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Dunmari Frontier - Wellby Solo Session 3

Reflections of Danger: in which Wellby and companions face the Mirror Realm

Featuring: Wellby, Alimash, Shoal
In Taelgar: Oct 14, 1748 DR to Nov 13, 1748 DR
On Earth: Saturday Nov 19, 2022
Arryn’s Tower

Wellby and new allies defeat mirror entities and rescue the wizard Arryn from the Mirror Realm, who then assists Wellby in journeying to the Feywild.

Session Info

Summary

  • Wellby and companions recover from the aboleth’s defeat, and Artem retrieves his remorhaz heart to aid his escape.
  • The freed Kenku prisoners inform Wellby of the wizard Arryn, who could help reach the Feywild; his apprentice, Resenna, mentions Arryn’s disappearance.
  • The adventurers sail north to find Arryn, passing strange islands.
  • Upon arrival, they battle animated mirror shards and meet Arryn’s steward, learning Arryn is trapped in the Mirror Realm.
  • The party formulates a plan to enter the Mirror Realm, leading to a confrontation with their mirror duplicates.
  • The real Arryn is rescued by identifying and destroying his mirror duplicate, closing the portal to theMirror Realm.
  • Arryn thanks the party, and helps Wellby reach the Feywild.

Timeline

  • Oct 14, 1748 DR: Rescue prisoners from aboleth lair, leave for Wahacha
  • Oct 15, 1748 DR: Arrive back in Wahacha. Help freed victims get organized to travel to the sea elves until a cure can be found. Say farewell to Artem who departs for Medju. 
  • Oct 16, 1748 DR - Oct 22, 1748 DR: Organize a ship and supplies from Wahacha, to sail north. 
  • Oct 23, 1748 DR: Say farewell to Rufus; depart with Alimash and Shoal for the tower of Arryn the Wanderer. 
  • Oct 24, 1748 DR - Nov 12, 1748 DR: Sail north, passing many strange islands along the way. 
  • Nov 13, 1748 DR: Arrive Arryn’s tower. Fight mirror shards, meet Gyles the steward, discover that Arryn is trapped in the Mirror Realm. Free Arryn. Say goodbye to Shoal, who heads south again to court his lady love, and Alimash, who remains in Arryn’s service for the time being. Wellby is plane shifted to Lastlight Falls, the fey crossing near Stormcaller Tower in the north of Dunmar, by Arryn’s magic.

Narrative

We begin in the aboleth’s cave as Rufus, Artem, Shoal, Alimash, and Wellby deal with the aftermath of that creature’s death, and the dazed confusion of the prisoners and slaves of the aboleth coming out of their charmed state. As others tend to the prisoners, Artem immediately moves to recover the remorhaz heart, explaining that this rare treasure is his price for freedom. Artem is fleeing from Ursk, a magocracy run by eight families of wizards, known as the rodnye; the exact reasons for his flight are unclear, but the party gathers he was unwilling to pay a price asked of him. The remorhaz heart is to be traded with a partron in Medju who has the means to ensure his safe escape from the scrying eyes of the rodnye of Ursk. As Artem gathers his treasure, he also examines the massive amber prison for some creature that none wish to see freed, and suggests that perhaps this is best left alone and undisturbed.

Meanwhile, the discussion turns to the prisoners. The two kenku – Nahto and Skoda – tell Wellby that the person he seeks is a wizard known as Arryn the Wanderer, originally from the western edge of Green Sea, and quite interested in the nature of the multiverse. He would surely know how to send Wellby to the Feywild. Unfortunately, his apprentice, Ressena, the formerly enslaved mage, tells the party that Arryn is missing. He was experimenting with trying to reach the hypothesized Mirror Realm, when Resenna heard a crash and a hand reached out of the reflective side of a silver water pitcher to try to grab her. She dodged and ran to investigate, but her master was nowhere to be seen, until she saw his reflection darting from shard to shard in the reflections of broken glass. When her reflection appeared and tried to grab her again, she fled, but was caught by the aboleth’s raiders on her way south to Medju. 

As the party heads above water to return to Wahacha and prepare for the journey north to Arryn’s Tower, they are confronted with the realization that the prisoners of the aboleth have been sickened with some disease that causes their skin to burn when exposed to air for more than a handful of minutes. The sea elves volunteer to shelter the freed captives (who retain the ability to breath underwater while the disease infects them) until a cure can be found, while the party gathers supplies for the journey north, and Nahto repairs Wellby’s kenku armor to allow him to activate the wings that were previously broken. 

