Seven Quinn Kidnapped

MAL 15

 * The party told Seven about the missing tower, but not about Threndix or Lochrann. She informed them that a friend in the tax office had told her Holden had not paid any taxes in Hastenport for the last five years, suggesting that he neither lives nor works here. If he is the same Holden who Petros identified as being a member of the Third Eye in Asture, that fits. Seven thought the description of the red-haired elven man in black leather sounded like someone from the Order of the Dragon, but wasn't sure. She did not recognize the description of the guy in the sewers, but pointed out that if he was an illusion, he wasn't necessarily a real person in the first place.
 * Italics represent that this was an enemy speaking.


 * While this was happening, Red noticed something was wrong--Seven had no scent. She took Aler aside to inform him of this and he cast true seeing, revealing Seven had reversed hands--the sign of a rakshasa. They told Adriel and Zadkiel about this and then the four of them attacked her, Red catching her in her serpent staff, Aler casting dancing lights, and Zadkiel casting dimensional anchor and an antimagic spell. Much DM fumbling in this section (the rakshasa's magic immunity should have repelled the dimensional anchor, and the antimagic spell should have dispelled the dancing lights.) "Seven" used grappling to break the snake's grasp, knocked Jon back 10' across the room, and exited the premises, suffering attacks of opportunity from most of the PCs and not appearing to care (it was clear she wasn't taking full damage from those blows.) Aler pursued her and observed her turn into an alley and shapeshift into an urchin boy. Khirg, running about as fast as a galloping racehorse (!), managed to catch up with the rakshasa but was confused by a magic blast. Aler caught a glimpse of the child dashing into a neighboring house, but he was gone by the time Aler entered, and a few unlucky track checks and the trail went cold.
 * Searching Seven's study, the party found her camera under the sofa. Bay was able to use Use Magic Device to turn it on, revealing that the last picture she took was a blurry shot of a red-haired person in black. Jon identified that there had been a magical portal cast here, and fetched Vyna from down the street, who identified it as an Abyssal portal. The party also found some letters scratched into the paint of the baseboard in one of the corners of the study: 666 -7Q.  The party hypothesized that this was a note from Seven referencing demons or the Abyss, that the person in the photo could have been the same one described by Jenn, and that "Seven's" unusual strength and knockback ability seem similar to those exhibited by "Jenn."
 * Jon cast Scry on Seven, who waived her saving throw. He saw a darkened room with two figures in it, one of whom he believed was Seven sitting on a chair. He cast Message through the scry and asked her where she was; she responded with a string of numbers, "42 25 N 16 8 W."
 * Deducing that these must be map coordinates, the party began running chaotically back and forth between the police station and the cartographer's guild. Eventually Captain Black was fully apprised of Seven's disappearance, and the cartographer's apprentice Jarth--after an emotional argument with Jon-- identified the numbers as the coordinates for the city of Ruastin. He said that Seven would have known this from her association with him, and said that the last time he had seen her had been the night before last, when she seemed to be in normal command of Seven's full complement of memories. This is in contradiction to the rakshasa's claim that she had been on a date last night.
 * Jarth announced his intention to go to Ruastin to look for Seven. Red thought Seven's message being given in coordinates may have been a message to the party to seek out Jarth, and asked him to travel with them, to which he immediately agreed.
 * Captain Black said she would send a telegram to the police chief in Ruastin informing them of Seven's suspected abduction, and that she would get Noyar on the case on the Hastenport end. The party informed her of Harasket's lack of scent and suggested the use of police dogs; Black seemed very pleased with that as an idea. She also confirmed that if the party found the kidnapper(s) before the police did, lethal force was entirely legal in the context of an ongoing crime, but that she considered it more important to retrieve Seven alive-- "we've lost too many good people this year already."
 * The rest of the party visited Gravil the social worker, who confirmed Aler's belief that Skenebrax lives in Ruastin, where Skenebrax and his girlfriend apparently run the city morgue.
 * The party made plans to travel to Ruastin, laying in some additional supplies for the trip.

