The End of Dovar, Part 2
Campaign Diary - The End of Dovar, pt 2
The Dragonslayers et al defeated Dovar the Lightbringer, an enormous entity who presumably escaped the Far Realm (also known as the Warden's Keep) to take over the Temple of the Gods and preach the gospel of "peace" via his network of Emissaries throughout the land of Akhentour. With the help of Korth of Abrungia, a Warden hailed to Avo from Warden's Keep by Manod, a Free Emissary, the Dragonslayers defeated Dovar in combat that felt ... too easy. Dovar's form, a mass of semi-translucent purplish ooze, quickly dissolved, bringing color back into the nearby land and revealing, inside, a small, desiccated corpse.
Korth approached the corpse and his radiant armor burned it into ash unexpectedly, leaving only a small, polished sapphire which was in one of the corpse's eye sockets. The Dragonslayers felt that this was not the end of Dovar. It seemed that the body inside Dovar was, or could be, Alrenn the lich himself, who somehow had either taken on another form, or was captures/eaten by Dovar. The sapphire, they believed, may in fact by Alrenn's phylactery.
Outside, the battle between the Core -- Peggy, Aloysius, and Landallyn -- and the members of the Kavonne League of Adventurers who attempted to parley with Dovar but ended up becoming dominated by him had ended. The Dragonslayers left the Temple only to find the KLA dead, Ghein draped across Landallyn's lap as she sat on a now colorful tree stump, weeping inconsolably. The party knew that Ghein and Landallyn, both very old elves, had a long history between them, and left her to her grief. Peggy later revealed that Landallyn had tried to resurrect him in battle but he was unwilling.
Peggy recounted the twist in their own tale: that Ian, bard, Glendower's boyfriend, and the only surviving member of the KLA party that defeated the lich Alrenn 20 years ago, had fled, or disappeared at the very least. Peggy was furious, and Glendower unsure of the fate of her beloved. She attempted to contact him via her sending stone, but Ian did not answer
Meanwhile, far above the world, the Lost Ones, another adventuring group from the Redfang Guild, detonated a "magical bomb" using a spelljammer they recovered from an old wizard's manse in Valwyr (which looks like a cuttlefish and is called Scuttle); the bomb worked, and the enormous rift in the sky finally sealed. The ones on the ground waited for the spelljammer to return to take them back to Kavonne.
While they waited, Aloysius studied the sapphire and concluded that it wasn't Alrenn's phylactery, but the key to it. In addition, he discovered that those who had handled the gem were now connected to it somehow by a thin red magical thread. He surmised that those who touched it were the only ones who could use the key.
Eventually the spelljammer arrived and the party boarded, Bula helping to move the bodies of those slain into the ship. They discovered more within the Temple, specifically the Nastyboys, who were all dead save for Pyotr, who was hanging on by a thread. On the trip back
The spelljammer made a pit stop in Monitska, where the priests there who had returned brought out an enormous chest loaded onto a palanquin. The chest was full of platinum ingots, jewels, and assorted magic items the priests had obtained over the decades -- nearly their entire treasury handed over to Peggy for the defeat of Dovar. Peggy gave the Dragonslayers two ingots and access to several magical items.
In Kavonne, Bula again helped load bodies into the resurrection chamber inside the KLA headquarters. Landallyn was there; she asked Bula about what she would do if she died. Would she want to be resurrected? Bula shrugged and seemed non-committed to the concept of A) dying and B) there being anything after you die to come back from. Aalari took a deep hot bath, Tal worked on creating a story of the events that had occurred. And Glendower went to Ian's room to see if he was there. He wasn't, at first, but Glendower's new tool, the Gem of Seeing, allowed her to see his invisible form, hiding in the corner, scared and face wet and red from crying.
Ian told Glendower about the Battle of Garrod and how Alrenn's phylactery is enclosed in a steel chest that can only be opened by someone who has pulled a card from the Deck of Many Things. Ian had the deck and the chest but was a coward and couldn't pull a card. Instead he brought it to Narellyn the sorcerer who opened a rift to the Plane of Fire and threw it inside, which ended up killing Narellyn in the process. Then their wizard, Demetrius, presumably cast Time Stop and when it ended, he was dead and Alrenn was gone. Glendower relayed that Peggy was furious with him and Ian said he would go, and left.
Glendower explained this to the group, saying she had found Ian's journal. Aloysius extrapolated what he believed Demetrius was up to: instead of killing Alrenn so that he would regenerate next to his phylactery, which could be a problem even in the intense world of the Plane of Fire, Aloysius believed that instead Demetrius encompassed Alrenn's close-to-dead body in some type of corrosive ooze, which would continually harm him while his regenerating ability, gained from siphoning the life from Teveren, would keep him alive, essentially putting him in homeostasis. Aloysius believed this would not be a permanent solution, which is also why Demetrius plane shifted Alrenn into Warden's Keep. How he knew about the Keep is unknown, but it appeared that the amount of effort to do this to Alrenn was sufficient to kill Demetrius.
Afterward, the party returned to Wodesville and divvied up upcoming jobs. The Dragonslayers were to head back to Khaosar to investigate the Free Emissaries and ask about their potential connection to Alrenn (if they're even still alive). The Lost Ones were to take their spelljammer around and see if they can locate the phylactery. The rest of the Core were to travel to Augzennet and ask the Orefather if they still have the Deck of Many Things. Beforehand, however, Peggy et al imparted more knowledge onto everyone, leveling them up to 10.