The Hall of the Forsaken

"The Hall of the Forsaken" is episode 68 of SuperQuest Saga. The Logician's puzzles continue to terrorize the team as they descend through the Library of Ancients...

## Synopsis

### Introduction

* Will Stark shall be your enshrouded dungeon master for this evening.
* Josh Freeland is playing Sebastian Crenshaw, The Forsaken, level 10 Fighter.
* Your Special Guest Jake is playing Persephone Goldpetal the firbolg druid.
* Brian is here to play Echo for the 68th episode, 70th recording. He’s a wizard and a rogue.

### Recap

Last time the party arrived at The Library of Ancients where they made pretty quick work of the guards. Inside the tower they found crazy water flowing upwards instead of downwards. The Logician announced himself saying “Welcome to my riddle, good luck.” The party solved the Dawn and Dusk riddles. Persephone revealed she is a mathematician with that natural Fibonacci Sequence in the Dawn Garden. They defeated the bronze minotaur holding the Dawn Stone. Without resting, they immediately proceeded into the Dusk door where they found an empty stone room with a blazing brazier containing a glowing indigo stone. Persephone got hit with something very sharp and they noticed a shadow of a dragon on the wall as the doors closed.

### Shadow of a Dragon

The Logician’s voice can be heard echoing throughout the room. “If the form of idea and the things which participate in them are the same; they must have something in common.”

Persephone cannot see anything in the room, just the shadow of the dragon on the wall, but she definitely felt something when she got attacked. She turns around to see the shadow of the dragon and casts Faerie Fire over the shadow. Her new spellcasting focus is the Orb of Thalassia; she holds it aloft and fire crashes out of it like a wave over the shadow, lighting it up with flames in various shades of blue. The dragon slides along the wall and backs up to line up Echo, Persephone, Primina, and Sebastian’s shadows, hitting them with shadowy flames. They do not see any physical fire, but feel themselves hit with the necrotic damage from the direction of their shadows. Everyone but Persephone manages to avoid the worst of the damage. Primina looks around and she asks for the rest of the group’s advice. “What do I do? It’s invisible!” Echo advises her to hold her action, he has a good idea. She moves to the left and waits for his signal. Sebastian uses a healing syringe on himself, then aims his BFG at the glowing shadow on the wall. His shot hits the shadow and it turns to snarl at him. Since that seemed to do something, he takes another shot and hits it again. Echo moves towards where the fiery attack came from and around to the opposite side. He uses his gun to shoot a ball of force energy directly at the shadow; he notices that the shadow of the dragon reacts to the damage before his projectile actually hits the shadow. It reacts when the shadow of the projectile hits it. Echo follows up his attack with a Fire Bolt and lands a critical hit. He asks everyone else if they saw that the shadows did damage, and he checks out the brazier in the middle of the room. It’s a magic fire that will be difficult to quench, and a Dispel Magic would need to be a high level to put it out. He tells Primina to use her shadows to attack. Primina maneuvers to an area where she will avoid hitting her friends, but the shadow of her fire breath will hit the shadow of the dragon. The shadow of the dragon manages to dodge some of the damage, but she does some damage.

Persephone holds the Orb of Thalassia up and casts Daylight, she positions the light source to give them longer shadows so they might be able to attack the dragon from farther away. This new light source does something unexpected: it creates new, lengthened shadows, but the shadows that were originally in the room before the spell was cast remain the same. She realizes that the original shadows caused by the brazier light are not natural, there’s something magical about them. Persephone uses a healing syringe and moves to get her shadow away from the dragon. The shadow of the dragon attacks Sebastian’s shadow; a bite and one claw attack miss, but one claw attack hits. Sebastian moves back towards the brazier, doubling the size of his shadow, and pulls out his sword. He tries swinging his sword in a way that the shadow of his sword strikes the shadow of the dragon. His attack deals massive damage, so he goes in for a second attack and bloodies the shadow of the dragon. The shadow of the dragon lashes out with a claw attack, but because Sebastian’s shadow is so large the damage is reduced. Echo casts Darkness centered on the brazier; the shadow of the dragon and all other magical shadows disappear; the only shadows that remain are those from Percy’s Daylight spell. They have a few minutes to regroup and strategize.

