On to the Fortress

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Using Hawk's survival skills, he located enough components along the way back for 4 bottles of Alchemist's Fire. For additional 40gp we could make naptha . Shimmer was successfully able to create 3 out of 4 naptha's and return them to Hawk. The process will take a day to create.

Gilian Vale, circus manager, is generally creepy.

Walking down a road, we encountered 5 crocodiles along the road. Giovanne found them by looking for shadow taint and destroyed them all with his Eldrich Blast.

The party comes up on a frozen lake with a cryo-hydra under the surface which attacks the party after Cid provokes it by slamming down a log onto the ice. After all the heads were destroyed, Hawk searches the body to extract alchemical items. Shimmer is able to create 12 flask of alchemist frost.

The party is now within visual distance of the fortress. The fortress is literally carved from and into the mountain. There is a melevolent looking horned image on the front of the main building.

Notes for the Editor:

• We now believe the Song and Sorrow Traveling Shadow Show was a 'front' for kidnapping people. It was confirmed that the 40 people we rescued were taken from places directly on the path the circus is following.
• The show is presently in Birthalis; it was arriving just as we left. (GM confirmed)

[edit] Entering the Factory

Cid scouted out the factory on his own. He found a secret passage on one side of the building. Inside were three doors. The largest had living lock. Under detailed investigation, part of the system was discovered to be an eviscerated hairless ape whose limbs were secured in concrete. It was still alive despite the open wounds. When the party went through one of the smaller doors they engaged a few undead and a shadowmage acolyte. From there they were able to rescue several piles of people who were being held for some nefarious end. The people were sent away and they left to return to their far away homes. As the team continued, they found a trap in one of the rooms which could crush a person. They also found a sumbol of House Vel. When they came to the main foyer, they found a lavish room with several pictures. One was of a countryside in ***], where Jung Fei grew up. Another had a man in full battle armor. A third was of a picture of a beatiful woman which looked like the 20 year old survivor of house Vel. The woman in the picture might be the young woman's mother.

Cid found a secret door in the room and when he went through, discovered a woman slowly bleading to death. She was tied up and apparently some sort of sacrifice. After Cid healed her with vita water, she explned she was captured and identified the 20 year old girls father as the one apparently in charge. SHe wanted him dead. She was convinced to leave and go to Patsy, while the party continued on and promised to bring her his head.

Continuing on, Cid found a Silver covered wooden alter which contained somekind of poison gas. The Alter will be taken when the party leaves. Continuing, he found a room with four acolytes playing cards. Creatively, he began to trade cards from the deck to make it look like cheating was going on. When the acolytes suspected each other of cheating, theybegan to argue but not to fight the way Cid hoped they would. Then armed with the idea to use the paralization wine the party got from the other acolyte's body, he tried to slip some in one of their flasks. He succeeded undetected but they noticed the change inthe amounts in the flasks. This caused them to start manifesting powers.

Within half a minute, their instructor showed up and ordered everyone to stop fighting,. While Cid remained hiding in a corner of the room, many acolytes filled the room and the PCs , still undetected, moved into position to launch a surprise attack on the shadow casters. Between Xam and Giovani, the Instructor was killed before he could cause any harm. Cid prevented the escape of some of the acolytes by blocking one door and helped Shimmer by opening another. The primary attack of the acolytes was to damage the health of the party. Although Cid and Xam took a few hits, most of the acolytes were quickly killed and the party was otherwise unscathed.

Three acolytes (the ones who were initially tricked) made a run for it and tried to get away. Cid stopped them dead in their tracks right before they could notify the rest of the complex using an advanced tanglefoot bag. After the three were taken out, the party examined the bodies, repaired some of the damage to their bodies and looked forward to examining the library.

Investigating the library, the party discovered the man behind this group is part of the shadow court. He is from the Val family and is trying to prove himself to the dark goddess to get her help healing his daughter (the girl we had met at the cabin). To do this, he has built an engine which uses captured elementals to allow more shadow to leak into the world.

Further investigation showed the dead instructor changed the engine. If the engine is activated, Darelth itself will be destroyed. Vel doesn’t know of this change. Vel knows of the Cursebreakers presence and he will be arriving right before the engine activates.

Cid deactivated the traps to the big pair of double doors. The switches were in the door jam itself. The traps were a combination of fire, acid and a spiked cylinder.

In the first room, the team faced 6 wights, a powerful undead and two living shadow shrouded creatures.

Beyond them were stairs and another pair of locked doors. Inside, the team faced a team of archers, two razor wielding clowns and a half-goliath. After a long harrowing fight, one of the archers escaped trough a side door while the Cursebreakers slew the rest.

The party encountered a room with double doors. Carefully, Cid peaked in the one door and found a long hallway with murals on either side. Fater a close examination, he found a trigure halfway down the hall which would drop the murals on each side, flooding the hall with tanglefoot goo.

He went to the opposite end of the hallway which also had double doors and peaked in. He quickly stepped back out when he found hi,self spotted and a fire elemental next to him guarding the other door.

The party quickly made plans and attacked. Killing two opponents, the party's advance convinced the Fire Elemental to put up a wall of flame and withdrawl. A few alchemist frosts allowed Shimmer and Jung Fei to get through the wall and join all but Xam in the next room which was a small library. After the wall died down, the party found the final room where the danger laid.

The party had little time for planning as the operation was about to finish. Cid and Giovani destroyed the conveyor belt and a feeding tube. In the end, Vel, and another caster escaped through the almost completed portal but then oddly disappeared.

A few more people were freed and the party decided to try to save the trapped water? Elementals which had been enslaved for the engine.

The party was left considering what to do with the factory and the elementals.

[edit] Arc Wrap-up

Cid searched the building in it's entirety while Shadowhawk kept watch on the portal.

The most notable find was a safe with a lock disabling trap which even Cid found extremely difficult to defeat. Inside, he found the ingredients used to produce the portal.

Meanwhile, the portal closed after some time passed. After half? an hour, the snakes ceased to be captive and after thanking the party (through gesture) left to their home plane.

In ritual, the party joined Shadowhawk to Vath and increased their own connection to the spirit.

With Patsy and the other survivors in tow, the party returned to Birthalis with what they could carry. Later, Cid and others made further trips to get all the treasure.

When the party first arrived in Birthalis, they found a tired and stressed Eulji, waiting for them at the gate. She explained how a week or so before (a day or two before the combat at the factory), her mother and little brother went missing. Shadow hawk promised to find and return her mother ande brother, 'alive or dead.' The party went to the last place the two had been seen and Shadowhawk picked up the trail. With the Captain? of the guard and a few other soldiers, the party and Eulji (provided armor and a scimitar from the cart), followed the trail. Unsurprisingly, it led to the circus where the people who resisted, never resisted anything again.

The party found 11 malnurished people in a trailer. Shadowhawk immediately led Eulji's mother to her. meanwhile, Xam, handed out rations to all the captives.

With ample evidence of murder and cannibalism, the arrested members of the circus were sentenced to death and executed. Eulji was given time off to spend with her family.

After a brief rest, the party trained together, learning some new tricks.