GATE KEEPING  

Keepers: Ina, T’ggar, Arc, Tommy, and Tinkersdamn: 

Mission: Interview and investigate the Guild of Starlight and Shadow about the Closed Circle, a group of mages that had supposedly been disbanded ages ago

Objective: We discovered that at least some mages were still active ibn the Closed Circle.

In our latest mission “Gatekeeping”, we discover more information on what professor Alston Sonorio was working on before he mysteriously disappeared from his office at Morgrave university. When we rescued professor Sonorio from a fate worse than death (er enveloped by an other planar monstrosity with three elbows and a garish mouth full of teeth and monstrous claws) by killing the beast that her enveloped him, we have been totally unable to get any information from him, merely blatherings and gibberish. This unfortunate madness of the professor has forced our investigation ingo other lines of inquiry, initially the Esoteric Order of Aureon, or EOA. Unfortunately, the EOA curtailed our investigation after making a substantial contribution to our financial support.  

Mistrustful of such means, we of course went directly to the Guild of Starlight and Shadow, their cross-town rivals, in search of answers, or at least further means of inquiry.  

We were greeted most cordially by Dane Vale, who directed us to Mistress of Shadows, Arcanist Eressa. When we described the professors state of madness and the documents related to the long Banned and supposedly defunct Closed Circle, she suggested that the professor had been exposed to the plane of Xoriat, a plane adjacent to our own yet filled with madness and horrors beyond our imagination. Any being so exposed would go completely  and irrevocably enter a state of eternal madness.  

She then informed us that when the EOA and the GSS destroyed the Closed Circle, the EOA and the GSS recovered many materials and documents of the CC. According to Arcanist Eressa, while the GSS destroyed those items, the EOA kept many of them for future research, naming Telios Vaun as one of the members of the EOA who still retained those materials. 

  When asked for leads in our investigations, she suggested we go once again to the lower wards, the caves where we found the professor. 

Entering the lower wards, we did find a very suspicious branch of the tunnel system, partially blockaded with warnings not to enter. We knew we were in the right place when Tagar detected an alarm system designed to warn of intruders, but being the intrepid and innovated folk we are, we slid under the alarm system once we determined that Roary, my Steel Defender Bear, was able to almost completely flatten his metal body to just barely slide under the alarm.  

After dealing with a trifling beastie in the outer ward, we arrived to an inner cave with an apparently dead-end tunnel. At the end of this tunnel was a teleportation circle and the rather loud sound of multiple voices chanting in another language. Unable to understand the language fully, I was able to grasp the purpose of the chanting was a summons, or to open a passage. Alarmed by these realizations, I threw my Molotov cocktail against the teleportation circle only to find that it did not penetrate mush at all. Cursing myself for an idiot, I lit my next cocktail and entered the circle, the rest of the keepers entering also. 

We saw a large, semicircular chamber with a very large summoning circle inscribed on the floor. At the center of the s circle was a very large black sphere hover above the floor, and six mages arrayed around the perimeter of the circle at evenly spaced points, and all chanting in unison in deep concentration. Around the six mages were six mirrors floating in the air, their reflections changing in an odd manner to reflect all manner of scenes which bore no resemblance to this chamber. 

 I threw my Molotov cocktail at the mage to my right and then charged the mage on my left in an effort to create as much mayhem as possible and break their concentration.  But my cocktail didn’t actually hit the mage, just sort of slide off of him with no visible damage and certainly no fire. Roary and attacked the mage to my left but the mage appeared unaffected, and I had not broken the concentration of either mage. Tommy and Tagar and Arc also attacked, but it appeared any damage done was seemingly dissipated around the circle.  

Frustrated, I fired my medium, crossbow at the mage on my left, but this also had no effect, even though my crossbow was imbued with magic, nor was any damage taken. Wondering if the mage was some kind of image, I moved to the next mage on my left but then, I noticed the mirrors again. Thing they must have a purpose, so I fired my crossbow at the mirror in front of me, shattering it.  

One of the mages disappeared. While Tommy and Tagar and Arc were attacking the one mage who seemed real, Ina was using her bow to attack the others. The black orb seemed to be expanding and pulsing now, the pulses coming faster and faster, and now I could see actual faces of horrors beyond imagination trying to press themselves through into our own world and knew we had to act quickly to shut this circle down. Using my Arcane knowledge, I scrutinized the remaining 4 mages closely, as the others killed the first mage I had struck with fire, trying to find a real one and not just another image. 

I failed. We were all reeling from psychic damage inflicted upon us by these mages, but we knew the fate of our city depended on us. So I studied the runes that appeared around the orb whenever Arc struck it with all the arcane knowledge I had gleaned, even identifying the rune Eressa had shown us for Xorian. I again tried to examine the mages, looking for any similarities between the one we had killed and the remaining, until I saw it: a certain similarity of stature, garb, and staff. Bypassing the mage next to me, Roary and I charged the mage I suspected was the real one with jaws and crossbow, damaging him enough to be certain he was the one! 

Tommy immediately came to my aide because he was the fastest, and between him we killed the mage! 

But our troubles were not over! The false mages all disappeared, but the black sphere started to pulse and undulate alarmingly! It was out of control! 

My arcane knowledge aided us once again as I was able to adjust the arcane circles and reposition them into a stable, nested ring, causing the black sphere to shrink and eventually disappear. 

Drenched in sweat and shaking in reaction, we all took stock of each other and searched the room and the bodies, finding several scrolls and a pittance of coin. We took the rich clothing of the two dead mages, Tagar took an entire body in hopes that as a shifter the visage of the mage may be used to identify him. I just took the head of the second in order to identify and hopefully aide us in our investigations.  

We also found a small written message the reads, “Tell the Gatekeeper we’ll get the job done”. 

We took our discovered scrolls and the dead mages to Eressa ,but she did not recognize them, she did however identify the scrolls we found. 

In service to Sharn, Tinkersdamn