init umbral 6

.vscode/settings.json

@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 {
     "cSpell.words": [
+        "Abeir",
         "abustle",
         "Aerasumé",
         "Alegreya",
@@ -17,6 +18,7 @@
         "Chondath",
         "Cisconian",
         "Cogyth",
+        "Cyric",
         "darkvision",
         "Datalog",
         "Deathrun",
@@ -47,10 +49,13 @@
         "Hornblade",
         "Iggwilv",
         "illithid",
+        "Inoho",
         "jotdown",
         "Karmel",
         "knotwork",
         "Laeral",
+        "Lantan",
+        "Lantanese",
         "Literata",
         "lodpi",
         "Luruar",
@@ -75,6 +80,7 @@
         "northlands",
         "planeswalker",
         "Playwrite",
+        "polymorphs",
         "pranking",
         "Pteey",
         "pygmentize",
@@ -86,19 +92,25 @@
         "Ruathen",
         "Ruathym",
         "Rumbar",
+        "Rwntincer",
         "Sahuagin",
         "scrying",
+        "Shar",
         "Silverhand",
         "Silverymoon",
         "soupault",
         "spellbook",
         "spellcraft",
+        "spellplague",
         "Taern",
         "teleporter",
         "Themberchaud",
         "Thunderspells",
         "Toril",
+        "Torilian",
+        "Torilians",
         "Underdark",
+        "undescribed",
         "unglimpsed",
         "unicodes",
         "unstopper",

