LordVyreth
First Post
The Price of a Soul: Strategic and Not So Strategic Misdirection
The party traveled farther into the strange forest, and eventually they found themselves in a massive “room.” The branch path they’ve used since Blediggs got his bearing after the thorciasid battle took them into a relatively clear area under the canopy. However, Blediggs stopped the party at the entrance to the canopy and pointed at a strange fungus growing in the middle of the chamber. “That’s no ordinary fungus,” he warned. “That’s a mu spore. It’s like that cockroach we fought before; it’s an ordinary nuisance to the gods, but a catastrophe to us.”
That being said, the party had to get past this creature if they wanted to reach the center of the Glade in time, so they quickly prepared for another battle. Danae and Tiana weaved powerful magic around themselves, Azat changed into his alternate were-form, and Bat and Amon got ready to charge the beast as Robin, Tal, and Danae moved to be in an ideal position to attack from a distance. As soon as the party charged, the fungus grew a pair of gigantic legs and moved to defend itself. It tried to bite at the heroes, but Bath and Amon were both too quick for it. It managed to release a few sprays of razor sharp spores at the party and a couple more of the giant, chaos-tainted scorpions were attracted by the noise of battle and tried to make a meal of them as well, but collectively the three were no match for the party. They quickly finished the creatures and hurried to reach their target in time.
Finally, hours later, the party began to descend from the branches, for they were near the center of the forest. Shortly after they reached the ground level, Blediggs took a more direct approach to guiding them again, since he knew this area by memory. Finally, he directed the party to a giant clearing in the woods. “Here we are at last,” he said as he gestured towards the clearing. “The resting place of lost souls. It would be their final resting place, I’m sure, if there wasn’t the whole tear in reality thing to complicate things.”
The party looked over the clearing. There were two noteworthy objects in the clearing. First of all, there seemed to be approximately a hundred tall slabs of crystal arranged grid-like in the middle of the clearing. Each crystal had a spectral form floating lifelessly within it. Most were human, elf, or benefactor drow, but there was a smattering of gnomes, halflings, goblins, demons, and giants as well. It only took few moments for the party to notice the cerebrilith demon they had killed in the Rift, along with the gold Rilmani, some of the giants that were killed in their first attempt to capture Tesserill, and a few other gray-robed cultists encountered in their journeys. She wasn’t immediately within sight, but the party had little doubt that the Blade of Minds was resting here as well.
However, the other notable object in the clearing was more disturbing, if no less surprising. A strange, disc-like ripple filled much of the sky above the clearing. It was hard to see what exactly was on the other side of the ripple, but what they could see was out of some sort of mad and terrible nightmare. Strange beasts seemingly randomly composed of vaguely organic parts floated over, watching the glade with mad desire. The sky above them boiled, oozed, churned, shifted colors and consistency, and was filled with twisted flying monsters at various places. And the ripple was expanding before their very eyes.
Time was running out, but the party still didn’t even know how to free their target. Should the try to break the prison? Would that save her or irrevocably destroy her soul, sending her to eternal oblivion? For now, though, they had to at least find her. As they began to search the slabs, however, some of the creatures peering at them from the Far Realms took notice. Two of them pressed against the portal, hungry for this strange new food, and they landed in a sickly heap in reality.
The party quickly became aware of these new threats and mobilized to fight them. One was vaguely humanoid and slightly resembled a gorilla. However, it had four arms and two legs that all ended in tentacles, and a seventh weapon grew out of the top of its head. The other had a snake body and a human-like head. Its tail was another tentacle, and another four of the hideous protrusions grew out of the middle of its body and seemed to move about on its body as it lunged at the party.
Tal prepared to attack the gorilla-thing, but his magic failed to penetrate the creature’s aura. Despite this, Bath shrugged and charged the beast. After all, strange as these creatures are, they’re not even as large as she was, let alone as powerful-looking as the fungus creature. They can’t be that much of a threat. She flew up to the creature and swung her sword confidently. It was a well-aimed shot, but to Bath’s shock, the attack completely bounced off of the creature! What were these things made of? As she pondered this, the creature lashed at her using many of its tentacles. Bath managed to evade a few of them, but a few were able to connect with Bath, and they wrapped around her, trapping her in its deadly embrace.
