caranelguild

[caranelguild]

May 16 - 20, 2IY 1

Our adventurers navigate their tiny fleet over the mountains, hugging the coast of the Sea of Fire. They descend from frigid peaks into a warm belt, balmy volcanic air from the east caught in the mountains' shadow. A little ways further north are the Twin Cities of Swishersea and Swisherland, our party's destination.

They land outside of Swisherland, of course, being terrestrial animals themselves. Not having had the proper adventuring inn experience yet on this voyage, they elect to find a base before they head into town to dredge up information. They choose The Hound & Duck, an establishment off a main square, due to the aroma of roasting meat wafting from its open doorway.

Inside is a cave-like common area centered by a crackling multicoloured fire, which licks the charred flanks of a gargantuan slab of meat.

A doorman collects a buffet fee from everyone and they draw their own blades to harvest their choice of slab from the roast.

It's okay. Not fresh, but the "spice fire" (as described by a server who comes by) has given the tough and stringy stuff some hint of flavour.

More exciting is the display tray of drinks brought out. Zilybar and Morama grab at random, ending up with a stout beer and a colourful slush cocktail respectively. Brindi claims the remainder without intending to ever pay, as Zilybar was unwilling to cover anything more than the buffet fee for the stingy dwarf.

Brindi is delighted by a vapourous offering contained in an ampule, which gives her a vision and a high. Later, she learns these are called Tinklers, and orders a few for her pocket. The second goes up the nostrils well, the third gives her a vision of some sort of hell and closes up her passages, leaving her with a headache. Along with their name, she learns that too many can be harmful - but the lesson is not put into practice.

After enjoying a nice break with beverage and carved beast, our adventurers head up the stairs to secure rooms - from a friendly rat-man named Walman. Walman hands them keys to individual lockboxes, as the rooms themselves have no locks.

Walman reveals that the "underground chess club" that both Roy's contacts are involved in is, in fact, a sprawling fight club network that takes place in the seawater sewers beneath Swisherland.

This intrigues our party, and they head into town to find out more, ultimately learning that the best action happens at night. So they split up to occupy the remainder of the day:

Morama takes Sage to the "day opera," a burlesque-type performance in a venue near the town square.

Zilybar heads to the coast, where Walman had mentioned a caste of risk-taker ne'erdowells known as the Cliffjumpers hang out. He finds them hanging out at the beach, and finds an in to their casual ranks by way of razor-wire jump rope. He chooses to head into the tunnels with a pair of "chess club members" when night falls.

The others rejoin each other at The Hound & Duck, heading off deeper into the city to find a sewer entrance. Luck is on their side and they run into Zilybar and his Cliffjumper pals just outside a walk-in pipe.

The Cliffjumper duo gives our adventurers a low-down of Chess Club. The entire sewer system is fair game: you go in, you should expect to be jumped. Most of the early pipes are called Pawn Pipes, where nothing "organized" or "official" occurs. This is where fighters can gain reputation, making sure to leave their victims alive to spread their notoriety. Then there are the Rook Pipes, where "unarmed" bouts occur with audiences; the Bishop Pipes, where mages duel; the Knight Pipes, where folks battle with weapons; and the Royal Pipes, where only the best chess players are called to fight before large audience betting fortunes.

The Cliffjumpers are heading for the Rook Pipes, where they do tandem battles. Roy and Zilybar follow them, but Brindi and Morama want to take this chance to hone their skills: they wander off into the Pawn Pipes to do battle.

When they arrive at the first of the Rook Pipes, Roy and Zilybar join the audience around a fierce match in its climax, between a sea-form and a gnome . . .

[caranelguild]

May 15 - 16, 2IY 1

To the west of the battlefield, Morama spots the glittering white light of a "crystal fire," a common signal of her order, the Rangers of the Western Star. Without conferring with her comrades aboard the UFO (she is with Rip and Coriander aboard the Legacy) she has her pilot head straight for it.

Rip connects with Brindi through their telepathic link, and the UFO follows. Unfortunately, descending close to the white campfire brings the two flying vessels into the awareness of both warring fronts: the seafolk are noticed carving new stream-trenches in their direction while the landfolk gather and point.

Morama uses her winged boots to land upon earth - but the four individuals around the crystal fire are not whom she had hoped for. Instead of Dimble Nackle, the ranger whom we know from times gone by, or any ranger, in fact, she finds a curious quartet: a young half elf in a chemise, an orangutan in a bow tie and top hat, a well-dressed elven butler, and a weathered dragonborn knight. This latter draws his greatsword at Morama's entrance as he tells the young half elf to "wake Dimble."

Sure enough, that friendly gnome is roused from a humble tent, and Morama quickly embraces him. He had been her first friend after her amnesia, training her in the ways of nature.

Time being short, our adventurers have their companions load the quartet's belongings into the UFO (though the young half elf, introduced as le Petite Baron Neuer le Saint-Exupery de Grand-Mont Rouge, makes everyone wait as he gets properly dressed). But the landfolk militia is the first to arrive, and our crew descends again to speak with them.

The humble soldiers plea for our adventurers to speak to their general, Soei, and they agree to do so.

The general understands that the crew can't stay long, but impels them to help out in one or two immediate ways. Those unnatural clouds need to be investigated - and who better than the crew of a flying fleet? As well, the seafolk are holding three prisoners behind their line, and the land front can't spare the soldiers to save them.

Le Petite Baron volunteers his party and Dimble (part of his party for a few days now) for this latter quest - but it takes some convincing to allow the young man and his curious group to take on this near-suicidal mission. He and his knight explain a decent plan - and besides, of a sudden there is the sound of blasting magic!

An emergency strike force has been sent from the sea front to target the low-floating flying fleet! General Soei rushes away and the quest-parties split up.

Retreating, first, aboard the fleet, our adventurers dump the baron's belongings, and then split up: the UFO heading for the attacking force and the Legacy for the clouds.

The UFO is a big target and takes a battering - on the exposed top deck, Trek, Trevayne, and Zilybar suffering the battering of hail and storm winds. But Brindi gives out worse than the ship takes, flinging fireballs enhanced by the amber throne. After three or four, however, Zilybar calls for a retreat: the UFO perforated by blasts and Trek down for the count.

Meanwhile, the Legacy approaches the clouds and rises above the lower "plate" to approach a glowing anvil's waist of cloud. Here, Roy gives the order to blast with the ship's sunbeam cannon, which seems to have great effect on the cloud's water vapours.

But the attacks provoke a response that leaves the four (Roy, Morama, Rip, and Coriander) aboard literally reeling. A many-fingered hand of deep blue lighting touches the hull and profoundly zaps the crew of the Legacy. Coriander droops, unconscious, while Roy and Rip are blasted prone. Morama saves herself from the same fate only by channeling her innate magics, absorbing half of the energy from the lightning strike against her.

Coriander's unconsciousness is a dire turn: she is the only person able to control the magicks that keep the ship in the air!

The Legacy begins to tumble through the sky.

Roy and Morama race over and heal her - but it takes a desperate plea from Roy for her to recover her senses.

But by then, the ship is inverted! Her pilot's seat, where she connects to the Legacy's systems, is now on the ceiling! With Morama's help (the staggering Rip ignored at present), Roy lifts her up until her ass is pressed to its wood. She recovers control of her vessel! -

Just in time for the lightning to sweep in again! -

But Coriander executes an incredible maneuver! -

It's not enough to avoid every finger of lightning, and that deep charge rushes through the wood of the ship once more.

Roy, unconscious. Rip, down. Coriander ... slumped, on the edge of death, in her seat.

But she had righted the Legacy!

But it is sharply angled toward the ground and traveling at incredible, peregrin-dive speeds!

Morama staggers over to Roy, brings him back, both expel healing magicks over Coriander, whose eyes flicker open and with concentration - but the trajectory remains fatal!

Aboard the retreating UFO, this terrifying scenario is spotted to the north, but there is nothing its crew can do but watch.

"Do you have this under control?" asks Roy, wide-eyed.

Coriander has no words. She only nods.

And her crew trusts her.

At the last moment, she cranks the flight angle and the Legacy skims the grass of no-mans-land, G-forces grabbing hard at everyone aboard. She had used the speed of near-free-fall to escape the reaching cloud!

All of this excitement now figuratively behind them, our adventurers elect to make it literal as well. They report the danger posed by the clouds to General Soei and then head off posthaste to the west, meaning to circle the clouds and continue north. They rest when night falls; a shambling figure at the edge of Roy's vision during his watch is ignored.

What is the fate of the little baron's party? Perhaps we'll never know.

[caranelguild]

May 9 - 15 2IY 1

On their way north, intending to recover the crown of the throne in the north sea, the fleet stops by Ogkikh. Regrettably, Morama's mother has not returned from her mission. The tiefling leaves another message with her father and leaves again. Meanwhile, Brindi has detected minute amounts of poison in her breakfast, served by the uncomfortable domestic Sage.

Sage is not pleased when Brindi confronts her. She has not enjoyed having to take a back seat, but she overextended herself on her long quest to find Morama and can't help out on the front lines, for a while yet anyway. Breakfast isn't perfect? Goddammit, it's not like she's a cook! Brindi reads Sage's mind but finds nothing unexpected.

