Session 20: From the moon to the planes Report

General Summary

Previously

Following the instructions of the Electric Monk, the party has repaired the shuttle retrieved from the Vlerryn, and flown the Surprise to the moon to retrieve the planar stabilization device that they hope to use to restore the city of Agaddon from the interdimensional rift in to which it was thrown a thousand years ago by the Incident. After waiting for the moon to temporally cycle through its grey phase and then back to green (to give them the most time on the ground before the next temporal transition), the party and Rylan approach the north polar fortress in the shuttle.    As they do, a bright beam of light shoots out from one of the nearby towers. It engulfs the ship, and the controls go dead. The beam guides the ship down into a cavernous hanger as its roof doors slide open, and deposits it gently on an bare metal surface. The beams disappears, and the ceiling doors slowly close, leaving the shuttle in darkness, in a space of unknown size.  

Session Notes

 

Moonbase Aggravation

  Zayer and Windy, as inherently magical beings, feel uncomfortable in the low magic, high science environment of the base. Zayer feels somewhat cut off from the divine.    As the party waits to see what happens, they hear the noise of rushing wind outside the shuttle (the hangar being repressurized), and overhead red lights come on, fading to white as the hangar air pressure builds. The lights reveal a large bay, containing several other shuttles, in various states of disrepair, as well as loading equipment. A couple of cargo-sized hatches are visible, as well as a number of smaller ones. The ship shuts down completely, the controls dead.   The party can see that the hangar bay is quite clean. Even the debris from the broken shuttles is neatly laid out in stacks and patterns, and remarkably shiny, as if it were polished.   Small (toaster size) robots roll out (pic), and start scanning the ship, and apparently plugging into it.    Windy exits the ship through the small airlock, and confirms the air is breathable. As the rest of the crew exit the shuttle, a bright white light seems to engulf them with a tingle, and they hear a voice overhead saying:   "Scanning. This shuttle is from the Vlleryn. It is in remarkably good shape, I must say. Unfortunately, it has not been cleaned well at all. There are large concentrations of organic contaminants, and some unusual technology. The power sources are not native to Paraxis. Units 13 and 23, bring the single large and several small artifacts of unusual origin to the science bay. Units 15 and 45, take the organic material to the recyclers."   With that, hovering cylindrical automatons with tentacle arms shortly float out of one of the larger hatches. Prax shouts "All units, return to base", causing the robots to reverse course. The overhead voice, now irritated, orders the robots forward again, only to be once again halted by Prax. Eventually, a transparent form (of the guardian spirit of the base, or of a hologram of the surviving AI, take your pick) appears and talks to Windy. Eventually, after much back and forth the party realizes the transparent form can't see them, or at least doesn't recognize them as being alive. Windy eventually convinces the form to take another look.      The form disappears, and they party can hear gibberish overhead about "finding the right subroutines", as Jessa strikes out in the general direction that the Electric Monk told them to go, with the rest of the party following her. Rylan is quite happy to stay in the ship until he knows if things are safe. Really quite happy. Really.    The floating robots temporarily stop the party so one can comb Hunter, but then the group continues on. Eventually, the form reappears, walking along side them, happy to chat now that he can see them. The party quickly realizes that something is terribly wrong with "Martin" as he calls himself. Half the time he acts like the commander of the base, half the time he is obsessed with cleaning things. He doesn't believe that it has been a thousand years since "The Incident", and he describes that he was "offline for a bit, and his repair algorithms had to scavenge code from a few sources to patch some gaps", whatever that means. Regardless, once the party explains why they are here, Martin eventually directs the party to a tunnel leading below the moon's surface. They need to get to a door at the far end to enter the Depositorium where the device they are looking for is, but the door is obscured through a series of hazed bands of energy. Each subsequent layer seems to lie behind a hazier and hazier transparent film, making it difficult to see through more than a handful of layers at once.   Martin explains that these layers are actually slices of different dimensions, and this is a side effect of the planar research station. Whether a form of toxic waste, or intentionally (to sequester dimensions deemed dangerous, or accidentally created), the station compiled collapsed dimensions--forming hundreds of red-gold metallic bricks that are warm to the touch. Each weighs almost 100 pounds (45 kg) despite being only 8 inches (20 cm) in the largest dimension. Whether these realities are truly collapsed, isolated from the multiverse, or just the interface from this part of spacetime is wrapped up, and the dimensions are still accessible from elsewhere, is unknown and may vary. Regardless, these bars are the cause of the dimensional distortions. Once the technomagic failsafes lapsed, their presence generated the distortions.   Martin explains that he has tried to get his robots into the Depositorium through the dimensionsal slices (he hasn't been able to clean in there in forever, and that is quite upsetting), but that most robots get lost in the first layer (which is a jungle, apparently). Only one robot got past that, and they didn't return. He advises them to look for tunnels, doors, etc. as passage to the next realm. Dimensional boundaries will be visible to the party, not to any "natives" (based on the few robots he's tried to send through, with very limited success-in part because they keep cleaning things).   The party heaves a deep collective sigh before stepping into the first layer. Before they do, Zayer asks Martin to talk to Rylan, and tell him more about what has been happening here, the history, etc.  

Jungle Layer

Vague green silhouettes can been seen growing beyond the haze. As the party steps through, they find themseles in a a riot of jungle growth. Tall trees, multicolored flowers, the sounds of birds and insects, humid heat, and broad leaves that provide shade from the bright sun during the day are features of this location. The hazy outline of the portal they entered through is visible behind them. There are no obvious paths that provide access through the area, but Hunter is able to find some remnants of the passage of the previous robot explorers, while Zayre and Windellian fly up for a better view above the canopy, and can see the side of a volcano, surrounded by a tropical island.    The party heads in that direction. After avoiding bright red flowers that apparently destroyed one of the previous robots with acidic spittle, they become aware of large, greyish, 6 legged jungle cats tracking them. The party keeps moving steadily but not running. When they reach an open grassland, with a tunnel visible in the cliff face ahead, BN Sue is the first to head out. He calmly walks out, as one of the cats stalks him. When BN Sue makes himself "look big", the cat decides to back off (much to the apparent amusement of the other cats). The rest of the party calmly walks across the grassland, their cool demeanor confusing the jungle cats, and they enter the tunnel without incident.   A short way down, they step through a black veil, and find themselves elsewhere.  

Bagworld

  The party finds themselves on a featureless, completely flat black plane. The only thing visible is a pillar of light far off to their right. They decide to investigate, and as they approach the light, Zayer guesses that they are somehow inside a Portable Hole or a Bag of Holding, having heard stories that there are such bags that give access to a shared storage plane, rather than a limited dimensional pocket. In the light, the party finds what appears to be the storage area of the Olympian gods, with silver lightning bolts, a pair of gauntlets, a wrought owl, and several other fantastic objects, along with many ornate (but closed) crates. Above, they can see the light is coming from a fabric opening that does indeed look like the inside of a gathered bag, with large shadows occasionally moving across the opening.    The party really, really wants to explore this loot more, and perhaps pocket a few things, but decide it is wiser to refrain (for now). They spot a blue veil in the distance, and after taking careful bearings for their return, head towards it and ultimately through it.  

Wonderland

  Emerging, they find themselves climbing out of a burrow in the side of a grassy knoll, the blue they saw from the sky above.  A perfectly manicured lawn stretches out before them, while a forest of huge mushrooms is visible to the right. Atop one, a very large caterpillar sits smoking a hookah, and regards them impassively.