After the Aether Age - User contributions [en]

Session Log 2024-06-26

2024-06-29T17:27:06Z

Abe: Created page with "Split party: Robin and Ignis Fireheart present. ---- Ignis awoke in the infirmary, surrounded by the injured from Golarth. Torrix slept heavily on the bed nex..."

Split party: [[Robin]] and [[Ignis|Ignis Fireheart]] present.

----

Ignis awoke in the infirmary, surrounded by the injured from Golarth. Torrix slept heavily on the bed next to him, his wounds sealed but his recovery incomplete. He was debriefed on the forthcoming moot, and left to visit the Gale Queen so that he might offer some insights as to his father's aims. However, he found her and her council in deep discussion, and decided to return later. As he left, he wondered if the Queen's rule was just, and if there was any possibility for a new society in the world they were fighting for.

Meanwhile, Robin visited the library to check in on the documents she had stolen from the pirate Cayrin Corvaine. She found that most of the lorekeepers were absent to study the necromantic artifacts, but the remaining librarian was happy to present her the mostly-decoded messages. The Queen and her council had already received them, but Robin caught up on the (slightly outdated) intelligence for her own sake.

Several of the documents were messages from Corvaine spies aboard other ships in the Thundercaller's fleet, concerning the politics and fortunes of unfamiliar names. One message did catch her eye, however - a ship called the Sepulchral Wyrm had been absent from the fleet for weeks, and was suspected to be on an envoy mission to the Gray Steps. Another document was decoded as Cayrin's own logistical records, indicating low rates of actual piracy - aside from intercepting supply shipments, the armada seemed to be lying low.

The most critical document was a message from the Thundercaller directly to Cayrin containing his orders concerning the villa of Dawnfont. She, Krotokos, and Golroga were to capture it and take hostages to bait a response from the Torch militia, then fly to the southern mountains to evade and distract them from operations "in the north". She was also tasked with evaluating Krotokos to see if his strength was worth his "shitty captaincy". Robin was informed that the Keep had increased scouting in the northern empire and mountains, but had yet to discover much besides wastelands and Howling Marchers.

Ignis, meanwhile, conducted his own research on both the Gale Queen and his own family. At the library, he found a book describing prominent Torch rebellions. It mentioned his distant relative Braxus Fireheart, who was executed by his own father for leading a mutiny against the Torch militia during their repression of a slave uprising. He left the library to ask after people's satisfaction under the rule of the Gale Queen, but the soldiers of the fortress were disinclined to speak ill of their commander. Robin, nearby, overheard some of those soldiers wondering about his questioning. One suspected that Ignis might be trying to undermine the Queen for his father, but his service to the Keep quashed that rumor.

Ignis spoke to the druid Millie back in the infirmary. He learned that, before he had joined their side, the Windwatcher's Keep had been an island held aloft by the fortress, upon which was built the largest free city that Millie had ever known. The Torch had assaulted it by air and infiltrated through a long-forgotten portal-gate, and in the ensuing battle, the city was evacuated and the island jettisoned.

He returned to the library to ask after history, wondering if the Gale Queen's hereditary position was the only way such a free city had ever existed. He learned that there were rumors of outlandish utopias that existed during the Aether Age, but the subsequent Time of Madness made it difficult to sift rumor from reality. Since then, tyranny and empire had been the standard of governance for most nations that lasted more than a few years.

Ignis returned to the Queen later in the evening, when the council's business had slowed to bureaucracy and hushed discussion. He wished to speak with her about the meeting, to understand her thoughts and goals. She informed him that she was planning to attend the meeting, as even a fraction of the forces that a mutinous Lord Fireheart could bring to bear would represent a multiplication of the Keep's war efforts. Though Lord Arva's eternal claim to the Keep was no longer a threat, the force and resources they could bring to bear were simply insufficient to battle any of the empires of the northern continent.

Her goals, and the Keep's goals, were unchanged from the original mutiny: war for liberation of the people oppressed by the Torch. She had no concrete answer to Ignis's questions about what a future society under her rule might look like, but encouraged him to keep dreaming about such a thing, as long as his blade remained pointed at the present.

The Gale Queen expressed that she thought Lord Fireheart above an underhanded assassination on neutral ground, but she was leery of his condescension and leverage. She asked Ignis if he could help find her any counter-leverage in the Keep's favor or to his disadvantage. He suggested that the Council of Flame represented a convenient common enemy against which to orient their alliance, before leaving her to her work.

Robin, meanwhile, tended to some chores she had around the Keep. She failed to brew any useful poison, and so turned to the glowing ceramic walnut she had recovered from the magebane pool in the Venom Drinker's lair. Though the hinge had been removed, it remained magically sealed against all intrusion - corrosive acid would do little to break a ward that had repelled magebane.

She brought it down to the blacksmith to see if brute force would be able to dislodge it and reveal the lightly rattling items inside. The dwarven smith set it in a vise on an anvil and took a sledgehammer to it, to no success. He complained to Robin that the shell's material was likely simple ceramic, glowing with magic - not worth much on its own - but that it would be unlikely to yield to any physical force short of titanic. Such a ward would require specific conditions or magic to open.

Ignis reached out to Vicriax of the Golden by contacting Haxryn's Image in the provided mirror. He wanted to see if he could leverage their alliance - and by extension, the cooperation of her Council of Fuel - to even the bargaining between the Gale Queen and Lord Fireheart. He asked for an ambiguous commitment, but she prodded him for specifics until he asked directly: would she join a war effort with the Keep, if Lord Fireheart were on their side? She gave him an honest answer: if she thought they would win. He sensed she was withholding some information, and was barely concealing her smugness about it, as she faded from the mirror.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-06-10

2024-06-23T22:59:33Z

Abe:

Split party: [[Ekkels]] and [[Klaitos]] present.

----

Klaitos succumbed to exhaustion on the floor of the arcanic laboratory. The obsidian rings he had been transcribing nearly slipped from his grasp. He slept deeply on the cold floor, and the remaining laboratory mages worked around his unshiftable bulk for the remainder of the night.

In his sleep, he was haunted by another strange dream - a roaring, vast, and wrathful storm, driven by a profound rage. Klaitos waded through the storm, and spied an obscured, partially indistinct figure at its heart - a crooked and steeped man, his claws lashing the wind into storm. Klaitos awoke in the middle of the laboratory floor, and belatedly registered that the galestorm's winds were familiar to his wind-tuned senses.

Disturbed to have had two such encounters in two subsequent rests, Klaitos went to see Millie, the druid, in the Keep's infirmary. There he found Ekkels, stretching awake from his own night of falling asleep on the job. He was confused when Klaitos asked after uneasy dreams in which lived strange presences, so Klaitos reasoned that whatever curse he had was exclusive to him.

Millie didn't have any immediate diagnosis or cure for him, but suggested he return to the infirmary to sleep that night. As a druid of the Petalbearer, she knew some of the magic of dreams, and she was sure she had a ritual that could help. Klaitos accepted the offer, and the two of them headed out into the Keep.

They headed to the Queen's Councilroom in the upper Keep, to ask after her decision regarding Fireheart's moot. They found the room still abuzz with scouting reports, supply logistics, and muttered strategic minutiae. A Councillor asked if their message or inquiry could be handled by someone less busy, but the Queen heard their request and brought them to a side chamber for a private conversation.

She expressed serious distrust, but confirmed that even a portion of Lord Fireheart's armies and assets, lent to the Keep's cause, could multiply their military capabilities. She mostly trusted him to grant her a safe meeting - or she trusted her protective guard, at any rate - but held no faith that he was interested in an arrangement on equal terms.

The Gale Queen requested Klaitos and Ekkels' help in finding some sort of leverage against Lord Fireheart, from any vector. The Keep's spy network knew some of his comings and goings, but knew nothing of his weaknesses. She assured them that she did not necessarily expect any more success from them on such a short timeline. She only brought this to Klaitos and Ekkels because they had achieved many things and discovered many secrets that no other Keep agent could have done.

They took the task seriously, but struggled for inspiration. Most of their ideas involved flying too far away to achieve without flaking on Millie's dream ritual. They decided to look for Fireheart's scandals and secrets through means unavailable to the Keep's spies: they borrowed Wilga's Wisdoms from Robin's hoards and tried to trick the book into thinking that Lord Ragnus Fireheart was before it.

Ekkels attempted to disguise himself as Ignis's father, starting with the face. Ekkels, struggling to carry Lord Fireheart's characteristic disdain, kept adjusting the face, eventually mushing his malleable form into an eerily perfect replication. Passerby in the hall were startled by the Councillor of Flame's face atop his normal robed, lumpy body.

Klaitos presented Wilga's Wisdoms with this shortened doppleganger. The purple book shook like never before, its pages fluttering back and forth. After a few moments, it gently opened to a mostly-empty page with a single line on it: "I can't improve on this. Well done." Belatedly, it flipped the page to a scatological illustration.

Lacking any other leads or ideas by which to improve the Keep's leverage against Lord Fireheart, Klaitos returned to the arcanic laboratory to spend his time more productively. Ekkels, left to his own devices, decided to find Hitchit the kobold. He still bore Lord Fireheart's face, and drew some alarmed attention for it, but his stature, robes, and Little Dudes were enough to prove his identity, and his reputation for chaos was sufficient for onlookers to shrug off the new look.

In the hangar, he was told by a Gale Knight that Hitchit, and his attendant knight Vott, were no longer living in the Keep. The erratic, bomb-making kobold had been removed from the fortress for everyone's peace of mind. Instead, he had been granted a workshop on the side of the volcano above which the Keep was stationed. The Keep kept in contact, sending periodic resupply flights through the volcanic smoke and incidentally verifying that the pair were still alive down there. Ekkels considered flying to meet his friend, but decided it was too much trouble, and had the knight pass along his greetings with the next supply run.

Up in the laboratory, Klaitos's task had shifted to transcribing marginal details of the already miniscule runework along the necromantic artifacts. The tedium, building upon that which he did not fully rest off from the night before, quickly eroded his focus, and he decided to call it an early night before he started making mistakes.

On his way to the infirmary for the dream ritual, he encountered Ekkels, still Fireheart-faced, heading in to request treatment. Millie reacted with alarm, worrying that both of them had been cursed at the same time, but was assured that Ekkels's condition was simply the result of a mishap.

She took Klaitos to an infirmary closet that she had turned into a separated bedroom. Klaitos and Ekkels settled in, and she lit a strange incense over their heads. She took a comfortable seat, and the three rested and waited for sleep. The incense smoke billowed over them, weighing like a blanket. Eventually they felt themselves submerge beneath its weight into a shared lucid dream.

The world around them was a indistinct and shifting, but not hostile. Klaitos registered it to be the same realm he had dreamed the other night, its natural inconsistency only apparent to his conscious attention. The storm was absent, however, and the dream quiet and calm. Klaitos extended his wind sense into the alien landscape, and found the echoes of its rage somewhere distant.

He considered why the curse was randomly diminished, and considered that he was sleeping somewhere different each time he sensed it - first the hangar barracks in beseiged Golarth, then the laboratory floor, then the infirmary. Millie suggested that it was the first night he wasn't sleeping in the presence of powerful necromancy.

Ekkels, meanwhile, was pleased to bear his own face in the dream realm, as opposed to Lord Fireheart's. This was undermined, however, by his unstable form beginning to unravel. He drew himself back together with effort, and Klaitos asked Millie if they could exit the dream early - without the storm close enough to investigate, their continued stay only posed risks for Ekkels. Millie claimed to know a ritual to help, but that it would take a while.

The druid sat on the inconsistent ground and closed her eyes in concentration. Ekkels, meanwhile, taped himself up to retain cohesion. This seemed sufficient, so he went for a walk through the dreamscape. He found its formless strangeness oddly familiar, but was unable to tell if that was due to a lost memory of some affinity with the chaos magic that saturated his soul.

The group suddenly awoke to Millie's shriek of alarm. While asleep, she had reached up and knocked down the incense. The Tireless Knight rushed over to snuff the flame and tidy up the mess. Millie apologized for startling Klaitos and Ekkels - tipping an overhead burning candle with her eyes closed always made her jump.

Klaitos and Ekkels thanked her, and thanked the Knight for cleaning up. Klaitos hurried back to the laboratory; Ekkels followed after verifying that his face bore no remnant resemblance to Ignis' father. They found the lab manned by a single researcher, as the rest were out for a meal.

He told them that progress had been good, in part thanks to the secrets gleaned from the partially-translated Tome of Arcanic Artifice. While the complexities of the rings and eye were still being deciphered, it seemed undeniable that their dread necromancy was the sort that worked with souls. Moreover, they had discovered another name in the runes on the eye, matching Lord Arva's on the ring - Inheritor Ulyunne.

The rings and eye were now stored in warded glass boxes, and the researcher advised Klaitos to use a pair of kitchen tongs to handle them. Under the Lantern Eye, Klaitos observed writhing necromancy on all three artifacts, though far fainter on the obsidian eye, but could not tell its workings or purpose. Ekkels felt a strange sense hatred echoing forth as the rings were returned to their box.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-06-10

2024-06-23T22:58:13Z

Abe: Created page with " Klaitos succumbed to exhaustion on the floor of the arcanic laboratory. The obsidian rings he had been transcribing nearly slipped from his grasp. He slept deeply on the cold..."

Klaitos succumbed to exhaustion on the floor of the arcanic laboratory. The obsidian rings he had been transcribing nearly slipped from his grasp. He slept deeply on the cold floor, and the remaining laboratory mages worked around his unshiftable bulk for the remainder of the night.

In his sleep, he was haunted by another strange dream - a roaring, vast, and wrathful storm, driven by a profound rage. Klaitos waded through the storm, and spied an obscured, partially indistinct figure at its heart - a crooked and steeped man, his claws lashing the wind into storm. Klaitos awoke in the middle of the laboratory floor, and belatedly registered that the galestorm's winds were familiar to his wind-tuned senses.

Disturbed to have had two such encounters in two subsequent rests, Klaitos went to see Millie, the druid, in the Keep's infirmary. There he found Ekkels, stretching awake from his own night of falling asleep on the job. He was confused when Klaitos asked after uneasy dreams in which lived strange presences, so Klaitos reasoned that whatever curse he had was exclusive to him.

Millie didn't have any immediate diagnosis or cure for him, but suggested he return to the infirmary to sleep that night. As a druid of the Petalbearer, she knew some of the magic of dreams, and she was sure she had a ritual that could help. Klaitos accepted the offer, and the two of them headed out into the Keep.

They headed to the Queen's Councilroom in the upper Keep, to ask after her decision regarding Fireheart's moot. They found the room still abuzz with scouting reports, supply logistics, and muttered strategic minutiae. A Councillor asked if their message or inquiry could be handled by someone less busy, but the Queen heard their request and brought them to a side chamber for a private conversation.

She expressed serious distrust, but confirmed that even a portion of Lord Fireheart's armies and assets, lent to the Keep's cause, could multiply their military capabilities. She mostly trusted him to grant her a safe meeting - or she trusted her protective guard, at any rate - but held no faith that he was interested in an arrangement on equal terms.

The Gale Queen requested Klaitos and Ekkels' help in finding some sort of leverage against Lord Fireheart, from any vector. The Keep's spy network knew some of his comings and goings, but knew nothing of his weaknesses. She assured them that she did not necessarily expect any more success from them on such a short timeline. She only brought this to Klaitos and Ekkels because they had achieved many things and discovered many secrets that no other Keep agent could have done.

They took the task seriously, but struggled for inspiration. Most of their ideas involved flying too far away to achieve without flaking on Millie's dream ritual. They decided to look for Fireheart's scandals and secrets through means unavailable to the Keep's spies: they borrowed Wilga's Wisdoms from Robin's hoards and tried to trick the book into thinking that Lord Ragnus Fireheart was before it.

Ekkels attempted to disguise himself as Ignis's father, starting with the face. Ekkels, struggling to carry Lord Fireheart's characteristic disdain, kept adjusting the face, eventually mushing his malleable form into an eerily perfect replication. Passerby in the hall were startled by the Councillor of Flame's face atop his normal robed, lumpy body.

Klaitos presented Wilga's Wisdoms with this shortened doppleganger. The purple book shook like never before, its pages fluttering back and forth. After a few moments, it gently opened to a mostly-empty page with a single line on it: "I can't improve on this. Well done." Belatedly, it flipped the page to a scatological illustration.

Lacking any other leads or ideas by which to improve the Keep's leverage against Lord Fireheart, Klaitos returned to the arcanic laboratory to spend his time more productively. Ekkels, left to his own devices, decided to find Hitchit the kobold. He still bore Lord Fireheart's face, and drew some alarmed attention for it, but his stature, robes, and Little Dudes were enough to prove his identity, and his reputation for chaos was sufficient for onlookers to shrug off the new look.

In the hangar, he was told by a Gale Knight that Hitchit, and his attendant knight Vott, were no longer living in the Keep. The erratic, bomb-making kobold had been removed from the fortress for everyone's peace of mind. Instead, he had been granted a workshop on the side of the volcano above which the Keep was stationed. The Keep kept in contact, sending periodic resupply flights through the volcanic smoke and incidentally verifying that the pair were still alive down there. Ekkels considered flying to meet his friend, but decided it was too much trouble, and had the knight pass along his greetings with the next supply run.

Up in the laboratory, Klaitos's task had shifted to transcribing marginal details of the already miniscule runework along the necromantic artifacts. The tedium, building upon that which he did not fully rest off from the night before, quickly eroded his focus, and he decided to call it an early night before he started making mistakes.

On his way to the infirmary for the dream ritual, he encountered Ekkels, still Fireheart-faced, heading in to request treatment. Millie reacted with alarm, worrying that both of them had been cursed at the same time, but was assured that Ekkels's condition was simply the result of a mishap.

She took Klaitos to an infirmary closet that she had turned into a separated bedroom. Klaitos and Ekkels settled in, and she lit a strange incense over their heads. She took a comfortable seat, and the three rested and waited for sleep. The incense smoke billowed over them, weighing like a blanket. Eventually they felt themselves submerge beneath its weight into a shared lucid dream.

The world around them was a indistinct and shifting, but not hostile. Klaitos registered it to be the same realm he had dreamed the other night, its natural inconsistency only apparent to his conscious attention. The storm was absent, however, and the dream quiet and calm. Klaitos extended his wind sense into the alien landscape, and found the echoes of its rage somewhere distant.

He considered why the curse was randomly diminished, and considered that he was sleeping somewhere different each time he sensed it - first the hangar barracks in beseiged Golarth, then the laboratory floor, then the infirmary. Millie suggested that it was the first night he wasn't sleeping in the presence of powerful necromancy.

Ekkels, meanwhile, was pleased to bear his own face in the dream realm, as opposed to Lord Fireheart's. This was undermined, however, by his unstable form beginning to unravel. He drew himself back together with effort, and Klaitos asked Millie if they could exit the dream early - without the storm close enough to investigate, their continued stay only posed risks for Ekkels. Millie claimed to know a ritual to help, but that it would take a while.

The druid sat on the inconsistent ground and closed her eyes in concentration. Ekkels, meanwhile, taped himself up to retain cohesion. This seemed sufficient, so he went for a walk through the dreamscape. He found its formless strangeness oddly familiar, but was unable to tell if that was due to a lost memory of some affinity with the chaos magic that saturated his soul.

The group suddenly awoke to Millie's shriek of alarm. While asleep, she had reached up and knocked down the incense. The Tireless Knight rushed over to snuff the flame and tidy up the mess. Millie apologized for startling Klaitos and Ekkels - tipping an overhead burning candle with her eyes closed always made her jump.

Klaitos and Ekkels thanked her, and thanked the Knight for cleaning up. Klaitos hurried back to the laboratory; Ekkels followed after verifying that his face bore no remnant resemblance to Ignis' father. They found the lab manned by a single researcher, as the rest were out for a meal.

He told them that progress had been good, in part thanks to the secrets gleaned from the partially-translated Tome of Arcanic Artifice. While the complexities of the rings and eye were still being deciphered, it seemed undeniable that their dread necromancy was the sort that worked with souls. Moreover, they had discovered another name in the runes on the eye, matching Lord Arva's on the ring - Inheritor Ulyunne.

The rings and eye were now stored in warded glass boxes, and the researcher advised Klaitos to use a pair of kitchen tongs to handle them. Under the Lantern Eye, Klaitos observed writhing necromancy on all three artifacts, though far fainter on the obsidian eye, but could not tell its workings or purpose. Ekkels felt a strange sense hatred echoing forth as the rings were returned to their box.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-04-25

2024-04-30T17:24:06Z

Abe: Created page with "Heiras, not yet steady on her feet, flew the Stormjumper west at the head of the remaining Keep fleet. Though few had been evacuated, and some had been lost, all were relieved..."

Heiras, not yet steady on her feet, flew the Stormjumper west at the head of the remaining Keep fleet. Though few had been evacuated, and some had been lost, all were relieved to be leaving behind the Umbra-choked skies of Golarth. Ignis, Oze-Oze, and Torrix were all left to rest in the hold belowdecks. Between them, bags stuffed full of the treasure from Lord Arva's tower clanked to and fro.

Ahead of the fleet, a lone crimson flare streaked into the clear sky. Heiras, Robin, Ekkels, Klaitos, and Angitt watched it burst into the crest of House Fireheart. Ekkels clambered to the fore of the ship to find the source of the flare through his magnifying glass. He spied a small but regal ship, comically fisheyed in his spyglass, waving white flags for parlay. On its deck stood Lord Fireheart alone.

The party debated the risk of engaging him, but saw little chance of a trap. Their main concern lay belowdecks - Ignis, his son and former heir, was recovering from a near-fatal self-detonation, healing liquor on an empty stomach, and the exertion of burglary. They had little hope of rousing him to deal with his father. Robin suggested that she could impersonate the missing Fireheart and make up the difference, but Klaitos objected, pointing out that they had no reason to cover for Ignis's current state.

So decided, Heiras flew the Stormjumper ahead of the fleet to hover near Lord Fireheart's vessel. He addressed the group, complimenting their feats of undead dragonslaying in Golarth, and commending their survival beyond. He claimed to have gotten word of their deeds from a wave of escaping militia - those that had evacuated before the Keep had landed. Belatedly, as though he hadn't noticed Ignis's absence, he asked Ekkels, Ignis, and Robin if his son had fallen under the Umbra to join the undead hordes. Before anyone could lie for no reason, Klaitos volunteered his present location and state. Lord Fireheart sneered but was unsurprised.

He declared that he would like to invite the Gale Queen - and them, if she liked - to a clandestine moot in three days time. When pressed for a reason, he claimed that, from his vantage as a military commander, the Torch was losing its wars. The dragons of the Council of Flame had all but abandoned the empire, and were simply waiting for the rest of them to perish. The Torch Empire, he reasoned, was falling apart, and he wished to speak with the Gale Queen - and other invested parties - about combining their efforts towards survival and even victory.

He swore that they would be safe at the moot, and told them that the location would be his private villa in the southern mountains. Robin was deeply suspicious of his offer, and noticed what it omitted - any promise to work for the Gale Queen. Though his readiness to betray the Torch and ally with the Windwatcher's Keep seemed genuine, his ultimate aim was to rule, not just to win. Finally, he asked the party pass along an earnest request to Ignis - that he keep away from the bottle, should he attend the moot - and flew off into the horizon.

The remainder of the journey was without incident. The exhausted party, remaining Gale Knights, and recruited Torch militia made for a dense crowd as they disembarked in the hangar of the Windwatcher's Keep. Ekkels slipped away from the group to head to the infirmary wing, while Robin and Klaitos were brought before the Gale Queen and her councilors for a debrief.

The Queen had already learned some of what had happened, by the time they came before her, and was primarily interested in what they had encountered and noticed in Golarth and with Lord Fireheart. However, the conversation was derailed by Robin's boasting of having slain Lord Arva. Klaitos argued that he had done most of the damage, but she maintained that her final crossbow bolt had sealed his fate, and brandished her necklace to show off the rings she had claimed as a trophy.

An intrusive halfling suddenly leapt down from the council to grab the necklace. He claimed that the rings were artifacts of powerful necromancy - a foul, forbidden, and dangerous art - and expressed horror that Robin had kept them so close to her skin. Under Klaitos's Lantern Eye, the rings and the Obsidian Eye in her pack glowed brightly, and the room took a collective step back. The halfling demanded to know what she intended to do with her terrible treasures, but Robin had only a loose plan to sell them. He asked if she would surrender them to the Keep's study and containment, but she demanded a fair trade or unique treasure in return. The Queen granted the request, telling her to speak to a nervous man at the end of the council after the meeting, and returned to the debrief.

Klaitos explained what they had seen at Golarth and described the dire state they had left the city in, but noted that Lord Fireheart had passed along a positive impression of the Keep's efforts, from those who had been able to evacuate. Robin submitted that Fireheart seemed motivated to use the moot to better position himself and his bloodline to rule, but that motivation meant that he was likely telling the truth about safely meeting and allying with her. The Gale Queen accepted this, and considered the offer worth deliberation. Klaitos and Robin were subsequently dismissed as the Queen and her council discussed their intelligence.

Ekkels followed some Keep soldiers carrying the gore-covered Torrix to the infirmary. Many beds were filled - some had been injured at Golarth, others on various scouting missions and skirmishes. Millie, druid of the Petalbearer and healer for the Keep, seemed to have her hands full, but was happy to see him. The Tireless Knight was also present, wandering the beds and assisting Millie. Ekkels came over to apologize for throwing him off a ship, a while ago. The Knight's expressionless helmet conveyed no emotion, but Ekkels sensed his sincere appreciation all the same.

Ekkels used his chaos magic to borrow some of Millie's healing and help reduce the workload. Though the Petalbearer's power flowed easily through him, and sealed the grievous wounds of the recovering soldiers, his irregular spellwork produced a messy bubbling effect on the bodies he healed. The Tireless Knight cleaned up behind him, and the two nonverbal medical assistants exchanged a thumbs-up. After a while, Ekkels tired out and fell asleep between the infirmary beds.

Klaitos followed the mages carrying the obsidian rings and eye that Robin had brought back from Golarth. It bothered him to leave the Umbra-smothered city to become another necropolis of the Gray Steps, and he wanted to lend aid to the Keep's efforts to study and undo the conquest of the Regalia Eternal. However, once he reached the arcanic laboratory, he found the discussion over his head. While the more-studied mages discussed and researched, he helped with the tedium of transcribing the minuscule runework of the rings. As he labored, he found the full name of Lord Arva Sirroon within the spellwork.

Robin bartered with the nervous treasurer for her recompense. He warned her that the Keep was not a nation of significant wealth, and that their stores were not likely to meet her standards of opulence. She assured him that she just wanted something unique and useful - particularly something to augment her ranged combat. He offered her a strange artifact he called the Pilferwhip, which was able to teleport objects struck with its lash-tip to her free hand. He claimed it to be an experimental undertaking by a now-deceased Keep craftsdwarf, not considered useful enough to produce more.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-04-12

2024-04-13T23:10:10Z

Abe: Created page with "Oze-Oze and Klaitos rushed to attack the gold-masked woman, but she danced away from their strikes. Meanwhile, Ekkels flew the Stormjumper around the Umbral gyre, scanning for..."

Oze-Oze and Klaitos rushed to attack the gold-masked woman, but she danced away from their strikes. Meanwhile, Ekkels flew the Stormjumper around the Umbral gyre, scanning for Ignis. He spotted the man being hauled aboard another Keep vessel, still on the ground, and so tilted the smuggler ship down to meet it. Robin studied the gold-masked woman as she fought, and realized that she was showing off - her mortal opponents were as playthings.

Robin tried to bait the woman with an illusory copy of the necklace bearing Arva's rings. The woman seemed unimpressed, but suddenly lunged for her. Robin evaded her grasp, and she fell back as she dodged further attacks from Angitt and Oze-Oze. The latter's over-committed maceblow sent him teetering against the ship's rail. Robin followed up on their strikes with a crossbow bolt to pin the woman's voluminous gown to the steerage wall. Ekkels, piloting the ship to rescue Ignis, heard the metal thunk of the bolt striking, and peered out to watch Klaitos's follow-up punch landing soundly. The woman's mask concealed any expression, but she radiated vengeful scorn at him.

Ekkels brought the Stormjumper to a hover by the other vessel, and tried to get someone's attention, so that they might throw his unconscious teammate to their deck. The soldiers, panicking at the zombie army scrabbling at the hull and the gold-masked woman battling on the Stormjumper, ignored his nonverbal pleas. He took matters into his own hands, instead, and swapped locations with Ignis's unconscious body. He then leapt back to the other ship, scrambling over the inconveniently-placed Ignis and Heiras to take back the steering.

The gold-masked woman tore free of the pinning bolt and leapt to the prow of the ship. She muttered a strange spell, and the Umbra above poured down past the ship. No immediate effect was noticeable, save a collective chill from the sudden exposure to deathly magic. Angitt raced across the deck and fired upon her once more, nearly striking her, but she dodged yet another bolt just as she finished her spellwork. Oze-Oze struggled to vault the rails to re-board the unsteady, pilot-less Stormjumper.

Ekkels clambered over the bodies of Ignis and Heiras and resumed his position at the steerage. Wary of the gold-masked woman standing before him on the prow, he readied for a sudden takeoff. Suddenly, Klaitos felt an uncanny force clawing life from his soul. He shook off the worst of it, but turned to find an obsidian eye hovering near the edge of the ship's deck. He called out a warning to his allies on the deck, but decided that the eye was not an opponent he was eager to face, and instead circled the steerage to stand between the gold-masked woman and Ekkels. Robin, alerted to a new shiny object, immediately consulted her Bracelet of Greed and verified that the eye's value warranted risking its threat. Eager to claim yet another treasure, she crossed the deck in a flash and stuffed the eye in a spare purse.

The gold-masked woman reached her arm skyward and clutched the air. A massive arm of stitched-together flesh rose from the ground below, following her motion. Ekkels, already on the lookout, flew the Stormjumper nearly clear of the grasping hand - its giant fingertips grazed the ship and rattled his smooth escape. All on deck stumbled except the gold-masked woman; Robin lost her grip on the eye-purse as she fell, and it flew blindly free from her grasp. Oze-Oze lost his grip on the rail and dropped to the deck of the other ship.

Angitt was the first to her feet, striking the woman's arm with a crossbow bolt as the ship steadied. She turned to the steerage and demanded Ekkels reverse course to retrieve Oze-Oze. He obliged, and Oze-Oze leapt to the other rail as they flew back down. Robin, meanwhile, pursued the floating eye-purse up and down the deck, but was unable to keep up with its flight on foot. She studied its movements, readying to pounce. Klaitos tried to corner the gold-masked woman at the front of the ship, but she danced around him, draining still more of his life force with a glare.

