Magic Shop Owners Session 18

Session Notes

Calendar Date: 34-3-596

AI Podcast Overview (From NotebookLM)

A Week in the Life of a Magic Shop Owner

• After a full week of rest the party was fully recovered
• Maia had been practicing her clerical abilities and could now cast light for free once a day
• Breadwig had learnt how to create a painting, like the Sarzan paint, of himself that would last half an hour
• From the notes from the Sarzan that remained in the keep they found lots of scrawled writing and half finished notes. He would start a project and when it seemed like it would not achieve his goal of immortality the notes would suddenly stop. This included notes about the Ebonoss.
• They were able to determine that in the keep there would likely be ghosts and doppelgängers which they had not yet encountered
• He had notes about the changing depths of the earth, where things seemed to linger for eternity, but they morphed and changed. The most prominent of these was Creatures of the Deep - On Those Things Which Refuse To End
• Sarzan's notes had become more obsessive and more incomprehensible as they went.
• The party were also able to manually take notes between the middle aged and young Sarzan paintings and they had become fond pen pals
• Jatumal had been talking to young Sarzan about the great collapse. Young Sarzan was eager to talk about this but middle aged Sarzan was much less interested. He had discovered that the war had started after a dwarf commander accidentally ate the elf ruler's meal. He had also learned that before the collapse the world had much greater technologies which they had still not returned to centuries later
• Maia had been doing general good deeds and along with the others and the Stagbrook locals had been fending off attacks from Pavnutia the vampire. The vampire seemed to have taken up residence in Acman's old tower. Stagbrook were now keeping strict watch and making good use of the defences which the party had funded
• Gary had returned to report on Stonehell to Stonehaven conversion progress during the week. The goblins and hobgoblins were now at war with the lizard people in the dungeon so progress had stalled
• Some weird occurrences had begun to happen in Stagbrook. Doors not working, items disappearing. It seemed like the weird properties of the caves below were beginning to seep through to the surface
• Everyone's unnamed magical items had stopped working. Sarzan had explained magic needed a name to work properly and everyone had begun to name their items. If they used the true names of the items, like Geog did for Darkfire, then they would be even more powerful. Everyone had started to name their items. Maia and Sphonyx copied the runes from their sword to notes for Sarzan to translate in hopes of finding their true names

Pushing Deeper Into Stagbrook Keep

Level 1 Map (post Ignid explosion):

Level 2 Map (A lot of this got skipped):

