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NOTE: Only Jeros Babblespell has returned to port and can provide a summary if they choose. @PhorrestGaze that's your call!

On the window of The Limping Biscut a small owl flies in, an oddity in this dead land. The explanation becomes apparent after a moment as the owl grows into the familiar gnome Jeros Babblespell. He looks flush, slightly sweaty, and a little out of it. He gets some water and soup before going to lay down quite early, some patrons exchange glances as they were expecting him to report in, especially returning alone.

In the morning he explains to the tavern that he had come down with a fever and had to split up from the party and fly back, arriving sickened. The party was safe when he last saw them, just making it to the other side of the bridge over the main river. To get there they'd gone north to the fountain that some of them were familiar with, though once they got there they got into a somewhat dangerous battle with some skeletons, some strange zombies, and an undead mage of some sort wearing clothing some of the party recognized. The undead mage was some sort of leader, he demanded that we take all of our humans to the lighthouse and while we attempted to bluff that we were taking the one in our party there the mage demanded all with the whole expedition and attacked. The strange zombies would shed their flesh and continue to fight as zombies once they took enough damage, just a little different than what Jeros had ever seen or heard of before. After dispatching them with Linden and Zenitha taking the brunt of their offence and needing a short rest. Looking around a bit after that the party recognized that the fountain was regularly trafficked with signs of the undead coming and going repeatedly and a lesser level of traffic to the east, each path marked with cairns.

Following the eastern path they continued to the bridge to find a significant number of Zombies along with some Ghouls guarding the crossing. The party use a creative Silent Image of a human to see how interested the zombies would be, and after a couple tries they were fooled into jumping in the river aft the illusion. The party then quickly dispatched the remaining ghouls and carried on, but this is where Jeros needed to retreat, thinking that he must have fallen ill because he isn't used to the strong feeling of death present and being so disconnected from nature.

♫ Minstrels Musings ♫
10 Springrise

You're probably going to hear tales of the washed up old hag in the lighthouse; how prosperous she said this city was. I'm sure the historians among us are going to analyze her every word.

I'm going to read between the lines of what she said and tell it to you plainly. She sucked. She professed for an entity called "The Deceiver". Let that sink in for a second. She, by her own admission, renounced her god and crawled her nasty old hag ass into bed with someone who calls themselves THE DECEIVER. Her words, intentional or not, were lies. The visions she showed us, naught but an illusion.

None of that matters now. She is dead. I mean, she was dead, but now she's even more dead. Whatever this city was is gone. Mourn the people of this nation. Mourn the people caught up in the machinations of this classist megalomaniac.

We have a shot, an opportunity to right the wrongs of our predecessors, to build a nation free from the shackles of our forebears. Each and every one one of us is here for a reason, and I think we all are seeking freedom. Freedom from caste and the preconceptions of our respective species. Freedom from the ideologies of the hateful. Will you capture it, or let it slip?

We brought you the Light. Let's look to the future and prosper.

- Lutrum

10th of Springrise

What a jaunt around the cove of this town. A myriad of obstacles to block our way when we proceeded to find the font of power that had been magically tormenting this town. We made way to the lighthouse and all but kept a small army from getting their gnashing teeth into our skins, as previous endeavors seem to make it plainly obvious. There was undead throughout our travels. We traveled from the fountain we had secured previously and made way over the bridge to find other shamblers in this bloody fog. When we were able to break away we made a run for the cliffsides of the bay, only to find a temple before the lighthouse. Within the Parthenon lay more adversaries that seeked myself as tribute, we were able to fend off the assailants and make camp before the tower trek.

The tower - Delusions of grandeur masked by deceit as we met the so called "sea queen" and she had quite the earful to tell us about the prosperity of what this town was and what the deceiver had wrought upon them. Alas there was no reasoning with one that had been so far gone in their own despair. We had to vanquish the foe that had helped put these malfeasances out into the world, and with that we were able to break a bit of the hold on this town dare I say this region. With the tower finally cleared we made our way upto the top of the tower and with the help of Grundr and others the mirrors and machinations were able to be put into working order.

Jaros & I were able to chart our own maps with such a vantage point and it will be one that I won't forget, with the fog finally gone it seems like a brighter dawn is finally a possibility.

