Previously, the adventurers had been confronted by the strange clash of the two cavalcades; the forces of the Silver Crusade and the demonic hordes which assaulted them at the Crimson Tower. Suffering through a turbulent night on the shores of Lake Llygad, they were greeted with the horrifying appearance of the tower during the first light of the morning. Before the tower disappeared once again, the adventurers ran down the causeway and moved into the tower and started exploring the ground floor.
Third Day, Second Ride, Summer Flame, 1262
(Silvermoon is waxing. Bloodmoon in high sanction. Darkmoon is waning.)
After having spent some time on the ground floor, looking at the various suits of armour and tapestries lining the walls, the painting above and the furniture in front of the hearth, the elaborate dining table and the huge candle-filled chandelier hanging above it, the adventurers started working on solving the crystal puzzle they had found kept a lock on the trapdoor leading to the cellar. They had found a blue and a red rod, and they were confident they could break the wizard’s playful attempt at securing the way through.
It proved harder than they had initially thought, but eventually did manage to solve the puzzle and the trapdoor could be opened. The space beyond was completely dark, save for the light coming from the chandelier. James was the first one to go into the cellar and was surprised to hear the voice of a man calling out at him.
The man turned out to be Ser Quentin Morvrayne, the son of a nobleman from Beauclair who had been locked into the cellar for a long time. He had arrived at the tower together with Lord Destan’s expedition, but had gotten separated from the others when they were exploring the tower and the trapdoor had shut behind him, locking him in. He had subsisted on some of the food and drink he had on him, and on what he could find in the pitch black, which hadn’t been much.
The cellar itself was spacious but not as lavishly decorated as the ground floor. It held a torture table, with various wicked looking implements, as well as manacles with which people could be shackled to the wall. It also held some crates, casks and barrels of provisions, which were the cause of Quentin’s survival. Without them, he most certainly would have perished.
The adventurers, ever cautious, asked Quentin to disarm himself and hand over his sword, which readily agreed to. He was weak, and allowed Emma to escort him up to the ground floor living room so that they could talk more about Lord Destan. In the meantime, James took some time to examine the cellar, where he found the green, crystalline rod.
Upstairs, Quentin had told the story of meeting Lord Destan while he was on a personal quest. He wasn’t too keen on sharing too many details about his quest, but some did notice he was fidgeting with a rather effeminate handkerchief which was tied around his left wrist and concluded that this must have had something to do with it. Through some tactical questioning on the part of the adventurers, they found that Quentin had met Lord Destan while he was in the company of his three house guards, as well as Robart, the villager. Quentin also seemed really eager to hear about what had happened to Lord Destan and his retinue and was saddened to hear that some of them had died while others had returned with their mental health no longer in tact. He proclaimed not to know about the tracker residing in Isobel’s care.
During this long discussion, some of the others started to take a look at the trapdoor in the ceiling at the top of the wooden steps that were set into the wall. They found that this trapdoor was locked by one of Atilesceon’s crystal puzzles and it proved significantly harder to solve. They did, however, manage to find out the mechanics of the crystal puzzles and how the crystals interacted with the crystalline rods. One of the mechanics seemed to be that both the blue and the green rod, when changing the colour of one of the crystals, also seemed to affect the crystals directly adjacent to that crystal. The red rod seemed to be the exception, which did not affect adjacent crystals. Some rods turned certain crystals into their own colour, some rods turned certain clear, and some rods turned certain crystals into a colour not their own.
Once the trapdoor to the second floor was unlocked the adventurers moved onward. They found that the second floor was Atilesceon’s personal library and study with bookshelves lining every wall, filled with books of all shapes and sizes. Most of them seemed old but well cared for, mostly written in an archaic form of Lyrian that was hard to follow. Three elaborate reading tables were set up among the bookshelves, each seemingly being dedicated to a particular topic of study; the planes, military history and engineering.
There was one hearth, with again a trapdoor on each side, one in the floor, from where the adventurers came from, and one in the ceiling at the top of wooden steps set into the wall. The one going up was not locked by a crystal puzzle.
