Players (Characters)
Scott (Rain)
Jeremy (Grokk)
Catherine (Amber)
Tony (Roland)
Rachel (Horkina)
DM: Tom (Garlen)
The party continued to investigate the assassination attempt. For 2000 gold pieces, Artus Shemwick informed the party that the temple of Wee Jas was heavily intwined with the city government, mostly through "donations" to nobles. In turn, Wee Jas seemed to get a lot of donations from people hoping to sway the government -- especially those accused of crimes. He could not explicitly confirm that the assassination order came from Wee Jas, at least not without more money and time. Rain wanted to head straight for the temple and attack, but the rest of the party wanted to be sure the order was generated locally first.
The group split up to investigate other leads. Rain and Garlen hid outside the temple. They noticed the temple was extremely quiet -- nobody went in or out over the course of a couple hours. Rain waited until the shadows were right for sneaking, and then used his boots to spider-climb up to a window. He noticed a pair of stone giants and a handful of orcs standing in the main sanctuary, looking like they were ready for a fight. There was also an armored human in the room, likely a cleric of Wee Jas. Roland and Horkina spoke to Meerthan, who shared information he'd gathered from Fario and Fellian: the temple of Wee Jas closed its doors for "renovation work" about the same time as the assassination attempt and brought in some stone giant "construction workers", and agents of Wee Jas recently met with Lord Vhalantru and Lady Rhiavadi. The high priestess, Embril Aloustinai, had not been seen in several weeks. Roland stopped by the Bluecrater library to look up the recent history of the town's nobility, and noted that both Vhalantru and the Blue Duke were portrayed as less than upstanding in the historical accounts. Amber and Grokk paid Jenya to cast a divination asking for the motivation behind the assassination attempt, and recieved the cryptic riddle:
Cages above and bones below
Death the door and magic the key
Knives but dust and souls the prize
The mention of death and magic again shed suspicion on the temple of Wee Jas, but this still didn't give a definite answer. Finally, the party asked Alek Tercival, guard captain, for permission to investigate the stone giants, as stone giants aren't generally allowed in town. Tercival wrote up a short warrant, and the party headed home to rest and prepare for an early morning encounter.
Roland sent an arcane eye into the temple through an open window, and was able to confirm the positioning of the guards: two stone giants, three half-orcs, and a human in the main sanctuary, with no other guards in the immediate area. The magical sensor found no sign of priests or lay worshippers in the main parts of the temple. Roland placed the sensor in the elaborate sanctuary, where the guards waited, to provide a clear view for teleportation. Rain and Grokk knocked on the front door, and Rain called out in his best little-girl voice "girl scouts!" The orc mercenaries moved to the main door and opened it just as Roland teleported in with Horkina, Garlen, and Amber in position to surround the human. Garlen called out "we're here to arrest you for illegal possession of stone giants".
The two giants ran at Horkina, and one swung his greatclub... right into the ground. Horkina and Garlen, surmising the cleric was the biggest threat, dropped him immediately. Amber moved to stabilize him. Rain tumbled behind one of the orcs and Grokk smashed it repeatedly with his greataxe. Roland fired a lightning bolt at the pair of giants and began flying toward the orcs at the main door. The orcs surrounded Grokk and scratched him slightly with their dwarven waraxes. The giants kept swinging at Horkina, but she deftly dodged their blows and struck back with both of her axes. Garlen did a somersault between one giant's legs and then stabbed it in the back of the knee. Rain's stabs bounced off the plate mail of the orc in front of him, but Grokk dropped that one and turned to swing at another, nailing it with a critical blow that sent it fleeing. Roland hit the fleeing orc with a ray of fire, and Amber held the other orc with a spell so Rain could finish him off with a carefully aimed jab. Horkina continued to avoid the giants' swings and dropped one with her waraxe, and then turned and hit the other with a critical strike. (Amber collected 10 gold pieces from Rain, as she'd bet on Horkina making just such a hit.) Rain put manacles on the stable, but unconscious, cleric, and the party gathered the armor, weapons, and gold from the fallen.
