CURRENT SUMMARY

The road so far

Upon receiving a letter of invitation from the Owl Oracle, backed by a the arrival of members of the Owl guard for transport, all current Player characters were gathered together into a large traveling carriage. During the travel, and once all their number had arrived, they experienced a reminder of an event each of them had experienced. During this event each had met a strange, multiheaded bovid/cervidae, and been branded by the memory. On their bodies a hoof symbol appeared to the others during a strange and eldritch event.
Upon arriving at the castle and entertaining an audience with the Oracle, Eleanor , they were offered a chance of either lavish, but restrictive and guarded, protection or some amount of freedom working for the Oracle and/or the Kingdom of Belham. The offer was presented with the reveal that the Oracle could not see them with her prophetic vision or their immediate actions and impacts on the world. Each group had interacted with a strange and foreign being that had warped them in some fashion, and so the Oracle had tracked them down to help limit harm they could potentially have on the world. Their power to overturn prophecy was considered valuable so she also hoped for their help. Later to the group she'd revealed that this was because she'd foreseen a great cataclysm and believed their prophecy altering abilities could prevent it.
The party agreed to take somewhat altered variations of the oath, which they either did in secret or the Owl Oracle had agreed to, and were set upon their first task. A task they selected from a pool of options drawn at random. The option they selected soon revealed to be from a member of their party that they could not well remember, vaguely recalled as burly individual in armor, who had drawn a mission to recover a fallen star with similar fate warping properties to the South West. The star had fallen in the vicinity of Allencot Cathedral in the Draughmarsh and it was suggested they stop off at the cathedral first.


The party made their way south, ran into an annoying trader from Cedric Eastroot 's past, avoided a gnoll ambush, were briefly assaulted by zombies after coming upon the wreckage of another caravan, and realized that the Draugmarsh's path that was once protected by wardstones had fallen into disrepair. The weakened wards allowed the undead, a constant problem in the Draugmarsh, out and made them a greater risk, but this was their safest and closest route. The followed the path even after the wardstones fully ran out. Suffering some attacks, some traps, cultist sightings, and signs of specific sabotage tipped the party off of a dangerous third party in the area. They finally arrived at the Cathedral, fought off a cultist assault, and had a tense meeting with its controller - revealed to be a hag named Peggy Toestealer. They agreed to return a magical piece of chain, broken free from a gravestone, back to Peggy in return for aid, shelter, and information on how to navigate through the swamp and to where the cultist encampment was around the meteor impact crater.
Along the path to the crater they were joined by one of the cultists, who grew disillusioned with the cult, were attacked by several warped creatures, noticed the vegitation growing at abnormal rates, and had a brief altercation with a dragon wyrmling. The wyrmling had killed the cultist who revived in a disgusting and bloody display, now marked with chain tattoos. Breena managed to calm the dragon, and after a battle with strange mutated alligators and left behind their (and some of their victim's) remains in a sack to feed the dragon. Breena left similar gifts several times throughout the remaining journey.
The group finally snuck through the cultist poorly defended encampment to reach the impact crater of the meteor. There they encountered both trees rapidly growing, but also rapidly disintegrating into ash, a strange alien light, and a number of petrified cultists. The head cultists was communing with the light and, when the group attempted to attack him as a distraction - while using spells to secure the meteorite at the center surrounded by a light cloud - he inhaled the light cloud and battle began. After an arduous fight the cult leader, named Klor Makora of the Phis gbin tribe and worshipper of Apomps, exhaled the cloud and escaped w/ the meteor. Breena hearing the infant Color from Outer Space's dying cries, allowed it refuge to feed off her while Leemu, Cedric Eastroot, and Quy'xyn gave chase. In the ensuing chaos of the chase the cultist who had joined the party had been stolen away and drowned in mud by the cursed spirits of the swamp. The chase was close but the party finally caught up to Klor and Leemu finished him.
As they moved to return to the Ellencot Cathedral, through hostile territory, they heard screams and combat. They came upon a strange sight. A heavily mutated young black dragon, the warped and aged wyrmling they had just met, had destroyed the cultist interlopers. It left them with the ominous confirmation of their "being even" and told them to leave.
The party finished their business within the swamp and returned to Belham and the Owl Oracle. There they learned that the piece of meteor they had collected, and gained a vision from [See 'Orphic Shard visions' section], was an Orphic shard they had been sent to collect. They also learned that the other groups had found similar items and returned or lost them in varying manners. Upon interacting with the chain-link Orphic shard the Owl Oracle had a vision that revealed the shards could be merged together within the Pyre's flame, though it did not reveal how yet.
Breena traded the chain-link for a crystal egg to allow the baby 'Color from Space' to feed off its incredibly powerful magic while the oracle reviewed it. She was also warned that the Color would eventually consume her very essence and eventually burn the world unless it returned to its home plane of the Far Realms. This trade also revealed to them another vision. [See 'Orphic Shard visions' section]
After this meeting the characters had about a month of downtime. Within this time the following events occurred:

Nagak and Ularkri harassed Breena into listening to them talk about a barbarian event known as the "Red Dream". They warned her to focus on what was important to her when it happened so that she could control the form her rages took later, and Nagak revealed that he had been lead astray into a darker representation of power. Ulakri then would accost Breena periodically for the rest of the month trying to impart rage instruction to her, which Breena would begrudgingly allow.

Leemu approached Churchin Cloudclink with an interest in acquiring one of his experimental pistols. Chuchin agreed but in exchange for permission to review some notes Leemu had acquired on the outing to the swamp and revealing some of the items they had acquired while there. Elija Honeywood also approached Leemu for help and exchanged with him some knowledge of thieving arts and in return Leemu convinced the Owl Oracle to move the housing of Evelyn Grandel and her child away from the rest of the Fang-marked memento holders.

