Editing The Third Eye (section)

====Dirge of the Dark Angel====
Within the Shadowfell, Hargrave was dreary, dilapidated, and almost entirely uninhabited. As soon as they arrived, they could hear the mournful tones of the son of lament, to which Ililen and Leon quickly succumbed. As they walked, they could indeed see the massive black ziggurat dominating the center of the city where the palace was in the Material Plane. They could also see  the stream of shadows flowing from the dungeon to the ziggurat, and that a thin stream was now issuing forth from the monk and the druid to join it. Samsadur led them first to Zurafkina's house, where they left the chests they brought along. Zurafkina introduced them to a large man with a glaive named Orellir, who claimed to have escaped the Dungeon of Tears and wished to help them in exchange for passage back to the Material Plane from whence he had been kidnapped. Samsadur studied him for a long time, but accepted his proposal. Orellir warned them that the warden was a night hag known as the Gloom Widow.

After a quick discussion, they decided their first priority must be rescuing the prisoners. On their way there, Leon spotted a drow tailing them across the rooftops. He sent his owl familiar to investigate, and saw that the drow had six extra eyes in his forehead and a few slender tentacles coming from the back of his head. As soon as the drow saw the owl, however, he vanished in a burst of shadow; despite watching for him, they did not see him again by the time they reached the prison. Ilara knocked on the door, and though there was no answer Sylas did spot a raven flying from one of the sentry towers into the prison yard beyond. They walked around to the side and were attacked by a lone shadow giant, after which Leon decided to simply stone shape an entrance into the wall, which led them into the back of a cell. The prisoner within was utterly indifferent to the rescue, and seemed disinclined to leave his cell until Ilara physically picked him up and placed him outside, where he simply shrugged and sat down. Ilara then smashed the wooden door off its hinges, and looked very pleased with herself until she realized there was a hell hound on the other side that spewed fire into the cell. After she and Orellir killed it, they stepped out into the western prison yard. It was surrounded by cells on three sides, and iron doors into the interior building on the fourth. There was also a teleportation circle on the ground.

Hearing whistling from one cell, they found its inhabitant cheerily whistling to himself, and smashed down the door. The man inside introduced himself as Jasper Platinumhand, the "Baron of the Multiverse." He'd also been snatched from Hargrave, but had thus far managed to resist the song of despair, something he attributed to his cheery personality. He also suggested said personality is why the Gloom Widow intended to have him executed the next day, so he was quite glad for the rescue. They offered to let him join them, and he accepted... But noted he would stay in the yard until they were ready to leave, being useless in a fight.

Ilara smashed through one of the sliding iron doors into the main building, finding a small guardroom with another door, arrow slits in the wall, and four levers. Sylas went in and pulled one, and he heard the sound of metal sliding against stone just before he got shot with a crossbow bolt. On his way back out he pulled another lever, which resulted in the same sound. Ilara started bashing through the next door, but Isabell cast mage hand on the third lever and it slid open to reveal an anteroom with a night hag standing in it; she promptly blasted Ilara with magic missiles, but was counterspelled by Isabelle. A fight ensued that quickly turned into Ilara getting enlarged and blocking the door, while getting pummeled by two invisible stalkers, with the night hag casting spells from behind them. So Leon polymorphed Sylas into a giant ape, who picked up a big rock and threw it at the night hag; badly injured, she cursed them to be devoured by sorrow and haunting dreams of loves lost before plane shifting away as Ilara killed the stalkers. Sylas the ape went out and smashed open every cell door in the eastern and western yards, gathering a crew of about fifty depressed prisoners who had to be physically led out of their cells because they couldn't muster the motivation to leave by themselves. They looked through the prison interior but found nothing of interest beyond the prisoners' belongings.

Leon suggested taking the prisoners along to the ziggurat, but Samsadur vetoed that on the grounds that taking them to where the shadow stuff being drawn from them was going was a terrible idea. Instead, he suggested guiding them to the one place in the city where the song couldn't reach them: the Eyrie of the Fabled. As they walked through the Shadowfell with their prisoners, they talked about what had happened. When one of them mentioned the night hag warden, one of the prisoners suddenly perked up, recalling his own experience with a hag, years and years ago, when a hag named Angheu killed his parents. This caused Ililen to perk up and demand more information, and though he refused to elaborate on why he was very intrigued at what the prisoner told him. Their discussion was cut short when a gargantuan shadow spider attacked them from the rooftops, spraying a shadow web into the street that sapped everyone's strength. After they killed it, they made their way to the Eyrie of the Fabled, which looked just as dilapidated and run down as the rest of the city. Ilara walked through the lobby and opened a door to the theater itself, which was shockingly pristine, and filled with patrons watching a show on stage featuring a prince defending a princess from a half-dragon aboard a ship. Ilara, who had never seen theater before and assumed that the prince was really trying to defend a real princess from a real half-dragon, charged towards the stage, only to be stopped by a shadow emerging from the crowd.

