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Erkonin (Campaign #1) [Session 46: Making Deals with Devils is Stupid as well as Bad]
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<blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8086488" data-attributes="member: 7016699"><p><span style="font-size: 15px"> Session 10: Why Did We Come Here Again?</span></p><p></p><p>Dramatis Personae:</p><p></p><p>Mo - Goliath Bard (College of Lore)</p><p>Orryk - Forest Gnome Monk (Way of the Four Elements, variant)</p><p>Fiona - Half-Elf Wizard (Evoker)</p><p>Taman - Human (variant) Rogue (Inquisitive)</p><p>Joybell - Forest Gnome Paladin (Oath of the Ancients)</p><p>Imaktis - Tortle Cleric (Nature)/Shadow Sorcerer</p><p></p><p>GM - Everyone Else</p><p></p><p></p><p>15 Sunnin 748 (Campaign day 16) (immediately after the fight)</p><p></p><p>I failed to note at the end of the previous session that Imaktis stopped the Cleric from dying (he may have cast Spare the Dying). He was unconscious, and going to be unconscious for a while, but not dying. We still stripped him of his armor and his holy symbol.</p><p></p><p>We also found an additional magical item: a device that looked rather like an orrery -- with eleven rotating rings with pins on them. The pins were slowly rotating.in different directions. A bit of exploration of it determined that it was a direction finder -- like a locate object spell. This was on the Cleric.</p><p></p><p>The Cleric’s holy symbol was clearly reminiscent of the orrery -- eleven rings nested together that gimbal around in different orientations. The cleric was the only one with a holy symbol and the one carrying the orrery.</p><p></p><p>We took a short rest, during which we hogtied and gagged the cleric, so even if he woke up he wouldn’t be able to cast any spells or do anything. After our rest, Taman went off to scout around the village. Mo sent him off with some inspiration, telling him he can do it.</p><p></p><p>Mo, Imaktis, and Joybell looked around Harl’s house to make sure that the rest of the house was clear. Imaktis had a Detect Magic up. In the library itself we noticed that were signs of the work that Barnett and the other mages were doing to reassemble the library -- there were groups of paper piled up and grouped together. Some of those stacks had been disarranged and re-scattered. On the ground floor, we found a door that had been forced.</p><p></p><p>Neither Taman nor the folks at Harl’s found any sign of a camp where the cultists had been staying.</p><p></p><p>Taman found the village still abandoned -- there was no sign of anyone living there or settling in. Though the bodies had been properly taken care of. He thought that maybe someone had been in some of the buildings, but it was hard to tell and he couldn’t be certain. He didn’t see a boat at the docks, so the cultists didn’t come that way.</p><p></p><p>He then looked for tracks and found tracks of four people and a sort of blobby, tentacled thing that could very well have been the Gribbly Monster that came in on a footpath that parallels the river going north. There are a number of small settlements a day or two apart up in that direction with both a footpath and the river connecting them.</p><p></p><p>After their exploration of the house, Joybell took the orrery out into the garden to see what it did. Over the course of a minute or so, the pins all lined up to point solidly at Harl’s house. Orryk then took it around the house, trying to see if there was a particular part of the house it pointed at, but it only pointed generally at the house.</p><p></p><p>When we felt we had extracted all the information we could from the house and the surroundings, Joybell did one point of healing to the cleric by laying on hands and woke him up. He came to with Mo smiling right into his face, with the Eyes of Charming on (the Magic Contact Lenses).</p><p></p><p>Mo: Hi, buddy! How are you doing? We had a bad first experience, but we want to make sure you’re feeling okay. What was going on here? What were you doing here?</p><p>Cleric: Something of ours was stolen and we were trying to get it back. A book -- that’s why we were in a library, dumbass.</p><p></p><p>(Clearly the Charm Person from the Eyes of Charming didn’t take.)</p><p></p><p>Mo: Who are “we”?</p><p>Cleric: We seek to feed the Hunger.</p><p>Mo: Does your group have a name?</p><p>Cleric: Yes.</p><p></p><p>(Clearly he was just being obtuse.)</p><p></p><p>Mo: What is it? Why is this book important?</p><p>Orryk: The book isn’t here.</p><p>Cleric: This is where it was. The book opens minds…</p><p>Mo: We’ve seen that.</p><p>Joybell: Can it be controlled?</p><p>Cleric: Why would it be? Why would we want that?</p><p>Joybell: It didn’t feed the hunger. It just made a man turn into a crazy whispering undead thing that made other crazy babbling undead.</p><p>Cleric: [Evil smile]</p><p>Joybell: But that’s not beneficial to anyone.</p><p>Cleric: [Evil smile]</p><p></p><p>We gagged the cleric again.</p><p></p><p>Those of us who talked to the cleric realized that he wasn’t speaking out loud, exactly, he was speaking in our heads, telepathically.</p><p></p><p>Taman pulled out his sending stone (paired with the one that we left with Tulmor) and sent out a message.</p><p></p><p>Taman: The house is clear!</p><p></p><p>Tulmor, not having been in Kell’s Boarding House with us, didn’t realize how great that was. She just said: Okay. We’ll be there in the morning.</p><p></p><p>Orryk had the idea suddenly to go looking for a basement or hidden rooms -- but the basement is the same size as house, with no space where a room could be hidden.</p><p></p><p>Mo tried to charm the Cleric again -- Joybell at least wasn’t at all certain that it would work since he resisted it the first time, but this time it worked.</p><p></p><p>Mo: Are you hungry?</p><p>Cleric: Hunger is not my biggest problem.</p><p>Mo: What is the name of your group?</p><p>Cleric: Servants of the Hunger</p><p></p><p>That’s so totally not a good name for a group. They need to tighten that up.</p><p></p><p>We learned that they’d had the Gribbly Monster since shortly after they left The Knot. They travelled from The Knot up to Auriqua and then came south from Auriqua along the roads and footpaths that parallel the river. Before The Knot they were in Ov, which is a smallish city on the river that flows down to Pelsoreen. (Note: There will be geography notes following the conversation with the cleric.)</p><p></p><p>Mo told the Cleric that the only thing we’ve seen the book do is drive a man mad and make zombies. (I believe Joybell helpfully corrected him here and said they were more like ghouls.) He asked if that’s all it does and why the book is so important to the Cleric and the Servants of the Hunger. The Cleric actually seemed a bit surprised and said that he’d never heard of the book doing that.</p><p></p><p>Mo: What is it supposed to do?</p><p>Cleric: It opens minds.</p><p>Mo: Wine opens minds. Travel opens minds. Art opens minds. But they don’t have spinning oratories pointing to them…</p><p>Cleric: It is mostly a recruitment tool.</p><p></p><p>The Cleric only knows of the one copy of the book. Orryk cast a minor illusion of the book next to the Cleric to confirm that we were all talking about the same thing.</p><p></p><p>Orryk: We know where it is. What will you give us for it?</p><p>Cleric: Nothing you want.</p><p></p><p>Mo told the Cleric that the book has been destroyed and is now confetti but that this is the last place it was whole, which is probably why the orrery was leading him here. The Cleric said that was going to be a problem because the book was their relatively <em>painless</em> recruitment tool. Their other methods are more abrupt and less selective.