MAL 16

 * The party went to speak with Detective Noyar and shared everything they knew about Seven's abduction with him. Noyar asked what Seven "had her nose into" prior to being kidnapped, and took careful note of your answers. He seems to think it's more likely that Seven's investigations led her to cross the League of Snakes herself than that the kidnappers were using her to get at you guys, but does not write off the latter possibility. Exit Noyar.
 * The drow agent gave his name as Enzin Ken'rae, and claimed he had been sent on a mission by his house with the orders to "tag the target with an invocation, and not to kill her." He professed not to know what the invocation itself was, only that it was an invocation of the Spider Queen and was cast by a member of his house. He seemed oddly unconcerned about whether the party would kill him or turn him over to the police at that point, or perhaps it was just a show of bravado-- Red and Jon both found the drow's facial expressions extremely hard to read. Asked about whether he was working with Chavalk, he scoffed "Work with demons? What do I look like, some kind of idiot Vel'sharren?" Aler chose not to reveal his identity, instead obliquely hinting that he might be a member of House De'Afin (Vanessa's house) or a surface elf in disguise. The party eventually decided to release Enzin, asking him to take a message to his House matriarch, Talisha, telling her that the alliance between Chavalk and the illithids threatened to bring an invasion of Malachi and that they wished to speak with her about it. Enzin asked from whom the message came, but Aler again declined to say anything; Adriel said it came from the Hunters, and Enzin left, leaving his gear behind.
 * Arriving at the gates of Ruastin, the party decided to split up and enter in two groups through two different gates. I think the idea was supposed to be that the group containing the tiger, deinonychus, and drow would distract all the attention, while the group with nondescript looking humans on horses would slip in anonymously. Ironically, the opposite happened, as the more distinctive-looking group asked a mundane question about a good inn to stay in and were waved through without fanfare, while the nondescript-looking group asked where the town morgue was on the pretext that a knight they knew had died and was currently in the morgue (!)
 * The party found the morgue, whose door was boarded up with a notice posted on it that it had been condemned for reasons of public health and safety, and directing people to the Temple of Alayan instead. Red reminded everyone that the priestess of Alayan, Beyond Jessery, may be associated with Chavalk and should not be trusted with information. Jon talked to a gravedigger in the cemetery and learned that the morgue had been shut down due to some plague that had started by or at least blamed upon Skenebrax the morguekeeper, killing two people and sickening several others.The morgue had no windows, but Bay and Aler were able to squeeze through a vent, and seeing no enemies, had Red open a hole in the back wall using stone shape. Exploring the morgue, the party got the impression it had been vacated-- the morgue shelves were all empty and only nonmagical anatomy books remaining on the bookcases. There was a trench in the floor with some white fluid, radiating cold, that shattered a vial when Zadkiel tried to collect it. Red's alchemy check suggested perhaps it is a magical preservation fluid.
 * Behind a secret door, the party found a staircase leading down to Skenebrax's slightly distrurbing living quarters. There was a fancy coffin lying next to the bed, a magical vat of slightly congealed blood, a bathtub with blood stains around the drain, and a magical refrigerator containing a human brain and a wine bottle. Most of the personal effects seem to have been removed from this room, but the party did find a few pertinant letters, including one from a friend of Skenebrax's girlfriend urging them to leave Ruastin before "things get worse" and another from a friend of Skenebrax's suggesting that his curse, which Skenebrax had already ruled out as Abyssal, might possibly be Chaotic in nature. "There is a prophecy that Xhriakw will return to the land led by a Lord of the Abyss who has mastered the three Hounds of Chaos. I have reason to believe Chavalk controls one of the Hounds of Chaos. If he is in league with Xhriakw, then perhaps Chaos could be the source of your curse. Although to be honest with you, I think it would be kind of strange for an elder force of chaos to concern himself with harassing a morgue operator with some minor plague."Jon remembered an adventure he had gone on several years ago in a Temple of Chaos and a book his party had recovered there about the Lords of Chaos, and thought a contact of his in the Temple of Lyra might know more about it.
 * The party met Jon's ex-girlfriend Kalima, who passed the sniff test and was glad to see Jon again. Jon did not tell her about Piper, nor about his curse, but he did tell her about Seven's abduction and asked about the book of Chaos. Kalima was confused and said that Jon had been the one to take this book from the temple, to read through for his planar studies. Jon has no memory of this. Their adventure in the temple of Chaos was seven years ago.
 * The party decided to go to the Center of the Third Eye to try and get more information. On the way, they were ambushed by a spiky nightmarish monster, a burning smilodon skeleton, and a handful of invisible demon assassins. Zadkiel turned into an angel again, inspiring a bunch of nearby dwarves to rally against the skeletal cat. Red was dominated by the nightmarish monster into trying to kill Jon and Bay, but luckily got some really terrible rolls, meanwhile the rest of the party got some great ones and Adriel eventually dispatched the nightmare being with the casualties including only one dwarf.
 * While Jon and Zadkiel talked to the dwarves, Red and Aler noticed a tatty, one-winged dragonborn stealthily exiting the scene of the ambush. Aler sent Syla to track where he was going and followed stealthily at a distance.
 * Jarth speaks up on the way to the Third Eye. "The message Seven left at her house said "666," he says. "To me that suggests they took her through an Abyssal portal. She must have eventually ended up in Ruastin since those are the coordinates she gave Jon, but if she came here by way of an Abyssal portal, surely we could try to track that down somehow?"

