Scourge of the Clouded Skies

Summary

Adventure: Scourge of the Clouded Skies
GM: Bernard
Session: Autumn 826 wk
Day: Wed
Level: High-ish

Party

• Elidon - Ice - Michael M
• Eugene - Fire - Sam S
• Vixen - Fire - Kita
• Elderan - Air - Ian A
• Aaron - E&E - Helen S
• Uthgard - Mind - Anne S

Adventure Full

Employer

Mission

To find out what happened to the missing and looted boats

Pay

Silver pieces

Scribe Notes

Session One

Day One

We are led to a Guild meeting room. Seems to be a tall party for once. It’s nice to see Uthgard again, she’s a hill giant mind mage and Elderan, an elven air mage. Aaron has also joined the party, he’s a human E&E mage. Apparently Elidon, an elvish ice mage, has decided he is strong enough for this party, we will see. And then we unfortunately have Eugene, a human fake fire mage. I doubt if he will live til the end of the season, of course won’t be by my hands, unless he happens to stand in my way.

Once we have done introductions, we sort roles. I am stuck as scribe since no one else wants to do it. Elidon tried to offer but came up with too many excuses, so I took over. Elderan being the competent healer will save our ass from dying. Apparently none of us know how to cook proper food, pity. Eugene will unfortunately lead us in battle, with Uthgard as secondary lead. And I will be the actual Leader of this party.

Once this is all sorted, we hear a sound coming from outside. Like fast horse movement, then a screeching sound. Then we hear a thud, I assume a person jumping off the horse. Then a couple minutes later a 5ft4 Orc dressed in a heavy weather sailors suit walks in. Have not a clue what their gender is, don’t really care either. They introduces themself as Captain Torga. Apparently a merchant type.

Torga explains that the “Weather has been wrong” in an area of sea after a previous party had dealt with the tower there. And how the Sky wasn’t behaving right. This person isn’t making much sense to me.

They go on to explain how they have been having a bit of unseasonal weather and recently started noticing heavy fog banks, about 200 miles from the banks in open water. Ships are being raided in the fog banks, but the thieves aren’t taking everything, they seem like they are looking for something in particular. So far 2 ships have been raided but also 3 ships have gone missing in the last 2 weeks. The three missing ships are called Bright Falcon, Silver Wind and Deep Ale. The crew from one of the raided ships ended up on a Liferaft ship, they are the ones that sent a message.

The Captain gives us each a Letter of Intro as well a navigator package and six flares to the group. He says that we should go talk to Captain Auldrich at his Silgorn ship called Morrowwind.

At this point, it’s evening. We get greaters from Aaron and call it a night.

Day Two

Today, Aaron spends his time doing rituals. Eugene, Elderan and Eugene head to the library. Eugene uses his super smarts and learns that the Mountain range in Palestina is very high. Go figure.. Although we do learn that there is a Roc in the mountain (big bird) and the last party that flew via cloud in that area got attacked by a flying ball of light. Delightful. They learn from some scribe notes that there are merfolk that are in the great shallows who worship Vephar. A very nasty demon, not keen to meet them. But thank god for scribes who take accurate and detailed notes. They also have a look at the navigator pack and learn the trade routes.

While the boys are busy, Uthgard and I decided to head to the docks to talk to the ship captain. We found a ship, called Foamy Gull. We noticed that it was dusty, like it hadn’t moved in months. After chatting to someone, who’s name I didn’t care to get, we learnt that no one goes into the great shallows and just sticks to the western kingdom borders. This ship used to go into the great shallows but looks like the crew has abandoned the ship.

Uthgard tries to knock on the door and yells hello quite loudly, in retaliation, the ship zapped her. Hehe. I notice that people avoid the ship, as if it had a bubble around it. People walk around it, as if it’s an unpleasant thing.

We then go and find the dockmaster. He tells us that a halfling known as Captain Tallfoot is the owner of the boat. He then directed us over to a boarding house 3 streets over. Once there we walk through the double doors. In front of us was a tiny girl, maybe 10 or 12 behind a desk. Apparently didn’t like us immediately and rang a bell. Four guards run in. After explaining who we want to talk to, one of them goes and talks to the Captain. Comes back and tells us that the Captain refuses to see us. Ridiculous and not helpful at all. But the Guards are able to tell us that when the crew from the Foamy Gull came back from their last outing they just went straight to their rooms. Now we crew come back from successful outings, they come back and drink their winnings which in my opinion is such a waste but I’m not a peasant. But this crew came back and were quiet. Sounds like nothing bad happened but it’s like the crew have a bad feeling about sailing and don't want to sail anymore and some now work a normal job in town. It was about 6 weeks ago. Might be connected to what’s been happening, we will have to investigate.

Session Two

Day Two Continued

We fly off on a cloud to the town of Silgora on the island of Falanion Federation. I did get Elderan to check if the cloud we were on was his master, Cloud the Dragon. Elderan thinks it’s not. We set up the cloud with the Picnic set and chairs that had been in the Cloud Storage. Little hard since the cloud is a bit hill-like. We spend this day travelling south around, following the coast line. Near the end of the day Elderan starts turning the cloud west, while in the dark. Bold choice. Can only hope we are going the right way. We work out watches. I’m with Uthgard on the first watch. I’m glad to be with someone competent. Eugene and Elderan on Second watch and Aaron and Elidon on Third. We apparently notice nothing while on watches. That could be true or we missed something.

Day Three

As we continue on, we see land North and South of us. We are currently in a straight that has no name. Apparently causes fights if we try to name it. How stupid.

In the Afternoon we get to the end of the straight but head towards cloudy weather. There is some stormy weather about 10 miles out but the clouds at the moment are in like multiple levels which makes our vision lines a bit hard.

  - Level 1: Icy Crystal Clouds
  - Level 2: Fluffy Clouds
  - Level 3: Fluffy Clouds

They are technically in the right space but are interacting weirdly. According to the air mage. This ain't my area of expertise.

Elderan slows down the cloud and does a ‘predict weather’. We notice that the clouds are moving around, the wind is moving weirdly but some clouds are stopping randomly like grinding to a stop, then grinding to a start and some are crossing each other. Rather odd.

We follow the storm’s edge to the south. Elderan decides to DA a cloud.

  Aura - Magic but cloud is not a spell or ritual (Ambient magic, zone not spell)
  Power Associated - No Answer 
  Major Magic in Effect - Weather influenced (Non-Collage)
  Negative Effect on Me if Touched - No Answer

I send a fire bolt at the cloud but nothing abnormal happens. While Elderan was DAing he noticed an aura at the front of the cloud, for context he was standing 50 from the front of it. Then the cloud suddenly grinds to a sudden stop. Elderan faceplants the cloud while the rest of us only stagger. Our spells like Mage wind are still active but the cloud is unable to move, like it's stuck on something. Breathing feels like breathing through a straw.

Eugene tries to get his nightmare horse but it says it can’t fly. Elderan uses his DA = Best Way to get Cloud to Leave - Remove the adhesion. Ahh now this is where I can be useful.

I decide to use dragon flames on the edge of the cloud, the air explodes. Oops. Uthgard casts ESP to check there are no other entities around, thankfully she just got the party. I try again using fire but using my fire bolts instead. Elidon casts cone of cold, aiming the opposite side of me. I notice like when I do alchemy, that a fire goes along a thread of glue. This area is less sticky. Feels like were in a web. Elderan passes out ice balls. We will use this to freeze the glue to condense it. 15 seconds of ice explosion. Once done as we move we see ice shards and spider webs everywhere. Air doesn't feel gluey but still hard. I cast dragon flames, there is now fire and ice in the air. Cloud moves again Aaron falls over. We head forward, narrowly avoiding another dead zone.

