March 2, 118
As they head down through the Undercity, Ash-Daughter makes a suggestion regarding their route. The last time they explored the area, they took the first right turn they saw and ended up following a long, circuitous route to Leravith's home. In doing so, they bypassed a door that, according to their map, could possibly lead to their destination much more quickly.
The party agree with her suggestion to try the door. Listening at it, they can hear voices beyond. Only Calanon is able to both hear and understand them, and the low, brutish-sounding voices are speaking in Giant. They seem to be discussing food or a meal. Since Giant is mostly spoken by monsters such as giants or ogres, not known for their friendly disposition, the party decide to try to burst into the room and ambush the occupants.
Unfortunately, Calanon makes too much noise trying to get the door open, and by the time he steps in, the creatures inside are looking straight at him. They are a hulking, nine-foot tall ogre, and two smaller, but still huge, half-ogres, perched over the half-eaten corpse of some humanoid creature. After a moment of hesitation on everyone's part, Calanon and the ogres charge each other.
The party has learned some new tricks since they were last in the area, and they find the ogres are not so much of a threat as they once might have been. They dispatch their three opponents fairly easily. During the fight, one of the half-ogres manages to get in front of Ellyanna and nearly drops her with a single blow, but otherwise the party suffer only minor wounds.
They decide to take a short rest before continuing on, so they drag the bed and the chest into the room, and retrieve the five other chests from the demiplane. They use these large objects to barricade all of the doors in the room, then rest up for an hour. During this time, Ash-Daughter and Dark Star search the room, but find little of interest. Dark Star looks at the corpse and identifies that it's an orc. He wonders if it's one of the orcs they met the last time they were here, but the remains are no longer identifiable.
Once Ellyanna has recovered from her wound, the party set out once again. Going by their map, they choose a door on the western wall of the room. After hearing nothing, they head through. They recognize the room beyond the door as one they've previously been to - Ash-Daughter's suggestion has paid off, and they are only a short distance away from the necromancer's lair.
The party pass through a few more rooms, which luckily remain unoccupied, before finding the stairway down to Leravith's home. As before, the entrance to her underground palace is just past the base of the stairs, and is guarded by two undead Elven soldiers. Now that they know the way is clear, they cart down the enchanted bed and the six chests full of undead remains. One of the soldiers fetches a manservant, who leads the party in, telling them that other servants will carry in their heavy burden for them.
The manservant leads them to a chamber where they find Leravith busy weaving a tapestry on a loom. As before, her attire and mannerisms are more fitting for noblewoman attending a formal High Elven ball than a necromancer in a ruin hidden below the city. Putting her work aside, she greets the party and, after some small talk, takes them down to her magical laboratory.
When they arrive, her servants have already brought in the bed and chests, and she makes a cursory inspection of each. She tells them that she'll need some time to study the undead remains before she can tell them anything. The party decide to wait in her home for a few hours to see what preliminary results she can come up with, before returning to the surface before nightfall.
During this time, they split into two groups. Calanon, Dark Star, and Ash-Daughter get permission from Leravith to study in her library, and spend the time reading bestiaries of undead creatures, hoping the knowledge could come in handy if they ever end up facing them. Elvish and Ellyanna spend the time discussing how they can convince Severn to wait until Zorlac's work with Kaplan and his doppleganger is done.
After the few hours pass, the party return to Leravith and ask her what she has discovered. She tells them that there is something very unusual about the remains that they have provided her. Most undead creatures are created by summoning up a source of necrotic energy, then permanently imbuing that energy into them. Even after their destruction, there should be some identifiable residual energy remaining. However, these remains seem to be different.
There is much less residual necrotic energy than she expected given their age, and the energy seems to have been external, rather than internal. It's as if, rather than being infused into the creature, the necrotic energy was stored somewhere else, then magically linked to the creature. She doesn't see why anyone would do this. As far as she knows, there is no advantage to it, and it adds a potential weakness: if the object where the energy is stored is destroyed, the undead creature would be destroyed as well.
Before they leave, Dark Star takes the chance to try to impress Leravith, by asking her about a random necromancy-related tidbit that he remembers from the wizard's spellbook they plundered from the Frosthaven crypt. Leravith seems surprised by his knowledge, and slightly annoyed that she didn't tell her he understood necromancy, as she could have gone into more detail. Dark Star "explains" that he wanted the others to be able to understand her explanations.
As the rest of the party leaves, Ellyanna decides to stay behind overnight, to make use of Leravith's library. The necromancer sends a soldier with them, explaining that there is a much faster path back to the city than the one they used.
Ellyanna spends her evening combing through Leravith's books for any information she can find on enchantment magic, still looking for a way to help Corsica. Obviously, the books are heavily slanted towards necromancy, but enchantment seems to be the second-most common subject. While she doesn't have enough time to learn anything directly useful, there is enough information available that she thinks she might find something, given enough time to study.
The rest of the party arrives back at the surface about half an hour after leaving, having followed Leravith's soldier through a quicker path. They head to the Eminent Cathedral to discuss their plan with Severn, and try to convince him to hold off on retrieving Kaplan. The plan they've come up with is as follows:
There is a public event coming in three days - the Grand Tourney of Vornheim. The Grand Tourney is an annual event in which noble warriors battle against each other in one-on-one duels, until a Grand Champion is crowned. It is a very popular and well-attended event, and the perfect place to hold an announcement.
They propose that, before the event, they retrieve both Kaplan and the doppleganger. Then, before the final match of the tournament, they will announce that they have captured the Archprelate's murderer, and present one of the two Kaplans to the audience. Then, they will dramatically reveal that there is not one but two identical men. They will explain that Sahril's magical knowledge allowed her to discover this fact, and that she was keeping her head down until they were both caught. After saying that they will take the two men back to be put on trial so they can determine which is really the killer, Sahril will announce her candidacy for Arch-Prelate.
Severn is convinced by this plan, and agrees to hold off until the Grand Tourney before doing anything. The party (except, Ellyanna, who is still down with Leravith) rest for the night at the cathedral again.
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