</p><p></p><p>Given what the book did to Harl, and what the monster Harl became did to the whole rest of the village, the fact that the book was the kinder, gentler recruitment method is <em>very</em> alarming.</p><p></p><p>Mo and Joybell each in turn tried to intimidate him -- Mo by asking why we shouldn’t kill him and Joybell by slamming her flail into the ground next to his head. But we didn’t get any further information from him.</p><p></p><p>So we gagged him again and Orryk made a pit out in the garden (because there is no jail anywhere here in Kalmarn). We put the cleric down in the bottom of a 10’ deep pit, still bound and gagged and at 1 hit point. It’s possible he got konked on the head again so he was unconscious and at 0 HP.</p><p></p><p>Joybell took a jar from the kitchen and got a jar full of Gribbly Monster bits before it completely sublimated.</p><p></p><p>We spent a relatively pleasant evening in the house full of dead people and gribbly monster vapor and destroyed books -- Taman went hunting and got us some fresh meat and things to eat and we cooked a decent dinner in Harl’s kitchen. Overnight we stayed in Fiona’s hut (Leomund’s Tiny Hut) out in the garden, next to the pit so we could keep an eye on the cleric and on Harl’s house.</p><p></p><p>Mo suggested throwing pebbles at the cleric all night (as we kept watches) to keep him from sleeping and getting a long rest (and therefore getting healed up and his spells back). We didn’t think it would be necessary.</p><p></p><p>The night passed without incident.</p><p></p><p>Geography Notes:</p><p></p><p>Before the Severance there was an empire on this part of Urnod. During the Fiend Wars, the capital city of that empire was completely levelled and it has not been rebuilt. However, the roads that led to the city, from all corners of the former empire, are still there and still meet in the former city’s network of roads. This is The Knot. It is about a month’s travel to the east of Embernook.</p><p></p><p>It is now a trade hub with carriage inns and caravans stopped to trade their wares. But it is not really a city now. There is no organized government, just a cluster of caravanserai and temporary camps of trade caravans.</p><p></p><p>Also, one presumes, the ruins of the former capital.</p><p></p><p>From the Knot there are roads to Auriqua, to Tash (another city on the river that flows down to Pelsoreen), to Ov, to Embernook. Possibly other cities we don’t know of yet.</p><p></p><p></p><p>16 Sunnin 748 (Campaign day 17)</p><p></p><p>The next morning, we woke up to find the Cleric out of his bonds and dead in the bottom of the pit. As it turns out, Mo was exactly correct and we should have kept a better eye on the cleric -- since at some point in the night he wriggled out of his bonds and cast inflict wounds on himself. (Though we don’t know how many spell slots he had -- he could have done that before he got a long rest.)</p><p></p><p>We were watching the pit all night but with him at the bottom of it, we really couldn’t see him. We decided to take his body back to Embernook so that the clerics could speak with dead and maybe learn something further from him.</p><p></p><p>Getting him out of the pit was looking to be a bit of an adventure, then Fiona cast Tenser’s Floating Disk and that made moving him to the library much easier.</p><p></p><p>Shortly after we got there, Tulmor showed up in the teleportation circle. When we all gathered up with her, she pulled out an inkwell, that we recognized as from Thalith’s office in Embernook. When she saw us recognizing it, she said, “It’s where we’d go anyway.” (Note: it will allow us to teleport accurately to the place the inkwell is from.)</p><p></p><p>Taman: Does he know you took that?</p><p>Tulmor: He wasn’t using it.</p><p></p><p>And with that we teleported to Thalith’s office -- as we arrived the portcullises lowered and the Sentinel Statues woke up for a moment and Thalith looked startled. Everything went back to normal when he saw who we were.</p><p></p><p>We gave Thalith a report -- assuming that Alighieri was listening, though he didn’t make an appearance -- and told him what was going on and what we did at Harl’s. We also told him that the crazy book they were looking for has been torn apart but could be reassembled.</p><p></p><p>We pulled out the orrery -- it was still pointing at Harl’s house, not at Tulmor and Barnett’s. We figure out that it was pointing to where the book had spent the most time recently (or perhaps where it was last intact).</p><p></p><p>Tulmor: Good thing it’s in a portable hole.</p><p></p><p>When we mentioned the name of the group, the Servants of the Hunger, Tulmor said she’d heard of them and they’re beyond crazy. She’d never known anyone who was recruited into their group, but thought that perhaps people being recruited get exposed to the Chaos Between Worlds and that corrupts them, or breaks their minds. Harl may have been strong enough to resist that, but not strong enough to resist trying to understand the chaos. And thus he was lost in a different way.</p><p></p><p>Mo: What is the Hunger? How do they feed it?</p><p>Taman: I assume it eats souls.</p><p>Fiona: Souls, worlds.</p><p>Tulmor: They probably intend to feed it the whole world.</p><p></p><p>We started talking with Tulmor and Thalith about what appears to be an increase in extraplanar activity -- with the Cult and Orcus and the Tundra Queen all being active in and around Embernook in the last few weeks. The Tundra Queen’s activities aren’t really changing -- she’s been meddling in the prime material plane in the same ways and at about the same level for centuries, though she does appear to be increasing in power since the Severance.</p><p></p><p>Orcus does appear to be more active.</p><p></p><p>Joybell had some questions about these things and why the cultists can worship the Hunger and still get spells -- why weren’t they cut off when they named it the “Hunger Between Worlds”? Tulmor said that they don’t really worship the hunger -- they’re just serving its ends.</p><p></p><p>Mo asked Thalith what he wants us to do about this. And if the cultists are capable of feeding the whole world to the Hunger. Should we stop them?</p><p></p><p>Orryk: Something’s always trying to destroy the world.</p><p>Taman: That’s depressing.</p><p></p><p>Orryk asked Tulmor if she had access to teleportation circles other than Harl’s. She said she probably did, but she’d have to make some inquiries and arrangements. She could think of circles in Auriqua, the Knot, maybe Ov… she said she’d look into it and let us know.</p><p></p><p>Orryk seemed convinced that we learn things and learn about things when they try to kill us, which is sort of true.</p><p></p><p>When we were done in Thalith’s office, we took the Cleric’s corpse to the Last Doorway, the temple of the clerics of nature, darkness and the grave, who oversee cremations, to see if they could speak with dead with it. They looked kind of uneasy at the prospect of speaking to someone that crazy. We bandied about the idea of trying to charm the corpse while it was under the speak with dead, or possibly using a zone of truth on it, but ultimately decided that those things weren’t necessary. The clerics agreed to try to speak with him and report to us, but it was understood that they didn’t want us there for it. After the speak with dead, they would cremate him and consign him to sky and ground.</p><p></p><p>Joybell wanted to go with Orryk to the armorer that made Mo’s cargo-studded leather armor (since he knew them) to see about getting the Cleric’s armor cut down to fit her. And maybe the leftover bits made into something for Scooby. They couldn’t do that last part, but with a couple of days work they could cut down the armor to fit her.