Session 31: And Now We Can Move On...
Dramatis Personae:
Orryk - Forest Gnome Monk (Way of the Four Elements, variant)
Mo - Goliath Bard (College of Lore)
Fiona - Half-Elf Wizard (Evoker)/Cleric (Knowledge)
Taman - Human (variant) Rogue (Inquisitive)/Ranger
Joybell - Forest Gnome Paladin (Oath of the Ancients)
Thneed - Wood Elf Ranger (Hunter Conclave)
GM - Everyone Else
8 Rippenin 748 (Campaign day 69) (immediately after)
While everyone was looking around at the aftermath of the battle, Barnett went into a corner between the disintegration chamber and the table with manacles and sat on the floor huddled into a ball. Orryk went to a different corner by the table (between the table and the Forge) and meditated and rested, gathering his chi and marshalling his strength.
Joybell, shaking with fury and emotion, and still completely unconvinced that we’d killed the real Steeltear and not a simulacrum or something, released the immovable rod and wrestled the steel plate from between the door and the iron boat. She manhandled the steel plate over to the door with the priest hole, which we still hadn’t opened, then used the immovable rod to hold it in place.
Taman: Can we at least peep through the peephole?
Joybell: No. We can’t deal with anything we’d see back there right now.
Mo: I’m fine. You’re fine.
Joybell: Orryk isn’t fine and I won’t go without him. And I want my dog.
Then she sat herself down on the floor in front of it with her sword in her lap.
Joybell, to Tulmor through the telepathic bond: Scooby is about to disappear.
She then dismissed Scooby from the material plane and immediately began casting find steed to bring him to the Forge.
With Joybell resolutely blocking the door, the others set about occupying themselves during a short rest.
Fiona and Mo examined the “setting” the crystal had come out of, looking to see if there were any working or functional looking parts that might be what did the work for the transformation. What they found were copper rods that connected the contraption to the table, transferring the energy from the crystal. They figured out that the crystal was simply a battery or power source and the rods were just connectors to transfer the power. The actual “doing” of the transformation involved a ritual of some sort.
Mo then turned to search the body of Steeltear, using a mage hand (in case he’d trapped himself). Steeltear, now a normal-sized dwarf with slightly greyish coloring, was wearing studded leather armor, nothing particularly special, and had on a leather cloak and a necklace with a pendant. Nothing on his armor or clothing indicated a house or organizational affiliation. In his pockets he had seven sending stones -- each one half of a different pair.
Fiona took out her spellbook and began casting detect magic.
Joybell, now with Scooby to hold onto, sat in the hallway with Scooby’s head in her lap, crying and telling him everything that had happened.
Thneed gave the Broom of Flying back to Mo and Orryk gave Mo the Wand of Web, somewhat over Mo’s objections.
Orryk: It has literally never worked for me. It’s not useful.
Thneed, after examining the table and finding nothing but manacles and the other ends of the power-transfer rods, went out into the larger chamber, to check the bodies of the dead Masks, making sure all of them were really dead. Also looking for any unusual marks or features on them. When she’d finished that, she just stood sentry at that hallway to the larger chamber.
When Fiona’s detect magic went off she found that the amulet and the cloak that Mo’s mage hand had removed from Steeltear’s body were magical (evocation and transmutation, respectively). The disintegration “pit” radiated some transmutation magic. She expected that the crystal would be very magical and found that it wasn’t, really -- there was definitely a glow there, essences of transmutation, abjuration and divination magic, but not the power source we expected.
Taman and Orryk, feeling more like himself after his meditation, went to examine the disintegration pit. They figured out that it goes off once a day at a fixed time -- there’s no switch or command word to set it off. It just goes at a certain time every day, regardless.
Mo suggested getting a bunch of raccoons or rats and releasing them down near the teleportation circle on the wall, in order to set off the Symbols of Badness. (Fortunately, Joybell couldn’t hear this suggestion or she would have been appalled.)
As Joybell heard the others moving around, and heard Orryk talking with Taman about the pit, she started pulling herself together. Wiping her nose and drying tears off her cheeks on Scooby’s fur. Scooby helped lick her cheeks clean. Then she put her happy face back on and was ready to go when the others were.
Barnett, sitting in the same place he’d retreated to as soon as the battle was over, was repeating over and over: It was me. It wasn’t me. It was me. It wasn’t really me.
Hulmon II, Tulmor’s little winged-squirrel homunculus, sat next to Barnett, gently shaking him, trying to shake him out of it.
Mo rolled a cigarette of his finest smoking weed, including some of what he got in Callallah and some of what he got in Pelsoreen, and gave it to Barnett.
Mo: Maybe it will calm you down. Maybe not. Don’t know how you’ll react. You can try it.
Joybell, with her normal mien pasted on, went to talk to Barnett while the others moved the steel plate away from the door and looked through the priesthole.
Barnett: Never cast that on me again.
Joybell, nodding: Okay. I did ask permission. But I won’t. Do you want Scooby to stay here with you? He’s very comforting.
Barnett: No, you may need the mobility.
Then she patted him on the shoulder and went to join the others ready to go through the door.
Looking through the peephole we saw a long room, much longer than it was wide, with a bed and a wardrobe against the far wall. There was an opening in the right hand wall, just a few feet from the door, that led to another room. There was no one moving or visible inside. So we went in. As we entered the room, we saw that there was another wardrobe on the same wall as the first one. Around the corner, not visible from the door was a long bookshelf, which Fiona and Orryk immediately gravitated to.
The bookshelves contained Steeltear’s spellbook (which Fiona set upon immediately), records of all the jobs done by the Masks for hire and records of Steeltear’s experiments with the Forge. Joybell started looking through the records of jobs done for hire, to see if she could find why hired them to take the children from the Wold, but there was no mention of that in the book.
From those books, we learned that there were still three squads of Masks active in the world -- one in New Arvai (working as enforcers for one of the underworld gangs), one in Lonoj (eliminating thieves on behalf of the goldsmith’s guild), and one in the vicinity of Auriqua (attempting to recover an item stolen by hobgoblins from one of the wealthy families).
We’re not sure what they’ll do when the current orders they’re under are no longer applicable. Will they return here and find the place empty and abandoned? Will they go out in the world on a rampage? We have no idea. But it’s not something we can deal with right now.
