2/16/25 - Getting Lost in the Pages
General Summary
Our adventures found themselves in the dark halls of the Chu Voian Temple. They had been greeted by one of the clerics of the order who told them to wait while he informed Tamvoi of their arrival. Feeling like this was a safe place to let their guard down, Welcome Tasks cracked open the books they had collected from the library.
That nagging thought “why this book?” still echoed in Slayer’s mind as he began to read Her Unexpected Dragon Match. He was met with a spicy tale and was glad his compatriots were focused on other things. However, getting through the embarrassment of reading a romance novel was greatly rewarded, as hidden between the text a pass phrase was revealed showing the book’s true nature. When spoken, Slayer could see that this was in fact a spell book of enchantment magic. A very useful thing for a coven of hags to have, a bit less useful to the Tabaxi. However, those more arcane focused could find it valuable.
Speaking of the others, it took Melkor, Aglizzy, and Malikae collectively to get through Libram of Shepherds. For starters, the book was written by a grung who often switched between their native language and common when writing the book. However it helped that there were a few familiar names in the story. It turned out that the titular “shepherds” were not those guiding sheep, but referred to a group of seven Death Shepherds that were servitors to the god Chet.
Welcome Tasks has encountered two of these beings before. The first, and the one they’ve spent the most time with, was Facili. It feels like a long time ago that Welcome Tasks had any dealings with Facili, but it would seem he was a more important figure than that of a necromancer in a dread swamp during the peak of the ancient empire. The other shepherd they’ve met before was Kethoth. He was the individual who ferried Saepe Miscellus Veridicus back from the afterlife. In his case, the story seemed pretty consistent with what the party encountered.
Within each story of the Libram, a spell can be replicated by any spell caster. Although since the deal with the god Chet, the spells fall into the necromancy domain. Malikae is uncertain if Helm would approve of their use, but for now the cleric will carry to tome on his person.
Reading these two books took the better part of an hour, and in that time their cleric hosts did not return. Aglizzy was the first to pick up on this as a scent wafted across his snout. It was not unpleasant though and in fact smelled of very familiar and delicious cooking spices. Once informed of the smells, Slayer took the lead and scouted up the stairs where the scents were strong and where their host had headed.
The staircase was wide, winding, and framed the building’s circular structure. At the landing to the second floor, the Tabaxi could see the second floor was more well lit with candle light and the smell spices was stronger. Entering, there was several small empty rooms with tables for studies or dormitories with nearly made beds. Beyond that, Slayer could hear several voices chatting in what to him would like a language Malikae would understand as well as sounds of tableware being set. From behind the closed double doors, Slayer could not make out how many hosts there were but hearing them speak, he got the sense that the vibe was that of a jovial dinner party. Not wanting to linger and be discovered, Slayer returned to his friends and as a group, the party walked up towards the presumed banquet.
Malikae led the way through the double doors and was met with a large dining table that divided and curved along the large crescent shaped room. The table itself could seat twenty or so individuals, but only the center section had setting for each member of Welcome Tasks as well as five seats for the clerics of Chuvoi. Four of these clerics were busy preparing the table when the dwarf walked in and they paused their duties to greet him.
All four of the the clerics matched one another; both in ceremonial garb and complexion. Their robes were colored in green, white, and beige and the usual symbols of elephant tusks and books were ever present. Only Tamvoi’s robes were slightly more elaborate to denote his higher status among the other. Their complexion though confused the party.
When they first met Tamvoi, his skin was dull, grey, and had given the vibe of almost being like elephant skin. Initially, this was written off as perhaps his old age or being in a place that has no sunlight. However, the other clerics around him also had the same skin tone and further still they were all not elves. Tamvoi and the cleric who greeted them were elvish, but the other two clerics were dwarvish and human. This raised some concerning questions about how they lived for hundreds of years past their usual lifespan.
Before that question could be answered, the council of clerics greeted Welcome Tasks and pleasantries were exchanged. The party asked about how long they had been clerics here and where they were from originally. A few were from the capital city of Bay Dihn Soi, others from the coast lands, and the dwarvish woman said she was from a town that is now on the west front of Gif territory.
Circling back, Welcome Tasks had many questions about their extended lifespans. Tamvoi was brief but honest about their current state. He mentioned that in the interest of maintaining their order, they had shed their mortality using the powers of “Maca Rong”. Whether this Maca Rong is a person, deity, place, or creature was not asked. It was however clear that this magic was uncomfortable to the life cleric.
Slayer was also more than a little suspicious. Eager to investigate further, he feigned needed to excuse himself to use the bathroom. The elf who had greeted them in the temple offered to escort him to their third floor where the bathrooms were. Agreeing, Slayer kept his eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. Along the way to the stairs, they passed through the dormitory chamber to which it was clear no one had actually slept in those beds in a very long time.
The staircase was a bit breezy but otherwise unremarkable. The third floor was the same circular shape as the second but was sectioned off into smaller rooms along the outer round wall and was about as well lit as the first floor of the temple. The doors to these rooms faced inward toward a center circular common area with a large stone glyph in the floor. Slayer was very skeptical of this carving and walked around it as his host levitated over it towards the lavatory.
