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terryclothTonight was my Tuesday D+D game. Luis was at least audible all night, although we never got the camera working. The players managed to avoid the only bit of content I actually had planned, even though I'd placed it 'anywhere they go', by not actually getting anywhere. Eventually, when they looked about to spend the ENTIRE rest of the session shopping, I gave in and jumped them with obligatory thugs.
Since the scattered herbs were easily replaced with more of the same from the storerooms, the only components the party really needed to complete the bathysphere were enough tar (or glue) to coat the 70-foot diameter sphere, and a dozen bat wings. They decided, not without justification, that it might be easier to obtain these components from an inhabited city than from the ruins of Ephae.
So, May, Conner (the cleric formerly known as Loren), and Abbey teleported back to the isle of the gods, and checked out the general store. It didn't sell components, but it did sell pitch, which was sticky enough to work. They'd need about 1000 pounds of pitch, though, which was a bit much to teleport in one go. So, after teleporting through the mist to take the first half back, May decided to hold off on teleporting the rest until they'd gotten the batwings, which they planned to hunt for in the forest and mountains nearby (as the mage flies).
They quickly located a cave that stunk of bat guano, and walked inside. After sealing the entrance to the cavern with a web, and spotting the carpet of bats that covered the roof of the cave, May decided to wake up the entire colony with a fusillade of magic missiles.
So then the party was in a bat swarm, trapped in it by a web. Conner, a cleric of Freedom, walked into the web unhindered, then reached out to cast Freedom of Movement on May. Abbey had to force her own way out, but managed it. They were all quite bat-bitten by the time they made it out, but Abbey'd grabbed six dead bats, and May had an entire bag of live bats that he plucked out of the web while standing inside it.
They teleported back with the rest of the pitch -- May got a little lost, but not so lost that he couldn't rejoin the party with a fly and four improved invisibilities -- and began enchanting the sphere. The wizards told them that it would take a week to finish all three enchantments -- the flight, the clarivoyance to allow them to see outside, and the magic compass to allow navigation through the chaos mist.
Not wanting to leave the mages to their own devices, but also not wanting to waste the entire week, May went out on his own to buy supplies. He decided that instead of just hiring lumberjacks on the Isle of the Gods, he'd travel to Lantham City itself to buy lumber and other supplies. His approach was careful enough to buy the supplies without a problem, but it left him low on spell slots suitable for teleportation, and he had to leave the lumber behind for the night, 'hidden' in a ditch by the side of the road with a sign reading 'do not steal'. In the morning, he teleported back to find that it had been stolen.
The rest of the week was spent lazing around while the mages worked, and eventually the bathysphere was ready for action. It wasn't very *fast*, drifting along no faster than the average human walked, but its hull was made of iron and sealed, so the dragons hovering over the city outside the chaos mist were unable to affect it, and eventually lost interest.
Thus began a long, slow trip to the Shimmering Isles. In eight days of liesurely flying travel through the chaos mists over the featureless ocean, they were attacked only once, by a pair of spectres, who drained some energy but were ultimately no match for the party. The bathysphere's clairvoyance broke down -- apparently, one of the student wizards did not deserve a passing grade -- but they managed to rig up a mirror outside the peephole in the airlock door to sort of see where they were going.
Finally, they reached the legendary impenetrable barrier surrounding the shimmering isles -- a prismatic sphere 10 miles in radius. The party flew out to look for a way through, only to get lost in the mist and only barely find their way back to the bathysphere before their fly spells ran out.
Not having any of the necessary spells on hand to penetrate a prismatic sphere -- May's examination suggested that the normal methods would work to at least open a temporary hole in the barrier -- the party turned back, wanting to leave the chaos mists before teleporting somewhere where the spells might be found.
They tried to rise out of the chaos mists, but the air got thin before the mist did. So on the second day, they cast 'water breathing', and had everyone swimming in one of the water-filled compartments of the bathysphere, except for the pilot and lookout who took breaths of water in drinking glasses out of barrels. After three hours of climbing past where the air started getting thin, they finally crested out of the chaos mists, polymorphed the student wizards into halflings, and everyone teleported to Sophie's Sanctum.
Which was deserted. Not wanting to risk running into whatever had made Sophie desert it, they immediately telported again, this time to Lantham.
In Lantham, they discovered that 'Gust of Wind' was easily found, 'Cone of Cold' and 'Passwall' were available but very very expensive (10000 gp each), and 'Disintegrate' was a legendary spell, about as easy to find as 'Mass Ressurection' would be on Faerun. The scroll merchant recognized the spells they were searching for, and suggested that, if they were trying to get through a prismatic sphere, they might be better off buying a rod of cancellation, since that was something that people in Lantham could still construct.