acl.cool/site/draft/umbral6.dj

@@ -1 +1,60 @@
-Umbral Gaze 6: The Deathrun
+# Umbral Gaze 6: The Monoeye
+
+Arriving back in Waterdeep after [a hectic day at work](/writings/umbral5/), our heroes stop at Laeral's home to discharge their mission's final obligation; Cisconian's corpse goes through the sallyport. Her note arrives late that evening by household courier--- Lord Silverhand is pleased; her words even carry a tinge of sympathy to the party's predicament. Ambling to their rooms through narrow streets, cloaks cinched and jackets buttoned against spates of dusky drizzle that force vermin and person alike to dart from overhang to lamp-lit awning in efforts to keep dry, the party are surprised to find Tasha--- dressed in the robes and pointed hat of her profession--- lurking in the lobby to accost them.
+
+The witch puts voice to the exasperation heretofore heard only through Almuth's letter, and is slower today to move on to more amicable matters than in writing before. The interaction reminds the party unfavorably of the speech Laeral gave yesterday under similar circumstances, and--- as then--- indignation plays at the backs of their minds; the choices their patrons force upon them are not easy. Conversation finally turns to Cisconian, and Tasha debriefs the adventurers.
+
+Word from Tasha's informants in Silverymoon, received through magic while the party traveled, tells of a network of pre-existing traps that the admittedly-still-unusually-intelligent Cisconian coopted for his own purpose. Now that the monster is excised, librarians have uncovered regions of the basements long-forgotten in which great treasures and ancient histories rest to keep scholars busy for many years to come. Further and more immediately, wizards of Silverymoon believe the six recovered artifacts of Cisconian's gauntlet to be multifarious fragments of [a powerful magical item](/assets/mantle.png)[^mantle], a mantle left by the very founder of the city untold centuries ago, thought lost until now.
+
+Few historians remember and can perform the procedure to join the fragments, but one luckily works in Lord Silverhand's employ, and Tasha is confident that she will help. Of the party, only Clementine has the skills and knowledge needed to make full use of their prize, and Tasha promises to send a message to Taern Hornblade on her behalf requesting permission for her borrow the artifact--- at least until the beholder threat is vanquished from the land. This is promising news, but a less fortunate development also comes to the fore: Tasha aims to purloin the party's clerics for some outside business, her temporary need for assistants diminishing their numbers by a third; the two are in no position to refuse, Almuth agreeing eagerly and Warren so with a trepidation that vanishes into a hearty chuckle of resignation. The party will take differing paths in the morn.
+
+{.thematic}
+***
+
+The war-chamber of Lord Silverhand's mansion is as our heroes remember, but for a stark emptiness of the desks and seats in its periphery. Laeral and Tasha stand together on the dais ahead of the great, low table, which reflects the light of a chandelier in sharp and dancing relief. The pair halt their conversation as the party approaches, and Tasha speaks up to Clementine before the meeting starts in earnest. She has Taern's reply: Silverymoon is glad for the ranger to have the cloak.
+
+Laeral explains the party's next task: they must travel to Lantan[^lantan], where the Monoeye beholder secrets itself away from prying Torilian eyes. Though popular understanding holds that Toril forgot those islands in the time of the Spellplague[^plague], merchants of the Sword Coast have recently known self-proclaimed Lantanese to come bearing technological marvels, shield golems and their like, which they readily offer in trade. The party is not to mention the history of Lantan, nor what they may find in their journey there, beyond these war-room walls.
+
+To get to Lantan will require the use of a planes-shifting device--- Almuth gives his Amulet to Carmal in anticipation of his own absence. Laeral's table recedes into the floor on whirring mechanisms to make space for Tasha to blow a hole in the atmosphere; a portal to the trackless sea five-hundred miles south thunders into place with a rush of wind that shakes the great doors of the war chamber on their hinges even as Gottlob braces them with all his meager strength. Under instructions to use the Planes' Amulet only when the thinnest eddies of fog obscure their hands before their faces, the party passes through the witch's gate.
+
+It takes little time to appraise the island on which they land--- waves crash no more than a few strides off in any direction while impenetrable fog occludes their vision to distances beyond. A canoe, with seating for twenty, lies halfway in the washes of the surf, oars in locks, waiting to carry the heroes onward. The party casts off, rowing until they reach a point at which the fog hangs heavily in the air and resists the returning strokes of their oars like a lesser stratum of sea, whereupon Carmal--- with Louisa's expert help--- casts "plane shift" as directed.
+
+A different beach greets the party now--- silver-colored sands, gouged deeply and thrown about like the dross of some crazed and careless excavator, keep the boat upright by its keel. Though the sky gives no sign of the sun's position or of clouds that might cover it, a flat, diffuse glow from above paints the scene in watery gray. Adventurers disembark directly onto solid ground. Shore becomes verdant jungle as they move inland toward a confusion of cables wrapped and knotted about boles and branches too far off to make out well. Farther still, a trio of cylindrical towers--- columns of glass and straight-sided stone--- rise defiantly toward the heavens in peaked punctuation of the landscape's brilliant but monotonous green. Some of the broad-leaved trees that crowd on all sides appear strange to the party; close examination reveals that roughly one in three is a false, metallic, manufactured replica of its organic neighbors. Trees both real and artificial teem with dog-sized spiders, some of which give the party a start when they approach, but the things seem peaceful, or at least reluctant to attack. Further scrutiny of the arachnids shows that whatever constructed the trees must also have built the spiders. Delicately wrought automatons of copper and steel clatter and click as they move like drawers overfull of cutlery.
+
+Nearing the edge of the forest's heart, adventurers discover again the tangled mess of wood and metal seen before from afar. At this near vantage, they make out rows of buildings suspended at least fifty feet above their heads, patchwork structures of steel cables and solid, organic plates anchored securely into the jungle canopy--- their layout suggests dense inhabitation. Louisa, Clementine, and Carmal teleport straight above, wary to climb the disused and dangling ropes that seem the only way to access the city from below; Gottlob "levitates" as a safety measure before hauling himself hand-over-hand up one such rope with ease.
+
+The art find themselves in what passes for a street, pausing for a moment to take in their surroundings. Many and varied automata make a flurry of activity everywhere they look. Rock gnomes and the occasional human work on dismantled machines in street-side stalls while others ride atop examples that stride down the boulevard with all the sense of place and purpose as a horse-drawn cab in Waterdeep. Spiders cling to walls and strands of cabling strung between rooftops, watching and doing who-knows-what above. The party's reveries of sightseeing are cut short as an especially large robot stops in front of the party--- it extends a hand on which stands a gnomish woman, small even for her kind, who greets the party in an unintelligible tongue. After some moments of confusion, Carmal casts "comprehend languages", and acts his best translator.
+
+The woman introduces herself as "Inoho". Apparently, it was through her report that Tasha learned the Monoeye's whereabouts--- she asks if the party constitutes the response to her plea for help in evicting the aberration. Though Carmal's magic does not allow him to speak her language, he nods the affirmative, negotiating their conversation with well-placed gestures and conveying the woman's meaning to his compatriots. The towers in the distance, Inoho communicates, are the complex of the Sky Forge. The forge itself lives in the leftmost tower. Far closer now to the trio than when they looked upon it before, they make out in greater detail the bases of the vast columns. Each is founded at the center of a gear--- intermediate gears link the whole apparatus together--- but in the teeth of the leftmost tower's base is a muddle of glass, in among pins and joints as though poured there hot and left to harden. The beholder they seek took up residence in the sky forge to appropriate it for the manufacture of its own variety of golem, that being--- predictably--- glass.
