Callie’s Journal
My finely-honed cleric’s instincts wake me up, alerting me that Lorelei is in pain. Also, she’s screaming at the top of her lungs. Looking closer, I can see that she’s just covered in these horrible little Flux-sores.
Rubinia, Cassandra, and Bec also look. Rubinia and Cassandra are horrified, but they don’t have a spell they think will help. [GM’s note: Are you saying Bec was not horrified? Harsh!]
Meanwhile, there’s a ruckus outside. Freki’s muffled voice says, “Put my feet down and pick up my arms!”
All the guys tumble into the dorm, Cal carrying Freki for some reason. [GM’s note: Because Freki is still suffering from 5(!) levels of exhaustion from the recent intense Flux exposure.]
Rubinia says, “It’s Flux Warp. We need to do something before it’s too late.”
Vondal isn’t surprised, like he’s seen this before or at least has heard of it.
Anyway, I cast heal, and the sores close. Lorelei stops screaming, but she’s unhappy about how inside her personal bubble we are. I can’t blame her, but this is an emergency!
Vondal yells that we have very little time and asks if I can teleport us somewhere else. Like…wehre? Why? What? He explains that Lorelei is like a pressure cooker that’s been temporarily bolted shut. I don’t know what a pressure cooker is, but I assume that’s not what you want to do with them?
Freki consults Hugin. Hugin says they can shield her. He tries to throw his cloak around Lorelei. She tries to wriggle away, but he kind of bear hugs her with it and gets it around her shoulders.
When the cloak settles, she says, “Oh, that’s so much better. How did you know to do that?”
Freki says he was guided by his bird friends.
“Ask them how long this will work,” says Vondal.
Freki asks them what’s next. “We’ll stay,” they say.
“Or you’ll explode like a geyser out of the ground, a geyser of Flux. With your flesh as the moist ground it explodes out of.”
Rubinia suggests that she has a way to turn this situation to our advantage. Wow, cold. She wants to consult with her organization, which it seems like Lorelei might also be part of. Oh, the “not necromancer” group? Great, this gets better and better. I’m sure the have an optimal way to get all the Flux pudding out of Lorelei.
Vondal has some kind of harebrained plan to squeeze the Flux out of Lorelei like venom from a snake. Wait, then what? Do we put it in some kind of jar?
Cal is like, “Vondal…I think that might be really bad.”
Vondal says, “It’s okay buddy, you’re just real tired.”
But I agree with Cal. I’m pretty sure this is a terrible idea, and I think I know why, even if I can’t remember right now.
“All we need is a Grand Elemental Master,” Vondal insists.
“Oh yeah!” Cal remembers what happened there. We fought a dragon, and later the Master of Water died saving Vondal from Flux poisoning. It wasn’t great.
“Does the Raven Queen have any ideas that don’t involve necromancers getting a new explody bomb?” Vondal asks.
“I do,” says Lorelei. Wait, she’s the Raven Queen? “Sort of,” she says.
“Everyone seems so tired,” says Cassandra. “Nobody should go anywhere.”
Oz thinks we should get the hell outta here, which is fair.
Freki closes his eyes and feels himself become the cloak. There’s a force here that is symbiotically connected to him. That power is keeping the Flux at bay within her. It’s stable, and might not last forever, but it will last as long as it needs to.
Bec sums up: “This is stable, but we still need to find a way to get the Flux out of Lorelei safely.”
“We should tell the boss about this,” Oz suggests.
“Tell me what?” demands Mallory, pushing his way in the room. We all shuffle around, making room.
Vondal explains the situation in his own particular way.
We’re all so tired that, since the emergency has passed and nobody is dead or exploding, we all kind of just want to go back to bed. Freki wants to stay near the cloak, and whatever. We’ve all camped together. I go back to my bed and try to settle in around my pixie wings.
Freki asks Vondal if he can stay awake, on watch.
“Strong maybe,” Vondal assures him.
