Session 32: Favored of Selûne

Favored of Selûne

Summary

Sparax at the Bleeding Horn Tavern

Ember cataloguing sensory stones

Gurincraag, the secret city

The Beetle Bazaar yielded only a bronze ring of feather fall, though the party eyed an unattended Belt of Giant Strength and haggled fruitlessly with an Iron Golem peddling a Potion of Gaseous Form for its absent master. At the Bleeding Horn, Sparax demanded fifty jink for portal use until Xarannos's name waved the fee; Glenn fed the stool his cowardice as a secret, earning a gray vortex.

Pulled sideways from the conduit, Diedric stood incorporeal beside Selûne herself as the surviving Howling Island kobolds emerged from a moonlit shelter -- "Guide the lost to me, favored one" -- and rejoined the party in the Hive with a silver streak through his hair, weeping, while the others promptly accused an opportunistic red tiefling of horrific deeds.

At the Civic Festhall, Ember directed them to a spirit-seeker named Vistra Runehall, frequenting a dwarven suckhouse called Vos'Ultok in Gurincraag below Sigil. Threading luminescent teal and magenta smoke through abandoned mineworks, Octavius's third eye caught The Unseen mid-ambush -- a duergar, two svirneblin, a drow -- and the fight closed with a Clay Golem conjured from a thrown rubik's cube and Smokescale slipping after the fleeing drow.

XP Award

• 600 XP for Glenn offering his cowardice to the stool — the secret it had been waiting for
• The Unity of Rings: 1500 XP for the Howling Island kobolds reaching their home plane, concluding their story as Diedric is named Favored
• 400 XP for finding Ember and the trail to Vistra Runehall in Vos'Ultok
• 400 XP for Octavius's Third Eye spotting The Unseen mid-ambush
• Total: 2900 XP
• Current XP: 64564 XP -> 67464 XP
• (Required for next level: 85000 XP)

Things That Happened

Browsing the Bazaar

• Date: 1st of Mirtur, noon, 1372 DR
• Marti and Diedric haggled with the tall ring merchant over a bronze ring of feather fall.
• Octavius browsed and spotted a Belt of Giant Strength, with no vendor in sight, along with a strange club with obsidian spikes inserted into it.
• Lilia sought an artifact of Baba Yaga, to instead only find an Iron Golem selling a Potion of Gaseous Form. It had a delayed activation.
  • There was a failed negotiation with it, stating that its master needed to make a profit. It deactivated to end the conversation.
• Their shopping concluded, the party left the Beetle Bazaar and flew at road-height to the Bleeding Horn.

Octavius's Third Eye

• During the travel, Octavius began a habit of activating a third orange eye, allowing him to see invisible creatures.
  • He shooed away two imps that were tailing them by throwing a fire bolt in their direction.

The Bleeding Horn

• A faint scar on the road where an ice wall had been conjured during the Blood War skirmish was visible outside the iron structure, magma flowing into it from one of Ribcage's ribs.
• Inside, Sparax served tieflings, cambions, and other humans.
• On approach to the stool that served as a portal to Sigil, Sparax notified the party he was charging 50 jink per use.
  • They negotiated it for free, citing their relationship with Xarannos, Ribcage's new leader.
• Glenn tried to speak his favorite color as a secret. The stool was unimpressed.
• Glenn then spoke of his cowardice in fleeing his homeland after suffering his affliction and defeat. The stool was excited.
• A gray swirling vortex appeared.
• Glenn sat on the stool to assert himself, then crawled into the vortex, followed by Diedric, Octavius, Lilia, and an opportunistic red tiefling.
• The party had a brief glance of the astral plane as they careened through an astral conduit, before the sensation of knives sliding over their skin led to their destination.

He Was Right Behind Us

• Glenn, Octavius, and Lilia appeared through a threshold of a collapsed building in the Hive District of Sigil, the City of Doors.
• Behind them, Diedric was nowhere to be found.

