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cursewoodrecap · 4 years

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Session 5: Askew

This episode: We meet some very strange people, and go to a very strange place.

Contractor Darius firmly escorts Valeria and Gral out of the Baroness’s hall, but he’s chill about it. Nothing personal, we’re just trying to keep the talk about this madman on the down low. We’ve had some suspicious activity around here lately, see. We Cursebreakers got our hands on some important books recently, and Witness Beatrice was just getting started on translating some of the more suspect tomes. Two days later, the library mysteriously burned to the ground. Now I’m not sayin’ it was the Penitents. We don’t have proof. But...well, you see why we’re being careful with news of anyone touched by the Curse.

Gral and Valeria are quite understanding, but they’d also like to take Darius up on his offer to meet this “madman.” Why not go right now?

Meanwhile, Clem goes armor shopping and meets some nice lesbian weaponsmiths at Hammerstein and Sons - Ms. Hammerstein, and her business partner Ms. Sons. Sadly, she finds out that armor and silvered weapons are ‘spensive. Shoshana is wandering the city, noticing that while people give her funny looks, nobody really gives her any crap about her mildly cursed appearance. Clearly, this is an opportunity to hang out in bookstores and impulse-buy unhealthy food. Nobody invites them to come interrogate the madman. Ahem. Anyway.

Darius brings the two adventurers into a narrow hallway in the repurposed mining office that the Cursebreakers took over after the library burned down. Several offices have been converted into sturdy jail cells. Only one of them is occupied. There’s a bed, and there’s easels everywhere, holding half-finished paintings, ink drawings, and charcoal sketches. Pots of paint and other art supplies are scattered around haphazardly.

“He’s weird but we’re pretty sure he’s harmless,” Darius tells them. “Bea comes in to cast Detect Magic once a day to see if he’s up to something, but she’s never found anything.”

Valeria inspects the various half-finished paintings. They’re mostly landscapes. She sees:

-a frozen ocean crashing up against bright purple cliffs, under a sky with five moons

-an owl that turns into a lizard partway through, casting a human shadow. The ground beneath it is breaking apart, opening a pit to darkness.

-a cavernous landscape filled with bones, a grim city looming in the darkness above

-the biggest canvas is full of nothing but very finely-detailed abstract shapes in a psychedelic swirl of colors. Only a small patch of the huge canvas is filled. There is no overarching pattern, just random but elaborate shapes and lines.

Sitting at the big canvas, there is a gaunt elf in ragged clothes. Fresh clothing is folded nearby within his reach, but he hasn’t touched it. Gral notices that there’s something weird about him - the elf’s proportions are juuuust slightly off, pushing him slightly into the uncanny valley. He turns to face them. His eyes are very, very wide, and they are all-black and full of stars.

He notices the group and politely inquires: “Hello. Is the key here?”

“The key?”

“Yes, I think I could be ready to leave soon.”

The adventurers ask if he knows why he’s in here.

“The very nice knights gave me this room to work on my paintings. They’re things I saw when I was elsewhere. I like to refresh my memory.” He points at the grim city. “I’m missing something here….”

Gral politely introduces himself and Valeria.

“Hello, I am the painter. Well, a painter. I’m the only painter here so I might as well be The. Unless one of you paints? No? Very well, the Painter I am!”

Gral inquires of Darius how long ago this odd gentleman was found. Darius says it’s been maybe two or three months? Not long after the mists started happening. The Condotierri found him wandering in a farmer’s field.

Gral turns to the Painter: “Do you know about the lake nearby?"

“Oh yes! I’m very familiar with it!”

“Have you seen the mists?”

“No. Although it makes sense that there would be mists, that’s where mists should happen.”

Valeria brings us back on topic. “How did you get to ‘elsewhere?’”

“Oh, the Key brought me.”

Gral: “...What, or who, is the Key?”

