Exploring Paradise

Summary

Scribe Notes: Session – Autumn 805
GM: Helen Saggers
Level: Low/Med.

Party:

• Sau RusParty Leader, Necromancy
• Tanis
• Drum Mil-Sci, giant?
• Menolly Farstrider, Scribe, Elf, Earth Mage
• Eleanna Cook
• Starflower Elf/Dragon
• Robert

Job:

Travel to the Plane of Sol and map the area surrounding the new settlement of Paradise, looking for neighbours, resources and anything else.

Payment:

Training of skills and spells, plus some other craftable items.

Travel Notes

Day 1 of Fruit/Autumn We have all answered the call for guild members to travel back to Paradise, to explore and map the surrounding areas and check out what other life forms are in the area. The group get together and discuss tactics, equipment and what sort of preparations we need to make before going. Starflower lends Menolly some flash armour. After much discussion we meet the hirers and discuss the job, finding out more information of the area and the such like. So far the area has only be briefly explored since it was cleared of the nasties and they need more details of what is there, and what has survived. Rumors of sightings of Centaurs, Griffins and strange white horses have come back to the Paradise leaders and as they want to repopulate their old holdings they need to check this all out first. Our payment for exploration is paid in the equivalent of any loot we find and payment in training/items or such things the Paradise people can provide once we have completed our current exploration. We buy winter clothing, stock up on healing potions and the like. Drum kindly pays for Lesser Enchantments on all of the four newbies (Menolly, Robert, Tanus and Eleynna) and the others get their own. We go out for the last night in town.

Day 2 of Fruit/Autumn We catch the morning tide on the ship Sea Dragon for the first day of a 16 day sail to the island of Rangiwhero. While we are loading our ship, we encounter another guild group also boarding a ship heading in the same direction. The port is busy with crew and party members loading ships. Our ship has two cabins for us to use, boys and girls, so we settle in for a long trip. We decide to put the travelling time into good use with training. Starflower trains Robert and Eleynna in the use of the Tulwar. Sau Rus teaches the rudimentary basics of blow pipe to Menolly so she can master her new hand blow bow. Menolly helps Sau Rus with his Elven pronounciations. Tanis spends the time training her spells. Drum sets up a forge of the deck and makes Eleynna a fine Tulwar blade. And Eleynna works on some spells as well.

Watches

• Elenna
• Sau Rus
• Tannis
• Drum
• Menolly
• Starflower
• Robert

Travel Order

• Starflower (flying)
• SauRus (riding Starflower)
• Robert
• Our guides Owen and Fred
• Tannis and Menolly and Eleynna
• Drum (with Rhino)

Day 17 of Fruit/Autumn Through fine weather and calm seas we make it to the island of Rangiwhero, an island with a big mountain. We make port and our guides lead us through the city. There is a big pyramid towards the back of the city. It is noted by Sau Rus who has been here before that there are signs of rebuilding in the city. Buildings have been repaired or in the midst of repair. Obviously things are looking up for the city. The guides provide horses for our exploration, which we pick up here. Drum doesn't need one, he has his own mount, a very huge rhino. And Strawflower doesn't need one, being that she can turn into a dragon. She offers to carry Sau Rus, and provides a harness for him. We travel through the city, towards where the Portal Alusia stands. This portal travels between here and Palaeolithica. The portal on this side is abit worse for wear. It is a stone arch surrounded by 13 standing stones. Some have fallen over. We travel through the portal. The portal on the other side is in better nick. All stones standing. Grass inside the circle is short, like it is magically mown, but the grass outside is very long, plains grass. We cast some protection spells and then head across the never ending plains to the Portal to Frigidia. It will take us 2 and half days to reach the portal and straying from the semi obvious path is frowned upon. The first day is uneventful, until we make camp. Robert checks the area for beings using his mind magic and encounters a large snake of somesort. Starflower, who has been travelling in Dragon form, goes and investigates and kills a giant 20 ft long 1ish ft wide constrictor which then turns into a lesson in butchering and skinning for Robert and Menolly by Drum. Starflower teaches some new recipes to do with snake meat to Eleynna and we dine on fresh meat.

Day 18 of Fruit/Autumn

Before setting off in the morning, while breakfasting and checking snares etc, Robert is asked by Drum to check the horses. He does, with ESP and ends up damaging his internal organs. Not bothering to mention it till half way through the day, when we stop for lunch. Luckily Starflower is able to fix it with a spell cause none of the healers could fix it. Something to do with Mind Magic stuff. We travel while discussing food. We end up teaching Drum some cartography using a map of the area. "the wiggly blue line on the map is a river, Drum" says Starflower We make good travelling and reckon we only have half a day to go when we finally break camp for the night. Tannis has been watching the weather and deduces that the weather is looking decidedly icky towards the south and moving towards us. Hopefully wont make it before we make the portal tomorrow. We set snares for the night. While scanning the surroundings a group of giggling hyena are heard, and scared away by Starflower. We sleep.

