Full History
May. 2nd, 2022 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thornspawnMarus was born an heir to the Ornelos Family, a noble house that runs the Acadamae of Magic in Korvosa, a port city in Varisia in the continent Avistan on the planet Golarion. However, he was also born with red skin, hooves, horn nubs, and a tail, marking him a tiefling, spawn of a devil's bloodline. They would have killed him, but they instead threw him to a couple who had served the family faithfully, the Thornspawns. They raised him well enough, hoping he'd be Lawful Evil, or at least Neutral. Unfortunately, they went right somewhere, and he joined the church as a Paladin of Sarenrae, the goddess of healing, light, and forgiveness.
It was there that adventure found the tiefling, as he was swept into events beyond his limited scope. He ran aid in many disasters, but it was in the events surrounding the House on Hook Street that he truly found his feet.
Marus gathered a group of individuals, local and visiting, to help investigate increasing nightmares in the Old Korvosa slums. They found more than they bargained for, however, their own recurring nightmares coming to the forefront as they were thrust into a fight with a nightmare miasma possessing a corpse. They felled it quickly, and the local constabulary asked them to continue helping them investigate. They were officially hired by a magistrate upon agreeing.
First, they investigated the corpses of the victims of the miasma. They were killed with no wounds by its negative energy embrace, and, as the party fruitlessly tried to follow the killer corpse's trail, manifested a dangerous phenomenon known as a haunt, a living spell. With the help of Rosa, a halfling oracle, it was slain.
The party's investigation led them to a drug den specializing in a drug called Shiver, after they learned the corpse was an OD victim, who had been dumped into a pigsty, such cruelty being typical in these dens. They found traces of the victim at the Raven's Roost, and managed to charm (person) their way to meeting with the boss. Marus was absent for this, probably good for his grace, but they got the names and common locales of the victim Frell Tann's friends. He returned to the party as they approached said friends, and began to question them. They learned little before they were attacked by another haunt, summoned by the death of one of Frell's friends, which caused spiders - the recurring theme of many of the nightmares plaguing the town - to manifest a web of sickness. Immune to its effects, Marus cut it down, despite being harried by real-er spiders summoned by the haunt.
Afterwards, the surviving friends of Frell - shiver addicts both - were talked down and brought to the temple of Sarenrae to recover. There, we investigated the body, as well, learning that this death too reflected negative energy.
Fearing that tainted shiver had been exposed to the water, the party headed to the most-used of the slum's wells, where, sure enough, they found a broken shiver vial. Its label was marked with a spider, indicating the involvement of our nemesis group - the Brotherhood of Spiders.
The party returned to the temple, and interviewed Frell’s friends, learning that the cult had either desecrated a temple of Desna, or found it already corrupted. Frell had been part of the team that found it. They also learned of the Oneirogen, or dream-seer, Madam Carrington, and decided to pay her a visit.
Rosa, a halfling oracle and one of the quartet, went with Marus to Carrington’s. After disarming, they were permitted to meet the oneiromancer, who resembled nothing so much as a corpse, albeit one with fiery, living eyes. She communicated via speaking board and planchette, telling the pair that a witch beyond the veil of dreams was stealing and hiding the souls of the dead, and that she was the source of nightmares, connected to the cult. She sought a key, the same key which Frell had found in the temple and tried to sell at an exorbitant price to Carrington along with a book of Desnan teachings, but she had turned him down. Between the witch’s magic and the shiver, dreams were spilling into reality, causing the haunts.
Meanwhile, Rhys, the party’s dhampir investigator, and Eandi, kobold swashbuckler, sought a spy. They found a street urchin who went by Kestrel, an information broker. He agreed to help them find the cult’s distributor for 50 gold.
The party reconvened to investigate the night fountain once more, this time looking for shiver dealers. Instead, they found a young girl, who called them obvious and ALSO claimed to be Kestrel. In exchange for a meal and the promise of 50 gold, she told them that the shiver was being distributed by cultists in robes.
In further investigations of the sites of recent shiver-related deaths, they found some robed men on a pier where two women had drowned, apparently high while swimming. The men ducked into a shack, and a water elemental appeared as the water level rose. The party managed to outlast the elementals summoning and slay the summoner, a hybrodaemon who had apparently drowned several people, including the previous victims, though the four came close to dying in the process. The men in the shack, safe with some air within, were also alive, and turned out to be addicts, paid in shiver to lure the party to the hydrodaemon. Rebuffed by this disappointment, the party returned to the mainland of Old Korvosa, only to find a mob of angry addicts. A little fast thinking, Marus’s near-suicidal stand, and one instance of grand theft boat later, they made it back to the temple district.