Favored of Selûne

• Diedric felt himself pulled sideways out of the conduit, then stood incorporeal on a rocky outcropping, dozens of feet tall like a giant, watching stormy gray terrain below.
• Two vortexes of air tore across the landscape, ripping up trees and stones. A dark presence pulsed within the stormclouds.
• Time passed. The vortexes moved on.
• A silver moonmote rose from the ground, spinning lazily over a specific spot.
• A trapdoor opened. A one-winged red kobold poked his head out, scanned the sky, and hopped free — the shaman Diedric had spared on the Howling Island.
• The moonmote circled him excitedly as he helped other kobolds — red, green, brown — climb out of the shelter. They had survived and made it to their home plane.
• He looked up. The clouds parted, revealing two moons and sparkling Tears of Selûne trailing behind them.
• A tall woman shimmered into existence, or was there all along, alongside Diedric: white robes layered with silver scales, long white hair with straight bangs, two hands resting on a silver sceptre. Selûne, in the aspect of the Moonmaiden.
• She watched the kobolds, then looked sidelong at him, smiling.
  • "Guide the lost to me, favored one."
• She touched her hand to Diedric's head.

The Hive

• Diedric burst into Sigil, weeping from the experience. He now had a silver streak of hair.
• The party came to Diedric's emotional aid immediately accused the red tiefling of performing horrific acts on Diedric.
• The tiefling sprinted away like Forrest Gump.
  • "Not you lot again." an old woman said from an upper building, slamming shut her window.
• As with a previous visit, the Light Boys appeared to still be on strike, many of the city's lights unlit.
• Taking in the sights, Lilia observed two drunken dwarves vomiting and a black-robed collector wheeling bodies toward the Dustmen's headquarters.
  • She also observed a Harmonium member in reddish armor, a gray orc, patrolling the alleyways in this area.
• There was no sign of the blockades that the Alley Reapers had placed, but there was still natural razorvine.
  • Lilia studied its leaves and sharp stalks closely, using her own blood to observe their growth in real time.

Tour of the Cage

• Excited to see the city, Lilia lit her witchbroom lantern and rode along the ground. The party rode higher up in the carpet, keeping a lookout for trouble.
• During the flight, the party sighted the Mortuary above them, with the architectural charm of a pregnant spider, the Great Foundry dumping smoke between the two layers of the ring, a burned down poetry shop, and the grime of The Hive giving way to the Lower Ward and Clerk's Ward.

Return to the Civic Festhall

• Two dabus, glyphs swirling over their heads, hovered past the party as they sighted the Civic Festfall, with its tall central structure with an organic design to its stonework and flanked by pools and fountains.
• The party flew to the location of the third sensorium.
• Now that it was night (which a friendly bariaur pointed out was antipeak), it was not as busy as last time.
• The bariaur directed the party to the fourth sensorium when they inquired about Ember.

The Fourth Sensorium

• The party approached and entered the fourth sensorium, its walls made of blue marble.
• A spiral staircase led to a third story where the party could hear someone working.
• Lilia hovered up on her broom while some other party members walked up the stairs.
• Confused at first, Ember stopped her cataloguing of sensory stones upon seeing the stranger Lilia, but ran happily to hug an awkward Octavius as she recognized the party.
• Glenn demonstrated his curse was cured, she complimented Diedric on his armor and the silver in his hair.
• Ember inquired about Galdren and Neribion. The party explained how Neribion had been replaced by B'ian.
  • The party proceeded to coyly describe and insult B'ian as if he were a real person. Odd.
  • She recognized the last name as Chuultan and pronounced it more accurately.
  • She indicated that her groom-to-be sends her wind whispers, and that is how he will communicate to the party when it is time for them to wed.
• The party explained their purpose -- they needed to find Navarra's petitioner spirit in the afterlife.
  • Ember knew her name.
• Ember directed them to find a spirit-seeker, Vistra Runehall, who frequented a rough dwarven establishment in an area of Sigil that was secretive and not legal.
• After some coaxing, she explained that it was called Vos'Ultok ("wild meeting place" in dwarvish), in the hidden city of Gurincraag within the underground part of Sigil known as "The Below".
• She explained that dwarven suckhouses were not her preference to visit.
  • Octavius ruined the eventual reveal by knowing immediately that dwarven suckhouses were smoking halls, where vases filled with scented and flavored liquids were smoked out of multiple hoses protruding out of them.
• Ember provided directions to an entrance to Gurincraag, an iron grate near the Hall of Information. She asked the party not to be seen.