Primina suggests they follow Sebastian’s lead and stand close to the brazier with attacks ready when the shadow of the dragon reappears. Sebastian hopes the fire in the brazier will drop when they defeat the dragon so they can grab the Dusk stone. Sebastian gets his sword ready to go, Persephone prepares to cast Primal Savagery on herself, Primina readies to attack with her bite, claws, and horns, and Echo readies his gun and a Fire Bolt. Echo says, “This darkness is not the only thing that’s going to drop this round.” As he drops his Darkness spell.

Their shadows, tripled in size, tower over the shadow of the dragon as it reappears. Sebastian swings down twice with his sword, dealing three times the amount of damage due to his shadow size, and absolutely destroys the shadow of the dragon, which disappears in a shadowy smoke. Their magical shadows and the fire in the brazier disappear into shadowy smoke as well; the only thing remaining is the indigo sphere.

### It's Time

Echo grabs the stone and the group takes a rest to patch themselves up. They now have two stones, one orange and one indigo colored. The group heads back to the teleportation device; a dais with a glowing white energy crystal above and a glyph below. Echo and Persephone coordinate to drop the stones into the notches at the same time. When they drop the stones onto the device, the white crystal changes color and glows a bright golden. Sebastian asks what they do now. Percy suggests they touch it. Echo touches it and realizes he needs to focus his arcane energies to teleport them to the next room.

The party appears on a platform with an identical teleportation device. The platform stands atop a spiral staircase that winds around the perimeter of the tower. There is darkness on the right and on the left are shelves of endless books that line the walls, descending along with the stairs.

Persephone leads the way followed by Primina and Sebastian. Echo lags behind as he scans the covers of the books. He sees all kinds of historical books, arcane books, books about biology, books about the planes of existence and physics, spellwork and the nature of magic, the philosophy behind the arcane. Some of these books look very valuable.

Echo takes out a tiny, ornate, gold-lined chest. He uses the Secret Chest spell and uses this tiny chest to summon a larger chest hidden on the Ethereal Plane, and starts grabbing valuable books to stuff inside. The group makes slow progress as Echo tries to quickly scan each section of the bookshelf along the stairs to grab the most valuable looking books. He’s able to fill his chest with books worth 24,000 credits. Sebastian searches the books for anything written in Orc and finds nothing. Persephone finds a few books; one on the history of the Singers dating back 10,000 years, one that studies the social hierarchy of the Singer nations even further back, and a scientific review of Singer culture in the modern age. Echo offers to keep Percy’s books in his chest but she tells him she has some space in her bag.

They make it safely to the bottom of the stairs and find an enormous circular room that is 200-ft in diameter. There is a huge iron double door on the northernmost wall; each door has a large glass orb embedded into it. At the center of the room is a 30-ft tall Umbrium pillar that is absorbing any light sources in the room. The pillar is covered in Orcish runes and encircled by four objects on the ground; three black pedestals each 3-ft in height and a black lever that sits on the southern side of the pillar.

### I Think It's About Death

Echo checks out the pedestals and finds each one has a plate that rotates on its surface. These plates are covered in modern symbols that he recognizes. He takes a closer look at one and sees five symbols: a coffin, a sword, a skull, a door, and an hourglass. The plate has an Elven inscription around it.

“*The man who devised it does not need it, does not want it. The man who bought it does not use it. The man who used it does not know it*.”

