The entire party felt a cold presence rush past them as the floor of the passage slowly lifted away, pushing the dropped floor back up into position as the flooring of the crevasse and revealing a downward-heading staircase below. Light from the staircase poured into the space then and the thunderous sound of rushing water enveloped their senses. As the party descended into the breach along a large, man-made brick pillar, a very deep bowl with a small square structure at its center was revealed to them. In a half-moon that ran from the western side around the southern portion of the expanse and then up to the eastern side was a large stone dam. From their vantage at the top of the stairs, they could see that this dam was holding back a lake of water which stretched westward into the darkness beyond.
The deafening sound of rushing water was emanating from a large waterfall that extended from the ceiling of the cavern down to a smaller lake at the bottom which surrounded the small structure in the center of the bowl. As they stared at this rushing water it took a few moments but then registered to each of them that the water was not splashing down into the lake below as they might have initially assumed. Rather, it was flowing from beneath the structure and out along a stone ramp on its eastern side, then rushing up to the ceiling of the cavern where it flowed as a small river to the east until gravity apparently reversed again and the water fell into the lake beyond the dam.
The thin stairway upon which the adventurers stood connected with the stone wall of the dam and then continued to the very bottom of the chamber where they ended at a small land bridge leading over to the square building central to the space. The entire area is lit as if by the sun, though there was no discernible light source.
As they began to walk down the staircase, suddenly a loud, grave whisper screamed out, "You fools! To think I would allow you to defile my project!"
Then the area went completely black for the entire party, a deep and magical blackness which none could see through. This gave away the nature of the darkness immediately and our adventurers began slowly and carefully picking their way down the stairs. Sadly, Avina made a misstep as she worked her way down and stumbled off the stairs to the rocks below. Being a sturdy dwarf, she sustained no serious injuries. Upon clearing the area of the darkness spell, Vilkas could see the dark form of a wraith far below in the small square structure. It was Mormesk.
The lake of water at the bottom of the cavern began to roil and churn as they quickly rushed to descend the path toward the bottom. A thin sheet of water erupted from the edges of the lake and flew up the sides of the cavern, coating the entire space within a watery bubble. The party was then pulled by the water as the bubble contracted until they found themselves cast to the floor of the square structure, now completely encircled by the liquid. The ghostly features of Mormesk grimace with resignation and unhappiness, but he makes no immediately threat against the party.
The structure is made entirely of marble with pillars holding a strange roof made of convex discs stacked one above another. The floor is wide, flat and unremarkable, but a large stone bowl is set into the eastern side, connected to the ramp which the waterfall ran from. The water surrounding it is opaque, hiding the rest of the cavern from view. As they gaze upon it, they realize that even though it is water, it is not exactly just water. There is something more to the substance.
As the group stares, slowly rising to their feet, the waters swirl and then part to reveal a dashing young man which Vilkas immediately recognizes from the persistent visions granted by Oghma.
"Makith!" Mormesk the wraith uttered a sound like a gasp upon seeing the man in the water.
"You!" Makith Tresendar's face twisted in anger upon recognizing Mormesk. "Fool of a mage! If you hadn't insisted on monitoring that pointless forge, you'd have been here when I needed you!"
"I... but..." Mormesk sputtered sheepishly. There was shame in his voice.
"Now my form is cursed to wander this place as is my mother's and my sister's! The magic of the Chrysalis tainted us and we can never rest as we should. Without the key, we could not enter the Chrysalis to escape their invasion. You traitor!"
Makith's skin melted from his body as he screamed these accusations, leaving behind only a clean, white, animated skeleton.
"I have the key, it is here!" Mormesk plead into the water, but as a wraith he cannot carry the wooden pipe. Suddenly, Mormesk was drawn into the waters. As he passed through the surface, Makith was no longer there, replaced now by Mormesk, but as a regular human standing alone in an empty room with four round orbs surrounding him. It was at this moment that the entire group became aware of a middle-aged high elf male suspended motionless in the air next to them, occupying the space where Mormesk had been only a moment before. His eyes were closed and he made no reaction or movement to indicate whether he was conscious or even alive.
When the adventurers looked again, the waters have swirled and collapsed, roiling incoherently for a few moments before they smoothed once more to reveal a wide room with four beds. Three bugbears were seated around a makeshift campfire in the middle of the room and they laughed while tormenting a small goblin.
"Good one, Mosk" said one of the bugbears before a loud thud resounded as if something had hammered into the door. The bugbear who had just spoken turned toward the door which was still firmly closed and growled,
"What do you want?"
As they all looked at the scene before them, something was very clearly out of place. That name... Mosk. It was familiar. Their eyes were drawn to the bugbears' faces, which appeared to be perfectly normal bugbear faces. However, something about the situation still wasn't right. It was something about Mosk's eyes. Something about his eyes was missing. Something important. Something vain. They all knew it was something vain, yet none of them could figure out what, or why, or how.