The woman leapt to the middle deck, but Oze-Oze, pulled to the deck by Angitt, scrambled across to smash his mace into her knee as she landed. Robin leapt for the obsidian eye, grabbing it out of the air, but fell from the upper deck in her single-minded pursuit, landing painfully at the gold-masked woman's feet. Heedless of the her looming presence, she tied the purse to her waist. Klaitos swapped roles with Ekkels, taking the steering as the latter raced out to the deck. He swapped places with the greed-distracted Robin and grabbed for the gold-masked woman again, but she easily danced away from his magic-warping grasp.

She glared death again at Oze-Oze, though he seemed to resist the draining force. She leapt free from the melee down to the wing of the ship, where she called more Umbra down to coalesce around her. Oze-Oze gave chase, lightning crackling at his jaws, but his bolt of energy missed wildly. Ekkels tried the same tactic, summoning and blasting forth with chaos in the same manner as he had struck down the floating scales earlier. His magic came out in a thrumming pulse, to his surprise, disrupting the cloud of Umbra but also the ship's engines. Klaitos struggled to maintain a level flight, and Angitt and Oze-Oze stumbled as the vessel rocked, the latter teetering against the rail again. Robin raced to the rail and fired a bolt at the woman, knocking her off the wing to plummet to the zombie-filled plaza below.

The gold-masked woman's fall led the eye to stop thrashing within the purse and caused the zombie army to fall into disarray. However, the now-disorganized army had still overrun the plaza. The remainder of the Keep fleet took to the air, surrendering the city and any remaining survivors to the undead below.

The party was ready to leave the city with their lives, but Robin suggested they fly to Lord's Town to see if anything could be stolen before they returned to the Keep. Besides the plaza and main road, the city seemed largely abandoned, as if every zombie had been called to join the mob now overrunning the warehouse district. Ekkels flew to land in the center of Lord's Town, just outside of Arva's tower. The party treated their minor injuries as Robin and Oze-Oze dismounted. She entered the tower to find any secret treasures the spiteful Lord might have kept, while he was simply eager to loot as much as he could carry off.

She climbed to the tower as he greedily, stealthlessly, and recklessly robbed the lower floors. She found a locked room at the top of the floor, and made short work of picking it. Inside, she found a room that seemed recently emptied of all furnishings. Its bare stone floor was marked with complex rune circles. At the center, a large figure sat still under an all-concealing cloak, their back to the door. Uninterested in potential hostilities or diplomacy, she quietly closed the door and headed back down.

She figured she had possibly seen something important, but didn't want to bother climbing up again, so she woke a badly-burned Ignis, filled him in on what he had missed, and told him to go check out the top room. He decided that it was important to finish looting first, so he helped Oze-Oze fill the ship. Heiras awoke to the sound of her ship being loaded with treasure. Ignis then healed Klaitos and grabbed Ekkels to join him in climbing the tower.

The two of them confronted the cloaked figure. Ignis called out, and was silently ignored. Ekkels studied the runes, and determined them to have some sort of amplifying and projecting effect - they weren't sealing or protecting the figure in any way. Ignis lit a torch and circled around the room. From the front, he observed the figure to be a giant skeleton, its fleshless face turned down as if in mourning. Neither of them had much idea of what to do with the skeleton, and both were worried about accidentally starting a fight, so they abandoned it without further investigation.

Their greed as satiated as the Stormjumper's hold allowed, the group took off for the Keep, catching up to the rest of the fleet. The Umbra-smothered city of Golarth shrank to a dark point on the horizon behind them.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-04-01

2024-04-06T00:13:37Z

Abe: Created page with "The steel-masked man broke free of the grapple, and turned to face Klaitos and Robin. He swung his axes for Klaitos's neck, but stumbled on now-ungainly legs. Around them, the..."

The steel-masked man broke free of the grapple, and turned to face Klaitos and Robin. He swung his axes for Klaitos's neck, but stumbled on now-ungainly legs. Around them, the undead army poured through the road and burning debris to charge into the plaza. Further ahead, the Torch and Keep forces were struggling to defend the ship's landing and warehouses against the unending, growing horde.

The crystal-eyed woman, finished trading threats with Ignis, quietly walked across the deck. From the Umbral dark of the engine room, Ignis thought he heard her drop off the side. He snuck into the ship, wary for ambush or trap, and made his way to the deck. At the last turn, the Umbra coiled and coalesced around him into a lattice of interlocking bone forearms. He found himself trapped, still clutching the leaking aether core.

Ekkels finished drawing a slapdash death ward on the canvas scrap. He noticed no adverse effect from having been sitting in the Umbra, without the ward, and tuned into his arcanic senses to try to figure it out while he was still immersed. He found that the darkness was charged with a vast amount of death magic; the gold-masked woman was somehow tied into it, allowing her to wield it and use it to fuel her own spellworks. As he studied the effect, Angitt and the lizardman mercenary flew the Stormjumper through the darkness to rescue him.

Robin snuck behind the battered steel-masked man as he battled Klaitos, and readied a strike where his armor no longer covered his neck. Her knife lashed out and tore a dozen metal rings free. The steel-helmed head tottered and tore, rolling into the mud. Klaitos noticed it was still moving, and promptly knocked it face-down in the mud, as the four-armed body flailed wildly and blindly.

Arva's mangled body began twitching back to life, and the zombies began to close in on Klaitos and Robin, heedless of whatever force had made them march around the area before. Robin got a boost from Klaitos, and leapt to the rope she had tied earlier. As she clambered over the zombie army to a relatively-safe rooftop, Klaitos heard the blood-soaked, deathly-looking Torrix suddenly snore at his feet.

Unwilling to leave him to die - and come back as a zombie - Klaitos hefted the dwarf under his arm and charged at the oncoming zombies. Klaitos punched through with his free fist, but for every one he struck down, more leapt right over it. He was torn by nail and bite from all angles, and emerged from the crowd into an alley tattered and bleeding. He scrambled, Torrix in tow, to climb a ladder to the rooftop besides Robin.

Savoring their momentary refuge, they noticed the undead surrounding and filling the building they were resting upon. Robin created a vast illusory arrow pointing down at them to facilitate a hoped-for rescue by air. They watched the zombie army overwhelm the Keep and Torch forces in the plaza, forcing them to retreat to the ships.

Ignis, trapped belowdecks in the bone lattice, felt the enervating gaze of the crystal-eyed woman upon him from an unseen vantage. Despite his stubborn will, his life was drained, and he found himself too weak to fight free from his bonds. He realized he was out of options - any magic would cause the aether core to erupt, and if it broke in his hands he would be at the center of a dangerous arcanic blast. He decided to escape at any cost, and so wrenched his body backwards and detonated the core in a fiery burst. The explosion rocketed him up and out of the ship and the Umbral pillar. He landed painfully on the plaza beyond, near a Torch platoon retreating from the zombies, and fell unconscious.

Angitt flew Ekkels to his allies under the illusory arrow. Looking across the increasingly undead battlefield, she surmised the fight was lost, and that they should regroup and retreat. As Klaitos and Robin boarded, the team agreed to escape with their lives, once they found Ignis, joined by whichever ships in the fleet were able to lift off. As flew back towards the battlefield to look for him, the lizardman awkwardly introduced himself as Oze-Oze.

Ekkels flew the Stormjumper low across the plaza, scanning for Ignis while ramming as many undead as he could safely. As they neared the twin pillars of Umbra, he decided not to risk flying through them, and tried to speedily bank around the first one. Suddenly, from out of the dark column, the Gold-masked woman leapt at the vessel. Angitt's paranoid reflexes were fast enough to fire off a crossbow bolt, but the woman twisted in midair and landed on the deck without injury.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-03-22

2024-03-31T16:44:25Z

Abe:

The crystal-eyed woman, unmasked but unimpaired, tore free from Ignis's grapple with ease. She turned and smiled menacingly, offering to improve upon his ally's tactic from the opening of the battle. As Robin and Klaitos had earlier pretended, she cast an arm skyward and uttered a strange spell. A column of writhing Umbra descended to swallow her, Ignis, and the ship atop which they were battling.

Nearby, the zombie embedded with the Onyx scales tugged at the dragon-rider's heavily-burnt corpse, trying to pull it down from the smoldering remains of Urtholon's pyre. As soon as Ekkels flew the Stormjumper into range, Angitt shot down the zombie, pinning it to the burning heap. The scales wriggled free, messily, and hovered north towards the Umbral pillar. Angitt's lizardman ally gave chase, bellowing bright lightning at the swarm, but the palm-sized scales were too small a target for his wildly-aimed attack.

To the south, in the clearing in the midst of the zombie army, Klaitos defended himself from the Steel-masked figure. He defended himself from the worst of the quadruple-axe onslaught, but the frenzy scored some shallow blows, letting yet more blood into the muddy road.

Ekkels examined the Umbral column. To his magic-attuned senses and arcanic expertise, the unnatural clouds were filled with potent, deathly magical force. He tried to warn Angitt, but her attention was elsewhere - divided between the swarming scales she had crossed the battlefield to pursue and the innumerable zombies surging from the south. He decided to chase the former, which he knew to be vulnerable to his chaos magic, rather than dwell on the looming pillar. He clambered down the side of the Stormjumper, leaving it in Angitt's hands, and raced off after the lizardman and swarm.

Robin scanned the battlefield for opportunities. She noticed that the Steel-masked figure's full-plate armor seemed to be ill-fitted, with gaps where the panels or joints should meet, but wasn't sure that she could aim her crossbow through them. Instead, she unspooled some rope to tangle his legs. Klaitos manuevered around the battlefield to help position the armored figure, and kicked mud into his steel mask to further impede his relentless attack. Robin darted between them, looping the rope around the figure's armored ankles. He glanced over at her, but she quickly hid the necklace with Arva's rings from his mud-obscured scan.

Klaitos hauled on the other end of the rope. The steel-masked figure strained against his strength, and remained standing. However, his exertion revealed his secret - Robin saw a body made of muscular corpse pieces, fastened together by metal staple-like rings, through the openings in his armor. As his legs flexed against the tightening rope, she saw the rings pop free and the limbs loosen.

Within the Umbra, Ignis tried to escape the crystal-eyed woman. He clambered down from the top of the ship in the darkness, fumbling for handholds. His haste and impaired visibility caused him to fall into a chute, tumbling down into the ship's engine room. Though the interior was likewise suffused with obscuring Umbra, earlier damage had cracked the ship's aether core. Its silvery glow still illuminated the room, but a steady stream of aether leaked from its damaged side to be continually swallowed by the deathly atmosphere.

The lizardman turned his head and Ekkels catching up in pursuit of the scale-swarm, and behind him the zombie hordes approaching the Stormjumper. Despite his earlier animosity, or perhaps having forgotten it, he gave the chaos mage a quick affirmation before leaving the former quarry to him. He turned and raced back to help defend the ship. Angitt, meanwhile, took the steerage and readied for an emergency takeoff.

In the clearing, the steel-masked man axed himself free of the rope that circled his legs. Limping slightly, he pressed the assault once more. Klaitos defended himself, scrambling, desperate to both survive and keep the figure focused on him - he didn't want Robin to getting killed for trying to help.

Ignis could hear the crystal-eyed woman land on and begin pacing across the deck, above. She called out to him, claiming to have recalled him to be of the Fireheart bloodline, and inquired aloud how his father might react to being sent one of his hands. He laughed off the threat, but realized she had positioned herself right before the exit from belowdecks - between him and getting off the Umbra-smothered ship.

The swarm of black scales flew towards the Umbral mass. Before it could vanish into the deathly clouds, Ekkels channeled his chaos magic into crackling energy, and launched a volley of vivid bolts from his fingertips at the mysterious scales. The chaos lanced through the swarm, and it clattered to the ground in a smoking pile.

However, the hasty channeling surged with more power than intended, and Ekkels' bolts of chaos struck the Umbra beyond. It roiled and exploded outwards, enveloping Ekkels and the surrounding plaza. Unharmed but worried to be surrounded by so much death magic, Ekkels sat and began drawing a runic ward against such on a spare patch of canvas.

Ignis prized the leaking aether core from the ship's engine, and felt its unstable energies rippling against his magic. He shouted an ultimatum to the crystal-eyed woman, declaring himself ready to blow both of them up with the ship. She replied that he would only be squandering his use as a captive, and that she could escape unharmed.

Robin brought the illusory gold-masked woman over to the steel-masked man and had her directly submit for execution, as he had earlier demanded. With his attention and axe-attacks split between Klaitos and this new target, Robin snuck up to him and stabbed her knife into a gap in his ill-fitting armor. She tore more of the metal stitching free, then ducked away from his suddenly-hindered retaliation.

Klaitos took advantage of the steel-masked man's debilitation by pressing a risky offense. He used his superior reach to grab and grapple the four-armed figure. He then leveraged that hold and his giant strength to pull the man's stitched-together limbs backwards, ripping them even looser than before.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-03-22

2024-03-31T16:41:27Z

Abe: Created page with "The crystal-eyed woman, unmasked but unimpaired, tore free from Ignis's grapple with ease. She turned and smiled menacingly, offering to improve upon his ally's tactic from th..."

The crystal-eyed woman, unmasked but unimpaired, tore free from Ignis's grapple with ease. She turned and smiled menacingly, offering to improve upon his ally's tactic from the opening of the battle. As Robin and Klaitos had earlier pretended, she cast an arm skyward and uttered a strange spell. A column of writhing Umbra descended to swallow her, Ignis, and the ship atop which they were battling.

Nearby, the zombie embedded with the Onyx scales tugged at the dragon-rider's heavily-burnt corpse, trying to pull it down from the smoldering remains of Urtholon's pyre. As soon as Ekkels flew the Stormjumper into range, Angitt shot down the zombie, pinning it to the burning heap. The scales wriggled free, messily, and hovered north towards the Umbral pillar. Angitt's lizardman ally gave chase, bellowing bright lightning at the swarm, but the palm-sized scales were too small a target for his wildly-aimed attack.

To the south, in the clearing in the midst of the zombie army, Klaitos defended himself from the Steel-masked figure. He defended himself from the worst of the quadruple-axe onslaught, but the frenzy scored some shallow blows, letting yet more blood into the muddy road.

Ekkels examined the Umbral column. To his magic-attuned senses and arcanic expertise, the unnatural clouds were filled with potent, deathly magical force. He tried to warn Angitt, but her attention was elsewhere - divided between the swarming scales she had crossed the battlefield to pursue and the innumerable zombies surging from the south. He decided to chase the former, which he knew to be vulnerable to his chaos magic, rather than dwell on the looming pillar. He clambered down the side of the Stormjumper, leaving it in Angitt's hands, and raced off after the lizardman and swarm.

Robin scanned the battlefield for opportunities. She noticed that the Steel-masked figure's full-plate armor seemed to be ill-fitted, with gaps where the panels or joints should meet, but wasn't sure that she could aim her crossbow through them. Instead, she unspooled some rope to tangle his legs. Klaitos manuevered around the battlefield to help position the armored figure, and kicked mud into his steel mask to further impede his relentless attack. Robin darted between them, looping the rope around the figure's armored ankles. He glanced over at her, but she quickly hid the necklace with Arva's rings from his mud-obscured scan.

Klaitos hauled on the other end of the rope. The steel-masked figure strained against his strength, and remained standing. However, his exertion revealed his secret - Robin saw a body made of muscular corpse pieces, fastened together by metal staple-like rings, through the openings in his armor. As his legs flexed against the tightening rope, she saw the rings pop free and the limbs loosen.

Within the Umbra, Ignis tried to escape the crystal-eyed woman. He clambered down from the top of the ship in the darkness, fumbling for handholds. His haste and impaired visibility caused him to fall into a chute, tumbling down into the ship's engine room. Though the interior was likewise suffused with obscuring Umbra, earlier damage had cracked the ship's aether core. Its silvery glow still illuminated the room, but a steady stream of aether leaked from its damaged side to be continually swallowed by the deathly atmosphere.

The lizardman turned his head and Ekkels catching up in pursuit of the scale-swarm, and behind him the zombie hordes approaching the Stormjumper. Despite his earlier animosity, or perhaps having forgotten it, he gave the chaos mage a quick affirmation before leaving the former quarry to him. He turned and raced back to help defend the ship. Angitt, meanwhile, took the steerage and readied for an emergency takeoff.

In the clearing, the steel-masked man axed himself free of the rope that circled his legs. Limping slightly, he pressed the assault once more. Klaitos defended himself, scrambling, desperate to both survive and keep the figure focused on him - he didn't want Robin to getting killed for trying to help.

Ignis could hear the crystal-eyed woman land on and begin pacing across the deck, above. She called out to him, claiming to have recalled him to be of the Fireheart bloodline, and inquired aloud how his father might react to being sent one of his hands. He laughed off the threat, but realized she had positioned herself right before the exit from belowdecks - between him and getting off the Umbra-smothered ship.

The swarm of black scales flew towards the Umbral mass. Before it could vanish into the deathly clouds, Ekkels channeled his chaos magic into crackling energy, and launched a volley of vivid bolts from his fingertips at the mysterious scales. The chaos lanced through the swarm, and it clattered to the ground in a smoking pile.

However, the hasty channeling surged with more power than intended, and Ekkels' bolts of chaos struck the Umbra beyond. It roiled and exploded outwards, enveloping Ekkels and the surrounding plaza. Unharmed but worried to be surrounded by so much death magic, Ekkels sat and began drawing a runic ward against such on a spare patch of canvas.

Ignis prized the leaking aether core from the ship's engine, and felt its unstable energies rippling against his magic. He shouted an ultimatum to the crystal-eyed woman, declaring himself ready to blow both of them up with the ship. She replied that he would only be squandering his use as a captive, and that she could escape unharmed.

Robin brought the illusory gold-masked woman over to the steel-masked man and had her directly submit for execution, as he had earlier demanded. With his attention and axe-attacks split between Klaitos and this new target, Robin snuck up to him and stabbed her knife into a gap in his ill-fitting armor. She tore more of the metal stitching free, then ducked away from his suddenly-hindered retaliation.

Klaitos took advantage of the steel-masked man's debilitation by pressing a risky offense. He used his superior reach to grab and grapple the four-armed figure. He then leveraged his hold to stretch the man's stitched-together limbs backwards, ripping them even looser than before.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-03-11

2024-03-16T00:22:10Z

Abe: Created page with "Above the plaza, the hunched silk-masked figure regrouped from the momentary disorientation of Ekkels's Spatial Exchange, and attempted to slip back into the shadows of the St..."

Above the plaza, the hunched silk-masked figure regrouped from the momentary disorientation of Ekkels's Spatial Exchange, and attempted to slip back into the shadows of the Stormjumper's deck. However, Ekkels, though still piloting the ship, kept an eye on the hostile stowaway and tracked him to his hiding place.

Across the battlefield, the zombie army continued to surge forth from the main road. In the clearing near the plaza, the burly steel-masked figure was unable to advance on Klaitos under the barrage of undead projectiles. Changing tactics, he positioned himself between the giant and the unmoving bodies of Lord Arva and Torrix, then smashed his feet into the road to stabilize his footing.

The gold-masked woman, affronted by Ignis's flatulent attack, leapt to the highest point of the ship. She glared down at him, but Ignis was able to again resist the life-draining magic in that glare, causing her to let out a low curse in an ancient language. Ignis re-ignited his fire magic and filled the air with strobing flares. While she was momentarily dazzled, he scrambled headlong up the ship to position himself in her blind spot.

Ekkels activated the Stormjumper's cruise control and dove off the side of the ship, directly over the burning corpses of Urtholon and the Onyx prince. The silk-masked Figure, taken by surprise, was not fast enough to stop him. Ekkels locked eyes with the silk-masked figure as he went overboard, and used Spatial Exchange to swap places. Ekkels hit the deck with a thud, and the figure plummeted, landing impaled on a burning dragon-rib. Ekkels reassumed his position at the wheel and brought the ship low to look for Klaitos or Robin, though at a glance all he saw were zombies.

Meanwhile, Robin, following the pull of her Bracelet of Greed, affixed a rope to a crossbow bolt and fired it across the road, then clambered across the makeshift zipline. Klaitos, watching her sneak into a dangerous situation, decided to hold his position as a distraction. As he punted zombified body parts away from him, he asked the steel-masked figure after his identity and goals. To his surprise, the figure responded, in a hoarse, low, toneless voice. He claimed to serve, and to have always served, the Regalia Eternal, rulers of the Gray Steps. He offered little additional information, however, and demanded that Klaitos submit for execution in order to join the ranks of the undead.

While they conversed, Robin dropped into the clearing, and swiped Lord Arva's necklace - a dull-looking piece bearing the crest of House Siroon, a practical symbol of his noble position. However, she found that the Bracelet was tugging in a new direction. Puzzled, she followed it to a lightly-rippling mud puddle between Arva and Torrix. She fished out a ring she had seen Arva wearing - jet black where it wasn't mud-stained, wriggling autonomously in her grasp. Her bracelet pulled her further, and she saw another ripple a few paces away.

As soon as she held the ring, the Steel-Masked figure ripped his embedded feet free from the road and turned to charge at her. Robin feinted, then evaded the massive tackle, sliding in the mud to position herself behind him. In the moment of tumult, though, Arva's ring twitched and fell into the mud once more.

Ekkels saw Angitt and the Lizardman on a mission and flew low to offer them a ride. The Lizardman clung to the side of the ship while Angitt climbed on board. She showed Ekkels their target: a lone zombie that appeared to be being puppeted by a swarm of scales.

Klaitos, having failed to keep the man's attention off his ally, noticed the zombies around the clearing turn to rush at him. He abandoned his position and strategy, dodged the zombies and zombie parts bearing down on him, and charged at the steel-masked man. On the way, he vaulted over Torrix's bulk, stepped on Lord Arva's broken body, and attempted to lariat the steel-masked man. However, the muddy obstacle course had robbed him of momentum, and the man's armor hurt his arm.

Robin stepped away from the melee to find the ring she had just lost. It fell still and hidden at her approach, but she took one of Torrix's spiked metal braces to rake the road-muck for it. Following her Bracelet of Greed, she fished it and its twin out of the muck, and tied them to an improvised necklace. She then summoned an illusion of the gold-masked woman at the edge of the clearing, demanding that the steel-masked figure stand down. He pointed an axe at the illusion and demanded that "the imposter" submit herself for execution.

Ignis grappled the gold-masked woman as she regained her vision. He seized her mask and pulled it off her head, tossing it into the darkness. Underneath was a gray-skinned, unblemished woman's face, with an elegant yet unnerving beauty. She turned back to grin and accuse him of being forward, and he saw that her eyes had been replaced with glittering black gems.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-03-04

2024-03-08T01:15:44Z

Abe: Created page with "Ekkels felt the "puppeteering" magic wrested back from his brief override. The gold-masked woman got to her feet, seizing him and tearing his grasp from her leg. She noted tha..."

Ekkels felt the "puppeteering" magic wrested back from his brief override. The gold-masked woman got to her feet, seizing him and tearing his grasp from her leg. She noted that he was too interesting a specimen to simply kill, and promptly flung him overboard. He sailed off the ship's deck, and saw a dark shape plummet from the umbra before him. Where it struck the ground, massive skeletal arms erupted, reaching up to the sky to seize him in a bony midair prison. He stared back at the gold-masked woman, and spotted the soldier that he had protected escape down the rigging on the far side of the ship.

The scale-swarm, though clearly reacting to Ignis's petty taunts, seemed to think that attacking him atop the Stormjumper was a fruitless endeavor. They floated off towards the zombie hordes to the south, leaving Ignis and Heiras behind.

Even without Lord Arva's position at their fore, the zombie army continued to flow into the plaza. The burning front lines disintegrated, falling short of overrunning the thinly-guarded western warehouses, and the Torch soldiers moved to secure them. Angitt and her lizardman ally held the eastern warehouses as other militia mobilized behind them.

With Lord Arva's winds no longer in play, Ignis and Heiras kicked the Stormjumper to life. She flew him north towards the rest of the fleet, and he attempted to leap deck to deck to confront the gold-masked woman. Unfortunately, his graceless jump saw him land flat on his face, and he was summarily pinned by the three undead, recovered from Ekkels's disruption. As the gold-masked woman approached, he retaliated with an indiscriminate blast of flame. The zombies were roasted, but the woman evaded, barely singed.

Ekkels saw Heiras fly the Stormjumper over to his skeletal prison. She was at a loss for how to break him free, though. He considered, and realized he could likely manipulate the magic-conjured arms himself. With some hasty runes and a surge of chaos magic, the hand-prison opened, and he was able to hop over to her deck.

Robin wanted to be assured that Lord Arva, and his zeal for vengeance against the Windwatcher's Keep, were concretely put to rest. She snuck past the disorganized undead forces and climbed one of the less-burning buildings nearby the main road. She leapt roof to roof until she had an adequate vantage. From there, she could make out a clearing amidst the hordes, where the zombies were moving around where Arva had landed. She couldn't see him, or his corpse, so she readied a crossbow bolt with sleeping potion for if he suddenly stood up.

Klaitos shared Robin's concerns, but lacked her talent for acrobatics. Instead, he simply bore down and plowed a path through the zombie forces, indiscriminately slamming them out of his way. As he neared the clearing, the enemy forces grew denser-packed, slowing his approach. He had a better view than Robin, though, and could make out Lord Arva and Torrix, unmoving and bleeding into the mud. Above Lord Arva stood a bulky four-armed figure in platemail, with a steel-masked full helm.

He vaulted over the remaining crowd of zombies and landed in the clearing. The steel-masked figure immediately attacked him with a flurry of vicious axeblows, landing a vicious slash on Klaitos's leg. Klaitos squared up against this new opponent, but noticed out of the corner of his eye some movement - some odd, sourceless splashing in the mud near Lord Arva's hands.

Ekkels heard a soft thud behind him, and turned to find Heiras cut down within the steerage compartment, a long gash across her back. He scanned the deck but saw no sign of any attacker. The Stormjumper, now without a pilot, continued to cruise north, away from the battlefield and towards the hangar-side wall.

The gold-masked woman stepped down upon Ignis's back. She didn't seem to be trying to injure him, but he found himself unable to wriggle free from her unexpected physical strength. The woman noted that she recognized him to be of Torch nobility, and a valuable hostage if she could keep him alive. Despite her comment, he felt a strange, enervating force wrack his body. He focused his will on resisting her magic, and was able to weather the mysterious attack, to her annoyance.

The reinforcements at the warehouses held strong against the first surge of non-burning undead. Still, more and more zombies spilled into the plaza from the main road, heedless of minor obstacles like Klaitos. Behind them, Robin leapt to a roadside building with a better view of the clearing. She judged the four-armed, fully-armored figure to be Klaitos's problem - her crossbow alone wouldn't puncture plate - and shot a bolt through the head of the prone, unmoving Lord Arva.

Her mission accomplished, she nearly turned to leave the scene, but her avarice suddenly flared at the prospect of looting a dead Torch noble. She checked her Bracelet of Greed, which tugged at her arm - something of significant value lay there in the mud. She found this curious - Arva had only been wearing a necklace and some rings, before, and neither had seemed particularly ornate - but riches were riches, wherever he had them stashed.

Klaitos, below, was too busy dealing with the hostile steel-masked man, and his four axes, to consider the prospect of loot. He figured the best way to deal with his opponent was to create some distance between them, so he backed up, and began grabbing zombies from the stampeding army to use as impromptu projectiles. The steel-masked man weathered a few such impacts with brutish strength, and the undead bodies broke into pieces on impact with his armor, but was eventually overwhelmed by the barrage and knocked back across the clearing. However, Klaitos soon found himself surrounded by animate corpse parts, scattered by the explosive force of their impacts.

Flying above the other side of the battlefield, Ekkels dashed for the steerage, hoping to evade whomever had attacked Heiras. He was startled as the attacker emerged in front of him - the hunched, silk-masked figure that had stalked Klaitos and him earlier, back at the Plaza of Legends. Undaunted, he used his chaos magic to swap places with the silk-masked figure, leaving them disoriented in the middle of the deck. He swung the steerage around and rerouted the ship back towards the central plaza. Below him, he saw Heiras still breathing, her wound serious but nonfatal.

Ignis, still pinned by the gold-masked woman, decided to keep pressing the fiery attack. He focused his magic, and his guts, and let loose a blast of burning flatulence. The woman's foot lifted as she dodged, again barely singed. He took the opportunity to get back to his feet, and confronted her, grinning at her sudden loss for words in the face of such an unorthodox and uncouth riposte.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-02-26

2024-03-03T16:51:56Z

Abe: Created page with "The woman in the gold mask turned from the scale-swarm below. Ignis, still climbing the Stormjumper's rigging to face her, watched as she made an inhuman leap from its prow to..."

The woman in the gold mask turned from the scale-swarm below. Ignis, still climbing the Stormjumper's rigging to face her, watched as she made an inhuman leap from its prow to the next ship in the fleet. Though the deck was defended by more soldiers, they fell before her before without landing a blow. The scale-swarm, meanwhile, hovered up the other side of the Stormjumper. Heiras, tracking its escape, called out with sudden alarm that someone needed to "take out that zombie on my ship's deck".

The forces of the Keep struggled to hold off the desperate Torch deserters boarding their ships in advance of the burning zombie hordes. Some ships began to lift off, haltingly and without coordination. Lord Arva, scowling from across the battlefield, threatened them not to "try to take away what was rightfully his." His magic stirred searing winds into a vast tornado, which began to drag the barely-aloft airships towards each other.

Beyond the storm, the zombies stagger-rushed unimpeded out towards the warehouses and plaza. Though their burning front lines were beginning to collapse, the soldiers defending the warehouses had largely retreated to the fleet. Angitt and her lizardman teammate, with a head start on the zombie forces, raced into the closest warehouse of the eastern block. Behind them, the undead Captain Caergon stumbled under Torrix's assault, its clumsy movements and oversized weapon poorly matched to face the stout dwarf's brawling in close quarters.

Ignis boarded the deck of the Stormjumper and, heeding Heiras's plea, scanned his surroundings. He saw a humanoid shadow rising as a zombie from some woundless death. Beyond, he spotted the glittering onyx scales swarming across the opposite threshold of the deck. He drew upon his fire magic to ignite his hands and forearms, then rushed the zombie. The former Gale Knight tumbled, burning, to the plaza below, but the scale-swarm hesitated to follow.

Though Robin lacked a pilot's sense of how a ship moves, she reasoned that Arva's winds would destroy the ships of the Windwatcher's Keep fleet if they tried to lift off now. Since without those ships, she would be stuck here, she decided to signal the panicking pilots to stay put. However, she couldn't remember any emergency naval codes for the Torch Empire or the Windwatcher's Keep, so she settled for scaring them into grounding.

