Second Ptolus Campaign Journal, #56
Still the 16th of Wind
We collect the possessions of the Cinderpriest and his warrior associate. Among them is a book praising decay, entropy, and strength through disintegration. We decide to explore further. Voices are talking down one hallway, and we run smack into a group of foes including the Balacazar mage Arkhall Vaugn and a beholder ally!
When they learn we have killed the Cinderpriest, we hear them debating whether their “deal is off” but the arrogant eye tyrant advances on us, its antimagic field doing great harm to our arcane protections and enhancements. A strike from Diethan’s holy mace makes the creature squeal, and additional blows from Feruch and Barbatos lend further injury to injury. The creature floats slowly to the ground but before we can rejoice, another one (this one with arms!) appears and confronts Barbatos: “What the hell’s going on here?” it demands.
Our wizard friend tries to bluff it, apparently convincing the creature (for the moment) that it was Arkhall Vaugn who killed the Cinderpriest. This creates a weird standoff between us and the Balacazar mage’s faction. The second beholder claims to be a guard of the Cinderpriest’s weapons. Our tactics confuse it for a while, but then it attacks Vaugn’s forces. Meanwhile, Barbatos tries to expose it to his vacuous grimoire. When Arkhall Vaugn finally denies having slain its partner or its master the Cinderpriest, the confused creature looks frustrated and cries, “I’m just going to kill everyone!” Oh, great.
Vaugn disappears but we manage to dispatch our other foes, including the beholder. Then we realize that Vaugn had not fled after all, but just became invisible. After I manage to hit him, he cries out, “Demons of darkness, I know who you are – you’re those Pythoness people!” Then he teleports away.
Well, at least we got out of this with our lives and a bunch of loot – plus, we accomplished our goal of slaying the creator of the weapon that undid the Keepers of the Veil.
After resting a bit, we explore farther. In one bedchamber we find a bunch of financial records. In another room we find a caged creature that seems to be part insect and part snake. Calista recognizes it as a type of chaos demon! But as it seems secure in its prison, we move on. In what we take to be the Cinderpriest’s bedroom we discover (hidden in a secret trapdoor in the floor) a staircase down. In the room below we find four chests and two large square grey cubes that bear a multihued sheen. Barbatos insists that we take the cubes, as well as the contents of the chests: a few bombs, a metal cylinder holding a strange purple liquid, and a lightweight metallic sphere. I’m pretty uncomfortable taking this stuff into our home because the area around the cubes seems to have become mutated: some sections are pitted, others are furry, and still others appear to have liquefied. Nope, I don’t like it one bit.
On our way out, we suddenly worry about leaving the body of the Cinderpriest intact. While Calista and I mull over what to do, the men in the party drag the corpse over to the cell of the chaos demon and let him feed on it. Oh, gross!
Then we teleport back to Pythoness House. What a day.
Session CVIII – 17th of Wind
First thing today we sell our loot from the Cinderpriest’s place. I’m a little uneasy leaving all those chaositech things down in the basement of Pythoness House, but Barbatos assures me that he’ll conduct experiments to ensure that they are safe. He tracks down Aprata Nachov at a tavern called the Goat to discuss the stuff with her. She openly scoffs at the idea that Barbatos was responsible for offing the Cinderpriest but agrees to come over to the house the next evening to help him make sense of the chaositech items.
The resurrected litorian Sallam, we recall, was the slave of someone named Cintric who lived in the Guildsman District. The litorian’s job was to turn the Great Wheel beneath the Foundry – we think this has something to do with the Great Drill project of Savane’s. We should track down the litorian again and see if he wants to help us destroy the machine down there.
“Emperor” Segaci is coming to Ptolus to meet with Savane, Diethan learns as he’s enjoying a drink (or six) later this evening. No one is sure whether the Commissar will welcome him as Emperor or not. Diethan also reads a story in the Undergrounder about some witnesses to attacks of what must be mind flayers beneath the city. “Mind Eaters Beneath the Streets!” screamed the headline.
Meanwhile, I do some research in the Delver’s Guild Library and Maproom to find an underground path to get us to the Foundry. This research stuff is slow going. My friends have no greater luck down at the Mane – Sallam left with Charnoth to go back to the tribe of Malechar. Too bad, I would love for him to be able to get his revenge on Cintric. But we know there’s not enough time to summon him back to the city: The article in the Undergrounder tells us that the flayers are starting to break through! Plus, the mind flayers apparently had as servants some undead that had been made from an amalgam of corpse parts. Ugh.
18th of Wind
Calista and I have better luck at the maproom today. We manage to learn that all the passages have been fairly recently blocked off, just like back when we sought an underground route to that Shuul installation to save the Prajdall litorians. We can find an access pretty close to the Foundry, though, so at least we don’t have to go through the underlevels very far to get there.