They met “Kestrel” at the appointed meeting spot, only to find her brother - the original, real Kestrel who Eandi had met - there with her. He extorted an extra 50 gold from the party by blackmailing Marus, of whom he seemed to know the true identity. He also confirmed the location of the distributor, Greeley’s, office… And that he had heard the name Sally Scrabblebones, an old Korvosan bogeyman of a hag, associated with the nightmares. Rosa deduced that there was a night hag in the dream world, stirring up trouble beyond belief.
The party returned to the magistrate, offering proof that Frell had been on shiver, that the cult was associated with the corruption of the trade, and that Greeley, the lead dealer, was working with them. With that squared away, they returned to the temple to meet Frell’s friends, and report to them, too. They then turned to research, and headed to the Acadamae. (Eandi’s player dropped off after the hydrodaemon, so Eandi did not continue to be part of the party after the meeting.)
At the school, they met with two of the retired guards - Marus’s parents. In exchange for a promise to attend weekly dinners, the party was allowed to enter the library of mythology to research night hags and Sally Scrabblebones. They found little they didn’t know, and ended up hiring a student to find more… Before going to dinner.
Dinner was eventful, mainly in that Marus finally discussed his homosexuality with his parents after they spoke of their desire for a “grandspawn.” They were willing to accept this, but still insisted he find a way to raise a child. They returned to the library and learned the weaknesses and strengths of night hags from the student they had hired before leaving the Acadamae.
After the visit, the party headed to continue investigations into the victims’ death locations. As there was no haunt at the docks, they concluded the women must have died elsewhere, and set off to investigate the others… And potentially order exhumation of the bodies.
Their first stop was the Gray District, home of the faith of Pharasma, the goddess of death and fate. This district, the whole thing a graveyard, is often pestered by the lesser undead. They let the party in after they professed their goals - to stop the haunts and free the souls of the deceased. Rhys examined the bodies the next day, and discovered that some who were believed to have partially devoured themselves in the throes of shiver had in fact been attacked by something… bestial. There was no pattern or chronology to the attacks, but they all occurred in Old Korvosa. The drowned were not drowned, but dropped into the water from great height. The lice-bitten, paralyzed by spider swarms. Those who’d seemed to have slit their own throats went too deep. It was all inconsistent, and they began to doubt the intentions of those who had filed the reports. If shiver was not the culprit, why was it implicated? Was it a cover-up for humanoid sacrifice? They decided to investigate further.
They first headed back to the night market once again, to learn about the two men who had been found with slit throats and knives in their hands. As they were mercenaries, the party checked places mercenaries might unwind - starting with shiver dens. The den known as the Soiled Sow was an early find, and they stumbled upon one of the men from the docks there - no longer in a robe, but still using shiver. While Rhys tailed him in disguise, Marus and Rosa entered the den, turning over their weapons at the door. They found little but rumor there, so collected their gear and left for Greeley’s hideout, where they were recognized as the killers of the hydrdaemon - which turned out to be his pet, linking him inexorably to the murders. They knocked out most of the guards, but one escaped, locking the door behind him. They found a secret tunnel at the back of an outhouse nearby, and followed it, hoping to get some insight into the cult’s activities. They found a locked portcullis at one end, behind which hung many cult-like robes, and the cult’s smuggling path the other way. When they returned, Reynaldo, one of Frell’s friends, had tied up the thugs, but Greeley had an ambush set; the party was injured, but managed to scare off most of the remaining thugs, and knock Greeley out.
In Greeley’s lair, they found more shiver, and had to drag Reynaldo away before stashing it and leaving. The party intended to destroy the dangerous drug, though the man begged them not to. Rosa and Rhys burned it while Marus walked Renynaldo back to the temple, and attended Greeley’s interrogation while he helped the recovering addicts settle in. Greeley unwittingly revealed that they had far darker plans for Korvosa - and the world - than just unleashing Sally, and that the cult’s last remaining bastion was a house on hook street, the source of the shiver and the last temple of an entity known as Mog-Lathar.
