Second Ptolus Campaign Journal, #39
Still the 12th of Year’s End
As we explore the rest of the levels beneath the orphanage, we toss the room Karee shared with Nostravant. There we find a note that says, “Contact Ged Morrowlost regarding Lilith’s Womb.” We previously found a letter referring to Lilith’s Womb as a hangout of Forsaken. Does this imply that the Covenant of Blood is in league with them? They are undead…
Elsewhere, we find a note that says, “Ged. Watch. Linele.” But Linele no longer has the watch that harbors a demon — the vampire Hadrien Runihan has it. What does this Ged fellow have to do with all this? We recall that the demon-watch told the criminal half-orc Linech where to find raw shivvel on an island in the Bay of Ptolus and how to process it.
From reading Nostravant’s book on transforming dragons with blood and the notes in Karee’s chamber, it seems that Karee first heard about us through Hadrien Runihan, and wanted us to serve as the “blood of seven heroes” in the recipe for evolving a dragon into a blood-fueled nightmare. However, it seems clear that Hadrien did not sic her on us.
We cannot find Karee’s coffin, but we do locate a room with quite a few child-size coffins; we stake the rest of the creatures sleeping in them. Now those child-vampires ought to be taken care of. When we return above to the orphanage levels, we find the orphans and the matron gone! Diethan and I make a point of alerting the City Watch to the situation — we don’t know whether the abbess was evil or whether she just removed the children to a safer location, far away from both vampires and adventurers.
The 13th to 15th of Yearsend
We have amassed quite a bit of loot, so we can afford to pay the Temple of Asche to have Tharn’s eyes restored and to heal my life-force drain. We wonder what to do with the book about draconic blood transformations. Do we take it to House Dallimothan? Surely they would be concerned at the sacrilege of the blood-evolution rituals. But how do we just barge into a powerful noble house with this information when we don’t even know them?
The 16th of Yearsend
Today we learn that Diethan has met a guy who knows Teris Brunchart, the businessman who, according to the Shuul records we got from Doctor Feegus’ office, supplied the litorians of Charnoth’s tribe to the Shuul. One of them, Sallam, did not go to the Shuul, however, and we still want to find him — and punish the slave takers. We hear that this Teris’ business is matching up sellers and buyers, but it sure sounds like a lot of these “business” dealings are illicit. Diethan gets his Midtown address (right above the cliffs over the Docks) and learns that Teris spends a lot of time at the Docks.
We leave Tharn to complete his recuperation and Archinemus and Barbatos to pursue matters of their own and head over to Teris’ house. A strong smell of fish hangs in the air from the nearby Fish Market. When we arrive, the lady of the house meets us and shows us into the sitting room to wait for Teris. (She has to go wake him up.)
Teris is a heavy-set, balding man in his mid thirties. He comes down to meet us barefoot, unshaven, in his robe. We manage to bluff him into believing he had an appointment with us. When we tell him that we want to discuss some litorians he traded to the Shuul he looks uncomfortable and takes us up to his office. Reluctantly he admits that some Shuul had come to him and requested litorians. “I happened to know of an organization that had some litorians.” When pushed, he admits that this was the Ennin. “They’re a horrible bunch,” he says, and he seems to be telling the truth — they’re scary to him, but not necessarily distasteful. He claims that he has not dealt with the Ennin since then. Calista casts a read mind spell and can see that it’s a lie. But Teris hedges, hoping to get us to buy the information from him. He says the Ennin keep good records but that truthfully he does not know what happened to the last litorian — the Ennin still had him.
Ultimately this louse agrees to give us the info we need in exchange for our keeping quiet about his involvement. He warns us not to go marching into the Ennin’s headquarters asking a lot of questions, ”Cause they aren’t quiet and nice like me.” He gives us a location of a warehouse in the Docks and thinks to himself that the Ennin guards would just tear us apart. He worries that the Ennin would trace us back to him. To get a meeting with them, one normally sends a message and requests an appointment. A lot of them wear strange bone rings, he knows. “A lot of them aren’t normal folks,” he adds, “Strange ones, like I’ve never seen.” Teris says that the highest-ranking member of the Ennin that he ever met was a human woman named Poselle.
