Session 2-8: What Lies Beneath

After ensuring Dr. Ravinger’s wounds have been taken care of, we set about gathering the remains of the Blackhearts-turned-ghouls we defeated. Kern had escaped the battle but with the book, we are able to recall him back forcibly. The truce is tense, with Horick especially eager to put an end to Eli instead of working with him. I’m able to convince him that for now, his abilities and knowledge might be useful, and that the The Faceless cultists would never expect our temporary alliance. To my surprise, he grudgingly accepted, especially with Liam and Dieter’s (un)lives in the balance in addition to Jammy and her family. He proclaimed that he would be watching his every move from here on, a sentiment I did not disagree with.

The Red Madonna’s imposed time limit coincided with her rival’s ultimatum to Eli concerning Dieter’s fate; we now had less than twenty-four hours remaining to retrieve the final fang of Stryxis. After making sure Jammy was secured in Isolde’s shop, Cojitron insisted that they check in on the other Throat Wolves. Scattered throughout the city though they were, it would take time to find and ensure their safety. Fortunately, we knew where most of them had settled down. Cojitron would make sure that the Red Madonna couldn’t reach them in the interim while we secured the fang with Dr. Ravinger. If she had openly threatened the others and I had no desire to call her bluff that she couldn’t go through with it.

Eli insisted on going back to the Whisperveil Cemetery to secure a corpse or two to revitalize some of the Blackhearts to aid in our task. Gruesome as that sounded, we would have to bear it; the final fang was in an area few had trod in centuries. Tea Kettle pointed out that the boat trip to the sunken city would take nearly eight hours, leaving us little time for error. He recommended using a Ryland steam ship, which he definitely knew how to operate, as it would cut our travel time to less than half. I told the others I would head to the docks first to contact the Ryland security team we rescued on the Prospero to see if they would loan us one of their vessels, while the rest help Eli at the cemetery. Fortunately for us, the carriage service ran all day and night; a quick trip to the nearest tavern to find a waiting driver later, minus enough coin to maintain their (silent and unquestioning), we secured swift transportation to the docks and the cemetery. In the meantime, Liam and the Blackhearts were disguised as best we could to hide their true nature.

At the docks, I located the Ryland administrative building and asked for Lt. Kevaleno. Thinking there would be some push back given the late hour, I am surprised to find him still on duty. He greeted me and remarked that this was likely not a social call given it was close to midnight. I asked him if he was willing to lend my friends and I one of their small steam ships to reach the other side of the lake to enter the city side. Understandably concerned considering its reputation and history, he questioned our motives, but I quite honestly convinced him that it was important and best kept a secret. Fortunately for us, he was a military man and not a company liaison, so he agreed out of respect for our actions in saving many of the crew and the Prospero itself, but asked for some sort of collateral as their ships were immensely valuable. Having foreseen such an outcome earlier, I had on the carriage ride to the docks forged signatures and legalese on the draft of the Locklander logging lease agreement the ***Hierophant provided me while disguised as a Rylander during our rescue of the The Midnight Circus. It was able to fool him into believing that this document represented valuable monetary concerns to us and so accepted it. I waited at the docks at the rendezvous point with the ship’s key in hand.

At the cemetery, with a full party in tow, Tea Kettle, Horick and Eli Ravinger entered the offices towards his old lab to affect the repairs needed on his ghouls. A few familiar faces among the gravediggers were seen as we arrived, including Tomkin Whitby and Perry Ives, and their dog Splash, as well as Migonnette Drivinod, formerly the assistant mortician and now the cemetery director. She spotted Dr. Ravinger enter his lab and alarmingly asked my friends if that was truly the old Director, as it was widely reported that the burning of the Ravinger estate had killed him and Dieter. They asked her to trust them for now, that Dr. Ravinger’s appearance was part of some especially important and time-sensitive work and, surprisingly, she agreed to keep it quiet for now despite her concerns. She even provided Tea Kettle a ring that she said might help us. Given a later revelation concerning Migonnette, my friend’s occasional scatterbrained nature inadvertently aided him as he pocketed her ring and promptly forgot about it.