She opted for a large threat, to grab attention through the lashing winds, and so reused the illusion of Haxryn looming overhead. The dragon's return, coupled with the earlier aerial zombie-dragon blockade, were sufficient to deter the would-be pilots, and scare them back down the rigging. Though she had ensured the ships safety, Robin was concerned by the gold-masked woman's proximity and lethality, and so drew her crossbow and slipped into a crowd of Torch soldiers reforming ranks .

Klaitos raced across of the plaza, dodging mobs of burning zombies. He hurtled directly towards Lord Arva, who had just made himself the biggest obstacle to their evacuation plans. The Torch noble had not been punched in many years, and so Klaitos's mighty fist struck him almost unguarded. His thin, centuries-aged body sailed backwards to a violent crash, where he lay for a moment dazed.

However, Lord Arva, clinging to centuries of hatred, would not allow himself to fall so easily. His eyes, unfocused with his concussion, leered in Klaitos's approximate direction. He rose from the ground and began to hover overhead, using his wind magic to lift his battered body aloft.

With the weird scales hovering out of reach, Ekkels turned his attention to the nearby ship atop which the gold-masked woman had leapt and begun killing. He spotted a Keep soldier, retreated to the guardrail, and used his chaos magic to swap their two positions. He landed quietly, and saw the masked woman walking between three fresh, unmarred corpses. Her casual stride seemed intended to cruelly prolong the moments before she killed the remaining soldier, crouching within the steerage compartment.

Ekkels scuttled up behind her and lunged forward, grabbing for her arm to try to seize hold of whatever magic she seemed to possess. She pulled away, leaving him clutching her gown-sleeve, but not before his fingertips grazed her wrist. He felt a brief contact with some vast force, channeled through her. Some of its powerful magic infused her body, and seemed to be controlling it as if it were a puppet, yet her inhuman grace betrayed none of the ungainliness of a puppetmaster's strings. Her sorcery radiated in his arcane sense, evoking exactly the dancing figure of his earlier dream.

The swarm of onyx scales suddenly flew across the deck of the Stormjumper. Ignis found himself surrounded by dozens of the shimmering black panes. Scale after scale flung itself at him, but their awkward, jolting flight made for an easily-countered projectile - Ignis punched them away with his still-burning fists.

The burning mobs of undead reached the central plaza as the ships were settling, but their uncoordinated assault and fiery disintegration left them unable to breach the reformed Torch lines and Robin's crossbow. Heiras was injured in the chaos, and decided that she'd rather fight on her ship than get trampled on the ground, so she raced for the rigging of the Stormjumper.

Lord Arva, hovering overhead, cast his arm forward, lashing out at Klaitos with a wave of rippling heat. Klaitos, unwilling to yield to the noble's arrogance, used his own storm magic to turn the wave aside. He tried to mock Arva's ineffective use of his rightful weather magic, but his taunts could not be heard over the windy battlefield.

Ekkels, clinging to the gold-masked woman's sleeve, felt himself being deliberately lifted to her face. He realized, suddenly, that the woman's eyes might hold some deadly power - the fallen soldiers on the deck were strewn as if they had fallen before her gaze, and he could make out something black and glittering behind her mask's eyeholes.

He scrambled across her expensive robes like a squirrel, desperately avoiding her grasp and gaze, but was seized and pulled off of her by the three just-risen zombies on the deck. She glanced back at him, out of the corner of her eye, and remarked that she would have to study such a curious toy when she had the time, then turned her attention back to the soldier in the steerage compartment.

Torrix battered the undead Captain Caegron to the ground, and ripped his burning head from his neck. He roared in triumph, holding the grisly trophy and the Captain's oversized sword over his head, and rushed back into the melee as the rest of the corpse burned to ashes behind him. Angitt and her lizardman ally began hurling makeshift bombs from the warehouse stockpile, holding the undead at bay on the eastern front, but the relatively unguarded warehouses to the west were overrun.

Ignis focused the fire he was wielding into bright, knife-like jets of flame. He carved into the scales, damaging the inscriptions on a few, and the swarm as a whole recoiled as it had from the chaos magic earlier. They began floating into the air, but Ignis mocked their cowardice, and they halted just a few feet overhead.

As the swirling arid winds were sealing off any escape by airship, Robin surveyed the battlefield to ensure she would be able to get out alive. She knew that the zombie hordes would lose direction if they were not lead by a necromancer or some greater, more conscious undead. She figured Lord Arva or the gold-masked woman were the best candidates.

With Arva so heavily injured by Klaitos, she decided to channel Torrix's rampage in the Torch Lord's direction. At her goading, he hurled Caegron's sword at the hovering man. His awkward projectile came nowhere near its target, but was enough distraction for her to snipe Lord Arva with her crossbow, gouging his side.

Ekkels, held firmly by the three undead Keep soldiers, was still driven to protect the other, living man in the steerage. He channeled his inner chaos magic into them, fully disrupting their necromantic animation, and they collapsed to the deck once more with tendrils of Umbra pouring from their mouths and eyes. Wasting no time, he sprinted at the gold-masked woman and grabbed for her ankle, elongating his malleable arms to keep her from evading his reach.

He seized her leg through the gown and immediately tapped into her magic more deeply than before. He felt the Umbra all around him as a tangible weight, and knew it was a force to which he could connect somehow. He ignored it for the moment to fight for control over the spell animating the woman's body. His success disrupted her previously implacable poise and caused her to collapse like a puppet with cut strings.

Klaitos was unwilling to leave Arva a chance to regain any momentum. He called Torrix to him, bodily lifted the gore-strewn dwarf, and hurled him directly at Lord Arva. His giant strength helped land the shot, and Torrix's eager fist slammed solidly into the ancient noble. Klaitos's reckless throw overshot the necessary distance, however, and Arva and Torrix both flew through the smoke and darkness to some distant impact in the road beyond the plaza.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-02-18

2024-02-22T14:22:21Z

Abe:

With the barricade scattered across the plaza, Robin decided to put some improvised cover between the party and Lord Arva's undead forces. She called out to Klaitos, who was still holding the collection of inscribed scales, and told him to wield the Umbra. He glanced down at the insriptions and found them utterly inscrutable. Unsure of what he was supposed to even pretend to do, he simply watched Robin keep going: using her illusion magic, she wrought a hand of the dark cloud and slammed it down into a smokescreen before the army.

Ignis took command of the nearest platoon, bidding them to hold a line beyond the smokescreen. He spoke to them with the voice of the Torch commander he had been raised to become, and inspired them with the heroism of their desperate stand. He punctuated this by reaching out with his fire magic and exploding a roadside blaze, igniting the zombie army. Arva's longcloak and the foremarching undead were silhouetted against the illusory cloud.

Ekkels, still injured from the battle against the prince and the dragons, scurried away from the battlefront to help with the Keep fleet. The ships' crews were reboarding, but wrestling with panicked mutineers. Klaitos, alone, noticed the scales in his arms quiver, and immediately tossed them to the ground. They clattered on the plaza stone, then one by one lurched into the air. Klaitos turned his Lantern Eye on the wobbly swarm, and saw a vague figure formed by glowing whorls of magic between the scales.

Angitt and her lizardman ally darted for the northern warehouses, far from Ignis's line against the zombie army. Arva growled at Ignis to move out of his way, and brought forth a violent gale to roar down the main road. The flames of the zombies caught by Ignis's earlier explosion surged forth through the ranks, and a storm of flame, debris, burning corpse parts, and searing winds fell down upon the defenders. Ignis ordered them low to the ground, with shields up, but Lord Arva's attack wiped out the entire platoon. Those that had been nearest the shieldless Ignis fell at his feet, having used their bodies as a last line of defense for their commander.

Robin saw something shoot out of the cloudy smokescreen: the gold-masked woman, making a superhuman leap through the air to land on the ''Stormjumper'' at the front of the Keep Fleet and confront its Gale Knight guard. Heiras, its pilot, froze midway up the rigging. Above her, the knight collapsed from some unseen blow. Cursing, she dropped and ran to Ekkels's side for mutual protection. She shouted orders over the din to try and hurry the Fleet's return to the air.

The army of undead soldiers, still ablaze, marched through the smokescreen into the plaza, surging over the fallen defensive line towards the east and west warehouses. At the fore of the east forces stood the reanimated corpse of the last commander of Golarth's forces (and Klaitos's brief ally), the giant Captain Caergon. A brutish, incoherent yell announced the return of the dwarven mutineer officer, Torrix, covered head to toe in grime and gore. Still yelling, he charged and tackled the giant zombie, falling upon its burning bulk with a heedless pummeling.

Klaitos, wary of the independently-animating necromancy of the inscribed scales, backed away and ran off to find Ekkels. He reasoned that a jolt of chaos magic would do more to disrupt any hostile effect than his fists or his storm. The scale-swarm followed after him, but its flight was too clumsy to gain any ground.

Ignis, unwilling to stick around in Lord Arva's line of indiscriminate fire, raced to the ''Stormjumper'''s rigging and climbed after the gold-masked woman. Robin, of similar motivation, condensed her cloudy smokescreen into a blinding mask around Arva's head. She then followed after Klaitos, though she had to dodge as a few onyx scales jabbed at her out of the swarm.

Ekkels saw Klaitos approaching and the swarm behind him. He channeled his chaos magic into a crackling between his fingers, and let that arc forth to strike through the heart of the swarm. Its component scales shook violently at the spell's effect, and fell back from their chase, scattered. The gold-masked woman, watching from atop the ''Stormjumper'''s prow, laughed coldly. In a regal voice, she dryly lamented the "ignoble fate of young Ziron".

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-02-18

2024-02-22T04:50:07Z

Abe: Created page with "With the barricade scattered across the plaza, Robin decided to put some improvised cover between the party and Lord Arva's undead forces. She called out to Klaitos, who was s..."

With the barricade scattered across the plaza, Robin decided to put some improvised cover between the party and Lord Arva's undead forces. She called out to Klaitos, who was still holding the collection of inscribed scales, and told him to wield the Umbra. He glanced down at the insriptions and found them utterly inscrutable. Unsure of what he was supposed to even pretend to do, he simply watched Robin keep going: using her illusion magic, she wrought a hand of the dark cloud and slammed it down into a smokescreen before the army.

Ignis took command of the nearest platoon, bidding them to hold a line beyond the smokescreen. He spoke to them with the voice of the Torch commander he had been raised to become, and inspired them with the heroism of their desperate stand. He punctuated this by reaching out with his fire magic and exploding a roadside blaze, igniting the zombie army. Arva's longcloak and the foremarching undead were silhouetted against the illusory cloud.

Ekkels, still injured from the battle against the prince and the dragons, scurried away from the battlefront to help with the Keep fleet. The ships' crews were reboarding, but wrestling with panicked mutineers. Klaitos, alone, noticed the scales in his arms quiver, and immediately tossed them to the ground. They clattered on the plaza stone, then one by one lurched into the air. Klaitos turned his Lantern Eye on the wobbly swarm, and saw a vague figure formed by glowing whorls of magic between the scales.

Angitt and her lizardman ally darted for the northern warehouses, far from Ignis's line against the zombie army. Arva growled at Ignis to move out of his way, and brought forth a violent gale to roar down the main road. The flames of the zombies caught by Ignis's earlier explosion surged forth through the ranks, and a storm of flame, debris, burning corpse parts, and searing winds fell down upon the defenders. Ignis ordered them low to the ground, with shields up, but Lord Arva's attack wiped out the entire platoon. Those that had been nearest the shieldless Ignis fell at his feet, having used their bodies as a last line of defense for their commander.

Robin saw something shoot out of the cloudy smokescreen: the gold-masked woman, making a superhuman leap through the air to land on the ''Stormjumper'' at the front of the Keep Fleet and confront its Gale Knight guard. Heiras, its pilot, froze midway up the rigging. Above her, the knight collapsed from some unseen blow. Cursing, she dropped and ran to Ekkels's side for mutual protection. She shouted orders over the din to try and hurry the Fleet's return to the air.

The army of undead soldiers, still ablaze, marched through the smokescreen into the plaza, surging over the fallen defensive line towards the north and south warehouses. At the fore of the north forces, stood the reanimated corpse of the last commander of Golarth's forces (and Klaitos's brief ally), the giant Captain Caergon. A brutish, incoherent yell announced the return of the dwarven mutineer officer, Torrix, covered head to toe in grime and gore. Still yelling, he charged and tackled the giant zombie, falling upon its burning bulk with a heedless pummeling.

Klaitos, wary of the independently-animating necromancy of the inscribed scales, backed away and ran off to find Ekkels. He reasoned that a jolt of chaos magic would do more to disrupt any hostile effect than his fists or his storm. The scale-swarm followed after him, but its flight was too clumsy to gain any ground.

Ignis, unwilling to stick around in Lord Arva's line of indiscriminate fire, raced to the ''Stormjumper'''s rigging and climbed after the gold-masked woman. Robin, of similar motivation, condensed her cloudy smokescreen into a blinding mask around Arva's head. She then followed after Klaitos, though she had to dodge as a few onyx scales jabbed at her out of the swarm.

Ekkels saw Klaitos approaching and the swarm behind him. He channeled his chaos magic into a crackling between his fingers, and let that arc forth to strike through the heart of the swarm. Its component scales shook violently at the spell's effect, and fell back from their chase, scattered. The gold-masked woman, watching from atop the ''Stormjumper'''s prow, laughed coldly. In a regal voice, she dryly lamented the "ignoble fate of young Ziron".

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-01-26

2024-01-31T03:55:51Z

Abe: Created page with "As the soldiers roused, slowly recovering from Urtholon's draining breath weapon, Robin had them gather the other three unconscious party members. She heard a commotion coming..."

As the soldiers roused, slowly recovering from Urtholon's draining breath weapon, Robin had them gather the other three unconscious party members. She heard a commotion coming from in the city, towards Lord's Town, but had higher priorities upon which to act. Seizing the opportunity, she doodled colorful flames on Ignis's face and a cartoonish angry expression on Klaitos's. As she prodded the group awake, none of them snitched on the others' graffiti.

Ignis and Ekkels took swigs of Ignis's healing liquor as Robin and Klaitos turned to the unmoving, twice-impaled body of the Prince. Klaitos's Lantern Eye revealed bright spots beneath the part-dragon's dented ornate armor. With that pried open, they discovered some dozen of the man's black scales to be faintly and densely inscribed. Klaitos set about brutally, and suprisingly bloodlessly, yanking them free from the body. Robin dug through her pack and brought out some charcoal and paper for careful etchings. The weight of the scales shifted oddly as she held them, but her meticulous copying was undeterred.

Ignis, took a walk to the northern wall-lift. He rode it the height of the wall and hailed Angitt, his face still covered in Robin's decorative flames. She made no mention of it, and declined his offer to join the victorious in the plaza below - despite the looming Umbra, she felt safer atop the wall with a weapon, since her ballista was broken. She also wanted to keep an eye on the lizardman teammate she had been carrying around, as he recovered away from the crowd. The teammate stirred, and found himself face-to-face with Ignis - the last person he had seen before falling in their battle. Angitt waved Ignis off so he could be brought up to speed in peace.

A cheer went up as the first ship flew safely from the Hangar, bound for brighter skies. The cheers died quickly, as the crowd of former mutineers came to a collective realization: the finite supply of working ships in the Hangar represented a narrow window of escape, only open to the first to claim each. Klaitos, who had just finished ripping scales out of the Prince's speared corpse, realized that this meant that Golarth airspace was no longer a deathtrap, and used the Keep's messenger scroll to update the fleet outside the city.

The awakened plaza crowd was beginning to mob the hangar. A crash sounded from beyond the wall, and was reported to be an ill-fated evacuee who had comandeered an air-unworthy craft in their desperate haste. Ekkels, alarmed, tried to overtake the mob and urge their caution. However, his diminutive stature and insistent whistling did little to divert their attention, and they shoved past him to claim their escape.

Robin finished her charcoal rubbings, and considered whether or not they should dispose of the scales - artifacts of unclear, but presumably necromantic, magic power. Klaitos noticed the scales' previous owner beginning to twitch with undeath, and he tossed it into the pyre of Urtholon's burning corpse. As they awaited the Keep fleet, a Torch soldier raced out of the shadowy main road. As he struggled to catch his breath, he claimed that the militia headquarters had fallen - the Masked Vanguard mercenaries, stationed in Lord's Town, had led an army of the undead to overrun them.

Klaitos, and some of the non-fleeing militia, gathered wagon-parts and shipping pallets to build a barricade in the main road. They lit it ablaze with a torch. Ignis, returned from his brief conversation with Angitt, shoved through the mob at the Hangar, and shouted some caution - urging them not to throw away their life after surviving this long.

His encouragement was underlined by the arrival of the Keep fleet. Cheers rose as a dozen Keep ships flew over the wall and landed in the Warehouse Plaza. Heiras leaned out of the Stormjumper's cockpit to shout her appreciation to see the party standing amidst the impressive carnage - the faltering blazes of dragon corpses, blast damage and holes scarring the interior Golarth wall, and a fiery barricade blocking the main road. She noted, with a touch of confusion, that they also bunch of Torch uniforms working for them. Klaitos corrected her - the soldiers were united in cause only, for today, but might someday raise the Keep banner over the city themselves.

Angitt and her lizardman ally returned from the walltop at the sight of the fleet's landing. As the Keep soldiers disembarked, and Klaitos weighed what they had accomplished here, he thought about the long term for this Umbra-smothered region. He noticed the persistent western wind had almost died down, and realized that the Umbra itself may have simply been dragged across the sky by the weather. He resolved to study if the region could be meteorologically reclaimed for the living.

The burning barricade was suddenly blasted back into the plaza. Nearby militia fled the volley of burning firewood. Lord Arva and the gold-masked woman Klaitos had encountered earlier stepped into the plaza, followed by an army of zombies dense enough to fill the main road. Ignis hollered an immature insult at Arva on sight, but the Torch Lord weathered it with only a twitch of his eyelid. He seemed to be in a good mood, unlike any other time the party had ever met, seen, or heard him. Smiling, he addressed the party and the fleet of the mutineer Windwatcher's Keep, and thanked his nemeses for paying his home city a visit. He apologized wryly for his forgotten hospitality, but threatened to properly welcome them all to Golarth at last.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-01-19

2024-01-21T21:37:55Z

Abe:

Robin made her illusory Haxryn of the emerald fly up into the concealment of the Umbra overhead, drawing the dragon-rider in the dented armor away from the battlefield in pursuit. She used the distraction to climb down the damaged Golarth wall to the warehouse plaza below.

Klaitos and Ekkels rounded the massive, burning corpse of Urtholon of the Emerald and found Ignis alive but unconscious. Lacking the time or skills to tend to his wounds, Klaitos gathered him off the ground. They joined Robin at the battered warehouse, atop which Angitt's ballista was still mounted. She scaled it easily, but the other two struggled to follow after, even with Ignis set aside and a rope tossed down for them.

The part-dragon descended from the Umbra with a vengeful glare. Robin took a shot with the ballista, but barely slowed him down as he dived down at her, and his blade scored a bloody slash along her leg. As he repositioned for another strike, Ekkels suddenly used his chaos magic to swap places with him, teleporting to the rooftop before the ballista. Klaitos took advantage of the disorientation to land a solid punch.

The dragon-rider declared that Klaitos would be made his eternal servant for the crime of daring to lay a hand on a "Prince of the Gray Steps". He flew into the air and breathed down a wave of barely-visible shimmering air. Klaitos could barely see the attack, let alone dodge it, and felt his skin blister and char as though ignited with an invisible flame.

While the "Prince" was distracted by Klaitos, Robin repurposed the rope danging from the warehouse roof into a lasso. She yoked the hovering "Prince" by the shoulder, the loop of rope secured within the dents of his armor. She and Ekkels attempted to reel him in, but his wing-strength outmatched their arms, and they only managed to draw the rope taut.

The dragon-rider glared with indignation at Robin, ignoring the distracting rock Klaitos pelted at him. Suddenly, Ekkels leapt from the rooftop at the flying prince. Though he was unable to grab ahold, his aerial tackle was sufficient contact for him to detect magic flowing through his enemy's body - not only the strange, invisible dragonbreath, but another force that he couldn't draw upon.

Klaitos caught Ekkels safely from his two-story drop. He realized that his brawling prowess wasn't enough to take down the prince, if he kept to the air. Still carrying Ekkels, he raced across the plaza, hoping to draw the flying dragon-rider out into the open air for Angitt to fire upon from the wall-mounted ballistas.

The dragon-rider watched him run away, and coldly asked Robin if she thought her allies would care when he cut her down. He yanked the lasso from her grasp and knocked Angitt's ballista to break on the ground below. Robin responded by vanishing in a poof of smoke, sneaking away to the cover of the burning dragon-corpse.

The prince shed the rope and flew after Klaitos and Ekkels. Angitt reached her ballista, but he dodged her bolt without slowing his chase. Klaitos turned the chase to the main road, hoping that the open arena would afford Angitt a better shot. His pursuer closed in, and Ekkels - watching their backs as Klaitos carried him - saw him open his mouth to unleash another blast of the invisible dragonbreath.

Klaitos halted in the road and pivoted to face his opponent. He summoned his storm magic to channel the westward winds - still blowing, though dying down. He hurled Ekkels directly at the prince, shaping the wind into a narrow jet of air to bolster his throw and disrupt the wave of invisible dragon-breath. The attack was deflected, splashing out and eroding nearby buildings and cobblestones.

The chaos-mage projectile struck true; though Ekkels was yet again unable to grab onto his opponent, he seized hold of the dragon-breath and returned fire. The prince was unable to dodge the unexpected short-range blast, and his armor was damaged by it, but Ekkels landed painfully from his flight and was taken out of the battle before he could continue the assault.

Angitt followed up Ekkels's shot with another volley from the wall-mounted ballista, but the prince's reflexes were undulled by the surprise burning, and he evaded the bolt. Robin, watching Klaitos, Ekkels, and Angitt distract her target, coated a crossbow bolt with her last dose of poison. She fired across the plaza, and her sneak attack successfully tore through his wing, but the lethal poison produced no obvious effect.

The dragon-rider sank, his torn wing throwing off his flight for a moment. Klaitos seized the opportunity to imitate Ekkels, throwing himself at the armored man to grapple him out of the sky. His weight and might were enough to drag the prince to the ground, but his recklessness was punished with a vicious swordblow, and he fell unconscious, bleeding heavily onto the prince's armor.

As the part-dragon dragged himself out from where he had been pinned under the bleeding giant, Robin and Angitt fired upon the part-dragon, taking full advantage of his momentary lack of manueverability. Angitt's ballista speared through the prince's spine, and Robin's bolt sank deep into his scowling face. Finally defeated, he collapsed to the ground beside Klaitos and Ekkels.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2024-01-19

2024-01-21T21:36:21Z

Abe: Created page with "Robin made her illusory Haxryn of the emerald fly up into the concealment of the Umbra overhead, drawing the dragon-rider in the dented armor away from the battlefield in purs..."

Session Log 2023-12-11

2023-12-13T04:28:21Z

Abe: Created page with "Ignis landed painfully, still burning, in the middle warehouse plaza. The flying Onyx part-dragon dove down after him, eager to slay Torch nobility. The earthbound zombie of U..."

Ignis landed painfully, still burning, in the middle warehouse plaza. The flying Onyx part-dragon dove down after him, eager to slay Torch nobility. The earthbound zombie of Urtholon of the Onyx thrashed to its feet as Robin coated a bolt with Venom Drinker poisons. She fired, but in the dragon's writhing, the bolt merely scraped it. The toxic payload found little purchase in the zombie's bloodless veins.

Urtholon, in response, charged at the warehouse upon which Robin was perched. Robin wrought an illusion of the zombified Byrix to soar in front of his charge. The larger zombie leapt gracelessly over the illusory obstacle, slamming into the warehouse with a shuddering impact, but failed to knock it or her down.

Ekkels and Klaitos spied their teammates in danger far away, leaving Angitt to handle the western ballista-mount and unconscious lizardman by herself. As they rode the freight elevator to the ground, they saw her fire the last bolt in the quiver directly into the underside of the great dragon's maw, piercing its decayed brain and pinning its mouth shut.

Ignis struggled to battle his airborne opponent while on fire. The part-dragon dove at him with flight speeds unhindered by his ornate armor; Ignis tried to evade his sword and seize ahold of his leg, but only barely managed the former. His burns spreading, he turned away from the fight and dove to the ground. He smothered the flames on his clothes and flesh by rolling on the dusty plaza.

Robin realized she couldn't maintain her position on the warehouse for long; if Urtholon were to a serious blow on the structure, it would collapse beneath her. Unwilling to try and run from the dragon, she instead ran to the roof's edge and leapt for Urtholon's not-yet-burning back. The zombie, still reeling from Angitt's strike, swung its head into her leap, and she found herself scrabbling for a grip on its tattered face.

Unable to open its mouth to bite, it instead flung Robin into the sky, her flight arcing halfway up the height of the city wall. Klaitos and Ekkels hurried towards the plaza, hoping to help save her from vengeful gravity with some sort of timely weather magic.

Ignis, still smoking and covered in dust, scrambled to get to his feet. The swordsman, however, swooped back around and cut him down with a flying slash just as he rose. Ignis fell to the ground, unconscious and bleeding. The part-dragon landed and kneeled down to take the Invernus Heraldic blade as his prize.

Robin, in the air, found herself buffeted by the same winds that had blown the Hitchit and the Ignis towards the wall earlier. She fashioned a crude parachute from a loose robe, and guided her fall towards the hole that Klaitos and Urtholon had broken open. She managed to sail close enough to grasp the lower edge, the stone crumbling under her grip.

Klaitos and Ekkels arrived at the plaza to find Ignis fallen and Robin clinging to the wall above. Klaitos noticed Urtholon's attention on the latter, so he decided to violently grab its attention. He raced past it to seize one of the metal carts that had earlier helped carry the hot air balloons across the city. He charged at it cart-first, ramming the zombie in the legs. The dragon stumbled and turned to stomp at him, but he easily evaded the clumsy blow.

Ekkels noticed the Onyx former dragon-rider had stood from where Ignis lay and turned his attention to Klaitos. He tried to distract him with a thrown brick, but his projectile was struck out of the air by the dragon's tail. His whistles and jeers, likewise, were drowned out by the howling wind and stomping dragon. The swordsman, unhindered, took to the air again and launched himself towards Klaitos.

Robin climbed up to relatively stable footing and took a crossbow-shot at the part-dragon. However, the smaller projectile proved no more able to foil his reflexes than the ballista's force, and he twisted in midair to dodge the bolt. He struck at Klaitos at full-speed; the giant used his bulk to halt the flying charge, and his toughness to endure the blade-strike, but suffered a bleeding gash across his arm for his outmatched defense.

Ekkels tried to rescue Klaitos by swapping locations with him. The spell worked, but Ekkels was immediately stomped upon by the zombified Urtholon. He squeezed free of the strike with his rubbery form, but realized that he was no more equipped than his friend to survive being surrounded by the dragon and the swordsman. Klaitos, from where Ekkels had been hiding, raced across the battlefield to grab him. He evaded the dragon's limbs and ran for the nearby buildings.

Robin, frustrated with her inability to harm any of the enemy combatants physically, considered her options for mind games. She noticed that the swordsman's armor was of a fairly outdated fashion, and thought he might find a similarly outdated threat to be a credible distraction. She wove a huge illusion of Haxryn of the Emerald overhead, and roared a challenge to the part-dragon that dared reanimate those of her bloodline. He seemed shocked to encounter the long-deceased Haxryn, but was fooled by the illusion, and flew up to slay her himself.

Klaitos, carrying Ekkels, raced through a building to put some distance between himself and the pursuing zombie dragon. He exited the other side and found a wooden cart with which to ram it once more. He and the zombie charged each other, as Ekkels channeled a little chaos magic into the cart itself. It smashed apart on the creature's rotten, scaly hide, but the broken pieces turned around and tore into the zombie again like the fangs of a great invisible monster.

The zombie finally collapsed, its body too damaged to move further. As Robin's illusion mock-battled the part-dragon above, Klaitos and Ekkels rushed to the fallen Ignis's side.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-12-04

2023-12-06T05:24:54Z

Abe: Created page with "The burning flank of the zombified Urtholon cast enough light for Robin to see its ornately-armored Onyx part-dragon rider. She poisoned a bolt and launched her first shot of..."

The burning flank of the zombified Urtholon cast enough light for Robin to see its ornately-armored Onyx part-dragon rider. She poisoned a bolt and launched her first shot of the battle from Angitt's ballista. The shot sailed far, but the rider still evaded it with uncanny reflexes. He glared at her and turned his attention to the city wall.

The dragon he rode twisted forward, slamming its burning side at the hole where Klaitos and Ekkels were perched. The two were knocked painfully into and across the stairwell, Ekkels deforming slightly with the impact. Klaitos seized him and raced up the already damaged stairs. The impact spread Klaitos's earlier destruction, and the walls and floor below them crumbled to rubble, crushing the drained soldiers three floors down.

Ignis left behind the disintegrating body, thrashing head, and smell of burning dragonflesh to get a better look out at the battlefield. He watched Urtholon slam into the wall below, and felt the structure shudder. Seizing the opportunity, he ran out across the hangar roof and scavenged a tattered tarp from a crashed aircraft. He flung it out overhead and leapt off the Golarth wall, diving for the dragon's back. As he plummetted, he spotted the rider for the first time.

Robin adjusted Angitt's crossbow to her height and comfort, then took aim at the dragon-rider once more. Her ballista bolt sailed true but was once again spotted at the last moment, and she merely managed to scratch the dragonborn's elaborate breastplate.

Klaitos stumbled on the stairwell, his normally boundless endurance at its limit. Urtholon's breath weapon had left him too drained to climb, and its demolition would soon catch up to them. Ekkels pulled free of Klaitos's football-carry and tried borrowing the magic of Klaitos's giant strength. He was able to hoist his friend off the ground and haul him up, escaping the collapse of the stairwell and making it all the way to the top of the wall. Klaitos was knocked around by the process, but the two of them were able to catch their breath in relative safety.

The two of them watched as Ignis parachuted at the dragon-rider. His tarp began to tear, so he threw himself off of it to try and unseat the dragonborn with a solid kick. His target, however, caught Ignis's foot out of the air, and slammed the would-be divebomber onto the dragon's back. He stood and turned back to face Ignis, expressing his eagerness to once again drink "Lord's blood".

Robin was forced to adjust her aim as Urtholon suddenly dove lower, hovering above the plaza about as high as her rooftop perch. Its throat began swelling to the point of rupture in anticipation of another cloud-sized breath attack. She abandoned her focus on the rider for the moment to fire a bolt into the zombie's long neck, piercing the dead scales and causing some of the pressure buildup to leak out.