4 hours later, mid afternoon to evening, we notice a large ship 20 miles out from the coast. We head down and park the cloud 200 feet from the ship. It’s a cog that’s been battle damaged. Such a shame. My infravision shows me that there is a halo of lightning around the ship that’s causing the metals of the ship to burn red. Using Elidon’s iceberg, we get closer to about 20 feet from it. Uthgard checks for any minds and only got us and the hungry fish below us. If only fire worked well underwater, then they would be dead fish. Elderan gives the lightning aura of the boat a 5 second stare.

 Aura - Magic
 Best Method of Not Injuring Me that I can do - Dampening Pain

And then the aura of the boat itself:

 Aura - Formally Living Composite

Eugene casts flame beast and sets it to attack the ship. I ask Elidon to move us back, I don’t trust the fake fire mage. The beast SNAP, CRACKLE and pops away. I ask Elderan for a bird, none appear after 5 minutes, apparently too far from the coast. Pitiful birds.

I try to send off a glass explosion, which I cast very well, at the deck of the ship. As I sent it off, the lightning of the ship went down the line of magic and hit me. Thankfully for a pitiful hit. But I now had a lightning aura. I touch Eugene to see if it zaps him, it does but it also doesn’t transfer. Disappointing. Elderan checks out my aura.

 Aura - Lightning magic
 Major Magical Effect - Storm Touch
 Negative Consequence of Storm Touch - Draws attention of greater storm entities. 
 Storm Touched Duration - Until used, consumed or curse removed

Fun..

We try to move right next to the ship but Elidon can’t drive and we hit the ship. The iceberg gets hit by the lightning. Elderan and I are fine but Aaron and Elidon get hit hard. Elidon falls unconscious and the iceberg disappears. We jump to the bridge and we manage to catch Elidon. They both now have the lightning aura. If I had gotten wet, I would have dropped Elidon in the water.

We climb onto the boat. The damage was clearly caused by being attacked by another ship. The air mages notice that high ranked lightning bolts have hit the ship but no blood around. We have a look around. The Captain’s quarters had been well searched, pity. We did find some papers from a logbook in a chest. It’s written in folksprach but doesn’t seem to belong to the Captain. We also found a brass scroll tube with etchings. Down in the cargo pit we find loads of bulk supplies and an odd item, which was a large net (woven wind breaker). As we keep looking around, we notice in the rigging, stuck to a rope are a pair of gloves. I climb up and grab them. With the gloves, I got a free set of skeleton hands. They look like they were ripped off of a body, poor thing. Ill give them to Eugene cause he's a necromancer. Oh wait, no he’s a fire mage now. Eh, I'll put them in his soup anyway. Later on in the cargo bay, we find 3 lightning bolt crystal shards. Don’t think I’ll mess around with them. They are laying in a line but we can see that they want to move together. When they started actually moving, me, Elderan and Uthgard all grab one to keep them separate. We take some time for Elderan to have a quick look at each item.

Scroll Case =

 Aura - Magic
 Nature of Magic - Messaging (charged)

Wind Breaker =

 Aura - Formerly living composite (Leather)
 Nature of Magic - Shelter

Gloves =

 Aura - Formerly Living composite
 Affect on me when Worn - Secure grab on ropes in high winds. 

Crystals =

 Aura - Magic
 Nature of Magic - Lightning Effect based on target
 Power Associated - No Answer
 Affect when combined - Formation of greater lightning shard.

As we look at the damage on deck, we realise that the crew were taken/ kidnapped shown by the drag marks. We could also tell that blunt weapons were used as well as lightning.

Session Three

Day Three Continued

After we finish looking around, we decide to get back onto the cloud. We decide to check everyone’s Auras.

 Major Negative Effect - More of a lightning rod than normal (not a curse)
 Method of Consumption - Something else consumes it
 Affect on Incoming scry and clairvoyant spells - Curse of attracting storms (creature). Magic casts by the Storms will find us and not the thing they are trying to find)
 Method of Use - Attunement of self and storm.

Around Midday, with a couple hours of flight to go, there seems to be a storm cloud a couple miles from us but it's too high and static. It’s also shorter than most storm clouds. We start heading up towards the dark cloud. As we get closer we notice multiple dark storm clouds that are a bit bigger than ours. It looks like it is hiding/protecting something in a sphere around it. Some of us noticed a glint of the thing that is in the middle of it, something possibly metal.

Elderan summons 6 seagulls. They come in glowing from lightning and panting due to how high up we are. We try to send them in but they dont want to do it because it's too windy and “The fish in the sky that eat them”. Maybe its sky piranhas or sky sharks? Eugene wants to know if the “fish” are sharks and asks Elderan to translate the question to them. The birds in turn call him stupid for explaining what a shark looks like to them. They said it, not me.

We decided to just go in. First try didn’t work but the second time we found a break and went through. Inside is an area about 500-600 feet wide. We park and have a look at the structure in front of us. It was bits of multiple ship wrecks, platforms and some stationary clouds. There is also a large oval metal egg on one of the wreckages.

We move the cloud forward and get onto the structure. As we moved, 5 shadowy figures appeared on the other side of the structure. They produced no heat and didn't have a mind. They tried to hit us with magic but once realised it didn't affect us, we just ignored them.

There were 5 crystals on plinths spread out on the structures. We DA’d the closest one which was a yellow ball.

 Aura - Magic
 Effect if Destroyed - Loss of Containment of Content
 Primary Magical Effect - Source of Great Power
 What can it summon - Answer not given, third party intercept to give an answer = The hearts desire, beware the inverse. 

Elderan starts to glow brighter, unsure why. Could be concerning.

We DA the Red crystal

 Aura - Magic
 GTN of Content - Earth Elemental

Elderan decided to try and look into the orb and found an aura - Formerly living Avatar. That’s a bit unnerving. For some reason, Eugene could suddenly DA the yellow and green crystals. I wonder what fuckery happened there. Hope he didn’t sign another fae contract.

Green Crystal:

 GTN of contents - No Answer
 Affect on me if I break it = No Answer
 Primary Magic in Effect = Stability and Undead Suppression

Yellow Crystal:

 GTN of Contents = Elder Storm Leviathan 

We get Elderan to DA the Shadow things that were trying and failing to attack us.

 Aura = Non Sentient animate 
 GTN = Mist Ghost
 Non Standard Ability = Cold Aura
 Major Weakness = No Answer.

Then we have a look at the other crystals.

Blue Crystal:

 Effect on removal = If the ship was still together than yes there would have been but now no affect. But might affect the cloud paths (minutes to hours).

Green Crystal in the middle:

 Aura - Magic
 Effect on Removal - Cessation of Stability and undead anchoring

Green crystal on platform:

 Aura - Magic
 Power Associated - No Answer
 Range of Primary Effect - The sky the area controls
 Time since activation - Several thousand years

(This is the same one Eugene DA)

In the rigging for one of the wreckages, I find a javelin so I climb up and retrieve it. This is the second time I’ve decided to climb something. I don’t know why I don’t just get someone else to do it. Elderan then decides to DA the platforms and ships and ask Plane of Origin. The platforms come back with Alusia, which is surprising but the ships come back with Astromandy.

Session Four

Day 3 Continued

We realise that these ships are likely water ships so if they have names, then it would be on the bottom. Aaron uses his Wizards Eye to have a look. The boat is broken into two parts but we find a name - The Emerald Bounty. It is written in Common, Orcish (artistic/fancy) and Drown (not elvish). It’s also written in two other languages but we don’t recognise them - inlaid in bone in pictographic language, second one - no idea but creepy feeling in the dark, we shudder, like things watching us and slimy slugs.

The ship with the metal egg is called The Storm Herald. This was written in Titan, Storm Giant and Common. It showed a heraldry of crossed lightning forks. We go and check out the Egg. Elderan sniffs it and says it smells like Damp Ozone. Didn’t know Ozone had a smell. We realise that the damage done to this egg came from the inside. Whatever it was that exploded had been kept in a bag. There are scraps of the 60ft bag left behind but not sure what kind of fabric it is but I do know its crumbly and gross. The egg itself has no ribs to hold its shape so must be from magic or whatever was in the bag. The egg is made of light steel but it is disintegrating from the elements.

