Centrum Glacies Session 72: Illusion
Week 72 Dungeons and Dragons Campaign in Centrum Glacies continues with the party still split up. The main group heads towards a potential disaster area, while Teztcal uses an illusion to incredible effect.
Like my other campaign, I’m turning this one into a book series. You can check out the first one here.
Anyway, just like my other campaign, there is a whole lot going on and I don’t want to elaborate on every moving piece in the story. You can see the whole thing in the book series.
!!!Trigger Warning!!!
This story deals with a cruel world with some horrific twists. So far, this campaign has featured: Animals getting killed, Genocide, lots of body horror, evil cults, brainwashing, torture.
One of the party members had an eye gouged out and lost an arm. Not exactly the way it happens in Berserk, but that might have been the inspiration for it. The group was incinerated in lava. But rather than die, they were transformed into Demons. They might be free from these transformations for now, but only time will tell what this means for them.
!!!Final Trigger Warning!!!
Jyona remained in the Dragon’s lair and awaited the final riddle from the Sphinx. The creature admitted that she didn’t seem to understand nuanced philosophical questions, and so decided to ask her a different sort of Riddle: “In your complex life, what is it you seek?”
Jyona went on a very large explanation of all her acquired knowledge of Sphinxes and this sphinx in particular. She stated that that type of knowledge is what she truly desired of all things.
The Sphinx was pleased with her answer. Although it had remained silent for a time making Jyona fear otherwise. As a reward it tells her what happened to Teztcal and Vitality. They had confronted the Dragon which took a turn for the worse when a strange creature had appeared in its lair. So the Sphinx had sent them away to save their lives.
Something that the Sphinx claimed should have been impossible since it controlled the way into the Dragon’s lair. Its true lair was actually a pocket dimension that can only be seen by those the Sphinx let in. Except this creature had ignored that and turned the Dragon into a horrible monstrosity. Even now, the Sphinx was using much of its power to prevent the Dragon from leaving.
Answers
Unfortunately, the Sphinx also reported that getting them away from the Dragon had not protected them from other problems. Apparently they had been followed to this place. Since Vitality and Teztcal had been rendered unconscious from their Dragon battle, they had been captured and taken back to Zrin.
Jyona thanked the Sphinx for all the information as well as a chance to play games that expanded knowledge and returned to the party. She gave them all the information to gleamed from the Sphinx.
They made the assumption that if Humans took Teztcal captive, they wanted him alive for some time. Meanwhile, the nobles were in more dire need as they are actively dying. This made their choice easy. Teztcal could wait.
Future Danger
Once they were away from the Dragon’s lair, the group headed north through the Jungle of Giants towards where the noble’s gathering was taking place. Along the way, they passed one of the Light of Abyss guard towards. And said soldiers drew their attention with some important news.
The Circle of Cleansing Druids sent to to burn a corrupted outgrowth in the nearby woods had not returned. Nor had the soldiers who had accompanied them. Something strange was happening and they were preparing to send for help investigating.
Knowing that the Guild would have a commission ready soon, the party prepared to potentially be the ones to investigate this issue. But Trent felt grim realizing that if they did, they might face the Druids again.
More Wraiths
Unfortunately, he didn’t get a chance to think about this long. As party drew near the meeting hall where the nobles were gathered, Obrom’s brand began to glow again. Just as before, the light around them faded as if the sun itself was being blocked.
Once again the party was attacked by Shades. A sure sign that another person had been killed during the noble meeting. Unfortunately for Obrom, the specters went for him first. And there were many more of them than before. He was put into peril almost immediately.
Perhaps due to the curse, the darkness summoned the mark faded when he fell unconscious. Yet the wraiths remained. At great disadvantage though as the sun was back and the Wraiths did not react well to it.
Seeing that the Wraiths were reacting to the sunlight, Trent used his staff and his only connection to Druid Magic to transform into a Radiant Elemental. Together he and Jyona made sure that Obrom was safe, and banished the remaining Wraiths.
No ghost appeared to talk to them. Which was an issue since they would have no further hints of what was happening at the meeting hall.
Entering the Meeting
After a very short rest, the group made it to the Meeting Hall proper. They wanted to be ready in case they came to a slaughter and had to deal with something even worse.
Luckily, there were living guards defending the doors from the inside. After letting the party know that they had better have a good reason to be here, they were let in after showing their Platinum and Gold Rank badges. Trent had to revert before he was let in.
Zrin Slums
Meanwhile, back in Zrin, Teztcal exited a house in the city slums. They sat inside the two pillars that were current ran by the two Thieves Guilds. Vitality had managed to escape the soldiers protecting the Golden Hands and found him while he was resting.
