23 Lochstan 1120

Return to Eldmoor

Mrs. Wilkins returned to Marhaven to find her comrades still away. She checked in with Grimaldi and learned that her teammates were off on another plane hunting down Chandrakar (The Outlands), but that they had left several crates of research notes with Grimaldi for safekeeping.

Mrs. Wilkins spent the next couple of days looking through those notes and preparing for the opening of her new side business, a small, discreet facility for the entertainment of discerning gentlemen.

Late on the 16th of Lochstan the rest of the party returned from the Outlands. They updated Mrs. Wilkins on their travels and the origins of the notes, and she in turn briefed them on the incident with Betty (The Potter's Clay) and the political fallout in the Jade Islands. They also caught up on local happenings including the near destruction of the newly-floated housing deck. All of the signs supported the conclusion that someone had made use of the same black goop the party had discovered in Stevens Manor (House of Ill Repute) to render the deck flammable. But who? And why?

The next day an old acquaintance came to the Chimera's slip: Gilliam Corgan, master of the Lucent. Aria, Strontium and Quinn remembered Corgan from an early mission when they and their former companions were hired to provide security for the transport of a criminal named Keldo Tidewater to Eldmoor (Transport). It was on board the Lucent during that mission that the party had encountered their first tsochar in the body of a sorceress.

Corgan explained, a little haltingly, that he had recently dropped off a new prisoner at Eldmoor and had left there with a vague but unmistakable feeling that something was wrong. He couldn't point to anything concrete; he just had a gut instinct that told him things were not right. The guards seemed to be trying a little too hard to seem normal, he said.

The feeling left Corgan in a quandary. He couldn't expect any of the authorities who oversee the prison to take any action on his own intuition, obviously. He also recalled the strange, alien-looking tsochar and realized that if the problem was related to them in some way the original party would be the only ones who would know how to deal with it. So he'd asked at the Guild about them and been referred to the Chimera. Corgan could offer no monetary reward but asked the party's help.

The discussion was brief. Quinn had been suggesting that the party revisit Eldmoor anyway, and Strontium was always up for an opportunity to kill tsochari. The rest of the group had no objection to the mission, so they agreed.

Corgan offered the Lucent for transport with himself and his crew to man her. The party checked with their contact Riley Hanal-Rian and obtained a pretext for the visit in the form of a criminal to be sent to Eldmoor. Strontium scribed four scrolls of his detect aberration spell and handed them out to the group and then cut a deal with Grimaldi to supply the spell to the general membership of the Adventurers Guild. Riley, in response to the group's inquiry, provided a list of ships known to have stopped at Eldmoor on legitimate business in the past year. It was a short list, but necessarily incomplete because Marhaven is only a customer to Eldmoor, not a major supplier of goods or financing.

By evening on the 19th they were ready to depart. With only average wind it took two full days to complete the trip. The sun was setting when the party spotted Eldmoor on the horizon, so they stood off overnight and approached the island in the morning.

The usual complement of four guards greeted their ship at the dock. The guards recognized the Lucent and seemed unsuspicious. Two took custody of the prisoner and marched him into the main prison building while the other two remained with the party. Strontium, feigning paperwork hassles, wandered around the dock area checking out the guards for signs of aberration infestations and found none. Mrs. Wilkins simultaneously faked a feinting spell, but her suggestion that she might perhaps need attention at the prison infirmary did not go over with the guards; they insisted that the prison's facilities were no more fit for Mrs. Wilkins' needs than those of the Lucent.

Mrs. Wilkins used a charm person on the lead guard to gain his trust and discovered that hers was not the only enchantment working on the guard at the moment. She noted the signs of a strong mental domination effect and decided on a change of tactic. She asked her new friend if she might possibly have a brief visit with her nephew, Warden Seacrest. After some hemming and hawing the guard agreed to escort her and no more than three companions to see the warden.

The party moved quickly. Aria and Quinn went below with Mrs. Wilkins long enough to receive an invisibility circle and a silence spell each, rendering them virtually undetectable even to each other. Audas used his own abilities to become invisible. The four visible party members then went with the lead guard to the prison, followed discreetly by the three invisible ones. They noted as they passed through the entrance to the administrative wing that all windows looking onto the prison yard were shuttered.

Warden Seacrest was at his desk doing paperwork when the party entered his office. He recognized Strontium with a bit of a start but did not seem to object to the unannounced visit. They talked briefly about the incident with the tsochar and Strontium decided to lay out their concerns more or less honestly. The warden assured Strontium that no tsochari had been seen in the prison since their last visit, but declined to allow the party to tour the facility. The population was getting a little unruly, he said, and he had imposed a total lockdown to prevent any kind of organized resistance until things calmed down.