Day 20 of Fruit/Autumn

Only half a day till the portal. Question of the morning is how we are going to hoist the horses up the step incline on Frigidia. Robert"we mental attack the horses and then hoist them by flying up to the portal." Duh! We aren't supposed to hurt our poor horses. We end up in more discussion about skin changing the horses and work out this is our best bet. We talk to Owen and Fred, our guides, and discover they have enough mouse skins for changing all the mounts. Our job is just to make sure the mice don't die on the way. Something about the dead changing back to horses while carrying them, and much squishing involved. I've never seen it happen but I've heard tales. As we travel to the portal we discuss traveling through Fridgidea and what we might encounter. It seems Starflower has traveled through there before and has much to tell about the mighty Ogrins and how things aren't quite the same on that plane. We finally reach the river around the island where the portal lives. It's muddy and wide and takes some traversing to reach the island. We rest and have lunch. We decide to take care of ourselves and get rested before traveling through the portal, so spend the rest of the day on the island. I cast a converse with horses and spend quite abit of the day being able to hear what they are saying. Drum's Rhino begins noticing the wild rhinos over the river and starts marking rocks and strutting about like the male he is. Eventually he gets "moused" and things quieten down. When Starflower goes Drake for a flyabout, she notices a wild male rhino further round the river bend who seems quite keen to locate Drum's rhino. We redistribute our loads so we can go hard our up the cliff once through the portal. We sleep. During the night the wild male rhino comes right up to the waters edge. Starflower ends up casting a phantasim at it of a bigger wooley rhino and it eventually runs off.

Day 21 of Fruit/Autumn

We head through the portal to Frigidia. Drum first, then Robert, Sau Rus, and then the rest of us. Funny, I've not noticed portals all that much, but the one on Alusia is like a big stone slab portal, 2 sides with another slab resting on top to form a doorway. But the portal on the other side is like a big round circle ring thing. All black obsidian stone with silvery funny writing on it. I've never seen the writing before, and try to scribe some of it before we head off. I'd like to go back and do a better drawing some time. I think Sau Rus or someone mentioned there is someone at the Guild with a copy of the writing. I might have to have a hunt back at the Guild library later. Anyway, we get to the otherside, with nothing nasty waiting to whopp us. We all get roped together, so we don't slip or fall in the ice and snow. Sau Rus, Owen, Robert, Elenna, Drum, Tannis, Menolly, Fred, 30ft of rope and then StarFlower leading the way. Seems she has a way with snowy environment. We climb up the ice ramp and get to this huge ice wall. We travel along the base of the wall for a bit until we find a road ramp thing that travels up the cliff to a cavern entrance. We make the cave entrance and pause to have some of StarFlower's yummy tea to keep our strength up for the cavern trip. We untie as a group and head into the caverns. Eventually we come into a big opening in the cavern, with another portal circle in the middle. I want to have a closer look but the others don't let me get anywhere close. Something about these Ogrins. Drum checks out the area and deduces that there was a big fire fight here previously, with Ogrins. We travel through the opening and carry on through the caverns. We make it to another open cavern with a big rope bridge over a big black crack in the floor. The crack in the floor looks big and deep, so we check out the bridge to make sure it is travel worthy. It's decided that the bridge is best for one person at a time. We cross the bridge taking care and all safely make it to the other side. Carrying on through the caverns we make it to another opening with another portal. It's a portal like the first one on Alusia, 2 side slabs with a top slab. It has runes that some of the others have seen before. In an old language. I had a look to check out what they were, and quickly sketched them down. We traveled through the portal to Paradise and ended up in a building on the other side. An old building of stone slabs, up on steps, out in the middle of nowhere. We head out of the building and have a rest while we change out of our winter clothes, eat and unskin the mounts for traveling. I had a bit of an explore of the building and sketched the runes from here as well. One of the others translated that main runes for me, which are a kinda saying or spell. They say: "Great Mithros, bless us and grant us safe passage to our destination: Frigidia" The other portal had the same runes, except the end had the rune for the Sol portal near Paradise. You learn something new every day. Guess I'll have to go hunt the meanings of these runes when I get back so I can recognize them next time. After having some more of StarFlower's interesting tea, we head off towards the farms of Paradise, the main one we are heading to first being the Livingston Farm. We travel for half a day and cross the beginning of the Livingstone River. We make camp for the night and sleep. Robert set some snares in the night, with the guidance of one of the rangers, and in the morning we found some rabbits caught. We prepare them for later and "into the hole they go". Drum has a portable hole for keeping things. We head off down the valley following the river. Around mid afternoon we come across the recently used quarry area. Obviously the people of Paradise have started building in stone. Wagon tracks and the like are spotted, but nothing recent. We see something, maybe buildings 5 miles away, so we carry on heading in that direction. We come to a bridge and several huts, some in wood and a few more permanent in stone. We carry on following our guides and head towards the settlement. We eventually see a walled in farm and head to the main house. We are greeted by an older gentleman who introduces himself as Cornelius Livingstone. We are informed the horses can be housed in the livestock barn and we are being housed in the second barn. A forge is discovered in the second barn so we use that to cook our rabbits and settle in for the night. During dinner preparation Drum mentions about "Entrails being good for Astronomy" but I don't know much about that. A party discussion about our work on Paradise wiles away the time before bed. Starflower does some telepathy and spots one of the younger men from the farm, riding past for Paradise. He obviously wasn't happy about the late night ride. We guessed he was warning the town we were on our way.

