A large concern

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Summary

Adventure: A large concern
GM: Jono Bean
Session: Summer 815
Night: Monday nights starting at 7:00pm
Location Waterview
Level: High Level+.
Information: Information from players for Jono.
House Rules: Quickness & Slowness, No 'B' Colleges please

The Party:

Sign up by invite by Baron Silverfoam.

Employer & others

Job:

The reliable visions of Eyes of Wisdom the following problems *need* to be resolved without delay.

  • To accompany the Royal fleet under Commander DK & Silverfoam on board 'The Light of Skies' and relieve the Elven Isles from Destiny if negotiations fail.
  • To use the 'dark portal' with stealth to recapture the County Palatine of Borovia.

Payment:

  • A Mortal Coil.
  • A stone of great value.
  • A hope and undertaking.
  • A cup of hope and pure joy.
  • A small house by the sea (and lands).
  • The use of a flying ship.

Scribe Notes

Session 1

The elf queen's consort, Youthful Expectations, instructs us the jobs as above.

Destiny has bought the Isles from the Drow that captured it, and want to sell it back to the elves. Negotiations have begun at 25 millions sp and we may need to intercede if the negotiations fail.

There is a portal from the Isles that used to go to Kinlu but now connects to Borovia. We might be able to find an egg that the drow have been using to realign portals.

The axe alliance have been supporting and harbouring refugees from Borovia, and are helping Silverfoam in this mission with money and troops (dwarves), including an earth mage. He gives us each a stone that allows casting of damage spells without preparing.

We can keep salvage except things belonging to Borovia, Alfheim, the Isles, ships and portals.

We go to Isel Ith's local estate to meet some elves and a beltaine invisible flying ship. They give us each a small keg of crash supplies.

The ship takes a discrete path to Alfheim, and we travel for 18 hours to arrive, in 10 hours, at dawn.

2nd Meadow

The seers are here. The navy is here. We spend the day here then we fly 60 miles northeast to arrive at the armoury an hour later and anchor at the top of a large pyramid, which turns out to be in Terra Nova.

We need to get maps of the building and the area for Starflower to scry on.

Session 2

3rd Meadow

We enter the armoury via huge spiral stairs. The armoury has magic that detects humans.

Some elves have gone to Eidolon to investigate, but not following a lead, just for political reasons.

They believe that they are not "alone" in the armoury, guest in question in darkness, deadly weapons may be wandering the halls.

We ask for an inventory and are told the some of the armourers may have such, and one of them is sometimes lucid.

Some of the weapons are from Alfheim (across the sea; we now figure out that we are in Terra Nova).

They give us amulets to allow us to use magic here, but it is not safe for non elves to wear them; they become enslaved.

They have a weapon that can cleave away necromancy which they offer to use on Naden. They tell us not to go below the 5th floor or past the red line of mana.

We go to the library (3rd floor), where there is an old man in a rocking chair by the fire. He tells us that the map room is on the 3rd floor. Many have gone missing from the 6th floor. He knows that the anvil must be in the armoury, because it could not have left. We can't understand his directions so we set out carrying him on his chair. Starflower decides to cure him of his age problem and it work - some of it falls on Naden and Toledo - but now he can lead us. Now he says that the map room is on the 4th floor. Some walls move, but he doesn't get lost because he can read the mosaic floor. (it is written in many languages and changes, especially around Isilith, but Starflower could figure it out in a couple of centuries).

We walk for a couple of hours and come to a room full of rocks and crystals, which is the map room.

Non elves can't be in the room so we wait out in the hallway (which is as everywhere in the complex, 50 foot wide). Things keep coming out of the floor mosaic and taking copies of the maps that people are part way through, turning the paper and quills into crystals.

Starflower finds and memorises a map of the 6th floor where the anvil should be. For some reason Caprice knows some stuff about it. It took most of the cartographer's life to make it. The entry in in the centre. The anvil is stored in a room (b) surrounded by 10 guardians. It was in room (a) getting cleansed by priests (of the new day or of evening) after being used by the previous party. It is couch sized and was being moved back to (b) by 4 people when it and its transporters vanished.