The books made it clear that Turnik Steeltear was the one totally in charge of the Masks -- he didn’t report to anyone else or take orders from anyone else. His records of experiments with the Forge end about 100 years ago. Fiona noticed something weird, or off, about the books, but couldn’t figure out what it was. They weren’t magical. Just off.
The wardrobes had clothes and basically bric-a-brac. Nothing terribly interesting.
Mo suggested that these might be Crazy Books, so Orryk pulled out the Orrery of Finding Outer Chaos Things. While it settled itself, we explained to Thneed about the crazy books and about the Orrery.
In the end, the Orrery didn’t settle on any direction, it continued spinning freely.
The room adjacent to the bedroom was a treasury -- with coins and things. Before we actually entered the room, Taman looked for secret doors in the bedroom. Thneed poked around with her rarely used sword, looking through the clothes. Taman found a secret door inside one of the wardrobes. He tried to figure out the mechanism, moving the bric-a-brac and shifting the clothing around but nothing worked. So he called the rest of us over to try. Fiona had to drag herself from the spellbook to give it a look, but her mind was not really in it because she found nothing. Orryk, still rattled from almost dying, didn’t find anything either.
With the secret door a bit of a conundrum, and the treasury right there, Taman checked for traps in the treasury room. Fiona took a few minutes to cast detect magic again and we went in and looked around.
We found (see the end of the notes for treasure breakdown and identification of the items found):
2 Potions
A Bead
A fan
A tan-colored cloth bag
A pair of boots
Also
170 pp
4500 gp
2000 sp
4 50lb silver trade bars (each worth 2500 SP)
800 cp
2 25gp silver ewers
2 25 gp statuettes
1 25 gp gold bracelet (Joybell would like for part of her treasure to include this if no one minds)
1 25 gp velvet mask embroidered with silver thread.
14 50gp gems
The mask is such an outlier that we feel like maybe we should keep it. It might be important at some juncture.
The money was neatly organized, not just a random heap of coinage somewhere. The trade bars had been stamped with the seals of many cities -- which indicates that the bar itself had moved around a lot. The seals that had dates included were many decades old.
Taman looked for secret doors in the treasury room, and didn’t find any.
Back in the bedroom, Thneed and Joybell tried to move the wardrobe away from the secret door, but it wouldn’t move at first. Joybell, still a seething ball of emotion and anger, and with Mo’s inspiration, roared and ripped the wardrobe away from the wall (moving it five feet down toward the other wardrobe).
Mo, singing to inspire Joybell: We’re gonna tear this mother-fucker down…
With the wardrobe moved, the entrance to the next chamber was revealed.
The long, angled wall of the room was a long bookcase absolutely FULL of books. In the corner immediately ahead of the door was the dwarven crematorium/tomb/family shrine that the Tashin diplomats had told Mo about while he was swanning them around Embernook. (Reminder: The diplomats told Mo that Masks had stolen the shrine from a caravan while it was en route to New Arvai about four and a half months ago.) It was about the size of a modern grave liner, with a flue that can be opened and a chimney installed on top. Fiona, still detecting magic, saw some items pop up on the bookshelves, but the crematory/tomb was not magical.
Taman checked for traps and found none. The instant he gave the all clear, Orryk and Fiona went immediately to the books. Taman, Mo, and Joybell worked on getting into the crematory/tomb. With some assistance from them (the sides of the thing were 6 feet high, so it is possible that most of the assistance was in the form of Mo being on all fours with Joybell standing on his back so she could shift the lid off the crematory. She moved it off to the side, where it landed with a loud, ringing clang.
Looking in, the crematory appeared to be empty, except for two potion bottles. Taman stabbed in randomly (and blindly) with his rapier and didn’t hit anything. Mo shot a faerie fire into it and nothing began to sparkle. Joybell just glared at it, because she still didn’t believe that we’d gotten the real Steeltear, so the son of a bitch had to be somewhere. And we’d been told he could be invisible.
Over at the bookshelf, Orryk and Fiona found records of all of Steeltear’s experiments -- not just the older ones documented in the books out in the bedroom. While looking at these books, Fiona also figured out what was weird about the ones on the shelf in the bedroom -- those were all about the same age, even though they were recording transactions and experiments over a large period of time.
There were five magic items on the shelves, which got dropped into the bag of holding (identifications at end):
A deck of cards
A cloak
A set of shackles
A mace
A scimitar
During all of this, Thneed, getting bored, started wandering off and went back to the bedroom to look around in there again.
Back at the crypt, Mo pulled the bottles out of the crypt and found that they were empty. Taman inspected them and found that the potions had been drunk recently, very very recently. Like since we killed Steeltear in the Forge room.
Mo immediately started running to check on Barnett.
Taman, paying very close attention to listening and watching for the slightest disturbance, heard footsteps running toward the secret door and gave a yell to get everyone’s attention.
Fiona immediately cast see invisible and pointed to where he was -- along the wall between the crematory/crypt and the secret door. Joybell moved to where she should take a swing at the general area where Fiona was pointing. Then she cast branding smite and flailed at the space, hoping to get a hit. (Swing hard in case you hit it.) She did land a blow on the invisible Steeltear. Her sword flared and he was branded with a radiant light, rendering him visible and giving him a soft glow. Orryk, now able to see the target, hit him with fists of unbroken air. Then Joybell hit him again with her second attack.
Out in the Forge room, Mo got to Barnett, still sitting and rocking with Hulmon II by his side.
Mo, to Barnett: I assume you’re familiar with the Clone spell…
Barnett: naughty word!
Mo then turned and ran back into the bedroom and, unable to get to a position to attack, inspired Thneed.
Mo: You, kill the little one!
Taman moved to cover the secret door, to stop Steeltear from being able to get out of the room, then cast hunter’s mark and hit with his scimitar. Thneed cast her hunter’s mark and shot him soundly with an arrow, doing a lot of damage. Orryk attacked and attacked and punched and punched, landing both strikes from his flurry of blows. Unfortunately, the stunning strikes did not work.
