MAL Ep. 52

In this episode the party persevered in their attempt to find Dayant Arakin and arrived at her displaced tower to parlay and/or throw down, as necessary.

1) First, the party noticed some shades bathing in the river, including one ragged looking shade who seemed to become smoother and healthier looking after immersing itself in the river. Aler crept closer to observe them, but the PCs decided not to try communicating with the shades at this time and forged on to find Enessiet.

2) Avoiding some unusual looking gray and white plants, the party began to travel around the mountain towards the lee side. They heard vultures crying overhead, and spotted a gray circle of runes carved into the side of the mountain, in a fashion Zadkiel identified as religiously ritualistic. No one could read the runes, which appeared blurry as the runes on the Vecna shrine had (although the party was able to conclude they were not the SAME runes they had found on the shrine.)

3) The PCs began to find themselves affected by extreme emotions, with Zadkiel falling prey to hysterical laughter, Jon to fear, Aler to rage, and Bay to sorrow. While they were dealing with this a shadow dragon suddenly burst out of the sand and attacked them with its shadow breath weapon, draining Jon of levels and several PCs of charisma, affect, and emotion. (On the plus side, it also dispelled the negative emotional state and imbued the PCs with a sense of serenity and calm.) Adriel successfully parlayed with the unhappy dragon, which ordered the party to "Calm down!" Bay used her wand of calm emotions to eliminate more of the party's emotional agitation and the dragon left without further violence. The group deduced that the emotional agitation had been caused by the vultures, who Aler had heard cawing "despair, despair, despair!", probably with the intention of annoying the dragon into killing some of you so they could scavenge the corpses.

4) The party rode the enormous pill bugs Red had summoned the rest of the way around the mountain and found the door Henneran had told them about. Knocking upon it, it was opened by a tall black shade who couldn't understand your language. Name-dropping Henneran seemed to make it less friendly, but name-dropping Enessiet caused it to fetch two of its fellows, one of whom spoke Abyssal and was thus able to communicate with Jon and Aler.

5) This shade, named Hanaya, was very resistant to bothering Enessiet with a visit from the party, asking what they needed to see her about, offering to take them to see her minister of public affairs instead, or offering to deliver the violin and a note from the PCs to her themselves. Remembering that Henneran had warned them to insist upon being taken to Enessiet, Jon was firm about it and Hanaya eventually caved in and led the party to Enessiet's chamber, warning them that they had only themselves to blame if the Shadow Lord was displeased by their presumptuousness.

6) The party did not, however, remember Henneran's warning to stay to the path, and encountered two dangers following Hanaya across a shortcut: a hypnotically spinning disk that Jon looked into and lost his soul (Zadkiel was fortunately able to reverse this calamity by spinning the disk in the opposite direction), and a huge gout of searing black flame that shot out of the stone floor and Jon barely dodged being fried by. After yelling at the confused-looking Hanaya about these misfortunes, the party stuck to the path for the rest of the journey and suffered no further mishaps.

7) Reaching Enessiet's chamber, the party found the Shadow Lord actually quite unbothered about being disturbed. (It's not clear whether Hanaya was lying/exaggerating, whether Enessiet has enough of a reputation of fearsomeness when she becomes displeased that everyone in the realm avoids it at all costs even though it happens rarely, or whether Enessiet would indeed have become displeased if you had not presented her with Henneran's violin as he instructed you to.) Enessiet chatted with the party for 15-20 minutes. I did not take notes on the encounter, but some of the highlights I think were:

* Enessiet seemed aware of the party's earlier travels on her plane, mentioning their fight with the shadow rats (for which Aler apologized for not figuring out the puzzle sooner and avoiding it) and asking them if they had been visiting the Shrine of Vecna because they wee on the quest for immortality. The party said no they were not.

* Enessiet gives the impression of being quite ancient. She apparently knew Vecna when he was a mortal, she refers to Henneran as a 'young man'

* According to Enessiet, Harasket was responsible for bringing Dayant and her tower to her realm, something he did without Enessiet's permission, but successfully apologized for later. Enessiet seems to know both Harasket and Henneran well and be comparatively fond of them.

* Of Harasket, Enessiet said that Harasket was associated with Dayant, and Harasket was associated with Aglan and the Fatespinners, but that did not necessarily mean Dayant was associated with the Fatespinners, since Harasket was often associated with multiple schemes at once. She said Harasket had once been a mortal Malachian mage before unleashing ancient magics and becoming a rakshasa, a "different path" to immortality than that of Vecna and Aglan (presumably lichdom.) She also said that Henneran and the Fatespinners didn't see eye to eye about matters of mortality, but shrugged off their disagreements with the attitude that "this is the Plane of Shadow, both light and dark are needed here. I appreciate Harasket and Henneran in different ways."

