While at the Monster Bashers, Momen had been working on a little trick he’d like show us which appears to be some sort of misty step. Likely to be very useful for someone like him so that he can get out of sticky situations in a hurry.
The Viscount of Cherry Mound sent us a letter while we were gone. He sent for us due to a bunch of people in his town randomly going missing. Not a lot to go on but were gonna go and meet the lad anyways. We decide to go to bed before the journey.
In the morning we find Spesof’s Dad and Merric chatting up a storm in the main area, but after a brief discussion with the both, we head off to Cherry Mound. We get into town and have a sudden feeling that we are being watched but decide to go straight to Sebastian Eichenwald anyways. It would appear that with every day passes by more and more people go missing. It started with one, then more than one the day after, to being many in a single day. Eichenwald addresses that the town has been rather paranoid about it and everyone is keeping their distance from everyone and at this point and people just simply go missing in their own home without anyone noticing. There have been a few people who have come back from being missing, but they do come back dead. The dead ones seem to come back with a cracked open back of the skull and their brains missing. Momen knows of a Cult that deals in devouring brains but isn’t too knowledgeable about it if they’re even involved. Eichenwald suggests that we go talk to the Priest about it and we head off to the temple to meet up with the Priest and the morgue to inspect the bodies.
The Priest essentially confirms everything that the Viscount had already told us. After examining the bodies we can see that the most recent one has a sort of clear residue to the wound on the skull, which spesof smells and I taste - confirming that it is in fact saliva. However, the hole seems to be a drill like hole. The priest speaks up in our discussion to say that there was an Eye Witness earlier and that we should go talk to them and points us towards a Woman who seems frightened deathly and convinces her to speak with us. It appears that the Victims are almost hypnotized and acting on their own to abduct themselves out of town. The witness account said this victim was muttering a name under his breath, some sort of abandoned town west of Cherry Mound. THe girl gives us the address of the victim so that Momen can get more material to be able to scry the victim. Momen attempts to scry the victim but it doesnt go through so theyre either on a different plane of existence or dead.
Running out of ideas, we decided to start heading west of town on the road to see what happens, but we dont really get very far before the guard stop us - telling us that the road has been closed outside of town. without much convincing they let us through. The town that we come up to smells horrible, more specifically it sort smells like a bunch of dead people - there are animals roaming all around enjoying the free buffet it seems. In preparation, I decide to attune to the neckless I just got to help protect me from magical spying. Momen tries to do some sort of telepathic thingy but then gets angry and starts giving a tree in the distance the bird (his middle finger), weird but okay.
We head into town where we can see demolished houses and stuff along with grimlocks in the distance, it can be assumed that there are a butt load of enemies. In preparation I start stealing and also invisible myself. I take a look around the place and there appears to be about 20 or so each of Ogres, Quaggoths, and Grimlocks, along with a bunch of dead townsfolk. I do some quick investigating and find a decent path to sneak the team into the building with the mind flayer. I set up a plan where I go in from the front door, pulling on an invisible rope that I gave momen in order to signal to him that it is time for him to go into the building. We enter the room and start fighting the mind flayer, but he was ready considering he could hear the spell component from Momen’s Passwall. This causes the Mind Flayer to stun Spesof in the process but momen and I were able to swiftly take it out before anything bad could happen. Spesof Wakes up and we collect our thoughts and scan the Mind Flayer