2022/12/07: Downtime Report

General Summary

Various characters   Got names for the remaining shadow dragon hatchlings. Union got Verinkanathe the Dread Champion (male). Ominous, chuunibyou, regal. Malakai got Jeriko the Dark Trickster (f). Smart, cautious, mischievous. Eldrin got Ekaidratheeil the Shadow Killer (f). Quiet, watcher, dangerous.   Pickles are a shadow dragon's food of choice. They like rotten food. Not particularly picky eaters. Similar to black dragons in dietary preference. Ruby and Altruenthe may take the kids to see Ruby's (very scary) dragon dad.   These kids are somewhat on the small side. They're fairly knowledgeable thanks to racial memory stuff.   Locke is bringing priests from Leithien to look into the Silence thing. Get an Atonement, have them look around in the cavern. The priests are fairly horrified by the cavern, mostly because what they find doesn't make sense. There are just souls in the rock, animating it.   Locke is making a mansion for Knight in New Hallownest. Growing a house from stone and wood. Knight needed a throne room and receiving area. Menderbugs are finishing the mansion and whatever other throne and royal things are needed. More official house. Don't care where it goes, whatever the architecture people and defensive people suggest.   A bunch of menderbugs missing. Apparently hired by a gnome from Glitterhame. Far to the west. Gnomish quasi-underdark city known for its crafts. All menderbugs other than followers are gone. They're being showered with money and excellent materials and the gnomes love their work.   Underdark leader meeting happening about a week after downtime.   Locke, the menderbugs, and sentries decided to grow the mansion down from the ceiling, which should be very impressive. Stairs coming up from below in a huge staircase. It's been suggested we get some bowling balls and/or wind to blow people back down. The Menderbugs had a lot of adjustments and aesthetic touches they wanted to include. That took Locke about three days. He spent that and the rest of the month also doing permaculture stuff, getting the bugs and fungus and farming up to speed.   Eldrin asked if his shadow dragon will let him not call her by her full name. She demands he at least call her Ekaidratheeil. She's very cautious, collected... maybe a little serial killer vibes. Self-serving, but fairly logical. "She realizes she can't take you right now, so she'll follow your lead."   Eldrin is spending pretty much his whole time in Trunkwood. Checking in, making sure his apprentice doesn't feel like he owns his town.   Senal is heading home for retraining, a date, and teaching classes with her fiancé. Her new sword can do knockback and douse fires, among other things. She also contacts Eldrin to take her to the city Nadira showed her in the dream. It's a survivor town where everyone's holed up in a few buildings for defense. It's a coastal city on the edge of an Underdark ocean. It's extremely creepy. As they arrive, they're attacked by tentacley shadow creatures. Senal manages to hold the line until Eldrin can blast them away. They get inside and talk to the people there. It turns out this is Shadowcove. This is the home of the Queen of Curses. They discovered from those people that the Underdark leader meeting is happening in about a week.   The Queen of Curses says she "knows of the gem of which you speak, but it is not yet time to reveal that information." "Come back with Knight." Senal and Eldrin came to visit Knight in the middle of a council meeting. Knight's immediate response was "What is it now?!" His relief when he was told they hadn't brought a new issue and would in fact be backup in the Underdark meeting was palpable. Senal is heading back home. Eldrin drank at the Lumafly Inn, found out that the drink was fairly weak and expensive, and made an emphatic demand that Knight get them better booze by the time he comes back. (Eldrin drank the drink, dragged the bartender over the bar, made his request, and left. Knight, still overwhelmed and in a council meeting, responded with "WHY AM I RESPONSIBLE FOR ALCOHOL SUPPLIES?!" Apparently Alvidar doesn't import alcohol at all and makes very little.)   Union is hanging out with Malakai.   Sunderfury is wandering around, looking for interesting things and hoping for enough money to get more weapons to eat. He's mostly going between Darkhome and the mining area in hopes of finding that weird sword guarded by the monolith elemental. Ran into some undead, some other monsters, a weird procession of people in white robes with chingy staffs and Egyptian-themed golem things. They were heading in a direction that would take them north of Darkhome. Sunderfury also came across some fungus kaiju monsters. Very big, very strong, not very good. Sunderfury won. Particularly abominable-looking fungus kaiju monsters. These and the one that teleported in and killed a Sentry are likely from that weird fungus cavern with the horror movie monster person.   Apparently there have been mysterious drow showing up in the city, disguised as local drow. Buying and selling and such.   Rodger gave voice to some worries that the Hallownestian bugs need some degree of instability around them to maintain their semi-real existence. If too many problems get solved, that may cause more problems. Knight finds this unlikely, but it's something to keep in mind.   Buzz is on Ruby's island with Azhar. Things go well for the most part. After about two weeks, Azhar has to go in for work. She apologizes and gets grabbed by a gate. Dark fey (dragon) sorceress is cheerfully helping to raise Buzz's shadow dragon. The dark fey is technically the lady Buzz answers to. Buzz also checked in with Ruby to make sure Altruenthe had been okay with working with a technomancer. Altruenthe said as long as Buzz doesn't start the singularity and doom them all, he was pretty okay with it. Buzz said that if Altruenthe ever finds out about a technomancer doing something like that, Altruenthe should call Buzz so Buzz can help murder the person.   Ba'alzamon and Ril got out of their time bubble on October 13th. Ril came to look at the solcite near the mining zone. Nadira's crystal is the most powerful solcite crystal Ril's ever seen. Ril doesn't dare get too close; otherwise Nadira will have a vessel and Ril will no longer be an independent person.   Ba'alzamon went to handle some maintenance and things on his end. Ba'alzamon has an adopted daughter, who spent some time as an insane undead and some time as an insane alive person, then finally an insane little girl thanks to Alvidarian priests. The little girl is actually the heir to the lands Ba'alzamon was entrusted with, and Ba'alzamon has an agreement with her that he'll raise her and make sure she's got a proper education, and then she'll inherit her ancestral lands. She's still a bit stabby. She's about 10 years old, but looks 7. Ba'alzamon is taking her to spend some time with the kids on Guaradon as long as she promises not to commit acts of violence. She's basically the Wednesday Addams to their normal kids. She's a transmutation specialist. Might get some teaching from Blythe once Blythe finishes founding her school.   Union was waiting for Malakai to take him to Blythe and get him a psionic forge.   Ba'alzamon summoned a trader to trade with New Hallownest a bit.     Pre-session questions and issues: Knight's researching Nadira, studying Voices of the Void (and with Ngel Sfet), and handling local issues.   What to look into? Knight:

