Session 14: Darkened Hearts
General Summary
Balarath, trapped in the Huntington’s ballroom with an unknown warforged, attempted to talk to the warforged who had locked him in. The warforged, now knowing where Bal was, immediately attacked, but Bal, still invisible and hushed, moved out of the way. The warforged them summoned a huge spectral hand to roam the room, looking for Bal.
Unsure of what to do, Bal fired his crossbow at the warforged, which forced Bal to drop the invisibility. The warforged pounced, producing two blades from his forearms, plunging them into Bal’s shoulders. Bal produced his hidden dagger, taking the warforged by surprise. The warforged then shocked Bal and threw him across the room, knocking him unconscious. As he fell unconscious, the quori spirit attached to him used the psychic link Bal had established with Vax to call out, telling Vax that, “He needs you. Now.”
Vax and Mila headed down the hall to the ballroom and Mila tried to force the door down with her shoulder, but the door held. Inside, the warforged then healed Bal, waking him up, and lifted him up in the air, asking Bal, “Who are you?”
Vax then grabbed Mila, peeked through the keyhole, and thunderstepped into the room, causing the doors to splinter and shake. Vax pretended to be very drunk and Mila persuaded the warforged that Bal was just an innocent party guest who wandered into the wrong room as did they. The warforged tossed Bal to them and told them to get out.
They happily left the ballroom and Mila asked a passing sympathetic warforged to “Go and get the feathery one.” The confused warforged returned with one of the party guests, Phoenix the Third. The guest, confused, was dismissed, and Mila instead called to Rasp via the sending stone jewelry. Rasp then came and healed Bal before they returned to the party. Vax helped by shaping water and dyeing the bloodstains on Bal’s clothes black.
Back at the party, Marcella played the Game and met Father Mountain, a bugbear in an elaborate military outfit with a mask that looked like a cliff face. After speaking for a bit, Marcella asked Vivienne who identified the man as Colonel Henry Knox Craig, colonel of the Breland military and commander of the Argonth, a floating military fortress that patrols Breland’s borders.
The Foundation regrouped in the courtyard where they discussed what had happened to Bal. They also realized that they needed to step up their efforts a bit since they had only cleared three of the eight chambers.
Rasp went to check on the strange parlor that Vax had described and used detect traps to find that the three large portraits hung in the room were trapped in some way. He also noticed two painted signs just inside the room that read: “If you find yourself unable to move on, always remember that your love can still touch the dead” and “Sometimes, one must give into the dark to see the light”.
Marcella ended up checking another guest bedroom on the west side of the house, where she found nothing but a copy of Band of Dusk. Smythe came upon the two checking these rooms and Vax asked Smythe if he would be willing to check the northeast most chamber. Smythe agreed and Vax asked him to see if there were any books in the room. Smythe went off as Vax misty stepped into the chamber on the northwest side. Inside was the master bedroom, but once again Vax found no key or anything of note other than a single book sitting out. This time, a copy of a book called Conflict without End.
Smythe returned and when Vax asked him if there were any books in that chamber, he responded, “Yes, 178 of them.” He then offered to lead Vax and Marcella to the room. Vax asked Smythe if he knew of any warforged who would be allowed in any of the chambers, or the ballroom, and was larger than most warforged. Smythe said that it could be a warforged named Estoc who frequently visited the estate, but he didn’t know much about him.
Back at the party, Mila and Vivienne met Mr. Blank, a gentleman in a geometric, holographic suit and mask with clawed gloves on. Mr. Blank confessed they were trying not to over-indulge as they had in years past and that they had been at every Summer’s Cusp ball the Huntingtons had thrown. After they moved on, Vivienne informed Mila that Mr. Blank was in fact General Luther ir’Tyran, a general of the Breland military and warden of the Black Pit, a Brelish POW work camp that mined dragonshards.
