The characters in this session were:
- Caulis, a homunculus warlock liberated from its master; has made a pact with certain Faerie Powers.Cephalus T. Murkwater, a dagonian barrister and monk, specializing in martial arts and magical labour law.
- Cephalus T. Murkwater, a dagonian barrister and monk, specializing in martial arts and magical labour law.
- Garvin Otherwise, a human rogue and burglar of the Ravenswing Thieves’ Guild, with a very, very peculiar past and a zoog pet, Lenore.
- Vespidae, a waspkin bard/cleric – a sacred dancer with a deathwish, shunned by the waspkin community for complicated ritualistic reasons, and a devoted follower of the Queen in Yellow.
- Yam, an eccentric gnome illusionist and local graduate student at Umbral University. Yam cares little for money. Yam is curious. Yam is Yam.
XP Awarded: 420 XP.
Caulis and Yam both found themselves invited to the same event – a meeting of the exclusive Order of the Auriferous Twilight. Caulis had long been masquerading as a human member of the research collective, submitting research by mail under the pseudonym “Octavius Flasgatherer.” Yam’s research supervisor, Sebastian Eldridge, was also a member, and had requested the gnome’s presence for part of an experiment. The Order had informed Caulis that it was testing out a new invention, the Vitreodimensional Resonator, which could reveal a “hitherto hidden layer of our reality.” Yam, somewhat vexed by the increasingly dangerous assignments their supervisor had requested, asked Cephalus to accompany them as legal representation. Vespidae, meanwhile, was convinced by Caulis to come along as a “research subject.”
As usual, Caulchurch swirled with 
arcane vapours and miasmas, though near to the Metamorphic Scholarium the fumes were somewhat less intense than further south towards Goatsbridge. Most of the people in the street here were alchemists and their servants – automata, familiars, and homunculi on errands for their masters. Many of those susceptible to the gases of the district wore protective masks and goggles to ward off any ill effects. Some of the strange creatures bred in the cauldrons and vats of the Alchemist’s Quarter could also be seen in the street – one carriage was drawn by a two-headed badger the size of a horse, while a wizard walked a miniature sphinx down the street. A number of gnomes and cambions from the neighbouring districts of Mainspring and Little Pandemonium could be seen around the western edge of Caulchurch as well. The group made their way to the main campus of the Scholarium at the intersection of the Street of Limbs and the Street of Hearts. Caulis made a point to stop in the district to procure a potion to polymorph it into a shape resembling that of a human mage, thus assuming the persona of Octavius Flasgatherer.
The Scholarium itself was a bizarre architectural conglomeration that changes on an almost daily basis, spells woven into the very walls of the university triggering changes in style and substance so that a slender spire that one day might be built of stone or gleaming metal might the next become an imposing crystalline monolith or an elaborate wooden pagoda. Students and faculty could be seen entering and exiting the myriad doors of the strange school, homunculi carrying spellbooks and laboratory equipment. The would-be experimenters proceeded to the Balthazar Voss Laboratory – memorializing the alchemist Balthazar Voss, former president of the Scholarium who died in the explosion that created the Midden – which was currently fashioned from a kind of nacreous substance like mother-of-pearl. Inside the eerily glistening structure was assembled a group of wizards, sorcerers, warlocks, and other spellcasters, the arcanists of the Order of the Auriferous Twilight. At the centre of the hall was a huge mirror framed by complex machines that resembled Librarian designs, though of obviously more recent construction.
The party mingled with those in the hall. These included such characters as Iganatius the Unchanging a senior alchemist at the Metamorphic Scholarium. He earned the moniker “Everchanging” after a polymorphing accident: he fell into a vat of experimental polymorphic potion, and now, as a result, he was continuously altering his shape, one moment appearing as a wizened old man, the next a beautiful young woman, or a stubbled youth, or a barrel-chested man, or a child of six, or stranger forms – a bear-like humanoid, a horned, demonic being, a pale creature with a single eye, an owl-headed beast. Ignatius wore specially glamered clothes that shift to accommodate his myriad forms. Despite the kaleidoscopic, chimerical changes he undergoes every few moments, Ignatius conversed quite calmly with fellow members of the Order, quite accustomed to his periodic shifts in height, weight, and form. Other notables in the Order included Giselle Gnostus, of the Citadel of the Perpetual Storm, Hex’s school of Evocation. While most lycanthropes in Hex wee doomed to incarceration in Catch-All, an exception was made for gnomish weremoles. Weremoleism ran in certain elite gnome families and was seen as a great blessing, and care was taken to ensure that lycanthropes marry one another to perpetuate the ability through blood; equal care was taken to ensure it was not passed to those undeserving of the “earth’s gift.” Giselle Gnostus was one such weremole. She was currently in hybrid form, somewhere between a mole and a gnome. An earth-shaper of terrific skill, she was a professor of great distinction at the Citadel of the Perpetual Storm, always accompanied by her familiar, a giant beetle the size of a small dog, which scuttled along beside her.
