December 21, 2009

Hook

Group wanted to establish contact with an undergroup Heg Group.

Plot Synopsis

The party responds to flyers looking for adventurers to help establish communication with an underground Heg resistance group.
Everyone assembles at Gil's recuriting annex in Lil' Karfelon. There Gil reveals that there is a group within the Heg that is
actively plotting the overthrow of their government because of religious persecution. The Heg, as a rule, frowns on Religion and
actively attempts to rehabilitiate people who stray down that path. The party is to make contact, see if they are worth working with
and make a determination if helping them will just cause another problem later on.

After the party agrees, Gil says listen closely and pushes a button. The room goes silent as outside noise is cutoff, window
shades shut, etc... Gil then tosses Tanis a 7" long crystal and says that one of the local temples would appreciate it if the group
would swap this crystal for one just like it in the Heg temple. He winks and says speak no more of this and then sound and light
returns from outside.

Gil says the meeting is scheduled for just before dinner Centralia time and that they should leave then. He gives them two disks
(a black one that will portal to the meeting location and a white one that will portal back). The party goes about their business
until the appointed time. They come together and activate the black disc. A portal opens and they step through.

They find themselves standing ankle deep in a muddy plane. It is raining/snowing and is generally miserable. The party quickly
finds that they are standing on a road and that going off the road is thin mud deeper than a man. Difuge notices a group of 6 human
shaped piles of mud off to the side. Erica flies upward and sees a horse drawn cart with 5 Heg soldiers mobing toward them. She
brings up a magic ward and the party settles in to wait for the meeting.

When the cart gets within bow range two of the soldiers fire crossbows at the party... and its on. The Heg soldiers are all
quickly killed except on who jumps off the road into the mud and is lost in the darkness and rain. At this point the muddy heat
sources rise up and move toward the party. Before combat can ensue they establish that they are the underground that the Jearnians
were here to meet. They reveal that they arranged the timing so they could watch the Jearnians work and get a feel for their
capabilities. They then take crates off the wagon and walk off the road telling the party to be careful and step where they are
stepping unless they want to fall off into the mud.

The party is led to a large cabin where there is heat and food. After much discussion they agree to the outlines of a plan to
destroy the Hegemony leadership and to attempt an insertion coup at that point. One of the party asks about their temples and is
told there is one below the cabin. They are shown to a flight of stairs that goes down around 80 feet and opens onto a large
circular chamber. Hanging from the ceiling are thousands of crystals such as the one Gil gave the party. The mud people (who are
pretty human once the mud is washed off) sit in the center of the chamber in a circle and get all meditative. The party looks around
the cavern. The walls are covered in some sort of naturally occuring pattern. A detect magic reveals that the center crystal is the
most powerful and they conclude that's the one that should be swapped.

After several minutes exploring the cavern a couple of the priests with the party briefly start questioning their own religion. A
couple of the non-priests join the mud people in their meditation circle. One of the party becomes obsessed with copying the
patterns on the wall. The rest of the party decides something hinky is going on and go back upstairs. At one point Erica invisibly
tries to retrieve the crystal and all of the people in the circle look up simultaneously to watch her as a voice whispers in their
head: "see this spirit attempting to steal from us". Erica sees this creepy site and heads upstairs herself.
>
> The party decides that the 1st objective has been met and decide to skip the bonus round. They go downstairs and get the other
party members who are meditating and then head outside to activate the return portal. With the white disc activated a portal
appears. Just before the party steps through, those who were sitting in circle hear "They are coming". Once back at Gil's they make
their report. Difuge also makes a personal report to the Lordship. The party then heads to a temple of Vormaxia to get their heads
checked for external influences/possession/etc... the priests of Vormaxia find nothing.

As they are leaving the temple a messenger brings them a note. It says only "Forget Gil. Pass it on". Anyone reading the note is
forced to make a WIL check. If they fail they immediately forget who Gil is and pass the note to someone else. A chunk of the party
falls to this. One member who doesn't passes the note around anyway.

During the night Erica is out wandering (which she always is), she sees three party members enter the Guild of Wizards. Since its
the same three that were sitting in circle she viewed it as suspicious and followed them. When they entered basement 3, Erica
teleports to the Alphasite. A few seconds later the three appear at the Alphasite and then depart through gate 167 (A venetial type
setting of canals and old buildings). They go to a clock maker who gives them crystals and they disappear. Erica teleports back to
report to Tanis.

Meanwhile at Tanis/Difuge's place a shadow knocks at the door. The butler gets Tanis who comes to the door. The shadow says he was
told that they managed to get "it" and he is here to collect "it". Tanis gives the shadow the crystal and the shadow gives him a bag
containig the equivelent of 8000sp.

In another Meanwhile Gil has been gathering the party back together with the same information (Bizarrely no one questions how he
knows). Once the party is reassembled they go to the clockmaker at 167. He denies everything and turns out to be a pretty decent
psionist. Not only does he resist attempts at lie detection but causes pain in people who try it on him. When Tanis attempts to
steal his identity, he is, instead, possesed by the clockmaker. Tanis/Clockmaker tells the party there are more crystals in the
back. They party uses the crystals to teleport and find themselves back in the chamber and the missing party members sitting in
Circle.

Many hijinks later the party has possession of the crystal and Tanis teleports the group back to Gil's. Payment is made.

Note: Gil doesn't show up at his training academy or recruiting office for the next two days. On the third day he is seen sporting
a missing left hand. When asked about it he just shrugs ruefully and says "I over reached".

Noteworthy Postgame Events