Tenanye 1, 22CR:

The party scouts the outer reaches of Perac and notes several points of interest.  They fight off an infestation of large monstrous spiders in a ruined garrison tower, avoid the predations of an assassin vine which has taken over the main garden, and chase off a strange wolf-like being called Jaroush, who has apparently set up a gruesome butcher shop and smokehouse of his victims.  Taledira performs a solemn Arinnite ceremony of last rites for Jaroush’s victims, and the party vows to investigate these disturbing circumstances to their conclusion. 

            That evening while scouting for a camp near the ruins, Chyann notices a small trail of smoke rising from a crumbled tower on the opposite side of the main Perac manor house which the party did not investigate.  She gathers her friends and they cautiously move toward the tower to discover who has lit a fire there.  They discover a graceful and well-spoken dark haired woman clad in fine deep purple leathers, who identifies herself as Joanna Kural, Herald of the Queen of the Dreaming.  She claims she has been waiting for the heroes’ arrival, and that their arrival was foretold by her Queen, the violet lady who once appeared in a strange dream shared by the heroes.

She offers entrance to the Dreamlands, but only to those who perform a blood pledge ceremony, wherein her blood co-mingles with theirs.  She cuts the wrist of each participant, drips a quarter cup or so of blood into her blue crystal chalice.  She calls out to the power of the Olthacaun (the “Crown Prince of the Dreaming”) and the curses the “False Gods” (this is the second reference to “false gods” the party has encountered – the first was spoken by the Vasx).  She mixes the blood with powdered amethyst, a crumbly black resin (the dried blood of Undead Treants), a reddish paste (rubycap mushroom paste) and Zor-frond tea.  All who participate – which is everyone in the party except Taledira – experience an extended vision quest, an intensely personal hallucinatory journey through his or her own consciousness.  This ritual also awakens latent Zadonite gifts in those born after and during the Convergence. 

Joanna shares information freely with the party, telling Balale that the wizard Adjatay took a sample of his blood in the battle arena, and he was not honest about it. She says that she was told this information by the Queen, who pulled the memory from Balale’s dreaming mind because she was concerned for his safety.  Balale vows to confront Adjatay about this revelation at his first opportunity.

Joanna wants the party to investigate the ruins of Perac.  She believes there is a sealed room at the bottom of the dungeon which was Jareth’s magical laboratory.  He had a library of books containing knowledge of gate-craft and extra planar travel, which her Queen needs to construct a permanent gate between the Dreamlands and the outer world.  Joanna claims to know little about the dungeon, save that a mad engineer/wizard had taken up residence there prior to the Convergence.  She suspects he either died during that event, or abandoned the ruins during or immediately after the Convergence ended.  She also informs the party that Perac’s outer walls are covered with invisible arcane wards, which will deadly to all those who attempt to enter… but she has been granted the power to bypass the wards by her Queen.  Her price for helping the party is a fair one: any books on gatecraft they might find inside Perac will be shared equally between herself and the heroes, with each party keeping a copy for themselves.  The heroes agree to accept her help, forging at least a temporary alliance with the charismatic Herald.

9-2-22CR: Accompanied by Joanna, who is able to deactivate the deadly magical wards that have been placed on the outer walls of the ruin, the heroes breach the manor house of Perac. They are not prepared for what lies inside, however: a fierce and cunning force of barghests and wolfweres harries and harasses the group mercilessly.  After a failed gambit involving a blockade of bookcases – which are subsequently set on fire by vials of alchemist’s fire tossed by the wolfweres – the party is trapped in one of the dark inner rooms of the lower manor house and cut off from its initial entry point.  Hali is charmed and mentally dominated by one of the barghests and breaks ranks, slipping into the shadows of the manor and leaving the party.  Balale, perhaps a bit overconfident in his new polymorphed form of a minotaur, is quickly taken down by the barghests; Kaso moves to stand over his body and absorbs too many subsequent blows.  The brave fighter sustains a mortal wound while defending Balale, and Thentis and Taledira are forced to drag both Balale and Kaso out of combat.  Delsin orders his clockwork homunculi to cover the retreat, but both his raven and lynx are beaten down and rendered inoperable by the barghests’ attacks.  The bodies of the homunculi are carried off by the barghests as battle trophies.

