A Friend Forgotten

"Please don't feel like you have to answer right away. Just, take some time to think about it, yeah? I'll be here whenever you decide. Always."

-Elisif, in her letter to Erevan

Whispers in the Dark

As the party rested, they became aware of an odd pulsating sound in their minds, seeming to pull them deeper into the cavern. Upon falling asleep, Erevan dreamed of an idyllic seaside picnic with a beautiful and yet unfamiliar elven woman. Lethe however experienced disturbing visions of endless roiling darkness, dripping ichor-laden tendrils, and an overwhelming sense of hunger and pain. As the visions washed over him he became overtaken by the strange pulsating pull and began walking deeper into the cavern. Unaware of his actions, he was snapped out of it by Aberchak. After realizing that the source of this sleepwalking was indeed the pulsating energy they all felt, the party bedded back down for an uncomfortable rest.
After waking Precision was contacted via message by Ilaria, who wanted to check on the progress they'd made with the shipwreck as it had been a week. Precision responded that they were handling something more pressing but would handle it. Ilaria responded with a second message spell: "We agreed two weeks. Could extend deadline, but at 100 gold daily. However, each day makes clearing your names harder. Cannot guarantee past three weeks." Precision passed this information on to the party as they resumed their journey. As they continued their trek downwards deeper into the mines, all the while the pulsating sound becoming more and more noticeable. Eventually all except for Lethe became overtaken by it, and Lethe out of curiosity allowed the others to continue walking as an experiment to see where the energy would lead them. Observing them to have some spatial awareness despite lacking control of their bodies, he attempted to probe into their minds through detect thoughts. Immediately he was met with a chaotic cacophony of hundreds of voices, taking several points of psychic damage in the process. One by one the party snapped out of their trance before finding themselves at the entrance of a massive cavern.

An Aberrant Presence

The cavern was huge, hundreds of feet tall and twice as much across. A crisscrossing series of scaffolding and cart tracks filled the space, many of which had long since collapsed from age. Realizing this to be the main source of the blackrock deposits, the party cautiously entered the cavern. Looking around, they became aware of a tunnel in a far corner of the cavern; given the pattern of the rocks it was clear that something had burrowed into this cavern from below. Sensing danger, Aberchak used his Primeval Awareness to reach out his senses, and he detected both a monstrosity and an extremely powerful aberration from deep below. Lethe, in an attempt to pay back the psychic damage taken earlier, sent out a psychic scream in an attempt to harm anything nearby. He was met with the same sound of thousands of screams in response, taking a powerful hit of psychic damage again. Aberchak reached out again with his senses and psychometrically saw the miners that had once worked in this space slowly be drawn into the tunnel. As he attempted to probe deeper and detect the location of this aberration he also was psychically assaulted. The party pieced together that whatever creature was deeper in the tunnels was a being of immense psychic strength and was responsible for the disappearance of the miners. Armed with this knowledge, the party cautiously moved into the tunnels.
After another half-hour of walking, the party reached a fork in the tunnels. Taking the right-hand tunnel they emerged in another, smaller cavern. Lethe illuminated the area using dancing lights and found themselves standing on a raised area of the cave, with a 6-foot ledge ahead of them. Further down was a dark, viscous pool of bubbling black acidic liquid around which several glowing mushroom grew; Aberchak identified these as Owl Spore. Lethe sent Ferdinand out to investigate the cavern, who saw a large pile of bones in the corner before being attacked by some creature and blinking out of existence. The party decided to double back and take the other tunnel.

A Disturbing Discovery

Taking the left-hand path, the pulsating noise became louder and louder before the party found themselves in a quite deliberately-built antechamber with two large doorways in front of them. As they entered one, they found themselves in a room filled with seven large tanks of blue-ish liquid, each of which contained a body floating within it. Tubes ran from the top of the vats to the ceiling, where a crisscross of tubing connected each of the vats to each other. As the party investigated, they were suddenly assaulted by a wave of psychic energy as the doors to the room slammed shut and the vats began to drain. Within each vat were humanoid figures, each with the tops of their skulls seemingly shorn off. These figures grabbed weapons and began attacking the party, who managed to dispatch them with relative ease.

After the fight, the party examined the bodies. They realized that the figures' brains had been surgically removed, leaving only the exposed brain stem. Lethe was perplexed as to how the bodies had been reanimated, as he detected no traces of arcane necromantic magic. One of the figures appeared to be wearing the remains of what appeared to be a barmaid's outfit, and the party came to realize this must be the missing Brunhilde. Another figure was an elven woman wearing light armor, wearing a pendant around her neck in the symbol of the god Beltam. Erevan recognized her face as the one he had seen in his dream, although he did not know why she seemed familiar to him. Upon her they found a note addressed to Erevan, and in reading it they came to realize that this woman—whose name appeared to be Elisif—had been a member of their adventuring party as recently as the night before; however, whatever process had been utilized to kill and mutilate her caused all memories of her to disappear from their minds. The letter discovered on her body was a confession of love towards Erevan and it appeared the two shared some closeness, although Erevan could not remember anything about her.

Elisif's letter to Erevan

Seeking answers, Lethe cast sending to Percival Fould, asking him if he had any recollection of Elisif; Percival replied that he did not. He also told the party that they should stay away from Hildonia for a time, as they were being sought by the Crownsguard. Aberchak looked again at his contract with Victor Elan for this mission; in it, Victor told him to keep an eye on "these four travelers." Attempting to process this discovery, Lethe put up his tiny hut and the party tended to their wounds.

Chapter Thirty

"A Friend Forgotten"

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Previous Chapter: The Tortle and the Scare

Next Chapter: The Battle Below

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Ingame Date: 29^th of Rainseed, 1855
Real-Life Date: February 28, 2021
Protagonists:

• Precision
• Lethe Argie
• Erevan
• Aberchak Haverdak

Featured NPCs:

• Elisif†

Locations:

• Vergess Blackrock Mine