Friday Abomination Vaults

After more than a month away from the table, the party resumed the investigation beneath Otari. The sewer was still only partly explored, Siorra’s connection to it remained unproven, and Chafkhem’s eventual return still hung over everything. Pressing beyond the ooze-filled passages, Murk tore a swollen door from its frame and exposed a stairway descending into a chamber filled with strange, grainy air. The haze proved to be a living mass of millions of ordinary fleas. Murk and Valaerys were engulfed first, with another swarm surging toward Braun and Reiko. The party quickly learned that swords and other conventional attacks accomplished almost nothing against the tiny insects. The fleas fed relentlessly, leaving Valaerys heavily drained and weakening Braun and Reiko as well. Braun’s magic and the party’s improvised bludgeoning attacks helped, but Reiko provided the real opening by unleashing a powerful gust that tore the swarms away from her companions and scattered them down the corridor. The party wisely abandoned the fight. Reiko remained at the rear, repeatedly using wind to keep the fleas back while Murk, Braun, and the badly weakened Valaerys fled toward the exit. She slammed a door behind them, but the insects immediately began pouring through the gap beneath it. The party reached the ladder, escaped to the surface, and replaced the sewer grate before retreating into Otari to wash, rest, and recover from the blood loss. The next several days were spent healing and preparing for the possibility of another swarm encounter. Murk purchased a maul and finally obtained sling ammunition. Braun added a shield boss and doubling rings to his equipment. Reiko, Braun, and Valaerys stocked up on lesser alchemist’s fire. Valaerys earned coin performing in town, while Reiko improvised a dancing accompaniment. Murk also secured a discounted armor potency rune from Carman Rajani after promising his support in the upcoming mayoral election. Once recovered, the party remembered that Morbilint still had Chafkhem’s recovered parchments and went to Odd Stories to check on the transcription work. The shop was unlocked, disordered, and apparently abandoned. Upstairs, they found Morbilint exhausted, unfed, badly dehydrated, and surrounded by days of frantic research. He proudly presented what he believed to be the lost Black Journal of Archmage Vardalion—a completely blank book he had spent days trying to decipher. As the party questioned him, Morbilint slowly remembered what had happened. A refined scholar calling himself **Magister Septimus Vhal** had arrived with a learned associate and an imposing bodyguard. All three appeared human, though they were unusually lean and carried the heavy scent of sandalwood, lavender, and vanilla. Vhal overwhelmed Morbilint with obscure magical knowledge, convinced him that the recovered parchments were insignificant, and traded the blank journal for them. The party recognized the truth: Chafkhem had entered Otari in disguise, manipulated Morbilint, and recovered his own magical writings without drawing a blade. Morbilint then remembered one final detail. Magister Septimus Vhal had mentioned purchasing property in Otari—the old abandoned house on the hill. The party ended the session with the sewer still uncleared, the flea swarms still alive, and Chafkhem apparently establishing a foothold inside Otari itself.

Valaerys kept singing the Ballad of Siorra and Viola at the Rowdy Rockfish, hoping the song might reach the broken shadow haunting Otari. This time, something answered. A traveler heard a second voice beneath the melody: faint, rough, feminine, and gone before anyone could find its source. Rather than chase the crate plan directly, the party followed that omen back to the warehouse where the Siorra mystery first entered town. Beneath the locked building, they opened the old bolted sewer grate and descended into Otari’s forgotten underbelly, where Braun’s light revealed stagnant water, old salt and lime traces, and signs that Keeleno’s old maintenance work has gone badly untended. What waited below was not a hidden lair or shrine, but a filthy undercity wound full of acid jelly, sewer slime, and worse. Valaerys opened a door into a tiny room completely filled by a ten-foot gelatinous cube, turning exploration into an instant trap. The fight widened from there as more ooze-things pressed in, the sewer terrain tightened around the party, and a Globster seized Murk in the middle of the chaos. Reiko adapted her attacks, Braun kept light and healing in play, Valaerys held the line, and Murk survived the Globster’s grip. The party won the night’s battle, but not the investigation. The sewer is still not fully mapped or cleared, and the central question remains open: is this Siorra’s path through Otari, the consequence of failed sewer protections, or both? The song got an answer. The answer led below. And the party is still underground.

