MAL Ep. 29

In this session, our heroes successfully restored the Forge of Moradin, suffered their first party casualty, talked to Adriel's Underdark contact, met the unusual mentalist Anselm, and got driving lessons from an Elder Fey.

1) First, Aler and Red deciphered Lochrann's message, telling them their gift was on the desk inside the walking hut and that the new entry code was "Vanima Kaimelar." (Vanima Kaimelar likes this very much!) Entering the hut, they found that Lochrann's present was a brief manual of operating instructions for the hut, which I have reproduced for everyone in a separate email. The party fooled around with the hut briefly, figuring out how to make it turn, walk, bank, and squat before Jon lost patience and exhorted everyone to hurry their butts to the volcano.

2) Approaching the volcano of Abresor, the party sent Syla the owl to scout the area, giving the caldera wide berth. She perceived no enemies in range, and Aler found only animal tracks.

3) The party then entered the map, determining that the window and cave mouth leading to the interior were both blocked by sheets of magical fire and noticing some unusual boulders of extremely light density with fragments of a pterodactyl skeleton imprinted on them. The party collected these five boulders, triggering one rather vicious branch-crushing trap in the process (with Jon screaming "I told you to check that for traps!" from the back.) Then they assembled the boulders into the shape of the pterodactyl as if they were puzzle pieces. Nothing happened.

4) The party realized that the boulder puzzle would fit into the window of the cave, and after some logistic wrangling, managed to fit them into the window, causing the sheets of flame blocking entry to the cave to vanish. However, although they had identified the boulders' ejection mechanism, they failed to seek cover after placing the boulders, and took a bunch of damage when they came flying down the hill at them. Good thing they weren't made of granite!

5) Now on alert, the party carefully checked the cave mouth for traps, finding a pressure place that would have caused 20' spikes to just down at you as you passed through. Bay remotely sprang the trap and led the party safely around it, and they descended down into the lower chamber.

6) The lower chamber had a steaming pit with lava at the bottom of it partially blocking the way to a back chamber emitting a magical glow. The party carefully proceeded through the chamber, splitting into several groups and being wary of anything that might push them into the pit. In the back chamber, they spied a glowing magical anvil on a white stone base, but an enormous creature the DM called a "pyroscorpion" and the players called a "fuckoff scorpion" emerged from the pit and began attacking.

7) Long, furious 3D combat resulting in Adriel's death by critical hit with an 8-foot-long blazing scorpion stinger, but the beast was eventually slain and sank back into the lava. The party dragged the 2-ton anvil back to the waiting hut and brought it back to the dwarven temple.

8) It was about 2 in the morning when the party arrived at the temple with the anvil, but most of the dwarves in the area had woken up and joined them there by the time they had logistically figured out how to get the thing inside. The high priest, Dareth, raised Adriel from the dead while a visibly ticked off Zadkiel finally summoned his angelic birth father for a talk.

9) The angel, Hastaros, didn't actually turn out to be that much of an asshole at all. First he told the assembled dwarves of the threat to Peraine and used the forge to rally them against it. Second, he told the high priest to contact the dwarven King and ask him to ally against the League of Snakes. Third, he finally explained himself to Zadkiel--he had been unable to tell him anything of his heritage earlier because he had given his word to Zadkiel's mother and angels cannot go back on their word under any circumstance. Now that Zadkiel already knew the truth, he agreed to remove the spell he had cast to suppress Zadkiel's ability to access his angelic form. Fourth, Zadkiel brought up Piper's problem. Hastaros said it would be possible for the angels of Moradin to restore her to life as a mortal by undoing her sacrifice, and that they might be willing to do this out of their abhorrence for child sacrifice, but that such a powerful magic would be sure to have cascading effects, since everything that she has used her powers to accomplish would also be undone. Jon and Piper were too concerned about the negative ramifications that could have for Malachi to take him up on the offer, but he said Zadkiel could contact him again at the temple if Piper changed her mind.

10) The party slept for the night, then tried to find information about the mentalist Anselm. They quickly realized that the miners in town didn't want anything to do with the adventuring types, drow, and highfalutin' merchants who are always traipsing through town on their way to the Darklands. They headed to the Southside, where those types were said to congregate, and located a bar the locals call "Jimmy Mack's." Jon went inside and talked to the proprietor Jimmy, a former adventuring bard who had married a miner's daughter and settled down here. The two traded a few bardic melodies, and Jon learned that Jimmy had met the mentalist Anselm once years ago, when he had come to town asking people strange questions and searching for something that was "whiter than white." Jimmy said he lives up in the hills west of town.