Seraphina suddenly squeaked an exclamation and snapped the jeweled eyepatch from her face. As the others looked on, she was drawn into the waters while suddenly appearing, motionless but floating, in the same spot she had previously stood. Like the high elf, her eyes were closed and she made no movement at all.
The waters swirled once more. When they were again calm they revealed the silhouette of a mage. His features were obscured, but he tossed and turned in his sleep until suddenly he sat bolt upright in the night. The mage rose and began wandering in search of something. He exited his room and stumbled down a hallway. The cold, musty stone looked like the walls of a dungeon, or maybe just an old castle. Everything then faded away but resolved again on the same mage. He was sifting through the rubble of a smashed table, moving rocks and dust aside in futile effort. There was something important here, they all could tell. Even the mage knew there was something important about this place. He continued searching.
Vilkas identified with the mage immediately. Unsure of what exactly he was seeing, he hastily drew a stack of tomes from his pack and flung them into the waters. Then Vilkas also disappeared into the waters, replaced by a burly human man who floated serenely in his place.
The calming of the waters this time was signaled by a loud hootscreech. The remaining members of the group saw within a lone figure who stood upon a hilltop road. An owlbear sprinted toward the woman who stood perfectly still as the beast bore down. Lo Risten responded immediately, unslinging her bow and hurling it into the waters. For her, an Aasimar female appeared and then the waters boiled once more.
As the eddies resolved, Count Alistair and Avina found themselves looking upon a large, circular room. Eleven bugbears stood in a ring under several Cragmaw banners. King Grol stood at the center of the ring, holding one of the banners aloft. He looked at each bugbear expectantly.
"We wait for the missing one. No matter how crazy he is, we wait!"
With a heavy sigh, Count Alistair pulled out his morningstar, stolen from the corpse of the very first bugbear he had slain and offered it into the waters. The bugbears all howled "Klarg!" in unison and Count Alistair, too, disappeared into the waters.
As Avina looked upon the settling waters, she was greeted by a frail old man who approached tentatively and pulled up a chair to seat himself before her. He looked directly at Avina, yet he did not look at her at all and began to speak in a low, soft voice.
Painstakingly, the man told the tale of a young girl who had everything taken from her. One whose purity of spirit was so strong that, despite her many heartbreaks, she chose only to find ways to help those who would be in need. This girl was the man's granddaughter, and as Avina looked upon the tear-stained face of her constant companion, Holly, she knew she had to give her great protector up to the waters before her. Holly's greatest prayer had been to serve as a protector for those who could not protect themselves, a role she had served to Avina faithfully countless times on their many journeys.
A silently tearful goodbye was exchanged between them and then Avina declared the name of her friend to the waters to watch Holly return home once more as Avina finally joined her friends within the magic of the Chrysalis.
Seraphina found herself in a long, empty hallway with a door bearing the sign "Knock twice or say it" at its far end. She approached the door and examined it. Seeing that it could not be opened with either thieves tools or brute strength, she tentatively rapped on its surface twice. The door formed itself into a face and spoke.
"Who's there?"
Seraphina stared at the door for a long time, unsure of the meaning.
"Seraphina." She said at last. The face's eyes glowed a hateful red and it cast magic missile, pummeling her with three bolts of force. She stood back away from the door, whose surface had transformed back to a smooth barrier barring her path, and thought for a few moments. Then, she knocked twice again.
"Who's there?"
"Boo."
"Boo who?" The door face intoned, then paused and laughed uproariously. The door swung open.
Vilkas found himself in a room with a wide table. On the table were six common ingredients: three water essence, one fire essence, one earth essence and one air essence. Along with these were also bundles of wyrmtongue petals, arctic creeper, blood herb, aniseed sap, drojos ivy and mandrake root. Next to the table were three heated kettles with paintings hanging above them. On the far left was a painting of a water drop colored green with drops of red blood hanging from it. In the middle was a plus with a faint blue border. On the far right was a painting of a brown shield with a bright yellow lightning bolt.
Contemplating the available resources for a few moments, Vilkas understood the challenge before him, yet he lacked the knowledge to complete it. Vilkas stroked his chin thoughtfully, then decided to add one water essence to each of the kettles. After this, he added an earth essence to the left, air essence to the middle and fire essence to the right kettles. No visible change greeted his efforts, so he proceeded by adding a blood herb and drojos ivy to the left, arctic creeper and wyrmtongue petals to the middle, and mandrake root and aniseed sap to the right kettles. Each mixture, in turn, bubbled violently and turned to an unusable black sap.
