Session 13

## Infiltrating the Magisterium

> Evening of 547/05/03
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The session opened with Salibar, Lilliana, and Ciarán in the headquarters of the Red Hand, having decided to undertake an infiltration mission for Matron Ziroli. The party was to infiltrate the centre of the Magistrate’s operations, the Magisterium, and gather information on the new Magistrate and the strange occurrences in the city. Ziroli advised them to prioritise searching the first and third floors of the building.

To aid them in their infiltration mission, Ziroli organised a distraction and handed the party a map with the layout of the Magisterium. This map contained an arcane glyph that could assist them in an escape, as Ziroli warned them they could not afford to get captured.

During this conversation, Ciarán cast Clairvoyance and scouted out the first and second floors of the building, noticing that the military presence was relatively small. The party decided to head to the Magisterium the following evening and took the next day to prepare for the mission.

> 547/05/04
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>

The next day, the party visited the parlour of the Crooked Men, where they purchased a set of thieves' tools and met again with Selman Karwise. The party decided to ask the Crooked Men for information about the Magisterium, and Karwise revealed that he was very familiar with the location. He advised them to infiltrate the palace late at night. He also asked them to retrieve an item from the treasury for him: a debt transaction book that could be used by the Crooked Men for blackmail purposes. While the party accepted the job, Ciarán was hesitant to support using such blackmail, fearing the harm it could do.

> Close to midnight, same day.
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>

When the evening arrived, the party made their way towards the Magisterium. As they waited for the Red Hand’s distraction, they saw a pair of familiar figures – a thin human and a dwarf – pass them carrying a crowbar. They recognised the figures as Jasper and Horace.

After some time, the party noticed a commotion: they heard bagpipes and saw magical illusions coming from a bank downtown. Seizing their moment, they magically disguised themselves as guards they saw rushing away from the Magisterium and entered through the building’s front doors.

The party headed straight for the Ministry of Records. When entering the room, however, they found they were not alone: a clerk was working at a desk. The trio soon left, unable to find anything of interest without raising the clerk’s suspicions. Here they were intercepted by some guards, who questioned their business in the record rooms. The party attempted to lie, claiming the rooms had a rat problem, and the guards responded by searching each room. Then, having found nothing, they chided the party for being the Magisterium’s most “incompetent guards” and relieved them of their duties.

The party moved towards the guard quarters before trying the second floor. Here Ciarán abandoned his disguise and resorted to sneaking in the shadows instead. Soon, they found themselves in the Audience Room and the entrance to the third floor. Guessing that it was close to a shift change, Salibar and Lilliana exchanged places with the two guards on duty in the room. With complete control over the entrance to the third floor, they decided to send Ciarán to scout out the rooms upstairs. Ciarán cast an invisibility spell on himself and headed upstairs.

Sneaking past a single guard, Ciarán approached the parlour, where he heard a pair of voices. Putting his ear against the door, he recognised the voices of Selman Karwise and Jack the “Knave of Hearts”. Ciarán was shocked to learn that Karwise, and the Crooked Men, were working alongside Jack and the Magistrate. Karwise also warned Jack to put extra guards on for the evening, hinting towards a suspected plot to rob the Magisterium. The conversation abruptly ended when Jack began to probe Karwise about the Crooked Man. Karwise immediately shut him down when the Knave asked whether rumours the “‘Big Man’ [was] in Arrnonland” were true.

Hearing that the pair were wrapping up their conversation, Ciarán ducked into another room, picking the lock and opening the door to the Magistrate’s office. To his surprise, the office was not empty, and the Magistrate was sitting at her desk. She stared directly at the doorway and spoke to Ciarán, saying, “I know you’re there – come in. I just want to talk”. Ciarán lingered in the doorway for some time before making his way into the room, terrified that the Magistrate was aware of his presence.

While Ciarán tried to mask his voice, Luriel recognised him as one of “the ones from the undercity” who had aided her in the mission to Woman’s Wept. When she asked where his “friends” were, assuming they were close by, he remarked that he had come alone. Surprisingly, Luriel appeared to believe this lie. Pleased that he was alone, she put herself between him and the exit and closed the door behind her. Ciarán, panicking, sent a telepathic message to Lilliana for help. However, Luriel intercepted this message and telepathically told Lilliana and Salibar to come to her office.