As the fleet soars north, Zilybar observes Brindi acting stranger than usual and heads to her "workshop" to inquire why. Brindi decides to read Zilybar's mind - maybe the gnome is the poisoner! Sage finds them there, also wanting to keep an eye on the dwarf artificer. Brindi summons a zombie and Zilybar has to suddenly diffuse a truly dangerous situation.

Aboard the Legacy, Morama's stomach suddenly drops without knowing why.

Zilybar is told about the poison, but can't really defend Brindi's mind invasions regardless. Zilybar and Sage search the hold for poison and none is found.

A few days pass, breakfasts tasting the same as always (though Brindi is no longer detecting any poison in hers), and the fleet arrives outside of Yusa, the wide-open homely city halfway to the northern coast, famous for its unique 24-hour public transit system of gigantic, reptilian caterpillars.

Here, our adventurers spread out to collect information.

Brindi heads to a metallurgist's to purchase an ingot of adamantium from which to form a hand to replace the one she lost beneath the southern sea.

Morama heads to the seedy side of the city seeking for a warlock or demonologist, wanting to know everything she can about Sage's situation. She finds a spicy-looking character at a bar, a dark wizard of some stripe, purple energy crackling across his shoulders. The wizard gives Morama a practical lesson in curses, subjecting Morama to a little curse of her own. The important point is belief: a curse is broken when the cursed individual truly believes they've accomplished its purpose.

Roy has gone to connect to his peers of law enforcement and is admitted into the staff room of the local police. They relate that they are focused on unrest in the city, folks mobilizing to protest Yusa's refusal to send troops to the front lines a few dozen miles to the north. A gnome officer mentions that Roy might get more detailed information about that invasion situation in the neutral "Twin Cities" past the front lines. He has a cousin who lives in one of the towns, named Evangelus Spat.

Zilybar has gone to find the popular artists' haunt and hears about the unrest, too. He also becomes privy to a plan to disrupt the transportation system: the revolutionaries have broken into the caterpillar-feed warehouse and will be spreading "walls" of feed in between stops throughout the city.

Roy then joins Morama in the seedy side of Yusa, where he connects with a moist woman named Slim Jane. She claims, under intimidation, that she is a local source for an invasion force spy. Allegedly, the seafolk have sent agents into all the mid-continent cities to find weaknesses. Slim Jane tells Roy that she always meets the agent at the city fountain at noon.

The gang reconvenes and shares information, though Zilybar is wary of listening ears and veils his revelation about the planned disruption in coded language that his companions do not understand.

That night, wanting to learn more about Baphomet the demon lord, Brindi heads off into the city to locate the local chapter of the Horny Ones. She finds them holed up in a Tea Shoppe circled around a bloodred brazier ... helping their youngest member with his maths homework.

Brindi attempts to pose as Baphomet himself, but her high pitched voice has the group convinced it is their seventh member playing a prank. So she drops the act and joins them at the circle, asking for all they know about their "patron." Dannie, the young student, is excited to show off his knowledge, but it is Mr. Munsun the tortle elder who knows the most about Baphomet. "He has respect for druids and rangers who work with beasts, and if an adventurer makes it past the first two gates of his labyrinth (protected by minor demons), there are never further traps or beasts - only the hurdle of the immense labyrinth itself. And if the adventurer makes it to the central chamber, Baphomet is automatically summoned from wherever he is to face them." And when describing the demon's character, "He loves slaughter and blood."

Brindi latches onto this. "So you're saying, if I want his attention, I could just ... kill all of you?"

A tiny tabaxi, hardened by years of combat, doesn't make it easy, but Brindi's blood is up, the Octavo is calling out from her pocket, and Baphomet, perhaps, is present in those dark flames ....

Dark deeds fill the night.

In the morning, the majority of our party is disappointed when their caterpillar downtown suddenly stops for an unplanned meal long before the city fountain. They arrive at the public fixture plenty early anyway, Roy and Zilybar setting up to "watch" a performer in the square who is otherwise playing to empty benches, everyone a few blocks over at the protest. Zilybar gives him a full gold coin when it comes to it, but Roy's copper piece is less appreciated.

Roy is by the fountain as the bell is hammered to mark noon, and spots a pair of eyes floating in a faint humanoid silhouette in the water. The spy is disappointed to hear that their presence was given up by a local contact, but to Roy's credit he is unwilling to be up front about whom.

Roy doesn't get much from the spy; they are focused on learning about these land cities and doesn't know much about anything magical in the northern seas - but they have a cousin in the Twin Cities named Ivanjelos Splat. "Tell them Lamborghini sent you."

So with two contacts set in the notoriously neutral towns, our party clambers aboard the fleet once more and sets off ...

But half a day later, they break from the clouds and see the invasion front beneath: a ragtag army of farmers and town militia fighting for the land behind pockets of sod barriers and bristling stakes, the sea force flowing through stream and creek trenches. And above it all ... are those clouds moving consciously?

[caranelguild]

May 8, 2IY 1

Our adventurers hum & haw for some time aboard the UFO, conferring occasionally with a willing Lady Senta, plotting the unfinished essential half of their cathedral heist. She tries to get them to part with a God's Manacle, saying her presentation of it to the higher ups will diffuse any alert momentarily rising, once her four compatriots make their reports. Brindi is willing only to part with a cursed goblet looted from beneath the Half Pass Library, claiming it was found in Istishia's first prison in the colossus' head beneath Galumpfh.

To add further disappointment, Lady Senta is told to hold off on any sort of report; our adventurers elect to strike while the iron is hot and go for the smash & grab as soon as day breaks and they're rested enough to cast a few more spells.

Step one: locate the tower above the sanctum. Do this invisible and on flying brooms, avoiding detection by the paladins roaming the cathedral roofs.

Step two: magic away a portion of the tower wall and conjure an illusion in its place.

Hurdle one: the sanctum is crawling with priests of the church.

Pivot one: the crystal orb through which Istishia's blessings seemed to come has been shattered, and lies in chunks and shards of glass upon the floor, investigated by this crowd. The right arm of the Dharaki throne lies amidst the pieces, conspicuous.

To address hurdle one: Brindi conjures a cloud of stinking gas that sends half the pack of priests retching to the ground.

Step three: Roy, cloaked anew with Greater Invisibility, flies down to touch the throne piece, to use his helm to teleport it aboard the UFO.

Hurdle two: One of the priests is wearing Truesight goggles and points him out.

Step four: Roy, now having to avoid willy-nilly blasts of radiance and fire, must return to the others in order to teleport away.

Pivot two: the priests have struck Roy once, and have surely conjured spells ahead that don't need aim; Roy knows clerical spells, and fears them. He teleports onto the roof by his companions, leaving one charge left in his helm.

Step five: teleport home!

Step six: get the hell out of dodge.

Already on the move, our adventurers assure Lady Senta that she's got the right story to present to her superiors (rescued their god in an extraplanar battle, yada yada) and shove her out the door, barely letting her drop from the rope ladder before properly taking off into the afternoon.

As the gang confers about their next destination, Brindi spends some time with the crew's third throne piece, discovering it to be a divine conduit.

[caranelguild]

May 7-8, 2IY 1

In the dead of night in the quiet cathedral, there is a sudden crackling noise behind the altar - and then POP! suddenly four weathered adventurers have appeared, reliably arriving through teleportation at exactly the place intended, thanks to Roy's loitering of a few days prior. The arrival of this quartet, however, doubles the population of the nightdark cathedral: yes, this extremely wealthy institution employs guards trained in the guard-training school right next door! Who could have guessed? Not our adventurers, anyway ...

So, four fully armoured and well-trained paladins ...

Luckily, one of them is barely visible, hundreds of meters down the aisle at the front door. Unluckily, said paladin has an enchanted steed-summoning whistle and is of a sudden closing that gap rapidly!

Luckily, his commanding officer issues a command to turn around and be ready at the belltower. Unluckily, the mounted paladin is brash and eager to prove his mettle, and ignores her!

Meanwhile, combat has begun near the altar, Zilybar and Morama finding their opponents, indeed, to be skilled. Brindi is focused on the altar, and attempts to pull a "tablecloth trick," but the altar runner is thick and soft, and she only manages to dislodge the brass candlesticks. However, the action somehow did not budge the wooden bowl of seawater ...

Even before the commander issues her second order to the mounted paladin, Roy is working to block off any attempts to alert reinforcements. When the paladin does respond to this second order, however, it becomes imperative, and Roy doesn't have time; he engages his helm and appears in front of the turned-around paladin. The paladin's lizard mount lowers its head and goes shoulder-charge into the stalwart cleric, but Roy stands firm and the paladin is thrown.

Zilybar is hardest pressed as the commander joins her fellow in flanking him.

Morama is bothered almost as much by Brindi as she is by her own opponent, as the dwarf scholar's experimentation on the wooden bowl leads to throwing fireballs at it from a height of sixty feet (it gave off the same magical energy as the God's Manacle in her pocket; perhaps the seawater is Istishia! And the only way to free a being locked in a God's Manacle is to kill it, after all ...).

As Zilybar falls under the blows of axe and sword, Roy rushes in to support, having Banished his opponent to a neutral plane.

That's when Zilybar's opponent draws a poniard and holds it to the unconscious gnome's throat. "Drop your weapons or he gets it!"

There is a moment when everybody is brought up short. But the words and gestures are fresh in his mind, and Roy successfully Banishes the poniard-wielding paladin alongside Morama's opponent, leaving only the commander behind.