Outside in the hall Starflower makes a copy of her map (scale is 50ft per square) and does her map thing but can't find the anvil on the 6th floor, or on Alusia, or for that matter, us on Alusia, so we decide that the armoury must be unscriable.

We go back up to the mess on the 3rd floor. We are told about the 6th floor: there are formerly living minions in a huge ball, storms of iron filings. A creature of lava might be there, a person giant-sized, water grew it. 75 dwarf workers in c,d,e.

To get down there is a shaft leading down, with carts that are lowered down. If you go down not in a cart all magic is stripped off.

The investigators were recently returned Brethren of Stars (Beltaine). The missing are Beltaine.

Teleporting in here ends you up in a room on the 5th floor except maybe if you are a princess. Shadow walking may be OK but we're don't plan to try it.

Isil Eth tries going phantasmal but is attacked by a phantasmal 30ft hellhound which is necromantic and part of an automatic system.

Session 3

Only Is can see it, and when she turns back she can't see it either. She goes back to phantasmal and it is nearly on her. Mind counter on its area doesn't stop it.

Those with spirit vision see "ghosts" place balls covered in grave moss on the floors. Three of us pick them up and toss them further down the corridor, where they burst into swarms of scarabs. We decide to run away but Naden grabs another ball that is about to go off and is pulled by the mosaic floor into the phantasmal version.

Toldedo tries to teleport and the same thing happens. They both manage to jump back through the holes in the mosaic left when they went through but take damage from the sharp edges. Any damage not healed in the first pulse then becomes replaced with mosaic peices and the damage is permanent - in Toledo's case 80% of his FT and EN.

We enquire from the locals about possible remedies

  • the 7th floor golems make porcelain plate and can work with the material, but they are 2.5 miles from the entry shaft
  • on the 5th floor is a monster (Astaroth) who does true forms with very hit

We go back up to the ship

We divinate Toledo

4th-6th Meadow

We head back to the guild and arrive at Seagate in 26 hours. We hunt down Turf for a Trueform which takes 2 days.

Meanwhile a map reading is done for the anvil, which shows it in the pagan mountains, west of Freetown, east of Glissom, north of Orctown. Kree and the Ruby Scourge don't show up on the Alusia maps.

Isil Eth is required at some social/political events.

We arrange to deliver 7 chests of silver as we portal to Glissom.

A map reading of the Glissom area shows the anvil to be in the Halls of the Frost Giants. (Some giants from there tried to hire a party about a year ago but it was tossed away as gibberish. A day later a spy is found who remembers that it said "willing to pay to sort a problem with a heartless giant" but nobody was sent as it was believed that the giants would not honour a deal.

7th-10th Meadow

We portal to Glissom and walk two days north to the foothills of the Shriven Hills. A locate now places the anvil south east of us north or Orctown again. We travel towards it by Starflower's teleport. We make slow time as it is much harder if she can't see the target location and the mountains are shrouded in unnatural mists.

We make 6 miles in the first day and 5 miles on the second. That night, descending into a valley for shelter we find a worked staircase of dwarven work. We climb the stairs for 2 hours and find ourselves at a sealed door. We knock and are let in an hour later. We are shown into the main hall where there are a couple of hundred dwarves.

We ask for a map of the area, and are hoping that the dwarves can let us use tunnels through the mountains.

Session 4

11th-13th Meadow

We sleep the night, then are banqueted till the afternoon. These dwarves are some that I made friends with many years ago.

The map provided shows 4 entrances that we can use. Map reading show the anvil about 10-15 miles from the southernmost exit. It is within an area claimed by "the Voice of Death" a powerful human wizard. He is also known to the orcs as Morgor or "Dark Terror". Turns out he has employed guild parties in the past. He sticks to his deals but drives a hard bargain. He has had a fracas with Sabrina. He has summoned a guild party. He is known to use succubi and incubi. He has rescued a party from Shrivers in the Shriven Hills and helped against the orcs.

We figure that he is leading us here with the anvil being scable so we will try just going to talk to him.

His complex used to belong to a blue dragon, which he threw out, but which is still in the area. It has cold, lightning and time affecting, ie aging, abilities.

