July 11 recap

•The group arrives at the mansion of Jahanah Drocin, but the party doesn't go as planned.

•The group learns that Jahanah Drocin plans to find the Siberys Pandect to open a new manifest zone to Xoriat, the Realm of Madness, allowing new aberrations to spill forth into Eberron.

•The group finds the torn-out journal pages detailing the location of the Siberys Pandect while escaping.

Laharal goes to the factory management headquarters to negotiate for better workers' rights for the warforged, but he finds the facility heavily guarded, and no warforged in sight. Investigating further, he finds that most of the warforged protesters, including Captain Longspear, have been arrested.

The party decides to interrogate the dragon they captured about her precognitive paintings. They specifically ask her about the painting of Mika holding what looks like the Siberys Pandect — where was she, why her, why no one else in the painting. The dragon admits that she only painted the exact moment the Pandect was found, and that the Draconic Prophecy says the party's finding the Pandect is a foretold event that will have serious ramifications. The dragon is unrepentant and admits that if released, she'll continue her primitive soothsaying and keep killing more dragonmarked soldiers, so the party decides to execute her (and does so). The party removes some of her scales, as well as her brain, to preserve for future rituals.

The group starts getting ready for the party with Professor Jewell at the mansion of Jahanah Drocin, who they believe has the torn-out journal pages revealing the hidden location of the Siberys Pandect. Jewell will accompany them, as will his grad student, an egocentric (yet stunning handsome, especially to Meva) spellcaster named Harv Ei. They hide their weapons and armor and get going.

The group arrives at the mansion of Jahanah Drocin, a foreboding and closed-off property. After letting the group in through the gate, the dwarven butler directs Professor Jewell to the library while sending the other guests to the observatory.

As they walk down the long, winding hallway to the observatory, Amahndar recites a long sermon of the Silver Flame while Mika looks for things to steal. However, after a while, the party realizes they don't seem any closer to their destination than before, and Laharal and Mika realize they've walked more than the entire length of the mansion! Something freaky is definitely going on, and Laharal realizes that reality isn't working correctly.

To investigate how the hallway is functioning oddly, Mika tries to open the doors, only to find they don't open, then smashes a nearby vase (which breaks normally). The rest of the party puts 2 and 2 together (especially once Amahndar finishes his long recitation), and tries to further figure a way out of their predicament. Mika and Meva try to walk in opposite directions, only to see that no matter how far they walk, they never leave each other's line of sight.

Laharal's finely tuned sense of the arcane finds no illusions, and he detects that the magic required for such a feat would be aberrant in nature; reality's not made to bend that way. It would take enormous magical power to change reality so strongly too, possibly an artifact or a planar manifest zone (a place where a plane's energy "touches" Eberron). Thinking back to what he knows about history, he remembers that the ancient goblin empire that was invaded by the plane of Xoriat, the Realm of Madness, did stretch up as high as Karrnath; the mansion is in a manifest zone to Xoriat (a very troubling prospect, as the dimensional seals the shardminds were tasked with guarding are supposed to prevent this sort of thing from happening!)

Mika uses her dagger to cut through the hallway wall, revealing another room behind. This room appears to be a library — bookshelves line the walls, a table contains open journals, and a large planar orrery sits in the middle of the room (a device charting the movement of the planes around Eberron). As the party approaches the table, the device springs to life and the planes start spinning around Eberron — at the same time, psychic energy draws the party in toward the orrery, while the spinning planets knock them back, creating a dangerous yo-yo effect. Deciding to try to smash the machine, the party eventually destroys it, and it explodes, falling through the library floor and revealing an underground tunnel below.

Before entering the tunnel, the party grabs some books, uses its Exodus Knife to create an extradimensional space to rest in, and reads the open journals on the desk. They detail a complex ritual that uses a large dragonshard to create a new manifest zone, opening a gateway between Eberron and another plane. The party deduces that Jahanah Drocin plans to use the Siberys Dragonshard not for the knowledge it contains, but to open a new portal to Xoriat and bring new, terrifying aberrations into Eberron.

The underground tunnel leads through some caves. Laharal hears strange creatures ahead of them, but the party is moving too loudly, and when the caves emerge into a wine cellar, a group of foulspawn is ready for them. A pitched melee ensues — Mika and Meva use wine bottles as improvised clubs while smaller foulspawn daze the party and a chuul and a foul, hulking giant pound at Amahndar. Eventually, though, after a long and bloody fight, the foulspawn are beaten to a pulp and the party advances out of the wine cellar, and climbing a staircase, the party finds itself in the kitchen, where they find the journal pages they seek. They quickly grab them and prepare to make their escape.

DM's notes:

• I'm rewinding the ending a bit, because I rushed the ending I'd originally had in mind because the game ended so late. So you guys haven't left the mansion *yet*.