The group decides to table the fey invitations until later.

In the meantime, Ibn Ammar, a Marid, asks to hire us to collect a debt in the City of Brass. He is not allowed to commit violence within the City; we are under no such restrictions. He is offering 250 gp up front, 250 upon completion, 50 gp a day, and transportation to and from the City.

It turns out that this is more a case of stealing back items that were previously stolen. The thief is a former adventurer by the name of Arioch. He wants us to loot Arioch’s place, give him the items in question, and take the rest for ourselves.

Regarding the City: The only legal punishment is slavery. The efreet are in charge of the City. Ibn Ammar offers rings that marks the wearer as property of his house. The terms of the contract specify that the slavery lasts for three days or until the wearer returns to the Prime Material and is non-transferable. Kirk accepts a ring. Jasper, Lagran, and Riverthorn do not. Riverthorn finds a potion of fire resistance, and Jasper and Quill get her a protection from energy spell in her book.

While we’re preparing, an invisible stalker attacks Jasper in his apartment. Jasper decides that Arioch sent the invisible stalker, so now wants to kill him. (N.B. It was actually sent by the wizard whose tower we crashed.)

Ibn Ammar brings us to the City of Brass and sets us up in the Hanged Man, an inn catering to mortal visitors. While he tracks Arioch down, Jasper and Quill head to the Academy of Magic, while Lagran, Riverthorn, and Kirk go shopping. Jasper looks up information on Minas Solas. Quill scribes a spell into her book and looks up information on creating a mage blade for Jasper.

The next day, we head to a slaad bar to ask a grey slaad for Arioch’s location. Lagran negotiates a contract to replace Arioch with her House as Gray’s employer. Gray tells us that Arioch is holed up in his ship, Her Great Ass, in the docks.

While we’ve been doing that, githyanki and illithid armadas have been massing around the docks. The efreet military is out in force to respond if needed.

We find Arioch’s ship and Kirk and Jasper head straight into the fray with his forces. We take down the blue slaad, although the efreet is trouble. Jasper heads into a cabin, where he thinks Ariock is an efreet dead drunk on the bed. Unfortunately, Arioch turns out to be the invisible death slaad hanging out in the room.

It’s difficult, but we defeat Arioch. Jasper and Ibn Ammar find what we were seeking: the fates of ten exceptional mortals. Jasper meets an intelligent great sword that wants to hunt illithid.

Treasure

• 1300 gp worth of treasure
• Magic lamps, 8
• Magic stone, periapt vs. poison
• Silver greatsword +1, intelligent, goes by “Savage,” adds 1d6 psychic damage & provides resistance to psychic, detect thoughts 3/day.

Dramatis Personae

• Jaspar Evensong d’Castilla y’Marischala
• Tranquility
• Trimyra “Riverthorn” Timrik
• Lagran Escriber
• Kirk the Wolf

We open back in the kitchen with perception rolls. Merric notices something shiny at Cade’s feet. It’s a ring. We decide to hold off on detecting magic until we’ve finished clearing out the manor house. Fox finds some stairs going up. We decide to rest up a little bit. During the rest, we hear a clock chiming twelve times. Merric opens the door and sees that it’s pitch black out.

We go up the front stairs. Merric blows paintings off the wall with a gust, which seems to amuse the poltergeists in the house; they giggle.

The turning blue effect doesn’t affect the skull Mercy’s carrying around. We find the wizard’s mistress’s bedroom, which has a mind-reading bed. In another bedroom, Merric and Keevah touch a chest and shrink to around six inches high, after which they are attacked by a centipede. In the meantime, Mercy tries to get a date by writhing on the bed. It fails.

We all end up shrinking in the shrink room and grow back to our normal size in the hallway. We manage to finagle the chest out of there with a rope and find a box and another skull. Cade picks the lock on the box and finds gold. We keep the skull, because we’re collecting them.

Selka opens the library and starts looking around. Merric finds a dagger in a desk, while Mercy steals some plate armor. Keevah starts wandering back to the butterfly room. She is joined by Merric and Cade. One of the living butterflies lands on Keevah’s finger. It gets bigger, and the butterflies on the wall start flapping their wings and fly around. Keevah heads back to the hallway, but one of the butterflies grows to four feet in wingspan before she leaves.