[editor: these abridged selections are taken from an early draft discovered in the midden of St. P—, 1204YE. The untranslated text is only slightly more succinct]

The Confessions of Jaroslav Ivanovich Prokulpnik

Chapter One, in which the revenant of the Sea Queen relates the perversion of her faith by Azrai and the ensuing waves of undead from the Heartland that flooded Sheltered Bay.

“The sea takes all things in the end, and therefore nothing is cruel that merely hastens wisdom.”

There is, of course, but one Goddess, Dziewanna; may her name be forever blessed. She makes the sun to shine, and then brings drought; she makes the clouds to rain, and she floods the lands as well. She gives life with one hand and takes it with the other. She cares nothing for our adulation; she is unmoved by our despair. Ours is only to live in concert with her whims.

In those first days, we had learned that the ancient humans of Sheltered Bay, upon whose ruins we struggled to survive, worshipped Nesirie, a goddess of both sea and mourning. This civilization spared no expense to shower Nesirie with pomp and ceremony. “Silk banners, silver bowls, pearl-inlaid steps” once adorned their terraces. Music and incense filled their mansions. They imported marble from across the sea and built a city both resplendent and divided by class; the base hands of commoners were not permitted to sully their pristine holy districts.

Though a false idol, the give-and-take nature of Nesirie would ring familiar to any True Believer. The Sea gives forth its bounty, but swallows mortals into her depths. I could not help but think that these long-deceased humans had perceived a pale avatar of our Dread Mother herself, filtered through the narrow trappings of their seafaring culture.

But I get ahead of myself.

I came to those accursed shores by command of my master Ivan Petrovich, High Zhiretz of the Bloodroot Enclave, Revelator of Dziewanna’s Mysteries, and my adoptive father. He bade me to insinuate myself among these first colonists that I might find a place where the True Believers could themselves someday settle and worship freely, far from the draconian religious strictures of that benighted Empire.

"Empire institutionalizes the greed and myopia of the short-lived species," he preached. "They live out their paltry days, and leave behind a legacy that we elves (and to a lesser extent the gnomes and dwarves) must endure." (See Appendix C for a full list of grievances). "It is blasphemous to the Goddess, and a thing to be repudiated." Are these truths not made evident by the fate of the Sheltered Bay? Of all the Seven Kingdoms?

Even so, I harbored no ill-will towards my short-lived companions; for, it seemed to me, we were all victims of Empire, even its staunchest loyalists. Indeed, I made many friends among their kind, and mourn their passing to this day.

When we arrived at those shores and beheld the desecration of the land itself, a scar on blessed Dziewanna’s very face, I determined to postpone my Order’s directives and lend such assistance as I could to end the undead blight.

[skipping ahead several pages]

We determined that our pace through the lower city was too slow, and the urgency of reaching the Lighthouse was too great. Rather than fight the innumerable undead that seemed to endlessly respawn, we resolved instead to sprint past them all. Though we had only a general concept of the direction we needed to go, and the thick, unnatural fog obscured our vision, we were confident that we could outpace these shambling corpses.

[skipping to next page]

At last we reached the base of the promontory. We could hear several ghouls giving chase in the fog behind us. We hastened up the switchback trail that scaled the black basalt cliffs, setting traps behind us to confound our pursuers. At last we reached the top and the weathered ruins of an open-air temple lay before us.

Eleven more undead stood there before a (literally) defaced statue of Nesirie. One of them was robed as a priest, performing a mockery of religious rites. As before, the robed figure was capable of speech and, upon seeing our presence, spoke out: “She whom I serve demands the human.”

[skipping three pages]


…my teammates graciously revived me.

We then camped on the cold temple stones for the remainder of the night. We kept watch in shifts, with the human Devin sleeping hidden behind the statue of Nesirie as an added precaution against attracting the attention of our foes. The Aasimar Zenitha made a makeshift alarm with spears at the entrance stairs to the temple. My half-orc friend Grundr attempted to ply his magics to restore the idol of Nesirie, but to no avail. The Aasimar Linden and Devin took the second watch with no events, and Lutrum and I rounded out the night, our elven heritage obviating the need for excessive sleep.

The morning of 10 Springrise arrived, and our party gathered about the portal. The inscriptions thereupon were illegible to us, but Grundr’s aptitude for the arcane arts divined to his eyes their meaning: “All who are faithful will pass”. Despite my true faith, I realized to my chagrin that I lacked the skill necessary to unlock the portal. Conversely, Zenitha served Lira, a false idol of joy, but was more experienced than I. Great Dziewanna saw fit to answer Zenitha’s prayers (for, as the Revelator said “the Dread Mother bends all people to her will”), and through the portal we proceeded.