Me and Elderan take the back two crystals while Uthgard grabs the blue one. The rest run back as well. But as we pulled the crystals the Ghosts stop and scream and start to get thicker. We decide we needed to get the fuck out of there quickly. I fire arc me and Elderan to the cloud while the rest book it. We notice that some of the clouds have holes in them from us, oops.

As we pull away, we hear chanting. I’m sure that can’t be good but we head quickly down into an exit. Some of us went flying for a bit but were caught. As we looked back, we noticed that there were some meteor showers and falling stars landing where we were. Yikes. That would have hurt. We hear rocks falling and crunching and more things falling. It might have been our fault it broke but can’t prove anything.

As we leave, up behind the breaking apart storm cloud, the sky opens up and there is a massive eye in the storm gazing down upon us. I didn’t see it but Aaron and Uthgard did. They get a bit sparky. Then the eye closes. Elderan gets a sudden vision via predict weather that a storm is coming. Doesn’t feel soon, maybe weeks away. How odd.

We sail on. As we get to near dusk, we believe we are in the right area. As we look over the cloud, we suddenly see a light appear from below. Then more appear. Seems to be a city. The city is situated in between two cliff sides.

As we move the cloud to the cliff on the left side, we see some lights move in the water below us. It's very dark so Elderan can’t tell what we are landing on. Suddenly we hear up and behind us, some distance away, “Ahoy the cloud, state your business”. Us with infravision notice someone flying on not bright wings, possibly shadow wings. Elderan says we are looking for a spot to land. The guy says to use the bright landing zone. Which is where the first light we saw on the ship/water. We land.

About 10 minutes later, a 16 man row boat heads towards us. The one standing welcomes us and asks what our business is. We hand over the letter of intro we got from our employer. This seemed to be acceptable and he allows us to join his boat. We learn his name is Yora.

He then gives us a bunch of rules:

 - Be aware the streets are very crowded so don’t run with knives.
 - Don’t damage the city (Apparently care more about the city then people)
 - Don’t cause a crowd stampede or move people magically
 - Don’t throw people out windows 
 - Don’t get caught using the sky bridges (The high cloth road).
 - Don’t go to the Ridge ends on either side as you WILL be killed
 - Don’t offend anyone you can’t afford to buy their forgiveness (apparently more likely to work in lower city)
 - But as a note: Crimes against people tend to be dealt with by people and NOT the city.

Fucking hell, I would love to know the stories behind these rules. This city is build taller than Seagate but is more cramped from what we can see. The city goes up the cliff sides on both sides. There a number of ways to move between the levels.

 - Chain bridges
 - Lifts
 - Sky Bridges - typically reserved for the rich, some are even owned by the rich. If caught the rich will decide what to do with us
 - Or there are stairs.

There a few important places:

 - The Verdant Grove Onclave (IDK what this was)
 - Smithy Area (High up on cliff)
 - Spire Towers (A bunch of tall towers, owned by the rich and nobles. Situated in the middle of the valley)
 - Merchant Market Square and Merchant Quarter
 - Dock + Harbour District
 - Healers Sanctuary (Outside the city).
 - Central Ridge at the top is a no go Zone. 

As we are brought into the dock area, we ask about the Morrowwind. He scrunched up his face and said that he’s unhappy that it's still in his dock. That the crew is still around but are finding it hard to find someone to fix their ship. Yora says we can talk to the dock master Rovan but in the morning.

We ask where to stay and apparently there are no inns in this city. Kinda dumb. They must really not like outsiders. He tells us to go see Elenor but we may have to pay her for the inconvenience of our presence. We head to Eleanors and we smooth things over with the ones we displace. Beds are large enough for us. We do watches and the night passes fine.

Day 4

In the morning we are served herb bread scones and tea.

 Uthgard - Elves eat this prissy food
 Vixen - What, do you want to eat rats?

As we head outside, it’s still quite dark. We head to the dock master’s place which is kinda in the middle of the dock. As we head inside there are a couple desks with people at the far wall - a female human and a dwarven man. We realise that this place seems to be the tax hub for the docks. We talk to the receptionist and he points us to the dock master. He's a human with grey hair.

Elderan leads the chat to Rovan. Rovan is disappointed to learn we weren’t shipwrights. We repeat the same thing of giving the intro letters and ask about the Morrowwind. Rovan informs us that the boat needs to be repaired before it can sail again but none of the shipwrights will work on it. This is because old Rennic believes it's cursed. They do know that the damage is from the storms, but unsure if it was the weather or a creature.

Renic is a long lived human who lives on a ship that's stationed at a smaller dock, pass the Old Rennic’s Cauldron. We are also warned not to get on Thesk’s bad side. He is an Orc, has one ear and has a big leather coat. He should meet Boom Boom as he has a spare ear. But I won’t say that in front of him, apparently Thesk doesn’t like ear jokes. But if we get rid of the boat, we will get on Thesk’s good side. I guess we better get that boat fixed.

Session Five

Day Four Continued

We leave the dock masters and head back to the middle of the docks, lots of people milling around. (About an hour before tide turn). Hand carts going around, getting ships ready to go out. We decide to head towards the Morrowwind. This dock is quite low, like tides roll over it. Either it was built low or it’s sunk. A bit slimy under foot. I can’t wait to get out of this horrible place.

We can see a large carrack. Its a 120 foot long, the hull is blackened and there are no sails. Pacing up and down the dock is a human in their late 40s with a flask in their hand and wearing a leather great seacoat and another human in normal sea clothes with their arm in a sling. I go up to the two. Captain has dark circles around his eyes. No alcohol smell though. Unsure what's in his flask then. Sling person is a woman, with short cut hair. He grunts at me. I ask if he's the captain. He looks around. He's quiet as he admits that he is. Uthgard lets him know the guild sent us. Captain says he knows nothing about the missing boats. But he was attacked by pirates ish (loose term). Elderan empathies him, he feels guilty and he is severely short on sleep, for as long as he's arrived here. He has a mild stimulant. Otherwise he's fine.

He explains that they were different to typical pirates. They came in fog/rain weather, and didn't notice at first until half the crew were down on the deck from lightning. They weren't looking for loot, but they were looking for something specific. They seemed like they knew the ship and where people were and where to go. Normally carry a range of crafts like fine metal, fine china, fine craftwork. Processed things. Unsure what they took. They took like 30 crates but not sure what was in it. They took parts of shipments.

Elderan DA’s the captain -

 - Short lived sentient 
 - Nature of Curse - (not quite curse) - Storm touched (slighting different to what we have, not strictly a curse)

The lady steps up and gives us a list of names. We recognise some of the names as Carzarlain crafters. Sebastian's place is listed (in Brastar). Nothing unusual. Seagate guild gave them some shit to move.

Aldric says that they didn’t see the ship that they came from. It seemed like they were going to stay longer but then they heard shouts of something gone wrong from where they came from so they left. The attack happened about 200 miles from here. They had a crew of 200 and some died in the fighting. By the time the ‘pirates’ left, they hadn’t cleared the whole ship. They were dressed in similarly armour - mixed leather and chain. Seemed to be human, like the ones that live on the sea of grass. No clue what that even means.

Elderan DA’s the Lady - Isera (first mate)

 - Short lived sentient
 - MA of curse - no answer

Elderan DA’s the ship:

 - Formerly living composite
 - Method to remove storm Aura - Repair of all storm damage and cleansing of ship. 
 - Effect of Storm Aura on Ship - Attention of ‘The Storm’
 - Secondary Magical Effect - Lighting attraction.

Uthgard touches it, she zaps it. We make Eugene touch it. It feels cold to him.

