Genesis V: The Delivery

Norr took them through the Grey Demesne as promised, and demanded of Tan-Sul three things: a fragment of its body, all of the information it is sharing with the party, and a freshly-made body of a dark elf, to serve in his attempts to bring back Trath. Norr was given all that he asked for, and Tan-Sul then gave the "true" quest he promised to Nel. Because Nel was Qashra, Tan-Sul could share his body by interweaving itself with the crystals that made up Nel. It merely wanted Nel to deliver it to the monastery at Jana's Peak, to which Nel agreed.

They headed north, and commissioned a strange dwarven mountain guide named Boris to get them through to Jana's Peak without having to first go through Torm. Boris had dug a tremendous pit beneath his shack, and urged Nel to enter after splashing some strange tea in his face. Nel reluctantly went down, and Boris went after him. He had dug into a passageway of the old dwarven ruins of Brovu, built by the same dwarves that built the Halls of Desolation. Boris was seeking an ancient treasure said to be down there.

The rest of the party waffled on whether to follow, but eventually did, and was forced to drink the tea in order to avoid getting killed by the primary guardian: a creature with hundreds of mouths at the entrance. They proceeded further in, discovering a room with hundreds of territorial constructs animated with some dark magic that end edup killing Nel. Nel made a deal with a psychopomp to return, but it changed his form, making him human and causing his body to quickly start rejecting Tan-Sul.

While dealing with this, he managed to escape the forge, and with the party fought off various other horrors in Brovu, including a nightskitter (a type of nightshade, creatures made of pure darkness) and dwarven shapes also made of pure darkness. It became clear that this place was some sort of manifest zone for darkness magic.

In Brovu's library, Tahl discovered a nearly-complete copy of the Renascentia Arcanum just as one of the Collectors, Albern, entered and tries to take it. Albern explained that he, too, was a Lantern who received a blessing not long after the death of Cerielle. He claimed that there are many of their kind, and that they have gathered in Radia. He came to Northmarch for the same reason Tahl did, and was forced to join the Collectors, who had information on what he wanted. He wished to bring the book back to them, and offered to help the party escape from Brovu.

Tahl told Albern that he would consider the offer, and joined up with the others as they attempted to use Zulg to force their way downwards in the central chamber of Brovu in order to gain access to the vault. They were forced to fend off the nightshade dwarves and narrowly made their way down, finding bolts of lustrous cloth, ancient dwarven coins, and a bag on a pedestal. Nel attempted to turn this bag inside out, unfortunately revealing its nature: it was a bag that destroys all matter put inside of it. Folding it inside out caused a sphere of annihilation to form in the center of the room. Boris decided that he wished to have this bag for himself, and the party left him to try, also leaving him his share of the treasure. Albern opened a small portal to the Brilliant Sanctum in order to get them out.

Unlike travelling through the Grey Demesne, the journey actually took considerably longer in the plane of light than it would in the real world, but they ultimately made it out to the monastery of Jana's Peak.