Fortunately for them, there were few people still at the cemetery working at this time of night, and after an hour or so, Eli had finished restoring in part two of the Blackhearts to fighting form as well as some of Liam’s damage. In the meantime, TK had concocted a method to track the fang with more precision than the mana gauge could provide. With some effort considering its fossilization, he chipped small pieces from one of the fangs in our possession and created a mixture in the lab with it to form a compass to point towards another one of its kind. At the end he had made two such vials, with the floating pieces of tooth pointing out towards the lake to the north. Their work done, they departed on the carriage as unceremoniously as possible and raced to the docks to meet me.

Shuffling on to the Rylander tugboat, Tea Kettle poked and prodded the mechanisms and, after a concerningly long few minutes, started the engine and, taking the helm, took us out into the lake. There was some fog this night, but with the boat’s steam power, we made incredibly good time cutting through the water towards the shore of the sunken city.

A few hours later, we spotted lights near our destination; Ghal Pelor normally kept a few small patrol ships to ensure no one entered the sunken city, for fear of disturbing what lay within (and beneath). There were but two of them and, with TK’s surprisingly good piloting, we made a run past the patrol, silently moving to one of the only slightly stable docks remaining. Securing our vessel and disembarking, we found that the city had lived up to its reputation; the waters reached our waist. The area was as silent as the grave and, pulling out the vials to track the fang, we plotted a course towards the center of the city. In the meantime, we managed to scavenge a rowboat large enough to fit us, Eli and his coterie of flesh golems.

Slightly into the city from the docks, we spotted some lights in what looked to be the remains of a tavern. Not expecting anyone else to be in the abandoned city, I volunteered to take a closer look, though the others insisted on staying close behind in the rowboat. I waded silently towards the dilapidated, half sunken building and peered inside one of the windows. What I saw shocked me to my core; a handful of skulking, fishlike monstrosities that horrifyingly looked to once be human. One amongst them in fact did look to still by a boy no older than fifteen, clutching at himself and raving senselessly, as if in some sort of anguish. I found a way to quietly slip inside, and I moved in the shadows, avoiding the fish monsters, and caught the boy unawares.

After convincing him that I only wanted to talk, I found out that he and his five companions come from Ridley's Watch and journeyed to Muldrak to scavenge. The ruins were apparently quite popular among their kind for picking over, despite the enormous risk. Having managed to make their way to the imposing pyramidal Urin Hall within the center of the city, they ran afoul of something terrible and became infected, cursed even. It was difficult to keep him focused, but I was able to pry the information we needed. The fang was hidden in the Hall of Heroes statue garden beneath Urin Hall. The boy swore that he had glimpsed it before they resurfaced and attempted their escape.

He begged for help, and though it pained me to see these luckless fools in such a state, I told him there was nothing I could do for the others. I tried to sneak him out of the tavern, but he bit my arm and got free of my grasp, causing his monstrous friends to notice my presence. Luckily Horick and Tea Kettle were nearby, having followed a short distance behind, and burst into the building before they could swarm over me. Though the adventurers-turned-aquatic monsters were fierce and vicious, we put them out of their misery after a brief battle. We made a quick search, discovering a magical cap of breathing amongst their possessions, and returned to Dr. Ravinger to continue our journey, following the detector towards Urin Hall.

The dead quiet of Muldrak was nerve rattling, but our resolve pushed us through its dark and foreboding flooded streets. We were able to avoid any further trouble and made it to the entrance of Urin Hall. The structure was as grand as Tea Kettle, recalling much of the history of the area from his very random research, made it out to be. Serving as a city hall, it was just as large below the surface as above, leading also to the vast city underneath the buildings that made up the visible portion of Muldrak. Two gargantuan and imposing statues of dwarven warriors flanked the double doors, which towered above us by some twenty feet. Moving our small boat closer, Tea Kettle and I investigated the doors while Horick eyed the statues. He rarely spoke of his time before living with his grandmother in Ghal Pelor, but even he knew of the catastrophe that befell the city and its inhabitants several years ago. Learning that the fang was somewhere in the Hall of Heroes did pique his interest some, though he remained on guard due to his overwhelming distrust of Dr. Ravinger.

