date: 2026-10-20
date_solaris_start: 1267-09-21
date_solaris_end: 1267-09-21
role: public
summary: "The party crept through the trapped halls of the temple of Faeren and broke in on Blacksoul Silas mid-ritual, with Wispy Quickbrush and three other captives bound to the pillars. Dravencoles dispelled the storm, Lirielle tore a Flamejump Potion out of Silas's hands with a geas, and when Silas begged for mercy, Dravencoles shook his head and Momeline ended him. The temple's spirits thanked the party and opened their vault to them, and Milo chose to head home."
scene:
  description: >-
    A potted plant stands in the lower foreground, large and close to the viewer, in a round
    terracotta pot on the sandstone floor of an ancient tomb. It is a sunflower-like plant with a
    sturdy green stem and broad leaves, but its single big round flower head is a soft-featured elf
    girl's face with freckled cheeks and bright green eyes wide open in startled indignation, mouth
    open mid-protest, and the petals ringing the face are wavy bright pink, standing in for her pink
    hair. In the middle ground behind the plant, Blacksoul Silas floats inside a roaring tornado of
    sickly green light above an open stone coffin on a dais: a gaunt, pale drow elf man with hollow
    cheeks and sunken eyes that glow with dark light, silver-white hair slicked straight back from
    sharp angular features, and a jagged scar running from his left eye to his jawline. He wears
    long robes of black and deep crimson and raises a staff crowned with a pulsing obsidian crystal,
    reading furiously from a small blue book. Around the dais stand carved stone pillars with
    captives tied to them, and behind everything an enormous skull carved into the back wall,
    covered in carved vines, stalks, flowers and crops. The green storm is the only light, washing
    the whole chamber in sickly green with hard black shadows.

Milo and Talan stayed behind to hold the temple doors while the rest of the party went in. Momeline scouted ahead through halls of carved sandstone and nearly set off a trap before catching herself. Dravencoles came within a step of another until Ferinthria bent his luck out of it, and Lirielle's mage hand brushed a third, which did no harm but rang through the corridors loudly enough to wake the dead. In a chamber of broken sarcophagi they gathered what the Rain-Keepers had left behind, and pressed on toward the sound of chanting.

In the great burial hall at the heart of the temple, Blacksoul Silas stood inside a storm of sickly green light above an open coffin, reading aloud while four captives bound to the pillars around him grew paler by the moment. One of them was Wispy Quickbrush. His skeletons came first. Lirielle and Ferinthria tore through four of them with back-to-back chromatic orbs of lightning, Dravencoles smote the rest down, and Momeline slipped her blade into the gaps. A surge of wild magic turned Ferinthria briefly into a potted plant. Two of the captives died before the skeletons fell, but Lirielle closed Wispy inside a resilient sphere, and she rolled out of harm's way.

Dravencoles cast dispel magic on the storm, and it guttered out. Silas stepped from the wreck of his ritual in a fury, raising the dead around him and blasting the party with gravebolts that left most of them bloodied. When he drew a small red vial from his robes, Lirielle knew it at once for a Flamejump Potion. She laid a geas on him to hand it over and snatched it from his fingers before he understood what was happening. He fought the command and paid for it in pain, but the potion was hers.

With his escape gone, the party threw everything they had at him. Dravencoles drove him back with smite after smite. On his knees, Silas begged for mercy. Dravencoles looked at him and shook his head, and Momeline delivered the killing stab.

Afterward, Momeline worked out the temple's last puzzle, fitting jade tongues into the mouths of two great serpent braziers, and a hidden vault ground open. Talan communed with the spirits of the temple, who were grateful for what the party had done and invited them to take whatever they needed to fight the cult.

Milo told the party he was in over his head and wanted to go back to Khasim's Crown, but agreed to see Wispy safely to Solaris first.