In the dining room, Bal met The Most Revered Dawn, a tiefling gentleman with a strange accent who sported a glowing mask and luminescent, layered robes. Dawn talked openly with Bal about not really understanding the Game and not playing it very well, but stopped short of just giving information away. Bal then moved to go and check out the last chamber on the east side that hadn’t been looked into yet, motioning to a passing guest who was dressed as a jester that he would greet him after going to the bathroom.
Vax, Marcella, and Smythe entered the northeastern chamber where they found an elaborate den that was at least partially a library. The room was much less traditional than the other rooms they had seen, and was at least staged to look as if work had been done there. Though they couldn’t fully determine what the secret of this room was, they did manage to find that there was a hidden staircase by the globe. With that, they left the den.
Bal managed to get into the Huntington’s Viewing Room, where he found a copy of A Full and Complete Explanation of the Goblin. When he returned to the dining room, he spoke to the Old Jester, a halfling, gnome, or goblin man who was quite drunk, enough so that it distracted Bal from getting a good read of him.
The group then re-convened at the party and discussed the current status of the mission, the fact that each room seems to be staged and contain a single book except for the den, which had quite a few, and that the parlor was clearly trapped. Bal also asked Vivienne about both the Most Revered Dawn and the Old Jester. Vivienne identified the Most Revered Dawn as Enoch of Maruk Dar, a tiefling emissary from the Demon Wastes who keeps the rest of Khorvaire safe from the evils of that region. As for the Jester, she didn’t get enough information from Bal to identify them. As they were discussing, Vivienne told them to disperse as they were getting looks.
Mila was approached by Jackal the Elder, a drow woman whose accent Mila identified as from Xen’drik, the drow continent to the west of Khorvaire. The women commiserated about the silliness of the party and the game. It wasn’t until Jackal returned to the party that Mila realized the drow was hitting on her. When she asked Vivienne about her, she told Mila that Jackal was Maeja Deeb, a liaison between Sharn and the Xendrake Partnership, a dragonshard industry leader in Xen’drik.
Marcella approached Alain once more and even prompted him with the Royal Eyes code question, “What is your favorite pastry.” Alain responded that he “isn’t much fond of pastries”, indicating that his cover is intact and he does not need assistance. Before parting, Alain kissed Marcella’s hand but then pulled her in close and said, “Raccanoch told me everything I need to know about you.” Marcella, flustered, dispersed into the party and away from Alain.
Rasp went over to the champagne fountain and opened his mouth to just let the champagne pour in. He was soon joined by the evening’s host, Collis Huntington, who introduced himself and commented on how strange Rasp was to him. Overall, Collis seemed a bit strange himself and left as oddly as he had entered the conversation.
The Foundation decided that they needed to check out the parlor before going back to the den with the books. Vax, Bal, and Marcella opted to go into the parlor while Mila and Rasp stayed with Vivienne to continue playing the Game.
In the parlor, Vax became trapped by one of the portraits, stuck in place staring at the painting’s eyes. Marcella and Bal noticed that several of the nearby paintings filled with beasts began to animate, with the creatures slowly making their way towards the edges of the paintings. Figuring that these paintings would soon come to life and attack them, Marcella did the only thing she could think of to break Vax from the painting’s hypnosis: she kissed him.
Vax broke out of the hypnosis and thanked Marcella, much to Bal’s own chagrin. Vax then hurled a flaming chromatic orb at the yeti painting, burning the canvas out of the frame. Bal noted on the portraits that the frames were carved with runes, making them arcane traps. The runes also proved resistant to tampering. Vax managed to burn two of the beast paintings before they figured out the trap’s puzzle, with Marcella touching the two skeletal stag heads mounted on the wall. Marcella also noted that these were symbols of House Vol.
It took them just a bit longer to suss out the second puzzle in the room. Bal doused the lights of the candelabras and saw that a painting by the bookshelves was glowing in the dark. Behind the frame was a button which, when pressed, revealed a hidden closet behind the bookshelves. Inside was a single copy of The Mysterious Affair at State on a lone shelf. Next to the book hung a familiar uniform: a slim, dark grey military-style uniform and a silver mask engraved with the numerals IV.
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