Steeltear started casting something really quickly. Fiona tried to counter it, but was unable to do so, so Steeltear was able to get off his Far Step spell. He bamfed out of the room, past Mo, then took off running through the priesthole door, closing it behind him.
Fiona cast misty step to get herself into the bedroom, then opened the door. Joybell cast misty step as well, teleporting herself and Scooby into the bedroom just beyond Mo, then Scooby ran and dashed to get past Steeltear, so they could hopefully block him from getting to the teleportation circle. Joybell attacked him, hitting and doing a divine smite on him. Her second attack, in the whirlwind of adrenaline and Scooby skidding to a stop in front of Steeltear, missed.
Mo came out of the room and inspired Joybell. Taman missed with an attack. Thneed got into position to shoot, but was unable to attack him. Orryk ran out behind Steeltear, using his Step of the Wind, but then missed with both of his attacks.
Then Steeltear pulled a little dagger out of his pocket and waved it around with a flourish, casting a spell that attacked the entire party (because all of us were in range of it). Only Joybell wasn’t hit by it, though her paladin aura was able to give Orryk and Scooby resistance to the damage. Scooby was “killed” and disappeared out from under Joybell (back to wherever celestial wolf-mounts go), who dropped to the ground with a curse, but landed on her feet. Everyone else took quite a bit of damage from the spell, which is a nasty one, Steel Wind Strike.
As part of the Steel Wind Strike spell, Steeltear appeared on the other side of Joybell, closer to the teleportation circle. When he started to run away, Joybell took the opportunity to attack him again, and dropped him. She continued hitting him, just screaming and crying and hacking at his lifeless body, for about a minute, until Taman stopped her and led her away. Then he consoled her while she broke down and cried.
With Steeltear really dead, and even Joybell believing it to be so, we spent some time going through all of the barracks halls to make sure they were clear of anything either dangerous or useful.
When we’d gotten through all of those we considered how to deal with the teleportation circle.
Taman: Hey, Barnett!! Could you help us out with a non-combat related question?
Barnett emerged cautiously from the Forge room and asked what he could help with. We asked if he could help us disable the Symbol spells so we could get to the teleportation circle to destroy it. He suggested breaking the wall from this side. Which hadn’t occurred to any of us. So Mo cast a shatter spell on it, then Joybell pounded on the weakened rock with her flail until we’d broken through the wall where some of the runes were and the circle was destroyed.
Looking at the books as we were stacking things by where Barnett was going to cast teleportation to take us back to Embernoook, we found a notation where Steeltear described the Forge as equidistant from Embernook and New Arvai, under the Dunimar Mountains. Which narrows it down somewhat, but puts it squarely under the heart of the Green Quilt, with no cities or even notable roads anywhere nearby.
As we were clearing the place, we stacked the bodies of the Masks, and both Steeltears, into the disintegration chamber -- that would be as effective as cremation for preventing them from coming back as undead.
We also took a bit more time to clear out the secret room, finding a bunch more treasure:
2000 pp
4 50lb gold trade bars (2500gp each)
4000 gp
7 1000gp gems (2 black opals, 2 emeralds, a fire opal, a blue sapphire and a yellow sapphire)
We then teleported back to Embernook -- loading the Tenser’s Floating Disk, the bag of holding, and each of us (including Scooby, summoned once again), all to the breaking point to get the treasure, the library, and the crystal all out of there while the circle was open.
9 - 14 Rippenin 748 (Campaign days 70 - 75) (another downtime montage)
Back in Embernook, Fiona and Orryk read through the books. Fiona found the details of a high ritual called Your Time For Mine. As she read it, she cringed in horror and disgust -- the ritual involved killing a humanoid to add its remaining lifespan to that of the caster. She burned that, hoping that the knowledge of how to do that horrible thing would go up in smoke. That was what he wanted the children from the Wold, and elsewhere, for -- to provide extra years for his life. When she told the others, Joybell wanted to go back to the Forge so she could kill him again. He needed so many children because he wasn't particularly good at performing that ritual.
Fiona also got some details of his current research -- he was trying to work out how to tune the high ritual that turned human children into Masks so that it worked on other humanoids as well. That was why he had Masks kidnap the orc children -- he had paid Black Irnod’s apprentice, Tarly, to vivisect them and try to learn in what ways they were different from humans.
Steeltear’s books talked about the pattern of Symbol traps outside the teleportation circle -- they were programmed not to fire when touched on by Steeltear himself, humanoids in masks, and beasts when hitched to carts or wagons. Everyone else would set them off. So sending in Scooby with a Mask wouldn’t have told us anything -- because Scooby is a celestial, and celestials in Masks weren’t immune. And it would have just tortured him.
We also learned that he had a habit of using his Masks to attack trade caravans for their treasure. In one of those attacks, he found a scroll with the Clone spell on it. He traded it to a wizard in Pelsoreen named Altorian Galthoril, a high elf, in exchange for casting it on him. That was four months ago -- shortly after he stole crematory/tomb from the dwarven caravan to New Arvai.
We learned the locations and sigil patterns for the teleportation circles in Steeltear’s network -- the ones in the Forge and in the cave outside Callallah have both been destroyed. There are four still functional: one north of Auriqua, one outside Tash, one near Erlin, and one in New Arvai. Of those locations, New Arvai has an active squad of Masks working under the direction of one of the underworld bosses. And there is an active squad near Auriqua working to recover a stolen magic item.
Looking back through the records of jobs offered and accepted, we found that someone tried to hire the Masks to assassinate Administrator Alighieri. Steeltear refused the job. This was shortly after Alighieri became the Administrator of Embernook. We also learned that the biggest job he’d ever been paid for was sending two squads (which were up to 10 Masks) to a place called Kotima (which some of us had heard of as a continent a long way away) to take part in a succession war.
Fiona and Orryk talked with Tulmor and Barnett about the crystal. They confirmed that the crystal is just a battery -- it stores psychic power and then releases it. Steeltear’s method of charging it was torturing a humanoid to death. Horrible.
We wondered if perhaps exposure to happy emotions, like those at a concert or show, might be enough to power the crystal up. So Mo gave a performance at the Pewter Oar. The crystal was set on a floating disc in the center of the stage, spinning slowly, with a light spell over it so it glowed and sparkled like a disco dazzler ball. It looked really cool and Mo gave a hell of a performance, but the crystal didn’t pick up the slightest bit of charge.