So things are going well till his wife comes in and offers us cookies. He gives her a coded message that there’s trouble, and a moment later we hear her leave the house. I run down the street after her but she makes it into a neighboring house. So we leave in our carriage with Teris and head to House Dallimothan. Apparently, Diethan has a plan.
“Now,” he says when we arrive at the noble estate of House Dragon, “we are satisfied with the information you’ve given us and we think it can help us find our litorian friend. But if you go back home and tell anyone, including your wife, about us or what you told us, our benefactors will put out a contract on your life.” Then he meaningfully brandishes a 3,000 gp letter of credit from House Dallimothan (part of our recent loot). Astounded that we worked for House Dragon (the rest of us are a little surprised by this as well), Teris promises profusely and convincingly that he would keep quiet and have no further dealings with the Ennin.
We return him home, where his wife and two thugs are waiting. But our man Teris signals madly to them and rushes indoors. We hope that’s the last we have to see of him — but we doubt it.
Next step is to plan how we go after the Ennin. We discuss full-out assaults (drafting allies from the Slave City and elsewhere) or invisibly reconnoitering the group’s warehouse, but neither of these seems like a quick path to Sallam. We talk of posing as customers seeking a litorian, and we talk of sending in one of us as a “slave,” but neither of these options wins us over either. So we decide instead to buy some divination magic to help us locate Sallam. We head over to the Temple of Asche and ask Mand about it. He suggests we try the Temples of Gaen or Lothian or even the priests of Locharit (goddess of written word) or Ynchabolos (god of numbers).
We also ask Mand about the Dark Market, thinking we might need to stake out the slavers’ area to see whether there’s a passage between the Ennin’s warehouse and the slave market. He says that to get to the Dark Market is difficult — they don’t let just anyone in. Off the Undercity Market, just past the Delver’s Guild office, is a place that hires out guides and porters, and so on. We must go there and give them a password (which changes but is circulated within the underworld). He gives us the name of a guy who serves as the gatekeeper; he knows everyone. If we don’t have somebody in the underworld backing us up, it’ll be hard to convince him to let us in. There might be other ways in, but that’s the main way, Mand says. He warns us that it’s a terrible place — are we sure we want to go there?
Some disguised dark elves are in town looking for Barbatos, Mand warns us as we bid him farewell. They’d be staying in the Warrens in the Refuge. What is that wizard up to now?
Off we go to the Temple of Gaen for our divination. We meet the priests Barit Calomar and Melior Kalen and tell our story. “The light of Gaen shines brightly, illuminating those things which followers of the darkness would rather keep hidden,” Melior says. “This seems like a just and appropriate use of the power that Gaen bestows on us.” We describe Sallam to him and he leaves for his sanctum to prepare the spell.
He comes back with sad news. “I’m afraid the litorian you seek is no longer with us. His body can be found in the Midden Heaps in the Guildsman District.” We say good-bye and head off to the middens. Although some members of our group don’t seem surprised by this turn of events, I never expected it. I was already looking forward to seeing Sallam reunited with his people. And now that will never happen.
When we arrive at the Midden Heaps, we are greeted by a scruffy-looking halfling and an even scruffier-looking dog. Before either one can give us a hard time, we pay the halfling a few gold and he lets us in. We’re warned that there could be wild dogs, dangerous oozes, or scavengers living near the cesspool. “If you see any puddles, avoid ’em,” says the short caretaker. “And get out of here before nightfall.”
We all drink antitoxins and head in. Donning our breather masks and goggles against the rotting, acrid stench, we move toward the northeast end of the central cesspool, where the priest of Gaen told us to look. The piles of wreckage and mounds of trash are as tall as a house, and the passages between them are quite mazelike. Reaching the cesspool, we see a rat running on two legs through a door in a pile of trash.
