3 Lochstan 1120

Badlands

The heroes returned from the Moonlands with the beguiler Garrick in custody and were greeted with surprising news: Tolisa Darius and Merkator of Holle, the last two members of the lost party, had returned to Marhaven. The party handed Garrick over to the city guard and hastened to see Quinn's former companions and learn what had befallen them.

A brief and interesting reunion followed for Quinn. Not only were her companions well but they were accompanied by an old friend of hers, Tana Brightwave. The pair had about a hundred years of catching up to do, but not right away -- first Quinn's group needed to hear about the last adventure of the Daybreak party.

Tolisa and Merkator told the story of their adventures since parting company with Quinn (The Mask of Diamond Tears). Upon hearing the name Chandrakar the group sat up and took notice; they had the same unfinished business with her that the original party had and a growing conviction that the answers they needed were in the Codex Anathema.

The lead on Chandrakar was now a month old, so there was no point rushing off to follow her. Instead the group asked around on the docks for any word of the Whisper, the ship she had hired. They learned that it was a respected ship with a well-known crew of good reputation, and that it had been in Marhaven only a day or two before. Some had heard that she was headed back to Margier for some maintenance and would be laid up a week or two.

As soon as they heard that the party stocked the Chimera and headed for Margier. When they arrived the Whisper was there, in drydock as their Marhaven sources had heard. They found much of the crew in a local bar, bought some drinks, and made new friends. Those new friends told them as much as they knew about Chandrakar and her hired adventuring party.

There were five in the party plus Chandrakar herself. The adventuring group had the usual mix of skills: a sorcerer, a cleric, a rogue, a fighter, and a bard. The Whisper crew took Chandrakar herself for an unremarkable, perhaps even slightly naive, society type. She had hired the adventuring group to help her find a lost tomb that containted a valuable artifact, which she hoped to recover for her University. The crew had been a little concerned because the adventurers seemed a bit shady and more than capable of double-crossing their patron given half a reason, but she wouldn't heed any warnings.

The ship had docked at Dusan and, by agreement, waited two weeks for her party's return. When nobody came back the captain was concerned and held out several more days, but finally had to ship out or forfeit the next contract. Nobody had any idea what had become of Chandrakar or her adventurers, but they glumly assumed the worst.

Now that they had more of the back story the heroes checked in the the local Adventurers' Guild chapter. The party Chandrakar had hired had been drummed out of the Guild for dishonest dealings -- specifically, withholding recovered art items from their rightful owner and then selling them on the black market. When expelled from the Guild they had been sixth level.

Given the party's knowledge of Chandrakar's methods, it certainly seemed as if either she or her hirelings were destined for some poetic justice. There was still a troubling question, though: what had Chandrakar been up to in the two months between the time the heroes had last seen her and her arrival in Margier?

Since the trail was already cold, they decided to see if they could learn anything in Nessen, home to Chandrakar's family. The family remembered Strontium, Aria and Quinn and had nothing new to tell them, but they did mention the name of her most recent teacher: Phylo the Nomad, a psion who focused on teleportation and planar travel.

They found Phylo in the mental ward of the Hospice of Boccob. He'd been there almost two months, according to the clerics. Strontium and Aria entered Phylo's room to find the psion sitting up but restrained with leather straps and canvas. He seemed calm at first but the heroes discovered quickly that his demeaner was random and varied. Sometimes he would calmly spout nonsense phrases such as "the chariot is blue" and other times he would shriek and cower in terror or strain against the leather straps and spit threats of violence at unseen figures in the air. In between, he had short periods of lucidity and it was during those brief respites that he was able to provide clues as to Chandrakar's intentions and actions.

Chandrakar, they learned, was an ardent -- a type of psion who studied, and derived her powers from, universal concepts referred to as mantles. She had come to Phylo to learn the nature of the planes and to study the methods of psionic planar travel. Then, recently, she had come back to him with a strange and frightening request: she wanted Phylo to teach her how to travel to the Far Realm, a legendary place outside of all space and time where horrific monsters contemplated ideas that would drive a normal creature insane. Phylo refused; it was impossible, he told her, and even if it wasn't impossible the nature of the Far Realm would destroy her. He remembered an argument, and him threatening to report her to the Society of the Mindful, and then ... nothing.