Make sure Hornet heals up fine. See about getting that Sentry resurrected. Figure out what that teleporting fungus hostile was.

Hornet's back up after a week. Sentry got rezzed by Scyka. There have been more sightings of the fungus things around. Probably from that fungus nightmare cave.

Mining zone logistics. We didn't rush that adventure just to sit on it for a month. Knight's talking to his financial advisor, figuring out whether and how to bring in Alvidar and the Thorandul Empire, finalizing the treaty (or at least nonaggression pact) with the kua-toa, and discussing logistics and defenses with the Darkhome council. Talked to Ril about her financial advisor in July, so should absolutely have had time to get him by now.

We have an Alvidarian barrister helping with logistics. He advises that most of the solutions will be hiring people and spending money. Hire dwarven miners from Thorandul. They're good about contracts. Some legal fees, some hiring of dwarven miners. Need to sell a meaningful portion of the output to the Thorandul empire and they'll be good about it. About 2000gp to the barrister. Hire mercenary guards to protect the miners. There's also a kingdom of deep dwarves not associated with the Thorandul. They're lawful evil, though. Good for relations. The dark dwarves would be more willing to hire out a few overseers. Recommended mercenaries are the Greyshielders. Talk to Zess.

Talk to Ba'alzamon and Ril about leylines near mine.

Shouldn't cause too serious issues. The local leyline makes Ril very goth and blacklightish.

Catch up with Zolsikar and his spiders. Are they going to be integrating more with New Hallownest? Keeping the masks but going back to those caves? Does Zolsikar want a mask, possibly reinforcing his identity?

Zolsikar would love a mask. The spiders are taking a more integrated role in darkhome. They like walking around as people rather than just waiting in a cave for food or danger. Locke made a throne home for Zolsikar and the spiders on the ceiling of New Hallownest.

Look into hiring mercenaries. I have enough money to pay at least a party or two of adventurers for a while, and having them leading patrols or objective raids with Sentries (and maybe mantises) as tag-alongs would allow for better growth. Check Alvidar and Castle Fallingstar. Make sure to get mages and healers.

If mercenaries or sufficient force, get situations checked out. Sulfur tunnels, horror fungus cave, Gollum, golems.

