Session 46: Rescue Party
General Summary
Using his divine powers, Zaphral transported the party back to Isociol's tomb. They were in an offering hall, and through an open door they could see a wide room with a huge globe in the centre, crackling with lightning and topped with an ominous metal spike. In the centre of the globe, suspended and inanimate, was a human man with a flowing black beard, a weathered face, and red robes, torn and stained.
Nemara, Sigvurd, Lins, and Vin immediately recognized him for Allustan, and the group set about trying to find a way to free him. Initial investigation showed just walking in to be a poor idea, when a bolt of lightning dismissed Nishithra from the plane.
The party explored a bit in search of some way to disable it, but settled on volleying it with cantrips. They made short work of the spike in this manner, and the contained energy dispersed in a wave of harmless static. At the same instant, Allustan dropped to the ground and immediately began to bleed out.
The party rushed forward, and Sigvurd and Nemara cast magical healing to stabilize the wizard. When he came to, he was disoriented, but quickly got his bearings.
The party had much news for their old patron, not to mention the introduction of their new friend Zeke, but the hardest to tell was the murder of Eligos. Allustan received the news gravely, and remarked that their enemies were greater than he had feared.
The reason he'd come to the tomb in the first place, he revealed, was because his research into the ancient Chaos wars had caused him to realize something of value in their fight against the Ebon Triad.
The Wind Dukes buried in these hills, he explained, were ancient warriors who once fought the Oberyth incarnation of chaos and her Wolf-Spider generals. Forces who shook the multiverse when the ideas of law and chaos were not ideologies but forces of nature and magic.
It was the Wind Dukes who forged the Rod of Law, which shattered into the Rod of Seven Parts. Indeed, the Vaati were famous for their magical weapons. And, he said, they often laid their arms to rest in tombs, so they should be secure, and could be retrieved in times of great need.
Such times, Allustan said, were surely upon them, and so he felt it appropriate to go and retrieve the ancient weapons of the Wind Dukes, for use against the Ebon Triad and their draconic allies. Isociol, the Duke buried in this tomb, was a great general in the fight against chaos, and his weapons would surely be worth seeking.
The party agreed, and determined to seek these weapons. The wizard had been scrying for the weapons' location, but didn't have much specific information to share, since he had never seen or touched the items he was scrying for.
He did know that the weapons were somewhere far below their current location, perhaps in some secret basement or hidden chamber. With this, and after Lins surreptitiously applied more bandages during a group hug, Allustan transported himself outside, and the party ventured further into the tomb.
They immediately ran up against a trap that tried to flush them down a great pit, but Flew ahead of it and set about combing the upper levels before heading down.
As they flew across a hall whose floor churned with ice and the strange blood-like water, two pairs of giant hands coalesced from the slush. The party dodged aside as they grabbed at their feet, pulling back to see two huge shapes forming and pulling themselves out of the bloody ice with murderous intent.