The Collective - Session 72

This is the seventy-second session in The Collective campaign and the third session in the Time Diversion storyline of the Conflict Arc. Player feedback ranks this session at an 8.6.

## Notable Events

* Rosanhi met with Abraham in the library and agreed to join the group in their search.
* Roscoe was reverted to his regular form and healed of his grievous injuries.
* Kevril successfully "won" the group another question from Abraham during his investigation.
* The group solved the remaining puzzles and proceeded to the office, discovering the book.
* Roscoe began the ritual to "seal away" the strange artifact suspended in the air.

## Summary

**MONDAY, MAY 28, 1001:** While her companions toiled away in the strange, twisted landscape of puzzles and horrors, Rosanhi spent 12 grueling hours searching through the archives of King Ossian's Cathedral in an attempt to learn more about the party's foe, Cencaela. Pouring through old tomes and connecting ill-detailed folktales and unconfirmed rumors, the young cleric learned little concrete information from the holy archives; her only drawn conclusion that trickery and impersonation were two of Cencaela's favored tools to further her goals. Frustrated with the lack of available information and seeing that the sun had set in the sky, Rosanhi turned to leave the archive and saw the strange sight of a small blue tent pitched in the room, the floorboards underneath it bending and bowing as some rotted and others sprouted twigs and leaves.

Rosanhi entered the tent to see the same room her companions had seen hours before, and soon met with it's owner, Abraham, who explained to her the details of the deal he had struck with the rest of the group, showing her a glimpse of the color-sapped corridor that they had been exploring. The two spoke for some time, with Rosanhi noting several odd things about the chronomancer, including his strange obsession with fun. Abraham offered Rosanhi a separate deal, pulling a tome from his cloak and pledging to give it to her if she were to join her companions to "prevail in the face of hardship". In fact, he even offered an advance payment to Rosanhi, allowing her to ask him a question herself. Believing that Abraham may be a god in disguise, she asked him to explain if his goals were divinely motivated. Understanding where her thoughts were headed, Abraham informed Rosanhi that he was *not* a god and that he was simply interested in trading information with the group: information that, he noted, Rosanhi would likely not find in the archive. With the question asked and answered, however, Abraham considered the deal to be accepted, and soon Rosanhi was ripped through space and time to join her companions.

**UNKNOWN:** Elsewhere, the rest of the party regrouped outside the classroom and discussed their strategy to keep Roscoe (still in bear form) safe during the likely trials to come, lamenting their inability to heal themselves of the leaching effects of the shadowy monsters they had just fought. To their great convenience (or more likely, the intentional meddling of Abraham), the group watched as a panicked Gorrn and Flynt began to fade from their view and in their place faded in Rosanhi. The group exchanged information regarding their situation and Rosanhi, still fresh from her time spent researching, was able to heal Roscoe from his enfeebled state.

> "I just went from the weakest I've ever felt to the strongest I ever felt. It was great...don't do it again."
>
> Roscoe, on his experience as a bear

With Rosanhi to bolster the worn remainder of the group, they continued forth into the Isolation Chambers. One one wall was a small fountain over which hung a tapestry of a crying eye, with a glass bucket seated next to it, while on either side of the group were several doors, each leading to a small chamber with assortments of old furniture and divining equipment. The group spread out and began to investigate the area, with Rosanhi discovering that, upon filling the bucket with water from the fountain, a key could be seen within it that had previously gone unnoticed. Taking this lead, Rosanhi worked with Kevril (who had himself discovered a hazy crystal ball and several sticks of incense from another nearby room full of broken furniture) to discover that the puzzle had something to do with the visibility of the items within the room. Kevril continued to investigate the remaining rooms after learning that the ball also contained a key, while Delorean, after dunking his eyes into the fountain to attempt to grant himself truesight, tore down an open-eyed tapestry from one of the chambers. Meanwhile, OTIS discovered smooth metal plates inside each chamber and was able to deduce with Rosanhi that the plates had hidden keyholes, also only viewable through the lens of the bucket.

