Suubra of the Twelfth Dimbrand: The mad Conjurer

Crimson_King

An entity has been going around causing chaos for it's sake, offering books of conjuration to the unprepared and ill-suited. They appear to be a woman in a red dress, adorned in bells. Hair of red and eyes like pitch.

They appear to be the one responsible for many of the incursions, the Celestial in Eveningstar, the Undead in the Storm horns, The Pit Fiend within the Hillsmarch and likely some involvment in the Calantar way's current landscape.

-Amin al-Din Abd Al-Rashid

Crimson_King

From hence forth, we shall refer to this entity as "The Lady of Bells", to avoid spreading her name or influences. It appears to use a milky white gem to maintain their hold within our plane, and fades the moment it is broken or crumbles from sustained use.

It is my theory that the Lady of Bells, is using the Chaos of these Gate incursions to weaken the veil to allow herself to remain indefinitely in our plane. Likely a demon of some sort, her very nature drew a reaction from me, I have to assume the same may be true for Aeris.

It appears to be using others as proxy to achieve these goals. We will catalog the events within this file as an Index.

Crimson_King

This post is deleted!

Crimson_King

The lady of Bells now claims all places beneath the surface of Arabel as her domains, the smugglers, sewers and other "lower ways". This encounter occurred within the Ankeg pits out toward Eveningstar. Although we did not see her physically there, she made an effort to taunt me during the battle and offer information for my cooperation.

I assume most of what was said was to taunt us, but some of her references seemed to carry a theme to them. Claimed she could "Offer me a heart", that she knew a place where Mystra still sang in the silence, but these were offered at a cost which appeared to be a drop of my blood.

We managed to chase her into the sewers, fighting more of these creatures and collecting two items of possible significance. A bouquet of Asters and a cut emerald. I am wary of making an attempt to scry any of these, there is danger in knowing and certainly more when the connection is offered freely. She may reside in the Deadwell, we lost track of her once she'd left the sewers into the outskirts of the Calantar and there are few other places I could imagine her hiding in that direction.

I'd rather search for her with mundane means than risk an attack through the sympathetic connection of a divination, and I have no interest in humoring this creatures offers. Anything offered by it will end only in suffering.

I'll finish the report off with what minions she seems to favor in her attacks so far.

Armored Undead Dwarves: Armored decently for an undead creature, they often wield weapons. Great-axes, and battle axes to general effect, but always be wary of a lucky strike.
Resilient Zombies: As the name would suggest very durable, well crafted and hard hitting variety of zombie. They are the most commonly used fodder, they are quite resistant to divine turning.
Bile Ghouls: The weakest of the undead in her arsenal, these creatures come in two varieties and you're unlikely to know which until you kill them. The first bursts into corpse vapors upon it's destruction, a noxious gas that's odor can leave you disoriented and the second burst into corpse scarabs, these creatures get underfoot and make maneuvering difficult. The beetles also burst into a noxious vapor on death.
Shadow-touched Ghouls: These undead favor the use of darkness in their attacks, moderately durable and while lacking in immediate martial prowess they make up for this fact with their ability to reform after being struck down. If left "mostly" intact upon the floor they'll reform again and thankfully there appears to be a limit to this ability. They may do this at least twice before they seem to fall apart.
Al-Rashid

Dire Rabbit

Seekers,

~~Hello!~~

I hope the information contained in this file will be of some use to the ongoing problem of the Lady of Bells and her growing influence in the region. For the sake of sanity, I’d urge you to think twice, thrice, and yet again before turning this document over to the Council of Twelve in total.

They cannot be trusted and parties within the Council will use the information contained within to spread their master’s influence, or go off on some half thought out crusade against someone who’s more likely a victim than a perpetrator.

If I am missing things, or you have questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know. This is a document compiled on my own research and foot work, so it may be out of date or have holes in it.

