The main vault had changed a bit since Ganeth's last visit: All of Streck's books and remaining effects (trapped on touching) were neatly boxed and piled in a corner, the heptagram had been replaced with a pentagram (with candles burning at the points), a crystal sarcophagus (trapped on opening) was sitting in the center of the room, and a large black tome (that was trapped on opening and seemed familiar to Zenig) was sitting on a large black pedestal. The room also held a woman dressed as a Helibane priest, something with an astral presence masked by an illusion of a rat (who dropped the illusion when called on it, turned out to be an amnizu, and detected as trapped on touching), a grinder-like item on a low table (trapped on touching), and a cylindrical black object (again, trapped on touching).
- Amnizu:
- "I invoke the Law of Mutual Non-Agression and demand safe passage from this place to a neutral mediation ground."
- Ganeth:
- "Am I supposed to know what the Law of Mutual Non-Aggression is?"
- Amnizu:
- "You may be thugs and robbers but you cannot ignore the Law. I must be released. Remove this vault from the sanctified zone so that I may return."
The priest (who was confused and having major memory problems -- not surprising for someone who'd been hanging out with an amnizu, even if she didn't know it) was reviving Q'ranzil, who she insisted had been framed for whatever it was everyone thought he'd done. It turned out Kharnzeel hadn't been heard from lately because a "fiendish old man" who'd "seemed so gentle and nice" -- Lord Rogthermal, back from Dustplane -- "tricked him, slew him, and imprisoned his soul," and the priest was trying to repair Q'ranzil's soul from whatever pieces were left. She insisted that he'd moved into the vault because it was the only place where'd be safe from all those people who were persecuting him. She also thought it was cruel to have moved the vault away from the "special places" that provided its power and were keeping Q'ranzil not quite dead.
- Amnizu:
- "Your words are being wasted on these folk. They are immune to reason."
- Ganeth:
- "`Immune to reason.' Interesting choice of words. Been hearing it a lot lately. Mostly from very evil people."
- Amnizu:
- "`Good', `evil' -- such primitive concepts. What have we done to fall into the hands of such primitives?"
- Ganeth:
- "You set up shop in my vault. Next question."
The amnizu insisted on having the vault moved outside the temple's wards so he could go astral and leave. He further claimed that the sarcophagus was his personal property, along with its contents. The priest took issue with this, claiming that Q'ranzil's soul was still free.
- Silvana:
- "I shudder to think what you are feeding into that crystal cocoon to rejuvenate him."
- Priest:
- "The chamber can only be operated by a pure, untainted soul. I cast Healing spells upon it. Something which you elves have little knowledge of."
- Silvana:
- "I am a priestess of Hanali and we get Major Healing too."
The Helibane was also quite surprised to learn that Silvana was now Champion of Good and began to realize just how extensive her recollective gaps were.
- Amnizu:
- "Memory is such a fragile thing."
- Silvana:
- "This stupid devil has the power to wipe memories."
- Amnizu: [rolling its eyes]
- "What do we have here? Walking bestiaries?"
- Ganeth:
- "It's a hobby."
Zenig's curiosity drew him to the tome, which Silvana figured might be used for summoning or controlling spiders.
- Zenig:
- "Somehow it looks familiar to me. Maybe I read it before?"
- Amnizu:
- "I doubt that. Such reading material is rarely imported to your homeland. Civilized literature tends to stay in civilized lands."
- Zenig:
- "What do you consider to be my homeland?"
- Amnizu:
- "Twin Paradises?"
- Zenig:
- "Nope."
- Amnizu:
- "Maybe Seven Heavens, then?"
- Zenig:
- "Wrong again."
- Amnizu:
- "Not that it matters much... mud of any color tastes like mud."
- Zenig:
- "Well, if I read it once, there's no harm in reading it again."
- Amnizu: [smiling]
- "Of course not. Would you care to read it?"
- Ganeth:
- "No reason to think you've read it before, Zenig."
- Zenig:
- "Alas, I also have no reason to think I haven't."
