Session 13: The Plot Thickens
General Summary
I. The Oblexerator
The battle against the Elder Oblex rages into its final phase. Kal drops a prepared Vutha bomb into the muck and the Claw wails on the creature from every angle. Tad, still without his bow, summons Tim the Merlotl to fill the gap. Sensing its end approaching, the Oblex attempts to warp away through an unknown dimension — but Nyxek kicks it out of time and ruins the spell. Vutha uses the temporal window to return Tad his bow. When the Oblex snaps back into reality it is completely oblexerated. Nyxek announces his intention to add Oblexerator to his official title collection.
II. The Student Quarters
A search of the surrounding area uncovers a room filled with books, scrolls, leftover pizza, and a small dormitory. It is a study space — the missing students have been living and working here, researching the Boundary Monoliths and sustaining themselves on a Box of Many Pizzas producing three per day. Kal claims the box immediately and is overwhelmed by a sense of profound fulfillment. Also pizza.
Tracks lead north into a tunnel broken through into the sewers. Following them, the Claw finds the remnants of several young Oblex — crushed flat by something larger and stranger. Vutha takes a lick. It tastes tentacly. Tad confirms the creatures were constricted out of consistency.
III. The Treasure Chamber
A second break in the sewer wall leads to a small side chamber containing treasure and four missing kung fu students. Three cower in the corner. The fourth — Ossoth the Tortle, named by the others — stands guard at a tunnel large enough for a younger Tad to walk through, glaze-eyed, a slimy alien tentacle groping his leg.
Vutha enters first and immediately gets grabbed by a second tentacle reaching out from the pipe. It drags him partially in and temporarily drains some of his memories. Tad and Kal tenderize the tentacles while Nyxek runs to the tunnel mouth and summons a field of the Emperor's spirit servants to punish whatever waits inside. The combined assault breaks the unknown assailant's hold on Ossoth — both physical and psychic. The tortle stumbles free.
IV. Special Delivery
Vutha rips the tentacle free and squeezes into the tunnel to find the source. Through a grate at the far end he can see into the sewer beyond — a strange, fallacious alien fish, an Aboleth, lurking in the water on the other side, using the pipe to assault the chamber from a distance. He explains the situation to the Claw, but working back out of the tunnel would take too long.
Tad moves for the grate but is too slow. Kal has another idea. He mounts his broom, calls on the power of the winds, and grabs Nyxek like a pizza box. "Special Delivery! It's Pizza Time!" He whips over Tad's head and through the tunnel fast enough to peel Nyxek's eyelids back, rounds too many corners to count, and deposits Nyxek hot and ready on the other side of the grate with eyes directly on the horrid alien.
Nyxek unleashes his magic to paralyze the beast. The Aboleth's mucus corpus slips free of the effect. "I know you all," it threatens, "and you cannot stop us." It then warps itself out of the foul sewer muck and away to a farther, saltier body of water. Nyxek is pissed. Treasure makes everyone feel better.
V. What the Students Know
The treasure chamber yields coin, two memory vessels, a Potion of Mind Reading, Serpent Scale Armor — at which Tad performs a dula-dulas happy dance — and the Shell of Turtle Power, carved into a Dragon Vessel, which Vutha claims for future fire breathing.
The students are questioned but most of their minds are empty. Nyxek examines them and identifies Ossoth as having the most remaining cognition. He restores what he can by the Emperor's Grace. The students are arcane researchers — kung fu is just a side pursuit. The two memory vessels in the chamber contain the researchers' own stolen memories. Nyxek is tempted to claim them. The others urge him to give them back, take the researchers instead, and use them as witnesses before the inquisition. He agrees.
With their minds partially restored, the students recall the details of their work. They had been collaborating — unknowingly, between memory wipes — with the Aboleth and Vox Gammoranth to tweak the Boundary Monoliths and alter the keystone. Their specific task: modifying the Boundary to allow something truly massive to bypass it. They also recall seeing the Pale Emissary working directly with Vox Gammoranth and the Aboleth, coordinating the memory manipulation that allowed the research to continue while keeping the students unable to remember any of it while above ground in the Imperial city.
The Aboleth's parting words — "you cannot stop us" — now have a specific shape. Something massive. The Boundary altered to let it through. The Pale Emissary and Vox Gammoranth in the same room.
The Claw surfaces with four students, a dragon vessel, a box of infinite pizza, and the clearest picture yet of what is being built beneath the Empire's feet.