-Cedric Eastroot was swarmed by a large number of birds of all colors and kinds. Within the cloud of feathers he had a meeting with Gilacia and was given a mission to save an innocent man from being convicted of murder and was told to meet with the King. The bird swarm then magically shoved itself down Cedric Eastroot's mouth, leaving him with a mouthful of feathers.
Cedric Eastroot and Father Quy'xyn went and spoke to the Queen, thought the King was out, about Gilacia's request to free the man held for murder - Min-xie Gu-yucao. They were informed that he could not be released but that the Queen would arrange visitation in return for a favor. Specifically she wanted the group to handle the political strains that a Ravenashen ambassador, named Zoya, was causing due to a threat against her daughter Dennoyea. The party agreed, and met with the strained and short tempered mother. After some investigation, and a private conversation with Dennoyea, they determined that a stalker was lodging in the graveyard outside the city. Along the way the group was assaulted by a large undead boar. The Color from Outer Space - now grown stronger - attempted to attack the undead beast but its being seemed repellant to the color, and even caused it grevious harm. It lashed out and wounded Leemu before dying itself, although Breena and Leemu's sparks of the color revived it shortly after the battle was over.
Upon reaching the graveyard, finding it strewn with bones sucked dry of meat and reshaped to hold pigs that had feed on death, the group descended into the crypts beneath the yard. There they passed several sleeping Hill giants, their skin appearing pale and touched by undeath, until they reached a back room and there met a young Hill giant who had been "gifted" a necklace by a fairy to bind him into love with another being, and briefly would allow him to change shape to meet its size. Through a conversation that was confusing to the stupid brute they managed to convince him to give up on his infatuation, although he took this badly and began a tantrum while his shifting size began to crack the grave's foundations and wake the other giants. The party managed to escape without being captured or crushed by debris. Upon returning to the Palace and meeting with Zoya and Dennoyea they were given thanks, gifts, and realized something they had gained from the Hill giant was actually and Orphic Shard (although iirc, they had brought it as it had been a gift to Dennoyea). This prompted their third related vision. [See 'Orphic Shard visions' section]
Upon returning the party was given both the deed to their new home and permission to see Min-xie in prison. When they met with himCedric Eastroot was disgusted, as he appeared to be a free-wheeling (and ultimately worthless) drug addict. Cedric Eastroot, driven by his duty, and the party, driven by Father and Breena somewhat enjoying the good nature of Min-xie, began to ask him questions and investigate the occurrences. They soon found evidence of a setup and, along with a poisoned weapon that had been used to attack Min-xie, several eye witness accounts, and the Owl Oracle's aid they were able to prove Min-xie's innocence. There second meeting with the Owl oracle showed her much weakened, however, and complaining of a dark cloud afflicting her visions. (She had found, however, a place within the Pyre to store the Orphic shards) Using the party's help, the Oracle was able to focus in on the Cultist of Burning Hate (named George) who had attacked Min-xie and discovered him being merged with some alien entity of dark power. The part was sent to their small temple to stop it and both the Owl knights and Eagle Guard were mobilized to aid them. The party rushed to the temple, discovered and disarmed its trapped secret door, and headed down into darkness.
There they found evidence of a moderate sized cult with limited surface interaction and several tunnels leading to their hideout. They decided to investigate and followed a simple mine-rail inward. There they found an empty bedding area as a sort of rest stop, some weak guards they quickly dispatched, and a lift into an empty room. They took the lift, knocked on the door, killed the man who answered, but alerted other enemies in the vicinity, and were attacked by all the remaining members of the cult. Cedric Eastroot died in the ensuing battle, but a deal that Breena struck with the cult's most pious member saved Cedric Eastroot form a permanent death. (Though it temporarily warped him with a goat's eye) As they fought the cult, explored its rooms, and headed deeper into their hold they soon found that most of the cult had died - sacrificed to whatever was now attempting to merge with George. This being, called The King in Yellow, had made a deal with Mephistopheles (a Devil Lord of Hell). He would aid Mephistopheles with power in exchange for borrowing the services and souls of one of his cult fronts - the Cult of Zarus (Supposedly a young form of Pelor) the Burning Hate.
The party confronted The King in Yellow, and Father Quy'xyn nearly agreed to swear an oath of service to him in exchange for abandoning his current activities. Leemu, while moving to prevent this, was motivated into immediate attack when a joke by Quy'xyn broke The King in Yellow's concentration and caused him to kill George by too rapidly pouring power into him. The desperate attempts to swear Quy'xyn to his service were cut short by Leemu's bullets and the King began to puppet George's tattered corpse in a brutal battle with the party. Finally destroying his limited anchor in their plane, The King In Yellow retreated while cursing their interference. The strange, sand-filled room they had fought him in disappeared as they escaped, becoming a lowly closet with a strange betentacled phoenix talisman within it. Upon touching it they received a fourth vision. [See 'Orphic Shard visions' section]
The party left successful and were given another period of downtime while they settled into their new home. Gilacia imparted more power into Cedric Eastroot through a bite, who had a conversation about her respecting his boundaries and autonomy more - which she expressed understanding for. Min-xie completed his life's (and he hoped death's) work in creating an art piece that expanded the Pyre's abomination and aberration repellant fields, then collapsed into a funk; whereupon Breena took him in for help with growing medicinal and recreational fungi in their basement. Breena had her Red Dream and answered the call of aid to an elephant spirit and a tormented young elephant, slaying their abuser and being gifted a mark of their blessing, becoming a Skinwalker. Leemu delved deeper into the criminal underworld, retraining his ranger skills in the art of thievery and raiding Churchin Cloudclink's lab for artificer's knowledge. Father Quy'xyn realized he had irritated his Goddess at his ready abandonment and was given visions and promptings of an upcoming quest to earn his deity's forgiveness. Breena and Leemu also, with the help of multiple clerics, managed to sent the Color back to its home plane, although the recent completion has left Breena still largely unrecovered from its parasitic toll.
The party is called before King Elric Nodens and the Owl Oracle in a request for their aid. They were given the decision between defending the King's wife, Queen Vulintrisal Nodens, from an assassin who had killed several of his previous wives and damaged the King once, and has been seen again in the area. Or aiding the Owl oracle who was highlighting an issue at a secret government facility obtained during an emancipating war from Irenvald. The King and Oracle had sent another team, consisting of Churchin Cloudclink, Sil-shil-Miss, and Jennifer Gultz, to investigate. They had not yet heard back from the group and it was requested that the party investigate the base and the state of their mission.
The party elected the second option and headed toward the location, known as the Village of Ibis Black on the records. The village was situated in the woods before the banks of the Whyndershin River, approximately 8 miles away. The party traveled along the road to the west, save for a brief detour along the river to speed their journey. The journey was mostly uncontested, save for a strange experience of being awaken by haunting needle-toothed gremlin like beings that fled to the North of their campsight. Upon arriving at the reported location of Ibis Black however they were confronted both by a massive fog dome completely obscuring the town and some sort of guard attempting to dissuade their entry. The leader of the darkling guards communicated with the party and explained sent by the King of Light and Earth to defend the outskirts of the "Mists of Xebico" from entry, apparently to avoid an international incident. They were warned that the town had belonged to a fey lord who was controlling the area, advised to walk respectfully within, and did confirm that the party they were looking for had been sent ahead and ignored his attempts at dissuading them.