Once in the restroom, Slayer took a brief glance around before trying to sneak away from his host. Again, this room looked unused, musty, and the window was sealed shut with stone. Slayer peaked out from behind the door to see his escort was distracted thumbing through a book in the central common area. Quietly, the Tabaxi avoided the elf and looked around.
He took note of the glyph in the center of the room. It was a pair of circles(one inside the other), eight symbols boarding the space between the circles, and in the center circle was another geometric shape. Unfortunately, Slayer’s arcane knowledge was limited. A few of the symbols were nonhumanoid skulls, and that was enough for the Tabaxi to leave it alone. Not wanting to be isolated for too long, Slayer tapped his elf guide on the shoulder and informed him that he was ready to return to the dining hall.
Meanwhile, it was nice to talk to natives of the continent that were not intent on killing Welcome Tasks. Melkor had lots of questions to ask about a certain trio of Tabaxi and was hopeful to get answers. Especially since the first time they encountered them, his hair was stolen to create a chimera. The council of clerics were familiar with The Tabaxi Sisters, and confirmed much of what the party suspected.
These individuals were in fact a coven of hags that polymorph to best fit in with the society around them. While not purely evil, they are selfish. They often make deals with whomever best serves their interests. The council also stated that there are many tales of three sisters who trick rulers, fight among themselves and even are “killed” only to reappear in history later in time. When pressed about that last point, the council said that since the sisters are fey, they often retreat to the feywilds when times are bad.
Melkor continued to asked questions, one of which was personal to him. He was curious with why The Tabaxi Sisters were so keen on dragons. One of the council, the Dragonborn named Ly Tram, explained that the continent used to have several dragons before the collapse of the menagerie. Further still, dragons were always considered one of the defining features of the material plane and thus were the most attuned to it. Clearing the sisters are keeping their eyes on Melkor due to his ancestry( or his good looks if you asked Potsticker).
Mentioning several dragons, Melkor then pulled out the atlas map where Ly Tram pointed out the draconic symbols where the great dragons used to roost. The large red rings around each dragon was a rough territory of how far the creature could fly in a single day before needing to turn around back to its lair. Ly Tram seemed most excited to talk about his heritage, but the dwarvish councilwoman seemed perturbed.
When Melkor had pulled out the atlas, the councilwoman dwarf quickly scurried out of the room only to return with a ledger under her arm. She took a quill and transcribed the title of the atlas and then asked for Melkor’s name. She was rather short with him,annoyed he would take a book out of the library without checking it out. The tiefling pleaded his case that they had all tried to check them out back at the help desk, but no one ever arrived. The dwarf woman, realizing that she had neglected her duties, found this answer acceptable and asked if there were other books that needed to be checked out.
The rest of Welcome Tasks relinquished their stack of books to Nguyen, the dwarvish councilwoman. Again, she collected book titles and names but Malikae and Melkor noticed that the ledger itself had some arcane features. When asked, Nyguyen explained that the ledger acted as a divination channel, should the book or patron who checked it out ever need to be found. This peeked Melkor’s interest as he pulled the slip he received at the help desk.
The slip had said the first book he was interested in, Scrolls of Inner Alchemy, was checked out. Nguyen thumbed through her ledger and found the title of the book. She chuckled and said that it was funny we were just talking about dragons. The person who had checked it out was a dragon by the name of Ragoth. When scrying his name, Nguyen said she could not locate the dragon, but could point to the book’s location somewhere in what is now Lizardfolk territory.
By this time Slayer had returned and the first course of the meal was ready to be served. The council sat on the outer side of the large crescent table while Welcome Tasks sat across from them. The meal consisted of seasoned couscous, and looked most appetizing. Playing off as not wanting to be rude, the party waited to see what their hosts would do. Malikae suspected that these being were undead and Aglizzy had even gone as far as to have one of the clerics gently push him to prove they were corporeal. However, the hosts ate their course as if it was a perfectly normal thing to do. Welcome Tasks ate their meal as well and their conversation with the clerics took a turn.
Tamvoi thanked them for coming and they were excited to have patrons in the library who wished to learn. However, he was perplexed by Welcome Tasks motives. When Tamvoi was told that they followed his direction from a mutual dream, he assumed that the party members were followers of Giac Moran. When he left Welcome Tasks to retrieve the book, he immediately started re-reading it to figure out why the god eater had sent them.
Before Tamvoi could continue, Malikae and Slayer interrupted. They told of how they’ve been combating the Yuan-Ti and Giac Moran pretty much the entire time they’ve been on the continent. The head librarian only seemed somewhat convinced but was eager to share what he had found while reading his book.
In the encyclopedic text, there was a passage about a group of clerics having issues with one of their temples where their clergy kept going missing. Within the passage, an oracle had proclaimed all the individuals who had gone missing and at the bottom of the list each member of Welcome Tasks’ name was etched. The worry of Tamvoi soon spread to the others as they were just as shocked as to how their names would appear in a book that was written almost a millennium before their arrival.