MAL 17

 * First, the party talked to the dwarves they had just fought the monsters with. The dwarves provided some ale, and Jon composed a song in honor of the dwarf, Doron, who was killed fighting one of the demonic skeleton cats. The warrior who had rallied the dwarves against the monsters, named Arsanus, wanted to question Zadkiel about his angelic transformation, but Zadkiel didn't have any answers for him. A dwarven clan leader named Hondor came out to assess the situation and asked the party what they were doing in town; they decided not to tell him about Seven or the League of Snakes, instead asking about Skenebrax. They received the rumor that Skenebrax was a cannibal and the suggestion to talk to Beyond Jessery to learn more about the plague he caused, and also learned that someone had set off a bomb at city hall last week, though no one was killed. The dwarves were not willing to speculate about who might have done it.
 * Meanwhile, in Nick's absence Adriel went with Aler to tail the one-winged draconian Aler had spied leaving the scene of the attack. Aler observed him upstairs muttering into a crystal ball in a language he didn't speak. Adriel knocked on the door and engaged the draconian in conversation while Aler tried to sneak in the upstairs window. The draconian told Adriel his name is Alomar, he is a tinker, and he had no idea what the monster was, in fact he asked Adriel what it was. Adriel gave him her real name, but fibbed to him that the monster was a demon. Meanwhile Aler didn't find much, but he did pinch a letter in Draconian, which Adriel translated as being about Aluon. The letter writer, named Kafrak, seemed concerned that Aluon had disappeared, leaving his weasel behind, which made Kafrak think he had left the plane; he also asked Alomar to try to find information about the "Hidden Ones," who an earlier letter from Chavalk had suggested were League of Snakes members. Adriel tried listening in on Alomar's crystal ball conversations, but didn't get a great roll and caught only two snippets: "the fat little gnome" and "may be the one you're looking for." Those were not part of the same sentence. Adriel guessed this might be related to the Order of the Dragon, but didn't recognize the names Alomar or Kafrak.
 * Then the party continued on to the Center of the Third Eye. They passed the Silver Scorpion Inn, where they rented rooms. They also found a restaurant serving overpriced gyros, a shop called the "Adventurers' Friend," the police station, and the Wizard's Guild. The Third Eye is a secret society and wouldn't let non-initiates inside, but name-dropping Petros was enough to fetch Eyewoman Terreira, who met the party in a private office in the Wizard's Guild. She confirmed Adriel's curse as a high-level Abyssal curse and said that it could be countered by a high enough level abjurer (suggesting the Eye of the Night at the Center of the Third Eye in Asture) or by killing the caster. Jon told her about his curse, and Terreira told him more about the illithids and their little-known psionic arts, concluding that magic was unlikely to be able to reverse this malady, and that killing the illithid who did it would probably not help either. She believes only another psionic can undo this damage, and that the only human she knew to have mastered this discipline was a mad mentalist named Anselm near Delsin. The other option would be letting another illithid into Jon's brain to repair the damage, which she wouldn't advise. Asked if she knew anything else that might connect these curses, she became thoughtful and recalled one of the King of Clock's men ("or whatever they are") coming in to the Wizard's Guild several weeks ago to have a cursed potion identified, being very focused on knowing what it did and whether it was fatal. Terreira eventually determined that the potion had the effect of sabotaging one of the target's skills; she did not know which one. She identified the Clockworkers as "strange people" from Averdale (a theocratic eastern kingdom where magic is outlawed; Dayant Arakin referred to it in her letter to Holden,) but she thinks there are more of them in Hastenport than Ruastin. The group decided to trust Terreira with information about Seven's kidnapping. Terreira checked Third Eye records about extraplanar gates during the two days Seven most likely disappeared and gave the party the location of an Abyssal gate on the 28th (not entirely matching the data you have which is that Seven disappeared on the 26th or 27th, though Terreira acknowledged the timestamp on Abyssal gates is sometimes inaccurate) and an Elemental gate the evening of the 26th (probably exactly when Seven disappeared, but Seven identified her abductors as demonic, not elemental.) Terreira didn't know anything about Zadkiel's angel form, suggesting that he talk to a master of religious history, like Father Valerian in Hastenport, to learn more about whether this kind of transformation has happened in the past. Finally, she mentioned that a drow necromancer named Thrane Do'Ezzen (a name both Jon and Aler had heard before) had arrived from Asture on the 26th, though she does not know what he is doing here or whether it's related to Seven.
 * Then the party had a long conversation about whether or not to go to the police station. Jon eventually prevailed, but only under the caveat that he not tell the police about the elemental gates. Jon and Red spoke with Captain Ames, who confirmed that Captain Black had sent him a telegram, said that no one of Seven's description had yet been sighted, and asked whether the party had a description of the abductors. They said no, but they were shapeshifters anyway so it wouldn't matter if they did. They did not ask or tell him about anything else (including the incriminating letter to Beyond Jessery or the monster they had fought in the dwarven neighborhood), instead suggesting that they might return the next morning, which Ames was happy with. Jon also showed Ames his papers from Magistrate Tell authorizing him to investigate the cult of Sholaith, and explained that Tell had been murdered and the party was investigating his murder. (Note, Tell's authorization ONLY mentioned Jon, Red, Adriel, and Aler. The other party members weren't there then.) Ames said that if you found the murderer in Ruastin and had proof you could extradite him to Hastenport, but "don't be a cowboy out there." Jon agreed that he knows he's not really a policeman. Cartino reminded him after they exited that it's Duchy law that citizens can use force against a crime in progress, so if they find Seven's kidnappers, they don't need police authorization to attack them and rescue her... but they would need to be right that Seven's in there.
