Session Date: 1/29/2023
Dia investigates the door and finds a secret symbol of St. Cuthbert and the door opens into light. The party rushes through with Arythas taking up the rear, and we are blinded by light.
Dia comes to first:
She is in a cell and someone is huddled in the corner, whimpering. It turns out to be her brother Bertram, who is whimpering and asking why she didn’t save him? She reaches out to try to touch him and cure him, but he isn’t real. He stands and has only one eye. He grips her and screams in her face, asking why she didn’t save him.
Iskra is next:
Blood is on his hands, as always. His hands are caked in blood and he is not in a room. He takes a step and it’s as if he was walking on an enormous mountain of corpses. He is alone, and his wolf isn’t there. The mountain breaks and Iskra tumbles into it.
Arythas & Rohan:
For Rohan, there is a very flickering and insistent flame. Rohan touches it and the flame feels cold. The flame disappears and the cold is within him, and a voice speaks. It demands Rohan to listen to it, and it is mad that Rohan is not holding up his promise. It wants Rohan to cause trouble. Rohan offers to free the magic and the demon says the abbey is doomed already.
Arythas sees the old dragonborn that trained him. The man says Arythas failed them and this is his judgement. Arythas recognizes that this is not real, actually, and that he is alone, so he attacks the shade. It dissipates into smoke and reforms as two more people from the village.
Inky:
Inky leaves his cell and is in a maze. He recalls that worshippers of St. Cuthbert create pocket dimensions called sin mazes to make us all confront our sins. He’s pretty confident that this is what is going on, and he begins moving through the maze.
Dia:
She frees herself by trying to heal Bertram. He turns into smoke and it passes through her. She momentarily sees Bertram in a cell somewhere, and it is snowing outside. He seems to be okay for now. She screams his name and Inky, in the maze, begins to rush to her.
Iskra:
He is drowning in the pile of corpses. Iskra tries to injure himself and it hurts, but he ultimately begins to sink into the mountain of corpses. He uses his whistle and Inky & Dia hear it, and the wet nose of his wolf presses against his arm. He feels it and then he is begins to see that he is both in the cell, and also in the mountain of corpses.
Arythas & Rohan:
Rohan gets Arythas to stop attacking and the two realize the same thing that Inky did about the sin mazes. The two leave and begin searching for the others together.
Iskra:
Everyone hears Iskra start screaming as he fails to realize this is all not real. He is flailing out and writing around on the floor. Dia uses calm emotions on Iskra and Iskra begins to come to.
The hermit may have a way for us to get out but we would need to know more about the maze. We hear the laughter that chased us into the room and we realize it is following us. We navigate the maze and the laughter fades away. As we are going, Arythas hears crying inside the room, and the voice goes from a little girl to a more demonic voice, warbling back and forth. Arythas uses divine sense to check for badness: there are no fiends, but the thing inside of Rohan is pissed at this and urges him to kill Arythas. Rohan exclaims no out loud and the party starts asking what is going on, which he somehow manages to talk himself out of.
The little girl that is crying looks wrong: one arm is covered in a black blistering mass of some kind of corruption. She was originally a fae and looks vaguely elfin, but there is something very wrong with her. The corruption is pinging Arythas’ divine sense. It has consumed her arm and part of her face and one of her legs. We realize this is the Frosty Princess Glaciebella.
Rohan remembers a book in a secret library that had a scroll about undead and what was basically necromancy would be a wound on this world. The fey are deeply connected to the world so they would be changed by the presence of necrotic magic and situations. Inky has noted that necromancy was written about in theory, but it has never actually been done in practice.
We need to figure out:
- What is causing the corruption to the Frosty Princess?
- How do we restore her?
Dia uses lesser restoration on the Frosty Princess. She collapses as she reaches out, submerged in a dark liquid. She hears a voice repeating the word “Nerull” over and over. The cast of lesser restoration fails and it causes the Frosty Princess pain, so she starts to cower in the corner.
Arythas knows that the current goddess of death is the Raven Queen, and she defeated the previous death deity — Nerull — to gain this position. The Raven Queen is uncaring, cold, and has no mercy, but she is a large upgrade from Nerull, who was evil and actively killed people. Arythas is aware that Bahamut and his followers fought Nerull and his followers.
Dia asks who caused the corruption and the Frost Princess isn’t sure, but she does say there is an old guy down here who has a weird smell about him. She leads us to the old guy, skipping and singing as we go. We reach a crossroads and she stops, saying she’s bored. It’s at this time she confirms she is Frosty Princess Glaciebella and she gives us direction to get to the old man, and Iskra leaves his wolf to play with her while we continue on.
We make it to his prison and we enter the door and it is smaller than originally entering here, but it is far less intense. There is grass instead of a stone floor, and we are in a very nice magically simulated meadow. It smells like spring in here. The more we go into the corridor it turns from a forest to a home made of wood. We hear a kettle and writing, then the writing and kettle stops and we hear the sound of pouring. A hobgoblin answers our knock and offers us tea and he is clearly surprised by our appearance. He comments he hasn’t had guests for quite some time now.
Dia asks what the meaning of Nerull being the undeath means to him and he starts writing at his desk. He explains working on death was his project in The War. We ask how to stop it and he isn’t sure. He explains that control mechanisms were theorized and without those safeguards he doesn’t know how they would be controlled otherwise.
Inky realizes that this gentleman is Kalvag. He is a war criminal. He was known for killing many people on the battlefield, and was in what is the equivalent of the MK-ULTRA program for the war. Inky and Dia know that this was indoctrinated and the monks have deprogrammed him. Inky makes it a point to not tell Arythas this information.
Kalvag begins looking over the princess and he explains the energy attacked her but that wasn’t the intent of whoever cast this spell. He doesn’t think that it is specifically connected to the fey. He confirms lesser restoration will not help her. He does have two thoughts on what can help her, though:
- Kill her and hope she reforms correctly.
- We draw the corruption out of the princess and destroy it.
We opt for option number two. Through a rather difficult ritual we manage to purify the princess. We realize she was simply collateral damage to something else going on and we need to assume that there is undead here. We need to choose if we will rest here or if we will return to our quarters.