Session 06: The Missing Pages

Game Date: August 2, 2008
In-Game Date: Wainsday, Grimander 12, mid-morning -- night.

The party is trudging back to the Royal Temple when Rowan gets an idea. “Hey, do you think Brovann would let us cast speak with dead on the noble Colwyn was supposed to have murdered?”
Even though the party knew Colwyn was framed, and now have evidence to prove it, this course of action might provide them with a few more pieces of the puzzle.
The party finds Brovann and informs him that they have proof that Colwyn was framed, and that the Jeredrakes are behind it. Brovann agrees to come with them to the home of the bor-Kennets, and to ask Lady Aseara, Meder’s sister, if they can speak with Meder’s corpse to try and find her brother’s killer.
She gives her consent, and Lumi finds herself casting speak with dead for the second time that morning. She casts it, but demands that she be bought candy later on. The corpse gives some answers, but also raises more questions. They find that the person who murdered him was not Colwyn. On a hunch, they ask the corpse what it knows about Jeredrakes. The corpse replies that the word means Dragonlord in an ancient tongue. The corpse tells them that the argument the servants heard was actually because there was another buyer interested in the book, and Meder was refusing to divulge the buyer’s identity. The corpse, however, has no problem telling the party who the buyer was: an agent of the Vaniri Empire.
Armed with that disturbing piece of information, they drop Kitala, who still seems either angry or depressed or both, off at the temple. Rowan mentions to Brovann that the shady arms dealer in the warehouse district seemed to know something about the Jeredrakes. Brovann tells them he’ll go and drag the shopkeeper in for some questioning. The party offers to help, but Brovann says they’d be interfering in City Watch business. He tells them it would do them no GOOD to be IN THE AREA around 4:00 when he makes the bust. With a smirk, he heads off to attend to filling out reports.
The party, meanwhile, has some time to kill, so they decide to pay a call on the Baroness Tarmikos. They arrive in time for lunch, and the baroness and her consort tell the party that they have found things out about their quarry, Colwyn Daystar, but it’s unfortunately nothing they don’t already know. On the plus side, lunch is very good, and afterwards Rowan asks if the baroness has a way to communicate with Kartharine. The baroness remembers she has an old mirror in her basement that can probably do the trick. She has it brought up, and speaks the incantations necessary to call up Kartharine back in Brindinsford. Kartharine is pleased that they have the book, but is very concerned that the pages may be in the hands of some enemy. She tells the party to keep looking, but if another week goes by with nothing to show, that they should just head back to Brindinsford with what they have. She also says it is imperative that they book be shown to as few people as possible, if it must be shown at all. (Brovann mentioned that city officials may want to see the book as evidence in the now-reopened case of Meder’s murder.)
After departing from House Tarmikos, Althea hears a strange small voice in her head. She turns her head, startled, to find Bartleby staring at her from his perch on her shoulder. It turns out that Bartleby (and all pseudodragons) can communicate telepathically, but Bartleby was playing dumb because he wasn’t sure he could trust them. But now that he saw them talking to Kartharine, he knows they’re on the level. He tells them that he has a few of his master’s effects (and a lot of his master’s money) in a bag that he secreted on a rooftop nearby his master’s apartment. Bartleby is fairly certain that the bag doesn’t contain any missing pages, but can’t be sure.
The party goes to the building in question: a two-story building belonging to the city sanitation. Bartleby flies up to the roof and finds to his dismay that the bag is missing. The party breaks into the building and makes their way up to the roof. Rowan and Aiden spot a few signs that some creatures were up here in the last 24 hours. Rowan casts a tracking spell that allows her to read the nearly non-existent tracks as easily as a blazed trail.
