Interlude 1: Darkseeker - Part 1

General Summary

Previous Chapter
A long time ago, in a place impossible to reach but for the ability to move at a right angle to reality, on the

13th day of Pitch, the 13th month, of the year 1028, one day before the solstice - Interplanar Space - Abord the Spelljammer Gilded Pike

A group of seasoned adventurers fly at unimaginable speed away from their homes on the Prime Material Plane, toward a destination yet unknown, at the behest of a mysterious young woman who has promised untold riches in exchange for the simple act of saving the world.

The Crew:

• Sazed (SAY-zed), Keeper of the Chronicles - Aasimar Elements Monk - On-board Captain/Chaplain - he/him
• Garnetta - Goliath World Tree Barbarian - Security Officer - she/her
• Brnadong - Muppetborn Glamour Bard - Communications - they/them
• Solarius "Starcaller" Luminel - Aasimar Eloquence Bard - Navigator - he/him
• Zephyr Darksong - Aasimar Eloquence Bard - Shipwrite - he/him

The party is gathered on the bridge of the Shrike classSpelljammer, Gilded Pike, armed 3 ballistas on the open, sea-ship style deck.
At the center of the Spelljammer's conrol room sits the Helm, a larg, throne-like seat connected to the floor, with armrests ending on softly glowing orbs used to control the ship. Occupying the seat of the helm is , an 8" diameter mirrored sphere. Unlike the sea and sky ships you're familiar with, there is no obvious wheel or steering mechanism.
DM Note:

• A DC 17 Arcana check reveals that the control mechanism for most Spelljammers is the seat itself. Sitting on the seat drains a magic user of their spells but grants them limited psychic control and awareness of the ship.
• A DC 23 Arcana check reveals that the mirrored ball is a Telemet, a device which alows for the user to cast magic remotely through contact with a paired sphere, or in this case, pilot the ship without costing any of those present their spellcasting abilities.

A small melodious chime plays throughout the ship as a dark mirror, inset in one of the panels on the bridge, begins to flash.
(let someone answer it)
The party's benefactor, a young woman named Elle, appears magically projected on the mirror's surface. She is humanoid, appearing to be in her mid 20's, dressed in a ruffled white shirt buttoned all the way up to a black collar. Her platimun blonde hair is done up in a loose bun with side swept bangs covering her forehead and contrasting her tan skin. She would look to be fully human but for her large, piercing blue eyes that seem to reflect just a bit too much light, and the slight point to the tips of her ears, implying a partially elven heritage.
DM Note:

• A DC 20 Perception check will notice that she appears to be sitting in a wide armchair, and just on the edge of the projection, one of her hands appears to be resting on a mirrored orb, similar to the one sitting on the helm.

As she speaks, images are occasionally projected on the mirror in her place to provide visual aide:
Elle: Thank you all for coming this far on my promises alone, but absolute secrecy was the only way to ensure this mission could not be compromised before we were underway. As you 've been told, there is a madman, Ansell, Seeker of the Void, who posess a significant threat to all of our reality.
Using the majority of my family's wealth and connections, we've secured three pieces of information that you haven't been told:

1. That Ansell means to erase the gods and their influence from all worlds, and has been amassing power specifically honed to destroy the pantheon,
2. He plans to carry out his assault tomorrow, on the solstice, when the walls between the planes are thinnest, and
3. That there exists, in another realm, an alternative power with the means to counter his godly counter measures.

For the first part of your mission, you all will need to steal this power. The problem is, you'll have to steel it from the gods themselves.
(At this point, the PCs may have some questions. Refer to the list of prepaired responses below)
You'll need to break into the Artifactuary in Deus Minima, the lower ring of the city of the gods in the Celestial Plane. The building resides in the Occulus District, and functions as a museum of sorts on the upper levels. There's less concentrated security going in this way, but it's a longer route with more failure points where you could be detected. The most direct route will be going in through the loading dock below and heading straight to the secure item storage.
DM: At this, a 3D map of the Artifactuary is projected into the space, with a room near the bottom highlighted.
Elle: Once there, you will each "borrow" one of the Relics of Lost Antiquity, the last vestiges of the old gods. They're each powerfully charged with their late godly ownwer's essence, so it would be dangerous for any of you to try to wield more than one, but you'll need the residual power to make any of your abilities, even those granted by a current god, effective agains Ansell and his legion of enhanced demons.
Once equipped, you'll return to the ship and travel to the Shadow Plane to use the relics to confront the Dark Mage Ansell before he can bring his cataclysmic demon forces to bare against the Prime Material world and the pantheon of gods beyond. Any questions?
DM Notes: Elle can answer questions with the following infprmation:

