Aerois - Episode 135: What Goes Up...

Katie Morrison as Aila

 Kim Richards as Nova V'ger

Rhiannon Frost as Sentry

 Tom Hazell as Qillek Ad Khollar

**What Goes Up...** is the 135th episode of the Aerois Campaign. It was broadcast live on both the Yogscast Twitch channel and highrollersdnd Twitch channel on 16th January 2022 from 5PM to 8PM GMT.

*Into the depths of Heartspire do the Stormchasers go...what horrors will they find? Quill's Truesight may know...*

## **Summary**

### **Announcements**

* Mark welcomes everyone and introduces the players.
* Today’s stream marks 6 years of High Rollers.
* Today’s sponsor is D&D Beyond. Call of the Netherdeep is available for pre-order. Use the link to support High Rollers.
* Tom recently turned 30. Rhiannon gave him a lovely hand-made set of Quill dice.
* There is a studio update on Patreon. The TOME has been acquired from @umbraarmoury on Instagram. Kim will be writing all names of the people who were Patrons on 31 December and those who donated to the Studio during the fundraiser in the tome in beautiful copperplate calligraphy.

### **Recap**

*"The party have travelled through the Feywild, aiding their friend Rosemeadow in discovering her true nature and rescuing a family of centaurs from a pair of undead spirit riders. An unexpected visitor to the battle, a simulacrum of Xarkira, mage and commander of the Valkyrian Empire, arrived injured and attempted to sew more chaos, but ultimately our heroes prevailed, the spirits disappeared, the simulacrum destroyed.* *Returning to their other Feywild task, the party have begun to travel towards the city state of Heartspire, home of Thalia Whisperwind, who fled centuries ago having been cursed by a powerful sorceress, following her terrible actions as the princess here. To undo the curse, the party escort Thalia to confront Mesmera, the woman who cursed her, with suspicions that more may be at play. Just before reaching the enormous briar wall that surrounds Heartspire, some of the party travelled through a valley of tall flowers, whereupon they were confronted by Amidor, an awakened dandelion who sees himself as a valiant knight. Amidor is a citizen of Heartspire, but was thrown out by a group of "false knights" after taking Amidor's 'beeloved' prisoner. Mistaking Lucius for an Eladrin lord, Amidor has agreed to try and aid the party in getting back inside the city, and before the enormous wall that looms before them, the party have taken a moment to rest."*
### **Part 1**

*The team attempt to break through the briar to sneak into Mesmera's domain!*

As they are finishing their long rest, they notice that Thalia is in a worse state than she has been previously: she can no longer move her arm or shoulder, she has laboured breathing and is occasionally coughing up specks of blood. Thalia offers to answer any questions she can before they try to make their way into the city; Amidor also offers to tell them what he can. Lucius asks what they will come up against in terms of guards: Amidor tells him of the guardians that stand in front of the gates to the palace, there are also knights that are disguised with illusion but their hands feel like pincers and claws – there are not many, but they are not affected by the rules that Mesmera has laid down: they are able to fly, to injure others and destroy things, and he thinks that this is Lady Mesmera’s rule. Amidor recites the rules: the rule of three – any harm done to a living being shall be returned to an attacker thricefold, the rule of grounding – no creature in Heartspire can fly, and the rule of destruction – one creature cannot destroy the property of another. Mesmera thinks that if the rules do not apply to the Mesmera’s knights, then the party should be able to harm them without having damage reflected, but she says that the knights should be Elven, Eladrin or Hobgoblin humanoids and not any other species. Lucius thinks that they should try to lure the knights out of the castle or from the skies above the city and dispatch them quietly where no one else can see.

Amidor tells them that most of the people in Heartspire are the citizens – artists, poets and lovers: Amidor is new to the city and was awoken by Mesmera herself. Mesmera has mercurial moods – she may stay in the palace for centuries, then leave on a whim. On the day she awoke Amidor, a decade or two ago, she did so out of kindness with him and his fellow flower brethren, but there have been other times that she has been angry and far darker. Thalia does not believe that they will be able to fight Mesmera – she is likely to be bound by her own rules, making her almost impossible or dangerous to attack – they may need to use guile to make her change her rules. Thalia is concerned about the knights – they sound strange to her because, even though she has been away for a long time, Heartspire was always all about love, following your desires and being with the people you care for – they would never torture someone and forcibly separate them from someone they love unless something has been done to them. Nova wonders if the knights are Xarkira’s forces.