The rest of the party followed, but Ililen and Avra became entranced by the play found a pair of open seats from which to watch it. Even after the shadows were dealt with, they refused to leave their seats, despite the rest of the group recognizing that the play was dismally bad. Meanwhile Ilara leapt on stage and swung her sword at the half-dragon, who nimbly dodged every swing while continuing his dialogue as if he weren't being attacked. This continued until the scene shimmered and changed to one of the prince professing his love to the princess from a jail cell. Sylas and Orellis recognized that these seemed to be ghostly spirits doomed to re-enact their play forever, and suspected that performing it themselves for the spirits might break the spell. Unfortunately, none of them were familiar with the play. So they went off in search of the script and found themselves in a storage room filled with precariously stacked boxes with random corridors twisting through them. Ilara and Sylas headed in, but instead of a script they found an angry minotaur. They attacked it, only to dislodge some of the stacked items and find themselves buried under boxes, but Sylas cast a spell of suggestion on the minotaur and told it to help them find the script, and it abandoned the fight to start poking around in the storage room.

After about ten minutes they had found a number of props, but no script, so they moved on. They first found a costume room, though without any information about what costumes were needed they made a note of it and kept going through a line of dressing rooms. Most were empty, but one contained the ghostly actress playing the princess singing a mournful tune. Still not seeing a script, they pressed on until they found the green room, where the actor playing the prince was silently acting out his part. Sylas stepped inside to ask him, or at least go past him, and discovered there was a silence spell over the entire room. The ghost did not take kindly to being disturbed, and attacked them.  Past the green room was the director's office, where they at last found a script. It was in poor condition, and mostly illegible, but they were able to find a synopsis, a cast list, and one intact scene: the finale, in which the prince and princess console each other as their ship sinks, and the princess sings a song about doomed love.

They went back to the lobby and ushered all the prisoners into the soundproofed theater, though Samsadur refused to risk losing his mind to the play and remained in the lobby. One by one, each of them became entranced by the play and compelled to take seats. Curiously, despite it being a full house, there were somehow just enough empty seats for them all. Jasper Platinumhand, however, they asked to be one of their performers, and play the part of the princess, a role he gleefully accepted. And to play the role of the prince opposite him, they decided Ilara would be the best candidate, and Sylas could telepathically feed her the lines directly from the script. While the bard went off to learn his song from the singing ghost, Isabelle and Leon went off to gather the relevant props from the store room, and Ilara, finding that the ghost of the prince's actor had reappeared, watched him to learn the proper gestures for the scene. That left Sylas to go retrieve the costumes, but when he stepped into the room an enormous shadow elemental emerged from the pile of discarded clothes. He screamed, bringing Ilara into the room. She promptly got her strength drained by the creature, so Sylas tried casting blight but discovered it was immune. Fortunately, the rest of their companions arrived in time to destroy it before it could further drain Ilara's strength.

With the script, the costumes, the song, the stage directions, and the props, they were ready to put on a play. With the ghost of the director watching from the wings, and occasionally screaming at Ilara to act better, they managed to put on a passable rendition of the finale act of The Tragedy of Princess Garilasia. With the scene completed, the ghosts faded away, and with them the illusion covering the theater, revealing the auditorium to be as decrepit as the rest of the building, and the audience having been just as much a part of the illusion. With the spell broken, everyone crowded into the theater and settled in to wait for the effects of the dirge to wear off. Samsadur warned them to lock the doors and post a watch, as it would be a long night. Indeed, only four hours later they heard the sound of the exterior doors in the lobby and the storage room being smashed open.

The Third Eye rushed to the front, since there was still a minotaur in the storage room and Sylas's spell on it had ended, where they found a pair of shadow giants coming in through the door. Orellir waited by the stage door into the storage room, and listened to a third giant get into a fight with the minotaur. Leon summoned a swarm of giant spiders, but Ilara, still fatigued from the shadow elemental, was quickly knocked unconscious. Sylas threw a bead at one of them, trapping it in a bubble of force while they dispatched the other one, got Ilara back on her feet, and rushed to the storage room at back of the theater in time to see the third giant crash through the boxes, having slain the minotaur. Wounded from the fight, however, it quickly fell before them and they returned to the lobby to finish off their remaining foe.

A full twenty-four hours later, everyone had finally recovered from the deleterious effects of the sorrowful song outside. And, without their to power it, the dome of shadow went away. Samsadur, naturally, reminded them of their deal: they had agreed, once the dome was down, to escort him and his chests to an associate of his outside the city. Though some of them wished to deal with the problem more directly at the Shadow Ziggurat, Sasmsadur insisted that per their agreement, his business must come first. Leaving the people in the theater, with Jasper Platinumhand to keep up their spirits, they told them they'd find a way to get them all back home and departed.