After much investigation, Kevril shattered the hazy crystal ball and thrust the key into the keyhole made visible by setting the broken furniture ablaze, causing a shower of confetti to rain down upon him. The voice of Abraham spoke to them briefly, congratulating them on making the experience fun for him, and promised that they would be allowed to ask a second question upon their return. Soon after, Rosanhi and OTIS solved the original mystery and dispelled a bright yellow sigil that appeared behind the tapestry above the fountain. OTIS, now wrapped in a tapestry, and the others went to leave, but Kevril, overcome by curiosity, decided to try another one of the keyholes and was locked inside an isolation chamber as noxious gas poured in, causing him to cough and sputter as he inhaled the burning fumes.

As the group left the chambers, Rosanhi caught a glimpse of a small creature covered in a hood, touting a divining rod in the chambers before turning away and disappearing into the room; a vision like the others had seen in their previous encounters in this place. The group leapt across the gaps to enter through the final doorway, stepping past overgrown plants and tendrils as they entered into a large botany room. Giant, thorny vines encased the area, creeping over the walls and floor, stemming from a corner of the room from which blue chromatic light could be seen glowing. Nearby, Rosanhi and OTIS discovered several containers of fluid that showed different colors in the blue light, while the three thick vines that blocked the way to the glowing sigil in the corner each presented their own colors under the blue light of the sigil. The group quickly got to work mixing the fluids to create pungent-smelling combinations to match the colors of the vines, pouring them onto each vine to eat away at them. Soon, all three vines had been destroyed and the final sigil had been reached. Triumphantly, the group returned to the remains of the main hall, as Roscoe caught a glimpse of a familiar looking creature; a small, humanoid crow, not unlike both the stuffed model he had seen many months ago in a collector's room in Paradeen and under the employ of Captain Lofy during his excavation of the twin's prison of ice. The group briefly discussed these sightings and the strange qualities of the characters they had seen before finally opening the large, glowing double doors at the end of the hall.

Passing through the double doors, the party found themselves in a large circular room full of activity. In the center of the room stood three tall, dark obelisks from which dark beams of energy fire forth into a great ball of black, swirling miasma. Dark specks and beams of energy ejected from the ball as it was held in some sort of containment by the obelisks, and in its center hung a small dark object, suspended in the air, from which flits of color, reds and greens, yellows and blues, danced within its spherical body. The rest of the room had clearly been all but destroyed, with strange arcane instruments burnt out, tables and chairs broken, books charred, and a pile of putrid-smelling ale barrels and flagons scattered everywhere. Not even the walls had been spared, with several large gaps held together only by thin purple walls of magic, behind which menacingly floated *hordes* of the dark shadows the party had encountered previously. Below the epicenter sat a small tome, a collection of torn out pages and hastily-scrawled notes that was most certainly the object of the party's pursuit: *Inception, Stabilization, and Termination of Extraplanar Gateways* by *O. Johnson*. Roscoe hastily grabbed it and demanded to Abraham that they be taken away from this place. His words fell on deaf ears, as Abraham explained to them that "wasn't how the story went".

The group soon realized that, to escape this realm, they would have to seal away the gem that floated above them, following Abraham's "story". As the most educated of the group, Roscoe began to pour through the tome, its contents clearly the thoughts of a master mage whose higher concepts were lost upon Roscoe. After some studying of the "Termination" section, he believed that he would be able to identify and draw the missing runes in a magic circle seated below the three obelisks, and explained to the party that doing so may cause the barriers holding back the shades to fade away, as they were cut off from their source of energy, the object itself. The group prepared themselves to defend Roscoe, and as he drew the first of three remaining runes he had identified, the group watched in shock as the existing runes began to shift and rearrange themselves, resulting in an entirely new set of runes to identify and inscribe; something that Roscoe had missed in his reading. Shades descended upon the group as two of the five barriers faded away, leaving the party to defend against the hordes as they continued the sealing ritual.

## Gallery

The isolation chambers inside the mysterious gray plane.The overgrown botany room.The large, circular office at the end of the broken hallway.
## See also

* The Collective - Session 71
* The Collective - Session 73