Phoenix Rising
Jun. 6th, 2009 01:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight we played some Shadake. We spent most of the session trying to keep a phoenix from incinerating our ship, and succeeded! We didn't actually save the ship. Or the captain, or most of the crew. Or catch the evil ghost responsible.
We saved the phoenix, though. Sigh.
After eleven days spent doing structural repairs to the Concordance, the ship set sail once more... but shortly after liftoff, people aboard started noticing that things were missing -- little things, mostly, but some important things, like Takara's stuffed tiger.
Also, Vesperian was found murdered -- slashed clumsily multiple times, with no sign of a struggle. Kyngeah and Cane had some blacked out time before the death, but that was *definately* not how Cane would have killed someone. Besides, his sword was clean. Cane inspected Vesperian's blood for poison, and found that he'd been stinking drunk, again -- probably killed while he was unconscious. Nico looked for signs of magic, but the room was clean. Too clean. Ludicrously clean -- probably cleaned of magical traces.
They also found one of the other cooks murdered in the kitchen, sliced up as if he was going to be served as food. It was a murder spree!
The captain gave the party permission to investigate the murders, since one of their friends had been killed. Cane and Kyngeah confronted Teatime, who was very not happy to see them, and didn't have an alibi, but also didn't have any evidence against him other than the obvious fact that he was guilty. Obviously. He also questioned the party right back about his missing invisible knife, although he at least pretended to think that it had been stolen along with everyone else's stuff.
They did find two clues, though -- Sgt. First's sword was the murder weapon, covered in blood. Cane analyzed the blood to verify it was Vesperian's, and... it wasn't all his. It was blood from at least three people of different species, in fact.
They also found a strange feather in Vesperian's possession -- like a peacock feather. Takara, scouting the halls, found a hole clawed in the hull with more of the same sort of feathers by it. Was there a borg-bug on board?!
So they had the crew search the ship, looking for the third murder victim and whatever made the hole. Soon, the searchers who'd gone down to the hold ran back out screaming and bleeding! Cane charged down to see who had attacked them, and found... a bird. Eating the eye of one of the crewmembers.
He took a swing at it, but missed, and so did Nico's followup attack. "Watch out," Kyngeah said, "if you kill it it might explode!" It breathed fire on them, setting the whole stairwell alight, and Kyngeah clarified that it was a phoenix.
So Cane whacked it with his sword to taunt it, and led it up to the deck, where he quicly untied a rope and wrapped it around his hand, then leapt off the side, to try to engage the phoenix in midair where it couldn't set the boat on fire when it died (he had the drakivolki 'flying' potions if the rope was burned).
The phoenix took one look at the rapidly approaching moon about to smash the ship to splinters, and flew away. Mission accomplished?
Nico didn't think the ship's headlong rush towards doom was normal, and headed for the pilot house to ask the navigator 'WTF'? But what he found there was the first mate dead and the captain possessed by a spirit speaking in a strange, archaic tongue, deliberately steering the ship towards its doom. He shoved the captain aside, and started randomly (well, methodically) pulling levers, sending the ship into a spin.
Cane hadn't realized that the approach to the moon was unusual -- for all he knew that was how ships normally landed! The spin was obviously a bad thing, though. Luckily for him, it dropped him back on the deck, and he was able to use his mountaineering training to climb to the pilothouse and help talk Nico through how to operate the ship. He didn't really know how it worked either, but he did know how to put the vanes in a neutral position, and from there... um, we're upside down. Okay, carefully flip it over, and I'll have the crew set up some sails to slow us down without messing with the vanes more.
...except that they'd just dumped all the skilled crew off the deck to their deaths, by flying upside down close enough to a moon that its gravity was ascendant. Damn it.
Still, between the two of them they managed not to kill everyone on board the ship with their landing. The ship was in sad shape, though -- all five vanes torn, the bottom of the hull sheared off, gunpowder from shattered barrels scattered all over, and worst of all, the phoenix came back.
For its nest. Of exploding eggs. Nestled underneath one of the vanes, right near the pile of gunpowder surrounding the ship. Since it breathed fire at anyone approaching within line of sight of the eggs, this was a dillema.
The first attempt at getting rid of it was to poison a, er, a piece of meat with sleeping potion, and throw it where the phoenix could get at it. Instead of eating it, though, the phoenix added the poisoned meat to its nest. Oops.
For the second attempt, Cane tried to use the shed feathers to make a 'scent of pheonix' potion -- the recipe called for the hair of a creature, and would use scent to make creatures of that species treat you as one of them. This wouldn't make the phoenix peaceful, but the thought was that it would keep it from breathing fire, since fire wouldn't hurt another phoenix. The potion didn't work exactly as expected -- it exploded in Cane's face, in fact, turning all his fur into feathers. He did smell different, though, so maybe it worked...
