August 12th, 2023
Forte, Draconnes 9th, 1194 (Continued)
While resting up in the posh room, we overhear some duergar moving in the halls discussing a problem that needs to be taken care of. When we ask them about it they accuse us of releasing something. Apparently their camp has been recently assaulted. We follow them to their camp. They ask us if we found a portal in the sinkhole, saying that a “demon” attacked them and they tracked it back to that portal. The demon is a female humanoid, about seven feet tall with purple-blue skin. She was repelled, but not killed. They want us to close the portal and Sigmund asks for payment for this service. They refuse and tell us to leave. During the argument between the duergar and Sigmund a door opens and a heavily armed duergar emerges. He tells the others to stop and, “tell the dragon our contract is over, we’re leaving”.
While the dwarves are prepping to leave and we are discussing our next steps, a door opens and three gray, six-legged canine creatures emerge from seemingly out of nowhere and attack us. They are accompanied by a slender gray skinned humanoid. These could be a void walker and void hounds. The void walker is knocked unconscious by Ralzer and we kill the hounds, then begin securing the area with a temporary truce with the duergar. Ralzer wants to let the void walker go so he can magically spy on it later. Before we let our prisoner awaken we decide to visit the portal again.
We settle on rebuilding the wall to block the portal and collapse part of the room and the entrance; spending most of the day plugging the portal. Afterwards, we attempt to interrogate the void walker prisoner. He blocks our perception of him and then teleports away.
Bellum, Draconnes 10th, 1194
We continue exploring the duergar area and find a library. Sigmund finds two Investigator Vale novels and keeps them to himself. On the floor is a summoning circle carved into the ground. It was once filled with mithril, but has been stripped; we take the flecks of mithril that are left behind. In the kitchen we find an animated table and learn that if we tell the animated guards to stand down in dwarven, they will obey.
Sigmund wants to speak to Kaarghaz of the stink lizards to warn them of this demon lady. Kaarghaz is aware of her and invites us to visit if we are in the area again.
Before we leave the dwarven hold we check on our sinkhole barricade and it looks as if something has tried digging through it and Sigmund spots some bipedal hoofprints in the area. We camp in the area hoping to catch whatever is doing this and we find our seven foot tall purple-ish lady in the area with the stars on the ceiling. Ralzer believes she is a rare kind of demon, a Debauched One (the planes check: 30) and we engage in conversation.
She describes herself as a tourist and asks if we know anything about the stars in this room. She informs us that they are the constellations of Kaajh’Kaalbh (hearing this name out loud causes us great pain; she is unaffected); he is also known as The Void. The constellations are a copy of the sky where he is from, or once was as he moves around. She tells us that saying his name can alter reality. She was most recently visiting a rather large void world, the one we found down here, but that she was not the one digging into that wall.
She explains that if The Void was called here, there would be signs as he approached. Plants would grow wild, natural growth will look like the entangle spell, and normal animals would have trouble sleeping due to too much energy. Magic would also be altered, it would be more difficult to concentrate on spells, caster levels would be reduced, and wild magic would start to happen. The tentacles are his creation, their presence indicates that he was, indeed, called. When asked how we stop him coming here, she suggests that we interrupt the call.
Regarding the Rite of Six Shadows, she says that if someone completed that ritual it is not a good sign. It can contact a greater demon, turn a mortal into a demon, or turn a demon into a greater demon. We bid our farewells and Graynor is concerned of what she will do once she starts “touring”.
We will now begin our journey back to Ironwald Downs. Three days travel back to Rivershade and a day there selling our loot.