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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brakkart" data-source="post: 2133014" data-attributes="member: 19617">DM's Log of Session Twenty FourBefore leaving the temple though, Jebodiah pays for a scrying on his mother, being worried about her as he left home without any annoucement, simply vanishing from the Citadel to find his way in the world. He is relieved that the scrying works, and he watches in the bowl for a while as she works running the family brewery, though he can see by the lines in her forehead, that she is worried about something or someone.As the others head back to the Crushed Coils for the day, Gyllipus ducks intoan alleyway and uses his hat of disguise to shift appearance. For the next couple hours he keeps watch on their Inn in a variety of guises, looking to see if anyone else is observing the place, having gotten fed up of being attacked in cities. Though he is as sneaky as can be, his surveillance proves fruitless, and eventually he gives up and heads inside for a drink with the others.Nightal 4th dawned bright and sunny, and the party roused themselves and headed back up the sloping streets towards the House of the All Seeing Eye, Aeron, Ash, Zamtap and Gylippus having taken to casting Endure Elements on themselves each morning to ease the sweltering heat of the tropics. The group locate Damai and this time their donation is rewarded with success, the High Seer easily able to scry on Esau's oriental bodyguard, he seemingly never more than a dozen feet from his pureblood master. they watch in a mizture of fascination and horror as they see the scientist inspecting a chamber filled with the large glass tubes they saw at Wolfhill House, each containing a growing Megaloman clone, there being at least a hundred in the room they see.As the scrying continues they see Esau and Shan walk out onto a balcony, overlooking a plaza amidst the ruins of a vast jungle city, sat on the shore of a lake with mountains in the distance. Damai is able to recognise the place, having scryed it in the past, as Ss'inthee'ssaree. What troubles them more is what they can see in the plaza, hundreds of Megalomen, organised into regiments and training. Remaining with the nefarious pair, they see them enter a laboratory where a large lizard with bony plates running down it's back (which Damai identifies as a type of Dinosaur called a Stegosaurus), is strapped down and clearly being experimented upon, Esau injecting fluids into it. Damai mentions that the Yuan-ti have adjusted many of the dinosaurs of the Black Jungles with a process called Ti-Khana, which gives them some Yuan-ti properties, and a more vicious mindset.Breaking the scrying eventually, he outlines that the group have a near impossible mission to reach the city by the only route he knows of, through the jungles, stating it would take at least a couple tendays to get there, and they would be relentlessly attacked the entire time, gylippus summarising everyones feelings when he states unequivocally "To the hells with that idea!" It is then that Damai admits that there may well be another who might know of a better route, though he is somewhat chagrined to admit that one not in Savras's service might know more than he, he suggests the group travel to the ruins of Procalith to consult the Seer there.As they are leaving the temple, intent on getting to the docks before the Tisiphone sets sail, the group are met by an old man escorted by a half dozen armed and armoured guards. He introduces himself as the Farseer, the high priest of the temple. Having been told about what was seen in the scrying bowl, he states that he will do what he can to persuade Tashluta's leaders to get the city ready for an attack, and he gifts the party with a chest of coins and a half dozen healing potions, to give them what aid he can spare, wishing them the best of luck on their quest.Rushing down to the docks, the group manage to get aboard their ship before it sets sail, and they inform Captain Baeran that they need to head east down the coast towards Procalith. Arriving there in the evening of Nightal 6th, the ship anchors off the coast and the party row ashore in the lifeboats, camping out in a wrecked plaza, with no weapons worn or on show, as Damai had instructed them.Towards morning, Gylippus and Jebodiah are on watch when a strange man, looking for all intents like a 3' tall dwarf with white hair, bald on top and bare of chin, dressed in red walks into view, smiling enigmatically, and asking them their business. There is some bargaining for a few minutes as the Seer does not wish to name a price, insisting that the group pay what they think is a fair price for the information they seek, this conflicting with Gylippus coin-counting nature, he not wanting to pay any more than he must, especially when the only currency that the Seer will accept is magic. Eventually though, the roguish wizard settles on handing him one of the brooches Zamtap made recently, and gains the location of Dowinn's Lode, an abandoned gold dwrf mining colony, a half days travel away from the ruins, the halls of which stretch under the Delphin Mountains, and emerge in the jungles only a couple days to the north of the city they seek.Having woken by now, Aeron decides to hand over a wand, wanting to know what lives in the old dwarf halls, learning only though that the lower level that exits into the jungles is home to Troglodytes and Trens, the Seer claiming ignorance of what dwells in the upper levels, stating that his area of expertise are the jungles and the Yuan-ti who live there, not dwarves. Having heard about the fabled Rod of Auglad from Captain Baeran, Ki hands over a potion to try and purchase the location of the artifact, but learns only that it is somewhere within the city, and it was placed there, centuries ago by the Magister of the time.Before leaving, the Seer gives the party one last piece of information, charging nothing for it. It states that the Yuan-ti are more active now than they have been for centuries because their god thrashing against his chains, has invigorated them, and this has awakened their masters, the dreaded sarrukh, who created the snakemen in their image.Leaving them with that thought to mull over, the Seer vanishes, some amongst the group hearing the sound of scales sliding over stone as the real creature departs, it having used a projected image to address them.Making preparations to depart, the group let Baeran know that they will not be needing his services anymore, and they sell him the horses and pony that they had been transporting on the ship, knowing that they will be of no use to them underground or in the jungles.DM's Notes:A no combat session this one, but heavy on the roleplay from all my group, for which I am justifiably proud. I got a few laughs as I decribed just what the "Seer" looked like, obviously modelling him after Dungeon Master from the old D&D cartoon, choosing that image both for the obvious comedy appeal, but because my players had been joking a while back about putting me in that outfit, so figured I'd work it in somehow.Dowinn's Lode is a hybrid, the name taken from the MUD I build, where it is the name of the evil dwarf town, while the maps for the place are coming from the 2E adventure Axe of the Dwarvish Lords (with a slight adjustment to the compass, so West becomes North, East becomes South, and some minor tweaking to the maps to fit them together in the way I want). So with that in mind, the next few sessions will be a good old fashioned Dungeon Crawl as they make their way under the mountains, through halls infested with monsters (and probably a few traps) in what I hope will be a fun homage to the Mines of Moria.</blockquote>

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