To protect against the expected pecks, he wrapped himself up in layers and layers of clothing until he could barely move, then rushed towards the next, planning to pick it up and move it away from the ship. As soon as it saw him, the phoenix breathed fire, setting his clothing alight, although he was wearing enough off it that he wasn't instantly burned. He didn't let that stop him!
But he was blinded, especially by the need to shield his eyes form the phoenix's pecks, so he had trouble getting to the nest. He did provide a wonderful distraction for Takara, who ran in, grabbed the nest, and ran off with it into the forest, until she found a rocky clearing where the eggs could explode in safety, and not set the ship or the forest on fire. She also rescued her stuffed tiger, of course.
After healing Cane's burns, Kyngeah cast a sanctuary spell on herself and went out to find the nest. The phoenix was angry at her, but failed to resist the spell, and couldn't attack her, so she was able to retrieve her own belongings, and heal one of the eggs that had cracked.
As soon as Cane was healed and unwrapping himself from his somewhat-effective makeshift armor, he found himself cornered by Teatime.
Teamtime: "I'm pretty sure it's not you, but you brought it here. This moon has no defense against it, and who knows if its gods will even care? We have to stop it here! I need my knife. Was it in the nest?"
Cane, trying not to smirk: "I didn't see it."
Teatime: "So you do know where it is. It's important!"
Cane: "I'm not entirely sure that it's not you."
Teatime: "What would it take for you to trust me?"
Cane: "Mind control?"
Teatime: "Okay then."
So Teatime forced a mind-meld to show Cane what he actually thought, in undeniable terms. He was not the murderer. He was an amoral bastard, but not THAT evil -- he didn't enjoy killing or anything. The girl he was tracking down did. She was a sort of evil ghost that possessed people, but couldn't stay long without a body. She was also his student, which was why her mind control in action looked exactly like the mind control he'd used during the battle against the drakivolki.
At any rate, the survivors of the crash (29 of them, including the party, the one-eyed squid the phoenix had been eating but Kyngeah had saved, and a mage stuck in a coma) set up a distress beacon, failed to repair the vanes (it would have taken magic, it seemed -- sewing them up physically didn't stop the magic from leaking out) and weatherproofed the boat to keep them warm in the chilly, wintery moon mountains. Nico and Takara took a jaunt to check out the locals, who were primitive cave-men. Er, cave bear-cats. No one had any idea what moon they were on.
Two days layer, there was a massive explosion as the pheonix eggs hatched, and seven fiery birds flew off into the sky, leaving the shipwreck behind.
last session | next session
We saved the phoenix, though. Sigh.
After eleven days spent doing structural repairs to the Concordance, the ship set sail once more... but shortly after liftoff, people aboard started noticing that things were missing -- little things, mostly, but some important things, like Takara's stuffed tiger.
Also, Vesperian was found murdered -- slashed clumsily multiple times, with no sign of a struggle. Kyngeah and Cane had some blacked out time before the death, but that was *definately* not how Cane would have killed someone. Besides, his sword was clean. Cane inspected Vesperian's blood for poison, and found that he'd been stinking drunk, again -- probably killed while he was unconscious. Nico looked for signs of magic, but the room was clean. Too clean. Ludicrously clean -- probably cleaned of magical traces.
They also found one of the other cooks murdered in the kitchen, sliced up as if he was going to be served as food. It was a murder spree!
The captain gave the party permission to investigate the murders, since one of their friends had been killed. Cane and Kyngeah confronted Teatime, who was very not happy to see them, and didn't have an alibi, but also didn't have any evidence against him other than the obvious fact that he was guilty. Obviously. He also questioned the party right back about his missing invisible knife, although he at least pretended to think that it had been stolen along with everyone else's stuff.
They did find two clues, though -- Sgt. First's sword was the murder weapon, covered in blood. Cane analyzed the blood to verify it was Vesperian's, and... it wasn't all his. It was blood from at least three people of different species, in fact.
They also found a strange feather in Vesperian's possession -- like a peacock feather. Takara, scouting the halls, found a hole clawed in the hull with more of the same sort of feathers by it. Was there a borg-bug on board?!
So they had the crew search the ship, looking for the third murder victim and whatever made the hole. Soon, the searchers who'd gone down to the hold ran back out screaming and bleeding! Cane charged down to see who had attacked them, and found... a bird. Eating the eye of one of the crewmembers.
He took a swing at it, but missed, and so did Nico's followup attack. "Watch out," Kyngeah said, "if you kill it it might explode!" It breathed fire on them, setting the whole stairwell alight, and Kyngeah clarified that it was a phoenix.
So Cane whacked it with his sword to taunt it, and led it up to the deck, where he quicly untied a rope and wrapped it around his hand, then leapt off the side, to try to engage the phoenix in midair where it couldn't set the boat on fire when it died (he had the drakivolki 'flying' potions if the rope was burned).
