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terryclothTonight was Lazar's Friday Shadake game, where in the wake of disaster our heroes re-examined their priorities, and decided to be good instead of evil. To shut Tsuru up.
Sophie discovered that, in fact, not only was her coin purse missing, but her secret stash of coins hidden magically inside the walls of the unused wing of her house (unused because most of the family had been drafted). She went to her mother to complain, and received a half-hour cursing tirade -- apparently, *all* of her family's money, precious metal and gems had been stolen, including everything in their bank account and the shininess (but not the functionality) of Sophie's mana crystals.
After talking with Tsuru in a futile attempt to get some clue of who might have done this, Sophie decided that it was probably the result of magic (to which everyone else said DUH!) and spent the rest of the night, and the second mana crystal from the assassination, summoning a powerful demon to follow the magical trail (presumably) left by the spell and exact vengeance. Lacking the materials for a proper ritual, she was forced to enlist Flokin's help, which meant that the spell had side effects, the most noticable of which was that the new, empty wing of the house caught fire once more... although it was only illusionary fire this time, and didn't actually burn down.
When Tsuru asked what she'd done, Sophie replied simply, "I've been casting dark and evil magics."
In class the next day, their relatively-beloved 'Life' teacher was still missing, replaced (to their horror) by the etiquette teacher. Somehow, this led to the sailing class being replaced by a naval combat class, in which they practiced boarding and repelling boarding, and Sophie managed to lose several whips attempting to master the whole 'wrap whip around target and yank' trick. During class, Kiet spotted the teacher murdering one of the crew of the boat. He didn't bring this up until after class, when they could be sure she wasn't still within earshot.
Thoroughly confused now, Sophie started making a list of who was 'good' (herself, and her missing brother, and the religion teacher... later she reluctantly added Tsuru and Kiet) and who was 'evil' (Lazarus of course, and the murderous and overly strict etiquette teacher, and Lord Mosher (the magic teacher and Lazarus' father), and Lord Aberhad (the city's top mage), and Tormierre (her boss), and Glick (her ex-boss), and the dragon, and... quite a few others). Eventually, she came to the conclusion that the best course of action was to somehow shift herself into the 'evil' column, where she'd be safe.
Tsuru was not on board with that plan, and revealed instead that he had in his possession the real jade tiger, that he'd stolen during the initiation -- and that it was the key to the dragon's cave, without which none of the willing sacrifices could present themselves to the dragon and save the city from draconic vengeance. He revealed that he knew who this year's chosen sacrifices were -- one was the priest Sophie had annihilated (explaining the dragon's attacks... and something Sophie had already considered as a possibility), another was one of Baird's friends who *hadn't* made the cut to join the gang, and the third was an Anura. Tsuru insisted that they find any remaining sacrifices before Tormierre had THEM killed too, and help them kill themselves for the good of all Midrein.
Tsuru was also sort of miffed that Tormierre had had them kill the priest under false pretenses. Sophie didn't care -- she kind of expected superiors to lie to her. Parents always did, after all. Kiet, as always, refused to comment.
There weren't many Anura in the city, and most of them lived in one small neighborhood, so they decided to try to track down the mysterious Third Sacrifice (since they didn't know where to find Baird until that night, or maybe the next day). They found that he'd already left, and so set out to the castle to borrow the drakivolki wings and fly after him, to give him the key and maybe ensure that he made it there in one piece to be devoured.
While retrieving the wings from the castle, they ran into Philander, who had a message to pass back to Sophie from Corrin, written in invisible ink (which Sophie could read due to the still-lingering effects of the hallucinogen from weeks back). Apparently he had *not* become a pirate, as she'd assumed, but was sneaking around the Mines of Evil spying on the minions of the Argent Claw. He sent back maps and urged her (and presumably her friends) to rescue one of the zombie miners and get Lord Mosher or Lord Aberhad to find a way to cure them. He also described the disease-like effect that turned them into zombies -- Tsuru was already showing signs.
But first things first -- the zombies weren't going anywhere, while the Anur was. Of course, Kiet's hawk and Tsuru's flitter scouted ahead. The hawk ran into the hannah pair that had tried so assidiously to cheat during the initiation, who were obviously also searching for this Anur, and also recognized and attacked it -- it got away by turning invisible, and then the pair was blown up by a floating bomb, which said 'You're already too late!'