Meanwhile, Diethan gets some valuable information from a disaffected former Foundry employee, including a basic floorplan of the place’s main level.
(Here’s a recap of what we previously learned: An aelectrical key – a two-part brass device that forms a circuit when activated – is the only way to get to the Great Drill. With the key, we’d need to find the secret door in the materials storehouse on the main level and go down to the experimental labs and Savane’s office. Past that is a door that the aelectrical key opens. Down from there using a lift activated by the key we can reach the drill. Finally, we learned that the Shuul have made large donations to the Brotherhood of Redemption for extra guardians.)
Sir Feruch hears that the Keepers of the Veil will be headquartered in Tarsis from now on. That’s where the group’s new leader lives. His fellow surviving members wonder if they will be called to leave Ptolus soon.
Tonight, Aprata Nachov arrives. We have stored the chaositech items down in the icy area where we fought the minotaurs a while back. She approves of the choice – the cold helps the items “keep” longer.
I point out one of the square things, and she says, “It’s a chaos storage cube, full of raw chaos. It’s extremely volatile.” Apparently we need something called a chaos siphon to get the chaos out of here to power other chaositech items. She also describes the other main items we have acquired:
The Metal Tube: A huge chaositech bomb with a timer. It’s big enough to blow up, for instance, the whole Siege Tower if you trigger it along with a couple or three chaos storage cubes.
The Metal Sphere: A chaositech madness bomb, radius 30 feet. (Not like the antitech bombs she got for us before that suppress technology. Also different from the explosive chaositech bombs we have.)
When we ask her which bomb is more reliable to use, she replies “It’s chaositech, none of it’s reliable.” She urges us not to keep it all stored together but spread it out in the room, and put it in separate containers. We give her an extra thousand gold pieces to keep her mouth closed about our chaositech trove and she leaves.
At the same time, Diethan tracks down two survivors of the mind flayer attack underground: a couple of adventurers named Yuri and Zuria. They relate that there were no Shuul or other humans around, no machines, just two mind flayers. They had other strange equipment, but not machines. They describe how their friend’s brain was extracted from the back of his skull during the attack. This friend had a sphere with four holes in it into which a mind flayer could deposit information with its tentacles. But they sold it to the Emerald Eye!
The survivors came upon the mind flayers in a cavern below Midtown and they were mutually surprised. The creatures were coming up from the depths: They were new to the area and had some of those horrid undead amalgams with them.
19th of Wind
Sir Feruch goes to the Emerald Eye today to buy the flayer communication sphere and a portable hole (which we want to use to transport our chaos storage cubes). None of us much want to go there and see our nemesis, Palkham Mosh, who tries to drive us out of business every chance he gets. After he brings the flayer communication sphere back to the house, Barbatos uses a polymorph self spell and accesses it. This is what he (in his horrid new guise) hears in his mind when he sticks his tentacles in.
“The pawns follow our orders to the letter. They follow their leashes well. The elder one stirs. We have chosen a bit of chattel to invest. Make sure you kill the dark elf named Shilukar so that our plans can proceed unmolested. Soon our destiny will be reached and even the stars will be ours.” The mission of the mind flayers that Yuri and Zuria killed was to find and kill Shilukar!
Sadly, Diethan and Barbatos maneuver Archinemus out of his suggestion helm and send a message to Shilukar, informing him we are hunting the flayers who want him dead and does he want to help. The response is, “So good to hear from you at last. I will assume your message is an assurance of safe passage and I will come to your abode this evening.”
Great Mother of all Machines! What a mistake! But there’s no telling Barbatos anything. He no sooner gets the dark elf’s response than he starts chilling the voveche.
That evening there’s a gentle rap on the door of Pythoness House. Yes indeed, it’s Shilukar. He greets us all and introduces himself to Feruch. I glower. “How’s life?” Diethan asks.
“Life has its ups and downs,” Shilukar says. “I was surprised to get your invitation.” (It wasn’t an invitation!) He knows that the mind flayers want him dead but claims he doesn’t know why they want him dead now. “Oh, did you get that from my friends Yuri and Zuria?” Apparently he has found some new pawns to do his dirty work for him.
Sure, he knows all about the Elder Brain and the plans to conquer the world and spread their power through the Empire and beyond. Evasive as ever, Shilukar turns aside our questions about his plans and wonders whether the illithids have sent assassins to get us as well.
That’s beside the point, and he caves to some degree. “I have in my possession a device that could cause the mind flayers a great deal of distress. I suspect that is why they have sought me out as a potential threat.” And he knows we have come into the possession of similar devices.
So what’s he going to do with his little “device?”
“I’m a peaceful sort,” he says. “Engaging in scuffles is not in my nature. In truth, I have what I have merely as insurance.” He lets his gaze linger on each of us, then smiles slyly. “I have the one thing that will kill an Elder Brain.”
