28.09.2024 - Scribe-5 - Coty's voodoo dolls and Harry Potter

• Coty realizes that she can mold Lorladon's mind like a snowman.
• She accidentially changes something while trying to understand what is going on.
• She is luckily able to put everything back to how it was (nat 20)
• Coty leaves her room to ask Sylword to make something for her.
• She eats a potato on the way, from the dinner Void left outside her door
• The rest of us are chatting over dessert
• She asks Sylword to create 5 carvings, and he agrees
• 
   
• We retire for the night
• Coty goes into Void's room to talk
• She asks if Void has done crafting before
• He says that he has assisted in enchanting, but nothing more than that
• Coty wants to know how that works
• He assisted Scribes, so isn't an expert. But you infuse magic into objects
• "What about enchanting feelings into something"
• Void thinks it might be possible, since there are sentient objects with personalities and feelings
• "Would you be able to try?"
• She wants Void to enchant 5 wooden blocks she has with strong feelings, like his feelings for his sister
• Then Coty will go and do some things, and see how it goes
• Next up is Bucket
• Coty goes to talk to Bucket
• He is currently trying to rest, and is meditating on the meaning of life using some leaves
• "That's perfect!" It wouldn't hurt then to do something more meaningful
• Coty calls him "THE holy person", so he agrees
• She needs him to preach, with holy power. And strongly pray to 5 leaves
• He will use 5 golden leaves from his home place
• Bucket imbues the leaves with the spirit of kindness, purpose and doing the rightous thing 
• Coty also leaves a note outside Scribes' door, asking her to inscribe something grand on 5 pieces of parchment
• Scribes searches her memory for grand quotes from books she has read:
• All grand thoughts come from the hear
• In the grand tapestry of life, every thread counts
• The pursuit of knowledge is a grand adventure
• Life’s greatest moments are often found in grand gestures of kindness
• In every challenge lies the seed of a grand triumph 
• Void uses 5 days on the enchantments
• He wakes up the first night, feeling like he is in the middle of a typhoon inside his room. Above the bed hovers one of the blocks he was enchanting
• When touching the block, he feels a similar feeling to when he thinks about his sister -> Success
• A Path of Sage sage is knocking on our door. She informs us that Glannon has recieved an emmissary, who wished to speak with Sonnlinor Sylword
• Bucket opens the door, and tries to take the message, but the sage is pushed away by a dwarf woman
• She is Erline Thorne, and insists that Sylword will want to see her
• Sylword doesn't remember anyone by that name, but agrees to go to the entrance to at least show his face
• Erline is waiting impatiently. She seems rigid and stern, treating Bucket like a child
• When Sylword appears, she steps close. "Boy. You are way to tall" She yanks him down and whispers something quietly
• Bucket hears something about Sylword's duty as a Sonnlinor, and a request by the Dwarven King of Kors. To sweeten the deal she will assist The Veil where she can. It is something about making something
• Sylword agrees to the terms
• Scribes tries to summon the raven familiar, but a different familiar shows up. The other two familiars are the same as usual, so something has happened to the raven that went through the teleportation circle
• Millicent de Mowbray contacts Scribes for her weekly sending talks. It becomes clear that De Mowbray knows about Scribes' reasearch into people
• Sylwordlacrum has gotten some people to help him get the guild up and running. It will be up in a couple of weeks (We've already deducted the money for simulacrum)
• Void's mark has continued to spread, and is now also on his neck and crawling down his other arm
• Erline Thorne comes back with a message from Glannon
• It concerns some missing items from the Tower of Forgiveness: A necromantic book called The Black Art of Oblivion
• Void remembers that it was the evil looking book we found there, with an eye on the front, that opened when he tried to read it
• 
• He can now read any language due to his pact, so he tries to read it again
• He finds it in his backpack, but he is 100% sure that it wasn't there before. His patron also agrees that it wasn't
• The book seems to be a diary of Valenor Shadowmire
• It goes into detail about his "artistic" experiments on people
• It starts talking about a benefactor becoming a problem. He starts to become ensnared by the benefactor, and becomes forced to do some "artistic" experiments that he feels are beneath him
• The last pages describes his plan to get out of his servitude to E
• His experience seems different to how Void has interacted with E
• However, Void thinks there is something hidden in the text, that the book is trying to prevent him from seeing
• He calls Scribes over to help ("Don't ask where it came from")
• Scribes summons her own magical book, and asks it to talk to the other book and ask it to show Void what he needs to know
• Scribes' book tells her a lot of things about the book, including a soul bound into the book. The book belonged to a warlock
• Scribes asks it to communicate with the book
• Void's book is made to prevent and hide, when asked for the password it gives a long string of numbers
• The number is not the password
• Void tries scanning his symbol, and the page shifts, but doesn't seem to work completely
• He instead scans the slightly different symbol, revealing information about where the warlock hid after breaking free from E
• His "art studio" is in Hugo-Sha
• During lunch, Erline Thorne mentions that she is willing to assist us in any quest or work that needs to be done, as payment for Sylword's services
• She mentions that she is an investigator, specializing in interrogation
• We ask her to help us find the warlock
• As we head out to go find the warlock, Scribes crit fails a random wis save...
• We go search for the warlock
• Scribes sets up Telepathic Bond, including Erline
• Coty casts Pass Without Trace to let us slip away from The Enlightened crowd
• Unfortunately, Bucket and Erline are both wearing platemail
• Erline carves an orange, sparkling rune in the air, commanding them to go tend to some pressing business elsewhere. They all leave
• We are heading into the seedier part of town
• We are being watched, but no one is acting on it
• Bucket warns us to keep a hand on our gold. He gets immediatly gets told off by Erline, who points out that holding onto your gold will show them where it is
