"Anything can, and might, happen if I see fit. Every minute here will be hard time. You have no rights here, unless I give them to you. You feel no pleasure here, unless I say you can. This is Hell... and I'm about to give you the guided tour." - The Warden 

"Indecision is a prison." - Fortuna

"Enemies can be redeemed and allies can be found in the strangest places." - Khalid

"Stories are powerful, Use them wisely." - Canto, Cervian-Moreau Istorimancer

"My food is to listen the tales the Architects set in motion, and to assure with my heart and sinew that their work persists - Jormun Goss

Shroktath stares at the surprise wound delivered by Fortuna. The last thing he remembered before she left him stricken with paralysis, were the glowing red eyes that were not hers. Balthazar! Khalid's gun is sent clattering away with a burst of telekinetic energy and Fortuna-Balthazar confronts Hazel. Meanwhile, inside her mind, a battle for control unfolds in which her beloved companions must journey through the many journeys to rescue her from the foul possession. When at last she is rescued, the group finds access to a downshaft that some cuts through the "Inbetween" allowing it to traverse to the bottom of the Downward Spiral. They find a group of non-Sentarean goblins, an Istorimancer, a terribly mutilated Architect, and anther Basile being transformed into an Elder Brain. The Warden is waiting for them. He will die, or Jormun Goss will. But Hell's own Warden has a some surprises yet for the intrepid heroes!

Luckums: Balthazaar was a Lich held captive in the dungeon. However, during his escape, he consumed the essence of one of the imprisoned ISTORIMANCERS.

Narrative, not game mechanics, brought this about. Narrative will seal your fate.

Each of you has been dealt a hand of cards that represent story elements: objects, people, events, and "aspects" often involved in fairy tales (for instance, there are cards for "crown", "key", "a death", "time passes", "sleeping", et cetera). These "Storytelling" cards represent ingredients of a fairy tale, i.e. words or phrases that are likely to appear in fairy tales.

Once you have used an ELEMENT card, you choose its column or row, and you can no longer use any of the other cards in that column or row.

There’s a blank card. Each of you FILL SOMETHING OUT NOW for that blank card. Picking something from this game world might be most helpful.

You’ve also been dealt four "Ever After" ending cards, to be kept secret from other players until it is used. The object of the game for each player is to use their cards in telling a story, finishing the story by using ONE of your Ever After cards.

One player at a time is the storyteller. Beginning with Fortuna.

• whenever a story ingredient is mentioned, if any player has a Storytelling ELEMENT card that matches that ingredient, he or she can play it and become (or continue being) the storyteller.

• Or they may use the INTERRUPT card (in the same way)

• A PLOT TWIST card can be used as an interrupt, but once one is used, that is it, and plot twists are important for the EVER AFTER ending.

CHOOSE WISELY…

Once someone has used all of their available ELEMENT Cards on one of the CARDS, they may attempt to end the story with an EVER AFTER card.

Everyone will have one last chance to INTERRUPT to hijack the ending with one of your own  if they have also completed one of their ELEMENTS cards… otherwise, they can use one of their unused PLOT TWIST  cards to do so (if they are not finished with the elements).

(CR-DM) It's Skaaz who lets you know that Fortuna is still in there, somewhere inside herself. As soon as Balthazar occupied her body, she communicated with you through her occasionally absent familiar. "Don't kill me! I still need this body." 

Got it. Recording in progress. Go, Fortuna.

A MIND OF MANY ROOMS

(DT) The following story takes place in a goblin's mind. The stories here are made up but are drawn from real events that have happened to this goblin in the past. They don't always have a pleasant ending.

Think of the mind of the goblin as a location where different memories are rooms in a horror house. As you open one door and go to the next memory, you are in a new story. You can travel from one fable to the next by simply opening a doorway or closing it.

Now, our poor goblin here, who thought she was victorious over the lich, turns out that she has been controlled and taken over by the lich. She is frantically trying to escape the mad wizard who is chasing her through these different memories. Each room is an alternate storyline that may or may not have happened or is completely made up.

As the pair travel from room to room, they have slight control over the story that's being told. They can choose the room, the location, the actors, what's happening, but they can also use it to deceive each other. The lich is trying to find out Fortuna's secrets, and Fortuna is trying to stall and trick the lich. This horror game is a cat-and-mouse adventure.