Elderan asks the Captain if they have any enemies. People from Destiny (country) but seems unlikely to be them. They don’t like their type of boat. Uthgard asks if they have photos, Isara gives us names and descriptions. I asked if Aldric has a plan for himself. He said no cause people died, crew is missing and no one will help him. It's why he's not sleeping.

As we head into town, the streets get narrower and more crowded. We are all ducking a bit due to washing lines and signs etc. We split through the smithy quarter. It's quite loud and smoggy. Can only see 50 feet in front due to the smoke in the air. This district is the steepest. The heavy smoke stuff is on the top because if they were on the bottom everything on top would suffocate due to the air circulation. We also see a significant number of copper rods throughout. (Maze like and interconnecting shops)

DA copper rod

 - Major magic effect - Durability

Heading up into the Guild district. Preplanned and manor houses/high rises, are interconnecting but connected after buildings were planned and done. Heaps of guilds here. Every marked entrance has guards in front. We have noticed that we have not found a single halfling in this town, every other race but not halflings. They would likely be trampled to death. Oh well.

We head to the scribes guild, in the centre of this district. They have a small thin building that kinda mushrooms higher up (it's connected to other buildings/leaning on it). We enter and pass 6 heavily armoured guards. We see a person with very black fingers copying stuff. Either dark magic or been working with black ink for too long. We talk to them about the manifest we found. We pay him 3 silvers for 3 pages to be transcribed from Voksprak into Common. Elderan makes time go longer by asking him to make it confidential, which I think is completely unnecessary. The person does a weird ritual with a stone over the paper. So maybe into both ink and dark magic.

One of the paper has thoughts about where to sell stuff they collected. Where to go to sort the stuff and organise the quality crafts. Second Page - talks about strange weather patterns. One of the dates is from 4 months ago. Third Page - Seems like a diary entry like a person log. An entry about how they thought they saw a sail on the horizon, and then they saw a large storm cloud and then descend to that area and then leave. They never found a ship. That date was 3 months ago. No name of ship written down.

We then decided to go to a fancy place for food. I talk to the butler explaining that we arent from here and heard about this place. He finds us a place to wait for a table. He asks if we want a food option tray. We say yes. He brings out lots of types of fish and veges. Very fancy. Once done we head home and sleep. Nothing happens during watches.

Day Five

The plan is to go 200 miles from here to where the morrowwind was attacked. We are going to sail out a bit so we can summon a cloud. Too big to summon at the dock. Elderan pays random people money. I think it was to not piss the ferry people off. Since we are taking our own boat from their dock. We summon the cloud which is unfortunately 500 feet away from us, so we sit for 30 minutes on a stupid iceberg for it to turn up.

We head north for 4 and a half hours. We avoided more sky reefs and the storm. Gone around the bank of clouds from the other day so we can see more than 50 feet ahead of us. It's cloudier over here. We can see 3 actual thunderstorms and a bunch of storm clouds. We can’t see any land from this position. The closest storm cloud is 20 miles west of us.

Session Six

Day Five Continued

We circle around trying to find something. This is a waste of time but we have no leads. About 50 miles. We head towards a storm cloud, I cast a crystal explosion at a storm cloud. As I throw out the spell, I feel that a charge wants to come back down it. Eh, this could be interesting. A lightning strike hits me, it spreads down into the cloud and hits everyone. Everyone but Eugene gains more Lightning Aura. (me, uthgard and elidon have the lightning crystals) The bags that they are in gain a lighting aura, won’t last. Elderan misjudges where the storm is so suddenly we are in one.

I cast again after learning the damage only affected Eugene. As it explodes, we realise we are in a small pocket in the cloud. Everyone but me looks at the lightning, while I look the other way at this big massive eye ball in the sky. I resist the eye ball. And sadly no damage is done to Eugene. Elderan notices his mage wind isn't isolating him as normal, the storm is interfering, Rangers notice that their north bump is a bit random. Elderan attempts to talk to the cloud. “Are you a storm?”. Elderan manages to get us out of the Storm. I cast another spell, I forgot to not resist and take damage and more aura.

Elderan takes us back so he can DA the cloud.

 - Aura Strength - Magical
 - MA of caster - None and Ludicrous 

We head back away from the storm. We headed back to Silgora since we gain absolutely nothing from this trip. We decide where to sleep, I suggest the Morrowwind since we don’t want to bug the dwarfs again. We get back on the ship. The deck looks lightning scared, with broken planks. Light siege weapons have hit the deck. We look at the cargo area.

Me, Uthgard and Elidon head in and notice light in a corner. We hear a crackle, and our pocket crackle as well. We find four shards. Weren’t placed here intentionally, it seems like they fell here or formed here. They were in hard to notice spots. Elderan DAs them.

Crystal One:

 - Time since creation - a month +/- a week

Crystal Two:

 - Method of Creation - Divine

Crystal Three:

 - Time since creation - a month +/- a week
 - Effect on me of long term possession - no direct effect
 - Effect on scrying - storm bait 

Crystal Four:

 - Effect on me if swallowed - Increased lightning aura, potential death, potential benefit. 

We continue searching the boat. The crew quarters are quite cleared out. The kitchen is still stocked with preserved food. We head to the captain's quarters. The door is locked. Aaron gets really excited. Elderan DA’s the door before he touches.

 - Aura strength - formerly living composite
 - Nature of Ward, Trap, Alarm or Curse - Dehydration

DA the wall next to the door.

 - Aura strength - formerly living composite
 - Nature of Ward, Trap, Alarm or Curse - no answer
 - Nature of Magic - strengthening and repairing (likely ship strength)
 - We back down the corridor. Elderan leaves an apple by the door. Aaron casts opening at the door. There is a thump and the door opens a bit. Uthgard nudges it open with her axe. 

There is a desk, chair, and a bed connected to the wall. The bed is on the right wall, a door on the left wall. Windows on the back wall. I head over to the desk. The desk is made of hard wood, scratches from maps, marks from compasses. A couple drawers, a basket draw on the left, a document draw on the right. They are locked. Aaron unlocks the document one first and uses the dagger to open it. Forgot to DA it. She feels magic impact. There is a folder in there. I grab it and open it. There are a bunch of letters from different places and people, a range of languages. From what I can tell from the ones I can read, it seems to be letters of introduction, letters asking to use the harbour. There are a couple unusual languages - one written in Sanddweller, (used in the five sisters), one written in draconic script, Saurime - Elderan can read draconic and knew the type, and one written in storm giant. These belong more to the ship than the captain.

Aaron casts opening on the basket draw. Elderan DA’s it Ward, trap, alarm or curse = Dehydration. Go figure. This water mage seems to only know one spell. Aaron remembers she has Telekinesis, so uses that to open the drawer. Draw is full of navigator tools. Elderan DA’s them

Aura strength - Aura

 - Nature of magic - Water proofing

Elderan DA’s the door

 - Aura Strength - composite
 - Nature of Warning, Alarm, Curse, or Trap - No answer

It's a bedroom with a double bed. No wonder the first mate is still with the captain. Nicely furnished.

At some point as we go back to the deck, we see patrol heading our way. We hear him say “I swear I saw a light coming from the ship”. The other patrols disagree with him and think he's making shit up. Good. We go back and hide back in the ship. Patrols do have a look around and see nothing and walk away. We head to the crew quarters and get some sleep. The night passes uneventfully.

Session Seven

Day Six

We decide to wake up before dawn so that we aren’t found on the boat. It's a bit busy but hasn't reached full normal traffic. As we head into town, we hit basically peak traffic of people. We head back to the scribes. The same people are at the front and at the desk. We pay the scribe to write it confidentiality. He asks if we want the return service. We pay the kid 250 silver to return the papers back to the boat, as if they were never taken. It will take an hour.