Angitt, from her new position at the westernmost ballista mount, fired upon the dragon as well, rending its side with a distant strike. Klaitos and Ekkels had decided to follow her over there, for lack of access to the battlefield, and cheered the blow.

Urtholon noneless bellowed forth its cloud of ash directly downward, spilling out across the plaza and surrounding roads. Robin's earlier interference kept the volume and height of the cloud below her warehouse roof, and Klaitos's countering winds spared the westernmost part of the warehouse district, but the soldiers prepared for ground combat collapsed throughout the area.

Ignis's opponent advanced upon him, broadsword drawn. Ignis, wary of the part-dragon's earlier defense, tried to blast him backward with flame. The dragon-rider was knocked back a few paces, but used his wing to fan away the fire. The indiscriminate blast, however, had ignited the zombie around where Ignis was clinging onto it, and his clothes began to catch fire.

Robin took advantage of the sudden opening between the two figures and fired another bolt, laced with sleeping potion, at the part-dragon. Her shot merely grazed the figure's armor, and failed to deliver any alchemical payload. Angitt, for her part, remained focused on the larger target, and fired more upon the undead Urtholon.

Ekkels and Klaitos had joined her, resting beside her unconscious lizardman ally and cheering on her ballista strikes. Ekkels was a little unnerved to find the friend she had been carrying around was the same individual that had threatened him this morning, but figured things were fine as long as he stayed sleeping.

Ignis, painfully ablaze, threatened the part-dragon that he would end him as he already had several other dragons. The barb seemed to provoke a kind of competitiveness in the Onyx dragonborn, who responded only that he had killed more. At that, he opened his wingspan and flew at Ignis, barely missing the burning man with his broadsword. He evaded a further shot from Robin with a scornful glare.

Angitt's next bolt struck home, and Urtholon's vast wing was seriously torn. The undead behemoth plummeted to the ground. Ignis, unwilling to get trapped beneath burning zombie dragons twice in one night, leapt from the burning back to land painfully on the stone of the plaza. The part-dragon flew after him, sword in hand.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-12-01

2023-12-03T17:05:35Z

Abe: Created page with "Ignis battled the still-burning zombie of Byrix of the Emerald atop the Golarth wall. Behind him, Angitt fought to drag her unconscious lizardman friend away from its assault..."

Ignis battled the still-burning zombie of Byrix of the Emerald atop the Golarth wall. Behind him, Angitt fought to drag her unconscious lizardman friend away from its assault with her burned arms. The dragon was still limping from the blast damage inflicted by the Hitchit, earlier, allowing Ignis get ahead of its movements and slice one shoulder nearly all the way off. In its thrashing, it knocked Angitt and her ally to the floor.

Far below, in the warehouse district plaza, Ekkels and the engineers were able to liftoff the Ignis - the second hot-air balloon - to try and blast the looming zombie of Urtholon of the Emerald. Robin, watching from a nearby warehouse roof, made an illusory duplicate of the balloon to confound any potential attempt to dodge or destroy the weapon.

She used another illusion - a crude puppet - to warn Klaitos of the rider atop the larger zombie. Klaitos, still standing in the hole he had opened in the Golarth wall, acknowledged the warning, but could not make out the figure himself. Instead, he created a new envelope of calm air amidst the gale to keep the Ignis from slamming into the wall as it rose.

The other Ignis continued to press his advantage, tracking the zombie dragon's impaired movements. As it stumbled on its now-useless limb, he leapt in close, heedless of the now-roaring flame consuming it. He slashed through its neck, and its head toppled to the ground. The rest of its burning bulk fell a moment later - atop Ignis, who had drawn too close.

The other dragon reared back its head and bellowed a throat-ripping volume of black ash down at the two balloons. Klaitos was able to guide the real balloon out of the way, and Robin made the illusory one evade a little below it. However, Klaitos was in the line of fire behind the balloons, and was unable to repel the sheer volume of ash with a hasty barrier of wind. He felt it pass through him ethereally, leaving him drained as though he had not rested for days.

Ekkels saw Klaitos get hit by the blast, and raced across the plaza to join his friend. He climbed the stairs inside the Hangar wall and passed by several soldiers that had likewise been exhausted by the zombie dragon's breath weapon. He leapt the gap in the broken stairwell to join Klaitos's side in the makeshift window.

Ignis, pinned beneath the noxious burning zombie dragon's body, called for Angitt's help to pull him free. She grabbed the lizardman's metal mace in her burnt hands and used it to lever the corpse partway off. Ignis pushed free, covered in soot. She immediately demanded his healing magic, and chugged the liquor, ignoring the burning head of Byrix thrashing and writhing off to the side.

Her hands and arms were restored, though she swayed a little with inebriation. Since her original weapon was damaged by the Hitchit's explosion, she told Ignis she was going to move to the next wall-mounted ballista. She slung the lizardman over her shoulders again, and carried him and his mace south along the wall.

The zombified Urtholon suddenly dove from the sky to loom before the hole where Klaitos and Ekkels were perched. It breathed forth a narrower gout of the same breath weapon, but Klaitos was able to deflect this smaller blast with his wind magic.

Both balloons now in range, the ballista operators positioned along the wall fired flaming bolts at both the real and illusory Ignis. Between the distance, the suddenness, and the confusion, none struck the real payload. Ekkels saw the balloon drifting past his and Klaitos's aperture, and borrowed Klaitos's storm magic to hurl a bolt of lighting at the metal basket. The strike ignited the oil barrel, blasting the dragon's flank and splashing burning oil in all directions. He and Klaitos ducked under the spatter as the side of the zombie caught fire.

Robin, still watching from the warehouse roof perch, finally got a good look at Urtholon's rider. Illuminated by the burning of his zombie mount, she could make out a black-scaled part-dragon wearing ornate armor.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-11-14

2023-11-16T05:34:24Z

Abe:

Klaitos and Ekkels were awakened from their short rest in the hangar by the arrival of the Torch militia and the crude hot air balloons. Klaitos helped set the balloons up in the warehouse plaza, but realized the persistent westerly wind would drag them - and their explosive payloads - directly into the wall of the hangar. As he contemplated this issue, he named the two hot air balloons - the Hitchit and the Ignis - after two of the most casually destructive individuals he knew.

Ekkels, for his part, went looking for Ignis and Robin, the former of whom he hadn't seen since he took a nap. He noticed signs of revelry - and varyingly conscious, alcohol-poisoned mutineer revelers - leading back towards the warehouse used for the party. He followed the train and encountered Robin and Ignis dragging a bandaged, unconscious lizardman. Ignis also appeared to have acquired a large metal mace.

Ekkels accepted this sight without question. The three of them dropped the lizardman off in the same warehouse as the drugged Angitt, and rejoined with Klaitos. The militia engineers were ready to start launching the makeshift ballooncraft, but nobody knew when the wind would die down enough to light the braziers. Klaitos, not wanting to waste any more time under the sky of tortured faces, took command and issued a battleplan to engage the dragons.

Angitt was awakened by Robin and Ignis. She was suprised at the sight of the lizardman assailant, incapacitated at their hands on the warehouse floor, but realized that he had come to free her from what must have looked like an abduction or arrest. Robin, still annoyed at the inexplicable violence of strangers, asked how she knew him. She identified him as her former second-in-command from the recently-slaughtered Crimson Arrow mercenary guild.

Ignis healed the unconscious lizardman, but his magic liquor dribbled out of his maw, and his worst injuries remained. Robin convinced Angitt to use one of the wall-mounted ballista, joining a team of similarly-placed militia sharpshooters, readying a burning bolt to shoot the hot-air balloon's oildrum. She took with her the unconscious lizardman. Ignis followed, to take position nearby on the battle-scarred hangar roof amidst obliterated aethercraft.

For her own position, Robin borrowed the woman's personal ballista, and had it mounted on a warehouse nearby as a second line of offense in case the fray descended from the skies. Other militia and mutineers positioned themselves around the plaza. Ekkels and Klaitos worked with the engineers in the center to start inflating the Hitchit.

As the balloon slowly swelled, the craft began dragging towards the Hangar wall. Ekkels borrowed Klaitos's storm magic, and the two of them attempted to divert the oncoming wind. They found it to be a massive force, and were unable to exert nearly enough power to stop very much of it. However, their spellwork was able to open a pocket of calm air around the Hitchit, extending part of the height of the wall. Dust and pebbles clattered on the ground at the stirring edge of their spell.

The balloon lifted off and began to rise, a few spans closer to the Hangar wall but otherwise unimpeded. Robin, Ignis, Angitt, and every soldier present scanned the skies for any sign of the ship-hunting zombie dragons. Klaitos left the wind spell in Ekkels's hands and raced into the Hangar building, vaulting up the stairs just inside the wall.

The Hitchit soon reached the ceiling of Ekkels' wind envelope. Klaitos, hearing the crowd panic, punched through the stone wall, taking out a significant chunk and damaging the stairwell beneath him. Backing up to the wall opposite the hole, with stabler footing, he saw the balloon careening towards him. He invoked his storm magic again to generate a second envelope of calm air in its path. The Hitchit's flight stabilized, and it climbed upward a few yards from the Hangar wall.

As the balloon crested the wall, it was Angitt's eye that caught the dragon first. The smaller zombie - the corpse of Byrix of the Emerald - dove out of the clouds directly at the Hitchit, floating only a few yards away from her. At close range, she was able to make a well-timed shot, detonating the oildrum in a fiery blast just as it reached the balloon. Burning rain splattered the dragon, Angitt, and the Hangar rooftop near Ignis. Wall rubble and burning oildrops pelted the engineers and Ekkels in the plaza below.

The dragon, struck by the fireball and partially ignited, landed violently at the edge of the wall. It flailed recklessly, tearing further stone chunks down past Klaitos and onto the plaza, and burned with a horrible smell. Ignis heard Angitt cry out, but to reach her would require he get past the thrashing zombie dragon. Opting to press his advantage instead, he tossed a jar of flammable grease at the dragon, fully igniting its wings. He called down to the plaza, telling them to send would-be dragonslayers to the walltop with all haste.

Robin scanned the skies still, ignoring the flailing and burning zombie on the wall to watch out for the other, larger zombie not yet sighted. Her pessimism was validated - she saw the huge form of Urtholon of the Emerald emerging from the clouds north of the Hangar, and shouted out the alarm - but this zombie seemed to be approaching much slower than its counterpart.

Klaitos, hearing the other target was coming into range, called down to Ekkels and the engineers to launch the Ignis. However, the dragon's approach, though slower than an arrow, was still faster than the brazier could raise the craft. Ekkels tapped into Klaitos's storm magic again, and created winds to stir the braziers to fill the balloon directly. This dramatically accelerated the inflation but kicked up some worrisome sparks and cinders around the oil barrel.

Robin, still perched on a warehouse above, tried to distract the inbound dragon with an illusion of a ship fleeing the Hangar. It breathed an almost-lazy blast of black ash at the ship, and Robin noticed it didn't disrupt her spell in the way that the undead Byrix had. She had the vessel feign damage, though, but continue flying like a gnat around the dragon.

Klaitos, in the wall of the Hangar, moved to perch in the hole he had created so that he could still see the battlefield if his footing crumbled. Taking care to avoid getting struck by the rubble dislodged by Byrix above, he watched the inflation of the Ignis, preparing to create another mid-air envelope to guide its flight to the larger zombie dragon.

Ignis heard Angitt shout for assistance beyond the burning zombie as it, uncaring of its injuries, climbed fully onto the walltop. She yelled at Ignis specifically, claiming that he had promised her survival in all of this, and that he needed to make good on that now. Ignis channeled his fire magic and used it to buffet the dragon as he maneuvered past it. He got in front of the beast before getting knocked to the ground and coated with its breath of bright-white ash, smothering his magic.

Ignis rolled to safety before the zombie could stomp him with a burning forelimb, and found Angitt beyond. She was crouched by the mount of the explosion-damaged ballista, struggling to drag her former second-in-command to safety with burned hands and arms.

Ekkels and the engineers, below, were able to launch the Ignis far faster than the Hitchit. The craft began to rise, and Ekkels switched his efforts from stirring the brazier's heat to enveloping the balloon against the unrelenting wind. The dragon descended slowly, emerging fully from the clouds above the warehouse plaza.

Robin continued to circle the illusory ship around the dragon, but found it to be entirely uninterested in the vessel after its first attack. Disturbed by the thought of a zombie able to figure out her illusion, Robin squinted at Urtholon's corpse, and realized that it had a rider, too far away to discern in the darkness.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-11-14

2023-11-16T05:33:12Z

Abe:

Klaitos and Ekkels were awakened from their short rest in the hangar by the arrival of the Torch militia and the crude hot air balloons. Klaitos helped set the balloons up in the warehouse plaza, but realized the persistent westerly wind would drag them - and their explosive payloads - directly into the wall of the hangar. As he contemplated this issue, he named the two hot air balloons - the Hitchit and the Ignis - after two of the most casually destructive individuals he knew.

Ekkels, for his part, went looking for Ignis and Robin, the former of whom he hadn't seen since he took a nap. He noticed signs of revelry - and varyingly conscious, alcohol-poisoned mutineer revelers - leading back towards the warehouse used for the party. He followed the train and encountered Robin and Ignis dragging a bandaged, unconscious lizardman.

Ekkels accepted this sight without question. The three of them dropped the lizardman off in the same warehouse as the drugged Angitt, and rejoined with Klaitos. The militia engineers were ready to start launching the makeshift ballooncraft, but nobody knew when the wind would die down enough to light the braziers. Klaitos, not wanting to waste any more time under the sky of tortured faces, took command and issued a battleplan to engage the dragons.

Angitt was awakened by Robin and Ignis. She was suprised at the sight of the lizardman assailant, incapacitated at their hands on the warehouse floor, but realized that he had come to free her from what must have looked like an abduction or arrest. Robin, still annoyed at the inexplicable violence of strangers, asked how she knew him. She identified him as her former second-in-command from the recently-slaughtered Crimson Arrow mercenary guild.

Ignis healed the unconscious lizardman, but his magic liquor dribbled out of his maw, and his worst injuries remained. Robin convinced Angitt to use one of the wall-mounted ballista, joining a team of similarly-placed militia sharpshooters, readying a burning bolt to shoot the hot-air balloon's oildrum. She took with her the unconscious lizardman. Ignis followed, to take position nearby on the battle-scarred hangar roof amidst obliterated aethercraft.

For her own position, Robin borrowed the woman's personal ballista, and had it mounted on a warehouse nearby as a second line of offense in case the fray descended from the skies. Other militia and mutineers positioned themselves around the plaza. Ekkels and Klaitos worked with the engineers in the center to start inflating the Hitchit.

As the balloon slowly swelled, the craft began dragging towards the Hangar wall. Ekkels borrowed Klaitos's storm magic, and the two of them attempted to divert the oncoming wind. They found it to be a massive force, and were unable to exert nearly enough power to stop very much of it. However, their spellwork was able to open a pocket of calm air around the Hitchit, extending part of the height of the wall. Dust and pebbles clattered on the ground at the stirring edge of their spell.

The balloon lifted off and began to rise, a few spans closer to the Hangar wall but otherwise unimpeded. Robin, Ignis, Angitt, and every soldier present scanned the skies for any sign of the ship-hunting zombie dragons. Klaitos left the wind spell in Ekkels's hands and raced into the Hangar building, vaulting up the stairs just inside the wall.

The Hitchit soon reached the ceiling of Ekkels' wind envelope. Klaitos, hearing the crowd panic, punched through the stone wall, taking out a significant chunk and damaging the stairwell beneath him. Backing up to the wall opposite the hole, with stabler footing, he saw the balloon careening towards him. He invoked his storm magic again to generate a second envelope of calm air in its path. The Hitchit's flight stabilized, and it climbed upward a few yards from the Hangar wall.

As the balloon crested the wall, it was Angitt's eye that caught the dragon first. The smaller zombie - the corpse of Byrix of the Emerald - dove out of the clouds directly at the Hitchit, floating only a few yards away from her. At close range, she was able to make a well-timed shot, detonating the oildrum in a fiery blast just as it reached the balloon. Burning rain splattered the dragon, Angitt, and the Hangar rooftop near Ignis. Wall rubble and burning oildrops pelted the engineers and Ekkels in the plaza below.

The dragon, struck by the fireball and partially ignited, landed violently at the edge of the wall. It flailed recklessly, tearing further stone chunks down past Klaitos and onto the plaza, and burned with a horrible smell. Ignis heard Angitt cry out, but to reach her would require he get past the thrashing zombie dragon. Opting to press his advantage instead, he tossed a jar of flammable grease at the dragon, fully igniting its wings. He called down to the plaza, telling them to send would-be dragonslayers to the walltop with all haste.

Robin scanned the skies still, ignoring the flailing and burning zombie on the wall to watch out for the other, larger zombie not yet sighted. Her pessimism was validated - she saw the huge form of Urtholon of the Emerald emerging from the clouds north of the Hangar, and shouted out the alarm - but this zombie seemed to be approaching much slower than its counterpart.

Klaitos, hearing the other target was coming into range, called down to Ekkels and the engineers to launch the Ignis. However, the dragon's approach, though slower than an arrow, was still faster than the brazier could raise the craft. Ekkels tapped into Klaitos's storm magic again, and created winds to stir the braziers to fill the balloon directly. This dramatically accelerated the inflation but kicked up some worrisome sparks and cinders around the oil barrel.

Robin, still perched on a warehouse above, tried to distract the inbound dragon with an illusion of a ship fleeing the Hangar. It breathed an almost-lazy blast of black ash at the ship, and Robin noticed it didn't disrupt her spell in the way that the undead Byrix had. She had the vessel feign damage, though, but continue flying like a gnat around the dragon.

Klaitos, in the wall of the Hangar, moved to perch in the hole he had created so that he could still see the battlefield if his footing crumbled. Taking care to avoid getting struck by the rubble dislodged by Byrix above, he watched the inflation of the Ignis, preparing to create another mid-air envelope to guide its flight to the larger zombie dragon.

Ignis heard Angitt shout for assistance beyond the burning zombie as it, uncaring of its injuries, climbed fully onto the walltop. She yelled at Ignis specifically, claiming that he had promised her survival in all of this, and that he needed to make good on that now. Ignis channeled his fire magic and used it to buffet the dragon as he maneuvered past it. He got in front of the beast before getting knocked to the ground and coated with its breath of bright-white ash, smothering his magic.

Ignis rolled to safety before the zombie could stomp him with a burning forelimb, and found Angitt beyond. She was crouched by the mount of the explosion-damaged ballista, struggling to drag her former second-in-command to safety with burned hands and arms.

Ekkels and the engineers, below, were able to launch the Ignis far faster than the Hitchit. The craft began to rise, and Ekkels switched his efforts from stirring the brazier's heat to enveloping the balloon against the unrelenting wind. The dragon descended slowly, emerging fully from the clouds above the warehouse plaza.

Robin continued to circle the illusory ship around the dragon, but found it to be entirely uninterested in the vessel after its first attack. Disturbed by the thought of a zombie able to figure out her illusion, Robin squinted at Urtholon's corpse, and realized that it had a rider, too far away to discern in the darkness.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-11-14

2023-11-16T05:32:11Z

Abe:

Klaitos and Ekkels were awakened from their short rest in the hangar by the arrival of the Torch militia and the crude hot air balloons. Klaitos helped set the balloons up in the warehouse plaza, but realized the persistent westerly wind would drag them - and their explosive payloads - directly into the wall of the hangar. As he contemplated this issue, he named the two hot air balloons - the Hitchit and the Ignis - after two of the most casually destructive individuals he knew.

Ekkels, for his part, went looking for Ignis and Robin, the former of whom he hadn't seen since he took a nap. He noticed signs of revelry - and varyingly conscious, alcohol-poisoned mutineer revelers - leading back towards the warehouse used for the party. He followed the train and encountered Robin and Ignis dragging a bandaged, unconscious lizardman.

Ekkels accepted this sight without question. The three of them dropped the lizardman off in the same warehouse as the drugged Angitt, and rejoined with Klaitos. The militia engineers were ready to start launching the makeshift ballooncraft, but nobody knew when the wind would die down enough to light the braziers. Klaitos, not wanting to waste any more time under the sky of tortured faces, took command and issued a battleplan to engage the dragons.

Angitt was awakened by Robin and Ignis. She was suprised at the sight of the lizardman assailant, incapacitated at their hands on the warehouse floor, but realized that he had come to free her from what must have looked like an abduction or arrest. Robin, still annoyed at the inexplicable violence of strangers, asked how she knew him. She identified him as her former second-in-command from the recently-slaughtered Crimson Arrow mercenary guild.

Ignis healed the unconscious lizardman, but his magic liquor dribbled out of his maw, and his worst injuries remained. Robin convinced Angitt to use one of the wall-mounted ballista, joining a team of similarly-placed militia sharpshooters, readying a burning bolt to shoot the hot-air balloon's oildrum. She took with her the unconscious lizardman. Ignis followed, to take position nearby on the battle-scarred hangar roof amidst obliterated aethercraft.

For her own position, Robin borrowed the woman's personal ballista, and had it mounted on a warehouse nearby as a second line of offense in case the fray descended from the skies. Other militia and mutineers positioned themselves around the plaza. Ekkels and Klaitos worked with the engineers in the center to start inflating the Hitchit.

As the balloon slowly swelled, the craft began dragging towards the Hangar wall. Ekkels borrowed Klaitos's storm magic, and the two of them attempted to divert the oncoming wind. They found it to be a massive force, and were unable to exert nearly enough power to stop very much of it. However, their spellwork was able to open a pocket of calm air around the Hitchit, extending part of the height of the wall. Dust and pebbles clattered on the ground at the stirring edge of their spell.

The balloon lifted off and began to rise, a few spans closer to the Hangar wall but otherwise unimpeded. Robin, Ignis, Angitt, and every soldier present scanned the skies for any sign of the ship-hunting zombie dragons. Klaitos left the wind spell in Ekkels's hands and raced into the Hangar building, vaulting up the stairs just inside the wall.

The Hitchit soon reached the ceiling of Ekkels' wind envelope. Klaitos, hearing the crowd panic, punched through the stone wall, taking out a significant chunk and damaging the stairwell beneath him. Backing up to the wall opposite the hole, with stabler footing, he saw the balloon careening towards him. He invoked his storm magic again to generate a second envelope of calm air in its path. The Hitchit's flight stabilized, and it climbed upward a few yards from the Hangar wall.

As the balloon crested the wall, it was Angitt's eye that caught the dragon first. The smaller zombie - the corpse of Byrix of the Emerald - dove out of the clouds directly at the Hitchit, floating only a few yards away from her. At close range, she was able to make a well-timed shot, detonating the oildrum in a fiery blast just as it reached the balloon. Burning rain splattered the dragon, Angitt, and the Hangar rooftop near Ignis. Wall rubble and burning oildrops pelted the engineers and Ekkels in the plaza below.

The dragon, struck by the fireball and partially ignited, landed violently at the edge of the wall. It flailed recklessly, tearing further stone chunks down past Klaitos and onto the plaza, and burned with a horrible smell. Ignis heard Angitt cry out, but to reach her would require he get past the thrashing zombie dragon. Opting to press his advantage instead, he tossed a jar of flammable grease at the dragon, fully igniting its wings. He called down to the plaza, telling them to send would-be dragonslayers to the walltop with all haste.

Robin scanned the skies still, ignoring the flailing and burning zombie on the wall to watch out for the other, larger zombie not yet sighted. Her pessimism was validated - she saw the huge form of Urtholon of the Emerald emerging from the clouds north of the Hangar, and shouted out the alarm - but this zombie seemed to be approaching much slower than its counterpart.

Klaitos, hearing the other target was coming into range, called down to Ekkels and the engineers to launch the Ignis. However, the dragon's approach, though slower than an arrow, was still faster than the brazier could raise the craft. Ekkels tapped into Klaitos's storm magic again, and created winds to stir the braziers to fill the balloon directly. This dramatically accelerated the inflation but kicked up some worrisome sparks and cinders around the oil barrel.

Robin, still perched on a warehouse above, tried to distract the inbound dragon with an illusion of a ship fleeing the Hangar. It breathed an almost-lazy blast of black ash at the ship, and Robin noticed it didn't disrupt her spell in the way that the undead Byrix had. She had the vessel feign damage, though, but continue flying like a gnat around the dragon.

Klaitos, in the wall of the Hangar, moved to perch in the hole he had created so that he could still see the battlefield if his footing crumbled. He watched the inflation of the Ignis, preparing to create another mid-air envelope to guide its flight to the larger zombie dragon.

Ignis heard Angitt shout for assistance beyond the burning zombie as it, uncaring of its injuries, climbed fully onto the walltop. She yelled at Ignis specifically, claiming that he had promised her survival in all of this, and that he needed to make good on that now. Ignis channeled his fire magic and used it to buffet the dragon as he maneuvered past it. He got in front of the beast before getting knocked to the ground and coated with its breath of bright-white ash, smothering his magic.

Ignis rolled to safety before the zombie could stomp him with a burning forelimb, and found Angitt beyond. She was crouched by the mount of the explosion-damaged ballista, struggling to drag her former second-in-command to safety with burned hands and arms.

Ekkels and the engineers, below, were able to launch the Ignis far faster than the Hitchit. The craft began to rise, and Ekkels switched his efforts from stirring the brazier's heat to enveloping the balloon against the unrelenting wind. The dragon descended slowly, emerging fully from the clouds above the warehouse plaza.

Robin continued to circle the illusory ship around the dragon, but found it to be entirely uninterested in the vessel after its first attack. Disturbed by the thought of a zombie able to figure out her illusion, Robin squinted at Urtholon's corpse, and realized that it had a rider, too far away to discern in the darkness.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-11-14

2023-11-16T05:19:38Z

Abe: Created page with "Klaitos and Ekkels were awakened from their short rest in the hangar by the arrival of the Torch militia and the crude hot air balloons. Klaitos helped set the balloons up in..."

Klaitos and Ekkels were awakened from their short rest in the hangar by the arrival of the Torch militia and the crude hot air balloons. Klaitos helped set the balloons up in the warehouse plaza, but realized the persistent westerly wind would drag them - and their explosive payloads - directly into the wall of the hangar. As he contemplated this issue, he named the two hot air balloons - the Hitchit and the Ignis - after two of the most casually destructive individuals he knew.

Ekkels, for his part, went looking for Ignis and Robin, the former of whom he hadn't seen since he took a nap. He noticed signs of revelry - and varyingly conscious, alcohol-poisoned mutineer revelers - leading back towards the warehouse used for the party. He followed the train and encountered Robin and Ignis dragging a bandaged, unconscious lizardman.

Ekkels accepted this sight without question. The three of them dropped the lizardman off in the same warehouse as the drugged Angitt, and rejoined with Klaitos. The militia engineers were ready to start launching the makeshift ballooncraft, but nobody knew when the wind would die down enough to light the braziers. Klaitos, not wanting to waste any more time under the sky of tortured faces, took command and issued a battleplan to engage the dragons.

Angitt was awakened by Robin and Ignis. She was suprised at the sight of the lizardman assailant, incapacitated at their hands on the warehouse floor, but realized that he had come to free her from what must have looked like an abduction or arrest. Robin, still annoyed at the inexplicable violence of strangers, asked how she knew him. She identified him as her former second-in-command from the recently-slaughtered Crimson Arrow mercenary guild.

Ignis healed the unconscious lizardman, but his magic liquor dribbled out of his maw, and his worst injuries remained. Robin convinced Angitt to use one of the wall-mounted ballista, joining a team of similarly-placed militia sharpshooters, readying a burning bolt to shoot the hot-air balloon's oildrum. She took with her the unconscious lizardman. Ignis followed, to take position nearby on the battle-scarred hangar roof amidst obliterated aethercraft.

For her own position, Robin borrowed the woman's personal ballista, and had it mounted on a warehouse nearby as a second line of offense in case the fray descended from the skies. Other militia and mutineers positioned themselves around the plaza. Ekkels and Klaitos worked with the engineers in the center to start inflating the Hitchit.

As the balloon slowly swelled, the craft began dragging towards the Hangar wall. Ekkels borrowed Klaitos's storm magic, and the two of them attempted to divert the oncoming wind. They found it to be a massive force, and were unable to exert nearly enough power to stop very much of it. However, their spellwork was able to open a pocket of calm air around the Hitchit, extending part of the height of the wall. Dust and pebbles clattered on the ground at the stirring edge of their spell.

The balloon lifted off and began to rise, a few spans closer to the Hangar wall but otherwise unimpeded. Robin, Ignis, Angitt, and every soldier present scanned the skies for any sign of the ship-hunting zombie dragons. Klaitos left the wind spell in Ekkels's hands and raced into the Hangar building, vaulting up the stairs just inside the wall.

The Hitchit soon reached the ceiling of Ekkels' wind envelope. Klaitos, hearing the crowd panic, punched through the stone wall, taking out a significant chunk and damaging the stairwell beneath him. Backing up to the wall opposite the hole, with stabler footing, he saw the balloon careening towards him. He invoked his storm magic again to generate a second envelope of calm air in its path. The Hitchit's flight stabilized, and it climbed upward a few yards from the Hangar wall.

As the balloon crested the wall, it was Angitt's eye that caught the dragon first. The smaller zombie - the corpse of Byrix of the Emerald - dove out of the clouds directly at the Hitchit, floating only a few yards away from her. At close range, she was able to make a well-timed shot, detonating the oildrum in a fiery blast just as it reached the balloon. Burning rain splattered the dragon, Angitt, and the Hangar rooftop near Ignis. Wall rubble and burning oildrops pelted the engineers and Ekkels in the plaza below.

The dragon, struck by the fireball and partially ignited, landed violently at the edge of the wall. It flailed recklessly, tearing further stone chunks down past Klaitos and onto the plaza, and burned with a horrible smell. Ignis heard Angitt cry out, but to reach her would require he get past the thrashing zombie dragon. Opting to press his advantage instead, he tossed a jar of flammable grease at the dragon, fully igniting its wings.

Robin scanned the skies still, ignoring the flailing and burning zombie on the wall to watch out for the other, larger zombie not yet sighted. Her pessimism was validated - she saw the huge form of Urtholon of the Emerald emerging from the clouds north of the Hangar, and shouted out the alarm - but this zombie seemed to be approaching much slower than its counterpart.

Klaitos, hearing the other target was coming into range, called down to Ekkels and the engineers to launch the Ignis. However, the dragon's approach, though slower than an arrow, was still faster than the brazier could raise the craft. Ekkels tapped into Klaitos's storm magic again, and created winds to stir the braziers to fill the balloon directly. This dramatically accelerated the inflation but kicked up some worrisome sparks and cinders around the oil barrel.