Fortuna, knowing that she's being chased, is trying to present as many false stories that are believable to the lich while hiding the more real parts of her past to make them appear unlikely.

So, with that introduction, I begin with the first room.

FIRST ROOM – THE ROOFTOPS OF RIOT’S GATE

The first room takes place on Sentar, in the glistening mountaintop city of Riot’s Gate. There, our goblin is a necromancer ringleader of a group of occult burglars. She is escaping the authorities by sliding from rooftop to rooftop on a shield made of diamonds. Being pursued by the authorities is no small matter, because the list of charges that are up against her are quite long, and she would surely be executed if they caught up with her.

In each story there are the common elements of the hero who's trying to escape and the authorities. In this, the authorities are actually a manifestation of the lich Balthasar.

Balthasar is catching up and making ground. Suddenly Fortuna gets to a dead end. There seems to be nowhere to escape, and the authorities have her surrounded.

(PW) The edge of this rooftop looked out over the city and the mountain range but might as well have been a barrier to match the Wall of the Righteous. Before she could despair, the goblin necromancer realized that they were actually standing above a terraced cemetary, far below.

She used her necromantic powers to create a sort of fireman's catch, Calling on the undead, skeletons and corpse rose from the ground to create a catch for her, and she was able to jump off the roof and land mostly safely. Bruises and bumps, and amongst, well, to her friends, and away from the people up on the roof.

IN THE PRISON BEYOND HER MIND – FORTUNA/BALTHAZAR ATTACKS HAZEL

(CR-DM) The dust from all of the undead leaves the necromancer blinded for a moment, and in that, Fortuna does not know which mind room she has just stumbled into. Meanwhile, in the dungeon itself, the attack of Balthazar against the other party members continues. With Shroktath having been paralyzed and Khalid disarmed, Balthazar turns his attention, seething with his red piercing eyes glowing from Fortuna.

Fortuna's reaching arms grow unnaturally long, stretching towards Hazel. Balthazar recognizes Hazel, the cleric, as a clear threat.  Her arms quickly wrap around the ratfolk like tentacles or the rags of a mummy, unnaturally twisting. Hazel wonders whether he is in a dream or is this really happening? He can hear Fortuna's bones breaking. Balthazar sighs through Fortuna’s mouth. In his ecstasy to destroy a cleric, the lich breathes in Hazel’s’s unnaturally augmented fear.

(DS) Hazel is seldom made to feel himself a small creature. But this monstrosity that was his friend leaves him overwhelmed, frightened and desperate. As his existence starts to close out, the smallness of a warren folk rises to his defence.

Fear is a constant when you are small. This is yet another opportunity to push through the fear and to bend its energy to his will. Fight or flight. Hazel closes his eyes and breathes.

“I am small. I am warren folk. My fear is my ally. It lets me see the way out.”

Hazel finds the gap in the sorcerous entanglement and slips free of Fortuna/Balthazar’s fell embrace. In channeling that fear, he gains an advantage.

(TC) Warren folk are creature of darkness and tight spaces. Little does Balthazar realize, but in enveloping Hazel, the lich has given him an advantage. It's where Hazel feels at home. It's where Hazel has power with connection to his Azel, his god.

Hazel channels the spirits of his warren folk ancestors and the saints to come to his aid. It connects him with this haunted power. A power that pushes back and engulfs the Lich.

ROOM WITHIN A ROOM - BALTHAZAR SUCCUMBS TO ILLUSION  

(DT) Balthazar realizes his mistake and begins to panic as Hazel slips away. He's in a dream state and it's becoming a nightmare for him. But thankfully, he wakes up.

And he wakes up into his lair where he was working. He'd been working for years on his phylactery. It was common for him to awaken suddenly in his laboratory, having been troubled by nightmares like the one he’d just had. He casts them aside and he continues his obsessive work on completing his phylactery.

He knows that Lichdom is not far away and that he's going to accomplish his eternal goal of living forever. The focus clears the nightmare. He continues to mix alchemy reagents, diving into his tomes of eldritch magic. He knows that he's soon going to complete his Lichdom.

(PW) As Balthazar is working on his phylactery, his confidence is returning. He feels like he's getting control of the situation again. The face of a goblin appears in his phylactery and screeches at him, “Not yet!” This item can talk!

