The session opened where the last one left: three members of the party standing inside magic circles inside a hidden spell room, each sealed under their own translucent bubble. Puck had dropped to one knee when the bubble settled over him and then stood, feeling the air around him thicken whenever he reached toward the edge. Penelope sat in hers. Orimene readied an action and waited.
From beyond the spell room door, Anar could see all three of them through the membrane — mouths moving, no sound coming out except for a faint vibration, like the thump of something heavy set down. A deep, layered chant came from everywhere at once, voices on top of voices cycling through the same phrase, none of it in any language the party spoke. The runes on the floor moved with each cycle, rotating slowly, pulling toward the center.
Penelope clapped twice. Winston materialized between the bubbles, his ghost clothing rippling in the inward pull of the energy. She asked if he could read the Deep Speech notes on the floor. He could not. He faded. She shrugged at Puck through the membrane. He shrugged back.
Puck tried to push his hand through the bubble edge. The air turned to sludge the closer he got — he had to lean into it hard, fingers first — but it gave. His hand came through into the cool, turbulent air of the room. Anar, standing at the doorway, heard it happen. He wedged the curtain rod into the doorframe to keep the mimic contained, then stepped inside and got his first look at the room.
He saw it immediately: a lectern near the center, book open on it, perfectly still while everything else in the room swirled. Papers, loose cloth, a stray boot — all of it kicked around in the magnetic pull of the ritual. The book didn't move. Not a page.
Anar walked up to it. He grabbed the cover and tried to force it shut. He needed a 20. He rolled a 1. When he touched the cover, the runes flashed red-blue for a split second and then he was somewhere else — just for a moment, just a glimpse — a vast dark space and a face in it, enormous, tentacles reaching. He pulled his hands back and was in the room again.
He grabbed Puck's outstretched hand. Both of them rolled strength with advantage. Anar got 19; Puck rolled a natural 20. Puck came through the membrane in one pull, skin stretching visibly across his face as he passed. His boots stayed behind on the circle. The boots walked on their own to the center of the circle, stopped, and began to age.
Orimene took a running start at her bubble. Nat 1. She bounced back onto the floor.
Puck tried the book next — pushed it sideways with a 15 (partial, not enough), then stabbed it with his dagger (rolled 3, wide miss). He gave Anar his last Bardic Inspiration die — D6 — and said: "My Lord, help me get my friends out." The bubbles had been getting smaller every round. Penelope could feel the pressure on her shoulders. Puck's boots were aging into dust at the center of the circle.
Anar grabbed the book again. 19 on the die, plus 1 for strength, plus whatever the D6 gave him. Exactly 20. The book closed. The bubbles were gone before the next breath. Penelope and Orimene stepped off their circles. Puck — already freed earlier with Anar's help — was simply free of the ritual now too.
All three of them had aged approximately ten years. Orimene, who had been around twenty-three, now looked closer to thirty-three. Anar — who had never stood in a circle — was unchanged. Puck's boots were high-tops. Penelope said she would mend them when they got out.
Anar roped the book before anyone suggested otherwise. The leather cover was wrong — not any animal he had ever skinned, not any beast he recognized. He tied it closed, put it in his backpack, and called it the demon book. Winston reappeared and reported that Zala had said they should simply close the book. The party noted the timing without comment.
On the side table: spell components — enough for four long rests of first and second level spells. All four characters took a share. A spell scroll of Mage Hand sat beside them; Puck took it, noting that per current rules the user needed the spell on their class list. He collected twelve sheets of Deep Speech notes from around the lectern. The circle itself was chalk on stone — nothing more.
The house shook during this. Each cycle of the chant from somewhere deeper in the building hit the structure like a bass note turned all the way up. Looking out the window, the lawn had taken on the look of glass eels — green-tinged, translucent, undulating. A section of earth broke away and floated. The party worked faster.
Penelope went to the mimic. It was exhausted and bleeding from the tongue wound. She sat close, watched it, read it. Animal Handling 21 against DC 15: the mimic was more afraid of them than they needed to be of it. She pulled the curtain rod out of its tongue. It stayed where it was and made a sound that was somewhere between a whimper and a creak. Anar came through from the kitchen and put it down. Orimene dissected what remained: five gold pieces and a signet ring inside the stomach. The ring bore the Adelaide family emblem. Orimene took both.
The floor was shaking. The debate about where to go next — second floor ritual or basement cultists — resolved quickly once the floorboards started cracking underfoot. Penelope pointed out that the cultists were a known threat. Anar argued that whatever was happening in the building was all connected to Markos, and weakening the ritual below might matter. He also grabbed a bottle of port from the kitchen before they left.
They went down.
Anar took the secret barrel door — Stealth 22 — but a floorboard squeaked under his foot halfway through. A cultist heard it, came to the curtain, and pulled it back. "Excuse me. Can I help you?"
Anar said he was Steve. Puck stepped out from behind the curtain and said he was also Steve. The cultist accepted this. He handed them pamphlets. He told them they should be in robes — they should know this — and that Markos was downstairs, and this hall needed to keep the crystals attuned. He walked away.
