Session 69

Now without Mingal, the party explores the location Miren purchased a deed for. It turns out to be far from what anyone expected it to be. 
== Summary ==
Teer provided Harbinger a letter of introduction to Rigg in order to help make his transition in Wolis smoother. Goon and Seresh then took the other warforged to Crow Peak for repairs, with a brief stop at Wolis to drop off Harbinger. 
Using the sigil provided along with the deed, Kiono cast Teleportation Circle for the party. They arrived on a small island. There was a vine-covered tower in the middle of a dense grouping of very tall bushes. A path led to those bushes, with the remains of a stable near the beginning of that path. Inside the stables, the party found a single, dingy red feather, likely belonging to a quetzalcoatl, feathered serpents frequently used as mounts for paladins. As they left the stable, Renn accidentally bumped into something, which caused the damaged building to collapse. 
They proceeded toward the tower, encountering the bushes first. While once they had been well-cared for, they now grew wild and blocked the path. FOUR attempted to talk to the plants to request access, but was unable to. Finding no path through after circling the perimeter, Teer cast Fly on the party, and they flew over. Too close to the ground still, vines erupted from the bushes, grabbing the party and slamming them back to the ground outside. Undeterred, they flew higher, opting to attempt to break in through a window rather than the front door. They found one near the top of the tower, and attempted to go through. Teer broke the window, finding the glass floated into the room instead of falling to the floor. 
They all entered and inspected the room. There was a big round bed in the middle, with a pile of faded pink and purple cushions on it. There was a bookshelf, a desk, and a wall of various stringed and keyboarded instruments. The rug was embroidered with a series of a face making silly faces. The entire room felt weirdly magical, though not in a way anyone could properly identify. Kiono searched the desk and found a necklace, as well as a small book with lists of names and dates, each marked with various hearts, stars, and skulls. It was dated around five hundred years prior. Renn found a copy of the Kama Sutra. Using her echo sight, Sors witnessed an elven gentleman composing a song at his desk. He then opened his door and let in a person. This happened several times, each time with a different visitor. 
Intending to go downstairs to explore the rest of the tower, they went to the door. Instead of stairs, however, they found a red sunset on the horizon, the surrounding area all bleached coral and red stone. They located the next door, some thirty feet down, and were able to use the last few moments of the Fly spell to reach it. The room they found was sparsely filled, containing a simple bed, a desk, a decorative bookshelf, and one wall covered in knives and similar weaponry. Renn broke the window of the room, finding that the weirdness from the previous room seemed to be confined to the inside of the tower. Kiono found a stack of letters in the desk, as well as a key hidden in a secret compartment. The owner of the room, Dak, had kept letters from his sister Antara in his desk. His bookshelf contained journals from adventurers past, containing notes and annotations made by Dak. They realized that the previous owners of the tower had likely been adventurers. Renn opened the second door in the room to find the bathroom. She tested the shower, finding that it sprayed blood instead of water. Unable to turn it back off, the group simply backed away. 
Using a combination of Wild Shapes and Polymorph, they descended further to the next floor, the room below contained a displacer beast rug, dragonscale armor on a stand with a black arrow piercing the chest piece, an ornate greatsword above the armor, a workbench with some carving tools, a desk, and a bed. Everything had fur trimming, but there was also shed fur everywhere. Teer located some nice woodcarving tools on the bench, as well as several unfinished animals. Kiono, still in the form of a tressym, discovered an unstrung bow beside the desk, a drawer full of arrows, and a sack filled with pine needles. These she offered to Teer, who gave her pets in return. FOUR discovered that the furs had been treated, and so were unable to provide it any nutrients. Renn found a locked diary with a deep gash through it and a book on mushroom identification on the bookshelf. The owner of the room seemed to have been the diary owner's brother. 
Sors crawled under the bed, but found only eyes. She screamed, causing the eyes to close, but as she attempted to crawl back out from under it, something brushed against her leg. Teer pulled her out, but nobody was able to find anything under it. She then crawled into the wardrobe. Her sight was blocked, but an eye peered at her from the darkness. Hands crept around her in a hug, increasing in hands until she passed out. Concerned, the party opened the wardrobe and found that she was missing. Renn attempted to crawl in after her, but she was stopped, as loosing her to the wardrobe too would not solve any problems. Unable to locate Sors, they were forced to move on. 
While Teer and Ephemera went back up to the previous floors to search for Sors, the rest continued down. They didn't find anything other than that the shower stopped spraying blood when the door was closed. The next room contained a training dummy, a bedroll, a low table with an incense burner, scrolls depicting martial arts forms, and several charcoal drawings. The drawings were of various people, including the elf Sors had seen, several of a human in dark clothing doing various action poses, some of an archer while practicing, and a lot of drawings of a skyforged doing a wide variety of activities. There were also a few drawings of a man in robes carrying a crystal staff with orbiting crystal bits. His face was covered in arcane tattoos. The only things they found beyond these drawings were incense for the burner, some mushrooms, and a ring box containing a simple silver ring. 
