Session 135 & 141: "Time is sort of like pasta." ( Mission 2Q ) Adventurers Present: -Dragomir Black, Vos Sorcerer LvL 7 ( Hats4Cats ) -Korak Flomhelm, Dwerren Cleric LvL 7 ( Slothslow ) -Darvius Alandre, Sidhelian Monk, LvL 7 ( Darvius ) -Grian Veles, Anuirean Warlock/Druid, LvL 3 ( Kristen B ) -Cedrych Brightbough, Sidhelian Rogue, LvL 5 ( Adam B ) -Glenn Sturgis, Anuirean Cleric, LvL 5 ( Spynx ) -Shango Bayu, Khinasi Monk, LvL 6 ( Depraved Lunatic ) Summarizing: -We enter the temple once again. -Ambushed by parchment that released Ink creatures. -Then ambushed by Cultists in a life or death fight, surviving by the skin of our teeth. -Discover a room that teleports you to the other side of the big central hall. -Discover the Khinasi assassins sleeping quarters, which have recharging explosive traps. -Are approached by Nyskira, who attains the crescent moon sword temporarily. -We speak to Aragnak to inform him of Nyskira's plans. -Kaevara demonstrates that she is atleast an even match to Aragnak and returns with the crescent moon sword. -Kaevara breaks the curse Nyskira had put upon us and most of the party returns to the Cohort. After writing up this summary, he leans against the back of his chair and sighs. He was still feeling bad for making the wrong decision, but seeing Kaevara effortlessly return the sword, he feels frustrated. It was either him making the wrong decision or dying in vain. "Why is being a Cohort member such a difficult task?" he questions himself. After pondering on the thought to no avail, he shakes his head and picks up the ink pen again. "So, we decided that we should return to this temple of the moon, to get behing why the moon above Urkenhame is forever crescent. We had discerned that it had something to do with the moon temple located northward of Loch Shel, but we hadn't fully understood why that was yet. Thus, we returned there, with the Crescent Moon Blade under my handling. Darvius asked me if I was ready to carry the responsibilities for this sword, to which I answered yes. I did not understand at that time that his idea of responsibility is to put the blade in front of myself and taunt a dragon, dying needlessly in the process, if need be, as we soon learned, but this was to be expected, the temple itself is designed to withstand even dragon's like Aragnak without a scratch. Why would this sword be any different? But I digress, this is for the later part of the log." For a short while, Shango contemplates going deeper into that section, but he stays his inkpen and takes a few deep breaths. While he was still frustrated, he musn't let his impulse get the better of him. Darvius was concerned for the better of the world and although he did not agree with his idea of responsibility in that moment, he must stay as calm as a breeze. "Darvius wouldn't be angry if he didn't expect me to do things better than I do them now", Shango reminds himself and sighs. He was taught tempests are poweful, but leave only regrets, if not properly tempered. After another few moments, he continues. "We travel towards the moon temple, making sure to look out for the sky, as it appears that the Cannibal is still on the move. Nalu, being a dragon and all was deathly afraid of it, thus Drago was especially worried. Korak meanwhile scanned the terrain for recent cultist activity, as we were assailed by such in our earlier attempt to clear out this temples mysteries. Needless to say, there was not a lot of cultist activity, if any. But somehing large had perhaps landed through the canopy. Probably said Cannibal, I assumed. Our group made camp after travelling nearly 30 miles. We could've made the push towards the camp, but decided that if we had to flee, we should have the sun up and about, not the moon. Mostly because most of our human party members couldn't see in the dark. Like me. During our nightly watches, something large flies above our heads. Glenn and I can't tell what it is, but it seemed like a black dragon. We wake the others, Nalu digging her head into the ground. Poor soul. Drago stayed up the rest of the night, while Cedrych scouted around the area for a bit. After making sure that the creature was nowhere to be seen, Glenn and I finished our watches and then went to sleep. Morning came, with Drago looking really tired. While I was worried, he assured us that he'd be fine. Cedrych and Darvius went ahead of us, to scout the way and look out for further looming threats, but they find nothing, the way is clear. As we arrive at the temple Cedrych notices a small etching in the ruins. It is apparently the draconinc word for eye, which put the party on edge. As Glenn confirmed that there was divination magic coming from it, we debate what we should do. While Korak was in favor of trying to clear it our first, we come to the conclusion that the spell has already detected us and leave it be. We are prepared to face an assault, if need be. As we enter the temple, we see that the guardian was not a construct made to restore itself. It was gone