 * The party decided to check out the elemental gate, though Jarth felt quite sure Seven knew the difference between a demon and an elemental, her knowledge/planar isn't like Jon's or anything and anybody could get a bad roll, especially under stress. The elemental gate traced to a home in a suburban neighborhood. Jon used clairvoyance to peer inside the home, seeing an altar with a fire symbol and a burnt offering on it, a pentacle with skulls, and some glowing red gems. There were also a blond woman in a skirt and sweater and four other women in red leather dresses with tall jackal headdresses. Red sniffed around the house to try and catch Seven's scent, which she didn't. The blond woman came outside to see what Red was doing, and Jon quickly pretended she was his pet dinosaur and led her away. The party decided they didn't have enough information to break into the house since they didn't see Seven, and went to check out the Abyssal gate site.
 * The party found the ruin of a round temple. There were two crystal statues which Zadkiel identified as Tessera, the old goddess of dreams who Arthon's ancestors had been worshippers of. There were also broken pieces of crystal on two other plinths, where the statues had presumably broken off. The ruins looked pretty old. Red began scouting for Seven's scent outside the temple, not finding anything.  Khirg walked into the temple and looked at a blue eye sigil, which Jon recalled seeing another of in the cove of the dead selkies, and Seela had identified as a symbol used by people who worshipped the fey or studied their magics. Khirg remembered having seen such a symbol on one of Tanya's books. Zadkiel examined the blackened outline of an arch on the wall near some rubble, and called over to search for secret doors. Aler found no secret doors, but was able to find a trail of hoofprints leading from the outline across the temple.
 * Then the party was attacked by invisible archers, who turned out to be gorgon-like devils. Jon was taken down by an unlucky critical hit, while other party members were damaged. A four-armed Ker devil decloaked and stabbed Zadkiel with a deepsteel weapon, preventing him from spellcasting for a round. She proved immune to most of the party's weapons, to Khirg's frustration. A demon portaled in and shoved Bay out of the way of getting potentially killed by the devil; the two kept up a running back-and-forth bitchfest in Abyssal for the rest of the combat, which only Jarth understood (he narrated it to the rest of you later.) They did not mention Seven at all, instead disagreeing about whether or not Chavalk was okay with killing Bay or not. Aler took the opportunity to shoot the Ker while she was distracted, and paid the price as five of the six devil archers unloaded three shots apiece into him at point blank range. Ten minutes of furious retconned math later, Aler was determined to be merely mostly dead, not all the way dead (in the future, you only get healed if you write the healing down on your character sheet, not just if the cleric says he offered to heal you earlier--but with Nick on the other side of a computer screen, there was an understandable communication barrier to accomodate.) Bay lost control of the chaos force, which started breaking things in the vicinity including the masonry of the ruined colonnade. The Ker clearly gave a command to move out, which the archers all obeyed; Adriel managed to kill one of them with attacks of opportunity on the way out, causing it to be banished back to the Nine Hells. The demon weathered an attack of opportunity by Khirg and also gated out.
 * Jon managed to use Bay's wand of calm emotions to recontain the chaos force (though not without a DM hint, so no XP for that, sorry), and the party quickly finished searching the ruins. After his brush with death, Aler successfully searched the rubble near the gate and found a ring Jarth identified as Seven's. Red found Seven's scent on the ring, but nowhere else, and concluded that she must have been riding on one of the horses (catching the scent of a person whose horse ran through an area once a couple of days ago is beyond Red's scent tracking ability.) Aler tracked the horses back to the road towards Ruastin, where they became lost in the traffic.
 * The exhausted party returned to the inn to sleep, but first a visitor arrived to see Jon. It was Messana, the creepily suburban housewife he had observed earlier in the house with the elemental gate. She addressed him by name, said she had heard he was a bard who knew much of "strange creatures," and asked whether he could determine the nature of some unusual undead being that had been harassing her coven for the past week and a half. The witches have clearly sensed its necromantic energy, but "speak with dead" has given them only strange bursts of static in response. The being has attacked them twice, dealing wrackingly painful wounds but being driven off by Light spells. It has also stood merely observing them on multiple occasions, and appeared to try to communicate on a few others. Messana assumed it wants to be laid to rest, but nothing the coven tried has appeased it. It usually appears between midnight and 4AM, but appeared once during an overcast day as well. She gave directions to the dancing copse where the creature keeps manifesting. Jon asked her if she'd seen three horses with a young woman on one of them, and to please keep an eye out for them and tell Jon if she saw them, to which she answered "There are many young women riding horses in town. Can you be more specific?" and Jon said "No," so she shrugged and left.