Oz’s monkey glows now, like a book light. He also can’t benefit from invisibility, on account of the glowing.
Anyway, I’m exhausted and don’t notice anything. But later on, Freki notices that Lorelei has become invisible and is casting the spell again on Rubinia. Freki asks the birds if he should let this happen. They assure him that they’ll watch over her. So it’s up to Freki whether to interfere, and he decides to say a little too loud, “Heeeeeyyyy, what are you doing?” He was trying to wake up me and Bec, but we are so out of it.
Rubinia says, “We need to go. Do not try and stop us.”
“Why you being sneaky?” Freki asks.
“So you won’t try to stop us,” says Rubinia.
Rubinia and Freki are in agreement that we all want to help Lorelei, but Rubinia thinks her friends can help. Freki doesn’t want his bird friends to leave him, but he trusts their judgement, and they want to go. Rubinia and Lorelei promise to return and thank him for letting them go, each in their own way.
Then Cassandra gets up, says nothing, and follows them out the door. Freki hears her say, “Please wait just a moment. I have something for you. Call us if you need help, don’t get in over your head.”
Freki figures this might be a sending stone, like the SPI has several of.
She comes back in and says to Freki, “I hope this works out for everybody.”
“Me too,” says Freki, imbuing his words with layers of meaning.
The next morning. I take a look around and notice that Rubinia and Lorelei are gone. Sighing, I head over to my shrine to pray. Bec opens the door and HELLO OZ IS HERE. I peek with one eye at their conversation. Oz is very intent on convincing us that he isn’t a creep. From somewhere downstairs, Vondal is singing.
We all go down for breakfast, where Vondal has made a lasagna and serves it up for us. Mallory wanders in, helps himself, and tries to leave again, but Vondal insists that he join us. He also pours some sort of thick wine or possibly gravy.
Just as Mallory is about to take a big drink, Vondal tells him that Rubinia and Lorelei are gone. Cassandra explains that she didn’t want a fight and that she gave them a sending stone.
Mallory asks Freki how safe Lorelei really is in the cloak.
“Safe in the short term. But I have a question. When was the last time you and Cassandra disagreed about something?”
“I’d say we’re disagreeing right now, but what’s done is done,” says Mallory. “I trust Cassandra and so should you.”
“You wanted the Flux out of the tower, and now it is,” says Freki.
“Back in the hands of the necromancers, who can make a bomb out of her,” Vondal puts in.
“I doubt it. There are other people who are more into that stuff.” Mallory looks pointedly at Vondal. “These necromancers are our allies.”
Oz pipes up that I need some better armor. Yeah, I do, as a matter of fact!
Mallory tosses some bags of coin at us: back pay! [GM’s note: except for Oz! All of his pay went to his debtors. XD] “You’ve all done good work and I want to thank you. You risk life and limb, but somebody’s gotta do it and I appreciate you sticking to it.”
He’s got a notepad. Lots of new business. The SPI has been trying to get Sima’s body back. The elves agreed to return the body and keep the secret of the changelings, but they have conditions. They want a waiver of their SPI duties until the Tree planting (ETA: 20 years). They need all hands on deck for that, apparently. Meanwhile, the elves are willing to devote resources to recovering the elven agents lost in the recent SPI fire, but not willing to pledge new agents until the previous ones are saved. They also demanded the Ioun Stone of Mastery back, but Mallory argued that Oz should hold onto it for now, because it’s better in action than in a vault. So it’s our “ward” until Tybalt’s return. Oz had better not let anything happen to it!~ Mallory also paid off a number of the people who Oz owed money to.
Cal tells Mallory that he still has a ton of magic items from Invictus’s estate. And that monster head, which he pulls out of the bag.
“Holy hell!” says Mallory, startled. “Where has that thing been? Is it going to come to life? Is it going to eat the lasagna?”
“Hasn’t yet,” says Cal.
“I guess I have some people who could study that,” says Mallory. “One thing at a time.”
