Second Ptolus Campaign Journal, #42
Still the 23rd of Year’s End
***Warning! Spoilers Here for The Night of Dissolution adventure! ***
Together with our dwarf friend Thogmun, the last of our Keepers of the Veil allies, we destroy Lilith’s Womb and collect any magical treasure we find. When we leave this place, it is no longer habitable for any straggling Forsaken cult members that may still be at large.
That evening, we spend some time reading The Book of Days Forsaken, a history book we found in the underground temple. It seems to have been written by Cynric, and it discusses the entire history of the Forsaken organization — including the recent days, when the soulshade Morund came from across the Whitewind Sea (Ren Tehoth) to found a Temple of Maleskari here. According to this journal, Morund said they sought to eliminate all clerics in Ptolus who could raise the dead. (I guess they’ve already put that plan in motion.)
However, the alliance between Morund and Cynric soured when the Forsaken learned that the Maleskari followers did not honor the undead side of the god’s portfolio but the shadowy side instead. Lucky for us, though, the journal reveals the location of the Maleskari temple: in an abandoned bell tower in the Temple District behind the temple of Iru Stellix, Goddess of the Nine Holy Stars. Finally, the text references a man named Dysirias Belloch, who might know even more.
Excerpts From The Book of Days Forsaken
The handwritten book, bound in what appears to be human flesh, is decorated with actual bones and teeth. Not quite a journal, it is an attempt to chronicle the events of the hideous group that calls itself the Forsaken. It appears to have been written at first by Shigmaa Urasta, and then, about two years ago, a new hand — perhaps that of Shigmaa Cynric — takes up the chronicling duties.
The beginning of the book talks about ancient history. It mentions “the dark lords that presaged the gods” rending the Veil between life and death, and allowing the spirits of the deceased to return as things not quite alive but no longer truly dead. It talks of the dawning of various gods of death, focusing primarily on Heiran and Nareis, the Sisters of Death.
Heiran, glorious is her name, sought to shelter the spirits of the dead from harm. Her sacred charges were more important than the spirits of the living, for they had crossed the Veil and saw the truth. They knew what the living did not. And what was the worst thing that could happen to the living: that they would pass through the Veil as well? The dead, however, were fragile, and needed Her.
Nareis, on the other hand, sought to liberate the living from the prison of life. She sought to teach the living the truth.
Today, both continue their divine work. It is only through their providence that we can reach the true potential we have set before us as our destiny.
The book also mentions other gods, but they are clearly minor compared to the Sisters of Death. (Among them is Maleskari, God of Shades, who appears to be a latecomer as deities go.)
The Forsaken, according to this book, formed about two thousand years ago, when creatures called the Wintersouled (some of the few remaining spirits that had come through that first tear in the Veil) came to the area around the Spire. The Forsaken served the Wintersouled as willing, even eager, slaves, worshipping the gods of death and darkness. More than a thousand years ago, empowered with an animated army of the dead that fell in the war against Ghul, the Wintersouled commanded the Forsaken to assist their undead servants to build the Dark Reliquary. Here, they were to await the coming Night of Dissolution, when all those living would die at last.
The inevitability of the final end will triumph at last upon that splendid night. The Winter of the World will consume it, and all shall die.
The leaders of the Forsaken were called “shigmaas,” which meant “to shepherd toward death” in an ancient, long-forgotten tongue. The shigmaas were living people who had touched death and returned to speak of it. Their bodies coursed with negative energy to the point where they were practically undead, even while still alive. Each time they died, their power grew stronger.
The Forsaken were divided into two groups: the Torens and the Licheloved. The Torens hated the living (to the point of self-loathing) and relished wanton murder and destruction in the name of death and undeath. The Licheloved were far more detached, interested in the esoterica of death and undeath. They rarely concerned themselves with the affairs of the living at all, and thus were not interested in killing or allying with other groups. The Licheloved wanted only to be left alone with their undead companions.
Not surprisingly, the suicide rate among both groups was very high.
Years after the Dark Reliquary’s creation, the Fallen demons — led by Raguel and Lilith — arrived in Ptolus and came to the Dark Reliquary, located in what was now the Necropolis. More through intimidation than anything else, the Fallen forged an alliance with the Forsaken and all but took over the place.
Still later, the Forsaken learned that there were living mortals who — while they did not revere death and the undead directly — worshipped the lords of chaos that would one day bring about the Night of Dissolution. Shigmaa Urasta, leader of the Forsaken at the time, pledged her allegiance with these chaos cultists. Eventually (only four years ago from today), the leader that united all the chaos cults, Wuntad, took the title “Shigmaa.”
