The Third Eye

The Third Eye was an adventuring company formed around the time of King Waldrann Azennar's death in Hargram.

Membership

• Ilara - Female shifter barbarian, seeking a pack and a place to accept her.
• Ililen Wuntohiin - Male firbolg monk, seeking his friend's killer.
• Isabelle Darrington - Female orc wizard, and member of the Arcane Tower.
• Leon - Male human druid, searching for answers about why Queen Lyrencia tried to have him killed.
• Sylas Asidia - Male eladrin warlock, working to investigate a mysterious murder.

History

Blood on the Crown

The Couatl Feather

The beginnings of the Third Eye occurred in 3002 when Leon and Ilara, both on the road to Hargrave, met. Leon was going to meet with an investigator he had hired to learn why someone had tried to kill him years ago. Ilara, meanwhile, was simply searching for a place to belong, and had heard Hargrave was welcoming of all races. The pair soon met with Ililen Wuntohiin, a firbolg monk also on the road to Hargrave to purchase medicinal herbs and other supplies. In Hargrave, they met the investigator, Sylas Asidia, who told Leon that his investigations pointed to Queen Lyrencia herself having given the order to have Leon killed. The group then went to the Lucky Leap tavern to have a drink and absorb this information, where they met the orc wizard Isabelle Darrington of the Arcane Tower.

While getting to know each other, they saw Crownwarden Cyne Mondar at a nearby table engaged in a business transaction to purchase a rare couatl feather from a halfling for a large sum. After Mondar departed, a bugbear entered and threatened the halfling over gambling debts, in the course of which he knocked over a lantern and burned up the couatl feather. The distraught halfling then appealed to the obvious party of adventurers with a deal: if they helped him buy a second couatl feather from his grandmother, and then escorted him to sell it to Mondar, they could keep the difference after the halfling's debts were paid. Seeing the opportunity for easy money, they agreed. They accompanied the halfling to his grandmother's house, where after chiding him for his gambling she finally agreed to sell him the feather, with the adventurers' money. As they headed towards Lord Mondar's manor, however, the halfling suddenly tried to escape into the crowd but was quickly grabbed by Ilara. The commotion attracted the attention of a guard, at which point the halfling transformed into a doppelganger and surrendered himself to the authorities.

Summons at the Old Grinder

The party continued to Mondar's home to try and complete the sell themselves, only to learn that not only had Mondar never made any such deal, but the feather wasn't even real; the entire transaction had been a scam from start to finish. Lord Mondar sympathized, and told them that he had a need for adventurers with a task that he did not necessarily want to involve the Knights of the Crown in. Mondar's friend, Lord Rumlyn, had heard rumors of suspicious gatherings and dark rituals near the old windmills. Cyne Mondar asked him to look into it and report back any further details; Rumlyn's report was that the clues seemed to implicate Countess Maritayl, owner of the Royal Stud Farm. Mondar didn't want to move against a respected noble with an important position in court without further proof and asked Rumlyn to dig deeper, but he hadn't reported back in. Mondar was getting worried, but didn't want to sent his knights in case his fears were unfounded, so asked the party to check on him under the pretense of retrieving Lord Mondar's horse, which he would need for the upcoming King's Games festival.

They arrived at Lord Rumlyn's manor, some ways out of the city, to find it on fire. Ilara barely managed to pull Lord Mondar's horse from the stable, while her companions found Lord Rumlyn's cook hiding in a barrel. He said that Countess Maritayl had arrived a short time ago with cloaked figures, murdered the guards, kidnapped Lord Rumlyn and his family, and set everything ablaze. The cook heard them saying something about a sacrifice at the Old Grinder, an abandoned mill several miles distant. After sending the cook back to Hargrave with Lord Mondar's horse, the group gave chase and, after several hours, arrived at the Old Grinder. They entered to find it guarded by hooded cultists and mercenaries, and after dispatching them descended to the basement to find a summoning circle with two dead bodies lying in it, and a bound and gagged woman and child nearby. A bearded devil had a wicked-looking knife pressed to the child's throat, while more cultists stood nearby. Ililen was unable to prevent the devil from slashing the child's throat, though Leon managed to heal the wound before he died. Once all of the foes had been defeated, the two captives confirmed that one of the cultists was Countess Maritayl, while the dead bodies belonged to Lord Rumlyn and his father. Lord Mondar arrived soon after, having heard the news from Lord Rumlyn's cook, and escorted his late friend's family back to Hargrave.

The next day they met with King Waldrann Azennar, who was grateful to them for stopping an infernal cult from summoning more devils. Unfortunately, from what the two survivors were able to recall, a second devil had also been summoned. While they didn't see it, being blindfolded at the time, they described hearing the beating of wings. The king told them that the annual King's Games were in two days; if the Royal Swords were unable to find the devil themselves, then afterwards he intended to lead the hunt himself and invited the adventurers to join him. He also promised front row seats at the Battle of Champions, for those not intending to participate in the tournament. Sylas spent the two days researching devils, though found a wide variety possessed of wings. The others, meanwhile, simply rested and waited for the games.

The King's Games

The King's Games were the annual celebration of Hargram's founding. As usual, they began with a royal tour throughout the city, followed by a full day of festivities and contests. The adventurers, still exulting in their victory at the Old Grinder, gleefully took part. Ilara won a strength and endurance contest known as the Merfolk Lumberjack, even beating one contestant who the crowd booed as a cheater on account of being an actual merfolk. The mood was dampened a bit late in the day when, during a cliff-diving competition, a halfling crashed into the rocks and died, but the tragedy was soon forgotten as the day concluded with the Battle of the Champions, a combat tournament in which each contestant wagered a magic item to their opponent. The grand prize ws a private audience with the king, but since the king himself competed and was skilled enough to emerge victorious nearly every year, it had become a popular joke among the populace about a "royal audience of one."

Ilara and Leon both elected to take part in the contest. Apart from the king, the other competitors were the paladin Gratus Ultio of the Knights of the Crown, the dwarven blacksmith Kagrian Ironsinew (who was using the tournament as an opportunity to show of his wares), a traveling monk named Vragi, a half-dragon sorcerer named Cay Tali Valberg, and a mysterious figure known as the Raven Knight. Isabelle caught Cay Tali cheating by surreptitiously accepting magical aid from the spectators, disqualifying her, while Kagrian was defeated by the king. Meanwhile, Ilara defeated Vragi and won his quarterstaff, and Leon defeated Gratus and won his sword.

The next fight, between the king and the Raven Knight, proved a surprisingly even match, with both fighters wielding their magical arms with great skill and neither yielding any ground. Finally, the Raven Knight stabbed the king in the leg, causing him to fall. With his opponent's blade at his throat, the king raised his hands in surrender. Praising his opponent's skills, he urged her to remove her helmet and receive the cheers of the crowd. Releasing a catch on her armor, a pair of black feathered wings unfurled from beneath her cape as she removed her helmet to reveal the face of Queen Elyssa, the king's late wife. She denounced him as a kinslayer and a traitor, declaring that she would claim his punishment and they would meet again in Hell. Then she plunged her sword through his heart before vanishing in a vortex of fire. Though the clerics and paladins rushed to his aid, there was nothing they could do. King Waldrann Azennar was dead.

Funeral of the King

The king's funeral was held a week later, following a national period of mourning. Lord Mondar invited the adventurers to attend, given their recent deeds. The funeral procession moved into the royal mausoleum, past the statues and sarcophagi of Hargram's past rulers, until they arrived at the space that had long been prepared for King Waldrann, including a glorious stone statue. Flanking it where the statues and sarcophagi of his first wife, Queen Elyssa, and their son, Prince Krasnar. As the king's body was lowered into the sarcophagus, a mournful wail filled the air as the crypt doors slammed shut. A ghostly voice whispered, "Murderer! Your line will end here and your deeds will be avenged!" From the statue of Krasnar, holdings the prince's signature glaive, a spectral version of his weapon appeared and began lashing out at the assembled people. As the Knights of the Crown moved to protect Queen Lyrencia and Princess Aphinah, and the other guests attempted in vain to pry open the doors, the adventurers attempted to attack the spectral glaive but found their attacks ineffective. Eventually Leon hit upon the idea of attacking the iron glaive held by Krasnar's statue, and when he and Ilara managed to break it, the spectral weapon vanished and the doors opened once more.

Later that night, Lord Mondar met with the adventurers once more at his manor. Clerics had inspected every inch of the crypt and found nothing to explain what had happened; the king had subsequently been buried in a smaller ceremony attended only by his family. Lord Mondar was concerned, however, by the events. The Raven Knight was almost certainly the winged devil summoned by the cultists, which pointed to a greater conspiracy. He and his knights were also troubled by Aphinah's impending ascension to the throne; she was known to be cruel and sadistic, and some of the paladins had begun to debate whether their oath was to the crown, the monarch, or the kingdom. A rumor had even spread that Aphinah intended to disband their order. Above all, Mondar was worried that they just didn't know enough about what was going on. He asked the adventurers to help him uncover the truth beind the king's murder, promising a suitable reward afterwards. For now, though, he wished them to join him for the coronation the next day. He hoped the ceremony would be uneventful, but wanted them in the room just in case something happened.

