Charging the portal up with their
diamond reagent, the party open up a passage to Fu's tower in Arventine.
However, things are never simple for our heroes. Facing some turbulence as they
flew across the planes to their destination, the companions found themselves in
a strange landscape: a tall white marble canyon, where a thundering wave of
radiant energy flooded towards them. Darting over rubble, the party just
managed to reach a dormant portal, and flee for their lives through it. They
arrived back in Arventine to see Fu's butler Parp diligently greasing up the
tower. The party discover to their confusion that their strange delay had kept
them away from the material plane for nearly ten months, and much of Arventine
had assumed they had died in now infamous 'Massacre of Khare', and the denizen
of
Not allowing this strange occurrence
to irk them, they set about their original intention; bringing the traitorous
Blind Varlet Tawni Abbas to justice. This proved problematic. Enough time had
passed for Balthazar to lose his Hidden Lord status, but after an enlightening
trip to the City Library, they discover he still retains the right to pursue a
grievance against another Hidden Lord. The party seek out a meeting with the
Hidden Lords, and after a tense negotiation surrounded by twenty of the deadly
Hidden Priest Avengers, they manage to arrange a Trial of Combat against Abbas.
With the battle laid on for tomorrow morning,
the party set about reacquainting themselves with Arventine. A trip to the
Golden Lamprey Inn has the companions meet with their old friend Sirius, no
longer working as Tawni's gopher but instead now an influential doyen in
Glipkerio's Thieves Guild. Christophe has a pleasant reunion with his
girlfriend Marigold, now running a orgiastic service in the Grove of Melora.
Believing this to be the will of his lady Melora, Christophe makes use of the
grove's new 'service' and has a fertility statue commissioned.
As the night draws in, curiosity
leads the party to strange street mystic. Claiming to be a chosen of Ioun, the
mystic grants the group a tarot reading, only to divine the sentence 'YOU DID
NOT DIE AT SHAREAT'. Spooked at this, she determines that the party has somehow
avoided a destiny that Ioun herself had bestowed upon her. With knowledge of
this 'dissonant destiny' condition, the party assume there must be some
connection between this and the strange radiant light they encountered in the
portal.
The morning of the Trial soon
came, but Tawni was not done with his tricks. Successfully poisoning Sarah
Lachance's breakfast, he managed to hamstring the party for the fight. As the
party made their way to the Hidden Lord's sepulchre, Tawni had also laid on
some assassins to take them out, but they were easily dispatched, and the
Arventine river gained a few more bodies.
After the ceremonial pomp was
completed by the Hidden Priests, Tawni's champions were introduced. A Tiefling
fire mage, a minotaur arena champion, a veteran of the Brass War, a brash
cleric of Erathis and an old friend - the were rat crime lord Scurrilous Gunny,
scarred from fire and lusty for revenge. But the party were fighting fit, and
dispatched all but Gunny and the Tiefling to the grave. Cursing Christophe's
name and vowing a 'blood debt', Gunny slunk away, determined that this would
not be the final time they meet...
Justice was soon to be done.
Balthazar was called up to pass sentence on Tawni Abbas. As Balthazar called
for the execution of Abbas, the tricksy senator activated a magical ring, and
teleported away. The party wasted no time in racing to his estate to stop his
escape from the city. Finding his estate servants in the process of packing
pocessions into carts, the party put these carts to the flame and storm inside.
There they found preparing for the road. Shocked, he fell to his knees and
begged Balthazar to allow him to flee to Evaressemme, were they would never
hear from him again. Full of rage, Balthazar wastes no time in running Abbas
through with his blade. As the duplicitous senator bled out in disbelief at his
end, the party ransacked what pocessions are left in his house. In his vault
they find a portion of the Abbas fortune, a fancy shield and a curious essay on
some Dawn War golems called "The Iron Four".
With the death of Tawni Abbas, the party gain
some closure on the terrible events they have been a part of. However, one
issue is still bothering Fu: the Neighbourhood Watch Committee of Scholar
Street wanting his tower. They roll by the estate of one of these berks, a
horse trader. After some heated words, Fu ends up turning the horse trader's
mind to pulp, and they make their swift exit, glad that the honourable
Balthazar wasn't their to witness this. Perhaps this is not the last our heroes
have seen of the Scholar Street Neighbourhood Watch Committee...
CHAPTER 1.5: "A PREVIOUS
OWNER"
At a loose end, and with Sarah
still recovering from her poisoning at the hands of the now dead Tawni Abbas, the
party head to the Golden Lamprey to attend an "evening of food, poetry,
wine and excess" event that the Temple of Corellon is laying on. The
heroes party on until the wee hours, and wake up with fuzzy heads, with the
tavern surprisingly serene in the morning light. Eored is gone, and they party
vaguely remember him saying he wanted to attend the "Bow and Arrow
Expo" going on in the Blackhand District today. Searching for breakfast,
the peace is soon broken as Parp charges into the inn, shouting that something
has gone terribly wrong with the tower.
As they chase across the city,
Parp explains that during his daily greasing, He found a stone, rune-covered disc
under the floor of the basement and when he went o grease it, the grease came
alive with black, creeping veins.
As expected, the tower was a mess
when the party arrived. The black misty tendrils of the Shadowfel rose off it,
and the Scholar Street Neighbourhood Watch Committee stood around it, tutting
and shaking their heads. Over calls of anger at the eyesore the tower had
become, the party push through the crowd and into the tower. Inside, the walls
are a mass of living black veins, all seemingly originating from the basement.
As they descend downstairs, they encounter a raging portal, and after looking
around find a diary entry from a previous occupant of the tower - a 'Cressida'
- who seemingly wanted to sojourn into the dead realm of the Shadowfel.
Naturally, Christophe, Balthazar and Fu bundle through the portal.
Now deep in the Shadowfel, they
find themselves confronted by a gothic looking facsimile of Fu's tower. Inside
they encounter Shadar'kai, a shadowy version of Parp, a strange machine and a
grumpy undead butler, before ascending to the top of the tower to find
Cressida. Cressida herself, mistakenly trapped in the Shadowfel, asks the party
to help her and her Shadar'kai return to Arventine, in exchange for a share of
the dark kingdom she will turn the city into. The boys had their fill of things
from other planes wanting to set up 'dark kingdoms' on the Prime Material, and
so dispatched the sorceress. Returning home, the party take the stone disc and
stow it (for some reason) in the library so that Cressida can never return.
With the Tower back to its greasy
self once more and the Neighbourhood Watch placated (for now...), the party
turn their attention to more serious matters. With the role of the Witch of the
Direwoods - the mysterious Baba Yaga - in the machinations of the Blind Varlets
still a puzzle, they prepare to return once again to the Direwoods to confront
her...
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