The Prodigal Sun
Summary
Adventure: The Prodigal Sun
GM: Ross Alexander
Session: Autumn 810wk
Night: Sunday
Location Remuera
Level: Certainly felt High (I think your confusing high with hot)
(2,000 feet up is pretty High)
(Did you count them as you fell?)
(Being dead at the time, no. I worked it out from the number of dents in my body after I was resurrected.)
Party:
- Naden Necromancer and vampire slayer
- Dean Rowan Velcanthus Human Wiccan priest of Chantris (Scribe)
Employer:
Orthostopheles & the Temple of the Sun
Scribe Notes
Naden suggests that he and I should travel to Kanlaoise because we both have interest in sun magic. He arranges for us to travel there by some portal nearby. We arrive in a manor house, where we met a well-dressed dandy. He is Baccarat, the Master of Fate and Luck.
It appears that the weather has gone very odd, and that it is bucketing down. It has been like this for some weeks, and Baccarat suggests we might find gainful employment and significant amounts of gratitude if we travel to a city occupied by a retired dragon of his acquaintance, Orthostopheles.
I cast Weather Control to see if I can return the weather in the area to a reasonable state, and it is affected somewhat by. This suggests to Naden and I that the weather is abnormal, but that it is not caused by a magical effect. Something else, we opine, must be doing something which is making the weather misbehave.
We agree to help, and he calls upon the assistance of Delerium, who leads us by a maze to a city many miles away. We arrive about a day's travel away from Mazarathin.
Upon arrival, we took a carriage and traveled to the city. It is extremely large and built upon an oddly regular conical hill. The buildings have been built upon the bones of even older buildings.
It turns out that the elves here have a very economical attitude about non-elves. Which is to say that non-elves are a commodity in their economy unless powerful enough to convince them otherwise. They are a kind of elf I had not met before, called sun elves.
From inside the carriage, Naden noticed a fellow paying an unusual degree of interest to us, and on casting about for the spirits that were associated with him, we saw a spray of stars behind him, the like I had never seen before.
Lady Delerium took us on to meet Orthostopheles who could not dodder more if he were walking into a powerful headwind.
He suggested that we speak with the Temple of the Sun. He believed that the attentions of experienced adventurers might be useful in finding out what was going on.
We take our leave of him, and part from the Lady Delerium. We decide that we will travel to the Temple and that I will be Naden's pet. We enter easily enough, but upon DAing a pool of light that covered an internal doorway, I decided to leave and let Naden handle the negotiations. I made my way around to an unobserved area, where I made the Rune of Location upon a wall and cast Visitation upon it.
I was able to pass the ectoplasmic form into the Temple for a short way, but the spell was quickly dissipated by some internal defence. I abandoned the attempt and found a place of concealment to await Naden's return.
In due course he came out and informed me that according to the people in the Temple, we should travel westwards along the coast. People had gone in that direction to investigate the peculiar weather, but they had not returned.
We went in search of the pale elf with a swathe of stars behind him and found him amongst the hobbit and dwarven people of the city. He was some kind of performer but not very good. We invited him to have a drink, and he told us he was a wanderer. He didn't have very much to offer but he seemed different to the other elves and this made us curious.
We returned and spoke with Orthostopheles, and in the conversation, it turns out that Kanlaoise is not a ball or a disc, but a great ouroboros worm, endlessly eating its own tail.
We took our leave of the city, again by carriage. It took some days to travel and I could not find a convenient place to set up a rune portal for it would need to be covered to protect the markings from the constant rain. We abandoned this plan and instead flew west.
The weather was relentless, torrential downpours. I Bound some air to provide relief from the endless raining. Eventually, our vision was so impaired that we were forced to fly above the cloud layer. This was easier going but made it hard to determine how far and in what direction we were traveling.
Nevertheless, later on that day, we spotted a peak in the cloud formation. It appeared to us that the cloud was being drawn up at this point, and it was my belief that this was because it was being heated from above. We flew at ninety degrees from our original course of travel to see if we could spot a column of hot air but could see nothing. We decided to get a little closer and then to pass through the clouds in the hopes that we would find ourselves in the eye of the storm.
The clouds were terribly waterlogged and were it not for the Bound air my throne may well have filled with water and become insupportable in the air. Happily, however, we managed to make it through and we did, indeed, find ourselves in the eye. We landed, and I Bound some water.
Then we traveled under the water, the Bound water providing us with a convenient environment in which to breathe. We traveled for some distance towards what we took to be the centre of the storm. I marked something large enough to float with the Rune of Location and then let it drift to the surface. Luckily it floated with the rune facing upwards. I cast Visitation. I took some effort but I eventually found that there was a point of brightness above us and that this was the source of the heat which created the peaked clouds. I tried to see something of its soul and it appeared to have a 'purpose' instead. It was like a small piece of the sun hanging in the air about 2,000 feet above the ground.
It seems that a cache of powerful artifacts had been disturbed, and some stuff had gotten loose. This was one such artifact, although I don't know what useful purpose it would serve.