The Midnight Curse

Cursed Coronation

The coronation was well-attended by important people: nobles, influential merchants, members of the Court of Voices, and even Laromarius, golem master of the Arcane Tower. Queen Lyrencia motinoed for silence before beginning a gracious speech evoking the royal heritage of House Azennar and the noble lineage of her daughter, Aphinah. The speech continud into a lengthy explanation of all the rights, privileges, and duties of the sovereign. Finally, she declared that she was bestowing these right upon Princess Aphinah, crowning her Queen of Hargram. As she placed the crown on Aphinah's head, the royal headpiece changed appearance, growing bony claw-like protrusions and thorns. Dark magical runes appeared on its surface, and a ring of downward angled fangs extruded outward. Thunder boomed outside, and through the windows strange purple clouds could be seen gathering in the previously clear skies. As lightning struck outside the hall, Queen Aphinah laughed hysterically as she stood, her mother casting a wall of force across the dais at the front of the room. Aphinah declared herself the new queen, demanded obedience and loyalty from all of her subjects, and began proclaiming harsh and arbitrary new laws, with penalties ranging from stiff fines all the way to death for such infractions as "dressing the same as the queen" or "wearing your hair in a ponytail." She then called upon the Children of the Coven, and as a number of cultists appeared in the crowd as their illusionary disguises disappeared, Aphinah called them her "eyes and ears" who would "tell on you if you misbehave." Finally, directing her yelling at the Knights of the Crown, she demanded, "Voice your loyalty to me now, my hounds, and I shall reward you with power beyond imagining! Otherwise, you will perish in the flames of Hell!"

Many of the knights immediately dropped to the knees and shouted "For crown and kingdom!" As they did, they were suddenly transformed into terrifying werehellhounds. And as her first command, Aphinah told them to slaughter all the priests and paladins who did not take the pledge. The throne room erupted into chaos. Lord Mondar and his closest knights immediately formed a protective circle around the nearest priests, and began a fighting retreat towars the door. Meanwhile, the adventurers tried to both fight the werehellhounds barring the exit and save the innocent, panicking people who were mostly being caught in the middle of the chaos. Meanwhile, Aphinah leaned against the wall of force and grinned at the carnage. Eventually they managed to dispatch the werehellhounds guarding the doors and break them down, and Lord Mondar called for them to follow him to a secret exit. Leading the adventurers and surviving priests down into the royal crypt, he barricaded the doors before opening a hidden passage that led into the sewers. While the priests broke off to tend to their followers throughout the city, Lord Mondar and his remaining knights led the adventurers back to the Lucky Leap tavern, where Ricio Tane pulled a hidden lever and closed metal plates over all the doors and windows. Bedrools were laid out throughout the tavern and the basement, while Tane and Mondar discussed next steps.

In the morning, Lord Mondar told the adventurers that they had a plan. But first, he wanted to relate the story of what happened fifteen years ago. He cautioned that his memory of the time in the Feywild was somehwat unclear, like a vivid dream, and also that he had vowed to speak of the events in no further detail than the story he was about to tell. In 2987, the stayr lord King Dasmag kidnapped Queen Lyrencia into the Feywild. King Azennar put together a group to rescue her consisting of himself, Prince Krasnar, Lord Mondar, Father Lestor of Ioun, and Master Eydan of the Arcane Tower. Lord Mondar did not recall precisely how they entered the Feywild, but distinctly remembered a tree with many eyes. Once in the Feywild, King Azennar defeated King Dasmag in a duel. The satyr lord was so impressed by the king that he returned Queen Lyrencia, and invited them all to a feast at his court. During the celebrations, he enchanted the crown of Hargram with a blessing of plenty to make up for the trouble he caused. Tragically, as they passed through a swamp on the way back, they hit a quicksand-like area of sucking mud and both Prince Krasnar and Father Lestor were lost.

Lord Mondar now suspects that the events of that quest are related to recent happenings, and that Queen Lyrencia, and possibly Queen Aphinah, are in league with Dasmag. He had no idea Lyrencia could cast magic, and always knew her as a kind woman. As for Aphinah, he always found her a spoiled and vicious child but now wondered if there was more to it than that. As far as he was concerned, a regent would likely need to be appointed until a new heir could be found. He presented his plan: in a nutshell, to steal the crown. Lord Mondar would try cleansing it with his own divine magic. It that failed, he would bring it to Master Eydan, who had not left the Arcane Tower since returning from the Feywild and had since appointed a new Archmage. If Eydan proved unable to remove the curse, Lord Mondar was even willing to destroy it if need be, believing it to be the source of the curse now afflicting the kingdom, as the terrible storm had not abated since the day before.

The royal quarters of the palace would be filled with sealed doors. However, Ricio Tane had a solution: he knew of a magical item called the Master Key, capable of opening any lock. Once the crown was in hand, however, they would need to prevent it from being magically tracked while they moved it throughout the kingdom. Ricio Tane also had a solution: a magic item in his possession called the Chest of Magic Nullification, which would completely block any and all magic from penetrating it. Unfortunately, it already contained a cursed item of catastrophic power which would need to be safely disposed of first: a demonic idol that rapidly drained all moisture from everything in an increasingly large radius, which would swiftly kill any living things nearby and - perhaps - eventually consume the world itself. Finally, in order to get into the palace itself, they would need to utilize a secret tunnel. Mondar knew of its existence, as the king had frequently used it to sneak out of the palace for extramarital dalliances, but not of its location. For that, they would need to find and ask the Royal Architect, Nandor Tyk. The adventurers, however, would need to accomplish all of these tasks; they were still unknown in the city, while Lord Mondar and his knights were all easily recognizable.

Tomb of the Constructor

The adventurers decided that their first task would be acquiring the Master Key. Tane explained that twenty years ago, an old adventuring companion of his, a master burglar named Davrillo Princarr, had appeared at the Lucky Leap and told him that he'd found the tomb of Master Arlen the Constructor, first Archmage of the kingdom, and intended to plunder it using the Master Key to get inside. Ricio declined, having just opened the tavern and pondering permanent retirement. Princarr never returned, and Tane suspected he had died in the attempt, but he still had the location his old friend had shared with him.

Following Princarr's directions, they traveled west to the edge fo the Cloud Peaks, finding that the choking rain and cursed lightning that now fell from the sky were found througout the kingdom. There, hidden by an illusory cliff face, they found a large chamber filled with broken golem pieces and containing a large door with a massively complicated locking mechanism on the front. Staring at the door was a young green dragon. After some discussion, it admitted that it had been unable to open the door, and struck a bargain: if they helped it open the door, it would get full access to all information within as well as half of whatever treasure they found. Upon agreeing, Sylas was able to decipher the process to open the gate.

Within the first chamber was a massive statue of Master Arlen in his youth, and several pedestals containing models of his various creations (with descriptive labels). These included the Arcane Tower, the Royal Palace, the king's Falcon Blade, and a multifunctional construction golem called a daedal wright. The first door they entered revealed a room full of broken golem pieces, but nothing of value. The second door opened to a flood of inscribed clay tablets; the room beyond was completely filled with them, floor to ceiling. At the far end of the chamber they found the skeleton of Master Arlen, slumped over his desk. Arlen's ghost floated nearby, dictating complex mathematical theorems to a deadal wright that was furiously writing down his words on a clay tablet. When both ghost and golem ignored them, they looked at the tablets to find them filled with dry, technical, and incredibly long-winded writings on history, medicine, magic theory, construction techniques, and more. His skeleton and what remained of its garments crumbled to dust practically at their touch, but they did find a piece of blue crystal fused into the forehead of his skull; the gem was also visible on the face of his ghost.

The final chamber was where they found the skeleton of Davrillo Princarr, a daedal wright standing over it. At the far end of the chamber of a massive iron stove, flanked on one side by a stack of clay tablets and on the other by clay and straw. In the center was a massive spiral staircase descending into the floor. Leon conjured a vine to try and drag Princarr's skeleton closer to them, but succeeded only in removing its leg. They instead stepped into the chamber, which caused the daedal wright to attack them as well. After destroying it, they found the Master Key on Princarr's remains. Lookking down the staircase, they saw that it was just countless walkways and shelves full of clay tablets going down more than two hundred feet. At the bottom they could see two broken golems, which appeared to have had their metal components chewed off. Deciding they had what they came for, they split what little treasure they'd found with the dragon and departed.

As the returned to the city, Isabelle inspected the crystal fragment she retrieved from Arlen's skeleton. Though whatever power it granted had long since faded, it store bore faint traces of magic. As they pondered what effects it might once had held, they decided that if they were going to travel together and save the kingdom, they would need a name for themselves, and settled upon the Third Eye.

Emporium of Marvelous Rarities

With the Master Key in hand, their next task was to get the cataclysmic artifact out of their Chest of Magic Nullification. Ricio told them that The only place they could safely do that was in a hidden cavern accessed via a teleportation circle in the Emporium of Magical Rarities... The same place the chest had been stolen from years earlier, by Ricio Tane's wife. Ricio told how years ago, a beautiful half-elven wizard named Avrathia Silverstar entered the Lucky Leap, and immediately stole his heart. They got married, and were involved in many questionable missions together, before they laid eyes on Master Bertio Ranberd's treasures at his Emporium of Marvelous Rarities, and decided to steal them. Master Ranberd took on a small number of apprentices, who also worked the shop. Avrathia posed as a student and was accepted; she hid her true skill, which was nearly equal to Ranberd's. For a year she studied and worked there, all the while uncovering and reverse-engineering the various protective systems of the vault. Her feigned quick and significant magical progress impressed Master Ranberd, allowing her to get closer to him and his secrets during a number of private lessons. And then, one day, she appeared at the Lucky Leap looking more terrified than Ricio had ever seen her. She thrust the chest at him, along with her notes on the Emporium's security, and explained that she had tried and failed to rob it alone. Not wanting to draw Master Ranberd's ire upon her husband, she kissed him goodbye and fled into the night with magical speed. Though Ricio searched for her, he never found her, and eventually came to believe that Master Ranberd killed her.