The commander is not without resources of her own. She draws a Sending Stone from her pocket. "I can have reinforcements here in a moment," she says, but self-preservation means she does not immediately utilize this recourse: she has the attention of four hardened warriors upon her. "Explain yourselves," she demands.

So Roy obliges. (Meanwhile, Brindi's fireballs indeed evaporated the water in the bowl, which dropped to the altar and cracked ...) Roy tells the paladin everything, emphasizing that they broke into the cathedral at the behest of its own patron god, to liberate him from bondage.

The idea of liberating her god appeals to the paladin. Perhaps this is the method by which she can achieve promotion ...

Roy knows he has mere seconds to capitalize on her ambition before his Banishment spells begin to end. "Yes, your god, Istishia! He was locked in the head of the colossus beneath Galumpfh, and freed himself from one God's Manacle, but has been held here since! I received word from him, as a fellow religious man!"

She's in - and just in time. First the brash paladin, down the aisle, then the others. The commander leans in to our gathered adventurers. "Make it look like I've struggled; take me with you. Let's talk more."

Brindi grabs the bowl, Roy forcibly grabs the commander as he activates his helm. Crackle, pop, and the five teleported warriors are of a sudden aboard the UFO.

Dialogue is had.

Our adventurers learn that scripture relates that Istishia, like water, has three lives: solid, liquid, and gaseous. Clearly, he has entered into his final form, thanks to Brindi's efforts.

Their story checks out, consequently, with Lady Senta Summersong, the paladin captain, and she agrees to help them with the second half of their heist in the coming days ...

[caranelguild]

Damaia the Arcane, woman of a thousand faces. Kriegencrat of the Divine Flame. Quagoon of the Mind Blades. Vola & The Widowmaker, slayer of demons. Aboard their ingenious flying craft, liberated from the royal hangar of a continent half the circumference of the globe away, their pilot Tula. Though helped along their epic quest by Hardric the Investigator, Sekos the Nimble, and Davdak the Clever, it is these five heroes that breathe in the city of Samar, the Hollow City, where a breeze is beginning to stir, threatening to disperse the piles of dust that represent the tens of thousands of the metropolis' inhabitants. These four adventurers and their pilot have traversed the earth to save them, to see that not the breath of a heartless wind but the warm breath of life is the next breeze to touch these sparkling piles, turning them from alchemical ingredients back into living people.

To do this, they must assemble the pieces of an ancient relic - and the final piece, the piece that hollowed the city, lies in the iron tower at the heart of Samar ... behind a colossus of gold whose head is moistened by the clouds, whose hands tear buildings from their foundations. This is what our adventurers must face, to return life to the hollow city.

The time is running out, but it has not yet arrived at the final sprint, and our adventurers have learned much in their 74 days away from Samar. They observe the colossus and then return to the city, slipping between guard patrols. Further research and planning is required.

Damaia finds more material regarding colossi. She reads that their makers imbue their creations with life and purpose by enclosing themselves within the construct. Lord Gulian, then, must reside within the chest of the golden colossus! The ribcage of gold will be mighty, but the scholar's research tells her it is the construct's most vulnerable point.

Meanwhile, Quagoon grants soft feet to himself, Krieg, and Vola, and they spread through the city to collect a few important materials. It gets hairy for the latter two; even passing without a trace, they haven't the shadowy instincts of the ranger, and once or twice stumble nearly into the laps of a patrol.

By morning, our adventurers reconvene. Krieg and Vola have collected volatile substances to pack into the nose of their aeroplane as a last resort; Tula will hold the fuse. Quagoon has found a black-powder grapnel gun and armour-piercing rounds. With Damaia's information, all has been gathered that is needed.

Dawn is red above the mist of the city, perpetual since the dissolution of its citizens (in fact, the collected moisture of them), as our adventurers break through. They are all aboard a single aeroplane, sluggish at the controls, but functional. Krieg lies upon the fuselage with Damaia behind, Vola and Quagoon upon the wings. Tula alone is inside the cockpit, with a lit lantern hooded to one side and a fuse to the other. Pungent oils seep from the timbers of the nose.

As if taking a collective breath, the aeroplane hesitates for a moment before turning north, towards the huge, passive face of the golden colossus at the apex of the city. Its focus is elsewhere.

Krieg taps the fuselage, and Tula adjusts the controls; the vessel catches the wind and accelerates, the dawn painting it rich and saturated from the right.

The colossus notices them with fifty meters to go - hardly five seconds before they might collide, at the gathered pace of the aerodynamic vehicle.

Five seconds and

one! icy blue crackles out from Damaia's fingers! Cold lashes the surface of the colossus' chest and the gold crackles, brittle -

two! three! javelins from Krieg and Vola, their tips bloody in the sunlight, crash into the colossus; the gold cracks, shatters like glass in frozen shards!

Five seconds and one! - two! quick maneuvers from Tula, but the second isn't enough - a finger catches the aeroplane's tail as Tula arcs up!

But our adventurers are already leaping from the craft, following a single, easy, concussive shot from Quagoon's musket that sends an armour-piercing grapnel into the golden shoulder above. Each hero has a fine climbing rope harnessed to their waist; these are braided near the grapnel to the grapnel cord, which is tied around Quagoon's belt.

Tula swoops to the right, just managing to avoid tangling in these cords, and away from the grasping hands of the massive construct. She has been instructed to keep momentum in sweeping arcs, in case she needs to dart back in to finish the colossus as a kamikaze pilot.

But our adventurers haven't failed yet! Their momentum carries them forward! Their aim seems true!

Gold shards are glittering in the air, sparkling as they fall away from the left chest of the construct, revealing ... revealing the dark, naked form of Lord Gulian embedded within solid gold, two meters deep!

Quagoon's trajectory from the starboard wing is poor; in the split second that he sees Lord Gulian before he collides with the colossus to the left of the cavity, he hurls two mental daggers - then he slams against the golden chest without seeing their effect.

Damaia's arc is true, but she knows melee is not her strong suit and the opening is slim; she hauls on her rope to adjust her trajectory and, even as she begins to spin, flings out her hand with its fingers swiftly forming the shapes of her favourite spell. Fire fills the opened cavity and Lord Gulian screams.

Past Damaia swings Vola. She is eager, she is pulling on her rope to get her there quicker! The point of her blade penetrates the fire and then she does. She knows she has a split second, and every fragment of a heartbeat counts. Her blade bites; she feels it pierce as if an organic extension of her burning nerves; and she is already falling prone, pushing off of an unknown surface, ejecting herself from the colossus!

A rush of cold air just above her face heralds the arrival of Krieg, and Vola hears her partner imbue his weapon with the wrath of his mysterious god.

Krieg's axe only has the momentum of his rope swing - but what a swing it was, and Krieg does not have to leap away from the cavity as Vola did. He crushes forward, the axe between him and his former master, embedded in solid gold. Bones snap and blood sprays. Both hands upon the head of his holy weapon, Krieg shoves it forward until he feels metal grind against its blade. Gulian's agonized face, cracked with burn, stares straight up the dragonborn's scaled snout.

"Long time no see, fucker!" growls Krieg, and leaps backwards from the cavity as the dark elf's eyes glaze over.

Cracks begin appearing in the colossus' body as our adventurers dangle from their ropes. The cracks spread like wildfire, forming hundreds and thousands of even gouges - until gold begins falling past our adventurers from the head above and they realize the colossus is reverting to the hoard of coins that formed it.

They have seconds before their grapnel will fall; instinct has them seize the knots of their ropes to begin climbing down - but it's all for naught before being unneeded. Their grapnel loosens, falls, and Damaia catches the party in a spell of feather fall.

They descend slowly as a city's wealth of gold tumbles to the cobbles below; soon, they are above the last few coins dropping from the erstwhile construct's knees, and they can see their next hurdle ...

Gathering tightly before the doors of the Iron Tower, still mustering from their patrols throughout the city, are hundreds of soldiers and mercenaries.

Our adventurers are vulnerable, hanging in the air, drifting slowly, but the soldiers are not yet organized. Only a few have drawn arrows and javelins back to their ears, and these wait for orders - which must come now! - no! the attention of the commanders is drawn away from the descending quartet!

Cutting through the air just beneath our adventurers' feet is the magnificent aeroplane, piloted with incredible deftness by the selfless Tula! She threads the needle, the turbulence of her passage causing Quagoon's cloak to billow, and our adventurers can see the flicker of the lit fuse in the cockpit through the window.

Now a meter from the ground, Krieg salutes the brave gnome as she steers her craft into the mass of panicking soldiers blocking the tower's door.

The morning sun is dimmed by the blast. First, there is a burst of chemical fire, radiating through the colours of the visible spectrum. Then the noise: a rending concussion. Then a cloud of smoke and blood sprays outward. Body parts, bits of armour, and aeroplane timbers follow, but our adventurers are rushing forward, heedless.

They leap through the fire and smoke and find that Tula's sacrifice provided a secondary boon: the front of the impervious tower has been opened like tin struck by a mighty axe blow.

Our adventurers leap over the bladed iron edge and don't hesitate but are immediately racing up the spiral stair.

