Session 23: Last of the Frostkeepers
General Summary
The party moved toward the barred doors to the south while Sigvurd bound and gagged their hostage. Peering through, they saw three humanoids standing, slack-jawed. After a moment, the party recoiled - these people were not only dressed in rags and filthy, they were missing large pieces of flesh. Most notably, their brains.
However, the party could see that the chamber expanded beyond their sight, through narrow corridors to the east. Vin went invisible, and the party cautiously lifted the portcullis to let her through. The zombies didn't react to her passage, and when she squeezed through the corridors, she found her mother and brothers huddled on the other side.
Using their newly acquired telepathy, Vin articulated what she'd found to the party. Mrs. Frostkeeper warned them that the zombies didn't react to people coming in, but they ruthlessly attacked anyone trying to leave.
After some deliberation, the party launched their attack, and Vin and Lins left to escort the other Frostkeeprs to safety. The party purchased a carriage and draft horses, and sent Aida, Nim, and Bel off to Diamond Lake, asking them to pick up Emiliana from Alustan when she got to town, and then send back the carriage.
Once they returned, the party was ready to proceed. They dealt with a magical trap that spewed acid all over Lins and Vin's construct, but they managed to skirt around it afterward.
When they stood in the next chamber, with its smooth stone and huge set of marble doors, thei rcaptive thrall began to levitate. Its eyes rolled back in its head adn began to glow fiercely bright as a voice boomed in the party's heads, drowning out all other thoughts.
It invited them to come in, and the doors swung open.
The doors revealed a circular room with benches - each with manacles bolted to it - along the perimeter. In the centre was a huge marble brain, its faint purple veins pulsing.
The last of the hostages was chained to a bench,and Vin ranto her uncle, suffering Wisdom Damage as the brain began its psychic assault. Nemara ran to give her the keys they'd lifted off the drow priestess, and suffered a similar mental wound.
As soon as Carlos Jabbar was free, he began attacking his niece, who was forced to turn him into a rat so she could escape the room. Meanwhile, Sigvurd and Lins hacked at the brain, hoping to destroy it. Its psychic energy fought for control of their minds, but they held it off long enough to shatter the brain into smoking chunks of marble.
Vin doubled back to place her hostile uncle in the newly-vacant cell, before the party turned their eyes on a curving staircase.
Vin's family was rescued, but several questions remained. Who hired this mind flayer and his thralls to kill them? Why? And what would they do when they found out the attempt had failed?