Session 8: Denouement...of a sort

General Summary

Part I: Tying Up Loose Ends
After liberating the golden shield of Balduran from the warrior-king's tomb under the High Hall of Baldur's Gate, we find our group of intrepid heroes walking through the cold night air of the Upper City. They are being led by the Minister of Public Welfare, Falco Zodge, toward one of his family's historic properties - Gond's House of Wonders - to bring the shield to High Overseer Thavius Kreeg.
The group all have their reasons to be suspicious of Zodge's motives, so tensions were high within the group. Rightly so, it turned out. Immediately after turning the shield over to Kreeg for further study, Huru, Loki, Belynor, and Dass the gnome were placed under arrest by the Upper City Watch for conspiracy to commit murder, at Falco's order. Elias, Aramil, and Douglas of Lathander were left free, as they were working directly for the High Overseer.
Part II: Death and Escape
Two days later, the accused stood atop the main keep at the Seatower of Balduran, overlooking a city on fire. With them were Mortlock and Duke Thalamra Vanthampur, and a stoic executioner. Aramil, Elias, and Doug looked on as charges were read, accusing the Duke and her son of treasonous activities. The sentence was carried out swiftly, and Thalamra's head was separated by sword, and Mortlock slowly strangled to death at the end of his noose.
Captain Darmin Zodge, officer in charge of the executions, began reading the charges against Huru when through the darkness arrived chaos in the form of a determined halfling and his ogre friend. Dropping out of the sky, almost as if from nothingness itself, the two disrupted the hangings. The short one cut noose ropes while the 12-foot-tall ogre dismantled the gallows with a mighty blow, then took the fight to the shocked soldiers in the courtyard below. The halfling was called Kneebreaker Willaby - who Huru knew as a Guild member in good stead with local boss Goblin Benne. It was the Goblin who orchestrated the rescue. After a quick, almost running, meeting with the crime boss, Huru and the rest of the crew were shown their escape by Kneebreaker, swimming to safety across the harbor.
Benne wanted them to reattain the five-headed dragon crown that the group liberated from the cultists under the Frolicking Nymph. Apparently, the crown once belonged to Tiamat, the fabled Queen of Dragons. By the Goblin's reconning, anything that a god desires is worth holding on to. His informants tracked the crown through it's buyer - Falco Zodge. Benne told the group to retrieve the crown, get out of the city, and head to Candlekeep to the south to meet one of his contacts.
Part III: Kreeg's Demise & the Death of Zodge
After re-supply and rest at the closest Tinker's Guild hall, and with a plausible excuse for entering the Upper City on Tinker business, the party found themselves delving into the halls under Zodge's museum to Gond, where everything turned south a few nights earlier.
The passages under the Hall of Wonders were guarded, and noble Aramil led the way as he confronted a hideous, purple devil and bested him in (mostly) single combat with the grace of Torm and a mighty sword strike to the chest. Dass might have helped, and Douglas would later tell tales of Huru weaving arrows home as well. None can recall for sure, as the noble combat between the devil and his Companion enemy enthralled all who watched (again, mostly Doug). What is known is that after the purple outsider was naught but ash on the stone tile floor, Dass dispatched an onlooking rat - only to discover tiny, red-skinned imp in disguise!
In the moments that followed, Thurstwell Vanthampur was discovered in the adjacent Hall of the Techsmiths, promptly delivered into unconsciousness for a second time. More solemn was the discovery of the High Overseer across the hall. The old man was defeated; drained physically and emotionally by his attempts to parley with the creature inhabiting Balduran's Shield, glittering in the lamp light nearby. The old man apologized to Aramil, but said his actions were justified. He snarled at Huru that his shining city of light would be redeemed at the cost of this "den of vipers," and finally collapsed in tears on the floor. Disturbingly, Huru's keen eyes noticed the shadow cast by the old man - exact in every detail, including short devilish horns. As Aramil focused his senses to discern the nature of this discovery, Kreeg convulsed and passed away. His last words, whispered from lips frothing with black foam were "What have I done? Oh, what have I done?" Aramil called upon Torm's love to send the old man into the afterlife.
The group regathered their bearings, and took the golden shield. To their surprise, the shield began to speak to them - from everywhere and no where, into their very minds. "Take me from this place. You have no further purpose here." The shield was adamant, but the group's willpower to find Tiamat's crown was sure. They pressed on.
The heroes found Falco Zodge in a high, vaulted chamber covered in beautiful frescoes to Gond the Wonderbringer. He stood at the feet of a copper statue of a beautiful angelic being, and was protected by his silent, pale accomplice. Belynor immediately moved to attack, unleashing the canine fury built his long, terrible history with the patriar. Dass, Huru and Aramil followed suit, with the latter drawing the attention of Zodge's pale friend. The man quickly revealed his true nature, shifting into a red, bat-winged humanoid with tale and horns - a classic devil in disguise, as told in cautionary children's tales. The combat was short and brutal, ending when the fiend dissapeared into a ring of magical fire, and Zodge had been bloodied by Dass's mechanical contraptions and as Belynor stood over the corpse of Zodge, throat embedded amongst his wolf-form jaws. Falco Zodge, who brought so much misery to the low born and helpless of Baldur's Gate, had been delivered unto death.
Aftermath
Battlelust sated, and tense discussion between group members resolved, the party opened the museum's Hall of the Forbidden. This vault was filled to bursting with strange devices, rambling notes and schematics, a short, dwarf-shaped keg robot with processing issues, and a living (???) chest that eats chickens and walks on a dozen short, wooden feet. Dass quickly pursued the dizzying number of scrawled pages, discovering that this was apparently the work of a crazed and brillient beet farmer from the land of Quirm named Leonard. Along with Mr. of Quirm's rambling letters and strange models, the group finally found the five-headed dragon crown of Tiamat. With chest following loyally at the feet of Huru, and with several pages of Leonard's notes (and not a few of his inventions), the group left Gond's House of Wonders.

Rewards Granted

• The chest.
• The crown of Tiamat.
• Roll-what-you-want dice.
• Knift-that-protects-your-fingers-from-injury.
• Self-directing lawn dart.
• Two metal and wood objects labeled "G.O.N.N.E." - one short, and one long - along with roughly two dozen metal ball bearings.
• The Shield of Balduran, reaquired.

Missions/Quests Completed

1. The story of Falco Zodge, whose callous and evil treatment of Baldur's Gate's lower classes had so long went unchecked, and who was almost assassinated by the group at the beginning of our tale, was finally brought to an end. Zodge's conspiracy to take power through fomenting civil strife had been thwarted, albeit after much death and destruction in the city.
2. More clues were obtained about the destruction of Elturel, through the words of Thavius Kreeg. His declaration that "the contract had already been inked," and the fiendish appearance of his shadow in the lamplight, imply there is yet more to discover along this thread of story.

Campaign

Into Avernus

Protagonists

Report Date

30 Jun 2020

Primary Location

Hall of Wonders

Secondary Location

Seatower of Balduran