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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2259547" data-attributes="member: 143">The Compact is a mechanism that I've used in my other writings, and it fits well (IMO) with the concepts laid out in the D&D rules. One of my high level Neverwinter Nights modules has players make a visit to Oinos, the first level of Hades, where the Blood War is fought; it's a place that has seen reference before in the Travels story. I'll be exploring more of these sorts of  issues as the heroes delve into the higher levels of spellcasting. While the Adventure Path is designed to take characters to 20th level, now that the group has gained in numbers the rate of earned experience has slowed a bit. While I have a number of ideas for the ultimate fate of the group, there are a few ideas twisting around in my mind. Oh, and I've got some pretty good cliffhangers on tap for the next few Fridays. Expect some unexpected twists. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />* * * * * Chapter 394Cal quickly stepped forward, ignoring the growls from the dire wolves.  Probably the smell was the only thing keeping them back, he thought.  No animal wanted to sink its jaws into the gooey mess of a demodand’s hide.  The giant regarded him warily, but it kept its huge greatsword—adamantine, he noted, the Cagewrights equipped their minions well—rested easily upon its shoulder.  “Master cleric send us,” Cal said, doing a fairly good imitation of a demodand’s rasping voice.  “He said we join others below.  He said show you this mark.” The Cal-demodand held out the wax seal he’d made the night before, impressed with an enlarged version of the Cagewright icon that appeared on the rings they’d collected thus far.  The rings themselves were stored safely in a secure box, warded against scrying, in Jenya’s possession back at the Lucky Monkey. “Think they’ll buy it?” Hodge whispered.  Dannel shrugged.  “If we don’t kill them now, we might have to do it on the way out.”“As always, yer a load o’ sunshine, elf.”But the giant merely grunted and pointed a meaty thumb over its shoulder toward the spire.  The “demodands” made their way to the narrow opening in the near face of the spire.  The split in the stone extended all the way to ground level, so technically there were three massive stone pillars, rising up hundreds of feet above them.  Darkness swallowed them up as they progressed single-file into the crevasse.  They wound their way deeper into the shadows, until they came across a fork, with both side passages appearing to extend back to the exterior of the spire. “I don’t see anything,” Benzan said.  “There is a tunnel that slopes down into the rock, immediately to your left,” came the voice of the planetar.  None of them had heard the creature return. “An illusory wall,” Cal quickly said, confirming that there was an opening in the black stone.  “Truth cannot be hidden from the eyes of justice,” the celestial intoned. “Yeah, whatever,” Benzan said, disappearing through the wall into the blackness beyond. The tiefling led them into a tunnel that sloped decisively down into a tight spiral that took them quickly beneath the surface, into the granite foundations of the bluff.  They’d circled back around to their initial route—and descended a good forty or fifty feet in the bargain—before the tunnel straightened and deposited them into a chamber.  The air was stale and musty, and thick square pillars five feet across crowded the room, making the place seem smaller than it was.  Even though the ceiling was a comfortable fifteen feet above them, the chamber still felt tight and oppressive.  Wary, they passed a pair of flanking pillars before the room opened onto a broad central area maybe thirty feet square.  The light of the warriors’ enchanted weapons glinted off of bright gold, a massive altar set atop a low stone dais in the center of the room, carved with obscene depictions in cold metal, and surmounted by a twisting representation of a serpent that covered the lid and rose from each end to a pair of heads that faced each other with open jaws equipped with sharp fangs.  The weathered floorstones on each side of the altar bore the mark of the Cagewrights, the Carcerian Eye. “Evil dwells in this place,” the invisible celestial said.“Well, duh,” Benzan said. Most of them were still crowded in the entry, back behind the pillars, when a hiss drew their attention to the altar.  A slender figure clad in a clinging black cowl and trailing cloak rose up into view behind the golden object, terrible syllables flowing from its lips.  He shifted with the familiar telltale of magical displacement, and a warding translucent shield hung in the air before him. “Spellcaster!” Benzan warned, even as the companions felt a surge of energy pass through them.  But that wasn’t the end of it, for the magic-user’s appearance triggered movement from the floor to either side of the altar.  The room was filled with a rumbling sound as the two Carcerian Eyes rose up out of the ground… set into the chest of a pair of stone golems, their bodies flat across the front, and shaped to perfectly fit the man-shaped depressions that had been carved into the floor to hide them until an enemy appeared to threaten the evil masters of this place.</blockquote>

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