We decide to go look around. We thought there would be a smithy guild, but weirdly there isn’t. Metal works guild, a tool guild, seal press guild and atelier guild are the closest to what we wanted. So we decide to just waste an hour eating and playing games.

The scribe gives us back a nice stack of paper. There is an informally written one for a place called sandspitt (fly this flag and wont get pirated or attacked), one for the holy city (one of the main towns in pallestina), one written in storm giant - invitation for capable crew to visit high anchor when passing - attached to this is a schedule of towns and villages for check in times for final directions and at current time its telling us to go to High Cove (unfamiliar place to us).

We head to the smithys. We use a chain to climb. There are a number of refineries, tanneries, and places that don’t deal with metal - alchemists. After asking around, we are told to head to Black Blade Smithery. Its higher up and there is an empty area around. There was a giant lightning storm that had affected the area and so they have built their smithy on top of it. Its a bit staticky as we get closer. As we walk in, we see a male dwarf with a burnt lightning shaped beard, with a furnace with lightning not fire and a short red haired muscular lady. They appear to be working on a blade on an anvil. Seems to be masters.

The dwarf turns towards us and asks what we wanted. We say that we want to know what items he has and also what happened to the ground. He lets us know that the ground was hit by a lightning titan and that's why the rocks have lightning to power the forge. He has a kite shield, Elidon wants to buy it. We see what the guy thinks about the lightning crystals. He said we can use them on ourselves and become charged and same with a weapon or break them and strike someone with lightning. They grow in this area sometimes. Sometimes brought in by others, maybe one or twice a year. No idea how they were made.

DA the shield

 - Distance it attracts lightning from - Forward arc. Makes the lightning turn into it
 - Affect on me when holding it while lightning hits - struck by lightning, metal armour may help, may hold charge. 
 - Power Associated - Thor.

He brings out a wrist cuff which you feed it energy and the bracelet becomes the handle and blade is made entirely of lightning. Doesn’t take weapon spells. Bit better than a blade but not better than a blade with a weapon spell. Recharges in storms. 1 to 3 uses before needing to recharge. Can’t overstrength it.

Lightning Pike - Pike head on a javelin. Put fatigue into it and it transforms it into pike.

He then gets out these two wavy daggers, touches them together and then throws up across the room and then teleports to that one as a lightning bolt, all in one pulse, and then stabs. They are so fucking cool.

I buy the daggers. Elidon was a bit pissed I got them first, tough shit. Elderan touches a hammer and disappears. No idea where he went. Apparently somewhere to see if he is worthy, in front of Thor. Thor challenges Elderan. Elderan drinks, vomits and blacks out. Then reappears. With vomit all over himself. I cast cleansing flame. I do really well and it apparently hit Uthgard and Elidon as well. Weirdly the cleansing flame has lightning so they got burnt and electrocuted at the same time. This makes me happy but sad I hit Uthgard and not Eugene. Elderan gets very clean, super clean. He failed the challenge, but not badly. We give up 4 crystals for the Pike and the Shield, we do not take the bracelet.

We head to a shipyard to talk to the shipwrights. We are pointed to a guy named Durn, who's chatting to some people. The whole table shudders when we ask about him fixing the Morrowwind. They think there are ghosts on the boat according to the guards last night. He said that if we can find a priest to de-curse the boat then he and his crew will work on it. I can tell this bitch 100% believes the boat is haunted. Us being on the boat last night definitely didn’t help.

We decide to head back to the dock master to ask if he knows if any ships have gone missing or if there are any boats that have been attacked by a storm. He said that some boats said that there was heavier weather than normal. Some coast boats and fishing boats go missing but figured it got caught up in the storm. Western Route is where the big ships have gone missing. No one else has been attacked by pirates. Some complaints of some shipments not coming in. A lot of metal goods are disappearing. A crate of mugs had been taken. Metal work being stolen - nice hinges, gates, crate of short swords.

A sky castle could be being made. The dock master makes a comment about how someone could be making a sky castle again. The current Storm Giant sky castle he knows about is High Anchor. High Cove is a village on a cliff on the western route, 150 miles away. He suggests we check in with Eisha Merr. Invitation says to talk to Elsha in HIgh Cove as she’s the connection point to get to High Anchor.

We head to the water and get a cloud and travel away.

Session Eight

Day Six Continued

Once we get 50 miles west of the city, we realise we are heading to an area where the clouds are forming solid layers. 5 layers.The sky reef areas are in the layers. We head in between layer 1 and 2. We travel 40 miles, we can see signs of clouds hitting cliffs and riding up it. Some of us notice that ahead there is some smoke breaking through the clouds and spreading out. I notice that the smoke is caused by a town on fire. A lot of big buildings, with some clouds with bridges and weird bulbus ships. We move closer and prep spells ready for a fight.

We spot someone on a ship, human and steaming. They point at us and shout “storm touched, storm touched are here”. There is a fight happening between the village and the ships. Then there is a lightning strike that hits a black building. As we get closer, we notice that there is fighting on the cloud but people are falling through cloud bridges. Also that they are targeting certain people from the village to round up as prisoners. We keep heading around to the ship by the burning buildings. As we move we hear a horn that is then responded to by other horns.

Randomly Eugene is hit by 3 balista bolts. They hit him hard. Looked painful. Glad it wasn’t me. He loses his fatigue so no fire arc, so Elderan sends out cloud into the ship. All the people on there are about 6.5 to 7 feet tall despite being humans, they are also steaming. I start us off with a dragon flames. I notice that they are under similar effects to Orcish Battle Juice. The ship catches fire. Nice. Elderan lights up the people with his lightning bolts. They kill everyone behind the front guy but unfortunately the front guy seems to be charged up by the lightning and causes it to arc back at Elderan. This is gonna hurt. Or not. He's stunned as shit but seems like nothing hurt him.

Uthgard went to walk onto the ship, redacted (threats were made)

Enemies move forward and start attacking us. Seems to really like dehydration. As I hit the big guy in front and me as well as the other smaller one, lightning hits my sword as I hit the smaller one and after hitting the bigger one, I notice that an outer coating of ice that was on him broke off and he became misty again. Elderan gets dehydrated and his health gets halved. These are some weird enemies, they turn into mist. Now some are bursting into flames after being hit by fire. As we continue to fight and they keep changing their element. They do a lot of damage to us. Uthgard who had been tanking a bunch of them without a shield, gets stabbed to the ship and is unconscious. One of them turns blue flame. The ship is also burning a lot and is tipping. All the enemies die and I can see that Uthgard is about to slip off the boat so I jump over and then fire arc us back to the ship. Elderan heals Uthgard. We fire arc down to the ground.

As we land, a lightning strike destroys our cloud and the ship falls and hits a cliff. Then the whole cloud layer in this area drops. We can see a someone with a staff on a boat who does the same motion as the clouds falling. Likely his fault.

Eugene and Elidon start casting extinguish fires. I'm unable to help as I'm helping Uthgard :) They get one off before the clouds drop. It's foggy.

Session Nine

Day 6 Continued

As we land, we see that the blue fire elemental fell from the ship. Elderan helps Uthgard with some potions. Then me, Elderan and Uthgard go after the elemental, while Elidon and Eugene put out the fires (see, fake fire mage), and Aaron tries to secure the ship before it falls. I manage to find the elemental first and end it.

The ship is tethering at a 45’ angle, needs massive support to not fall, more than half is hanging over the edge. Me and the others head over to Aaron to help secure the ship. As we help Aaron we hear screaming from people inside. The fire stoppers came and joined the rest of us. Uthgard heads inside to look for the screamers and find a bunch of people in cages with padlocks. There are some chests down the far side of the ship. Elderan identifies that the lift pods are not working in harmony currently, some are pushing up, some down, some in different directions and it’s tearing the ship apart.