By the far the most renowned of those gathered in the laboratory, however, was Master Melchior – one of the founders of the Order of Auriferous Twilight and also one of Hex’s oldest and most famous wizards. Though in his heyday Melchior had a fleshly body, now he was a preserved brain kept alive through powerful necromantic spells, alchemical preservatives, and transmutation magic. This brain was housed in a spidery automaton with a pair of humanoid forelimbs and a voice-box for speech, Melchior’s brain clearly visible in a glass jar at the automaton’s centre.
Melchior crept toward “Octavius” – that is, Caulis – and spoke to the disguised homunculus using his voice-box.
“Greetings, Ocatavius,” the brain said. “Or, should I say, Caulis?” After intimating that he had been following Caulis’ researches for some time, Melchior suggested that the homunculus and its companions speak to him at a later date about a job – something to do with one of the books the party had come across during their adventure. Further conversation was interrupted, however, as the experiment began.
“And now, the reason we have convened this meeting: the Vitreodimensional Resonator,” Ignatius said, currently in the form of a towering purple woman with four arms. “It’s based on certain technologies salvaged from the Old City through explorations undertaken by Cogswright & Associates.” He had shifted in form to the body of a thin, heavily bearded man with ink-black skin. “Professor Tawnish built and calibrated the Resonator. I’ll let her explain further.”
“Thank you Ignatius,” Viola Tawnish said, stepping forward – a conjuror from Fiend’s College, renowned for her theories on the nature of transplanar time and chronomancy. She first calculated the shifting temporal differentials between the Underworld and the mortal plane and is said to have twice visited Hell. Dressed in the Diabolique style, she had short-cropped red hair and soft mauve skin suggesting some form of non-human parentage. “The Librarians are known to have developed a network of portals to travel through physical space on this plane, as well as between different planes. Indeed, it may be through such a portal that they first arrived in our world. The vast majority of these portals are now inactive or destroyed, and while we have managed to create temporary gates between planes and to call beings from one world to another, we have not succeeded in duplicating a Librarian portal. Until now.” She smiles. “Using certain applications of mirror magic suggested by Professor Eldridge, I have created what I think may be a functional portal-like device, the Vitreodimensional Resonator. When activated, the mirror should become a gateway. On the other side – another world.”
“And which plane do you propose to visit?” Master Melchior asked, his robotic voice croaked through his automaton body.
“We aren’t sure which plane the Resonator will lead to,” Ignatius said. “In fact, that’s part of the experiment. The results of this journey may tell us a great deal about the cosmological makeup of the multiverse.”
“Yes,” Professor Tawnish said. “I am sure you are all familiar with some of the most common theories. Some believe that our world is but one iteration of the Magistra’s arcane formula, our reality a program formed out of magical code; other planes are similarly programmed, but with different rules and formulae. Others believe that universes are actually super-organisms, capable of breeding with one another to produce new worlds, or of splitting in two via fission with every choice we make, or every tiny, chaotic fluctuation. There are some who argue that our entire existence is an elaborate illusion, a shadow thrown by some elemental light at the heart of creation., and that other worlds are similar shadows cast by the same flame. And then there are those who think there is only a single universe, and that what seem like other planes of existence are in fact distant planets – that Hell and Faerie and the Dreamlands and even Anathema are but different, vastly disparate regions of the same plane.