Using a flight spell, Calista scopes out the path from above. Our path takes us right toward the mound where we saw the ratman. An initial look around shows us no sign of any bodies. So we call for the resident creatuers to come out and talk to us. Maybe they know where the body is. When we offer a reward, a filth-covered goblin emerges. Slime and oil clings to his awful flesh; he’s not wearing anything else. Just grime. He seems willing to tell us the body’s location in exchange for gold coins. Then he throws out a litorian skull, claiming that’s all his people know about. We can’t know for sure whether this is Sallam’s skull — but perhaps Calista can tell with her spells.
We decide to get out fast, before the goblins’ pet monster in the cesspool awakens. After cleaning up, we gather at the Mane to celebrate the life of Sallam with stories and drink. I probably drink too much, on account of what a crappy day it’s been.
The 17th of Yearsend
The next morning, Calista’s loresight spells tells us that this skull is — was — indeed Sallam. Poor Sallam. Calista can tell that he died of exhaustion; he was worked to death. His last goal while alive was to achieve freedom. He’s been dead three months.
I feel terrible. Sallam was the strongest of all the captured litorians, in the prime of his life. Why weren’t we able to save him?
We head with his remains back to the Temple of Gaen. We want to speak with the spirit of Sallam to find out more about his enslavement and to ask him if he wants to be resurrected. The priests agree to help and we follow them into the sanctuary. In a magical ritual, we hear the voice of the skull begin to speak, as though it were speaking through a long passage. Here’s what we learn: Sallam was the slave of someone named Sintrik. Sintrik lives in the Guildsman District, but Sallam worked turning the Great Wheel beneath the Foundry. (There’s something to do with drilling going on down there too, we have heard.) Sintrik used to speak of many enemies, but he really feared the Slayers of Feegus. The Ennin kept him in a cage in a cave near saltwater. And yes, he would want to come back long enough to squeeze the life out of Sintrik. So right there in the sacred sanctuary of Gaen, Charnoth slices his hand with his weapon and swears a blood oath to do all he can to bring back his friend and get vengeance on Sintrik and all who enslaved the tribe of Malethar.
Our loot now amounts to 11,230 gp (plus a 3,000 gp letter of credit from House Dallimothan). But to resurrect Sallam will cost us 30,000 gp. When Charnoth asks if he can perform a warrior’s service to the temple to help defray these costs, the priests seem interested. It seems that a hidden temple of Maleskari — evil god of darkness and death — has begun operation in the Temple District. If we were to eliminate this new temple, they would absorb the costs of the resurrection themselves. The priests warn that we may face dangerous magic, and that the new temple may be linked to other forces of darkness. They explain that the Forsaken pay homage to this god of shades. The rumors about this hidden temple also suggest that the group is behind some local abductions as well, stealing people to use as sacrifices in their dark rites.
Without hesitation, we agree to take on this task. For Sallam.
The 18th of Yearsend
This morning, the Legacy pops over into the main area of our shop from the vault. “I am tired of that place. I have been thinking — I wish to go out with you.” But he requires another seat of consciousness so he doesn’t have to stay in the book all the time. He asks us to do a magical ritual to allow him to accompany us anywhere we go in spirit form. When we warn him that sometimes we get into some pretty dangerous spots, he says merely, “I am beyond danger.”
To grant him his new form, we conduct a ritual that evening to translate him into a companion spirit that can travel with us. We remind each other that we are to call him “Linus” in public to stave off suspicion of who we’ve got with us. Once the ritual is completed, we feel not only the presence of the Legacy around us but also a stronger bond with each other. He shows us how he is able to contribute to the party’s efforts in his new spirit form — he can grant us a pool of healing power as well as store a spell that each of us can cast daily. And now that his spirit form is with us all the time, the Legacy doesn’t mind if we put his book back in the vault for safekeeping.
The 19th of Yearsend
Diethan and I visit the neighborhoods where people have gone missing of late, since we understand that mysterious disappearances could point to increased Maleskari/Forsaken activity (getting sacrificial victims). The Watch reports increased slaver activity over recent years targeting mostly outsiders, not locals, but no increase in local disappearances. Strange. They tell us about Mirialam Tedesta, a mage who lives in Oldtown on Vock Row (a.k.a. Dweomer Street) and seems to keep tabs on the comings and goings of mages and priests.
