The Magnificent Four entered the small Illithid settlement, now grown to a sprawling city of diverse races co-existing in a blissful life of plenty– /all who miss communion will be devoured/– thanks to the Big Bad, the God-King of Perfection and Beauty.
Half of the party accepted the Talbert family’s invitation to a beef roast dinner at their modest-but-comfortable home. But the house was actually a hovel. The fireplace was an old wash tub, and the meal was certainly not beef or corn, despite the happy insistence of the Talbert family.
The other half of the party followed a teen-aged boy, finding a nest of the Underbed Crew, children who hid under their beds instead of going to communion and woke to see the reality of the city: the slaves, the scarcity, the aberrations hunting the streets after curfew. Their parents no longer remembered them.
Incensed but afraid, the Magnificent Four, now grown to eight, moved through the city to the off-limits area, to the edge of the lake.
And in the center of the lake, the black pyramid waited, pumping out raw magic, making the sorcerer’s bones scream. The tear between the plains at the top loomed impossibly huge.
And the Big Bad, the self-proclaimed God-King, is waiting inside for them.
The Tome of Adventures 