The dwarves think that he would like to capture me, as Queen of Glissom.

In the afternoon we set off through the tunnels, and after walking for what seems like to weeks, but is only 3 days, we arrive at the exit.

14th Meadow

There is a tradepost here with about 15 humans working. The dwarves give us some food, which can also be used to staunch wounds and can be lit as a signal fire.

We are told that the dragon will be able to smell the magic on us, but we can't think of any way to cover that, except for the black and grey alder flower which is found on ships floating on the 43rd plane of hell, "the drowning deep", which would make it sneeze and avoid us.

Keisha sets up a rune portal just outside the door. There is an obelisk here which is a portal that Morgor sometimes comes out of. It is under a stasis effect, and knocking on it has no effect.

We buff up and leave just after dusk, and the dwarves shut the door.

As the dwarves shut the door, (the outside is covered in claw marks, griffon or gargoyle sized, not dragon) we are ambushed by some humanoid figure covered in ice armour, a demonic and 3 golems. Isil Eth makes short work of them with TK rage of the cliff.

We are on a wide landing at with stair going down and around from the edge. The view is much better here; the unnatural mists are to the north but not between us and where we want to go.

We can see two more ambushes on the way to a forest and a river, and 3 caves in the opposite valley.

There is am unnaturally grey mountain where the anvil locate points. We teleport to a mountain about 8 miles away. There are dragon clawmarks here, and from here we can see a huge orrery and a row of columns on the grey mountain.

Suddenly a wash of cold,carnivorous fog washes down on us, which can only be seen by those that fail to resist (stasis amulets allow a 2nd resist), and those that fail take damage and are aged.

We quickly teleport to near the orrery. It is warm and pleasant here, except that there seems to be cold iron under the ground which is hurting Isil Eth. The orrery is about 100' across and there is a spiral staircase leading down from the centre of it. The arade of fruit trees leads towards the mountain proper but there is something in the nature of an illusory terrain between us and it and aslo over where we are, so we can't see it properly. We are all hit with lightning when we arrive. Looking for tracks we can see that 7 people have come along the arcade at dawn and put down mats.

We head along the arcade. We dicover that healing potions don't take effect, like a disjunction. When Isil Eth tries to fly up to get above the effect she is again hit by lightning when she gets up to about 40', which we discover is shooting up from small eye? things on the ground.

The fruit on the trees seem to be normal.

Info dump

including some of above and results
The consort asked us to perform 4 tasks

  1. To find recover a missing Anvil taken under concerning circumstances.
  2. To seek and arrange the release of a friend of the Crown from the Ruby Scourge which will greatly be assisted by Axis Dragonmage.
  3. To accompany the Royal fleet under Commander DK & Silverfoam on board 'The Light of Skies' and relieve the Elven Isles from Destiny if negotiations fail.
  4. To use the 'dark portal' with stealth to recapture the County Palatine of Borovia.
  5. Find egg which attunes or realigns portals.

We achieved thing number one and got some information towards thing number 2. Clearly we are all currently working on the rest.
Here is a bunch of notes I have made of things that seems important to us now (possibly in jumbled order):
The person who gave us the tasks is Sir Celladoor Bladekind, consort of the Elvish Queen. As of Summer 818 WK he is at the elf embassy outside of Seagate waiting to talk to us.

The missing anvil was in the Eastern Armoury also known as Tee Ra-Mil. It was legitimately taken out of the armoury but stolen and had not been returned. As I follow it, Morgor took it to lure someone/something but became enthralled, so his minions, by following the letter of their instructions, used it to lure us to rescue him from the enthrallment. Those guarding the anvil were slept/petrified and sunk in the bay outside of Freetaun. They are probably still there as at Summer 818 WK.

We succeeded in that and he returned the anvil to the armoury.
He has not rewarded us for this as yet, so should be in our debt.
He is known to drive a hard bargain, but to keep his word.

The anvil is similar to the one use in the war that needed to be dropped by an earth mage and killed Mil Scis but we don't know the details. If succubi or seraphim are killed in its vicinity the effects are "catastrophic". We don't know whether the anvil is still in the armoury now. Morgor was enthralled by PHENEX: The Immortal Marquis because he tried to summon Malphus but someone had swapped the page. Phenex charms by song, even if you can't hear. Phenex devours the flesh of sentients.

