Session 8
October 23 2019
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Star, Orel, and Balasar returned to the tavern, and (after half a night’s rest) told the rest of the owners about the pumpkin creature that Star saw and chased until it vanished into a sewer pipe.
The next morning, several owners went into the basement to check on Thol Deepwood’s staff. What they found was that it had filled the cave beneath our tavern with a thick cloud of smoke. Penub investigated further and learned that the mushroom forest in the cave had caught fire. Grixis’ Unseen Servant fetched the staff, still emitting clouds of smoke, and put it in the furnace to vent. The staff’s heat started fires in our basement, which Grixis kept under control with a Control Flame cantrip, while Star went down into the cave to put out the mushroom forest fire with Create Water. Penub tried to enlist the help of the Kobolds, and Burke went down to help him, and between the two of them, they convinced the kobolds that a wizard had started the fire, but that the franchise would protect the kobolds from the wizard. After Star and Grixis had put out the fires, they saw that the staff kept restarting them, so Grixis grabbed the staff and ran outside.
Starting fires all along the way, the franchise owners carried the staff out to the docks, hoping to dowse the staff in the sea. Star led the way, using her credentials as a noble to clear a path as guards chased us all the way to the docks. As soon as they got to the docks, Grixis jumped with the staff into the ocean. The staff instantly created an explosion of steam which carried Grixis 20-ish feet into the air. Star tried to catch the goblin with a well-timed Create Water spell, and Balasar tried to catch him the conventional way, but it ended up that Balasar soaked and Grixis landed on him, with both of them splitting the damage from Grixis’ fall.
The next thing we knew, we saw a 12ft tall being, humanoid in shaped, but elemental in nature, emerge from the sea. The being was recognized by some franchise members as and Efreet, a self-important being from the Elemental Plane of Fire. He fumed his frustration about being imprisoned and thrown into the ocean. While Star and Balasar tried to placate the Efreet, something Thol said seemed to rub him the wrong way, and he drew his scimitar and approached Thol menacingly, prompting everyone to roll initiative.
Thol, Balasar, and Orel pelted the Efreet with spells and darts, and the guards who had chased us took up arms against the Outsider. Grixis went underwater after the staff, and saw that a Gate to the Plane of Fire had been created down there. The Efreet punished Thol’s insolence by banishing him to the Plane of Fire, but Thol saw the Gate and tried to make his way to it. Grixis resurfaced with the staff, and ran at the Efreet as Star distracted it. When Grixis got close enough, his eyes and the gem on his ring started glowing the same red color, and he chanted an incantation in a voice that wasn’t his own. Thankfully, the spell succeeded in binding the Efreet back into the staff, ending the fight.
Meanwhile, Thol had to make Constitution Saving Throws to fight his way through the overwhelming heat to get to the Gate back to our plane. His first two results were totals of 6, earning him two levels of Exhaustion. He rolled one success and a few more failures, then the final Saving Throw resulted in another 6, ensuring Thol Deepwood’s death from heat exhaustion in the Elemental Plane of Fire.
However, the franchise may not even be aware of Thol’s death. All most of us saw was that the Efreet cast some sort of spell on him, and he vanished. For all we may know, Thol might turn up later. Perhaps one of us will retroactively identify the spell that was cast and deduce that Thol was banished to another plane with no way to return. If we get really lucky, we might even learn which plane he was sent to and correctly guess that he probably died there. In any case, Thol is gone, and whether we know it now or learn it later, he’s not coming back.
The franchise is, once again, shaken by the loss of one of its owners, but the battle is won, and the rest of us will have to move on as well as we can. Perhaps we’ll hunt down some monstrous pumpkins and/or missing drunkards to help us take our minds off of our loss of Thol, and perhaps another character will join the ranks to help fill the void Thol left behind. We’ll all miss Thol Deepwood, but until we all join him in the Outer (or Inner) Planes, the franchise must go on.