Cade picks the locks on the drawers and finds the pouch, magnifier, and another skull. Mercy asks the candelabra to light, and it does. Mercy heads into a closet, finds nothing of interest, and turns invisible.

We find a bathroom where it is raining inside and a couple of large frogs attack Merric. Mercy (still invisible) opens a door and finds another bedroom. Keevah talks the frogs into handing over a soggy pouch and another skull.

There’s a trap door in the master bedroom’s ceiling. We head up to find a perfectly preserved dead woman in leather armor clutching the last skull. There was another room up there full of random stuff, with another door (with a crescent moon on it) at the end. We decide to do the skull thing. On the way back, someone notices a secret door in the master bedroom, which leads to a pile of little gems.

We head back to the skull room and put the skulls on the skeletons. It turns a painting of the new moon into a portal leading into an area of darkness. This does not open the door, but the key in the darkness does. The darkness also makes Mercy visible again.

Before we open the crescent moon door, an imp yells “no, don’t let the master out!” and attacks. We kill it.

We open the door and head into a study. Merric goes further into the room and disappears, becoming invisible and incorporeal, where he sees a zombie wizard. Keevah heads into the same area and joins them in the invisible/incorporeal club, where she smacks the zombie in the nose before it bites Merric. Then Mercy ends up there and blows the wizard up.

Character Roster

• Merric Sky-touched
• Keevah
• Selka Jurekdottir of Clan Dunkarran
• Erysimum (As Cade Silverblade)
• Mercy
• Foxfire

Treasure

• Ring of protection +1 (Mercy)
• A shimmery blue bottle – potion of mage armor (Keevah)
• A steel bottle – potion of magic weapon (Merric)
• Silver hand mirror (50 gp), comb (25 gp), and scissors (30 gp)
• Metal box
• 100 gp
• Silver dagger (Merric)
• Silver long sword
• Plate mail (Mercy)
• Pouch with 50 gp
• Magnifying Glass, comprehend languages 1/day, written text only
• Spellbook, all level 1-3 transmutation spells (Foxfire)
• Soggy pouch (28 sp, 12 gp)
• Glowy hot sphere, softball size
• Key (found in master bedroom)
• 30 gems worth 1 gp each (Mercy)
• 500 sp, 250 gp
• 4 potions (2 potions of healing, lesser restoration, dark vision – Merric)
• 4 scrolls (Protection from good & evil, feather fall, scorching ray, burning hands)
• Silver key (75 gp)
• 200 gp
• +1 dagger
• Unicorn horn wand
• Wand of wonder, depleted, can be used as arcane focus (Merric)
• 180 gp (pay – Adventurer’s Guild cut)
• Magic candelabra

We’re hanging out in the Zheimbai Adventurer’s Guild socializing and having fun. “Cade” is flirting with Fox. A job is brought to our attention; something is occupying a recently-purchased manor house and the nouveau-riche hotshot who bought it wants it cleared out before their family moves in. Cade knows it as a local haunted house that scares all the neighborhood kids out by the Avenue of the Brazen Whores. Mary heard it was a mage’s house around 20 years ago, but the mage disappeared.

We gathered our stuff and make our ways to the realtor’s office. The clerk brings in Kenneth, a greybeard dwarf. He says the last group going in didn’t come back, but that was over two months ago. This thing has changed hands around 50 times in the last decade, because rich people don’t do their homework. Mercy asks for an inventory so we know what belongs to the manor house.

The place looks abandoned. The grass is as tall as the wall around the property. There are runes burned into the front door. A large black rhinoceros comes out of the tall grass. Foxfire notices a baby rhino in the grass as well. We avoid the fight by heading into the house. There’s a knocking sound from one of the doors. We open it (with some difficulty) and find a skull with the symbol for the waxing crescent moon carved on its forehead.

