The Union of Two Adventuring Companies

If you want to know how our heroes got into such a tight spot, take a look at the last episode of the Ptolus adventure.
~Monte

Getting out of the Dark Reliquary was going to be really difficult. Not the least of the group's worries was that a marilith named Drusii seemed to taken an interest in them once they arrived and were put in a cell.

Up until this point, Aliya had not told the others (Mara, Shurrin, and Serai) about a little secret she had. Since a young age, she would occasionally see in mirrors a face that was not her own -- similar, but different. She didn't know why. Yet while they were in a cell in this stronghold of demons and undead, Drusii briefly showed herself in this other woman's form -- the face that Aliya had seen all these years. While this was upsetting, Aliya was to learn that Drusii was not the woman she had seen: That woman was Drusii's prisoner in the Dark Reliquary.

And no one knew where Feruch the paladin was at all. They would only much later learn that the demons left him for dead in the Necropolis -- at night. He barely got out alive.

Once they were alone in the cell again, a prisoner in the next cell started talking to them. Only through him were they able to learn where they were. But the other prisoner -- a half-orc -- gave them a tooth from his own mouth: a tooth with a very special rune on it. Serai was able to trigger the rune's special magic: It was the key to an extra-dimensional prison, where an orcish demigod of fire named Ochremeshk had been imprisoned. (As an aside, this is a different Ochremeshk than you will find in Demon God's Fane -- I just like the name).

The group used the distraction (to put it mildly) of the sudden appearance of a 25-foot-tall humanoid of fire to escape their cell, break into the pain pits where Sister Mara faced terrible torture, and escape through an arena into a maze of very old passages and down through a secret elevator that led to an ancient temple or tomb and a way out through the cliffs by the sea.

In the arena, however, the PCs encountered one of the Rat God priests they had seen before when fighting rat men elsewhere in the city. Clearly, the forces of chaos (the Rat God's followers among them) were allied with the Fallen and Forsaken of the Dark Reliquary. Even stranger, the old temple or tomb that they passed through seemed to belong to one of the evil and ancient Galchutt that they had learned about. Did the demons above know about this place? It seemed not.

After some rest and recuperation, the group still needed to go back into the Necropolis and deal with Wynn's quest for Quideth, the woman imprisoned in the gem. They needed to get into the tomb of Alchestrin, the entrance of which they had found (surrounded by standing stones), but it could only be accessed at night.

So, despite the dangers of the Necropolis at night, they went to the standing stones and waited until dark. They were assailed by ghouls, seeking fresh, human flesh to feast upon. Fending off undead, the adventurers pulled up the plug sealing the entrance to the tomb of Alchestrin and went down inside.

Full of undead guardians and magical traps, this place was very dangerous -- more than the group could handle, in fact. Repelled by the defenders, they fled back up and out into the night, where they were further hounded by undead shadows and other terrible things that haunted the dark Necropolis. They decided to make for the island they had seen earlier -- Clasthamus Isle and its druid protector, Andach. Crossing the old stone bridge, they were relieved to see their undead pursuers did not follow them.

They took shelter there until daylight, for the Stones of Thamus protected the island, just as Andach had said. They retreated into the city, and recruited some friends to help them: the Company of the Black Lantern (Vexander, Sercian, Chanticleer, and Gaerioth).

Together, the group plundered Alchestrin's tomb, defeating its powerful guardians and even Alchestrin himself -- undead now, his rotting intestines writhing and attacking them with mouths as he cast spells. One harrowing fight later, around the evil wizard's terrible undead tree that produced vampire spawn in its seed pods, the adventurers proved victorious (although there were casualties -- both Aliya and Serai fell in battle). Worst of all, they learned that Quideth wasn't imprisoned at all: She had become undead herself and had fallen in love with Alchestrin. The group managed to imprison her in a soul gem (the irony completely lost on them), and they eventually returned her in that state to Wynn.

Wynn, confronted with the reality and betrayal of it all, fell into a deep despair.

But now that the two groups were together, discussing matters and telling tales, one name kept creeping into conversion. Helmut Itlestein. He was connected with the assassins that had attacked both groups, as well as those that attacked the boy the Company of the Black Lantern had protected and Phon, the young woman the other group had aided. So they all decided to pay him a visit.

After much reconnaissance, they learned where he lived and infiltrated his home. He was not present, but they learned much from going through his things and interrogating the two people hiding in his basement. Helmut was a priest of the Watcher of the Skies, a god dealing heavily in prophecy and portents. The two people the group confronted worked for the Weaver's Guild -- an organization that claimed to be able to see the weave of time and foretell the future. Both they and Helmut saw terrible things coming in the near future. Helmut specifically believed that certain children, all born bearing special runes (like Malkeen Balacazar's nephew), one day soon would bring about events that would spell disaster for the city. Helmut, it seemed, was a stalwart defender of the city and its people. He even backed a group that called itself the Republicans. These faction struggled to institute political change and transform Ptolus into a republic, independent of the Empire, in which people could vote for representatives rather than serve distant Emperors and their appointed Commissars.

But worst of all, the group learned that Helmut believed he was destined to have only these rune-marked children, should he ever have a son or daughter of his own. Thus, when his lover Phon became pregnant, he felt he had to resort to drastic measures and hired assassins to kill her. After the adventurers saved her from the hired killers, he had spirited her away himself and ended the pregnancy.

So when Helmut came home, accompanied (as he often was) by his shield guardian construct, a fierce battle ensued. The group defeated Helmut but could not bring themselves to kill him. Instead, they threatened to expose his treasonous political plans if he harmed any other children. It was a terrible position for the adventurers to be in, and not all of them agreed with the decision to let him go. The two groups parted, few of them really believing that this was actually over.

Next Time: The Company of the Black Lantern gets a key to the mysterious underground city of Dwarvenhearth and on the way there ends up finding a place to call home.