You mean as a scroll? Sure, if you can afford it! Just look up the price, anything less than 15,000 gp is freely available in the city somewhere - no roll needed.

A scroll of monkey fish (or any other first level wizard/sorcerer spell) will cost you 25gp.

Edited my foreshadowing post...

wow, then even i can afford one, if i reprioritize my shopping a bit! Will do so,just to have it an emmergency!

Does Celene know, other than through other's description, any of the puppet. characters besides Nylaria?

Such as the high magus, or is she above and beyond? Anyone else she has seen?
This message was last edited by the player at 19:27, Thu 01 Jan 2015.

Celene has heard about all of the people mentioned in the puppet show, there are all subjects of city gossip in a big way. She has only ever seen Nylaria and the High Magus before though. And she hasn't been that close to the leader of the Wee Jas church, just seen her at a distance.

Ok, on hold for now.

Celene gathers up her stuff, and dons her street clothes,before heading towards shadowshore on foot. She asks around for the Skinned Man.

Great. See you in thread 0A!

After the events in the House of Porphyry, Celene joins the rest of the party in the old Dragon Lotus lair under the city. Despite Angati spending a considerable amount of money on the place it remains dark and damp, but the cleric of Wee Jas has little choice - she has nowhere else to go. Now that she is accused of murder and there is a hefty reward for her corpse, she will never be able to return to the temple.

Once Alohan and Logan are packed away for the night (the barbarian and rogue are still blind thanks to Nylaria - Lady Silvermane has promised to heal them the next day) the sorceress lowers herself into one of the mouldy beds in the large bunkroom. She is so exhausted from the drama and tragedy of the day that she is asleep within minutes.

Celenen dreams that she is back in the small home she has dreamed of many times before. This dream also feels exceptional real, but something is different this time. No sounds of arguing come from the next room.

She gets up from the tiny sleeping bed and moves to the doorway leading to the kitchen/dining room. Her parents are not there, but someone else is...

The mysterious woman is sitting on the table, both hands stretched back to rest on its rough surface. She drums the fingers of her left hand on the table and an unhappy frown mars her otherwise extremely beautiful face.

"Why did you do it?" she asks simply.

”Cycles of pain and torment shouldn’t be allowed to continue in perpetuity.” Celene said as she stared into the eyes of Malcanthet. ”It ends with me. I’m the only one left who could resurrect your house of horrors from the ashes and I refuse to be a part of it.” she spat her hands clenched at her sides. ”Eseriel and Nylaria had a choice to make something of themselves to rise above whatever evil lurked within their blood; to reject their upbringing. They chose to worship you. I choose not to follow.”

The lady laughs. "So bold! So dramatic! Not very fitting of a cleric of Wee Jas but very in line with a succubus. Don't you see? What did you do when you saw that useless old fart Eseriel was dead? Did you try and explain? No, you jumped out the window like a thief, lied to the High Magus, ambushed your pursuers. You become more and more one of us every passing day."

The lady advances on Celene, and the young cleric finds herself unable to move. In the dream she is stuck solid, one hand locked against the rough doorframe of the peasant house. The lady's face changes a little, sharp pointed incisor teeth growing out from her canines and a jagged snarl appearing on her lips.

"But no this little sorceress. By the time all this is over, you, "Bends-wills-to-her", will come to me on your knees BEGGING to be my anointed. This I swear. I, Malcanthet, Queen of the Succubi!"

With a lightning flash the succubus reaches out and slaps Celene across the face. The pain is intense and jerks the young girls head back.

When Celene opens her eyes she is back in the mouldy bed under the city. She feels her cheek - it is red and flushed. And then... Celene explodes.

Harsh purple flames burst out of her skin obliterating her night clothes and setting all of the nearby bunks on fire. Logan, who is sleeping a respectable few beds over, is nearly barbequed in his sleep. Celene screams but can not draw her breath. Such power! She is unchained and ready to meet her destiny as a sorceress, but looks down at the holy symbol of Wee Jas that hangs at her neck and finds it gone - the symbolic metal dagger evaporated by the heat. She finally manages to yell out and finds that although her connection to the Abyss (for that is what it is) is redoubled, her connection to the gods has been broken. She is no longer a cleric of either Wee Jas OR Malcanthet.

OOC: Celene loses a cleric level and gains a sorceress level. She also realises that she can speak and read Abyssal fluently.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:49, Tue 13 Dec 2016.

"What the frac!?"  Logan spills out of his bed, dagger already drawn, his half-asleep mind resorting to instincts well-honed in Shadowshore.

The half-elf looks around, trying to gather his wits, then finally spots Celene.  "Celene...what, what happened?"

Celene covered herself as she sat up and tried to manage the pain. She turns her head towards Logan framed in the light of the smoldering fires she had inadvertently caused "I spoke with Malcanthet in my dream. She broke the divine connection we had. It must have awoken latent powers within me; manifested as an eruption of flames?" she mused "She's angry with me for my part in the destruction of House Porphyry. She's trying to pervert my actions, make me doubt myself, soften my will for the future." Celene looked down at her uncovered body and moved away to find something to wrap herself in. "She can't... I won't..." she said to herself softly.

OOC: <DM shrugs> Sure, why the hell not.  :D



OOC: Well... that is one way of looking at it. You have to admit that Celene has been acting in a more morally ambiguous way lately, and it is not as though Malcanthet has been 'forcing' her to be like that.

Please scrub out 'Lawful Good' on your character sheet and write in 'Chaotic Good' instead you evil succubus spawn.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:36, Wed 14 Dec 2016.

