Session 24
From 4th Edition
Everyone Hates You
| The True World |
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| You emerge from the mountains into a new world. Gone is the Technicolor dreamland that you so happily waltzed through last week, though the specter haunting your thoughts is gone as well. All that is left is the dying world in front of you, filled with brown miasma.
The spores of the beast plant are unnaturally vivid in your unaltered state of mind, and you can see them floating gently though the air in huge clouds that seem to choke the land. Periodically, gusts carry them out from the ground though unseen vents, bathing world in a perpetual sea of brown.
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Following Wimpington Jr's directions, the party heads towards Candlekeep to collect the ritual information necessary to reconnect the gateway between Wimpington Manor and the Shadow Manor in Chult.
| The Ruins of Candlekeep |
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| Approaching, you see none of the customary flags or banners flying from Candlekeep's towers. In fact you see no towers at all. As you round the last bend along the narrow path, you find yourselves standing in front of a smoldering ruin. Candlekeep has been burned to the ground. After your initial moment of surprise, you take a moment to survey the damage. The fortress shows no sign of attack, and in fact, the outer walls seem as strong and intact as they've ever been. The destruction seems to radiate outward from the keep itself, as though Candlekeep's destruction was its own doing.
While pondering this, you observe no gate keepers and no activity within the keep's walls. The large iron door barring the main road in stands shut, but the smaller man-sized door built into the iron has swung open. Inside, the keep's main yard seems to have become a battleground. The ground is scorched and marked with craters, while the bodies of mages and scholars lie rotting in the sun. It appears that they died fighting each other, with neither side claiming victory. The ferocity of their combat seems to have vaporized most of the surrounding structures, leaving only the reinforced walls and the crumbling heap of the keep at the center. While most of the keep's superstructure has been destroyed, you can see a narrow crack leading inside near where the main entrance used to be. Once again, you can see and hear nothing alive here except for the scavenger animals who pick at the field of corpses. |
After defeating some monsters and solving some puzzles, the party got what it came for and beat a hasty dash to Wimpington Manor itself.
| Inside Wimpington Manor |
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| The main hall of Wimpington Manor is a wreck. The furniture here has been thrown about and destroyed and the art and décor have been torn to shreds. The brown miasma is thick here and you can see the bodies of servants and staff tossed about.
You're not positive about the source of the tossing, but it may have something to do with the band of monsters in front of you. The walls of the mansion are covered in runes relating to planar portals, and it appears as though Henderson may have been trying to recruit followers from the Elemental Chaos after his headless agents were destroyed. However, it seems that a team of icy monsters has stumbled through unsupervised and are currently menacing you. Henderson is nowhere to be seen. |
After a difficult fight, the party limps south to buy a cure for Harken after he's permanently petrified.