The party returned to Carrington’s abode to seek advice. Though the key was out of her sight, she directed us to the Lantern Man, the man who organizes the urchin lamp-lighters of Korvosa. She also offered them a haven from the nightmares, though refused to elaborate on what made her place safe.
They spent the night at Carrington’s before exploring the tunnel once more, this time picking the lock of the portcullis. Behind it, they found a cult’s storage room… and were immediately set upon by three chain kytons, worshippers of pain from the fell planes. They reveled in the party’s agony as the fight dragged on…. And their own as they died. They nearly brought down both Marus and Rosa, but the party recovered and moved on.
They discovered a room destroyed by a summoning attempt, and a room where they failed to trick some cultists and were forced to end them. Many, many more cultists and monsters and rests later, they managed to clear the house, acquiring many an artifact and calling upon Cassiopeia the Azata on the way. She exchanged a week of service for a magic ring and a promise that Rosa and Marus would make a journey within the next year, together or apart, far from the city and devote it to Desna. They agreed.
Having cleared the main part of the house (and discovered a corrupted temple to Desna), the party continued into the structure, after defeating an animated giant spider corpse golem monstrosity. There, they saved as many victims of the cult as they could, wiping out a few more cultists in the process, and took the survivors and the corpses of those they could not save to the appropriate temples. On their return, they split up, Marus going in the front door and clearing out the first floor of an ettercap and its arachnid minions while the rest climbed up and in through a balcony.
With that done, they turned their focus to the temple. Marus entered first, still alone, and fought off cultists and evaded an air elemental. When the party reunited, they defeated the air elemental and had it dismissed, rather than killed. They also found a closet of corpses, which they reported to the priests of the goddess Pharasma, guardian of the dead. Then they turned to a tunnel under the temple. This tunnel led down deep, to a well, which in turn led to the nest of the cult itself.
The heart of the cult's worship lay in a desecrated temple to Gozreh, god of weather and storms, deep underground... and underwater, under Korvosa's harbor. They fought their way there, and found a large dome of glass, deep under the harbor's surface, where a large fossilized spider hung, the cult's idol. The party fought hard; Marus failed to protect or save Rosa, the halfling oracle, after Rhys was brought low, his heart full of revenge. He fell after the fight for this transgression. Carefully, he and Cass carried the pair back to be revived, and he sought and found atonement. Before he found it, however, he used his birth family's name, seeking their aid with the revival. They refused, and exiled him, leaving only the contingency that he had time to solve this issue. However, if haste was not made, they would hurt his adoptive parents. With that done, he went to the magistrate who initially hired him, trading the cult's book of roll and the news of their demise in the tainted temple of Gozreh for 9000 gold sails (coins) and the promise of revival for his friends.
The revival was difficult - but ultimately successful. The atonement was even harder, if less expensive. In the end, the party was together again - and, after the fight with the cultists, had a key which empowered them in the world of dreams. They needed only to find the book which would get them there.
This led to them seeking out Kestrel - the real one, as his sister had approached them before to learn how to be a doctor, and was staying in Marus's rooms. They asked after the survivors of a former enemy's group, and he found them - all dead. When the group got to them, they found something much worse than corpses - a blood-soaked golem of some sort, able to drain its victims with a touch. Marus nearly died, but the other two managed to slay it and save him.... Though Rosa fell to death's embrace once more in the process.
Rosa was revived, bringing the party back to three... and four, when they were joined by a new member, another tiefling, though this one was of a rakshasa's brood. Elias, the magus. He had once been Marus's boyfriend, but they separated on good terms. Now he was sent by the Thornspawns to ensure their son's safety. The party returned to the scene of their most recent conflict, and learned the book had been sold to a shopkeeper they knew - who, when they got to his shop, was dead. His daughter, Avigail, weeping on the steps of said shop, said a skinless hound had killed them; the party's next target.
They found the book of dreams, the gateway to the dreaming world, in the store, but could hardly leave a threat free to... well, threaten. First they took Avigail to Carrington's, where the daughter of the late bookseller helped decipher the riddle of the rituals within the book of dreams, and inadvertently discovered her own occult, psychic power - the power to focus spiritual energy. She was not as experienced as the rest of the party, but helped them from then on.
