Saturday, January 6 to Sunday, January 7, 653 AU

• While waiting for Utaz to get back to them, they discuss possible next steps:
  • Find out more about their curse and their forbidden knowledge.
  • Finding the missing kobolds in Amyanthalas.
  • Find out more about the mysterious ‘T’ and the Comets.
  • Dealing with the necromancers in Silverdale.
  • Find the Evenglooms, who escaped Crystalport after Tharruk’s plans were thwarted.
  • Find Perrit, the leader of the Wood Scorpions, who also escaped.
  • Find more information about Grieving Edge or Siora Virren’s hidden forge in Hearthollow.
  • Bring Beatrice’s remains to the Shining Citadel.
• Aurelia spends 7 gp to pay a sage at the Crystalport Archives named Nikryll to research the comet for one week.
• Valya talks to Valspira in her bastion, who is working on re-establishing contact with various devils in the Hells.
• While the party convene in Valya’s bastion to discuss the logistics of modify memory, white smoke begins billowing out of the corner of the dining room. It only lasts a moment, but it leaves an acrid, metallic scent in the air. They can’t find a source.
• They return to Valspira’s room to ask what she knows about curses. Valspira is being difficult as usual, and delighted that something horrible might happen to the party, so they tell Valspira the cursed knowledge, bringing her under its influence. Valspira is furious, but is now forced to actually help the party. She begins researching, but taunts the party, telling them they’d make excellent devils. Aurelia convinces herself it wasn’t wrong to curse Valspira—she is a devil, after all—and the rest of the party privately muse about Aurelia’s morality.
• Valya tries to contact the Thieves’ Guild, but they appear to have moved on from the warehouse where they’ve met the past few times. She finds Remy at the Drunken Goblin, who asks Valya to steal the Daykins’ treasure from the vault under the Daykin manor, but Valya refuses, since the lack of funds would doom Crystalport. Valya instead wants to purchase magic items, hoping to find a pearl of power. Remy doesn’t have one, but Remy says he’ll send Valya a sending if he comes across one.
• Valya and Aurelia have a conversation about Valya accepting boons from Neesha and putting the party in danger (bringing up the encounter with the roper in Uxovaharis’s tomb) and how Aurelia doesn’t fully trust Valya anymore. Valya protests that Neesha has different aspects and in Thamior she’s the protector of dreamers.

Monday, January 8, 653 AU

• In the morning, they return to Utaz’s tower in the Andirune Institute. They are joined by a gnomish mage from Khorsir named Slelbe who specializes in mind magic. Slelbe wears thick glasses, and it is impossible to remember the color of her robe.
• Slelbe goes over the possibilities and their pros and cons as she sees them:
  • Using modify memory is risky, because it’s vulnerable to dispel magic and would prevent them from acting on the knowledge they’ve learned, which Utaz has assured her is important.
  • They could slow the progression of the curse with a potion made from nothic eyes—one eye per affected individual. They have one month to find enough nothics. (They’ll need at least seven eyes: one each for Utaz, Valspira, Qhask, Thaldohr, Bill, Aurelia, and Valya.)
  • They could destroy the source of the curse, but they don’t have any idea where to start and some preliminary divination proved unhelpful.
• Gathering nothic eyes for the potion is their best bet, so they discuss where to find them. They discuss heading to the Underdark, where they could potentially find nothics, but they need a specific lead—wandering around and hoping to encounter some is probably hopeless. Utaz has two possible leads:
  • The Irodel Valley to the northeast, in Amyanthalas, contains the ruins of a small village settled by followers of Rhoklo. They all mysteriously vanished decades ago, and now the ruins are reportedly haunted. There are reports of “cyclops” creatures spotted in the area, which might be nothics.
  • There’s an adventurer’s guild in the city that collects journals and memoirs of adventurers, which might contain information about nothics.
• As they turn to leave, they see smoke billow out of the corner of the room near the door, and they hear a distant barking. The smoke vanishes as quickly this time as it did last time, and Utaz and Slelbe confirm it’s conjuration magic. They speculate that it’s either part of the curse, or Uxovaharis spying on them.

⁂

• They find the Castalian Adventurer’s Guild. The patrons are no help—they’re all amateurs with no experience—but they read through the journals and discover another lead: In the journal of an adventurer named Launseith, there’s mention of cyclops creatures seen in the great cavern where Tharruk pitted the duergar and the drow against each other. There’s a map—it’s south of Kharst.
• Considering they aren’t sure how long it will take to reach that cavern, and having no guide in the Underdark, they decide to head for Irodel Valley.
• They head to the train station and discover that the next train to Eth’Alorei leaves in two hours. They wait in a small café off of the main lobby, but a few minutes later they see more smoke billowing out of the corner. This time it doesn’t abate, and a large dog-like creature jumps out of the smoke and attacks the party. It hurts to look at, and exudes an aura that batters their psyches. They kill the creature without too much difficulty, but it leaves behind a puddle of corrosive acid as it dies.
• On the train they run into Aliatha Omanys, the art collector they met at the party in the Daykin Estate.

