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Sisyphean Attempts at Self-Improvement #1097369 added September 14, 2025 at 4:03pm
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A Preoccupation with Evocation
After rescuing Antonio’s mother Camille from a Balhannoth monster that had invaded the family crypt, you help her back home where she can convalesce under the care of her house staff. Reggie sells the chimera corpse to the family, but keeps the dragon head for himself and has it shipped home to Harborcrest. Bryony gives everyone masterwork (but non-magical) weapons and armor from the company reserves, and she encourages Antonio to think about giving up his life of adventuring to help her take care of the family estate and business, which he weighs while traveling to Driscoll with the party.
On the way to Driscoll, you happen across a land bridge that crosses a river which has buffeting winds that repel anything that tries to cross it. Big-E introduces himself to Wilbern and Meldagar Hanaford, a pair of elderly nudists who arrived at this impasse a day earlier and are attempting to figure out what to do.
A nearby shrine with a magical, puzzle-locked door provokes your curiosity and Reggie figures out the passphrase to open it after Big-E does 90% of the work. Big-E races Reggie down into the shrine so that he can be first. The shrine contains two large rooms lined with torches which automatically ignite when you all walk into the room (and extinguish when you all leave). In the back room, there are two locked doors which you learn are trapped when Reggie picks the lock on one and triggers a Fireball trap that singes both him and Antonio. Big-E lucked out because he was inspecting one of the walls in the corner of the room at the time, and was just outside the Fireball’s blast radius.
Big-E discovers another Fireball trap mechanism trained on the other door and plans to trigger it. Antonio presses himself against the wall as Reggie refuses to get out of the way, only managing to dive out of the way of the second Fireball at the last minute. With both doors now open, you discover a summoning circle in each one, with markings indicating that they are connected to the Elemental Plane of Air. By disrupting the composition of the circles, you dissipate the Air Elementals that were preventing you from crossing the bridge outside, but get one last nasty surprise when you trigger an Ice Storm spell in the first room on your way out of the shrine.
Back above ground, Big-E gives Wilbern and Meldagar two gold pieces - one for travel costs and one for sunscreen - and encourages them to alter their retirement plans from heading to Gwynn to instead relocating to Kyriel where there’s more opportunity for the retirees to thrive.
Arriving in Driscoll, you reunite with Athel at The Beguiling Bard, and he tells you that Cobb’s Casino (which you left to him on your way out of town several months ago) is something that he in turn bequeathed to Aanen for his orphanage. Traveling to the outskirts of town, you discover the casino has been converted into an orphanage and Aanen has taken up residence in Garel’s old room. Aanen, now a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory, does not remember much about Reggie and definitely can’t give him the answers about his backstory he was hoping for. He vaguely remembers Reggie (but recognizes Thogun immediately), and can’t identify the emblem that Reggie recovered from his room at the old orphanage in Armore beyond the fact that it’s enchanted with powerful magic.
While playing games with the orphans, Big-E absolutely dominates and collects a few coppers from them.
In a fit of pique, Reggie goes to the wall of orphan photos in the main hallway and swaps his at the far bottom corner of the room with Thogun’s photo, which is framed and centered in the middle of the wall. Then Reffie heads back to Driscoll to sleep at The Beguiling Bard while everyone else shares a meal with the orphans and elects to stay at the orphanage in one of the many free and well-appointed rooms.
Having gotten what you came for in your home region, you set off for Kyriel the next day, with Reggie leaving Aanen fifteen gold pieces as a parting donation to the home he once knew but doesn’t know him as well as he would have liked.
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722 words
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