“The explorers who venture through into whatever world the Vitreodimensional Resonator reveals must take care to note everything they can about its nature. There may be clues as to the nature of our multiverse which may be uncovered. Those who step foot into whatever strange new world the Resonator reveals should approach it as natural philosophers, cataloguing flora and fauna, noting the presence of any sentient inhabitants, their customs and laws, and also any strange physical laws which this plane might possess…”
With a few invocations, the Vitreodimensional Resonator powered up. The party braced themselves and stepped through the swirling vortex of magical energy into another world…
Emerging through the portal, Yam, Cephalus, Caulis, and Vespidae stepped into a copse of trees just beyond a well-ploughed field, not far from a small farmhouse with a barn and pens for livestock. It felt like they’d entered a pastoral painting, complete with grazing sheep, a blue sky dotted with clouds, and cheerful farmhands tending to the fields.
Other farms could be seen nearby, flanking a road that led down to a broad, clear river. Having looked out over the murky, oily, filth-clotted Radula River of Hex these many days, the sight of such clean, blue water was almost shocking. At the end of the road was a village, built on the riverbank. The village was surrounded by a low stone wall; cheerful-looking plumes of smoke drifted up from thatched roofs. The place looked antiquated, the architectural style reminiscent of buildings one might associate with a feudal past. A small keep presided over the tiny town. To the east a large island could be seen rising from the middle of the river, with swamplands dominating the surrounding banks. To the north a huge forest brooded, and to the west rose a distinctive craggy mountain. South looks to be hilly farmland.
Cautiously the group set out, heading for the farmhouse and the workers in the field.
Meanwhile, some time earlier…
One moment Garvin was walking through Corvid Commons on his way to Rosemary’s Receiving. The next, he was standing in the middle of a very different street. Buildings rose about him; though a few wouldn’t be too out of place in Hex, many wee glassy, glittering structures, and distantly he could make out some tall spires that might rival those of the Librarians in Engima Heap for height, as well as some sort of bulky metal dome or sphere. Trains on raised tracks rattled nearby, speeding off to some other quarter of the strange but eerily familiar city.
The street Garvin was in wasn’t filled with people but with some kind of boxy automata, mechanical carriages. A shrill sound filled the air as one of these machines barrels towards him. He tried to avoid it, but was knocked prone. Soon a crowd of people had gathered around him, pointing strange devices at him that clicked and flashed, and gibbering in a half-forgotten tongue. Panicking, Garvin muttered a quick spell and blinked to a nearby alley, leaving the crowd of people astonished.
“I’m not sure where we are, Lenore…” he said to the zoog still on his shoulder. “But I think I’ve been here before…”
Fashioning a quick disguise for himself as best he could using his disguise kit, Garvin set off into the city. Using a minor spell he managed to procure on of the small, rectangular devices everyone seemed to carry in this world. This was one was whitish, and had a symbol that looked a bit like a small apple. It seemed puzzling and had a glass panel covered in unusual sigils. Locating what looked like a bookstore, Garvin ducked inside and located what he guessed could be a dictionary or similar tome, hoping that it might help him make sense of the maddeningly familiar language of the people here. After skillfully shoplifting these, he headed for what looked like a coffeehouse and settled himself in a corner…
…only to appear quite suddenly seated on a stump, in the very copse of trees shared by his companions, drawn once more between worlds. Surprised but not displeased by the sudden reappearance of their companion, the party continued towards the farm, approaching one of the farmhands: a dark-haired, hale youth that several of the party members seemed to half-recognized. He identified himself as Jasper Van Lurken, and noted that the farm was owned by his parents, Leopold and Nicolet. The village nearby, he said, was called Blessing.
It was at this points that it clicked: the party was in a world eerily similar to their own, geographically at least. The craggy mountain was none other than Mount Shudder; the river was the Radula, albeit unpolluted. The village of Blessing stood where Hex should have been, or a part of it. But there was no sign of any Librarian structures, none of the alien spires of the Old City, nor the Elder Trees.
They were in a universe in which the Librarians never arrived.
Cephalus, meanwhile, had noticed a nearby gravestone not far from the farm. He used some of the ghostdust he’d secured back at the Puppeteer’s lair and, peering into the Ethereal plane, he saw the spectre of a young woman with dark hair, who identified herself as Annette Van Lurken. Having not encountered the Van Lurkens of Hex, he did not recognize her, but was able to discover that she died of some sort of sickness. It sounded as if magical medicine was considerably more primitive in this timeline.