While covering her compatriots’ escape along with Joanna, Chyann is set upon and outflanked by multiple barghests; she too sustains a mortal blow and Joanna quickly moves to drag Chyann’s torn body out of the fray.  The barghests howl in evil glee as the heroes flee for their lives, chasing them out of the manor house and towards the woods where the party’s wagon is carefully hidden.  The creatures do not pursue them beyond the outer courtyards of Perac, content at their victory over the heroes and their capture of Hali and the two homunculi. 

9-3-22CR: After the humiliating defeat at the hands of the barghests and wolfweres, the party is forced to retreat back to Fort Redshore to have Kaso and Chyann raised from the dead.  The journey back to the Fort takes a full day. 

9-4-22 – 9-6-22CR: The prelate of the temple of Jenoic is surprised to see the heroes again so soon, especially with two of their number having been dealt mortal wounds.  By donating a substantial amount of gold (10,000gp), the heroes convince him to use his divine power to raise Kaso and Chyann.  Having fallen into darkness twice in a weeks’ time against evil foes, Chyann blames herself for Kaso’s death and reconsiders her somewhat rash approach to combat, vowing to be more careful in the future. 

            The party spends the rest of the day and all of the following day (9-5) resting and recuperating, researching the capabilities of the barghests at the FortRedshore military library and formulating more thorough strategy for assaulting the ruin.  They depart the Fort on the morning of 9-6 and head back to Perac for a 3^rd attempt, again skirting the shores of Lake Vanibril towards the abandoned estate.  They camp on the lake shore about a mile from the main manor house and agree to assault the place at morning’s light.

9-7-22 – 9-13-22CR: The heroes delve into the ruins of Perac, determined to fulfill their bargain with Joanna and make this journey – which has tested their abilities to the limit of late – worth the time and effort they have invested.  Their first objective is to establish a perimeter inside the manor and recover Hali and the missing clockwork homunculi.  Acting in a much more coordinated fashion, they cut down all of the wolfweres and several of the barghests on the ground floor, forcing the rest to retreat via dimension door.  A thorough search of the lower and upper aboveground floors of Perac’s manor reveals little treasure, but several strange pieces of equipment have been scattered around the house, apparently at random.  In addition, the party makes a fascinating discovery on the upper floor: an entire room that houses a miniature mechanical city built by magical artifice.  The level of detail is stunning, but the tiny city has fallen into disrepair over the years and is nonfunctional.  Delsin tinkers with it in an attempt to repair its nonfunctional parts, but he discovers a few key pieces are missing.

9-8-22CR: As the party continues its sweep of the two upper levels of Perac, they find yet more secrets: a crate of inert Source crystals dating from the year 6260CG (four years prior to the Convergence), a piece of some sort of magical rod having to do with ice and frost, and a set of narrow passages built into the outer walls of the manor – one of which contains an old and half-rotted artificer’s leather apron and a logbook.  Apparently, an artificer named Nils Cadak moved into the abandoned ruins of Perac around the year 6239CG and claimed it for his own, determined to learn the secrets of Iareth’s artifice for himself.  In his journal, Cadak details a meeting between himself and some agents who arrived in the year 6260 bearing gifts of source crystals to assist him in his work.  These agents, as described by Cadak’s writing, bear a strong resemblance to the current Cymos clan operatives (his description of the black and gold-trimmed cloaks with Infernal runes is the giveaway). 

The party finally discovers a way to dig deeper into Perac’s hidden past: the bound spirit of Cadak’s butler Jervey guards the passage to the depths below.  Poor Jervey has been magically bound to a magic circle as a Dim Wight, an incorporeal creature laced with elemental frost.  The heroes engage the Dim Wight and free Jervey from his spiritual bonds; he rewards them with a piece of the “Dim Wight Rod,” which he claim will be of use to them on the lower levels.  He also points them in the direction of a tiny, seemingly insignificant treasure: two linked steel rings hidden in a pile of refuse outside the old kitchen area, which will be needed to reactivate the miniature mechanical city.  The magic circle melts away and reveals a spiral staircase to the basement level where, Jervey warns, the leader of the barghests dwells.