While the warden spoke, Strontium watched him closely. His detect aberrations spell confirmed that the warden was not currently hosting a tsochar, but Seacrest's manner was definitely off. Both Strontium and Mrs. Wilkins sensed that Seacrest was under some form of enchantment, just like the guards at the dock. He attempted a dispel magic but all he got was a splitting headache and the certainty that a far more powerful caster than himself had enthralled the warden.

The guard and the warden both recognized Strontium's gestures and words as a spellcasting attempt. The warden's manner turned stern and dismissive; clearly, he said, Strontium had tried to enspell him in some way and this could not be tolerated. The party was ordered to leave the island immediately. The group briefly entertained the idea of resisting the order but opted instead to pretend compliance and followed their two guards back through the hallway. Once clear of the warden's office, though, Aria tried to coldcock one of the guards. She didn't succeed entirely, but Mrs. Wilkins came through with a deep slumber spell that put both of them down and allowed the party to bind and gag the guards securely.

A locate creature spell told Mrs. W that the nearest tsochar was in the prison yard. The group popped open the shutters on the nearest window and looked out to spot two large, green, rubbery-looking creatures standing quietly in the yard area: trolls.

Audas opened hostilities by tossing an eldritch blast through the open window. Strontium accepted a greater invisibility from Mrs. W and pushed the doors open. A third troll, stationed just beside the door, smelled him and flailed with a claw but missed. Strontium let loose a fire-based lesser missile storm to give the troll something else to worry about and cleared out of the doorway.

From up close it was easy to see that there was something different about these trolls. The difference became more apparent when the troll near Strontium seemed to emit a burst of fiery energy without making a single sound or gesture and the other two seemed to be briefly bathed in a flash of violet light that then faded out of view. Caenus struck the nearest troll with his spiked chain and was dismayed to see that not only did the chain do less damage than it should have, but the minor wound actually started closing itself almost immediately. A slow spell from Mrs. W also failed, revealing that these trolls were also immune to enchantments.

Aria used her fire breath ability to smother a troll in flames and noted that at least in this regard the troll acted normally -- the fire damage did not seem to be regenerating. Melian's +2 returning trident also seemed normally effective, though the wounds were not exempt from the troll's self-healing ability. Caenus noted this and switched to his +1 bastard sword, which proved far more effective at dealing damage to these creatures. He took a mighty swing at the nearest troll and felled it, at least for the moment.

From each of the two standing trolls a ray of fiery energy lashed out. Quinn was struck but Aria dodged out of the way just in time. Again there was no speech, no gestures, just the sudden appearance of a spell effect in addition to the trolls' deadly claws and bite. From within the fallen troll a blue-black tentacle lashed out and grabbed onto Strontium. The wizard recognized a tsochar tentacle and kicked his way loose before it could inject him with its poison. This was not unexpected, but clearly also not the entire explanation for the trolls' unusual powers. He turned on the troll body with a fire-based magic missile and burned the remains to death.

Unable to affect the trolls directly, Mrs. W cast a haste spell to assist the rest of her party. Caenus swung his sword with greater speed and ripped the flesh of another troll, but then felt his sword grow unbearably hot in his hands and was forced to drop it. The troll's claws closed on him and tore into him in retaliation.

When the tsochar emerged from the smoldering body of the first troll Quinn was among those ready for it. She thrust at it with her adamantine trident but lost her grip and accidentally flung the trident past the creature and onto the ground. Aria breathed another gout of fire at her troll opponent and then ran to retrieve the weapon.

Caenus was hurting. The trolls were giving as good as they got from him, and Caenus couldn't regenerate. Mrs. Wilkins cast greater invisibility on herself and used the cover afforded by the spell to sneak a healing potion to Caenus. That kept him on his feet, but his trusty spiked chain fell to the ground as it also became incredibly hot, forcing him to draw his third weapon, a trident. At least it had a wooden handle.

Quinn got her trident back from Aria just in time for the tsochar to grab her in its tentacles. She managed to wriggle free right away and watched the creature die after an eldritch blast from Audas and another fiery magic missile attack from Strontium. A final surprise came from one of the standing trolls: a cone of slime shot at her from the creature's mouth. Quinn ducked and avoided a direct hit but slipped in the slime and fell to the ground a moment later.

The combination of fire magic, Aria's fiery breath and Audas's eldritch blasts combined with Caenus's weapon brought down the trolls. As they fell, or in one case even before, a tsochar burst out of each one with its usual disregard for the state of its host. The party took swipes at them but the tsochari were clearly intent on escape. They clambered up the walls as full speed. One did manage to escape from view but Strontium brought the other down with a magic missile attack.

