2025/10/10: Investigating the Vale of Hermonides Part 2

Buzz, Kelsey, Knight, Malakai, Nimbus, Othar, Union   It is now believed that the great overlord imprisoned under this place is the same as the captain; the captain was just a piece of the great evil, acting independently and for Good.   More of those annoying dwarves and their airships were in the area. The Totenkreuz and Ragnarok got involved in a brawl between two sides, so there were shenanigans ongoing in the sky. Lots of maneuvering and fighting for advantage. The less hostile side still wasn't particularly friendly. Malakai returned from checking on that.   The less hostile side seems to be the side in general control of the area. They use more conventional airship designs, with propellers and such.   Everett went back to the ship to warm up. He's an old man, he doesn't like the cold!   Malakai took a look at the elemental magic puzzle in the southern cave. The pedestal in the middle of the room was slightly enchanted, he found, made very difficult to damage, dirty, or break.   A bunch of experimentation with the puzzle proved fruitless. Buzz eventually opted to Legend Lore the room, so Knight took the opportunity to go scouting intangibly around in the snow. They found several iron trapdoors leading down into caves/tunnels under the courtyard. Those were probably the way into the catacombs. They also found that the plateau was remarkably flat under the snow, and seemed to be shaped like a great hexagon or snowflake.   Nimbus came to the suspicion that the floating words in the sage room were lyrics of a song, or perhaps notes. She and Kelsey tried singing them, but that didn't do anything.   Othar tried to use darkfire to destroy the snow on top of the doors leading down. The snow proved unnaturally resilient; the blast had barely any effect. Knight tried to experimentally eat some of the snow and was unable to; it just mushed against their false carapace. Kelsey and her dragon friends set about digging a path through the strange indestructisnow.   Meanwhile, Buzz finished his Legend Lore. Rather than text, he got a sort of silent movie. It showed a short elven woman who cried a lot, ordering craftspeople around and trying to get her statue set up, but it kept breaking, and then it showed her crying where the statue should be. Then it fast-forwarded, and there were scenes of three different adventuring parties trying to get her attention by doing things in the corners of the room. One party was eviscerated after she appeared where the statue should be, one was chased out by the angry lady with her staff, and one she actually joined.   Buzz's spellcraft knowledge suggested that the elf, Seneca Whitestag (according to the statue) was teleporting in, which meant she was somewhere else in the meantime. Othar left the plateau (which was consecrated and thus dangerous to his magic) to try to scry on her. He took Kelsey with him as a buddy and guard. It was fortunate that he did so: He and Kelsey were ambushed by a quartet of snow bears as soon as they landed.   Soon after, Kelsey set about skinning the four bears she killed, one noticeably marked by a scorching dragon's handprint, while Othar started scrying. It started to work, and then someone noticed and shut it off from the other side, hard enough that some areas of the snow and bears around them started on fire. Kelsey yelled something at her about "get over here, we've been waiting for you to show up!" While covered in blood and idly gesturing with the skinning knife. She got no response.   (The whole hilarious incident with Kelsey cheerfully yelling "I have four skins!" while covered in blood when she and Othar got back, with Othar saying "Don't leave the plateau, it's bad out there" first happened here. Much wonderful banter.)   Nimbus, Malakai, Kelsey, and Buzz sang in the corners of the rooms. The acoustics were great, Kelsey was happy, and Kelsey and Nimbus proved to have exceptional singing voices in such circumstances. Malakai was also pretty good. This worked! The cowled archmage lady showed up on the pedestal.   She was confused, mostly because of the presence of Othar and Kelsey (and Kelsey being covered in blood). She wasn't sure if they were talking or fighting, but the party quickly clarified that they were wanting to talk. Buzz: "If we're fighting, I surrender. I've seen the replay, I don't want any of that." She said this made her even more confused.   She power-word-washed Kelsey. Kelsey was mildly frustrated by this. "You don't want to be covered in blood here. It's, under all the blessings, cursed as hell, so blood bad."   Adventurers once split off the good part of the dark overlord and made him incarnate. He became the captain. He's now been reabsorbed into the whole, but there's still a possibility of separating him again. It's been done before!   Need to take a holy relic down to the core where the evil overlord's soul is and essentially chip a part off while incarnating it with a reincarnate spell. It's more complicated than that, but there's a lot of soul magic and stuff involved.   Seneca wanted to scan the party members to ensure that they would work okay with the ritual and they weren't evil she needed to kill.   Buzz went through Seneca's scan. Like diving through a giant sentience kaleidoscope. "Some A-grade life magic bullshit." You are literally being drawn into a leyline, but for this person's purposes the leyline is alive and under her control.   Nimbus went next, with Knight using the Dream Master's Nail to quietly check that she and Buzz were okay and still themselves. After her was Kelsey. Kelsey's swords got pulled into a side conversation with the archmage while in the lifestream. "We think she's a good mage. She knows a lot about magic. A lot about magic."   Seneca said she'd already talked to Kelsey's swords about their part in the ritual. They'd agreed as long as Kelsey was okay with it.   Malakai's dip in the leyline was tainted by his time on the Isle of Necromancy; "I'm not sure that's washed off yet." Seneca eagerly asked Malakai if he could make her a staff she'd just had an idea for. She said she'd never met an artificer before.   Malakai asked for possible therapy for the battlecruiser he was trying to heal in exchange for the staff-making.   Knight was exempted from the scan for medical reasons. Because no one was sure what that would do to them. She'd gained enough understanding of them and their party by then to not need it to be sure.   Othar was scanned differently, because soulfire issue. Seneca's conversation with him suggested that she was secretly the hag, somehow. They came to an agreement. Among other things, she wanted him to use his soulfire surgically during the ritual, possibly with her guidance.   Malakai offered Light Grenade, and Seneca gave the party spellcasters several defensive spells in return.   Nihlia's Love. Great for resisting weird undead draining effects. AOE, like Prot Evil, but for cursed lands, basically. One of Seneca's best defensive spells for the crypts. Almost like a portable consecration. Lasts roughly all day. Hard to dispel.   While opening one of the warded iron gates, there was a brief flash where Kelsey noticed Seneca had a long, curved nose. Started to get suspicious about the hag thing.   The walls were like crystallized coal, black, hard, brittle, and sharp. Seneca recommended trying to make a straight shot to one of the corners, then down, then across to the other corner, down, and so on. There's a lot of things down there that will try to lure people away and/or kill them. Though apparently not all of the attractive things are false.   Kelsey quietly shared her suspicions with Nimbus. Nimbus said she might be able to do something about illusions if she could make physical contact while Seneca was in Nimbus's aura.   15-foot-tall-plus burly shadow. Large armored troll wraith. Liquid darkness and raw evil.   "Blackheart. One of the generals of the dark lord. We never did figure out how to kill him, we may need to run." - Seneca   The party silently decided "no, we've got this" and proceeded to ignore his attacks and test weak spots until they found enough openings to stab him to death. There was a dramatic death scene as he screamed to the sky with Kelsey's swords buried in his head, and then he exploded into darkness and ash and coal and a pile of armor. The armor promptly collapsed on Nimbus.