Session 75

As the group makes their way to the docks to set sail on the Windrunner, they make note of several cannons and ballista being rigged on the ship. They board the ship and have a brief chat with captain Darvan before they lower the sails and begin to head out into the harbor. A host of townsfolk gather near the docks pointing and talking animatedly, with the group hearing a few people say "Are they crazy?!". Captain Darvan unfurls a scroll once they are clear of the docks and lets loose a gust of wind that gets the ship really moving. The weather is clear as they sail out into the gulf, heading north. After a day and a half of sailing, however, the skies rapidly begin to darken and rain and thunder pick up out of nowhere. The crew member manning the crow's nest calls out in horror saying "What in the depths is that?!" shortly before the party notices a massive tentacle rising out of the waves, which slams into the mast, causing the man in the crow's nest to fall out and splat on the deck. A battle ensues whereupon a second tentacle emerges and joins the assault. As the party hacks away at it, a large creature emerges from behind the tentacles and roars loudly, and then calls a bolt of lightning that only just misses Dain, but still gives him a good shock. The creature continues to assault the ship, taking a couple of good hits from the cannons before retreating under the water and attacking the ship from beneath, occasionally coming up to call down a lightning bolt, and eventually spitting out a pool of acid that dissolves half the crew. However, after a good final hit from Dorin, the creature roars and retreats underwater.

The party decides to dive down into the water to give chase, swimming all the way to the bottom, somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 ft. down. They search the immediate area, but after finding no sign of the creature, and Merrick's Sickening Radiance wearing off, they continue in the direction the ship was heading, despite the exhaustion brought on from their rapid descent to such a great depth. They eventually notice a trail of blood leading forward and they follow it to a shimmering field past which they can't see anything. Dain decides to go through to see what's on the other side and finds some sort of underwater cliff leading upward and a collapsed wooden structure that he figures was once a pier or dock of some sort. He attempts to go back through the field to tell the group, but finds that he can't pass back through the barrier. Worried about how long he has been on the other side, Merrick uses Message to contact Dain and ask him what's going on, to which Dain responds telling them about the barrier and telling them to come through. They follow through the field and they begin to explore around the shelf, finding a couple dilapidated, collapsed buildings that appear to have once been a fishing house and a boat house, as well as large piers. They swim to the top of the shelf and continue exploring, eventually finding a dilapidated stone wall that stretches on as far as Merrick can see, and they see a faint light in the distance. They decide to swim for the light and find a cave in a mountainside. They enter the cave and find that it slopes upwards into an air pocket. They see the flickering of light and hear the roar of a fire ahead and Dorin decides to explore with his Arcane Eye, finding a large room ahead with a blazing fire and a small camp. The party moves ahead into the room, leaving Summer and Prenna behind to guard the entrance, and as Merrick enters the room, a large trident whooshes past his face and buries itself into the wall. He uses Message to ask whoever it is to stand down and that they mean no harm, and hears a feminine voice reply asking who he is. He explains who he is and asks if they can talk, at which point, the trident dissolves into water and disappears, and he enters to find a High Elf woman holding the trident by the fire.

The party explains their situation, saying that they came to track down a creature that had been attacking ships, and that they tracked it in here. The party seems confused as to what she's doing down here and asks her how she got in here, to which she replies that she was here when the city fell. Dain seems confused and asks if she means Seryndor, to which the woman confirms. Not once did the party check the Wayfinder's Sphere and realize that despite their efforts to track the location of the city, they wound up there completely by accident. They converse with the woman, at which point Summer comes into the room and the woman seems shocked and… happy? She greets her and says "You… you came!". Through a series of questions, the party determines that they are talking to Calantha, Summer's supposed grandmother that they came here in search of. They continue talking and learn that she was once a student of the Ars Aurum Academy, and after Dain explains the events that led them there and what they've been through, Calantha shows recognition at the name Adamar, explaining that he was the "Kembax" of illusion magic, meaning the head instructor, while she studied at the academy, and he was her favorite instructor. She seems disturbed by the party's description of what he has become, and after being shown his journal by Dain, she seems distraught. The party is curious of how she learned of them and Summer in particular, and she explains how she found spellbooks of Divination around the city and learned some scrying spells she has used to keep herself sane over the years, watching events in various locations around Arak, and that she has been watching them ever since they dealt with the undead in Eldham. Dain questions about the barrier and she decides to tell him of how she ended up in the city when it sank and how the barrier came up in the first place, explaining that she once apprenticed for a wizard named Valdor who she had dreamt of studying under, and that she unfortunately caught him in the middle of some sort of blood ritual, causing her to be banished from his tower, and she then left for the academy, where she stupidly fell for one of her instructors and had a child, Summer's mother, which she did not regret, but wished it could have been under different circumstances. She explains that neither of them wanted to be parents and gave the child up for adoption at the Temple of Lekaris. Apparently this fiasco caused a scandal that caused the academy to dismiss the instructor, at which point Calantha went to Catarvoss on the continent of Myr to study. Dain comments about how he's surprised that magic was permitted there back then, confusing Calantha, who says that it was widespread at the time. She is also confused when she mentions never having visited Reshyk despite wanting to pay a visit to Shimmerwind, and Dain learns that Reshyk has not always barred entry to foreigners. Calantha explains that she returned to Seryndor and tried to avoid Valdor, befriending a Vesperkin wizard named Tryn, and that one day while they were chatting, they heard a loud noise and screaming coming from the city. They saw a circle glowing around the communal district and saw a large, featureless, shadow creature emerge, large as the statehouse itself, and begin destroying the city. She said that "glowing figures" rapidly approached the city from the sky and descended upon the creature. Tryn then collaborated with other sorcerers in the city to erect a barrier as a contingency to keep the creature contained, but that for unknown reasons, it trapped them all within the city just as it began to slide into the sea. She retreated to the laboratory with Tryn who tried to deactivate the barrier so the citizens could escape, but the plinth used to activate it would not respond to her commands, and they sank, with the area Tryn's tower resided collapsing when the city hit the ocean floor into a deep trench. She said that some citizens survived, but with finite supplies, most died within a few months, and that Tryn helped Calantha early on, but with her limited lifespan, she died ages ago. She explains that the barrier is controlled by pylons in the residences of several wizards around the city, but she isn't sure how many wizards were involved and some, she doesn't know where they lived at all, but that if the party manages to destroy the pylons, it should bring down the barrier. She gave them the names of three wizards to look for, including Tryn, whom she recommended investigating last due to the danger of the trench, and Kira Evenwood and Seylas Talavir. She explained that the only reason she hasn't been able to accomplish this herself is due to the number of Sahuagin inhabiting the city, and that while she is proficient in magic, she is just one person and can't handle them all alone. The party then has to break her heart when she comments on how she misses Shadeberries and would like to have some when she returns to the surface, at which point Dain tells her of the Wellspring eruption which transmuted them into Shadesteel, which seems to make her depressed.