MAL 18 & 19

 * They reported back to Eyewoman Terreira about their fight with the devils by the Abyssal gate. Terreira expressed surprise that devils would be using an Abyssal portal, and the party told her that the Keres may be allied with Chavalk, which concerned her greatly.
 * The party asked Kalima about Captain Ames, getting the response that he was a pragmatic man trying to preserve a delicate balance between the police, the Ducal guards, and the two main underworld gangs of Ruastin. She says he is known to look the other way on certain gang activities, but does not believe he would tolerate anything involving extraplanar attacks or causing social disorder. Jon also asked her about Piper's curse, about which she could only suggest asking Beyond Jessery.
 * The group talked to Beyond Jessery, but due to her apparent connection with Dayant Arakin and the League of Snakes, decided not to ask her about Piper or about Seven. Instead they asked about Skenebrax, and learned that the plague he had been spreading is called the Marigold Shakes and is not necromantic in nature. Jessery also mentioned having observed strange necromantic energies from the old Tenarri tomb in the south of town, but that the paladins had detected no evil there and they had left it alone.
 * The group talked to Captain Ames, who told them about a conflict between a local thieves guild and a gang that was visitng from Rivercity. Expressing concern that Seven could be killed in the crossfire if the Rivercity gang had her and the thieves guild attacked, he gave the party his tacit approval to go in looking for her, preferably leaving them thinking it was a local gang. Ames also mentioned to the party that a local gossip named Gabrielle had been asking all over town about three horses with a girl on one of them, and provided her address.
 * The party decided to take on the Rivercity gang disguised as a gang of killer clowns with bad New York accents. While in disguise, they first stopped at a brothel and bribed the pimp to tell them about the Rivercity gang, which he evidently knew nothing about, then went to the gossip Gabrielle's house and terrorized her for a bit until she told them that she got the information about the three horses with a girl on one of them from her neighbor Messana, who Jon had asked if she had seen such a group. So that turned out to be a dead end--just a rumor the party had spread themselves getting back to them, not an actual Seven sighting.
 * Then the party, disguised as clowns, went to the Rivercity gang headquarters and broke in. Apparently expecting an attack, the thieves did not fight back but instead tried to use total defense, tumbling, and the deployment of traps to escape. Two escaped successfully, but the party killed one and captured three others, learning from them that they were in town to rendezvous with the drow necromancer Thrane Do'Ezzen and that they had been warned to stay away from someone called "The Hidden Ones."
 * During the attack, an arm shot out from the eye sigil on Khirg's back as he maneuvered past Aler, phasing through his ribcage, causing him to fall unconscious, and teleporting him somewhere. He regained consciousness in a black-tiled room with a fiend who demanded to know who had demonmarked Aler and tortured him with hellfire and a deepsteel blade when he refused to answer. An illithid rescued him by shooting the fiend in the back with a holy blaster, revealing herself as a tiefling planeblazer named Tisha Lake with a shapeshifting amulet. She also told Aler some information about his family, in particular that he could have inherited the demonmark from his mother because demonmarks follow bloodlines and that Aler's father had killed Tisha's mother.
 * The group returned to Terreira and asked for her help in finding Aler. She said she could try to fast track the analysis of the day's extraplanar travel incidents for the party, and enlisted a fellow Eyeman to cast Locate Creature for the party. Surmising that Aler was probably not on the plane from the broken empathic bonds with his animal companions, they used both castings of the spell on Seven, failing to find a trace of her from either the northern or southern ends of the city. The Eyemen said this could mean anything from Seven being dead, to being shielded from scrying, to being on the other side of the river (running water blocks the spell.)
 * Meanwhile, Aler and Tisha were escaping from the ethereal plane, where Aler had apparently been imprisoned. With Tisha disguised as an illithid and Aler acting like her mind-controlled slave, the pair bluffed their way past a crystalline fey giant and a little fairy dragon to escape out the window of the tower to a location from which Tisha would be able to plane shift them back to Ruastin. Aler then failed a fortitude save and succumbed to the pain of his injuries, passing out.
 * The party then went to Messana's house and asked her whether she had any magical means of locating Seven or Aler. Messana asserted that her coven could use the Vision spell to reveal visions of past events even when they don't involve a target of legendary status, contrary to the rules-as-written spell description. The party decided to trust her and made a deal that they would remove the undead monster haunting her grove in exchange for the casting of this spell. Messana sealed her pledge by sticking her hand into a burning brazier, the creepy weirdo.
 * Tisha revived Aler with a healing potion, revealing them to now be in the Land of the Dead--the only location she had been able to safely shift to quickly enough. She apologized for teasing him about being unable to carry her and revealed her demonic heritage, then asked his advice about getting past a valley filled with ghosts to a spot she could safely bring them through to Ruastin. Using their stealth skills and Aler's ranger abilities versus the undead, the two of them managed to first sneak and then run past the ghosts, at which point Tisha shifted them both to Ruastin where they were reunited with the rest of the party.
 * Tisha explained to the group that she had been on the ethereal plane looking for a family friend who had been kidnapped, revealing herself to be Barris Wainwright's daughter and the family friend to be Seven, who the party told her they were also seeking. Tisha told the party she had infiltrated the ethereal tower because there seemed to be infernals there and she had identified the devils that attacked the party at the ruins, so she guessed they might be related. However, she did not find any trace of Seven in the tower--only Aler, who she knew of through her father and decided to rescue instead. Then party decided to invite her to join forces with them.
 * The party told Messana that the creature was gone and that she should fetch them again if it ever came back, and Messana kept her side of the bargain by bringing her coven to cast a gestalt spell in the dance copse. Jon played wild music to accompany their dance, causing several PCs to dance uncontrollably. (For the future, Scott is correct, the save DC should be half levels + CHA bonus-- in Jon's case that would be a 10. On this particular occurence, the save DC was 17 due to the amplifying effect of the witches' dance.)
 * The question asked of the vision was "Where was Seven Quinn five minutes ago?" They received a vision of a magically darkened room, in which Aler, Khirg and Zadkiel were able to identify what looked like an illithid standing behind an altar, but no sign of Seven. Before the duration ended, Jarth alertly redirected the vision with the question "How did she get there," which showed Seven riding through the Abyssal gate on a horse with a man in purple robes, alond with two other horses carrying the succubus that had attacked Jon earlier and a large man with blue woad lines on his face and torso, to whom the eye sigil on the wall spoke and said "It is watched" in the Fey language. Neither the robed man nor the man with woad lines pinged Jon as extraplanar, and Zadkiel identified his robes as those of a priest of Sesharet.
 * The group returned to Captain Ames and did not directly admit to having attacked the Rivercity gang, but said they had heard the Insane Clown Posse had done it. Ames, to his credit, seemed more concerned about whether Seven had been rescued in the raid. The party gave him the description of the three perps they just divined, and Ames sent an officer out to question all the gate guards.
 * Finally, the party went to the Tenarri tomb Beyond Jessery had told them about, having first gotten corroboration from the Paladins that they had visited the site with her earlier this week but had not gone inside. Though there was no undead presence obvious from the outside of the tomb, Aler's tracking turned up a slight undead trace against one of the trees a short distance from the tomb, as if an undead creature had brushed against it at some point recently and some negative energy had rubbed off there. He was not able to determine more than that. The door was locked, but Red and Tisha opened it by shapeshifting their hands into six-fingered form to manipulate the six-fingered handprints on the door.
 * Inside the rather gaudy tomb, the marble floor held no tracks but Red was able to pick up faint human scent (suggesting someone had been in here within the past few days.) Old incidental scents are hard to read, but she felt pretty sure these scents were neither Seven's nor Jessery's. After much trial and error, the group figured out that they needed to turn the scarab dials and stand on the heavy gold tiles to open a secret door, revealing a stone platform with another scarab dial on it which proved to be an elevator.
 * Aler, Adriel, and Zadkiel went down the elevator and into a room full of ornate pressure plates while Jon and Khirg covered them from the level above and Red hovered in the elevator in the form of a pterodactyl. The party realized that turning the scarabs on the walls caused some of the pressure plates to lock and others to unlock. Using the high-tech methods of flying around and turning the dials with mage hands and the old-school method of banging on things with a 10-foot pole, the three PCs managed to get all the way to the far wall with minimal trap damage before triggering one of the pressure plates that caused skeletons to drop from the ceiling onto them MM6-style.

