#70 - A Rude Arrival

The PCs were in a room quite different from the rest of the forger's opulent hideout. In the corner, trunk-like clusters of roots rose like columns. The earthen floor of the chamber roiled with strange mist, and it had a baleful effect upon Clarion, Szen, and Dafrena. Warforged, halfling, and dwarf all toppled to the ground. Unharmed but incapacitated.

An immense and quite hideous pale worm with a many-toothed maw rose up out of the ground in front of Magnus. For several long moments, he engaged it along with the others, but though it gnashes at him and dealt him minor injuries, his own weapon passed harmlessly through it. It took some time for them to realize it—and a thoughtful infusion from Cypher—to fully deduce that the beast was an illusion. Not merely an illusion, a phantasm—capable of dealing real harm, if you believe in it. Once this was realized, the worm faded away.

Meanwhile, writhing, root-like tendrils grasped anyone they could reach—the druid Dar, Kard, Cypher. Once the illusory worm was dealt with, Magnus pulped the animate plants, quieting them in time, while Dar wildshaped into a badger to escape the tendrils. She even dug into the packed earth, discovering that the chamber beyond was barred by stone from underneath.

Cypher tried out the dancing sword he believed he had, which he'd acquired in the cellar of the ir'Valish estate, casting it into the air to combat his enemies. At which point it immediately turned upon him, slashing into his body and dealing considerable damage. Soon Kard, with help from Magnus, sent it banging out of the air and into the earth. Bent, but now inanimate, the cursed blade was reclaimed by Cypher anyway (because of course it was).

When all threats had passed, the PCs brought the unconscious or disabled allies back through the painting they'd entered and lay them in the previous chamber. Cypher set Rungo to guard them.

The door to exit the earthen room had three locks, but Cypher expertly picked each and every one, using an infusion to guide his already skilled hands. With a detect magic spell, Kard learned that a section of the floor in the hallway that lay beyond it was enchanted with conjuration magic. Believing it to be a trap, they were sure to move around it.

The door at the end of the hall led into a comfortable study with a desk, bookshelves, extravagant carpet, and homey fireplace. A middle-aged gnome—well-dressed but obviously flustered—was busy gathering papers and tossing them into the fire. Obviously destroying documents as quickly as possible.

Into this chamber Magnus charged, bursting through the door and engaging in melee with a pair of dwarf bodyguards who's flanked the entry. In a corner, an ugly, much-too-large rat with bony spurs hissed and sputtered and quickly joined the combat.

Magnus made short work of the first dwarf, but a quick command from the gnome prompted the massive carpet underfoot rise up and wrap around the barbarian! Kard and Cypher rushed into the room, the cleric managing to knock the gnome to the floor. Unharmed but prone!

The diminutive forger looked...inconvenienced.

#69 - The Forger's Lair

As told by Magnus of the Island of Seren.

Crammed spaces.  I am coming to hate them.

We were in a halfling's basement, kicking our way into a room guarded by a warforged and there was NO way I could swing my mace in there.  Hopefully, the next room would be built a bit bigger.  The party spilled out into a really nicely furnished room, tea set and all.  A handful couple of kobolds and the warforged were ready to get physical with us.

I banged the warforged hard, but this one cheated and sprayed and spurted substances at us. Some kind of ink even blinded Cypher. But as we tore into the warforged and the kobolds and and started to win, the warforged slid over to a painting of a city on the wal....and then stepped inside it.  I could see him in there…more magic.  It wasn’t long before some of the party let us know that there was a magic word to get into the painting. Kard must have heard it first. He stepped right into the painting after the warforged.

Clarion, too, then said the word very clearly—“Ristil” or thereabouts—and put his hand through the painting.  I put my hand on his shoulder and tried to put my hand in. No good, I had to say the watchword myself.

Clarion stepped in. I said the word finally, and stepped in. It was a funny feeling, but not a bad one.  I emerged in a slighter larger, less furnished room that looked like a barracks. Inside were also Kard and Clarion and some halflings and the fleeing warforged.  We killed them all—almost. And Kard got stabbed repeatedly by the halflings. It was strange! I'm more accustomed to seeing pooling blood beneath my own body, not my ally's. We did realize that without some help, we couldn’t use all the paintings—and there was another in this room. I tried to knock one of the halflings out and Kard used a “hold person” spell on him.

Cypher joined us. We spent a long time doing a bad job of interrogating our prisoner. A bad job. He negotiated with us and then gave us the watchwords for activating the magic paintings—one for passing through alone, one for looking through like a window, and one for letting in a larger group. We asked him where the forger was—the one whose lair this was—and the halfling told us it was the painting in the first room.

We headed back into the first room. We let the one prisoner go. We dragged the warforged back into the first room, since Cypher wanted his goo-spraying arm weapon. Acid, ink, grease, stuff like that. Cypher will likely mount it on his head.

