Unsolvable problems? Help is on the way! - July 14, 2023

 - The next morning they are walking to the Beard and Barrel to figure out what kind of poison is in the beer.

- While they are walking, Tiff casts Sending to Calvin to confirm that he is not actually poisoning the beer at the B&B. Calvin is irate at the mere suggestion that he would ruin beer.

- They talk to Tallian the cook and order four meat-cakes on bread and then he goes to do that and also get Gerald.

- While they are waiting, Tiff gets a sudden bought of inspiration to ask Gerrard about dragons since he might be one and all.

- She Sends, "Hello, sir. My name is Theophania. You knew my great-aunt Thessalie in Mistverge. Possible black dragon under Mistverge. Can you share information about them? Thanks!"

- He Sends back, "Happy to do what I can to help. Unfortunately, this isn't my area of expertise. I will send someone who might be able to help."

- Gerald shows up, but they already flushed all the bad beer, so they ask to investigate the drain in the workshop instead.

- Osiris casts Detect Poison and Disease and both the sample of the new beer and the pitcher of non-beer drink Tallian brought with the meat-cakes on bread is poison, and so is the water in the mop bucket, and everything containing water in the back room, and so is the well from which all this water was pulled. (It is a natural form of poison, but she doesn't know its name.) She warns Gerald that his well is poison, and then runs from the river and recasts. The fog on the river is not poisonous and neither is the river's water.

- The well here is only used by the brewery, but the nearby Docks Market well is also poisonous.

- Osiris Sends to, "Marta, multiple wells in the city are poisoned. The river's fine. Pull all the water from the river. We're working on it."

- From Marta, "Is EVERY well in the city compromised?!"

- Osiris Sends again, "Beard and Barrel's well is poisoned, so is the Docks Market well. Checking every well in the city would take a week."

- "Okay, we'll have to get the city guard to shut everything down. This could be a catastrophe. Check as many wells as you can."

- Osiris and Tiff work out a system where Tiff will cart Osiris around on the broom checking wells while she concentrates on the detection spell. Tiff mixes up some dye for her sprayer and she'll quickly mark any contaminated wells so they can move on to the next one. The first time they have to stop to ritually cast the detection spell again, Tiff Sends to Marta, "Osiris and I checking wells around the city. I will put a reddish-brown mark on all the wells with poison. Let the city guard know."

- "Understood. Thank you for letting me know. You do the best work." 

- They spend the rest of the day checking every well in the city. The wells at the Temple are clean. The wells north of the Temple are clean. The docks area and the poor area south of the Docks district is not great. The middle-class area south of the Hall of Justice is infected. The farther east, the less poison. The neighborhood just across the river on the south part of town is also infected, but the rest of the samples were okay. 

- Raiàn, Lyrielle, and Rusty know the plan and head out to let more of the local city guard stations know about the contaminated wells and the marks on them. The plan is to meet back at the Curlywit boarding house that evening.

- Magnus has been trying to transmute water into wine, and they test his experiments and they are not poisonous. The wine tastes stale and oxidized and somehow like garlic. Tiff Purifies his waste bucket before they leave.

- Raiàn and Lyrielle stay at the boarding house to rest / sleep while Osiris, Rusty, and Tiff head back to the Temple to talk to a robot.

- The robot can be submerged in water, but it cannot swim, it just sinks. 

- The next morning, the group meets up at the well at the Docks Market and bring the Robot Friend who they tie to a Rope of Climbing and lower into the well, and then it skitters back up. The well is just a hole in the ground with a 25' (ish) bulb of space at the bottom.

- As a test, they send Osiris (Water Breathing and Protection from Poison cast on her) and she casts Locate Creature (dragon) and finds nothing. They do another test on the eastern most edge of the poisoned area and also find nothing. They also test a well on the western most edge of the poisoned area and also nothing.

- While they are standing around ruminating on what to do next, Tiff Sends to Gerrard, "Not your expertise, but could black dragon poison ground water? Also who is your expert and when will they be here? Hope to see you soon."

- She receives, "Black dragon could absolutely poison water. The expert is a dragon historian of sorts. Should be there in the morning. I'll try to visit soon."