As Bath prepared to deal with this strange new threat, Tiana and Amon surrounded the snake creature, but they had no luck striking it either. Danae prepared to help them, but realized that most of her remaining power spells were explosive in nature or otherwise affected a large area, and she didn’t want to risk attacking the crystal slabs and destroying the souls until she knew what it would do. She helped fight the creature grappling Bath using some magic missiles, but it didn’t do much good.
However, as Azat and Robin tried to help Tiana and Amon defeat the snake, which seemed a little weaker than the gorilla, Blediggs had an idea. The monsters had nearly impenetrable armor, but they were also extremely fast and agile. However, when they were distracted by grappling a party member, they weren’t able to evade enemy attacks. He demonstrated this by attacking the gorilla thing and calling out to the others, “Hey, try attacking them while they’re busy grappling somebody!”
The others nodded as they realized what Blediggs meant, and Amon lured the snake creature to him and willingly let the creature grapple him. Meanwhile, Tal decided to try a new tactic on the gorilla-creature. He used a spell capable of weakening the spell resistance of a creature, letting his spells more easily attack the creature. Bath continued to struggle against the creature, but failed to damage it or break away from it. To make things even worse, she slowly felt her life force draining away. The creature’s touch was corrupting her very body, making it succumb to chaos. If this kept up, she would completely break apart as her very order was destroyed!
Realizing the threat to their strongest fighter, Danae carefully moved up to the creature and touch Bath, then used her magic to teleport a short distance away. Bath was free, but the gorilla monster turned its attentions on Blediggs! It quickly began to suck the life force out of him, forcing Tal, Robin, Bath, and Danae to attack it before it can kill their guide! They finally finish the beast, leaving Blediggs alive but dying on the floor. Bath quickly moved to heal him as best she can while the rest of the party prepared to finish the second pseudonatural monster.
While this was going on, Amon, Azat, and Tiana were focusing on the snake monster. Amon was initially held, but Azat used magic that gave his movement complete freedom, letting him slip out of the monster’s grip. He soon used the same magic on himself, and the two of them alternated being grappled by the snake while the freed one and Tiana attacked. By the time Danae and the rest of the party were ready to help, they had almost finished the creature. And when the party was able to completely surround it, it was quickly destroyed.
Though there enemies are dead, the party still had a problem to deal with; what to do with the trapped souls? They were reluctant to break the slabs, but had no idea how to rescue them. Finally, Bath had an idea. “Let’s just break the slab of one of the trapped demons. If it frees the soul, we know what we have to do to free the others, and if not, all we lose is a demon soul we didn’t care about in the first place.”
The others agreed (though Blediggs made a mental note that the demon they’re freeing can count for the party’s share if they destroy it,) and Bath shattered the slab with one swing of her sword. To the party’s relief (but Bath’s slight disappointment,) the soul was unharmed and appeared to be capable of moving now, though it was extremely confused and seemed to have almost no will of its own. The party quickly freed the rest of the souls, including Tesserill’s. As expected, she was also confused when she was saved, but she recovered quickly when she saw the party.
“You!” she telepathically shouted. “Haven’t you done enough to me? Can’t you let my soul rest in peace?”
An ashamed Danae looked away, but Tal as always took on the role of diplomat. “You misunderstand,” he began, “We’re here to save you.” He pointed to the ripple over the Glade. “This realm is doomed, and you will be as well if you don’t come with us.”
The Blade of Minds immediately recognized what that portal led to, but she wasn’t going to travel with her enemies so easily. “And where will we go? This was supposed to be our place of rest, and now it’s being destroyed.”
Blediggs shrugged. “Well, according to the contract, half of you are coming with me. Don’t worry, my master will treat you with kindness, and if you’re really lucky, you could be reborn as slaad like me!”
Tesserill gasped, and the rest of the party gave Danae an accusing glance. Danae herself was having second thoughts as well. After all, these people (except for the demons and other psionic monsters,) weren’t that much different from her in terms of what they believed in. They might have been enemies in life, but they deserved a fair afterlife. She sighed and asked Blediggs, “would it be possible for us to change the deal?”
Blediggs looked a little worried about that and said, “Well, I suppose, but it won’t be cheap. You owe me 50 souls, so I’ll be willing to part with them at the cost of 5,000 per soul.”
“Done,” Danae forcefully said, but she quickly reconsidered. “Well, I don’t think we’ll worry about those souls,” she said as she pointed to the cerebrilith demon that they killed earlier. “You can keep the evil ones.”
