Session 4 (09/24/2021)

## *Day Two, Evening*

**Dusk** has fallen by the time the adventurers return to Seidan. The streets are empty, and the shops have closed for the night. As the group heads back toward Shasta's manor, Swage takes out the spyglass and aims it at the compound. Nothing looks out of the ordinary, but he can see the manor seems to be encased in some sort of soft bubble. Dove can hear the familiar sickening hum coming from the house.

Gary and Swage both want to cast magic rituals before turning in for the night. The group finds a shed near the manor, and the clerics begin setting up for their rituals. Sitting back-to-back, Swage begins the Identify Magic ritual for the magical items while Gary starts his Detect Magic ritual on the strange bubble surrounding Shasta's manor. Dove sits close to the manor since her magical blue journal still won't let her move too far away from it. Patrolling guards pass by the shed, but they hardly seem interested in the group.

As Gary's ritual finishes, he looks to the bubble and sees it to be a spell from the Divination school of magic - spells crafted to predict the future, interpret dreams and visions, and find hidden things or remain hidden.

Swage completes his ritual and examines the magic items the group has piled up before him. He first picks up the spyglass - it is the Spyglass of True Sight. This spyglass can pierce illusions and see beyond magical misdirection, but the elven incantation only lasts for one minute.

He sets the spyglass down and looks closely at the compass. He determines it to be a Compass of the Trailblazer. This item must be attuned to its user, but it gives the holder advantage when trying to survive in the wilderness and the compass will always point north.

Next Swage picks up Pele's coin purse. He identifies it as a smaller version of a Handy Haversack - an extradimensional pocket that always places the desired object right within reach.

He hands the coin purse back to Pele and picks up the strange key with the bone pommel. Swage sees its four teeth can open any door, but there's a random chance several teeth will be broken after each use. Gary happily takes back the key as Swage focuses on Dove's stubborn journal.

He determines it is the Demonomicon of Iggwilv - a strange book with many abilities. Once the user attunes to it, they gain the ability to cast four spells, plus a cantrip that can be used at will. The book also is an Abysmal reference guide, letting the user lookup information about fiends and the abyss. Swage hands the book back to Dove and warns her that it might harm her interpersonal skills.

The final item is the dagger with the jagged blade. It perplexes Swage since it seems this dagger can heal as well as harm. He determines it is a Dagger of Healing, which causes extra damage on an attack, but can also heal those it strikes.

The group notices the patrolling guards are starting to get a little suspicious, so they decide to pack it up. The adventurers decide that the compass is best suited for Kaz and that the dagger is an obvious choice for Holly. Dove is slightly abashed to have such a powerful book in her possession and is determined to study its spells and think carefully about its abilities.

As the adventures get closer to the manor, Swage picks up a large rock and hurls it as hard as he can at the bell on the manor roof. The rock strikes the bell dead-on, but no sound rings out. The rock falls silently to the ground.

The front door of the manor is unlocked, and torches in the hallway light the way to the kitchen. Platters and dishes of food have been left out for the party, and Pele, Dove, and Kaz immediately tuck in. Kaz finishes off his meal with another pitcher of honey mead, and everyone makes their way upstairs. Holly, Pele, and Dove head to their room, while Gary goes to settle into the armoire for the night. Swage shows Esha to a soft mattress, then goes to talk to Kaz who is getting comfortable in his spot in the hallway. Swage attempts to mend Kaz's broken maul, and after an hour of delicate adjustment and alignment, the spell takes, and the maul is repaired. Kaz is delighted to see his trusted weapon whole again.

Swage takes out his dulcimer and begins to play a song. Dove had been in her room attuning to her book, but when she hears Swage, she grabs her lyre to join in the song. As she plucks the strings, the adventurers all cringe at her attempts at "music" which have somehow managed to get worse than they already were. She doesn't seem to notice as she strums along with Swage's somewhat salty prayer to Gond.

As Swage prays, he can feel the earth begin to tremble and he can hear the pounding of anvils in the distance. But instead of feeling the soul-shattering fear, he felt on the mountain, Swage feels almost a kiln-like warmth to the sound. He opens his notebook and rips out the drawings he had attempted to make earlier that day. Dove returns to her room and sees Pele passed out cold on her mattress.

## Day Three, Early Morning

**Just** after everyone drifts off to sleep, Kaz, Swage, Gary, and Esha are awoken by a loud crash. They can hear screaming and growling, and the sounds of a room being torn apart coming from behind the door to Shasta's room. Esha listens, and she determines some kind of land-based creature, maybe a big cat, is making the noise, and whatever creature it isn't native to this area. After telling the others her theories, she gets back in bed. Gary quietly creeps to the end of the hallway, just as a loud crash causes the door to shake. He can hear the sounds of feral claws scratching through fabric and upholstery.

