Friday, January 19, 653 AU, continued

• In the observatory, the Dawnbringers debate how best to attack the creature on the ceiling. They decide to have Aetheris entangle the creature to trap it in place, let Aurelia cast fireball at it, and then have everyone else rush in while the creature is trapped.
• The creature proves more resilient than they anticipated, and its spindly limbs turn out to contain razor-sharp bone blades, which at one point it uses to stab right through Valya’s chest, narrowly missing her heart. Eventually, they manage to hold it in place and deal enough damage to bring the creature down.
• Calziver says the townspeople went in small groups every night out to the woods, accompanied by strange, hooded figures, and then came back some time later, changed.
• Calziver Cobblegem thanks them for defeating the creature, and the Dawnbringers ask him if he can decipher the Susurri Ignis Caelestis. The book was published in Telmir in 54 AU by the Ecclesia Sapientiae Stellaris, which Calziver has never heard of. He flips through the pages, and thinks this data goes back almost a thousand years. He does some calculations, muttering to himself, ignoring the party, claiming the book is a compendium of observations of the relative positions of the planes.
• It’s almost dusk at this point. While Calziver does his research, they decide to keep watch for any villagers being led to the woods. Aetheris transforms into a cat and checks on the village. Ardreth and his family appear fine. The mayor is still staring at the wall, but in a slightly different position than before.
• Aetheris returns to the observatory and keeps watch on the village from the ledge outside the front door.

⁂

• In the evening, Calziver uses the telescope to test out his theory about the data in the book. He spends twenty minutes taking measurements of various stars, then turns to the party. “That confirms it,” he says. “There is a previously unidentified minor plane bound to Incora—our plane—phasing in and our of conjunction with it every eighteen days. It’s tiny—a demiplane, perhaps. On the days when it’s closest, why, you’d be able to travel between the two!”
• They speculate that the creatures plaguing Duskpoint might have come from the demiplane. Calziver says he first saw the creatures on December 31st, which would match up with his observations—that was a perigee! The party were on Cobalt Rock at the time.
• Aurelia points out that they have a tablet of create spelljammer helm…
• The most recent perigee was January 17th, two days ago, and the next one is in sixteen days on February 4th.
• Calziver asks to hang on to the book. Valya carefully searches the book for curses or hidden phrases, but doesn’t think it could curse Calziver, so she hands it over. Calziver is understandably uncomfortable with how the party doesn’t seem to know whether the book is actually cursed or not, but his desire for knowledge gets the better of him—he wants to present his findings to the astronomical society in The Shining Citadel. Calziver even suggests that Queen Oriel might fund an expedition to this demiplane. Only The Hammer has the ability and legal authority to travel between planes, he adds.
• Valya mentions that they have a tablet of create spelljammer helm, and Calziver is completely flabbergasted. He says it is highly forbidden magic, and that the queen should know about it. Aurelia warns Calziver not to tell anyone, and Valya says that they will meet with the council in Crystalport soon to discuss what to do, and that if they explore this demiplane they might want to bring Calziver along with them as an expert. Calziver demands to accompany them to the council meeting.
• Valya uses her scroll of borrow knowledge to try finding the comet with the telescope, and realizes that the comet won’t be visible in the night sky until June 18th—it’s in the daytime sky right now.

⁂

• It’s well into the night at this point. Aetheris watches three lumbering figures emerge from the forest. They are approached by four villagers who exit a few of the houses, who briefly converse with them, and then the four villagers head to another house. Two figures emerge from that house—they’re Ardreth and his wife Mina. They talk with the other four, and then they all head into the woods together.
• Aetheris follows them stealthily—the four villagers are telling the other two that they found the kids responsible for the pranks, and that they needed the other two to apprehend them. They are led to a clearing, where the lumbering figures show themselves—they are some sort of aberrations, and they shriek “Feed them to the pod! Feed them to the pod!” At the far end of the clearing is a plant-like creature with writhing vines.
• Aetheris runs back to the observatory as fast as she can to warn the others, who all run back to the forest. Once there, they see the creatures have fed Ardreth to the plant creature and have grappled Mina.
• The creatures are clearly extraplanar—at one point, near death, the plant-like creature shouts telepathically: “We will come in a number greater than you can imagine! We will destroy this plane and reform it in our image!” They keep one of the other creatures alive for questioning. It refuses to talk, so Valya casts detect thoughts. She determines that the name of their plane is Zeethal and that they arrived several “cycles” ago. She also determines that there are hundreds of them, but she can’t determine anything else before it breaks free and they’re forced to kill it.
• Back in the village it’s chaos—all the podlings have collapsed and died, revealing their interiors are plant matter. Of the eighty villagers, only thirty are left. They explain to the villagers as best as they can what happened, and the villagers praise them as their saviors, and suggest they all head east to Cymosa as refugees first thing in the morning.