Notes could be found everywhere, some of them scattered, some of them laid out neatly on the reading desks. They seemed to be Atilesceon’s words on a wide array of subjects. Most of the journal pages were read aloud by one of the adventurers as they read through all of them, picking out the ones that interested them. Some saw names that they recognised, others touched on subjects of personal interest. Only one was not for public consumption, as James surreptitiously palmed an entry on the mysterious Upright Man.
Emrys found himself interested in the entry on Mohiam, her plots and how those plots were affecting Atilesceon, who was romantically interested in one of her disciples. Emma pointed Emrys to a journal entry which spoke about the Arms of the Senhadrim, and mentioned Toruviel by name. Emrys decided to take a moment for himself to commune with the sword, hoping to get a more direct communiqué from Toruviel, but unfortunately the bond between sword and wielder was not strong enough for that yet, and all that Emrys gleaned was repulsion and rejections; for Atilesceon, his work and ultimately for his betrayal.
Quentin, while leafing through the different journal entries came across one which touched him deeply; about how Atilesceon was in love with Lauriel Skycaller, but how that love went unreciprocated. It also mentioned a dark pact that Atilesceon had struck with someone called Mammon in return for possessing Lauriel. And then there was the mention of a “prior”, but it was unclear how they factored into things.
Luca, overwhelmed with all the information, read an entry on Tharizdun, but decided not to share it with the rest. He did however, read another entry aloud that dealt with something called the Seal of Divine Animus, which Tharizdun put in place to shield the planes of the Ethereal Mist from the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos. Emma, in turn, read about the ebb and flow of magic and how the Seal of Divine Animus also prevented the Ethereal Mist from their access to the weave of magic.
When Luca took a moment to commune with Blackstar in the same way that Emrys had done with Toruviel, he found that the entity inside the staff was as hateful towards Atilesceon as Toruviel was.
It became clear that some of the journal entries were quite recent when Emma read out an entry that dealt with the Daerlan Empire and its current emperor. Taking another look at the journal entries, it appeared that there were some that were remarkably older than others. Some were of this age, and others were of the age of the Silver Crusade.
Hejduk found an entry on the szygani to read, and it slowly became clear that Atilesceon was very concerned with what he called the Tablets of the Elemental Eye. They seemed scattered among several figures, and that collecting enough of them could lead to someone who referred to as the “Illusive One.” Pazuzu, a demon, had five tablets, while the devil Mammon had three. Various others had one or two in their possession, including some people that the adventurers had met before or heard of.
At that point, James started to go through many of the books in the library, finding that most of them were written in archaic Lyrian, which would take time to decipher. He decided to find the two most expensive looking books and store them away in his magical bag.
When Luca found a journal entry on something called the “Ritual of Returning”, which was a ritual designed by Atilesceon in order to escape a place he called “Old Llygad”, he decided to note this down in his tome. He also noted that the cost of performing such a ritual was very high; the sacrifice of a willing soul.
Afterwards, Luca performed a ritual that attuned him to any magical aura and investigated the study, only to find that nothing stood out to him as magical in nature. That’s when the group of adventurers moved to the next floor, finding there a lavish bedroom, with a large four-poster bed covered in the plushest feather pillows and mattresses, made up with sheets of the finest silks.
There were also windows, letting in an eerie pale white light. Two doors lead to a wide balcony that looked out over the front of the tower and part of the causeway. The walls were clear and made of pale stone, not at all crimson-stained and lined with suffering victims.
The surroundings were shrouded in a pale, milky mist, diffusing the light all around. There was no sun, nor moon, nor other light source available, and yet the mist was evenly white in all directions. Very gentle waves could be heard in the distance, like that of a small lake. A titanic, shadowy creature moved like a shade through the mist at a great distance. It was unclear what the creature was. Nothing could be made out other than that it was much taller than the tower. The creature didn’t seem to notice or care about the adventurers.
After some fumbling with a mirror tied with a rope to a sword, trying to create enough of an angle to see beyond the overhanging jetty above them in the hopes of seeing further up the tower, the mirror slipped and smashed to pieces on the causeway below.
After running out of things to do on the balcony, James decided to go back inside the bedroom and do a thorough search of the floor. The only thing of interest he found was a jewellery box with a set of earrings, a necklace and two rings in them. He asked Emrys whether he could see if they were magic or not, but Emrys responded by saying that this was not part of his arcane repertoire. Once Luca was done transcribing the Ritual of Returning, he confirmed James’ suspicion that the jewellery was all magical. And so the jewellery box disappeared in James’ magical bag.
