Session 21

General Summary

21st of Flocktime to ???, year 595
The river bandits finally gather themselves together and one of them heals their hobgoblin leader with a potion. The next instant, Malex nearly obliterates the groggy and barely standing bandit chief with divine force. Meanwhile, the party begins making their way across the narrowed gap between the ships and leaving the increasingly engulfed salvage behind. One bandit surrenders while one tries to swim to the other side of the river and gets sucked screaming into the Vortex, and a third bandit makes it to the near riverbank. The archer, seeing no hope for a win, starts to swim away but is hit by both arrow and spell and ends up floating in the water.
However, the party pulls her from the river and stabilizes her in time. And between her and the surrendered bandit, they learn of the bandit camp on the far side. With assurances made that she would not return to banditry, the archer, Safflan, was allowed to take her sister's body (and her enchanted ring and quiver) with her back to shore and away.
The surrendered bandit helps the party navigate the captured boat back to a riverside cliff wall with a concealed passageway up top. The bandit, convinced by the party's recent merciful actions, agrees to provide the passphrase and they enter the semi-permanent camp containing 3 more bandits who agree to allow the party to raid their fallen comrades' possessions unmolested.
With a combination of tripping traps, avoiding other traps, finding keys, and picking locks, the chests and lockers of the hobgoblin chief, his drug-addled arsonist goblin, and the sisters are looted, along with a variety of found objects in their tents. And true to their word, with no armed protests made, the party leaves the bandits in pease, if boatless as they sail the boat back across the river to where their mule was left.
And indeed, their mule was taken. Fortunately, the ground allowed for clear tracks of the mule and its thief leading directly south and way from the Vortex. Even so, as the party travels on, following the tracks, it sounds and feels like they never leave the Vortex over their shoulder. Time begins to slip away and the party fades into a kind of fugue state where time and distance pass unnoticed, while they realize suddenly they have been following a spectral figure of a shadowy woman the entire time without consciously seeing it. Additionally, Wally sees unusual animals while Toby sees them as something different. Malex finds himself obsessively thinking over one thought. Irina constantly hears voices. The party notices Valenthe singing the same line of a song over and over without realizing it for some unknown amount of time.
Eventually, they find their mule standing tharned before a cabin that seems to resist being able to be focused on -- its orientation and alignment in space does not remain fixed in their vision. They walk through the door, and pass through a shadow and mist and come out into a room, but they do so feeling as though they have just traveled miles and battled hours and have only just rested. Wally finds himself seeing the room filled with shadowy creatures no one else sees and a leg of his pet fire beetle is inexplicably broken, Toby is unable to make any sounds from his mouth, and Valenthe is nowhere to be seen.
The cabin is dimly lit by candles and a fire in the fireplace, but Malex casts a spell of daylight, which does nothing to banish the shadows. There is puddles of blood and vomit on the floor. There are books lying about. Some written in common regarding local flora and fauna, and some with titles such as: The Social Structure of Gnolls, A Morphology of Gauths, A Study of Poisonous Toads, The Eye Tyrant.
Irina discovers a stack of journals on the desk written in a language she has heard about but has not before encountered, known as Qualith. It is a multi-dimensional language of the Illithid that makes the mortal mind that encounters it instantly ill and full of dread and anxiety.
The group also finds a collection of bones engraved with runes that Malex recognizes as belonging to a protection class of spell, and a small statuette that is identical to the statue that was at the top of the lighthouse of Hsaturton, above the first broken Portal the party discovered. Oddly, the statuette, despite its size, seems to weigh in excess of 2 or 300 pounds.
Suddenly, Toby, Irina, and Wally are hit with a powerful feeling that their goal, their object of search and need, is on the other side of the door opposite the front door, and they rush to open it. For an instant they see a horrific aberration of grotesque mouth and tentacles clinging to the center of the ceiling, and it disappears. And moving into their way is some kind of floating glob of flesh with a single large eyeball surrounded by partially formed eyes and milky eyes at the end of stalks.

Rewards Granted

• 30cp
• 60sp
• 50gp
• masterworked half plate
• enchanted great sword named “Beadoméceas” (in an ancient Eastland tongue, meaning “slaughter blade”)
• javelin
• 8 vials alchemist’s fire
• pouch of miscellaneous crystals and polished stones
• pouch full of "fightleaf"
• small bag of 5 beans showing enchantment
• scroll: Remove Curse
• scroll: Blight
• wand with comedy/tragedy faces carved along its length
• Pouch with a small blue diamond
• a variety of 8 gems

Character(s) interacted with

• Grogo the hobgoblin river bandit leader (killed)
• Safflan the river bandit archer (let go)
• Hedge the river bandit and his 3 companions in camp

Report Date

15 Sep 2019