The flitter located a large glacier-like mass of snow and ice, which was the easiest way up the mountain due to the many tunnels running through it, and also had plenty of meltwater to keep an Anur wet. So it started searching inside, just as passages started collapsing with suspiciously apt timing, and eventually found the Anur, just in time to be trapped with it in a small loop of tunnel, deep within the heart of the ice.
Following the signal from the flitter, Sophie and Tsuru and Kiet landed on the glacier, and tried to think of how to possibly get them out. Entering the tunnels from the bottom would mean cutting through multiple collapses, which looked to have been caused by bombs and might be hundreds of feet in length. Entering from the top would mean fighting whatever was sending out the bombs, as the bombs emerged from that exit on a regular basis. Tunneling down through the ice seemed like the best choice... but it was 560 feet down -- way too long even for fire magic.
Unless... perhaps a summoned creature, that breathed fire, and ate wood, could do the trick? Sophie conjured a dome of glacier-colored smoke to keep the fire she intended to be using soon from bringing in visitors from miles away, then spectacularly failed to summon a creature, instead summoning a giant ball of magma, which sank into the ice...
The magma melted its way down to the chamber where the flitter and Anur were trapped, but then cooled, and looking down into the shaft the three could see hundreds of feet of water. Tsuru had Kiet enchant him so as not to have to breathe, and swam down through the water to the rock, counting on Sophie to release the spell and get rid of the rock, after which he'd swim through the flooding waters and hopefully safe both his flitter and the sacrifice.
It didn't work, though. Sophie couldn't release the boulder spell because she'd never cast a boulder spell, at least not intentionally. So, noticing that the water was freezing over, she tried again and this time got a proper flamethrower elemental -- a twenty foot snake that wrapped itself around her body and spat dangerous flames, good for melting ice and not so good for evaporating water.
They served to rescue Tsuru from the icing column of meltwater, however, and then to burrow down to the chamber with a series of smaller switchbacks (leaving space for melted water to gather). Once the somewhat winding tunnel was complete, the flitter flew free on its own, and Sophie wrapped her flamethrower snake around the badly chilled Anur and had Kiet levitate them back up.
Where they were surrounded by ice birds, descending through the smoke.
last week next session
Lazar and Snowy were both really tired this week... Snowy (Tsuru) in particular kept falling asleep. Regardless, it was kind of fun, even if an awful lot of it was chatter between the characters.
Sophie discovered that, in fact, not only was her coin purse missing, but her secret stash of coins hidden magically inside the walls of the unused wing of her house (unused because most of the family had been drafted). She went to her mother to complain, and received a half-hour cursing tirade -- apparently, *all* of her family's money, precious metal and gems had been stolen, including everything in their bank account and the shininess (but not the functionality) of Sophie's mana crystals.
After talking with Tsuru in a futile attempt to get some clue of who might have done this, Sophie decided that it was probably the result of magic (to which everyone else said DUH!) and spent the rest of the night, and the second mana crystal from the assassination, summoning a powerful demon to follow the magical trail (presumably) left by the spell and exact vengeance. Lacking the materials for a proper ritual, she was forced to enlist Flokin's help, which meant that the spell had side effects, the most noticable of which was that the new, empty wing of the house caught fire once more... although it was only illusionary fire this time, and didn't actually burn down.
When Tsuru asked what she'd done, Sophie replied simply, "I've been casting dark and evil magics."
In class the next day, their relatively-beloved 'Life' teacher was still missing, replaced (to their horror) by the etiquette teacher. Somehow, this led to the sailing class being replaced by a naval combat class, in which they practiced boarding and repelling boarding, and Sophie managed to lose several whips attempting to master the whole 'wrap whip around target and yank' trick. During class, Kiet spotted the teacher murdering one of the crew of the boat. He didn't bring this up until after class, when they could be sure she wasn't still within earshot.
Thoroughly confused now, Sophie started making a list of who was 'good' (herself, and her missing brother, and the religion teacher... later she reluctantly added Tsuru and Kiet) and who was 'evil' (Lazarus of course, and the murderous and overly strict etiquette teacher, and Lord Mosher (the magic teacher and Lazarus' father), and Lord Aberhad (the city's top mage), and Tormierre (her boss), and Glick (her ex-boss), and the dragon, and... quite a few others). Eventually, she came to the conclusion that the best course of action was to somehow shift herself into the 'evil' column, where she'd be safe.