Having already made Chandrakar persona non grata with the Adventurers' Guild, Strontium felt it couldn't hurt to do the same with the Society of the Mindful. The Society is difficult to work with if one is not a member, but Strontium persisted and managed to gain an ear for his suspicions that Chandrakar had damaged Phylo's mind to prevent him from reporting her dangerous fascination with the Far Realm.

Before taking on Chandrakar, the heroes realized, they would need some preventive measures. They purchased a dozen potions of protection from evil -- two per party member -- to protect themselves from mind control tricks, which seemed to be the mainstay of Chandrakar's power. They also obtain two scrolls of the arcane spell dimensional anchor, a successful castin of which would prevent Chandrakar from escaping by teleport or plane shift as she had on Castanamir's island.

A few days later the Chimera reached the port city of Dusan on the northern edge of Saurian Alliance territory. They made arrangements for the ship's security and began asking around about Chandrakar and her team. The people remembered them and, after a suitable number of drinks were purchased, put the party in touch with a man named Ghassan.

Ghassan's brother, Akram, had been hired by Chandrakar as a guide for her expedition. Their destination had been a place called the Mu'adh Valley, which lay in an area of badlands between the fertile shore area and the Saurian desert. They had left on camels with two weeks' worth of provisions but nobody had returned, including Akram.

The party asked Ghassan to lead them to the Mu'adh Valley but he adamantly refused. He had not only his own family to see to now but also his brother's, he explained. He offered to give them directions and draw a map, but would not under any circumstances make the journey. The heroes respected his position and instead hired a different guide, a younger man named Bhoutros, for the trip. They rented camels and set out in the morning.

The badlands were deserving of the name. Daytime temperatures rose to 140 degrees, while the nights often cooled to as low as 50. The presence of some water -- non-potable but sufficient for Quinn to bathe and breathe in now and again -- and the hard, rocky terrain made it slightly more hospitable than a true desert but the party still ended up using their wand of endure elements to keep from drying out in the heat.

On the third morning they came within sight of the Mu'adh Valley. A dry riverbed led down between a pair of carved hills into the valley. As the party approached the mouth, however, they spotted a pair of boulders flying through the air at them. Everyone ducked successfully and looked up to see a young fire giant looming over them from atop one of the hills. Even as they watched an adult giant stood up next to him and handed the younger giant another rock. The party was being used for target practice, it seemed.

Audas threw an eldritch spear at the adult fire giant and Quinn followed up with a great thunderclap that knocked father and son to the ground but did no other damage. They stood up and hurled two more boulders that hit Quinn and Audas. Quinn was knocked off her camel but Audas held on and hurled another eldritch spear in retort.

Everyone tacitly agreed to focus on the adult rather than the child. Strontium, recalling the characteristics of fire giants, unleashed a set of magic missiles made of cold energy on the larger giant. Caenus hit the mark with his longbow and the giant was clearly hurting.

Quinn enraged the pair of them with an arc of lightning and paid the price for it when the adult, enraged by the attack that also harmed his son, jumped down and smashed at Quinn with a greatclub. As a result he didn't see his son try to hurl another rock but fumble it and end up hurting himself.

Now that a target was within melee reach, the party ganged up on the adult with their weapons. Caenus entered a rage and flailed away with his spiked chain. Aria used a Stunning Fist to prevent the giant from crushing Quinn and Audas felled him with another eldritch blast. Melian had his bow aimed at the youngster but seeing his father slain so quickly frightened the boy into fleeing.

The group took a moment to heal up and then proceeded into the valley. Melian spied a group of buzzards circling in the distance and they headed toward that. Sure enough, they found the buzzards were feasting on the remains of seven camels that had been tied up near a cave entrance. The group scattered the buzzards and searched the carcasses, some of which had been picked clean already. The saddlebags had been gone through already and contained nothing of interest.

The cave, on the other hand, was very interesting. Strontium's keen eye detected a difference between the rock at the very entrance and that just a few inches within. He surmised that the cave had been sealed, and then recently unsealed, by stone shape or similar magic. Knowing that Chandrakar's party had included a cleric capable of casting that spell, this looked even more like their destination.