Thalia tells Sentry about the guardians outside the tower – they are golems, large statues of a lion and an elk that would come to life to protect the city gates. Nova asks Thalia if bloodlines and succession matter in this place – in theory, when Thalia turned her parents to stone, she should have become the next Archfey, but somehow Mesmera did instead and used the power to put Thalia’s curses on her. Thalia thinks that Mesmera gained the power because she was truly loved by the people – it is why Thalia was so jealous of her – because Heartspire is a place of love, desire, beauty and art, that is why Mesmera became the Archfey in place of Thalia. Thalia hopes that if Mesmera is somewhat broken or twisted that the Knight of Love may come to aid them eventually – a physical manifestation of love itself.

Lucius proposes that they simply try to enter Heartspire like anyone else and just request an audience. Nova and Quill suggest that she and Thalia are hidden because they worry that so much emotion may make it dangerous for the whole party. Sentry suggests asking for a diplomatic meeting with Mesmera, but they are not sure which side of the Empire she stands on. Quill asks Thalia what she plans to do when she is face-to-face with Mesmera: she knows what she wants, nay, has to say but does not know if there is any chance to save herself – she does not really care, but feels that it is her responsibility to apologise for what she did to Mesmera. Thalia says that she does not expect forgiveness or for her to change her mind, but Thalia wants a chance to save her and help her as a lost soul to find her way. Quill worries that Thalia will lose her temper with Mesmera, but she reassures him that there is no anger, just shame and guilt. Amidor warns them that once they enter the city, their paths will diverge, and he will leave to save Pollenella but will point them in the direction of the palace before he leaves.

They make their way up to the giant, 100-foot briar wall around the city – it is a tangled, dense mass of long, knotted thorns, dense brambles, and thick vines – it is not completely impassable, but is very thick: Amidor, being so small, slips through the small spaces and starts to make his way in. Nova suggests using fire to burn their way in, but the very idea frightens Amidor – there is also a concern that it will attract a lot of attention that they do not want. Lucius thinks that they might be able to use their weapons to cut their way in, but Aila’s hammer will likely not be of any use. When Lucius moves up to the briarthorn wall, clutching The Captain’s Command, the thorns and vines of the wall seem to try to grab at him (which they did not do to Amidor) – they do not manage to grab him, however. Nova again suggests fire, but Lucius is reluctant to do so – since the walls have gone up, no one has really gone in or out of the city. They cannot use an *Arcane Gate* because Nova has not seen the other side of the wall. Lucius casts *Fly* on Nova while she makes herself invisible – she sees that the wall is 100 feet thick and in the middle of the city is a round plaza with a huge tower and it is full of fairy tale buildings with colourful roofs and flowers growing everywhere; there are also lots of gardens, ponds, and amphitheatres around the city. Nova realises that she cannot cast *Arcane Gate* due to some of the restrictions on the spell. While Nova has been trying to work out a way into the city, Rosemeadow has been talking to Amidor, and realising that he had been awoken, she is now looking at flowers around her and quietly wondering if she could do the same thing. Quill considers taking a few people into the ethereal plane and going through in that fashion: Lucius decides to take things into his own hands to cast *Tasha’s Caustic Brew* and to use chromatic control from his gauntlet to change it to fire instead of acid – using multiple casts of this and using a napalm-magma type material instead of actual fire, it burns and cools, coating the hole in the wall in a thick resin-like material.

He calls the rest to follow him as he makes their way through the wall: fortunately, no one in the city notices them enter into the back alley of a fairytale city – only Rosemeadow and Big Cat have struggled because of their large size but they all make it through successfully. Once in the city they do notice some wear and tear that was not visible from the outside – a number of the pastel roof tiles are broken, flower boxes under windows are overgrown and cobblestone streets are not in good states of repair. They look up and see a Goblin’s face pressed to the window, looking from them to the hole in the wall – the young Goblin looks terrified. Lucius holds his hands up to indicate that everything is ok, the Goblin signals to someone behind them and suddenly and older-looking male and female Goblin also appear at the window – they look terrified then grab the younger Goblin and disappear from sight. Rosemeadow starts to use her druidic abilities to fix the hole in the wall, when Sentry uses *Plant Growth* to quickly repair the hole: Rosemeadow is thrilled saying, “I did it!”