“That is a very complicated question. I’ve asked the Astronomer that many times, and he was always frustratingly vague.”

“The Astronomer?”

“Yes, the Astronomer, he’s the one who told me about the Key. I’m working on a portrait of it!” He gestures to the huge abstract canvas. “I can only remember it sometimes.”

“Where did you meet this Astronomer?”

“In his house by the lake, that’s an awfully silly question.”

Valeria: “...Tell me more about your paintings. This one is super nice, tell me about it!” She points to the ocean landscape.

“Oh yes! That was beautiful, one of the first places I went from the Astronomer’s house. I don’t know if the others made it through in time. I lost my sketchbook somewhere. Unfortunately I didn’t have my paints with me.”

“...you went to these other places with others?

“Oh, well, that was the idea, but I ended up alone. The Astronomer, The Musicians, The Alchemist, the Sculptor, the other Painter – frankly he’s hideous and the world is better that he was left behind, or stuck between – I didn’t look back, there was too much to see in front of me.”

Valeria elbows Gral. “You’re a musician.”

“So I am! Did these musicians happen to be orcs?”

The painter doesn’t know what “orc” means, so Gral takes off his mask and asks if the musicians looked like him. Nope. Glancing between the orc Gral, the dragonborn Valeria, and the human Darius, he decides the musicians looked like - well, nobody here, but Darius more than anybody.

Moving on to the next painting, Valeria points at the owl-lizard creature. “What kind of creature is this?”

The Painter looks angry. “That’s the Destroyer. We had worked so hard for so long, and at the last moment, the triumph of success, it interrupted us.”

“What did it do?”

“I was on the other side, so I was only able to see, but not warn the others. It destroyed our art, our collaboration. What was to be a bridge is now trapped between the two, between here and there. Sometimes there’s a bit of a connection, but… that’s when I’m able to work on the portrait. I remember the Key.”

Valeria: "...Is the Key a physical object?”

“Are you?”

“…Generally speaking, yes?”

“Not entirely, no, but less than you are.”

“Is the key alive?”

“Partially. Partially. It was killed, but it’s alive. Maybe. It should be more. These are some very odd questions!”

Valeria is pretty frustrated by all the riddles. “It doesn’t sound like your key is entirely anything!”

“Well, it might have been one day. If there’s any of it left. That’s why we tried so hard to reach it. The Astronomer especially. He was the first to see it. He organized the collaboration. I was the only one to make it through.

It hasn’t been so bad since I’ve been back. The small one comes to play chess with me, but she’s really bad at it. Doesn’t know any of the rules.”

“What happened to the Astronomer?”

"He is where the house is. I don’t know which side of the house he’s on, this one or the other side.”

Next painting. What’s up with this city of bones?

“The Key wasn’t WITH me, but it helped me. It sent me places. And yes, it was a rather gloomy place, I did not care for it. Impressive visual, but poor lighting.”

“Was anything there alive and moving?”

“Alive no, moving yes. I’ve left those bits out, it’s more of a landscape. What’s the opposite of still life? Moving dead? I’m sure the OTHER painter would have loved it. But I capture sublime beauty, thank you very much. Is that all? Thanks for the appreciation, but I must get back to work on the portrait. I remembered some of it last night, and those memories don’t stay.”

Gral: “Where are the other collaborators now?”

“Some of them might be in the house, some might be wandering. I barely know why I’m here! I doubt the Astronomer left the house, he loves it. It was his place.”

Valeria asks whether the Astronomer would mind if we paid the house a visit.

“Oh, he loves guests!” An insight check reveals the painter is entirely sincere, and madder than a box of rabbits

He turns away from our heroes and gets back to work, almost trance-like in his movements.

Darius is pretty impressed. “You caught him on a good day. Usually he’s worse, you can’t get him away from painting at all. The paints keep him calm. Me or Quentin will try to talk to him, but this is the most we’ve gotten in a while. He’s usually better after the mists come, which is NOT a comforting thought.”