Before fighting the strange hound, the party helped Robin find a tutor to teach her letters, and helped her get clean and better clothing, as well as a bath. She was, after all, originally an urchin. They brought her back to Carrington's, where their night's sleep was interrupted by a terrible howl. They went to investigate, and found... the hound. It turned out to be a Hound of Tindalos, aided by a cultist, and defeating it was a dreadful ordeal, but they managed to get it to turn tail and run after they killed the cultist. However, sadly, it had already killed Frell's friends, abducted from a sojourn from the temple.
They returned to Carrington's, only to find her insensate, her manservant possessed, and her apparently carnivorous plants hungry. Robin was nowhere to be found. The party cleansed the servant's mind, and found Robin in a cupboard with the book and key, but could not help Carrington save at the temple. She had been affected by a night hag's ability to drain life, and only a significant amount of diamond dust for life or killing said hag could save her. The party (mainly Avigail) continued to study the ritual to enter the world of dreams. The party went day-to-day until the time came. They returned to the house through the tunnels, where they encountered the ettercap Marus nearly killed but could not truly end thanks to its regeneration, the hound, and two giant ogre spiders. They slew the spiders, and the hound, and the ettercap escaped once more, this time to the shadow plane.
With that in mind, and the ritual mastered, the party set off to kill the hag. They entered the dreaming world, and found it... too similar to Korvosa. They found Carrington's home there, defiled and full of blood, the trail leading to the mansion that took the place of the house built around the temple. They broke in, fighting extraplanar plants and window-monsters, and a door that turned out to not be locked. In the building, however, things truly got dicey. They encountered a haunt that could baffle the mind, and nooses that grabbed at throats shaped like the tails of their party members, all controlled by the owner of the mansion trapped in the realm of dreams, Nahum Caligaro. Rosa dispelled the tails, and Marus the haunt, but there was much more to do.
They encountered Belkers, evil elementals made of smoke, inhabiting the bodies of a pair of cultists, and a mass of flesh that represented the cultist's victims but was living and insane, and defeated both, though they had to retreat afterwards, finding relative safety in the dreamscape's version of the bookshop. It had, however, been trapped, worryingly. They had nightmares that woke them terribly, but managed to rest all the same.
Returning to the house was an ordeal in and of itself, as they were attacked in the street by a haunt much like the first they'd met. They managed to fell it once more, and continued to clear the house. They headed directly to the temple, where they encountered and revealed a new form of evil - childlike Vulnadaemons. They dispatched them, but were far too late to save the dead Baku that the daemons had savaged, Madam Carrington's former protector... Which the last daemon awoke as an undead being, causing more damage, first to the daemon, then to the party.
After its defeat, Rosa took a moment to mourn her inability to have children, brought to light by sorrow at the vulnadaemons' youthful appearance. Marus declared them all family, which helped, and then was unable to hide the truth about his exile anymore when pressed. The party vowed to stay together, and continued on.
The next room contained a projector that displayed a picture of a powerful fiend, an Asura from the depths of the hells. The projection came to life, but was brought low by the party's combined efforts. The only threat they had yet to face was the hag and Nahum's combined power, and the party met them next.
Sally Scrabblebones, Night Hag. There's a lot to be said about her, but she had Madam Carrington's essence, and the party refused to parley, even though she recognized Avigail for a changeling, a half-hag. Elias, ignoring this revelation, smashed the hag's hand and freed Carrington. The battle raged on, the key changing hands more than once as it was stolen back and forth, and eventually hidden by Cassiopeia, but Elias's cold iron rapier whittled her down. She escaped with the book, but her heartstone, source of much of her power, was taken before she managed that.
After reclaiming the key from the ettercap, Marus ended the beastly creature once and for all. With the key and the hag's heartstone, the party, helped by Madam Carrington, hid and rested. Only after that did they once more return to the house, ready to take on Nahum and the Hag.
Their enemies were ready, but the party of heroes was, too. They gradually whittled the hag down, Marus finally ending her in three cleaving attacks, taking off both hands and her head with his sacred scimitar. Only Nahum remained. He was protected by fearsome haunts, and had summoned the shadow of a demon, but was defeated with relative ease. However, that was not the end of it. The dreamstone, the core of the corruption, revealed itself, harming the minds of all who looked at it. The party managed to cast it into the dream with a ritual, but it left the dreamscape unstable. They barely escaped back to reality.
