Trieskan Feynian - 4/20/23

 I shot a mastiff! I had to––who knows if what was behind that door was friend or foe?! Not me, and I wasn’t taking any chances.

But high above it all, I could see our party and the hog-tied wizard Mordenkainen. The door is open, and there doesn’t appear to be any traps as far as I can tell. Brace tosses the wizard over his shoulder once more as Bingdor and Radha attempt to leap over the faux tile that Brace’s foot initially triggered. I leave them to this as I continue on the ceiling with my spider climb ability and into the room that housed the two mastiffs, which Brace believes to be Mordenkainen’s pets. (That should go over really well!) Meanwhile, Bingdor leaps over the tile with no trouble at all, but Radha, admittedly no athlete, tries to step over but there is a “click” and she’s frozen in place, the square plate depressed into the floor. Radha removes her foot, and as Ireena leaps backwards to avoid any potential harm from this trap, nothing happens! Endrid then hops over the plate, and they all follow me into the room.

The room is an anomaly. Hay bales and a mess. At the end, a sizable treasure chest some six feet wide, three feet deep, purple with gold trim, quite nice, in the corner of the room. Beside a makeshift bed, a side table and a bunch of wooden crates, and on top, papers, notes, and scrolls strewn inside the crates. I leap down and make my way to the chest as the others light some torches and enter, scorching some hay as they wade through it.

I have a look at the chest. It has a large keyhole and I examine it for traps. All I notice is a strange, deep blackness to the keyhole, deeper than any I’ve ever seen, so I decide to step away and ponder this a moment. Endrid uses her free hand to rifle through the loose hay and unveils some of the shiny things glistening from within. Then she pulls out a skeleton! Beneath it, an apple-sized gemstone glimmers crimson. Endrid plucks the ruby from underneath the skeleton, holds it in her hand. No traps trigger. No skeleton reanimates. However, the ruby seems bigger than any other she’s seen in all The Realms.

The party and I all decide to rummage the hay in search of more shiny loot. We push aside some hay and reveal a black hole three meters in diameter. The blackness looks similar to what I gazed into inside the lock’s keyhole. Radha tosses a big handful of hay into the hole. It vanishes! Endrid then dips her torch into the hole and pulls it out, still bright and burning.

So I decide to dip a finger into the pool of pitch darkness. I stick my head inside after tying a rope around my waist and having Endrid grip it tightly, and from within the black hole, the color changes from black to a psychedelic blue/purple. It appears to be a three-foot tunnel that goes about ten feet down. Then I slip my body inside, climb around, colors swirling all around. The walls are see-through, but there’s nothing to see, really, so I climb back out and explain to my comrades that there’s nothing down there. Inspired, Radha decides to take a dip inside and see if she can sense anything, what with her connection to The Old Ones and all, but when she emerges on this side of the hole, she admits she felt nothing.

Bingdor and I walk over to the chest again, and he examines the hole for magic. He deciphers that it is different from the hole in the ground. Bingdor then examines the makeshift bed. Beneath it, he finds a portrait of a scantily-clad woman wizard brandishing her elbows. On the night table, there is a half-empty glass of water and a pill bottle along with some notes and scrolls. Bingdor reads the pill bottles––one in a language he is not familiar with, the other is a urinary tract infection medicine, as it is written out in common. They decide to take the pills, in case they are Mordenkainen’s medicine.

I then rush away from the group and back to the chest. I pull out my thieves tools, pull out one of my more trusty utensils and carefully insert it into the back keyhole. When I pull it out, the tool is gone, all but the part I was holding onto! I then rummage through the wizard’s pockets as Ireena holds up a handful of silver which she earlier had pulled from his pockets, as if to say “I already did that, Trieskan!” and all I find is a napkin with a flaccid leftover hotdog in it. I wiggle it around and it falls apart.

Mordenkainen then rouses somewhat, though his eyes don’t open, and tells us he needs to use the bathroom. Bingdor takes the Wizard over to the black hole, which seems to be his cosmic pissing potty. I feel grosser than I ever have.

“Can you live with joy in your heart?” Mordenkainen says to Bingdor, low, but audibly enough for us all to hear and chuckle at. “I want you to take a moment and look me in the eyes. I want you to put myself in your heart forever, because forever is about to happen.” What?!

Bingdor uses his walking stick to undo the wizard’s robes so he can relieve himself. A weak stream of elderly pee exits the old wizard’s body. Once done, Bingdor walks Mordenkainen over to us, and he says “you’ve all beaten me barely by the skin of your noses. I would commend you for it, but I don’t think that you guys deserve that win. I know you’re here for my help, and I don't think I’ll be able to give it to you in your current state. You should untie me, and we should get to work right away in order for you…” the wizard pauses a moment, and the moment seems to linger longer than it should. Then, he continues: “…in order for you to defeat Strahd…” Another pause, heavy with grizzled acceptance. “…who hasn’t been defeated yet.”

“Should we untie him?” The question is aroused.

“What’s in the chest?” Endrid asks Mordenkainen.

“I’ll let you know after you untie me,” he retorts.

“We’ll untie you after you tell us.” Bingdor parries.

After a moment, Mordenkainen admits he doesn’t know what's in it, that it’s protected by a Sphere of Annihilation and that he’s lost many a magic weapon trying to open it.

Endrid asks if there’s any spells that can open it. “None that I can find,” the wizard responds.

“What help can you offer us, untied?” Bingdor asks.

“Honey,” Mordenkainen says with arrogance, “I think you need all the help you can get.”

“What about you?” the wizard says to Radha, and begins courting her with compliments on being an orc wizard.

Bingdor asks about the skeleton, and the wizard chalks it up to “an experiment.” Endrid then shows him the crimson ruby, and he warns him to be careful with it, that it’s “...a very powerful magical item.”

We all vote on whether or not to untie Mordenkainen. It’s two to keep him tied up, two to untie him, and all eyes are on me. So I rationalize that he won’t be much good to us tied up against Strahd. Three to two in favor of freeing the wizard.

Mordenkainen is cut loose and slides off of Brace’s back. He shakes it off, then gets up. “I commend you adventurers for having a democratic system. Quite beautiful. However, you failed––never untie the wizard!”

Then, he strangely adds, “where are you and what are you doing? Tell me that!”

And for the life of us, we couldn’t tell him. Not at first, at least.

But ultimately, we relayed the story of Madame Ava telling us to go off to the mountain. Endrid tells him that Madame Ava loved him, to which there is no response. She then tells him that she is no longer with us. He seems moved somewhat, mainly because, he admits, Madame Ava is not a being the way we are beings, but an entity older than all of us.

“I fear you’ve compromised my position in this cave,” he states with sadness. He adds, “I don’t know how you got this far. I think what we need to do is a training exercise.” And he tells us to have some dinner and get a good night’s rest. “Tomorrow, I’ll lead a training battle against a simulation Strahd and a potential group of baddies he would have with him, were you all to face him in battle.”

Then, he adds again, that “forever is about to happen tomorrow.”

And then, strangely, he adds that we should “put Amafray in your hearts because my heart is full. My heart is full.”

SMASH CUT TO:

INT. MORDENKAINEN’S DINING HALL - LATER

We are suddenly seated at the long table in the dining hall. Everyone is eating. Mordenkainen is telling stories of battles, of Xanathar and other legendary figures in The Realms. We are all sharing drink and food. Radha Eldritch blasts a plate in mid-air and the plate explodes in the air. Bingdor plays a magical tune on his dulcimer. Ireena is getting drunker and drunker, but she’s earned it, I think.

We have all earned a night like this, I like to think.