Ritual Partying
After a few days relaxing at the Siren's Rest Resort, the party began to run some errands in preparation for the next stage of their adventure. Potions were bought, maps were acquired, and Larkspur went to inquire with Dahmer Bezos about getting some advice while renegotiating their contract with Tasha. Unfortunately Dahmer was out, so Larkspur looked around the area to find a potions shop to restock. They entered a perfectly normal shop but had the weird feeling of being watched, like everyone was staring at them but looked away the moment they turned to look back. Being to feel paranoid, they introduced themselves to the potions shopkeep by the name Wren. The shopkeep told them to have a good day, using their real name.
Realizing his mistake, Greg introduced himself.
Apparently Greg was the god of chaos, and had been keeping an eye on the party throughout the whole campaign by possessing bystanders. He had also planted the bag of holding with the rip to the Astral Sea hoping one of the party would pick it up. He had been responsible for Larkspur's visions. He offered an alliance. All he wanted was to reduce the gods to mortals so everyone would be equal and to free everyone. For an extreme definition of freedom that seemed to involve removing bonds that people entered into willingly.
Larkspur refused on the basis that they were fundamentally designed to serve, had chosen their masters and were happy there. Greg was bitter and disappointed- he had thought if anyone would understand it would be them. He then said: 'You'll find him at the Yawning Portal,' and vacated the person he was possessing.
Larkspur raced back to rest of the party and gathered everyone up to relay what had happened. The whole party sat there for a a little while, struggling to process what they had learned and figure out how it changed things. Eventually they decided it didn't change much about what they had to do. They still had to summon Corelleon to see how to escape Labrynthia, and the best way to do that was to throw a massive party. So they headed over to the Yawning Portal and started getting drunk. Tom the Killer showed up apparently having been sent there by Greg with the note "Find robot. Go to bar." After the first round, a portal opened up to the next party stop, and Tom managed to call the whole bar in to keep the party going.
From the Yawning Portal, the party wound up at the The Beached Leviathan, then Hell's Kitchen, Minotaur Wild Wings, Blood of the Vine Tavern , The Stinky Dinky , Blue-Flame Firebird, The Ruby in the Rough, and finally, the The Coral Cut. Everyone was blackout drunk by the Stinnky Dinky. Remembered highlights of the night of partying include encountering Flordarious again in Hell's Kitchen, and doing the Waterdeep Splash in the Blood of the Vine. The Waterdeep Splash consists of going swimming in a pool of alcohol with water breathing cast on you to functionally inhale alcohol. Cribbins created and pulled it off by collecting kegs of alcohol from all prior taverns.
The party woke up the next day hungover as hell in the Coral Cut with a note from Corelleon saying to meet him in the penultimate tavern, the Ruby in the Rough. Larkspur was also down an arm, but seemed to have gained a golden trumpet labelled "The Pawn and the Prawn". For some reason Bobbie Robbie was at the Coral Cut and he and Cribbons struck up a conversation and began making plans for a MLM. When he woke up, Argent figured out that he could re-trigger the portals to retrace the party's steps to get back to that tavern if they got to a place they had been before the Ruby. The Stinky Dinky, the last place anyone remembered being, was in Suzail and a quick teleport away.
Once in Suzail, the party realized that they didn't actually know how to get to the Stinky Dinky, since it was hidden in the sewers and its location changed with the semester. Eventually they managed to track down some students that knew where the entrance was currently- in the back of a printer's shop. When the party got there they discovered two things: one that the print shop was also printing pro-war with Ahm propoganda that had been comissioned by someone named Diablo Erebus. The shop had been paid with fey platinum coins minted that year with what was likely a warforge's four-fingered hand with three claws extended on it. In addition, it had the inscription "The Lord will/has freed us." The second thing the party found was that the owner of the bookshop was being controlled by a undead partially mechanical intellect devourer. Looking into the printer's past revealed that the last thing she had seen was a green-horned devil walking into the shop. The devil had looked like an older, higher-ranking version of Meph- 03. After some freaking out at Cribbin's lab, the party refocused and made their way back to the Stinky Dinky and jumped through the portal to the Blue-Flame Firebird in the City of Brass.
Once there they traced the trumpet to the Pawn and Prawn, a pawnshop. Apparently, Larkspur had traded some strange magical device for a horn there, but the party swapped them back. Some fiddling around revealed that the strange magical device was a fancy phone, purchased from the Golden Pomegrante. This strange store had no shopkeep, but an array of incredibly expensive magical items and phones. After bemusedly poking around the store for a little bit, the party remembered that they had another lead that said Larkspur had drunkenly gambled for the funds to to buy the phone at the Seven Maidens. They took off for it, getting into a brief scrap with some city guards. The party's drunken carousing had evidently caused some issues. They also noticed some wanted posters for other warforged who had been freeing slaves. In the Seven Maidens, they found Meph-F4, a devil deformed so that he couldn't walk. He was using Larkspur's arm as support. Larkspur bargained back two of their little arms to get the big one back, which pleased Meph-F4. Written on Larkspurs arm in gold ink, however, was a note that read "Say we had a really good time last night. See you at the next one." After asking some more questions, the party found out that they had dragged the party to the royal palace, and that was likely where the next portal was.
While making their way to the palace, a fleet of skyships descended, unloading a small army of warforged on the royal palace who seemed intent on causing a coup. The party ducked their way through the combat, with a few people firing off potshots on palace guards as they went. The warforged in charge of the battle seemed to be the one who left the note on Larkspur's arm, although they freely admitted to him that they were blackout drunk and didn't remember him. He seemed to take it well enough as the party vanished through the portal.
Now the party was finally at the Ruby in the Rough, although they didn't immediatly see Corelleon. Instead they saw Tom the Killer sitting at the bar sipping at his drink. After some poking at Tom magically they party finally figured out the phrase to say to allow Corellon to emerge. He proceeded to be the most helpful any god had been so far, answering all questions that he could and explaining a lot of what had happened.
When Greg had first been divided, it had been into three parts: body, mind and heart. The body, The Wyrm, had been buried beneath a ley line nexus in a desert. The mind had been buried deep underground and a neutral zone created around it- no godly powers could be used, and the treaty of the gods was null there. Later, a dark gnome city had sprung up nearby. Eventually Wigglesme-Tigglesme had stumbled on it. Greg's heart had been used to ressurect Sehanine after she had died in the god conflict.
Labrynthia consists of 9 levels of increasing difficulty. Level one, the surface of the planet, could fairly easily be entered and exited. Level two, which cursed anyone to only be able to remember three things, could not be exited the same way one came in- at this point the only way out was through. Corelleon reccomended wearing gear that protected against curses to make it through. At the lowest level there is a room with the Staff of Mystra which holds back the three remaining Ferum. The trick here was to get rid of any and all magic, run in and run out as fast as possible, locking the door behind us.
Corelleon also had no idea how the connection between Greg and Larkspur was formed or how it could be removed/blocked. He reccomended talking to a cleric of Mystra, using Modify Memory to check for any altered memories, or asking Larkspur's patron. He also noted that there was an oracle in a different cell in the bottom of Labrynthia who had a similar power- although the guy was weird, and just narrated whatever was happening.
At the end of the lore drop, Corelleon teleported all of the party to an old student of his and an old friend of Silatheron, the wizard GorgZ'aGohan.
