OttD Session 36: Intermission I, Stirring up some Buzz with a new airship

General Summary

The party is in full attendance. We begin the session with the party still in The Tavern, talking with Sconce, Madani, and Mama Bear. Madani offers to take the group on a grand tour of the island.

She explains that the terrain in Vigrid is crafted from the memories of the participants. When terrain from the outer planes appears, it sometimes carries over the "rules" of the original plane. For example, she has seen before where those killed in an area based on Ysgard came back to life at the next dawn. Pestle inquires whether that counted as a kill, and Madani went over to the two referees, Black and White, to get confirmation. It counted as a kill, but that kill also went away when the target came back to life.

After this, Pestle points out the giant pyramid towards the east of the island. Madani is surprised to see this structure, as it is new. It appears to have been based on the party's memories of destroying the Temple of the Four Winds. The party goes to investigate, with the intention of stealing the gold from it again. There turns out to not be nearly as much gold as there was before; instead there is just a thin layer of gold layered on top of sandstone bricks. The party spends over 45 minutes here engaging in various gold-related shenanigans, making small talk, etc.

The tour then proceeds to the dwarven district, which appears to be primarily hill dwarf architecture, and is largely uninhabited. Zerrof stays here to find a forge and start looking for some busywork to clear his head. Tornac returns to The Tavern with Madani to go get drunk and make small talk with Sconce.
The rest of the party proceeds to a strange gate, standing unattached to anything else, towards the center of the island. They have come to visit Iapetus and see exactly what he is intending. Iapetus himself is remarkably calm and casual, offering little details regarding his plans. He intends to make all things mortal, as that is the natural state of the world. He is also crafting himself a new spear, to replace Dénouement. He does not seem to mind Tornac having the old one. He will, however, allow some gods to maintain their immortality if the Hands of Fate gathered in Vigrid are insistent enough. He does this not out of a belief that mortals should hold judgement, but as a matter of picking his battles and going after the "worse" gods first. They struggle to get much more out of him, and eventually go make their way back to The Tavern .

Meanwhile, Zerrof spends quite some time preparing a forge and finding a way to keep himself busy. After he has been working for roughly an hour and a half Nihilo comes to visit him. There is considerable tension between them, as Zerrof makes it clear that he has no intention of allowing Mazu to die. Nihilo responds by giving a brief explanation of his background and The World of Forms.
Nihilo is thousands of years old, having been born in the Age of Sacrifice, which was the one before The Age of Rebellion, when Zerrof was born. According to Nihilo, the Forms are the reason that the world is constantly on the brink of destruction. If this is not resolved, Nihilo says, then future generations are bound to face similar cataclysms. Nihilo also believes that mortals are bound to lose eventually, which would bring about the death of all things. This is why Nihilo plans to destroy The multiverse: in order to destroy The World of Forms. After this The multiverse would be reforged, without the forms, and future generations would lead much safer lives. In other words he does what he does not out of hatred for what exists now but in order to save future generations from destruction. He believes the finite lives of those alive today is a small cost to pay to save an infinite number of future lives.

Nihilo also shares the story of The Hanging Tree and the The Age of Rebellion. In short, The Age of Rebellion was characterized by violent conflict in which the people rose up against their own leaders.  This was brought about not by the works of mortals but by The Hanging Tree, which was the Avatar of rebellion. This eventually resulted in mortals, and indeed life itself, rebelling against the gods.  Nihilo says that he convinced the Dukes of Air to put an end to this by destroying The Hanging Tree.  Unfortunately, the Avatar's death throes resulted in the gods going to war with each other.  This was The Shattering.

Serious conversation having been concluded, Nihilo explained that he had actually come to ask for a favor.  He provides Zerrof with a large quantity of iron ore and some schematics for various mechanical components, including what appears to be a metallic comb, a small handle, several gears, and a strange metal cylinder covered in bumps with very precise measurements.  Apparently this will all be used to help make a gift for Aria.  Zerrof gladly agrees to assist.  He was looking for something to do, anyway.

The rest of the party meets up and makes small talk briefly before setting off for the Church of Ascension.  They never actually arrive, however, because Pestle lets Barry the Bee out of his herbalism kit and uses his True Polymorph scroll to turn him into an airship.
This action, as it turns out, is entirely valid within the rules as written.  It requires a large arcana check to actually cast the spell successfully, but with assistance from the rest of the party Pestle passes that by a significant margin.  Barry the Airship is a small airship with several days of food and space to house seven people.  The ship is capable of magical flight.  Pestle has considerable difficulty controlling it, but through several skill checks of varying kinds he manages to teach himself the basics.  Adoven Verdonnet also finds an ancient map, dating back to the Age of Sacrifice, which is far more detailed than any other map of the land of that time that has been found so far.  He finds a small plastic bag to store it in, with the intention of asking Zerrof to make a proper case for it later.
The party also spends some time playing with the ship cannons.  They appear to be magical in nature, but their exact workings are still unknown.  Thorough investigation determines:

• The ship has four cannons, but no cannonballs
• The ship can fire cannons despite not having ammunition for them
• Each cannon features three small green gemstones on the back.  These glow when the cannon is ready for use, and dim when it is fired.
• When a dwarf (in this case, Tornac) is loaded into a cannon, its gemstones turn red.  The cannon still functions, however, and can launch said dwarf as a projectile at great speeds
• The party believes these cannons need to be recharged before being used again, but they are not certain how.

Report Date

16 Feb 2020