MAL Ep. 33

Laura's Notes
In this online adventure, our heroes solved some puzzles to recover the Chalice of Wisdom, met with Anselm, and learned the Answers to the questions they had asked them. Plus some character drama from Jon in the outro. :-)

1) First, the giant pumpkin monster Zadkiel had inadvertently summoned at the end of last session ate Khirg, necessitating his rescue by the rest of party. After an epic charge and much strangulation by giant vines, the Great Pumpkin was defeated and Khirg was retrieved from its gullet, drenched in bilious pumpkin slime and somewhat the worse for wear.

2) Meanwhile, Bay had deduced the correct solution to the flubbed puzzle, lighting the four elemental braziers and divining which direction was North. The party dug in the correct spot and located a metal trapdoor engraved with the words "Use Thy Wisdom."

3) Descending into the earth, the party discovered a hallway of blinking lights and unsettlingly shifting effects (a gold mirror with a face suddenly jutting out of it, an urn full of writhing scarab beetles, etc.), causing several characters to become disoriented or unnerved. Adriel thrust her arm into the vat of scarabs, becoming ill but finding an aquamarine circlet. The PCs chose to avoid a pile of gold in one corner, feeling it would not be considered wise to loot a strange place where nothing was as it seemed.

4) At the end of the hallway, the party found a translucent green staircase with uneven steps leading upwards. They heard an eerie sound effect (known as a "Shepard Tone" in real life,) which gives the audial illusion of endlessly ascending. Climbing the staircase caused PCs to become dizzy and lose their footing, but they realized they could avoid this by closing their eyes; they then found they could never reach the top of the staircase, but Red used wax to plug her ears and without the distractions of the sight of the shifting stairs or the sound of the endlessly ascending tone, made it to the top. The others followed.

5) The party ascended into a marble hall with huge colored crystals hanging from the metal rafters. They discovered that the circlet they had found in the urn of scarabs caused the crystals to glow, and deduced that the crystals needed to be illuminated in the same order as the flashing colored lights in the hallway, causing another passage to open.

6) The party entered another area with a kaleidoscopic floor causing them to be lose their balance. Aler, scouting ahead, found a lever and pulled it, causing half his life force to drain away. The party saw what appeared to be bloody handprints on one wall, Aler failed a sanity check and refused to approach them, and everyone else decided against investigating them further also. Aler intentionally avoided a large mirror, but Zadkiel chose to look into it, seeing a vision of his face decaying. He failed a sanity check and was overcome with dread, but also gained a permanent +1 to his will save.

7) The PCs hurried through the rest of this winding hallway to a square room in the center blocked by a forcefield. After some trial and error they solved a puzzle opening the forcefield by pouring liquid into a protruding font and entered the last room.

8) In this room, they saw a table with nine cups of various sizes and shapes and an inscription that said "choose wisely." They had the innate sense that touching a goblet would constitute choosing it, so they had only one chance to find the right one. Zadkiel had the idea to drag the large mirror from the hallway into the room and look at the reflection of the table in the mirror, where he saw only one small silver goblet, which was not on the table at all when he looked at it directly. Zadkiel used Create Water to fill the unseen goblet. Vanima Kaimelar repeated the Lesson of the Fox which Lochrann had told Jon earlier: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Jon then seized the invisible goblet Zadkiel had identified, which was inscribed with the word "wisdom." The table disappeared, replaced by unfolding white circular stairs.

9) Cartino reported a menacing black fog was slowly advancing through the winding hallway towards them. The party guessed this was probably illusory like everything else in this Hall, but decided they didn't want to tangle with it anyway, and hurried up the stairs, emerging into a small pentacle-shaped room with no exits. There they found a circle of star-shaped crystals like the one they had seen in Anselm's yard earlier. Using the "Crystals of Power" clues they had found in the Garden of Wisdom, they quickly solved the puzzle of which order to arrange the stones in and were transported back to the Yard, where they placed the final chalice in the rusty tent.

10) The party all reappeared in Anselm's manor, where Zadkiel immediately made some tea. Anselm emerged into the room and took the teacup, inviting the party to sit down. There were no chairs, but Jon sat down as if there were a chair there anyway, and found himself supported as if it were there.

11) Anselm remarked that the party had been "exceptional subjects... downright actinic, actually," and that he was pleased all three of their questions had Answers that they would find valuable.

12) Learning the importance of all the crystal skull's uses: Anselm identified the skull as a "conduit," which could theoretically be used to channel power for any purpose, running through an exhaustive list of which would not be an efficient use of your time. However, regarding the importance of the artifact's uses, Anselm explained that few men are capable of commanding the mental powers of the illithids, and since you found the skull in the possession of their human ally/servant Ander, they undoubtedly gave it to him so he could activate their own power to do what he could not. The party guessed that he might have been using the artifact to control the Leviathan you encountered at Ander's house, which Anselm agreed was possible.

Anselm also mentioned that there was one other "use" of particular importance to the party: the illithids could use it to track the party, "and there is nothing you're capable of doing that could conceal it from them. I would assume their first attempt to repossess it will not be their last." Zadkiel asked whether Anselm would be willing to keep the skull here in his realm, and if so, whether he could keep the illithids from finding it here. Anselm said yes, but if the party chose to do this, they could not count on finding him again to get it back from him later.