He asked if they'd run into such a powerful magic trap in the recently unearthed dwarven mines, just reclaimed from chaos and rumored to be the source of great wealth, but the party refused to answer one way or another. Or take the hint.
So! They began the search for a rod of cancellation, and were eventually approached by a street urchin who told them that 'Mr. Rogers' had heard of their plight and wanted to talk to them.
May: "So, where are we supposed to meet this Mr. Rogers? In a dark alley in the warehouse district?"
Urchin: "How did you know?"
Actually, they were led to a small shed near one of the docks, at which rested a ship with obvious elven styling. Mr. Rogers was inside, and May and Conner went in to talk to him. Abbey decided to scout the perimeter, and quickly discovered a pair of rogues waiting in ambush. She stayed silent and hidden, watching them, deciding not to warn the party since they already suspected an ambush.
Mr. Rogers did not want to sell the party Rods of Cancellation. Mr. Rogers wanted the party to come with him and his crew on his ship to the Shimmering Isles, since he guessed or hoped that they'd found a way to navigate through the chaos mist (and they had -- the magic compass), since why else would they be willing to spend tens of thousands of gold on items whose only realistic purpose was to penetrate the legendary barrier around the Shimmering Isles?
The party admitted they were *looking* for the shimmering isles, but insisted that they wanted to go alone and not bring along Mr. Rogers and his 'friends', whom they did not trust. Mr. Rogers agreed to sell them the rods the next day, at the place of their choosing, then cast a stinking cloud on them as soon as they turned their backs.
Conner managed to stagger out of the cloud without inhaling the noxious vapors, but May stayed in the cloud to fireball Mr. Rogers, taking out the entire building and part of the dock, as it was all made of wooden boards. There was no further sign of Mr. Rogers, but May had stayed in the cloud too long, and staggered out nauseated by the vapors, collapsing at Conner's feet.
Meanwhile, Abbey watched the pair of rogues charge into the stinking cloud, and sneakily scouted around the perimeter of the cloud, away from Conner, and so managed not to see the rogues come back out of the cloud and surround the cleric... and of course she never saw the other pair that had been lying in wait on the other side of the now-destroyed shack.
Conner watched the four rogues closing in on him, and reached down, touched May, and dimension doored behind some crates so that the sorcerer would be safe, then marched out into the open to get their attention, casting more buff spells on himself. At the same time, Abbey finally got in position to snipe at the rogues, and although she couldn't sneak-attack them (since they were rogues) she did distract two of them to come after her instead.
The rogues turned out to not be much of a threat. Abbey finished off her two rapier to rapier, and Conner held off the two on him until May recovered from the stinking cloud and turned them both into slugs. Then Conner picked up the slugs, Abbey started looting the dead, May jumped into the water to search for Mr. Rogers or his body, and the guards arrived, having seen signs of spellcasting.
The guards hadn't actually seen the party cast spells, though, and never managed to spot Abbey at all. One saw May jump off the dock, but May was already invisible by the time he ran over to look into the water. They told Conner that they'd be by later to question them about the obvious spellcasting, and the senseless deaths of two unarmed elves (whose weapons had already been looted).
May saw no trace of Mr. Rogers in the water, but just as he made himself invisible and flying, he saw the elven ship begin to leave. He flew after it, but it was slightly faster than he was, and soon disappeared into the (extremely light) morning mist. Guessing it might have turned ethereal, he cast 'see invisible', and indeed there it was, with Tximisti coming out onto the deck to sail it!
So, the party dragged the two slugged rogues to a woody copse in the farmlands surrounding Lantham for interrogation. The first insisted that he and his friends were rogues unrelated to the 'wealthy merchant' they'd seen the party meeting with, and had ambushed them hoping to steal whatever it was they'd bought from him. He was re-slugged and put in a glass jar without air holes, and shoved into May's Handy Haversack.
The second rogue tried to commit suicide as soon as he was deslugged, but the party saved him, and charmed him, and interrogated him at length, and got the real story. They (and Mr. Rogers) were working with some Tximisti who worked behind the scenes to ensure that Lantham remained a safe world from which to harvest sheep. They'd wanted the party to take them to the Shimmering Isles so that they could summon the cube and destroy the mages there, who might be a threat. He was blinded, and abandoned near the village on the isle of the gods, to live out his life as a beggar.
The party decided that while Mr. Rogers and his 'friends' were a new threat, they didn't have any good way to follow them, and so their primary goal remained to find two rods of cancellation and penetrate the Shimmering Isles. Perhaps if they approached the Church of Lantham, they could commission such a device?
last week next week
Next week Luis is supposed to be actually here in person... so I probably shouldn't reschedule the game yet. We still need more players, though, so after that game the plan is to move it to a different day if that would let us get someone else for it.