</p><p></p><p>After the armorer, Joybell went with Mo to the herbalist -- Joybell got herbs and ingredients to brew two healing potions in the couple of days of downtime she was going to have while the armorers did their work.</p><p></p><p>Mo bought himself a light crossbow and some bolts, so he’d be able to do damage at range beyond throwing his one dagger (though he’s done good work with that dagger).</p><p></p><p>We had a couple of days of downtime in here, during which some things happened:</p><p></p><p>The party went to the guard house to see what they could give us for the wand of detect magic, which we don’t need, though it seemed like it could be useful for the guards. They came back with a Rope of Climbing -- it’s 60’ of silk rope that will tie itself. With the Immovable Rod we could have a self-anchoring rope, which seems like it will be handy.</p><p></p><p>Orryk went to talk to Tillaron Zun about Pelsoreen to get advice and possibly some contact information. Also to offer to do any small favors (taking messages type thing) we could do for him. Tillaron’s main advice was not to get into debt in Pelsoreen -- that’s the main way people become slaves there. Almost all slavery in Pelsoreen is debt repayment. There is some birthright slavery, so to speak, but that is often repaying a debt so large that one lifetime of servitude can’t repay it. That said, the Efreeti, Marids and Dao will take people who don’t owe a debt as slaves. They’ll also purchase the debt of someone who thought he was going to have a human master and take him off to the City of Brass or the Great Dismal Delve.</p><p></p><p>Fortunately, it’s hard to go into debt there without knowing it.</p><p></p><p>Tillaron gave Orryk the names of some merchants that were more trustworthy than others. The Zun family’s main interests in Pelsoreen are spices, fabrics (both luxurious and more commonplace) and exotic woods. Pelsoreen, despite being a port, is not as big a fishing town as New Arvai.</p><p></p><p>Orryk asked for a letter of introduction to some of the merchants Tillaron recommended and Tillaron agreed to do that, though he’d need a day or two to get that written up.</p><p></p><p>Joybell spent the days of downtime doing two things: brewing healing potions at the druidic circle (two of them) and, while the potions were simmering or steeping or brewing, going to talk to some clerics about religion and the Severance.</p><p></p><p>(Note: This is the conversation that we agreed would happen off-line -- I’m adding it to the notes because it’s my information to share. There’s a great big religion information dump here. If you’re not interested scroll down -- the end is clearly marked.)</p><p></p><p>Her original thought was to speak to as many clerics of as many different orders and domains as possible, but she found Taramor, a cleric of the Lightbringers, an order of clerics of light, knowledge and trickery, who was a fountain of information. She mostly spoke with him and Aramaka, one of the druids at the circle.</p><p></p><p>Taramor was old, even for an elf, and had memory from his parents and grandparents of the Severance and the Fiend Wars.</p><p></p><p>Joybell asked him what is making people turn to these arguably more personal, but awful interactions with Supernaturally Powerful beings rather than to the religions worshiping concepts and powers? Even bad or evil concepts and powers seem better than Orcus and the Hunger Between Worlds. Is all of this an indication that something is missing religiously from people’s lives? Is it a sign that perhaps we should be working to figure out what caused the Severance and undo it? People have tried to figure that out in the centuries since it happened, but should it be an ongoing project? Is this world without gods MISSING something important? Clearly at least some people are missing a personal connection and making it through pacts with Supernaturally Powerful Beings (even ones inimical to life) or worshiping the Hunger Between Worlds. Does Taramor (and do the druids at the circle in the city) even think this is a problem?</p><p></p><p>(Unsurprisingly, Joybell’s questions were rather long and wordy and delivered all in a rush.)</p><p></p><p>Taramor said that the people making deals with or otherwise choosing to serve entities like Orcus and the Elder Darkness are almost to a one seeking power here in this world.</p><p></p><p>The cause and possible cure of the Severance is still, after all this time, a mystery. Some people in the various orders are trying to undo it (Restorationists), others think the world is better off now and are working to keep the gods away (Exclusionists), and still others are ambivalent about the whole question because they see more important and pressing needs in the world around right now.</p><p></p><p>Taramor could say that what was Severed, though, was not merely the ability for the Gods to empower their worshipers, but the ability for worshipers to empower their Gods. What seems to be happening now is that these concepts, which are part of the existence of sentient beings, are being broadly empowered by ... being experienced and acknowledged by sentient beings. What was two streams, one flowing from mortals to the Gods and the other flowing from the Gods to mortals, has become one stream, bending around to come back whence it began. Even before the Severance, there were people who cast as clerics who didn't worship particular Gods; now, that's the rule, not the exception.</p><p></p><p>Joybell wanted to think about that more ... because that sounded like we are empowering ourselves now, since our worship doesn’t empower gods. Could that be right?</p><p></p><p>She also learned from Taramor that Orcus is powerful and sentient, but he is not a God. He does not gain power from being served or even worshiped. The Elder Darkness is powerful, but it does not seem to think or otherwise operate on mortal time scales; the general thinking is that it barely notices mortals, if at all. It also doesn't gain power from being worshiped or served.</p><p></p><p>Those who serve Orcus (or any other Fiend) are looking for power, either as a favored servant, or by somehow using the Fiend for some end of their own; that rarely works out well, and they almost always end up serving the Fiend's ends. While that might gain a Fiend something, it is not the same sort of thing as the power from being worshiped. Those who claim to serve the Elder Darkness are mostly either nihilists or insane; they basically want to end the world, and hope to have a grand time doing it. Since exposure to the Elder Darkness tends to drive mortals mad, even those who start out merely desperate often wind up as insane and/or nihilistic.</p><p></p><p>What's missing from most current practices of religion is, obviously, that personal connection. Some want a figure to bargain with. Some want a figure to blame. Some want a figure to thank. Given time, maybe that will cease to be missing.</p><p></p><p>END OF RELIGION INFORMATION DUMP</p><p></p><p>Possibly Taramor’s most telling thought echoed Orryk’s rather depressing observation in Thalith’s office: Obviously evil people doing evil things is a problem, but that was a problem when there were evil gods, too.</p><p></p><p>There is some thought (and the druids confirmed this) that the Fey, with their selections of realms, are drifting toward a form of godhood. Whether that is intentional, or whether that would even work, or whether they'd need to undo the Severance, no one seems to know. If the Fey know, they're not telling.