The first order of business was a bath, but as they left the bathhouse, the sun was rising over the beginnings of a festival. They enjoyed what they could, and visited Madam Carrington, but Marus could not stay long. Robin chose, agonizingly, to come with them; her brother elected to stay behind. At festival's end, the family left the walls of Korvosa, together, and that is where we ended.
It was there that adventure found the tiefling, as he was swept into events beyond his limited scope. He ran aid in many disasters, but it was in the events surrounding the House on Hook Street that he truly found his feet.
Marus gathered a group of individuals, local and visiting, to help investigate increasing nightmares in the Old Korvosa slums. They found more than they bargained for, however, their own recurring nightmares coming to the forefront as they were thrust into a fight with a nightmare miasma possessing a corpse. They felled it quickly, and the local constabulary asked them to continue helping them investigate. They were officially hired by a magistrate upon agreeing.
First, they investigated the corpses of the victims of the miasma. They were killed with no wounds by its negative energy embrace, and, as the party fruitlessly tried to follow the killer corpse's trail, manifested a dangerous phenomenon known as a haunt, a living spell. With the help of Rosa, a halfling oracle, it was slain.
The party's investigation led them to a drug den specializing in a drug called Shiver, after they learned the corpse was an OD victim, who had been dumped into a pigsty, such cruelty being typical in these dens. They found traces of the victim at the Raven's Roost, and managed to charm (person) their way to meeting with the boss. Marus was absent for this, probably good for his grace, but they got the names and common locales of the victim Frell Tann's friends. He returned to the party as they approached said friends, and began to question them. They learned little before they were attacked by another haunt, summoned by the death of one of Frell's friends, which caused spiders - the recurring theme of many of the nightmares plaguing the town - to manifest a web of sickness. Immune to its effects, Marus cut it down, despite being harried by real-er spiders summoned by the haunt.
Afterwards, the surviving friends of Frell - shiver addicts both - were talked down and brought to the temple of Sarenrae to recover. There, we investigated the body, as well, learning that this death too reflected negative energy.
Fearing that tainted shiver had been exposed to the water, the party headed to the most-used of the slum's wells, where, sure enough, they found a broken shiver vial. Its label was marked with a spider, indicating the involvement of our nemesis group - the Brotherhood of Spiders.
The party returned to the temple, and interviewed Frell’s friends, learning that the cult had either desecrated a temple of Desna, or found it already corrupted. Frell had been part of the team that found it. They also learned of the Oneirogen, or dream-seer, Madam Carrington, and decided to pay her a visit.
Rosa, a halfling oracle and one of the quartet, went with Marus to Carrington’s. After disarming, they were permitted to meet the oneiromancer, who resembled nothing so much as a corpse, albeit one with fiery, living eyes. She communicated via speaking board and planchette, telling the pair that a witch beyond the veil of dreams was stealing and hiding the souls of the dead, and that she was the source of nightmares, connected to the cult. She sought a key, the same key which Frell had found in the temple and tried to sell at an exorbitant price to Carrington along with a book of Desnan teachings, but she had turned him down. Between the witch’s magic and the shiver, dreams were spilling into reality, causing the haunts.
Meanwhile, Rhys, the party’s dhampir investigator, and Eandi, kobold swashbuckler, sought a spy. They found a street urchin who went by Kestrel, an information broker. He agreed to help them find the cult’s distributor for 50 gold.
The party reconvened to investigate the night fountain once more, this time looking for shiver dealers. Instead, they found a young girl, who called them obvious and ALSO claimed to be Kestrel. In exchange for a meal and the promise of 50 gold, she told them that the shiver was being distributed by cultists in robes.
In further investigations of the sites of recent shiver-related deaths, they found some robed men on a pier where two women had drowned, apparently high while swimming. The men ducked into a shack, and a water elemental appeared as the water level rose. The party managed to outlast the elementals summoning and slay the summoner, a hybrodaemon who had apparently drowned several people, including the previous victims, though the four came close to dying in the process. The men in the shack, safe with some air within, were also alive, and turned out to be addicts, paid in shiver to lure the party to the hydrodaemon. Rebuffed by this disappointment, the party returned to the mainland of Old Korvosa, only to find a mob of angry addicts. A little fast thinking, Marus’s near-suicidal stand, and one instance of grand theft boat later, they made it back to the temple district.