Kaz runs in to wake Dove and Pele and let them know the host has gone crazy. Dove jumps out of bed to join Kaz, but Pele just says "nope" while pulling the blankets tighter over her head. Swage tries to sleep through the commotion, but eventually gets up and joins Kaz and Dove.

Gary uses thaumaturgy to call for Zertis, his voice ringing out throughout the entire house. After a few moments, Zertis makes his way up the stairs. He is dressed properly in his butler's attire, and he looks completely unbothered by the screeches and yowls coming from Shasta's room. He calmly asks what the problem seems to be, and Swage sarcastically wonders if this is the "youthful indiscretion" Zertis had mentioned.

Zertis says this is all completely normal, but Kaz asks "normal for WHO?" Zertis then asks if Kaz has a tail. Kaz seems puzzled by the question because he doesn't have any visible tail, and Dove interjects that she has a tail while swishing it back and forth. Zertis asks Dove if she has any "troubles" during the full moon. She says no and her tail goes still.

Kaz and Swage question Zertis further and find out that Zertis has been at the manor for ten years, and that every mayor in this town has been a little eccentric. Shasta arrived with the shaman after the previous mayor died, but Zertis adds that Shasta did not kill the previous mayor, as Shasta doesn't like violence - he only gets "agitated" every full moon. Zertis isn't sure what causes this agitation, but it might have to do with the previous mayor, Ocelot von Draun. He also had troubles during the full moon, and Zertis wonders if the condition could be contagious.

Swage asks Zertis how old he is, but Zertis himself isn't certain. He thinks he's been here his whole life, as Shasta has been the mayor for ten years and Ocelot before he was mayor for 390 years. Swage looks at him and says in Giant that 400 years is a very long time, but Zertis doesn't react. Swage discreetly asks Dove to fetch the spyglass, and she bounds off down the hall. She sneaks into the room and grabs the spyglass without waking the sleeping Pele, but tucks Pele's blankets in a little tighter before dashing back through the hallway. Swage looks at Zertis with the spyglass. He can look right through the firbolg disguise and sees the form of an older-looking human man with no legs floating in the air.

Gary casts Detect Evil or Good and learns that Zertis is Undead. He angrily asks Zertis how long he has been dead, which Zertis casually denies. Swage passes the spyglass to Kaz, then Kaz passes it to Dove. They all tell Zertis, that yes, he is indeed dead. Gary asks the adventurers if they have any last questions for Zertis before he goes away. As Dove starts to ask what that means, a spectral hand flies from Gary's hand and hits Zertis with Chill Touch. The spell hits Zertis directly, but it doesn't seem to harm him at all. He coldly tells Gary that he should not try that again. Kaz gets the impression that Zertis didn't know he was dead, but Swage is furious that Zertis would impersonate a firbolg. Zertis says he has a lot to think about, turns around, and walks away.

Kaz and Gary tail Zertis, who is lost in thought as he descends the stairs into the kitchen. He absent-mindedly puts a kettle and some dishes in the sink, walks to the back of the kitchen, and vanishes through the wall. Kaz touches the wall where Zertis passed, and it feels solid but colder than expected. He knocks on the wall, and it seems solid. Kaz takes out his newly mended maul and takes a big swing at the wall. The maul crashes against the stone, and the resonating sound causes Swage and Dove to rush into the kitchen. Gary casts Chill Touch at the wall, which causes the wallpaper to peel back and reveal the stone beneath. Kaz can see that although the wall is solid, there is a place that looks like it was recently mended. Kaz takes another swing with his maul, smashing through the stones and creating a small hole in the wall. Dove hops in the hole to take a look around, and she finds herself in a small corridor with stairs descending to her right. She climbs out of the hole as Kaz prepares to take another swing at the wall.

As Kaz smashes away, Gary hurries upstairs to wake up Esha and Pele, letting them know they had found a hole AND a dead person! Pele reluctantly gets out of bed, and Gary offers her a sugar cube from his meat pocket to help perk her up. Pele tells Gary thanks, but that she never wants to eat anything out of his pockets ever, and the group heads back down to the kitchen.

Swage and Kaz have torn a hole in the wall big enough for everyone to pass through, one at a time. Pele casts Dancing Lights to illuminate the staircase. Esha notices a channel along the walls, containing caustic fluid. She recognizes the liquid as flammable, and Pele uses Control Flame to ignite the liquid. Fire snakes through the channels, lighting up the whole area and revealing a small stone platform beneath them. Swage quickly drops his torn notebook pages into the flames, and Kaz notices a hidden pressure plate at the bottom of the stairs. Dove tosses a stone on it, and a huge blade comes crashing down on the platform and then slowly retreats into the ceiling. Wide-eyed, the adventurers carefully skirt the pressure plate and enter a partially lit area with a heavy stone chest guarded by four gargoyle-like stone figures.

