Zelrathi's ¿patron? had a confrontation with her ¿sister? And Salris faced off against his family.
Bugfood says that the World Spire pierces the planes, and we're now in a place that's thinning.
Upwards
We continue up the mountain, bouldering and scrambling, in this ceaseless light. Even in the cave, there was light from cracks in the rock. Now Jerry leads the Party, and with a comfortable and smooth path we ascend quickly.
We start to see footprints, headed in the same direction we are, where someone stood as they moved rocks out of the way. The footprints are fresh.
We hear a grunt from ahead, of someone falling. Bugfood takes the shape of a Giant Owl and looks ahead, to see someone spread-eagled across a crack which leads down into a cavern, bridging the gap.
Bugfood the Owl lands in front of this person, and the person is surprised. The Party catches up, and we rescue this person from being splayed across the gap. He's wearing a gradient of blue robes, with symbols of crashing waves and distant storms. The person is happy to see us, if wary of this Giant Owl. Ryltar explains that Bugfood isn't always like this; Bugfood raises a Giant Owl Eyebrow.
With a 15 on a religion check, this is a cleric of Umberlee, the goddess of rough seas and natural water.
Ryltar asks how this cleric got here, so far from the ocean. The person is still dazed from the fall, and frequently trails off. He's on a pilgrimage for his town. Bugfood leaves owl shape, and brushes off the robes of this traveler, slapping him gently in the face.
The guy, a human male with sun-bronzed skin and ocean-blue eyes, drifts in conversation, and never really answers questions directly. Bugfood runs around beside him to look where he's looking, but doesn't see anything.
Bugfood casts Detect Magic and sees something that's a vague holy symbol on the cleric's body. Bugfood looks down the crevice, but sees nothing magical down there. He casts Stone Shape and makes a warning sign: "Warning! Daangar. Deep fall. Don't fall. Signed, Bugfood." The cleric tries to correct his spelling, but Bugfood insists.
"So you are … Bugfood?"
"The one and only!"
"I've only heard of one Bugfood."
"We're all Bugfood, at some point."
"I've never met you, but there are exploits, deeds you have done."
Bugfood begins to tell a story of how he raised a squirrel.
As Bugfood tells this story, Ryltar and Jerry notice two welts appearing on the face of the cleric. And Bugfood notices, but continues talking about how he named the squirrel 'Peapod', and gave it a shirt, and casts Dispel Magic on the cleric, who jumps back — but the bumps are still there.
Bugfood pokes the horns; he thought they were magical or disguised. But the cleric explains that he thought he was human!
The cleric of Umberlee introduces himself as Doomcaller Randyl Segoon. He doesn't know what the lumps are, yet they look like the horns of Bugfood and Salris. The welts have a hard base inside them.
We talk about whether this man is slowly turning into a Tiefling. Salris takes the Mask of Many Faces to turn into a human, saying, "What are you talking about? I've always been a human." Yet the welts are still there, slightly more prominent, with no discoloration of the skin.
Jerry notices that Bugfood's hands are lightening in shade, less dark blue than they were. She asks Bugfood if he feels any less Tiefling than he did before, but he feels very in his skin. "Randyl, you and I seem to be changing places."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You seem to be growing horns, and I seem to be growing … skin."
"But we've only just met!"
Bugfood contemplates throwing him down the mountain, but passes it off as "Too drastic." He continues to tell a new story, about the robin he raised, which was named Carl.
The rest of the Party watches, bored, and notices little. Moon, on the other hand, sees something, but can't say it. Zelrathi nudges Vurguron, picks at his tooth. Vurguron looks at Randyl, and sees that Randyl is growing fangs, and his ears are slightly pointier.
Bugfood continues to narrate the story, but we don't see much different. Zelrathi says, to Ryltar, "He has found a friend," and indeed Randyl appears to be fascinated by the intricacies of bird law.
The longer we look at Randyl and Bugfood, the more we have a nagging feeling that we may have met Randyl. Maybe?