MIND ROOM – THE BURNING FOREST

And then he gets reversed back into the dream world. And now it's the goblin mind again... They're in sort of another space and it's a goblin woodcutter in a forest, but the forest is now on fire. We've kind of pulled him back down away from the real world back into the dream world or the story world, basically.

(TC) This is one of the first true threats that this Lich has ever faced. He is accustomed to mastering powerful magics to create the phylactery and countless horrors. And now there's that element of panic.

However, he is resourceful and amazingly powerful. He draws upon a limited wish to try to counteract the awakening strength of Hazel. If he could only lure the warren folk into this mind world. He thinks he will have an advantage, trapping Hazel in the different rooms and memories of Fortuna.

Hazel and Fortuna find themselves in another mind room. One that belonged to Luckums. And Luckums has just been recruited into the army and has met Basile for the first time. Hazel’s heart aches at the thought of it.

Fortuna/Luckums and Hazel/Basile are kind of sizing each other up, feeling nervous. There's this weird sort of presence in the background. This great evil that doesn't match up with their memories of that moment.

(CR-DM) Being in the army was hard times. Basile and Luckums have just been recruited into the road making company and ditch digging brigade, where it all began. There's a forest fire. It was set by the advancing horde.

For the past several days, you've been fighting fires together. This is how you all met, but now there's a heavier element to it. There’s almost this sense of deja vu. You're remembering these interactions between Basile and Luckums, but the fire is Balthazar and it's consuming all of the rooms!

PARALLEL WORLDS – THE AXE

This is a way for him to try to flush out Fortuna and to occupy Hazel. Meanwhile, in the real world, Hazel now appears to Balthazar to have succumbed. And Balthazar/Fortuna lets him slump to the floor and turns his attention to Khalid!

(DS) In the dream, ditch digging and road building are monotonous, exhausting and difficult. Luckums went from being a street urchin to a growing magic user who was very cerebral. She was not accustomed to hard labour, and suddenly she’s been thrown into something that is all muscle and strong backs.

And one day, “Go take care of those trees,” was the order from Sarge. She had to start using an axe. Heavy. Awkward. Not the skill she’d trained. She struggles with it. And it's the awkwardness of a dream where you're trying to do something, yet your body is not moving.

Back in the waking world, Khalid has been disarmed of his primary weapon. And is overwhelmed by a sneak attack that's threatening his people. Though he does have a backup. He always does. He pulls out his own axe.

And he wonders, how do I use the only weapon I have to attack my own teammate? And so there's this parallel that's occurring between the two—dream world and waking world—of the same axe. In the dream, the clumsy army tool that's ugly and damaged and dirty is paralleled in the awake, where it's now this beautiful weapon!

Khalid is trying to figure out what to do with it. Luckums is trying to figure out what to do with it.

(DT) During the fight in the real world, Khalid is using the axe to keep Fortuna-lich at bay. There are the two ongoing realities, on top of each other. Khalid may be fighting the goblin, but really strikes at the heart of the lich, because they're metaphysically in the same spot. This causes the room to change, and it's very jarring for the lich who was controlling the location.

When Khalid strikes Fortuna, it has an impact on obviously Fortuna, but also the lich heals it through his heart, and it causes the lich to lose Fortuna for a moment.

PIRATE SHIP ROOM

Fortuna escapes on a floating pirate ship that looks like it belongs to the Galantine Empire. It's fueled by rainbow fireworks and scoops up through the clouds, tearing through the sphere into the astral plane. At the helm, Fortuna trying to throw in fake memories.

Jennifer is there, and finally the two lovers Fortuna and Jennifer are reunited at the front of the ship. They spread their arms out, Titanic style.

They know that they're about to part ways. The istorimancer tells Fortuna, “There's a lot of power in stories. Never forget that.”

Fortuna, who was kind of lost in her own mind, senses the presence of Jennifer. She wonders perhaps, if it was Jennifer was whom the lich consumed. Or maybe a temporal clone?

Somehow, the lich has part of Jennifer in his mind. So, Fortuna's trying to dig out the secrets.

(CR-DM) In fact this reflection of Jennifer is part of the lich's own treacherous alchemy, as he sifts through Fortuna's memories. He’s found the importance of the Istorimancer to her. He is now using istorimancy himself—experimenting with it for the first time—having consumed an istorimancer's essence inside of the prison. The istorimancer he consumed was not Jennifer, but he's used it to find a weakness in Fortuna and gain an advantage.

