The Island of Castanamir

On 12 Wylden the party showed the dead tsochari to Riley Hanal-Rian.  Riley had never seen such creatures before and had no idea what to do with them other than call in an expert -- Grimaldi, senior researcher at the Adventurers' Guild.  Grimaldi was unable to tell the party anything they didn't already know:  tsochari are evil aberrations that inhabit intelligent creatures and slowly consume their hosts from within. 

The party arranged for Grimaldi to quietly destroy the corpses and sought other resources.  Strontium prepared himself by researching a detect aberration spell to keep handy during outings.  Uiq learned to detect psionic auras and visited Melchior Fordney to obtain a masterwork bastard sword.  Quinn made inquiries with elders of Marhaven Below but learned nothing new from them.  W'Illot recalled that illumians are legendary hoarders of lost knowledge and decided to visit Tideborn Cabal, the enclave in Marhaven.  His visit proved productive:  the steward of the library located for him a record left by a past adventurer describing his party's encounter with tsochari in 1084.  The record ended with a list of the creature's attributes that included information the party had not previously gained through combat.

By 19 Wylden the group had exhausted all local sources and was looking for a better lead.  One appeared that morning in the form of a woman who introduced herself as Chandrakar, "a student of extraplanar and aberrant life."  The group judged from her attire that Chandrakar was wealthy, and Uiq detected a powerful psionic aura suggesting extensive training and experience in the mental arts.  Chandrakar explained that she had heard of the party's encounter with the tsochari and suspected that she and the group may have a common interest in learning more about the tsochari's abilities and goals.  The ideal resource would be a legendary book called the Codex Anathema.

The Codex, she explained, is the most authoritative reference ever created on the origins, abilities, and psychology of aberrations.  Its author was a legendary scholar called Iphegor of the Ebon Mirror, who compiled the work from his personal experiences over 1,000 years ago.  Only five copies of the Codex are known to exist and their locations and custodians are closely-guarded secrets.  The only viable lead was a persistent rumor that in 1025 a famous wizard, Castanamir the Mad, had spent 100,000gp to purchase one of the five copies.  Shortly after that purchase Castanamir retired to his island off the coast of Nessen, shrouded the island in magical protections, and was never seen again.

Chandrakar proposed that the party join her in a journey to Castanamir's island to find and recover the Codex.  She had permission of Castanamir's family to do this, and held out the possibility of a finder's fee for any other valuable items they could salvage from the site.  The opportunity to learn more about their enemy was enough for the party to agree to the mission. 

Castanamir's isle was enshrouded in magical fog and ringed by a dead calm, a static area of unnatural calm with no wind and no current. A conventional sailing ship can not move in a dead calm; the party began to discuss using their pinnacle, which has oars as well as sails, but Chandrakar forestalled that by stating that she had already made arrangements to hire a theurgeme -- a ship powerd by magic.

The party set out for the island on 21 Wylden aboard the theurgeme, a luxurious ship powered by a turning paddle wheel kept in motion by a captive water elemental. Uiq and Strontium casually checked out the crew, Chandrakar and each other with their new detection abilities and determined that there were no aberrations on board and no psions other than Uiq and Chandrakar.

Midway through the third day at sea, the ship came within sight of a dense cloud of gray fog that marked their destination. As the ship neared the cloaked space they spied a ring of bouys warning sailing ships to avoid the dead calm. The theurgeme slowed to a crawl and the crew broke out long poles to probe the water for the invisible rocks and sandbars that legend said lie in the waters.

Aria and Quinn jumped into the water to provide more reliable guidance and led the ship slowly toward shore. Along the way they noted a large amount of wreckage in the water, much of it very old but there was one item that looked recent: a small keelboat, capsized, with oars still in the oarlocks. Once the party had landed on shore, Aria and Quinn swam out and dragged the keelboat ashore just in case it might prove handy.

The fog thinned at ground level enough to allow normal, if slightly hazy, vision. The island was about three miles across with rolling hills slowly rising to a high point in the middle where a spacious, lavish-looking villa sat in silence.

