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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 7241753" data-attributes="member: 6816692">The Queen's crazy dinnerThe party travels to the abandoned watchpost and remember that they've already seen this place once: During their flight from Bresk. They find the hidden entrance to the aqueducts near a graveyard and enter the tunnel. They immediately notice that something heavy must have been dragged through recently and decide to dig a little deeper. When they reach the city again, they are attacked by the two tragedies. One of them drains a good portion of Tinuviel's life force. Fortunately, Torrent can heal him up after they banish the malevolent creatures.Note: I really like the fluff of the Tragedies. My players managed to avoid their first tragedy in the Fire Forest as they saved the Seela. So this was the first time they encountered them and they scared the hell out of Tinu's player.They follow the tunnel until they reach the room with the frozen Zombies and Torrent starts destroying them with holy energy. This causes the Zombies to moan loudly which leads to Jutras the Mohrg jumping down from the torture chamber. Cuin'halar remembers the story of demon worshipping criminal and also his fear of chickens. He does his best to impersonate a chicken by using an illusion and some cluck-acting and is more than amused to see Jutras flee in terror.When they try to attack him, the Mohrg comes back to his senses and promises to feed their souls to his demonic master. He manages to wound Cuin, but is ultimately slain by the group's combined effort. Note: The Strength check to lift the grate would have been pretty hard for them, so I just let Jutras do the thing for them. This made the fight with the Zombies a bit harder than intended, but they had plenty of Torrent's channels left, so the frozen Zombies were no real threat.Tinuviel volunteers to climb up the shaft first. He finds and disables the alarm and then helps his fellow friends to enter the torture chamber. The find recently used torture tools, but fortunately no victim. They surprise inquisitor Torrax and ambassador Serrimus in the guard post as they are about to prepare a sending spell. With them are some undead knights and a flayer devil.  They split up as Cuin heads directly to the devil while Tinuviel charges the inquisitor with whom he's still got scores to settle. Which is on a second thought not the best idea as this leaves Torrax enough space to safely heal his devil companion and / or interrupt Cuin's more dangerous spells. Torrent harasses Serrimus enough that the ambassador surrenders and pleads for his life. Cuin decides to join up with Tinuviel to cut down the Inquisitor and finally down the devil as well. Meanwhile, Torrent uses her channels to keep the undead knight at bay. When they finally get to fight the undead, the elves are a bit surprised to see commander Thurask among them. He's no match for them though.Note: I thought the Inquisitor battle needed a bit more of a challenge as my players were pretty strong at this point and would have easily overpowered Torrax and his minions. So I added a devil minion which was sent by Guthwulf to check up on Torrax' progress. Serrimus didn't pose much of a threat anyway. The group accepts Serrimus' surrender. Cuin uses the opportunity to intimidate the man to write a confession about their involvement in the assassination of the Queen's children. He also finds the contents of the Sending which includes the information that the Elfroad via Innotendar is open again. They also conclude that Guthwulf wanted Torrax to keep an eye open for a sorceress called Katrina. And they finally find the recipe for the Red Madness poison. When questioned about the poison, Serrimus explains that Torrax wanted to put it into the food for the banquet. Now that they got this information, they know that time is pressing. Still they take the time to free the chef, Randas, from the prison and tell him to flee immediately. Then they hurry to the banquet hall where the dinner is about to begin. They inform the guards outside of the hall that they are the missing knights of Lord Gallo and that they have to get in immediately as the lives of the Queen and her Lords and Ladies depend on it. Then they kind of kick in the door and order everyone to stop eating immediately as the food is most certainly poisoned. Everyone is shocked at this revelation. Everyone, except Queen Steppengard who is laughing manically as she explains that justice will be finally served and that everyone who killed her family will today ultimately meet his or her end. She grabs her flail and starts attacking a very surprised Lord Gallo who does his best to take cover. The other nobles (except Lady Timor, Lord Gallo and Melanie Ursin) suddenly all show symptoms of the Red Madness and chaos breaks out.Cuin senses that this situation is pretty dire, so he starts sword-dancing towards Queen Steppengard while trying to knock out as many affected nobles as possible. Tinuviel rallies the unaffected guards and explains that they have all been poisoned by the Ragesians and that they all should do their best to wrestle the nobles down and avoid casualties. After a rather short fight, they manage to subdue all of them and to knock out the mad Queen. Note: This was actually pretty easy as Nina/Madness was missing from the fight. Plus Tinu got the guards to help them by presenting the evidence that the Rags were behind this plot. To stop this madness, Tinuviel asks Lady Timor to accompany him to the vault to check up on the Book once more. There they find the rope tricked book dangling in