They met “Kestrel” at the appointed meeting spot, only to find her brother - the original, real Kestrel who Eandi had met - there with her. He extorted an extra 50 gold from the party by blackmailing Marus, of whom he seemed to know the true identity. He also confirmed the location of the distributor, Greeley’s, office… And that he had heard the name Sally Scrabblebones, an old Korvosan bogeyman of a hag, associated with the nightmares. Rosa deduced that there was a night hag in the dream world, stirring up trouble beyond belief.
The party returned to the magistrate, offering proof that Frell had been on shiver, that the cult was associated with the corruption of the trade, and that Greeley, the lead dealer, was working with them. With that squared away, they returned to the temple to meet Frell’s friends, and report to them, too. They then turned to research, and headed to the Acadamae. (Eandi’s player dropped off after the hydrodaemon, so Eandi did not continue to be part of the party after the meeting.)
At the school, they met with two of the retired guards - Marus’s parents. In exchange for a promise to attend weekly dinners, the party was allowed to enter the library of mythology to research night hags and Sally Scrabblebones. They found little they didn’t know, and ended up hiring a student to find more… Before going to dinner.
Dinner was eventful, mainly in that Marus finally discussed his homosexuality with his parents after they spoke of their desire for a “grandspawn.” They were willing to accept this, but still insisted he find a way to raise a child. They returned to the library and learned the weaknesses and strengths of night hags from the student they had hired before leaving the Acadamae.
After the visit, the party headed to continue investigations into the victims’ death locations. As there was no haunt at the docks, they concluded the women must have died elsewhere, and set off to investigate the others… And potentially order exhumation of the bodies.
Their first stop was the Gray District, home of the faith of Pharasma, the goddess of death and fate. This district, the whole thing a graveyard, is often pestered by the lesser undead. They let the party in after they professed their goals - to stop the haunts and free the souls of the deceased. Rhys examined the bodies the next day, and discovered that some who were believed to have partially devoured themselves in the throes of shiver had in fact been attacked by something… bestial. There was no pattern or chronology to the attacks, but they all occurred in Old Korvosa. The drowned were not drowned, but dropped into the water from great height. The lice-bitten, paralyzed by spider swarms. Those who’d seemed to have slit their own throats went too deep. It was all inconsistent, and they began to doubt the intentions of those who had filed the reports. If shiver was not the culprit, why was it implicated? Was it a cover-up for humanoid sacrifice? They decided to investigate further.
They first headed back to the night market once again, to learn about the two men who had been found with slit throats and knives in their hands. As they were mercenaries, the party checked places mercenaries might unwind - starting with shiver dens. The den known as the Soiled Sow was an early find, and they stumbled upon one of the men from the docks there - no longer in a robe, but still using shiver. While Rhys tailed him in disguise, Marus and Rosa entered the den, turning over their weapons at the door. They found little but rumor there, so collected their gear and left for Greeley’s hideout, where they were recognized as the killers of the hydrdaemon - which turned out to be his pet, linking him inexorably to the murders. They knocked out most of the guards, but one escaped, locking the door behind him. They found a secret tunnel at the back of an outhouse nearby, and followed it, hoping to get some insight into the cult’s activities. They found a locked portcullis at one end, behind which hung many cult-like robes, and the cult’s smuggling path the other way. When they returned, Reynaldo, one of Frell’s friends, had tied up the thugs, but Greeley had an ambush set; the party was injured, but managed to scare off most of the remaining thugs, and knock Greeley out.
In Greeley’s lair, they found more shiver, and had to drag Reynaldo away before stashing it and leaving. The party intended to destroy the dangerous drug, though the man begged them not to. Rosa and Rhys burned it while Marus walked Renynaldo back to the temple, and attended Greeley’s interrogation while he helped the recovering addicts settle in. Greeley unwittingly revealed that they had far darker plans for Korvosa - and the world - than just unleashing Sally, and that the cult’s last remaining bastion was a house on hook street, the source of the shiver and the last temple of an entity known as Mog-Lathar.
The party returned to Carrington’s abode to seek advice. Though the key was out of her sight, she directed us to the Lantern Man, the man who organizes the urchin lamp-lighters of Korvosa. She also offered them a haven from the nightmares, though refused to elaborate on what made her place safe.
