Session 19 - "The Rotting Garden" Report

General Summary

In the darkness of the underground retreat of Cirvai's Garden, the party begins to explore. Walking down the stairs, they find themselves in a large circular room. It extends in the four cardinal directions, with the stairs making the southern passage. In front of the party is a small well.

Thais Argyri takes out her lantern and lashes a rope to it, then slowly lowers it into the well, looking for any sort of holes or damage to the well... or any sorts of pests waiting to attack. Thankfully, though, the well seems to be a perfectly intact well that does not house any hostile creatures within.

Micaiah Louvre notices a shrine in the northern direction: it is dedicated to Kona-Karr, with a rock garden and hardy plants nestled into the rocks. A statue of the woman herself: human with long hair braided in two ropes over her shoulders. She wears leather sandals, a cloak, and carries branches of ripe berries, rabbit furs, and fresh flowers on a leather belt about her waist. She holds out one hand with a soft smile, offering a sprig of... something. It looks like it was once an actual plant, but time has dried it out and crumbled it to dust.

There is an inscription below her feet, reading, “I gift you what heals all.” In the rock garden, they find twelve different herbs: echinacea, chamomile, sage, garlic, ginger, peppermint, lavender, rosemary, thyme, turmeric, cilantro, and basil.

Foenix Stolnent identifies the plants, and Micaiah takes a few sprigs to make a tea. Thais takes some sage to burn in offering to Syria.

Meanwhile, Foenix opens a door off the eastern hallway and finds an underground garden, with beautiful flowers and glowing moss. There are butterflies that lazily fly around the space, which Foenix realizes with alarm are death butterflies - butterflies that feed off carrion. Normally, because the party are still living, corpse eaters should not be a problem. But the death butterflies have no qualms using the poisonous powder that coats their wings to create corpses for them to consume.

Foenix quietly closes the door, sealing the butterflies inside. The party debates how they can deal with the swarm, but all ideas (fireball, ice storm) come with an area of effect that would decimate the garden. And that is something they most definitely do not want to do.

The issue is tabled while they continue to explore, heading to the western hallway and finding a small library with enchantment, potion, and runebooks. In a desk, they also find a journal belonging to the dragon who built this place: a silver dragon named Cirvai.

It becomes apparent that she fell in love with the community that sprang up close by, and worked as a healer to be close to them for many years. It was rumored that the gods granted her her long life and draconic form to continue her work (rather than the other way around), but then over time the community began to disintegrate and eventually collapsed entirely.

While her mental state, for unknown reasons, looks to have already been in decline, the final entry on Silen 14, 912 of "They have gone. I have nothing else." Does not bode well.

Back at the shrine, Olena joins Micaiah and Foenix. Her errant statement that the quote on the statue could be a pun leads to the two solving the puzzle, placing a sprig of thyme ("time heals all") in the statues hand. Inside they find Cirvai's recipe book and an amulet of health, which is given to Foenix.

The final place not yet explored is a room locked behind a portcullis, at the end of a southern hallway from the eastern room (which is a general storage room). It glows with soft white light, and as Thais approaches, she can see inside: behind the portcullis is an alchemy and enchanting room. This place is veritably stacked with tools and materials to create potions, enchanted items, and curatives.

There is a tapestry directly opposite the portcullis. It has a bouquet of poisonous plants and fungi sitting on a table set with a skull, burning candle, and a wine glass, and if as she studies it, a wave of nausea washes over her. A curse, but thankfully she avoids the best of it. She calls back to the others to warn them, and Foenix nocks an arrow, shooting it directly at the rope that holds the tapestry up. It hits and knocks the tapestry to the ground.

Foenix makes quick work of the locked portcullis, and Olena and Thais work together to lift the gate.

As they step into the alchemy room, they begin to flip through Cirvai's recipe book, eventually finding a recipe for a potion of invulnerability. They decide to take the time to create a potion of growth (using the swelling vine harvested earlier in the day), Olena taking the lead. The obsidian dagger they use to chop ingredients snaps halfway through (item of sacrifice), but they are able to complete it.

Finally, they decide to exit the garden's underground structure, heading out a further eastern passage and coming out on a lower hillside. A stream runs by a cairn of stones with a spear sticking out of the middle of it: a shrine to Grund. Foenix takes the time to investigate it, finding a simple amulet that Thais recognizes as a symbol of Reka.

Scoffing, Foenix breaks it, and as the party watches, the stream immediately turns a bright red. Blood instead of water flows past their feet.

Micaiah wonders if perhaps Reka is the source of this corruption, and if there is some way to potentially bring Cirvai back to herself. Inspiration hits, and he casts disguise self. The form he takes is that of the goddess Kona-Karr, hoping that the devotion Cirvai clearly had for the Mother of Mothers would bring her back to herself.

And so, Micaiah calls out to Cirvai in his new divine disguise, and the party braces themselves as a shadow begins to circle above them...