Tsuru was not on board with that plan, and revealed instead that he had in his possession the real jade tiger, that he'd stolen during the initiation -- and that it was the key to the dragon's cave, without which none of the willing sacrifices could present themselves to the dragon and save the city from draconic vengeance. He revealed that he knew who this year's chosen sacrifices were -- one was the priest Sophie had annihilated (explaining the dragon's attacks... and something Sophie had already considered as a possibility), another was one of Baird's friends who *hadn't* made the cut to join the gang, and the third was an Anura. Tsuru insisted that they find any remaining sacrifices before Tormierre had THEM killed too, and help them kill themselves for the good of all Midrein.
Tsuru was also sort of miffed that Tormierre had had them kill the priest under false pretenses. Sophie didn't care -- she kind of expected superiors to lie to her. Parents always did, after all. Kiet, as always, refused to comment.
There weren't many Anura in the city, and most of them lived in one small neighborhood, so they decided to try to track down the mysterious Third Sacrifice (since they didn't know where to find Baird until that night, or maybe the next day). They found that he'd already left, and so set out to the castle to borrow the drakivolki wings and fly after him, to give him the key and maybe ensure that he made it there in one piece to be devoured.
While retrieving the wings from the castle, they ran into Philander, who had a message to pass back to Sophie from Corrin, written in invisible ink (which Sophie could read due to the still-lingering effects of the hallucinogen from weeks back). Apparently he had *not* become a pirate, as she'd assumed, but was sneaking around the Mines of Evil spying on the minions of the Argent Claw. He sent back maps and urged her (and presumably her friends) to rescue one of the zombie miners and get Lord Mosher or Lord Aberhad to find a way to cure them. He also described the disease-like effect that turned them into zombies -- Tsuru was already showing signs.
But first things first -- the zombies weren't going anywhere, while the Anur was. Of course, Kiet's hawk and Tsuru's flitter scouted ahead. The hawk ran into the hannah pair that had tried so assidiously to cheat during the initiation, who were obviously also searching for this Anur, and also recognized and attacked it -- it got away by turning invisible, and then the pair was blown up by a floating bomb, which said 'You're already too late!'
The flitter located a large glacier-like mass of snow and ice, which was the easiest way up the mountain due to the many tunnels running through it, and also had plenty of meltwater to keep an Anur wet. So it started searching inside, just as passages started collapsing with suspiciously apt timing, and eventually found the Anur, just in time to be trapped with it in a small loop of tunnel, deep within the heart of the ice.
Following the signal from the flitter, Sophie and Tsuru and Kiet landed on the glacier, and tried to think of how to possibly get them out. Entering the tunnels from the bottom would mean cutting through multiple collapses, which looked to have been caused by bombs and might be hundreds of feet in length. Entering from the top would mean fighting whatever was sending out the bombs, as the bombs emerged from that exit on a regular basis. Tunneling down through the ice seemed like the best choice... but it was 560 feet down -- way too long even for fire magic.
Unless... perhaps a summoned creature, that breathed fire, and ate wood, could do the trick? Sophie conjured a dome of glacier-colored smoke to keep the fire she intended to be using soon from bringing in visitors from miles away, then spectacularly failed to summon a creature, instead summoning a giant ball of magma, which sank into the ice...
The magma melted its way down to the chamber where the flitter and Anur were trapped, but then cooled, and looking down into the shaft the three could see hundreds of feet of water. Tsuru had Kiet enchant him so as not to have to breathe, and swam down through the water to the rock, counting on Sophie to release the spell and get rid of the rock, after which he'd swim through the flooding waters and hopefully safe both his flitter and the sacrifice.
It didn't work, though. Sophie couldn't release the boulder spell because she'd never cast a boulder spell, at least not intentionally. So, noticing that the water was freezing over, she tried again and this time got a proper flamethrower elemental -- a twenty foot snake that wrapped itself around her body and spat dangerous flames, good for melting ice and not so good for evaporating water.
They served to rescue Tsuru from the icing column of meltwater, however, and then to burrow down to the chamber with a series of smaller switchbacks (leaving space for melted water to gather). Once the somewhat winding tunnel was complete, the flitter flew free on its own, and Sophie wrapped her flamethrower snake around the badly chilled Anur and had Kiet levitate them back up.
Where they were surrounded by ice birds, descending through the smoke.
last week next session
Lazar and Snowy were both really tired this week... Snowy (Tsuru) in particular kept falling asleep. Regardless, it was kind of fun, even if an awful lot of it was chatter between the characters.