Gral is fixated on the idea of other worlds. When the terrible creature came upon his expedition, Gral saw a kind of warping in space. “The painter’s madness resembles some of the whisperings upon the air when that creature growled. I think there is truth to what he’s saying, just not our truth. And we know there’s something at the lake. Have you found the Astronomer?”

They haven’t. In fact, this is the first time he’s ever been mentioned. The guy hasn’t really given us anything about what he saw in the mists. You might want to talk to Bea about the astronomer? She used to be local record-keeper. She has a shrine to Torme in the basement - all the books she could recover from the library fire. Don’t spook her, please. Also, Quentin’s gonna want an answer about the Mornheim expedition sooner rather than later.

It’s roughly around here that Clem and Shoshana’s players insist on Showing Back Up. Shoshana is eating some sort of absurd ice cream wrapped in fried dough, because no one was there to stop her.

Gral recounts the audience with the Baroness and the meeting with the Painter, and tells Shoshana and Clem the harrowing story of the Curse’s Champion. “I know the Champion’s in the painter’s story somewhere – not sure if it’s the Key, or the Destroyer. But I don’t like any of it. He has probably seen the Champion.”

We ruminate on the idea of this Key taking things Elsewhere. “When the Champion attacked, it ripped the space around it. Maybe it took the encampment’s tents somewhere else instead of destroying them?”

Maybe this Key is a connection to other dimensions. If that’s the case, Gral contends, the connection is sentient. And sometimes mean. Perhaps, if he had followed the beckoning whispers that accompanied the fearsome beast, maybe he would have ended up in the fantastical places in the paintings.

Our problem: CAN we do anything? We’re low-level, dimensional portals are probably not weak to “being hit with sword,” and we have to face the possibility that, like in a Fantasy HP Lovecraft novel (he’s very racist toward orcs), we will be exposed to Weird Shit Man Was Not Meant To Know and end up as nutty as the painter. Also, like, the dead rising in Mornheim might be a priority?

Gral holds firm. “I can’t overstate how important this is. Sooner or later – I don’t know the agenda of this champion, but everyone in this town will die at its hands.”

He bows his head. “I’ve been living for a long time to just see this thing dead, but when I heard its growl last night I just wanted to run and hide. Still. I’ve heard it speak, so I believe it has a body. And if we can find out what that body is - if we know what it is, and where it is, we can figure out what its weakness is.”

Undecided if or when to investigate the Astronomer’s lake house in regards to this mystery, we decide to first take Darius’s suggestion and speak to Witness Beatrice, the cleric of Torme who rescued books from the library fire.

As we go down towards the basement, Clem pulls Gral aside. “Gral, I’m so sorry – I didn’t know that any of that happened to you. I kind of understand where you’re coming from, back with your unit. So if you ever feel like you need to talk, please know that I’m here for you.”

Gral shrugs. “It’s not something I like to remember. Part of me’s scared, part is mad, part is excited I can finally kill this thing. But I have to know what it is first if I’m going to have any hope of killing it..”

Clem nods grimly. “Believe me, I would LOVE to help you kill this thing.”

We head down to the basement. It’s cluttered with bookshelves - some carry old mining records, but most are groaning under a haphazard collection of singed books. There is a small shrine to Torme, the god of knowledge and law, in the corner. It takes a moment amidst the clutter, but Gral spots a small halfling woman muttering to herself and organizing one of the shelves. Gral takes his mask off, knowing that most non-orcs find it unsettling, and calls out a cheery, “Hello!”

She looks up at us from behind big ol coke-bottle glasses. We are all super visually intimidating and armed, because adventurers. She eeps! and hides behind a shelf. “DARIUS!”

Darius scolds us for frightening her after he specifically told us not to, and tells her it’s okay, these guys came and brought Morozov a dead body and an animal skin - wow, okay, that doesn’t actually help make them less scary. Anyhow they’re allies.