⁂

• It’s late afternoon by the time they arrive in Eth’Alorei, so they decide to stay in the Temple of Soleil and head out in the morning. Aurelia tells the party that her mother lives in a small village outside the city. They head to the temple, and are greeted by Amra, a friend of Aurelia’s. Amra apologizes that Vestan, another of Aurelia’s friends, is not in the temple at the moment—he should be at the Citadel by now.
• Valya notices that people are giving her suspicious stares. They meet with the High Priestess Vaeri Helebalar. Vaeri is tactful but cold, and mentions that Aurelia keeps “unusual company”. She suggests staying at an inn, claiming there aren’t any free rooms. Valya casts detect thoughts, and discovers that Vaeri and others are bothered by the presence of a Nahalian, who are “all worshipers of Neesha”.
• They get rooms at The Elm, then head to a bar that Aurelia used to frequent with Amra and Vestan. Aurelia speaks with the bartender, catching him up on what she’s been doing in Crystalport.
• The bartender says he’s seen a group of kobolds–refugees from Caranthiax. Apparently, they were waiting in the woods for a friend, but when he didn’t show up they decided to head north to the Gemra Empire to find a dragon willing to fight Bellaroth.
• The bartender also knows a bit about the Irodel Valley—apparently, the leader of the settlement, a priest of Rhoklo, received strange dreams telling him to build something, claiming they were divine visions from Rhoklo.
• Aurelia asks if he’s heard of anyone having strange dreams about comets, and he mentions a patron a month ago, a retired adventurer named Elre Glynmyar, who was ranting and raving about visions of a comet. He hasn’t been to the bar in the past two weeks, which is unusual.

Tuesday, January 9, 653 AU

• Aurelia participates in the morning prayers at the temple, and speaks with Vaeri, who warns Aurelia not to trust Valya, and that the Lady of Whispers is certainly identical to Neesha. She also informs Aurelia that Valya is wanted for murder in Thamior—whatever Valya told the party about that night, she might be lying. Vaeri looked into Valya’s background when she heard that Aurelia had made new friends. She warns Aurelia not to stray too far into the shadows.
• They head to a magic weapons store, since they’re in Amyanthalas, which tends to ignore the Castalian ban on the sale of magic items. Bill buys an enspelled longbow of acid splash for 1250 gp. Valya finds a spell scroll store and sells the scrolls of danse macabre and spirit of death for 2000 gp. At an armory, Valya buys breastplate armor for 400 gp and sells her studded leather for 30 gp.
• They head to the Irodel Valley, following the road north and then veering off the path and into the snow-covered woods. After an hour, they come across a stone obelisk jutting out of the snow. They see the traces of writing, but it’s so weathered it can’t be read.
• They continue on, and suddenly find themselves ambushed by two giant centipede-like creatures—juvenile rhemorazes. They’re tough, and their screeching soon draws the attention of their mother. When they hear the screeches of even more rhemorazes in the distance they flee.
• They find the ruins. Old stone buildings of exceptional craftsmanship, abandoned and being overtaken by vines and young trees. The biggest building is some sort of town hall or temple—the roof is partially collapsed. They explore the large building.
• Inside, they find a repeating motif of crossed chisels, the holy symbol of Rhoklo. There’s a podium and an altar on a raised platform at one end of the large open space that takes up most of the building. Next to the altar on the ground are an old rusty hammer and chisel.
• Bill picks the lock of a side door, and they find an office. A skeleton lies in the corner—it appears to be a more recent adventurer, not an original inhabitant. In its clothing, Valya finds an amethyst and 123 gp. Aurelia chastises Valya for stealing from the dead yet again. There is a desk in the corner. On the desk is an old, faded draft of a speech praising Rhoklo and claiming that “the machine is almost complete”, and that the faithful will all be led to a new golden age of prosperity.
• Aurelia examines a drawer in the desk, triggers a trap, and is pricked by a poison needle. She heals herself with magic, and examines the contents of the desk. There’s blueprints inside of some sort of large ring-shaped object—none of the party can make heads or tails of it.
• Valya tries to open a different drawer, fails to notice the trap, and also gets jabbed with a poison needle, which Aurelia attempts to heal. Inside the drawer is a shiny chisel, resting on a velvet cushion.
• Bill opens another drawer. He, too, gets stabbed. Aurelia wastes her third lesser restoration. The drawer contains administrative records of the town. It covers the discovery of the valley, the construction of buildings, and so on. There’s only a twenty-year span between the founding of the city and the last entry.
• Aurelia inspects the final drawer very closely, figures out where the needle will poke out, and avoids it. The drawer contains a hammer resting on another velvet pillow.
• They investigate the other side door, and find a library. While they’re investigating, they notice two large winter wolves have entered the main room of the building. The wolves can speak, and tell the party they can work together to their mutual advantage. They, too, are looking for nothic eyes. The party quickly works out that the wolves were sent by Uxovaharis, which Valya confirms with detect thoughts. The party decides to work with the wolves for the time being, hoping to gain more information about the wizard and to make use of their knowledge and keen senses to to help find nothics.
• After some searching and investigation of the murals on the altar, they discover that they can use the hammer and chisel they discovered to open a secret staircase in the floor. They descend and discover a large chamber filled with strange machinery. In the center is a floating metal ring that matches what they saw in the blueprints.
• They determine from the blueprints and other writings that they can activate the ring by sacrificing life force. They convince one of the wolves to put their paw on the pedestal under the ring, and the wolf yelps and backs away. The ring begins humming, and a purple swirl of energy appears within the ring.
• Valya sends her smoke mephit through the portal, who reports that on the other side is a realm of palpable darkness.
• Bill, Aurelia, and Valya step through the portal, while Thaldohr and Qhask wait behind with the intent to follow them if they’re not back within a day. They find themselves in the middle of a dark forest. The sky has an almost-imperceptible purple glow. There’s an eerie feeling, as if they’re being watched. Aurelia in particular feels the oppressive malice of this place, wherever they are. To their horror, after a few moments the portal behind them goes dark. ❦