After having killed what seemed to be Ectobius Rex. The The Trollskull Crushers together with Xoblob and Eszvele Rosznar are engulfed by shadowy spectres that come flowing down the chimney.
For a moment they are completely blinded by this assault, but moments later their vision returns with no visible harm being done to anyone.
Bewildered, they start looking around the room and quickly notice that all of the colour around them has been drained to a shade of black & white.
Skálmöld takes a look out of the window. Where she expected to see a small back alley in Waterdeep, she instead sees a dark barren wasteland. Xoblob explains to everyone that he believes we somehow teleported to The Shadowfell. After freaking out for a bit, he pops out his fake eye and casts a spell on it that enables him to see the colour purple again.
In the far distance, multiple Towers of White can be seen by the party. Glowing beams of what seems like magic connecting them all through the skies, ultimately leading towards one giant castle on the horizon.
Skálmöld also notices a eerie black crow sitting in a tree not too far from the window. She feels as if the crow is staring her dead in the eyes. When she brings up this raven, it seems like none of her companions are able to see this creature sitting in the tree.
Cracuta tries to reach out of the window, but is stopped by some strange invisible wall of force. They head over to the front door to see if they can exit the house, but it seems like the invisible barrier is surrounding the whole building they are in.
While exploring the house, the find a strange room containing some highly advanced contraptions. Not even Quertex knows exactly what they are used for, but he guesses they serve as some sort of container for something.. or someone.
During their exploration they find multiple pages from Ectobius Rex's Notes from which they try to gather what happened in this place.
In the basement they find a clone of Xoblob lying on an operation table. The clone has a deep wound in his abdomen and seems to be dead. The party assumes this was the culprit behind the Scarab of Death.
While inspecting the body they notice a small tiny create crawling over the body, a Soul Vector. It's trying to sew the body back together, but attacks the party when they get too close. The "dead" Xoblob clone also awakens during the fight but gets his head cut straigt off. Xoblob doesn't seem to bothered by all this, in fact he plays around with his own decapitated head for a bit. The group easily takes care of the rest of the enemies.
Ectobius Rex's Notes explained how he built his own laboratory next the the Ivory tower that was conveniently placed behind the copy of his home in the Shadowfell.
The notes also tell of how he was gifted a specimen he refers to as "Marigold" from "Lord & Lady C.". Skalmold makes the connection with the Cassalanter family.
Ectobius wrote down how he was tasked with creating something using the essence of this "Marigold". He ultimately combined Marigold's blood with the living shadows of the shadowfell and severed body parts acquired by this "Lord & Lady C." to create clones.
The notes end with him having the idea of making clones of himself because the workload has grown too large for just him to handle, as he slowly grows insane after doing this.
Behind the house, the party finds the large Ivory tower from the notes. It's poking out of a small mountain with a large square building built next to it. At the bottom of the mountain they find a small cave.
They decide to investigate and find multiple graves filled with bones. They try to make sense of this but notice that none of these bones seem to fit together. It would be impossible to create a full skeleton from the bones found in these graves.
Inside of the cave they discover a small puddle of skin that still seems to be pulsating. They try to grab it's attention, but it never responds. When they try to get closer, they find themselves standing in front of an invisible barrier yet again.
The make their way up the stairs on the mountain and enter the large building next to the tower. Xoblob casts an invisibility spell around them, they will be harder to detect as long as they stick close to him.
Inside they find multiple laboratory and supply rooms. The floors are covered in blood and crawling with an army of Soul Vectors who thanks to the spell do not notice them.
While exploring the hallway they almost run into an Ectobius Clone. Skalmold almost falls out of the invisibility spell, but they manage to stay hidden.
At the end of the hallway they find a corridor filled with jail cells. Inside of these cells, grotesque half-grown humanoids can be seen chained to the walls. Some of these clones seem to be indistinguishable from the real thing. Others just look like monsters.
Cracuta notices the Shifter prisoner from Amendsfarm inside one of these cells. The fingers being cut off from the prisoners there seem to have been supplied to Ectobius for his experiments.
Further inside of Mountview Institute, they find themselves before a large set of doors leading into the Ivory tower. Inside the tower they find multiple Ectobius clones doing all sorts of experiments.
The party tries to make their way upstairs but it keeps getting harder and harder to stay undetected due to the increase of clones on each floor. There must be over a hundred clones inside of this building.
They almost get caught once, but Skalmold uses some quick thinking to transform into Ectobius as well and leads the clone away from her invisible friends.
Once at the top of the Ivory tower, they see a massive Soul Vector with a lifeless pale woman floating inside of it. Behind it they see Ectobius Rex casting some sort of spell on another pale lifeless body strapped inside of some strange contraption. They figure this must be Marigold.
Ectobius notices the intruders and calls for his clones to come up the tower to defend him. Xoblob and Eszvele decide they will try to hold of the clones for as long as they can.
A fight begins as Ectobius casts a magical barrier around him and Marigold. The large Soul Vector stands up and begins to attack the party.
The party manages to destroy the Vector's legs one by one as it ultimately comes crashing down. As it does, it fills the whole floor with a strange liquid while the pale woman climbs her way out of the wreckage.
This woman is an incomplete Clone of Skálmöld. Created from the finger she lost at Amendsfarm.
The clone grabs some of the shadows floating around her and creates a shadowy cloak & dagger out of them as she cast a cloud of smoke on the party.
The clone continues to change into the different members of The Trollskull Crushers, able to use all of their spells and abilities.
During the fight she manages to push Cracuta off the side of the tower by using Punko's Shape Water spell to freeze the ground and Quertex's Turret and Catapult spell to push Cracuta backwards.