Finally, Alimash, Wellby, and Shoal head north in a small sailing boat, navigating their way north towards Arryn’s Tower. past the oddities and sights of the Eastern Isles: a small island with an incredibly dense pine forest, no signs of cities or towns, but small lights moving in the darkness through the trees as the adventurers ride at anchor for the night off the coast; a sheltered harbor in what appears to be a coral atoll, except all the coral has turned to solid stone; a flat island, covered in a vast expanse of salt marsh and shallow dunes just barely above the ocean, moving fast in the current seemingly unmoored from whatever keeps these islands roughly in place, with lizardfolk on the shore swimming and playing in the water. 

The party arrives at the small island on which Arryn’s Tower stands, mooring on the long dock that, while obviously in use recently, is currently deserted. Following the path, the party approaches the tower. While Wellby begins to inspect the door, shards of glass spread around the outside entrance – seemingly from several broken mirrors – begin to swirl into swarms and animate, attacking the party. Wellby makes a few attempts at unlocking the door, but in the chaos of battle finds it difficult, and instead turns to fight. The party manages to reduce the glass swarms to dust in short order, and with time to study the door quickly yields to Wellby’s lockpicking skill. 

The first floor of the tower is a entryway and an elaborate audience chamber, where all reflective surfaces seem to have been removed or dirtied with soot and lard to prevent reflections. Some experimentation with pools of water reveals that reflections animate, and move separately from the person they are reflecting, to the point that Wellby’s mirror hand begins to reach out of a puddle of water and try to grab Wellby. After some further experimenting with reflections, the party heads up the stairs to continue exploring. 

The second floor – kitchens and servant’s quarters – is not deserted. The party finds Gyles, Arryn’s steward, here. He is not doing well, struggling to deal with the chaos of what is happening in the tower. It takes some convincing, but the party eventually gets him to believe they are real. He tells them that after Arryn vanished, Resenna told him to run, but he refused to abandon Arryn or the place he had called home for more than 15 years. But then a mirror reflection of himself tried to emerge from a mirror and take him over. He smashed the mirrors, but was too scared to leave the tower, afraid of the reflections in the ocean. He suspects Arryn has been taken into the Mirror Realm. 

As the conversation progresses and it becomes clear the party may need to distinguish between the mirror Arryn and the real Arryn, Shoal asks Gyles for something about Arryn that only Arryn would know, and is told about when they were coming east, on a halfling ship, Arryn sang the Lost Lads of Tollen, the only time he’d ever heard him sing. 

The party flies to the top of the tower, avoiding whatever dangers lie on the 3rd floor. It takes some time and convincing a raccoon to investigate, but they find the location of Arryn’s notes with clues to the Mirror Realm. The raccoon also ends up in the Mirror Realm itself, and sees two wizards wandering around, confirming that both the (presumably) real Arryn and the duplicate Arryn are still alive. From Arryn’s notes and observation of the raccoon, the party learns that in order for the real Arryn to be returned to this world, the duplicate Arryn must be destroyed. 

After some discussion of how to proceed, the party decides that Wellby will use his smoke arrow to obscure the room with the mirrors at the top of the tower, and everyone will rush around covering the mirrors with drapes and sheets so that they can control the creation of duplicates. Then Alimash will enter the Mirror Realm to try to figure out which is the real Arryn and kill the duplicate, while Wellby and Shoal (presumably) deal with the Alimash duplicate that appears on this end. 

The plan immediately faces complications, however, when Alimash speaks to an Arryn and realizes the wizard does not remember the real world and that magic does not work in the Mirror Realm, while at the same time mirror-Alimash charges Wellby in a rage. As Wellby and Shoal battle mirror-Alimash, real Alimash pushes the Arryn version away, after humming the Lost Lads of Tollen to him with no effect, and runs down two flights of stairs to talk to the other Arryn, where the conversation repeats. Wellby and Shoal attempt to restrain mirror-Alimash to give real-Alimash time, while real-Alimash hums again to the other Arryn, who recognizes the tune. Alimash immediately stabs the first Arryn, who shatters into thousands of tiny silver shards as the real Arryn fades and begins to reappear in the real world. At that moment, Shoal strikes with all his power at the now-restrained mirror-Alimash, who likewise shatters into thousands of pieces as the real Alimash emerges. 

Quickly, restored to his memories and powers, Arryn closes the portal to the Mirror Realm, severing the connection, and turns to thank Wellby, Alimash, and Shoal profusely. After giving gifts to Alimash (a ring of mind shielding) and Shoal (a deck of beautiful illusions), Wellby asks about the Feywild. Arryn gifts him a necklace enchanted with moonlight as a gift to secure an honorable Fey guide, and the plane-shifts him to Lastlight Falls, the portal in northern Dunmar where Wellby will meet his friends.