</p><p></p><p></p><p>18 Sunnin 748 (Campaign day 19)</p><p></p><p>During the third day of our downtime, Tulmor got in touch with us and we went over there. She has access to circles that will accept us arriving there in New Arvai, Erlin (on the river that goes to New Arvai), Tash and Pelsoreen. All of them belong to people she knows but not everyone would be capable of sending us back using the circle. She can’t promise the return trip.</p><p></p><p>Joybell, remembering what Orryk reported from Tillaron Zun about getting into debt in Pelsoreen, asked if we’d be indebted to the people who let us arrive at their circle. Or if Tulmor would. Tulmor said that there would be no debt involved.</p><p></p><p>Joybell turned to the rest of the party and made an impassioned plea: They like us here. They accept us as protectors and guards. We’re doing good work and there are things that need to be investigated and taken care of. I’ll go where everyone else wants to go, but they like us here.</p><p></p><p>Mo suggested going to The Knot to see if we can find more information about the Servants of the Hunger.</p><p></p><p>The others reassured them that this is just a trip and that the group would be coming back to Embernook after Orryk’s research in Pelsoreen was finished.</p><p></p><p>Concerned that the Servants of the Hunger were a ticking time bomb, Joybell and Mo asked Tulmor and Barnett if they had any sense that the cult’s plans were coming to a head. Tulmor said that the cult has been around for quite some time and feeding the Hunger Between Worlds has been their goal forever.</p><p></p><p>Joybell agreed to go with her friends, but with a heavy heart. Mo said he wants to liberate the slaves, which Joybell is totally behind.</p><p></p><p>Before we left, we went to talk to the clerics at the Last Doorway, where we’d taken the cultist Cleric for speak with dead to see what they’d learned. What they’d learned was that they couldn’t understand him at all. It was like he was speaking a gibberish language. They thought they could understand one word in ten, perhaps, but it was mostly gibberish.</p><p></p><p>We also went to talk to Thalith before we left. Joybell asked if we could have something from his office so we could teleport back more easily. Surprised that we asked rather than just nicking something, he gave us a simple letter opener. If we knew a teleportation circle in the city we’d go straight there, rather than to Thalith’s office, but Barnett destroyed the one he’d had in his rooms some time before.</p><p></p><p>Thalith didn’t have any errands or messages for us there. He said he knows there are some decent people in Pelsoreen, but he doesn’t know any of them personally.</p><p></p><p>We went to Tillaron Zun’s estate to pick up his letters of introduction to some of the merchants and to thank him.</p><p></p><p></p><p>19 Sunnin 748 (Campaign day 20)</p><p></p><p>The next morning we went over to Tulmor and Barnett’s. Tulmor gave us a scroll of Sending so that Fiona can learn the spell. It’s so useful for getting in touch. We recovered Mo’s sending stone from her, so we have both of the pair again.</p><p></p><p>When we’re ready to come back, we can contact her. It is possible that she’ll be able to teleport to us and bring us back, like she did from Harl’s place.</p><p></p><p>Then she cast Teleportation Circle and we all walked through.</p><p></p><p>We found ourselves in a room, not a large room, which was crowded with the whole party (including Scooby) in it. The only features in the room were the circle on the floor and a door.</p><p></p><p>After a moment, the door opened and a chubby halfling man greeted us. His name was Ammoch and he had breakfast, or perhaps second breakfast or elevenses waiting for us.</p><p></p><p>We accepted his hospitality and asked him some questions about the city, starting with an inn we could stay at. He recommended the Flaming Quill because it’s near where the magicians are, so we’ll be close to where he understood from Tulmor that we want to be.</p><p></p><p>Joybell asked if we should go check in with the guard, since we’re new in town. Ammoch said that he wouldn’t recommend that at all. Pelsoreen is run by five more-or-less criminal corporations, so most of the guard work for one or the other of those. They’re not at war with each other, exactly -- there’s not a lot of overt violence -- but if someone violates the armistice between them then violence can break out for a time.</p><p></p><p>He recommended strongly finding some way to carry your money that is not easily accessible from outside your person. Some of the pickpockets and thieves are protected by one or the other of the families. Others are not.</p><p></p><p>Taman: How do you know if they are? Because if someone tries to rob me, I’m going to run them through.</p><p></p><p>Ammoch said that it’s okay to defend yourself from being attacked or robbed, but if you see someone else being robbed, assaulted, or even killed, it’s best not to help them.</p><p></p><p>Joybell, utterly horrified: This is a horrible place!! This is awful! There are slavers and it’s run by criminals and you can’t help people who are being hurt and… Just do your thing quickly and let’s get out.… <<deep breath>> <muttering> I want another crumpet.</p><p></p><p>Before we left Ammoch’s Joybell went back into the teleportation circle room and shifted her money around, putting the copper and silver and a couple gold into one pouch at her side, a larger amount of gold into a pouch secured inside her armor, and most of it in the pouch with her initial on it that came from the Administrator in the Bag of Holding. The party kitty is in another pouch tucked under her tabard, secure and not easily visible, but also accessible.</p><p></p><p>Joybell also asked Ammoch if there’s a druidic circle in the city. He said there’s not one in the city exactly, but there are some offshore islands, a small archipelago, with an elemental druidic circle. Joybell would like to visit that before we leave because it sounds like it might actually be nice.</p><p></p><p>Ammoch gave us directions to the Flaming Quill and agreed that we could come back to him when we’re ready to get teleported out of the city. We thanked him and left.</p><p></p><p>Joybell: I want to get Ammoch a present. Maybe a nice crumpet iron.</p><p>Taman: You could get him a slave.</p><p>Joybell: <<speechless horror>></p><p>Fiona, slapping Taman on the back of the head: Don’t say that!</p><p>Taman: I was joking.</p><p>Fiona: She doesn’t know that.</p><p></p><p>We found the Flaming Quill without incident. The sign outside is actually a permanent fire in the shape of a quill pen hanging from what looks like a more or less normal sign bracket. Mo suspected that the innkeeper might be a fire genasi, and it certainly looked possible given the redness of his skin.</p><p></p><p>Joybell complimented the innkeeper, Jorly, on the sign and he said that his great grandfather made it.</p><p></p><p>We asked about the libraries and were told that there are several of them including two in the magical college itself. We asked why there were two instead of them having been merged into one. Jorly said that he understood that they’d originated from two different donated collections. He’s never been to either of them but his understanding is that to get into one you need to demonstrate knowledge and to get into the other you need to demonstrate capability.</p><p></p><p>Jorly also said that there are a couple more libraries outside the college that are accessible to the public -- you have to pay to get in and that payment is not necessarily in coin. Some of them want a service of some sort.</p><p></p><p>Jorly said he could give us directions to the ones he knows about but he also had a map of the city available. Orryk bought a copy of the city map.