OWA-01: A Web of Intrigue

The party met up at the headquarters of the Fixers.¹ We boldly decided to not do introductions and instead moved straight to drinking. The bartender, a white dragonborn named Vaccesh, recommended we stop drinking so we could be sober for our upcoming meeting with V—the leader of the fixers. Cirix took exception to this and ordered more drinks.

After a few more shenanigans, we moved on to our meeting with V. On the way, Rivi snagged a job notice about nefarious dealings in the Gatehouse Night Market. V introduced us to the Lady of Pain,² who tasked us with investigating the darkening gates of Sigil.³ In return for our service, she promised us a holding within the city. Since Sigil is filled with prime real estate, and because this seemed like our DM’s main campaign hook, we agreed to investigate. Cirix immediately insulted her. Rivi somehow managed to fall even more out of favor by being impatient.

After some brief arguments about where to go and what to do, we decided to start by investigating the nature of the gates at the Hall of Information. There, we met Thon, a friendly mindflayer librarian. He offered us library cards and warned us about the docents—strange humanoids that patrol the stacks and protect the tomes. Thon implied that stealing a book turns you into a docent. He was very helpful in locating books.

Between previous questions posed to the Lady of Pain and research at the library, we learned the following:

After Soot and Cirix checked out choice books on spelljamming and haste magic, the party moved on to the City Records. Abner proposed mapping out the disappearing gates to see if any patterns emerged. After acquiring maps from the record keepers, Soot and Kori noticed that the darkening spread outwards from the Hive Ward - the city slums. This was strange, since the city itself is quite harmonious and even the slums don’t see much trouble.⁵

The party headed to the Hive Ward to investigate. In one of the alleyways, they spotted a pair of robed figures,⁶ flanked by Dabus.⁷ The robed figures were drawing on the walls using red stone, leaving twisted runes that made the area around it shimmer warp. Cirix vaguely understood the symbols as a dialect of Primordial, and figured out they were connected to some sort of Far Realm entity.⁸ This suggested that the robed figures were connected to the darkening gates—we had suspects!

We could read the writing on the wall, both literally and figuratively.⁹ This was going to end in combat, so we tried to play it smart. Rivi took Abner and moved into the street, out of sight. Cirix, Caleb, and Kori stayed near the end of the alleyway, away from the figures but still clearly in view. Cirix prepared the spell web, in case something went wrong. Soot walked up to the robed figures and asked them what they were doing and how their day was going. After he received a rude answer, he walked away, used message to inform the party to attack, and shot the cultists. Soot missed, but the web went off.

What followed was almost certainly the worst eighteen seconds of the robed figures’ lives. One cultist was immediately killed by Soot’s arcane cannon, and both of the Dabus were trapped within the web. We then alternated between shooting and burning the restrained Dabus and cultists, making a mockery of what should have been a very difficult encounter.¹⁰

We figured out during the course of the battle that the Dabus had been suborned by some sort of creepy tentacled thing. This jived with what we knew, since the Dabus are supposed to be part of a network controlled by the Lady of Pain—and they responded poorly when we mentioned her. When we took down the first Dabus, it flashed a weak “thank you” in runes before collapsing. The second one did not get a chance to say anything, since Rivi completely disintegrated it.

After that, Abner intimidated the remaining cultist into surrendering. We took them hostage, and should try to interrogate them for more information later. We also copied down the runes on the wall—their meaning would be worth looking up in the Hall of Information.

The fixers are an interdimensional adventurer’s guild based in Sigil. They fix people’s problems, hence the name. ↩︎
The ruler of Sigil and commander of the Dabus. ↩︎
A city in the Outlands on the inside of a donut. Only travel in/out is via natural magical gates. ↩︎
A blight that fed on magic and destabilized the Weave. ↩︎
The Lady of Pain patrols the city herself, accompanied by her Dabus guards. ↩︎
Likely, these were cultists. Soot suggested on calling them “robes” to be polite until we are certain. ↩︎
Like city guards for Sigil. Part of a hive mind controlled by the Lady of Pain. ↩︎
Lovecraftian horrors beyond our ken. Most Far Realm creatures have too many tentacles and too many eyes. ↩︎
Our DM ruled that readied actions happen before combat starts. So we readied a lot of actions. ↩︎
Web is DEX save vs. restraining. Restrained creatures have to use their action for STR save to escape. This meant that the collective opposing side got a single action the entire combat. We also realized that every character in our party was built for ranged combat. That means this could have gone very differently had we been pinned in melee. Something to watch out for in future encounters. ↩︎

Day Two Patch

OWA-01: A Web of Intrigue

Roster

Objectives

Summary