Kracken and Shopping Episode

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

Something massive passed by the small island in the center, and Dalish disappeared. A moment later Dalish reappears next to us on the shore, and huge tentacles are grabbing people up off their feet. Bullets, spells, lightning, and curses fly. Klyce turns into a shark and jumps into the water to take it on its own turf. I try to take control of the storm it has summoned, but that does no damage to it. I pull deep from the odd energy of the Fae King and curse the thing. Shortly thereafter, Remy finishes it off with a few more shots. Klyce pulls a mirror shard out of its forehead while the cavern begins to shake. Wasting no more time, I teleport us back to our hotel in Buenos Aires.

Klyce and Philomena head out to dinner while the rest of us rest up and discuss what we’re doing next. There’s a lot of back and forth about the desert with the mountain and the desert with the labyrinth, and honestly, I’m not sure which one we’re headed towards. Either way, we decided to take a day off to find some mana and do some shopping.

Remy and I head out to a place Philomena has found that sells mana on the down low. We gather money from the group and manage to secure just over 1000 motes. We pack it up in a covered wagon to take it back to the hotel. They give us a tip on where to go for magic items, as well. Gathering up the rest of the group, we head out to see what kind of magic supplies we can find.

It’s a hidden alley full of magical vendors when we find it. Right, first thing, we get a Bag of Holding to carry the massive kegs of mana. Then we head over to a guy named Gary to buy a bunch of scribing supplies. Everyone goes a bit feral then, going from vendor to vendor buying all sorts of things. I help as many as I can get decent prices, or at least less than they initially ask for. I buy a bag of tricks for Maribeth and sending stones for Nat. She gives me one to hold onto since we’re the two most likely to be doing the teleporting for the group. We also manage to find a potion seller and get 20 healing potions of a couple different strengths.

When we get back. Nat tries out the boots and gloves she bought. The boots sing quietly while she sneaks, and the gloves start shouting if she tries to steal things while wearing them. Well, that’s fun. Hopefully everything else we bought isn’t quite so unreliable.

Dangerous Waters

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

After the library, we meet back up and decide that we are going to divide the targets between our two groups. Dalish wants to see the waterfalls, so we decide to head in that direction. The Iguazu Falls are to the north, and his creepy, undead, monstrous bird can carry nearly the entire party. Klyce flies himself along the way. We travel at night, for unknown reasons, but the guys think that a big dead bird might attrack unwanted attention in the day time. Whatever, I think it’s scarier at night, honestly. We arrive at sunrise on the third day, and it is just as magnificient as Nat said.

But no time for beauty, apparently, though there was time to fly all the way here. We begin taking sweeps around, looking for any sort of cave or temple. Let them look, I’m just enjoying the sights. Then, we glance over and Klyce and Nat are plummeting down the falls. They splash down gentle as feathers before we reach them and we all gather up on some big rocks at the bottom.

“Found it.” Klyce tells us that there was a section that suppressed his eagle form. Klyce decides he’s the best option for scouting since he knows where it was and is most likely to survive climbing through the rushing water. So, we all sit on the rocks as he flies up and disappears into the water a ways off from where he fell. A few minutes later, he comes shooting out of the waterfall again, this time with a massive waterspout propelling him.

Found it again. He heads up, convinced that we all are too weak to survive his path, and investigates some more. The third time, he comes out under his own power, it’s too much, he needs our brains afterall. So, we formulate a plan to dive bomb ourselves through the last waterfall, and just hope our momentum carries us through.

It works! We all tumble into a cave and find a wall where Klyce has pass walled instead of opening the door. When we all get close to it, six of the seven fish around it glow, but we don’t pay it much mind, and head on in. Magic is dampened in here, but Dalish doesn’t collapse, so that’s a good start. Klyce takes us to a room with a pedastal in the center with a dagger on it. Around this, are four statues of beautiful, half naked women with a hole in each of the throats. We move forward and one of the guys goes to the dagger. A weird voice comes out, but Remy can understand it.

The fae have infiltrated many times in the past. If you are worthy, you can identify the fae. Make the wrong choice and consequences will befall you. Or something like that. Then each of the statues spoke. Remy translated them roughly as:

Three was with me when the assassination happened.

Four is known for never telling lies.

I was accomplishing a task when it happened. It is definitely Four.

One was acting suspicious at the time. One must have done it.

Gerhard tries first, and stabs #2, but he starts to turn to stone. Klyce says he has already tried #3. We listen to the voices again, and then Gerhard stabs #4. It sinks in and twists. Then the pedastal begins to rotate downwards to reveal a set of stairs. We all move forward into this strange place and down the twisting stairs.