⁂

• Back in the observatory, they explain to Calziver what happened. Calziver has never heard of a plane called Zeethal. Aetheris asks where the portal between the planes could be, and Calziver says it could be anywhere.
• Aetheris also asks Calziver about comets, and Calziver says the last time a comet was seen was a few months before the destruction of Ghelroth’Far. A comet has not been seen since then, and gods willing they will not see one in their lifetimes.
• Calziver also says that the gods worshipped by the Ghelrothians were strange, and it’s not clear whether they were different aspects of the same gods worshipped in Castalia or if they were different entities entirely. There’s a lot of scholarship debating that question in the libraries of the Gemra Empire—it’s not a well-known topic in Castalia. Calziver is surprised they’ve even heard of Ghelroth’Far at all.

Saturday, January 20, 653 AU

• The following morning, they head back to Crystalport on Captain Green’s boat.
• They meet with Gertrude Crow, who reads Bill’s tea leaves. “I see… the winged lion. Strength, but danger. It guards secret treasure. And… the pyramid. Hidden knowledge, kept by the dead or the ancestors.”
• They ask Gertrude if she knows about any pyramids in Castalia. She gets a postcard from her desk, with a drawing of a pyramid on it. A mystic friend of hers, Penelope, spent some time in the Gemra Empire at the Cadeline Oasis, learning the ways of a reclusive tribe of diviners who live there. She never mentioned pyramids, but they do appear on her cards.
• Bill asks if Gertrude can interpret dreams. She can’t, but she has a colleague in Mythford named Zephyr Astralix. He’s a street magician, but she assures Bill his dream interpretation dreams are genuine.

⁂

• When Valya arrives back at her bastion, Valspira says an elf arrived—Aliatha Omanys. She said to tell Valya that she’s going on a trip to the Shining Citadel and to meet her there at her earliest convenience.
• Bill’s farm was attacked by the moorbounders a few days ago, but some sort of winged creature kept the moorbounders away.
• Valya’s smiths have just had a child, and will no longer be able to work Valya’s smithy for her.
• Aurelia’s healer, Eloise Broadleaf, has come down with a sickness and will be treated at the temple of Soleil for a few weeks.

Sunday, January 21, 653 AU

• It’s the day of the emergency council meeting. The Daykin Estate looks almost as good as new. Present are:
  • Duke Kenneth Daykin
  • Duchess Louise Daykin
  • Lord Evan Woodmore, no longer a captain
  • Captain Emiel Kargan
  • Lord Bryn Redgate
  • Utaz the Inquisitive
  • Cedric Daymirror, high priest of Soleil
  • Elsa Skinner, high priestess of Neesha
  • Sorendil, leader of the druids of the Osorin Forest
  • Treeneedle, captain of Sorendil’s guard
  • Three adventurers they don’t recognize
  • General Turlin Dahr, from the Shining Citadel
  • Vestan, childhood friend of Aurelia who made it to the Citadel
  • A young male tiefling they don’t recognize, talking to Dahr and Vestan
  • Lord Baelar Cerys, a high-ranking noble of Eth’Alorei
  • Lady Kellia Dorlan, ruler of Tel’Arisse
  • Kat Steelgrip, the journalist for the Citadel Sentinel
• Aurelia is surprised to see Vestan, who tells her that everyone is waiting for her in the Shining Citadel. She also says the temple has taken quite an interest in her exploits. She introduces Vestan to the rest of the Dawnbringers.
• The three adventurers are the Fists of Dhedros: Zylvan, a dragonborn artificer; Jocelyn, a half-elf fighter, and Mavrus, a tiefling wizard.
• The other tiefling talking to General Dahr and Vestan is Amphion Teladus, a tiefling of around twenty who is the greatest young detective of his generation and has already become deputy head detective.
• Lord Daykin gives a speech (transcript edited to remove interruptions):

Thank you for coming, everyone, on such short notice. Just so everyone is on the same page… The siege of Crystalport lasted from December 18th to the 21s. It was thwarted by the Dawnbringers with the assistance of Atris of the Hammer, sent by the queen herself. Tharruk, the lich, was defeated, his phylactery destroyed—or cleansed, I suppose, in this case. The leader of the Wood Scorpions, Perrit, escaped, along with Harmony Grove and Fergus O’Toole. The whereabouts of these three are unknown. Marek, their most competent sorcerer, was killed—the Dawnbringers found him in the Underdark.

The Evenglooms also vanished during the siege, except for Acacia and her son Rinnall. Acacia’s parents, Lord Lawrence and Lady Rosa, as well as Acacia’s husband Lord Elturel Jadestone, are still at large. We have one possible lead, thanks to Kat Steelgrip: No one outside the family has been allowed to visit Jadestone Estate in Serynth in the past month. Perhaps they’re harboring their family-in-law, or even the Wood Scorpions.