Echo starts puzzling it out, and Sebastian checks out the center pillar. The runes seem to repeat some insane phrases. “Flesh so fine, so fine to tear. To gnash the teeth. The skin to strip to plate. So nice to plate the strips, so nice. So red the drops that fall. Blood so red, so red, so sweet. Sweet screams, pretty screams, singing screams, scream your song, sing your screams.” Sebastian uneasily relays this information to the others. Persephone moves to look at what Echo is reading and realizes she can’t read Modern Elven so she goes to inspect the door instead. It’s made out of some sort of black iron, it’s rather enormous, and the glass spheres are about 2-ft in diameter each and are empty.

Echo turns the plate with the symbols on the pedestal to select the coffin. He explains to Percy that the dead guy who uses a coffin doesn’t know, the guy who bought it doesn’t use it, and the guy who made it doesn’t want it because he’s alive. He moves on to the next pedestal and sees five symbols; a bishop, a knight, a rook, a queen, and a king from the space chess game. The Elven inscription reads:

*“I stand beside the holy man; the monarchs fear my wrath.
None may move the way I can, ever the crooked path.”*

Echo turns the plate to select the knight. On the chessboard the knight is next to the bishop and no other pieces move the same way.

The last pedestal has four symbols; harp, fire, clock, death. The inscription reads:

*“What man loves more than life,
Fears more than death or mortal strife.
 What poor men have, the rich acquire,
And all contented men desire.
What misers spend, and wastrels save.
And each man carries to his grave.”*

Echo turns the plate to the clock. Nothing happens, and it seems like they need to pull the lever. Echo checks with everyone to make sure they’re okay with the answers and Percy pulls the lever. The pillar begins to give a dark black glow and that glow transfers directly from the pillar, into the lever, and into Persephone and she takes necrotic damage.

### In Which Some Major Overthinking Occurs

They puzzle it out more and swap the plate with the knight to select the queen. Echo takes necrotic damage as the pillar glows black again. He takes another look to see if they missed something, and it becomes plain that the third pillar where they selected the clock symbol only has four options where the others have five. He shares this oddity with the party and Persephone notes that none of the four symbols seem to line up perfectly with the riddle. The answer has to be a fifth element that isn’t there; Sebastian suggests that maybe two match up so selecting a space between would be the correct answer.

Echo looks at the pedestal to see if it has been tampered with in any way, but doesn’t see anything. After much discussion, they decide that “Nothing” is the best answer, and select a space between symbols as their answer. Sebastian pulls the lever and the necrotic energy begins to glow on the pillar again, but, instead of flowing into the lever, the energy transfers into the two glass orbs on the door. A black miasma fills the two orbs and the door opens, revealing a long, dark hallway beyond.

### The Hall of the Forsaken

The party ventures through the door; the hallway extends about 30-ft until it opens into a wider corridor. This corridor is of dark stone floors and walls, and at a glance it appears to be a cultural or historical exhibit with glass cases lining the wall, all holding items both ancient and unremembered. Persephone takes a closer look and it becomes clear that all the items are of Orcish in origin. There’s a broken tablet in Ancient Orcish, which can be read easily by someone who knows Old World Orc. There’s a suit of greenish-black Orc armor, a rusted Orc scimitar, a mosaic of a bare-chested orc with the symbol of Emnity on its chest, a statuette of an orc woman nursing a babe, and a necklace of ornate jade, ivory, and bronze.

Sebastian takes photos of everything. He goes to read the tablet and finds it is an ancient fable or parable with some sort of moral lesson, but it is broken so some of the story is missing. He also notices that all these artifacts have nothing to do with the Cult of Nyarlathotep. These items predate whatever happened to the orcs that caused Nyarlathotep to worm his way into every facet of their culture. This exhibit seems to be a preservation of things that were not touched by his influence. The mosaic of the orc with the Emnity symbol indicates that they were once aligned with the Precepts of Enneanism before Nyarlathotep came. Sebastian wants to take things but he has a feeling the glass cases might set off an alarm if disturbed. He checks just in case, and does not see any sort of trap or alarm system. Persephone casts Detect Magic and does not clock anything magical in the room. Echo starts heading through past the cases to the next part of the hallway.

