The Tree is rumbling.
Stormseeker: “Did it work? Is Sartus OK?” She goes over to check him.
Bec: “We have to get out of here.”
Oz (adamantly): “Yes, we should go check on the queen immediately, posthaste.”
Vondal quickly tells Rain: “We blew up, I’m good, everybody else question marks, welcome back, hi, and now the tree that holds all of existence of dying.”
Cal beckons Oz over to talk to him. He wants Oz to stab the Book.
Phoebe: “The cleansing is incomplete. Something is wrong.”
The shaking is getting worse.
Lorissa (still checking Sartus): “He’s not breathing!”
Cal, whispering to Oz: “I want you to use the Hornblade to stab the Book.”
Oz: “Aww Brando, do we think that’s a good idea? I don’t think that’s such a great idea… They seem to be way smarter than us, man.”
Cal: “We need to kill the Book.”
Freki overhears: “I don’t know that it’s a bad idea. ‘cause the Book is clearly magic.”
Oz, Cal, and Freki continue to debate it.
Oz: “It’s against my nature, but I think this is a case where “don’t stab” is the way to go.”
But Cal is adamant that the Book has to be destroyed.
Callie intuitively senses that Sartus’s spirit and divine connection are rapidly dissipating, leaving only a lifeless husk. She thinks even speak with dead would not work on him.
Bec: “We have to go the Queen. We have to take the Book with us if it hasn’t been fully fixed.”
Callie senses that the Book is still evil, but much less so? “It was always an evil artifact… but…”
- Rain hefts Sartus’s lifeless husk over his shoulder.
- Vondal and Murky and Freki and Rain run for the entrance.
- Bec tries to heft the Book with mage hand. It’s hard at first, but suddenly it gets easy; Callie feels a divine assist from some Fey influence.
- Phoebe and Lorissa follow them out.
Oz: “That owlbear’s gonna eat that guy!”
When the party gets outside the treasury, they realize it’s not the treasury that’s shaking—it’s the entire Tree. And it’s getting worse.
“Quickly! With me!” Phoebe says and she touches part of the trunk in prep to tree stride. “Take my hand!”
Mushrooms oozing out the trunk, Phoebe recoils. The creature that’s in the queen is fighting back, and Phoebe cannot use her power on this Tree anymore, it is too far gone.
But Letharil Galere and the other remaining tree-melded appear! They can still tree-stride, since they are bonded to this Tree. Each of the seven can each take one person to the throne room. Letharil takes Bec, and the party agrees the other six should be Cal, Callie, Freki, Oz, Vondal, and Lorissa Stormseeker, who has sworn a vow to protect the Queen and would like a chance to fulfill her oath, as well as get revenge for Sartus’s death.
Throne room
In the throne room, the party emerges from the two sides of the giant throne made of tree branches.
The Queen/Zuggtmoy is chained to the throne with roots wrapped in cold iron:
Celes Skyfall the paladin is there. She is shocked to see them appear, but moves to block them from advancing any closer.
Skyfall: “If you kill her, the Tree dies.”
Vondal remembers that this situation is a lot like that one time with the evil entity possessing that guy… just gotta get it out of there and kill it!
Vondal asks others for advice, but people aren’t sure… then Stormseeker speaks up.
Lorissa (quietly): “Banishment.”
Vondal: “Banishment? I have that!”
And he immediately casts it.
Freki wants a page of the Book to incorporate into an arrow of slaying. Celes thinks it’s a brilliant idea.
Oz points his weapons at the Queen: “Creature! You are a yeasty onion-eyed ratfucker. Get out here and face me!”
Zuggtmoy: “Untie me and it would be my pleasure.”
Vondal casts it! He busts through the first layer of her will. Then, Feymist begins to flow from the Tree into him! He is chaotically empowered, and pushes through the second layer of her will!
An enormous black ooze emerges from the Queen! It gushes all over Callie, who was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
- Oz uses decanter to wash off Callie.
- Freki shoots a lightning arrow at the ooze but it’s immune to lightning.
- Vondal manipulates reality to make the ooze be Freki’s oathbow sworn enemy, which is currently still Erasmus the faerie dragon.
- The ooze takes the form of a faerie dragon (still black oozy).
Vondal makes Bec super lucky (all 20s), and everyone else critically unlucky (all 1s).
Lorissa casts fireshield as she bladesings, but trips (auto-1!) and falls into the black ooze. :-(
Vondal tries to fix it, causing three wild surges. Vondal grows large, is followed by ethereal music, and immediately teleports 20 feet.
The black ooze makes nine pseudopod attacks! But all nine miss, since it was critically unlucky.
Oz attacks the ooze with his swords. The ooze fails the Con save vs poison, then fails another Con save vs necrotic.
Celes still wants to grab a page from the Book and give it to Freki to incorporate into an arrow of slaying. Bec stops her from touching the Book directly, concerned it would corrupt Celes, then rips out a page using mage hand, thrusting it toward Freki.
Freki dexterously grabs the torn-out page of the Book and wraps it around one of his arrows-of-slaying-in-the-making. He swift shot shoots it. The ooze is completely obliterated! But his hand feels oily, and it’s not going away…
Cal tries to whip grapple the Hornblade (35 Athletics!).
Oz: “What the fuck?”
Cal: The Book must be destroyed.”
Oz manages to weasel the Hornblade out of the whip’s grasp (39 Acrobatics!). As he frees the blade, he flips around acrobatically, bringing the sword down… ON THE BOOK!
As this happens, Bec reflexively drops the Book (which she was still holding with mage hand), which lands still open, as Oz’s downthrust drives unerringly toward the Book’s spine…
Vondal, concerned he might have been created by the Book, or even be an aspect of the Book itself, tries to channel luck to protect it using Lucky (which normally can only be used to protect himself)… but it doesn’t work. Whew!
Time slows to a stop for Freki, as his ravens appear spectrally, one on each of his shoulders.
Hugin: “The veil between life and death grows thin.”
Munin: “The Lady will be very displeased.”
Hugin: “Do we let this happen?”Freki feels great respect for the elves, and for the Tree, which is the closest thing he has to a religion. He decides he cannot let this happen, and resolves to intervene. Time resumes, and Freki leaps with supernatural speed, bolstered by the fleeting image of a giant spectral raven around him, on top of the Book.
…and the Hornblade pierces Freki straight through the back.
Oz does 109 critical damage. But Freki in hybrid form has 110 hit points! He has 1 hit point left.
The party quickly acts to heal him:
- Vondal uses Callie’s 5th level cure wounds from his ring of spell storing to heal Freki for 16 HP, and also heals him with a charge from his Wand of Healing.
- Celes, a paladin of the ancients, uses her lay on hands power to heal Lorissa’s acid damage, then heals Freki for 40 more HP.
Celes then inspects the Book and the Queen for lingering traces of evil, but finds none. However, Cal is skeptical, sensing some subconscious doubt in Celes’s analysis of the Book, and calls her on it. She looks again at the Book, and now notices a tiny gem of something evil still there. Lorissa casts remove curse on the Book, and everyone feels a tiny metaphysical cracking sensation, and Celes believes the Book to be now fully and truly cleansed. At least, Freki’s oily hand feels better now!
As everyone frees the Queen from her chains, an argument can be heard through the throne room doors. The Warforged bursts through the door with two of her elite hunters (1 and 2), having pushed past a flustered Anastasia Starflower.
………………….
Six days later, the agents are tracking the Sima doppelganger east through the Deepwood.
And Freki senses that they in turn are being followed…