Astvanor Session 101 (1/27)

[cinaed]

Session 101: Day 19 of Veksdan (1/27)

Hava reacts first to the shadows rushing at them. She casts Guardian of Faith for the first time, summoning a large spectral image of a sea elf with long hair and a strong face. The specter wears armor that looks like it’s made of dried leather and decorated with shells and sea kelp. On his back is the same longbow that Hava bears.

Hava stares at the guardian and asks, “Dad?” The specter doesn’t respond, facing the shadows. She summons her spectral tentacle as well, striking one of the shadows. She quickly realizes that it is immune to cold damage, but the tentacle slows it down nonetheless.

The shadows are oozing this rotting smoke. With Sola’s wall of magic down, the sickly scent of rot hits Galowen, Hava, Diana, and Adrin. Diana and Hava reel at the stench, feeling it sap their strength.

One of the smoke creatures approaches, taking a blow from Hava’s Guardian as it does and flinching at the damage. It makes two claw attacks at Galowen, one striking him, before it seems to vanish. A second one approaches as well, also taking damage, before it vanishes from the sight of most of the group.

The third approaches, and the Guardian’s blow deals it an especially damaging hit. It reels before it manages to land a hard blow to Galowen, spiking pain through his head before it vanishes from everyone’s sight but Yolov’s.

Diana shoots the closest one with her shortbow, realizing that the shadow takes less damage because it’s a non-magical weapon. She switches to her shortsword instead, striking it again. Adrin snaps out with her teeth, biting the shadow as well.

Audacity runs up the wall, taking a blow from one of the hidden shadows, before he turns back and attacks the shadow that just hit him, his burning staff striking out at it. It looks damaged, seeming to half dissolve into the air as Audacity punches it for good measure.

Yolov sends Es into the thick of the shadows, casting Slow through him. Two of the shadows are caught by the spell.

The one in front of Galowen slows, staring at him with small glimpses of almost eyes, reminding Galowen of being in his childhood bedroom when he was scared of what he would find in the dark. He can feel the presence of fiends all around him.

Galowen casts Channel Divinity, holding his holy symbol, a deer jaw he keeps at his hip, aloft and speaking a word that makes Audacity’s stomach twist unpleasantly and Az’s head pounds as a comfortingly warm and rich green and gold and bronze energy wraps around Galowen.

It looks like sunlight filtering through the trees, this golden light covering him and bursting from him as the shadows all shriek pained, agonized, and horrified screams and cower. For a moment, Galowen can feel two strong callused hands on his shoulders, and hears a whisper of the voice from the forest in his ear, a soft, “That’s my champion. Show them.”

Az watches these shadows scream before he misses one with a Witch Bolt, Medrash hissing and biting the shadow in front of him.

The two other shadows begin to flee, the one struggling under Yolov’s Slow.

Hava races after the fleeing shadows, dodging an attack by one shadow while the other Slowed shadow keeps cowering. She draws her longbow that her father gave her. The radiant damage flares off the arrow as it strikes the shadow, dissolving some of it as it tries to flee. She hits it one more time for good measure with her tentacle.

Again the terrible smell sweeps over the group. Diana and Yolov feel it burns their lungs, but Yolov manages to concentrate on Slow as Diana breathes hard and attacks with her shortsword again. Both strikes are true, the shadow looking less and less substantial as Adrin bites into it as well.

One shadow rushes past Audacity, Az, and Yolov towards Captain Cassone’s crew, but Audacity, Az, and Yolov’s combined attacks dissipate it mid-flight.

The next shadow attempts to flee, and Galowen, Hava, and Diana both attack it. Diana stabs into its back as Galowen swings out with his sword as well, Hava’s dagger joining it as the creature explodes into nothing.

Audacity runs up the wall and over to the shadow still in the midst of the group. He hits it with his staff, fire licking at the shadow until that shadow dissolves as well. He then runs to the shadow being attacked by Hava’s tentacle.

Yolov runs around the corner, bringing Es with him, and casts Psychic Lance on the furthest shadow. It takes some damage but keeps running. Galowen races past Yolov, casting Moonbeam on the closest shadow. The shadow shrieks as the radiant energy destroys it.

Az also races around the corner as well. He fires off two Eldritch Blasts. Both hit the final shadow directly, sending it slamming against the tunnel wall. It rights itself and keeps running, disappearing into the darkness.

Most of the party realizes that this creature has a sentience and mental acuity that the party didn’t realize it had and is fleeing out of self-preservation. It has realized it won’t win or survive this fight. The party decides against chasing after it as the stench faintly lingers in the air. They all know that it is going in the same direction as the party and Cassone’s crew. If it tries to cause trouble, they’ll deal with it later.

Audacity recognizes this lingering scent as the smell that clung to Marion and tells the group, confirming what they had previously guessed: this is the smell of the Shadowfell.

Sola is sitting on the ground, legs sprawled out, looking exhausted as someone’s water flask dangles in his hands. Hava goes over to him and uses Greater Restoration from the prayer beads Navier gave her, banishing some of his weariness.

Sola asks where she got them since he would like to know the god involved, eyeing the prayer beads, and she says she got them from a cleric of Rova. As Audacity briefly bristles at Sola’s perceived lack of gratitude, Hava realizes Sola is simply curious.

Sola says that he’s seen clerics of Rova before, but not necessarily paladins. Most of the group admits that it’s a struggle to visualize a Rovan paladin.

Cassone stands up, looking impressed as she wipes dust off her clothes. She asks if they’re a mercenary group and if they have a ship. She’s shocked when Diana and Adrin admit to not knowing how to swim and she asks the others if they all don’t know how to swim.

Az looks surprised when Audacity says he does, until Audacity explains that he learned how to swim in the cistern and out of self-preservation surrounded by people who can manipulate elements like water.

