This material was originally planned for Game 11, but since we were rolling the night of Game 10 and I already had a lot of it laid out, we continued the same night.
The party, now including Ord Redding, had no leads for finding Prosper or the Volkers. So, they took Haas to the safe house Wren had suggested.
When the party arrives at the address Wren gave Haas, they see that it's Gramercy Books, an upscale-looking store in the financial district. There are a few windows in the narrow storefront with lamplight coming out of them. If you peek in the window you can see Wren huddled around a little table with three men, talking.
When the party knocks, Wren comes to the door. She looks at the party's faces to verify they're who she expects, then lets them in and closes the door behind them.
She introduces the party to the three men - Aliester, Indvik, and Mari. Wren has explained everything to the men, but they're amazed to actually see Haas. They ask him all sorts of questions about his state: Is he cold? Can he breathe? Is the body his own body?
After they've sated their initial curiosity, they become quiet. The three men exchange glances. Indvik goes to lock the front door, then Aliester leans closer to Haas and asks in a soft but urgent voice: Did you go to the hospital to get revenge? Did you find the necromancer?
After they hear the story, they say that since Haas trusted them, they'll trust him with their own secrets. They say the necromancers are the Volker Brothers, members of their own order, the Oracle. The Oracle is an ancient organization - that often has to operate in secret - that summons shades for prophecy. A few years ago the Oracle raised a powerful shade named Lebrecht, and Lebrecht wanted to possess a human body to experience vice and addiction. Lebrecht gave the Volkers information and persuaded them to do this abomination. It must have been Lebrecht that you saw possess the girl's body. They shudder to think what Lebrecht is going to subject it to.
They ask Haas what he wants to do in his last hours, before the body becomes moribund. Haas says he wants to go to Hereward, which causes a stir among them. They say that they don't know if Hereward actually exists, or how to get there, but they can maybe raise a shade that can tell them.
At this point, the Oracle men finally acknowledge the rest of the party. Aliester says: "Beowolf, Kasskar, Aeris, we know you. You sailed with the Hedgepeth and brought a fortune in Greencake back to Hollin. We call Greencake 'Soma.' Kasskar, I have something else here you might find interesting."
He goes over to a bookshelf and swings it out from the wall. Behind, there's a door decorated with an elaborate tessellated pattern. Instead of a door knob, it has two fist-sized holes with a large lever next to them. Aliester says it's called a niche door. When you put your hand into the correct hole and turn the handle inside, the hole will close on your arm as you turn the handle. When you've turned the handle all the way, it snaps into place and you can't remove your arm. You pull the lever with your other hand, your hand is released, and the door opens. If you put your arm into the wrong hole, this procedure will break your arm into a hundred pieces. It's an ancient and time-tested device - the most a perfect locksmith or thief can determine from inspection is that there's an exactly equal chance of each hole being the correct hole.
He asks Kasskar if he'd like to try it. If not, no hurt feelings, he'll open it.
Our memories after this game differed on whether Kasskar or Aliester opened the lock. But in any case, the door was opened. Going through, the party and adepts entered the Hollin Grimoire, the Oracle's massive basement library of summoning texts. The Grimoire included ten opulent, hardwood-accented floors, each with dozens of bookshelf-lined, gaslit alcoves. A single 50-foot-wide rectangular shaft cut through the levels.
They took a spiral staircase down, past each of the ten floors. Below the lowest, they found a cavernous room with an unfinished dirt floor and a crater-like summoning pit under the central shaft. Aliester and Indvik took up places behind an altar on the pit's edge and started to perform the summoning ritual.
Mari took a cigar box of Greencake out of a nearby desk drawer and showed it to the party, saying they'd now see how Greencake was used. He shook it out over the pit, but instead of settling in the pit, it rose on the air, creating a cloud of green powder. When the cloud had almost filled the library's shaft, Aliester and Indvik finished their incantation, and the powder cloud exploded in a flash fire, alarming the characters and momentarily driving them back with a ten-story column of flame.
Then as quickly as the fire had started, the flame and Greencake were gone, replaced by a man-sized shadow standing silently in the pit's center. After a few seconds, the shadow leapt gracefully and menacingly onto the pit's edge, facing the altar. Unsure if he would speak or if he would attack, the characters asked where where he was from. The shadow answered that he was from an unnamed plane of nonexistence, which prompted the party to ask several questions about different planes. He said that there were many planes, and when Ord asked which plane was the most interesting, he said emphatically that their own plane, Balaal, was the most interesting.
Turning to their immediate problem, the party asked if Hereward was real. The shadow answered that Hereward was real; that there was a portal to Hereward on Apogee, the clifftop overlooking Braddock; and that the portal was the reason Hollin was originally located here. He told the adepts how to perform the ritual to open the portal, and then sensing that he was no longer needed, disappeared.
The party and the adepts traveled to Apogee, where the adepts opened the portal using the ritual the shadow had described. Two portal guardians came out, cruel swordsmen with statues' unmoving, boyish faces, and tried to prevent the party entering. The party beat the guardians while the adepts kept the portal open, and Haas ran in. Sensing a unique opportunity and surprising everyone, the adept Indvik also ran through the portal as it closed.
After the fight, Ord claimed one of the swordsmen's curious statue heads. Beowolf and Ord claimed the guardians' swords, Aria and Isra, respectively.
The first is named Aria, meaning "melody." Aria has a shimmering white-silver blade. It's long with a barely noticeable curve, and has a narrow groove along the blade's length. It has a beautifully crafted handle shaped like a fish tail, again in shining white-silver.
The second sword is named Isra, meaning "night journey." Like Aria, Isra is a long sword with a groove along its length. But, Isra has a straight, rusted, and beaten-looking iron blade. The simple handle has a copper-colored finish, which has mostly worn off, exposing ebony underneath.
Both swords were +1 and had additional powers the characters weren't yet able to discover.
The characters went to third level after this game. We also decided that in the future, the characters would go up a level after every four games instead of every five.