3.505: Lighting the Way

Synopsis

3.505: Lighting the Way picks up where 3.504: Gleaming the Cube left off, with the party in the black pyramid's chamber beneath the mayor's manor and Tim walking up to touch the armored statue. The DM, Alex Morrison, gives him flashes of the strange place with its tall buildings and its odd blue sky, then a voice in his head that asks who he is. Tim answers "Jackie Chan," then settles for "Tim." The voice asks whether he seeks to protect the ways from those who would misuse them. Tim says yes, and the voice digs into his mind for the truth, since what he really wants is to use them for his own gain. He spends his luck on a re-roll, gets a 16 on Deception, and the DM says that the statue does "not see deception" in his heart. The statue's spear slides aside, a door opens, and the party gets a vision of the black pyramid as it looked long ago, before it was buried under a hill, with creatures pouring through it into world after world.

Beyond the door is a vault with a green-leather book in a language no one can read, a lantern that seems out of place, two potions of healing and a statue of a slender woman with her arms held out. The party puts the book and the lantern in the statue's hands, where they give off a faint magical pulse and nothing else, then takes everything back. The book gives anyone who touches it an icky feeling, and the lantern needs oil. Each time a new person fills and lights it, a window appears in the wall and shows that person a scene from another life on a far-off Earth. Glenn Ghoulia sees a woman use a burning symbol on the floor to banish three attackers who have come into her home. Tim sees a dark-haired boy of twelve or thirteen banging on a window and calling his name, and then a man in an office high up in a skyscraper.

The party then takes the book and wonders about Shen, the innkeeper, who asked them to bring him whatever they found in the vault. "Secret villain," someone answers. Before they climb back up the rope, they try lighting a torch on top of the pyramid, since the book has a picture of a black pyramid with a flame over it, and nothing happens. In the mayor's study, they find a storeroom with a big container of lamp oil, and Major Baker's Cat pours it into the lantern with his mouth and sees a soldier's funeral and an old man finding a woman's body on the floor.

Drandy Savage's window shows two boys, the younger of whom puts his hand on the glass and falls through it, and then the older boy as a grown man in glasses, with a curled mustache and suspenders covered in little hearts. He draws a symbol on the floor and reads aloud from a book, surrounded by four other men, and a light shoots from each of their heads. The DM calls him Dr. Simeon and explains what happened. He and his friends sent their minds across the void in a ritual taken from a book that Percival Warthrop, who also gave his name as William James Henry, had mailed to him. The book spoke of a black mirror that once belonged to John Dee, and the ritual was meant to find a mirror on the far side so that the brother who fell through the window could be brought back. The party gets the pieces of it. Drandy is Dr. Simeon in a dragonborn's body. Mathon, after a vision of a fight in a shack and a ruined city by a lake, remembers that he is Billy McConnell. Tim is Timeon Kantstandyerbitz, Simeon's long-lost brother, the boy who fell through the window. Two more of the travelers landed in a house cat and in a ghoul resting in a burrow, which fits the Cat and Glenn. Whenever the lantern is lit, their memories of Earth feel real and their memories of their bodies in this world feel like a dream.

The party decides to rest in the study, with the Cat taking the first watch. Glenn, who is carrying the book in his bag, hears a creak in the floor during his watch, but nothing comes of it, and in the morning everyone has reached level 2. Back at the inn, which is silent and empty, Glenn catches the smell of rot, tracks it to the storm cellar and finds the body of Mayor Warder Ebengard, who has been dead for about a week. Glenn eats the mayor's brain with his Psychic Feast and sees the mayor's memories. They show the mayor with the book, which he knew as "The Key and the Gate," then walking in on Shen in a back room of the inn as Shen sits inside a circle of symbols and calls up silvery entities that slip out through every crack, and then being questioned and beaten by Shen in a basement. Shen serves one of the beings beyond the ways and wants them opened so that its servants can be sent through to prepare for its coming.

