Session 29: Into the Void Report

General Summary

The party regrouped, and began discussing the various options for how to find and reach the sphere. They also discussed alternate scout options, Roy mentioned Copper, and the loss of Copper, and that Fred is not really intended to be a scout. Jeeves , during the discussion, did look around for Cigfran , but could find no sign of where he wandered off to. Eventually the party settled on possibly using a powerful magical item called a Windborne Pennant. This item was ensorcelled to only take them back to Marshfield, but the thought was that the magic locking them within the mountain might override that and enable them to move about more freely within the tunnels. During the discussions Quirico indicated, with gestures and writing in the dirt, that he could not speak and wished that to be remedied. Boris called upon The Source to heal his friend, and Quirico vomited up a frog, which hopped a short distance away before bursting into flames. Once the frog burned to ash, Quirico was able to speak again. The party finally proceeded forward, and once the magic was enacted, with the help of a magical script to enhance the duration further, the party discovered there was one more whisp of cloud than expected. Choosing to ignore this, assuming it was their friend Cigfran , they began to make their way down the tunnels with Roy leading. They quickly became lost, and after wandering for some time, the seventh cloud waved them in another direction, quickly leading them to an entrance where the rough cave walls gave way to polished stone. This whisp then waved them back as it proceeded forward. They found a room that had been unused for a long time, and gathered there. The group solidified in this unused room, where they discovered the seventh whisp was, indeed, Cigfran . They closed the door and spoke quietly, Roy asking Cigfran why he kept disappearing. Cigfran protested innocence even as he flickered out of sight, becoming invisible. The moved on, keeping high to avoid the void cultists wandering about. They entered a large room where they saw people milling about in some form of ritual pattern. They observed the people moving into and through this pattern, and in one case watched as three others found themselves surrounding another, whom they lifted and threw into one of the several pools of acid, and that unlucky individual dissolved as they screamed in agony. After watching for a while, they continued down a different corridor, and discovered people making careful gestures before stepping over a threshold. It took quite a bit of careful and repeated gesturing to each other but the group all finally understood that this was a code of some sort to prevent triggering some kind of magical trap or sensor. Eventually, everyone performed the required gestures, and passed through without further issue. They proceeded on to the next area where, with some additional gesticulation managed to agree on a direction. Heading to the West, and using their mist forms to flow under the doors, they rounded a corner and entered a larger space. Here they found what appeared to be a market, and witnessed some form of sacrifice as a child was thrown into a carnivorous fungus patch as payment of some kind. Proceeding further, they encountered another gesture gate, and after some fumbling everyone managed again to make their way through. Passing down a long series of corridors, they noticed a stream of persons carrying tiny fragments of Void Crystal, some no larger than a pinhead, heading in one direction, and followed them. Arriving at a bustling area they moved through into a massive chamber with a very high vault ceiling, and a large dark sphere floating above a raised platform, surrounded by carnivorous fungus. As they watched a man and woman stepped forward, the man pushed the woman into the fungus where she began to scream in agony and terror as her flesh was consumed, and the man then threw the tiny shard of Void Crystal into the sphere, which expanded large enough to engulf the woman, who's cries cut off abruptly. The sphere shrank back, a bit larger than before, and everyone in the chamber began cheering wildly. Searching the area, Roy found a circular opening in the peak of the ceiling, covered by illusion, and led the group through into a room with a circle of chairs around the well-like opening, and some space behind that circle, with a closed door behind that. Thick dust covering everything suggested centuries of disuse. Cigfran gestured for quiet as everyone solidified in the chairs. Cigfran whispered toward the well "Hear now, the voice of the void, clear this place, lest you feed me!" Everyone in the room below froze, and then cleared the room. Cigfran quietly climbed over the chairs to move close to the door, and gestured for the others to come closer. Quirico fell climbing over the chairs, but the thick dust muffled the noise, everyone managed to come close, and Cigfran cupped his hands around his mouth and said "Hear the voice of the void, cheer for the void" but there was no cheer. "I think we can speak here as long as we're quiet." The party agreed that Roy would wait here for four hours, then drop the crystal. The rest returned to cloud, and rushed, as fast as possible, away. While rushing away, Cigfran noticed a tiny natural chimney, and led the group up that small channel to a room, then flowed through a crack that led quickly to a room near the Octolibrarch's cave. The group had only been there a few minutes when they were blasted with terrible cold, then moments later a sound so powerful it shattered their eardrums. In the meantime Roy was waiting in the observation chamber while people returned to the room below, and sacrificed many to the fungus. The many sacrifices made the time seem much longer than it was, and Roy only ended up waiting a single hour, though he thought it was 5 hours. Roy dropped the crystal, and accompanied by a burst of wild magic vanished from the timestream just before the crystal struck. Unseen by any who survived, the sphere expanded to a full 10,000 foot radius, then ceased to exist, leaving a massive sphere of vacuum, which the atmosphere rushed to fill, accelerating to the point that when the air crashed together at the center it heated enough to explode. Roy reappeared and began falling, but used magic to slow his fall then transformed to mist, just in time for the blast wave reflected by distant mountains to toss him about violently, but as mist he was not harmed. The scale of destruction was incomprehensible. Boris used magic to restore his own hearing, Quirico and Cigfran used herbs, and Jeeves used his herb to restory Roisin Marshfield, whereupon Boris used magic to restore Jeeves ' hearing. Jeeves returned to mist and headed back to a cavern where he had seen rare fungi, to collect materials for herbal preparations, returning about a half hour later, just after Roy and the Octolibrarch arrived. The Octolibrarch commented on the violent choice of means to remove the cultists, gave the group more information about the magic relics they bore, answered a question about the Iron Tone, and did something strange to help Jeeves that left the chiurgen unconscious, then plane shifted away, finally freed of its long imprisonment.