A bit of magic let the party determine that 15 of the souls were evil, so Danae gave them to Blediggs and paid him for the remaining 35. This obviously made the rest of the party feel a lot better about this deal, and it clearly had an impact on Tesserill as well. Even she had to admit that saving all but the most evil of her followers from a fate potentially worse (and certainly weirder) than oblivion took great amounts of mercy, but they still have to figure out where exactly she and her fellow petitioners could go.
“Well, what else is on this plane?” a frustrated Robin asked, prompting Danae, Bath, Amon, and Blediggs to quickly figure out a solution.
After a while, the group had a few ideas. “What about Sigil?” Blediggs offered.
Tesserill shook her head. “That place isn’t safe. Remember, we’ve already been there. Once they realize we came from the Forbidden Plane, we’ll either be forced to tell what we can remember or killed off to avoid provoking the Lady of Pain or The Indigo Entity.”
Amon had another idea. “The Rilmani said they lived here, right? They might welcome you in.”
This idea had some merit, but Blediggs shot it down as they were considering it. “They’re too suspicious to let most outsiders into their land. Besides, they live deep in the heart of the Outlands, where almost no magic works. They’re protected from this effect because they’re natives to the area, but I don’t think you would survive it.”
Finally, Bath figured out a decent solution. “What about the realm of Boccob the wizard? He has a similar moral code to you and your followers, and he isn’t worshipped on your plane, so he shouldn’t care about the Bas situation.”
Tesserill and many of her followers agreed that this was a fine solution, and the others decided to take their chances on the planes as a while. Blediggs offered to take them back to Glorium with him and the petitioners he purchased, and after Bath and Danae made sure he understood completely that they’ll be checking up on him in a few days to make sure he didn’t take these followers and give them to his master along with his purchases, they agreed to let them go. The party then had to worry about physically bringing all the followers to Boccob’s realm. After filling their portal holes with most of the followers, Danae tried to teleport the entire group to Boccob’s library based on what she knows of how it looks. Unfortunately, she didn’t succeed.
They ended up in a library all right, but something seemed wrong somehow. The party quickly investigated, but something found them first. It was a strange, blue, creature of some sort. It looked like it tried communicating with the party, but instead of a voice, it projected a strange balloon over its head filled with letters and symbols.
The party tried to quickly figure out what this means. “The first word looks like a W plus a hat?” Amon said with a confused voice.
“I think that means What,” Tiana said. “And the next two words are just the letters R and you. What are you…” she continued.
“I don’t get this next part,” Bath complained. “It looks like wet grass?”
“Dew!” Robin shouted happily; glad to put his nature skills to use here. “And it ends with the letters ING. What are you doing?”
Azat finished the verbal riddle. “The last word is the letter H plus an ear. What are you doing here?”
Realizing this creature was upset and after finally figuring out what it was, Danae gasped. “This thing serves the Lady of Pain! I think we’re in her personal library!” Turning to the creature, she apologized profusely. “I’msorryi’msorryi’msorry! We wanted to visit Boccob’s domain, but we got misdirected. We’ll leave as quickly as possible, we swear!”
The creature seemed to understand, and it teleported the party to Boccob’s realm, successfully this time. From here, getting Boccob to accept the petitioners was easy. After all, his guests were from the Forbidden Plane, and while he understood that he couldn’t share their stories with the world at large, they could at least tell him and let him expand the general knowledge of his library.
Now that the party took care of Tesserill, it was time for her to return the favor. “Now that you’re at peace after death, can you please help us on our mission at home? We need to know where Bas is.”
Tesserill didn’t seem to have any problems betraying her former goddess now that her ties to her life were finally allowed to fade, but her memories were fading as well. “I don’t know exactly,” she admitted. “But I know a way you can find out.”
OOC Notes: Find out the way in about two weeks (well, a week and a half; sorry for the late update.) As of now, there are only two adventures between here and where the party is right now, so we’re finally almost caught up. A lot of this adventure after the fight in the Glade was improvised, including the botched teleportation attempt by Danae and the bit with The Lady of Pain’s library. Does anyone remember the names of those creatures that serve her? I was in a Planescape one-shot adventure once that featured one, so I knew about the strange speech that they had, but I don’t remember their names.
