S1 E51: Sojourning in the Far Realm
General Summary
In which the gang discovers the madness between the planes, and reaches the impossible wayshrine of the House of Mystery
- Trapped without a clear exit from the far realm after the larval mage destroyed the portal on this side, Mae realizes that a spell she knows of, but was formerly not quite powerful enough to cast herself, might apply here. But to cast it, she'll need a tuning fork of a very particular sort, attuned to their home on the Prime Material plane. On the one hand, the Scale Squad has no idea where to procure one in this place; but on the other hand, in total chaos and pure probability, it's the kind of thing that might reasonably just turn up at some point, like things searched for in dreams.
- The soft, swampy land around them begins to sizzle and fade away, and they find themselves in an 80' cube made of glued wood. The floor is looping coils of fibtous vine that might rise up to strangle them at any moment, but it just lies there, lazy, as a couch and desk materialize, as well as a studio audience cheering, barely visible on the other side of intense bright lights shining in their faces. They find themselves seated on the couch with two mind flayers, while a third at the desk taps some question cards and the audience cheers. It's some sort of late night mind flayer talk show. Before they know it, they're performing a song and by the gods, they actually do a really good job of it (easily passing the group performance check).
- The scene shifts then to an even more distressing situation - they find themselves all alone on a gigantic grid of 5 foot squares marked out in black, laid out on some kind of coated cloth they know to be called vinyl, on an even larger tabletop, surrounded by titanic beings, unarmored but dressed in bizarre clothing. A more immediate threat is a sleet storm, Slaad Sleet; dozens fall from somewhere far above to splatter on the vinyl, even as strange obelisks with lit-up buttons and screens rise up from the ground around them, beckoning the party to purchase wares at reasonable prices. The machines are not unlike the Regulator, from down in Quindarin's lab, but they don't talk or threaten to suffocate everyone like she did. A single blue slaad survives the fall, having fallen onto onto several more that had died but broke its fall, and it enthusiastically leaps to attack. It soon becomes apparent through its aggressively flirtatious telepathy that it fulfills its life cycle in combat, thus explaining its vigor in fighting. While it poses some threat, it's not exactly an existential danger, and Zalock buys himself a laser rifle from one of the kiosks while he has the chance, and one of the other machines gives him a free book that turns out to be a copy of the Book of Vile Darkness. The Slaad is dispatched, but not before it infects Mae with its gross Slaad reproductive disease, called Chaos Phage. When it dies, it leaves behind a puff of blue smoke, two bricks of gold weighing a pound each, and two small emeralds.
- The scene changes once more once the Slaad is put down, and the sci fi kiosks morph into Traveling merchant wagons of the Old West, each one selling the same items as before in addition to tonics, hair loss cures and snake oil. Each one is run by a traveling salesman named Gunther, all of whom are the same person but in different clothing at each of the 5 wagons. Gunther doesn't have the tuning fork, but suggests that they can surely find it in the House of Mysteries, also known as the Warped Chapel, or perhaps the Hall of Insanity - all the same place. It's a small building usually found on the edge of a lake. When asked where to go to get there, Gunther (all five of them) seem confused. "Go? You don't go anywhere in the void. This is all complete chaos that your brains are desperately trying to translate into stuff your five senses can deal with, otherwise y'all just lose your minds for good." But as if to emphasize the influence the dreamer has on the dream, Mae immediately discovers the House of Mysteries is already right here, on the edge of a small, still pond. Understanding this to somehow mean that wishes are coming true, Blizzard tries, unsuccessfully, to turn himself into an Adult White Dragon.
- Unfortunately there are also aggressive weretigers lurking about, and they attack, slaying Gunther who plays out his old west death scene with gusto, and then trying to infect the party with lycanthropy; the theme of the place seems to be infectious reproduction. Soon enough they're also done away with, and the party enters the smallish house - small on the outside, anyway. Inside they find an elaborately decorated space like an opulent, though dusty and old, parlor. Against the back of the room is a small rounded box about 4 feet high, open on one half, in which two hand puppets buffet each other and fight with sticks, silent other than the clicking of their weapons and the swishing of their cloth. There is nothing like a north, south, east or west orientation here in this place, where instead of sunlight there's simply a suffused ambient light like a perpetual cloudy afternoon, but from the entrance door, one of the passages is almost directly to the left, and the other is halfway between right and straight ahead. These are heavy, ironbound oak doors fitted perhaps for giants, or perhaps the party has gotten smaller in size, as everything seems a slightly larger scale in here. The room is devoid of much decor or detail, but what's there is passively headache-inducing, as if everything was coated in a hypnotic pattern but your eyes can't quire make out what the pattern is.
Rewards Granted
- 2 lbs gold (worth 100gp ea, 200gp total)
- 2 small emeralds (500gp each, 1000gp total)
- The Book of Vile Darkness https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/5424-book-of-vile-darkness
Missions/Quests Completed
- Into the far Realms
- Into the House of Mystery
Character(s) interacted with
Gunther, snake oil salesman
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