Robin, still perched on a warehouse above, tried to distract the inbound dragon with an illusion of a ship fleeing the Hangar. It breathed an almost-lazy blast of black ash at the ship, and Robin noticed it didn't disrupt her spell in the way that the undead Byrix had. She had the vessel feign damage, though, but continue flying like a gnat around the dragon.

Ignis heard Angitt shout for assistance beyond the burning zombie as it, uncaring of its injuries, climbed fully onto the walltop. She yelled at Ignis specifically, claiming that he had promised her survival in all of this, and that he needed to make good on that now. Ignis channeled his fire magic and used it to buffet the dragon as he maneuvered past it. He got in front of the beast before getting knocked to the ground and coated with its breath of bright-white ash, smothering his magic.

Ignis rolled to safety before the zombie could stomp him with a burning forelimb, and found Angitt beyond. She was crouched by the mount of the explosion-damaged ballista, struggling to drag her former second-in-command to safety with burned hands and arms.

Ekkels and the engineers, below, were able to launch the Ignis far faster than the Hitchit. The craft began to rise, and Ekkels switched his efforts from stirring the brazier's heat to enveloping the balloon against the unrelenting wind. The dragon descended slowly, emerging fully from the clouds above the warehouse plaza.

Robin continued to circle the illusory ship around the dragon, but found it to be entirely uninterested in the vessel after its first attack. Disturbed by the thought of a zombie able to figure out her illusion, Robin squinted at Urtholon's corpse, and realized that it had a rider, too far away to discern in the darkness.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-10-31

2023-11-02T02:29:18Z

Abe: Created page with " The party and the still-handcuffed Angitt emerged from the bonfire in front of the Warehouse District. Brushing off the ash, they greeted the late-night stockpile guards, and..."

The party and the still-handcuffed Angitt emerged from the bonfire in front of the Warehouse District. Brushing off the ash, they greeted the late-night stockpile guards, and passed along word that the hot air balloons were on their way. The sentinels were of strained morale, at best, in the undead-stalked burning city under the tortured night sky. One of them asked after Lieutenant Torrix, and the honest answer - that the party had simply lost him in the night - offered little solace. The stockpiles themselves bore signs of pessimistic raiding, but Angitt eyed them with naked calculation in her eyes.

Ignis broke away from the group to try and lighten the atmosphere among the guards. He was able to strike up a few conversations, joking about the overwrought uselessness of the Torch with the mutineers. One of them told him there was an end-of-the-world party happening in the last warehouse in the row. He elected to crash it, reasoning that alcohol and carousing would serve morale as well as any speech.

Klaitos, Robin, and Ekkels reasoned that they might be better-served by resting in the Hangar until the militia arrived at the with the hot-air balloons. To keep Angitt from running off with stockpiled goods while they slept, Robin whipped up a sleeping potion dosed for the giant woman. She grumbled at the treatment, and demanded her ballista back to prove the party wasn't going to treat her as disposable. They conceded, and she was left in a drugged stupor in the corner of a stockpile warehouse. Ekkels, seeing her sleeping uncomfortably, opted to remove her handcuffs.

Klaitos cleaned his scalp wound and face, then he and Ekkels settled in for a nap between two ships on the lowest hangar floor. Robin broke off to find Ignis, wanting for his liquor to restore her injured shoulder before she rested. As a secondary concern, she hadn't seen him in long enough that he was probably up to or in trouble.

From the plaza, she heard the sounds of laughter echoing distantly from the far warehouse. She grouchily headed to investigate, but a bulky figure emerged from behind a warehouse and began to follow her. She turned into an abandoned building and slipped into the shadows. Utterly still, she watched the figure peek around the doorway, and recognized him as the lizardman rioter that had earlier attacked Ignis.

He stared into the darkness, oblivious to her proximity. She tossed a stone across the warehouse to clatter by the far doorway. He jolted at the sound, then peered further into the room, swore softly, and rushed around the building to intercept "Robin". The real Robin waited for him to leave and then crept out the window. She hurried over to the end warehouse to find Ignis and put him between her and the lizardman stalker.

She found the apocalypse party to have gotten somewhat out of hand, most of its attendees well past drunk. She wandered over to Ignis and bade him heal her shoulder. He welcomed her to the party and offered her a drink of strong magical ale. She wandered off, tipsy but relieved of the day's injuries, and settled into a game of cards in the corner of the room.

Ignis, realizing that he had been partying in a perilous location, took it upon himself to patrol the area and ensure the security of the party warehouse. His self-appointed watch saw him stagger through the warehouse alleys in a loop, coming across no danger but the stale vomit of mortally terrified binge-drinkers.

Robin, for her part, easily read the shellshocked gamblers' body language and took the table for herself. Unusually nonplussed, the players began gambling treats and trinkets they had appropriated from the stockpiles they had been guarding earlier. Robin eyed - and easily won - a decorative map of the city, with Lord Arva Sirroon's crest marking his tower in its center.

She gambled long enough to sober up, and was ready to head in for some rest, when she remembered that the lizardman stalking her. She told Ignis - who had begun, at this hour, to sober up - of the encounter. The two of them decided to use him as bait, so Robin climbed to the roof of the warehouse as he pretended to urinate against the side of its neighbor.

Sure enough, the lizardman emerged from around the corner to ambush the apparently defenseless Fireheart. He leapt from hiding wielding his mace, crackling with lightning, only to have his charge interrupted by Robin's sharpshooting. He reeled back from the bolt in his shoulder as Ignis drew to engage him in melee.

The lizardman muttered that he hadn't wanted things this complicated, but Ignis ignored him and lunged suddenly to stab him through the hand. The lizardman dropped his mace with a shriek of pain. Lightning jumped between his gritted teeth, but Robin was able to take him down before he could make another step.

Ekkels and Klaitos, far from any drinking, gambling, or ambushing, were confronted with troubling dreams in their light sleep. Klaitos stood hidden beneath a vast and heavy presence, unknowing if he was beneath its notice or only spared its attention by luck. He raged against it, but his shouts echoed as quiet, distant thunderclaps before the force, and went unregarded.

Ekkels's dreams were haunted by a pair of dancing lights, shining with an indescribable radiance that made them difficult to look directly upon. He approached with his eyes shadowed by his hand, but the lights seemed to grow past it rather than be smothered, and he was unable to discern them at all. He lowered his hand and stared into the sun; after a few moments his eyes seemed to adjust, and he witnessed two luminous forms: a earthbound dancer appearing to wear a gown, and a winged humanoid circling overhead.

The pair of them were then awakened by a mutineer messenger announcing the arrival of the hot air balloon contingent.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-10-24

2023-10-31T22:56:14Z

Abe: Created page with "The party, along with Captain Caegron, surrounded the surrendering woman. Robin, still nursing her ballista injury, offered to handcuff the woman. The captain, stubbornly untr..."

The party, along with Captain Caegron, surrounded the surrendering woman. Robin, still nursing her ballista injury, offered to handcuff the woman. The captain, stubbornly untrusting, ordered a soldier to do it instead. Then, with his sword at her back, they tried to figure out why she had led the rioters to charge the gate, and if she would be willing to cooperate with their assault on the undead dragons - the party knew they could use a sharpshooter of her caliber. Ignis further proposed she join in sky combat as a shipside gunner.

She declared herself to be Angitt, leader of the Crimson Arrow mercenary guild, up until their recent annihilation. She claimed that her actions were to ensure her survival; she knew no Torch aid was coming and wagered that she could escape into the wastelands on foot, so long as there was a large enough mob with her to distract some of the undead.

Though willing to talk, she was resistant to any notion of aiding the party in their mission, or to Caegron's suggestion that she be jailed, arguing that either fate would simply mean her death. She pled to be turned loose so she could hole up somewhere secure. Robin recognized that Angitt was seriously afraid for her own survival - her cynicism wasn't faked, but her paranoid glances back in the direction of the illusory zombie breach betrayed her anxiousness.

Klaitos used this to argue that, since they had taken over the faction of mutineers at the Hangar, they had the food and resources to best ensure her survival. He also contended that, whether or not she believed in their plan, they actually had one, and were acting on it, which was better than her proposal of hiding from the undead hordes. She considered his argument and agreed to go along with the party - as anti-air support, on the ground - if they would trade her the location of the stockpile Klaitos mentioned.

His diplomacy achieved, Klaitos asked Captain Caegron if he'd be willing to dispatch some men to bring the hot air balloons, and the group of military engineers, from the eastern wall to meet with them at the Hangar. He agreed, but warned the group not to let Angitt slip their grasp in his absense. He staggered back through the Plaza, dispatching orders as he left.

Klaitos and Ignis escorted Angitt as Robin led the group through the Scales District. The fires throughout the city glowed beyond the overlarge buildings, illuminating the massive tortured faces flowing through the umbral cloud above.

Robin heard a strange thumping ahead, and bade the party wait as she scouted. She found a march of scattered undead - part-dragon residents of the Scales District, mixed with the smaller bodies of more common folk. The thumping turned out to be zombified pack lizard lurched forward slowly on three limbs, smacking into the ground with every step. Though there was no formation to speak of, the undead followed the main road inexorably towards Lord's Town.

Robin reported back to the group, and they found an unlit alley a few blocks down through which they could stealthily approach the main road. When the undead were far enough away, Robin led the group in a silent dash through the most shadowy part of the street.

Further on, they found the neighborhood just north of the Scales District to be consumed in a massive blaze. The smoke and heat choked them as they drew near. Lacking the time or directions to find a way around, Klaitos conjured an envelope of wind to protect their skin and lungs. Robin found a low-lying path between collapsing buildings that took them to the comparative safety of the Warehouse District.

As they emerged and caught their breath, Ekkels, from the safety of Klaitos's backpack, spied an indistinct figure emerge from the flames a few paces behind them before slipping out of sight.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-10-13

2023-10-18T04:08:33Z

Abe: Created page with "Ignis conjured an indiscriminate flare to clear the melee around him, and called out for Torrix to deal with the lizardman with the mace. The dwarven deserter emerged from the..."

Ignis conjured an indiscriminate flare to clear the melee around him, and called out for Torrix to deal with the lizardman with the mace. The dwarven deserter emerged from the battlefield and tackled Ignis's opponent out of the Plaza of Legends. Ignis tried to put down the lizardman two-on-one, but was barred by Torrix wanting a good sporting brawl.

Robin felt the heavy gaze of the ballista-wielder on her as she looked for an escape. She decided to play on her earlier illusion and conjure the image of a zombie running into the fray. The already-panicked rioters scrambled to keep clear of it, but the sniper was undaunted - Robin was barely able to slip her attention in the chaos.

Ekkels, borrowing Klaitos's wind senses, was able to track their silk-masked pursuer. Klaitos decided, as long as the assassin was trackable, he stood nothing to lose by simply leaving, and raced forth to the battlefield at the end of the Plaza of Legends. Ekkels noticed the figure follow, but fall well behind Klaitos's giant pace.

The two arrived behind the line of Torch militia. The injured Captain Caegron was surprised to see him, but told him he needed to help put down the riot if he wanted there to be any militia left to cooperate with him. Unwilling to step into a pointless fight within the zombie siege, Klaitos opted to try and defuse the situation with a spell of cold rain.

Ignis capitalized on the opportunity, relying on his terrorist reputation and dramatic fire to punctuate a final threat directed at the rioters. The morale of the haggard, zombie-haunted, rain-dampened mob was broken, and the group surrendered to the militia/terrorist alliance.

As her allies put down their weapons, the ballista-wielding giant tried to slip away. Klaitos shoved through the crowd and cornered her before she was able to leave the Plaza of Legends. Though Klaitos's height, she was not strong enough to push past him; instead, she levelled her ballista at his face. He swatted it away - getting shot in the scalp for his recklessness - and closed the distance. Caegron, approaching behind her, held her at swordpoint. Her escape thwarted, she dropped her weapon and raised her arms in surrender.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-09-26

2023-09-29T03:58:28Z

Abe: Created page with "Klaitos, with Ekkels aboard his backpack, raced south. They hurried to reach Captain Caegron and the contigent he was taking to subdue the mob at the southeastern Gate Tower s..."

Klaitos, with Ekkels aboard his backpack, raced south. They hurried to reach Captain Caegron and the contigent he was taking to subdue the mob at the southeastern Gate Tower so that they could recruit ballista-operators from among his militia to aid the balloon-bomb assault on the dragons. They decided to race around Lord's Town rather than try to breach the upper-class stronghold.

Meanwhile, the gate-storming mob halted before the sight of the illusory zombie army summiting the towering walls of Golarth. Ignis took advantage of their disorganization and fear by issuing an order to retreat. The giant woman with the ballista attempted to counter his orders, but the common sense of fleeing the undead horde won out, and so she could only glare at Ignis and leave with them. Torrix and Ignis followed after them, both to escape the climbing undead and to monitor the instigating faction of the near-battle.

Robin slid down the lift-rope after them, but missed the glaring woman. She followed after Ignis at the tail of the mob, lurking at a safe distance to see what he would do next. As she headed to the Plaza of Legends, she dropped the visual component of her massive illusion, leaving only the sounds of the horde - the mob had already been turned away, and she wanted to follow them out of the range of her magic.

Klaitos was too unfamiliar with Golarth to find the Plaza of Legends in the umbral darkness, and so climbed the wall of Lord's Town for a vantage from which to plot his course. He and Ekkels were reprimanded for their trespass by a figure in a regal gown and a gold mask, but ignored her to jump down and hurry onward.

They heard the sounds of the Lord's Town gate opening behind them, and Ekkels caught a glimpse of some skulking pursuer. As they reached the Plaza of Legends, Klaitos could see Caegron's forces arranged against the mob, blocking their passage through the path of obelisks. Beyond them all, a teeming mass vanished suddenly from the walltop.

Ignis saw a small militia force, led by a giant Captain, holding a line ahead and halting the mob in the plaza. The captain demanded the lawless rioters stand down, but the encroaching undead and general anarchy of the besieged city meant his orders were met with jeers and threats. Ignis circled around the group and jumped into the no-man's-land between militia and mob. He pled for rational cooperation instead of needless combat. Robin, at the back of the mob, watched the giant woman reach for her ballista.

The Captain eyed him with scorn, at first, and then disdainful recognition. He identified the man as Ignis Fireheart, traitor to the Torch and wanted terrorists with a bounty on his head. In the surprised silence that followed, Robin dropped the illusion behind her and cast another, imitating the captain's rough voice and calling for all present to disperse and return to their homes.

Most of the mob took the order as an opportunity, fleeing into the streets and putting distance between themselves and the apparently overtaken wall. However, the giant woman rallied the rest, reminding them that their homes would be their graves in the besieged city, and calling on them to survive or die. She punctuated her declaration by firing a bolt into the captain's side, knocking him back. The situation rapidly devolved into open combat, allowing a gleeful Torrix to batter the nearest rioter to the pavement.

Ekkels lost sight of their pursuer, right up until Klaitos was attacked from the shadows by a short figure in a silk mask. He evaded the strike, but the figure retreated into hiding. Klaitos tried to sense the assailant's presence stirring the airflows, but was foiled by the persistent westward wind. Ekkels strained to make them out in the darkness. Neither wanted to be delayed here - they could see Caegron had been injured up ahead - but the unseen assassin from Lord's Town was too great a risk.

Ignis was jumped by a yellow-scaled lizardman and suffered a brutal maceblow. He summoned his fire magic; the lizardman grinned and let a spark dance between his teeth in response. He attempted to blind his attacker with a flare, but his opponent moved quickly enough to avoid the stunning burst.

Robin watched the giant woman load her ballista for another shot, and decided to sneak up to try and sabotage her. The woman's keen eyes spotted her coming, and she turned her weapon on the "rat in their midst". The bolt tore Robin's shoulder, but spared the captain, who rose to his feet and lumbered into the fray with a greatsword to rival Krotokos's maul.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-09-19

2023-09-24T16:26:51Z

Abe: Created page with "Klaitos and Robin debriefed on their respective journeys and encounters as Ignis worked to heal the fallen engineer. The man's wounds were sealed, but he remained unconscious..."

Klaitos and Robin debriefed on their respective journeys and encounters as Ignis worked to heal the fallen engineer. The man's wounds were sealed, but he remained unconscious and pale, so Klaitos continued to carry him. The party combined their individual goals and materials for the short term - they resolved to continue work on the hot-air balloons to challenge the undead dragons for the sky, but to also load them up with a payload of flammable oil barrels. Plans to seize control of the Lord's Town irrigation override were shelved for later.

Ekkels peeked into a few buildings and found some industrial carts to use as baskets. He also heard some kind of clamor from the south, but it was distant and incoherent enough that he saw little reason for immediate concern. Robin and Ignis headed back to the factory to recover the oil drums they had seen lying around, carting them back to the group. Klaitos found a textile manufacturer and hauled reams of unfinished canvas out into the ash-covered road. He used his storm magic to inflate the fabric, so that the engineers could get a sense of its sturdiness and ultimate design.

They worked by lamplight into the overcast, moonless night to bring the balloons together. The persistent wind dusted them with the ash of the burned fields to the east. The tumult to the south grew more audible, if no more coherent. Robin scaled a tenement for a better view, and saw a mob marching south across the Plaza of Legends towards the gate tower.

When the crude balloons were finished, the party, Torrix, and the engineers used a lift to get to the top of the eastern wall. The undead army beyond the city walls teemed with greater numbers than when the party had entered earlier, and the umbra seemed to hang lower in the sky. To the south, the riotous mob had reached the gate, and an even larger host of undead stood ready to greet them beyond it. The paltry Torch militia stationed at the tower seemed to be the target of the mob's ire. One guard manned a walltop ballista, and fired it backwards into the crowd within the city.

The group agreed that sending the balloons up in the dark of night would likely be a disaster. Klaitos and Ekkels went to go find militia to provide artillery support from the wall-mounted ballistae. Robin and Ignis travelled south along the wall, reluctantly bringing Torrix along to keep him from antagonizing the overworked and fearful militia engineers.

Ignis and Torrix raced towards the southeastern gate tower. Torrix revealed himself to be far more agile than his burly stature might suggest, and Ignis pressed himself to keep up, out of both pride and concern that the dwarf's violent sensibilities might impede diplomacy, or worse, result in the undead getting inside. Robin, far less accustomed to running for such distances, lagged behind. She eventually settled for a brisk walk along the city wall, far behind the men. She took the opportunity to look around with her lantern, and noticed that the dark clouds of the umbra overhead were forming fleeting images of tormented faces.

Klaitos and Ekkels didn't get any response knocking at the walltop entrance to the northeastern gate tower, and so took the lift back down into Sootcorner. They made their way east, Ekkels in his familiar backpack seat, with the aim of debriefing Captain Caergon at the militia headquarters and petitioning him for more soldiers. Their journey was ominous - the dark and silent streets of Golarth promised little safety - but swift, following the towers of Lord's Town illuminated by sporadic urban fires. Ekkels saw a church in their path, and steered Klaitos clear of the adjoining burial ground and its reanimating occupants.

Ignis and Torrix arrived at the riots in time to see the ballista operator struck by a bolt of equivalent size, fired from the crowd below. Torrix laughed as was knocked off the wall into the undead mob beyond. Neither man had a means of entering the fray quickly, or getting their attention from the top of the wall, so they took the lift down to the Plaza of Legends. As they descended, they watched the meager guard struggle to repel the attackers, led by a woman of Klaitos's size wielding what appeared to be the ballista that had struck down the wall soldier.

Robin saw them, up ahead, taking the lift without her. As she drew closer, she heard the sound of the rioters calling to "rush the gate". Recognizing the disaster brewing, she hurried forward, and conjured an illusion of the undead masses scaling the great wall of the city to terrify the mob into abandoning their suicidal rush. Ignis, arriving on the scene, saw the undead above and behind him, and shoved past Torrix to raise the alarm. The crowd balked at the illusion, and the assault on the tower relented.

Ekkels and Klaitos reached the headquarters, only to find the perimeter undefended. A soldier answered their knocking, but confessed that most of the remaining forces had been led by the captain to answer the mob attempting to break through the southeastern gate tower. The soldier wouldn't commit any of the remaining guard to the wall artillery without Caergon's approval, so Klaitos and Ekkels headed south to try and catch up with the Torch-loyal giant.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-09-12

2023-09-14T03:20:06Z

Abe: Created page with "Split party: Robin and Ignis present. Robin studied the mechanisms of the Valve Station. She couldn't figure out the exact operation of the defaced machinery, but not..."

Split party: [[Robin]] and [[Ignis]] present.

Robin studied the mechanisms of the Valve Station. She couldn't figure out the exact operation of the defaced machinery, but noticed piping leading both into and out of the city. She found, pinned to the wall and partially grafittied-over, a diagram depicting a central override station, located somewhere in Lord's Town at the heart of the city.

Ignis reasoned that he could feed something besides water into the irrigation pipes, but the controls in this station would require serious repair - and a few Aether Cores from the abandoned ships in the Hangar - to operate. He put the remaining Aether Core in his pack.

The two decided to seek out flammable materials for their scheme. They set out from the Valve Station east, towards the Sootcorner industrial district. They stuck to the shadowy base of the wall, opting for better line-of-sight over the mazelike alleys of Golarth. Robin remained wary of further undead, but could only hear the muffled sounds of those beyond the city walls.

Ignis, meanwhile, tuned into his drunkard's sense for sources of alcohol. He spied a broken-into tavern down the street. He and Robin investigated, and found a basement storeroom. Robin lit a torch to reveal the tavern's supplies largely picked clean. A lone barrel of wine, possibly too heavy for survival-oriented looters, had been left cracked open to gather dust.

The two continued following the wall towards Sootcorner, Ignis lugging the barrel as Robin remained on lookout. The wind stirred the overcast skies ever westward. The city was already as dark as a starless night beneath the Umbra of the Gray Steps, save for Robin's lone torch and the distant glow of burning buildings.

Sootcorner proved to be an uninviting neighborhood - the streets were narrow, ash-coated, and laid out with apparent disregard to the notion that anyone would ever need to travel them. Robin spied a figure moving further ahead. She climbed a tenement and readied a bolt with a flammable strip of cloth, only to find herself aiming at what appeared to be a living, burly, blue-scaled lizardfolk. He seemed to be lugging a heavy bundle of metal poles and planks, hurrying due south.

Ignis set down his wine and attempted to climb after her, but was deterred by the ash-coated handholds. Instead, she used whistles to guide his pursuit on foot, so that they might ask him where to find flammable materials. He caught up to the man quickly, unburdened by wine barrels or metal bundles, but stealthlessly. He realized that the man was not a lizardfolk, but instead a startlingly plainly-dressed part-dragon like Vicriax - an unusual sight, when most with dragon's blood lived at minimum lives of moderate aristocracy.

The part-dragon didn't seem to recognize Ignis, nor did either man introduce himself. Ignis asked if he was willing to help them take the fight to the undead dragons haunting the skies above, and played on the man's draconic pride, but was brushed off brusquely. He claimed to have his own people to take care of, and a barricade to reinforce, and no interest throwing himself into the stranger's fight.

Ignis, unable to recruit the man, asked if he knew where to find flammable materials. He claimed not to live or work in Sootcorner, and so he didn't know any particulars, but he did offer a suggestion to follow the smell of oil. He also gave Ignis the location of his holdout - an inn in the eastern city - if Ignis were successful enough to stage a rescue for "his people".

Ignis regrouped with Robin as the man headed south. The two of them followed his advice, and soon found a factory reeking of flammable oil. Robin's flickering torch revealed industrial machinery that seemed to be for building inscrutable, large metal constructions, with a large oil spill across the shop floor. A few other variously-full barrels stood between the machines.

Having found what they were seeking, the pair marked the location of the oil-rich factory and headed back into the city. They came across a burning factory, with Klaitos, Ekkels, Torrix, and the remaining Torch engineers standing outside and watching the blaze. The engineers seemed traumatized, one of them carried unconscious and bloody by Klaitos. Torrix, by contrast, wore a mad grin.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-08-08

2023-09-12T22:58:37Z

Abe:

The group parted ways at the base of the Golarth wall. Ignis and Klaitos made their south way to the center of the city, wanting an audience with whomever was still stationed at the Militia Headquarters. Robin and Ekkels, meanwhile, headed east to see if they could accomplish anything by breaking into the northern Valve Station. Robin paused to muddy the Sirroon Shield to hide its quality.

Ignis and Klaitos sprinted down the main road, drawing curious eyes from hunkering civilians and stray deserter militia, but no obvious pursuit. After several minutes of trying to sprint behind Klaitos's long-legged stride, Ignis found himself winded when they arrived.

Guards around the fortress-like building demanded to know their business, and Klaitos pled that they were there to help on behalf of the Windwatcher's Keep. They recognized the pair, and told them to drop their weapons as a soldier went inside to alert highers-up. Ignis kept a foot on his to make sure he could kick it back up in a hurry.

Ekkels and Robin made their way through the back alleys of north Golarth. Robin made easy progress through the maze of crowded, haphazard streets. Ekkels, following after her, spotted a group of people cowering in a building with the window smashed in. Robin shone her lantern on them, revealing a family crouching over a badly-wounded young man. The man's mother told them that he had been speared by something like a ballista, defending their barricaded neighborhood from raiders, and they had fled here as a result.

Robin inspected the injury but determined it beyond her meager skills. Ekkels climbed to the roof and drew out a crude chaos-magic ritual to amplify his powers. He squinted towards where Klaitos had headed, and spotted his largest friend in the plaza across town next to Ignis. He subjected the latter to his Sptial Exchange magic, and the two suddenly appeared in each other's place.

Ekkels surprised the militia with his sudden appearance atop Ignis's sword. He was able to reassure them by parroting Robin's assurances of aid and nonviolence from when they had encountered the family. Klaitos was deeply confused by the change in roster and only further disturbed by the voice of his other teammate coming from Ekkels' mouth, but the guards kept their weapons down.

Ignis climbed down from Ekkel's ritual on the roof, confused and accidentally disarmed, and healed the man as Robin filled him in. The two of them asked after the raided encampment. They learned that it had been raided by some group from the south, not wearing Torch uniforms, separate from the mutineers to the west. and got directions to see if there was anyone left to rescue. They told the family to make their way to the warehouses and mutineers, and Ignis sent a magic whisper to Torrix to make sure their safe passage was guaranteed.

The two found the encampment a little south of the Valve Station. The area looked as much a warzone as the injured man's torso - the walls and many of the buildings were in ruins, all of which were littered with unmoving bodies. Robin scanned the scene, hoping to understand more of the faction to the south. She found holes and embedded metal bolts that fit what the mother had said about a ballista, but also signs of destructive lightning strikes all over.

Ignis moved from corpse to corpse, looking for signs of life that he could rescue. Wrist after wrist showed no heartbeat, but he felt one move slightly under his arm. He was partway to healing them when it suddenly bolted forward and siezed his arms with a cold grip. Ignis forcefully pushed himself free of the zombie, and sent its head sailing with a vicious kick. Robin realized that more of the bodies were beginning to twitch. They considered burning the battlefield, but decided it would take too long to spread the fire when the city was full of bodies already.

Klaitos and Ekkels were let into the headquarters to find themselves facing down two large squadrons of guards from either side. A giant Torch captain, wielding a sword to rival Krotokos's maul, stared them down. Klaitos explained the situation and made their case: they wanted to secure Golarth airspace for evacuation and supply chain by taking down the mummified dragons. He asked for help only in outfitting the ships of the Hangar for combat, recognizing how little the Torch could afford to truly join forces with them.

The Torch captain, Caergon, told Klaitos and Ekkels that no true alliance based on trust could be forged with enemy terrorists. He refused to tell them if there had been contact with or aid forthcoming from the rest of the Torch. He conceded that if they were willing to cooperate under that level of distrust, he could grant them some assistance - not the least because he didn't want to bet the few squadrons of loyal soldiers he had left on winning a fight with them.

He confessed that deserters had already taken their airships, and he refused to spare so many soldiers that the headquarters would be vulnerable. He instead ordered a handful of militia field engineers to join them to arm their ships. The extended group headed northeast back towards the Warehouse District.

Robin and Ignis arrived at the Valve Station and found it already broken into. A control panel of complex instrumentation had been defaced and abused, but its craft was too sturdy to loot. A periscope-like aperture on the wall had been reduced to a vista of broken lens. On the floor below the control panel sat four small boxes, three of which had been clumsily broken into. Two seemed empty, the third held broken glass and a small yet disconcertingly deep hole. The fourth, Robin opened with care, revealing an apple-sized aether core connected to the machinery of the room.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-08-21

2023-08-27T03:38:39Z

Abe:

Split party: [[Ekkels]] and [[Klaitos]] present.

Klaitos and Ekkels led the six militia engineers down the main road to the hangar warehouse district. They regrouped with Torrix, who was skeptical at their joining forces with the captain he had mutineed from. They discussed the resources available to them in their mission to challenge the undead dragons for the Golarth airspace.

The engineers could retrieve shipworking tools and some materials from the hangar, but Torrix said that none of the mutineers had tallied the remaining airships. Most, he recalled, were smaller vessels for minor merchants and aristocrats. The militia engineers would find it challenging to equip them with air-to-air weaponry of the scale necessary to hurt a dragon.

Ekkels asked around the plaza for witnesses of the dragons' attack. He found an anxious guard, who remembered that the dragons had descended from the encroaching umbral clouds, smashed some fleeing ships to the ground, and breathed gray and white jets that downed clouds of ships at a time.

Klaitos reasoned that the dragons were capable of breathing something that messed with the magic keeping the airships aloft. He proposed the group construct a hot air balloon - a simpler, nonmagical craft able to reach the heights necessary to try dragon-hunting. An engineer suggested that they could retrieve the necessary canvas and rope from the Sootcorner industrial district.

They journeyed east off the main roads, taking care to avoid bringing Torrix - already offending the engineers - anywhere near Captain Caergon. Instead, Ekkels diverted from the group to pass on their destination and goal. Though the remaining militia at the headquarters were alarmed to see only him, he was able to convey the necessary information. He wandered back into the city and proceeded to get lost trying to rejoin the others.

Klaitos, Torrix, and the engineers passed by a block of ruined barricades and heaped corpses. A detached head, lying on the road, began working its jaw in a feeble attempt to move closer to Klaitos. Torrix, elated to find a target he was allowed to hurt, promptly bodyslammed the head into a smear. Klaitos tried to ignore him, and hurried the group on to Sootcorner from the horrible sight.