- The next morning Tiff has a visitor who is a young-looking woman who blonde hair cut short on the sides, but longer bit on the top has a blue-streak. She introduces herself as Jinora. 

- 3,000 XP ea for 82,000 XP total ea.

How the ass did you detect me through all that stone? #Confusion - July 7, 2023

 LAST TIME IN MISTVERGE:

- En route to the entrance to the catacombs, Rusty asks why they don't Send to Thessalie to see if she is still alive, and Theophania immediately pulls out her stick, "Auntie! I invented a Sending Device, and we stopped a necromancer causing a zombie invasion, but now people are poisoned and there's magic river fog!"

 BACK TO THE PRESENT

- Tiff's eyes light up a little bit (unusual) and she feels a calming energy that comes over her and there's a warm tingly sensation, but no words.

- Tiff is a bit infuriated once the calming effect wears off.

- Osiris says she'll give it a go later. (She and Theophania discuss the possibility that Thessalie has ascended to a higher level of being)

- Osiris continues leading the way down to the catacombs, and then she takes what she believes is the tunnel that goes the deepest into the earth, though she's never been to the end, so it must be pretty deep

- Tiff is still very distracted percolating on what the Sending response could mean, but Rusty and Lyrielle hear a scratching noise. Rats?

- They pinpoint the noise coming from a particular niche, and then investigate further and get taps in response to taps and there's a warm spot one side of the back wall.

- Tiff casts (R) Detect Magic, but she can't see anything. It's probably because there's more than 12" of stone between her and the magic

- Tiff then uses the Alter Self spell to give herself some kind of fantasy badger hands that can dig through stone and she starts going at the warm spot.

- She digs and digs and digs until she has a hole just wide enough for her little self through about 36" of stone and through a hole just big enough for her face she's sees a mechanical spider-like creature that jumps back and regards her suspiciously 

- She wiggles backwards enough to turn her head to talk to her friends and report that there's a metal digging critter that can't understand her.

- Raiàn casts Tongues on Tiff's foot, and she talks to it again, and it's just continuing to repeat "Danger, danger, must report."

- Tiff makes her little hole large enough to pop her head through to see how many of these there are, but there's only the one.

- Tiff backs out of the hole, and then the creature follows her, scans the group, then approaches Rusty and beep chirps at him and he instinctively turns his ankle and a port opens up on his ankle that the critter integrates with and begins the upload of information. During this process Rusty is sort of catatonic

- Tiff goes back to widening her part of the hole for her friends to maybe squeeze through before Alter Self wears off because the critter's tunnel leads south towards the river.

- The critter communicates to Rusty through images:

    - There's a store room that the surveillance drone was watching

    - The wall in the store room collapse and a foul ooze and black tendrils start creeping into the room they're not quite vines, but more like a slime mold sort of netting in appearance. There's something growing out of the nodes of the "net" or "webbing" that looks shiny. They resemble the tendrils that were on the alter that the group destroyed that created the portal to the nether-realm.

    - The final image that it communicates to Rusty looks like the head of a large black dragon.

- Tiff has the hole she made more or less matched up to the tunnel the surveillance drone made, and Osiris shoots a flaming arrow down the tunnel and it goes about 500' then curves to the left away from the river. She calculates that the end of the tunnels would be around the edge of the temple grounds.

- Rusty gives a recap of what he just learned, and the drone powers down folding its little legs underneath it.

- After much freaking out about the tendrils (familiar) and the dragon (also familiar, but bigger), Tiff examines the dormant drone, and finds the activation switch, which she pushes with Rusty's permission

- It beeps at Rusty in a "Input Command" sort of way, so he asks it if it can lead them over a different, larger route where they'll fit, but it just cocks his head curiously having not enough intelligence to answer the hypothetical question, so Rusty just commands it to follow

- Tiff pats it and tells it's much less scary than a dog, and it seems to like the attention.

- Tiff casts (R) Alarm on the opening to the tunnel.