Put out the call for adventurers to help with Nadira. Already mentioned to players. May do something else first. Also see if Sunderfury wants to pursue that sword further.

Agriculture with Locke. Bring in some worker bees for him to make friends with. :P

Locke got some seeds from them. They're relatively secretive otherwise. The seeds are some of the largest viney tulip things Locke has ever seen. Sort of a vertically cave-growing pitcher plant. Dark grey-purple outside, goldenish inside. The flowers are almost three feet long. Sort of tube-shaped. They can apparently take sustenance from moisture in the air and minerals in the rock.

Drow priestesses in farming community were possibly in market for new god. Sith? Karnifax?

Sith's all for it. Might give books. Shane's busy for now, may come by once he's done with his adventure.

Talk to Ba'alzamon about defenses for Darkhome (and particularly New Hallownest).

Ba'alzamon was happy to help. The city could use some archers and other longer-ranged units. Better concentration of force. Crossbows, regular bows, etc. Ballista. Set up more wall enhancements and more walls. Some discussion about mining zone. Ba'alzamon pulls out 2360 Bigby's construction workers that will stay for 59 days to really give the walls a do-over and enhancement. They're floating hard hats and gloves and tools that work 24/7 (aside from breaks) and complain about questionably existent kids. Building several layers of walls with arrow slits, set up to allow falling back from one wall to the next. Walls are about 4 feet thick. Some apertures for frag-carrots. Tunnel/entrance path large enough for big bugs. Spiked pit moats with drawbridges at the entrances to the bridges. Need to set up countermeasures to earth-passing creatures.

What's up with that lost humanoid who fell into the Underdark from another dimension? What and who is she? Did she move on? Might have some answers in talks with Tim.

She helped out for a while, left some gifts, and joined a group of Alvidarians. There are a few windowsill planter boxes around the city that are growing what seem to be very strange-looking carrots. The Sentries have been instructed how to care for them. Always keep a few carrots in each box, cut them in half, and put one half back or something. They are frag grenade carrots; twist/snap the top off and throw, and they'll explode on impact. Good chance the planter boxes are enchanted to grow these; likely normal carrots if grown elsewhere.

When's the Underdark leader meeting happening? It's been a month and a half, so probably not yet.

A week from end of downtime.

Prep for dealing with Dreadgaze? Might be able to get strike teams from other Underdark nations. Figure out scale of Dreadgaze's territory and forces.

Not much info at present. Haven't been seeing the beholders much.

Dire corby spread still an issue? Are they close enough to be a concern?

Pretty far away. Not an immediate issue. 800-900 miles at present.

What's Ngel Sfet doing with the Black Hive beneath Darkhome now that she's no longer a Void Shaper?

Still about the same. She can still make the void constructs, but can also spend those spell slots on other things.

Give Champion's Short Sword to someone. Level 1 preferred. Rookie Sentry with potential? Vessel? Need characterization before I choose.

Want someone dependable and with potential. Tim will provide a list.

Maybe hand off Ibix to Hollow Knight or other Vessel?

Going with the Hollow Knight.

Test the Copper Choker of Headlessness.

Doesn't work for Knight. Basically just effectively kills and reforms him. His body falls off rather than his head disappearing. Knight just put it in storage.

What's up with the dream blossom?

It's growing pretty well.

Et-Kehri:

Figure out how to properly raise a baby shadow dragon. Coordinate with other parents, maybe talk to Zarlask through Knight's mirror. Acquire supplies and set up home properly.

Study big wizard's library to get more utility spells.

Talk to Sartine. (Need skull stats.) Possibly introduce to Teragus.

Sartine is mostly interested in convincing me to kill cultists. She's pretty single-minded on it, in fact. She largely deals with clerical magic and has knowledge about that, but she boosts arcane caster level.

Character(s) interacted with

Menderbugs, Queen of Curses, Azhar

Created Content

Verinkanathe, Jeriko, Ekaidratheeil

Notes

Still need to figure out fortification details, mining contracting details, mercenary contracting details, what to do about infiltrator drow. Knight's leaning towards the Thorandul miners. They're unionized and don't want to work with nonunion miners (i.e. the bugs), but they're also less evil than the deep dwarves.

(In response to finding out all known Menderbugs were followers): "I am going to say all the menderbugs that are your followers stayed. There were more in the city , but they got lured away by gnomish buisiness profits. Also the leader got changed as we rp'ed already. So statistically nothing happened, roleplay wise it was still a thing."