The group rested the next four hours waiting for Jeeves to wake up, then began to plan their next actions.

Rewards Granted

Information about the Iron Tone

The Iron Tone is a thing that does not exist, it can be made. Its purpose is to destroy the Iron Legion. Ahh! It is not a thing, it is a sound that can be produced by a thing. You must gather several items and combine them. In the presence of the Iron Legion strike the chime, it will send forth the tone, and shatter them all. Oh, a wonderful thing, I love things such as this, so destructive, so wonderfully vile. You will need a Mithril bar, you will need to bathe the bar in the planar energies of the Celebryth Vale. You will need the form, from the The Pits of Borelius. And you will need the tuning fork, for which you will need to visit Arborea. The Tuning fork must be created of Cold Iron, and tuned to the World Tone of Arborea. This tuning fork will form the tuning stem of the chime, the chime itself is made from Star Metal cast in the Form found in the The Pits of Borelius, and the bar bathed in planar energies is used to strike the chime. The portal you must travel to reach Arborea is in the Swamp of Borelius. There are many who will oppose you, as they did Borelius himself for he too sought the Iron Tone, but fell in the effort.

Information about the relics

The ring you bear was Enlightened, when the Void Crystal entered the sphere of annihilation. Oh my word! You Insane Monster! You did not! That would be what you did... Well then, I'm not sure I should tell you anything more. You destroyed a sphere of annihilation, one of the most valueable and wonderful things in the multiverse, well, I will forgive you this once. Child, I mean princess, you must engage a legendary creature in combat, you need not do so alone, and you must defeat that creature without harm to yourself. That will enlighten your scarf. Further, to gain ability now, you must embrace your noble heritage and become an inspiring leader. You, bearer of the assassin's bow, you must kill an enemy which is capable of attacking precisely to cause great harm, you must do so with surprise, you must critically strike it, and must kill it with a single bolt before any other creature acts in combat. If you do so, you will gain further power from it. Also, you should become expert in the crossbow, it will gain great strength if you do so.