The party traveled farther into the strange forest, and eventually they found themselves in a massive “room.” The branch path they’ve used since Blediggs got his bearing after the thorciasid battle took them into a relatively clear area under the canopy. However, Blediggs stopped the party at the entrance to the canopy and pointed at a strange fungus growing in the middle of the chamber. “That’s no ordinary fungus,” he warned. “That’s a mu spore. It’s like that cockroach we fought before; it’s an ordinary nuisance to the gods, but a catastrophe to us.”
That being said, the party had to get past this creature if they wanted to reach the center of the Glade in time, so they quickly prepared for another battle. Danae and Tiana weaved powerful magic around themselves, Azat changed into his alternate were-form, and Bat and Amon got ready to charge the beast as Robin, Tal, and Danae moved to be in an ideal position to attack from a distance. As soon as the party charged, the fungus grew a pair of gigantic legs and moved to defend itself. It tried to bite at the heroes, but Bath and Amon were both too quick for it. It managed to release a few sprays of razor sharp spores at the party and a couple more of the giant, chaos-tainted scorpions were attracted by the noise of battle and tried to make a meal of them as well, but collectively the three were no match for the party. They quickly finished the creatures and hurried to reach their target in time.
Finally, hours later, the party began to descend from the branches, for they were near the center of the forest. Shortly after they reached the ground level, Blediggs took a more direct approach to guiding them again, since he knew this area by memory. Finally, he directed the party to a giant clearing in the woods. “Here we are at last,” he said as he gestured towards the clearing. “The resting place of lost souls. It would be their final resting place, I’m sure, if there wasn’t the whole tear in reality thing to complicate things.”
The party looked over the clearing. There were two noteworthy objects in the clearing. First of all, there seemed to be approximately a hundred tall slabs of crystal arranged grid-like in the middle of the clearing. Each crystal had a spectral form floating lifelessly within it. Most were human, elf, or benefactor drow, but there was a smattering of gnomes, halflings, goblins, demons, and giants as well. It only took few moments for the party to notice the cerebrilith demon they had killed in the Rift, along with the gold Rilmani, some of the giants that were killed in their first attempt to capture Tesserill, and a few other gray-robed cultists encountered in their journeys. She wasn’t immediately within sight, but the party had little doubt that the Blade of Minds was resting here as well.
However, the other notable object in the clearing was more disturbing, if no less surprising. A strange, disc-like ripple filled much of the sky above the clearing. It was hard to see what exactly was on the other side of the ripple, but what they could see was out of some sort of mad and terrible nightmare. Strange beasts seemingly randomly composed of vaguely organic parts floated over, watching the glade with mad desire. The sky above them boiled, oozed, churned, shifted colors and consistency, and was filled with twisted flying monsters at various places. And the ripple was expanding before their very eyes.
Time was running out, but the party still didn’t even know how to free their target. Should the try to break the prison? Would that save her or irrevocably destroy her soul, sending her to eternal oblivion? For now, though, they had to at least find her. As they began to search the slabs, however, some of the creatures peering at them from the Far Realms took notice. Two of them pressed against the portal, hungry for this strange new food, and they landed in a sickly heap in reality.
The party quickly became aware of these new threats and mobilized to fight them. One was vaguely humanoid and slightly resembled a gorilla. However, it had four arms and two legs that all ended in tentacles, and a seventh weapon grew out of the top of its head. The other had a snake body and a human-like head. Its tail was another tentacle, and another four of the hideous protrusions grew out of the middle of its body and seemed to move about on its body as it lunged at the party.
Tal prepared to attack the gorilla-thing, but his magic failed to penetrate the creature’s aura. Despite this, Bath shrugged and charged the beast. After all, strange as these creatures are, they’re not even as large as she was, let alone as powerful-looking as the fungus creature. They can’t be that much of a threat. She flew up to the creature and swung her sword confidently. It was a well-aimed shot, but to Bath’s shock, the attack completely bounced off of the creature! What were these things made of? As she pondered this, the creature lashed at her using many of its tentacles. Bath managed to evade a few of them, but a few were able to connect with Bath, and they wrapped around her, trapping her in its deadly embrace.
As Bath prepared to deal with this strange new threat, Tiana and Amon surrounded the snake creature, but they had no luck striking it either. Danae prepared to help them, but realized that most of her remaining power spells were explosive in nature or otherwise affected a large area, and she didn’t want to risk attacking the crystal slabs and destroying the souls until she knew what it would do. She helped fight the creature grappling Bath using some magic missiles, but it didn’t do much good.
