Wednesday, January 3rd, 653 AU, continued

• They find that the door ahead is locked, so they decide to backtrack down one of the other hallways. Squeezing through some rubble, they find another room lined with niches, each containing an unmarked sarcophagus. Qhask enters the room and notes two other hallways out of this room, each terminating in a closed door. He approaches the nearest door and presses his ear to it, which activates a glyph of warding which envelops him in a fireball.
• The explosion also wakes up the undead lurking in the sarcophagi, which crawl out and attack the party. The zombies aren’t too tough, but at the end of the battle, as they’re rummaging through the sarcophagi, Aurelia spies some creature watching them from the rubble-filled hallway they entered from. It realizes it’s been seen, and silently darts out of site. They take a short rest before continuing.
• Valya inspects the door, but whatever magic caused it to explode when Qhask touched it has been expended. She picks the lock and opens the door. They discover a library. Books are chained to shelves lining the walls, and at the far end is a podium on which rests an open tome. But the first thing they read is scrawled in dried blood on the floor: “THEY ARE COMING”. The blood could be decades old.
• Valya flips through the book on the podium, noting that the pages are blank. However, the chained books suddenly rip out their chains and begin flying around, attacking the party. They dispatch a few of the books, and the rest fall to the floor, inert.
• They scan through the tomes and find treatises on magic, most of which are manuals on the planes; how they connect to each other and how to travel between them. One appears to have been authored by Uxovaharis himself. They take it for further study. Aurelia determines that the blank book on the podium is not magical, but she and Valya get headaches from looking at it for more than a few moments. They put it, too, in Torba for later.

⁂

• They leave the library and try the other door. It’s carved with stars, moons, and other celestial motifs. Valya picks the lock, and they find the orrery. Crystal globes of various colors float in the air, randomly placed around a central glowing orb that represents the sun. There are levers and dials and numbers on a panel on the other side of the room. Valya has seen a display like this once before as a child—she recognizes that each of the orbs represents a plane. She notices a tiny red jewel, no larger than a pea, further out from the central sun than the others, and surmises that it represents the comet.
• Valya turns a dial, and the orbs start moving. Qhask and Aurelia realize at the same time—the numbers on the panel might be dates! They also note that as planes get close to each other, a thin trail of light connects them and they glow a little brighter. Qhask tries to work out the current date in the old format used in the display. They work out that the orrery is currently set to a date in the distant past. As they bring the system closer to the current date, the small red jewel gets closer and closer to the others… With dread and trepidation, they advance the date past the current date. The red orb gets close enough to the blue orb that a thin glowing line appears between the two as they reach their closest approach. The date is October 2nd, 653 AU.
• “Well, we have nine months,” says Qhask. Immediately, they all feel an overwhelming sense of nausea and doom and utter wrongness—they have just learned something that should not be known. Aurelia sees a brief glimpse of her vision of the comet. She and Qhask are horrified, but Valya, Thaldohr, and Bill block it out of their minds and refuse to realize what’s happening. Aurelia and Qhask try to convince the rest. Valya shakes off the disbelief, but Thaldohr and Bill appear to be having their minds broken and suffer more psychic damage. They continue to refuse to acknowledge what they learned from the orrery.
• Aurelia takes out one of the planar manuals they found and tries to identify the orbs. She learns the names of the three planes in their local system, but the book makes no mention of a fourth plane.
  • Dicora, the large dull red sphere closest to the sun
  • Incora, the blue sphere next-furthest away (their own plane)
  • Vuitov, the clear sphere furthest from the sun
• Valya tries to write down what they learned about the planes to show it to Thaldohr and Bill, hoping it might bypass the magic preventing them from understanding, but to her horror, the writing fades. Aurelia looks at the blank book again, wondering if it will have writing now, but it’s still blank.
• Suddenly, they hear chuckling echoing from down the corridors. Qhask turns just in time to see a gaunt creature with a large eye in the middle of its face staring at him from the doorway. It tries to probe his mind, but Qhask resists. The creature taunts the party, claiming they will soon be just like it. It darts back into the hall and vanishes.