Lucius is concerned that the Goblins may report them until Amidor tells him that they are not likely to do any such thing – because of the way the knights treat the people, the people are cowed, and most people try to stay in their homes. Quill casts *Arcane Eye*, Nova makes herself invisible and casts *Invisibility* on four others, Big Cat, Rosemeadow, Thalia and Sentry. Thalia is nursing her arm and cannot help coughing up blood and wincing – Nova tries to stay positive when Thalia can see her but is clearly distressed at her state. While they are occasionally seen by citizens in the back alleys, they are not spotted by any soldiers – they do realise that they will have to move out of the alley ways and into the main streets or plazas in order to get to the palace at the centre of the city, however, and the winged mantis Elves are flying around above those areas. Lucius has noticed a Gnome, wearing a traditional red garden gnome’s hat, perched at a window and staring at them – he goes and knocks on the Gnome’s door – he talks briefly to Lucius advising him to stay off the streets and out of sight of the knights, telling Lucius that they were in a bad mood last week, took his neighbour, Nelly, away to work and that he has not seen her since – he says it is happening more and more and that the knights are cruel. The Gnome points them in the direction of Fanglewood park and tells Lucius that the knights do not go in there before waving him off. Nova asks Amidor about the knights and he tells her that he thinks they are under some sort of illusion – she asks Quill to see if he can see through their illusion with *True Seeing –* he casts the spell. There is magic all around him but the spire and the walls around it do not change: the knights are obscured by very powerful illusion magic. Quill has seen these creatures before, on Azagrat – they are red-skinned men and women in armour with horns and tails, he sees creatures that look like a centaur, but the top half looks like a demon made of rock and molten flesh. He also sees creatures that look like they are made of white bones, carrying long polearms. All of these creatures have been disguised as Centaurs, Elven knights or Treants but are clearly devils and demons: he recognises the flying creatures as Erinyes (female warrior devils), the white bony creatures are Bone Devils, but he does not know what the Centaur-like creatures are. When he looks at Thalia, Quill again notices the image of a six-fingered black hand around her arm, but it looks like it is pressing into the skin, gripping even tighter and more painfully.

Quill sees some of the knights on the ground going door to door, calling for volunteers to serve “Her Ladyship” in the palace – a family of Satyrs looks hopeless as their young son volunteers to go to save his parents and is marched off by the devils and demons. Quill goes back to the group and tells them about the knights’ real identities and the involvement of Graz’zt in this whole situation.

### **Part 2**

*Mesmera's allegiance has been made clear as the Stormchasers sneak into her palace!*

Quill tells the group about the knights taking citizens to work in the palace and suggests that they should volunteer in order to get in, Lucius prefers to tail the Satyr “volunteer” and see if he is put to work in the grounds or the palace itself. They tail the two Centaur-like creatures and the Bone Devil who stop at a few more houses to get “volunteers” including one Eladrin who does not want to go and is viciously assaulted before being dragged off with the rest of the citizens – Amidor points out that the knights are not subject to the rules that Mesmera imposes on everyone else. They realise that these “knights” are not going to the palace and that they are better off going straight to see Mesmera – as they draw closer, there are more knights and fewer people. The flying knights are coming and going from within the tower, and they think that they may be patrolling and reporting to someone in the tower.  Ahead of them is one main road leading into a single gateway going to the main spire. The main tower is made of polished white stone with a blue tiled roof, there are offshoot turrets with pink and green turrets all decorated in spiralling gold filigree in the shape of flowers and roses. The tower itself is surrounded by a short inner defensive wall (about 30 feet high) with a metal gate in front of it that leads into the tower proper. Around the outside of the wall is open space with plazas – there are two giant statues in front of the gate, an elk, and a lion, but also lots of figures looking up at the tower. Nova suggests that she can cast a doorway in the wall without having to see the other side, casting *Passwall* with Tiangong’s help – they move around to the side, trying to avoid the stone guardians.

