2025/04/25: Searching Kierst Isle Part 8
General Summary
Knight, Buzz, Malakai, Rusti, Kal'vus, Kelsey
While the group was setting up, Rusti quietly revealed that her divination earlier showed that there is a traitor in the group.
Possible traitors:
Yaza
Rusti's celestial weasel
Rusti's storm crow
Knight's black pudding cup
Sahzam
Killgleam
Pesky the parrot
Kelsey's bunch of intelligent swords
the ghost lady attached to Knight
Rusti's intelligent ring
The PCs, which is unlikely but impossible to rule out
We returned to our heroes in the room where they had fought Zen Hwan and his minions. The group had scoured the room for the treasure hidden throughout it. In the process, they had found that there was no lever to turn off the traps from this side. The beings resetting the traps were dead, though, which meant tossing things down the corridor would eventually disable most of them. The key the party was looking for had not yet been found. While Rusti set about clearing the way back, Knight and Kelsey searched the room for more hidden compartments. Knight tried checking the dream realm, which produced no keys, only a room full of tortured ghosts and unusually aggressive torture equipment. After extensive searching, the party eventually gave up, collected their things, and headed back to where they'd met Carlsby, hoping some innocuous item in the loot pile would turn out to be the key they were looking for. While they waited briefly (and fruitlessly) for Carlsby to reappear, they were suddenly attacked by three sneaky pirate skeletons that crawled out of a wall in the room where Carlsby had been. Knight and Malakai warded them off but were apparently unable to damage them. They seemed to be trying to grab adventurers and drag them back into the wall in an almost slapstick fashion, and whacking them repeatedly (and comedically) was enough to drive them away. The party considered trying to pursue, but the wall appeared solid, and Knight's dream nail produced three portals of different colors with no indication of meaning or relevance. After some discussion, the group decided it was just a distraction. They returned to the wall the key was supposed to work on. Presenting the various loot items to the wall did nothing on the first attempt. An attempt by Knight to detect spirits and life partway through showed souls all around the party, in the walls and hidden rooms that were, by all appearances, completely inaccessible. It seemed this place was dimensionally strange. Buzz suggested he try his tricorder back in the room where they'd destroyed Xen Hwan. Perhaps it could detect hidden dimensional routes that physical searches could not. The tricorder returns on the ambush room were... concerning. This place is, weirdly, sort of an extension of Hell. Apparently a lot of demons had been summoned and used as minions here, and they were resetting the traps even as they trapped the trapmaker here. That did explain the dream realm full of tortured souls. Unfortunately, the scans did not reveal any hidden compartments. The group returned to the wall, thinking that using some of the items might prove more effective than just presenting them. Knight tried tapping the wall with the Red Stone Wand of the Infernal Contraption, which produced no passage but did summon a demon named Sevela. She is a "cute girl" (perhaps an erinyes) in fancy and refined robes. She offered her aid in exchange for having several people killed (from a long list), or some 50,000 gold, or several other means of payment. Kelsey asked who Sevela wanted killed, intuiting that it would provide insight into Sevela's motivations. She was right: Every one of the options given was a citizen of Kaelund. Kal'vus almost went with the money option, but stopped when Knight pointed out that they didn't yet have reason to believe they needed her help for anything. Seeing that the party wasn't biting, Sevela bid them farewell, telling them that they could summon her or one of her associates with the wand if they ever needed help. Malakai almost tried the Crown of Brilliance (but relented when reminded of the major drawbacks) and did try one of the royal accoutrements sets (and found out they were haunted). In the end, the Ring of Delusional Reality turned out to be the key, sort of. The ring teleported Knight to an alternate dimension with a bunch of tunnels. He grudgingly decided to return to the party rather than searching on his own, and while he was unable to get back to the dimension after returning, Buzz was able to open a portal by putting on the ring and running into a wall. The portal took the group to that alternate dimension once more. In the tunnel-filled crossroads, one path led through where the wall had been. The adventurers advanced. The path grew darker and darker, reminiscent of a wider version of