This trail, however, leads down into the city’s sewers. Following the trail through the dank tunnels beneath the city, they come across the partially submerged corpse of a gnoll. Up ahead, a large, low domed chamber opens up. This, apparently, was the living space of a band of gnolls. Until something attacked and slaughtered them, anyway. And very recently, too, from the look of things. Rowan’s trail ends here. The strange thing that she notices is that the campsite is large, probably home to over 50 gnolls, maybe more. But there are scarcely a dozen bodies strewn around the chamber. As she passes by the body of the chief gnoll, his eyes flicker open and he attacks her with a mindless savagery. Rowan, Caspian and Lumi quickly dispatch the already grievously wounded gnoll, but as it dies, it growls something about snakes.
Rowan discovers a hole in the wall near the chief’s body. A blood trail leads down the hole; bodies were definitely dragged though the hole. Since the bag isn’t among the debris of the camp, it seems a third party now has the bag. Lumi can fit down the hole easily enough, but the others have to squeeze though until it opens up some 20 feet beyond. The larger tunnel slants downward at a sharp angle, but at least the trail is easy to follow. The tunnel ends, and before the party is a chasm some 25 feet across. Down, far below the range of their lights, the sound of rushing water can be heard. Across the chasm is a fair-sized ledge, and the entrance to another tunnel. Lying on the ledge is a bridge of sturdy wooden planks that can be laid across the chasm to form a bridge. Caspian volunteers to try and jump the chasm. He shrugs out of his armor, and the party casts what spells they have to increase his speed to give him a better running start.
He takes a run-up and leaps into the air, sailing across the chasm, clearing it by an almost miraculous margin. He actually lands a few feet inside the tunnel beyond the ledge. Moving the bridge into position, the party continues. They reach a large-ish chamber with the bodies of a few gnolls that have been strangely crushed and mangled. One to two dozen weapons lie scattered around the floor of the cave.
As the adventurers make their way across the broken floor of the cave to the tunnel on the other side, many of the weapons lying on the ground fly into the air and attack the party. In the dim light, they can just make out the black tentacles that hold the weapons that come swinging at them. Where the tentacles meet, a black, misshapen head like an octopus’ emerges from its hiding place. Tentacles without weapons bash into the party as well, wrapping around them and trying to crush the life out of them. Althea goes invisible, but the thing is sensitive enough to vibrations that it can still attack her with impunity. The bard goes down after being knocked senseless, still invisible.
Caspian, who’d been seized and squished, teleports a few feet away to get out of the grasp of the tentacle wrapped around him, then charges the thing’s head, dodging and jumping tentacles as he goes. He delivers a massive blow to its head, which along with Aiden’s spells and Rowan’s blades are enough to bring it down.
Gasping, the party heals themselves, and Lumi revives Althea once she becomes visible again. Collecting the weapons the creature held, they find that quite a few of them were faintly magical. One is an extremely valuable short sword. Lumi casts her old shortsword aside and yells “I call it!”
From here the tunnels continue down, but branch off into a maze of twisting and branching routes. Rowan can barely make out the blood trail now, and finally is forced to guess at a fork in the path. Her guess leads them into a large chamber. There is a stretch of rocky ground before them, and beyond this a fast-moving river of black water seething across the chamber. The river stretches a good 70 feet across. There are rope lines anchored into the stones of the floor that stretch across the river at about chest height. On the far bank of the river, pulled partway up out of the water, a raft is tethered to the ropes, enabling people to pull themselves hand-over-hand across the raging waters.
Just as the party considers climbing across the water on the ropes without the raft, Bartleby asks for a line of rope. Taking one end in his mouth, he flies across the river and lands on the raft, anchoring himself to it as best as his small clawed hands will allow. The adventurers pull the raft across the river to their side and then pull themselves back to the opposite shore.
Before them are two doorway, one relatively unmarked and leading down, the other carved into the gaping maw of a snake’s head. Bartleby volunteers to investigate the tunnel going down, and reports back a few minutes later that it’s empty save for a few storerooms with nothing interesting in them, and a closed door. He saw a snake slithering along the ground, but as far as he knows, the snake didn’t spot him.
The party, feelings of foreboding in their hearts, creeps through the carved doorway. Well, considering their light source probably gives them away, and half of them are wearing heavy armor, they can’t creep all that well.
