User:Lhynard/Projects/Imago Deorum/Campaign outline/Summary 7

Dates
Flamerule 25 – ???, 1372 DR

Summary
Leokas arrives in the basement warehouse, but there is no sign of Belvin. He discovers several scratches in the wooden floor, which he is convinced were caused by someone very heavy and wearing metal boots. He also finds a slip of paper having fallen behind the desk in the room. It is a receipt of sale of an adamantine portal frame and eight Galormansko's sequencer apparatus to Samber from The Interlink Consortium of Bral. The logo for the Interlink Consortium is the same set of interlocking rings found on Walker's crates and the metal fragment Szordrin carries. The others arrive soon after on the portal. They are excited to see the receipt, but they worry about where Belvin might have gone. Szordrin remains to examine the grandfather clock in the room, Nargroth, Jayce, and Oma visit the local bars to learn what they can, and the rest head to the docks. Jayce, Oma, and Nargroth learn that they are in Shilku. No one had heard of anyone named Samber, but the warehouse was rented out to a man named "Rembas". Also, four men in full plate armor and visored helmets had been spotted entering the warehouse the night before. Leokas found clear footprints of metal boots outside and the group follow them to the docks, where they are surprised to find The Daisy, Belvin, Ombert, and Loreene. Belvin claims to have been waiting for them for several hours. They ask around and learn that there was only a single other ship in the small port that day, and it was piloted by a man in a suit of armor! It left only a few hours ago. Szordrin used his magic to analyze the portal and the grandfather clock. He finds that the clock sets a time delay on when someone arrives at the other end of the portal. This was why the others arrived an hour after Belvin. They all meet together again, and Belvin shares how he thinks he was confronted by Samber himself. They return to Ombert and Jayce eventually (with bardic magic) convinces him to have The Daisy pursue the other vessel. Reaching shore on a rowboat, they explore the land. In the falling snow and wind, they find a house. Within, they meet a man, named Nikol Mennas, and woman with green hair and matching tattoos. Nikol tells them that they are on an island and he offers suggestions on where to find shelter. They also learn that it does not usually snow on the island, but it happens every once in a while throughout the year and usually melts by the next day. The community of islanders seems to be self-governing, yet they serve a being they call "the Maker". Meanwhile, Belvin finds a massive underwater cave. After swimming around its circumference, he exits and follows a shore until he comes across the wrecked Daisy and joins again with the others. The party and the crew of The Daisy find shelter in a cave barn that Nikol had recommended, where they spend the night. When the sun rises the next day, the snow already begins to melt. A few of them visit several of the homes on the steeply sloped island and meet more of the islanders. Each home seems to house individuals who share the same unnatural hair color and tattoos, which they claim are not tattoos at all. The islanders all have an accent similar to Jayce's. While they appear different ages, each one appears in perfect health and is very attractive. They claim to have no parents but rather to have been made by the Maker. The people are not stupid, yet they seem oblivious to certain concepts, such as buying and selling, birth, or even death. One of the elders of the settlement agrees to call a community meeting to discuss their plight. Perhaps most interesting of all, they learn that most of the inhabitants are miners, and they mine omlar gems, which are supposed to only be found in the Omlarandin Mountains. They are told that the mine is off-limits. Leokas summits the top of hill and gets a sense for the small size of the island and spots another bay on the north size. Forest seems to separate the small settlement on the south side from the rest of the island. Leokas and Szordrin explore the mine at the top of the hill, with the latter picking the lock at the gate to get in. They do not go too far back before they discover that the crystalline stalagmites seem to be made of omlar. The community meeting is called, and all of the islanders gather in the meeting hall, as do the sailors and the adventurers. The two leaders of the islanders, Grimno and Carthar, introduce the party and explain their plight. It is discussed how the community might assist them in building a new mast and freeing The Daisy from the sandbar. It is revealed that the Maker has been unresponsive ever since an earthquake a few days ago and that they have a "problem" that needs to be solved, which