MAL 20

 * They fought the skeletons in the Tenarri tomb, which was going pretty well until a bunch of damn fairies portaled in and started cursing everyone and supercharging the skeletons. The party rallied, killed the skeletons and a barghest and drove the fairies off after a long fight, with some assistance from Father Saxon, Captain Ames, and some sharpshooting guards.
 * Ames told the party he was at the tomb because his investigations of the three kidnappers the party saw in the vision turned up the tip that the purple-robed priest of Sesharet had been spotted at the tomb. Jon alertly said that was why the party was there too, which Ames believed. Ames and Jon both identified the most recent sighting of the priest they knew of to be a day and a half ago, and Ames posted guards on the city gates and the docks to detain the priest if they saw him trying to leave town. Saxon, who doesn't seem to like drow, expressed concern about Aler, but Zadkiel vouched for his character and Aler revealed himself as a member of Iscariot.
 * Their magics nearly depleted (including all their higher-level healing,) the party decided to return to the inn to sleep, but first stopped to talk to several NPCs. First, they returned to Terreira to see what she had learned about today's extraplanar portals (the party had specifically asked about whoever had captured Aler in the Clown Gang raid.) Terreira identified two portals in that place and time, one from the fey lands and another to the ethereal plane. Tisha reported that if someone had portaled in from the fey lands and out again to the ethereal plane on the same combat round, that person must be a high-level planeblazer. There was also a portal from the fey lands by the Tenarri tomb at an undetermined time (that may or may not have been one of the ones you witnessed there,) and two additional portals to the Ethereal plane and back from the Land of the Dead that Tisha identified as her own.
 * I believe these were Aler getting kidnapped by more than one assailant. Next it was probably the fairies. Lastly Tisha identified her own travels.


 * Jon stopped in to see Kalima and ask her about buildings north of the river. Kalima identified a cathedral of Raija and a large farmer's market as the most important community buildings there, but also mentioned a large metal warehouse the Clockwork Men had built there recently. She said she didn't know if they were men or machines, but that their leader was called the King of Clocks and they came originally from Averdale. Kalima said she would try to find out more information about the priest of Sesharet, the succubus, and the man in woad, and Jon asked to meet her at the Hall of Lyra at 8AM the next morning for breakfast.
 * The party went to visit Messana, who baked cookies for everyone. She was unable to cast any more Vision spells on their behalf (the spell does drain the witches' XP), but suggested to Red that the kidnappers seen in the previous vision might be easier to find than their captive. Red became excited by this and tried to use scry on the purple-robed priest, unfortunately to find he was in a blocked location.
 * Red used another scry spell on the man in woad, being rebuffed by his will save and recognizing that he was located on another plane at this time. She does not know whether he was aware of this attempt.
 * In the end, the group decided to investigate the Clockworkers' warehouse, which might be related to Seven's kidnapping (being north of the river and also apparently made of metal, both of which would have interfered with scrying) and also related to the quest to thwart the Invasion (since a Clockwork Man had been linked with one of Chavalk's curses by Terreira and Khirg reported fighting with strange mechanicals in his dream.) That is where they are headed at 5:30 AM on Sunday May 1st when the next session begins.