They hoped they would know it when they saw it; sure enough, their lungs ragged and their legs on fire, they come to a stop, finally, outside the penthouse chamber - Lord Gulian's sanctum; surely, where he activated Yswilomyr's bastardized relic piece and dissolved the populace beyond the abjured walls of the tower.

Quagoon is already at the lock with his thieves' tools, but even when the mechanical lock is tripped, the door refuses to open. Vola's turn. Two strikes with the shoulder and her momentum carries her through a puff of poison that doesn't faze her.

The others hardly wait for the cloud to fade before rushing through after her.

And there, lying in the center of a nonsensical and unnecessary magic circle (Damaia scoffs) is a silvery gem in the shape of a perfect droplet: the Dissolution relic.

Our adventurers have the other pieces ready:

Found in the unsettling ghost city of Walbutte, the threaded rod of the Idea relic.

The hooked yellow gem of the Creation relic, found in the rich, volcanic soil of Port Falls.

The Invention relic: a thin rod with a central nut, the reward for defeating a fearsome demon in Kaigan Katai.

The beautiful, fine chain, resplendent with metallic stars, extracted from the very coronation stone of Myrad: the Energy relic.

Then, from the bowels of a fiery mountain and the clutches of a genuine dragon, the Impetus relic, a disc of pure gold. (Krieg regrets having to shatter an immaculate crystal dragon skull to get to it.)

Finally, the pure white disc gemstone of the Beholding relic, recovered from a mental labyrinth in the underworld beneath Snowcrest Village.

Damaia's delicate hands and the heads of all our adventurers put together work at the assembly of the relic.

Within minutes, it's complete.

The threaded rod (Idea) screws into the golden disc (Impetus). From the top of the rod, the fine rod with a nut (Invention) spins three-quarters down the Idea rod until it sits firm. The fine chain (Energy) drapes over the "arms" of the Invention crosspiece, and the yellow gem (Creation) hooks on to dangle at its center. The silvery gemstone (Dissolution) sockets perfectly onto the top of the upright rod, and as soon as Damaia's fingers seat it, the pure white gem (Beholding) floats up to slowly orbit the crosspiece, softly glowing.

Down the stairs, our adventurers can hear a clamour. The soldiers must be organizing again, and surely they know where the heroes of Samar have gone ...

Damaia reaches towards the assembled relic with her magic, but it rebuffs her. The others follow, but its magic remains distant.

As they ponder how to activate the relic, how finally to bring life back to their city, it feels right to sit in a circle around it. Then something motivates them to lift their hands, hold their neighbours' in their own - and suddenly, as one, our heroes see everything.

They know each other's deepest secrets even as they know their own are laid bare. This doesn't matter. Their minds are open to each other.

Quagoon knows that Krieg is considering using the relic to find his lost tribe, from whom he was stolen, to be enslaved for his youth. He doesn't judge his companion for that.

Krieg watches an instinct cross Vola's mind: to use the relic to bring Gulian back to life so she can kick his ass again, take his head with her Widowmaker. He smiles at the thought.

Vola knows that, deep down in Damaia's consciousness, the tiefling is wondering if the relic could change her into the thief that her parents always wanted her to be. She knows the thought is instinctual, and does not judge her for it.

Damaia sees fire in Quagoon's mind. The fire that took his wife and child from him, but turned on those that did it. This instinct fights with that necessary need to use the relic to bring his loved ones back from beyond the veil.

But all four know that these are individual thoughts, solitary needs, selfish desires, and they are completely joined. Their combination has only one instinct.

The mist descends and the dust rises to meet it.

In the wetland, where the air remains damp and close, a god smiles and fades into legend, memory, and legacy.

Samar lives once more.

[caranelguild]

May 5-7, 2IY 1

Actually, our adventurers decide not to conduct an immediate heist on the Istishian church. Roy has reached out for some divine word, and received back a short riddle each from his own deity and Istishia himself (or so Roy hopes). Istishia's response includes the word "depths," which motivates our adventurers to return to the colossal statue beneath Galumfph.

Here, the fleet is moored on the mainland and our adventurers strip down in preparation for a free dive - except Roy, who instead gets dressed in a Cloak of the Manta Ray.

Lucky he did! The water is icy cold, and both Brindi and Arlex lose strength quickly. Roy tugs them along as they descend down the inconceivable length of the colossus' head.

By the time they arrive at the statue's chest, Roy has cast True Sight and knows that it is not a statue at all but a precipitous island, rough rock so steep it is basically a column - which is determined, at this stage, to be quite out of reach to unsuited free divers, even with the ability to breathe under water granted by Brindi's magic.

The pressure and the cold has reached everyone, and the prison of Istishia remains undiscovered (our adventurers' goal). So Roy activates his helm and of a sudden, the quartet is back up by the statue's face - their heads pounding from the bends.

The heart ruled out, the base out of reach, and the face observed the other day through the window of a submersible, the last potential location of a spell, portal, or prison lies at the back of the colossus' head. Aching profoundly, our adventurers make the swim.

Sure enough, with his lasting True Sight, Roy spots a moon door in the mountainside despite the nightdark sea. Halfling pictograms are written at its top, and a hand-sized hole sits at the door's center.

Unwisely, Brindi sticks her hand into this hole. She does not pull it out again; a cloud of blood seeps into the water and she withdraws a bleeding stump, sealed by a quick healing spell from the resident cleric.

The pictograms are copied out and Roy teleports the gang back to the UFO, where Rip van Winkle has a magical look at them. The message appears to read, Befriend a fish and ask it to swim through the hole. The sea god is behind the door, and it will open.

Not willing to risk another free dive on the chance of encountering a fish on their way, our adventurers head into the city as dawn breaks. Zilybar ends up purchasing an entire barrel of saltwater eels, from which he selects a keen volunteer who is given the name Eeliza.

Using the last teleport charge in his helmet, Roy gets the group and eel back to the moon door, and Zilybar uses his Gnomish charm to get Eeliza to swim through the hole.

The door swings open outward.

Inside, Eeliza is nibbling on the wrist of Brindi's severed hand. Further in, a single open manacle made of a seagreen steel that Brindi identifies as a God's Manacle. Likely, it has a twin somewhere else.

So, Istishia is not here to be freed, which means he must be held in the cathedral after all.

Back to that, then! The heist, merely postponed, is back on - for next time.

[caranelguild]

May 4-5, 2IY 1

Having the convenience of air travel at their fingertips, our adventurers are content to leave some minor business unfinished in the city in favour of flying northeast to the Istishian cathedral; they can always fly back within an afternoon. They arrive within sight of the colourful spires and bulbs of the great church and camp for the night.

In the morning, our adventurers head to the boardwalk road, where they join a line of supplicants arriving at the closed doors of the cathedral. Some conversation is had with the parties before and behind, and the gang learns that a few rich supplicants have come following generous donations to be considered for a Blessing.

Arlex tries to donate to one of these rich patrons of the church, but is turned away.

All of a sudden, dawn breaks through the wetland fog and a beam of golden sunlight illuminates the highest dome of the cathedral. At that moment, the front doors are opened by a handful of apprentice paladins.

The sanctuary within is a spectacle of colours and textures, and the aisle is lined by fully armoured paladins in seafoam green plate.

Everyone wanders in. Brindi and Roy inspect the altar, noticing some pattern or carving hidden on its top surface beneath a velvet runner. Then they and the other two separately join a line forming by an interior door, where it appears the patrons wait for their Blessings.

However, when a priest comes out of the door, he is checking the guests against a list written in a book. Brindi introduces herself as the Viscountess Diefenbaker, and is taken to a luxurious sitting room to wait for an agent to accept her donation. Zilybar and Arlex are slightly less lucky, being commoners, and are taken to an office. Roy is least lucky of all, after attempting to influence the priest's mind with magic; the priest holds up an antimagic charm and kindly asks Roy to cease his attempt.

Zilybar and Arlex give quite generously, and are admitted into the next private service in "the Sanctum." This is a room down a spiral ramp with a 75-meter domed ceiling letting in a shaft of sunlight. In the center of the round room hovers a large, faceted crystal sphere with an irregular object in its core.

The service consists of the chanting of monks, surrounding this orb, before a bishop of some sort enters from a secret door and taps the orb with a magic staff, sending prismatic colours dancing upon the white marble walls. The bishop gives a sermon in Old Halfling, the monks chant anew, and the service ceases, the crystal sphere now emitting golden dots of light in place of the prismatic colours.

Meanwhile, Brindi is making friends with the richest of the rich in this aristocratic waiting room, before a church agent meets her to discuss patronage. Brindi ultimately fills out a Dwarf Bank cheque for a ludicrously generous 5,000 GP in the name of "her steward," Gilderoy Ullmark. She quite ably forges his signature.

While waiting for confirmation from the Dwarf Bank, she continues chatting with a wealthy orc, smoking a pipe.

The cheque's legitimacy confirmed, the agent returns with a bishop, who extols the virtues of the generous viscountess, who withdrew nearly every coin from her steward's account to fulfill this donation.

Due to her philanthropy, Brindi is given special treatment. She is given a bath, served hand and foot by the bishop himself, who anoints her with various blessed oils. Then she is allowed into the Sanctum alone. The service is the same until the presiding bishop is seemingly transfixed by the spirit. Once again, the bishop taps the crystal with his sceptre, and this time all the colours and lights are focused upon Brindi in a single, radical shaft.

She feels health imbue her. A true Blessing, visited upon this generous patron of the church!