Jerry observes that the familiarity isn't because Randyl and Bugfood look the same. But what's similar between them are the ocean-blue eyes, and mannerisms.
When Bugfood reaches a pause in his story, Randyl spends some time describing the differences of waves, and storms, and how they come and go. Very much the same thing as Bugfood has been doing, but about his own experiences.
Jerry quietly casts Silence on them; they notice. Jerry apologizes, saying it was an accident. But Bugfood's black hair has lightened in color, towards a dark brown.
"Bugfood, are you okay becoming human?" asks Ryltar.
"No! Disgusting things. Am I becoming one?" He looks at Randyl. "Last chance to come clean before I fry you," he says to Randyl.
Randyl doesn't know what's happening, and splutters, but Bugfood says, "I know what you're doing! The hair, the ears, the fangs and horns!"
Yet Randyl protests his innocence.
The rest of the Party still thinks they might have met him someplace. We discuss whether what we should do, and Bugfood concludes that it would be terrible to throw him into the crevasse. "Can we go more than 5 minutes without you threatening to kill someone, Bugfood?" asks Ryltar.
"Oh, you're a cleric?" And horns poke through the skin.
The more we tell him about Bugfood, the more he begins to look like Bugfood, and the more that Bugfood begins to look like him.
Bugfood reaches into his bag for a bottle of bleach, "to forget everything," and finds a bottle with a red potion, which he didn't put there before. At Ryltar's suggestion, Randyl opens his bag to reveal the usual climbing gear; he relies on Umberlee for healing, not potions.
We notice that each spell cast has a sort of magical smoke exhaust. Perhaps this explains all the Wild Magic rolls.
Bugfood casts Identify and finds that the mysterious red potion is a bottle of Moonberry Wine. Bugfood passes it to Randyl, and says, "Drink this, it's good!" He wants to see if the man turns into a Tiefling, like how Bugfood turned into a human.
When Ryltar sees the Moonberry Wine, he realizes that Randyl looks like Bugfood did, when Bugfood drank the Moonberry wine and turned into a human.
"What good graces have brought you together with your doppleganger," asks Ryltar. And at Salris' whining, Ryltar gives Salris a dose of the Moonberry Wine.
A minute passes, and indeed the man turns into a Tiefling who looks exactly like Bugfood. He looks down at himself, and says, "This is not what I am! I am the spiritual advisor for the town, I'm not …"
"What town are you from?"
He's from Hazelfort, just off the coast, down southwest of the island. As he explains, Bugfood realizes that his skin has become more pale and human.
Ryltar asks if this man had a prophecy he was following, but no, Randyl says he came because his town was failing and he needed to come make appeasement to Umberlee. One prays to Melora for safe passage, but to Umberlee not to send the monsters and evils. This is why Randyl has the title "Doomcaller". He comes here because his town is beset with raiders, to save his town. He's just here to complete his pilgrimage and save his town.
"Well, you're brave to do it alone," says Ryltar.
"When you face the ocean, it is only between you and the water that stands in your way," says Ryltar.
"And you have no idea why you might be turning into our friend here?"
"No! No, not at all. Our town has wives' tales of infernal heritage, but everyone around me has always been human. I've never seen Bugfood here."
They don't seem to come from the same town, or have similar backstories, but as they talk, a flush of blue skin comes across Randyl's cheekbones.
So we discuss lying about Bugfood. The blatant lies don't do anything, but presenting a truth as a lie causes Randyl's horns to grow. The more we tell Randyl about Bugfood, the more that Randyl begins to look like Bugfood. And the more that Randyl tells Bugfood babout himself, the more that Bugfood begins to look like Randyl. And lying causes Bugfood to deny the lies, so Jerry casts Silence again, but Randyl, still a Bugfood, begins to walk off. She drops it. The different Bugfoods shout their departures to each other, explaining that they liked talking to each other.
Bugfood turns to the Party and starts regurgitating everything that Randyl told him. We walk and talk, and walk around the 5-foot-wide, 30-foot-long crevasse.
