Rise of the Runelords Recap # 120 [RPG]

 
[12 Gozran 4708 continued]
 
As the adventurers finish a brief rest, they realise that Morgiana is missing!  Clearly affected by her recent cascade of deaths and resurrections, the young hobgoblin has slipped away back down the mountain, leaving only a note saying that the group has no chance against Karzoug’s forces and that the rest of the party should flee as well.  Jinkatsyu remains adamant however, stating that the group has come too far to turn back now.  The others agree.
 
Having secured the entrance to the Pinnacle of Avarice through multiple bloody battles, the adventurers are able to push deeper into the fortress.  One corridor leads to a dazzling chamber awash in golden light—every bit of the wall, floor, and ceiling is covered in gems and gold!  A veritable carpet of rubies forms a throne that seems to make the rest of the chamber’s extravagance pale in comparison.  However, the room is unoccupied and the adventurers decide to push on.
 
At what turns out to be a dead end, Erik’s supernaturally-enhanced senses notice a spot where the walls between the planes seems thin.  Before he can take any precautions, a slightly transparent image of Karzoug manifests and speaks!  “And so the fools have found me.  I must applaud your tenacity.  You are much more persistent than the worms I thought you to be.  You are more like hungry maggots in your endless squirming and writhing to get to the death that awaits you at the core of your fate.  Let me show you a mere taste of the power you face.”  But before the image can actually cast a spell, Jinkatsyu stabs it with his Runeforged blade and shatters the image!

Later in their search, the Heroes of Varisia find a massive room containing a pair of outrageously-sized beds—each over forty feet long!  Clearly the resting point for rune giants, though none are present during the adventurers’ search.  Other chambers clearly belong to the lamias, the Hungerers, and other foes that were dispatched during the rolling battles near the entrance.  But another part of the fortress is guarded by a completely new danger: a gaunt fiend with the face of a hideous fish and a body consisting of lanky limbs and writhing tendrils!  It seems to drain the very soul-stuff from Jinkatsyu while appearing in and out of the Material Plane so rapidly that it evades most attacks.  But Ava casts a spell to lock it in place, and Erik and Jinkatsyu are able to finally finish it off.  The adventurers decide another withdrawal and rest are in order.  As they go to leave, Karzoug cannot resist taking over Jinkatsyu’s persona one final time: “Yes, flee, worms.  Already I have broken your company.  I afford you one more sally, as I tire of this game.”

The Heroes of Varisia decide they can’t afford to tarry, and instead should press on with their explorations of the massive fortress.  One route leads them to a potential godsend: a planetar angel!  But the divinely-inspired being seems unable to communicate and, through emphatic gestures, warns the adventurers not to enter the room it is in.  Erik is able to establish a non-verbal rapport with the angel and discerns that it has been bound by Karzoug’s apprentice to guard this place and must attack all who enter.  The adventurers decide that, come morning, they’ll see if they have the magical wherewithal to free the angel from its magical bondage.
 
The group continues exploring, with Erik and Jinkatsyu scouting ahead.  The two adventurers see a pair of double doors, their faces covered with tens of thousands of tiny runes carved in an eerie, spidery script that seems to writhe and move around.  The kitsune and the aasimar find themselves somehow sucked into the door and into a nightmarish maze!  Eventually the two escape the phantasmagorical labyrinth and find themselves in an equally bizarre chamber. The plain stone walls of the long room are lined by a variety of tables, boxes, crates, and cylinders—some made of stone, but others of metal.  Strange winding cables protrude from some to connect to others, and all of the clutter seems to focus upon a large metal framework constructed at one end of the room, where strange currents of energy dance and shimmer within a ring of stone. The currents occasionally coalesce into images—such as a massive city of towers and gigantic monuments set in a mountain valley at the foot of a huge peak.  Xin-Shalast, as it would appear from above!  But the city beyond the energy curtain is different than what the Heroes of Varisia experienced: its towers and buildings are ablaze with light both magical and mundane and the great central road and surrounding streets teem with tens of thousands of giants and humanoids of all descriptions.  The sounds and even the smells of this strange metropolis waft through the image—an image that is seems more and more like a window to the past.  And surrounding the strange device are a dozen, vaguely human shaped beings wearing twitching yellow robes, turbans and veils.  They completely ignore Jinkatsyu and Erik, and instead do various tasks to manipulate the device and consoles around it.  Erik realises that this must be what the so-called “Leng spiders” were talking about!
 
Meanwhile, Kang and Ava devise a plan to communicate with their allies through a magical spell of sending.  The two decide to take the risk of entering the maze as well, and although what they see is quite confronting, they eventually escape it and emerge next to Jinkatsyu and Erik.  The four discuss what to do.  Kang is unable to make any sense of what the machines are for.  Jinkatsyu says that if these “Denizens of Leng” are doing Karzoug’s will, then he wants to stop them—and uphold the agreement with the spiders.  Ava, however, says it could be incredibly dangerous to start a battle in a room of magically-powered equipment with an unknown purpose.  The conversation continues as, all the while, the Denizens of Leng continue their mysterious work.

Director's Commentary

Morgiana's player left the game after the previous session, so I thought it made the most sense to have the character leave as well.

I really liked the Leng experiment concept.  The PCs didn't know exactly what the Denizens of Leng were doing, and whether stopping it would be a good or a bad thing.  The truth is that the Denizens were *outwardly* working on a way to bring an army of giants from ancient Thassilon into the present, but *secretly* building a trap that would ensnare Karzoug the moment he left his pocket demi-plane (in order to serve their own grand machinations).  We'll see what the PCs choose in the next session.

At this point (and putting the Denizens' trap to one side), Karzoug has the raw power to escape his pocket demi-plane whenever he wishes.  He gained a huge amount of magical power from the destruction of Turtleback Ferry whose residents were marked with the Sihedron Rune, not to mention the scores of giants the PCs had killed.  However, he knows the PCs are coming for him and he's content to watch and wait so he can fight them in his domain.