Chapter VI: Coup

The party awakes and goes back to the meeting room to meet with Selren and her advisers to talk about the plan. She says that the recruiter has an audience with Luren a little bit later in the morning and the current plan is to have some of the elven members go to the crown district and await a signal to attack in needed. The non elves will be ready on the outskirts of the crown district. She asks if the party would be able to sneak into the palace somehow to which they inform her that Thuridan said one of the tunnel paths they just came from leads to the throne room. Selren alters her plan a bit so that she and her advisers will travel with the party to the palace through these tunnels.   With Thuridan leading the way they encounter more cobwebs down this tunnel. It's similar to the ice spiders in the other tunnel though when they encounter the king spider and two adolescents they look more like normal spiders in their coloring and do not emanate a cold aura. Shen, Daxius, and Bink kill one of the Adolescents while the king attempts to attack Thuridan and misses. Selren then raises her staff and a blinding light emanating from it enveloping the remaining spiders. When the light fades there are just piles of ash where the spider used to be. She tells the party to continue and they do until they find an old rickety ladder at the end of the tunnel.   Going into the room above they find themselves in an abandoned wing of the Palace that Thuridan says used to be the throne room which he recognizes one of the doors being connected to a kitchen and storage room thought he does not recognize the other door. Aire goes to the unkown door and hear commotion, listening in he hears:   “My Arnen. A message from the rightful ruler of this city.” He holds a scroll out which a guard takes and gives to LuRen. “Is this a threat?” “You had your chance to give the people of this city a life worthy of living. Not punishing those not born into the aristocracy by sentencing them to a lifetime of poverty. If you relinquish power maybe your relative will be gracious and even give you a ranking position in the new system.”   “My men can repel any weak attack. I could have them burn the entire Hartsdale district to the ground if I ordered them to”   Shen and Aire tell Selren to listen while Shen tells her they she should find a good moment to burst in and take control of the situation.   “We have the staff”   “The staff is symbolic. I hold the power regardless of a stolen relic.”   At this point Shen had convinced her to barge in and as she does, Shen makes her glow and billow in the wind as she says:   "The staff has been restored cousin and the stories told in our family were true. You have my word that if you step down now peacefully, you will have a spot within my council. But whatever you should choose, you WILL be at my side."   Luren tells the guards to seize them, however, they are too intimidated from what they just witnessed and don't listen to their king. Luren tries to run but as he does, Selren raises the staff and Luren morphs into a valanar hound. Selren sits on the throne and addresses the party while a guard go outside to blow a horn to signal what happened. People flood in and kneel before their new queen as show says to the party:   “Thank you for your trust and support. I wish we had more to give you, but for now we must use what we have to rebuild Hartsdale and give everyone in this city a decent life. I will have the horses and carriage prepared for you and will be delivered to feyfane tower. Lastly, I name you Companions of Galren, the highest titled honor I can give you. I assure you we will do our best to change this city to be more open to those without Elven heritage.”   “And for you Daxius. I hereby restore your title of Archmage of Galren and you may remain in your residence at Feyfane Tower.”   The party asks for favors from her to which Bink receives a history book, Xar gets a breastplate and gives up his katana of apparitions, and Shen gets incense. Aire vowed to bring back the bo staff and they set off back to feyfane tower. As they traveled back to Feyfane tower, Daxius asks about the first stone they saw in Idreah and they tell him about their first run in with one of the items. He says he needs to see this for himself and will travel with the party back to Idreah if they are headed back that way. He only wishes he remembers the symbols/glyphs for the teleportation circle. The party hearing this asks about teleportation and Daxius explains it to them that they need the 3 symbols of the place they are going and drawn it in the circle they are at with special chalk in order to travel there.   Daxius goes to prepare for the journey while Shen does a ritual with his incense and Bink searches through more books in Daxius' study. They then set off to Idreah once everyone is ready and Pazuzu is back.   Along the way, Bink searched for herbs and read books he had, Shen searched once for herbs and read some of the books he had, Aire sparred with Xar and Rydel, and Daxius taught the party about magic and was generally bored.   Things of interest the party came upon were:  

1. Shen seeing eyes in the middle of the night after being woken up by Sir Stuffed. When causing the bear to glow and throwing it into the forest where the eyes were it disappears and he hears faint laughter.
2. Bink became paralyzed from the lense
3. Bink Experienced vivid illusions due to the lense
4. Daxius studied the lense and removed the curse
5. They find a bounty hunter. (It's guards from Galren who has been tracking John in hopes that he will get the 7 gold he had heard was promised for his capture)
6. Xar finds a hollowed out tree that seems to have something glistening in it. When they approach he sees that the hollow trunk is filled with treasure. He tried to grab any of it then the illusion breaks showing that the inside is actually a bee hive and they have disturbed them. The bees will attacked and Xar hears faint playful laughter.
7. The party runs into two men cheering over capturing something. They find that they have captured a fairy, similar to the ones they found previously coming from the green light. The fairy polymorphs one of the men into a ferret.
8. Bears come in the night going through their things looking for food.
9. The party stumbles upon an old crumbling tower. Rydel remembers this tower being a forward operating base of the humans during one of the wars of severance.

Back at Idreah the party talked to Ellis who thanks them for returning the original cart to which the party informs her that they didn't and John must have dropped it off. She gets the Ritter who says he had the manor searched and he found something interesting. He found an intact picture of the archaeologist. This sparks something lost in Aire's memory who knows the man. He is Matthias Veys and he has a home in the village outside of Ghandon Monastery. The party decides to go back to the manor in Idreah to search for more clues and eventually travel to go to the second manor.