+
+An agreement is reached: the party will travel to the tower, sneaking past any glass golems they encounter, to evict the Monoeye from its stolen headquarters--- ideally, by diplomacy; if necessary, by force. Before the party gets going, Inoho bids they follow her up a ways to a squarish building of benches, nooks, and lockers: an armory. Most of the armor is sized for gnomes, but scores of human-appropriate weapons are visible as she opens one locker after another and presents their contents to our heroes, offering them their choice of arms. Gottlob and Carmal take a rapier, each. Inoho explains the fruits of her scientists' labor to improve the swords, that--- through advanced mechanics and metallurgy--- the blades shake when they strike[^vibe] so to cause maximum damage to brittle materials like the glass of the Monoeye's minions. She shows them more advanced weapons too, strange metallic rods that throw fire and lead, but party members are confused by the items and leave them to their makers.
+
+Across the forest that intercedes the Lantanese' ramshackle cramming of their whole city into half and the glass-enrobed base of the tower in which their quarry works the forge, our heroes reach the foot of their destination. A cohort of glass automata--- humanoid like all the rest they've seen--- patrol tall iron doors set flush into the wall, rendering stealthy entry a perilous endeavor. Though the party sneaked through the bulk of the occupied city undetected through the aid of Clementine's "pass without trace", they will need a different approach to surmount this next stage of their challenge. Peeking furtively over the ridge behind which the party hides, Gottlob looks around--- the remains of destroyed and dismantled spiders, among other sorts of Lantanese machines, decorate carpets of moss on the forest floor; perhaps he can extricate some useful items thence. The satyr slinks back the way they came, into the city, to find a spider corpse out of view of the Monoeye's guards. Finding such a wreckage, he begins to pull at plates and wires until he exposes the innards of the arachnid's thorax, wherein a steel-cable net, festooned with little spheres, sits nestled in among the mechanisms like an oyster's pearl just asking to be levered free. Gottlob can only oblige; tugging mightily at his prize, he rips it free with a surge of effort that sends it flying from his hands as he falls backward on his ass with the sudden absence of resistance.
+
+As the net lands, a few spheres bounce free, and a round start goes through all for a mile as they detonate with sharp, short cracks and an echo off the eaves of buildings high above. Lantanese spiders are apparently designed to launch bomb-laden nets at their foes. The party is unharmed, but not for long if they allow themselves to be discovered by the golems responding to the commotion. Gottlob scoops up the now-bare net, and they hightail it back toward the tower before any arrives, taking cover when needed to avoid their enemies.
+
+Knowing that a stealthy ingress will be all but impossible now after explosions set the door guards on high-alert, alarming their glass bodies with color like a bunch of walking pictorial windows, the party decides to turn the situation on its head: they will fly up to the top of the tower, break in from the roof, and fight their way downward as circumstances require. Thus, they should catch their target unawares. Carmal "polymorphs" Clementine, turning her into a quetzalcoatlus, and he and Gottlob clamber aboard her leathery back as Louisa casts her own flying spell. The llama takes one stubby talon between her teeth so that the one might tow the other at great speed to the roof, more quickly than guards on the ground could hope to target.
+
+Up top, the discus of the roof levitates-- perfectly still, as though resting on invisible beams--- fifty feet off the floor. No wall or windows connect it to the rest of the tower. Beneath is a banquet pavilion complete with feast, food laid out atop a rectangular table like something from a painting. Three gleaming prisms, tall as a man and twice as wide, ripple strangely in the sky's unfiltered light, scattered with no apparent pattern throughout the room. Glass golems and strange machinery decorate the end opposite to where party members peer furtively into this incongruous union of manufacture and merrymaking. They step gingerly off of Clementine's back onto a raised ledge within, careful not to make more noise than necessary and, gathering their bearings, hear an imperious voice that orders unseen lackeys to their tasks at the far side of the room. Our heroes catch glimpses of the monster from their oblique vantage--- a stalk-less head floats facing a bundle of glass columns.
+
+The adventurers slink up a wide and gently curving stairway to take positions on a mezzanine that overlooks the room. It affords them a high-ground advantage and a dramatic position from which to initiate the confrontation that follows. Carmal announces their presence with a shout, and the beholder turns the orb-spanning "X" of his eye to engage the tower's uninvited guests. {% I think we're meant to break into song here.%}
+
+Questions abound on both sides. Interlocutors hurl "Where did you come from?", "What do you want?", and the like at one another. Eventually, some understanding is reached. The beholder's name is Rwntincer; he is not surprised that the lords of Faerûn would send a kill squad to clean up his mess. Still, he explains, his aims are ultimately peaceful. He came to Lantan to be far away from his dreary home in the outer planes and from the interference of strangers like the rock gnomes and themselves--- in the latter, he may have misjudged. Rwntincer has the air of a solitary, socially disinterested character, and the party are inclined to believe his claims that he wants to be left alone. His work in the sky forge is of academic interest--- the gnomes' methods of automaton construction far outstrip his own; he labors in the tower to reverse-engineer their process so that he too may produce manners of golems beyond the humanoid forms that are all he has managed thus far. He pushed the gnomes out of their city only because, when he first took up the Sky Forge, they attacked him unprovoked!
+
+The Lantanese see the situation differently, as the party explains. _Of course_ they attacked the Monoeye when he showed up from nowhere to insert himself in the mechanisms of their critical industry and displace them from the sites of their work. It is they who acted in self defense by retaliating against such an outrage, not he by responding in kind. In the course of the heated debate that follows, the beholder confirms a suspicion that took root in the party's minds at the notion of "his mess" and his unsurprise at their arrival: Rwntincer's egress from the outer planes produced the fissure through which all nine beholders entered the Sword Coast. Carmal "sends" Tasha the news.
+
+It takes much skillful parley, but Rwntincer eventually seems to understand, and some convincing calculus from the mouth of Gottlob persuades him that his time and effort would be much more efficiently spent somewhere he needn't bother defending a _stolen_ lair. An agreement is reached: the party will fetch representatives of Lantan and bring them to the Sky Forge to negotiate in good faith for the reclamation of the complex and relocation of its operator. Unsure that he can trust our heroes, and eager to dissuade them from any thoughts of double-crossing, the beholder makes a show of force--- a lance of pure heat, the intensity of its light washing out all other qualities, makes a searing triangle between the crystals our heroes noticed earlier. Moisture flees their every exposed bit of skin as the laser punches a hole in the floating ceiling above their heads, superheated metal forming rivers and little glowing pools in tension along the wound's boundary.
+
+{.thematic}
+***
+
+
+
+
+[^mantle]: This is basically a lightly homebrewed [Nature's Mantle](https://dnd5e.wikidot.com/wondrous-items:natures-mantle).
+
+[^lantan]: Torilians believe tsunamis, smoke powder, and spellplague destroyed [this island cluster](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Lantan#History) _circa_ 1385 DR. In fact, it was transported to [Abeir](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Abeir).
+
+[^plague]: The [Spellplague](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Spellplague) was the calamitous result of Mystra's assassination at the hands of Cyric and Shar.
+
+[^vibe]: These "Clockwork Rapiers"  are magic items that do an extra `d8` of thunder damage against creatures and objects made of glass.