Cassone says that they’ll follow the agreement and help them travel the dwarven roads, nodding to Jeremy to handle the supplies.

Hava heals Galowen, soothing his headache lingering from the shadows’ attacks. She offers healing to Kyla, who says she’ll be fine despite a bloody nose and claims she’s had worse on the Lost Mistake.

Jeremy begins to organize the smuggled items into an easily moveable sled he can pull, bullying Sola into sitting on the supplies and resting as the party eats a belated breakfast and recovers from the fight.

The crew and the party begin to walk together down the tunnels, with Hava falling into step beside Cassone.

After a moment, Cassone says that she can join her friends. Jeremy is behind them with all the supplies, Cassone won’t be running off. Hava says she’s not worried about that, she wanted to talk to her about her sister since they seem like good friends.

Cassone says one could say that. They’re pretty close. Maeve’s saved her life three times, but Cassone shot a Roc out of the sky for her. After a moment’s confusion over Roc versus rock, Hava is very impressed.

Cassone explains they met in Upper Crescent Port when Cassone ran into trouble with the harbormaster who wanted to inspect the entire ship. A fight ensued, and Maeve shot a person attacking Cassone and asked her if she was Captain Cassone. When Cassone said yes, Maeve introduced herself as Captain Breezerunner and said Cassone owed her one.

Hava vaguely recognizes the name, but doesn’t know it. Yolov looks up from reading Asa’s notes while he walks, recognizing the name as someone mentioned by the Morning Flight while they were aboard Captain Kiva’s ship.

Hava asks Cassone if Maeve told her about what happened to her before she became Captain Breezerunner. Cassone tells her that Maeve said she came to Port Sci and a couple other places, causing trouble until she ended up at Upper Crescent Port.

Hava corrects her, saying that Maeve didn’t arrive at Port Sci there willingly, she was a child, someone took her.

Cassone says Maeve never said anyone took her, and Maeve’s told her a lot. Hava asks if Maeve ever mentioned her, and Cassone says that sometimes Maeve would look out at the sea and miss something from her home island, she just never said what. Cassone assumes she meant Hava, though Maeve never mentioned having a sister.

Hava asks if Maeve gave her that holy symbol and Cassone says yes. She says that Maeve is important to her, and if Hava is important to Maeve, then she’s important to Cassone too.

Hava starts to walk away to gather herself and Cassone jokingly offers her shoes. The party realizes that no one except Sola and Jeremy are wearing shoes on the Lost Mistake’s crew and that this is clearly an inside joke, since Maeve also disdains shoes like Hava.

The walk is very long before eventually the path begins to tip upward, a steady ascent that levels off into something like a hole burrowed through a wall, everyone going one by one out of a narrow opening onto a once nice but now cracked tile floor.

They can see the edges of a long-destroyed design of a mosaic. The room has faded painted walls. It looks like it was once an underground room but age and use has beaten it out of shape and into a combination of warehouse and resting point for smugglers. There are stairs that ascend upwards to another floor. Besides the stairs is a dumbwaiter to bring up supplies.

Cassone gestures at the stairs and says, “We’re going up the flight of stairs and then there’s a floor before another set of stairs. Then there’s an exit, then there’s another path, and then there’s another few hours of travel before we reach the city.”

Audacity is puzzled how she has kept track of the time when they’ve been underground this entire time. She looks confused by his confusion and says that it’s obviously 11:47.

Az is surprised to find when he fishes out his watch that she knows the time exactly down to the minute. As they take in the area around them, Az recognizes the mosaic fragments as one tremendous dark hand with a cradled star in its palm. This is a ruined temple of Tsaliora.

It’s not typical to find a Tsaliora temple here. While she made their god, the dwarves worship Diathar the Stonebinder and it would be sacrilegious to build a temple to Diathar this close to the service, unless it was built by goliaths.

Az gets Cassone’s attention, gesturing down at the mosaic. He asks if she knows about it. Cassone doesn’t recognize it as a temple, just knows this place has been a hideout for centuries. Az says it’s a shame that it’s fallen to rubble but he supposes she’s not around to be angry.

Cassone says she has some appreciation for art, especially when it’s beautiful, and asks if this is a temple. Az sketches out the hand he sees and explains to the party what’s under their feet, drawing everyone’s attention. They see the pattern and shape of what used to be here.

It’s quite odd, in the sense that the twin goddesses don’t have images of themselves or portrayals of them. Relayta is generally a woman with a face of sunlight, while Tsaliora’s face is darkness. These walls look like there was once a whole picture of Tsaliora.

Audacity knows that historians and religious scholars debate whether or not Celthaes created Tsaliora and Relayta and then stayed or if he left immediately. There isn’t a lot of documentation or mythology surrounding Celthaes other than a constellation called the Artist. Traditionally speaking, most people agree that Relayta and Tsaliora were given control very quickly after their creation before he retreated, though there is much debate on how long that brief time was to a god compared to mortals.

There is a twisted, decrepit set of stairs. Cassone offers to show them a museum in Upper Crescent if they’re interested in that sort of thing, making Yolov briefly brighten before she says it’s boring. The party briefly debates the excitement of museums, remembering the one in Port Vestan in which they first met Calia and Hava almost got arrested.

They ascend the stairs. Yolov, Hava, Diana, and Audacity hear a strange sort of skittering and hissing from above. Audacity remarks that that doesn’t sound good. When Cassone says nothing is supposed to be up there, they decide to send an invisible Medrash up to investigate.

Through Medrash’s eyes, Az can see more ruined space. There is a ruined fountain, and boxes and abandoned bags spread around the room. Medrash discovers gems in a star and sunset mosaic on the next floor before his attention is drawn to several enormous spiders that seem to be phasing in and out of existence as they crawl together above the curving stairs.