Meanwhile, the rest of the UFO gang has wandered over to the paladin college, where they learn a few facts about it.

Then the radiant Brindi joins them, and the crew decides to head back to Galumphf to take the submersible tour.

They hire a freelancing story guide and pay to skip the line.

The guide tells them a few tales, speculative and fanciful for the most part, about the colossal statue upon whose head sits the city, as the submersible descends. Being made privy to the knowledge our adventurers hold about the Resh-Khan and Dharak's relationship with the ancient coastal nation responsible for the colossus, the guide wonders if the Prince Ali of the fairy tale might have been a son of the Dharaki emperor! The princess slain in connection to his son, the Resh-Khan may have given the gift of the throne piece to the king as a peace or bereavement offering.

According to the guide, ancient legends and stories of his people are littered with instances of gods being entrapped and manipulated by the ancient kingdom. Indeed, many locals posit that the first sea invasion was a reprisal of such an act.

Satisfied with the tour, our adventurers return to their fleet to determine next steps.

[caranelguild]

May 1-4, 2IY 1

After a devilishly clever idea from Brindi and Roy results in less immediate peril for the demon-pact-bound Sage, our adventurers anchor the UFO, have Coriander land the Legacy, and rest as day breaks.

When he has rejuvenated his divine connection, Roy uses a powerful mind-manipulation spell that is paired with the convincing gaslighting of Brindi to convince a consenting Sage that she is still working hard to enact satisfying and complete revenge upon our adventurers - but she's just playing the long game now, weasling her way into hearts and learning everything she can learn to make the revenge that much more devastating and comprehensive.

Her illness immediately abates as the spell takes hold. No longer having to worry about her, our party sets off as evening sets in, traveling the last few miles towards the village of Ogkikh before the sun sets.

The rice paddies are seen first, and here they anchor. Morama heads along the dykes to do some quick recon, asking after her parents. She is told that her father has become a valued elder, and is unable to leave the village due to health complications, but her mother is on a religious mission to the north.

When the farmer learns to whom he is speaking, he is beyond excited to lead our adventurers to Ogkikh. Their welcome is ebullient - a gaggle of young children sent to old Olmthu's place to wheel him out to reunite with his long-lost daughter.

Ogkikh is populated by folks over forty and under fifteen - a generation having been lost to the military manipulations of the demon Marilith.

A party is thrown for the crew of the UFO, though Brindi, Rip, and Coriander remain behind with the ships, the former communing with her extraordinary magic tome, the Octavo.

Sage and Morama are given a comfortable annex for the night, and Morama seems to have no qualms about intimately reuniting with a wife who wholeheartedly believes she is only sleeping with Morama in order to better betray her later.

The others sleep in a kitted out stilthouse over the marsh.

In the morning, Brindi joins them. They are directed towards an immigrant wetland halfling, when they ask after legends about the Drowned Lands.

This halfling tells them the tale of a seafolk Halfling princess from ancient times - no more than a fairy tale, but it infers a number of the elements from Gal's translation of the Resh-Khan's throne parchment: namely, the princess was courted by a god, but married a foreign prince before dying mysteriously on the road.

The halfling then points our adventurers towards two destinations to learn more: the largest city of the coastal halflings, Galumfh, and the major cathedral and its school of paladins roughly a day away from it.

After sending a raven to the north to call Morama's mother back to Ogkikh, our adventurers depart to the south, heading to Galumfh first.

This city of narrow streets and delicate spires sits almost at sea level and occupies the whole of its flat delta island. The UFO is anchored across the water, and our adventurers take a ferry in.

Here, Zilybar almost joins a high school literature club in a pub called the Crystal Coffin. Nothing else exciting occurs, but information is collected.

It is learned that the city sits upon the flattened head of a gargantuan statue from a bygone era, and one can take a submersible tour of this statue's face.

The cathedral is the hub of the Church of Istishia, and many halflings find it grossly ironic that this deity of freedom and neutrality has been confined within rigid doctrine. The city itself is anarchic, collected into communities, so this opposition to a hierarchical church makes sense. The "arm of justice" from the throne parchment might suggest this church, then - and that becomes our adventurers' next destination.

[caranelguild]

April 17 - May 1, 2IY 1

For the last few days of their travel from Half Pass to Ogkikh village in the Drowned Lands, our adventurers have noticed a strange shape lingering on the horizon during night watches. Brindi and Arlex see it clearest the two days before arrival at the latter's hometown - an oblong, angular shape formed of some dark material, hovering incognito upon the line of the sky and earth.

Rousing her companions this last night, Arlex points it out, and Roy uses his magical Eagle Eyes to observe it in detail. Meanwhile, Brindi casts Invisibility on Arlex's wyrmling, who wings off to investigate it up close.

The reports come in: it is a flying vessel formed of dark-stained beams of wood, banded here and there with blacked iron. Neither Roy nor Stormwing, who circles it completely, see a door or a window, but Stormwing senses magic and Roy identifies a perception spell rune upon the craft's nose.

Pretty quickly, it becomes the priority, despite Ogkikh being mere hours away. Discussion ensues to determine the best way to surprise the sleek flying vessel - whether to use the Teleportation Helm in some way or send a single infiltrator, or something else.

Something else is decided upon: Brindi makes everyone invisible, Arlex straps on her Winged Boots, and our adventurers fly the kilometer distance to observe the object in person.

A potential trap door sits atop the back half of it, but Zilybar and Brindi elect to move towards the bay door in the rear bottom. A locking rune causes Zilybar to improvise, using his atomic blade to begin cutting away the jamb.

Meanwhile Arlex chooses violence, clinging to the ridge along the vertical middle of the vessel and punching at the hull until she can begin ripping them off - learning, in the process, that the vessel is made of the same Homlech Grove buoyant wood as her own UFO, as shards of lumber float off in the air.

It's during that process that the trap door opens to reveal an autonomous Sunbeam cannon that begins blasting the visible members of our crew - namely Roy and Stormwing. The latter lands atop the vessel and tries to rip the cannon from its moorings.

Figuring to be helpful, Brindi conjures a ghost and gives it the direct command to attack the first thing it encounters inside the vessel - which unfortunately happens to be Arlex, reaching through the hull to continue widening her hole!

Arlex becomes illogically terrified of this apparition and climbs hurriedly up the hull so that her wyrmling can defend her.

Meanwhile Zilybar has given up on the bay door and climbs over to Arlex's abandoned hole, which the gnome can just slip through. He finds himself in a half-galley kitchen with a small tea table.

When he pokes his head into the hallway, he sees the tail of a tiefling disappear up a hole in the ceiling, sprinting away from Brindi's terrifying ghost, now given a more precise instruction to attack anyone not a member of the UFO's crew.

Soon enough, everyone is inside - Zilybar finding the latch for the bay door. Brindi is the first through the hole in the ceiling, while Arlex discovers a captain's office in the hallway.

On the top deck, the pilot of the vessel is sitting in a floating chair controlling a series of glowing sigils hovering at arm's length. By the chair, baring her teeth and wielding two axes, is a blue-hued tiefling with green hair. Interrupted, the pilot orders the tiefling to attack!

But then Arlex climbs through the hole, and the tiefling hesitates. She takes a hesitating step forward ...

"Morama?" she asks in a whisper, "Morama, is that you?"

Their reunion will find no justice done it in this record, but must reside until the end of time, when all immortal loves must face the final challenge, in the hearts of its protagonists. Arlex's memory bursts open and spills the forgotten truths of her lost years down the corridors of her bloodstream until they fill her heart.

She is Morama, wife of this tiefling Sage, whom she met during the forced campaign under the warlord Marilith, Demon Lord of Poison, the very fiend that turned both women into tieflings, blood-slaves of the Abyss. They had deserted upon meeting, experienced a whirlwind romance - that had ended in abyssal tragedy, as Morama was recaptured by the jealous demon, her mind broken.

Until a tiefling named Arlex had found herself wandering from the shores of the Drowning, released or escaped or let loose from Marilith's clutches less than a year ago ...

Anyway, the other reunion is nothing compared to this drama. Basically, the pilot of the ship is none other than Coriander Elspeth, artisan carpenter, who had pitched this very design to our adventurers back in Alfomb, promising it as her Last Great Work.

Apparently, that promise was basically made, as far as Coriander was concerned. When her offer was "cruelly spurned," she took it upon herself to source the buoyant timber and craft it. But she was profoundly slighted by our adventurers. Fueled by spite, she has been searching for our adventurers for the last month, using a magic compass attuned to the buoyant timber of the UFO.

But why was this to be her final work? She is afflicted by a series of invasive skin and bone diseases that have dramatically altered her appearance and left her with days to live. Well, Elven doctors in Alfomb had given her days to live a month ago. Revenge has kept her alive until now.

Roy is baffled. Can't magic heal her?

Apparently her parents took her to doctors all across the continent when she was younger, and none were able to deal with the tangle of afflictions.

Roy shrugs and reaches into his pack for some velvet bags of diamond dust. "Here," he says, and waggles his fingers, exerting some high-level magic upon Coriander. He casts his most advanced healing spell twice, and the transformation is incredible.

But then Arlex - that is, Morama steps forward. She has been catching up with Sage, and she has dire news.

