Session 42-B: Thoughts and Prayers

## Key Plot Developments

Pix, Glyn, and Misu prepare to seek out their share of ingredients for the demon lord-banishing ritual. Glyn and Long-Ears speak about Long-Ears’ frustrations at his inability to protect Glyn. Pix reads the inspirational letter Bogtooth left behind before the Bogtooth, Trix, and Tremble group departed.

Glyn decides to seek Grazilaxx’s assistance with teleportation, so he delivers a sending. Y and Skriss appear and teleport Glyn, Misu, and Pix to meet with Grazilaxx in the Society of Brilliance’s cavern.

Grazilaxx expresses his desire to help the team in exchange for an important boon: freeing his pod of mind flayers from Cyrog, the undead elder brain controlled by Orcus. Elder Brains, he says, are ascended mind flayers that have telepathic dominion over their thralls. When Cyrog was killed and immediately resurrected by Orcus, the rest of Grazilaxx’s pod was fell under the demon lord of undeath’s control.

When the team agrees to help, Grazilaxx explains the forces at play:

1. Orcus, who possesses both an incredibly powerful weapon called the Wand of Orcus and the Deepking’s hammer of the greater devils (taken when Gracklstugh fell), has taken over the pod and left Cyrog in control. Orcus is known for his plans to exterminate all living beings and populate the world with the undead.
2. The pod is populated by vampiric mind flayers. Because it’s two levels deep and mind flayers can levitate between the levels, the party will need to fly to move from level-to-level without making noise. Misu can’t cast most spells without verbal communication, so this poses a complication.
3. The mind flayers also use thralls. If the thralls are freed, they may be made into allies; if they aren’t, they must be dispatched quickly.
4. A utilitharid (an advanced mind flayer) named Tobulux has also taken an interest in the pod and has partnered with Cyrog. Tobulux is the leader of the empty-scabbard killers, who are known to Glyn as psionic assassins from Gracklstugh. Glyn realizes he interacted with Eldgrim, Tobulux’s second-in-command, before Gracklstugh fell. Misu suggests taking advantage of Tobulux’s ambitions and playing him against Cyrog; Grazilaxx concurs.
5. Cyrog has incredibly strong telepathic abilities. Grazilaxx suggests counteracting his influence by using modified brain worms. These creatures normally eat brains and turn their hosts into mind flayers, but these altered beasts (improved by Skriss’s experimentation) can block Cyrog’s influence and allow them to stealthily ambush the elder brain.

The team gives Grazilaxx messages to pass on to the second group if they die. Grazilaxx, in a show of kindness, compliments the team and wishes them well. Glyn takes the opportunity to remind Grazilaxx of the demon lord Graz’zt’s sexual interest in him; the mind flayer is uninterested. Y and Misu flirt.

The group is teleported to the mind flayer’s layer, where they note the presence of some empty-scabbard killers (Tobulux’s group). The group dispatches their opponents but draws the attention of a non-vampiric mind flayer. Before it can call for allies, they slay it. The team feels paranoid and uncomfortable; they communicate using improvised sign language. Since the mind flayer lair is full of silent telepaths, any verbal communication might echo throughout the corridors and reach Cyrog.

Glyn goes through some of the mind flayers’ chambers and notices odd, sentimental items in one room—including what looks to be a series of children’s drawings of a human mother, father, and child. The father is depicted as slowly becoming a mind flayer. He surmises that mind flayers may remember who they were before they transformed, or that one mind flayer in particular has retained some of his sentimentality towards his previous iteration. He wonders if these pictures belong to Grazilaxx.

The group continues to scramble through the layer. Soon, they encounter sickly, grey mind flayers with tattered robes. As they try to avoid them, they reach the center of the layer. A powerful wall of force prevents them from reaching the chamber’s center, but they can see the huge, pulsating elder brain inside. Pix attempts to shatter the barrier with Dawnbringer, but even the sword of light can’t break the wall of force. This alerts Cyrog to their presence.

The vampiric mind flayers attack the party, nearly sucking out Pix’s brain. Glyn slays them, buying the team a brief respite. But the elder brain knows they’re here. It loathes their existence. And it commands an army of the undead.

## Memorable Quotes

* **Long-Ears:** Why is it that my eyes burn, but I have not recently jumped into lava at your behest?
* **Glyn:** Oh! Uh, well it could be that you haven’t slept…because when your eyes, when you use them a lot, they get tired. You know what tired is?
* **Long-Ears:** NO! I prefer death!
* **Glyn: Well,** instead of killing you...I could just release you from your summoning?
* **Long-Ears:** …could that have happened at any time I was in pain?
* **Glyn:** …yes.
* **Long-Ears:** Please grant me that sweet release.

**Misu:** The best healing is a dead enemy!

* **Glyn:** Hey, Misu? Does Beze sleep?
* **Misu:** No…he’s a machine.

