MAL Ep. 54

MAL Ep. 54
I'm not sure a recap is actually all that necessary at this late hour, you are really on the cusp of resolution already, but here is a quick one for you:

1) First, the party resolved their quest in the Tenarri Land of the Dead, helping some ghost women fix their town up from a hurricane in exchange for some information about the Skeleton King-- who they realized from the descriptions must be none other than the skeleton boy who had sent them to see the ghost women in the first place, thus conning them into dealing with the storm cleanup for him.

2) The party went back to see the Skeleton King again, learning his origin story: he had been the Tenarri trickster god before becoming Lord of the Dead, but having died so many times in the course of his escapades, began to feel sympathy for the dead souls and decided to stay in the Land of the Dead to take care of them. They asked him for the secret of slaying a demon lord outright, and he asked them why they would wish to do this, pointing out that there would always be demons in the world and also that banishing Chavalk to the Abyss would have the same cutting-the-head-off-a-snake effect on his alliance that slaying him would. Adriel explained that destroying Chavalk would send a message of hope to all Malachians that they have the power to defend their land from invaders and make a lasting difference. Impressed by her character growth, the Skeleton King gave Adriel a divine talisman to cause Chavalk to become as mortal as any man, and the party returned to Malachi.

3) The party had a long meeting with Tisha, a knight commander named Kantos, a ducal minister named Erasmus and the dwarf lord Hondor. They conveyed the information they had obtained from Terence and then reviewed and firmed up many plans, the most important I remember being

A) everyone agreed not to talk to Threndix about the Invasion in advance, but rather to mobilize the Order of the Dragon in defense of the southern city of Riell against a "possible extraplanar threat" as close to the date as feasible. Since the League of Snakes may be striking at other unknown targets simultaneously, the Kingdom is being careful to leave defenders in other areas as well

B) Tisha will handle coordinating the contacting of the drow as close to the date of the Invasion is feasible

C) After quite a lot of arguing, the party decided to tell Tisha that they might have secured reinforcements coming to the battle on the side of Malachi, but NOT to tell her those reinforcements belonged to Lochrann, since there is reason to fear that either Lochrann will not show up or Shyra will cover her tracks better if that possibility gets out.

D) The party made plans to "leak" the fact that the illithid homelands were under attack to the illithids by sending soldiers running near their position thinking about it, on the theory that if they check to see whether this is true and learn that it is they may leave the battle to protect their homes E) The party devised two layers of plans to thwart any enemy plans to impersonate them, by means of Red teaching the secret Druidic cant to some of her teammates and Jon acquiring double-blind codeword letters from a trustworthy third party to prevent illithids from being able to learn that information psionically.) F) The party did NOT tell Tisha about the artifact the Skeleton King gave Adriel, instead they decided to have Jon spread rumors amongst the soldiers via his network of hookers that Adriel intends to pursue Chavalk to the Abyss after the battle and attack him in his stronghold, thus obscuring the fact that she has a means to kill him on Malachi and possibly tricking him into beefing up security on the Abyss G) Tisha asked the party not to reveal the date of the Invasion to anyone else since there are a lot of troops to move to Overthorn without alerting anyone of something unusual going on, which is logistically complex. 4) The party then went to scout out the planes overlapping Fort Overthorn. They found that the site does not connect to the Land of the Dead at all, even by conduit, which is unusual; it would be impossible for someone to planewalk here directly from the Land of the Dead (though they could always portal in from the land of the dead by way of a third location.) The Ethereal plane connects but seems empty. On the Fey plane Jon spotted a slowly rotating magical pyramid device.

5) After a lot of arguing Jon said he refused to go to the Fey lands to examine the device, so the rest of the party went in the Walking Hut; Jon was however fibbing and went through on his own to try to take notes on the device clandestinely, rejoining the party later when a fight broke out.

6) Said fight occurred because upon approaching the device, Tanya noticed ghostly gnollish figures chained to the device and pushing it along its path. They spoke an old version of gnollish which was very hard for Khirg to understand, but after getting a very high INT check, he was able to learn that they are gnollish warriors who died about 1000 years ago, whose spirits were unable to pass to the afterlife due to the blocked access to the Land of the Dead Jon noticed earlier, and therefore became lost in the Fey lands and enslaved by fairies they called "Unk-ha" (which looking that up later, Tanya is able to decipher meant "One who binds" in Old Gnollish.) The party decided to cut these ghosts' chains with Khirg's cold iron greataxe, resulting in a confrontation with a group of very Unseelie fairies in bad moods.

7) The party made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to get information out of them, asking them "Who do you serve?" and getting back "We serve no one. We ARE served!", and Jon played a clan song from Lann Lasanta's Owl clan at them, which they clearly recognized but only shouted "Who's there?" in Fey rather than anything betraying either allegiance or hostility to that clan.

8) Big combat in which all four fairies were slain--the one that tried to escape did not succeed.

9) The PCs released all the ghosts, but the ghosts were still unable to go to their eternal rest for the same reason they ended up on the Fey Plane in the first place: the Land of the Dead is inaccessible from here, and their spirits cannot travel far from their place of death. The druids were unaware of this issue because their tradition relies on reincarnation. Realizing this would also be an issue for troops who fell in combat, the group deputized Zadkiel to speak to the Angels, asking them to transport the spirits of those who die in combat, including these gnolls, to the afterlife. (And if that keeps them busy and away from Averdale for a bit longer after the combat ends, well it's for a holy cause, right?) The PCs asked if the gnoll ghosts (there are 18 of them) would join them in the battle against Chavalk a la Aragorn's Ghost Army. They said sure, but they are not very powerful (5th level) and Dayant Arakin could pretty easily take them over. The party decided to ask them to monitor the Ethereal Plane instead, since ghosts can see ethereal and are almost impossible to spot through the Veil. And there we broke for the day. See you in June (if all goes according to plan) or early July (if it does not) for the final showdown. Game on!