October 25, 2020

On the hill giant’s belt is a key to the prison. After clearing out the dungeon, the party checks in on the Brinewall prisoner to see if she could be of help. She is still just as cagey as she always was, no pun intended, and has no new information to offer, but does agree to help them out if they set her free. Against the dissenting vote of Laudius, Linzi offers Kenda Oxgutter her freedom and Shump-Shump unlocks the cell. Sneaking through the castle, the heroes find a number of ogres sleeping on makeshift hay beds in the hallways where they should be standing guard. The adventurers wound their way up and down staircases and passed through over one thousand doors, visiting places both old and new. Among other discoveries, it was clear from the mess in the dining hall that the birds loved Genjamin’s stew! Eventually, the sneaking hit a bump in the road when the party was stopped by a group of angry ghosts. Linzi, recognizing who they must be, promised them that we were not interested in robbing the castle of treasure, but were only here to avenge the Kanjitsu family. At this, they put down their weapons and helped us as best they could, muttering vague phrases like “Andriel revenge,” “safety Andriel,” and “Amatatsu revenge.” A desk full of old documents revealed that Brinewall had been lost to them when a group of men in black robes had set siege to the castle. Further down into the dungeon, the group even encountered the ghost of Rokuro himself guarding two vaults and the door to the secret third. He repeated that there would need to be two seals to open the door, so the group headed back upstairs to find the second seal. Piecing together that the first seal was found on the body of a worshipper of Pazuzu, the group snuck into the altar room where they had previously seen a bird-person priest at a shrine to the evil god. Linzi ransacked the room in silence and found the sun seal to match the moon seal, saving the priest from a grisly fate at the hands of Shump-Shump. When both seals were fit into grooves in the wall in the dungeon, a puzzle that only Laudius with divine guidance from the god of knowledge and magic himself could have untangled, the third vault was revealed, containing a box and two other magical artifacts: a helm and a lute. The box sprang open to reveal the Kanjitsu family’s ancestral seal. Linzi injured themself trying to pluck at the lute, but it was picking up the family seal that set the entire castle shaking. Linzi hastily grabbed the other two treasures as everybody booked it double time. The sleeping ogres woke up to burning beds and boulders to the face as the group escaped, and the corby guard at the outermost door ate a ceiling’s worth of rubble as Shump-Shump powered him into the wall. Safely outside, the group saw the entire castle cave in on itself before they made their way back to town. Ameiko had woken from her coma and, when given the seal, shared a series of visions: a jade warrior that struck down a number of evil samurai beasts and herself crowned empress seated on a jade throne. The party rides back to Sandpoint with Ameiko contemplating what to do next, after a brief detour for Laudius to further desecrate the corpse of the false hydra breeding mindflayer.