Thennek, entry #2

Thennek, warlock of Ilian Observatory

The sound I heard while we rested in the undead alchemist’s lair may have been a portent. She turned out to be a druid of some kind. Darkly dressed and fixated on death. A good thing we’d already packed the books into the bag of holding, but also a warning of how near we were to death, and the choices I made that lead us closer.

Once introduced to Vantiss, the unusual druid, the party welcomed her since she was a sort of local and had sought out the house as well. The basement turned out to have a second secret door, leading to caverns. The walls and ceiling swarmed with bugs, though they gave us wide berth. The bugs steered clear of the ceiling cavern with stalactites. Or was it stalagmites.

Whichever kind hung down.  Puddles of some kind of green ooze plipped as drips from above occasionally landed. We hugged the walls through that area and found no other ill concern until the site of my first deadly mistake.

Off to one side of a tunnel, we found a chamber with people inside.  Being a narrow tunnel, I suggested we form a line and head in. And were met with a small force that used a tactic that we had used so well before that day.  The leader, a man named Sam who kept talking in the third person challenged us to leave, and we didn’t. Fighting ensued, but the paladin Crixos at the front couldn’t advance because of the pair of bandits in front of him. We formed a choke-point of our own doom.

He managed to push through, shoving one of them back. Beyond them, a man with a bow, married to one of the other bandits we found out, and behind him, hiding behind some barrels crouched Sam, the wizard leader of these smugglers.  I took a chance to rush past the front most guard but took a swipe from his blade for my trouble. I landed on a pile of silk bolts and nearly swooned from the pain.

The party continued fighting, throwing spells, daggers, and firing arrows at them, but they wouldn’t fall. Sam, the pirate wizard sent fiery bolts toward some of us, one scorched the wall just over my shoulder, but I played dead while preparing a hex.

As the battle continued, I sent a blast of eldritch power at Sam. Green and black energies groped at his right arm, pulling matter into some dark dimension. He screamed and sent another fiery bolt my way. And that was it. For a moment, I died.

I awoke to the paladin standing over me, hands glowing.  Though still wounded, I felt alive.

After some debate, we decided to make camp for the night, piling the bodies at the doorway and setting the elves to watch since they only sort of slept.

Though they heard a noise in the night, we made it through. The next day, we cleared out the last of the cavern. It ended in a grotto connecting to the bay. There were signs of a boat being pushed out before the tied left. So, we were not alone that night and lost a chance to apprehend the final villain of this caper.

On leaving the house through the front door, we met a man sitting on the porch step. At first, he seemed quite put out with us, claiming to have been tied up on the second floor all day. We never went upstairs, so that much was inconvenient for him. However, I pointed out how self-reliant he was, having untied himself. I recall having thought at the beginning of our investigation of the property, suggesting that we just burn it down and simplify things. Had we done so, this man would be dead.

The man said his name was Ned Something, and he used to be part of the smuggling ring. He told us about the shipment of slaves, of which we found none.  I suppose they must have been in the chamber near the boat landing. Unfortunately, they must have been whisked away on the rowboat we surmised had been there.

When we returned to town, we found Anders Soulmor, the councilman who hired us. I introduced Ned as a survivor and mentioned the slaves we missed. A slight fabrication, but the former bandit seemed contrite. He paid us, and asked us to stick around, perhaps we could speak to the town council. So, we paid a coin to the keeper of the better inn and after selling off some goods and splitting up the money, everyone pursued their own interests in town.  

A few things of note during the week in town:

The druid, Vantiss didn’t want any money, which I thought was odd, but at the time meant more for the rest of us. She also didn’t stay with us at the inn.

There’s a clubhouse of some kind dedicated to Iuz. They offered to trade a set of mariner scale mail armor for leather if we interfered with the dwarves’ mining operation. We declined and kept the armor.

I spent the week cooped up in my room, studying the books and papers we found. The local sage dropped by, asking if we’d found a coin, with an eye. He knew I studied the eye, though I know not how as few knew of its existence. I let this confusion fill me as I acted ignorant of a coin with an eye on it. Somewhere in our bag of holding lay such a coin, and I swear it blinked at me as I placed it inside when we found it. He rambled on about it being a portent and a protection. When the eye blinked, a coin would appear in the world.

T’was an odd conversation, and he left asking me to visit him at his tower, the largest in Salt March, should I find one. I assured him I would, all the while contemplating the places he rambled about where one might be found. Could this coin be related to the great eye in the sky?

Thinking back, I remember when Lapu Droust first discovered the eye. We were on duty at the observatory. Our great work consisted of mapping and tracking the movements of the stars, adding to our findings and continuing centuries of records. As the work focused on the bright sparks in the night sky, few had paid attention to the darkness in between. That is until noticed a celestial body designated as SG917 disappeared. We expected it to cross an elliptical expanse, but it vanished, as if into a hole. We spent months staring at that void in the night sky, Lapu even longer as he obsessed over it. In the first few months, I scrambled to continue our scheduled observations, while Lapu focused intently on the dark void, searching for some clue as to where SG917 might be.

When Lapu demonstrated a spell for me, I knew something was different. He told me that as he stared into the eye of the abyss, he heard whisperings of ideas, incantations and thoughts not of his own. Thoughts which led to discoveries such as a spell to move objects by his will. That is when I also gave more attention to the blank space in the canvas of the night. And with it, power.

Lapu left Ilian Observatory two months ago, seeking answers about the eye. A month ago, I received his letter, posthumously as it implied. I came to Salt Marsh and came across a coin bearing nothing but an eye. Coincidence?

I know not. Though I hope the coin is not related to something stupid and dangerous like a beholder cult. That is not where my power comes from. I am certain it is something older, and if I can avoid doing anything stupid like running past a hobgoblin with a sword, I might live to figure it out.

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