Carceri-Bound
Corelleon teleported the Ring Bound back to the Yawning Portal, where Silatheron was waiting for them. They party caught him up on everything that had happened. He admitted that he and GorgZ'aGohan had not parted on the best of terms, but that the wizard could be found in Barovia. It was quickly decided that the easiest way to reach the Shadowfell would be to travel to Regaclith and continue from there. So the party teleported there, or, more accurately, to Evershine Tailoring in the city, who's owner politely requested that they find another place to teleport to in the future.
While walking through the streets, Larkspur got hit with a vision (See The Travels of Daisy. After coming to and relaying it to the rest of the party, the group decided to take a quick swing by Regaclith University to say hello to Timmy the Goblin and ask why the University was now at an angle. Timmy, who was now at a lanky 6'3", caught them up on everything that had happened and the fate of Lux. His roomate, Freckle Fingle, gifted the party some tea. On their way out Larkspur gave Timmy a hug and had a moment of wondering 'oh hey, I take care of everyone else, but do I need someone to hug me?' before promptly banishing it to the back of their head with a 'of course not, I'm a robot!'.
Silatheron had not traveled with the party to the University, but instead had gone to wait for them at the Iron-Blooded Orphan Tavern where he ordered a meal for the crew and felt like a terrible father all over again when he realized that Argent had never had pudding (the British variety) before. The party ate and then headed out, having a brief conversation with the city guard about a werewolf attack that had taken out 25% of their forces, which hadn't yet recovered from Frank's attack on the city. Once outside the city and in Shadowfell propery, Silatheron began to have an panic attack that he was talked out of by Cribbins and Larkspur, likely a remmnant of his time imprisoned on the plane.
From there the party flew via dragonback to Barovia, briefly pausing to deal with some nightwings. A few times Silatheron got lost in his own head or began to panic again. Larkspur did their best to distract him with inane conversation while Cribbins, on dragonback, proceeded to invent and brew Dragon Cocaine. When the group reached the Barovia, they briefly set down to talk to locals and figure out where GorgZ'aGohan's tower was. Instead they discovered that another one of Silatheron's old party members, Angelica had apparently started some sort of cult/church around herself. The barkeep they were talking to confirmed that Angelica herself could be found at the Cathedral, which was apprently built on top of Strahd's old castle. Confused, the party flew to there to see what, exactly, was going on. A brief conversation with Angelica revealed that she was extrememly stressed and frusturated by the current circumstances. GorgZ'aGohan had requested help managing the region so Angelica and come. But GorgZ'aGohan had proven functionally useless in helping, and left unchecked the region dissolved into violence due to the influence of the Shadowfell. So, not seeing other options, she had created a government that was rapidly sliding or had already slid into theocratic facism. She also called Silatheron "Snowflake," an implied they had once been lovers. She was rude to Argent, and unhappy with the relationship between Silatheron and Argent's mother Laura Eradine due to the age gap. When she caught Larkspur attempting to insight her, she counter-insighted and honestly pled that she had done the best she could. When Larkspur responded that her best hadn't been good enough, she snapped and said, essentially, "All right. You deal with it then," and flew off.
With the heart of their government/religion gone, the guards at the Cathedral panicked and raced off to inform a council. After some delibration, the party decided to try to track the guards by sending to Shadow to deal with them and in the interim speaking with GorgZ'aGohan, whose tower location Silatheron thought he could guess.
When they got through the tower defences (via Argent knocking on the door with a mage hand) GorgZ'aGohan greated them and proved to be the definition of a hedonistic alchoholic wizard. He also greated Silatheron with "Snowflake," apprently having also slept with the silver dragon. He mentioned that Laura hadn't liked him much, but he had liked her. After some conversation where Larkspur tried (and miserably failed) to convince him to take a more active role in governing Barovia, Cribbins managed to talk him into letting the party walk some people through his interplanar portal in the hopes of simply evacuating the region's populace to somewhere that didn't inspire madness. GorgZ'Gohan agreed and the party refocused on what had originally sent them his direction- the strange connection between Greg, Wigglesme, and Larkspur. He popped open their chest to take a look at the internal components, took their armor to integrate lead components to it, and had Silatheron do a quick check for divine influences. Everything came back negative, which, according to GorgZ'aGohan, left warlock shenanagains. He had a private conversation with the Astral Dragon via the bag of holding and emerged with his conclusions.
Apparenly, the Astral Dragon was not the ultimate source of Larkspur's power; both he and Greg shared a patron at a higher level. Since Greg was higher than Larkspur in the warlock pyramid, and Wigglesme was level, they could track them and Larkspur was unintentionally spying back on Wigglesme. GorgZ'aGohan speculated that the patron that both the Astral Dragon and Greg shared was a primal force, possibly one of the Entities.
After a little bit of thought, Larkspur put together that the most likely option of the known entites was Knowledge, which was connected to the Cloak of Eyes that the party had picked up in the Forever Woods. GorgZ'aGohan volunteered to cast Legend Lore on the cloak, and the party got the whole histroy of Cloak of Eyes. Not seeing anything particularly malicious, and in a relatively safe place with plenty of powerful magic users, Larkspur settled in and attuned to the cloak, actively using their magic to try to forge a deeper connection.
They promptly tripped into a vision sequence.
First they felt all the souls that had given something to the cloak, and sang them a memory of a lullaby to try to soothe them into rest. Then they follow the cloaks magic to the Entity of Knowledge, which appeared as a sphere of eyes, watching. Larkspur plucked out their remaining quatz-crystal eye and offered it to the Watcher and closed their other eye.There was a moment where, with their eyes closed, Larkspur saw themself from an outside perspective and were forced to really think about what they wanted, and what this power meant to them. They watched their life flash by, both their time with the Ringbound and everything that had passed before that, reanchoring themselves to their body as they did. In the end they decided that it was no longer time to Watch but to Act and opened their eyes.
They stood in the center of the sphere of the Watcher, a part of it and yet their own person.
They were then shunted back to their physical body in the Shadowfell, with all of their senses dialed up to an eleven. Slowly Larkspur began shutting things off, listening to the heartbeats of their party to recenter themselves. They also realized that Cribbins had fucking carved his name into their heart, and that's why they kept feeling the urge to introduce themselves as Larkspur Cribbins.
After some discussion, Silatheron volunteered to stay in Barovia to help manage it, while the rest of the party went back to Suzail and Cribbin's lab to make the curse-resistant gear they would need for the second layer of Carceri. The party also found out that GorgZ'aGohan used to teach at Suzail and in fact used to have Cribbin's lab.
The party spent a couple days hanging out as the gear was made, and then went back to Barovia as GorgZ'aGohan planar shifted them to the first level of Carceri, after repeatedly warned that after he closed the portal on them, he wouldn't be able to get them back. They went in anyways.