was why the mine is closed. The adventurers agree to investigate the problem in exchange for help freeing their vessel. Szordrin learns from one of the islanders that no one on the island is any older than seven-years-old. They claim that the Maker occasionally orders them to build a new house, and the next morning a new islander lives there. Grimno explains to them that the "problem" is that the day after the earthquake, two of their miners never returned. They were later found "asleep" and not breathing. Grimno hopes that the adventures can solve the problem, since the Maker has not been answering. Ilthian, the "daughter" of Carthar, who seems to have taken an interest in Hakam, offers to guide them to the fallen miners. Cassiera goes with them, while Jayce and Oma stay with the islanders. Nargroth finds the bodies of the two miners. Nargroth and Ilthian remain with Kamil, the prisoner, and the bodies. The others rush to find Hakam and Cassiera. They return to the mine, forbidding Ilthian to follow them. The hobgoblins point them to the tunnel from which the osyluth came and they begin tracking it. After journeying further, they hear the sound of crying, and they come to an opening to a chamber in which they see the osyluth. It tries to speak to each of them telepathically, but Hakam ends the conversation by shooting at the devil with his musket. The party return the two hobgoblin children to their parents and receive the pirate treasure from the hobgoblin tribe. A second earthquake occurs. Leokas notices that Stormshadow has not followed them across the bridge. He returns and finds her sitting there, and she refuses to go forward. They try various methods to force her across, even trying to drug her or put her to sleep with magic, but she resists and eventually runs off. They give up and decide to come back for her later. Meanwhile, Cassiera has scouted ahead and says she's found a room accessible from the aqueducts through another cave-in. The room appears to have been set to the torch. In the meantime, Stormshadow strangely shows up, apparently having finally crossed the bridge and followed them. They decide to spend the night in the garden and in the gazebo, so that they can rest from the fight with the osyluth and regain their spells.
 * Hakam hurries back to the others in the ancient temple and informs them that Belvin and Hakam have gone through the portal. All of them follow after the two elves.
 * At night Belvin changes form to a dolphin and swims out to the other vessel. He boards it and summons fire elementals to burn the sails. This lets those on The Daisy know where their target is in addition to acting as sabotage. By the next day, however, their target has repair the sails. They attempt to slow the vessel again by sending pteranodons to attack it, but this triggers a response. Dark clouds form above The Daisy and a lightning bolt splitters the main mast.
 * The Daisy feints fleeing and then turns back continues to follow the vessel stealthily from a great distance. They make no more attempts at sabotage. The holidays of Midsummer and Shieldmeet come and go and a full tenday passes.
 * They are alarmed when the ship they are pursuing seems to disappear into thin air. Belvin immediately dives into the ocean, morphs into a dolphin and begins searching for the missing vessel. When The Daisy arrives at roughly the place where the other ship vanished, they seem to pass through a field of invisibility and into a strange and isolated blizzard. The Daisy shipwrecks in the blizzard on a sandbar, and the adventurers are sent by Ombert into the land to find shelter before they all freeze to death.
 * When they return to the shipwreck to notify the others, they find a stowaway, a young woman whom Ombert believes to be from Samarach.
 * The snow continues melting. Hakam, Mythlos, Jayce, and Oma head over to the meeting hall. They find it unlocked. Inside, they discover a hidden door in the floor, which leads into a dark basement by ladder. Upon lighting a brazier, all of the sconces in the room magically light up, and two metal doors behind them slide open. They pass into the second room and find a throne surrounded by a circle of runes and behind this an obelisk. There is also a large gong, which Mythlos cannot help but ring. Upon doing so, the runes glow, a beam shines down toward the throne from the obelisk and a floating, flaming skull appears, which they guess to be the Maker. The skull speaks, demanding to know who has summoned him and commanding them to leave. They obey.
 * The adventures gather and share their separate findings. They also finally speak with the stowaway, whose name is Cassiera. She admits to being a yuan-ti pureblood but insists that she fled from her people because of their evil and to get away from Samarach.
