GS 30: Meeting the Mad Poet

Loot

None...

Secondary Campaign Trait Improvements

Driven by Guilt: As you regain your memories, you relive all of the terrible things that you did, which you would not do now, given the choice. This sensation can be demoralizing, but the clarity it brings and your most recent actions fighting against cosmic evils center you in your current goal of helping others—and the world. Once per day as a standard action, you can grant your allies a +1 trait bonus for 1 minute on saving throws against spells or spell-like abilities cast by evil creatures

Twitchy: As you regain your memories, you feel an element of calm fill your body. You’re still anxious and a bit paranoid, but you have a better sense of how to focus this energy to work for you in future fights against your enemies. You gain the ability to make one additional attack of opportunity in a round. This ability stacks with other abilities, such as Combat Reflexes, that increase the number of attacks of opportunity you can make.

Summary

The party fights a huge plant tree that has fruit that look like their own heads!

Then they meet the Mad Poet, Abdul Alhazred, who gives a +2 ability boon to each player as they get copies of the Necronomicon...

Abdul explains that Lowls seeks a city called Neruzavin. And that if the party wishes to learn of its location in their world, they must seek certain writings in the Necronomicon. The Dreamlands Necronomicon is of no use to the party— Abdul riffles the pages in his book to show that it appears blank. Alhazred explains to the party that they can peruse the genuine Necronomicon at a university of the occult called the Mysterium in the Qadiran city of Katheer.

Abdul continues saying that he provided the same information to the count that he just shared with them, so Lowls is most likely headed to Katheer to obtain the Necronomicon. Alhazred warns the party that Lowls isn’t what he seems, and that the Great Old One Xhamen-Dor has infected him. Alhazred surmises that Lowls intends to use the Star Stelae in Thrushmoor and Neruzavin to mark Golarion so that it can be brought into Carcosa. Doing so would help fully waken Xhamen-Dor, and Lowls would become the great old one’s champion for completing the task.

Then Abdul Alhazred offers to let the the party get a taste of the future— and perhaps of their past—by allowing them to speak with the “King of Neruzavin.” He invites them to step into the waters of the oasis, gesturing grandly with his free hand over the clear waters.

Here the party does so and their memories come flooding back, they remember being drowned in the Oasis waters. And as their anger of what Lowls did them surfaces, also does copies of themselves! 4 Animate Dreams appear and the party fights them.

During the fight of the Animate Dreams, the Mad Poet slips back into his hut with his book and his gifts. When the party checks the hut, they find it entirely empty. After defeating their dream reflections, the party experiences the same weird event in their minds:

After the deluge of memories returns to their minds, the party hear a bizarre series of clicks and high-pitched hoots intermixed with crackling mechanical static as images of a faraway desert city flash in their head. The cacophony settles and the party recognize this as a language that they suddenly and inexplicably understand. They again see images of Count Lowls drowning them in the Mad Poet’s Dreamlands oasis, being led through the receiving doors of Briarstone asylum in a catatonic state, and then suddenly waking up in the asylum’s basement. The images and sounds coalesce into a sudden shout of “Wake up!” 

As the mental sensation begins to fade from their startled minds, the party hear a strange voice overlaying the clicks and static that says, “You are now free, but to remain so you must find me.” This communication is purely mental, and all of the party experience it at the same time in a flash of just a second.