Session 86 - Into the Wild Blue Yonder

6 Numont 1011 - 3 Flaurmont 1011

General Summary

Eventually arriving in Corunglain, the party settles into a nice cozy inn, and have a real meal. The next day they get down to work. The first thing they do is seek out a responsible temple to pass the sword off to. There is a temple to Ixion, who is the lord of Light and Energy, and is known for opposing Entropy, and banishing darkness. After some thought, they decide to approach the temple. The party enters the temple, and Seraphina leads the discussion. She asks a priestess if they could have a private discussion about a problem. The priest agrees, and is surprised when all 5 party members follows her to a more private space.
Once there, Seraphina begins describing the powerful chaotic artifact/sword they encountered, and that the party was seeking a responsible way to keep the artifact out of the hands of dangerous folks. After just a little way into the discussion they got, the priestess explains that this is above her ability to help, but she will speak to the head of the temple, if they could wait a moment.
After a short while, the priestess returns with a high-level cleric. They once again describe the sword, and its intent to return the everything to nothingness, along with its persuasive nature. The cleric asks if it is in a safe place, and if the party would be willing to bring it to the temple for them to study. The party agrees, on the condition that they can stay nearby to help protect it. The cleric agrees, and is surprised when they draw the sword from the Bag of Colding. She handles the sword with great care, and it is obvious to the party that she recognizes its danger and power. After some time studying the sword she explains that she will need to commune with Ixion, and that it may take some time to do so. Later that evening she attempts to Commune with Ixion. Clearly this sense of need was strong, as the attempt was successful. The next morning she informs the party that a representative of Ixion would arrive in 2 days time to take the sword back to Ixion; the party maintains their vigilant watch for the duration. On the annointed date, they gather in the courtyard with the priestess and the cleric. In time, a winged humanoid becomes visible descending gracefully from the sky. It has wings, but their movement seems too languid to keep such a being aloft. The Angelic figure carefully takes the sword within its wrappings and floats away, leaving a blessing behind for all of those in attendance.
As the party goes back about its business in town, they are contacted by a Corun House agent, who says they have a message from the Corun family, who are wondering why the group has not checked in yet. With Blackrazor dealt with, the party is happy to meet, and accompany the agent to a Corun family estate. They give an abbreviated version of their tale, leaving out the sword and the trident, only mentioning the dwarven hammer, Whelm. While it is a powerful artifact, it seems that it can only be wielded by a Dwarf, limiting its dangers. They offer it to House Corun, who gives them the remaining 9000 gp. He says that with the news from Rockhome, it may not make sense to let it out of Darokin for the time being. The party, not privy to the latest rumors, perk up, and ask about Rockhome. It turns Denwarf, the legendary golem-king from centuries ago, has returned and is contesting the throne. The current king has ruled well, and peacefully, but this is an internal affair that should be resolved by the dwarves, and Darokin will try to keep itself out of whatever arises from this internal strife; hopefully peaceful relations will continue after whatever should come.
With their newfound wealth, the party buys a few new magic itqems for themselves, then heads via trees back to Saltmarsh. Ynyr and other Saltmarsh regulars are met with in the ensuing days. While Ynyr works with the newest Orrery piece, the party stays about town through the winter months.
In Rockhome, inner strife leaves them vulnerable to attacks from a horde led by Thar, though the clans are able to set aside differences long enough to drive out the humanoids. When that situation is resolved, rule of Rockhome is still in contention. Ultimately, a Challenge of Kings is held - Everast XV and six champions against Denwarf and his six, who come from clans hoping to depose the Everast family. In the battle, Everast loses three champions before Denwarf is severely hurt and enters a frenzy, kill four of his own champions. When the battle is done, Everast is victiorious but mortally wounded. In the end, Everast's oldest child, Bofin, is crowned King Everast XVI and the heads of two rebellious clans are banished from Rockhome.
In Saltmarsh, the party members have all honed new skills and abilities that make them even more formidable. Seraphina has learned to summon an even greater version of Luminescence, now in the form of a noble Pegasus! She has been giving the orphans flying rides, when weather permits. Tork has been contemplative in the down-time, still trying to find balance in his monastic learnings and his tribal temper. The orphanage has a very substantial reserve fund now, and probably can remain in good financial health for generations to come.
Leo contacts Sumadram Nila, the party's aquatic elf friend, and invite him to visit. He arrives a few days later, looking quite healthy and fit since his recovery his time as a prisoner on the former Sea Ghost. He turns the head of many women in the city, especially when he first arrives wearing little but sea elf swimming shorts. Elincia takes particular interest in him over the course of his visit, though the party does stay on-task of hosting him and presenting him with the magic trident, Wave, entrusting him with it's safekeeping. He hopes that he can live up to the task, though the party thinks he is too modest of his character and qualities. When he leaves he promises to visit more often, possibly with a longer look in Elincia's direction.
Meanwhile, Ynyr has been working steadily on understanding the artifacts. He is now sure there are six parts in total, of which the party has now collected three. He is fairly certain that the altar the party found in the Hill Giant steading that had the cutaway that seemed to hold the first part of artifact was not anything to do with the original function of the artifact, but instead was trying to draw power from the artifact for other purposes. He shows Leo how to use the improvements to strengthen the signal of the artifact pieces. By early spring it seems that the portion that had "gone south" is now returning, and projected to pass not too far from Riverfork Keep in a few weeks time.