Taking their leave of Jasper, the party headed toward Blessing. The village wall looked like it had seen better days, moss eating away at its crumbling length. Here and there a wooden fence had been erected to patch a gap or extend the extremely modest fortifications. The gate was of stout wood and stands open, guarded by a solitary man in chainmail armour leaning on a pike.
The guard, Roderick, asked a few minor questions about the party’s business in Blessing; they identified themselves as a troupe of actors. Roderick was alarmed at the sight of Vespidae, believing the waspkin to be a fairy from the Tangle – evidently that forest existed here as well. He was also perturbed by Cephalus, identifying him as one of the “merfolk” from the swamps. With some fast-talking, the party was able to pass them off as foreigners from a distant part of the world. Asking a few questions, they quickly got a lay of the land, learning that the town was ruled by a woman named Lady Fullblood, that it included several shops and inns, and that it was also the site of a large temple. Curious to learn more, they passed through the gate and into Blessing.
The village of Blessing was so modest that it scarcely possessed true streets, but rather a series of winding paths between the picturesque thatched-roof buildings. The town brought the words “wholesome” and “quaint” to mind; it was like something out of a child’s storybook. It was also curiously homogeneous; the people here were almost all human. A few gnomes could also be seen, as well as a handful of stocky, almost universally bearded creatures like oversized gnomes or short humans. Many eyes the party, some with wariness or suspicion but most with curiosity and welcoming smiles. Yam and Caulis were able to identify the bearded creatures as “dwarves” – a species long gone from their own world, sometimes thought to be ancestors of gnomes, and reputedly hunted to extinction by the Librarians during the primeval past.
The group’s first stop was the Troll & Tankard inn, a large establishment with an attached stables. A stone stair led up to the door of the common room, from which music and laughter emanated. The skull of a monstrous troll was hung above the bar, which was tended by a broad-shouldered man with an eyepatch who polished a mug and chats with various patrons, most of whom looked to be cut from roughly the same rural cloth as the rest of the townsfolk. The exception here was a fellow who wouldn’t be too out of place in Hex: a man dressed in blue robes and a pointed hat, with large spectacles and crazed hair. He sat in a corner booth drinking from a mug of ale and leafing through the first book the explorers had seen in Blessing. Several of the party realized abruptly that the man was the virtual double of the alchemist Valdemar Sluice!
Caulis idly peered over “Valdemar’s” shoulder and scanned the pages. There were real arcane formulae there, but mixed in with superstition and arcane nonsense. Noticing the party, Valdemar was delighted to observe Vespidae, and immediately launched into a series of questions, taking the waspkin for a fairy. The party began conversing, asking about the town. It seemed that this version of Valdemar was traveling from elsewhere and had been drawn to Blessing by some unusual rumours about magical happenings nearby. Meanwhile, Garvin and Cephalus noticed that the party was being watched with some alarm by an ill-favoured fellow in the tavern, who quickly left. They slipped out in pursuit and caught up with the man, Cephalus quickly subduing him. He identified himself as Brett, and claimed to have been heading to the local temple to speak to someone called Father Roland, warning the priest of the presence of “demons and spirits” in the town. With some suitably fast talking, he was persuaded that the party were an acting troupe in costume, come to perform a play for the entertainment of Blessing.
Of course, this meant that the party had to either get out of town… or put on a play.
Pondering this problem, the group headed to the local temple. Blessing seemed to have just one temple – a church dedicated to someone called “St. Melchior.” The name, of course, was familiar, though Master Melchior of Hex has certainly never been considered a saint. Though probably the most ornate building in Blessing, the church was rather ordinary-looking by the baroque and fanciful standards of Hex, built of plain, grey stone with modest decorations. Despite its lack of grandeur there was something decidedly welcoming and comforting about it – perhaps because it wasn’t dedicated to a slavering tentacle entity from beyond space and time, or a primeval demon-lord…
Inside, the church retained its relative plainness, though there were a number of murals painted on the walls depicting the life, miracles, and apparent martyrdom of St. Melchior, as well as statues in his name. He was mostly depicted as a bald, clever-looking man of middle years with a neat beard. He appeared to have been killed while trying to convert a tribe of trolls or similar creatures. A few clerics tended to the church, garbed in loose grey robes without adornment. Those learned in the history of Hex quickly recognized Master Melchior himself – or, rather a version of him – as he looked before he became a brain in a vat. They quickly found Father Roland, a stooped and aged man whose bent exterior was belied by the fierce zealotry burning in his eyes. The Father seemed ready to condemn the group and their activities, but with smooth talking from Garvin and Caulis he was convinced that the party’s play would in fact emphasize the dangers of temptation and of dabbling with dark powers. The party was careful not to disclose that they came from another plane. They found out a bit more about the local religion, which had a number of unusual features, revering only a single, simplistic deity and denouncing others as false idols.