Since the scattered herbs were easily replaced with more of the same from the storerooms, the only components the party really needed to complete the bathysphere were enough tar (or glue) to coat the 70-foot diameter sphere, and a dozen bat wings. They decided, not without justification, that it might be easier to obtain these components from an inhabited city than from the ruins of Ephae.
So, May, Conner (the cleric formerly known as Loren), and Abbey teleported back to the isle of the gods, and checked out the general store. It didn't sell components, but it did sell pitch, which was sticky enough to work. They'd need about 1000 pounds of pitch, though, which was a bit much to teleport in one go. So, after teleporting through the mist to take the first half back, May decided to hold off on teleporting the rest until they'd gotten the batwings, which they planned to hunt for in the forest and mountains nearby (as the mage flies).
They quickly located a cave that stunk of bat guano, and walked inside. After sealing the entrance to the cavern with a web, and spotting the carpet of bats that covered the roof of the cave, May decided to wake up the entire colony with a fusillade of magic missiles.
So then the party was in a bat swarm, trapped in it by a web. Conner, a cleric of Freedom, walked into the web unhindered, then reached out to cast Freedom of Movement on May. Abbey had to force her own way out, but managed it. They were all quite bat-bitten by the time they made it out, but Abbey'd grabbed six dead bats, and May had an entire bag of live bats that he plucked out of the web while standing inside it.
They teleported back with the rest of the pitch -- May got a little lost, but not so lost that he couldn't rejoin the party with a fly and four improved invisibilities -- and began enchanting the sphere. The wizards told them that it would take a week to finish all three enchantments -- the flight, the clarivoyance to allow them to see outside, and the magic compass to allow navigation through the chaos mist.
Not wanting to leave the mages to their own devices, but also not wanting to waste the entire week, May went out on his own to buy supplies. He decided that instead of just hiring lumberjacks on the Isle of the Gods, he'd travel to Lantham City itself to buy lumber and other supplies. His approach was careful enough to buy the supplies without a problem, but it left him low on spell slots suitable for teleportation, and he had to leave the lumber behind for the night, 'hidden' in a ditch by the side of the road with a sign reading 'do not steal'. In the morning, he teleported back to find that it had been stolen.
The rest of the week was spent lazing around while the mages worked, and eventually the bathysphere was ready for action. It wasn't very *fast*, drifting along no faster than the average human walked, but its hull was made of iron and sealed, so the dragons hovering over the city outside the chaos mist were unable to affect it, and eventually lost interest.
Thus began a long, slow trip to the Shimmering Isles. In eight days of liesurely flying travel through the chaos mists over the featureless ocean, they were attacked only once, by a pair of spectres, who drained some energy but were ultimately no match for the party. The bathysphere's clairvoyance broke down -- apparently, one of the student wizards did not deserve a passing grade -- but they managed to rig up a mirror outside the peephole in the airlock door to sort of see where they were going.
Finally, they reached the legendary impenetrable barrier surrounding the shimmering isles -- a prismatic sphere 10 miles in radius. The party flew out to look for a way through, only to get lost in the mist and only barely find their way back to the bathysphere before their fly spells ran out.
Not having any of the necessary spells on hand to penetrate a prismatic sphere -- May's examination suggested that the normal methods would work to at least open a temporary hole in the barrier -- the party turned back, wanting to leave the chaos mists before teleporting somewhere where the spells might be found.
They tried to rise out of the chaos mists, but the air got thin before the mist did. So on the second day, they cast 'water breathing', and had everyone swimming in one of the water-filled compartments of the bathysphere, except for the pilot and lookout who took breaths of water in drinking glasses out of barrels. After three hours of climbing past where the air started getting thin, they finally crested out of the chaos mists, polymorphed the student wizards into halflings, and everyone teleported to Sophie's Sanctum.
Which was deserted. Not wanting to risk running into whatever had made Sophie desert it, they immediately telported again, this time to Lantham.
In Lantham, they discovered that 'Gust of Wind' was easily found, 'Cone of Cold' and 'Passwall' were available but very very expensive (10000 gp each), and 'Disintegrate' was a legendary spell, about as easy to find as 'Mass Ressurection' would be on Faerun. The scroll merchant recognized the spells they were searching for, and suggested that, if they were trying to get through a prismatic sphere, they might be better off buying a rod of cancellation, since that was something that people in Lantham could still construct.
He asked if they'd run into such a powerful magic trap in the recently unearthed dwarven mines, just reclaimed from chaos and rumored to be the source of great wealth, but the party refused to answer one way or another. Or take the hint.
