S1 E37 - Opening the Well of Souls

General Summary

in which the gang visits a hill giant Shaman Priestess of Tenma, parties hard with the Satyrs, and winds up in the deepest hole yet

• The party, led by the Hill Giant Board Ashored, heads into the strange and fantastical city of Ettinston - a mountainside outpost built by and sized for Giants. The original structures including the outer wall and the stone and timber buildings are three times the size of their human equivalents; interspersed among these are newer structures built by humans and smaller sapients since the Accords established peace between Hill Giants and the civilized races of the region.
• The central structure of the large town is a temple-sized chapel of Tenma, the moon goddess of trickery and disease. Tenma is a protector of Giantkind and her priestess, Maze Inhorse, talks with the party about what she knows regarding Kannet and their mine down the road. Odd things, such as the fact that in the five months of the mine's operation it has shipped virtually nothing back to Marleven; the road from the mine passes through Ettinston.
• They leave Josuu with Board Ashored; after an initial rocky start (literally, as the kid can't stop shooting his slingshot at everything) the two of them seem to have hit it off, and Maze Inhorse thinks it's a splendid idea to leave the two of them here to work out their various situations together.
• The party makes their way to Glenhaven, the semi-mobile encampment of the Satyrs (SATE-ers), and Mae's immediate family. The entire clan including her father Fol, her brother Xander and the scouts Aunt Kaddie and Uncle Murton are delighted to see her and meet the party. A great feast is held in their honor and their celebratory dancing, drinking, and merriment continues late into the night, with a couple of Mae's nubile cousins taking a particular interest in Blizzard, to the point that he has second thoughts about ever leaving the camp again. He has to be coaxed and convinced to go to the mine site at all.
• At the mine site they meet a few workers who lead them to the Mine Boss, Chief Engineer Mogrid Moghadam. The Chief Engineer is less than thrilled to see them at first, but brightens at the prospect that perhaps he's being fired or that they're there to replace him. He seems to be a loyal man driven to disloyalty by frustration at the current state of things.
• He explains he has so far lost six people in the mines, which have never really opened - initially a party of three to scout out the bottom of the drillhead (at a depth of 2,000 feet where they broke through the stone into a chamber of some kind). Then a party of two sent to recover the three, who also never returned, and the last one, a single mercenary who went down three days before. He mentioned that nothing was mined, but then contradicts himself in talking about a few barrels of material recovered, and the six people in total are not the only ones who have been down to that chamber - they were lost, evidently, when exploring other chambers connected to the main drop. A chain lift has been rigged up at both ends. He gives some detail on how they had issues properly surveying the mine location at first, but then were able to pinpoint the landmarks on the maps based on the three nearby battlefields.
• Once the party reaches the bottom, it's clear that nothing so vague as a battlefield could have sited the drill so perfectly into the back portion of a circular room, with a single exit opposite the point where the drill came down. The chamber is stone, with doors that drop into the floors rather than opening normally or pocketing into the wall. A magical diagram on the floor is confirmed to be a map as Lorfel checks out the basic layout using Arcane Eye. No other living creatures, hostile or otherwise, are obvious to the investigation, but all manner of strange items and additional carvings, in deep speech, are seen. The whereabouts of the missing scouts seem to perhaps be solved by a round intake vent only a little larger than the opening of the average beer stein, surrounded by gore and dripping with blood that has dried on the wall around it. The diagram suggests the other end of that tube is some kind of power supply or perhaps power-focusing device.
• The map used to site the mine was provided by 'the client', according to Moghadam; he gave a name, Nomi Peshek, but as he gave it, revealed that it was certainly a false name so not helpful in itself. Lorfel with his Intelligence of 20 surmises that whoever gave Kannet that survey map already knew exactly where this small structure was, because they hit it perfectly with the drill from 2000 feet above. This suggests that the client also knows what this structure IS, and that is a lot less evident. At first blush, it has arcane symbols and strange writing, and is built in a circular shape, implying a temple or holy site; but there's something very functional here, not spiritual but some kind of arcane research laboratory. Perhaps connected to the Stardonyx, Xi Shi suggests, and that seems like a good guess, but their odd not-quite-symmetry isn't on display here. 
• Lorfel focuses his attention on the next room in the series, which has a number of glass tubes, one of which seems to contain a naked Stardonyx though it's hard to be sure as they were recognizable mostly by their elaborate clothing and their fishbowl helmets, and this creature has neither, floating in a greenish fluid. Another tube is full of fluid and floating bones, and a third is smashed and empty below the broken glass or crystal or whatever the tube is made of. The room also contains three enormous vats of clearish pink goop that looks like what the 'dead' cat was suspended in and possibly something those pink Jell-O skeleton monsters were coated in. The floor is thick with a black tarry substance, which was also found in the main room in a thinner layer that Lorfel used to be able to read the writing. Also in the room is some kind of arcane device with a black obsidian screen on which a blue and green light pulses slowly.
• Having gathered all the pre-intelligence about the place, and particularly the next room, as they feel that they can, Mae proceeds to leap over the drop-door for fear of it suddenly slamming upwards. It stays put, but Mae splashes down in/on a pair of Black Puddings. As she does so, the arcane device rattles to life; a soft, synthetic female voice says: "Private communication protocol requested...Protocol request accepted. Please provide your coded access word."

Missions/Quests Completed

• "Reaching Ettinston"
• "Meeting Mom and Dad"
• "Reaching Oscuro"
• "Into the Well of Souls"

Character(s) interacted with

• Maze Inhorse
• Mogrid Moghadam

Notes

Scratched into the walls, in deep speech, room 1:

"5 Stages of combustion chamber. Begin with elementally pure fire, water and earth."

Report Date

27 Dec 2022

Primary Location

The Arborvast