They spent the night at Carrington’s before exploring the tunnel once more, this time picking the lock of the portcullis. Behind it, they found a cult’s storage room… and were immediately set upon by three chain kytons, worshippers of pain from the fell planes. They reveled in the party’s agony as the fight dragged on…. And their own as they died. They nearly brought down both Marus and Rosa, but the party recovered and moved on.
They discovered a room destroyed by a summoning attempt, and a room where they failed to trick some cultists and were forced to end them. Many, many more cultists and monsters and rests later, they managed to clear the house, acquiring many an artifact and calling upon Cassiopeia the Azata on the way. She exchanged a week of service for a magic ring and a promise that Rosa and Marus would make a journey within the next year, together or apart, far from the city and devote it to Desna. They agreed.
Having cleared the main part of the house (and discovered a corrupted temple to Desna), the party continued into the structure, after defeating an animated giant spider corpse golem monstrosity. There, they saved as many victims of the cult as they could, wiping out a few more cultists in the process, and took the survivors and the corpses of those they could not save to the appropriate temples. On their return, they split up, Marus going in the front door and clearing out the first floor of an ettercap and its arachnid minions while the rest climbed up and in through a balcony.
With that done, they turned their focus to the temple. Marus entered first, still alone, and fought off cultists and evaded an air elemental. When the party reunited, they defeated the air elemental and had it dismissed, rather than killed. They also found a closet of corpses, which they reported to the priests of the goddess Pharasma, guardian of the dead. Then they turned to a tunnel under the temple. This tunnel led down deep, to a well, which in turn led to the nest of the cult itself.
The heart of the cult's worship lay in a desecrated temple to Gozreh, god of weather and storms, deep underground... and underwater, under Korvosa's harbor. They fought their way there, and found a large dome of glass, deep under the harbor's surface, where a large fossilized spider hung, the cult's idol. The party fought hard; Marus failed to protect or save Rosa, the halfling oracle, after Rhys was brought low, his heart full of revenge. He fell after the fight for this transgression. Carefully, he and Cass carried the pair back to be revived, and he sought and found atonement. Before he found it, however, he used his birth family's name, seeking their aid with the revival. They refused, and exiled him, leaving only the contingency that he had time to solve this issue. However, if haste was not made, they would hurt his adoptive parents. With that done, he went to the magistrate who initially hired him, trading the cult's book of roll and the news of their demise in the tainted temple of Gozreh for 9000 gold sails (coins) and the promise of revival for his friends.
The revival was difficult - but ultimately successful. The atonement was even harder, if less expensive. In the end, the party was together again - and, after the fight with the cultists, had a key which empowered them in the world of dreams. They needed only to find the book which would get them there.
This led to them seeking out Kestrel - the real one, as his sister had approached them before to learn how to be a doctor, and was staying in Marus's rooms. They asked after the survivors of a former enemy's group, and he found them - all dead. When the group got to them, they found something much worse than corpses - a blood-soaked golem of some sort, able to drain its victims with a touch. Marus nearly died, but the other two managed to slay it and save him.... Though Rosa fell to death's embrace once more in the process.
Rosa was revived, bringing the party back to three... and four, when they were joined by a new member, another tiefling, though this one was of a rakshasa's brood. Elias, the magus. He had once been Marus's boyfriend, but they separated on good terms. Now he was sent by the Thornspawns to ensure their son's safety. The party returned to the scene of their most recent conflict, and learned the book had been sold to a shopkeeper they knew - who, when they got to his shop, was dead. His daughter, Avigail, weeping on the steps of said shop, said a skinless hound had killed them; the party's next target.
They found the book of dreams, the gateway to the dreaming world, in the store, but could hardly leave a threat free to... well, threaten. First they took Avigail to Carrington's, where the daughter of the late bookseller helped decipher the riddle of the rituals within the book of dreams, and inadvertently discovered her own occult, psychic power - the power to focus spiritual energy. She was not as experienced as the rest of the party, but helped them from then on.
Before fighting the strange hound, the party helped Robin find a tutor to teach her letters, and helped her get clean and better clothing, as well as a bath. She was, after all, originally an urchin. They brought her back to Carrington's, where their night's sleep was interrupted by a terrible howl. They went to investigate, and found... the hound. It turned out to be a Hound of Tindalos, aided by a cultist, and defeating it was a dreadful ordeal, but they managed to get it to turn tail and run after they killed the cultist. However, sadly, it had already killed Frell's friends, abducted from a sojourn from the temple.