Escorted by a guard, Lilliana and Salibar were brought to Luriel’s office. Ciarán dropped his invisibility, and after a brief conversation in which Luriel attempted to probe for information from the group, Lilliana broached the subject of the missing workers. When Lilliana asked if the Magistrate could tell them what had happened to the missing people, Luriel simply responded, “oh yes, we’ve been eating them!”. With this, her face began to twist and distort into tentacles, and the third illithid revealed itself.

The illithid immediately stunned Lilliana and proceeded to grapple her. With Lilliana grappled, the creature proceeded to wrap its tentacles around her head and bit into the back of her head. In response to this attack, an attack that would have killed the sorcerer outright, something strange happened. Lilliana felt her mind open, and her world begin to shift. To Ciarán and Salibar, it seemed as if Lilliana and the illithid were rotating on the spot. Then with a blast of purple light, the mind flayer was thrown back from Lilliana. With fear in its eyes, it remarked, “you’re like me!”. With the battle turning in the party’s favour, Ciarán landed a final blow on the creature with his spiritual weapon. However, he refused to kill the illithid and instead began frantically searching Luriel’s desk for documents. He found some kind of magical scroll on the desk. Salibar was not having any of Ciarán’s nonsense, and he cut off its head with his axe.

While the party had defeated the Magistrate, the battle was far from over, as four suits of animated armour appeared in the doorway. Due to a *web* spell cast by Lilliana, the constructs did not approach the party, giving them time to figure out their escape from the office. Salibar and Ciarán continued to search the Magistrate's desk, and Salibar found some official-looking documents. Meanwhile, Lilliana threw some ropes out the window to create a safe exit from the 100ft high room.

As the party prepared to leave, a familiar voice spoke to them, and the party saw Jack, the “Knave of Hearts,” appear dressed in black clothes. He tapped his hat and shifted into his more recognisable red attire. He offered the group another way out of the office: a hidden exit through a cupboard. Perhaps against their best judgement, the party followed his directions into a cupboard. Unsurprisingly, Jack locked the door behind them, trapping them. While trapped in the cupboard, Lilliana contacted Ziroli, relayed that they had killed the illithid, and asked for assistance in escaping.

Jack admitted that the party knew too much and divulged that they had ruined important plans by killing the Magistrate. According to Jack, the Red Queen and the Court of Underland had facilitated the rise of the illithids in Misclap. He lamented Luriel’s death, remarking that the illithid had “great plans” for the city. Jack refused to let the party out, although he budged slightly when Lilliana offered to revive the illithid.

Jack suddenly fell silent and spoke to someone the party could not hear. Then, he opened the cupboard and let the party out, seemingly obeying orders from above. Now free to leave, the party began descending the rope out the window. The party spotted a glow in the distance and saw Ziroli flying towards them with fire trailing behind her. When she reached the Magisterium, she burned the rope above them and carried them back to the Red Hand headquarters.

That night, Ciarán visited Lilliana’s room and asked whether she was okay, considering the mind flayer seemed to recognise her. He reassured her that he could help and support her if she needed to talk. Lilliana simply told Ciarán that she didn’t know what was happening. After Ciarán left and as she was lying in bed, Lilliana felt her room tilt, and a voice whispered to her, “you’re welcome”.

Salibar, meanwhile, inspected his lockbox for more notes. He found a message that read, “thank you - S”. Salibar wrote another message: “I’m not sure what I’ve done. Some advice would be nice”.

Ciarán spent the evening identifying the scroll he found as a “Scroll of *Dimension Door*”.

> Morning of 547/05/05
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>

Strangely, the following day, the city seemed normal. The town crier announced the morning bulletin with no mention of the dead Magistrate, and the group later learned from Ziroli that the city’s council had gone into session.

Lilliana was inducted into a higher level of the Red Hand, becoming a “Blaze” and receiving complete fire immunity. Erianna accompanied Lilliana in her ceremony, although she appeared uncomfortable with the Red Hand.

Meanwhile, Ciarán and Salibar visited the kuo-toa and returned the final illithid head to the village. On the way, the pair shared a short conversation about how Salibar felt about his affliction. Ciarán questioned whether the party should have sought even more powerful clerics and more powerful restoration spells to heal Salibar’s affliction. When the pair arrived at the kuo-toa village and presented them with the illithid head, they praised Salibar as “the slayer of devils”.

