Session 52 - Argosaquas

General Summary

The Party continued their conversation with “King Unibrow’s” men, waiting for the right opportunity to slip out of the city.
Saul, who had earlier been disguised as King Unibrow, sipped healing potions while Linus, the spring eladrin, fretted over him. Rusty, the halfling, ordered drinks for everyone and kept the conversation going. Yen played with his domino set. The half-elf leader of their group, Danilo, muttered to himself as he watched the setting sun.
“Every year on this day,” Danilo muttered to himself. “Every. Single. Year. I knew I should have called off the gig when they moved the timetable to today.”
“He gets like this every year on Summer Solstice,” Rusty told the Party in confidence. “Kinda a tragic backstory thing. Danilo here thinks the Scales of War actually kicked off the night of the solstice celebration… When was it Danny? About 35… 40 years ago?”
Gorgoroth approached Danilo and asked him about his personal connection to the Scales of War. Danilo thought that the Party were fellow con artists and that Gorgoroth was “in character” throughout the night. Danilo quizzed Gorgoroth about his character’s backstory and became more and more impressed with the dragonborn’s character research and method acting. Together, they told the story of the night 38 years ago when goblins attacked Brindol and kidnapped seven citizens.
Danilo’s mother, Jalissa Thorne, captain of the Brindol Guard, had been one of the victims of the goblin raid. She and many of the others were rescued by Gorgoroth’s old adventuring group, the Heroes of Brindol. Jalissa had fallen madly in love with Kylar Bearcharger, the elf warrior who had later become the Feydark’s Bear-Skinned King. Kylar spurned her advanced and she bore a child from another elf, Gilgathorn, who did not sitck around to raise Danilo.
Red joined the discussion and admitted that he had been part of the Heroes too. Red was once the wizard Robbilard Farwalker but had reincarnated hundreds of times. He told Danilo about his group's relationship with the “Freebasters” (actually an adventuring group named the Freeriders) and his attraction to their leader, Megan Swiftblade. This confused Danilo, who had consumed much alcohol by this point.
Meanwhile, Ifrit noticed that Saul and Linus were watching a magical pen that wrote on a piece of parchment automatically. Ifrit and Latnum peeked at the writing and were unhindered. Linus explained that the device was a spanreed and worked like the Message spell, but connected to several other spanreeds. When a user wrote something using one spanreed, its sisters would copy the message anywhere on the same plane. The message that magically appeared said:

ISB Field Agents,
Wanted for questioning: Captain of the Golden Dragon Airship (githyanki origin?). Last seen leaving Serpentus Rift headed towards Altaran Peninsula.
Remind Captain, they are owed a debt from Vortex’monark’windrexys’cyclonarx (AKA Windrex, High King of Eastern Nerath). Captain is to report to Cyclone Citadel to claim reward.
Further, Captain is to give immediate testimony to ISB about efforts in assisting Seetharin’thorax (AKA Seethe, King of the Serpentus Rift).

Collin, the son of Tom, the barman, came home from wizardry school and delighted in conversing with Ifrit about magic and spellcraft. Collin confirmed that the Society of the Blue Rose mage guild was head by High Mage Lorfinas, but Lorfinas was too busy in his research to interact with the students.
Later that evening, there was a knock on the door. Though Tom had locked up the tavern early due to a “private party”, a new group of patrons entered. Collin identified them as professors at his school of magic. They were Professors Onai, Garlic, and Black. The professors were investigating the disturbance at the warehouse, which had led to the death of one of the students as well as two other strangers. One of the strangers was a member of the Imperial Survey Corp (ISC) named Guy Peoples. It appeared that Guy had been carrying military documents related to the imperial expansion efforts in northern Nerath.
Saul stood up and introduced himself as Heinrich Mendle, an ISB operative who was searching for a traitorous informer known to be in the area. He negotiated with the professors to get access to the corpse. In the middle of their conversation, those who were drinking water tasted the salty brine of blood. All of the glasses of water had turned to blood. A rumbling echoed from far away, like an approaching tidal wave.
Outside the tavern, huge surges hit the metal city walls. The wizarding professors ran outside and the Party followed them. A massive water elemental battered the island city and threatened to drown them all. It was Argosaquas, once the patron of the early settlers to this region. Argosaquas was enraged about an old deed done by Isla Oja ancestors many generations ago. The wizards confided in Ifrit and told him that High Mage Lorfinas’ sole responsibility was to keep Argosaquas at bay, and he needed nearly all of the mage guild’s resources and leaders to do so.
Together, Ifrit and Professors Onai, Garlic and Black combined their magic to gain the elemental’s attention and question him. Argosaquas was angry that the leaders of Isla Oja had lied to him and had covered up a dark secret. He sensed that a chamber had been opened and underground there were young corrupted somehow through dark magic. The professors told Ifrit that legend told of a cult that had once operated on the island, but the town leaders had destroyed them all. They also admitted that a forgotten crypt under the warehouse had been exposed by the fire and that it was being investigated at the very moment.
As the professors joined the other Blue Rose mages in holding Argosaquas back, they asked Ifrit for his help in finding whatever had enraged the elemental. If Ifrit and his friends were successful, the guild would provide them whatever reward or boon was in their power.
Ifrit caught up to the rest of the Party who had dashed over to the smoking ruins of the warehouse. The fire was snuffed out and the ground muddy with water. Some tiles of the stone floor near the teleportation circle had been shifted away, revealing a basement covered with mosaic frescoes and a stone staircase. Gorgoroth threatened one of the guards and recovered the body of Guy Peoples. Lat’num and S’thom unceremoniously dumped Guy's corpse into their Bag of Holding.
As the Party filed into the stairwell that descended under the teleportation portal, Red overheard young wizards discussing the frescoes they had discovered.
“The cult was run by dragonborn and tieflings, usually mortal enemies. They worked together, but only here in the cult. They did something terrible and the lords of Isla Oja exterminated them. Killed every member. That’s why the guild still doesn’t allow dragonborn or tiefling members,” the mage said to her colleague.
The Party’s crypt exploration was helped by magical torches that lit as they walked through the tunnels. They looked out for signs of mages that had come before them, or potentially a golem that one of the mages had cast and sent down. For a long way down they only saw torches, patterned tiles and sarcophagi.
The hallway opened up into a large chamber. A broken stone altar or basin lay in the middle of the room, surrounded by five dragon statues on short plinths. Behind each statue was another hallway leading out of the chamber. The five dragon statues represented metallic dragons: gold, silver, copper, bronze and brass.
The golden statue had strange shapes etched on the plinth. The bronze plinth was surrounded by five metal polearms. The copper plinth were decordated in magic runes that described illusion magic. When S’thom searched the brass statue, something leapt at her from the dark hallway beyond.

Report Date

09 Aug 2023