Wuntad was slain soon thereafter even as he attempted a ritual utilizing the blood of a Natharl’nacna to bring about the Night of Dissolution. A number of attacks made against the Dark Reliquary at the same time by champions of gods of light and life wounded the Forsaken greatly. A powerful Forsaken necromancer named Shigmaa Surmoil died in one of these attacks.
And then, once the chaos cultists’ hope of bringing about the Night of Dissolution were dashed, more and more living soldiers came to lay siege to the Dark Reliquary. Shigmaa Urasta herself fell in the battles that followed, and her second-in-command, Cynric, took her place.
The hated ones, plump and fat with their life-force, thinking they understood what was true and what was holy, came to the Dark Reliquary with their hated weapons forged in burning light. But even with each stroke of their contempt-filled blades, we drew closer to victory. As they closed their fists, we slipped through their fingers. Our day, we knew, would come. Our victory was inevitable. Life, by its very definition, is finite and short. Death is eternal. Infinite.
Ironically, the Forsaken retreated from their sanctuary and occupied a secret place called Lilith’s Womb, originally used by the Fallen when they first came to Ptolus. Cynric used a potent Wintersouled magic item to bring Urasta back, but not as a living creature: as a terrible repository of negative energy.
The book also mentions a formidable vampire named Medre Allaconda, who belonged to both the Forsaken and another group, the Covenant of Blood. This cabal of vampires honors a pact forged long ago with the sahuagin of the Whitewind Sea, based upon an ancient artifact known as the Horn of Blood.
While in Lilith’s Womb, Cynric met a man named Morund, who was a creature called a soulshade. Morund represented a new fellowship of Maleskari worshippers that had just come into the city from across the Whitewind Sea in Ren Tehoth. Morund promised that his cult’s first goal was the elimination of all clerics in Ptolus who could raise the dead.
He was, dare I say it, half-undead. One foot in the glory of the grave, but the other still planted on the land of the living. He existed in the shadows between the two. I believe his power came from the Veil itself.
Morund promised an end to the city-dwellers’ ability to rip souls from the glory of death and drag them back to their wretched living existence. This had long been a dream of ours, and so I agreed.
Morund and Cynric formed an alliance, but it quickly soured. Using a spell, Cynric (or rather, one of his ghoul sorcerers) read the mind of a representative of Maleskari named Nishel. From him they learned that the Maleskari cult only planned on using the Forsaken. They were not interested in the glory of death, but only in the glory of Maleskari. They valued their deity as not a god of undeath, but as one of shadows.
The Forsaken imprisoned Nishel and planned to sacrifice him to Nareis. Cynric and his last remaining confidantes, Samael, Festaral, and Barrabas, struggled to get those Forsaken now working with the Maleskari cult (including a pair of night hags named Ulti and Ilti) back without alerting the cultists that the alliance was broken. They believe that the Maleskari temple lies in an unused and all-but-forgotten large bell tower in the Temple District, behind the temple of Iru Stellix, Goddess of the Nine Holy Stars. The text references a man named Dysirias Belloch who might know even more.
The Book of Days Forsakenends with this line:
The Wintersouled still sleep deep in their fortress, silent and unseen. Our victory is inevitable.
24rd of Yearsend
This morning we head over to the Temple of Gaen with the body of Nishel, the dead Maleskari cultist who refused to tell us what he knew in Lilith’s Womb’s prison (and was consequently slain by Diethan — on accident). We warn Melior, one of the high priests there, of the plot to kill all priests who can raise the dead, and we ask him to cast a speak with dead spell on the corpse.
“It is there, but it will soon be greater. All will worship the Lord of the Shades, or they will be put to the sword,” the dead cultist tells us. The Maleskari group’s most effective deterrent to invasion is “Tzebbeth (the Great Mastiff), the Howler in the Dark,” Nishel says. He adds that the members of his group know all the faithful by sight, so there’s no password to get into the temple. He claims that the next target of assassination is the High Father of the Lord of the Air. He says Kevris Killraven is bankrolling the temple. Oh no: Killraven and the Maleskari cultists on the one hand, and the Balacazars and the Covenant of Blood on the other.
Nishel doesn’t know who Dysirias Belloch is, but at that moment in strides Steron Vsool, champion of Gaen whose heart shines brightly through his armor. “I know Belloch,” says the paladin. “I’m surprised that he still lives, but he is a crafty old wizard. Long ago, I’ve been told, he was friends with Menon Balacazar. When they were young, the two of them were terrors in the streets of Ptolus, with all sorts of criminal and darker enterprises. It’s said that Belloch underwent a transformation to heighten his power and prolong his life, but it required him to drink magic.”
