The Aneman-Pirran Border Wars - Session 6

The Party:

• David Van Stone, 6th level Half-elf Warlock (Celestial Patron) - Former Aneman army officer.
• Van Darkholme, 6th level Half-elf Warlock (Sentinel Patron) - Vigilante crime fighter and former Aneman city planner.
• Wellston Plumbago, 6th level Half-elf Warlock (Great Old One Patron) - Rake, roustabout, and the world's only known Drow ambassador.

The next morning, the trio of Warlocks confirmed that their captured Skeleton Jelly had frozen solid in the horse trough, collected an alarmingly toxic fire suppression grenade from their hired alchemist, Eva, and returned to the tomb with all but one of their retainers in tow.

Highlights of expedition #2:

• The trio noticed that the remains of the black pudding they destroyed are entirely missing. Black puddings don't evaporate, so they concluded that something strange was afoot.
• The fire in the octagonal chamber had gone out overnight--no longer requiring the use of the astoundingly toxic fire suppression grenade--and the trio were able to dredge the reeking pool by hand, recovering a magic bottle, a magic ring, a golden chain, and a ragged, insane mummy head that spun in circles on the floor as it alternated between soundless jawing and attempts to chew on their boots. The chain turned out to be simple metal, and the bottle was full of oil of etherealness, but the ring proved to be unique. 
• Putting the ring on his finger in the course of examining it, Van felt his eye pop out of his head and roll around on the floor with the sound of a bouncing glass marble. His eyesight remained undiminished, and there was a brief and careful scramble to recover the organ and quickly re-insert it before Van removed the ring and vowed to never touch the item again.
• The party finds and carefully scoops up a pile of ancient serpent-man scrolls for later translation. A massive stone scroll case is knocked over in the search for secret passages.
• While exploring the ritual area of the complex, the party finds the laboratory of Xiximanter, an undead serpent-man alchemist. 
• The creature is accommodating, polite, chatty, and entirely unaware that the tomb is no longer full of hundreds of other priests. Nobody disabuses it of this notion.
• After confirming that the party has neither wives, children, or slaves to offer him for his experiments toward immortality, Xiximanter asks if the party would help him test a new potion. Van and Wellston reluctantly agree, and consume the draught handed them.
• Wellston's fundamental understanding of his suggestion spell warps--it now compels belief, rather than action.
• Van's eldritch blast changes from a long, accurate beam to a powerful and concussive short-range blast.
• Xiximanter asks if they'll help him gather data on one more concoction. Wellston demures, but Van accepts the proposal. Drinking the potion, Van's body mutates--the half-elf's body is reduced to a hollow shell of living skin, his flesh, blood, and bone supernaturally displaced to parts unknown. Van is displeased. The trio departs, happy to have escaped the maddened alchemist with their lives and most of their organs present.
• The party spends some time ascertaining the extent of Van's mutation. Offers to plumb his newfound depths are refused, although Piple is convinced to turn into a spider and crawl around for a bit inside of Van. Wellston suggests Van fill himself with wasps as a secret attack.
• A large jade door made of stone snakes is discovered, but the party can't open it. It's obviously missing a piece. Nearby, the trio find a revolving cylinder that opens into a very smelly collapsed cave system, then get stabbed a few times by a spear trap before retreating to the hissing sulfur chambers and scraping some molten gold out of a natural fire pit.
• The Warlocks are ambushed by a large crowd of fungus goblins near the fire pit. All but one of the goblins are slain within seconds, and the remaining one yanks a boot down over his head and does a headstand, insisting "I'M A LEG" when questioned. Little useful information is extracted from the captive before it wanders into a spiked pit entirely by accident.
• A sealed chamber is opened, revealing a trapped berbalang. The party bargains with the creature at great length, trading its release from an intact summoning circle for the skull of the dead Basilisk and answers to a number of questions. 
• Van opts to ask about the fate of the vanished Empire, and gets a BEWILDERING series of questions in response, rather than any clear answers. The berbalang implies that it can't offer the answer directly without incurring some terrible consequence, but the creature's questions lead the party to conclude a number of profound things. (See the bottom of this post.)
• The missing magic snake is discovered, and the jade door is opened, revealing a golden throne surrounded by elaborate mirrors. The mirrors are disassembled, looted, and the throne is entirely ignored after it is discovered to be radiating Enchantment magic.
• Wandering back across the tomb complex, the party finds a heavy iron vault door that is opened by the key they found wedged under the basilisk's collar. Inside, they find a huge pile of ancient and modern coins, cut gems, a golden statue of a three-eyed humanoid head on a tripod, and a number of strange magic items:
• A seamless ceramic cube about the size of a grapefruit
• A silver-headed arrow, the presence of which immediately and inexplicably makes Wellston break into a cold sweat
• In a plain silver box of Drow make: Three occultum coins. Glassy, massless, gold-black. Just enough to start a war--or perhaps end one.
• Within the box, a note in the handwriting of Wellston's father--but written in third-person--on the various uses of occultum. Curious.

~ ~ ~

Conclusions the party reached after speaking with the berbalang (reproduced exactly as they wrote them):

1. The imperials did accomplish what they set out to do.
2. The events surrounding the moon shadow involved intervention by divine agents.
3. So far as we know - divine agents can only act on the world through human requests.
4. If this is true, then the imperials accomplished what they intended to do through divine intervention.
5. If 3) and 4) are true, then the divine entity Ahta was likely involved, which means that there was a request that allowed her to act.
6. Troublingly, the Berbalang made an implication that our understanding of what prevents direct divine action may be in error.
7. Our understanding of what prevents direct divine action is that all gods have a divine treaty that states that all gods will prevent/punish other gods from acting without a request.
8. If 6) is true, then either the nature of the request from the Imperium is very important, OR a majority of gods were acting in concert, thus invalidating the pact, OR there is some other extremely powerful universal force enforcing the rule.