Fortuna has exposed her weakness to him. He now shifts the scene to one in which Jennifer is captured by Skitterix. He's trying to manipulate Fortuna into a point of weakness. He aims to dominate the last of her will inside of her, using the power of stories.

STORY WITHIN A STORY WITHIN

He shifts the scene to a small and peaceful cottage. In which a very old Fortuna is wiling away.

(TC) Unfortunately for the lich, while he is working, it opening a door to a magical power with which he is very inexperienced The stories start to work on the lich like a disease. They affect him in unpredictable ways. While he's set this old Fortuna room to work, the lich is thrown back into his own ill spent life.

Re-experiencing some of the key moments in his earlier existence start to paralyze him and work on him. He's caught in indecisions. The things that he could have done. The things that he could have done differently.

How he could have been more powerful.

(PW) The lich is on the back foot, because it's made a critical mistake.

A lich is, by its very nature, something whose story is actually over. They are basically extending their story through artificial and corrupted means.

The Istorimancer he consumed was actually cleverer than the Lich had thought. He'd implanted a story seed in this moment, leaving the lich somewhat befuddled.

There is a book. And that book is something that both Luckums and Hazel can now access. They open it, and inside that book is actually the story of the Istorimancer. And the Istorimancer actually implanted that book. Sort of a dream.

Kind of an item within a dream within a dream. And unleashing and opening that book momentarily creates an opening to the real world. Where Khalid actually doesn't see Luckums for like a split second. He just sees the lich. And in that split second, he crushes down with his axe.

In the spirit world inside Fortuna, the lich kind of cries out in front of Hazel and Luckums.

(DS) Our heroes are interacting in both the waking world and a dream world.

Khalid has been struggling with his weapon. Wow! He has this flash that the Fortuna is not Fortuna but the lich and he goes to strike. With all the confidence that he's striking the lich, not his colleague. There's a moment of doubt in the middle of it.

While the while the lich has been wounded mortally Khalid believes that he's actually killed his teammate. Has not has not seen through the deception but was part of the deception. It was the story.

“What have I done?”

The lich is again taking control and struggling to try and fix it, because that's what Khalid always wants to do. Fix it. He's reaching now for some sort of healing potion.

“I didn't make a mistake. I did make a mistake, but I can still heal it.” He fumbles for the potion as he cradles Fortuna’s body, trying to heal her.

The risk now is that he'll heal the lich instead of instead of healing his friend.

INDECISION IS A PRISON

(DT) Indecision, in itself, is a prison. If you have regret and you make a mistake, you're locking out potentials and you're creating barriers for yourself. This shifts the narrative in a way as this potion does get used.

It does heal the lich but it also heals Fortuna. The story gets reinvigorated on all fronts. Fortuna, though having understood what's going on in her own mind, now realizes that she can multi-thread her stories. She can layer three stories at the same time. So there's three stories that take off, all of a sudden.

There's one which is so the three stories relate to a prison. The first story is the lich imprisoned before it got out. Placing the lich is put back in its prison. It hasn't escaped yet or killed the Istorimancer.

Then you have the narrative of the Istorimancer who is in the prison and has been captured. We find out who that is in a moment. This takes place just before they know that they're about to be. They hear someone breaking the cells open and they see the Lich coming to consume them to reinvigorate his power.

The third prison is actually a vault. In the vault the players are shown through the book. The Istorimancer's book that we were looking at. The story inside shows a prison where the Illithid are hiding the phylactery!

The Istorimancer knew, and he hid this knowledge where even the lich couldn’t find it inside himself. Inside a story! The heroes now gain the information of where the lich's phylactery is inside the prison.

(TC) So there are the three stories. Fortuna knows which ones are present for the Lich. She's hiding and showing them to her friends.

MIND ROOM - COTTAGE IN THE DARK WOODS

(CR) Fortuna has taken refuge in a cottage. She's aged and she's preparing a stew for her guests. She turns and puts the pot down.

“It's so lovely to see you again after all these years, and share some neogi noodle soup.” And she puts the stew down in front of the guest, who is in fact Skitterex.

“Please, so nice to have me here with you,” he whimpers.