Garvin visited the local blacksmith – “Axe & Anvil,” which seemed to be the only major smithy in Blessing. The creature labouring at its namesake in the open courtyard is one of the peculiar, stocky beings the group had seen about town in small numbers: what the party’s historians had identified as a “dwarf,” known in their home-reality through fossil evidence and ancient records. Like the rest of her ilk she had a beard, though hers was quite small. Her name turned out to be Bess Bonnyshield, a dwarven woman formerly of the Groanmount – apparently this world’s name for Mount Shudder – before the Wyrm, Scorra Bitterflame, laid her clan-home waste. Garvin bought a dwarf-made dagger, noting the extraordinary craftsmanship of the item.
The party next meandered down towards Pistons & Powders, as Yam was curious about this reputedly gnome-run establishment. This ramshackle-looking building wouldn’t have been too out of place in Mainspring, with its small doors and windows, large boiler, haphazard architecture, and plethora of hissing chimneys, though even this structure looked far less intricate than the gnomish buildings of Hex. Inside, a small tinker’s workshop could be be found. Though a few crude mechanical oddments were scattered about, it looked like the place mostly deals in basic repairs for pots, pans, and tools. A handful of simple firearms were sold here as well, though they were far more primitive than the complex wheellocks of Hex. A handful of gnomes worked here, mending metal goods.
Yam cheerfully bustled in, only to bump into a gnome. The tinker turned around – and stared into their own face. The gnome at Pistons & Powders was Yam, albeit dressed in oily mechanist’s clothes.
“Yam!” Yam said.
“Yam!” Yam responded. “You’re not some kind of shapeshifter are you?”
“I’m you from another dimension,” Yam disclosed with nonchalance. “Want to come hang out?”
“Sure!” Yam agreed, taking off their apron with a minimum of fuss. They turned their head to yell: “I’m on break!”
The party next headed to the market square at the southeast end of Blessing, near to the small town’s docks. Here they began planning for the performance they had now promised to put on, deciding to tell a version of the story of Robin Redcap. The two Yams and Caulis provided special effects while other members of the party, disguised through magic or cosmetics, assumed the guises of Duke Gothmord, Robin Redcap, and other persons. A crowd had soon gathered as word circulated of the performance, and as sun set the party began their impromptu tale, Vespidae using her dancing to enthrall the assembled commoners, while the “troupe’s” spellcasters used illusions to lend the performance an air of strange mystery. Hastily written and quasi-improvised dialogue might have ruined the play, but the magical effects bedazzled the bucolic onlookers. As the play concluded to great applause, however, the church bell tolled, and a town crier appeared, screaming: “Goblins at the Mountain Gate! Fear! Fire! Foes!”
The party rushed to the gates, grabbing up their weapons, to discover a band of the hunched, malformed goblins setting fire to buildings and terrorizing townsfolk. In the land of Hex such creatures had been exterminated or placed on reservations, to keep them from mischief, but in this land it seemed they ran amok! Some rode great spiders, apparently denizens of the Tangle, and they carried clubs and crude swords. Cephalus rushed forth, limbs flying, to dispatch the leader, while Yam conjured a cloud of daggers, eviscerating several of the goblins. The battle was brief, and though a few injuries were had, Garvin managed to put a bolt through the skull of a final, fleeing goblin, leaving them all dead. The few remaining townsfolk nearby rejoiced, hailing the group as heroes, though most had fled the battle… but time was growing short, the day long, and the group was eager to return from whence they had come. Yam’s double insisted on following them – as did a local girl from the town, who, having seen their power, asked to join them. Impressing upon both that they might not soon return, the party hurried back to the portal at Van Lurken farm and slipped through the dwindling vortex between worlds, back into the Metamorphic Scholarium’s laboratory in Caulchurch, with quite a few findings to report…
Images: Brain in a Jar from “Open Graves: Secrets of the Undead.”