The Minds of Innesbyr

What followed the Battle for Old Weir and Safad's Nightmare was a confusing blur. The party was alive, but altered. Their eyes blinked open and closed, and days passed.

The one thing they knew for certain, was that they loved their master. It was fanatical how they felt. Mollitheesid, was its name. A beautiful creature. They were in awe of it, how its tentacles flowed gracefully, how silently it could levitate, how it knew their mind so intimately. They would do anything for it.

Their eyes blinked shut and an expanse of time passed.

When they open again, a montage of scenes fly by…

• You’re picking up blocks of white stone, building the bridge with fellow Weirans.
• You are told to tell visitors the town was attacked by stone giants, but you held them back and survived.
• You are helping to nail a stone giant and a mind flayer to Old Weir’s sacred oak--crying as you hammer a nail in the illithid’s arm.
• You see a figure from your former life. It was some dignitary. Someone from a big city somewhere...you can't quite place him. He nods to you and he and a few others leave town.
• You are in the Hibernal Den, working beside others to clear rubble as you break down walls and break through the floor of bathhouse to let your new masters levitate around their home with easy, sheltered, access in and out of the tunnels below into the Underdark.
• You’re working in perfect lockstep with your fellows. Some building homes. Others learning the smith trade. Dala'gse becomes the town's forager for a spell. 
• You see many Midwinters pass by with tourists coming to enjoy the festivities. You hand a visiting child a felted toy badger. You sing "Under the Bridge" together. 
• You see a delegation from some land come and appraise the town proudly. You offer them sfos and drink some in front of them, they seem a little put off but shrug.
• You see yourself at monthly ceremonies when the illithids choose their next crop of minds to consume. You feel sad every time you are passed over.
• You have glimpses of what the new masters call “coupling day” when you are paired off to reproduce. 
• You see the birth of a son or daughter. Maybe a whole brood of them, it's all slipping by, melding together. But you feel love for each one. You see all the adults in town raising all of the children. 
• You lose track of time, as it accelerates and warps and blends together into one bad dream…

Until one day you remember. 

Those were memories. In the past. 

And you were not in control. 

Suddenly there is light and you remember those scenes but they seem one second removed from falling in the Battle for Old Weir. Your mind jolts to consciousness, as though gasping for breath after nearly drowning. Everything is real now, seen with sharp edges. 

You hear water dripping, you feel dampness on your face, it might be sweat. You hear furtive whispers and fussing over you. When you open your eyes there is dim candle light and you can make out the rough contours of a cave, set up as a camp to be lived in. 

Around you, you see makeshift bedrolls laid out, and unfamiliar people begin to sit up in them.

Yet, hold on, there is some recognition…you see your old companions, yes, the “Misfit Six” you were once called. Except they are...old. At least 25 years older than when you fought together. 

And there are others, leaning over you, blinking.

• An ancient half orc woman, wrapped in furs and leaning on a beautifully carved staff 
• A 30 something woman with haunted eyes and a fierce disposition dressed in leather armor 
• An old half elf with a dark robe and a frost-crusted long sword
• There’s also, strangely, a goblin, with many piercings and markings -- he's geriatric 
• And there is a sturdy Orog, with deep-set eyes who looks pained

The ancient half orc pats your forehead reassuringly. The old half elf starts to speak, his voice full of phlegm and rust. 

“You must have many questions. Let me start. It’s been 25 years since the Battle for Old Weir, though none but us know it even happened.

This is what we know: The battle was lost. The mind flayers came from the Underdark and took control of the town. No one knows how they managed to tunnel from so deep under the town. The Lakeville army had surrounded the town and made sure no one escaped. They enslaved everyone. 

We believe the Monarch, Jeremius Mason, was behind it.

With Old Weir suddenly so pliant, joining the Vostewylde was a rubber stamp. This only encouraged the Lords Alliance and accelerated the Vostewylde’s membership. The Monarch's Vostewylde officially joined the Lords Alliance, and within ten years Jeremius moved on from his seat in Innesbyr to become a noble in Waterdeep. Eventually, he became one of the nobility there, and is now one of the secret Masked Lords of Waterdeep. His influence is strong and his pockets are deep. Built off the wealth from the platinum mines that have operated so successfully and for so long in the Underdark. We can only assume the mines have been so successful because of some sort of protection offered by the mind flayers. 

