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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Morrow" data-source="post: 757343" data-attributes="member: 301">AtE Session 87th of CharderThe party, Thar in particular, fights off another bout of mind control during the night, but this time no one appears effected.  In the morning the party decides to return to Gariarch’s camp, traveling through the area they know to be patrolled.  Hopefully they’ll encounter another patrol and capture someone a little more observant then Flinz. Rhuun retrieves her sap from her backpack and sticks it in her belt.  Krikara manages to scrounge a small sack and create a makeshift sap of her own.Thar hopes to learn more at Gariarch’s camp.  “Why did he leave Sanctuary?”  Thar asks, “No one forced him out in the strictest sense.  As far as we know he just picked up and left with all of his loot, all his followers, and a bunch of prisoners.  He cleared out and then hid.  What could scare him?”If they cannot get to Auntie Em, they need to seek out the only person they know of who may be able to neutralize Auntie Em’s sympathetic magic, her sister Auntie Annie.  That will require a journey through the Hellmouth to Gulg, a dangerous course, but perhaps their only option.  Foleful believes that distance should decrease the effectiveness of the mind control, thus improving their chances of success.Again Krikara scouts ahead as the party, and soon she hears a wet slapping, squishing sound approaching.  She drops back to the party, and soon they seen a strange many tentacled creature dragging itself down the tunnel toward them.  The creature would clearly be more comfortable in a marsh or swamp, and has the same not-quite-right quality that the rast possessed the day before.  The party’s first volley of attacks had little effect.  Krikara’s arrows and Atarax’s charm monster spell both appeared ineffective against the chaos infused aberration.  The tentacled thing was able to squirm under the full brunt of Moroku’s lighting bolt, and Foleful’s stinking cloud does  not slow the creature down at all.Atarax begins singing and the party backs away from the advancing creature, but Foleful is not fast enough.  A long tentacle streaks out of the stinking cloud, wraps around him, and drags him back in.  “No, I’m poisonous!  I’m poisonous!” he shrieks as he is dragged out of sight.The party cannot see their opponent through the cloud, so Thar dispels it, almost yelling the prayer which accompanies the spell in his frustration.Atarax seizes the initiative, "Swamp brother!  We’re so happy to see you.  I suggest that you don’t touch the xvart, he’s poisonous.” The tentacled creature promptly drops Foleful.  Elemental charges forward to scoop up Foleful, but is caught by another tentacle.  Meanwhile, Foleful, incapacitated by his own stinking cloud, begins hallucinating from his contact with the chaos creature.Elemental manages to squirm free of the tentacle and drag Foleful out of harms way.  The party attempts to bring down the creature.  Atarax’s alchemist fire and Thar’s magic stone spell prove ineffective, but Moroku manages to bring down the beast with two volley’s of magic missiles.The party takes stock and heals Foleful and Elemental.  Foleful seems confused and flighty after his contact with the tentacled creature, but the party can do nothing for him, so they continue their journey.[Game Note: Foleful’s player had great fun playing him after he took a considerable amount of wisdom damage during the battle.]Soon they reach Gariarch’s camp.  Krikara reports the party that she hears the chewing noises that are indicitave of the rat-creatures.  Foleful seems gleeful at the opportunity to observe the creatures in action, and atop Elemental, flies into the main cavern of the camp.  “Hey guys,” he calls back, “We have guests, and they seem like really nice guys.”The four goblins, turned into rat creatures by the mysterious contagion do not, in fact, seem like nice guys.  They charge Foleful, raking the little xvart with their claws.  Foleful panics and drops solid fog over the entire area.  This does succeed in slowing the rat creatures, but it also delays his escape long enough for them to claw at him again.Thar casts freedom of movement on Rhuun and Krikara and they move into the cloud, quickly dispatching the rat creatures trapped there.Soon the cloud has disbursed and Foleful able to pull himself together enough to cast some more divinations.  He casts a thought capture near a goblin slave which was killed by swords, and gets a clear image of Mikek, very businesslike, running the goblin through.  He casts another thought capture near a goblin slave killed by a morningstar, and gasps in surprise at the image he receives.  He sees a bugbear come around the corner and crush the goblins skull with a morningstar.  It is not seeing a surviving bugbear which shocks Foleful.  It is that the bugbear looks distressingly like Egor.The party is shocked.  “Egor, the little goblin who stood in back and couldn’t hit anything with that bow of his?  A bugbear?  What’s going on here?”  Foleful casts a final thought capture near Gariarch and receives the bugbear’s last thoughts.  “Gotta get them before they get away.”  Then there is nothing but pain and surprise.Thar casts speak with the dead on one of Gariarch’s lieutainents.  “Why did Gariarch leave bugbeartown and come here?”"The rat bastards." “Who are the rat bastards?”“Sneaking, little cheating rat-bastards.  Jermelaine.  And the shapeshifters.” The party looked at each other in surprise.  “What did the shapeshifters do?”“They shapechanged into one of us.  Caused chaos.”“What’s so important about the stone gauntlets?”“They meld stone, dumbass.”  And with that the bugbear’s spirit was free.The whole party began talking at once.  “So even the Jermelaine aren’t a coincidence?  They were sent to keep an eye on Gariarch?”“The evil genius is using the Jermelaine?  I was hoping they would work for us.”“Shapechangers.  Well, that explains Egor.”“Probably Mikek’s entire group are shapechangers.  It just keeps getting better.”“One of us could be a shapechanger right now, and we’d never know it.”“No wonder Gariarch cleared out.”During the conversation Atarax trails off in mid sentence, but recovers quickly and only Krikara pays much attention.  Thar decides they’ve covered all the ground their going to in one night and goes into Gariarch’s cave to meditate.  Krikara begins teaching Atarax to speak darkcreeper, and the others disperse.It is second watch when Krikara hears Flinz and Chip talking.  Chip is saying that he can’t wait to get back to Zorn.  Krikara wanders over to where Rhuun stands on watch and explains what she heard.  Rhuun doesn’t hesitate, the pair pull out their saps, walk over to Flinz and Chip, and bludgeon them into unconciousness.  The rest of the party is awoken by Flinz’s cries, but by the time they arrive Rhuun is already chaining the pair to the wall. Krikara quickly explains what she heard.  Foleful is enraged.  He casts as summon monster spell.  Thar, surprised and disgusted smacks the xvart on the back of the head, trying to disrupt the spell, but Foleful completes the incantation.  An earth elemental stirge pops into existence, but the rest of the party destroys it before it can latch onto Chip.  The party is angered by Foleful’s behavior, but he insists that Chip and Flinz must be killed, “For all we know the Evil Genius is looking at us through those eyes!”  Eventually they manage to calm Foleful down and return to sleep, but the night is disrupted a second time when Krikara hears Atarax talking to the prisoners about his love for Zorn.  The party is awakened again as Krikara angrily confronts the goblin bard, but he manages to pacify them, explaining that he was just trying to get information out of them.8th of CharderThe next day Thar begins by casting a zone of truth around the party and instructing everyone to say that they don’t love Zorn.  Chip and Flinz are unable to pass the test, but everyone else seems fine.  Foleful eventually badgers them into admitting the truth, mostly by taking advantage of Flinz’s low pain tolerance.  They explain that they intended to conceal their loyalty to Zorn and slip away while no one was looking.Thar casts a remove disease spell on Foleful to neutralize any ill effects from the rat-goblins bite and follows it up with a restoration in the hopes of neutralizing any lasting effects from his encounter with the chaos creature.  Foleful immediately feels much better and admits that his encounter with the tentacled aberation left his confused.While Thar works Krikara huddles with Moroku.  When they’re done talking Moroku turns to Atarax and casts a dispel magic.  Atarax seems confused for a minute and then admits that he was under the same compulsion as Flinz and Chip.Atarax comes up with a more dependable test for mind control.  He explains that his horn of good creates an effect that will neutralize mind control in the area for a short time.  He offers that the effect could be used to reveal who was mind controlled, and Moroku could then dispel the effect.  The party tests the theory on Chip and Flinz, who immediately return to normal and are quite distressed to once more have their minds played with.[Game Note: Somewhere along the line we deduced that area dispels were ineffective against the sympathetic magic mind control.  In other mind control action, Forrester ruled that since Atarax hadn’t actually instructed Krikara to do anything, she didn’t realize he had effected her with a Charm Monster spell either during the periods in the protection from evil effect, or after it wore off completely.]Soon thereafter the party leaves for Gulg.  They travel through the Hellmouth, dodging dangerous creatures and using their elaborate combination of stone shape, the horn of good, and Moroku’s dispel magic spells to keep themselves free of mental domination.  