Recap

This week at Alakazam Comics in Irvine, CA, the Game Show continues to battle in search of shards to prevent a mind flayer ritual that will bring back more mind flayers. We encounter grells eating sweet goo. Enoki dies after negotiating with a fanatic and then we battle a monster mind flayer.

Characters

Cody – Zachtos the Wizard/Cleric
David – Skip the Weak – Tiefling Samurai
Dylan – Ramen the Wizard
Glenn – Tiefling Warlock
Henry – Elf scum
Lance – Schwarm Elf Wizard of some sort
Taylor – Mushroom Fighter riding an Owl Bear

Not there

Louis – Bugbear Assassin
Mike – Half-Orc Stork Paladin

Other table

Brian – Calypso – Fairy Druid/Barbarian

RIP

Brian – Artemons Linktorious Lantimourous
David – Enoki – Dwarf Cleric who studies mushrooms
David – Garner – Gnome Bard/Warlock (lexicographer and logographer)
David – Halfling Bard
David – Skip the Weak (Samurai)

Rifts in Reality

While hunting obelisk fragments in the previous chapter, the characters learned of the fanatics’ headquarters: a mind flayer enclave called Illithinoch deep in the Underdark below Phandalin. In this chapter, the characters learn more about the fanatics and rescue the kidnap victims from Phandalin. However, doing so—as well as stopping the ritual that threatens to turn Phandalin’s townspeople into mind flayers—will be far more harrowing than the characters realize.

Shadow over Phandalin

The mind flayer fanatics haven’t begun their ritual in earnest, but ripples of Far Realm energy have infected some residents of Phandalin. Those who spent significant time around the obelisk shards absorbed some latent Netherese magic and are suffering strange maladies. Three of these people—Sister Garaele, Ander, and Halia Thornton—have become angry, violent, and very much not themselves. A fourth, the tiefling Wheel-of-Fortune, is on the verge of a similar transformation.