MAL Ep. 15

Thanks for playing, everyone. I'm sorry about the draggy pacing of that session--some of the stuff I had in there really didn't move along as well as I'd hoped.

Stuff that transpired included:

1) The party investigated the Arakin tower again. No undead things attacked as they skirted the graveyard; the PCs did not stop to check the names on the gravestones. When they got to the site, the tower was gone. Only a sinkhole in the ground remained. The party determined that the tower was physically not present, not merely invisible or otherwise hidden.

2) The party conversed with Sallykin, who addressed them again as "the Hunters." (She said previously this was because you had introduced yourself by saying you were hunting a demon lord. "That's big game!") The party chose not to reveal their association with Lochrann to her, so she offered only that "Shyra" and "Seela" were not fey names and were probably aliases. They also did not ask her whether the tower was on the fey lands now. They did tell her about Threndix and his crusade against extraplanars, to which Sallykin commented that she'd been on the moor a long time even by draconic standards, and that he'd never bothered her.

3) Exploring the sinkhole and using Stone Tell, the party determined that the tower had been teleported away somehow and that the earth then collapsed into the hole left by the departed basement. Some fragments of stone tile were apparently wrenched off and left behind during this event, causing a large brazier and a number of small personal effects to scatter into the dirty. Khirg found a fork, and Aler found a few gold pieces and a letter from Dayant Arakin to a cleric of Alayan named Beyond Jessery, addressing her as a fellow supporter of the League of Snakes and associate of Chavalk's, bemoaning what she perceives as unfair treatment of necromancers, and voicing her opinion that action needed to be taken against the Duke of Peraine.

4) The group deduced that the tower must have been transported to another plane. Red tried to use Scry on Dayant Arakin, using the fork Khirg had found as a personal focus. The spell did not succeed. Red knows there are significant minuses for not knowing Dayant personally and for her possibly being on another plane. Also, in retrospect, though the fork was a great idea, Red's not actually all that sure vampires even eat with forks.

5) Returning to Hastenport, the group found the retired knight Cartaso and his teenage son Cartino waiting for them. Cartaso asked Adriel if she would be interested in taking Tino with her as a squire, since the paladin who was previously mentoring him was killed by the vampire. After consulting with the party and testing the youth's abilities in a duel, Adriel agreed.

6) The party returned to Hastenport and went back and forth between the police station and a few other locations. They told Captain Black about the missing tower, but left out the letter to Beyond Jessery, the encounter with Threndix, and their experience with Lochrann. They did share with her the theory that the woman who escaped from Tylden Square may have been fey rather than undead, and hence a different person than Dayant Arakin. Captain Black confirmed that the woman who escaped from Tylden Square was the same one who fought the paladins in the tower.

7) Vyna, Petros' second-in-command at the House of Fantarin, identified Corrigar as a god of pestilence and sorrow, and said that he doesn't have an organized church, though many people pray to him to spare their families.

8) 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.

9) 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.

10) Barris, alerted by "Seven's" screams, showed up at the bookshop with his wand out. He was concerned to learn Seven was missing, and told the party to contact him if there's anything he could do.

11) 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."

12) 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."

13) 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.

14) 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.

15) 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."

16) Spooked by Seven's abduction, Jon asked for a security detail on his house. Captain Black said in light of the attack on Jon earlier this week, she would have the paladins post a guard at the house. Red also sacrificed her own XP to Awaken a large pine tree in Jon's yard, turning it into a minor treant, which she left with orders to defend Jon's family and alert the paladin on duty of danger.

17) Jon and Red visited Jenn the madam, learning that the High Priest of Sesharet, Ander, has not been seen since the night before you left for the Tower.

18) 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.

19) The party made plans to travel to Ruastin, laying in some additional supplies for the trip.

And that's as far as we got today.

Onward!

Laura