Callie’s Journal
“The living are not welcome here,” says Audreth. “Now you will pay the final price.”
“At least we’re still living,” Bec whispers to me.
We gear up for battle. Oz starts out with a solid attack, though he’s surprised to find out his poison dagger is missing. Then he saunters away and hands things over to Freki, who’s looking strangely pleased with himself.
Curtis: “Did you hear what I said before about how you can’t perceive things in the periphery of your senses here?”
Nate: “No, I didn’t even perceive that.”
Freki is in hybrid form with a feathery cloak and says, “We are not your enemies, and you don’t want us to become that.” He readies his bow.
Audreth calls, “Megaera!” He yields, for now, and heals himself.
That name sounds familiar to me and Bec. It’s some kind of legendary creature, which Bec is surprised to find actually exists. In whatever way things exist IN THIS OTHERWORLDLY PLACE UNDER OUR HEADQUARTERS.
Bec kneels to look Audreth in the eye and tells him we have members under the protection of Nerull, which supercedes the authority of the Furies, which she thinks doesn’t exist anyway.
I’m already at eye level, so I don’t kneel. I just ask him to explain why he’s under our headquarters. He just says we shouldn’t be here, which I’m not even arguing with!
Cassandra doesn’t think Audreth will listen to us. She starts casting a spell of some kind.
Audreth looks outraged. “Honorless!” he says, and stands up.
The creature shrieks in the distance. We can kind of see it now. It looks like the same thing that was hunting us before. Three arrows come whistling from the direction of the creature and slam into Cassandra. Yeowch!
Oz yells, “Give me my fucking dagger, hairball!!!” Excellent as ever at knowing who the enemy is. Still chuckling, Freki tosses him the dagger in one smooth motion.
Freki fires Hail of Thorns at the flying creature and lands two great attacks on it! He’s looking a little fuzzy, like his cloak is camoflaging him somewhat. It’s pretty weird!
Oz slices up Audreth again, snicker-snack. He’s badly wounded, but not dead yet.
Vondal attacks Audreth with Scorching Ray. Audreth’s eyes turn to inky black voids. He isn’t channeling Flux like a wild mage, the Flux is channeling him. Something reaches through the voids to grab at Vondal. Creepy! So creepy! And we just came from a whole undead, underground city!
Vondal strikes back for 69 damage, nice.
There are a bunch of mirrors floating around reflecting…what? Oz sees Mallory, also surrounded by mirror shards. He panics, shifting through all kinds of shapes, unable to stay with just one. Bec sees a woman in a tower surrounded by strange creatures, which she is smiling at. Freki sees Audreth drinking water from the river, after which he gets a vacant expression that is the hallmark of ensorcellment. Vondal sees us doing some sort of ritual to help Audreth recover his memories. I see a shadowy beast with three heads. The heads turn toward me, trying to bite me. The heads have no eyes. But then, it opens more mouths and it DOES have eyes and there are so many and it jumps through the mirror and it’s RIGHT HERE!!! The beast bites me and fire drips into the wounds. Yaaaaah!!!
Damage I took: 36 points from the many-toothed dog
Bec casts Hypnotic Pattern. Two of the dog’s heads are mesmerized. The third head, the one that bit me, tries to get the other two to snap out of it.
I wisely run the hell away.
Cassandra fires off a massive radiant spell.
We all have advantage on saves, enemies have disadvantage on attacks.
The dog breathes molten rock over all of us! I think…I think I hate dogs.
Damage I took: 21 points of fire damage, plus we are restrained because of the cooling rock.
The bird-like creature, Megaera, I assume, lands nearby. She’s pissed about how we’ve been treating her pets, but honestly, how has she been treating them that they’re like this?
Oz wants to know if Megaera’s curtains match the drapes. Like, are her pubes made of little snakes? Cause his are! Dude, get that checked at the free clinic.
Oz attacks her and does some damage. Freki fires off two arrows, taking her down to near death. His third shot pegs her straight through the throat. The mists of Flux swirl around and seem to absorb her. Well, she’s…neutralized.
Vondal tries to talk to the dog and convince it he’s a friend.
Bec goes to check out…something by the river, I’m not sure what.
I stabilize Audreth. I have the feeling he’s not really our enemy, and I don’t want him to die. Then I cast Mass Healing Word on myself, Oz, Vondal, Freki, and Cassandra.
Spell cast: Mass Healing Word at level 4
Everyone who I healed regains 12 HP
Cassandra uses Hold Monster to restrain the Cerberus. “Got him!”
Vondal tells us that he’s just Flux-damaged, we can help him and bring his mind back, we owe it to him to try. It’s a stirring speech, and I think he’s talking about Audreth, but no. He means the dog. I sigh and roll my eyes. Freki has a plan to establish dominance over it, which sounds like a better idea, but never mind. Oz hasn’t murdered anything in the last five minutes, so he’s gonna kill it.
Oz kills the Cerberus in a way that is excessive even for him, which is really saying something. The mist swirls and the dog is gone. Oz hears a whisper in his mind that says Yeeesssssssssss.
Cassandra exhales and looks to see if there are more threats. “Are we in the clear?” she asks.
“Don’t you know?” Freki asks her.