⁂

• They continue exploring, finding a staircase and heading down. They turn a corner and find the creature gnawing on a dead rabbit. It laughs and says the party will be his brethren soon, and warns the party that “they” are coming, but whoever “they” are, it can’t or won’t say, claiming they’re indescribable but that they’ve come many times in the past. The creature probes into Valya’s mind, learning her secrets, and tempts Valya by claiming that “they” know what happened that fateful night.
• The creature also says he came to the tomb long ago with his dwarves, seeking knowledge and power. The party realizes that this creature used to be Cecil Sharpe—he must have turned into whatever he is now, killed his family, and returned to the tomb.
• Cecil also says that Uxovaharis is not dead, but sleeping, waiting until the day “they” return, and that the party could come see him, if they like. Aurelia asks if Cecil knows of a dark statue, but Cecil gets defensive and says they can’t take it, it’s his, he protects it, and that the statue, too, is waiting with its brethren for “their” return.
• Valya intimidates Cecil into showing them to the statue, and he opens the door. Cecil taunts the party, claiming that they’ll be like him in a matter of months, and that he’s preparing for their arrival, too, in his own way.
• Valya tries to read Cecil’s mind, and takes massive psychic damage for the trouble, curling up on the floor and vomiting. Cecil taunts Valya, saying she isn’t ready to hear “their” voices.
• Aurelia and Qhask nod at each other, and Aurelia casts sacred flame on Cecil to put him out of his misery. There’s a short battle, but Cecil isn’t very powerful and they quickly dispatch him. They take a small iron key he was wearing on a string around his neck.
• Valya wants to visit the sleeping wizard, but Aurelia is adamant that their mission is to get the statue and they shouldn’t mess with Uxovaharis, who might be extremely powerful.
• They continue down the hall and open a door. There’s a ruined library, with empty bottles of wine piled in a corner. The room is musty—it looks like Cecil was sleeping here. The books are Uxovaharis’s diaries and notes, but the magic theory is way over their heads. They try to look for information about the planes, and discover that Uxovaharis was writing about rituals for planar travel that require blood sacrifice. They also discover notes from the time of his collaboration with Caranthiax—apparently, Caranthiax became suspicious of Uxovaharis’s motives and cut off communication, telling him to stop reading such dark tomes. Uxovaharis’s diaries become more deranged and difficult to understand as they go on—the later volumes are filled with grandiose claims that he had pierced the veil and seen things no wizard before him had ever seen, and that he has discovered entities worthy of worship.
• Looking further, they find more sarcophagi. These are made of rock crystal, and empty, except one has a crack in it. At the far end of the hall, they see a black statue resting on a pedestal. As they get close to the statue, they’re attacked by an invisible creature—Valya is enveloped in a whirlwind and is slashed by some invisible blade. They try to fight back, but the creature remains invisible and they’re not sure if they’re hitting it.
• Suddenly, they hear a ripping noise and a creature pulls itself out of a rift in space near the statue. The creature has long, deformed limbs, and no face—instead, it has a void filled with eyes on the front of its head. The creature, a woe strider, proves very powerful, and nullifies all magic around it. The party are massively wounded by the end of the fight, but Thaldohr eventually cuts through its limbs and it dissolves into a puddle of black goo.
• They all agree to destroy the statue rather than take it back to Utaz—it’s way too dangerous to keep around.
• There’s only one room left; the resting place of Uxovaharis. Aurelia strongly suggests that they let the sleeping wizard lie, especially since they’re really beat up and in no condition to fight. Qhask agrees they can wait, but Valya, Thaldohr, and Bill think they should take a long rest and deal with the wizard in the morning. Quask and Aurelia are outvoted. They take a rest in the entrance hall.
• During the night, Qhask has a disturbing dream of searching through a ruined city for… something. Thaldohr notices Qhask shaking, and wakes him up. Later, during Aurelia’s watch, she suddenly finds herself alone, in the room with the clear sarcophagus. For a split second, she sees a cyclops creature like Cecil instead of her own reflection in a sarcophagus. She rushes back up the stairs to their camp.

