Tuesday, January 9, 653 AU continued

• Aurelia, Bill, and Valya find themselves stranded in a forest of gnarled, leafless trees. The dirt under their feet is dry and crumbly. Aurelia investigates the portal, but can’t make heads or tails of the runes.
• Bill looks for footprints, and finds several. He’s not sure how old they are, considering he doesn’t know how often (or whether) it rains here, but he can tell they aren’t humanoid—one set looks like it was made by a heavy, bestial creature, and another set looks like it was made by a creature with spindly points for feet.
• Aurelia tries to listen for activity, but doesn’t hear anything aside from the vague impression of whispering in the eerie silence.
• The winter wolves start sniffing around, but the only thing they can smell is the stench of death. They smell something else, but they can’t identify it. The trail leads east.
• As they slowly make their way through the dark forest, they hear fluttering from up in the trees. Aurelia casts light from her gem of brightness. They see light reflected from a pair of eyes and hear a hiss of anger—it’s a cloaker, angered by the light, and it immediately dives in to attack. It wraps around Valya’s upper body, attempting to suffocate her, but the rest of the party are able to drive it off into the darkness. Aurelia decides to deactivate the gem of brightness.
• They continue through the forest, following the strange scent. An hour or so later, they see a light in the distance, as if someone is carrying a lantern through the trees. Valya dashes after it, but she doesn’t seem to get any closer to the light. Valya shouts out “Wait! Who are you?”, and the light vanishes. She returns to the party. They retrace Valya’s steps, but they can’t find any footprints. “Perhaps it was a spirit,” suggests Aurelia.
• Another hour, and darkness weighs heavier on their minds. Valya becomes despondent, and Aurelia especially feels the malevolent darkness cutting her connection to Soleil. But eventually, the trees begin to thin.

⁂

• Half a mile away, on a small hill, is a town surrounded by a wooden palisade. They approach, while the wolves offer to sniff around outside the town—they’re not sure how well winter wolves will be received.
• As the party approaches, something whizzes by the air next to Bill’s head. A voice from behind the wall informs them that that was a warning shot, and they shouldn’t come any closer. There’s a tense standoff, but after they mention that they came through the portal, they are allowed in.
• The inhabitants are mostly humans, elves, and halflings. A middle-aged half-elf introduces herself as Josalia, the mayor of Sanctuary. Josalia explains that the portal they came through is one-way. Many have tried to open the portal from this side, but all have failed. This shocks the party.
• Josalia leads the party to a mess hall, and on the way they spy a shrine to Neesha. Aurelia is taken aback, but Josalia explains that this is the Shadowfell is Neesha’s domain, and Soleil has little power here. Neither does Rhoklo, for that matter.
• A guard speaks up and claims that this is all part of Rhoklo’s test; Josalia’s father knew that, and Josalia would do well to remember. Josalia’s grandmother was one of the original settlers who came through the portal—this town is populated by their descendants.
• Josalia explains the history of this place. Long ago, there was a small cult of Rhoklo, mostly itinerant masons, carpenters, and artificers, led by their priest Elmon Ravajor. They came to Irodel Valley to construct a great device, the blueprints for which were sent to Elmon in a dream by the god Rhoklo. After they constructed the portal and came through, they found they couldn’t get back. Elmon claimed this was part of Rhoklo’s plan, and that they needed to be here in order to do what needed to be done, but it was clear he was just as confused as any of them. They built Sanctuary, and tried to continue their lives here, but the hostile environment and oppressive darkness made that difficult. One day, a few years later, Elmon went into the Nightwood—the forest the party just trekked through—to look for answers. He came back changed, babbling about some secret truth revealed to him, a truth greater than Rhoklo. There was a schism, and Elmon took a dozen of his closest followers somewhere downriver. Elmon never returned. Now, half the inhabitants of Sanctuary believe this is all a test, and the other half just believe they’ve been duped by the gods.
• Josalia doesn’t believe Elmon’s dream was sent by Rhoklo, but by some unknown malevolent entity. She doesn’t believe this is a test, and that they should just try to survive as best as they can. They fight off the occasional zombie horde, and they have some trade with a city downriver. Valya asks if the cities in the Shadowfell are populated by humanoids, and Josalia laughs and depends on how you count vampires, ghouls, and ghasts.
• Josalia has a guard bring over a map. The Shadowfell is a twisted mirror of the material plane, and there are cities in roughly the same positions as their material counterparts. Sanctuary is on the eastern edge of the Nightwood. To the south, down the Smoking River, is Ilek Vaad, the city they trade with. To the west of Ilek Vaad is the Sea of Sorrow, and to the east is the city Nerren, with a smaller town called Hatheg in between. Hatheg is built on the rim of a mysterious crater called the Unseeing Eye. Dominating the map to the east of the river is the Smoking Mirror, a cursed plain of crushed black glass. The darkness is especially thick there—it’s impossible to see more than a few dozen feet. In the mountains to the northeast is the Monastery of Kixist, which is mostly a mystery to those in Sanctuary.
• Aurelia believes Elmon was influenced by the comet, and that they should find him—he also might know how to reopen the portal. Josalia doubts they can make it far outside of Sanctuary. Ilek Vaad is ruled by a vampire lord and populated by mostly undead, dark giants roam the Smoking Mirror, and they’re lucky the worst thing they encountered in the Nightwood was a cloaker.
• Valya asks if they can rest in Sanctuary, and Josalia asks what they can contribute. Valya offers gold, and Aurelia offers a vial of holy water, which Josalia appreciates. She says there is an elf in Sanctuary, Morthil, who went hunting and came back as a vampire spawn. He’s chained up in a shed and watched over by his wife Valindra. Josalia wonders if holy water could cure Morthil.
• Bill asks Josalia if she’s been to the city. Josalia has not—their only trade is with wandering merchants. One is in Sanctuary right now—a drow named Salress who has his tent set up on the south side of the town.
• Valya asks if they have bullets for her gun, and Josalia and the nearby guards are surprised. She asks to see the gun, and muses whether it’s a sign from Rhoklo. Josalia tells the party to take what time they need, and wishes them luck if they intend to brave the Shadowfell outside the walls.