The party then reconvened at the Red Hand headquarters to receive boons for their work for the Hand. The group requested safe passage to Goback, and individually were offered boons. Lilliana received the ability to cast a *firebolt* cantrip, and Salibar asked for a *greater restoration* or heal for his affliction. Ziroli revealed that she had immediately noticed his undead nature, she asked to inspect him closely. Salibar agreed, and Ziroli quickly found the lich hand he had attached to his body. She was horrified by what she had found, and recognised the hand as that of Malediction. She revealed some familiarty with the lich, and revealed that the red hand had personally sought to destroy the lich and any remnants of them that remained. Then speaking, not to Salibar, but to the lich inside him, she asked “Are you in there?”. Ziroli remarked that “what [Salibar] carr[ied] in [him was] a thing of dark” completely antithetical to the Red Hand’s goal of serving the light. Then, pulling Lilliana and Ciarán into another room, she expressed that they had to remove the hand and the lich’s influence from Salibar to save his life. Both Lilliana and Salibar consented to her helping Salibar, both the sorcerer and the cleric then retired to some chambers, learning that the process would be long and laboursome.

## Salibar Kills the Lights

When Ziroli returned to Salibar and described what was to happen to him, Salibar’s arm began to act of its own accord. He pointed his left hand towards Ziroli, and with a burst of energy, he instantly killed the Matron.

Alone and with Ziroli lying dead at his feet, Salibar panicked and felt overwhelmed with emotion. Unable to act, he simply curled up on the ground. Lying on the ground, he suddenly felt energy building up in his body; he allowed a vision to take hold. In the vision, he again saw a great dead oak tree, and a familiar voice spoke from an amber-filled crack on the side of the tree. The Magus reassured Salibar that “it is the essence of discovery to make mistakes” before reaffirming that he carried “a great and dark power” that he had to be “careful with”. The Magus commanded him to get to his feet and offered him aid in the form of a tome of necromancy. This book contained a spell to make Ziroli’s body disappear and a spell allowing him to resurrect her from the dead. He was left with a difficult choice.

Choosing – at great personal risk to himself – to revive Ziroli, Salibar cast a resurrection spell and pulled the Matron’s soul back from the beyond. Ziroli immediately responded by casting a *hold-person* spell on Salibar for her protection. Then, acknowledging that it was not Salibar who had killed her, she searched through Salibar’s locked box and revealed the grim details of his situation. The Red Hand would not allow Malediction to return to Evergreen and would separate the lich from him regardless of whether he consented. Salibar agreed to cooperate, and Ziroli led him to a lead-lined room to make preparations for a ritual. The Red Hand required a whole day to prepare for the ritual: Salibar only needed to stay awake that night and not die to the rapid corruption spreading through his body.

Ziroli returned to Lilliana and Ciarán with a bloody eye, appearing visibly shaken, and revealed the details of the ritual. The pair then spent the next few hours helping Ziroli prepare.

Ciarán prayed to the Man on the Moon and felt himself overcome with confidence, and Lilliana, possibly for the first time, prayed to the Burning God. She found herself filled with burning power.

As powerful clerics and healers would be required for the ritual, Ziroli also sent for Auntie Greenleaf.

When Lilliana and Ciarán detailed their travel plans to the hag, she warned them about travelling to Glumm. According to Greenleaf, there was a powerful presence residing in Glumm: a presence she revealed to be the hag Baba Yaga. According to Greenleaf, Baba Yaga was a powerful and malevolent figure responsible for training Morgana La'Fae herself. She also provided Salibar with some potions to help him stay awake.

As the evening approached, Ciarán sat watch outside Salibar’s cell and talked with him to keep him company. Despite Auntie Greenleaf's potions, Salibar’s strength was soon overcome, and his whole body started transforming into a mummified-like corpse. Ciarán, spotting this change, immediately called for Auntie Greenleaf. She informed Ciarán that Salibar would almost certainly die before the morning. He begged her to save his friend, and she offered him an alternative – he could connect himself to Salibar and take the corruption onto himself. Ciarán agreed without any hesitation.