The sitting room has fancy furniture and a decanter of glowing violet liquid. A drop of it makes Merric glow for around a minute, so he drinks a glass of it. We wander through the house, finding another skull. When we find the dining room, we find the skeletons that the skulls belonged to. We keep exploring to find the rest of the skulls. We find a room with some statues of rats. They turn Keevah into a statue when they animate. It turns out that that room wants to turn people to and from stone every 12 seconds.

The next room has a clear bell jar with a shiny rock and some butterflies in the middle and lots of butterflies on the walls. Then we find a pantry with apples that make people change color,equipment and all. Merric and Mercy are now blue. Cade ends up in a fight with a doppleganger in a pantry. We end up with two Cades. Fortunately, only the real one can cast spells. The fake asks to just leave. Cade’s ok with letting him go, so he runs for it.

Character Roster

• Merric Sky-touched
• Keevah
• Selka Jurekdottir of Clan Dunkarran
• Erysimum (As Cade Silverblade)
• Mercy
• Foxfire

We’re in a tower. There are magic circles moving around the floor and some doors. There are some drow. Jasper tries to open the door to the drow, but it’s locked. Kirk knocks on the door. Somehow we end up in a fight against the drow. There were invisible priestesses and oni running around causing trouble.

Jasper teleports us to a room with an acid pit and a bunch of elementals. We kill them, but they chew through us. We end up leaving the tower.

After that, we rest up and head to an ancient elven ruin covered in a faint magical barrier. Kirk refrains from licking it. The night we’re camping, a chariot bathed in moonlight comes riding from the direction of the elven city. The fey from the chariot says that Jasper’s blood is connected to the place, but it’s barred for a reason. She gives Jasper a bush that produces goodberries.

When we’re heading back to camp, we’re attacked by drow and a demon.

On the way back, the dryad asks Kirk for another night. He goes for it. So does Cullen.

Our non-dragonborn friends are waiting for us in Mund. They pay us.

Treasure

• 14000 gp
• 1890 pp
• (3) 250 gp art pieces
• Tentacle Rod
• Rod of Lordly Might
• Ring of the Ram
• Ring of Spell Storing

Near the hobgoblin encampment, Lark goes to investigate an approaching party that is stumbling its way towards the hill. She finds a gnome wizard (Moonstar Spiderblink) and a human cleric (Evalyn). Lark confronts the duo and Moonstar asks for Jasper. Lark lowers her weapon and agrees to escort the two to Jasper. As she puts her bow away, a human male (Cullen) makes his presences known as the third member of the party, startling Lark.

Lark guides the group to the others and people make introductions. Cullen asks after Aela having traveled with her before. Moonstar knows Kirk, Greyson and Jasper. He introduces Evalyn who stutteringly asks if anyone has seen her son, a tiefling in the area. Evalyn seems very out of her element tramping about the woods, but then offers everyone the best biscuits ever tasted as Jasper calls for Mot to make tea.

Jasper asks Lark to fire off a note into the hobgoblin camp asking for parley. A note is returned saying yes. Jasper meets with the envoy by himself and asks questions regarding the dragon. The hobgoblin had no more information than what the party had already known. Jasper asks to meet with the wizard. The envoy says he will return with an answer tomorrow. During the night we feel like we are being magically observed.

The next day the encampment is eerily quiet and the guards are missing. We approach the palisade and Kirk climbs the wall. Kirk, Greyson and Jasper trigger a trap (fireball) while trying to open the gate. Inside everyone is missing. There is an obelisk in the center of the encampment. Moonstar indicates that the obelisk and an area in one of the building radiates magic. We find a chest, dispell the magic and unlock it. There is a note from the wizard sealed with a stylized head of a mindflayer with 2 extra tentacles and a bag of platinum. Jasper reads the note. The wizard says the platinum is for us and to have a nice day.