When the group moved up to the next floor, they found it filled with artificing tools, including hammers, chisels and pliers. There is a small anvil and a forge, which lay dormant. There were two baths, filled with oil and water, and a small smelter, surrounded by ingots of different metals; iron, tin, copper, silver and gold. There were shelves filled with curious glass bottles and ceramic jars, containing strange liquids, powders and pastes. And lastly, there were precious and semi-precious stones and crystals, though no Lyrium.
Emrys, spotting the precious stones, went to look for a piece of obsidian, which he would need to fuel one of his spells. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to find any. James, however, quickly separated some of the more precious stones from the semi-precious stones and pocketed a small cache of them. Luca convinced everyone to help out in filing down enough iron and silver to supplement the iron filings he had gotten back in Allenham. He explained that it would greatly benefit the group in the battles to come, since it would be able to protect against the fiends that they were reading about. Everyone went to work, using the tools to file down the ingots until Luca had enough to fuel his spell.
In the meantime, James went downstairs to the bedroom and stripped the bed of the silk sheets, fashioning them into a makeshift bag. He took it down to the library and started to fill it up with books, taking about fifteen books in total before the bag became too heavy to drag around.
When the next crystal puzzle was solved and the next trapdoor up was opened, it revealed a wide, open space with a large statue directly in the centre. Made of stone, it was humanoid in shape but about the size of an ogre, with large crude arms and legs, and a blunt, shapeless head. Behind the statue, against the wall, stood a large marble archway, covered in a translucent, blue film, behind which lay the black void of a rift, much like the ones the adventurers had seen in the catacombs beneath Lynnecombe. At the base of the archway they saw the same molten slag and jutting crystals they had previously encountered, which seemed to go hand in hand with the formation of these rifts.
When James cautiously stepped into the room to investigate, the statue came to life and started to move. “Intruders…” it said in a low, rumbling voice, and pursued James, who quickly darted back downstairs. The statue didn’t pursue James any further, but a clear crystal embedded in its torso started to charge up in a vibrant blue light until with a thunderclap a bolt of lightning arced out from that crystal to painfully hit James.
Quentin demanded the return of his sword, which the group obliged him in, with Astrid kindly reminding him that if he raised his sword against any one of them she would pound him into dust. Quentin assured her and went down to the living room to retrieve a shield from one of the decorative suits of armour. He found a suitable kite shield made of wood, rimmed with a steel band.
In a concerted effort the group engaged what was surely the crimson guardian that Atilesceon had spoken of in his journal, they managed to use the rods to keep the guardian from using the powers of the crystals against the adventurers by touching the crystal with the appropriate rod during the time the power was charging up. Eventually the guardian was defeated, though not without some of the adventurers getting bludgeoned themselves. The life extinguished from the guardian in a super nova of flame that it sent out all around it in a desperate attempt to defeat the intruders.
The adventurers discovered one last crystal puzzle, embedded on the marble archway, which they solved and the protective bubble dissipated and the rift lay naked in front of them. The sound of the ever receding waves that they remembered well from the first rift became louder and more compelling. A conversation was started on whether to go through.
Emrys felt deeply uncomfortable at the sight of the portal. The unease he felt in the pit of his stomach was familiar to him. It reminded him of the moment right after his mentor Voriel disappeared. He was dreading the decision he had to make.
Confidently, Luca decided to step through with Hejduk obediently following him. They were sucked into the pit of the void until they could no longer be seen by the remaining adventurers. Next up were Astrid and Emma, and Quentin quickly followed. Only Emrys and James remained behind. Emrys hesitated for long moments, but eventually overcame his feelings of dread and also entered the portal.
James, the only one to remain after Emrys went through, watched as the wisps of light that had been getting caught in the pull of the void started to chaotically flicker like lightning. The flickering rapidly became more erratic and there was a rumble coming from the portal that started to shake the foundation of the tower. Cracks started to appear in the marble archway that held the portal, and James knew that there was something about Emrys that had caused the disruption. Knowing this, he dove into the rift without further hesitation, forced to leave the silk bag of heavy books behind.