The party circled the perimeter of the island looking for signs of other craft or visitors and found none. Along the way they attracted a different form of attention: a weird, alien-looking creature materialized behind Quinn and dipped one of its four long hands into her backpack. Strontium let loose a magic missile spell at the creature and hit it as it vanished again. A quick check of Quinn's pack revealed that her leap capsule, a quasi-magical item she carried in case of a need for a powerful jump, was gone. From Strontium's description and the creature's theft Chandrakar surmised that the creature was an ethereal filcher, a non-evil aberration with great dexterity and the ability to move at will between the material and ethereal planes. Filchers are attracted to magical auras and shiny objects, she explained.

The party secured their valuables more carefully and continued up to the villa. The opulent structure struck the party as too new, too well-kept to be real. W'Illot probed the wall with the haft of his spear and was only slightly surprised to find that his spear went through the wall quite easily. He stepped forward into the wall but found himself unable to muster the will to pass through it. Other who witnessed the attempt made their own tries and three of the party plus Chandrakar were able to walk through the illusion easily. The others closed their eyes and allowed their comrades to lead them through the false vision.

Inside the party found a neatly dug foundation for a building with nothing inside it but a granite slab against the back wall. The slab radiated conjuration magic to W'Illot's senses but had no visible seams or methods to open it. The only clue in the area was a small glass potion vial, empty, that lay on the ground near the slab.

After some discussion Strontium cast a knock spell on the granite slab. The outline of a door drew itself on the stone and then receded, leaving a door-shaped opening in the stone that was filled with an impenetrable blackness. Strontium and Aria ignored the musings of their teammates and stepped through the opening, seeming to disappear. Quinn followed shortly after.

The three found themselves in a comfortable, well-furnished parlor complete with burning fireplace, upholstered furniture, and a tiny construct that walked a pattern around the room using a disintegrate ray to clean up any trash or spills. The parlor had three visible exits: doorways filled with the same darkness as the main entrance.

While Aria and Strontium explored the parlor, Quinn grew impatient and stepped back through the opening to prod the rest of the group. To her surprise, however, Quinn did not end up in the foundation -- instead she was deposited in a long, bare room with an improvised barricade of furniture at the bottom. Perplexed, she left again by another opening and found herself in a huge dining hall. That same portal then deposited the confused druid in a long hallway with more of the black portals. She stepped forward through another one and, to her relief, returned to the parlor. Uiq, Pendrul and W'Illot had joined the rest of the group by then and were intrigued at Quinn's description of the seemingly random portal system.

W'Illot suggested investigating the next room in the parlor area before venturing through more portals. Strontium hustled to the door and flung it open before the rest of the group could assemble. He saw a halfling body lying on the floor near a desk and moved forward to investigate. As he entered the room, a small arrow shot out from under the table and nearly struck the dwarf. The source of the arrow, a second halfling crouched near a chair, hurled a glass vial that shattered near Strontium's feet and ran out through another of the black portals. The "body" jumped up and followed at a dead run as the rest of the party scrambled into the room to engage.

Uiq wanted to pursue the halflings through the portal and began assembling the party to do so but Strontium refused, to the point of splitting from the party if they chose to follow the halflings. The lengthy quarrel that ensued ended any likelihood of catching the halflings and Uiq recognized the inherent dangers of separating the party, especially in this bizarre environment. He grudgingly agreed to abandon that course in favor of exploring the other portals first.

The first portal they took led to a large circular room lined with weapon racks holding staves, darts, short swords, and other simple weapons. The room itself had a powerful magic aura but the weapons appeared normal. The only other feature of this room was a red circle enscribed in the center.

Aria picked up a quarterstaff to examine it and the circle in the center lit up brightly. A column of light shimmered and faded away to reveal four hideously deformed creatures in the center. Chandarkar looked at them and quickly identified them to the group: "Dolgrim -- low-level aberrations, no special powers to speak of."

The party wasted no time in choosing targets for combat. The dolgrim wasted even less time in proving Chandrakar's assessment of their abilities to be accurate. Quinn and Uiq sustained the only significant wounds in the short fight, and Chandrakar healed both quickly with her psionic powers. During the fight Aria felt a hand reaching into her pack and wheeled around to confront the ethereal filcher. She hit it with a quick unarmed strike and the creature vanished again with a wounded look in its alien eyes.

The dolgrim vanished after each fatal strike until once again the room contained only the party. A few later the circle glowed again. This time only three creatures appeared: bizarre-looking things that resembled a large eye suspended by six spider-like legs. "Mad slashers," Chandrakar said. "Worse then the dolgrim, but not by a lot."

