Some Assembly Required
ARAN: We’re in here Troy!
Qhortho pops his head through one of the gaps in the wall.
QHOR: We found more things that should help us get into the basement.
Troy shudders at the thought.
They all scramble out of the side room and make their way to the attic stairs to put out the fire before it takes down the house.
The roof and floor are engulfed in flames, but it is still manageable. Aran, Farron, and Qhortho pat out most of the floor fire while Qarzdaq flies and uses Prestidigitation to put out the flames above. After only a few minutes, and some minor burns, they successfully extinguish the fires.
The party takes a short rest in the attic, at which point Farron and Qarzdaq learn the Mind Sliver spell.
They descend to the basement door and provide all of the family’s heirlooms to Aran. He holds them all in his left hand and reaches out towards the basement door with his right. The door opens easily and without fanfare. The dim lighting inside the house is like a sunny day as compared to the basement. Some dime light filters in through the cracked walls on account of the bright moonlight, but that is the only source of illumination.
Aran puts away the family’s items and arms himself with his guandao. He takes a step to descend the stairs.
QARZ: Wait.
The Light
Qarzdaq reaches out to the blade of Aran’s weapon and closes his eyes. The blade lights up as if it were a lantern.
ARAN: That will certainly should help. Ok everyone, line up behind me. Including you Troy! None of this hiding out in the back!
TROY: Will do! I want to help however I can!
ARAN: Not only that. You don’t want to be alone in this house. Especially after all we’ve come across.
QARZ: I’ll stay in the back with Troy.
Troy whispers to Qarzdaq, “thank you.” Qarzdaq nods.
Aran holds the guandao out in front of him but fights the desire to use it only as a light source; this is his weapon after all and he is sure to need to use it as such.
The stairs are a single flight down to a stone floor. Sweeping his weapon around, Aran sees a mostly destroyed and neglected alchemist laboratory with a slew of mechanical parts is piled in an area where some sort of contraption must have been. A small desk sits along one wall and a small work bench sits on the other side of the room along the opposite wall.
Aran notices a door on one wall that stands out as very different from any other door in the house. This one is made from metal and looks to be very substantial. After a moment he realizes it is glowing with a very dim magenta hue.
The smell is of a humid musk. The scent is not necessarily sickening, but its pungent concentration begs to differ.
There are a number of small black puddles around the room.
Something skitters along one of the walls, its concealment just barely betrayed by the moonlight shone though some cracks in the walls. Aran tries to keep it lit by sweeping his light across but he loses it behind a pile of scrap. Qarzdaq sees it in the dim light thanks to his Darkvision. It’s one of those Slithering Trackers.
Qarzdaq shoots a bolt of fire in its direction but it strikes the wall. Aran rushes over to where Qarzdaq’s bolt hit and sees the creature. He quickly slashes it and it splatters on contact.
Qhortho looks over the desk and finds nothing of any use. Just scraps and strange-looking equipment.
Farron checks out the small workbench and finds various shapes and sizes of broken quartz crystals in a small pile next to a jeweler’s kit. It reminds him of the quartz used in the Teletherscope, but there doesn’t discover any directly useful application of that knowledge.
Suddenly, the black puddles suck upward, forming more Slithering Trackers. Farron quickly casts Haste on Aran. Aran knows this feeling.
One of the Trackers lunges at Aran. With the rush through his blood, Aran slashes it, causing its black blood(?) to spill. It’s not enough to stop it though and it wraps around his neck, making him unable to breathe as if he’s underwater somehow. Aran manages to pierce the Tracker’s slimy hide and run it down the length of it, spilling more of the black liquid from its body. It flops to the floor as Aran gasps.
Another one jumps at Qarzdaq, who dodges it. It flops around next to him looking to retarget. Aran rushes over to it and slashes it into non-existence.
Another jumps at Qhortho and wraps around his neck, preventing him from breathing. Qhortho is shocked initially, but he realizes this thing thinks it is winning when in reality, it has only made itself convenient for Qhortho to attack.
Aran rushes over to Qhortho and destroys that one as well. Qhortho gasps.
QHOR: Hey, that one was mine!
ARAN: Looked more like you were his.
Qhortho is not pleased.
ARAN: Hey, let’s check out this door.
The Dark
Aran leads the way and pushes the metal door open easily. It opens to a fairly large rectangular and mostly empty room with a flagstone floor. The feel here is noticeably less grimy, but still neglected. There are various scribblings on the walls that look to be a mix of Terran, Draconic, and Aquan. Qarzdaq knows Draconic and Terran from his time at the Red Temple, but no one in the group knows Aquan ever since Rolan left.