9-9-22CR: The heroes take a brief rest to heal and revitalize their energies, and head below.  A dusty and chaotic storeroom lies immediately ahead.  Without Hali to search for traps, Balale stumbles into a series of clever traps and nearly gets himself killed, and suddenly the keening laughter of many barghests fills the room.  The heroes engage the bulk of the barghests in a tense skirmish down in the dark basement, winning through to the “party house” of the evil beings, a throne room of sorts… where the leader of the barghests is holding court with a thoroughly intoxicated Hali.  The huge, bestial barghest has had its right arm removed and a massive scythe blade grafted onto the stump; he introduces himself as Ghornax, Party King of the Barghests and Ruler of Perac, then attacks the heroes ferociously.  The battle goes back and forth for a few rounds, but Ghornax seems to be struggling against another will inside his own body… Taledira attempts a banishment spell, which drives out some kind of possessing spirit from the Party King, who immediately falls to the floor unconscious, muttering “so… stoned…”

The heroes bind and awaken the huge barghest, prepared to slay him if necessary.  However, he is now willing to parlay, and tells a tale of having been summoned to Perac by Nils Cadak to act as an enforcer while the artificer worked on secret projects on the lower levels.  Apparently, Cadak was successful in discovering Jareth’s (Iareth’s) summoning apparatuses and laboratory, which is how Ghornax and his barghests were drawn here.  He was ordered to protect a piece of a “Flame Rod,” which he now turns over to the heroes.  Things turned bad for Ghornax and his crew when three dark humans turned up about four years prior to the Convergence – Ghornax refers to the cataclysm simply as “The Shift” – and his memories abruptly stop at that point.  Ghornax is undoubtedly an evil being, but he agrees to depart without delay and never return, and seems happy to do so.  The heroes allow the Party King and his remaining few barghests to depart the Material Plane in peace, but before he leaves, Ghornax warns the party of a large band of chuuls that resides below.  He magically sealed the entrance to the sewage tunnels because of the threat posed by the chuuls, but at the party’s behest he dispels that seal.  The way below is now open to them.  Hali is likewise freed from the mental domination of the barghests, and Ghornax returns Delsin’s captured clockwork homunculi to him, none the worse for wear.

9-10-22CR: After resting and recovering from the battle against Ghornax, the heroes advance deeper into the bowels of Perac.  They find themselves in a dank, wet complex which is half natural tunnels and half crafted sewage/water reclamation tunnels.  They know what to expect here, and they don’t have to wait long before a group of chuuls rushes to meet them in combat.  Thentis saves the day by noticing a weak point in one of the sewer walls a few moments before several chuuls break through it in an attempt to outflank the heroes. Once that gambit fails, the chuuls fall back to their brood nest at the far end of the natural tunnels after the party defeats five of their best warriors.

            As the heroes advance toward the nest, they are contacted psionically by the real power on this level: the chuul broodmother, a great bloated aberration whom the other chuuls have retreated to protect.  She too wishes to negotiate with the party, telling a story of having been called here by Nils Cadak to guard the entrance to the bowels of Perac.  She has tired of servitude to lesser beings, and further believes that the artificer is long dead.  In exchange for safe passage into Lake Vanibril via one of the natural tunnels in her chamber, she will leave the heroes what she had agreed to guard: three pieces of three different magical rods, as well as Nils Cadak’s repair kit – which contains vital instructions and specific tools that will be needed to repair the miniature mechanical city.  The huge chuul mother knows that Cadak and two humans entered Jareth’s deep laboratories prior to the Convergence, but she doesn’t share the details of how access to those levels might be attained (perhaps she doesn’t know).  The party agrees to her terms, and the broodmother and her remaining chuuls depart for the depths of LakeVanibril immediately… the massive lake, it seems, has a very deep center which leads all the way into the Underlands.  The heroes now hold two pieces of each rod – the Cryo Rod, the Dim Wight Rod, and the Flame Rod. 

9-11-22CR: Armed with Cadak’s design notes and repair kit, Delsin and the rest of the heroes return to the surface levels of Perac to repair the miniature mechanical city.  Delsin labors all day and night with the intricate pieces of the city, working feverishly but with great delight.  At last, he determines the correct order and logic of the machine, which operates by moving little mechanical people around on tracks and by those movements creates a cycle of completion whereby little glass stones are moved from one tumbler to the next.  Six detailed repair steps are required to fix the entire mechanism, and Delsin proceeds carefully.

