After a month's delay, the campaign continued where it left off. The first order of business was for the party to interrogate the gnome they'd captured. The questioning was handled primarily by Terrazin, who dominated the gnome into answering the party's questions. It took a little while, as the illusionist was just as fanatic about arcane magic as Terrazin was about psionics, so each ended up pushing the other's buttons and the interrogation devolved into a philosophical debate several times. In the end, a few key pieces of information were learned.

First, the red-robed figure with the chain lighting and flowers was one Ellyn of the Wands, the self-proclaimed leader of the Wilders. She had formed the group with the purpose of exterminating psionic monsters, but a chance encounter with a "vile mentalist villain" allowed her to learn about the Waking Event, how it could be used to disrupt the use of psionics everywhere in the multiverse. (It seemed that the "vile villain" was one of the Chosen, and was eventually killed by Ellyn.) The gnome also revealed that the Wilders had killed a second of the Chosen, the Jester. The final piece of information discovered was that the Colorless Lodge was indeed a psionic guild, and was harboring at least one of the remaining Chosen. After the interrogation, Terrazin and Jack decided to leave the further "care" of the prisoner to Shazarr and Greymankle. Shazarr elected to kill the gnome, and then sell his body to Orsander's Meats in the Hive.

In the process of examining the information gained from the gnome, the party quickly concluded that Ellyn was actually one of the Chosen. There were two competing theories on how this could be. The first was that the Chosen Ellyn had supposedly killed actually killed her, and then took her place as a way to get rid of the competition. The other theory was that Ellyn was actually a wild talent psionic, was a Chosen, and was trying to cover up the fact she had psionics and use the Waking Event as a way to get rid of her "curse". In an effort to determine which theory was correct, Terrzin elected to locate Ellyn by Remote View and see what she was doing.

The githzerai did easily locate her. She was in a psionic laboratory somewhere, and a laboratory that Terrazin recognized. It belonged to the illithid that had held him prisoner as a slave for months just prior to his meeting the rest of the party. It quickly became apparent to Terrazin that Ellyn was being mentally dominated by his hated foe, especially after his hated foe contacted him telepathically and taunted him for a bit. Terrazin now had even more motivation to resolve to see the Waking Event through to its conclusion.

After the interrogation and the scrying, the party headed to the Outlands burg of Ironridge to find the Colorless Lodge. At the door, the party was met by a pair of huge astral constructs that had been stabilized and made permenant. (Of course, only Terrazin realized the immense display of psionic power this represented.) After proving their good intentions, the party entered the small building, to find only a single chamber containing a large crystal. In short order, the party discovered the crystal was actually a portal, which led to the true location of the Lodge on another plane. The party was greeted by a member of the Lodge who, upon hearing who Terrazin was and what he was looking for, quickly summoned the elders of the organization. One of the elders was another of the Chosen - and a githyanki. This naturally was cause for some friction between the psychic warrior and Terrazin. However, after not killing each other, Terrazin and the party was able to learn some solid facts about the Waking Event.

First, the Waking Event is something that occurs once every other millennium. When the Event occurs, six psionic beings are chosen. Each being, in addition to representing one of the existing psionic disciplines, has the seed of an entirely new discipline of psionics within them. The six Chosen are supposed to gather in front of the Crystal Conciousness and make a single choice as to the shape of psionics for the next two thousand years. (The last Waking Event is what saw the creation of the Metacreativity discipline.) This information helped to confirm the actions of the Wilders, under Ellyn's control. Since the decision has to be unanimous, this means that either all six Chosen have to agree on it, or there have to be less than six.

This latter would seem to be the plan of the party's enemies as the Lodge confirmed that Ellyn had indeed slain the Jester, and the Necromancer (who turned out to be a psionic lich) had slain the Harlot. So, as it stood, the party had to now find the location of the Crystal Conciousness and deal with the other two Chosen, who would most likely also be there. Some research on the party of the Lodge discovered the Crystal to be in a vault beneath the ancient palace of someone called the Azure Emperor (who was the one who created Metacreativity during the last Event). The palace was located on the prime material world of Ortho - which also happens to be the homeworld of the Harmonium.

Armed with all this cheery news the party found a portal to Ortho and quickly travelled to the ruins of the palace, avoiding all contact with the natives of the planet. At the ruins, the party found a shaft which descended deep into the ground. After some experimentation, the was determined that there was a portal near the bottom of the shaft. The key to the portal was terminal velocity, so the party had to fall through it to activate it. On the other side, the party was finally in the Vault of Azure Emperor. It was quickly determined that the Vault was located on the Astral Plane. As luck would have it, the party didn't have to explore very much of the Vault before running into one of their foes.

In the first chamber they came to, the party discovered the psionic lich and immediately engaged him in combat. The combat was very difficult as the lich had two companions with him - one being a psionic goblin, the other being the animated skeleton of a dire bear. To futher complicate things, the lich and the goblin were inside the skeleton, meaning the party had to first destroy the undead abomination before getting at the other two foes. The skeleton was destroyed in fairly short order, which exposed the lich and his goblin companion to direct combat - as well as six ghasts that had also been hiding inside the bones. Given that arcane magics were nearly impossible to use in the close presence of the lich, and that every psionic or spellcasting creature was able to cast one extra Quickened power/spell per round, the battle was looking grim as the touch of the lich drained Constitution and a number of psionic constructs began appearing. Fortunately, Greymankle decided to use a magic item obtained earlier and summoned an Asura to help with the combat.

Eventually, with the angelic ally, the party was finally able to destroy all their foes and claim victory (although several people were severely drained of Constitution). Given the beating they'd taken, the party decided to camp immediately and heal up, knowing that Ellyn was most likely somewhere else in the Vault. Although the party had claimed several enchanted items from the lich and his allies, there was no time to identify any of the treasure.

Headband

Crystal

Ring

2 Dorjes

Power Stone

Cloak

1620 cage in gems

At some point, we'll continue the game and see what happens next in the Vault. However, due to a sudden shift in the number of people who can play, we'll have to see when this next session actually happens.

Authored by: Ken Lipka E-mail me: krlipka@yahoo.com

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