* Of Henneran, she mentioned that most Fey do not care for the realm of Shadow (which offends their sensibilities,) but that Henneran has a greater appreciation for shades of gray than most of his kind. She made some remark about his emotional nature being more inclined to contemplative mourning than raging against the dying of the light, and though most of her subjects found interacting with him a bit uncomfortable, Enessiet herself didn't mind a man with a bit of passion--like Henneran or like Jon-- as long as he knew how to keep it under control.

* Enessiet showed Jon an oil painting over the fireplace, called "Into the Mystery," which Henneran had painted. It inspired feelings of wonder tinged with sorrow in Jon, who played a haunting song on his pipes to match the canvas. Enessiet seemed pleased with his performance.

* Enessiet told the group the exact location of the vampires' tower. She also described it accurately, and identified the other vampire living in the tower as Terrance, Dayant's mate. She said the vampires weren't causing any trouble for her as they did not prey upon her subjects. The PCs were honest with her that their attempts to parlay with Dayant might end in violence, though they hoped to get the job done with negotiation. Enessiet was kind of indifferent about this, saying that she had no attachment to either the vampires or the PCs and would not interfere unless they attacked her folk or damaged her realm. Enessiet clearly did not consider your earlier skirmishes with the shadow rats or the shadow dragon to be problems from her POV (either because the party didn't start those fights, because no shadows were actually killed in them, or just because they were small and incidental conflicts.)

* Rather taken with Enessiet despite himself, Jon offered to bring her to Malachi for a visit to show her its beauty someday, and gave her the ashes of the starbeast the party had killed as a present. Enessiet seemed intrigued by both, and accepted a piece of Jon's clothing so that she could communicate with him at a later date.

* I have a nagging feeling there was something else Aler discussed with Enessiet, but I do not recall what.

In the end, Jon left the enchanted violin with Enessiet, and the party left her audience, retracing their steps along the path safely to the surface.

8) The party decided they had all the information they needed and did not further investigate the shadows bathing in the river, the runic circle, or the strange plants, instead heading straight for Dayant Arakin's tower.

9) On the way, they discussed their proposal to present to Dayant, in hopes of getting her to switch sides or at least give you the information you need and exit the League of Snakes. Their arguments included

* That the Prince of Cloudwatch has agreed to rescind the Duke's ban on necromancy if Dayant stands down

* That Dayant has already succeeded at swaying public opinion, as evidenced by Lady Aldrayeth's public stand in defense of necromancy and the willingness of Red the Archdruid to parlay with her

* That if she continues to support the Invasion, she will squander these inroads and be treated as a public enemy instead

* That Iscariot, who Aler represents, is prepared to work with Dayant to make a plan under which she can operate without harassment by the Church of Tallian, and that in fact Iscariot has done exactly this for another vampire Aler knows, Skenebrax's girlfriend Aki

* That Iscariot's support, and Lady Aldrayeth's, is likely to be worth more than Chavalk's, who is inherently untrustworthy and is likely to have been manipulating Dayant for his own purposes

* That Zadkiel, whose church carefully maintains good relationships with all the other organized religions of the Duchy, considers the necromancy ban a mistake and is willing to work with the other churches for an acceptable way to normalize necromantic magic

10) The party used Animal Messenger to send a shadow raven to the tower carrying a letter asking Dayant to parlay with them about these matters, but also began approaching the tower themselves, not wanting to give an archmage time to mount any advanced tower defenses if she didn't want to parlay.

11) As the party crossed the yard towards the tower, they were attacked by a horde of undead, which they carved through with a certain amount of flair (except for the disappointed Red, whose badass Sunbeam spell sputtered into nothingness on the Plane of Shadow, where light-based spells seem not to function at all.)

12) Finally, a vampire appeared, holding the note you had sent him, and called off the remaining undead. This is Terrance, Dayant's lover. He told the party that his mistress is out but invited you into the tower to discuss the situation, the party accepted and went with him.

And there we broke for the day. As I mentioned on the Discord, I am leaning towards allowing the party to make their case to Terrance using the arguments they have already articulated and thus beginning next session with his responses, rather than make y'all have to roleplay the whole proposal all over again.

Onward!