- Silvana:
- "If you were a mage or priest in your prior existence, perhaps."
- Amnizu:
- "Of name level."
- Ganeth:
- "Well, you're not evil, so I suspect you haven't. We can skip the lecture on coarse concepts this round, thanks."
- Amnizu:
- "Maybe his soul was going somewhere useful before Whitemoon imprisoned it in this shameful form? Have you considered that? Maybe you didn't really want to turn out this way."
- Helibane:
- "Maybe he was redeemed, fiend."
- Ganeth:
- "How many of us turn out the way we want to, really?"
- Amnizu:
- "So true..."
- Zenig: [to amnizu]
- "Well, since it seems all right with you, perhaps I could take another look..."
- Silvana:
- "No, that's a very bad idea. It could be trapped, and if you don't know what you're doing, it could summon something or drive you insane."
- Amnizu:
- "Why are you so worried? After all, a powerful Good being like him could hardly be harmed by a tiny evil tome like that."
- Silvana:
- "I'm curious about how the devils exert their control over spiders. Can they divert them while they are moving thru the ether?"
- Amnizu:
- "Why do you believe I would know anything about devils? Many say that there is no clear evidence that devils even exist. By interfering here, you are actually advancing the cause of Rakni. Doesn't that worry you?"
- Silvana:
- "Not really."
- Zenig's surface thought:
- "What does it matter who's controlling the spiders?"
By this point, the party was getting in the mood to roast some lower-planar hide and went to the gist of things.
- Silvana:
- "So your last proposal is that we let you go to safety along with Kharnzeel and everything you want in the vault."
- Amnizu:
- "It appears that is your only option, yes."
- Silvana:
- "Leaving us with what....an insane Helibane priestess?"
- Ganeth:
- "I doubt that even covers our labor costs."
- Amnizu:
- "I can take her off your hands, if you like."
- Helibane:
- "Evil people can be redeemed. However, evil extraplanars are irredeemably corrupt and can be destroyed without remorse."
- Ganeth:
- "Must be why I sleep so well."
- Amnizu:
- "Let's not be hasty here. You do not wish to set off some major incident due to your foolhardy actions."
- Silvana:
- "We're already in the middle of a major incident."
A tense round followed where everyone got lousy inits and realized they couldn't do anything especially cool without being interrupted. Ganeth eventually initiated hostilities by trying to close with the amnizu and pop a stoneskin, but he failed to save against the devil's sanctuary. Thorongil and Beeel fared equally badly, Zenig decided to wait for the devil to do something worth interrupting, and eventually Silvana put up a prot evil and went in with her forceblade (making the sanctuary save). The amnizu spent the round panic-parrying, and Silvana missed with all of her strikes.
- Amnizu:
- "Let's be reasonable, shall we? Is violence really worth this much to you? I'd like to cast a spell now, if I may. It is not offensive."
- Silvana:
- "You can cast it. I'll try and hit you."
Silvana didn't hit the amnizu, Zenig tried to interrupt and bounced off the expected stoneskins, and the devil got a bunch of mirror images up.
- Amnizu:
- "Now, what if I cast blur? Don't you think that you have better things to do with your day?"
- Ganeth:
- "I'm having fun. Aren't you?"
- Amnizu:
- "To tell you the truth, I was having much more fun before you appeared on the scene."
Silvana and Zenig slowly chipped through the amnizu's stoneskins, so he summoned in some megalocentipedes. One of them lived long enough to bite Zenig, but overall they were pretty irrelevant.
Apparently the amnizu decided that a stalemate wasn't so optimal for it after all, since with the fighters around to counter summonings, eventually Silvana and Zenig would slowly and patiently nick it to death. So it changed tactics and tried to charm Beeel, momentarily forgetting that was just the wrong side of an offensive action. (The party expected the amnizu to go offensive in style and imprison someone, but that wasn't the devil's plan.) Beeel saved, and Ganeth flew in, landed a critical strike on the amnizu (whose imprisonment ability detonated in its mind for a healthy 9d6), and ended its corporeal existence with his other held attack.
