Session 50 - The Panopticon

General Summary

We must rescue Jangles and Silanos from the Panopticon! It’s a big tower on the city outskirts on a hill, there are doors on the bottom floor but no windows. We can’t get closer until night time, so we decide to gather information about the place first by asking around with scholars and ex-prisoners. Kestor and Xanthos go find Theages, the transmutation wizard they met last time they were in town who changed Xanthos’ eyes. We ask him about the panopticon, he tells us to leave it well enough alone. Nobody who has ever gone in has left sane, and the people who work there stay there and don’t come into town much at all.
A group said the walls aren’t enchanted and tried to go straight through but never came back. He wasn’t privy to their planning, but he did help their attempt by acquiring the means of accessing the tower. They wanted another scroll that they never picked up, but he gives us a scroll of Passwall. They had one already and used it to get in, but got impatient and didn’t wait for the second so they got stuck there. He also thinks everyone in there should probably be released as the prison system doesn’t add anything to society that shouldn’t be dedicated to rehabilitation.
Ionessa and Neo go looking at institutions that might look after people who have been driven insane in the Panopticon, they head to the temple of Apnosis thinking they might look after people whose minds have been lost. The cleric there tells them about intellect devourers that can eat your brain and inhabit your skull, but doesn’t seem to know about the tadpoles. Ionessa ends up describing the tadpole in significant detail to him and he takes down an illustration, she also tells him “they’re coming for everyone like right now”. Then she asks if he knows anyone who has been released from the Panopticon.
He can point them in the direction of a woman who was released from there, but he wants to know why. Ionessa says they want to listen to her story, and he takes their names down for the records. Her name is Cleo, and they head to her run-down house but she’s clearly paranoid and unstable and won’t talk to anyone. If they talk about it, something happens, they’ll die. Geas spell? Someone’s watching from the tower, probably Phosidaeus. They keep questioning her and she lets something slip that makes her panic and start begging for forgiveness before being cut off mid-sentence. It takes a while but eventually they break open the door after using a rat to see that she’s on the ground, she’s dead. Neo casts revivify to bring her back.
She talks about how awful it is inside there, he has everyone “stacked like crates” and you cannot see him but he sees everything inside. He has a needle and if he pricks you, it makes you unable to talk about the Panopticon. She has a mark in the shape of an eye, the symbol of the Panopticon, which the needle gave her. She also tells us not to let him see us. We meet back up and exchange information, then decide to try to get our hands on some nondetection and counterspell scrolls, maybe anything else that might help the prison break. Most of us end up at Joel’s Scrolls, Joel only sells things that rhyme with scroll (foals, maps of the shoals, bowls) but Xanthos insists on going to the more respectable and boring Archaeus’ Scribing Services.
Xanthos gets kicked out for being a philistine and not appreciating the guy’s scroll marbling or whatever, Kestor apparently also got kicked out of here before for desecrating the scrolls. Before we scope out the tower, Kestor wants to check out the house his friend Nika lived in where he first found the play. He meets a guy who seems to be selling the house and takes a tour. He smells something old and burning from the fireplace, which is where Nika tried to burn the play. He also notices the corners are weird and folding, maybe his own trauma altering his perception or maybe something is seriously off here. The guy is desperate to get rid of it, clearly there’s something wrong with the place.
He offers it to Kestor for 1,000gp, Kestor bargains him down to 800 and buys the home to prevent anyone from living there. He makes plans to board the place up and Ionessa offers to take a look through it with her true sight, but they decide to do it after the Panopticon business. We check out the tower at night, there are two entrances through an exterior wall, inside is a second tower. We try to get closer but are spotted by a guard on a tower. We retreat, Xanthos tries to get closer with Skotos but is spotted and shot. Next, Ionessa uses the oil of etherealness and begins scouting the Panopticon. She gets a look at the entirety of the prison and finds Jangles. She also spots Phosidaeus, and sees with her true sight that he is an illusion, in reality he seems to be made of ice.
The central “control room” in the tower extends up high and descends far into the earth. Inside is a large creature that is vaguely circular with huge pointed teeth, and a bunch of eyes on eyestalks. It’s a freakin eye tyrant! Ionessa retreats and paints a couple of slogans on the Panopticon as she leaves.
Back at the cottage, Kestor dreams of his new house. The shadows are long, the walls are wrong, the smell of old smoke is pervasive. He sees a new door with a light beyond it, he goes through and finds himself in a really fancy study room. There’s a desk, sitting behind it is Parmenion. He believes Kestor’s mind is worth cultivating, and offers a deal that keeps his companions from getting in his way and he doesn’t have to hurt anyone. He knows there is something coming, he knows vaguely about the rot and wants to ensure Rheo is prepared for the coming threats. Kestor doesn’t think he’s entirely lying, but he is editing his goals to gloss over how what he really wants is for him to be in control.
He doesn’t know as much as Kestor about the rot, and so Kestor spins a yarn about how the real reason they can’t tell him is not anything to do with Ektikori or the ember, but because we’re being hunted by a creature of nightmare that could kill him if he learns its name. Parmention promises that if Kestor gives him that information, he will give Kestor information about Dorien. Kestor tells him its name is Pairairi, Parmenion has heard of it. A boogeyman to the kenku, but as he’s talking the lights all go out. We hear something scraping against stone, the smell of burned pages, Pairairi is here. Parmenion tries to twist the dream to fight it but he’s not fully in control and finds himself under threat. Kestor tries in vain to wake himself up, then to stand against the nightmare by invoking the spirits in his mind. He doesn’t have much luck, and is awoken when Ionessa finds him writhing on his bedroom floor.
They wake everyone up and Kestor explains what happened, it might have been a mistake to summon Pairairi, but Kestor wanted to test his dream spell theory and he was tired of running away. Not that he really accomplished anything… Except maybe getting Parmenion killed. There is a knock on the door and a government agent serves Kestor a 50gp fine for unauthorized building on his property. The extra building that Parmenion created in Kestor’s dream must have appeared, apparently it’s sticking right out into the street. Kestor realizes that Parmenion’s body might be there. UH OH!
The end.

Notes

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Report Date

27 Nov 2023