Session 16: A Shop in the Dark
The party gets a badly needed rest, stumbles into a trans-planar shop, and saves the missing Kerani from a group of aggressors.
Reframing the Picture
Having secured the gatehouse after clearing it of its monstrosity, the party settles down for badly needed rest.
Tilly cooks up the fish she caught, and the night went uneventfully.
Fork re-set the traps behind them as the party got their things together, while the others took the opportunity to ask him some lingering questions about
changelings that they had.
Moving beyond the gatehouse and further into the tunnels of the underdark, the party finds an old, decrepit building. Out of place in the dark tunnels deep below ground, the party warily investigates the building. When
Tilly flies through one of its broken windows however, she finds herself in a brightly lit, well stocked shop, a lime green
Dragonborn behind the counter. Back behind her, the window was seemingly repaired, but a strange purple glow seemed to surround the building's exterior.
The rest of the party, having witnessed
Tilly suddenly disappearing, quickly check the front door for traps, and
Vita steps inside to find her. Having entered the shop properly, a bell rings, and the dragonborn looks up with a welcoming flourish. He introduces himself as
Nadar, the proprietor of the shop "Nadar's Magical Mercantile", that seems to exist in a wide variety of locations all at once. Recognizing that there's no danger here,
Vita pokes her head outside to usher the others in.
The nature of the shop, and the lexicon of its owner, drew a number of questions from the party.
Nadar picked up quickly what the problem was, and explained that they're "Primes". When the party explains they were just in
Eberron, it seems to confirm
Nadar 's suspicions. He explains that his shop is exists in innumerable locations, but that he himself is in the outer planes, specifically
The Outlands. He describes it, and a nearby city he calls
Sigil, a crossroads of
the outer planes. He explains that his shop is merely an illusion to the party, and they an illusion to him. But an agreement made for a transaction lends to money, and the corresponding object, being exchanged by magical means that
Nadar insists is a "trade secret."
The party restocks however they can;
Tilly recouping her tent that was left with
Noggie, while
Bulgey picks up a new bagpipe, and hand crossbow.
Brian restocks on potions, while
Fork picks up a shield.
Vita and
Tilly inquired about magical items, but found most of them outside of their price range.
Their transactions complete,
Nadar makes a request of the party. He points at the corks within the healing potions that they had purchased, and explained that, should they drop the cork on the ground once they've used the potion, it would sprout into another one of his shop's locations in a weeks time.
Tilly, seeing mischief to be had, immediately purchases a bag of regular corks, and removes the magical one from her potion, starting the timer. The party, refreshed with sleep, and restocked with items, thanks
Nadar and returns to the dark tunnels of the
Xen'Drik underdark.
On the Trail
A number of forked paths, and decisions moving forward, and the party begins to hear things up ahead. Never one to miss an opportunity,
Tilly calls out for "Karen." The sound of someone running cuts out at the sound, and
Vita transforms into a spider to investigate. As the sound of someone running fades into the distance, the sound of a group running by rises and falls.
Vita returns after a few more moments, to report that she did not see much of the first group, but that the second group included
humans,
lizardfolk, and some dogs. They seemed to be chasing or hunting something.
The party, their suspicions raised, give chase cautiously. It isn't until they hear a faint scream up ahead, that they abandon caution and race forward. Opening into a larger cavern, the party finds the group that
Vita described, having cornered a badly injured girl wearing clothing similar to
Iskandar's.
Kerani. The attackers, unaware of the party at first, demand that she give them her bird, which appears to be a small, rainbow colored hummingbird.
The party doesn't give her much of a chance to respond, and a number of the attackers are killed before they all know what hit them.
Fork, aware that they're all strangers, called out to
Kerani, letting her know that
Iskandar had asked them to find her.
Brian eviscerates one of them, using them as a temporary shield as the party makes short work of these aggressors.
