elias that they should just wait for him to catch up
- Once the whole group is up, Elias having pulled
Rormir back up the stairs, he starts telling everyone that he
really doesn’t want Kogar to get the zombie dudes
- Rormir appears to have a trickle of blood coming from his nose, Elias gives him a tissue to wipe it up
- The group decides this nose bleed is probably not a big deal, but Rormir has a headache and feels weak, he’s not looking too good
- Heph takes a look, with some help from Elias and guidance from Rormir, and deduces that whatever is going on with him is beyond a basic physical malady, there is something magic and extraplanar about it
- Looking up his nose, which is still actively dripping blood, what is happening feels similar to what is blessing the venom vials
- Heph tells Rormir he might want to get in touch with his snake friend, because something even weirder than normal is happening, and he should take it easy until he has a chance to talk to the snake
- Delilas taps Elias’ shoulder and pulls him aside,
asking him if they smelled the same thing coming from the chimney
- She says if there is a way to get home that is closer they might be able to bring in reinforcements
- Heph spots them having a silent conversation, and breaks into Elias’ head and asks him what they’re talking about, and Elias leads the group up onto the roof to have a private conversation away from all the non-party members
- While climbing up to the roof, Elias telepathically speaks to Delilas, asking her why she’s trying to keep things secret, and she responds “You can understand I’m a little sensitive about the idea of betrayal”
- Elias looks at his friends and says “I can understand that, but we can trust these people, I promise”, but she seems reluctant to trust him about that, and Elias gets a dark look on his face and looks away
- She puts her hand on Elias’ shoulder, but Elias is still not responding to her
- The rest of the group arrives on the roof, and Heph asks where the
chimney goes
- Delilas explains that it smells like home, and could be a portal home, but they won’t know until they get more information
- Maho is very confused about how the portal works, and Elias starts suggesting they can tie the ropes together, but Maho isn’t waiting and starts to climb in
- Heph asks her for rope, and she climbs back out, Heph gathering rope from people they manage to scrounge up about 250 feet of rope
- Heph calls out to Ana, who was disguised as his armor, but she has no extra rope
- After tying off the rope there is somewhere around 230 feet of rope left, and Maho climbs down about 100 feet before slipping and falling, falling an additional 50 feet she opens a door and steps out of a lazily spinning windmill with a field of gently blowing grain
- Heph tries to message Maho, but there is no response
- Maho pinches herself to see if she’s dreaming, and she hears a sharp whistle of birdsong as she does so
- Maho pulls the rope 4 times indicating that we should follow, and yells “Hello!” into the windmill
- We do not hear the yell, but we feel the tugs on the rope
- Elias climbs down first, Heph following, but Heph slips and falls onto Elias, who manages to grab him, but then Rormir also falls, Elias tries to grab him but they all end up falling
- Delilas sighs and climbs down normally
- Maho sits down and waits for the group, and it’s unclear how much
time has passed, minutes, seconds, weeks
- Despite the falling, the group just opens up the door and walks out, Karrl hopping out with the group
- In this place, Karrl seems to look slightly different depending on which angle you look at him, a hawk, an octopus, a frog, a fish, etc.
