I received a letter summoning me to see the Lord Protector of Neverwinter.
I met three others who were summoned as well: Treeavenger, Pash, and Bardon.
- Gauthak Treeavenger Ogolakanu is most near to me. A hulking Goliath with ashen skin and branch-like tattoos on his face. A barbarian following the Path of the World Tree
- Pashtarot, a human wizard
- Bardon Sunstone, a dwarf cleric of light. A bit eccentric, but capable.
Along with myself, Ziani, a male Shadar-kai rogue. Originally of the Shadowfell, but living as a resident Private Investigator in Neverwinter.
Pash and Bardon seem to have known each other from previous adventures.
Lord Neverember, requested us to assist in finding some notables who are kidnapped/missing.
4 Victims: Eldon Keyward Indrina Lamsensettle Sarcelle Malinosh Umberto Noblin
We take a short trip through the town, stopping by some shops on our way to the graveyard where we believe our best lead to find the missing people are.
We arrive at the Hallix Mausoleum. An eerie mist hanging in the air.
We enter the Mausoleum and see 6 tombs around us which bear the names of the Hallix family.
We head deeper.
Finding wights as we head down the stairs.
Pash burns away several of the undead.
We managed to take them out handedly. Pash looted a coffin and found 4 wool cloaks and 2 wide brimmed hats.
We head forward past some rumble further into the unknown.
Treeavenger, peels open a locked door. Pash plucks hair from the ‘body’ within. We find Sarcelle Malinosh, who seems to have lost her powers. After some proding at a particularly uneasy Sarcelle, we discovered her secret:
Sarcelle's Secret
Details
Sarcelle’s Secret. Sarcelle’s psychic explorations showed her a glimpse of a dreadful future. She saw the desiccated figure of a man levitating off the ground, gathering evil energy around himself in glowing wisps. The desiccated man then screamed and the energy exploded, causing something terrible to happen. This vision terrified Sarcelle.
Link to original
Pash and I escort her out.
Pash then checks the neighboring room, using his mage hand ability to pull some papers from under a grate.
A metal grate in the floor of this ten-foot-square room blocks access to a shallow stone pit holding a small gold harp, a handful of loose papers, and a piece of bloody cloth.
The papers detail plans to kidnap a Neverwinter aristocrat named Indrina Lamsensettle. The notes include a map of her estate, schedules of her movements, and suggestions that she knows an important secret about Lord Neverember. A scrawl in the margin of a note claims that “her secrets will make a worthy sacrifice.”
We check another neighboring room finding some “potions of healing” within. Though Pash let’s us know that they are instead, potions of poison. I take them off his hands.
The door on the platform above us has a strange symbol on it. We bypass it for now to check the southern corridor.
Pash brushes past the others and sees a gnome. He quickly leaves and let’s Treeavenger know that this is his problem.
Aside
Water leaks down the walls of this cell and pools on the floor near a rusty drain. A dejected gnome sits on a sodden mattress in one corner.
We find Umberto Noblin and he quickly mentions his own secret
Noblin & Pash
Seldom is the name of Vecna spoken except in a hushed voice. Vecna was, in his time, one of the mightiest of all wizards. Through dark magic and conquest, he forged a terrible empire on the world of Oerth. For all his power, Vecna couldn’t escape his own mortality. He began to fear death and take steps to prevent his end from ever coming about.
Orcus, the demon prince of undeath, taught Vecna a ritual that would allow him to live on as a lich. Beyond death, he became the greatest of all liches. Even though his body gradually withered and decayed, Vecna continued to expand his evil dominion. So formidable and hideous was his temper that his subjects feared to speak his name. He was the Whispered One, the Master of the Spider Throne, the Undying King, and the Lord of the Rotted Tower.
Vecna went on to author the Book of Vile Darkness. He recorded in its pages every diseased idea, every unhinged thought, and every example of blackest magic he came across or devised. The contents of this foul manuscript are the meat and drink of those in evil’s thrall. No mortal was meant to know the secrets it contains, knowledge so horrid that to even glimpse the scrawled pages invites madness. Not even nature can abide the book’s presence. Ordinary plants wither in its presence, animals are unwilling to approach it, and the book gradually destroys whatever it touches. Even stone cracks and turns to powder if the book rests on it long enough. It is here, that he documented his ritual to lichdom.
After some time, Vecna, was betrayed. Some say that Kas, the warlord of Vecna’s armies and the liches most trusted lieutentant, coveted the Spider Throne for himself, or that his sword, forged by Vecna, seduced him into rebellion. The sword, sentient and forged of pure evil was meant to serve Kas unquestioningly, but the did the sword develop other ideas? Whatever the reason, Kas brought the Undying King’s rule to an end in a terrible battle that left Vecna’s tower a heap of ash.
Kas did not escape the battle unscathed either. Before the liches fall, he flung Kas across the multiverse and the Sword was lost. Kas became the ruler, & prisoner of a Domain of Dread called Tovag (a mist-bordered realm in the Shadowfell) , and that is where history leaves him. Of Vecna, all that remained were one hand and one eye, grisly artifacts that still seek to work the Whispered One’s will in the world.
Recite
Break Time
Pash uses his mage hand to dive into the water and retrieves a bracelet. This caused some water elementals to stir awake. Pash spoke to the elementals. No idea about what.
Pash opens the South East door and calls out to a ‘Shanzezim’, a ‘fish’ headed person.
We check the remaining rooms.
Recite
Pipes along the south wall of this room disappear into the walls near the ceiling. A complicated series of cogs and four hand-turned wheels connect to the pipes. Rusty standpipes and interlocking cogs cover the walls of this small alcove.
Not knowing what to do with the cogs and wheels, we decide to open the ‘Vecna’ door, as Pash calls it.
We find a lamp lit at the end of the hall, and several bells of various sizes along the hall.
We enter the next room to find a room of cultist. A fight quickly breaks out. A weird guy huddles in the corner muttering about “teeth”. I murder him because he is too weird and dangerous.
The teethy people had necklaces of teeth.
After Bardon heals us, we check the side rooms before heading through the North door.
Quickly dispatching the foes.
Recite
Eldon’s Notebook. Anyone searching the blankets finds Eldon’s prize possession: a small notebook filled with his cramped writing about extraplanar intersections, planar conjunctions, and similar esoterica.
We head down the hall and Pash opens the door to find a pair of Barlgura
We manage to dispatch them and can examine the room in more detail. We find 100s of name plates across the walls. Treeavenger finds a secret door on the right.
I pick the lock on the left and we find a person within.
It seems to be Indrina Lamsensettle.
She is very upset at the idea of us being hired by Lord Neverember and believe he is the one who is behind all of this.
Pash tries to read her mind and fails.
Bardon noticed the smell coming from the wall behind us and discovers a hidden passage.
Recite
END SESSION