The Visions
During the night, the party has various dreams about the past, present and future. Fie however wakes up, to find the room empty. It’s apparently night outside, with no Penny in her bed. He checks the neighbouring room, and finds Kal and Dandelion missing as well. Curious, he ventures to the ground floor, and finds that the whole tavern is abandoned. Food still on the plates, lukewarm. Looks like everything has been left behind in the middle of breakfast. He ventures into the streets, and finds it also abandoned. Carts having crashed into the side of the road, with items being dropped as if people disappeared suddenly. He ventures northeast to the centre of the city when he notices it. The sun. It’s there, but… missing. Like it’s been carved out of the sky, with just a void remaining. As he sees this, the earth starts shaking, and the city crumbles around him, eventually burying him. And then he wakes up.
The party talk about their dreams, and meet in the dining area to talk about their plans for the day. Dandelion wants to eat quickly in order to go out to do her business for the day. Before she manages to go, Alexis approaches Kal to ask about their plans for traveling to Ravenforge. She gives them a proposition, as Halander Honeypot has specifically requested the party for a task, and if they are successful, they will have unlimited access to the teleportation circle in Elvenroth, and be able to travel to wherever they need to in the future. Kal shares this with the party, and they agree to meet with Honeypot in the afternoon.
Making Deals and Asking Gods
Fie and Kal go to the temple of Azuna. They approach the head priestess, and tell her about The Monk that they met, but she has no knowledge about her. Fie asks specifically for guidance, and for a small offering, he will be allowed to meet with an oracle. After paying the price, Fie is led down to the lower floors of the temple, into a massive dome of a chamber. In the middle sits a nude young woman, with her eyes blindfolded. The head priestess tells him that he has three questions. She seals the room, and observes, after assuring her that they both are vowed to silence. He asks his questions, and the woman floats into the middle of the chamber, flowing without support, and her voice bellows throughout the chamber as if coming from the divine creator herself.
Should we continue our current path with The Key and it’s inhabitant? Yes
Is Delphine of the watchers connected with their cult? Unclear
Does he have more influence than he has currently shown? Yes
In the meantime, up top, with Chester, Kal is asking for guidance on how to be a cleric, but there is not much to tell, as clerics do as their patron demands of them. She is however allowed to purchase a wealth of material components for her cleric spells. As Fie emerges from the depths below, they leave, to meet with the rest of the party near the Crown Athenaeum.
Penny is wandering around looking for a place to buy a ball for the horses, and eventually wanders into the Onyx district, and notices that it is the slums of the city. As she walks around, she comes across an old and creepy looking shop called Fate & Mystics. She meets an old lady, who tells her that she can make whatever she needs, but everything has a price. She makes Penny a magical ball that can shrink or expand based on what the user needs, and the price is fairy cheap. She merely asks for a favour. At a later time. At her discretion. Penny agrees, and the lady pokes Penny's finger, drawing some blood from it. Penny gets her ball, and leaves happily, going back to the Generous Queen Inn.
Dandelion in the meantime is looking for a particular rock, an agate, as well as some diamond dust. Vrendol is unable to help with the rock, but points to a shop two doors down from his that should have what she needs. Inside she meets an earth genasi named Heward. He luckily has everything she is looking for, being an earth genasi and all. Dandelion asks about why he is walking out topless, and he complains about his nipples chafing. She can empathize, feeling that clothes can be too restrictive at times. Having gathered her componentes, she returns to the Inn, and sits down in her room, trying to cast a greater restoration on herself, to hopefully be rid of her curse. The spell works, but it appears the curse persists. At that moment, Penny returns, and finds the door locked. Dandelion lets her in, and explains what she was doing. Penny exclaims that she did manage to find a ball, and shows how it works. Dandelion is impressed, and wants to know what it costs. Penny is embarrassed to say that she didn’t pay in coin, which prompts Dandelion to drag Penny back to the shop to get it reversed.
Back in the Onyx district, Dandelion is perturbed by the state of the district, feeling bad for the locals, handing out copper coins left and right to anyone she meets, hoping to help somehow. As they enter the shop again, the lady greets them, spooking Dandelion who had activated her detect magic, suddenly appearing in front of her. Dandelion demands that the woman takes payment in coin, but the woman explains that the transaction is already complete, and cannot be undone. She offers Dandelion help, as she knows her name, and that she is cursed, offering to remove the curse, if she is willing to make a trade. Dandelion is not having it however, and drags Penny out of there. They head towards the Amethyst District to the north, to meet up with their friends.
