12.27.22 - The Demise of Demise

We decided to take some time to relax and plan while I made a bomb full of glitter and acid to hopefully help us take on Tikulti and whoever else he might have with him. While Dagii and I worked on that, Lilioyasa and Ozrus made pizza and sandwiches. Fayzira mostly just ate pizza and talked about technique with Oz while we worked on our plan. While working on the bomb, one of my sending stones began to buzz, and when Dagii listened to the message it was Tikulti taunting us about the artifacts. They also had an argument about who the artifacts truly belonged to: the elves or the goblins. Tikulti made some demands about bringing him the artifacts back “where it all began,” and if we did northern there would be issues. Dagii asked what we would get in return for the artifacts to which Tikulti replied that we should be happy if he lets us walk out alive.

Once I was done with my bomb, we made our way to the mines in the Cogs where we could access Asherta’s Tomb. The proprietor of the mines was confused about why we had come back since the bugs were gone. Dagii simply told him we were doing an elf extermination as rumors had led us to believe that there was one down below. After that it was easy enough to retrace our steps in the tomb to locate where Tikulti was.

However, when we arrived, we did not see Tikulti, but Demise. She was surrounded by undead creatures of all kinds and Professor Gydd, was tethered to the coffin at the far side of the room. There were also some silver glowing sigils drawn around the statues at the center of the room. Fighting broke out and Ozrus used the bomb I had crafted perfectly! Things were not looking good for our group until Dagii threw a few beads of force and managed to capture Demise within one. This allowed us to take care of her goons without her helping them. When we freed Gydd, they were not really the professor, but a doppelganger. When we asked where Tikulti was, the doppelganger pontificated on whether Tikulti had even ever existed. It seemed that Demise had been in the middle of a ritual to put all the pieces back together which we interrupted.

When the bead of force containing Demise dropped, she almost made it away from us, but Ozrus managed to catch and end her before she could escape. Dagii claimed the remaining pieces of the crown and we stuffed Demise’s corpse into my bag of holding. Lilioyasa found a Staff of Frost that Demise had dropped in her desperate attempt at freedom. On our way out of the mines, Dagii collected his reward for elf extermination. We then went and delivered “Tikulti” to the Captain.

The Captain then demanded we hand over the pieces; however, Dagii would not let that happen, so he offered a counter offer. Dagii proposed that the Captain be allowed to keep the crown and that we were able to keep all the other pieces to return them to the goblin people since the crown could track the other pieces and the weapon could not be built without the crown. That way he would know where we were and he could tell we were not planning to upset the balance of power with the artifacts. He decided that this was an acceptable compromise, so we headed out to meet up with our ship and the rest of our crew.