A short tunnel led to a large octagonal room clearly carved out by skilled masons. The painted murals that decorated the walls, however, were not anything the party would have expected from an ancient tomb. The murals depicted scenes of depravity: a beholder feasting on the body of a human child, an aboleth holding two victims in its tentacles as their flesh turned to mucous, and similar disgusting visions. One scene -- a tsochar emerging roughly from the body of a female host -- was unnervingly familiar to some in the group.

Only one wall was free of these disturbing images. Opposite the entry tunnel, the wall held only a large jagged spiral design. Strontium's eye detected well-hidden seams in the stonework and Melian found an inscription on the floor hidden by dust: The door to understanding opens to all who speak the ancient name.

The group's first instinct was to speak the oldest name they knew of -- Azazel, the name mentioned in a scroll recovered by the Daybreak party -- but this had no affect on the door. Aria recognized the spiral as the unholy symbol of Tharizdun, an ancient deity of madness, corruption, and death. As she spoke that name the wall lifted to reveal another corridor beyond.

More of the same obscene artwork decorated the walls of what appeared to be living quarters for perhaps a dozen sets of people. The individual rooms showed signs of a violent end long ago and had been picked clean of any worthwhile items and the communal bath had dirt and cobwebs where the water would be. The only items of interest in the area were two fountains which, defying climate and physics, continually recycled a stream of fresh-seeming water through stone tentacles.

The fonts radiated conjuration magic. That, coupled with the complete lack of any other exit from the area, led the party to conclude that the fountains were teleporters. They chose one and entered it one at a time. Sure enough, as they stepped into the water they emerged from an identical fountain in a completely different room. The magic was even considerate enough to keep their clothes dry.

Their new location proved to be an anteroom off of a large round chamber. The symbol of Tharizdun loomed large on the floor and a single door was visible to the left. Quinn's trident took a light spell and illuminated the space for the group as they worked their way around the perimeter, all of them unwilling to step on the unholy symbol.

Melian examined the door and found that it was locked and trapped, but both lock and trap were in poor repair. He disabled the trap but the lock stuck, so Caenus took matters into his own hands and kicked the door in easily. A second door was in similar condition and yielded quite readily to Caenus's foot.

Inside the group found a pair of horrific sights. The room was divided into cells that were little mroe than large cages. The stink of death and decay was heavy in this area and the cause was immediately apparent: one of the cells contained the remains of a human male body in an advanced state of decomposition, along with a revolting pile of additional body parts -- legs, arms, eyes, even a heart and spine. As the party contemplate this horror a weak voice whimpered from another cell, "Please ... help me."

In the cell behind them was a female in leather armor. She looked like a tiefling, but her eyes were completely black. Her left arm was not only a different color from her skin but ended in a three-taloned claw. "I'm Neeka," she said. "Please kill me."

The heroes were reluctant to comply, but gave their promise in exchange for Neeka's tale. She was part of the group hired by Chandrakar, she explained. The group had throught Chandrakar a weak, naive woman, the daughter of an archeoligist, with more money than common sense. They had taken the job of helping her find a lost tomb and recover an artifact, but her companions were determined that once they had found the treasure of the tomb they would quietly cut Chandrakar's throat and sell the artifact, and whatever else they found, for their own profit. Instead of a tomb, however, they had found this place -- abandoned home to a cult of aberration-worshipping fanatics long dead, and violently by the looks of things. But then they had found a secret door in the temple and, on the other side, a horrific laboratory full of alien-looking body parts and specimens.

Neeka's companions saw no gold, no jewels, just a bunch of musty old wizard's crap, and grew frustrated. Chandrakar, on the other hand, had become animated and excited. She leafed through notebooks she found in the lab and began babbling about how much the cult had learned, how much she could learn. But the mercenary adventurers wanted gold and decided it was time to put the batty teacher's daughter to the knife.

That was when Neeka and her cohorts learned that their patron was no ingenue. She unleashed mental powers on the group that stopped their rebellion and, one by one, forced them to surrender their weapons and submit to whatever orders she gave. Then, using the notebooks and tools and preserved bits in the lab and surgery, she started experimenting on her would-be murderers. She removed body parts and grafted on replacements -- "improving" them, she said -- and marveled at what worked and fretted over what didn't work. She had replaced Neeka's eyes with a pair of eyes from a jar and her left arm with the clawed arm the party had already noticed. Neeka's companions had suffered similar treatment, and possibly still were. Neeka had shaken off the mental control and tried to run, only to have her own friends subdue her and throw her in this cell to die. Akram, the guide, had been the lucky one -- he died during her first attempt at a graft and never had to wake up to find himself looking through a monster's eyes.

