The Beloved Chosen

The team finds a notice on a bulletin board for adventuring quests run by the Shaded Immortals Information Guild. The notice says "Dangerous Wizardry afoot in a new town near Zroset. Please see the guild leader for more information/to access the eligibility of your adventuring group." The team travels to the branch of the Shaded Immortals Guild in Hogate to speak with them about the specifics of the quest. Upon entering, they see Yanrin, a secretary of sorts working at the desk near the door and speaking to Rokian Thaddenbau. Just as the team walks in through the door, Rokain seemingly finished his conversation and leaves the area in no hurry. As she looks up at the party, she sets her papers down and impatiently asks how she can help the party. They respond asking for the information about the quest and she looks the team up and down appraising their skills and ability to be able to take on such a task. 
After some debate/convincing from the team, Yanrin agrees to give the team a chance on the adventure. Yanrin explains that there is a new town that was recently developed has stopped trading with the outside world except for very rare occasions where they try to receive more books and other seemingly minor items. Additionally, it seems that all the people who were originally residents of the town are no longer there. Instead, it seems the town is run by simulacrums and there are only a handful of real people left in the town. They tried to establish a branch of the guild there but were unable to due to the town's strict rules barring entry. The only way to get inside and see whats going on in the town would be to use a disguise ring to make the party appear as simulacrums to the other simulacrums in the town. Yanrin gives each member of the team one and notes it will a be 500 gold fine for each ring that is not returned upon completion of the quest. (Its suspected that the simulacrums are being commanded by a grand wizard or a group of wizards for some reason.
Once the team arrives in the town of Hythe, they see that apart from the people in it, the town seems very normal. However, the people who make up the town are humanoid figures made out of snow and ice (if the players investigate the figures, they can see that all of them have a runic symbol on their bodies somewhere (some are behind the ear, on the neck, on the arm, on the wrist, on the leg, etc.) The "Sims" act as if they have a limited set of things they are allowed to do and almost as if they are on a track and have a pre-specified conversation list. All of the conversations do mention "The Chosen" which seems to be who they worship in this town.
Asmodeus decides to sneak away from the team and adventure into the lower section of town that now functions as a marketplace for some undisclosed reason. Doluvius notices and watches Asmodeus try to sneak through the crowd. In an effort to loose the attention of Doluvius, Asmodeus starts a small fire in the marketplace and uses the chaos to sneak away. In the meanwhile, the team decides to investigate the bookstore that is in the town of Hythe since Yanrin mentioned that the town was still receiving books whenever they did open for commerce.
Upon arriving at the bookstore, Doluvius attempts to ask the shopkeep, Greras Nare (They do not know his name or identity throughout this adventure) about his cloak (Queen Ayleth Dyana Osola's cloak) that the team found in the abandoned monestary at the beginning of their adventures together. As the shopkeep learns about the cloak that Dol has in his possession, he is inclined to try to steal it from Dol who is blissfully unaware of the theft. Asmodeus sees this and casts a spell to stop theft attempt. The theft stopped but the team asked about the wizards tied to The Chosen and the shopkeeper became aggressive and evasive and the team fled the store while taking significant damage.
After the team fled the bookstore, they made their way over to the tavern to get Alara as she was drinking away her frustrations. They told Alara about what happened at the bookstore and that there was a fight. She walked outside to see if anything was amiss or if the simulacrums were following them. She sees that they were indeed following and were now on alert and were keeping an eye on the "odd" simulacrum decoys that was the party at that moment. Alara returns to the bar and throws a coin to the barkeep and the group hightail it out of the back of the bar. They all try to covertly exit the city and regroup to figure out what to do next.
While the group was waiting outside the city, Asmodeus removed his disguise ring and revealed his true form. Upon seeing that, Mad who had been covertly following the group from the bar (he had seperated from the group after the completion of their last mission) revealed himself and reconnected with the group as well. After taking a rest and getting Mad up to speed on what happened, the team decided to wait until night time to investigate the city again. Before the travelled into the city, they saw that there was a blue glow coming from the city almost like a sunset but coming from the city. As the team snuck back into the city, Asmodeus gave his disguise ring to Mad and agreed to wait outside as the "rescue party" should the team need it.
The team entered the city and saw that the blue light coming from town was being emitted from the statue of Leira at the center of town. Alara and Dol investigated the statue and had some familiarity with it. The statue had simulacrums coming and going from it where they would stop to pray for a moment and continue on their way. The team then decides to travel to the bookstore again to try and investigate it. They find it to be locked by are able to sneak in and see Greras still inside. They investigate the magic coming from him and are able to tell that he is using enchantment magic and they sneak back out of the building without being noticed.