Jasper is annoyed and demands the wizard pay for dry cleaning, not realizing that there was a bag of platinum left for the party. The obelisk has a mark on each side of the faces including the top in an unknown language. Moonstar casts comprehend language and touches the obelisk then disappears. The party quickly follows in touching that same side of the obelisk and finds themselves drowning on the elemental plane of water. A jinn happens to be waiting and casts water breathing on the party. Turns out the wizard stiffed him and now Jasper is under a geis to return a sapphire if he finds it. The party touches the obelisk on the top and is transported to another obelisk in a black watery area. We follow some glowing arrows on the floor and are attacked by a giant tentacle snake. We kill it and the wizard talks to us in our heads annoyed by our efforts. We continue on our way and arrive in an opulent reception area with equipment for drying off. We continue up the stairs and find ourselves in a large round tower area. There are 4 doors in the area and a Cambion standing near one of them. We talk with him and convince him that his dealings with the wizard will not reap benefits. They decide to leave. He does tell us that to get to the wizard you have to pass through the 4 elemental planes and there are githrazi prisoners. He also tells us about an inn in carcosa that is fantastic. (Jade Dragon Inn) We contact the creatures behind the other doors, they disregard our warnings. (Marilith – abyss & Markoth – ) As we approach the 4th door, we are confronted by a pair of helmed horrors. We defeat them.

2000xp per

Jasper
Lark
Kirk
Greyson
Cullen
Spiderblink
Evalyn

Chip DM

There’s someone at the gate asking for us. They are “dragonlike but not dragonborn.” They are a group of half dragons led by Bluetooth. Their master prefers to remain nameless. They want to bribe us to investigate a dragon in the Darkwood. He wants us to disrupt negotiations between the dragon and a wizard.

We head into the Darkwood. The first person we meet is a dryad. She invites us to tea. Then she asks the gents in the party if they’ll help her with her seed. Kirk agrees. The dryad’s tree is near an ancient elven house, which interests Jasper.

The next day, we find a Fomorian (evil giant). During the fight, a young green dragon tried to sneak up on us. Badly. However, her breath weapon was entirely too effective, dropping Aela and Jasper immediately. Fortunately, the rest of the group was able to drive her off.

After some healing potions and a rest to help Aela and Jasper, we go into dragon-hunting mode. The dragon has made her lair inside a giant living tree. The dragon apparently stopped by to grab her gold and most valuable items, but still left a bunch of stuff.

We try to find information on the wizard she was supposedly meeting with. Jasper finds her guest room, which includes information on an elven ruin, including the note “we can’t pierce the barrier.”

We decide to track the dragon. This takes more than the rest of the day. During the night, Grayson and Kirk notice a half-score of hobgoblins attempting to sneak towards our camp. They’re wearing badges with stylized mindflayers. One of them is a fireball-casting spellcaster. We take most of them out, but three got away.

In the morning, Lark tracks the two little guys back to a treeless hill with a palisade at the top. This is the hobgoblin “camp” and the wizard’s fortress

Dramatis Personae

• Greyson Najin
• Jaspar Evensong d’Castilla y’Marischala
• Lark
• Aela MacClintock
• Kirk

Treasure

• Short Sword – Dragonslayer
• Fomorian Eyes
• 7000 sp
• 700 cp
• Rod of the Pact Keeper +2

Potential crafting items:
Fomorian Eye (CR 8)

Once a year, the Martell brothers have their unclaimed freight sale. We find a nice dwarven-made rapier with Jasper’s house symbol on it. Jasper considers letting it go to auction and duelling the winner to the death. We find out that it had been commissioned by Quill, but she refused the delivery at the end. Jasper ends up buying it. Lagran buys a lot of books from an old sage.

During the sale, the Martell brothers make contact with us. They want us to investigate a mine with both silver and platinum (there’s a possibility that the mine could have mithril further down). Some of their miners have disappeared. They offer the group 1500 gp to investigate, 1500 if the mine is usable afterward, and bonuses for rescuing miners and keeping the four engineers they’re sending with us alive. Martell throws in a free bottle of ink. They provide wagons and provisions, to make the engineers comfortable.

The trip to the mine is relatively easy. The local bandits realized that their profit-to-chance-of-being-murdered ratio was unfavorable and left us alone.

While setting up camp, Ehlonna notices someone watching us, who scampers off. Kirk identifies kobold tracks.