How we dealt with the Phenex problem:

  1. Help Morgor by using counter music to lessen the charm effect
  2. Help Morgor by using panacea
  3. Three incoming banishments
  4. Protecting the succubi and seraphim so that the anvil didn't kill everything.

It seems that Morgor was trying to lure Ruby Scourge, who wants the anvil. The Ruby Scourge wanted the anvil so as to deny it to the Drow because the Drow know that "if you kill a relative blood offering has effects". Kree is known to have stolen six Ruby Scourge scales that Morgor had and to have taken a sack containing the head of a terrible creature that turns things to stone which he has placed outside the lair of the blue ice dragon. Since he has been sneaking around he probably also swapped the page. He has also taken some tea herbs that are used for a blindness potion to avoid the stoning head. That recipe or plant probably comes from Stolas.

Ruby Scourge is immune to demon and using Phenex's ability to enthrall Kree. The death of Phenex will not free the dragon enthralled eg Kree. In Morgor's Lair there is a nest of vampires living underwater led by Lady Bloodsong AKA Karisi. Several of them used to be Drow . They have dark magic and storm magic. They have shrouds which will make you seem undead and be immune to the charm. We had a combat with them which is ended by us by an enforced magical peace. There is a sand garden which is actually a cesspool of blood. There are undead fish and the animating magic is "waters of death" I wonder if the kurf problem is connected to that. Bloodsong lent us shrouds on our promise that we vow not to come back beyond the sand unless we were to rescue someone. She sold Kree to the dragon for three items of great worth. (She offers to give us a letter of intro to Ruby Scourge? if Isilith asks politely. Don't know whether that happened.)

We potion Isil Eth's Phenex form's immunity to charm and if burned reborn next sunrise. Each potion takes two days, and it doesn't always work. Some assassins that attack us have bone daggers with aout 150 names enscribed on them. About 75% of the names are guildmembers, including of our group Starflower and Isil Eth .

Other things that were in the lair and the connected fire realm were and chained naga or marilith, a giant loom, and a fire creature to be woven (another better possibiliy for the infected prince), a sceptre that was being used to turn stone back to flesh for consumption, elohim and corpses of elohim

Morgor has a lieutenant of notable ability, named Syrene who is an ancient elvish earth mage. She is known as Keeper of the Great Heart. She works with the "First Children" (titans) so is a good guy. She is a friend of Braegon and not of Caprice.

The titans defeated the senators of decay (in the civil war?).

The ship "The Light of Skies" is named after an item in the armoury and sound suspiciously similar to the Dark Skies. They have a weapon that can cleave away necromancy which they offered to use on Naden.

There may be a creature of lava on the 6th floor (noting creatures of lava as infected prince smith is made from one) Starflower's finding map can't find anything that is in the armoury. It also can't find Kree or the Ruby Scourge.
Some giants from the Halls of the Frost Giants tried to hire a party about a year before but it was tossed away as gibberish. They were willing to pay to sort a problem with a heartless giant. (Noted just in case. No known connection).

  • Elves may be able to supply experimental stones of not preparing
  • Beltane may be able to supply Kegs of Crash Supplies for Kings Rapiers and other attackers
  • In the armoury (Isil Eth can give permission to enter) are some armourers who have an inventory. One of them is sometimes lucid. We were given amulets to allows elves to use mana in the building. Don't go below the 5th floor or past the red line of mana.

There is a map room on the 4th floor. Starflower could read the floors; it would take a couple of centuries. She memorises the map. "Caprice knows stuff about it" I don't know what that means. It is of the 6th floor.

