POKÉMON MYSTERY DUNGEON: GATES INTO SHADOW

Chapter Seven: Ghosts of Burnwillow
raw campaign notes edition

ambur and hazy scout out carson's wagon. it's burnt to shit and missing most of his tools, along with his wishing stone. ambur goes to bed, hazy goes to the café. it's closed. racist pokémon are gathered outside angry about ghost types. hazy eats at the inn instead then also goes to bed. ambur wakes up in the middle of the night to some armored figure searching around their house. they tell it to fuck off and it runs away eastward.

the next morning ambur and hazy meet up outside the café. ambur confronts a racist bellsprout. asks if he doesn't feel embarrassed calling all ghost types bad when there's a grass type crook in town right now. asks whether he'd throw ambur under the bus if a gang of poochyena rolled through. he says yes. ambur calls him a cunt hard enough to knock him across the street. he says he'll file a complaint to the guild. hazy's the current most senior guild member so he takes the complaint and ignores it.

they go into town. breloom and truffle are helping repair the guildhouse. ambur grabs some snacks from the inn. mike n ike are closed for repairs.

they head into old oak. the rock the ghosts threw at them is still there. the path's about the same, crumbling stone lanterns with wiggly flames inside. they're obviously litwick. hazy intimidates one of them. ambur just carries on down the path determined to storm into burnwillow all cool looking. the weird red dog escorts them in and makes ambur feel a lot less cool. can't storm in if you've just been invited all friendly like.

they reach the mansion. it's shifted around a little. the mural seems bigger and the red dragon's eye blinks. carson and strawberry are having tea and seem content to stay. wisp is oblivious to any ghostly attack on pannacotta. bonsly acts suspicious. they intimidate wisp for a bit, then hazy gets pissed and fires ghostly beam at the painting. it screeches and the mansion unfolds. it's a dynamaxed runerigus. wisp is very confused.

bonsly and ninjask are actually phantump and shedinja. they try to distract hazy while he dynamaxes and starts fighting ormendahl. ambur gets wisp to carry carson out of falling rock danger while they haul strawberry out. hue the larvesta-litwick tries to lead the townsfolk away out of danger but ambur stands in his way. the ghost sword flies at them but they bite it out of the air and bury it in the ground. hazy keeps slashing through whatever shield ormendahl puts up. ambur insists the townsfolk stay right there but hue tries to confusion-gaslight them. they darkpulse him pointblank and he collapses against the buried sword. strawberry snaps out of her confusion and a few illusions around town start to falter.

runerigus traps hazy in a shield-bubble with benji and bow. he knocks benji out immediately while flame charging his way out. ormendahl tries to charge at ambur but they dynamax and hit it with darkpulse after darkpulse, breaking through whatever shields it pops up. it tries to call a swarm of litwick at them but hazy freezes them with a foe-hold orb. combined, they both hit it hard enough to explode and send chunks of rock flying across the village. hazy picks up one of the rocks and eats a bit of its soul while ambur goes looking for whatever chunk had the wishing stone. the sword unburies itself and tries to fly at hazy but ambur intercepts it and buries it again. bow runs off in search of the head rock. a swarm of litwick and seedot encroach from outside town as ambur carves the wishing stone out of the rock with their basic bronze explorer team badge. hazy works on melting the sword down with a flamethrower. bow succeeds in whatever they were doing and the rocks start to move again.

the sword wriggles out of hazy's grasp and flees down a path away from town, deeper into the forest. litwick swarm's candlelights start pointing toward where bow had gone. ambur and hazy start running toward it but hazy stops when he feels like his soul's being ripped out. ambur witnesses the runerigus' headstone absorb the flames from all the 90-something litwick, cracks in the rock glowing pink and green. bow is gone, already among the spiritomb's collected souls. dark pulse does nothing. ambur runs back toward town and warns them of what's happening, explaining what hazy felt. they brainstorm solutions but can't find anything. no escape orbs. hazy pulls out the RKS sword and ambur starts examining it. it's got sigils somewhat like entercards that can apparently be rearranged. considering deneb was trying to use it to escape, it's probably coded to warp to star league hq. not much of an escape route. but maybe they can send it back with a little present attached. with wisp's help they douse out a leyline intersection, scooping up a few litwick (including hew) to use as bait. hazy makes sure to take rin along for the ride. they reach the leyline and ambur writes a little note with their cartography kit. "you dropped your sword. with love, the midnight crew"

ambur passes the sword to hazy cause he's got thumbs. he somehow activates it and stabs the spiritomb, with ambur tossing hew into the middle of the leylines as a final piece of bait. it works. ormendahl is now the star league's problem.

they take a moment to rest before ambur tries to find another exit to the dungeon, closer than the one way back at the start. they find one but hazy says it feels weird. they step through the threshold into burnwillow. the real burnwillow. like fifty years after hazy left. meaning it's 950 years in the past. we've fucking time travelled. that's not how it's supposed to work.