[skipping 24 pages]

As the reader can see, the Sea Queen’s verbosity knew no bounds. And yet, for as much as she postured and pontificated, there were many questions left unanswered. What became of Azrai? Why is he named Deceiver when she claims he spoke truths? How did the undead plague begin in the Heartlands? Who were the five other kingdoms?

But she entertained no question. She finished her monologue with a banshee’s scream, and the hallucinatory terrain shattered. Azrai’s desolation lay bare before us once again, and the ruins of Sheltered Bay – the fate of all empires – were on display.


[remainder of chapter omitted]

Footnotes:
(The reader will please note that I mean no disrespect to my companions by referring to them only by their given names. It was not the custom for citizens of the Empire to use patronyms as we did in Bloodroot Forest, preferring instead to use classist titles like sir/madame, lord/lady, etc. Often, my companions did not even share their surnames. A complete listing of full names known to me may be found in Appendix B)

Linden's Notes:

We decide to head to the lighthouse to see if it is the cause of the undead. We sneak through the city and are not as sneaky as we thought and encounter a robed figure with undead who demands that we bring all humans to the lighthouse. We are unable to negotiate with the figure, and it doesn’t help that there is a significant language barrier, and we enter combat. I tried my wild shape for the first time and tried out a Lion Shape. After the scuffle, we rest and Gründr finds a neat magic cloak that helps people move underwater.

On the way to the lighthouse, Jeros and Jaro note many footprints taking the path north of the fountain which Zenitha notes with a stone cairn. We find eight ghouls loitering on a white stone bridge. Lutrum uses his illusion to try and get them to jump off the bridge. Six were tricked into going off the bridge to follow the illusion. We easily dispatch the last two.

A magical fog rolls in before we cross the bridge so I bring forth my bat familiar to assist with blindsight. We encounter more undead at the end of the bridge. After dispatching them, we rush to the lighthouse. There are more undead and they want all humans. We kill them barely.
We take a long rest to recover after a very difficult battle.

Gründr uses magic to translate “all who are faithful shall pass” on the stone door. Zenitha then uses channel divinity to try and open the door and it works! We see the temple fully repaired, people walking around, and a view of the busy docks. We meet a woman dressed very ornately. We tell her of the desolation we experienced. She tells us her story and

The Sea Queen describes Sheltered Bay as a magnificent coastal city dedicated to the goddess Nesirie, with wealthy temple mansions, grand ceremonies, a towering waterfall, and a rigid social hierarchy that she views as the foundation of civilization. She sees beauty, wealth, rank, and religious splendor as virtues that gave meaning and order to society.

She then recounts the city's downfall. As the Seven Kingdoms of Man fell into war and chaos, she became influenced by Azrai, the Deceiver, whose philosophy transformed the faith of Nesirie from one of mourning and endurance into one of despair and surrender. When undead hordes descended from the Heartland, Sheltered Bay was overwhelmed. Refugees flooded the lower city and many were driven into the sea.

Rather than turning back to Nesirie, the Sea Queen embraced Azrai completely, becoming a servant of despair. She now regards hope, courage, and love as ultimately futile. She ends with her threatening us and unleashing a supernatural wail.

The wail shatters the illusion we were seeing, exposing the ruined temple we saw from the exterior. We best her in a fight, travel to the top of the lighthouse and Zenitha lights the beacon.

We find a hidden room with a bunch of items and my understanding of them, though I kept none for myself:
- 40 silver bars, 2 lbs each (50 gold each)
- Rosewood coffer with Elvish writings (250g)
- Magic staff, wood (inscribed staff, resistance)
- Spell scroll: Thaumaturgy; potion of greater healing
- Belt; 2 hand axes
- 2 barrels (10 lbs preserved garlic, wine barrel)
- Crown (proficiency in persuasion)
-Trident (magic, roll crit pushes)
- Shield (magic, bonus action light, resist push)

Words written in the margins of an old, worn spellbook, around abjurative runic diagrams:

I think this might be the most significant find we’ve made so far during this insane expedition to a new world. Hold on. From the beginning:

The lighthouse was the most tantalizing landmark we saw when we landed. So obviously we needed to check it out. We did not expect the density of undead we’d encounter on the way, so our scouting was a bit stop and go. But this time, we were in it for the long haul. We had to get to the lighthouse, and as Zenitha and Linden theorized, we hoped to find the source of the curse or the undead there.

