The Mad God's Test and the Unnatural's Task
General Summary
Note: Sometimes a chronicler gets so far behind and misplaces notes along the way so that a full article becomes... problematic to write without many inconsistencies. Maybe one day I will find both the missing notes and the time to recap this particular chapter of The Un-Valine of Time, but for now, dear reader, I hope it will be sufficient to just list the highlights as a reminder for myself and, perhaps, a few points of interest for you. My sincerest apologies for the gap in the chronicle...
~The Rob of Wonder (Official Chronicler of Valine)
- Apparently within the cube, the party met with Ades the Mad
- The group were able to question Ades about what had been happening, and learned that Nivian had been acting from within the book they had been imprisoned in and the gods were using different individuals and groups from across Valine's history to counteract the chaos Nivian was sowing
- Ades revealed that their adventures thus far had been a test and that the other gods were on the fence about their performance, so Ades was assigning them a task, or rather a choice of tasks
- Three choices were offered to the party: Right the Wrong, Heal the Shadow, Fix the Crack. The party chose Right the Wrong. Ades warned the group not to trust anybody.
- Stepping through the indicated portal for their chosen quest, Kail, Thea Longhorn, and Popo found themselves in what appeared to be a temple with statues of snake-humanoids within it
- Hide was sent on a different task to retrieve an item to help out the rest of the group - a warhammer from a dwarven tomb.
- Hide found the warhammer - unprotected. It seemed too easy, despite being ambushed by an undead monstrosity that was apparently once a dwarf that had been the mistress of the patriarch of this family tomb.
- The rest of the party fought their way through the temple, moving past illusions, Gelatinous Cube, Yuan-ti, and traps including what seemed to be experiments on living beings using electricity and temporal magic.
- On the journey Thea nearly killed a ratling scout after making a snap judgment based on her prejudice
- Hide rejoined the group, as the dwarven tomb attached to the temple chambers through a secret passage and the group came across a powerful magic user who was keeping a much older version of Gabrunel Zincolland prisoner - and apparently had been experimenting on him for decades
- Although able to defeat the mage, Hide discovered that the warhammer she had retrieved was useless - most likely a decoy.
- While the rest of the party tracked the mage, who had fled from them, Hide and Popo returned to the dwarven temple below to try and find the real warhammer. There, they encountered the undead dwarf guardian, who decimated Hide and sent Popo fleeing for help.
- The rest of the party quickly determined that the mage had combined temporal magic with blood magic and somehow transfered himself into a statue, where he lay dormant. The party began to dismantle the statue, but before they could destroy it entirely, they found themsleves transported once more. Hide's critical condition had caused another of the gods to intervene.
- The group found themselves standing in front of Khydar the Unnatural, God of Undeath.
- Khydar also told them that he thought Ades' test had been unfair and he was sending them to deal with a little problem in his own sphere of influence. An amulet was there and he needed it destroyed. But first, he needed Gabe to deal with something - and he could rejoin the group later.
- The rest of the group fouond themselves outside a large village, the constellations telling them that they were in Valine's southern hemisphere.
- The village was being overrun with zombies and Animated Skeleton
- The party rescued the blacksmith, the tavern owner and his daughter (all dragonborn, and an elf
- From there the group and the townspeople, rejoined by Gabe after his mysterious sojourn, made their way to the village temple, which was being completely overrun by undead, scaling the temple's tower to enter from the top.
- In the main temple, the party helped two acolytes fight off the undead horde - apparently attracted to the hidden amulet.
- Finding the amulet, when it was first touched the undead collapsed and formed themselves into a "super" zombie and a "super" Animated Skeleton in an apparent final attempt to get to the amulet.
- Finally destroying the amulet, the party found themselves back in the alley in Irvine - just moments after the point when they had originally been thrown back in time.
Report Date
01 Dec 2022
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