Beyond the glass cases, the hall empties and the stones on the floor look different. There seems to be an 8x8 grid of 5-ft stone plates, each marked with a large Orcish rune. On the far side of the 8x8 grid, more Orcish runes appear, but this is Ancient Oricish and Echo cannot read it. He interrupts Sebastian’s browsing of the cases and calls him over to read. Sebastian is startled by the runes and reads: “*Be strong or be purged in the flames of failure.”*

### Bend It Like Bastian

Echo thinks that sounds rough. Percy says that they’re pretty strong and asks if there was a rite of passage that Sebastian remembers. Echo throws birdseed into the grid and now there are seeds scattered across the tiles. Sebastian surveys the tiles and notes that each one has the equivalent of a single letter.

Echo steps on the “M” in the first row and it begins to glow orange. Sebastian looks at the grid to see if there are any names of strong warriors that stand out to him. He knows there’s Gruumsh, Chieftain god that most orcs worshiped, Ilnebil was the god of warfare. Echo notices “Power” in the first five rows, Sebastian suggests “Powerful” to fill all eight rows. Persephone remembers the orc on the mosaic had Emnity on its chest, but Emnity doesn’t fill the rows. She tries to think about the other Precepts.

Echo steps off “M” and moves around and steps on to “E” instead, the “M” stops glowing and “E” starts. Persephone thinks that of the Nine Precepts, Emnity fits the best. Echo steps off the glowing “E” and walks along the first row, none of the other tiles light up, and moves to the “M” in the second row. He moves along this way up the rows to “N”, then “I”, then “T”, and “Y”. Echo looks to Sebastian for guidance; Sebastian has trouble because they’re trying to spell the Common spelling of “Emnity” with the Orcish runes and it’s not translating correctly.

Echo intuits that they need to think about this differently. They need to pick a word that fits the question and find the word in Orcish. The party works together to brainstorm some words that might be the right answer. The first word they try to translate is “Strength” and Sebastian tells them the Orcish word is “Lok’tar” which is one letter short of what they need. Echo tries to spell it anyway and throws on the accent at the last row. He sends Jhank forward after lighting up all eight rows; Jhank fries as a wall of fire jets up, preventing him from moving past the eighth row. He’ll be back, but Echo notes that it’s traumatic every time Jhank dies.

Sebastian steps on one letter and tries to throw something across to the area beyond the grid. The wall of fire blasts up again. Sebastian suggests that they can try different words and then throw things across to test if their answer is correct instead of jumping into the flames themselves. Sebastian tries “Lok’tar” again but stands on the seventh row without moving forward. He throws a screwdriver from his robotics kit, and the flames do not leap up. Sebastian then leaps forward trying to get across; as he jumps, the runes on the floor shatter and he is able to pass through safely. Echo, Persephone, and Primina follow his lead and they move down the rest of the hallway to a door.

### It Is Indiana Jones!

The door is 5-ft wide and 10-ft tall and it leads to a thin hallway that opens to a 40x30-ft chamber. This chamber is lined with 20-ft tall orc statues, all staring downwards. These statues all appear to be orcs of treat standing; they are dressed in the apparel of chieftains, warriors, and leaders, male and female alike. There are twelve statues, six on each side. Sebastian looks to see if he recognizes any of the figures. A whisper echoes through the chamber. “Only those who honor the past may pass.”

Sebastian recognizes a couple of the statues as famous warlords so legendary that no one knows if they actually existed, who supposedly led Orcish nations to conquer a lot of land. Persephone knows Sebastian was raised to be more human, but asks him if he knows of any customs for meeting royalty or someone of high station. Sebastian knows that orc culture is all about strength and domination; anyone who takes control of a group of orcs expects everyone to be subjugated underneath them. One would be expected to kneel before their chieftain. Echo asks which one is in charge, but they all look like equals.