Step 1: activate the Mining Carts… there is a miniature mine that requires repairs, as its gears have become rusty and its sprockets loose.  As Delsin completes the work, the mine carts move and the Mine reactivates.  The little mine carts full of “gems” (colored glass beads) s roll on to the…

            Step 2: Gem Tumbler Factory… the carts dump their loads of gems into hoppers next to the detailed factory.  It seems the factory is out of order… but Delsin figures out that a magical elemental flame spell must be cast to reignite the Factory’s fires.  Once Balale uses his burning hands spell to get this done, the “smelter” and “tumbler” reactivates, and the factory powers up…

Step 3: the Town Square… many little mecha-people on tracks are moving to and fro on their business.  One little girl is not active; she stands at the well with an empty bucket.  The well is broken and she cannot complete her cycle.  Delsin uses some of Cadak’s most intricate tools to fix the winding mechanism to the well and allow her to draw “water” (actually small blue glass stones) from the well.  She then takes her bucket of stones across the town square to a mecha-horse, and the horse and rider move along their track to…

Step 4: the Battlefield… outside the town, a battle is raging between an amazingly detailed mechanical Cryohydra and a small army of skirmishers.  A part of the sequence is broken; the horse and rider are supposed to be “killed,” knocked over (on their track) and dragged to the Graveyard by ghouls, but the track is bent and twisted and they cannot reach the graveyard.  It can be repaired, but the work is very tricky.  Delsin cleverly uses his sovereign glue and needle-nosed pliers to fix the broken track, and the ghouls drag the horse and rider to a grave in the…

Step 5: the Haunted Graveyard… a hatch opens revealing the “grave” and skeletal hands reach out of it to take the horse and rider to their rest… except that the hands are rusted over and nonfunctional.  This work is extremely delicate, as it’s the chains and gears under the grave mechanism that are broken.  After some frustrating initial attempts to fix this mechanism, Delsin realizes that he needs the linked rings he found on the top level to complete this repair.  Once the rings are incorporated into the repair, the work is accomplished, the graveyard functions properly.

Step 6: the Underworld… the horse and rider are pulled along the track and through a macabre section of the mechanical city, where demons, imps and devils move about and torment them.  Eventually, the figures fall into a “fiery pit” in the center of the Underworld and are lost.  An impressively detailed mecha-demon head emerges from a hatch in the wall and spits a steel coin down a track-ramp into a slot.  This activates a mecha-angel in the high back-left corner of the room; it swoops down to “attack” the Cryohydra and inserts its sword into a slot on the Hydra’s neck.  The Hydra “dies” and sinks into the floor, and a small treasure chest pops up through the Hydra’s chamber in the floor.  At this point, the whole city comes to a halt.  The chest contains the final piece of the Dim Wight Rod: a twisted undead face with small black opals for eyes.

An audible grinding of stone and gears can be heard deep below the manor house.  An audible ‘click’ and grind is heard after the final step is completed and the mechanical city ceases its operation.  The sealed door behind the broodmother has been opened.

9-12-22CR: After resting, the heroes descend into the unknown depths of Iareth’s gated laboratories.  They discover the Dim Wight Gate – a macabre structure made of polished bones and humanoid skulls – which lies just beyond the wall that opened when the mechanical city completed its cycle.  Placing the completed Dim Wight Rod into a slot in the gate causes it to activate.

The heroes utilize the now completed Cryohydra Rod to activate the second gate, a steel and crystal structure which has many sharp edges and feels frosty cold to the touch.  Stepping through the gate, they find themselves in a large room filled with strange hovering constructs – living suits of armor enchanted with icy cold elemental properties.  They party has no time to contemplate whether these are guardians built by Cadak or Iareth, as they are immediately attacked by the group of eight constructs!  After a difficult battle, all the hovering guardians are dispatched and the Cryo room belongs to the heroes.

They find the final piece of the Flamegate Rod in a hidden niche in one corner of the room.  Combining the three pieces of the rod together, they fabricate the key to the next gate, which lies directly ahead at the far end of the room – it is a beautifully carved structure of black lava rock and translucent red crystal, and the entire gate hums softly and glows with a soft fiery light when the assembled Flamegate Rod is brought near it.  Before activating and entering the Flamegate, the heroes rest to heal their many wounds and recover their arcane and divine energies, as the previous two battles against the undead and the hover guardians took every ounce of effort they had to give. 