The phoenix took one look at the rapidly approaching moon about to smash the ship to splinters, and flew away. Mission accomplished?
Nico didn't think the ship's headlong rush towards doom was normal, and headed for the pilot house to ask the navigator 'WTF'? But what he found there was the first mate dead and the captain possessed by a spirit speaking in a strange, archaic tongue, deliberately steering the ship towards its doom. He shoved the captain aside, and started randomly (well, methodically) pulling levers, sending the ship into a spin.
Cane hadn't realized that the approach to the moon was unusual -- for all he knew that was how ships normally landed! The spin was obviously a bad thing, though. Luckily for him, it dropped him back on the deck, and he was able to use his mountaineering training to climb to the pilothouse and help talk Nico through how to operate the ship. He didn't really know how it worked either, but he did know how to put the vanes in a neutral position, and from there... um, we're upside down. Okay, carefully flip it over, and I'll have the crew set up some sails to slow us down without messing with the vanes more.
...except that they'd just dumped all the skilled crew off the deck to their deaths, by flying upside down close enough to a moon that its gravity was ascendant. Damn it.
Still, between the two of them they managed not to kill everyone on board the ship with their landing. The ship was in sad shape, though -- all five vanes torn, the bottom of the hull sheared off, gunpowder from shattered barrels scattered all over, and worst of all, the phoenix came back.
For its nest. Of exploding eggs. Nestled underneath one of the vanes, right near the pile of gunpowder surrounding the ship. Since it breathed fire at anyone approaching within line of sight of the eggs, this was a dillema.
The first attempt at getting rid of it was to poison a, er, a piece of meat with sleeping potion, and throw it where the phoenix could get at it. Instead of eating it, though, the phoenix added the poisoned meat to its nest. Oops.
For the second attempt, Cane tried to use the shed feathers to make a 'scent of pheonix' potion -- the recipe called for the hair of a creature, and would use scent to make creatures of that species treat you as one of them. This wouldn't make the phoenix peaceful, but the thought was that it would keep it from breathing fire, since fire wouldn't hurt another phoenix. The potion didn't work exactly as expected -- it exploded in Cane's face, in fact, turning all his fur into feathers. He did smell different, though, so maybe it worked...
To protect against the expected pecks, he wrapped himself up in layers and layers of clothing until he could barely move, then rushed towards the next, planning to pick it up and move it away from the ship. As soon as it saw him, the phoenix breathed fire, setting his clothing alight, although he was wearing enough off it that he wasn't instantly burned. He didn't let that stop him!
But he was blinded, especially by the need to shield his eyes form the phoenix's pecks, so he had trouble getting to the nest. He did provide a wonderful distraction for Takara, who ran in, grabbed the nest, and ran off with it into the forest, until she found a rocky clearing where the eggs could explode in safety, and not set the ship or the forest on fire. She also rescued her stuffed tiger, of course.
After healing Cane's burns, Kyngeah cast a sanctuary spell on herself and went out to find the nest. The phoenix was angry at her, but failed to resist the spell, and couldn't attack her, so she was able to retrieve her own belongings, and heal one of the eggs that had cracked.
As soon as Cane was healed and unwrapping himself from his somewhat-effective makeshift armor, he found himself cornered by Teatime.
Teamtime: "I'm pretty sure it's not you, but you brought it here. This moon has no defense against it, and who knows if its gods will even care? We have to stop it here! I need my knife. Was it in the nest?"
Cane, trying not to smirk: "I didn't see it."
Teatime: "So you do know where it is. It's important!"
Cane: "I'm not entirely sure that it's not you."
Teatime: "What would it take for you to trust me?"
Cane: "Mind control?"
Teatime: "Okay then."
So Teatime forced a mind-meld to show Cane what he actually thought, in undeniable terms. He was not the murderer. He was an amoral bastard, but not THAT evil -- he didn't enjoy killing or anything. The girl he was tracking down did. She was a sort of evil ghost that possessed people, but couldn't stay long without a body. She was also his student, which was why her mind control in action looked exactly like the mind control he'd used during the battle against the drakivolki.
At any rate, the survivors of the crash (29 of them, including the party, the one-eyed squid the phoenix had been eating but Kyngeah had saved, and a mage stuck in a coma) set up a distress beacon, failed to repair the vanes (it would have taken magic, it seemed -- sewing them up physically didn't stop the magic from leaking out) and weatherproofed the boat to keep them warm in the chilly, wintery moon mountains. Nico and Takara took a jaunt to check out the locals, who were primitive cave-men. Er, cave bear-cats. No one had any idea what moon they were on.
Two days layer, there was a massive explosion as the pheonix eggs hatched, and seven fiery birds flew off into the sky, leaving the shipwreck behind.
last session | next session