At any rate, creeping as best they can under the circumstances, they find themselves in a large natural cavern. Ahead of them, carved into the solid rock, is an ancient temple. Steps lead up to an entranceway that is also carved in the shape of an open-mouthed snake, only much larger. The party goes cautiously into the temple, their eyes peeled. They pass through a huge hall flanked with spiraling columns (also carved like snakes. There seems to be a snake motif here.), into a circular chamber with a deep, seemingly bottomless round hole in the center of it. On the far side of the chamber, matching curved ramps move up to a platform and altar that overlook the chamber, and the hall beyond. Behind the platform is a huge statue of a snake-man that stretches almost all the way to the 70 foot ceiling. This is a temple to Mershullk, the evil snake-god of the Yuan-ti. As they turn to leave, a dry, raspy voice calls to them and asks them why they have intruded on the domain of the Yuan-ti.
A figure, colored to perfectly blend in with the marbled patterns of the walls, glides forward and rests his clawed hands on the altar above them. The party honestly responds that they just want the bag the gnolls stole, and that’s all. Although they can’t see any other creatures in the chamber, the flesh on everyone’s neck seems to be trying to crawl around to the other side of their bodies. No one doubts that they’re being watched by multiple malevolent eyes.
Suddenly Althea takes out her lute and begins strumming a strange but low, hypnotic tune. It seems to fascinate the creature above them. In a lilted voice that blends with her music, Althea tells the creature that it would be best if the noble and powerful Yuan-ti gave them the bag so it’s contents would trouble them no more, and then she and her friends could return to the surface, and it would work out well for everyone.
Amazingly, the creature agrees, and hisses some words that no one in the party understands. Moments later, two creatures with the bodies of men but the heads of snakes bring two nearly identical bags. Bartleby nudges Althea, and the party takes the bag that Bartleby identified. They slowly and carefully back away, bowing low to the creature behind the altar, who still is swaying his head in time to Althea’s hypnotic tune.
One they are out of earshot, they realize they have about a minute before the effects of Althea’s music wear off and all hell breaks loose. They bolt back through the cavern and haul ass across the river on the raft, slicing the guiding ropes when they reach the other side. Freed from it’s anchoring ropes, the raft quickly disappears into the darkness down the underground river. Then the party runs on. Fortunately Rowan’s Ranger senses are working overtime, and they navigate back through the labyrinthine tunnels quickly, only getting turned around once. Even so, they can head sounds of pursuit as they reach the chasm. Racing across, they pause long enough to heave the bridge into the chasm, and dash back up into the sewers.
They have just enough time to make it to the warehouse district before 4:00, so the party moves through the city at a jog, their odor helping to clear a path for them in places. They arrive at the shop before Brovann, and stall for time by pestering Grulluth, the tiefling who runs it. Finally Brovann appears, ducking his massive head under the doorframe, and the party heads out of the shop. Caspian turns invisible and tries to sneak back in, but something in the doorway negates his invisibility, and he sheepishly heads back outside. Outside the shop, the party makes some small talk with the five guards that accompanied Brovann. Inside, the conversation grows a bit louder in volume, making it easier on the party to eavesdrop.
Grulluth makes a few barbed comments about Brovann’s past, and Brovann tells him that he can do things here, or down at the station. The tiefling sighs heavily, then says, “All right, you win. Let me just close up here and I’ll come with you.”
Althea, curious, casts detect thoughts on Grulluth as Brovann turns to leave with a grunt. Althea gasps at the thoughts flitting across the surface of the tiefling’s mind. She shouts a warning to Brovann, but she’s a second too late, and Brovann is a second too slow at figuring out where the danger is coming from.
Grulluth’s spell hits Brovann square in the face, and the Minotaur doubles over, braying in agony as his flesh erupts in blisters and boils, and his eyes go red and begin to drip blood. He lays in the doorway, partially blocking it, spasming uncontrollably with pain.