</p><p></p><p>We took one room for the lot of us (including Scooby, Joybell is not leaving him in the stables where anything could happen to him). Fiona can put an alarm spell on the one room overnight.</p><p></p><p>We ended in what Joybell, at least, is convinced is the Worst Place In Urnod. It’s still mid-morning.</p><p></p><p>Pelsoreen awaits.</p><p></p><p>Treasure:</p><p></p><p>Orrery of Finding Crazy Book (Joybell wants to spend some time with this and maybe get Fiona to identify it -- it could be handy if it could be used to locate anything other than the Crazy Book)</p><p>Rope of Climbing (party item in the Bag of Holding)</p><p>Holy Symbol from Cultist Cleric (I’m not sure what we did with this)</p><p>2 Healing Potions Joybell Made (She’s planning on giving one to Taman and one to Orryk and just forgot)</p><p></p><p>Note: After paying 6gp for our room at the Flaming Quill, the party kitty contains: 2 pp, 2gp, 6sp, and 8 cp.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prabe, post: 8086488, member: 7016699"] [SIZE=4] Session 10: Why Did We Come Here Again?[/SIZE] Dramatis Personae: Mo - Goliath Bard (College of Lore) Orryk - Forest Gnome Monk (Way of the Four Elements, variant) Fiona - Half-Elf Wizard (Evoker) Taman - Human (variant) Rogue (Inquisitive) Joybell - Forest Gnome Paladin (Oath of the Ancients) Imaktis - Tortle Cleric (Nature)/Shadow Sorcerer GM - Everyone Else 15 Sunnin 748 (Campaign day 16) (immediately after the fight) I failed to note at the end of the previous session that Imaktis stopped the Cleric from dying (he may have cast Spare the Dying). He was unconscious, and going to be unconscious for a while, but not dying. We still stripped him of his armor and his holy symbol. We also found an additional magical item: a device that looked rather like an orrery -- with eleven rotating rings with pins on them. The pins were slowly rotating.in different directions. A bit of exploration of it determined that it was a direction finder -- like a locate object spell. This was on the Cleric. The Cleric’s holy symbol was clearly reminiscent of the orrery -- eleven rings nested together that gimbal around in different orientations. The cleric was the only one with a holy symbol and the one carrying the orrery. We took a short rest, during which we hogtied and gagged the cleric, so even if he woke up he wouldn’t be able to cast any spells or do anything. After our rest, Taman went off to scout around the village. Mo sent him off with some inspiration, telling him he can do it. Mo, Imaktis, and Joybell looked around Harl’s house to make sure that the rest of the house was clear. Imaktis had a Detect Magic up. In the library itself we noticed that were signs of the work that Barnett and the other mages were doing to reassemble the library -- there were groups of paper piled up and grouped together. Some of those stacks had been disarranged and re-scattered. On the ground floor, we found a door that had been forced. Neither Taman nor the folks at Harl’s found any sign of a camp where the cultists had been staying. Taman found the village still abandoned -- there was no sign of anyone living there or settling in. Though the bodies had been properly taken care of. He thought that maybe someone had been in some of the buildings, but it was hard to tell and he couldn’t be certain. He didn’t see a boat at the docks, so the cultists didn’t come that way. He then looked for tracks and found tracks of four people and a sort of blobby, tentacled thing that could very well have been the Gribbly Monster that came in on a footpath that parallels the river going north. There are a number of small settlements a day or two apart up in that direction with both a footpath and the river connecting them. After their exploration of the house, Joybell took the orrery out into the garden to see what it did. Over the course of a minute or so, the pins all lined up to point solidly at Harl’s house. Orryk then took it around the house, trying to see if there was a particular part of the house it pointed at, but it only pointed generally at the house. When we felt we had extracted all the information we could from the house and the surroundings, Joybell did one point of healing to the cleric by laying on hands and woke him up. He came to with Mo smiling right into his face, with the Eyes of Charming on (the Magic Contact Lenses). Mo: Hi, buddy! How are you doing? We had a bad first experience, but we want to make sure you’re feeling okay. What was going on here? What were you doing here? Cleric: Something of ours was stolen and we were trying to get it back. A book -- that’s why we were in a library, dumbass. (Clearly the Charm Person from the Eyes of Charming didn’t take.) Mo: Who are “we”? Cleric: We seek to feed the Hunger. Mo: Does your group have a name? Cleric: Yes. (Clearly he was just being obtuse.) Mo: What is it? Why is this book important? Orryk: The book isn’t here. Cleric: This is where it was. The book opens minds… Mo: We’ve seen that. Joybell: Can it be controlled? Cleric: Why would it be? Why would we want that? Joybell: It didn’t feed the hunger. It just made a man turn into a crazy whispering undead thing that made other crazy babbling undead. Cleric: [Evil smile] Joybell: But that’s not beneficial to anyone. Cleric: [Evil smile] We gagged the cleric again. Those of us who talked to the cleric realized that he wasn’t speaking out loud, exactly, he was speaking in our heads, telepathically. Taman pulled out his sending stone (paired with the one that we left with Tulmor) and sent out a message. Taman: The house is clear! Tulmor, not having been in Kell’s Boarding House with us, didn’t realize how great that was. She just said: Okay. We’ll be there in the morning. Orryk had the idea suddenly to go looking for a basement or hidden rooms -- but the basement is the same size as house, with no space where a room could be hidden. Mo tried to charm the Cleric again -- Joybell at least wasn’t at all certain that it would work since he resisted it the first time, but this time it worked. Mo: Are you hungry? Cleric: Hunger is not my biggest problem. Mo: What is the name of your group? Cleric: Servants of the Hunger That’s so totally not a good name for a group. They need to tighten that up. We learned that they’d had the Gribbly Monster since shortly after they left The Knot. They travelled from The Knot up to Auriqua and then came south from Auriqua along the roads and footpaths that parallel the river. Before The Knot they were in Ov, which is a smallish city on the river that flows down to Pelsoreen. (Note: There will be geography notes following the conversation with the cleric.) Mo told the Cleric that the only thing we’ve seen the book do is drive a man mad and make zombies. (I believe Joybell helpfully corrected him here and said they were more like ghouls.) He asked if that’s all it does and why the book is so important to the Cleric and the Servants of the Hunger. The Cleric actually seemed a bit surprised and said that he’d never heard of the book doing that. Mo: What is it supposed to do? Cleric: It opens minds. Mo: Wine opens minds. Travel opens minds. Art opens minds. But they don’t have spinning oratories pointing to them… Cleric: It is mostly a recruitment tool. The Cleric only knows of the one copy of the book. Orryk cast a minor illusion of the book next to the Cleric to confirm that we were all talking about the same thing. Orryk: We know where it is. What will you give us for it? Cleric: Nothing you want. Mo told the Cleric that the book has been destroyed and is now confetti but that this is the last place it was whole, which is probably why the