24

ALIENS
A slaad infestation took over Revel's End, stemming from a rogue blue slaad. The prison was sent into lockdown. Beforehand, the party met Warden Marta Marthannis and Fern managed to discover Prisoner 13's arcane lock-breaker. Azgul talked to Vaelish Gant during the slaad attacks, and Tetro healed Gadget's wounds, which festered with the slaadi chaos phage. Oona and Crank slept through it all. In the center of the panopticon, a green slaad ran away into the vents while the party dispatched two reds. A minute later, the Warden's lockdown broadcasts ceased. As static and sirens filled the air, the lights blacked out and all doors opened.

Revel's End

#RevelsEnd Azgul, Fern, Tetro, and Gadget waited in the mess hall while Oona and Crank took a nap in the guest rooms. Tetro befriended some of the kitchen staff, while Gadget took a look at the Dwarven artificing used to heat Revel's End to a balmy temperature. One guard was muttering about stomach pains when the half-orc Lieutenant Stone arrived to bring the party to Warden Marthannis.
#RevelsEnd #Prisoner237 #Prisoner13 Azgul and Fern spoke with the stern and cool-headed mage, Warden Marta Marthannis. Once it was sorted out that the party were not Arcane Brotherhood operatives, but, rather, adventurers who had found themselves at the center of all things Icewind Dale, the warden eased up a bit. Fern was able to arrange a meeting with Prisoner 13, though the cautious warden refused an immediate audience with Prisoner 237, Vaelish Gant. Bringing up their collaboration with Easthaven's speaker Danneth Waylen and captain Imdra Arlaggath, they asserted that speaking with Vaelish would be vital for the safety of Icewind Dale. Azgul promised to relay a sending stone message and replay it for the warden.
#RevelsEnd During the meeting with the warden, all the magical lighting turned deep red and an alarm began to blare. A guard came in and conferred with Warden Marthannis. Apparently two prisoners, Edgin and Holga, had escaped, taking Absolution Council Member Jarnathan with them. Warden Marthannis assumed the two prisoners would die in the ice fields, but sent a search and rescue team out for them and Jarnathan regardless. She had other matters to attend to... dragon sightings, a sick guard in the prison hospital, and food shortages.
#RevelsEnd #Prisoner13 Fern and Azgul met with Prisoner 13 - Korra Glintstone in the same interrogation room. The tattooed dwarf initially played coy with Fern, denying the knowledge of the Axebreaker Vault's magical seal. The prisoner said she was quite comfortable with life behind bars, given the protection it offers from her enemies. She eventually said she'd help the party if they brought her a ledger of prisoners - a detailed roster of names and crimes. During this interrogation, Fern noticed a tic. Prisoner 13 was constantly rubbing her knuckle on her right hand. It dawned on her that this hand's tattoo was a lock-breaker. This was the key to the Axebreaker Vault.
#RevelsEnd Gadget and Tetro chatted up the staff, who told them some rumors. Apparently prisoners occasionally manage to sneak in contraband through unsavory means. These items are held in the tower's evidence chest. The heating in the prison is less of a luxury than it seems. Prisoners, who wear plain clothes, are essentially dead if they manage to escape. Either the cold or the wild life will get them. In the past even Arveiturace once brought back a prisoner, and now the dragon hounds the warden for bribes.
#RevelsEnd #Prisoner13 Through a clever use of her rat familiar, Fern was able to safely study Prisoner 13's hand long enough for her to trace a copy of the arcane lock-breaker. It seems the prisoner is no longer needed. All that is left is to replicate the tattoo and head to the Dwarven Valley.
#battle #RevelsEnd Waiting to speak with the warden in the morning to get access to Vaelish Gant, the party retired for the evening. They woke up in the dark of morning to red lights and sirens. Lathander's Blessing had also weakened to 8 temporary hit points. A voice on the communication system directed guards to the northwest storage room where the "blue target" had been cornered. The kitchen staff and council members, including the retrieved Jarnathan, were told to quiet down by the party as they crept out of the mess hall and toward the guard room where their weapons had been cached. There was one guard in sight, slumped in the corner, missing the lower half of his body. As the party asked what happened, a second guard was flung into the doorway, neck snapped, and a red slaad appeared. The creatures claws caused eggs to fester under Gadget's skin, but Tetro and Azgul kept it at bay as Fern picked the lock on the chest where their armaments were stored.
#battle #RevelsEnd Making their way to the storehouse, the party met with Lieutenant Stone and fought the cornered blue slaad alongside the guards. It seems this slaad burst out of the hospital patient's chest last night, crawled in a vent, and rapidly grew. The guards reassured them that this was the only slaad detected. Slaads are chaotic abberrations from the Plane of Limbo, a rare sight in and of itself in Faerun. The warden knew that slaads took time to reproduce, but had begun emergency lockdown preparations anyway. The party, though, had just encountered a red slaad. The blue slaad's chaos phage was replicating much more quickly than normal. The lieutenant ran to alert the warden and ordered the party to lock themselves in their rooms. Tetro cleared out the chaos phage from Gadget, who was slightly questioning her decision to join the Heroes of the Crag.
#Prisoner237 #RevelsEnd As the prison entered lockdown, the party took the opportunity to talk to Vaelish Gant directly. Azgul got the pompous wizard to talk about his misdeeds - how he masked himself as a merchant and served as Duvessa Shane's aide in Bryn Shander before he tried to overthrow the local government. He was not only imprisoned because of this stunt, but the Arcane Brotherhood had turned their back on him as well. Vaelish still insisted he would've been great for Ten Towns. The best, even. Regardless, Vaelish had learned a thing or two in his time in the north. First, ten years back Auril had a Chosen, a Reghed woman named Hedrun who was dubbed as the Ice Witch. Hedrun had amassed chardalyn weaponry and converted barbarians into a frenzied cult to attack Ten Towns and cow its peoples into worship of Auril. Adventurers had thwarted her at her tower of black ice near the sea Second, during this time Vaelish's study of Hedrun and Auril's cults revealed the presence of a frozen waterfall at the Reghed Glacier. The frozen fall marked the entrance into the depths and a passage to the Netherese ruins of Ythryn.
#battle #RevelsEnd The conversation with Vaelish was cut short, as two red slaad and a green slaad attacked. The green used its magic to assault the party, after which it changed shape and entered the vents of the prison. Guards from the central command tower lent their firepower to take down the red slaads, but soon they stopped responding and messages over the intercom by the Warden, who was activating safety protocols, ceased and turned to static. As the battle ended, and Fern scratched at the eggs under her skin, it became apparent that several prisoners were dead with chests ripped open. Then the lights cut out, and all the cell and tower doors creaked open.