The party broke into Helmed Crown Layla's Home after Gwydion picked the lock on the front door. Knowing they were short of time, they put Mimsi into the bag of holding and left Olympia to stay on watch outside.
The second they entered the house, the party felt the overwhelming sensation of being watched, seemingly by thousands of seperate eyes throughout the house.
Olympia felt this too, even from outside and, as she critically failed a perception check, she was then placed under the charm effect of... something?
The party continued to investigate and found the following evidence throughout the house:
- They found around 40 holy texts of Correllon the sun god. Every single book was filled with blank pages apart from their final page which simply read 'Why does the Sun Shun the Dark?'
- Kodo discovered that, inside of Layla's kitchen cupboards, someone had etched into the wood with a knife 'They can see you, they can hear you, but they can't read you'. Something the party took to mean that they should write on parchment to communicate with one another. He also discovered that, at the bottom of the cupboard was a single silver ring depicting two arrows running parallel to each other, as though in an eternal race. Using a detect magic, he realised the ring was magical and decided it may be better left untouched for now at least.
- The party moved upstairs and went to investigate the main bedroom, within, Thordak activated his Inquisitor Rapier and found that there was an aura of Aist magic coming from inside the vanity draws. Satisfied, the party decided to return to Dairon and report the location of the Aist magic... though they didn't tamper with it for obvious reasons...
- At that point they found a trail of blood that wasn't there when they first entered the room. The blood trail led to a guest bedroom where it was then in puddle with another one of those rings sitting in the centre of it. The blood was dripping from a space in the ceiling where it seemed something had bled through the roof. When Barallas sent Pawcaw to investigate the roof though, he felt his connection to the bird vanish.
After this, the search group were sufficiently freaked out and decided that it was time to leave the strange, watching, house. As they reached the reception, they saw Olympia, seemingly asleep, running her hand through a silhouette black spotlight that seemed to be dark even against the darkness that already filled the house. As the party tried to pull her out of the darkness she was firmly stuck inside it and eventually, it took the whole party supporting one another to finally extricate her from the Distortion in the house.
As they pulled her out, Olympia described how she felt like she was dreaming, she dreamed she was afloat in a endless purple and black sky with strange stars all around her as the sky whispered to her 'Why does the Sun shun the dark?' at this point Olympia gained a point of madness. It had rp ramifications but also it seemed she became more comfortable in darkness, gaining darkvision out to 45 feet but also gaining the sunlight sensitivity feature.
When close to the Distortion, Baralas could sense Pawcaw within the spotlight and made to jump inside it until Kodo easily grappled him. Advising Baralas that they will find another way to get Pawcaw without him putting the group in danger. Baralas responded angrily to Kodo's suggestion and accused him of not caring about Pawcaw, at which point the group split up. Olympia wandered the village alone, Thordak and Baralas went to the forest to complete Baralas' find familiar ritual to get Pawcaw back and Gwydion+Kodo found Inquisitor Dairon.
They found Dairon as she was preparing to delve into the Oar Mountain with her partner, Inquisitor Theros. Once Gwydion and Kodo discussed what they found with her however, she told Theros to start without her and that she'll catch up, eager to grab the evidence before someone has a chance to steal or tamper with it. With that, she paid the party for the work they had done and moved towards Layla's home.
At this time, Olympia spoke with the 'Library?' and it was revealed Layla had purchased the books of Correllon from the library and then accused them of conning her as the books were all blank... as the librarian looked Olympia up and down he noted that her and Layla had the same strange look in their eyes.
Thordak and Baralas meanwhile brought Pawcaw back to life before Baralas cast speak with animals and had a domestic row with his pet as Pawcaw describes the endless sky he saw that whispered to him in Baralas' voice before his life ended. The two made up and apologised as Thordak watched with confusion and they decided to head to the wedding to find the rest of the party.
Dressed up formally and prepared to go, the party went to the wedding of Xander and Ivanka Bandobras, they had just started the reception and the two brides eagerly greeted the party, all apart from Gwydion, who snuck to the wedding gifts table and replaced the most valuable looking gifts tag (a present from Ivanka's mother to the pair) with a tag he wrote, claiming the present is from the party as a whole. After that, Olympia walked to the back of the venue to prepare with the wedding band whilst Mimsi sat at the open bar and started drinking with Thordak, Baralas and Pawcaw. Gwydion and Kodo decided to stick with water for the night as they felt they would need to keep an eye on the rest of the party.
Olympia spoke to Tywin Gentlestrum who again entered into a bitching contest with her, he dearly hoped she wouldn't choke like the last time he saw her play and again promised she would get her portion of the gold upon performing adequately. At this point he left them to their preparations and Olympia learned that the band she was working with were Ninja Teen/Team Death Slice, an anti-establishment 'fuck the man' style rock band. She immediately connected with them and they revealed to her that they failed their silver pipes audition, claiming it was due to the silver pipes being a 'corrupt, capitalist machine'. Olympia offered the band a rename and chose to call them 'Olympia and the Machine' for this wedding performance.