As the party burned the remains of the trolls, Strontium had a chance to really examine the remains and consider their abilities. The sunken eyes, the increased strength and resistance to weapons, called to mind the properties of voidmind creatures -- thralls whose brains had been removed and replaced with a thick goo designed to sustain mobility but prevent thought. A favorite creation of the mind flayers. Strontium felt his skin crawl; he despised mind flayers almost as much as he did tsochari.

A high-pitched voice cut through the post-battle silence. "Hey! Over here! I can help you!" The voice was familiar. Sure enough, the group pried open a pair of shutters to find, behind steel bars, the beguiler Garrick Mistrider. The gnome's face fell a little at the sight of his old enemies, but he quickly swallowed any remaining emnity and offered his help in exchange for his freedom. The party made no promises but Garrick was in no position to insist. He gave in and told them all that he knew.

All of the guards, he said, were being controlled by someone. The warden, too. Every few nights guards would come and collect a handful of inmates, typically a dozen or less, and round them up in the prison yard. The inmates would vanish and never return. Interestingly, Garrick noted that the guards never came to his wing -- instead the trolls would come in to fetch a prisoner or two. Garrick's wing, he explained, was for spellcasters; the cells were all permanent antimagic zones and would automatically suppress any kind of enchantment if a guard entered.

Garrick's tale, while interesting, didn't really add much to the party's knowledge. Still they hesitated to leave him for the escaped tsochar to infest. They bound and gagged him to prevent him from using spells and secured him in the holding cell on the Lucent for the time being. A consultation with Corgan told them that the only other way off the island, barring a dangerous swim in shark-infested waters, would be a sloop kept by the guard barracks for necessary trips to shore. They had the captain cast off and circle around the island from a distance while the party made their way around closer to land, using the shallow water as cover. The sloop was missing but could not be spotted on the horizon, which meant it had been gone for a while.

The party reassembled and approached the prison from the rear. They noticed that there were no guards about, which seemed odd and disquieting. Melian easily picked the lock to the rear door and they reentered the facility to search for the missing tsochar. Mrs. Wilkins took her familiar Derek to the courtyard and had him sniff a dead tsochar, then took him to the spot where the escaped one had mounted the wall and had him try to pick up a scent.

The ploy worked. Derek found the trail of the tsochar and led the party back into the building via a hatch in the roof. They wound their way through an eerily empty cellblock and down to another door which led to the basement.

The party assumed a defensive marching order and descended into the dark basement. Strontium kept a detect aberrations spell active as they inspected a series of empty storage rooms, finding nothing. At the end of the hall a final door represented the last option.

As soon as Caenus kicked the door inward Strontium's detect aberration spell signaled the presence of aberrant life beyond. At first the party saw only two massive crystalline creatures of roughly humanoid shape, but beyond them lurked a gaunt, human-sized figure with bulbous eyes and four undulating tentacles surrounding its mouth: a mind flayer.

The illithid was prepared. It greeted the party with a mind blast that left all but Strontium, Quinn, and Mrs. Wilkins stunned into immobility. Strontium responded with Otiluke's resilient sphere, trapping the mind flayer inside a ball of force that would prevent it from using its powers against the party. Quinn, seeing the impressive size of the crystalline creatures, protected herself with barkskin and Mrs. Wilkins cast haste so that as the party members recovered they would be able to act more effectively.

Melian and Audas recovered quickly. Melian cast cat's grace on himself while Audas launched an eldritch blast at the closest of the crystalline things. When that worked Strontium tried a set of sonic magic missiles and found that while they worked, the creature didn't seem to be especially susceptible to sonic energy. Closer inspection showed that while the thing had a crystalline appearance it was not actually crystal but some kind of otherworldly material. They were clearly constructs of some sort.

One of the constructs moved out of view, forcing the party to enter the room if they wished to remain engaged. Quinn followed and was clobbered by one of the constructs. Mrs. Wilkins also moved inside, drawing her crossbow, but was greeted rudely by an unseen enemy: the escaped tsochar, hiding behind a crate to the side, reached out with two tentacles and gripped Mrs. W securely. Its piercing needles bit into her and injected her with its paralyzing poison. Melian moved in to assist but missed the tsochar.

With a number of the group now inside the room a second mind flayer, levitating above a stack of barrels in the corner, made its presence felt with another mind blast. Quinn took the full force of the attack and was stunned severely but the others managed to shake it off and continue.

Aria engaged one of the constructs directly but found the going tough; the creature was hard to hit squarely and freakishly strong. Mrs. Wilkins struggled against the tentacles that held her but was not strong enough to break the tsochar's grip. Strontium came to her rescue with a pair of chain missile spells that scored damage against the constructs and the tsochar at the same time. Already wounded from the previous battle, the tsochar succumbed and Mrs. Wilkins was free.