Meanwhile, Asmodeus sneaks back into the town because he hears a commotion in the market area of the town and wants to see whats going on. He sees a large bonfire with 25 simulacrums and 5 "normal people" around a fire listening to a pink skinned Teifling speak. Her name is Matish and she is speaking about the Goddes Leira, Lady of Deception and "The Chosen" trying to recruit new followers (almost like an MLM). Asmodeus creeps closer and starts to be enticed by the religion and moves to begin the process of joining the group. At the same time, the team from the bookstore come back over and see what Asmodeus is doing. Alara has a reaction to the masks that are assoicated with the religion and that causes Asmodeus to stop his induction to the religion. Matish is enraged by this and goes to stab him with the scissors used for the ritual. He dodges and teleports over to the group. Matish is even more enraged and realizes that the group are fake simulacrums and alerts the rest of the "Sims" to the traitors. They all are immediately in fight mode and ready to fight the group. Dol casts some magic to delay the Sims from attacking and the group begins to run the other direction out of town. On their way out of town, they pass Greras and can see him starting to use some magic of some sort and it is the same type of magic that seemed to be causing the glow from the town. The team continued to flee from the town with Greras following them to the gates of the town and watching as they fled the area.
As they fled the area, it was still night time and the group saw a dim light (a campfire) a few miles away from Hythe. As they steathily approached the fire, they made some noise and alerted the two that were there to their presence. Trisdove and Jaxtrin drew their swords and demanded to know who was there. The group identified themselves and Jax asked if they were with Greras in Hythe come to attack them again. Tris realized the group were also there to figure out what was happening in Hythe and try to save whomever they can. The group sat down and discussed what they all knew about the situation (Alara stayed back near the tree line due to her bad reaction to the prior incident in town). Tris revealed that her brother (Jax's lover) died due to Greras and his attacks. Tris, her brother, and Jax lived in Hythe before Greras took over. They also noted that after the first handful of simulacrums in the city, there was a construction project that seemed to be geared towards creating a weapon of some kind or conduit for magic? They couldnt tell since they were sowrdsman what it was specifically made for.
Through conversation, the group figured out there was arcanite used to create this conduit system and seemingly, that is what's allowing Greras to create and control so many simulacrums. The team decides the best path is to split into two teams and have one team destroy the amplification statue and the other draw Greras and Matish out of town as a distraction. Asmodeus, Alara, and Dol were on team explosives and Tris, Jax, Mad, and Caelum were on distraction team. In order to get explosives to blow up the statue, Asmodeus snuck into town and stole some from a storage shed in town. The distraction team, used an amplified voice of Jax courtesy of Asmodeus to lure them to the ambush point and he would run back to the ambush point with them following. Dol decided to sneak into the book store while Greras was gone and steal some of the arcanite that was there for himself. As he was doing that, Asmoedeus set and detonated the explosives. Both Dol and Asmodeus run out of town after the blast. Asmodeus goes back to camp and starts packing up the camp while Dol goes to the ambush point to help the team. Alara followed Greras and Matish to the ambush point since she was trying to find Matish since she had tried to rope Asmodeus into the MLM religion cult before.
The distraction worked a treat and Greras and Matish followed Jax to the ambush point where the rest of the group was hiding waiting for them to show up. Once they arrived, jax was hiding in a bush and accidentally made a noise and Greras started walking towards him so, Tris threw a dagger at him to keep him from hurting Jax and the fight began. In the fight, Jax and Matish were knocked unconscious. As Matish fell, Greras let out a loud scream and started to cast banishment on Caelum who knocked Matish down but Pynalia Ofandrus teleported in just in time and cast counterspell and instead banished Greras to another plane. While he was gone, the team stabilized Jax and Caelum tried to put Matish out of her misery but failed and made her bleed out before finally chopping her head off. After the team searched her body and found a unique gold key, a ring of keys (for Dol), and a piece of paper with directions written in Celestial were found on her body. Once they finished that, Greras reappeared and said "You couldn't have thought it would be that easy to get rid of me" and the fight resumed.
The team and Pynalia began to fight Greras. Immediately, Greras disappears but the team can sense that he is still in the area and is invisible. Each attack that Greras makes reveals his location and he quickly teleports/moves again so that the team is constantly unsure of his location. Pynalia used her necrotic magic to resurrect Matish to have her fight with T.U.R.D. Co. against Greras. Greras was initially startled seeing Matish alive and moving again but soon regained his composure and began to fight even more violently. Now, as he attacks, he would focus on one team member each round and try to control their mind. If he was successful, he either made the team member act against his comrades or help him in some other way. The most hurtful incident of this was when Tris fell unconscious after an attack, Greras controlled Mad and forced him to bash her head in killing her entirely. Doluvius activated his invisibility sight and was able to see Greras which helped the team better know where he was but in a fight that was moving as fast as this one was, there wasn't much time to call out his movements.
After a lengthy battle, the team and Pynalia were able to defeat Greras and he collapsed to the ground. After he collapsed but before the team was able to search his corpse for any clues or helpful items, his body slowly faded away and disappeared before their eyes. Once the team is able to regroup and recover after the fight, they return to Hythe to see what changes were made.
Upon arriving at Hythe, they realize that all of the "Sims" are gone and all that are left are the few "people" that remained. When talking to the townsfolk, they are very worried because while they did not feel comfortable with the "Sims," the "Sims" allowed them to continue living life and the town to continute to function. However, with them gone, they weren't sure how the town would survive. The team promised to send word back to the Information Guild to have them send help so that the townsfolk would not suffer further.

Important Characters:

• Yanrin
• Rokian Thaddenbau
• Greras Nare
• Matish
• Trisdove
• Jaxtrin

Rewards for the team: Found on Matish's corpse

• A unique gold key (The Key of Karma)
• A ring of assorted keys (for Dol)
• A piece of paper with directions written in Celestial

Found where Greras' body was

• A ring with the Lords of Chaos symbol on it

Next Quest: Horn of Truth