The Dawnbringers… I can’t believe I’m saying this… defeated the hydra in Kyasha’s Vale on the 22nd. Crystalport’s guard has secured the Pool of Tears, and though they have cleaned it up as best as they can, the water is still a mere trickle. Utaz is of the opinion that it must have something to do with the goddess herself.

Bellaroth arrived that very same day and made her demands. She claimed her tribute of 10,000 gold pieces on Saturday the 30th, Saturday the 6th, Saturday the 13th, and she just received her most recent tribute yesterday morning. Some noble families have already left Crystalport, and some others have suggested we offer up the Dawnbringers to the dragon. We all know you were the ones who stole from her hoard, and Bellaroth has spies in the city and surely she knows it too.

Moving on… The necromancer Marenora attempted to take control of Tel’Arisse on January 15th. Two days ago, on the 19th, the remaining nobles in Tel’Arisse used the chaos to pardon all the town guard involved in the coup, replaced Ferunas Talos with Sergeant Nirosh, and deposed Kellia Dorlan. They don’t legally have the ability to do such a thing, but considering the circumstances, Kellia came here to Crystalport for safety. There is talk that Tel’Arisse plans to secede from Castalia. I doubt Queen Oriel will let this stand for long—the loss of Castalian territory demands a response.

• They debate whether Marenora is actually alive—General Turlin Dahr says the only evidence they have is a sending to one of the Dawnbringers, and that a lich takes several days to reform. Valya retorts that she might be using magic from Ghelroth’Far, but General Dahr says every wizard claims to have secret knowledge from Ghelroth’Far.
• An argument follows, and Amphion Teladus backs up the Dawnbringers. Surprisingly, he says he has contacts in the Shadowfell and knows that Marenora is working with Lord Desmond and Pamona the Eternal, who is not dead, and who had the Book of Dark Waves, which everyone knows is genuinely from Ghelroth’Far. The party murmur amonghst themselves that they like Amphion.
• Lord Woodmore’s plan to reroute the train through Kyasha’s Vale instead of the Osorin Forest has been accepted by all parties involved, and Lord Bryn Redgate is excited at the possibility of his town becoming a resort town once more.
• The Dawnbringers and Calziver bring up the existence of a demiplane in orbit around their plane, and bring everyone up to speed on the events on Cymosa.
• Kat Steelgrip also brings up that Kaspar Grove, Harmony’s brother and infamous Wood Scorpion assassin, is being held in the Eyrie, the highest-security prison in Castalia, in the mountains to the northeast of Waymarsh. He might know something.
• While the rest are talking, Aetheris casts divination, asking: Are there any tasks that the Fists of Dhedros could fulfil that would bring us closer to our objectives? She receives a reply: Pure water cleanses pure water. They assume this has something to do with the Pool of Tears—perhaps the Fists of Dhedros have the ability to fix the spring? They mention this to the Fists and give them their vial of spring water, in case it’s useful.
• Amphion Teladus comes up to the party. “Wow, the Dawnbringers. A pleasure to meet you! It’s going to be quite a feather in my cap when I take you down.” It turns out he believes the party are up to no good. “You arrive mysteriously in Kyasha’s Vale. That night, a child is murdered. You bring news of a hydra, which no one had heard of before. You arrive in Crystalport—soon after, a lich, long thought dead, threatens the city. You head off into the mountains, and soon a dragon from the Gemra Empire decides to make its home near Crystalport. You head to the Shadowfell, where you have a meeting with Lord Desmond. Then you head to Tel’Arisse, where a coup takes place. You wake up an ancient wizard, Uxovaharis. You can see why I’m concerned.” They argue with Amphion for a while, but can’t convince him not to suspect them.
• Aurelia and Vestan have a long discussion after the meeting, talking about Aurelia’s visitation by an agent of Soleil. Vestan tells Aurelia that the Order of the Radiant Dawn is interested in her, but that they’re concerned about the company she’s keeping—specifically Valya. Vestan, for his part, trusts Aurelia’s judgement. The Dawnbringers and Vestan go for drinks at the Drunken Goblin and discuss their recent adventures.
• They discuss Vestan’s life performing his duties at the temple—it’s very similar to life back in Eth’Alorei. He’s fascinated by the adventures Aurelia has gotten into. Valya is initially worried that Vestan is a love interest for Aurelia, but eventually determines that he’s more of an older brother figure. They also get onto the subject of Laelyn, another childhood friend of Aurelia’s. She was human, and has long since passed away. Valya tries to read Vestan’s mind, and finds that Laelyn is “more than a friend”.
• They return to their bastions, but Valya spends the night at Aurelia’s where they have a heart-to-heart about Valya’s ties to Neesha. ❦