Heroes of Silvermoon, Chapter 4: The Half-Moon Crucible

Contents:

1. The Cultist
2. Arena Games
3. Phoenix Sorcery
4. The Half-Moon Crucible
5. Castle Mistamere
6. Bringing Back the Dead
7. The Curse of House Lightwalker
8. Captured
9. Far from Home
10. Through the Underdark
11. A New Port of Kings

The Tale of the Heroes of Silvermoon

Chapter 4: The Half-Moon Crucible

The group returned to the material plane, not knowing how much time had passed in their absence. They soon ran into Julian again, who had been looking for them. Unbeknownst to the others, Julian had been through horrific ordeals in the previous months. His entire household and family had been assassinated in Silvermoon, and he had taken revenge on them by murdering those of his rival house with his necromantic powers. The events had left him emotionally scarred, though he fought to conceal it from his friends. He was surprised and not happy to see Xilmar in the group.

The group traveled for some time, lending their services in towns along their path, when one day they went through a mountain pass called the Half-Moon Pass and discovered an immense valley in a bowl-like area of land. One half of the valley was cold and dark, the other half sunny and green. They followed the snaking road to the bottom of the valley, where they met two gnomes, Rosen and Guilden, who welcomed them to the Half-Moon Crucible. The gnomes said they were employed by a locally settled caravan called the Celestial Sellers & Sages. Rosen was the overly-positive, slightly naive barker, and his twin brother Guilden was the fry cook, bartender, watchman, and tough.

Rosen introduced them to his inn, the Sleep-Inn, connected to Guilden's eating establishment, the Eating Establishment. He also showed the hereos the caravan's leaders, seven mysterious beings who had set up shops in wagons in the valley:

• Achyuta, an upbeat human monk interested in weapons and armaments who ran a wagon called Adventurer's Armaments.
• Cygnus, a powerful drow sorcerer with eyes like galaxies of stars. His wagon was known as Cosmic Charismatics.
• Hemat, the proprietor of Healer's Haven, an older man whose magical drawer in his wagon seemed to teleport wounded from other locations for him to heal.
• Waldefreya, a beautiful wood elf with an emerald eye and a golden eagle with a matching emerald eye. Her wagon was called Forrester's Finds.
• Wilhelmina, the owner of Wizard's Way, an elderly half-elf mage and tinker fascinated with gadgets.
• Supplies, an automaton and failed experiment of Wilhelmina's who distributed simple general supplies, and
• Raksha, a shadowy tiefling whose wagon, Rogue's Redoubt, was hidden from the others.

Weary from their journey and intrigued by the celestial sages, the adventurers settled at the inn for several weeks, forming bonds with the sage, learning from their wisdom and skills, and working for them to earn money for their adventures.

Julian learned fighting skills from Guilden to supplement his magic; Xilmar learned how to use the powers of the stars, sun, and moon from Cygnus to fuel his phoenix sorcery; Nysae undertook the same ritual Waldefreya did to bind her senses to her wolf Luna's, sacrificing an eye in both her and Luna's heads and replacing them with emeralds they could both see through; Ari got into trouble, but encountered the mysterious Raksha, who taught her some skills in shadow and blood magic; and Cristoff, still recovering from his exposure to such darkness in the Shadowfell, found comfort in learning healing skills from Hemat.

Curious about the sages' origins, the heroes questioned Hemat. He told them that the sages had once been heroes like them who had ascended into lesser deities known as the Apotheoses. After centuries of cosmic battles with a group of chaotic gods called the Veritas, one of their group, an Apotheosis called Apeiron, made a pact with a god named Vis to defeat the Veritas. In the process, however, he became a Veritas himself. The Apotheoses fled from his madness as he tried to destroy his friends, to the temple of Vis on the Material Plane. There, they tried to free him from his patron and his madness, but Vis attempted to command his disciple to finally end the Apotheoses. In a last moment of clarity, Apeiron instead trapped his friends in a bubble of force, preserving them in time.