They group was successful at relaxing Eastmoon's (the leader's) concerns enough to allow them entry, and he warned them that it was dangerous and that there was likely no exit once inside. Determined the party entered and found themselves in a mist filled, slightly overgrown, path into the village. Twitching shadows shaped like people would flicker in front of them at strange intervals and lanterns appeared and disappeared. Gentle whispers would drift to their ears as they followed the path into the village. They began to investigate, discovering a bar that was barricaded from the inside. Investigating it revealed three corpses. 2 Eagle knights, dead of wounds suffered from some sort of large, sharp, metal feathers and a nearby white-robed individual who poisoned himself and then slit his wrists. Searching the bodies revealed signs of malnutrition and a local map of the town with a red X carved over the church in the center of town.
After the bar, the party did a fast circuit of the houses making up the town, noting most of their states - such as the chaotic damage done to the inside of the shop which left it in disarray - but not entering them save to note a dead child's corpse in a collapsed home. Afterwards they proceeded into the church, whose front door was propped open by an severed, armored foot. Inside were numerous corpses, a pool of blood, and poems written on the walls in blood. The main pew and multiple floor boards were pushed to the side, revealing a heavy steel trap door without an obvious lock but instead 4 colored tap-bells. The trap door was locked and the party went back to exploring to find the potential code to enter the secret chamber. Finding it in the store, with Leemu deciphering a Thieves cant secret message, the party was able to determine the pattern from the cloth swatches that had been set on display. (Black, Red, Tan, Gray)
On the exit from the Shop and on their way back to the Church the party was attacked by two Perytons. Suffering injuries while they ran into he building the party was able to use magic to distract and frighten off the Perytons. Once inside the Church they entered the trap door, and began to descend into the pitch-black stair-well and hcallway ahead, but not before catching the faint sound of child-like giggles.
Sneaking down the hall, and avoiding opening any doors, the party managed to avoid whatever had giggled in the darkness, and reached the second basement level without incident. There they found a hallway filled with mud and strange loping creatures - that seemed to be bleeding meenlocks. They began to move passed them but the seemingly impassive creatures suddenly turned hostile, grabbing Breena and pulling her through the strange mud. The combat infected Leemu and Cedric Eastroot with a strange fear illness. Reading notes found within the source of the mudroom revealed three corpses to be found within are 3 "daughters" whose birth seemed to have precipitated the strange mud, as well as birthing other monstrous creatures. The researcher appears to have been infected by the mud's fear illness and transformed into a meenlock. The party, hearing the sound of loud boots above hid themselves in the surrounding rooms and watched when multiple babushka lady red-caps descended the stairs. They found the meenlock's bodies, hacked them open and whetted their caps within the bodies before growing bored of the search and returning upstairs. Exploring the surrounding rooms provided both a safe place to rest, away from the mud, and several magic items within experiment rooms. Including Sanna's Sundering, a +1 Two-Pronged Silver sword with Ruby-studded red-leather sheath, that appears to have been blessed by the cult of the Red Father and named after his first bride. The Red Father was the fey that Eastmoon warned them once controlled the town and was exerting his influence now.
On resting, Cedric Eastroot and Leemu had horrible nightmares of vague abuses, crying pleas in the wracked form of a young girl, before grabbing a scalpel and digging deeply into their own wrists with it, calling out for her father. Awaken, and rightfully disturbed, the two also carried the child's blind fear as their own, requiring prompting to proceed further down.
The next floor was dimly lit, and a figured in some sort of heavy, spiked, betentacled armor-wearer was knelt in the center of the end of the hallway. Before they could advance very far, however, they heard muttered arguing from a nearby room. Investigating the group discovered strange gremlin like monsters, apparently made of placenta, who possessed the ability to steal experiences. Incredibly lonely they were willing to befriend the group so long as they were not killed as the person at the end of the hall appeared to doing. The party also discovered a sign in a nearby closet with 'Welcome to Xebico' written on it.
Approaching the armor wearer revealed her to be one of the individuals they were sent to check in with - Jennifer Gultz. A grayish-haired human with heavy white makeup and bland clothes normally, but now wearing the strange armor and wielding two fans, which she prepped at the party's approach. She told them that they could not pass unless they became "enkindled", at Churchin Cloudclink's orders. She could not answer what happened to her party because she had not left her post, acting to turn away anyone from above. Leemu volunteered to be enkindled, especially after Jennifer Gultz implied some amount of "spark" already within him, however Father and Breena interceded and were allowed to pass. Cedric Eastroot and Leemu remained behind as Breena traveled below.
The fourth floor's investigation was brief and progressed down to the fifth floor. The fifth floor investigation revealed the floor in disarray with massive boulders broken from the ceiling and wall cave ins. The visit ended after the enkindled Breena and Father managed to reach a stalemate with a strange, giant, beclawed teddy-bear that was attacking a metal door, and who had apparently killed a halfing scientist and human guard on his way there. Realizing they didn't want to venture too far without the others, they returned to the floor above. However, they were prevented from advancing as Jennifer Gultz informed them that nobody who *had* been enkindled was allowed to leave.
The party convinced Jennifer Gultz to escort them below and, after dispatching a Teddy-bear-crab monster, they saved the remaining researchers in the facility. Exploring revealed that Shil-sil-miss had died from another of the daughter's children, a plague of insectoid parasites. Through some careful navigation, and the elevator, they made their way down to the secret Montauk lab. There they met Churchin Cloudclink, ravaged by the radiance of manufactured inspiration, and a near complete Artificer function that would send the remaining daughter to a secure containment in his lab. Quy'xun completed the spell by using his last miracle of the day and the daughter was saved. Churchin then explained his condition to Leemu and that they had a spark that "Enkindling" was trying to replicate. (A journal of his they found would later imply its connection to a mysterious third transitory plane.) While in the Montauk lab they found individuals stripped of their identity through magical brain spike to serve as components of the Montauk operation. The party used the command dial nearby to release them from cells and gain control of them, bringing them along. Churchin absorbed the party, and Jennifer's, Enkindling then but his attempts to offload the power into a mind-spiked captive failed and instead he died after prematurely resurrecting as a type of undead creature without enough radiance to sustain the form.
The party, with their refugees in tow, then escaped the facility's church facade. They came upon a ritual being hosted by a strange eldritch identity, which Jennifer identified as the creature she met that caused her marking and the strange effect of being hidden to the Owl Oracle's sight. This eldritch creature, later identified as Intaths Nia'ta - The nurse of the newborn, was apparently orchestrating a transformation in what the party deduced was the Red Father by feeding him his apparent progeny through a strange alien shroud.
Leemu wanted to interrupt the event, especially due to Nia'ta's dismissiveness, but the party encouraged flight and he reluctantly obliged. They exited the fog barrier(cutting through it with Jennifer's cursed armor and the magical sword the party had found earlier) to find the former fey guardians of the shroud butchered and flags of Irenvald stamped into the mud with boots. (Investigation revealed it to be the strange goblinish fey that had accosted them briefly on the way here and that they had seen feeding themselves to the Red Father as they left. They'd killed and hung the guards and planted the stamped flags.)
The party successfully navigated the three-week journey back to the city safely, although they were accosted by nightmares along the way, urging them to make decisions. Father Quy'xun obliged the dream while the others denied it. The dream came true for Father, to some extent, its promises beginning to be fulfilled while the others found themselves with new strange knowledge of how to resist these creatures, although from what source is not clear.
The party entered the city of Mourholm to find the king injured to save his wife, the dark force accosting the Owl Oracle withdrawn, and the country grateful for their efforts - granting them a license for mercenary work due to a sudden quiet from all fronts after the events with the Red Father's potential ascension into an alien form.
The party decided to forgo the foundation of a mercenary group for the foreseeable future and were preoccupied in their downtime pursuing personal activities and information that they received:

Breena attempted to search for Nagak and Krogan Blackhands for exploration of rage power, and Min-xie ifnormed her that a Beerbert Yewcleave had left a message seeking to purchase their fungal harvests

Leemu capitalized on the Laboratory that Cloudclink had gifted him and began researching and building, completing one of Cloudclink's half-finished experiments (a watch he gave to Cedric Eastroot). Beerbert also left a Cant message for him, hidden in a gift for the home, inviting him a job in the seedier side of Mourholm.

-Cedric Eastroot was warned about a coming danger by Gilacia. Who also informed him that she was going underground due to danger from a civil war that had broken out in Irenvald. Min-xie also informed Cedric Eastroot that a company of caravan guards called the "Society of Beasts" had been aggressively pursuing a meeting with him.

Quy’xun's village had finally arrived by foot travel in Mourholm and he helped address their spiritual concerns and anxiety over Tsun-pei-zan and Jiang-meesh's unconsciousness. Raesh, a friend of Quy'xun's family for many years, pulled him aside and indicated to him suspicions about the children, and also informed him that Pei-tsu's inner government had been behind the attack on the village years ago and that he'd been hunting them in retaliation. He later would indicate he believed that Me-ley was the individual who'd given the order and asked for Quy'xun's help in slaying her. Quy'xun also had long talks with his family through his Memento, empowered as it was Inathis Ni'ata.

Quy'xun took the issue of Me-ley to the Owl oracle, and the party questioned Me-ley to little initial clarity. There was a geass or curse of some sort, and of incredible complexity, applied to her that seemed to prevent her from talking. Father managed some very intricate divine spellwork to allow a Remove Curse spell to free Me-ley who revealed her past - that of a disgraced-from-birth member of a high ranking family who had figurehead position in the signing of border-land military orders - and that she was cursed by a high-ranking Inner City scientist and official known as Zhuge Fongwoa before she came to Belham to prevent her from sharing secrets. Father allowed Me-ley to live for the time being, believing that she wasn't the person that needed to die, although she still held some blame. Raesh took issue with that decision but seemed to honor it, storming off in a fury as the party went back home for the day.
Extremely early the next morning they were awoken by a messenger pounding on their door, having been told to escort them back to the castle wing where Me-ley was being held. There they found her dead, stabbed to death by Raesh, who was also dead by her snake-arms' venom. Standing over the gory scene was a mass of snakes in the rough shape of a man and a group of guards who were wary to engage the being. The snake-gestalt greeted and mocked Father Quy'xun, joking that he was his father while also dismissing the notion and levying vague allusions of coming danger and levied a threat at Quy'xun before the serpents collapsed into a normal pile of snakes.
The party left the cleanup in differing states of confusion and shock returned home, save for Leemu who stayed in his lab, to find a bird nailed to their front door with a message carved into it. "The Hunt Begins. You have till dawn". Searching the neighborhood for immediate danger they discovered that one of their neighbor's homes had been broke into while they were away and had become a gory camp from which their own house had been watched. Breena detected vague odors of bats and some stranger odor like blood, sweat, rot, and abnormal beastly urine all in one. There were also vague transmutation ruins in the fireplace that Cedric Eastroot discovered. Numb to events around him Father had merely gone back inside and had nightmares of being surrounded by a sea of snakes.
Dawn came and the party was not immediately attacked, however Cedric Eastroot's feather from Gilacia went white and he felt his connection to her sever as he heard a distant hunting horn sound. Over the day, as they travelled back to the castle to alert Leemu, Cedric Eastroot and Breena realized they were being stalked by hunched figures in the allys and shadows of the city. They were shortly attacked thereafter by were-rats with short-bows using some sort of strange magically poisonous arrow. They defeated and captured one while the other shifted into rat form and fled into the sewers. When they arrived back at the castle Leemu and Cedric Eastroot were able to identify that the arrow was of Fey origin. Alerts were sent and the group entire formed at the castle, where information was shared between the party, the Owl Oracle, and Queen - who had her questioners work information out of the captured were-rat - to attempt to identify their assailants. They were abled to determine two locations to investigate: The Sewers and a shop in the city: “Crescent Bone Huntslodge and Pelt Trade”. While the Queen rallied the Eagle guard under direction of the Owl knights the party investigated the shop.
Breena investigated the lobby and distracted the proprietress, Aelsoniath, by purchasing a new skinning knife while Leemu and Cedric Eastrootsnuck into the back of the store. Breena's search of the store front revealed:

Strange Pungent fur

Humanoid Bones, including those of children

Secret trapdoor beneath a massive stuffed bear that smells of sewer, mold, and blood

A fresh odor of panther musk

Cedric Eastroot and Leemu's search of the back revealed:

Shop ledgers, real and cooked, detailing connections to shipments of bones from "Society brother's and sister's"

A stack of scalps under the bed in a hatbox

A heavy locked trunk containing trophy weapons from earlier Caravan assaults - including the oneCedric Eastroot was with when he met Gilacia, and paperwork connecting them to a string of attacks on Caravans since before they even founded the Society of Beasts as caravan guards. Seemingly with the intent of luring Gilacia out.

A severed finger and silver and gold ring with a torch signet of a small but historic family in the city, the Greine (Grayn-eh)