⁂

• As the party is about to leave the mess hall, two humans enter, having heard that there were visitors. They introduce themselves as Adeny and Greglar, and tell them that their son, Galsin, went missing two sleep cycles ago while feeding the chickens.
• At the party’s request, they lead the them to the chicken coop, which is right against the palisade. They investigate the area, and Bill notices scuff marks on the wall, as if from a shoe. Did Galsin climb up the wall? They investigate the outside of the wall, and find some fresh scratches. Was he kidnapped? Aurelia promises Adeny and Greglar that they’ll try to rescue Galsin.
• Valya asks if there are other disappearances, and Greglar says there have been six disappearances in his time here—each time, they vanish without a trace.
• Aurelia sits on a log next to the central bonfire outside the mess hall and casts divination, hoping to contact a servant of Soleil to determine if there’s a chance they’ll find Galsin alive if they leave immediately. She can’t make contact—all she hears is a faint, mocking whisper: There is only death for you here, sputtering little candle. Thoroughly freaked out, she decides to search for Galsin immediately.
• Bill points out that they should talk to the trader Salress and possibly the vampire spawn Morthil as well.

⁂

• They find Salress outside his tent, roasting a spider on a spit over a fire. He’s surprised that there are new faces in town. The party introduce themselves. Salress says he can serve as a guide, for a price, and that the safest way to get to Ilek-Vaad is to take a boat down the river.
• Salress mostly trades livestock, grain, and metal from Ilek-Vaad for guns and finished wood and metal goods from Sanctuary. Salress knows the story of Elmon, but never met him. He has no idea what happened to Elmon and his followers after they left Sanctuary.
• Valya asks about Ilek-Vaad, and Salress calls it a beautiful city, ruled by the vampire Lord Desmond, who rules with an iron fist. Ilek-Vaad trades with the more populous cities on the shore of the Sea of Sorrow, importing many duergar slaves.
• Hatheg, on the other hand, is a cursed town populated by orphans, the lost, the mad, and the like. He avoids it.
• the Monastery of Kixist is as mysterious to Salress as it is to the other inhabitants of Sanctuary. They’re secretive and trade very little with Ilek-Vaad—all they ever want to trade for is more slaves. He has no idea what god they worship at the monastery.
• They ask about nothics, and Salress says he’s seen a few in Ilek-Vaad. Apparently they come from upriver—possibly the Smoking Mirror? The nothics are drawn to Abigail, a lich in Ilek-Vaad who enforces Desmond’s peace and collects all manner of arcane knowledge.
• According to Salress, it’s possible to leave the Shadowfell, and that surely someone like Abigail would know how to open a portal. He hints that there are other methods, but he really shouldn’t speak of them. Valya hands him 10 gp, and Salress tells them about shadow crossings—locations where the veil between the Shadowfell and the material plane is especially weak. They appear sporadically in dark, forgotten locations.
• Salress finds their plan to save the inhabitants of Sanctuary amusing and stupid, and that the Shadowfell is not the kind of place that rewards selfless do-goodery.
• They ask Salress what could crawl up a wall with claws and steal a child, and he suggests it could be a sorrowsworn, or anything really. It could even be people from Ilek-Vaad doing the kidnapping.
• Bill asks if Salress could take them to Ilek-Vaad, and Salress says he’s leaving tomorrow and he could bring them with him for 50 gp, which they pay.