Almost everyone, with the exception being Aglizzy, was curious to read the book now. Tamvoi had an alternative solution to each person reading it. It is with the powers of the Chuvoi clergy to “step” into a book and relive the events. This seemed like an appealing opportunity, and after some debate and the main course of the meal, Welcome Tasks agreed to this adventure.
Both the clerics and Welcome Tasks walked up to the third floor to the glyph circle where the ritual would be performed. Melkor recognized it immediately as a teleportation circle and began taking the time to memorize it in the event they would need to come back to this place. After his studies were complete, the clerics used chalks and other material components to modify the spell circle. Four of the clerics stood around the circle and channeled the spell while the party and Tamvoi would be the ones to actually walk into the book. With the smell of musty pages and ozone swirling around, all those in the circle were transported into the pages of the book.
Aglizzy, Malikae, Melkor, and Slayer found themselves standing before a grand stone throne in a large open court. Directly in front of them, stood the oracle to Giac Moran telling the Rajarshi the part of the story they had already read. The throne stood upon a raised altar and its ruler sat listening intently. The titular ruler, Ivellios the Cultivator was a wood elf garbed in fine royal robes and had a somewhat surprising skin complexion of forest green. When the oracle finished her speech, Ivellios spoke out to Welcome Tasks in a grand gesture. “So it is decided then. You lot will investigate this issue and report back to me. Tamvoi, accompany these individuals and chronically all that you see.”
With that a young, by elf standards, wood elf entered from one of the wings. Tamvoi looked similar to the version Welcome Tasks had first met but was roughly passing through his first century and had the defining green skin his heritage was known for. He eagerly approached both the adventures and the oracle with a stack of blank journals and began to chronicle every action of the group. Now that everyone was accounted for, they all left the throne room towards the exit.
As they walked down the hall of the royal court, they could see out several large windows and see a sprawling city below the receiving hall. They did not have time to linger though, as their oracle guide was quickly rushing to a small chamber further down the hall. In this chamber the oracle quickly pulled chalk and other material components familiar to Melkor and began scribing her own teleportation circle. Of course our tiefling took the time to memorize it before they all stepped inside the ruins and were transported to Giac Moran’s temple know as “The Temple of the All-Seeing Eye”.
Within the teleportation room, there were no windows and only a singular door leading out. The Oracle explained that this temple was in fact on its own demiplane, and this room is the only way in or out. She also explained that this is as far as she would venture the halls and would wait for their return when they find her missing clergymen. This seemed reasonable to the group as they did not wish to be trapped here or have Melkor need to ration his magic, and with that Welcome Tasks and Tamvoi opened the door into the temple.
Stepping through the frame, they could see this temple was a stone structure with large corridors spanning roughly ten feet wide and twenty feet tall. The walls were etched with clear symbols to the familiar snake god, with a heavier focus on the serpents’ three eyes. The first corridor stretched out for more than sixty feet eastward with a northern corridor branching off in a T-section twenty or so feet from where the party stood. It was decided to take this northern hallway which led them to a large room with a crystal altar.
The room was diamond shaped with a similar sized hallway as the one the party enters from leading westward and a set of grand double doors leading northward. When the altar was inspected, it was completely transparent with a single blade hilt suspended in the center of it. Not wanting to shatter the stone, Malikae used stone shape to create an opening while Melkor used a simple mage hand to free the hilt from its encasing.
Unfortunately this precision was still enough to cause the pair of Dao guardians to rise up from the floor and attack the party. It was a fast but taxing fight. The dao wasted no time pulverizing the closest person to them, which turned out to be Slayer and Malikae. Their hammers were used to great effective knocking prone their victims and would certainly have been fatal if not for the healing efforts of the cleric and Aglizzy’s chalice form.
Slayer ducked and weaved out of melee before he could loose any arrows from Hide piercer. He was also able to buffer the distance thanks to Melkor summoning his shadow hound. After shifting to his start form, Aglizzy got craft. He heated the metal jewelry around the daos’ neck causing them great pain and making them swing wide with their hammers. Malikae did end up taking the brunt of the earth genie’s assault but Helm’s protection heals all wounds.
After blows were traded, the tide of battle turned in favor of Welcome Tasks. One Dao was struck down from a critical strike from Slayer, and the second one descended into the floor in retreat. The fight would have been called there if not for the shadow hound who was hellbent on tracking the elemental as is moved through the undisturbed ground. This was key as the whole party was ready for when the creature reappeared; key on smacking Aglizzy for causing it such harm. With the element of surprise gone and out numbered, the guardian dao was defeated.
There was a bit of plunder to be had, as the dao each had necklaces of fine gold and gemstones and the hilt that had caused all this trouble was in fact a Sun-Blade. The party sat around and contemplated on what to do next. Tamvoi, who was watching from a safe distance, entered the room and busily took notes of the encounter. Welcome Tasks couldn’t help but strike a heroic pose, especially since they know this was being recorded for centuries to come.
They then felt it was best to rest and recover from the fight, but were unsure how that would work with being in a literal story. It was at this point, Tamvoi turned to the adventures. His form transmuted from the young elf of the story into the more familiar elder elephant skinned elf Welcome Tasks had first met. Tamvoi smiled at their question, and simply said “we can skip a few pages if you’d like.”
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