C2 Session 4

The adventurers set out on the path to the Platinum Peaks, about four days' travel from [[Ouran]]. The scene as they leave the populated city is beautiful, and from where they are the frosty snow caps of the mountains on the horizon. In the distance, the city of [[Xiria]] is slightly in sight. The first day of travel was quite uneventful, the axebeaks began to tire and the sun sets on the purple sky. They set up camp and established night watches, [[Henry]] taking the first watch. His watch was uneventful, but the quiet and darkness is refreshing since he has only ever known the lights of the city and the bustling of the town. [[Koin]] takes the next watch, and sees nothing, just observing the mountains and seeing the sky glow a bit brighter as he dozes off. [[Xodon]] takes the last watch, and as he’s sharpening his blade in the early morning, a large hawk appears in the sky and lands next to him. Xodon recognizes the hawk as a companion of his friend [[Poco]], and takes the scroll off of its back. Xodon opens the scroll and it is a letter.
  Dear Xodon, 
  I hear you’re traveling with a platinum defender, that's quite an accomplishment. Make sure he gets where he needs, it will be good for you. I’ve sent someone to aid you on your travel through the mountains. 
  Well wishes, Poco
  They travel on and complete another uneventful day, setting up camp, with Xodon taking first watch. As he watches, the axebeaks perk up their heads and try to run at something, but Xodon looks over and sees that it’s just an elk. They wake up and travel another day, setting up camp and Koin taking first watch. A cart rolls by the road on the first watch, dragged by two mules. Koin turns his head and hears a faint screaming from inside the cart. Koin alerts Xodon and then sprints up to the cart and hears a “1, 2, 3,” and more muffled screams. Koin hops on top of the cart and asks the driver what the cart is doing. He says that they are carrying one of the inflicted and they need to get them somewhere quick. Koin looks in the back of the cart and sees a tabaxi doctor pouring a liquid into the mouth of a hyena type creature, and each time the liquid goes into the creature's mouth, it screams. As Koin leaves, he notices that the creature is foaming at its mouth and in some parts glowing a faint green. Koin turns around and returns to the camp for the beginning of Xodon’s watch.
  Xodon’s shift is uneventful, and so is Henry’s. They wake up and begin to move into the farmlands. A few miles in each direction are various barns and farms. Koin recognizes that this is the point where they deviate from the path. They turn and head towards the foot of the mountain. As they reach the foot, the axebeaks do not change pace and begin ascending up the mountain peaks. Cresting the peaks, the temperature drops drastically and eventually they are forced to stop for a second and put on some warmer clothes. They continue on, and looking over at the land in front of them, Koin notices a humanoid figure on an axebeak heading towards them, but Xodon says that might be the aid that Poco sent for them. 
  Suddenly, a loud hellish scream is heard in the distance, followed by a short humanoid scream. They head towards the noise to discover two dead bodies in the bloodstained snow. There is a black tabaxi with its intestines ripped out, and a dead axebeak with a bag on its side. Inside the bag is 50 feet of rope and a letter from Poco stating “This ones more durable.” They continue to investigate the bodies, before a large creature with lanky arms emerges and swipes at Xodon, slashing him and leaving a chilly bit of post-damage. Henry applies a layer of magical armor to himself, and Koin dashes up to him, slashing and punching the creature. Xodon now recovered from his wound activates his shift and jumps in the air, swiftly missing and hitting the ground, but realizes that the ground feels hollow and unstable. The yeti stares at Koin and lets out an icy scream, knocking Koin out before swinging towards Xodon and swinging but missing. Henry creates an illusion of a large wall between Xodon and the yeti, then Xodon takes out his healing potion and pours it in Koin’s mouth. The yeti then attempts to slam the wall, instead crashing its fist into ground and leading everyone to fall about 75 feet, knocking them all unconscious. 
  Xodon is the first to wake up, and as he rises he sees blood everywhere. An axebeak is on top of an unconscious Henry who is barely breathing, and Koin is on top of the yeti with a sword in his chest. Xodon heals Koin with a potion and Henry suddenly wakes up. They all dust themselves off and realize that they fell into a large building. They see tables in the corners and shattered glass with blood on it, and a compass rose with a large map of [[Aezraghn]] engraved in the floor. A sense of dread sets in as the snow falls down on them. Koin uses his healing abilities to cure some of the injuries on Henry and Xodon, and start deciding where to go next. Xodon begins investigating and finds a chest, and as he opens it a dart shoots out and reveals 9 onyx gems. The building looks to be of dwarven nature, and it is quite old. 