There is a very large chamber at the bottom with ghostly blue lights. There are stone wheels on the floor and complex piping running all over this room. The voice here, Remy says, explains that we have to get water across the room, from one massive pipe to the other, but no water is coming out of the first pipe. Klyce’s expression falls, just a little, he may have messed up the water system with his hole in the wall. Nat sends HeyHey up to look, and yes, it leaves out into the resevoir that Klyce drained. HeyHey goes to look the other direction and sees a massive underground lake with glowing blue light in the center.

We set the wheels turning and get the pipes all lined up, but we still need water. Nat then sits down to concentrate on flooding the resevoir with her magic, and it works! We get the water flowing, and each pipe glows blue as the water arrives. When the water gets to the far end, another path opens up for us to leave this chamber.

We head down another set of stairs, all the way down to the lake. The blue light is about 200 feet out in the lake and about 5 feet above the water. Dalish floats out over the edge of the water. No issue, so he continues, out to the center, to see the light. We have a slightly shouted conversation about what he finds.

The light comes from a ghostly flame in a small brazier on a rock outcropping. There is also a pedastal with a small platform, holding a pictogram of an obsidian shard. It gives off strong divination and abjuration magic. He says there’s a pattern of tentacles on the pedastal and the island. I really want him to push on the pictogram to see what happens. Eventually, he does and there is a pulse of magic through the entire cavern. There is the sound of grinding stone, the water viabrates, sloshes, and churns between us, and then swells toward the island.

Notes for Spy Master

On By ravonlockeIn Backstory, QuillLeave a comment

Scraps of Reports for Spy Master written by Quill

The Big Guy sends strange business my way: frogs and mice. Notes follow.

Met a Red Grung – Forged ownership papers for a building by the docks. Also seen stealing from Lord Smallhat who you asked me to follow.

There’s also an Orange Grung in town, he’s a bit spotty, but hangs out with the Red one, when he’s not gambling.

Met a Small Mouseman – Forged authenticity papers for jewelry. Note: he is afraid of kittens, but likes books on crafts.

Lucern, the herbalist, has a green man working for her. He came from Candlekeep.

Cat bard from Chult seemed far too interested in me and where I came from.

Quill Scratcher

On By ravonlockeIn Backstory, QuillLeave a comment

Quill was the smallest of her clutch. Her siblings were always pushing her out of the way, and sometimes out of the nest, or off the roost. She never understood why they always had to be so high up, and got more than her fair share of broken bones from being pushed off high places. Eventually, they pushed her out of the flock altogether. 

She found a new flock though, Penny for Polly. They appreciated her smallness. Taught her to use it, and to be quick, and to stay hidden. But she was always getting distracted by words. On signs, on books that “fell” from satchels, on scrolls that were “dropped” on the ground. Her parents had taught her reading and writing, and all this sneaking about gave her ample opportunity to practice. So, her Master gave her a chance at forging a letter he needed, and she exceeded all expectations. She was Master’s prized forger after this, and earned the name Quill Scratcher. 

Most of the flock teased her about such a boring job. They also teased her about her fear of heights. She could climb like the rest of them, but she clearly preferred to scout from the ground. She even stayed toward the middle of the roost at all times, never watching the city from the eaves with the other young members. They called her Chicken Scratch. All except Master and Whistler, her fighting trainer, and she loved them for it. Not that Whistler knew, she only paid attention to Quill during training. But Quill was always aware of her.

Penny for Polly was a good crew. They took care of their part of Baldur’s Gate, and the Guild left them be. Until one day, Basher and Slicer stepped out of bounds in chase of their quarry. They crossed lines the Guild did not approve of and Master had to turn them over. The Pollies were restless after that, and the Guild paid less and less attention to threats against them. 

It was still a shock to the whole flock when the rival gang attacked in the roost itself. They’d been edging around for weeks, but a frontal assault was completely unexpected. Quill did what she does best, she hid from the large intruders and watched in terror as Master was struck down. Whistler hadn’t given warning, and the flock was falling. Quill ran. 

She ran all the way to the gates and hid in a caravan wagon just leaving for Waterdeep. When it stopped for the night, she crept out, and hid once more. Still deep in shock and despair, she followed the caravan all the way to Waterdeep, scavenging what food she needed from the wagons, but barely eating. 

Halfway through the trip, she started remembering stories of the grand city. It was supposed to be beautiful and there was a great library in the Castle. She wondered if she could be a scribe there. She could lose herself in a library that big for years.

When they arrived, it was not as golden and beautiful as she had hoped. Just as dirty, just as busy, filled with the same sorts of people, good and bad, as home. The castle guards turned her away before she could even ask about the library. She looked at herself then, bedraggled from her escape and travel, and disappeared into the city. Scrounging for a few weeks until finally finding work as a scribe at a dingy messenger service. 

Sometimes though, when work is slow or too tiring, she likes to go drinking at a pub near her room. She loves sweet wine and beer nuts, and writing down whatever snatches of conversation she hears. Occasionally, the other patrons aren’t so happy with her copying. Once in a while, they show their displeasure rather violently. 

