3.0 In which woe does in fact betide the Maharajah, and, really, everyone.

We find our heroes continuing their journey through the Maharajah's palace, on their way to find Thain's door - and perhaps, inside, another Ascendant.

But first, they needed to rescue Ithal, who was being interrogated by palace guards - so Sajaina, Travize, and Dal split off to pick up the poor guy. With a little help from Timmeron's time-freezing magic (via the magic hat), Sajaina (and her mini-team) successfully broke Ithal out of the interrogation room, and before long, rejoined the party-at-large. All things considered, that worked really well!

The journey through the tunnels continued with an almost shocking lack of incident - due in no small part to Kebrio's position of considerable power in the palace. (Ithal did comment that that Kebrio seemed to have a concerningly large amount of power... but since it was helping the party get through the palace without meeting a painful death, his criticism didn't go much farther than that.)

Eventually, the party came upon a courtyard - a very open courtyard filled with wounded soldiers (after a recent battle with void spawn) - that they would have to cross in order to reach the other side of the palace, where Thain's door was located. But no matter! Sal simply conjured up an illusory wall that looked identical to the actual wall, and the party traversed the courtyard by walking in the small space between the real wall and Sal's fake one.

Or, well, they traversed *part* of the courtyard that way. Everything was fine until one of the Orc soldiers decided to lean against the "wall" that wasn't really a wall at all. Baygrith decided to, uh, fix that problem by pushing the Orc right back on through the "wall."

This all went about as well as you'd expect.

The soldiers could tell that there was *very clearly* something amiss with that "wall," leading to considerable poking and prodding of it by said soldiers - but the real trouble started when a trap within the actual wall was triggered, sending spikes out toward the party! They all leapt away to avoid the spikes... but that put them right in the line of sight of the soldiers in the courtyard. Even worse, that put *Sajaina* in the line of sight of all the soldiers. She's just a little (read: A LOT) wanted by the Maharajah right now, so, her being seen is a problem.

That, also, went about as well as you'd expect.

And thus, a fight ensued.

Some of the party - most particularly, Grukk - fought with violence; others, like Timmeron, fought with magic; still others, like Travize, tried intimidation (with a healthy dose of magic, too). Grukk wound up getting a little too violent and destroyed a tall platform that some archers were standing on, which killed them - Dal actually had to put him in a wormhole to get him to stop. Sajaina was captured, but Karhanza turned her bonds to snakes, so Sajaina could get free. The soldiers eventually decided that the only thing that could stop the party were ballistas, which they aimed at the party - but Perlapae destroyed one by flipping the ground underneath it, and Travize destroyed the other by politely asking of a favor of the stone: to break.

It worked. The party finally made it out of the courtyard...

... And into a corridor filled with yet more angry soldiers! But they were no match for the party: Grukk broke the line of soldiers and Caireann took up the rear, and the whole group made it through without incident.

Still following Kebrio's lead, the party made its way to a temple of sorts - not religious, per se, but certainly a somber, respectful place of reflection.

Inside this temple was a painting of the founder of Mura'Kesz that, according to Grukk and his magic-vision, was very magical. The party spent some time investigating the painting while trying their darndest not to look overly suspicious... to varying degrees of success.

Figuring out what the painting was magical *for*, was a team effort. Timmeron figured out that there were gears behind the painting; Baygrith then worked out that the first step was to put one's hand on the painting, but couldn't determine was step 2 would be; Sal and Travize suggested that the phrase "two hearts joined as one" might be involved somehow, as it was part of the founder's marriage ceremony; and finally, Perlapae then learned from Adalon that the painting changes depending on the lighting in the room, and that "easy answers" would trigger a trap.

So the party decided to turn out the lights in the room and keep looking at the painting. (Kebrio was luckily able to convince all of the other people in the temple at the time, to leave, or else they would have been mightily confused by the change in ambiance.)

Lo and behold, the painting looked completely different in the new lighting! It was then easier to see where one would need to put their hands - and when the painting was touched while speaking the password ("dick lover" in Jamessa, because Mura'Kesz is a funny place sometimes), voila! The painting moved to reveal a corridor!

The party progressed through the following corridors with little trouble. (There was one moment where Travize misinterpreted a clue from some time ago, so the party went left when they should have gone straight - that caused the floor to drop out from underneath them, but luckily, through various forms of teleportation/flight/generally-magical powers, the party survived without injury. And they never made that mistake again.)

The party finally reached the last of the corridors - and beyond them, they could see Thain's door! Wrynn could sense that they already have the key with them, and Sajaina remembered that she had long ago stolen a random key, and she still had it with her... And yep, Wrynn confirmed that that random key wasn't so random after all!

Unfortunately, between the party and the door, there's a mysterious pit filled with a sort of quicksand-like substance, which is being guarded (so to speak) by a sort of gun that shoots out electricity at whatever is nearest to it in the pit. The party can't just walk around the pit, either; while there is a small ledge, the walls seem to be filled with some manner of creepy-crawly that sounds dangerous and best avoided.

