Enormous gouts of blood burst out of Phoebe the Hamadryad’s neck, when Freki suddenly wolfed out and lunged at her throat. Ozborn immediately followed Freki’s lead and stabbed the hamadryad with both his blades, further engorging the blood flood. All that blood blobbed into a bloated blubbery pile of gnome on the ground, unconscious.
After that, things happen fast—very fast.
“Wait!” cries Isis Ra’ksh, “Don’t hurt him! He’s a friend.” She interposes herself between Phoebe and the gnome, poised to respond to any aggression.
Bec hesitates, watching to see how everyone else reacts.
“We can’t let him escape,” says Sartus, then tries to cast hold person on the gnome. But Isis counterspells it using dispel magic.
“I agree,” Vondal says, “We have to secure that guy immediately.” He points his fingers at the gnome and casts a spell, but it fizzles out, with Vondal poofing out in a puff of feathers!
I like to think that Curtis just winged that.
Callie casts cure wounds on Phoebe. It is super effective! She feels not only the presence of the dual goddesses, but also less familiar divine presence, as Feymist coalesces from around the area and infuses itself into her hand as she touches the hamadryad. Phoebe’s wounds close, and her eyes begin to flutter.
Cal stays near Phoebe, wanting to know if she’ll recognize him now, if/when she awakens.
Phoebe then opens her eyes, apparently awake, but just lies there staring, at least momentarily. She seems to be in a daze.
Freki picks up the unconscious gnome in his maw and holds him threateningly. The gnome is grappled and covered in drool.
Oz readies to stab Isis if she takes any hostile action against his friends.
Bec asks Isis what the hell is going on with this blood guy.
Isis pleads: “Please put him down, and I’ll explain everything.”
Bec: “I’d rather him in Freki’s ‘gentle’ grasp, then who knows… all those things on his belt. One of those potions could make him RUN AWAY, just DISAPPEAR.”
Sartus (to Isis): “I share Bec’s concern. We need to be extraordianariliy cautious. We cannot fully trust you.”
Cal to Phoebe: “Are you OK?” Phoebe’s head slowly turns, in a daze, toward Cal. She slowly sits up, and Cal helps her to her feet. Phoebe looks Cal straight in the eyes: “Where is he?” she utters darkly.
Michael rolls a 32 on perception for Freki to sense exactly what parts of the gnome are in his mouth the most. Due to Freki’s close bodily contact with the gnome, Freki can sense that the gnome is barely unconscious. Any little thing would awaken him. So Freki shakes him awake!
The gnome startles. “Ahgh!” And then when he realizes his predicament: “Put me down at once! I’m being oppressed!”
Bec: “Not until you explain what you were doing with the hamadryad. Or in. That’s not a normal place for a gnome.”
Meanwhile, Phoebe has come to her senses, and Cal has helped her to her feet. As she turns toward the gnome, her eyes fill with lightning, and more lightning begins to crackle from her fingers.
“Wait, no, I can explain!” exclaims the gnome desperately.
Phoebe raises her arms, lighting shooting up into the sky, and a storm cloud manifests in a matter of scant seconds. A lightning bolt shoots downward, striking the gnome square in the everything. “Graghghgh!” screams the gnome in pain.
Freki is also struck, his jaw clenching as he refuses to let go of the gnome (even though he could sense the oncoming bolt a split second before it strikes—his instinct to brace for impact wins out).
“No!” cries Isis. “It’s my fault, not his! Everything he did is because of me!” Callie and others can sense that Isis is lying, trying to cover for his behavior, because she has strong feelings for him.
Oz, sensing that the storm would only grow more dire from there, looks at Cal: “We’re about to get wet; we might as well swim.” And he stabs Isis with the Hornblade, with secondary fire damage burning the gnome. Then he fancy footworks away, sauntering over to Cal.
“Please, stop!” cries the gnome. “We had good reasons for everything we did!” But no one is convinced.
Bec decides to jump into action, casting confusion on everyone except Freki and herself. Callie, Cal, and Oz all resist the effect, as do Phoebe and Sartus, but Isis and the gnome both become utterly confused!
In the last moment before confusion overcomes her, Isis lunges toward the gnome, touching him as she casts plane shift. The gnome has just enough presence of mind before madness overtakes him to acquiesce to the magical effect, and reality warps around him, bending him away to who-knows-where. In the moment, Bec knows enough about planar magic to recognize that Isis might have been able to include herself in the escape attempt, had she been able to join hands with the gnome… but she failed to do so due to his flailing around from being electrocuted and on fire.
Phoebe’s murderous gaze turns on Isis.
