Fortieth Session - Adventures in Baby-Sitting

START OF SESSION

ROUND ONE

1. Max - Movement to run next to nightmare portal, Action to spread caltrops there, more movement to run back toward the corner they came around, bonus action to switch to javelin, free action to yell to Ishaq 'Get her (Alana) out of there!'

2. Ishaq - runs across caltrops without harm, takes Alana, Dimension Doors down the hallway with her 150 feet. Driftglobe goes with him, Daylight remains and provides light for the encounter

3. Markoris - bolts down the hallway and Hides

4. Creature - uses Finger of Doom on Alice, Alice takes 19 necrotic damage and is both Frightened and Paralyzed, closes in to melee with her and attacks, 35 damage AND loses the equivalent max HP, HALVED by Aura of Warding to 9 and 17 respectively

5. Raul - soils self, shoots arrow at Creature, 7 damage to Creature, Raul runs like hell with Bonus Dash

6. Alice - takes 7 Necrotic damage thanks to creature's Aura (reduced by her own Aura), has no opportunity to save against the Paralysis effect!

7. Alana - Blind-casts Moonbeam around the corner, establishes a wall of damage in middle of corridor

8. Celia - still has the kid, moves and casts Banishment on the Creature, which immediately and permanently vanishes from this plane of existence, having been an extraplanar entity. She holds her spell for the required time that it takes permanently; this monstrous entity is gone

END OF INITIATIVE CELIA IS MVP

Celia spores to the group that the creature is gone. Ishaq immediately runs back, grabs Alice, and then he Dimension Doors 500 feet away from that horrifying area. His gentle slaps have no effect upon the paralyzed Alice'z face, Ishaq is no cleric. Markoris catches up to them and aids Alice, who recovers from paralysis after a minute. Meanwhile Celia hands the kid (Hepatian) to Max and maintains careful concentration on the Banishment spell as they run. The Keepers regroup and agree to get out of there, report on what they found, and claim their bounty. Ishaq and Alana in particular recognize this was some form of extraplanar threat.

Hepatian awakens, deeply traumatized by his experiences, and calls for ‘Nailth.’ Alice guesses that Nailth is the person who was caught in the nightmare portal, and suggests that he might be saved. This prompts Hepatian to immediately bolt toward the portal. Max snags him, and Ishaq successfully casts Charm Person on him to render him more cooperative, but mostly to get him to stop trying to run back into the nightmare portal. Alice tries to comfort and persuade him and protect him from the less-than-sensitive approach of the others, but he is still exhausted and deeply shaken and starts crying more. Alana heals him further with Cure Wounds, asking if any of them had ever taken care of children before. Ishaq said no, the Host Radiant doesn't really recruit children, so no.

The party is aware that the portal may stay open for eight hours as long as somebody is in there, so there is time to save Nailth. Thanks to Markoris’ map, the party is able to find their way back to LOTLE’s temple despite characteristically poor Intelligence rolls. Alice thanks Ishaq for rescuing her. He says to think nothing of it, that any one of them would have grabbed her if they could, and Celia was the real hero. She is still deeply terrified of what she went through, yet is no longer Frightened in the mechanical sense.

The Keepers return to the temple and then back up the staircase to the Pantheon. The NPC Priest there is surprised at their success and survival, and casts Lesser Restoration on Alice to further recover her from her ordeal. After Alice thanks him, the group heads to the Palace of Azkaresh to deliver Hepatian back to his father the Governor, in a hurry to arrive before Ishaq’s Charm spell can wear off and render the situation deeply awkward. It is now early afternoon.

Max is worried about how they will be greeted, which stirs discussion about whether the Governor will be happy about the Charming of his son in the process of the rescue, and the value of human fathers (Ishaq is Pro, Alice is Con).

Hepatian is greeted with joy at the gates of the Palace. This particular guard, later identified as Celus, appears to have a personal attachment to the kid. He gets less happy upon hearing who the Keepers are, but does admit the party into the palace for an audience with the Governor.