The party starts to work on freeing the people from the cages, while Elderan starts aiming ice balls at the flying pods to try and get them to balance, I grab a chest. Elidon then tries to provide a counter weight with a wall of ice. Eugene notices that some of the rear pods are broken. At this point there are 4 people remaining in the cages but the ship is very close to falling. Elidon then tosses a rope into the hold of the ship's hull to grab the party and survivors. As Uthgard and Aaron free 2 people the ship snaps in half, almost knocking Elidon off the cliff. We heard a laugh as the ship almost steered into Elidon. Uthgard and Aaron get hit hard and narrowly grab onto the rope with the 2 survivors. I fire arc out with a chest. Unfortunately, we did miss the last two people. I don’t think they survived because as the ship fell, something massive leaps out of the water and eats it and then sinks back into the waves. Apparently the “demonically associated giant sea serpents” are the source of the laughter. Great, that can be someone else’s problem.

After checking over the survivors and then helping with search and rescue for the town, we realise that this town is High Cove. We then have a look at the chests I grabbed.

Chest One:

 - Ward, Trap, Curse or Alarm - Anti-lightning

Chest Two:

 - Power Associated - Not associated with any power but against some certain power.

Elidon breaks the lock with an icy transformation but gets hit with some black lightning from the magical trap. Idiot, he knew it was trapped. His lightning is now in the negative and is in a darkened light with an aura of “anti-lightning”. Whatever that means. Aaron then casts opening on the second chest and has no immediate issue but then uses telekinesis to open the chest and gets hit with the same lightning and takes a hit to her aura but she had more than Elidon so is still light.

In one chest was a set of 5 leather pouches. Elderan thinks these can be thrown as grenados as they have weak seams and have a dust-like substance inside. Unsure what yet and don’t feel like taste testing. In the other is 7 potions in clay bottles with no labels. Elderan DA’s the stuff.

Potion:

 - Magic Aura
 - Nature of Magic - Beserk

Pouches:

 - Formerly Living Composite
 - Major Magical Effect - Anti-daemonic, lightning 
 - Power Associated - Not associated with a power, anti a specific power. 

One of the people we saved was bound with leather cords which we noted were a bit weird, so we DA them -

 - Aura - Formerly living
 - Nature of Magic - Cold Iron

We test them out on Elidon who upon being tied up, loses his ability to use his magic. Hmm, these could be quite useful. Maybe I could use them Eugene.

After looting some corpses we find a clock and a set of bracers that seemed interesting.

Cloak:

 - Nature of Magic  - warmth and hiding

Bracers:

 - Aura - Composite (Leather and Brass)
 - Nature of Magic - Anti-falling of others 

Around evening time we’re invited to attend the town hall. We’re offered dinner with the locals. We’re invited to speak with the “elders” (they speak a hybrid language of okay common) who are having a working dinner, sending reports etc. some are actually elders, some young mid 20’s there are 6 of them. One is wearing a silvered improved plate, the other is wearing jousting gear, all have weapons nearby. They ask who we are because we aren’t who they expected. We say we are from seagate and just happened to be around. They were waiting for people from Sylgora. Not sure what happened to them in the end. We tell them we were looking for Elsha and they say that she’s around with a clipboard organising the supplies. We ask if the sea serpent thing was theirs, to which they denied.

We then decide to talk to the survivors we saved, but Uthgard doesn’t want to because she doesn’t want to traumatise them more. We head to the infirmary. They don’t have a complete list of who’s missing yet but there does seem to be specific people that were targeted. Won’t know fully as it will take a day to complete. But it seems the people targeted had something to do with the crane docks and boats but unsure. Unfortunately the people we saved were resting so we couldn't question them so we left.

We eventually find Elsha as a Cloud appears, shooting a signal flare back and forth. Elsha is a 6’ tall lady wearing a purple satin coat, very upright posture with a head snapping around a ton very like an owl. She is quite busy as we approach. We chat with her, show her our credentials, she looks at our papers, okays us and tells us we can sleep at the town hall where someone will bring us instructions.

We spend some time helping at the infirmary with our magic and skills - Elderan wakes up 2 of the people we saved: two are fishermen, one works a crane and one is a porter. It was too dark for them to see the 2 who fell to their deaths.

DA them for auras - all 4 have an aura separate to them:

 - Primary magical effect: matches the party storm auras
 - Time since acquired: ~ a month
 - Effective MA for curse removal: 0
 - Effect on being affected long term: more likely to be struck by lightning

DA the people we saved:

 - All 4 short lived sentients
 - Last magic to impact:
     - 2 Fishermen - curse of the storm
         - Porter - lightning bolt
         - Crane - hands of earth

The people we saved can’t give us any info, but the common point is that they all have the aura and interact with ships. We find some scraps from one of the attacking ships, and DA it for plane of origin - Astromondii. We DA a corpse of an attacker:

 - Plane of Origin - Astromondii
 - Who is coming to collect their soul - “The storm may attempt to fight for it”

We do a quick DA on Elidon asking who will take his soul on death and get the same response as the corpse. Yikes.

A few hours later Elsha appears and finds us, handing us a scroll with instructions on how to get to High Anchor - we have to swing inland, then to the coast following landmarks to a specific altitude where it’ll appear right in front of you, we will need to dodge. 50 miles inland - use landmarks follow a course - follow and dont fuck up for 200 miles at a specific altitude following the specific bering (normal cloud height) - we need to display a pennant / flag. I’m glad I'm not a navigator. Thanks Elderan.

Session Ten

Day Seven

As we travel we notice that layer 2 and 3 are merging and becoming stormier. Currently travelling between layers 4 and 5 doesn't affect us. We have broken through into a massive clear area. There is a thunder cloud at the top and large chains holding a rock in the middle. Like it’s part of a cliff that's been ripped from the cloud. There is a structure carved into the cliff. It's four times the size it should be. A four story castle built into this. There is a balcony and the bottom with a large gate.

Elderan feels an impending doom from behind us. Like lightning is about to hit us. We see a lightning bolt fly towards the castle from behind us and move to hit the cliff and it breaks part of it off. There seems to be a bunch of metal lightning rods that've been placed randomly around the cliff. Some are wrecked. The baloney is about 100 feet across and easy to park the cloud on it. Manor sized doors, perfect size for a storm giant. Uthgard uses the door knocker. Barely reaches it. A few minutes later, a small door opens and an elf head pops out and says for us to come in.

He asks us why we are here. We say we were hired and he asks for proof that we are on the side of the sailors and stuff. So we show our letters and he understands. He introduces himself as Sereth, he is an archivist. Korrin, the warden and Lysa, Korrin's apprentices are upstairs. We travel up a spiral staircase built for giants, that has a second smaller staircase for human sized folk walking into a combo lounge and library encountering two storm giants, there’s a mix of furniture sizes, some human furniture is on the floor, others are on tables to match the height of the storm giant level with stairs up.

We chat to Korrin about what's going on, giving them a rundown - the sky pirates came here through a portal a few years ago, traveling back and forth a few times, they’re constructing something for sometime hunting elemental creatures in the skies, specifically targeting a group of arcing baleen - lightning whales - specific whales in the herd - following a kind of sensor telling them what to hunt The wrecked ruins in the sky we found was called Midwatch - ruined during Punjari. Lately the storms are getting aggressive, usually they behave but haven't been listening recently - we let them know we saw a giant eye in the clouds while traveling, they say its concerning to nobodies surprise.

We hear a crash of lightning hit the castle and shakes it. They look concerned. They also realised that some of us glow and Elidon looks like the ground before lightning hits. We show them the lightning shards, they point out they are dangerous. The lightning shards that were at the smithy were formed due to the lightning strike that hit Midpoint. They are unsure why the other ones formed.

They say that the raiders are roughly located 300 miles north northwest in a single straight line would get us within 20-50 miles, high altitude above everything which happens to be within the range of a locate spell Aaron can cast. Seems like they are building a human castle with some kinda globe-like structures with bits off of it - likely 500ft across or smaller with connected adjacent buildings.

