Sanguine Sunrise #6: The End of the Message

General Summary

Agronok begins carving into the Giant while three hobgoblins and goblins wielding weapons begin interacting with the rest of the party. The Hobgoblin gives them an ultimatum: Give up and be take in bindings, or leave the castle. Luthrin decides to charm two of the hobgoblins, succeeding on their leader to convince of a mysterious third option: let the adventurer's walk by unharmed. As this argument is happening,the goblins attack Agro, starting a brief skirmish where the goblins are slain after damaging the half-orc. After this, it becomes clear there will be no circumvention between the hobgoblins who are protecting their leader and those who came to bring harm upon him. The adventurers kill two of the enemies, but the leader who was charmed hides from his "friend's" aggressive allies. After this, Agronok manages to successfully collect stomach acid from the giant in a strong enough concentration to possibly affect the door.
The party then takes a short rest in the puzzle room before preparing to solve the puzzle. They decide to do the order, dragon, wyvern, drake, resulting in the stone moving, and allowing passage. The party follows the pathway to a room alit with green flame. There sits a smaller, less elegant form of a throne akin to the one in the workshop in the main area of the castle. Upon the throne sat the herald of the dead, in full plate armor, and beside him, sat the skeletal alchemist, in black chain, shining in the pale green light. The sound and image of water lapping against the stone behind them let on that this was behind the lake the adventurers ignored.
The Herald greeted the party by saying, "Ah, you got your little birdy in line. Last time we met he ruined my well crafted hospitality," in a gruff voice. After a short continuance of banter between the two groups, the Herald claimed he would finally return the favor and rose from his throne.
The fight begins with Agronok summoning rocks to throw at enemies before The Herald summons the dead from the depths of the water. He continues to do that throughout the fight. Meanwhile, he becomes enraged at Skek and screams, "You're going to die little birdie!" This causes the Herald to almost kill Skek and Grimace in a mindless rage before he is dropped. Finally, the adventurers defeat the alchemist that was lobbing acid at them and pick off the risen wights from the depths of the lake. They then turn to see that The Herald dragged himself to the corner in his bleeding state. As Luthrin began to swing down and finish off his enemy, he halted as the eyes turned green and his demeanor changed from that of a snarling warrior, ready for his death, to a strange villain, amused at the carnage left in his own wake.
Through the man that hated him and itself for being under his sway, the necromancer monologued, "This has been very interesting. Seeing as you have defeated my Herald, perhaps you would like to meet the man from which his deathly message originated. Come to the coast within the swamp to find me. From there, an old friend of yours will lead you to my current resting place. So toodaloo interesting folks. I hope to see you soon. Oh, and if you could destroy this vessel, that’d be great. I don’t like failures.”
After this, Luthrin fulfilled the wish of both the necromancer and The Herald in one swift slice.
Given a break in their constant conflict, the party closes the wall and notices a slight trickling of water occurs as they do so. They divide up loot amongst themselves, and they go to sleep. Upon figuring everything out, Grimace receives the skeleton's shirt, a set of bone dice, and carries The Herald's sword just in case, Agronok gets some vials of acid, Skek gets some vestments, Kiwi gets a gold bracelet, and the whole party receives a hefty sum of coin. Following this division, the group breaks the wall where the water is leaking in, watching as a torrent of water floods into the lake, rising the necromantic waters of the lake of the dead. However, after about a minute, the flow of the water actually dies down, and Kiwi is able to climb up the hole with Agro and Grimace in tow. After travelling for a bit, they arrive at a point where the water becomes too heavy, and they must swim, so Kiwi swims ahead.
After a short travel time, Kiwi, realizes they can make it to the surface, so she tells this to the other two, and all three abandon their companions and swim up. However, they notice the Gravekeeper senses them and charges at them as they arrive at the surface. This causes the other two to flee while Kiwi returns to Luthrin and Skek. When these three arrive at the surface, they notice the gravekeeper waiting for them. They all scatter, but Skek runs to the castle. As the other two escape, Skek shoots at the gravekeeper and attempts to fight it before everyone but Agro and Luthrin return to save the dying man. They manage to barely get him out, while he remained at death's door and begin their journey to the coast.
As they began to set out, Skek hears the voice of Rastra in his head: "Skek, I have awoken to a loud crash. I have regained some strength but i’m still weak. Something happened in the room. He needs help.” After a long while of Skek not figuring out how he managed to magically interact with her, he relays the message to the party, and they head off to save their employers.
When they arrive at the keep, they manage to spot wagon wheels in the dirt. They follow them around to find a carriage with Guy "The Hunter" Wylde leaning against it. He continues to lean against it as he says, "your employer is not looking too hot, so if you're looking to continue to make this a... profitable venture for all parties, my boss is willing to pay you for the capture of the target, so i recommend you capture him, cut out his tongue, cut off his hands, and deliver him to my boss in the city of Silverymoon." He then returned inside his carriage and urged the group to think of his offer.
Into the keep, the group finds the door to the room full of employers is open. However inside are only two figures despite hearing multiple voices from them before. In addition are plentiful amounts of spores as the one figure, Sheathe, a kenku who utilized mimicry to give this job to exact revenge on the necromancer who killed the voices that only live in his memory, has a fungal based infection, the Wight's Plague. Sitting beside the dying man, is Rastra trying to soothe him in his final moments. He expresses the final message from his friend to him, telling him to avenge the Renegades and kill the necromancer, a task he places on the party as he tosses them his short sword which Agronok picks up. He then coughs before quieting and the party decides to leave him and calling a saddened Rastra out of there due to the practicality of not getting a deadly plague.
Finally, the party heads on a road to the necromancer. On this trip, Agronok realizes his blade is excellent at slaying the undead and would be useful for aiding a cleric in turning them. Then, they all end up waiting along the coast for this "old friend."
There, a vampiric figure greets them and calls out the dullness of the group in the short time he had been watching them as opposed to the juicy talk he had caught the tail end of the last time he saw them. He then leads them to a dark cave citing his master would greet them in his favorite way. However, the cave is a dead end with six chairs around a table with a miniature game involving two towers, one that ascends into the sky and one that descends into the earth, and he asks everyone to sit to play. Everyone but Kiwi and Luthrin sit, at which point Kiwi gives him a knowing look and sits herself. Luthrin then does the non-ridiculous move and flips the chair around before sitting on it. The eyes of the vampire then turn green as the necromancer greets them and sits in the sixth chair. 
All of a sudden, the characters are transported to a world of darkness, all of which except Agro caught in an enclosed room while Agro is faced with a dark sky. There, they are all faced with differing challenges. Agro is faced with his past. Kiwi is faced with herself. Skek is faced with his faith. Grimace is faced with his savagery. Luthrin is faced with his bondage.

Rewards Granted

600 cp, 6000 sp, 2900 gp, 140 pp   
Grimace: pair of engraved bone dice, Adamantine chain shirt, The Herald's Sword
Kiwi: small gold bracelet,
Skek: cloth-of-gold vestments
Agro: 2 vials of acid, Short Sword of undead slaying

Missions/Quests Completed

Killed the Herald.
Spoke with the necromancer.

Character(s) interacted with

The Herald of the Dead
Peras, the necromancer
Guy Wylde, the hunter
Theirastra, the caring
Sheathe, the last renegade
The Vampire of Peras

Report Date

29 Jun 2020