The Library
As they reach the square where the Crown Athenaeum is located, they are both immediately drawn towards the smell to the north of the square. A small bakery, filled with people buying pastries. The smell overwhelms Dandelion and Penny, who beeline towards it like moths to a flame. Inside, Fie and Kal are waiting for them. Penny purchases a box of various pastries, and they head towards the library.
As they enter, they are awed by the scale of the place. It is clearly much bigger on the inside, with it reaching 30-40 meters into the air, and even 100 meters below, front he ground floor. They approach the desk, and are led to an office to the side, where a small old halfling man is sitting. Halander Honeypot, Bertram Honeypot brother. He explains that he and his colleagues are looking for a mythical item, rumored to be hidden in the depths of the library, but has not been found yet. In exchange for finding the item, and returning it to him, they will have free access to the teleportation hub in Elvenroth, and be given access to the return circle, allowing them to return whenever they need. The party agrees, and Honeypot tells the party that he will have the library shut the next day, giving them free access to the depths without being disturbed. He tells the party that people disappear from time to time in the library, due to its size, but they are mostly found. One person however vanished without a trace about 200 years ago. He also, interestingly, tells the party that he only knows about one cleric of Udall, but that was before the betrayal. He doesn’t seem convinced that Kal is one, but that is neither here nor there.
Firbolgs for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
They return to the inn, and the girls tell about their encounters with what they think has to be a Hag. Fie eventually leaves to go to a side room, and is drawn into the ring by his patron. Inside he shows Fie two circles, one leading to his temple to the Great South, and the other leads to the teleportation circle in the tower of the Institute of Edhellond.
Before going to bed, as the day draws to its end, Penny, Kal and Dandelion head towards a “pet shop” that Fie and Kal spotted when traveling through the Amber district. When they approach, Kal and Penny explain that these are pets, not wild animals, and Dandelion promises to behave. As they enter, they can see a few various animals and birds, and to the back, two magnificent owls, one brown owl and one snow owl, perching on a stick. She can’t decide on just one, which was her intention, and buys both of them. As they leave, she manages to convince them to stick around. She is frightened as both of them fly out of sight, but return shortly after, having just stretched their wings.
In the morning, Dandelion leaves the window open for them to leave and come as they please, and tells them she hopes they are still around when they get back, as she looks forward to getting to know them. She names them Argus and Ira.
Beneath the Library
When the party reaches the library, there is a crowd of people standing outside, hoping to be let in. A group of city guards are holding them back, explaining that the library is closed, with their drakes perched on the top of the building looking over the crowd. The party gently forces their way through the crowd, much to the murmuring of the gathered people, and are let inside after showing the guards that they have permission. When they enter, they immediately head to the bottom layer, and work their way down, into the maze that is the bottom layer of the library.
Spending about four hours, going back and forth, meeting dead ends, and seeing endless books on any topic they can think of, they eventually reach a side passage that curves slightly. As they follow it, they find a nondescript door, with an inscription on it in primordial. A riddle. Someone says the correct password, “a map”, and the door opens, leading to a staircase into the darkness.
As they reach the bottom, they are faced with a winding corridor, with sword emblems on the floor, with no way around it. They try to follow where the sword points, but can see that at the end they have to go a different direction. They deduce that this is probably part puzzle, part trap, so it’s gonna hurt no matter what. The question is just how much? In either case, they manage to cross, being slightly wounded by swords that magically come swinging from the walls. Before the next part, there is another door with a riddle that the party manages to solve, before reaching another sword hallway, and another door. This repeats one more time, before they reach a bigger chamber with a mural of the material plane under the sun. In a throne in front of them lies a skeleton, which looks placed there. Kal casts speak with dead, and learns that the skeleton is named Efferil the Mage, but he doesn’t give any useful hints, probably knowing that this whole chamber is a test. The path forward is a set of colored tiles that the party has to cross. They manage to deduce that the correct path follows the layers of the material plane, earth, water, air, fire.
Next, the party faces three chambers, each with statues of lions that have open mouths. The doors have a riddle on it, with glyphs underneath it. They realize that the glyphs correspond to the common alphabet, and try to press them to enter the password. They mistakenly just randomly presses some buttons, which causes the door behind them to lock, and the chamber fills with poison gas. They do manage to solve it, and head to the next chamber, which has a similar riddle, but easier. The last chamber however stumps the party, and after having tried several different passwords, they finally manage to emerge on the other side, having barely survived the gas.
