The Second Age - Session 4

Tirsday 21st Zeptambor, Year 599 (continued)
After tying up the illusionist, our heroes decided to interrogate him on the spot, instead of contacting any authorities. Despite doing their best, he would say nothing but: "I can not betray the mistress". Even a knife through the hand and under the knee-cap could not make him talk. This convinced Torkiel that he was under some spell exerting mental control beyond normal means.

Using Hand of Fate, Dobukan found that the wizard was below. Searching through a ravaged laboratory turned up a trapdoor and a recently dug tunnel below, leading to the sewers.

After a quick foray into the rather disgusting sewers, the party returned to the tower in order to search it for more clues. In the bedchamber, they found Yuzura, a magical dagger that Torkiel immediately claimed as his.

Not satisfied with the clues they had, the heroes shoved the unconscious illusionist into a big bag and made their way to the Temple of Erathis. After a short talk with an acolyte, they gained access to High Priestess Dirina of Erathis.

After a short but hard negociation, Dirina agreed to try to remove the enchantment from the captured illusionist. Alas he didn't survive the removal. Angry that she hadn't mentioned that this was a possibility, the heroes demanded a refund. No luck on that. But she did offer them a discount on a speak with dead ritual. Via their questions, they learned that the illusionist was merely there too look for additional components and scrolls and that Mistress Adele was a woman who had taken over the Ravens and that she was controlling the members by magical coercion.

After the transactions were done, Dirina blessed the party, but little did that help their mood. They swore never to return to the church of Erathis.

Back to the tower and sewers the party went, determined to find the wizard and Mistress Adele. After a couple of hours of searching, some castings of Hand of Fate, and a lot of swimming around in shit, they finally found a secret entrance leading up. Following the tunnel, they stumbled over a rogue counting money in front of a door.

Retreating a bit back, the party had a talk about what to do. When they finally agreed to bluff their way in, the rogue was gone. Instead they found themselves standing in front of the door, not sure whether they should head in or wait.

Suddenly the door opened, and without looking, Torkiel blasted away, killing a young girl of about 11-12 years.

Now there was no way back, they felt. Entering the headquarter of the Ravens, the heroes started to snoop around. They found a lot of sleeping rooms, and a guildhall full of thieves and thugs. Not wanting to take them on all at the same time, they explored further. After dealing with a trap on a chest in one of the rooms, the heroes finally found the wizard. Unfortunately, he was pretty dead, hanging in chains up on a wall, with his entrails half hanging out, half laying on a stone on the floor in front of the wizard's body.

Dobukan used a quick ritual, Last Sight Vision, to see what the wizard experienced just before dying. After his vision, Dobukan stated: "I do not think she is human". When asked, he told how a raven-haired relatively young girl had been casting a ritual, while eating the entrails of the wizard.

Garel-Kai mused that it might be some sort of ancient ritual that allows you to draw out of the power of arcane spellcasters while they die.

Determined to deal with this threat, the party decided to set up an ambush to take out some rogues, before confronting the majority of the inhabitants of this secret hold-out.

Unfortunately while good, the ambush plan was not air-tight, and after killing 5-6 rogues, one managed to escape. The heroes followed in pursuit, ending up facing around 20 thieves, rogues and thugs in the main eating hall of the guild. Mistress Adele was there as well.

The fight was long but furious. Mistress Adele took some good hits and fled, but not before spending some time empowering a couple of thieves, turning them into raving maniacs that felt no pain and were thus very hard to kill.

In the end, the heroes managed to kill all the thieves. And no one died, although it was close. Especially Kavaki was under a lot of pressure, and had to drink several healing potions to stay alive. They party also learned that Garel-Kai's focus was not on "healing", but instead on combat. "I only heal people when they go down".

With the thieves dead, the focus of the heroes soon reverted to Mistress Adele. Although pretty beaten up, they decided to find her immediately. Finding a secret door in a storage room, put them back on her trail and they found themselves once again in the sewers. Paavu rushed off to the right, while Dobukan was sure he had evidence that she had gone left. Unfortunaly for Paavu, Dobukan was wrong.

Not far from the others, Paavu was surprised by Mistress Adele, who dominated him and sent him back to kill his friends. Luckily, Paavu was no match for his 4 friends, but he did manage to bring Kavaki down and slow down the heroes so that Mistress Adele could escape.