S2 E9: The Dome Below

General Summary

In which the party is split, and Eldara is offered an impossible choice.

• The party has several threads - at least eleven, at last count - to follow up on, including the Queen's Hive gambling den, Jubliana Stroud, and others. Checking out the mortuary seems to be the simplest thing, as it's across the street, so they head back into the sewers for a third go, noticing that they're under the not-too-subtle gaze of the Drow brothers, Calendon White and Ephraim Bale.
• Retracing their steps through the mortuary they find, unexpectedly, an enormous door linked to a summoner circle, though dormant now. A few scattered notes refer to the 'work at hand', the 'restoration of justice', and other nebulous - and perhaps ominous - references in a journal that evidently belongs, or belonged, to Tristan Desauvigny who's tomb they thought this was. Monkeying about too much, however, they find themselves under relentless attack by the Drow brothers.
• Seemingly capable of killing everyone present, the Drow instead elect to capture Eldara, and KC, and take her back into the sewer where the strange aluminum tube is again waiting. Before the rest of the party can stop them, the Drow load Eldara and KC inside, and the tube once again disappears into the gloomy green murk.
• Eldara returns to control of her faculties in a huge glass dome under the water, in an uncertain location but within an hour's tube ride of the sewer, if not closer. Daylight is visible far above, perhaps 50 feet of water between them and the surface, deep enough to be totally invisible from the surface. A number of other tubes are docked under the edge of the mushroom-shaped top dome, cluttered with tubing and machine parts, where dozens of the giant isopod-bugs scuttle around, mostly ignored by the workers and the Drow. Eldara is taken to a room - not bound or restrained, for where could she flee? Several levels down in the 'neck' of the facility, which extends even below the ground, or sea-floor as she begins to understand. She meets the architect of the place, a condescending Dwarf with an evil vibe named Monder Guggins, who begins to explain what the place is, and why it's here, though the explanation is more complicated than Eldara can really follow other than Tristan DeSauvigny is a humiliated Elven lord with deep pockets and an interest in making his resentment into everyone's problem, by happily funding subversive activities and counter-government research. She wishes Cobolt was here to see all this Artificer junk and make sense, perhaps, of at least some of it. Quite a bit looks homemade, though skillfully crafted; but other items are clearly of Infernal or Abyssal origin.
• Meanwhile Tatiana, on the surface, attempts to recruit some help. She first goes back to Lissa Daine, who more or less tells her to get lost, then heads to a nearby tavern, the Dragon's Ear. There the bartender connects her to a Mercenary Paladin named Galadrion St-Michel, who is eager to help rescue the lost - in return for 100gp a day plus expenses, an Optimates' sum that Tatiana can ill afford, but doesn't really try to negotiate. Galadrion says she'll take magic items of equivalent value if gold is harder to come by, which for Tatiana is a much worse arrangement. Though that magic blade, Wavebreaker, is still locked up in the old Essi place...
• After some discussion in which Monder Guggins suggests a sort of symbiotic relationship exists between these isopods and those infected with them, eminently pleasurable for those carring the isopods thanks to the euphoric effects of the honey-substance they exude. Furthermore that honey, when hardened, has certain conductive properties tied to soul magic, and by extension, the coinage and power supply of the lower planes. Easier to show it than to explain it, he says, and takes Eldara down into the lower levels of the undersea mushroom-dome, where she finds to her horror that her sister is encased in the honey amber and blazing like a star - the power supply for the entire facility, Guggins' various artificer creations, these submariner traveling tubes and gods knows what else. Shadar Kai, Guggins says, are especially conductive of the soul energy thanks to the bleak drenching shadow of their home. He assures her that Adrina is not in any pain or discomfort, and that in fact, she's not conscious of any of this at all; when she awakens, her mind will simply pick back up where it was before her soul conduction occured. But he can't afford to simply turn the system off, or the effects would be disastrous. 
• He does, however, offer Eldara a choice - Adrina can go free, but Eldara must take her place instead. What will she choose to do?

Missions/Quests Completed

• Into the Underdome
• Monder Guggin's terrible toys

Character(s) interacted with

• Caledon White
• Ephraim Bale
• Lissa Daine
• Galadrion St-Michel

Report Date

14 Dec 2023