the Dark Side cave from Star Wars. At what initially seemed like the end was a room with Carlsby trapped in a magic circle. He tried to scream something; no sound could be heard through the circle, but Rusti discerned that he was saying "It's a trap! They know!" Kal'vus, meanwhile, followed his pointing finger and looked back. There were shadows closing on the party. Kal'vus raised the alarm, and the party readied for combat. The fight was pretty short. The party sustained no casualties. Lots of shadows died messily. With the battle over, and with some inspection of the disintegration barrier that was the magic circle, Kal'vus destroyed the circle with a ranged wind blade. The circle momentarily went offensive as it blew. Carlsby was flung at him and briefly possessed him. In a moment that lasted eternity, Carlsby begged Kal'vus to "save them". Then he dissipated into mist. The party continued onward. Deeper and deeper, into a zone where the walls were granite specked with mica, the reflections looking like scattered tears. The passage got narrower and narrower. At the end there was a glowing vault door shaped like a skull. No signs of mechanical traps, but many layers of horrible death and suffering wards. Rusti pulled out the skeleton key and the party retreated around the corner. It turns out the skeleton key doesn't come with his own lockpicks. Gillian kindly let it borrow his exceptional lockpicks. About 20 horrifying deep screams went off when the skeleton started opening the door, but they were all ignored. Not long after, the bored skeleton came back and reported success. Inside the vault was a massively magically warded black coffin. Rusti suppressed the wards while Kelsey and Knight pushed the top off. Inside the coffin was an extremely underfed and over-tattooed young human boy. He was alive and technically conscious, but very out of it. His tattoos matched the wards in the coffin. After Knight pulled him out, Killgleam uncursed him, and the party retreated from the vault, the entire feel of the dungeon changed. It seemed he was being used as a power source or conduit for the necromantic energy. Buzz used Phoenix Cry to heal the boy and remove whatever curses, diseases, and other negative effects he might have on him. The party set about producing what nourishing liquids and pastes they could. As the group started heading back to try the other corridors, thinking the rest of "them" might be out there, Teregrun looked startled and called out that the party needed to run. There dimension was beginning to collapse. The party made a beeline for the portal and dove out. The necromantic effects were now entirely down, but there were teleport wards up across the island. The party handed the kid off to Teregrun, who couldn't go into the Animus Society dungeon due to the fear aura. He wasn't on the potential traitor list and our heroes weren't confident that bringing the child was at all a good idea. The adventurers ventured back into the Animus Society dungeon. Thanks to the removed necromantic aura and a petrification protection from Gillian, the party was able to explore the dust room freely. They found the lever to open the big, ominous door that necromantic energy was still pouring out of. The next room was a sort of X-shape, with a 30x30 central room and 20x20 squares at the corners. A green crystal in the center of the floor exchanged black lightning with an identical crystal on the ceiling. Statues of Old Ones were scattered around the room. There was some Old One writing in the room, which made Buzz react... very negatively. Apparently there are only about eight people in the multiverse that can speak this language, and most of them are causing problems in spelljammer. That is a very bad problem for another day. The adventurers considered whether they really wanted to go against their common sense and continue. They did: This is what adventurers do. Knight: "We ignore our common sense so other people don't have to." As the party approached the center, the inevitable enemies appeared. Entropic Reapers. Essentially eldritch grim reapers, four of them. Battle commenced immediately. The reapers proved to do weird things to space and were pretty much only vulnerable to holy damage and magical weapons. Also, they had a terrifying ability: If they kill you, you're dead forever. They destroy your soul and pull it out of reality. The fight went relatively well initially, with Knight, Kelsey, and Kal'vus killing two reapers even as Buzz and Malakai were tossed to a different space, but then one went for Rusti and nearly killed her with a single stroke. With the stakes so high, she panicked. A light of creation was unleashed in the room. As the reapers burned away and the adventurers changed, Rusti reflected that at least it was better than being dead.
