Hellish Homecoming
The Ring Bound made their way to Iraiebor. On their way they were attacked, very poorly, by the Children of Iraiebor. They responded by cooking the children a meal and giving them some seeds and starting them on a farm, as well as Lux giving them enough money to feed, cloth, and send them all to college. The party also found out that there was a blindness disease in the city's water supply; Cribbins took samples. They made their way to Iraiebor and spent a quiet afternoon at bookstores, a very fine bed and breakfast, and, in Lux's case, gambling and being flirted with by a merchant. They then got the sigil sequence for the city and teleported away.
The arrived at Suzail University, in Cribbin's lab and met his interns. On their way out, Cribbins got challenged to participate in the upcoming boat race by fellow professor Seymour Butts, with taco Tuesday on the line. With the race in a few days, the party stopped to do some trivial tasks. Cribbins repaired Larkspur's head, which neccessitated sending Lux and Gira to Marsember to talk with rare minerals dealer Boris to get some cyrosteel. Cribbins also gave a lecture, picking up another intern. Lux got his spine fixed and a case study written about him. Larkspur also did some research into Labrynthia. The party also found that infernal possession is an issue throughout Cormyr. There was a protest on the university campus in support of the fireblood/fireborn, which was apparently a more politically correct term for the infernally piloted. The protesters believed that the demon attacks were staged by the government. In contrast, Marsember was under strict curfew.
The boat race went off with much trickery and a few war crimes, with Cribbins winning handily. Lachnai acquired the conjuror class's boat, as it was apparently technically an unread creature.
The party made their way at Lux's Mansion, working their way through a kelpie forest and clearing out some demon spiders that had taken up residence. They then figured out that the house could be made to stand up and walk, and promptly began to pilot it to Immersea to sell some stuff.
While in Immersea, Lux got some of his stuff stolen and tracked the thief back down into their lair, confronting Flordarious. The rest of the party rushed to help, engaging in a fight that saw all their shit continuously stolen by the rakshasa. Flordarious stole Larkspur's bags, which included Bahamut’s Fang. He and his forces also managed to kill Lux before Flordarious teleported out. Again, with all the good shit. Lux began a massive draconic/demonic transformation, apparently triggered by his death. In one of his hands was a powerful spell that he appeared to be charging up. The rakshasha's remaining forces fled, along with several members of the party. Larkspur raced over to Lux, dumping happy memories down the link their rings created and using it to command Lux to sleep. Lachnai created a wall of force around Lux, trapping a willing Larkspur in with him, before running to try to get his sister out of the blast radius, with Cribbins racing ahead to start up the house. Gira stayed, also using his ring to try to stop Lux. Larkspur took damage and drew focus, distracting Lux from trying to break or teleport free from the wall of force. They went down after two rounds, and managed to shunt their fading concious through the rings into Lux's mindscape. There, Velezark was trying to snap Lux out of seeing a loop of his mother's death by punching him repeatedly. Larkspur started singing a lullaby and trying to calm Lux down. Eventually that worked and Lux snapped out of it before the spell could go off, passing out. Alkizarr, who had come running from Lux's Mansion as soon as he heard what was happening, arrived in time to mist step through the wall of force and puppet Lux into casting a cure wounds that saved Larkspur's life. Gira, Alkizarr, Larkspur, and Lux then raided the shit out the rakshasas lair, gaining a shit ton of gold in the process. Lux also passed Larkspur his bag of holding, along with most of it's contents. The party reconvened and went out to eat and sleep at the Immersea Inn.
The next day, Lux made the decision to leave the party, seeking answers and a way to contain his dangerous fugue states. He left Larkspur with a medallion of his old mercenary company. Lachnai also decided to take the house and head to Baldur's Gate with his sister. The remaining party members chartered a ship and headed to Arabel. On their way into the city they had to pass through several checkpoints manned by the church of Pelor, which had apparently used the demon incursion to gain power. When they entered the palace, they discovered that Larkspur's clone, Wren, had apparently already made their way to the palace. King Therrin Obaskyr accepted that there were now two Larkspur's and welcomed the second home as well. He caught the party up on the current political situation; namely that the people were angry with the monarchy for not letting the church seize more power sooner and for not taking care of the demon incursion. The Linwood Barony had fully revolted, and Ondreia Obaskyr had gone out to deal with it. Cribbins and the party went to go report in to Dalila Obaskyr, who asked them to retrieve an informant from a nearby church-run """"enlightenment""" camp who responded to the name Songbird. To help them, she assigned Ashe Trickson to assist them. Flordarious also contacted them, letting the party know they had a three day time limit to come and confront him or else he was going to sell the Bahamut’s Fang. With that time limit over their head, the party set off for the camp.
On the road the party encountered an old man with an incredibly powerful staff who could only remember three things and appeared incredibly attractive or aesthetically pleasing to whoever viewed him. He muttered something about a prison. Eventually Larkspur managed to figure out that this was the whole-ass god Corelleon under a genuine curse. Alkizarr managed to break the curse. Corellon yelled something about a gnome and vanished. He popped back a moment later to drop off a diamond with his likeness on it before vanishing again. Befuddled, the party neverthe less continued on their way until they reach the camp. Larkspur and Alkizarr remained outside while the rest snuck in. They quickly discovered that the Church of Pelor was using enchanted headbands to enslave whoever entered the camp, as well as tricking them into signing contracts that gave up all their legal rights. Gira also discovered that 'Songbird' was actually Big Bird. Ashe Trickson found an office containing all the dirty contracts and stole them. The party on the inside managed to sneak Big Bird out and hopped in the gamer cart to return to Arabel.
Once back in Arabel, the party sidetracked to help push back some demons and close a portal that had opened in the middle of the city. Here they encountered Friar Pip as part of a contingent of priests that where responding to the alarms. The party dropped of their info with Spectre, who sent them via the merchant's guild portals to Baldur's Gate. There the party realized that the merchant's guild had to have a connection with Flordarious, and promptly interrogated both a worker and a manager to discover that the rakshasa had bribed them to report when the party arrived. Larkspur and Ashe Trickson scouted around the city and got information on where the rakshasa was staying. Cribbins decided to implement plan O, and hired a bunch of adventurers to help clear the lair (serve as Cannon Fodder). The party figured out that Flordarious was staying in the sewers and began to dungeon delve, working their way around traps magical and physical. Larkspur avoided the beartrap and the glyph, but missed the NFT-wielding hirelings behind both of those. Cribbins came to their defense, and a battle began.
After much back and forth, with several near misses with death, the party eventually managed to corner Flordarious in such a manner that he surrendered and agreed to work for the party. While Cribbins haggled that out, the rest of the party retrieved what remained of their stolen loot and headed out, planning to go back to Arabel before starting to figure out how to head to Labrynthia to retrieve the Staff of Mystra.
