Freki remembers being the target of a scrying. He tells his allies about the message. They decide that Callie is going to use sending again, to contact Gardenblossom:
Where are you?
How can we get to you?
Why did you contact us?
Was that your scrying?
What’s going on?
Still love the clock.
Leopold’s reply:
I can’t believe you’re using Sending! Such an inferior spell!
Sure, it’s a little faster than scrying, but way less versatile. Back in my day—
The party waits 10 minutes for Gardenblossom to respond again, but he does not. They decide to teleport to the SPI HQ. They dig up a teleport crystal and activate it! The magic feels… sluggish. But it activates. Agents feel like their bodies and souls are being stretched like taffy through the wormhole…
The party finds a branch that is crying out for water. Callie tries healing it, but it just disintegrates under her touch. Bec discovers that it was undead.
Vondal tries some magic! It causes Callie to burst into bright light, blinding everyone. Vondal tosses Callie a rope so she doesn’t get lost, but everyone moves 5+ feet away from her to get away from the light.
Vondal doesn’t want to use his mystery wand, which he got from the genie. But he doesn’t want to put it away, either.
In a room that used to be Mallory’s office is a desk with a lamp that is “shedding roots.” Freki walks over to the desk and senses that the plant wants to help him. He likes the weird magical plant! Vondal casts Read Thoughts and kind of talks to the desk. Desky tries to get the party to open up its drawers and take what’s inside. Inside the drawer is a number of helpful alchemical objects. Vondal immediately becomes best buds with Desky, but their conversation takes a strange(r) turn and the party leaves. He’s acting shifty, but he doesn’t tell the others what’s wrong. When they’ve left the room and the door is closed, he fills them in that the desk turned out to be evil. Still, we’re keeping the loot!!! Freki and Callie really want to keep the loot, but Bec and Vondal warn them away. BY PEEING ON IT!
Vondal uses Prestidigitation to clean his vomit off of everybody. Callie tries to sneak a vial of Alchemical Fire, but then Vondal pees on all the loot to make it nasty to touch! Callie very reluctantly replaces the vial without touching the pee.
In Cassandra’s lab, a weird bulging wall of dirt covers the wall that had the hole. Bec sticks her head in. She calls out to Gardenblossom twice, but no answer. Then hears a very faint low droning sound. She mage hands near the dirt, and the hand becomes visually scrambled, like a computer glitch. Bec reasons that the dirt is elemental magic, and some sort of extraplanar phenenomenon distinct from the original hole.
Vondal: “So… you guys wanna fight it here, where it’s super strong? Or in a mini elemental plane of earth, that somehow dampens the flux? Your choice, ‘cause it’s probably comin’!”
Callie eats all the cheese. It’s not going to save her. :(
The SPI buffs, then proceeds through the earthen barrier. Oh noez, the tree comes to life! Combat ensues.
TODO picture of tree
Web at the bottom of the hill.
- Hilltop is 40 feet up—there is a huge nightmare tree (big d30), brutal-looking Hezrou demon (yellow d6), and giant mosquito-like chasme demon (orange d6).
TODO pictures of demons
- Vondal and Callie break right to edge of web, a little further down the hill
- Bec breaks right to edge of web, no further up the hill
- Freki breaks left to edge of web, no further up the hill
- A wall of fire 60 feet wide and 20 feet high shields the party from the hilltop and its monsters
- The tree moved through the fire to the other side; at the center just past the fire
- Freki’s turn is next
- Everyone is blessed
- Callie and Bec have earth spell slots from Zan’qaa
- Freki entangled the mosquito but it broke free but is still at the hilltop
- The Hezrou came around the right side of the wall of fire
- Zan’qaa is still floating above the scene. What will he do next??