Session the Forty-eighth (Part One):
Cassilda teleported the party to the Thrushmoor nexus, and they arrived near the shore of Avalon Bay. The skies above the alternate Thrushmoor were dark and stormy, but also hazy in a manner that appeared to have little to do with the weather. The clouds roiled and raced across the two muted black suns. The wharf, nearby warehouses, and fishing boats were all indistinct, like an animated watercolor painting done with faded pigments. Despite the appearance of strong winds that lashed at nearby trees and a driving rain, no wind or rain could be felt, and the town was eerily quiet. The queen immediately cried out in a startled and tortured scream and flickered out of existence.
Standing just where Cassilda was before she vanished, the translucent image of the Pallid Mask flickered into existence in her place. “Hello,” he said smugly, “we meet again.” Evie asked whether he recollected what happened at his last meeting with the party, to which the Mask replied that memory varied across periods of time.
“Something bothered me during our last encounter. You were supposed to be dead, couldn’t quite reconcile how you were here. You see, I have since learned that you died in the Dreamlands. You were the victims of the one who calls himself Lowls, urged on in his actions by the Mad Poet. Yet here you were in Carcosa and you were the death of me—a distressing paradox, one that the King has now acted to correct. Carcosa, you see, haunts the dreams of mortals throughout the universe, and the Dimension of Dreams transcends time. Simply put, everything you are and everything you have done has been naught but the dreams of dying minds, an alternate timeline where you woke up from your amnesia to fight a cosmic battle against the inevitable.
“Even now, the Briarstone Witch sends her minion, the Tatterman, through the dreams of Ulver Zandalus to put an end to you and this alternate continuity.” The Pallid Mask laughed dryly. “Ironically, you were also phantoms of truth, but now those phantoms are laid to rest.” The Pallid Mask turned and walked away, fading from sight as he did.
A moment later the party received a faint telepathic message from Cassilda, though she was nowhere to be seen. “He tells only the truth he wants to believe. I still sense you and something strange on the isle near you. Go there. Nowhere else because you’re running out of time! Make your own truth!”
When they surveyed their surroundings, they observed a strange corona of light shimmering over the Briarstone Isle and felt a strong, intuitive urge to go there. They found that though they were not dreaming (according to the Dreamlands cat—although Avarel expressed some skepticism (for which he was threatened with the Claw) on her perspective—they were still awake), they were able to simply fly across the water with ease.
Once the party reached the island, they felt an even stronger instinctive pull to enter the asylum and to return to the very basement location where their adventures began. They passed through the door where the eye-mouth had been, and it reformed. As they passed the chapel, they could see themselves sleeping there. It looked as though the sleeping Evie and Winter woke up a little and saw the party standing over them.
They proceeded down into the basement, finding the corpses at the bottom of the chute and Luna asleep in her cage, just as she had been when the first woke up in the asylum. They went through the door to the chamber with the cells and saw themselves asleep and locked up. They observed a tall, thin figure in the garb of a doctor. This doppelganger in human form dragged and pulled one of the survivors onto the table and strapped him down. She said, “The Tatterman says you all must die. No survivors. All must die! The witch, she commands it!” The victim woke up and screamed as the horrific creature began its ghastly vivisection. The doppelganger muttered softly to its victim, “They didn’t tell me which ones were the important ones, though. So, we start with you.”
At that moment, a blinding flash occurred in the center of the chamber, superimposed over the events that were unfolding. Space seemed to stretch out, and the room widened. A shimmering, colorless mass congealed to form a four-armed humanoid shape with an eye-like pattern in its torso and the party immediately noted it was in sync with their state of existence.
A flash of imagery and sounds filled their minds as the being communicated with them. It gave them the impression that time had gone askew and the creature would have to destroy the party in order to set things right again. After this communication, it attacked.
Myfanwy identified it as a bythos aeon, a guardian of planes and travel. Winter cast prayer on the party and aeon before Luna cast disintegrate with a sneak attack on the “eye” and shaved a large chunk of the creature. The creature then moved into hit Myfanwy, causing her to vanish. Avarel, Belinda, and Bettina engaged the aeon, surrounding it. As they did so, the man on the table screamed out, “Wake up!” at the sleeping party.
Evie seemed to have collected spirits of the people who died in the asylum as she moved back through time, and they floated, barely visible, around her, moving her hair and pulling at her clothes and items. She moved in and took a glancing hit from the aeon. She then touched the creature with touch of idiocy but didn’t do enough damage to its intellect to affect it. The man screamed again. “Wake up! Save yourselves! Wake up!”
Winter healed Evie as Luna attacked with the claw, killing the aeon. As it dissipated, the torture victim screamed a final time. “Wake up! Save me! Help! Wake up, damn it!” The party noticed they weren’t waking up and they moved in and shook themselves awake, surprised to find they could interact with there sleeping forms, even Myfanwy’s.