9-13-22CR: During the party’s rest in the eerie gate complex of the infamous artificer Iareth Highgold, Balale draws on his knowledge of the Planes and posits a theory to the party: these gate rooms may actually be some sort of extradimensional space, and the heroes may be quite far from their home plane at the moment.  Despite this startling possibility – or perhaps because of it – they agree to press on through the Flamegate.

In the room beyond, xix pedestals with “Goldrise,” “Greyfade,” “Blackmoon,” “Highpoint,” “Longshadow,” and “Brightglow” are arranged in a semicircle around a central pedestal.  The pedestals are marked 1 through 6 in Taliraen runes and the central pedestal bears an inscription: “The secret of unmaking is Inversion.”

Six eye-sized rubies sit glowing in a small cauldron; a rune for each word can be seen glowing within the rubies. After some puzzling, the party determines that the gems must be arranged correctly on the pedestals in the following order:

1.Blackmoon, 2.Greyfade, 3.Longshadow, 4.Highpoint, 5.Brightglow 6. Goldrise

Once so arranged, a column of flame erupts in a central summoning circle, and Iareth’s Flame Guardian appears.  The Flame Guardian is a 10’ tall humanoid figure with glowing lava veins across its body and a fiery cloak that whips about as it moves.  The facial features are wreathed in flame, but vaguely resemble an elf.  It is armed with a two-handed sword of molten flame, but it does not attack the heroes immediately.  Instead, it speaks to them in depth about what lies beyond in the final gate to Iareth’s laboratory: Nils Cadak discovered the secrets of these dimensional gate rooms during his investigation of Perac, and for reasons unknown to the Flame Guardian, he sealed himself inside the main laboratory beyond the Flamegate room.  The Guardian was charged by Cadak to test anyone who reached this far into the complex to see if they are worthy to open the final gate.

            The elvish spirit guardian allows the heroes time to enhance their abilities with spells and items, and then honorably joins battle with them.  Though several members of the party are badly scorched by his elemental fire blasts and his searing greatsword, they overcome the Guardian’s powers and defeat him, opening the way to the main laboratory through the final gate.

They confront the artificer in his lair at last.  He appears as a shrunken-skinned, papery, gaunt undead, with only bits of his dried skin still clinging to his bones.  The arms have elongated into boned tentacles with 10’ reach, but his skeletal hands remain at the ends of the tentacles.  He still wears his rotten engineer’s apron and working leathers.  Two moldering skeletal corpses of the Cymos Deathmark agents who were sealed inside the laboratory with Cadak lie nearby.  When the heroes approach Cadak, Korelith takes over fully, and his eyes glow with a black and gold radiance, making the pupils disappear.  A dark crystal etched with Infernal script can be seen glowing faintly beneath Cadak’s chest, to the right of his heart beneath the sternum.

The battle is joined – Korelith/Cadak reanimates his Deathmark allies (these undead are cloaked in black and gold, wield 2-handed swords, and wear scale mail of similar coloration and design to other Cymos soldier the party has encountered) and begins the fight in earnest.  The lich blasts the party with negative energy attacks while taunting their efforts and angrily cursing them for their interference.  He also thanks them for providing him an escape route after twenty-five years of imprisonment by “that fool Cadak.”  Like many battles against the Cymos clan, this one is fast and tense, lasting only a few rounds.  The teamwork and resilience of the heroes proves to be enough to overcome this dark fragment of Korelith’s will, and the tentacled body of Cadak slumps to the ground after a telling critical blow from Kaso’s magical blade Taskmaster.  When the final blow strikes Cadak/Korelith becomes himself long enough to speak: “the city…my beautiful mechanical city.  I will dream of it from the other side.  Thank you.”  With that, the light goes out of his eyes forever, and Nils Cadak, the usurper of Perac and one of the greatest artificers of his age, is no more. 

9-14-22CR: Nils Cadak has been defeated, and his spirit is released from its 25 awful years of being bound to the will of Korelith.  The heroes have cleansed Perac of its evil presence and also gleaned vital secrets on the modus operandi of the Cymos clan and Korelith himself.  Now that they know the nature of Korelith – that he is a crystal-imbued lich that can fragment its essence into living beings via crystal implantation – and they strongly suspect that Tobias Windtaer and possibly others in Falgenburg have been working for Korelith and the Cymos clan for some time.

The Heroes of Falgenor