To the caverns of the cloud giants we go...
July 2008
Game Day: 12/24/1308
Here is a rough sketch of the tower we are in:
There was nothing else we could find in the southern room. The blink dogs tell us that the smell a chemical smell coming from the room behind the large door. All of us attempt to open the door, individually, and even Rabbo and Eyar fail. However, we all attempt together, and end up breaking a rivet along the bottom of the door, which allowed a small crack in the wood to be exploited. We could see through, and could squeeze through the opening.
Looking through the crack, we see a big table. There are shelves along the walls. On the shelves there are at least 40 bottles and flasks. Ethan and Ivy both cast Detect Magic, and they begin to scan around the room, trying to identify any magical items. Topaz flies up to the table to look around. Topaz sees beakers, flasks, and general lab equipment. Ivy and Ethan detect 8 magically emanating flasks.
Potion #1: moderate, Ivy detects it’s within the sphere of healing
#2: strong, Ivy detects sphere of healing/chaos
#3: normal, Ethan and Ivy detect sphere of summoning, school of conjuration
#4: overwhelming, Rabbo spends 113 psionic points to influence Ethan and Ivy’s “luck,” and detects the sphere of summoning/chaos, school of conjuration, summoning, and alteration
#5: normal, couldn’t detect school or sphere
#6: normal, couldn’t detect school or sphere
#7: overwhelming, Ivy detects sphere of elemental/chaos
#8: strong, Ivy detects sphere of necromancy/chaos
Rabbo climbs up and uncorks #4 and lowers his continual light vial in the potion bottle (remember, everything is 12 times normal size) and gets a sample. He lowers down #4, #2, #1, almost drops #7, and #8 slips and falls a few feet at the very end of its descent. The stopper pops off of #8, and the potion spills everywhere. In particular, it spills on Ethan, Ivy, Eyar, and Shardenzar. Even though only a tiny amount spills in Eyar’s open mouth, it was enough to have a strong effect. As they are doused, the bottle starts to tip over, but Ethan and Ivy together are able to keep it from dumping completely out. After one taste, Eyar feels a strong urge to drink more, and even though we counsel against it, she decides to drink more. After she drinks, she acts as if she is under the effects of a haste spell, and also a potion of youth (longevity), because she speeds up in her speech and action, and also reverts to approximately a girl of 14 years of age. Fortunately for Eyar, she was an early bloomer, so she nearly has her adult stature, figure, and strength. As the change occurs, Rabbo commands Shardenzar to cast dispel magic; however, he can’t do it right away. He first has to read it out of Ethan’s spell book, and then has to memorize it. Then, he casts it. Although the haste effect was removed, Eyar remains approximately 14 years old. We gather the following samples:
1 vial of #8, 2 vials of #7, 2 vials of #4, 1 vial of #2, and 1 vial of #1. Then we also filled up our continual light vials: Rabbo: #4; Ethan: #7; Ivy: #1, Eyar: #8, and Shardenzar: #2.
While this is happening, Rabbo drinks his potion of flying and carefully puts the bottles back up on the shelves, and tried to make it look like nothing was disturbed. The potion that was spilled (and was almost empty) was clear, so with luck, no one will notice that is was spilled.
We climb up steps, and about halfway up, we hear the door downstairs open (on the first floor) and can hear someone walking around down there. Ethan studies for his Friend spell and we wait quietly. The door closes, and we move forward. We make it to the top of the next landing. There is a ladder going 120 feet straight up to a trap door in the ceiling above us.
Rabbo drinks about half a potion of levitation and floats up to the trap door, using the ladder as a guide. He opens the trap door and takes a quick look around the tower room. Next to the door is a large crank with a loop of chain which runs to and through the ceiling. Rabbo sees a crude telescope and a table with a large strange looking ship, and a stack of building supplies. Along the walls of this room are many strange carvings that glow. This room is large and open, and there are papers on the table.
The papers on the desk are charts, marking monthly events. They are for navigation in three dimensions.
Everybody else makes it up by levitation, flying, blinking, or potions of gaseous form. Ivy floats over to the table with the odd-looking ship. The strange looking ship looks like this:
The little tools on the table seem odd----the hammers have normal sized heads, but really long handles that get big (giant-sized) at the end.
Ethan and Shardenzar go to the table with the papers on it. Ethan casts comprehend languages and can recognize that these papers are for navigation through the plane of air, and are specific for this ship. In fact, the papers include blueprints for this ship. The ship is called a dragonfly, and is referred to as a spelljammer ship. Reference is made to a spelljammer helmsman and a helm. After inspecting the room, we decide to enter the ship.
12/25/1308
Once onboard, Rabbo does an object reading, and gets the impression that the boat is a model, very accurate, painstakingly detailed, but from the giant who built it’s perspective, a model only. This doesn’t mean that it also can’t be a functional airship, just that the giant built it as a model. The magic users try to concentrate and see if they can “feel” anything magically to power the ship, but they don’t. While we rest, Ethan and Shardenzar are casting the spells to read and copy the plans for the spelljammer. Rabbo influences their luck at reading and copying when necessary. While this is happening, Rabbo also slowly turns the wheel attached to the chains in the ceiling. Slowly, the roof begins to open. It is obvious we are in an observatory, and the glowing markings on the walls noted earlier mark constellations. After the spelljammer Dragonfly plans are copied, they rest.
