Shadows in Moonlight session report: 01.31.2025
In the aftermath of the undead
This week's session resumed in the aftermath of the defeat of the drow and their undead. The party talks with Bernhard, one of the town leaders and the one who led them to Deepvale from Mindreh. From him, they learn that the Deepvale guard are making more strigant preparations for defense since they now know the undead aren't random attacks. They ask if he knows why they'd attack like this, but he says that they're still trying to get everything organized but invites the party to search the drow for clues if they wish. Deciding to do so, they discover a familiar symbol on the corpses: the emblem of Orcus. Sivelena, the elven sorceress, also takes the necromancer's spellbook, hoping it might have some useful knowledge within it.
After searching the drow, they notice Javed gathering the serpentine skeletons into a large piece of canvas. They offer to help, which Javed graciously accepts, and they strike up a conversation. After learning that the skeletons are the remains of the Nagayr, ancient serpentfolk who are nearly forgotten and widely believed to be extinct, they question his reason for gathering the Nagayr bones. His vague answer heavily implies that he is one of them. Once the bones are gathered, he thanks them for their assistance and departs to ensure that they are properly reinterred.
In the aftermath, as the town guard gather the remaining undead bodies, the party decides that they're departing that morning. So, instead of returning to bed, they make the rounds to say their goodbyes to the friends and acquiantances they've made in town. With everything finished, they load the children onto the riding lizards and leave the city of Deepvale.
Journey to the Myconid Bed
The journey is fairly uneventful as they wind their way through the Underdark following the river that will lead them to the myconid bed. On their fourth night, as they camp at the junction of a smaller stream and the main river itself, Cerulean spies something creeping through the shadows towards the tent of one of the villagers. Investigating, she finds a bulbous soft-bodied creature with long flexible arms that blends uncannily into the stone surface beneath it. Calling Sivelina's attention, the pair confront the creature and discover it's a rocktopus, an cephalapod cousin of the octopus that's adapted for cavern life. Cerulean uses her druidic magic to communicate with the creature and learn that it is simply hungry and seeking an easier meal than catching fish in the river. She feeds it a ration and then spends some time catching fish for it. It gratefully takes the fish and departs.
Their journey continues uneventfully for another week. As they pass through a winding, hand-carved tunnel, the ground begins to vibrate and then shake. People and lizards begin to stumble, Cerulean falls against the tunnel wall, and then the stone begins to glow orange and the wall starts to crack. They hurry the villagers and the lizards across as magma seeps from the wall, the fissure widening and it spreads to the floor. Just as they get everyone across, lava swells in the fissure and they spy movement. First are dozens of small beetle-like shapes, but beneath them is something larger rising up to fill the tunnel behind them. A gleaming metallic shell with dozens of tree trunk sized legs passes them by, unaware or unconcerned with their presence. It takes minutes for the creature to fully pass. Once it has, the lava that filled the fissure begins to cool, leaving a weld-like scar across the tunnel. Feeling much smaller, the party continues their journey.
Several more days later, the party is nearing their destination. They reach a tunnel junction filled with mushrooms and other fungal growth, along with a ruined tower absorbed into the cavern wall. They take shelter in the first floor of the tower for the night and investigate what else remains. While the standing structure only goes up to the second floor, it's clear that it once stretched all the way to the ceiling and perhaps even into it. On the interior wall of the second floor, they discover the faded remnants of a mural staining the tower's stone. The top half is a star map: silver stars across a black background fill most of the mural with about a dozen golden stars scattered among them. Each of these golden stars are connected by thin lines with all of them leading back to a single, larger gold star in the center. The lower half depicts a cracked globe, multicolored lines arcing out of it; surrounding the globe, half-humanoid half-serpent figures face away from it, posed as if they are fleeing. Combined with their existing knowledge of the Nagayr, the party suspects that the arcane ribbons are to blame for the fall of the Nagayr empire, or at least somehow connected to it.
The party continues the last leg of their journey, but as they reach the final stretch, something begins to bother Stool, their myconid companion. What should be well-tended mushroom groves appear abandoned, left untended for what appears to be weeks. Nearer to the myconid bed, they find mushrooms broken and fallen, crumbling and trampled. With few options other than to push on, they soon reach the outskirts of the settlement. Ahead, across the river, they spy two figures in the faint gloom of the glowing fungi, with just enough light to identify their obsidian skin and white hair. The drow stand sentinel at the entrance to the myconid bed.