• How do you know all this? We've got a lot of connections to good spies and magic, and we've burned through a lot of gold to keep tabs of guys like Ansell- more often than not, they're just gifted wizards with a chip on their shoulder and some grudge against the gods. Usually they just aspire to litchdom, but every once in a while, one aims a little higher and tries to become a god or kill one.
• Why save the gods? Thousands of years ago, there was the era where the old gods had died, but the new gods had yet to emerge. Little is known of this time, but it is said that magic and life forces were in a constant decline, and many civilizations died out as natural magics dwindled, brith rates plumetted, and crops began to fail year after year. It was only when the current pantheon took stewardship the world that magic and life began to flow again in abundance, or so the legends go. I'd don't know how true those legends are, but if Ansell's going to raze the material plane on his way to strike down the gods, then it might not matter either way.
• Why don't the gods handle this? The gods either do not see Ansell's threat, or do not want to see it. Our best clerics have prayed to the gods for intervention, but Ansell hides his preparations in the Realm of Shadow to obscure even the Watcher's vision. That is why salvation falls to us- to you.
• Why hide the mission? The gods would take our meddling in affairs they deemed insignificant as an affront. We couldn't risk word of this plan getting to them, and they have a habit of checking in on high tier adventurers, such as yourselves. Also, they definitely won't like the whole burglary thing.
• Why me/us? You were chosen for your skills and past exploits. It's our belief that together, you five possess the requisite abilities and battle prowess to stop Ansell from savaging all of creation.
• Why not hire an army? Apart from the impossible cost of supplying a force that large, we needed to keep the nature of this mission a secret. A bigger circle introduces more possible points of failure. Plus, historically for situations like this, quality far outproduces quantity.
• Who are you/youre family? My family and I would prefer to remain anonymous. I can tell you that we're tied to the line of House Sims, but nothing more. We don't need any glory for saving the day, or any backlash for defying the gods. We just want to help keep this world intact. Obviously you know my face and given name, but we've taken steps to obscure ourselves from further identifying.
• What's with this ship? This spelljammer was recovered from a crash site on a small island out in the North Sea, near the Lon'Gi Mist wall. It's been repaired and refurbished as best we can to aide you on this mission. I'm a bit jealous, honestly. I'd love to go off exploring in that thing in person.
• What happened to the old gods? We don't really know. That was so long ago that its even passed from the living memory of the highest tier of elven druids, the longest lived mortal beings in existance. Whatever it was, it wiped the old gods out so badly that even the memory of their identities was erased. Minor gods are killed and brought back more often than their faiths or cults would like to admit. Even if the church is wiped out, history says that one new mortal finding an old pamflet is enough to reignite a god's spark, but there's not enough distinct information to even propperly acknowledge the old gods, and without knowledge and faith, a dead god can never revive.

The party only asks Elle what the relics are. Elle can only give them the item types.
Brn(adong) passes out cookies they prepared using their Replenishing Treats ability that give the party some temporary hit points.
Elle: Eyes up! looks like we're coming up on the Celestial Plane now.
DM: Through the viewing windows, you don't initially see anything different from what you've been looking at outside for the past couple hours; a multicolored haze dotted with distant points of light- the visuals of Astral Plane
(Have PCs roll a Perception check. They notice indecending order) The area in front of the ship is beginning to glow with a faint golden aura, as is the air around the Spelljammer was beginning to heat rapidly, but instead of a searing or burning effect, it gives off a warm, soothing feeling, even below deck.
Then as the glow becomes a bright yellow, then near blinding white, space around the front of the ship begins to warp before tearing all together, as the ship shifts the ship into tune with the Celestial Plane.
Suddenly, where once was a gray void filled with distant hazes and swirling mists of color, there is now an infinite, bright blue sky full of fluffy pale-yellow clouds. There is no sun above, and no land or sea below, but before you floats a vast circular metropolis, bigger by far than any settlement any of you have ever seen in the Material Plane: The Celestial City.
The entire city appears to be built on a central hill, so that walking deeper towards the middle is always an incline. The central section, cordoned off by a large wall is filled with bright light and is hard to clearly make out. The buildings there seem to be only a handful of enourmous, city block-sized structures that constantly shift and rearrange as if jockying for position among each other.
Around that, the outer ring is full of many smaller, static buildings with extravigant design and variation. The scope of the city makes it hard to see as you continue to approach, but among the chaos of gold and silver roofs, there appear to be sections with distinct secondary building materials prevail. The section you are heading toward is full of buildings with marble accents and outter surfaces.
As you descend and dip below the disc of the city's outter streets, you see that it is rimmed with docks and ports of varying shapes and sizes, that all hang over the bright blue, cloudy void. The docks here hous a number of flashy Spelljammers and air-ships. The bottom of the city is convex like the top, and many buildings hang below in the city's shadow with their own attached docks and entries. Some docks also just lead to stairways upward.
The vessels parked down here are still nice, if not as guilded, and you see a number of small, rowboat sized craft flitting from one doc to another. It seems most of the city's parking and taxi services are kept underground.