After a brief time, Tea Kettle concluded that the doors were sealed by magic and a complicated mechanism that could automatically open and shut if activated properly. He was unsure what would happen if the magic were not first bypassed, but suspecting it might trigger some sort of defense against intruders (the statues animating was a safe wager!), worked feverishly with Dr. Ravinger’s assistance to temporarily suppress the flow of magical energy to the seals. Once TK gave his all clear, I had several minutes to override the locking mechanism before the magic reset. Though it was my first time working through dwarven engineering, I was able to undo the physical lock and activate the mechanism to open the doors. The sound from the grinding gears echoed through the halls, but they opened without issue.

Not too far from the giant doors were two dwarven corpses, warriors from the looks of their elaborate armor and weaponry. They were long deceased, having died protecting the door from anything escaping. Though the armor was damaged beyond use, their weapons were still in perfect condition. We salvaged a powerful Warhammer that was made for destroying aberrations, a dwarven pistol with three silver bullets, and two helmets capable of allowing the wearer to breath underwater through some kind of pump apparatus on their backs. One was cracked, so TK set to repair it for our trip; the statue garden was well underwater below the entrance. Finally, on the finger of one of the fallen was an ornate ring that granted resistance to psychic attacks. Thinking of the fate of the Ridley’s Watch scavengers, I put it on.

After Horick and I tested the helmets and TK equipped the Cap of water breathing, Dr. Ravinger suggested we bring Liam along while he and his Blackheart ghouls kept watch by the entrance. We agreed, thankful to have his help in case we ran into any trouble. Despite being a slow and awkward swimmer, he required no air to breathe and was a steady presence. We used a scroll of continual flame from Isolde’s shop upon Liam, as no light penetrated the subterranean passages of the hall, and slowly made our way beneath the dark depths. Horick and I were able to navigate thanks to the dwarven runes clearly pointing the way towards our destination.

After what felt like an agonizingly long swim through the immense tunnels, though it was likely less than ten minutes, we found ourselves in the Hall of Heroes. The statue garden is as grand as we have heard it to be, with sculptures of great dwarven personages lining the hall, numerous plaques detailing their achievements within their epitaphs. Entering the garden, we found a considerable number of alien creatures lazily swimming about, aimlessly and without purpose. They were hideous to behold, many baring tentacles, claws and horrible maws. Some were larger than full grown men. Amongst these horrors swam fish creatures that looked to be the full realization of what the scavengers were becoming, though a number of them were still in the process of transforming. We kept our light low and dim as much as we dared, and though our eyes were up to the task of seeing without much illumination, Liam’s were a different matter. We needed to lead him as best we could.

A rumbling hum reverberated through our skulls as we swam closer towards the statues, and as we glanced above us, we behold a gargantuan creature that rivaled the size of the statues in the garden. Its darkness seemed to ooze from it, and the greatest horrors we have spied here paled before its visage. Many followed in its wake, drawn by its “song”. The closer we got the more its compulsion ate at our psyche; only Tea Kettle and I (thanks to the ring I discovered) were equipped to resist it to some degree. Though there was no method to its maddening movement, we resolved to keep as far from it as possible, as TK indicated that alerting it to our presence would be our deaths. This was an aspect of the Scorned One a being from beyond our world, and whatever befell Muldrak was the work of this entity.

Studying one of the main plaques in the garden, Horick pointed at three statues that the fang could be based on clues of these dwarves’ deeds. I signaled that I would take a wide berth around to inspect two of them while the others would go under, and we would meet at the furthest of the three statues in the back. Through stealth and guile, I reached the two statues without issue, keeping clear of the abominations that were in my path. I spied that on several occasions Horick succumbed briefly to the song of the Scorned One and swam towards it, though with TK and Liam restraining him he was able to avoid alerting the dark god. Worst still, the glowing tetrahedron in TK's possession seemed intent to savage the Scorned One, as seemingly, the outer being it "belonged" to saw the former as a bitter rival. It was all my friend could do to keep it under control lest it get us killed. Several close calls later, we were able to find our way to the final statue, and we discovered the fang held in the dwarven hero’s hand. Horick carefully removed it, and we stashed it away safely.