Sage had come to Alfomb mere days after our adventurers had left the city, and quickly agreed to sign on to assist Coriander on her continental search for a mysterious collection of adventurers aboard a flying craft. She had been on foot searching for her lost wife for the last years - wherever Coriander's journey took her, it would be quick and - perhaps - all around. This was a perfect opportunity to find Morama efficiently!

The problem was, Coriander Elspeth was off her head with revenge. To ensure Sage's loyalty, to see her revenge quest to its bitter end, she summoned the demon Baphomet to seal their agreement.

Well, that is a problem ...

[caranelguild]

April 1 - April 17, 2IY 1

Our adventurers collect information from the streets and harbours of the merchant cities of the inner sea and then head to Grok's Library near Half Pass to read some books. This, our adventurers do sans Arlex, who continues her quest to uncover her past on her own for a couple of long days in Titush, where she learns of a past connection.

After a long day of study, Zilybar and Brindi are taking a lunch break and reflecting on how dodgy the librarians (all named Grok) have been about the subject of the first invasion when Arlex stumbles in six hours late and breathing hard. She had activated the helm of teleportation in the early morning, as planned ... and and had dropped a dozen miles off course on the road to the library.

Leaving the cafeteria, a suspicious-looking Grok is seen turning a corner, wearing a thick apron and a belt full of tools. Brindi immediately turns invisible and she and Zilybar set off in pursuit while Arlex changes her boots.

Despite their precautions, they are heard in the silent library stacks, and with a gesture, the suspicious librarian somehow summons a regular Grok in the path of our adventurers. When they finally extricate themselves from the invasive assistant, the suspect has disappeared - but they are convinced they see a bookcase against a wall down the corridor move, as if back into place.

So our stalwart scholars set to work investigating the five shelves of this bookcase. Well, Brindi just starts sticking interesting titles into her endless pocket, but the others begin poking around.

The shelf of books on military history becomes the target after Zilybar activates a hidden trap switch (none of the other shelves provided any clues). When a book is slid off the shelf, there is no reaction, but when a book is tilted - like might trigger a secret door - the spine corner compresses a button in the resting shelf!

But our adventurers do not find a rhyme or reason for the traps, and ultimately Zilybar just clears the shelf and readies himself to do a glissando down the line of triggers.

Around this point is when they are noticed by a new Grok. Brindi, still invisible, is unnoticed, and Zilybar fades into the gloom, leaving Arlex to come up with the worst cover story known to all realms.

"I'm a bookshelf engineer," she says. "I'm very interested in the, uh, structure of, uh, bookshelves."

She's taken away for questioning, this being the second strike against a member of our company (being caught tailing a secret librarian being the first).

Zilybar slips a personal possession into Arlex's pocket as the tiefling passes, using Brindi's mental link to tell her to use it to accurately teleport to them whenever she's able.

Then Zilybar completes his tickling of the bookshelf, dodging blades and darts but getting frostbite on his fingers and inhaling both a suffocating poison and some sort of powder that turns him blue.

Three book triggers from the end, after all of that, finally, the shelf judders and moves away from the wall and to the left, revealing a narrow door opening on an empty shaft.

Continuing his streak of bad luck, Zilybar's head is absolutely walloped by an arriving elevator car that blasts upwards from the deep dark of its shaft.

Zilybar and Brindi activate the keyhole inside the elevator car with magic and travel down to a basement, where Arlex joins them.

She had been questioned, revealed a little about their quest, and accepted that the way she went about the research was not the right way. She agreed to leave the premises and, when out of sight of the library, activated the helm.

Outside of the elevator, our adventurers step into a round room decorated with a few display bookcases and a handful of leather sofas in its center.

Soon enough, a leather ottoman joins the furniture. Our adventurers hear the noise of the elevator being called up and set about hiding. Arlex becomes the ottoman, Zilybar slips behind a bust on a bottom shelf, and, well, Brindi just casts invisibility again.

Two armed Groks enter the chamber, give it a quick look, and head off through two different doorways out of it.

They are followed by a head librarian and two mages, one of whom remarks on the ottoman, which they don't remember being here ...

A quick witch bolt singes a hole in Arlex's disguising cloak ... but the bold adventurer activates an innate magic and absorbs the energy, biting her lip and not shifting an inch.

"Must have been brought in by somebody recently," remarks the mage.

Through the mental link, our adventurers have been furiously planning what to do next. Trapped in the basement with a whole library of aggressive Grok's above them - and at least five down here with them, they are not feeling confident.

But they haven't seen Brindi acting suspicious yet, suggests Zilybar. Perhaps I should give myself up as a decoy.

True, they know at least one of us is down here, says Arlex, but I'm supposed to be on the road to Half Pass already.

Plan made, Zilybar steps from the bookshelf towards the strange ottoman, which slyly sheds a teleportation helm. "You've got me!" says Zilybar, snatching up the helmet.

He is escorted briskly into the elevator and away, taking with him all five investigating Groks, leaving our remaining pair alone in the basement chamber.

Arlex takes the left hallway, Brindi the right.

Arlex discovers a hallway of solid metal doors, each with a prison peephole behind a metal slide. Inside the first, an empty stone room - scorched. At the end of the hallway, from a door left slightly ajar, Arlex can hear the sounds of industry ...

She peeks in and discovers a pair of aproned Groks tinkering away on a complicated device of beams, tubes, and glass vessels crackling with magic and weird substances.

Meanwhile, Brindi has discovered a gymnasium sized warehouse full of crates, a few with artifacts lying upon them. She's in heaven - until Arlex grows uninterested in her hallway and comes to join her.

Behind a wall of crates, the pair discover why the librarians have been dodgy about the first invasion: inside a bubbling tank, hanging listlessly in illuminated seawater, a merperson!

The tank is hooked up with some sort of machinery.

Before long, Zilybar appears, and the trio together begin figuring out the situation.

Through a feeding hole opened by one of the buttons on the machine, Arlex deposits some magical berries, but the merperson does not react. If indeed they have been in this tank since the first invasion, it's been nearly thirty years!

But soon, Zilybar has activated a translation device that accepts his voice and bubbles into the tank in a language that the merperson appears to understand. A dialogue ensues.

The merperson is Captain Ehlspann of the Third Regiment. They have been interrogated in this musty warehouse for decades, but insist they have no broken - so if this is just another tactic to get them to spill secrets, forget it!

Slowly, our adventurers convince them that they are not with the library - and, indeed, that they want to help the poor POW. (Do they? Isn't this captain an enemy? But to be imprisoned in a dunk tank for 25 years ...)

A plan is laid. Zilybar has used the last teleportation charge, but if he has thrown off the Groks with his last concession, perhaps they can wait out in this dusty place for a night to wait for the magic to replenish. When it does, zap, they all appear on a dock in Titush!

But in the meantime, Brindi cracks the code in the inventory binder and begins looting what she can.

Our adventurers do not waste their required twelve hours in the warehouse beneath the library, just waiting for the Helm of Teleportation to recharge.

Brindi teaches the others how to decode the inventory so that every time she comes across something interesting, she can go off and investigate without halting the search for relevant items and information.

Pretty quickly, the crate full of notebooks taken from interrogations with the seafolk corpses is uncovered - a literal trove of information about the first invasion. Tragically, it appears Captain Ehlspann contributed the most information, despite their lack of awareness of this. Their records contain detailed information about the hierarchies, intentions, and operations of the invading force from 27 years ago - reams of names, detailed maps, everything the captain could have possibly known.

[caranelguild]

April 1, 2IY 1

Pretty quickly, the whole gang is packed into the hold of the UFO to face off against the ancient Thronegod of the Tlixacta'in, who has overcome the minds of Trek and Trevayne to fight for xem (Trevayne the trained merc the more effective military servant).

The Thronegod seems to draw power from the amber throne, and uses archaic spells to attack and defend, but our heroes slowly wear xem down. Roy's Twilight Sanctuary fends off further probes of mind control, Arlex's magic scimitars severs a few arms, Brindi casts magic darkness for some reason, Zilybar and Trevayne trade blows, newcomer Rip provides support.

Blasts of amber force are taken in return, but our heroes prevail. The Thronegod crumbles into shards of carapace and piles of fine dust (collected quickly by Brindi).

Brindi then studies the amber throne, with its chunk of sandstone chair embedded in its back, while the rest of the crew gets the UFO moving south.

First deicide, next, the gang needs to decide which piece of the scattered throne to go after next - and this requires further research! So they set a course for information hubs and places of learning ...

[caranelguild]

March 28 - April 1, 2IY 1

After spending the night in the ancient spire, our adventurers, Neptunus, and the two Tlixacta'in (Stormy and Rip) travel easily back to the ruined city, remembering to pick up their barrel of wine on the way. The gargantuan snake, this time, is but a gargantuan snake-skin, and Brindi rolls up a bolt of it to take with her.

Back in the city, our adventurers are brought in to see the Earthlord, who sends Stormy the steward to fetch the promised reward. While the Earthlord and xer steward then confer in the corner of the office, Rip the Magus is tasked with upselling the rewards.

A polished badger skull in a casket is touted as the head of the Tlixacta'in's Father of Civilization, an individual who mentored them fresh out of the insect mound.

A phial of greyblue liquid is said to be the most precious substance farmed by the Tlixacta'in and the secret to immortality.

A circlet of thornwood was a gift from, uh, from a species of, well, twig-people-insects who were neighbours to the city?

