Session 33 - Brainstorm

General Summary

We take Idressi to Axiokeanos to deal with his arm. Kestor recalls hearing of cursed gold from the southern continent, which suggests that Dorien (and her master?) is associated with the southern continent somehow. The Tidecaller goes to find someone to help, and we discuss Dorien being a problem. Kestor wants to go find her at some point both because she’s an enemy in search of the ember, and because her connection to the southern continent makes her a curiosity to him. There’s probably cursed gold in her lair! Ionessa is hesitant because she feels responsible for Dorien being in our lives at all, if she had just gone back to Dorien in the first place instead of running away, we wouldn’t be in danger from her. We all explain that it’s better that she’s here and she doesn’t have to feel guilty about Dorien being around.
Axiokeanos introduces us to Fathomkeeper Vathylakas, she’s very interested in the arm. Idressi is an awful patient, but Vatholakis is able to remove the curse. Unfortunately he’ll have to stay in the temple while his arm recovers, which is apparently the end of the world for him. He and Xanthos argue for a bit and . Tidecaller acts as the tide, representing the people of Oiakis on the surface as the surface dwellers experience the tides, which they also experience underwater, so it’s a common feature they share! The Fathomkeeper is the keeper of lore who stays within the city, Kestor asks for her help researching and clues her in to where the cursed gold is from. Maybe they will research this together!
We head back to Ionessa’s family’s place to sleep. Ionessa looks pretty shaken by all of these events, so Xanthos comforts her. She hasn’t considered Dorien coming to Oiakis, her family might be in danger, but Xanthos isn’t going to let anyone hurt her or her family. Ionessa thinks the omen about her bringing danger to the city might be about Dorien, and so it’s her fault that she might lead danger here. The priest banished her for the omen, and she disobeyed his decision, which might get someone killed. Damn she kinda has a point… (jk)
Xanthos argues that you can’t spend your whole life thinking about whether decisions you make will end up being bad, she’s allowed to go see her family, just because a bad person is after her doesn’t mean that seeing her family was a bad decision. Ionessa doesn’t know whether staying or going is better for her family. Xanthos suggests making Dorien a priority if she’s that concerned about it, maybe even using Idressi as bait (this idea gets shot down pretty sharpish). In the end, Xanthos says they just have to focus on making sure nobody else gets hurt, and they hug. Gross!
The next day everyone is up and about eating breakfast. Ionessa’s moms are coming soon! Today! Kestor and Neo decide to go to the library, while Ionessa and Xanthos go to the barracks. Kestor wants to look into the southern continent, while Neo wants to look into the ways of worship of the deities down here. Neo learns that this is a very superstitious culture, lots of focus on omens. The pecking order of the gods has Thalakyma at number one, Saomenos has a lot of influence in Oiakis specifically, and Tegissa as the bogeyman of their culture. All the bad gets blamed on Tegissa, old stories involve people roaming too far from their villages and towns and encountering scary monsters that worship Tegissa, including merrow. Rarely is there any reference to monsters raiding a town, usually it’s when people roam too far that’s the problem.
Kestor has some trouble navigating the library system and takes a lot of time to find some information. He finds merfolk depictions of Koss, though it’s not particularly extensive. There are no references to the southern continent, or rather the place where they would be are suspiciously empty. Kestor assumes the Fathomkeeper has taken them already, and he, Neo, and Gord set out to find her.
At the barracks, Ionessa and Xanthos ask around about how they might help out with the merrow. The militia are adamant that they have everything under control and that they don’t require outside assistance, particularly not from surface dwellers. Xanthos asks if they’ve looked into the crusty change in appearance, but gets shut down because he’s an outsider. Ionessa argues on his behalf, our party has been in a lot of fights so we can help, but the argument similarly falls on deaf ears. This militia dude’s a racist. Xanthos challenges the militia’s greatest soldier to a duel to prove that he can help out, but they don’t agree to the fight. I&X have to leave, Xanthos is frustrated and Ionessa chastises him a little for his approach.
Parthesis, Thrysos, and Akatios head on over. Apparently duels don’t really happen down here, and the reef sergeant they spoke to is kind of a racist jerk. There were some merrows spotted down by the vents on the seafloor, that might be a good spot to go looking and see if we can capture a merrow and take a look at its crust. We could also go ask around for someone who might have examined the crust already, but Ionessa thinks it would be better to go looking ourselves first and bring any findings back.
Back at the temple of Thalakyma, Kestor and Neo meet Halina who offers to help find the Fathom Keeper. She’s not in the library there, nor is she in her room at the temple. Kestor gets caught sneaking into her room so Neo has to distract the cleric while Kestor pokes around in more detail. Unfortunately, the Fathomkeeper’s notes are all written in code and Kestor cannot decipher it. He contemplates taking the knots with him but decides instead to leave them and see if she comes back for her rites in the afternoon. Halina is quite uncomfortable with everything they are doing and Kestor is quite dismissive of her.
Meanwhile, Ionessa and Xanthos investigate the vents at the seabed. They ask around with the pipe engineers there about the merrow. A genasi there reports that a merrow showed up and attacked him, but the militia was able to fight them off. He had to do some repairs on the pipes, and then a young man called Oktios came by to pick up the body. The merrow were chewing on the pipes, what damage could they do if they got into those? Xanthos asks where each of the pipes go, they’re all full of hot water but what if something else got in there? Xanthos convinces the guy to test the water to be sure, he tries to convince the guy to let him open it with his shadow but the guy is too proud. He turns the valve and inky black water shoots out of the pipe, Ionessa uses her wall of water to block off the ink and the guy closes the valve and goes to shut off the whole supply. Xanthos helps him turn all the valves that need turnin’! The inky black water is diverted from the spa to a pipe far away. The pipe tech’s name is Ismaros.