Longsaddle pulled the party from the Rowdy Rockfish to a wrecked Absalom-registered boat in a rocky cove west of Otari. Bran found the dead crew had not died in the wreck: they showed void damage and cast no shadows. Reiko copied their tattoo, and Yinyasmera later named it as the Hooded Beaks, a small Absalom outfit, not Black Hand or Osprey. The boat also carried illegal Chelaxian silk and papers suggesting an Otari pickup bound for Diobel.

Murk and Bran questioned Aldous and Mira Dosk at the harbor office. Mira brought them inside, surrounded the home with bright light, and revealed the truth: she and Aldous are the paperwork-and-signal side of Otari’s Black Hand pipeline. The elven vampire threatened them about a week ago and forced the crate plan into motion through Yinyasmera. Mira wants this shadow thing shipped to Diobel to tear into the Black Hand so the Dosks can retire, but the party did not accept that as harmless.

Mira also raised the ugly math: one warehouse victim, one outside guard, three Hooded Beaks, and Siorra herself make six—the number of crates requested. Valaerys began spreading The Ballad of Siorra and Viola to draw Siorra out for a possible conversation, while Reiko kept the crate work alive as leverage or bait. Near midnight, a guard at the lumber kiln survived a void-wounding attack from a nebulous figure inspecting the crate materials. Valaerys healed him, Reiko found the materials intact, and the party realized the elven vampire is now watching the work directly.

After Chafkhem's body fell to dust, the party spiked his chamber shut and tried to find a way to end the magic circle before he could return. The Gauntlight library did not give a full answer, but Reiko found a passage that made the order clear: the room must first be made holy through consecration, and only then can the hidden lines of the circle be cut. The group returned to Otari because Murk's mummy rot and Reiko's vampire drain had to come first. Reiko's drain was cleared through a blood transfusion, and Bran removed Murk's mummy rot with a heightened cleanse affliction after rest and prayer. Valaerys spent part of the downtime turning Murk's blind defeat of Chafkhem into a song at the Rowdy Rockfish. Bran learned the consecrate ritual from Vandy Banderdash, and Grandma Brindy explained from hard experience that the circle will reveal anchors only after the consecration takes. Ending Chafkhem now means preparing a three-day ritual, gathering costly offerings, choosing secondary casters, and guarding the room while the work is done. Before the night ended, Brindy pointed the party toward Maret, who has begun aging rapidly after the warehouse attack. At the Crow's Cask, the portrait shook him badly and he confirmed Siorra Fallowglade's Black Hand history, her relationship with Viola Mirethis, and the lie that destroyed them. For Maret, the portrait proved an old Black Hand wound around the elf in the painting, not what attacked the warehouse. He also guarded a necklace closely enough to draw the party's attention, but he would not explain or surrender it on suspicion alone.

The fight resumed in Chafkhem's chamber with the party already in serious trouble. Chafkhem used the room itself as part of the fight: despair kept the living frightened, blur and concealment turned strong attacks into missed chances, and the warding script punished anyone who pressed him through the threshold. Murk remained blind from the earlier failed warding-script save and spent most of the fight swinging into darkness, while Reiko carried the vampire's drain and later suffered fresh blindness from the script. Bran removed the cultist with vitality magic, Reiko and Bran kept dragging the vampire down, and a bloodsiphon added one more complication before Reiko destroyed it and triggered its necrotic death burst. Chafkhem used fire, mummy-rot strikes, and harm magic to keep the room under his control, while Bran's healing kept the party standing and Valaerys's fire retaliation and champion protection made Chafkhem pay for attacking. The fight finally turned when @Murky (Jorge), still blind, landed two clean hits through the uncertainty and destroyed Chafkhem's body. The victory immediately revealed the next danger: Murk has mummy rot, Reiko still needs recovery from the vampire's drain, and Chafkhem is not truly finished while his perfected magic circle remains active. The party recovered Chafkhem's dense papers, including the awaken portal and create undead rituals, an unusual staff, and a cache of coins. The next session begins with the party heading back toward Otari to deal with the curse, the drain, the ritual problem, and the unresolved Otari threads.