The last time they’d seen these three languages together was at the entrance to the Pit of Light’s Sparks before they descended in that fiery hell (https://www.theunlikelyassembly.org/session-xlvi/).
They begin deciphering the languages and based on the pattern of information from the Terran and Draconic terms, they eventually decipher the Aquan terms as well!
- Colorless
- Smelless
- Tasteless
- Textureless
- Timeless
- Spaceless
Qhortho repeats these words but nothing happens. They try to figure out what these terms have in common. After a few more minutes, they realize what it is…
QHORTH: I got it! The Void!
The Wet
Just as he says it, Troy becomes very distressed. The black remnants on his face look as if they are being sucked into his body, prying him apart down through his abdomen. He falls to the floor clutching his face and belly in agony. The metal door slams shut and the house begins to shake. The walls crack from the ground upwards. Cool water begins pouring inward through the cracks, slowly filling the room.
As the party tries to open the door and looks for how to get out of this place, Troy continues to clutch at himself, desperately trying to physically hold himself together as his body is literally collapsing in on itself.
Farron attempts to use Telekinesis on the metal door to pull it free. It proves too strong and he is unable to even make it budge.
Qhortho tries it using his brute strength but finds the same result.
ARAN: Yeah, we’re not getting out that way.
Aran stoops down to look at Troy more closely. His eyes are fully black. Other than groans of pain and slight trembling as his muscles shake, he is entirely unresponsive.
The water level continues to rise.
Farron examines the cracks in the walls more closely. Though water is flowing through the cracks, he finds that there is no “outside” from which it is flowing. There is an inside to the room, and there is depth to the walls, there is water appearing from somewhere, but the place from where it appears to be flowing is… nowhere. It is fully a lack of everything. It is The Void.
Qhortho rushes over to Troy and shakes him vigorously.
QHOR: Troy! Wake up! Are you doing this??
Bits of inky blackness sputter onto Qhortho’s arms and looks to be eating through his skin. The holes fill in after just a moment, but the experience was surreal. This was not like the black sludge that smears onto a surface; this was as if short-lived pockets of emptiness appeared in his arms. Luckily, they filled in after just a moment.
Qhortho jumps back.
QHOR: Did you guys just see that?? What the fuck was that?!
The water level continues to rise.
Qarzdaq examines the scribblings on the wall. What they thought was black ink, he now realizes is something else. It is not ink on the walls; it is a lack of wall in the form of script. Not a carving, but literal nothingness.
Aran remembers his Delver’s Gauntlets and looks to them for a way out. He puts them on and the depth simply says “0” — no units, just zero. The direction for the way out is also normally displayed, but now it simply spins around constantly without any fixation.
He decides to try opening an Ioun Portal to make his own way out. This will take only about 30 seconds thankfully.
The water level continues to rise.
Farron looks more closely at the wall script and runs his fingers over it. To his surprise, it also sputters some of the void spots onto his arms. These spots do not disappear as they had for the others. He looks over to Troy and begins to get nervous. Had he just triggered something that will force him into a fate like Troy’s?
He decides he should experiment with this. He puts his arm under the water and it bubbles slightly as an interaction. The water does not flow into it and the void spots are not releasing a gas.
Qhortho shakes Troy again, and again, he gets void spots on him. Though they hurt him, they close up after just a moment. He decides this is getting him nowhere and moves to protect Aran while he is opening the portal, just in case something happens.
The water level continues to rise. By this point there is roughly two feet of water in the room.
Qarzdaq grabs Troy by the hair to baptize him in the water. Flames would be more his style but when times are tough, you use what you have. The water in contact with the void areas of Troy begins to bubble slightly. It does not make the water warmer or cooler, it does not change the water in any way, it does not change the void spots in any way.
QARZ: By the power of R’hllor, you will be healed!
R’hllor, however, does not answer.
He uses his Telekinesis to lift Troy and push him against the door with the hope that a voided door will allow them to get out. The void spots sputter onto the door as planned, but they do not dissipate. Instead, water begins to flow from the spots on the door.
QARZ: Well shit.
The water level continues to rise.
Farron uses his Telekinesis to take control over Troy’s body and smear him on the ceiling. Void spots open on the ceiling and water trickles in from those locations.
FARR: Well shit.
Farron places Troy where he sat initially, now a little more banged up.
Qhortho looks around the room. Two words on one wall, two words on another, two words on the third, then just one door on the fourth. That’s it! He investigates the wall with only the door on it and finds nothing of any importance.
QHOR: I might be onto something here.
He draws the symbol of the house on the wall, to no effect.
They all convene in the middle of the room and re-read the journal entries from the wizard they’d discovered. Should they try something with the words “Cut and Bind, Slice thy Mind” or maybe use dragonglass against the void?