Swage doesn't see anything unusual through the spyglass, and Kaz begins to push the lid off the stone chest. As the lid slides back, a shimmery warm light shine from the chest. A stash of gold, jewels, and treasure sparkles in Kaz's eyes. He had never once in his life felt an affinity for material wealth, but he suddenly felt an almost unbearable urge to dig his hands into the stash of treasure. A voice in his head was beckoning him to just take one little piece, but he's able to fight the temptation and slide the lid back in place. The lights dim and flicker, and two of the impish statues suddenly grab him by the hands and growl ferociously.

Kaz breaks free as one of the imps takes a swipe at him. Gary and Pele attack the imps with spells while Dove quickly pages through her Demonomicon to determine what these creatures are. She shouts out to the group that they are devil blood imps with poison stings, and that they have cold resistance and are immune to poison and fire attacks. She closes her book and launches an arrow at an imp. Pele casts Chromatic Orb at an imp, causing a lightning bolt to flash through it and explode it with a sizzle. Swage takes a swing with his mace at another imp, sending it smashing against the wall in a burst of blood. Gary finishes off the last of the imps with a Chill Touch uppercut, and the adventurers catch their breath. Pele peeks into the stone chest and sees that all the gold that Kaz mentioned has turned into bits of clay and broken pieces of junk.

The group continues and finds a room with three altars. One looks like a podium with some scattered papers, one has a crudely drawn sigil, and one is covered with assorted offerings and jars. While Dove and Pele investigate the altars, Dove leaves the tuft of fur from the mountain dire wolf as an offering. The adventurers then move to another room, and they see several tombs and another altar. Each tomb has a small portrait above it. Some are in tatters, but two are completely intact. Below the portraits, there is writing in an unknown language. Gary recognizes enough of the letters to see that one of the portraits says "Sentinel" beneath it. His blood runs cold at the sight of the word.

Gary’s memories from studying the events of the Eberron War return. He vaguely remembers humanoid automatons, and powerful fighters called Sentinels. Kaz checks the tombs for traps, and finding none, he leans his hand against the stone wall. The stone clicks, smoke begins to fill the area, and a loud humming noise comes from a tomb as it rises to vertical and the lid slides away. Inside is a sparse-looking machine with a lithe, lanky body. Its amber eyes flicker on and in a metallic voice says "Initializing protocol.......accepted." It approaches a very surprised Kaz and asks, "what can I do for you?"

The adventurers are stunned by and wary of this machine and begin asking it questions as quickly as they come to mind. The automaton tells them there are others like it in the other tombs, but none are functional. It knows that Zertis was its previous master, but it doesn't know how long it's been in its tomb. It tells Gary that its name is C345, and it was hiding from people that wanted to destroy it. Pele, who was flipping through a notebook she found on the altar, perks up at the mention of automatons in hiding. She remembers that at the end of the Eberron War, there were groups who persecuted automatons. One militaristic group was led by a ruthless animalist character, and his descendants still control their kingdom. She also remembers that Sillea bore the brunt of the Eberron Wars, and they eradicated what they called the "dangerous machines."

Pele returns her attention to the journal she picked up and thumbs through it. The pages read like a writer's descent into paranoia. Standard entries detail day-to-day activities, but then the writer mentions an unnamed menace that is getting closer and must be stopped. There is an odd gap in the entries until the writer picks back up saying they had been bitten by a wolf-like creature. The writer then gets angrier and angrier as they have to remain in hiding. The final entry in the journal was made more than 300 years ago.

Swage asks C345 to describe Zertis, and the description C345 gives is not of the Zertis the adventurers know. C345's Zertis is a short, balding man with bushy white hair and a big set of goggles. Swage asks C345 if it has ever seen a firbolg, someone like him. C345 replies that he has - a firbolg named Professor Honeywood, who was trying to discover a way to make the automatons into humans by giving them, souls. Gary wonders if all the dead bodies in the Seidan town hall might be the souls that this professor is trying to put into automatons.

Swage uses firbolg magic to transform into the towering black creature from the mountain. Pele and Dove both freeze in fear at the sight of the apparition, and C345 instantly powers off. Swage returns to his firbolg form, and when C345 powers back on, it has no memory of what just happened.

Gary asks C345 where Professor Honeywood's lab was, and C345 agrees to take them there. The group of adventurers follows the automaton into the darkness.