He slurps the soup. “Yes, everything you are, came from me,” the Voice inside her head mutters there in the cottage, “Now I am part of you. Skitterex am inside of you and part of you! Forever.”

“Skitterex am likes this story very much. Oh, and this soup is delicious. Skitterix am delicious! Skitterex knows things. Skitterex knows things. Skitterix has many stories. Now, Skitterix am part of you story forever!”

(TC) This is Khalid’s journey. Unbeknownst to Khalid, his moment of weakness and his moment of doubt is actually a moment of great strength. It's what a truly great leader can do. What they are capable of, holding these doubts and these concerns for the people in their charge. When he when he has his moment of doubt and he's doing the healing, that is the connection to humanity and the greatness of Khalid's leadership.

He is present in the room in the lich's mind of stories with his companions. In combination with the opening of the secret of the prison, of the book to the phylactery, the connection of Khlaid to his friends actually takes Khalid on a journey to the phylactery’s hiding place in the real world!

Fortuna is healed from the wound he delivered with his axe, moaning unconscious on the ground over the battle within her mind. Armed now with the knowledge from the Istorimancer’ book, communicated through his connection to his friends, so begins Khalid’s frantic search through the convoluted halls and nightmarish rooms of the illithid prison for the lich’s phylactery. They’ve kept it close, and he is drawn to it!

He's on his own and he has his axe.

PHYLACT-ORIOUS EVER AFTER

(DS) Khalid is determined now to assert his ending. His Ever After.

(CR-DM) We know where the phylactery is. The cat and mouse game inside of Fortuna's head where it's no longer quite cat and mouse because Fortuna is off aged and eating soup, in a cottage, and the lich is imprisoned, worried about the whereabouts of his phylactery.

(DS) This whole cat and mouse game has really been a journey. It started with the tension and thrill of Luckum’s early life, which mixes with Fortuna, racing on her disc through the streets of Riot’s Gate.

Then the authorities catching up and getting into her capture and conscription into the Federation’s army on Sentar in the middle of a terrible, nihilistic war. And that gets worse. Loss of freedom. Loss of control. A prison of its own kind in spite of it being service.

And in that, the most degrading, very physical roadworks only to be enslaved entirely! Then, she escaped through her magic, with a smaller group. Now, another type of suffering and sorrow where she’s trapped inside her own body by the lich.

The final way is the cottage, the cottage and cooking, which is one of Luckum-Fortuna's great loves. The ultimate retirement is to just be in a cottage by yourself, feeding those you love, and the magic creativity of cooking. Her sorrow did come to an end and her joy began.

The next trick is of Skitterix somehow being inside that, because she could learn that two parts of the story through her little cottage.

Even Skitterix, as horrible as he was, had a role to play. “Everything you are, is because of me,” he had said. Fortuna-Luckums had learned from the worst elements of Skitterix to be a better person. Within the dream, this is represented by, ‘I teach you how to cook’ and ‘share a meal.”

So, the narrative thread is this, the secret location of the phylactery is in a cabinet. And when Fortuna opens up the cabinet to get the secret ingredient for her soup, it is actually the pathway to the phylactery. And her joy began. And her joy began.

DENOUEMENT TWISTS

(DT) The adversary is envious, because the heroes have a good story writer, and are fortunate enough to have a good ending! Villains usually don't get that luxury. I believe it was sorry again, someone was in the real world was a truck test in the real world that was going to getting the, the phylactery. Khalid has the phylactery now in the real world.

He has a choice to make. What does he do with it? Does he destroy it, and therefor, the lich. Does he put it near Fortuna and draw the lich into this prison forever? Or perhaps, there's another action that Khalid takes to end the story. The plot twist is, Khalid has the factory.

(TC) Balthazar is feeling wrath. He thought he was so clever. He thought he was imprisoning people in Fortuna’s dream world. Little did he know, he was actually leading us straight to his phylactery and his own weakness.

He's wrathful at himself, and he makes a great mistake. He leaves Fortuna to manifest back in the real world. It creates like a magical pop. Which sets us free from his influence.

(PW) Having been thrown into this dream world of the phylactery, the Lich thought that Hazel had been sent there afraid, with his mind semi-broken by the traumatic sights he’s seen. What he doesn't understand is that Hazel literally was born out of fear on the ghost ship. Fear does not affect him as much.

