Session Date: 07/29/2024
Faylen has a light above all of the people who don’t have darkvision.
As we continue through the shadowed city we can tell that the city rebuilding itself has slowed down even since we have arrived. Carver asks how long he has been out, and we admit that we aren’t sure. Tabby comments that the city had been changing pretty fast when we first entered, and Faylen explains that they’d only just recently got here. Carver wonders if this is perhaps over the course of a couple of hours, which is possible. We explain that we’d expect to see people here, but we haven’t seen anyone here.
Carver is worried that once the city stops it might try to convert the citizens, and Mary points out that it may have happened already. Tabby mentions the peryton and Carver explains that peryton are native to this region, so it may not have been summoned but was rather just here when it all happened. Mary says that we really need to find Argent and figure out what he did to here.
After Bosch is patched up (he’s squirming and insisting we move on almost the entire time), Carver dismounts from his steed and decides that he will walk as much as he can, and we all continue through the city. Bosch and Faylen move from cover to cover, with Faylen not being particularly stealthy because of how sore he is. Carver helps us navigate through back alleys and there are several times we have to turn back because he thinks that there is an alley somewhere that is now just a wall. Carver doesn’t think that coming up the front is not the best idea at this point, we need to be smart about our plan of attack.
Bosch puts Faylen on the spot and says that he’s the smart one, so be smart. Faylen says that he feels Carver is doing well to navigate us through the alleyways and we’ll be able to figure out the best plan of attack. He asks Bosch if Bosch would like to be big when we attack again, and Bosch says yeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssss (good evil laughter).
Bosch sneaks off to check out the temple, and Tabby does the same by way of the rooftops.
Bosch approaches the temple and while he does have darkvision, there are spots here that are still too dark for him to actually see clearly. It isn’t that the city is dark, but this specific temple is dark, and he realizes it’s dark because it’s still being built. He eventually realizes he’s not been walking on cobblestones, but he rather he’s been moving through what is almost like a very thick ink. He’s starting to sink within it.
He scrambles back to the last solid ground he can find. Talitha appears next to him and she yells out for Mary that there’s something like quicksand here - quickshadow? Quickshade? Mary translates for Talitha as Bosch shakes the inky darkness off of him.
Tabby calls down to ask if Bosch is okay, and Bosch says that it’s really gross, and we aren’t going to go that way. Tabby throws down a rope for Bosch to climb up, and Bosch definitely clambers up to join Tabby. Tabby helps dust the shadows off of Bosch and the pair of them look for a path through the temple.
Tabby can hear the crying again, nearby. He mentions that he hears it and points out the direction of the crying, and Tabby comes back to get the rest of the group. He grabs the rest of the group and heads towards where the crying was.
Bosch sneaks and finds the child. There’s a house that’s sinking into the ground, and the child is sitting in the window with their back toward the Bosch. It sounds like its crying but there is no attempt to move its shoulders or shudders like it’s actually crying: it doesn’t seem to understand the actual finder details of crying. The child is close enough for Bosch to walk up to it and touch it if he would like. Bosch opts to sit and watch it while he waits for the group to catch up, not moving.
Tabby gathers the rest of us up and we make it to where Bosch is. Carver says that he’s going to find another entrance into the temple. He doesn’t think this entity has anything to do with the shadows here, so he is going to leave us to deal.
This thing emits a cry every minute or so there is about ten seconds of crying, and then it stops. It repeats this pattern, with the sound always exactly the same. Mary asks if it has moved, and he says no.
Faylen watches the entity and realizes:
Faylen is certain this has nothing to do with this shadows. It may have appeared because of what’s going on here allowed it to enter, but it’s not a feature of the city. It’s something existing beside it. Faylen can reasonably assume that if the city finishes transforming with the shadows, then the entity will likely stay, but if we reverse what’s happening here then the entity will likely go back to where it came from. He also doesn’t think this is necessarily dangerous: it won’t grow fangs and attack us. Faylen knows this is something that either is from the Dark Demesne, or - worse - something completely unknown.