Archinemus and Calista learn that Maleskari is the god of shades. His domains include not only literal shadows but also undead ones. He was once a mortal but ascended to godhood in a ritual that involved a thousand people committing suicide all at the same time; they are called the Thousand Martyrs of Maleskari. In fact, many of his rituals involve suicide, so his cult often attracts only the really fanatic. One of his rituals transforms living creatures into things called soulshades — creatures that are neither entirely alive nor entirely dead.
They also learn that last night the High Priestess of the Temple of Teun was killed! How horrible! The only details they learn are that someone broke through from underneath the temple and attacked. I feel bad that I didn’t go to church more often.
The 20th of Yearsend
This morning, Archinemus and I make our way to the Temple of Teun but it’s all cordoned off and guarded by Shuul Knights. They don’t let us in, claiming an investigation is under way. “Rest assured that the temple hierarchy is running the investigation,” they say, adding that the Shuul have been called in to “help.” As we leave, we wonder why the temple guards are not in evidence. Just the Shuul. Hmmm.
Meanwhile, Barbatos seeks more information about Maleskari at the Celestial Conclave, a temple devoted to religion itself and stocked with information on all the pantheons. He learns that Maleskari has no active temples in Ptolus now. The god of shades appears as a skeletal figure in chainmail armor. He habitually demands blood sacrifices of his followers. A priestess of the Conclave explains that the soulshade ritual transforms a living and willing follower of Maleskari to a new form that grants him or her powers in the darkness. In the course of his visit to the temple, Barbatos manages to convince the priestess that he is “one of the brethren” of Maleskari and gets the name of a recent visitor inquiring about the temple: Todius Bedenster. (Barbatos gives his own name as Palkam Mosh of the Emerald Eye.)
Archinemus and I visit the Guild Library to learn what lies beneath the temple of Teun. However, it’s unexplored. The Temple of Teun has no crypts beneath it.
Finally, Diethan and Calista go off to see the gossipy Mirialam Tedesta on Vock Row in Oldtown. The first thing they discover is that she has many, many cats. All black ones. She brings out tea and seems willing to trade her knowledge of Maleskari worshipers for information from my friends. As soon as they flash their Castle Shard friendship rings, she seems even more amiable. “Oh, well, if you’re friends of Lady Rill…”
One thing she knows is that the members of the Maleskari cult have money. “From what I hear, they don’t kidnap their victims, they buy them,” she says. The cult members are new to the city, but she doesn’t know where they come from or why they picked here. “But I do know that they’re trying to gain more followers by attempting to recruit the members of the former chaos cults.”
She suggests that we contact a man named Bergathor the Cinderpriest. He’s very dangerous, a former priest of chaos who has taken up worship of Arachthon, Dweller in the Caverns of Cinder. “I have heard that the temple of Maleskari has approached the Cinderpriest and asked him to join with them.” A less dangerous option might be to get in touch with the remaining members of the Cult of the Tolling Bell. They’ve also been approached to join the Maleskari group, although their numbers are few. They’re located in an old house on the north end of the Temple District and probably are likely to say yes to the offer.
Mirialam goes on to say that a former chaos cult called the Crimson Coil (led by someone named Zart Skoyter) was responsible for the attack on the Temple of Teun. She thinks the Plagueborn are gone now. (Diethan had thought it would be interesting to infiltrate the Maleskari cult by posing as the last remnants of the Plagueborn. Yuck.)
The cat-lady warns them that the cultists have brought into the world the Howler in the Dark: Tzebbeth, the Great Mastiff. Such a thing can only be accomplished by someone who wields the shadowstaff. (Lord Renn Sadar had it before he died back on the Day of No Magic a few years ago.) So it seems this Maleskari cult shows up out of nowhere and they have lots of money and powerful magic right off the bat. Hmm….
When they get back to share this info with the rest of us, Barbatos is surprised to hear Zart Skoyter’s name mentioned. Zart is the fellow who came to Barbatos and Diethan (as two of the heroes who busted up the Shuul) and asked for advice about starting his own chaos cult. Our friendly neighborhood wizard says they instructed him to take it slowly, make a plan, and not go off half-cocked. (Only later do I learn that this was not entirely accurate.) But, Diethan’s and Barbatos’ advice aside, Zart was in no shape to assassinate the high priestess of a major temple — unless he had help. Help from Maleskari’s cult.