When they reach Gulg, four and a half days later, none of them love Zorn and they are all hopeful that Auntie Annie will be able to help them.Somewhere along the trip, Thar casts a sending to communicate with Filbin, the cleric he had trained back and Blarkarg camp.  “It’s all going to hell here.  How are you doing?”“Fine boss.  We’re not slaves yet.”13th of CharderThe party enters Gulg through the same hidden route that Atarax and Foleful used to leave it not long before.  They soon find Auntie Annie’s shop.  The tall, gaunt, old woman is behind a counter set up outside and she greets Atarax warmly.  Atarax begins by negotiating a price to alter the cloak that he took from the cat-demons, but soon moves on to more important things.  Auntie Annie admits that she has heard from her sister about the rat-disease in Sanctuary.  When Atarax mentions that Auntie Em had spoken unkindly of her sister, Annie offers that Em is jealous of her talents, or just thought that Atarax was trying to use his connection with Annie to get a discount.  Atarax begins asking about some of the effects they have seen and attributed to sympathetic magic.  Auntie Annie seems disbelieving at the tails of greatly increased strength, but is interested enough to invite the party inside her shop.Atarax asks Flinz to tell Auntie Annie her story.  He attempts to make further inquiries about Auntie Em and her capabilites but Annie grows impatient with the little information he offers.  Foleful turns to the others, “Huddle.  Do we have anything to lose here?”  he asks forcefully.  “Do we have anything to lose?!”The party looks at each other, and one by one shakes their heads.  “We don’t know anything that our enemies don’t know already.”  says Thar.  “Tell her all of it.”So Atarax tells all, including their suspicions about Auntie Em’s part of the mind control plot, and their thoughts that Em is responsible for giving the humanoids following Zorn increased strength.Eventually Annie cuts Atarax off.  “There is no way that my sister has the power to do this.  Do you have any idea of the raw power it would take to maintain a charm effect over that many creatures?  To transform that many creatures.  It can’t be done.”However the party keeps on her.  Thar offers that this might be a case of professional rivalry, that ‘it can’t be done,’ really means, ‘I couldn’t do it.’  Auntie Annie is admitant the Auntie Em couldn’t be responsible for these effects, but eventually seems convinced that impossible or not, what the party describes is really happening.  She does offer one interesting observation.  “How do you get strength like that?” she asks.  “You can’t just create it.  You have to borrow it.”Auntie Annie decides to talk to her sister.  She leads Atarax into another room, where he stands, invisible, while Annie smears oil on a mirror and says a few words over it.  Soon the reflection swirls and another room appears in the mirror.  A bell rings and moments later another old woman walks across the room to stand before the mirror.  As they stand looking at each other Atarax thinks that it really could be a reflection.  The two are nearly identical.The two great each other, and Annie tells her sister that she has heard about trouble in Freetown.  Em admits there has been, “The cutest little group of adventurers, attacking people and causing trouble.”  She also offers the rat-disease and other weird things have been happening.The two sisters exchange pleasantries and agree that they should see each other more often.  Auntie Em assures her sister that everything is business as usual, she has no reason to worry.When the conversation is over Atarax and Auntie Annie rejoin the party.  Atarax agrees that Auntie Em did seem to be telling the truth, but points out that she didn’t offer a lot of detail.  He is convinced that Auntie Em is hiding the truth by not providing a lot of detail, rather than by lying. Auntie Annie maintains that her sister is not powerful enough to be responsible for the effects the party has described.  She does have an idea.  She pulls a book off the shelf and shows them a picture of a giant with a third arm growing out of its chest, an Athach.  “The third arm would have been something like this, wouldn’t it?”The party agrees.  Auntie Annie reiterates that in order to get the kind of strength they had discribed, someone specializing in sympathetic magic would have to find something like an Atthach and take a piece of it, like a fingernail, or even better, blood.  It is possible that such an effect would also cause the growth of a third arm.  However, in order to get the strength that the party describes, and give it to so many people, it would take a lot of blood.The party puts aside the question of how this was done for a while, and asks Annie if she could create something to protect them from the mind control effect.“Yes,” responds, “but I’ll need a sample of your blood.”The room goes silent, then the party cries, almost in unison, “No!”</blockquote>

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