The bubble slowly eroded the sanity of those within the valley. Luckily, the sages had magical duties to occupy themselves with, but they were especially grateful to have outsiders like them to teach and bond with. Hemat indicated that the temple of Vis in the center of the valley contained the key to disabling the bubble and restoring the sages—a keystone that must be placed at the top of an arch—but the bubble's border overlapped the church, making it impossible for them to cross and descend into the church's dungeons where the keystone was held.

Xilmar was interested in the bubble's properties, and when he ventured off alone to test whether he could cross its border, he did not return. The rest of the heroes also tested the bubble's border, realizing that in some cases, leaving it caused a loss of memory of the people and areas within. The heroes decided to investigate the temple, but inside they found only madness, awakening their deepest fears and turning themselves against each other through hallucinations and confusion. Xilmar returned, but acted strangely around the group, and in the culmination of darkness in the valley, an insanity elemental manifested itself, attacking the heroes and the sages. With the help of the sages, particularly Cygnus, who changed the time from night to day, they were able to overcome the ordeal. But seeing that the heroes had spent so much time in the bubble and had awakened some of its insanity for themselves, the sages made the group promise that they would finish what they started and free them from the bubble before they left. The group agreed.

That night, while the group was together in the Sleep-Inn, a magical cloud of darkness appeared inside the inn, and creatures of madness attacked the heroes again. As they fought to defeat the monsters or flee, a second Xilmar entered the inn. The group soon realized that the being they thought was Xilmar was a doppelganger, who soon transformed to appear like Cristoff to sow confusion among them again. Eventually, they defeated the shadows and doppelganger and explained to Xilmar all that had happened. Xilmar told them of his capture as he tried to leave the bubble. He had been imprisoned and hidden in a shed by the doppelganger, who kept him alive and fed on his fear. During Xilmar's imprisonment, a small satyr named Garmelie appeared and comforted Xilmar, ultimately helping him escape. Despite Xilmar's insistence that Garmelie was present during the fight and real, no one but he could see him.

Knowing that the madness would only increase from there, the heroes prepared themselves and entered the temple of Vis. They descended, finding sets of floating doors that led to many traps, rooms, monsters, mazes, puzzles, and riddles. Throughout the dungeon, Garmelie led Xilmar to secrets and past traps, being an invaluable resource and guide, to the rest of the group's surprise and confusion. At the end of it all was an armory with weapons of godlike power. The group equipped themselves, and in the next room found themselves in what appeared to be the Sleep-Inn. There, a gigantic mass of shadowy power attacked. Using the power of the weapons, the party easily destroyed the enemy, and went forward into a room that held much treasure, and at the top of a platform, the keystone they needed.

As soon as Julian grabbed the keystone, Garmelie became visible to all of the group. However, instead of helping the group further, he attacked. As his form shifted into that of the Veritas of Insanity, he screamed apologies and wept as he summoned powerful monsters and cast powerful spells. The heroes' newly found weapons seemed to have lost their As Cristoff fell, his consciousness was brought to the god he worshiped, Ilmater. Ilmater told Cristoff that he was not dead, and that he should go back and set things right. Cristoff awoke and tried to save the heroes, but amid tears of apology and regret, Garmelie killed each one in turn, ending with Xilmar.

The heroes awoke in town, alive and well, though shaken. They found with dismay that all the sages in the caravan were dead, their bodies lying on the floors of their wagons. The only one left in the town was Supplies, who was busy attempting to build an archway. The heroes helped him, and Xilmar and Julian used their mage hand spell to lift the keystone to the top. When the keystone was in place, brilliant light flashed and the bubble around the valley vanished. The sages, now gods again, awoke from their sleep, grateful to the heroes, and gave them each their blessing. The heroes also seemed to grow more youthful as the effect of the time bubble took years away from their lives. As the heroes left the now empty valley, they looked back to see what appeared to be the visage of the last Veritas in the distance with a grateful expression on his face, and then it was gone.