He shared his wife's maps and notes with the adventurers. The teleportation circle was in the emporium's inner vault. Both the inner and outer vault doors were keyed, and Ricio Tane had copies of those keys. However, there were four other locks on the vault doors. These locks could only be undone by pressing hidden switches throughout the rest of the building, and would only remain unlocked for ten minutes, so the whole thing would have to be done quickly. On top of that, every window, and the main door, and a number of interior doors, were set with alarm spells that would mentally alert both Master Bertio Ranberd and his apprentices/employees. Also, the main corridors and the stairwell were subject to a permanent warding spell and the entire building was under a permanent private sanctum effect. Fortunately, Avrathia's map showed which doors were alarmed and where the hidden switches were, but getting in and out undetected would still be a challenge. To aid them, he gave them a magical cologne of dispelling. He also warned them about what Avrathia said she had found in the cavern on the other side of the teleportation circle: an enormous crystal whose very presence assaulted her mind with crushing psychic force. She had also told them that Master Ranberd had been there, and was seemingly able to use magic despite the anti-magic field, which she attributed at the time to the green crystal embedded in his forehead.

Sylas's first plan was to strike up a conversation with the person manning the store, invite him out for drinks, and then cast Suggestion on him and get him to lead them to the switches and then the vault. The man was decidedly uninterested, however, especially once it became clear they did not intend to purchase anything, and then became suspicious and asked them to leave. Thus, the group moved on to their second plan: wait until nightfall, then break in and hope they could successfully dispel everything. After dispelling the alarm on the front door, they used the Master Key to unlock it, but encountered what seemed like an invisible metal grate. Casting dispel magic revealed an ordinary, now-visible metal grate. Thinking outside the box, Leon shapeshifted into a spider, crawled through the grate, turned back, and opened it from the inside.

Following the map, they went through the first door, into the lavatory, and triggered the first switch: a single tile on the wall that looked exactly like every other tile but could be pushed in. As they were told, there was no visual or auditory cue that they had triggered anything. The tile just pushed in, and then back out. With the first switch pressed, the ten-minute timer had started. After disarming the door into the main hallway, they successfully dispelled the warding effect on the corridor. The next switch was through the lecture hall, where they encountered an apprentice cleaning up. Sylas cast his Suggestion spell, but when the apprentice was unaffected Ilara elected to bash her over the head instead. After hiding the unconscious apprentice under a desk, Ililen used his own firbolg magic to disguise himself as her. They then passed into the alchemical lab in the next room, where an innocuous-looking valve could be turned to activate the second switch.

With both switches on the ground floor triggered, they hurried upstairs. Ililen took the lead and entered the library, only to find Master Bertio Ranberd was sitting in a chair, reading. He looked up and said, "Ah, Enixea, what of the intruders?" Unfortunately, Ililen realized that while he looked like Enixea, he didn't sound like Enixea, and when he spoke Ranberd immediately realized what had happened. Ranberd started to call him out on the deception, so Ililen rushed him with his quarterstaff, but the wizard simply teleported away. Realizing they'd been made, they quickly triggered the next switch by setting the hands on a painted clocktower in the library and hurried on. They dispelled the alarm on the next door, and opened it to find Master Ranberd's bedroom. Ililen stepped in, and set off a magical glyph that he hadn't seen, placing him under Ranberd's magical telepathic control. The master wizard asked what Ililen was doing in the Emporium, so Ililen explained that they needed to use the teleportation circle in the basement to safely deposit a dangerous artifact in the vault. When Ranberd asked how the monk even knew about the teleportation circle in the first place, Ililen related the entire story given by Ricio Tane. Ranberd thanked Ililen for the information and told the monk to walk out to the balcony.

Meanwhile, Ililien's companions watched him into the room, suddenly go still, and then start walking towards the balcony door, which they knew to be alarmed. Ilara grabbed him and held on until the dominating magic wore off, while Sylas dispelled, unlocked, and opened the secret door leading to a hidden room with the final switch. Inside that hidden room they found a table with vials of blood and preserved female body parts. And, sitting in a chair at the far end, a woman in a red and yellow dress with a patchwork face. She looked up, expressed surprise at having visitors, and quite earnestly asked who they were and what they were doing. Sylas again attempted a Suggestion spell, and when it failed she frowned and asked what spell he tried to cast, as it must be one she didn't know. Since she seemed friendly, Leon told her, and then asked who she was. She said her name was Avra, and that Master Ranberd had created her, but reminded Sylas that she asked first and he hadn't answered. Sylas apologized and introduced himself and his friends, explaining that they had to dispose of a dangerous magic item. She accepted this answer, and they asked if she could come with them; she'd never been outside Master Ranberd's room before, and was curious to see what else there was. After rotating the wall sconce to trigger the final lock, they rushed downstairs with Avra, who kept gazing in wonder at everything they passed along the way.

Below the Emporium, at the vault's antechamber, they were confronted by another apprentice and an animated suit of armor with a finely-crafted greatsword. Unfortunately, Ililen triggered a second unseen warding glyph and found himself trapped in a magical sphere of force. Isabelle immediately dispelled it but the apprentice, already on alert when he saw the warding magic vanish from the stairs, attacked along with the animated armor. Ililen quickly knocked him out with his staff, then joined Ilara in dispatching the armor; the barbarian took up its sword as Sylas opened the door to the outer vault. The vault was filled with books, potions, and scrolls, and while Sylas rushed to open the inner vault door Leon tried to snag some. When he found they were held in place by magic, he regrettably left them behind, knowing they had little time. The inner vault was filled with much more valuable magic items, but suspecting they were likewise held firm they hurried past them and into the teleportation circle.

The Third Eye appeared in a cavern containing several large iron chests and a very large green crystal formation. Standing in front of the crystals was Master Bertio Ranberd, who looked at them, almost curiously, before Isabelle and Sylas immediately grabbed their heads, screamed, and collapsed. As Ilara grabbed their bodies and dove back through the teleportation circle with Avra, Leon quickly opened the Chest of Magic Nullifcation, removed the demonic idol, and hurled it into the cave. Ililen meanwhile, throw a dart at Master Ranberd. The wizard easily dodged it, and then transformed into a massive feathered serpent shortly before Ililen and Leon, too, were dropped by the crystal's mind-crushing aura. While Avra began to freak out over what she had seen in the cave, and how terrible it had felt in her mind, and what Master Ranberd was even doing in such, a place, Ilara downed a healing potion and then charged back in to retrieve Ililen and Leon. Reviving her companions with enchanted berries provided by Leon for emergencies, they managed to calm Avra down enough to flee, escaping down the street and disappearing around the corner just as they heard the city watch arriving from the other direction. When told about Ranberd turning into a feathered serpent, Isabelle recognized it as a couatl, a magical creature often found guarding powerful magic items.

Victorious, but thoroughly spent from their harrowing ordeal with the crystal, they staggered back into the Lucky Leap. Ricio began welcoming back, but stopped when he saw Avra, his eyes widening as one word escaped his lips: "Avrathia?" Avra replied, somewhat cheerfully, that Avrathia was who Master Ranberd created her to look like. As Ricio began to freak out a bit himself, the adventurers decided to go to sleep and let him deal with this himself. Avrathia told Ricio what Ranberd had told her: that the wizard had caught up with Avrathia only a few days after she fled into the night, whereupon he promptly disintegrated her. However, he soon began to feel guilty about it, having fallen in love with the woman he felt had been his intellectual equal. And so he created a flesh golem in her image, named her Avra, and eventually began teaching her magic. Periodically he would bring new parts to "improve" her, though she was unaware of where he obtained them. Having never known anything else she believed Ranberd to be a kind man who cared for her, but after what she had seen and heard that night, she was beginning to have doubts. Though she was not truly his wife, Ricio still invited her to stay at the Lucky Leap, an offer she accepted.

Hunt for the Royal Architect

With the Master Key acquired, and the Chest of Magic Nullification emptied, all that remained was to find the Royal Architect, Nandor Tyk, to learn the location of the hidden tunnel into the palace. They first went to Nandor's apartment and knocked on the door. There was no answer, but an old lady down the hall cracked her door and peeked out. When they asked if she knew Nandor, she said no and slammed the door. Ilara bust down Nandor's door to find his apartment empty. Nothing appeared amiss, but Sylas found a smudge of poop on the floor, like it had been tracked in on a boot. Ililen identified it as being from a large reptilian herbivore, and Isabelle knew that there was only one place in the city that might possibly have such a creature: the Royal Menagerie, which had a pair of triceratops. On their way out they knocked on the old lady's door, but she told them to go away or she would call the guards. When she tried to close the door Sylas stuck his foot in to keep it open, and she made good on her threat and became screaming and yelling for the guards; the group beat a hasty exit and made for the Royal Menagerie.

While normally open to the public, the menagerie was now closed and the gates were chained. While walking there, the group noticed that throughout the city there were more weeds than usual, in places where they should have been removed before getting so big; many of the weeds also looked unnatural and dangerous. Additionally, a great deal of moss and lichen had appeared in the almost perpetual rain. They unlocked the gates of the Royal Menagerie with the Master Key, and noted that there was a lot more algae in the fountain than just a few days of neglect would account for. Then they unlocked the gift shop, where Ilara took a stuffed griffon and left 6 silver on the counter (Leon swiped the money when no one was looking).

