An Asylum and a Palace

From left: Aliya, Canabulum (soon to join the party), Serai, Zophas, Shurrin, Sister Mara... and Udalaag!

Serai, Aliya, Shurrin,and Mara had, much earlier, learned that a shipment of chaositech, discovered in something called the Vaults of the Kython, was coming into the city through Mahdoth's Asylum. The time had come for the shipment to arrive, and thus the group moved to intercept it. It had been Sister Mara's mission all along to look into and stem the tide of dangerous chaositech into the city, and the others agreed with the goal to varying degrees -- Serai had a slightly new outlook, and actually wanted some of the chaositech for himself, to study.

Mahdoth's was an underground asylum for insane spellcasters, those afflicted with mental maladies that no remedy (or spell) seemed to allay. Most of the place utilized magic-dampening fields, which made it extremely hard to use spells. The group didn't know whether those who ran the asylum were a part of the chaos cult conspiracy or not, so they went in cautiously. Their plan was to turn Serai over to the asylum as an inmate so he could observe things from the inside. The rest of the group would wait close at hand in case trouble started.

And of course it did. Serai spent a strange night among the inmates and soon found an exit from the asylum to passages that went much deeper underground. From there, the cultists were transporting large gray cubes as well as a variety of weaponry and devices. Serai attacked and all manner of chaos broke loose -- so to speak.

Mara, Aliya, Shurrin, and Zophas intercepted the chaos agents coming down from the city to meet with those bringing the shipment up. In the ensuing battle, which extended down into the asylum itself, some of the inmates were freed, including a particularly dangerous mage whose name was unknown, even to the staff. He used soul magic to conjure a tyrannosaurus into the middle of the battle, and then escaped.

The administrator of the asylum, believed that the adventurers were attacking the place and did his best to hold them off with his own guards. Finally, Mahdoth himself showed up -- a beholder who had long ago been reformed of his monstrous ways (by a group called the Brotherhood of Redemption). Mahdoth would tolerate no one that would threaten his charges -- the inmates -- and thus began attacking everyone, both the cultists and the characters.

Serai discovered the hard way that the strange gray cubes were storage containers holding some sort of liquid power -- the pure essence of chaos itself. This liquid began to spurt out of a pair of them after he used a fireball to attack the cultists transporting them. The cultists also brought kython with them: horrible monstrosities from ancient times, when the chaositech was created. These creatures were amalgams of both serpents and insects.

Eventually, the characters defeated the cultists and the kython, and recovered most of the rest of the chaositech. Some was turned over to the Church of Lothian for examination. Some, Serai took. The asylum returned to normal, although a few guards had perished in the fight, and the nameless mage had escaped. Even Mahdoth himself was appeased.

Back to the Dragon's Lair
But the group still wanted to explore the rest of Storamere's lair. After a good long rest, they returned, with Zophas' new wizard cohort Ephendus Thal, deep underground to the strange ethereal island-palace. There, they encountered one of Storamere's bizarre progeny, a half-dragon/half-umber hulk named Udalaag. Rather than fight the pitiful creature (who had been persecuted by its half-siblings for hundreds of years due to its slow-wittedness), they befriended it, particularly Mara. After much coaxing, Mara even convinced Ephendus to lend Udalaag his headband of intellect so that they could be more thoroughly question him.

They also found an intelligent elvish dagger named Shayla. Shayla claimed to have been made by the wizard-priests of Ni-Gorth almost 16,000 years earlier. These wizard-priests were the very same ones who helped create the Jewels of Parnaith, which some of them had heard about earlier from a magical, intelligent pool found in the former abode of Alchestrin. They had learned the Jewels were vital in their quest to stop the rise of chaos and the Galchutt's return.

Now, however, Shayla told them that the jewels were not objects, but places. Ethereal islands that could be reached by "color doors" and the use of a magic item called the illitor. Eventually, they found the strange illitor in the dragon's palace (a ring, a bracer, and a belt made of bronze, all connected by a bronze chain) and decided to return to the surface to learn more about all of this.

On their way back up, shadowdancers and shadowmages in the employ of House Sadar, one of the noble houses in Ptolus, ambush them. The servants of Sadar demanded from Serai the key to the box of shadows, the very object which started the whole quest. After a harrowing fight, the characters escaped -- but now they realize they are hunted by one of the most powerful forces in the city. They knew they needed to find that box -- and quickly!

Next: The Box of Shadows, Part 2!

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