In addition to reading the library from the Forge, we had a week or so of downtime (until Joybell’s bulette plate shield was finished) and accomplished other things.
Orryk, now learning some wizardry from Tulmor and Barnett, performed a high ritual to summon a small elemental friend as his familiar -- something that looks like a mephit but is not evil and is friendly to Orryk and his allies.
Mo ordered a netting chair made for his broom of flying - so he could start the broom going then ride underneath it in a hammock-chair, able to play his pipe and cast spells as he liked. Sort of a combat hammock.
Fiona used a sending spell to let Rask and the Cracked Shield orcs know that it was safe for them to return to Pelsoreen. The Masks would not be returning there. She also cast sending to Wilm Orter, the town elder of Callallah, to let him know that the Masks would not be returning and that they should enjoy their children and the bounty of their village.
Fiona spent most of the downtime transcribing spells from Steeltear’s spellbook to her own. That plus the rest of his library kept her plenty well occupied.
Barnett, during all of this, was slowly recovering and getting back to his own normal.
Mo, who had taken possession of the seven sending stones we found in First Turnik’s pocket, waited for anyone to call on them. We learned that Turnik had people in many cities, though not Embernook (because Embernook is nice) keeping an ear out for business opportunities for him. When one came up they could use the sending stones to let him know about them.
After several days without getting any message through the sending stones, and after an evening spent drinking heartilly, Mo picked one at random and drunk called.
Mo: Just so you know, your boss is dead and you’re next.
Voice at the other end, after a moment’s pause: Good luck.
After he told us about that, we went to ask Tulmor and Barnett if it was possible to learn the location of the other one of a pair of sending stones. (Note: GM said he would get back to us on that.)
Thneed spent much of her time walking around talking to the guard in town, thinking they were perhaps kin to soldiers (one of her favorite enemy humanoid subtypes) and trying to persuade them to do harmless but silly things. She realized after several days of this that it probably came off as flirting. Especially since she’s an adjunct guard herself.
Toward the end of the week, before Joybell’s shield was finished, she, Orryk and Taman went out to the Basalt Henge. Because Taman is all interested in nature and rangering and so on these days, Joybell spent the trip out talking to him about the plants and animals native to the Black Field. Taman mostly tuned her out. While we were walking, Orryk had his new elemental familiar as a mud mephit flying along with us. Orryk was working on using mold earth to raise up walls of earth around us.
We took a moment to have a conversation with all three of us talking to a somewhat confused marmot who just wanted the eagles to stop attacking. One had just killed his brother. Joybell promised to warn him if she saw one while they were still close by.
While we were taking a break on the road, Orryk asked Taman to hit him, really hit him. Taman, a bit confused, complied and attacked him. Orryk tried to raise a protective earthen shield around himself, but it didn’t raise in time and he took the damage. But he was almost cheerful about it. The next day, when we were at the Henge, Joybell took a turn taking a shot at him at his request. The protective shield almost deflected the damage, but it wasn’t quite fast enough. Orryk smiled even bigger.
When they got to the Henge, Joybell told Nailo, the head druid, and Green Hope, her fighting trainer, that we’d avenged the Wold. They seemed somewhat taken aback by that -- not upset, just surprised. Joybell agreed that it wasn’t entirely in keeping with her oath to seek vengeance but it needed to be done. Then she went off to the henge itself to pray and try and atone and to reaffirm her commitment to her oath of the ancients.
Orryk told them about going to the Primal Atoll and shared what Irlua had said about fire being out of balance. He then asked if they knew anything about the Umbral Circle. Nailo said that it had been a few years since they’d seen anyone from the Umbral Circle. He asked after the staff we were charged with recovering, Adnorga’s Staff. They had heard of the item but weren’t aware of it being missing.
We stayed at the Henge for a couple of days while Joybell atoned (including having a Ceremony: Atonement spell cast on her behalf). Toward the end of the time, Taman used his new ability to sense planar portals and found a dormant portal to elemental fire about a mile away out in the Black Field. We all took a walk out there, across the lava flow, and realized when we got to the location that the portal itself was under the lava field in the dormant volcano. Nothing to see.
The third day of our trip, Joybell attacked Orryk again, to test his new earthen shield and it rose up to protect him just as he wanted it to. Orryk was almost happy.
The next morning, we returned to Embernook.
14 Rippenin 748 (Campaign day 75)
Joybell’s shield was ready and she picked it up from Brightforge.
(Note: The montage can continue from here as we buy a house and furnish it.)
Treasure:
The DM notes that Turnik had High Ritual gear in his bedroom. Blocky and square, not particularly attractive but well made, including ritual clothes sized for a dwarf. The party can sell the lot for 1200 gp.
Totals:
PP: 2170
GP (including trade bars, art, and sold Mask gear): 19450
SP (including trade bars): 12000
CP: 800
Gems: 14 x 50 GP, 7 x 1000 GP
Per person:
PP: 361
GP: 3241
SP: 2000
CP: 133
Gems: 2 x 50 GP, 1 x 1000 GP
(Note: Joybell is going to take the Velvet Mask and the Gold Bracelet as 50 of her, erm, 3241 gp. Which is not going to make an appreciable difference to anything. Just we’ll have that mask and she wants the bracelet.)
Leftover:
PP: 4
GP: 4
CP: 2
Gems: 2 x 50 GP, 1 x 1000 GP
Which leads to a Party Kitty Update:
Party Kitty update:
8 pp, 7 gp, 10 sp, and 18 cp. Also 2 50gp gems and 1 1000 gp gem.
The kitty will go a long way toward buying us a house, I reckon.