The Heist

At this point, the speaking mirror flashes again, acompanied by it's alert chime.
Elle reappears and addresses the party:
Elle: Okay, decision time; Do you want to try to enter through the upper level Museum and sneak in as guests? Many of you have Celestial heritage, so that may be a convincing enough cover to get you inside. Otherside, you pull up to the loading dock directly beneath the Artifactuary. This way is more direct, but will probably be a bit more heavily gaurded and harder to charm your way past.
Keep in mind, angellic guards are hard to lie to at the best of times. Our intell says there are only Deva on staff here, so you shouldn't run into anything beefier than that. Some angels, like Planetar and Solars, can even sense lies inherently.
In any case, the ship will be waiting at the Artifactuary's loading dock to pick you up for a quick getaway.
Stat Blocks:
Planetar
Deva

Museum Route

The ship pulls up to one of the docks not too far from the edge of the city. It's is a 10 ft wide stone walkway with marble pillars topped with floating motes of light every 30 or so ft keeping it illuminated, though somewhat dimly. At the far end is a column housing a spiral staircase leading up onto the city streets.
The party exits the staricase onto a pristine white cobblestone street, lined with white stone, or marble buildings with gold and silver accents. The street is bustling with foot trafic from minor celestials as well as a few fey, elementals, and even an occasional mortal, or at least beings who appear to be mortals. The streen continues up the hill to your left, and to your right, it forks around a large austentatious white building, easily 100-ft wide, 3 stories tall with tall white columns and a couple stairs leading up off the street to it's own cover stoop the lenght of the entire frontage. Between the columns, velvet black banners hang with gold writing in 2 different languages (Celestial and Primordial). Zephyr can read Primordial.
(The writing reads: This month, special exhibit on Lord Noctis: god of the Night and Secrets!)
This can be none other than the artifactuary.

The Lobby

Beyond the sets of double doors on the building front is the lobby, a roughfly 30x40-ft room with black onix tiled floors, white walls hung with various tapestries and posters depicting different past and upcoming exhibits.

• A double door on the right sits open to an area racks full of small cloth effigies, gleaming rocks, and tunics with writing on them. Above the doors, hangs a banner written in Celestial and Primordial: Gift Shoppe
• Occupying the left side of the room is a grand staircase leading up to a balcony on the back wall that overlooks the lobby with a set of open doubledoors leading into the second floor. From that balcony also extends more stairs leading to a second balcony on the right wall, likely with an entrance to the third floor, thought it's too high up to see.
• finally, on the back wall directly ahead of you, there is a large curved desk, and to the right of that, an open set of double doors leading into the first floor exhibit space. Behind the desk sits a beautiful man, with olive skin, and a shock of bright orange hair on top of his head and cresting over the right side of his face, only pierced by his bright white glowing eyes. His body is well muscled, but still lythe, with a pair of clear, crystaline wings floating behind his back. over one shoulder is slung a gray toga, with a small metal plaque affixed to the front upon which is written in common: Dave

DM Notes: Davenel (Dave for short) speaks common and will ask what the party is here for today. If they don't do anything too suspicious, he will direct them to the rotating exhibit on Lord Noctis on the first floor. The upper floors have their usual exhibits on the history of the mortal realms and the resettling of the Celestial Plane. He's just the receptionist.

Exhibit Space

The first floor exhibit space is filled with framed images and display cases honoring Noctis, the god of Darkness. Most of them are pitch black voids or display objects that are permanently silhouetted, with tiny plackards written in Celestial and Primordial. There are a handfull of groups touring the rooms and halls.
3 Devas roam the space for security. With a DC 19 Stealth or Performance check, the party can move through the space inconspicuously and slip through one of the closed doors to enter the Back Halls.

Loading Dock Route

The ship pulls up to one of the docs closer to the edge of the city. The docks consist of four 10-ft wide stone walkways with marble pillars topped with floating motes of light every 30 or so ft keeping them illuminated, though a lot of the above light still reaches from the lip of the disc, There are three empty bays between the docks for ships of varying sizes connected by another, perpendicular walkway attached to a plain white rectangular building with no windows, that extends up into the city disc.
On the front of the building, are two closed doors. As the ship pulls into the smallest docking bay on the far right, you all see that each door appears to be labelled with a small sign with words written in 2 languages (Celestial and Primordial).
(The writing reads: Security Office on the right and Storage on the left door)


As you disembark, the right door opens and a 10-ft tall being steps out, well muscled, with green skin, a mane of wild golden hair, and glowing white eyes. They are shirtless, with metalic gray wings sprouting from their back, and wearing a gray toga fastened around their waste where you can see a golden, two-handed swordhilt hangs at the ready.
With one hand they point to your ship, and producing an obsidian clipboard in the other, they bellow: What is your business?
DM Notes: This is a Planetar (named Moriel). If the party cannot convince him to let them pass, he will call the other guards (another Planetar and 2 Devas) to attack