  They walk through the chambers and see that the hallway is very bland, and there are small stalactites on the ceiling. The hallway curves southeast into a regular sized door. Koin opens the door with a loud creak and it hit with an intense smell of blood. The room is semi-circle in shape, and along the wall are five large vats of different sizes filled with a dark black substance. The first is empty, and the second is too but is also shattered. They are labeled a, b, c, d, e. E is the shattered one and is massive, and D is empty and of moderate size. A, B, and C are all filled with the dark blood-like substance. On the wall are tubes meant to plug in to something, as well as a set of manacles for hands and feet chained to the bottom of the vat. Xodon checks each of the vats and can faintly see dark figures floating in the three containers, but they are indiscernible. After a long bit of thought, they decide it’s for the best to leave the creatures alone. Koin painstakingly drags the dead axebeaks in front of the door to the chamber. They enter the west chamber and walk through the hallway. As they’re walking, Koin triggers a tripwire and the doors behind and in front of them bar and gas pours in. They all manage to huff off the gas, which has made them very tired as a result. They continue and enter a large room with a 40 by 40 foot square pit with lots of blood on the floor, with cages to walk on top of. One of the cages has a dead axebeak with its head split clean in half. Going counter-clockwise, they see a humanoid creature sitting on the ground of another cage, but there is no telling if it is alive or dead. Koin shines a light into the cage revealing an aarakocra. Its right arm is replaced with a sword and it has multiple tubes coming out of various body parts, but it is definitely dead. The way the pit is structured as if it was some sort of fighting pit, and the aarakocra and axebeak fought and both died. Continuing on, another cage is empty with a reflective bottom, and in a fourth cage a small creature that looks like a brain with arms and legs jumps up and grabs the cage. It swings up and through the bars and faces Henry. As it begins walking towards springing towards Henry, Koin’s glowing white sword slashes down and stabs the creature back into the cage. Going back to the aarakocra they reach into the bag on the body and find a large potion of healing.
  They continue on through the west door into a room with three large circles on the floor and upon inspection by Henry, they are magical but not of a nature he does not recognize. Each circle has a small dip in it. There is no danger around and nothing else in the room so they take a short rest and then head for the door to the south in the previous room. Through the door is a room with a large triangular dial in the middle, with its points  pointing towards them. The only thing they can tell is that it spins. Koin spins the triangle and the room begins to spin rapidly. As it slows, they are all very dizzy and looking at a blue and silver hallway, different than the one they came from. They walk in and it is dimly lit with candles along the hallway. There are dirty utensils on a table, a large bookshelf of rows A-E and 5 volumes in each row. Koin opens a book and begins reading findings of a creature with an ability that the scientist writing wanted, and he was able to take the ability from the creature and give it to himself. He said that it was kept in the red room due to the room's anti-magic capabilities. Another section is a series of notes on monitoring a Leonin. Another is notes about how to rip apart and destroy a dragolian wizard, as well as plans to implant the brain of the wizard into the Tabaxi. The last section details a series of experiments on trying to mesh metal and flesh together into a creature called the chain brute. A red crystal ball about the size of the dip in the circles in the room to the west lays on a pedestal labeled key to the red room. They went back to the triangle dial room and spun it into another room filled with spiders. They walked through the room and Henry got struck by a sudden dart. He shrugged it off and they continued on to another room with a bunch of bookshelves with various labels. Koin opened a section called “escaped.” The first person listed is a goblin that could bring itself back to life, even long after death. It cast a spell and disappeared randomly. The second escapee was an ooze able to take over the minds of others and obtain their memories. It would control other subjects by taking their mind over and planting a seed, driving them insane. It stole enough of intelligence to make the decision to meld through the floor and was last seen traveling north. The third is a yellow golden tabaxi that was supposedly infused with artificial dragon’s blood. It attacked the observer, almost killing him, and then leaped out of the pit. It had extreme martial prowess, was fast, cunning, and intelligent. The fourth and last escapee was a dragon made from artificial dragon’s blood that overpowered him and escaped.