The party reaches the same conclusion, that Shen has been sending out the dead lights, killed the mayor, and wants the book. When Glenn reaches into his bag for it, the book is gone, and they realize it was taken in the night, on his watch. They dash up the hill, passing Constitution saves on the run thanks to a Bardic Inspiration die, while Tim, and others, plan to open fire from a distance. In the clearing they find Shen at the polished obsidian pillar holding the book. He greets them as if he had expected them, thanks them for doing the "difficult labors" in the one place where the questions needed a virtue he does not have, and says that he is opening the ways for his master and the "preparers." He has seen in his visions a world with a blue sky, buildings that scrape the sky and machines that fly, and says that he has "dozens, hundreds" ready to wipe it clean. When someone tells him they have already been there, he tells them to stay and play with his friends, and the episode ends with guttural sounds and shrieks in the trees around them.

Funny Moments

• Asked who he is by the statue, Tim says "I'm Jackie Chan" before correcting himself to "I'm Tim." Asked his favorite color, he answers "I seek the holy grail," and another player predicts that this will be like "the statue scene in the NeverEnding Story," with lasers from its eyes.
• After Tim's lucky 16 on Deception, a player predicts that he will walk out of there with "night vision goggles, super strength goggles, and the ways," and another says "seems legit."
• The table argues over what language the green book is written in, trying Common, Elvish, Dragon and Portuguese before the DM says that it is in English.
• The party puts the book and the lantern in the hands of the slender statue and gets a magical pulse and nothing more. A symbol of a pyramid with a flame on it prompts someone to call it "the Triforce."
• A player reveals that he has ten torches and hands one to everybody. The table runs out of lamp oil over and over, since only the burglar's pack had any.
• The table calls the innkeeper "Shenifer" and decides that he is a "secret villain" without any evidence. When the mayor's memories prove it, the table's reaction is "called it," followed by "I called it as well."
• Once he realizes that he is Dr. Simeon, Drandy is told that "Dragon Bee Daddy" would have made more sense and that he picked his own names.
• The DM insists that it was not his plan for Seth to name his character Tim, and that he only just decided the name belongs to the long-lost brother.
• Glenn follows the smell of rot to the storm cellar with a Sniff roll with advantage, calls the basement "delicious," sits down to eat the mayor's brain, offers some to the others with "I don't want to be rude," and observes "I don't normally eat this many carbs."
• Glenn's new level adds a +1 from Jack of All Trades to his Sniff roll, for a 17 that the DM calls "pretty dang good." He also thinks that Song of Rest may be a second-level spell, and the DM explains that it is just an ability.
• Glenn offers to compose a song about how the mayor, if he ran away, "bravely turned his tail" when danger came, in the manner of the Brave Sir Robin song.
• The Cat wakes up the next person on watch by "bapping" them with his paw, beginning with the ghoul.
• On the run up the hill, players call out their ranged attacks one after another: Tim's short bow, another player's longbow, "150 feet," and a javelin. Glenn announces that he will "viciously mock" the villain.
• Glenn passes his Bardic Inspiration to a teammate with "homie, I know you can do it."
• When Shen invites the party to join him in wiping out the blue-sky world, someone answers that they have "already been there."

Notable Quotes

• "I'm Jackie Chan." —Tim
• "I seek the holy grail." —Tim
• "I do not see deception in your heart." —Alex Morrison
• "My name really is Billy McConnell." —Mathon
• "I climb back up the rope with my paw." —Major Baker's Cat
• "This basement smells delicious." —Glenn Ghoulia
• "I don't normally eat this many carbs." —Glenn Ghoulia
• "Homie, I know you can do it." —Glenn Ghoulia
• "I'm going to viciously mock him." —Glenn Ghoulia
• "I do appreciate you doing all the difficult labors for me." —Shen
• "I have dozens, hundreds ready to clear and wipe it clean." —Shen
• "I suppose maybe you can just stay here and play with my friends." —Shen