Uiq did not like the trend and advised an immediate exit from the room, figuring that it was better to have low-level aberrations potentially wandering after them than higher-level ones. Not surprisingly, the group agreed. They left the room through the east portal and emerged in the long barricade room Quinn had found earlier.

The group explored methodically, trying to work out the sequence of the portals. They found the kitchen, where the floor was littered with pots and pans that made it impossible to move through without making noise. The kitchen featured a fully stocked pantry and found the door rigged with crossbows on stands to fire on an unwary person who opened it. W'Illot looked for a similar trap on the freezer and disabled it, but found nothing in the freezer but fresh, fine quality meats.

Another portal led the party to the dining room. Strontium poked at the pile of debris in the corner and stirred up a rat swarm that moved immediately to engulf as many of the heroes as possible. Uiq, Strontium and Aria were bitten, which put them at risk of disease. An acid splash from Strontium and physical attacks from everyone else caused the swarm to disburse. Inside the pile was a valuable prize: a Heward's Handy Haversack full of extremely valuable items, apparently gathered and hidden there by someone hoping to take them off island.

A few portal jumps later the party found a pair of well-furnished guest suites, each complete with bedroom and sitting room. In one of the sitting rooms they found a scroll explaining the operation of the summoning arena, which Castanamir had dubbed the game room. They kept this for potential reference and pressed on, having largely figured out the portal sequence.

The next jump took the party to an almost identical set of rooms, but these were furnished quite differently. One seemed almost like an overcrowded second-hand store full of trinkets and brik-a-brak from all over. A life-sized statue of a kobold in full armor caught the party's attention but proved to be nothing more than an ornament. In the bedroom area the party made a discovery that was both grisly and sad: a badly decomposed body, of small humanoid type, lay on the bed. On the night stand, they found a note:

Master,

Me keeps howse nice sins you been gone. Kleko dide. Me sick now. Golum in dining hall broke.

Monne

The next set of rooms were trapped with more crossbows. The party entered carefully and removed the hoods that were shielding the light fixtures. In the bedroom, crouched behind pieces of furniture, were the two halflings from the parlor. They fired arrows at the first people to enter the doorway but missed and found themselves facing the entire party. The halflings looked at their obviously untenable position and surrendered.

Their names were Doblin and Joblo, they said. They had been passing by on a merchant ship and, after being caught stealing by the captain, cast off in a keelboat with nothing but a week's rations and their own possessions. They'd rowed to the island but they were no seamen; they ran their boat against some invisible obstacle and flipped it over. They were too small to right it so they swam ashore and sought shelter in the villa. They had seen through the illusion and managed to get the front door to open by pouring a potion on it, but had not been able to find an exit. The halflings admitted to gathering the valuables that were hidden in the dining room and gave up the rest of their goods in exchange for their lives, though the party allowed them to keep the approximately 200gp in coin they had.

With the halflings secured, the party set about looking for Castanamir's private quarters. In the corridor with the servants' rooms they noted a mural of a simple cottage with a life-sized door. Casting a knock spell on the mural caused the door to become real and to open, revealing another of the black portals.

On the other side was a large library lined with full bookshelves, scroll cases, and work tables. In the middle of the room, seated at a table, was an elderly man in wizard's robes. The party's immediate fear -- that this was Castanamir, and they were about to pay dearly for looting his home -- proved mercifully wrong. The man introduced himself as Bradvig, a name the party recognized from local history as that of an evil wizard executed a century ago.

A short conversation revealed several important facts. Bradvig was a simulacrum, a copy of the original man at half his effective power, forever bound to follow specific instructions given him by Castanamir. Bradvig's orders were to protect the library's contents, though he was expressly forbidden to kill anyone. And Bradvig, after nearly a century of guarding the library round the clock, was neurotic beyond belief. He answered questions in a plodding, monotone voice that screamed of melancholy and self-pity. He directed the party to the various works in the library, indicated which were trapped and which were not, and answered general questions about Castanamir and the house.