Ekkels found he had unintentionally wandered into the same back-alleys Robin had led him through earlier. Realizing that he was lost, he chased down some voices he heard around the corner. He greeted and requested directions from a burly lizardfolk and a pair of humans, who reacted with suspicion. Ekkels realized that the three had been sneaking around with underhanded motives, and might not have wanted his company. He was able to convince them he was no threat, and they dismissively pointed him towards Sootcorner.

Klaitos, Torrix, and the engineers arrived at Sootcorner with Ekkels nowhere in sight. Klaitos climbed atop a dilapidated tenement, and conjured a narrow twister in the dark sky to signal their location to his missing friend. The engineers searched the factories nearby for supplies, with Torrix serving as a bodyguard of questionable dedication.

Ekkels passed the block of ruined barricades with a shudder. He spied Klaitos's signal and stature over the rooftops, and was grateful for both the destination and something less terrifying to look upon. As he approached the tenement, Klaitos climbed down and called everyone in to regroup.

They had been unsuccessful at finding the necessary rope or canvas. Moreover, only four of the six engineers emerged from their searching. Klaitos tried to organize a search, but struggled to wrangle Torrix's unhelpfully grim input with the nervousness of the other militia. Ekkels scanned the streets' namesake soot for footprints, and spotted a factory that had recently been entered but not exited.

The remaining group cautiously ventured inside the dirty, pitch-dark building. Klaitos attuned his senses to the stirrings of the still air, but could not detect any movements beyond the six of them. The engineers brought out gas lanterns, which revealed a messy shop floor and damaged, partially-looted machinery. Torrix ran loudly down the aisle but was unsuccesful in flushing out anything to punch.

Klaitos turned to his Lantern Eye for further investigation. He found the room suffused with ambient magic of similar magnitude to the chaos-saturated Knotted Tower. In that ambient glow, a particularly ravaged machine glowed brighter. Klaitos approached it with a borrowed gas lantern, and spied an engineer lying unmoving in the detritus at its base. In that same instant, a clawed hand reached out from the gaps in the broken machinery and slammed the lantern to the floor.

His wind senses tracked a ghoul emerging, contorted, from the apparatus. It leapt at him in the darkness, but he was able to knock it back with a solid strike. Torrix charged it an aisle away and pummeled it with a roar, but was forced to disengage when another ghoul ambushed him from the shadows.

A third raced past Ekkels and pulled an engineer from the group out of sight, his lantern falling to the floor behind his startled cry. The remaining engineers ran for the exit, leaving the factory darkened save the smoldering fuel of the two fallen lamps. Ekkels wanted to make more light, so he found a barrel of sawdust and knocked it into the small flames. The sawdust burned in a great plume of fire and searing ash.

Torrix laughed and praised Ekkels for "fighting to win" by burning down the building. He then raced away from the ghoul stalking him to the follow the engineers to safety. Klaitos pulled the missing, unmoving engineer from the ground and charged after him, knocking workstations and chairs aside to clear a path for Ekkels.

Ekkels found himself unable to keep up with the more athletic members of the group, and fell behind in their escape. He encountered a ghoul feeding on the engineer that had been stolen into shadows moments ago, both spotting the other in the same instant. The undead leapt at him, but he escaped with shallow scratches by bouncing his malleable form out of the way.

He emerged from the factory as the fire spread to drown out the shadows. The group stood and caught their breath in the dark outside, watching the building burn to make sure none of the creatures followed them.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-08-21

2023-08-27T03:37:53Z

Abe: Created page with "Split party: Ekkels and Klaitos present. Klaitos and Ekkels led the six militia engineers down the main road to the hangar warehouse district. They regrouped with Tor..."

Split party: [[Ekkels]] and [[Klaitos]] present.

Klaitos and Ekkels led the six militia engineers down the main road to the hangar warehouse district. They regrouped with Torrix, who was skeptical at their joining forces with the captain he had mutineed from. They discussed the resources available to them in their mission to challenge the undead dragons for the Golarth airspace.

The engineers could retrieve shipworking tools and some materials from the hangar, but Torrix said that none of the mutineers had tallied the remaining airships. Most, he recalled, were smaller vessels for minor merchants and aristocrats. The militia engineers would find it challenging to equip them with air-to-air weaponry of the scale necessary to hurt a dragon.

Ekkels asked around the plaza for witnesses of the dragons' attack. He found an anxious guard, who remembered that the dragons had descended from the encroaching umbral clouds, smashed some fleeing ships to the ground, and breathed gray and white jets that downed clouds of ships at a time.

Klaitos reasoned that the dragons were capable of breathing something that messed with the magic keeping the airships aloft. He proposed the group construct a hot air balloon - a simpler, nonmagical craft able to reach the heights necessary to try dragon-hunting. An engineer suggested that they could retrieve the necessary canvas and rope from the Sootcorner industrial district.

They journeyed east off the main roads, taking care to avoid bringing Torrix - already offending the engineers - anywhere near Captain Caergon. Instead, Ekkels diverted from the group to pass on their destination and goal. Though the remaining militia at the headquarters were alarmed to see only him, he was able to convey the necessary information. He wandered back into the city and proceeded to get lost trying to rejoin the others.

Klaitos, Torrix, and the engineers passed by a block of ruined barricades and heaped corpses. A detached head, lying on the road, began working its jaw in a feeble attempt to move closer to Klaitos. Torrix, elated to find a target he was allowed to hurt, promptly bodyslammed the head into a smear. Klaitos tried to ignore him, and hurried the group on to Sootcorner from the horrible sight.

Ekkels found he had unintentionally wandered into the same back-alleys Robin had led him through earlier. Realizing that he was lost, he chased down some voices he heard around the corner. He greeted and requested directions from a burly lizardfolk and a pair of humans, who reacted with suspicion. Ekkels realized that the three had been sneaking around with underhanded motives, and might not have wanted his company. He was able to convince them he was no threat, and they dismissively pointed him towards Sootcorner.

Klaitos, Torrix, and the engineers arrived at Sootcorner with Ekkels nowhere in sight. Klaitos climbed atop a dilapidated tenement, and conjured a narrow twister in the dark sky to signal their location to his missing friend. The engineers searched the factories nearby for supplies, with Torrix serving as a bodyguard of questionable dedication.

Ekkels passed the block of ruined barricades with a shudder. He spied Klaitos's signal and stature over the rooftops, and was grateful for both the destination and something less terrifying to look upon. As he approached the tenement, Klaitos climbed down and called everyone in to regroup.

They had been unsuccessful at finding the necessary rope or canvas. Moreover, only four of the six engineers emerged from their searching. Klaitos tried to organize a search, but struggled to wrangle Torrix's unhelpfully grim input with the nervousness of the other militia. Ekkels scanned the streets' namesake soot for footprints, and spotted a factory that had recently been entered but not exited.

The remaining group cautiously ventured inside the dirty, pitch-dark building. Klaitos attuned his senses to the stirrings of the still air, but could not detect any movements beyond the six of them. The engineers brought out gas lanterns, which revealed a messy shop floor and damaged, partially-looted machinery. Torrix ran loudly down the aisle but was unsuccesful in flushing out anything to punch.

Klaitos turned to his Lantern Eye for further investigation. He found the room suffused with ambient magic of similar magnitude to the chaos-saturated Knotted Tower. In that ambient glow, a particularly ravaged machine glowed brighter. Klaitos approached it with a borrowed gas lantern, and spied an engineer lying unmoving in the detritus at its base. In that same instant, a clawed hand reached out from the gaps in the broken machinery and slammed the lantern to the floor.

His wind senses tracked a ghoul emerging, contorted, from the apparatus. It leapt at him in the darkness, but he was able to knock it back with a solid strike. Torrix charged it an aisle away and pummeled it with a roar, but was forced to disengage when another ghoul ambushed him from the shadows.

A third raced past Ekkels and pulled an engineer from the group out of sight, his lantern falling to the floor behind his startled cry. The remaining engineers ran for the exit, leaving the factory darkened save the smoldering fuel of the two fallen lamps. Ekkels wanted to make more light, so he found a barrel of sawdust and knocked it into the small flames. The sawdust burned in a great plume of fire and searing ash.

Torrix laughed and praised Ekkels for "fighting to win" by burning down the building. He then raced away from the ghoul stalking him to the follow the engineers to safety. Klaitos pulled the missing, unmoving engineer from the ground and charged after him, knocking workstations and chairs aside to clear a path for Ekkels.

Ekkels found himself unable to keep up with the more athletic members of the group, and fell behind in their escape. He encountered a ghoul feeding on the engineer that had been stolen into shadows moments ago, both spotting the other in the same instant. The undead leapt at him, but he escaped with shallow scratches by bouncing his malleable form out of the way.

He emerged from the factory as the fire spread to drown out the shadows. The group stood and caught their breath in the dusk outside, watching the building burn to make sure none of the creatures followed them.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-08-08

2023-08-11T00:51:40Z

Abe: Created page with "The group parted ways at the base of the Golarth wall. Ignis and Klaitos made their south way to the center of the city, wanting an audience with whomever was still stationed..."

The group parted ways at the base of the Golarth wall. Ignis and Klaitos made their south way to the center of the city, wanting an audience with whomever was still stationed at the Militia Headquarters. Robin and Ekkels, meanwhile, headed east to see if they could accomplish anything by breaking into the northern Valve Station. Robin paused to muddy the Sirroon Shield to hide its quality.

Ignis and Klaitos sprinted down the main road, drawing curious eyes from hunkering civilians and stray deserter militia, but no obvious pursuit. After several minutes of trying to sprint behind Klaitos's long-legged stride, Ignis found himself winded when they arrived.

Guards around the fortress-like building demanded to know their business, and Klaitos pled that they were there to help on behalf of the Windwatcher's Keep. They recognized the pair, and told them to drop their weapons as a soldier went inside to alert highers-up. Ignis kept a foot on his to make sure he could kick it back up in a hurry.

Ekkels and Robin made their way through the back alleys of north Golarth. Robin made easy progress through the maze of crowded, haphazard streets. Ekkels, following after her, spotted a group of people cowering in a building with the window smashed in. Robin shone her lantern on them, revealing a family crouching over a badly-wounded young man. The man's mother told them that he had been speared by something like a ballista, defending their barricaded neighborhood from raiders, and they had fled here as a result.

Robin inspected the injury but determined it beyond her meager skills. Ekkels climbed to the roof and drew out a crude chaos-magic ritual to amplify his powers. He squinted towards where Klaitos had headed, and spotted his largest friend in the plaza across town next to Ignis. He subjected the latter to his Sptial Exchange magic, and the two suddenly appeared in each other's place.

Ekkels surprised the militia with his sudden appearance atop Ignis's sword. He was able to reassure them by parroting Robin's assurances of aid and nonviolence from when they had encountered the family. Klaitos was deeply confused by the change in roster and only further disturbed by the voice of his other teammate coming from Ekkels' mouth, but the guards kept their weapons down.

Ignis climbed down from Ekkel's ritual on the roof, confused and accidentally disarmed, and healed the man as Robin filled him in. The two of them asked after the raided encampment. They learned that it had been raided by some group from the south, not wearing Torch uniforms, separate from the mutineers to the west. and got directions to see if there was anyone left to rescue. They told the family to make their way to the warehouses and mutineers, and Ignis sent a magic whisper to Torrix to make sure their safe passage was guaranteed.

The two found the encampment a little south of the Valve Station. The area looked as much a warzone as the injured man's torso - the walls and many of the buildings were in ruins, all of which were littered with unmoving bodies. Robin scanned the scene, hoping to understand more of the faction to the south. She found holes and embedded metal bolts that fit what the mother had said about a ballista, but also signs of destructive lightning strikes all over.

Ignis moved from corpse to corpse, looking for signs of life that he could rescue. Wrist after wrist showed no heartbeat, but he felt one move slightly under his arm. He was partway to healing them when it suddenly bolted forward and siezed his arms with a cold grip. Ignis forcefully pushed himself free of the zombie, and sent its head sailing with a vicious kick. Robin realized that more of the bodies were beginning to twitch. They considered burning the battlefield, but decided it would take too long to spread the fire when the city was full of bodies already.

Klaitos and Ekkels were let into the headquarters to find themselves facing down two large squadrons of guards from either side. A giant Torch captain, wielding a sword to rival Krotokos's maul, stared them down. Klaitos explained the situation and made their case: they wanted to secure Golarth airspace for evacuation and supply chain by taking down the mummified dragons. He asked for help only in outfitting the ships of the Hangar for combat, recognizing how little the Torch could afford to truly join forces with them.

The Torch captain, Caergon, told Klaitos and Ekkels that no true alliance based on trust could be forged with enemy terrorists. He refused to tell them if there had been contact with or aid forthcoming from the rest of the Torch. He conceded that if they were willing to cooperate under that level of distrust, he could grant them some assistance - not the least because he didn't want to bet the few squadrons of loyal soldiers he had left on winning a fight with them.

He confessed that deserters had already taken their airships, and he refused to spare so many soldiers that the headquarters would be vulnerable. He instead ordered a handful of militia field engineers to join them to arm their ships. The extended group headed northeast back towards the Warehouse District.

Robin and Ignis arrived at the Valve Station and found it already broken into. A control panel of complex instrumentation had been defaced and abused, but its craft was too sturdy to loot. A periscope-like aperture on the wall had been reduced to a vista of broken lens. On the floor the control panel sat four small boxes, three of which had been clumsily broken into. Two seemed empty, the third held broken glass and a small yet disconcertingly deep hole. The fourth, Robin opened with care, revealing an apple-sized aether core connected to the machinery of the room.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-08-03

2023-08-05T05:05:20Z

Abe: Created page with "With the soldiers routed and their leaders taken down, the party recollected their equipment. Wondering at the point of the Torch's overwrought, unprompted, and futile betraya..."

With the soldiers routed and their leaders taken down, the party recollected their equipment. Wondering at the point of the Torch's overwrought, unprompted, and futile betrayal, they decided to interrogate Captain Avraza. The elf was lightly treated with Ignis's healing liquer and awakened. He came to his senses disarmed, alone, and within the clutches of Klaitos.

Ignis demanded straight answers upon pain of death, and threatened to confirm those answers with the next officer. Avraza conceded to the credible threats of the party and admitted he'd probably be treating them the same in the same circumstances.

He told the party that he and the lieutenants were not the legitimate Torch militia, but a faction of mutineers that had siezed territorial control of the warehouses and hangar in order to hoard supplies for the siege. He confessed to little knowledge of the state of the city, except the two undead dragons downing most airships that dared fly. He guessed that a good number of citizens had probably died in the collapse of social order, but there hadn't been any reports of undead within the city walls.

The party decided that they had gotten sufficient answers out of Avraza and found him personally repellent, so Klaitos reiterated smashing the elf unconscious against the wall. Ignis then awoke Lieutenant Torrix, purging the poisons from the dwarf's bloodstream with liberal healing ale. He was grouchy to have lost such an unsporting brawl, but seemed to take the turned tables in relative stride.

He affirmed Avraza's claims about the city, including the general disinterest in the welfare of its citizens. The party asked if he'd want to help them out, but he was wary of trusting the lead of dirty fighters like them. They explained were on a mission that'd involve lots of fights and a better chance of getting out alive than following Avraza into the wall. Weighing his various self-interests, he decided they had a point.

Torrix noted that the halls were empty of guards because those guards were likely pillaging the warehouse stockpiles. The party raced out the warehouse plaza and saw, as the Lieutenant had described, soldiers and ragged citizens running in all directions to secure whatever supplies they could carry. Robin's Bracelet of Greed tug weakly at the vanishing stockpile.

Ignis assumed a commander's demeanor, as he was taught to in his military education, and shouted the riot to a halt. He told them that the mutiny was over, and to return to their positions for further orders. The already-routed soldiers complied with the orders of the people who had just defeated their bosses. A small group attempted to slip away while Ignis's reprimanding attention was elsewhere. They were carrying something distinctly valuable to Robin's sensory magic.

They were cornered before they could escape into the shadowy, overcast streets of Golarth by Robin, disguised as a Torch officer. She reiterated that the mutiny was over, and demanded they drop their plunderings and return to duty. They returned the food they had stolen, and a large high-quality shield with the crest of Lord Arva's House Siroon.

The party was able to restore the order that the mutineers had achieved, albeit with significantly less of the original stockpiles and with significantly more desertions. The party considered the dragons to be the biggest obstacle in any sort of rescue, and decided to go check if they could fight them with the great ballistae mounted to the top of the Golarth walls. They left Torrix in charge of the warehouse guard, promising him they'd return when they had somewhere violent to go.

The party climbed twenty flights of stairs to the top of the wall. The overcast sky hung low and quiet above them, smothered by the Umbra of the Gray Steps. Ekkels stared out over the city. The view was bleak - a battlefield of crashed ships and damaged structures, makeshift barriers, and active fires. His gaze travelled east, and he spied a figure or group running between the ash-spattered factories of Sootcorner.

Klaitos set about studying the ballista, but its elaborate and heavy-duty construction was beyond his tinkerer's reckoning. He wasn't sure how well it'd necessarily serve at range, and noticed only a dozen or so bolts left to reload - other had been wasted, pinning still-twitching undead to the ground below. He and Ignis wanted to figure out a means by which to set the drier, older dragon corpses aflame using the ballista. Setting the bolts aflame might work, but might damage both bolt and ballista, depending on their ability to reason their way through ballistic physics.

Robin, ignored the sky and the city in favor of a far more important goal - a way down that didn't involve stairs. She found an elevator shaft, its carraige devoid of the requisite operator on the ground below. She broke into the gate and rappelled down the pulley, then courteously reactivated the elevator to return and collect the party.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-07-25

2023-07-27T03:08:58Z

Abe:

Robin, confronted in her guard disguise by the bestial lieutenant Fraigg, claimed that the officer had it wrong - she was just another guard! While the crowd was distracted, she withdrew one of the sleeping potions from her pack and tracked the transformed goblin through the crowd of Torch soldiers. When the lieutenant leapt for another strike, Robin threw the uncorked vial down her throat. Choking and sputtering blood and glass, Fraigg growled that she had been poisoned, and the guards began to close in on Robin.

Ignis, meanwhile, sparred with Lieutenant Torrix. The dwarf bellowed a challenge at him and bore down Ignis with a series of dramatic punches. Ignis dodged the attack, but having expended his flare, he had little in the way of melee options available to him, and so jabbed at the dwarf's leg with a vicious kick. As Torrix roared at him to fight him fairly, Ignis stared down the guards in the audience, cowing them with threats of similar violence. The front lines, already intimidated, began to flee from the fire mage standing up to Torrix unarmed.

Klaitos chased down Captain Avraza, but the elf was able to loose his arrow before Klaitos's fists could reach him. The arrowhead only grazed Klaitos, but the serpent of living flame ignited his pack and began to uncoil across his body. Ekkels, still channelling the giant's storm magic, attempted a gust of wind to blast the elemental snake away, but failed to achieve more than making it sputter and flicker. Klaitos, aware of the heat but not yet of the fiery curse, caught up to Avraza and landed a blow on him.

As the snake began to tighten and burn his body, Klaitos called out a warning to Ekkels and dropped to the ground to roll it off. He was unable to fully detach it, and squashed Ekkels in his attempts. He grit his teeth as the fire burned his arms, twisting his neck to avoid the serpent's fangs in his face.

Robin, unarmed and surrounded, had to stall for time before her potion would lay low Lieutenant Fraigg, and was privately curious to see the effects of her amateur alchemy on such a creature. She tried to subtly weave an illusion of the goblin, pre-transformation, emerging from the crowd and denouncing the slavering beast as an impostor. This distraction was sufficient for her to slip amidst the guards again.

Annoyed that they had taken one of her favorite items, she swiped a guard's crossbow as she slipped away. In the crowd, she felt Fraigg tackle into her from behind - the goblin hadn't been fooled or distracted, even if she was starting to wobble on her four legs.

Ignis continued to evade the dwarven boxer's attack. He struck with another blow to the dwarf's leg, manuevering to take advantage of his limited vision. The dwarf staggered with pain as the cheap shots inflicted him with muscle cramps.

Klaitos pushed his way back through the guard to try and rejoin Ignis, whose pyromancy, he reasoned, might be able to help with his arms on fire. As he ran, he ignored the pain to channel his storm magic, summoning some humidity to dampen the flame's power. This was insufficient, however, to totally douse the snake, and its burning coil continued to singe his flesh.

Ekkels leapt at Avraza and grapped ahold of him, his elastic body elongating to wrap around his torso. The elf's collected demeanor broke in confusion and alarm as Ekkels seized control of his magic and promptly deactivated the fire serpent attacking Klaitos. Avraza struggled to remove the chaos mage from his torso, and ended up requiring the aid of his underlings to haul the wriggling Ekkels off.

Robin decided that the goblin situation would resolve itself, and simply vanished into the crowd. Ignoring her pursuer's increasingly slurred curses and threats, she manuevered to the edge of the clearing where Ignis and Torrix were brawling. From the sidelines of nervous Torch soldiers, she coated a crossbow bolt with the Venom Drinker's poison and fired it at Torrix. He roared in outrage at the cheap attack, but began to show signs of severe and painful poisoning almost immediately.

Torrix channeled his rage into a final attack on Ignis, but barely bruised the man before a retaliatory uppercut took him out. His foe dispatched, Ignis raced over to help Klaitos and Ekkels fight Avraza.

No longer aflame, Klaitos shoved his way back through the soldiers between him and the captive Ekkels. In his haste to rescue his friend, he found himself facing down the captain with an arrow nocked and a maniacal look in his eye. Klaitos took the arrow-shot on the side of his dense skull and kept running, ignoring the blood streaming into his face.

He pulled Ekkels free of the soldiers that had hauled him off of Avraza. Ekkels immediately leapt again at the elf. Avraza, now wary, sidestepped to allow the chaos mage to fall flat on the ground. He notched another arrow, began casting a new spell, and backed into the crowd of soldiers. Robin tried to shoot him with a poisoned bolt before he was out of her line of sight, but at such distance he was able to evade the shot.

Lieutenant Fraigg emerged into the clearing where Torrix had fallen, obviously heavily affected by the sleeping potion. Her transformation fading, she spun around, scanning the room for Robin. The illusionists' diguise, amidst a crowd of guards, was sufficient to elude the goblin one last time, and she collapsed in what appeared to be a very angry slumber.

Ignis shoved his way through the crowd in an attempt to punch the captain, but his target proved too evasive and responded by grazing Ignis with another flame-snake arrow. Ignis collapsed to the ground and rolled around, smearing the flames on the ground, where they began to slowly reconstitute into the elemental serpent.

Klaitos fought through Avraza's soldiers and bodily seized the arrogant elf. He lifted him off the ground and began spinning, building up momentum and trying to slam him into the other guards. Unfortunately, Avraza was able to twist and kick the others out of his way, leaving him unharmed by the maneuver. Ignis kicked at the spinning Avraza, dirtying his face.

Ekkels tried to solicit bets for the battle between Klaitos and Captain Avraza. He presented a guard with the current odds, but his depiction - a hasty sketch of Klaitos stomping on an elf - was misconstrued as some inscrutable prophecy, and his would-be gambler was scared off.

Klaitos whirled closer and closer to the wall as Avraza attempted to draw his bow at his captor. The former was faster, and the elf was slammed with force sufficient to take him out of the fight, his bow clattering to the ground. Ignis, with a final threat to the remaining guard, routed the assembled mob and finished the battle.

Ignis set about tying Captain Avraza and Lieutenant Fraigg - the extremely poisoned and half-blind Lieutenant Torrix seemed to pose little threat. Ekkels retraced their steps searching for the equipment that had been liberated from them. Klaitos and Robin followed, the latter using her Bracelet of Greed to sense any potential valuables in the building. She wasn't able to find much in the hangar or the hallways beyond, but sensed some kind of value stored somewhere in Golarth nearby.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-07-25

2023-07-27T03:05:30Z

Abe: Created page with "Robin, confronted in her guard disguise by the bestial lieutenant Fraigg, claimed that the officer had it wrong - she was just another guard! While the crowd was distracted, s..."

Robin, confronted in her guard disguise by the bestial lieutenant Fraigg, claimed that the officer had it wrong - she was just another guard! While the crowd was distracted, she withdrew one of the sleeping potions from her pack and tracked the transformed goblin through the crowd of Torch soldiers. When the lieutenant leapt for another strike, Robin threw the uncorked vial down her throat. Choking and sputtering blood and glass, Fraigg growled that she had been poisoned, and the guards began to close in on Robin.

Ignis, meanwhile, sparred with Lieutenant Torrix. The dwarf bellowed a challenge at him and bore down Ignis with a series of dramatic punches. Ignis dodged the attack, but having expended his flare, he had little in the way of melee options available to him, and so jabbed at the dwarf's leg with a vicious kick. As Torrix roared at him to fight him fairly, Ignis stared down the guards in the audience, cowing them with threats of similar violence. The front lines, already intimidated, began to flee from the fire mage standing up to Torrix unarmed.

Klaitos chased down Captain Avraza, but the elf was able to loose his arrow before Klaitos's fists could reach him. The arrowhead only grazed Klaitos, but the serpent of living flame ignited his pack and began to uncoil across his body. Ekkels, still channelling the giant's storm magic, attempted a gust of wind to blast the elemental snake away, but failed to achieve more than making it sputter and flicker. Klaitos, aware of the heat but not yet of the fiery curse, caught up to Avraza and landed a blow on him.

As the snake began to tighten and burn his body, Klaitos called out a warning to Ekkels and dropped to the ground to roll it off. He was unable to fully detach it, and squashed Ekkels in his attempts. He grit his teeth as the fire burned his arms, twisting his neck to avoid the serpent's fangs in his face.

Robin, unarmed and surrounded, had to stall for time before her potion would lay low Lieutenant Fraigg. She tried to subtly weave an illusion of the goblin, pre-transformation, emerging from the crowd and denouncing the slavering beast as an impostor. This distraction was sufficient for her to slip amidst the guards again.

Annoyed that they had taken one of her favorite items, she swiped a guard's crossbow as she slipped away. In the crowd, she felt Fraigg tackle into her from behind - the goblin hadn't been fooled or distracted, even if she was starting to wobble on her four legs.

Ignis continued to evade the dwarven boxer's attack. He struck with another blow to the dwarf's leg, manuevering to take advantage of his limited vision. The dwarf staggered with pain as the cheap shots inflicted him with muscle cramps.

Klaitos pushed his way back through the guard to try and rejoin Ignis, whose pyromancy, he reasoned, might be able to help with his arms on fire. As he ran, he ignored the pain to channel his storm magic, summoning some humidity to dampen the flame's power. This was insufficient, however, to totally douse the snake, and its burning coil continued to singe his flesh.

Ekkels leapt at Avraza and grapped ahold of him, his elastic body elongating to wrap around his torso. The elf's collected demeanor broke in confusion and alarm as Ekkels seized control of his magic and promptly deactivated the fire serpent attacking Klaitos. Avraza struggled to remove the chaos mage from his torso, and ended up requiring the aid of his underlings to haul the wriggling Ekkels off.

Robin decided that the goblin situation would resolve itself, and simply vanished into the crowd. Ignoring her pursuer's increasingly slurred curses and threats, she manuevered to the edge of the clearing where Ignis and Torrix were brawling. From the sidelines of nervous Torch soldiers, she coated a crossbow bolt with the Venom Drinker's poison and fired it at Torrix. He roared in outrage at the cheap attack, but began to show signs of severe and painful poisoning almost immediately.

Torrix channeled his rage into a final attack on Ignis, but barely bruised the man before a retaliatory uppercut took him out. His foe dispatched, Ignis raced over to help Klaitos and Ekkels fight Avraza.

No longer aflame, Klaitos shoved his way back through the soldiers between him and the captive Ekkels. In his haste to rescue his friend, he found himself facing down the captain with an arrow nocked and a maniacal look in his eye. Klaitos took the arrow-shot on the side of his dense skull and kept running, ignoring the blood streaming into his face.

He pulled Ekkels free of the soldiers that had hauled him off of Avraza. Ekkels immediately leapt again at the elf. Avraza, now wary, sidestepped to allow the chaos mage to fall flat on the ground. He notched another arrow, began casting a new spell, and backed into the crowd of soldiers. Robin tried to shoot him with a poisoned bolt before he was out of her line of sight, but at such distance he was able to evade the shot.

Lieutenant Fraigg emerged into the clearing where Torrix had fallen, obviously heavily affected by the sleeping potion. Her transformation fading, she spun around, scanning the room for Robin. The illusionists' diguise, amidst a crowd of guards, was sufficient to elude the goblin one last time, and she collapsed in what appeared to be a very angry slumber.

Ignis shoved his way through the crowd in an attempt to punch the captain, but his target proved too evasive and responded by grazing Ignis with another flame-snake arrow. Ignis collapsed to the ground and rolled around, smearing the flames on the ground, where they began to slowly reconstitute into the elemental serpent.

Klaitos fought through Avraza's soldiers and bodily seized the arrogant elf. He lifted him off the ground and began spinning, building up momentum and trying to slam him into the other guards. Unfortunately, Avraza was able to twist and kick the others out of his way, leaving him unharmed by the maneuver. Ignis kicked at the spinning Avraza, dirtying his face.

Ekkels tried to solicit bets for the battle between Klaitos and Captain Avraza. He presented a guard with the current odds, but his depiction - a hasty sketch of Klaitos stomping on an elf - was misconstrued as some inscrutable prophecy, and his would-be gambler was scared off.

Klaitos whirled closer and closer to the wall as Avraza attempted to draw his bow at his captor. The former was faster, and the elf was slammed with force sufficient to take him out of the fight, his bow clattering to the ground. Ignis, with a final threat to the remaining guard, routed the assembled mob and finished the battle.

Ignis set about tying Captain Avraza and Lieutenant Fraigg - the extremely poisoned and half-blind Lieutenant Torrix seemed to pose little threat. Ekkels retraced their steps searching for the equipment that had been liberated from them. Klaitos and Robin followed, the latter using her Bracelet of Greed to sense any potential valuables in the building. She wasn't able to find much in the hangar or the hallways beyond, but sensed some kind of value stored somewhere in Golarth nearby.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-07-14

2023-07-16T18:28:48Z

Abe: Created page with "The party caught their breath in the abandoned hangar as the undead horde howled outside, unmuffled by the Klaitos-damaged metal barrier. A few ships lay unused in the gloom,..."

The party caught their breath in the abandoned hangar as the undead horde howled outside, unmuffled by the Klaitos-damaged metal barrier. A few ships lay unused in the gloom, but much of the platform was empty.

Over the din of the creatures outside, the sounds of footsteps and voices echoed across the room. The party decided to greet whomever it was diplomatically, and strode forward to meet them in the gloom. They encountered a sizable group of Torch militia, led by an unkempt goblin in a Torch lieutenant's uniform. The crowd was nervous, and alarmed to find the barrier damaged, but she interrogated the party unintimidated.