MAL 21

 * The party went to the metal warehouse of the King of Clocks. They knocked on the door, planning to parlay with the clockworkers, but when no one answered, they went inside to have a peek around. Aler found a note from the King of Clocks mentioning Harasket offering him help with some unknown situation in the kingdom of Averdale which has apparently been going on for 19 years. No beds, food, or any other indications of anyone with a human life cycle living here were found.
 * The party used Tanya's Crawling Eye invocation and Jon's reluctant Clairvoyance spell to look down the shaft the dragon had emerged from. They saw the dragon's holding chamber and two small adjoining rooms, still no sign of human life. Aler's dancing lights reawakened the dragon, and the party decided to stay away from it and go back to town.
 * Kalima introduced Jon to a dapper halfling called Fingers Clayton, who she later identified as the owner of the Ruastin casino. Clayton had pieced together the party's search for Seven and told Jon the cult of Corrigar, an affiliate of the gang called Malice, were allied with illithids and he could find the girl he's looking for if he confronted them.
 * Adriel got an anonymous note from a Malice member telling her that the Red Hand is lying and Malice is NOT allied with the illithids--except for Skenebrax, who is now gone--and that the King of Clocks, a Red Hand ally, is the real associate of the League of Snakes.
 * Finally, the party talked to Beyond Jessery, first establishing some friendly relations by discussing the necromantic ban and Piper's situation with her, then revealing Seven's kidnapping and confronting her with Dayant Arakin's letter. Jessery seemed confused and claimed not to know Dayant Arakin or Chavalk, saying that the letter must have been meant for a different Beyonder. Detect Thoughts failed but Sense Motive suggested she was flustered but telling the truth when she claimed never to have met Dayant Arakin. Overall, the party concluded that this letter was most likely another example of Chavalk's deceit, though they couldn't rule out Jessery being involved with the League in some way.

MAL 22

 * The party then went to see Captain Ames, and found him discussing how to implement the necromancy ban with a Ducal officer, who he introduced as Captain Tersain.  Ames was clearly unwilling to share information about the local gangs in front of Tersain, so the party got him to leave by having Jon tell a long boring story till he had enough and left. Then Ames identified Fingers as the casino owner and head of the Red Hand, and said that though he didn't know if the King of Clocks was affiliated with the Red Hand or not, it was located on Red Hand turf and undoubtedly at least playing protection money to them. Ames said there was no official church of Corrigar in Ruastin, but gave the party a note with an address for "Philsin the Fixer" who might know more.
 * Philsin turned out to be an information dealer. The party bought several pieces of information from him, the most relevant being where the cult of Corrigar was located (in a building in a park in the west of town,) where the King of Clocks is (an address in Hastenport), and who Enarras Misterian was (a Tenarri sorcerer-king from ~600 years ago, known as the Dragonslayer and buried in a tomb in Ruastin by his fellows after he fell nearby in combat. Local rumors describe his spirit wandering the streets as an apparition reliving old battles.) Philsin also offered to buy information, but he said that he would not and could not promise to keep any information the party sold him a secret from anyone else.
 * Then the party went to the building where the cult of Corrigar was said to be located and staked it out. After finding it blocked from scrying and the windows stained glass which could not be seen through, Vanima Kaimelar turned into a shimmering liquid form and oozed through a crack in the door, spying on "two men in green dresses" who pushed buttons on the wall and descended a staircase that magically opened. Red then used Stone Shape to open a hole in the wall through which Khirg lifted the bar that was barring the door, and the party entered a room with a creepy fountain of blood and began examining the button pad, which they soon figured out would open the staircase when manipulated into the shape of an earth rune.
 * Descending the staircase, the group found some underground catacombs, where Adriel triggered a trap where the stone floor swallowed her face and began suffocating her. After attempts to yank her out of the stone and smash the stone out from around her didn't succeed, Zadkiel held his breath and transposed with her, then Tisha grabbed his foot and went ethereal with him to get him out of the encasing stone.
 * Tanya found an invisible button on the wall. After using a mage hand to remotely push it, she found it caused a secret door to swivel open. Tanya, Khirg and Aler went through to check it out, and found a hidden room with a safe. Aler was unable to open the safe, and sent Tisha and Bay through instead, who were able to crack the safe but triggered a gas trap that rendered Bay unconscious. The small group escaped from the room with some unidentified loot and a letter from Chavalk addressed to the "Priests of Contagion" telling them that the timing of the Invasion would depend upon the "disposition of Xhriakw." Jon took more mental damage when he thought about the name "Xhriakw" again. He is sure he must have known more about this at some point, but seems unable to access those memories. Zadkiel hypothesized that the priests of contagion mayb have been behind Skenebrax' curse of spreading plague.
 * The party filed past a magic mirror without taking any precautions to cover or disable it, then entered a twisty passage that led them to a false staircase which dumped them into a pit of green slime and scarab beetles. Using ropes and magic, they managed to climb back out, then Tanya found another invisible button which rotated the wall to reveal the real staircase down.
 * On the lowest level, the party bypassed a door to a room that later turned out to be a laboratory, and followed another twisty passage to a large altar room where they were attacked by a mummy, a priest of Sesharet, several green-robed cultists, and an invisible illithid. The mummy shot at the party with arrows of dragon slaying, then announced that "none of my enemies are here," as if surprised. The priest of Sesharet stated you were "mercenaries, just kill them." Zadkiel tried to talk the mummy into turning on the cultists, but it wasn't interested. The illithid dominated Khirg, who did a lot of damage to his teammates before being restrained by the magic python, and then three of the fairies you encountered in the tomb returned and began lighting the party up with eldritch blasts. After a long, messy fight, the mummy was killed by Aler. The still-invisible illithid tried to get to a side door and was thwarted by Tanya and Jarth, then he and the purple-robed priest somehow teleported out of the complex together, while the cultists were wiped out by Red's summoned creatures.
 * The party revived their downed teammates and found Seven in a glass box where she had apparently been in stasis for four days. They opened it and released her, learning her version of events and also that her investigations in Hastenport had revealed Ander, the villainous priest of Sesharet, is actually a priest of Corrigar who had infiltrated the Temple of Sesharet.
 * Finally, they found a note from someone named Kolchis discussing a "biological agent," telling Ander that the Keres would be "otherwise occupied," and that Harasket had provided them with a location for an attack, but no time. Jarth was able to identify the coordinates as someplace in the middle of the Utah forest. "That's a... strange place for an attack," he says. "Why would they choose a remote wilderness location like that? What could be there that they would want so much?"