She insists he leave his bird, Daikon, down here with her if we’re gonna be large and scary and stuff.

Turns out that when the library burned, she had just begun a research project on several rare texts that might have clues to the Curse: “The Song of Druids,” “The Temptation of Fiends,” and a gruesome collection of essays on undead compiled by a mad necromancer.

Gral asks if any of the texts mentioned keys or gateways.

Bea: “Portals to the Abyss, maybe? I didn’t get very far before the fire.” She shows us a glass case. There are several fragile books inside, badly burned.

She also tells us the Painter’s name is Johann. “I don’t think he knows how the rules of chess work? He picked up a pawn and started painting on it and said that it was a fish. Then he put it in my water glass. Which makes sense, in a way? But I was drinking that.”

When we mention an Astronomer with a lake house, though, something rings a bell. She hunts through the shelves for an old book of maps, left over from when this was a mining office. One of us tall folks kindly gets it off the top shelf.

There! On one of the islands in the lake. There’s supposed to be a home here – right over the cave system they were mapping. A manor house, belonging to one Artyom Vlemisk. A land grant from the old baron to his friend. Bea thinks back: “Yeah, astronomer Artyom! I remember when he came to town, just when I was starting out – he had a bit of an artists’ colony out in his observatory. I mean, we assumed the artists’ colony died a long time ago. Daikon did a sweep, over the entire lake, and we didn’t see the house anymore. When mists first came, we assumed they all got Got. A lot of the people close to the lake have died in the mists, especially down in the fishing village.”

Bea uses a neat magic trick to instantly transcribe us a copy of the map. She was up by the lake not long ago - she stopped by when Darius was surveying the lake bed (using Daikon, who was an octopus at the time) & Quentin was off with Ser Balderich. There’s some guys from Sturmhearst College who set up on edge of lake. They say they’re here to “study the anomalies,” and they’ve set up shop in an abandoned church, calling it a “staging ground.” It might be easier to get them to take us across to the island - the fishermen probably won’t want to risk their boats. They’re led by a Professor Quercus, who specializes in “aberrant biology.” Bea marks the church on the map for us.

With business out of the way, Valeria can’t help but feel a Powerful Need to do something nice for Bea, and produces her book of tales of the Peacock Knight to help Bea rebuild her library. Bea has a copy of the same tales, but it’s a singed and battered old one, and Valeria happily swaps it for her pristine illustrated copy so the library can have something nice.

We decide to go down to the lake to check it out. We still have five days before we have to give Ser Quentin an answer about Mornheim, and since the mists just came last night, we are maybe less likely to get caught in them again if we go soon. Also, we’re just gonna take a casual look around for an afternoon; we don’t have to get into anything too crazy. Right?

We bop on down to the lake. Sure enough, there’s a damaged old stone churchy building, patched with leather tarps. Lights are flashing behind the windows. Someone has put a wooden sign up out front, reading “Sturmhearst College of the Natural Sciences, Holzog Annex. est. [last Tuesday]”

A pair of hulking dudes all in black leather, with big hats and owl masks stand impassively at the gate, armed with big ol’ clubs. They eerily turn in weird unison to look at us as we walk down the path towards them. Clem waves. Valeria waves. Shoshana finger guns. One of them awkwardly tries to finger gun back.

There’s a bell on a pole near the front gate, labeled “please ring for entrance.” Shosha theatrically pulls the ding dong. A figure in a long-beaked bird mask peeks out of the door. “Um, yes, we’re not buying any, go away.”

“Hey, can we use one of your boats?”

“Uh. You’d have to talk to the professor, I guess. I’m just a researcher”

“Oh, is the professor the one in the bird mask?”

“Is this a joke? ...No, really, is that a joke? I’m studying humor. Well, the humors. I’ve been theorizing that maybe comedy affects the balance.”