At the center of the menagerie was a small lake, with a sign stating it was home to a number of crocodiles, including a big one called Old Gnarly. Looking into the lake, which was starting to overflow from all the rain, they saw it was filled with the mangled bodies of crocodiles and at least one keeper. Sylas spotted the big one swimming under the surface. As they looped around to the triceratops pen, they saw a wooden platform next to the stands; though they would normally be above the lake, they were now partly submerged in it. Attached to the platform was a wooden crane arm with a cage on the end, and a body inside. Trying to get to it, Ilara ended up stepping in not one but two bear traps. Iilen looked for more, and not finding any stepped up on the platform... At which point Old Gnarly burst out of the water, climbed up onto the stands, and said "Are you feed, or do you bring meat?" It was not mollified by Ilara saying "We have mead!"

After killing Old Gnarly, they looked around for more traps. Behind the stands was a dead triceratops, clearly killed by the giant crocodile. Its horns were oddly spiraled, like a unicorn's. They could see the other triceratops, also with spiraled horns, looking at them through a giant hole in the fence around its pen. Since there was another trap in front of the hole, Ilara picked up a stick and safely set it off from a distance. And then the other triceratops teleported across to attack her as thorns burst out of the ground under their feet and a keeper leapt out of the bushes, telling them not to struggle because Old Gnarly liked his meat intact. Ilara knocked the triceratops unconscious, and Ililen did the same to the keeper before tying him up. After they woke him up, he panicked because if he didn't feed Old Gnarly, the crocodile would eat his father. After showing him that Old Gnarly was dead, and rescuing his father from the cage, the keeper had an emotional breakdown at everything he had endured. His father explained that he was the head caretaker of the menagerie, and that after the storm started the animals got... Strange. They started acting smarter, and meaner. And then Old Gnarly started talking. It kept him alive only because he had fed it good cuts of meat, but was also using him as a hostage to get his son to feed it more meat. The group offered to let the keepers escape to safety at the Lucky Leap, but they insisted on staying and caring for the remaining animals as best they could.

Nearby was a set of two cages with iron bars. One was filled with a variety of objects, including a barrel, a trough, a chest, and an armchair, but no animals. The bars in one corner had corroded away, and it was partially flooded by the overflowing lake. The cage next to it had an inner layer of wooden bars a few feet from the iron ones, and a sign inviting visitors to see "the iron eaters of the Thundering Mountains." On the far side of the cage they could see a dead body wearing underarmor padding, but no armor over it. Ililen walked over to check out the body and saw an enormous rust monster eating the remnants of its armor. It then immediately turned toward and made a beeline for him and his adamantine staff, along with the smaller one behind it. Leon conjured vines to entangle them and kill them from a distance, but Ilara noticed when she shot the big one with a crossbow bolt, it ate the bolt head to heal its wounds, an unusual trait for a rust monster. With the creatures slain, they identified the corpses as members of the Royal Swords and one of the queen's witchservant cultists. Ililen and Sylas checked in the other cage, and the trough opened its mouth and spat adhesive goo at them; they dodged, then killed it, and found the half-eaten body of a keeper clutching a potion labeled "Invisibility - For Emergency Use Only."

Both cages were attached to a small building with sliding metal doors; Ilara opened one, surprised a cultist inside who had barricaded the exterior door, and killed him. Inside was a cage full of rabbits, trays of rotting vegetables and meat, and a crate of iron ingots: food for the various animals of the menagerie. The other cage attached to the feeding shed, which did not have its bars partially rusted away, contained a dirty and very hungry owlbear; Leon threw it a rabbit, which it snapped up immediately.

The next three enclosures were a set of identical rocky bowls surrounded by iron bars. The first had a sign pronouncing it held gricks. Some of the bars were dissolved by acid, and next to a dead grick. The second had a sign that said, "Beware Deathsting! The tail that stings, the claws that catch!" Some of its bars were also dissolved by acid. The third visibly held a pair of griffons. The bars on its enclosure were much higher, supporting a net over the top, and had not yet been dissolved. Looking back into Deathsting's enclosure, they saw a number of canvas bags scattered about in one corner, and when Sylas looked closer he spotted a hatch in the ground designed to blend in with the rock. In fact, having spotted it, he now saw that all three enclosures had such a hatch. That's when Deathsting, a giant scorpion with acid dripping from its jaws, appeared from the bushes and stung Sylas, nearly killing him with its venom before Ilara and Ililen killed it. Ilara, still enraged and having only hit a single thing, jumped down into the grick enclosure to fight them as well.

Once the gricks were dead they entered the trap door, which led to the feeding chambers. They had been taken over by the Uncanny Vagabonds, a traveling band of entertainers and outlaws.After explaining that they were looking for a way to get rid of the queen, the Vagabonds' elder, Taris, admitted that Nandor was his cousin, and was staying with them. He was even willing to let them speak with the architect for only a hundred gold, a price which included everyone involved promising not to tell anyone else about each other. Nandor, who had holed up with the Vagabonds as soon as the trouble started, was happy to furnish them with the location of the hidden tunnel, as well as a map of the palace itself. He told them about an abandoned royal villa, used occasionally when the monarch needed to meet someone in secret, or who they didn't want to allow in the palace. In the wine cellar, one of the large kegs was actually a secret door leading to a staircase down into a hidden tunnel, which connected directly to the royal quarters in the palace. The tunnel contained a gate, however, that featured the most complicated locking mechanism Nandor had ever seen. It wasn't just a physical gate, either; it also included an invisible wall of force. The late king had the key, but Nandor didn't know who held it now and and couldn't promise the queen was unaware of the tunnel, or that it would be unguarded. Still, he conceded it was a better option than the front door.

A Leap Into Fire

Having obtained the information they sought, they returned to the Lucky Leap... Only to find it on fire. The door had been smashed in, and the metal shutters peeled back. One of the bystanders said that a group of werehellhound knights had attacked. Only one person had come out since then: a badly burned werehellhound knight who kept to the shadows as he fled. Inside the tavern dead knights were everywhere; because the werehellhounds reverted to human form on death, and were still wearing the uniforms of the Knights of the Crown, it created a bizarre scene that looked like the knights fought and killed themselves. Leon's horse, Luna, who was being kept inside, was dead in a corner. As was Ricio Tane, whose corpse was slumped against the bar. A single werehellhound was inside, breathing more fire on the walls.

Ililen and Ilara rushed through the burning tavern and headed downstairs. As they had been staying in the tavern, they know of the secret level between the tavern and the cellar. Behind the hidden door, which had already been found and opened, was a small room filled with fake documents and a trapped chest, designed to create the illusion that it was the only hidden room to deter anyone from looking for the second secret door inside. Another werehellhound was poking around this room, having not found the second door yet; after killing it, Ilara headed down to the cellar, where they could hear more fighting, while Ililen searched the secret level for the Chest of Magic Nullification; Ricio Tane was holding it while they were out, and she didnn't know exactly where he put it.

While Leon, Isabelle, and Sylas dealt with the werehellhound in the tavern, Ilara reached the cellar and found the dead bodies of Cyne Mondar and another knight with weirdly long fingers and a strange coloration to his skin. Nearby were two more werehellhounds fighting with Avra, who was both enlarged and berserk. Ilara held them at bay until her companions joined her, eventually managing to slay the werehellhounds and calm Avra down. Looking closer at the strange dead knight with Lord Mondar, they discovered he was a doppelganger wearing a knight's uniform. They also noticed that Lord Mondar's fist was tightly clenched around his signet ring. Inside the band, they found an inscription: "Crypt Mondar 2-4-2". Exhausted from the fighting, and unwilling to risk searching for a safehouse yet, they holed up in the basement and let the tavern burn down above them.

The Hidden Vault of House Mondar

The next morning, they came up from the basement through the ruined ashes of the tavern. Since Avra had nowhere else to go, they asked her to join them. Then they wrapped Mondar's body in a rug and took him off to his family crypt. Outside were two Royal Swords who told them the queen had ordered it closed. Their nervousness soon gave away that they were not actual Royal Swords, and when Ilara shoved past them they didn't put up a fight. The entry chamber featured a great mural of dwarves mining, trading, and amassing great wealth, bearing the title of "The Greatness of the Mondar Clan". Descending into the main chamber, they found an empty crematory, two sarcophagi bearing the images of a male and a female dwarven warrior, and dozens of niches with urns. The male dwarf's sarcophagus had been opened, and the body inside had clearly been disturbed. Its ghost appeared, accused them of disturbing his rest, and threatened that they would be consumed in flames like those of the Mondar line if they did not make right what had been defiled and offer proper prayer and tribute. And a necrotic fire blazed in the crematory at the ghost's proclamation. Leon, being well-versed in dwarven funerary practices, was able to instruct the others how to return the body to the proper ritual burial position before closing the sarcophagus back up. Once this was done, they removed the ruby from Mondar's signet ring and offered it as tribute while speaking a prayer for the dead and lighting a candle, and the ghost of Lord Gronjyph Mondar vanished.