- Rahul:
- "This one's going to be on the Baatezu Horror Channel for some time."
- Elissa:
- "I think I deserve a nice scabbard for today's actions, don't you?"
- Ganeth:
- "You already have a nice magical scabbard."
- Elissa:
- "Hmmm...I guess I do. Hhow about a nice magical glove to hold me with? Or do we have that too?"
- Ganeth:
- "I've got magical gloves, yes. And a nice magical rune on your blade too. I could paint a little mark on your hilt for every greater devil and demon we take out."
- Elissa:
- "Yes, that sounds nice. Maybe a diamond dust and ruby mark?"
- Ganeth:
- "We'll see."
When the amnizu went down, whatever was left of the Helibane's memories went as well; she didn't remember meeting the party and had no idea who she was, though she remembered the basics of the Helibane religion. Silvana was able to sense that there was something wrong with the Helibane shrine in the vault (probably some not-quite-understood ability from Whitemoon), and the Helibane verified that several "Secrets of Helibane" had been subtly violated in the shrine's construction (things like Helibane casting a shadow and having one too many beads on her necklace).
The shrine was beyond what the Helibane could fix, so the party decided to trash it for good measure. The Helibane suggested casting bless on the statue and then ripping it out, while Nomistrus suggested dispel evil (which could bypass some types of anti-blessing traps -- unholy damage being the most popular). So Silvana did the dispel evil and did in fact bypass an unholy damage; the statue appeared to smile at her for a moment before melting into a thick tarry ooze with lots of little blinking eyes.
Ganeth put up gaze reflect, the Helibane hid behind him, and he and Beeel attacked the ooze, which took half damage from bludgeoning weapons and tried to gaze at Beeel and G. Beeel made his save and thought it felt like a polymorph attack; the ooze failed to save against its own reflected gaze and turned itself into a lemure.
- Silvana:
- "That's very interesting. Normally you can't polymorph people into extraplanars."
- Ganeth:
- "Maybe you can't polymorph extraplanars into people either, and that's as close to a bunny as it could go?"
Pounding the lemure down to -90 was trivial, and soon there was more evil astral junk floating around the vault. Silvana thought that not having an astral link might have limited the creature's intelligence (since gazing into a gaze reflect is pretty dumb when you're not immune to the effect yourself). The Helibane recalled hearing that Asmodeus makes waxes and paints that artists can as they desire.
Once it was safe, Nomistrus entered the vault and recognized several valuable items. The sarcophagus was, to nobody's surprise, the Crystal Cocoon that had made Kharnzeel's and Subator's extended lifetimes possible. The black cylinder was something called an Alchemist's Dream which would transmute lead to gold (and not just any old gold, but high-quality gold meeting the most exacting dwarven standards). And the grinder was Bokenja's Diamond Mine, which turns coal into diamond dust (and is incredibly heavy -- there's some sort of compact object inside generating the necessary pressures; the party had to reduce it before carrying it out, and even then it took several fighters to do it). Silvana detrapped everything she could find and noted that the stand the tome was sitting on seemed to have some sort of quiescent intelligence.
Zenig started to carry the tome and stand out of the vault to see if it triggered any memories. As he picked up the stand (and after making a save to avoid going insane), he had a vision.
Zenig is seeing a scene from the perspective of an old man in dark robes, in a cramped tower room. He is casting some kind of ritual spell using the tome that Zenig just touched. The old man is surrounded by a horde of spiders, all swaying as if charmed. Suddenly the old man turns around and looks startled as the door opens. In the door stands a young boy (8 years old?) who starts playing a little flute. His eyes look mischievous. Around the old man, spiders start to break out of their trance; the boy runs away and the vision ends.
The party searched the vault for secret doors and compartments; they came across a compartment in Streck's writing desk filled with coded notes written on Nirduk stationery.
- Nomistrus:
- "Why don't you guys take a well-earned rest and let us pacifist priests handle things for a change. I have a temple full of priests salivating to do divinations over some of these things."
- Silvana:
- "Just remember that `detrapped' isn't synonymous with safe."