Undermountain Session 5
Going to the Chapel, and We’re Going to Get Butt Stuff
The Delvers spent quick night at Fiends End, resting up, crafting new ammo, but Ysara was not to be long delayed from the search for Galiana. In the Sea District of Waterdeep, the party was soon ascending the steps of the hilltop Temple of Selune.
Feeble cries to Our Lady of Silver, the Moonmaiden, and the Night White Lady come from a few of the huddles massed outside the temple. Some of the throng call out for money, more for healing or help. More than a couple ask for mercy, and for death. Esvele and Malsanos tried to speak to one of the few broken minds that came out of the desecrated temple, but his Drow features only drew fear from her. Ysara, undeterred and unmoved in her singular focus to find her partner, pushed into the temple.
The party quickly set to sorting through the bodies in the dark church, all of them belonging to slain clergy, servants of Selune, or the City Watch and Queens Guard soldiers that had been sent in response to the sudden attack. No evidence of any other bodies, and no sign of Galiana.
Esvele started sneaking into a dining hall, but Ysara soon thundered through, hearing some faint sounds in the northerly kitchen and kicking in doors. Suspicious meats is a good name for a band, and also what was cooking on the open hearth oven. As Esvele crafted a new clutch from a cheese wheel, the party did battle with a drow assassin they weren’t supposed to find hiding high above the pantry shelves. Sumfun turned into a spider, trying to use his blindsense and shoot hot sticky loads from his butt at the drow, and Malsanos met darkness with darkness “I can do that too”, using his cloak and spidey senses to cast his own webs, ultimately defeating the drow who dropped in flight only to find Esvele’s rapier (and cheese wheel) waiting.
The party poked through the balneary and ran up a hall, pausing at a ruined iron gate that revealed an ancient door. They wisely left it alone, perhaps to search the rest of the main temple and find a key that might be used to open it. This would be funny later after having found the key, seen a glowing glyph with a good perception, but then licking it and causing the massive explosion anyway.
The party found a refectory, ignoring a northerly door and passing into the main sanctuary to Selune where Ysara immediately began sorting a pile of bodies that had been stacked on the temple floor. Finding so sign of Galiana but pocketing 4 pp and 30 silver.
The party crept to the library, where Esvele attempted to use her brain to ferret out 3 books of greatest interest or rarity. But murmurs and a flickering lamp from a northern alcove drew their attention, and soon enough the party was busy slaughtering a war priest and two magician acolytes. Apparently after hearing mention of a “Dark Father” and bringing in more victims, they didn’t need to hear more. Though to Malsanos’ credit, he DID try to pass himself off as the help. “Hey, um.... we need more people from the front?”
The priest failed to banish Ysara but went invisible as the party melting the others with a guardian of faith and a lot of steel. Sumfun, still a huge spider, had replenished his butt stuff and sends more thick steamy strands from his spidey-ass, forcing the priest to clatter away and he used his blindsense to close on the priest. The rest of the team used that to track and made some best guess attacks before Malsanos used his faerie fire. This made the fight academic, though just in time as Esvele had been paralyzed and was about to take one for the team, and not in the way she wanted.
The party looted a scroll case that they couldn’t read and the odd key that would let them pass the door to the ancient House of Selune below. In rifling through the bodies, they noticed an odd tattoo on the priest but couldn’t place it.
Books of interest all centered on Waterdeep new and old, with particular interest in the proximity of “a knot in the weave” and the Netherese wizard Karsus who wrested magic from the Goddess Mystrl but couldn’t hold the power. Added to Consolidated Lore: Undermountain - Consolidated Lore
(a tome from Gale of Waterdeep)
Ah, yes. Karsus. Karsus was perhaps the most powerful wizard who ever lived. The child-who-would-become-a-god, the elves called him. And he tried. With a spell of his own devising, he endeavored to usurp in one fell swoop the power of the goddess of magic... Imagine what it must have felt like. To be a god. To know yourself to be untouchable. To be mistaken.
— Gale of Waterdeep[9]
A mysterious mage Hilaster mage appeared on the sword coast soon after, finding the place of Karsus’ Folly where the weave was strong but damaged where Karus fell after taking on Mystra’s power. Hu built Halaster’s Hold and began a furious pursuit of knowledge to control fiends, master the planes, and grow even more powerful. He assembled apprentices to speed his total control of Undermountain and left his hold in 309 to live permanently there. Halaster seemed obsessed with Karsus’ efforts to wrest magic from the weave.
Finding some smaller chambers, offices, and a small chapel off to the side of the narthex, the party found some gold and three items in a locked chest. Leaving the gold, they inspected an ornate censer, a large cauldron, and a crystalline mace. Ysara grabbed the mace* and the party left the rest to do cursory exploration of some monk's quarters, an infirmary (where they didn't do poking but could have fought Dybbuk - Monsters - D&D Beyond cuz how cool is that?)
Passing back through the main sanctuary, Esvele stopped, standing near the large statue, looking down at the ruined mosaic of Selune's face. Feeling the emptiness of the temple and surrounded by so much despair, she chastised the Moon Maiden and all the pantheon of light. Speaking half to the goddess and half to herself, she mused that perhaps the reason they did nothing wasn't because they didn't care but that they just don't exist.
After Esvele elected to lick the glyph of warding instead of using the key, the Delvers delved into the ancient House of Selune. Finding some signs of recent use in the centuries old vacant temple, the drow and thief decided to "explore" the heavy sarcophagus in one corner of the chapel. Esvele used her ghost tattoo to pass through the stone, only to find herself trapped - held by some force - and asphyxiating inside, unable to move out despite being ethereal. Malsanos went to fetch Ysara and Sumfun, who despite their dismay were able to move the heavy lid through strength and the ring of the ram. As the lid was pushed aside, Esvele emerged at the same time a shadowy, necrotic cloud sprang from the coffin and seemed to dissipate through cracks in one wall. Almost as if had a consciousness.
Esvele placed a gleaming headband on her head like a tiara and gave a very serviceable belt to Malsaños.
The Delvers then continued through the small temple, finding a horrific scene in the central audience chamber. The ground of the center of the room had been shattered by a great power, and a mangled sea elf, near death, lay bleeding on a makeshift table built on jagged crystal in the center of the rubble. The victim was attended by two shadowy demons and a man looking like a succubus (was actually a variant Incubus keeping Lleyash docile and digging through his mind). The Incubus cast a hypnotic pattern and arrested the entire party, but Sumfun, inspired, did not get hypnotized and used ThunderWave to wake everyone up. After some Call Lighting from the cleric and druid and many stabby stabs, the Incubus was defeated. Sufun also became a bear, because he misses his woods.
Towards the end of the battle, Esvele went to check the body on the table, perhaps fearing it was someone she'd been searching for but finding the unfamiliar form of Lleyash. She moves his body where it had been pierced by the blue mineral, removed a few pipettes draining his blood, causing more damage and sending Lleyash into death saves.
At her side, the forgotten dog Radar (?) starts barking as lights appear in a hallway opposite them.
Seeing the party in need, Ysara channeled a mass healing word, sending healing into the broken elf as well and causing a mighty surge of crackling blue energy as wild magic explodes around him.