Protection in exchange for thralls. First it was a hamlet, Lakeville. Which grew from the steady stream of adventurers encouraged, by the Monarch of course, to explore the new ruin of Myth Sveldin. We all know what awaited them there. Then the Monarch offered them a kingly gift: the stubborn thorn in his new alliance’s side, Old Weir. Old Weir was a gift to the Mind Flayers, from the Monarch.  

He gave them the Minds of Innesbyr. 

We’ve tried to tell those in power, when we’ve dared stick our heads out. That Old Weir is a town of thralls. They think we’re crazy. They say it is well known a rogue mind flayer enthralled stone giants who attacked the town many years ago, but the town won — they even strung up the mind flayer to commemorate the battle. We told them to go to the town and see for themselves how weird it acts. They say anyone would act so strangely if they consumed as much sfos as Old Weir does…it’s an open secret the town is addicted to the stuff. Sound familiar? It should: Lakeville. Besides, they say, how could mind flayers take over a whole town like that, it’s unheard of. Those who study the lore say thralldom doesn’t work like that.

So here we are, the last bastion of knowledge about the monarch and how he got to where he is. We’ve been steadily working to prove it, to understand how he was able to strike a deal with these aberrations. Why they never turned on him and just took over his mines -- what he had to offer them.

I do not know if our names will mean much to you. I am Tallin Gale, this is Bask Briarcloak, Nell Danovna, Kargi Prexson, and Golun-dal Blackbane."

Golun-dal smiled sadly then took up the tale, his Common much improved. 

"We learned many years ago we had to get you out, but couldn’t. How do you steal thralls from a town of thralls? And how do you prevent them from communicating with their masters?

We tried unsuccessfully a couple times over the years. We weren’t caught, but our therapy to restore the brains of those we captured didn’t exactly work, and we lost a couple…early trials. Eventually, my patron learned the secret, and after a few failings we perfected it. Finally we risked the raid to abscond with the seven of you. It was terribly fraught, but we had to risk it.

Because you are the key to her return--the goddess's return. 

It was my Lady, who you have met, Tessadil Lanodyn -- you may know as the Lady of the Glen -- who learned to decipher the signs. 

A goddess called out, in visions mostly, and my Lady deciphered them. The goddess speaks through constellations, whispers on the wind, through rustling in the leaves, voices in the spray of a waterfall, in whorls in wood. Twice a year, on the exact same days, we learned, your faces would appear. In the hearth, in the stars, in a flight of birds. We realized it was the day you first came to her cabin, and the day Old Weir fell. 

My Lady sent me to find any survivors of Old Weir, and I met up with this rag tag group here. She believes you are the key to the goddess’s return, and the goddess is the key to ending this scourge.

My Lady said she didn’t quite know how it came through her, but she gave you a prophecy. That what you chose defined your path. She now believes the goddess had been guiding you, through others in your periphery like her, and in signs. But her connection is strongest in you all. She believes it is all tied up together: the monarch, the mind flayers, the goddess. 

But we don’t know who she is, or how to listen better to her. Or why you matter. That’s why we need you."

Tallin patted Golun-dal on the back and said, "You all must have many questions of your own. If you are well enough to speak, we would do our best to answer anything." 

With that, Tallin uncorked a flask of smuggled Roger's Finest and poured a comforting round for the survivors. As they drank, they took in the aged features of their companions, and saw that they had nothing from the old days with them--no coin, no armor, no Rook--just the common clothes on their back. 

Tallin had many things on his mind. He recalled the final day before the battle. 

Did they know why the attack happened when it did? Why were they so intent on interrogating the Lord's Alliance in those fateful hours? Where did sfos fit in all of this. And Sha'hale? They were given a prophecy--what did it say, exactly? Did they ever notice any signs from the goddess? 

As their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, they realized there was an opening to the outside they could see. It was twilight and the stars were beginning to rise in the night sky, a few constellations becoming clear:

• The Seven Prongs of the Stag that Ironica looked to as she first fled the bustle of city life and made her way to Shifu.
• The bright star that marks the Heron’s head, which shone above that ship on the fateful day Dala'gse left M'balu.
• Tymora’s Dagger pointing south as it always does, as it did that night to inspire Nancy to end the abuses of her band leader.
• The cluster of stars that form the crook of the Shepherd’s staff, that guided Safad after Baldor's death. 
• The Maiden’s box-shaped veil that Zireael saw through the trees when he rescued his daughter.
• Oghma’s simple Cross, that welcomed Slothrop to the surface when when he first emerged from the Underdark.

And as the party gazed out in wonderment, Rya had a slow, dawning realization.

Those were Sha'hale's favorite constellations--the ones she would tell stories about when Rya was a child.