So! They began the search for a rod of cancellation, and were eventually approached by a street urchin who told them that 'Mr. Rogers' had heard of their plight and wanted to talk to them.
May: "So, where are we supposed to meet this Mr. Rogers? In a dark alley in the warehouse district?"
Urchin: "How did you know?"
Actually, they were led to a small shed near one of the docks, at which rested a ship with obvious elven styling. Mr. Rogers was inside, and May and Conner went in to talk to him. Abbey decided to scout the perimeter, and quickly discovered a pair of rogues waiting in ambush. She stayed silent and hidden, watching them, deciding not to warn the party since they already suspected an ambush.
Mr. Rogers did not want to sell the party Rods of Cancellation. Mr. Rogers wanted the party to come with him and his crew on his ship to the Shimmering Isles, since he guessed or hoped that they'd found a way to navigate through the chaos mist (and they had -- the magic compass), since why else would they be willing to spend tens of thousands of gold on items whose only realistic purpose was to penetrate the legendary barrier around the Shimmering Isles?
The party admitted they were *looking* for the shimmering isles, but insisted that they wanted to go alone and not bring along Mr. Rogers and his 'friends', whom they did not trust. Mr. Rogers agreed to sell them the rods the next day, at the place of their choosing, then cast a stinking cloud on them as soon as they turned their backs.
Conner managed to stagger out of the cloud without inhaling the noxious vapors, but May stayed in the cloud to fireball Mr. Rogers, taking out the entire building and part of the dock, as it was all made of wooden boards. There was no further sign of Mr. Rogers, but May had stayed in the cloud too long, and staggered out nauseated by the vapors, collapsing at Conner's feet.
Meanwhile, Abbey watched the pair of rogues charge into the stinking cloud, and sneakily scouted around the perimeter of the cloud, away from Conner, and so managed not to see the rogues come back out of the cloud and surround the cleric... and of course she never saw the other pair that had been lying in wait on the other side of the now-destroyed shack.
Conner watched the four rogues closing in on him, and reached down, touched May, and dimension doored behind some crates so that the sorcerer would be safe, then marched out into the open to get their attention, casting more buff spells on himself. At the same time, Abbey finally got in position to snipe at the rogues, and although she couldn't sneak-attack them (since they were rogues) she did distract two of them to come after her instead.
The rogues turned out to not be much of a threat. Abbey finished off her two rapier to rapier, and Conner held off the two on him until May recovered from the stinking cloud and turned them both into slugs. Then Conner picked up the slugs, Abbey started looting the dead, May jumped into the water to search for Mr. Rogers or his body, and the guards arrived, having seen signs of spellcasting.
The guards hadn't actually seen the party cast spells, though, and never managed to spot Abbey at all. One saw May jump off the dock, but May was already invisible by the time he ran over to look into the water. They told Conner that they'd be by later to question them about the obvious spellcasting, and the senseless deaths of two unarmed elves (whose weapons had already been looted).
May saw no trace of Mr. Rogers in the water, but just as he made himself invisible and flying, he saw the elven ship begin to leave. He flew after it, but it was slightly faster than he was, and soon disappeared into the (extremely light) morning mist. Guessing it might have turned ethereal, he cast 'see invisible', and indeed there it was, with Tximisti coming out onto the deck to sail it!
So, the party dragged the two slugged rogues to a woody copse in the farmlands surrounding Lantham for interrogation. The first insisted that he and his friends were rogues unrelated to the 'wealthy merchant' they'd seen the party meeting with, and had ambushed them hoping to steal whatever it was they'd bought from him. He was re-slugged and put in a glass jar without air holes, and shoved into May's Handy Haversack.
The second rogue tried to commit suicide as soon as he was deslugged, but the party saved him, and charmed him, and interrogated him at length, and got the real story. They (and Mr. Rogers) were working with some Tximisti who worked behind the scenes to ensure that Lantham remained a safe world from which to harvest sheep. They'd wanted the party to take them to the Shimmering Isles so that they could summon the cube and destroy the mages there, who might be a threat. He was blinded, and abandoned near the village on the isle of the gods, to live out his life as a beggar.
The party decided that while Mr. Rogers and his 'friends' were a new threat, they didn't have any good way to follow them, and so their primary goal remained to find two rods of cancellation and penetrate the Shimmering Isles. Perhaps if they approached the Church of Lantham, they could commission such a device?
last week next week
Next week Luis is supposed to be actually here in person... so I probably shouldn't reschedule the game yet. We still need more players, though, so after that game the plan is to move it to a different day if that would let us get someone else for it.