The party took their findings to the Owl oracle and Queen, who had prepared sting teams for both an exploration and infiltration of the sewers and a possible strike on the Crescent Bone Huntslodge and Pelt Trade. They decided to join the strike-team on the Lodge but found it already abandoned by Aelsoniath and the other soldiers having revealed the trap-door to the basement using Breena's information. The basement contained more odors of the rot, blood, and beastial markings that they had found in their neighbor's house. Taking a team of nearly 50 down with them the party moved through the basement's broken wall and into the sewer tunnesl adjacent to the building. These lead into a large cistern where were rats ambushed the party. They dealt with the attackers swiftly but as the explored deeper, after the battle, the party triggered a trap that released a deluge of water which swept more than half of the strike team into a hundred foot drop into a pit and nearly took some of the party with them. Struggling forward they found a tunnel which lead deeper into the sewers, which seemed to have been built into some preexisting ancient building structure that had been retrofit with gas lighting.
The party moved carefully through the trapped sewers and defeated the other therianthropes there, including Aelsoniath in the form of a were-panther. She held letters of communication back to the Queen of Air and Darkness who had hired them to retrieve something from a safe in these sewers which necessitated Gilacia - or now Cedric Eastroot- to be present. They were waylaid by a were-alligator cleric of Malar, whose attacks revealed the price Quy'xun had paid for his ability to talk to his family, that when injured the wound revealed his slow transformation to a clay doll. While the party recovered from their wounds of battle, and send the remains of the strike-team back with captives, the remaining were-wolf zealots of Malar sacrificed themselves to empower the Beast of Malar the cult had summoned prior to the hunt.
When the party breached the sanctum of the strange sewer area, alongside a new crew of Eagle Guard, they were attacked by the Beast. The battle was hard and bloody, with the Eagle Guard dying to the man and Quy'xun left in great danger to his wounds. Exploration of the are where the werewolves had sacrificed themselves revealed a marred statue to some unknown person or deity with a storage unit lockbox modified by the cult to open for their own codes and a strange red fluid to operate the water control in another room. The lockbox held ancient keys, long untouched, made of gold and silver. The party used the fluid to lower the water level in the other room, the keys to raise a secret chest, and Cedric's presence alongside the Greine ring to open it. The spirit of a celestial couatl appeared and spoke nebulously about Gilacia's disgrace before imparting its power to Cedric and tasking him to protect a Gold-foil Sunflower which proved to be another Orphic item. Inside the same chest were also books and charts detailing the stars.
The party returned to the Queen who was orchestrating the defeat of the remnants of the Cult of Malar and the Society of Beasts within the city sewer. She warned the party to check themselves for lycanthropic diseases and Breena and Quy'xun realized their illness in time to be cured. The party then retired to some of their own time.
Breena, troubled by feelings of connection with werecreatures and how they are viewed by the country, helped with the cleanup efforts following the battles in the sewers and while there met a man seeking to claim the dead were creature's corpses for proper burial in the name of his church. A church dedicated to the worship of a deity called The Traveler. The man, named Gavin, seemed to have some sort of strange insight into Breena's situation and invited her to visit the church grounds in Blackchapel sometime. Intrigued, but wary, she went her separate ways.
Father Quy'xun spent several weeks in isolation attempting to come to terms with his situation, repeating nightmares, and growing fear of his own failings. Urgings from his guardian spirit seemed to spur him out of his room, and when he visited his village congregation he found them similarly distant and troubled. They provided Quy'xun the last of Raesh's belongings, containing: 1 partially burned wooden Coiled Snake statue with cracked Emerald gemstones in its eyes, A melted copper mass that used to be Copper Nests (taken by Leemu), and numerous torn and semi-burned notes from a partially destroyed journal. These notes contained connections to Zhuge Fongwoa, his motivations, and hints a connection to a nearby colony of flesh-crafters, but Quy'xun drew back from this new information and looked to help others for now as he processed his feelings.
Cedric, concerned about Gilacia and curious of the couatl's statements, began to search for ways to contact her. Failing that he found out form Min-xie that another individual with ties to Gilacia may be in town. A glassblower who had housed him in the past. Cedric brought the group to Vayu Glass where they met one of Gilacia's former Warlocks, named Arnulf Foxe. He directed them to the town he used to live in Hiendfynd, which he had heard is recently being reclaimed from abandonment, because Gilacia had a warren or base of some sort in the ruins of an ancient fort nearby. As his only lead Cedric asked the party to accompany him on a journey to search near Hiendfynd for the fort and any evidence of where Gilacia may have gone.
Leemu took Beerbert up on his offer to meet and was offered sponsorship from Beerbert to enter the Undercity and the shady cabal of the city's criminal element. In return Beerbert needed Leemu to delivery a package to a Crematorium in Blackchapel, something Beerbert's other employees were having trouble with due to the interference of one of Beerbert's competitors. Investigating the Crematorium, Leemu found it guarded by multiple shady individuals and a familiar face, a guard Robert Redforge. Leemu left, and acquired Cedric for backup, and then snuck into the mortuary by using his construct spider as as distraction. Once inside Leemu rushed past the attacks of the criminals in the front room who chose not to pursue him into the crematorium proper. Once inside he made his delivery but was almost killed when some sort of horrible mass of blood and ichor crawled up through the floor vents and vomited fire on him while he climbed out through the sunroof. Cedric meanwhile had snuck closer, fearing for Leemu's condition. The two met up and, although Leemu lost his spider robot (and the pink-quartz arrow necklace it held) he was successful in receiving Beerbert's pay and a ticket empowering him (w/ Beerbert's blessing) to create an undercity sigil to act as his signature.
Before the party could start Cedric's journey, the state of Father's waning life and growing clay form needed to be addressed. Investigating with several victims of Inathis Ni’ata the party was able to identify a potential solution. Father was required to break the Memento Vitae of his family, while within the city limits, separating him from his contract with "The Nurse" but also severing his connection to his family (and possibly releasing their souls from confinement within the Momento). This prevented his condition from spreading, but didn't revert it, and the party cautiously set out on the path to Hiendfynd with Cedric.
Along the path the party passed multiple carts transporting dirt, the result of some sort of annual event in which burrowing bugs awoke and ate soil. The action fertilized the soil, making it valuable for farming, and resulting in farmers paying either well-equipped mercenaries or deeply poor and numerous Rat-town inhabitants to ship it and drop off old topsoil in its place. Warned of the danger that these insectoid monsters bring the party was cautious and avoided conflict with them as they reached Hiendfynd. There they found the village small and overrun by flowered and throny-vined overgrowth. The discovered a new local lord of some sort had headed through town and up to the fort to rebuild it and make it their own castle. Realizing the town had something amiss, and that the mayor had a parasitic disease, the party left quickly and found the path to the fort. The party noted, and avoided, a tracker who seemed to be ignored by the insectoid monsters in the region.
Upon arriving at the fort the party scouted it and when they addressed the guard at the front gate they were attacked by a horrible centipede like creature that had a human face and had used the gate-guard's body as a puppet. Fighting into the fort they discovered one of the towers to have its interior filled with flowers and vine growth.
Quy'xun's use of 'Detect Poison and Disease' also revealed the shed flesh-shell to spontaneously generate the egg form of the parasite the mayor had earlier, which on investigation the party estimated would hatch if exposed to something acidic.
Leaving the shell and exploring the tower the party found it overgrown and filled with flowers of varied types, along with vines growing thick and thorny. The party also discovered a stairwell heading down surrounded by runes that at one point may have reinforced an illusion spell on the location. After taking the stairs down the party came to a vast, ambiently lit, vault filled with incredibly powerful magic items. One of the walls had been tunneled through, a piece of statuary looked like it had been made of flesh and bone and was partially eaten, and spread out on the massive statue of hand lay a bloated and warp insectoid creature with blue crystal growths coming from its chitin. It seemed intelligent, and engaged with trying to open a book that seemed magical. The party parlayed to help the creature, and the creature seemed to accept happily. However, when Cedric opened the book the creature screeched and attacked, trying to take the now open book for itself.
Quy'xun was felled briefly when he realized firsthand that the creature's crystal shell could deflect some spells, and Cedric was likewise knocked unconscious when the creature, in desperation, spewed acid and the previously swallowed halfling. Upon its death at the party's hands a complex runic word seemed to appear and shatter in a blast of light from the dying creature, embedding its shards in the party, and one of the monsters this creature birthed. The creature seemed to have some sort of rapid metamorphosis and vomit a flesh-burrowing mite at Cedric before Breena, in her protective rage, squashed the bug.
The party has had sudden revelations, and the start of physical changes of their own, in wake of these runic shards afflicting them. Seeking respite and rest, in what they are now certain is Gilacia's refuge, the party set down bedding to take a long rest in the room. Cedric began to investigate Gilacia's Journal , the party at large discovered the remains of items and treasure from consumed townsfolk and landed gentry's party.
While Leemu recovered material from the remains of their foe, Quy'xun climbed a large marble hand in the center of the room and chisled out a massive egg-shaped gem of amber. Wailing periodically originates from it, and using his new-found essence-sight Cedric was able to detect the presence of a ghost generated by the gem, as well as a constant leak of essence from it. Out of an abundance of concern the party avoided freeing more gems from the hand. Cedric attemtped to count the flowers on one of the paintings but stopped after the party heard grinding from above.
