Cultist Kidnapping

Shadow has had a lot of questions about how the cult operates and functions and what their end goal is. It would seem the best way to find that out is to ask them. So if like to propose a session specifically to kidnap a cultist and time permitting interrogate them.

Recap

The party gathered at camp around Shadow's ever-growing murder board as the Tabaxi recounted the previous expedition's findings — the insect colony beneath the farmland, the underground castle draped in the banners of the Cult of the Whispering Stars, and the chilling revelation that it sat directly beneath the center of the pentagram. A hidden entrance near the forest's edge now offered them a way back in when the time was right.

But today, the party had a different destination. It was time to investigate the swamp.

They set out on what would be their longest overland trek yet. Thalen pored over his maps, searching for shortcuts through the terrain. His pathfinding was decent — not inspired, but enough to shave some time off the journey. As they walked, Thalen and Helena filled Shadow and Aldric in on what they'd missed: the mountain climb, Grit and his cactid brews, the oasis, the swamp they'd glimpsed from afar, and the distant wizard's tower.

They forded a river without incident, but as they neared the swamp the ground began to soften treacherously beneath them. Aldric and Helena powered through with barely a stumble, but Thalen and Shadow — normally the nimblest of the group — found themselves struggling against the sucking mud. Shadow's expression soured with every step, his paws caked in muck, his usual fluid grace reduced to an undignified slog.

Into the Pink

The swamp, for all its dampness and decay, felt surprisingly alive. Insects hummed, frogs croaked, and deer picked their way through the undergrowth. Then, as the party crested a low rise, the first shades of pink appeared among the trees — delicate, almost beautiful, like oversized bonsai with rosy leaves and reddish wood. Thalen studied them closely. They bore resemblance to trees the party had encountered before, but he'd never seen this particular species. Unusual, but not immediately alarming.

Shadow scaled one of the pink trees to survey the area. The swamp wasn't vast — he could make out its rough boundaries — and scattered throughout were clearings in the canopy. From the nearest one, a thin wisp of smoke curled upward.

As Thalen sketched the trees in his journal, carefully matching the exact shade of red with his crayons, he glanced up and froze. Some of the branches had moved. He blinked hard, but the positions were undeniably different from moments before. He tested one with a tentative touch — nothing happened. Aldric glanced back, sighed wearily, and pressed on ahead.

Montagne

As the smell of smoke grew stronger, the party slowed and began to plan their approach. Thalen cast Speak with Animals and called out to a bird perched nearby. The bird's name was Montagne.

Thalen asked about the fire. Montagne assured him it had been put out a while ago — all was safe now. When asked about "big folk," the bird said no — the inhabitants here were smaller, scalier. Lizardfolk.

Aldric, meanwhile, was having a crisis. He pressed himself behind Shadow, clutching his weapon, peering frantically over the tabaxi's shoulder at the chirping bird. To him, the conversation was just an incomprehensible exchange of tweets.

Montagne, in turn, spotted Shadow — distinctly feline — and hastily ducked behind Thalen for protection. The bird then mentioned that the lizardfolk were lying on the ground, and that others had been through the forest recently. Darker clothes. When Thalen gestured to his own cult cloak and asked if they wore something similar, Montagne's demeanor shifted instantly. Convinced Thalen was a cultist come to finish what had been started, the bird fled.

The Village

Helena blessed Shadow with the Trickster's gift, and Thalen wisely shed his cult cloak before the party moved in.

What they found in the clearing was devastation. Crates lay smashed, their contents long since looted. Small huts and structures had been burned and broken apart. Bodies lay scattered across the ground.

Helena and Aldric moved immediately to check for survivors. Shadow went rigid for a moment — something in the scene pulling him backward into memory — before forcing himself into motion. The bodies were not fresh, but not far gone either. Rigid, a few days dead. Some had fallen to blades, others to magic. A few had been brutalized with a savagery beyond what the party had seen in previous encounters.

Helena drew the Nine of Swords — Fear. A veteran of kingdom conflicts, she read the scene clearly: this was no battle between equals. This was an unprovoked slaughter against people who never saw it coming.

Aldric searched for cult insignia — cloak scraps, amulet fragments — but found none. What he did find, on the firmer ground at the north edge of the camp, were tracks. Footprints. Drag marks. Hostages had been taken.

Thalen, looking at the bodies, saw his own home village. The tears came before he could stop them. He reached out and grabbed Madam Helena's leg, seeking some anchor of comfort. She stood rigid for a moment, then offered a brief, awkward pat on his ear.

Shadow searched for signs of leadership among the dead — an elder, someone with distinct markings or garb. The first body he turned to had been so horrifically mutilated that he couldn't bring himself to examine it further. Helena moved to his side and drew the Five of Swords — the fallout of battle, the weight of internal struggle. She placed a hand on his shoulder.

"We cannot control the fate of what has happened here," she said quietly. "But we can control what we do next."

Shadow's hand drifted to his scarred eye. He nodded.

Aldric's voice rang out, hard with conviction. "These cowards slaughtered this village and took hostages. I will not stand for it, and neither will Luminor." He cast Find Steed, and Luminor appeared — sporting a fine new fey saddle.

The Second Clearing

The party followed the trail of footprints and drag marks northward. Helena drew the Queen of Wands and cast Pass Without Trace, and the group moved like ghosts through the pink-leafed swamp.

