Session 8: Vica Fucks Some Buddhist Monks

After three weeks, the dam is completed and the river starts flowing again, curing Thorim of his insanity. Upon drinking the water, Vojta remembers Sazyr the water spirit, who has long granted wisdom to the sages of the tribe. Fearing discovery by outsiders, Sazyr exists under a self-imposed curse that causes people to forget about it when they leave its vicinity. When the water stopped flowing, Sazyr grew weak, but couldn’t communicate this due to the curse. Instead, it was forced to use the madness-inducing visions in an attempt to save itself. Now that Sazyr and the Banska tribe are saved, Lavoi gives each member of the group a mistletoe amulet containing Sazyr’s magic, which can be used to cleanse diseases or curses.

The crazed elf is still unintelligible, so the group dunks him into the cleansing water, which cures his condition. He tells the group that Pha’uel extended his life in return for servitude. He tried to kill two birds with one stone by accepting a contract from an unknown person to kill the group and fulfilling it by coaxing them into trading their soul with Pha’uel. When he failed to deliver souls, Pha’uel feebleminded him. The elf clearly has no intentions to do much of anything anymore, so the group offers to let him go. He says he’d rather die than continue under Pha’uel’s control, so Vica puts him out of his misery.

The group finally heads north towards Ceneza. At night, they are awoken by an angry savager crashing into the camp and growling at them to get out of its territory. The group can’t flee without leaving some valued possessions behind, so they try to calm the beast with magic, but it resists and attacks. It nearly kills Ahrm and Vica with its mighty claws, but Thorim zips around to pull them out of danger while Arran bombards it with a dozen magic missiles, killing it. Vica harvests its valuable claws, while Ahrm collects a bunch of its quills and Vojta harvests its meat for roasting.

The group arrives at a small goliath town at the coast and finds a ship willing to bring them to Ceneza. Before they leave, Vica sells the claws for gold, and Ahrm pays a leatherworker to sew the savager’s quills into a vest, becoming an even spikier motherfucker than he already was. They set out on the goliath ship, which seems to have an excessively large crew below deck. Halfway, they are intercepted by a huge dragonborn warship called the Red Jasper. While the dragonborn inspect the ship, Vica realizes she has the hots for dragonborn and flirts with the sailors, but they aren’t very receptive. The dragonborn question the group and determine that they have no affiliation with the goliaths. They bring the group onto the warship, then blow up the goliath ship, explaining that it was a slaver ship. The group questions why they blew up the slaves as well, to which the dragonborn callously say that taking them in wasn’t worth the effort. The group doesn’t challenge them on it due to being ridiculously outnumbered.

The dragonborn drop the group off at a rudimentary dock on Ceneza. From there they travel to a monastery built on a bunch of geysers. A gnome called Karidan welcomes them. He says that Arran’s contact Lokreth is currently asleep, so he offers them rooms to stay in. The group spends some time bathing in the hot springs, where Vojta takes the form of a baboon and shares a moment of acknowledgement with another druid who takes the form of a badger. Vica makes a sketch of this moment. Thorim performs for the monks in the dining area, who offer him food and wine in return since they have no money to give. He shares the wine with Ahrm, who gets shitfaced and has a drunken conversation with a rockback armordillo, momentarily forgetting that they’re supposed to be rivals.

The next morning Arran and Vojta go to see Lokreth while Ahrm and Thorim sit out their hangover. They see a strange crystal tree in front of his door. They meet the aarakocra Lokreth, who acts odd and distant, mentioning that he recently recovered from a curse. They ask about the tree, but he says it simply grew there one day, and tells them not to touch it else they might die. They make an appointment with Lokreth, who doesn’t want to leave his chambers, to bring the group over for a talk.

While Vojta and Arran are gone, Vica flirts with a male and female dragonborn, then pulls them both into a back room for some hardcore furry on scaly action, much to the annoyance of Ahrm who has to listen to the noises. When they finally finish, Arran brings the whole group to Lokreth’s room, while warning them not to touch the tree. Thorim immediately dares Ahrm to touch it, but for once he has enough sense not to.

The group tells Lokreth about their situation. He’s familiar with Tusk, who he calls Clarity Stonetusk, but he’s withholding information. He claims Pha’uel has granted him knowledge but that the memories are locked away. Vojta asks about Etreath, which he understood from Pha’uel to be the Lunar Man’s name. Lokreth seems frightened of Etreath and avoids the topic, but Arran recognizes that Etreath, and therefore the Lunar Man, is the god of darkness. The group asks about the execution scene at the spike that they saw in Tusk’s memory. Lokreth says this execution was for a heathen named Theras (matching the name on the letter found on the dead shapeshifter), and that he escaped being killed. Ahrm asks about God’s Rest. Lokreth has been there along with someone called Saleekh, who he says can tell them more.

The group asks about the Last Light Gang, but Lokreth gets defensive and tells them they have to stop getting involved in this. He says Arran’s archives on Kadoma were burned down and that Arran should have been there to protect them instead of undertaking this quest. The group pushes him, and he mentions having a connection to Gyrraleth, the black dragonborn of the Last Light gang. Lokreth then magically locks the door and again urges the group to end their quest. When they won’t back down, he reveals that he was summoned by the Last Light Gang to replace the real Lokreth.

Thorim takes this as his cue to tackle Lokreth, but he leaps right through his illusory form. A previously-invisible gray slaad emerges and starts smashing Arran with its greatsword. Vojta turns into a giant spider and covers the slaad in webs, but the slaad throws a fireball in return, exploding Vojta’s spider form. Ahrm takes advantage of the webs and blitzes the slaad in a carnage of kicks and punches. The slaad soon realizes that it’s outmatched and plane-shifts away.

The group then finds the real Lokreth in a nearby room, looking gaunt and abused. Lokreth explains that he was kept alive here for unknown reasons, and that he’s been praying as a way to keep the tree contained. The tree was apparently planted here by Gyrraleth, who has been placing them in several locations to serve as a ritual that will bring back the seventh primordial god. He mentions that the six known gods are those of dawn, dusk, chaos, order, nature, and artifice, and that Anaereth and Etreath, gods of dawn and dusk, together form the Lunar Man.

Vojta recognizes by his aura that Lokreth is one of the acolytes. Lokreth knows there must be two more, the one with the wooden arm and the one with the obsidian spine, and he confirms that the dead changeling wasn’t one of them. The group convinces him to join them, since trying to contain this one crystal tree won’t solve the cause of the problem. He mentions that the City of the Glacial Stream is currently unsafe, so the group debates whether to go to Glyckheart or the Spike in search of the other acolytes. They settle on Glyckheart because of Ahrm’s inside knowledge of the place, even though Ahrm is reluctant to return there.

The group then notices that forty monks are staring in through the door, seemingly frozen. Lokreth says they are shocked by the violence, and at the fact that the slaad got in here, since this place should be warded against planar travel. The monks speak in unison like a hive mind when questioned, then hiss and disperse at the mention of the Last Light Gang. The group spends the night, and in the morning everyone acts normally again.