Buffs & Mil Sci

Long Term (assumed always on)

Figure after / are enhance by the Silverfoam harp

Magic (caster) Rk Effects Dur (enhanced rk 15) Ca Is Na Sf St To
Greater Heart Rune (Ke) 18 cure 11 EN 19 days Y
Smite (Ke) 22/34 resist or [D+1] +22/34 dam, thrown prone, stunned 37/50 hrs Y
Disguise (Ca) 17 ht+/-17%, wt+/-34%,PB+/-10, voice and clothing, race or gender 33 hrs Y Y Y Y Y Y
Armour of Earth (dwarf) 20/32 42/66 def 1DR 18/24 hrs Y Y Y Y
Strength of Stone (dwarf) 20/32 +20/32 EN or PS 36/48 hrs EN EN EN EN EN EN
Force Shield (Starflower) 17 30 def (38 on Starflower) 380 mins Y
Dark Vision (Na) 10/22 250/370 ft range 21/33 hrs Y
Mind Speech (Starflower) 12 planar range 4hrs 10/6hrs 10 Y Y Y Y Y
Mind Shield (Isil Eth) 20/32 +50/72 res to mental attack, immune to Is's TK rage 41/63 hrs Y Y Y Y Y
Wind & Water Proofing (Silverfoam) 15->20 protects completely from all forms of non-magical water damage ... 42 [63] hrs Y Y Y Y Y Y
Water breathing (Silverfoam) 12->20 breathe & see equally well under water as on land; negates Create Fog (SF has at Rk12: penalty -17 to strike chance; 7000 cu ft) 13 [21] hrs Y

Short Term

Magic (caster) Rk Effects Dur/Enh Dur Ca Is Na Sf St To
Enhance Enchantment (Ca) 15 up to +15 Ranks spell duration 17 pulses
Invisibility (Ca) 12 1hr/2hrs
Eldar Weapon Spell (Is) 16 +17 SC, +10dam, +21 dam vs unborn .5/1 hr
Spectral Weapon (Na) 20 +21 SC, +7dam, effect insubstantial 25/40 mins
Undead Disguise (Na) ? ? ?
Phoenix Wings (Sf) 6 36 miles (rng 126/234 miles) 3.5/6.5 hrs
Phoenix Wings (SF) 6-19 48 to 87 bonus MR R+5+D min
True seeing (SF) 12 may reveal invisible, rearranged, transformed item/entity or vis illusion within 120'; at least 1xPC (Rk 12+) 2.5 min Area
Windwalking (SF) 9 95 mph; 100' cast range (7.9 mi distance) 5 min Area

Other

Communication
All of us but Naden are on mind speech
Naden has a link with Toledo, Silverfoam and Starflower
Caprice, Isil Eth, Naden and Silverfoam have whispering earrings, range 600'
Mil Sci ring of command
Melee Only: +10 IV +10% SC +10% Def +1 End of Pulse Pass Action in melee
Raise Morale +15 WP
Naked Dancing
by Caprice (assuming Lipstick): At night party gains +21 to MR and Ft (not including Isil Eth, including earth mage)
Martial hymn on Harp of Marineh (1 pass action /2 pulse from Mask of Shailah)
by Caprice: +52 SC, followers of PoL +3 dam, agents of PoL regen 1 per pulse
Psaltery of Psilence
sneaking at 1/2 TMR
by Caprice: negates stealth penalties of armour, doubles racial stealth bonuses, triples spy and assassin stealth bonuses
Defence potion, 1 each from Siverfoam
35 def, -20 stealth (sparkling), against unholy, reflects 21 dam per strike and spec grevs
Within 20 ft of Isil Eth
+10 WP, -d10 draining
+15 WP in courtly situations
Enhancement
SF adds 2-19 ranks to spells as per Black Enchanted Feather Hat (Arcane SB-2), generally only during safe or Buff times.

Special Perception

  • Caprice - see living and undead things through obscurement, see in rk 20 dark/light, rk 10 see invis
  • Silverfoam - elf
  • Toledo Steele - elf
  • Isil Eth - elf
  • Naden - elf
  • Starflower - elf

Other Enhanced Senses:
Caprice can sense nefarious intent towards her (99%) at 90ft, which will also wake her up at 18ft.

Loot

from storeroom

7x amulet allowing casting

from incubi

3x cloak allowing release of stored magic
2 x boot
belt
codpiece
trouser padding

from vampires

6 x shroud make undead

Marching Order

DAs on party

Caprice:

Maps