Callie is also thinking on her feet, and strongly considers casting calm emotions, but she is afraid of the consequences, and decides not to intervene against Phoebe’s rage. She steps back.
Phoebe strikes Isis with a lightning bolt, who screams in agony.
Oz then kills Isis, running her through with the Hornblade. He moves to give a flourishing bow to Phoebe, but at that moment, he feels the presence of the creepy halfling ghost responsible for his acquisition of the Hornblade (see Case 11, Parts 02 and 04), and a powerful sense of vengeance fulfilled washes over him. He feels satisfied, that this person he just killed was specifically responsible for some grievous wrongdoing against his benefactor.
Isis falls to the floor, her skin sloughing off, and she looks like THIS:
Bec recognizes the creature as a doppelganger! She wasn’t even sure they were real, or how many of the various conflicting stories are true. But here it is.
Bec wants to keep part of the body and starts sawing it. Oz stabs it again to make sure it’s really dead (it is).
Freki asks: “Why don’t you keep the whole body?”
Sartus cleans up the corpse with prestidigitation, and Freki dumps it into his bag of holding.
Bec: “Would it be a bad thing if we kept this, for studying? ‘Cause this is like myths being proved real, and I’m kind of reaaally excited about it.”
Sartus nods. “I agree. We have to keep it. We don’t know enough about these creatures. We need to know how far this goes.”
Sartus explains that he needs the hand anyway, because it will improve their chance of success at unmaking the words from the Book of the Dead.
Bec: “We need to tell people. Tybalt.”
Sartus: “Do we?”
Callie: “We may need to find a way to know that we are all who we are.”
Oz (bluffing): “It’s well known in the circles I travel in, that doppelgangers are real. And we have a very simple test.” He pulls a vial out of my pack, with liquid in it. Unbeknownst to everyone, it’s just water. He pricks his finger, puts some blood in, and explains that if he were a doppelganger, it would have fizzed and reacted.
Cal immediately pricks his finger and proves he’s not a doppelganger.
In actuality, Oz wants to test who will refuse to do the test. Everyone except Freki agrees to do the test, and “passes” it.
Phoebe suggests that the test actually works, and that any liquid will do, which gives Oz momentary pause.
Michael [because the doppelganger does not have a mouth]: “Does it have a butthole?”
Curtis [answering without consulting the rules]: “It does not have a butthole.”
Phoebe looks at Sartus and asks him whether he really wants to proceed with his plan. Sartus answers earnestly that he does, and Phoebe agrees to help him. The exchange seems uncomfortably intense.
The party votes on what to do next:
- Cal wants to seek out Tybalt because he wants to investigate whether Sima is another doppelganger.
- Sartus wants to not tell Tybalt, and instead steal the Book first.
- Callie votes to deal with the Book first.
- Freki wants to go after the safe, because he would like to stick to some plan for more than 20 seconds.
- Bec would also like to go after the Book.
- Oz is also on board with that.
Cal argues that we outnumber Tybalt, and should find him first.
Callie expresses concern that Tybalt also could be a doppelganger.
Bec: “I think we really need to save the Tree.”
Callie suggests using a sending to Tybalt. She thinks the risk is low that it get intercepted by a false/doppel version of Tybalt—that it will likely go to the Tybalt they have been interacting with.
The agents discuss this idea, but Sartus suggests to be very careful what they say to him.
How is this any different than the dragon that winked in and out of existence! Or the hive of bees that was a person! Or the six-foot shrikes! Oh, this is the line! Your weird-shit-o-meter is not calibrated the way mine is, that’s all!
Cal: “If you guys don’t want to go there, we should at least warn him.”
Oz: “But if he is one, we’re in deep doo-doo. And let’s face facts: he probably is.”
Sartus pleads with Cal, arguing that if Tybalt has any whiff that they are going after the Book, he will try to stop them.
Cal agrees on two conditions:
- As soon as we’re done, we go to Tybalt.
- We destroy that book immediately.
Sartus agrees completely, but expresses doubt that the book can be easily destroyed. Cal thinks: “I wish I had my fuckin’ sword…”
They decide not to cast sending, and go straight to the vault. It’s an hour’s walk through the city, from the ground floor on up through the city’s various districts of lowtown, midtown, hightown, and finally the palace:
They reach the treasury building, situated on a tree branch such that there is only one accessible entrance and exit. The entryway has a high vaulted ceiling with a walkway of quite some length, beyond which is the treasure room proper, protected by several elite elven guards.
At the building’s entrance, a figure stands with his back turned. As the party approaches, he turns around—it is Tybalt. He looks angrily at Sartus. “I knew you wouldn’t listen to me.”