SourceMaterial-Avlis Campaign 6, Part 2

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Campaign Title Part Avlis Campaign 1 The "Jade" Campaign Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Avlis Campaign 2 The West End of Time Part 1, 2, 3, 4 Avlis Campaign 3 Vanoviel and The Godslayer Part 1 Avlis Campaign 4 Rune Quest Part 1, 2 Avlis Campaign 5 The Western Underdark Part 1, 2, 3, 4 Avlis Campaign 6 Daggerspace Part 1, 2, 3 Avlis Campaign 7 Into The Wastes Part 1, 2, 3 The Daggerspace Campaign Scene 9: Village of the Mindless Town name - unknown Party lands on Levena, moon of Avlis Most buildings are empty, sometimes a catatonic person is found in a building, constantly bumping into a wall or banging head on table Tavern - The Space Pony - find a little girl in a daze, talks about “The Great Builder”, calls him a “mind bender”. Has no idea where everyone went. She thinks “Great Builder” lives west. Doesn’t seem to be much help beyond that. Party ventures out of village to west, comes to a graveyard with mausoleum Find a secret passage at the back wall where there is a shrine to Saint Mariam that has a door opening up to a stairway down Find a vampire down there, symbol of Saint Mariam on his coffin Fight the vampire, he turns to gaseous form and flees Scene 10: Vampire on Board Party decides it was a vampire, not a mind flayer that destroyed the village Head back to ship to go tell the githzerai Crew members start disappearing after a few days Lathalsa (half-sylph) shows signs of becoming a thrall Party stations the orc slave with her to stop vampire from coming in while he’s coming in, but it doesn’t seem to work Party studies the dying body of Lathalsa, finds a holy symbol of Saint Mariam around her neck Vampire appears, tells them Lathalsa looks just like Saint Mariam Vampire claims he was Saint Mariam lover, and he witnessed her ascension to godhood His protests and anguish over Mariam's pain made him curse at The Supreme, who he supposes changed him into a vampire He was unable to bear staying with Saint Mariam any longer, too painful. She left for somewhere unknown. She gave him a censor and told him it was one of three keys he could use to find her again one day Vamp tells the party that a mind flayer is indeed killing everyone in that village Vampire kills Lathalsa and leaves Party cuts Lathalsa's head off to try to prevent her from rising Vampire gets angry, fights party Charms Conor and Thundershaft, bites them both, drains Conor until death Party "vaporizes" vamp but he comes back an hour later and tells them to retrieve the head of Lathalsa and put it back on Party complies and takes vamp and bodies of Lathalsa and Conor to githyanki asteroid, let's them go Dock official who gave party mission to scout the mind flayer on Levena berates them, tells them to try again Scene 11: If at first you don't succeed... The party took some downtime on the githzerai asteroid to resupply and rest Met a githzerai wizard named Nirk who was assigned to them by the githzerai as a guide to do reconnaissance on the suspected mind flayer on Levena In the tavern where they met Nirk, they ran into a paladin of St. Mariam named Sir Worthur Worthur told them that he is part of the Order of the Panfish sent to capture or kill Leticia and Alhana as heretics for their beliefs in Literalism Worthur was secretly sympathetic to them due to his adventures in space. He believes Mariam may have physically ascended and that it may not be just a metaphor. He warns the group that a group of paladins of the Order of the Panfish are on the asteroid ready to grab them. Says there is a war going on back on Avlis between the Literalists and the orthodox church. The Order of the Panfish is running an Inquisition against heretics/Literalists. He walks out of the bar. Afterward, the PC's decide they need more crew and Nirk tells them to post an ad in the Town Hall. On the way to the Town Hall they get jumped by the paladins. Leticia's spell kills several and the others, including Sir Worthur flee. After posting the ad, they relax and recoup some more. Days later, 10 githzerai show up. 9 decide to join the crew within a couple days. Crew takes off for Levena, and almost instantly gets jumped by a paladin ship. Space battle ensues. Shots traded. The party uses Greek Fire to catch the paladin ship aflame and mows down most of the crew with the arquebi. They board the ship, almost completely empty now and find the mage who was driving, a member of the White Order of the Light. They complete their journey to Levena and find a crator with construction taking place, seemingly by thralls from the town they last left. Scene 12: The Big Dig Upon closer inspection of the crator, the group found that it was being excavated by thralls which were people from the village. Nirk said it was the work of a potentially powerful mindflayer and the signs pointed to them attempting to establish a breeding base. After waking up several of the thrawls and gathering more evidence, the group returned to the ship and took off to bring the news back to the Githzerai. When they were close to port, another ship of Paladins jumped the group in a Galleon. This time the group decided to fight them ship to ship and take their Galleon for their own. After a successful battle, the group found evidence that the Order of the Panfish is aware of the Three Keys of Faith which supposedly open a gate to St. Mariam. The group already possesses the Censor of Purity, and a new clue was found on the ship: The Lantern of Truth lies within a dungeon below the Monastery of Faith on the Githzerai asteroid.... Scene 13: The Dungeon of Faith With the newfound information that one of the major artifacts of Saint Mariam may be located underneath the Monastery of Faith on the githzerai asteroid, the players immediately set out to find it. Letitia, Indica, Namfoodle, Alhana, Grapthar, and a newly recruited crew member from the ship, Jaqdaris spent some time looking for the entrance around the base of the monastery. Soon, with the help of some clues from a friendly githzerai monk, they found the entrance. The first floor of this dungeon gave every indication that it was abandoned for a while. The group found some broken items, like a statue of a god none of them had heard of, Arsher. As they descended down the levels of the dungeon, it became more readily used and there were many