We find the little town, Rose Rock, that sprung up around the mine. With the mine currently closed, the town’s not doing well. We spend the night; Lagran breaks some lute strings, and Jasper loses money at backgammon, but gains female companionship for the evening. Riverthorn loses money at backgammon, but finds out the previous company left due to a kobold infestation. Ehlonna finds out the kobolds are serving a red dragon. The mayor’s been planning to sacrifice some of the town’s young women to the dragon to save six hostages (one of which is the mayor’s daughter). Ehlonna wished to have “words” with him, but Riverthorn suggested beating down his door with the dragon’s skull.

In the morning, Ehlonna discovers that the baron’s sister’s head has disappeared from her bag. Then we go to the mine, leaving the engineers back in Rose Rock. They’re happy with this development.

There’s a single mine opening, about 20 feet wide, with a small collection of shabby, unmaintained wooden buildings. There’s a lot of loose stone lying around; someone’s (kobolds) been digging out new tunnels and just tossing the stone out.

We climb down into the mine without major incident, thanks to Jasper’s Feather Fall. We make noise, and the mine explodes in stirges. We wipe them out. We consider avoiding the barricade in the main shaft by looking through side passages, but decide that we’d rather go after a dragon than stirges. Kirk clears the barricade, and Jasper helps us Feather Fall down.

After we chase the kobolds away – the last we saw, the women and children were heading down the emergency exit – we search for the dragon. Ehlonna goes invisible and scouts the dragon’s lair. It’s a pretty nice starter lair, but the room is clearly big enough that the dragon has long-range plans. A couple of kobolds hear her, but they don’t find her because of the spell. The dragon, it turns out, was perched right above the door.

Jasper flies up and stabs the dragon, who then flies down to a cage with the captives and threatens them. The group drove Gralex the dragon off, rescued the hostages, and recovered the dwarven clan badges for the Martells.

Treasure

• 2823 gp (per person)
• Trident of Fish Command (party treasure)
• Circlet of Blasting (party treasure)
• Bag of Holding (Riverthorn)
• Plate Armor of Swimming (giving it to Grayson)
• Gloves of Swimming and Climbing (Lagran)
• Headband of Intellect (Jasper)

PCs

• Ehlonna
• Jaspar Evensong d’Castilla y’Marischala
• Kirk
• Trimyra “Riverthorn” Timrik

After a short rest, we decided to check out a goblin warren. It looked like the demonic werewolves killed all the goblins. It’s caked with gooshy goblin bits. We find a crude chest in what we assume was the chief’s or shaman’s quarters, which we promptly loot.

Ehlonna lopped off the baron’s sister’s head. Apparently she wants to keep it around, the loony.

Then we try to work out whether and how to check out a second cave and some green goo. It turns out the two are related; someone was filtering and separating the goo from the swamp water and keeping it in a basin. People are weird. The goo is a little bit magical, but does not appear to have been enchanted.

We end up in a room of demon pods. There’s a gloopy half-dissolved goblin in one of them, a nearly formed quasit in another, and some formerly-human-looking things in another couple. Quill tries blasting one with fire, but it didn’t seem to work. Ehlonna’s Eldritch Blast pops a pod and drops its embryo. Riverthorn joins her in popping pods.

We start hearing growls and the polyps on the walls start to quiver. There’s movement in the water. Basketball-sized frog eggs with tentacles start popping out of the wall polyps. Lark skewers a couple and pops them in founts of goo. Ehlonna pops a second pair with Eldritch Blasts. A third pair grab Quill and Riverthorn. Kaimi pops those two polyps, who spew their poison goo all over Quill and Riverthorn. It makes Quill ill; Riverthorn’s had worse. For the first time in the campaign, Lark breaks out a short sword.

At that point a demonic form comes darting out of a hole in the ceiling. It spears Quill with its proboscis. Riverthorn shoots a witch bolt at it; it resists the lightning, but takes some damage. Ehlonna gives it a good blasting. It flies up the hole, and Quill papers it over with a web. More polyps pop out, and one of the pods pops, spewing stinky gas that made Riverthorn cough. Then a 15 foot tall blobby Pillsbury Dough Mama comes out of the pond. She wants to turn us into demon pods, but ran out.