Aiden shoots an acid arrow into Grulluth, who howls in pain himself. Pulling a scroll out of his cloak, he reads a spell that seems to fill the air with power. There is a muffled bang, and three towering creatures appear in the alley outside the store. They have faces like toads, but stand erect on two legs, and are over ten feet tall. Their arms are massive and hang almost to the creatures’ knees. At the end of each forearm, two massive bone claws stick out from their arms. Instead of attacking at first, they surprise the adventurers by casting spells! One of them tries to freeze Caspian, but he shrugs off the spell’s effect. Rowan is not so lucky, and is held helpless in place. The third slams his hand onto the ground, and a wave of chaotic energy surges out from him. Three of the guards are knocked off their feet and very nearly killed outright, and several of the party take damage as well. Rowan shakes off the effect of the paralysis and heads into the shop to aid Aiden in restraining the tiefling, who is trying to escape. Lumi casts hold person on Grullth, freezing him in place before he can flee. Aiden, not knowing how long Grulluth can be held, calls for back-up, trying to knock the tiefling out without killing him. Rowan comes to his aid; she slaps Grulluth across the temple with the flat of her longsword, knocking him unconscious. Nialia has backed into the shop and is singing her haunting melody, which throws off the hulking brutes by enough of a margin that Caspian, Lumi and Rowan (who ran back outside after dealing with the tiefling) can evade many of the blows that would otherwise have really, really hurt. The two guards who survived the creatures’ initial attack are not so lucky. Claws rip apart one guard, then cuts another one nearly in half. It takes a while, but finally the party manages to bring down first one, then another, and finally the last one succumbs to it’s multiple wounds and pops back out of existence.
They help Brovann to his feet while Lumi franticly stabilizes the three guards who hadn’t been ripped open. She manages to save them, much to the appreciation of a badly shaken Brovann. Unfortunately, even though they paralyzed Grulluth without killing him, there was still an acid arrow in his side, dissolving his insides. He is quite dead when they finally try to bring him around.
For any other group, this would be a serious impediment to the interrogation process, but not to Lumienne “The Corpse Whisperer” Tilok! The gnome cleric sighs as she casts speak with dead for the third time in a day. While the corpse of Grulluth doesn’t know where Colwyn Daystar is, or who the leader of the Jeredrakes is, or if they work for the Vaniri (the corpse answers that they work for whoever pays them), they do learn that the Jeredrakes can be found in the brown house by the centaur fountain in the old town area.
The party notifies the nearest watch house to send aid to Brovann, who remains behind at Grulluth’s store. Then they report to the office of the High Sherrif of Fallo as Brovann asked them to. The High Sheriff is a kind but stern man, as focused as he is charismatic. He has the party dictate their findings under the city to several clerks.
Finally, as the sun sets, the weary party heads to their hotel and eats a hearty dinner. Going up to Rowan’s room, they finally have a chance to pull out Colwyn’s bag they got from the Yuan-ti! In it is a large sum of money and jewels, and a ring of sustenance. However, there is a second ring that Bartleby squeaks in delight to see.
It turns out the ring is actually a ring gate. When the command word is spoken, the ring enlarges to a diameter of about 18 inches. The other ring is set in a storeroom of Colwyn’s which he magically hid somewhere. With baited breath the party sends Bartelby through to see what’s in the storeroom. He tosses out some clothes, a few trinkets, but that’s it. He pokes his head back through the hole and speaks to everyone.
“Sorry, guys, but there’s nothing else in there.”
Everyone’s face falls. Back to square one…
“Except these torn pages!” yells the Pseudodragon’s voice in their heads. He pops all the way out of the ring gate, holding the missing pages in his claws and grinning like only a dragon can. The pages are all there. Finally, their job is done!
There’s a knock at the door. The party has a message that was delivered to them. Curious and wary, Rowan opens the note and reads it. The note says that the author of the note has a certain priestess in his possession, and wishes to make an exchange: the book for the priestess. If the party agrees, they are to hang a lantern outside the window of any one of their rooms, and more instructions will follow.
The note is simply signed “J”, and underneath is the all-too familiar seal of the Jeredrakes…