orrery was leading him here. The Cleric said that was going to be a problem because the book was their relatively [I]painless[/I] recruitment tool. Their other methods are more abrupt and less selective. Given what the book did to Harl, and what the monster Harl became did to the whole rest of the village, the fact that the book was the kinder, gentler recruitment method is [I]very[/I] alarming. Mo and Joybell each in turn tried to intimidate him -- Mo by asking why we shouldn’t kill him and Joybell by slamming her flail into the ground next to his head. But we didn’t get any further information from him. So we gagged him again and Orryk made a pit out in the garden (because there is no jail anywhere here in Kalmarn). We put the cleric down in the bottom of a 10’ deep pit, still bound and gagged and at 1 hit point. It’s possible he got konked on the head again so he was unconscious and at 0 HP. Joybell took a jar from the kitchen and got a jar full of Gribbly Monster bits before it completely sublimated. We spent a relatively pleasant evening in the house full of dead people and gribbly monster vapor and destroyed books -- Taman went hunting and got us some fresh meat and things to eat and we cooked a decent dinner in Harl’s kitchen. Overnight we stayed in Fiona’s hut (Leomund’s Tiny Hut) out in the garden, next to the pit so we could keep an eye on the cleric and on Harl’s house. Mo suggested throwing pebbles at the cleric all night (as we kept watches) to keep him from sleeping and getting a long rest (and therefore getting healed up and his spells back). We didn’t think it would be necessary. The night passed without incident. Geography Notes: Before the Severance there was an empire on this part of Urnod. During the Fiend Wars, the capital city of that empire was completely levelled and it has not been rebuilt. However, the roads that led to the city, from all corners of the former empire, are still there and still meet in the former city’s network of roads. This is The Knot. It is about a month’s travel to the east of Embernook. It is now a trade hub with carriage inns and caravans stopped to trade their wares. But it is not really a city now. There is no organized government, just a cluster of caravanserai and temporary camps of trade caravans. Also, one presumes, the ruins of the former capital. From the Knot there are roads to Auriqua, to Tash (another city on the river that flows down to Pelsoreen), to Ov, to Embernook. Possibly other cities we don’t know of yet. 16 Sunnin 748 (Campaign day 17) The next morning, we woke up to find the Cleric out of his bonds and dead in the bottom of the pit. As it turns out, Mo was exactly correct and we should have kept a better eye on the cleric -- since at some point in the night he wriggled out of his bonds and cast inflict wounds on himself. (Though we don’t know how many spell slots he had -- he could have done that before he got a long rest.) We were watching the pit all night but with him at the bottom of it, we really couldn’t see him. We decided to take his body back to Embernook so that the clerics could speak with dead and maybe learn something further from him. Getting him out of the pit was looking to be a bit of an adventure, then Fiona cast Tenser’s Floating Disk and that made moving him to the library much easier. Shortly after we got there, Tulmor showed up in the teleportation circle. When we all gathered up with her, she pulled out an inkwell, that we recognized as from Thalith’s office in Embernook. When she saw us recognizing it, she said, “It’s where we’d go anyway.” (Note: it will allow us to teleport accurately to the place the inkwell is from.) Taman: Does he know you took that? Tulmor: He wasn’t using it. And with that we teleported to Thalith’s office -- as we arrived the portcullises lowered and the Sentinel Statues woke up for a moment and Thalith looked startled. Everything went back to normal when he saw who we were. We gave Thalith a report -- assuming that Alighieri was listening, though he didn’t make an appearance -- and told him what was going on and what we did at Harl’s. We also told him that the crazy book they were looking for has been torn apart but could be reassembled. We pulled out the orrery -- it was still pointing at Harl’s house, not at Tulmor and Barnett’s. We figure out that it was pointing to where the book had spent the most time recently (or perhaps where it was last intact). Tulmor: Good thing it’s in a portable hole. When we mentioned the name of the group, the Servants of the Hunger, Tulmor said she’d heard of them and they’re beyond crazy. She’d never known anyone who was recruited into their group, but thought that perhaps people being recruited get exposed to the Chaos Between Worlds and that corrupts them, or breaks their minds. Harl may have been strong enough to resist that, but not strong enough to resist trying to understand the chaos. And thus he was lost in a different way. Mo: What is the Hunger? How do they feed it? Taman: I assume it eats souls. Fiona: Souls, worlds. Tulmor: They probably intend to feed it the whole world. We started talking with Tulmor and Thalith about what appears to be an increase in extraplanar activity -- with the Cult and Orcus and the Tundra Queen all being active in and around Embernook in the last few weeks. The Tundra Queen’s activities aren’t really changing -- she’s been meddling in the prime material plane in the same ways and at about the same level for centuries, though she does appear to be increasing in power since the Severance. Orcus does appear to be more active. Joybell had some questions about these things and why the cultists can worship the Hunger and still get spells -- why weren’t they cut off when they named it the “Hunger Between Worlds”? Tulmor said that they don’t really worship the hunger -- they’re just serving its ends. Mo asked Thalith what he wants us to do about this. And if the cultists are capable of feeding the whole world to the Hunger. Should we stop them? Orryk: Something’s always trying to destroy the world. Taman: That’s depressing. Orryk asked Tulmor if she had access to teleportation circles other than Harl’s. She said she probably did, but she’d have to make some inquiries and arrangements. She could think of circles in Auriqua, the Knot, maybe Ov… she said she’d look into it and let us know. Orryk seemed convinced that we learn things and learn about things when they try to kill us, which is sort of true. When we were done in Thalith’s office, we took the Cleric’s corpse to the Last Doorway, the temple of the clerics of nature, darkness and the grave, who oversee cremations, to see if they could speak with dead with it. They looked kind of uneasy at the prospect of speaking to someone that crazy. We bandied about the idea of trying to charm the corpse while it was under the speak with dead, or possibly using a zone of truth on it, but ultimately decided that those things weren’t necessary. The clerics agreed to try to speak with him and report to us, but it was understood that they didn’t want us there for it. After the speak with dead, they would cremate him and consign him to sky and ground. Joybell wanted to go with Orryk to the armorer that made Mo’s cargo-studded leather armor (since he knew them) to see about getting the Cleric’s armor cut down to fit her. And maybe the leftover bits made into something for Scooby. They couldn’t do that last part, but with a couple of days work they could cut down the armor to fit her. After the armorer, Joybell went with Mo to the herbalist -- Joybell got herbs and ingredients to brew two healing potions in the couple of days of downtime she was going to have while the armorers did their