The next floor down was completely empty, so they continued down again. Reaching the main floor, they found several archways. One led to the front door, one toward the "stairs" they had just come from, and one each led east and west toward sets of double doors. There was a bulge in the floor in the center of the room. Floor-to-ceiling polished mirrors stood in the corners of the room. One mirror appeared to be normal, one made everyone look like skeletons, one like demons, and one appeared to contain a creature made of orange arms with an eye in the palm, wiggling and watching them. The creature appeared to have burst from the floor of the room in the reflection. As this was pointed out, one of the orange arms reached forward and scratched at the inside of the mirror. 
The skeletons in the skeleton mirror appeared to be out of sync, as though they were people just pretending to be a reflection. In the normal mirror they spotted a trap door in the bulge in the middle of the room. Inspecting that trap door in reality, they found that it was locked, but that the reflection was capable of opening it. They were able to determine that the mirrors were not alternate universes, but rather passageways into localized reconstructions of the space with differing possible timelines. 
Testing this new theory, the group traveled through the normal mirror. Inside they found a ring of keys hanging on a wall, one of which matched the key found in Dak's desk. They were able to unlock the trap door, finding within it a folded piece of black cloth and a crystal orb. The orb could be used to scry through a planar gate, and the cloth was a portable hole. 
Not possessing skeletons, Teer and Ephemera next went through the mirror into the skeleton world. Looking back, Renn and FOUR both appeared to be skeletons from inside the room. Inside, they found an alcove above the door containing a phonogram, a chair, and a skeleton. The skeleton's clothes matched those of the rogue from the charcoal drawings. Their death appeared to have been from a slit throat. Ephemera retrieved the knife beside him, and the two left. 
They took a quick peak inside the demon room, but found nothing of note. Hesitant to mess with the room with the orange arms, they decided instead to open the trap door in the center room using one of the keys from the key ring. Thick vines like those of a skyforged's partially barred the entrance. They climbed down and found a skyforged bracing a large pair of double doors shut. holes had been pierced through the door, including one that had pierced the skyforged, irreparably damaging its core. Ephemera cast light on some rubble and threw it through one of the holes. They could see some sort of miasma inside. The stone was snatched up by something inside, but otherwise there was no sign of activity. 
Not certain they were quite ready to deal with that, they returned upstairs. They went through the eastern door and found a library. The section that had contained books on magic had been heavily picked through more than other sections, but there was nothing of note to be found. The other room appeared to be a sort of meeting chamber with six chairs around a table. A map of the world was on the table, but was five hundred years out of date. Out of curiosity, they pushed one of these chairs through the mirror with the orange arms. The chair was immediately grabbed and torn to shreds. Kiono explained that she thought it was likely an elder odopi. Odopi were extraplanar aberrations from the abyss. Though their intelligence was barely above that of an animal's, they were incredible strong and durable. The miasma, also extraplanar, was not created by the odopi, but may have been related to the weird magical things in the upper floors. 
In order to find answers to their many questions, Teer cast Speak with Dead on the skyforged. 
* What happened to the tower? We were planning to go somewhere on holiday when Atalamay summoned some dark force. We contained it at great cost. 
* Who is Atalamay? Atalamay was? is? a wizard who struggles with his perceived inadequacy. He is a great and powerful arcanist responsible for many of the wonders we enjoy in our keep. But it is his inadequacy that causes him to pursue ever-greater power. 
* Can you tell us anything about the nature of the dark force that was summoned? It is unnatural and ephemeral. We could barely fight it. It is dangerous and insidious. It was all I could do to seal the door. It comes from beyond the veil of nightmare. 
* How have you managed to keep it at bay? What's holding it back? Estelar and Kukey entered the door before I sealed it behind them. I could only hear their screams and then nothing. Forgive me. It was all I could do to stop from opening the door and going in after them. 
* Do you know how we can find Atalamay's study? His... Though he had a chamber in the upper tower like the rest of us, he long ago moved all of his possessions and materials down here beyond the door. It is why I suspect he is responsible for the summoning of this creature, this entity, this force that has killed us all. 
Frantic slamming, clawing, and clapping noises could be heard on the other side of the door now. An orange-handed eye peered through one of the holes. Not sure what to do, they decided that perhaps it would be best to attempt to attack the odopi through the holes, and then deal with the miasma afterwards. 
== NPCs ==
=== Introduced ===
* Dak (rogue; deceased, mentioned)
* Antara (Dak's sister; presumably deceased, mentioned) 
* Alok (warforged druid; unnamed, deceased)
* Atalamay (wizard; mentioned)
* Estelar (ranger; deceased, mentioned)
* Kukey (monk; deceased, mentioned)
* Piran (bard; unnamed, mentioned)
=== Mentioned ===
* Harbinger
* Rigg
* Goon
* Seresh
== Items ==
* A book
* Necklace
* Silver ring
* Portable hole
* Scrying? orb