The party woke and Bettina made a grab for the keys on the doppelganger’s belt. The Pallid Mask flickered back into existence and staggered towards past-Bettina, shouting, “No! Stop! This is not possible!” He knocked her arm aside and she failed to grab the keys. Myfanwy reappeared in the party, having been moved forward a short way in time by the aeon. In a roar and incandescent explosion of bright light, the entire scene disappeared.
The party found themselves back in the same spot at the docks where Cassilda first teleported them to the Thrushmoor nexus. The skies were still stormy, the rain began to soak their clothes, and waves rolled across the lake. They were returned to the Material Plane on Carcosa.
Beyond the docks, large sections of the town appeared to be missing. Empty ground existed where buildings once stood. Yet slowly the outlines of homes and business started to appear and gradually became more and more solid. The streets of this phantom town were deserted, but the cries of its panicked populace could be heard in the distance. Those cries grew steadily louder with every passing heartbeat. To the north and in the direction of Iris Hill, storm clouds circled where the manor should have stood, and a beam of yellow light rose from the ground and stabbed into the night.
They decided to check out Iris Hill. The ghosts that were attracted to Evie in the asylum seemed to continue to haunt her, moving her hair and clothes opposite that of the wind. They found a two-story tower of peculiar yellow stone standing where the manor once was. It was featureless and windowless save for an open, arched entranceway at the base. Spired battlements, like the tines of a crown, surrounded the top of the structure. A beam of pale-yellow light stabbed through the eye of storm clouds that swirled around the tower in a ring. Surrounding the tower was an immense hedge that parted in front of the entrance. Shadowy figures could be seen moving on the tower’s roof in the gloom.
As soon as the party walked through the hedge, it and much of the scene were revealed to be elaborate illusions. The lawn vanished to reveal a riot of sickly grayish-green grass and weeds intermixed with moss and toadstools surrounding the tower. Three curved menhirs wrapped around the tower and were hewn from the same strange yellow stone. Also hidden were three wavering stone walkways that meandered toward not one but three different open entranceways that all faced different directions.
Where the hedge was were two hideous creatures, each with iridescent spines covering the backs of the enormous, long-legged worms. Writhing tentacles sprouted from their throats, below circular, toothy maws dripping with luminescent spittle. They attacked from ambush, and Myfanwy identified them as shrike worms, creatures that blurred reality and illusion to surprise its prey. Avarel and Evie got clawed by the worms. Myfanwy became fascinated by their odd forms, watching them intently.
Luna cast a spontaneous sneak attack chain lightning into the worms, causing massive damage to them both. Belinda moved in and struck in flank caused by Evie creating the effect of a flanking creature. Avarel swung his sword and brought his aberration slaying powers to bear, slaying one of the worms. Bettina then tumbled past the creature’s reach and struck at the remaining worm. Belinda then hit as well with the sunblade.
It clawed Bettina then struck everyone except Luna with tentacles grabbing the entire party. Myfanwy located a vital spot on its spine as she was lifted to be skewered on its back spines and struck there with her rapier, killing it. Winter channeled energy and healed up the party. They circled the tower and found all three entrances looked the same. Evie looked inside with darkvision. Strange glyphs and sigils were engraved along the odd yellow stone archways that led inside. The chamber within was stark and barren, save for a staircase that wound counter-clockwise up to the next floor.
The writing above the archways was in Aklo and read, “Praise to the Unspeakable One who will emerge from Carcosa as a god.” They entered the yellow tower and moved to the staircase. They decided to let Luna go invisible and scout ahead to see what was on the next floor. The enormous circular chamber was twenty feet high and held two sets of circular staircases, with Luna on the from the ground floor. The second set of stairs ran clockwise along the wall up toward the roof. In the chamber were six cultists, waiting for the party to emerge from the stairwell.
Session the Forty-eighth (Part Two):
One cultist was equipped differently than the other five and she cast a spell. Then she flew up to the twenty-foot ceiling, being hard to see in the flickering yellow light. The other cultists moved into position so they would be well hidden from the party. Avarel scrying on Luna requested she return and use dimension door to bring everyone except Winter into the room and take the cultists by surprise. Avarel ignited his sword, making it powerful against armor while Winter cast bless on the party.
Luna ported them in behind the cultists, catching them of-guard. They moved into various positions, so the set-up ambush was completely undone. Avarel’s sword was made of pure energy and cut right through a cultist’s armor. Luna cast disintegrate on one cultist that had no one fighting him and took a large chunk out of his side.
Belinda and Bettina teamed up on one cultist and managed to take him down. Myfanwy flew up to attack the floating cultist, surprising her and causing her to drop her guard and stab up between the sides of the breastplate. As the cultist turned away, Myfanwy stabbed her through the neck, killing her.
Evie cast synapse overload on the cultist Luna hit with a disintegrate, killing him. Avarel then killed another one before attacking another. Both remaining cultists vanished and moved about invisibly. Luna was able to sniff them out and she cast glitterdust on the cultist and Avarel. Avarel closed his eyes in time and was not blinded; the cultist was not so lucky and was now fully visible.