• After their week of rest the party finally decided to re-enter Stagbrook Keep and deal with whatever dark things the real Sarzan had been so scared of
• They made their way down the stairs, avoided the spike trap, hopped through the room with the chopped up tables, disturbed the cave locusts for fun, and then Maia levitated everyone across the pedestal room with the huge drops. They went to the opening on the far side that had been caused by the Ignid explosion
• They found a cave that gradually got thicker with webs they ventured in with Maia calling ahead with her ability to speak spider. Eventually some spiders responded, they were anxious. In part of the conversation, they explained that they ate the giant driver ants that were also living in the caves. Jatumal decided to give them his ants which he had found in the vault on the first level of the keep, Maia translated. He announced they were called Antony, and in giving them a name and opening their container activated their magical ability to clean. They began eating all the webs lightning quick
• Jatumal quickly called them back but the damage had been done. The spiders were now even more anxious. Maia was able to calm them down and they explained that they rarely went into man made parts of the keep, but it intersected with the cave and there was a man alive but trapped in a stone box
• The party assumed this man was the real life, unpainted Sarzan and asked for passage through to this area. The spiders begrudgingly escorted them through their colony on level 2 of the keep
• They were taken to an infinite staircase, which was only not infinite if you walked on the left-hand side of the stairs, but the spiders explained how to use it
• Breadwig and Geog led the way down the stairs experimenting with switching between the left and right side as they went
• Eventually they reached a hastily cut stone room with a stone coffin at the centre. They could hear a muffled breathing. Breadwig made himself invisible to go and look inside, but without the light of the party who were on the other side of the room he could only make out that there was a body inside
• Everyone was anxious about the room. Jatumal cast detect evil. There was no evil coming from the coffin, but there was something malicious on the ceiling. It was not visible though
• Geog decided to ignore this and began shouting over to the coffin to see if whoever was inside would respond. There was a mumbling but they couldn't make anything out that was said. Geog continued to shout
• The ceiling creature fell from the ceiling down onto Geog dealing a devastating blow. In its movement it brought a magical and impenetrable darkness with it. It completely encapsulated the light of their torches
• Those with infravision could see the form well enough. These were Jutara, Jatumal, Maia. The others mostly flailed at or threw things into the darkness in hopes of hitting the creature.
• In the process Jutara named her lightning sword Galileo, Magma named his nechrome sword Chillrend and his spiked whip Sanctithorn Lash
• The party kept swinging at the creature which made devastating multi-attacked bites from many limbs. After Jatumal had taken a heavy hit from it when it was targeting him for shooting it multiple times, Jutara got a hit with her Galileo on the creature. It was shocked and scurried onto the ceiling dropping down again onto the part after recovering. They each got hits on the creature with magical weapons
• It twitched and flailed and the magical darkness began to fade. A horrible creature with an impossible number of arms was revealed. On the palm of each hand was a many toothed mouth. The party dislodged and took some of these
• After the battle they approached the coffin to find a recognisable but deathly looking image of their friend from the painting. It was Sarzan twisted and broken, barely alive but somehow undying.
  