The game began in Otari with the unresolved crate problem. Yinyasmera clarified that the special materials would take time and that she did not know exactly how the Black Hand pickup signal worked, pushing the party toward dockside leads. The group showed her the female elf portrait, and the red roses proved to be more than paint. Sharpe found a hidden message in the painting: “I will always love you. V.M.” Yinyasmera connected those initials to Viola Mirethis, daughter of old Black Hand figure Caladrel Mirethis, raising the possibility that the shadow creature’s story is tied to a forbidden or rejected relationship rather than simple vengeance. Bran suggested the blood-painted portrait might be an anchor that could help lay the being to rest if the party learns enough of the story. The party then split preparations: Sharpe ordered crate materials, Bran and Valaerys researched mummies at the Dawnflower Library and learned about despair, paralysis, fire, and binding marks, while Murk took the Black Hand papers to Morlibint. Morlibint identified a smuggling and laundering pattern through Otari Market and gave two code names: Nightfisher and Candlepenny. After buying supplies, antiplagues, potions, and manacles, the party returned to Gauntlight by the surface route, avoided old dangers, and found Chafkhem packing to leave with undead servants. They confirmed Jafaki’s death and received the promised portal ritual, but Valaerys refused to let Chafkhem walk into the wider world. Chafkhem offered a trap password as a last bargaining chip, but the standoff became a fight. The battle is unresolved: Chafkhem is blurred in his own warded room, his despair aura is punishing the party, Murk is blinded, Valaerys and Sharpe have both lost turns to paralysis, and Bran’s three-action heal has kept the group alive while damaging the undead.

Across these four Friday sessions, the party pushed from Chafkhem’s demand into the lower Gauntlight’s locked cells, killed a vicious black pudding, and accidentally activated a teleportation circle that threw them into Jafaki’s domain. They survived the blood-stained testing chamber, saw a seugathi-like observer taking notes, forced their way through Jafaki’s guarded door, and began a brutal fight against Jafaki, PipNee, and a drider. The fight carried into the next session, where confusion, poison, and friendly-fire chaos nearly broke the group before Reiko dropped Jafaki as he tried to heal himself. With Jafaki dead, the party looted what they could and fled approaching reinforcements through the smugglers’ route and the wilderness. During the escape, Deputy Murk recognized Noxag—his quarry—now fleshwarped into a drider-like form. The party returned to Otari, rested at the Rowdy Rockfish, spent two days recovering from a fungal illness, and bought antiplagues. Then Reiko met Yinyasmera, who revealed a new crisis: the shadow creature wants three special crates built so it and its crew can leave Otari in a Black Hand shipment, promising not to return but threatening the town if refused. The party has not resolved whether to help, trap, negotiate with, or destroy it, and they still need to report Jafaki’s death to Chafkhem.

Bran Wills, Deputy Murk, Reiko Junna, and Valaerys il’Tharandiir pressed deeper into the Gauntlight at midnight instead of withdrawing, following the trail of fleshwarping evidence into a grim throne room riddled with open pits. Somewhere below, water moved in the dark, and the whole chamber felt less like an abandoned ruin than a hungry place waiting to notice them. It noticed. Two Gibtas Bounders erupted into the fight with leaping attacks and acid spit, chewing through Valaerys’s defenses while Bran struggled to keep him upright and Murk and Reiko helped bring the creatures down.

Their reward was a hidden compartment in the throne itself, holding coin, a Dragon Turtle Scale, and a Climbing Bolt — the kind of discovery that makes adventurers think maybe the room was worth the risk. Then came the voice from the hall: something had caught their scent. Two gibbering mouthers oozed into the doorway and turned the party’s defensive position into a nightmare choke point of babbling mouths, grabbing flesh, spit, and teeth. Valaerys was nearly overwhelmed, Bran poured healing into the line, and the group finally ground the horrors down. Bloodied, battered, and wiser, the party withdrew to the ready room, rested, repaired gear, traded shields, and emerged at 7th level with a sharper understanding that the Gauntlight is not merely haunted — it is inhabited, alert, and hunting.