At this point our adventurers wonder if any of these stories are at all true.

Finally, a buckler made of Tlixacta'in chitin, with a cloudy opal boss, is claimed to have belonged to a great warrior who defended the city from an invading dragon horde.

The gifts are magical, even if they are not as storied as all that, as detected by Brindi, so the gang takes them. Brindi likes the cut of Rip's jib, and asks xem if xe would like to join their band of adventurers. After some negotiation bordering on the sale of Rip's agency as a person, hooray! Rip joins the crew of the UFO, and they all head off to speak with Gilderoy about next steps.

While that happens, Zilybar seeks out Stormy. The two communicate as best they can, and consent is clear: they have a lovely tryst. (Zilybar is a bottom). Zilybar comes *ahem* away with a magical statuette formed from the experience.

At first, the expedition leader wonders if they should keep going. The spire was supposed to be the incredible climax of the adventure, not some abandoned bit of rock with some words carved in. But then he remembers how nice a real bed is.

So the teleportation helm is used to transport all the adventurers but Brindi, then Brindi and the animals to the wood elf village whence the expedition entered the Lost Forest. Brindi and the animals arrive looking a bit haggard -

- but nobody is looking worse than the unfortunate harpy baby wrapped up and resting on the dwarf woman's chest. The baby, in fact, is dead. Brindi and Arlex are reluctant to offer up the necessary diamond for Brindi to use up in a revivification ritual. Luckily, Zilybar values life, and has one of his own to offer.

The baby lives again.

As wood elves begin to wonder what's going on, our adventurers decide it's time to part ways with the expedition. Reluctant to teleport back to Azzimar after witnessing the death of the baby, it takes some convincing before Gilderoy, Drakon, and Neptunus are willing. Neptunus, meanwhile, compares his notes to the perspectives of our gang, to ensure an accurate record, and Brindi tries to recruit him. Alas, he has two partners back home, and is excited to publish his account.

The teleportation is easy this time, as Brindi connects to the permanent circle back in the university city.

Then, there is nothing to do but wait. The UFO should swing by within twelve hours, as Trek and Trevayne were set on a patrol route to always pass by this starting point.

But it doesn't come.

That's when our adventurers decide to tell Rip about the whole probably-teleported-the-actual-Thronegod-onto-our-flying-ship situation, and when xe explains that the Thronegod was not, in fact, the immortal Resh-Khan but a genocidal Tlixacta'in megolomaniac ("I dunno, you folks keep slaves, so maybe this Thronegod had the right of it," muses Brindi), our adventurers become worried about the state of their ship (and companions thereon).

Nobody is more anxious than Rip, however, who immediately sets off to look for the UFO. Zilybar accompanies xem on a circuit around the village - and as night falls, they spot the UFO listing north towards the forest!

Zilybar uses his telepathic link with Brindi to alert the others as he and Rip rush towards the ship.

The rest of the gang is there shortly, and within seconds the whole gang is on board. Zilybar is the first to rush below.

He finds the amber throne sitting askew in the splintered floorboards of the hold. Resting against it, the ancient Tlixacta'in, xer carapace being polished by a pair of fawning gnomes!

[caranelguild]

March 27-28, 2IY 1

Though members of the party are keen to experience the nightmares written about in Locke Ullmark's expedition journal, camp is ultimately made upon the hill overlooking the valley of the spire.

In the morning, instead of embarking on the one-hour trek to the base of the spire, our adventurers discuss an interesting idea brought up by Roy. He has the Helm of Teleportation, and can get a very good look at the top of the spire with his magically enhanced vision - why doesn't he just teleport there, teleport the throne to the UFO, and then teleport himself back to his comrades? In the morning, he can teleport everyone to the UFO and hey-merry-dol, the troupe is on its way to the next throne piece!

He does get a good look, observing a great throne of amber underneath an ancient gazebo just below the sharp peak of the spire. In the throne's back, beneath a layer of amber, appears to be a backrest of stone.

Though he could be safer about it (teleportation magic being occasionally imprecise), Roy pretty quickly just does the thing - and lands his toes on the very edge of the gazebo floor. Another inch off course and he would be falling the eight hundred meters to the ground below.

He moves to inspect the throne more closely, and that's when a frail form - from a distance, appearing to be a thin dead plant of dark stalks - leans away from a gazebo pillar and breathes out faint words in the bugfolk language.

Roy is not interested in conversation. He casts teleport on the throne just as the ancient being touches it with a hand and both creature and throne are, of a sudden, gone.

But that shouldn't be able to happen! Roy can teleport objects or people, and if he's targeting an object, a person has no business catching a lift.

Concerned, Roy teleports back to his companions and relates his tale. The gang sends a message to Trek on the UFO, who confirms that the throne and bug have arrived on board. Trek is not very efficient with his words when sending a message back.

When the anxious tlixacta'in ask what's been going on all morning (they are eager to get to the spire and do what the Earthlord has asked them to), Brindi puts on her translation suit and spins a tale.

She says that Roy went to the spire and cleansed it of evil energy, or something.

They relate that they don't quite put stock in that kind of mumbo-jumbo. They would like to take a look around for themselves.

"Mumbo-jumbo, is it?" seethes Brindi, and casts psychic fear magic upon Stormy the Steward.

When Rip the Mage notices this happen, xe is understandably perturbed and begins weaving magic of xer own, but Roy steps between. Roy casts Tongues on Stormy and explains the truth of the events of the morning. Stormy wonders if Brindi can be trusted - she seems rather like an agent of the thronegod to xem.

Anyway, situation diffused, the gang heads down to the base of the spire. Here, they elect to climb it - Roy is not sure that the throne and creature under the gazebo was not just an illusion, and the true relics might be within the tower itself.

So Stormy climbs behind Roy astride a flying broom and Neptunus does the same behind Brindi. Tensions between the bugfolk and Brindi rise again when the dwarf casts Fly on Rip without xer consent, but soon enough everyone (Arlex and Zilybar climbing with magically enhanced equipment) is ascending.

A third up its length, our adventurers break from the canopy and are instantly beset by bare-breasted harpies. These monsters are cut and flamed from the sky within a few minutes. Brindi raids one of their nests and steals a disturbingly human-like infant harpy.

Close by, the climbers encounter a door set into the spire.

The door has six locks; a pair of threes: one trio on the left and one on the right. Beside each lock is a symbol, and in the center of the door is a message that the mage translates for you word for word.

Above the message hangs an ornate key on a hook.

Left 1: A spiral Left 2: A square Left 3: A circle

Right 1: A triangle Right 2: A spiral Right 3: A hexagon

The message reads,

Ever since the dawn of history, great heroes have arisen. This is an abiding great comfort and a universal truth. Though fears may spiral, remember what hath come before and hold onto hope. This is so important. Will you rise? What is thy turning point? When will life be a liquor to thee? Corners and twists will abound, but hide not before them. There lies danger, in the failure to move and in the pale stilling of the feet. You must know the right time to act, hero. Thy hand must grip thy sword! Life deals not with cowards; cowardice is death.

The mage has heard of this sort of sacred door. Only one keyhole unlocks the door. The others may trigger traps.

Our adventurers hum and hah for a while before Neptunus suggests that the number six may play significantly into the solution - six locks, and the tlixacta'in being six-limbed.

That cracks it for Zilybar, who begins counting words. He eventually recites, "History is a spiral and so is life, corners hide danger and the right hand deals death."

And so the key goes into the first lock. It turns and the door opens, revealing a hollow spiral stair going up the center of the spire.

As our adventurers climb, scuffmarks upon the stairs begin to take more conscious shape in their minds. Perhaps each stair contains a piece of a hieroglyph, and cycled through rapidly they would be legible as something?

Anyway, the climb stretches on. Soon, the walls are filled with ancient writing the tlixacta'in recognize as prehistoric cuneiform. Passageways that once led to secret rooms have been blocked up with ivory spit-stone; anyway, they would only lead to the open air, now.

At the top, a message has been scrawled with a tool into the crumbly stone:

What must I do to die? I have blocked up the passages, in fear of using them to leap to my death. I remain here at the top, fearful.

While the others search the gazebo, Zilybar takes Roy's shield and skates down the spiral stair with great skill, taking in the hieroglyphic tale told by the stairs - a tale of the origins of the tlixacta'in. But when he gets to the door and intends on climbing up the outside, just to say he's done it, he observes angry harpies soaring about the canopy outside.

[caranelguild]

After five days of travel south from Snowcrest Village, our adventurers have returned whence they began - to the Hollow City itself, to Samar. Wreathed in the unnatural marsh fog, only the iron tower and a hundred lazy plumes of fire smoke scattered through the area are visible. The setting sun silhouettes Lord Gulian's great construct, now horribly decorated at its tip by machinery and spikes. As our adventurers angle their aeroplanes towards the city limits, they watch a flock of evening birds approach the tower - where they are incinerated, blasted, and shot by fire, magic, and missile. Evidently, the patriarch of the city has outfitted his tower with automatic weaponry.

The aeroplanes are brought down outside of the city in a field Damaia remembers. From there, the gang doesn't waste time but heads into the city, despite the late hour.

Creeping without a sound through the streets, it isn't long before they hear some ruffians ahead, their shadows from a small fire flickering on the walls across the street. Damaia summons a rat familiar to spy ahead.