Sarzan's Undeath and the Depths Which Caused it

• Sarzan mostly mumbled and laughed. He said little that was coherent apart from begging for death. He seemed to be supported by some weird tubes that were pumping something into him to keep him alive. There was another note inside Sarzan's coffin: On Becoming Necessary. It appeared the Archeans were somehow protecting him from death
• The group now had a chance to inspect their surroundings. The hastily cut room had an opening to the caves, which looked similar to the one in Sarzan's final painting. It appeared whatever he was scared of had come from there
• After experimenting a little with the near lifeless form of Sarzan, and showing it to the middle aged Sarzan in the painting (the party were storing the painting in The Kraken, the expanding and shrinking boat), they decided to head into the caves
• From Creatures of the Deep - On Those Things Which Refuse To End they had decided that the Antiphoenix or the Archeans were likely the thing the Sarzan feared to release. Although they were still not entirely convinced by either conclusion
• They hoped the caves would have answers
• The caves twisted and turned, they were hard to keep track of but Geog made a map. Magma scouted ahead using the pigeon ring in places and Maia used her levitation boots. They also made good use of their ropes and Smuv made their way down a long squeeze before deciding to turn back
• There was little life in the caves which they travelled through. Until they entered a cave with a large opening through the ceiling
• There was a small body of water in the room. On the near side was a pile of ash and on the far side a sleeping black form: the Antiphoenix
• They tried to speak to it but it seemed to be ignoring them, but when they mentioned Sarzan's name it opened its eyes, but quickly closed them pretending it hadn't heard
• The party believed they could get the creature to talk to them by giving him Sarzan who it seemed to want based on the notes
• Maia approached slowly, but the phoenix recoiled standing up large and straight. Maia backed away
• The party talked to the creature, but it again seemed unbothered until Sarzan was mentioned again. It appeared to not speak common. After some prompting a book appeared. It was a book of an ancient language that no one in the room had even seen the characters from before. Smuv used their ability to read languages and deciphered it quickly.
• The book was a dictionary of a language that consisted of lots of popping noises. Smuv quickly learned the language with their ability
• The party then began talking to the phoenix using Smuv as a translator
• The creature didn't really understand organised society. It was a little twitchy like it could attack or take off at any moment. It liked stories and liked to see things both begin and end. Its problem with Sarzan came from the fact he had stopped his ending. The bird took it upon itself to end things which otherwise would not, but couldn't reach Sarzan
• They asked if there was anything they could do for the creature. It said it wanted to end immortality and liked to collect artifacts of lost culture. It would happily collect dead languages and forgotten poetry
• They suggested that they could bring Sarzan or Pavnutia the vampire to the creature which it seemed quite happy about. In exchange it would give them some artifacts it had collected
• Somewhere in the conversation they found out the phoenix could speak common and just chose to only speak dead languages. They also found that there were some Archeans that tended atomic bees nearby. The phoenix also wanted to end them, but they were under the protection of a ward as was Sarzan
• The phoenix didn't understand how the Archeans worked or why they kept Sarzan alive, it just knew they did. It wasn't fond of them
• After they finished speaking the party wanted to know how they could find the Antiphoenix again if they needed to. It said it would find them if it wanted to. It explained they could call him Lysander but that was not its true name. It then flew into an opening in the ceiling.
• The party wanted to hear the other side of the story so made their way towards where they believed the Archeans were
• They had to go up a column shaped cave to reach the atomic bees. Around the hives, which were mounds in the ground, was a green glow. The bees took green rocks into them
• The party skirted around them and into a large, much more open cave. This cave was pocked with little hole openings like a seedpod
• Inside the tall figures of Archeans slowly danced around. They seemed to care little about the presence of the party
• The party called to one which hesitantly turned to speak to them in common
• The Archeans were a hivemind and struggled to understand the singular. Sarzan had been connected partially to this mind and was supporting their world somehow. They craved order but didn't understand people. The party discussed this with them for some time. The Archeans were using Sarzan to support something, but could not or would not explain it
• It seemed they farmed the bees for a substance that they used to create beings. The party questioned if they were gods
• Eventually the party decided that the Archeans were making Sarzan suffer to support something for their own gain. They had all been trying to work it out but eventually decided they would just kill Sarzan with Maia loudly exclaiming, "let's just kill him". The Archean warned them not to and lumbered after them but couldn't catch them
• Following Geog's maps they were able to return to the room where Sarzan was held with ease
• When they reached Sarzan they decided they could take Sarzan to the Antiphoenix so wanted to keep him alive until then
• They began pulling the weird tubes that covered his body off and a thick purple fluid oozed out
• Magma pulled Sarzan out of the coffin. The old man wheezed. Magma put the pigeon ring on Sarzan hoping it would keep him alive. Sarzan turned into a pigeon and then flopped on the floor dead. Magma took his ring back and the dead Sarzan returned to human form
• The whole cave and dungeon system began to rumble and bricks and rocks began to fall. The party made a run for it
• They ascended the infinite staircase, ran through the spider cave where the spiders were now frantically scurrying, grappled, and flew back up through the caves and then got to the pedestal room. The ceiling was collapsing not far behind so they couldn't use Maia's boots to slowly get everyone across
• Maia flew Smuv across, Magma used his pigeon ring, Breadwig deftly jumped across the pillars. Jatumal missed his jump, he tried to use his sword to stab into the side of a pillar but it glanced off and fell. In one final attempt at survival he tied a rope to an arrow and shot it up, Maia, Smuv and Magma pulled him up
• Jutara also failed her jump but was sliding slowly down the pillar which she hugged. Geog jumped after her, pulling her up and throwing her to the next pillar as he jumped along. They got into the room with the chopped up tables just as the ceiling collapsed behind them
• The quickly ran up the stairs avoiding the trap and emerged just in time to see almost all of Stagbrook collapse and fall into a huge, black, bottomless pit. Sam's bakery and Sally Hope's house were the only buildings that survived
• It appeared they were not magic shop owners anymore, and the recently retired Sphonyx may have just died

XP

500 xp = 20 x Crab Spider
500 xp = 1 x Grue
18750 xp = Archeans
19750 xp = total
19750/7 = 2822 xp each

Published Content Used

• OSE (Classic and Advanced)
• Veins of the Earth
• Raiding the Obsidian Keep