Vondal wants to inscribe some ritual spells in his spell book. I suggest going through my emporium! I can offer a 10% discount to all my colleagues at the SPI!
Oz is still complaining about his sparkle feet and antlers. Mallory says all we need to do is consult the preeminent Flux expert. He looks pointedly at Vondal.
“I’m not putting you on any new cases until you sort this out,” says Mallory, of our warped forms. “I got a few ideas here. That Sonan guy who saved your lives before? He died, but he’s a Samsaran, so he comes back. He’s probably not full grown, but at least he’s not a baby. That’s one idea. Next, you’ve got some colleagues back at Triumph, the ones you said you didn’t want to work with anymore. They were smart. They left to find their own solutions. Maybe they found some.”
Oz says under his breath, “I think he’s making this up as he goes along.”
“Shut up, I got more ideas! You know St. Benedor? Only the greatest healer in all of Aecus?” He fills us in on what happened with that hurricane thing we didn’t go help with. St. Benedor had a vision from Pelor, but it didn’t come true. Unusual for him, apparently. In any case, a great healer should be able to help us.
Then he suggests Grainne, a swamp witch and changeling. Granted, she’d probably extract some sort of soul price from us, but it might be worth it.
Also, even if St. Benedor is mad at us, he might listen to his daughter. Who’s a changeling!
“So don’t mention the changeling chunks in your bag,” says Oz to Bec.
“OK, spill it,” Mallory orders.
“I feel bad about it, but I was excited by the scientific discovery. Everyone thought changelings weren’t real,” Bec explains.
“Have you had time to look at it?” Mallory asks.
“Bec, you should lie now,” Oz advises.
She looks in her bag, expecting some gnarly decomposition, but all that’s left is goo. EW!
Vondal does prestidigitation to clean off the former changeling body parts. Apparently this is also how he bathes, and the list of things I wish I didn’t know grows longer.
“We need to get rid of our freakness,” says Vondal.
Oz thinks we belong in a swamp. Speak for yourself! I’d rather talk to the priest of Pelor. Vondal thinks I should commune with my deities, which is an ace idea.
Anyway, Vondal also wants to fill Mallory in on what he saw in his vision, about how the Flux was created by the traitorous elf.
Cassandra says she thinks she’s been blessed for her whole life, but not by any of the gods we know. This “forgotten goddess.” It feels right to her.
“Let’s be honest,” says Mallory, “You should all be dead. Many times over. You’ve been protected.”
“I think I’m linked to her, or at least to that sword.” Cassandra nods at the daggers that used to be the hornblade.
Vondal wants Oz to try taking him along on a dagger teleport, but Oz refuses to become a VONDALFLY NO NO NO.
Cal brings up his vision of Moradin, saying “Mother, I will make them remember.” Does that mean the forgotten goddess is an original deity who spawned others?
Cassandra thinks maybe she can learn more, and perhaps even learn to heal the Flux herself somehow—her own Fluxtaint has somehow faded without her even trying.
Mallory flips another page in his notebook. “So you didn’t manage to save my double.”
“I’m sorry, boss. I wanted to, but we were so tired,” says Cassandra.
“We need to make that a priority,” says Mallory. “If he doesn’t meet with me once a month, he’ll rot. And he saved the SPI at its lowest point, so we’re gonna do the same for him.”
Relatedly: Amisa, the changeling who was imprinted on Sima but is now adrift and rotting, still needs a new anchor. Vondal had volunteered, but Mallory says he cannot do it till his Fluxtaint is brought under control. None of them can.
Mallory continues: “Next up: Oz, you have some coins?”
The coins appeared after the other Mallory suggested that we had already found them, which is admittedly hinky. He asks Cassandra if she can identify the coins. Oz hands her one, after showing off his fancy finger work with it.
“My ritual book is in my lab. Just bring them up there later,” says Cassandra, sounding disgruntled.