MAL 23

 * Aler felt a compulsion to sit down and start writing. He did, and it turned out to be a letter from the head of Iscariot, a yuan-ti named Naruah. Besides responding to Aler's letter to him, he also informed Aler that three Iscariot members and four townspeople had been killed in a plague Skenebrax infected them with upon his return to Asture. Iscariot identified his curse as an "imprecatory prayer combined with a biological weapon." They have placed Skenebrax in an isolated place until a cure can be found for his curse, but Iscariot's diviner was among those killed in the plague.
 * Red cast Scry on the illithid they had fought in the cult of Corrigar, and was able to observe him in an unknown room speaking with the demon who interrupted the Ker attack on you earlier. The conversation was elliptical-- "She didn't take the bait." "Too bad. What about the rest of it?" "The canary has flown." Then the demon frowned and mentally attacked Red. As the spell faded out, the party heard him yelling “God DAMN it will you tentacly bastards start securing locations, this is what magic was invented for—” :-D
 * Red hypothesized that perhaps the "bait" of Seven being held prisoner was intended for Lady Aldrayeth, since the enemies had prepared a substantial anti-dragon ambush and since Aldrayeth clearly cared enough about Seven's abduction to lend a major artifact to the cause.
 * The party remembered that Zadkiel and Red had found dead canaries in the birdcage in the disease lab, and speculated that the cult of Corrigar might be spreading disease by releasing infected birds. Aler said it could be a metaphor for any agent of disease, noting that Skenebrax had carried a plague back to Iscariot. The party decided to pay at the temple to have Zadkiel and Red, who had entered the disease lab, checked for signs of disease. Zadkiel, but not Red, seemed to be in the earliest stages of infection with a disease, which he was able to cure with the Healing proficiency. The party then guessed this might have been because Zadkiel fell into the scarab pit unlike Red, so they paid to check Angara, Khirg, and Aler. Aler was similarly affected, but not the others. The party then paid to have Tanya, Adriel, Jon, Bay, Syla, Sephy, and Blue all checked, revealing Jon was affected. Aler and Jon were cured. Zadkiel suggested checking Seven and Jarth, and Jarth was affected like Zadkiel, Aler and Jon were, but Seven was fully infected and contagious, and Cure Disease needed to be cast on her. The group realized that the characters who had caught the disease today were the ones who had touched Seven (Aler helped her out of the box, Jarth hugged her, Zadkiel checked to see if she needed healing, and Jon comforted her and tried to calm her down.) Everyone was now successfully healed, and the outbreak of an annoying plague next session that would have caused PCs and important NPCs to become comatose at inconvenient times for the party was now thwarted. XP awarded.
 * The group returned to Philsin the Fixer to see whether he had found more information about the kidnappers like they had requested. After paying him, they learned that the man in blue woad is a feysworn sorcerer named Manathor. The party then haggled about Ander, trading the information they had learned for the information that Ander had apparently been consulting with Thrane about the possibility of raising some deepsea monster from the dead.