High Anchor rarely gets involved with things but mostly observes, avoiding conflicts. We don't know where their portal is and neither do they, but they have a theory according to Uthgard - a lighthouse in the green fog, was broken and they fell through a portal. What they’re building might be located at the source of the weird weather. Jonathan Livingston goose told them there are lots of dangerous creatures living up in the sky above the clouds, reports of a kradjin (sky kraken) and other things.

We ask if he has anything that can help. He hands over a backpack. A Fist Size Stone.

 - Bardic listening magic

Large Firework Rocket.

 - Dispel storms in its area. Will not work on giant storms. Works on magically summoned storms and controlled weather. 

A Small River Stone

 - Protects you and the area from wind

permanent

A Bone and Brass Whistle

 - Summons east wind. Like wind whistle but also firey
 - Permanent but charges per season

Art Folio of Blank Paper.

 - Possessed by rainbow gremlins and can be used to capture a picture and the drawings can be used as magic.

Weather Vein

 - Can be used to predict weather
 - Permanent

Elidon asks if we can use the portfolio to create an image of the place we need to find, the storm giants say yes and generate one - 3-inch rainbow goblins draw a magical painting that Aaron can use locate on to magically guide us on a fixed path instead of guessing without landmarks.

It looks like a giant Orrery, the planets can rotate and the outer masses are used for defensive purposes. We spend a few hours learning how to use the various magical items while Uthgard learns how to become a storm giant: impress the clan and be resurrected into a warrior’s body.

They let us know that there are 50-100 raiders, maybe more. They have seen 5 vessels, now four since we broke one. Oops.

Then lots of conversations about some geese on the 4th floor of this building. Apparently it's a Geese cult who can talk and are headed by Johnathan. That sounds insane and nothing I want to be near, unless I can cook them and call them dinner. Elidon, Uthgard and Elderan decide to head up the stairs. They hear loud honking. Go figure. But the doors are 3 feet thick.

Uthgard stands on her tip toes again and opens the door to the room, a goose head pops out, a goose head 6ft across honks at us aggressively nearly deafening them - they both cast magic as Elidon watches bewildered, now deaf - their danger sense goes off immediately as they are within the size to be swallowed whole. Elderan and Uthgard honk back at him, The goose Jonathan is called over with more fog horn-like honks.

Elderan DA’s the goose:

 - GTN: Storm Goose (giant)
 - Major Magical Ability: assorted lighting effects
 - Can he track us: No 

Shortly after a bigger lightning goose appears and honks, magically stunning all of us as Johnathan comes close saying hello in storm giant. It intimidates Uthgard by speaking better storm giant than her. Elderan says hello in elvish, the goose takes a second and replies with a soft hello in elvish.

Jonathan asks if they have come to offer tributes, we let him know that we only come to see him. He opens the door, standing proudly at 20ft tall and responds saying that they can worship him. Elidon offers a magical hand mirror as tribute. We spend some hours in reverence and worship the giant goose, Johnathan offers a question each for our worship.

DA on Jonathan:

 - Aura strength avatar
 - Power associated with - himself, Jonathan
 - Ability to track me: Yes

Question One: Why are the Raiders scared of us? - Their bound minions wither us and change with the elements, getting stronger if they experience too much of one. I do not know why they would be scared of you

Question Two: The giants could not give us great directions to find these bandits, do you have better directions to where they are located? – We have encountered them upon the winds, we don’t know where they rest.

Question Three: Have you encountered the portal to Astromondii? - I have not, I have not opened the path to the storm.

Question Four: Can you teach us Storm Giant? - I cannot bestow boons to non-followers, but can teach you normally.

Question Five: Can you give us boons or magical to helps us? - I can give you lighting if you wish.

The goose charges the whole party with lightning, Aaron and Eugene resist the additional lightning, Aaron fails and gains the buff. The goose flaps his wings and gets us to leave, tossing us out. We get a lightning buff that we need to DA and investigate, it will last till the end of the season or until sufficiently discharged.

We get investigated by the storm giants, they tell us the buff is equivalent to lightning arc, a retaliation effect. We also notice the cloud is crackling too, the cloud honks softly at us and we notice a stowaway storm goose, Uthgard is keen on keeping it as a pet.

Session Eleven

Day Eight

We head off from High Anchor. Elderan is struggling to move the cloud due to the entity limit. The clouds are becoming more together and forcing our cloud higher which is pushing the normal altitude.

Many hours later, Elderan’s weather sense goes off - near the end of the predict weather (timing wise) there will be a hurricane in this area. Currently there is a non-rotational hurricane. There is a spot in the sky that is clear, it would be the eye of the hurricane. Aaron uses locate to find the castle, it points to the centre of the hurricane. We head to the centre. We notice objects in the clouds skirting around. We decide to pretend we are a cloud and cast scry. As we wait, me and Elidon notice 80 sky sharks heading to us. We decide to run and hide. The sharks get bored and leave. Boring.

The Ritual works and we get a scry ball up the eye hole. Aaron uses her mirror and we see a grainy image. We see a bunch of large balls coming off the structure (about 30-40). They can move slowly. There are people in there setting up mechanization type ballista. As we get closer to the main structure, it turns into a mist. There seems to be a cage around it, to make it harder for flying things to hit it. We can tell that something is interfering with this and we lost sight halfway through. Elderan asks the Goose its name - Rath.

Uthgard does a limited pre-cognition. She sees multiple versions of our plan.

 “They sense that something is coming and throw out wild shots and we seem to make it through okay as the alarms go off. Fire arcs almost always work. And as we pass through the gap 

 Branch one - We land on a battle platform and results in long slow fight and they pour in. Ends in a sea of blood, a mix of theirs and ours.

 Branch two - We fire arc through the chain cage and every one is shocked at us and we land and at least one of us is stunned. 

 (Uthgard knows that leading to inside leads to less death but at multiple branches it ends in lightning.)

 Uthgard hears a male voice saying “keep them away from the rods”. This is heard in multiple branches. 

 Heard by Uthgard - “Keep them in the cloud, they will melt” - heard in some branches

 Eugene will hear as an echo off of Uthgard - Eugene will get socked in multiples of these like he's stuck in a glob of water. 

 Elidon will hear a few curses about ice mages - like how did they know to bring an ice mage, they counter so much. 

 Vixen will note on multiple of them that there are a number of times where the lightning aura causes a party member to go so mad that they could kill the party. 5-10% of the visions. 

 There are a number of visions where we take the escape route. 

Plan: Enhance enchant Weapon spells. We buff the fuck up. Fire armour, weapon of cold, ablative, Rath is getting ice armour and all the other buffs, resist cold. We are going to go invisible and fly into fire arc range and fire arc through the cage onto the top of the castle (courtyard).

Phase One - Invisibility works and we move to 500 feet out. We hear someone yelling from the ball that there are storm acolytes and to sound the alarm. Someone asks where and then there is a stream of numbers. We see some balistas fly by, a couple hit our air shell. A couple bounce off the goose. One hits Eugene for a solid damaging hit. That was so funny. Everyone went on the fire arc with Eugene. I tried for my own but I was too distracted by Eugene being hit so Rath decided to lightning arc us. Lucky for me I didn’t get hit by lightning but the rest of the party got hit really hard (60 damage for most but 120 for Elderan). OUCH.

We land on the roof, the castle is on the side of the side of the rock. The gravity centre is the middle of the rock.

Session Twelve

Day Eight Continued

We land on a courtyard with a sensation leading us to one entryway. Everyone but me take some healing potions. As we fight through some corridors we hear dying goose sounds Eugene hears more goose sounds but they multiply? Where the fuck did the geese come from.

We go around the corner and see fog and crackling sounds. We walk down the corridor through the fog, we can see 50 feet in front of us. I notice there is a corridor to the left and one to the right, the one to the right veers off into a room with stairs to the north. I decide to go left.