They use the coffee pot to try to take a quick rest, and realize that they only get this one chance, as the walls begin to close in on them, as if to consume them, before they start moving again. Seems like the chamber is designed not to let people rest for too long.
As the party solves the sundial puzzle, they are faced with a room of energy fields that correspond to the different elements. With a twist, this time they have to follow the path, and then the rest of the path is revealed for them. Luckily Penny being impatient, happens to run in the correct path, with the rest of the party following her lead. Kal remarks how the people who built this place likes to punish those that are not as smart as them.
They all get hurt in the next areas as the puzzles punishes them in various ways, but they manage to get through it. Reaching the final chamber, they come across a large circular room, surrounded by massive statues looking down upon a throne. The throne is on top of a circular stair, and hovering above it is a small shard of something, glowing bright blue. Fie activates his flying, reaches out to the shard, but his hand phases right through it. Confused, or reflecting, he instinctively floats down to the throne and sits down in it, thinking about what to do next. He doesn’t have time to do much thinking however, as he is suddenly overcome by necrotic energy as the shard lowers itself to his hand, and he goes unconscious.
When the party brings him back, he seems to be speaking in a much more advanced vocabulary, and he tells them that this is called “Shard of the Seeker”, one ofthe divine shards. The Divine Shards. Kal casts legend lore on it, and they are remnants of when the gods made Iozaria. There are a total of six shards, Warrior, Deceiver, Defender, Thief, Seeker, Observant, which can be combined to be “The Shard of the Divine”. It is said no one can hold all at the same time, and that these are powerful artifacts that are just rumored to exist. They figure that this shard probably came from Adea.
Having gotten what they came for, they make their way back, and find that getting in was easier than getting out, as the traps at the beginning are still in effect. They do manage to cross the boundaries, with a bit of luck, and emerge from the temple, victoriously. As they exit the door they came in through, it vanishes, along with the shrine, its existence no longer necessary.
The Reward
Having reached the ground floor of the library again, having spent a couple of hours emerging from the depths, the party finds Halander waiting for them near the desks in the center. He is impressed by their ability to find the artifact, and thanks them for their help. He gives the party 10 platinum for material components, as Kal casts Greater Restoration to remove the shards attunement to Fie. It drops to the ground, and Halander picks it up, managing to resist its attempted attunement of him, and puts it safely away in a box.
They talk a bit about the path forward, and they talk about their common adversary, the cult of the Forgotten God. Penny is holding out the Key, which Halander sees, but gently makes her put it away, telling her to not show that to anyone. It is clear that they have a common enemy, and they will be looking for the party and the key. He tells them to be careful. Halander is also not convinced that Kal is a cleric of Udall, but he convinces him when she tells Udall to show a sign, making the skies outside rumble from thunder. Halander is thoroughly impressed. As he puts the box with the shard away, he returns and brings them to the Teleportation Hub. On the way, they overhear a town crier talking about increased cult activity, and the order of arrest of anyone making pacts with otherworldly beings.
At the hub, they can see that there are nine circles in total: the home circle, Ravenforge, Unknown, Port Emerald, Khuzunzan, Arcan City, Goldenworth, and two more that are restricted, leading to Edhellond and Whitewall. Each is guarded by a pair of Royal Incinerators, looming over, observing the party. He writes down their description and given names, to send out to each location, and gives them each a pin, symbolizing their access to the hub whenever they require. Before they leave, Kal asks Honeypot about Genie wishes, and immortality, and how someone can reverse it if it went wrong. He tells her they need to find some way to get a wish, or Wanda can help. Neither option seems viable at the moment.
Nightfall
Fie, after returning to the Generous Queen Inn, takes a short walk around the neighborhood, returning as a different persona, and asks to talk to Alexis. After giving her codename, she takes him to the back room, and asks what she can do for him. He tells her that he has asked for guidance from Azuna, and has been told to continue the path they are set on. Alexis tells him again that they should talk to Bertram Honeypot in Ravenforge. She fears that the cult has infiltrated all parts of the ruling class at this point, so she is unsure of who to trust. She does however seem to have a good feeling about Fie, who she correctly deduces to be a shifter. She tells him that a way to identify members of the cult, at least those they have found so far, have all either had a shrine to the forgotten god, or carried a symbol or tattoo of his mark, well hidden. She bids him good luck, and says she is glad they were put in contact by Kal. In the end she signs his book, with him convincing her that it is merely a powerful magical item, allowing him to send her messages when needed, and she tells him to notify her when they arrive in Ravenforge. After this, Fie retreats to his bedchamber along with the rest of the group, ready to head out in the morning.