Steron agrees that Belloch would know something about the temple — he knows a little about everything, the paladin says — but he won’t help us for free. We ought to be able to find him in his home in the Rivergate District.
25th of Yearsend to 1st of Newyear
We spend a week recovering from old wounds and training in new skills. Tharn and Seanus decide to have a party on Newyear’s Day (they redecorated their apartment, much to Charnoth’s disdain). Locking up at the store later, we are set upon by figures dressed head to foot in black leather with dull iron masks. They look like shadows…
“You have angered Maleskari,” whispers one of them menacingly as he attacks me. Before we know what’s happening, we’re all surrounded. Creatures made of liquid shadow rise up out of the pool in Delver’s Square and join the fray. Hitting these foes is almost like fighting incorporeal creatures — but they have a material core to them, down deep.
Two of them gang up on me and lay me low, while Archinemus holds them off with a wand of light, and Krondar and Charnoth battle the liquid shadow creatures, and Calista wraps one of the assassins in a resilient sphere. After a frenetic battle in which all of us almost died at one point or another, our assailants all lay dead in the square. Maleskari can have them. Archinemus takes the bodies in the carriage and dumps them in the river.
2nd of Newyear
We reflect back on last evening’s battle. It seems that the soulshade creatures were not all the way incorporeal, but they were a little bit. We decided to take their leather/mask ensembles, in the event that we want to infiltrate their temple in disguise. Seanus and Charnoth arrive with terrible news: The apartment Seanus and Tharn share was broken into and trashed last night — and Tharn is gone. It looks like he was taken in a struggle.
There’s no time to lose… first we talk to that wizard, then we attack the Temple of Maleskari.
Session LXXXI – Still the 2nd of Newyear
After finding Tharn gone from his apartment and the place in a shambles, we’re immediately worried about Diethan and Barbatos. We race over to Barbatos’ place, and it’s the same story, We’re not sure where to look for Diethan, but he’s not at his favorite hangout, the Black Swan. Thank goodness, just as we’re starting to panic, Diethan walks into the place.
He tells us that after leaving Tharn and Seanus’ party, he ran into a beautiful dark-haired woman named Noralan Asta. She invited him out for drinks in Oldtown and the Nobles’ Quarter and they just now parted company. He recalls that she had a raven tattoo on her chest — did she perhaps keep him out of harm’s way? He does, after all, pay homage to Harredda, Mistress of Ravens. (She rescued him from a pack of Pale Dogs when he was but a child. He also dreamed of a raven-woman who saved him recently when he was being chased by an avatar of the Shuul.)
A loaded dwarf named Solth comes up to Diethan and tells him some people were asking for him — quiet, gruff humans. If they’d found him, he’d probably be wherever Tharn and Barbatos were taken by those Maleskari cultists.
We check Pythoness House, but Barbatos is not there. We decide to look more in the (later) morning, after Calista has rested and reclaimed her spells for the day. I stop by my dad’s house to wish him happy new year — and check on him. Thank Teun he’s all right. My apartment looks normal as well.
When we regroup later, Calista tries to scry Tharn, but something blocks her. However, she is able to make contact with Barbatos, who appears to be back home in bed. We head right over. Calista uses a spell to determine that Variath Telesari is the name of the one who knocked over a chair in Barbatos’ messed-up place. Apparently this is a soulshade elf. If we needed any further convincing that the Maleskari were behind this, we need doubt no longer.
Barbatos notices that some of his favorite bric-a-brac is missing. It seems the intruders just wanted to make this seem like a regular burglary. We leave Barbatos fussing over his losses and head out to find Dysirias Belloch, the friend of Menon Balacazar whom we’ve heard might know some of these cultists. Perhaps he’s even heard of the soulshade elf Variath Telesari. Archinemus has set aside some choice magical items to bribe him with.
We take the carriage up to the Rivergate District to the home of Belloch, which sits right against the city wall. The place doesn’t look well kept — there are weeds in the yard, and the front door knocker is half fallen-off. An old troll opens the door to our knock. He tries to tell us that Belloch is dead, but we don’t buy that one. We’re finally allowed in when Archinemus points out that we have magic items to offer in exchange for information.
The place is really musty and smells of dust and old men. It’s quite dimly lit. When our eyes adjust, we see the aged Dysirias Belloch seated in a chair. He holds a tube connected to a glass bottle on a stand. The bottle holds flashes of multicolored light, and little sparks emerge from the tube. “Why are you here?” he rasps. When he hears that we seek the Maleskari cultists, he takes a drag of his bottled arcane energy and eyes our offering of a couple suits of magical armor and a wand. He inhales deeply of them in a disturbing fashion and agrees to talk to us.