While falling to his death, Cracuta loses control of the beast within, transforms into a monstrous Werewolf-Werehyena hybrid. With this newfound strength and wild magical abilities, he manages to climb his way back up the tower to re-join the fight.
In the end, the party barely manages to destroy Skálmöld's clone. But Ectobius Rex still stand before them behind his barrier. Whatever they do, they cannot get through it.
Xoblob & Eszvele Rosznar come running back up the stairs telling the party they cannot stop the hoard of clones for much longer.
Slobberchops appears out of nowhere on top of Punko's head. They suddenly hear the voice of the Blackstaff Vajra Safahr coming from Slobberchops' mouth. The Blackstaff tells them she detected an abnormal amount of strange magic coming from somehere in Waterdeep. She is currently at the source, Ectobius' house. And explains to the party that she might be able to bring them back to the natural world, but only once they destroy the source of this magic.
During this explanation Skálmöld has been receiving cryptic messages through her Blink Dagger telling her to wield the dagger to shatter his veil.
As she stabs the dagger through the barrier she can feel her whole body passing through it. She stabs Ectobius Rex with no mercy. But sadly, this was also not the real Ectobius, as his body turns into a shadowy mass.
Skálmöld then takes a look at "Marigold" sitting lifelessly in her contraption next to her. Skalmold is shocked by what she sees, as she immediately recognizes Marigold to be her very own mother Syglin whom she thought to be dead.
Skalmold grabs her mother's hand as her eyes slowly open. All of Syglin's memories start to flow inside of Skálmöld's head.
She sees how a young teenager is trying to survive on the streets by stealing food, donning another face in each of the memories. She sees her slowly growing older and more bold in her tactics to gather food. She learns how certain well dressed people seem to receive food for free while walking around the market, and uses her powers to change into these faces to enjoy all of these delicacies as well. One day though, she get's too confident and fails to notice that the person she is impersonating is standing right next to her. The noble freaks out at this sight and stabs Syglin on the spot.
The next vision is of her waking up inside of a large throne room made of black and white stones. At the top of some stairs, sitting inside of a fabulous ornamental throne decorated white skulls and ravens, she sees a woman with pitch black hair, donning a pale white face covered by a thin shadowy veil, wearing a golden crown.
The Raven Queen.
The goddess of death offer Syglin to become her champion, or to return to the sea of souls. Syglin accepts and receives the Raven Medallion and the Blink Dagger.
Scenes of Syglin taking on different mission can be seen as she uses her innate skills to easily infiltrate anywhere and assassinate her target.
During one of these missions she is hunting a Hag and is joined by a man whose sister was killed by this Hag. Together they manage to kill the Hag, but Syglin is heavily wounded and reverts back to her original changeling form. The man does not seem bothered by this and saves her life by treating her wounds.
The man would later join Syglin on all her further missions as they slowly fell in love. This man was Frold, Skálmöld's father and current champion of the Waterdeep Arena.
The years flow by they get married inside of the Raven Queen's castle, both receiving her blessings. They can be seen buying a small farm outside of Waterdeep together.
After giving birth, Syglin passes on the title of Raven Queen's Champion to Frold, as she needs to take care of the baby. She visits the raven queen to beg her to be okay with this.
Skálmöld's memories and her mother's start to flow together as she sees herself growing from a baby into a small child being read bedtime stories to.
Skalmold knew the good memories had to stop somewhere as she once again sees the happenings of The Death of Syglin through her mothers eyes.
Skálmöld wakes up from the visions and gives her mother a long hug. Syglin tells her daughter she is proud of her as she passes away, her soul returning back to the Raven Queen's palace.
After the battle, Cracuta starts losing more and more of his humanity as he is starting to transform into a regular Hyena.
Still not having destroyed the real Ectobius Rex, the party decides that his real body must be the pile of flesh they found below in the cave. Skálmöld makes her way down the side of the tower by using her Blink Dagger. She breaks the barrier inside of the cave with her dagger and ends Ectobius' life once and for all, destroying all of his clones and experiments.
The Trollskull Crushers, Xoblob, and Eszvele Rosznar wake up back inside of Ectobius' home in the material realm.
They are greeted by the Blackstaff but are also surprised to see Zardoz Zord there together with his animal tamer and Cracuta's Hyena parents. Apparently they went wild about an hour ago and managed to escape the circus and make their way here.
The Blackstaff congratulates them for helping her save Waterdeep. She doesn't exactly know what happened yet, but she believes that if this mess was left untended for too long, it might have destroyed the whole city.
The Blackstaff also makes a curious remark about feeling something wrong about the now Three hyenas standing in this room cuddling up together. She asks if anyone is aware that these animals might not be regular animals at all, and that they might be cursed humans. She teleports every over to the Emerald Enclave where the druids there prepare a ritual to get rid of this curse.
Cracuta is turned back to his old self, but the two Hyenas also end up transforming into humanoids. Bewildered after having lived their lives as beasts for more than ten years, they explain how they are actually Cracuta's real parents. As they hug their son, the explain how they were cursed by the rulers of their country after not wanting to sacrifice their daughter, Cracuta's twin sister, to their ancients God.
The druids there end up doing a location spell on their daughter, using their memories of her to find if she is still alive. Which she seems to be. The druids can feel her presence in a very far away land. Most likely the continent they came from.
Together with Cracuta they decide that they need to go find her. Zardoz Zord explains where he found them but also that he is unable to bring them back there himself. He is however able to get them on a boat heading there in a few days.
Tired after a long day of adventure and just hearing they might lose one of their dear companions. The Trollskull Crushers decide they must throw a great farewell party for Cracuta before they leave. The Blackstaff and Zardoz Zord promise to aid them in making this party come together.
The Blackstaff uses her magic to return everyone to their respective homes for some well deserved rest.