Following their long rest, and one of Quy'xun's few completely relaxing rests in a long time, Leemu began Identifying the strange magic items that Gilacia has collected.
He safely identified 'Flowers Innumerable', 'Portrait of Dyland Hallfum', 'Sight at the Edge of Yesterday', 'Eagle Palace', 'Alsiji-farwan-era Sarcophagus', and the 'Inevitable Cycle' art pieces so far. Revealing the following information:
* Flowers Innumerable [ BLOOM ] - All seeds, flowers, vines, grasses, and plants within 50ft/minute of observation of the painting begin to flourish, sprout, seed, and grow to maturity at a hyper-advanced rate. It starts with the lowest of the plants at first, and once they are expended it travels up the chain.
*Portrait of Dyland Hallfum [ FOOLISH-WISH ] - Grants anyone a use of the Wish spell, one time, within proximity to the portrait.
* Sight at the Edge of Yesterday [ END-PROPHECY ] - If a person sacrifices their sight (Blind permanently) by staring into the red glowing orb inside this complex wall-piece they gain the ability to see prophecies of the end times.
* Eagle Palace [ OATH ] - Any promise, oath, or agreement made by the owner of this piece (before or after) is affected by a Geas, as the spell, to follow through on it.
* Alsiji-farwan-era Sarcophagus [ REBIRTH ] - Sarcophagus of an ancient pharaoh it can bring back anyone from Death if properly mummified and placed within.
* Extraplanar Woodcarving "Inevitable Cycle" [ REWIND ] - The serpent on the woodcarving appears to rotate back when pressed. Rotating it rewinds time but forces the rewinder to relive those moments exactly. If taken to a time before their existence their consciousness exists similar to a freeform ghost around their mother. On their return they age according to the time spent aware of events.
The remaining identified items, after some complications with manifesting hallucinations and psychosis, were:
* Oyamba spirit drum [ HOME-WALK ] - Can deliver any person to the place they identify as “Home”. Each person is carried individually, not as a group. Requires Proficiency with the Drum instrument to function. Throat of Heaven [ CALL-CONTACT ] - Can send a message directly to any known target in the world. The message arrives as a booming voice from the sky. If the target is in a confined area they take 3d10 Thunder damage and must succeed on a DC 18 Constitution save or be knocked unconscious. The speaker takes 1d6 damage and loses their ability to speak afterward until their next Long Rest.
* Memorial of the Fallen [ PRICE ] - While within 60ft of the painting and looking at any object or considering any idea that may have involved mortal harm the individual is made fully aware of everything that object cost, both literally in Copper Nests, and metaphorically in lives, effort, and suffering.
* Statue of a Soldier; Kamendo Raven-shed [ CLAY ] - Touching the statue allows an individual to generate any graduation of clay and command it as if it were a creature. However if the statue is no longer touched in any form anything generated immediately disappears.
* Heart of Sunnis [ AEGIS ] - While holding the diamond (Which is 4ft in diameter and ways close to 1600lbs) and touching the ground a person holding the Heart of Sunnis cannot be directly affected by any outside force, positive or negative. As such the holder cannot breathe, smell, or feel anything, and is blind during this time.
* Electrum Mirror with "You" etched into its base [ REFLECTION-REVELATION ] - Looking into the mirror will reveal a secret about the person looking. New information is always revealed, but it may not always make sense and may not be chronologically accurate.
* Sister-knight Glasaya; Daughter to Honored Asmodeus [ AMBITION ] - Any non-Evil creature viewing the Statue for more than 5 minutes will have horrible nightmares of betrayal, adultery, patricide, matricide, theft, torture, and murder over the next week, guaranteeing 1 level of fatigue (though no more) during that time. Committing a similar act relieves the afflicted of these dreams but threatens Alignment shift. Any Evil creature viewing the statue gains knowledge of a person they can kill to advance in status, though not the details of how to do it or where the benefit would come from.
* Ivory Displacer Beast [ DISAPPEAR ] - Ownership and proximity to the item has a 1% cumulative chance, every night, of making something nearby disappear. Anything that disappears is deemed irrecoverable. Giving the object away will cause it to disappear, however the statute reappears somewhere in the owner’s home within 3 days of disappearing.
* Kardum [ FIRE-FIEND ] - The statue is not hot to the touch, though it smells of white-hot metal, and has a 20% chance to ignite a nearby person with invisible fire that deals 1d12 Fire damage every turn until extinguished or the person is dead. When the fire is put out the person is revealed to be covered in lash marks instead of burn marks.
* Gorey remains of Gauderis - No longer magical
* Eternal Ice Sculpture of Lord Thrym [ SON ] - Touching the sculpture offers one a choice, any child they sire will be born a Frost Giant or dedicate themselves to the worship and tenants of Thrym. Denying either may do nothing, but has a 20% chance to spawn a Frost Giant.
* Replica Tower of Khin-Oin rendered in Bone [ CONSTRUCTION-DESTRUCTION ] - Slowly attracts corpses, flesh, and other organic material towards it over time. Any non-living organic material contacting it disappears. After 100lbs of fleshy material is collected the Tower will produce a Mezzoloth whose job is to create more Mezzoloths, up to the number 13. At which point they are to begin construction on a life-sized replica tower on a material plane through manipulation, deals, and manual labor.
And 5 Stones in a marble hand Marble hand:
* Touch of Water Sapphire [ FLUID ] - When a command word is spoken after attuning, or the gem is contacted without attuning, all gasses in a 30ft surrounding bubble become liquid that requires a DC 25 Strength save to break into or leave
* Touch of Fire Rubyl [ WARMTH ] - A 15ft area around the gem is constantly kept at a pleasantly comfortable temperature
* Touch of Earth Tiger-eye-gem [ BODY ] - If a person’s body is incompleted the missing materials, shaped of local organic and inorganic materials, replace it.
* Touch of Air Opal [ BREATH ] - Enables a creature to breathe in any environment. Can allow a corpse to inhale its soul back into its body if done quickly enough, but transforms them into a warped state of unlife that is neither positively or negatively attune and so requires exponentially more energy to maintain.
* Touch of Force Amber [ SOUL ] - Periodically generates a new soul that attempts to find a body. The extended effects of this can be varied.
The party blocked the entrance with rubble and made it looked caved in to aid in hiding the powerful items and then left. Initially they tracked the bug creatures, but they had apparently split into two groups and headed disparate ways on the death of the queen. So they traveled back to their home in Mourholm, the first week of this travel saw Father and Breena beset by horrible cursed nightmares of betrayal and violence in an attempt to corrupt their minds and souls. Leemu aided them through this.
Along the way Father's condition was cured using the mother bug's blood, although it seemed to leave him with strange serpent markings and stranger dreams, to follow up his cursed nightmares. Finally as they neared home the party saw an explosion in the night sky that briefly alighted cracks in reality all around the party. Though nothing else obvious came of the event.
On returning home Leemu had been left a warning message and invitation to a job by Beerbert, which he later spoke the man about. Apparently several of his agents have been being assasinated, and the most recent site of murder was recent. While the house is being cordoned off by the Eagle Guard he invited the party to investigate the event.
Breena began searching for a guide to master her controls of rage and transformation. She's briefly visited the rebuilt church to The Wanderer to observe events around it, and was invited to use a captured Hobgolin in the Castle Dungeons by the Queen. (Who seemed slightly overeager to introduce them.) She also enlisted the party's aid and Leemu found a lead that he tracked to and from a strange bar where he worked. A bar with a rich patron and a child-focused clientele.
Cedric began looking into the Colossus Springs and the presence of the "Azure Spine". A magical crystal on site. He decided to avoid the location for saftey in his search for Gilacia.
Father attempted isolation and self-reflection for now, due to the dreams and also the continued weight of recent events.
After being informed of several barbarian trainers she attempted to speak with a Bird Maiden, a clerical figure that worships regional lesser gods. The Bird Maiden was unable to give much direct information in helping Breena understand how to control her rage, relating more annecdotal tails of her brother, but was able to suggest rhymic chanting and meditative focus as possible means of controlling the forms that Breena's rage took. Breena returned home to begin practicing the skill after sharing a cup of tea with the Maiden.
When she returned back to the group, Leemu had rounded everyone together to begin looking into the murders that Beerbert had tasked him with investigating. The party traveled to the home and found it guarded by three Eagle guards. Robert Redforge (Leemu's gambling buddy and a known aider of an adversarial gang), a portly but outgoing, friendly muscular Beastfolk Aasimar named Yurson, and a distrustful, standoffish, drab human woman named Jori.
The party entered the home with the placeholder dolls mimicing the corpses and their wounds. There they discovered the essence of 2 individuals having been within the house for a time, paticularly at a chess table inside, vials from the church of Moradin (although with nonstandard markings of the faith), evidence of the presences of and death by magical oozes, and Leemu hurt a strange animal call when investigating the location where the worst burn victim (a halfling) had been when they died. They also found evidence that someone had hatched through the ceiling to enter, found a section of the floor that collapsed to reveal rare alchemical substances stored heavily under the house, and found more evidence of the exit and possible entrance of oozes from the pipes.
After searching the house Leemu organized a meeting with Robert Redforge and Yurson later. However when the party showed up at the bar Robert did not arrive and Yurson had a tense converstaion with them while they drank and gambled. He had them pass along a message to "stay out of Blackchapel" to Beerbert, and revealed himself to be The Noose. Some sort of well known assasain who weaponized the object and didn't leave survivors when he made his moves. The party agreed and left peacefully, and Leemu later gave the message to Beerbert, who frustratedly acquiesed to the threat.