- They take it back up to the temple and report in to Rowan and Birel about the robot dog (Rusty took it to Osiris's room to scare as few people as possible) 

- Tiff also very excitedly reports to them about her Sending to Thessalie as well.

- The unnamed (at this time) mechanical critter and Rusty have an Q&A

    - Can you count? Can you give numerical answers? (Affirmative)

    - How long did it take you to make the tunnel? (Another connection through the ankle, and it probably took like months (at least two months) to dig it's little tunnel after it had been trapped for probably a few weeks.)

    - Can you take us to the main entrance to that place? (Another picture of an underground place with an overlaying sort of feeling of being lost.)

    - Were you specifically searching for me? (Negative)

    - Were you looking for a Steel Guard? (Affirmative)

    - How the ass did you detect me through all the stone? (Confusion)

    - Are there other Steel Guard within your detection range? (Negative)

    - Are you capable of following your tunnel, but on the surface? (Confusion)

    - No more digging unless I specifically tell you. (Affirmative)

    - Are you able to power down but still respond to my voice. (Affirmative)

    - Power down mode.

LONG REST

- 3,000 XP ea. for 79,000 XP total ea.

Are you there, Thessalie?! - June 30, 2023

 - Much discussion about how the team can help Theophania with her presentation, and she's polished up her armor to a good shine

- The meeting goes well, and Theophania leaves her drawings and prettified notes for his perusal before he just gives her 1500 GP to build the first three prototypes to refine her triangulation method

- Osiris is a bit suspicious, but Lord McNabb doesn't give any hints that he is on the side of the The Voice, his neutrality is based more on a "devil you know" and cost compared to reward (If each device costs 500GP, then 36 for the whole city-wide network is about 18,000GP)

- They then spend the rest of the evening measuring the fog over the river so that Theophania can figure out a good entry point to the swiss cheese of sewers, caves, and catacombs and the shortest path to get there

- The next morning at the boarding house, Andak Fastcaller (chef's knife in his belt like a short sword) who shows up asking where he can find his cousin Theophania.

- Raiàn uses her earring to message Theophania to ask her to come to the boarding house, so she does

- Osiris and Tiff fly across the river on her Broom of Flying

- The Beard and Barrel has closed down because some people have died and their beer may be poisonous and those people think Calvin might have sabotaged them

-The story about Wally Walltrop is told, but it isn't Calvin's beer causing problems.

- Osiris tried to Send to Jimmy, but the Sending doesn't go through. Jimmy is either on another plane which can give the spell a chance to fail, or he's dead.

- Tiff Sends to Marta in the Hospital Wing, "Tiff here. Has there been a spate of patient with severe food poisoning due to Beard and Barrel beer? Do you know the toxin? Thanks!"

- Marta responds, "Oh yes! There's a whole troop of sick sailors. Don't know what they got into other than drink, but that's enough sometimes." 

- Tiff Sends to her again, "Has anyone Detected Poison on the beer to identify toxin? If patients are all sailors, new fog on the river may be the cause."

- Marta returns, "The fog probably isn't helping, but something from the pub got them sick. It's not just sailors. There are other rough characters keeling over too." 

- Osiris tried to Send to Lady Blackmore, but that spell also fails.

-  From this disturbing brunch, the group heads into the sewers and after about 1.5 hours of searching Tiff finds a section of illusory wall and Tiff walks through it.

- The room is full of things that might have been stolen from the Temple, but it looks like no one has been here in quite awhile due to the level of dust. (Several months at least)

- The source of the magic is not in the hidden room.

- Another few hours of searching are also fruitless.

- Back at the Temple, they stop in to talk to Marta and ask about missing supplies, but she directs them to Norman, the quartermaster.

- Norman knew about the missing things from the latest inventory, and they give him the map to the cache.

- From there Osiris talks to Rowan to get permission to search the catacombs, so they head down there.

- En route to the entrance to the catacombs, Rusty asks why they don't Send to Thessalie to see if she is still alive, and Theophania immediately pulls out her stick, "Auntie! I invented a Sending Device, and we stopped a necromancer causing a zombie invasion, but now people are poisoned and there's magic river fog!"

- 3,000 XP ea for 76,000 total XP each.