And we continue uphill.
As we walk and talk, Bugfood gains a greater understanding of himself, and gains a holy symbol of waves, which allows him a one-time casting of Spiritual Weapon? He curses the gods, and praises "the wet goddess" for giving him her blessing.
The clouds gather closer and closer, as we talk about the "Wet Goddess."
He calls out into the air, "Do not send us waves, do not sink our ships, do not drown us in the waters of the ocean!" as the visibility drops to 5 feet.
After a minute of travel within this dense fog, and where before there were ambient clouds, we see blue sky and drifting clouds. We see the unclouded sky, and land, all the way back down to the bottom of the World Spire. To the south-southwest, we see the lakes we've traveled past before.
Above the clouds
The terrain is a comfortable 45-degree slope, of rocks and mountainside. We have passed the trials.
Bugfood starts to sing a sea shanty, reminiscent of the A-Team theme song. He looks at the rocks, to see whether there's rocks that would have bird nests, and he sees some ledges.
There's peace here, and no gloom. Besides a drifting cloud or two, it's clear and sunny.
Ryltar is thinking about the prophecy. His mind drifts with the clouds, and he wonders whether the lead we received is all there is, or whether there's anything beyond it.
Salris wonders what will happen when he does. He doesn't know what will happen, and he fears that the curse will continue.
Vurguron is questioning reality. Were the things we met in the clouds real, or just an astral projection?
Vurguron, and then the rest of the Party, see incorporeal figures surrounding the group. Some large, some small. A dark figure with horns, Lolth scattered in the wind, Bahamut's presence shedding scales, others that we've seen on our travels. Some become more solid; others fade out.
Vurguron doesn't think they're real. It's too much to expect that they're real. Yet he walks over to them. They dissipate. He sees footprints of the creatures. He is indeed spooked a little.
Jerry sees these creatures, and knows that the mountain has thrown things at them before. She worries about what will come next.
There is only silence; it's vacant up here.
"Zelrathi, what is her name?" asks Ryltar.
"Who?"
"Your …"
"Arye." For a moment, the spectral wings appear behind Zelrathi's back. They fade, and then she appears: a human woman, in white robes, floating behind and above Zelrathi, drifting in the wind a little. She seems corporeal to Ryltar. And the rest of the Party sees her.
"Are you Arye?" asks Ryltar.
"I am," she says.
Zelrathi spins around, spluttering: "What? How? Why are yo here?"
"I am here because you are here. You take me wherever you go."
"So if I'm to put things together," says Ryltar, "Your brother got himself into some deep shit?"
"I don't have a brother."
"Then who was that? Do you have a sister?"
"She is my lady, my…. I had journeyed with her, long ago, for many years."
Zelrathi asks her many questions; she fades into a blinding light.
He continues angrily questioning: "I've spent weeks reading about this, but you show up at the mention of a name!"
"In my experience, Zelrathi, it's less about reading the books and more about experiencing them. Here you're closer to her; the planes bring you closer together. You didn't have to come along." This from Ryltar.
"Why do you hate her? She doesn't seem malicious."
"You don't have her in your head," says Zelrathi. "She tells to do this, find this, doesn't give maps. She asks more of me than I have to give."
"I think with the right group of people, you'll have the support you need to do your tasks," says Ryltar, who would have been dead with the Drow. Salris agrees, who would have been dead in a coastal city. The Party offers other examples: Moon.
"There are a lot of coincidences here in this prophecy, versus current events," says Ryltar. Maybe the Gloom Grove isn't that we're going for. Maybe it is.
Zelrathi insists we push on.
We continue to climb upwards, up the same slope.
Jerry looks down at the lakes, and compares them to where they were when we last looked at them. As we've climbed the slope, we move horizontally, so the distant terrain should have changed some, in terms of angles and perspectives. And it looks like it did.
We continue climbing, making good progress. But how long have we been traveling? Hours, minutes? Days? How long has it been since we last slept? Where is the sun in the sky?