Magic items:
+2 Scimitar [Martial Weapon limits to Joybell/Taman/Thneed]
Bag of Tricks, Tan
Bead of Force
Boots of Elvenkind
Cloak of Displacement [Attunement, Joybell]
Deck of Illusions
Dimensional Shackles
Mace of Smiting [STR/Monk Weapon limits to Joybell/Orryk]
Periapt of Wound Closure [Attunement]
Potion of Frost Giant Strength
Potion of Invulnerability
Wind Fan
Wings of Flying [Attunement]
Dramatis Personae:
Orryk - Forest Gnome Monk (Way of the Four Elements, variant)
Mo - Goliath Bard (College of Lore)
Fiona - Half-Elf Wizard (Evoker)/Cleric (Knowledge)
Taman - Human (variant) Rogue (Inquisitive)/Ranger
Joybell - Forest Gnome Paladin (Oath of the Ancients)
Thneed - Wood Elf Ranger (Hunter Conclave)
GM - Everyone Else
8 Rippenin 748 (Campaign day 69) (immediately after)
While everyone was looking around at the aftermath of the battle, Barnett went into a corner between the disintegration chamber and the table with manacles and sat on the floor huddled into a ball. Orryk went to a different corner by the table (between the table and the Forge) and meditated and rested, gathering his chi and marshalling his strength.
Joybell, shaking with fury and emotion, and still completely unconvinced that we’d killed the real Steeltear and not a simulacrum or something, released the immovable rod and wrestled the steel plate from between the door and the iron boat. She manhandled the steel plate over to the door with the priest hole, which we still hadn’t opened, then used the immovable rod to hold it in place.
Taman: Can we at least peep through the peephole?
Joybell: No. We can’t deal with anything we’d see back there right now.
Mo: I’m fine. You’re fine.
Joybell: Orryk isn’t fine and I won’t go without him. And I want my dog.
Then she sat herself down on the floor in front of it with her sword in her lap.
Joybell, to Tulmor through the telepathic bond: Scooby is about to disappear.
She then dismissed Scooby from the material plane and immediately began casting find steed to bring him to the Forge.
With Joybell resolutely blocking the door, the others set about occupying themselves during a short rest.
Fiona and Mo examined the “setting” the crystal had come out of, looking to see if there were any working or functional looking parts that might be what did the work for the transformation. What they found were copper rods that connected the contraption to the table, transferring the energy from the crystal. They figured out that the crystal was simply a battery or power source and the rods were just connectors to transfer the power. The actual “doing” of the transformation involved a ritual of some sort.
Mo then turned to search the body of Steeltear, using a mage hand (in case he’d trapped himself). Steeltear, now a normal-sized dwarf with slightly greyish coloring, was wearing studded leather armor, nothing particularly special, and had on a leather cloak and a necklace with a pendant. Nothing on his armor or clothing indicated a house or organizational affiliation. In his pockets he had seven sending stones -- each one half of a different pair.
Fiona took out her spellbook and began casting detect magic.
Joybell, now with Scooby to hold onto, sat in the hallway with Scooby’s head in her lap, crying and telling him everything that had happened.
Thneed gave the Broom of Flying back to Mo and Orryk gave Mo the Wand of Web, somewhat over Mo’s objections.
Orryk: It has literally never worked for me. It’s not useful.
Thneed, after examining the table and finding nothing but manacles and the other ends of the power-transfer rods, went out into the larger chamber, to check the bodies of the dead Masks, making sure all of them were really dead. Also looking for any unusual marks or features on them. When she’d finished that, she just stood sentry at that hallway to the larger chamber.
When Fiona’s detect magic went off she found that the amulet and the cloak that Mo’s mage hand had removed from Steeltear’s body were magical (evocation and transmutation, respectively). The disintegration “pit” radiated some transmutation magic. She expected that the crystal would be very magical and found that it wasn’t, really -- there was definitely a glow there, essences of transmutation, abjuration and divination magic, but not the power source we expected.
Taman and Orryk, feeling more like himself after his meditation, went to examine the disintegration pit. They figured out that it goes off once a day at a fixed time -- there’s no switch or command word to set it off. It just goes at a certain time every day, regardless.
Mo suggested getting a bunch of raccoons or rats and releasing them down near the teleportation circle on the wall, in order to set off the Symbols of Badness. (Fortunately, Joybell couldn’t hear this suggestion or she would have been appalled.)
As Joybell heard the others moving around, and heard Orryk talking with Taman about the pit, she started pulling herself together. Wiping her nose and drying tears off her cheeks on Scooby’s fur. Scooby helped lick her cheeks clean. Then she put her happy face back on and was ready to go when the others were.
Barnett, sitting in the same place he’d retreated to as soon as the battle was over, was repeating over and over: It was me. It wasn’t me. It was me. It wasn’t really me.
Hulmon II, Tulmor’s little winged-squirrel homunculus, sat next to Barnett, gently shaking him, trying to shake him out of it.
Mo rolled a cigarette of his finest smoking weed, including some of what he got in Callallah and some of what he got in Pelsoreen, and gave it to Barnett.
Mo: Maybe it will calm you down. Maybe not. Don’t know how you’ll react. You can try it.
Joybell, with her normal mien pasted on, went to talk to Barnett while the others moved the steel plate away from the door and looked through the priesthole.
Barnett: Never cast that on me again.
Joybell, nodding: Okay. I did ask permission. But I won’t. Do you want Scooby to stay here with you? He’s very comforting.
Barnett: No, you may need the mobility.
Then she patted him on the shoulder and went to join the others ready to go through the door.
Looking through the peephole we saw a long room, much longer than it was wide, with a bed and a wardrobe against the far wall. There was an opening in the right hand wall, just a few feet from the door, that led to another room. There was no one moving or visible inside. So we went in. As we entered the room, we saw that there was another wardrobe on the same wall as the first one. Around the corner, not visible from the door was a long bookshelf, which Fiona and Orryk immediately gravitated to.
The bookshelves contained Steeltear’s spellbook (which Fiona set upon immediately), records of all the jobs done by the Masks for hire and records of Steeltear’s experiments with the Forge. Joybell started looking through the records of jobs done for hire, to see if she could find why hired them to take the children from the Wold, but there was no mention of that in the book.
From those books, we learned that there were still three squads of Masks active in the world -- one in New Arvai (working as enforcers for one of the underworld gangs), one in Lonoj (eliminating thieves on behalf of the goldsmith’s guild), and one in the vicinity of Auriqua (attempting to recover an item stolen by hobgoblins from one of the wealthy families).
We’re not sure what they’ll do when the current orders they’re under are no longer applicable. Will they return here and find the place empty and abandoned? Will they go out in the world on a rampage? We have no idea. But it’s not something we can deal with right now.