Greenleaf then attached Ciarán, with a magical transfusion device, to Salibar, and a golden tether connected the pair. However, Ciarán could not match the force of the lich’s power, and he felt his life force draining away. Faced with the prospect of death, Ciarán handed Lilliana a note to be opened upon his death. Lilliana soon relented and asked Auntie Greenleaf to attach her to Salibar as well. With the magical cord connecting the three of them, the group formed a trinity, fighting desperately to stave off the lich’s influence. Lilliana, filled with the fiery power of the Burning God, overcame the corruption, and the cord connecting her burst into flames. Ciarán was saved, Salibar was safe, and all three survived until morning – albeit extremely exhausted.

## The Ritual

> Morning of 547/05/06
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When the morning arrived, Salibar was laid on an altar, and the ritual began. Along with Ziroli, Ciarán and the Red Hand’s clerics, and Auntie Greenleaf, Lilliana assisted by pouring her magic into the ritual. Greenleaf started the ritual by rather unceremoniously removing Salibar’s arm. Then, the group saw Salibar’s spirit leave his body and another spirit rise along with him: the wraith of Malediction. In Salibar’s spirit, they saw only a sphere of darkness where his heart should have been.

With the aid of the spellcasters, Salibar began to fight for his soul. Despite the Red Hand’s best efforts, however, Salibar’s strength failed, and he lost the fight for his soul. His withered and armless body lay lifeless on the altar. Refusing to be parted from Salibar’s body, Ciarán cried for the loss of his friend. Auntie Greenleaf simply put her hand on his shoulder and apologised that she could not save him. Ciarán, unconvinced, yelled at her to save him, but Greenleaf reiterated that she could do nothing. Only one thing could be done: the party would have to risk their lives and travel to the land of the dead to retrieve Salibar’s soul.

In their final moment together, Ciarán spoke to Salibar’s lifeless body and told him, “we’re coming for you. I promise. Wait for us.” Salibar, now in the afterlife, heard these final words echoing in his mind as he began his journey.

## The Land of the Dead

Salibar awoke in a desert before the landscape twisted into a vision of the greenwoods. Accompanied by the figure of the Reaper, he recognised his surroundings as the greenwood near Camelot, where he first arrived in Evergreen. The Reaper spoke to Salibar, telling him that “[his] journey seem[ed] different to most”. As Salibar was not originally from Evergreen, the Reaper offered to send him to another plane to die where he felt most at home. They then asked him, “do you believe this is your plane of belonging?” before casting a banishment spell upon him. However, Salibar, resolute, resisted the spell. He admitted that he knew little of his home plane and felt as if Evergreen was his home.

Meanwhile, Auntie Greenleaf hasted Lilliana and Ciarán and made for the docks. Procuring a ship, they sailed across the sea. Soon, mists began to gather around them, and the hag asked them both whether they were still willing to pass into the realm of the dead. She revealed that if their tether to the material world was broken, they, too, would die. Ciarán again agreed to go, but Lilliana refused to risk her life for Salibar’s mistakes. However, she offered whatever aid she could from the boat.

Ciarán said goodbye and gave Fionntán into the hag’s care. She pushed Ciarán into the water, and as he hit the surface, his body went limp. He found himself floating in a black void, with the moon above him and the darkwoods and the Stranger below him. Soon, however, he emerged in the same desert as Salibar. Rather than greenwoods, Ciarán’s landscape shifted into the darkwoods, and he found himself in a shadar-kai village. When the Reaper appeared, they noted that Ciarán was “not dead” and refused to help him locate his friend: telling him only to find his own way. Ciarán frantically tried to search the village but found himself passing through incorporeal visions. Then, looking up, he noticed the moon seemingly pointing in a direction. Taking this as a sign, he ran in the direction indicated by the moon.

Returning to Salibar, the tiefling found himself walking along an endless path. The Reaper then appeared again and asked Salibar, “when you are gone, who will remember your name?”. He saw flashes of those he knew, whose lives he had touched in positive ways: Lilliana on the boat, casting a sending message to him; Ciarán’s lifeless body in the water; the kuo-toa tribe and a carved frieze of Salibar, Lilliana, and Ciarán; and the disciples of the Magus searching the north for signs of the Magus’s oak tree. However, these images soon shifted to those he had killed in his time on Evergreen, including the illithids and Foxx Rouge. The Reaper then asked him whether he felt he had been a positive influence on the lives of the people of Evergreen. Salibar stated that he believed he had. The visions disappeared.

