Splitting Paths Arc

In-Game Dates: 5th of the Claws of Sunsets, 1470 - 19 of the Claw of Sunsets(14 Days)

Session Dates:  09/17/21 - 01/28/22 (133 Days)

The Finger Gang arrived, unannounced, via teleportation within a Dungannon Navy base. After talking their way around cadets stationed on guard duty, Morwen led the group to her old stomping ground: a bar known as the Verdant Ogre. 

The bartender was shocked to see Morwen, who was believed to be dead after the Raging Harmony was badly hit while fleeing a Dungannon Naval ship. She explained that members of her old crew had gone south in search of a Resurrections stone, so that Finn Mudd could bring his brother back from the dead. 

Troubled, the group sought further information at the Dungannon Antiquities Collective, at their base of operations beneath the Tufe Museum. Aca, a standing member of the DAC, was initially lied to by a member of his own order, who told him the leader of the Collective, Tharrasus Gift, was not in. 

Aca's loud arguing brought Mr. Gift in to greet the group. He nervously brought them into his office, and explained that many members did not trust Aca. After Aca left on his mission to retrieve a wand, the Helm of the Voidcaller was stolen from the Collective's vaults. Additionally, three missives went missing. These documents contained details on The Breaker (an item of immense power current possessed by Shae, after it was used by the Ninth Path to open a portal to Kalipsos; Mercy's Edge, a longsword forged with the blood of a member of the Burning Banner; and a Planeshift Amulet. 

Together, the group surmised that the Ninth Path seemed bent on freeing Azrah, the Goddess of Rot. Hearing that Euriel's Watch, a group of rangers from The Auld who worked alongside Heinrich's patron, had taken up residence in the abandoned Dunetop Manor, the Finger Gang set out across town to seek more answers. 

There, they reunited with Nazzara and two other members of Euriel's Watch: Thaemaer, an injured elf, and Perdot, a stealthy halfling. The group assisted in the interrogation of a prisoner, and learned that the Midnight Assembly had left Port Quinn when the Finger Gang killed their leader, and had picked up working in Dungannon on behalf of the mindflayer Ziestriess. Further, they learned of an event happening later that night designed to obtain an important item: The Mindflayer's Grotesque. 

Nazzara led the group on patrol around Upper Anchor, and intercepted an attempt to rob Dustmock's Pawnshop. They fought a series of ghouls and escaped with the item they seemed intent on stealing: a silver statue of a sneering demon. 

Using clues obtained from the cultist, the group investigated their way across Upper Anchor and found themselves in a district of warehouses and factories. The Sunshine Sweets Factory produced candy the cultist had with him, so the group broke in. 

The factory had long been silent, with it's staff slain. Traps had been set, but the true danger lurked in the basement levels where disrepair had seen the sugary treats stored within turn to caverns of crystalized sugar. The Midnight Assembly, chased out of Port Quinn by the Finger Gang half a year ago, had taken up residence here, and their Assembled Souls (beings of clockwork machinery and bone) defended the new base, though now coated with candy. 

The Gang captured members of the Assembly, and brought them back to Euriel's Watch. There, they learned from this cultist that the group was operating out of a pyramid or tomb in the desert somewhere within the Kua-tar Badlands to the south. They also learned that Rex was a tortle druid that Ziestriess had some interest in. 

Following this lead, the group descended down to Lower Dungannon, following signs of the Vermincaller Druids with the hopes that this group of city vermin enthusiasts might know something of Rex. 

The catacombs of artistically organized bones was one part boneyard, one part monument to the people lost in the Dawn Rebellion, a war fought to free Dungannon from the vampiric king, Somathorne. Eerily quite along the way, the group eventually came face-to-face with the first direct evidence of Ziestriess' influence. 

A wizard performed some occult ritual, and seemed to be pulling the dead from beyond this plane. The Gang interrupted the ritual, but as the wizard and a strange, purple-skinned, tentacled illithid creature the size of a gnome made their retreat, they summoned a powerful creature from the Hells. 

The beast and the wizard combined slew Aca, who pursued them down a set of earthen stairs that seemed to disappear into the belly of Alberon itself. The group managed to save Aca by bringing his corpse to the Dungannon Antiquities Collective where Oglethree cast Raise Dead on Aca. 

The Gang travelled to Yorn with assistance from a hesitant Caranza Billows, and found that the Xinyi monks and the Lorebinders had established a joint base in an abandoned, floating fortress called the Floatstone Fortress. Master Gambol welcomed the group, and showed them a wrecked, flying ship that he believed he could fix to help the party travel faster. 

To speed the process along, Heinrich and Aca volunteered the group to help scour Yorn for power sources. In doing so, they found a shed that contained some likely vessels... but found them to be guarded by a powerful treant, now furious at Aca for exploding a sapling it tended. The group was forced to dispatch the treant, angering the nature spirits, and making their upcoming trip to the Feywild far more perilous. 

To help offset this, Meliora used her dubious standing with the Winter Court to ask Azzelian, the Fey Lord of the Frostline for forgiveness. The neutral Azzelian, also called the Winter That Wanders, asked that the group rid the Frostline of a rotted tree that once held a community of pixies, called Sunhoney. In return, he would forgive both the death of the treant, AND reward the group with the ressurection stone that Morwen sought. 

He bade them only one test: presented with a trio of mirrors that reflected each person differently, which would they choose to step through? Aca stepped through a mirror that showed Ziestriess, a mindflayer lich. For Shae, she saw only herself in each mirror, her monastic training not allowing her mind to see the deception in the glass. She followed Aca. 

When Aca and Shae emerged, they waited. And waited. And waited. 

Morwen and Heinrich never arrived.