They returned to Carrington's, only to find her insensate, her manservant possessed, and her apparently carnivorous plants hungry. Robin was nowhere to be found. The party cleansed the servant's mind, and found Robin in a cupboard with the book and key, but could not help Carrington save at the temple. She had been affected by a night hag's ability to drain life, and only a significant amount of diamond dust for life or killing said hag could save her. The party (mainly Avigail) continued to study the ritual to enter the world of dreams. The party went day-to-day until the time came. They returned to the house through the tunnels, where they encountered the ettercap Marus nearly killed but could not truly end thanks to its regeneration, the hound, and two giant ogre spiders. They slew the spiders, and the hound, and the ettercap escaped once more, this time to the shadow plane.
With that in mind, and the ritual mastered, the party set off to kill the hag. They entered the dreaming world, and found it... too similar to Korvosa. They found Carrington's home there, defiled and full of blood, the trail leading to the mansion that took the place of the house built around the temple. They broke in, fighting extraplanar plants and window-monsters, and a door that turned out to not be locked. In the building, however, things truly got dicey. They encountered a haunt that could baffle the mind, and nooses that grabbed at throats shaped like the tails of their party members, all controlled by the owner of the mansion trapped in the realm of dreams, Nahum Caligaro. Rosa dispelled the tails, and Marus the haunt, but there was much more to do.
They encountered Belkers, evil elementals made of smoke, inhabiting the bodies of a pair of cultists, and a mass of flesh that represented the cultist's victims but was living and insane, and defeated both, though they had to retreat afterwards, finding relative safety in the dreamscape's version of the bookshop. It had, however, been trapped, worryingly. They had nightmares that woke them terribly, but managed to rest all the same.
Returning to the house was an ordeal in and of itself, as they were attacked in the street by a haunt much like the first they'd met. They managed to fell it once more, and continued to clear the house. They headed directly to the temple, where they encountered and revealed a new form of evil - childlike Vulnadaemons. They dispatched them, but were far too late to save the dead Baku that the daemons had savaged, Madam Carrington's former protector... Which the last daemon awoke as an undead being, causing more damage, first to the daemon, then to the party.
After its defeat, Rosa took a moment to mourn her inability to have children, brought to light by sorrow at the vulnadaemons' youthful appearance. Marus declared them all family, which helped, and then was unable to hide the truth about his exile anymore when pressed. The party vowed to stay together, and continued on.
The next room contained a projector that displayed a picture of a powerful fiend, an Asura from the depths of the hells. The projection came to life, but was brought low by the party's combined efforts. The only threat they had yet to face was the hag and Nahum's combined power, and the party met them next.
Sally Scrabblebones, Night Hag. There's a lot to be said about her, but she had Madam Carrington's essence, and the party refused to parley, even though she recognized Avigail for a changeling, a half-hag. Elias, ignoring this revelation, smashed the hag's hand and freed Carrington. The battle raged on, the key changing hands more than once as it was stolen back and forth, and eventually hidden by Cassiopeia, but Elias's cold iron rapier whittled her down. She escaped with the book, but her heartstone, source of much of her power, was taken before she managed that.
After reclaiming the key from the ettercap, Marus ended the beastly creature once and for all. With the key and the hag's heartstone, the party, helped by Madam Carrington, hid and rested. Only after that did they once more return to the house, ready to take on Nahum and the Hag.
Their enemies were ready, but the party of heroes was, too. They gradually whittled the hag down, Marus finally ending her in three cleaving attacks, taking off both hands and her head with his sacred scimitar. Only Nahum remained. He was protected by fearsome haunts, and had summoned the shadow of a demon, but was defeated with relative ease. However, that was not the end of it. The dreamstone, the core of the corruption, revealed itself, harming the minds of all who looked at it. The party managed to cast it into the dream with a ritual, but it left the dreamscape unstable. They barely escaped back to reality.
The first order of business was a bath, but as they left the bathhouse, the sun was rising over the beginnings of a festival. They enjoyed what they could, and visited Madam Carrington, but Marus could not stay long. Robin chose, agonizingly, to come with them; her brother elected to stay behind. At festival's end, the family left the walls of Korvosa, together, and that is where we ended.