Back Halls

The back halls are brightly lit and wide enough for large creatures to pass in iether direction. the white block walls are broken only by occasional grey, metal doors. There are a couple entrances from the Exhibit Space, but thanks to the 3D map that Elle showed during her briefing, the party can easily navigate to the vaults from any of them. The halls are patrolled by lone Deva.
Entering the Back Halls for the first time, the party fails to be stealthy and are spotted by a Deva guard. Panicking, Sazed moves to the front of the group and thrusts his arms forward. Brn, who was being carried by Sazed to reduce the noise of their armor, reaches out to touch the Deva and cast Firends. The Deva Guard succeeds his check and begins to raise an alarm, but Sol is able to decieve them into thinking the group is just lost. The gaurd escorts them back into the Exhibit Space, where they then sneak into a different Back Halls entrance and , successfully, this time, sneak their way to the Secure Item Storage.

Secure Item Storage

(all signs written in Celestial and Primordial, but there are simple icons that can be deciphered)
Door to Relic Chamber is locked and trapped, triggering the trap call another guard group to fight. The party is able to disarm the trap and lockpick the door into the room.
(each relic is in a separate vault room. failing to pick a lock causes a quiet beep and a red light above the rood lights up. 4 failed lockpicks will alert more guards who begin trickling in before pouring in. The relics must be replaced with an item of similar or the same weight to avoid trippinng the alarm. Failure to make the switch quick enough will count toward the 4 failed lockpicks.)
(relics are only identified aoutside their vaults by their weapon/item type and are behind adamantine solid vault doors. Inside the vaults the relics float in their unnatuned forms with a short poem noting their name and hinting at abilities)

The Relics:

• Great Sword (Thunderbringer)
• Trident (Ruthlessness)
• Staff (Saccharine Mercy)
• Helm (Kuro Kabuto)
• Shield (Aster Disk)
• Bow (Arcum Lux)
• Cloak (Dawn Wing)
• Battleaxe (Leviathan)
• Dual Short Swords (Chaos Rippers)

Working to disarm the locks before picking them, the party lakes the Cloak and gives it to Sazed, triggering the secondary trap. Analyzing the chamber to figure out that the items need to be swapped out, not just taken, they try to place something else into the cloak's vault but that doesn't reset the alarm counter, so they move on.
Next, they disarm and lockpick the door to the helm. They swap an item for it without issue, and hand it over to Zephyr.
After that they disarm the door for the Battleaxe, but Zephyr breaks his lockpicking tools (Nat 1) twice. Deciding this is a bad omen, the party switches to trying for the short swords.
They manage to get the trap disarmed and the door open without isse, and swap in two items to match the two shortswords, which are given to Solarius.
Riding that small vicotry, they move back to the battleaxe vault and manage to get the door open with a, now very difficult lockpicking. Unfortunately, Sazed, who's been doing all of the swapping and trap disarming, starts to get fatigued (low roll) and doesn't replace the new item fast enough, causing the second alarm light of the four to light up.
With one item left, Sazed disarms the trap on the vault of the staff, but Zephyr breaks his lockpicking tools for a third time and they can nolonger be mended. Noting that this is the last vault they need to open, the group decides that Sol should just cast Knock to open the door, noting that the loud noise caused by the spell shouldn't be too much of an issue as they'll be leaving expediantly, anyway.
As the party leaves the Secure Storage room, they hurry to meet up with the ship at the docks. With a successfull Group Stealth roll, they narrowly make it around a corner as Deva guars at the other end of the hall start to approach.

Return to Spelljammer Gilded Pike

(via loading dock route. Enemies at the docks still there if not fought already unless that took more than 1.5 hours)
Riding that overwhelmingly successful stealth roll, the party quietly opens the door to the loading dock in time to see a larger guard approaching their ship just as it pulls into the far docking bay. The guard, in a commanding voice, asks the empty ship who is abord and what their nusiness is. The party, peaking out of the door behind the one the gaurd came out of consider suprising the guard to get the jump on him, but decide to let Brn try to use Suggestion to get the guard to leave and help unload "the other ships". Unfortunately the guard saves, noticing the party and turning to ask them what they are doing here.
Sol tries to use his charm to talk their way out, but when his explanation turns to falsehood, they cover in blown. This guard is a Planetar, who instantly knows when they are told a lie. The guard calls for aid as coombat ensues.
He is joined by another Planetar and two more Deva.
The battle is relatively quick, but tough as the party pivots from making a break for the ship to making sure they don't leave these guards as witnesses.
(Once everyone's aboard, the ship pulls away at great speed before warping to the Astral Realm to begin the 10 hour trip across the Palnar System to the Abyss.)

Report Date

09 Nov 2024