It wasn't large enough to generate enough heat to be felt more than a few miles away. However, it was heating the water and turning a lot of it into water vapour which was pulled high up into the air as a warm wet stream. Because the world is a large circular ribbon, the warm, water-laden wind traveled east where it rained and rained and rained.
We returned to Mazarathin, and spoke to Orthostopheles and the Temple about this state of affairs, a feat taking about three days. The Temple very kindly gave us scrolls of every kind of protective magic that they could cast on us. Orthostopheles gave us a crystal origami floating table thing.
We were projected back to the eye of the storm. We bound some air, and flew up to within about 200 ft of it. Naden Banished it somehow, whereupon it lashed out with a massive Solar Flare. It did huge damage to me, killing me outright. Naden merely shrugged.
Unfortunately, I was the one flying us at the time so we both started to plummet. Naden, by the grace of Chantris, managed to trigger Shadow Wings, and then as my body and throne fell out of the sky, he marked my position with a Darkness spell.
When he landed, he unbuckled my broken form and opened up the crystal origami table thing to lie the throne upon. Then, he returned to Mazarathin, where I was resurrected by the Healers at the Temple.
The sun elves were very grateful. They gave Naden a Solar aspect, and they taught me the Solar Protection spell, which I could see might be very handy given the way I got blown up.
We tried to make contact with the pale elf with the swathe of stars behind him on our return but he had left or was hiding and we couldn't find hide nor hair of him.
Places
- Kanlaoise - a plane operating under the picnic curse.
- Mazarathin - a city built on a conical hill. The home of Orthostopheles and the Temple of the Sun
- An unknown delta where the sun particle had settled.
Treasure
Orthostopheles' Crystal
This blue, translucent crystal triangle is about a metre on a side and weighs around 10 lbs. If an Opening spell, or one that suggests opening behaviour (like Tunneling) is cast upon it, then it will grow, in the manner of a snowflake and taking about a minute, to be about a megahex across.It may also be attempted by casting a Mage Lock spell (or one that suggests locking behaviour, e.g. Runelock) with the intention of reversing the spell. This requires a successful 3 x MA check and costs twice the normal FT.
The crystal is a legal target for travel spells, and its movement is limited by the mechanics of the spell that targets it. Thus, Firerunning will not allow the crystal to fly, Levitate will not provide any horizontal movement. The crystal will not move any faster than the spell allows normally.
The Adept must spend FT equal to (weight in lbs/1000) x (speed in mph/20) for each hour of use. Each fraction is rounded up.
The Adept may close the crystal by casting Mage Lock or a spell similar to it. It may also be attempted by casting an Opening spell (or one that suggests opening behaviour) with the intention of reversing the spell. This requires a successful 3 x MA check and costs twice the normal FT.
The crystal is robust, but will shatter if it takes more than 30 points of physical damage in a single blow.
Orthostopheles is rather absent minded, and has probably forgotten where he put it for the moment. At least until someone reminds him. He may turn up at any time to reclaim the item.
Adventure | Season | Plane of Origin | Aura | Nature of Magic | Value | Cursed etc.? | GM |
Prodigal Sun | Autumn 810 | Kanlaoise | Magical | Ross Alexander |
People and Creatures
- Baccarat, a lord of luck
- Delerium, a lady of mazery and magery
- Orthostopheles, an old dragon, retired from active dragoning
- An unknown pale elf, not a sun elf.
Experience Awards
Naden | Rowan |
6000 | 7000 |
After racial tax: | |
5000 | 7000 |
Calendar
Autumn 810wk: Fruit(4) | ||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Moonday | Duesday | W'ansday | Th'rsday | Frysday | Reapsday | Sunday | ||||||||
Lugnasad | 1 | Guild Meeting | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |||||||
7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | ||||||||
14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | ||||||||
21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | ||||||||
28 | Travel to Kanaloise | 29 | Arrive in Mazarathin | 30 | Meet Orthostopheles | |||||||||
Harvest (5) | ||||||||||||||
1 | Travel by carriage | 2 | Travel by carriage | 3 | Travel by throne | 4 | Travel by throne | |||||||
5 | Travel by throne | 6 | Travel by throne | 7 | Discover micro-sun | 8 | Travel by throne | 9 | Travel by throne | 10 | Travel by throne | 11 | Travel by carriage | |
12 | Arrive back in Mazarathin | 13 | Gather resources | 14 | Projected back to micro-sun | 15 | Equinox. Banish micro-sun | 16 | Get resurrected | 17 | Seagate Autumn Fair. Get taught Solar Protection et al | 18 | Seagate Autumn Fair. | |
19 | Harvest Moon | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | |||||||
26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | Michaelmas | 30 | |||||||||
Vintage(6) | ||||||||||||||
1 | 2 | |||||||||||||
3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Return to Guild | 9 | |||||||
10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | ||||||||
17 | Blood Moon | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | |||||||
24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | Beerfest |