12/26/1308
At 1 am, Ivy hears a trumpet sound. The party looks out the weird ship’s bridge window, but do not see anything. We decide after everyone is rested, we will wait until dark, and then attempt to leave the tower and get back on the castle grounds. Sometime later in the night, we see rats climbing down the tower chains, but they don’t disturb us. We wait, get rested, healed, and around midnight of 12/26, Ethan had been dying to use featherfall to fall down the tower, and in the course of being a little silly, hits upon a great idea to get us all down. Ethan casts featherfall on each of us. Recall that Ethan is wearing a ring which allows him to immediately recall and recast a memorized spell. This greatly quickens our pace out of the tower.
When the party makes it back out of the rat hole by the front door of the tower, it is bright out. Clearly, light and darkness work in a different cycle here. The party thought they had planned out the best time to move, but in the end, it didn’t matter much (at least in regards to traveling under the cover of night).
We are back out in the big courtyard/garden. As we make our way northwest, Topaz scouts out our surroundings. However, we are still ambushed and surprised by a huge kitty cat (approximately 12 times normal size). It seems a little surprised too, and tries to attack. Ivy casts speak with animals, and tries to get it not to attack us, but in the course of her scolding the kitty, it changes its mind, and isn’t as cowed by us as much as she begins to think we might be tasty like the rats we were trying to persuade her with. The cat decides to attack, but fumbles, and is stunned for a couple of rounds. Ivy grabs it by the ear, and harshly scolds it, saying, “Bad kitty!” The cat seems perturbed and a little frightened, and as it is coming out of being stunned, looks like it is going to attack. Rabbo takes a hold of the cat’s ear, and in an attempt to pull its head to the ground and subdue the cat, rips its ear off, and is covered with blood (scored a critical hit). The cat freaks out, but before it realized the mortality of its wound, Rabbo delivers two blows to the center of its forehead and sadly, kills the poor bastard. This was a hell of a feat, considering the cat was a 10 hit die monster!
We try to leave the cat in a lifelike pose, in case the guard in the tower happens to see it. The party continues to head northwest, and comes to a huge fountain, 120 feet across. We decide not to investigate. At the northwest corner of the yard, we spy a rat hole which leads into a building.
(picture of the castle, from Topaz’ recon and the party’s mapping)
We enter the building through the rat hole. It is a huge hall, like a ballroom for gala events, but it is currently empty, except for three dust mops dusting the floor. As soon as we step on the floor, the dust mops make their way menacingly towards us. It is clear they mean to attack. Besides being dust mops, there are invisible servants ready to choke the life out of us! One starts to choke Eyar, and Ethan hits it. One gets its hands on Rabbo’s neck. Ivy is also attacked and takes small damage. Eyar goes from bad to worse, and is stunned (took a critical hit). Ethan hits again. Rabbo hits the one on him for massive damage. Eyar is still losing hit points, and is being strangled. Rabbo fumbles, and the creature gets out of his grasp. Topaz tries to strike and also fumbles. Rabbo kills one. Ivy hits the one on her. Rabbo hits that one and kills it. Eyar has now been strangled for five rounds. Rabbo makes it over to her and kills that one, too. We take a few moments and heal everybody up. We look around, and see another rat hole towards the northwest corner.
We go in, and are in a room with a long, large table with many chairs. There is art on the walls which depicts hunting scenes from across the planes. There is a door on the far end. We find another rat hole and enter into the kitchen. The kitchen is a large room with two great tables, pots and pans, ovens, etc. Ivy finds rat holes leading to other rooms. We investigate a pantry, in which goods are stored in holes made from cloud stuff. We investigate a privy, and a laundry room also. Earlier, when we said that nightfall didn’t give us the cover of darkness, it did give us the advantage of sneaking around when almost all of the denizens of the castle were sleeping.
We find another rat hole, and peek through into a corridor. At one end, we see a guard posted by the southernmost door. At that point, Shardenzar says, “You know, I forgot, but I can turn invisible at will,” (due to his part faerie heritage) and Rabbo cocks his head and whispers, “I’m going to poke your eyes out. Turning invisible at will is one of those, oh I don’t know, extremely important and useful things I really ought to know about before we go adventuring about.” But, instead of trying to sneak up on the giant (which is about impossible) we go back through the rat hole, and find another rat hole to follow.
We decide to go back through to the kitchen, bypassing a sleeping room with three female giants. We tried to get out through the kitchen door, but couldn’t. We decide to go back to the pantry, and as we search, Ivy finds another rat hole which we follow. It opens up into the large root cellar. In the back of the root cellar, we find another rat hole which leads to the caverns.
Then, we took a break.