Tabby wonders if this thing is crying because it wants to go home, if it’s been ripped away from its family. When Tabby says the word home and the thing stops crying early and turns its head as if is listening. Tabby speaks more loudly, asking the entity if it does want to go home, and it stands and jumps on the ground outside of the window and moves towards us - not that it moves like us, mechanically it doesn’t know how to actually move like we do - but it stops and realizes it might want to face us while walking toward us, and then starts to walk toward us. It isn’t looking at Tabby, but just moving forward.
Mary asks what it needs, and it looks at Mary and has a general idea of how voice might come from the crying of a child: We want home. Home. Mary asks where its home is, and it explains that it has no home, but it wants a home. It asks if we would like to see home. Faylen steps forward and says yes, and it reaches its hand reach forward in an unnatural way. Faylen steps forward and takes them.
He imagines himself standing in what the entity imagines is a home. He tries to breathe and he cannot as the air doesn’t work for humanoids; he moves his hand just a little and his body starts to dissolve into the atmosphere as if it were acid dissolving him; there is no sun, but there are stars so very close to the surface - he cannot survive this if it were real.
Faylen understands one specific thing: it is not something you can do small scale, this is what they want to do to the planet.
(Faylen is enfeebled 1)
Externally, the party sees Faylen hold the hands of the child, and then he begins to cry blood enough for them to notice it. The child closes the transference and Faylen stumbles back as if pushed back by some force, and Mary moves to catch him and he stumbles heavily into her. It takes him a second before he forces himself back to his feet and he tells it that they can’t do that, and it simply says home again. Faylen suddenly lunges at the creature, drawing his rapier and stabbing it. There’s a moment where the entity sort of glitches, then it disperses into nothing.
Faylen stands there for a moment, breathing hard, then he eventually sheathes his rapier and takes a moment to straighten his shirt. He pulls out a kerchief and wipes away the bloody tears that he’d shed during the ordeal, walking back to the group as he explained that he saw that the entities from the Dark Demesne wish to change the planet so that it is inhospitable to life as we know it.
We all move to find Carver, with Faylen explaining exactly what he saw on the way to him. When we reach Carver, he asks if Faylen is okay, and Faylen reports that he’ll be fine. Bosch says there’s a lot of weird stuff going on, and Mary and Faylen both say that we need to fix this city. Carver agrees, then says that he found something that might help. He leads us to a drow that he’d captured.
The drow is so glad to see us, exclaiming that Argent is going to kill them all. He explains that he joined for the tax cuts and for the girls, but this has gone so far out of control.
Mary asks if there’s anyone else, and this gentleman says that the city changing was the second part of the ritual. The first part were tendrils of darkness kidnapping people into the temple. The third part will be to change everyone who was kidnapped into people of the city, but this guy doesn’t know exactly what that means.
The drow’s name is Zinag and he continues to talk about how much of a coward is and we coerce him into telling us how to get there. We make it to a very large bridge (that 100% will collapse the moment the magic is done with its work) and we notice as we begin to cross that there are no more bats or creatures above us. The group does make it across the bridge and this is the least finished section of the city, and there’s not so much in the way of ground here: just shadow. It’s solid enough we could climb, or blast a way through the wall if we had an explosive of some sort.
The wall is several stories high. It’s clear that the shadows are still sort of trying to decide on the final form of the temple, but there absolutely is a temple up above. We look around and we see where the gate is planning to be, but it’s not there yet.
Bosch reaches into Faylen’s bag and Faylen whips around and slaps at Bosch’s hand out of habit from his sister stealing out of his bag, and Bosch explains that he was going to use it to punch the wall. All of us decide this is a good plan, actually, especially with the help of Carver’s steed kicking the wall alongside him.
We all work together to clear a little radius of where the door is supposed to be. Bosch does a one two punch with the Seal of Infinity that we have, weakening the wall. The horse kicks the wall to weaken it further, and then Bosch follows up by hitting the wall with the Seal of Infinity, and the wall bursts with actual light. Cracks appear on where the door would be, and more and more cracks continue to appear as Bosch and the horse alternate their hits and kicks, and then what would be a door disintegrates. Bosch low-fives the horse.
There’s a scream from the top of the stairs and a lot of somethings start to skitter down the way toward us.