After another long talk, we moved into the painting of the dark wasteland—the halfling said it was a paint of Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead—the way we were told to go. Once we entered, we found it to be very different than the other rooms. It was like a grave or something, soft spongy ground, covered with mist and under that, insects.  At the end were two large root-like trees and a door. The misty floor felt strange and I heard some kind of commotion among my allies as I walked through it towards the opposite door. Then the floor seemed to open up directly in front of me. I didn’t fall, but something was charging up out of the misty pit in front of me.

The halfling prisoner had sent us to a trap.

And why shouldn’t he?

#68 - Entering Wroat

It was a handful of gargoyles that had been perching on boulders nearby, watching. How long they'd been there even Kard was unsure. An attempt to see and engage them sent the flying into the air. Previously, Cypher and Magnus had battled gargoyles in the Seawall Mountains and the warforged had even had a tangle with one on the streets of Graywall. They were known to be aggressive predators—not unintelligent but hardly diplomatic.

They're also known for lairing in high, rocky places or vast cave networks. So what were they doing out on an open plain?

The druid who'd first introduced herself as Dar, now revealed to be a changeling named Loh, offered a means of hiding from the gargoyles' surveillance with her earthly magic. Using a Pass Without Trace spell, the group moved with greater stealth back to where the Brelish couple awaited on the road, then moved further down the road and made camp in a copse of trees.

Kard had now rejoined the group. His quest was vague but one thing he made clear: he wanted the rest of the party to join him in entering Glyphstone Keep, a place about which they'd all heard only rumors. He would join them in their local errand in the city, but before long, insisted on returning to his quest—a quest which had something to do with his knowing where to find them in the first place.

"Changelings, bah! You can't
trust a people who can
change their faces on a
whim." —Racists, or
anyone who's been
wronged by a changeling

Meanwhile, the Jorasco halfling Lord Szen suggested that upon reaching Wroat, the party join him in investigating the "forger" address that the ir'Valish mage had on her person. It was a Brelish matter of state, in fact, and had something to do with his reason for going to the ir'Valish estate in the first place. Szen explained that recently, there had been a high profile theft at the Wroat Exchequer (the government's treasury). Someone had withdrawn a valuable sum of gold using illegal yet impeccable documents constructed for that sole purpose. Then a body had turned up in the river, and agents of the Citadel had asked Lord Szen to examine the body. Having detected trace of the necromancy-conducive plant covadish, he had been sent to investigate the abandoned ir'Valish estate, since the ir'Valish family were known for having cultivated the rare plant before.

All of these things, he believed, were related. Perhaps more answers would come if they could find the location of the forger in question! Thus far, Wroat's law enforcement had not been able to find him.

The last remaining days in traveling to Wroat were uneventful. Cypher examined and identified some of the magic items they'd procured in the basement of the ir'Valish estate. The gauntlets imparted supernatural agility to their wearer, the helm greater protection, and the sword was a "dancing weapon"—allegedly able to fight on its own if tossed into the air during a fight. Each of these would require some attunement, however.

The PCs reached Wroat and after some antics at the gate, all made it inside. Clarion and Aleae were slightly detained at the gate—for the eladrin possessed no identification papers—but they agreed to meet up with the others later the Royal Bear Inn, a place Szen knew well enough.

Loh also had no identification papers, but she used her druidic talents to transform into an animal, became a rat, and simply scurried underfoot past the guards. Only after assisting her to pass unseen did Cypher, First Sergeant of the Brelish Engineers Brigade, realize he'd been complicit in deceiving Brelish authorities.

Wroat is Brelish's capital city, a metropolis dwarfed only by Sharn. Spread onto two sides of the Howling River, a central island houses Brokenplade Castle (the palace-fortress of King Boranel's court) and the buildings of the Citadel. It was a bright day, and the city's many thousands of citizens and visitors flowed through the streets. Most were human, but a surprising number of gnomes and half-elves comprised the population, with a smaller amount of elves, dwarves, and halflings. Even warforged were plentiful, relatively speaking.

After crossing a massive bridge into the south side of the city, settling in at the Royal Bear, stabling their horses, and paying for rooms for three days, the PCs set out for the "forger" location. The street address led to a dark, closed little glassware shop. After Szen banged loudly on the front door and Dafrena, his dwarf bodyguard, winced at the racket, the old halfling finally broke out of thieves tools and popped it open with a bit of luck. The PCs went inside, found a tight little spiral stairwell winding down into the dark, and proceeded down.

They arrived in what seemed to be a small receiving room, with green-tiled floors, and uncomfortably low ceilings clearly intended for smaller folk like halflings and gnomes. Magnus had to stoop, and could not stand upright.

On one wall was a door, on the other a vivid painting of a moonlit meadow. A big warforged with a curious contraption on one arm answered the door, and told them, "It is advisable that you leave." When they did not, it closed the door again. When they pressed the point, they discovered that a sitting room lay beyond, as did a handful of kobolds armed with blades. The warforged warned them that if they passed through the door, they would come to harm.

They passed through the door.