The Truth Won't Set You Free

Thumbnail for Season 1 Chapter 18 featuring Sam

## **Synopsis**

In Chapter 18: The Truth Won't Set You Free, Beezaura entered the genie temple and was marched immediately to the Arbitration Chamber where the Efreeti Ahreko was waiting to receive her.  He questioned Beezaura's affiliation with the Lightwhistle Estate Club and corresponding chess pieces, but was unsatisfied with her answers and sent her away to join the others in the lounge adjacent to this room.

As we anxiously awaited a judgment on our perceived offenses, we were told to split up into small isolated rooms where we would be interviewed by "the inquisitors," a pair of Genasi named Murad and Cipro who had been tasked with finding out what our intentions were in accessing these sacred halls.  One by one we endured accusations and pressure from the Genasi as they attempted to find inconsistencies or weak spots in our story, but after an initial round of questioning something unusual happened – the Fire Genasi Cipro approached Beezaura privately to confess that he was sick of the genies' never-ending obsession with seeking vengeance on the Lightwhistles.

Desiring freedom from this endless pursuit, Cipro had hatched a plan that required our cooperation – and he would reward us by providing a means of escape before Ahreko could declare us thieves and infiltrators, or possibly keep us locked up indefinitely like our recent acquaintance Shaleer Olivinus.  We would pretend to have desirable information regarding the Lightwhistles and show a willingness to cooperate – which would give us access to "the Sanctum," a section of the temple reserved for magical experimentation, building traps and puzzles, and most importantly: applying curses.

The genies had developed enchanted crystals that carried something Cipro referred to as a Curse of the Djinn, a powerful spell capable of tracking your whereabouts anywhere you go – including across alternate planes of existence.  Also held in the Sanctum were a number of rare creatures for the purposes of study, including a number of Zhuggs – elusive little critters with the ability to teleport and warp to other dimensions.  The idea was simple in theory: imbue the Curse of the Djinn to one of these Zhuggs, set it free, and then escape without being noticed so that Ahreko would believe one of his prisoners – who possessed information he greatly desired – had disappeared off of the material plane.

Cipro marched us to the Sanctum and talked his way through the Genasi there before placing a decoy curse on Graven that proved sufficient to fool Ahreko into thinking the correct one had been applied.  When the coast was clear, we hurried to the room where the exotic creatures were being held and decided that inducing maximum chaos would keep the Sanctum guardians busy while we slipped out the back – so we unlocked all the cages and Cipro snagged a Zhugg to affix the Curse of the Djinn to before it warped away.

Sliding through the chute designed for discarding magical waste, we landed in a series of tunnels with an excess of unstable arcane debris and thick gray ooze that appeared to be runoff from magical experimentation.  With some clever maneuvering of a plow-like device that Safira discovered, we bypassed the hazardous refuse – and it seemed like we were moments from the surface when Cipro got his foot caught on some of the goo, which triggered a flurry of angry insects to descend upon us.

With injuries mounting and a few moments of flirting with disaster, we forced our way through the arachnids and their webs to reach a portal that deposited us on the surface – seemingly not far from the boardwalk that we fell from earlier today.  Cipro wanted no part of our plan to head back toward the temple to reunite with Erland and Jillian, and he scurried off in the opposite direction without so much as a farewell nod.

## Trivia

* Natural one count: one natural ones was rolled in this Chapter, by Sam.