After witnessing Otari’s spirit seized and dragged away by a horrifying manifestation tied to Nhimbaloth, Valaerys il’Tharandiir, Deputy Murk, Bran Wills, and Reiko Junna were left with more dread than answers. Rather than spiral in town or chase half-formed leads, the party returned to the Gauntlight’s arena level to consult the genie. His advice was practical and unsettling: reconnoiter the level and the one below, because Belcorra’s fleshwarping infrastructure may matter more than a blind rush toward vengeance.

The search led the party back through the corpse-haunted machinery of the dungeon. In the slain velstrac sister’s chamber, a rusted grate nearly took Murk into the dark before Bran pulled him back, revealing a deadly drop toward the laboratories below. Farther on, the party found locked cells filled with rotting sludge and old remains — and, half-buried in the gore, a glistening copper key. The “corpses” were not finished with anyone. Shanrigol Heaps lurched up from the filth, grabbing, bleeding, and battering the party in a vicious melee that nearly dropped Valaerys and left Murk bloodied before Bran’s healing and the group’s pressure finally won the room.

The copper key opened the way to Jafaki’s supply room, a grisly cache of preserved organs, wrapped bones, surgical tools, mutagens, and magic. The party recovered a Wand of Heal, several moderate mutagens, and another unidentified magical item, but the real discovery was worse than treasure: the room confirmed that the fleshwarping below is active, organized, and purposeful. Bestial aggression, juggernaut resilience, and quicksilver speed all pointed toward one goal — building stronger, faster, more durable horrors for Belcorra’s designs.

With the warehouse incident still boiling over in Otari, Valaerys il’Tharandiir, Sharpe, and Deputy Murk arranged a midnight meeting beneath the Rowdy Rockfish. Using Kip Skydrift as a discreet runner, they brought Yinyasmera into a careful basement negotiation over dead guards, seized cargo, Black Hand pressure, and Captain Longsaddle’s impossible position. Everyone wanted the heat lowered, but no one could move safely until the truth of the guard’s murder was pinned down. The follow-up search of the impounded boat only deepened the mystery: foreign coins, a strange mint mark, a wax-seal die disguised as a coin, and a citrus-and-ash-preserved cipher document hidden inside a strongbox’s false bottom. One name floated up from the evidence like a warning: Candle-Penny.

By February 20, Bran Wills had rejoined the investigation, and Captain Longsaddle gave the party permission to examine both bodies — the dead guard and the dead Black Hand operative. The result was chilling. Both victims bore almost identical throat wounds, precise cuts with the same unnatural starting point and angle despite a dramatic difference in height. Whatever killed them did not seem bound by normal reach, stance, or human movement. The party’s urgency accidentally sparked public panic, but the trail pulled them back below, where they recovered crumbling documents, wrestled with the recurring code words wick, tallow, and green, and returned to Otari Ilvashti’s ghost. There, the old Roseguard hero began to speak of his fall, his endurance, and the truth of the Roseguard — until something vast and hungry manifested from the dark, seized his spirit, and dragged him away screaming. The entity did not strike the party. It simply took Otari.

The party checked in with Yinyasmira and set a simple “yellow flag” warning signal if suspicious Black Hand figures were spotted. Then the group ran street security while Gynn did the only break-in: he bypassed the patrol dogs, climbed in via the roof, and after a rough run of lockpicks finally got into the office. Inside he found a hidden/false-drawer situation, a ledger, and—most importantly—a receipt showing Keeleno is paying the city for a dockside warehouse, pinning down the location.

Before anyone could sleep on the lead, a blood-curdling scream came from the docks. On the run, the party passed a dead guard, nearly decapitated. At the warehouse, blood trails and an open door led inside to a second scene: a dead Black Hand operative with a surgically precise throat cut and foul “sewage” that moved. Combat erupted with two oozes, and the party won.

Afterward they found crates stamped as Black Hand property—too much to haul—and learned of a second victim: a Black Hand man near a cart, barely alive, who was healed and babbled about a black fog and something “squishy” underfoot that let him escape. At the Dawnflower Library, the party pursued the trust-packet lead. A GM flashback reframed Keeleno’s past: years ago, when Otari was struggling, Vosk quietly offered help through smuggling and unrecorded contracts, and Keeleno accepted a token meant to summon aid—but every rescue comes with a price.