The party moves up to the first row of statues and kneels. Nothing happens. Echo knows that this is the right track, in order to pass they need to honor the leadership of the past. He looks to Sebastian as their best bet to figure out how to proceed. Sebastian suggests kneeling in front of each statue. They kneel before the first row, then the second row, and nothing happens. As they approach the third row they can hear a fluttering wind and they quickly kneel. Everyone feels a strong wind brushing over their heads. They kneel again before the final three rows and nothing happens; they are safely to the other side. They find another doorway with another hallway beyond.

In this room is an empty chasm that fills the 40x30-ft room. Directly across the chasm from them is another door with a glowing Orcish inscription above: “A warrior’s last leap to prove their worth.” Echo throws some fucking birdseed on it and the seeds land on an invisible floor. He leads the way, sprinkling birdseed to show the path, and they make it safely across to the next door.

Beyond the other door is another hall with a small antechamber. At the center of the chamber is a glass case housing a black iron horn. The iron horn is covered in an Ancient Orcish inscription; Sebastian moves in to inspect and reads “The grave is no bar to my call.” On the far wall of the room is a very anachronistic door, it is a large metal door with an electronic pad for a lock.

Echo casts Detect Magic; the horn is giving off Conjuration magic. Persephone suggests checking out the lock since that might be something Echo can pick. “Maybe we can bypass this and not call vengeful spirits forth, maybe? If that is what this thing does?” Sebastian smashes the glass and takes the horn while Echo and Percy check out the door. Nothing bad happens to either group; Sebastian now has a cool magic item, and Echo pushes open the door.

### The True Gauntlet

Inside it is pitch black. Echo flashes his bracer jack light into the room; it is a room of pure steel floors and walls divided into a 9x6 5-ft square grid on the floor. Across the room is a closed steel door. Echo throws bird seed on the floor; nothing happens. He does not detect any magics. Echo steps inside and a series of very bright lights turn on, starting closest to him and moving back towards the other side of the room. A fourth set of lights turns on and reveals a big glass panel above the door across the room. Inside the glass room is a podium, behind which stands a Warforged that can only be The Logician.

The Logician is a thin, tall figure. Its face has seven different sized aperture lenses, the crown of its head is elongated, almost to a point but not quite. It is tall and skinny in body; on its chest is a circular light with two lines extending up over the shoulders. Its head is on the end of a long, tubular-like neck, and similarly, its hands are on the ends of long tubular-like arms with ten digits on each hand.

“I must say, I am impressed. The Hall of the Forsaken was most likely to be your downfall. Still, don’t get too confident… Confidence is a slow and insidious killer. The true gauntlet begins now.”

## Characters

### The Party

* Sebastian Crenshaw: a half-orc fighter. Stealing all the artifacts.
* Persephone Goldpetal: an albino firbolg druid. Not interested in summoning spirits.
* Codename: Echo: an elf wizard/rogue. Supreme with his bird seed.

### NPCs

* Primina: a genetically engineered young woman. The MacGuffin. So stronk now.
* The Logician: a Warforged. One of The Freelancers. Loves riddles.

## Trivia

### Out of Character

* Every room in the Dawn Garden from last episode had a clue to the number they needed to pick hidden amongst the statues and stuff.
* The "Nothing" riddle is from the game Silent Hill: Homecoming

### Mechanics

* The Orb of Thalassia is a +1 to Persephone's spellcasting mod. It provides resistance to cold damage. It holds 10 charges that can be used to cast Wall of Water, Tidal Wave, Control Water, or Watery Sphere. 1d6 recharge per 24 hours; if a 1 is rolled then the orb is destroyed.
* The black iron horn Sebastian picked up is a magical item that functions like the Silver Horn of Valhalla.

### Dice Breakdown

#### Nat 20's (5 total)

* Brian (Fire Bolt)
* Freeland (Investigation)
* Special Guest Jake (Investigation)
* Brian (Intelligence)
* Brian (Intelligence)

#### Nat 1's (1 total)

* Will (Initiative roll-off as Dragon Shadow)