The more Bradvig spoke, the more the party wanted somehow to set him free. Bradvig could not allow this, being bound by the orders of Castanamir alone. Strontium argued in favor of attacking and killing the simulacrum -- putting him out of his misery, as it were -- but was overruled by the rest of the party. They took a rest break to recover spells and to allow Strontium to copy some spells from a partially-destroyed spell book, then set off in search of the Codex, which Bradvig said would be somewhere in Castanamir's private lab.

They found the wizard's shrine, a small round room with no furnishings except for a few benches and a marble fountain. The water had a magical aura and proved to be quite healthful; a quarter skin of the water had the properties of a potion of vigor (fast healing 2 for one hour). The group filled their water skins from the fountain and continued on.

An L-shaped hallway further on seemed pointless until W'Illot discoverd a secret door in the wall. On the other side was Castanamir's bedroom. The wizard's private journals sat gathering dust on a high shelf, and the room was filled with mementos of Castanamir's days as the leader of the League of Seven adventuring group. The most intriguing feature of this "bedroom" was that it had no bed. The group found a magic belt in the middle of the room tethered to an iron ring in the floor. When Uiq put the belt on he was able to fly within the limits of the tether. Chandrakar recalled hearing stories that Castanamir slept in such a harness, floating free instead of lying on a bed. The party untied the tether from the ring and took the belt with them.

Also in Castanamir's room they found the exit from the villa. A double metal door, when opened, revealed a view of a rocky beach with water rushing toward, but not through, the doorway. The party also found a small chest containing a quantity of gold and gems and a very ornate crystal and platinum pendant: an amulet of the planes. This extremely valuable item was useless without knowing the command word, but the party kept it with the intention of discovering the word from Bradvig or through magical means.

A trophy room held even more mementos of Castanamir's adventuring life. The party grabbed a quantity of the most valuable keepsakes and placed them in the haversack.

Finally, after trekking through the entire villa, the party found Castanamir's private lab. They picked up a tome on summoning and a wide assortment of mundane spell components. A wizard locked chest held a number of rare and valuable research books, on top of which was the object of their mission, the Codex Anathema.

Chandrakar lifted the Codex and held it to her chest. "At last," she exulted, "the Codex is mine!" With a triumphant laugh she shimmered and vanished from sight.

The party hastily packed up what they could carry and used the double doors to exit the villa. By the time they reached the spot where the theurgeme had dropped them off there was nothing left but the keelboat they'd dragged ashore earlier. Chandrakar and the theurgeme were gone. They did, however, locate a small cave near the villa's exit where they found a small cache of shiny objects including Quinn's leap capsule, some jewelry, and a couple of minor magic items. The ethereal filcher, if it was still alive, was nowhere to be seen.

After much discussion of options, the party took the keelboat and rowed to Nessen, a 30-mile trip that took most of a day. Aria and Quinn swam beside the boat to allow more room for the party and their halfling captives.

In Nessen they sought an audience with Castanamir's family. There they discovered that Chandrakar was a member of that family -- Castanamir's granddaughter. The family described her as a black sheep, a powerful ardent who derived psionic power from her studies of corruption and madness, deception, and the planes. She had spoken for years of the knowledge that lay untapped in Castanamir's libraries but had been unable to persuade the family to brave the island's protections and possibly risk the wrath of Castanamir himself, should he still be alive, in the process. The family did express gratitude for the party's account of their walk through the villa and promised a finder's fee for the items they brought back, especially the journals, and the items still in the villa once recovered. The family did not know where Chandrakar lives now. They speculated that with her powers she may not even live on the Material Plane.

When the party reached Marhaven again on 27 Wylden, Chandrakar had been and gone. Her rented rooms had been cleaned out and nobody in the city had any knowledge of where she had gone. The Society of the Mindful, which had told Uiq before the trip that she was well known and considered reliable, expressed shock at the betrayal and registered Uiq's complaint without argument. The Adventurers' Guild also responded with dismay at the party's tale of being left stranded and put Chandrakar on the black list, making her persona non grata at any of the Guild's facilities. W'Illot also secured a promise from the owner of her former rented rooms to advise W'Illot if she made any contact.

For their troubles the party gained a reasonable amount of coin, several useful magic items, and information on Castanamir and his history. How much of it would prove useful against the tsochari remained to be seen.

<MR>

Note: This adventure was inspired by the AD&D tournament module C3, The Lost Island of Castanamir by Ken Rolson, (c) Copyright 1984 TSR, Inc.