The books made it clear that Turnik Steeltear was the one totally in charge of the Masks -- he didn’t report to anyone else or take orders from anyone else. His records of experiments with the Forge end about 100 years ago. Fiona noticed something weird, or off, about the books, but couldn’t figure out what it was. They weren’t magical. Just off.
The wardrobes had clothes and basically bric-a-brac. Nothing terribly interesting.
Mo suggested that these might be Crazy Books, so Orryk pulled out the Orrery of Finding Outer Chaos Things. While it settled itself, we explained to Thneed about the crazy books and about the Orrery.
In the end, the Orrery didn’t settle on any direction, it continued spinning freely.
The room adjacent to the bedroom was a treasury -- with coins and things. Before we actually entered the room, Taman looked for secret doors in the bedroom. Thneed poked around with her rarely used sword, looking through the clothes. Taman found a secret door inside one of the wardrobes. He tried to figure out the mechanism, moving the bric-a-brac and shifting the clothing around but nothing worked. So he called the rest of us over to try. Fiona had to drag herself from the spellbook to give it a look, but her mind was not really in it because she found nothing. Orryk, still rattled from almost dying, didn’t find anything either.
With the secret door a bit of a conundrum, and the treasury right there, Taman checked for traps in the treasury room. Fiona took a few minutes to cast detect magic again and we went in and looked around.
We found (see the end of the notes for treasure breakdown and identification of the items found):
2 Potions
A Bead
A fan
A tan-colored cloth bag
A pair of boots
Also
170 pp
4500 gp
2000 sp
4 50lb silver trade bars (each worth 2500 SP)
800 cp
2 25gp silver ewers
2 25 gp statuettes
1 25 gp gold bracelet (Joybell would like for part of her treasure to include this if no one minds)
1 25 gp velvet mask embroidered with silver thread.
14 50gp gems
The mask is such an outlier that we feel like maybe we should keep it. It might be important at some juncture.
The money was neatly organized, not just a random heap of coinage somewhere. The trade bars had been stamped with the seals of many cities -- which indicates that the bar itself had moved around a lot. The seals that had dates included were many decades old.
Taman looked for secret doors in the treasury room, and didn’t find any.
Back in the bedroom, Thneed and Joybell tried to move the wardrobe away from the secret door, but it wouldn’t move at first. Joybell, still a seething ball of emotion and anger, and with Mo’s inspiration, roared and ripped the wardrobe away from the wall (moving it five feet down toward the other wardrobe).
Mo, singing to inspire Joybell: We’re gonna tear this mother-fucker down…
With the wardrobe moved, the entrance to the next chamber was revealed.
The long, angled wall of the room was a long bookcase absolutely FULL of books. In the corner immediately ahead of the door was the dwarven crematorium/tomb/family shrine that the Tashin diplomats had told Mo about while he was swanning them around Embernook. (Reminder: The diplomats told Mo that Masks had stolen the shrine from a caravan while it was en route to New Arvai about four and a half months ago.) It was about the size of a modern grave liner, with a flue that can be opened and a chimney installed on top. Fiona, still detecting magic, saw some items pop up on the bookshelves, but the crematory/tomb was not magical.
Taman checked for traps and found none. The instant he gave the all clear, Orryk and Fiona went immediately to the books. Taman, Mo, and Joybell worked on getting into the crematory/tomb. With some assistance from them (the sides of the thing were 6 feet high, so it is possible that most of the assistance was in the form of Mo being on all fours with Joybell standing on his back so she could shift the lid off the crematory. She moved it off to the side, where it landed with a loud, ringing clang.
Looking in, the crematory appeared to be empty, except for two potion bottles. Taman stabbed in randomly (and blindly) with his rapier and didn’t hit anything. Mo shot a faerie fire into it and nothing began to sparkle. Joybell just glared at it, because she still didn’t believe that we’d gotten the real Steeltear, so the son of a bitch had to be somewhere. And we’d been told he could be invisible.
Over at the bookshelf, Orryk and Fiona found records of all of Steeltear’s experiments -- not just the older ones documented in the books out in the bedroom. While looking at these books, Fiona also figured out what was weird about the ones on the shelf in the bedroom -- those were all about the same age, even though they were recording transactions and experiments over a large period of time.
There were five magic items on the shelves, which got dropped into the bag of holding (identifications at end):
A deck of cards
A cloak
A set of shackles
A mace
A scimitar
During all of this, Thneed, getting bored, started wandering off and went back to the bedroom to look around in there again.
Back at the crypt, Mo pulled the bottles out of the crypt and found that they were empty. Taman inspected them and found that the potions had been drunk recently, very very recently. Like since we killed Steeltear in the Forge room.
Mo immediately started running to check on Barnett.
Taman, paying very close attention to listening and watching for the slightest disturbance, heard footsteps running toward the secret door and gave a yell to get everyone’s attention.
Fiona immediately cast see invisible and pointed to where he was -- along the wall between the crematory/crypt and the secret door. Joybell moved to where she should take a swing at the general area where Fiona was pointing. Then she cast branding smite and flailed at the space, hoping to get a hit. (Swing hard in case you hit it.) She did land a blow on the invisible Steeltear. Her sword flared and he was branded with a radiant light, rendering him visible and giving him a soft glow. Orryk, now able to see the target, hit him with fists of unbroken air. Then Joybell hit him again with her second attack.
Out in the Forge room, Mo got to Barnett, still sitting and rocking with Hulmon II by his side.
Mo, to Barnett: I assume you’re familiar with the Clone spell…
Barnett: naughty word!
Mo then turned and ran back into the bedroom and, unable to get to a position to attack, inspired Thneed.
Mo: You, kill the little one!
Taman moved to cover the secret door, to stop Steeltear from being able to get out of the room, then cast hunter’s mark and hit with his scimitar. Thneed cast her hunter’s mark and shot him soundly with an arrow, doing a lot of damage. Orryk attacked and attacked and punched and punched, landing both strikes from his flurry of blows. Unfortunately, the stunning strikes did not work.
Steeltear started casting something really quickly. Fiona tried to counter it, but was unable to do so, so Steeltear was able to get off his Far Step spell. He bamfed out of the room, past Mo, then took off running through the priesthole door, closing it behind him.