Myfanwy flew down and swung out and hit one while Evie killed the one on Avarel with a spell. Avarel charged around and engaged the remaining cultist. Winter at last arrived on the floor as the cultist stabbed at Avarel, giving the paladin a few scratches before Avarel mulched him. The party looted the bodies, healed up, and proceeded up the stairs to the rooftop. They decided to use Luna to reconnoitre the roof before advancing upward.
Dark storm clouds roiled low in the air about the hazy reflection of Thrushmoor, as a sickly yellow light emanated from the tower and pierced the churning gray sky. The tower’s roof was ringed with triangular battlements, but was otherwise flat stone with only an opening on the western edge revealing stairs leading down. An elderly woman was at the center of the tower, moving with alarming confidence and precision. Her ghastly, milk-white eyes left no doubt that her extraordinary vigor was of unnatural origin. With her was a ratling and they were in the shadow of something horribly unnatural. As Luna moved onto the rooftop, the woman looked right at the invisible cat and cackled. “I admire your tenacity, but you’re too late. Thrushmoor is doomed, and I’m going home to ensure it meets its destiny and to escape this place.” Towering behind her was a monstrosity, a hideous, fungoid merger of Count Haserton Lowls IV and a portion of the remains of Xhamen-Dor.
The party quickly surmised that the woman was the Briarstone Witch, Ariadnah. Luna cast battering blast and chain lightning into both targets. As soon as Luna appeared, the Star Seed recoiled in fear: his fear of cats was one of the last vestiges of Lowls in the monster. Ariadnah was immune to electrical damage, but the Star Seed took significant damage.
The Star Seed sent out a tentacle to grab Luna, but Evie used a mesmerist trick and made four more Lunas appear. It still managed to hit Luna, grabbing her. The witch’s familiar pulled out a scroll and read a scroll, healing the undead creature. Ariadnah cast a hex on Luna, but the cat resisted it. Myfanwy used communal stoneskin right before Evie who cast dimension door and took the rest of the party up to the rooftop.
Winter used her channel energy in a ray and healed up Luna. Evie then cast freedom of movement on Luna, freeing her. Avarel and Bettina attacked the witch, causing two harm contingencies to go off to keep Ariadnah up. Belinda became nauseated by the unspeakable presence of the Star Seed. Luna used limited wish to cast blight on the Star Seed.
The Star Seed continued to be intimidated by the presence of the cat and was finding it difficult to fight as well as it should have. It cast symbol of insanity, to no effect due to the strong wills of the party members. The ratling read another scroll and a massive earth elemental appeared and began pummeling Avarel. Myfanwy identified Ariadnah as a lich. She warned the party that unless they found and destroyed the witch’s phylactery—the repository for Ariadnah’s soul—the witch would simply reform after they destroyed her body. As for Lowls, Myfanwy said he had merged with a remnant of the old one Xhamen-Dor. If they destroyed Lowls, the connection between Golarion and Carcosa would be broken.
Luna used another limited wish to determine the location, appearance, and surroundings of the phylactery. A quick discussion with Myfanwy narrowed her quest to the pit beneath the Carcosan Briarstone Isle. She saw that it was an ornate box with Kellid markings watched over by a stone familiar and surrounded by dozens of bholes.
Winter cast flamestrike on the Star Seed as Bettina, Avarel, and Belinda concentrated their efforts of the Lowls construct. The Star Seed sent out tendrils and struck his three attackers, grabbing them. It began digesting Belinda’s body even as she struggled to break free. The ratling familiar used another scroll of harm to heal Ariadnah again as the elemental grabbed Avarel.
Ariadnah tried to place a death hex on Avarel, but the paladin shook it off. Myfanwy used dragon’s breath with a line of lightning on the Star Seed. Winter cast stormbolts and did significant damage to Ariadnah and the Star Seed, and Avarel began striking into Lowls along side Belinda and Bettina. Belinda continued to decay and be dissolved.
Luna went invisible, teleported to the phylactery, and snuck in near the chest. She waited until the right time, ignoring the bholes who didn’t notice her. She grabbed the phylactery with mage hand and teleported back. She arrived at the tower just after Ariadnah and her familiar had hit the group with horrid wilting and fireball, killing Belinda. Winter used her magic to restore Belinda to life. Avarel pivoted and destroyed the phylactery with one strike, resulting in Ariadnah screaming in rage.
Winter cast mass heal, fixing the party and damaging the witch heavily. Belinda struck Ariadnah with her sunblade and destroyed the lich. The familiar fled and the elemental disappeared. The Star Seed cast horrid wilting on the party, heavily damaging Belinda, killing her a second time. Winter cast breath of life on Belinda, bringing her back again. Evie cast a synapse overload on the Star Seed followed by Avarel slashing at Lowls for everything he could throw into it, finally killing the villain, once and for all.