as told by the cavalier Olmas Lurecia himself.

Wealday, 29 Desnus

(still)
Our encounter with shadows in the chessboard trap made us feel we might well run into more of the same in what appeared to be a trip thru the Shadow plane.  We prepared with two separate Hide from Undead spells, expecting that the (usual) fighters would likely break that spell by attacking than the other group of, well, Kali.

I was one of the first into the shadowy passage but it took only seconds for all of us to enter.  The colors may have been muted, but the sound seemed the same.   Ivan had a theory that the inro was actually a map of sorts to lead us through this shadowy world.  There were gates of certain colors, or materials, that seemed to match up with items in the inro.  We made a couple of wrong turns and got hit by lightning and ice storms, but by and large I think we avoided a large amount of grief.

We came upon a largish room, and the entrance to the room seemed also to be an exit from the shadow plane.  I entered the room and observed two women on the floor.  I immediately moved to check out the women.   In one corner was a life size statue of a female in the lotus position, and in the other corner was a monkey – no, tiger – no, snake.

Actually it was all three, and did not seem friendly.  In fact it had a yell that actually hurt.  The women seemed .. not dead but not alive and I announced that.  But the first issue was the montigersnake.  Actually, Kali later said it had an explicit name too but I don’t remember what it was anymore.  The usual suspects (myself, Radella, Qatana) moved in to attack it.  It was going to take me a few seconds longer to reach it, having spent time first checking on the women, but Kali magically moved me and I started beating on it in earnest.

Suishen informed me again, in an almost accusatory manner, that it was not an oni.

But when we cut it, it did bleed, and despite some bizarre capabilities (it could make us feel incredibly tired just by waving its paws) we managed to best it with some wicked good swings and some good arrows by Ivan.

There was a door in the room, and it seemed to lead to a study. A quick search uncovered several magical items.

[669] magic samisen
[670] ivory plectrum
[671] potion of bull strength
[672] potion of cure moderate wounds
[673] potion of protection from cold
[674] potion of water breathing
[675] scroll of bestow curse
[676] scroll of ice storm
[677] scroll of lightning

There were also some

[678] business records

A quick read through the notes completed the story of what had happened.  He had tried to move his wife’s soul into his daughter’s body, but any fool knows that a body can only hold one soul so the whole thing fell apart – his wife’s soul seems to have disappeared while his daughter’s soul – O-Suyami’s soul, we could now confirm – occupied a pearl instead of her body.  He was reluctant to return hers to her body because he feared it might make it impossible to recover his wife’s.

About this time, Radella said, “aHA” and a portion of a shelf moved.  “There’s a secret door here” she announced.  And we again prepared ourselves for battle, although at this point the preparation was entirely mental and not magical.  Arranging ourselves we entered the narrow passage.

The passage led first to what Zos readily identifed as an alchemical lab.  His eyes lit up as he looked over the room.

But it was not our main interest right now.  We anticipated that we would be finding a dark mage of some sort, holding his daughter’s soul captive.  We moved on.

The next room again had muted colors and a grey appearance to it, even though it was not in the shadow plane.  There was a man sitting at a table on the far side of the room who observed us entering in an almost unconcerned manner.

“My wife is gone forever,” he remarked in a strangely flat voice, taking a sip of tea.  “I was trying to move her into my daughter’s beautiful body, but something went wrong.  I have so far been unable to reverse the effect.”  He glanced at Radella, who had moved next to him. He glanced up at her. “I assume you do want to save the girl, don’t you?”  He casually tipped a container of pearls over and they spilled across the floor.  “Be careful you don’t crush her soul by stepping on the wrong pearl” and he began to chant in earnest.

While Zos hasted us all, I hurried over to interrupt his spell with Suishen.  Unfortunately, the discarded pearls acted as marbles and I fell on my way there.  He gestured at a shadowy alcove at one end of the room and a number of shadows appeared.  Kali quickly threw up a wall of force but warned, “they’ll probably go underneath it so it won’t work for long.”  I regained my footing and attacked the man, while Qatana cast a greater dispel magic at him to render him more vulnerable.  It did not take long for us to finish him off, but it too longer to deal gingerly with the shadows he’d welcomed onto our plane.  I lost strength several times to the foul things, but Qatana was able to help me recover.

On the man and in the room, we found

[680] pearls picked up from the floor and left in the jar
[681] an inro (darkwood + embedded emeralds forming a dragon and turtle, with 3 compartments)
[682] blue-green aquamarine (magic)
[683] black pearl
[684] large white pearl (magic)
[685] potion of water breathing
[686] scroll of resist energy
[687] MW dagger
[688] cloak of resistance +4
[689] dusty rose ioun stone +1 insight bonus to AC
[690] ring of protection +2
[692] spell components
[691] ring of swimming
[693] spellbook
[694] 250gp of diamond dust

and of course the previously discovered

[695] alchemy lab

We tried to decide our next step.  We needed to revive O-Sayumi but none of us were sure how this might work.  Eventually we decided dispel magic might do the trick … and it did.

O-Sayumi told us how she was brought there by threats to harm the monks if she did not.  There was a brief discussion and we decided to leave by barge, now that it was safe, rather than waste more magic flying.

Upon approaching the barge, however, a company of hobgoblins challenged us and we shook our heads at each other.  Really?

Qatana created a blade barrier to hem them in, but much to our surprise, one after another flew ABOVE it to escape it.

The first one I laid Suishen into made him practically tremble with excitement. “ONI!!!”  ah, a dozen overconfident, underpowered oni.

Time was when that would have been a problem for us but even O-Sayumi joined in the battle, casting spells no less!  Clearly not your ordinary geisha.

With that taken care of, we are preparing to board the barge.