Respectfully,

Misa Leonalloud

What I am lacking in all of this is motive or understanding of the Lady’s goals. Though I have some ideas, they’re half formed at best and actively nebulous at worse.

My working theory is that there is something on, under, or around Immersea that the Lady wants; most of her efforts have been focused on isolating the port and fortifying it with people loyal to her. Her grander goals may be along the lines of taking hold in the Prime since no god or avatar could stop her during the Silence; a humanoid among ants as it were.

Timeline:

Eveningstar.

Incident 1

A young militia member is given a book of angel summoning by a red haired woman who claims it will make him a hero. This goes horribly awry as the man cannot fully grasp the intricate bargaining required when casting these spells and a portal to the upper planes is opened and an angelic host pours free.

Incident 2

The same day, a necromancer is fiddling around in the South Horn using some kind of cobbled together ritual that empowered the curse in the region, weakening the Veil. Further into the tower in the region, we find the necromancer intentionally attempting to breach into the Plane of Shadow.
When questioned, she said that she was given the ritual by someone we’d not expect and that she wanted to fulfill a dream of shadows reaching out to her. She had been prepared to undo the ritual once her goals were complete, she went in expecting to survive it. Whether that was intentional or not on the part of her benefactor isn’t known. But it does fit the motive of the previous encounter; planar breach, offered a chance to fulfill a dream.

Hullack Forest

Incident 1

Next, a fortress in the Hullack overrun by fishmen. A lot of food is sacrificed and some form of ritual circle is discovered. This will become important later.

Incident 2

The incursion (and later native hosting) of Slaadi is introduced to the area, presumably initially by the Lady of Bells. I do not have confirmation of this
There are a few other incidents of folks getting their hands on things they shouldn’t have and causing havoc, I don’t have specifics for them as I only ever hear about them fifth hand; not being a member of the Council of Twelve, I’m not privy to their information.

Hillmarch Mines

Incident 1

Another planar breach was found involving a Pit Fiend, apparently the ritual devised was conducted by ogres but they were slain before it could be completed. A sorcerer, knowing full well what he was doing completed the circle and ritual which brought the Pit Fiend into existence and weakened the Veil from the sheer power of the breach.
To my way of thinking, this represents an escalation of the power of these rituals being offered and composed. Or it could merely represent a more earnest familiarity with opening holes into the lower planes- not unreasonable considering the nature of the Lady.

Incident 2

An incursion by creatures of the lower planes into the mine was fought (and continues to be fought, I’m told) by beings from the upper planes. This breach seems to have been spontaneous, an odorous malaise of sulfur permeates the area and lesser creatures of the lower planes (such as Vrocks!) wander the mines unchallenged. I am building a ward to seal this tear.

Irondrake Mines

This occurred in a cave near a place known as Irondrake rock where a demon had helped a Frost Giant Shaman raise her dead companions and the dwarves who went in to kill those giants as undead monsters. The creature said that it was helping the giant get what she wanted.
Attempts to even harm the creature weren’t thwarted so much as outright ineffectual. It crushed a gem and disappeared, presumably back to its home plane. Again with that motif.

Immersea

Finally we come to Immersea. Months of bad fishing, progressively worse attacks on ships, and so forth. Some of this could probably be attributed to the sahaguin being what they are. Apparently a leader arose among them and has been orchestrating a lot of attacks on the port. This creature has been killed recently and the attacks, as I understand, have died down.

Incident 1

Months ago, attacks upon shipping begin by the sahaguin fishmen, storms ravaged the port town and sent as many as three ships to the bottom of the Wyvernwater for every one that got into the port. This lead to the mayor taking out loans from the other major factions within the region so she could continue to seem like the trade hub that Immersea should have been.

This went on to the point that even the inn had to go to half rations since fishing was so poor.

From here, the mayor sought out help of the Wolf’s Head, a group of pirates that have a long reputation for taking over ports they come into. It’s not known where she got this contact, her daughter doesn’t know and she was cagey when asked directly. The mayor sold her port to the Admiral for relief of her debts.