However, as Azat and Robin tried to help Tiana and Amon defeat the snake, which seemed a little weaker than the gorilla, Blediggs had an idea. The monsters had nearly impenetrable armor, but they were also extremely fast and agile. However, when they were distracted by grappling a party member, they weren’t able to evade enemy attacks. He demonstrated this by attacking the gorilla thing and calling out to the others, “Hey, try attacking them while they’re busy grappling somebody!”
The others nodded as they realized what Blediggs meant, and Amon lured the snake creature to him and willingly let the creature grapple him. Meanwhile, Tal decided to try a new tactic on the gorilla-creature. He used a spell capable of weakening the spell resistance of a creature, letting his spells more easily attack the creature. Bath continued to struggle against the creature, but failed to damage it or break away from it. To make things even worse, she slowly felt her life force draining away. The creature’s touch was corrupting her very body, making it succumb to chaos. If this kept up, she would completely break apart as her very order was destroyed!
Realizing the threat to their strongest fighter, Danae carefully moved up to the creature and touch Bath, then used her magic to teleport a short distance away. Bath was free, but the gorilla monster turned its attentions on Blediggs! It quickly began to suck the life force out of him, forcing Tal, Robin, Bath, and Danae to attack it before it can kill their guide! They finally finish the beast, leaving Blediggs alive but dying on the floor. Bath quickly moved to heal him as best she can while the rest of the party prepared to finish the second pseudonatural monster.
While this was going on, Amon, Azat, and Tiana were focusing on the snake monster. Amon was initially held, but Azat used magic that gave his movement complete freedom, letting him slip out of the monster’s grip. He soon used the same magic on himself, and the two of them alternated being grappled by the snake while the freed one and Tiana attacked. By the time Danae and the rest of the party were ready to help, they had almost finished the creature. And when the party was able to completely surround it, it was quickly destroyed.
Though there enemies are dead, the party still had a problem to deal with; what to do with the trapped souls? They were reluctant to break the slabs, but had no idea how to rescue them. Finally, Bath had an idea. “Let’s just break the slab of one of the trapped demons. If it frees the soul, we know what we have to do to free the others, and if not, all we lose is a demon soul we didn’t care about in the first place.”
The others agreed (though Blediggs made a mental note that the demon they’re freeing can count for the party’s share if they destroy it,) and Bath shattered the slab with one swing of her sword. To the party’s relief (but Bath’s slight disappointment,) the soul was unharmed and appeared to be capable of moving now, though it was extremely confused and seemed to have almost no will of its own. The party quickly freed the rest of the souls, including Tesserill’s. As expected, she was also confused when she was saved, but she recovered quickly when she saw the party.
“You!” she telepathically shouted. “Haven’t you done enough to me? Can’t you let my soul rest in peace?”
An ashamed Danae looked away, but Tal as always took on the role of diplomat. “You misunderstand,” he began, “We’re here to save you.” He pointed to the ripple over the Glade. “This realm is doomed, and you will be as well if you don’t come with us.”
The Blade of Minds immediately recognized what that portal led to, but she wasn’t going to travel with her enemies so easily. “And where will we go? This was supposed to be our place of rest, and now it’s being destroyed.”
Blediggs shrugged. “Well, according to the contract, half of you are coming with me. Don’t worry, my master will treat you with kindness, and if you’re really lucky, you could be reborn as slaad like me!”
Tesserill gasped, and the rest of the party gave Danae an accusing glance. Danae herself was having second thoughts as well. After all, these people (except for the demons and other psionic monsters,) weren’t that much different from her in terms of what they believed in. They might have been enemies in life, but they deserved a fair afterlife. She sighed and asked Blediggs, “would it be possible for us to change the deal?”
Blediggs looked a little worried about that and said, “Well, I suppose, but it won’t be cheap. You owe me 50 souls, so I’ll be willing to part with them at the cost of 5,000 per soul.”
“Done,” Danae forcefully said, but she quickly reconsidered. “Well, I don’t think we’ll worry about those souls,” she said as she pointed to the cerebrilith demon that they killed earlier. “You can keep the evil ones.”