Where is the sun in the sky? It's still bright as day, yet the sun is not in the sky. Shouldn't we be hungry, or tired?
At this point Jerry realizes that she is all painfully hungry, like she hadn't eaten in days. She crumples with the pain; Bugfood casts Goodberry and passes one to her, just as the rest of the Party also collapse in hunger. We eat the Goodberries. We all gain one HP.
Oh, we're thirsty too. We all take two points of exhaustion.
And we're tired. A wave of exhaustion crashes over the Party.
So we take a long rest, using the sleep juice, losing our temporary HP and one point of exhaustion. Bugfood swaps out one of his spells for Create Water to refill our waterskins. Zelrathi does not partake of the sleep juice; fearing it won't be effective. He moves with half speed; we carry him.
We ask Zelrathi about Arye; he thinks she's a Celestial of some sort: an Angel of some sort, but not a Fallen Angel.
As we continue to walk and talk, we hear the gradually-loudening sound of grinding chains, clanking and rustling. From the ground beside Salris jumps a Fallen Angel, with a fiery greatsword and black-feathered wings. She attacks Salris.
Surprise round!
The figure hits with the first swipe for 6 slashing and 14 fire damage, halved to 7, missing on the second swing.
Round 1
Vurguron slashes at the Fallen Angel with his sword for a usual amount of damage, for 12 slashing and 4 radiant. The radiant damage doesn't seem to sear the angel's flesh. His second attack hits for a little more damages.
Bugfood Summons Woodland Creatures for two large Octopodes. He commands them to attack.
The Fallen Angel releases a blast of necrotic energy. All within 50 feet make a Strength save; Salris and Bugfood and Vurguron take 15 radiant damage, and are knocked prone. Then it flies up 20 feet. Salris' and Jerry's attacks of opportunity fail. It stares down at us.
Jerry throws a dart at the Fallen Angel With Lightning Arrow for 9 piercing and 21 lightning damage, and misses with the second dart.
Ryltar casts Slow on the Fallen Angel.
Each Octopus makes a grapple attack on the flying Fallen Angel, and both latch on.
Zelrathi casts Haste on Jerry, and something happens to frighten Zelrathi of the Fallen Angel. He stands up.
Moon can't help.
Salris pulls out a square of black silk, screams at it, and casts Negative Energy Flood to deal 5d12 necrotic damage, but the Fallen Angel takes little damage. He also Hexblade's Curses the Fallen angel.
Round 2.
Vurguron attacks it with a crossbow for 7 piercing and a little frost damage.
Bugfood casts Frost Bolt for a little damage.
The Fallen Angel Howls, and the Party make Wisdom saves against fear. Jerry and Ryltar are Frightened. The octopi are also frightened. And then it tries to break the octopodes' grapples.
Jerry casts Ensnaring Strike and throws a dart at the Fallen Angel for 6 piercing, but it shrugs off the spell.
The octopuses bludgeon the Fallen Angel for 15 bludgeoning.
Jerry and the Octopi are unfrightined.
Ryltar casts Ray of Frost at the creature, for 7 cold and a reduction of its speed to -10 feet per minute.
Salris casts Negative Energy Flood again, and kills the Fallen Angel. The wave of energy crashes back into his mouth, and he gains 9 temporary HP from the Hexblade's Curse. The Fallen Angel becomes a zombie under his control.
Ryltar is weirded out by the necromancy. "Reduce, reuse, reanimate," quips Salris. "It's not like you haven't seen necromancy before."
"So what I'm thinking here is that whenever you think about something bad, it happens here," says Ryltar.
The Party all make Wisdom saves.
Jerry was thinking about Majorie, her daughter. Ryltar was thinking about tarrasques. Vurguron was thinking about sexy lizard babes. Zelrathi was thinking about Arye.
Arye appears again, and says, "Run."
In the distance, we hear the distance of giggling beach babes. The giggles are cut off by a thunderous roar. We panic and start to scramble uphill
And for a split second, Jerry thinks she saw Majorie reach out, bloodied and scraped and caked in mud, from under the tarrasque's claws.
