Timberlands Campaign, Session 12: Get Out of my Head!

March 1-2, Caudex Annales, 71 AUP

By this time it was late at night. The party gathered back up at the Dream Arena chamber. Mahlon Dreadwhit continued to rant about the secret dice-roller controlling everyone's actions until he was given a good hard nap, and the party decided to investigate the machine to see what might be lurking inside of it. Nathalia Bonare (now acting headmistress of Starchapel) reassured everyone that it was totally safe. The party was cautious, requesting that the destination be set to a version of the conference room upstairs, and that Dreadwhit be placed inside of the dream to test the flow of magic across the boundary between the Dreamlands and reality. When Dreadwhit initially remained unconscious, Shayna volunteered to entered the dream as well.

She arrived in the Dreamlands to witness a lecture by the ill-favored scholar in front of a bunch of disinterested students. At the end of the dream, as the room faded back into mist, she could hear a distant murmuring voice. The voice grew louder as she ventured beyond the boundaries (to the great alarm of Nathalia, who quickly lost the ability to track locations), but seemed to be speaking no recognizable words. In order to bypass the loss of tracking, the party decided to send in another member with a crystal ball. This seemed to work -- the magic of the crystal ball functioned just as successfully as a manifested object in the Dreamlands, and the paired set could work as a two-way communication system. Nathalia joined the dream with a tongues spell in order to interpret the language, which seemed to consist of overlapping instructions intended for a large number of different persons, a sort of psychic switchboard.

Unfortunately, the presence of multiple eavesdroppers was detected, and the source mounted an attack directly against the minds of the dream visitors. Nathalia failed to defend her mind, and quickly fell under the influence of some dark power. Even after being awakened (and then subjected to both the "normal" and "lizardman" versions of dispel magic) she continued to emit a string of apocalyptic rantings of the most disturbing sort. (Lizard version: Smash mage against another solid object!) In an act of desperation, the party decided to throw a protective helmet on her head (of the sort used to block out ESP attempts, thinly coated with lead/gold). Somehow it worked! The distant source was unable to penetrate the lining.

The party notified Alaric Wainskirtle, the Seadom Hall master, and recommended that he put on a tinfoil hat of his own. (He's ex-military in a fantasy world, so being awakened in the middle of the night and having someone recommend cranial protection against mind-control rays is perfectly plausible.) They attempted to do the same for the other two masters... and found that Enoch Teacandle, the gnome from Dunston Eyot, had gone off to explore the dungeon on his own.

At this point, a portion of the party finally decided to investigate the dungeons. (Ed.: Took you long enough!) Zelmar stayed behind to monitor Teacandle's activities with his crystal ball. The late-night crew in the bulwarked control room waved them through security, carefully opening and shutting the doors to allow access. Just beyond they found some very suspicious orcs on the upper level, who waved them past. In other portions of the first level, they found usual sorts of creatures acting unusually -- goblins cowering in a corner, pit vipers dropping from the ceiling, the rest of the orcs huddling together on high alert. After surviving a rolling-ball trap, they met a strange (but apparently honorable) entity, born of fire and ascending from some extraplanar rift on the lower levels.

Meanwhile, the other members of the party (Zelmar, Shayna, and Anatolia) decided to catch up. Zelmar, in a moment of bad judgment, decided to come alone ahead of the others. Having the advantage of being able to speak orc allowed him to discover that the orcs were suspicious that their own leader was under some evil influence. Zelmar agreed to help them confront the subchief. This resulted in a tense staredown, followed by the alarming revelation that the chief's skull had been compromised by the presence of an intellect devourer.

The intellect devourer ripped apart several orcs, and showed surprising resistance to physical damage. Fortunately, Zelmar was able to drop a damage-over-time spell that slowly wounded the skittering brain. Unfortunately, he was paralyzed almost immediately afterward by the psionic assaults of the nasty little brain parasite. The devourer shrank down, crawled into his mouth, and began burrowing through the soft palate in order to access the tastiest bits of the cerebral cortex. Tragically, the creature expired at roughly the same time as Zelmar, leaving him dead with a nasty-looking brain monster corpse clogging his half-eaten face. (Adventuring, it's such a glamorous life.)

Shayna and Anatolia arrived a while later to witness the carnage. They dragged Zelmar back into the control room, whereupon they discovered another unpleasant secret: the night crew in the control room consisted of three doppelgangers, who were looking to eliminate witnesses. Anatolia and Shayna powered up with spells and dispatched the faceless horrors. Zelmar was beyond recovery, so the others pushed forward to find the rest of the party.

The survivors regrouped by the stairs to the lower levels and did a bit of scouting. The path followed by Teacandle seemed to lead to the sixth and lowest level, which was damp and filled with the sound of flowing water. The party sent lizard swimmers ahead down the flooded tunnels, only to fall victim to an ambush from a puddle behind them that ended up being deeper than anticipated -- deep enough to contain a skittering maw. Only the timely intervention of the mysterious fire-lord saved the exhausted party from an untimely demise. At that point, everyone decided it might be best to retreat from the dungeons and regroup.

Roster

• Edw...ina(?) Sir Dame Winsley, 5th-level dandy mystic (Andrew)
• Jeeves, 1st-level butler-paladin
• Zelmar
• Anatolia
• Frigodria Dawnbringer, 5th-level paladin (Reba)
• Mysterious fiery stranger that one-shots everything (Kyle)
• Grurdev Onyxvault, 5th-level dwarven lightbearer (Sion)
• Need to check about henchmen here also (two, I think)...
• Someone new (Will)
• Viserion, 5th-level young white dragon (Zac)
• Adonirim, 3rd-level mage
• Shayna, 6th-level shaman (Kim)
• Ur khla lu khbea, 4th-level gladiator (Jonathan)
• Slarus (Austin)
• Thorvald, maybe?!?

Mercenaries and followers:

• Army o' skeletons (400+ at this point), with a few abominations as champions

• Aksel Steelheart, 9th-level vaultlord
• 10 dwarven lieutenants:
• 4 5th-level vaultguards
• 3 4th-level vaultguards
• 2 3rd-level vaultgaurds
• 2nd-level vaultguard
• 18 fire dwarf infantry
• ~ 90 light-infantry pirate survivors from the defeat of the Charybdis crew in the Saberstrath campaign

Not appearing in this adventure, but potentially available now that everyone is back in the area:

• Saltbeard (Trefor)
• The very young white dragon, Namazu, reporting back on the frost giants
• Sir Rock Boulder Fist, dwarven 5th-level summoner
• Sir Robin

Retiring, unless they somehow resurface:

• Zalgesh
• Jarrus Velt, 5th-level thief
• Thorvald, 6th-level spy (Zac's Mom's PC, not a henchman)
• Togast, 6th-level skinscribe (Juston is happily married)
• Tu'a'than, 5th level spriggan

Casualties

Zelmar, paralyzed and chewed up by a tiny brain that crawled into his mouth

To be continued...