We made it back to the fountain, and there were more. We dispatched them quickly and kept moving to the bridge. I had the idea to use Lutrum’s silent image and the undead’s appetite for humans to dispatch those who were milling about on the bridge. Lute performed exquisitely, luring many of them to their second deaths. Or, at least, to the bottom of the river and out of our way. If they still “live,” they can easily be dealt with by future expeditions. We dispatched the remainder and continued onward. It was a bit of a slog, and costly in terms of resources, to get up to the lighthouse. We were running on almost empty when we arrived at the exterior attached temple.

I had managed to create a localized density field on top of the Weave plating spell I cast on myself at the start of the expedition, and it seemed to be holding. So I agreed with the others when they said we should try and clear out the crowd of undead at the temple. I had planned to enhance the combat abilities of some of my allies, and I a glut of good targets, especially Z riding a transformed Linden directly into the fray. Unfortunately, like Danzig said, plans rarely survive first contact with adversity. Z took a heavy hit and was knocked off. There were so many, I didn’t know what to do. I reached my hand out to send out a spell, and hesitated. Don’t know what came over me, but a rush of adrenaline sent me sideways to the rear rank of the undead, near the spellcaster and its bodyguards.

In an effort to draw their attention, I spewed the foulest string of vile curses and vitriol I have ever uttered, trying to goad the caster into going after me. I’ve never been one for the crass poetry of the Tale Tables back in the longhouses of my tribe, but I think that would’ve at least gotten some tusks rustling back home. Short answer, it worked. And honestly the density field and Weave plating held up much better than I expected. I didn’t even go down! I had to augment the plating with localized arcane force projections, but the ablative nature of the density field held up for a long time given how heavy the hits that bit through the armor were.

That isn’t to say everything was sunshine and roses. This fight exhausted us even more than the fight at the fountain, and very nearly resulted in our deaths. We had to use everything just to survive. I think my gambit helped, but only barely enough to help others survive. Once the zombie dust settled, we were tapped.

I truly did not think we would be able to get a rest in to recharge. It seemed like the undead would come after us. We would only find out why they didn’t once we got inside. It was the first time all of us had taken watches and slept near each other. Zenitha and I had first watch and I tried to appeal to Nesirie, this Mourning Mother of the Sea sort of goddess, but to no avail. At least now I trust the others enough to sleep near them. I still had all my stuff when I woke up.

Fully recharged, we attempted to open the door. Didn’t take much more than a basic divine burst of energy from Zenitha thankfully. Inside was a wondrous vision of this place in its heyday. We were beckoned forward by attendants to a golden high priestess, who waxed poetic about the splendor of Shelter Bay as a place of pilgrimage and perfection. Too bad it was all a bunch of bullshit. This priestess would not stop spouting self-important fundamentalist garbage about how the teeming masses were "bettered" by simply seeing the beauty and devotion of the byzantine rites and processions of Nesirie. I don't have a problem with this god per se, but this high priestess was not doing her any favors. Her prose was so positively painfully purple that it reminded me of a bruised grape, with the same amount of value and substance. I suppose it makes sense that she gave in to this Deceiver she was on about. In any case, she finally got fed up with our mere presence and simply wailed to try and incapacitate as many of us as she could. Turns out we were more hardy than she expected, and she fell over without near as much a fight as her final followers in the antechamber courtyard.

We continued exploring. Made it to the top of the lighthouse itself. I used mending to improve the condition of the turnstile and the fresnel lens at the peak, while Z took a flight around the outside to inspect for damage high up, taking notes on what it might take to further shore up this structure. It will take fair bit beyond just mending to make it usable. But I do have plans...The rest of our friends explored for any left behind valuables, and they found plenty. No need to recount it here. What an exhausting trek. But it was productive. Concepts were proved, knowledge was gained, and now that we are heading back to the wharf, I can almost feel the life beginning to return to Lil' Brightwater.

Summary XP granted for:

Jeros Babblespell, Lutrum Bravesong, Devin, Jaroslav Prokulpnik, Linden Heartwood, Gründr One-Ear.