- Rormir looks really rough, even rougher than he did before, his skin having dark purple veins, and they almost look like cracks in his body, and his body seems to be almost splitting apart at those lines with a faint green glow emanating from them, and he’s a foot taller
- Maho feels like she’s been waiting a while, and the group notices that Rormir looks odd, and asks him if he feels okay
- Rormir asks Heph what is going on with him, and Heph first turns to Elias and asks him if this is his home
- Elias thinks they are deep in the Fey Wild, deeper than where he knows about
- The fields stretch on forever but are also really close, the sun is everywhere but only in one place at a time
- This is not the Nor’Southern Isles, nor is it the UnderWild that Rormir is from, these planes seem to be a scale and this world is between, but closer to Elias’ home
- Heph asks Rormir if he can manipulate the environment at all, and Rormir uses Druidcraft to create a weather sensor, then tries to picture snow to see if it changes the forecast at all
- He tries to manipulate the space using the tricks he knows but is unsuccessful, but he can tell the place is not entirely physical and can probably be manipulated
- Heph pulls out his mirror fragment, and peering into it he sees himself looking back, matching his expression
- Heph covers his mouth and starts using message to communicate with his mirror self, he seems convinced that having two diverged brains is better than one and is willing to give it a try
- After some indeterminate amount of time discussing with himself, where the processing of the two brains work in perfect tandem, greater than the sum of their parts, Heph comes to the conclusion that this plane is a gradient, from where Elias is from to where Rormir is from, and focusing on the horizon the horizon jumps to him, and after repeating this a number of times and traversing an unknown amount of distance, the fields give way to a beach and turquoise water, with a medium sized vessel parked at the edge of the sea, and the beginnings of land on the far side
- Elias figures out where Heph is looking, and following
his gaze, he ends up seeing a sea he is very familiar with
- Heph snaps back to the windmill, and Elias takes a step forward and is suddenly standing infinitely far away on the beach but yet still close
- Rormir does the same, but instead of stepping, wills himself to be there on the beach, and he finds himself re-acclimating to the environment, and space shifts around him and he is suddenly at the beach with Karrl
- After some explanation, Delilas takes a step and is next to Elias
- Maho thinks Heph is thinking too hard about this, and just begins a long trek to the beach
- Heph follows Elias’ lead, and is standing next to him on the beach
- Some amount of time passes, and Maho finally arrives on the
beach, with the rope still tied to her
- Although when you focus on the rope, it seems short, as if they are standing right outside the windmill
- There is a man standing in front of the boat, Elias tries to tap
him on the shoulder without moving, but it seems we are too shallow and need
to walk forward
- Rormir moves forward and greets the man, who responds “Hello, Rormir”
- Elias greets the man, who responds, “Hello, Elias”, and Heph runs up and asks if he knows his name, and the guy pretends to not know but then reveals he knows Heph
- Someone (Elias I think?) starts calling him “Darryl”, and he says that is his name, yes
- He appears a bit elvish, although his ears are longer and go to more pointed tips
- Elias asks if he’s an Eladrin, but he says he is not quite, but he is close, he is a Wayfarer
- Elias asks if he takes payment, and the guy says no, he just has some conditions if we are to travel with him
- Heph asks him what the conditions are, and he says the condition is we need to row and no matter what happens, we keep rowing, keep looking straight ahead, and not stop for anything
- Elias looks to Delilas, but they don’t know what’s going on, and Heph contacts Pheh and they can’t deduce if anything weird is happening
- Elias digs a hole to try to create a landmark, and Maho grabs a shell, saying she’ll return it on the way back
- Elias draws a card, throws it into the hole, and fills the sand back in; a giant troll is standing on the beach and jumping and waving to try to guide us back
- Rormir turns to Karrl, who seems very at home here and is somehow a creature of this land, and he snaps his hawk/octopus beak, indicating he is not untrusting
- Rormir takes a grain of sand and walks into the ship
- Heph follows, Maho, Elias and Delilas following right after
- Delilas turns to Elias and telepathically asks how
he feels about heading home, and Elias points out
Kogar isn’t there, but he’s still not feeling great about
it
- Delilas says things are pretty bad, and she’s not sure where the boat will let us off, but we need to be stealthy and careful, and our arrival can’t be noticed
- Elias doesn’t repeat what she said, and seeming a bit pleased she turns the to the group and explains we need to be stealthy
- Heph suggests they take a quick short rest so he can change his armor, and Elias takes the opportunity to keep working on his castle
- Rormir doesn’t change much as the time passes, but he has changed to be a bit closer to his normal form, although he is still very far from it
- Once we set off rowing, Rormir thinks for a bit, then stops
rowing for a few seconds and says to the group that Tertel told him he was
dying, and he thinks this is what dying might look like for him
- Maho asks if there is anything we can do about it, and Rormir says no, just keep rowing
- As Rormir stops rowing, the blue sky darkens, there is thunder and lightning, the calm and tranquil sea starts smashing against the ship
- From a burst of spray, there is a large dark shape just below the surface, and a giant feathered tentacle wraps itself around Darryl and pulls him down into the sea
- A number of other massive tentacles emerge from the ocean, and a large shape begins to emerge from the ocean, with a huge beak protruding from a wet feathered face
- Heph yells at Rormir “KEEP ROWING” and he begins rowing again, but it seems it might be too late