Lo Risten had entered a long hallway, littered with fifty bear traps, scattered along its entire length. In her hands was the legendary bow, Aethershred, which had invigorated her body in a way that she had never experienced before. Using her exceptional dexterity, she chose to avoid all of the traps she could and make her way down the hall toward the doorway. Halfway along her journey, however, Aethershred subjugated her mind and set off one of the traps, causing fifty owlbears to spawn in front of the door at the end of the hall. These immediately rushed toward her, and Aethershred forced Lo Risten to attack, striking the owlbears with chain lightning and angering the host of them.
The host of them continued to surge forward, becoming caught in the traps as they tried to attack. After a few moments, Lo Risten finally managed to wrest control of her mind back from the bow and she made a dash for the door at the far end of the hallway. She felt the bow attempting to take over once more, so she threw it aside, hoping to evade the owlbears through wits alone. As the bow left her hand and clattered to the floor, suddenly all of her attackers disappeared along with the bear traps and the door at the far end of the hall swung open.
Entering the room at the end of the hallway, Lo Risten found it contained the mythical Sacrificial Forge, with a great axe lying across its lip. However, upon entering the room, Aethershred manifested before her as an Avatar of Death which held the great bow. She attacked, blade to bow and destroyed the avatar after many tense moments of fighting. Taking the great axe from the forge, Lo Risten sundered the bow and destroyed it.
Count Alistair stood upon a pillar. Around him were four other, wider pillars, divided into nine pads, with some padded bridges connecting them. Each of these pads bore a number of pegs on its surface. He could see three doors which led nowhere, but off the side of the pillars. One of the doors had a large forty emblazoned on it, the next a twenty-one and the last a twelve.
The noble took a few tentative steps forward, observing how the area reacted to each movement he made. Once he stepped upon a pegged pad, a number appeared atop the pillar where he had started which matched the number of pegs on the pad. He moved to another tile and the number increased by the value of the pad he stepped upon. Count Alistair immediately understood that the pads would add value to the central pillar and once he had added an equal value to the door before him, he would be able to enter it. Uncertain what the trick of the doors might be, but suspecting that he ought to try for the highest value door, Hawklight stood quietly pondering the pads for a moment, attempting to determine whether he could make it to that door with the correct value.
Upon determining that he would have to start over in order to achieve that goal, Count Alistair decided instead to head for the middle value, which he could still accomplish. A few steps later, he opened the door marked twenty-one. A voice spoke to his head, saying "Laziness is for the weak of mind." Then he passed through.
Avina heard the sound of gears grinding into motion as she entered the waters to find herself in a mostly empty room. At the center of the room was a glass dome set into the floor. Through the dome, several gears were visibly turning. Atop the dome sat a lever with a large dial behind. On the dial was a hand slowly rotating toward its upright position. She observed this indecisively for a moment and decided that now, more than any other time in her life, was the moment to be decisive.
Avina stepped forward and pulled the lever. The hand on the dial swung back down to the bottom position, yet the gears continued to turn. She stared at the gears suspiciously, then began to look around the room. There was a door set into the far wall, but nothing else of note. Still the gears turned. She peered into the glass dome in an attempt to determine what the mechanism might be connected to. There was nothing to see within the dome, though. Simply a mass of turning gears which continued toward their inevitable goal. The hand rotated slowly and Avina stood thoughtfully to the side.
Pulling the lever had accomplished nothing, she thought, so surely there was no purpose to pulling the lever again. She raised her warhammer and attempted to smash the glass dome, however the head of her weapon bounced to the side harmlessly. Still the gears turned. Still the hand rotated.
Finally, Avina sheathed her hammer and sat to wait. The gears ground forward and the hand slowly made its way to the top position. Once the hand attained its goal, the gears stopped abruptly and the door in the far wall swung open so she could pass through.
These challenges, for the group, represented their connection to the Immortal Chrysalis, which drew power from their very being and also the magic items they carried. At the end of this ordeal, they understood themselves to be capable of choosing who and what they would be upon exiting the magical sphere. For Seraphina, this meant recovering her youth. For the others, it meant suffusing their current life with that of another individual.
Vilkas, obsessed with knowledge and equality, found that he could not accomplish his goals in the weak form of a simple wizard. He found the qualities he desired within the warlock Tross the Hound who had languished for decades in a discouraged stupor. Together, they had wrongs to right and the ability to right them.
Lo Risten, dissatisfied with her capacity for protecting friends and unfulfilled by her capacity to annihilate her enemies upon the battlefield, chose to find purpose alongside the Aasimar paladin named Shay Davencolt, who shared humble beginnings reminiscent of her own, bolstered by the strength and self-reliance to dominate a battlefield.
Count Alistair, whose attempts at securing nobility for his family's name had continually fallen short while introducing too much compromise into his life, opted to unite himself fully with magic and join together with a powerful and resilient sorcerer dragonborn named Rilos.
Avina, long plagued by her indecisive nature and weary of her faithless questioning only wanted the strength of unwavering conviction. She found this in its purest form within the life of Unka the barbarian. So she chose to fade away, granting her new ally all the benefits of her past experience.