To the north I hear some crashing and screams and large angry geese. I decide to head back the other way as again, I don't feel like dealing with geese. Into the other room to the right, the south stairs lead to a platform in the room, the north stairs head up.

Elderan DA’s the fog -

 - Negative Effect - Slightly harder to resist lightning.

We hear dying goose sounds, angry goose sounds and more geese joining the fight. We head up the north stairs and at the top is a different floor. The flame beast and Elidon reach the top first and can see the whole place. There is a hole in the top that is shining light through. There is a goose-hydra (Six headed goose). There are about 30 entities in that room. We hear “don’t let them near the pillars”. So I know exactly what I'm going for.

We enter a square room to the east, its 50x50 and empty with a corridor north, we head north immediately seeing a large 100+ ft across room, a 6-headed Goose Hydra to the east, 5 earth elementals to the north, 3 lightning elementals to the north, 6 mages and many humanoids performing some kind of lightning based ritual / ceremony.

The center of the room has a plinth surrounded by 4 pillars, and a ball of lightning sending arcs to them. The enemies call out to not let the part near the pillars after seeing us enter the room. So I know exactly what I'm going for. A tough fight ensues, all of us hit by lots of lightning based attacks.

When Uthgard hits 100 lightning charges, she absorbs all the lightning in the room, and zaps the entire room with a large storm bolt killing most of the enemies and hurting the party filling most of the space with a dangerous lightning storm. The mind speech ends and she is not part of our milsci. Ah shit, that ain’t good.

Uthgard runs to the center pillar like a moth to flame, possessed by something. The priest does the same calling us fools, trying to beat Uthgard there. The enemies flee the storm Uthgard created, which I mean is a valid idea, as the goose hydra joins them at the center pillar. All the lighting in the room focuses on the central pillar. Uthgard, Priest and Goose-Hydra all try to absorb each other's lightning auras, they seem to be sapping each other's lifeforce away too.

I knew I needed to do something, so I, being reckless, fire arcs right onto the Priest and managed to kill him quickly. The Goose hydra starts draining Uthgard's lightning charges and health. Elderan shouts 3 words to the goose - “let her live” braving the storm and knocks Uthgard out, dragging her body from the storm. We realise that the Goose-Hydra is getting quite powerful and with us not at full strength, we could not even begin to deal with him, so we bolt, with him yelling that he’s the new messiah. We grab loot on the way out.

We run to the outer cage and see all the enemy ships fleeing. We jump off the floating castle and cast featherfall on us. Me and Eugene fire arc us out and Elderan gets a cloud up for us to leave. Once on the cloud, we realise our stowaway is gone and we begin to relax and look at our loot.

Backpack

 - Steampunk backpack with lightning patches that can store stuff. 
 - Worn like a backpack.

Clock

 - A lightning clock with lightning zapping off of it.

Ring

- Black Bronze ring

Greataxe

 - Also has lightning. 

+ Cash value stuff

One of the crystals had God liquid in it - Something that could make a potion to permanently change things but need to add things to it.

Session Thirteen

Day Eight Continued

As we leave, we see that the cloud is dispersing and the hurricane has broken. We head back to High Anchor. As we arrive, we can see that they are making preparations to move. The Storm Giant lets us in the big doors this time. He is surprised we lived. A bit offended but eh. We inform them about the new Goose Messiah. He responds saying that that explains why half the geese left. We tell him about what happened in glorious detail. He says to expect there to be strong winds around for the next few days.

He bids us a farewell and safe travels. We head back to Seagate. The divinators say that we did nothing with the storm aura, that it will dissipate over a few months. I currently glow like a damn light stick so I will find a way to deal with this quickly. Maybe just zap Eugene 134 times. That sounds like a brilliant plan.

Buffs & Mil Sci

• Aaron has rank 11 Enhancing Enchantment (up to 11 ranks on an aspect of a spell) duration 65 sec (13 pulses) Minimum range 15 ft, Max 180 ft.
• The greater from Aaron is rank 20 (4 Areas +21) last 21 days (Cost 4000sp in myrrh for the whole party, with the bonfire) Seasonal is 12k in myrrh each.

Buffs and Abilities

Long Term (assumed always on)

Magic (caster)	Rk	Effects	Duration	Elidon	Eugene	Vixen	Elderan	Aaron	Uthgard	Minion 1	Minion 2	Minion 3
Mind Shield (Uthgard)	9	+28 vs Mental Attack, Stops Mind Reading	19 hrs	?	?	?	?	Y	Y	?	?	?
Barrier of Wind (Uthgard)	10	+25 Def vs Range +15 Defense vs Melee and Close	5.5 hrs	?	?	?	?	Sit	?	?	?	?
Enchant Armour (Aaron)	16	34 def +1 Arm	8.5/14 hrs (21 days)	?	?	?	?	Y	Y	?	?	?
Eleutherian Ward (Aaron)	11	Reduces Encumberance/Armour AG mod by upto 3.	6/11.5 hrs	?	?	?	?	Y	Y	?	?	?
Hot Wind	12	29/17 def	390 Mins	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
Vapour Breathing	10	Magic	5.5 hrs	?	?	?	?	?	Y	?	?	?
Feather Falling	9	Magic	6 hrs	?	?	?	?	?	Sit	?	?	?
Name	##	Magic	hrs	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?

Short Term

Short Term/Situational

Magic (caster)	Rk	Effects	Duration	Elidon	Eugene	Vixen	Elderan	Aaron	Uthgard	Minion 1	Minion 2	Minion 3
Mind Speech	10	11 Targets + Principal target mental communication with pictures	110 mins (210 mins)	?	?	?	?	Sit	Sit	?	?	?
Enchant Weapon (Aaron)	11	+12 SC +4 dam	16/27 mins (21 days)	?	?	?	?	Gl/Sw	?	?	?	?
Scales (Aaron)	16	52 pts ablative vs Magic & Mundane before Armour	26/37 mins	?	?	?	?	Sit	Sit	?	?	?
Arrow Flight	16	+16sc +5 DM	21 mins	?	?	?	?	?	Axe	?	?	?
Name	##	Magic	hrs	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?

Talents, Skills, other buffs

Magic (caster)	Rk	Effects	Duration	Elidon	Eugene	Vixen	Elderan	Aaron	Uthgard	Minion 1	Minion 2	Minion 3
Sense Danger	12	Sense the presence of a danger to the adept	Always	?	?	?	?	?	Y	?	?	?
Sixth Sense	na	Thief	Always	?	?	?	?	119%	?	?	?	?
Name	##	Magic	hrs	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
Name	##	Magic	hrs	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
Name	##	Magic	hrs	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?

Other buffs

Arron can extend the duration of elemental defence, armour or weapon spells of other Adepts to 21 days, Although I can see problems with extending some like Std Imolation for example.

Watch Order

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
1			2			3			4
5				6				7

Marching Order

Skirmish Formations (Front)
Default 1 2 3 4 5 6	Tracking/Scouting 1 2 3 4 5 6	Single File/Danger 1 2 3 4 5 6

Calendar

Autumn
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
	Lugnasad
Fruit (4)
			1	Guild Meeting Astrology: Warrior GREATERS	2	Armour & Weapon spells ritually cast	3		4		5		6
	7		8		9		10		11		12		13
	14		15		16		17		18	Astrology: Warrior ends	19	Astrology: King starts	20
	21		22		23		24		25		26		27
	28		29		30
Harvest (5)
							1		2		3		4
	5		6		7		8		9		10		11
	12		13		14	Astrology: King ends	15	Equinox Astrology: Mother starts	16		17	Seagate Autumn Fair	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		9
	10	Astrology: Mother ends	11	Astrology: Magician starts	12		13		14		15		16
	17	Blood Moon	18		19		20		21		22		23
	24		25		26		27		28		29		30	Beerfest