13) How to fight against the illithids both offensively and defensively: Anselm gave the party some information about the nature of the illithids' mental powers, which they call Fhtagn, the Tenarri call Psionics, and he himself refers to as "mastering the Core." He warned that the illithids' psionics are nearly impossible to block, counter, or dispel. Without mastering the Core yourself, your only defenses against them are "mitigation, Will saves, and blind luck. There is a good reason the rest of the Darklands fear them. But I know the secret of the illithids: the Core is equally useless against magic. Even their oldest enemies on Malachi do not know this. When you can control men's perceptions without recourse, how are they to know how much damage their enemies have taken, how much effect their spells have had, by what means a victory has been achieved?"

The party discussed this with Anselm further, asking questions about mitigation and how to use magic against the illithids' weakness. Anselm defined mitigation as not countering a power, but preventing its effects from harming anything. As an example, he said you can't magically stop an illithid from telekinetically dropping a rock on your head, but you can disintegrate the rock before it hits you, use a ring of jumping to jump out of the way, or take the damage and heal yourself. Conversely, an illithid cannot stop you from casting a lightning bolt at him, but he could transpose polarity and divert the strike away like any other electricity, or use the Core to heal any damage you cause. Anselm also warned you that the illithids are masters of mitigation, having had much experience with the magics of the Darklands.

Aler brought up force attacks, having noticed that his force arrows seem to have no effect on the Cthulhoid monsters you all fought. Anselm said he would not recommend using mind-affecting magics or force attacks on illithids at all, as their mitigation game would be especially strong on those fronts.

Red brought up several spells as examples to feel out what would be a useful attack against illithids or not. Anselm clarified that if an illithid had erected a psionic forcefield, an arrow could not pass through it regardless of whether it was magically enhanced or not, but nothing would stop you from casting a non-physical spell through the forcefield as if it were not there. So, for example, you could summon an animal right next to an illithid even if there were a forcefield between you. They have no resistance to pure magic spells like Finger of Death (though they still get a saving throw like anything else.) And if you cast any spells to enhance yourselves or disadvantage them, they have no way to dispel that... except for dominating the spellcaster and forcing him to terminate the spells, which they could do.

14) The party then asked whether Anselm could use the crystal skull to confer his own powers to the party to shield themselves from illithid attacks. Anselm said no, the skull was nowhere near powerful enough for such a thing. The party then asked whether Anselm could empower the skull to hide JUST their knowledge of the illithid weakness from psionic probing. Anselm said he could do that, and the party gave him the crystal feather from the magic balance in exchange for this.

15) Finally, how to reverse Jon's memory loss. Anselm explained that this had no simpler a fix psionically than magically, since Jon was not suffering from brain damage (which could simply be healed) but rather his neural pathways had been rewired. "Nothing is going to have any chance at reversing that but another intervention through the Core." He suggested two options for restoring Jon's memories: 1) getting another illithid to do it. "They aren't a hive mind or anything--just because one illithid attacks you doesn't necessarily mean another one might not help you. But making deals with the illithids is not for the faint of heart. Bear in mind there is nothing you can do to completely protect your mind from them while you interact." 2) Anselm could try to repair it, but without knowing exactly what the illithid did, he might end up causing more damage. He suggested that if you brought him the brain of an illithid, it would improve his chances a lot.

16) The PCs decided the best course of action was to go to the Underdark and contact the illithids--if they could find one willing to cure Jon they could do that, but if they could not, they could kill one and bring back its brain. However, Jon asked Anselm to attempt psychic surgery immediately, despite the higher risk of failure. Adriel stridently dissented, saying that the risk of brain-damaging Jon further was too high and that it was irrational to assume that healing his brain a few days sooner would make any difference to their anti-Invasion plan. Bay asked whether this would help Piper somehow, and Adriel stated that it did not matter, because the fate of Malachi was more important than the lives of any individual. After a short quarrel, Jon stated that it was his brain and this was his final decision, which Red backed him up on.

17) Bay then asked Anselm about the apparition of Chavalk they had faced (which Ralph had referred to as a "free Answer,") and whether those were a preview of Chavalk's real powers or just, you know, a generic pit fiend stat block from the Dungeon Master's Guide. Anselm mused aloud about his philosophical unwillingness to start bending his own rules, one of which is not to discuss the thoughts of his visitors with anyone else--but that in this case, the illusion of the demon lord you fought in the Tomb of Horrors came not from Adriel's own mind but from an impression left by a previous guest, and that while he still does not intend to divulge personal information about his visitors "even to their next of kin," he knows without a doubt that the stored data about Chavalk would have been willingly given to Adriel.

18) Finally, before Anselm made his attempt to recover Jon's memories, he invoked some psionic maneuver that made all your bags rock and shake, explaining that he had just replaced the gold they looted from the Tomb of Horrors with real gold. "You seemed so excited to find it... it would be a shame for you to get back to town and find it all evaporated to memory." ;-D

And there we broke for the day, with Jon's fate as yet unknown, and the party agreed upon returning to Delsin to enter the Underdark.

See you all when small group gatherings are on again!

Addendum
Note, the recap didn't make this clear, but as of now the party's consensus was NOT to leave the crystal skull with Anselm, but rather to give him the crystal feather in exchange for psionically imbuing the skull to occlude their knowledge of the secret of the Fhtagn from illithid telepathy.

If you wish to change that, let me know before next session, as the two options (both interesting ones suggested by the players) would have two different sets of ramifications.

Onward!

Laura