Thursday, January 4, 653 AU

• The next morning, they return to the door to Uxovaharis’s resting place. The door is protected by an arcane lock, so Aurelia casts dispel magic to open it. Valya opens the door. The room beyond is lavishly carved marble. Opposite the door are two statues of robed, hooded, faceless humanoids, but instead of hands, tentacles poke from beneath their sleeves. The room is filled with tables, on which rest strange objects, and at the very end of the room is a stone slab. On the stone slab, looking very much alive, is a sleeping wizard—middle-aged, with a salt-and-pepper goatee and black-and-purple robes.
• Aurelia and Qhask stay outside in the hallway while the rest of them search around the room. There are spell scrolls in a stand, some gems and art objects, and a jet black tablet on which is carved some writing in a language they don’t understand.
• Qhask notices a hidden door in the wall behind the table holding the black tablet. Valya and Bill try to figure out how it opens, but can’t figure it out. Thaldohr is about to break the wall down with his hammer when Aurelia sighs, curses, and enters the room, quickly finding a hidden button in the wall.
• Behind the door is a ten-by-ten room. It is empty, save for a pedestal and the shattered remains of the crystal artifact that must have once rested on it. All over the walls, written in blood, are repetitive phrases: “NO”, “NEVER”, “I’M SORRY”, “HOW COULD I HAVE THOUGHT IT”, and “NEVER AGAIN”, repeated over and over. It’s different handwriting from whoever wrote “THEY ARE COMING” in the library.
• Valya casts identify on the glass shards, but they’re not magical. Then, she walks over to the sleeping wizard, says “we think this guy is evil, right?” and stabs Uxovaharis in the chest. Uxovaharis opens his eyes. Oops!
• Uxovaharis sits up, looks around, and asks “What year is it?” Aurelia, in shock, says “653?” Uxovaharis laughs, says “I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of each other in the future.” He casts teleport, and is gone. “Looks like we were right,” Qhask says to Aurelia. Aurelia opines that in the future, she and Qhask should get double votes.
• With nothing left to do, they take a break and identify the objects they’ve acquired. They have: spell scrolls of feign death, borrowed knowledge, major image, elementalism, and cloud of daggers; art objects include a carved bone statuette of a mind flayer, a purple silk embroidered handkerchief, a gold bracelet with emeralds, a chalice made of a kobold skull, two silver ewers with handles in the shape of a grick, and the black tablet; and the blank book, the book on the planes written by Uxovaharis, and Uxovaharis’s diaries.

⁂

• They leave the tomb and return to Greenview to pick up their horse and wagon, then head back to Crystalport, which takes the rest of the day. They arrive just before sundown.
• The first thing they do is speak to Utaz. They explain that the statue was in the tomb of Uxovaharis, that Uxovaharis was not dead, but sequestered, that they destroyed the statue rather than retrieving it, and that on October 2nd two planes are going to collide. Utaz begins to get a headache, and at first he doesn’t seem to understand Valya, but Aurelia presses further and breaks through.
• Utaz leafs through Uxovaharis’s journals, frowns, and asks the party to accompany them to a magic circle two floors up. He begins casting a ritual, which he says is a powerful detection spell. He determines that the knowledge of the planar collision is cursed, and asks the party: “What have you done?” He explains nothics are created when humanoids learn cursed, forbidden knowledge.
• Utaz suggests two options. First, they could cast modify memory to forget the forbidden knowledge, though this would just leave them defenseless when the planar conjunction occurs. Second, they could try to find a way to shield themselves from the effects of the curse, or break the curse outright. Otherwise, in a matter of weeks or months they will all turn into nothics. He says he will contact some colleagues, but if they can’t think of something clever, then modify memory will be the way to go. He can’t cast it himself, but he knows someone from Khorsir who specializes in mind magic.
• Utaz examines the black tablet and is astounded to discover it’s instructions for casting create spelljammer helm, a spell for creating a ship that can travel through the astral plane. “This is the sort of forbidden knowledge that just causes a lot of trouble…” Utaz muses.
• They return to their bastions for the night.

Friday, January 5, 653 AU

• Valya sells the items they found in Uxovaharis’s tomb for 525 gp. The ewers, it turns out, are magical, and the man appraising them declares them contraband. Valya casts suggestion, but it doesn’t work, so she tries bribing him, which works. They turn out to be a decanter of endless water and an eversmoking bottle.
• Valya tries to find Remy at the Drunken Goblin to purchase gunpowder, but he’s not around, so she goes to the Thieves’ Guild instead. Sqreeth informs Valya that guns are only available to the guards in the Shining Citadel, and that he might be able to acquire some bullets if Valya pays him 30 gp.
• Aurelia speaks privately to Cedric, the priest of Soleil. She asks Cedric about comets, but all Cedric knows is that they’re omens of ill fortune, blemishes in the sky, and affront to both Soleil and Neesha. She informs Cedric about her visions, and her worry that something awful will happen. She also confides in him that Valya’s power might come from Neesha. She spends the rest of the afternoon healing citizens in the temple, and making holy water. ❦