* **Pix:** I’ll try to make this as Boggy as possible!
* **Misu:** The accent’s a bit thick for me.
* **Glyn:** Yeah, what was that bit about eating us all the time?
* **Pix:** No! That was *beatin*g. You need to go get your ears checked.
* **Glyn:** …I’m self-conscious about my ears.

**Bogtooth (in his letter):** Pix, we need you to stay alive cause no one can write better songs about us.

* **Bogtooth (in his letter):** Chipgrin once called you a “dynamite dame.”
* **Glyn:** Pix, do you know what dynamite is?
* **Pix**: Hmmm. Dynamite. Dyna. Mite. Dynamite! Mite is a small insignificant bug. Is he saying I’m a small—
* **Misu**: It sounds a little like dinosaur! Massive. Ancient!
* **Pix:** So either he’s calling me massive, or an insignificant little bug? Chipgrin! Well, I guess I’ve never seen me outside my body.
* **Bogtooth (note):** Well ya know, I think you’re ALL dynamite dames!

* **Pix (regarding Long-Ears):** Thank god that creature isn’t here anymore and I can eat this breakfast in peace. Little eyes and human teeth, oh gosh.
* **Glyn:** Oh, you mean Vizeran?

**Vizeran (regarding giving Glyn the specific coordinates of his tower): G**ood query. In case you are compromised by any of the mind-controlling demon lords, I am going to modify your memories so that you forget this after it is sent.

* **Y:** Grazillaxx has been stressing out like crazy about this. So we’re gonna get in there, you’re gonna kick some ass, and then we’re gonna save the world!
* **Misu:** You got a plan to take out these mind flayers?
* **Y:** I DON’T!
* **Skriss:** But I do.

* **Grazilaxx:** I am led to believe that the demon prince of death himself, Orcus, arrived in Gracklstugh. And he wasn’t only wielding his wand…he was also wielding the hammer of the greater devils.
* **Misu:** Hnnng!
* G**lyn:** Is that the one—
* **Misu:** YES! ….yes.

**Grazilaxx:** An elder brain is a singular intelligence. It is the thing to which all mind flayers aspire to one day become. It possesses the absolute command of the divergent possibilities of scientific experimentation, of growth, of change--or unraveling the order of things. What Orcus has done to Cyrog is to pervert an elder brain’s directive. He has forced it to expend its energy into only one route…the route of undeath, of the extermination of all life.

* **Grazilaxx:** If you all die, what message would you like to be shared with the others?
* **Pix:** If…if we DIE?
* **Grazilaxx:** It is a reasonable possibility.
* **Glyn:** Tell Bogtooth that it was okay that he hit me those times. And that the other two will need him to be a good leader if we’re not there. Tell Tremble that no matter where I am, I’ll be watching out for him and that my power will be his. And tell Trix that I’ll do everything I can to get me and her back to him.
* **Pix:** Please share with my brothers that I love them.
* **Misu:** Tell them gentle repose is a powerful spell. And to Trix… congratulations on getting out of hell.

* **Glyn:** Grazilaxx, um, have you given any thought to the, uh…I think Trix probably told you about the arrangement?
* **Grazilaxx:** I’m not familiar.
* **Glyn:** Oh, um. So, you know Graz’zt?
* **Grazilaxx:** The demon lord of excess?
* **Glyn:** Yeah, so I met him in the library and he offered to not only get rid of the demons in the Underdark but also to help Trix get his soul back from hell. He said in return for that help…he, uh, wanted to, uh, have sex with a mind flayer?
* **Grazilaxx:** Why are you talking to a demon lord? Why would you ever trust ta demon lord? They’re the worst. Listen Glyn, I’m going to lay out several key arguments about how this would never make sense. I‘m going to have 5 sub points under each—

* **Pix (after failing an Insight check):** I dunno, Glyn. I’m sorry, I think Graz’zt might have some competition…
* **Glyn:** What?
* **Grazilaxx:** What?
* **Pix:** What?
* **Misu:** What?
* **Y:** WHAT?!
* **Skriss:** What? Ha. I do not know what’s going on.

* **Skriss:** Hey, it was, uh, nice to chill. We’ll do it again.
* **Misu:** Yeah! After we save the world, huh?
* **Skriss:** Oh, I was thinking, hopefully, in a couple hours…but, you know..
* **Y**: HEY…YOU THINK I CAN BE INVITED TO YOUR LITTLE CHILLIN’ TWOSOME?
* **Misu:** Sure. If we do this, it calls from some chill celebration
* **Y:** If we—do you think we could—SURE! SOME CELEBRATIONS WILL BE IN ORDER!

**Misu:** (Blushes.)

* **Glyn (through improvised sign language):** Do we leave? Talk to the mind flayers?
* **Misu**: (Replies with improvised sign language).
* **Glyn**: Got it. Don’t peel two oranges.

**Cyrog:** Your very existences are revolting.