Journal 37: Owlbear Lost in the Paranoid City
Exploring the twisted town, the party realizes there is an almost exact 50/50 split between extreme paranoia and extreme ecstasy among the populace, but trouble in paradise is brewing.
General Summary
As we leave the Raven Queens temple, Harvey Cecil makes it clear he really wants to leave this town, as there is something up. This is followed by a lot of bickering about what the actual plan is. In the end, we settle to get horses for team Bravo first. Jean Phillipe tells us he remembers seeing cultists last time he was here, whose description we recognise as cultists of the Great Mother. She is some sort of demonic / abberation kind of creep. Something with a lot of eyes. We manage to convince Jean-Phillipe Lebas de Fenelon-Chaussy d'Edouart to join team Bravo, and they are off to the mountains to harvest some snow.
Chris Edward joins us after a while. He has even less people with him, now. We ask him about the water / great mother / beholders. He tells us this doesn't ring a bell. Rael sees him flinch a little, though. He tells us he has a mother, Benthilda. Any way, Chris is up to something. Something beneath the city. Dun dun duuuuuun.
We have the brilliant idea to go to Bridgit Mouser, mayor of this town. There is a complication because we have an owlbear in our company. The village militia doesn't seem to like this. After ditching the owlbear, we are let in. After a brief talk, it seems the mayor doesn't know what is up. She does act strange though, and makes it clear that we should come to her if we have something concrete. She manages to tell us there is another city underneath the city. There is an entrance south of the city, where the tunnels meet, at the river base.
Then, shopping time!
In the magic shop Artso's Arcane Assemblage, Wren learns from the goblin shopkeep, Artso, that he left an armor (of breathing underwater) in the city below. The city below is flooded, ironically. If we get the armor for him, he'll pay us for it. He draws us a map of the underground city, and the location of his old workshop. Meanwhile, a terrified villager drops a threating letter and giant ruby after being spooked by Harvey. The villager is of the family Bent. The note is from 'The rulers of the night'.
Our merry band then goes to the place we think the entrance to the underground city is. There is a small lake with kids are playing there; they are innocent but seem to know something about what is going on. They tell us the villagers bring 'bad men' here and proceed to naively describe what amounts to a drowning of the villagers. The lake has a hole in the bottom where the entrance is.
We hide in the forest nearby, and wait for night. After it gets dark, a woman is dragged up to the lake by some cultists. Rael calls lightning upon them! The rest soon joins in. Cultists die. We manage to capture one cultist alive. We find a draft version of the threating letter to the Bent familiy on one of the cultist corpses, apparently Mister and Misses Bent were among the cultists! The captured cultist tells us they feed the Great Mother every night. The great mother is from the sixth circle of hell, and is breaking out. If they don't feed her, she will be angry. The town under the town is bliss. Rael dispels whatever afflicts her, and she is very sad that they murdered all those villagers and did shitty things. It all started two months ago. Something about Drussix. It has tentacles, with a smooth head. It is not very strong physically, but controls minds through dreams.
After we rest (Rael has a good dream; the rest has bad dreams), Rael gets a Sending from Ulfgar. Morbelgion is collecting ingredients for a spell. It includes 5 displacer beasts, a giant diamond and pixy dust (paaaarrtyyyy!). Morbelgion has been scouting, and found Kor Kreda (an ancient city of arcanists). He wants to go there with the last (including Ulfgar). Morbelgion controls the Valkyrie now; he means to subjugate.
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