work. Mo bought himself a light crossbow and some bolts, so he’d be able to do damage at range beyond throwing his one dagger (though he’s done good work with that dagger). We had a couple of days of downtime in here, during which some things happened: The party went to the guard house to see what they could give us for the wand of detect magic, which we don’t need, though it seemed like it could be useful for the guards. They came back with a Rope of Climbing -- it’s 60’ of silk rope that will tie itself. With the Immovable Rod we could have a self-anchoring rope, which seems like it will be handy. Orryk went to talk to Tillaron Zun about Pelsoreen to get advice and possibly some contact information. Also to offer to do any small favors (taking messages type thing) we could do for him. Tillaron’s main advice was not to get into debt in Pelsoreen -- that’s the main way people become slaves there. Almost all slavery in Pelsoreen is debt repayment. There is some birthright slavery, so to speak, but that is often repaying a debt so large that one lifetime of servitude can’t repay it. That said, the Efreeti, Marids and Dao will take people who don’t owe a debt as slaves. They’ll also purchase the debt of someone who thought he was going to have a human master and take him off to the City of Brass or the Great Dismal Delve. Fortunately, it’s hard to go into debt there without knowing it. Tillaron gave Orryk the names of some merchants that were more trustworthy than others. The Zun family’s main interests in Pelsoreen are spices, fabrics (both luxurious and more commonplace) and exotic woods. Pelsoreen, despite being a port, is not as big a fishing town as New Arvai. Orryk asked for a letter of introduction to some of the merchants Tillaron recommended and Tillaron agreed to do that, though he’d need a day or two to get that written up. Joybell spent the days of downtime doing two things: brewing healing potions at the druidic circle (two of them) and, while the potions were simmering or steeping or brewing, going to talk to some clerics about religion and the Severance. (Note: This is the conversation that we agreed would happen off-line -- I’m adding it to the notes because it’s my information to share. There’s a great big religion information dump here. If you’re not interested scroll down -- the end is clearly marked.) Her original thought was to speak to as many clerics of as many different orders and domains as possible, but she found Taramor, a cleric of the Lightbringers, an order of clerics of light, knowledge and trickery, who was a fountain of information. She mostly spoke with him and Aramaka, one of the druids at the circle. Taramor was old, even for an elf, and had memory from his parents and grandparents of the Severance and the Fiend Wars. Joybell asked him what is making people turn to these arguably more personal, but awful interactions with Supernaturally Powerful beings rather than to the religions worshiping concepts and powers? Even bad or evil concepts and powers seem better than Orcus and the Hunger Between Worlds. Is all of this an indication that something is missing religiously from people’s lives? Is it a sign that perhaps we should be working to figure out what caused the Severance and undo it? People have tried to figure that out in the centuries since it happened, but should it be an ongoing project? Is this world without gods MISSING something important? Clearly at least some people are missing a personal connection and making it through pacts with Supernaturally Powerful Beings (even ones inimical to life) or worshiping the Hunger Between Worlds. Does Taramor (and do the druids at the circle in the city) even think this is a problem? (Unsurprisingly, Joybell’s questions were rather long and wordy and delivered all in a rush.) Taramor said that the people making deals with or otherwise choosing to serve entities like Orcus and the Elder Darkness are almost to a one seeking power here in this world. The cause and possible cure of the Severance is still, after all this time, a mystery. Some people in the various orders are trying to undo it (Restorationists), others think the world is better off now and are working to keep the gods away (Exclusionists), and still others are ambivalent about the whole question because they see more important and pressing needs in the world around right now. Taramor could say that what was Severed, though, was not merely the ability for the Gods to empower their worshipers, but the ability for worshipers to empower their Gods. What seems to be happening now is that these concepts, which are part of the existence of sentient beings, are being broadly empowered by ... being experienced and acknowledged by sentient beings. What was two streams, one flowing from mortals to the Gods and the other flowing from the Gods to mortals, has become one stream, bending around to come back whence it began. Even before the Severance, there were people who cast as clerics who didn't worship particular Gods; now, that's the rule, not the exception. Joybell wanted to think about that more ... because that sounded like we are empowering ourselves now, since our worship doesn’t empower gods. Could that be right? She also learned from Taramor that Orcus is powerful and sentient, but he is not a God. He does not gain power from being served or even worshiped. The Elder Darkness is powerful, but it does not seem to think or otherwise operate on mortal time scales; the general thinking is that it barely notices mortals, if at all. It also doesn't gain power from being worshiped or served. Those who serve Orcus (or any other Fiend) are looking for power, either as a favored servant, or by somehow using the Fiend for some end of their own; that rarely works out well, and they almost always end up serving the Fiend's ends. While that might gain a Fiend something, it is not the same sort of thing as the power from being worshiped. Those who claim to serve the Elder Darkness are mostly either nihilists or insane; they basically want to end the world, and hope to have a grand time doing it. Since exposure to the Elder Darkness tends to drive mortals mad, even those who start out merely desperate often wind up as insane and/or nihilistic. What's missing from most current practices of religion is, obviously, that personal connection. Some want a figure to bargain with. Some want a figure to blame. Some want a figure to thank. Given time, maybe that will cease to be missing. END OF RELIGION INFORMATION DUMP Possibly Taramor’s most telling thought echoed Orryk’s rather depressing observation in Thalith’s office: Obviously evil people doing evil things is a problem, but that was a problem when there were evil gods, too. There is some thought (and the druids confirmed this) that the Fey, with their selections of realms, are drifting toward a form of godhood. Whether that is intentional, or whether that would even work, or whether they'd need to undo the Severance, no one seems to know. If the Fey know, they're not telling. 