They emerged at a second clearing — a tiered space with basin-like pedestals arranged across a gentle slope, almost like oversized birdbaths. Kouzlo cast his sight soaring above the canopy and confirmed the area was empty. At the base of the central pedestal, a plaque waited. The trail of footprints and drag marks entered the clearing but the soft ground swallowed any further trace.

The Puzzle

The feature before them had a plaque reading:

Seven stars form the Watcher's Eye but sight does not begin sight;

First the lid must wake from sleep, like the moon rising from the deep;

Then gaze sweeps from left to right, taking all into its sight;

Last the pupil focuses true, and it sees the real you.

You must find how they sync, but beware that time can pass in a blink.

Each pedestal held a set amount of water and bore a lever on its side. Daylight was fading. Thalen pulled the bottom lever first — a horrible grinding sound filled the air before snapping back to its starting position. Kouzlo, Helena, and Shadow all felt something try to claw its way into their minds. They resisted.

On the second attempt, the party solved the sequence: top row right to left, bottom row left to right, finishing with the central "pupil." The ground shuddered and split, revealing a staircase descending into darkness directly in front of Helena.

Below

The staircase led into a subterranean chamber. Crystals — the same shade the party had encountered before, yet visibly lesser and unrefined — jutted from the ground, wrapped in roots that seemed to correspond with the positions of the pink trees on the surface above. Along the right wall, cages held lizardfolk prisoners: beaten, starving, barely clinging to life.

A large cultist paced before the cages. Nearby, another cultist had his hands pressed against one of the central crystals, channeling magic to refine it into the polished form the party had seen before. Beyond them, more cultists sat in pews, chanting in the dim light.

Luminor, tragically, could not fit down the staircase. He waited above. A good boy, denied his moment.

The party's stealth held. Every member slipped into the chamber undetected.

The Battle

Shadow struck first. He melted into the dim light, Shadowstepped to the top of the room, and drove his fist into the lead cultist's face. The cultist crumpled, stunned. Shadow hit him again with a devastating blow — and the enchanter's work was over before he could comprehend what had happened.

Thalen cast Entangle, and roots erupted among the pews, snaring two of the four cultists there. Helena blessed Aldric, Thalen, and Kouzlo. Aldric charged the nearest free cultist and brought his weapon down with righteous fury, Luminor's absence clearly fueling his aggression. Kouzlo hit the remaining free cultist with Thunderwave, though the blast barely fazed the target.

The fight escalated quickly. Shadow shrouded the crystal in magical Darkness, cutting off the enchanting cultist entirely. Helena's Toll the Dead rang out like a somber bell, and her Spiritual Weapon materialized across the room — missing its target, but looming with menace. A dwarven cultist raised his staff and unleashed a wave of decay that withered the ground and bit into Aldric, Helena, and Kouzlo alike, even healing his battleaxe-wielding ally in the process.

Then one of the cultists pulled something from his belt and drank it. A horrible noise filled the chamber as his body twisted and swelled — muscles bulging grotesquely, a transformation straight out of a nightmare.

Aldric marked the first battleaxe cultist with Hunter's Mark and hammered him twice in rapid succession. Thalen followed with a precise sneak attack that finished the cultist off entirely. But the Orc cultist, cornered and desperate, turned his spite on the helpless — casting Burning Hands directly into one of the cages, incinerating the lizardfolk inside, then moving toward the next cage.

Kouzlo reacted brilliantly. From within the Darkness, he oriented himself, Misty Stepped across the room, and slammed the orc with a Chromatic Orb of fire. Shadow followed, stunning the orc with a devastating strike. Thalen's arrow finished him off.

Helena's Spiritual Weapon pivoted from offense to mercy, smashing open the third cage to free the remaining prisoners. She cast Mirror Image on herself as the Hulk bore down on the party's front line, landing crushing blows on both Aldric and Helena.

Aldric healed himself with Lay on Hands and swore a Vow of Enmity against the Hulk. He struck twice — the second blow a critical hit — but the creature only roared louder, its muscles still growing. Shadow closed in and landed a hit, but the Hulk resisted the stun and swung back. Kouzlo's Silvery Barbs twisted the retaliatory strike into a fumble.

Kouzlo ended it. A Fireball disintegrated the remaining sword cultist and scorched the Hulk. Then, with his final Melf's Minute Meteors, he sent one last blazing projectile directly into the Hulk's skull. The creature dropped.

Collapse

The ground was already rumbling. The cave was coming down.

Aldric grabbed the unconscious Hulk cultist. Helena's Spiritual Weapon broke open the last cage. Thalen snatched a stack of bound notes from the podium. Kouzlo found the remains of the Hulk's potion vial — a vibrant purple liquid — then fired Thunderwave behind him on the way out, ensuring the chamber collapsed completely.

Kessara

On the surface, Luminor stood guard, faithful as ever. A female lizardfolk stepped forward from among the freed prisoners and addressed the party with quiet gratitude. She asked if they had found her village.

Aldric delivered the news as gently as he could.

The lizardfolk — Kessara — was now the leader of what remained of her tribe. She told the party that the cultists had been extracting something from below. "Stars from beneath the earth," she called them. Legend held that a star had fallen from the sky long ago and landed in this place. It was the source of the swamp's life and abundance — the trees fed off its power.

Thalen glanced at the pink trees. The branches had shifted again.

The party made their way back to camp with two new additions: the captured cultist, bound and unconscious, and the surviving lizardfolk — battered, grieving, but alive.