That is more the player changing than Celene. I'm sure if Johannes was here things would be different. Also there is the fact that had Alohan and Celene tried to stay behind and answer questions there would have been a distinct possibility that Nylaria would have completed her ritual while they cleared their names.

By "pervert my actions" I meant she is trying to make me think, in retrospect, that what I did was evil and not the best course of action to save as many lives as possible. It was a very Batman like thing to do. Take the position of a criminal in order to save lives.

You can definitely say she is Chaotic but she hasn't been acting the least bit evil. :)
This message was last edited by the player at 14:43, Wed 14 Dec 2016.

Logan rubbed his eyes, resigning himself to a night with little sleep.  Something about nearly being burned alive in your sleep tended to ruin the rest your chance for the rest of the night.

"Wait, Malcanthet?  In your dream?"  The rogue laughs.  "Sorry, but I'd just be happy if she could reach out and interact with you while you were asleep, the worst that happened is some bedclothes got singed."  Logan stood up to comfort Celene, but decided the new (demonic?) sorceress might need some space right about now instead.

"Do you know...is that common?  I mean, beings like that talking with people?"  Logan was already turning things over in his mind, wondering if he could expect similar nocturnal visits from Gwynharwyf in case he managed to mess something up royally..or if he already had, by betraying the secret of the temple in the first place.

Celene now wrapped in some moth eaten blanket than was only half burned moved closer to Logan "I don't know. Maybe... maybe it's just me. This isn't the first time she has come to me in a dream. I just didn't know who she was before. My room was set on fire after that conversation as well. Back then she sent me to seek out Vorsh." Celene's eyes narrowed in though "It seems strange she would send me to seek out the man that had almost completely destroyed her last cult of worshippers. It doesn't make sense does it?" she asked.

Logan shook his head.  "Well, she's a chaotic evil succubus, right?  Maybe she felt like Nylaria and Eseriel weren't doing enough to further her own goals?  Or maybe she was worried they were getting too powerful and would challenger her?  I don't have any direct evidence of this in...in powerful planar beings, but I've seen it in a score of low-level street gangs.  People who rely on intimidation for power can't allow their subordinates to get too much power or prestige, or they'll lose their hold over the rest of the gang.  Maybe Malcanthet just set you up to introduce Vorsh and Nylaria again.  Best case, they'd both get killed, and she'd be rid of a troublesome subordinate and an enemy who vowed to destroy her cults.  Worst case, she'd probably be rid of one of them.  And look what actually happened: most of the Whirling Furies were killed, along with Nylaria.  Probably not a bad outcome."

Celene frowned "She sent me to Vorsh before we went looking for that sword. Vorsh and Nylaria were already acquaintances. If her intent was for Nylaria to die than why would she be angry?" she shook her head again "None of this makes sense."

OOC: Now just hang on a second here!

THe original cult that Vorsh destroyed 50 years ago wasn't one of Malcanthet's. It was a cult of Shami-Amourae, the Lady of Delights.

True, Malcanthet did set Celene on the road to accepting the mission that Vorsh and Eseriel presented her with (stealing the sword), but Malcanthet didn't know that Celene would go and trash everything... committing this crime was meant to be the first step on the road to Celene's corruption, but unfortunately (for the Succubus Queen) the Shadowshore rogue that Celene got set up with had a heart of gold and also the young sorceress was not easily swayed to the dark side.

It was really just bad luck for Malcanthet that Celene was sent out to Kraken's Cove (by Lavinia) and got involved with the Black Pearl and the Savage Tide - and got the clues that let her track the ship with purple sails back to Eseriel. And then rather than confronting her mentor, Celene bluffs her way into the House of Porphyry just at the wrong time and figures out what the cult was. What were the odds of that happening?!

I think the real question is 'What was the cult of Malcanthet going to do with the Black Pearl'? Why would a succubus cult want to change a whole city into savage creatures?

I actually had no idea that Nylaria was involved. I wanted to get insight about Eseriel from her. Were we not supposed to have dealt with that at this point in the adventure?

Also I think talking to Eseriel might have led Celene further down the wrong path had she been convincing enough.

OOC:  Man, that is an involved plot line!  Kudos to you on juggling it all and keeping it straight.  Sometimes it's hard to piece all this together getting it fed one piece at a time through a score of different threads and plot lines, so thanks for giving the info-dump to clear everything up.

Would a succubus want everyone changed into demon-creature because they become fully subsumed by their lusts?  I mean, succubi could like more than just physical sex, right?  Giving into any kind of lust would be in their "wheelhouse," and maybe if you had any city engaged in a (literal) orgy of destructive lusts, it would give Malcanthet a lot of potential worshippers.

Thanks dude! But I underestimated the time it would take us to get here so I feel like a lot of the story line is diluted by the months and years that pass in-between elements of the story being revealed. I mean, I started this plot line in the final months of 2014 with a different player for Celene, and now I reach the middle of it and there are two years' worth of posts between us and that original information. <shrug> Oh well, probably better in a way that trying to do it over the table top.



I don't know man. None of the savage creatures they met were interested in sex. I mean, quite the opposite. They were just hungry and wanted to rip people apart. Doesn't seem like converting all the people in the city to mindless savage monsters with zero sex drive would have helped Malcanthet at all...



Well, it is all good, I was just more surprised than anything else. Yes, you were meant to deal with Nylaria now. Eserial was racked with guilt and ready to spill the beans - she would have told everything to Celene if the cleric had turned up and asked, and then still drunk the tea of death.
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:56, Wed 28 Dec 2016.