She mentioned her disgust for how revolting this place was. Truly much worse than the Lower City, feces smells dominated the air. And calling anything a house in this place was a misnomer. None of the building had four solid walls or roof. Most didn’t even have doors.
Vitality pointed towards a tower that dominated the underground landscape. It was also surrounded by similarly armed and armored soldiers to the ones that the two had fought recently. She told him that their stuff was locked up in there. Obviously guarded by the Golden Hands. At least it wasn’t the Zrin Guards who were patrolling other parts of the slum.
Teztcal suggested that one of them to distract the guards while the other gathered their things. And he volunteered to be the distraction. He even bragged to Vitality that he was a master of distracting people.
Vitality was surprised that Teztcal trusted her so quickly. The Dragon admitted that he had not reason not to trust her. After all, she had saved him from his cell several times and even put her life in danger to help him. Something she would soon be doing again.
Distractions
Teztcal had a plan already. And even though his Arcane Focus had been taken, he still had access to a few spells. So he cast mage hand, and then a minor illusion of himself. It was time to cause that distraction.
He had the hand go over to his illusion and far away from where he really stood. His first act was to have the hand start pulling people’s pants down. An action that quickly caused screams and drew the Zrin Guard’s attention.
Vitality had managed to hide an invisibility potion on her person, or perhaps more than one given how many situations she had escaped from recently, and used it to vanish from view. Now that the soldiers were distracted, she had a chance to get inside the tower.
Eventually a person called over the Golden Hands Guards to solve the issue of the pants-attacks. The Zrin Soldiers were being less than helpful. In fact their attempts to help simply resulted in homeless people being assaulted for the crime of being in the way.
The Golden Hand Soldiers found the entire situation amusing. They didn’t move to help out at all and simply looked and watched al the chaos as it unfolded. They remained ignorant to the fact that they were being tricked out of position.
Chaos
One of The Zrin Guards reached the Mage Hand. Teztcal watched with interest to see what the soldier would do. And knowing he was in a prime position to cause more mischief caused it to flips him off.
Yelling all sorts of obscenities now, though Teztcal couldn’t hear them clearly, the guard swatted the hand away. But this did little to stop the Dragon’s games. If anything it only encouraged him to cause more chaos.
Instead, he dismissed his initial illusions and summoned another illusion of a hand to taunt the guards from another house. This led them on a little chase around this corner of the slums. With poor people shoved aside at every corner, the soldiers scrambled to figure out what was going on and who was insulting them.
Increasing Chaos
What the soldiers didn’t realize was that the illusion they were chasing was in fact an imitation of a Mage Hand. Teztcal summoned an actual Mage Hand elsewhere and started tugging on people’s pants again. The guards scrambled around the slums continuing to hunt for the one responsible for all this. But to no success.
Still, Teztcal knew that eventually the soldiers would wizen up and find him. He needed to give them something to latch onto. A clear stranger that stuck out in this place to distract from the very real him. Luckily, he wore rags that helped him fit in. Not to mention the fact that he had grown up in a place not that different from here.
And so he conjured another illusion while dismissing the earlier one. This time, he summoned up the illusion of a wise old bearded man. And for added effect, had the visage chuckling to draw immediate attention. Teztcal was unusually successful at every one of these endeavors.
The illusion went into the house and vanished before the guards could reach it. And the soldiers were reaching their anger points now.
Anger Inducing Chaos
The guards decided to take their anger out on the innocent people laying around. As if their lives were not already terrible living in faux houses and surrounded by the smell of piss and feces. The guards shoved them around being as violent as possible in their pursuit of the perpetrator.
But Teztcal wasn’t done with these soldiers. He was having far too much fun at this point. The soldiers still hadn’t found him, but his Mage Hand found them and decided to tug on their uniforms as well. They screamed fury as the Dragon continued to mess with them while suffering no repercussion for this.
But it seemed that some of the Guards had grown aware of what was actually going on. While several continued to search the slums for Teztcal, about half as many returned to their posts. They seemed to understand that everything happening here was a distraction. Good thing they didn’t know what it was for.
After a final round of back and forth with the soldiers, Vitality returned with all of their equipment, including the dragon egg. She had a strange sack that seemed to hold an unbelievable amount of stuff in it. His companions would likely have been shocked at this item and realized its importance. Teztcal however did not.
The two made their way out of the slums. The soldiers did not stop them, being far too tired from Teztcal’s earlier games. And Vitality had been ready to deal with anyone who had tried to stop them from leaving. The Dragon’s scheme had worked remarkably well.
Wrap Up
Vitallity and Teztcal have their stuff back. Meanwhile the rest of the party is now with a bunch of nobles with a murderer on the loose. Will the two groups rejoin soon, or will their adventures continue away from each other?