2023/08/09: Consolidation Report

General Summary

Knight, Lillith, Kal'vus, Union, Zaran, Buzz, Ik-chuk   The parties spent two days going through loot and spellbooks and waiting for the evil aura to finish.   Union handed over the letter from Ao to Zaran. It was mostly just Ao telling Zaran to stop calling for divine intervention when he didn't really need it. ("Stop using the nuclear option on squirrels!") Not really any other information of consequence.   Sweet got a set of coordinates from one of the reference books in the library. Spacial coordinates, apparently. There's some place of interest that Necrosa's followers wanted to look into. Buzz was able to determine that the location was somewhere in the asteroid field in the Renedge System. Necrosa's people had detected something there when setting up their instruments, but subsequently decided it was nothing and unimportant. Sweet disagreed, but didn't explain why.   Buzz set to building a ship (based on dreadnaught hulls from Star Wars) using his technomancy, which he'd be able to add his Greater Spelljamming Helm to as needed. With a bunch of further additions and design changes, it ended up looking like a wood/stone/crystal narwhal, with a powerful (artifact?) horn. Plus a bunch of other details that aren't being recorded here.   In the meantime, Lillith tested Ik-chuk for magical potential. He had... rather less than average. But hey, at least he's psychic!   The party discussed what to do with the corpse of the Faceless Watcher. It seemed to be stable inside Knight's inventory, with no apparent ill effects, but none of them wanted to rely on that for long. The Shadows had immediate projects to attend to, but the Fist of Ranthael were willing to go wreck the Watcher's stuff on his home plane and then ambush and kill him when Knight released the corpse on their command. The password the party's bard would use when requesting the release was "Free Bird". The Fist would need to pick up some magical aid from the Mountain of the Mages to properly track the Watcher's base down. Knight donated 15,000 gold to the task, in thanks and in hopes it would help speed things up.   As planned, Lillith played the magical harp to generate coins for everyone. She didn't play perfectly, but she played extremely well. Almost 10,000 gold per party member.   The party separated once the auras wore off, heading off to handle various personal and administrative tasks. Among other things, Eldrin Stormseeker's birthday was coming up two days later.   Eldrin invited all his friends to Trunkwood. Lots of guests, lots of alcohol, lots of fun. Details will be handled later.   Knight went back to check on his home. Events are in motion. According to Knight's spy, Slick, New Hallownest has a few weeks before it'll get hit by at least a hundred thousand ant people. Slick said the formian civilization, which he'd thoroughly (and with great personal trauma) infiltrated, is spread across seven different caverns. They went into panic mode after the defeat at the kuo-toa city, and they're now building up to fight an army like what we brought on the regular. They've been pressing the mercenaries defending the mines and the city hard. They're all sort of insane, with a mix of magic and psionics unique to them.   One of the hive caverns is a gigantic petrified brain. It's about a mile and a half long. Slick doesn't know what it was when it was alive. Maybe a giant elder brain. They also have an ancient grell city. Apparently the ants used to be bio-weapons the grell made, before the ants turned on them and wiped them out. The ants have a sort of racial superiority xenopohobia thing going. Another cave with lots of vines. Another with steep dropoff pit things. Another that's a near-paradise with great biodiversity and lakes and rivers and plants. Another is a blue stone crystalline cavern. Another has a dusty mold lake several miles long that they use as a food generator.   They're all in panic mode and are printing new soldiers like mad. Trying for an army in the hundreds of thousands.   Aside from that, things are relatively normal. Now there are little slug things wandering around rather than little crab things. They're oozing out from above and outside. They're pretty easy to deal with, but willing and able to try to eat people. Out in the caverns, there are some much larger ones.   On the bright side, the mercenaries and the spiders are all doing well on unity. Having a shared and dangerous enemy helps with that.   With the spelljammer expedition expected to take a week and a half each way, Knight had to inform the rest of the group that he wasn't going. He had a far more urgent crisis to handle.   Union took an opportunity during the week and a half of downtime to sell off some of the treasure he'd acquired. He also bought a very eager, puppy-like magical (psionic?) crystal and a girdle of fire giant strength, and possibly other things.

Rewards Granted

1 xp

Character(s) interacted with

Sweet, Ik-chuk, Slick, Eicria, Herb, Ao

Notes

Traena's brother-in-law (in the Fist of Ranthael party) is a justicar.