Caenus, the last of the party to recover from the initial mind blast, came to his senses and entered the fray with a pair of solid hits on one of the constructs that enabled Melian to finish it off with a thrust of his trident. The first mind flayer saw this and managed to dispel Strontium's resiliant sphere. It weathered a lesser missile storm from Strontium and then called a new construct into being right behind the wizard in position to strike. The other mind flayer let loose with another mind blast that stunned Aria, Melian, and Caenus for a few seconds each, then followed that up with a cone of acid reminiscent of a black dragon's breath attack.

Mrs. Wilkins tried a whelm on the mind flayer but was unable to overcome its magical resistance. She turned invisible and tried again from a hiding spot with a little success. Meanwhile the other mind flayer fixed its attention on Melian and succeeded in taking control of the spellthief's mind. He became the first mind flayer's personal bodyguard, defending it from his friends even to the point of attacking Aria with his trident. A whelm from Mrs. Wilkins weakened Melian, but when Strontium killed the mind flayer with a magic missile Melian was compelled to attack even though he was near collapse. He threw his trident at Strontium. The throw missed and the effort of trying was enough to cause Melian to lose consciousness.

Caenus dispatched a construct and turned his spiked chain on the second mind flayer, using its reach to flail at the creature from below. The illithid targeted him with a mind blast and then a psychic crush but Caenus shook off both with minimal effect. Quinn finally recovered her wits and set about healing Aria.

Strontium let fly with his last magic missile set of the day at the remaining illithid. He knew his resources were spent and that most of the party was in bad shape, so he opened a parley with the monster. Summoning his best poker face, he pointed out that the mind flayer was now outnumbered 7 to 2, including the final construct; it would be in its best interest to discuss terms of surrender.

The mind flayer showed no fear of the party, but neither did it refuse to parley. In a telepathic discussion with Strontium, the illithid revealed that it and its associate (the now dead mind flayer) had been sent here by the elder brain of its enclave to harvest the inmates, and then eventually the staff and the warden, for food. They gathered up a handful of prisoners at a time and teleported them to the illithid enclave, where their brains and other organs became food for the illithids. The brains were payment in some kind of bargain between the elder brain and another entity. All but a handful of the prisoners had already been harvested, so from the illithids' perspective the deal was complete.

The party was eager to finish off the enemy. Knowing the lawful nature of mind flayers, Strontium tried to elicit a promise from the creature never to return to the prison. The illithid declined, and before anyone could attack it teleported away. The final construct melted into nothingness shortly after, leaving the party with an almost empty prison and a political mess on their hands.

The guards were still under the mind flayers' influence, though without the creatures present to renew the domination it would soon wear off. A greater concern was the warden. From Mrs. Wilkins' experience in the Jade Islands the party knew that the entity controlling the warden could maintain that control indefinitely barring interference from an extremely high-level mage or cleric. Strontium had the idea of taking the warden to one of the antimagic cells. They collected the warden, who was no match for them at all, and marched him into one of the cells.

As soon as he entered the antimagic field, the warden's face changed. "It's gone," he told the party. "The voice ... it's gone." He then explained how, a week or two after his return from being resurrected at Marhaven, he had been knocked out by one of his guards and came to in a dark underwater cavern with a magic choker around his neck that allowed him to breathe. He had become aware of a cold, inhuman voice speaking to him from inside his head and felt powerless to resist its commands. Under the voice's control he had welcomed the mind flayers and stood by while they slowly depopulated the prison. The party asked about the missing sloop and received a chilling answer: a small party of inmates and a couple of guards had been sent to the mainland a few days before. The warden did not know whether they were mind flayer thralls, tsochari hosts, or a combination of the two nor did he know their mission. The party could think of several possibilities, none of them good.

Consulting with Seacrest, the party came up with an interim solution to keep the prison running. They moved the essentials from the warden's office into the antimagic cell, allowing the warden to manage what was left of his staff from that spot. Even the guards still technically under the mind flayers' control would follow the warden's orders, so there was enough staff to keep the few remaining prisoners fed and secured. Beyond that there was little the party could do -- this was now a job for politicians, not heroes.

When the party reboarded the Lucent Gilliam Corgan reported, with more than a touch of irritation, that the beguiler Garrick had escaped. A well-meaning sailor, not realizing the gnome's capabilities, had removed his gag to allow him to drink and ended up charmed into letting him free. An exhaustive search of the ship failed to find him. The disappearance of a waterproof sack and a few days' worth of iron rations suggested that Garrick was taking his chances with the dire sharks in the water. Assuming he survived the swim and reached land with no money, minimal food, and an Eldmoor tattoo on his neck, it would be some time before Garrick could be considered a problem again.

<MR>
3/28/07