Barbatos remembers that House Sadar really came into its own after a mysterious figure gave Renn Sadar the shadowstaff. No one knows what happened to it after Lord Renn died in the crash of a fleet of magical flying craft that went to fight a barbarian horde, but he was unable to be resurrected and no one knows why. The powerful staff might not be in the hands of House Sadar anymore. But on the other hand, it might — and House Sadar could be funding the Maleskari cult’s efforts.
That night, Diethan has a terrible dream of a rotund middle-aged woman surrounded by weird clockwork mechanisms floating in the air around her. She is stomping through the streets of Ptolus chasing him, and is about to get him when a beautiful woman with dark hair comes floating in, surrounded by ravens. She stops the large woman from chasing him, then he awakes.
The 21st of Yearsend
Today, we go off again on separate missions. Archinemus, Calista, and I go looking for the old house of the Tolling Bell cult. We find the place and sneak up invisibly to the front door. With clairvoyance, Calista sees that it’s a real mess, with junk and food everywhere. No people inside.
We approach past a fat drunk-looking guy named Panner and walk through the front door. Inside, Archinemus sees another fat man coming up through a trap door in the floor. “Todias, is that you?” he calls out, hearing us enter. Aha, two birds with one stone! While the fat guy busies himself in the kitchen, Archinemus goes downstairs and encounters an old man standing near a cistern. Without warning, giant green tentacles erupt from the well, surprising both Archinemus and the old man. The tentacles manage to grapple the sibeccai. At the same time, Panner comes in the door upstairs and says, “Reeth, what’s going on around here?” But Calista is already down the stairs, and I subdue the two guys upstairs. After just managing to keep Archinemus from being dragged into the cistern, we chop off a tentacle and send the creature reeling back down into its well. After an unfortunate tripping incident on the stairs, we capture the old man and Panner.
Meanwhile, Barbatos and Diethan approach the Temple of Teun disguised as Shuul. Claiming to have information helpful to the investigation, they walk in and see a scorched hole in the sanctuary where supposedly the invaders got in. Below it looks like an old worked passage. Someone clearly blasted through from below. When confronted by a Shuul special investigator, Diethan bluffs his way through by pretending to also be a Shuul special investigator assigned to infiltrate the chaos cults. When he claims to have made contact with new assailants, the real investigator — named Roland Yager — says, all right, then let’s go share this information with Savane. Yikes, the head of the Shuul!
Diethan manages to learn that the blast was created by a one-time-use chaositech device with matter-weakening properties. Then they arrive at the office where Savane is working. A raven sits on a perch behind him — Kevris Killraven’s spy? Diethan introduces himself as Sercil Larazain and tries to pins the attack on the Crimson Coil. But before they can get any further, Savane declares, “I’ve never seen these men before in my life” and attempts to draw his weapon. Then our friends come clean; “Your security here sucks,” Diethan tells him and tries to explain that he’s been working against the chaos cults. “Oh, I know exactly who you are,” Savane says. “Take them both!”
But somehow the silver-tongued urban ranger manages to convince Savane to let him talk. Diethan says that Zart Skoyter is the Crimson Coil’s “leader” in name only and explains that the Maleskari cult is the funding and power behind it. It seems that Savane never believed that Zart was the assassination effort’s real leader, either. Barbatos claims that they can infiltrate the chaos cults as the Shuul cannot. And Diethan admits that he came here today mostly because of his dream. After he describes it for the Shuul leader, Savane is silent. Then he says, “Last night I had a dream that I was chasing a villain through the streets of Ptolus, but I was prevented from catching him by a woman covered in ravens.”
In the end, Savane agrees not to interfere with any actions we take with the cult of Maleskari, at least for the remainder of this year. “I will contact you in the new year,” he says. As a show of good faith, my friends leave their stolen Shuul clothing and supplies and depart.