A bit of magic let the party determine that 15 of the souls were evil, so Danae gave them to Blediggs and paid him for the remaining 35. This obviously made the rest of the party feel a lot better about this deal, and it clearly had an impact on Tesserill as well. Even she had to admit that saving all but the most evil of her followers from a fate potentially worse (and certainly weirder) than oblivion took great amounts of mercy, but they still have to figure out where exactly she and her fellow petitioners could go.
“Well, what else is on this plane?” a frustrated Robin asked, prompting Danae, Bath, Amon, and Blediggs to quickly figure out a solution.
After a while, the group had a few ideas. “What about Sigil?” Blediggs offered.
Tesserill shook her head. “That place isn’t safe. Remember, we’ve already been there. Once they realize we came from the Forbidden Plane, we’ll either be forced to tell what we can remember or killed off to avoid provoking the Lady of Pain or The Indigo Entity.”
Amon had another idea. “The Rilmani said they lived here, right? They might welcome you in.”
This idea had some merit, but Blediggs shot it down as they were considering it. “They’re too suspicious to let most outsiders into their land. Besides, they live deep in the heart of the Outlands, where almost no magic works. They’re protected from this effect because they’re natives to the area, but I don’t think you would survive it.”
Finally, Bath figured out a decent solution. “What about the realm of Boccob the wizard? He has a similar moral code to you and your followers, and he isn’t worshipped on your plane, so he shouldn’t care about the Bas situation.”
Tesserill and many of her followers agreed that this was a fine solution, and the others decided to take their chances on the planes as a while. Blediggs offered to take them back to Glorium with him and the petitioners he purchased, and after Bath and Danae made sure he understood completely that they’ll be checking up on him in a few days to make sure he didn’t take these followers and give them to his master along with his purchases, they agreed to let them go. The party then had to worry about physically bringing all the followers to Boccob’s realm. After filling their portal holes with most of the followers, Danae tried to teleport the entire group to Boccob’s library based on what she knows of how it looks. Unfortunately, she didn’t succeed.
They ended up in a library all right, but something seemed wrong somehow. The party quickly investigated, but something found them first. It was a strange, blue, creature of some sort. It looked like it tried communicating with the party, but instead of a voice, it projected a strange balloon over its head filled with letters and symbols.
The party tried to quickly figure out what this means. “The first word looks like a W plus a hat?” Amon said with a confused voice.
“I think that means What,” Tiana said. “And the next two words are just the letters R and you. What are you…” she continued.
“I don’t get this next part,” Bath complained. “It looks like wet grass?”
“Dew!” Robin shouted happily; glad to put his nature skills to use here. “And it ends with the letters ING. What are you doing?”
Azat finished the verbal riddle. “The last word is the letter H plus an ear. What are you doing here?”
Realizing this creature was upset and after finally figuring out what it was, Danae gasped. “This thing serves the Lady of Pain! I think we’re in her personal library!” Turning to the creature, she apologized profusely. “I’msorryi’msorryi’msorry! We wanted to visit Boccob’s domain, but we got misdirected. We’ll leave as quickly as possible, we swear!”
The creature seemed to understand, and it teleported the party to Boccob’s realm, successfully this time. From here, getting Boccob to accept the petitioners was easy. After all, his guests were from the Forbidden Plane, and while he understood that he couldn’t share their stories with the world at large, they could at least tell him and let him expand the general knowledge of his library.
Now that the party took care of Tesserill, it was time for her to return the favor. “Now that you’re at peace after death, can you please help us on our mission at home? We need to know where Bas is.”
Tesserill didn’t seem to have any problems betraying her former goddess now that her ties to her life were finally allowed to fade, but her memories were fading as well. “I don’t know exactly,” she admitted. “But I know a way you can find out.”
OOC Notes: Find out the way in about two weeks (well, a week and a half; sorry for the late update.) As of now, there are only two adventures between here and where the party is right now, so we’re finally almost caught up. A lot of this adventure after the fight in the Glade was improvised, including the botched teleportation attempt by Danae and the bit with The Lady of Pain’s library. Does anyone remember the names of those creatures that serve her? I was in a Planescape one-shot adventure once that featured one, so I knew about the strange speech that they had, but I don’t remember their names.
I really liked how you created the entire campaign world from the first adventure with the Quill. I have also enjoyed the many twists that have happened. Most of my questions are more about the players and group interaction (like why did Quercus's player leave on such bad terms), but that's probably just my morbid curiosity coming out.