Before they further that discussion, tentacles grope at all their ankles at once! They quickly kick them away, evading their grasp.
The water level continues to rise.
Qarzdaq looks over at Troy.
QARZ: Cut and Bind, Slice Thy Mind! Cut and Bind, Slice Thy Mind!
Troy’s eyes widen for a brief few moments before he falls slack. His body splits down the middle as a banana peel might after being redressed in its covering. Only the void remains where his soul might have been, if you believe in that sort of thing.
Aran focuses on the tentacles in the water, slashing at them repeatedly. Seeing as that hasn’t done enough to stop it, Farron banishes it to another plane. The pool of eater sloshes vigorously as the liquid fills the now empty space.
FARR: Weel, that thing is someone else’s problem for right now. I wish I knew where these banished creatures go.
QHOR: Don’t say that!
FARR: You’re right. I hope I never find out.
Qhortho asks for the components they’d found around the house from Aran then goes back to his drawing. He looks at them very carefully and corrects parts of his drawing while repeating, “Cut and Bind, Slice Thy Mind.”
Still nothing happens.
Farron tries something similar on another wall using his thieves’ tools while repeating, “Cut and Bind, Slice The Mind.”
QHOR: Slice THY mind, not THE mind.
FARR: Eh, close enough.
Nothing happens.
After another few seconds, Aran’s portal opens! But… it looks a little different than normal. It is faded as if it is only the illusion of their normal Ioun portal. He digs in his bag and tosses his panther cloak through it. It passes right through the portal and falls into the still rising water. There is now about four and half feet of water in the room.
FARR: I think we need to bring back that creature and kill it. We may just be prolonging the inevitable. And this room is going to be filled very soon.
They all agree and ready themselves to attack as soon as they see it. They nod to each other. Farron drops his concentration on the banishment and the creature pops back into existence. All at once, the party attacks through the waves and splashing water around them.
FARR: “Cut and Bind, Slice Thy Mind!”
The creature thrashes in the water. Aran slices into the creature but notices a mucous gets on his own skin! It doesn’t manage to get purchase into his skin, but he senses it is some type of poisonous protection.
ARAN: Careful about getting too close!
Qarzdaq shoots a fire bolt at it. It pierces through the water and strikes it in the head. It attempts to grasp Aran by the leg but narrowly misses. Qhortho cuts into its thick hide with his great sword. Qhortho gets the mucous on him, but it also sloughs off without ill effect.
It recoils and swims towards Qarzdaq. Aran sees an opportunity as it is moving past him. He slashes deep into the fast-moving creature, its momentum so great that it carries it through the guandao’s blade, halving its body. Vortices of inky black water swirl by each half.
They all prepare for what is about to happen next. After a few seconds they realize the water has stopped rising.
QHOR: Ok, so that’s good, right?
ARAN: Yeah, but we still don’t have a way out of here.
The Dry
The water begins to recede. Qarzdaq quickly breaks out his Teletherscope but finds nothing. In just the brief time spent looking through the scope, the water dropped to only half its depth!
Now they can see three gray slaads standing, facing each other, near one of the corners of the room!
FARR: Ready yourselves!
As the water level recedes, they see more and more of their bodies and find them standing around a cauldron. A red glowing summoning portal is nearby.
Before the slaads have time to act, Aran rushes up and attacks one of them to near death. Gaining a second wind, he deals the final blow. With the water fully drained from the room, the slaad can be seen as it strikes the floor where it transforms into a green hag.
QARZ: What the fuck?!
ARAN: They’re hags!
Aran follows up his kill with a few more strikes on the next closest slaad.
Through the portal arrives a monstrous undead skeletal creature with very large bony humanoid claws. Orbiting around its head is a deep red spherical object.
Aran sees an opportunity to attack and slashes its leg. It looks down to him as if he is nothing more than a bug to be squashed.
Farron launches a Qarzdaq Fireball from his ring towards the cauldron. Neither of them is able to avoid the full brunt of the explosion, and the one Aran struck moments ago falls to the ground, its flesh sizzling as it transforms into a green hag. The contents of the cauldron ignite, providing a decent steady source of light for the room. It’s not that Aran’s lit guandao is a bad source, but it’s not exactly like he can hold it still for everyone to benefit from its glow.
Qhortho engages the last slaad, bringing it close to death.
The slaad transforms into a green hag before Qhortho’s eyes and smirks. It then creates a line of explosive lightning, striking both Qhortho and Farron.
Qarzdaq circles around the room to get the perfect angle. He creates a ball of light in the palm of his hands and directs the sunbeam through the large skeletal creature and hag. The hag glows bright then quickly dims as a lightbulb burns too bright then burns out. It falls to the ground in a heap.