Behind him, through the door, there is a cacophony of noise. Growl, clatter, crash, explosion! The researcher goes to check, we wait a moment, and then the door opens. “The professor is now available.”

The researcher, who we dub Frederick, leads us into a decently sized church. Folks in bird masks are hurriedly dragging something into basement. It’s under a tarp. It’s vaguely dog shaped, but big. It also looks like a buncha stuff just got crashed over. There’s another owl guard standing there, holding a weird contraption. It’s vaguely smoking, crossbowlike, and smells of ozone? Whatever it is, I want one the next time we go in the woods.

We are approached by a fellow in a white leather coat, wearing a fancier bird mask than the others. He walks up to Valeria. “Ah! Hello there! Mister…mis…are you a boy or a girl?”

“Um, Kyr Valeria Argent, she/her pronouns?”

“Ah, good. My usual method of determining gender of reptilian organisms would be quite rude!”

IT SURE WOULD, I BET.

“Anyway, why do you want a boat?”

“For science?” we try. Before he can call us on the cliche, he distractedly dives under a table and grabs at a rolling object.

“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t want to lose the orb! It got knocked down during a…football game. That we were having. Yes. I don’t want it to accidentally take root, it would be an awful waste!”

We inform him that we are investigating what used to be a manor built on the lake. An artist colony, disturbed by the mist. Perhaps even movement between dimensions! Have you ever heard of anything like that?”

“Oh, how fascinating! Have I heard of such a…transference? WHAT NO OF COURSE I HAVEN’T. BUT IT WOULD BE QUITE SOMETHING.”

Insight check: he’s lying through his beak. He IS super fascinated by a transference on that scale, but yes, there is super shady shit happening here. We don’t push further, but he bustles over to a table of various strange objects.

“A quest as worthy as this must be done post haste! And I should give you some assistance! That is what one does when asking a group of valiant heroes to quest for knowledge, yes? Take one of these things, they’re magic. Student inventions, you see.” He offers us three options:

1: A rectangular wooden box with a weird putty inside. The putty apparently works similarly to the Mending cantrip, but is especially intended to repair things that have been burned.

2: A ceramic tile with a hole in the middle and a tortoiseshell on the back. It’s a method of acquiring fresh water – it absorbs water from air, or uses a form of the Create Water spell. He’s not really sure! Boop the shell button and you get a stream of fresh water.

3: A weird misshapen orb of plant matter they found in woods. If you throw it to the ground, it makes vines happen. Frederick got stuck in it! You could use it to make rope, or climb a wall. It grows quite quickly if planted or thrown!

We choose the burn repair gel, hoping it might help Witness Beatrice.

He also insists on giving us a red journal in which to record our notes. We all acknowledge he is definitely using us as unpaid research assistants.

“Oh, by the way. Standard procedure for sending out expeditions: do you know what a homunculus is?” (Valeria does. It’s like a familiar, but crafted out of alchemy. They’re not necessarily evil? Super weird, tho.)

“I have one named Gray. Though he’s really rather more of a blue color. He’s got quite a keen sense of smell, so in case you do not return, please let him sniff you so we can track you and recover your research notes. What’s that, Frederick? Oh. Oh dear! To shreds, you say?”

Frederick nods.

“Well! Please leave an article of clothing, perhaps a sock? He will have to smell you later, when he’s a bit more put together.” Gral gives him a bit of sleeve. He tells us to stick together, so they can find all of us if they track Gral. Splitting the party is not university policy!

As we’re merrily heading out, the DM admits he’s surprised he kept a straight face for the whole scene. And then slyly tells us to google the meaning of the name “Quercus.”

The Professor’s name. Is Oak.

...the laughing DM narrowly avoids being pummeled, by virtue of being several hundred miles away. Valeria’s player is revealed to have been a willing accomplice in the whole gag.

For the record, the three items he offered us? A Char Mender, a Squirt Tile, and a Bulbous Orb.

