The Wizard College & Chasing Tail
…as Molish finished patching everyone up, the Regulators set forth exploring the Forbidden City. Heading north from their entry point, the party approached a large building with a 15 foot ornate central archway. Carved into the stone facade were eight emblems that Pix recognized as representative of the eight schools of magic. While they cautiously began exploring, Spider-Leo took the opportunity to scout their surroundings. Heading east, Leo made his way to the main avenue. Far to the south, the druid glimpsed the end of a massive tail disappear between the buildings.
Dust and vine-covered once-ornate sculptures, paintings, and tapestries lined the hall with a half dozen doors. While exploring, Pix began chanting the ritual to detect magic. Upon opening the first door, Shady found a less ornate hallway with a dozen doors that appeared to lead to ransacked dorm rooms. As the tabaxi searched the rooms for anything overlooked, the gnome finished his chanting and disappeared! The remaining Regulators were instantly on alert, looking for their friendly wizard but seeing no signs of his passing and receiving no answer to a call with the simul stones. An ancient vase crashed down off its pillar, but the party turned that way and saw no one and no cause. Thaminor called out for Shady to return to the fold while the Regulators debated what to do next. As suddenly as Pix disappeared, he reappeared… in the middle of knocking another sculpture off its base (right next to Fell)!
Confident that he performed the ritual correctly, Pix warned the party that they may want to be cautious about their use of magic in this place. The next door led to an equally-ransacked but far more opulent living quarters, likely those of a long-gone headmaster. It turned out that Shady was a better investigator than whoever was there previously, as he uncovered a chest of treasure under one of the rugs! Next was a large dining hall, with two doors at the back. Upon entering the kitchen at the back of the dining hall, they found half a dozen vegepygmies that were quickly dispatched.
Vegepygmies, also known as moldies, or mold men, were fungus creatures that lived in dark forests or underground, hunting for sustenance and spreading the spores from which they reproduced. They were spawned from dead humanoids that were killed by a type of mold commonly known as russet mold.
Across the hall, they stepped in to a two-story library, where the vanilla smell of old books was spoiled by the odor of mold. As they entered the room, three soft-bodied, iridescent creatures floated down, tentacles rippling along their backs. Pix’s first attempt to cast a spell fizzled, while Molish’s seemed to enlarge him, rather than its intended effect. Thaminor charged straight at the monstrosities, slashing with his blade. Fell launched his missiles and Shady moved in with unarmed strikes. Pix’s next attempted casting seemed to be taking effect, when one of the enemies pulsed with an inside glow and that spell failed, too. Soon, the combined melee might of the Regulators cleared the room, and the final monstrosity fell to the floor. Upon searching for any valuable surviving books, they found two:
- Treatise on the Residents of the Woods and Wonderful Wilds: This book is meant to give insight about the wooded forests of Faerûn and the perils that they may contain. This book is torn/stained and some of the pages are missing. It is written in Druidic. This book is worth 50 GP.
- 101 Morsels And Monsters: A cook book detailing various recipes based around safely using the meat of creatures adventurers might slay in battle. This book is leafed through, but otherwise good condition. It has a lengthy foreword or dedication to someone. This book is worth 70 GP.
The final door led to a ransacked store for magical material components. Scouring the room, the party was able to assemble four component pouches before moving on.
Once Leo caught the Regulators up on the intel from his reconnaissance mission, they decided to head south towards the giant tail that was seen moving through the ruins. They cautiously proceeded, sticking to the shadows and side of the boulevard. About half way to their destination, they spied something amid the ruins west of the road: an abandoned campsite. Torn backpacks and rotted gear littered the ground around three moldering tents. At the center of the camp, a scrap of dirty yellow cloth hung from a crude wooden flagpole. In one of the buildings to the south of the camp, a floor had collapsed into a strange cellar. Upon investigation, the cellar contained a small shrine with a stone carving of some sort of snail, a sacrificial stone, and etchings in old Omuan begging for the life of a sick child.
The Regulators continued to track the giant reptilian footprints that they surmised belonged to Leo’s tail sighting. After a few hundred yards further south, the tracks turned down a road to the east. That road ended at the lip of a rift overlooking a lake of bubbling lava and next to the steamy waterfall from a river of water the flowed down from the north. The footprints turned along and towards the rivers edge, where they disappeared. A little further to the north, a giant fallen log laid across the river.
Not needing the log to cross the river, Shady quickly ran across the water to the eastern bank. As he charged, an arrow landed in the waters behind him. Fell took the first run across the log, and promptly took an arrow in his shoulder! Seeing the windows that the arrows came from, Shady teleported to the shadows in the tower and came face to face with another tabaxi!
Tabaxi archer: “Hello. My name is Bag of Nails. You have crossed my river. Prepare to die.”
Shady: “Whooaa. Slow down my feline friends. We have enough enemies in this land without fight each other. Can you help my fiends and I?”
Bag of Nails squinted and his slit eyes narrowed as he said, “You seem a decent fellow, I hate to kill you.“
As he finishes speaking, Bag of Nails hurled a small glass ball at the floor. As it shattered, the room filled with a magical darkness. Shady heard the patter of padded feet race across the room towards another window, then silence. Down below, Fell reached the end of the log, then lurched over, grabbing the shoulder where the arrow had struck…