Hazel grabs as much of Balthazar as he can, as he is getting ready go away. The warren folk cleric begins to absorb understanding and knowledge. Hazel is especially focused on understanding as much as he can about the One. Thus, the spell was broken, and everyone caught inside the dream rooms of Fortuna was freed!

(CR-DM) Balthazar has left Fortuna's body—his refuge—in his wrath. He appears to Khalid like one of the roiling Callers in Darkness—all oily rags of screeching faces—roaring towards him. Khalid had been frantically ripping through all of the caged potions and cupboards of the Illithid. Then he found it, grabbed it and turned to face the lich’s furious soul.

(DS) Khalid is frantic. He is searching, to find the phylactery, and facing an existential decision. He again has a vision of Hazel aboard the Cygnet Terrace, the evil there, and the evil of Basile struggling with the One.

In this, Khalid has an insight. His previous existence was the pursuit of destroying his enemies. The gun is only a destructive force. You do not point a gun at anything you do not wish to destroy utterly, and that's been his life.

However, the journey since then has shown him that enemies can be redeemed, and new allies can be gained in the strangest of places. He had to lose a hand to save Goat Boy to learn this, and in holding onto the existence of an existentially evil creature, he sees this insight to his longtime friend, Fortuna.

An ally, a hidden asset, appears from nowhere. He asks himself, can saving, not destroying, the Lich be a key to regaining Basile? If he traps the Lich in its phylactery, without destroying it, he will have an asset.

Just as with with the vision of Skitterex, for whatever reason, it would seem enemies can be redeemed and allies can be found in the strangest places. Perhaps there's some use… perhaps Balthazar has some role yet to play in the story before it's over.

(CR-DM) Fortuna crumples to the ground and collapses as Balthazar left her body and charged at Khalid. Much to its surprise, the roiling creature flying from her face ends up going directly inside of the phylactery Khalid holds up between himself and her. It gets sucked right up. Balthazar is captured!

(DT) Fortuna sighs. A pure heart will always triumph in the end. Oh, how lovely.

(CR-DM) And scene!

FORTUNA: Before you all leave, Fortuna, you walk over to Balthazaar’s ragged remains and extract a psionic key. This accesses the downshaft that will take you to any level. You immediately know where to find it.

The DOWNSHAFT: is a chimney that runs the length of the spiral. The key opened a mechanical door through tonnes of rock to access it, but Shroktath, you immediately recognize that the shaft itself is not material as such. It is INBETWEEN the rocks. There is no elevator. Where in the prison does t he KEYWEILDER wish to go?

Your ears can sense the unbelievable quantity of rock pressing in on all sides of you.

Its eyes have been removed from its grey and bulbous head. There are scars around the holes, crudely sewn shut with stitches that have long since scarred over but never been removed. Puss leaks from the edges. 

It’s feet and hands have been amputated without being stitched shut. Maggots cover the wounds. 

The top of its skull has been removed and replaced with a mechanical brace that looks as though it can be opened and closed at will. 

Tubes running to its nose holes run to a small pump built into the wall. A plate of the brown yellow goo is half eaten on the floor. There are crusts of it around the creature’s mouth.

Notes detail unspeakable tortures. For what, you gasp. For secrets revealed? Surely nothing is worth this - what it must do to the perpetrator, to say nothing of the victim. To what end?

A line in the notes makes the horror of it all the more palpable.

“The torment keeps its mighty mind preoccupied,” you realize. "That it is unable to focus not on vengeance or escape."

1. Astral Dreadnought: Small slug, apparently a massive an titanic astral creatures

2. A Fihyr, as you've encountered in the Inbetween Places, like corrupted parts of the Cradle of Creation - all snapping teeth, lashing tentacles, and glaring eyes. The container hums, and hurts to look at.

3. BROKEN & EMPTY... the names scratched out. The psi-crystal powering containment is still functional, though it sparks dangerously

1. Ferrumenstra: Elemental Lord of Rust – a small crablike creature in a suppression chamber

2. BROKEN & EMPTY: Elemental Lord of Alchemy - whatever it was, it appears to have escaped... the container is broken open from the inside. The psi-crystal empowering the containment unit is dead and cracked.

There are four temporal anomalies in this sector, though it appears that there was a fifth. And the notes indicate that one was recently removed. All of them are encased in psi-crystal empowered containment units.