The party debated silently and it fell to Strontium to keep their pledge. He took one of Aria's adamantine daggers and sliced through Neeka's neck with a single clean stroke. Her lips mouthed the words "thank you" as she bled to death.

Strontium cut off a toe from Neeka's body and wrapped it carefully so that, if the opportunity or need arose, they could have Neeka resurrected in her rightful body. Then the group set out searching for the secret door to the lab area.

Melian found a spot on the wall with the spiral of Tharizdun carved on it faintly. Quinn traced the spiral with a finger and the wall opened into a narrow corridor. Everyone quaffed protection from evil potions in anticipation of the need. Melian detected a pressure plate in the floor about halfway down, so the party sidestepped it and continued on to a door. This door showed signs of recent maintenance -- the lock had been oiled and responded smoothly to Melian's picks. Audas employed his walk unseen invocation as Melian pushed the door open and Caenus led the way inside.

Inside was a musty but well-stocked laboratory. The group had no opportunity to assess it further before three figures rose from bedrolls in the corner and engaged them.

One was, from the look of him, a fighter. His head and torso looked human enough, but his arms ended in long, pointed talons rather than hands. He charged Caenus and attacked with abandon using the hard pointed ends of his arms as piercing weapons.

Another was a female in clerical garb. She closed on Strontium, who had followed Caenus inside, but instead of attacking with the made in her hands a pair of long tentacles lashed out from her back and closed around the wizard.

The third was a man in wizard's robes. He stayed back from the fray and cast a scorching ray at Melian as he entered the room. Then a third eye, mounted on a beholder-like eyestalk, rose from his head and surveyed the field of battle.

Audas attempted an eldritch blast against the sorcerer but felt it fail in the face of an unexpected spell resistance. Melian closed with the mage and missed with his trident. Being gripped by tentacles brought back repulsive memories for Strontium and he responded instinctively with a magic missile at his attacker, thankful for his Force Missile Mage ability to cast the spell without gestures. Aria joined Melian to engage the sorcerer while Caenus kept the fighter occupied and Quinn sought to free Strontium. She landed multiple hits with her trident but then growled with rage when she saw the cleric use a healing spell on herself to recover.

There was bad news for Aria and Melian as well. Not only was the sorcerer showing signs of a persistent regeneration, but his eyestalk proved capable of acting on its own to fire a ray of inflict serious wounds at available targets. The mage made things a little worse by summoning a fiendish giant wasp to his aid that stung Audas with a vicious poisoned barb.

Strontium managed to break free from the cleric's grasp and fire another volley of magic missiles at her. She responded with a sound burst that stunned Caenus, though it left the rest of the group unimpressed. Aria, Melian and Quinn all had the sorcerer in attack range but he foiled them temporarily by using baleful transposition to switch places with Audas.

The momentum turned in the party's favor when Caenus recovered his wits and dealt a fatal blow to the fighter. Quinn landed a good blow on the cleric to fell her and Audas ended the fiendish giant wasp's life with an eldritch blast. That left only the mage standing. Aria knocked him unconscious with a flurry of blows, but he regenerated and began to stand up almost right away. Melian knocked him back down with his trident and Strontium performed a coup de grace with his dagger.

The heroes were bleeding heavily. While the most wounded sought healing, Melian searched the room. He found a secret door that led to a tiny hidden alcove containing three chests. Two were wooden and rotted to the point where the locks, and the poison dart trapps equipped behind them, were too rusted to work. Caenus broke the chests open to reveal a cache of gold and gems and a set of carefully packed surgical instruments.

The third chest was a marble box with a heavy lid. After Melian declared it free of traps Caenus moved the cover aside and a green mist flowed out of the chest, quickly filling the tiny space and then flowing through the opening into the main room. It surrounded Strontium and Melian, both of whom still had open wounds, and both men felt their injuries healing on contact with the mist.