“They watch everything,” he says. “They are not just in the shadows, they are the shadows.” He explains that we will find the true master of the temple in the shadow of the city: in a sort of shadow dimension accessed via the temple location we were informed of (Temple District, behind the temple to Iru Stellix, Goddess of the Nine Holy Stars). The leader of the temple is a creature named Nostromac that keeps itself well hidden. He, like the others, came from outside the city.
“Restlare” is a word of power, he says, that will allow us to get into the temple (we’ve seen that word tattooed on the underarm of the Maleskari cultist we found in the Forsaken prison). “And you wouldn’t need that at all if you had the box of shadows.” Diethan recalls hearing of this box, as well as the Shadow of Ptolus dimension accessed via a shadowy tower called Kadmiel. He recalls that House Sadar was after the box of shadows, so either they or the Malkuth probably have it.
“But I wouldn’t go there,” Belloch says, adding that only Ren Sadar might know as much about the Shadow of Ptolus as he. He confirms that the Howler in the Darkness has come to guard the temple, and that daylight is its weakness. It’s a good thing we’re working for the temple of the Goddess of Light. The man’s constant inhalation of the arcane lights through the tube is becoming a bit unsettling, accompanied as it is by his horrid wheezing.
Shadows, he warns, feed on strength; they’ll sap you dry, let you lie there unable to move until you starve. And when you do, you become one of them. But there are also things that live in between: the soulshades. They exist only in a semisolid form, and only certain spells can affect them, such as light and pure magical force. “Since they have the shadowstaff, they’ll have at least one shadow demon at their beck and call as well. Those creatures incorporate the worst aspects of both.”
We wonder as to these cultists’ true goal. Is it more than just slaying the priests who can return people to life? “They want it all,” Belloch says. “They want to shift the entire city into its own shadow.”
And why would they steal our litorian friend? “Don’t forget, Maleskari is also a god of the undead and death. He loves nothing more than the sacrifice of the living. And they have been buying slaves.”
“How can you see so piercingly into shadow when others see just dimness?” asks Archinemus. The old man just laughs, a hacking, terrible chuckle. We thank him and take our leave.
We split off to work on different tacks. Calista and I head over to the Pale Tower to ask the Malkuth about the box of shadows. We meet with a woman named Glasia Tiaro, who is in charge of the items the Pale Tower keeps. (I’m pleased to see she recognizes me as one of the Hu-Charad!) She is interested to hear about the Maleskari news and confirms that the box of shadows is indeed a very evil artifact that is now in the hands of the Malkuth. “Fortunately, it’s now locked,” she said. “An elven sorcerer has the key* and we have the box.”
* Named Serai Lorenci.
Kadmiel, Glasia says, is a tower and one of the places where the Shadow of Ptolus overlaps the real city. The bell tower behind the temple of the Goddess of the Nine Holy Stars must be another. She tells us that we might find a material called “liquid light” of value in our fight. Like its opposite, liquid shadow, it is a natural substance: the leftovers of acts of great goodness. She says she’s heard that you can put it in a ceramic container and throw it like a grenade.
Meanwhile, Charnoth, Archinemus, and Diethan visit the Temple of Gaen, and the priest Melior offers a few scrolls of daylight as well as some vials of liquid light. “But be warned,” he says. “Liquid light has as its opposite liquid shadow, which is as dangerous and malevolent as liquid light is holy and benevolent.” Sadly, they learn that Steron Vsool, champion of Gaen, is out in the Dragonsbirth Mountains right now, hunting a dangerous red dragon priest of Father Claw, so he’s not available to lead our fight.
I stop in at the library and learn about shadows and greater shadows (more vicious and drain strength faster) as well as shadow mastiffs (houndlike shadow creatures that cause fear). In addition, there are shadow rats, shadow spiders, and shadow demons and shadow worms (also called tenebrean worms). Their one commonality is their ability to pop in and out of shadows. So it’s up to us to do whatever we can to chase the shadows away.
Before the night’s over, Calista and I meet with Shim and make sure that our skulk friend is okay — we were afraid the Maleskari cult might be after him too, considering that he was poking around about them on our behalf a while back. When we tell him what we’ve learned, and that Barbatos was not taken after all, he nods and says, “Ah, yes, the month of Vallis.” We don’t know what that means.
And the rest of the group leaves a message for Mand Scheben recounting the Maleskari threat to the city. After buying a good supply of potions of lesser restoration, we call it a night.
Tomorrow, we find Tharn!