Retreating to the exit of the garden proved to be a near fatal ordeal. The Scorned One’s path took him dangerously close to us. Horick, thinking quickly after his mind had nearly been taken over completely moments earlier, consumed a potion of gaseous form, becoming a cloud that moved much more stealthily than he is normally capable of. However, a small group of creatures, seeing us (and the mass of bubbles from Horick) as if for the first time in their reverie, made a dash towards our group. Knowing we had to flee or be overwhelmed, or worse still, enraptured and enslaved by the Scorned One, we destroyed a number of the cursed creatures as they engaged us, though not without sustaining some poisoned injuries in the process. We broke off from the conflict when we made an opening and made our way to the exit.

The Scorned One, however, finally noticed the group of minions that had attacked us. It moved swiftly to investigate, with its diabolical song once again penetrating our minds. TK sacrificed his avian construct as shield to make it through the gateway out of the garden, followed closely by Horick in his gaseous state. Liam had nearly been overtaken by the Scorned One, and though I had made it to the gate, I made a beeline towards him and overcharged a piece of manacite to burst, shaking him from his mental domination. The Scorned One, now fully aware of our presence, made to overtake us. Liam and I sped through the exit, following the other two back to the surface and the great doors of Urin Hall. We were fortunate to have a head start and that this being wasn’t as nimble as we were.

We climbed aboard the boat with Dr. Ravinger and his wights, verifying that we had retrieved the fang. Asking where the now gaseous Horick was, we answer only that he is securing our escape route. Dr. Ravinger then reaches for his gun in an attempt to take the fang from us, ordering his Blackhearts to attack. Horick ends his gaseous state, shocking Dr. Ravinger at his sudden appearance, and while screaming that he had been waiting for this inevitable betrayal, plants his weapon into his chest. The badly wounded Dr. attempts to use his book to force Liam into attacking us, but having had his mind clear for some hours now, in addition to the serum we administered and owing his life to us after saving him from the Scorned One, he fought the compulsion. TK and I had our hands full with the Blackhearts, but thanks to Horick’s timely intervention and Liam arguing against his father’s betrayal, we defeated them soundly. Horick crushes Dr. Ravinger’s skull and we take the book from him, intending to free Liam and Dieter at long last. Liam has little time to mourn his father as the abominable call of the Scorned One echoed from the depths of the hall; he had found us and would soon be here.

With great haste we move beyond the doors and while TK bypassed the magical seals once again to keep the defenses inert, I started the door mechanisms while Horick and Liam pushed against them to speed the process. We spotted just beneath the water the huge form of the Scorned One coming our way. With but seconds to spare the doors slammed shut and the magic resealed them. We were free from mental domination, for now. Knowing what laid waste to Muldrak was trapped beneath Urin Hall gave us little comfort, and we wished to be away as quickly as possible.

We began making our way back to Ghal Pelor, skirting by the quarantine patrol. Our actions managed to retrieve the last of Stryxis’s fangs, and we now possessed the one from Muldrak, the one found in the counting house lockbox and the original from the MacMurdaugh that started this sordid tale. Hencil Spash retained his own. The trip back would take around eight hours, leaving us little time for us to plan against the Red Madonna and the other Faceless Cult member that had taken Dieter Ravinger. We allowed ourselves a rest first, knowing the task ahead to be deadly. It was time to end this.

We took the scroll of legend lore Isolde provided us and cast the spell, hoping to discover more about the Red Madonna. The woman hid her tracks very well, having proofed herself against even this powerful divination. Would that we had also taken the same precautions; Uncle Dayne’s thirst for publicity had revealed our identities long before, and it was through this that our vulnerabilities and acquaintances could be discovered. The spell did show us faint glimmers of gravestones, and someone speaking in a Talboti accent, though it was difficult to make out the words even with magic. I wracked through my mind with these clues and what I managed to observe about the Red Madonna yesterday during our encounter when she murdered Bill, discovering that all the pieces pointed to Migonnette. Transplants from Talbot were rare, and she was the only one we’d interacted with in recent months. Something about her was deeply familiar at Jammy’s home but I couldn’t quite place it then. There was no one else we knew that fit even these sparse pieces of information. Whether she also initially gave Dr. Ravinger his first tome to reanimate Liam and Dieter was unknown, but this knowledge could give us a slight edge. TK then remembered the ring she gave him.   The end for now,   ~Bayour S.