Various attempts were made at disabling the gun, but nothing worked. Then the party remembered that they had a magical cornucopia that provides a never-ending stream of fruits and vegetables on command! They were able to distract the gun by throwing produce closer to it than they were at any given time. For an added layer of safety, Perlapae shifted some rock so that the gun would bend in on itself a bit. Safe from the lightning gun, the party made it across the pit by shimmying along a harness/tightrope system they set up.

Opening the door proved to be no trouble. Most of the party entered the room - Sajaina stayed outside with her family (because they were still with the party through all this madness, bless them), and Thain had recently and suddenly (and inexplicably) made itself scarce. But once the rest of the team was inside, it was clear that something was very wrong. One of the walls was blackened, and the ceiling was oozing - almost bleeding - and Ronya, the Ascendant they expected/hoped to find in the room, was nowhere to be found.

Oh, wait. The ceiling really was bleeding. Or, rather, Ronya - who was in the room after all, except she was dead - was bleeding while strung up from the ceiling. It would appear that she never managed to fully Ascend - she was murdered, most likely by Thain, before she could complete the process. Uh oh.

The party tried to leave the room, but they found the space where the door had been, covered by some sort of fleshy substance that immediately "healed" when they tried to cut through it.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the door, Sajaina and her family were suddenly attacked by the Maharajah and Thain!

Eventually, through sheer force of will (along with a whole lot of physical force), the group in the room broke through the flesh-barrier to join Sajaina in her fight against the Maharajah and Thain. It was epic, and dangerous, and exciting.

In time, it was Kebrio who wound up turning the tide of the battle: he took control of the lightning gun, and thus, the entire situation. But instead of using it to, say, either help or hinder the Maharajah (the party wasn't entirely sure which side Kebrio was on at that point), he uses it to threaten Sajaina, because she had "led him on," romantically. Because that was definitely the most important thing in need of discussion at the time.

Luckily, that allowed Timmeron a chance to take advantage of the distraction Kebrio was causing - and thus did Timmeron bring some rocks down upon the Maharajah's head.

As the Maharajah was dying, Adalon took over Perlapae to speak with him about his (their?) plans for Sajaina. Adalon disagreed with what the Maharajah's ideas - "This is not what we had planned," Adalon said.

It was explained, through their conversation, that the first two stones of Viti have been considered missing for some time; however, while the location of the first stone is still unknown, Sajaina has the second stone attached to her heart. Adalon and the Maharajah believed that if Sajaina were to be killed with the stone inside her, it would fix the fertility issues the Sun Elves were having: the "pure power of life" from Viti needed to be born into a Sun Elf (Sajaina), but then that Sun Elf would have to die in order to pass the power through the rest of her people - thus, saving her entire race from extinction. However, Sajaina also currently has Viti inside of her, which was not part of the original plan - killing Sajaina now would save the Sun Elves, but destroy the Laputi.

(The Maharajah also mentions, almost off-handedly, that he literally met Astor during his Maharajah training and could speak with him through a crystal.)

Sajaina told the Maharajah that she may - MAY - be willing to sacrifice herself to save her people, but only if Adalon could absolutely guarantee that the Laputi would survive. Still, though, she thought the whole thing was a bad idea, all in all.

Before that conversation could go much farther, Timmeron again took advantage of the distraction to set things in motion: he froze Kebrio, and Baygrith took the lightning rod from him; Grukk, then, prepared to kill the Maharajah once and for all. The Maharajah managed to get out, "I might have misinterpreted what was meant by 'You will save our people,'" before Grukk finally ended his life.

With the Maharajah gone, Thain apologized to the group, explaining that the Maharajah's brother (Sajaina's father) was the one controlling it, but that his orders were to follow the Maharajah's orders. Since the Maharajah wouldn't be giving any more orders anytime soon, and since Sajaina's father hadn't given Thain any new instructions yet, Thain was on the party's side... though it couldn't promise that it would always be that way, if new orders were given to the contrary.

Thain also, frighteningly calmly, confirmed the party's suspicions that it had murdered Ronya - in fact, Thain had consumed Ronya's powers for himself, so it now has the power of TWO Ascendants.

Meanwhile, Kebrio FREAKED OUT over the death of the Maharajah (and, really, the events of the entire day), so the party took him prisoner - not so much because they considered him a threat or an enemy, but because he was quite literally incapable of making any sound decisions at the time.

They called Captain Veller to, finally, come pick them up as had been planned. Thain brought the group up to the roof of the palace for easy access; on the way, Bagel drops the Maharajah's body into an area that had been the site of a recent void spawn attack at the palace - so it would look like he died in the fight, rather than having been murdered.

Captain Veller arrived not long after, and brought our heroes into the safety of his ship - for some much needed, and sorely earned, rest.