Though they wished to cremate Cyne Mondar like his ancestors, they didn't have an urn to place his ashes in, so they left his body for the moment and opened a secret door to find a set of stairs. A blood-tipped spear jutted from the wall near the top, its retracting mechanism jammed, and bloody footprints led down to the door at the bottom. Sylas found the pressure plates that triggered the other spears. The door at the bottom was a stone vault door with a circular valve lock, which Ililen managed to figure out how to open by listening carefully to the mechanism as it was turned. On the other side was a room bearing the stony face of Lord Gronjyph across the entire floor, with three other identical doors leading out. They could also hear a muffled voice moaning and begging for help from somewhere below the floor. Killing two birds with one stone, Leon stone-shaped a section of the floor into an urn for Mondar. Thirty feet below, they saw a man impaled on a spikes. They lowered a rope and pulled him up, and he told them his name was Fernog and confessed that he and his friends, having heard about the treasure of House Mondar, had come to steal it. However, he had accidentally triggered a trap that opened the floor and dropped him onto the spikes. He gave them his coin pouch in thanks and they let him go.

After cremating Lord Mondar, they returned to the room with the moving floor and took precautions against sharing Fernog's fate. Isabelle attempted to open the first door, which triggered the floor; Sylas grabbed Leon, who had affixed himself to the wall, while Isabelle cast feather fall and she and her companions drifted slowly to stand among the spikes. Leon lowered a rope for them as the floor slid closed once more. Sylas, meanwhile, figured out that the "2-4-2" on the signet ring was the instructions on which door to take, and successfully opened the second door. This revealed another staircase, leading them to a large room whose floor was carved to depict a dwarven fortress with a massive stone gate under Lord Gronyph Mondar's face. A thin layer of fine sand covered some of the room, which contained four more exit doors and a group of people. Among them was a badly burned doppelganger wearing the armor of a Knight of the Crown, and a woman adorned with gold jewelry that Leon recognized as Yhlsaby, matron of the Loud and Lusty brothel. Sensing that things were likely to get violent, Yhlsaby confirmed that they were there to claim the Mondars' riches and offered a compromise: they help each other get through, and each person present would get an equal share of the treasure.

Agreeing to the compromise, Sylas attempted to open the fourth door, but failed to set it to the right combination and set of a trap that began filling the room with sand. As repeated attempts failed, and the sand threatened to make it impossible to open the door, let alone breath, Ilara simply forced the door open, hurrying everyone else through before slamming it shut behind them. The next hallway was lined with alternating white and dark gray tiles. When Sylas couldn't find any traps, Ilara took a step onto a gray tile, which fell open beneath her and dropped her fifty feet into a pool of putrid water. Isabelle levitated her out, and Sylas checked again and they realized that the white tiles were safe while the gray ones were trap doors. At the end of the hallway, they were faced with four more doors; Sylas simply pointed at the second one, and Yhlsaby and her crew managed to get it open.

The final hallway was blocked by a naga, who warned that none but the Mondars may pass. The Third Eye showed it the signet ring and explained they were here on the Mondars' behalf, which it accepted. It opened the door and allowed them into the vault, but sternly reminded them that under the terms of its agreement with the Mondars, it was granted ten percent of the treasure within. Yhlsaby thanked the heroes for a profitable partnership, making mention that they were part of the thieves' guild known as the Golden Masks. Wile her people began taking stock of and divvying up the treasure, Sylas went straight for the book sitting on the table, finding it to be Lord Cyne Mondar's personal journal. After skimming through the early years of his life, his induction into the Knights of the Crown, and how he'd used significant portions of his family treasure to fund various charitable causes in the city, Sylas found an account of the fateful journey into the Feywild fifteen years ago.

Most of it was as Lord Mondar had said: they went to the Feywild to rescue Queen Lyrencia, King Waldrann defeated the Satyr Lord Dasmag in a duel, and Dasmag returned the queen and threw them a big feast at which he enchanted the crown with a blessing of plenty to make up for the trouble he caused. Lord Mondar noted in his journal, however, that the two kings struck a second, secret deal with each other, the details of which he was not privy to. Where the story diverged, however, was in what happened as the party returned to the Material Plane. The official story - the one told to the public, and that Lord Mondar told them - was that on the way back, they had the misfortune to find a quicksand-like area of sucking mud in the swamp, to which both Prince Krasnar and Brother Lestor lost their lives. The truth, as written by Lord Mondar in his journal, was that as they journeyed Prince Krasnar suddenly demanded confirmation of his rightful status as heir, leading to a fight between him and his father. Ultimately, the king killed his raging and indignant son, then made the entire company swear an oath to never again speak of the details of the journey. When Father Lestor refused to do so, the king exiled him to the Feywild, forbidding him from returning to the Material Plane with them.

With the mystery deepening, the group decided that they would need to find a way to the Feywild to speak with Father Lestor. However, first, they must complete their present mission: to use the secret tunnel to enter the palace, steal the crown, and deliver it to the Arcane Tower to end the curse afflicting the kingdom.

Trapped Under Shadows

The Royal Palace

After leaving the Mondar Crypt, the group went directly to the estate Nandor told them about. As expected, one of the massive kegs in the basement was actually a secret door that could be opened to reveal a narrow staircase descending down into a long, narrow tunnel. About a hundred feet in was an ornate gate with a complicated locking mechanism. They opened it with the Master Key, then continued for some distance before hearing a horrible voice rasp out of the darkness: "You are my meal that was promised and the carriers of my treasure. I will implant my eggs into your body, and you shall bear my spawns!" What scuttled out towards them looked like a naked, pale-skinned woman from the waist up, and a giant cockroach from the waist down. She had festering scabs all over her body, and her face was flat and chitinous, lacking ears or a nose and with mandibles, feelers, and large insectoid eyes. Leon, Sylas, and Isabelle promptly hit it with their biggest spells, quickly destroying it.

The tunnel eventually emerged through a secret door into the king's cabinet, a private room to which no one else, not even the queen, was allowed entry. It was finely decorated, including fine wines and liquors and a rack with some very fine swords. From there they passed through the king's bathroom (with a gold toilet seat) into the royal bedroom, where a dead naked elf was lashed to the bed, having bled to death from hundreds of cuts. After looking in the queen's bathroom, they entered the royal wardrobe, which was filled with expensive outfits and also a leather dress made from flayed people. Sylas found some unusual plant matter and odd bits of brimstone and ash on Lyrencia's clothing, and began to suspect that either she had been replaced by a devil, or she had summoned the devils they found back in the mill. Ililen poked his out out one of the three doors leading out. With Nandor's map, they knew that this was a large sitting room that surrounded the royal chambers. From the door he could saw a bunch of thick vines spread throughout the room, some of which were sprouting large purple flowers that Leon identified as carnivorous death cups. He then poked his head out of the second door, and was immediately spotted by a pair of werehellhound knights standing guard. After a brief fright, the group decided to take a rest before continuing on. Sylas looked around, saw that the vines were thickest where they emerged from a nearby door, and cast blight upon. As the vines withered, a loud angry screech was heard from behind the door, which burst open to reveal four furious dryads.

During the ensuing fight, one of the dryads magically charmed Ilara to protect her, and another charmed Ililen to let no one through the door. While Ililen did his duty and defended the door against his comrades, Ilara took her order more literally than the dryad expected and defended her... from the other dryads. The four soon fell, and the group stepped into the next room and found what was left of the royal treasury; it had obviously been plundered, and only a handful of scattered coins remained. After taking a few minutes to rest, they passed through the door that the werehellhounds had been guarding to find an absolute mess of a bedchamber: rotting food and torn clothing strewn about, questionable stains on the bed, a decapitated stuffed bear, and a partially burned dollhouse with the dolls hanging by their necks. Within this room they found Queen Aphinah playing with a fey creature that Ilara recognized as a mumus. Her mother had once told her stories of them, and the scream she let out was so terrifying that Ililen leapt into the room and beat it with her staff until it stopped moving. Sylas demanded to know where the crown was, and Aphinah simply grinned and said it was her sister's turn to wear it. Ilara stabbed Aphinah, and though the queen dropped bleeding to the floor she stood up a moment later, giggling wickedly and scratching at Ilara with her nails. Ililen smashed her over the head, but she once again rose, seemingly free of injury, and Sylas realized that despite her human appearance, she must be something else capable of regenerating. They tried fire. They tried lightning. They tried necrotic energy. None were capable of slaying the queen. Eventually Ilara cut off her head - something that made Ililen visibly uncomfortable - and she simply got up and put her head back on. Enraged at being constantly scratched, Ilara finally cut off her hands and flung them across the room, causing Ililen to go nearly catatonic from shock. Finally Leon conjured a beam of moonlight to bathe her in radiant energy; at this, Aphinah shrieked in pain and, at last, died. While Leon and Isabelle helped Ililen come back to himself, the others searched the queen's room. Though there was nothing particularly valuable, they did find a number of scrawled notes with messages like "Born in hell, burn in hell!" and "It's my turn, bitch!"

Continuing their exploration through the breakfast nook and across the sitting room, they found another bedroom that was dusty and unused; it was clear that no one had been here for years. The sitting area was filled with defaced paintings of the late Queen Elyssa, while the bed was without a mattress and a nearby armor rack stood bare. When they pulled out a desk drawer, they found that on the bottom someone had drawn a picture of Kill Waldrann, Queen Lyrencia, and Princess Aphinah being violently tortured. Above it was a drawing of a glaive and the words, "I will avenge you, mother." They concluded that this was the bedchamber of Prince Krasnar, mostly untouched since his death fifteen years ago, who clearly blamed his father and stepmother for his mother's death. They recognized Elyssa's face as having been on the erinyes that slew the king, and the glaive as the spectral one that had appeared during his funeral, but they still weren't sure how the clues fit together. Was King Waldrann really responsible for Elyssa' death? Was Krasnar justified in demanding recognition of his status as heir, leading to the fight that claimed his life? Was it a legitimate concern, or was he merely making a pretense to usurp his father? They could not yet answer any of these questions, however, and still had the crown to find besides.