Ciarán then found himself in the cobbled streets of Xyander. Around him, he saw signs of plague and recognized the deadly outbreak of 544. He was outside a temple, and, looking inside, he saw his past self tending to the sick. He then saw a group of guards approaching the building. Running towards them, he noticed that the group was led by a familiar figure: Cyrus Van der Zee. As Ciarán approached the guards, he started to feel unwell, and plague sores began ravaging his body. With his body deteriorating, he cast a *sleep* spell on the guards, leaving only Cyrus standing. Cyrus simply cast them a disdainful look and continued forward. Ciarán, legs falling apart and walking on nothing but bone, reached for Cyrus and wrapped his arms around him, hugging him. But his arms closed around nothing, and Cyrus and the vision vanished.

In Salibar’s final vision, he found himself in a large library filled with tomes. The Reaper then informed him that his “god [the Magus] ha[d] not yet claimed [him]”. When Salibar tried to explain that he was “seeking them,” the Reaper told him that he had failed.

In Ciarán’s final test, he found himself back in the darkwoods. Above him, he saw the clear and guiding presence of the Moon, but he heard a set of heavy footsteps approaching behind him. He turned to find himself facing the Stranger. The Reaper informed Ciarán that no one god had claimed his soul, and he would have to choose either the Man on the Moon or the Stranger.

Salibar, in the meantime, found himself before the Reaper with a set of scales. On one side was a feather. The other side was empty. His life was to be weighed against the feather and judged. The Reaper reached into Salibar’s chest and pulled out his heart, placing it on the other side of the scale. Immediately, the heart caused the scale to fall. The Reaper informed him that Ciarán was searching for him and could save his soul from purgatory if he arrived in time.

Ciarán finally made his decision. While he initially turned to the moon and thanked them for saving him once before, remarking that they had always guided him and helped, he found himself drawn to the Stranger. Gazing at his *shadowfell brand*, he expressed fear that the darkness and the Stranger already had a hold of his soul. Hesitatingly, he reached for the Stranger. The figure burst into a flock of ravens, and Ciarán’s hand grabbed hold of an object  - Salibar’s heart – and lifted it.

Salibar’s heart, lifted by Ciarán, balanced the scales. Satisfied, the Reaper then allowed Ciarán and Salibar to return to the land of the living.

## **Final Days in Misclap**

Waking up in Misclap, Salibar found himself without an arm and feeling devoid of some of his power. Matron Ziroli welcomed him back from the dead and fitted him with a metallic prosthetic arm. She informed him that only some extremely potent magic would restore his arm. Ziroli also returned something they had found in his hand: a glass shard from the Mirror of Kathepis. She gifted him a small pewter box to store the shard in and to hide its magical signature. Ziroli knew precisely what the shard was; however, she promised to keep his possession of the mirror piece a secret. Expressing that she did not know what Salibar’s designs with the mirror were, she told him that such an object should be “thrown in the ocean” but admitted that such an object “ha[d] a tendency to be found”.

Upon inspecting his lead lockbox, Salibar also found a ring. Identifying this as a ring of messaging, he slipped it on his finger. Immediately a deep voice responded in his head: “you took long enough to find that”. He recognised the voice as that of Titus Kiyth. Titus revealed that he had “destroyed” Salibar’s shard of the mirror, and when Salibar told Titus that the Order of the Eleventh Eye had warned the party about him, the half-orc remarked that he believed himself to still be following their ways. According to Titus, he only wanted to destroy magical artefacts that had the potential to cause harm to Evergreen.

Soon, Lilliana and Ciarán returned from their journey. On the docks, Ciarán, upon seeing Salibar alive, ran and embraced him, and Salibar hugged him back. Auntie Greenleaf told Salibar that he had good friends and that she was happy to help people who were so willing to risk their lives for their friends.

Over the next four/five days, the group recovered from exhaustion and their ordeals. Salibar became acquainted with his new arm, Lilliana worked to defuse her Wands of the War Mage, and Ciarán visited a temple to the Man on the Moon to ask for forgiveness.

