Session 16 Report: Mazeware Mishap
General Summary
Newtowne
After heading to O'Farley's, the SIDE investigators decided to take a break for lunch. They were getting hungry and had to both wait on the sketch from Jazlin and for Pep Squad practice later in the evening anyway.
Gyrm and
Karl brought lunch that day so headed back to the SIDE office, leaving
Brand,
Dray, and
Shoke to fend for themselves. Luckily they were in Newtowne, and Shoke new of a restaurant here that made a mean "Red Bug Patty", the Crispy Cricket Grill.
While he led the other two there, rating the different sauces you could get on your patty, the officers heard a scream for help and saw a cloaked figure running out of a nearby shop, holding a satchel over their shoulder. The source of the scream was a wood elf woman, who came running out of the shop after the cloaked individual still yelling that something had been stolen, and waving for help. The officers jumped into action and chased after the presumed burglar, Dray's keen eye spotting that the alleyway they ran down was in fact a dead end. They cornered the burglar who dropped the satchel and attacked them as they rounded the corner into the alleyway. Unexpectedly, the burglar put up quite the fight with a crossbow firing poisoned bolts and a poison-coated shortsword.
The officers were eventually able to subdue the burglar, telling them to yield and tell them what was going on. Taking them by surprise yet again, the burglar bit down on something, causing their eyes to flash a blinding bright white before their flesh and bone melted away and most of their clothing was incinerated. The officers stood in shock for a moment, Dray finally pulling the satchel over to see what he had taken. She pulled out a fancy vase and showed it to the others. Upon inspection, there was an elaborate white maze-looking pattern on the inside. While she was peering in at the pattern, the three started to feel a vacuum sensation pulling them towards the vase. Then with a pop, they were gone.
A Maze?
Brand, Dray, and Shoke came to in a small, rectangular room with cobblestone floors, walls, and ceiling. There was no apparent light source, but a low, soft light seemed to suffuse the room. In the corner, they could see a shoddily assembled straw mat and in another corner the remnants of a small fire with some sticks and rat-like skeletons set to the side. Suddenly a loud bellow or growl echoed throughout the room, emanating from a behind a thatched makeshift wall. Shortly after a small, disheveled-looking halfling with dirty white hair came bursting into the room, re-affixing the makeshift wall over the entrance and huddling in the far corner. Panic fading, she looked around the room and fell into a panic again, noticing her three new arrivals. After some back and forth the party was able to successfully calm her down and get some information as to their predicament. Her name was Nadein Jessom, owner of Mazeware Pottery. This sparked recognition for the SIDE officers, who clocked this was one of the missing people for whom they'd received a poster. They asked Nadein how long she'd been down here, she referenced a set of scratched lines on one of the walls and estimated maybe a couple weeks. Strangely, the missing person report was filed over 6 months prior.
The officers started to ask Nadein about their surroundings and circumstances, trying to gauge what was going on. It seemed they were in some kind of enclosed maze where some large beast sometimes appeared out of nowhere and chased Nadein around until she was able to safely hide away again for a while. Expressing safety in numbers, the group decided to head out to scope out the area and look for ways out, despite Nadein's objections as to the the dangers that waited and the lack of exits she's found so far. And so they all set out stealthily, but deciding to leave a trail of breadcrumbs in their wake in case they came back upon their previous path.
As they searched around, they could sometimes here a loud horn, like a deep, resonating vuvuzela, echoing through the halls. Every time it sounded, Nadein would jump and look around frantically. Eventually they looped back around to their starting point and only had one direction remaining to go, the one Nadein kept telling them to avoid because she thought that was where the beast lived. Regardless, they headed in that direction, Nadein reluctantly following and flanked by the group for protection. The horn sound grew louder as the progressed and eventually Nadein collapsed... then suddenly grew to twice her size, covered in gray-white hair, two massive horns sprouting from either side of her now bovine head.
A fight ensued with the now minotaur Nadein. The party tried to call out to her with some seeming success but she wouldn't change back. Shoke managed to dislodge a rock from the ceiling using a trick shot, which landed on her head and disoriented her slightly. Luckily some quick thinking and strategy along with having her flanked in tight quarters gave the officers the edge they needed to take her down non-lethally. Once they knocked her out, she reverted to her original form and they were able to cuff her arms and legs in case something like this happened again. Thankfully she was pretty light in her original form, and with the mystery of the "beast" presumably figured out and put to rest, they continued on toward the last part of the maze they hadn't explored.
The orb room
Shortly after, they came upon a square room significantly different from the rest of the relatively empty maze: it had a large stone carving of a chest in the center of the room surrounded by a set of four glowing, colored orbs atop four carved pedestals. After some investigation, the group learned that touching the orbs caused them to change color, seemingly along some shared pattern. The pedestals were each carved into a different shape, with some kind of riddle etched below each shape.
The first orb rested on a stone mound, the text below it read
Phalanx upon phalanx, my brothers and I stand tall. Many are our blades, but all we cut is the wind.
The second orb rested on a stone anvil, the text below it read
Click clack, snick snack. So passionate my are children as they mold and change, only to grow cold and dull with time.
The third orb rested on a stone ship, the text below it read
I can sparkle but I’m not a star. I can run but I don’t have any legs. I can fall but I don’t get hurt.
The fourth orb rested on a stone skull, the text below it read
Of the king I am blue. Of the frog I am cold. I'm always with you for if I'm not you will die.
After some testing and puzzling, the group was able to figure out the color pattern. In the order of the orbs listed above:
- Green, for grass
- Orange, for the flames of a furnace
- Blue, for water
- Red, for blood
Upon touching touching the last orb to reach the final color, the group heard a click and the sound of stone sliding over stone. In the center of the room, the seam around where the stone chest statue's lid would open had now become an actual seam and was slightly ajar. Dray went over to open the lid, noticing three mysterious items inside. They each rested for a bit to identify the items, learning them to be
- a Cartographer's Ring,
- a Fickle Hand Loupe, and
- a Ring of Subdual
Looking back into the chest, Dray caught another white maze-like pattern at the bottom out of the corner of her eye, immediately looking away when she noticed. Gathering everyone nearby, she looked back at the pattern and they were once again sucked in towards it, everything fading to black with a "pop".
Northtowne
The SIDE officers, now with an unconscious Nadein in tow, reappeared back in the alleyway in Northtowne. Ravawyn immediately bagged the vase the burglar had taken while Brand and Shoke called in a pickup of Nadein and what remained of the burglar by an NRPD cleanup crew. Before signing off, Shoke made sure to ask them to pick up some Red Bug patties from Crispy Cricket Grill on the way over, one with each type of sauce: tangy sauce, spicy garlic, and "sweet grandma sauce" for himself. As they enjoy their patties, watching the cleanup crew do their work, they notice one last detail from the scraps of clothing still left unburnt from whatever the burglar had done. There was a small insignia or logo, a gold or brass colored moth looking symbol.
Character(s) interacted with
- Nadein Jessom: Previously missing owner of Mazeware Pottery in Newtowne
