This session finds our team back in Cauldron buying scrolls and weaponry for a battle they are sure is about to ensue. As a reminder, they found the dungeon they are currently hunting a beholder in below the house of Velantru in their quest to find the cagewrights. This is because for the past several years, the Cagewrights have labored in secret to build thirteen soulcages to drain the life energy from the Shackleborn. These soulcages hang from an artifact called the Tree of Shackled Souls - the device that gathers the life energy needed to unlock the prison doors of Carceri so they can create a portal to Othrys.

Outside of the room that the adventurers believe holds a beholder, Loskid casts an anti-magic field, at which point the painting of Celeste turns into Celeste, a half-naked lady who says she was investigating Velantru when she discovered Velantru is in fact a beholder. Loskid and Hilde explain they haven't broken the curse that has trapped her in the painting, and warn her that once the adventurers commence the battle she will likely return to the painting. The team starts to realize that in an anti-magic field they will not be able to heal since potions won't work. This is going to go well…

Hilde summons in 3 Bone Devils (Bill, Larry, and Augustus) and her prepped “disintegration” spell goes off, disintegrating the stone beside the door. In the room beyond, Hilde sees a “deflated human body”, a beholder, and 3 people chained to the floor (who die immediately). Loskid rushes to Hilde's side, and his anti-magic field immediately blinks one of Hilde's bone devils (Larry) out of existence. Bill moves into the beholder's anti-magic field and blinks out of existence. Then Augustus (not to be outdone) moves into Loskid's anti-magic field and blinks out of existence. The beholder casts a couple of spells on one of the bone devils as they blink back into existence and kills them immediately. Then it casts a gas cloud, floats up, and casts an anti-magic cone (again). Elanor gets paralyzed, and somehow, ranged attacks (and Hilde's skill with magic and dimensional door) win the day and the beholder (Velantru) dies. Hilde notices that one of the eye stalks is missing from the beholder, specifically the eye stalk for “inflict moderate wounds”. Melgarin notes that, while glad it's dead, the team is not necessarily closer to finding the Tree of Shackled Souls. Hilde theorizes that the room with the clothes was Lady Rhiavaldi's and so he has her clothes and spellbook since the team had seen her with an eye stalk grafted to her head (not creepy at all). Hilde thinks it is possible that the deal was one eye stalk for the skin suit of Velantru. Loskid recommends taking the skin suit and turning it into the authorities, in an attempt to convince the city of Cauldron that the taxes were enacted by a beholder and they can be rescinded.

Celeste tells the team that Velantru clearly didn't know where the Tree of Shackled Souls was because she saw Velantru asking Rhiavaldi where it was. The team then proceeds to go through the papers that the beholder left behind. Apparently Velantru has been mapping the caves beneath Cauldron, and looking for the “Fiery Sanctum”. Hilde is able to decipher the map, finding a couple of locations the adventurers have been to previously, and noticing that the caves Velantru had mapped extended much further beneath the surface.

The team explores a little more, finding a red leather book one of the remaining rooms to be explored. Apparently it was “zar'ilkpth tartaros” a guide to Demodands (specifically how to merge your soul with one).

Shackled City Home
Last time: Session 66
Next time: Session 68