Nova uses Tiangong to cast *Passwall* to create a temporary passageway through the wall, but Tiangong tells Nova that the enchantment built around the palace was so powerful that they believe that whoever created the enchantment will be aware of what they have done – they begin to hear heavy creaking stone coming towards them. In the direction of the main gates and door, they start to see the emergence of a giant stone paw…

Nova glances up and sees a window high up the tower and Lucius casts *Mirror Image* before a giant stone lion rounds the corner with glowing eyes – as it looks at them with its glowing eyes, they feel some sort of magic hit them, momentarily feeling paralysed, but they are all fine: Thalia calls out, however, as both Kyrie and Rosemeadow are turned to stone. They can hear the other statue coming around the other side of the tower. Lucius averts his eyes to avoid the magical effect of its gaze, estimates where the creature is and lobs a *Vitriolic Sphere* towards it, hitting it with the acid and dichromancy. Nova avoids the gaze of the stone lion and starts wildly firing *Eldritch Blast* in its direction but misses with all three beams, she grabs Thalia and tells her that they will come back for Kyrie while they move away from the golem. Aila also avoids the creature’s gaze and smashes it with two mighty hammer blows, and it stumbles back; Sentry raises her shield to protect herself and casts *Cleansing Touch* on Kyrie, but she is not affected by a spell, she is petrified, so nothing happens – she remains a perfectly rendered, life-like stone sculpture, so Sentry moves to protect Quill.

Quill looks at the stone lion through the *Arcane Eye* and he sees that its eyes start to dim – he uses his magic vision to cast *Blindness* on the creature, but it does not take effect on the statue, then tells the party that it may be safe to look at the lion if its eyes stop glowing. Big Cat turns to look at the lion and attack, then suddenly turns to stone. Aila does not notice, but the lion’s eyes stop glowing: it hits Aila twice with its giant stone paws then keeps melting from the residual acid on it from Lucius’ spell. Lucius looks at the lion and feels no magical effect trying to petrify him, so he moves towards the noise of the incoming elk statue, twins his spell, blasts the lion with an acidic chromatic orb (which also splashes Aila) then lobs the second one at the elk but realises too late that the elk’s eyes are now glowing: fortunately, this time, he resists being turned to stone and throws his dichromancy at the elk. The lion statue looks extremely injured and is barely still standing – its front paw is almost separated from its body, half of its chest cavity is melted away and it has suffered greatly from Aila’s mighty blows: the elk, on the other hand, is relatively uninjured.

Nova does not look at the elk and casts *Synaptic Static* in the region of the oncoming statue, damaging it and causing it to be muddled – with the stone elk coming from the other side of the tower, Nova pushes Thalia behind her protectively and, panicked, tells her not to look at the statues: Thalia calmly tells her, “Nova, I was a medusa for 400 years, I fucking know how petrification works” before telling Nova that she is immune to petrification because of the residual curse on her. Aila takes two almighty swings at the lion, hitting with her first blow and missing with her second, but as the hammer passes the statue the second time, the lightning damage that sparks from it destroys what little is left of it and it crumbles to the ground – she moves towards Lucius and Sentry who are fighting something just around the edge of the tower. Sentry moves further around the tower, *Misty Steps* onto the elk’s head, grabs it by the antlers as it tries to throw her off, and she shields its eyes with her shield and body, yelling “Hit it now, it can’t see!” The elk statue attempts to slam Sentry into the tower thrice and manages to connect her with the tower once – it does not manage to knock her off, however.