Surprisingly there have been no reports of the inky black water creating problems back in the city. We all reconvene at the temple and meet with Halina, it’s revealed that there are no plans to use the hot water for any of the rites at the moment. We take a look for the offending pipe and find valves controlling the water flow so we can cut off the water from reaching the temple. Upstream from that valve, there is a pipe diverting from the line that has been freshly installed that goes into the rock of the wall into another part of the temple. Ionessa finds that the water to the ritual rooms has already been shut off, which means the tainted water is only traveling through the newly installed pipe. This reeks of conspiracy.
Kestor and Xanthos rush off to search the prayer rooms and ritual rooms for where the new pipe comes out, while Ionessa, Neo, and Halina go to ask around about new construction to see if they can narrow down locations to search. They find the Schoolminder who says there have been no new pipes installed recently, at least not one that went through her. She agrees to gather the acolytes to search for the pipe. Kestor and Xanthos don’t have much luck searching in areas where . They try following roughly where the pipe would be, but they try traveling underneath the temple and find a dead end where the pipe would presumably have led underneath the temple itself. It seems like they might be pumping the liquid into a space under the temple, but we don’t know how to access that.
Ionessa asks the Schoolminder for more information, she isn’t aware of anything that’s under the temple and agrees to start evacuating the building. Ionessa conscripts a school of fish to help look for another entrance to this underground area. With their help, we find a strange spot of rock that seems extra salty, which could mean a brine pool or some such that is poisonous. We find that an illusion is covering the entrance, which seems to have been worked by a very talented caster. It leads into a dark tunnel, so we steel ourselves and head in.
We try to be stealthy as we head through this dark, smooth tunnel. We spot a figure blocking our way in, it’s Fathomkeeper Vathylakas. She asks us to leave, it’s obvious she’s in on the whole scheme. She says she is only in keeping with the teachings of Thalakyma, it’s unclear if she’s a zealot or mind-controlled by something (as the conversation goes on it seems more like the latter). She originally tries to get us to leave again, but then invites us further into the tunnels to a dark cavern that she illuminates to reveal it is filled with merrow. Idressi is chained to a wall inside, and there is an enormous monolith dedicated to some cyclopean being that we don’t recognize. The pipes are pumping a pool of black brine around what appears to be an enormous brain!
Kestor sees a scene play out before him, as if the room itself temporarily changes into a different room with a large throne on one side, the room is engulfed in moving shadows. There is a being on the throne, he’s peeking out from behind something and watching. Shadowy figures with pointed knives enter and approach the throne, the figure on the throne sees them coming. Kestor ducks behind what he is hiding behind and comes back to reality, this was the result of flashing back to a moment of triumph, Kestor is now moving with surprising grace and stealth.
Ionessa tries to convince her of what’s going on, but the Fathomkeeper seems to think the giant brain is a child of Thalakyma, and that she is in some great temple ordained to her by an oracle who isn’t here, and that the merrow are guardians of Thalakyma. She’s completely mind-controlled and delusional, and insists on giving us gifts from the child to ensure we don’t speak of what we have seen here. Shockingly we’re not cool with that, so a fight starts!
The fight is pretty tough, we manage to take out the Fathomkeeper non-lethally and most of the merrow are killed. Once we start damaging the brain, a bizarre figure appears and blasts us with a psychic wave that stuns all of us. “Troublesome interlopers. Why have you disturbed my work?” It does the typical villain speech about us being losers and not having time for us, it takes the brain and the two of them disappear.
Kestor wants to release one of the merrow as a show of good faith to Tegissa and the other merrow in the hopes of maybe putting a wrench in the war. Ionessa disagrees, saying that the merrow are not creatures that can be reasoned with. She convinces Kestor to bind it and at least talk to it first, and OH BOY. He prays to Tegissa to help cleanse the merrow, but she does not answer (no roll, perhaps she does not see this merrow as one of her children?) We clean off its crust and take a sample, then Ionessa heals it. It wakes up and starts RAMBLIN’!
It rambles about having joined this cult of its own volition, to ascend to a higher calling. They are evolving, Ionessa thinks it implies that most of the merrow have joined this cult. It begins to convulse and speak in various languages, it calls to Kestor, “I see you, little playwright.” Then to Neo, “little spark”. It says, “sink heaven, drown the gods.” Its jaw dislocates, and four tentacles begin bursting out from its mouth. It lunges at Ionessa and Xanthos puts it down.
WHAT THE HECK!? Everyone’s kind of shaken by this, there’s a lot of implications here. Ionessa thinks Tegissa is being displaced, a mighty blasphemous opinion. We take the Fathomkeeper and Idressi to the temple to make sure they can be cured of whatever is happening, but we’ll find out if that actually works later. The church is very disturbed to learn of our news and sends a crew to go clean up the cave. Ionessa and Xanthos break up because Ionessa keeps trying to save Idressi.
The end.

Notes

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Report Date

26 Jun 2023