18 Sunnin 748 (Campaign day 19) During the third day of our downtime, Tulmor got in touch with us and we went over there. She has access to circles that will accept us arriving there in New Arvai, Erlin (on the river that goes to New Arvai), Tash and Pelsoreen. All of them belong to people she knows but not everyone would be capable of sending us back using the circle. She can’t promise the return trip. Joybell, remembering what Orryk reported from Tillaron Zun about getting into debt in Pelsoreen, asked if we’d be indebted to the people who let us arrive at their circle. Or if Tulmor would. Tulmor said that there would be no debt involved. Joybell turned to the rest of the party and made an impassioned plea: They like us here. They accept us as protectors and guards. We’re doing good work and there are things that need to be investigated and taken care of. I’ll go where everyone else wants to go, but they like us here. Mo suggested going to The Knot to see if we can find more information about the Servants of the Hunger. The others reassured them that this is just a trip and that the group would be coming back to Embernook after Orryk’s research in Pelsoreen was finished. Concerned that the Servants of the Hunger were a ticking time bomb, Joybell and Mo asked Tulmor and Barnett if they had any sense that the cult’s plans were coming to a head. Tulmor said that the cult has been around for quite some time and feeding the Hunger Between Worlds has been their goal forever. Joybell agreed to go with her friends, but with a heavy heart. Mo said he wants to liberate the slaves, which Joybell is totally behind. Before we left, we went to talk to the clerics at the Last Doorway, where we’d taken the cultist Cleric for speak with dead to see what they’d learned. What they’d learned was that they couldn’t understand him at all. It was like he was speaking a gibberish language. They thought they could understand one word in ten, perhaps, but it was mostly gibberish. We also went to talk to Thalith before we left. Joybell asked if we could have something from his office so we could teleport back more easily. Surprised that we asked rather than just nicking something, he gave us a simple letter opener. If we knew a teleportation circle in the city we’d go straight there, rather than to Thalith’s office, but Barnett destroyed the one he’d had in his rooms some time before. Thalith didn’t have any errands or messages for us there. He said he knows there are some decent people in Pelsoreen, but he doesn’t know any of them personally. We went to Tillaron Zun’s estate to pick up his letters of introduction to some of the merchants and to thank him. 19 Sunnin 748 (Campaign day 20) The next morning we went over to Tulmor and Barnett’s. Tulmor gave us a scroll of Sending so that Fiona can learn the spell. It’s so useful for getting in touch. We recovered Mo’s sending stone from her, so we have both of the pair again. When we’re ready to come back, we can contact her. It is possible that she’ll be able to teleport to us and bring us back, like she did from Harl’s place. Then she cast Teleportation Circle and we all walked through. We found ourselves in a room, not a large room, which was crowded with the whole party (including Scooby) in it. The only features in the room were the circle on the floor and a door. After a moment, the door opened and a chubby halfling man greeted us. His name was Ammoch and he had breakfast, or perhaps second breakfast or elevenses waiting for us. We accepted his hospitality and asked him some questions about the city, starting with an inn we could stay at. He recommended the Flaming Quill because it’s near where the magicians are, so we’ll be close to where he understood from Tulmor that we want to be. Joybell asked if we should go check in with the guard, since we’re new in town. Ammoch said that he wouldn’t recommend that at all. Pelsoreen is run by five more-or-less criminal corporations, so most of the guard work for one or the other of those. They’re not at war with each other, exactly -- there’s not a lot of overt violence -- but if someone violates the armistice between them then violence can break out for a time. He recommended strongly finding some way to carry your money that is not easily accessible from outside your person. Some of the pickpockets and thieves are protected by one or the other of the families. Others are not. Taman: How do you know if they are? Because if someone tries to rob me, I’m going to run them through. Ammoch said that it’s okay to defend yourself from being attacked or robbed, but if you see someone else being robbed, assaulted, or even killed, it’s best not to help them. Joybell, utterly horrified: This is a horrible place!! This is awful! There are slavers and it’s run by criminals and you can’t help people who are being hurt and… Just do your thing quickly and let’s get out.… <<deep breath>> <muttering> I want another crumpet. Before we left Ammoch’s Joybell went back into the teleportation circle room and shifted her money around, putting the copper and silver and a couple gold into one pouch at her side, a larger amount of gold into a pouch secured inside her armor, and most of it in the pouch with her initial on it that came from the Administrator in the Bag of Holding. The party kitty is in another pouch tucked under her tabard, secure and not easily visible, but also accessible. Joybell also asked Ammoch if there’s a druidic circle in the city. He said there’s not one in the city exactly, but there are some offshore islands, a small archipelago, with an elemental druidic circle. Joybell would like to visit that before we leave because it sounds like it might actually be nice. Ammoch gave us directions to the Flaming Quill and agreed that we could come back to him when we’re ready to get teleported out of the city. We thanked him and left. Joybell: I want to get Ammoch a present. Maybe a nice crumpet iron. Taman: You could get him a slave. Joybell: <<speechless horror>> Fiona, slapping Taman on the back of the head: Don’t say that! Taman: I was joking. Fiona: She doesn’t know that. We found the Flaming Quill without incident. The sign outside is actually a permanent fire in the shape of a quill pen hanging from what looks like a more or less normal sign bracket. Mo suspected that the innkeeper might be a fire genasi, and it certainly looked possible given the redness of his skin. Joybell complimented the innkeeper, Jorly, on the sign and he said that his great grandfather made it. We asked about the libraries and were told that there are several of them including two in the magical college itself. We asked why there were two instead of them having been merged into one. Jorly said that he understood that they’d originated from two different donated collections. He’s never been to either of them but his understanding is that to get into one you need to demonstrate knowledge and to get into the other you need to demonstrate capability. Jorly also said that there are a couple more libraries outside the college that are accessible to the public -- you have to pay to get in and that payment is not necessarily in coin. Some of them want a service of some sort. Jorly said he could give us directions to the ones he knows about but he also had a map of the city available. Orryk bought a copy of the city map. We took one room for the lot of us (including Scooby, Joybell is not leaving him in the stables where anything could happen to him). Fiona can put an alarm spell on the one room overnight. We ended in what Joybell, at least, is convinced is the Worst Place In Urnod. It’s still mid-morning. Pelsoreen awaits. Treasure: Orrery of Finding Crazy Book (Joybell wants to spend some time with this and maybe get Fiona to identify it -- it could be handy if it could be used to locate anything other than the Crazy Book) Rope of Climbing (party item in the Bag of Holding) Holy Symbol from Cultist Cleric (I’m not sure what we did with this) 2 Healing Potions Joybell Made (She’s planning on giving one to Taman and one to Orryk and just forgot) Note: After paying 6gp for our room at the Flaming Quill, the party kitty contains: 2 pp, 2gp, 6sp, and 8 cp. 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Erkonin (Campaign #1) [Session 46: Making Deals with Devils is Stupid as well as Bad]
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