The Gulp

• Backtracking a bit, the party flew to the Hall of Information, spotting the described iron grate.
• They waited for a large Harmonium patrol to pass, led by a woman with brown hair and dark skin.
• Each party member ented the hole, Unit 137 barely fitting.
• A small tunnel with the earth around them seeming strange, with the texture and hardness of stone until it was chipped away, then immediately disintegrating to dust with nothing remaining.
• A few everburning torches lit the way to a very narrow spiral stone steps descending further below.
• Unit 137 could not fit and was unsummoned with a 🤘 hand gesture, disappearing in brimstone.
• Walking sideways in order to fit, the party descended several levels until they burst into a much larger tunnel, large enough for wagons and carts to drive by and pass each other.
• A dwarf was driving his wagon filled with grain, led by two ponies, when Glenn greeted him with "Pike off, berk! :D"
  • The dwarf stepped out of the wagon, not believing what he was hearing.
  • He eventually established that he was likely daft, and pointed behind him was the way to Gurincraag.

Gurincraag, the Hidden City

• The tunnel opened into a grand underground dwarven city, with real stone construction and architecture, the ceiling much higher and grander.
• A dwarven woman asked if they were there for the suckery. The party confirmed, and she indicated that they just need to follow the smoke.
• In the distance, they could see teal and magenta smoke coming off a side corridor.

Following the Smoke

• The party walked through the city, passing a bank and several shops, until they proceeded into the side corridor.
• This broke off into small tunnels that went every which way, but the luminescent smoke was always there to guide them.

Spotting the Unseen

• The party eventually ended up in a series of tunnels that appeared to be abandoned mining operations, including a rail system and abandoned carts.
• With his third eye, Octavius spotted an ambush ahead -- a duergar, two svirneblin, and a drow, all invisible, blocking the path to Vos'Ultok.
  • They appeared as translucent to his eyes.
• He murmured a warning, but their body language gave them away as having spotted the ambush.
• The duergar shouted that they were protectors of this area and that the party just needed to pay for their protection, declaring themselves as "The Unseen".
• As Octavius began to cast thaumaturgy to assist Diedric in intimidation, the duergar charged as the drow slinked around a corner.

Encounter: The Unseen

• Highlights:
  • Synaptic Static dropping the svirneblin to near death, a yellow streak of energy bouncing between their minds and the more-resistant duergar.
  • A butterfly-filled faerie fire revealing the svirneblin to the party.
  • Glenn surprising the duergar by effectively slashing him despite his invisiblity, sensing the vibrations in the air.
  • A guiding bolt from Diedric disintegrating a svirneblin.
  • The drow attempting to ambush Octavius, only for him to have foreseen this and non-chalantly dodged it by barely moving away from the poisoned crossbow bolt.
  • In desperation, the drow manipulating a metal rubik's cube, throwing it down until it used the earthen material to create a Clay Golem.
  • The Clay Golem hammering away at Octavius, acid melting some of his feathers.
• Smokescale trailing the drow around the corner, spotting him right as he was about to drink from his invisibility potion.
• The session came to an end.

NPCs Encountered (or mentioned)

• Mote, the Iron Golem
• Jaarl, the fleeing Tiefling
• Baahram, the helpful Bariaur
• Vistra Runehall, the Spirit Seeker
• Du'Godaar, the Insulted Dwarf
• Kos Vos Toa, the Duergar Leader
• Nivilleal, the Drow Skirmisher

DM Thoughts

• The party is attempting to turn B'ian Ch'k Ch'k against me. Proceed with caution.