• Multiple pickpockets tries to steal, but none are successful (Bucket deals swift justice)
• We eventually find the right place, a well in the center of a courtyard, reached by walking through a narrow alley
• Void detects some magic in this place. It is not the courtyard, but the alleyway that led there. The exit into the courtyard has a small section where all sound cuts off.
• There is illusion and transmutation there
• A small section of the brick wall is more worn, but is covered by illusion magic
• Erline looks for traps, and finds a charm on the bricks that convinces you to be somewhere else
• Erline casts Heroism on Scribes, and Scribes Dispel Magics the charm, befor pressing the bricks
• The wall rearranges itself to create an opening (think Harry Potter)
• We enter a study with a small library, a table, a workbench and a lot of art supplies
• Void senses magic from some of the art supplies and some of the books
• The room starts feeling oppressive, and the edges of his vision darkens
• Scribes casts light on her quill
• Void's vision slowly comes back, but without the detect magic
• Void is talking to Duskwalker again. He walks over to a bookshelf and takes out one of the magic books. They all have edgy titles like "The whispers from the void", "The forbidden scroll of the dead", "Tombtakers ledger"
• Coty starts hurting from necromantic damage
• Scribes realizes that it is Forbiddance (but necrotic, rather than Sylword's radiant), targetting Coty since she is fey. She fails to Dispel it
• Coty leaves the room, and gets healed by Bucket
• Since Void can't check for magic traps, Bucket will walk in front and poke the ground with his javelin
• We walk into the next room, revealing a bedroom
• There is a small book on the nightstand. The bed is made
• The room feels a bit off. Maybe from all the paintings on the walls. They are all of the same person, doing different things and in different stages of life
• Some of the paintings look like they're watching us
• Bucket stabs one of the paintings in the eyes with his javelin. It is ripped up, as the person in the painting duckes, glares at him and leaves the painting to join another one
• All the paintings are signed by Valenor Shadowmire
• Scribes is talking with one of the paintings. It can't speak, but it nods or shakes its head. It doesn't know where the original is, but it claims that all of the ones in the paintings are Valenor
• The original one comes to talk to them, but he hasn't been here in a while
• Void asks where he can find E, and all of the paintings turn to look at him, before beginning to casts spells. They don't seem to have any effect
• Scribes tries to calm them down by saying that we're also trying to hide from E
• Outside Coty buys a pie from a suspicious old lady, who cackles and walks away
• With Coty's tip, Scribes draws the painting a little quill and parchment to communicate
• It tells us to hide from E using spells
• "I think it's too late for hiding" - Void
• Void says that he has to find her. She has something important
• Erline suggests to them that we could help them figure out what happened to their warlock, if they tell us what they know that can help us
• The paintings also tells us that the password to the forbiddance area is "The tides of oblivion"
• The bookcase in the other room starts shaking, opening into another room containing cages, straw beddings and shackles
• It is damp
• There seems to be two humanoids in there, both lying on the ground inside the cages
• One the size of a dwarf (which Erline runs towards) the other moves
• The latter is tied up all over (80% mummy). It is blindfolded and has pale, reddish skin. 
• It is covered in tattoos similar to Void's, and it has horns
• Erline sighs in relief "It not him. Thank the gods", and starts looking around at other things that the dwarf
• We ask questions through Message, so we don't have to ungag it quite yet (In case of spells)
• "Who and what are you"
• "I am Malzareth, a servant". It refuses to elaborate on who it is a servant of. It is a cladidu(??)
• It is a prisoner, it will reward us if we free it. It can lead us to E
• "Prove that we can trust you", "Do you have a choice? Feed me."
• Under the bandages, mouths appear all over its body, trying to get through the bandages. It wants us to feed it magic
• Void is about to give it magic, when Erline steps in and reality checks him. "You are literally making a deal with a devil here. Lets make sure he can be trusted first"
• Bucket casts Zone of Truth
• It confirms that it can lead us to E
• "At what cost"
• Our lives (including the devil)
• "What did you expect would happen when going to hell"
• After being pushed it adds that tt can bring us to her alive and back again alive, for the right price
• It will do it if we feed it magic
• Duskwalker suggests hacking him into tiny pieces and using one of those to go there
• Scribes speculates that we could use the devil's essense to attune the Plane Shift tuning fork
• Void doesn't think devils deserve to live, due to his history with them (kidnapped sister)
• He says that he can get us to hell and back alive without moving from here. So technically we don't have to free him
• He'll also tell us what happened to him
• Erline suggests that there are techniques to get unwilling prisoners to talk
• Void is looking for the true name of the devil. The paintings don't know it, but the small notebook on the nightstand contains a tutorial for something Shadowmire cast every night to ensure that he could remember the devil's name: Virelith
• It also contains several spells:
• See Invisibility
• Nondetection
• Mordencainen's Private Sanctum
• Mind Blank
• Forbiddance
• Void reenters the room, and tells the devil that he will bring us there and back at no cost. Using his real name.
• The devil slumps, and agrees, but says that he needs magic to be able to do that.
• Void agrees (but doesn't make a deal), but says that we will come back when we have made the proper preparations
• Scribes takes the notebook, and Erline takes the dwarf corpse
• The brick wall closes up as we leave

Plan

Learn the new spells: Nondetection and Mind Blank (and the others from Arinini's library)   Prepare to go to hell: Make a hell tuning fork (we can get back using our teleportation circle with plane shift, or Word of Recall)   Sylword can cast Locate Object on the knife that was left on the other side of the Lorladon portal.      Scribes needs to read up on what pranks are, and think of one to prank Sylword and Bucket back. Since they told her to.   Scribes needs to talk to Coty about what happened with Lorladon (Coty wants to assemble her voodoo dolls first)   Figure out what to do with Mamon