When brought on stage, Olympia opened with an acoustic romantic piece (after Kodo knocked out two kids at the back of the venue screaming insults at Olympia) that set the crowd to tears (amazing work Lorz)... after that the wedding devolved into a thrash metal concert that Ivanka loved but Xander... not as big a fan.
Thordak (with Mimsi in the bag swinging at his side), Baralas and Pawcaw joined the mosh pit for the next few hours whilst Kodo roasted the caterers for sub standard food (secretly seasoning the meat when no one was looking) and Gwydion relaxed and observed the party.
As he did this, an attractive, blonde wood elf came to his table. Dressed in a suit similar to Mimsi's, she introduced herself as Archania and immediately set to flirting with Gwydion. When he asked what her reason to be there was, she summoned a dagger belonging to the Weaving Providence and placed it between the two of them. Gwydion rose from his feet and drew his pepperbox to shoot at Archania but she wove magic together to force the gun to misfire before talking him down and explaining that he should know better than to cause a scene.
Archania explained that she finds life in the weaving providence deeply boring, she doesn't really carry the macabre beliefs of her fellow assassins and instead enjoys hunting adventurers and mercenaries for the sake of a challenge. For that reason, she has been tailing and observing Gwydion for a long time... revealing that she was the strange creature breathing behind Gwydion in the Oar Mountain tunnel and it was a fear spell that she cast that led him to leave.
In short, Gwydion and his group both interest and excite her and so she wants to wait until Gwydion is strong enough to give her a challenge in combat... only then will she kill him. She took her leave by stating that she would also be on Lyren Killian's ship and she was excited to get to know him. Once she left, Gwydion spoke to Kodo and claimed that one day he will either marry that girl, or she'll kill him.
The wedding came to a close after that and Olympia spoke to Tywin who showered her with praise, promised that if she ever auditioned for the silver pipes he would support her and explained that he was pleased with her rebranding... explaining to Olympia that when she auditioned for the silver pipes she went by the name 'Poppy'.
The party eventually got back to the tavern and, as Thordak, Mimsi and Baralas were drunkenly put to bed, Kodo, Olympia and Gwydion found out Layla had allegedly visited the inn and left the party an envelope with two more rings inside it. The three decided to not risk inspecting the rings further yet and instead decided they'd speak as a party and ask Baralas to see if he knows what they are the next morning.
Gwydion took a final look from his window and noticed that Archania was watching him in a house across the street.
The next morning, the party discussed the rings and Baralas revealed they were rings of recording, rare and expensive things but not corrupting or cursed items.
With that, the party decided to listen to them.
[THE RINGS OF RECORDING TRANSCRIPTS CAN BE FOUND IN THE JOURNAL SECTION IN ROLL20]
With this new information, the party decided that the next thing they should do is reach Dairon and warn her as Layla directly threatened her in one of the recordings. They decided to split up. With Kodo, Baralas and Mimsi staying by the mountain and Gwydion, Thordak and Olympia searching Layla's house for the rest of the rings and ensuring the evidence was still there for Dairon. As they searched, the watching had developed into whispers that carried the party's voices. The trio utilised a mixture of message spells and writing to track down the rest of the rings.
Gwydion searched the upper floor and found another distortion in the house, within which only remained Dairon's hand as she seemed to have been almost entirely swallowed up. Eventually he succeeded in dragging her out of the distortion with the rest of the group and she was non responsive.
As Thordak dragged, Gwydion and Olympia investigated Layla's vanity to find the evidence and discovered that within the draws was a spell scroll and the other draw was filled with jewelery of all kinds. They couldn't find a ring of recording inside and so they decided to upturn the draw and empty it into Gwydion's bag to inspect as a group later.
The party then all met in the broken oar tavern where Dairon was simply drinking, shaking and staring at the table. She explained to the group that she'd visited the same empty space as Olympia did but had spent 14 hours there, she discovered every single star was, in fact, her own eyes staring at her. They endlessly asked her, over and over, why does the sun shun the dark But every time she tried to answer they would simply laugh in crowds of whispers.
The party handed her the spell scroll (a scroll of Danse Macabre) as well as the rings they hadn't listened to, after that, Dairon left, shaky and emotional. Promising that she will head to King's Bay to ensure a bounty is put on Layla's head... she left, hoping to meet the party again down the road.
Once Dairon left, in typical fashion, the party pulled out the stuff they'd stolen from Layla and sifted through the jewellery finding some expensive pieces. Gwydion also noticed three signet rings belonging to the Black family... rare collectible items that the mayor of Krueler pays VERY well for. He recommended that the party look after those rings as they could be worth a significant sum of gold.
After this, the party spent the next few days training and generally enjoying their downtimes, for five days, before Lyren Killian's ship finally arrived.
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