1. Basile 1 – undead, kept alive by the chamber. Pieces of Basile, and Kyton chains

2. Basile 2 - A living tissue upper torso of Basile, that is otherwise unconscious. Its brain is expsed and filled with wires and tubes.

3. Basile 3 – Basile X7B1: This prison cell’s door is specially sealed. There is no mistaking the warrenfolk you see floating in the stasis cylinder.  Despite the horrific his deformation, it is your dear friend. Cephalic tissue has grown out of his head and stretches part of the way down his back. A feeding tube goes down his throat runs to a device outside the cylinder. It has a circular opening about 1’ wide, similar to the door on a pot belly stove, and it clicks occasionally. An air compressor that leads to tubes in his nostrils hisses at regular intervals. He appears asleep, but twitches as though he were dreaming.

You understand that he senses your presence. You can interact...

• LUCKUMS: The stasis chamber Is suppressing some sort of chrono-effect

• HAZEL: Removing him would kill him

• HAZEL: As you approach tendrils quiver and reach out. The sense is overwhelming… “Braal”… This Basile is being transformed into an Elder Brain. The lab notes confirm this.

Notes in Qualith: detailing efforts to transform him physically and psychologically in the hopes of harnessing the chronal energy and allowing a colony of illithid to become aster chronomancy. The challenge has been the strength of this Basile’s personality and its determination to resist the psychological transformation.

• • Basile: “I saw inside YOUR Basile as he Became One. He piqued the One's curiousity and lingered for a time.” 

4. Specimen KY321 (Kyton): This prison cell’s door is specially sealed.  Inside there is a small version of the psi-crystal powered chambers, as seen in the other cells, but this has multiple back-up psi-crystals and additional security. An infinity loop made of barbed wire and flesh and pulsating with a mix of negative and temporal energy. Whatever this is, it is powerful and is pushing to escape. The chamber in which it is held pushes back with equal force. The balance of pressure is so intense, you can feel it in your teeth, the moment you enter the prison cell. You recognize inherently that the thing inside holds an unbelievable amount of potential energy.

• • • Notes indicate preliminary attempts to weaponize this "temporally charged Kyton infection"

    • There is a portable power unit for this.

The goblins have searched everywhere for a key to the Downshaft. They tried to make their way up through the spiral, but had to turn back because of the battles amongst the surviving illithid prisoners and the surviving guardians and sentinels. They are waiting for the murdering to run its course. Meanwhile, Canto, the one surviving Istorimancer in the prison is telling them stories around a cozy fire. Goblin legends and fables. They are roasting illithid for dinner. The fire emits a warm glow that can be seen around the corner and outside their cell. They do not try to hide it.

The goblins appear slighty different than the goblins of Sentar. They speak what sounds like an accented dialect of Sentarean goblinoid and have foreign sounding names: Rodrigo, Paula, Guadalupe, Javier, Eduardo, Antonio, and Catalina.

Canto is a stag-moreau istorimancer (his antlers have been sawed off). He speaks their language and is listening to their stories. The other storytellers are dead. Canto had found a way to surreptitiously communicate with the goblins through whistling each time his cell was opened. This allowed him to escape the slaughter when the riots began. But that’s a tale for another time.

This Illithid is unlike any you have seen before. He has brain material growing outside his skull and has two psionic tendrils dangling from beneath its ridged edges. He stands taller than most Illithids as well, and has a muscular build.

The tentacles take hold of the empty space around him. The air itself seems to crumple in his grasp. With a heave, he tears two gaping holes in reality, on either side of him. And the wounds let the fihyr pour in!

END OF ROUND: Tentacles burst forth around each of you…

A psi-crystal powered door seals this prison cell of Jormund Goss.

This is a sound and psychic proof room. A naked illithid sits serenely at its centre of the chamber. When you enter, he chuckles silently in his squiddy sort of way – his tentacles waving lightly.

"Alright, alright, alright."

"I knew you'd come, man. That's what stories do!"

We may have just saved existence. Alright, that might be going a bit far. We may have - probably have - saved Magluon. We managed to kill the Warden and get to Yurgon Gos - the Okalappa leader that might undo the evil monolith that is the illithid.

I usually feel pretty calm when our group faces a challenge, but honestly, I had my doubts as to whether we’d succeed on this from the start. Worse, I worried that somehow, if we failed, the Illithid would capture us and somehow use us to further their evil ends. It took almost everything we had, but we may have just done it.