⁂

• They hear gunshots, and find the guards shooting at their winter wolf companions. They tell the guards the wolves are with them, and go out to talk to them. The wolves want to know what the party learned. Aurelia tells them what they’ve learned so far, and that there might be nothics somewhere to the east. The wolves are eager to find them.
• The wolves have been prowling around and smelled a human—the trail goes east from Sanctuary a few hundred feet, but stops at the river. However, there’s a sign that a boat had been pulled up on shore recently. Furthermore, the wolves smell another scent mixed with the human—something they don’t recognize. It seems Galsin might have been kidnapped.
• They head back to the village.

⁂

• They decide to talk to Morthil, the vampire spawn. Outside the door of the shed is a woman, slumped against the door, her face streaked with tears. The woman, Valindra, says that she hasn’t fed Morthil since he returned—he’s just been chained up. Valindra is insistent that there is always hope, that soon they’ll figure out a way to fix Morthil. Aurelia tries to convince her that Morthil is being starved and that there’s no way they know of to save him. Valindra, crying, opens the door of the shed, cuts her arm with her hunting knife, and offers it to Morthil, but the blood doesn’t sate him. Aurelia suggests they try animal blood instead.
• Morthil, looking at the party for the first time, says that his master will welcome them in Ilek-Vaad, that he can hear Desmond in his head, and that Desmond will help them. Valindra, confused, demands to know what’s going on. Aurelia leads Valindra away to talk.
• Aurelia tries to comfort Valindra, and explain that Lord Desmond is the one who turned Morthil. But when Aurelia tries to gently suggest that they destroy Morthil, Valindra calls Aurelia faithless and unworthy of her robes. A true follower of Soleil would have hope—Aurelia must secretly be a servant of Neesha. Aurelia, shaken, heads for the mess hall to drink.

⁂

• The rest of the party find Aurelia in the mess hall, and they talk over drinks. Aurelia asks Valya what she plans on doing when she finds her brother, and whether Valya is worried that her brother is the one who killed the rest of her family. Valya isn’t sure.
• Bill tells the rest of the party that his memory is hazy before five or so years ago, and he feels like he was asleep before that time. The earliest thing he can remember is farming on the outskirts of Crystalport. He doesn’t think he has any family.
• They talk for a while about the idea of gods having different facets in different cultures, and wonder how Valya’s powers, the Lady of Whispers, and Neesha all relate to each other. Valya says the sun goddess in Nahalis is treated with suspicion and caution—if you get too close to the sun, you can get burned.
• Aurelia confides in the rest that she didn’t really choose her path—her mother was the head of the church in Alynhone. Aurelia showed promise, so her mother sent her to the bigger church in Eth’Alorei to train. Her father is a painter.
• Valya asks Aurelia if she think’s they’ll make it out of the Shadowfell. “We have to,” says Aurelia. “We will, or we’ll die. Those are the only two options.”
• Then Valya and Aurelia get into an argument about Neesha, and about Valya waking up Uxovaharis, which Aurelia says is extremely suspicious.
• They set up their tents in a relatively empty area of the town, and go to bed.

⁂

• Bill has a dream he’s in an empty field. William is there, looking at him expectantly. Bill follow him, and William hops ahead, turning back occasionally to make sure Bill is following. As the dream progresses, the landscape becomes stranger and stranger, eventually turning into a blasted waste covered in black glass that cuts the bottom of Bill’s feet. When William turns around for the last time, he has one large eye in the middle of his face, and he says something in a language Bill can’t understand. Bill wakes up in a cold sweat.
• Aurelia has a vision as well. She is in a dark wood, and further ahead through the trees is a light, which she knows is the sun. She chases after it, but the light recedes. Aurelia trips on a root and falls into a deep pit, landing atop a miniature city carved from animal bones. She looks up, and instead of the opening of a pit, she sees a gigantic eye staring at her.
• Valya’s vision is of her sparring with her brother in her family estate. Lucan wins, and Valya feels a rage at her own inadequacy. As Lucan turns away, she stabs him through the back. Lucan turns back to face Valya, and has one eye in the middle of his face.