We retreated from the cave, decided to camp overnight and then go back when we’re in better shape. We decide to focus on the Dough Mama, taking her out as soon as we can. We also get rid of the insect demon and scour the walls of the podling polyps. The green stuff does not respond to our efforts.

We take a good long rest after scouring the cave, then track down the source of the goo. We track it through the swamp to an abandoned temple. We find a droopy protoplasmic tree. We find fractally inky blackness, similar to the stuff attacking the titan, around here. We think it’s the Abyss encroaching into the mortal world. We head into the temple to see if we can see something to disrupt. We find a flat, weird, black and white Marilith hovering inside. We take it out, but the rift remains. We can’t figure out how to close it, so we’re going to send word to the capital to see if anyone there has any bright ideas.

Treasure

• 1000 sp
• 50 gp
• Boots of Elvenkind (advantage on moving silently)(Lark)
• Adamantine chain shirt (Elohna)
• wand of Magic Missiles (Tranquility)
• Jewelry worth 50 gp

We went to the old werewolf lair. There were demonic werewolf things, a vrock, and the Baron’s formerly-dead sister, who is now a sorceress instead of a warlock. There was a fight. It hurt.

Treasure

• 2000 sp
• 2300 gp
• Wand of Magic Missile
• Adamantine chain shirt
• 2 potions of healing

Mr. Payne has posted a notice on the board in the Copper Ram for those interested in a “lucrative opportunity.” He has a spinster aunt who he’s trying to wed to another merchant family’s widowed uncle, so he’s asked us to escort her to Ulster. He is extremely unhappy about the possibility of our talking to said aunt in order to verify that she’s OK with all of this.

Just then, a commotion breaks out at the front of the Ram. Someone yells out that someone else is a cheating son of a bitch, followed by another person yelling that they don’t want to draw attention. We ask Mr. Payne to hold on a bit while we check out the ruckus. Apparently it is a disagreement over cards. Three of the card players turn out to be werewolves.

We find out that the three had been abducted and forcibly turned outside of One Eyed Jack’s, a dive bar between here and Carcosa.

We take Quill’s new wagon down the road towards Carcosa. After some days, a couple of ogres start tossing boulders at us. They are not a challenge. They narrate their own deaths quite prettily. They are all wearing the badges of an orc chieftain.

One Eyed Jack’s is a pretty ramshackle set of buildings, but there are well-armed guards around the place. Lark thinks the feel of the place is wrong; that area no longer feels like the Golden Wood should.

We drop two guards immediately, and then the werewolves smell the blood. The werewolves have a berserker, an archer, and an alpha female with scars and a magic necklace. They also had a pixie and an oak tree that turned this area into an extension of the Dark Wood. We take all of them out with the help of Haffner the Mysterious Bear Druid. Long Jack’s is burned to the foundation during the fight.

The druid is able to save Alard, one of four dead merchants. Haffner says the werewolf pack was part of the Dark Council of the Dark Woods. He doesn’t know why her pack had come down, but she had mentioned being betrayed before her death. Haffner is not sure who could have betrayed her, but he knows where her original lair was.

Haffner is unaware of anything that could give a disease (the berserker) or scar (the alpha) to werewolves, so whatever drove her pack out is a big nasty.

We decide to head towards the old werewolf lair to see who or what has taken it over.

Treasure

• 930 gp
• 640 cp
• 2200 sp
• 25 gp in home goods
• Fancy tapestry worth 500 gp if it gets mended
• Random belt pouches
• +1 silver klaive, martial weapon, 2d4 base slashing (Kaimi)
• necklace – flame devouring amulet (the wearer has advantage on all saves vs. fire. In addition, amulet absorbs half of all fire damage dealt to target. Once it has consumed 43 pts of fire damage, the ruby will crack and it will cease to absorb damage, but the saving throw effect will continue, attunable item)(Kirk)
• 3 gold chain bracelets worth 250 gp each
• iron lockbox with a trapped lock (we also have the key)

Characters

• Lark
• Riverthorn
• Quill
• Kaimi