for good. Worrying, as the cultist will now have free reign over how they traverse this temple, but I must admit, the guardian didn't listen to us last time anyway, so they were already reigning freely anyway. We unlock the eastern door to be met with 3 pieces of inked parchment. We all knew what that it was trapped, but I decided to be the guinea pig. A very hurtful experience. These ink blobs seem like they were made to counter my very existance. They retaliate immidiately in melee and explode upon taking thunder damage. So I had to try and shoot them from a distance. And if theres one thing I'm not particuliarly good at, it's hitting things from afar. Nevertheless, our party managed to cull them soon enough and we could proceed forward. We thought we could, atleast. We were ambushed by a party of cultists and their black robed "leaders", but they seemed more coordinated this time. They had us surrounded on all sides, Grian getting the worst of it. I hold them off at the top west entrance, but I am stabbed in the back by one of their elites, going down almost instantly. My next memory fragment is Drago feeding me a healing potion, to get myself back up. I get up and see Glenn on the ground, surrounded by the blackcloaks. Jumping in to get the man to safety, I toss the Crescent Moon Blade towards Korak, so that they might escape with it. Just as I was about to launch my attack, I get downed once more by the blackcloaks, greviously wounded. I get back to my feet once more, wrestling myself to conciousness, to assist in striking down one of the blackcloaks. The other one sank into the stones once more and the fight came to an end. Exhausted but not defeated, we venture further into the temple. Having cleared out a majority of the cultists forces, we think it safe enough, after Glenn patches our wounds up. We enter a grand hall of some sorts, where all the cycles of the moon are depicted. Drago comes up with the theory that it has something to do with Tiamat's strength. Makes sense, considering the Moon was created to lock up Tiamat. We venture westward then northward, into a room we thought familiar: It seemed like one of these rooms that spawned chests. What happened instead, was that Korak disappeared in front of our eyes. He returned moments later, stating that he landed at a similiar room. 3 of us enter the room and are indeed teleported into a very similiar room. As we venture further south, we realise that we must have been teleported to the eastern side of the temple. We look towards the west and recognize the moon phase room. So we effectively discovered that this temple has a teleporter. Neat. We continue our venture westward and find the rooms of the black cloaks, presumably. As mentioned in earlier logs, these blackcloaks are of Khinasi Ancestry and this room was decorated ornately with Khinasi decorations. Reminds me of home. We try to break into the room, made possible thanks to Cedrych's prowess at lockpicking, but are greeted with a very hurtful explosion. Similiar to the one of that statue that knocked me down the previous month. The wounded retreat, Darvius and Cedrych continue inwards. They lay their hands on some stuff that they presumably shouldn't, as the only thing I see from over there is another explosion followed by Cedrych being dragged out of the room by Darvius. We then proceed it is high time for us to return to Urkenhame, as nearly all of our resource were used up by our fight. And so we did. As we return to the surface, our faces are basked in the sunlight. Makes seeing extremely hard, but we get used to it soon enough. We begin traveling to Urkenhame, but are beset by the brass dragon, Nyskira. We tried to hide from them, but they weren't fooled so easily, landing in our vicinity and calling out to us in draconic. After a few, increasingly agressive barks from them, Drago stepped out of his hiding spot and tries to negotiate with the dragon. All the while, I am frozen in place, having made no sense of the situation. The dragon then suddenly calls out to us in Sidhelian, after Darvius and them exchanged a few words. They wanted us to either pledge ourselves to their cause, or forfeit the sword, never touch any of the moon blades again and never to return to the temple. I hear all the people around me tell Nyskira that they won't touch the sword. I turn to Drago, Korak, the latter of which gives the same oath. I try to get any signal from Drago, but I either am indeed to slow to understand, or didn't receive any. After being stared down by the dragon for a good minute, I unsheath the sword, toss it in front of myself. I feel daggers being stared at the back of my head and Drago looked disarmed. I questioned my choice the moment I did it and only see the dragon put the spell on top of me. Drago makes the same pledge as the others and Nyskira takes off with the Sword. Darvius come to berate me on me not holding up to my responsibility regarding the Sword. "I expected you to die for it." where the words that left his mouth. I