Wednesday, January 10, 653 AU

• Valya wakes up with itchy, scaly skin. Aurelia can’t identify the condition.
• Valya finds a blacksmith in the village, and trades one antitoxin and 15 gp for three dozen bullets.
• As Bill is smoking some pipeweed while waiting for Valya with the rest of the party, the smoke from his pipe forms unmistakeable words: THE EYE SEES. Spooked, they wonder what the words mean, and what caused them to form.
• Thinking about what Josalia said to them yesterday, they decide to search the Nightwood first for whatever Elmon found there. They stick close to the river, but as the river enters the wood it gets more swampy and eventually they have to give the whole area a wide berth.
• After a few hours of searching, they find the ruins of a small stone house. It looks like it’s been abandoned for decades. Valya spies a glint of metal under some debris in the open pit that must have once been a basement, but is startled when undead suddenly burst out from under the debris—the metal was a sword, held by one of the skeletons.
• The skeletons aren’t so difficult, but a will-o’-wisp joins the battle, shocking them and darting around, too quick to hit. Eventually, they’re able to destroy it.
• They inspect the skeletons, and determine that, based on their armor, they were probably followers of Rhoklo. They find two rings on the bodies; one silver, one pewter.
• A few yards outside the house, they find an inky black glassy stone, ten feet long and a few feet across, which was once standing upright but is now lying on its side. Valya casts comprehend languages and touches the stone. She’s almost bowled over by the wave of nausea and insanity that briefly passes through her. Though she can’t understand all of what she saw, she gets the gist of it:

THE WORLD MUST BE PREPARED FOR MY COMING. CARVE THE IDOLS IN MY NAME. YOU WILL KNOW THEIR FORMS FROM YOUR DREAMS. LEAVE THEM IN THE SHADOWY PLACES, THAT THE WORLD MAY FEEL MY PRESENCE.

• Valya feels like there’s a lot more specific information there, but she might be driven insane if she tries to comprehend it. Aurelia suggests this is what drove Elmon insane.
• They think they’re being stalked by a cloaker, so they hurry back to Sanctuary. The wolves meet them on the way, and they inform the wolves of their plan to take a boat downriver with Salress.

⁂

• Back in Sanctuary, they speak to Salress inform him that they’re ready to leave. As they’re exiting Sanctuary, Valindra tells the party that she fed Morthil three chickens and a pig and he’s still thirsty, and asks for advice. Valya says Morthil is under Lord Desmond’s control, so Valindra begs the party to kill Lord Desmond. She gets into an argument with Aurelia, who says Morthil must be destroyed, and walks away fuming.
• They find Salress’s boat, and begin heading down the river. After an hour, the wolves catch Galsin’s scent. It exits the river and heads east, across the Smoking Mirror. They part ways with Salress and head east across the plain of black grass, against Salress’s advice. Bill is the first to point out that the black glass appears to be the same material that the black statues are made of. Valya wonders if the monastery is responsible, since it’s the only thing they know is to the east of here.
• The trail ends at another river, so they decide to follow this river toward the Monastery of Kixist instead of continuing on their way to Ilek-Vaad.
• As the follow the river, they feel the presence of a large shadowy presence nearby, but it doesn’t seem to notice them.
• A few minutes later, they encounter a figure wearing scarlet robes a few dozen feet ahead of them. It has black fabric covering its face under the red hood, and it does not move or speak. As they approach closer, it whispers in a buzzing voice: “What business have you at the monastery?” Valya says they know about the statues, and the figure responds “Then soon you will be one of us.” It must be a nothic! Valya casts suggestion, but the figure somehow turns the charm back on Valya, who barely resists it. “You will enter the monastery when all your impurities have been stripped away,” it says, “but not before.” It vanishes.
• As they continue on their path, they enter the foothills of a mountain range. In the distance, they see a large, disturbing citadel high in the mountains. There is an old trail winding up through the foothills, which they follow. Soon, they come to a valley–at the far end of the valley is a guard tower. Perched on the guard tower is a large shadowy dragon, watching the valley. They decide to backtrack and find an alternate route to the monastery.
• As they’re scrambling up some rocks, they see a human child lying on the ground ahead of them. He’s alive, and the wolves confirm that it’s been his scent that they’ve been following—it’s Galsin. Curiously, the scent continued through the valley and past the dragon. What is he doing here? Did he escape? Aurelia determines that he’s suffering from dehydration and exhaustion, so she heals him.
• Galsin opens his eyes, and tells the party that he escaped the nothics after they kidnapped him and brought him to the monastery—he escaped through a cave in the basement. The wolves insist that they leave the child behind and continue to the monastery. The party decide to bring Galsin with them to the monastery.
• Galsin shows them a small hole in the base of a cliff, and warns them that there were monsters in there. They follow the tunnel as it winds up toward the monastery. The tunnel opens up into a large cavern, with a bridge crossing a deep pit. They hear chittering from somewhere below, but the pit is deeper than any of them can see. Bill crosses the bridge first, noticing and avoiding a pressure plate in the center of the bridge.
• The tunnel continues on the other side of the bridge, and after a few hundred feet the natural walls of the tunnel give way to a hewn stone hall… ❦