The party long rests into the morning.
Helia attempts to divine something about Louis: she fails and gets a drawing with 2 triangle towers, a fire, and Louis in a wizard hat.
As the party awakens, they realize that Ev is missing. She had taken the last watch. They find a hastily written note that explains “MY PATRON NEEDS ME”.
The party continues their trek towards the well in a sneaky fashion.
They follow the dog’s trail towards an awakened tree and a vine blight. The party tries to navigate around but Helia is drawn towards the tree.
Helia’s presence offends the tree and the vine blight lashes out. The party creates lots of small and big fires and destroys the vine. Also some vegepygmies stumbled into the fight and were killed.
The tree is at the edge of death and the party casts some sort of ice spell to stave off the inevitable. They question the tree for 1 minute of real time and learn:
- The tree just wants to be left alone
- It is disoriented from where it’s home used to be
- It does not know where the vine came from
The party continues onwards to find the dog with an exploded belly. Kool is distraught and needs to be consoled. Boogie is cremated.
The party gets to the well and sees that the jungle is not the thickest at the well. In fact, it’s the thickest at a shop nearby that Kool identifies as the Tinker’s guild home (him and his gang had done some minor laborer work for them)
The party checks the well and sees a tied rope but the bucket (with the implied bags of platinum) is nowhere to be found (the rope is sliced clean on the other end).
Harloc retcons a secret passage at the bottom of the well. The party slides down with minor damage. Kool chooses not to follow them.
The party follows the tunnel to a lab inside the TInkers guild. They find a large contraption and a small cylindrical reservoir of moon light. They find a large wall with a mounted lyre and a small pair of drums, with mechanical contraptions jutting out.
The 3 instruments are arranged in a triangle with a spot missing for pan flutes. The party place the pan flutes and it clicks into place.
Louis starts cranking the moonlight cylinder. Music starts playing, in what appears to be attuned to the natural rhythm of the universe. Then a second beat gets added, in the between every first and the magic of the moment is lifted.
And just as it began, the moonlight starts to fade and the song fades with it. Louis and Cory work together to keep the crank going, but fail to get the timing right. Still the song continues to play, in a semi broken way.
The world shifts and the party takes 1d6+2 damage.
The party finds just themselves, their belongings, and a few overturned desks have transported to a new land bathed in twilight. The sun is setting and a moon is rising with no apparent change in illumination.
One of the desks has overturned, revealing a few journals that explain that:
- The Tinker’s guild has been experimenting with the inherent musicality of the universe
- They recognize 3 fundamental instruments: strings, winds, drums
- They have had minor success with “transposition”, but want to confirm their findings with the tinkers in Melisma.
- They are sending just the pan flutes with the hope of further research.
There does not appear to be any civilization nearby.
The party heads to a nearby copse of trees and makes camp there for a long rest.