Session 45: The Gang Plays Myst

While the others contemplate, Nan suddenly reappears. She explains that Faranehou is miffed that she was brought back to life, since it’s part of their contract that he gets ownership of her soul when she dies. He wants to speak to Grombrin and Vojta later, to set up a contract for payment if they bring Nan back to life again. The others tell her what happened in her absence. She concedes that she also received a vision that was probably created by the aboleth, but kept it to herself to not stir any distrust.

The group looks into the chamber below. Most of the floor is covered with intricate carvings showing heroic figures and fantastical scenes. They tie a rope to a pillar, descend down into the room, and land in the middle, where there are no carvings. There is a bowl filled with green fluid, inscribed in primordial. Grombrin translates the inscription as “bring me my purpose”. Nan sheds a drop of blood into the fluid as an offering, but it burns away into smoke. They try a piece of paper and then a copper coin, which both disintegrate as well. When they step on one of the carvings, it lowers into the ground like a pressure plane and a puff smoke emerges from the bowl. They try several carvings and find that some lighten the colour of the liquid. With some experimentation, they find that the right carvings are the ones that do not show leading figures, since gods do not rule, their existence merely facilitates. Pushing all the right plates turns the liquid clear, revealing a keyring with one key inside. They pull it out of the now-harmless liquid. As they do, a small keyhole opens in the floor. When they put the key in, a passage opens in the floor, to another room below. They again use a rope to climb down.

In the centre of this room are four large stone disks stacked on top of each other, with another empty bowl nearby. There are coloured patterns on the disk, and irregular holes through which the lower disks can be seen. Though experimentation, they find that the disks can be rotated such that the patterns form the shape of Radro. Six palm-sized crystal balls then roll from holes in the walls, while a partial staircase emerges from the ground. Nan climbs it and finds out that the balls have different colours when viewed from that position. They figure that the colours represent the six gods, but Nan warns that the balls swap colours whenever someone says a god’s name. Oddly, saying the name Moradhin doesn’t change the colours, while saying Yane does. Without saying the names, they place the balls on the disk, matching the location of that god’s temple. Red for Morach, opal for Turagh, green for Mereteth, purple for Etreath, blue for Tereth, and yellow for Anaereth. Gaps appear on the disk to receive the balls, and when they are all placed, a key emerges.

They put the key into a new keyhole in the ground and descend into another lower chamber. On the floor is a carving of a large compass. Another bowl reads “give them their places”. It contains six coloured gems and six stone tokens with symbols of the four elements, a feather, and a heart. They try to match the tokens to the gods and place them on the relative positions of the temples, but nothing happens. They try placing the heart in the centre, which causes the plate to sink and the indentation to fill with blood. When the feather is placed on one of the arrows, it fills with a blue liquid that Grombrin recognises as angel blood. With some experimentation, they place the four elemental tokens in the corners, filling them with water, mud, lava, and smoke. They inspect the gems more closely and find that focussing on the gem evokes certain emotions. Red evokes anger, yellow exhaustion, green melancholy, purple jealousy, and opal paranoia. They are unable to get an impression from the blue gem. They try matching the gems to the tokens to no avail. Finally they realise that the emotions evoked by the gems represent the domains of demon lords, and place all the gems on the arrow opposite the feather, completing a chart of the planes of existence. It fills with yellow liquid and another key appears in the bowl.

They open another passage down and descend again. This floor has a bowl that says “give me a tongue” and a crescent wall with writing in an unknown language. While discussing, the group realises that they all see something else on the wall. They all see some recognisable letters among the gibberish, so they put their pieces together to form “language will never contain me”. When this is said, a new series of letters appears. They are in common script but form only gibberish. After much deliberation, they notice that the first sentence has 26 letters, matching the alphabet. Using this sentence as a cipher, they swap out the letters of the bottom sentence to form “but the truth shall be shown when the name of the seventh is spoken”. Saying Cerebarieth’s name causes another key to appear in the bowl.

They descend again to find a six-armed statue of Turagh and a large bowl that reads “give me my name” in the next room. There are four pillars with engraved buttons, and another with a turnable dial and twelve carved symbols. The buttons initially do nothing when pressed. When the dial is turned to one of the symbols, a flame appears in one of the statue’s hands. Pressing one of the buttons then brings the hands together. The different buttons cause the flames to either grow or shrink when combined, but they all extinguish afterwards. They try spelling out Turagh’s name by counting the alphabet position number around the circle, but this doesn’t work. They then figure that each sign represents a number, choose some numbers that add up to 20, the alphabet position of the letter T, and use one of the enlarging buttons to add them up. This causes one flame to appear in the bowl. They spell the other letters of Turagh’s name this way, causing another key to appear. No new passage appears, to they climb back to the top.

When they put the keychain on top of the statue’s head, a door forms in the wall. Frustrated, Cho flings open the door and promptly disappears into a veil of mist beyond. The others go after him and find themselves in a ruined desert temple surrounded by a sandstorm. Before them is a broken stone figure seated on a giant throne. The cracks in its body reveal squirming tentacles inside. It calls for them to step forward, so Arran approaches. Turagh reaches out and wraps a silvery strand around Arran’s body, which forms into a dim aura visible to Grombrin and Vojta. Turagh slumps back and whispers weakly that something has infested her mind, and that they must leave to give her peace. They ask if she can bring them back to the surface, but she simply expels them back to the tower.