It was on one of these occasions that she met The Big Man. She was rather drunk at the time, or she wouldn’t have ended up in that alley in the first place. So, she thought she had imagined the elephant of a man healing her wounds and walking her home. But then she saw him again, and he even hired her a couple times, for scribing. She always accepts his contract, and he keeps an eye out for her in alleys late at night. So far, he’s sent a pair of Grungs, a rather skittish Mouseman, and a job at an herbalist who employs a big green man who knows about Candlekeep.

Spy Master found her there, too. He had heard of her from her clients in Baldur’s Gate, been sent to her by Svetel, the Big Man. He promised to protect her, and get her work, and make sure she was well paid for her talents. He even helped her get a tiny basement room, and gave her a book to start her collection. A collection which covers one wall of that tiny room already, after just a few years. Her room is full of books, her pockets full of quills and gems. It’s a good life. She loves going to Homeward Bookshop at the end of each week to get a new book, visit the kittens, and see her friend Abena. The Mouseman didn’t seem too keen on the kittens, but Candlekeep man liked them well enough.

Southern Libraries

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

That night, Locke dreamed to me while I was ruminating on the door. I asked him if we should open it. He said from everything that Hank has said, that no, we should leave it closed. Then he showed me Buenos Aires. It is a beautiful city, and you can see the Royalist architecture taking over everywhere. Locke handed me a coin from the fountain in the square in the Dream. When I woke up, I still had it. That’s some magic Natty needs to learn.

I head down to have an early breakfast, making sure there’s still a bit of food for folks in the house. Then head up to my brother’s room. I knock politely, and Crystal answers. I ask if my brother is within, and he sleepily pulls into view, almost dressed. The incense in the room is intense, and I stay just outside the doorway. I ask if he’s still going to school, and he says yes, but he’s almost done so he doesn’t have lot of classes left. I remind him of his responsibility to graduate and become an adult and take care of the house. He sort of blows me off, but not unkindly. I turn on Crystal and tell her to keep him safe or I’ll hunt her down. She is amused by my threat, but it doesn’t matter. I turn back and tell Gerald that we’re going to South America and to be careful of Professor Wiest. He thinks we should tell her everything, but I remind him that she’s not Prime, yet. He’s not so sure, but I tell him to be careful, and I’ll be back in a couple of days.

Everyone gathers up that morning. Remy says he didn’t accept help from the Utopians afterall, so Klyce is breathing a little easier. Nat has warned her family, and commissioned a caravan. Once everyone has their mana and supplies sorted out, we gather up to teleport down to Buenos Aires. The trip goes smoothly, thanks to the Dream and the coin, and Locke quickly hurries over to us and takes us to meet up with Hank and friends.

We exchane a few pleasantries, including admiring a new metal arm of Frank’s before getting down to business of the Black Mirror. Hank says it has been haunting his dreams for the past year. It is an artifact from before the war ended. If it was whole, it would allow absolute vision and knowledge of any target you choose. The gods found it and broke it into six pieces, hiding it away down here in what is now South America. They’ve been searching, but have only found one piece so far. It was in an anciet sun temple.

The boys take a look at it. It is highly enchanted, but, being broken, the enchantment is incomplete. Remy says it is heavy fae divination magic, which only makes sense. He asks if they can see where the other pieces are with it, but they say it only shows flashes of color. Blue, white, red, light blue, and then back to black. I take a look, channelling a bit of my magic into it, but only the same flashes. Dalish catches a non-reflective black at the end, before it goes back to being shiny. So, blue, white, red, light blue, black. Nat says I’m not using the right kind of magic, so she takes it, it starts to smoke a bit and coldly tingle. I try to get her to put it down, but she uses a bit of divination magic.

She kinda goes catatonic a moment, before snapping out of it. She said it was a good tingle and that it gave her visions of places. A beautiful jungle lagoon with waterfalls, a stark white salty desert plain with a conical mountain in the distance, a complex tangle of valleys and crevices leading up to a red clay plateau, the top of a mountain above a glacier, and then darkness.

Gerhard manages to get similiar, if much more hazy visions. Klyce asks if they’ve heard of places like that, but only the falls sound familiar. They give a name, but I didn’t catch it. If Nat saw it, she can just take us there, right? But then someone says we ought to research the places. Since we don’t have objects from the locations, it’s better to have all the information we can get, and travel there more carefully. Ugh! Research!

So, those of us with teleport, and the bookish folk head off to the a great library in the city, while Klyce and Philomena head off to enjoy the local cuisine. Locke tells us that the sun temple they went to was guarded by monsters, and his magic had not worked to fight them. Over the course of the afternoon, we manage to locate all the discernable places. The darkness will just have to wait. I wonder if it’s behind the door. But that’s probably just my obsession talking.