there's a little memorial shrine to wisp the hisuian zorua outside town. wisp the "suicune" feels awkward about it. we head into town and meet lady burnwillow who welcomes hazy back. hazy doesn't want to stay. she insists on holding a celebration for his return. a bunch of other talk that ambur doesn't care about. isn't it fun that the recap is from the perspective of the least interesting character? they're offered a room to stay and they go to bed.

wake up in burnwillow, conversation with hazy about whether he wants to stay. he obviously doesn't. wisp is pacing outside, hazy tells her to drop the suicune disguise. she says one of lady burnwillow's friends from the war will be coming to the feast. checking in on carson and strawberry, carson thinks he might stay and strawb's just very confused but trying to take it like a vacation. they head into town for shopping, ambur buys a revival herb and a couple escape orbs, carson tries and fails to barter for some fancy silk. hazy trades some future fruits for weird extinct past berries. the old coins have a falling star design on them that reminds ambur of the star league emblem. they're minted east, past dragonsgrave, where polaris lives, and also the future location of star league hq. someone else remarks that hazy reminds them of a family that used to live here before they all moved out with polaris. also the mountains to the east look bigger in this time period.

polaris shows up for the feast. it's a deoxys.

the gang goes back to the mansion and relaxes for a while before the festivities start.

lady burnwillow gives a speech before the feast about how great it is that wisp and hazy and carson and rin are home. polaris and burnwillow are side by side at the head of the table with ambur and hazy on polaris' side and carson wisp and strawberry on burnwillow's side. burnwillow tries unsuccessfully to reconnect with wisp who is basically her adoptive kid. polaris recognises hazy and has some of his "hisuian" cyndaquil compatriots hand over a family heirloom. it's a sword. he also recognises ambur as an umbreon when no one else here knew what those were. ambur asks him if he knew any other umbreon and he says yes, from before he arrived on this world and turned the tide of the war against the ghost lord skithrix. some explorers, some researchers. ambur says that they're both, and that they're researching mystery dungeons still a thousand years in the future. polaris says that he and his organisation will have to redouble their efforts in mystery dungeon reserach in that case. he asks them what the future is like and they say it's pretty good. less swords around says hazy, besides some fanatics who get kinda weird about them. this gives polaris the idea to limit swords to a select exclusive guard class. oops we might have just invented the star knights. also apparently something in the mountains also came from space?? the feast wraps up. ambur has the chance to ask polaris for any favour he can provide. they don't know what to ask for.

ambur wakes mid sleep and overhears carson and wisp in the adjacent room talking about whether they're staying in burnwillow. carson's keen to leave, wisp is unsure. wisp leaves, and ambur decides they also need a little fresh air, not used to sleeping during the night. wisp sits undisguised until she notices ambur. they talk for a bit about whether to leave or stay. ambur says she's welcome in pannacotta. she's worried about choosing wrong. ambur says everyone chooses wrong sometimes, statistically. they are book-smart not people-smart. re-entering the mansion, lady burnwillow is observing ambur. they lock eyes, she gestures them toward a small study room. she tells them to keep wisp safe, they say sure thing. she gives them a flame scale.

it's morning, they're having breakfast in the main hall. polaris needs to leave early. they give a few enchanted items to the party. ambur gets a cool cloak. hazy gets a power band, carson a luck vest, strawberry a recovery scarf. polaris also gives ambur a badge that looks like an old timey version of the star league ID badge. he leaves through the other path out of burnwillow, through the dragonsgrave mountains. lady accompanies the crew to the dungeon entrance, which seems to have shifted a little? wisp is coming with them. lady says wisp will know how to reach her in the future. they say their goodbyes and all step through.

whatever they did with ormendahl has kinda broken the seal on the dungeon's shape. the path is different, and chunks of town are randomly appearing well before they reach the real fake burnwillow. they stop to serch for carson's stolen goods but don't find any. they eventually navigate to the stairs back to the first floor. it's again very reorganised, no pattern to the empty lamps strewn about. they reach a fork in the road, ambur mapping things out, finding that the shorter path is crawling with seedot and nuzleaf and maybe some fire types, while the longer path still also leads to that big tree clearing they ran through the first time around.

they decide to go through the clearing. better the known danger than the unknown danger. the seedot seem intimidated by wisp's vulpix disguise. a nuzleaf hops down in front of ambur, they stare it down, and ask polite yet firm to simply pass through without disturbance. they succeed, and manage to reach the exit. ambur voices worry about whether they'll even get back to the present, strawberry tells them not to Manifest bad things, ambur says Manifesting is stupid and Manifests what if the inn burned down, strawberry bonks them on the head. they step back through like a week after they left. they walk and talk all the way back to town. strawberry goes to the inn while they head up to the guild tower to meet with cinni (who is finally out of bed) and rigatoni and meringue. they update guildmaster on a few things then talk more out of earshot so he doesn't need to worry about Learning too much and being a liability. turns out cinni didn't actually offer the wishing stone to breloom as payment for his help, breloom either just assumed as such or they made it sound like that was the discussion because they're generally sleazy. cinni also talks shit about wisp because she tried to hypno them to stay in the dungeon while she was under ormendahl's control. wisp and carson stay at the inn.

hazy's gonna go check on the café first thing next session. ambur's just gonna go to bed.