She demanded to know why they had broken through the siege, and how, and whom they were working with. Klaitos answered honestly - to help rescue the civilians of Golarth, recklessly on foot, and the Windwatcher's Keep. With this last answer, the soldiers recognized them as the wanted Keep terrorists - Robin heard mention of their bounty. The goblin found their explanation implausible, but Ignis was able to smooth over their concerns and maintain peaceful parlay.

The goblin lieutenant ordered them to leave their weapons on the ground - the Invernus blade, Krotokos's maul, and Robin's trusty crossbow - and follow her into the halls beyond the hangar platform. She had a soldier go on ahead to relay news of their arrival.

Soon, the group joined with two other Torch officers - a stout dwarven lieutenant and a tattooed elven captain - as well as an additional squad of guards. The captain took over, leading them through the complex as he and Ignis questioned each other.

The captain wanted to know about the Keep's evacuation plans, and where and how many ships they had gathered to that end. Ignis asked after the city at large, and was told that things were relatively stable as far as food and security for the time being. Ignis, sensing something amiss, warned the elf that they were prepared to fight if they were being manipulated. He brushed it off, and offered to take the party to a war room where the necessary logistical records would be available.

Ekkels noticed some of the guards were acting nervous, idly grasping their weapons when they thought the party wasn't looking. Robin decided that she had no interest in being led unarmed to a second location by the Torch militia and pulled a vanishing act as the group turned a corner, hastily disguising herself as another guard.

Her absence was noted almost immediately, and as the militia drew their weapons, the goblin lieutenant growled that she had known this would turn ugly. The captain called for a peaceful resolution and asked the party if they knew to where their ally had vanished. Ignis replied that she had probably left because she knew something was up, and that he trusted her judgment. He demanded the militia reveal what they were plotting on threat of his infamous proclivity towards violence.

Though the mob of guards were daunted by Ignis's threats, the officers gave up their deception and launched an attack on the unarmed party. The elf fired his bow at Ignis, but the already-wary Ekkels swapped positions with him and the arrow sailed harmlessly overhead. The dwarf raced after Ignis with gauntleted fists and violent joy. Klaitos intercepted him and got uppercut to the jaw for his trouble.

Robin took advantage of the chaos to slip in, still disguised, amongst the nervous guards. She looked around for the party's weapons, but saw only Klaitos's maul being hauled by several hapless soldiers. Her bracelet of greed couldn't sense the heraldic blade in the vicinity, and she surmised it had been stashed somewhere in the facility.

Ekkels teleport-swapped with the dwarf next, causing a haymaker intended for Klaitos to knock out an allied guard instead. He charged back into the fray, laughing at the "cheap trick", but was again intercepted by a charging Klaitos, taking a solid blow in the collision. Ignis summoned a flame of blinding brightness and shoved it into the dwarf's face, disrupting his boisterous melee by searing his eyes.

Robin found herself being pursued by a speedy, erratically-moving quadruped the size of a dog. It called her out as an impostor in an even growlier version of the goblin's voice. Lacking a weapon and surrounded by enemies, she drew a vial of sleeping potion from her pack and tried to get a good angle to throw it down the creature's throat. Unfortunately, the lieutenant leapt at her from her blind spot and scored some shallow cuts on her with scrabbling claws.

Ekkels noticed the elf's tattoos glowing, and a serpent of flame manifesting around his notched arrow. He scrambled up Klaitos's back to try and throw off his aim with borrowed wind magic, but wasn't able to conjure enough of a gale in the crowded hallway. Klaitos noticed Ekkels's attempt and supplemented it with a charging blow, knocking the elf aside before he could fire the enchanted arrow.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-06-27

2023-06-29T03:27:06Z

Abe: Created page with "The party surveyed the corpse-stalked wastelands between the ruins and Golarth. They considered flying over the heads of the shambling masses preferable than trying to fight t..."

The party surveyed the corpse-stalked wastelands between the ruins and Golarth. They considered flying over the heads of the shambling masses preferable than trying to fight their way into the siege, but Heiras was against flying into the city airspace without knowing what had downed the other ships.

The group broke off from the Keep platoon and crept carefully into the wastes, taking a long route to hide from the undead in the craggy barrens farther from the city. They spied aimless undead meandering in the fields and the dusty land around the city, clustering with intent only at the walls and doors. They reached the field of crashed airships by late morning.

Robin and Klaitos crept closer, to study the hangar and the undead respectively, but the giant's attempt at stealth embarrased Robin to skulk beside. She borrowed the Lantern Eye and told him to stay behind. She studied the vast wall of the hangar, and considered the possibility of wrenching open the metal panels that sealed the ship-ports, but failed to discern any obvious weakness at so great a distance.

She then crept toward a lone undead near the downed ships and briefly shone the lantern eye at it. She could see the swirls of magic, hazy all around, with a concentrated brightness around the shambling figure, but wasn't sure what any of it actually meant or if she was using it correctly.

Robin regrouped with the party and they decided to try to lure out whatever force had crashed the airships littering the wastes before them. Robin cast a complex illusion of a Torch merchant ship appearing to fly in from the horizon, headed over the city walls. As it approached, a zombified green dragon emerged from the gray overcast sky and breathed a blindingly-bright flash at the "ship". Robin felt it try to interfere with her spell, and deftly "piloted" the vessel away from the zombie into a crashing descent.

The dragon returned to the clouds as the party considered their options for entering Golarth. Robin proposed sendng the Little Dudes to sdope out the hangar entrance, but Ekkels refused to put them in that kind of danger. Ignis suggested he be used as bait, saving his fire for when he needed to blast his way out, and the rest of the party could approach from another angle. The Ignis-weighted risk was deemed amenable, and so the party sprinted out of hiding in two groups.

Ignis was able to draw the attention of a swiftly-growing horde of shambling undead, their stumbling pace compensated for by their omnidirectional approach. Their howls attracted still more from further afield. A ghoulish undead leapt out from the wreckage of a ship to attack Ignis, but he was able to cut it down without breaking stride. As the mob began to surround him inescapably, he mantled his flame and blasted it forth, clearing his path for a few more paces but incurring the ire of screeching ghosts.

The roundabout path of Klaitos, Robin, and Ekkels covered more ground than Ignis's. While Ekkels and Klaitos were able to keep the pace, Robin found herself winded trying to keep up. Though some straggler undead attempted to attack them, Klaitos was able to smack them aside with ease using his giant maul. A group of skeletal soldiers briefly halted his advance, but he, Robin, and Ekkels made short work of them and rushed to the wall.

Ignis surrounded himself with a ring of fire and watched the mob of undead burn unflinchingly beyond. The smell and sight wrenched his gut, and the chorus of screaming zombies and screeching ghosts overhead assailed his ears. Lacking a real exit strategy, Ignis soaked grease into his cloak and lit it aflame. He then dropped the wall of fire and raced forward, relying on its consuming heat to destroy any wasteland-dried corpses that grabbed him. A lone ghost flew into his path and grazed his face with an unearthly touch, but the flames deterred it from draining his energy further.

The rest of the party reached the base of the hangar wall. Robin climbed to the lowest entrance as Klaitos and Ekkels fought off the undead swarming around them. She lodged a sturdy grappling hook in the top corner of the metal panel and tossed the rope to Klaitos. He found the wall tricky to scale, and so decided instead to pull the rope down. The force destroyed the hook and bent the side of the metal panel wide enough to pass through.

With a running start, and Robin's help, Klaitos made it into the hangar. Ekkels likewise scrambled up the rope. Ignis arrived last, discarding his flesh-singing robe, and barely scrambled up the rope as the rest of the party pulled him away from the horde he had been leading around.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-06-12

2023-06-15T01:07:12Z

Abe: Created page with "Given the night to prepare for the infiltration of besieged Golarth, Ignis, Klaitos, and Robin gathered supplies and information. Ekkels decided instead to go to bed early...."

Given the night to prepare for the infiltration of besieged Golarth, Ignis, Klaitos, and Robin gathered supplies and information. Ekkels decided instead to go to bed early.

Ignis spoke with some Gale Knights about fighting the undead of the Gray Steps, and learned that fire or total destruction were necessary to keep them from putting themselves back together. Moreover, despite popular rumors, the bite of most undead does not itself carry the curse of undeath - dying under the umbral skies of the Gray Steps by any means would lead to one's reanimation.

The Keep library was still reserved for the deciphering of the Corvaine correspondence, and so Klaitos was unable to find out any information about the Gray Steps, the Regalia Eternal, or the undead on his own. Instead, Ignis was able to sneak in with Robin's illusory disguise, and found an old Torch world almanac and an academic text for mages.

The almanac described the Regalia as a cabal of rarely-sighted, immortal sorcerer-kings ruling the undead of the Gray Steps. Though their territory was known to be dangerous to interlopers on land and in the air, scant reports described a barren land of undead armies dotted with distantly-sighted opulent cities and pillars of smoke.

The academic text described undead creatures as a rarity outside of the too-dangerous-to-study Gray Steps. It claimed that any animation of dead flesh would require some sort of ongoing source of power to replace the living soul, without which the corpse would simply collapse like any other.

Robin and Klaitos, satisfied with their research, tried to figure out the Golden Walnut. Robin found a faint seam along its circumference with a thin hinge on one side. She borrowed some of the Keep's tools to dismantle the hinge, but found the Walnut stuck fast regardless.

Klaitos shone the Lantern Eye over it, and discovered a moderate and stable-looking magical aura. This came as a surprise, since it had been originally found in a pool of magebane. He tried to open it carefully with his strength, but found it unyielding, and was unwilling to risk damaging it with a more reckless attempt.

Robin decided to consult a third party, and so presented the inscrutable vessel to Wilga's Wisdoms. After flipping through dozens of pages of walnut-related obscenity, she found a caricature of herself and Klaitos, staring dumbly at the Walnut, as a caricature of Ekkels fit it whole into his mouth.

Ignis went looking for the Tireless Knight, hoping to recruit the construct for the upcoming mission on the basis that he had no flesh to decay or reanimate. He found the Knight on the balcony of the Keep, staring out into the volcanic smoke surrounding the fortress. He tried to strike up a conversation, but found the Tireless Knight's expressionless and mute demeanor an obstacle to any rapport. He requested, and then tried to order the Knight to accompany him, but was ignored.

In the morning, Heiras flew the party to Golarth aboard the Stormjumper. She flew at slower speeds than normal to keep with the mission convoy - a collection of skirmish vessels, and the Tortoise, in case the party was able to liberate enough refugees to fill its hold. The group approached the besieged city flying low to the ground, and landed amidst the war ruins to its southwest. The umbra of the gray steps loomed overhead, leaving midmorning as dark as dusk.

Now that Ekkels was awake, Robin offered him the Golden Walnut and bade him lick it. Ekkels did so, warily, to no effect. The party then combed the ruins for a hidden passage into the city. They found a den of small lizards in the rusted hulk of a war machine.

Lacking easy answers to their problems, Robin borrowed Heiras's spyglass to observe Golarth and the siege. Of Golarth's four vast industrial farms, one remained - the other three smoldered in the wake of wildfires. Likely to preserve water supplies, the farm had been left to dry in the smoke and shade. Here and there, undead roamed the fields, burnt and unburnt. Closer to the wall, they formed lurching mobs, particularly near the heavy gates.

On the ground near the Hangar, and on its rooftop, she noticed a number of destroyed Torch civilian and military ships. Some seemed to have crashed with no sign that they had been hit by anything, others lay coated in pale dust, and a few had been smashed into irreparable pieces as if by a massive hammer.

The party debated their best option for entering the city. Klaitos suggested they fly in, but Heiras warned him that any approach in an empty sky risked being taken down like the ships at the Hangar, or being spotted by whatever remained of the Torch within the city.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-05-08

2023-05-19T03:22:13Z

Abe:

The Tortoise sailed safely into the refreshingly dry skies of the Torch wastelands. With one small detour to drop Vennat off near a smaller city, the journey to return to the Windwatcher's Keep was relatively peaceful and steered far clear of the western battlefront and ocean of black flame. Their remaining food store was used to keep the destructive Morgle from attempting to break, attack, or eat anything else as they flew.

Upon their arrival the party noticed the keep to be livelier than usual. The hangar was filling with the clamor of repairs, the halls were bustling with soldiers, and every workshop seemed full of activity. Klaitos volunteered to handle the debrief, but had to flag down a passing dwarven officer to find an audience. The officer promised to relay news of the successful village relocation and the encounters with the warbeasts and the Venom Drinkers. In exchange, he filled Klaitos in as to the business of the Keep.

Cayrin Corvaine's cipher had been broken, and the documents that Robin had stolen from her desk were being decoded line-by-line, prioritized for work by order of the Gale Queen. More troublingly, the city of Golarth had been attacked by the Gray Steps. The gray sky, under which the dead would rise again and again, had spread overnight to blot out the morning sun. The Torch fleet, according to the Keep's intelligence, was strained and largely absent from the eastern front. Though plans hadn't been finalized, the officer reckoned that the city was to be the arena to which the Keep's forces would next deploy, and the fortress was abuzz with preparations and planning.

Robin went to the closet of alchemical supplies which she had previously plundered to make smokebombs. She waited for an alchemist to help her identify the vials she had taken from the Venom Drinkers. A scatterbrained elven woman soon appeared, whom Robin was able to convince to identify the vials despite her stammered questioning. However, her analysis only revealed them to be a cocktail of mixed toxins and venoms with unknown intent. Before the woman could bother her with any further questions, Robin distracted her and got away.

Ekkels went looking for Millie, his druid friend. However, his diminutive stature and unassertive personality left him at the mercy of the Keep's crowded hallways. He was accidentally kicked around by some large, armored figures, and awoke in the infirmary with a headache being tended to by Millie.

Ignis was left to wrangle the Morgle. Lacking any further food stores with which to entice it to follow, he tried to lure it with his healing libations. The creature slurped the offering off the floor, its acidic saliva leaving noticeable burns. Ignis tried to bait it further, but got tackled to the ground for his troubles. He was finally able to bait the beast to follow him into the Keep. Passers-by gave Ignis and the lumpy, toadlike quadruped a wide berth as he lured it to the Keep's wasteroom.

The Morgle needed little convincing to start devouring the edible garbage in the pile. A nonplussed janitor let Ignis know that he had just been about to dump the mass into the sky and let it fall into the volcano below. As the two watched the creature gorge itself on decreasingly edible garbage, the man requested Ignis watch over it and "volcano" whatever was left when it was done, and left to do his job elsewhere.

Klaitos decided that Ignis and the Morgle he had been tasked with keeping were not to be left to their own devices. He found the ship abandoned, and realized they had gone somewhere in the Keep. He checked the infirmary and found Ekkels and Millie. Millie said that she was wrapping up for the day, and was intrigued by the "unknown species" that Ignis was leading around. Ekkels, still a little worse for wear, assumed his usual seat in Klaitos's pack, safe from the stomping crowds. The three of them left to track down the errant Fireheart and Morgle.

Robin went to the library to find a Lore Keeper able to help her translate the dwarven writing of the inscribed gem, but found a guard posted at the entrance. Inside, she saw the Keepers inside transcribing laboriously and sleeping in shifts. Undeterred, she disguised herself as a Keeper with an illusion and entered. She woke the man she had given the Corvaine documents from a light nap on a library bench. He was grouchy from the additional work they had been given out of the documents she had retrieved, and told her she had to contribute a few hours to the deciphering work if she wanted help. Disinterested in the prospect of work on someone else's behalf, she took a book on dwarven runes and language and bluffed her way back out past the guard.

Ignis watched as the Morgle continued to eat its way through the trash pile. Having apparently finished off all of the food waste, it was slowly chewing through the rest of the garbage - damaged cloth, chunks of stone, scraps of metal - with no indication that it was nearing the limit of its appetite. Klaitos, Ekkels, and Millie were able to track him down - many people had seen the weird creature, and the infamous Ignis leading it through the hall.

Millie reacted with alarm and fear to the misshapen beast and its acidic palette. She questioned the logic of bringing an unknown Venom Drinker attack monster from the Blight to the Keep. Ignis wanted her, or them, to take it off his hands, and expressed that they might need to throw it into the volcano if its appetite proved insatiable. Neither Klaitos nor Ekkels wanted to simply kill the Morgle, but neither of them were keen on keeping it as an omnivorous pet. Ekkels remembered that there was someone aboard the keep with the unenviable job of following and containing Hitchit, the bomb-obsessed kobold. He reminded Millie about their encounter with the kobold and the kobold-keeper, and suggested the man as a potential Morgle-keeper. She agreed and offered to take them to him.

Robin, unable to learn anything useful about the Corvaine documents from their grumpy decipherers, lurked around the keep looking for a lead. She was able to eavesdrop on one soldier filling another in, and surreptitiously followed the pair to learn the secrets that her recovered intelligence had revealed to the Keep.

The soldier claimed that some of the documents were unsigned messages from Corvaine spies, reporting on other ships in the Armada. Other documents, still being deciphered, contained painstaking administartive records detailing weapons, ships, crews, lootings, and exhaustive other minutia. The Gale Queen had prioritized deciphering those documents, despite their density, as they would be more useful the less out-of-date they became.

The most immediately useful message among the documents, however, was one from the Thundercaller himself, giving Cayrin her orders to capture Dawnfont as a distraction for the Torch. They were to take hostages from the villa, draw military attention, and escape to the southern mountains to frustrate pursuit. The ultimate goal, the letter said, was to provide cover for "business up north". On this last clause, the Keep had dispatched scouts to the northern Torch and the mountains beyond, in search of the pirates' movements.

Millie, Klaitos, Ekkels, and Ignis brought the Morgle through the Keep once more. Ignis, losing patience, dribbled his magic liqueur in a trail on the ground and simply ignored the damage that the creature's acidic tongue left in their wake. Robin, having nearly set about doing her own homework, noticed them pass by and joined the group, passing the inscribed crystal, dwarven translation book, and busywork to Klaitos.

They found Hitchit and his handler-soldier, Vott, in a sparring room. Much of the equipment had been shoved to the walls to make room for the kobold's workdesk, which he buzzed around with manic energy. Hitchit seemed barely aware that the group had entered, but Vott tipped his cup of coffee in greeting. He was surprised to learn that the party knew Hitchit, and let them know that the Keep was searching for a more remote place for him to use as an explosive workshop.

Ignis was able to convince him to take on the additional responsibility of the Morgle, assuring him that his tireless attention to the most dangerous of the Keep's assets was an invaluable benefit to their liberatory cause. Vott accepted with the resigned acknowledgement that, whatever the mutant was, it was hardly less scary than falling asleep around an inspired Hitchit.

Klaitos filled the rest of the assembled party in on what the officer had disclosed to him. He endeavored to translate the inscribed crystal, but found it tedious, frustrating, and difficult to follow. Having to manuever the crystal to different angles in the light while cross-referencing the book and squinting at the faint symbols was beyond him, and so he passed the task, unfulfilled, back to Robin.

Later, as the Keep began to settle for the evening, the party was summoned before the Gale Queen. She commended them on their recent success, and appreciated the preservation of the Tortoise despite the perils of their endeavor. Moving on to business, she explained that the sudden siege of Golarth necessitated their redeployment. She confirmed what Klaitos had heard from the dwarven officer about the sudden encroachment of the gray sky, and further explained that Golarth was likely to be abandoned entirely by the Torch. Most of the nobility had escaped, or tried to escape, and so the city was full of civilians and protected primarily by its titanic walls. Such people were not the enemy, however, they might feel about the Torch, and were worth trying to save.

The party, she observed, were skilled at operating in advance or in support of the Keep military. They would be ideal for a forward mission to infiltrate the besieged city. Their goal would be to assess the stakes and possibilities of rescuing the civilians from their undead doom. If possible, they were to figure out why the gray cloud had advanced so quickly, dispel it from the skies above Golarth, and help the citizens in the Keep's name. The Keep's forces would follow them there and be ready to swoop in when called, whether that be to defend the city, repel the undead, or simply protect a convoy of evacuees.

The Gale Queen warned them that this mission was not to be taken lightly - those that fall under the gray cloud rise as servants of the undying sorcerer-kings, and that those servants would be far harder to slay beneath its gloom. She bade them rest the night and prepare for their journey - Heiras had recovered, and would be able to serve as their pilot on the Stormjumper once more.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-05-08

2023-05-11T03:00:06Z

Abe: Created page with "The Tortoise sailed safely into the refreshingly dry skies of the Torch wastelands. With one small detour to drop Vennat off near a smaller city, the journey to return to the..."

The Tortoise sailed safely into the refreshingly dry skies of the Torch wastelands. With one small detour to drop Vennat off near a smaller city, the journey to return to the Windwatcher's Keep was relatively peaceful and steered far clear of the western battlefront and ocean of black flame. Their remaining food store was used to keep the destructive Morgle from attempting to break, attack, or eat anything else as they flew.

Upon their arrival the party noticed the keep to be livelier than usual. The hangar was filling with the clamor of repairs, the halls were bustling with soldiers, and every workshop seemed full of activity. Klaitos volunteered to handle the debrief, but had to flag down a passing dwarven officer to find an audience. The officer promised to relay news of the successful village relocation and the encounters with the warbeasts and the Venom Drinkers. In exchange, he filled Klaitos in as to the business of the Keep.

Cayrin Corvaine's cipher had been broken, and the documents that Robin had stolen from her desk were being decoded line-by-line, prioritized for work by order of the Gale Queen. More troublingly, the city of Golarth had been attacked by the Gray Steps. The gray sky, under which the dead would rise again and again, had spread overnight to blot out the morning sun. The Torch fleet, according to the Keep's intelligence, was strained and largely absent from the eastern front. Though plans hadn't been finalized, the officer reckoned that the city was to be the arena to which the Keep's forces would next deploy, and the fortress was abuzz with preparations and planning.

Robin went to the closet of alchemical supplies which she had previously plundered to make smokebombs. She waited for an alchemist to help her identify the vials she had taken from the Venom Drinkers. A scatterbrained elven woman soon appeared, whom Robin was able to convince to identify the vials despite her stammered questioning. However, her analysis only revealed them to be a cocktail of mixed toxins and venoms with unknown intent. Before the woman could bother her with any further questions, Robin distracted her and got away.

Ekkels went looking for Millie, his druid friend. However, his diminutive stature and unassertive personality left him at the mercy of the Keep's crowded hallways. He was accidentally kicked around by some large, armored figures, and awoke in the infirmary with a headache being tended to by Millie.

Ignis was left to wrangle the Morgle. Lacking any further food stores with which to entice it to follow, he tried to lure it with his healing libations. The creature slurped the offering off the floor, its acidic saliva leaving noticeable burns. Ignis tried to bait it further, but got tackled to the ground for his troubles. He was finally able to bait the beast to follow him into the Keep. Passers-by gave Ignis and the lumpy, toadlike quadruped a wide berth as he lured it to the Keep's wasteroom.

The Morgle needed little convincing to start devouring the edible garbage in the pile. A nonplussed janitor let Ignis know that he had just been about to dump the mass into the sky and let it fall into the volcano below. As the two watched the creature gorge itself on decreasingly edible garbage, the man requested Ignis watch over it and "volcano" whatever was left when it was done, and left to do his job elsewhere.

Klaitos decided that Ignis and the Morgle he had been tasked with keeping were not to be left to their own devices. He found the ship abandoned, and realized they had gone somewhere in the Keep. He checked the infirmary and found Ekkels and Millie. Millie said that she was wrapping up for the day, and was intrigued by the "unknown species" that Ignis was leading around. Ekkels, still a little worse for wear, assumed his usual seat in Klaitos's pack, safe from the stomping crowds. The three of them left to track down the errant Fireheart and Morgle.

Robin went to the library to find a Lore Keeper able to help her translate the dwarven writing of the inscribed gem, but found a guard posted at the entrance. Inside, she saw the Keepers inside transcribing laboriously and sleeping in shifts. Undeterred, she disguised herself as a Keeper with an illusion and entered. She woke the man she had given the Corvaine documents from a light nap on a library bench. He was grouchy from the additional work they had been given out of the documents she had retrieved, and told her she had to contribute a few hours to the deciphering work if she wanted help. Disinterested in the prospect of work on someone else's behalf, she took a book on dwarven runes and language and bluffed her way back out past the guard.

Ignis watched as the Morgle continued to eat its way through the trash pile. Having apparently finished off all of the food waste, it was slowly chewing through the rest of the garbage - damaged cloth, chunks of stone, scraps of metal - with no indication that it was nearing the limit of its appetite. Klaitos, Ekkels, and Millie were able to track him down - many people had seen the weird creature, and the infamous Ignis leading it through the hall.

Millie reacted with alarm and fear to the misshapen beast and its acidic palette. She questioned the logic of bringing an unknown Venom Drinker attack monster from the Blight to the Keep. Ignis wanted her, or them, to take it off his hands, and expressed that they might need to throw it into the volcano if its appetite proved insatiable. Neither Klaitos nor Ekkels wanted to simply kill the Morgle, but neither of them were keen on keeping it as an omnivorous pet. Ekkels remembered that there was someone aboard the keep with the unenviable job of following and containing Hitchit, the bomb-obsessed kobold. He reminded Millie about their encounter with the kobold and the kobold-keeper, and suggested the man as a potential Morgle-keeper. She agreed and offered to take them to him.

Robin, unable to learn anything useful about the Corvaine documents from their grumpy decipherers, lurked around the keep looking for a lead. She was able to eavesdrop on one soldier filling another in, and surreptitiously followed the pair to learn the secrets that her recovered intelligence had revealed to the Keep.

The soldier claimed that some of the documents were unsigned messages from Corvaine spies, reporting on other ships in the Armada. Other documents, still being deciphered, contained painstaking administartive records detailing weapons, ships, crews, lootings, and exhaustive other minutia. The Gale Queen had prioritized deciphering those documents, despite their density, as they would be more useful the less out-of-date they became.

The most immediately useful message among the documents, however, was one from the Thundercaller himself, giving Cayrin her orders to capture Dawnfont as a distraction for the Torch. They were to take hostages from the villa, draw military attention, and escape to the southern mountains to frustrate pursuit. The ultimate goal, the letter said, was to provide cover for "business up north". On this last clause, the Keep had dispatched scouts to the northern Torch and the mountains beyond, in search of the pirates' movements.

Millie, Klaitos, Ekkels, and Ignis brought the Morgle through the Keep once more. Ignis, losing patience, dribbled his magic liqueur in a trail on the ground and simply ignored the damage that the creature's acidic tongue left in their wake. Robin, having nearly set about doing her own homework, noticed them pass by and joined the group, passing the inscribed crystal, dwarven translation book, and busywork to Klaitos.

They found Hitchit and his handler-soldier, Vott, in a sparring room. Much of the equipment had been shoved to the walls to make room for the kobold's workdesk, which he buzzed around with manic energy. Hitchit seemed barely aware that the group had entered, but Vott tipped his cup of coffee in greeting. He was surprised to learn that the party knew Hitchit, and let them know that the Keep was searching for a more remote place for him to use as an explosive workshop.

Ignis was able to convince him to take on the additional responsibility of the Morgle, assuring him that his tireless attention to the most dangerous of the Keep's assets was an invaluable benefit to their liberatory cause. Vott accepted with the resigned acknowledgement that, whatever the mutant was, it was hardly less scary than falling asleep around an inspired Hitchit.

Klaitos filled the rest of the assembled party in on what the officer had disclosed to him. He endeavored to translate the inscribed crystal, but found it tedious, frustrating, and difficult to follow. Having to manuever the crystal to different angles in the light while cross-referencing the book and squinting at the faint symbols was beyond him, and so he passed the task, unfulfilled, back to Robin.

Later, as the Keep began to settle for the evening, the party was summoned before the Gale Queen. She commended them on their recent success, and appreciated the preservation of the Tortoise despite the perils of their endeavor. Moving on to business, she explained that the sudden siege of Golarth necessitated their redeployment. She confirmed what Klaitos had heard from the dwarven officer about the sudden encroachment of the gray sky, and further explained that Golarth was likely to be abandoned entirely by the Torch. Most of the nobility had escaped, or tried to escape, and so the city was full of civilians and protected primarily by its titanic walls. Such people were not the enemy, however, they might feel about the Torch, and were worth trying to save.

The party, she observed, were skilled at operating in advance or in support of the Keep military. They would be ideal for a forward mission to infiltrate the besieged city. Their goal would be to assess the stakes and possibilities of rescuing the civilians from their undead doom. If possible, they were to figure out why the gray cloud had advanced so quickly, dispel it from the skies above Golarth, and help the citizen's in the Keep's name. The Keep's forces would follow them there and be ready to swoop in when called, whether that be to defend the city, repel the undead, or simply protect a convoy of evacuees.

The Gale Queen warned them that this mission was not to be taken lightly - those that fall under the gray cloud rise as servants of the undying sorcerer-kings, and that those servants would be far harder to slay beneath its gloom. She bade them rest the night and prepare for their journey - Heiras had recovered, and would be able to serve as their pilot on the Stormjumper once more.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-05-01

2023-05-05T03:05:51Z

Abe: Created page with "Though the Venom Drinker had been cut down, the tree-mold which he had used to encase Robin remained. Ignis attempted to undo the spell as he had undone the caster, with a sin..."

Though the Venom Drinker had been cut down, the tree-mold which he had used to encase Robin remained. Ignis attempted to undo the spell as he had undone the caster, with a single, unforewarned swordblow. Robin was cut free, unharmed, but Ignis's misuse of the Invernus heraldic blade had caused its edge to dull.

Klaitos, Ekkels, and one of the remaining Venom drinkers climbed atop the fallen canopic mushroom. The cultist was unable to hit Klaitos with his poisonous spit, but provided enough covering fire to keep the storm giant away from getting past him and interrupting the remainder of the other Venom Drinker's ritual. Klaitos opted instead to hurl Ekkels into the fray.

Though Ekkels missed the other caster, he landed safely nearby. The man's hands were entangled in the writhing, sinewy fungal mass, allowing Ekkels to kick him squarely in the leg from behind. The spell was interrupted again, but the caster retailiated with a gob of venom, leaving Ekkels weakened.

Robin, shaking off the orange dust of the fungal trap, drew her crossbow and scored a grazing hit on the Venom Drinker confronting Klaitos. Realizing that they were badly outnumbered, he crouched low and began casting another spell. The grove of glowing mushrooms began to quiver in anticipation of another flare-burst. Ignis sprinted across it, hoping to close the distance and join the melee before he was blinded.