“Next. Based on what you told me, this tower is under the Flux, which is also in the Flux, which is also in the Feywild, and also maybe the Afterworld. Whatever’s happening down there needs to not be happening. We have to find some way to stop it. Nerull, much as I don’t trust her, might be a resource. We’re on the same side for this.”
“So tell me about that monk guy,” Mallory goes on.
Oz says the monk was a dick who looked like Vondal, but was way more chill. He skims over the part where the monk offered to show us how he did his monk stuff and Oz just stabbed him. Also, he talks up his stabbing skills. I guess he did manage to land one on the monk, but he didn’t really do a lot of damage.
Bec explains more about the multi-planar nature of the encounter, which Mallory finds fascinating.
“He was so much cooler than me,” Vondal groans. “Like, I never thought I could be that cool, but then there he was!”
“And he had that crane tattoo,” Oz points out.
“Those weird tattoos the changelings have?” Yep, those. Like the one I saw on my father, but I rejected that reality and the tattoo disappeared. “If those tattoos have something to do with the Flux, then we should find out what it is. Maybe we should try to find this monk,” Mallory concludes.
“He seemed like one of those people who says they want to make the world perfect by getting rid of non-perfect beings,” says Bec.
“He also beat you real bad!” says Vondal to Oz.
“I don’t remember that,” says Oz. “He could’ve been you, you know.”
“I could have been cool,” says Vondal, marveling.
“I get a weird vibe from it. If you ask the changelings about it, be careful,” Mallory advises.
“Yeah, they’re shifty,” says Bec, winning the day.
“Now, I’ve got news. Squeaks and Rain have gone missing,” says Mallory. “I would want you guys to go after them, but not now, not until you fix it. In other news, no one knows what’s become of the Brucolac. Seems to be some trouble brewing in the vampire lands, but you have to take this info with a grain of salt, considering it’s coming from our new agents.”
That’s right, Etria LeDuc and Meerlinda Descant are joining the SPI! Since Arallu invoked the Aecus Concord, they have to ante up some agents.
Everyone has objections, except Cal, who probably just wants them handy for killing. He advises that they’ll stick to their word, but not past it. As long as our goals align with theirs, we can count on them, but we should never trust them.
Speaking of new agents: Mallory reports that his efforts to exclude Xaryuvia from joining the Aecus Concord have failed: TEAM has started diplomatic negotiations entertaining their request, and it seems all but certain to be successful at this point. It’s not known yet though who the Xaryu hive will send to join the SPI.
“How do we get the rest of the agents out of you?” Mallory says to Vondal, before assuring him that he’s one of the best agents.
“Nice of you to lie to me like that, boss!” says Vondal.
Vondal asks to requisition a bottle of air, so we can breathe in the portable hole.
I’m going to try to develop my own spell list, which I never told anyone about. Shhhhhh!
To help us decide what to do next, I commune with my goddesses, asking three questions:
- Between Grainne and Saint Benedor, is Grainne the better choice to aid us in curing our conditions?
- Avandra: Yes. Erathis: No.
- Was the monk guy we encountered a real Vondal?
- Erathis: No. Avandra: It was a trick!
- Does Bram really know where our agents are?
- Erathis: Technically. Avandra: Barely.
Then we voted on what to do next, deciding to go see the changelings first, then the swamp witch.
Our next few steps will be:
- Some days of downtime to prepare.
- Defunkify. Gather intel on the crane tattoos at the same time.
- Find Eeoram.
- Find Rain and Squeaks.
- Talk to Bram about missing SPI agents.
Downtime activities
- Cassandra: Identify the coins.
- Oz: Acquire poison from underground network.
- Vondal: Scribe commune with city into ritual book; buy identify.
- Vondal & Mallory: Requisition a bottle of air.
- Callie & Oz: Requisition better armor for Callie.
- Cal: Deposit magic shit from Invictus’s ritual room at HQ.
- Freki: Replenish arrows; spend some time in nature.
- Bec: Transcribe and/or learn spells from Letharil and Sartus.
10% discount from Callie’s shop for inventory items, including magic inks for spell scribing!