Breena was called to speak with the Bird Maiden the next day, who had Communed with her "small gods" and on word of mouth had found two other shape-changing Barbarians. One who lived in isolation in the dead lands to the north and the other who lived in a frozen land of Irenvald. The latter was said to be dangerous and unstable, but the gods had implied someone else may aid Breena in her training if she went there.
The party, at something of a loss of a direction elected to travel West to Irenvald, somewhat in the hopes of meeting and questioning Gilacia, and somewhat for Breena's concerns. However, about a week into their travel out of town, as they had entered into the marshy forests, they were accosted by a some form of mercenary company in an ambush. The leader, Gerhard the Tooth, had elected not to hide himself and instead started to perform some sort of threatening speech, invoking the name of the Yellow King and the party's death, but was attacked before he finished. After a grueling combat the party had one of his number of Nezumi captive, several more had fled, and the leader of the attackers was dead.
The party interrogated the surviving captive and discovered that several of the nightmarish creatures they had encountered (The Nurse, the King in Yellow, and the Red Father) had formed some sort of temporary truce or compact and turned their sights on wounding Mspinor Brori and killing the party. This ambush was to kill them and the assaulting leader's strange transformative abilities (becoming other species when injured) were a result of their "gifts". Gerhard also possessed some alien hold of the Nezumi and their surviving captive revealed his wish to take his dead and return home peacefully and with no ill will. The party allowed him to leave with his dead, sans those who fled and his weapons, and continued on.
The following weeks revealed that the other members of the caravan appeared to have forgotten the harrowing attack, remembering received wounds as old injuries and the like. Reading Gerhard's journal revealed that several mercenary companies seemed set to become traitorous cells, freed from the Owl oracle's vision by receiving the alien revelations and mementos as the party had. Identifying Gerhard's magical tooth also revealed its name was for one of the dead children from Quy'xun 's village. A connection which weighed on him greatly. Other than a brief interactions which revealed the mutated black dragon they had met now ruled the nearby marshes from the Draugmarsh and beyond, the travel was calm and peaceable. Until the tax woman, Saidi Towerfall - who had been traveling with them to interview Irenvald on their war tariffs - pulled them aside and questioned them about the trip. She seemed to think it was abnormal, and with some prompting revealed that she also remembered the ambush, had realized the others had not, and had been beset by strange nightmares and a fear that she was going insane. Comforted by the party's assurances she lead the caravan into Irenvald. When the guards attempted to waylay and bully the caravan Cedric's badge of office as a Trade Sheriff quickly quieted them and got the party on their way to their stop - Tradewood.
Upon arriving the caravan set up, the party was paid their second half of their fee, and Saidi went to interview the head of Tradewood, Master Behit' illial'. The party took some of the time to shop, noting the strange gallows, ringed in mushrooms, in the center of the crowd of mercenaries and trade caravans, flanked only by two crumbling stone walls. A scarecrow, hung in effigy, swayed from the gallows and 2 stone statues flanked the stand as if to prevent anyone from approaching the stage. The party's exploration and shopping revealed both high prices, the enslavement of a gnomish man Rondale Oblak to a fey lord. He requested his freedom and said that the man who actually held his magical bonds, Zoan, lived in a chateau to the southwest from Tradwood. Breena and Leemu considered helping him, which he seemed grateful for, and also warned them that the party's heritages may make them of interest to the fey in the lands ahead. After some carousing and identifying the potential dangers of Irenvald the party was privy to a nightly occurrence which is often met with a jubilant party. (Something Cedric has historically avoided.) The scarecrow unties itself and parades through the streets, gesturing for its bonds to be removed. When Breena helped tear them, however, before Master Behit's guards or a nearby woman Leija, could do anything to stop her in the partying crowd, the scarecrow placed a wooden crown from its head upon her and then collapsed into a pile of skeletal bones and tanned flesh. The crown cursed Breena in some fashion and while Leija explained the skin and bones belonged to her deceased brother (who had snuck up and put the crown on as a jest one night before disappearing), Master Behit angrily accosted the party. Demanding to know why they had freed the scarecrow. Calming himself he explained that he had been put into place by Oberon the King of Earth and Light to guard Tradewood, not only because of its economic value, but also because it was believed to hold the portal to "The Tower of Alagadda", a Fey lord's home in the contiguous Feywild said to house some sort of power that could alter the civil war going on in Irenvald for the worse. And a place that the Red Father was likely to attack because of an old beef with the Tower's controller "The Hanged King".
Cedric cured the curse from Breena and Master Behit ordered his guards to surround the crown which they left on the ground to avoid further cursing. Behit and his daughter, El'leet'alli, explained more about The Hanged King and the nature of the True Fey in a private meeting with the party, somewhat in apology for his short response from earlier. The True Fey were created from mortal dreams and took Titles and powers representing those dreams from the Plane of Dreams that spawned the Feywild. The Hanged King was, after research, likely to have been a dream of a warlock from a pre-maelstrom era that made some deal with a strange alien being in return for great power that made him a powerful king. At least until his subjects overthrew and slew him.
The group did some brief shopping and prepared to rest after an eventful night, as the partying mercenaries and trademen had been broken up by the guardsman previously, and as the drama of the strange event died down people began to retire once more as well. Then about 3 AM the peel of a bell burst from the crown and a mind affecting haze settled upon everyone within the vicinity, pulling them to sit before the gallows as if it were a stage. The statues became flesh and lept down to guard the platform and from an unseen portal between the beams of the gallows a frowing-masked Jester stroke forward.
The Jester cavorted and invited everyone to the "Tragedy of the Hanged King", retrieving the crown and magically distributing playbills for the show. He then appeared to control several audience members onto the stage, including spiderbot and Nerle (the caravan head they'd arrived with), as "actors". The play then started, with the actors playing their parts, speaking in alien voices and the Dark Speech language (which only Breena understood), and slowly deviating more and more from the Playbill summary that was provided. Strange shadows, and a being wrapped in binding, chains, straight jackets, and ropes appeared upon the stage. When one of the actors was killed when their character died in the play, the party members who had resisted the full control of this strange spell interrupted the play. The Jester ducked an attack from Quy'xun and left back through the portal, leaving the crown behind. Chaos erupted as many of the members of the audience, and the actors on stage, fell to some strange alien fury and began rushing the stage, fighting and slaying eachother. The once stone statues, now an Ogre Executioner and a Half-giantess Executioner Guard, attacked and slew many nearby. The party determined that the chaos would end if the abandoned crown was placed upon a head, and fought well against the executioner guards, slaying the Ogre and badly injuring the Half-giantess, before Leemu placed the crown on Rondale's head. Rondale, now controlled, set out for the portal as the rioting public bowed. Leemu took to looting, Breena to carrying Rondale away as she suddenly shifted to a Giant Owl, and Cedric to attempting to remove Rondale's curse. In the chaos however the Half-giantess managed to grasp Father Quy'xun and throw him through the same portal that many actors, including spider-bot, had left through previously.
Father Quy'xun landed on a wooden bridge that seemed a continuation of the gallow's wood. There he was greeted by the projected dreams of the archon and demon which haunted him and he traveled ahead to find the entrance to the Tower of Alegadda, still open from the dream realm via a large mirror. He passed through and met the Jester, now seemingly depressed and forlorn, who explained there was no way back without the permission of all the Tower's Lords, or by helping him - the Lord of Suffering - end a cycle that the other Lords and an ambassador of the Red Father had perverted. Quy'xun, realizing he would need the party's help messaged them for aid. They would arrive, for him, moment's later due to the strange way time reacts in the Feywild and Dream plane.
Meanwhile the party worked to decide on a course of action, with Leemu pulling to wake and enlist the aid of nearby entranced individuals by damaging them until they began dying before healing them back to conciousness. They were able to successfully use this method with Leejha Redroots, who was from Cedric's halfling home town in Irenval, and Teeth-pulled-from-Sky a "feral" halfling from myth and an unknown location, but when it came time El'leet'alli strongly disagreed with awakening her Father - Behit' illial' - with this method. Leemu incapacitated her (with a bullet to the head) before stabbing Behit' illial' enough to wake him and then healing El'leet'alli. Behit' illial' and El'leet'alli argued and Behit' illial' aggreed to help the party solve the issue. The party then entered the portal, were displayed multiple dreams from both their allies and themsleves, and followed Father's steps to his location.
Once reunited the party decided on the path ahead. After a long rest they agreed to help the Jester through tower for now, but the only way to unlock the first door involved torturing people, often to death, in some amount. The Jester intended to use the captives in the dungeons on this floor - including those actors that had made it through the portal during the earlier conflict, and other beings apparently captured at some other point and time. These included a mad half-demon/half-faerie that seemed twitcy and dangerous, and a water-gensai Orc that seemed to know Cedric, and even wore the trappings of the Duke of Magpie, who the man indicated he served. And for whom he had spent many years playing the part of Cedric for, in a play-like recreation of Cedric and his sister's experiences.
Leemu volunteered to torture one of his incarnations (from his Word of Creation) that was in spider bot to proceed, after the Jester said it seemed possible. This succeeded and the party ascended above to a room with gravestones, but along the way realized that the other Lords had layed traps to waylay, or even prevent, the Lord of Suffering from ascending the tower. Something the Lord of Suffering seemed to indicate was already a break from the usual cycle.

