Session Eight: Tuning Fork of Unknown planes

We start to divvy up and distribute the treasure. While we are doing this, Toadvine approaches and says that Isoldae freed him, and he's kind of upset with Elias didn't help him. Angst was watching out, but now he's gone. Elias confronts him about Angst, band we learn Angst is injured behind the cave. Joe immediately runs to behind the cave while Ash, Franz, Dermish and Elias stay behind to handle Toadvine.
 
Ash dashes to catch Toadvine as he tries to run away and he gets a couple of really good hits on her. Elias hops on his broom stick and chases him down with his bow and arrow. Joe runs around the cave towards Angst. She sees a blood trail leading to him about 300 ft away.
 
Franz scorching rays Toadvine and gets a nice blast on Toadvine. Dermish comes in and casts Scorching ray as well and gets him really good.
 
Toadvine drops his weapons and tries to call us friends, and Elias runs up and punches him out just as he was saying "If you kill me, you'll never know how to save....."
 
Elias wakes him up and we learn that Isolde sent him here to kill Angst. Isolde wanted to hurt QM, and that's why she wanted to have Angst killed.
 
Meanwhile, Joe runs up to Angst and he's got a sword through his chest. His lips are blue.
 
Magdalena is there, and she is panicking unsure what to do with this situation. Maggie pulls the sword out of Angst, and the blood flow has stopped. Joe tries to use magic to heal him and keep him alive. However, it seems like it's too late.
 
Magdalena is absolutely heartbroken, because she wanted to marry Angst.
 
Elias, at the news of Angst's death creates a frozen shard of water and shoves it down his throat. Ash uses all the magical healing she can muster to prolong his suffering. He does die, but just before he dies, he tells Elias that Angst is in hell and we will find him on the first layer of the abyss. Maybe he'll see us there. The last thing Toadvine says is "Your father will be so proud of you" Elias sends a Raven to warm QM.
 
Flies start to burst out of Angst's chest. A portal opens up around him and he begins to sink into it. Joe and Maggie try desperately to pull him out of the portal. Neither of them can hold onto him without getting pulled into the portal. Magdalena refuses to let go of Angst. Below they can hear screaming and taunts of blasphemy and it's terrifying.
 
Joe lets go of Angst and grabs Magdalena so she isn't pulled into the portal. She just barley pulls her off of Angst. Angst sinks in fully and disappears as Magdalena digs at the ground for him. Magdalena's hand is black from where it entered the portal. She says "We're going to get married" and falls over. All that is left is Angst's sword.
 
Maggie, sits up, grabs Angst's sword with her cursed hand and declares "I am going to kill Isolde"
 
Franz is able to determine that Maggie's hand is magically cursed. Something to do with anger and rage. When she picked up the sword, the blackness started to spread down her arm as her anger got higher.
 
It seems that she has some kind of curse that is taking over her. She's brought something back with her. Franz tries to warn her, but she just says she's fine.
 
On our way back to town we run into QM who is devastated that Angst has been taken. Franz reminds us that we have a book about demons so maybe it will give us clues about getting to the Abyss. Dermish has the Demonomicon Volume 4 written by Ilgueve herself.
 
We get back to town. QM gives the bad news to Blackwood. She wants to plan and gather reinforcements and QM basically tells her to fuck off. We aren't waiting.
 
We go to Esoterica to see if we can learn anything about getting to the Abyss there. As we walk into the shop, The old lady behind the desk says "The cards were right. Ain't nothing good coming my way today" She offers to give us a fortune.
 
She tells Franz that he'll be obtaining everything he is trying to achieve.
She tells Dermish that he should watch his back. He has hidden enemies. Everything you think is gonna be good is going to bad
She tells Joe that she is trapped and chained. Joe pulled the devil card. She can't escape
She tells Elias "They say at the end we will all be judged, but right now that is you. You are judge, jury and executioner"
Ash declines to get her fortune read, but the witch did look at a card for her without saying what it was.
 
Elias finds that Esoterica is in the ledger. Elias gives her 50GP and she gives us the book on the Abyss. She offers another book, but Elias declines. Dermish follows in Elias's footsteps and gives her 23 more GP.
 
She the offers a magically glowing redish black arrow to us. It will cost $2k GP. Its an arrow of fiend slaying. It would insta kill a lesser fiend. somewhere in the middle, it will make them run away, and even the strongest fiends will take note of it. It does 6D10 damage. We decline.
 
She offers Healing Potions for 50GP each.
 
Joe offers to buy Ash's potion believing she doesn't have any gold, but Ash reveals that she has some gold from the cave. It was a kind offer though.
 
We each buy a Healing potion. Joe then offers the mysterious cupcake to the witch in exchange for the arrow. The cupcake had a purple worm inside of it and the witch is delighted to take it from her.
 
Joe hands the arrow to Elias. Elias takes some of the frosting from the cupcake as it's contaminated with purple worm poisoning. He would need to spend 2 hours to refine it to do this. (It will add 12d6 to the damage)
 
We go back to the barracks with the books and arrow. QM was proud of us without saying it. We are learning a bit about the theory of the planes. not much on how to travel between them. Dermish is learning about the kinds of demons we might encounter.
 