Exhausted from the long day, and with their magical reserves fading, they decided to spend the night in Krasnar's bedroom and continue their search refreshed in the morning. Isabelle conjured a magical shelter in front of the door for them to sleep in, but it was not longer after doing so that they heard a scream from the next room, followed by angry shouting. Assuming the bodies of the guards - and the queen - had been found, they prepared for a fight while Sylas listened quietly at the door. He heard someone enter the prince's wardrobe, walk to the bedroom door, and try to open it. With the magical shelter in the way, though, it had no room to open. And as Sylas listened, the figure on the other side cursed in annoyance, and then left. Letting out a sigh of relief, they settled down for a wary sleep.

The next morning, they went back to their search. First through the royal kitchen, where they found a swarm of ghoulish pixies in the pantry, then through a dining room that was an absolute mess of leftover food and broken glasses, and then through the drawing room where they found a Hargram-stamped platinum bar wedged between two sofa cushions. Past the drawing room were the knights' quarters, where they interrupted and subsequently killed a pair of werehellhounds who were sparring. Their path led them downstairs, where they emerged into the back of the throne room, the middle of which was now filled with a veritable forest of dangling chains. Several of them were wrapped around bodies that writhed and twitched, so Isabelle levitated Ilara up to rescue one. Staring into the chains, she was surprised to see a devil staring back at her with the face of one she knew to be dead, which startled her so much she failed to attack it. The devil next turned its gaze on Ililen, but it had miscalculated; instead of being shaken by seeing the face of a dead loved one, the monk howled in fury, and swung up through the chains to kill the devil. With the creature dead, they realized that the bodies were dead as well, the devil having been moving them to look alive as bait.

Beyond the throne room they came across a long hall with two murals: one showing a ragtag army battling chromatic dragons, and one showing Master Arlen and King Tarn Hargrave standing outside the newly-built royal palace. Past the hall of history was the hall of monarchs, featuring statues of the late King Waldrann, Dowager Queen Lyrencia, and Queen Aphinah. The king's statue had been toppled over, and the Third Eye took the opportunity to deface the other two. The next room they checked was the hall of trophies, where the heads of great beasts (including a dire bear and a red dragon) were mounted. Three absolutely terrified servants were busy dusting them, but they happily told the group what they knew of the queen: one of them had seen a carriage from the Gorso family by the stable, and suspected she was entertaining them in the meeting rooms in the west wing, across the garden. They then decided they were done dusting and practically bolted out of the room. The group consulted their map and decided to take the most direct path there. This led them into the reception hall, which was dominated by a massive painting depicting the attack on the palace by the blue dragon Malzdreziret several decades ago, and occupied by half a dozen clearly inebriated royal guards. The guards tried to stop them, but when that proved beyond their ability in their drunken state, one of them staggered into the ballroom next door and called for the queen.

Surprisingly, Aphinah was in the ballroom with three werehellhounds, torturing servants for amusement. She sneered at them for interrupting her fun, and they quickly discovered that this queen, too, couldn't be killed until Leon shone another moonbeam upon her. Having now killed Aphinah twice, with neither one having the crown, the group was perplexed as to what was going on. Knowing they had little time to dally, however, they proceeded outside and across the garden to the open-air hallway of the west wing, guarded by still more werehellhounds. Though they dispatched them quickly, a group of the queen's witchservant cultists emerged from the direction of the meeting rooms to investigate, along with more royal guards. Isabelle hurled a fireball into their midst and charged in along with Ilara, where they saw Queen Aphinah, bearing both the crown and her father's Falcon Blade, seated at a table with her mother. The nobles they were meeting with were huddled in the corner, begging for their lives. Lyrencia took one look at the intruders and vanished, teleporting away. Ilara quickly relieved Aphinah of the sword and attempted to pull the crown off, but it seemed to be attached to her head. It was not until Leon killed her with another moonbeam that the crown came off. Suddenly Ilara's eyes glazed over, and she put the crown on her own head, declaring that they needed to find Queen Lyrencia, now the true ruler of Hargram, and deliver it to her. Isabelle promptly dispelled the compulsion from the barbarian, and Sylas used a magical hand to remove the crown and drop it into the Crate of Magic Nullification. Sparing one final look at the terrified nobles cowering in the corner, they took the Falcon Blade as well as the queen's mithril torc and swiftly made their escape; Ilara also stole a silver sword from the weapon rack in the king's private chambers on their way out. After dispatching two more werehellhounds standing guard in the secret tunnel, they emerged back into the afternoon streets of Hargram to find it as dim as twilight, even though it was still early morning. Looking up, they saw that the entire city had become enclosed in a massive dome of pure shadow energy.

Under the Shadowdome

Over the course of the next week, it became clear that the shadowdome formed a solid barrier through which no living being could pass. Various magics confirmed that it existed in all coterminous planes, and could neither be dispelled nor bypassed with teleportation magic. Further testing revealed that the dome's source was somewhere within the Shadowfell. During this time, the High Speaker explicitly named each member of the party, except Avra, as an enemy of the crown, wanted for stealing from the royal palace, with a reward of 1000g for information or 2000g for each of their heads. As detailed descriptions of them had been circulated as well, they spent most of their time hiding out in the Royal Menagerie with the Uncanny Vagabonds. And, despite a great number of attempts, had failed at destroying the crown. Until, finally, Elder Taris came to them with a plan. He had a contact inside the palace, who said that in the morning, the Queen would open a hole in the shadowdome to allow a group of soldiers to leave the city. The contact also sent along Royal Sword uniforms and false papers designating them as new recruits. Taris asked only that they take with them his cousin Gren - who the Vagabonds believed to be the bastard son of the late King Waldrann - who would make contact with their allies outside the city.

They seized on the opportunity, and the next morning they went to the Crown Gate in disguise. The guard captain chewed them out for being late, then ordered them into an armored troop carriage with a number of other soldiers. Soon after they boarded, Queen Aphinah arrived on a palanquin, seemingly wearing the very crown they had stolen. She announced that she had come to see off the brave soldiers of Hargram on their journey...

...Which would end right now. She cackled as the transport doors slammed shut, and moments later a cloud of necrotic gas appeared within, causing all of the soldiers with them to die and promptly rise again as zombies. Isabelle, Leon, and Sylas all teleported out to the nearby rooftops, where they were met with attacks from archers on the ramparts and the witchservant cultists surrounding the queen. Meanwhile, half a dozen guards and a pair of werehellhounds waited in the street in case the others broke down the door, which Ililen and Ilara eventually did. After Isabelle hurled a fireball at Aphinah, she teleported away, displaying spellcasting abilities they'd never known her to have in the past. Leon summoned a herd of draft horses to provide cover, and after a long battle they eventually made their escape.

As they ran down an alleyway, a man stepped out of the shadows and into their path, wearing a fine silk robe with one shoulder bared to display a large tattoo of a tiger. He introduced himself as Samsadur, leader of the Golden Masks, emphasizing that he hoped his identity would lend weight to his words. He explained that he had the ability to send them into the Shadowfell to bring down the shadowdome, and then bring them back afterwards. In exchange, he merely wanted them to escort him to a business associate in the Shadowfell outside the city. As they'd exhausted all other ideas for breaching the dome and had been unable to destroy the crown themselves, they accepted the offer. Samsadur told them he had an associate in the Shadowfell with a counterpart on the Material Plane, and that the two were able to communicate with each other and, subsequently, him.

This associate, a gnome named Zurafkina Shoemaker, had discovered that the shadowdome was being generated from the Shadow Ziggurat, a structure occupying the same location as the palace, which had been the seat of power for a fallen angel for millennia. Additionally, once the dome appeared, a dark song of despair could be heard throughout the Shadowfell version of the city, sapping all positive emotions from everyone who heard it. She also reported that a small tribe of shadow giants, led by a night hag, had made camp at the Shadow Ziggurat and were known to have brought many prisoners to the Shadowfell version of the dungeons over the last several years. Since the dome went up, a faint cloud of shadow could be seen moving from the dungeons to the ziggurat. She knew of only one place in the city where the song could not be heard: the Shadowfell version of the Eyrie of the Fabled, a well-known theater with soundproof walls, but when she went there she saw a haunting phantasmal play on stage that drove her to flee. Despite the dangers, Samsadur felt confident that the Third Eye would be able to find a way to remove the shadowdome. Gren, meanwhile, elected to return to his people and find out why they had been sent into an ambush.

Samsadur allowed them to spend the night in a Golden Mask safehouse, where he showed them a pair of heavy chests bound with solid padlocks that would be transported to his business associate once the dome was down. He warned that they were protected with deadly traps, and advised them not to open them. When asked what they contained, he replied only that their contents were of great importance to his business associate. The next morning, he plane shifted them into the Shadowfell.

Dirge of the Dark Angel

Within the Shadowfell, Hargrave was dreary, dilapidated, and almost entirely uninhabited. As soon as they arrived, they could hear the mournful tones of the son of lament, to which Ililen and Leon quickly succumbed. As they walked, they could indeed see the massive black ziggurat dominating the center of the city where the palace was in the Material Plane. They could also see the stream of shadows flowing from the dungeon to the ziggurat, and that a thin stream was now issuing forth from the monk and the druid to join it. Samsadur led them first to Zurafkina's house, where they left the chests they brought along. Zurafkina introduced them to a large man with a glaive named Orellir, who claimed to have escaped the Dungeon of Tears and wished to help them in exchange for passage back to the Material Plane from whence he had been kidnapped. Samsadur studied him for a long time, but accepted his proposal. Orellir warned them that the warden was a night hag known as the Gloom Widow.