acl.cool/site/umbral-gaze-timeline.dj

@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+# Umbral Gaze's Timeline
+
+There are some differences between the WotC version of the Forgotten Realms presented in fifth-edition Dungeons and Dragons material--- particularly around the 1480s DR--- and the version of Umbral Gaze. Some of the most significant differences are listed below in no particular order.
+
+- In WotC, the second sundering returned Lantan to Toril; not so in UG. Lantan remains on Abeir.
+- In WotC, Chondath and the Chondalwood were flooded by the late 15th century DR; not so in UG.

acl.cool/site/writings/umbral5.dj

@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ As she sends the party away, Laeral offers the censer that confines the air elem
 
 {% You should have known _Tasha_ was up to something, Laeral. Come on now. %}
 
-As the party returns to the rooms the city has provisioned for them since the beginning of their quest, Gottlob finds a secluded corner, away from eyes that might wonder at the release of a wind spirit into the middle of Waterdeep. He opens the censer; a semi-corporeal body of gas hisses through the mesh to take the form of a craggy-faced tornado about the height of a man. It hisses some more--- perhaps in thanks--- and a glow suffuses its body like the moment of a lightning strike stretched thin over seconds. A pale blue stone bearing an indeterminable rune materializes, floating at eye level before Gottlob and catching reflections from the strange electric luminance and gas lamps of the inn in its polished surface. The paladin snatches the offering from the air, and at this, Cogyth's messenger flies away into the night, its body flowing freely through half-open windows to mix with the muddy haze of the street below.
+The party returns to the rooms the city has provisioned for them since the beginning of their quest, affording Gottlob the opportunity to find a secluded corner away from eyes that might wonder at a wind spirit's release. He opens the censer; a semi-corporeal body of gas hisses through the mesh to take the form of a craggy-faced tornado about the height of a man. It hisses some more--- perhaps in thanks--- and a glow suffuses its body like the moment of a lightning strike stretched thin over seconds. A pale blue [stone bearing an indeterminable rune](/assets/vind.png) materializes, floating at eye level before Gottlob and catching reflections from the strange electric luminance and gas lamps of the inn in its polished surface. The paladin snatches the offering from the air, and at this, Cogyth's messenger flies away into the night, its body flowing freely through half-open windows to mix with the muddy haze of the street below.
 