We returned to our heroes in the room where they had fought Zen Hwan and his minions. The group had scoured the room for the treasure hidden throughout it. In the process, they had found that there was no lever to turn off the traps from this side. The beings resetting the traps were dead, though, which meant tossing things down the corridor would eventually disable most of them. The key the party was looking for had not yet been found. While Rusti set about clearing the way back, Knight and Kelsey searched the room for more hidden compartments. Knight tried checking the dream realm, which produced no keys, only a room full of tortured ghosts and unusually aggressive torture equipment. After extensive searching, the party eventually gave up, collected their things, and headed back to where they'd met Carlsby, hoping some innocuous item in the loot pile would turn out to be the key they were looking for. While they waited briefly (and fruitlessly) for Carlsby to reappear, they were suddenly attacked by three sneaky pirate skeletons that crawled out of a wall in the room where Carlsby had been. Knight and Malakai warded them off but were apparently unable to damage them. They seemed to be trying to grab adventurers and drag them back into the wall in an almost slapstick fashion, and whacking them repeatedly (and comedically) was enough to drive them away. The party considered trying to pursue, but the wall appeared solid, and Knight's dream nail produced three portals of different colors with no indication of meaning or relevance. After some discussion, the group decided it was just a distraction. They returned to the wall the key was supposed to work on. Presenting the various loot items to the wall did nothing on the first attempt. An attempt by Knight to detect spirits and life partway through showed souls all around the party, in the walls and hidden rooms that were, by all appearances, completely inaccessible. It seemed this place was dimensionally strange. Buzz suggested he try his tricorder back in the room where they'd destroyed Xen Hwan. Perhaps it could detect hidden dimensional routes that physical searches could not. The tricorder returns on the ambush room were... concerning. This place is, weirdly, sort of an extension of Hell. Apparently a lot of demons had been summoned and used as minions here, and they were resetting the traps even as they trapped the trapmaker here. That did explain the dream realm full of tortured souls. Unfortunately, the scans did not reveal any hidden compartments. The group returned to the wall, thinking that using some of the items might prove more effective than just presenting them. Knight tried tapping the wall with the Red Stone Wand of the Infernal Contraption, which produced no passage but did summon a demon named Sevela. She is a "cute girl" (perhaps an erinyes) in fancy and refined robes. She offered her aid in exchange for having several people killed (from a long list), or some 50,000 gold, or several other means of payment. Kelsey asked who Sevela wanted killed, intuiting that it would provide insight into Sevela's motivations. She was right: Every one of the options given was a citizen of Kaelund. Kal'vus almost went with the money option, but stopped when Knight pointed out that they didn't yet have reason to believe they needed her help for anything. Seeing that the party wasn't biting, Sevela bid them farewell, telling them that they could summon her or one of her associates with the wand if they ever needed help. Malakai almost tried the Crown of Brilliance (but relented when reminded of the major drawbacks) and did try one of the royal accoutrements sets (and found out they were haunted). In the end, the Ring of Delusional Reality turned out to be the key, sort of. The ring teleported Knight to an alternate dimension with a bunch of tunnels. He grudgingly decided to return to the party rather than searching on his own, and while he was unable to get back to the dimension after returning, Buzz was able to open a portal by putting on the ring and running into a wall. The portal took the group to that alternate dimension once more. In the tunnel-filled crossroads, one path led through where the wall had been. The adventurers advanced. The path grew darker and darker, reminiscent of a wider version of the Dark Side cave from Star Wars. At what initially seemed like the end was a room with Carlsby trapped in a magic circle. He tried to scream something; no sound could be heard through the circle, but Rusti discerned that he was saying "It's a trap! They know!" Kal'vus, meanwhile, followed his pointing finger and looked back. There were shadows closing on the party. Kal'vus raised the alarm, and the party readied for combat. The fight was pretty short. The party sustained no casualties. Lots of shadows died messily. With the battle over, and with some inspection of the disintegration barrier that was the magic circle, Kal'vus destroyed the circle with a ranged wind blade. The circle momentarily went offensive as it blew. Carlsby was flung at him and briefly possessed him. In a moment that lasted eternity, Carlsby begged Kal'vus to "save them". Then he dissipated into mist. The party continued onward. Deeper and deeper, into a zone where the walls were granite specked with mica, the reflections looking