Fiona cast misty step to get herself into the bedroom, then opened the door. Joybell cast misty step as well, teleporting herself and Scooby into the bedroom just beyond Mo, then Scooby ran and dashed to get past Steeltear, so they could hopefully block him from getting to the teleportation circle. Joybell attacked him, hitting and doing a divine smite on him. Her second attack, in the whirlwind of adrenaline and Scooby skidding to a stop in front of Steeltear, missed.
Mo came out of the room and inspired Joybell. Taman missed with an attack. Thneed got into position to shoot, but was unable to attack him. Orryk ran out behind Steeltear, using his Step of the Wind, but then missed with both of his attacks.
Then Steeltear pulled a little dagger out of his pocket and waved it around with a flourish, casting a spell that attacked the entire party (because all of us were in range of it). Only Joybell wasn’t hit by it, though her paladin aura was able to give Orryk and Scooby resistance to the damage. Scooby was “killed” and disappeared out from under Joybell (back to wherever celestial wolf-mounts go), who dropped to the ground with a curse, but landed on her feet. Everyone else took quite a bit of damage from the spell, which is a nasty one, Steel Wind Strike.
As part of the Steel Wind Strike spell, Steeltear appeared on the other side of Joybell, closer to the teleportation circle. When he started to run away, Joybell took the opportunity to attack him again, and dropped him. She continued hitting him, just screaming and crying and hacking at his lifeless body, for about a minute, until Taman stopped her and led her away. Then he consoled her while she broke down and cried.
With Steeltear really dead, and even Joybell believing it to be so, we spent some time going through all of the barracks halls to make sure they were clear of anything either dangerous or useful.
When we’d gotten through all of those we considered how to deal with the teleportation circle.
Taman: Hey, Barnett!! Could you help us out with a non-combat related question?
Barnett emerged cautiously from the Forge room and asked what he could help with. We asked if he could help us disable the Symbol spells so we could get to the teleportation circle to destroy it. He suggested breaking the wall from this side. Which hadn’t occurred to any of us. So Mo cast a shatter spell on it, then Joybell pounded on the weakened rock with her flail until we’d broken through the wall where some of the runes were and the circle was destroyed.
Looking at the books as we were stacking things by where Barnett was going to cast teleportation to take us back to Embernoook, we found a notation where Steeltear described the Forge as equidistant from Embernook and New Arvai, under the Dunimar Mountains. Which narrows it down somewhat, but puts it squarely under the heart of the Green Quilt, with no cities or even notable roads anywhere nearby.
As we were clearing the place, we stacked the bodies of the Masks, and both Steeltears, into the disintegration chamber -- that would be as effective as cremation for preventing them from coming back as undead.
We also took a bit more time to clear out the secret room, finding a bunch more treasure:
2000 pp
4 50lb gold trade bars (2500gp each)
4000 gp
7 1000gp gems (2 black opals, 2 emeralds, a fire opal, a blue sapphire and a yellow sapphire)
We then teleported back to Embernook -- loading the Tenser’s Floating Disk, the bag of holding, and each of us (including Scooby, summoned once again), all to the breaking point to get the treasure, the library, and the crystal all out of there while the circle was open.
9 - 14 Rippenin 748 (Campaign days 70 - 75) (another downtime montage)
Back in Embernook, Fiona and Orryk read through the books. Fiona found the details of a high ritual called Your Time For Mine. As she read it, she cringed in horror and disgust -- the ritual involved killing a humanoid to add its remaining lifespan to that of the caster. She burned that, hoping that the knowledge of how to do that horrible thing would go up in smoke. That was what he wanted the children from the Wold, and elsewhere, for -- to provide extra years for his life. When she told the others, Joybell wanted to go back to the Forge so she could kill him again. He needed so many children because he wasn't particularly good at performing that ritual.
Fiona also got some details of his current research -- he was trying to work out how to tune the high ritual that turned human children into Masks so that it worked on other humanoids as well. That was why he had Masks kidnap the orc children -- he had paid Black Irnod’s apprentice, Tarly, to vivisect them and try to learn in what ways they were different from humans.
Steeltear’s books talked about the pattern of Symbol traps outside the teleportation circle -- they were programmed not to fire when touched on by Steeltear himself, humanoids in masks, and beasts when hitched to carts or wagons. Everyone else would set them off. So sending in Scooby with a Mask wouldn’t have told us anything -- because Scooby is a celestial, and celestials in Masks weren’t immune. And it would have just tortured him.
We also learned that he had a habit of using his Masks to attack trade caravans for their treasure. In one of those attacks, he found a scroll with the Clone spell on it. He traded it to a wizard in Pelsoreen named Altorian Galthoril, a high elf, in exchange for casting it on him. That was four months ago -- shortly after he stole crematory/tomb from the dwarven caravan to New Arvai.
We learned the locations and sigil patterns for the teleportation circles in Steeltear’s network -- the ones in the Forge and in the cave outside Callallah have both been destroyed. There are four still functional: one north of Auriqua, one outside Tash, one near Erlin, and one in New Arvai. Of those locations, New Arvai has an active squad of Masks working under the direction of one of the underworld bosses. And there is an active squad near Auriqua working to recover a stolen magic item.
Looking back through the records of jobs offered and accepted, we found that someone tried to hire the Masks to assassinate Administrator Alighieri. Steeltear refused the job. This was shortly after Alighieri became the Administrator of Embernook. We also learned that the biggest job he’d ever been paid for was sending two squads (which were up to 10 Masks) to a place called Kotima (which some of us had heard of as a continent a long way away) to take part in a succession war.
Fiona and Orryk talked with Tulmor and Barnett about the crystal. They confirmed that the crystal is just a battery -- it stores psychic power and then releases it. Steeltear’s method of charging it was torturing a humanoid to death. Horrible.
We wondered if perhaps exposure to happy emotions, like those at a concert or show, might be enough to power the crystal up. So Mo gave a performance at the Pewter Oar. The crystal was set on a floating disc in the center of the stage, spinning slowly, with a light spell over it so it glowed and sparkled like a disco dazzler ball. It looked really cool and Mo gave a hell of a performance, but the crystal didn’t pick up the slightest bit of charge.
