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Military: Battle

Myska's Menagerie delve through a mountain to catch Jibrom by surprise in is laboratory. The Menagerie put an end to the maestro and his puppeteered warlord.  More than just Temperance Shards are found in the laboratory: dozens of mysterious components, brews, and reagents whose power comes from a subtle science beyond the sight off man; potions, scrolls, and a codex.

Myska's Menagerie flew through the night and the next day westward. With the frost giant raiders dealt with, the full attention could be paid to Jibrom and his embiggened Citadel from the Fated Order.   Many plans were bandied during the flight from guerilla warfare over the course of hours and days to just chucking the Temperance Shard empowered throne off the side of the vessel to rocket through the roof of the inner keep as an opener to a blitzkrieg assault. In the end, the decided tactic was far more delicate. Chupta contacted Cheyrita through his tome and the party brought her aboard once more. The party had requested the stonemelder to make them a subtle entrance in the side of the keep to allow for everyone to sneak in before the fighting began. The stone giant leader doubled up on this, wishing to take the party completely underground. If they sought Jibrom and only Jibrom, why even go near the fortified upper keep? Cheyrita had helped make Jibrom's dungeon for his experiments and knew that he had her grow the dungeon to access “Flowing Life” (an underground stream). Cheyrita could guide the party to a cave on the opposite side of the mountain and meld through the rock until she found the same hidden creek. The party could then follow the stream back up, always taking the more polluted path at any junction.   With the plan set, the companions crept their way forward, blessed by Crush's attunement to nature to quiet their sloshing steps until the faint lights of lanterns could be seen ahead. A broken floor spilled out a few feet over the edge of the exposed stream. Fozz's shadow-stepping scout revealed the opening to be at the far end of a long hallway. At the opposite side, Kimmalog stood at attention, guarding the entry square of the dungeon. A purple light flooded from a barred doorway halfway down the hall's length and a large distillery contraption provided Fozz cover on his end. As the party gathered above the water, clinks of glassware and the shuffling of furniture could be heard from a nearby door just on the other side of the distillery. Christu slithered under to confirm Jibrom's presence right inside.   Fozz called on his shadow magic to fill the hall between the Menagerie and Kimmalog with silence to dampen the sound. This would allow an open fight with Jibrom without Kimmalog interfering. The companions piled towards the door as Astrid gulped down Fozz's Potion of Growth before casting her own Enlarge spell quickly piling up to the size of a giant. Chupta went to open the door but found it locked. Fozz quickly picked it but Chupta took the pause to send Jafi in to keep eyes on Jibrom... who no longer was there. Astrid kicked open the door to see noone. Fozz darted in to look around a corner but only saw the danger too late. Jibrom appeared in the corner as an invisibility dweomer fell away due to him flaring a series of concussive blasts from his ring. Jibrom instantly followed up the barrage at Fozz with a psychic shockwave erupting through the rest of the Menagerie. The party began to pile into the room as Crushed sent a microboom. The blast sent the blubbery maestro stumbling back towards a cabinet. Unfortunately, Fozz had lost concentration on his dampening magic when he was assaulted by Jibrom's concussive blasts. Kimmalog was on his way.   Jibrom summoned up a vast amount of power to attempt to mentally imprison Astrid and Fozz simultaneously in a living iron maiden of gray narrow shards. Despite the mental havoc it put the pair through to immediately push away the painful presence, accepting it as a binding reality would have been far worse. Fozz retreated back behind cover as he pulled animals from his Bag of Tricks. A weasel appeared to run up Jibrom's pants followed by the charge of a giant elk to remove escape routes for Jibrom. Astrid pushed forward with Devastating Blows, smiting with every swing of the double enlarged hexflail against her chosen target. Jibrom was not a fighter. He had the front line to soften the Menagerie in the upper keep. He had Kimmalog down here as a bodyguard. But none of that mattered with the assault coming in through the underground creek. Flesh was torn from face and torso to hang from the body. He could not go toe-to-toe with Astrid. Any thought he had of staying much longer was taken when Chupta called out his name from well behind cover and sent a psychic lance as a homing missile through the dungeon and into the hill giant.   Opposite of this, Crush was left to deal with the charging Kimmalog on his own. The tortle conjured a wall of fire to try to keep the frost giant at bay but Kimmalog merely charged straight through it, holding a large ceramic jar as he loped forward. As he burst through the curtain of flame, the giant hurled the jar at Crush which impacted and exploded across him. Despite being far more fragile than a boulder and doing less immediate damage, the contents were far worse. A thick, sticky sludge burst into flames on contact with air and greedily clung to Crush.     As Crush ran into Jibrom's private room towards his companions for aid and to not be in range of Kimmalog while he burned, Astrid and Fozz began to rush out into he hall. While Crush had tried to handle Kimmalog, Jibrom had made some choices for survival. Having been knocked back from Astrid's blows and into a table, into a corner, he had to get out. He attempted a volley of concussive blasts at the woman but she withstood them and still seemed hardy. He could attempt another mental prison but if the first mental fight had shown anything, it wouldn't save him. He scrounged on a desk for a potion but the one he found would not help him. Needing to get out with his own Temperance Shards, he teleported out of sight.   