We run uphill fast; Salris sends the Fallen Angel Zombie to the tarrasque. Zelrathi casts Haste on himself. Bugfood becomes a Giant Owl. We follow Zelrathi and Ryltar uphill, riding on horses that Bugfood summoned, and they seem adequate for a while, until we come to a steep wall, with a horse trail off to the side, just wide enough for the horses.
Ryltar prays and hopes that the tarrasque will fall; he prays to anything that will listen. It does slide off the mountain, and with it, the crunching noises.
We gallop up the horse trail for an hour, past the expiration date of the horses. They remain.
Bugfood tries to end the spell; the spell stops but the horses continue.
Ryltar thinks about something good: a campfire. We gallop past one.
Ryltar thinks about the Gloom Grove. The path narrows. The horses slow down, and eventually we must dismount and continue on foot. But still we run.
The path continues to narrow as we ascend.
The path runs under a slanted rock slab, into a cave. The cave is a tight squeeze, but we all fit in, and come to a small chamber with a 15' radius, with two trees growing on the far side. Jerry lights a torch for those without darkvision. The trees are pale white of bark, and the boughs are withered and brown and dying.
The humid air is thick with the smell of dirt and decay. The air is still and stultifying. It feels wrong to Ryltar, yet also familiar. The Party follow him into the grove.
Ryltar trips, almost falls, but catches himself. He looks back, and sees a skeletal hand, partially sticking out of the soil, unmoving. He investigates it, and uncovers the torso and spine of the body. The legs and pelvis are gone. There are robes, and a band of rope across the body. The head has the remnants of tissue. The clothes once had a patch or emblem, but it's mostly gone. Zelrathi casts Detect Magic on the ground, and sees the rope is magical: a Rope of Climbing.
And also the whole place reeks of Conjuration magic.
Stepping closer to the trees is like stepping into water; the air is thick and heavy. But Ryltar gets to the trees, to touch them. These trees would not grow in darkness. But for at least 100 feet above us, all that can be seen are dead branches in darkness.
So we elect to dig up one of those underground sources of magic.
Jerry digs up a humanoid person in half-plate, with a cape on one arm, and a diamond patch on that shoulder. Inside the armor is only bones. The patch is later identified as Guardian Emblem, which can be attached to armor or shield with a word, and a cleric or paladin can use one charge to turn a critical hit into a
Salris digs up a humanoid person who is mostly intact, with webbed gloves and minimal clothing.
Ryltar digs up a humanoid person without clothes or attire, only bones and a ring in the shape of a feather, which Zelrathi identifies as of Transmutation. Ryltar puts it on (but can't attune to it)
Bugfood digs up a Dwarfish skeleton in rotting flesh and disuse-hardened black leather armor with a glass vial on a necklace chain. Bugfood Identifies the vial: a Bloodwell Vial (+2). Put a few drops of blood into it, and a sorcerer can use it as a spellcasting focus, with bonus to attacks and defenses, and recover sorcery points while rolling hit points.
Ryltar receives the vial from Bugfood, who in turn picks up the Ring of Feather Fall, which does require attunement. Salris takes the Gloves of Swimming and Climbing to sell later.
Ryltar is really happy with that Bloodwell Vial.
We give the Emblem of Protection to Moon, to see if she can use it.
Arye again
Cracks begin to glow in the walls, as a white female figure floats into the room. It's Arye. She calls out, in an unearthly voice: "Zelrathi. We need to talk."
Next session
What does Arye want?
Long-term:
We know how to trap the Jester, with Magic Circle
What's going on with the stars? Are Ryltar's theories about colors and significant plot-relevant things' colors correct?
What's left to complete the Ice Heart of Winter?
How can the Mummy Lord be defeated?
Determine how to resolve the Eta'el-Kerjes plot
Remember to un-petrify Ockoh in the Ice Lord Wint's Lair — if Dirius didn't shatter him. Grab the de-petrification potions from the Elven town.