The party searched two small rooms off to the side. One was filled with mundane supplies, while the other looked like living quarters for a priest. Several papers detailing day-to-day temple operations, such as number of visitors and cost of janitorial support, covered the desk. Roland stuffed the papers in his bag and the party headed upstairs. On the next level was an even more finely decorated room, probably the living quarters for the high priest. A similar stack of papers, dated before Embril's recent leave of absence, covered the desktop. Rain noticed one desk drawer had a false bottom, beneath which were a few healing potions and a stack of letters describing a search for an unnamed thing. Roland gathered up these letters, and then the party continued onward.
Rain opened the next door, and the party stepped onto a small staircase leading up into a large octagonal room with a cage hanging from the ceiling. A divine fire rained down on the party. The spell was cast by Ike Iverson, who was floating at the top of the room near the cage. A dread wraith rushed through the floor and drained a few points of constitution from Rain, while a bone devil took up position near the top of the stairs and several large gray render zombies slowly shuffled across the room. Garlen tumbled past the devil and flew into a rage, jabbing it with a shortsword, while Rain attacked with his rapier and Grokk landed a solid blow with his axe. Amber used a heal spell to seriously damage the wraith, and Horkina finished it off with several swings of each axe. Roland floated upward and fired a powerful bolt of energy, stunning Ike and injuring him somewhat. The bone devil clawed and bit at Garlen, who responded with a flurry of attacks that destroyed it. Garlen then swung at one of the zombies, while Grokk and Rain attacked another. Amber fired a Lucent Lance at Ike, who was still stunned, and Roland touched Ike with a flame that caused him to combust. The party mopped up the zombies without much difficulty, and grabbed a few surviving treasures from Ike's charred corpse.
In a room downstairs, the party found Todd Vanderboren's body lying in state. Roland met with Lord Vanderboren, who said the temple of Wee Jas had been paid to resurrect his son but had thus far delayed. Because the temple of Wee Jas was no longer in a position to provide resurrection services, James performed the resurrection for a nominal fee. The young Stormblade explained that his group had been adventuring in some tunnels beneath Cauldron when they were ambushed by a powerful wizard, and he was hit with some sort of death spell. He thanked the party and James, and left to find his friends.
The party woke the captured cleric, Calmus Vel, who knew only that Ike expected the party to attack the temple and that he was to hold them off. One of the letters proved to be more enlightening. It read:
High Priestess,
As many have heard me say, the cages alone will not afford the completion of the ritual. The Cagewrights
have built a matrix on which to support them, but due to the shortsightedness of the others, I have been
left out of these discussions. You are my only ally amongst the Thirteen now. You must warn them that
there is more hidden in thee Soul Pillars that could prove of great import to their plans. What more is
needed I cannot say, and so I continue to explore the mysteries of the Soul Pillars at great peril.
Vittriss Bale grows ever more restless, and the insanity that lies frozen in Karran-Kural begins to stir.
Yet I shall remain here until the end, in hope of unveiling the last of the weavers' hidden lore. Still,
the risk is great. My price has doubled.
F. Abradius
Roland spent some time at the Bluecrater library researching, and came to these conclusions:
- the "high priestess" is Embril Aloustinai, and Fetor Abradius is a local loremaster.
- Karran-Kural is a spell weaver ruin located near the Demonskar. The spell weavers had experimented with ice and death, and apparently trapped souls in some sort of pillars.
- Vittrius Bale was a green dragon who agreed to protect Karran-Kural in exchange for immortality.
- The Cagewrights, also called the Thirteen, were a group searching for a way to connect the prison plane of Carceri (home to demodands and other evil creatures) with the material plane. They believed people called "shackleborn", descended from half-demodands, somehow held the key to forming a planar junction.
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