Now, with Myska's Menagerie in the hall, the fight was focused at Kimmalog. Blows landed but a flair of purple light from under his cracked him coincided with wounds healing at an extraordinary rate. The battle didn't last long as he suddenly turned and fled down the hall. As the companions gave chase, they found Jibrom coming out of another room into the square. The hill giant was holding his shard cluster he had chosen to save instead of Teleporting miles or continents away. Kimmalog seemed to be veering towards him. Crush, still burning, summoned a spike growth in the center of the room to obstruct movement and Astrid's heavy blows walloped Kimmalog into them. The frost giant tore himself free of the spikes but couldn't get to the waiting Jibrom. The Hill had to close the distance himself before knocking off the Frost's helmet revealing a Temperance Shard protruding from his skull. Jibrom pulled the shard free and plunged it into his own chest. Kimmalog stopped healing but the horribly wounded Jibrom started. Astrid attacked Kimmalog to give her companions time to put the stubborn fire out on Crush. The Frost dropped her to the ground. Fozz ran up to get the Kimmalog's attention as Crush's spores mended Astrid's wounds. Before she could get up though, Jibrom sent a lightning bolt to steal her consciousness once more and drop Crush as well. Kimmalog tried to grab Fozz to tear the slowing down elf limb from limb but Fozz managed to continue to evade. Chupta sent Jafi to feed Crush the healing potion Fozz had left with the tortle after the fire was put out Fozz dug through Kimmalog's torso with a thousand dagger slashes and claws. Where Kimmalog had attempted limb by limb, the elf went organ by organ. Crush stood back up, using his fungus to animate a dead troll claw from the floor to cling onto and infect Jibrom. The claw dug to the heart and the fungus prevented the healing shard from raising Jibrom up once more.   With the Giant maestro and servant dealt with, our party began the looting of Jibroms alchemical laboratory. After the now single-ly enlarged woman was helped back up, Astrid returned to the purple flooded room to look upon 12 tanks with floating troll parts in them, each tank topped with a fragment of a Temperance Shard. She stepped forward to get a closer look but a flare of light from the ground signaled a Glyph of Warding as it exploded, shattering all of the jars and causing the purple shards to phase and wink out of existence.   Fozz and Crush rushed to Astrid's aid. Her health was sought to and she was pulled back into the main corridor. After removing the unconscious Astrid from the the chamber sodden with embryonic fluids and shattered glass, further investigation went slow. A plethora of potions were looted from Jibrom's racks and arrays. Jibrom's ring was collected as well as the regenerative Temperance Shard from his side and his core-shard that he had snagged mid combat. His core shard was small, obviously fractured time and time again for his own experiments. Now only a single piece remained.   Within the initial room of battle that contained Jibrom's desk, Crush found a large, brass bound scroll that Chupta later identified to be a ritual to contact other planes of existence. The party located the holding chamber Jibrom had teleported into to grab his final temperance shard. This sparked Chupta into wanting to head back the chamber that had felled Astrid with the explosive trap. Dead limbs, heads, and organs of trolls scattering the chamber, Chupta brought out his Gem of Seeing. Drifting through the air, through walls, or simply lightened into pure translucency, Chupta could see the splinters of Temperance shards fading through the Ethereal. Some shifted in the plane itself, others continued on through that transitory plane elsewhere.   Chupta brought over Fozz excitedly and talked with him about how they might grab them. Fozz attempted to reach out, channeling his connection to the shadows and phased his hand through reality to bring it back out with a splinter. Chasing down another before it drifted through the ceiling, Fozz managed to pull the maneuver a second time, hand vibrating and leaking from it's own confines has he reached through reality into nothing to pull back out a second splinter. Feeling the similar energy to the Temperance Shards he had previously dealt with but also an otherness to them, a charge and volatility, he kept them separate, putting them in opposite parts of the handy haversack.   Crush, meanwhile, found another document of interest, this one far more austere than even the powerful scroll than before. The document was made up of a stack of skins and hides. The splayed open pile was bound by a log of amber fused over one of the sides of the skins. Upon the skins were a weaving series of sigils, bent and warped symbols making up the iconographs. The writing meant nothing to Crush. When Fozz found him, the elf studied it. While the symbols meant nothing to him, a prolonged attempt to understand the writing caused a faint ringing of chains to echo in the back of his head. The elf freaked out, panicking again and lashing out verbally at Crush. Fozz attempted to collect Chupta to leave but then couldn't find Crush. A game of hide-and-seek and a sold kick at the found shell of the withdrawn Crush only heightened party strain. After Fozz had left, Crush rolled the bound hides up around the core of amber and placed it in the bag of holding as well.   In the end, the party found themselves out through the back of the caves once more. A call for Temren got them back on the ship though Cheyrita had left to go to the Fated Order's citadel herself. Astrid was placed in her bed and the party started to sort through the loot. Eventually, Chupta too went to bed, giving Fozz and Crush time for a heart to heart to reconcile actions taken in Jibrom's dungeon.

  Legend Lore: Jibrom had spent two 5th level slots on Scrying each day to prepare for the party. Unfortunately for him, he caught parts of multiple plans. While he was ready for Myska's Menagerie, he did not know they would be coming in the back. He started acting as soon as he heard the first spell cast.