After a quick discussion, they decided their first priority must be rescuing the prisoners. On their way there, Leon spotted a drow tailing them across the rooftops. He sent his owl familiar to investigate, and saw that the drow had six extra eyes in his forehead and a few slender tentacles coming from the back of his head. As soon as the drow saw the owl, however, he vanished in a burst of shadow; despite watching for him, they did not see him again by the time they reached the prison. Ilara knocked on the door, and though there was no answer Sylas did spot a raven flying from one of the sentry towers into the prison yard beyond. They walked around to the side and were attacked by a lone shadow giant, after which Leon decided to simply stone shape an entrance into the wall, which led them into the back of a cell. The prisoner within was utterly indifferent to the rescue, and seemed disinclined to leave his cell until Ilara physically picked him up and placed him outside, where he simply shrugged and sat down. Ilara then smashed the wooden door off its hinges, and looked very pleased with herself until she realized there was a hell hound on the other side that spewed fire into the cell. After she and Orellir killed it, they stepped out into the western prison yard. It was surrounded by cells on three sides, and iron doors into the interior building on the fourth. There was also a teleportation circle on the ground.

Hearing whistling from one cell, they found its inhabitant cheerily whistling to himself, and smashed down the door. The man inside introduced himself as Jasper Platinumhand, the "Baron of the Multiverse." He'd also been snatched from Hargrave, but had thus far managed to resist the song of despair, something he attributed to his cheery personality. He also suggested said personality is why the Gloom Widow intended to have him executed the next day, so he was quite glad for the rescue. They offered to let him join them, and he accepted... But noted he would stay in the yard until they were ready to leave, being useless in a fight.

Ilara smashed through one of the sliding iron doors into the main building, finding a small guardroom with another door, arrow slits in the wall, and four levers. Sylas went in and pulled one, and he heard the sound of metal sliding against stone just before he got shot with a crossbow bolt. On his way back out he pulled another lever, which resulted in the same sound. Ilara started bashing through the next door, but Isabell cast mage hand on the third lever and it slid open to reveal an anteroom with a night hag standing in it; she promptly blasted Ilara with magic missiles, but was counterspelled by Isabelle. A fight ensued that quickly turned into Ilara getting enlarged and blocking the door, while getting pummeled by two invisible stalkers, with the night hag casting spells from behind them. So Leon polymorphed Sylas into a giant ape, who picked up a big rock and threw it at the night hag; badly injured, she cursed them to be devoured by sorrow and haunting dreams of loves lost before plane shifting away as Ilara killed the stalkers. Sylas the ape went out and smashed open every cell door in the eastern and western yards, gathering a crew of about fifty depressed prisoners who had to be physically led out of their cells because they couldn't muster the motivation to leave by themselves. They looked through the prison interior but found nothing of interest beyond the prisoners' belongings.

Leon suggested taking the prisoners along to the ziggurat, but Samsadur vetoed that on the grounds that taking them to where the shadow stuff being drawn from them was going was a terrible idea. Instead, he suggested guiding them to the one place in the city where the song couldn't reach them: the Eyrie of the Fabled. As they walked through the Shadowfell with their prisoners, they talked about what had happened. When one of them mentioned the night hag warden, one of the prisoners suddenly perked up, recalling his own experience with a hag, years and years ago, when a hag named Angheu killed his parents. This caused Ililen to perk up and demand more information, and though he refused to elaborate on why he was very intrigued at what the prisoner told him. Their discussion was cut short when a gargantuan shadow spider attacked them from the rooftops, spraying a shadow web into the street that sapped everyone's strength. After they killed it, they made their way to the Eyrie of the Fabled, which looked just as dilapidated and run down as the rest of the city. Ilara walked through the lobby and opened a door to the theater itself, which was shockingly pristine, and filled with patrons watching a show on stage featuring a prince defending a princess from a half-dragon aboard a ship. Ilara, who had never seen theater before and assumed that the prince was really trying to defend a real princess from a real half-dragon, charged towards the stage, only to be stopped by a shadow emerging from the crowd.

The rest of the party followed, but Ililen and Avra became entranced by the play found a pair of open seats from which to watch it. Even after the shadows were dealt with, they refused to leave their seats, despite the rest of the group recognizing that the play was dismally bad. Meanwhile Ilara leapt on stage and swung her sword at the half-dragon, who nimbly dodged every swing while continuing his dialogue as if he weren't being attacked. This continued until the scene shimmered and changed to one of the prince professing his love to the princess from a jail cell. Sylas and Orellis recognized that these seemed to be ghostly spirits doomed to re-enact their play forever, and suspected that performing it themselves for the spirits might break the spell. Unfortunately, none of them were familiar with the play. So they went off in search of the script and found themselves in a storage room filled with precariously stacked boxes with random corridors twisting through them. Ilara and Sylas headed in, but instead of a script they found an angry minotaur. They attacked it, only to dislodge some of the stacked items and find themselves buried under boxes, but Sylas cast a spell of suggestion on the minotaur and told it to help them find the script, and it abandoned the fight to start poking around in the storage room.

After about ten minutes they had found a number of props, but no script, so they moved on. They first found a costume room, though without any information about what costumes were needed they made a note of it and kept going through a line of dressing rooms. Most were empty, but one contained the ghostly actress playing the princess singing a mournful tune. Still not seeing a script, they pressed on until they found the green room, where the actor playing the prince was silently acting out his part. Sylas stepped inside to ask him, or at least go past him, and discovered there was a silence spell over the entire room. The ghost did not take kindly to being disturbed, and attacked them. Past the green room was the director's office, where they at last found a script. It was in poor condition, and mostly illegible, but they were able to find a synopsis, a cast list, and one intact scene: the finale, in which the prince and princess console each other as their ship sinks, and the princess sings a song about doomed love.

They went back to the lobby and ushered all the prisoners into the soundproofed theater, though Samsadur refused to risk losing his mind to the play and remained in the lobby. One by one, each of them became entranced by the play and compelled to take seats. Curiously, despite it being a full house, there were somehow just enough empty seats for them all. Jasper Platinumhand, however, they asked to be one of their performers, and play the part of the princess, a role he gleefully accepted. And to play the role of the prince opposite him, they decided Ilara would be the best candidate, and Sylas could telepathically feed her the lines directly from the script. While the bard went off to learn his song from the singing ghost, Isabelle and Leon went off to gather the relevant props from the store room, and Ilara, finding that the ghost of the prince's actor had reappeared, watched him to learn the proper gestures for the scene. That left Sylas to go retrieve the costumes, but when he stepped into the room an enormous shadow elemental emerged from the pile of discarded clothes. He screamed, bringing Ilara into the room. She promptly got her strength drained by the creature, so Sylas tried casting blight but discovered it was immune. Fortunately, the rest of their companions arrived in time to destroy it before it could further drain Ilara's strength.

With the script, the costumes, the song, the stage directions, and the props, they were ready to put on a play. With the ghost of the director watching from the wings, and occasionally screaming at Ilara to act better, they managed to put on a passable rendition of the finale act of The Tragedy of Princess Garilasia. With the scene completed, the ghosts faded away, and with them the illusion covering the theater, revealing the auditorium to be as decrepit as the rest of the building, and the audience having been just as much a part of the illusion. With the spell broken, everyone crowded into the theater and settled in to wait for the effects of the dirge to wear off. Samsadur warned them to lock the doors and post a watch, as it would be a long night. Indeed, only four hours later they heard the sound of the exterior doors in the lobby and the storage room being smashed open.

The Third Eye rushed to the front, since there was still a minotaur in the storage room and Sylas's spell on it had ended, where they found a pair of shadow giants coming in through the door. Orellir waited by the stage door into the storage room, and listened to a third giant get into a fight with the minotaur. Leon summoned a swarm of giant spiders, but Ilara, still fatigued from the shadow elemental, was quickly knocked unconscious. Sylas threw a bead at one of them, trapping it in a bubble of force while they dispatched the other one, got Ilara back on her feet, and rushed to the storage room at back of the theater in time to see the third giant crash through the boxes, having slain the minotaur. Wounded from the fight, however, it quickly fell before them and they returned to the lobby to finish off their remaining foe.

A full twenty-four hours later, everyone had finally recovered from the deleterious effects of the sorrowful song outside. And, without their to power it, the dome of shadow went away. Samsadur, naturally, reminded them of their deal: they had agreed, once the dome was down, to escort him and his chests to an associate of his outside the city. Though some of them wished to deal with the problem more directly at the Shadow Ziggurat, Sasmsadur insisted that per their agreement, his business must come first. Leaving the people in the theater, with Jasper Platinumhand to keep up their spirits, they told them they'd find a way to get them all back home and departed.

Lair of the Eternal Hive

After retrieving the chests from Zurafkina's home, Samsadur led them to a ravine about ten miles outside the city. At the bottom was an enormous stone arch engraved with magic runes, guarded by a rotting black dragon writhing with glowing green worms that referred to itself as "we." Samsadur bowed to it and opened the chests, revealing two well-preserved dead bodies. He told the dragon that he had killed two of the three individuals it had tasked him with slaying, but after searching for the third for a year he was now convinced the third was no longer on the Material Plane and could not be found. However, he hoped that these two would be sufficient to fulfill his end of the bargain he'd made with the dragon. The dragon was not pleased with this pronouncement, and became even angrier when Samsadur threatened to simply take the two bodies with him and leave the dragon with nothing. Finally, the dragon ordered its shadar-kai minions to bring out "the item", an ornate magical bow. Then the dragon stomped on it, snapping it in half before kicking the pieces over to Samsadur and angrily declaring their business to be concluded.