Quill casts *Guiding Bolt* on the elk but misses – he does see that there are two Erinyes flying down from the tower, however, and they will be with them in a few seconds, there are also alert horn blaring. Lucius tries to cast a spell at the elk, but it is bucking and going mad from having Sentry on its head, so he misses before moving towards the main door. Nova uses the Amethyst Lodestone to cast *Fly*… and nothing happens because of the rule of grounding – Quill realises that while he knows that he *can* fly, he does not really remember how to – it appears that the rule of grounding is repressing his knowledge of how to fly. Nova then decides to blast the elk with *Eldritch Blast* but only hits with the first beam before moving towards Lucius. Aila throws her hammer at the elk and runs towards Nova and Lucius as the hammer hits the elk, smacking it in the chest and causing it to start cracking from the centre. Sentry lets go of the elk and drops to the ground, superhero style, before attacking blind with Starbreaker, not wanting to be petrified. The elk looks at Sentry and fires a beam at her, *Slowing* her before attacking her with its hooves, striking once.

Quill runs to Rosemeadow and casts *Greater Restoration* on Rosemeadow – a swirl of golden feathers causes the stone to crack and break like a shell from around Rosemeadow and she comes to shouting about the lion’s eyes glowing; Quill asks Rosemeadow if she can cast *Greater Restoration* (she isn’t sure) and asks her to cast it on Kyrie or Big Cat. Lucius sees the Erinyes coming towards them and prepares to cast a *Chromatic Orb* at anything that comes within 90 feet of them. Nova moves up next to the spire and uses the Amethyst Lodestone to cast *Reverse Gravity* (placing it so that it just catches her on the edge) – she now falls upwards and flies past the window she was looking at to end up 100 feet in the air near the top of the tower: there is a large window that appears to look into what appears to be a throne room – when she reaches the 100 foot limit of the spell, Nova stops and gently begins to oscillate beside the tower.

## **YouTube Timestamps**

00:00 - Intro
11:20 - Part 1
1:32:54 - Break time/Donations
1:41:40 - Part 2
2:56:57 - Outro/Donations

## **Featured Characters**

#### **The Stormchasers (Player Characters)**

* Aila
* Nova V'ger
* Lucius Virion-Elluin Elenasto
* Qillek Ad Khollar
* Sentry

#### **Returning NPCs**

* Amidor
* Thalia
* Big Cat
* Kyrie
* Rosemeadow

#### **Mentioned NPCs**

* Mesmera
* Pollenella

## **Featured Locations**

* Heartspire
	+ Main city area
	+ Palace grounds and tower

## **Trivia**

* Tom asks if he can use *True Seeing* with his *Arcane Eye*. Mark tells Tom that no, he cannot, but that once he gets back to Aerois, he can do some research and spend some money to upgrade the spell to do just that (use extra money/spell components per cast to do this). Tom said that he wants a new spell and would call this *True Arcane Eye*.
* The group last saw Azagrat in July 2020, about 18 months prior to this episode. In game, only a few months had passed.
* Mark clarifies that the Valkyrian Empire has a coalition with demonic forces – Fiends, Devils, and Demons serve the Valkyrian Empire (they saw this on The Tassadar). On Azagrat, the Demons are in charge of the planet and generally left alone by the Empire. Xarkira probably worked with a lot of Devils and Demons during the Invasion of Solwynn, but they can be found throughout the Empire. Sentry is aware that Valkyrian uses them as shock troops – he lets them loose, they sew chaos and he has to rein them in again before his more disciplined troops come in and secure objectives or positions.
* Mark suggests that there was a giant juggernaut Guardian warrior in the time of Solwynn called Kulaid (pronounce Kool Aid by Sentry) – the suggestion is that he used to burst through and breach defences. Trott asks if they are canonising the Kool Aid Man.
* The stone statues they fight are constructs and have an Int 3, so are just affected by Nova’s *Synaptic Static* which requires an Int 2 to be affected.
* Nova did not think her reverse gravity plan through. After she casts Arcane Gate, there will be a portal near the window, another one on the ground, and she will be oscillating 100 feet in the air, nowhere near either gate. This would give rise to a lot of thinking over the next week. Kim only had one sentence about the Amethyst Lodestone’s Reverse Gravity spell. She did not think about looking the spell up to check on all the terms and conditions.
* Mark had a series of encounters planned for the party, but with Kim bypassing the rule, she bypassed a lot of shit.
* Mark clarified that Amidor left the party before they got to the palace.
* For the petrification effect, everyone had to make a Con save of 17 - if they had failed by more than 5, the result would have been instant petrification. The NPCs all had +3 to their rolls.