Party stumbles on cult campsite. There are dozens of dead cultists and no sign of an enemy. Dusan mutters about figments killed them and not to let them touch you. The party looks around a bit but then notices things on the lake growing bigger each time the party looks yet they never seem to move. Dusan flees and the party runs after him. The things that move without moving are too fast to outrun though. On second they are no where near the next they are all around. A man with no features, a Eyeball, a book with moving images, A pink blob of flesh, and a unseen presence fall upon the group leaving burning marks wherever they touch. The marks drain health and strengthen the images.
The party quickly learn the things are concepts and can be shaped. Seldion turns the pink thing into a pink bunny rabbit by squinting and thinking very hard. Arcas and Qimae use thulish discipline to lash the things with mental attacks. Ariel however pulls out a holy spell and blasts all the creatures with a brilliant light that makes them fall into themselves and disappear.
One creature is much larger than the others and is unaffected by the blast. It lashes out at Karsa striking him and Qimae several times draining a lot of con. Finally Karsa smacks the Huge creature hard enough to rupture it and a shapeless thing is left behind that the party quickly extinguish.
After the fight it is found that the marks fade with magical healing but not all the marks can be removed and someof the damage is permanent. This wigs Karsa out and he runs off screaming. After several minutes screaming and running he passes Dusan who nods at him as a kindred spirit. Before too much longer he calms down and the group reforms far away from the lake. The lake is seen to bulge and extrude something truely massive that Seldion and Dusan watch intently despite the distance. No one else sees the unfettered cthulonic titan emerge and examine the sight of their battle.
The party learn to deal with the thinning nature of reality and after camping for the night the group walk up waterfalls, flit through the air and even lose themselves in noise and color but eventually they gather at an empty campsite by the Gate. Some altered by the experience to be have wings or mass beyond what they normally have.
Reality is thicker near the gate. People resume their normal forms. The gate is in a wall that shimmers with waves of agony. The pain coming off is palpable.
Portal in wall shimmers with a field of energy as if the air was dusty
Karsa looks at the gateway and states that the stone inside is younger than stone on the outside. Not only that but the time on inside progresses at a fraction of rate outside
Seeing that time is different inside form outside Seldion wants to study teh ritual to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The fact that time flows differently inside tips him off that time is not a constant it is influenced by life. Ariel adds that the ritual was designed by two individuals that did not trust one another so it has a number of false leads or traps. Party realize that Noriel had worked with Tar Baphon but Tar Baphon's lichhood sabotaged the ritual because in being dead he could not manipulate reality the same way as a living being and that the ritual scroll is riddled with Nory's essence so using it will include him in the ritual which is probably why Tar Baphon tried to cut him out. But the scroll is one of the only was to provide the necessarily Miracle. But the party might be able to cut him out by using Besmira or another being of power as his replacement.
Noriel claps slowly from nearby. He says they got almost everything right but that they will still probably fail. The party make a deal. He help them do the ritual properly and he gets included but only singularly and the party does the actual ritual he just gets to advise them on where teh ritual needs to be corrected and they do it to his specifications. He agrees saying his Calling is Fix. He would do anything including fall to ensure that reality is fixed Nothing else matters. But at the same time he has one thing left he must do first.
Through magic and cunning the group bypass the geas on Nory to discover that Iramine used a scroll of Greater Planar Binding to compel his assistance beyond the portal. He is bound to defend the bridges separating the first and second sections of the city. He carefully thinks of each of the defenses he knows in the city so the party can get there but warns them that he is compelled to use his powers to destroy anything attempting to cross. The party come up with plans to deal with this and promise that they will see him inside and in return he offers to help them with the gold dragon at the center. The defenses mostly ignored Iramine as she has teh key to the realm but the group will have to go through the hard way.
Party gets 7th level.