Arriving at the temple at night, Ciarán prayed to the Moon and apologised for choosing the Stranger. He admitted that he was terrified of the Stranger but believed the Man on the Moon would be justified in rescinding their blessing.

The Man on the Moon listened to his prayer and appeared to Ciarán in a beam of moonlight. They reaffirmed that Ciarán was worthy of their gifts and told him why he was chosen. The Man on the Moon did not choose Ciarán for his devotion or skill but for his courage. In his downtime, Ciarán also received his boon from Ziroli, receiving information and documents on the Strife of Camlin.

With passage arranged by the Red Hand, the party set off for Kerrithungle.

## Goback

Arriving in the kingdom's capital, the now largely abandoned city of Goback, the party was warned about the strict religious codes of the city. Goback, they learned, worshipped "The Unspeaking God", and any mention of the Old Religion would be punished. The party were also advised to keep quiet and not linger around the city's strange Monolith.

As they were walking through the streets, they saw a stall where a couple were selling apples. Horrifically, the party noticed that their mouths were sewn shut. Ciarán approached and asked where their apples were grown before buying one for himself. Suspicious, he cast *detect magic* on the apple. While he found nothing on the apple, he spotted an invisible figure off to the side of the road. Ciarán waved, and the group approached the stranger.

The old lizardfolk woman, accompanied by a large orcish man, introduced herself as Bobby No-Nose. She asked the party if they wanted to join an expedition into the outskirts of the old city to recover some treasures stored in vaults beneath the old temples. Despite looks that suggested the contrary, she described herself and her comrade as “archeologists” and “treasure hunters”. The party, interested, agreed to accompany her (though Ciarán was hesitant to rob any Old Religion temples).

She then led them to a building, knocked on the door and spoke to a person named Jenkins. Inside, they found a room with the floor removed and a direct entrance to the sewers. The party was introduced to several of Bobby’s comrades, including a short Goliath named “Little John”.

Having gathered in the sewers, the party set off with Bobby’s group towards the temple. After some time walking through the tunnels, one of the men, Tom, slipped on something on the ground, and a horde of insectoid creatures (meenlocks?) ambushed the party. At one point during the battle, Lilliana saw the flaming figure of the Burning God appear in her mind and decimated one of the insects with a *firebolt* spell. The party managed to dispatch the creatures relatively quickly, but Bobby remarked that it had taken them “long enough” before deftly killing the last creature.

The group continued through the tunnels and emerged in another room. There was a figure standing on the other side of the room: a monstrous, four-eyed figure that Ciarán immediately recognised as the Stranger. For the first time, the party saw the figure that had been haunting Ciarán. Ciarán felt drawn to “the Stranger” and approached them. “The Stranger” pointed at Ciarán, and the elf, afraid, asked whether he had “done something wrong”. The figure shook its head and said, in a voice that was obviously not the Stranger’s, “you failed to die”. Large jaws appeared, and the thing lunged for Ciarán, but he parried it with his shield, remarking, “you’re not the one I follow”. When he looked at the creature, he saw a mass of faces and images drawn from his subconscious: what his mother might have looked like, perhaps a long-lost brother. He saw himself leaving Xyander for the first time and was filled with an overwhelming sense that he had made a mistake. Despite this obvious mind manipulation, the party quickly dispatched the creature as well, with Salibar landing the final blow with a powerful smite. They continued towards their quarry.

Finally, they reached the appointed section of the sewers, and the group began to smash their way through the roof above them. However, when they breached the temple vault, they discovered that the room was far from abandoned.

They found themselves face-to-face with a group whose bows were pointed at the party. Little John walked over to the new group, betraying Bobby, and a green-hooded man gave the party an ultimatum: they had ten seconds to choose; either they could die, or they could take on a new job, killing Bobby No-Nose and her party.

Lilliana immediately escalated the situation by casting a *hunger of Hadar* on the hooded figures, and the party was thrown into combat. Ciarán attempted to parlay but failed. Amidst the chaos, Bobby acknowledged Lilliana’s spellcasting and told her to “do it again”. Lilliana then cast a *fireball* into the darkness, killing a number of individuals.

We end the session with the party embroiled in a fight between two groups of “archaeologists” beneath the city of Goback.