11) Aler, by the way, debuted his new disguise as a surface elf named Alan Silverleaf, assisted by the disguise capabilities and Competence song of Bay and Jon.

12) Meanwhile, Red, Adriel, and Khirg went on a shopping trip in the Southside, pretending to be looking for a buyer for Khirg's illithid book, They got recommended back to Jimmy Mack and to Nathali Ken'rae (Adriel's drow merchant contact,) but also the suggestion that the demonologist Thrane Do'Ezzen, who had arrived in town the previous day, might be a good buyer for anything occultish. The party recalled having met Do'Ezzen in Ruastin and also briefly scried upon him conversing with High Priest Ander-- though they did not seem to be allies and Do'Ezzen appeared disinclined (at least at the moment) to help Ander with whatever he was requesting help with. Aler recalled Vanessa telling him that Thrane was a dangerous man and that Aler should stay away from him (he consequently did not go to visit Thrane in Ruastin when the other PCs did.)

13) Jimmy Mack arranged a meeting with Nathali Ken'rae for the party. Neither Jimmy nor Nathali seemed to twig to Aler's disguise. Nathali confirmed that her aunt Talisha, the matriarch of House Ken'rae who Adriel had contacted earlier, had asked her to broker a meeting. She explained that there was a border town beneath Delsin, called Kiratas, where traders from Peraine and the Darklands do business. As a keyholder, Nathali can grant you entry to Kiratas at any time you wish, however she cannot recommend surfacers going any further into the Darklands than Kiratas without having a meeting already planned with one of the Great Houses. She suggests that once a meeting is scheduled, the party can book passage from Kiratas to the drow city of Ellenun, where Talisha can meet them to discuss matters. The party agreed to get back to Nathali about this. They also asked about Thrane, getting the response that Nathali had just seen him this morning on his way down to Kiratas, and about Anselm, getting the response that Nathali did not know him but had heard he was a human mage who had escaped from illithid captivity in the Darklands many years ago.

14) The party then set off for the hills west of Delsin to look for Anselm. Red used her Commune With Nature spell and identified an area of unnatural anomaly, though the spell could not identify what that anomaly was. Approaching that area, the party found a small estate tucked away among the hills with some peculiar features scattered around it: a red merry-go-round creaking in the wind; a small garden with a strange silver stream flowing around it and a fountain in the center; a stone circle of multicolored rocks; a small pagoda with a tiled table with a snow globe on it; a stone lion with a bowl of sparkling jewels between its paws; and a sculpture of a giant chair.

15) The party moved warily around all these things without interacting with any of them and went to the door of the building, which was open (revealing a homey sitting room inside) but felt closed to the touch. They knocked upon the invisible-seeming door and heard a voice call to them to come in, which all of them did except for Red and Cartino. A blond man in a long cloaked stepped backwards into the room and turned around to face them, introducing himself as Anselm. He asked who each of you were, responding "Oh. That's interesting" when Aler introduced himself as Alan Silverleaf and "Valenal. I knew someone else named Valenal, many years ago..." when Adriel introduced herself as Adriel Valenal. Anselm then said "Well, you must be here to ask me questions. Everyone who comes here has questions to ask of me." Jon remarked that didn't seem very neighborly and asked whether Anselm had any questions to ask of them, to which Anselm gave a quizzical look and said "Thank you, but there is no need." Zadkiel then cast Mind Blank on himself, to which Anselm commented "What an interesting choice." The spell appears to have worked, but feels very strange to Zadkiel.

16) Anselm concluded "Everything has to do with the choices you make, in the place you are now. Your actions will speak for themselves. Complete three challenges, and you may have three answers from me. They will all be honest and true, but please take a bit of care in what you ask. I am very close to omnipotent here, but nowhere close to omniscient, and "I don't know" is, after all, an honest and true answer to many questions. I would hate for you to go away disappointed. Talk amongst yourselves until you have decided which questions you would ask."

And there we broke for the night.

Onward!