Episode 1402: Of Mazes and Misunderstandings

So this group is coming off of a small but needed break, cleaning up some details from the previous chapter, and just kind of regrouping and recharging. Their over-arching goal is stoping the Cult of the Dragon from getting Tiamat access to this plane of existence. This group is:

Tsedek, our charming Tiefling Rogue

Itanis, a devious High Elf Wizard, fond of controlling any situation we may find ourselves in

Leoven, our quiet but effective Wood Elf Ranger

Magnus, the Human Paladin of Heironious, he has followed a vengeance path

Elle, the small but sparky High Elf Wizard, fond of blowing things up with lots of fire

The last night at Dragon's Bane Keep we received a note from a wizard who is working for the Cult of the Dragon inviting us to Xonthol's tower to rescue him and he has the Blue Dragon Mask he'll hand over. And in an attempt to not be completely obvious about our hero status, we took regular old horses ... and Magnus' Gryphon ... rather than the flying city.

A few days of riding we arrive at the town outside of the tower and decide to find the local bar to find out information on the tower. Tsedek, our charming silver tongued devil of a rogue decides to take point on this and starts talking up the barkeep and buying a round for the locals.

The tower was abandoned by Xonthol, rather abruptly, about 100 years ago. No one quite knows what happened to him, though there are many rumors. He became a Lich, he died, all sorts of things. All of his apprentices were abruptly escorted out and he just disappeared. But bad/weird things still keep happening up at the keep, people who enter the maze around it do not return alive.

The barkeep does point out one drunkard in the corner as one of Xonthol's apprentices, so Tsedek attempts to talk up the man. Now, the man is somewhere between elderly and ancient at this point, and quite the drunk, so he's not making much sense. But he swears he can guide us to the tower in the morning as he passes out drunk. Tsedek then tries to pat the drunk down but the barkeep notices and calls him out.

We decide to go up to the maze that evening to see what we were getting ourselves into, do some investigation. While Tsedek, Itanis, Elle, and Leoven are on the ground poking about they make the discover that multiple Wish* spells were used to create this maze. And for some reason, Magnus decides to get on his Gryphon and fly over the maze.

He starts shouting down to us that he doesn't know what the fuss is about as the maze is all overgrown. So Elle flies up and confirms from in the air the maze is all overgrown, but from the ground it is still very much maintained. She returns to the ground fairly quickly as her flight doesn't last all that long. Magnus flies into an invisible wall, and get a bit frustrated. He then, much to the astonishment of all of us, falls off his gryphon, right into the maze.

And then he walks right out of the maze right next to us. At that point we decide to go to bed for the night cause that was nuts.

The next morning we enter the bar to find the drunk former apprentice awake and mostly sort of sober-ish, and ready to go to the tower with us. So off we go to the maze.

We walk up to the maze and as we get there we see a figure exit onto one of the tower balconies, wave and shout at us. He states that he has what we're looking for and they've found out his deception, so he's going to go under the tower and leave the key somewhere we can find it to come find him before the cult does. That doesn't sound ominous at all. As he finished up that speech another figure comes out onto the balcony and after a brief fight, this second figure goes flying off the balcony and the first figure disappears.

Magnus, being who he is, just charges right into the maze. We follow along. At the first intersection of 8 paths, including the one we entered on, we find a sundial. Elle quickly deduces that the shadow it's casting has absolutely nothing to do with the current sun position. But she wasn't quick enough, Magnus continues barreling on towards the tower, even with her shouting "WAIT!" wasn't enough.

Following the path Magnus went barreling down for a little while as it wound and wandered about, we come to another 8 way intersection with a sun dial in the middle of it. And this time it's casting shadows down path "A" and path "C". Itanis and Leoven start investigating the sundial and ground as Magnus sidles up to the former apprentice guide and essentially threatens his life. "Now, if you don't tell us how to get to the tower, I'm going to have to kill you." Elle shouts "Magnus!" as the guide takes a drink or several.

Tsedek proceeds to charm the man into sharing his drink, and he tosses it into the hedge, only to find out the man has other flasks on his person. He is also drinking a fair bit, and kind of getting a bit wishy-washy on us. Suddenly, the man takes off down one of the paths so Magnus tries hold person on him, but it fails. So Itanis throws up an illusion wall and makes it real, so the guide runs face first into it. He starts crying "I don't want to die!!!"

We get the man back to the clearing and after some more back and forth the man comes up with the comment "Oh! We're supposed to split the difference!" Not entirely sure we believe him at this point, off we went down path "B". This path wandered about like the previous one did, and we found ourselves yet again in a clearing with 8 paths, a sundial, and shadows not being cast by the sun. Only this time it was casting shadows down path "A", "D", and "F".

Magnus, again, goes up to our guide and gets in his face, stating that we need to get to the tower how do we do this or do I need to kill you. Elle admonishes Magnus again. This elderly, drunk, human at this point is so frazzled at this point and quite drunk. Or at least actively drinking.

Elle yells why are you threatening his life, and Magnus responds with "I'm the bad cop, and he's the good cop" while pointing at Tsedek. With a completely puzzled look she responds "We don't go around harming our hirelings Magnus".

He scoffs "He's not our hireling" and that's when Elle realizes what's going on. "Magnus, this elderly human was an apprentice of the former owner of the tower. He does not work for the Cult of the Dragon. "

Yep, Magnus didn't quite grasp who the guide worked for and Elle was about to fight him on the subject. The guide is leaning heavily on his alcohol by this point and has had fits of sobbing, screaming he doesn't want to die a couple of times now, because of that detail. Magnus did ease off of the man at least.

After getting that sorted out, and quizzing the guide a bit more, we decide to continue with the split the difference strategy, and headed down path "E". Only this time, Itanis uses some of his created rocks to do a trail of breadcrumbs.

We follow this path around for awhile, never getting any closer to the tower, when we find ourselves in yet another 8 way intersection with a sundial in the middle. And this time the shadows are pointing down path "A", "C", "E", and "G". We're all a bit frustrated at this point. The guide tries to study the thing when the shadows start spinning like mad and then disappeared poof! Poor guy starts hurling at this point.

After some discussion back and forth we decide to follow Itanis' trail of rocks back to the previous sundial clearing. Only, that did not go as planned. As we're following the trail back it opens up into an 80' square clearing, with an approximately 60' round pool of murky water. In the center of this pool of murky water, a Garnet is hovering above the surface. This was not here the first time we traversed this path.

Tsedek decides to try mage hand to try to reach the garnet but the spell can't quite make it out that far, so Itanis uses unseen servant to go fetch the garnet. As soon as that servant grabbed the garnet though, 6 large humanoid-lobsters came up out of the murky water.

And that's where these two weeks of story ended! More next week I hope!

* Wish is a very powerful and very expensive spell that has a chance of never working again for a caster, and we're detecting multiple uses of this spell

* All the letter references for the paths were for the player's sanity, the paths weren't actually labeled.