Godsgrave Session 5 Recap

The party discovered that devils and demons were no longer answering summoning spells through Esmerelda's experimentations. Thirsting for more knowledge, they decided to chase down Lucian, The God of Knowledge and Magic, and Leorah's father.

Sol used his faerie magic to transport the party to the toadstool ring closest to Beacon, the city founded and ruled by Lucian. As they approached Leorah warned the group that while Lucian was the god of knowledge, he hoarded it and many in Beacon were illiterate serfs working to support the scholar caste. Leorah did not know why, but Beacon was also deeply chauvinistic in its customs.

Approaching Beacon, the party found a crowd gathered to burn an 11 year old girl, who was condemned for witchcraft due to her ability to read and write.

Tempted by violence, the party instead opted to have Sol distract the group with his divine music. Sol played so well that the group was complete enchanted, along with Nam-Joon. Sol lead the witchburners away into the forest before disappearing into the toadstool ring with Nam-Joon. The party gave the little girl money and a knife and set her on the path to Sorefoot Sanctuary.

Sol and Nam-Joon found themselves briefly stranded deep underground, as the peasants had dug up the toadstool ring looking for Sol. With a little help from Amun-Khun's beetle worshippers, they appeared in a forest and Sol turned into a giant owl to fly himself and Nam-Joon back to the party.

The party encountered Lucian on the edge of the mist, where he was studying its effects on various people, including a new demigod he had fathered, and Leorah proclaimed with disgust and disbelief that she had a new baby sister who was suspended in a cage above the deadly fog. Leorah used her divine insight to try to discover more about the fog, but it was hidden from her. She turned her omniscience on her father, and discovered that he knew deep down that he was responsible for the mist, but would never admit it, not even to himself.

Lucian had been watching the party with divination since the start of their journey, and was apparently expecting them with their favourite foods and drinks, expertly prepared. Eventually the whole party sat down, although many did not eat or drink, fearing poison.

Lucian had coated the chairs in a slow acting paralysis contact poison, although he failed to take into account the party's divine constitutions. A small fight started until the party realised that Lucian was merely an illusion.

Tired from the fight, the party decided to rest. Lucian reappeared in the night and trapped all but Nam-Joon in the forcecage. He captured Nam-Joon with the intention of studying him and then studying the effects of the mist on this "new god".

The party mobilised to rescue Nam-Joon, but Esmerelda let slip that Nam-Joon was still charged with energy from the Well of Souls and could simply suicide to reappear with his friends.

As soon as Lucian heard this through his arcane sensors, he sent his guards to restrain Nam-Joon, but it was too late. Nam-Joon reappeared in a burst of golden light with his friends.

The party ascended the tower, noting that the guards were instructed to stand down and let them through, passing some traps, before enountering multiple floors of empty magic circles inscribed to imprison demons and devils.

On the highest floor with these circles, the party discovered one devil and one demon still within their circles. The devil, desperate for freedom, bargained with the party, offering complete and honest information and safety for themselves and mortals for 300 years if they would simply release him from the circle. The party did so. True to his word, as devils must be, he told them everything he knew.

Lucian had been working on a project for the past 200 years. He had been trapping devils and demons, destroying them to their elemental components, discarding the pure Law and Chaos, and instilling the Evil into a scythe blade which he sent off to another god. The remaining devil and demon were apparently not needed to create the blade, and he had seen thousands of his kind destroyed to make it.

The party moved on to encounter Lucian, who sat in a throne surrounded by nine mirrors hanging from the ceiling.

The fight was brutal and in some ways, lacking in the misdirection and deviousness they had noticed before. The party did discover that Lucian had created 9 True Simulacra which dwelt inside the mirrors (portals to demiplanes) and that they could not kill him until they killed all the Mirror-Lucians.

While some of the party battled in the real world, the rest traveled from plane to plane, slaying each Lucian.

At one point the party disrupted Lucian's casting of an epic spell, and in the resulting arcane chaos, an enormous monster broke into the material plane and began to attack them.

Eventually, Amun-Khun slew the last mirror Lucian, and Esmerelda slew him in the real world. Leorah inherited his knowledge, and Esmerelda took his magical power.