Act 1.5 - Intermission & The Road to Candlekeep

From For Companion and Country

← Act 1 - The Vanthampur Investigations -- Act 2 - Hellturel →

Political Maneuvering, Gift Opening, and Book Shopping

Before leaving the High Hall, the party stopped by the office of Milo Honeywell, where -- with a generous gift of platinum pieces to fund his campaign, as well as the pipes of the sewers belonging to the former Master -- he was convinced to begin campaigning for Duke, to represent the voice of both figurative and literal little people. Will he become a Duke? Will he get assassinated in the streets? Only time will tell. At the very least, he has acquired a few new workers; Albina Voort has a position in his office to run his burgeoning political campaign, while Lawrence Krol and Edmao Baert both found work in a newly-mobilized sewer crew, improving sewer flow by eliminating various evil cult dungeons underneath the city. Nora Baert and Alyssa Krol have both moved into a new set of apartments to raise Lance Yelren Krol, proving that at least one family of refugees from Elturel is settled.

After that, the party went shopping for books, as the cost of admission to Candlekeep is a book that isn't already in their vast library. Scouring it, they came up with the following books:

  • Grumph is carrying The Roots of Modern Society, a pocket-sized guide to practical botany.
  • Nephrite obtained The Quest of the Eldritch Rod, a metallic rod that is allegedly a book about an artifact, but which refuses to unfold into a book for anyone but a warlock.
  • Flight Risk has Juvenile Amusements, a book written in Common by Amaz Lerune, a ten-year-old child, detailing a festival he visited one time in Neverwinter.
  • Bryzworyn bought Alraune's Almanac: The Underdark, a book by Alraune Whitewave detailing various locations in the Underdark.
  • Solarys has, in addition to the stolen fragment of information he was carrying at the start of the campaign, The Grimoire of Slaadi, detailing all about these disgusting froglike creatures from Limbo.
  • Yelren got The Land of Calimshan, which is, as it sounds, a travel guide to the land of Calimshan.

Finally, resting in their rooms at the Elfsong Tavern that evening, they opened the gift bag -- a Heward's handy haversack -- to uncover the following gifts, seemingly tailored to each person.

On the Road

After checking in on those they were leaving behind (including Oshalla, who is now the artist-in-residence of the Elfsong Tavern and beginning to explore more around the town while magically disguised), the party left in the most stealthy way possible: out the front gate at eight in the morning. This straight-forward approach stymied any pursuers, but did allow them to coincidentally run into Falaster Fisk near his home in Little Calimshan, who successfully negotiated to take possession of Vilus Incarnatus to take to Sylvira Savikas, as well as riding along with the party in Solarys' freshly-acquired wagon.

In Wyrm's Crossing, the party had a brief encounter with a grubby urchin from the refugee camps that have cropped up between the Basilisk Gate and Stonyeyes; more interested in food than in wealth, he was attempting to look for the shield of the Hidden Lord after it posed as Torm and asked the boy to steal it back from the party to ensure his family's safety and wealth. He was sent on his way with a gold piece, some rations, and directed to seek out Zodge to hopefully be let into the city.

Any further pursuit was cleverly dodged by acting like any other group on the road; while the weather was rainy for the entirety of the trip down, the party did make it to Candlekeep just as the clouds cleared. They did spend a night camping with Reya Mantlemorn, a fellow Hellrider who had been patrolling up and down the Coast Way helping groups of refugees with healing and a strong sword arm. Primarily she was glad to trade news with Grumph, Yelren, and Bryz, though she insisted on sharing the tale of the original Hellride with the rest of the group.

Revelations at Candlekeep

On arriving at Candlekeep, it went a lot like any other tenday visit for any other seeker. The party submitted their books and were afforded entrance, granted room to stay, stable room for their horses and wagon, and so on. The whole group visited Sylvira Savikas, who -- along with her lab partner Traxigor, amnesiac hollyphant Lulu, and familiar Pipsy -- had the technomantic tools required to safely open the infernal puzzlebox and promised to alert the party when it was ready.

Also there was a bit with a guy stuck in a time loop on a bridge outside Sylvira and Traxigor's tower; various attempts to interact with him turned from trying to stop him or save him to basically slapstick humor at his expense. Not like he knows.

After that, everyone spent the rest of the week relaxing for once, preparing for whatever tasks lay ahead of them by doing independent research using the vast library at their disposal.

