Session Date: 10 July 2026
Players: Janette, Jeff, Stuart, Nathan, Olivia
Scribe: Stuart
Location: The Unnamed Tavern
Valecar Date: Goldwane 13th, 701 AC (Ascendant Cycle)
Session Table of Contents
At long last Obadiah caught up with us just as we had figured out the cypher to open the door. He brought with him two additional Ascendants that had been attempting to catch up with us. We were all introduced to Stak and Maeve. We are anxious to see what assets they will bring to our party. We entered the monolith and saw a long, wide corridor stretching out ahead of us. The key to gaining entrance into the monolith had been the phrase: „Blessed be the shield of the Gilded Warden“. We had to enter each character into the 42 wheels outside the door. It is my hope this same key will grant us access to any other perimeter entrances should we encounter them. The corridor was dark but dimly lit by torches along the walls. We could see the corridor opened to the left and right ahead of us. We approached these wide openings and saw that large rooms existed to the left and right. Ahead of us a pair of large, ornate doors blocked our progress at the end of the main corridor. We entered the chamber to the left and observed a miniature statue of the monolith itself overlooking the
room set high up to the right on the far side. A dais of sorts was dead ahead and a dark opening leading to downward spiraling stairs was to the left. A trench of what appeared to be lava bubbled to our right against the wall. Between the dais and the mini monolith were several stones in a semi circle each etched with a cryptic rune. |
Before we could do much exploring we heard voices and footsteps coming from the stairwell leading down. A trio of Haroken (fanatical followers of Grand Vizier Taezyth) emerged and we were introduced to The Grand Regent of the Crownwood Expanse Monolith as well as two of his armed guards. All wore the gray cloaks of the Haroken with armor beneath. The Regent immediately asked us who we were. We identified ourselves as Ascendants and he told us we weren’t where we were supposed to be. He ordered us to leave. Then he insulted our Marbleborn comrade. Things went downhill from there. A brief battle ensued and we discovered the Regent was a cleric when he cast silence on our group. After the Regent and one of his guards were defeated Esmira asked the last guard to surrender and he did. His name is Giovanni Stelaris. He is now our prisoner. We questioned Giovanni about why they were here but he really doesn’t seem to know much about anything other than the fact he has been thoroughly indoctrinated into following the Haroken’s orders.
So, after securing his hands, we began exploring the first chamber once again. Bulger Cuttlefish found sort of a dial- like apparatus built into the dais and tried experimenting with it. He got blasted by a beam of energy from the mini monolith. It nearly killed him. After Esmira nursed him back to a semblance of health we searched the Regent and his fallen ally looking for clues. We found a curiously worded puzzle about the dais, the symbols around it and the runic stones between the dais and the mini monolith. After much trial and error with each stone, symbol and using a mage hand we finally figured out the puzzle and this opened the two doors at the end of the main hall. Just prior to opening the doors we tried to examine them more closely but any attempt to approach those doors was met by a pair of lave-like golems rising from the canal of lava along that passed beneath the approach to the doors. Without solving the puzzle we would never have progressed deeper into the monolith. We did attempt to cover our bases by taking the spiraling steps down out of this chamber but they led to a vast, open void with a few stone platforms floating in the nothingness. Fearing we could die if we fell trying to jump to one we opted to go back upstairs and through the now open main passage. Through the doors was a passage that led us to a cavernous void. A large platform was floating some 50 feet or so from the end of the passage. There were strange floating platforms out in the void whirling and spinning around it slowly. Bulger attempted to jump vertically just to see if gravity was being affected in this area and instead was teleported out onto the central platform. Each of us attempted to jump and join
him but it seemed that the results were random as to where we landed. A mysterious wraith like creature appeared to Maeve and after a short chat it left her with a token and a question: Why? It then visited Obadiah and left him with a token and a question: Where? Finally it appeared to Merric and left him with a token and a question: When?
A large humanoid creature had spawned on one of the platforms during our encounter with this room and it tried jumping as well. It ended up on the central platform with Bulger, Esmira and Maeve. A battle started. Merric decided it was unfair to our prisoner to have his life threatened by being bound through all of this and so he negotiated a release with him. Each of us now began jumping in the hopes of assisting our comrades with the battle on the central platform. Obadiah had dropped the token he had been given and it ended up on a platform that Merric jumped to. The two token were attracted to each other and when they touched they become a row boat floating in the nothingness. Merric jumped in and rowed this
boat to the central platform in the hopes of joining with or rescuing his comrades. Instead, when he got to the central platform, the third token was attracted to the rowboat and it became a dragon. The large humanoid disappeared and all of us were transported to the central platform. The dragon spoke and said we had solved this riddle of the monolith. We are now free to move on to the next challenge. Throughout the battle with the humanoid a few of us were injured. We attempted to rest to recover our health, spells and abilities but it appears we are unable to „rest“ within the monolith. It seems if we are to survive we must do so quickly and with whatever resources we still have.