Incident 2

During my first encounter with the sahaguin down there, when we recovered some supplies from some of missing vessels, we also found a circle that was abyssal in nature and, while crude on the face of it, was still much more advanced than anything they should’ve been able to produce.
They were attempting to commune with, or summon their abyssal god, Sekola. They’d stacked offerings of good, valuables and the corpses of the crews of these ships, using their blood to create this circle.
We captured one and interrogated it under magic thrall, didn’t learn much. I don’t think anyone’s followed up investigations with the big chief before killing it, sadly I wasn’t there to do so.

Incident 3

During our attempts to deliver the coin provided by the Wolf’s Head to the various debtors around the region we have been set upon by bandits and all manner of other folk attempting to stop us. One of those bandits offered to give us the name of the one who sold us out-- that bandit is dead now. We dropped the ball on that, I don’t know why it wasn’t followed up on faster. We wanted to, we couldn’t get timing right.

Other interactions with the Wolf’s Head has shown that Zhentarim may be part of the crew and the second in command is a bit of a strange case that pings a lot of people oddly.

Incident 4

An attack by fish men upon the village apparently destroyed a copy of the village’s ‘ledger’, this has later been rumored (confirmed?) to possibly be a book bound in humanoid skin containing the True Names of many powerful creatures. The whereabouts of this book seem to be in the Seeker’s posession.

Incident 5

The road south to Immerse has been flooded by undead, presumably lead by the tiefling necromancer that the Lady of Bells is sponsoring. Byron Burke of Ilmater has had two encounters with him, apparently the tiefling was speaking about a queen of the dead coming back to kill an ancient dragon.

Possibly related to the bleeding statue of the queen in Aunaria?

I played a gamble to see if it’d happen, and to my bemused delight, it worked exactly as predicted; I sent a letter of my findings to the mayor’s daughter, Marlene, I was informed by her that her mother is exiling me from ever entering the village again. I touched a nerve. But Merl informed me that she thinks the Admiral is in the clear, that her second in command might be the one helping push forward the plots of the Lady.

[Enclosed]
Letter to Marlene: https://nodebb.cityofarabel.com/topic/55798/letter-to-marlene-arcerak/3
Letter from Byron: https://nodebb.cityofarabel.com/topic/56352/byron-burke/2

I have a theory that the ‘woman in blue’ might actually be a blue dragon in disguise, drawn here for some purpose. The ‘queen of the dead’ doesn’t strike me as particularly apparent, but I am open to ideas. Were I able to get in front of her, I could utter something in draconic and see if she bites (hopefully not literally!), but I think there are better ways to skin this cat.

I am open to ideas.

Miss Misa,

While I appreciate you compiling such an extensive file, I've some notes to be added to it. I think you've done a brilliant thus far in getting us all up to speed.

The one who summoned the Pit Fiend was actually found to be Arn Targon, the dead infernalist also known by the moniker "The Baron Croaker".
She also has a dangerous Doom knight working at her whim, which we reference further here https://nodebb.cityofarabel.com/topic/56160/the-doom-knight
To speak his name is to invite his presence.
Igrezor has the tome of "True Names" I believe, as we all shared in a ritual to divine it's creation and would make sense given what you described, as well as the results that followed, such as hushed warnings spoken in Netherese before the Doom Knight's assault.
I can tell you more about the Admiral but I... [An inkstain appears on the page] I fear for my life to part with such information, and I cannot risk such before my research is completed. Perhaps in a secure location in person, we can cover this final omission.
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   Alistair Aldershot
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To add to the matters in Hillmarch off the Dragon Trail, Miss Misa...

A villager named Jach has been entrusted with an enchanted diamond imbued with an alarm I set by using three castings of mage alarm. While it is a simple spell, it should at least allow the villagers a moment to prepare and call for help at the sign of the next incursion.

This was done after fending off yet another horde of demonic presence just hours ago.

        Alistair Aldershot