signs of activity by the third floor. Soon they encountered goblinoid creatures: hobgoblins, goblins, bugbears, and the occasional gian-kin mixed into the bunch. All of them seemed to be working and worshiping down there. This Arsher turned out to be a goblinoid god of some sort. Deeper down, the PC's finally fought their way through many traps and resistant goblinoids to find the Lantern of Truth, and Letitia immediately took possession of it. The trip past the third floor became much easier once Jaqdaris revealed that he was a Changeling who could take the form of the bugbear captain they killed. By using the captain's forceful personality and the locals' fear of him, Jaqdaris managed to chase away most of the potential resistance. After obtaining the lantern, the group did some exploring and found boxes of good alcoholic beverages: wines, whiskeys, some made of fermented purple mushroom. They also found the purple mushrooms in an unprocessed form, which seemed to have a mildly hallucinogenic affect. Taking their spoils to the surface, the group celebrated at the local githzerai tavern. They were then approached by a githzerai named Ruul who told the group that the Order of the Panfish was looking for them, and the githzerai would appreciate it if they got rid of the Order of the Panfish and their disruptive behaviors. The group agreed to go check out the Panfish camp. Scene 14: The Panfish Inquisition Did Not Expect This As soon as they were able, the group decided to conduct surveillance on the Panfish camp from an overlooking ridge. There, they noticed a scene unfolding. A small "mosquito" spelljamming vessel had landed in the middle of the camp. The pilot seemed to be an elf with no distinguishing features who was delivering a rescued paladin. Another ship hovered just over the ground nearby, a large galleon. These two objects dominated the camp which was comprised mainly of tents and campfires with paladins alternating between guard duty and time off. In the center of the camp, the pilot and the captain were talking, and the group was able to make out some things from the conversation. It seems that the Panfish was close to obtaining an artifact of St. Mariam, the Staff of Charity. But the ship was ambushed and crash landed on a moon around the gas giant, the moon of Erdan. Before crashing, the being in the mosquito saw them and tried to rescue a couple of the paladins to bring them here to the asteroid to ask for rescue. He says the people on the other galleon that crashed know where the Staff of Charity is. The adventurers withdrew and created a battle plan and commenced their attack on the camp the next day. From the west, Jaq made himself invisible and began untying tent pegs while the others began sniping at the periphery. Soon, a large battle started as the paladins began to wise up to what was going on. Many tents were set aflame as they fell on their occupants, and the group eventually fought its way to the deck of the landed galleon where the ship's captain, an imposing female paladin of the Order of the Panfish, fought to her death. Searching the wreckage, the group found some useful items and some correspondence: The papers revealed the approximate location of the Panfish Galleon's crash on the moon of Erdan. They think it crashed on a chain of islands located off one of the continents. This continent is populated with lizard folk and yuan-ti. When the ship crashed, they picked it clean and took the information to their compound. The adventurers will need to go there to find it. Fighting through the compound, the adventurers found another scroll that tells a story of the staff's creation by St. Mariam along with the two other artifacts. Her lover, the vampire, was entrusted with the censor, while she entrusted the other two to a friend of hers she met in space who was a native of Erdan. He thought it would be clever to hide the lantern with the goblins of Arsher under the githzerai monastery of faith, because he figured that was a relatively safe area that no one would try to invade. He hid the staff in a small asteroid cluster in an orbit 5 days out from the sun. The cluster was supposedly undiscovered by planetary civilizations but was home to some "interesting" creatures. He found a wizard to create a system of portals between the asteroids and some dwarves to hollow them out. Then he killed the dwarves and the wizard to protect the secret. Scene 15: Off to Erdan After a trip to Erdan, and a small scuffle with a necromancer sent by the evil lord the group pissed off when they destroyed his asteroid portal to the negative energy plane, the group started searching for the crashed Panfish ship. Soon enough they found it and began scouring the area. The wreckage showed a nasty crash with bodies strewn about, but otherwise it was mostly picked clean of loot. This was a mystery until the group found a wooden structure populated by yuan-ti not far away. As the group considered its options, it figured out that a frontal attack on foot would not do. They decided to take a different tactic and bombard the dwelling by ship. A long fight ensued as the group methodically seiged the building from the air and the yuan-ti sent out defenders to try to counter the seige, but eventually the building was razed and looted. More documents were found: The higher members of the Order of the Panfish and the large religion they represent against the Literalists are determined to make sure that Saint Mariam *stays* a metaphor. The true mission of the Order of The Panfish is to first find out if Saint Mariam really ascended. If the story is true, the Order's instructions are to find a way to eliminate her for the heresy of taking on her own mantle of godship when the only one worthy of such a thing is The Supreme. The Order of The Panfish wants the artifacts because they know they will open a portal to The Seven Heavens where St. Mariam resides. However, they know that if they don’t' get the artifacts, there are other ways to do planar travel, and they are working on that too. One group working with the Brothers of Orlessa has already figured out how to open a portal to The Seven Heavens. They now just need to find which one has Saint Mariam's domain. The group decided they needed to find that last artifact, either to destroy it or use it to warn St. Mariam. So they began their journey to the asteroids specified.