  Other notes detail how he arrived, with notes saying that he was experimenting in his lab and was suddenly shunted into a room with three circles, and he inferred it was a teleportation circle, and he did not know how to leave. In the corner of the room is a moderately sized statue of a hooded figure with wings. Koin inspects it and finds that it is stone-like but not stone. Henry examines it and accidentally pulls on one of the wings, pulling it down, revealing a secret door to a small chamber with a clear-top coffin. In the coffin is a creature with hundreds of tubes in it leading to other places in the dungeon. The coffin is labeled with the name [[Zedek]], and it can be inferred that the tubes from it are running to the room with the vats of blood. As they enter the chamber, the creature opens its eyes and flexes its muscles. A spectral duplicate emerges, unburdened by the coffin. It looks at Xodon and says “hmm, a new experiment.” Henry casts his chromatic orb, dealing a decent amount of damage. Xodon rushes up to it and slashes it. As they attack it, they notice with each attack the body in the coffin shakes. After Xodon’s last hit, the creature shatters the glass, ripping the tubes out of its body and looking at Xodon. It then flies in the air and strikes Xodon, then swings around and sinks its fangs into his neck, sucking his blood and knocking him out. The wounds on its body close as it throws Xodon to the side. Koin rushes to Xodon and heals him a small amount. Henry then makes three duplicates of himself, and Xodon shifts into his beastial form before rushing at the creature and stabbing it with his shortsword. It laughs before an intense pain sets in on Xodon’s head. Xodon passes out, and the creature says “I’d love to stay and play, but I must be going,” before snapping his fingers and flying quickly down the diagonal hallway to the left of his coffin.
   They walk down the hallway to the right and find a room with a carpet. They step on the carpet and it sinks down, and they lift it up to reveal a small compartment with a chest. Inside the chest is lots of gold and currency and a scroll with arcane inscribings. Henry examines it and finds that it is a scroll for the spell sleep. The scroll can either be used once, or saved and copied when the resources are available. Koin and Xodon split the currency to carry, and they find a note that says that the whole structure is called the [[Stone Glass Citadel]], and it was constructed by a race called the duergar(do-ra-gar). They turn around and go down the hallway that the creature went down. There is a fake door that slides away, revealing a large empty vat, similar to the vats in the other room. They go all the way back the way they came and into the room with the three circles. After two wrong attempts, they put the crystal into the third indent and they are all teleported into a red room. There is a table with writings on it, and the sound of a creature can be heard murmuring the words “Zedek...sent you.” Xodon sees the creature and rushes at him and attacks him twice, bloodying it and leaving Koin to swiftly kill it, but barely leaves it standing. Henry tries to finish it off with his dagger and seemingly fails, but the creature collapses and dies.
  There are many bookshelves in the room, which Henry discerns to be filled with books of evocation spells with fire capabilities. There is ink and paper, assumedly magical, on a table. There is a blue crystal powering the anti magic quality of the room. Henry and Koin wait at the teleportation circles, and Xodon quickly grabs the crystal and dashes extremely quickly to the circles, barely making it in time before the thousands of spell papers explode. They get back and put the blue crystal in the middle of the main teleportation circles, and are brought into a strange room. The room begins to spin rapidly before stopping. There are 5 walls that rotate around the chamber. Each wall has a unique shaped hole. The sections between walls have statues of unique shapes. As the walls spin, so do the statues, and they spin to meet the next hole. There is a method to not get hit by the wall, but it is extremely difficult to pull off. 
  Suddenly, a cloud of mist emerges in the air and materializes into Zedek the vampire, who says “You’re not going anywhere.” Henry moves towards one of the statues and jumps up, throwing a chromatic orb at Zedek and hitting him hard, which he did not expect as he is heavily focused on Xodon. Xodon then jumps and strikes him extremely hard, killing him. They then all get hit by the walls, and then tie themselves to the wall. The wall spins and they all are stuck to the wall. Across the room is a green stone, which Koin manages to get and make it back to the wall without being hit. They teleport back to the circles, and put the green crystal in the last slot, which teleports them onto a different mountaintop than the one they entered from. They look over and see a mechanical chain and flesh amalgamation of an [[Artificial Dragon]] tied to a chain tied to a boulder, trying to fly away very angrily. It is visibly hurting and malnourished, so they feed it some rations and it is not angry at them anymore. Henry casts a fire chromatic orb, breaking the chain and letting the dragon free. It lands and prompts them to get on its back, and a voice in their head says “Thank you.” before the dragon takes off and flies them all the way to the [[Platinum Peaks]], and specifically the place Koin has been trying to reach. 
  He gets off and walks towards the platinum tree where there are seven circular stones, each of them filled with lots of names except for one stone with only two names: [[Sun]], and [[Gray]], the name of Koin’s father. Koin begins scratching his name into the stone. As he does so, the snow stops and all of the snow disappears, revealing everything in Aezraghn. All regions can be seen from what is the highest point in Aezraghn. The silver and platinum amulet in the large stone is glowing. Koin touches his badge to it and his eyes glow white. He enters a realm of light, where a voice tells him that he is ready, and to swear to him Koin’s devotion and claim the strength and power. They all then get back on the dragon, flying over everything and observing the entirety of the land below them.