Puck put the robe on over his leather armor. Anar said he was too shy to disrobe. The cultist accepted this too and left. Anar cast Disguise Self — a Gloom Stalker feature, no spell slot — which counted as being ritually disguised. A second cultist came back, heard the tail end of the spell's sound, and asked if someone had cast. A noise, a pause, the curtain closed. They were in.
Penelope and Orimene stayed in the storage area near the casks and waited.
Five cultists. One priest who never stopped chanting — not once, not for anything. Four others rotating: always at least two praying at any given moment. A statue at the front, humanoid, with an elongated head and tentacles where the face should be.
Anar inserted a "meow" into the chant. Puck played Pip slightly off-key. The ritual continued. Anar pulled out the thalar — a kazoo-like instrument the party had not known he was proficient with — and joined in. Penelope and Orimene cracked the barrel door; the room resonance covered the noise.
The head priest stopped chanting, picked up a drum, and began leading his own chant. He drifted toward the corner side door. Anar slid past him and picked his pocket: Sleight of Hand 27. Three points of static damage from the contact. The priest, jarred by it, announced his title: Grant Priest of Krokulmar. Anar, mid-pickpocket, also confirmed empirically that the priest wore nothing beneath his robe. This did not surface in-game.
Penelope snuck to the curtain and cast Message, pitching her voice as Markos. She told the priest to come upstairs and bring as many as he could spare, framing it as Markos's will calling his servants. Orimene, who had rolled a natural 20 on Perception, had already found a second door on the far side of the room — unused, blocked by stacked boxes. She moved to it and opened it.
The door opened to a repurposed dissection room. A wok-shaped vessel sat on an open flame, green-burning, full of body parts. A pile of limbs against one wall. Shelves of jars, each one containing a head floating in liquid that smelled of alcohol.
Orimene failed her Constitution save — natural 1. She rolled Wisdom Insight to make sense of what she was seeing: 18. One of the heads turned in its jar and looked at her. It was Elra.
Her grief triggered a wild magic surge. D100 came up 42 — the DM ruled it as a result tied to Orimene's existing wild magic condition, set off by the emotional shock rather than a spell. Inflict Wounds on self; D10 = 3 damage.
Penelope reached her. Orimene pressed her face into Penelope's hair. Penelope closed the curtain over the shelves and shut the door behind them.
The head priest commanded Anar and Puck to keep chanting and demanded their signet rings as proof of membership. They bluffed. Anar produced an illusory ring via minor illusion, holding the image steady while his actual right hand drew a short sword to the priest's throat. The priest could feel the blade but couldn't see it.
The priest cast Mass Suggestion. Keyword: grovel. Anar failed the Wisdom save and dropped prone — then rerolled with Fey Ancestry advantage and succeeded, standing back up. Puck made the save and kept his feet, playing the moment as compliance (Performance 15 vs DC 15).
Puck opened Zala's spellbook and cast Suggestion — one charge consumed. "Take me and my friend to Marcos and leave everybody else here, not chanting. Tell them it's done." The priest failed the save on a 13. He had Puck and Anar shackled and began leading them toward the spiral staircase.
Penelope and Orimene were watching through a cracked door. While the priest was occupied with his shackled prisoners, Orimene used Thaumaturgy — the booming voice option — throwing her voice to sound like one of the acolytes: "Get your asses upstairs." Roughly three minutes of confusion followed. Several cultists drifted toward the stairs. Three remained: the mandatory chanters, locked to the ritual.
Anar used Druidcraft to grow flowers out of the statue's tentacle face, then leaned on the cantrip again to summon a swarm of faeries that danced around the base of the statue, making lewd gestures and miming comical antics about toppling the whole thing over. The remaining cultists clustered around it in confusion. The distraction was enough. Penelope and Orimene slipped into the vestry unchallenged — the DM waived the stealth roll. Four large linen chests, makeshift guard posts, and a closed door between them and the stairs down.
Penelope cast Spike Growth centered on the statue, 20-foot radius. Four cultists were already outside it. The three mandatory chanters were trapped inside, now standing on difficult terrain. Then she wild shaped into a brown bear and put herself against the vestry door. Strength check: 18 plus modifier equaled 21. That was the DC for anyone trying to force it from the other side.
The spiral staircase went down in a tight well shape. Cold first, then warm. Purple light at the bottom. Two dome caves connected by a twelve-foot stone archway. A large magic circle on the floor. And at the center of it: a headless figure in full plate armor, kneeling, greatsword laid across its lap, dry-ice tendrils pouring from the open neck hole in slow, drifting curls.
Markos Delphi stood nearby — regalia headpiece, sunken eyes with a thousand-yard stare, reading aloud from the Codex. As he spoke, tentacles were visibly extending from him, growing larger with each phrase. He was speaking Deep Speech. Four large crystals around the chamber pulsed purple light; inside each one, glimpses of something else — the Far Realm, flickering at the edges of visibility.
Puck cast Command on Markos: "Drop." Markos's head turned, Exorcist-style, all the way around to look at Puck. Then it turned back. He kept reading. No effect.
Anar tried to lift a key from one of the two guards: Sleight of Hand 9 against a DC somewhere between 15 and 20. Nothing.
The session ended there. Puck and Anar shackled in Markos's domain. Penelope a bear against a door above. Orimene with her. Three chanters inside Spike Growth. The headless armor still kneeling. The Codex still open.