For starters, we managed to survive round two with the slippery demilich. I was paralyzed by the lich’s initial attack, and only aware of a sliver of what went down. I could hear the thoughts of my comrades - there was some kind of dreamlike, shifting battle going on that I wasn’t a part of. I could tell that the lich was attempting to use its newly consumed powers of storimancy to hunt down Fortuna’s consciousness in this dream/story world, but got more than it bargained for. It lost control of the story threads, as my comrades became co-creators of the dreams' twists and turns. The narrative ended up leading Khalid straight to the story of the phylactery, and the lich’s doom.

Frozen as I was, I could only watch helplessly, as Fortuna’s body, possessed by the lich, lashed out at my comrades. At one point, poor Khalid was wracked with doubt and regret as he’d attacked what he thought was the lich? Or had he struck Fortuna? But I saw it clear as a sunrise - it was his capacity for doubt in his actions, his care for his comrades, that made him not just a capable leader, but a great one.

Anyways, the lich sorted, we caught a very lucky break. We almost stumbled onto a secret, central shaft that covered the prison “top” to “bottom.” I say lucky because we were nearly played out - Hazel and Fortuna especially, as they depended on their spells more than Khalid or I did. I was wondering how much would be left of us by the time we worked our way, painstakingly, through the spiral. And adding to that, time wasn’t on our side. Sooner rather than later the illithid would figure out how to bring reinforcements into their prison, and we’d have more and bigger problems on our hands than just the Warden.

Too eagerly, I stepped into the shaft, only to plummet like a stone and have to be saved by Hazel. But our tried and true method of getting through the spiral passageways worked here, and so we quickly made our way to the maximum security levels of the illithid prison.

We found fragments or copies of Basile somehow created in the moments after his sacrifice to keep the One at bay and out of the spheres. Two of the three fragments had been mutated beyond any Basile-ness by the evil illithid. But one… Ah, one! One was still Basile! I cannot describe how good it felt to be around my friend again - my friend who I’d been through so much with, who had saved my life, who had been my pack warden, my friend who I thought was dead and who I had missed so dearly.

Basile’s wishes were clear. Either we could get him out, or put an end to him and the horrible transformation the mind flayers were trying to force upon him. With absolute clarity, I knew I could not leave my friend to the fate the illithids had in store for him. 

There were a few cells in the prison that we just steered clear of, but we did decide to take a mutated Kyton - filled with hatred of the illithid but held fast by their psionic powers - along with us. Sort of a Kyton bomb. Gave me the shivers, given our past experiences with these monsters, but desperate times and all that.

We went down deeper and found the captured goblins, and - I think - the only storimancer left alive in the prison. This feels weird to write, but it was fun to be around a bunch of goblins again. We managed to get them fired up to come with us and face the warden. It wasn’t that hard of a sell, really - adventure, blood, battle, risk of death, and all worthy of grand stories at the end.

With our new allies, we pressed on to the end of the prison where the Warden lay in wait for us. It was a glorious battle. Fortuna amazed me. Drained of most of her magic she still fearlessly and smartly played a key role in our victory, flying above the swarm of fears that the Warden had summoned and coolly disabling the magics the Warden had placed to protect it. Khalid helped to inspire and lead us, and blasted openings in the horde of fears that allowed the rest of us to advance closer to our enemy. As I closed with the Warden, I called upon the power of the architects to end this false gardener. But it was Hazel that finally brought it down with a flurry of blows from his mace. I can picture it like a work of art in my mind: Hazel’s mace reverse glowing with the darkness of his god; his face so purely focused and set; his blows raining down upon the crumpling form of the Warden.

How fitting, that the leader of this prison, this high ranking and powerful illithid - the scourge of the Warrenfolk - was brought low by Hazel, a hero of his people.

With what little strength I had left, I leaned in my spear and smiled.

Hazel healed us up, and we opened the final cell door, only to find the relaxed to a nearly liquid state Yurgon Gos. It was as if he was lying back on a hammock next to a beautiful beach somewhere, and not in the worst cell of one of the worst prisons in existence. Stranger still, none of this was really that surprising. 

“Alright, alright, alright.” He said. “I knew you’d come, man. That’s what stories do!”