an extradimensional space. They put the book back to its place and Tinuviel finds the situation a bit funny since he and Cuin discussed the effects of extradimensional spaces on the book's magic days ago.Meanwhile, Torrent and Cuin'halar do their best to release the unconscious Queen of her madness. They manage to push out a black sliver made of maddening energy which looks eerily familiar to them. Just when Lady Timor and Tinuviel return from the vault and all the Lords and Ladies regain their sanity, the Queen regains consciousness. She realizes what she has done and is instantly overwhelmed with grief and regret. She declares that she is unfit to rule Dassen as she almost sparked another civil war and put her own bloodline above the fate of her nation. She also wasn't able to see the change in Nina Glibglammer and is embarrassed to having been tricked this easily.  She's about to throw her crown away when Cuin intervenes and tells her that right now, Dassen needs its Queen more than ever. They all were tricked by the Ragesians and a good monarch would never surrender after just one defeat. He says he understood the Queen's need for justice when he heard about the assassination of her children, but now all of Dassen needs justice and she was the one who unified Dassen, so she'd better keep the responsibility that was given to her. Gallo agrees with Cuin'halar. He adds that only a unified Dassen could hope to stand up against the Ragesians and that he also believes that Seaquen and its brave citizens should be allies of Dassen, standing together like siblings instead of rivals. Queen Talia Steppengard sees reason in their pleas and thanks them both for their trust. She insists, however, that the other Lords and Ladies of the Eight Lands have to express their confidence in her reign as well or she'd resign. In the light of these events, they all vote for a continuation of Steppengard as monarch of Dassen. Note: Again, a very powerful and inspiring speech from Cuin'halar. He loves talking reason into people. I am fortunate that I often don't have to ask for diplomacy rolls and simply let him (or both of them) talk as they are in most cases exceeding expectations. Steppengard then proposes an emergency meeting of the Council. Fortunately, all members are already present (and healed up!), so they only have to ask for someone who'd take the role of ambassador of Seaquen. Both Cuin and Tinuviel have to decline the invitation as they are not really Seaquenians, but rather citizens of Gate Pass. Torrent is Dasseni, but no diplomat. So Tinuviel does what Tinuviel can do best: He performs an emergency teleport to Gallo's Fend to get Balan into action. While the Council discusses the future of Dassen, the party tries to find out what in the nine hells happened to Kelkin Thravamvost. They head back into the dungeons and find a protesting, imprisoned Nashara in  another wing of the prison. They ask her about Kelkin and all of a sudden she gets enraged and tells them that the stupid dwarf got what he deserved. It turns out that Nashara and Kelkin found out that the Queen was no longer protected by the books magic, but they got surprised by Torrax on their way out of the vault. Kelkin and his “friend” started fighting the Inquisitor and Thurask immediately. Torrax then dispeled the seeming “buff spell” on Nashara which turned out to be the long time charm. When Nashara realized what happened she turned on the wizard and tore him to pieces before he stood any chance. She then killed Thurask, but was subdued and imprisoned by Torrax.Note: Someone *had* to die in the dungeon. I admit it, this was a kind of cheap way out of a tricky situation. Had Kelkin succeeded, then the whole adventure could have ended without the final confrontation. And I wanted them to challenge Steppengard and to put their new friends and allies at risk. Proud Nashara demands to be released immediately and to be brought to the Lyceum where Kelkin promised to send her someday. The party agrees to get her out of prison if she swears to stay peaceful. They offer to accompany her to the Lyceum school as they are Lyceans themselves and the sphinx agrees. The next morning, Tinuviel takes his silver plate and the inquisitor's mask and hands them over to Lady Timor. With a stern expression he offers her to bring her the heart of that bastard as well should she prefer a more bloody token, but she fortunately declines. Nonetheless, she thanks him for finishing this business. She also tells him that she cleared up the relationship between Tinu and her cousin, but he'd better say goodbye to her in a courtly manner. At noon, the Queen officially announces that Dassen will make a stand against the Ragesians and that they will send ambassadors to Seaquen soon to discuss further actions within a possible alliance. Ragesia is officially condemned as the driving force behind the assassination of the Queen's children and ambassador Serrimus is to be subjected to further interrogations. The troupe from Seaquen is praised as heroes and defenders of Dassen and each of the heroes recieves the Dasseni Star of Courage. Melanie Ursin and Lady Timor say goodbye to their personal heroes. Cuin'halar promises to return to his dear friend to show her the beautiful, regrowing Forest of Innotendar should the opportunity arise while a pretty sad, but nonetheless prepared Melanie declares that even if Tinuviel doesn't return her feelings, she'll love him forever. Ouch, you did it again. Then Tinuviel, Cuin'halar, Balan, Torrent and Nashara say goodbye to Bresk and head back to the Lyceum in Seaquen.</blockquote>

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