2024-03-09 Corruption in the Spiritroots
Player Characters
- Arkenciel
- Magoo
- Furifuru
- Ferravax
- Derulo
Summary
The party began in Smurkleton.
Magoo attempted to make a guard frown with his wand of scowls, but the guard resisted.
Arkenciel showed off the wagon she had constructed from a froghemoth skeleton, as well as her new colorful ribbon gauntlet.
The party traveled up the river through the dark and tangled Spiritroots along Twinklenight River. Arkenciel purified a small amount and noticed that the corruption was chaotic and random.
After a day of travel, the river's source split into different streams. Derulo sang to the defiled brambles, which responded by revealing the path of the corruption. They continued up that particular brook.
The party met a group of four deep gnomes, and both groups were immediately suspicious of each other. The lost gnomes wanted to find their way home to Smurkleton, and asked which way to go while pointing daggers at the party. Arkenciel told them to calm down and follow the party's footsteps back to Smurkleton. The gnomes told the PCs that one of their companions unexpectedly turned blue and became mutated, then attacked them. They warned that the corruption was infectious, and to avoid contact with it.
They happened across a stream with four colorful egglike rocks. As Arkenciel examined one, they hatched. The party fought four slaadi (red, green and blue). Arkenciel was unknowningly infected by a red slaadi's claws during the fight.
They rested for the night as the ribbons of corruption led northeastward.
One night, Arkenciel saw a blue serpent in her trance-dream. It told her to go to her people, that they needed her. She tried to chase it, but it slipped away from her vision.
The PCs marched on through the underground forest. They began to see the tribal signs of Arriknia, a town of Shadaria, home of the shadar-kai. Arkenciel led the party there.
The guards were distrusting of the outsiders that accompanied Arkenciel. She convinced them that the party were under her control, and they entered the town.
The residents of Arriknia practiced the same kind of bonecraft as Arkenciel. They wore armor and carried weapons crafted of wood and bone. Rothe carried wagons of materials and produce (mostly fruit and fungi) around. Mushroom farms were dotted around the edges of the town.
They found Thelnien, a shadar-kai folk hero, giving a rousing speech to the town. Many soldiers rose to join his effort to stop the corruption.
Arkenciel walked to the library to learn more about the corruption, which started four weeks ago. She found records showing that Thelnien was the first to discover the corruption and had led some efforts to cleanse it, but it didn't find details about its origin.
Magoo secretly defaced an important figure in one of the history books.
Thelnien approached to question the party's motives and Arkenciel's trust in the outsiders, which she reinforced with some effort.
Thelnien asked the party to visit the nearby villages Quithil and Darkblossom, which had been ominously silent within the last week. He arranged for the PCs to rest comfortably in the infirmary before setting out.
Ferravax demonstrated her giantish runes to a runecarver, then watched with interest as the shadar-kai woman demonstrated the underground elves' style of runes. Ferravax studied them to use later.
The next day, the party marched to the village of Quithil.
Quithil was quiet. Arkenciel and Ferravax led the way in and found elf corpses strewn about. Something burst its way out of the corpses; there were signs of struggle and evidence of slaadi.
They continued to Darkblossom to find more shadar-kai strewn about, but without holes in their bodies. Arkenciel realized they were alive just before the elves rose to ambush them.
During the fight, Arkenciel tried to parley with the aggressive kai, but they insisted on fighting. The enemy kai claimed that Arkenciel and her group were saboteurs and enemies of Thelnien, while she tried to convince them that the party were allies.
During the fight, several of the enemy kai fell ill. Blue slaadi tadpoles began to burst forth from their chests. Arkenciel saved two elves with lesser restoration while the others killed the tadpoles.
The PCs conversed with the two surviving elves, who explained how Thelnien declared the PCs saboteurs, and sent the group to ambush them in Darkblossom. Ark told them that this was not the case, to the ambushers' confusion. The kai told her that Thelnien's squad had left to chase the corruption to its source, and told Ark to follow. The two kai left toward Arriknia to report the incident.
The party rested in Darkblossom's remains. Searching the buildings, Magoo found an ioun stone of awareness.
They followed the path of corruption through the root forest. They discovered the site of a battle between kai and slaadi. One injured shadar-kai begged for death. As Ark began to try to help him, he began to tranform into a red slaadi. Ferravax rushed forward and executed the mutating elf. The PCs continued to follow the trail.
They happened across a larger battleground, where Thelnien lay injured. Ark restored and healed him, sparing him from death. Thelnien explained how his goal was to redeem the shadar-kai as their hero, how the glory of staunching the corruption was supposed to be his. He sent a group to attack the PCs to prevent them from interfering with his quest.
Arkenciel chastised the ambitious shadar-kai man for being a pawn in plans beyond his control. Thelnien apologized for his actions and told the party to go and stop the devil's plot.
Traveling ahead, the party found an erinyes with two barbed devils, standing beside a corrupted pond, amber shards, and a tall obsidian obelisk. The devil, introducing himself as Tazaneth, taunted the PCs, only for Furifuru to entrap him in a sphere of ice. The party fought the arrogant devils. Tazaneth opened a hot portal to the inferno, and another devil entered the scene.
A voice in Ark's head told her that killing the devil in hell would cause it to die permanently.
As the PCs exchanged grapples with the devils, Derulo conjured a stone enclosure on the other side of the portal, preventing more devils from filtering in. Ferravax used her lashbinder whip to yank Tazaneth into the inferno. He continued to tease them as they held him there.
Taz began to panic as he realized why the party held him on the inferno side of the portal. The PCs worked hard with their chance-related abilities to keep the devil there, but he managed to fly out one last time before Furi froze him in time. They pushed the devil back into the portal and slew him, destroying him forever. He dropped a ring of necrotic resistance.
Derulo entered the Inferno for a moment in order to experience it. The portal began to fade, however, so he lept back out.
A sapphire-colored couatl appeared above the corrupted pool and introduced itself as Chatzka. It thanked the party for their efforts, and explained its involvement in the ordeal: it guided Thelnien to make a deal with Tazaneth in order to lure the devil to where he could be destroyed permanently. Tazaneth's corruption spread much more efficiently than expected, however, and so the cost of destroying the devil flew out of control. Thelnien had sold his soul to Tazaneth in exchange for the opportunity to be a hero, and was freed of that deal by the erinyes' demise.
Chatzka showed the party that it had become irreparably corrupted during the struggle to protect the Spiritroots. It would set out to purify as much corruption as it could, but it knew it would ultimately be consumed by the chaos and need to be destroyed. It tasked Arkenciel with hunting it upon this transformation, and stated that it would contact her in a dream as it had done before.
Chatzka restored Arkenciel's slaadi infection, then flew away into the darkness of the roots.
The party destroyed the obsidian obelisk and deduced that the amber shards were Tazaneth's means of transporting the slaadi from hell.
The PCs returned to Arriknia. Thelnien confessed how the couatl's voice had convinced him to make a deal with Tazaneth to lure the devil to its demise. Arkenciel decided Thelnien's fate: she recorded the true events, stating how Thelnien was a pawn in a greater plan. He was allowed to live with the shame of his mistakes. The party were rewarded for their efforts with gifts of fine arts and crafts created by the town's citizens.
Arkenciel told the deep gnomes of Smurkleton that the shadar-kai were dealing with the chaos, but didn't go into detail about its source.
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