understand that not being able to hold onto the sword was my fault. But I didn't and still don't think me goading the dragon into attacking the sword would have any merit. In the best case, the Sword and I are destroyed. But if his gamble went wrong, I would have died in vain. For no reason. Only with the sword standing there ripe for the picking for Nyskira. I considered it was not the best idea to further anger this dragon, before it attacks my companions, hence me tossing the sword to the ground. Anyway, we continue our return to Urkenhame after our heated debate. Queen Freya and Kaevara await us there, as well as Laremdylth in her human form. We have a discussion about what our next steps should be. I was in too much of a daze to properly remember all the details of the conversation, but I agreed with the plan of taking this piece of info to Aragnak. While he was certainly not too keen on us "lower lifeforms", as he put it, he certainly wasn't that happy about Nyskira trying to make the dragons mortal again. It was a gamble, akin to earlier. But it is a gamble I firmly believed would benefit us one way or the other. We take a week to rest up and regain our resources, before we move towards Aragnak. In the meantime, we learn that Kaevara is actually a Chronomancer. A literal time mage! Well, she didn't do anything as grand stopping and turning time ( yet ), but we learned that she draws her power off the years that she has lived. She gets younger the more she uses magic, but she's lived for so lang by now, that it does not matter to her. Once we are all rested up, Korak sends a message to that dastard Henry Fasfathom. We know he is a servant to Aragnak of note and even though I hate his guts, I must admit that he was our only chance of getting a meeting with Aragnak. His message has a response soon enough. "The Great Henry Fasfathom shall meet you at the Rapid Retreat Castle in the Hag's Domain. Heh. They named the castle after the rapid retreat Korak and Drago's group had to make. We depart from Urkenhame, westward. Our travel wasn't as eventful. Korak spotted some tracks belonging to a creature that mimics forests, looking like a spider with trees for legs. While I was curious to see what the creature was, Korak was insistent that we give it a wide berth. And well, so we did. Our next day was as uneventful as the first. We reached the edge of Wolfgaard, close to the Cave where a previous party had encountered a horde of Troglodytes, strange abberations that have a bloody history with the dwerren. We decide that we don't want to camp directly next to their homecave and push on for a few miles. We take a rest as soon as our mounts seem to be at the edge of their stamina. We give the animals and ourselves some much needed time to rest up. But I felt that the Wolf couldn't be too far, as I'm sure it can sense interlopers. Speak of a devil and he will appear. The next night, when we camp near the border of the Hag's domain and Wolfgaard, the Wolf and his pack came upon us, surrounding us. While I already had an encounter with the Wolf, I hadn't seen him before. And I must say, he is a ginormous beast. A woman made her appearance from underneath the legs of the Wolf. We are asked to bring an offering. While my gaze turned towards our mounts with a frown, Drago saved the night with the ludicrious amounts of rations he keeps with him. He dumped over a months worth of rations in front of the Wolf. His pack get to eating them up, quickly devouring the stack of rations. The woman was not fully satisfied yet. She asked for a way to become a wolf. Grian offered her to teach her his druidic ways, so she can turn into a wolf herself, but Drago asks for permission to use magic, to turn her into a large wolf. I didn't think that Drago's magic was that strong and the boy looked just as surprised as the rest of us. The rest of that night we could here the two giant wolves frolicking with eachother. We might have done something great this day. Once first light approaches, we make our way to Castle Rapid Retreat. The fog blocks out the sun as always and I was about to light a lantern to see, as the fogclouds dissipated, revealing the massive body of the single largest being I've ever been fortunate enough to see and live to tell the tale. Aragnak was indeed as large as people made him out to be. How he managed to sit on top of the castle walls was beyond me, he looked heavy enough to press mountains into the ground. Drago says our piece, informing Aragnak that Nyskira was at it again, trying to revive Tiamat to bring the end to all the dragons immortality. He immidiately discerns Nyksira's dragon oath on us, assuming that we are their servants. We quickly fix the misconception and have a chat with Aragnak. He informs that he doesn't have a problem with dragons in general. Only with those that mingle with lesser species. Like Laremdylth. We apparently meddle with the Mebhaigl too much, which is the grounds for his disdain against sidhelian, humans and the like. We also