As the arrival date gets closer, the party visits Seraphina's mother near Riverfork Keep (traveling via trees of course), and she is, as usual, a joy to visit. She is very impressed with Seraphina's Pegasus, and loves the ride she is given. They have a wonderful dinner of course, and head north the next day to get closer to the path of the artifact. At this point Leo decides to mention to the party what he learned from Schmid Schmilosh about his parents, particularly that there is a (mostly) secrety flying city of gnomes. With the trajectory of this artifact piece, Leo is now suspicious that it is on this flying city.
The next day, shortly before lunch, they hear an explosive sound in the distance and then spot an object in the sky that is smoking badly and descending towards the east. They immediately head where they think it should have landed, and in an hour or two, they are nearing the impact area. Through the trees ahead they can see a clearing, and in that clearing they see a bright green tarpaulin of some sort covering a large object. As they move to approach, they hear a call from the trees above. "Friend or Foe?" Leo quickly answers "Friend!" and the response is, "Thank goodness! It's so tiring being up here, can you help me down?" Stavos uses his whistle to rise up into the tree, and a gnome is brought down.
With some convoluted and weirdly evasive discussion, they eventually work out that something went wrong with their flying machine, they call it a "Cloud Clipper", and they lost propulsion and had to crash land. It seems that he was assigned lookout duties, but is now leading them to the flying machine. The Captain of this crew, one Dunbar Stormkinder, is a bit alarmed that he is back with a pack of strangers, but in no time they have embraced the party as helpful hands. As they learn more from the crew over time, it seems this contraption is powered by stored magic. In fact, the Captain asks them to "top off the tank" by casting a spell into a port inside the craft, with an indicator glowing brightly when Leo casts Sickening Radiance into the device. The spell is absorbed using a process the pilot can't sufficiently explain, saying "I fly 'em, I don't make 'em." Leo finds it an intriguing device.
The party helps in various ways while Dunbar and his three crew members work on repairs. Stavos and Tork take over the watch duties from the gnomes, and all the gnomes (including Leo) as well as Seraphina and Elincia stay by the machine helping in whatever ways they can. They keep fixing things, but it seems things are breaking as fast as they can fix them. Eventually the captain declares, "We must have a Gremlin!". With questioning looks from the party, he explains that gremlins are small creatures that infest complex machinery and compulsively take them apart. The bane of complex machinery. Once the party is aware of what they should be looking for, they are vigilant. Eventually, they spot the Gremlin, and chase it down as it flees the area. As it is about to escape into the woods, Leo casts Forcecage on it. The creature is trapped in the barred version of the cage, and they confront it. It seems sentient, if evasive, and clearly a creature of chaos. In any case, it just likes to take things apart. It wants to get out of the cage, and the party doesn't want to let it out. After some time arguing, futile for both sides, the gremlin squishes itself between the narrowly spaced bars, letting itself out. Seraphina hastily casts Sleep on the gremlin and it falls to the ground, snoozing soundly. They tie it up, and bring it back to the captain explaining that they captured the gremlin. "Great!" he says, "Now, bash its head in!" Seraphina and Elincia don't seem too enthusiastic about that solution and negotiate making sure it doesn't get back to the flying machine. Elincia summons eight housecats that are on watch, surrounding the gremlin as it comes back awake. Meanwhile, the captain has one of the gnomes make an unsolvable/unbreakable (hopefully) gadget to occupy the Gremlin's attention.
With the gremlin out of the way, the repairs go much smoother. By the next morning the work is complete and it has become clear that the gnomes are advance scouts for the flying city of Serraine. As thanks for their help, the group is invited to join the gnomes in their return flight. Luckily the Cloud Clipper is sized to carry passengers and not cramped for those larger than gnomes. When the machine is started, it's quite loud, though the ride is fairly smooth and far different that being on the back of a giant eagle or in the form of a cloud.
After a while, one of the crew spots some hostile creatures closing in. It seems the flying machine attracted the attention of three Wyverns. Everyone is able to help with fighting off the Wyverns, with the crew even breaking out crossbows and ammo from a storage chest. Tork, in his typical way, runs right out onto the tail of the Cloud Clipper to engage in close combat with the Wyvern that starts attacking the rear of the aircraft. Leo summons an Aberrant Spirit (Beholderkin) to help shoot at the Wyvern that is closing in on the wing. Stavos and Elincia shoot and cast spells at the Wyverns, while Seraphina summons Luminescence and engages them directly. In just a few rounds, and a couple devastating smites, the Wyverns are all killed, plummeting from the sky.
After nearly an hour, the vehicle approaches a large, white cumulous cloud, though on rising higher they see that the cloud was to obscure a wondrous flying city from the ground below. The city is quite large, and seems like an island fully populated with large buildings right up to the edge. The towers are remarkably large for something that is floating on air! One of the gnomes clips a harness to a mounting point and leans out a hatch to begin signalling down to the landing strip below, where gnomes in blue jumpsuits wave large flags to signal incoming crafts. After a couple passes, the Cloud Clipper is cleared to land and smoothly touches down on the landing strip. The captain explains that they will have to go through the customs building just over yonder before they can go in to the city itself.
They wave their goodbyes and head to the indicated building, where it turns out they have to go through a multi-hour interview process. They are asked their names and origins, and their magic items are inspected and cataloged. It turns out there is an import tax for magic items, at 10gp per item!!. The party, their pockets a bit lighter, have finally passed through immigration, and are now ready to explore the amazing Flying City of Serraine!

Character(s) interacted with

Ynyr
Sumadram Nila 
Calen Thekrana

Report Date

14 Apr 2024