As she does so, the others take in the city. Krieg and Vola, returned after more than two months. Quagoon, for the first time, looks at the haunting devastation has has only ever heard about.

The rat overhears two conversations between pairs of rough-looking mercenaries. The first pair believes the city is haunted, unnatural. One of them had kicked over a dust pile (the dry elements of a citizen, our adventurers know) once, and the next day he could have sworn it had returned to its previous position! The other pair are discussing the "golden colossus" that apparently dominates the city's high hill. The one relates how they were recruited for months to scrounge up every gold piece in the city, bringing them to the tower square. He shudders, relating the enormous construct that resulted, which now terrorizes anyone who comes close.

Krieg whips up a sound-maker that conjures a horrifying screeching and, along with some magical enhancement from Damaia, this confirms the mercenaries' worst fears. They race off in a panic.

The next party our adventurers encounter on their way up the city streets is one of city soldiers, wearing uniforms very familiar to three of our gang. They decide to take one of these for questioning, trusting the soldiers to know more than the fearful mercenaries.

The ambush is swift. The squad captain puts up a good fight with a frost-magic sword and another swordsman frustrates Quagoon with his katana-cringe, but ultimately the soldiers lie dead (the captain's hand clutching a locket containing portraits and locks of hair from her children) but for one: a bard-class warrior who had wielded a transforming lyre. This one is trussed up and thrown over Krieg's shoulder.

Damaia leads the pack to a secret basement speakeasy in the neighbourhood. With a library upstairs, it was a favourite haunt of hers once upon a time. She makes herself a drink and absorbs the memories.

Krieg interrogates the prisoner, who confirms the story of the golden colossus. Apparently, our adventurers' escape from his tower those 75 days ago set Lord Gulian on a path of paranoia. Surely those random guards who were accidentally preserved from the mass murder, who escaped the city on a stolen military vessel, were dead set on undermining his great plans! (How right he was!) So he did indeed conjure an immense guardian out of half the gold of the great city, in a days-long ritual. Apparently nobody goes near the tower anymore; the colossus has taken to throwing buildings at people.

Unfortunately, this means the soldier (already of a lower rank) is four or five layers separated from orders coming from the iron tower, and even then, he relates, direct orders come through Sending Stones. Lord Gulian has not left his tower for nearly fifty days.

The harpist is fixed a last drink, a gin & tonic with a cucumber twist, and is then killed by Krieg.

Damaia looks through the library upstairs and finds a book of colossus legend, relating no real facts but outlining the possibilities and concept of the immense constructs.

Nothing for it, then, but to face the thing itself. (I guess.) So our adventurers creep up the hill through the old market district and find themselves staring at the bare golden feet, the shapely calves, the thick legs, the enormous schlong, and the chiseled torso of a construct of gold whose upper quarter is lost within the mist a hundred feet above. When an arm that stretches a city block sweeps down to wrench a stone wall from its foundations, our adventurers can make out the faint texture of coins upon the colossus' surface.

The colossus idly splits the wall in two and tosses the pieces away, then turns to step nearer to the tower.

Well, thinks our party, let's stay back and consider how to approach this.

[caranelguild]

March 25-27, 2IY 1

The bug steward surveys the destruction time and, perhaps, a despot known as the Thronegod had wreaked on xer city. Eventually, xe snaps out of it and invites our adventurers back into the church, as there is no longer the comfortable hotelerie across the street in which to put them up.

Inside, they are ultimately brought up to the Earthlord's time-bared office, where they are asked on a quest - the Earthlord fears that, as, evidently, the Thronegod succeeded with xer genocidal plot, xe and xer followers may have survived and would then be a threat to the newly rejeuvenated people of the city. Would our adventurers travel with a guide and scout out the Mound where the Thronegod had gathered xer followers? If tlixacta'in are there, turn back and report. If not, could they ensure the destruction of the heretical throne?

After a brief question period, our adventurers agree to set out in the morning. They are each (not Drakon, who is outside with the animals) given an intricate statuette formed of hardened ivory excretion as a down payment - each piece infused with a mild, comforting magic.

Brindhelga stays up late conversing with one of the magi, learning everything she can about these ancient peoples.

In the morning, our adventurers are joined by the steward (whose poetical tlixacta'in name is translated down to "Stormy") and a young magus ("Ripple," or Rip, or Rip van Winkle). These two lead the party (sans Drakon and Gilderoy and 2/3 of the animals) out of the city.

As they climb up a wooded slope, Arlex observes a strange-looking tree stump. Upon investigation, it turns out to be a great sealed barrel of rich red wine. Everyone has a tipple and the party moves on.

Over the rise, everyone sees the way ahead blocked by an enormous scaly fallen tree that might be a gargantuan snake?

Surely, it is a snake. But it does not move and is terrifically long, disappearing to the left and right through the trees, lying straight. It hardly reacts as Brindi harvests some scales from it.

This roadblock causes some delay, but ultimately Roy uses some strength magic to lift the mule over the snake and everyone gets across.

More traveling ensues, until they arrive, on the second day, at the lip of a great forest bowl. In its center stands sharply the spire of Locke's journal.

[caranelguild]

March 25, 2IY 1

Our adventurers have had enough of sepulchres, and certainly enough of spiders - poison courses through their systems and, for Arlex and Zilybar, results in some embarrassing discomfort. They leave the cliff behind and travel towards the sprawling ruin of the tlixacta'in city.

At first, it is as recorded in the journal of Locke Ullmark: broken foundations and toppled walls, overgrown and grown through by the forest. The only relics easily found are the clay plates familiar to Brindi and the university. She collects a few for herself.

Then a haze grows up ahead, and soon the gang is on the edge of an expansive cloudbank of mushroom spores that limit visibility of the rest of the city! Brindi has already fashioned a gas mask and pulls it out to find the source of the spores. Arlex follows behind.

Zilybar is the most reluctant to risk breathing the fungus, but ultimately follows the gang when everyone and the animals head inside. He does his best to stay above the bank, leaping from ruin to ruin.

Soon, they discover they are walking towards a colossal mushroom the size of a cathedral. Beneath its spreading head grow hundreds of other white mushrooms of various sizes.

Brindi tries to eat a chunk of the mumshroom's great stem, but her stomach rejects it.

Then the party is moving on, observing that the mushrooms around them are home to a species of blue inchworm or caterpillar. When Zilybar leans in to get a closer look, one of these worms exhales a tendril of fragrant smoke, as of herbal tobacco.

Soon, our adventurers are beyond the spores, and can see what must be the city center ahead. Arlex runs towards the large, buttressed building that dominates the space - missing its roof but otherwise intact - and as she enters the square before it, she finds herself crunching over thousands of scattered bug-people bits. Carapace and brittle limbs lie everywhere, entirely covering the ground.

The cathedral draws everyone's attention, and they head towards it. The doors open, and reveal a large entry chamber with multiple doors leading from it. Ahead is a double-door sealed with fungus that must lead down the aisle of the great building's sanctuary.

Zilybar and Arlex clear the seal, and air hisses out from the cracks. The doors are thrown open, and our party faces two alert, at-arms bug guards!

Arlex doesn't hesitate, even though everyone else wishes she did, and leaps forward, hacking the four hands off of one guard.

Only when that bug teeters forward and topples onto Arlex without reacting does our party recognize that the two guards are far from alive. Perfectly preserved, yes - down to the frills on their colourful garb - but absent any signs of life.

As lights are brought forward, the entire sanctuary is discovered to be populated by these preserved insect people. They fill the pews - all richly dressed, all completely still, like wax figures.

Our adventurers move down the central aisle and approach a great magic circle inscribed into the stone of the sanctuary's center. Filaments like those dangling from the statuary doors have been braided and inset into the design, and bug folk in robes stand at particular points of the huge rune.

Another bug person stands facing the magic circle in the elevated pulpit box.

Brindi steps into the magic circle -

and she dies, collapsing to the stonework -

and there is a dry rustling, as every tlixacta'in in the church comes to life -

and Brindi is suddenly rising into the air above the circle, her eyes glowing in a colour beyond the spectrum. She recites seven words, and drops to her feet, alive and crackling with new, fiendish magic.

Pandemonium ensues. Bug folk are panicking in the pews, screeching and clicking in their language, rushing every which way. Arlex is caught among them, sulking away from the others ever since being criticized for chopping the hands off the guard -

who screeches louder than any other from back up the aisle.

But Brindi had put on her translation device almost as quickly as Arlex had attacked the guard, and begins conversing with the person in the pulpit box.

She learns that the tlixacta'in gathered here to avoid death from the "Thronegod", and are under the impression that they only just, in the last instant, recited the final phrase of a great preservation spell. The person Brindi is speaking to is referred to as the "Earthlord", and is delighted to learn that the spell actually worked - they outlasted the Thronegod and xer followers!

Together, Brindi and the Earthlord calm the host. Brindi leads her companions to the steps of the cathedral while the Earthlord gives a speech to xer congregation, explaining the situation. Injured are sent out to our adventurers per Brindi's request, but Arlex refuses to redeem her actions by assisting with the magical healing.

So Roy and the archaeologist do the work, even reattaching the guard's amputated hands.

A steward of some kind is shortly sent out to bring our adventurers to guest quarters, but xe is brought up short by the sight outside the cathedral: the death field, and the ruins beyond.