learn that Laremdylth has apparently been messing with Aragnak's leylines, which had him in a bad mood. He tells us that such a device would not have been easy to hide and that it must be a large building. I think we all understood that there might be something wrong with Drago's tower, but we let the boy do all the talking. Aragnak states that the Void Dragon's aspects are drawn to eachother once they are released. Also, the heart of the Void Dragon, the Indigo Star, might be a valuable tool in luring it out, if we ever want to gang up on it. We are told to show Aragnak where the temple is. We were just about to take him there by foot, but he engulfs us in a torrent of flames, telling us to imagine where the temple and it's surroundings are. We all become a chorus of moon temple, as we desperately think of the temple, as we didn't want to anger the giant dragon quite yet. Before we knew it, we landed at the moon temple. We waited a couple of minutes for Nyskira to appear as they promised, but to no avail. As Aragnak grows impatient, Kaevara appears out of the temple, in all her glory. We are taken by surprise, as we thought she was staying in Urkenhame. She stated that we said we wouldn't help her in her mission anymore, so she went alone. Aragnak however stated that Kaevara's presence offends him and proceeds to breath fire on the poor woman. Atleast that's what I thought then. With a simple flick of her wrist, Kaevara deflected Aragnak's fiery breath. My jaw dropped, as I would've never imagined that Kaevara held such enourmous powers. What is she going to surprise us with next? Turns out, the surprise didn't wait long. Aragnak goaded Kaevara, grumbling that he should eat her. She simply utters: "You'd lose.", which Aragnak agrees to, shivering and shaking as if paralyzed with fear. I had no words. I still have no words. Seriously, this woman is full of surprises and shocks. Oh well. We return to Urkenhame again, where Kaevara explains to us that time is sort of like pasta. We nooded approvingly. I didn't make sense of it, but at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Aebrynis was just some fluffy wedding cake. If Kaevara says it, it certainly must have some sort of merit. I mean, by everything that's holy, she just removed Nyskira's curse effortlessly. What can't Kaevara do?! Korak gives her a fatestone he had spent a pretty coin on. At first, she wanted to share with him. She chewed through her half of the stone as if it was some sort of marshmellow, while Korak bit on... stone. Seeing that he can't consume it in the same way, he handed the other half over to Kaevara as well, who indulged in her snack. Meanwhile, we decide to return to the temple of the Moon once more. I was slightly worried that we might be in trouble, especially those with the oath to never return to the temple, but it seemed to be fine. We check if the temple was at all damaged by the probably fuming Aragnak, but it seemed to not be the case. This thing was built to withstand freaking Tiamat, of course it wouldn't be bothered by some "small fry" like Aragnak. We ask Kaevara what exactly she was doing in the temple at the time and she said that people wanted to kill her. She conjures the Crescent Moon Blade out of nowhere and tries to give it to a squirrel. Yes. She tried to give it to a squirrel. But more importantly, she had the sword. Which meant that my decision to toss the sword was remedied, I guess. True, I could've never foreseen that Kaevara of all the people was the one that would return it into Cohort hands, but at that moment I was just glad everything worked out. Wanting nothing further to do with the sword, I was the first to vote to get it locked up in the Cohort Vault after Darvius suggestion. Kaevara also says that she could release us from our oaths to Nyskira. While we tried to minimize the amount of magic she'd have to spend on us, we in the end scratched the plan when she couldn't keep apart who was getting their curses removed and who weren't bothered by it. It turned into a group hug, with Kaevara in our midst, while she removed the curse from us. She loses approximately half of her height. I was worried that she might have spent too much power. But when she stated, that she had enlarged the world around her, I was sure that she'll be fine. Drago goes to talk to Queen Freya about the matter regarding this "device" that Aragnak mentioned and asks her if Laremdylth had included something in the construction of his tower. She says that Laremdylth had some minor influence, but she wasn't aware of anything this grand. With things here not fully done yet and me owing Drago another healing potion, we decide it is high time for us to rest. Drago, Nalu, Kaevara, who had returned to her orignal size in the meantime, and I wave the rest off as they return on their board. I on my hand should already finish this log so I can get to working on Drago's potion. And it's going to be the freaking best potion of healing he's ever gotten. -Signed, Shango Bayu."