“You’re the hunter,” she says.
“You’re the leader,” he counters.
She sighs and heals herself.
Cassandra heals herself with a minor assist from Vondal’s wand of healing. I cast Cure Wounds on myself.
Spell cast: Cure Wounds at level 4
I regain 24 HP
Oz wants to kill the unconscious guy, naturally, but Vondal actually steps in the way this time and insists that we cast some sort of ritual to heal his mind. I’m not sure what that would entail, but luckily Bec has some ideas. Maybe something tied to his identity would help him recover his memories? Vondal remembers that Audreth was a Warlock and a Paladin of Peylor.
Cassandra listens to what Vondal says, then says that if he’s a Warlock and a Paladin, that means he’s pledged to two entities. We would need to restore the ties to both of them. Besides Peylor, who else might he be pledged to? “The Great Old One,” Vondal thinks. The Great Old One is linked to the Flux somehow. If it gazes upon you, it drives you mad.
Vondal gets right to work. He makes the sign of Peylor over Audreth’s heart, draws tentacles representing the Great Old One over his stomach, and puts a piece of paper with “The Great Old One” and “Peylor” written on it in his mouth. Bec, Cassandra and I help Vondal with the ritual.
Audreth sits up and recognizes Vondal! The ritual was successful! Bec explains that we’re underneath HQ. Audreth thinks that means they were successful in reaching “the source.” They came from the mountain. There were four of them on the mission: Audreth, Rubinia, Mallory, and Lorelei.
Oz is confused about the number of Mallorys that exist. I explain that the Mallory down here is a changeling, and the one upstairs is the original one. We used to work for the changeling, but then he disappeared and now the original is back. Simple! Oz says he saw Mallory shifting shapes rapidly in the mirror shards, and not on purpose.
We explain that Rubinia is upstairs, but we haven’t found Lorelei. Now we know that Changeling Mallory is in trouble. But how did Audreth’s party, and now our party, end up in this weird place from two totally different starting points? Audreth says the roots of the World Tree are expanding far beyond where they should, creating more and more Flux points.
Bec uses Mage Hand to scoop out some vials of water for herself and Freki.
Audreth says something attacked his party down here before he could sound the alarm. The others all fell, and then he did. Vondal tries to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, he was alone and outnumbered. There’s a flash of anger and Freki senses some self-righteousness at that. I think there’s something he isn’t sharing, but I don’t ask about it right now.
He asks whether he said anything when we met him. We explain, with maximum sound effects, how the battle went down. He says, “It seems I was outnumbered again.”
Freki asks him whether he really was alone. He says his party was ambushed, they didn’t have a chance to put up a decent defense. Audreth says he fought on the front lines, while the others fought from behind where it was hard for him to see. It doesn’t seem like deception, but he does seem a little angry about how it went down. Freki presses him about what his warrior heart tells him about Mallory’s actions.
“I do not know them well, and would not presume to judge their valor in combat,” he says. A stone wall. Pretty sure that wall is casting some shade, though.
Freki thinks there is some evil afoot that needs to be rooted out. Audreth says this is beyond good and evil, and anyway, everyone has the capacity for evil. I tell him Freki means whatever force was controlling him. He says “The less you know about that, the better,” and I think Bec and I both just broke out in hives.
Audreth says he’d like to join our effort to find his friends, if we’ll have him. Bec and I are on board. She’d like to press on without stopping to rest. She explains that she saw a vision of a tower in the mirror shards and she thinks we should find the woman there.
Vondal and I think we should go back to HQ for an hour. He and Oz need time to resummon their familiars, and why do it down here? It sucks down here! Now that the distractions are gone and…um…we’re talking about it…the tower seems closer. Is that why it’s closer, because we’re thinking about it?
“Do you think we should go there?” Bec asks Cassandra.
“No. But I think we have to,” says Cassandra.
Vondal says he’s almost done summoning, which is great, because I’m so sick of looking at all the nothing down here. Except that it’s impossible, because he just started summoning and it takes an hour. I try to focus on the ladder and bring it closer. Hey, it’s here! And the tower is gone, since I’m not focusing on it.
Hey, Big Brain Academy here. Why don’t we just focus on the people we’re looking for and bring them closer? Why not use this dumb place to our advantage? Vondal mentions that we glow like bonfires and anybody who’s around will see us coming. That seems like a given, considering it’s a TOWER surrounded by NOTHING, but okay. Bec says to Freki that she thinks his goddess might be in there.
Audreth uses some sort of primordial power to share his memory of Lorelei with all of us. We all see her in our mind’s eye. Bec recognizes her as the woman on the throne in the tower. Looks like we know where we’re going, then.
And now, the Animal House close!
…Ozborn Underfoot went on to found a town called “Little Harm” that still exists to this day.
…Bec went on to re-bunk many previously de-bunked cryptids and became a giant in the field of cryptozoology.
…Vondal invented a spell that always does 69 damage, but only at exactly 4:20.
…Freki completed his martial arts training and became the first-ever werewolf ninja. Whether he ever became the vengeance-obsessed revenant Wrecki, I do not know.
…I met a dwarf named Varric Tethras who suggested that I write down all my adventures. And now you know the rest of the story!