Revenge will be had, DM. When you least expect it.

Aaaaaanyway.

They let us borrow a dinghy, which we all pile into - nobody has boat proficiency, but we do fine on the basis of nobody wants to spend an hour doing a “did anyone fall overboard and get wet” sidequest. A fish looks at us. It has three eyes. It is not a chess pawn.

We can see houses with docks on the edge of lake. They’re badly damaged and falling apart. There were never many people on the lake islands, but when the mists first rose, everyone on islands got real dead, real quick.

The middle of largest island is where the astronomer’s house was. This is not a particularly deep tangle of wood. The whole place seems pretty tame. The trees aren’t too thick, and there’s a paved road right to a large clearing.

According to the map, there should be a large house here. There is not. Instead, there is a giant hole in ground. We peer into it and see the splintered but surprisingly intact remains of the manor house – like a sinkhole opened up directly under it. Valeria throws a rock in the hole, as an experiment. We observe normal rock in hole behavior, and write it down, for science. It’s about a 50ft deep hole. Seems like there was a cave down there? The house is awkwardly sitting in it, looking weirdly intact for a house that fell in a sinkhole.

We rappel down into the pit. It’s weirdly quiet. Closer up, we can see the house has been painted all over with weird geometric patterns and lines. There are bits of carved stone nailed to house in a big massive design of shifting colors and shapes. The designs are broken up a good deal by the collapse of house. Seems like even the house itself was a giant weird abstract art project? We wonder if it’s the same pattern as the Painter’s “portrait,” but we don’t roll well enough to figure out if it is.

Heading in, we find ourselves in a crumpled hallway. The weird patterns continue along the walls. There are 4 doors; 2 on each side. The end of hallway is rubble.

We open the closest door on left: it’s a painter’s studio. There are easels and spilled paint, and there’s a human skull on floor. There’s sketches. Looks like this painter was painting the skull. Shosha takes a sketch, for souvenir reasons. The art is all really macabre, lots of battle scenes There’s a rack of weapons and a mirror, clearly for art references. One wall has a crazy mural of impossible battle scene. Knights are fighting weird monsters. There’s fire and shooty glowing lights. The characters don’t have the cultural context to describe wtf it is, but the players are told it’s very King Arthur vs. Flash Gordon. There’s also a nice, if cliché, Rack in Chains painting.

Next up is the sculptor’s studio. Lots of big marble blocks. The pattern on the walls has continued through both rooms. In the middle of the room there’s an unfinished sculpture of...something weird? It’s clearly unfinished, but there’s, like, an arm and torso stickin’ out. Wtf is that supposed to be? Also, there’s a bunch of symbols and shapes carved into the wall and into blocks of marble, as if the sculptor was practicing them. They get more regular. Some are carved on statue. Shoshana tries to copy them into our Pokedex journal, but starts getting headache staring at them for so long. Roll initiative. Wait, what?

Wait. That shape wasn’t there before...is it moving? A carved fold in sculpture opens up to reveal a maw of stony teeth. A blue-purple tendril emerges from the mouth and the whole thing kind of inverts itself into a big teeth-and-eyes-everywhere guy. WELP. SCP jokes are made.

It proceeds to smack Shoshana with a pseudopod. Hissss! She instinctually swats back, Primal Savagery giving her unnatural claws. But it’s immune to acid damage, which her claws do for some weird mechanics reason. RUDE. Gral fails to insult it. Then, a clatter of metal - the swords from previous room flying through the air! There is a crackling as lightning comes out of the pattern along the walls. The lightning grabs the swords and pulls them through the air along the lines of the pattern, like a Mag-lev train, and attack Valeria and Gral. Clem smacks a mimic with a sword, which is very helpful, since it has just reduced Shoshana to 0 hp. Gral Healing Words her up, though. Shosha MAX DMGs Burning Hands, killing the mimic. A dozen mouths open as if to scream, and what comes out is a weird discordant song. It burns and starts to shrivel up in front of us. Valeria snaps one of the swords, Shoshana flames another, and the final one rolls a natural -3 and self-destructs in shame.