Samsadur, though clearly displeased by its destruction, accepted. When Ililen asked about their deal, he told them that the bodies were none of their concern but that he while he had hoped to sell the bow for a tidy sum back home, he was willing to sell it to them for half price, trusting they were resourceful enough to get it repaired. They declined, since none of them fought with a bow. The dragon then offered to make a deal with them in exchange for the usage of its magical arch to return to the Material Plane. Samsadur encouraged them to decline, as he could simply return them home himself. When they asked again to return to the ziggurat in search of the source of the mournful song, Samsadur once again declined; the agreement was that he would being them to the city and back in order to remove the dome, which they had now done. He had no intention of remaining in the Shadowfell while they investigated further, and as they had no other means of getting back short of the dragon's unspecified price for the use of the arch, the heroes ultimately agreed to return with him, feeling guilty about the prisoners they were leaving behind.

Once back in the Material Plane, Samsadur thanked them for their assistance. He assured them he considered Queen Aphinah "bad for business," and that though he knew most of them would disagree ideologically with his organization, on this matter their interests aligned. Asking Orellis to stay behind for a private chat, he then had his agents sneak the Third Eye out of the city.

The Vanished Tower

A Cursed Kingdom

The Third Eye traveled two days south of Hargrave towards the Arcane Tower, where they saw the full extent of the damage the curse did to the kingdom. The constant rainfall left the ground muddy, plants were overgrown, thorny vines and weeds choked out fields and gardens, and mutated creatures roamed the land. Their first stop was an inn at the crossroads to the tower, the Weary Ogre, whose chef was renowned as one of the best in the kingdom. Inside were clear signs of a fight, and the bodies of six guests bludgeoned to death on the floor. And then an entire kitchen's worth of undead, animated meat flew at them, attempting to bludgeon them to death. After dispatching all of the meat, they found the half-ogre proprietor, Ozar, in the wine cellar, where he'd been hiding since the meat spontaneously animated and attacked about a week ago. Leon suggested that this can't have been the weirdest thing to ever happen, being near the Arcane Tower. He said no, it was definitely the weirdest thing to ever happen, because the wizards of the tower were generally much more professional than that, and he would know, having studied there himself as transmuter before he decided he'd rather be a chef. Unfortunately, he didn't know about the current state of the Arcane Tower as he hadn't seen anyone from there since the curse began. But as thanks for saving his inn, he was happy to give them free rooms and a good meal whenever they were passing through.

In the morning they continued on. The farms within a few miles of the tower were full of decayed, overly-soggy plants. A few had lights on, though a disturbingly large number were dark. Finally, they arrived at the tower... Or, rather, where the tower should be. Instead they found a large, flat patch of bare earth, with a faint arcane circle still visible in it, and a trap door that had clearly been forced open. Isabelle, having been a member of the tower herself, recalled hearing that it was capable of plane shifting, and though she knew nothing about how it worked or where it would have gone, clearly the curse was deemed sufficient to do so. Through the trap door, a flight of stairs led to down to the vaults. At the bottom of the stairs was a tall pedestal with six circular indentations on top. On the front was a long inscription proclaiming it to be a planar lock created by Master Arlen the Constructor under orders from King Tarn Hargrave. It could be activated by the six torcs of the tower, entrusted to the king's loyal Lawgivers throughout the kingdom. Sylas interpreted this as the means by which the tower had been transported away.

Looking around, of the four storage room doors, three stood closed; the fourth had been destroyed by something very large tunneling through the walls to lay a large egg in the central chamber; Leon identified it as a bulette egg, laid only within the last few days. The component storage room had been mostly destroyed by the bulette, which had also damaged the arcane circle connected to the pedestal. They found nothing interesting in the depository, but in the golem part storage room Leon found a manual on how to make a clay golem. The archives were mostly full of old academic records, textbooks, attendance sheets, and other boring, mundane paperwork, but Sylas did find a reference to something called the "Dark Star Parchment," said to be written in a dark celestial language and containing an unknown command phrase, that had been recovered by Master Arlen the Constructor himself several centuries ago. The entry was circled in red with the word "STOLEN" next to it. Though not relevant to their current problem, he made a note of it for later.

The last room was the sealed vault, though the vault door had clearly been forced open. Inside was a huge wardrobe made out of bright red wood, its surface covered with runes, wrapped with a heavy chain and padlock. Isabelle identified it as being made from a rare tree from the Abyss, and that the runes - written in Abyssal - were part of a magical formula similar to a gate spell. The chain and lock, while sturdy, were mundane. Knowing that the tower was in another plane, they decided that this must be the means for reaching it. After picking the lock, they all stood back while Isabelle magically opened the wardrobe. The runes suddenly glowed bright red, and the doors slammed open as a torrent of water flooded out, knocking Ilara and Leon off their feet. The water slammed the vault door closed, then ripped it off its hinges entirely and hurled it into Ilara. As this foul, putrid water flooded out, so did a trio of dretches. Sylas burst them all with a blast of psychic energy, and then Leon polymorphed Ilara into a giant ape so she could push against the flow of water and close it again. They were left with no doubt, now, that where this wardrobe led was a flooded layer of the Abyss. Sylas, still convinced that it was the means of reaching the tower, tried to think of a way to survive the flow, but Isabelle talked him down by noting that if the tower plane shifted away from the curse, they wouldn't have plane shifted to a dangerous plane like the Abyss.

After spending several hours inspecting the bulette's tunnel, only to discover it ended in a cave-in, they finally returned to the surface where Isabelle inspected the arcane circle in the dirt and confirmed it was filled with runes linked to the Astral Sea. They decided that their next course of action would be to ask around at the surrounding farms to see if anyone knew anything that might help them find a way to reach the tower. One farmer told them the last time the tower disappeared was almost seventy years ago when the blue dragon Malzdreziret attacked Hargrave; it plane shifted back in after the king drove the dragon away. One of the children told them another wizard was staying at a different farmhouse. Inquiring there, they met Rowan Caltheryan, an apprentice who had been out gathering reagents when the curse struck, and returned to find the tower gone. Having studied the tower's plane shifting abilities, he understood what had happened, and trusted that Master Zaophas had good reasons for activating the plane shift.

Though hesitant to countermand Zaophas's actions, even for a fellow wizard of the tower, once the group explained that they needed Zaophas to remove the curse from the crown to break the curse afflicting the kingdom, he agreed to tell them what he knew. The pedestal in the vaults, and the six torcs that were keyed to it, was not a means of transporting the tower into the Astral Sea, but of forcibly recalling it back to the Material Plane. The six torcs, having been given to important allies of the king, should still be somehwere in the kingdom. In, fact, he had a lead on one of them - about a week and a half ago he saw a group of bandits - a rogue, a bard, a wizard, and an ogre barbarian - break into the vault. When they emerged, he spotted their leader wearing what he knew must be the iron torc of the tower. The bandits then left in the direction of the Weary Ogre. Rowan also told them of a wizard named Aubilor Whitegate, who had been expelled by Master Zaophas several years ago for stealing an ancient parchment from the library, and might have more information. He marked Aubilor's workshop on their map, near the town of Gorso. Rowan told them that if they returned with the torcs, he would help repair the arcane circle that had been broken by the bulette in order to recall the tower. Until then, he would stay and protect the farmers.

At the Weary Ogre, Ozar confirmed that he did see the bandits Rowan described; sensing their ill intent, he sent them away, but heard them say something about "Ronul's End", a harbor to the northwest, as they departed. That night, they compared their notes, including the details of the inscription, to determine where they needed to search:

• The mithril torc of the tower was given to Peklyo Tassadir, Lawgiver of Hargrave. Suddenly remembering the torc they had taken from Queen Aphinah, they inspected it further and found the Arcane Tower's emblem upon it, and gave it to Isabelle for safekeeping.
• The iron torc of the tower was given to Jwarlea Jyle, Lawgiver of Smokestone. This was the torc Rowan had identified as being held by the bandits who raided the vault, now on their way to Ronul's End.
• The adamantine torc of the tower was given to Onrryl Blackbone, Lawgiver of Harveston.
• The silver torc of the tower was given to Agratthys Vuelnor, Lawgiver of Gorso.
• The clay torc of the tower was given to Lord Eard Wytas "Dragonfriend" Arden, Lawgiver of the Kingswood.
• The stone torc of the tower was given to Kalnur "Rockheart" Nangrath, Lawgiver of Nangrath.

As Aubilor Whitegate's workshop was near Gorso, they decided to stop there on the way and ask about the silver torc. First, however, they would chase after the bandits, not wanting the trail to go cold before they could catch up, as they were already nearly two weeks behind and the journey to Ronul's End would be another six days. When they arrived they discovered that Ronul's End had been burned to the ground, and the people slaughtered and simply left where they died. When they went in to investigate closer, they were attacked by nearly a dozen giant mutated frogs. After a fight in which half the group got swallowed at one point or another, Sylas briefly found himself levitating twenty feet in the air with a giant front clamped onto his leg, Ilara found some tracks - footprints, hoofprints, and wagon tracks - heading into the hills to the north.