Day 23 Fruit/Autumn

I was woken by the sounds of the farm which was a pleasant change. We make breakfast using the forge and instead of tea, Starflower made a dormouse appear in her teapot. Not as drinkable as tea if you ask me. We headed to Paradise with Owen, Fred and Cornelius. We continue to travel along a river, quite a wide river. We lunched and then carried on until we saw the town of Paradise rising on the horizon. With 30 or so houses, it's quite noticeable. There is a bigger river past the town, very wide. We get taken into town and shown where the stables are so we can settle our horses. Poor things, they have had it abit rough what with being moused and all. While waiting for our escorts, Starflower tried to make us some more tea in her wonderous pot, but it seems not to be the day for it as all she got was a pot full of pond water and a carp. We are lead to one of the temporary houses, used for the next influx of refugees, which will be our base while here. As we have a proper stove Starflower sets about making a scrumptious feast of snake, which ends up being dubbed Starflowers Super Sumptious Snake Steak Stew, try saying that really fast. So nayway, we have dinner and then get escorted to the new, still being built Tavern. There we met three elders, Cornelius Livingston, Samuel Kirby and Ronnin Travis. Someone worked out that Cornelius is a Namer mage, plus a farmer. Samuel is a water mage and a fisherman by trade, and Ronnin of the way too bright clothes is an E and E. His profession is just "Elder" with lots of capital letters. And we got down to business, which was what we were here to investigate. Seems ever since they arrived on this plane they have seen a few odd things. With the next influx of people soon, they want to enlarge their land but want to check out who their neighbours are so they don't step on anyones toes, or get killed. So our job is to survey the land directly around the town. We are to look for sources of mineral and metal deposits, and any resources for leather making. Some of the tales they tell us are about seeing a large winged creature off to the mountains in the north, black against the sky. Also horses with human heads which were spotted on the far side of the large river bordering the northern side of the town. And up near the portal and quarry someone has seen white things, of equine nature. Not to mention some animal body/human head/goat type creatures also south by the portal. I guess we will be busy. I have head of creatures like their directions, but never seen any myself, so this will be a great adventure to see such things. Maybe I could get to know them abit. I like the idea of meeting a unicorn. The elders show us a map of the town which includes what they have explored so far. It seems most of it is the nearest coastline around this side of the lake/large water mass they town is very close to. Now, I'm not sure if I've written this in here. The people here in Paradise are fleeing a place where magic is evil, and anyone using magic, found with magical abilities etc are persecuted, imprisoned and killed. So for the best part of their lives they have hidden any magical abilities they have incase getting caught. So talk of possible magical beasts is like talking a foreign language to them. They have no stories, history of such things. And even we know they can do magic, they still try to cover it up as "luck", or good wind or other such "tales" to explain what they do. So our conversation through the night is very odd at times, trying to get through this barrier. I guess this will come with time. I so hope none of these oppressors discover this lovely place. Oops, I sidetrack, anyway, we talk into the night about the tactics of surveying this place, where to start and the best methods of mapping and exploring. We finally set up a meeting with one of the local "water guides" (think mage) who will barge us and our horses over the big river so we can start on the "human headed horses" which could be centaurs. Even though it's night time, we are keeping to our watches. Starflower and Sau Rus are planning to copy the elders map during the night so we have something to add to as we go along.

(to be continued)