 * While being led by Ilthian through the mine, they are ambushed by a band of hobgoblins. They are victorious, but Belvin loses his left arm in the battle and is distraught. A few of the hobgoblins escape further down the mining tunnels, but Cassiera and Hakam pursue them.
 * The others interrogate a surviving hobgoblin shaman and learn that the hobgoblins were once pirates and came to this island several years ago in a shipwreck. He angrily responds, when asked about Allu, that that false god corrupted half the tribe a few years ago. They realize that this is indeed the island where Malick had been.
 * Hakam and Cassiera battle the three remaining hobgoblins to a stalemate in a lower chamber. Hakam retreats.
 * The group regroups and they find an opening in the cave wall caused by the recent earthquake, which leads up to the hobgoblin's village. They speak with the village guard, a bugbear named Bork, who convinces them that fighting him would be futile. They learn that the hobgoblins have recently been attacked by a "monster of bone" and have been weakened. They offer to return their prisoner in exchange for money to pay to have Belvin's arm restored. Bork permits two of them to speak with the tribe chief.
 * Belvin and Szordrin speak with Chief Grak and find that the hobgoblin has been brutally maimed. His arms and legs were bitten off by the "creature of bone" that Bork had described. Grak seems to have little care about his fate and agrees to allow the party to take all of their pirate treasure. He agrees to never go to the south side of the island. His wife, however, begs their help. Grak explains that the monster stole off with three children, after killing all the others. One of the children is his own daughter. Szordrin guesses that the monster is an osyluth.
 * They return to the surface and try to explain the concept of death to the islanders, and they hold a sort of funeral for them.
 * The next morning, having prepared their spells, they readied to hunt down the osyluth. Hakam preserved Belvin's severed arm. Jayce tells them that he is not interested in fighting a baatezu. He instead wishes to explore the woods of the island with Oma, because the people tell of strange fauna living in them, and he wants to record more of their stories. He hands Mythlos the elephant figurine.
 * They find a mechanical lever, which when pulled revealed a secret door in the stone. On the other side, they find a man looking exactly like Belvin remembered Samber appearing. They excitedly begin to question him, but Szordrin senses an illusionary trap, and then "Samber" vanishes and the osyluth appears behind Szordrin. It attempts to stab him, but Szordrin's protection from evil spell saves him. The osyluth teleports away before any of them can respond.
 * Everyone except for Mythlos finds him- or herself trapped beneath a magical wall of ice. Moments later, the tunnel fills with over a dozen lemures. They struggle to hold back the lemures while trying to break through the wall of ice.
 * On the other side of the ice wall, Mythlos faces the osyluth alone. First, the devil deals with the celestial bison Hakam summoned before the wall went up. Mythlos deals a few solid blows, but finds himself overpowered and takes refuge behind a stalagmite. The other adventures break through and begin coming to his aid. Leokas and Szordrin are unable to harm the devil at all. Cassiera runs to the hobgoblin children and takes them to safety. Mythlos summons their elephant from the figurine of wondrous power, but the devil simply teleports atop it. Only Belvin's called lightning bolts and Mythlos' sword seem to harm it. Mythlos has the elephant lift him to its back with its trunk. The devil asks why Mythlos cares about rescuing evil creatures. Mythlos says that the only evil creature in the room is the devil and that he would rather die than have the children harmed. The devil agrees to his terms and nearly slays him with several severe blows, knocking him flat onto his back from the elephant. Another ice wall then surrounds the others, leaving Mythlos once again alone. The devil leaps from the elephants back to pin Mythlos to the floor with his scorpion tail, but at that moment, the moonblade gains a new rune, and it teleports Mythlos behind the osyluth, who now has its tail embedded in the ground, stuck. Mythlos stabs the fiend in the back, destroying it, as Yasheira had prophesied.
 * The adventurers discover that Ilthian has disobeyed them and followed them into the cave. Stormshadow, Leokas' wolf, seems to have come with her.