Klaitos, disinterested in getting covered in another layer of glowing spores, rushed the other Venom Drinker and tackled him out of the way, then dropped to the group beside the injured Ekkels. Robin finished the man off with a crossbow bolt to the chest, stilling the spell-animated mushrooms. Ekkels, though weakened by poison, tapped into the storm magic of the adjacent Klaitos. Channeling lightning through his hands, he electrocuted the last Venom Drinker, frying some of the canopic mushroom where it still encased his hands.

With the battle over, the party caught their breath and looked around. Lacking any other obvious exit, Klaitos bade Ignis burn a hole through the mushroom he had dropped on the doorway. He, Robin, and Ekkels studied the EK+ELS tree, but didn't notice anything obviously magical or special about it. The letters seemed amateurishly carved, and the ground beneath them scarred gray and barren, but nothing explained it or why Ekkels had been drawn here.

Robin, losing interest, followed her Bracelet of Greed to the pool of magebane, slightly receded in the sunlight. She found some suitable wood and lit a shoddy torch off of Ignis's stray flame. In the translucent depths of the lethal pond, she spied something gleaming, lying against the roots of the canopic mushroom shading the slime from the rest of the sun's light.

Elsewhere, Ekkels was approached by the errant Morgle, but it was more interested in the electricity-fried mushroom than anything else. He didn't sense any real hostility or interest in anything beyond food, and studied it a bit, but was unable to recollect anything that might help identify what kind of creature it actually was.

Ignis reached the collapsed stone wall behind the mushroom, smeared some glowing mushrooms against the walls of the tunnel he had burned, and called Klaitos over to finish the job. Klaitos reinforced the tunnel with some scavenged wood and tried to carefully move the collapsed rocks out, one chunk at a time. When the passage began to tremble, he used his bulk to simply slam it back into position.

Robin called over Ignis and Ekkels to help her retrieve the shiny object from the deadly pool of magebane. She and Ignis reasoned that a sufficient magic effect, carefully controlled, ought to let them "guide" the magebane up the sides of the towering mushroom at the center of the pond, thus lowering it enough to dredge her prize free. She fashioned a crude hook out of rope, dead wood, and rubble, and Ignis summoned a ring of fire to rise around the trunk of the fungus.

Sure enough, the magebane followed the magic upward. As the pool's depths became shallower, Ekkels spied a number of objects, too decayed to truly identify save for the Petalbearer's sigil, here and there. Robin flung her dredge as the fire-ring neared the top of the mushroom, and pulled the shining object into the sunlight to cleanse it of the remaining magebane. Ignis dismissed his spell, unintentionally causing the magebane to splash down and out from the central stalk. None of them were splattered, but Klaitos rejoined the group to find Robin telling off Ignis for his carelessness.

Robin's prize turned out to be a strange ceramic vessel, styled to resemble a golden walnut. It was slightly larger than a canteen, with something inside gently rattling but no clear hinge or means of getting it open. Nonetheless, her bracelet indicated it to be of value, and so she stowed it away as compensation for her trouble in coming here.

The party prepared to leave the ruined village. Ignis found the Morgle taking a post-meal nap on the last, unconscious Venom Drinker, and opted to coup de grace the cultist with his dulled sword. Since the creature itself didn't seem to exhibit any real hostility or non-food motivations. Ignis tried to bid it follow them out, promising to feed it. With no sign of comprehension or hesitation, the Morgle waddled after the man that had said the word "food" in front of it.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-04-21

2023-04-22T21:29:56Z

Abe: Created page with "Not wanting the EK+ELS tree to burn down, Klaitos reached to the newly-revealed sky and called down rain to douse it. The party heard the voices of angered Venom Drinkers, and..."

Not wanting the EK+ELS tree to burn down, Klaitos reached to the newly-revealed sky and called down rain to douse it. The party heard the voices of angered Venom Drinkers, and saw two approaching from the ruins. The nearby patch of glowing mushrooms started to tremble. Ekkels climbed into Klaitos's pack as Robin and Ignis snuck closer to the masked figures.

The mushroom-patch burst in a bright flash and an eruption of glowing spores. Robin, though closest, was able to blink away the lights in her eyes, but she and Klaitos were left covered in clinging bioluminescent dust. One of the Venom Drinkers rushed to the toadlike creature, absently chewing on the collapsed canopic mushroom. He ordered the "Morgle" to catch and eat them, and it waddled around to face Klaitos, glowing brightly out in the open.

Ignis advanced on the further-away Venom Drinker. Robin, unable to quickly rid herself of the glowing spores, hid herself within the illusion of a giant luminescent mushroom. Ekkels realized that the Morgle was rather stupid but would attack based on the man's order. He climbed atop Klaitos and echoed the Venom Drinker's command, pointing back at him. The Morgle, unable to comprehend two instructions at once, rocketed forward into Ekkels and kicked back off of him to tackle the Venom Drinker. Both were knocked to the ground.

Klaitos, temporarily spared the attention he was due as a big glowing target, found a puddle of swampy muck sufficient to smother most of the sporeglow on his skin and clothes. The Venom Drinker cursed and muttered some new instructions to the Morgle, too quiet to be heard and parroted. Forgetting its earlier commands, it leapt atop the fallen canopic mushroom, stared at Ekkels, and retched a glob of acid at him, burning his shoulder. The other Venom Drinker saw Ignis behind cover but missed him with his poisonous spit.

Robin changed her disguise to that of a (glowing) Venom Drinker and ordered the Morgle to attack the spitting Venom Drinker. Again forgetting its earlier instructions, it waddled to face the man at the edge of the pond of Magebane. Ekkels, with the creature's attention removed and Klaitos's backpack too disgusting to climb into, hid beneath the toppled mushroom's roots. Klaitos figured that there wasn't a good reason to stay and fight, but his efforts to tear through the mushroom blocking the exit were in vain.

Ignis closed in on the Venom Drinker that had attacked him and dealt him a burning blow. The man tried to retaliate with a projectile of bottled Magebane, but Ignis dodged and the sunlight-weakened blob didn't touch him. Having heard Robin shouting orders from behind a rotted tree, the other Venom Drinker retaliated with his magic. He touched the tree she hid behind and made a shelf of orange fungus explode forth from it, encasing Robin nearly to her face and hands. The Morgle, however, acted on its last instruction and leapt across the battlefield, violently colliding with Ignis's opponent and knocking him partway into the Magebane pond. The man screamed as the creature and the slime began eating him from opposite ends before losing consciousness.

Ekkels heard voices from the other side of the mushroom and chanced a look - he found two more Venom Drinkers touching the side of the uprooted mushroom and chanting. He rushed over to Klaitos to warn him, and the two of them conjured a gale to disrupt whatever they were casting. The indiscriminate wind was unable to harm or move the Venom Drinkers, and they could hear one tell the other to stop them from interfering.

Robin, immobilized by the tree-fungus, called out to Ignis. With his first opponent out of the fight, he raced over to slay the one that had encased her. The man, still hobbling from the Morgle's earlier strike, was unable to defend himself or counterattack, and was struck cleanly by Ignis's blade. He fell to the ground, trying and failing to muster a final spiteful poisonous spit. Unfortunately for Robin, the fungus was not dismissed with his death.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-04-04

2023-04-05T03:44:12Z

Abe: Created page with " Ekkels contemplated his name being carved on the tree, hidden within this secret place in the Blight. He recalled seeing it before, in this space, when it was much brighter a..."

Ekkels contemplated his name being carved on the tree, hidden within this secret place in the Blight. He recalled seeing it before, in this space, when it was much brighter and more verdant. Klaitos noticed that the letters were about at his shoulder level, far shorter than an adult's hard could carve. Robin climbed the dead tree to look for hidden switches and the like that could lead to Ekkels' origin.

Wondering if he might find other clues to his past in the Venom Drinker's lair, Ekkels wandered further, finding a craggy solid wall. Ignis and Klaitos followed him over and decided to explore the lightless marsh using the right-hand rule. Robin snuck over to the patch of biolumiscent fungus to grab a specimen for use as a lantern, unintentionally spreading some of its glowing spores on her hands, before catching up.

The party followed the wall for some distance and around a turn. They passed the ruins of a clay-and-stone building, now overgrowth with fungus, though Ekkels recalled it had once been someone's home. He heard a faint wet sound, and his recollections confused him into thinking he had found a pond ahead. Recent experience, however, had refreshed his memory of the sound of creeping magebane, and he was able to warn the party back away from the danger.

Back at the dead forest with the marked tree, Robin gathered the driest wood she could find from the other trees, hoping to make a few torches. The Little Dudes were able to contribute some twigs to the effort. Meanwhile, Klaitos elected to deal with the magebane by toppling one of the giant canopic mushrooms and letting the sunlight in. He found the nearest such fungus, but was unable to budge it with mere pushing force.

Ignis wandered over to help, but his swordplay nearly saw the Invernus heraldic blade irrecovably embedded in the mushroom stalk, and his pushing force even less helpful than Klaitos's. Ekkels was summoned, in the hopes that his chaos magic could wreak the damage their muscles had failed to do. Misunderstanding, he flexed his meager strength and pushed vainly against the mushroom's base.

Robin had gathered enough material for two torches when she decided to see how the toppling efforts were going. After giving the fungus a shove (just in case), she decided to work smarter. She fashioned an explosive from her alchemical supplies and shoved it in the crevices left by Ignis's hacking at the stalk. Then, she tied the middle of a rope to a bolt and fired it into the stalk as high as she thought she could. She tossed the ropes to the far side of the mushroom, where she, Klaitos, and Ekkels readied themselves to pull it down.

Ignis was left to trigger Robin's explosive. He summoned his fire with difficulty in the humid air, and flung a stream of it at the crevice she had used. His aim was poor, but after igniting a few folds of tattered fungus, he was rewarded with a successful blast. His sloppy pyromancy, however, resulted in a wave of burning mushroom knocking him back against the wall and catching the EK+ELS tree ablaze.

Robin, Ekkels, and Klaitos, unaware of Ignis's condition, yanked the upper stalk with as much force as they could muster. Klaitos's giant strength finally tore down the sinewy pillar, but his reckless might caused it to crash into and block the tunnel through which they had entered.

With the mushroom down, the afternoon sun streamed in, revealing the fates of Ignis and the marked tree. It also seared away the edges of the now-visible pool of magebane. The anger and shock of the Venom Drinkers was audible from somewhere past the dead wood and ruined houses, and the party readied themselves for their attack.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-03-27

2023-03-30T02:29:37Z

Abe: Created page with "Ignis led the party through the dark hallway, his path revealed with Robin's illusory lantern. Hearing a squishing noise behind him, he turned to find a pool of magebane seepi..."

Ignis led the party through the dark hallway, his path revealed with Robin's illusory lantern. Hearing a squishing noise behind him, he turned to find a pool of magebane seeping out of the cracks in the walls. Robin used her lantern to bait the slime away from the magically-infused party and leapt past it, splattering Ignis and forcing him to cut a strip off his clothes. Klaitos and Ekkels saw the pool was growing in the illusion's light and backed away.

Robin dismissed the light before the hallway was any further filled with magebane. Ignis tied his shirt around his sword-tip as a makeshift torch, cutting his fingers in the process. A spark of fire magic ignited it and illuminated the pool nearly upon him. He warded it off with the sword as Robin dug into her inventory for her cards and a vial of fireproof potion. She lit a deck aflame and scattered them into a line on the ground, holding off the magebane for the moment.

Klaitos, carrying Ekkels, climbed across the wall over the deadly ooze, but missed a handhold in the dancing shadows of Ignis's torch and Robin's warding cards. He and Ekkels landed on them, scattering them. Robin pulled a second, cheater's deck of cards from her pack and repeated the maneuver. Ignis recognized the deck with which she had conned him with the other day and reproached her for her dishonorable behavior.

The party wandered further into the tunnel and reached a barrier of taut, woven, thorny vine. Ignis, still irked by Robin's con, refused to help with his sword-torch, so she produced instead a pair of shears. She cut Klaitos an eyehole, through which he could see a dark clearing with scattered patches of glowing mushroom beyond. Faintly, he thought he heard speaking voices and gurgling noises.

The cards started to burn out behind them, and Robin realized that, without Ignis's cooperation, the magebane might soon creep back upon them. Klaitos, unwilling the wait for said cooperation, rammed recklessly through the thorny vines. The party passed into the marshy clearing, but the tearing and lashing of the vine-wall silenced whomever had been speaking. The party stuck to the shadows beyond the glowing mushroom-patch, save for Robin's illusory Ignis send forth as bait.

A noise between a gurgle and a belch announced the arrival of a gray, misshaped creature with toadlike flesh and asymmetrical lemurlike proportions. A voice in the shadows called to "Ignis", asking what brought him to a lair of the Venom Drinkers in this incredibly hard-to-find location. Robin bluffed something about an uncanny subliminal calling to help destroy civilization. The interrogator thought for a moment before deciding that "Ignis" was too likely an unwitting spy to be worth sparing, and bade the froggy creature eat him.

The thing belched and leaped forward with the force of a cannonball. Robin had the illusion fall to the ground and begin melting, but the creature began to eat the "corpse". The Venom Drinker stalked off as the toadlike creature swallowed gulps of illusory-flavored mud, periodically vomiting the inedible slop back up.

Ekkels felt himself overpowered by an indescribable familiarity, and wandered off into the darkness. Klaitos followed, and Ignis guided Robin until she was far enough away to distract herself from her illusion without drawing the creature's attention. It took a few more bites of undisguised mud before realizing its meal was over and wandering off.

Ekkels brought the group into a forest of shadowy, mold-eaten trees and stumps. He stopped before one of the more intact dead trees. Robin and Ignis scanned the area for motion before Robin summoned just enough light to make the tree out. Before the party, at Ekkel's shoulder height, were carved a set of clumsy letters:

EK + ELS

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-03-19

2023-03-24T01:00:09Z

Abe:

The party and Ted realized that the webbing growing between the towering mushrooms would soon surround the Obelisk Hall. Klaitos leapt out into the swamp, powering through the toxic Blight muck with Ekkels in tow. Robin used her crossbow to pin a rope to the nearest unwebbed mushroom so that she, Ignis, and Ted could pull themselves through the mire.

As the group splashed to freedom, they were set upon by swarms of rat-sized insects. Robin conjured an illusion of the smell of pungent rotting food, drawn from her memories of living on the streets of the Torch, to distract a portion of the swarm. Ignis, still channeling his fire magic, blasted many of the rest out of the air.

The group made it past the growing fungal fence. Ignis paused a moment to blast the encroaching swarms. He felt something splatter against his collarbone and immediate began feeling ill. A violet stain of poison had struck him from a masked assailant clinging to the mushroom above. He cleared the poison from his system with a swig of healing liquor and warned his friends of the threat above. Klaitos pulled him bodily away from the spot before the webbing separated him from the group.

Robin struck Ignis's poisoner with a crossbow bolt, but the figure simply climbed higher into the shadowy subcanopy. Ignis spitefully and recklessly decided to knock the mushroom down. He chopped at the stem with his sword as Klaitos pushed it to tear and topple. Ekkels borrowed Ignis's flame to help somehow, but when Robin and Ted were attacked by the remaining insects, he shifted his focus to wiping out the swarm. Though Robin was able to drop below Ekkels's poor aim, Ted's reflex were not as sharp, leaving the orc burnt and dazed.

Klaitos and Ignis's efforts saw the canopic mushroom topple heavily. Daylight streamed through the spore-haze as the great stalk collapsed onto another, and another mushroom. The chain reaction concerned Ted, who warned that greater threats than an assassin and some bugs would investigate a noise like that. Ignis healed his burns as Ekkels searched for the masked figure. A far-off, rumbling bellow drove Ted's point home and spurred the party to urgency.

The assassin was found alive but unconscious. Under the mask, the party found a starkly unwashed but unfamiliar human face, with violet staining around his mouth. Ekkels felt a strange unease around him, distinct from the realization that he could sense chaos magic radiating from the man. Ted labelled him a Venom Drinker - a member of an omnicidal, corruption-worshipping sect that had wiped out many of the Hidden Villages before the Petalbearer's exocus. The wildlife, he reasoned, didn't make much distinction between nice folks and Venom Drinkers - whatever came by was as likely as not to eat the man. With that, the group headed back towards the Hidden Village.

In the village, Robin studied the crystal she had pulled from the dwarf statue. It bore layered inscriptions and runes that she recognized as Dwarven. She brought it before Weavegreen, who recognized the names of old dwarven cities, and advised her to hold it up to some light to project the image correctly. The refractions formed something that looked like a map, but curiously circular, shifting as Robin turned the crystal.

The rest of the party said their goodbyes to a shaky-looking Ted and the rest of the village. Vennat requested to join them on the Tortoise for a lift to a Torch city of their convenience - the village was comfortable and safer than their river, but his clan still needed the material support from his mercenary work. Weavegreen suggested that, even though Arijat's favor had been paid, if they ever needed to reach the village, they could commune in dream with the help of the other druid they had mentioned.

The Tortoise and its five passengers took to the air. Ekkels steered them well clear of where they had been ambushed at the Obelisk Hall, but was surprised at his own familiarity in navigating the Blight. This deja vu spurred him to turn off of the path out of the Blight at the waterfall. Instead, he brought the Tortoise up to the side of a vast, rotting log, and rediscovered a hidden tunnel in a whorl of its bark. Vennat offered to man the ship, and the party dismounted to explore the mysterious, shadowy passage.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-03-19

2023-03-24T01:00:02Z

Abe:

Session Log 2023-03-19

2023-03-24T00:57:29Z

Abe: Created page with "The party and Ted realized that the webbing growing between the towering mushrooms would soon surround the Obelisk Hall. Klaitos leapt out into the swamp, powering through the..."

The party and Ted realized that the webbing growing between the towering mushrooms would soon surround the Obelisk Hall. Klaitos leapt out into the swamp, powering through the toxic Blight muck with Ekkels in tow. Robin used her crossbow to pin a rope to the nearest unwebbed mushroom so that she, Ignis, and Ted could pull themselves through the mire.

As the group splashed to freedom, they were set upon by swarms of rat-sized insects. Robin conjured an illusion of the smell of pungent rotting food, drawn from her memories of living on the streets of the Torch, to distract a portion of the swarm. Ignis, still channeling his fire magic, blasted many of the rest out of the air.

The group made it past the growing fungal fence. Ignis paused a moment to blast the encroaching swarms. He felt something splatter against his collarbone and immediate began feeling ill. A violet stain of poison had struck him from a masked assailant clinging to the mushroom above. He cleared the poison from his system with a swig of healing liquor and warned his friends of the threat above. Klaitos pulled him bodily away from the spot before the webbing separated him from the group.

Robin struck Ignis's poisoner with a crossbow bolt, but the figure simply climbed higher into the shadowy subcanopy. Ignis spitefully and recklessly decided to knock the mushroom down. He chopped at the stem with his sword as Klaitos pushed it to tear and topple. Ekkels borrowed Ignis's flame to help somehow, but when Robin and Ted were attacked by the remaining insects, he shifted his focus to wiping out the swarm. Though Robin was able to drop below Ekkels's poor aim, Ted's reflex were not as sharp, leaving the orc burnt and dazed.

Klaitos and Ignis's efforts saw the canopic mushroom topple heavily. Daylight streamed through the spore-haze as the great stalk collapsed onto another, and another mushroom. The chain reaction concerned Ted, who warned that greater threats than an assassin and some bugs would investigate a noise like that. Ignis healed his burns as Ekkels searched for the masked figure. A far-off, rumbling bellow drove Ted's point home and spurred the party to urgency.

The assassin was found alive but unconscious. Under the mask, the party found a starkly unwashed but unfamiliar human face, with violet staining around his mouth. Ted labelled him a Venom Drinker - a member of an omnicidal, corruption-worshipping sect that had wiped out many of the Hidden Villages before the Petalbearer's exocus. The wildlife, he reasoned, didn't make much distinction between nice folks and Venom Drinkers - whatever came by was as likely as not to eat the man. With that, the group headed back towards the Hidden Village.

In the village, Robin studied the crystal she had pulled from the dwarf statue. It bore layered inscriptions and runes that she recognized as Dwarven. She brought it before Weavegreen, who recognized the names of old dwarven cities, and advised her to hold it up to some light to project the image correctly. The refractions formed something that looked like a map, but curiously circular, shifting as Robin turned the crystal.

The rest of the party said their goodbyes to a shaky-looking Ted and the rest of the village. Vennat requested to join them on the Tortoise for a lift to a Torch city of their convenience - the village was comfortable and safer than their river, but his clan still needed the material support from his mercenary work. Weavegreen suggested that, even though Arijat's favor had been paid, if they ever needed to reach the village, they could commune in dream with the help of the other druid they had mentioned.

The Tortoise and its five passengers took to the air. Ekkels steered them well clear of where they had been ambushed at the Obelisk Hall, but was surprised at his own familiarity in navigating the Blight. This deja vu spurred him to turn off of the path out of the Blight at the waterfall. Instead, he brought the Tortoise up to the side of a vast, rotting log, and rediscovered a hidden tunnel in a whorl of its bark. Vennat offered to man the ship, and the party dismounted to explore the mysterious, shadowy passage.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-03-07

2023-03-09T03:27:12Z

Abe: Created page with "As the Kobolds unpacked and settled into the hidden village, a handful of varied villagers emerged from the treehouses to greet them. Meanwhile, the party spread out to invest..."

As the Kobolds unpacked and settled into the hidden village, a handful of varied villagers emerged from the treehouses to greet them. Meanwhile, the party spread out to investigate the strange grove deep within the Blight. They found the village looped back on itself - walking far enough in any direction simply brought one back to where they had started. The old elven magic that had created this fold in spacetime seemed to be able to keep out most of the fungal corruption - sunlight trickled in through real trees, without the mushroom canopy to block it.

Klaitos, having served his end of the deal, was freed from the Oath-bond by Arijat. She advised him and his allies to stay the night, at least - the Blight would be little darker than the spore-clouded and mushroom-overcast day, but its perils far more active. Lacking an urgent reason to fly the Tortoise back by night, Klaitos agreed to borrow some of the dusty beds. He wondered if there was to be any celebration of their newfound sanctuary, but learned that, though the nomads were used to lean times, the food stores of the village were not such that they could supply a proper feast. Their gardens were underutilized - cleaning errant spores made it troublesome to grow more food than would be eaten - and they were ill prepared to hunt the fauna of the swamp.

Robin climbed into the treehouse-village. Her Bracelet of Greed indicated little of value in this sanctuary, and so she inquired among the villagers as to the Obelisk Hall the party had passed on their way in. To her dismay, archeology was not a major interest among the remaining villagers. She was able to find a stockpile of writings, but most of it was gardening manuals, notes on the Blight, and book after book of variable-quality amateur fiction. She decided that, in lieu of further information, she would at least try to cajole a local into helping her navigate the swamp floor safely.

Ekkels took in the fresh air and greenery, wandering around the looping village. He felt a strong sense of familiarity, but couldn't figure out why. Puzzled but untroubled, he took the opportunity to relax and watch the young kobolds frolic as they experienced grass, flowers, soil, and trees for likely the first time in their lives.

Ignis found an engraved stone tucked away in a corner of the grove. It bore several dozen names and a farewell message from villagers that had left for the Petalbearer's realm. Having little familiarity with the Cult of the Petalbearer, he asked many questions of the patient Weavegreen. She told him that she and the other remaining villagers had turned down the sanctuary-realm offered by the Petalbearer some months ago, out of a desire to protect this realm or simple disinclination to leave the realm in which they had lived their lives. He proposed several increasingly convoluted plans to de-Blight the Blight, which she declined to comment on for lack of arcanic education. Even his hopes of plunderable old elven ruins were dashed - what was preserved from the Blight was villages that had been lived in for generations, not the elven tree-cities from before the Time of Madness; if he wished to risk his neck for their treasures he could dive into the old capital at the heart of the Blight like any other fool.

The party regrouped and discussed their plan for the next day. Robin was set on revisiting the Obelisk Hall but conveyed little reason to her allies. They did agree that it was worth seeking some sort of creature that could be brought back to the village to serve as livestock, beyond the villages' few remaining pack-lizards, but that they shouldn't risk flying the Tortoise to and from the Hidden Village.

Waking from a comfortable night's sleep in the village's unused beds, Robin asked her more personable allies to persuade a villager to serve as a swamp guide. Ignis was trapped by a conversation with a doting elderly woman, but Klaitos was able to convince Ted, a middle-aged orc to come along. Appreciative of their efforts in bringing the village back to life, Ted disliked the idea of them rotting at the bottom of the Blight, and figured his expertise as a former hunter for the village could come in handy. He was rather skeptical of the idea that they'd find anything worth raising as livestock.

The group left through the root-passage, the stench, humidity, and ambient chaos of the Blight increasing with every step. Ted used a compass to guide them due north. Their footsteps squelched messily in the muck of the Blight, but Robin was able to use a partially-rotten branch to erase their tracks behind them. As they ventured further into the mire, their noses full of rot and their ears plagued by the whine of insects, she questioned her commitment to treasure.

Arriving at the Obelisk Hall, Robin realized her bracelet was pulling towards the head of a granite dwarf-statue some 15 feet high. She convinced the group to help her pull the statue to the ground, and improvised some explosives to loosen the base. It crashed loudly onto the stone plaza and cracked open, revealing a small inscribed crystal deep within the head of the "dwarf". The dim light filtering through the fungal canopy was insufficient to study her new treasure, so Robin pocketed it for later.

Just then, as if in response to the crash of the statue, the buzzing of insects began to increase in volume. Ignis called upon his fire magic, and its light revealed an encroaching cloud of rat-sized insects. He surrounded the party with a wall of flame and smoke to deter the horde as Ted cursed and pointed the way they came. A webbing had grown between two of the towering mushroom-stalks, blocking their path back, and more webbing was stretching from stalk to stalk around the Obelisk Hall.

[[Category:Session Logs]]

Session Log 2023-02-16

2023-02-18T02:40:04Z

Abe: Created page with "Ignis checked in on the weary kobold nomads as Ekkels flew the Tortoise through the black-flame smoke and into the empty sky. Though the most severely debilitated had already..."

Ignis checked in on the weary kobold nomads as Ekkels flew the Tortoise through the black-flame smoke and into the empty sky. Though the most severely debilitated had already received his attention, the village - already appreciative of the party's dragonslaying - was grateful for his and his teammate's aid in their time of crisis.

With little other interruption, the Tortoise flew south to the Blight. Its fungal peaks loomed on the horizon, and, at about the same distance, its stench of pervasive rot curdled the increasingly humid air. The kobolds that were unable to fit belowdecks looked vaguely sickened by this miasma. Klaitos tried to protect the ship, but found it difficult to wrap in an envelope of wind. Robin tried to fashion some protective facialwear, but found her materials and tools unsuited to the task.

Ekkels passed the steerage over to Klaitos, with Robin backseat-piloting, and imitated the storm giant's spell with his own power. Ignis asked the kobolds belowdecks for a tent to pitch at the front of the ship to help shape the barrier, and Vennat conjured a pair of spectral dragonwings to contribute to the spell. Working together, they were able to freshen the air around most of the abovedecks, leaving only Klaitos and Robin to deal with the stench.

Klaitos, wary about damaging the Tortoise with his average piloting skill, felt for the flow of the wind to help him guide the craft. With Robin's help, he evaded the periodic eruptions of fungal spores from the canopic Blight. They reached the waterfall Arijat had described, and found a gap between the cliffside and the canopy through which the vessel would fit - but only barely. Klaitos carefully avoided scraping the rocky wall, but accidentally brushed against a sporulent node on the side of one of the towering mushroom-stalks. It erupted into a mass of purple-grayish fuzz that quickly began to spread across the side of the ship.

Ignis rushed over and interposed himself between the spreading infection and the kobold nomads. He quickly confirmed that none of them had been caught in the splash before conjuring some fire magic to try and manage the spread of the slime. However, the humidity and the ambient spray from the waterfall literally dampened his flame, and he was unable to do more than keep it from flooding up the deck.

Robin headed belowdecks to retrieve a large jug of sanitary alcohol to purge away the fungus. Klaitos abandoned the steerage, allowing the ship to hover, so that he could relieve Ekkels from the burden of maintaining the wind-barrier. He suggested that the fungal growth could be magical in nature. Ekkels was unable to sense any significant magic coming from it, but realized that the air was saturated with ambient chaos - a force that had been steadily increasing since they reached the Blight, subtler than the stench and general unpleasantness. The fungus may have been warped by chaos, but it was not obiously relying on it to fuel its growth.

Ekkels, alongside some earnest but ill-equipped kobolds, hurried over to where Ignis was keeping the slime at bay. He was able copy Ignis's flame magic, and used a great blast of it to clear off the majority of the mass from the deck. Ignis, irritated that he had been bested by mindless mold, channeled a wave of heat through the side of the ship, scouring the majority of the remaining slime from its side.

Robin's alcohol and the kobolds' cleaning efforts purged the last of the fungus. Now that Klaitos was sustaining the barrier of wind, Ekkels resumed piloting the Tortoise through the gloomy subcanopic Blight. Having become aware of the ambient chaos, he noted its force waxing as they flew deeper within.

Arijat's instructions said to find a specific landmark - a collection of stone obelisks - on the ground below, but Ekkels wasn't sure how he'd know it was there in the hazy darkness without flying dangerously close to the jungle floor. Ignis helped by casting a fireball of glowing light out before the ship. Robin considered helping, but decided that the events of the journey thus far had not yielded enough profit to warrant her attention, and retired belowdecks.

With the aid of Ignis's beacon, Ekkels was able to find the Obelisk Hall. As the ship briefly circled around it, Robin's Bracelet of Greed tugged lightly at her wrist. She didn't think it was worthwhile to dive overboard now, when they were close to their destination, but decided to revisit her larcenous opportunity on the way back.

The Tortoise flew due south from the Obelisk Hall to find the ancient, upturned roots of a vast tree. Arijat emerged, leaning heavily on her younger aide, to guide Ekkels. They flew a winding route between the roots in a specific order. The passage was tricky for a ship of the Tortoise's size, and several of the old roots bumped against its hull. With one final loop, an impossible passage of denser foliage appeared before them. Within, Ekkels felt the chaos's influence lifted. Beyond, the vessel landed safely in a grassy grove.

Arijat's destination seemed even better than she had described -a glade of living trees holding aloft a village of treehouses and wooden bridges, large enough for the whole village and clean enough to breathe freely. Arijat called out their arrival, at which an old dwarven woman with mossy streaks throughout her hair and petals on her clothes emerged from the treehouses above. She climbed down to hug the old kobold and to welcome the new residents as they disembarked from the Tortoise. She introduced herself as Weavegreen, druid of the Petalbearer, and keeper of this last hidden village within the Blight.

[[Category:Session Logs]]