The palace is built of white, shining marble carved with intricate geometric designs. Flush with greenery and gardens growing food, it appears to be central to food production for Azkaresh. In the inner palace, the Governor is seated next to a larger throne Denethor-style, wearing extraordinarily rich clothing. With 5 minutes left on the Charm Person spell, he expresses his gratitude at the return of his son and admits he misjudged the Keepers in banning them.

Ishaq and Alice explain about the perils they've faced and the necessity of the Charm Person spell. The Governor understands and is earnestly convinced, and is particularly concerned with the reports of extraplanar threats. After sending Hepatian to his room with Celus to recover, the Governor invites the party into the War Room.

The War Room is dominated by a full-scale 3D sand map of Raith, which can be magically reshaped according to the user’s mental image. The Governor shapes it into Azkaresh, and then the party takes turns briefing him on what was encountered down in the Catacombs, including past encounters with the Dream Devourers. Ishaq brings up a troubling fact: that nightmarish monster didn't just ease his way into this material plane, someone brought it into the world here. And they couldn't assume it was simply the fault of the Dream Devourers, not without conclusive evidence.

Ishaq expertly persuades the Governor that their investigation will require unhindered access to likely powerful people, and the Governor, so utterly charmed, tells the party they will be deputized by the Starred Guard to investigate the appearance of this entity, and to rescue Nailth- who is apparently the High Priest of LOTLE in Azkaresh. The Starred Guard will provide manned backup but no further magic items. When Max asks if the Governor has any suspects, he says he has no idea who could have done this. The Governor stresses that the investigation is to be done by the book, without wanton lawlessness.

As the briefing concludes and the Governor departs, Ishaq makes a map of Fairsold and gazes at it pensively for a moment, focusing on a particular building before he allows it to dissolve. The party is then paid for the bounty on Hepatian’s rescue with a chest filled with 500 Platinum. Since Raul passes on his offered share, this divides to roughly 83 Platinum and 3 Gold each.

SESSION END BUT PEOPLE KEPT PLAYING OUT SPECULATION

Once out of the Palace, the party (mainly Max) begins speculating and theorizing on their new investigation. Max suggests that due to the extremely destructive nature of the entity and its seemingly random attacks, it could have been accidentally summoned by a faction with magical power - perhaps the Starred Guard, LOTLE’s own followers, or the local Host Radiant splinter.

Ishaq strongly vetoes this last theory, insisting that such evil acts are completely anathema to even the most radical interpretation of Host Radiant teaching, and moreover he doesn’t believe the individuals they encountered would be capable of these deeds -- morally or arcanely. Instead, he suggests that LOTLE’s own temple and burial service might have been the target, as both were strongly disrupted by the entity’s predations. Ishaq alludes to the fact that LOTLE does not take kindly to misinterpretations of her will, so it is unlikely that culprit would be devout to her. The opposite seems all the more likely in his mind.

When asked who might want to bring down LOTLE and her worshippers, Ishaq recounts certain religious rivalries: the Empress herself had tension with the Lady before achieving Godhood, given the Empress' interest in lichdom and how the Lady despises that, and also that resentment might be held by the Old Gods who were suppressed by Raith in favour of the approved pantheon, and specifically the Lady. The Son of the Void, an entity of raw chaos, also comes to mind. Celia refers to what the Wimpy Priest (his official name) related about Nailth’s vanishing, leading Ishaq (perhaps viciously) to guess this summoning could have been some kind of promotion ploy by an ambitious underling of the High Priest; something that she would not approve of even hypothetically.

Max keeps spinning out angles of possibility, including the rivalry between the Starred Guard and the Crownsguard, the latter of whom wanted to bar the former from investigating the Catacombs. He also wonders about the spell components needed for summoning such an entity, and Ishaq volunteers to research this topic.

PLANS MADE: SESSION END FOR REAL THIS TIME
 * Markoris and Max will go back to the Bishop to check in and follow up this new set of queries
 * Celia will keep Ishaq alive while Max is gone, Ishaq will research both arcane and religious angles and definitely not cause trouble as they purpose a potential defiler of the goddess he hates most
 * Alana will talk to Hepatian some more about what he beheld down there once the kid has had some time to recover and probably rehydrate because he was crying non-stop