 The next morning, encroaching light and the sounds of the city stirring him awake, Almuth gets out of bed to find a note lying in front of his door where a messenger pushed it in the night. Scooping the folded scrap of paper from the floorboards, he reads a message in Tasha's handwriting: the witch admonishes Almuth that through him, Laeral learned her plans for the party to peacefully subdue the beholders--- Laeral must have complained to Tasha about the evening's interaction--- but she doesn't seem truly upset; it was inevitable that the Lady Mage would discover their collaboration eventually. Post-script is captioned a passage written in the common alphabet, with undecipherable spellings.
 
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ Almuth is skeptical, as he often is, and the cleric refrains from following the
 
 Having located an abandoned alley, far enough from streets that a small explosion would pose pedestrians no mortal danger, Almuth holds the note up to the sun and chants aloud. A pendant no lager than a coin drops from a pin-point portal that forms above the note as he finishes speaking, and he catches it as it falls toward the dirt. The Cleric recognizes this artifact; it is an item his order has sought for a long time: an amulet of the planes! So this is what Tasha meant by “a deal is a deal". Overjoyed, he heads back toward the inn where the party made plans to breakfast before striking out this morning out to Mithril hall, from where they aim to collect the long-missing harengon Warren before journeying to the lair of the Deathrun in Silverymoon[^silverymoon].
 
-During breakfast, Gottlob chews pensively at the crusts of his bread and Louisa wonders if her human form is doing alright by itself; Almuth shares his discovery. None of the party are surprised at Tasha's chagrin, but they've done they best they can, and any guilt turns to interest as a the cleric produces his prize. Those with arcane aptitude can tell at once that the artifact is powerful, and gears turn in their heads as to how the item might be put to future use. For now, though, they must focus; an encounter with the Deathrun is close at hand.
+During breakfast, Gottlob chews pensively at the crusts of his bread and Louisa wonders if her human form is doing alright by itself; Almuth shares his discovery. None of the party are surprised at Tasha's chagrin, but they've done they best they can, and any guilt turns to interest as a the cleric produces his prize. Those with arcane aptitude can tell at once that the artifact is powerful, and gears turn in their heads as to how the item might be put to future use. Gottlob, too, shows the elemental's runic stone; Louisa identifies it, to similar--- if less piquant--- effect. For now, though, they must focus; an encounter with the Deathrun is close at hand.
 
 {.thematic}
 ***
@@ -154,7 +154,7 @@ The party is not too bothered by the gruesome display, happy just to have won th
 
 A look of surprise gives way to a smile of relief when Taern notices their presence. The arch mage expresses his thanks alongside those of Silverymoon and of the Library of Sages. Considering the vast knowledge housed here and the eminent reputation of the party's interlocutor, Almuth speaks up with a question: might he be able to lend some insight into the curse that troubles their llama friend? Louisa provides all the details, but the library's information extends only as far as that already gathered elsewhere. Taern mentions something about a vampire, and suggests that Louisa and her human body look together into a mirror; by that, she may uncover the next piece of her life's puzzle.
 
-With thanks and farewells and the usual trivialities exchanged between a party and their hosts, our heroes begin the journey back to base, back to Waterdeep, for once happily unburdened of the need to fabricate Lord Silverhand a story. They did well today, and quickly too; the sun hangs high in the sky as our heroes quit cramped keep for city streets! If the party makes haste, they may even spend the night in familiar beds.
+With thanks and farewells and the usual trivialities exchanged between a party and their hosts, our heroes begin the journey back to base, back to Waterdeep, for once happily unburdened of the need to fabricate Lord Silverhand a story. They did well today, and quickly too; the sun hangs high in the sky as our heroes quit cramped keep for city streets! If the party makes haste, they can spend the night in familiar beds.
 
 [^silverymoon]: [Silverymoon](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Silverymoon) is the largest city of the far north and a haven for the study of all kinds of magic. It was ruled by Laeral's sister and fellow Chosen of Mystra, [Alustriel Silverhand](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Alustriel_Silverhand), and now by her son.