Stone Soules Summary: Aftermath of the Barnaire Strike
Take on adventure: Approx. 40,000 gold pieces. Scroll of Protection from Petrification; a magic mace +1, lots of jewelry, statuettes, and gems; a good viola; and some weird, putrid musical compositions.
The viola had contact poison and a needle, and snake trap on it. We investigated back at Middle. We did check thoroughly for traps and removed the poison needle, and then unlocked it. Apparently there was something inside that sticks-to-snakes'ed a twig inside when it opened. The snake killed Snag in about ten seconds (he was bitten by a cobra inside the viola case) but for Slow Poison and Neutralize Poison spells later. When we killed the snake, it turned into a twig.
We learned that the spawn have travelled to End. Silla or the other woman must have bought the viola from a fancy goods place: a woman came in and bought that very instrument a couple of years ago, the shopkeeper said.
The viola is worth 3,500 gp. Gram copied the sheet music for posterity. The compositions are carefully crafted to sound incredibly discordant. They are actively unpleasant to listen to. Gram's music skill told him that the tunings required in the musical piece are horrible. The piece might approach good if that was fixed and the pieces carefully adjusted to a reasonalbe keys. later analysis revealed that the music is very carefully constructed. Although it is not magical in nature, it certainly has a disconcerting effect that is distinctly unpleasant. The music consists of arrangements of better known pieces that have been mangled almost beyond recognition. It is a distinct curiousity, but performing it to anyone but scholars of music is likely to result in lynching.
Much of the GOC since we killed the demonspawn (about 1.5 months later is this incident) became much more "alive" with more birds and more overgrowth. During our battle with the four lesser spawn, the garden they had was a scale-insect kind of garden with very sick plants--maintained just above death to maintain the insects. Dari destroyed it as an abomination of nature. It could be a reflection of that in the reduced presence of the 'spawn.
For a while early on, it was considered that the beithir could be one of the "Great Ones." This also pointed to the "Multiple Beithir Hypothesis (MBH)." Both theories were later abandoned.
Also, the sphinx said that the name of the city is plastered everywhere. However, Eli did not comprehend Runic I well, and the party did not see it much at first. They later learned that the name was "Tan-El."
Kyle