We learn about the Chaos plane and a elemental god named Therezdan. An Oberith named Poezoozoo from another universe. Poezoozoo and his Oberith goons had taken over their own plane of existence and wanted to move into another plane of existence. They created the shard of pure evil. A tiny piece of this shard was in the black diamond. This shard of pure evil is world breaking. A sliver of it can destroy a whole world.
 
Poezoozoo handed Therezdan the Shard of Pure Evil. Therezdan is known as the chained god. His followers sometimes hear his voice which sounds like screams of pure evil which can drive them insane. Therezdan was a great elemental. He wanted Therezdan to put the shard of pure evil into the Astral plane and it would allow them to invade. However Therezdan wanted power for himself, so he took the shard and plunged it into the depths of the elemental chaos. It started to sink there and created infinite layers creating the Abyss. This is how the Abyss was created.
 
Eventually the oberiths got into our plane and ruled the Abyss for a while. Eventually an eladrin was able to come down and take over the AByss for a while. Therezdan ended up chained in a random layer of the abyss that evades all knowledge and nobody really know what happened to Poezoozoo.
 
Poezoozoo holds sway over all flying creatures. He rules the Plane of infinite portals aka the Palace of 1001 closets. The only layer of the Abyss that has sky is the first layer. It has a red dieing sun in the sky there. Is this where we will find Poezoozoo and his flying goons.
 
We also learn of demons called Tanari. They are the ones who defeated the Oberiths. There are few oberiths left in the Abyss. The Tanari are there. A couple of the most powerful ones are Orcus, Demogorgon. A Tanari first appeared when mortal souls died and ended up on the Abyss. All Tanari started off as mortal beings on the material plane, rose up through the ranks and then eventually defeated the Oberiths.
 
We learn that souls, when they die, end up going to the Fuge plane where they are sorted out as petitioners where they wait there for their gods to come and retrieve them. Many times, demons and devils will come in and snatch those petitioners up. There is a portal in the city of Brass on the plane of Fire that will take you to the Abyss.
 
Magdelina speaks up saying that she believes she can get us to....somewhere.....she has us follow her to her house. When we arrive, she tells her father that she needs the tuning fork. He notices her hand, and becomes quite worried. She is determined to get the tuning fork, so he relinquishes.
 
The tuning fork she has came from a wizard they once tried to treat and he passed. His name was Oculum. All she knows is the tuning for shifting to a plane that it is attuned to. A wizard with plane shift would have to cast the spell.
 
Madelina picks u the tuning fork with her cursed hand, and it starts to vibrate. Joe tries to grab it from her hand and she notices that Maggie's hand is beyond cold. When Joe touches her hand, her hand starts to grow black. However, Joe is able to grab the tuning fork. However, it continues to vibrate. A portal opens up. It's an orange portal. Magdalene tries to go through it and Elias grapples her. The rest of us try to talk sense into her. Maggie tries to touch Elias's face with her hand, but he is able to knock her out. Joe looks down at her hand and sees that it is turning black. She wants to go through the portal. Franz tries to stop her, but she goes in. We all decide to follow after her.
 
Dermish dives into the portal with Magdalena just behind him confessing that if she wasn't in love with Angst, she would totally be into Dermish.
 
In the Portal, we are surrounded in darkness. It's some kind of cave. Joe, who wears no shoes loves the way the ground feels here. It feels more like home than actually home. She has tremor sense for 30 ft as long as her feet are on the ground.
 
It seems we are trapped in the cavern with no seeming way out of here. Joe is able to detect a cavern ahead, and Joe uses mold earth to dig to it. She finds a 10ft by 10ft diamond. under the ground. We figure out that we must be on the Plane of Earth. Ash gives Joe a glove to cover her cursed hand. She gives her second glove to Maggie.
 
Joe uses her tremor sense to try and find smaller diamond pieces to break off pieces of the larger diamond. At that moment a monster things pops out of the ground. It latches onto the diamond and starts eating it. Joe gathers up a couple of shards of diamond. Elias scoops up some diamond dust.
 
Joe detects that more of these dirt monsters are coming, so Joe decides to try using the tuning fork again with her cursed hand. It opens up another portal in the middle of the portal. Elias jumps through. Ash tries to jump through but falls. She gets their attention and they go under ground to try and attack her, but Joe warns her in time and she is able to get through the portal.
 
As Joe goes through she is able to turn the diamond so that she can push it through. However, she is able to use mold earth to push it all the way through the portal.
 
Franz is able to leap through the portal without issue. Dermish is able to jump through and Magdalene comes in behind him. When we get through the next portal, we find that we are all falling at a really fast rate along with the diamond. There is no ground in site, and this is where we end. Falling through this unknown plane.
 
We note that we only started to fall when we saw the diamond fall and Jo fall afterwards. Before that, we were kind of hovering and disoriented.