Chapter 14: A Grisly End
After discussing their plans with the Githzerai, they were asked to clear out a mind flayer colony in undersigil, the massive network of tunnels and sewers beneath the city. This would prove to the githzerai they had the might to follow through with their plan to destroy the first mind flayer and stop him from attaining divinity. The githzerai also told them of the many factions in the city and how they might be able to help them procure a portal key to return home. They chose to work with the society of sensation, and set out into the streets to explore the city.
As they traveled through Sigil, they encountered many strange and wonderful sights. They eventually made their way to the markets and perused the wares of several extraplanar merchants, finding nothing worth buying. At the market, they encountered a group of 3 faction members arguing about the gods. When asked for their input, they answered that all 3 were correct in someways and wrong in others, which the group found disappointing (though a nearby Modron approved). They followed the modron and asked it questions about itself and its people, and learned of the great modron march and its crusade of lawful order.
As they made their way to the headquarters of the society of sensation, they encountered one of its members (known as sensates) using sensory stones to record experiences. She asked him to elicit serenity in a nearby Satyr musician who was nervous about his performance. Jolkottr used his magic to enhance his charisma, allowing him to perform exceptionally and eliciting great joy in him. The sensory stones turned yellow, and as they returned them to the sensate she told them the emotion captured was joy rather than serenity, but gave them a sensory stone to hold on to regardless.
Finally, they made it to the Civic Festhall where the society operated. It was in fact many halls filled with artists, theatres, and performers of every kind. In specially designed chambers, customers could pay to experience sensations captured within sensory stones. They met with the faction's leader, a flamboyant man named Aaron Darkflame Montgomery. He asked them to record their sensations as they ventured into the mind flayer colony, and in exchange he would pay them half the cost of a portal key and give them the contacts necessary to have one forged. And so they set back out into the city, traveling all the way back around to where they began in the lower ward (stopping by the gatehouse night market, where Jolkottr purchased ooze boudin balls from a minotaur butcher and quickly regretted eating them). They returned to the face of gith for the night.
The next morning, they set out towards the entrance to undersigil and made their way through the tunnels to find the mind flayer colony. Along the way, they encountered a dying cranium rat who warned them that "we have already won." Jawhara ended its life with her axe. In the next chamber, they found a group of creatures sitting at a table eating cake and drinking eat. Most of them were large hippopotamus-like creatures wearing baker's attire. They asked the group to have cake with them (the cake sported a pair of leathery wings atop it), and when the group refused they attacked them with large rolling pins and firearms. As the cake-eaters died, their heads separated from their bodies and grew wings and attacked them. Eventually, they slew them all and found their way through the tunnel (using large metal pipes with portals inside them).
The group discovered the entrance to the colony, recognizing it as a similar structure to the one they had escaped from months ago in the great below. They entered, steeling themselves for the task ahead. They encountered several mind flayers near the entrance, easily dispatching them before moving on to the central feast hall where they had spotted a mind flayer down the hallway. There, they were ambushed by two of the creatures (hidden out of sight, waiting for them) who blasted them with psychic waves and stunned them all. One of the mind flayers was an arcane spellcaster and used his magic to help keep them from fighting as the other two mind flayers grappled Kelthar and Jolkottr with their tentacles. With Jawhara kept distracted by the mage's magic, Jolkottr and Kelthar soon fell prey to the mind flayers' extremely efficient methods of extracting brains for consumption. As their bodies fell limp to the ground, the mind flayers gorged on their brains with delight, leaving Jawhara to fend for herself against three mind flayers. Thought she fought as hard as she could, even her great strength and the flame of Surtr was not enough to best them. She soon fell prey to them as they gorged on her brain as well...
..thus ended the travels of the Fabulous few.
With the knowledge of the party, the mind flayers surfaced and sought out the githzerai. They killed them in the streets and in their beds at night, exacting revenge for sending the adventurers to kill them. With the Githzerai dead and knowledge of the location of Arlyss and the First, the mind flayers traveled to the mistlands to support their progenitor in his efforts. A deep-delver would one day discover the abandoned colony, as well as the dead adventurers and their sensory stones. He would sell the stones to the society of sensation, and their captured sensations would make them one of the richest factions in the city.
No one knows what happened in the mistlands as Bahamut and her brood of metallic dragons converged upon Mets Gradaran and encountered a fleet of Mind Flayer nautiloids. As the same time, mind flayers emerged from the great below in every city in Sydonia and attacked the populace. As the second doom of Sydonia seemed certain, the mind flayers suddenly broke ranks and fled back into the great below. No one knows why they came, and why they fled. Since the attacks, Kind Edmund of Sydonia has ordered the church of woden to begin a grand inquisition against all psionic beings.
Lady Aelyn Silverlight never returned to the north, and Bahamut has not been witnessed in Arlyss since the mind flayer attack. She left her titles and land to Victavia Stralham (the former member of the Fabulous Few), who now rules as Duchess of Arlencourt.
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