As the group noted this strange effect the mist coalesced into a bizarre, alien-looking form with four legs and four arms similar to the ones on the dead fighter. It spoke telepathically and identified itself as a silthilar, an aberration composed of thousands of independent but telepathically linked cells with the ability to restructrure living tissue. It thanked the group for freeing it from a prison in which it had been trapped for decades when the cultists, whom the silthilar had been schooling in the art of grafting, were attacked by soldiers of the Emir. Faced with only the second non-evil aberration they had ever seen, the party bade the silthilar goodbye and watched as it returned to mist form and drifted out of the place.

The heroes held a hurried conference. They had used up half of their protection from evil potions and still not found Chandrakar. There was another door leading out of the lab with a high probability that she would be behind it. All but Caenus readied potions but held them until they were sure Chandrakar was near.

Melian examined the door but it was barred from the inside and beyond any stealthy method of opening. Caenus kicked it in and the party poured into the adjoining room. There they saw Chandrakar bent over a humanoid figure on an operating table, apparently attaching the last of four illithid tentacles to the man's face. She looked up at the group and, recognizing some of them, spoke quietly. "This one is being difficult ... it's good to see you again. I hope you aren't too miffed about my leaving you behind, but there was so much I had to do."

Those who had potions ready drank them. Aria and Quinn closed on Chandrakar carefully, with Aria continuing the conversation. It became clear very quickly that while she lacked the violent and fearful moods of Phylo, Chandrakar was not entirely sane. She babbled about the knowledge she was gaining from her practice, and about how vital it was to learn as much as possible to avert the threat. The party listened, horrified, as she babbled on until Quinn could stand it no more. She cast a great thunderclap behind Chandrakar to avoid catching Aria in its area of effect, and the hostilities began.

Aria attempted a Stunning Fist on Chandrakar but missed and sensed that the enemy's elven chainmail was not the only protection in place. This was confirmed when Strontium launched a barrage of sonic magic missiles only to see them get absorbed by an energy shield similar to a shield spell. He tried to dispel the protection but fell just short of matching Chandrakar's caster level.

Once the attacks began Chandrakar responded with her psionic powers. First she hid herself from normal perception, forcing the party to focus and concentrate in order to perceive her. When this failed to protect her from Aria and Quinn she used another power to summon assistance in the form of a large, skeletal-looking creature that arrived in a hail of black smoke and heat. The creature was a cerebrilith, a psionic demon; the party's protection from evil would protect them from most of its attacks and abilities, but it still represented a threatening presence in the room.

Caenus took out protection from evil potion and moved to drink it, but the cerebrilith reached out with an attack of opportunity and smacked the potion bottle from his hand. Chandrakar attempted to dominate Aria but the monk's mental discipline was too much even for Chandrakar's power to penetrate. Taking damage from both Aria and Melian, she realized her position was untenable and used her psionic power to plane shift away.

Strontium saw Chandrakar vanish and swore loudly. Between the horrors they had witnessed in the lab and Chandrakar's weird behavior he had completely forgotten to prepare or use either of the dimensional anchor scrolls. He took out some of his frustration on the cerebrilith with a magic missile volley but seeing the summoned minion die was no consolation for having the primary target slip through the party's fingers again.

He did manage a grim smile when a search of the room turned up a series of notebooks, obviously compiled by a number of people working together and independently, detailing all of the cult's accumulated knowledge of aberrations. The notebooks were no Codex Anathema, but having seen what use of the Codex seemed to be doing to Chandrakar it was perhaps better for the heroes to have those than the infamous book.

The party looted the lab for what they could find that was valuable and relatively benign, then set the rest on fire. They watched the alien specimens burn, then emerged from the cave and headed back to Dusan.

Along the way, their frustration over Chandrakar's escape helped to shape a new plan. They still had a scroll of discern location that they'd taken from the beguiler Garrick. They also now knew that the Daybreak was at the bottom of the sea somewhere and that inside the wreck was likely to be that party's amulet of the planes, another souvenier from Castanamir's villa. The scroll would tell them exactly where to find Chandrakar no matter what plane she might be on, and the amulet would give them the means to get there.

All they had to do was find it.

<MR>
1/13/07