We decide we no longer want to be in the sculptor’s studio.

The door across the hall opens into a large lounge. There’s a bar, bookshelves, and tables. We flip through the books. Most are about art history. They’re super moldy, though. We also find a book of cocktails, written in Kevan, and immediately start making puns. The Boozenomicon. The Negroni-nomicon? By the Mixologist of Minsk. Miska-TONICS? Mixa-tonics? Obviously by Sturmhearst University press. Clem also finds 2 bottles of fancy high-elven vodka, worth 25gp each. Valeria finds scattered sheet music for 2 songs: one is called “Requiem for the Prisoner;” the other is “The Opening of the Ways.” Naturally, she gives the music to the bard.

Next up is the kitchen. The scattered mess and wall patterns continue through it. Chained to the wall, we find a heavily annotated cookbook. Clem takes it and decides to flip through. It’s written like an eldritch recipe blog, and we definitely gotta have it. Loot!

An awful, acrid chemical scent is coming from the next room. It appears to be the alchemist’s lab, which is definitely not a thing you put next to a kitchen, home designers. We all roll Con saves versus being sickened by the fumes. In the middle of the room lies a decaying body - the alchemist herself. A medicine check reveals a head injury - she was likely concussed or knocked out when the house fell, preventing her from escaping the toxic chemical fumes of her shattered laboratory.

Gral finds a notebook labeled “Property of Dr. Alicia Keene”. It describes certain paints that she was inspired to create – formulas for various pigments and art materials. “While I do not have a direct role in the collaboration, I was inspired to create the wondrous pigments Johann and Musalt will need for their parts, though some of the ingredients for the pigments must be acquired from Beyond. Artyoum has assured me that the Lurker and his Hounds will not bother me as I gather them.”

We also gather three potions, labeled A, B, and Q. The DM has not decided what they are yet, but he’ll stat them at some point, if we ever remember we looted them. Shosha also finds a sealed tin labeled “Paint: Reserved for Collaboration.”

Clem, as we loot evidence, notices a weird puddle. Drip. Drip. She looks up and a slimy mass is clinging to the ceiling. It drops onto us and tries to eat us, but we skedaddle outside the room, far outpacing its slow oozing speed.

As we climb upstairs, we start to hear faint music. It echoes down a long hallway filled with doors. Like dumb teens in a horror movie, we go directly toward it.

Inside the conservatory, the painted patterns swirl in complex detail across the floor, centering on a single music stand. The walls are lined with mirrors, but we notice with unease that we don’t reflect in them. The reflection seems to show the room we’re in, but instead of us there are two women, distorted and lanky with unnaturally long fingers, surrounded by floating musical instruments. One is playing a violin, the other a flute. Gral, having read the sheet music, recognizes they are playing “Requiem for the Prisoner.”

As we enter the room, they look at us and stop playing. They spare a glance at each other, raise their instruments once more, and continue playing. But this time, it’s a different song. We hear the opening bars of “The Opening of the Ways,” and the patterns across the floor begin to glow faintly. Cracks in the mirrors begin to emit the same soft glow, and the odd colorful light begins to extend past the edges of the mirror. Mist begins to pour from the cracks.

A sensible adventuring party would have fled, escaping the house before things could go very, very sideways. The DM explicitly gave us the option. But since when has “sensible” ever described an adventuring party? We wanna see what’s gonna happen.

We are declared certified Dumbasses by the DM, and we are about to go on a very strange journey through the looking-glass.

All PCs are now level 4.

#session recap #holzog #the key #shoshana bat chaya #valeria argent #clem haxan #gral omokk'duu #quentin morozov #contractor darius #witness beatrice #professor quercus #sturmhearst university

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