  • Flight Risk looked into the bureaucracy of the Nine Hells with an eye towards signets and heraldry he can copy and forge. He gained a wealth of knowledge about the governmental organization of the Nine Hells, and has already begun trying to replicate Asmodeus' personal seal on a cheap signet ring.
  • Grumph studied the flora and fauna of Avernus, as well as rideable mounts. What he found shouldn't really surprise anyone thinking about Hell: while it is not a lifeless place, many of the flora and fauna are mutated or unfriendly, and there's not a lot in the way of plant life. He also found some very interesting schematics for what seem like multi-person riding machines, powered allegedly by something called soul coins.
  • Bryzorwyn discovered an older version of the tale of the Hellride, which puts a more chivalric or romantic spin onto it, naming two of the figures involved: Olanthius, the High Rider at the time, and his lady love and fellow knight, the Lady Yael. Whether this is fiction based on reality, or is in fact the true version that has been built on over time, or somewhere in the middle, remains a mystery.
  • Yelren, pragmatically, studied up on the weaknesses and strengths of devils. While they frequently are unbothered by cold and outright immune to fire, they strongly dislike the holy energy of radiance, which frequently originates from the Upper Planes via followers of the gods.
  • Nephrite researched both her own origins and magical uses for a genasi's blood. She discovered that earth genasi tend to be rare overall - efreet and marid especially tend to sire genasi in order to have essentially bragging rights, while dao often do not want children so much as they want slaves to work their great mines in the Elemental Plane of Earth, so they tend to be the rarest of all. With the help of a necromantic reader, she worked some of her own crystalline blood into protective amulets for some of her fellow party members.
  • Solarys, as expected, spent some time with his old mentor Escanor Meridies; he also looked into the metaphysics and mechanics of what would actually be required to send an entire city to another plane. The general consensus was that a vast amount of energy would be required -- likely positive energy -- to bathe the city for years, suffusing every inch of it, before essentially being flipped like a gigantic switch to negative energy, pulling the city across planar boundaries. He also found some incomplete studies about something unusual in the Ethereal Plane, disruptions around the city of Elturel, but none of the studies were ever complete and their authors never submitted anything again. Some notes about divine standing also came up, for those interested, but essentially summed up a hypothetical means to steal an entire religious city without sending the gods on a holy crusade into hell.

Finally, Sylvira called the party back to her office, where in addition to sharing the fruits of their research, she finally opened the infernal puzzlebox and found within half of an infernal contract.

The Infernal Contract

On this tablet of solid platinum -- three sides smooth, one side jagged, because as Traxigor explained infernal contracts are written in duplicate and then both the devil and the mortal keep a copy -- was written the following.

On this, the fifteenth day of Flamerule, in the one thousandth, four hundredth, and forty-fourth year of the Dale Reckoning, I, Naja Bellandi, by my authority as the High Watcher of Helm and the highest surviving mortal authority in the city of Elturel, do swear this Oath to pledge my soul and the entire city of Elturel unto the Archduchess Zariel, to be so passed into her custody at the end of fifty years, the latter to be transported to Avernus and the former to be taken into her service.

In exchange for which, Zariel, the Archduchess of Avernus and faithful representative of Asmodeus, the Archfiend, Lord of the Ninth and Nessus, Supreme Master of the Nine Hells, bestows the Gift of the Companion, a Solar Insidiator which shall be placed in the sky above Elturel for at least the term of this agreement and whose light will scourge the undead from the city. She further swears to render whatever aid may be necessary to end High Rider Klav Ikaia's reign if the Gift of the Companion prove insufficient to this task.

In consideration and honor of these mutual covenants, we sign in blood upon the day and year first written above,

Zariel, Archduchess of Avernus

High Watcher Naja Bellandi of Elturel

Recall the Creed:

I solemnly pledge my soul and blood and blade to serve as a knight of Elturel and share the Oath of the High Observer...

In swearing to share an Oath they had never read, one which ostensibly was to uphold the law or revere the Companion or some such, all Hellriders and all members of the Order of the Companion had inadvertently damned themselves, and their descendants, to the service of the Archduchess of Avernus upon their death. At last, the party had the final question of why the Zarielites and the Dead Three were working together in Baldur's Gate to murder Hellriders, Companions, and their descendants: they were sending them directly into Zariel's service as hell knights.

Sylvira warned Grumph, Bryzorwyn, and Yelren to do their best to not die. Flight Risk was suddenly very glad he never took the oath.

All Roads Lead To Hell

To sum up:

  • Half of the infernal contract was now in the party's hands. Annulling it, however, would mean recovering the piece likely held by Zariel in Avernus, rejoining them, and then finding a way to destroy them. Traxigor suggested the breath of an extremely powerful dragon, or perhaps immersion in the River Styx, which kind of seems like his solution to a lot of things.
  • In order to stop Grumph, Bryz, and Yelren from being damned, the original Tome of the Creed Resolute -- which held the bloody thumbprints of everyone to ever join either organization -- would need to be destroyed. Unfortunately, it was kept in the High Hall in Elturel, meaning it, too, was very likely in Avernus.
  • Elturel itself was also in Hell, having been transported there via the energies suffused into it via the Companion, now revealed to be something called a 'Solar Insidiator'.

In short, everything the party needs is in Avernus. Traxigor assured them that if they helped him find a tuning fork, he could plane shift them there. One short search later through Trax's incredibly messy lab, the party, Trax, and Lulu found themselves forming a circle around a magical tuning fork, outside the protective wards of Candlekeep...

← Act 1 - The Vanthampur Investigations -- Act 2 - Hellturel →

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