In addition to reading the library from the Forge, we had a week or so of downtime (until Joybell’s bulette plate shield was finished) and accomplished other things.
Orryk, now learning some wizardry from Tulmor and Barnett, performed a high ritual to summon a small elemental friend as his familiar -- something that looks like a mephit but is not evil and is friendly to Orryk and his allies.
Mo ordered a netting chair made for his broom of flying - so he could start the broom going then ride underneath it in a hammock-chair, able to play his pipe and cast spells as he liked. Sort of a combat hammock.
Fiona used a sending spell to let Rask and the Cracked Shield orcs know that it was safe for them to return to Pelsoreen. The Masks would not be returning there. She also cast sending to Wilm Orter, the town elder of Callallah, to let him know that the Masks would not be returning and that they should enjoy their children and the bounty of their village.
Fiona spent most of the downtime transcribing spells from Steeltear’s spellbook to her own. That plus the rest of his library kept her plenty well occupied.
Barnett, during all of this, was slowly recovering and getting back to his own normal.
Mo, who had taken possession of the seven sending stones we found in First Turnik’s pocket, waited for anyone to call on them. We learned that Turnik had people in many cities, though not Embernook (because Embernook is nice) keeping an ear out for business opportunities for him. When one came up they could use the sending stones to let him know about them.
After several days without getting any message through the sending stones, and after an evening spent drinking heartilly, Mo picked one at random and drunk called.
Mo: Just so you know, your boss is dead and you’re next.
Voice at the other end, after a moment’s pause: Good luck.
After he told us about that, we went to ask Tulmor and Barnett if it was possible to learn the location of the other one of a pair of sending stones. (Note: GM said he would get back to us on that.)
Thneed spent much of her time walking around talking to the guard in town, thinking they were perhaps kin to soldiers (one of her favorite enemy humanoid subtypes) and trying to persuade them to do harmless but silly things. She realized after several days of this that it probably came off as flirting. Especially since she’s an adjunct guard herself.
Toward the end of the week, before Joybell’s shield was finished, she, Orryk and Taman went out to the Basalt Henge. Because Taman is all interested in nature and rangering and so on these days, Joybell spent the trip out talking to him about the plants and animals native to the Black Field. Taman mostly tuned her out. While we were walking, Orryk had his new elemental familiar as a mud mephit flying along with us. Orryk was working on using mold earth to raise up walls of earth around us.
We took a moment to have a conversation with all three of us talking to a somewhat confused marmot who just wanted the eagles to stop attacking. One had just killed his brother. Joybell promised to warn him if she saw one while they were still close by.
While we were taking a break on the road, Orryk asked Taman to hit him, really hit him. Taman, a bit confused, complied and attacked him. Orryk tried to raise a protective earthen shield around himself, but it didn’t raise in time and he took the damage. But he was almost cheerful about it. The next day, when we were at the Henge, Joybell took a turn taking a shot at him at his request. The protective shield almost deflected the damage, but it wasn’t quite fast enough. Orryk smiled even bigger.
When they got to the Henge, Joybell told Nailo, the head druid, and Green Hope, her fighting trainer, that we’d avenged the Wold. They seemed somewhat taken aback by that -- not upset, just surprised. Joybell agreed that it wasn’t entirely in keeping with her oath to seek vengeance but it needed to be done. Then she went off to the henge itself to pray and try and atone and to reaffirm her commitment to her oath of the ancients.
Orryk told them about going to the Primal Atoll and shared what Irlua had said about fire being out of balance. He then asked if they knew anything about the Umbral Circle. Nailo said that it had been a few years since they’d seen anyone from the Umbral Circle. He asked after the staff we were charged with recovering, Adnorga’s Staff. They had heard of the item but weren’t aware of it being missing.
We stayed at the Henge for a couple of days while Joybell atoned (including having a Ceremony: Atonement spell cast on her behalf). Toward the end of the time, Taman used his new ability to sense planar portals and found a dormant portal to elemental fire about a mile away out in the Black Field. We all took a walk out there, across the lava flow, and realized when we got to the location that the portal itself was under the lava field in the dormant volcano. Nothing to see.
The third day of our trip, Joybell attacked Orryk again, to test his new earthen shield and it rose up to protect him just as he wanted it to. Orryk was almost happy.
The next morning, we returned to Embernook.
14 Rippenin 748 (Campaign day 75)
Joybell’s shield was ready and she picked it up from Brightforge.
(Note: The montage can continue from here as we buy a house and furnish it.)
Treasure:
The DM notes that Turnik had High Ritual gear in his bedroom. Blocky and square, not particularly attractive but well made, including ritual clothes sized for a dwarf. The party can sell the lot for 1200 gp.
Totals:
PP: 2170
GP (including trade bars, art, and sold Mask gear): 19450
SP (including trade bars): 12000
CP: 800
Gems: 14 x 50 GP, 7 x 1000 GP
Per person:
PP: 361
GP: 3241
SP: 2000
CP: 133
Gems: 2 x 50 GP, 1 x 1000 GP
(Note: Joybell is going to take the Velvet Mask and the Gold Bracelet as 50 of her, erm, 3241 gp. Which is not going to make an appreciable difference to anything. Just we’ll have that mask and she wants the bracelet.)
Leftover:
PP: 4
GP: 4
CP: 2
Gems: 2 x 50 GP, 1 x 1000 GP
Which leads to a Party Kitty Update:
Party Kitty update:
8 pp, 7 gp, 10 sp, and 18 cp. Also 2 50gp gems and 1 1000 gp gem.
The kitty will go a long way toward buying us a house, I reckon.
Magic items:
+2 Scimitar [Martial Weapon limits to Joybell/Taman/Thneed]
Bag of Tricks, Tan
Bead of Force
Boots of Elvenkind
Cloak of Displacement [Attunement, Joybell]
Deck of Illusions
Dimensional Shackles
Mace of Smiting [STR/Monk Weapon limits to Joybell/Orryk]
Periapt of Wound Closure [Attunement]
Potion of Frost Giant Strength
Potion of Invulnerability
Wind Fan
Wings of Flying [Attunement]
)
