While out buying rations, Valya purchases expensive polychromatic ink (purchases 4 oz. for 60 gp)
Valya then purchases a garish, fancy hat to cheer up Aurelia (150 gp, 2 gp for hat box, 1 gp for card), and discusses special-ordering a faux dragonscale vest for Qhask
Valya arranges a dinner that night with Cedric, where Valya gives Aurelia the hat—Aurelia tells Valya that she’d appreciate it if Valya would spend the money on the poor instead
At the dinner, Cedric also casts heroes’ feast
Leander rummages through Valya’s spellbook that night—Valya pretends to be asleep
Tuesday, December 18, 652 AU
They decide to investigate the Hall of Justice, where they are searched before entering and have to hand over their weapons
Thaldohr is escorted away by guards when they find Mage-Slayer
Inside, they take a tour, and note a door to a basement where records are kept
They also find out that Utaz was hired to cast forbiddance over the entire building
Invisibly, they sneak into the basement archives, and snoop around until they discover a suspicious room—they pick the lock, but also activate an alarm spell
Luckily, none of the people around know what they’re supposed to do, so Valya shouts “fire” and tricks everyone into running upstairs, leaving the party alone
There’s a secret door in the room behind a shelf, which they open, but they’re attacked by a pair of guards who appear to have been mind-controlled by Azzox
They manage to break the control on one of the guards, a student from the Crystalport Academy, who they tell to find Utaz
Down the stairs behind the secret door, they find a shaft that leads down to an old sewer system—they snoop around and are immediately ambushed by a swarm of rats
They find a body in the middle of a sewer tunnel, surrounded by a pool of blood—Valya approaches, and is nicked by a razor wire trap
The victim, a humanoid rat, was sliced in half by the razor wire trap
Later they’re ambushed by a wererat named Zot, but Qhask, who speaks Undercommon, is able to reason with him
Zot says undead cultists have taken over this area of the old sewer, forcing him and his people into the upper sewers, leading Crystalport to take action against the “rat problem”—he’s spying on the cultists in hopes of ambushing them
Zot also tells them that further down the tunnel are flameskulls
Zot accompanies them, and they encounter two flameskulls and a wight—Zot dies during the fight
Beyond the flameskulls is a small room with a few moldy crates—Aurelia throws the two flameskulls in to see if it’s a trap, but nothing happens
Aurelia steps into the room, and the door locks behind her while choking gas fills the room
Valya, Qhask, and Leander break the door down while Aurelia searches around for a way to disarm the trap
In the corner of the room is a loose flagstone, under which they find an iron hatch—under it is a small shaft with a ladder descending into the darkness
The rough stone walls are covered in stone eyes that swivel around to stare at the party—this must be the beholder’s lair
They decide to take a short rest first, throwing the flameskulls down a side tunnel as far away as possible
At the bottom of the shaft, they find an ancient temple to Neesha—specifically, Neesha as she is worshipped by cult of the eclipse, whose symbol is everywhere
Statues of Neesha, cloaked and hooded, hold continual flames that flicker green light on the carved stone walls
They hear an explosion from somewhere far off while they explore this antechamber
While exploring, they get a sending from Utaz—apparently, someone blew up the Hall of Justice!
They encounter a hall that leads to a large room, so Qhask sends his drake to explore ahead—a gurgling voice echoes “password?”, but the drake can’t speak, and as it runs forward it gets hit by a black bolt of energy and disintegrates
Down a different hall, they encounter a statue with a sympathy spell—Valya is attracted to the statue and falls down a pit trap, which attracts the attention of some cultists in the various nearby rooms
They fight the cultists, and manage to extract the password from their minds—“my life for Neesha”
In a nearby office, they find missives written by a cultist addressed to the leaders of nearby cities, informing them of the creation of New Crystalport, a haven for undead—Tharruk will rule, and the Evenglooms will serve as his main ministers
They find a teenage girl, who says she escaped from a nearby cell—there are other prisoners
In the cultists’ dormitory, Valya discovers a box of incense, which she feels compelled to open and smell, but resists
They head down another hallway to the prison, and get in a fight with the cultist guards, during which one of the guards takes a prisoner hostage and threatens to slit her throat—Aurelia, thinking quickly, casts sanctuary on the prisoner, saving her
Also during the fight, Aurelia sees an old crone beckoning to her from a door, but when she blinks and looks back, the door is closed and there’s no sign of the old woman
After they defeat the guards, they talk to the prisoners, discovering that the prisoner who was taken hostage is Acacia Evengloom, and she’s here with her son
The son seems unperturbed by their situation, and the party discovers that the child is Tharruk’s phylactery… ❦