Orphic Visions

First vision (Prompted by the Chain-link Celtic knot//meteor shard) :
The holder stood on a flat, gray, semi-translucent plane with a sky of clouds roiling away from them in every other direction. Around them were flickering shadows, each holding a star. As they flickered and disappeared a mysterious voice spoke to them, announcing that it "needed to be whole", that there were 13 additional pieces of itself, that it would birth a new world, and then implied a connection to 5 giant hulking statues. The only visible two - of Blue and Red - appeared closest. The ground then shattered and dropped them back to reality.
Second vision (Prompted by touching the Crystal Egg) :
On the same plane as before, with the same gray clouds streaming away - this time streaked with red lightning, the holder stood in view of a massive Black and Red mottled statue. Before that statue stood a shadowed figure that seemed to alternate between the forms of fire or lightening. It spoke of its past, saying that it was the last one to wish on the "Egg" key. (The Orphic Egg) She stated that she had wished for a Hero to survive; past when that hero was destined to die. Doing so shattered the world, causing the Crimson Maelstrom that had occurred hundreds of years ago. She stated that the pieces of the "egg" key would be completed and someone, the one who held the completed key/egg, would birth a new world.
Third vision (Prompted by trying to touch the Red-breasted robin in a cage recovered from Dennoyea; given as a gift by the Hill giant) :
When the Robin is touched the holder once again stands on the strange, smooth, cloud-covered plane with shadowed individuals flickering in and out around them. Before you is a large monochrome knight with a broken spear jutting from his side resting his head on the lap of of a similarly monochrome gnomish woman. She weeps over his helm as she slowly removes it to reveal the thick brow of a First-man. He winces up, obviously in pain before presenting her with a lotus flower before silently mouthing to her. He closes his eyes as she takes the flower. There is a cacophonous crash of thunder as the sky around you darkens, A bolt of red lightning crashes down on top of them a moment later. The monochrome figures disappear as you watch red lightning and the whole Crimson Maelstrom play out above you until Red eyes of lightning form before you. The smooth ground cracks and shatters, allowing a dull gray light shine through. Above you, the clouds mirror the cracks and allow red light shine through.
A voice, not the women from the last time, but a deeper masculine voice rasps out, “The mistake compounds again. The tears have widened. The unraveling is inevitable. I knew the other gods were wrong. The tapestry we formed will not hold in the face of mortal emotion. I pray the next person to complete the Ophidian Egg ends everything. It should have been what I did” - The voice seems to be speaking to themselves, not you.
From the sky stretches down alien tendrils and giant faces.
Fourth vision (Prompted by touching the Phoenix Talisman being held/used by the King in Yellow):
When the phoenix is touched the holder stands once again on the strange smooth cloud-covered plane with Shadowed individuals flickering around them - though there are far less now. Before you stands a skeletal figure leaning on a glowing red scythe, rotting skin hangs off their body, wrapped as it is in the thick moth-eaten robes of a mage. A hollow gurgling voice whispers out, “If you see this, then 4 seals of the necessary 5 have been pierced. You have been forewarned by I, Nerull the God of Death, the scythe of this world, that you threaten to unleash an artifact from its isolated pocket plane. To do so is to court my fury and my scythe”

Fifth vision (Received upon touching the Goldfoil Sunflower in the Greine family designed sewer vault):
The one who made contact with the sunflower now stands on a broad dark plane. Thick dark stormclouds swirl menacingly overhead and a looming greyscale statue of gargantuan size is before them. There is a cry of a woman and the skies loosen with a rain, staining the statue in browns and greens and clarifying it as a massive Hulking shape. Everywhere the rain falls there are green flashes of strange creatures and differing races. Dwarves, Elves, Giants, Goblins, Dragons, and Genie spring up and disseminate into floating motes of green light. A woman's voice can be heard "All I want is a baby!" before the rain washes the viewer in emerald waters and they awaken.