like scattered tears. The passage got narrower and narrower. At the end there was a glowing vault door shaped like a skull. No signs of mechanical traps, but many layers of horrible death and suffering wards. Rusti pulled out the skeleton key and the party retreated around the corner. It turns out the skeleton key doesn't come with his own lockpicks. Gillian kindly let it borrow his exceptional lockpicks. About 20 horrifying deep screams went off when the skeleton started opening the door, but they were all ignored. Not long after, the bored skeleton came back and reported success. Inside the vault was a massively magically warded black coffin. Rusti suppressed the wards while Kelsey and Knight pushed the top off. Inside the coffin was an extremely underfed and over-tattooed young human boy. He was alive and technically conscious, but very out of it. His tattoos matched the wards in the coffin. After Knight pulled him out, Killgleam uncursed him, and the party retreated from the vault, the entire feel of the dungeon changed. It seemed he was being used as a power source or conduit for the necromantic energy. Buzz used Phoenix Cry to heal the boy and remove whatever curses, diseases, and other negative effects he might have on him. The party set about producing what nourishing liquids and pastes they could. As the group started heading back to try the other corridors, thinking the rest of "them" might be out there, Teregrun looked startled and called out that the party needed to run. There dimension was beginning to collapse. The party made a beeline for the portal and dove out. The necromantic effects were now entirely down, but there were teleport wards up across the island. The party handed the kid off to Teregrun, who couldn't go into the Animus Society dungeon due to the fear aura. He wasn't on the potential traitor list and our heroes weren't confident that bringing the child was at all a good idea. The adventurers ventured back into the Animus Society dungeon. Thanks to the removed necromantic aura and a petrification protection from Gillian, the party was able to explore the dust room freely. They found the lever to open the big, ominous door that necromantic energy was still pouring out of. The next room was a sort of X-shape, with a 30x30 central room and 20x20 squares at the corners. A green crystal in the center of the floor exchanged black lightning with an identical crystal on the ceiling. Statues of Old Ones were scattered around the room. There was some Old One writing in the room, which made Buzz react... very negatively. Apparently there are only about eight people in the multiverse that can speak this language, and most of them are causing problems in spelljammer. That is a very bad problem for another day. The adventurers considered whether they really wanted to go against their common sense and continue. They did: This is what adventurers do. Knight: "We ignore our common sense so other people don't have to." As the party approached the center, the inevitable enemies appeared. Entropic Reapers. Essentially eldritch grim reapers, four of them. Battle commenced immediately. The reapers proved to do weird things to space and were pretty much only vulnerable to holy damage and magical weapons. Also, they had a terrifying ability: If they kill you, you're dead forever. They destroy your soul and pull it out of reality. The fight went relatively well initially, with Knight, Kelsey, and Kal'vus killing two reapers even as Buzz and Malakai were tossed to a different space, but then one went for Rusti and nearly killed her with a single stroke. With the stakes so high, she panicked. A light of creation was unleashed in the room. As the reapers burned away and the adventurers changed, Rusti reflected that at least it was better than being dead.
Rewards Granted
3 xp
Missions/Quests Completed
Recover Carlsby's "treasure"
Character(s) interacted with
Notes
Light of creation effects:
Kelsey: 1 unknown power, the ability to use Psychic Crush 1/day, and Kelsey herself (not her weapons) counts as Striking for 1d6.
Knight: Not yet - delay effect, Play Dead, Detect Gateways
Kal'vus: Book obsession (and book radar), gets a kitten, "mental combat" mode (that thing where martial arts warriors stare at each other and then one says "he's won. I can't possibly defeat him.")
Rusti: returning (anything she throws acts like it has the returning property), can destroy metal, now has an underworld contact named Vinnie the Snitch, lasting breath, academic debate, darkover enemy, disguise, atomie quest, angry birds, hidden rebels, hostile machines
Malakai didn't actually get used as a chock in the trap corridor. That was a joke. The party retrieved all the statues from the dust room when they escaped the first time. A pirate, an old one, a sorceress, the fop, a guy in armor, and a thief?
Malakai didn't actually get used as a chock in the trap corridor. That was a joke. The party retrieved all the statues from the dust room when they escaped the first time. A pirate, an old one, a sorceress, the fop, a guy in armor, and a thief?
Kal'vus
Rusti
Buzz Gizmo
Knight of Darkhome
Kelsey of Kaelund
Malakai
Report Date
25 Apr 2025
Primary Location
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Related Characters
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