 * The earthquake prevents them from returning directly to the surface, but they had wanted to explore the way from which the osyluth had come anyway. The return to where they first found its tracks and descend deeper underground. They come to a strange bridge in a massive chamber that passes over a body of subterranean water. The entire chamber seems to be an area of dead magic. In the middle of the bridge is a change puzzle with pegs. At the end of the bridge, guarding a doorway into a domed structure, is a stone golem. They finally determine that Jayce's prophecy is the key to the puzzle; setting the pins to read the correct time causes the golem to step aside and let them pass.
 * They arrive in a half-domed room guarded by eight iron golems that stand motionless. Magic is functional again here. There is a single door that is locked and magically sealed. Next to it, however, they find a cave-in in the wall. IF one were to crawl through, they would enter an aqueduct system.
 * They all proceed through the aqueduct tunnels. They climb a pipe that leads up below a drinking fountain to the room Cassiera had described. It is covered in ash and burned furniture. It also includes three giant portal rings, one of which is active and leads to a beautiful forest. They also find that a broken column seems to have destroyed a sort of cage, presumably for the osyluth. They also find that Samber has intentionally left behind one of his journals for them to find. Among other things, it describes some of his confusion as to why some of his creations, the Forokell, are more creative than others. He seems to speak about Ilthian as one of the special ones. He then describes how the gods have somehow banned him from using magic, but then how he finds a way to use magic again after traveling somewhere. He writes about meeting Belvin in Shilku and the strange events at sea, how he came home to find that an earthquake had occurred in his absense, how he was summoned by Jayce, Hakam, Mythlos, and Oma, and how he discovered that the osyluth had destroyed one of his workrooms and escaped through a portal to the High Forest. Finally, Samber notes that he is going to track down and find the osyluth, since it is his responsibility. Mythlos and Leokas pass through the portal and find no evidence of the osyluth passing through. They believe that it had tricked Samber. The party decides to take the opportunity to explore further, rather than pass into the High Forest.
 * They explore the aqueduct system fully and believe it to be a way of providing fresh water to Samber's palace above. They also find its source. They follow the water until it exits through a cave opening into a massive dome with magic, artificial light. Within this large dome is a hillside, a garden, a gazebo, a grove of fruit trees, a pool, a stream, and Samber's palace. They also find his ship docked in a large body of water. They find two strange "animals" that they believe Samber to have created. The castle and the ship are guarded by creatures in suits of armor, the same kind that Belvin has seen when he had boarded Samber's craft. They speak to the guards, but they refuse them passage. Belvin tries to summon Krynn the satyr over the wall, but he is vaporized by violet beams of energy from the visors of the guards on the wall.
 * During the night, Samber appears, exiting from his castle. He appears to stop time, alters gravity, and opens a portal in the air. They all find themselves falling sideways into the fissure. Samber seems to be using spider climb and holds onto Ilthian. He also suspends Belvin in the air with magic. Mythlos, Kamil, and Stormshadow fall into the dome immediately. Hakam has a ring of feather falling, and so he floats away slowly. Cassiera catches onto his ankle, and before they pass through the portal, Hakam strikes Samber with a beam of searing light, which causes Samber to drop Ilthian, and Hakam catches her before the three vanish. Szordrin hangs from one of the pillars of the gazebo and tries shooting at Samber with his wand, but Samber resists the magic. Leokas manages to pull himself up onto one of the columns and leaps onto Sambers back, but Samber simply teleports near Belvin, and Leokas falls, striking Szordrin and knocking him into the rift. Samber asks Belvin why he is here. Belvin admits that he doesn't know, only that the gods sent him. Samber then heals Belvin's arm with magic and lets him drop. Only Leokas remains now, desperately clinging to the pillars. The elves yells out that Samber must stop what he is doing, and the man asks why. Leokas answers that the gods command it. Samber argues against this. Leokas replies, "They created us; they know what is best for their creations!" Samber says, "Likewise, I know what is best for mine," and then points at Leokas, and everything goes black.