Portal Pals (10/02/2022)

- Previous session began with the party riding a boat into Ilnathir. Attempted to use Talek as a prisoner, but cultists weren't fooled. Large battle ensued. Party ended up in front of a large magical font with many bleeding cultists feeding it and what appeared to be Eldrin (Alluin's brother) leading them. Alluin screamed and the session ended, picking up...

- with Alluin screaming and immediately launching a fireball at Eldrin. Eldrin pushes through this while cultists continue praying. "Eldrin" turns out to not be true Eldrin as he shouts "HE TOLD ME NOT TO KILL YOU", and proceeds to try and kill the party anyway. A battle breaks out initially focused on "Eldrin", though the party quickly realizes that the cultists should probably be stopped as the magical font appears to be intensifying as blood is fed to it.

- A number of cultists are culled through fireballs and other magical assaults. Mid battle, Dandelion has an internal debate about whether or not to open a portal on top of the blood portal that is being opened in the magical font. Though she knows from her magical training that this may be a bad choice, she pushes ahead shouting "RUN" to the party and unleashes chaos opening a portal full of whispers and milky tentacles directly on top of the opening blood portal. An enormous blast goes off from the center of the font, vaporizing all of the remaining cultists. The blood portal is now completely opened and the two portals begin sucking everyone in.

- "Eldrin" seems pleased by the opening of the portal and begins walking towards it to enter it. As he turns, he animates a nearby tree into a gigantic tree monster which immediately impales the voice-hearing wood elf scout Ilnyas and begins choking the life out of her. The animated tree begins to assault the party as "Eldrin" walks towards the portal. Seeing this, Hadrian erupts with golden wings, takes flight into the air, and launches himself directly at "Eldrin", sending both of them flying through the portal. Witnessing this, both Alluin and Talek decide to step through as well.

- The remainder of the party assaults the tree monster. Fen, definitely terrified, lights the tree on fire reactively not knowing what to do. Kizzik uses the blade that was given to him by Talek and assaults the tree doing a fair amount of damage and exploding both the blade and his arm up to his shoulder. Dandelion shrinks the tree, along with the rest of Ilnyas. The tree is brought down by Leaf's final blow, but Ilnyas is now a charred and tiny corpse. Fen feels tremendous guilt about torching his companion and unbeknownst to the party takes a tiny bone as penance. He and Leaf then enter the portal, following the rest of the party. Xofren and Scott keep watch over the portal area, doing wolf things.

- Dandelion, Ryafyrie, and Kizzik decide to ride back to Therakan to try and enlist the aid of the Inquisitors and to update the council leaders. The council leaders are not much aid, but the Inquisitors are willing to ride back. While in the city, Kizzik is attended to and has an arm grown back from ironwood. The three then ride back to the portal with the Inquisitors in tow. The remainder of the party enters the portal, but the Inquisitors are unable to.

- On the other side of the portal, Hadrian is nowhere to be seen. Time doesn't seem quite the same as the party members enter the portal roughly at the same time, despite much time passing. Their falls are broken by Alluin's clever casting. Looking around, the sky is dark and full of red lightning. There are dunes and only one obvious path to take. After catching up on previous events with each other, they press on through the only available path.

- After some travel, the party comes upon a majestic tiered city made of white marble. They quickly realize that the city is in fact Alescia, or whatever form Alescia takes in this plane.