Qhortho smirks then looks to the skeleton. The skeleton’s bones singe and it looks to Qarzdaq, now seeing him a greater threat than Aran.
The walls of the room begin to fade away revealing their location as outside the house. In place of the thick metal door is a gaping crumbled wall into the basement. The owls are still overhead hooting.
Suddenly a green claw emerges from thin air to strike Qarzdaq. A green slaad reveals itself from invisibility and swipes at Qarzdaq multiple times. Qarzdaq evades the damage using his force shield barrier.
The skeletal creature snags Qarzdaq in one hand and Aran in the other. It holds them up to look at them momentarily before turning away and running into the woods with half the party in hand.
The slaad watches this take place then looks to Qhortho and Farron as his next targets.
Farron and Qhortho watch as the skeletal creature runs off, its position given away by the two flickering light sources in its claws. A burst of light reveals to them that Qarzdaq is still lighting the creature up with his sunbeam.
Qhortho runs after the skeletal creature and sees it tumble to the ground. He sees both Qarzdaq and Aran fall to the ground hard, but the creature is not getting back up. Qarzdaq and Aran stand up.
QHOR: Shit yeah!
With that, the hooting stops.
What Goes Up, Must Come Down
The green slaad runs towards Farron. Farron points in the creature’s face and a bell sounds simultaneously. It grabs at its head in pain and Farron runs past the green slaad towards Qhortho.
Qhortho looks up overhead and runs as quickly as possible to the dead skeletal creature and scoops up the deep red Ioun stone.
QHOR: Quick, back to the house, those owls are still…
Before he can finish his sentence, an owl swoops down and grabs Qhortho, taking him twenty feet into the air.
Qarzdaq sees the green slaad following Farron and sends a beam of radiant energy into it. Farron continues running towards his allies with the green slaad gaining on him. Aran runs right past Farron and slashes the slaad across its legs with one felling swoop.
QARZ: Take cover! Watch out for the owls!
With that, one of the owls grabs Aran and takes him twenty feet up. Just as Aran goes up, Qhortho comes crashing down to the ground with a thud, the owl underneath him.
He stands up just as Qarzdaq launches a Fireball into a cluster of owls circling above. The sky lights up briefly, injuring most of the owls, killing none. Another owl swoops down and scoops up Qhortho.
QHOR: God damnit…
The party continues to battle the owls, getting picked up and dropped to the ground, a few more times before Farron gets in a good enough position to banish 4 of them. Now the fight is in the Assembly’s favor.
Qhortho dusts himself off and looks around. It occurs to him that there should be a crystal shard around here somewhere. He looks around and notices a small bright spot of moonlight within a small area of darkness beneath a tree, as if the moonlight is being focused by something.
He runs over to the tree and looks up to see the shard nestled within a few branches about fifteen feet up. He focuses on the power provided by the Root of Knowledge and fey steps up into the tree to snag the shard.
QHOR: Shit yeah!
This exclamation grabs the attention of a nearby owl and it swoops down towards the tree. Qhortho quickly fey steps to the area just above it in the air, his sword’s pointy end downward, and down thrusts the flying beast all the way into the ground, his sword skewering the owl. This little maneuver caused his blade to stick into the ground by almost a foot, so it takes him a few seconds to wrench the blade free from the owl.
Qarzdaq and Farron run towards the house and jump into the basement through the broken wall just as three owls land hard near the opening. The owls get a few good attacks on Farron and Qarzdaq before Aran rushes over to attack from behind.
Qarzdaq blasts owls closest to Farron with his sunbeam, blinding them in the process! Farron moves around the other side and barely escapes an owl bite. Aran finishes off two of the owls just as Qhortho makes his way to them and finishes off the last of the immediate threats. The banished owls, however, have just reappeared.
The Assembly rushes inside and up the basement stairs, slamming the door behind them.
QHOR: Troy…
QARZ: Yeah…
They decide to set up one of Farron’s special tents and take a long rest in the ballroom… right next to the last two jars of black sludge.
The awake as the sun is directly overhead on Day 799 and teleport immediately to Winterfell. The starkness of Winterfell just after the hell they’d experienced is extremely jarring, even after their rest. It takes them some time to feel at ease in their safe haven.
Their plan is to travel from here to the floating castle known as Greywater Watch to see if another crystal shard can be found on those grounds.
This session, the Assembly battled through their last of the gruesome fortunes, lost a long-term friend of the Assembly, and might have sentenced Troy’s one love to death. However, the Assembly did gain just enough experience to reach Level 15, so they have that going for them!